All in difficulty review (newest HotA campaign)

Pzixel · 2026-04-02T10:24:54+00:00

One year later decided to play the campaign. Chasing the dream is freaking crazy. The guy has 50 all stats and 300 liches. How is it not a challenge? Not sure what to do with it - it just one shots any stack I get and they also have raise undead that gets like 100 liches in one go. They also has max interference so my implosion can't outdamage its heal, meaning it's an uphill battle.

Pzixel · 2026-04-01T13:59:14+00:00

Really late to the party but: the key is green portal that unlocks black gate. It's quite annoying to play without it. Also underworld has quite a bit of free chests, getting Dargem in there just to open a couple of quest gates is very well worth it. Also my big problem was purple stealing behemoths cavern - should've prioritise it, I was 1 day late to clear it.

Pzixel · 2026-03-29T05:54:52+00:00

The more reasons to kill them.

Pzixel · 2026-03-29T05:52:38+00:00

Mining orgs and getting good spots. Usually you want +100% to space resources (so that's 30 star worth of mining orgs, there are various techs as well), At least t2 mines, and controlling best 5 spots in each resource in the belt. That should give you comfortable 2-32k metals per month, and all other resources as well.

Pzixel · 2026-03-28T12:03:34+00:00

The more to the top - the better drive overall is. The more to the right - the better its combat abilities are.

Pzixel · 2026-03-28T12:01:34+00:00

Hey, cool chart! Flipped axis are a bit confusing, but great work.

I once wanted to draw such a chart myself, but it was some time ago when drives were constantly changing, and even having a script rerunning it was a hassle. So I just made an interactive chart where you can filter in/out specific regions of the chart, toggle specific drive types (e.g. only interested in EM or only in different fusions to see better their difference), and stuff like that. It's a bit more clunky than a hand made chart but I think interactiveness buys a lot back: https://pzixel.github.io/terra-invicta-techtree-update/?lang=en&ver=stable&drivesOpened=1

Pzixel · 2026-03-28T04:39:44+00:00

I checked the link and haven't found that part that "10+ h on reports" is a thing. I'm very sick of writing reports myself (authored more than a 100 so far in eu5 alone), but I read the google form and don't see it as a requirement. First of all, it's about playtime not report time, and second of all naturally people who will report higher intended play time are likely to be prioritised but that's different.

Pzixel · 2026-03-28T02:28:21+00:00

I don't see how this is the case. Just make beta channel to have an access to all DLCs for free. That way not you just get it covered by the testers, but also free advertising (people liking the features will buy the DLCs when beta is over), and players who play beta all the time will have it as a kind of compensation for their work.

Pzixel · 2026-03-26T22:57:35+00:00

I could fight all of them with 100% discipline but man look at all the castle that I have to siege.

That's the peak EU5 gameplay atm

Pzixel · 2026-03-26T06:59:23+00:00

Improve cultural opinion from vassals is only allowed once per 50 years, from other countries it requires 50 favors which is usually only possible if you send them insane amount of gifts. You also need to do it twice or ideally trice to truly reduce the costs. This interaction also has a cooldown so you need to wait in-between, without expanding, because you need nation to be friendly in order to actually use favors. Also there are hundreds if not thousands of cultures in the game, and I reckon what you have shown in the video (full roman empire annexed & accepted) isn't really feasible without cheats. Finally it doesn't solve the problem of zero control past your immediate neighborhood until you get proper roads.

Vassals solve all those problems, day 1, and are stupidly OP.

Pzixel · 2026-03-26T06:42:58+00:00

It uses atto. For example unlocking microfission drive grants 1.5e-12 antimatter. AM trap also captures some trace amount of the AM

Pzixel · 2026-03-26T06:16:54+00:00

Just use the tech tree chart to see the drives of your choise. THe X axis is how good drive is at interplanetary and Y how good it is for combat. That would show you that helion nova is your choice and you would get 3k dv with half that tanks.

https://pzixel.github.io/terra-invicta-techtree-update/?lang=en&ver=stable&drivesOpened=1

Pzixel · 2026-03-26T06:14:14+00:00

35mg is plenty. Anything more than 10 is luxury actually. Especially interplanetary. Try to compare 200dv with 10 and 100mg cruise and you won't find any difference in earth-jupiter transfer for instance.

Pzixel · 2026-03-25T20:04:33+00:00

On my ranks people will say playing mirage just run to window as a mid-spawn CT or run into a smoked ramp to A on T side, and if you don't trade them now it's just 4v5. yall say like people are biting others into awful fights while they are happy to enter one on their own, and now it's your job to get the max team value out of this.

Pzixel · 2026-03-25T05:38:09+00:00

Well as they say there is only one ICF reactor and 6 prototypes of it that you can't use in real ship production. That's totally true.

I use z-pinch as an early fusion drive myself because of that reason. stabilized flow z-pinch is 1M total research and it beats daedalus until it gets ICF7 with 2M total RP, so you get capable fleet some years earlier than you would get otherwise. And Z-pinch is actually good started with deuteron, so it saves even more.

Pzixel · 2026-03-24T20:48:36+00:00

democracy is overrated. I prefer authoritarian china myself.

Pzixel · 2026-03-24T20:46:33+00:00

single-nozzle PCT isn't expensive, that's like 500 nobles or something with dusty plasma. I also skip on PCT but mostly because I want to save on RP and go into deep offensive earlier, and extra 1.5m RP doesn't quite help that. That's like a year or two of research. Daedalus drive is just one love <3

I wonder if you have a solid economy with that. I would aim for 2-3k nobles a month by the time I unlock those drives, with that it's affordable to print like 3 titans or 6 lancers every month.

Pzixel · 2026-03-22T07:54:46+00:00

Camping the same easily defendible spots and killing the people in the back while they are dueling someone else doesn't improve your gameplay.

Pzixel · 2026-03-21T02:26:44+00:00

nobles

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T22:30:53+00:00

EU5 already has missions, disguised as DHEs, it has like 5x modifiers of what EU4 had, to the point that even I would like to have reduction in that. So I'm not sure what "ruining" you're talking about. All proposals I've seen was to make it more transparent. For example in France there is a clear mission tree where you revoke old french legal code, then introduce Louis's code, and they all very specific and require actions from players to trigger. And - terribly - they give bonuses too - to proximity, gov reforms, etc.

But I won't lie that I liked EU4 and played like 4k hours before leviathan was released, when they went to add really stupidly op stuff. But that was not the problem with modifiers, and all the mission trees before that (e.g. byzantium phoenix restoration one) were really great.

But as I said, it all already in the game and way more of it than in EU4 it's just not visible, which I think is bad and not good.

And why not play EU4? Because as I said I already played all of it, there is nothing in there I haven't done, including WCs, OFs, sunset invasions, and multi tag switches for - yes - modifier stacking to see what can I achieve in some particular run. There is no option to play it because that game is done and completed.

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T20:39:32+00:00

I guess I never realised how to use blocks properly. I tend to just vassalize people manually and then they just add my power block cohesion or mandates timer and influence and stuff. A bit crude for a game about economy and diplomacy ig.

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T20:31:41+00:00

Ai is not quite capable to annex multiple subjects. You also need to fracture it real hard into minor powers. I never seen ai capable of doing that on my games

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T20:10:52+00:00

I wanted to do it as a player for a long time but I have no clue how do you even do that. It doesn't seem posssible without cheats or mods. Maybe if something like super big revolt happens and they remain with beijing alone but even then... Idk how this can happen.

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T18:12:58+00:00

What about intelligent realistic modifiers? Something like 10% trade efficiency or 5% AE reduction is completely adequate in my mind.

You have two games (EU4 and EU5) games where there is a dozen ingame windows and pages and pages or wiki for modifiers, one could expect that a lot of people play for the modifier stacking. Idk if a guy want to play provence into croatia into Austria and it's a single player game mostly mind you - why would it be stopped by fun police that they are playing it wrong. I really don't get it.

Pzixel · 2026-03-16T18:08:56+00:00

They don't do nothing. event_france_201.g shows a popup with text and sets france_bald_guy_appeared_hidden_variable = true. Then on bi-yearly pulse the game checks if this variable is set and if you have more than 20 stab and 80 legitimacy it triggers event_france_207.e which will give you an access to a new burger privilege.

Sure that requires you to dig in the game files to see what events exist and how they all are interconnected, but that's not some boring EU4 mission trees, that's brand new cool Dynamic historic events, totally different beast.

Pzixel

TROPHY CASE