r/EU5

So, after playing Balkan nations for a few runs now, I noticed one constant: the Byzantine Empire tends to lose Constantinople quite quickly after the start date, often in the first 2 wars.

In the first war with Bulgaria, Serbia, or the Ottomans, AI will take Constantinople, or, even worse, make Byzantium destroy the Theodosian walls around it, making it easy for anyone who attacks the state afterward.

Of all unimmersive things in EU5, for me this may be the biggest one, and it does have bad effects on the gameplay of the Balkan region as a whole, because it more or less becomes a race for Constantinople in the first 2 decades of game time, while eliminating Byzantines as potential players entirely by the 1350s.

As I said, besides this making very little historical sense, this makes the initial decades quite boring and repetitive: as any Balkan or Anatolian state, Constantinople is the largest market in the region, and a city with a large population will boost a state's economy quite a lot, especially in the early game, wasting cabinet actions to stabilize it, assimilate it and integrate it, is 100% worth it.

Taking Constantinople is the best tool to avoid the struggle of the early game economy, and this makes it a prime target for META plays.

This eliminates quite a lot of strategic decisions in the early game, and opens insane snowball effects later down the line.

I do think Constantinople, and by extension the Byzantine Empire, should have special war mechanics unique only to them to mimic the defiant nature of the last Roman city and its citizens, as well as the importance of the city to Orthodox Christians

1. The Byzantine Empire can not unconditionally surrender, nor can any action be taken on Constantinople if the city is not directly taken.

2. When Constantinople is besieged, the Byzantine Empire can call Orthodox nations to aid by using prestige and legitimacy.

3. Byzantine Empire can be vassilized but not annexed, nor can Constantinople be taken from them with vassal actions.

4. Byzantium can commit its manpower to the Constantinople garrison.

5. During a siege, if Constantinople is owned by Byzantium the can launch a counterattack action that would cost some defenders but would reduce siege progress and do damage to the attacker's army.

6. In case Constantinople is taken, the Byzantine Empire collapses; Constantinople becomes a core of the state that captured it instantly; however, this causes massive local antagonism and persistent antagonism until the end of the game in Orthodox states if the owner is not Orthodox.

These changes can reintroduce a lot of historical immersion to Constantinople and the region in general.

Firstly, it makes the city a lot harder and costlier to capture, and it was historically.

Ottomans, for example, would need to first eliminate and pacify Balkan states, secure their borders against Georgia and other Orthodox Eastern European states, and build a strong enough navy to secure the siege and maybe even blockade the city for a long time before committing to a siege.

If the city is captured by the Ottomans, there would be a constant threat from Orthodox states, as it was historically, with each of them aiming for eventual capture of Constantinople.

Yes, of course, I acknowledge that there are issues. But there has never been a game more suited for me than EU5. I love the setting more than any game ever, the map is the best I have ever played, and the diversity of nations and locations make it infinitely replay-able to me. This game has led me to spend hours browsing the Koppen climate map alone, and I will literally have to prevent myself from just exploring the map indefinitely. I love this game so much!!! I even love the economy!!! The gap between Victoria GDP economics and EU arcade/development was perfectly bridged for me in this game. I love how much control over the market/economy I have relative to EU4.

But, I feel like all I see online is people vehemently hating it. It is one thing to say a DLC is a moneygrab, it is another to write off the game entirely. I am so afraid from the general consensus on social media (including reddit), the average of steam reviews, and the (slightly) decreasing player count that this game will stop development. I would seriously buy a steaming pile of pig shit from Paradox if it means they keep developing this game!!!!

Though I know people dislike the Paradox DLC system, I really truly hope that EU5 gets 20 DLCs and keeps getting developed like EU4 did. I will buy them all, I don't care.

I feel like I am the only one who feels this way. Does nobody else feel that this game has the most potential of any game they have ever played??? For me, it is #1 by far. I love EU5, and if anyone at Paradox reads this, I love you!!! Please keep creating and developing EU5, I love this game so much and will support y'all indefinitely!!!

for context i have a decent amount of experience,about 2000 hours in eu4 and 2000 is hoi4,few hundreds more in their other titles.nive played every modern paradox title

i dont think paradox has ever had a game where the ai is nearly as terrible as this game,they basically adopt one of two stratagies

1. put everything into one big stack,and wander around looking for something to do. this always leads to the ai having stacks with less than 20% morale. which eventually i can ambush and instawipe

2. they split into a billion small stacks,that i pick off with 0 effort.

in both cases,their miltary advantages have 0 effect. because of this,antagonism means nothing. i can conquer as much as i want,and im confident i can easily beat the ai when outnumbered 10-1,while having less than 50 hours in this game. i dont even feel this confident playing hoi4 on very easy.

this leads to everything miltary related being meaningless,and the game feeling sloppy as a result

It's obvious that province borders in EU5 are a gameplay abstraction rather than a historical one, so I'd much rather see them optimized for gameplay.

Right now England is the only major country with four provinces containing only two locations, which feels unnecessarily restrictive. Another issue is that many of England's key RGOs are grouped into the same provinces, while the most natural locations for urban development are just across the province border. Those cities can't benefit from the province's Production Efficiency bonuses simply because they're in a different province. A good example is the southern containing 2× Iron, Wood, and Stone. All four are valuable RGOs you don't want to urbanize any of them, meaning you have to give up important province Production Efficiency bonuses. Simply moving one Iron location into Kent would immediately create a much more natural industrial hub around London. The same issue exists on the Welsh border, where Iron and Wood are locked together in another small province.

London also deserves another look. Middlesex consists entirely  Grain locations, which means the only industry that really benefits from the province's Production Efficiency bonus is brewing. That feels like a very odd design choice for London. The Thames also provides only the minimum river bonus, which seems surprisingly weak. Likewise, London's natural harbor value of 0.8 feels unnecessarily low. If the harbor value is intended to stay as it is, then at least increasing the Thames to the second-tier river bonus would make sense. I also think EU5 should avoid provinces with only two or three locations wherever possible. Province layout has a huge impact on urbanization and Production Efficiency bonuses, so players shouldn't be disadvantaged simply because of an arbitrary map split.

I’m not sure how many here are aware, but if someone declares war on you, you can typically peace out at the very start for very little concessions.

In my byz game I have consistently had war declared on me by Egypt, Naples, France, etc, and even many coalitions.

Humiliation is -10 prestige. Literally a complete non factor, but the AI weighs it HEAVILY if you offer it in peace. You can typically peace out of any unfavorable war with this and some combination of money and other low impact factors the day the war starts. I have not given up a single inch of land.

Combine this with sound toll exceptions and you can just peace out with these 99% of the time. The AI also likes when you end alliances with nations as well

Plus an underrated aspect of this is that the countries that just declared on you will now have a truce. Meaning, if you swallow up some other neighbors they won’t join. Rinse and repeat for next coalition and you are eating land while costing your economy almost nothing avoiding massive wars

It makes no sense that a 1 location county with a tax base of 0.5 has the same number of (base) cabinet seats as a 10 province kingdom with a tax base of 50.

Instead I think that the number of cabinet seats a country has should scale with its economic base and to a lesser extent its size in the form of a bureaucracy-like slider and some sort of modifier according number of provinces. Richer states can afford to invest more in their government and so that should be reflected in game.

As well as this, the slider mechanic would also give the player flexibility - if they just conquered a lot of land they might want more cabinet seats for integration or if they are in a lot of debt they might want to cut down on cabinet spending etc.

https://preview.redd.it/o2km4cc1frbh1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=7865a973da342886965bba1b0dc5546bc4b773c6

Reading a book abt Maria Theresa and I’m interested in Habsburg maxxing rn. I’ve become quite fond of playing Austria in Victoria 3 and I’m
Hoping it translates to EU ❤️

Hi all! I'm Jadamsan, I make some EU5 vids and I've got a simple question for you.

What content would you like to see, that isn't being done at the moment?

I'm playing an Ottoman game, and I was sieging Constantinople. They were holding out very, very effectively. But, I did starve them.

... Then nothing happened. The population of Constantinople starved. They lost like 10,000 pops before I finally got smart, and sieged enough unrelated land to get 100% war score and force a surrender on the empire as a whole.

Historically, the point of a siege was to starve out the defenders. At a certain point, there would be nothing they could do but to surrender. One of the siege ticks is even food shortage, but it has nothing to do with actual food!

I assume the devs are working on it, among other things. But this just struck me as very odd.

Can someone explain exactly how production turns into monthly ducat income in EU5? I understand that buildings produce goods, but I'm trying to understand the formula. How does producing more iron, cloth, or wine actually increase the number of ducats I receive each month? Which modifiers matter the most?

I'm playing the ERE on the beta and every launch of the game the Pope rivals me

My understanding is you need to Pope to be on side to not get overwhelmed by debt

Is there a way I can make him friendly before he rivals me (always on 20th of May weirdly)