Difficulty Curve

[Descri]

As someone who played many hours of EU3, It occurred to me that one of the base problems with the game was its ridiculous difficulty curve. Ask anyone to day what is the classic difficulty curve for a videogame, and he will answer that it should rise like a parabola: A slow rise at first, and quickly increasing towards the end. This gives you the most satisfying feeling, because the better you get at the game and the more comfortable you are at your position, the greater the challenges the game throws at you are.
In EU3, however, your difficulty curve is like a rectangular hyperbola: It has a massive drop in difficulty right after the beginning. As a game, this makes EU3 flawed at its base, because the longer you play, the more bored you are with the game, since it gets easier and easier. This IMO is the main reason that most games ended pre-1821, because there was no reason to continue, to due the lack of challenge.

Recently however, this short article (more like newsflash) came out, where it was written:

Thomas was keen to emphasise the game's focus on true history, so as you play the game, if what you happen to be doing at the time relates to a real world event, a popup will provide more information about the historical context beyond your decisions. It's a nice touch and really helps you develop an appreciation of how they're trying to get you to consider these real world issues. Next, he demonstrated Monarch Power. He wanted to avoid situations where you get into a winning streak, he thinks players would find that boring as there's no real challenge. He wanted to prevent a country being so strong that no-one could beat it.

This is an incredible change, because its exactly the change EU4 needs to become ideal from a game design point of view: Complex and consistently challenging. However, it might be that Paradox might consider nerfing this system (whatever they had in mind) to make its impact less significant:

It's easy to solve, just not in a way that most players will agree to. Because most players want to see this happening to others - not to themselves. Then the game/devs are just punishing them.

I think that to truly make EU4 Paradox need to implement this system fully. This new difficulty curve will probably fix every single problem that is caused by it as well, such as the dysfunction of certain game systems, and Paradox's decision is what separates EU4 from good to amazing.

 

[Descri]

?

 

[svenk91]

But what if you start with bad leader streak and only get good ones near the end?

 

[Eh up me duck]

EU is no different to any other strategy games in that respect. Do you think Rome Total War was MORE difficult after you'd conquered most of the known world?

 

[Descri]

Do you really want to compare EU with total war?

 

[MrQwerty]

In EU3, however, your difficulty curve is like a rectangular hyperbola: It has a massive drop in difficulty right after the beginning.

I don't know what you mean by this, especially when playing as a minor. I do agree, though, that checks and balances do make for a consistently challenging game. I for one am looking forward to the coalition mechanic, which should pit great powers against each other more often.

 

[unmerged(353072)]

The coalition mechanic might fix the problem of becoming a super power in a region, but I think a problem that it might face will be either the AI not recognizing who is the biggest threat or them not properly doing anything about them. Like when I play and am fighting a big nation I try and divide them or take land that might weaken them. I feel the AI might not do this properly as in choose the ask for the liberation of the weakest nation. Another problem is the AI might not recognize who it the biggest threat to them or who to make a coalition with.

Don't get me wrong though the coalition system might be the flare to make continuing till end game worth it.

 

[Fawr]

In my first EU1 game I though the game had this (every time I declared war the whole world declared war on me back). However that was just a poor understanding of how the badboy mechanics worked on easy.

I'm hoping the new alliance system works in a way which is more fun that badboy and more fun that rebel crushing.