EU3 (warning long post)

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I recently took the time to get into the EU series by starting with EU3, because it runs best on my machine and has a relatively complete lineup of expansions. I feel like I've gotten a good handle on how to play now, but I've reached the point where I don't feel like firing it up anymore because there are too many things that bug me about the game design. I am wondering though whether this is different in EU4.

All of these boil down to how it functions as a history simulator. On one level I'm impressed at some of the complexity worked into the game, but there are some areas that just feel downright wrong:

Trading. It gets some things right. Large centres of trade earn a lot of money for the government who owns it, fine. Nations that favour mercantilism are better at monopolising their own trade versus those who favour free trade can compete better at other centres, fine. However, the game completely fails to model the effects of localised trading on a nation's economy. If you pump hundreds of ducats into your trade buildings but your merchants get kicked out of COTs everytime you send them, you get nothing. How is that realistic? Of course you want to simulate the effects of a massive trading hub and reward players who can take advantage of it, but you should also be earning a smaller amount of cash for doing local trade properly.

War I like how this game models war, but I hate how it models peace. The whole notion of there being 'War Leaders' is good but it's far too rigid and can result in some problems. Case in point: I was allied to Hungary in a war against Bohemia and they were the leader because they had more troops at the start of the war. We both took a pummeling early on, but I managed to build my forces back up and with 6 vassals I eventually wiped out the Bohemian armies. Here I was poised to roll across their territory for a 100% victory and the Hungarians took white peace because they had lost a fair bit of territory. I reloaded the game about three times and got the same outcome. Surely if it was realistic, the War Leader should change at this point?
Moreover, the number of times I've faced an island nation like England and taken all their territories on the mainland, only to be forced to cede them back in a peace deal because I don't have enough 'war score' is just ridiculous. I can't muster up a navy to cross the seas and wipe them out, but by the same token they don't have the troops to beat back my army. Stalemate, but I'm still holding their territories, they shouldn't just arbitrarily go back to them because I didn't faceroll their entire kingdom to accrue the necessary warscore!

Technology and 'Westernization'. This is the big one. The game mechanics already allow them to model the effect of being isolated from major technological developments by granting bonuses based on what your neighbours are up to; so why the completely arbitrary grouping of people into tech groups? it basically just hard-codes the Eurocentric bias into the game, with non Western nations having little option but to undergo the even more arbitrary process of 'Westernization'. Why not model the kind of innovations that pushed Europe into a dominant position in-game so that people can play out a proper 'alternate history'? Make scientists, universities etc have a real effect as opposed to just getting you that +1% bonus four years before everyone else.

Back to my original question: are these things handled differently in EU4, or should I just accept that this isn't going to be a perfect model for alternate history development and enjoy it for what it is?

 

[Xeorm]

I'll say this to start: EU4 is a game that I had a lot more fun with than EU3. It has some weird mechanics changes, but overall I found myself enjoying it more. Take that as you will.

Trading: yes, this was changed quite a lot. It's now much more based on control of trade through actual control, rather than Trade Efficiency and compete chance dominating one's ability to make money from trade. Certainly an improvement I think.

War is handled a tad weirdly in the EU series, I agree. Warleader problems are due more to technical issues though as far as I'm aware. Major changes in 4 are that nations have the option to disable the warleader from using their stuff to make peace with (aka, you can't make a peace by giving your ally's territory away) and a ticking warscore system. If the war goal is to take a province, warscore will go up for whichever side has the province. Helps a lot with stalemates like the one mentioned with England.

Well, modeling the real effects of what allowed western Europe to thrive would require knowing why western Europe thrived. We have some ideas, but no definitive ideas on what allowed that to happen, making it rather difficult to model. There's also other balance reasons for it, but in general it's not a bad system, as they have to make a lot of realism sacrifices, either due to not knowing how it happened, or keeping out needlessly complex stuff.

Westernization is handled much better in 4 though. Maybe not to some people's satisfaction, but it is a much nicer system than what is presented in 3.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I'll say this to start: EU4 is a game that I had a lot more fun with than EU3. It has some weird mechanics changes, but overall I found myself enjoying it more. Take that as you will.

Trading: yes, this was changed quite a lot. It's now much more based on control of trade through actual control, rather than Trade Efficiency and compete chance dominating one's ability to make money from trade. Certainly an improvement I think.

War is handled a tad weirdly in the EU series, I agree. Warleader problems are due more to technical issues though as far as I'm aware. Major changes in 4 are that nations have the option to disable the warleader from using their stuff to make peace with (aka, you can't make a peace by giving your ally's territory away) and a ticking warscore system. If the war goal is to take a province, warscore will go up for whichever side has the province. Helps a lot with stalemates like the one mentioned with England.

Thanks, this is all very helpful. I would need to seriously beef up my rig before I could run EU4 properly, but I'm considering it. Those changes to the warscore in particular sound really good.

Well, modeling the real effects of what allowed western Europe to thrive would require knowing why western Europe thrived. We have some ideas, but no definitive ideas on what allowed that to happen, making it rather difficult to model. There's also other balance reasons for it, but in general it's not a bad system, as they have to make a lot of realism sacrifices, either due to not knowing how it happened, or keeping out needlessly complex stuff.

Westernization is handled much better in 4 though. Maybe not to some people's satisfaction, but it is a much nicer system than what is presented in 3.

There's definitely some good theories (Jared Diamond's being the one I personally find most plausible), but it's true that there's plenty of debate on the subject. Personally I think if they did away with the tech groups and made neighbour, trading and leader bonuses more important you would still get a fairly realistic outcome where Western Europe tends to dominate for a while, but if at the very least they've made Westernisation more palatable I should look into it.

 

[raeior]

Trading will change even more in the new expansion "Wealth of nations". So far it has some weird implications because trade only flows in one predetermined direction. If Japan would take colonies in America, they could only profit from trade goods from the west coast of northern and middle America. They could take the whole east coast but would have no way of steering the trade to Japan because it can only be steered toward Europe via several routes. This also makes the trade node of Antwerp extremely powerful because you can route the trade of the whole world there and no one can steer it away. The same would be true for nations in China or India. All their trade flows west, so expanding in the direction would net them next to nothing in regards to trade. It is possible to collect trade outside of your capital, but that comes with a highly reduced trade power in that node.

Warfare in EU is still really weird. There is currently a problem of cascading alliances, where you attack one country, that calls it's slightly larger ally who then becomes warleader, calls all of his allies, one of whom is slightly stronger than the current one, becomes warleader, calls all of his allies and so forth. This can lead to wars where you start fighting a 1 province country that then calls a 2 province country that is allied to Austria who are allied to France who are allied to Russia and suddenly you have the whole world against you without the game telling you beforehand. Also expansion was heavily nerfed in EU4. Taking 3 or 4 provinces can already lead to over 100% overextension. This enables fun events like "+15% revolt risk in province x" "your trader leaves trade node y" "your advisor leaves your court because you are a warmongering menace to the world" and those can come like several times a month.
Wars for oversea territories are also still problematic regarding peace negotiations. If you take several English provinces in America as a native American nation you can end in an everlasting war because England won't be willing to give up it's provinces because "our military is much stronger than yours" which might be true...but they never ship them over to win this war and instead have them sitting around on their island doing nothing.

Also the infamy system was replaced with coalitions. This basically means that if you take provinces from say Münster without having a claim or core, most other countries in the HRE will hate you and might join a coalition against you. This means that if you attack a member of the coalition you will have to fight all members of it, even though you might still have a truce with some of them. Also if a member of the coalition attacks you, he calls all the coalition members into the war. So a 1 province country that joins a coalition that already contains Sweden, France and Spain against you can call all of them to war right after joining. This can get really ugly really quick because the aggressive expansion modifier you get for taking land is currently quite insane (especially in the HRE). The good thing is that it's more or less localized. If you take large chunks of land from the Ottomans, no Christian country will care because screw those infidels. I think it's a better system than the infamy system but it can reach quite ridiculous dimensions. Right after release you would get coalitions where the Aztecs would happily fight alongside the Ottomans, the Papal States and Ming against Austria or similar nonsense.

The technology and building stuff was also heavily overhauled because now you fall behind in technology if you build too many buildings because they are paid with points from the same pool. I'm still not really sure what to make of this.

Oh well but I still like EU4 more than EU3 and I have already sunk far too many hours into it

 

[Fat Hippo]

The technology and building stuff was also heavily overhauled because now you fall behind in technology if you build too many buildings because they are paid with points from the same pool. I'm still not really sure what to make of this.

I was somewhat irritated by this once as colonial Portugal, since I couldn't upgrade any of my dozens of South American provinces without falling drastically behind in tech. Granted, this may be alleviated by the Conquest of Paradise expansion which forms new colonial vassal states, which I haven't played much of yet, though.

I do generally think it's a good thing that large empires get some heavy downsides, to avoid total snowballing once a nation gets large enough, which happened easily in EU 3 (french blob, anyone?)

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The technology and building stuff was also heavily overhauled because now you fall behind in technology if you build too many buildings because they are paid with points from the same pool. I'm still not really sure what to make of this.

I was somewhat irritated by this once as colonial Portugal, since I couldn't upgrade any of my dozens of South American provinces without falling drastically behind in tech. Granted, this may be alleviated by the Conquest of Paradise expansion which forms new colonial vassal states, which I haven't played much of yet, though.

I do generally think it's a good thing that large empires get some heavy downsides, to avoid total snowballing once a nation gets large enough, which happened easily in EU 3 (french blob, anyone?)

Yeah, the stability and tech penalties in EU3 don't really stop the dreaded Blue Blob. They can always crush revolts faster than new ones can spring up. Maybe if they didn't start with so many vassals...

 

[raeior]

I do generally think it's a good thing that large empires get some heavy downsides, to avoid total snowballing once a nation gets large enough, which happened easily in EU 3 (french blob, anyone?)

I guess my problem with it is that it doesn't prevent blobbing like at all. Nations like France get the "lucky" bonus which means they get super powerful kings and generals all the time and because of that can throw monarch points around like crazy. It also doesn't stop the player from blobbing because he can work around a lot of the monarch point costs by tricks like vassal feeding. Also the use of most buildings is kinda underwhelming. The only exception are harbours and the military ones and maybe the trade ones depending on what you are trying to do. This also leads to a huge influx of money because there isn't enough to spend it on. A similar problem existed in EU3, but luckily in EU4 saving money doesn't increase your inflation like crazy.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I do generally think it's a good thing that large empires get some heavy downsides, to avoid total snowballing once a nation gets large enough, which happened easily in EU 3 (french blob, anyone?)

I guess my problem with it is that it doesn't prevent blobbing like at all. Nations like France get the "lucky" bonus which means they get super powerful kings and generals all the time and because of that can throw monarch points around like crazy. It also doesn't stop the player from blobbing because he can work around a lot of the monarch point costs by tricks like vassal feeding. Also the use of most buildings is kinda underwhelming. The only exception are harbours and the military ones and maybe the trade ones depending on what you are trying to do. This also leads to a huge influx of money because there isn't enough to spend it on. A similar problem existed in EU3, but luckily in EU4 saving money doesn't increase your inflation like crazy.

Well, I usually just turn the lucky nations bonus off, it seems dumb to me. It's not like certain nations were just destined to become powerful in 1444, some things could have turned out differently.

I don't know what vassal feeding is, vassalizing parts of your empire never seemed all that beneficial to me, but maybe I was wrong?

Buildings can definitely pay off if you get enough of them, highly developed provinces are valuable if you invest properly, although it does depend on whether you are ahead in technology at the time.

I have also had problems with lack of spending opportunities, like in the game of colonial Portugal I mentioned, although 3 level 3 advisors will do a lot to empty your coffers.

 

[raeior]

Well, I usually just turn the lucky nations bonus off, it seems dumb to me. It's not like certain nations were just destined to become powerful in 1444, some things could have turned out differently.

I'm currently playing Ironman so I can't turn them off but I fully agree that they are quite a dumb idea. France wiping the floor with half the world at once...yeah not funny.

I don't know what vassal feeding is, vassalizing parts of your empire never seemed all that beneficial to me, but maybe I was wrong?

It basically means that you try to take a single province out of a larger nation where another extinct country has a core. Something like a province that once belonged to Finland out of Russia. Then you create Finland as a vassal from that single province and start feeding it it's cores back in subsequent wars. You now have a quite large vassal, a weakened Russia and the option of annexing Finland at a later point to automatically get cores on all their possessions. Rinse and repeat. This way you can completely destroy larger nations like the Ottomans with relatively low costs on your side. Another way is to attack a country and give it's cores to another nation, then vassalize them and declare war on the nation you gave their provinces to, to get them back to your vassal. When your new enemy is small enough, vassalize him, get him his other cores back etc. pp. You can also sell provinces your vassals have claims on to them to further "feed" them. It's basically the official way to blob in EU4 because it's nearly impossible if you try to core everything yourself.

 

[Vegosiux]

It basically means that you try to take a single province out of a larger nation where another extinct country has a core. Something like a province that once belonged to Finland out of Russia. Then you create Finland as a vassal from that single province and start feeding it it's cores back in subsequent wars. You now have a quite large vassal, a weakened Russia and the option of annexing Finland at a later point to automatically get cores on all their possessions. Rinse and repeat. This way you can completely destroy larger nations like the Ottomans with relatively low costs on your side. Another way is to attack a country and give it's cores to another nation, then vassalize them and declare war on the nation you gave their provinces to, to get them back to your vassal. When your new enemy is small enough, vassalize him, get him his other cores back etc. pp. You can also sell provinces your vassals have claims on to them to further "feed" them. It's basically the official way to blob in EU4 because it's nearly impossible if you try to core everything yourself.

Well, vassal feeding was nerfed, in 1.04 I think...prior to that you could just slap any ol' province on a vassal and let them worry about coring it, but now, unless they have a core/claim, or have owned the province in the past (expired core, I suppose?), they're getting a -1000 modifier.

I must say, however, at least in my case, "blob boredom" kicks in rather quick, or rather, soon after I complete my objectives...like, getting to Renovatio, or trying to pull an early reunification of the Balkans, or showing them Frenchies who's boss as England...then again, I should try to play something more obscure, such as a steppe horde and just see how long I can keep up, or something. In the end, if you're only going for the top of the score list, EU4 is going to start boring you. Much more fun to pick something like Bosnia and try to pull off a dismantling of the HRE. Or getting yourself elected emperor, or something...

 

[Guy from the 80's]

War I like how this game models war, but I hate how it models peace. The whole notion of there being 'War Leaders' is good but it's far too rigid and can result in some problems.

Thats how it is and its not really a problem, just dont join wars that doesnt benefit you.

Moreover, the number of times I've faced an island nation like England and taken all their territories on the mainland, only to be forced to cede them back in a peace deal because I don't have enough 'war score' is just ridiculous. I can't muster up a navy to cross the seas and wipe them out, but by the same token they don't have the troops to beat back my army. Stalemate, but I'm still holding their territories, they shouldn't just arbitrarily go back to them because I didn't faceroll their entire kingdom to accrue the necessary warscore!

And thats how an island nation like England survived the likes of France and Prussia (etc) because they had the sea to protect them. Why should they want to grant you peace if their capacity for war is still high?

 

[Saxnot]

And thats how an island nation like England survived the likes of France and Prussia (etc) because they had the sea to protect them. Why should they want to grant you peace if their capacity for war is still high?

because when you've occupied a province for 5 years and England has done fuck all to fight you in that time, it stops being a question of winning or losing, and starts being about recognising reality. even if your capacity for war is still high, if you're not willing or able to use it, you're not actually fighting a war.

also, historically speaking, the wars england lost did not end with their enemy invading the island. it ended with them coming to the conclusion that they were not willing or able to continue the war.

There's definitely some good theories (Jared Diamond's being the one I personally find most plausible), but it's true that there's plenty of debate on the subject. Personally I think if they did away with the tech groups and made neighbour, trading and leader bonuses more important you would still get a fairly realistic outcome where Western Europe tends to dominate for a while, but if at the very least they've made Westernisation more palatable I should look into it.

Jared Diamond exactly illustrates the problem here: his theory is very complex, and hinges mostly on geological, biological and other nonhuman factors. not only would it be very hard to simulate so many factors impacting technological development, it would also make the game not very fun for certain nations, because they would be unable to catch up with european nations simply by the fact that they're in the wrong climate zone.

all this is besides the fact than if EU actually simulated this sort of thing fully, playing any native american nation would end with losing 90% of your population and getting steamrolled as soon as the europeans show up and start spreasing diseases. it wouldn't matter if you had guns or not, because all your armies would be dead of smallpox within a decade.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

because when you've occupied a province for 5 years and England has done fuck all to fight you in that time, it stops being a question of winning or losing, and starts being about recognising reality. even if your capacity for war is still high, if you're not willing or able to use it, you're not actually fighting a war.

You say England hasn't done anything to fight you, but you have failed in taking the fight to them. The English are drinking tea because of your inability to threaten their well being. You cant win against anyone unless you reduce their ability to wage war. The EU games are not Total war games, the AI wont give you anything for free.

So until you can fight their navy, dont fight them. Thinking you can fight england without a navy is the same as fighting Prussia without an army.

also, historically speaking, the wars england lost did not end with their enemy invading the island. it ended with them coming to the conclusion that they were not willing or able to continue the war.

Thats war exhaustion.

 

[DEAD34345]

Trade is completely remodelled in EU4, and it's pretty good. It certainly fixes the problems you have with EU3 I think, but it comes with a few of its own. The trade network is basically rigid, and all trade flows towards Europe, so basically the further you are from there the less you can benefit from it. It leads to weird situations like the one mentioned with Japan: The "Nippon" trade node only has one other node feeding into it, which is the "Mexico" trade node, and "Mexico" is only fed by the "California" node, which is fed by nothing. This basically means Japan can only earn trade income (without horrible penalties) from Mexico and California, which is more than a little awkward.

War is mostly the same, but the ticking war score should solve one of the problems you have with EU3. In the war against England, assuming the goal was to take one of those territories on the mainland which you had already taken, your warscore would gradually increase for as long as you held it. If they didn't take it back, England would be forced into a peace deal, and they'd be smart to do so as early as possible if they didn't even intend to try and take it back, as the war score would be lower and they might get a better deal. The war leader system is still a bit dodgy, if you're not the leader you can peace out early if you're winning and steal whatever you can get away with (at the cost of pissing off the other nations you're fighting with), or you can stick it out and just hope the leader will be generous to you. They usually aren't.

Technology and Westernisation is still pretty much just bad. It irritates me too, especially since I like to go for small starts far away from Europe. My only option to stay relevant in the game is to try to get a territory next to a western nation as quickly as possible, and rush westernisation, which is just dumb.

 

[Shpongled]

because when you've occupied a province for 5 years and England has done fuck all to fight you in that time, it stops being a question of winning or losing, and starts being about recognising reality. even if your capacity for war is still high, if you're not willing or able to use it, you're not actually fighting a war.

You say England hasn't done anything to fight you, but you have failed in taking the fight to them. The English are drinking tea because of your inability to threaten their well being. You cant win against anyone unless you reduce their ability to wage war. The EU games are not Total war games, the AI wont give you anything for free.

So until you can fight their navy, dont fight them. Thinking you can fight england without a navy is the same as fighting Prussia without an army.

also, historically speaking, the wars england lost did not end with their enemy invading the island. it ended with them coming to the conclusion that they were not willing or able to continue the war.

Thats war exhaustion.

If he's occupying their territory then he's done all the taking to fight to them he intends. It's like if you stole someones lunch money, they tried to defend themselves but you beat them down and take their wallet. Then they stand up again going "lol it's not over, come at me bro lol" without actually approaching you. You can say what you want, unless you actually come and fight me then the reality is i have your lunch money and can spend it on what i want. In all EU games you usually have to beat someone down, take their lunch money, take their wallet, impersonate them and ruin all their credit, take their wife and probably children hostage, and maybe then you might be able to make a peace treaty offer and get their lunch money.

I see what you're saying, but i still feel there should be some form of mechanism in place to force players (ai or human) to either come and defend their territory that's occupied or lose it completely, even without ending the war. It's silly that occupied territory can remain merely occupied when the occupiers have occupied the place for nearly 50 years and the original owners haven't been so much as seen in the same hemisphere since. Just because some King refuses to sign a peace treaty wouldn't change the bare facts that land is occupied by enemies and has been for a long time, and therefore they shouldn't still control it. The rebellion system helps somewhat with this, but it's very unwiedly.

This goes for players too, it's silly that i can have a war in europe with a big european power and completely ignore my colonies to be completely occupied by the enemy knowing full-well that as soon as the treaty is signed i'll get them all back.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

If he's occupying their territory then he's done all the taking to fight to them he intends. It's like if you stole someones lunch money, they tried to defend themselves but you beat them down and take their wallet. Then they stand up again going "lol it's not over, come at me bro lol" without actually approaching you.

Not really. Its like if you stole ten bucks from someone, but they still have their wallet in their pocket and laugh because they still got the funds required to be at war with you.

You can say what you want, unless you actually come and fight me then the reality is i have your lunch money and can spend it on what i want. In all EU games you usually have to beat someone down, take their lunch money, take their wallet, impersonate them and ruin all their credit, take their wife and probably children hostage, and maybe then you might be able to make a peace treaty offer and get their lunch money.

Not really. He was complaining about not being able to get the peace HE wanted from England when they obviously had little to no war exhaustion. Also....what ever happened to diplomacy? Its EU logic 101 to get an ally with a strong navy if you cant field one yourself.

I see what you're saying, but i still feel there should be some form of mechanism in place to force players (ai or human) to either come and defend their territory that's occupied or lose it completely, even without ending the war. It's silly that occupied territory can remain merely occupied when the occupiers have occupied the place for nearly 50 years and the original owners haven't been so much as seen in the same hemisphere since. Just because some King refuses to sign a peace treaty wouldn't change the bare facts that land is occupied by enemies and has been for a long time, and therefore they shouldn't still control it. The rebellion system helps somewhat with this, but it's very unwiedly.

This goes for players too, it's silly that i can have a war in europe with a big european power and completely ignore my colonies to be completely occupied by the enemy knowing full-well that as soon as the treaty is signed i'll get them all back.

Colonies have no real impact on your nations well being. Losing mainland cores however will. In the case of England, the solution is to mint gold like crazy, build a navy and blockade them. Then their war exhaustion will go up and then they will be interested in a peace deal. The OP has a problem with the game because hes unaware of how war exhaustion works and its intended purpose.

 

[Saxnot]

You say England hasn't done anything to fight you, but you have failed in taking the fight to them. The English are drinking tea because of your inability to threaten their well being. You cant win against anyone unless you reduce their ability to wage war. The EU games are not Total war games, the AI wont give you anything for free.

So until you can fight their navy, dont fight them. Thinking you can fight england without a navy is the same as fighting Prussia without an army.

Their ability to wage war doesn't matter, if they're not actually waging a war. say you're france and you occupy normandy during the 100 years war, and england stops sending troops over, then sooner or later the war is practically done. it doesn't matter how big your forces are if the thing you're fighting for has already been lost, and you're not working to get it back. likewise colonies that you occupy. if england doesn't take the colony back back from you, and your economy can function despite their inevitable naval blockade, they're not actually winning. they're just keeping you from trading. that's annoying, but not something in the way of integrating and using your new territory.

If he's occupying their territory then he's done all the taking to fight to them he intends. It's like if you stole someones lunch money, they tried to defend themselves but you beat them down and take their wallet. Then they stand up again going "lol it's not over, come at me bro lol" without actually approaching you.

Not really. Its like if you stole ten bucks from someone, but they still have their wallet in their pocket and laugh because they still got the funds required to be at war with you.

Right. but you're not at war with them for the sake of being at war with them. you have what you want. and unless your enemy does something to take it from you, there's not actually an active conflict

Regarding war exhaustion: if you take it to reflect the increasing unwillingness of your population to carry on a war, it doesn't make snense in this context. a situation like this doesn't have any meangful cost for the english. for them, all it involves is a blockade. that doesnt impact the home front, because it's just a few ships stationed somehwere else. did it cause unrest and reluctance to get involved in international conflict when they sent navy ships to protect shipping around somalia? did you even remember that happened? all it involved was sending some ships off somewhere, but nobody actually noticed

 

[Guy from the 80's]

Their ability to wage war doesn't matter

Yes it does. Each province has manpower and income, and until you occupy enough provinces the AI wont care.

Right. but you're not at war with them for the sake of being at war with them. you have what you want. and unless your enemy does something to take it from you, there's not actually an active conflict

Right, you are not at war with them for the sake of being at war with them but in order for you to get the peace you want you have to force your enemy to accept.

Regarding war exhaustion: if you take it to reflect the increasing unwillingness of your population to carry on a war, it doesn't make snense in this context. a situation like this doesn't have any meangful cost for the english. for them, all it involves is a blockade. that doesnt impact the home front, because it's just a few ships stationed somehwere else. did it cause unrest and reluctance to get involved in international conflict when they sent navy ships to protect shipping around somalia? did you even remember that happened? all it involved was sending some ships off somewhere, but nobody actually noticed

I dont know what you mean when you mention Somalia, but during WW2 the convoys from America was vital to Britian. Without it Britian would have lost. The same goes with the Soviet union, Germany took large areas but soviet got supplies from the allies and thus managed to survive.

 

[Ryotknife]

Trading is...better, albeit a lot more complicated. Used to be in EU3 you just tried to physically control as many trade nodes as possible and dump all of your merchants there. In EU4 you have to worry about trade steering, trade ships, trade power/value, overextensions, embargoes, etc. The strategic goods angle is pretty nice though (if you control 20% of that resource in the world you get a bonus)

War is a bit easier against big powers now. You can get a warscore of 65% just through battles and holding an objective. Also length of war, war exhaustion, and how low their manpower reserves are also affect their willingness to surrender. The warleader thing is still a problem. If you get called into your allies war, do the bare minimum.

Westernization is a lot more fair now. westernizing in EU3 was one big ole roulette that basically required you to save scum so your country doesn't fall apart. Technology is also more fair. IN EU3 the more powerful you were, the faster you get technology because the more money you have. Now money doesn't influence technology a whole lot.

some changes though to EU4:

-diplomacy is kinda wacky, your allies betray you under the weirdest circumstances. I would understand if I was allied with burgundy and we beat up france to the point where they were no longer a threat and now my country is the biggest threat to burgundy. For example, I was playing as Byzantium (which is nearly impossible to play as now) and I was allied with Moscowvy (Russia). He broke my alliance and declared me an enemy even though I wasn't anywhere near him (I was focusing on Italy and the Middle East), and he was surrounded by big powerful countries that hated him. So unless he wanted to be the only Orthodox country in the world, his actions makes no sense.

-There are a LOT more factors which influences battles now. You have been warned. Just be glad they nerfed mountains. Used to be if you controlled a single mountain province then you automatically won the war.

-coring takes longer the more provinces you have, and the more uncored provinces the higher your revolt risk and the less trade you get. Not to mention if you get overextension (non cored provinces) over 100% (which is like 3 decent territories) your country could very well fall apart.