Europa Universalis IV - 1.36 & 2023 In Review

[Trunting]

EU gimme 5

 

[Parmelion]

Can't wait to see what you have in store for us in 2024.

 

[honkajoki]

Any chance for the next update, or any update, to include a proper pause key?

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Any chance for the next update, or any update, to include a proper pause key?

space bar?

 

[grotaclas]

space bar?

space bar also unpauses which is a problem if something else is pausing the game(e.g. an event) just before you press it

 

[Rule Britannia]

EU gimme 5

I suspect we will get EUV in 2025

 

[Runite Drill]

Here's to an excellent 2023 and an even more stupendous 2024!

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

I suspect we will get EUV in 2025

At best it will be announced in 2025.

 

[Metz]

I think moving forward, a fundamental part of the game that needs a rework or at least QoL features at the minimum is colonization and the balance it entails. It happens too fast and it avalanches for the Western Europeans and it ends up giving them much more leverage over the rest of the world at least a century ahead of time. I think once colonization is reworked, more people could play more into the late 1600s and even up to the mid 1700s.

I would also be curious about examining the adding new provinces embargo. If the embargo is to stay for the rest of the EU4 lifetime, I would recommend for a redistribution of provinces. In particular giving some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s provinces to South Africa, West Africa, and the Southern Cone region (SA). If necessary, parts of Cascadia and southwestern US can be axed to make those provinces available for other more colonized regions.

 

[Atacama]

I think it was a decent year though I still prefer mechanical content and flavor over mission trees. Domination is what I was most excited to try, and the music has been great as always in this series.

Still waiting for a big, meaty South America X Colonial Nations rework with content for that area.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

space bar also unpauses which is a problem if something else is pausing the game(e.g. an event) just before you press it

That is annoying. Could they make it when the events don't pause/unpause.

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

I think moving forward, a fundamental part of the game that needs a rework or at least QoL features at the minimum is colonization and the balance it entails. It happens too fast and it avalanches for the Western Europeans and it ends up giving them much more leverage over the rest of the world at least a century ahead of time. I think once colonization is reworked, more people could play more into the late 1600s and even up to the mid 1700s.

I would also be curious about examining the adding new provinces embargo. If the embargo is to stay for the rest of the EU4 lifetime, I would recommend for a redistribution of provinces. In particular giving some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s provinces to South Africa, West Africa, and the Southern Cone region (SA). If necessary, parts of Cascadia and southwestern US can be axed to make those provinces available for other more colonized regions.

Just merge that Borneo wasteland into one and add wasteland to Andes.

 

[Xxccxxccxx]

I think moving forward, a fundamental part of the game that needs a rework or at least QoL features at the minimum is colonization and the balance it entails. It happens too fast and it avalanches for the Western Europeans and it ends up giving them much more leverage over the rest of the world at least a century ahead of time. I think once colonization is reworked, more people could play more into the late 1600s and even up to the mid 1700s.

I would also be curious about examining the adding new provinces embargo. If the embargo is to stay for the rest of the EU4 lifetime, I would recommend for a redistribution of provinces. In particular giving some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s provinces to South Africa, West Africa, and the Southern Cone region (SA). If necessary, parts of Cascadia and southwestern US can be axed to make those provinces available for other more colonized regions.

Maybe adding a new stage to Colonisation would be the solution.

STAGE ONE:
Setteling a Province.
This stage is basicly the og Colonisation of a Province with a Colonist.
But the provinces can be Attackted and destroid by anybody without declaring war.

STAGE TWO:
Claiming an Area/state.
In this stage Natives can not Attack or destroy Settlements anymore. Other Nations can. If an other Nation can conquer and hold the Area/state for 5 years. They can either destroy or annex the settlements.
If a Nation Manages to hold an settlet Area for 20 maybe 30 years without interoption.

STAGE THREE:
If that is the case, the Provinces will turn into Colonial Provinces and become a CN or become part a existing CN.

Treaty of Tordesilas would not be given Automatically, but would have to be bought from The Pope for a lot of Ducats. Each Nation can buy it 2 Times max.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

I think moving forward, a fundamental part of the game that needs a rework or at least QoL features at the minimum is colonization and the balance it entails. It happens too fast and it avalanches for the Western Europeans and it ends up giving them much more leverage over the rest of the world at least a century ahead of time. I think once colonization is reworked, more people could play more into the late 1600s and even up to the mid 1700s.

I would also be curious about examining the adding new provinces embargo. If the embargo is to stay for the rest of the EU4 lifetime, I would recommend for a redistribution of provinces. In particular giving some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s provinces to South Africa, West Africa, and the Southern Cone region (SA). If necessary, parts of Cascadia and southwestern US can be axed to make those provinces available for other more colonized regions.

Why the hell should New Zealand lose provinces!?

 

[grotaclas]

That is annoying. Could they make it when the events don't pause/unpause.

You can deactivate pause on events in the game settings. And you can disable pausing for other popups in the message settings(or by using the button at the bottom right of the popup itself)

 

[Brynjar]

When I saw the title of this thread I thought we were finally getting some updated statistics on most played countries etc. Instead it was yet another advertisement for DLCs

Any chance for the next update, or any update, to include a proper pause key?

You could disable the auto pause on events if you find it to be a problem. I can't remember ever playing a game where the pause key doesn't also unpause the game. That is in fact a feature I would expect from a proper pause key.

 

[Metz]

Why the hell should New Zealand lose provinces!?

New Zealand wasn't formally colonized until after the game's time frame (1840) and the Maori population was less than 100,000 during the 1800s. Whereas South Africa was settled in 1652 and West Africa was home to several European outposts. In overall it does not add any value to the game's focus and it does not give a comparative advantage to its owners to make it worth fighting over.

Australia is also unnecessarily big. It's multiple provinces have no affect on the games outcome as Australia always tends to end up under one country's control anyways (most of the time Spain or Portugal). By giving more provinces to West Africa and South Africa, you increase competition for trade and naval supremacy in the Atlantic. The Andes mountain range is also missing which would help shape colonizing routes and army movements in South America.

Most likely the developers took liberties with Australia and other places in the region not knowing that they'd be barred from adding more provinces to other regions in the future. In hindsight, they most likely might have not added as much as they did and left some free provinces for other regions to use for map makeovers. There was an excellent mock-dev diary regarding West Africa posted years ago in the suggestions section, that had a very good facelift of the region in terms of provinces and resources. Link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/west-africa-update-a-compilation.1490038/

 

[honkajoki]

You could disable the auto pause on events if you find it to be a problem. I can't remember ever playing a game where the pause key doesn't also unpause the game. That is in fact a feature I would expect from a proper pause key.

I pretty much play the game "turn based", speed 5 and pause. I like the events to have autopause, in fact every message that is set to popup is also set to autopause. Problem is I often like to pause even when there's no event happening ... until the millisecond before I press pause. Sure, it may be argued that the game is supposed to be played in "real time" without pauses, but that would be only one opinion. It's not a real time simulation anyway, real life kings took days or years to ponder on many of the things players click thru in seconds.

Also, I've never argued that the pause only key, what I've called proper pause, should be the only option. Of course the current pause/unpause key should remain for those who prefer it.

I won't try to pretend that I won't buy anything from Paradox unless they implement the proper pause key. I'm too much of an addict to believe that. I'll continue buying DLC for my existing games. But unless a pause key is implemented I'll do my best to resist the temptation of buying any new games, thus avoiding further raging when the game won't pause, and further DLC moneypits. Once I lose interest in my current games but yet want to do something related, I have a solid plan:
1. Buy EU1 (this will be an exception to the don't buy rule) and get familiar with it.
2. Learn to code.
3. Create a copy of EU1, otherwise identical but with a proper pause key. Can't be too illegal, given for example FreeCol vs Colonization. The FreeEU or whatever it will be called shall be ready around the same time that PDX releases EU9.
4. Abort the above plans once realising that I can just ask my domestic AI to reverse engineer EU<anynumber> and create a copy with proper pause key.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

I highly apreciate the very good work on the game recently

What I do not understand is why is there going to be a 4 month total break in Dev Diaries without any reason stated and without this being properly announced (The last sentence of a post that is merely a copy & paste of existing content that is not particular interesting does not really count - in particular since the break already lasts longer than usual after a release).

I understand there is not always (interesting) content to present for weekly Dev Diaries, but 4 months of radio silence is quite a lot ... There may be good reasons for that, but it should be communicated, it is quite annoying to look for the regular Dev Diary on Tuesday and again and again not see it there ...