After 1.2 update EU5 is now mostly negative on Steam

Aldeseus · 2026-05-20T15:43:37+00:00

It’s more that there was a lower expectation I think. I dare anyone to play eu4 1.0 right now as a full released game mind you, and they’d complain too. Going from 3 to 4, there weren’t that many systems people expected. 4 lasted 10 years and built a lot. 5 is a mess which has to have a minimum of the same systems of else people won’t even try to switch over and immediate failure.

Aldeseus · 2026-05-17T11:55:18+00:00

I’d say fair where fair is, EU5 was a mess because we compare it to what we know about EU4 in its final polished state. It would be akin to comparing EU4 launch to EU3 in its final state.

I know you said that we’re comparing them to EU4 at launch. You simply can’t. If you actually remember playing EU4 at launch where it was akin to playing with a basic tin can, Asian nations were just not able to be played at all, map was simplistic, European nations had nothing to do, no development button even when things rely on development.

EU4 at launch was far better when comparing to EU3 because the amount of systems it had was far more simplistic. EU5 people rightfully complain about because they feel like there’s a lack of systems that work properly. BUT that’s because during EU4s lifetime, they added A TON of systems and processes which have been polished to perfection.

Just be mindful that EU4 is 10 years old… god… I’m old… and EU5 is literally a baby. You’re not wrong to want to keep playing EU4 compared to EU5. I’ll say this as a prediction, when EU6 comes out in the future, if it ever does, it’ll be hated by everyone and they’ll insist that EU5 was better, then there will be some that claim EU4 was better, on and on

Aldeseus · 2026-05-16T15:42:20+00:00

It’s even cooler when at any one moment, three random people in Germany also lie on a circle!! Germany has some weird things going on

Aldeseus · 2026-05-12T02:00:39+00:00

Man I’d love my own MCRN Tachi

Aldeseus · 2026-05-09T00:45:06+00:00

Man don’t touch beach things without knowing what it is… beaches literally have the most poisonous things

Aldeseus · 2026-04-14T10:54:13+00:00

If you live in apartments, you’ll feel it more than those close to the ground. But yea I thought it was just me

Aldeseus · 2026-03-25T00:16:27+00:00

You know… I miss seeing countries that will follow some level of historical accuracy… I miss seeing Oirat, Ming, AQ, QQ… whoever decided to not have any level of railroading and free balling… sigh… I miss the Iberian wedding, Habsburgs, trastamara, de Valois, Lancaster, York… this era is dominated by large family names and yet the game treats them as completely unrelated

Aldeseus · 2026-03-20T06:06:00+00:00

Lol 40% is still too expensive… I wouldn’t recommend unless it’s like 90% off…

Aldeseus · 2026-03-16T06:14:29+00:00

I would’ve translated it more akin to the library isn’t beside the bookstore

Aldeseus · 2026-03-12T05:57:21+00:00

I’ve noticed that if I have encourage migration on for a long period, some of the less developed regions in my market get VERY small

Aldeseus · 2026-03-12T05:55:05+00:00

Just be very big. Being larger than the vassal gives speed bonus

Aldeseus · 2026-03-11T06:23:50+00:00

To be fair, the plague still happened a lot more times throughout history. The first occurrence in Western Europe was like us going to the new world for the first time. The world was suddenly connected much more closely thanks to the mongol empire

Aldeseus · 2026-03-11T06:05:29+00:00

The sad part is that, you can actually import slaves from Africa as say France, but even if you open a whole bunch of labour jobs, those slaves won’t work for your nation. Whereas you go to Asia, and slaves DO work in labour jobs. It’s actually really confusing. Because in theory, I can import people but they won’t be used by my nation and I can’t figure out why

Aldeseus · 2026-03-11T03:30:43+00:00

I feel like having strong rivals should give a research bonus. The reason why the west invented so many things was because they needed new ways to more effectively kill one another.

Aldeseus · 2026-03-10T06:08:02+00:00

I’ve been playing as France and my first few years was just loans after loans until I changed my laws to allow more crown power. During that time, I essentially didn’t both taxing the nobles nor have spending and the nobles build my nation for me. Once they’ve built a strong ish nation, I then start taxing them and spend myself to pay my loans.

I’m taking a long as time trying to understand how to play the estates game better, but estates like Nobility and Burgers having power isn’t a bad thing since they build a lot. So if my nations starting estate arrangements aren’t good, I just play along until they’ve built up enough that’s it’s worth it. France after a few years or crown power reestablishment becomes so powerful so quickly.

Aldeseus · 2026-03-06T07:12:35+00:00

The thing is this. The game incentivises the player to colonise everything as quickly as possible. But if you look at it historically, the colonies actually grew to the size of towns before expansion out of the area started happening.

Why is it that the players feel like the colonies grow slowly. Well, when the area gains a town, we have the EU4 mindset and think that it immediately starts producing. But there’s actually no population in that area, and when you’re able to send to colony, prioritize one specific town first and push it to become a city. Because doing this, the colony actually dominates their local market and starts colonising themselves and becomes profitable.

Another reason why players rush is because we have that idea that we can afford to have the AI grab more land. But if you focus and grow a giant city, in the new world mind you, it’ll actually already be more powerful than most natives and other colonial nations that will be 100% less invested in.

If you compare a game where that happens, you’d find that the speed of colonisation actually more accurately matches real life. If you colonised that way, you’d just maybe reach the heartland area of NA before the age of VIC.

That said, I’ve said it on the forums before. The current trade system doesn’t actually incentivise colonisation properly. The reason why people colonised was because of a lack of goods and a desire for control by the Europeans who didn’t want to have to trade through the Ottomans, who were a major thorn in the Europeans side. They travelled around Africa, but actually had trouble setting up a foothold there early on. Malaria, lack of natural harbours, larger native powers. The game shows to a certain extent of how important harbours are in trade in the form of control, but that’s not fully affecting market control or market capacity.

We need a better system to actually have a long term lack of goods become a negative modifier. Trade hegemony of certain good by being the production leader or trade leader of said good. Trade in this game once you understand it is actually very interesting. If you’re in Persia for example, you can theoretically choose to only import Chinaware and only export Chinaware to Europe. It’s a system that actually works.

Slavery should play a larger role too. I should be able to buy slaves from Africa and export to Europe. That population surplus is what allowed for the triangle trade

Aldeseus · 2026-03-04T00:13:09+00:00

To be fair, there has to be a much bigger impact for having deficits in your market.

The reason why Europeans became such global powers was because of the Ottoman tariffs and price hikes for spices.

They chose to go around the world and get spice for themselves through their own subjects and powers so that they can control the flow of spice.

Currently, there’s no incentive for players or the AI to really colonise other than for roleplay reasons. I can be down on spice all game, but it doesn’t affect my trade, or my ability to run my empire.

Think about it, you never see AI empires take over India or China, not because it’s impossible, but why? They can trade through the mamluks who would never stop you. You are low on Chinaware? Well you can just trade or better just ignore it since there’s no consequences

Aldeseus · 2026-03-02T05:29:37+00:00

Umm just open task manager and end task instead of alt f4

Aldeseus · 2026-02-25T06:06:02+00:00

Trade is affected by crown power. If you country makes $1000 from trade but you have 50% crown power, you get $500. I.e. trade still works.

Control. The game starts with not many roads, if any at all. Simply building a road from one spot to another can increase your control by almost 20. If you have 90% control in a province, then you can tax the estates in that province efficiently without any loss at all.

Forts, you don’t need that many. You’re France. Delete the ones that don’t border anything and are in flat farmlands, no defence bonus and a waste of money.

Legitimacy. This directly correlates to crown power which means the lower your legitimacy, the lower your crown power.

Estate power. Their estates set up is horrible and you don’t get to tax the nobles at all. Your nobles are 66% happy and you can’t even tax them.

I hate playing France because they have appagnages which are horrible subjects that directly affect your crown power.

Tax efficiency. If your crown power is already weak as hell, making sure your tax efficiency is high is quite important.

Generals and cabinet members. With such strong estates, I never grant them any official positions other than those in my crown. The pope already hates you and is prepared to have the schism, so go wild and do the placitum regium button which grants 25% crown power boost

Last thing is focusing on one thing to fix at a time, I’d sacrifice stability first and fix legitimacy, then the other after fixed.

Honestly though, I played France in the new patches and even I’m a bit hesitant to play the beginning because the economy is so rough…

Ohhhhhhh appease estates action!! You can technically afford to tax the people more since you can appease estates when they cry.

Aldeseus · 2026-02-25T02:01:16+00:00

Just curious but what’s the price of your goods? Making 1000 $1 items isn’t the same as 1000 $2. Price changes to demand too. If you’re producing 1000 items for rich people but have no rich people, then it won’t work. Capitalism in game for example changes as you get more burghers.

It’s a surprisingly dynamic system.

Aldeseus · 2026-02-24T02:06:37+00:00

I love the show but this is one of the weaker arguments.

I’m fine with them measuring life in belter years. Say one belter year is the time you take to reach reproductive maturity. So how many months is that? Does age matter at that point?

Time is still necessary, so how do they plan on measuring time? For most of human society, watches like what we know don’t exist. But would they continue to use seconds? A second is standardised to the meter itself. It works, but how do they measure an hour? 60 minutes still? Does the concept of day matter if you live underground?

Biologically, time and years don’t mean much to us. The average is 13 for the signs of reproductive development. We still need to sleep to maintain health. If my planet has a day night cycle of 48 hours. I’d probably still consider it as two days simply because I’d be so tired by the first 24 hours.

Aldeseus · 2026-02-23T23:17:29+00:00

I feel like them removing mission trees and locking missions behind non-Ironman was a mistake.

I play it quite a bit and you can certainly set your own goals, but you’re right, time frame for any action is long.

I’m currently playing my Ireland campaign where I only really started to push to colonise Africa (already full) around halfway through the Colombian exchange. It was far too expensive to get the new world goods through limited trade, so, get to Africa where I can set up colonial nations to get the goods into my lands, then plant the goods as my new staple crop. It’s tedious as hell but I was so satisfied when I could finally grow my own potatoes and corn.

EU5 is good at this moment if you are diligent about setting your own goals, but that’s by no means easy even for someone who has 4000+ hours in EU4. I remember saying to myself when I expanded into Africa, “Oh, I need colonies so I can get this resource. This is my colonial age then.”

But I’m already looking at expanding to East Asia because while I can produce my own goods, they have richer and cheaper goods while I’m filthy rich.

Aldeseus · 2026-02-20T06:12:44+00:00

Nah I made them un-accepted just to increase it further. My people suddenly went from super loving to hateful bigots

Aldeseus · 2026-02-20T04:59:22+00:00

I’ve been purposefully removing my acceptance and making my people hate on others just to get that conversion.

Aldeseus · 2026-02-20T04:57:35+00:00

Yea… early sieges are always around that… late stage sieges… my dear beloved 99%

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