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[Rakonas]

Yes, they nerfed AE so you actually end up with only neighbors particularly outraged by expansion like it was advertised, instead of the entire world declaring war on you since you took 2 provinces.

[MoLAoS]

Wait, can we not vassalize Indian nations as a Western nation? WTF?

[Rakonas]

Now if a high tech nation vassalizes a low tech nation they become a 'protectorate' which instead gives trade power rather than the normal stuff. It's pretty lame and the tech gap allowance is much too small, for instance I saw Mamluks early on make Ethiopia a protectorate when they're not even that far behind.

[MoLAoS]

Paradox is a dumb piece of shit. I can't believe I wasted 14$ on an expansion that crippled map painting. I mean, I love playing as Poland, although not as much in Ironman, but this is just fucking stupid. I don't even feed my vassals and now I can't have any fun vassals at all. Most of Europe is impossible or not worth conquering anyways and now I can't do it anywhere else either.

The HRE is a boring slog for mediocre province gains, Hungary and Bohemia are massively expensive to core and Hungary is large and has no releaseable nations, Muscovy and France are OP unless you camp them at the start. Not that vassals are any good anymore anyways. Instead of just nerfing Austrias diplovassalizing power, for instance by adding diminishing returns to stacked diprep for vassalizing, now you can't vassalize barely at all unless its military.

I coulda spent that money on a PLEX for EVE or some soda, at least then I wouldnt feel like it went in the trash. I guess all they care about is "balancing for multiplayer." Morons.

[MoLAoS]

I think I am going to cry. I was doing really well in my Denmark Ironman game. Integrated Sweden, Denmark, and Holstein.

Conquered all of Teutonic Order but Marienburg which Poland stole. Even with an accidental send offer that cost me two lands I had Kurland, Riga, Osel and Samogatia. Took Neva from Finland by defeating Muscovy. Conquered Lubeck, vassalized Baden because why not, conquered Mecklenberg, East Frisia, and Utrecht. I had paid off all my loans, had awesome income, decent fleet and army. Allied with Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria. It was the year 1475.

And then it all went wrong. I forged claims on Antwerp and Aberdeen(England ate entire Scotland). I declared on England forgetting about their massive heavy ship fleet. I lost a sea battle instantly but no ship losses. They patrolled so that I couldn't get any troops to GB at all.

Then, having been used to steamrolling even Austria and Burgundy and various HRE people I said whatever and declared on Burgundy. They had all their normal lands plus 4 between their 2 clusters. Only later did I realize that not only were Englands fleets keeping me from being able to move troops to Burgundy but my allies couldn't move any troops across the continent to hit England's continental holdings. Later I realized I should have allied France and had them declare on Burgundy with me but "since war started" penalties boned me. England had Portugal providing extra ships which made that even harder. And somehow Burgundy allied with Castille who lead a union with Aragon who lead a union with Naples. And they had a small fleet. Even when I built up my fleet to 20 heaviess plus galleys and light ships and cogs taking me to 58 I couldn't win against England or Castille when either of them had 40 or more with less light and heavy than me. I peaced out to England eventually losing Mecklenberg and Osel and Kurland plus Gotaland, money and such. But in the end even Castille could fleet stomp me, I was already in debt from ships and mercs, and I had had to disband mercs after the had snuck into Orkney and then lost half in the Highlands to an English army. So I was both broke and unable to get more mercs even if I had had money.

I really should have just waited to take out Burgundy first. With no England I would have had time to bring in my 45 armies before Castille's fleet sealed the ocean up.

At least next time I have a good strategy and won't mess up the peace offer to the Livs, among a few other changes. But still I lost like 10-20 hours of playtime.

[MoLAoS]

Update:
After conquering Cleves and Utrecht with separate peace I got screwed because I had my king sieging and so he was the general at like 2/1 instead of my general with 1/6 shock fire. I would have beat the army I set a trap for before the other army arrived and probably ended up winning. Instead with mere days to go they loaded in and totally stomped me. So while I didn't get Friesland I still got the lands I needed to go after Burgundy who has been crippled by wars. Sadly now I'VE been crippled by wars. I totally forgot about the king thing. What I should have done was let that guy die and tried to intercept the smaller army. If I had ended up winning this crucial battle Austria would have been ruined militarily thus allowing me to finish attacking them and claiming Friesland plus a sizable amount of ducats, which I could have spent paying off loans while my still incredibly large army healed up a few thousand troops and prepared to stomp Burgundy in 6 months to claim Antwerpen Zeeland and Freda which also would have given me a line of provinced to Cleves so I could start coring it.

Fuck you Paradox for making the little known rule that shitty monarchs must lead all battles they are a part of even if I was only using him as a leader for his 2 points of siege which I had to Google to find out after wondering why my 1/6 general didn't crush my enemies into dust for me. Why the hell would you just not average or take best stat of all generals on each side of a battle anyways as that is what historically would have happened? In a non Ironman game this is probably where I would either use the manpower cheat or savescum to pretend that battle never happened. Its going to set me back about 20 years once I tally up all the various consequences like losing 5 years of manpower, losing 80 ducats instead of gaining 70 and probably missing me chance to gank Denmark while France was still sieging them and stomping all their armies to claim Picardie.

Sad times ahead for the poor Danes.

In my current game I got curia control from the rng at start. This helped IMMENSELY. I still lost 3 Teut lands to Poland but I managed to get other stuff instead.

I just finished enforcing a PU on Hungary. Even with 3 Italian allies and crappy armies on their side I still burnt through 100% of my manpower and had to stop paying off loans for a while. Somehow I ended up not fighting a single battle with my fleet, which blows since most of my power is in my massive fleet. Well actually the Italians beat but didn't damage my 10 Barque Lubeck trade fleet.

Most of my losses were due to siege attrition which is massive since I had to take down all but 2 of their lands even with winning every single fight and having the war goal bonus. I had the hardest time getting there too. I had to get mil access from Burgundy, Bavaria, Austria and 2 HRE minors. My first route close when the Palatinate revoked mil access which put 1 of my 3 12 man armies into exile status so I had to march all the way back across Europe to my fleet. Sending 3 12 man armies across the entire continent was nervewracking. Getting exiled, taking so long that Hungary got an heir and shit. During the multi year sieging period where I had 3 mil leaders with 1 1 and 2 in siege while having to siege 20 lands with no cannons I was immensely afraid they would get an heir. Once they won I had to counter the 113 negative opinion of me before my stupid king died. Terrifying. What if I lost my PU and wasted all that time, money, and manpower plus the 30 AE? Currently I managed to get to 100 opinion and my king is alive with a semi decent heir. I'll got from 2/4/2 to 1/4/2. Big bonus of forcing a PU on an awesome country like Hungary? No stupid coring costs and no overextension.

In my previous games my first two heirs were 6/5/3 and 5/3/3. Needless to say I am super poor in admin points at 2/4/2. Hell even if it didn't take 10 freaking years to core crappy Nov provinces I still couldn't conquer land anyways since I have no ADM to spare. Also I'm multiple techs behind in every category, well only 1 behind in military, due to stability and coring costs. Its 1490 right now and I have only one idea set, Diplomacy, and only filled 4 levels. Once I get to 7 in 10 years or so I'll have to take Naval Ideas so I can head for England. Luckily having level 3 or 4 DIP tech is not that harmful until like 1550. I really hate the behind in tech monarch point cost nerfs though. I should be saving like 500 points because of how farm behind I am in dip tech but no...

Now literally the only thing I can do is pray that in 50 years + integration time my PU with Hungary will pay off. I'll have tons of money, tons of troops, be able to pincer Poland/Lithuania who are PUed and finally get those 3 Teuton lands plus maybe some bonus lands that Lith has in the Baltic node, and finally have a whole other area to fight wars in where the AE won't cross over to Europe. Denmark has the worst time ever trying to expand because Muscovy and Poland/Lithuania wall off the East and the HRE is not a safe expansion area due to massive AE and those extra opinion nerfs to the entire HRE. I already had to give back Lauenburg because Austria gave me the return it or suffer huge penalties warning.

And anything below Friesland is too far away to fabricate claims on and I can't afford to take 2 point stab hits. Until my manpower and armies recover I cannot even attack Burgundy because taking Friesland to get into their sea node to forge claims is impossible with Bohemia and Austria and the rest of the HRE trying to defend it.

I had Lithuania to help me until taking all of the Livonian Order and 60% of the Teutonic Order pissed them and Poland off and then they got PUed and so Poland told me to fuck off. Now my allies are Hungary, which will finally help me again now that its PUed, since my recent fights were too far away for it to care, and Bavaria which is my dynasty. I have the chance to force a PU on the Palatinate but its not worth it with their allies. Currently if they die its me vs Scotland, why would Scotland have a chance...

Hopefully I can win the succession war and cripple them for an invasion 5 years down the road. I think that since I didn't join the HRE till I was too large because Austria used to be mad at me my best shot is to break up the HRE entirely. Then finally Denmark will take its rightful place as the ruler of Europe, with a focus on taking all the coastal provinces. Eventually I'd like to take not only all of Europe, Britain, and the Med coastal province wise but maybe Africa, too. Then maybe pop the coastal lands of all the Americas for that delicious trade money. I doubt I can get a WC but I might be able to conquer literally every single coastal or island province on the whole map.

[MoLAoS]

I hate my life. I claimed throne on Bavaria and the message said I would inherit before the king died. Sadly of course he got an heir before then. I could have forced a PU but inheritance is superior and also they had Austria and Burgundy backing them as allies and neither Hungary, Bohemia, or France(who I allied just for the purpose of possibly using the CB to get  a PU) were willing to assist me in the event of a claim war. Bavaria had an extra province or two and if I had inherited them I could easily have bashed down Austria into releasing Styria and thus crippling the HRE. Now I don't even have my alliance with them, since I broke it in case of a war. This is because you can't tell who will join you in a war without trying to declare it. Which is a fragging stupid mechanic...

[Teneb]

So it looks like there will be an East India expansion/DLC.

Damn it Paradox, I haven't even bought CoP yet.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

CoP honestly isn't worth it. After playing with it and the horrible patch that is 1.4 I feel quite stung. The native play is all about colonising as quickly as possible, migration is a complete gimmick, colonial nations are the best addition but they aren't fleshed out enough, finally the random map generator is an abomination - not once did I generate a map that I wanted to play on or even look at.
The two sprite packs are very well done however, kudos Paradox South.

Hopefully Paradox is going to step up their game with the next expansion. Trade companies are completely needed at this point to fix the totally borked protectorate system (which should have already been patched out).
I do have more faith that they'll be able to pump out a better expansion this time though since it seems like the random map generator (for some reason) got the most attention out of CoP and pissed away precious development time. Not going to preorder though, fool me once...

Also Announced:
Paradox Viking RPG, Runemaster (that looks a bit like HOMM)
Hearts of Iron 4 (because you can't possibly ever get sick of WW2 games...)

[WealthyRadish]

I played a vanilla Japan game with the new update (first vanilla game ever, actually), and the colonial nations seem pretty meh to me. For the most part it was me doing all the work for them, while they just sit around not even generating much money. Granted, I had all of western and central North America before the Eurotrash even 'discovered' me, but all the wars were fought by essentially me alone to seize land from zombie worshipers and natives (the funny part is how willing the Europeans were to start wars against the wealthiest and largest nation on the planet, that at one point had more tech than Spain).

I've found that it is actually possible to keep technological pace with Europe as Japan without westernizing, but it requires having +3/+3/+3 advisers always, and frugality when it comes to monarch points. Of course, for whatever dumb reason Asian units are still objectively inferior to their equal level western counterparts, but I didn't have difficulty trashing Spain and Muscovy. Colonizing the Philippines and Indonesia early gives some ridiculously good provinces that can pay for the adviser costs, but for the first time in EU, I was strapped for cash most of the time (until I annexed Manchu who had been fed most of Ming).

Rushing the first artillery tech lets you absolutely stomp Ming if they don't have it, by the way... I obliterated an 80 regiment doomstack in the first war with a 28 regiment stack, and after that their manpower never really recovered. The overextension mechanics are absolute tripe, though... Couldn't take 4 provinces from Ming without going over 100%, and without vassal feeding, there wouldn't have been any reason to even bother with it. I fail to see how conquering the crap out of China would result in constant peasant revolts in mainland Japan... I would've thought that house Hosokawa would've ascended to god status by then.

[MoLAoS]

Paradox is dumb as hell with their OE shit. Hell even Ottomans with their 83-93% core cost/time bonus can't do a WC, and they also have a good position to avoid AE. But it doesn't matter. Lousy 4-6 provinces unless they are garbage nothern european ones per 6-10 year coring cycle. At 10 years you can score about 40 cycles or maybe 240 provinces max, assuming that increasing country size doesn't raise coring times. Honestly I can't keep track of whether it does or doesn't with all the crazy changes these days.

[MrWiggles]

Have you consider that Paradox isnt making a world conquest game?

[Tarran]

Whether they are or not doesn't change that the feature is simple and problematic, and it encourages problematic behaviors (vassal feeding).

[MoLAoS]

Have you consider that Paradox isnt making a world conquest game?

Have you considered that you can make a world conquest possible without focusing the entire game on it or forcing players who don't want to do it to do it?

That exact phrase with precisely those words is a common troll tactic on the Paradox forums. And its inherently trolling in general. I mean, no, I never ever ever not in a million years considered that world conquest and map painting was not the sole focus of Paradox. Or is that sarcasm?

Johan specifically stated that EU4 was a conquest game, and yet the most effective strategy for growing large is to abuse Austria's, and some other countries', ability to possess a large number of dipreps and diprels.

Probably the stinkiest cheese in the whole game is of course the HRE. In fact nearly every world conquest centers around it. While DDRJake sort of sidestepped it by abusing the warscore cost drop of the revolution casus belli some players like Novacat went right at it using its vassal power combined with its core cost and tech bonus to make an Ottoman HRE ruling monstrosity coring provinces in 6-12 months rather than the 6-10 years most countries take.

There is also of course the cheese strategy of abusing the free faux-vassal status of HRE princes to "vassalize" the whole world with no diprel requirement and then permanently sticking to 6-10 high quality provinces to further reduce coring time and nerf your aggressive expansion gain.

World conquest trouble is really just a symptom of the fact that attempting to directly conquer large amounts of land in a conquest game is disallowed by arbitrary, unhistorical, nonsensical hard caps. At 99% OE you merely get massive nerfs to diplomatic capability. At 101% you are pummeled with insane events until you crash and burn. Even if you could handle the random rebels springing up in your capital because you conquered some poor nation halfway across the world it doesn't matter because events will cripple you.

I once accidentally went 4% over the OE line and triggered a whopping 3 25 prestige loss events in a single 2 month period.

There's lots of other bullshit too. With claims and wargoals and rival status I can take 1 province for 0 dip points in a peace deal, plus like 4 provinces for 28 each. But god forbid I want to annex the entire country which suddenly costs me 300 points for 6 provinces instead of 112 for 5 of them.

The list of garbage goes on and on but no one else out there makes games remotely similar to Paradox so if you want to play grand strategy you are stuck with it.

Well, you can do some decent fixes with mods but so much of the stuff is hard coded that many major issues are unavoidable.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Wealth of Nations DLC "leaked". East India Trading company confirmed.

"#pdxcon EUIV:WoN - Enhanced Diplomacy. Trade companies (like East India Company). Privateers and Caravans."

Presumably caravans will be like lightships for landlocked countries.