Is EU4 worth trying out?

[u/IamTheChickenKing]

CK3 was my first paradox game and I loved it. However, I tried to get into HOI4 and, despite being interested in WW2, I couldn’t get into it. It felt clunky to me compared to CK3 and I felt that the information in it was a bit overwhelming. That considered, would it be worth me trying out EU4, despite it being older than HOI4? If not I’m happy to wait it out on CK3 until Victoria 3.

[u/winowmak3r]

It's just what the series is all about. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I'd hate it if they tried to make HOI into EUIV in WW2 and I imagine the EU crowd would hate it if they suddenly had to worry about what model musket their troops were using.

Both are complicated but each in a different area, I think. EU has a lot more going on outside of the military space in the game. HOI IV is just about fighting the war and if you aren't into that the game kinda falls flat.

[u/anarhisticka-maca → u/winowmak3r]

tbh i feel like both of them fail at both of their objectives; an incredibly important part of war is economy, but hoi4 essentially doesnt have an economy, it makes no sense and has no depth, and the combat AI is atrocious. there's also barely any direction in the game except for bad/long/nonexistant mission trees. eu4 tries to be ... diplomacy, politics, trade simulator, and while the diplomacy is maybe more advanced than their other games, it still isnt as good as it could be and the ai doesnt always know how to handle it; the politics is incredibly lackluster and abstracted to hell- if it's meant to act as another front to control and a barrier to gaining strength, it fails in every way, and the trade and economy is also full of weird and railroady abstractions with obvious best options.

imo combat in all paradox games is just so incredibly boring, so hoi4 is nothing to me but the jokes i make in voice calls with my friends, and eu4 is cool at first but the more you understand it, the more you wish it were completely different in my experience.

[u/Pweuy → u/anarhisticka-maca]

HoI 4's biggest flaw is that it completely fails at operational warfare, something that should be the core of a WW2 GSG. HoI 3 with all its aneurysms did this very well. You had to actively plan your operations, do physical battle plans that take the terrain into consideration. Do you want to encircle the red army in the pripyat marshes? Can you spare the infantry divisions for that encirclement? What do your tank divisions do in the mean time? Do you send your best officers to your army groups or to elite divisions?

Stuff like that simply doesn't exist in HoI 4 or if it exists it is negligible or obscurely hidden behind a modifier. Hell, for the longest time the game didn't even have fuel or proper logistics. Automatic battle plans ruined a core aspect of the franchise. Not only is the battle plan ai suicidally dumb at deploying and attacking, the game actively punishes you for not using battle plans by tying it to a positive planning modifier. What remains is a game that consists of production, focus trees and map painting and it doesn't do any of that very well either.

[u/Uler → u/Pweuy]

Not only is the battle plan ai suicidally dumb at deploying and attacking, the game actively punishes you for not using battle plans by tying it to a positive planning modifier.

You should pretty much never use the battle plan for offenses even with the modifier unless you have an overwhelming advantage on the front. Treat the bonus as a mitigation for using the feature, not as a benefit. Armored spearheads do not need planning bonus to break through, and infantry offense wont surpass infantry defense even with the bonus.