Europa Universalis 4 is a HOT Mess Compared to Hearts of Iron IV

[@ev4_gaming]

none of the dates have any buildings. Just 0. Even in 1812, so it makes sense the economy sucks

There's one kind of buildings they have - high level forts. That's why everyone's so bankrupt all the time. If they at least consistently had no buildings, that wouldn't be so bad.

[@Domebuddy]

None of the land is devved either.

[@ev4_gaming]

@@Domebuddy i thought some of it was, but more like +3 iin a handful of states and not anything close to what it should have been at

[@lordedmundblackadder9321]

one of the start dates the entirety of Anatolia is occupied by ottoman revolutionaries in the 1500s

[@MatthewLittlesafe3456]

Which is it?

[@idontlikerome2744]

It was supposed to be that Janissary revolt?

[@sagagis]

@@idontlikerome2744 might be Jelali Rebellions

[@evanneal4936]

Thats historically accurate though so it makes sense actually...

[@ihatebritain3942]

Except eu4 Revolutions are hard coded (normally) to spawn after the 1700s and they represent only napoleon's revolution

[@queru1ous]

I’ve been waiting for ISP to play EU4 again for like… 6 years? I’m not even sure if I’m happy or I feel bad for our guy at this point.

[@Jedibob5]

Did he ever regularly play it? I know he plays it for the megacampaigns every year, but I thought he mostly did Vic2 content before HoI4

[@skot8692]

@@Jedibob5 he played it quite often and quite a lot in like 2018-2020

[@SnowithVG]

@@Jedibob5 I think I remember him mentioning he started on EU4 mockingly imitating boring video commentaries and grew onto other things from there, if you look at his oldest videos on the main channel you can tell he unlisted most of his early stuff so it's hard to tell from a quick look

[@dearingo]

Even if he is making fun of the game it still makes me happy

[@ImThatKidMike]

@@SnowithVG wow I never noticed he delisted so many old videos that actually makes me sad most of the stuff he posted while I was in middle school is gone

[@mgrillo2863]

charles in charge of our days, and our nights

[@ciphergacha9100]

This isn’t HOI4

[@data3419]

are you sure?

[@ciphergacha9100]

@@data3419 like 70%

[@Sircowcosmic]

Nah is a hoi4 mod

[@Aaron067]

But there's map? Mappie only in hoi, so this must be hoi. Maybe UI mod. It's just ui mod​@@ciphergacha9100

[@Fusi0n-e07]

Feel betrayed

[@ethanlarsen9126]

This must have taken so much work to get every single month at least war-accurate, that's insane. It's no wonder it got abandoned so fast, I feel bad for the poor dev who spent a million hours coding this. I knew about the bookmarked start dates, I never even noticed there were custom ones

[@3st3st77]

They didn't quite go through that much effort. If you look through the individual dates, you will find that lots of big events aren't represented in full detail. For example, Spain goes from having basically no colonies to owning most of the Americas in a single day. It's still a lot of work, but not that much.

[@efulmer8675]

It's actually not as bad as you think - those dates aren't all kept individually, they're compiled by the game by checking the "province history" file which just has a list of dates in it saying things like: "Occupied by Austria - January 19, 1732" "Occupied by Prussia - March 30, 1771" And then the game goes "Oh this province should be occupied by Austria between January 19, 1732 and March 30, 1771"

[@siltdoctor3478]

@@efulmer8675 still it wouldve taken a lot of effort to model all the leaders, generals, wars, etc.

[@tromedlovdrolmai]

Considering the fact that the borders are updated Everytime new provinces are added for the alt start dates, Paradox hasn't forgotten it, just not improving it

[@baltasarjimenez2091]

It's an automatic process, same thing for save game conversions. I'm pretty sure at any given stage, they only split or move provinces.

[@bdleo300]

Yep, this feature is EU 'trademark' since EU1.

[@6button9]

Cromwell isnt actually king at the startdate and is supposed to be a Lord Protector or whatever it is they give him. However, theres a very funny bug with the startdates where if you change the date your government won't change. It's actually kinda a big exploit if you use it right because you can for example go to 1800, get a empire government with its benefits, then go back in time to 1444 with that and achievements on, vice versa. I believe there's an exploit that uses that to completely bypass the shogunate mechanics

[@edwxx20001]

ya, you can do some fancy interesting things with start dates, because all the updates they have only done the minimal work to keep this feature functional. if you are doing iron man, remember to turn off end-tags, so you can tag switch as much as you want and swap mission trees to become super op.

[@harrismisailidis8798]

@6button9 yeah I remember when I didn't have any dlc and thus I couldn't advance my government rank I'd go to 1800 and scroll down to get Empire on France

[@seadmurtis6075]

there's also a similar bug with venice where choosing a later date and coming back to 1444 has them join the HRE from the start, i remember looking up a guide years ago and this is what people did lol

[@maikatideibaskapanaumrqlatupa]

don't do this, it breaks the game and causes a lot of issues

[@harrismisailidis8798]

@@maikatideibaskapanaumrqlatupa how so?

[@Vyury]

4:15 Close is understatement, they literally won, boyars elected Ladislau, son of then king Sigismund, as a Tsar, with a requirement that he converts to Orthodoxy. But, Sigismund was a die-hard catholic, so he refused, and then it all fell apart. His Catholicism was also a reason he was ousted as a king of Sweden, too, and again, he was proposed to have his son take over, if he were to become Lutheran (guess how that went).

[@wujekstalina]

Yep, Sigismund was a boneheaded moron

[@DehydratedDarkness]

And the reason while most influential Polish nobles were against him. The richest magnates had issues with the clergy interfering with their lives and having to pay for churches with tons of gold in them so the richest magnates were mostly protestant

[@paulusillyriusiudathaddaio2530]

@@DehydratedDarkness Thats actualy bs, i could name from memory some orthodox nobles in the commonwealth originating from the eastern voivodships, but not protestants. And to claim richest magnates were mostly protestant is insane. Another thing about church interferring in affairs of the nobles: most of the clergy was of noble birth, especially in the higher ups like bishoprics. And yet another thing: Sigismund was not a bad monarch, he actually trippled the income of the commonwealth, he managed to secure local union between catholic and orthodox churches, and was supported by the most powerful families like Zamoyski and Żółkiewski

[@admbeck]

Looking through the bookmarks and custom dates really helped me in passing history exams. It's sad to see them gone in future games

[@GBHighlands]

It's not a surprise when it's a mechanic so isolated from anything else. Also one they just put in and immediately abandoned. If they'd maybe put in some more achievements for the later bookmarks, and better implemented the economic scaling (sounds like a lot of work but behind the scenes it's essentially adding some values to some spreadsheets, adding some churches and workshops to the higher development provinces would probably go a long way towards rebalancing the mid- and late- game economies), it would be really cool to play different economic setups.

[@sharkronical]

Even in the third channel, not even HOI4, he can’t help but do achievements to Z

[@thevoidlord1796]

There's a reason why Tinto has made it clear that Project Ceasar will only have the 1337 start date

[@keizervanenerc5180]

The worst thing about these other bookmarks is that because it's historical borders, Spain and the Ottomans and rediculously overpowered in most of them.

[@losisansgaming2628]

Well historically they were kinda op....

[@kamodo2299]

Boolmark

[@keizervanenerc5180]

@@kamodo2299 thanks, corrected it

[@hanneswiggenhorn2023]

​@@losisansgaming2628yeah, but the game kind of lacks a mechanic to make the ottomans (or big empires in general) fall of. For the Spanish, that mechanic are the French who somehow are able to beat countries twice their dev with half the army, but the Ottomans don't really have a valid rival except the commonwealth if it forms, but often they still dominate even them

[@benpage5088]

@@hanneswiggenhorn2023The fuck are you waffling about? Spain shits on France with Spanish Tercios age bonus

[@HeavyGuyFP]

EU4 I've noticed has a fun fuckup where if you select a later bookmark (say, one in the revolutionary era) and then go to an earlier one, the UI gets ultra confused and starts showing things that shouldn't be visible for another few centuries

[@BlimberryBoi]

i really like eu4 , much less on tracks then HOI4. compared to eu4 it feels like the same thing happens every HOI4 game.

[@lorenzmaut3708]

in CK2 this feature made sense, like, if you want to play with someone historical you need to have those ages, for example playing as Rodrigo de Vivar, El CId, or enjoying a game with a historical nation that would never exist in a normal game because of events that are impossible to make in the game, and considering the time frame it doesn't matter if things are not perfect. But in EU4 starting a game with vast empires without economies doesn't make any sense, like it ruins the experience.

[@maciejbala477]

I do wish they added more bookmarks to CK3 for that reason. Currently it's just 2 (and no date selector). But yeah, generally, it is a lot of work, so I get why it's not a thing. Plus, modders can do this anyway. It's better to focus on features that modders can't add. That's where HOI4 DLCs are imo a mistake because mods will do focus trees better, they should've gone for making focus trees free altogether and done actual game mechanics for dlcs

[@Freedmoon44]

​@@maciejbala477 the problem with game mechanics for DLC's is that it ruins the experience for the non DLC players, the more mechanics are placed behind DLC's the more barebone the base game thus unatractive. Whereas ironically putting focus tree's behind paywall matters less cus mods do them better either way

[@starless267]

7:40 This is actually historically accurate. In the early 1820s, there was a revolt of nobles and Napolionic war veterans who tried to depose the tsar and establish USA style parlamentary republic in Russia. Judging by the fact that the revolt areas are quite accurate, I assume that it's a scripted event triggered by AI.

[@timesnewlogan2032]

The Decembrists, if I’m not mistaken?

[@milesgettles1058]

Isn’t the United States a Presidential system? How can you have a USA style parliamentary system?

[@timesnewlogan2032]

@@milesgettles1058 I assume they mean the parliament itself would be like the US Congress, with each division getting the same representation in one of the chambers, and the other being based on population.

[@stanzer09]

That was in 1825. Also they didn't want it to become a Republic.

[@anthithei4374]

I remember there existing some strats for France where you go to later bookmarks, then go back to starting in order to get free cores on a bunch of land in HRE

[@ryankasch5561]

I had the criticism going back years that their complaint about having to change all the dates was a bit stupid given they were the ones constantly updating the game. Like EU3 was able to easily do it because they had a grand total of 5 expansions, and I think it was only with Heir to the Throne that the map had any changes. I guess something having the start date selector down to the day showed that paradox didn't like as it showed real historical processes basically could never happen, but now not having them gives them the chance to not break the illusion.

[@muleorastromule3491]

Based on their statistics, almost no one plays the later start dates so it's pointless to keep putting the work into them.

[@edwxx20001]

@@muleorastromule3491 Hopefully eu5 will not have any but the 1300s one

[@manana1444]

@@muleorastromule3491 It's a negative feedback loop. Smaller amount of people play the non standard dates so Paradox doesn't put much effort into keeping them up with the current game, thus the dates start getting more imbalanced, which makes players less likely to pick them and that disincentivizes Paradox even further.

[@MattM-oe6qs]

​@@manana1444That's a positive feedback loop. This means that the same behavior continues and continues. A negative feedback loop has an opposite action occur. You are saying negative feedback just because the word negative means 'bad'.

[@ougasinge]

Can't believe eu4 has no feature with the plague and RATS

[@edwxx20001]

But EU5 starts with the black death so comeing.

[@pohorex6834]

When I was in early high school, I had a shit laptop that was barely able to play the game, so I legit spent days just looking at the maps and learning about geography and history of the world they created with the bookmarks

[@santoast24]

Personally, I think the plethora of alternate start dates, even for how broken and over-ambitious it is, is really one of the coolest features in any historical grand strategy ever

[@SubLordHawk]

So once again, modders working for free do better than the company that loves putting everything behind paywalls.

[@briandoolittle3422]

I play a lot of EU4. I can tell you everything that's broken. The whole thing. All dates. All mechanics. All countries. EVERY SINGLE THING.

[@BattyBest]

EU4 is a broken mess and we love it that way.

[@FukuokuaZoomer]

Can't wait for "Europa Universalis 5 Is A Broken Mess"

[@thevillager8339]

I like the different start dates as a challenge to bring back dying empires

[@powdermcgee267]

Wow that’s a lot of cool start dates you’ve shown us! It would be really cool if you could show us the fabled Victoria 2 tutorial

[@Jedibob5]

I'm surprised anyone else still remembers that he said he was going to make a Vic2 tutorial. I would imagine the idea is just fully abandoned now, but tbh now that Vic3 is a thing, I don't really mind. For all of its flaws, Vic3 is at least somewhat accessible in that its base economic system actually kinda functions and doesn't require abusing 6 different exploits to keep from collapsing on itself.

[@HazmanFTW]

It'd be cool if in EU5 they reworked the bookmarks so you have 1337 as the Sandbox mode start date, jump in and the game plays normally. Then you have big milestone bookmarks like the 30 Years War, 7 Years War, the American Revolution war etc, and have it be it's own set thing, where the economy and everything is all setup so you aren't going to immediately die to no money and it ends when you win or lose that war.

[@hugobatista9541]

I t sounds cool but it is a lot of work. Plus when they add new DLC they also have to consider the future bookmarks when adding them. Honestly it adds to much work for something that simply is not used a lot. To properly function each bookmark needs to be designed with building in provinces+ the development to give you income, that match the expenses that the administration and armed forces of later start dates cost. If not you end up like in EU IV, constant deficit.

[@James2017LC]

Weirdest thing is if you go all the way to the end date load the map for it and then go all the way back to 1444 and start the game nations will have new cores and lost cores on provinces its crazy. They will never fix this.

[@DNVIC]

0:25 at first i thought you were talking about random new world, which also hasnt been touched since it came out and is also staring you in the face when you launch the game. i think ive played maybe 2 games with random new world, and thats it.

[@efulmer8675]

Random new world has so much potential but the tile system, weird colonial and trade regions, and often just a lack of anything spawning really holds it back.

[@DNVIC]

@@efulmer8675 If there was a way to actually make it generate realistic continent-like landmasses, it'd be really fun. But almost every time it generated a world with the giant line from north to south in it, which just ruins immersion completely. Otherwise its like 3 tiny islands that barely count as "continents". I think I've only gotten a proper "new world" like once.

[@TheDolphinTuna]

I’m sure that the later start dates probably represent the historical tech difference between Europe and the ROTW more strongly, since that was how it usually played out before institutions were added

[@tteeee27426]

nice to see new videos of other paradox games aswell, good stuff

[@RichyArg]

the worst part is that the feature itself is not as broken, it sort of works, mods like ET make use of it with some sucess, it's the fact that the devs have never bothered to update the history files the feature draws from, and i'm pretty sure some newer features can't even interact with it, at all, which is why mods like ET have to resort to background events to compensate.

[@fraginatrix]

If he went back to EUIV, perhaps the funny map man will also return to Vicky 2 for some fun? We can only hope.

[@pixel9403]

as an eu4 enthusiast, i cried watching this. my fragile eyes that stared at the same colour for hours couldn't take it anymore.

[@keizervanenerc5180]

*SLOP INTENSIFIED*

[@fawkewe]

The thing about the start dates is the economy is NEVER ok. I spawned in as the Ottomans once and i was loosing 40 ducats a month because i was like 80 men over the force limit. They don’t take into account anything lol

[@wersab5960]

you can kinda mitigate the impact by just removing some of the forts because for some reason there are a lot more forts in the start dates

[@luigisardi1194]

Love that you showed how to get an achievement the cheesy way, I know you did this in HOI4 a while back but it's always fun to see and hope you do it more!

[@Titantr0n]

I feel so bad about the absolute waste of effort every time I boot up the game...

[@matthewsarson6934]

It makes you wonder why they have multiple start dates, when they never bothered to update or fix any of them besides 1444.

[@GBHighlands]

It probably seemed like a fun idea 10 years ago, but then they went and like quadrupled the map's province and country count, exponentially increasing the amount of work needed to update all the bookmarks. Pl

[@notthetsar438]

Ya know, kinda curious to see ISP give anbennar a try

[@strategystuff5080]

I don't blame em, Its fair to say most people play at the start, I will say PDX has very well researched border changes (for the most part) so its good for research, and getting a general idea of events, its actually very ambitious. to basically put most important historical events into a sim like this.

[@9wowable]

ISP back on EU4??!! I’ve prayed for this

[@spencerdurette2859]

There's a bunch of exsploits/glitches with swapping from one date to another, like changing the government for England and such to change how the behavior in the start date goes off, and it works for ironman. Any thoughts on checking out how bad it gets with just changing the dates around to emphasize this point?

[@Elfangor567]

I find the later start dates interesting mostly because you can play larger nations without them having been perfectly built up.

[@qewobob]

i love the alternate start date future playing in a broken world if fun

[@buhwuhbuhduhbuhluhbuhruhbu1298]

I remember I tried out the US achievement and for some reason none of Europe had feudalism or any later institutions so the French Revolution would have happened but they were probably confused on what they were trying to abolish.

[@TheOwneroftheIC]

Alternate start dates are gone because the devs got lazy. I'd trade all of the stupid "flavor" (filler) events in CK3 to have them back.

[@aksmex2576]

I wish for EU5 they have dedicate new start dates, maybe a total of 3. One early game, one midgame, and one late game.

[@ekonomija8718]

I love the new editing style!

[@Elvesflame]

Note that later bookmarks will also randomly select and fill out your idea groups to the tech level. Have fun refunding all the crap you don't want for 10% of the idea cost!

[@CoeGr]

That backgroung music is pleasant.

[@TheUckActor]

What a time to be alive ISP video about eu4 in 2024

[@bdleo300]

Bro never played EU1, EU2, EU3....

[@fawkewe]

10:38 this is actually REALLY!!! Low manpower for that part of the game. The bigger countries like France and Russia should have atleast 500k each at this point.

[@Tanya_Of_The_Evil]

Damm, he is playing Eu4, just like about a years before Eu5

[@gorilla_online646]

Dude I just started playing EU4 again. Les go

[@krayedouk]

I just restart to play to EU4 this day ... Beautiful

[@arklaw8306]

There's a few alternate start videos that are neat, like the Napoleon wars against the coalitions

[@Prauwlet213]

ah yes, Eu4, that one I keep forgetting exists.

[@torgomaghanyan7633]

If you swotch to 1820 and back but still holding Ashikaga capital , when you go back to 1444 you get all dimeos for free, not only yhat but they cant fight each other so you have your own easter revok hre from day 1

[@matthijsw.4135]

Had to sit still for a moment to take in that I have exactly the same expansions as the Suffered One.

[@sweetpurple8812]

You have to do a series playing these different dates as starts!

[@lokenontherange]

It still amazes me that the colonisation game doesn't have an AI capable of fighting overseas.

[@martinescobar3908]

Now do Broken Victoria II's mechanics

[@bigbubble4282]

That whole game is just jank

[@martinescobar3908]

@@bigbubble4282 fun jank, did you know that releasable nations are randomised? You can have republics or kingdoms and also the accepted cultures are random too

[@logoncal3001]

I swear if Paradox releases a whole content pack FOR THIS MECHANIC because of your video

[@SnowithVG]

$7.99 for that btw

[@derekskelton4187]

A world where Napoleon has a mediocre victory is probably better for everyone tbh.

[@Joshieboy75]

eu4 is my main paradox game its just so much fun and i have more time to do stuff and i can work on a campaign for months while in hoi4 i start a game and im already to ww2 in like 4 hours it makes my time feel more worthwhile and it has great achievments

[@Deus_Divinitus]

If paradox was smart, they’d “buy” the extended timeline and add it to the base game as a free expansion

[@Inucroft]

Oh, Oliver Cromwell was actually crowned king after a few years into his reign

[@SuperCelio456]

The return of the king 👑

[@huni1939]

And I was surprised when I first played Eu4 and started the thirty years war and I was in insane debt

[@Ittna]

Bought the game yesterday for 5€

[@katamattyon]

I really want them to update startdates and historyical files (for people who have the relevant DLC) so religions like Anglicanism, Hussitism and Sikhism are in there

[@TheDrow79]

I propose that if you do more EU4 videos that we should be referred to as starving Timmies whenever it is a EU4 video

[@fredrikkirderf2907]

CK2 has this feature as well except it actually works fairly well

[@strategystuff5080]

Actually in older versions of the game you could get something like 1 million men by end, granted most where mercs, but that was just the standard for many years.

[@goldenfiberwheat238]

ISP finally escaped the hoi4 mines

[@NullScorpion]

I found the French army! I’ve been stuck in the Blackrooms for 12 years! And they just appeared!

[@wyvernscale9634]

Funnily enough, ck2 also has this feature! I don't think it's nearly as broken there though lol

[@themthew638]

Would be happy with 3 start dates in EU5. Keep it simple, start, middle, late, kinda like Medieval TW1.

[@MATRIX6162]

If every nation is in debt, then no nation is in debt

[@linders2000]

Use the Anbennar Mod!! That really gives Eu4 new life!!

[@isorrowredpanda]

This isn’t hoi4…

[@flameguy3416]

Yes it is.

[@TheBrawlUnit]

I feel like if they're ever going to fix the bookmarks, it'll be when they're sure the game won't get any new major update/DLC that could break them again down the line. But at this point, I doubt they'd want to spend the effort instead of working on a game that's actually gonna sell more DLCs.

[@catlovingtrio]

If you think EU4 is lousy with abandoned, broken content, wait until you hear about HOI4.

[@powerman923]

The SLOPPY saxophone was a good choice. 👌

[@NotKnafo]

this should be on the main channel also youtube recognized this as eu1 wtf?

[@Davitasho]

hope for a real eu4 video with the latest dlc content

[@enigmabey]

YES!.. both to you playing EU4 on the side and also yes it is a broken mess

[@matthewlong257]

I really hope eu5 actually has a good deal of content of release. I would rather the game take another 2 years to come out if it was anywhere near the level of eu4.

[@Burno01]

What's this ISP comes to EU4 what a blessing. You will find no Gravey Timmy around here.

[@niohanniball1772]

Yeah problems that should be fixed before EU5: Trading System (no chance but it's the worst simplistic system I have ever seen); AI (mainly the stupidly fast expansion); AE (way too low currently); Standing Armies (in 1444?!); Technology (everyone has the same advancements?); colonization (in America: too slow, in Africa: too fast); DLCs ("Domination" literally is just an update for "Conquest of Paradise", "Rule Britannia", "Mandate of heaven" and "Third Rome").

[@Wahsteinious]

March of the Eagles A-Z when

[@pocky9693]

Last time I was this early, ISP made HoI4 content. wait

[@riptidezim6151]

"Europa Universalis 4 is a HOT Mess Compared to Hearts of Iron IV" This guy literally complained about a feature nobody used for 12 minutes.... Usually a fan of your hoi4 videos but this was just a clickbait video where you clearly dont care about eu4 at all. EU4 is a mess in some aspects such as only utilising one core to process the game, having to restart when you return to the menu or the late game issues of doomstacks (mostly in MP) but not one of these was addressed.

[@sonsam9067]

9:55 The man said it (I'm french-Canadian)

[@nomnomxddd7341]

Non-Hoi4 content:happy It's eu4: hell Pleas help

[@GrockleTD]

Lads, there's an impasta amogus

[@krystina662]

its similar in ck2, since at some point poland and bohemia were in a personal union and the Czechs were a part of the HRE Poland is just Bohemia that's a vassal of the HRE