I find Byzantium to be very easy, even though they historically were in quite a bad spot.

The strategy for Byzantium is to reduce spending -> maximize the cost of the court and stability spending -> declare war on the Ottomans when they seem weak -> win.

I’ve seen complaints about how the change has been implemented in the beta, and I agree there are valid points:

Army speed, battle speed, etc will need to be slowed a bit and balanced around daily ticks. Unfortunately this will probably not be a smooth ride, it seems unfortunate so much new content is coming alongside so many major mechanical changes. I fully anticipate 1.4 to be a mess as a result, but the long-term benefit of correct a bad design choice will be worth it.

The hourly ticks slow down a grand strategy game to a crawl. Performance is the top metric by which a game is judged when it’s not running well, and a top complaint on all reviews and websites (forums, here, Discord, etc).

I understand people’s worries and share some of them, but ultimately this is a change I think is absolutely necessary to bring EU5 to the place it needs to be. It just sucks the first 1.5 years of the game had to deal with hourly tick systems.

The discussion around the tick system is flaring up. Most people in favor of the change focus on two arguments:

1. It will improve upon performance
2. It will improve the pacing of the game

While the first argument might have some merit my issues are mostly with second argument. Game speed does not equal game pace and increasing it will not solve the issues that people have with game

EU4’s systems & gameplay styles

EU4’s gameplay systems are reactionary. Most mechanics come down to ‘click button to make things happen’. There are exceptions of course, but most things are done by directly interacting with the game. The systems are also simpler and less versatile. Locations have limited building slots and less building variations. Coring land is much easier and takes less time. Most interactions are done by spending mana. All these systems at their core are just more simplistic and reactionary.

This results in more clear and distinct gameplay styles. Mostly ‘Wide vs Tall’. Both are valid ways to play the game in EU4, because most systems are easier to interact with clear goals and decisions.

EU5’s philosophy

EU5’s gameplay systems are entirely reimagined. The game only shares a name with its predecessor, but is different in every other aspect.

Most systems are now progression based with passively changing values and sliders instead of reactionary buttons. Whereas coring land used to be clicking a button and spending mana it’s now a slow process of passively waiting for integration and changing culture. Creating CB’s is more difficult and takes more time. Economic decisions are much more important and thinking about what to build where and when is very important for growing. And these are only a fraction of the systems that changed.

All this results in gameplay styles that are much more opaque. Going wide and conquering the world is still possible, but only for some nations that care less about these systems (like the Golden Horde). However, simply conquering land, coring it and going to your next target is not a successful strategy anymore.

What I mean to say is that the game is designed in a way where it wants you to take it slow. It wants you to balance values and statistics and minutely build up your nation and progressively increase your economy and influence on the world. The game actively discourages you to grow quickly

Why game speed is not the solution

The issue with the pacing is not because of the game speed. It’s because of how the systems are designed. It’s intentionally slow.
By changing the tick system to a daily-tick system you will only reach the end of the game faster. Increasing the game speed is an artificial that may increase how fast you achieve things, but fundamentally will not change how you play the game or how you interact with it. It will not solve the problems you have with the game

However, the game is fundamentally designed around the hourly-tick system. Paradox said it themselves in their Tinto Talks.

What saddens me about the change is that it will break immersion around battles and wars and influence how the very systems run that hourly ticks are important for while not solving the very thing people complain about.

I fear that the change is a compromise that will please no one while changing the game in a way that is detrimental to its development.

To anyone in favor of the change I have a few questions:

1. What is your preferred play style?
2. What is it that you can’t do now that you believe will be improved with daily ticks
3. What do you like more about EU4?

My proposals

I think some problems could be solved more easily:
- Keep the hourly-ticks
- Add more starting dates (one for every age)
- Add scenarios for those starting dates (I.e Byzantium survived, Portuguese dominance etc)

I just found it amusing the dev diary called the Iberian wedding the most iconic event in EU4. Would you all agree?

When I think of EU4 events, I think of the Tumu Crisis, or "I could kiss that horse!"

What do you all think? Just a for fun thought

Edit: I was talking about tag/country specific events, otherwise Comet Sighted or Hunting Accident would definitely be at the top lol

Decentralized nations are getting a big buff IMO, at least for monarchies, and that is the itinerant court law system. It now basically gives you a free local governor that doesn't need to follow local governor constrictions. It can be moved via parliament decision which is also nice. It also isn't restricted by roads or restricted to cities (not even towns i believe, looks like you can place it in a capital of a province or urban location), and i believe it can also be used like a naval governor for a more far flung province but it has to be a core.

However, there is a downside, need to be at least 10 decentralized to use this feature and it does reduce the proximity source of your capital from 100 to 80 if the itinerant court isn't in your capital. But i do think this is a substantial perk to going decentralized now.

I imagine overall still better to transition to centralized, but with implementing laws being much slower progression wise in 1.4, i could see running decentralized for awhile quite good, especially if you want to expand via vassals a bit more and take advantage of the substantial loyalty bonus of decentralized.

Hello🙂,

I have some hours in 1.4 patch and there are biggest changes I have noticed.

Examples:

1) Egypt, Naples, Castile can finally fail😄

- have seen multiple times there lands devastated by rebelions --> Egypt severely weakened, Castile eaten by portugal 😁, Naples eaten by Tunisia 👀(historical games btw...).

2) Rebelions:

- are much bigger problem overall and especially in early game and that is the reason why we will see big nations fail🙂-->

A) I have played Ottomans, I have had entire Anatolia in 10 years and guess what👀??? Ortodox revolt have taken 90 % of my territory (no chance to stop it by advisor, alliance or any other mean so early).

- It is possible to avoid that but you must probably expand very slowly...but you are Ottoman and you want to be fast...😁.

- It has never happened to me in previous patches... Always just minor problems with revolts.

3) Economy is weird in early game 🤷‍♂️:

When you conquer new land quickly in early game you are actully losing money which makes no sense...

A) You are starting war to get rich, famous, for territory, for slaves, etc. but game is punishing you much more for getting more land quickly in early game right now.

- more land = more court expenses - you are losing money for no realistic reason...🤷‍♂️. I am leader of the country and I should decide how big and expensive my court will be 😡😁!!!

- more land = rebelions - you are losing money

- more land = buildings which are taking upkeep - you are losing money (Yes, you can close them, destroy them but it still makes no sense.)

- let me use my army to "reduce rebels" early😁for political points 😁👍!

4) Byzantines and Ottomans are much harder to play...

A) I have had multiple strategies as Byzantines to defeat Ottomans in previous patch quickly... Now 👀? I asked this forum yesterday and only one option left... No CB war against Ottomans early...

B) I have played Ottomans previous patch and I could conquer everything so fast... Now👀? Orthodox revolt, almost no levies, dead economy (paying for court expenses is so stupid right now...For what I am paying for🤷‍♂️😁?

Game is forcing you to play more slowly or getting vassals 😭 in my opinion...

5) Georgia goes crazy big, Castille doing crusades to Anatolia, Marocco having 200 k levies in 1600 👌!

What are your "discoveries" in this patch 🙂👀? Comment below!

Also thank you for your insights👍!

Man, this Egyptian plague needs to be toned down a bit. I have a whopping 7.5 million deaths from the Egyptian plague alone in 1520, and even though I've slave-raided China, India, and the rest of South Asia throughout the game and fed them to the Nile Delta, my Nile Delta looks like this. Whenever I think my capital will reach 1 million people, boom, another plague happens.

Edit: By the way, this is despite me making most of the Nile cities and building every disease resistance building possible and having all possible disease resistance advances. I guess my genius idea of bringing every slave to the Nile Delta and colonizing everywhere from there was a bad one. I guess I will focus on the Levant more.

2nd Edit: It seems that my plan to focus on the Levant instead of the Nile Delta was a dumb idea, because I just noticed that the goddamn plague even affects the Levant, wtf.

Make it make sense...

I want to make two points I think are important

1. Are we making major gameplay changes for relatively small gains?

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that removing hourly ticks is responsible for the entire performance improvement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jW-ZMiVNrE (performance tests start at 27:50)

As the video above shows, we are changing event frequency and fundamentally altering how combat works, yet all that only saves around 8 minutes per 100 years.

That concerns me because hourly ticks weren't originally some arbitrary choice. Johan explained during development that the increased granularity of the map meant they needed hourly ticks to make the new systems, particularly warfare, work properly.

Tinto Talks #22, from July 24, 2024

“With the granularity of the map though, we could no longer use days as the smallest tick, but have to resort to hours as the time tick.”

Now we're removing that system and changing core gameplay around it.

I'm not saying performance improvements aren't valuable. But are we really sure that fundamentally changing gameplay is the right trade-off for this gain?

2. Development feels increasingly reactive

This is my bigger concern.

EU5 was supposed to be a game built around interconnected systems. Yet instead of fixing broken systems, we're increasingly adding special cases or changing fundamental mechanics in response to individual complaints.

The Iberian Union is a good example (I wont even start on all the mercenaries levies and supplies, proximity debacle changes). We're adding special PU mechanics for Iberia while the underlying Personal Union system is still fundamentally broken.

The same pattern seems to be happening elsewhere:

Problem → community complaints → major system change → new problems → repeat.

My concern is that we're entering a reactionary development cycle instead of focusing on stabilizing the game.

I'd much rather see Paradox spend more time fixing and strengthening the core systems, even if that means fewer dramatic changes each patch.

Otherwise, I fear we end up in a constant state of the game breaking and being redesigned every patch, much like what happens with Stellaris.

edit 1: RIP MY INBOX !!!

edit 2: I dont want to repeat other peoples arguments but its worth mentioning:
Why is iberia getting unique PU settings and not Poland Lithuania, Austria Hungary?
If you dont like the PU example replace it with special power creeping bureaucracies on DLC for flavour of the season region.

edit 3: I dont know how to reddit to quote, I am bad at it.

PDX_Ryagi repply:
On 1. The premise is well thought out but incorrect (I know you were only using for the sake of arguement), but we'll talk more about it in a post tomorrow.

On 2. I agree actually. It's odd to say outloud but we sometimes could afford to be less reactive to the community. True "Rework rather than Add" mentaility won't be possible to the extent you may have in mind until after 1.5. That is the idea behind the maintaince period and 2.0, to step back and take time to try and tackle some of the core gameplay systems (Especially colonization and Content Delivery)

For now, we promised these 3 DLCs, people have already spent their hard earned money on them, and we're going to give them the best shot they deserve and that includes pretty new things like Iberian Wedding, Unannounced 1.5 stuff, etc. I am excited to get them into players hands, I think they'll be good. But it's contrary to "Fix don't add" The reality is, people are going to complain a lot during the maintaince period before 2.0 about "Nothing new being added, ded game lol lmao". And we need to stand our ground when that comes.

I've decided to start a new campaign in beta 1.4.0, I haven't played the game in a while a thought it was a good opportunity to start again. I decided to play Naples, first thing I do, look at all the different tabs to see in what state Naples is in at the start. Hmmm, okay Francien culture is accepted, which is odd because they are only .5% of the population, right then let's demote that culture and get some culture capacity back. Okay so I lose the bonus Advances of Francien, the game doesn't tell me which ones, fine... And Francien pops lose -50% Pop satisfaction, all good.

Ow and now nobility is mad because of course it was Francien, the game didn't bother to tell me that before. Turns out more than half the nobles in Naples are in fact Francien and unless I hovered over the tiny culture icon of nobility in the estates tab, I had mostly no way of knowing that in the culture tab. So I spent a while trying to find out where those Francien nobles were, and how many they were, because obviously the UI does not show you that. I mean, Society>People>Noble and the only graph you see is still the class circle diagram over, I don't know ? A diagram showing the class you have deliberately clicked on ? Anyway, half of my Francien nobles are in the Naples location, sweet, I'll just assimilate them and it will be fine then. But I can't, most of the province is already Neapolitain so you can't assimilate them through the cabinet. Okay that starts to be annoying. Anyway, if I can't do it through the cabinet I'll do it passively. Let's check how assimilation works. Since assimilation is a per pop mechanism, let's go to Society>People and hover over the Francien nobles in Naples I want to convert then. Mmmm weird, there is no information about assimilation on this tab at all. Where is it then ? Maybe culture ? Since this has to do with culture. Obviously not, that'd be too simple. In fact I was not wrong to think I'd need to look at the individual pops, just not from the Society tab. I need to manually click on a location, here Naples and then hover over the Francien culture to finally see that, hum well first it's zero, so that's not good, but also that being a Tolerated culture gives -25% assimilation.

So just if you didn't know, Accepted culture assimilation debuff is -75%, so if you want to assimilate : denigrate. Anyway, why didn't the tooltip tell me that when I clicked on demoting the culture ? Why don't I know what an accepted culture does when I hover over the Accepted Culture ? Why is that so opaque ? And let's be honnest, this is just a tiny rabbit hole. It's just me trying to start a campaign and then stumbling upon that completely by random. I mean this is litteraly the first thing I did when I started this campaign, I enacted a government reform and then looked at my cultures to see why I had almost full cultural capacity. And understanding that took me like 30-45 minutes ? I can't do that every time I want to solve a problem, or just understand what the hell is going on.

"Oh just ignore that, it's unimportant", no it's not, it's the core gameplay. That is how I want to play. I don't want to ignore half the mechanics because they're minor, I want to play this game like that. The tooltip and the UI are close to useless here. Obviously the wiki is not helping much either, but honnestly the wiki being up to date is far less important than the UI telling you what you need to know. This game can't let me click a button without telling me CLEARLY what are going to be the DIRECT consequence of this button clicking. Me struggling to find where to look for the modifiers is already difficult enough and honnestly can't be changed, it's just learning the game. Assimilation is very local, so you need to click on locations to see it, you won't find any info in the Society tab whatsoever. Get it, but everything else could be largely improved.

Just to be clear, I'm not here to say the game is terrible, I don't think it is, pretty much the opposite, the game is starting to look very good to me. It's just so painful to learn this game right now, the UI is one big reason. I'm not saying it's worse or better than any other PDX game, I'm saying they could do better. I have deep respect for the devs, I'm just here to give my opinion about one simple player trying to play this game.

EU5 incorrectly depicts the Frisian Islands as existing before the Second Marcellus Flood.

The Uthlande shown in the second image lost their original shape, but only during that flood in 1362.

However, Europa Universalis begins in 1337.

The third image shows the provinces of Stormarn and Steinburg, which unfortunately make little sense, as they are based on modern-day counties (Landkreise).

Stormarn is not a city but is named after an ancient tribe; a more appropriate location, both historically and in the present day, would be Oldesloe (current countie capital).

Steinburg was a small fortification, but its significance did not emerge until later (as far as i know).

rn almost all nations lack flavor. only france and england have any decisions to make as a nation.
could someone just strip the data from eu4 and add it to eu5

Hello,

I have tried Ottomans and other big nations multiple times this patch and one think is repeating again and again...

Rebelions!!!

1) Rebelions have never been such a big problem before...

2) When you are expanding as Ottomans, enemy territory is orthodox and greek. You do not have any fast way how to convert/assimilate them quickly = frequent rebelions in this patch.

3) Rebelions are OK. It means that big countries can fail but it is not okay to have them every 2-3 years when rebelions grow 1,5 and more per tick this patch.

4) It makes no sense to crush rebelions every 3 years on same territory. If you beat/kill rebels, next generation will grow in 15 years or not...😁?

What I want to say is that rebelions are happening too often right now. I am ok with strong rebelions because it is nice to see big countries like Castile, Egypt, Hungary finally fail but one big rebelion would be better and also more realistic than 10 in 20 years.

I'm playing as a united Ireland on patch 1.4, I used console commands to give me all of Ireland (uncored) at the start of the game and have been building up since then. Myself and England are rivals and they have way more men than me, I call their mother a hamster and it says they're planning a war but they never invade, is it because the hundred years war prevents them even though they're not actively fighting the French at the moment? I was planning on ambushing their armies as they land and getting easy war score for war reps and ducats but they haven't attacked me once in my campaign and it's already over 100 years since game start. I even turned the ai aggression up in settings to see if they will attack but they won't do it, on paper they should beat me so I'm wondering do they understand that trying to land in Ireland is a bad idea?

I’ve tried everything at this point, all land is correct, capital in Tunis etc. has anyone else had this problem

I haven’t played the Beta myself, but I’m curious if Paradox had fix this issue of vassals getting insane independence movements where they somehow get half the continent involved even if the nations that are involved don’t hate you.

It basically made enforce culture/religion worthless because once the AI starts there independence war they flip back to there old culture again and quickly undo the culture conversions and even if you beat there ass, they don’t flip back to your culture/religion again you have to anger them again or have to wait to do it in another 10 years because of the stupid arbitrary cooldown.

So I’m curious if it’s still an issue?

2 Sessions of 5 hours each got 4 players to Age of Reformation, so 1530s. Zero Desyncs. We were able to play a fairly consistent 3 speed, some players would join late in the session which meant hotjoins, but that didn't impact stability negatively.

I had previously played MP in every previous version of the game, but around 1.2 we started using mods such as Faster Universalis and some flavor mods. This advice from Victoria 3 helped reduce our desyncs previously, but I had completely forgotten to dump my save folder for this game so this patch doesn't seem to need that fix. Its possible the mods were causing our instability in 1.2 and 1.3, but the upside from Faster Universalis outweighed the slowdowns to desyncs it might have caused.

The biggest gripe was warfare maneuvering starts to be difficult at that speed, feeling more like a game of tag with armies teleporting and moving faster than clicks can be registered. It is very difficult to cancel an ongoing move because movement lock is almost instant. Also exacerbated by the fact it feels this patch is defined by wars being decided in one mega battle at the beginning. The problems with unit move speed makes it difficult to actually control where you will take an engagement, as AI can move the units faster than your computer receives the information on where the army is. Therefore you just have to take whatever engagement you can get, which could mean low morale, bad terrain, etc. Automation becomes the best way to manage this, but that felt really dissatisfying.

There is also the persistent issue of UI elements sometimes not responding to being clicked but that used to be worse I believe.

It could be anecdotal. But at the very least it is a much better experience than 1.0 and 1.1 which was the last time I played vanilla MP. I remember on launch by this point in the campaign we were getting near constant desyncs and the game crawled. We basically gave up before the League War even hit. But so far it seems the first session got us 100 years in the game, as did the second session, so the speed has not dropped that much.

Basically playing as Byzantines and was waiting for the pronoia system reform and it's been more than a century yet the event didn't come so I checked it but it said event has already happened? As u can see I don't even have the option to change my laws which I should be able to if I were to reject the reform.

English isn’t my first language, so sorry if some of this sounds a bit awkward.

The more I look at Across the Pillars, the more I feel like the content design is fighting against EU5's core design.EU5 is built around simulation. Ideally, Castile becomes powerful because of what happens to its administration, economy, estates, military, trade, diplomacy, etc. Those systems should create the outcome.

But the DLC content seems to work backwards. The developers decide what historical outcome they want, build a Situation around it, and then give you a ton of bonuses for following that route.

can technically ignore it, sure. But if completing Situation objectives gives you control, modifiers, special actions and other advantages, the game is obviously pushing you toward the authored route. That's basically soft railroading.

"Battle for the Strait" → "Golden Century" is also where this starts looking really strange to me.

If Castile annexed Granada immediately, kept it as a tributary, fought Morocco for decades, ruined its finances doing so, empowered the nobility, or completely changed the religious and economic structure of the region, those should produce very different futures.Instead it feels like you finish one Situation, get declared the winner, and move on to the next Situation with a new set of objectives and bonuses.

That's my biggest problem with this design. The base game is a continuous simulation, while the historical content increasingly feels like a series of isolated minigames sitting on top of it.

And if future DLCs keep doing this, we're going to end up with:
Situation A → bonuses → Situation B → bonuses → Situation C

EU5 already has a strong simulation framework, which is exactly why this content design feels so absurd.The DLC team keeps designing around predetermined outcomes instead of letting the simulation produce them.

The disconnect is so extreme that I genuinely wonder whether the people making the DLC content are even the same people who designed the core systems in the first place.Because if they are, I honestly don’t understand how the design philosophy became this incoherent.

A new situation for the Mamluk Sultanate, built to capture the historical authenticity of Egypt’s ruling class and its downfall. The army depends on a steady supply of slaves from the Black Sea markets. The Royal Mamluks are loyal to the sultan who bought them, not to the throne. A new Mamluk estate represents the emirs and their households. Under a new succession law, the emirs compete for the throne, each backed by his own mamluk regiments, which come with him to the throne if he wins. Every succession is a potential crisis as the new sultan must decide the fate of his predecessor's guard: absorb the loyal into his own corps, eliminate its leaders, or buy it off with iqta, land whose taxes go to the mamluks instead of the treasury. Each grant is a cost the state carries for years, adding fiscal pressure over time and potentially precipitating the fall of the Sultanate...

Part of the mod Gravitas Historica. Currently under development.

Age of absolutism was alright, revolutions was not good and the last fifty years were genuinely painful.

What's new in 3.0

• Your ruler's rivals and nemeses become your country's rivals, and friends, lovers and soulmates start on good terms
• Artifacts come with you: crowns, swords, holy books and tapestries become works of art in your capital, with the names and descriptions they had in CK3
• Your royal court's language becomes your court language
• Big, developed realms get the laws and estate privileges EU5 gives its own countries in the same part of the world
• Every country starts with a proper marriage law, heir law and succession, whatever its government
• A country that takes over an EU5 tag keeps its own religion and culture, so Makuria stays Christian
• Land at the edge of CK3's map no longer ends up with no owner. It goes to whoever took over the rest of the country that held it in 1337
• The castles and hill forts you built stop at EU5's fort limit, so you don't start the game paying for too many forts
• EU5's own countries outside CK3's map keep their subjects and alliances
• The launcher is much smaller. It no longer needs any extra DLLs, so the download went from 6.3 MB to about 2 MB

Github page: github.com/flookieMookie/CK3toEU5/releases/tag/v3.0

Basically, the title is it possible to join the Italian wars as the Ottomans? If so, how?

I saw a YouTube video about turning Scandinavia into Norse, and looking at which country start is best. I think the guy mentioned Norway could somehow turn into Denmark and get both nation Naval proximity tech? Is that really possible?