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[Bastus]

What are your issues with Common Sense? I try out a lot of different mods perhaps I found one which can help you get rid of some of your problems.

And I think I finally know why Poland/Commonwealth is so strong in the newer versions. It's not just the over developed provinces in Lithuania. First of all free Westernisation due to Poland always getting Danzig is helping out alot, even if being eastern isn't that bad, you get a huge amount of free points over time just by doing your normal expansion, you don't have to get out of your way. Next thing is you rivals. Most of the times you only strong rivals are Muscovy and the Ottomans. I could easily secure Alliances with Austria, France and Brandenburg which made me nearly unbeatable until I was string enough myself.

[Bouchart]

Poland also has strong ideas and good cavalry.  Also they're Catholic but don't get hit too hard by the Reformation unless they expand a lot west or into Scandinavia.  Even when they do it's fairly manageable.

One of the odd things about Poland is that you can't form the Commonwealth if you have two personal unions.  I learned that the hard way in my most recent game because I had some random personal union with Anhalt.  I don't know why that would be the case since you can form Spain with two personal unions.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

What are your issues with Common Sense? I try out a lot of different mods perhaps I found one which can help you get rid of some of your problems.

Development being linked to MP instead of something sane like ducats. Leads to ridiculous sky metropolises from useless OPMs.

No longer being able to take land outside of coring range. Really fucked up vassal feeding and hit the RoTW hardest since they can't fast westernise anymore.

Can't disband units in enemy territory. Not a massive issue but another poorly implemented fix for a very small exploit that could have been patched in a less tedious way.

Native development and buildings being nerfed into the ground leaving them with nothing to do for decades (sometimes centuries) while the Euro scum goes and conquers Africa instead of the New World.

I wouldn't mind just turning off Common Sense and disabling development but then I lose out on all the new vassal interaction features which you need now that you're locked out of intergrated a vassal above 50% LD (fuckign dumb change). There's also issues with certain disasters that you can't actually stop unless you have Common Sense, enjoy those rebel stacks. 

Buddhism being a joke of a religion that is actually more powerful with the DLC turned off. The karma balance "mechanic" is the second worst implementation I've seen after development.

Government levels having way too big of a bonus. Empires are already stupidly stable in EU4 and they just made them stronger. Heaven forbid we get some domestic policies or a centralisation mechanic instead.

So yeah, Common Sense had the potential to be a great expansion that the game really needed but the implementation was just so utterly pathetic.It wouldn't be too bad if this stuff wasn't hardcoded so modders could actually repair the game but Wiz is too busy shitposting to get that done apparently.

[Aklyon]

What are your issues with Common Sense? I try out a lot of different mods perhaps I found one which can help you get rid of some of your problems.

Development being linked to MP instead of something sane like ducats. Leads to ridiculous sky metropolises from useless OPMs.

That was the entire point of development though, was it not? Regardless of if your sky-tall city is actually better or worse than huge blobpires, you can do that. If you wanted to play an opm as an opm for some arcane non-hre reason.

[RedKing]

Just imported my Indo-Persian game into EU4 (which I haven't played in a heap of months). Spending the first 20 years or so just getting a grip on the new mechanics and tidying up the borders (and converting some cultures).

Importer did some weirdness with giving Mongolia a sliver of provinces almost to the Indian ocean, but this problem resolved itself in short order thanks to masses of Indian separatists and an AI that actually does try to sell provinces now. I was gracious enough to buy the two times it offered, since I have more money than Shiva anyways.

Took Gahrwal in a quick war so I could form Bharat (despite having been the unified empire of India for hundreds of years). Also took Bhutan and Manipur, and have a slew of protectorates around my fringe. Reclaimed all the Persian holdings that I had lost to the Arabs towards the end of CK2. Now I'm wondering if I should focus on internal development or go for a massive land grab and expand west until I hold the Holy Land (now that I don't need to worry about endless Crusades if I do).

Or expand west until I find China and then try for a massive Indo-Persian-Chinese empire. One interesting bit is that I imported with Western tech, so all these south Asian minors are rapidly Westernizing. If I push west, I have to roflstomp China quickly, or I risk letting them westernize hundreds of years ahead of schedule, which would have huge ramifications for the rest of the world. At this point, I have a huge advantage in conquering/colonizing in Asia, because the Western powers are relatively small and won't be able to reach Asia for a long time.

Primary European powers:
Knights Templar (which appears to be filling in for Spain -- they won a Crusade for Iberia sometime back in CK2 and have kept trying to retake the rest of the peninsula)
Lloegyr (Breton England)
Norway
Sweden
Germany
HRE (considerably weaker than normal, only 24 members, mostly in Italy and eastern France)
Carpathia
Poland
Byzantine Empire (all of the Balkans, southern Italy and western Anatolia)

The Arab Empire is still around, but heavily truncated to mainly just the coast of North Africa, bits of Andalusia, the Levantine, and western Anatolia. Mecca and Medina were converted to Hinduism a hundred years ago. One major beneficiary of that is Abyssinia, which survived as an intact and stable Monophysite kingdom, at one point reaching all the way into central Egypt.

Should be an interesting game. There's no danger of "losing" the game, but I'm curious to see how things develop organically.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Development being linked to MP instead of something sane like ducats. Leads to ridiculous sky metropolises from useless OPMs.

That was the entire point of development though, was it not? Regardless of if your sky-tall city is actually better or worse than huge blobpires, you can do that. If you wanted to play an opm as an opm for some arcane non-hre reason.

Here's a crosspost of mine from the EU4 forums if you care for a response.

Spoiler: kinda long (click to show/hide)

The problem is that development rewards countries for doing nothing. Countries that sit around doing nothing and get lucky enough to have a god-king can enjoy growing stronger with no risk or agency. There's no tactical thought or skill, merely sitting on speed 5 and mashing development every couple months. Anyone who's tried to play "tall" knows how boring it is and nobody could think it's an adequate replacement for expansion.

Monarch Points remain a currency that can barely be influenced while ducats are a much more influenceable currency that is considered completely inferior and worthless when compared to MP. Ducats only serve limited use in maintaining an army/navy (which are often limited by manpower and merc pool), constructing buildings (which are often useless without development) hiring advisors (to generate the infinitely better MP) and creating a buffer for certain negative events. Once the player hits the critical mass of ducats needed to maintain those services they no longer serve much point. There's essentially little to motivate the player on maintaining a strong economy aside from protecting your MP pool.

Linking development to ducats creates positive feedback loops that rewards players that maintain their economy, makes ducats a significantly more useful currency and makes sure that countries need to expand their sphere of influence to maintain their relevancy. This can be easily coupled with a centralisation mechanic that offers bonuses (and certain maluses) on reforms which difficulties scale on nation size. Small countries will be more easily able to centralise their countries (which offers easier development) if they're willing to commit which will help them compete with majors who will stagnant if they choose to ignore investing resources into centralising their realm.

This still allows countries to "play tall" but actually forces player agency and more importantly adds depth to peacetime and simple domestic policies which the fan base has been begging for and Common Sense failed to deliver on.
This also allows development to be much more dynamic with factors/events that lower or raise development. Right now with MP being such a sought after resource losing development in a province would come as a harsh and unfair blow. Instead having it dynamic while linked to a much more flexible currency which the player has a much greater influence on isn't nearly as painful and would introduce some depth to a game often criticised for being shallow.

The other issue with MP development is locking low technological groups out of what should be a core gameplay mechanic (although apparently it isn't because it's locked behind a paywall). Western to Ottoman tech tend to be completely drowning in MP with nothing to spend it on apart from development while ROTW nations either forgo technological advances (like dip tech) to dump into provinces or ignore development completely.

A lot of people believe that the game is becoming over reliant on MP and while I share that thought, I think MP makes perfect sense for the more abstract elements of EU4 like technology since it's something that was rather opaque in the early modern era with a number of contributing factors that would extremely hard to simulate in EU4. However being able to will a city out of nowhere which then for some reason stagnates your cultural and technological growth is just not a good mechanic in either a gameplay or historical sense.

[Aklyon]

Good point, actually.

[Bouchart]

That's part of the reason why I like EU3 better: no monarch points.  It would be nice if the game was just remade with EU4's interface.

[WealthyRadish]

Agreed, pretty much every mechanic in EU4 that that uses monarch points would be better off with an EU3-like mechanic. The economic sliders weren't great, but I'd take them any day over the miserly ruler-roulette system that MP creates. It's a shame EU3 has so many other mechanics that really suck in comparison, like EU4 rebels being so much more enjoyable (if a bit too weak and avoidable IMO).

My fix for development in this version (while still being able to use other CS features) was to change the base development cost in the defines to 9999. It's the crudest fix imaginable, but it's a lot more fun until they fix the AI's spending and the more fundamental problems that CLC's listed.

[Bouchart]

Westernization is also better in EU3.  In EU4 it's not uncommon to see most of the world westernized by the end of the game.  Plus you can modernize the army.

[Rex_Nex]

Trying to play as Mutapa, that gold-infused tribal nation on the south tip of Africa. I had dreams of eventually marching on Constantinople, but those were crushed pretty quickly. I made my way up the coast of Africa until I got to Ethiopia, and it was all downhill from there. Massive armies with inflated tech values, alliances with everyone around, etc. I had one shot at beating them, but it required a LOT of mercs. I should of done it, even if it required massive loans. But I didn't, I lost. From there it was just Ethiopian crusade after crusade, and I effectively lost the game. I had no idea Ethiopia was such a powerhouse, but they certainly are. It wouldn't of been so bad if I could carve them up, as the Mamelukes weren't very threatening, but that didn't happen.

Was quite a new thing for me, I've certainly lost before, but never after having expanded so large. Usually once I get the ball rolling, it's over. Not this time! Another thing I learned is that attrition is not very poweful, at least in that part of the world. 50k troop stacks in the 1500s besieging a scorched earth province for two years? Didn't even make a dent!

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Not this time! Another thing I learned is that attrition is not very poweful, at least in that part of the world. 50k troop stacks in the 1500s besieging a scorched earth province for two years? Didn't even make a dent!

Attrition was hit with the nerf bat pretty hard a couple patches ago. It's now capped at 5% max attrition which is basically nothing for a large nation (also makes scorched earth hilariously useless). There's also currently a bug (yes another attrition bug) where the AI will only take half attrition.
So yeah. Don't expect to be melting armies anymore like the EU4 of glorious yore.

[h3lblad3]

Trying to play as Mutapa, that gold-infused tribal nation on the south tip of Africa. I had dreams of eventually marching on Constantinople, but those were crushed pretty quickly. I made my way up the coast of Africa until I got to Ethiopia, and it was all downhill from there. Massive armies with inflated tech values, alliances with everyone around, etc. I had one shot at beating them, but it required a LOT of mercs. I should of done it, even if it required massive loans. But I didn't, I lost. From there it was just Ethiopian crusade after crusade, and I effectively lost the game. I had no idea Ethiopia was such a powerhouse, but they certainly are. It wouldn't of been so bad if I could carve them up, as the Mamelukes weren't very threatening, but that didn't happen.

Scroll up and look at the pictures from my Burgundy game. Ethiopia is the big blue blob of that game.

[Loud Whispers]

Ethiopia was the African nation that managed to fend off Italian encroachment, leading it to be the only significant independent African power during the height of colonialism. Needless to say Ethiopia is strong. In my Byzantium game the Mamluks had effectively swallowed up most of the Ottoman lands in the East whilst I created power vacuums everywhere around me - that is until the Ethiopians attacked from the south. They managed to get so north as Cairo, eventually nationalists restored Mamluk rule (and were promptly swallowed up by the resurgent Roman Empire), but Ethiopia remains strong. Also of amusement is that the destruction of the Sunni Mamluk, Ottoman and Tunisian powers have result in Islam becoming dominated by the Shiites of Mesopotamia and Persia (unsurprising) and the Ibadi of Arabia (what). To top it all off the Kingdom of Afghanistan spreads from Afghanistan and Khorasan to Tibet!
I have begun colonizing as well. A small bit of India now belongs to me, as does one sole Island in Indonesia and a single province in Brazil. Whilst the Romans simply cannot compete with the filthy likes of Frenchmen, Iberians and Britons, the Romans can certainly steal the fruits of their labours.

[Uristides]

So, who's up for the estate hype train?
Even though I'm usually all for playing tall and internal I have to say I'm not yet sure I'll pick the next expansion at launch.
As interesting as the horde mechanics look, they just aren't my piece of cake.
Estates do look intriguing, but I have to admit the more I play EUIV the fonder I get of it's "just sit down and fuck shit up" style rather than the more involved pace of CKII/Vic2 where you need to be really careful when going to war and assuring you'll have enough internal support and you won't just piss off the big powers to a point they come after your ass the same instant(well, at least not in this patch not outside the HRE). I'm just not sure I want a mini-faction system for every nation I pick to play as.