The way how rulers are handled in games. In II, you had historical monarchs with stats corresponding to their achievements. This meant regardless of your play you could be stuck with entire string of lackluster monarchsnote And if your country outlived its historical destruction or conquest, you either got stuck forever with your last monarch or get fictional heirs, all with mediocre stats and obviously made various scenarios far less plausible if history didn't repeat itself. From III onward, rulers are randomly generated - so you can pretty much say good-bye to all the historical rulers except those at the game start and their heirs, while having to deal with RNG for the rest of the game. Depending who you ask which system is better, you can get conflicting answers, especially when IV and its mana system (describe below under Scrappy Mechanic) are concerned. And then there is also CK fandom overlapping with EU, which complains about rulers being nothing but a name and three stats.
Comes with practically every update to EUIV, with some saying that Paradox is destroying the fun of the game in attempts to Nerf exploits, while others say that the changes are necessary to stop the game from being too easy. On the other hand, numerous changes are made to reduce player agency to minimum and thus giving AI a fighting chance... instead of improving AI.
EUIV's Conquest of Paradise introduced colonial nations. The moment a player colonises (or otherwise have cores in) five provinces in arbitrary decided regions in the Americas, and Australia/New Zealand, a colonial nation is automatically formed from the colonies and from then on works as a vassal, while each new colony in that particular region will be automatically handled over to the CNs. This is all done with absolutely zero control on the player side. For some players, it is enough reason to not colonise at all (unless you're colonising the Old World), treating them as money sinks with zero monetary gain, while others love the fact that CNs build large armies which the mother country doesn't have to pay for and then provide them expeditionary forces whenever asked. Bringing up this issue on the official Paradox forum is an almost guaranteed way to start an all-out brawl. After the reworking of migratory tribes, colonising lands with them around presents a new problem: devastation.
With patch 1.26, territories (except trade companies) in excess of a nation's maximum number of states now give corruption. This made colonial nations more attractive. But at the same time, the mechanic divided players, between those who felt that the mechanic was appropriate as it punishes excessive land grab, and players who liked to paint the map in their nation's colours and denounced the mechanic as "anti-fun".
The max number of states and 'too many territories' penalty above has been replaced in 1.30 with governing capacity. It's also a soft cap that can be increased by spending government reform progress, increasing your government rank, granting estate privileges, or researching technology. This no longer penalizes countries with lots of low development states and the penalties for exceeding governing cap aren't especially steep. In addition, governing cost can be decreased by building courthouses and other buildings. These changes have been received much better as there is now a lot more player involvement with the mechanic and massive blobbing is still quite possible.
Another mechanic accused of being "anti-fun" was introduced in 1.28: if a nation wishes to move its capital, the continent where the proposed new capital is located must have at least 50% of the nation's development. This made it next to impossible for large nations to move their capitals to other continents. With the nerf to territories in 1.26, trade companies are regarded as mandatory in any playthrough; a nation with its capital located in Asia can only set up trade companies in three regions in Africanote While said nation can have trade companies in two regions in Asia due to these regions having some provinces which are marked as part of Oceania, these provinces are few in number and are poorly developed.. In contrast, a nation with its capital located in Africa can set up trade companies in thirteen regions in Asia. note Nations with capitals located outside the two continents can set up trade companies in all 16 regions. In patch 1.30, trade company requirements were loosened; they can be set up anywhere except for the capital region (so Ming can set up a trade company in India). Also, trade company provinces' minimum 90% autonomy interferes with government reform progress, slowing down the nation's ability to e.g. gain a parliament.
There is also the stance to the way how the DLC system itself is organised. Each new expansion, especially the earlier ones, was adding things that weren't really connected with each other in any way or even with the nominal theme of the DLC. While some people were fine with new options simply being added to the game, others were annoyed by chaotic way different mechanics and changes were lumped together, while in the same time spreading crucial, intermingled elements over few different DLCs. And there is another part of the base that is annoyed with DLCs as such, pointing out some of them don't really add anything meaningful to the game even in terms of flavour, but still took development time and labour, with Mare Nostrum being regularly brought up as the biggest offender of this practice.
The debate of historical accuracy vs gameplay balance. One of the more extreme case is the decision to move the Vietnamese culture to the Chinese group, which has never been the case previously in EUIV, in order to enable an alternative history scenario in which Vietnam somehow conquers China proper, despite the fact that this weakens Dai Viet's resistance from Ming invasion which is the real history scenario.
In EU II and III, high Centralisation is such a no-brainer, there are dozens upon dozens of events to just push it back to decentralised state and III has further limits on how far you can get Centralised rating with your current government type. Yet it's still usually the very first stat everyone will try to max-out, since unlike all other sliders, this one works good with every single country and strategy.
In II, every province except those with goods corresponding to other manufactory type and the capital (assuming it doesn't produce wine or sugar) will get a refinery as soon as enough funds are gathered. The +1% of trade efficiency, along with +5 ducats toward trade tech are just too good to ignore. It is further reinforced by the fact you can build refineries from infrastructure tech level 3, which is dated for 1420 - every other manufactory type doesn't show up until mid-16th century.
Also in II, once you hit naval tech 27note Exploration with all fleets, even if they don't have an explorer. Previous tech level also sets movement time between sea zones at 6 days, allowing to pass 5 zones per month, there is no real point funding it any further, as any benefits from that point onward are just meaningless. This allows to save a pretty penny, while still carrying forward on the fact everyone else is going to invest in naval tech anyway, so unless you are the last existing country of your techgroup with ports, the neighbour bonus alone will fund the naval technology. For the record, the scale goes to 60 and stops giving any sort of benefits whatsoever by level 49. And if you play as a nation with historical explorers, you generally don't need naval tech beyond level 18note It allows revealing all coastal provinces the moment a coastal sea zone is discovered and comes almost a century before level 27, since you can simply use the explorers you've got to do the job.
In III, enacting "Build post office" and "Expand road network" provincial decision into as many provinces as possible, as early as possible. Not for their minor bonuses to production, but for monthy growth of magistrates. Sure, +0.01 per month per decision doesn't sound like much, but it snowballs into crazy values in no time.
Also in III, Patron of Arts national idea, especially in HTTT and DW expansions, is the most-often first pick for any given nation. It's the most stable and in the same time substantial source of cultural tradition (and prestige in earlier versions of the game), allowing to hire 5 and 6 star advisors in reliable fashion, which for obvious reasons has massive impact on your game from the very start.
In both III and IV, certain national ideas are just too good to ignore, especially if they provide large bonuses, additional agents or grant access to otherwise locked-out abilities (like hiring explorers).
For IV, anything which increases a nation's capacity for more states, since states are just so darn better than territories. On the other hand, expanding towards trade company regions where one's nation can form trade companies is almost mandatory because territories which are added to trade companies do not contribute to corruption AND used to have a minimum autonomy of 0% (the same minimum as states) note This was later removed in patch 1.30; trade company provinces now have a minimum autonomy of 90%, same as territories.. Patch 1.30 removes this limit altogether and players can now state as much as they want, at the cost of the new mechanic Governing Capacity, which leads to players trying to increase that number as much as possible instead.
Again with IV, the first few things a player would do when optimizing a nation is (a) lower local autonomy, (b) convert religions and cultures, starting with provinces with highest priority and in states, and (c) reduce any devastation. Local autonomy, different cultures and religions and devastation all decrease various parameters of a nation.
Early on in IV, Trade ideas. It's even less of a no-brainer choice, given its necessity. Short of playing a country that has default bonuses to trade and number of merchants, it was flat-out impossible to participate with the entire trade part of the game, and if you have innate bonuses to trade, your best course of action was to strengthen them with that set of ideas. Trade ideas are less important with recent patches, as most countries can get along with just two merchants steering into their home node fairly well (even becoming rich if they grow to dominate their home node), and additional merchants can be easily gained via trade companies. Trade ideas do still provide a massive boost of income, but often other idea groups can provide greater benefit.
With the release of DLCs, the easiest nation to play for IV in 1444 is Ming, bar none. While the other Great Powers can achieve greatness with various levels of difficulty, Ming can prosper without fighting a single war. Ming looks at the Scrappy Mechanic listed below (advisor costs) and laughs. note Not only does Ming have a discount on advisor costs, said discount is dependent on them hiring top quality advisors as advisor skill levels contribute to Meritocracy, the mechanic which enables the discount in the first place. With Common Sense, Ming can spend the increased amount of Monarch Points generated to develop their provinces, and jump-start any institution which they cannot get; this all but ensures that they'll never fall behind in technology. note Before the introduction of institutions, Ming's tech group meant that they'll almost always lag in technology.But Wait, There's More! Ming's status as a Celestial Empire means that they can ask just about any nation near their lands to become their tributary. Tributaries (if advanced enough) can contribute Monarch Points to Ming once a year note Other forms of tribute are ducats and manpower. What's more, Ming has to have neighbouring nations as tributaries; if not, their Mandate level will decrease, leading to some nasty penalties. note The mandatory "neighouring nations as tributaries" mechanic was removed in patch 1.29. On the other hand, high Mandate decreases stability costs and national unrest. The Broken Base about colonial nations above? Ming's colonial nations can own the New World and Australia without them turning against Ming. note A colonial nation's desire to break free (liberty desire) is affected by its size, along with the military strength of the colony; for vassals, marches and client states, their combined military strength is used when calculating liberty desire. Ming's size and wealth can ensure that (a) it can perpetually bribe/develop its colonies to retain their loyalty and (b) its military can be a few times the size of the militaries of all its dependencies combined. However, with patch 1.29, Ming was rebalanced a bit, by giving them the unique "Crisis of the Ming Dynasty" disaster note This includes events for Li Zicheng's rebellion and releasing the Three Feudatories in southern China if the disaster is mismanaged. The disaster becomes possible simply by having <50 Mandate after the first Age, and this will always happen when you pass a Celestial Reform after said Age, as maximum Mandate is 100 and every reform costs 70 Mandate (and 1 Stability). This is on top of the baseline "Unguarded Nomadic Frontier" disaster for the Emperor of Chinanote This disaster becomes possible when a large steppe horde nation (with at least 300 development) borders Ming, and is not a subject of or allied with Ming or does not have a truce. The monthly progress increases by 1% as long as the conditions are met., and the nerfs to territories in 1.26 and capital shifting in 1.28.
On Ming, one of the items near the top of their agenda will be to make sure that they don't border a steppe horde nation, or have all border steppe horde nations as vassals or tributaries. This is to nip the "Unguarded Nomadic Frontier" disaster in the bud. While AI routinely fails at this, a human-controlled Ming will never experience the disaster, as preventing it from even triggering is ridiculously easy and also well-worth it in terms of profits such vassals and tributaries bring.
Ming can also effectively bottle all their trade nodes and feed to themselves, despite neither of them being an end node. Almost all provinces in the four Chinese nodes start under Ming control and once all are under direct control, it is possible to simply prevent any trade leaving the loop, meaning that not only China makes all the money of the internal market, but, far more importantly, the rest of the world gets nothing. This makes Ming even stronger, while everyone else is at the same time weaker, as trade in IV is a zero-sum game. All a Ming player has to do is to conquer a handful of provinces - for which they have missions anyway - and not lose even a single port to Europeans. After that, nothing flows outside and any attempt at steering the trade away can be easily curbed. Since Chinese trade is usually about a quarter of the starting world economy, and even with a well-colonised world, it still makes at least one-sixth of it by end game. The denial of income is going to hurt everyone considerably.
In later patches, Ming's national religion Confucianism received a boost. Previously, if Confucianism harmonizes with other religions, the provincial culture of provinces with harmonized religions cannot be changed. Now, Ming (and Korea) can do so, thus squeezing more value out of provinces.
The "Confirm Thalassocracy" decision is something everyone will try to bee-line for. It grants a bunch of all-round bonuses to various statisticsnote +0.25 yearly navy tradition, −10% light ship cost and −5% diplomatic technology cost, along with a free merchant. While at first glance it is nigh-impossible to achieve, requiring to be a dominant trading force in a whole lot of trade nodes... it doesn't matter what percentage you have in any given node. All that matters is to be the largest one. Done right and done early and one can easily "dominate" required nodes with laughable share of 5 or even less percent. And you are probably going to pick "Found Indian Trade Company" along the way, for both the bonus it provides and making it far easier to claim the thalassocracy modifier, as it increases your raw trade power.
Players seeking an easy world conquest will very often play as the Mughals due to their extremely strong conquest-oriented ideas, as well as their diwan mechanism that allows them to mostly make unrest a non-issue.
In IV, attacking Byzantium without a CB as a country near them (with a stretch; even countries like Castile and Muscovy can easily perform this) is commonly used to break the Ottoman AI and preventing them from snowballing, making them easy to defeat fairly early. Even if this may lead to the Mamluks rising up and snowballing instead they are usually easier to defeat than the Ottomans.
The Divine Wind expansion pack for III turns the Golden Horde and Timurids into these for everyone between Eastern Europe and China.
Revolts of any kind and type for first 100-150 years, especially in II and III. At low tech, battles are pretty much randomly resolved and morale is so low, the spawning morale of rebels will be nearly the same level as your "prepared" army. This means even if you have army in the same province as the rebel army spawning, you can easily get curbed right off the bat. Still in II, rebels remain a serious threat, especially once you start having a spread-out global empire - it will take months, or even years to get troops to the right place. And rebels are always at the same tech level as you are, so unless they are dealt with instantly, they turn into a massive problem once their morale rises to your own level. This is especially contrasted with rebels in IV, who are at best Goddamned Bats and usually don't pop-out at all, unless you seriously mess-up.
Germanyblob: A massively bloated and world spanning German Empire, coined from how easy it is to make a huge state out of a German kingdom in Europa Universalis IV.
HUErtugal: Portugal, which is a common starting nation in Europa Universalis IV, in reference to the HUEHUEHUE BR meme about Brazilian online gamers that has led people on the internet to call that country "HUEsil".
Fanon Discontinuity: Ask even the most decidated fans of the series about Europa Universalis, the very first game, starting the whole series. They will probably ask if you mean Europa Universalis II. It's not that the first game was bad, but when compared with II it feels like a proof-of-a-concept game or some sort of a tech demo.
If you aren't careful, pirates. They can be easily dealt with most of the time, but that still requires your attention and additional expenses if you don't want to lose trade and colonial profits. Also, it's considerably easier to prevent them from spawning at all than to fight already existing fleets
In II and III, OPMs are just pain in the ass when it comes to trade. Since each country generates own merchants and sends them to nearby centers of trade, they end up flooding them with competitors over limited trade slots. And AI sends merchants all at once, so it's a huge wave of merchants fighting against each other at once. Maintaining monopoly in places like Lübeck or Venice is nigh impossible due to the sheer amount of countries trying to get their slice of the cake. It is often beneficial to let OMPs consolidate into bigger entities or even intervene in local wars for that purpose, simply because it means less competition for trade and thus easier time making money.
Good Bad Bugs: The AI does not understand the concept of attrition. It's entirely possible to lure a large army into your territory, Scorch the Earth in that province with a fast / sacrificial unit, and let that (or the winter) whittle the enemy army down to almost nothing.
The flipside is that naval attrition has to be disabled for the AI, leading to things like Ottoman territories in the Baltic, or Castille owning Finland.
Naval attrition in European waters is nigh-nonexistent anyway.
If the player starts the game anytime later then 1399, the game would remember all changes that happened since that year and mention them in the country's history log. Start the game as the USA anytime after 1797 and read how George Washington's period was only remembered for his drunkenness!
Growing the Beard: A recurring theme for each game in the series and their expansions.
The most straight example would be II. It was a substantial improvement of the original game, fixing UI, extending timeline, added tonnes of new events and improved in regards of historical accuracy. The jump was so big, I is pretty much ignored entirely, as if the series started with II.
Upon premiere, III had mixed reviews and even worse reception. The first expansion, Napoleon’s Ambition, continued the trend. It wasn't until In Nomine the game truly flourished, finally reaching its recognisable form, further cemented by Heir to the Throne.
IV was a butt joke of how bare and weird the initial release was. Then each following DLC was announced to be the "fix" to salvage the game... only to further tank the reception. Cue Art of War and related big patch, which by itself wasn't all that good, but finally showed the signs of improvement. But the real turning point was Common Sense, which gave the game finally its recognisable shape and mechanics.
Low-Tier Letdown: Playing as a land-locked nation removes roughly a third of gameplay from your experience and in the long run, makes the game unfun, as it cuts you off from all the interactions with naval mechanics and exploration. Even just having a single port is more engaging than having none, not to mention the passive effects it has on your nation in II and III.
"France is the Final Boss of EU4."note France is often dubbed as the 'Big Blue Blob' because of its tendency to conquer most of Europe if left unchecked.
Prussia and its larvae form Brandenburg are infamous for their "Prussian Space Marines". Prussia's military ideas are hands down the best in IV - French morale, Swedish infantry combat ability and near-Japanese levels of discipline.
Oirat has reached this level for being a top contender for world conquest in player hands, sporting the starting position, religion, and government form fitting to quickly expand in all directions while also being eligible for many gameplay loopholes such as becoming the Holy Roman Emperor while retaining all of its bonuses.
Also, hilariously because it's a OPM, Ulm.note That said, it's not entirely ridiculous: Ulm starts as a free city in the HRE so it gets Austria's protection right off the bat, your German ideas aren't that terrible and you're a republic so you don't have to be saddled with a bad ruler for long.
Skanderbeg, aka the God Emperor of Albania, is easily the best ruler in the 1444 starting date. With his 6/5/6 stats and godlike generalship, a skilled player can turn the OPM of Albania into an Ottoman death trap; burying Mehmed the Second's dreams of European conquest in the treacherous mountains of your tiny nation.
Enrique (Castilian for Henry), the atrocious 0/0/0 heir to the Castillian throne in 1444 has gained this status. Truth in Television, as his historical counterpart, Henry IV of Castile, was nicknamed the Impotent.
Nowadays, the Ming empire (at least under AI control) is considered to be a pushover that completely collapses within a hundred years, making a Qing or a Yuan gameplay extremely easy.
Memetic Mutation: On the forums, someone started a thread titled "Can Poland into space?", which is itself derived from Polandball. This has become a minor meme, with the Strange Screenshots thread containing many instances of nations claimed to "into space" - apparently it's the new word for "blobbing". The backlash is summed up by this image◊.
But Poland can into space!
Ascended Meme: As of Divine Wind, "Poland can into space" is an achievement acquired by reaching maximum level in all technologies as Poland.
Also, "Spain is not the Emperor." It appears on the loading screen as a hint. And it was followed up with the achievement "Spain is the Emperor."
From Europa Univeralis 4: "You can never have too much grain". Cue threads and threads devoted to the awesomeness of grain and grain-inducingpuns.
The reddit sub r/ulmgonewild is dedicated to the adventures and shenanigans of the greatest German city state to have ever existed.
"Steppe Wolfe" - common on the Something Awful Forums when describing a game that's gone horribly glitchy, ahistorical, or involving Bulgarians. It's a reference to a So Bad, It's Good mod which had, among other things, a bug in which during the fall of the Soviet Union the country of Estonia somehow manages to secede from every single country in the world simultaneously and go to war with all of them. It's also one of the few mods where you could get this message (paraphrased): "My lord, news from the country of the Soviet Union: They have thrown off the shackles of their former master Quebec and are experiencing freedom for the first time in ages!"
"X is just a number," where X is a thing like Aggressive Expansion note Which is earned when you conquer more territory than you have claims or cores on in one go, and enough of it can cause massive coalitions to form against you to break up your empire. or Overextension note Which is earned when you conquer too much territory, and which causes your empire to destabilize due to the difficulties of managing your empire. or Mercantilismnote Which is earned by spending dove mana on it and provides scaling bonus to trade power, probably one of the most egregious example of the meme in action.
"Personally I quite like Hormuz" note Comes from Reddit, where a user accidentally posted this message 33 times on a thread due to a glitch. The sentence immediately reached memetic fame, being reposted everywhere in the thread and giving Hormuz the reputation of being the most likeable nation of EU4
"If Iroquois started the war then enforce peace on Iroquois" note Became memetic for a similar reason as above, resulting in a thread where most posts were this exact sentence.
Cyberpunk 1444note A nickname for the 1.31 release due to its notorious glitchiness as well as the tendancy of Native American nations to develop megacities by the 16th century (albeit with high devastation).
Oops, the game crashed. note A tendancy for the game to "mysteriously crash" after the player being unlucky such as due to losing an important battle or a bad event happening. This is because the game only does a backup every 3 months or so in Ironman, so if the game forcefully closes, say, because the player pressed Alt+F4, it may reset before whichever calamity happened.
Memetic Psychopath: Crossing with Memetic Badass at times, the Ottomans are regarded by the community as an Eldritch Abomination that inevitably expands in an unstoppable fashion, often competing with the aforementioned France in the late game. It helps that they're regarded as the easiest nation in 1444 to do a World Conquest with. It is little wonder why it is so difficult to play as the Byzantines, or any other Turkish Beylik.
While not in the core game, the popular mod scenario Dark Continent includes an alternate starting scenario based on The Years of Rice and Salt, where Europe has been nearly depopulated by the Black Death. Seeing all that empty territory can be rather chilling, especially with events where you reclaim abandoned cities.
Romanian cultured nations have a special mission called "Impale the Sultan", which upon completion results in the Ottoman Sultan and his heir getting brutally impaled. Note that this event will fire regardless of the Sultan's age, meaning that you could possibly end up impaling a child who's too young to understand why he's being dragged towards a sharpened pole.
Obvious Beta: New patches for EU4 often have some things that can be exploited or minor bugs, but some have stood out as almost completely broken.
The Cossacks DLC (released with patch 1.14) was infamously broken. It introduced new, back then paid content - estates. They weren't fully functional until entire string of patches under 1.14.x numeral, until eventually reaching 1.15.1. Estates were behaving randomly and pressing new demands each month, punishing everyone for refusing their demands, while AI was handling out privileges like candy during peace time, ending up crippled economically and military for no real reason. Things were so bad that the titular Cossack estate, intended to be limited to steppe provinces, was possible to simply install whenever, while still displaying the tooltip about steppes.
The release of 1.30 (Imperator) was an unmitigated disaster. Every single new mechanic was so fundamentally bugged it should have been obvious to any QA tester within a single run as any European country. Nations would join the HRE at the drop of a hat, leading to everyone from Byzantium to Novgorod to Brittany creating a bloc impervious to outside expansion by 1450. Imperial incidents were broken, with the Shadow Kingdom event leading to Italian nations leaving the HRE and then rejoining the next day. The Council of Trent frequently simply did not fire at all, when it was a major mechanic in the new patch. Mercenary regiments could be split by loading some of them on to transports to recreate the old mercenary system. New events (like estate statutory rights) would pop up every day if they could, completely breaking players games. Most of these were fixed fairly quickly, but it was an astonishingly poorly tested product that had itself been developed over an entire year to give the team more time to implement and test good features. Instead, it created an impression no testing at all was made, with predictable reception.
Release 1.31 (Leviathan) was no better. Just to name a few: horde ideas giving a bonus that gave +100% conversion speednote as in, provinces are converted in one month, North American natives constantly joining and leaving federations, extremely unbalanced buffs from monuments, the possibility to cancel constructions in other countries, crashes when hovering over some native Australian government reforms, one naval battery disabling piracy in the whole world, going over government capacity as a stateless society giving a bonus rather than a malus, broken announcements, character stats overflowing, placeholder art still being present for the Sikh religion and, perhaps most egregiously of all Majapahit, which is the name of the free release, being completely unplayable without the DLC due to having no way of preventing the "Collapse of Majapahit" disaster that will without fail kill you.
1.31.1, coming just a few days after, corrected some of the most major glitches and did some rebalancings... unfortunately, this hotfix itself introduced new glitches, including Ming spontaneously exploding, and especially a very dangerous glitch capable of wiping out savefiles outright by erasing every single nations in the game.
In II, movement attrition is this. If your army is moving between two provinces and new month starts when they are on their move, a small fraction, just few dozens of soldiers, is going to die due to attrition. Fine. But unlike III or IV you can't replenish them in any way. You can easily end up losing a 2-3 thousands men by just getting your from point A to B and the only counter-measure is to simply muster new troops and send them to point B, following the same pattern. It also leads to extremely unfun micromanagement of troops, always moving them just one province away per month, always starting their move on 1st day of new month. And there are still provinces when you are going to get movement attrition anyway, because they combine hard terrain and a river crossing, so unless you don't have artillery (slowing down entire army), you are going to lose men. III introduced reinforing of troops precisely to finally give a way to restore troops to their full strength. And it wasn't that the loss of small amount of soldiers was affecting your total war effort in any meaningful way (low support provinces and winter had about ten times bigger impact), but how plain annoying it was, while also affecting your unit weight when using ships (since having 1001 troops weighted the same amount of 2000, but does make a difference in combat), making logistics further complicated.
For whatever reason, III decreased the amount of agents you can stock to 5, from 6 in II. But monopolies still require to send 6 merchants to a Center of Trade. This very quickly gets very annoying, especially each time you discover or establish a new CoT that you could dominate easily in a single go, but have to wait a month, if not longer, to gain the lacking 6th merchant.
While the fandom is extremely divisive about Europa Universalis IV, at least one thing can be agreed upon - the mana system is just badly implemented. Or rather not mana itself, but the way it is gathered. To perform pretty much any action in the game, you require specific amounts of administration/diplomatic/military points, with growth based on skills of your ruler - which are randomly generated and you have zero influence about. You can increase the amount of points generated by appointing advisors, but they cost a lot over time and you also have zero influence on how good they are or what bonus they will grant note You can spend ducats to retire a potential advisor so that the game generates another one in its place, but that is about it. , often hiring absolutely useless people for loads of money just to mitigate the atrociously bad monarch. Republican governments in theory allow you to pick what kind of ruler you want, but they are almost always one-trick ponies. Rights of Man slightly improved the situation with certain types of governments and giving the general ability to abdicate and disinherit your oldest child (saving your country from truly incompetent monarchs) and Cradle of Civilization allows you to spend money to upgrade advisors of accepted culture, but it's still about managing random outcomes and thus far from perfect. And there is nothing worse than being stuck with string of bad rulers, over which you have no influence.
As mentioned above, the way how Colonial Nations are formed and interacted with. Players can't pick which provinces they handle over to their newly minted vassal state and any new provinces colonised in the same colonial region will be instantly handled over the very next day. Any overlord nation can only have one CN in any given regionnote Technically, there can be more - if country A and B have CNs in the same region and country B is a vassal of A, once B gets integrated into A, its CNs will change ownership to A - but trying to pull this with AI is exceedingly hard due to, well, it being AI, so the end result is a really big, unitary vassal state that's by design written to eventually stage a revolt against you. The benefit of having CN is laughable - rather than earning all the riches from the controlled territory and trade, half of it is retained by the CN for its own use and everything else is given to the overlord, leaving the CN with not enough money to build anything anyway and forcing the overlord to invest in it... to benefit CN, not overlord. In case of trade, this is a deal-breaker, as CN is going to collect trade locally, for own profit, while the goal of the overlord is to steer trade away. Even if some of the profit made from collecting trade is given back to the overlord, it just pales in comparison with simply steering it to home trade node. Colonisation done by the CN itself is under heavy penalties, meaning it will have a hard time to expand by itself and will always require support from the mother country... even if said mother country gains nothing from it directly. Overlord can't set goals for CNs aside from generic call to arms and collecting revenue, not even deciding who gets to be ruler (CNs work like republics, but the fluff for election event openly states they are sent from the metropoly, rather than voted for locally). All of this goes without even mentioning Artificial Stupidity, which makes various issues multiplied by the magnitude of ten.
The main reason why CNs are so infuriating to handle is two-fold. First, while players have zero control over how CN is formed and which lands are given to it, there is an option to form your own nations in the game, as long as they aren't in colonial region. That's right - there is a tool in-game for making new countries out of conquered territories and hand-picking which provinces are given to it (along with option to give it additional ones), but CN is on full auto, with no customisation aside from giving it a name when formed note Leviathan allows you to define the nature of the CN by choosing one out of three definitions.. Second is related with historical starts. You might have a bunch of provinces in any given colonial region under your direct control and a colonial nation controlling some other provinces in the same region, to represent the historical administration of the region. Load the game, unpause it... and the next day all your provinces are handled to the CN. And if none exists, it will be instantly formed. Fun!
While it makes some sense for European nations to have semi-independent colonies, it's completely nonsensical how Siberian tribes and the Ainu have to follow the same system. Alaska is barely a stone-throw away from them, yet they have to form CNs all the same.
Trade nodes as such. The entire thing is pre-defined. No matter how the history will play out, the direction in which the trade is going is fixed and there is no way of changing it. Say you're playing as Korea. Short from conquering most of Manchuria and colonising West Coast of the North Americanote Which not only means you are the only country present in that area, but it's only the West Coast, as any other nodes simply can't send trade toward it, meaning there is no point colonising any further, you have no inflow to the Nippon node, in which Korea is located. Even if you conquer large part of China, you can't send trade from there, you must instead move your collecting node to China, sending trade from upward Nippon node there. And it goes like this the entire chain of trade, so if you happen to be a country placed somewhere upward, especially near starting points, you can't in any way trade in nodes down the line, unless you conquer majority of provinces set there and establish it as your new, collecting node. This even affects various European countries, who face the choice between inability to use trade at all, or going on a massive conquest spree, just to get access to different node.
Go ask just about anyone about the English Channel trade node. It's a final trade node shared between the Netherlands, England/Great Britain and France. If you are playing by any of those countries, you are going to feed the other two with your hard earned trade, even if they aren't even present in regions you are steering from. At least in earlier versions, Amsterdam was a separate trade node, but eventually it was merged with the Channel. And Netherlands are the ones most robbed by such configuration, since they control the least amount of provinces within the node, while being by default a nation focused on global trade, so steering a lot toward the node. Thus successfully playing as Dutch allows England to get rich just by existing, while France can ignore trade being steered in other directions than Bordeaux, because it will reach English Channel, allowing to not only recover the trade lost at Bordeaux, but gain even more money thanks to the total value of the Channel node. Similarly, playing as England will make Dutch Republic rich by proxy, especially when not competing for trade in far-away nodes. No amount of modifiers, number of light ships and bonuses allows to control sufficient share of trade to truly tap full profits, always giving between 30 to 50 percent of profits to the other nations. That could mean even hundreds of ducats being just given away to (most likely) enemies, despite all the effort to earn them globally and to send them to the final node.
And if you are any of the nations from around the Danish Straits, good luck collecting in Lübeck, because English, Dutch and French ships are going to do their very best to steer that trade to neighbouring English Channel node. Inflow from the colonies? Good luck competing over England/Great Britain over the North Sea, so they will send that trade to English Channel. Short of conquering or vassalising Scotland and/or Ireland, it's nigh impossible to send colonial trade toward Lübeck. Lübeck is even worse because it has zero access to the maritime spice routes around the cape of good hope. Generally, colonial nations generate far less income than trade companies, and those who want to keep their home node in Lübeck have zero access to the riches of China and India without establishing a Russia-sized land empire .
With the introduction of Age mechanics, a lot of theoretical possibilities emerge, allowing players (and AI) to greatly help their economy and war machine, picking from different bonuses by spending (slowly generated) splendor points. However, once a specific Age ends, the bonuses are gone for good and the effects don't carry further. This makes certain very desirable and useful options extremely lackluster in the end, as they provide only a temporary bonus, which in turn might not be even utilised fully, as a nation might gain the bonus just as the current age is about to end. Certain bonuses take it a step further, as they are nation-specific and Age-specific, meaning that the given nation only gets the bonus for a specific Age. In turn, the four nations getting unique bonuses during the final Age are absurdly overpowered thanks to their bonuses, as they never end for the final 110-120 years of gameplay.
The biggest offender is probably the Age of Discovery bonus Higher Developed Colonies, which provides all provinces settled under that Age with free +1 to all three base statistics. The Age of Discovery ends 10 years after Protestantism pops out. It can be anywhere between 1460 to 1520, based on string of random events all Catholic nations have. Technology required to even consider colonising is dated for 1492 and at best can be rushed by a decade. And once Age of Discovery is over, the bonus is lost. Portugal takes it a step further, as they gain +50 colonial growth only in this Age.
Age of Absolutism has by far the most useful bonuses, allowing to have numerous forts on borders with rivals free of any charge, changing rivals easily and putting new territories and subject under your heel in no time and with easier means of making them productive after even most devastating wars. Shame it all goes with smoke around 1710 mark or so, when The Enlightenment starts and the bonuses are replaced with lackluster effects, unless you plan to have dozens of protracted sieges against powerful forts build in the previous period. Oh, and revolutions are now possible, so good luck with staying in power as conqueror and/or global colonial empire if your stability suddenly drops.
There is also the related Golden Era option, which once triggered, lasts for 50 years and provides a series of bonuses, most importantly making all mana-using options 10% cheaper. But, since most of the bonuses are related to absolutism mechanics (at least before the rework), which isn't even unlocked until Age of Absolutism in 1600s, it makes the Golden Era pointless for a human player before that timeframe. Meanwhile, the AI is eager to trigger Golden Era as soon as it can, so it's not unusual for everyone to fire their Golden Era around 1470-80s and then having another wave of it for OPMs around 1510s. After the rework, the Golden Era bonus give more generic bonuses and only one bonus relates to absolutism, but the AI is still eager to get it ASAP, regardless of any factors. In single player (or co-operative multi), this gives human-controlled nations the most absurd bonus imaginable, since triggering Golden Age under half-decent ruler during Age of Absolutism allows to paint half of the world in your colour and then easily keep it.
The "Lost Cultures" group, made of cultures which are gone by the historical period of Europa Universalis, which can be added in game through import of Crusader Kings savegames or custom nations. Some are absolutely ahistorical, like "Scythian", "Phoenician", etc... The problem is that some of these cultures (like "Scanian" in Scandinavia, or "Pruthenian" for the Baltic Prussians as opposed to the German Prussians) were muribund, but not extinct at all by the game's era. Thus, when such cultures appear in the game, you're forced to deal with culture penalties everywhere as a consequence, when logically there shouldn't be any. This is made worse by the fact that some cultures with no provinces at all in history files are still included within their logical culture group (such as "Ingrian" in the "Ugric" group). And a serious offender is the restoration of the Roman Empire, since the "Roman" culture is also part of "Lost Cultures", and when the government shifts to it you're to deal with unmitigated culture penalties in the whole empire. Some players argued for the removal of this culture group altogether and having its cultures redistributed more fittingly.
Seasonal Rot: It is generally admitted among the community that updates and accompanying DLCs started declining in quality later in EUIV's lifecycle. Depending on who you ask, the rot set in early to late 2018. The reasons for this are multiple: first of all, updates became increasingly unbalanced, with nations receiving massive buffs, exacerbated by the AI rarely being capable of exploiting these buffs. Second, while Paradox was never stranger to unstable launches, some updates went as far as being an Obvious Beta, plagued by crashes and bugs. Third, the update rate slowed to a crawl starting from 2019, with a single major patch in 2019 and another in 2020, while 2018 and prior had at least four each.
Golden Century, released with the 1.28 update, was criticized for being unfocused on Iberia, despite being touted as an immersion pack for it. Instead, many of its features were centered on pirates. This resulted in the DLC being seen as too shallow to justify its price tag. Furthermore, some of the mission trees included in the mod were seen as overpowered, most notably Spain's, which can easily get many Personal Unions.
Emperor and the 1.30 update were plagued with numerous bugs at launch, with many of its features simply not working, despite its development having started even before 1.29. The artificial intelligences of large nations, already rather bad at managing their economy, became almost memetically so and constantly bankrupted themselves due to mercenary pay. None of the hotfixes managed to fully eradicate this problem, much to the frustration of many players suddenly finding themselves betrayed by a loyal ally at the worst moment. Even some of the well-received additions, such as imperial incidents, were criticized for being underused.
Leviathan and its 1.31 update were outright nigh-unplayable at launch due to the sheer quantity of glitches affecting even parts of the game that weren't modified by 1.31 and some dangerous enough to stop a campaign entirely due to repeated crashes or even wiping out its savefile, giving the impression that despite having taken one year in the making, QA was essentially nonexistentnote which, given the closure of Paradox's QA department and alleged mismanagement, might be literally true. The content of the DLC itself was lambasted for being badly unbalanced note Among some of the worst offenders, the Alhambra monument gave 15% admin efficiency at launch for a mere 2000 ducats, the pyramids of Gizah gave -15% technology cost to pagan nations, concentrate development/pillage capital allowed you to easily build a megacity of 60 dev and more by 1500, and tribal development was given too generously, causing the whole of North America and Australia to be covered in ludicrously well-developed provinces rivaling Rome or Beijing, some reaching to up to 80 development in just a few decades., unfocused note more idea groups for North American tribes, but no unique ideas for the Iroquois to explain why they're "interesting nations" in the region. Some new formable nations stripped away the previous unique ideas and replaced them with the most generic "national ideas" group, and sometimes outright unfinishednote Many Polynesian missions had generic art or sometimes even no art at all, Sikhism religion tab had obvious placeholder art, Zoroastrianism and Alcheringa could not hide their origin as (haphazardly) reskinned Copticism and Fetishism. The horde idea group icon was obviously a cut-and-paste job from a historical painting and does not blend in at all with other idea groups.. All that caused an overwhelmingly negative reaction of the fanbase against Paradox and the DLC, with the user review of Leviathan reaching the abysmal 7% and becoming the worst-reviewed product on Steam. This, combined with the controversial "reorganizing" that led to the end of development for Imperator: Rome, made some question the very future of Paradox as a game studio. Even studio manager and game director Johan Andersson later admitted in a statement that PDS had dropped the ball as early as Golden Century.
That One Achievement: "Three Mountains", conquering the entire world while playing as Ryukyu - a very small island chain off the coast of Japan. World conquest is already very difficult, but Ryukyu couldn't be in a worse place and has about as much in the way of resources you'd expect; pulling this off without exploits is considered one of the top challenges.
And that is only one achievement. Between the 295 achievements Europa Universalis IV has, there's more of these kinds:
True Heir of Timur, introduced in Dharma. It requires you to play as a Timurid vassal, form Mughals and conquer the entire Indian subcontinent by 1550. It's actually considered to be harder than the Three Mountains because you're in a even bigger time constraint than before and it's already difficult to conquer the whole Indian subcontinent as the Timurids themselves, let alone with a vassal. To do the achievement, you will have to free yourself from your overlord, then follow the missions to get the free claims on India and then do the entire Mughal mission while truce juggling and watching the ridiculous aggressive expansion on other Indian kingdoms.
Frozen Assets, where as Novgorod you must make the White Sea the richest trade node of the game while owning 90% of its share. Said trade node only has one inward flow from Novgorod, an already pretty shit trade node. It's also located on the northern parts of Russia, where, you guessed it, has one of the worst developments and can't be easily developed because it's in the Arctic. The only way to make it richer is by getting trade from other nodes to flow in there, which requires conquest. As Novgorod. A republic with a worse expiring date than Byzantium. A nation that borders Muscovy that has the biggest standing army in the game. And you can only muster 1/3 of the army size of theirs because more than 3/4s of your nation is ice. Good luck.
The Pheasant Strut is this for all of the wrong reasons. The difficulty here is not from forming Nepal and having a sizeable army, but rather having the AI do the fucking same as either the Teutonic Order and Brandenburg to form Prussia. And even if they end up becoming strong and eligible to form Prussia, you still need to pray to whoever god you believe that they convert to a Protestant religion, which is required to form Prussia. On the plus side, once Prussia IS formed, all it takes is to declare a no-Casus Belli war and ensure that both of you are primary participants.
Anything that involves doing hard conquest as an One Province Minor will end up being this, with offenders such as Empire of Mann. It requires to take all islands in the world as Mann. In contrast, Ryukyu is alive at 1444 and it's a tributary of the strongest nation in the game and it's able to conquer (albeit with some creativity required) land with small repercussions. Mann, on the other hand, doesn't exist and must be released as England. To even think of do this achievement, you WILL have to empower the vassal while crippling England itself, all the while preventing the other European powers declaring war on you, putting the both nations on a precarious situation where any fuck up ruins the run. Then, when you finally release Mann as a strong nation, the game starts and now you have a smaller window of time to conquer all islands of the World, including those ones in the middle of the Pacific.
Eat your Greens requires you to play as the tiny nation of Kale and conquer all grasslands in Asia... before absolutism. There are generally two paths to this achievement, one that involves blocking global trade from ever spawning to stall the age of absolutism (which isn't easy on itself), while the official way is a struggle to conquer the immense amount of grasslands all over the continent before 1610. Doing so you will have to fight almost all major powers in Asia, including Ming, in a relentless race against time sometimes said to be even harder than the aforementioned True Heir of Timur. And unlike the Mughals, Kale merely sports mediocre ideas and a generic mission tree.
Underused Game Mechanic: It could be argued that IV is built from those. The general consensus among players is that due to the design philosophy of DLCs being self-contained and non-interacting with each other, any mechanic that exists within a DLC is by default shallow and doesn't carry much weight in actual gameplay. Examples include things like innovativenessnote A scaling modifier in regards on how advanced technologically a nation is, gained by rushing technology or adopting an idea first (this one gets exhausted within first 50 years of the game) and utterly meaningless unless reaching 100% value, army professionalismnote Another scaling modifier that gives small bonus to dealt damage on national scale and unlocks such stunning abilities like reinforcing a fort instantly or decreasing costs of hiring a general, all rendered completely moot once mercenaries were reworked, as it never decays now and related with it drillingnote A specific, exact regiment non-stop training outside of combat, for another scaling modifier to performance. Openly mocked as a gimmick to occupy players army with something during peace time, as the gain of drilling is extremely slow and bonuses provided by it virtually invisible, while tied to specific regiments, rather than all units in general or Prussia-exclusive (thus even more underused) militarisationnote Yet another scaling modifier - see a pattern already? - that increases discipline and decreases maintenance of the Prussian army, but in the same time forcing player to stay at all times at a very small size of a country in a game that doesn't support tall gameplay. Various game mechanics that originally were DLC-exclusive eventually got moved to core rules and only then reworked into something more impactful, with estates being probably the best example of this.
This sentiment has only grown with the previews of the content coming in the 1.31 patch. Initially though to be a free patch providing flavor for the underdeveloped southeast Asia region (as Poland was in 1.27 and Northeast Asia was in 1.29) the DLC appears to also contain a grab bag of random mechanics to justify charging for another DLC. It appears to contain a cut of Golden Century (slightly different types of colonial nations), a slice of Emperor (reworked regencies and a controversial favor mechanic) and a grab bag of other ideas aimed at tall play (pillage capital, expand infrastructure, and centralize state).
French board game
