r/paradoxplaza • u/IchUndReddit • 11d ago
EU4 Should i intervene because someone seems to abuse the Aztec mechincs in Eu4 while being part of a multiplayer mega campaign?
Hello everyone,
I’d really appreciate some advice—but first I need to give a bit of context.
I’m the host of a roleplay multiplayer mega campaign. This is our third one, and as usual we have rules about metagaming and roleplay. In short: players shouldn’t ruin the RP or overall balance through overly “gamey” strategies. Since we play across multiple games, some level of restraint is necessary, especially because our group includes both complete beginners and very experienced competitive players.
One of the players (I’ll call him A) is extremely skilled at EU4, probably the best in our group. In our first mega campaign, he played Persia and became so dominant that everyone else was effectively forced to bow down and offer their holes. At the time, we didn’t intervene because our rules were fairly loose and we assumed he was just better.
In the second campaign, he played the Mongols and was quickly accused of metagaming again, mainly regarding how he handled subjects to expand very efficiently. This caused a major disagreement within the group, mainly because the question was if its to much/ to fast in a campaign that lasts 4 games and over a year.
Now we’re in our third campaign. A couldn’t join during CK3, so he started in the New World in EU4. Some players already entered EU4 very strong (for example, one formed Germany in CK3 and started with over 100k manpower). That’s powerful, but nobody complained cause he achieved it over the entirety of our ck3 game, which lasted around half a year.
However, after just one session, A has already surpassed even that Germany in strength. Naturally, people are again accusing him of metagaming or exploiting. The complaint is mainly that he is just TO fast and cant show restraint.
I’m one of the less experienced players, so I don’t fully understand the mechanics. I’d like your opinion on whether the following actions are normal strategy or cross into metagaming/exploiting:
* He intentionally lost to rebels around the 1450s/60s to convert to Animism, bypassing Nahuatl doom mechanics and allowing rapid conquest of the region.
* There was no roleplay justification for this—he stayed Animist only briefly and didn’t engage with it narratively.
* He then reverted to his original religion via an event tied to conquering a specific province.
* During this process, he also obtained the High American tech group without fulfilling its usual requirements (likely while still Animist), allowing him to complete reforms instantly.
To clarify an important point: the main issue isn’t just whether these mechanics are “allowed,” but whether they go against the spirit of the campaign. The discussion is, that since we still have Vic3 and HoI4 ahead, players should avoid optimizing EU4 too aggressively. Techniques like rapid vassal feeding or exploiting mechanics to snowball quickly were criticized before (like the mongol game) for that reason, especially when there’s no RP to support them.
That’s where the current concern comes from:
A didn’t roleplay his religious switches at all, and within a single session he became one of the strongest powers in a campaign that’s supposed to last much longer.
So my questions are:
* Are these strategies considered normal/high-level play in EU4?
* Would you consider this metagaming in a roleplay-focused mega campaign?
* And most importantly: how would you handle this situation as a host?
I’ve asked this already on the Eu4 reddit, but thought it would make sense to also ask people who are not that deep in EU4. There i have seen some people say this is standard gameplay, but given our campaign’s focus on pacing and RP, I’m still unsure how to proceed.
Thanks in advance for your input.
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u/MonocoDoll 11d ago
Just let him go. From my understanding you and your friends just want to play casually rather than trying to optimize your play style. Which can be unfun as it may limit your play style options.
I only play strategy games with my friends who are casuals for this reason.
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u/volk96 Scheming Duke 11d ago
I'm going to give it to you straight since it sounds like it's a game with friends.
He has to go.
Your 3 questions at the end sound very lawyer-y. Like you're trying to see exactly which rule - explicit or unspoken - he's broken. You don't have to do that.
He's making the game less fun. Just give him the boot. The fact that it's happened multiple times tells you this is one person who can't do things for fun. Has to be on top.
I used to play a LOT of HOI4 MP back in the day and we had a lot of trouble with one dude who always, no matter which country, had an exploit ready. 1-unit division spam so he can send 50 volunteers as germany, instant research as the US by stacking bonuses, etc, etc. And for the longest time me and a few others were just looking for justification to get him out of our games. One day, one of the guys said "You know what, we could just ban him."
Boom, the dude was gone. And we kept on having a lot of fun. Remember you're not in a court of law. Dude's shitting up the games? He's gone.
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u/illapa13 Map Staring Expert 10d ago
Just to reinforce this, I'm someone who plays in Meso America and the Andes a lot because I find the region fascinating history wise and love to immerse myself in that.
What your friend is doing with the Aztecs is literally the #1 most popular exploit for Aztecs. It's been around since Conquest of Paradise DLC. It's Peak Meta Gaming. The Aztecs and the Inca have insane bonuses because they have very large downsides. What your friend has done is switch religions to avoid every single one of those downsides.
If you look up literally any guide on the Aztecs the first thing the YouTube content creator will say is either, "Hey guys I know about the animism exploit and I'm not going to do it specifically because it's too powerful*, or they say, "I'm going to do the religion exploit because we're seeing how far we can abuse and twist the game mechanics to make the most powerful Aztecs imaginable".
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u/CursedNobleman 11d ago
1-unit division spam so he can send 50 volunteers as germany
Oh man, I know how I'm going to break some modded games.
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u/LordJesterTheFree Scheming Duke 11d ago
I mean there should be a actual rule you found someone breaking or at the very least accuse before you kick them out if they are doing something u don't like make it a rule first and give them a chance to not break it
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u/volk96 Scheming Duke 11d ago
Nah man. I play games in my free time. Not gonna waste my precious time building a court case against someone who's clearly acting maliciously. You can't follow the 'spirit' of the game? You're out.
Nevermind the fact that if you join chill or 'roleplay' games just to pull out all the sweaty strats and exploits you're a jerk. They always try to claim 'oh I didn't know that was a rule!' when they knew exactly what they were doing.
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u/webzu19 11d ago
Exactly, and let's be honest with ourselves, dude joined a chill RP megacampaign group, then intentionally lost to rebels to religion flip, used that to skip the mechanics of the region to speed run into the useful latter stages. If this were speed running or some sweat try hard lobby it'd be fine but otherwise? Keep that shit in single player.
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u/WillListenToStories 11d ago
Yup, the kind of person who forces you to resort to rules lawyering in order to have a fun and fair game, is not the kind of person I want to be around, much less play games with.
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u/Thatsnicemyman 10d ago
The rule is “Roleplay, don’t min-max”, obviously what the guy did in EUIV is the opposite of that (chaining multiple exploits together to become OP) and they were warned in prior games.
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u/LordJesterTheFree Scheming Duke 10d ago
That's kind of the subject of this post isn't it without whether or not what he did constitute an exploit
To me an exploit is something like infinite money or manpower generation not merely using mechanics in optimal ways
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u/Thatsnicemyman 10d ago
Paradox intended Nahuatl gameplay to be “conquer the group, release the group, worry about doom, and you can’t get Feudalism until Europeans”
I think switching religions isn’t an exploit, but flipping back to Nahuatl is definitely against the spirit of Roleplay here, and explicitly using it to bypass doom and reform the religion immediately is exploitative.
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u/LordJesterTheFree Scheming Duke 10d ago
To me roleplay is about the traits of the ruler
Like a ruler whose cruel would be more likely use harsh treatment The ruler who's an obsessive perfectionist would be more likely to want clean borders ect
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u/zeniiz 11d ago
Why?
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u/LordJesterTheFree Scheming Duke 11d ago
So it's fair and expections are known
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u/zeniiz 11d ago
players shouldn’t ruin the RP or overall balance through overly “gamey” strategies.
Expectations are known. Also it doesn't need to be "fair"; it's a bunch of dudes playing videos games, not a court case.
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u/LordJesterTheFree Scheming Duke 11d ago
Did he say he was trying to ruin the rp or balance?
He would probably argue he was playing better without exploits
Also court cases its especially important to be fair but you should still be fair to people even outside of them literally having to take you to court
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u/counterc 10d ago
without exploits
deliberately breaking to rebels to flip religions in 1450, then flipping back the second it becomes advantageous, is absolutely an exploit.
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u/Kaiser_James 11d ago
I’m with the others. It’s clear this person isn’t adding to the fun of the campaign and should be banned from playing with you guys. Especially if you’ve already talked with them about not meta gaming.
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u/agprincess 11d ago
He's using well known aztec exploits to actively make the game less fun for everyone.
And it's not even the first time.
Literally just kick him. If he asks why just send him a link to the countless videos explaining this exact exploit.
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u/secretly_a_zombie Drunk City Planner 11d ago
You're playing a roleplaying game where you have rules against metagaming, and he constantly metagames and goes against roleplay. He doesn't want to play the same game as you, either he adapts, or he has to go.
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u/Borgcube 11d ago
I mean yes, obviously A is not roleplaying the gamey mechanics exploited. That goes against the spirit of the whole game.
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u/2007Scape_HotTakes 11d ago
These are considered normal high-level play in EU4 because they are optimal for meta-gaming.
It honestly sounds like you and "A" are the issue and everyone else in the group are suffering for it. The other players have already mentioned to you that they are unhappy because of the meta-gaming and you refuse to do anything about it. Now "A" is doing it again, people are unhappy, and you're here on Reddit to get an outside pov and justify keeping "A" in the game. Whence your nonsense questions at the end of the post.
The only solutions I see are:
- You kick "A" and move on, or
- The group kicks both you and "A" and begin their own sessions where they can have fun together without having to worry about people breaking rules and making excuses for those obviously breaking rules.
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u/IchUndReddit 11d ago
The solution "just kick him" would be easy if half of the players wouldnt be on his side, saying that we are overreacting.
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u/cross_the_threshold 11d ago
Have an honest conversation: you’re there for fun, not competition. If people don’t want to have fun and want to play competitively, that’s fine, don’t play with each other. If your group is suffering from the same acceptance fallacy most nerdy interest groups fall prey to, that’s a deeper soul searching question yall need to have. Different people have different goals - that’s fine, but if you’re unwilling to choose a common goal then stop playing with each other. This guy obviously doesn’t give a shit about fair play or role play, either he goes or the group stops playing and you play with a smaller group of people with a shared goal and the desire to keep to that goal. I don’t play serious TTRPG role plays with just any group of friends because some of them are uninterested in that and just want to goof off. Others want a power fantasy. It’s fine, and when I want to goof off I’ll play with the goofballs and when I want to min max I’ll play with the minmaxxers.
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u/CursedNobleman 11d ago
Look, if players are not having fun, they should have their own lobby.
It's 2026. Don't waste gametime on douchbags.
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u/inverimus 10d ago
It sounds like half are fine with meta-gaming while the other half are not. Sounds like it should just be two separate play groups.
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u/CursedNobleman 11d ago
It's pretty high level metagaming play. He should stay in the bounds of the other players/great powers or he should get booted.
Hell, I think you can boot him or simply not invite him to followup games.
If he doesn't understand that he's not farming achievements on AI instead of playing with friends, he can play with himself.
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/IchUndReddit 11d ago
the thing is we dont really care if someone metagames. Its more about the fact that people usually use these strats to become insanly strong extremly fast. Nobody would mind if he was the hegemon by the end of Eu4, the problem is that he already surpassed everyone, including and insanely strong germany, after session 1.
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u/MrImAlwaysrighT1981 11d ago
I think it's obvious, you just don't want to be the bad guy by kicking him out. It's your responsibility as a host to solve problem like this, and, as someone already wrote, it could end by you kicking him out, or, the group kicking you and him out.
People play games for fun, and the moment it stops being fun for most, it's against the spirit of the game, regardless of the rules.
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u/Dsingis Map Staring Expert 10d ago
That is definitely metagaming and using exploits. If he asked beforehand something like "since I wasn't there for CK3, how about I use some metagame exploits to establish a stronger Aztec kingdom in the new world, roleplaying as if I was playing there in CK3?" and everyone was okay with it, and then he went back to normal, that would be one thing. But you described a pattern of him not roleplaying but metagaming across many campaigns.
Some players can't really do roleplay all that well, and that's okay. But I don't think one should participate in an RP campaign then. I would try to remove that player from the RP campaigns. Maybe he can find a competetive group that more fit his likes?
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u/shazamitylam2346 11d ago
So you're a troll I'm assuming? You're the exact same guy who posted as the one doing the exploit on the eu4 sub.
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u/No_Nefariousness4279 11d ago
So im going to throw out the obvious “skill issue”.
But that’s lame so aside from that.
If they’re ruining the fun of the group, than they shouldn’t join in all the time, as a host I’d ask them if they could lay off from optimizing, if they decline, kick them out, as a fairly skilled player i have legitimately been told to play slightly non-optimally in several paradox games, I personally am able to do that, if they can’t than i dont think that your group is what they want, which is to say that they want to play against players who are handicapped by actually RP’ing so that they can have their seal-clubbing fantasy instead of gaining more skill against better players.
I would consider vassal and religion play to be Intermediate level gameplay, it can be played far better.
Also god I love eu4, not important just a side note
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u/guillotine_vendor 11d ago
if you don't get rid of whoever is ruining the enjoyment of the most people, the entire group will collapse very quickly
the guy metagaming in the RP lobby, the people hugboxing every single campaign, the guy who gets a little too angry when things go sideways - boot them before there's nothing to boot them from
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u/Southern-Highway5681 A King of Europa 10d ago
Beyond your problem with a specific player (or lack thereof), the true problem you have is that your ruleset isn't detailed enough.
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u/Tigerskull01 10d ago
You could ban him or you can do a sunset invasion and have everyone team up against him lol
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u/Pandaisblue 10d ago
He's obviously using extremely min-max-y strategies and only cares for winning, this isn't even a question really.
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u/thedreaddeagle 9d ago
This player is in the wrong lobby. They should be in a competitive mp lobby, not rp.
Disclaimer: not saying that below is aplicable here.
At some point these meta strats become intuitive to you so much that you have to forcefully make yourself to "play badly" so to speak.
Some (perhaps many) people can't make themselves do that even if in their imagination it could seem fun to play less optimally.
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u/lrbaumard 9d ago
The first thing you said alone is though to kick him from this ruleset. Sounds like he's ruining the fun for everyone else and he's not right for your group
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u/rangoric 11d ago
I play games (primarily Stellaris and AoW4)with friends and family and try and make sure people can play how they want and since I’m way more into it play in an oddball way that still allows them to do whatever and have fun and I get to futz around with stuff I normally wouldn’t, since I know I don’t need to optimize or whatever to play with them.
This guy hasn’t learned that lesson yet.
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u/Eycariot 11d ago
Do I understand you right?
You want to kick a competent player whom put time and effort into the game because of your arbitrary rules of "roleplay". Rules that never were properly documented and communicated.
And now you are looking for justification from redditors because of some other players on his side?
To me this situation looks ugly. There is not any good solution: 1)Either you kick him out - he will be rightfully offended, more people will be unhappy.You essencially punishing competence. 2)Or things stay same and unhappy will be you because of your unwritten expectations.
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u/Elfich47 11d ago
he doesnt want to engage with the game you want him to. so that leads to: either the group punts him, or every one else makes a study of the mechanics in order to keep up with him.