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[Mictlantecuhtli]

Whenever I start to go into EU4 I end up ranting about it. I just deleted an essay I accidentally wrote while talking about the mechanics of actually warring. I'll just abstain from that. I think this topic is dead because there's literally nothing to do in EU4 aside from painting the world your color, and finagling and exploiting your way through the broken diplomacy and military mechanics.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See: The strategy on how to deal with a tiny one-province country, in places like Europe. I'll call this country A. You go to declare war, you mouse over the Call All Willing Allies. You notice all of your allies are on board but one. This one being a pretty major one, a big power broker in the area. For EU this is stuff like France, Britain, Sweden, etc. I'll call this country X. Why does X not want to help me over A? No reason, really. [I've usually got strong allies permanently at +200 opinion] Save the game and declare the war. This one NO on your 'call willing allies' will invariably join tiny, useless country A against you, a country they've been allied/married/had military access to since the inception of the game. This is typical in my cases.

How do you deal with this? By bribing, cajole the ally into taking a neutral stance on a war you're about to declare, as per history? No, there's no mechanics for this. It's simply a 'if the AI decides to fuck you, they can' design decision. So you, as the player, get to decide. Do you want to accept that you can never invade country A because country X will always betray you to help them? Or will you exploit your 'alliance' and declare war on someone they're rivalled to? We'll call this country B. Declare war, Have nation X join the war, and never put effort into finishing this war. Now X will be locked into not helping countries it guarantees/allys for all eternity until you end the war or they get a separate peace. This is an awesome design and not ridiculous, at all.

I also tried playing EU4 this week and quit as soon as I had something rad happen again. Declare a war on a vassal to another nation. Claim a province, or something. Call some allies in, even 1 will work. Now, occupy the vassal. Keep it occupied. Try attempting to occupy the overlord's land in any reasonable timeframe. Now, when your warscore reaches a certain point, your AI allies in your war will offer to this overlord country a separate peace [mind the separate]. This peace usually turns out to be a 'release vassal' peace. Now, mind you, I declared the war, occupied the vassal, occupied the overlord, and then, suddenly, I get a 'Peace!' popup, as if I offered a treaty to the other side. 'So and so [this being the vassal nation! The thing I can't even offer a peace to, and if I could, it'd be annexed as soon as I occupy it all!] has accepted our terms'. Now the vassal is released, and I'm still at war with the overlord and the original wargoal, the vassal, is independent, with a treaty with me. The fuck? You're saying random allies in a war like this can, and will fuck up your entire war goal, and even your plans of progress entirely? Why have allies in offensive wars like this then? I will provide any and all saves required to prove this situation is real.

This is the worst new-era release from paradox, atleast CK2 got fixed to a point of playability. EU4 is just... ugh, the battles aren't fun, diplomacy isn't fun, trading is moderately fun, colonization is so very dull, there's no flavor to anything. Even up to 1.4 I feel like my money was entirely wasted, as I still play EU3 to this day and actually enjoy it, as opposed to the ragefest of ridiculous mechanics and broken AI that is EU4.

Fuck. I did it again. I'm sorry, this was building up in me the whole time I was attempting to enjoy EU4 last week.

[a1s]

The strategy on how to deal with a tiny one-province country, in places like Europe. I'll call this country A. You go to declare war, you mouse over the Call All Willing Allies. You notice all of your allies are on board but one. This one being a pretty major one, a big power broker in the area. For EU this is stuff like France, Britain, Sweden, etc. I'll call this country X. Why does X not want to help me over A? No reason, really. [I've usually got strong allies permanently at +200 opinion] Save the game and declare the war. This one NO on your 'call willing allies' will invariably join tiny, useless country A against you, a country they've been allied/married/had military access to since the inception of the game. This is typical in my cases.

Are you sure X is not guaranteeing A? they stand to lose quite a bit of prestige (not that it's really logical to prefer war to a loss of prestige, but it would make some sense.)

How do you deal with this? By bribing, cajole the ally into taking a neutral stance on a war you're about to declare, as per history? No, there's no mechanics for this. It's simply a 'if the AI decides to fuck you, they can' design decision.

While imagining a Shadow President style event chain (basically, you keep threatening with worse consequences until they back off or you do) with each war is really !!fun!!, it wouldn't fit with the physical reality of the age. Not that instantly controlling your troops does, or most of the other things about your interface. for that matter.

I also tried playing EU4 this week and quit as soon as I had something rad happen again. Declare a war on a vassal to another nation. Claim a province, or something. Call some allies in, even 1 will work. Now, occupy the vassal. Keep it occupied. Try attempting to occupy the overlord's land in any reasonable timeframe. Now, when your warscore reaches a certain point, your AI allies in your war will offer to this overlord country a separate peace [mind the separate]. This peace usually turns out to be a 'release vassal' peace. Now, mind you, I declared the war, occupied the vassal, occupied the overlord, and then, suddenly, I get a 'Peace!' popup, as if I offered a treaty to the other side. 'So and so [this being the vassal nation!] has accepted our terms'. Now the vassal is released, and I'm still at war with the overlord. The fuck? You're saying random allies in a war like this can, and will fuck up your entire war goal? Why have allies in offensive wars like this then? I will provide any and all saves required to prove this situation is real.

Now this sounds like it should be very moddable- war target's owner shouldn't be allowed (you didn't just attack under a random trade war, did you?) to be released (or AI shouldn't want to do it). Does anyone know of a mod that fixes this or is willing to write one? (this should be a dozen lines tops, unless it's the AI thing, in which case it should  be a dozen lines, and an evening of propagation testing)

Fuck. I did it again. I'm sorry, this was building up in me the whole time I was attempting to enjoy EU4 last week.

Don't sweat it, I (and probably most people in this thread) enjoy a well written rant.

[somebody]

Now this sounds like it should be very moddable- war target's owner shouldn't be allowed (you didn't just attack under a random trade war, did you?) to be released (or AI shouldn't want to do it). Does anyone know of a mod that fixes this or is willing to write one? (this should be a dozen lines tops, unless it's the AI thing, in which case it should  be a dozen lines, and an evening of propagation testing)

Nope, completely impossible. There isn't any scope that would specifically address this. If it were to happen it would be through a really arcane way as there isn't anything that tracks being a war leader.

Isn't a war target scope either, and I was being more general about this as I meant if you aren't the war leader the vassal should stay in the war.

[a1s]

Now this sounds like it should be very moddable- war target's owner shouldn't be allowed (you didn't just attack under a random trade war, did you?) to be released (or AI shouldn't want to do it). Does anyone know of a mod that fixes this or is willing to write one? (this should be a dozen lines tops, unless it's the AI thing, in which case it should  be a dozen lines, and an evening of propagation testing)

Nope, completely impossible. There isn't any scope that would specifically address this. If it were to happen it would be through a really arcane way as there isn't anything that tracks being a war leader.

War target. The province you're going for. To clarify: no one should be able to release the war target, whether they're a war leader human or an allied AI.

[Mindmaker]

How has this not been posted in in 2.5 months?

Don't know about the others, but I'm playing these kind of games on and off with months in between.

[MoLAoS]

I suppose to be fair the only reason I'm currently playing it is because of mods. I'm not really interested in another ironman playthrough.

[Mindmaker]

I'd be playing ironman if it didn't force "lucky nations".
Making each game more predictable isn't fun.

[Sergarr]

Who thought of the very idea of "lucky nations" as a viable game mechanic?

[Mindmaker]

Because "muh realism", which is silly considering the whole point of Grand Strategy is randomness, such as your random backwater nation suddenly becoming a world power.

[a1s]

Who thought of the very idea of "lucky nations" as a viable game mechanic?

there are about 150-200 countries involved in any game, so making sure the important ones have names you recognize is a good idea. Of course a better way to do it (which EU IV has) is to give the names to prominent countries in the region (such as any of Ireland, Scotland and England (Wales too? That would be pretty  cool) being able to become Britain, and either Novgorod or Muscovy (possibly Ryazan or Tver) becoming Russia)

[lemon10]

Who thought of the very idea of "lucky nations" as a viable game mechanic?

there are about 150-200 countries involved in any game, so making sure the important ones have names you recognize is a good idea. Of course a better way to do it (which EU IV has) is to give the names to prominent countries in the region (such as any of Ireland, Scotland and England (Wales too? That would be pretty  cool) being able to become Britain, and either Novgorod or Muscovy (possibly Ryazan or Tver) becoming Russia)

The way lucky nations work is extremely stupid. Having the same 8 nations every game getting crazily unfair advantages is annoying and repetitive.
Annoying because the advantages are unfair in a not-fun way.
Repetitive because the same exact nations every game get them for teh entire game, which means that every single game you deal with the exact same strong enemies.

A neat mod would be for lucky nations to be truly random (within Europe, with more outside of Europe), and having them change every 100/50/25 years. It would completely remove the repetitive issue, and make the annoyance more bearable because you wouldn't have to deal with the same super-nations for the entire game.
And it would lead to fun things like tiny useless nations that were being stepped on by lucky ones rise up to become super powerful and lucky themselves.

[snelg]

Isn't that already known as the current ruler of the country? And that was probably why it was introduced to begin with. Since important countries exploded when they got into trouble and the ai couldn't handle it.

I really dislike it as well though.

[RedKing]

It's also a play balance issue for achievements. For instance "Overthrow Austria and become Emperor of the HRE". Without Lucky Nations, you'd just need to play through a couple of times until Austria gets some god-awful 1/1/1 leader for a while or a run of bad events.

[BFEL]

Since important countries exploded when they got into trouble and the ai couldn't handle it.

Then maybe instead of just throwing out cheats to "important" countries they should have made the ai ABLE to handle it.

[Sindain]

one of my biggest issues with lucky nations is that all the nations that have it (with the exception of Prussia) already do well in 9/10 games. They are all already the biggest and baddest nations around with advantageous tech groups and NIs and a few of them start out with very good rulers, so they don't even need the help.