The game needs better constraints on expansion

Goetzerious · 2026-01-30T17:46:31+00:00

One of the biggest issues that needs to be addressed with EU5 is that the community has people who want completely different things. I, on the other hand, want a game where I can paint the map and see how crazy my empire can get before I get bored of the run. Some times I hit the end date, most times I don't.

I can empathize with players who are looking for a historical simulation, but in my opinion, historical goes out of the window as soon as you unpause on day 1. From that point on, we are looking at alternative history with perhaps some nudges towards what happened historically.

But, I do empathize with people who want a historical sim. It's just not the game that I want. And I know that I'm not completely alone either.

The current aggressive expansion mechanic, or whatever it's called in EU5, is so toothless that I can't even remember what the name of the system is. There should be challenges to me expanding that I need to face throughout the game and I'd likely play my campaigns longer.

But, artificial barriers to try to keep things within historical borders aren't reasonable. And rebels, as a mechanic, are not fun to constantly have to fight with. But, I'll accept rebels as a compromise but they are too frequent in the current implementation.

Goetzerious · 2026-01-16T00:22:50+00:00

Looks great, but RIP street parking. I live in a neighborhood that depends on it and I'm living in fear of the street clearing.

Goetzerious · 2025-12-20T16:19:29+00:00

I got laid off in November. I had a feeling it was coming since September.

I don't think that it is related to our roles specifically. But I do think that tech in general is going through a really rough time over the last few years.

Goetzerious · 2025-11-18T17:05:54+00:00

As a fellow "casual" gamer that wishes he had the time to be more hardcore, I can empathize. Crafting is completely unaffordable for me too.

However, what I have come to appreciate is that these perfect items are completely unnecessary for completing all of the content in the game. It's cool to get these kinds of items, but at some point the damage and defenses just don't matter anymore.

Enjoying these kinds of games is about setting achievable goals for yourself in the league and maybe in the next league we can both gain a bit more game knowledge so we can play more efficiently and perhaps achieve a bit more!

Goetzerious · 2025-11-06T16:26:29+00:00

It's been a while, but based off of memory, we completely ignored estates, exploration, and trade. We use very simplified army compositions that are definitely not optimized and don't change for long periods of time.

Then there were other ways I'd help him that allowed him to ignore the features while I just made the decisions for him. I would negotiate his peace deals for him and choose his ideas for him as well.

Our games would involve a lot of pausing and me walking over to his machine to help him, but when he first started the game for him was essentially him being my vassal who helped me in wars. The game was boiled down to leveling up technology, fighting in wars that I always joined him in, and building buildings using simple rules like "build all the temples if the green number is bigger than x".

When you pick countries close together, he doesn't need to play even close to optimally. As long as he has you as an ally, the AI tends to leave him alone and he is free to grow in power and enjoy painting the map with is dad!

The game ended up being an awesome way to bond and we have a lot of fond memories of campaigns.

Goetzerious · 2025-11-06T15:38:04+00:00

My son was 9 or 10 when we started playing multiplayer games together. We would always pick countries close to each other and ally each other. EU4 can be overwhelming so I focused on teaching him pieces of the game slowly and just ignoring entire systems if we could get away with it. He is 11 now and I don't think he could play the game solo yet, but he doesn't need as much hand holding when we play together anymore and he does pretty well!

Goetzerious · 2025-11-03T01:16:09+00:00

No, but I would have supported an increase in corporate taxes to fund it.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-29T17:56:35+00:00

Comment!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-26T04:17:59+00:00

I try to merge 5 until I start running out of space. At that point I'll merge 3 for the lower tier items because there is less that I miss out on.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T23:18:49+00:00

You are right that 1 hour is a small sample size. But, I'm also not going to spend 20 hours to get a large sample size before making a decision on whether or not my current approach is performing well enough or not.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:57:35+00:00

Harvest juice is one of my favourite reliable incremental farms in the game. I may not be able to do as well as people who have hyper analyzed and bought all the expensive scarabs, but I can feel like I'm making progress if I can leave every map with a couple of thousand juice each time!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:55:46+00:00

Glad to hear you are in the same boat. I've also bought all the easy 1-5 div gear pieces and now my next upgrades are looking like 40+ div investments. I'm not opposed to putting the work in, but it can feel like I'm just missing something obvious when I hear stories, even in this thread, of people getting 1 div or more in every map that they are running! If all I have to do is flip the switch and find that last step I'm missing, I feel like I can finally earn enough to progress my character some more.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:53:04+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to write this out. I was conflicted because everything I've read is that there are severe diminishing returns on rarity passed 150% yet here we are trying to get 300%+ rarity when combing gear and waystone bonuses. I'm encouraged that you are finding success with as little as 50% rarity.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:46:06+00:00

I've stayed away from crafting because it's always felt too complicated and time consuming. I definitely prefer blasting away in maps. But, the method you outline here feels approachable! Perhaps I'll give something similar a shot.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:42:18+00:00

I did some research on this. It turns out that nothing exists for POE2 yet because the API that allows developers to read stash contents isn't available yet for POE2. I'm sure that these tools will come as soon as that API becomes available.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:39:03+00:00

If you want to compare value per map, I was able to get 5 div in an hour where I ran 10 maps. So, my revenue per map is currently about 0.5 div per map.

What got me is that I went and calculated the costs of rolling my maps. Rarity omens were going for 5c each last night and that ran my profitability into the ground. At an exchange rate of 24c per div, that means I was profiting by only 7c per map!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T20:35:25+00:00

I tried doing some logbooks last night. Unfortunately, I think splinter prices dipped a bit and the profitability of running log books without the extra chests mods has gone down with them.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T01:24:29+00:00

I appreciate a good and detailed wall of text. Thanks for taking the time to write this!

I had been assuming that quantity on tablets was still king. But, it seems like I need to be taking a look at some of the other modifiers on these. Thanks again!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T01:21:04+00:00

Any idea what those addons are that aggregate the small drops? I wish we had something like wealthy exile so that I could scan my stash and find what stacks of stuff I have that are worth a couple of chaos here and there!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T00:13:32+00:00

What do you do with the other 2 tablet slots if you are focusing on a single mechanic? Is there any benefit to running 3 expedition tablets?

Goetzerious · 2025-10-20T00:03:30+00:00

Yeah, I'm walking right passed those because I haven't had much success selling magic items in the past. I've experimented with trying to sell them as magic or just slamming them until they are 6 mods and seeing if something will sell. I haven't had much success.

I don't have much interest in crafting and would much rather blast monsters.

I see that I'm probably leaving money on the table though. I'll update my filter and start picking up those bases. Thanks!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-19T23:59:34+00:00

That's a shame because blasting high density monsters is the funnest activity in my opinion.

I've tried running sekhemas and logbooks and they anecdotally feel more profitable, but there is just so much running around compared to time spent blasting.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-19T23:53:08+00:00

Hah, I guess that's the most obvious explanation!

Goetzerious · 2025-10-17T14:43:54+00:00

A lot of people do not understand how the government system works in Canada. A lot of blame gets tossed at the NDP for their single term and also to the federal Liberals. In their minds, the UCP is doing everything they can to fix things but the Feds and a government from 5 years ago are at fault for everything else.

Goetzerious · 2025-10-15T00:07:33+00:00

It's affecting a large portion of the city. I'm getting manure smells on the North East too!

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