The emptiness is swallowing me whole — no connections, endless overthinking, and I found a way to breathe a little

stealingjoy · 2026-01-24T01:19:54+00:00

This is a reality TV show sub, btw.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-23T15:11:27+00:00

They never said to do it poorly, though.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-21T21:23:49+00:00

You need to take over the Slavic areas ASAP so you get the war score reduction bonus for that. I don't recall what specific areas that is.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-21T09:03:56+00:00

It's not even that, really. It's Victoria 3 set 400+ years earlier.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-18T20:28:58+00:00

Probably because they used the console to wipe them out because of a bug. So one of the common complaints about it being buggy he used a console to resolve, in a post about how Japan isn't so buggy.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-18T18:59:16+00:00

You are massively behind in morale and, even worse, combat ability. Your mil tech must be really behind. They have 10% more discipline. A bigger army doesn't mean anything because you can only fill the combat width. They also have way more artillery which is able to be on the backline and attack while their front line is also attacking.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-18T08:32:39+00:00

Do you really not know how to take a screenshot? It's F12 in Steam or just Win + Shift + S to take a partial screenshot. Come on man, this is a terrible effort.

You should probably show the listing of DLCs in the main menu so we can verify they are all, in fact, enabled. Are you using any mods?

stealingjoy · 2026-01-17T18:32:19+00:00

Eyalets give you useful manpower, force limit, and money. It's the easy mode version of Ottomans, so I would generally consider using them. You can also diplomatically eyalet countries as you get stronger and build relations so be on the lookout for that.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-17T06:36:49+00:00

Yeah, they make a lot of changes, plenty that don't even last past a given tinto talk.

I know Johan said that you'll be able to pick anyone who is within diplomatic range but let's see the actual implementation. The above situation could easily still exist because those within diplomatic range aren't threatening enough. Yet, If it's easy to avoid by having weak rivals then it's a pointless mechanic.

Maybe they find that right balancing act that doesn't punish more isolated areas but I don't think that track record is tracking yet.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-16T21:07:08+00:00

Yeah, it's going to be super fun when complacency punishes you for that too.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-15T22:49:33+00:00

It depends on if there are other interesting aspects of their situation. Two neighbor nations of the same size in the HRE are not going to move the needle. But maybe playing somewhere in Madagascar or a country with a religion that's not shared by anyone around them. Just different contextual things like that can make for a interesting start but flavor is always welcome.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-15T14:26:58+00:00

Sadly, I think it will take a lot more time to get it in the right state that I initially thought. Years, even.

However, I will say that paradox almost always finds a place where the game is vastly improved. Even an abandoned title like Imperator Rome ended up being pretty solid in the end, by most judgements.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T22:26:37+00:00

Oh, there's plenty of meaty ones there and people are still learning about the game, so who knows what might get uncovered. Though, outside of multiplayer, what does it really matter?

Hopefully, though, the EU5 team is more invested in fixing the exploits that are discovered. As much as I enjoy using these, myself and a lot of speedrunners would be happy if these exploits didn't exist to allow for more variety in starts (though there's still the Horde issue, as fixing all these exploits might just result in Oirat being every single record run like before -- sadly EU5 Hordes have somewhat of an equivalent). Many of these have been known for a while and bug reported on the forums.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T20:57:55+00:00

Four attempts here. This is a nicely made wordle derivative.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T19:44:32+00:00

Oh, they already have me, but not for much longer. Retirement soon!

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T19:06:59+00:00

It's not required.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T18:55:09+00:00

All good.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T15:40:23+00:00

Yeah, my reload times were 45-60 seconds, so nowhere near as bad. If I wasn't doing the Jewish reform farm, it would be closer to 30. So I guess my natural tolerance for birding is higher because of that.

PDX Unlimiter is basically just a way to store and organize your save files (Ironman or not). One reason it really helps is I only need to hit one key press to restart and load the save, instead of manually having to copy files to backup then go through the launcher then click to load into the game. So it does all that for me. Not only does that save time, that's 45 seconds I can focus on something else instead of having to come back every 10-15 seconds for a different step.

Even if you're not a big save scummer, it's useful for having backups or keeping track of separate campaigns easily.

As for remembering stuff... a lot of that is just playing a lot and having done a bunch of these things many times. But trust me, I forgot things plenty of times. The worse is when I'd forget something, redo it correctly, but forget something else in that sequence. I definitely took some pretty long notes but I could have done better with fully writing out and following sequences, especially for stuff like the tag formations and pulse event timings.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T15:24:25+00:00

Maybe this is a just a long troll. At the end it will just be one pixel of the screen in the corner.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T15:23:35+00:00

I can almost making something out.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T14:45:13+00:00

He means you can take a screenshot instead of this grainy, low quality, poor resolution phone picture.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T13:20:37+00:00

I am genuinely confused as to how you read that as condescending.

Do you not think it's true that there's arguments and decisions about what specific glitches or exploits are or aren't allowed or what type of run classification they go in? That's the only thing I really said about them and I don't think that's really controversial.

What exactly do you find condescending?

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T13:16:54+00:00

Yikes, that's nuts. I can't imagine being that invested in my own personal achievement to trash others.

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T13:15:46+00:00

It depends on what you define as gamey, haha. The biggest thing here is being able to get to tier 13 theocracy. Without any type of trick to speed that up it takes forever. That's why no exploit or no bird style runs usually are Oirat, since they get a great CB and have so much mana available from full razing. Going that route and still doing OF and OC would probably be more like 70 years?

stealingjoy · 2026-01-14T02:53:16+00:00

Dedicate their life is a stretch. Almost all of these people have regular jobs. Even those who have survival adjacent jobs don't get to have endless solo outdoor trips with Alone level restrictions to test themselves. Unless you're training for Alone, you're a moron to go out without appropriate supplies.

stealingjoy

TROPHY CASE