PDX Games IX: Western Pre-Turkic Empire

[Purpelia]

Everyone needs a Rogue Servitor in their lives.

The only robots I want in my life is if the Japanese finally figure out how to build female androids.

[The Imperial Reach]

Everyone needs a Rogue Servitor in their lives.

The only robots I want in my life is if the Japanese finally figure out how to build female androids.

[Ithalian Empire]

Yeah but big empires have always been hard to keep together. And in a game thats supposed to give me the feel of ruling an unwieldy feudal state I want it to be a challenge to build an empire and to keep it whole fr as long as I can.

That's kind of the antithesis of what I think CK2/EUIV should be like, where growing larger should obviously provide benefits, but it should also make it progressively more difficult to hold the empire together as it expands, but I can understand why you like the game style.

To some extent definitively. The game wouldn't be fun if it was too easy and if there were no internal threats and you could just blob HOI4 style. That would remove a lot of the fun roleplay elements from the game as well. But I feel that lately the game has been going too far in that direction. It basically went from way too easy to way too hard to the point where its become almost impossible to keep a large empire together. And what's worse a lot of it is just fake difficulty. That is to say mechanics that you can't really interact with deeply enough for your skill to make a difference.

I mean, look at for example the faction system. It's designed to allow vassals to gang up on their monarch. And they just do. Always. Every single time. Until eventually it just becomes impossible to run your empire. I'd much rather if it was designed in a way that would allow the monarch to use the factions by playing vassals against one another. Which is what historical monarchs did. And if you fail to do that and allow them to all come together than and only than have it become a fail condition.

Same with the plot system. You have 1 plot per character. Therefore you will inevitably just get overwhelmed as everyone plots against you and you can only respond one at a time. No amount of player skill is going to help me take out the leaders of the two separate plots to kill me.

For a complete contrast look at the council system. The whole favor system is a bit too powerful for my taste. Like I'd make it so that you can use a favor to counter someone elses use of a favor. But that's a tiny nitpic. And other than that the idea of gathering favors and the tradeoff between staffing your council full of people who'll do your bidding at the expense of angering powerful vassals or keeping them happy at the cost of having a council of malcontents is exactly the sort of mechanic I'd want to see more of. It gives me as a player meaningful choice and room to strategize. It forces me to stop and think.

TLDR the difficulty right now is a 5/5 where as in my view it should be around 3. And a lot of it is due to mechanics deliberately rigged against the player as opposed to a skill challenge.

I disagree with the factions. You want to keep vassals from being in factions? Keep them happy, keep them close to you and for the love of god don't be a tyrannical prick.

[Serrus]

I disagree with the factions. You want to keep vassals from being in factions? Keep them happy, keep them close to you and for the love of god don't be a tyrannical prick.

Or, if they're trying to destabilize the realm even if they like you (which happens with annoying regularity), just murder them all. Intrigue, duels, whatever.

[Lunas Legion]

Personally I like what the GoT mod did by adding a 'loyalist' faction for vassals to join.

[Genivaria]

Personally I like what the GoT mod did by adding a 'loyalist' faction for vassals to join.

Agreed, having a loyalist faction would make it where the liege lord doesn't try to screw you over if you're loyal.

[Purpelia]

I disagree with the factions. You want to keep vassals from being in factions? Keep them happy, keep them close to you and for the love of god don't be a tyrannical prick.

Does not matter. I literally have a bunch of +100 characters all plotting against me and creating factions to put a random cousin they actually like less than they do me on the throne instead. Indeed in my experience there is literally nothing I can do to prevent vassals from plotting and factioning against me short of killing +100 vassals only to have their replacements do it all over again.

[Ithalian Empire]

I disagree with the factions. You want to keep vassals from being in factions? Keep them happy, keep them close to you and for the love of god don't be a tyrannical prick.

Does not matter. I literally have a bunch of +100 characters all plotting against me and creating factions to put a random cousin they actually like less than they do me on the throne instead. Indeed in my experience there is literally nothing I can do to prevent vassals from plotting and factioning against me short of killing +100 vassals only to have their replacements do it all over again.

I have literally never had this problem.

Personally I like what the GoT mod did by adding a 'loyalist' faction for vassals to join.

CK2++ has that as a feature as well.

[Purpelia]

I have literally never had this problem.

Lucky you I guess. I have it right now.

[Serrus]

I have literally never had this problem.

Lucky you I guess. I have it right now.

I've had stuff like that happen.

[Renoa]

No, I'm totally fine that we're losing to the Ottomans even when our alliance has more troops because our armies refuse to gather together and fight battles, why do you ask? It's not like we need to stop their advances into Eastern Europe or anything, they can march all the way to Danzig for all I care.

Playing EU4 is basically just me cyberbullying myself.

Now that I think about it, I guess it's pretty historically accurate that Christian Europe could have probably defeated the Ottomans if they stopped being self-serving pricks and banded together for even the smallest amount of time, but were too busy jerking off directly into their own eyes to see that far ahead.

UPDATE:
We managed to goad the Ottomans into a single battle which we technically won, even though we had more casualties. That sent them on the defensive for a bit and we managed to siege down Bosnia and parts of Serbia. However, the Austrians and their pals pulled their troops back to Austria as if the war is done, leaving almost 100 thousand Ottoman troops to come back and they're starting to retake all the land we sieged.

And what's worse, my other allies the PL Commonwealth has just been attacked by Russia, so once the Ottomans inevitably tear us in half in this war, I'll be faced with yet another unwinnable one right off the bat.

[North German Realm]

The third part (Part 2) of the Iberian Kings playthrough is also out. God I hope I have as much fun playing the game as these guys do

[The Huskar Social Union]

Everyone needs a Rogue Servitor in their lives.

The only robots I want in my life is if the Japanese finally figure out how to build female androids.

Riiiiight


Hahaha the fuck

[Bralia]

This SEA update for EUIV has been looking quite nice content-wise.

[Bralia]

The legacy of CK3 will be forged through its legacies.

[Ifreann]

The legacy of CK3 will be forged through its legacies.

It's legacies all the way down.

[Bralia]

I did it again. Except this time I completely forgot about the stream entirely.

[Bralia]

Noticed something ominous in the thread tracker on the forums, apparently some major people working on the Bloodlines game are gone.

[Danubian Peoples]

Noticed something ominous in the thread tracker on the forums, apparently some major people working on the Bloodlines game are gone.

Actually forgot this game existed for a bit. On to my opinion.

This seems like another case of 'business people do thing that makes no sense unless copious amounts of beans are spilled.' I just, don't get it. The post provides zero explanation for what they were doing besides a generic 'we decided to let these people go,' and since I don't follow the game's development, I have zero clue as to what these important folks they just fired do. I read through some of the thread below, but it appears to be mostly expressions of disgruntlement or perplexion. I do hope I get a better view of this in the future, since I am quite curious as to what's going on.

[Lunas Legion]

Noticed something ominous in the thread tracker on the forums, apparently some major people working on the Bloodlines game are gone.

Actually forgot this game existed for a bit. On to my opinion.

This seems like another case of 'business people do thing that makes no sense unless copious amounts of beans are spilled.' I just, don't get it. The post provides zero explanation for what they were doing besides a generic 'we decided to let these people go,' and since I don't follow the game's development, I have zero clue as to what these important folks they just fired do. I read through some of the thread below, but it appears to be mostly expressions of disgruntlement or perplexion. I do hope I get a better view of this in the future, since I am quite curious as to what's going on.

They're effectively the writers for the game's plot/story roughly and the direction that goes, I think. I'm sure they had a reason for getting rid of the Lead Narrative Designer and Creative Director this late in the process, though. They're not dumb enough to shoot themselves in the kneecap like that.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Noticed something ominous in the thread tracker on the forums, apparently some major people working on the Bloodlines game are gone.

Something tells me this game is gonna suck.

[Bralia]

An asshat in the CK3 forums has informed me of something that's pretty cool, all of the clothing in the entire game is available to you to change whenever you want. This actually excites me, I feel like the first order of business for me, after the rise of a successor, is going to be finding cool clothes that look attractive on them.

[The Huskar Social Union]

An asshat in the CK3 forums has informed me of something that's pretty cool, all of the clothing in the entire game is available to you to change whenever you want. This actually excites me, I feel like the first order of business for me, after the rise of a successor, is going to be finding cool clothes that look attractive on them.

If he doesnt like those clothing options then here is a hint, dont use them?

[The Huskar Social Union]

Noticed something ominous in the thread tracker on the forums, apparently some major people working on the Bloodlines game are gone.

Something tells me this game is gonna suck.

They didnt give any information as to what exactly happened, it must have been something serious to fire two people who are prominent members of the dev team. Tis a mystery.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Something tells me this game is gonna suck.

They didnt give any information as to what exactly happened, it must have been something serious to fire two people who are prominent members of the dev team. Tis a mystery.

Its just giving off the vibe that some people both on the dev team and at paradox are not satisfied with the game and while it will likely be a hit barring it being a buggy fucking mess its not going to live up to the nostalgia and world building of the first game.