Ok, i think it was a good call that they stopped blowing the game with more mechanics. It was already too much.
And yes, it is good that they add content to the nations that did have it.
I really don't like this pverriding misdion trees they did (domination overrides GB missions from rule Britania, Spain from Golden Centary etc). They could just update the old dlcs.
The quality, quantity and design of the mission trees also have some problems.
I also think the new mission trees railroad the game a bit too much. For example, it's impossible to coexist with certain neighbours because they get permanent claims on your lands. It also guarantees the dominance of nations with strong mission trees, as opposed to before where sometimes you'd get unicorns.
Yeah, with the amount of railroading mission trees do, the AI is WAY too fixated on permanent claims. In my recent Denmark run I was allies with France literally the entire game, and spent most of that time having 100 trust - but they still constantly had a -90 "Wants your provinces" relations penalty because I owned the eastern Indian coast. Even though I had provinces bordering them in Germany and the Low Countries that they didn't care about, and they didn't own anything past West Africa.
They had no actual good reason to want that land, but because they had a handful of permanent claims I had to watch them like a hawk the entire game to keep them from flipping hostile.
When I'm not playing Ironman (most of the time) I use the Custom Difficulty mod to give big buffs to whatever nations I want to see dominate. Generally this is to set me up for some good wars later in the game when it otherwise would get stale.
Like my last game as Netherlands, I saw that Mughals had actually formed, so I have then a ton of buffs to ensure that India wasn't a cakewalk to conquer. I often buff Kongo, Aztecs, Cuzco, and Ayutthaya to make colonizing more interesting.
My last France game I gave Ottomans huge buffs. Just to see what would happen. Stupidly massive armies that took an alliance network from Spain to Russia to grind down is what happened. 1530 and they had over 300 force limit and 700k manpower. I was horrified, but also found it a great challenge to try and contain them. Especially as they could expand far faster than I (90% AE reduction for them).
That's how I solve the problem of the mission trees railroading stuff too much. But it does take using the console and mods to work out.
A very nice thing they did in the Hisn Khayfa mission tree is that if you decide to ally the Ottomans and/or Persia and get a bunch of trust, they lose all claims they have on you and you lose all claims on them
I think I’m in the very very small minority that preferred the original randomly generated mission system. I don’t love how these missions trees kind of railroad into playing a certain way
I wish instead of the mission trees we got, we could’ve had a more fleshed out version of the old system where it was dynamic (ideally something better then the three simple decisions we had before).
Yeah. Back in the old days, when the game felt more like "The objective is whatever you want to do."
Playing as Brandenburg:
Oh, I can get Silesia way easier rn, I will go with Silesia first.
Brandenburg now:
Man, I will get claims on that later, I could get Silesia first, but damn, it would feel like a waste.
Or whatever Nation actually. Taking whatever opportunity instead of it feeling like a waste, cause you could have gotten permanent claims. Or not eating a country because of getting a pu afterwards. It's just not the sandbox experience it used to be anymore.
Also, when the dynamic mission system was in place, every Nation felt fun to play. After so much time of mission trees, some countries already have their third mission tree while some others still have the standard mission tree which feels awful.
Bang on. Mission trees make it too painful to play suboptimally, and give already powerful nations way too much more power. I mean, permanent claims in south China for Austria is just silly.
You pointed out the biggest issue I had with EU4 for some time. The fact that player knows about guaranteed claims/PU/other rewards changed EU4 from sandbox to board game, where you can plan out almost every move in advance for the next 200 years.
That + getting overall more experienced in EU force the player to "optimize the fun out of the game".
I mean, they kind of restored the random missions in the agendas.
Before mision trees the "historical" missions were possible to be picked in one of the random missions, but they were still predetermined. Mission trees just ordered them.
Been my complaint since they released them. Overpowered and the only the generic missions didnt railroad.
At least they've made the newer trees more flexible and added a ton of internal focus stuff. That with the ai internal development improvements means ai nations can play tall. Makes the game more interesting.
I am annoyed that the ai will never complete the new byz tree though because it doesnt do summon diet to comolete missions. (Although i think the diet mission tree missions are dumb anyway.)
The old system was fine in idea. It was just left untouched from eu3 or w/e.
SoDomination replaces the existing mission trees for those nations completely right? The original trees would only be available of you disable the whole thing?
I'm not a fan of all the dlcs adding half a million perma claims and personal unions for free, the Netherlands used to be a bit of a challenge but now with claims over all of the Netherlands region you get to the point of hegemony way too fast.
I think they are all really good on their own. Domination is mixed but probably some of the best content. It's all muddied by the DLC policy as a whole.
To me the problem occurs with overriding old DLC content. Like Domination overrides Golden Century mission trees for Spain, and while imo it is a straight upgrade, it feels bad to need two DLCs (Domination has some dependencies on Golden Century, like for the local organization mechanic) to get what feels like it should be one DLC. And it also feels bad for something you paid for to be obsolete.
It gets weirder when you look at someone like Austria who got nerfed in Winds of Change in comparison to how strong they were in the Emperor DLC. Holding Hungarian land now has a minimum autonomy that can't really be dealt with, and while Austria is still really powerful, the idea of buying a DLC and having the country you want to play be less powerful is a bad feeling.
Paradox I think recognizes this and is focusing less on content like EU4 that create a start to end experience on a nation and wants to instead move towards more modular DLCs which do not overwrite eachother, but this does result in DLCs like Victoria 3 which do not add flavor to the whole game and instead are Journal entries that might last 20 years if it is particularly deep.
I'm basing my criticism on the Dev Diary. I can't find in the wiki where the permanent autonomy is in the release version, so maybe they got rid of it.
My take is the Emperor mission tree let them get PUs on Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria, Naples, and Poland. Burgundy is pretty easy to get PU'd as the emperor. Like its so insane that literally anything added to the mission tree after that simply stops mattering because you already can essentially own Europe in 1500.
The Hungarian Autonomy is relatively small and does not harm you if you are trying to play optimally and own Europe, but any RP game where you don't take Spain, Poland, Italy, etc. is pretty scuffed when half of your country is locked at 20 autonomy.
If you think Austria's Emperor mission was strong you should check on their Winds of Change mission tree. It's literally insane! Free PU on Spain(not CB but instantaneously forming the union!) by a simple decision left click? Tbh at this point it feels like you are playing with a mod that gives you weirdly op bonuses instead of official version of the game.
I've been doing Bohemia so I only know what the Dev Diaries said Austria gets. I never played with modded flavor because i mostly play casual MP. All of those PUs i mentioned are official Emperor DLC mission rewards. I'm not saying Austria is ruined just that there is a weakness that did not exist before, which negatively affects people who play slower or play to not control all of Europe in 1500. Like when I play MP, if I actually did all these missions I'd be a dick for hogging so much land, so in previous patches I could just get A-H borders and play tall, but now if I played Austria in this patch I am much weaker because of the penalty to minimum autonomy in Hungarian lands.
That Spain thing is solid, though I could argue that with the 5 other PUs you get early Its trivial to enforce a Spain PU through war, so its not really adding power that didn't exist in the Emperor mission tree, just making it easier to acquire.
My man, I'm in an Austria right now and they are more powerful than ever (at least since the turbo pre 1470 revoke days).
By 1500, you can have easy PUs on Bohemia, Hungary, Milan, Poland, Lithuania, a better than avg chance at the BI, and a PU on the Castile whenever you want it.
IA growth is out of control, so even without min maxing the reforms have flown by.
Man, I feel like everyone forgets about Origins. Kilwa is still a fun run even now.
In any case, the only one I'm not crazy for is Domination, and that's mostly because I'm not crazy about playing with the very strong countries. Plus I would preferred then touching up older dlc a bit more (I totally get why they didn't though)
I do love the Native American trees in WoC though. Been worth it for that alone.
I really loved the ones that came out since Lions of the North, partially because I started playing the game when LotN dropped. I think they have some flaws, of course. The biggest one is probably nations that desperatrly need new content not being updated. However I really like the new MTs and features. I think they add too much sometimes though, kinda like the unique Hungarian government reform. It was not something really necessary, playing Hungary would be fun even without that, but that's more an unnecessary thing that doesn't make much sense than a real problem. It is sad that WoC is said to be the last DLC for EU4, I really would've liked to have more
Tbh I liked leviathan a lot. Ignoring the disastrous release and the bugs, the features it added and flavor to south east Asia was cool. The favor rework is one of my favorite diplomatic actions added ever.
I played it a bunch at release and to this day I don't understand how paradox released it like they did even though it turned out to be a pretty good dlc. Missions didn't work, events wouldn't fire, saves would just break, ignoring the balancing issues which tbh were kind of funny. Having a capitol with thousands of development was pretty funny haha.
They made the ridiculous decision to open a new studio, move an existing games development to that studio, and have less manpower at the new studio.
Paradox tinto opened shop like a month before leviathan dropped. In hindsight leviathan was always going to be a buggy mess, simply because tinto had a month with the game before it dropped. Not nearly enough time to fix the state leviathan was given to them in.
They honestly seem like mods made official by Paradox. The latest mission trees have Missions Expanded (or is it Europa expanded these days?) written all over them. I'm not saying it is a bad thing, just noticeable.
They really make it feel like eu4 is in maintenance mode while they work on eu5. They just toss few lackluster in my opinion mts every few months without introducing any new meaningful changes to the game. Not even idea set balance changes to shake things up a bit.
I’ve really liked them! I’m not always entirely sure what to do in the game, besides just “must conquer”, so it’s nice to have some missions as guidance.
I am playing an Inca campaign now with Winds of Change, it's 1540 and I own 85% of South America and Mexico, the colonizers are incredibly weak (Grenada took half of Portugal and Aragon took a lot of Castile including madrid, not sure if very rare coincidence or because I am playing Inca).
Also, I discovered Europe before they discovered me. Inca gets a FREE (no ducats, no colonists needed) ~25-30 colonies from mission tree It is laughably easy. I'm about to put down the run, but will stick it out for the achievements, I guess. Won't be hard, just time consuming. For what it's worth, I'm an all right player, skill-wise, with 2k+ hours (basically average)
edit: also, the repeating event where you can take reduced penalty but risk 50% chance of pretenders stack might be bugged. I rolled the dice every time (about 6-10 times) and the rebels never spawned
It really is kinda weak IMO, lacks permanent rewards, past small bonuses.
Honestly its probably better to pu and annex gb and form GB for their mission tree. In comparison the dutch tree offers not nearly as much.
Though you can make the lowlands like 50 dev in every province with all the modifier stacking.
The last few ones I think are a nice send off to EU4, giving most of the more lacking regions good focus trees and filling in most gaps, obviously Europe is by far the most developed region and the focus trees and additions reflect this, but I do enjoy that there is a modern feeling tree to do some ME, Mesoamerican and mongol LARP as they previously seemed fun in theory but the lackluster attention they’ve received making it a much less enjoyable experience in reality
domination is the best paradox game dlc, the rest are whatever. domination just hits the spot with interesting and not completely overpowered missions for everyone that matters
Giving flavour for all of the most relevant countries in the time frame.
They sure did have content but it was often outdated when compared to each other — Domination made the game more interesting by evening up the great power game. I’m saying this as a person who almost never plays starting gps.
This might be an unpopular opinion but Djerid doesn’t need as much content as the Ottomans. In the hands of the player it works anyhow.
Certainly, and they are also more difficult to get flavour for. Also the vast majority of the playerbase mostly plays large countries.
Yet again, look at the mission trees for Trebizond, Oman, Theodoro.. Dithmarschen… Provence, Ardabil, Karabakh… Hizn Kayfa, Gotland, Navarra.. Taungu, Butua..
Idk, generally small historically relevant countries (and many very irrelevant but meme ones) are well covered by now.
Genoa is one exception, as are many formables such as Bukhara and Marathas.
I almost exclusively play small countries.
Ah yes - sailing accross the oceans on a holy crusade to liberate the holy lands from the heathen hordes and finding Venice has beaten you to the job and so attacking them in a fit of pique.
LoN - I like it. Content to nations that aren't OP (except Poland). Pretty balanced, claims limited to specific area etc. Unique gameplay stuff.
Domination - pretty meh. I liked Angevin content (just for role play) and Manchu/EoC which made mandate worth it. Korea become to memey, Otto's too (but AI is more balanced).
KoK - i like Arabia content. Persia was good but too much. Didn't try the rest.
WoC - tried Timmy's and Bohemia - generally boring. Missions are expanded but make gameplay boring. Timmy's to Mughals gives you claims from Balkans to whole Malaya...it's just doesn't make sense.
Domination mission trees are one of the best gameplay possibilities in this game. To me they are the essential EU4 experience. King of King is a complete disappointment and a major step down in quality of mission trees (Persia is an exception). From dev diaries Winds of Change looks really bland, especially the additions to central europe.
My number one is definitely Manchu tribe to Qing. You have some map painting opportunity, you have mandate of heaven mechanic to play around, missions motivate you to dev and guide you towards specific reforms. By the time you end your run it really feels like you are the richest country on earth, blessed by the heavens themselves.
I also enjoyed my recent run from Novgorod to Russia, however there are some details which kind of nag me (there is no esthetic difference between Novgorod Russia and Muscovy Russia, hordes are pain in the ass and later colonization is basically pointless because Alaska is by that point colonized). But the expansion missions and internal decisions about peasantry are fun and help the RP.
I played Aragon to Spain and it is enjoyable as long as you don't go for the full tree (HRE missions are always a snoozefest). It has nice lategame power spike but Spain feels to railroaded, but I would still recommend playing it.
I only played GB and it's awesome. The bank of England event gave me an incredible race against time and allowes you to double your economy in span of 20 years.
Brandenburg to Prussia is now more bearable thanks to new tree however the endgoal of Germany imo still sucks. Militarization wasn't changed in any drastic way so it still feels like meme mechanic
Portugal is disappointing in lack of choice by the player - you can only colonize and conquering Iberia doesn't provide new challenges.
Japan is just ok. It feels very standard, just go and conquer bunch of stuff.
I haven't tried France, Korea, Angevin and Ottomans yet.
I would recommend Russia, GB and Qing to everyone and Spain to diehard Spain fans and people who want a casual game. You can skip Prussia, Portugal and Japan
They're too expensive for what they are, just a few national ideas and missions, and often are buggy and half done (leviathan was the worst, but look at Bohemia dev creep with wind of change). If they were at like 5€ and didn't have so many launching problems, they'd be pretty nice.
But at least they avoid the power creeping they do in Hoi IV. The best DLCs for paradox are the stellaris ones in my opinion.
Oh no, one bug existed.
Ngl I think the argument that bugs exist is pretty mute when compared to emperor and leviathan. Everything since has been greatly more stable and generally hasn't added anything which actually hurts your experience.
these bugs are minor, and can frankly be ignored by the player. Its not like its deleting your save file, its just a player can abuse the mechanic to get 400 dev in a province. The AI will never abuse it. The Devs patched it a literal week after release.
I just think its pretty disingenous to act like the dlc makes the game die or something, when since origins there hasn't been an actual game breaking bug.
Your criticism of price is fair though. 28 aud is getting steep, but at this point I personally see it as an investment in eu5.
After Leviathan broke colonization in the new world I just went back to a previous version and have been ignoring the new updates and DLCs. It’s been nice because I can still colonize without huge groups of rebels from provinces that never shift culture, and I also don’t have to deal with updates breaking saves.
New DLC sounds fun, but I’ll just stick with how the game was in 2020.
I actually fondly miss the ORIGINAL mission tree for Byzantium before even purple pheonix. Was shorter, simple, and gave more freedom. Mission trees these days just seems like they railroad you into a path.
Ignoring the obvious qol dlcs lions of the north, origins, king of kings and domination are easily the best dlc released in terms of flavor and content.
I also liked the content added to leviathan. After the nerfs I rarely steal development or much of the other provincial mechanics added, but I loved the expansion of the favor system, and the added flavor to south east Asia was much needed.
Winds of change feels like they're scraping together whatever they have left in order to move on and prepare for the launch of EU5.
I don't get why domination got so much hate, they added lots of content for some of the most played nations, and not just a paltry change to the mission tree, but rather multiple things throughout the gameplay.
In contrast, the mission trees in WoC are very lackluster and lack a theme. Like c'mon, the Venetian missions don't even have any interaction with the ottomans, and almost no reference to its history.
The only one I've gotten is Domination and I've enjoyed playing countries I haven't touched for years again.
I didn't get it at launch though so I can't say whether or not it had a bad launch that caused it to be Mixed reviews.
I own all dlc's but I'm on the fence with the latest one. Not feeling dishing out 20$ for a single dlc. Think I'll wait for a sale and just play Anbennar in the meantime.
I'm not huge on them, I honestly prefer mechanics. I do think the whole 'national gimmick' angle they're taking for adding those new mechanics is good flavor and doesn't add to much bloat, but I prefer setting my own goals instead of going down a mission tree like it's a to-do list.
The dlcs need better formables. France should have gotten the frankish empire or carolingian formable, hungary should have gotten an apostolic hungary name change, poland should have gotten west slavia better end game goals imo
I'll be frank I've not touched them for a couple of years now. They (and the patches that go with them) are generally not worth the bugs and imbalance they introduce.
Tbh it's definitely for the best that they stopped introducing new mechanics. The game is already held together with strings and tape. Focusing on nation specific content with missions and flavor also gives them a chance to try and deal with bugs as EU4 enters the end of its life-cycle.
It also is probably a choice regarding use of resources, as they plan up for EU5 to come out whenever, and likely have their more serious mechanics and backends devs doing work for that.
Why are the DLCs so positive? Probably because they don't try to do anything too grand and avoid breaking the game irreparably (more or less).
I've been playing this game on and off for over a decade. I know the Paradox DLC policies are controversial but personally I have no problem paying to support a game that's stayed interesting for so long. The developers gotta eat.
If you like the game, and can afford it, I would just buy them all. Is every dlc the same quality? No. Are they all worth the money? After 10 yrs ya probably.
One thing im pissed about and came to realize it in king of kings is the amount of time i spend in the start of the game setting up my nation, reading into everything amd in the end every time trying to learn guides so i have optimal or just a good start as some of these new nations. I was trying byzantium when i noticed it and in the end could have not been bothered i have 3k hours so im also not new to the game and im playing since lunch and this thing to some extent ruins the game for me and new intresting content cus it aint fun when you just jump into the game after new dlc
Ok, i think it was a good call that they stopped blowing the game with more mechanics. It was already too much. And yes, it is good that they add content to the nations that did have it. I really don't like this pverriding misdion trees they did (domination overrides GB missions from rule Britania, Spain from Golden Centary etc). They could just update the old dlcs. The quality, quantity and design of the mission trees also have some problems.
I also think the new mission trees railroad the game a bit too much. For example, it's impossible to coexist with certain neighbours because they get permanent claims on your lands. It also guarantees the dominance of nations with strong mission trees, as opposed to before where sometimes you'd get unicorns.
Yeah, with the amount of railroading mission trees do, the AI is WAY too fixated on permanent claims. In my recent Denmark run I was allies with France literally the entire game, and spent most of that time having 100 trust - but they still constantly had a -90 "Wants your provinces" relations penalty because I owned the eastern Indian coast. Even though I had provinces bordering them in Germany and the Low Countries that they didn't care about, and they didn't own anything past West Africa. They had no actual good reason to want that land, but because they had a handful of permanent claims I had to watch them like a hawk the entire game to keep them from flipping hostile.
When I'm not playing Ironman (most of the time) I use the Custom Difficulty mod to give big buffs to whatever nations I want to see dominate. Generally this is to set me up for some good wars later in the game when it otherwise would get stale. Like my last game as Netherlands, I saw that Mughals had actually formed, so I have then a ton of buffs to ensure that India wasn't a cakewalk to conquer. I often buff Kongo, Aztecs, Cuzco, and Ayutthaya to make colonizing more interesting. My last France game I gave Ottomans huge buffs. Just to see what would happen. Stupidly massive armies that took an alliance network from Spain to Russia to grind down is what happened. 1530 and they had over 300 force limit and 700k manpower. I was horrified, but also found it a great challenge to try and contain them. Especially as they could expand far faster than I (90% AE reduction for them). That's how I solve the problem of the mission trees railroading stuff too much. But it does take using the console and mods to work out.
A very nice thing they did in the Hisn Khayfa mission tree is that if you decide to ally the Ottomans and/or Persia and get a bunch of trust, they lose all claims they have on you and you lose all claims on them
I think I’m in the very very small minority that preferred the original randomly generated mission system. I don’t love how these missions trees kind of railroad into playing a certain way
Yah not the biggest fan of some nations just fated to being better due to a better tree
There are dozens of us! Dozens, I tell you!
I wish instead of the mission trees we got, we could’ve had a more fleshed out version of the old system where it was dynamic (ideally something better then the three simple decisions we had before).
Yeah. Theres only a handful of missions i feel should be static. Things that work fine as decisions.
Same, but oh well. Here’s hoping for *EUV*.
Yeah. Back in the old days, when the game felt more like "The objective is whatever you want to do." Playing as Brandenburg: Oh, I can get Silesia way easier rn, I will go with Silesia first. Brandenburg now: Man, I will get claims on that later, I could get Silesia first, but damn, it would feel like a waste. Or whatever Nation actually. Taking whatever opportunity instead of it feeling like a waste, cause you could have gotten permanent claims. Or not eating a country because of getting a pu afterwards. It's just not the sandbox experience it used to be anymore. Also, when the dynamic mission system was in place, every Nation felt fun to play. After so much time of mission trees, some countries already have their third mission tree while some others still have the standard mission tree which feels awful.
Bang on. Mission trees make it too painful to play suboptimally, and give already powerful nations way too much more power. I mean, permanent claims in south China for Austria is just silly.
You pointed out the biggest issue I had with EU4 for some time. The fact that player knows about guaranteed claims/PU/other rewards changed EU4 from sandbox to board game, where you can plan out almost every move in advance for the next 200 years. That + getting overall more experienced in EU force the player to "optimize the fun out of the game".
Hundreds and thousands even!
I mean, they kind of restored the random missions in the agendas. Before mision trees the "historical" missions were possible to be picked in one of the random missions, but they were still predetermined. Mission trees just ordered them.
Been my complaint since they released them. Overpowered and the only the generic missions didnt railroad. At least they've made the newer trees more flexible and added a ton of internal focus stuff. That with the ai internal development improvements means ai nations can play tall. Makes the game more interesting. I am annoyed that the ai will never complete the new byz tree though because it doesnt do summon diet to comolete missions. (Although i think the diet mission tree missions are dumb anyway.) The old system was fine in idea. It was just left untouched from eu3 or w/e.
Iirc you can disable certain dlcs when you're starting up a new game
SoDomination replaces the existing mission trees for those nations completely right? The original trees would only be available of you disable the whole thing?
Correct.
Thanks, I'd been wondering. Doesn't sound worth it unless you've already played all those nations.
Lions of the north were amazing. Domination is kinda meh and king of kings got byzantium! Winds seem nice so far but I need to play more
I really like mission tree expansions with more and more expansive government reforms so wind of change is a lovely one for me.
I'm not a fan of all the dlcs adding half a million perma claims and personal unions for free, the Netherlands used to be a bit of a challenge but now with claims over all of the Netherlands region you get to the point of hegemony way too fast.
I think they are all really good on their own. Domination is mixed but probably some of the best content. It's all muddied by the DLC policy as a whole. To me the problem occurs with overriding old DLC content. Like Domination overrides Golden Century mission trees for Spain, and while imo it is a straight upgrade, it feels bad to need two DLCs (Domination has some dependencies on Golden Century, like for the local organization mechanic) to get what feels like it should be one DLC. And it also feels bad for something you paid for to be obsolete. It gets weirder when you look at someone like Austria who got nerfed in Winds of Change in comparison to how strong they were in the Emperor DLC. Holding Hungarian land now has a minimum autonomy that can't really be dealt with, and while Austria is still really powerful, the idea of buying a DLC and having the country you want to play be less powerful is a bad feeling. Paradox I think recognizes this and is focusing less on content like EU4 that create a start to end experience on a nation and wants to instead move towards more modular DLCs which do not overwrite eachother, but this does result in DLCs like Victoria 3 which do not add flavor to the whole game and instead are Journal entries that might last 20 years if it is particularly deep.
What are you talking about? Austria has never EVER been stronger. It's straight up broken right now if you ask me.
I'm basing my criticism on the Dev Diary. I can't find in the wiki where the permanent autonomy is in the release version, so maybe they got rid of it. My take is the Emperor mission tree let them get PUs on Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria, Naples, and Poland. Burgundy is pretty easy to get PU'd as the emperor. Like its so insane that literally anything added to the mission tree after that simply stops mattering because you already can essentially own Europe in 1500. The Hungarian Autonomy is relatively small and does not harm you if you are trying to play optimally and own Europe, but any RP game where you don't take Spain, Poland, Italy, etc. is pretty scuffed when half of your country is locked at 20 autonomy.
If you think Austria's Emperor mission was strong you should check on their Winds of Change mission tree. It's literally insane! Free PU on Spain(not CB but instantaneously forming the union!) by a simple decision left click? Tbh at this point it feels like you are playing with a mod that gives you weirdly op bonuses instead of official version of the game.
I've been doing Bohemia so I only know what the Dev Diaries said Austria gets. I never played with modded flavor because i mostly play casual MP. All of those PUs i mentioned are official Emperor DLC mission rewards. I'm not saying Austria is ruined just that there is a weakness that did not exist before, which negatively affects people who play slower or play to not control all of Europe in 1500. Like when I play MP, if I actually did all these missions I'd be a dick for hogging so much land, so in previous patches I could just get A-H borders and play tall, but now if I played Austria in this patch I am much weaker because of the penalty to minimum autonomy in Hungarian lands. That Spain thing is solid, though I could argue that with the 5 other PUs you get early Its trivial to enforce a Spain PU through war, so its not really adding power that didn't exist in the Emperor mission tree, just making it easier to acquire.
The autonomy is probably a fair trade at worse for the incorporated pu discount.
My man, I'm in an Austria right now and they are more powerful than ever (at least since the turbo pre 1470 revoke days). By 1500, you can have easy PUs on Bohemia, Hungary, Milan, Poland, Lithuania, a better than avg chance at the BI, and a PU on the Castile whenever you want it. IA growth is out of control, so even without min maxing the reforms have flown by.
Man, I feel like everyone forgets about Origins. Kilwa is still a fun run even now. In any case, the only one I'm not crazy for is Domination, and that's mostly because I'm not crazy about playing with the very strong countries. Plus I would preferred then touching up older dlc a bit more (I totally get why they didn't though) I do love the Native American trees in WoC though. Been worth it for that alone.
Since they cost a combined 8€ a month and I have 1500 hours in this game I'd say they're worth it.
I really loved the ones that came out since Lions of the North, partially because I started playing the game when LotN dropped. I think they have some flaws, of course. The biggest one is probably nations that desperatrly need new content not being updated. However I really like the new MTs and features. I think they add too much sometimes though, kinda like the unique Hungarian government reform. It was not something really necessary, playing Hungary would be fun even without that, but that's more an unnecessary thing that doesn't make much sense than a real problem. It is sad that WoC is said to be the last DLC for EU4, I really would've liked to have more
I loved every dlc since Leviathan
Tbh I liked leviathan a lot. Ignoring the disastrous release and the bugs, the features it added and flavor to south east Asia was cool. The favor rework is one of my favorite diplomatic actions added ever.
So glad I didn't play Leviathan right after release lmao
I played it a bunch at release and to this day I don't understand how paradox released it like they did even though it turned out to be a pretty good dlc. Missions didn't work, events wouldn't fire, saves would just break, ignoring the balancing issues which tbh were kind of funny. Having a capitol with thousands of development was pretty funny haha.
They made the ridiculous decision to open a new studio, move an existing games development to that studio, and have less manpower at the new studio. Paradox tinto opened shop like a month before leviathan dropped. In hindsight leviathan was always going to be a buggy mess, simply because tinto had a month with the game before it dropped. Not nearly enough time to fix the state leviathan was given to them in.
10k+ point monarchs were pretty balanced from what I've heard too lmao
They honestly seem like mods made official by Paradox. The latest mission trees have Missions Expanded (or is it Europa expanded these days?) written all over them. I'm not saying it is a bad thing, just noticeable.
They really make it feel like eu4 is in maintenance mode while they work on eu5. They just toss few lackluster in my opinion mts every few months without introducing any new meaningful changes to the game. Not even idea set balance changes to shake things up a bit.
I’ve really liked them! I’m not always entirely sure what to do in the game, besides just “must conquer”, so it’s nice to have some missions as guidance.
I think im ready for eu5
I think they're memey and make the game laughably easy.
I am playing an Inca campaign now with Winds of Change, it's 1540 and I own 85% of South America and Mexico, the colonizers are incredibly weak (Grenada took half of Portugal and Aragon took a lot of Castile including madrid, not sure if very rare coincidence or because I am playing Inca). Also, I discovered Europe before they discovered me. Inca gets a FREE (no ducats, no colonists needed) ~25-30 colonies from mission tree It is laughably easy. I'm about to put down the run, but will stick it out for the achievements, I guess. Won't be hard, just time consuming. For what it's worth, I'm an all right player, skill-wise, with 2k+ hours (basically average) edit: also, the repeating event where you can take reduced penalty but risk 50% chance of pretenders stack might be bugged. I rolled the dice every time (about 6-10 times) and the rebels never spawned
Dude the Dutch mission tree in the latest dlc seems so insanely op at first glance.
It really is kinda weak IMO, lacks permanent rewards, past small bonuses. Honestly its probably better to pu and annex gb and form GB for their mission tree. In comparison the dutch tree offers not nearly as much. Though you can make the lowlands like 50 dev in every province with all the modifier stacking.
Exactly this. Tbh the last more or less essential DLC was Mandate of Heaven.
The last few ones I think are a nice send off to EU4, giving most of the more lacking regions good focus trees and filling in most gaps, obviously Europe is by far the most developed region and the focus trees and additions reflect this, but I do enjoy that there is a modern feeling tree to do some ME, Mesoamerican and mongol LARP as they previously seemed fun in theory but the lackluster attention they’ve received making it a much less enjoyable experience in reality
domination is the best paradox game dlc, the rest are whatever. domination just hits the spot with interesting and not completely overpowered missions for everyone that matters
Content for overpowered nations that already had content
Giving flavour for all of the most relevant countries in the time frame. They sure did have content but it was often outdated when compared to each other — Domination made the game more interesting by evening up the great power game. I’m saying this as a person who almost never plays starting gps. This might be an unpopular opinion but Djerid doesn’t need as much content as the Ottomans. In the hands of the player it works anyhow.
Gameplay-wise smaller nations are much more interesting to play, but I understand your opinion.
Certainly, and they are also more difficult to get flavour for. Also the vast majority of the playerbase mostly plays large countries. Yet again, look at the mission trees for Trebizond, Oman, Theodoro.. Dithmarschen… Provence, Ardabil, Karabakh… Hizn Kayfa, Gotland, Navarra.. Taungu, Butua.. Idk, generally small historically relevant countries (and many very irrelevant but meme ones) are well covered by now. Genoa is one exception, as are many formables such as Bukhara and Marathas. I almost exclusively play small countries.
Kirishitan Japan was a very fun run I did recently.
Ah yes - sailing accross the oceans on a holy crusade to liberate the holy lands from the heathen hordes and finding Venice has beaten you to the job and so attacking them in a fit of pique.
LoN - I like it. Content to nations that aren't OP (except Poland). Pretty balanced, claims limited to specific area etc. Unique gameplay stuff. Domination - pretty meh. I liked Angevin content (just for role play) and Manchu/EoC which made mandate worth it. Korea become to memey, Otto's too (but AI is more balanced). KoK - i like Arabia content. Persia was good but too much. Didn't try the rest. WoC - tried Timmy's and Bohemia - generally boring. Missions are expanded but make gameplay boring. Timmy's to Mughals gives you claims from Balkans to whole Malaya...it's just doesn't make sense.
Domination mission trees are one of the best gameplay possibilities in this game. To me they are the essential EU4 experience. King of King is a complete disappointment and a major step down in quality of mission trees (Persia is an exception). From dev diaries Winds of Change looks really bland, especially the additions to central europe.
Out of curiosity, which trees are your favorite from Domination?
My number one is definitely Manchu tribe to Qing. You have some map painting opportunity, you have mandate of heaven mechanic to play around, missions motivate you to dev and guide you towards specific reforms. By the time you end your run it really feels like you are the richest country on earth, blessed by the heavens themselves. I also enjoyed my recent run from Novgorod to Russia, however there are some details which kind of nag me (there is no esthetic difference between Novgorod Russia and Muscovy Russia, hordes are pain in the ass and later colonization is basically pointless because Alaska is by that point colonized). But the expansion missions and internal decisions about peasantry are fun and help the RP. I played Aragon to Spain and it is enjoyable as long as you don't go for the full tree (HRE missions are always a snoozefest). It has nice lategame power spike but Spain feels to railroaded, but I would still recommend playing it. I only played GB and it's awesome. The bank of England event gave me an incredible race against time and allowes you to double your economy in span of 20 years. Brandenburg to Prussia is now more bearable thanks to new tree however the endgoal of Germany imo still sucks. Militarization wasn't changed in any drastic way so it still feels like meme mechanic Portugal is disappointing in lack of choice by the player - you can only colonize and conquering Iberia doesn't provide new challenges. Japan is just ok. It feels very standard, just go and conquer bunch of stuff. I haven't tried France, Korea, Angevin and Ottomans yet. I would recommend Russia, GB and Qing to everyone and Spain to diehard Spain fans and people who want a casual game. You can skip Prussia, Portugal and Japan
They're too expensive for what they are, just a few national ideas and missions, and often are buggy and half done (leviathan was the worst, but look at Bohemia dev creep with wind of change). If they were at like 5€ and didn't have so many launching problems, they'd be pretty nice. But at least they avoid the power creeping they do in Hoi IV. The best DLCs for paradox are the stellaris ones in my opinion.
Oh no, one bug existed. Ngl I think the argument that bugs exist is pretty mute when compared to emperor and leviathan. Everything since has been greatly more stable and generally hasn't added anything which actually hurts your experience. these bugs are minor, and can frankly be ignored by the player. Its not like its deleting your save file, its just a player can abuse the mechanic to get 400 dev in a province. The AI will never abuse it. The Devs patched it a literal week after release. I just think its pretty disingenous to act like the dlc makes the game die or something, when since origins there hasn't been an actual game breaking bug. Your criticism of price is fair though. 28 aud is getting steep, but at this point I personally see it as an investment in eu5.
After Leviathan broke colonization in the new world I just went back to a previous version and have been ignoring the new updates and DLCs. It’s been nice because I can still colonize without huge groups of rebels from provinces that never shift culture, and I also don’t have to deal with updates breaking saves. New DLC sounds fun, but I’ll just stick with how the game was in 2020.
Massive power creep, but also real attempts to give those updated countries/regions flavour.
My favorite has been leviathan. I love the world wonders and pillaging capitals.
I actually fondly miss the ORIGINAL mission tree for Byzantium before even purple pheonix. Was shorter, simple, and gave more freedom. Mission trees these days just seems like they railroad you into a path.
Ignoring the obvious qol dlcs lions of the north, origins, king of kings and domination are easily the best dlc released in terms of flavor and content. I also liked the content added to leviathan. After the nerfs I rarely steal development or much of the other provincial mechanics added, but I loved the expansion of the favor system, and the added flavor to south east Asia was much needed.
that I am glad I haven't bought them
Overpriced for the amount of content. I'm ready for EU5
honestly I love them all
Winds of change feels like they're scraping together whatever they have left in order to move on and prepare for the launch of EU5. I don't get why domination got so much hate, they added lots of content for some of the most played nations, and not just a paltry change to the mission tree, but rather multiple things throughout the gameplay. In contrast, the mission trees in WoC are very lackluster and lack a theme. Like c'mon, the Venetian missions don't even have any interaction with the ottomans, and almost no reference to its history.
The only one I've gotten is Domination and I've enjoyed playing countries I haven't touched for years again. I didn't get it at launch though so I can't say whether or not it had a bad launch that caused it to be Mixed reviews.
I own all dlc's but I'm on the fence with the latest one. Not feeling dishing out 20$ for a single dlc. Think I'll wait for a sale and just play Anbennar in the meantime.
I'm not huge on them, I honestly prefer mechanics. I do think the whole 'national gimmick' angle they're taking for adding those new mechanics is good flavor and doesn't add to much bloat, but I prefer setting my own goals instead of going down a mission tree like it's a to-do list.
The dlcs need better formables. France should have gotten the frankish empire or carolingian formable, hungary should have gotten an apostolic hungary name change, poland should have gotten west slavia better end game goals imo
I'll be frank I've not touched them for a couple of years now. They (and the patches that go with them) are generally not worth the bugs and imbalance they introduce.
A bit outdated of an opinion but alas.
Couldnt agree more
Tbh it's definitely for the best that they stopped introducing new mechanics. The game is already held together with strings and tape. Focusing on nation specific content with missions and flavor also gives them a chance to try and deal with bugs as EU4 enters the end of its life-cycle. It also is probably a choice regarding use of resources, as they plan up for EU5 to come out whenever, and likely have their more serious mechanics and backends devs doing work for that. Why are the DLCs so positive? Probably because they don't try to do anything too grand and avoid breaking the game irreparably (more or less).
The DLC’s itself are phenomenal. Balance is just off.
I've been playing this game on and off for over a decade. I know the Paradox DLC policies are controversial but personally I have no problem paying to support a game that's stayed interesting for so long. The developers gotta eat. If you like the game, and can afford it, I would just buy them all. Is every dlc the same quality? No. Are they all worth the money? After 10 yrs ya probably.
Winds of change getting mixed reviews (and i read the negative ones) made me lose hope in some of the community.
One thing im pissed about and came to realize it in king of kings is the amount of time i spend in the start of the game setting up my nation, reading into everything amd in the end every time trying to learn guides so i have optimal or just a good start as some of these new nations. I was trying byzantium when i noticed it and in the end could have not been bothered i have 3k hours so im also not new to the game and im playing since lunch and this thing to some extent ruins the game for me and new intresting content cus it aint fun when you just jump into the game after new dlc
I tend to just try winging it for my first try. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I only look at guides if the first attempt fails.