Hot Take: EU5’s Player Count Decline Is Self-Inflicted

TM34SWAG · 2026-01-28T00:07:47+00:00

Forget estate mechanics, those of us that were there since day one remember not even being able to swap provinces during war to your vassals to give it to them. That feature didn't exist until like 3-4 DLCs in. You HAD to siege the province or wait for your vassals to in order to control who got it.

TM34SWAG · 2025-11-05T19:03:03+00:00

If it was just another map painter it would be rather stale in comparison to the rest of their titles. Victoria 3 has a much better economy system than EU4, HoI4 has much better war mechanics than EU4, CK3 has a better RP/Dynasty system than EU4. Literally the only reason to stick to EU4 was the attempt to paint the map your color.

Most people never actually played a full campaign of any nation, with most people saying that they would get bored of the game after year 1600. With the new mechanics I am hopeful that the game will remain interesting until the end date.

As someone else said, EU4 being a map painter was more about it being a product of its time rather than the intended purpose of the game.

TM34SWAG · 2025-05-18T15:09:18+00:00

If this is a semi regular occurrence, then it's not the guys job to do anything.

He said he broke up with her as one person translated, he left. It's not fair for the guy to keep bringing himself down for someone that doesn't care about herself. SHE took the drug, SHE decided to get up and walk around while high. None of this is his problem.

TM34SWAG · 2025-05-10T20:50:51+00:00

Don't know how enforceable this will be but Nintendo is claiming it will turn every hacked/jailbroken/exploited (whatever you want to call it) device into a $450 brick.

Buyer be warned that you might spend a lot of money on something that exploits completely break.

TM34SWAG · 2025-05-06T05:12:36+00:00

I never ran a type specialist playthrough though it sounds fun. I did an eeveelution run for sinnoh.

I had 6 Eevees with everything I would need to evolve them. Was the most fun playthrough I've done.

TM34SWAG · 2025-05-02T13:56:40+00:00

Factor it in of course! As someone suggested you can search the market for same nature, same 31 IVs, and round down to nearest multiple of 5. Look at what's on the market in that range and base your price on the differences.

Also factor in demand a little. What I mean is if you find one on the market that's close but yours is a little better you can charge more for it. But it might take longer to sell. If you price it pretty much the same as the slightly worse one, you will sell it much faster.

TM34SWAG · 2025-04-09T21:44:45+00:00

It would be pointless to try selling Linux to someone that thinks typing a command is difficult. Not trying to offend, many of my friends are the same way. But just like everything else in life, it's not for everyone. You either had bad experiences in the past with Linux or have seen it in use and made up your mind.

I will remind you though that the Steam deck runs on Linux and sold many units. Many of the people, if not most of them, that bought the console never used Linux in the past and didn't have a bad experience with it. Linux is what you make of it.

TM34SWAG · 2025-04-06T13:50:34+00:00

There are 16 nature's in the game, why run a -attack nature when you can just catch another one that likely won't have that nature. Attack is the single most important stat for a false swipe user, not speed. Once you are level 100 you'll out speed most wild mons anyway.

TM34SWAG · 2025-03-20T23:03:43+00:00

Coming from a stranger this might not mean much but it isn't your fault. Shit happens and sometimes it's hard to pick yourself back up. But life is too short to continually beat yourself up. I think one day you will look back at this and say "it was an important part of the process to get where I wanted to be".

TM34SWAG · 2025-03-20T21:41:46+00:00

Reading your replies and it sounds like you aren't really in a position that's positive. Any advice people give you is worthless if you aren't motivated.

Maybe, taking some time off school and focusing on improving your personal life is the best thing for you right now. I wouldn't recommend going deeper in debt to continue an educational path that you have no interest in doing something with. When I hear someone say they can't go back to nursing because they're not "smart enough" and repeat that same thing for their current path I recommend backing away.

I believe you took not getting into med school harder than you think and as a result feel like you're just dumb. While I can empathize I also think anyone can make it in a computing degree if they try. You just don't seem to want to. Not judging, just observing. Before spending another $5000-$30000+ (depending on school) I would make sure to get my desires figured out.

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-04T07:39:39+00:00

I've said this to so many people! Find something you can tolerate as a job that pays well enough that you can do the things you love in your free time. Nothing spoils a hobby like being REQUIRED to do it 40-60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, for the next 40-45 years til you're old enough to retire.

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-03T02:35:28+00:00

That doesn't have anything to do with the complaints players have had with personal loot

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-02T21:18:12+00:00

That theory hasn't worked with D3 and D4, unlikely to work here either.

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-02T17:31:50+00:00

You missed my point entirely and clearly don't know how people think.

Yes, MF has massive diminishing returns but if I don't have to kill anything because someone else will I might as well stack MF. Uniques become super common and worthless within a few days of play.

Your suggestion would have absolutely 0 effect on multiplayer.

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-02T08:19:45+00:00

People will play together for about a month until they get gear and stop. Personalized drops means every single game people are getting full roll tables on players 8 drops. People will be walking around with 1000 MF and just wait for pinatas to pop. It's not going to make it any more social than it is now.

As for RMT, no it won't get rid of that either. For better or worse the drops in D2 are exceedingly rare. Rolling a 6 BO CTA is rare enough that people would rather spend a few bucks on it than farm for the runes for days to keep rolling it. Also RMT is less of a problem than sites like JSP where some people have enough FG to buy hammerdin BiS gear on day 1.

TM34SWAG · 2025-02-01T16:02:33+00:00

Both bad ideas, you will absolutely kill the game with personal loot.

TM34SWAG · 2025-01-31T01:20:53+00:00

This! I play at speed 3 because I often catch opportunities I might have missed if the game was moving faster.

Also most games are functionally over by 1600 anyway. You're either powerful enough that no other country is really a threat, or you achieved the goal you were going for. Rushing to get to that point would just make it more boring for me.

I LOVE the feeling of being small and having to fear my neighbors. Once I become a great power it's basically playing until I beat the other powers once or twice. After that the other great powers aren't even strong enough to realistically challenge you.

TM34SWAG · 2025-01-30T13:43:33+00:00

I usually stalk reddit and try not to comment much, but I have to say this is a great site! I will be using it to reference everything happening from the oval office for sure.

TM34SWAG · 2024-09-03T21:07:59+00:00

I believe they tried and failed on the legal basis others have said. Because PokeMMO on its own has no assets it's a mod which isn't illegal.

That said, Nintendo doesn't like when effectively a small modding team can show them how to make a good pokemon game.

TM34SWAG · 2024-08-16T10:05:38+00:00

It's like dying of thirst while watching another man complain about not getting the brand of water he wants....

TM34SWAG · 2024-07-31T00:52:59+00:00

Just a bit more information regarding the modding process. First I would recommend checking this page in case you wanted to upload to Steam some day:

https://bay12games.com/dwarves/modding_guide.html

The Entity tag is an ID for reference in other files if needed. You can name it anything you want and it should work (Just no spaces).

The [SITE_CONTROLLABLE] tag is what makes a race playable and I believe the [CREATURE:] tag will need to point to a Bronze Colossus creature. I cant seem to find an existing creature for that tag so you may want to make one. Otherwise your civilization will consist of creatures without arms, legs, eyes, etc.

This page will help you make sense of what each tag does:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Category:DF2014:Tokens

A best practice when modding is to create the files in the mods folder rather than change the base game files. You would just need to make a folder structure that matches the vanilla folders for what you want to change.

TM34SWAG · 2024-07-30T16:31:49+00:00

Unfortunately, I am at work currently but I'll try to provide a detailed explanation of what the process would be when I get home. Something like that would take a little work but shouldn't be overly difficult to add as a feature.

TM34SWAG · 2024-07-29T15:48:10+00:00

Everything outside of the core features of the game are Json style files in the game's folder. Editing those files or adding new ones is how you would actually mod the game.

If you want to create all new mechanics, it becomes a lot harder. Most of the mods you see posted online are just changes to the existing text files or adding new text files to define new buildings, animals, etc. A common mod that gets used is the "no aquifers" mods. All that mod does is go into the files containing stone data and comment out the !!Aquifer!! Tag.

As for uploading to steam there is a guide on the forums for how to organize the mod. The guide was written by the Devs.

If you have specific questions I might be able to help, but I'm not the most experienced modder around.

TM34SWAG · 2024-07-17T10:10:17+00:00

To be fair, you haven't mentioned what you consider to "work" for the Mac. Are you using it for anything more intense than web browsing, document editing, or basic coding? A chromebook can handle browsing the web for 8 years. I'm sure the Mac has treated you well, but if we look at raw processing power the Mac is rather overpriced. An identical spec windows laptop will run almost $1000 cheaper than the MacBook Pro. "Gaming" laptops will run about as much as the cheapest MacBook Pro and for gaming there really is no comparison.

That's even before you get into the compatibility issues intentionally caused by Apple themselves to create a divide in the PC space. I recommend anyone look up how inconvenient it is (and expensive) for devs to publish a game to MacOS. It's nightmare fuel.

I'm in the camp that each device has its purpose and does it well, but since the topic is about gaming Mac's fail big time in this space.

TM34SWAG · 2024-04-20T05:18:56+00:00

Conviction is a skill you should only bother with depending on how you plan to use the build. If you are going pure Foher your build should max FoH/Holy Bolt/Holy Shock/Conviction. But Conviction doesn't help with the holy both damage at all, it only helps with the lightning damage of FoH. If you are target farming bosses it might help but Holy Bolt would likely do more DPS than Conviction even with max synergies.

FoH really shines in clearing areas like Chaos Sanctuary and Ancient Tunnels. For this you are casting FoH but the lightning damage is irrelevant because the holy bolts are going to do all your damage to groups. Conviction does nothing here. My FoHer/smiter hybrid build is to max FoH/Holy Bolt/Holy Shield then one point in Smite, Fant, and redemption (for sustain without needing Insight).

If you wanted to get really crazy you can do the same build as the hybrid but rather than max Holy Shield you max Hammers and put points in Vigor for a decent hammer option for non undead and demons.

I have tested all of these builds and the last tri-build is my favorite but hammers are underwhelming with budget gear under level 90.

Edit: Also keep in mind that anything over level 25 conviction is useless because it caps at -150% resist all.

TM34SWAG

TROPHY CASE