Europa Universalis IV announced

[garbon]

Is there any pattern to how monarch stats are generated? I see France, Burgundy and Austria often getting monarchs with 6 and 5 values with a lowest value of 4 (of course they do get shitty monarchs as well).

Turn off lucky nations or France and Austria will always get god-kings.

Ah gotcha!

[DGuller]

What I really want to know about trade is not so much whether or not it is more or less work, but whether or not it is an interesting means of creating conflict in the game. Especially MP.

Is there a feeling of being able to "fight" another power through trade? Some kind of actual conflict happening (which means actual tactics/strategy that must adjust/react to what the other guy is doing), or is it just a matter of understanding the mechanics well enough to know how to maximize your numbers better than the other guy?

In my Brandenburg->Prussia SP game, I've been competing with Denmark for more than a century over Lubeck, and to a lesser extent, Baltics.  I don't really know what Denmark AI was thinking, but if Denmark was human, it would've definitely felt a bit of a tension with Prussia (even though it makes no sense for me to eat up their territory beyond Holstein, I can't take all their territories in the Lubeck node without giving myself enormous headache). 

Then again, two human players in that situation can also agree to split the profits, not emargo each other, and split the steering duties for the Baltic Sea.  At the end of the day, it's a zero-sum game to fight over the Baltic nodes, and human MP players are pretty good about making deals in such situations.

[garbon]

Oh and yes, like I said Spain had to adapt to what I was doing by sending its lightships to the Caribbean to make sure that I wasn't bottling up trade there.

[Tamas]

Berkut the only thing holding fierce competition at key nodes back is the relatively easy way to exploit the system right now. There is too much room to blow earning out of proportions, and they can be done in cooperation with other humans to make it even worse.

Once they sort that one out, trade will probably be THE biggest source of conflict. You can absolutely screw a lot of countries over with trade steering and trade power increases, and/or make yourself some serious extra bucks by tapping into the right flow at the right time. You can have a glance of how things could be if you watch the Gulf of Aden node in SP during the game. Fierce competition because it has several possible ways to go downstream and each is crucial for a set of countries.

Trade is the most imbalanced part of the game now but also maybe the greatest invention compared to EU3

[Fireblade]

I love the new trade system. I'm doing a non-ironman game with Castile to play with trade. It's ~1580, I've only gotten to Ceylon, and I'm clearing 180 gold a month from trade alone. Once I get Nippon > Seville going and a shit ton of light ships protecting, I'll seriously have more gold than I'll ever spend.

But seriously, the New World colonies need to be more profitable. The gold issue aside, the fact that sugar is less valuable than grain or fish means that something is seriously broken. I'd almost say that demand for sugar should start at something ridiculous, like 200%, and slowly decrease over time, not start at 25% and increase by midgame to like 28%. Spices and so on should go the same way. From what I've experience so far and read on the forums, it's like Europeans in EU never realized that sugar is sweet or that spices make their shitty ass boiled food taste edible. Just because Swedes love to eat rotten fish and stale bread doesn't mean that, say, Hungarians don't enjoy paprika or Spaniards don't enjoy spicy shit. 

[Legbiter]

But seriously, the New World colonies need to be more profitable. The gold issue aside, the fact that sugar is less valuable than grain or fish means that something is seriously broken. I'd almost say that demand for sugar should start at something ridiculous, like 200%, and slowly decrease over time, not start at 25% and increase by midgame to like 28%. Spices and so on should go the same way. From what I've experience so far and read on the forums, it's like Europeans in EU never realized that sugar is sweet or that spices make their shitty ass boiled food taste edible. Just because Swedes love to eat rotten fish and stale bread doesn't mean that, say, Hungarians don't enjoy paprika or Spaniards don't enjoy spicy shit. 

The demand for most colonial goods depends on high-end or expensive buildings like factories. I don't know if the AI often has the money to build those.

[Berkut]

I love the new trade system. I'm doing a non-ironman game with Castile to play with trade. It's ~1580, I've only gotten to Ceylon, and I'm clearing 180 gold a month from trade alone. Once I get Nippon > Seville going and a shit ton of light ships protecting, I'll seriously have more gold than I'll ever spend.

See, I hear that and it makes me think the new trade system sucks donkey balls.

I don't want a system that will let me "have more gold than I'll ever spend".

[garbon]

But seriously, the New World colonies need to be more profitable. The gold issue aside, the fact that sugar is less valuable than grain or fish means that something is seriously broken. I'd almost say that demand for sugar should start at something ridiculous, like 200%, and slowly decrease over time, not start at 25% and increase by midgame to like 28%. Spices and so on should go the same way. From what I've experience so far and read on the forums, it's like Europeans in EU never realized that sugar is sweet or that spices make their shitty ass boiled food taste edible. Just because Swedes love to eat rotten fish and stale bread doesn't mean that, say, Hungarians don't enjoy paprika or Spaniards don't enjoy spicy shit. 

The demand for most colonial goods depends on high-end or expensive buildings like factories. I don't know if the AI often has the money to build those.

But why bother? As stated elsewhere makes more sense to just pillage North American states for their massive treasure troves.

[garbon]

I love the new trade system. I'm doing a non-ironman game with Castile to play with trade. It's ~1580, I've only gotten to Ceylon, and I'm clearing 180 gold a month from trade alone. Once I get Nippon > Seville going and a shit ton of light ships protecting, I'll seriously have more gold than I'll ever spend.

See, I hear that and it makes me think the new trade system sucks donkey balls.

I don't want a system that will let me "have more gold than I'll ever spend".

Sounds like it just needs to be tweaked / for periods of time (particularly when there isn't a lot of Euro competition yet) it should be a big money maker for states.

[Legbiter]

One nitpick, the border friction event is pretty extreme, it fires fairly often and it pushes all your neighbors into coalitions if you so much as fart in their general vicinity.

[garbon]

One nitpick, the border friction event is pretty extreme, it fires fairly often and it pushes all your neighbors into coalitions if you so much as fart in their general vicinity.

They said they will be hotfixing that soon.

[Tamas]

But seriously, the New World colonies need to be more profitable. The gold issue aside, the fact that sugar is less valuable than grain or fish means that something is seriously broken. I'd almost say that demand for sugar should start at something ridiculous, like 200%, and slowly decrease over time, not start at 25% and increase by midgame to like 28%. Spices and so on should go the same way. From what I've experience so far and read on the forums, it's like Europeans in EU never realized that sugar is sweet or that spices make their shitty ass boiled food taste edible. Just because Swedes love to eat rotten fish and stale bread doesn't mean that, say, Hungarians don't enjoy paprika or Spaniards don't enjoy spicy shit. 

The demand for most colonial goods depends on high-end or expensive buildings like factories. I don't know if the AI often has the money to build those.

when you get a province in a peace deal it erases all buildings there so with the frequent wars (hopefully the to-be-fixed border friction is a factor in that), nobody gets to advanced buildings, like, ever

[Legbiter]

But why bother? As stated elsewhere makes more sense to just pillage North American states for their massive treasure troves.

That and colonizing the trade nodes to direct all the New World loot towards your European node of choice. Plus cored colonies don't count towards over-extension and give you more force limits and a bigger tax base (each Carribean island is very lucrative in this regard for example).

Paradox will have to tweak the native gold supply, the border friction events and the use of massive doomstacks of light ships to break the trade system

[Fireblade]

But seriously, the New World colonies need to be more profitable. The gold issue aside, the fact that sugar is less valuable than grain or fish means that something is seriously broken. I'd almost say that demand for sugar should start at something ridiculous, like 200%, and slowly decrease over time, not start at 25% and increase by midgame to like 28%. Spices and so on should go the same way. From what I've experience so far and read on the forums, it's like Europeans in EU never realized that sugar is sweet or that spices make their shitty ass boiled food taste edible. Just because Swedes love to eat rotten fish and stale bread doesn't mean that, say, Hungarians don't enjoy paprika or Spaniards don't enjoy spicy shit. 

The demand for most colonial goods depends on high-end or expensive buildings like factories. I don't know if the AI often has the money to build those.

But why bother? As stated elsewhere makes more sense to just pillage North American states for their massive treasure troves.

In my current game, Swahili had 10k gold by the time I got around to pillaging them, Aztecs had 6k, Incas had like 7k, and on the horizon, I see Shawnee or something, who has about 5k gold. I know the Spanish got a shit load of gold IRL from Indians, but owning mountains made out of gold was where the real money was for the Spanish.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's not a real history simulator but a game based on history, but when you have an automatic 90% penalty for overseas provinces, creating a colonial empire in the Americas is more something to do with your excess colonists than something that seriously generates money.

Also Berkut, in my non-Castile/Portugal games, I haven't noticed either of them trying to monopolize the Nippon > Seville trade routes. That's actually why I postponed the MP game I was trying to set up, because both countries, given the chance to rush Japan, would be absolutely unstoppable.

[Legbiter]

when you get a province in a peace deal it erases all buildings there so with the frequent wars (hopefully the to-be-fixed border friction is a factor in that), nobody gets to advanced buildings, like, ever

Central Europe is always in flames, with the German minors being flung around like Jodie Foster on a pool table so the New World trade values will stay low forever.