I love EU4, but hate the AI. Useless 99.99999% of the time, unless of course they're your enemy.
The other thing I wish they improved on with EU4 is the pretty much hardcoded nation focus. By that I mean, native americans do absolutely nothing for 200 years until europeans arrive then just die
and europeans (COUGH SPAIN) seem to beeline for the Americas no matter what
i literally had a game where we reduced spain to nothing but The Canarias (read: -1 economy) and they still beelined to america and now have colonies
it would be cool if the ai was more dynamic, like japan unites really early on so the AI takes exploration ideas and discovers america, or something idk
AI is dynamic. In one of my games as the Knights, I decisively broke Ottoman power and began conquering all of their fiefdoms and states. The weak Ottoman Empire allowed the Mamlukes to grow strong and become a great power and regional hegemon, during which they adopted exploration ideas and expanded through the Indian ocean to become a major international spice trader, sending Indonesian spice from their plantations up into the red sea through their Indian Sultanate allies. Once the Knights turned their attentions on the Mamlukes, attacked on two fronts by the Indonesians in SE Asia and the Knights in Egypt, the Mamlukes were effectively exiled to one fortress island in the Malayas, form which they founded an effective city state to colonize the Americas. By this point however most of the Americas was taken, but with great effort the Mamlukes sent their desert dwelling citizens
to Alaska. No doubt extremely bitter at this turn of affairs, the Alaskan Mamlukes quickly grew rebellious against the Mamluke city-state, and with the aid of the Spanish plotted for independence, becoming the first independent colonial nation and the only Egyptian/Sunni colonial nation.
The Emperor of Trebizond started the Enlightenment. I conquered them just to see if that would speed up rate of adoption, but didn't seem to do much. RIP Trebizond
Spain, Venice, the Papal State, Hungary-Austria, Cyprus and the Knights Hospitaller formed a super alliance, Mediterranean NATO
The Byzantine Empire was finally destroyed in the late 17th century with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, where the Med NATO alliance went up against the rival alliance of France and Russia
Also hilarious is that Scotland nearly succeeded in destroying England. Cultural rebels undid the mighty Scottish conquest, however Scotland did remain powerful long enough for England and Scotland to create English Brazil and Scottish Brazil, which was eventually to include French Brazil. My absolute favourite though was that the Hungary-Austrian Empire formed. Not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the Hungary-Austrian Empire.
Austria inherited much lands and integrated many vassals in the early game HRE, and was shaping up to be an effective Emperor with mastery over the Empire, getting its first reform done in no time. Inheriting the lowlands, Austria gained a border with France, which was to be its undoing. Though France did not severely defeat Austria, the loss in prestige was enough to ensure that Austria fell under a personal union with the Magyar Hapsburgs. The entirety of the Austrian lands falling under the overlordship of Hungary completely killed all Imperial Authority and ensured the HRE would never unite ever again.
It's a pity, Hungary was 20 years away from integrating Austria when its PU was broken by a Franco-Commonwealth alliance.