Personally, I prefer the broader mechanics of EU IV but objectively it's like comparing apples and oranges. They both aim for different things and succeed in different areas
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I like EUIV more. CK2 was really fun at first but it lacks depth to make it challenging on the long run. AI just roleplays too much and does not play optimally enough (patricians not investing in campaign funds, non germanic pagans not raiding,...). New versions added nice features but toned down too much intrigue, which used to be the very unique part of CK2. In the other hand, EUIV gets more depth with each new DLC.
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I'm finding I'm more interested in EUIV's expansions these days than CK2. CK2s seem to more about adding even more new mechanics instead of refining, overhauling or improving the ones they currently have
To be honest, they are two different games with completely different mechanics, way of playing, goals, map, and immersive objects. They cannot be compared.
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CK2 is by far the better game.
More depth, no dependence on mana, no artifical limits on player expansion...
and more to lose if your character dies without an heir, etc., you could lose the game or half your empire, not possible in EU IV.
More depth, no dependence on mana, no artifical limits on player expansion...
and more to lose if your character dies without an heir, etc., you could lose the game or half your empire, not possible in EU IV.
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But what about crown mana and cross/crescent/bird/hand/wheel/Om mana?
You can expand in CK2 without that. Opinion from prestige caps at 2500? or was it 2,000?
As for piety, I never pay attention.
in EU IV you cannot expand, either wide or tall, without bird/paper/sword mana.
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My personal favorite is Vicky 2, but I love CK2, EU4, and HoI3. Hard to pick. Between the two games in question, I have to give a slight edge to CK2. I suppose I fancy myself a people person.
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I enjoy EU4's expansions more and the quality is often higher but CK2 provides more variety and entertainment in the long run.
CKII. I pre ordered EUIV and got Crisader Kings with it. I have been playing it ever since, and I have yet to play EUIV.
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This is a difficult choice.
CK2 was my game of choice for a long while, but when the EU4 expansion Art of War came out I switched to playing EU4 almost exclusively, and EU4 - El Dorado got me colonizing and playing in the new world again. The Common Sense expansion just raised the bar even further for me. I am voting EU4 as superior, for now, and with reservations because...
Because the next expansion to CK2 is going to be Horse Lords, with almost every single Horde and Nomad feature I ever dreamt for... based solely on the dev diaries to date I want to switch my vote! But it's not out yet so my vote stays...
EU4
CK2 was my game of choice for a long while, but when the EU4 expansion Art of War came out I switched to playing EU4 almost exclusively, and EU4 - El Dorado got me colonizing and playing in the new world again. The Common Sense expansion just raised the bar even further for me. I am voting EU4 as superior, for now, and with reservations because...
Because the next expansion to CK2 is going to be Horse Lords, with almost every single Horde and Nomad feature I ever dreamt for... based solely on the dev diaries to date I want to switch my vote! But it's not out yet so my vote stays...
EU4
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CK2. While CK2 cant hope to accurately represent the nuances of each and every type of governmental system in its time period it at least has made the effort. EU4 represents every single faction as a 19th century nation state when in reality the period should play more like a CK2 lite. I still enjoy EU4, however I dearly hope that EU5 will be a departure from the current way of doing things as it feels like I am playing Victoria 2: bland as all **** edition ATM.
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Hoi3 as Andorra ^_^ , but Crusader Kings II plus all expansions with CK1's superior music modded back in, is still delicious after all this time. It's simply engrossing.
Ck2 the character element is missing from eu4. Despite up until the end of the Renaissance it really should be character driven. After that victoria should really kick in with more administrative focus. Eu4 lacks depth and focus on anything but war and blobbing.
What eu4 gad going for it however is that it's durable. It's been balanced and fixed so many times so all those anoying things which you hate in ck2 doesn't happen.
What eu4 gad going for it however is that it's durable. It's been balanced and fixed so many times so all those anoying things which you hate in ck2 doesn't happen.
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I like both games, but choosing between them, I'll vote for CK2.
EU4:
EU4:
- + Much better optimized
- + Better suited for MP campaign
- - More streamlined towards blobbing
- - No roleplay
- - "fantasy"-style Monarch-Power: way too random
- - Development system is much more poor: playing "tall" is too expensive
- + Much more options to go tall
- + A lot of peace time gameplay
- + Tons of roleplay
- + Extremely fun events
- + Huge immersion
- - no naval battles
- - Performance issues (Game slows down after 200 years played)
- - MP is much less stable
- - less diplomacy options
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Victoria 2 for me as well (great to see it popping up in the thread 
), and I'd bet good money on HoI4 early next year, but if I had to choose between EU4 and CK2 it'd be EU4 all the time. Biggest reason for that is that EU4's gameplay evolves a bit over time - it's different playing a nation in 1780 than it is in 1480 - wheras beyond a few changes to the various modifiers in one direction or the other, CK2 is CK2 whether it's 769 or 1430, so a long game of CK2 feels very one-note. That, and a family in CK2 is a family. There are a few different rules to spice it up (Muslims and decadence, for example, or starting early on with gavelkind succession) that help make it a bit more interesting, but the things you do each game seem very similar each game regardless who you play as. It wasn't much different for me playing my Byzantine to Roman empire game as it was playing Lanka to conquering all of India. Whereas my Novgorod to Russia game in EU4 felt different to my Poland game felt different to my Portugal game.
That, and there's too much time spent looking at, sorting, and scanning lists in CK2. Better functioning (or even better, just less) lists, and CK2 would have stood a better chance.
They're both great games though, would recommend playing both for at least 20-odd hours to see if someone liked them.
I'd actually argue less mechanical depth (although far longer lists!) in CK2, but that's a bit subjective, but all games, everywhere have a dependence on mana. EU4's 'mistake' is that the 'mana' is too obviously mana, so people are struggling to understand what it means. EU3 still had mana (one point every ten years per slider), CK2 absolutely, definitely has mana (prestige accrual, piety accrual, money accrual). Mana is just a 'stock' of some kind of power of influence in a game. In EU4, the 'mana' is an abstract for the Government's capacity to act in three different fields, and the model is actually pretty elegant, but it's also a bit abstract, so not as easy to understand, so people go 'it's unrealistic and mana', when actually it's more realistic, in many ways, than the previous approaches to power and influence accrual in previous EU games.
I'm not saying its perfect, and it's clearly a bridge too far in terms of requiring that leap of understanding by many of EU4's players, but that doesn't make it a bad model, it just makes it a hard-to-understand one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's perfect (there's a fairly arbitrary and clunky break between financial power and capacity to act in admin, diplo and military fields, when money could in fact be used to enhance capacity here, and more than just by spending it on advisors - over the period, many states used greater finances to develop institutions to assist in this endeavour), but it's hardly 'it's all unrealistic, because it's mana'.
As for limits on player expansion, how about a vassal limit, demesne limit, fixed numbers of holdings and fixed limits to how those holdings can be developed? These are no more or less artificial than AE and overextension (note - I'm not particularly a fan of how overextension works in EU, but that's because they have to fudge it because of no mechanic to the internal power and admin structure).
), and I'd bet good money on HoI4 early next year, but if I had to choose between EU4 and CK2 it'd be EU4 all the time. Biggest reason for that is that EU4's gameplay evolves a bit over time - it's different playing a nation in 1780 than it is in 1480 - wheras beyond a few changes to the various modifiers in one direction or the other, CK2 is CK2 whether it's 769 or 1430, so a long game of CK2 feels very one-note. That, and a family in CK2 is a family. There are a few different rules to spice it up (Muslims and decadence, for example, or starting early on with gavelkind succession) that help make it a bit more interesting, but the things you do each game seem very similar each game regardless who you play as. It wasn't much different for me playing my Byzantine to Roman empire game as it was playing Lanka to conquering all of India. Whereas my Novgorod to Russia game in EU4 felt different to my Poland game felt different to my Portugal game.That, and there's too much time spent looking at, sorting, and scanning lists in CK2. Better functioning (or even better, just less) lists, and CK2 would have stood a better chance.
They're both great games though, would recommend playing both for at least 20-odd hours to see if someone liked them
.I'd actually argue less mechanical depth (although far longer lists!) in CK2, but that's a bit subjective, but all games, everywhere have a dependence on mana. EU4's 'mistake' is that the 'mana' is too obviously mana, so people are struggling to understand what it means. EU3 still had mana (one point every ten years per slider), CK2 absolutely, definitely has mana (prestige accrual, piety accrual, money accrual). Mana is just a 'stock' of some kind of power of influence in a game. In EU4, the 'mana' is an abstract for the Government's capacity to act in three different fields, and the model is actually pretty elegant, but it's also a bit abstract, so not as easy to understand, so people go 'it's unrealistic and mana', when actually it's more realistic, in many ways, than the previous approaches to power and influence accrual in previous EU games.
I'm not saying its perfect, and it's clearly a bridge too far in terms of requiring that leap of understanding by many of EU4's players, but that doesn't make it a bad model, it just makes it a hard-to-understand one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's perfect (there's a fairly arbitrary and clunky break between financial power and capacity to act in admin, diplo and military fields, when money could in fact be used to enhance capacity here, and more than just by spending it on advisors - over the period, many states used greater finances to develop institutions to assist in this endeavour), but it's hardly 'it's all unrealistic, because it's mana'.
As for limits on player expansion, how about a vassal limit, demesne limit, fixed numbers of holdings and fixed limits to how those holdings can be developed? These are no more or less artificial than AE and overextension (note - I'm not particularly a fan of how overextension works in EU, but that's because they have to fudge it because of no mechanic to the internal power and admin structure).
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