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So Europa Universalis IV is now out.

Other than a stretch of graphics stuttering I received, when warring against France in an early start as England, it looks to be in pretty impressive shape. That stuttering eventually stopped, btw. Secret French Lagweapon AWAY!

The changes they've made since EU3 have been pretty great. To me, EU3 was an exercise in ridiculous meta-gaming exploits with poor AI and some poor game mechanics to boot.

The biggest improvements I've seen are in the new "Monarch Points", which is basically three kinds of influence/techno-currency used in many decisions, unlocking ideas/tech, construction of buildings, etc so it makes your choices more difficult and gives your nation much more character as it grows and customizes. Perhaps a bit like an RPG with a lot of character customization.. but with a renaissance nation of course. It's way better than the damned sliders, 'Great Men', Culture points and various other sterile crap from EU3.

Another huge one is the new Trade system. It flows from node-to-node and every nation has a "home" trade node in which they will make some profit. You can send merchants to redirect some of the trade flow to your home trade node from others "upstream". Your light warships can be sent to a trade node to give a boost to your Trade Power ranking in that node (basically how many shares of the trade total you have there). The new trade system is pretty intricate, so I won't delve into it to avoid TLDR syndrome here. I'm really happy they got rid of the annoyingly constant Merchant-jockeying from the previous version.

Also thankful they ditched the "minting" option, which was so often abused. The AI also couldn't use it properly because it didn't know how to get rid of the inflation it caused, in EU3. Good riddance. No more "rubber-banding armies".

In summary, Pdox got rid of many annoying things in EU3 that often made me quit in disgust after awhile. While there is still the +3/-3 Stability ranking, and the accompanying avalanche of bad events constantly making you lose that and other things, much of the rest has been fixed up to varying degrees.

I definitely recommend picking up EU4 if you can handle the curve.

Alas, EU4 is the one Paradox game that has deeply disappointed me in recent years. I think the only game they released which engendered this sort of dislike in me was March of the Eagles. They've gutted it in the name of simplicity, IMO.

Still, I've been known to change my mind, these games take time to develop and play. I actually don't mind HoI3 these days, though I still prefer Hoi2.

One thing i do like about it is the sheer attention to detail, check out starting in 1812 as the US, the War of 1812 is going on, you're already credited with losing the Battle of Queenston Heights - now that's impressive. It's the same for all the other wars. Simply making all those scenarios must've been a gigantic time sink.

This is the promotional video on EU4's website.

I think I see Wufir's hand in this.

Gutted for simplicity? Pfah! You and I must see strategy games in completely different terms. Perhaps only from an Event perspective, ever since ripping out the historical multi-choice events and replacing them with a handful of random punishment ones between EU2 and EU3! EU4 is more detailed & complicated than EU3 in a few areas. Sorry, but numerous facets of EU3's game mechanics just plain sucked or didn't work well. Sometimes the AI couldn't even use it properly. I think it was the weakest showing in the series due to this being the case, even after the assloads of expansions they poured on. EU3 was ultimately an exercise in frustration for me.

(EDIT: Since you stated, "EU4 has been a disappointment for me over the last few years" I'm guessing you were also talking about EU3?)

I'd say Paradox has pushed their game quality up a few more levels between this and the recent CK2. Good stuff.

******

My current Denmark game, in Ironman mode.

Nah. They've gutted the advisor system, gutted how the budget works, stripped out half the technology options. Kinda meh on the new ideas system too, no more mix and matching, you unlock them in blocks. No more cherry picking Unam Sanctum, if you want religion you go all the way. I see player choice curtailed all over the place. I thought the monarch points idea sucked, I'd much rather spend out of a budget rather than be allocated stuff automatically. I liked how prestige worked too! Again you used to have choices, while in EU4 you choose from a tiny number of options ( you dont add advisors to your pool, you are given them) with restraints placed upon you (one from each branch now, not anything goes like EU3) a theme I see repeated throughout the whole game. So far half the time in EU4 I don't have all 3 advisor slots filled because at least one of them will be a waste of good money on something totally irrelevant - I find that sort of thing frustrating. Why am I forced to have a military advistor when I don't need one? GAAAHHHH!

I also wasn't very happy when firing up a game, seeing that I had a budget deficit and upon investigating found I only had one option - disband stuff. I guess this is good for noobs, but In EU3 you got a lot more choice than that, because you have control over more stuff with your budget rather than just being allocated a fixed amount. Even in Civilisation you got a lot more choice than that...

The new trade system, well I don't hate it, I don't really have an opinion. It's nice that your navy can do something I guess.

It looks very slick and pretty, but then with a strategy game that's the least important bit of all.

Been playing a fair bit of Victoria 2 lately, lots of sliders to play with, that's more my speed I guess.

All is not lost fortunately, Space Hulk is out in 10 hours!

Which is the best EU?

Never been a fan of the game by event mechanic, it's why I disliked CK1 too much. IMHO CK1 was Paradox's worst game out of their main titles, you couldn't do anything at all really aside from respond to events. I don't mind if they are a part of the game, just so long as they are not the whole game.

I didn't really remember much of any EU game's events. Meh. They were there, there was some flavour, beyond that they weren't all that relevant to me.



Like?



Sucking AI is a different issue.



Nah, I liked EU3. I mean, out of the Clausewitz games they have done (Vicky 2, CK2, HoI3, EU4), I think EU4 is easily the worst - it's the only one that after an hour of playing I thought, "well, this sucks balls" and did something else. March of the Eagles had that effect on me as well but that's not a main game of theirs, I think it's a mod or something? (It sucks too anyway ).

I do admit that my first impression of Vicky 2 and HoI3 was pretty bad as well, though I think not as bad as what I think of EU4. But as the expansions came out so I could do more than watch a game run on autopilot, they became interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if EU4 followed that route.

Well, that's settled. You and I have completely different tastes in grand strategy.

I thought some of EU3's systems were dull. And sucked. Fortunately some mods fixed them up to be somewhat interesting (in some circumstances). There was no interconnection between facets, so many choices were painfully obvious. The Culture Point system was a good example of this. Such isolated coffers of point mechanics also made it easier to exploit the game.

The new system is more of a challenge. It had previously felt like a boringly regular & normalized flow in EU3, of annex & then cool, but behavior is more fluid now. The AI is also noticeably better thus far. The AI in EU3 couldn't control it's own inflation,which would go into crazy numbers, for example. It's Peace Agreements were questionable. Etc.

I don't see how you can still play the old EU2-engined games. Their interfaces may have been passable ten to twelve years ago, but they lick balls these days. I tried firing up a version of EU2 a couple years ago and it was like slashing my eyes with a razor blade, with palsy. Poor UI.