Why do people avoid playing big nations? 

Maybe I should just play a nice tall France game you know sticking with their natural borders... All support is massively appreciated!! ko-fi.com/lemoncake101 Come and say hi here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv

Simple, playing after you're already on top is boring. Everything stops being a challenge and becomes monotonous.

I think the main reason is that people play EU4 for having fun and writing cool stories. And the underdog story going from a small nation to a big one is cool. Also I think people start by playing big countries and then there is only small countries left

One of my enjoyments of playing Eu4 is taking a small country and make a mental note of my current standing in 1444, when 100 years have gone by I enjoy to watch my new empire and see how much I've expanded. To me the fun is watching the growth of my country, now one could argue that development of your country is also a growth, but it doesn't look as good as a map painted in your colours.

Its Easier to Have Prettier Borders

Cuz its way to easy so you dont get that dopamine rush when you get the number1 gp spot

I don't avoid any country except fr*nce

playing tall for me more means trying to make the most money/power without conquering a ton of land

Mostly because people enjoy a bit of challenge and if you start as Otto, sure you can have some fun flavour, but it's never a question of if you can achieve something, it's a question of how fast you can do it. Playing Perm or Granada, now that's decently thrilling!

I'm in the camp of people who's mostly played small nations. It wasn't only after hundreds of hours past the 1,000-hour playtime mark that I started to try big and European nations like France and England. Personally, this is probably for two reasons. One, especially before the mission trees that would give inordinate amounts of flavor to certain countries over others, it's objectively more fun for me to build up from a small nation to a big one than it is from a big nation to a bigger one. The fun back before mission trees came from you yourself being the tangible cause for how your nation would grow and prosper, which is more palpable if you start as a small nation. Now, mission trees are a thing, and it's big nations (or nations that have potential to be big) who are those that have the most flavorful ones. Second, as a citizen of an irl Southeast Asian "minor," I have little attachment to the big powers present in the EU4 timeframe, and the place of which I claim citizenship was a sprawling empire neither then or now. I think many players play certain nations based on how much they are emotionally attached to it (Byzantium is an obvious example), and such nations tend to already be notable entities on the map in the EU4 timeframe.

It's the late game problem right? You play a small nation and first 100-150 years you are pretty hands on getting your nation strong but once you've overcome the hurdles it can get autopilot-y. Starting as a big nation you just hit that point way quicker and I reckon the more hours/experience you have in the game the less enjoyment those nations are going to provide since you can just roll over the AI from 1444

To quote Tarantino "Because it's so much fun Jan! Get it!"

I just generally like underdog stories both in fiction and history. Being big and become bigger feels nice for a while but quickly become boring. Also it's creates more memorable moments. Like I don't remember much from my Russian campaign except being huge and unlucky regencies but Somalia vs Spain+Portugal or Sikh Punjab and crushing winged hussars with elephants were sick moments.

i played a game, when the new russian mission tree first came, as a quite dev focused muscovy into russia, and it was amazing. the russian heartlands are, as lemoncake says, great for devving, and when i was running out i just switched over to polish farmlands. using trade companies and the powerfull mission tree for tons of production income was exceptionally fun

The case with Stellaris isn't really the same as with other Paradox games. In Stellaris playing with subjects is better since you can specialize them. Expanding too much also gives negative effects that increase with the amount of planets, systems and pops you have. And finally as much as I personally like seeing my name big on the map and micromanaging all my planets, it's living hell to manage more than 5 planets, let alone 20 or 30 so I just leave it to specialized subjects instead or if I can't make subjects I try rushing technologies that let me just place everything on a couple of specialized planets.

For me it’s to take as long as possible to get to what I’m going to call the expansion phase. That moment when you can just cycle wars and nobody can stop you. Now I’m going to get back to my Riga game.

i get REALLY bored when im playing a country where I have to wait 2 minutes for my armies to move from one side to the other

As a playing tall enjoyer I would like to clarify somethings: Why when we play tall we choose dont choose big nations like france, ming or castile even though they are objectively better to dev? That is because neither of them have a helpful starting ideas or situation to play tall, add to that that the concept of their nation isnt to build tall but to expand and that is seen in the mission trees. 2- why even though playing tall and wide is 100% the best strategy tall players choose to stick to some border that is worse for them? For myself I would answer that this depends on a very deep concept in my mind that the land and only the land is representative of the nation we play, so for italy italy ends with its natural borders same with the netherlands, it doesnt matter if there are way better land to dev just right in france for me to conquer, because if I get them and dev them, Im developing france... Im not developing the nation I choose to build tall to the skies. 3- isn't having a three 20 dev provinces better than having a one that is 60 dev? Better in what way? In terms of military + economic meters inside the game? For sure but that isn't the point we already saw that tall players willfuly go for a strategies that are worse under these metrics They are for sure better in terms of economy, but are they better in terms of enjoyment? For me no having a 60 dev province is way more fun, to look at and to manage and to dev to that limit.

and then there is me, that thinks if you are not constantly at war you are not playing the game right. Of course, just my opinion

Don't forget that Ming gets an additional building slot in all their provinces as a mission reward, has bonuses for playing tall, and its one of the nations that you can get your advisors down to costing nothing very easily.

The answer is simple: People love an underdog, and in my case, I get extremely bored when there's no other country able to challenge me and that happens way too quickly if you play as a major.

Ackthually, the term you're looking for to describe how increasing Development has amazing returns up to a certain point is called Logarithmic, not Exponential 🤓👆 P.S: Great improvements on the audio, lemon man

For me it's just a fun factor. Like many other people said in the comments, I like starting as an underdog, slowly increasing my power and influence to overcome bigger neighbours that threaten me. If I started already big, it would be bland and boring for me. *Power is way more satisfying when it is earned, not given from the start.* I think that sentence sums it up best. In my entire EU4 history (over 1000 hours), I've only played 2 big nations: Aragon and Poland. Aragon, because it was my first campaign and I figured it would be easier to learn as a big nation (but even then I preferred picking weaker Aragon over stronger Castile). Poland, because I'm Polish (but if I ever want to repeat a Polish campaign, I'm starting as Mazovia). But I have never ever touched nations like the Ottomans, France, England, Austria, Muscovy etc. And before EU4 I used to play CK2. I've always started as a count or a duke, never as a king and definitely not as an emperor. Climbing the feudal ladder was the most fun for me and I usually got bored quickly after becoming an independent kingdom. On a sidenote, I'm also not a fan of the last few DLCs, because instead of adding or expanding some organic mechanics for the game (like favors or trade companies in the past), they just come down to 'click a mission to get something OP'. And again, I prefer building up my power by using knowledge of the game mechanics, instead of getting something cool just because I conquered province A as tag B. You occupied Cairo as the Ottomans? Great, have Mamluks as a subject and here's some more cool stuff for you! You occupied Cairo as Cyprus? Good job, I guess... You conquered Rome? Bad boy, have a bunch of negative modifiers! Oh, you're France? Pardon, here's a reward instead. I'm really sorry that this comment is so long, it wasn't planned as such 😅

having a large empire in late game stellaris turns your in game years into literal years. I actually like having a large empire in games, but lots of games just can't handle it.

My only game i ever played to 1821 was a Tall korea game where I conquered China and Japan and just stayed there the entire game. Still had #1GP even with one of the craziest spains I've ever seen cuz literally every province was like 30-40 dev

Awesome insights into this matter. I personally only really subscribed to the idea that big nations are easier and that people want a game to be challenging to be fun. But that idea of being better than the AI, and smaller nation equals bigger achievement and bragging rights really resonates with me, because as the reddit shows, people like to get praised and recognised for their work, and not so much critisised for being worse than the AI. I understand that this view might not be shared by many because not everyone share their games on reddit or other platforms, but i think that the craving of validation and congratulations is quite universal and it feels good to be complimented. It also makes sense to avoid being critisised. Smaller nations allow for this. As an extra thought, I also think the tall=small thought comes partially from the idea that this creates a stronger contrast in what your country achieved. Yes conquering everything makes being tall easier and more efficient, but that isn't the emphasis when people look at it, the emphasis is put on the funny large name across the map.

I enjoy eu4 the most when i am on the verge of death, so my favorite countries are the small nations that need to deal with the ottomans early on

7:14 I did this as the Great Horde. I started the campain for the Khaan achivement. After I got the achivement my comquest slowed down because I was busy devving the Steppes and Russians. I never ran of land to dev. It was incredibly fun. That campain was the turning point for me. I didnt played tall at all before that campain.

I started playing as Portugal not because it is small, but because is the best country to fuck with Spain.

Hoi4 autist (7000 hours) playing small nations is more of a challenge against AI and it adds on top the task of carrying the AI, particularly in modded games. Indochinese marines storming Hamburg after the gruelling independence war makes for a better story to make up than fixing the german economy and crushing the AI under CAS

Really nice video. Another region that I find fantastic for deving & expanding it's the north of India. If you start as Bengal, because they have -10% dev in their ideas and nice color, follow their conquest mission tree you'll end up with tons of farmlands/grasslands with amazing trade goods, with almost every area having a center of trade that you can upgrade to lvl 3 when you do some dev cycles. On the plus you'll have some amazing natural borders easy to protect with mountains and jungles.

I enjoy taking the smaller countries and making them powerful. The fun is in the expansion for me and going from like 3 provinces to 300. Especially if there's a really big and fancy mission tree for it.

The true and only fun tall and big nation game is Ming. Just chilling as Ming. If you want someone to win a war you just send them like 5k ducats and play god as you go to 2k dev from standing there

0:13 I mean.... tall empires in stellaris are good not because they are challenging, but because they are hard.

This hits home, i've got over 1600 hours of eu4 and i've never started the game as anything that has over 2 provinces. Even if I want to play as Austria, I always form it as Bregenz.

When i play larger nations I typically set goals for myself as points of maximum expansion, usually historical borders but sometimes a little further, then once I get to that point I try to make it like a vic2 game where I try to keep all the other great powers in check, limiting their expansion but also making sure they're capable of defending themselves from the other GPs

Ridiculously enough Persia might currently be the best country to play tall. The mission tree rewards, estate privileges and -20% dev cost in the Age of Reformation allow it to develop ridiculously cheap (even on mountains), without expanding too far they can gain total control over 4 trade nodes - 3 of which can establish trade companies to further boost their goods produced - they get insane amounts of money from silk and they can get some of the strongest military in the game (full cav armies with high discipline and CA).

For many its about the challenge but for historical games its about making your niche historical hyperfixation of the month into the destined superpower IT WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE BEFORE EVERYBODY ELSE RUINED IT.

my main motivation to play (and also stay) small is roleplay playing a tiny Netherlands with historical borders is one of the most fun and difficult playthroughs ive had - far from "optimal", but immensely satisfying similar playing as Zaporozhie, its a fun challenge to maximise cav combat ability while struggling against the ottomans, russians and poles as a tiny nation other examples are lübeck without conquering anything outside lübeck trade node, pirate gotland, and my favorite: pirate queen of bregenz raiding the Mediterranean while maxxing power projection through insults a lot of the main tags are way too powerful too early on, and its only gotten worse with domination and winds of change for example austria just gets half of europe in the first 100 years, which is fun at the start, but when you're that powerful, conquering more land is far more tedious than challenging

ROLEPLAYING IS THE KEY. I've been playing eu4 for years now. And yet the best game I've had so far was probably Fezzan dismantling the HRE. Mr. Wen-li would've been proud.

Altho this is modded on my experience, I played a medium size nation and "expand" by vassalizing 7 tribes and gave them couple of provinces, this way I can play very tall for 100+ years spamming "tribal raid" which is show strength on any small neighbors, overtime I became the most powerful nation, a superpower waiting to happen, which is fun

This video isn't about playing tall as ming but I am in a playthrough playing a mix of tall and colonial with Ming and I just wanted to add that their mission tree is really good at playing tall even if their ideas aren't as good as they could be. You can get 20% dev cost reduction permanently by finishing the mission tree while improving the Haijin policy, and you also will end up upgrading one of your celestial edicts to add -10% dev cost as well to it. Plus if you think of tall as not expanding and just focusing on internal development they have a privilege for the Shizu(clergy) that punishes them for expanding and rewards sitting back and dev clicking, Inwards Perfection punishes declaring war and expanding while providing dev cost reduction depending on your Shizu's land control. Plus: tributaries. You'll be swimming in so many monarch points you might even run out of ways to waste them assuming you still try to optimize deving. And if you ever run out of your land to dev and you're feeling generous you can just dev your tributaries' land or turn the tributaries into vassals for even more land to dev.

If I'm playing a larger nation, I like playing the falling Empires in games. Examples include Abbasids in CK3 Timurids in EU4 Seleucids in Rome 2 DEI West Roman Empire in Atilla The initial rush is usually being forced to make decisions under pressure that is unique to the region you're in and the challenges presented by the start. It usually gets monotonous but much slower than playing a rising power would as I'm putting out fires all over the place.

I loved playing wide in the original Stellaris. It was nice conquering the galaxy and throwing every new system into a massive single sector that was self sufficient and planet automation actually worked. Today I can't be bothered with all the extra work required to stop the AI from bankrupting my nation.

That's me too , there is an apeal in making small cpintirs bigger and more successful . Being the big ones means you just have to keep your position

You've pretty well summed up my issues with "playing tall" as understood by the community. It's almost always better to simply conquer more land in EUIV from an opportunity cost standpoint. I will say, though, I think you're underselling the main reason to play smaller nations, at least in my experience. Smaller nations are at much greater risk in the early to mid game, before you become strong enough to stop worrying about things like coalitions, manpower, money, or enemy nations. Once you have enough experience in SP, you should never be in the position to lose a war as the Ottomans or France. If you're playing Ramazan or Berry, though, you have a lot more engagement with the game's mechanics, a lot more to lose, and therefore for many people, a lot more to gain.

This remembered me of an idea i had when i was addicted to play total war games, especially the Medieval II. The amount of times i ragequit for losing a battle or not taking account of something that, although did not make me lose the campaign, nevertheless made me lose a stupid challenge of an idea i had in mind to my campaign like conquer all of gaul the fastest as possible. I thought of that as pretty childish, but even now that I've grown up i tend to do so in some EU4 campaign (i.e. achieveng 90% admin efficiency in a german run), but i think that make me lose a lot about what this games can teach me, about losing, even in the context of historical war strategy. When I figured that out I tried to allow myself to make mistakes and it was awesome, it was truly a roleplay, full of intrigue and the sense of possibly losing everything. I suppose that can be feeled in multiplayer campaigns, but thats something i havent tried once. Just letting this little idea or notion i have on this kind of games. P.S. sorry for the grammar, I'm not a native english speaker.

Much more fun to go from small to big than from big to bigger

One of the main reason for playing tall is to give the Ai a chance, and to having a "chill" game.

This is so real, I feel that big countries add this sort of pressure, Idk why like if I mess up and lose, The entire thing is ruined but if im a small country me not intervening in things won't matter as much I can do my own thing and it's effects wont be felt. Like I dont wanna play france cause I dont wanna fight the British vice versa. It feels like theirs too much importance in my actions.

Qing and Burgundy>Lotharingia are some of my favorites to play tall with for the reasons mentioned in this video. Tall China is not only super strong, but it feels really good to have high average development and be the sort of juggernaut china was in the real world.

I prefer starting with smaller nations because you start out with fewer concerns and considerations which gradually expand as your nation expands. Whenever I start with a large nation, however, I have to stay paused for the first 15 minutes just to get my bearings on everything that's happening that I had no part in making happen.

20 minutes about something that can be summed up in a few seconds? The answer is that people want to carve out their own empire, beat up the big guys, it's a challenge and it's fun.

The Civilization example doesn't really match with EU4, because if you want to win a normal civ game the fastest(assuming Pangea, 6 AI, ~Immortal difficulty) the fastest way in terms of REAL time spent is going to be 4 city tradition. People play 4 cities because they want to win the quickest way possible. If you play more than 4 cities you get a diplomatic penalty vs the AI that makes them much more likely to declare on you, which means each turn starts taking exponentially longer as you both have to manage more cities and more wars. Additionally, wide empires often struggle on science, so you end up needing to conquer the world by late midgame if you want to win vs AI who can spit out 3 bombers for each of yours. It's possible to do, but MUCH harder than just playing on 4 cities and going to space.

in my opinion eu4 gets boring when you get very big and wealthy, so starting as a bigger country just makes you get to that point faster

Sounds to me like playing 'tall' is self-defeating. You limit your borders, and waste points on trying to get the most out of your smaller country, both getting behind in size and in dev, therefore you end up being neither wide nor tall. As for my personal reason for playing small nations is exactly the thing you said at the end, although for me it's not because of experience, it's exactly because of the lack of experience. I tried to play big nations at the start and I was absolutely overwhelmed. So many things to pay attention to at all times. In comparison playing a small nation or even an OPM(I played a lot of Ireland and Japan at the beginning) is so much simpler. One unit stack, 0 to 1 forts compared to 3-4 stacks of units and 5-10 forts, 1-4 provinces instead of over 20 with all kinds of modifiers. No money for advisors so I don't have to worry about it immediately, no subjects(or being a subject yourself in case of Japan). Sure it leads you to getting wiped immediately if something goes wrong, but for me it is a much cleaner way to learn the individual aspects of the game one by one rather than having everything fall into my lap and needing to figure things out before I can even start the timer. But I've been told by my EU4 friends that I'm weird for feeling this way and playing this way, so yeah...I always thought playing big nations was the norm.

For me, it's probably just because I'm easily overwhelmed if things get too big/complicated. It's much less stressful playing as England when all I have to worry about is the British Isles and a few rich colonial outposts dotted around the world.

This video is making me want to try the OPM + Vassal dev technique again. Instead of devving your one and only province yourself over and over again, you take some vassals, dev their provinces and then seize development into your singular province over and over again. In the past, this let you get ridiculously high dev OPMs when enough time was invested. Like when Laith got Ulm to over 300 dev, or however high it was at the end.

It's impossible to objectively distinguish or calculate, but there is a moment in every playthrough where the player undergoes an incredible shift in playstyle, sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden. But after 20 years of playing differently in game it becomes very obvious, you aren't microing your troops as much, you skip the battle results and pay attention to your manpower losses far less, you don't hire mercs, you read the events less and become more fixated on their effects, etc. I feel like any Eu4 player knows this stage, where the most difficult part of the game is finding something difficult enough to bother focusing on (that isn't difficult by virtue of its inherent monotony but because it provides a unique and tailored challenge to the player), and that kills the end game. All of this of course wraps back around to big nations and why they aren't fun, it's because this stage comes much quicker when you have 71 different provinces to dev, stack modifiers on, 200k manpower and 4 armies at game start + all the ducats you'd need to offset any negative event the game throws at you.

Most games get boring as the strong nations around 1600, starting small you can push that to 1700s or even game finish

The reasoning's definitely very different in Civ V - in it there are definite and very strong benefits to playing tall. For example, # of cities contributes to unhappiness, which decreases population growth, so playing wide will mean you will struggle with growing your population. Plus, you can easily weaken your enemies while not increasing your empire size, such as by razing captured enemy cities.

My plans for any EU4 game look like this: 1. We gonna play something new! 2. Choose a nation you don't understand 3. Loose first major war 4. Quit and start a game as Holland or Flanders 5. Netherlands yay 6. Mucho trado mucho shipo 7. Tall Netherlands yay Always like this.

I learned eu4 back in 2014 by autistically playing Norway over and over

There's always a bit of scope creep when I try to play tall. If I tried to play a tall game as France, at some point I'd get a lucky PU opportunity that I just have to take, and then I need to conquer some land to connect my borders to the PU, then while I'm doing that I might as well steal a colony at the same time, next thing you know I've got a global empire to manage. If I try to limit myself to just the Netherlands, I'll still slip and end up grabbing half of England, bits of Germany, and Norway somehow but it won't get too out of hand.

Rassids are an extremely fun country to play as. They have a pretty fun mission tree as well.

I played a Jianzhou to Qing game where I developed large parts of China along with building manufactories and workshops in hopes of stealing Global Trade from the Europeans, and although I failed that goal, I then realized I was in a great spot economically. Too bad I got bored of the campaign before I got to make use of it, but playing that campaign in China made me realize how good China is for playing 'tall'.

It’s historically accurate. Big nations are hard to manage by its scale and emperors or Sultans couldn’t live long enough to enjoy the game.

I havent played EU4 but heres why I play small nations in Hoi4, CK3, and Vic3. Playing a smaller nation feels less daunting and there isnt much of resposibility in the world stage. in a bigger nation its harder to micromanage everything. I also like to maximise my nations potential while in a bigger nation its easy to forget some things because theres so many things to worry about. Also the feeling of growing from a small nation to a big one is cool. Simply I just want to make my nation from scratch, and bigger nations feel too overhelming to me.

Personally I do the exact opposite. I usually play with big nations but I like to add a small spin. My favourite runs were Zoroastrian Timurids, Sikh Vijayanagar, Protestant Japan (with Russia under a PU), France, Aragon into Greece, Manchu into Qing. I also finish most of my games in 1820 so monotony doesn't seem to be a problem. I always find a fun goal. There's just something special about becoming a behemoth and painting an entire continent your colour.

I do the same, play a big country playing tall not doing much conquering but being a world policeman stopping rivals from conquering

My first 300 hours on EU4 was spent exclusively on Trebizond, after getting the khomnenoi empire achievement i moved on to Byz and played it until i managed to form roman empire. Then played as kiev. Then multiple provence campaigns. Then muscovy. Followed by burgundy. Lastly, it was AQ

To me (a good number of one tag/one faiths, but slower dates than top players), picking a small nation over a large one mostly comes down to that it's an extra "phase" of the game. Manipulating alliances and winning wars ASAP under existential threat is content, and any given run offers less of that if you pick Castile rather than Dahomey. Less still if you pick Ming. It's not uncommon for most OPMs to hit "great power" status significantly before 1500 anyway, and this is an interesting part of the game, so I'm not usually inclined to skip it.

Honestly I used to pick smaller nations for the feeling of progression, but now I pick nations based on achievements I want to complete

I play small nations and play tall for the following reasons: 1. To encourage stronger AI nations If I conquer too fast it means the AI will get the legs taken out from under them and by the late or even mid game I will have no strong rivals. EU4 has terrible AI, even on VH I can get to the #1 great power very fast, and that just gets boring if you do it more than a few times. 2. To make the game more challenging Within 50-100 years i you play as: France, Castile, Aragon, Ottomans, Mamelukes etc. you will have no strong nations to face and the game becomes "How fast can I conquer other nations" not "can I conquer other nations". That gets very try hard and very tedious very fast. I don't play tall to make the game easier or be more efficient, I play tall to make the game more difficult and therefore more interesting. 3. Expectations for expansion I have yet to ever play France, Austria or Ottomans simply because I feel like if I play them I have to keep up with the rate of expansion that occurs in videos. I keep on comparing myself against other have done. Because when you play a big nation there is much RNG in the game and much more is within in your control. Therefore you are expected to do very well every single game. Therefore, at least to me I'm also measuring my progress against others. When you play a small nation you have to be much more opportunistic, use mechanics you wouldn't otherwise, and rely on unique game states to move forward. It feels much more rewarding and much more unique. You have to actually compare about army composition, actually use defensive terrain, actually reinforce properly, actually support your siege stack with other armies. Do all the fun things which are overkill if you play a large nation. 4. Tedium The bigger your nation the more you have to manage: more armies, more rebels, more provinces, more zones of conquest, more missionaries, more cultures, more wars. It gets unenjoyable very fast. 5. Experiencing unique nation experiences The average player will play all your large nations as they have all the content, and are better known. So when i say I played and France and had this experience it just isn't very excited because they probably had very similar one. May fewer people have played Georgia or Armenia or Switzerland, and because of the RNG in those hard early starts the game will be much more unique and therefore more interesting. Lastly, I think this is the sad thing about EU4 no one questions whether you can do a world conquest, they just question how fast. When you're trying to do something as fast as possible it becomes more like work, and less like fun. I've only done a WC once, and I don't think I'll ever do it again. I could have done a one faith in the same game, but I just got too bored. Edit: Just finished the video, not sure if I remember comparing my performance vs the AI, though the I started playing ~8 years ago so I'm not sure what I would say back then. I currently compare my performance vs other players though, so that is similar. You definitely hit the nail on the head with the micro

It's because winning as an underdog is more exciting than winning as a big empire. It's harder to win as a small not very capable country than it is as the Timurids. I'm not sure a 20 minute video was needed to say this

Personally I like being able to "hold my nation in my head". I know exactly what trade goods, centers of trade, terrain types, etc. are in the low countries region, so I don't find myself abstracting into "the France part" or "the Germany part" like, say, a Rome game. Also, The Netherlands is the smallest nation I ever play tall with, I usually unite my home region (or at least to the point where the borders are sexy), and then play tall, since you should only start doing it after a couple idea groups anyway.

Great vid. I hope that with Eu5 the devs implement some mechanics to make larger nations harder to govern, as was historically accurate.

For me it’s kinda like “I don’t want to disappoint that country by ruining it” like how at first I didn’t want to play Germany or Britain or my own country because I couldn’t do it justice imo.

I like both large and small countries, but I like turning both into larger countries. I really don’t enjoy playing tall in the same borders for 200 years. I’m a causal player, so I’ve never done a world conquest, but I like painting the map until I’m satisfied with my accomplishments and go on to the next self-imposed challenge.

Its a difference in philosophical thought. No im not bullshitting, the mind of us tall players and the wide players is just wired differently, thats why a base level explanation like "expanding allows you to develop cheaper and thus is better for playing tall" that may be so when we are talking pure stats, but this is about a mindset, and atitute, a phylosophical outlook in life.

The flavour added in mission trees and government reforms helps, but pretty much every big nation (whether they're powerful already at 1444 or you make them powerful yourself) plays the exact same way, especially if you're going wide/World Conquest. You have excesses of every key resource so you're not really making any difficult strategic decisions - you're just pointing your army in the direction of the next food. Playing a variety of "small" nations gives you genuinely different strategic situations at game start. At least for me that's where the fun is. Building proper diplomatic relationships, taking advantage of unexpected circumstances, microing your army to beat a superior enemy etc. is what I want to focus on, because at it's heart this is a Strategy game. With respect to modifier stacking, obviously it is very powerful and interesting. But when it gets to the very extremes my interest in it is really more academic than actually relevant to my gameplay. I am genuinely interested in how high you *could* theoretically get that modifier but I know I'm not going to jump through all the hoops to actually do a game where I'd make it happen myself. My curiosity in it is satisfied just from watching your videos, so I suppose I should thank you for that.

I usually measure myself against the historical performance of a country, which is a much more reasonable goal for new players in most cases than comparing yourself to other people or ai

There’s the obvious fun and challenge aspects everyone is mentioning, but I have another reason someone hasn’t mentioned yet. A big reason for me is that large nations like Russia or basically any colonizing nation just involves way too much micro across vast distances. I’d much rather be able to see most if not all of my nation without having to scroll across continents. My favorite type of start is a small nation surrounded by other small nations that you have to unite to form a strong regional power, like the Italian nations in eu4 or any of the barbarian tribes in imperator Rome.

Your point about social pressure is true, I feel it when playing a big nation and it makes the game less fun

lemon cake only plays ottomans and france and does a world conquest every game

I like to play small nations in strategy games, as it's easier to get into them. You have less to manage. Secondly, I like them as it feels good to compare your humble origins to the heights you reach by the late game.

In hoi4, you have to manage air, infantry, tanks and navy where as small nations you only need to focus on infantry and one of the others

If the AI was actually able to put up any fight against a burgeoning superpower starting strong might be way more fun. In my current Venice game both France and Austria have gotten great PUs (Castile, Bohemia-savoy) with no other great powers intervening. If the Burgundian inheritance fires they’ll be the only roadblock to the other.

Personally the reason why I pick is smaller nations is because I don't want to start too powerful. The feeling of starting small and growing, feeling like you have ACHIEVED everything you have and not just begin with it + I don't want to spend so much time at the beginning of the match micro managing all the free provinces I got who have stuff set that I have NOT chosen because I began with it already given to me. I want it all to be mine and personally I mostly play CK3, I suck at any other Paradox Game. But if I fail I want to know that it was my mistake and not just the fact that I was lost in a big faction or that the reason I am thriving is just that faction and not my actions.

honestly i enjoyed taking the Ottomans to the extreme sometime. Managing Three front wars across Europe, Africa, and India. Trying to eat as much land as I can early as I can despite advantages of absolutism and late game advantages. Utilizing resources of manpower and money to their breaking points.

I have always had this idea of playing a city state in Civ V, influencing events "behind the scenes". Love it as a trade league in EU IV too, but you do get pushed into gobbling up stuff.

I mainly play bigger nations cause 1. I prefer to follow relatively historic paths so picking Navarra and conquering Spain/France just doesn't sit right with me. 2. I don't have to deal with a lot of the crap you get when playing smaller countries, it's not a game I play to minmax I play it to enjoy myself so if I have to search every nook and cranny to find that extra 0.02 monthly gold and potentially have to exploit the mechanics of the game to beat Muscovy as Perm then I'd rather just start as Muscovy at that point. This has nothing to do with social pressure though cause firstly no one sees what I do in single-player (I often use cheats to give AI money, make them in wars, trigger events etc. to make them more historically accurate) which the community hates. 3. I don't play countries that are TOO large like Russia cause managing such a large country also requires too much micro-management for me to care. I just never understood the point of playing for modifiers etc. The game is easy, even without it I can earn 1k a month without much effort and also there is little in the face of actual challenge. Games like League of Legends etc. It makes complete sense why someone might want to minmax and I like doing that myself (not in league, in this game called Smite) but a game like this becomes so boring so quickly if you just minmax. Everyone can do what they want but I couldn't imagine playing past 1500 by minmaxing.

I would say there's two main camps. Those who can't see any value in something if there is no immediately obvious challenge and have to play everything in hard mode. Nothing wrong with that playstyle so long as you have the time to dedicate to it. And second those who want to keep things simpler. For exactly one of the points you brought up, there is less to do, and less to remember, making learning things easier. You have more time to explore the menues, discover subtle mechanics to maximise what you have, because you can't just dev your way past every problem

One nation that is absolutely crazy for deving is japan. The terrain is not ideal but you can stack just so many modifiers. Take a daimyo with dev cost in the ideas. Then you get 10 from religion, 25 from inwards perfection, I think around 30 from your mission tree if you fire everything at once and of course all the standard modifiers. You can dev your whole island to around 30 dev a province for 3-5 cost per click regardless of terrain.

You kinda put it best at the end I like having chill games I can just have running on the side I like having a clearly defined border that's sort of my "safe zone" Big enough to have room to grow but small enough I dont take months to walk from one end of it to the other Its a difficult balance to strike but islands and peninsulas are really nice for this You get Ming or Mughal level big its really hard not to feel overstretched Please god will someone make a good tree for ireland, they're pretty much ideal but their vanilla tree is obsessed with conquering the isles rather than making the emerald isle the jewel of the atlantic I enjoyed Madagascar in the Doges Shattered World mod for this reason, its all about developing new resources and buildings on the island and when you're strong enough you could strike out wherever you like

I am Basque so it only makes sense for me to main Navarra xD I would like to know people from other small nations represented in this games if is the same way for them. I can only appreciate the time and effort they put on research to give it such a depth and accuracy, EU as well as CK. You can even restore the old pagan religion and the name is in perfect Basque language. National ideas related to sailing and whale hunting as well as the claims you get in the new world where there was large Basque populations and influence. Mission tree, cultural traditions, names, language, ruler families, territories, orography, foreign politics. They nailed pretty much everything within the constrictions of a game of this scale! You can tell they didn´t just fly by a map and place a small nation to trample over with Castille or Aragon. They went balls deep xD in to the culture and historical context. I can´t say if they did the same with every single small nation because I obviously don´t know as much of other places as I know of my own land and culture and I am curious about it. I assume yes, at least in the European continent. Because why will we be special? And that is a lot of work!!!

I thought people only really played tall in Stellaris and CK3. Playing tall in eu4 is extremely tedious. I played a Tuscany to Roman empire campaign and by 1700 I had the med and Rome formed and then I kinda didn’t know what to do other than fight colonial nations, Russia, and the HRE. Idk playing as France against the ai Spain and Portugal in massive wars for 200 years is sometimes a lot more fun and less tedious. I get the whole underdog thing, thats why in Ck3 I almost always start off playing tall and nearly 2/3 of my campaign I don’t expand like crazy. In Stellaris playing tall is extremely rewarding. Having a smaller fleet just wiping 5 star stacks in late game against an entire federation makes the 12 hours i spent building up megastructures and like 5 worlds feel like it was worth it.

When you run out if provinces to develop in Netherlands you just get more land from England and France to develop. This stands for every nation that you play tall with.

I often find managing a large country becomes annoying and I end up struggling to keep up with everything. Although I have played large countries and they were very fun, I tend towards not doing that

RP. RP every day. I played a victoria 2 game as Russia, the biggest country, but the entire time i think i only took one or two states directly, and everything else as puppets. I find that way more enjoyable than minmaxing to oblivion.