Europa Universalis IV Review - It Ain't Broke

[Korsgaard]

So by and large, what would you folks say the biggest changes from EU III are? I played the hell out of EU III, and am just curious what some of the big changes are before I go buy EU IV

The single largest difference, in my opinion, is the replacement of all the bajillions of sliders in EU III with the points system of EUIV. It makes expansion, tech, and national ideas much more accessible. The old infamy system is dead and gone, folded into the diplomacy system as an "aggressive expansion penalty" - which feels much less arbitrary and strange.

I'm playing as poland right now, as politically as I can. My only war has been an allied war with Austria against Ottomans and Crimea, but I've managed to annex Teutonic Order, Mazovia, Brandenburg, and Pommerania anyways. Hungary is trying to stir up trouble. I'm in personal union with Lithuania, trying to form the Commonwealth, but getting to administrative tech 10 is a huge pain.

Thank you! It sounds like an interesting shift for sure - one thing I noticed is that in your description of your play-through as Poland, you mention that you annexed a number of countries - in EU IV are you able to incorporate counties at once? I hated how in EUIII you were forced to nibble away at other counties, even when you got a 100% victory score over a two or three province nation, ensuring you had to go to war again if you want to absorb the rest. Did that change?

 

[Abomination]

Thank you! It sounds like an interesting shift for sure - one thing I noticed is that in your description of your play-through as Poland, you mention that you annexed a number of countries - in EU IV are you able to incorporate counties at once? I hated how in EUIII you were forced to nibble away at other counties, even when you got a 100% victory score over a two or three province nation, ensuring you had to go to war again if you want to absorb the rest. Did that change?

It hasn't changed, but you will be able to do more than just "nibble away" at them.

The thing is there are 3 things you need to do to a province in order to make sure it's really "yours", you can only do one of these at a time and in some cases can only handle doing it to one province at a time.

If you were to take an entire nation over there would be the serious issue of overextension by lacking "cores" on those provinces, cultural differences and religious differences. Which means increased chances of riots, reduced income and there's a chance the nation you took over can just re-form again.

Wars between empires are long rivalries, the way I have found is best is to just "break" the nation up first. Usually an empire is comprised of many smaller nations and it costs far less war score to break the empire up into little independent nations than try and take a massive bite out of it in the first place. This allows you to declare war against lots of little places and annex them whole rather than waiting for truces to expire before you can take another bite from a big empire.

Divide and conquer.

 

[james.sponge]

So by and large, what would you folks say the biggest changes from EU III are? I played the hell out of EU III, and am just curious what some of the big changes are before I go buy EU IV

The single largest difference, in my opinion, is the replacement of all the bajillions of sliders in EU III with the points system of EUIV. It makes expansion, tech, and national ideas much more accessible. The old infamy system is dead and gone, folded into the diplomacy system as an "aggressive expansion penalty" - which feels much less arbitrary and strange.

I'm playing as poland right now, as politically as I can. My only war has been an allied war with Austria against Ottomans and Crimea, but I've managed to annex Teutonic Order, Mazovia, Brandenburg, and Pommerania anyways. Hungary is trying to stir up trouble. I'm in personal union with Lithuania, trying to form the Commonwealth, but getting to administrative tech 10 is a huge pain.

Thank you! It sounds like an interesting shift for sure - one thing I noticed is that in your description of your play-through as Poland, you mention that you annexed a number of countries - in EU IV are you able to incorporate counties at once? I hated how in EUIII you were forced to nibble away at other counties, even when you got a 100% victory score over a two or three province nation, ensuring you had to go to war again if you want to absorb the rest. Did that change?

It's easier to peacefully annex somebody now. During my first playthrough I managed to greatly expand my territory without declaring war on anybody but you can still piss people off with it. Particularly if you annex HRE members