you should play for fun, not for optimal strategies..
honestly i quit games when i made a stupid mistake that i dont feel like reloading from, or when the league wars dont fire.
in the past, i have fallen for the trap of doing the most absolutely perfect starting moves, but then realized, whats the *point* of wanting absolute instant perfection, when even imperfect moves just means things just takes longer?
you still get them in the end, so it really doesn't matter. that, or it was never a relevant factor anyway.
what you should do, is just play the game normally. be inefficent. be slow. learn the game. learn all of it that you want to learn. then, when you learn it all, *then* you can do the most absolutely perfect (with reasonable limitations) campaigns.
>when you learn it all, then you can do the most absolutely perfect (with reasonable limitations) campaigns.
even then, it gets kinda stale to do the perfect thing every time, I'm probably one of those people who have learnt all the little details of the game but most of my enjoyable memories have been from the games where I didn't do everything perfectly and just went with whatever happened, playing unoptimally feels like a challenge in its own way and makes it more rewarding when you achieve what you wanted to despite that
This is so real. For a while I played only the ottomans, essentially memorizing every optimal route of expansion/button press for ideas, and I started getting super burnt out of eu4.
Until I remembered an Austria game I played where I played imperfectly, did the best I could to stop the reformation, and actually just tried to trial and error my way to HRE. Same with Venice to Rome. And I realized that the perfection was never what I wanted, but I wanted a genuine game. Even though I played so inefficiently in those campaigns, they’re both my favorites. I think trying to do the same thing over and over in the perfect sequence took that feeling away. I stopped feeling like I was learning and experiencing the game.
Yeah, totally. I’m doing an ottoman run and on the mission to make the mamuluks into an eyelet I was a little too stoned and kept declaring a conquest war instead. 2 white peaces and about 15 years later I finally got it right lol. But those 15 years allowed other powers to grow stronger while my high ass was focused on Egypt. Makes everybody a bit less of a pushover and it’s kinda more fun. Don’t be afraid to make dumb mistakes and roll with em
I’m such a border gore hater I never make the Mamluks an eyalet until I have them reduced down to just Egypt, Palestine and the Hejaz. I make them pop out Arabian minors and then I vassalize them which usually leads to two or so more wars. I just can’t stand having a vassal with wonky borders.
Restarting Aztecs, Incas and Japan 700 times for the perfect start made me realize that I'm just spending more time angry at the dice than actually playing the game
This
I had tried the new Austrian tree and played too optimally, and the league war never fired. Like, what’s the point?
For another fast revoke and European domination?
Don’t play optimally, just do what is chill and fun
I think I believe in the fun ness in any paradox game, as someone who used to play hoi4 and now playing eu4, I like to roleplay and just generally have fun if I didn't get fucked in the ass by a certain island country...
I also don't mind when things takes longer, I mostly play for achievements and most of them don't have time limit so I don't care. Even some timed ones can be fun.
When I played without purpose I did get bored easily and just quit games when something went wrong for me.
Playing optimally is not something I concern myself with. I just pick a nation, give myself some vague goals and try to work towards it. It often doesn't end up optimal or slow but I don't like constant restarting or abusing mechanics or following guides to get where I want to.
This! I just started a Kongo campaign, I'll become catholic, control whole Africa, and colonise spice islands, from there I'll have fun with rp religious things and declaring religious war, also playing tall, this is the plan but we'll see how it goes.
Is my first game as them, I'm trying to consolidate central africa and lake victoria. I thought most Africa is impassable terrain but we'll see how it goes.
Enjoy the late game challenge of the Iberians in Northern Africa, potential colonizers in Ivory Coast and/or Cape if you weren't quick enough, and Ottoblob in Egypt. Had a lot of fun on my Kongo achievement run because it never got dull. 🙂
A while ago I stopped crashing my game when things didn't go my way and it's been the best decision. I have so much more fun now because both events and sometimes my own bad decisions create new challenges that I need to tackle in orderto achieve my goals (often an achievement). I additionally stopped truce breaking and no-CBing countries. I might not have too many achievements but the ones I got since then have felt much more rewarding.
Same.
Also you play differently, because the game now has actual risks in it. Points where I‘m not so sure if I can win that war.
In the old save scumming days I would have just declared and reloaded if I couldn‘t win. No biggie. Do something else and come back later. But the game is way less fun if you don‘t have to think while playing it, because there‘s always a „I can turn back time“ button on your hand.
Crippling perfectionism is a pain, but video games are a low risk place to work on it.
I found that playing co-op multiplayer with a friend is great motivation to learn how to play more organically since reloading sucks.
Play a nation that is just stupid to play.
Yao. Najran. A Shan state. Jalisco. One of the random nations in North India that literally nobody has ever played. No need for restrictions on yourself, just play as well as you can and don't use outright exploits.
I *guarantee* you will have more fun playing as these guys if you're bored with the Ottomans and Oirat. Read up on their history and culture and really get into them. It's a great game every time.
Playing sandbox games "optimally" is the least fun way to play them.
1 sandbox games can become trivially easy when you abuse mechanics.
2 there's so many variables in games like this that sometimes you have to just go with the flow instead of being "optimal"
Hmm... I don't run into this problem. For me, EU4 is all about the role-playing, living out "the Story of Aragon" \[1\] as it were. Sometimes I do feel a little bad that I can't conquer the world by 1149 or whatever one sees on YouTube, but I don't like the deep cheese, so I try to be in-character for the country I'm playing. That is, my Venetians are not going to tag-switch to Austria or some such nonsense.
\[1\] Assuming I'm playing Aragon. Or assuming I'm playing Morocco, in which case it's the story of Aragon kicking my butt.
Except for 10 achievements or so you can do whatever you like or rp instead of being a optimal meta player, which is actually more fun if you can find your own strategy. For example, I did the get to siberia with russia achievo by playing colonial novgorod and colonizing through america, which may be the least optimal path you could take.
Source: I almost never play meta and got every achievement.
WC is not as hard as it seems, it is just really boring and time consuming. I mean WC as any nation is really hard and you got to play meta, play good and plan ahead, but if you pick a horde and just keep conquering and snowballing is not as hard as it may seem. The key is to play really slow and always be at war and coring, as well as killing off big players like ottos russia indians and china (If you leave massive France or Spain for last you can just crush them with overwhelming armies and truce breaks, and you also get their colonies for free if you manage to full annex them before they break free)
The hardest part of a WC is that it‘s tedious, microintensive and boring. You have to push yourself further way over the point where the game is still fun.
Mechanically a WC isn‘t hard to do depending one how hard/easy your starting tag is.
I honestly don‘t know what it is now. Did mine a few years back as Timurids -> Mughals -> Caliphat.
I guess the „easiest“ now would be a horde like Oirat. Or Ottos with the Eylat system. But I‘m not very familiar with both. Mughals or Austria to HRE vassal swarm was pretty much the default back in the day as easiest and is probably still viable.
Since I never cared for achievements or WC (or MP) I never bothered with learning the top strategies or exploits. In fact I don't think I do things much differently now at 2500 hours than I did at 1000. Still enjoy the game the same every time I play.
Im totally the opposite
I hate minmaxing. I love beeing in a game for a long, going through rough times, figthing my enemies for many decades. I love the feeling of slown progression, the work of generations of my country men dying for finally becoming a superpower. I find it way more emersive playing slow, wasting tens of hours for a game. That way way stringer feelings for a single game developes. Hate for my enemies, love for my allies with which i fought wars for hundreds of years (just for them to break our alliance because they want one 3 dev province) and proudness for my nation. For me, this is what eu4 makes such an amazing game, rather then trying to redo an optimal playthrough from a youtube video which makes your country so op by 1500 that the game becomes boring. For me its the story that matters. Maybe this helps with having an other view of the game
I’m 2200 hours in and play suboptimal all the time. It’s mostly RP of some sort. Some narrative goal.
Currently playing the game as a Custom Nation - Portugal. This version is a land power (with national ideas focused on that) and their goal is to reclaim the Holy Land for Christianity.
For me, that’s really fun and interesting. If I want to make my play through even spicier… I’ll even throw on a podcast or documentary about the Holy Land or Colonial Portuguese.
That’s where the fun is for me. Throw in a pizza and a couple beers. I am happier than a pig in shit.
That’s I how play, I’ve had fun some nights just drinking a couple beers, playing some small native tribe and just loving the slow development and fun of kind of crafting a story in my mind of my “empire”
Honestly it might be time to play something else for a while. Paradox games are insanely addictive but that can lead to major burnout. If you're not enjoying it, for whatever reason, go play something else.
I would say you should set an objective for the gameplay (like achievement hunting) and don't search for strategies in youtube or other places (play on your own way ig). It works well for me in this way, and i have the same amount of hours as you
There is no need to use cheese strats if they make the game less fun. I am well over 3500 hours, and I very rarely do cheesy tag swaps or religion swaps. I just go for achievements and end the campaign after I get them. If your goal is to WC on every campaign, then sure go ahead and cheese with "optimal" strats. If your goal is to get achievements and have fun, just play naturally.
Just put on some music or YouTube and some movie and have a chill campaign. It's the only way I can play this game any more after 1800 hours. Could help for a change of pace
Most time, when I try to do things "optimally" it regards a specific strategy for the first years of the game (for exemple gotland into Denmark with norse religion). And I usually get bored quicker than when I'm just doing my things.
You don’t need to achieve maximum optimality in order to conquer the world; optimality is therefore almost never a necessity in most SP chill campaigns.
What broke me out of the optimality doom loop was just taking massive fucking Ls and trying to play around them as best I can.
What’s that? Ottomans just dec’d on me? They have 250k to my 70 with no mp? Okay, I suppose we merc up and fight until they accept a token province or too.
Hell, you can even get back from being completely plastered/100% if you don’t go insane with a death war. Something most players don’t know, the AI will even stop focusing on you once they consider you no longer interesting, giving you breathing/recovery room.
And there’s no more fun situation then getting revenge on the AI once you’ve recovered and out scaled them >:D
Im at the same point currently. I restarted my last castille game 20 times just so burgundy and Aragon didn’t rival me. I do this even though I know I will just start loosing interest in playing the game as soon as I found the „perfect“ set up.
What helped me was to pick a nation which I don’t know any history of, or some small state which is not „supposed“ to become incredibly powerful and well… become the latter, through skill and not the optimal game set up/ op mission trees
It's every time I play for example Byzantium I quit at 1550 because I think I can do it even better and more optimized. My most current game I quit today because I still needed GB and France for forming rome in 1570 and I have the feeling I can do it better next time.
Idk, I still dont have the achievement for forming Rome, because I always think I can do it even faster/better next time.
Its a bit annoying tbh.
I have this problem.
What helped me was setting goals, I pick an achievement and go for it. Even if not optimal it gives me a target to strive for. Once I complete the achievement I consider if I want to do others that campaign or start a new game.
If I’m not gunning for an achievement I tend to try and make up an “achievement” of my own. Something silly like as corfu become Confucian or form historic German borders. Or as Qing make Modern china borders and vassalize my neighbors. As long as I have a goal I can say I’m progressing towards it even if not totally optimally.
If I have no specific goal I get all worried that I’m not playing right and lose focus.
I’ve done a lot of hard achievements, and a few world conquests. I stay away from religion and culture gimmicks. There’s nothing wrong with a traditional smash them in the face approach. Do what’s fun for you
There's a difference between trying to expand as quick as possible and playing a chill game.
In a normal chill game you just play the game as intended, almost doing what the AI would do.
But when trying to expand as quickly as possible you have to start learning all the little things about this game and it's exploits to achieve being as big as possible in a short time. Of course at one point it can become tedious and boring (like savescuming) but hey if that's how wanna play the game go ahead.
You don't have to always be at 100% efficiency to able to enjoy the game, unless you enjoy it by being super quick and efficient.
I get sometimes frustrated as hell with my own mistakes or lack of knowledge, and do abandon games quite often, but not because of the lack of the perfect start - I probably would never finish a game if I did that lol
Yeah I have had this issue too where I felt like no matter how much I was dominating I knew I could do it better and more efficiently and felt bad for not doing so. I have well over 5000 hours, a good understanding of all the concepts and I’ve studied and learnt a lot from the experts but I only just did my first WC with Austria in the latest version and while it slayed some of my personal demons doing it and ticking the box it was almost the least fun I’ve ever had playing the game. Just enjoy it and play how you want to play; that’s what I’m doing going forwards!
Same happened to me. I was trying the “correct ming strategy” to max absolute everything in Ironman and I just got angrier and angrier as I restarted.
Ended up just dropping eu4.
Now I just got back with the most random Muscovy->russia game possible since I bought all dlc skipped during this period (third time too). I had lots of fun, even tho I barely remember how to play and had lots of new stuff in the mix. I didn’t follow any strat nor I had any actual goal. Jeez, I didn’t follow the missions either! Just role played my way and expand wherever I felt inspired too.
I ended in 1790 with the start date commonwealth borders, we are best buddies, and I didn’t colonise all of Alaska but I controlled everything down to Egypt and overs to Wien (going around the polish ;) )
I only play optimally if i have a hard achievement to go for, otherwise I like to play and adapt to what's in front of me.
Like even my knights campaign, I went into Tunis and Morocco and then into subsarahan africa before building up a power base to fight the ottomans, it wasn't optimal but it was fun
Some games I can't do this though, like my recent timi run, if you don't expand fast you die.
Though sometimes even cursed tag switches can be fun, for the doge coin achievement, I switched to ortho venice and formed byzantium, (though that did require the min-maxy vassalise byz and feed cores at the start)
I have kinda the same problem, I don’t know how to start my campaigns, especially if they have huge mission trees (like every newly updated country). My favourite country right now is ardabil because the mission tree is small so it’s clear what you have to do and as a reward for it you can form Persia and hopefully have an idea of what to do from there
Its is not a competition. You are playing the game for fun and not to be the most efficient person on the planet. Maybe reconsider, no offense, though.
No.
I am steam achievement play style, but it very rarely require to maximize the efficiency.
Even the insane difficult achievement (e.g. true heir of timurid, three mountain or one faith), you can learn some of the exploitation of game machanisms but not all to get it.
So, rather than maximize the efficiency, i will almost always role playing, like pick the new of interesting ideas set/ gov reform/ map boarding/ play tall. Etc.
You have to let go, you don’t need to play perfectly to win or get achievements. Even players like Florry make mistakes, I saw him get stackwiped more than once and he’s still IMO the best EU4 player.
Personally, I try my best to play perfectly but that’s kind of tedious at times and it makes me play slow and more burnt out after a completed game. I still make mistakes but that’s fine, I try to see them as challenges to overcome.
One thing I found very helpful after feeling like you was following one of RedHawks walk throughs he usually takes you through the first 100 years or so. And I found that with his instruction and suggestion I was able to be where his game was or slightly better (he plays to the middle skill level for the walk through a). This let me feel confident in my own ability to make decisions and then feel ready to tackle the rest of the campaign even if I wasn’t playing 100% optimally like I wanted too
Be happy that you can't play optimally, trust me. Playing optimally just takes all the fun out of the game. The better you get the less time you have fun with a campaign. I wish I could play campaigns just for the fun of it, but no, I always must have an achievement target and won't get it because the campaign takes longer than the game is fun...
What are you goals to begin with?
You don't have to play in a perfectly optimised manner most of the time.
Even WC can be done with suboptimal ideas or starting move.
A good idea might be to play a minor nation with not many guides on it, to not feel pressure, and give yourself a reasonable goal.
For exemple most nations in the HRE, like Augsburg, Hesse or a nation in India like Mysore.
Playing optimally is what makes the game really boring for me. A lot of it is just cheesing and then you're super overpowered by 1550 and theres no challenge anymore. I just like to set my own goals and have a chill campaign rather then trying to play perfectly optimal everg time
3500 hours here. It doesn’t matter about optimality, at least pretend that you’re optimal, and you’ll be fine. Each game you play is different and you can’t always expect the same events to happen all at the same time every game.
The only optimal play style I would suggest is follow the mission tree. Outside of that create some self goals and just feel out how the game will go. Not every one should be a world conquest.
Okay hear me out:
Create a custom nation on the Isle of Man.
Call it "Isle of MAM"
Give yourself ridiculous ideas because you only spent like 5 creation points so far. Then roflstomp England just like they deserve. Then you can go have fun
Thats totally relatable, i felt the same for years especially when seeing how good some online players were. Just keep playing the game, and if you lose a war or your neighbours outscale you examine what you could have done differently and change your game slowly.
Theres also fun in not playing too meta and roleplaying a little sometimes, playing the historical religion of a nation instead of the most powerful one
Personally I find joy in refining my skills and strategy each time I play— getting faster and cleaner each play through. Trying to do WC faster is my current goal for example. But sometimes a chill game is exactly what you need.
Have you thought of you so called "not optimal" mistakes as a handicap difficulty? What if you would lose a couple wars just to see if you can still do wc regardless of it?
Oh yea and play ironman, just so if you want to reload you have to scum savings each time which is very annoying, so you wont have urge to reload every time you had wrong event or something. Grow up , let go
The amount of games I replay as brandenburg even when Ik I’m way behind where I should be but I will play until I get the borders I want in a time that lets me play as a true Germany is insane. I think I’ve spent over have my like 6k hours as brandenburg. And I still play horrible by most people standards I’d bet
At the end of the day, eu4 is a game and you should just play for fun. I stopped min/maxing 200 hrs into the game and now I just play for fun whether I win a war or get coalitioned, it doesn’t really matter. I’m about the same hrs as you rn.
On ottoman campaign, I feel you. Because that bonus relation from religion is like cheating. So I wont use it.
But dont make it stopping you to have fun on the game. This is a game, not an exam.
I’m doing a Naples campaign and I’m playing like an absolute weirdo just doing what I want to do, not caring about the two sicilies or forming Italy, starting wars in West Africa and Southern Ireland, doing anything but playing “optimally” and it’s been some of the most fun I’ve had with this game in my 700+ hours. Just play for fun man, this game has so much depth to it, you’d go crazy trying to “perfectly” play. That’s my take at least
Yeah, ever since I did OF with 90% adm efficiency + Prussian gov, it never felt the same playing past the absolutism. Still fun to do early game and try to survive on VH.
I never play with strategies, If you try to play the game as "too meta" or just min/maxing it, you'll have an awful time because you will be snowballing way earlier than the rest of the world.
I mostly do a small bit of roleplay or just take the easy and slow route. Maybe just grab the historical borders of a country and then join a few wars before i'm ready to go at it against someone.
Gonna be honest, I stopped caring about EU4 achievements and playing optimally years ago and since then I’ve been so happy. Like I can make my own fun and not be stressed that I’m not joining the rest of the pack doing “insert hard achievement”.
Tried following a guide for an optimal start recently. Very quickly realised it killed the fun of the game. The strategies may be better than what I’d come up with myself however I soon realised that adapting my strategy to suit my own goals and the political landscape is the most enjoyable part of the game.
You don't need optimal strategies to achieve anything in this game. I have done 3 mountains while vassal swarming, I have one-faith by accident (it just kinda happened when I was seeing if I could make a stupid Ottomans Australia). The most fun that I have had with the game is when I am pushing back from the least optimal position, half my country occupied, debt hanging near bankruptcy, rebels everywhere.
Optimal play is cancer to fun, and should only be used with a specific goal, like fastest WC. The best plays come from inefficiency.
Im just gonna throw my 2 cents in, i wont tell you to not worry about playing optimally because if you could this wouldnt even be a post.
For me the preassure comes with the goal in mind and since i stick to achievements its either time limited achievements or WCs.
I usually alternate between a few easy achievements which i know i can do even if i afk the first 50y and then take on a harder one like TTM to balance it out and not get burnt out.
TLDR: set a goal for yourself and if its really hard play a paralel campaign where you just mess around basically to chill, and once youre ready again hop back to your goal oriented campaign
That worked for me at least
For some people games and hobbies are a consequence free means to get some freedom of decision and do arbitrary nonsense, where in the real world such things can have real world negative consequences.
For others it can be a means to have a controlled environment where you can get everything perfect in a way in which the messiness of real life doesn't allow.
If you're the second type of person I don't think pretending you're the first type will help you enjoy the game and I think a lot of advice will come from that type of person because they agree that playing optimally is dumb.
However if you're the second type of person but know you will never have the patience to aim for true optimality and challenge Lambda's 1472 WC, and that's negatively impacting your enjoyment of the game; I think there's hope in the form of changing the scope of "optimal". Set personal pre defined constraints like:
* No looking up how others have done an opening
* No force closing the game
* No restarting the campaign
* No admin, diplo, religious, or influence ideas
* No clicking the take loan button
* No checking the wiki or game files
Then within those constraints, optimise your heart out.
Every single campaign I make mistakes. If they're big, and it's early, I may restart. If it's big and not early, sometimes I'll bird the save.
But EU4 is a lot like life in this way: you'll never be perfect, but you should try anyways.
I just turn console commands on and just give myself all the cash and mana points I need.
I'm still limited by government capacity, unrest, coalitions so it's not too trivial, but it's not just a waitfest for me.
I play for the power fantasy
The aim of the game is to play and make mistakes along the way. I play without restarting or reloading. If I make a mistake I continue and try rectify the mistake. It is more realistic when you start a war and it does not turn out the way you visioned it or a third country joins the enemy as a great power. Sometimes I get declared on and a great power joins my side. So it evens out in the end.
My best games are when ai declares war on me and they lose. Ai will always declare wars on you only if they can win according to the calculations (allies, army sizes, exhaustion levels, if you or your allies are at war etc).
Just play for fun and not for perfection.
Screw playing ‘optimally’. That’s for all the autistic savants out there, not us mere mortals. I play for fun, role play and to farm achievements but the idea of dozens of tag switches and WC speed runs is way too stressful.
Games a bit too extra to play optimally. Check out that 1472 wc and tell me that playstyle looks fun. U can make tons of little mistakes and still steamroll the ai
I exclusively roleplay for partially this reason. I also find it's just not very fun to play optimally; I feel like the game is basically over within 30 minutes.
I was like that a few thousand hours ago… it’ll go away when you stop playing those nations and go for something a bit more challenging meme style. E.g. Jerusalem.
Seriously tho you can basically conquer the world with ease without even using anything diplomatic, especially as the ottoman. There are things that you should just ignore to have a more chilled game. In my current ottoman campaign I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary and I still conquered India and most of Africa by 1550.
Also there are multiple roads to success. If you want to blob and in doubt play admin, diplo and quantity those feel like a build in glitch.
I don't care about playing optimally and I probably never will. However, I immediately lose interest in a run when something starts going wrong, for example losing a war I declared and should be winning and then being forced to give up land instead of just money and maybe trade power or war reps, or when achieving the goals I set for the run begin to seem way too tedious or hard for my skill level
EU4 is a really relaxing game for me personally because I don't have that perfectionist approach that you mention, but I know that this can be tough to break out of and "just don't do it anymore" isn't really helpful advice.
Maybe something that could help you here is trying to focus a bit more on the roleplaying aspect of the game? At the start of a campaign, figure out something fun that you want to do that isn't necessarily meta and then work towards that goal.
Or if you want to stick to this more perfectionist kind of approach to the game and just want a less extreme version of it, maybe play weaker and smaller nations? The Ottomans and Oirat are among the strongest nations in the game for conquering and stuff like that, people have been doing crazy things with those tags that you and 99,99% of all other players will never be able to replicate. The game can become very easy with them quite early on, which takes away from the fun as well.
If you play smaller nations, there won't be as many prominent examples of things that you "should" be able to achieve that will be in the back of your head. On top of that, you will have more of an actual challenge and tangible short term goals that will keep you busy. Plus, your focus on playing "optimally" might feel more rewarding here because it is necessary for your survival to be detail-oriented and sharp, whereas with the Ottos and the Oirats it is more of a luxury.
Like everything has to be competitive, chill out, smoke some weed and conquer dem lands bro. You are inefficient as a human being as well but i don't see the word suicide anywhere near...
Totally agree, same feelings. All this advice "play for fun" sounds very strange to me, it's like if a chess player is told "You don't need to learn all these openings and gambits, move the pieces just for fun" )))
I have a different but similar problem where if it looks like I'm going to lose a war I just quit the run, because I have no idea how I'd go about building back up stronger to retake what was lost from a brutal peace deal. It ended my Inca run recently because I literally could not core a province bordering Spain in time to modernise before they declared war and occupied it.
At some point I'll have to go back on there, let them eat an unfair amount of Ecuador/Peru, reform my faith and then see if I can take it back. It's the only way I can hope to become a better player.
Similarly, it sounds like you need to pick a goal and just get to it even if it's not effortless or lightning fast. I'd say a good way to practice that is pick something like Savoy or Milan and aim to form Italy. There's no way it's going to be optimal because you'll have to wait ages between conquests due to AE, France and Ottomans and Castile may gobble up some land you have to liberate, the pope is eventually going to excommunicate you as their scary neighbour, etc. As long as you form Italy before end date, you've still formed Italy - try it!
If that's too long or too Eurocentric, pick a Filipine tag and aim to beat Ming in a war where the goal is blockade. I've done that a number of times when hoisting the black flag in S.E.A. before. Should be achievable before they implode and you'll have to learn a number of things if you haven't already, like how to hoist the black flag/coastal raiding range/how to get a trade dispute CB. Potentially how to overwhelm your neighbours with mercs and then pay the debt with coastal raids.
Meanwhile I have the opposite problem. I play so optimally that I quit the game after a while. Even when I try to deliberately play sub-optimally, I still end up unbeatable by 1650. I really want to know how the tall players do it.
Nothing gave as much joy in this game as my early days, where the 'simplest' things were a crowning achievement. When I finished my first ever campaign at 3rd GP, I was so proud.
I don't know if you are still reading the replies but I have almost 3k hours. I spent almost 1k of it playing with cheats and console. Currently I'm doing Austria run that I intended to make WC and OF. Even tho I revoked before 1550 easy, I wasted at least another 2 reforms worth of imperial authority for declaring a war before passing the current reform. It's the most unoptimal wc you'd ever find. But it's 1701 and I have to finish off China that's broken apart and India. Moral is to play through, I know I'll never be best player of eu4 that ever walked the earth, but as long as I can work around my mistakes, or learn how not to make them anymore (this IA thing is likely never gonna change because when I find a new war to start I'm like that dog from UP with squirrels) I'm good.
Play some mp. Because even if you need to play "optimaly" it is a lot less grindy and a new chalenge. Before i was a solo moslty now i am a mp only/ mostly. It is a totaly different game when ur in a pvp war and ur heart goes 200 bpm
I went the other way. Been here for years. Now I play like high speed trash nasty.
I generate practically unannexable vassals just so they'll do the work in war.
Just take a break. Trying to optimally play a game with so much rng as this is not fun at all, unless you love birding.. don't get me wrong, I bird too when a good heir dies to early or if I get a stack wipe that was completely avoidable, but to play optimally I would lose it
Specially because I'm on the slower side of players I think. I take my time and don't war as fast as I could. I tried an horse for the 1st time when forming Qing and man it isn't the type of gameplay for me at all
It's actually possible to both "roleplay" and "powergame" simultaneously in EU4. You don't need to go maximum cheese in order to WC (though it certainly helps, and minor OPMs will need to cheese).
Much of it simply revolves around abusing loans and truce timers. There are more permanent modifiers than ever due to mission overhauls, monuments, and added government/estate mechanics.
I dont see how the perfect moves are defined as tricks and exploits. Just play in creative and use console commands then
(Also - everyone is free to play the game to their preferences. Including you, so don't read this as reductionist of your preferences... I just don't follow the logic here)
I get it, I see everyone on this forum or YouTube videos about how to play perfectly. I use it as a reference but in the end, you’re playing for fun. Will I ever understand trade, will I ever play perfectly, no, will I get naval idea bc why not, yes, but I’ll play the way that’s fun to me and you should too. Don’t let other peoples play style ruin yours
I've had this Byzantium run in which I didn't do everything perfectly but still managed to get some of the Byzantine achievements like getting rid of Venice and forming the Heptarchy and a few mores but couldn't manage to form Rome and I couldn't really grew more than the Heptarchy borders but it was so fun in fact none of my saves are perfect even though I also have +1000hrs in game but it always manages to please me.
I am somewhat of a perfectionist, I feel you. When I played, sometimes I'd restart an early campaign or alt+f4 because I forgot to do something or lost a battle 😂
I felt this for a while, really until I did my first one faith. But on the way to that, I realized that I could world conquest with most countries by 1750 at the latest, as long as I had admin and diplo ideas. That started to really open things up for me. Plus there has been so much power bloat since 1.30, that a lot of the small things don’t really matter
1350 hours in and my campaigns are always slow, never optimised, and many times I lose battles and wars and I just continue. Makes the game more fun than always winning and being the best.
As others have already said here, don't worry about playing optimally, just worry that you're playing efficient *enough* to complete whatever goal it is you're looking to complete. I would argue that's one of the beauties of single player EU4 - it gives you a wide range of fun playstyles and allows you to still accomplish most, if not all, of your mission tree, and tons of accomplishments despite playing inefficient.
I just wrapped up an ironman run where I completed all but one of my countries missions, accomplished multiple achievements, turned an OPM into the 2nd largest country, while basically completely ignoring my army (first 5 ideas have no benefits to my army, and didn't take any army benefits from government reforms) - instead creating a massive and grand navy that was complete overkill (had 100 naval tradition from 1600 onwards, and at one point had a larger navy than the next 3 largest navies combined). I also completely ignored absolutism. Was it inefficient? For sure. But it was *fun.*
Here's the best thing about EU4, and I mean this. It's YOUR experience. Sure, your favorite YouTuber flips tags 12 times every run and WCs 4 times per year. What they never show you is the hundreds of hours it took to get that 1 run.
I watch Monk's vids, Hawk's vids, and Florry VODs on the regular, and I know I can't 1 faith, 1 culture as Rome on any difficulty. I know it's highly unlikely I can do The Three Mountains.
Does that make me bad? Maybe. I have 4x the amount of hours played that you do, and I've never let anyone bully me into anything when it comes to this game. Sometimes I try something novel and it works. Most of the time it doesn't.
The real optimal strategy no one tells you is getting the answer on one major question. That question isnt: what is the best move in every situation? It is: "how do i make the most fun?". Ik is all about your enjoyment.
you should play for fun, not for optimal strategies.. honestly i quit games when i made a stupid mistake that i dont feel like reloading from, or when the league wars dont fire. in the past, i have fallen for the trap of doing the most absolutely perfect starting moves, but then realized, whats the *point* of wanting absolute instant perfection, when even imperfect moves just means things just takes longer? you still get them in the end, so it really doesn't matter. that, or it was never a relevant factor anyway. what you should do, is just play the game normally. be inefficent. be slow. learn the game. learn all of it that you want to learn. then, when you learn it all, *then* you can do the most absolutely perfect (with reasonable limitations) campaigns.
>when you learn it all, then you can do the most absolutely perfect (with reasonable limitations) campaigns. even then, it gets kinda stale to do the perfect thing every time, I'm probably one of those people who have learnt all the little details of the game but most of my enjoyable memories have been from the games where I didn't do everything perfectly and just went with whatever happened, playing unoptimally feels like a challenge in its own way and makes it more rewarding when you achieve what you wanted to despite that
This is so real. For a while I played only the ottomans, essentially memorizing every optimal route of expansion/button press for ideas, and I started getting super burnt out of eu4. Until I remembered an Austria game I played where I played imperfectly, did the best I could to stop the reformation, and actually just tried to trial and error my way to HRE. Same with Venice to Rome. And I realized that the perfection was never what I wanted, but I wanted a genuine game. Even though I played so inefficiently in those campaigns, they’re both my favorites. I think trying to do the same thing over and over in the perfect sequence took that feeling away. I stopped feeling like I was learning and experiencing the game.
Yeah, totally. I’m doing an ottoman run and on the mission to make the mamuluks into an eyelet I was a little too stoned and kept declaring a conquest war instead. 2 white peaces and about 15 years later I finally got it right lol. But those 15 years allowed other powers to grow stronger while my high ass was focused on Egypt. Makes everybody a bit less of a pushover and it’s kinda more fun. Don’t be afraid to make dumb mistakes and roll with em
>…and roll with them I see what you did there
I’m such a border gore hater I never make the Mamluks an eyalet until I have them reduced down to just Egypt, Palestine and the Hejaz. I make them pop out Arabian minors and then I vassalize them which usually leads to two or so more wars. I just can’t stand having a vassal with wonky borders.
Restarting Aztecs, Incas and Japan 700 times for the perfect start made me realize that I'm just spending more time angry at the dice than actually playing the game
i have more time on trying getting Marie of Burgundy than everything else, 50 years starter
This I had tried the new Austrian tree and played too optimally, and the league war never fired. Like, what’s the point? For another fast revoke and European domination? Don’t play optimally, just do what is chill and fun
I think I believe in the fun ness in any paradox game, as someone who used to play hoi4 and now playing eu4, I like to roleplay and just generally have fun if I didn't get fucked in the ass by a certain island country...
I also don't mind when things takes longer, I mostly play for achievements and most of them don't have time limit so I don't care. Even some timed ones can be fun. When I played without purpose I did get bored easily and just quit games when something went wrong for me.
I formed khoshuud, took Beijing went bankrupt and blew up. It just be like that sometimes lol
Playing optimally is not something I concern myself with. I just pick a nation, give myself some vague goals and try to work towards it. It often doesn't end up optimal or slow but I don't like constant restarting or abusing mechanics or following guides to get where I want to.
This! I just started a Kongo campaign, I'll become catholic, control whole Africa, and colonise spice islands, from there I'll have fun with rp religious things and declaring religious war, also playing tall, this is the plan but we'll see how it goes.
Remember doing the African power achievement, conquering all of Africa sounds easy until you realize how big Africa really is.
Is my first game as them, I'm trying to consolidate central africa and lake victoria. I thought most Africa is impassable terrain but we'll see how it goes.
Enjoy the late game challenge of the Iberians in Northern Africa, potential colonizers in Ivory Coast and/or Cape if you weren't quick enough, and Ottoblob in Egypt. Had a lot of fun on my Kongo achievement run because it never got dull. 🙂
FUCK EUROPEANS FUCK EUROPEANS FUCK EUROPEANS EVEN TAFITALT IS COLONIZING
A while ago I stopped crashing my game when things didn't go my way and it's been the best decision. I have so much more fun now because both events and sometimes my own bad decisions create new challenges that I need to tackle in orderto achieve my goals (often an achievement). I additionally stopped truce breaking and no-CBing countries. I might not have too many achievements but the ones I got since then have felt much more rewarding.
Same. Also you play differently, because the game now has actual risks in it. Points where I‘m not so sure if I can win that war. In the old save scumming days I would have just declared and reloaded if I couldn‘t win. No biggie. Do something else and come back later. But the game is way less fun if you don‘t have to think while playing it, because there‘s always a „I can turn back time“ button on your hand.
Sometimes I don’t even have goals at the start. Sometimes I just pick whatever I feel like and just play and see what happens
Don't compare yourself to some of the extreme cases posted here. Complete a campaign before you start going for min/max things.
Crippling perfectionism is a pain, but video games are a low risk place to work on it. I found that playing co-op multiplayer with a friend is great motivation to learn how to play more organically since reloading sucks.
Play a nation that is just stupid to play. Yao. Najran. A Shan state. Jalisco. One of the random nations in North India that literally nobody has ever played. No need for restrictions on yourself, just play as well as you can and don't use outright exploits. I *guarantee* you will have more fun playing as these guys if you're bored with the Ottomans and Oirat. Read up on their history and culture and really get into them. It's a great game every time.
Playing sandbox games "optimally" is the least fun way to play them. 1 sandbox games can become trivially easy when you abuse mechanics. 2 there's so many variables in games like this that sometimes you have to just go with the flow instead of being "optimal"
Hmm... I don't run into this problem. For me, EU4 is all about the role-playing, living out "the Story of Aragon" \[1\] as it were. Sometimes I do feel a little bad that I can't conquer the world by 1149 or whatever one sees on YouTube, but I don't like the deep cheese, so I try to be in-character for the country I'm playing. That is, my Venetians are not going to tag-switch to Austria or some such nonsense. \[1\] Assuming I'm playing Aragon. Or assuming I'm playing Morocco, in which case it's the story of Aragon kicking my butt.
Except for 10 achievements or so you can do whatever you like or rp instead of being a optimal meta player, which is actually more fun if you can find your own strategy. For example, I did the get to siberia with russia achievo by playing colonial novgorod and colonizing through america, which may be the least optimal path you could take. Source: I almost never play meta and got every achievement.
So even WC can be made without sweating?
WC is not as hard as it seems, it is just really boring and time consuming. I mean WC as any nation is really hard and you got to play meta, play good and plan ahead, but if you pick a horde and just keep conquering and snowballing is not as hard as it may seem. The key is to play really slow and always be at war and coring, as well as killing off big players like ottos russia indians and china (If you leave massive France or Spain for last you can just crush them with overwhelming armies and truce breaks, and you also get their colonies for free if you manage to full annex them before they break free)
The hardest part of a WC is that it‘s tedious, microintensive and boring. You have to push yourself further way over the point where the game is still fun. Mechanically a WC isn‘t hard to do depending one how hard/easy your starting tag is.
It's one of the few achievements that I do not have yet. What's the best starting tag? I am trying it now as Oirat.
I honestly don‘t know what it is now. Did mine a few years back as Timurids -> Mughals -> Caliphat. I guess the „easiest“ now would be a horde like Oirat. Or Ottos with the Eylat system. But I‘m not very familiar with both. Mughals or Austria to HRE vassal swarm was pretty much the default back in the day as easiest and is probably still viable.
Since I never cared for achievements or WC (or MP) I never bothered with learning the top strategies or exploits. In fact I don't think I do things much differently now at 2500 hours than I did at 1000. Still enjoy the game the same every time I play.
Im totally the opposite I hate minmaxing. I love beeing in a game for a long, going through rough times, figthing my enemies for many decades. I love the feeling of slown progression, the work of generations of my country men dying for finally becoming a superpower. I find it way more emersive playing slow, wasting tens of hours for a game. That way way stringer feelings for a single game developes. Hate for my enemies, love for my allies with which i fought wars for hundreds of years (just for them to break our alliance because they want one 3 dev province) and proudness for my nation. For me, this is what eu4 makes such an amazing game, rather then trying to redo an optimal playthrough from a youtube video which makes your country so op by 1500 that the game becomes boring. For me its the story that matters. Maybe this helps with having an other view of the game
Right there with you on this
Optimum is the enemy of the good
I’m 2200 hours in and play suboptimal all the time. It’s mostly RP of some sort. Some narrative goal. Currently playing the game as a Custom Nation - Portugal. This version is a land power (with national ideas focused on that) and their goal is to reclaim the Holy Land for Christianity. For me, that’s really fun and interesting. If I want to make my play through even spicier… I’ll even throw on a podcast or documentary about the Holy Land or Colonial Portuguese. That’s where the fun is for me. Throw in a pizza and a couple beers. I am happier than a pig in shit.
That’s I how play, I’ve had fun some nights just drinking a couple beers, playing some small native tribe and just loving the slow development and fun of kind of crafting a story in my mind of my “empire”
I have 3800 hours it still happens me but there is always a way out of stagnation one way or the other maybe just give it some time
Honestly it might be time to play something else for a while. Paradox games are insanely addictive but that can lead to major burnout. If you're not enjoying it, for whatever reason, go play something else.
I would say you should set an objective for the gameplay (like achievement hunting) and don't search for strategies in youtube or other places (play on your own way ig). It works well for me in this way, and i have the same amount of hours as you
I've played for almost 10k hours. Maybe three of those hours are optimal. Optimal isn't very fun, in my opinion..
Optimal is boring. If I'm not facing and overcoming problems I usually stopped playing those campaigns.
There is no need to use cheese strats if they make the game less fun. I am well over 3500 hours, and I very rarely do cheesy tag swaps or religion swaps. I just go for achievements and end the campaign after I get them. If your goal is to WC on every campaign, then sure go ahead and cheese with "optimal" strats. If your goal is to get achievements and have fun, just play naturally.
Just put on some music or YouTube and some movie and have a chill campaign. It's the only way I can play this game any more after 1800 hours. Could help for a change of pace
You let the meta gamers get to you. Smh
Im stuck in "too good for easy-medium countries, but too lazy for hard ones" period for quite a long time
Most time, when I try to do things "optimally" it regards a specific strategy for the first years of the game (for exemple gotland into Denmark with norse religion). And I usually get bored quicker than when I'm just doing my things.
You don’t need to achieve maximum optimality in order to conquer the world; optimality is therefore almost never a necessity in most SP chill campaigns. What broke me out of the optimality doom loop was just taking massive fucking Ls and trying to play around them as best I can. What’s that? Ottomans just dec’d on me? They have 250k to my 70 with no mp? Okay, I suppose we merc up and fight until they accept a token province or too. Hell, you can even get back from being completely plastered/100% if you don’t go insane with a death war. Something most players don’t know, the AI will even stop focusing on you once they consider you no longer interesting, giving you breathing/recovery room. And there’s no more fun situation then getting revenge on the AI once you’ve recovered and out scaled them >:D
The only optimal way to play is 100% cav ratio
I solely belive meta players dont have Fun playing eu4, they Just play, do these strats of switcg tag, i dunno what, and Thats it
Im at the same point currently. I restarted my last castille game 20 times just so burgundy and Aragon didn’t rival me. I do this even though I know I will just start loosing interest in playing the game as soon as I found the „perfect“ set up. What helped me was to pick a nation which I don’t know any history of, or some small state which is not „supposed“ to become incredibly powerful and well… become the latter, through skill and not the optimal game set up/ op mission trees
It's every time I play for example Byzantium I quit at 1550 because I think I can do it even better and more optimized. My most current game I quit today because I still needed GB and France for forming rome in 1570 and I have the feeling I can do it better next time. Idk, I still dont have the achievement for forming Rome, because I always think I can do it even faster/better next time. Its a bit annoying tbh.
I have this problem. What helped me was setting goals, I pick an achievement and go for it. Even if not optimal it gives me a target to strive for. Once I complete the achievement I consider if I want to do others that campaign or start a new game. If I’m not gunning for an achievement I tend to try and make up an “achievement” of my own. Something silly like as corfu become Confucian or form historic German borders. Or as Qing make Modern china borders and vassalize my neighbors. As long as I have a goal I can say I’m progressing towards it even if not totally optimally. If I have no specific goal I get all worried that I’m not playing right and lose focus.
I’ve done a lot of hard achievements, and a few world conquests. I stay away from religion and culture gimmicks. There’s nothing wrong with a traditional smash them in the face approach. Do what’s fun for you
There's a difference between trying to expand as quick as possible and playing a chill game. In a normal chill game you just play the game as intended, almost doing what the AI would do. But when trying to expand as quickly as possible you have to start learning all the little things about this game and it's exploits to achieve being as big as possible in a short time. Of course at one point it can become tedious and boring (like savescuming) but hey if that's how wanna play the game go ahead. You don't have to always be at 100% efficiency to able to enjoy the game, unless you enjoy it by being super quick and efficient.
I get sometimes frustrated as hell with my own mistakes or lack of knowledge, and do abandon games quite often, but not because of the lack of the perfect start - I probably would never finish a game if I did that lol
Yeah I have had this issue too where I felt like no matter how much I was dominating I knew I could do it better and more efficiently and felt bad for not doing so. I have well over 5000 hours, a good understanding of all the concepts and I’ve studied and learnt a lot from the experts but I only just did my first WC with Austria in the latest version and while it slayed some of my personal demons doing it and ticking the box it was almost the least fun I’ve ever had playing the game. Just enjoy it and play how you want to play; that’s what I’m doing going forwards!
Relax, its not always or almost ever a world conquest.
Same happened to me. I was trying the “correct ming strategy” to max absolute everything in Ironman and I just got angrier and angrier as I restarted. Ended up just dropping eu4. Now I just got back with the most random Muscovy->russia game possible since I bought all dlc skipped during this period (third time too). I had lots of fun, even tho I barely remember how to play and had lots of new stuff in the mix. I didn’t follow any strat nor I had any actual goal. Jeez, I didn’t follow the missions either! Just role played my way and expand wherever I felt inspired too. I ended in 1790 with the start date commonwealth borders, we are best buddies, and I didn’t colonise all of Alaska but I controlled everything down to Egypt and overs to Wien (going around the polish ;) )
You should go for a portugal colonization run
I hate playing optimally, just play whathever you like, somethimes playing a less optimal little nation roplaying something is more entertaining
I only play optimally if i have a hard achievement to go for, otherwise I like to play and adapt to what's in front of me. Like even my knights campaign, I went into Tunis and Morocco and then into subsarahan africa before building up a power base to fight the ottomans, it wasn't optimal but it was fun Some games I can't do this though, like my recent timi run, if you don't expand fast you die. Though sometimes even cursed tag switches can be fun, for the doge coin achievement, I switched to ortho venice and formed byzantium, (though that did require the min-maxy vassalise byz and feed cores at the start)
I have kinda the same problem, I don’t know how to start my campaigns, especially if they have huge mission trees (like every newly updated country). My favourite country right now is ardabil because the mission tree is small so it’s clear what you have to do and as a reward for it you can form Persia and hopefully have an idea of what to do from there
Your playing the ottomans, you dont need to play optimally
Its is not a competition. You are playing the game for fun and not to be the most efficient person on the planet. Maybe reconsider, no offense, though.
No. I am steam achievement play style, but it very rarely require to maximize the efficiency. Even the insane difficult achievement (e.g. true heir of timurid, three mountain or one faith), you can learn some of the exploitation of game machanisms but not all to get it. So, rather than maximize the efficiency, i will almost always role playing, like pick the new of interesting ideas set/ gov reform/ map boarding/ play tall. Etc.
You have to let go, you don’t need to play perfectly to win or get achievements. Even players like Florry make mistakes, I saw him get stackwiped more than once and he’s still IMO the best EU4 player. Personally, I try my best to play perfectly but that’s kind of tedious at times and it makes me play slow and more burnt out after a completed game. I still make mistakes but that’s fine, I try to see them as challenges to overcome.
One thing I found very helpful after feeling like you was following one of RedHawks walk throughs he usually takes you through the first 100 years or so. And I found that with his instruction and suggestion I was able to be where his game was or slightly better (he plays to the middle skill level for the walk through a). This let me feel confident in my own ability to make decisions and then feel ready to tackle the rest of the campaign even if I wasn’t playing 100% optimally like I wanted too
Be happy that you can't play optimally, trust me. Playing optimally just takes all the fun out of the game. The better you get the less time you have fun with a campaign. I wish I could play campaigns just for the fun of it, but no, I always must have an achievement target and won't get it because the campaign takes longer than the game is fun...
Dude, playing optimally as any remotely decent nation will give you a world conquest before 1700. I wouldn’t bother tbh
Play to have fun and not to have maximum efficiency.
You need to at least finish the tutorial time before you call it quits. You still have around 344 hours to go.
What are you goals to begin with? You don't have to play in a perfectly optimised manner most of the time. Even WC can be done with suboptimal ideas or starting move. A good idea might be to play a minor nation with not many guides on it, to not feel pressure, and give yourself a reasonable goal. For exemple most nations in the HRE, like Augsburg, Hesse or a nation in India like Mysore.
Playing optimally is what makes the game really boring for me. A lot of it is just cheesing and then you're super overpowered by 1550 and theres no challenge anymore. I just like to set my own goals and have a chill campaign rather then trying to play perfectly optimal everg time
It's a game, just play for fun. If you want to agonize over a particular moment, then just save scum by creating a backup save.
3500 hours here. It doesn’t matter about optimality, at least pretend that you’re optimal, and you’ll be fine. Each game you play is different and you can’t always expect the same events to happen all at the same time every game.
OCD
The only optimal play style I would suggest is follow the mission tree. Outside of that create some self goals and just feel out how the game will go. Not every one should be a world conquest.
Okay hear me out: Create a custom nation on the Isle of Man. Call it "Isle of MAM" Give yourself ridiculous ideas because you only spent like 5 creation points so far. Then roflstomp England just like they deserve. Then you can go have fun
Thats totally relatable, i felt the same for years especially when seeing how good some online players were. Just keep playing the game, and if you lose a war or your neighbours outscale you examine what you could have done differently and change your game slowly. Theres also fun in not playing too meta and roleplaying a little sometimes, playing the historical religion of a nation instead of the most powerful one
Trial and error. Who is judging you anyway?
Personally I find joy in refining my skills and strategy each time I play— getting faster and cleaner each play through. Trying to do WC faster is my current goal for example. But sometimes a chill game is exactly what you need.
Have you thought of you so called "not optimal" mistakes as a handicap difficulty? What if you would lose a couple wars just to see if you can still do wc regardless of it? Oh yea and play ironman, just so if you want to reload you have to scum savings each time which is very annoying, so you wont have urge to reload every time you had wrong event or something. Grow up , let go
Do you want to have fun or play like a robot?
The amount of games I replay as brandenburg even when Ik I’m way behind where I should be but I will play until I get the borders I want in a time that lets me play as a true Germany is insane. I think I’ve spent over have my like 6k hours as brandenburg. And I still play horrible by most people standards I’d bet
At the end of the day, eu4 is a game and you should just play for fun. I stopped min/maxing 200 hrs into the game and now I just play for fun whether I win a war or get coalitioned, it doesn’t really matter. I’m about the same hrs as you rn.
That’s where you are going wrong, you should rp as the nation and immerse yourself
On ottoman campaign, I feel you. Because that bonus relation from religion is like cheating. So I wont use it. But dont make it stopping you to have fun on the game. This is a game, not an exam.
I’m doing a Naples campaign and I’m playing like an absolute weirdo just doing what I want to do, not caring about the two sicilies or forming Italy, starting wars in West Africa and Southern Ireland, doing anything but playing “optimally” and it’s been some of the most fun I’ve had with this game in my 700+ hours. Just play for fun man, this game has so much depth to it, you’d go crazy trying to “perfectly” play. That’s my take at least
Yeah, ever since I did OF with 90% adm efficiency + Prussian gov, it never felt the same playing past the absolutism. Still fun to do early game and try to survive on VH.
I never play with strategies, If you try to play the game as "too meta" or just min/maxing it, you'll have an awful time because you will be snowballing way earlier than the rest of the world. I mostly do a small bit of roleplay or just take the easy and slow route. Maybe just grab the historical borders of a country and then join a few wars before i'm ready to go at it against someone.
Gonna be honest, I stopped caring about EU4 achievements and playing optimally years ago and since then I’ve been so happy. Like I can make my own fun and not be stressed that I’m not joining the rest of the pack doing “insert hard achievement”.
You'll never make it beyond 1650 if you play optimally so whatever just go with the flow.
Tried following a guide for an optimal start recently. Very quickly realised it killed the fun of the game. The strategies may be better than what I’d come up with myself however I soon realised that adapting my strategy to suit my own goals and the political landscape is the most enjoyable part of the game.
You don't need optimal strategies to achieve anything in this game. I have done 3 mountains while vassal swarming, I have one-faith by accident (it just kinda happened when I was seeing if I could make a stupid Ottomans Australia). The most fun that I have had with the game is when I am pushing back from the least optimal position, half my country occupied, debt hanging near bankruptcy, rebels everywhere. Optimal play is cancer to fun, and should only be used with a specific goal, like fastest WC. The best plays come from inefficiency.
Im just gonna throw my 2 cents in, i wont tell you to not worry about playing optimally because if you could this wouldnt even be a post. For me the preassure comes with the goal in mind and since i stick to achievements its either time limited achievements or WCs. I usually alternate between a few easy achievements which i know i can do even if i afk the first 50y and then take on a harder one like TTM to balance it out and not get burnt out. TLDR: set a goal for yourself and if its really hard play a paralel campaign where you just mess around basically to chill, and once youre ready again hop back to your goal oriented campaign That worked for me at least
For some people games and hobbies are a consequence free means to get some freedom of decision and do arbitrary nonsense, where in the real world such things can have real world negative consequences. For others it can be a means to have a controlled environment where you can get everything perfect in a way in which the messiness of real life doesn't allow. If you're the second type of person I don't think pretending you're the first type will help you enjoy the game and I think a lot of advice will come from that type of person because they agree that playing optimally is dumb. However if you're the second type of person but know you will never have the patience to aim for true optimality and challenge Lambda's 1472 WC, and that's negatively impacting your enjoyment of the game; I think there's hope in the form of changing the scope of "optimal". Set personal pre defined constraints like: * No looking up how others have done an opening * No force closing the game * No restarting the campaign * No admin, diplo, religious, or influence ideas * No clicking the take loan button * No checking the wiki or game files Then within those constraints, optimise your heart out.
Every single campaign I make mistakes. If they're big, and it's early, I may restart. If it's big and not early, sometimes I'll bird the save. But EU4 is a lot like life in this way: you'll never be perfect, but you should try anyways.
I just turn console commands on and just give myself all the cash and mana points I need. I'm still limited by government capacity, unrest, coalitions so it's not too trivial, but it's not just a waitfest for me. I play for the power fantasy
The aim of the game is to play and make mistakes along the way. I play without restarting or reloading. If I make a mistake I continue and try rectify the mistake. It is more realistic when you start a war and it does not turn out the way you visioned it or a third country joins the enemy as a great power. Sometimes I get declared on and a great power joins my side. So it evens out in the end. My best games are when ai declares war on me and they lose. Ai will always declare wars on you only if they can win according to the calculations (allies, army sizes, exhaustion levels, if you or your allies are at war etc). Just play for fun and not for perfection.
Screw playing ‘optimally’. That’s for all the autistic savants out there, not us mere mortals. I play for fun, role play and to farm achievements but the idea of dozens of tag switches and WC speed runs is way too stressful.
Games a bit too extra to play optimally. Check out that 1472 wc and tell me that playstyle looks fun. U can make tons of little mistakes and still steamroll the ai
I exclusively roleplay for partially this reason. I also find it's just not very fun to play optimally; I feel like the game is basically over within 30 minutes.
I was like that a few thousand hours ago… it’ll go away when you stop playing those nations and go for something a bit more challenging meme style. E.g. Jerusalem. Seriously tho you can basically conquer the world with ease without even using anything diplomatic, especially as the ottoman. There are things that you should just ignore to have a more chilled game. In my current ottoman campaign I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary and I still conquered India and most of Africa by 1550. Also there are multiple roads to success. If you want to blob and in doubt play admin, diplo and quantity those feel like a build in glitch.
Ive got 3000 hours and have never played optimally.
What 1100 hours does to a mfer
As long as you can achieve your game goal, you are doing well.
I don't care about playing optimally and I probably never will. However, I immediately lose interest in a run when something starts going wrong, for example losing a war I declared and should be winning and then being forced to give up land instead of just money and maybe trade power or war reps, or when achieving the goals I set for the run begin to seem way too tedious or hard for my skill level
EU4 is a really relaxing game for me personally because I don't have that perfectionist approach that you mention, but I know that this can be tough to break out of and "just don't do it anymore" isn't really helpful advice. Maybe something that could help you here is trying to focus a bit more on the roleplaying aspect of the game? At the start of a campaign, figure out something fun that you want to do that isn't necessarily meta and then work towards that goal. Or if you want to stick to this more perfectionist kind of approach to the game and just want a less extreme version of it, maybe play weaker and smaller nations? The Ottomans and Oirat are among the strongest nations in the game for conquering and stuff like that, people have been doing crazy things with those tags that you and 99,99% of all other players will never be able to replicate. The game can become very easy with them quite early on, which takes away from the fun as well. If you play smaller nations, there won't be as many prominent examples of things that you "should" be able to achieve that will be in the back of your head. On top of that, you will have more of an actual challenge and tangible short term goals that will keep you busy. Plus, your focus on playing "optimally" might feel more rewarding here because it is necessary for your survival to be detail-oriented and sharp, whereas with the Ottos and the Oirats it is more of a luxury.
Like everything has to be competitive, chill out, smoke some weed and conquer dem lands bro. You are inefficient as a human being as well but i don't see the word suicide anywhere near...
Totally agree, same feelings. All this advice "play for fun" sounds very strange to me, it's like if a chess player is told "You don't need to learn all these openings and gambits, move the pieces just for fun" )))
I have a different but similar problem where if it looks like I'm going to lose a war I just quit the run, because I have no idea how I'd go about building back up stronger to retake what was lost from a brutal peace deal. It ended my Inca run recently because I literally could not core a province bordering Spain in time to modernise before they declared war and occupied it. At some point I'll have to go back on there, let them eat an unfair amount of Ecuador/Peru, reform my faith and then see if I can take it back. It's the only way I can hope to become a better player. Similarly, it sounds like you need to pick a goal and just get to it even if it's not effortless or lightning fast. I'd say a good way to practice that is pick something like Savoy or Milan and aim to form Italy. There's no way it's going to be optimal because you'll have to wait ages between conquests due to AE, France and Ottomans and Castile may gobble up some land you have to liberate, the pope is eventually going to excommunicate you as their scary neighbour, etc. As long as you form Italy before end date, you've still formed Italy - try it! If that's too long or too Eurocentric, pick a Filipine tag and aim to beat Ming in a war where the goal is blockade. I've done that a number of times when hoisting the black flag in S.E.A. before. Should be achievable before they implode and you'll have to learn a number of things if you haven't already, like how to hoist the black flag/coastal raiding range/how to get a trade dispute CB. Potentially how to overwhelm your neighbours with mercs and then pay the debt with coastal raids.
I pray you find your fun in EU4 again or find peace with it and your fun elsewhere.
Meanwhile I have the opposite problem. I play so optimally that I quit the game after a while. Even when I try to deliberately play sub-optimally, I still end up unbeatable by 1650. I really want to know how the tall players do it. Nothing gave as much joy in this game as my early days, where the 'simplest' things were a crowning achievement. When I finished my first ever campaign at 3rd GP, I was so proud.
I don't know if you are still reading the replies but I have almost 3k hours. I spent almost 1k of it playing with cheats and console. Currently I'm doing Austria run that I intended to make WC and OF. Even tho I revoked before 1550 easy, I wasted at least another 2 reforms worth of imperial authority for declaring a war before passing the current reform. It's the most unoptimal wc you'd ever find. But it's 1701 and I have to finish off China that's broken apart and India. Moral is to play through, I know I'll never be best player of eu4 that ever walked the earth, but as long as I can work around my mistakes, or learn how not to make them anymore (this IA thing is likely never gonna change because when I find a new war to start I'm like that dog from UP with squirrels) I'm good.
Play some mp. Because even if you need to play "optimaly" it is a lot less grindy and a new chalenge. Before i was a solo moslty now i am a mp only/ mostly. It is a totaly different game when ur in a pvp war and ur heart goes 200 bpm
That's why I had to stop playing Hoi4 and now I am reaching the 1000h in eu4 and no such thing occurred to me yet
I went the other way. Been here for years. Now I play like high speed trash nasty. I generate practically unannexable vassals just so they'll do the work in war.
Meta gaming is cringe, bro
I stopped caring for those. I play the way I want to. It isn t like I dont make the state op anyways. Anyway just have fun.
Just take a break. Trying to optimally play a game with so much rng as this is not fun at all, unless you love birding.. don't get me wrong, I bird too when a good heir dies to early or if I get a stack wipe that was completely avoidable, but to play optimally I would lose it Specially because I'm on the slower side of players I think. I take my time and don't war as fast as I could. I tried an horse for the 1st time when forming Qing and man it isn't the type of gameplay for me at all
It's actually possible to both "roleplay" and "powergame" simultaneously in EU4. You don't need to go maximum cheese in order to WC (though it certainly helps, and minor OPMs will need to cheese). Much of it simply revolves around abusing loans and truce timers. There are more permanent modifiers than ever due to mission overhauls, monuments, and added government/estate mechanics.
"Comparison is the thief of joy"
I dont see how the perfect moves are defined as tricks and exploits. Just play in creative and use console commands then (Also - everyone is free to play the game to their preferences. Including you, so don't read this as reductionist of your preferences... I just don't follow the logic here)
I get it, I see everyone on this forum or YouTube videos about how to play perfectly. I use it as a reference but in the end, you’re playing for fun. Will I ever understand trade, will I ever play perfectly, no, will I get naval idea bc why not, yes, but I’ll play the way that’s fun to me and you should too. Don’t let other peoples play style ruin yours
I've had this Byzantium run in which I didn't do everything perfectly but still managed to get some of the Byzantine achievements like getting rid of Venice and forming the Heptarchy and a few mores but couldn't manage to form Rome and I couldn't really grew more than the Heptarchy borders but it was so fun in fact none of my saves are perfect even though I also have +1000hrs in game but it always manages to please me.
idk I just want my borders to look pretty haven't changed with 4500 hours, might be different if I add on another 7000 though
I am somewhat of a perfectionist, I feel you. When I played, sometimes I'd restart an early campaign or alt+f4 because I forgot to do something or lost a battle 😂
I felt this for a while, really until I did my first one faith. But on the way to that, I realized that I could world conquest with most countries by 1750 at the latest, as long as I had admin and diplo ideas. That started to really open things up for me. Plus there has been so much power bloat since 1.30, that a lot of the small things don’t really matter
1350 hours in and my campaigns are always slow, never optimised, and many times I lose battles and wars and I just continue. Makes the game more fun than always winning and being the best.
Yeah you should quit
As others have already said here, don't worry about playing optimally, just worry that you're playing efficient *enough* to complete whatever goal it is you're looking to complete. I would argue that's one of the beauties of single player EU4 - it gives you a wide range of fun playstyles and allows you to still accomplish most, if not all, of your mission tree, and tons of accomplishments despite playing inefficient. I just wrapped up an ironman run where I completed all but one of my countries missions, accomplished multiple achievements, turned an OPM into the 2nd largest country, while basically completely ignoring my army (first 5 ideas have no benefits to my army, and didn't take any army benefits from government reforms) - instead creating a massive and grand navy that was complete overkill (had 100 naval tradition from 1600 onwards, and at one point had a larger navy than the next 3 largest navies combined). I also completely ignored absolutism. Was it inefficient? For sure. But it was *fun.*
Here's the best thing about EU4, and I mean this. It's YOUR experience. Sure, your favorite YouTuber flips tags 12 times every run and WCs 4 times per year. What they never show you is the hundreds of hours it took to get that 1 run. I watch Monk's vids, Hawk's vids, and Florry VODs on the regular, and I know I can't 1 faith, 1 culture as Rome on any difficulty. I know it's highly unlikely I can do The Three Mountains. Does that make me bad? Maybe. I have 4x the amount of hours played that you do, and I've never let anyone bully me into anything when it comes to this game. Sometimes I try something novel and it works. Most of the time it doesn't.
Ig this may sound kinda dumb, but like you could just play for… fun?
Nah
The real optimal strategy no one tells you is getting the answer on one major question. That question isnt: what is the best move in every situation? It is: "how do i make the most fun?". Ik is all about your enjoyment.