Be honest, how often do you actually finish the game? I always got bored around 1600

>1518
>hasn’t put those aragonese dogs to the sword and formed Spain yet
Do you even Grand Strategy?

iberian wedding

Probably start with EU4 since its the easiest to learn of those 3. Dont think you need to understand every mechanic before playing.
For EU4 pick someone easy like France or Castile, and figure out the very basics first like making alliances. So long as you have a powerful friend like Austria / England / France / Aragon / Castile, you're going to be stable enough that you wont colapse if you ignore eberything else and nobody will attack you since it will pull in your allies. Then pick something like Economy, War or Trade and try to get to grips with that and then move on to the next thing. You're probably not going to do a world conquest for a long while, so just accept it and take baby steps.

A handful of times in thousands of hours, even so most of these are in Victoria 2, which is the shortest and has a very busy late game
Getting to the end date always feels bad as you either ran out of time to reach your goal, or you did it a long time ago and spent time just running the clock

Where do I find a 29yo boomer girlfriend?

for actual "conversation" >>>/gsg/

Very rarely if it's singleplayer. Not sure if I've played a single eu4 game in singleplayer to the end date, same as you I usually quit in the 1600 because then I've thoroughly explored my gimmick.

Finished plenty of multiplayer games though, versus and coop.

Grand strategy gets incredible boring once you start to snowball. Even giving yourself goals seems pointless since you will be almost guaranteed to not fail because you are so powerful; the ai is usually dumb too which just compounds the issue.

You mouseover UI elements to see what everything does and then you press buttons and click on things, and dominate without self-imposed challenges being set, since strategy game AI tends to play essentially by random: for as long as you are utilizing the mechanics and actually doing stuff, that's enough.

Would be kinda comfy if you just left it like that imo.
Instead of a Portugese tumor there's an Aragonese tumor on the iberian peninsula.

>How can I get into these "4X" games?
They are not 4x games.
4x is a more specific term that doesn't include games like eu4, ck2, or v2.
They are usually referred to as grand strategy game, which isn't a great term with its definition, but when you take it as "strategy game that kinda plays like those paradox strategy games" it's good enough to be useful.

The basic gaming loop of 4x games are a lot easier, so you can probably just jump into gal civ 3 and not worry about it too much with what you need to do.
In grand strategy there are a lot of stuff that can distract you, and you may have a hard time to find exactly what you need to do, I still suggest just playing a real game, as a strong stable nation and then whenever you want to do something you don't know how, just ask.

hah, yeah right.

Have you been to /gsg/ lately?

>lately

I'll have you know that between the months of june and august in 2013 it was a decent fucking general that was clearly in the top 50 of generals on /vg/.

Almost 2k hours in latest paradox titles combined and I have never finished a single one of them till the end

No way that you havent finished once

EU3 kino

Not once
Latest CK2 date - XIII century
Latest EU4 - 1700ish
Hoi4 - 1945

with the 769 or 1066 start date?

I usually finish my Polish, German and Italian campaigns because they are often somewhat slow

Malaya, on the other hand, is a fucking monster

Always earliest possible starting dates. What's the appeal of playing later?

By the time I formed Germany I had 0 real competition on the map. Wars were a slog that took years of Tom&Jerry experience running after enemy armies or carpet sieging everything

For ck2 it's the main focus of the game, where there's more historical accuracy to the starting characters mostly.
Some are just butthurt with christendom getting wrecked by muslims and vikangs occasionally though.

For eu4 the later start dates are pretty broken, like I think spain has overextension in the thousands in some start dates because they have a ton of american uncored provinces instead of colonial subjects.

In eu3 there's some cheesy stuff you can do with later start dates, like 1406 instead of the earliest 1399 as china, which gives you an amazing explorer(Zheng He) that can explore the entire world.
Without him you'd have to probably wait 100-150 years for that.

For ck II I usually start 1066 because early dates make a mess and there is lack of historical characters and dynasties. Also, I'm Lithuanian and like to play when most pagans are already gone for that historical larp. Also play later start dates for different historical characters.

Almost never. I usually pick some achievement or personal goal and try to do that. Even finished world conqueror way before the end date, like 70 years or some shit like that.

i have 140h in ck2 and i just picked up eu4 (10h) what the fuck do i do with trade
also how do i manage coalitions if i have no manpower

Dont get into coalitions. Or get into multiple and manage truce timera, but this option is for big boys. So for starters dont try fucking everyone around you and get strong alliances that'll work as coalition repellant

>implying that is high

Probably finish 1 out of every 5 games I start. Some just arent interesting so I quit. Some I stop early because I just have specific goals that I end up doing quickly and dont want to just blob for the next 200 years

Have you seen the new patch coming for Imperator in September? They're removing mana and most instant actions.
If they only add some flavor to different culture groups it might actually become worth playing.

I thought the Pompey patch removed mana

Nah, Pompey mostly added basic functionality that should've already been in the game like moving capitals and different ship types.
It changed how stability and war exhaustion work, but everything else is still instant and mana-based.

Alright guys I'm trying to figure out EU4 right now, wish me luck. in game tutorial sucks btw

CK2 is the best paradox game.
You cannot argue with that.
It's not perfect but still the best.

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A fun method of playing until end date is to switch to another country once you've achieved the initial goal of your original country.

Here I played as Texas and rebuked Manifest Destiny which removed US cores on the southwest. Then I switched to USA in time for the Civil war. The north was severely handicapped since they didn't have all that new clay, so winning the Civil War was pretty easy. After I take Cuba as the CSA I'll probably release New England and balkanize the US further

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Pick Ottomans, it's like playing on cheat codes

It also added different heritage trees to nations for more uniqueness. I haven't played it yet so I dont know how true this is. I think it also added 2 consuls/suffetes as well. And it may have been Pompey that let's you release nations because that definitely wasnt in the original release

Is there any fantasy grand strategy?

Like in the style of Master of Magic or something?

good luck user you can do it

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The "uniqueness" is some tiny modifiers you instantly forget about. Plus only the majors and some lucky minors have their own heritage, 95% of nations have generic ones like "rural heritage" or "coastal heritage".
I don't know about releasing nations. I wanted to do it once to avoid a rebellion but I couldn't find any button to do it.

Mods to Ck2. The most complete and fleshed out are for GoT and TES

There are lots of fantasy mods for CK2. I see the Warhammer mod posted a lot.

unmodded ck2 also if we're gonna be real

>become a satanist and use magic powers to regrow my severed leg I lost during a battle and nobody bats an eye
believable worlds

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imagine the smell

I dont want to

Designated
Shitting
Continent

you can turn blatantly supernatural events off

Don't expect to blob until much later in the game. Take 1-2 provinces and keep your threat level below 50 if you're not ready to face coalition.
As for trade, steer towards your home node and collect only there. But don't assign a trader there to collect unless you need trade power there