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Rob Zacny

Episode 310: EU4Ever: Common Sense

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Rob, Rowan, and Sean Sands fulfill our listeners' requests by taking a deep dive on the newest expansion for EU4: Common Sense. The latest DLC (and associated free update) brings notable changes to the game's systems. Are they all for the better? Should this be called EU5? How many kids are on Rob's lawn, and should they get off of it?

 

Credit for the episode title goes to listener @semitext, who angers me by coming up with something as good as "EU4ever" before I could.

 


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Interesting and cool podcast!  Just got Common Sense myself and spent a day on it so far so I'm still collecting my own thought on it, but initial impression wise I'm very impressed.

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semitext is my twitter handle! I can't tell you how pleased I am that this name suggestion was used. The idea was for an EU4 podcast spinoff, I felt it was only appropriate that the Idle Thumbs podcast network have DOTA Today and EU4Ever, but barring that actual podcast this is easily the next best thing!

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For me, Common Sense represents a set of good ideas derailed by lack of conceptualizing and testing outside of the top ten Great Powers that Paradox plays in the inter-office multiplayer games, which seem to serve as design inspiration for them. Just as an example, the development system seems fine in theory, but in practice, both its thematic significance (infrastructure harms a country's technological progress and ideological framework by directing resources elsewhere) and mechanical implementation (under best-case circumstances, it is one-fifth as efficient to improve infrastructure than simply to annex new territory; the vast majority of terrain types make even capital provinces quite costly to improve; and yet another progression mechanic is tied to the completely player-agnostic die-roll of "mana," also known as monarch points, making gold even more of a useless resource beyond supporting armies and advisors) show it to be an entirely half-baked idea that isn't very workable outside of playing an already-big nation like France or England.

 

Even something that the podcast praised, like the potential for development to let you customize different provinces, is being rolled back in the next patch. Instead, no one part of the development value for a province will be able to be higher than the other two, meaning that your tax powerhouse will have to be almost as much a source of manpower and production, functionally making the development interface a generic "make my province better" button. It's a shame that they got rid of all the different unique buildings in order to implement a system that's turning out to be less flexible and expressive, but I guess that's what happens when most of your game's regular feature additions and changes are efforts to contain and control player behavior. Maybe after another nine months, they'll get it into working order, like they finally did with coalitions, which still aren't fun to fight but at least function as expected.

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I am enjoying this expansion a lot, it need a some tweaks, but so far, very good.

Like Rob I too started a game with England, here is my impressions so far:

- Loved the new fort system, I just wish it still possible to remove your troops by sea (if they came from there), because it´s very easy to get trapped with no way to go, it happened to me when I declared war on Malaca and unlanded my troops (14k) in a province, only to find out that there was this huge stack (40K) of troops coming and I had no where to run. Save from that, the fort system is great, I mean, choosing where to move and strike mean much more now. One side effect (and I don´t mean in negative way) is that forts might be helping smaller nations to survive for much longer, in my game several smaller nations where able to survive, in my game Malaca was able to survive, after two failed landing done by me which crushed my menpower.

- I agree with Rowan, that because several change made now (and some before) I am starting to pickup ideas which I might not done otherwise. In my game, much like Rob I find myself worried about rebels and the rising of reformation, but thanks to Humanism idea I was able to keep thing in place.


- I agree that a visual indicator on the map for how much a province is developed could help. I don´t think the new development system for province will be a barrier, but I do agree that is a bit vague how it works (It took me a while to find where it was and start using it), but once you got the hang of it, it´s good, I find myself developing provinces for shipbuilding and other for trade or manpower, but only later in the game. Let see how patch will adjust.

- Talking about manpower.... I think since maybe last expansion (or before) I found that it was becoming more critical to keep an eye on it, since not only reinforcements cost a lot of money, but now low manpower trigger the Peasant Revolt. In a old game with Muscovy I didn´t pay attention and because my war with Novgorad turned sour, I later myself dealing with several rebellions that I had no strenght to fight and did lost a lot of autonomy. Now it appear to be bit more tweaked (in sense of how it trigger, I mean, still happen but no so much like before, because it was annoying) which mean that each defeat I suffered kind hurt more, since meant I need time to recover and luck that nothing goes wrong in the meantime (just to be clear I am not complaining about this, I kind like it). And much like Rowan said, I did felt that mercenaries are much more vital now, specially in moments where you down on luck and menpower, but still have gold (those Treasure Fleets from Peru saved my life at least twice) or have the ideas which lower cost on mercenaries.

Other things that happened in my game:

- Both Portugal and Spain made huge colonial empires (except on Asia) but now are falling apart, mostly because war in Europe weakened them so much that their colonies start to split up.
- The released colonial nations where quite powerful Haiti (released by me) managed to build it´s own colonial empire, Mexico (Portugal) was able to hold off both me and France (and all of our allies). I think Spain is about to lose Brazil.
- Austria got luck upon Burgundy demise, but soon after several nations declared war on them and after a few year they lost almost everything.
- Much like it was said on the podcast, the HRE is quite wild place, spotted a few minors becoming bigger and a few unlikely emperors.

- During the English Civil War, I was almost defeated, but managed to win by hiring all mercenaries I could. In the end I had 19 debts, but thanks to the gold of Peru I was able to pay all, after several year of living with almost everything on zero and praying that nothing goes wrong.

Edited by Valorian Endymion

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For me, Common Sense represents a set of good ideas derailed by lack of conceptualizing and testing outside of the top ten Great Powers that Paradox plays in the inter-office multiplayer games, which seem to serve as design inspiration for them. Just as an example, the development system seems fine in theory, but in practice, both its thematic significance (infrastructure harms a country's technological progress and ideological framework by directing resources elsewhere) and mechanical implementation (under best-case circumstances, it is one-fifth as efficient to improve infrastructure than simply to annex new territory; the vast majority of terrain types make even capital provinces quite costly to improve; and yet another progression mechanic is tied to the completely player-agnostic die-roll of "mana," also known as monarch points, making gold even more of a useless resource beyond supporting armies and advisors) show it to be an entirely half-baked idea that isn't very workable outside of playing an already-big nation like France or England.

 

Even something that the podcast praised, like the potential for development to let you customize different provinces, is being rolled back in the next patch. Instead, no one part of the development value for a province will be able to be higher than the other two, meaning that your tax powerhouse will have to be almost as much a source of manpower and production, functionally making the development interface a generic "make my province better" button. It's a shame that they got rid of all the different unique buildings in order to implement a system that's turning out to be less flexible and expressive, but I guess that's what happens when most of your game's regular feature additions and changes are efforts to contain and control player behavior. Maybe after another nine months, they'll get it into working order, like they finally did with coalitions, which still aren't fun to fight but at least function as expected.

 

Emphasis added by me.  That line really hits some of my feelings in regard to so many of EU4's troubled update history and some of its problematic designs (fuck monarch points seriously (I love you EU4 and Paradox, it's just the monarch points))...  I mean technically every game is about setting up restrictions for the player to navigate around.  That's what rules are.  It's fundamental to game design.  But something about EU4's patching history felt really more in my face about what I can't do more than just ordinary game rules.  Is it the complexity of the game that make certain tertiary rules harder to accept?  I don't know for sure but all I know and definitely agree with are expressed in that emphasized sentence.

 

Onto the specifics, I just flat out ignore province improvements most of the time.  I only spend monarch points there AFTER tech, ideas, coring and other nation wide stuff - stability, war exhaustion, inflation - has been dealt with... which is to say, almost never unless I score some really good leader as powerful western nation.  Again, fuck monarch points.  Tech and coring (and stability, sometimes) is sooo important to this game that having other stuff share same resource always make it a non decision.

 

If they wanted to give a real option to spend monarch points, it has to be way more scalable than spending 50+ points for one base stat increase to a single province.  Or make monarch points more scalable (adviser slots go from 1 ~ 3 depending on government rank?  OMG that would be SOOOO GOOOD) so that Monarch points aren't drip fed to players anymore so we are actually incentive to spend them elsewhere.

 

All this being said, EU4 + Common Sense still plays like EU4 to me so I'm very much enjoying it after coming back from like 6+ months of break (so I skipped previous 2 DLCs as well, got them all in the sale).

 

One interesting point is that many of the "big" changes that have been brought up as a result of this DLC are in the free update and don't require a purchase:

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Common_Sense (such as the changes to forts)

 

EU4's model of DLC/expansions are really praiseworthy for this IMO

 

 

- Both Portugal and Spain made huge colonial empires (except on Asia) but now are falling apart, mostly because war in Europe weakened them so much that their colonies start to split up.

 

I really hope I see something like that consistently so that WC doesn't boil down to killing Castile and Portugal before 1500s.

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I was quite intersted to hear this discussion.  I've long been in the camp that says the EU games need more roadblocks in the way of anachronistically huge early empires, so the improvements to rebels and especially forts seems like a great idea.

 

I am interested to ask, do any of the regulars play with any start date other than the earliest possible?  I find the 1400's' boring, and have always felt that the early starts never result in anything like the historical world I'm actually interested in seeing.  My last few rounds of EU4 (admittedly, sometime early last year) were all set to begin after the reformation, because I wanted to play around with that particular setup.

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I really hope I see something like that consistently so that WC doesn't boil down to killing Castile and Portugal before 1500s.

 

Spain and Portugal, followed by Scotland and me managed to colonize a lot of places in both South and North America, but the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans and Native Americans survived for very long time, I mean the Iroquis still around in very late 1780 as some other nations, while Incas and Mayans and Aztecs fallen only around maybe late that the usual fast failing.

 

Ming, Japan, Korea and many other places in Asia still there doing fine, I already told my failed landings in Malaca, but now I have to add another one, I don´t what going on on Ming, but there is a lot of rebels everywhere and several minor power started to split off. I saw a two province Die Viet appear and tried rush it, only to reenact my disaster landing in Malaca, ended wasting my manpower unable to siege their capital, which was protected by a level 3 fortress (or more, AI appear to like build improved forts, which is great).

 

Fun thing is, while Spain and Portugal did colonize huge streches of land, it kind turned in a "hoisted by your own petard" situation, as they could not hold the Liberty Desire until either no one is paying anything (except the treasure fleets, which still work even with high Liberty Desire) or they start to rebel, both powers had no way to control this, and let me add one more thing, Colonial nations are supporting each other, making alliances and supporting each other independence. Haiti (my former colonial nation) is allied with Mexico (Portugal) and Chile (Spain) while supporting independence of my English Peru... and boy, did we had some fun wars, because I hold some land in Mexico, until they drive me so against the wall that I had to give up some land there and to maybe never again got myself in war against them, I decided to free my colonial nation there.

 

Also I think the new dynamics in the way Colonial Nations work now give more option of how to deal with Colonial Powers, as you can either try to weaken them (which rises the Liberty Desire and reduce the income they provide), support Colonial Nations or just wait, soon or later things will start fall apart, instead of trying to get them down early on.

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@Valorian Endymion,

 

I'm around 1620s~ in my Russia game so I'll get to see what happens with colonial nations in my own game later when my discovery expands into Americas~  So far my game has been pretty... similar?  Except I'm having slightly easier time as Muscovy cause getting Novogrod early through war was easier cause their provinces seem to cost less...

 

Oh and Burgundy is still somehow alive and fighting against France, which made France a whole lot weaker.

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Some of the more radical changes Paradox makes to their games are kind of troubling for someone like me. My strategy game habits are such that I might put 10 hours into a game in a week, and then not return to it for months at a time. Like, I learned how to play Crusader Kings 2 at one point, but when I played it most recently I basically didn't recognize the game at all, and it was too challenging for me to wrap my head around it. I'm a bit worried that the next time I jump into EU4 it will be a similar experience.

 

This is kind of a worrying trend because for awhile it seemed like Paradox was making huge strides to make their games more approachable without sacrificing any depth.

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This is kind of a worrying trend because for awhile it seemed like Paradox was making huge strides to make their games more approachable without sacrificing any depth.

 

Eh, for a while, Paradox was also releasing games and DLC with no serious bugs, either. That's definitely gone, even discounting total messes like Rajas of India. I think they were both top-down mandates, in response to contemporary commercial and critical failures, that have drifted by the wayside as their business entered a new heyday.

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I've been playing as France, and I'm now almost to the end of the 16th century.

 

-  I love the new fort system.  Geography matters, and choosing when and where to build, mothball, or destroy forts are important decisions whose consequences will be felt.  The map is no longer a featureless plain. 

-  I'm going to hold off on judging the new province development system until I try to play a "tall" empire.  My France is definitely not tall.

-  I too have experienced repeated manpower crises.  Seriously, what happened to manpower?

-  France's start is DEFINITELY more challenging now.  Incorporating Provence et. al. is a much trickier process.  Rob was right - they pursue an aggressive and independent foreign policy. Burgundy is a beast to begin with, but they can get cut down to size if they lose their PU/vassals.  

- I don't find the core game experience to be that much different.  To me, it is still primarily a game of diplomacy.  Wars are often still one before the first shot is fired, but they can still be very (delightfully) unpredictable.  (See, e.g., Arumba's playthrough as England, I think in episode 14 or 15, when makes a successful high-risk assault on Paris, and ends up gaining a province in a war that should have cost him the Continent).  

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Even something that the podcast praised, like the potential for development to let you customize different provinces, is being rolled back in the next patch. Instead, no one part of the development value for a province will be able to be higher than the other two, meaning that your tax powerhouse will have to be almost as much a source of manpower and production . . ."

 

Following your link, it actually says that no one value can be higher than the other two together.  I was dismayed when I read your description, but what it actually says doesn't sound that unreasonable.  

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As someone who owns EU4, but hasn't yet had time to become acquainted with Common Sense, it would have been helpful if you had devoted some time during the podcast to explaining what the "huge" and "extensive" changes are exactly. 

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Following your link, it actually says that no one value can be higher than the other two together.  I was dismayed when I read your description, but what it actually says doesn't sound that unreasonable.  

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. It's definitely a positive change, but it also makes the system more generic and less flexible than the old building system, in addition to being something that should have come up during basic design playtesting. The number of mechanics that have launched in DLC and then had to be immediately retooled is beginning to make me feel that Paradox doesn't do any design playtesting beyond whiteboard spreads and intra-office multiplayer. In the past, they've released new tech systems that bluntly don't work for most of Africa and Asia, but no one seems to have checked.

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As someone who owns EU4, but hasn't yet had time to become acquainted with Common Sense, it would have been helpful if you had devoted some time during the podcast to explaining what the "huge" and "extensive" changes are exactly. 

 

 

Yes, this was one of the less accessible shows to people who haven't played the game.

No offence to the panel, but I find that this problem doesn't arise when Troy, Bruce or Tom are present.

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So few more days have past, anyone have updated thoughts?  Still feels very EU4-ish, except that decentralized regions like HRE become pain in the ass to conquer later in the game and minors remain lot more sturdy, both of which I like but my WC desires also hate.

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I just finished a game here is some more thoughts:

 

- I still think that the large changes won´t be a barrier, the only thing is maybe older players get around with old tactics with the new fort system. The new development system is more likely to surprise people only when they couldn´t build more, and from there on is quite clear what to do but not exacly where to click.

- AI is behaving sometimes really well:I saw the Commonwealth form and survive until the end, AI armies often hunt down you down (which make those landings more difficult), split when safe and join when under threat (saw this happen a lot in my England+France vs Mexico + Haiti + Chile wars, Mexico would move around a huge stack of 40k men but split it when felt it safe, only to rejoin later, my French allies did the same). But I also saw the AI behave in strange fashion: in one case where a rebel stack would try to siege a fortress with almost no infantry, in other one war France stood with huge stack in border with Mexico but they didn´t move it. Haiti had huge stacks in the islands, but they didn´t move them. But I don´t know if because my fleet was around quickly or they lacked transports.

- I didn´t had much problem with development/core because mostly of my war where outside europe, but then the largest amount of provinces I take in a war as five against Haiti and all of them where previous colonies in the north coast of Brazil.

 

Other stuff that happened.

- Russia formed, later something happened, and Perm take over.

- Spain had huge colonial empire but lost almost everything, became the center of the revolution and later even Tlemcem would invade them and take a few regions in their own mainland.

- Portugal had the same fate.

- The Ottomans did really well for the whole game.

- As the Commonwealth did too.

 

Below is the map of the world in my game around 1812.

eu4_map_ENG_1812_04_13_1_zpsf4ntgfjn.png

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New beta patch is out and it's already looking so much better.  Finally +1 diplomat and leader for empires... used to get those from special buildings so it was much needed.  Also appreciating the 3 way split of admin efficiency so that we get 20% lot earlier.

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Common Sense currently has a Mixed 57% rating on Steam. It has not been well received by a lot of people. It's going to take some patching before I start a game with it.

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I'm reading through most helpful negative reviews and I feel some major gripes with the reviews themselves.  Every point of valid criticism seems to be paired with stuff that are just factually wrong or contradictory to reviewer's previous criticism.  Take this one where the guy says there is too much focus on monarch points, then goes right back to say new buildings that now doesn't cost monarch points to be useless even if they offer pretty much same bonus as before but just doesn't cost monarch points.

 

Every single ones complaining about rebels popping up and sieging provinces too fast to react... the rebels have a % that is always visible that they need to fill up to 100 before firing, and it often takes years to fill up.  How can I take such criticism seriously when they refuse to heed the warning like that for years?

 

I think coring/diplo cost increase is bad because it's contradictory to game's primary language (grabbing more land) but so many of these reviews are just really bad.

 

One thing though, is that AI is indeed not so hot with the new fort system, and with movement lock option it's easier than ever to bait and stackwipe AI.

 

Current beta patch kind of 'fixed' the increased coring cost by splitting adm efficiency into 3 pieces with 20% each (so total is now 60%, 10% more than before) with first piece unlocking way earlier like in adm tech 18 or 19?  It also made province development little too good so HRE remains this meat grinder where every AI major tries to dip their foot in there gets too high AE, gets massive HRE coalition and die.  Muscovy AI also suffers from similar fate.  Kinda whacky as heck but it's really dynamic.

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