Why does very easy suck?

[@LemonCake101]

Should I do a Very Easy France lets play to fix my mental health?

[@noahengelstad1253]

YES

[@zacoXXII]

please

[@ratatataget]

yes

[@Prankbros148]

Yes

[@OJSTheJuice]

It would pretty funny.

[@pohorex6834]

The issue with difficulties is it doesn’t really change the ai. Only thing I want is a setting to tell the AI to chill. The AI plays like they are competing against a min-maxing player ALL the time, when I think most players are more turtle-like and prefer the more historical slow expansion over time

[@anti-spiral159]

AI forces me to actually want to speedrun my expansion, more so because no nation really collapses unless they get specific events or situations ( be it coded or not) like just getting done with war, so no nation gets independent once they are aggressive and going up, this also applies to a player, "collapsing" is just having rebels, there should be, or should have been, a mechanic that gave independence to a country once it has too much militancy in its region, and now you have a reconquest war, it also nerfs the minimize autonomy minmaxxing. AlsoI wish giving more independence gave some buffs apart from just *no rebels* .

[@hendrikhans3729]

I feel as though it is quite good that something like the Very Easy mode exists. There is a clear distinction between Easy and Very Easy. If a player is looking to become really good at the game (which not everyone does), then Going from Very Easy to Easy is a great opportunity to learn about all the many many modifiers of this game. In my experience it's not how exactly you manage your country or specific military strategy that new players learn, the first and (in my opinion) most important learning is learning about the dozens / more of modifiers. In the end this game is fun because you achieve things within it, like conquering a certain area. When there are players who cannot / do not want to put hundreds of hours into the game, it is nice to have a gamemode that allows them to achieve things without devoting two hours just to get a grasp of what all the modifiers do, and Very Easy prevents that by making you not have to deal with as many modifiers.

[@LemonCake101]

To be clear I do agree with its existence in principle, its just done in a way that I think is.. quite bad for learning, like teaching the player that annexing vassals is bad.

[@hendrikhans3729]

@@LemonCake101 Yeah that's fair

[@troshcha_8620]

@@LemonCake101 I think(from my experience) that people when choosing very easy just want to play eu4, not min max, and not a visual novel of a lot of modifiers. It is just fun introduction for people who chosen ottos and lost to mamluks, hungury, poland or austria.(yeeeah, also from my exp :'( )\

[@agamemnonofmycenae5258]

You are wrong. The way I learnt the game back in the day was to play it on hard difficulty with a hopeless nation(byzantium), by following a tutorial and learning therefore how to abuse the various mechanics to get started, instead of dying. Lock in iron-man to release yourself from save-scumming, and you learn fast to avoid mistakes and use all available mechanics granted to you to the outmost. Games that I played on easy never pushed me to up the difficulty because I was frustrated with the increased challenge. I was seeing very easy as the "correct" way the game is supposed to work, and nor the sandbox version of it. Prime example of it being the Dawn of War series. I never got myself to play them in any other difficulty other than easy. Hence why I *always* avoid playing any game on a difficulty that's labeled easy. On eu4 terms, starting on easy with the bonus modifiers, really warps your perspective on the relative strength of a small nation in comparison to the larger ones. Milan for example on very easy must be as strong as France at the start of the game, which is ludicrous once you go for hard or very hard difficulty. It will be suicide for you to declare war on Mantua, when it's allied with France, but very easy will let you get away with it to an extent(a newbie will probably still be screwed) Bonuses are irrelevant only when applied to the ai, because they don't always translate to a stronger military(your only way of interaction with ai empires). Most of them are crutches and supports that help the ai keep the nation stable. A player won't normally have his nation disintegrate to rebels(part of the learning process), but ai controlled nations, especially ones with crisis events/mechanics like Ming, will suffer explosions. Stability and power cost/gain modifiers will put them more in line with experienced platers that can keep their nations stable throughout a disaster event chain or 2-3 rebel stacks rampaging around. Very easy makes these nations inherently unstable and warps your perspective on how hard they(disasters,bad events) tend to hit. Bump the difficulty from very easy and they are definitely a more frustrating experience. The worst thing though to experience are the manpower modifiers. Manpower is the gatekeeper of eu4. Its increase/decreases are felt the most out of anything. Learning to manage it is the most important aspect of the game. Giving extra manpower and taking it away would ve my number 1 reason for not switching out of very easy, if I decided to start there! Edit:typo correction

[@MyUsersDark]

Because it's very easy. There you go

[@LemonCake101]

smh my head doesn't even watch the vid :(

[@noahengelstad1253]

The best feeling is to wake up and watch this video in bed. Hope you reach 25k soon

[@LemonCake101]

Thanks man, enjoy and what can I say, I am working on it!

[@SirBalageG]

I realized after 3 months of on and off watching that I’m not subbed, I remedied it quickly

[@SpicyFiur]

I personally didn't know that therre was a Difficulty setting until I reached 500 hours. After that I just ignored it. People that want Hell can play on Hard. People that have a mental problem play on Very Hard. (Sarcasm btw)

[@gvncd]

v hard is just alt + f4 simulator, you have to micro every last ducat, sailor, monarch point to be able to compete with on paper weaker enemies. or just play ottomans.

[@СтавридесКелевра]

It's really funny that one bonus that wasn't even mentioned is the one that for me was singlehandedly bigger than all the rest of them (maybe, exert AE) I played my first ~50 hours on very easy and got it absolutely as axioma that it's ok to have slightly negative balance all the time - cause I'll have my free nonreturnable loan in a form of "debase currency" ones in two years. And if economy is somehow ok - than "0" in corruption is my "time to build something, free money arrived" alarm

[@LemonCake101]

That’s fair, the minus corruption is also insanely strong but I didn’t mention it since it’s under the ‘new player doesn’t know it can abuse it’ camp for me.

[@СтавридесКелевра]

I mean, i genuinely thought an economy dev is more of a roleplaying option than a necessity, given that some 0,12 ducats from a 100 ducat temple isn't even noticeable on top of a +5/month flat and a periodical free money on top...

[@СтавридесКелевра]

@@LemonCake101 nah, i found it instantly, like 30 minutes in)))

[@Nota-Skaven]

One of those bad habits I had to break was abusing the debase button, I'd expect even a new player to notice the button that gives free money on demand. It never quite turns out to actually be free money but with - corruption it actually can just be free, expecially if you're bad at expanding and aren't building up a lot of OE and + corruption to cancel it.

[@MekarWB]

@@LemonCake101 There were a few traps like this that I think you can fall into as an experienced player trying to understand a new player. It is basically impossible to guess what they might find and get used to. It is essentially random. You're putting this through a filter of "but that's bad play" and that's because you know it is, but a completely new player doesn't know ANYTHING.

[@slaviansky]

I once tried to play on lower difficulties and the ai is actually more passive. I saw the Ottomans basically sitting in Anatolia and Balkans by 1600 even with Constantinople, Commonwealth imploding into several states and many formables you usually expect not forming. Or i just gut lucky that time

[@agamemnonofmycenae5258]

Very easy modifies ai behaviour. It says it on 0:54 ("On easy, the AI is more forgiving towards players, whereas on hard it is far more aggressive.")

[@iseeyou5061]

Clearly the solution is for someone to make a video titled "playing strongest county" of some obscure tag but once the video begin, it zoomed to very easy difficulty. :v

[@LemonCake101]

Mood

[@electricVGC]

I think Very Hard, Hard and Normal are all MUCH more popular than Easy and Very Easy, but I think some people do play lower difficulties in HoI4.

[@Augustus_Imperator]

I played 2.5K hours of this game and I always play on very easy for 3 simple reasons: I like the complexity not necessarily the difficulty; I like to take it slow and I can't if the AI becomes a tryhard all of a sudden (in Hard/Very Hard); And last but not least, I don't really care about difficulty, I know a lot of people do, they boast about achievements, about playing on very hard or doing a WC with The Knights, but that's really irrelevant to me, I just play to enjoy myself.

[@manana1444]

2:05 Hard and very hard can however change the overall strategy for some nations, due to the maluses to diplomacy acceptance, or putting a heir of your dynasty being disabled.

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

I find it annoying that higher difficulties is done by giving the AI magic buffs, instead of making it play smarter. While in some other games like AOE2 it feel like you're facing Skynet.

[@LemonCake101]

Xorme AI resolves this by making the AI smarter, but be aware it is a difficult mod.

[@axiomsofdominion]

Well the question is how do you make the AI smarter? What would it mean to be smarter? Humans use tons of meta tactics. AI can't play a run a dozen times to see what is optimal.

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

@@axiomsofdominion one example is how the province is developped. Most humans players quickly figure out how to specialise provinces : money-focused for good trade goods (resource manufactory, workshop, trade, focus on deving production...) or manpower-focused (barracks, manpo manufactory, focusing on deving manpo...), while the AI doesn't seem to do that, making jack-of-all-trades provinces. This makes human players punch above their weight class, at an equal total dev level.

[@Thunderdumpe]

I disagree, old aoe2 ai was more fun because it's more narratively satisfying to defeat endless hordes of noobs than to watch the ai cheese you with 1000 apm and no weaknesses. "clever ai" is a huge monkeys paw when it comes to enjoyable difficulty cos it always ends up being a battle over who can cheese the other's weaknesses rather than an actual fight. I can easily crush aoe2 hardest with archer rush cheese, but can't even play late game cos it macros too much. If it cheated in 500 res per age and macro'd like ass it would feel more like a human than it does now.

[@axiomsofdominion]

@@Thunderdumpe Paradox games especially are loaded down with far too much modifier stacking for the AI to keep up fairly. Modifier stacking is antithetical to interesting AI because you can never manually create rules for AI since the devs don't know what the good cheese is. You could write a dynamic check on modifier stacking optimization but you'd still have to update the dynamic checker if you added wholly new modifiers. And the AI would at least have to know why you'd want to stack a specific modifier.

[@nickmiller1182]

I think a system more similar to what you said at the end would be best. Similar to the CIV series where the player is unchanged but the AI is just hamstringed on lower difficulties. Great video!

[@Seagull512]

I usually recommend people play the tutorial, just to feel something when the entire chatroom explodes

[@nathaniel1207]

see, that wouldve been great advice but its about 1300 hours of playtime too late for me. instead i learned by placing my hand on the metaphorical hot iron that was the great horde. no im not kidding that was the first nation i played. i saw a video on it (thanks laith), thought it was cool and slammed my head into that until i went and played the ottomans.

[@Seagull512]

lol, you didn't miss much then. I tried it, understood nothing and then went and played Frankfurt instead

[@christianwhite8877]

i agree. they should have made very easy punishing to the ai rather than benefiting the player. it makes there be a much easier learning curve, also from when i double checked the requirements for that one mission of Naples/two sicilies i decided to look into the requirements for a tier 4 defender of the faith (the minimum required for the mission) and found that around 20 nations of the same faith existing is enough for tier 4 (this means two sicilies fits better as the last nation to form before Italy, though there ideas are worthwhile if you are unable to first form Sardinia-piedmont do to not owning enough of the required land or not being able to culture shift)

[@seadmurtis6075]

Adding an AI aggressiveness option or limiting it through government cap as you mentioned would be the best option imo, as it stands, players either have to learn through the in game tutorial which teaches next to nothing new if you have played any strategy games before or youtube guides made by the community which can be very intimidating as they often pack too much information. Having less aggressive AI would let the player explore the huge number of different mechanics on their own pace and it trains their muscle memory with the different tabs through gameplay alone which a tutorial or an online guide cannot do. (I actually learned all the paradox games watching people play the game rather than guides and i learned a lot more through that than any guides). It could also be interesting to have a tutorial through mission trees since you mentioned how they could be used to teach certain mechanics without holding the player's hand too much tho i would rather have paradox move away from mission tree systems as it kills replayability for me.

[@Poki3]

Not related to VE, since the following was played on normal, but your "Don't play Scotland, play England" thing reminded me how I had a friend bounce off the game hard when playing england. After spending a lot time just reading tooltips and looking at all the menus, they got declared on by france, got murdered trying to land an underprepared army, and then the War of the Roses proceeded to kick them while they were down.

[@boltzxz]

I have 1.3k hours on eu4 and still play on very easy, I don't care about getting achievements I just play the game to have fun.

[@LemonCake101]

One of the few Eu4 players still having fun :)

[@Tarkusarkusar]

It's me, Trumpet, your favorite American President-- I mean Paradox KZbinr

[@dreadon8264]

Tbh I feel like stronger tutorial mechanics would help much more for a new player. Like for instance, I recently bought domination. I used to play the ottomans a lot given im a new player and know they are strong so I play the ottomans. The various new mechanics make no sense to me, and seemed only to punish me. Like having a ruler be in charge of an army, so I make the ruler in charge of one army while waiting for urban to appear and with nothing better to do, I start drilling because i know it just makes troops better, and my strong ruler immediately dies, and I can’t afford what the janissaries want and get a debuff until my new ruler dies. If there was more robust tutorials in the game without having to consult outside sources like KZbin, perhaps I wouldn’t have suffered as much. Like the advisor in Civ 6. They help you learn the game on easier difficulties, give you suggestions on what to build or improve, and bring you attention to new mechanics as they come up like alliances, carbon emissions, and new governments. And when you don’t need them, you can turn them off, and try to beat the ai your way.

[@clayjp1548]

Even as someone who purely plays eu4 to pass time, I play on normal because I think that some of the modefiers that the game gives you on easy and very easy breaks certain things (looking at you diplo rep)

[@phileascurtil5605]

I started playing on very easy but I found that in general it's easier on some ways to play on normal. For example, if you have a mission to get 100% FL you will struggle to maintain it. Also, it negates almost completely some mechanics such as rebels (almost never got any rebels withe VE), AE, corruption and some others. When I initiate new players to EU4, I recommand them to play with the custom difficulty mod if the never played paradox games to create a custom difficulty that still allow them to play.

[@hiptoptoe4847]

The unrest of conquered provinces with the -5 national unrest will also mean increasing autonomy would fully get rid of the rebellion - another bad mindset to be in

[@Vadim-qy4jo]

tbf that playstyle works very well for hordes

[@chibertarian]

I think realistically, playing an easy powerful country is always going to do a better job of teaching how to play the game on normal than a difficulty setting with a bunch of modifiers ever will. I think a lot of the current modifiers teach players some of the important right lessons by being very visible during play around your cash/army. There's a lot of opaqueness that a new player will just not have any chance of knowing about fighting the Ottomans as Hungary, but you can see the quantity buffs on your screen at all times as bigger stacks. If you learn what sort of quantity of army you need to overwhelm their advantages that's something that won't change when you increase difficulty, you'll just have to work harder for that army size. Similarly, if instead of player buffs it's a bunch of AI maluses you'll learn very weird things about how the game outside of your borders will progress and not learn that you need to be ready for or disrupt large power blocks from forming near you. Then again, it also teaches some real bad lessons like "smash debase currency every time corruption hits 0" and "inflation fixes itself" but, uhh, I ain't arguing it's perfect here. Which is kind of funny, because the negative lesson you really honed in on with the vassal annexation thing is something I legit never noticed when playing on very easy. No matter what, if Very Easy is based on modifiers at some point you will have to learn to play without that crutch if you want to move up to normal. And to make EU4 "Very Easy" requires using a very large crutch. There's probably too many modifiers for this, but having a custom difficulty setting where you can play around with the sliders would do a lot to fix this problem all around. A newer player could ratchet the difficulty up a little bit at a time, or focus on removing one modifier at a time.

[@nehemiahkenny5027]

Conversely, when I learned to play Paradox games, I started with EU3. Who did I play? The Inca. I don't live in Peru, I have no family from there. I just... _liked_ the Inca. Sure, I got crushed by the Spanish every single time, but I was learning about how the internal systems worked. How the budgeting, and the national ideas, and the sliders worked. When I moved on to CK2, I went to Ireland. Good ol' tutorial island, since it's relatively isolated and not as likely to have massive internal issues from dastardly ai vassals. In Vicky 2, I started on Hawaii and Greece, since I could learn the interface and some of the mechanics without being exposed to ALL of them. I think the biggest tutorialization these games can benefit from is _isolation_ from the sheer breadth of mechanics. Maybe something like Very Easy _turning off_ estates. Give new players _less_ to worry about.

[@Xcyiterr]

18:35 funny enough, my first eu4 game was Florence actually I played on normal difficulty too, but to be fair by then I had already spent hours watching guides in preparation, especially one for playing Florence in specific, so I don't think I would count as an average new player at the time tbh

[@mattconley8907]

learned the game by playing oman a million times, only found out this game even had variable difficulties in the last year

[@KatherineFtw]

I’m of the opinion that player/ai buffs should be a Stellaris style slider for both sides. I personally play with some cactus cheats options on very hard and find that the most fun. I’d like an easy way to buff both me and the ai while keeping the more agressive ai like I do now in “Project Ceasar”/EUV.

[@omegaexists]

Deja vu.

[@LemonCake101]

Shh this is the first time your seeing this video, no slander please

[@OcAirlines]

One thing I would like to add in regards to the modifier that gives additional force limit: I've noticed that a lot of new players will try to build up to force limit no matter what. So giving them additional force limit can lead to them overspending and building up bloated armies that their economy can't sustain. This can easily lead people into a negative spiral that can be tough to get out of for newer players - especially when those big armies start going to war and take big losses to attrition or bad engagements. Reinforcement-costs are a very sneaky and hidden economic factor that will blindside a lot of newer players in their first wars. Hell, even for experienced players this factor can be tough to calculate in longer and costly wars. Basically, you will have newer players going into a war with a slighty positive budget and then be completely overwhelmed by the skyrocketing costs that their bloated armies are causing.

[@LemonCake101]

I feel though that building to Force Limit is a very player thing to do though, I would say actually choosing to not build to FL in certain situations is a good idea, but usually yes.

[@OcAirlines]

@@LemonCake101 Oh absolutely, that's what I meant. Not building to force limit is often a good idea, just like it is a good idea to focus on eco instead of military early on in an RTS. But many newer players aren't aware of that, they think the force limit number tells them that this is how many military units they should have - while not realizing that their eco can't sustain it.

[@muratonuryilmaz5385]

In this age many people get their tutorial for games from youtube it is kinda old to have "click this to do that" arrows type of tutorials. Maybe having youtubers make tutorial videos and letting them be playable in game as tutorials would be cool to teach new players the game. Granted this is kinda stupid idea but who knows , maybe it can work

[@LemonCake101]

Well hey as long as they pay me or my fellow creators for it!

[@muratonuryilmaz5385]

@@LemonCake101 is there other way? If you get a service you pay for it. You will give them a hook to get new players in a better rate . This will give them new customers to sell dlc packs. Money well spend

[@SN4S1487]

I find playing on hard / very hard more fun during general game play, but they nerf what you can do with the favor system, for example can't place a relative on someone's throne. It's not something I do very often but just knowing I'm being blocked out of a game mechanic makes me play the higher difficulties less. Also hate the ai getting the AE and unrest reduction I wish it was just the other buffs and making the ai more aggressive.

[@luckylluck2]

These suggestions sound like a good mod

[@johanrosenberg6342]

I thought I was playing on normal, but one day I was checking a tooltip and saw it saying "+1 very easy" or something along those lines. As for the video itself I think you brought up some really thoughtworthy points, what I will say though is that I've learned a lot specifically from having buffs and understanding how they affect the game. I for instance had one game where I accidentally ended up with a ton of corruption, which was really bad, but because of the buff made me realize I would have been way worse off had it been on normal. And honestly as I've gotten better at EU4 I've noticed a lot of quite unforgiving mechanics. Take the example with the Ottomans for instance, I quickly understood they were better at the start (from playing as them and experiencing how much they fall off), but for a longer time than I'd like to admit I just figured bigger stacks was the solution. And that's specifically a habit you can't fix with missions or AI debuffs, but giving the player an explicit buff to reserve damage taken would have both made the game easier and more clear on what I need to do. Still, having the AI outgrow you is a huge step to get over in EU4s learning curve so nerfing that is something I'd be all for. Alliances would still get in the way though, but those are fairly easy to break anyways.

[@DanjasLP]

This is kind of off topic, but I think some of the recommended nations for new players are no longer valid. I have seen beginners (less than 200 hours) play both Castille and Sweden and they failed miserably on both, Getting into debt spirals and endless -3 stab. Unable to beat either the Castillian civil war or the Swedish independence war without intervention from me. Same thing goes for England. With how much the game has changed since those recommendations were added, the 100 years war being combined with the War of the Roses is incredibly difficult for new players to wrap their heads around. This just leads to new players, who pick those nations because they are recommended by the game, to have a terrible time and possibly dropping the game without having a chance to give it a chance, if that makes sense. So here's what I'd do to fix this: Switch Poland to being a "special recommendation" like Ottomans, Castille and Portugal are right now. Demote Castille to a non-special recommendation, replace Sweden with the Mamluks and England with Bohemia or Hungary.

[@LemonCake101]

For sure, the recommended nations now are very... out of date.

[@Speedster___]

Consider stellaris difficulty sliders. The AI aggressiveness setting is suberb

[@wachtwoord5796]

All difficulty levels that arent normal suck because it's just handicaps/buffs. It should be about making the AI better or worse. A chess AI doesnt play with an extra queen when you set it to difficult ...

[@nathaniel1207]

Definitely agree that the AI needs debuffs rather than the player needing buffs. if the player is going to be buffed, it should be via slowing down the reoccurance of revolts, extra advisors, and buffs like those. the AI needs AE debuffs, minor military debuffs which will help keep them from outscaling the player via Quality & Econ Ideas, and possibly Core creation cost increases. though that last one might have a lot of unintended effects. I found that learning on very easy was way too different from normal, especially in the economy. you just dont have to manage yours on very easy, while on normal if you manage it correctly its a tool that'll really set you above the AI since it can let you maximize your manpower, gain trading bonuses, and field a larger army and navy. its really a shame how very easy buries the economy.

[@samomighty7893]

I play on normal for single player games but whenever I convince my friends to play with me we play on very easy because I have 1500 more hours than they do on the game and want to feel somewhat powerful without having to know everything about the game. I think it works well with very casual multiplayer

[@Mythicalyst]

When I first started playing EU4. I realised how dogshit the "Very Easy" difficulty was and created my own mod that is just Very Easy but with mechanic breaking buffs removed. Stuff like -1 corruption yearly. Even in my newbie brain, I realised that the -1 corruption yearly completely removes corruption as a mechanic. I would pop debase currency as soon as my corruption hit 0 every 2 years.

[@DodoSniffer73]

Very easy if you want to paint maps fast, even with OPMs. Very hard if you want actual gameplay

[@guipinto5248]

I love eu4 yapping videos

[@Phoenix-ik7bm]

I actually play on very easy but that's usually because I'm impatient and I play with lots of mods so the game can be a little slow, so very easy makes it so I can achieve the goal I set out to do for that secession in a couple hours instead of multiple play secession over multiple days.

[@pogusmogus3573]

it isnt easy to make an all province tierlist for real, but it must be done

[@lucas_oreki5287]

Very easy feels more like it is made for players that are annoyed by all the small things that happen in a campaign rather than a space for new players. Especially the unrest to make rebels less penetrant and the manpower buffs to allow the player to not pay attention to things like terrain and take higher losses. Very much just feels like a "brains off" mode

[@spannishpalau2932]

okay FINE i will subscribe

[@LemonCake101]

Good choice

[@tommym02n79]

As someone who has 617h on EU4 and played about 600h on very easy before moving to normal, it is entirely different game... Corruption? sure in the first 100h there was some, but after that there was never issue with it. When on normal, it felt like 30% of my income is going to fighting corruption. Manpower? similar story - Issue in the first few games, but after that there was never a *need* to worry about manpower. The first real war on normal resulted in me having lost most of my manpower and some (quite a lot of) provinces of Livonian order. And of course there was also upcoming war with Poland... at least I managed to get an aliance with Brandenburg, because otherwise that would be the end of the campaign. Oh yes and Estates, on Very easy they did not really feel all that impactfull, on normal I felt the need of some of the privileges (and sometimes I felt the exact oposite). But after the move, I have to say that those 17h were probably the most fun I had in the game. Wining wars, losing wars, getting pulled into wars I should have not agreed to be pulled into, systematically destroying the Ottomans with the help of Austria and Hungarian marine forces which somehow sieged the northern Africa. Oh and being confused about why I was kicked out of HRE, when the only members I attacked were defending non member... but that might have been because I took some land of theirs.

[@abbynguyen5923]

You can't get kicked out of the HRE at all normally. If you were playing The Teutonic order or an Italian nation, it can happen because of scripted events.

[@tommym02n79]

@@abbynguyen5923 Oh I know you cant usually be kicked out, I was playing as the Teutons.

[@homoe7976]

Isn't this always the case? Normal is the default and many new players might feel overwhelmed starting out, be it in a Paradox or even a Civ or other 4X game. I do think scaling very hard modes gets silly but manageable but agree that easy modes lend themselves to teaching bad habits. A friend of my I used to play Civ V with would always unfailingly go for the Great Library rush because that's what worked on Prince and he would just stop computing if the AI or myself took that from him.

[@doomdrake123]

As someone who always plays on Normal - I agree with you. I inherantly dislike the notion of me getting buffs on easy, or the AI getting buffs on hard, but you idea of AI geting debffs in order to tone down aggressiveness is very good and tailored for new players. I believe the buffs that the modes different from Normal provide are such because the devs focused EU4 too much on blobbing, and I see indications that Project Caeser will have somewhat different playing experience.

[@klankungen7794]

I didn't know there were dificulties. I don't think I have even 500 hours yet so after about 50-100 years of hard work to double mu size I always fall back to smaller than I start. It's hard because there are so many things I could do that are good that I do all or nothing and it all becomes shit in the end. The first years are easy because the AI has not built anything, just like me, so when I all of a sudden start losing money even if I would kill all armies (I tried) I will start spiraling down to nothing again.

[@leaflotus6726]

Easiest difficulty: just play Croatia, the greatest nation to play, rule the nation, guide the world. 🇭🇷

[@gvncd]

There needs to be difficulties between very easy and easy, as well as between very hard and hard, and these in-between-y difficulties should be an AI skill difference. As in, have an easy (dumb AI that blunders a lot and leaves lots of opportunities for the player to capitalize), medium (occasional blunders but competent AI that doesn't move off a siege at 49%) and hard (rival nations actively team up against the player, traitorous player allies, but not make player allies lobotomites either) AI but then very easy VS very hard should buff the player or the AI respectively in conjunction to the mentioned AI skill difference. Also dislike how very hard just straight up removes some mechanics. Modifiers to make diplo vassalization/place heir on throne etc less easy (like in hard difficulty) instead of removing features makes more sense to me. Or have the difficulty be customizable, like custom nations or like in Stellaris, as in, the player chooses the modifiers they/the AI gets and if they hit a certain threshhold as a whole, the difficulty and score modifier increases/decreases.

[@ninny65]

I've played like over 2k hours and never changed the difficulty ever

[@BobbiusRossius]

very hard and very easy are really lame tbh, very easy/easy gives you too much training wheels that you cant stop using, and very hard just lazily gives the AI buffs to make it "smarter" paradox just cant design good AI

[@LemonCake101]

Yeah, VH itself also does suffer from just delaying the inevitable player victory instead of posing a new challenge. But then again, things like Xorme AI exist, and its relative lack of popularity by people asking for a harder Eu4 has me asking... do you actually want a better AI?

[@BobbiusRossius]

@@LemonCake101 I think its a catch 22 tbh, you make the AI harder but then the "casuals" complain the ai is too hard (people already say this with the current ai lol) but then if you keep it dumber people who want the AI to be harder complain, i don't think you can appease anyone tbh Funny enough tho, EU4 AI is probably the best out of all paradox AI (ck3,vic3 are trash, hoi4 is completely braindead)

[@strawbunnyfps]

xorme AI kinda takes away a lot of the dynamic aspects of eu4 by making the AI just try to play as optimally as possible and gets boring a lot quicker than vanilla imo. would be nice to have AI that's better at times when it should be good (like during wars) but keeps the random personalities and quirks of vanilla AI​@@LemonCake101

[@LemonCake101]

@@BobbiusRossius Eu4 ai tbf actually scales pretty well over the long run but then you do rush into the complaints of ‘stale endgames of ww1 1 million troops everywhere’.

[@BobbiusRossius]

@@strawbunnyfps Yea this is a really good point, when i play with xorme i usually always see a giga ottomans, giga france and giga spain every game I do wish xorme would have an option to have "dynamic" buffs to certain nations, e.g mamluks so they can go form rum, oirat so we might see a yuan or something similar, just so we see different nations

[@minderbart1]

the problem i have with very hard is that the ai will pretty much only focus on the player. for example ai rivals pirating your trade node even though it's losing them a lot of money. the ai will pretty much suicide on the player on very hard.

[@LemonCake101]

The player focus choices are... interesting.

[@Leo-ok3uj]

The thing is that to make difficulty levels or tutorials you need to understand the mechanics of the game Something that paradox kinda doesn’t

[@Karim896]

I don't like the difficulties cause feels cheating with all that modifiers for you or the AI depending on the difficulty. And normal difficulty is easy enough to learn with some challenges to improve for many campaigns

[@ssdrbx6180]

3:16 AI won't fort snipe and exploit potential encirclement in very easy from what I have observed

[@pyroparagon8945]

I think it's just because paradox has never figured out how to make difficulties without just spamming modifiers. It's just not very interesting.

[@gwky]

If people like grinding so much, they can go on grinder.

[@patrickdawson6281]

I have never played anything but normal, is it worth me uping the difficulty?, Im basically at the point where i can semi reliably do a world conquest with any moderately powerful nation

[@sprites75]

rofl. i never played very easy so i don't know. but you'll still need hundred of hours dto do something decent. I remember when they nerfed manpower recovery from 2 years to fill the pool to 10 years....

[@jric6283]

It kinda sounds like you ideal Very Easy would be to give every single AI the bankruptcy debuffs with the only change being that they don’t have the diplomatic penalties where they can’t be called into ally wars

[@luiziki]

I don't think the 'very easy' difficulty is useless. I learned to play with it after trying a first playthrough with England and losing to the rebellions (which at the time I thought would actually destroy my country).

[@luiziki]

Nowadays, I find the game very easy and play on 'very hard' only because the AI gets smarter, which I think is good. However, the bonuses that AIs get don't appeal to me, because, for example, it's frustrating to see France conquer all of Italy without gaining any AE, while if it's me conquering, the whole world will unite to destroy me.

[@BobbiusRossius]

@@luiziki Very Hard doesn't make the ai any smarter, it just gives it giant buffs to make it seem smarter If you want actual better ai, use xorme AI

[@mateusziii2067]

About decrease in gov cap and prussia.... No, please, no

[@LemonCake101]

Prussia should own Berlin and be happy

[@shadeblackwolf1508]

I think stats are entirely the wrong approach to teaching fully new players. I'd suggest very easy remove all disasters and negative random events from the game for the player's nation. basically, separate core gameplay and supporting systems, and simplify or remove supporting systems. A good example of that, is that i think on very easy, there should not be technology groups.

[@leeroyo]

Theres something else other than ironman?

[@LemonCake101]

You can do this and Ironman :)

[@RellMayers]

10:06 that extending is easy to do

[@LemonCake101]

Modding wise universally yes not sure if you can do it specifically though

[@RellMayers]

​@@LemonCake101I'll get back on that after I'm back home

[@christianwhite8877]

i just thought of something. if you can get the most out of Italy as Milan (because of the mission tree and Italian formables). and you get the option of ambrosian republic (a unique type of republic) a military dictatorship (a special type of republic) or going back to a monarchy, which choice is the best option if you intend to later go theocracy?

[@LemonCake101]

Republic due to reform progress generation without question if you don’t intend to keep it around.

[@christianwhite8877]

@@LemonCake101 then the question is military dictatorship vs ambrosian republic during the time before theocracy

[@LemonCake101]

@@christianwhite8877 oh frankly neither I prefer normal non-Italian republics personally, building around frequent elections to be fully honest, so I avoid those 3 pretty hard.

[@christianwhite8877]

Fair enough. But if I played then it would be a choice between 10 morale and extra passive autonomy reduction in return for no decent tier 3 option and the rulers stats being less reliable. Or 5 morale and 50 gov cap and a small increase to tax income with no passive autonomy reduction bonus from the reform but better tier 3 options for the cost of the initial rulers being low in stats, even if it's temporary for a theocracy the choice still matters a certain amount

[@christianwhite8877]

@@LemonCake101 according to the student. the bonfire of vanities can still happen if you formed Tuscany but started as a nation other than Florence. the only requirement is being an Italian signora type of republic and tanking your republican tradition a bit. this can allow you a 'free' way to become a theocracy. and means that Tuscany is arguably best formed last (or if you start as Florence then you delay it until your ready), but as Milan this means if you want the bonfire of vanities to fire then the ambrosian republic is the only option (though you potentially could exploit two sicilies getting an event during the reformation to become a Italian signora in order to do this, but that's only if your patent enough for the event)

[@BrunoCarvalhoPaula]

We could say it sucks because it is a piece of cake

[@CoachAbeciunas]

Ulm doesn't suck, it is very easy and enjoyable

[@LaborikPravdberg-jy4zl]

Personally, I think giving flat buffs/debuffs to player and AI is a bad way of doing difficulty, rather it should increase/decrease the skill level of the AI.

[@LemonCake101]

You say that, but given the lack of popularity of mods such as Xorme, which only buff the AI skill level, well something tells me you don't actually want a better AI.

[@LaborikPravdberg-jy4zl]

@@LemonCake101 I think that boils down to the fact that most people find the game too/enough difficult, but to the few that enjoy a harder challenge it could be a good thing. And ofc, for the newer players, they could have a worse AI.

[@JB-bb1bh]

*in ironic meme voice taking offense of very easy😲* "S H U T Y O U R W H O R E M O U T H, Very easy is great for those who actuallywant to keep jobs and somehow have a spouseand want to play other games-" ...... *Watches video.* OH, you do make some good points, but ya gotta warn me next time!

[@bradleycooper5436]

Very easy is better than using consol cheats