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Why not? How is it prevented?
Putting an arbitrary "nope, u are not allowed to get more provinces" or any other boundary would be very anticlimactic, would it not?
An arbitrary limit to expansion would be pretty silly. But EUV has systems that could, and I believe should, make it prohibitively difficult to conquer the entire world. Control should result in massive empires gaining no benefit from much of their territory while needing to invest resources in conquering it and suppressing rebellions. Army casualties killing pops should result in nations that engage in too much warfare running out of people to put in the military. Nationalist rebels should result in nations that have conquered huge amounts of land seeing much of their empire attempt to secede regularly. All of these put together should result in it being a serious challenge to build and (perhaps more importantly) maintain a large empire, and a literal world-spanning empire would be so difficult as to be impossible.
 
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Go play Risk if you want a world conquest game.

I play Europa Universalis because I want to play a strategy game which tries to simulate the dynamics and politics of the Early Modern era, and that includes my own Empire suffering through decline and even possible crashdowns. Right now, EU5 is the closest to implementing that.
 
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If a world conquest is possible then the implications are that the game mechanics will be too easy and actions will be too overpowered in a normal campaign even if your goal isn’t a world conquest.
 
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Why not? How is it prevented?
Putting an arbitrary "nope, u are not allowed to get more provinces" or any other boundary would be very anticlimactic, would it not?
It should be too expensive, like in real life. The British Empire for example was generally seen as a net negative for the general economy, it was all held afloat by profitable industry in the UK (until it wasn't, and then it fell apart).
 
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An arbitrary limit to expansion would be pretty silly. But EUV has systems that could, and I believe should, make it prohibitively difficult to conquer the entire world. Control should result in massive empires gaining no benefit from much of their territory while needing to invest resources in conquering it and suppressing rebellions. Army casualties killing pops should result in nations that engage in too much warfare running out of people to put in the military. Nationalist rebels should result in nations that have conquered huge amounts of land seeing much of their empire attempt to secede regularly. All of these put together should result in it being a serious challenge to build and (perhaps more importantly) maintain a large empire, and a literal world-spanning empire would be so difficult as to be impossible.
Thats how it should be.
But even with 0 control, u still could wage war and keep painting the map. I bet alexander did not care all that much about control of the most fringe regions of his realm when he kept conquering.
I like playing tall, but i think painting the map in your color is a goal worth having and knowing there is 0% possibility of doing so, would be a shame (but i believe this is not the case, right?).
 
No thank you.

World Conquest has no place in EU, the fact it became such a meme in EU4 was due to its arcade playstyle, not really with developpers "allowing" or "preventing" it.
 
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let alone a "world conquest"; while watching florryworry or lambert's italian game, i was disappointed that an italian polity can just waltz into their neighbours saying might makes right without any repercussions
 
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I don't think preventing a world conquest is an admirable goal, or making one possible for that matter. It's just an arbitrary line in the sand, and one I'd argue is significantly easier than conquering the first 50% of the world if you've already destroyed all your European rivals.
I think it's important to have systems in place that make empires realistic, and I think the control system does that admirably, it makes sense that a lot of land an empire has is basically worthless to them, there are countless examples of that. If you were playing normally, if a world conquest were possible, you'd be playing the game worse trying to go for it, investing a lot of resources into fighting for lines on a map that could be spent improving your nation.
I believe the driving force for empires falling is external conflict so it seems the main obstacle for realistic player expansion is the ai. As you increase in power more and more nations should be willing to band together to cut you down, as well as to aid rebellions so they're actually threatening. As far as I'm aware world conquests aren't an issue in eu4 multiplayer and I'd be willing to bet it's because players are able to accurately access threats and maintain parity.
The other thing that could help is increasing the cost of war. It seems like currently war sucks early game, but than professional armies makes it so it doesn't impact your economy as much, but keeping a modern army up to date is much more expensive then just using whatever troops your nobles happen to have lying around, especially once you need to update to more expensive guns and artillery.
 
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This perfectly summurizes the opinion of EU5 fans imo.

Jokes aside, I think WC should be basically impossible in EU5, not because of arbitrary limitations but because of mechanics and simulation. Of course, if you manage to complete one, congratulations, but it should be so darn difficult that no sane person should ever think it's possible, at least within reason. And if you manage to do a WC (or conquer like 50% of the world), then it should be almost impossible to keep that land.
Right now WC isn't completely impossible: if you build thousands of bailiffs and wait a shit ton of years for cultures and religions to assimilate and convert you can pull one off, though that would require at the very least triplicating the game's timeframe. Without this, you'll collapse well before you even get remotely close. Take Delhi as an example: Ludi said that at the start of the game they can only survive if they give up territory, otherwise they would collapse into almost nothing, and not just because of flavor, but because of mechanics. This is what the game should be, and this is what they have made. I'm very happy with this.

Again the game you are looking for is not in EU. If one wants to play a native Indian tribe that can advance and become a global power that is very much possible in EU5 which was less likely to happen than the UK or France taking 50% of the entire world. This isn't the rigid historical game you hope for.
Maybe a Native American tribe (assuming by tribe you mean those like the North American ones) becoming a global power would have been unlikely, but still way more plausible than the UK or France conquering 50% of the entire world. You don't need to be a big blob to be a global power, if you have a decent amount of population, a good economy and good relations with at least a few other powers, maybe some vassals as well. Conquering half of the world, however, is a whole other story, because you'd need to have a huge advantage over everyone else, so much that even if a global coalition forms you can beat it, or at least defend yourself without having problems after that. And before you say that the British did that, the coalition they defeated wasn't global if we exclude the colonies, they had an ally (Prussia) and it still gave them issues (the American War of Independence was one of the consequences of the Seven Years War). Additionally, remember that you have to actually control those places, otherwise you just get rebellions all over the place (part of the untaxed money got to the rebels). Of course you can avoid most of these issues by conquering only places like Siberia, Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska (and, if it were in the game, Antarctica), but what's the point of it?
 
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It sounds like you might actually agree with everyone. There is no feature in the game by which they will prevent you from taking the last bit of territory, making a world conquest literally impossible. Instead, they are creating realistic issues that make it extremely difficult to hold large amounts of distant and diverse territory, unless you take centuries to solidify your rule.

If you’re willing to play centuries past the end date, world conquest will surely be possible - it just won’t be something that any human player will manage. It’ll be like running a 3 minute mile - there is no law of physics or biology making that specific feat actually impossible (the way there is a law of physics making it impossible to get to Alpha Centauri in a month) but it’ll just require doing things beyond any realistic capacity.

I don’t think this will cripple the AI.
This. And there are two aspects here:

First is making something extraordinary irl (like the restoration of the Roman or Mongol Empires, or reaching the extent of the British Empire), about as hard as a WC in EU4.

Second is making the usefulness of these territories dubious, mainly with control. Using colonies and company charters, I imagine large overseas provinces can become quite profitable (as those are essentially vassals), but lands closer to your home, with unaccepted cultures and such, are much harder to core and get control up to par, much less in large areas.
This was somewhat shown in the streams, though I imagine as the game progresses and you get advances improving your roads and control propagation, it should also become mor eworth it to expand. To what degree, we'll have to wait and see.
But this approach is an interesting one, if you want to blob, that's fine, it's a valid playstyle, but you really have to spec your nation for it.
Go for key advances, Decentralization SV to keep rebelions down, improve your diplo cap to get more vassals, improve your culture cap to get more accepted ones (and thus faster coring, more control and less rebels), invest heavily in roads and buildings boosting proximity, etc etc.
That's a lot of stuff, which creates opportunity costs where focusing solely on blobbing might leave you short in other areas, like military or production advances, other useful SVs, investing in buildings boosting your production and trade, etc etc.
So in the end, just blobbing might not even be the most optimal way to play in many cases (like it was in EU4), we might be able to actually extract more from a decently sized kingdom with a somewhat homogenous culture than from a sprawling continent-sized empire.
And with the "tall" playstyle now actually being fun (instead of just stacking dev cost modifiers and spending mana), the game seems more geared than ever to get away from the blobbing style of gameplay.
 
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View attachment 1296285
This perfectly summurizes the opinion of EU5 fans imo.
I would argue that the type of player that is on an official game forum is not really the typical/average player (even if more common for a paradox game). However, I do think that EU5 is made more for us than for the average gamer based on design choices.

IMO, world conquest will likely be possible but involve extreme exploiting and abusing unintended mechanics, similar to how it is sometimes possible to WC as ryuku in EU4. Hopefully the systems make large-scale empires very difficult to build or hold for extended periods of time.

That said, playing past the end-date, it may be possible as I expect it to become at least somewhat easier to conquer stuff towards the end of the timeline (but then you are going into unintended mechanics/mods)
 
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View attachment 1296285
This perfectly summurizes the opinion of EU5 fans imo.

Jokes aside, I think WC should be basically impossible in EU5, not because of arbitrary limitations but because of mechanics and simulation. Of course, if you manage to complete one, congratulations, but it should be so darn difficult that no sane person should ever think it's possible, at least within reason. And if you manage to do a WC (or conquer like 50% of the world), then it should be almost impossible to keep that land.
Right now WC isn't completely impossible: if you build thousands of bailiffs and wait a shit ton of years for cultures and religions to assimilate and convert you can pull one off, though that would require at the very least triplicating the game's timeframe. Without this, you'll collapse well before you even get remotely close. Take Delhi as an example: Ludi said that at the start of the game they can only survive if they give up territory, otherwise they would collapse into almost nothing, and not just because of flavor, but because of mechanics. This is what the game should be, and this is what they have made. I'm very happy with this.


Maybe a Native American tribe (assuming by tribe you mean those like the North American ones) becoming a global power would have been unlikely, but still way more plausible than the UK or France conquering 50% of the entire world. You don't need to be a big blob to be a global power, if you have a decent amount of population, a good economy and good relations with at least a few other powers, maybe some vassals as well. Conquering half of the world, however, is a whole other story, because you'd need to have a huge advantage over everyone else, so much that even if a global coalition forms you can beat it, or at least defend yourself without having problems after that. And before you say that the British did that, the coalition they defeated wasn't global if we exclude the colonies, they had an ally (Prussia) and it still gave them issues (the American War of Independence was one of the consequences of the Seven Years War). Additionally, remember that you have to actually control those places, otherwise you just get rebellions all over the place (part of the untaxed money got to the rebels). Of course you can avoid most of these issues by conquering only places like Siberia, Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska (and, if it were in the game, Antarctica), but what's the point of it?
To be fair I did expect such a reaction from the forum but im glad Paradox don't consider every point we have on here because again I feel some people just want their playstyle encouraged through the mechanics and will push for this.

I don't think you and a few others who want to make WC impossible will ever get that to be honest because if they make it impossible to attain in the current game timeline then isn't that good enough? WC is only possible IF you play past the end date which i do and then it shouldn't really affect you or others. The irony is we end up both getting the game we want.

I also don't agree with you that it's more plausible that a native American Indian tribe could become a global power than France or the UK taking another larger portion of the world than they already controlled. It's a bigger fantasy but still plausible within EU because it's an alternate historical game.
 
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I would argue that the type of player that is on an official game forum is not really the typical/average player (even if more common for a paradox game). However, I do think that EU5 is made more for us than for the average gamer based on design choices.

IMO, world conquest will likely be possible but involve extreme exploiting and abusing unintended mechanics, similar to how it is sometimes possible to WC as ryuku in EU4. Hopefully the systems make large-scale empires very difficult to build or hold for extended periods of time.

That said, playing past the end-date, it may be possible as I expect it to become at least somewhat easier to conquer stuff towards the end of the timeline (but then you are going into unintended mechanics/mods)
Very true. If you look at EU content creators, their efforts to create large Empires are some of the most popular streams and Paradox knows this. They are never going to remove this option because a few of the more hardcore fanbase on this forum who want a more realistic experience.

By the way it's kind of similar with Total War games. As a hardcore fan for many years i felt the views of us on the forum was becoming quite different to the average Total War player who was starting to soak up the fantasy elements.

Most EU fans love conquest and looking at EU5 it will be largely the same. For WC however I'll just play into the modern era to achieve this lol
 
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