Why do people avoid playing big nations?

[@LemonCake101]

Maybe I should just play a nice tall France game you know sticking with their natural borders... All support is massively appreciated!! ko-fi.com/lemoncake101 Come and say hi here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv

[@Rudra-b5d]

We both know that the natural borders of France is all of Western Europe, Africa, the New World, South and South-East Asia, the Middle East and the rest of the world in a PU or as vassals and client states.

[@mr.ocelotguy8995]

i agree i would watch it

[@flazzorb]

Simple, playing after you're already on top is boring. Everything stops being a challenge and becomes monotonous.

[@LemonCake101]

I mean it's a sandbox game, you make your own challange, like getting fun OE numbers, etc etc. If you want the fun to be from fighting wars against countries that can put up a fight, well come play MP :)

[@flazzorb]

@@LemonCake101 Personally, I find the fun in the climb to the top. Passing vibes based benchmarks such as no longer needing allies, and being able to disregard the concept of mercenaries, or as is my current Austria run, even needing to pretend to fight my own wars. MP, being a battle of relative equals, means that climbing the metaphorical ladder is undermined by going up against the same guys on broadly the same footing, over and over. Of course, it's all different strokes for different folks, and there's no wrong way to have fun, especially in SP.

[@LemonCake101]

@@flazzorb no fair enough, and I do see the appeal!

[@toddhoward1892]

@@LemonCake101 This is pretty much me. I'm coming up to 500 hours, so a relatively new player, but I've never played France, England, Spain, Portugal, Ottomans... Basically anybody that has more than 15-20k troops at the start of the game. I found it much easier to learn how the game works by starting as a nation in a difficult position, (Irish minors, Granada, etc.) because you have no wiggle room to screw up. If you screwed up somewhere, you get declared on and full annexed, so it immediately taught me the importance of strong alliances, pouncing on chances for easy expansion, the value of the ducat, loan cycling, and other sillier strategies to escape danger, (No CB Irish minor as Albania, flee to the new world.)

[@Jouzou87]

I feel this. As a small nation, if an event costs 100 ducats, you have to consider the options. Whereas in the late game you could drop a thousand ducats without a second thought.

[@remidepont2603]

I think the main reason is that people play EU4 for having fun and writing cool stories. And the underdog story going from a small nation to a big one is cool. Also I think people start by playing big countries and then there is only small countries left

[@LemonCake101]

For sure: I mean I literally talk about that later in the video ;)

[@QasqaZhol]

Not really. It is just that coalition system and AI decision making is a total crap in paradox games. If AI nations would behave like they did historically against hegemons, playing Ottomans, Hordes, France or any other strong nations would be great to play.

[@justacrewmate3876]

And a small country is better to be managed and administrated.

[@bozomori2287]

Lemoncake exposed the thinking behind your childlike comment The fear of failure is real

[@Bopadoo]

@@LemonCake101stop lying. 🤬🤬🤬🤬

[@IronGin201]

One of my enjoyments of playing Eu4 is taking a small country and make a mental note of my current standing in 1444, when 100 years have gone by I enjoy to watch my new empire and see how much I've expanded. To me the fun is watching the growth of my country, now one could argue that development of your country is also a growth, but it doesn't look as good as a map painted in your colours.

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough! Blobbing is an art too for sure.

[@arekzawistowski2609]

I agree but deving for "i don't like sand" achievement was actually very enjoyable. But meanwhile Austria bot got 6,5k developed by 1700 so my 3,5k dev on deserts wasn't a match and i need to try again.

[@Follower_of_Yeshua]

Its Easier to Have Prettier Borders

[@LemonCake101]

The prettiest border is when you own it all though

[@Follower_of_Yeshua]

@@LemonCake101 Nah, the German Empire Borders are Elite

[@marcustulliuscicero5443]

The only beautiful borders are where the land and sea kiss.

[@arekzawistowski2609]

There are only a few examples of perfect borders Croatia/Chile owning all coastline. Switzerland/Czechia owning 0 coastline. Mann owning all Islands and no mainland and classic world conquest

[@ogerpinata1703]

​@@LemonCake101 Yes and no. Take the German Empire. These borders look sleek and sexy. The proportions, everything. (Apart from Northschleswig, which is too long) Then look at the HRE or Weimar Republik. In the HRE, Pomerania looks bad because its so stubby and not all territory is linked up. Same goes for the Weimar republic and East Prussia. By itself East Prussia has very sexy borders, however the Memelland and half of the Frisches Haff are missing, obscuring the shape. When the Polish parts of Silesia were added to German Silesia, it bent the shape out of its form again because it was too long. Aesthetics are important because they please the eye.

[@Noobmaster-of3xk]

Cuz its way to easy so you dont get that dopamine rush when you get the number1 gp spot

[@LemonCake101]

That too is a fair reason

[@RsgNoise]

But the ai is so bad than being n1 is not so exciting after the first hundreds hours, you just know it'll happen

[@nrbmemes2414]

I don't avoid any country except fr*nce

[@LemonCake101]

Correct answer

[@theblindlucario5093]

Based Francophobe

[@peterzeger7263]

I actually have the most fun playing France or Austria in the big nations league. GB, Portugal and Spain/Castille seem the most boring to me. Even Ottomans has a better game start and you can try do the Rome before 1500 achievement.

[@brendansmith5529]

France is especially interesting because it has three main routes of expansion: South (Spain/Italy), East (HRE) and Overseas (New World, maybe Britain and Ireland if lucky). Three very different gameplay styles, right smack in the heart of European politics.

[@MyUsersDark]

Literally me

[@kitchaos1118]

playing tall for me more means trying to make the most money/power without conquering a ton of land

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough, that's a definition of tall too. That to some extent is the issue: there are a lot of conflicting 'tall' definitions.

[@arekzawistowski2609]

Zlewikk "tall" trade game with 1,5 M income would fulfill this definition?

[@Notmyname1593]

@@arekzawistowski2609 Yes, it would. It doesn`t matter how wide you are at the end. If you get tall, you are tall.

[@arekzawistowski2609]

@@Notmyname1593 but he almost got WC first and then started scaling

[@plebisMaximus]

I like this definition because that way I'm just a really good tall player and not an awful wide player lol

[@goldenmairon2371]

Mostly because people enjoy a bit of challenge and if you start as Otto, sure you can have some fun flavour, but it's never a question of if you can achieve something, it's a question of how fast you can do it. Playing Perm or Granada, now that's decently thrilling!

[@LemonCake101]

I mean, I guess? If you think Otto's are too easy, that just means you aren't declaring enough wars.

[@RemyLorenz]

​@@LemonCake101 So indeed a question of how fast you can do it. That just a bit less fun to me. I could have an easy campaign as England rn but I'm playing an Irish minor with the foggy dew playing in the background.

[@LemonCake101]

@@RemyLorenz oh I see, fair enough!

[@JosefZeethuven]

@@LemonCake101 Declaring more/less wars is just deciding how fast you would accomplish your goal.

[@adechi]

It's the late game problem right? You play a small nation and first 100-150 years you are pretty hands on getting your nation strong but once you've overcome the hurdles it can get autopilot-y. Starting as a big nation you just hit that point way quicker and I reckon the more hours/experience you have in the game the less enjoyment those nations are going to provide since you can just roll over the AI from 1444

[@LemonCake101]

True, the issue is for me I guess is it has kind of looped back around since I can roll over AI from around 1444 now, so I may as well play the bigger tag get the fancy buffs and go for a weird build instead of 'proving' myself by playing something like Mzab for the 14th time.

[@adechi]

@@LemonCake101 Yeah I get that as well, setting mini goals for yourself is a good way to enjoy different tags. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with anbennar since most tags have something unique going for them with lots of RP which counteracts the minmaxer in me which can be a breath of fresh air lol

[@FantasticKruH]

Yep, for me its the late game issue. if you play a major country, you would already have unlimited manpower and ducts by 1550. but if you play a small country you have 50-100 extra years of non creative mode gameplay depending on the setbacks you had. also when you are already top 5 countries at the start, it does not feel satisfying reaching number 1. playing a small country and watch it grow into a great power and then into number 1 feels so satisfying.

[@damdamdamdam208]

This is why one of the game modes I've come up with to challenge myself is the 'you must be at least 30 dev tall to ride' rule. It's quite simple: you're only allowed to directly conquer or annex provinces if all your other directly owned provinces are at least 30 dev. Every single one. Even with countries that have dev cost reduction in their national ideas like Cologne or Netherlands, it's a challenge to keep up with larger nations well into the late game. You have to get clever with alliances and vassals. At first mana is the limiting factor, so to gain more mana and keep yourself it's actually a good idea to declare wars on rivals just to humiliate them. In the late game mana is no longer the issue (especially if you got coring cost reduction) but instead it's govcap that becomes an issue. This game mode becomes a lot easier (I'd say too easy) if you become emperor, so in my recent games I've tried to avoid that.

[@dakapo8985]

To quote Tarantino "Because it's so much fun Jan! Get it!"

[@LemonCake101]

Fun is mandatory after all

[@dakapo8985]

@@LemonCake101 Yea. Like you said in your vid about important aspects of a WC, the most important thing is that you find it fun.

[@missingmochigumanofficial]

I'm in the camp of people who's mostly played small nations. It wasn't only after hundreds of hours past the 1,000-hour playtime mark that I started to try big and European nations like France and England. Personally, this is probably for two reasons. One, especially before the mission trees that would give inordinate amounts of flavor to certain countries over others, it's objectively more fun for me to build up from a small nation to a big one than it is from a big nation to a bigger one. The fun back before mission trees came from you yourself being the tangible cause for how your nation would grow and prosper, which is more palpable if you start as a small nation. Now, mission trees are a thing, and it's big nations (or nations that have potential to be big) who are those that have the most flavorful ones. Second, as a citizen of an irl Southeast Asian "minor," I have little attachment to the big powers present in the EU4 timeframe, and the place of which I claim citizenship was a sprawling empire neither then or now. I think many players play certain nations based on how much they are emotionally attached to it (Byzantium is an obvious example), and such nations tend to already be notable entities on the map in the EU4 timeframe.

[@edgarbm6407]

I think you raise an interesting point about the cultural perspective of the player. As a Canadian, I love playing as England or France and building a massive global colonial empire, while keeping something similar to "historical borders" in Europe.

[@zshivkonezshivkov380]

The case with Stellaris isn't really the same as with other Paradox games. In Stellaris playing with subjects is better since you can specialize them. Expanding too much also gives negative effects that increase with the amount of planets, systems and pops you have. And finally as much as I personally like seeing my name big on the map and micromanaging all my planets, it's living hell to manage more than 5 planets, let alone 20 or 30 so I just leave it to specialized subjects instead or if I can't make subjects I try rushing technologies that let me just place everything on a couple of specialized planets.

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough: Stellaris is kind of weird in the way it can 'punish' expansion with their glorified governing capacity mechanic in fairness.

[@zshivkonezshivkov380]

@@LemonCake101 It's not even that honestly, you can scale out of those negatives. It's more that it stops being fun having to micromanage so much. It's not like in EU4 where provinces are more static. I personally prefer blobbing in EU4.

[@marcustulliuscicero5443]

And your vassals in Stellaris get the massive resource output bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulties, which means for raw resources it can be much better to just tax your vassals and don't run a resource gathering job.

[@youtuberobbedmeofmyname]

@@zshivkonezshivkov380 People always complain about boredom in EU4 but honestly I've never been more bored more quickly than when I played HOI4 or Stellaris. You scale up a little bit and it's suddenly much less difficult but 10x more micro management. EU4 the micro is as big or as little as you want it to be. You can waste all your points if you want. You can spend your money all you want. It usually wont be the end of your nation. Apply the same strategy to HOI4 or Stellaris and you lose. You cannot screw up in those games or you lose until you lose everything.

[@minus-111]

I just generally like underdog stories both in fiction and history. Being big and become bigger feels nice for a while but quickly become boring. Also it's creates more memorable moments. Like I don't remember much from my Russian campaign except being huge and unlucky regencies but Somalia vs Spain+Portugal or Sikh Punjab and crushing winged hussars with elephants were sick moments.

[@LemonCake101]

That's fair, it does make for better stories.

[@rodi8266]

Manufactories giving flat goods produced bonus is the biggest reason why you want to be wide when playing tall

[@jordan7239]

As a playing tall enjoyer I would like to clarify somethings: Why when we play tall we choose dont choose big nations like france, ming or castile even though they are objectively better to dev? That is because neither of them have a helpful starting ideas or situation to play tall, add to that that the concept of their nation isnt to build tall but to expand and that is seen in the mission trees. 2- why even though playing tall and wide is 100% the best strategy tall players choose to stick to some border that is worse for them? For myself I would answer that this depends on a very deep concept in my mind that the land and only the land is representative of the nation we play, so for italy italy ends with its natural borders same with the netherlands, it doesnt matter if there are way better land to dev just right in france for me to conquer, because if I get them and dev them, Im developing france... Im not developing the nation I choose to build tall to the skies. 3- isn't having a three 20 dev provinces better than having a one that is 60 dev? Better in what way? In terms of military + economic meters inside the game? For sure but that isn't the point we already saw that tall players willfuly go for a strategies that are worse under these metrics They are for sure better in terms of economy, but are they better in terms of enjoyment? For me no having a 60 dev province is way more fun, to look at and to manage and to dev to that limit.

[@jordan7239]

And for the theories why some people choose playing tall over wide I would say one of the main reasons is that its way more relaxed just try it, you just set down and dev, you dont have to manage truces, you dont have to deal with rebels popping left and right, you dont have manage your trade... Etc

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough, lets go through these: 1. I mean yes, but 10% dev cost is not enough to overcome an average dev of +4: since +4 dev increases dev cost by 12%: so by spreading out more, you have dev cost 'built in'. 2. Fair enough, that is personal preference. 3. Its better because its cheaper to get there. For the price of 1 60 dev I can have like 10 20 dev provinces.

[@jordan7239]

@@LemonCake101 For 3- again we already agree that its worse in terms of ingame meterics, but choosing to go this route of building a mega province has its advantages over the other route in the enjoyment meteric for many people including me. And for 1- tall players tend to enjoy it more when there is a big nation that is a threat around you rather than you owning the entire show from the start, its like a boss of some sort that you will usually beat up when you decide its the right time, and starting as france or ming dont give that luxery

[@noseycrane]

i played a game, when the new russian mission tree first came, as a quite dev focused muscovy into russia, and it was amazing. the russian heartlands are, as lemoncake says, great for devving, and when i was running out i just switched over to polish farmlands. using trade companies and the powerfull mission tree for tons of production income was exceptionally fun

[@LemonCake101]

Its a really strong build, and yeah the Russian missions are pretty plane overpowered too I have to be honest.

[@boop7441]

i get REALLY bored when im playing a country where I have to wait 2 minutes for my armies to move from one side to the other

[@teddys5775]

For me it’s to take as long as possible to get to what I’m going to call the expansion phase. That moment when you can just cycle wars and nobody can stop you. Now I’m going to get back to my Riga game.

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough!

[@gabrielethier2046]

Riga is a great wide vassal swarm nation

[@teddys5775]

@@gabrielethier2046 going for a full Europe conquest west going to Prussia and east going to Livonia except for a few specific Provences that I’m going to dev to 100

[@FantasticKruH]

yep, I call it the creative mode phase.

[@itshunni8346]

Don't forget that Ming gets an additional building slot in all their provinces as a mission reward, has bonuses for playing tall, and its one of the nations that you can get your advisors down to costing nothing very easily.

[@piotrkosakowski7071]

and play click dev button simulation whole game?;p

[@itshunni8346]

@@piotrkosakowski7071 Yea, kind of

[@jillstingray8828]

and then there is me, that thinks if you are not constantly at war you are not playing the game right. Of course, just my opinion

[@LemonCake101]

No for sure, constant expansion and fire management is definitely one of the ways I would consider having fun in this game.

[@iseeyou5061]

​@@LemonCake101 Hard agree. I find i struggle to having fun if i'm not planning to conquer something. Ultimately making all of my game plotting on world conquest even if i don't play long enough to actually achieve world conquest

[@edgarbm6407]

Constantly at 2-3 wars more like.

[@xerty5502]

​@@iseeyou5061each to there own I guess. I do not mind expanding but I have never really been a map painter it just is not that much fun for me. Do not get me wrong fighting wars is fun but the constant need to pai t the map one color is just not my bag. Once the snowball builds up enough that the wars are not challenging any more the game is pretty much done for me. I have spent pretty silly amounts of time playing balance of power games in the hre. I find that fun.

[@iseeyou5061]

@@xerty5502 I have difficulty playing once snowball kicked in too but i could have some fun if i'm still planning on conquering new lands. If i simply limit myself like say, i want to recreate second Achaemanid empire, then my motivation more quickly dissapear as i get closer to my goal. Planning for world conquest, even though i never had one allow me to have fun playing longer.

[@eventuel4987]

I think a third factor (for me, at least) is that every game as a small nation is unique due to the random events. I've played three games as Corsica, and because of the opportunities that were offered to me, I had a very different style: I went pirate in one with most of my provinces in Italy, colonial in another with lots of provinces in Iberia, and conquered the Hordes in another. When you're a smaller nation, every small change is going to affect your game massively (as Austria, Switzerland allying France doesn't make a big difference since you're probably gonna fight both at some point anyways, whereas as the Three Leagues, it is a major game changer). The fact that you're able to thrive off small changes is part of what makes the game fun as small nations, unlike in already powerful nations where you can just shrug off most of the other events.

[@zwinnytygrys9865]

0:13 I mean.... tall empires in stellaris are good not because they are challenging, but because they are hard.

[@boss0nomaka102]

having a large empire in late game stellaris turns your in game years into literal years. I actually like having a large empire in games, but lots of games just can't handle it.

[@anisothmen3712]

That's me too , there is an apeal in making small cpintirs bigger and more successful . Being the big ones means you just have to keep your position

[@bjarkiorleifsson6100]

The answer is simple: People love an underdog, and in my case, I get extremely bored when there's no other country able to challenge me and that happens way too quickly if you play as a major.

[@SereglothIV]

For me it's just a fun factor. Like many other people said in the comments, I like starting as an underdog, slowly increasing my power and influence to overcome bigger neighbours that threaten me. If I started already big, it would be bland and boring for me. *Power is way more satisfying when it is earned, not given from the start.* I think that sentence sums it up best. In my entire EU4 history (over 1000 hours), I've only played 2 big nations: Aragon and Poland. Aragon, because it was my first campaign and I figured it would be easier to learn as a big nation (but even then I preferred picking weaker Aragon over stronger Castile). Poland, because I'm Polish (but if I ever want to repeat a Polish campaign, I'm starting as Mazovia). But I have never ever touched nations like the Ottomans, France, England, Austria, Muscovy etc. And before EU4 I used to play CK2. I've always started as a count or a duke, never as a king and definitely not as an emperor. Climbing the feudal ladder was the most fun for me and I usually got bored quickly after becoming an independent kingdom. On a sidenote, I'm also not a fan of the last few DLCs, because instead of adding or expanding some organic mechanics for the game (like favors or trade companies in the past), they just come down to 'click a mission to get something OP'. And again, I prefer building up my power by using knowledge of the game mechanics, instead of getting something cool just because I conquered province A as tag B. You occupied Cairo as the Ottomans? Great, have Mamluks as a subject and here's some more cool stuff for you! You occupied Cairo as Cyprus? Good job, I guess... You conquered Rome? Bad boy, have a bunch of negative modifiers! Oh, you're France? Pardon, here's a reward instead. I'm really sorry that this comment is so long, it wasn't planned as such 😅

[@Donerci_Pikacu_Usta]

7:14 I did this as the Great Horde. I started the campain for the Khaan achivement. After I got the achivement my comquest slowed down because I was busy devving the Steppes and Russians. I never ran of land to dev. It was incredibly fun. That campain was the turning point for me. I didnt played tall at all before that campain.

[@chan-bch.6833]

Awesome insights into this matter. I personally only really subscribed to the idea that big nations are easier and that people want a game to be challenging to be fun. But that idea of being better than the AI, and smaller nation equals bigger achievement and bragging rights really resonates with me, because as the reddit shows, people like to get praised and recognised for their work, and not so much critisised for being worse than the AI. I understand that this view might not be shared by many because not everyone share their games on reddit or other platforms, but i think that the craving of validation and congratulations is quite universal and it feels good to be complimented. It also makes sense to avoid being critisised. Smaller nations allow for this. As an extra thought, I also think the tall=small thought comes partially from the idea that this creates a stronger contrast in what your country achieved. Yes conquering everything makes being tall easier and more efficient, but that isn't the emphasis when people look at it, the emphasis is put on the funny large name across the map.

[@Michal-je1hx]

When I started playing, I was afraid to play as large countries because I thought they would be much more difficult to manage than smaller ones, but in practice it is the other way around

[@aluminiumknight4038]

I enjoy eu4 the most when i am on the verge of death, so my favorite countries are the small nations that need to deal with the ottomans early on

[@LemonCake101]

Fair enough!

[@nurrohmatadiputra5378]

I play ramazan and my entire playthrough is just constantly stressing how to expand under the ottoman, mamluks, and great horde. It's really annoying that mamluks guarantee cypres (is that the correct nation?) independence, add in the fact that with enough times my neigbor would ally themselves with ottoman or mamluks (and later the great horde), thankfully I manage to get ottoman to be my ally but that makes me become an eyesore to mamluks. Honestly it's really fun experience.

[@b0redom782]

My only game i ever played to 1821 was a Tall korea game where I conquered China and Japan and just stayed there the entire game. Still had #1GP even with one of the craziest spains I've ever seen cuz literally every province was like 30-40 dev

[@b0redom782]

Also some small nations have even more wide potential than bigger nations. Saluzzo for example is probably one of the countries that can get the biggest in europe by 1500 because they can for like 25 years ignore ALL AE with 90% AE reduction through papal controller + mission reward + age of discovery buff + espionage + traditions. I used that to conquer literally all of italy within like 10 years and nobody cared. Took out a massive chunk of france. Nobody cared. (I did kinda shoot myself in the foot because I was constantly at war so much that the duchess of burgundy event couldn't fire and I had to manually integrate them after I forcefed them a fuck ton of land)

[@LemonCake101]

I feel like most people won't call all of China and Japan as Korea a 'Tall' Game in fairness, but sounds pretty fun!

[@b0redom782]

@@LemonCake101 I don't like tall as a phrase either. I really play a mix of both in most games unless i'm playing someone who really does quick conquest like the timurids (who despite being in terms of raw dev of them and their cores the second biggest nation in the game I do think are played significantly more than the other "big nations" in the game, just cuz of the whole mughals thing)

[@katelundberg2029]

This video isn't about playing tall as ming but I am in a playthrough playing a mix of tall and colonial with Ming and I just wanted to add that their mission tree is really good at playing tall even if their ideas aren't as good as they could be. You can get 20% dev cost reduction permanently by finishing the mission tree while improving the Haijin policy, and you also will end up upgrading one of your celestial edicts to add -10% dev cost as well to it. Plus if you think of tall as not expanding and just focusing on internal development they have a privilege for the Shizu(clergy) that punishes them for expanding and rewards sitting back and dev clicking, Inwards Perfection punishes declaring war and expanding while providing dev cost reduction depending on your Shizu's land control. Plus: tributaries. You'll be swimming in so many monarch points you might even run out of ways to waste them assuming you still try to optimize deving. And if you ever run out of your land to dev and you're feeling generous you can just dev your tributaries' land or turn the tributaries into vassals for even more land to dev.

[@THEFabianValenzuela]

Homestuck pfp

[@ognyannedev5979]

lemon cake only plays ottomans and france and does a world conquest every game

[@LemonCake101]

lies, I stack funni modifier

[@andrewsmith6776]

When i play larger nations I typically set goals for myself as points of maximum expansion, usually historical borders but sometimes a little further, then once I get to that point I try to make it like a vic2 game where I try to keep all the other great powers in check, limiting their expansion but also making sure they're capable of defending themselves from the other GPs

[@Leann-n]

I consider myself waaay too obsessed with this concept, the idea of rejecting what is considered OP or more powerful than most of the other options. In part I know the history of the countries that "won" in history, I don't have curiosity to play through France, Castille, Ottomans history, (while Burgundy, Aragon and Byzantium are super interesting and fresh) I cannot write it from start so that takes away part of the fun, but also I've seen those let's say top 10 tags play in my SP campaigns and its hilarious how OP they are compared to other countries, it adds to the rejection when thinking of these countries. There is also an ego factor in the sense that there is no "merit" or "challenge" when playing the strongest tags, there's less things to learn how to play and to execute correctly without loosing. Btw I don't like "playing tall" at all I can't believe that's a real concept, like yeah having super big provinces and a huge capital with lots of buildings is really cool but putting yourself on a 5-20 province jail makes no sense to me. I'm not the WC guy either, I want to forget I'm a lonely man playing with bots roleplaying countries 😂so to achieve that the gameplay has to be very challenging, to keep the mind bussy with lots of problems that have to be solved, as soon as I find myself just making colors and numbers bigger by exploiting AI and never loosing it just becomes omega boring and campaign is over. I do see the fun in WC and super wide gameplay tho, I would just need to be more of a hardcore eu4 player to enjoy that.

[@Leann-n]

Oh and you also make a great argument with the micro being boring part, monotonous micro overload is a classic trigger for ruining inmersion. I think that's why this "rejecting OPness" concept is so much more impactful in EU4 than other games, because lets face it, its micro is super boring and non-interactive, without context built up you are just clicking buttons LMAO. I don't get this feeling as much in RTS for example, where micro is waaay more fun. What a long comment damn sorry, but again I'm obsessed with this concept and EU4 is its clearer example so you hit a spot haha

[@abcde_5949]

This hits home, i've got over 1600 hours of eu4 and i've never started the game as anything that has over 2 provinces. Even if I want to play as Austria, I always form it as Bregenz.

[@sreckocuvalo8110]

0:00 TOO EASY! Video done, thank you for coming to my Ted Talks.

[@LemonCake101]

Eu4 is too easy by that logic no one would play any country

[@lkaseru]

Much more fun to go from small to big than from big to bigger

[@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585]

my main motivation to play (and also stay) small is roleplay playing a tiny Netherlands with historical borders is one of the most fun and difficult playthroughs ive had - far from "optimal", but immensely satisfying similar playing as Zaporozhie, its a fun challenge to maximise cav combat ability while struggling against the ottomans, russians and poles as a tiny nation other examples are lübeck without conquering anything outside lübeck trade node, pirate gotland, and my favorite: pirate queen of bregenz raiding the Mediterranean while maxxing power projection through insults a lot of the main tags are way too powerful too early on, and its only gotten worse with domination and winds of change for example austria just gets half of europe in the first 100 years, which is fun at the start, but when you're that powerful, conquering more land is far more tedious than challenging

[@KerromSever]

I recently played The Command in Anbennar and, despite them being rather large and having strong armies, it was challenging and interesting due to the numerous horrific disasters (e.g. 100’s of thousands of demons spawning, or large swathes of your nation rebelling multiple times) and the relatively large and variably powerful neighbors (notable the raj to the south west)

[@stefanstankovic4781]

For most Paradox games, I usually try some regional powers that can eventually dominate the region... Which is as good of a cut-off point as any, can't remember last time I reached end date except maybe Victoria II. So - Argentina, Persia, Serbia, Sokoto, Two Sicilies, Japan, Dai Nam, one of the Nordics...

[@Nictator42]

I enjoy taking the smaller countries and making them powerful. The fun is in the expansion for me and going from like 3 provinces to 300. Especially if there's a really big and fancy mission tree for it.

[@cubeofdestiny]

in my opinion eu4 gets boring when you get very big and wealthy, so starting as a bigger country just makes you get to that point faster

[@linkhidalgogato]

i think i just like how efficient playing tall is u end up doing a lot more with what u have than u would while playing wide, and i think a big part of that is that most people just dont do the micro when they play wide myself included.

[@Klymstra]

Really nice video. Another region that I find fantastic for deving & expanding it's the north of India. If you start as Bengal, because they have -10% dev in their ideas and nice color, follow their conquest mission tree you'll end up with tons of farmlands/grasslands with amazing trade goods, with almost every area having a center of trade that you can upgrade to lvl 3 when you do some dev cycles. On the plus you'll have some amazing natural borders easy to protect with mountains and jungles.

[@LemonCake101]

Bengal good, for sure.

[@xkevlarex]

Absolutely agree, last time i played Trebizond to Byzantium campaign, and at the moment when Byzantium was formed and i "replaced" Ottomans there's nothing left to do in the game: you could just go and kill anyone and nothing can stop you. And Ottomans are in that position after first 5 years of the game.

[@Oshnook]

Great vid. I hope that with Eu5 the devs implement some mechanics to make larger nations harder to govern, as was historically accurate.

[@chengzhou8711]

Finally looking at the philosophical side of paradox games

[@gokce9521]

If I wanted to see the big powerful country get bigger and powerfuler I would read a history book

[@ignaciomedinadunin359]

This remembered me of an idea i had when i was addicted to play total war games, especially the Medieval II. The amount of times i ragequit for losing a battle or not taking account of something that, although did not make me lose the campaign, nevertheless made me lose a stupid challenge of an idea i had in mind to my campaign like conquer all of gaul the fastest as possible. I thought of that as pretty childish, but even now that I've grown up i tend to do so in some EU4 campaign (i.e. achieveng 90% admin efficiency in a german run), but i think that make me lose a lot about what this games can teach me, about losing, even in the context of historical war strategy. When I figured that out I tried to allow myself to make mistakes and it was awesome, it was truly a roleplay, full of intrigue and the sense of possibly losing everything. I suppose that can be feeled in multiplayer campaigns, but thats something i havent tried once. Just letting this little idea or notion i have on this kind of games. P.S. sorry for the grammar, I'm not a native english speaker.

[@elcazador3349]

I'd prefer a rather philosophical cake today, baker.

[@LemonCake101]

please don't eat me

[@loserinasuit7880]

For many its about the challenge but for historical games its about making your niche historical hyperfixation of the month into the destined superpower IT WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE BEFORE EVERYBODY ELSE RUINED IT.

[@turbo2346]

In hoi4, you have to manage air, infantry, tanks and navy where as small nations you only need to focus on infantry and one of the others

[@Hunterrion]

Qing and Burgundy>Lotharingia are some of my favorites to play tall with for the reasons mentioned in this video. Tall China is not only super strong, but it feels really good to have high average development and be the sort of juggernaut china was in the real world.

[@3daysiegeticks]

Ackthually, the term you're looking for to describe how increasing Development has amazing returns up to a certain point is called Logarithmic, not Exponential 🤓👆 P.S: Great improvements on the audio, lemon man

[@LemonCake101]

well, its exponential returns until you hit basically an x curve... but that's an arbitrary debate :P thanks, working on the audio

[@emanuelneagu14]

about playing "tall", you see, there's a fine line (invisible and very hard to calculate) between underdeveloped and overdeveloped provinces, and it moves up and down with time and events, much like in real life, but there's always a point beyond which development is waste and that's good, imagine if it became more and more profitable to develop a province or if the cost stayed the same, it would be so broken even the computer would exploit that. Countries like the Netherlands just have a lot of modifiers that raise that line well over 30 development. Also, starting with an already developed province is good for playing tall despite the cost of further developing, because all modifiers being equal, either if you start with let's say a 10 dev province or a 5 dev which you dev up to 10, you get to pay the same for deving up to 11. So of course if you want to play tall you need more than 10 provinces and preferably colonies. I once tried to play Korea only with the provinces at start just to see if I can stay independent, got to about 70-80 dev in each province iirc but Shun still crushed me close to the endgame, so you need many good provinces just to survive the endgame if playing tall, or colonies. That doesn't mean you need low dev ones, you just need enough to be able to spend on some quite efficiently during late game

[@rensvopstal]

I feel like the overall quality of your videos has always been good but you seem to have stepped it up with this one. Thanks for the enjoyment

[@Luka__1]

I wish there was a way to change what trade goods a province produces, except for when it happens randomly

[@DylanSargesson]

The flavour added in mission trees and government reforms helps, but pretty much every big nation (whether they're powerful already at 1444 or you make them powerful yourself) plays the exact same way, especially if you're going wide/World Conquest. You have excesses of every key resource so you're not really making any difficult strategic decisions - you're just pointing your army in the direction of the next food. Playing a variety of "small" nations gives you genuinely different strategic situations at game start. At least for me that's where the fun is. Building proper diplomatic relationships, taking advantage of unexpected circumstances, microing your army to beat a superior enemy etc. is what I want to focus on, because at it's heart this is a Strategy game. With respect to modifier stacking, obviously it is very powerful and interesting. But when it gets to the very extremes my interest in it is really more academic than actually relevant to my gameplay. I am genuinely interested in how high you *could* theoretically get that modifier but I know I'm not going to jump through all the hoops to actually do a game where I'd make it happen myself. My curiosity in it is satisfied just from watching your videos, so I suppose I should thank you for that.

[@unknownonedied8765]

Altho this is modded on my experience, I played a medium size nation and "expand" by vassalizing 7 tribes and gave them couple of provinces, this way I can play very tall for 100+ years spamming "tribal raid" which is show strength on any small neighbors, overtime I became the most powerful nation, a superpower waiting to happen, which is fun

[@LudwigMeckland]

The thing is, strategy games are plagued by a snowball effect. Difficulty is mainly external, coming from the AI. But the bigger you get, the more ressources you have. And either you become better than the AI or the AI become better than you. And because of that, either you are so much more powerful that there is no point to continue, or the AI is so powerful that you know that you have lost. What I propose is simple: to have different difficulties depending of your size. to have different challenges coming against you. To have small nations fight to survive and grow. And big nations to fight ennemies within to not collapse. To have technology grow, stagnate, and be lost in periods of instability. To have to manage your administration with territories further from you capital costing more and more until they cost you more than what they bring you. To have your nobles and clergies want more and more priviledges, and you to need a powerful sovereign to curb their power and influence over your country. For you to build temples, tombs, win military campaigns and have a resplendant Court to show your people your legitimacy as a ruler. And all that dear friends, is Rise & Fall: Bronze Age.

[@AverageJohanson]

What's the most optimal way to use the development interface (b->8)? A main reason I "play tall" in most runs is that I don't want to have to navigate that menu manually. I presume there's some formula for each mana so that you can just use the buttons at the top (trade good, dev cost, local efficiency, etc) but I haven't found any formula that lets me just quickly open it, select the correct sorting, then spam click without needing to worry about wasting mana/losing potential by deving the wrong provinces first.

[@prokhorevstafievich2096]

ROLEPLAYING IS THE KEY. I've been playing eu4 for years now. And yet the best game I've had so far was probably Fezzan dismantling the HRE. Mr. Wen-li would've been proud.

[@osiris3676]

Great video . ive being enjoying a lot your latest vids

[@LemonCake101]

Thanks, appreciate it!

[@lucyfrenchie9470]

This is so real, I feel that big countries add this sort of pressure, Idk why like if I mess up and lose, The entire thing is ruined but if im a small country me not intervening in things won't matter as much I can do my own thing and it's effects wont be felt. Like I dont wanna play france cause I dont wanna fight the British vice versa. It feels like theirs too much importance in my actions.

[@LemonCake101]

Yeah, for a smaller country you do anything its nice, because the expectation is 0, so there is no 'pressure' there.

[@AmariFukui]

Oh my god someone finally puts it into words, this is exactly the feeling I get

[@Miller09095]

If I'm playing a larger nation, I like playing the falling Empires in games. Examples include Abbasids in CK3 Timurids in EU4 Seleucids in Rome 2 DEI West Roman Empire in Atilla The initial rush is usually being forced to make decisions under pressure that is unique to the region you're in and the challenges presented by the start. It usually gets monotonous but much slower than playing a rising power would as I'm putting out fires all over the place.

[@holyholyholy40]

My best campaigns were the ones where I played the hardest nations to overcome the worst odds.

[@ProfTheorie]

Ridiculously enough Persia might currently be the best country to play tall. The mission tree rewards, estate privileges and -20% dev cost in the Age of Reformation allow it to develop ridiculously cheap (even on mountains), without expanding too far they can gain total control over 4 trade nodes - 3 of which can establish trade companies to further boost their goods produced - they get insane amounts of money from silk and they can get some of the strongest military in the game (full cav armies with high discipline and CA).

[@mason3279]

I generally play small-midsize countries because it extends the enjoyment period of the game. Playing a large nation is fun for the first 150 years, but then I've dominated my region, fought my big bad, colonized. But when I'm playing a smaller nation I get 2 of these games. 1 where I expand into my small neighbors then the second where I have to fight to be a major power. This way of playing usually extends my play period to 250-300 years. My favorite recent game was Hamburg, maintained as a free city until my vassals had all the required land to form Germany. Annexed them all, pressed form, closed the game

[@felonyx5123]

There's always a bit of scope creep when I try to play tall. If I tried to play a tall game as France, at some point I'd get a lucky PU opportunity that I just have to take, and then I need to conquer some land to connect my borders to the PU, then while I'm doing that I might as well steal a colony at the same time, next thing you know I've got a global empire to manage. If I try to limit myself to just the Netherlands, I'll still slip and end up grabbing half of England, bits of Germany, and Norway somehow but it won't get too out of hand.

[@solidoperative]

I do the same, play a big country playing tall not doing much conquering but being a world policeman stopping rivals from conquering

[@DanjasLP]

This video is making me want to try the OPM + Vassal dev technique again. Instead of devving your one and only province yourself over and over again, you take some vassals, dev their provinces and then seize development into your singular province over and over again. In the past, this let you get ridiculously high dev OPMs when enough time was invested. Like when Laith got Ulm to over 300 dev, or however high it was at the end.

[@sykeskills896]

One reason why at least I play small countries sometimes is that I want to play the game and not worry about always being on edge trying to take advantage to be on top and conquer everything that you easily could, one example is trying to colonize as someone else than any of the main colonizers and always worrying about if you are getting a good deal out of where you are colonizing, you can colonize basically everywhere within the new world within 100 years and so the pressure is on to snag all those trade centers, or mission tree specific land before any random portuguese colonist shows up ruining everything while being allied with half of europe and henceforth almost untouchable, so yeah, playing small is sometimes fun if you just want to only colonize one area, unite your region, or other fun stuff that doesnt force you to WC accidentally whilst trying to be in control of what's happening

[@LemonCake101]

I mean I see it, but at the same time: you can do the same, play a bigger country and not always being on edge trying to take advantage of everything: that's your approach to the game, and not an inherent property of larger tags.

[@MEGAAGUMAN]

Hoi4 autist (7000 hours) playing small nations is more of a challenge against AI and it adds on top the task of carrying the AI, particularly in modded games. Indochinese marines storming Hamburg after the gruelling independence war makes for a better story to make up than fixing the german economy and crushing the AI under CAS

[@ethanemmerich9698]

I like improving the HDI of my citizens, especially culture group. I accept some big cultures I conquered and then I just slowly culture convert and raise the living standards of my people. It’s fun to try to make your development the best in the world for your culture

[@gordyhowitzer]

You've pretty well summed up my issues with "playing tall" as understood by the community. It's almost always better to simply conquer more land in EUIV from an opportunity cost standpoint. I will say, though, I think you're underselling the main reason to play smaller nations, at least in my experience. Smaller nations are at much greater risk in the early to mid game, before you become strong enough to stop worrying about things like coalitions, manpower, money, or enemy nations. Once you have enough experience in SP, you should never be in the position to lose a war as the Ottomans or France. If you're playing Ramazan or Berry, though, you have a lot more engagement with the game's mechanics, a lot more to lose, and therefore for many people, a lot more to gain.

[@blownaway9187]

for me it is mostly being the underdog and making a impact on history by making a small insignificant country a major power. Actually now that i think about it excluding mp matches i played with friends, the biggest nation I played in sp in 1444 would be Ethiopia. Most of my play time in sp is with nation that have in between 1 and 10 provinces in 1444

[@SoundGuideline]

I usually play big countries Muscovy, Englang, Ottomans, Ming, Austria. I play them relatively wide, expanding methodically and devving along the way. I find it most pleasant to see how my country becomes an economic strength as well as a blob on the map.

[@Memanruler]

I'd like a total conversion that is focused on a shattered world style start, there isn't a lot of growth that can happen that doesn't come at the expense of others/advantages that you must leverage over others.

[@Ethan-cz8xq]

The reasoning's definitely very different in Civ V - in it there are definite and very strong benefits to playing tall. For example, # of cities contributes to unhappiness, which decreases population growth, so playing wide will mean you will struggle with growing your population. Plus, you can easily weaken your enemies while not increasing your empire size, such as by razing captured enemy cities.

[@LemonCake101]

For Civ 5 specifically... yeah. Basically. The 4 city Tall build really was a monster, shame really for the health of that game.

[@chungus816]

I loved playing as larger nations early on but you can really feel the challenge disappearing once you get better at the game

[@LemonCake101]

For sure

[@lucasnadamas9317]

The true and only fun tall and big nation game is Ming. Just chilling as Ming. If you want someone to win a war you just send them like 5k ducats and play god as you go to 2k dev from standing there

[@lucasnadamas9317]

Oh shit this was before you said it, yeah ming is awesome tall

[@sasi5841]

My first 300 hours on EU4 was spent exclusively on Trebizond, after getting the khomnenoi empire achievement i moved on to Byz and played it until i managed to form roman empire. Then played as kiev. Then multiple provence campaigns. Then muscovy. Followed by burgundy. Lastly, it was AQ

[@LemonCake101]

That's a very unique one to start with I will admit!

[@aluminiumknight4038]

Your point about social pressure is true, I feel it when playing a big nation and it makes the game less fun

[@niewiarygodny6853]

To answer question why ppl dislike playing big countires, because mostly they seek challange. Even if they wanna play Tall, there is huge diffrence in starting as i.e. France and having +40k army at the start and huge economy. Vs Holland/Florence with 9k and 3 provinces. There is big factoy while playing Eu4 and it's being a human, which give us huge advantage over AI. We make better moves: - Baiting AI, controlling armies, building forts in proper positions - Dealing with economy, securing alliances, cancelling alliances we don't want to fight - Doing missions which gives further boosts, creating subjects etc. - Spending our Mana (This and previous point is big, like in how many games you seen Riga going 30 dev early to get those insanse benefits? Instead they sit on 11 dev, 1 province for 50 years. Where all that Mana goes? Even without 50+ PP and advisors you would have spare Mana to def...) I mostly give up on further playing once i don't need to try to win a war, because i am already too powerfull, Which is somewhere between 1500-1600s. If i would go bigger country, it would be even faster.

[@aksmex2576]

One of the main reason for playing tall is to give the Ai a chance, and to having a "chill" game.

[@RisingChaosWriting]

I like the challenge of small nations. I've seen you say that big nations can be challenging too if you're aggresive enough, but that's not a playstyle I enjoy. I like to take my time and accomplish goals in small chunks. It's relaxing and engaging and nice. That being said I understand your problem. You have reached pretty much absolute system mastery, so of course it wouldn't make sense to play small nations. In your hands they are basically the same as the big ones.

[@guffly]

It's impossible to objectively distinguish or calculate, but there is a moment in every playthrough where the player undergoes an incredible shift in playstyle, sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden. But after 20 years of playing differently in game it becomes very obvious, you aren't microing your troops as much, you skip the battle results and pay attention to your manpower losses far less, you don't hire mercs, you read the events less and become more fixated on their effects, etc. I feel like any Eu4 player knows this stage, where the most difficult part of the game is finding something difficult enough to bother focusing on (that isn't difficult by virtue of its inherent monotony but because it provides a unique and tailored challenge to the player), and that kills the end game. All of this of course wraps back around to big nations and why they aren't fun, it's because this stage comes much quicker when you have 71 different provinces to dev, stack modifiers on, 200k manpower and 4 armies at game start + all the ducats you'd need to offset any negative event the game throws at you.

[@homoe7976]

I have always had this idea of playing a city state in Civ V, influencing events "behind the scenes". Love it as a trade league in EU IV too, but you do get pushed into gobbling up stuff.

[@khronuskeeper2046]

I would say there's two main camps. Those who can't see any value in something if there is no immediately obvious challenge and have to play everything in hard mode. Nothing wrong with that playstyle so long as you have the time to dedicate to it. And second those who want to keep things simpler. For exactly one of the points you brought up, there is less to do, and less to remember, making learning things easier. You have more time to explore the menues, discover subtle mechanics to maximise what you have, because you can't just dev your way past every problem

[@ominousflames14]

Rassids are an extremely fun country to play as. They have a pretty fun mission tree as well.

[@Adventurer32]

The Civilization example doesn't really match with EU4, because if you want to win a normal civ game the fastest(assuming Pangea, 6 AI, ~Immortal difficulty) the fastest way in terms of REAL time spent is going to be 4 city tradition. People play 4 cities because they want to win the quickest way possible. If you play more than 4 cities you get a diplomatic penalty vs the AI that makes them much more likely to declare on you, which means each turn starts taking exponentially longer as you both have to manage more cities and more wars. Additionally, wide empires often struggle on science, so you end up needing to conquer the world by late midgame if you want to win vs AI who can spit out 3 bombers for each of yours. It's possible to do, but MUCH harder than just playing on 4 cities and going to space.

[@viniciusyugulis7278]

That's a Civ V strategy, if you keep only 4 cities in VI you're pretty much dead

[@Hunnia000]

I loved playing wide in the original Stellaris. It was nice conquering the galaxy and throwing every new system into a massive single sector that was self sufficient and planet automation actually worked. Today I can't be bothered with all the extra work required to stop the AI from bankrupting my nation.

[@jakobhawkins77]

The Rise up is better than the Fall Down. Challenge to make a small country big is awesome. However getting too big is annoying. Distant Worlds 2 does 'Automation Policies' to an extreme but fun design to help manage the Grand Concert of it all.

[@solgerWhyIsThereAnAtItLooksBad]

Being the underdog is appealing

[@magawengway]

I find I go for smaller countries in PDX games (Eu4, CK3, Vic3) because in part I find it weirdly easier to build up from small to big and subsequently manage a bigger nation I built, than start as a big nation where I havent had a say in the creation of the big nation, I suppose its also feeling more invested in the story of maintaining a nation I made big from humble beginnings

[@elgirl19]

I only enjoy starting out as Great Lake nations or ardabil where I delete all my troops at the start.

[@thatfellow7556]

I prefer starting with smaller nations because you start out with fewer concerns and considerations which gradually expand as your nation expands. Whenever I start with a large nation, however, I have to stay paused for the first 15 minutes just to get my bearings on everything that's happening that I had no part in making happen.

[@ziyilin2029]

16:45 Can relate that once I played Hisn Kayfa and actually beat QQ few times but I was a little bit too overconfident and declear on Otto with Mamluks made me bankrupt and can't recover afterwards.