What do YOU consider an Exploit in Eu4?
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- A bit of a different video then usual, but I hope you find it enjoyable non the less. Talking about exploits in Eu4 is a bit of a controversial topic at heart, but I hope I addressed it in a reasonable manner here.
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Editing has been kindly done by www.youtube.com/@thekaiser-eu... check him out if you haven't already!
See you next Video! - Hry
This is a topic that I think deserves a lot of time and discussion, so thank you for this video.
I have my own personal thoughts that are too long for a comment, but I'd like to at least correct/add to a few of the points you made.
Re; savescumming sieges -- it is impractical to savescum to achieve perfection for every siege tick in optimized WC speedruns because of the sheer amount of sieges that you are concurrently sieging such that siege ticks correspond to a single day. Indeed, savescumming for a 1/14 on one fort isn't _that_ miserable, but savescumming for a 1/14 on 10 sieges simultaneously is (1/14)^10, which is on the order of winning the lottery 1 million times in a row -- something that is unlikely to happen even if every single human plays only EU4 and continuously savescums for their remaining life. So when thinking about the power of savescumming, you should acknowledge realistic time limitations; it's very easy to hit practically impossible numbers. Also, saving a few siege ticks in a war is of mostly negligible benefit anyway -- it is far more important to save scum a very select few forts if a particular war is a bottleneck, which would be a more fair and realistic use of savescumming sieges. Same argument goes to combat -- you aren't fighting only one battle at a time in these runs.
Re: savescumming events -- pulse events are quite "practical" to savescum (in the sense that it only takes a few hours), but going for perfect MTTH events is ridiculously hard, although not as astronomically hard as sieges. You're expecting to savescum every 20 days, so even at fairly low MTTH, say 120, you're expecting 3 hours or so of savescumming (assuming 1 bird per min) to have a 50% chance of getting the event. In terms of expectations, you're expecting a bit over 4 hours of savescumming on average every 20 days. But there are some events with even higher MTTH (like Dargah). If you change this to 1200MTTH, you're expecting ~43 hours of savescumming every 20 days. You can quickly see how impractical this is starting to get
Also, unless you discovered numbers 2, 4, and 5 by yourself, I wish you made an effort to cite sources. 2 was first discovered by MSparta. I don't know who discovered 4 and 5.
Ah, nice to see you here, I've been watching your stuff for a while! (With an exception for the Maple Story arc I am afraid). With that said, if anyone has a good opinion on exploits, well I doubt it gets more qualified then you.
So savescumming sieges: for a WR run, no. You have too many on the same day as you said, and being behind a couple month from an imperfect siege isn't worth literally millions of years worth of birding. However it was more of a 'demonstration of a point' and it certainly has its uses for crucial sieges, or attempting siege races you have no right of winning. And yes, while technically you can bird every siege, the moment you are birding for more then 1 even at the same time it becomes a time nightmare. The combat one also stands: it was again given as a more extreme 'given perfect conditions' case.
As for savescumming pulse events, that is certainly a lot more practical for sure, but again, yes, the real life time limitations are what is holding you back here from some of the extreme ones. My argument is more 'you can use this to achieve that' but in practice you are better off just conquering 'better' then birding for 5 hours for a -20% AE event, and once MTTH goes up, well good luck.
Basically: I agree. The points where made more 'in a theoretical vacuum with infinite time Tier 3 Savescumming can give you perfect sieges and battles' and less of a 'you should bird every battle/siege until the heat death of the universe' but I clearly could have communicated that better in the video.
As for sources, well I spend too much of my time in Eu4 communities, so while 2 I have discovered honestly by accident myself, 4 and 5 where shown to me by random people, with them not exactly citing sources, although funnily enough one of the sources cited was 'lambdacord' so I guess I should be giving you some credit: but yeah I didn't know who initially discovered them. I should be better with citing sources to be clear, just explaining myself here.
Anyway nice to see you here, I hope to see you more in the future!
Does upgrading your boats count as an exploit as the AI don't do it? 😂
True: the ultimate level 0 exploit, using game features!
At that point, does dev pushing institutions, or not wasting mil power on Harsh Treatment (before age of absolutism) count as exploiting? Exploiting development obviously counts.
@@LemonCake101 DLC FEATURES
I
FUCKIN
PAID FOR THAT EXPLOIT
@@LibertyMonk ok you know what you got me there, those are all level -1 exploits, aka exploits the game WANTS you to use!
@@KarczekWieprzowy no way is upgrading boats a DLC feature???
My general strat for birding is that I use it to mitigate truly abysmal RNG (rare), fix the outcome of early-game events (getting the Livonian vasal as the Teutons, Hungary as Austria, stuff that happens in the first 15 or so years that resetting the campaign is just a time sink) and most importantly to mitigate the fact that I am perpetually playing on speed five and not paying attention. Like ya I COULD avoid being stackwiped simply by playing on speed 3 and looking at the screen, but I would much rather watch Lemon Cake videos and ALT+F4 when I mess up real bad.
Oh, I will also use it to get some releasable tag achievements, which is a bigger exploit but I don't want to play as Wales sorry Paradox.
The last one is pretty understandable, forming something getting an achievement and then birding is also a classic.
I think you've got it exactly right. Birding as a way to save IRL time by playing faster. And you know where to draw the line because birding also COSTS IRL time.
Same with early events. Unless you consider restarting from 1444 an exploit, birding bad rng is just a faster route to the same outcome.
IRL time is the most precious resource of all and should be prioritized.
What do you think of the new editing style?
I like it if you are doing these types of videos but for actual gameplay like a more minimalist approach.
Speaking of exploits what tier would CTA Cancel of LambdaX fame be?
Goooooooood
@@Speedster___ wasnt it literally alt+f4ing or something?
@@Speedster___ gameplay wise that is fair, I don't have many gameplay videos out though, and if you check the x30 England Game I am going to stick with the current minimal edits for it.
LambdaX is not in a Tier, he is the Tier.
@@th3fluffy422 glad you enjoyed, compliments to the Kaiser!
You can use the movement-locked cancel with a fleet exploit by control clicking any province with the army selected
Yup, that too to be fair, I just thought it would be easier to communicate that idea by showcasing the 'use the boat automatic transportation' part, but yes.
The biggest penalty to birding is the insanely long loading times
If that is an issue, try deleting some of your old saves, that helps loading speeds significantly.
Stuff like birding I generally use for stuff like when I accidentally send the wrong peacedeal by accident etc, I think the most egregious time I used it was when I randomly lost emperorship out of nowhere (eu4 really needs a banner thing for when the electors are no longer voting for you anymore)
That’s fair, and I guess it depends how far you take it
Considering the many new alerts they gave us, that should be a relatively easy to put ingame
@@AHappyCub hmm, as long as I can turn it off personally, it would be annoying to get the notification when you don't want to be Emperor.
This is why I find the Reddit achievement icon detectives to be misguided. Like, it is so easy to cheat in this unprotected single player game that the little achievement icon being lit up proves absolutely nothing when you can easily edit your save file, use cheat engine, do starting date tricks, etc. and be totally undetectable from a mere screenshot alone. And like you said there is a certain point where birding in totally legitimate gameplay is basically equivalent to cheating. How much siege ability % is equivalent to rerolling for every single siege tick?
Oh absolutely, I have lost a lot of faith with reddit when I saw genuine arguments for keeping corruption high and not rooting out, since it decreases unrest... but to get back to your point, yes the achievement enabled icon means very little, but finding and detecting a lot of this stuff takes a lot of work, even with a co-operating individual providing saves and/or streams of the whole event.
@@LemonCake101 Considering the many sources of unrest reduction present in the game, relying on corruption seems like the silliest thing to do, especially as it raises the autonomy floor and slowly starves you of resources, like Gold, Manpower, etc.
@@LemonCake101 That's real? Unrest is never a limiting factor though. The all power cost increase and autonomy floor is huge though. Reddit, man.
@@lamename2010 to be clear I am giving it as an example as to why I don't exactly trust Reddit's opinions on Eu4.
@@plebisMaximus See Unrest can be a limiting factor... when you starting hitting the fun OE levels at 3k+, but somehow I doubt that is what the person meant.
I used to have so much fun with lvl 4. Byz, England and Timmy was contenders for best nations to start as.
There is a current patch version AFAIK but I have only heard about it, I haven't tested it and in truth I have no desire to do so.
really like the new style and the way this channel is improving.
Thanks for the support, and thanks for the feedback!
agent lemon cake looking fresh
:)
I discovered level 5 a very long time ago. It was funny at first, but I realized quite quickly that you aren't really playing the game at that point. You are kinda making a new version of the game that is way easier. I still do it every now and then just for fun, like you would with a mod, but when you accidentally or even purposefully earn achievements doing it, it really sucks out the fun of earning that achievement imo. Just stick to mods if you are doing the 5th one. : )
I appreciate the honesty, and I can only commend your attitude. I think a lot of people making mods/messing around with the game end up discovering Level 5 eventually.
Same! I always loved setting up scenarios in a cheated event without breaking ironman. One of my favourite campaigns was one where I locked every AI ruler as a militarist.
Wow what a trip, I totally forgot how different the game looked back in the version when you were using the custom nation exploit.
That was the version I originally played on and fell in love with.
Fair enough, the Eu4 updates really do add up! A small tweak to the map here and there, more provinces added and moved, and if you look back even 4 or 5 patches everything looks so different.
The problem with birding is that due to the game being old, it takes an eternity just to reload the game, so i only use it to counter bad events and not cheesing to get good events
If you are struggling with loading times, you may have too many save game files. Delete as many as you can, I am talking just leave 2/3 at most, and then try re-loading. It should be night and day.
There are also console patchers that allow the use of the console in ironman. They could honestly be in a level 6 because of how powerful and easy to use they are.
Shh, make sure you don’t mention unzipping Ironman files either
Damn the 4th one really takes me back, remember doing that years ago xd
It’s a classic to some extent!
I assume that I use birding to negate bad rng in average 4-6 times in a run, usually hunting accidents, 18 years king death or when making embarassing mistakes like doing something that you promissed yourself not to do in the end of previous session. After my first mp game where my heir and king after all died within 3 months I just stopped worrying about negative experince.
Now I see birding more like a tool then exploit - you can preview unfamilliar content like events triggered by missions or negating rng in purpose of rp, all of that in context of mods.
Fair enough, but I believe playing with bad rng can be more fun in a casual run, but if you are trying to 'push a country to its limits' Birds really help with that concept.
Fun fact, eu4 saves are just a zip file, and you can tagswitch in ironman mode, like start as byz, tag to ottoman, give yourself money and core, go back to byz and enjoy, etc
Quite a funny way to make other country royal marry you, lose hier, or anything you want them to do that will result in your advantage.
There are some issues with compressing/decompressing them, but yes savegame manipulation is also pretty much automatic Tier 5.
@@LemonCake101 The gamestate file while compressed, has the player country tag as uncompressed which allows you to switch tag in ironman and not lose the ironman flag.
@@Code-Imp oh interesting, that is good to know, I wasn't aware.
Could you please explain more open?
For savescumming, I've found that the ai is constantly reconsidering wether it will declare war on u or ai/peace out against other ai. So say hypothetically ur playing as an OPM and ur at the cusp of winning ur first war, but ur allies have been so weakened that a stronger neighbour will dec on u and they won't join. U can just save every few days and alt f4 whenever they dec u and go back to the last save and repeat. The ai sometimes will declare the day after, and sometimes will take a couple of weeks. So with this inconsistency you can buy yourself enough weeks/months to finish the war and therefore u will be stronger in the eyes of the ai/ ur allies will have more reasons to join u and the ai won't attack u. Alterantlive, say that ur attacking a nation to pu them being attacked by another. If they peace out for provinces, u need to dec them for those provinces and therefore spend ae/pwsc. So by buying yourself enough time with the same method u can peace them out first and get all the provinces + a defensive war. Super cheesy but if u got a good start sometimes 15 mins of restarts is worth more than a full game restart.
Yeah that's fair, I am not sure exactly how the AI uses the math's behind the 'should I declare/peace out' but it can definitely be cheesed with birding, and while I didn't mention it in the video, this is one of the things that can definitely make that strategy very powerful!
The #1 exploit has to be using trainers, you can literally unlock the console in ironman mode
well, at that point again you are entering level 5.
I recall lvl 4 could also be used to replace a nations ideas with one from the custom nation designer. Replacing the Ottoman idea set with all useless ideas then playing as Byzantium was certainly an interesting experience.
That too, and you could replace your own with some very... balanced things from the National Designer as well.
Even better, you could change their culture and religion too so you could make them aztec and kongolese so they'd instantly collapse to rebels.
@@jeromevent4548 again, the world really is your Oyster in that regard.
Anyone else feel like the mana bank cap should be removed? The 999 mana cap feels extremely unnecessary and annoying. I usually end up with too much mana, but in the rare occasions where i do want more mana (i.e. early game or when filling up an idea group or culture shifting) i end up lacking in mana.
Its a surprising common suggestion, but it does exist to prevent you banking too much of it: although for example with dip, there are ways.
@@LemonCake101I guess this begs the question, "what is too much banked mana?" If banking more mana is available to AIs and players, what is the actual harm? One could say it makes the game harder, but I don't agree.
@@Nois-ufnoc I mean I guess getting rid of the cap isn't that big of a deal, but it may have many un-intended consequences, and you can already do fun things like take dip tech 21 like 10 techs ahead of time if you set up for it, which I fear will be made a lot easier if you allow infinite mana banking.
@@LemonCake101 I think an easy solution would be to make teching up ahead of time more penalized. Besides, if you're banking that much diplo - teching up crazy ahead of time is far less useful than culture converting and developing.
I feel like mil would be the issue, but again. Just make the penalties of taking tech ahead of time more egregious.
@@Nois-ufnoc well taking dip tech 23 early gives you access to early Imperialism, hence why it makes sense to do so. But yeah removing the cap would have to involve a lot of other changes too, such as increasing the ahead of time penalties and probably a lot of other issues which may arise that don't come to mind right away.
I mean if you really want to play with a larger cap, be behind on an institution: that increases your mana cap!
Once I was playing as Denmark and there is an event (this is before Lions of the North so don't know if its around anymore) which would set Sweden's liberty desire to +100% and set them as a historical rival. I would continously Alt F 4 whenever this event would occur which became farely common to the point where I kept save scumming until I could integrate them by forming Scandinavia at admin tech 20(I was new to the game and didn't know about the stacking dip rep to inherit throne and didn't want to waste dip points). Yeah save scumming is pretty broken when done right.
I mean at this point, I have to admire the dedication!
yeah@@LemonCake101 the whole thing was me just being too lazy to fight sweden.
I much prefer the new events where you can make some short term sacrifices to keep them friendly to the old ones that just told you it's time to fight sweden, better get ready, bucko. Lions really did a lot to make Scandinavia fun
@@anonymousmodder1395 can't blame you, as long as you had fun!
if your boats are locked, you can pause the game, assign them on any mission and tell them to go to port during the war
they will unlock their movement and hide in the nearest port
very useful
Yup, that also works!
alt F4 have saved me a few times when i clicked the play as x nation that pop up like pirate's or other factions that show up sometime. but i can't imagine reloading a 100 times for a event to happen.
No fair enough, as I mentioned I believe there is a large gap between what you do in level 3.
NOW LOCK. IN. LOCK IN LIKE YOU'VE NEVER LOCKED IN BEFORE...
It only locked in if you feel like it!
Always up to anyone (in SP) what they enjoy. But my general view is, decide your level of it. Purists would avoid (almost) anything that could be an exploit. Many gamers will exploit as they see fit. But a reasonable middle ground just uses a few criteria to decide whether you may use an exploit:
1) You're rectifying something that should be in the game anyway. For instance if you want to get a proper peacedeal with allies and need to know which provinces they'll accept, afaik there's no good way, except to just grant them the provinces, see what they'll take, and then bird once you know. It's game-technically an exploit, but in-setting it's an anti-bug.
2) You're perfectly happy putting this into your alt-history. It might be odd that you tagswitched three times over the weekend, but it's just your king declaring himself the lawful heir to Sardinia-Piedmont, Croatia and Austria and going through various rituals, which the local population very much appreciates. Properly you're now the king of Provencal-France, Aragon, Hungary, Sardinia&Piedmont and Austria, but within the game mechanics, this is a reasonable approach. I think. And it's my opinion that decides :P.
3) Your hard work is in danger due to something ridiculous (likely RNG) and there's no good fix
4) You really want to
total nostalgia trip with exploit 4, used that so much back in the day, was fun to see some rare unicorn nations spring up, and it's nice to not have to deal with the ottomans every single game.
Ah, a classic.
Birding that much isn't exploiting the game. It's letting the game exploit you. You might get in game benefits, but they come at a real and very harsh cost.
You are converting time into good rng
@@LemonCake101 Indeed, and in doing so are making a sacrifice too rich for my blood, haha.
I'm generally not a fan of drawing the line on exploit (which seems to change meaning between people or between mechanics for same person) vs the easier (but still challenging) line to draw of "this is too strong relative to the game systems". This is a useful distinction, because a mechanic or action that's "too strong" will distort the meaning of the other game systems.
Players and devs will still disagree on what's "too strong" vs not, but at least it's reasonably possible to state/define a framework whereby others would be able to figure out where your line is!
@@TheMelnTeam at the end of the day, it is important to realize that there will be elitism and struggles over definition in any category, so I find that as long as you try to minimize hypocrisy and are transparent over what you are using, go ahead!
As for the power creep, well, I believe that is a different topic entirely: at least with that, the powerful stuff is intentional.
@@LemonCake101 To clarify my last paragraph, I wasn't talking about power creep, but rather evaluation of a gameplay action based on its impact to the game overall.
- There are some things, like raising auto as Inti while you are at 0 authority, which people called "exploit" but had negligible impact on the game (prior to the implementation of states/territories, it's not even clear it was reliably worth doing). Far from changing how you play the game, there was no amount you could use this where Inti (in its form at the time) could be competitive with common religions.
- There are others, like negative army maintenance in early patches, where if you used it you could disregard a large % of the game's constraints.
Regardless of what someone wants to call an "exploit", those examples are massively different from each other in terms of game impact, in a way we can actually measure if we want. That's what I was getting at when talking about whether something is "too strong".
@@TheMelnTeam oh I see, yeah that's fair: thankfully I have to say most of the time with the vast majority of players playing Eu4 as a singleplayer experience, these exploits have minimal effects on other players experience, and in MP, you can make rules with your own group around it.
Years ago when I still bothered with vanilla Ironman, the save file replacement to tag around on Ironman helped me a lot with PU
Well, that is true, but that is certainly exploit territory.
If you must know there is a very old cheat and I do mean A Literal Cheat. That's ironman compatible! Where you can change your rulers starting stat/traits, province details, generals stats and some others. We're talking immortal +choose traits with whatever mana number you want. Change province to have whatever starting mana you want. Want generals with 100 pips? Heck why not 1000? Give yourself Empire rank, 100% crown land and mercantilism. It's been there since launch and they've still not fixed it. Have I tried it? Yes, but I felt very dirty afterwards.
How do I do that?
@@david82633 It involves some save game shenanigans. Do you really want to go down the patch of the dark side?
We don't discuss how save games are Zip Files.
I sometimes dow, check what i can take in war, eg. Can i take required province for mission and not get coalicioned or can i take all vassal cores, then alt f4 because ot wasnr on my agenda right now but planned next war and there is no peace deal simulation button
Honestly that is probably the least egregious use of the bird mechanic.
I mostly try to play without birding if I can help it, though something I will do (particularly within the first 30 years of a campaign) is set up "checkpoints". For example, setting up a backup save on December 11 1444 so if I lose an initial war I can quickly retry it without having to do all my start-game setup again. Or, during my Norse Norway campaign, creating a backup save after I've met all the conditions to get the Norse event so that I don't have to redo the opening war with Denmark over and over again. After the first 30 years I feel it's too much, but in the early game they're useful to make sure I don't have to repeat the same stuff over and over again.
That's fair, and at the end of the day it is a personally decision, and I can certainly see doing the early setup to save yourself time if you would have planned to restart anyway.
Not sure if I'd place it in lvl 1 or 2, but leaving the event pop-up open instead of clicking it immediately can help you mitigate bad events or gain extra from positive ones, like not pressing the comet before you leave a disaster. Similar is stab-ing up before you press the free stab to circumvent the 50% price increase could be looked upon as an exploit, since it's something the AI would never consider to do.
A simple exploit I personally often do is by the one regarding the time date, especially when playing as Austria
Ah that one can be quite powerful too, but it’s in the realm of custom nation fun and games
I find Alt-F4ing takes the fun out of the game for me, unless it's to fix a pure misclick and done immediately. The ability to choose your luck reduces immersion. A strategy that depends on not having bad luck is a risky strategy. You choose how much risk to take and live with it. (But if I'm checking to see what a war would look like and then instead of clicking Cancel like I intend, I click Confirm, I'll reload because I never actually chose to start the war.)
I think it can depend to be fair: if you are doing a run where you are trying to push a concept to its limit, I can see the argument to basically see 'what would this country be if everything went well' but they should be in a different category then no bird runs in my opinion.
You can also cancel locked in movement by attaching the army to another stack.
There are variations around this for sure...
I'm a little bit offended that alt+f4 is "level 3" while movement canceling to trick the AI is only level 2. There's a difference between realizing that peace deal wasn't the one you thought it was (my most common reason to "bird") or that the Emperor/DoF actually *will* honor the call to arms regardless of the red X, level 2 of not letting your 40 year old king die when your fresh PU is at -1 opinion with 50 remaining on Improve Relations or forcing a 50% chance "offer" event, and level 3 of outright forcing optimal rolls in everything that matters.
But, you're kind of right that *technically*, save scumming is tremendously powerful in a game with as many die rolls as eu4, even if it isn't to the point of Arbitrary Code Execution that level 5 is. You're still drawing some pretty firm lines between methods when you're differentiating between the boat/anti-lock exploit. BTW, the place you're boating to doesn't need to be separated, you can hold control to force embarking.
I think the issue is birding at its peak includes both save scumming bad rng, and well abusing it for infinite sieges. I do want to be clear here though: bad luck can be infuriating, but it is part of the game, and it is important to recognize that while you may feel justified taking away that bad luck, doing so is quite powerful: hence the placement. Overall however, if you saw the end of the video you would see I am giving my go ahead for Ironman Singleplayer to well go all the way up to save scumming anyway, so feel free to continue having fun without further judgement from me: I know I have save scummed for much lesser things.
Ahhhh save scumming. The ultimate F You to Paradox for having the Ultimate F You to Us: Hunting Accidents
Best part, that event was meant to be an Easter Egg.
pretty damn rotten egg if you ask me -_-@@LemonCake101
@@PA_Sword eh, it can help when you have a 1 1 1 or something
I remember a fun exploit (though i don't remember the process of achieving it) that allowed any nation to start as a tribe and later reform into horde. It also allowed to reroll rulers by alt+f4 as at the start of the game each time a new random ruler was generated. I had a lot of fun with horde Byzantium with 6/6/6 ruler. I don't remember if it was ironman compatible, i think it was
Oh that rings a bell.. yeah Eu4 has not had the best stability track record.
@LemonCake101 At least it doesn't crash often! That's definitely something not every game could say about itself (for the purpose of this thesis let's forget about Leviathan just after the release)
@@matis2964 Leviathan I thought would be a sign of things to come, and I am honestly surprised pdx actually managed to reverse course somewhat.
Dang, and here I thougt that birding to get the Inheritance was unfairly strong!
I mean, its a good thing to bird for!
I understand the power of birding and timing saves, but ... that sounds extremely tedious. If you're going to those lengths, just play normal mode, guys.
Some people really like the achievement icon, and it’s great for CZcams clickbait
3:36 iirc if you control-click a province , you force the use of a navy; so even if you dont have exclaves, this exploit might still work
It does, I just wanted to be clear in the video and explaining control click I thought may be a bit too far
The hardest i've ever exploited the game was with the custom nation exploit where you could change a recommended country to custom nation ideas, culture, religion etc.
I used it to cripple a rival nation for a difficult start.
You are not the only one it seems to be fair, but yeah it was a surprisingly well known exploit.
The siege fort peace bug is interesting.
Peacing out an AI while sieging a fort is level 1.
Actively removing your troops from a siege and leaving just 1k to get more from the peace deal is level 2.
Coding that in is level 5.
Siege Fort peace bug? Do you mean the cannot peace out due to no forts occupied in the area, or the -20 from not sieging the capital?
@@LemonCake101 While you siege a fort, the reasons for peace you get from the AI is bugged, the calcs are fucked.
Normally players abuse this by sending a bunch of 1k stacks to enemy forts to get a bit more from the AI when peacing out.
Some people think this is intended, to a degree it is, but at least last time I've played some patches ago, the bug is still there.
Basically the reason it gives so much occupied and besieged provinces reasons for peace is that the devs messed up the calcs. It is entirely backwards.
The AI thinks that when you have 1k stack you're about to take the fort, as you make progress in the siege, the occupied and sieges provinces 'score' goes down, same if you add cannons or a general with more siege pips. That is why there is such a big swing when you take a fort. The AI thinks you went from being really far away from taking it to having it captured.
The graph looks like this _|\一 (pretend the last line is higher), when it should look like this _/一 (pretend the last line is higher).
So if you're in a war and want to peace out an AI, you can get a bit extra by resetting your sieges and leaving just 1k units there.
@@luminica_ oh interesting... I will have to take a look at that, I mean I may have used that by accident since I knew that having a province 'under siege' would trick the AI a touch more. Good to know, and great explanation!
Otherwise that would be a level 2 exploit basically, although a powerful one!
You used to be able to have 1444 start with everyone having the Imperialism CB against everyone else just by advancing the start date to the 1800s and then back to 1444. No idea if it still does that, but I think that got fixed.
I believe that got fixed, but that was certainly fun!
damm the last few are disgusting, you can also cancel unit movement on land. i have a quick short on it if u care
There are many ways around it for sure: this is by no means a comprehensive tutorial!
@@LemonCake101 no wrys just thought ill let you know, keep up the good work
Im guilty of birding in an Ottoman war, fresh 30ish K Austrian vs 35ish K Ottos stackwiping my army on defense in the plains of Thrace, uh no.
Well, at least you admitted to it, but historically a lot of those kinds of battles happened!
If you want cores with annex you can just use integrate
Not quite how that exploit works, regardless of console command used you don’t gain cores on the land. I should have communicated that in the video better.
In defense of birding, I understand that it's a hell of an exploit and I agree that it can ruin the intended way that PDX wants EU4 to be played.
HOWEVER, when I am playing an Ironman game trying to get an achievement, especially a timed one like the Eat your Greens one, I am putting in multiple hours of my life into it only for the chance to have to start all over if I'm off by just a few months. At that point it's just wasting the time of your life.
That is a fair way of approaching it, and I am not against it: but I would prefer if people where open about it since it can lead to unrealistic expectations.
@@LemonCake101
That's true, but I don't really take part in the EU4 community so it doesn't apply to me. Reddit achievement hunters should mention it though yeah.
@@frogge8495 Fair enough! It is almost two different types of game.
I wouldn't consider level 1 as an exploit. AI does do it multiple times, whether I intended it or not. Also, let's say you're a soldier embarked on a transport ship and the you are landing on the coast of England. Your officials are preparing the landing and the fleet is getting closer and closer to the shore. Then suddenly, the Admiral decides to call off everything. He has to take all the boats, including the ones you're standing on since he commands their captains, to some safer place or just to any different place. You don't really have a choice, do you? You don't know how to steer or command a ship. The Admiral and the captains are the ones in charge for as long as you're on that ship, even though you could almost feel the English ground under your feet if you had just a few more days
That's one of the reasons why in the video I argued for it almost: like intuitively it makes sense, and if you observe AI behavior and what is intended by conventional order submissions (aka cancel landing now please) you would see that it is technically an exploit: you are not meant to be able to reset a landing this way.
for me lvl 1 exploit would be not accepting events when thy pop up. Its so powerful especially for times when having big overextension since the same event cant appear when previous one wasnt "executed".
I allow myself to bird (alt + f4) the first 10 years of a game. it takes the fun out of the game for me if I keep birding during a campaign
It can certainly become very tedious, and turn Eu4 almost into a chore.
I save scum often enough that the task manager is usually open on my other monitor. I think for me it comes down to enjoyment. I have thousands of hours and often understand the things I should do to play the gamer better but sometimes that makes the game more of a chore than fun. I know it’s cheating but in a single player game I don’t really mind because I’m the only person that is effected by it.
Also sometimes the AI does have an advantage over the player. Even on normal difficulty lucky nations exist. I normally don’t mind but when the ottomans get three siege ticks in one of mine and win on a 7% while I’m on 49% I will bird every single time.
Well, the AI advantages don't go into dice rolling, that is just unlucky, but at the end of the day, if you are having fun, you are winning. With that said try a campaign where you restrict yourself to no birding, its an unusual way of making Eu4... harder.
For exploit 4 instead of using the annex command can yoy use the integrate command and have cores on those provinces instead
That doesn't give cores I am afraid, I just needed to change ownership of the province. Regardless of what command you use.
Ahh alright i get it now
@@Ign_48ms no worries, I should have been more clear about that in the video: the idea to use annex instead of integrate was to communicate that the command used didn't matter
I'm a bit split on birding, on one hand you should take the game as it deals the cards on the other hand especially in the first few years if you took away birding you'd just have restarts that do the same but just take longer.
There is certainly an argument for that, if it is done early enough it can be compared to just a more time efficient restart.
What do you thinkind abiut copy save file and play difficult war for example 3-4 times in single-player? This is definietly unintended game mechanic, but from the other hand you increrase your eu iv skills when you are in hard war. Do you accept that or you think that is too much for you?
Glorified Birding, so level 3. To be clear, I have done that myself in the past, and hence I accept its use in SP: it is just using glorified save states after all.
What I use birding for mostly is cheesing the PU rng, because frick that :D
A surprising common use of birding to be fair!
I alt f4 for rng bullshit, like I don't think I've ever got an institution without birding, and so many times the AI has a 70 something year old ruler with no heir and I'll get a PU and bam, suddenly they get an heir. Very frustrating, and my game suddenly crashes...
I mean if you are open about it, that's fine. But yes, this is why the mechanic is so powerful, it allows you to 'force spawn' institutions as well as bypassing the RNG needed for PU's.
Its funny to me that people think shit like level 1 would be an exploit when I play every game on non ironman and regularly use console to fix AI border gore and rp, trigger events I don't want to wait for and reload old saves when bad events fire and I'm not in the mood to deal with it.
Hey, its non-ironman, and you are having fun, so congrats!
thousands of hours, didn't know you cancel locked movements with the automatic transport ship
Its not very intuitive in fairness, and I am only showing it as an example.
Tbh those map redacting exploits made me sad for a bit, people doing this and not getting the real EU4 taste. Maybe they make it so my achievement badges worth less for some other people, but damn, there are achievements which I will remember for all my life and one day I'll tell those stories to my grandson, I believe.
It certainly takes away a lot of the achievement from the achievement, for sure.
Getting 100 merchantalism via Exclusive Trade Rights exploit is still there too.
Yup, thats a pretty clear level 2 in my books.
I've seen that a lot of people in the EU4 community have mixed feelings about the level 3 exploit. However here's my dilemma about it:
Would you rather :
1. Restart a disastrous run that took you multiple hours to achive ruined by bad RNG and the AI nations that got too powerful too quickly/have an abominably powerful set of alliance that just completely destroy you.
2. Save your time by using alt+F4 to not ruin your nation.
Personally, I have indeed used this exploit in single-player from time to time for difficult nations, but never to the point of literally deleting bad events because I love to be challenged in games, because I hate investing so much effort and time into something to eventually get nothing and restart.
Finally, I'd say this:
Are you really a EUIV player if you never used this exploit?
Also, please, never use exploit in multi-player (exept for lvl 1). It is highly scummy and disrespectful.
Good video btw!
Thanks for the support! I want to be clear, honestly given the allure of 2, who doesn't want to do that instead of restarting? However, when it is done, I think it is important for the sake of transparency to be clear that yes, you did bird.
alt-f4 with the loading time shows serious dedication... I'd put it in a category lower
Just because something is a big dedication doesn’t stop it being exploit: and if your loading times are a pain, consider deleting old unused saves, that helps a ton!
@@LemonCake101 If you're going to respond, can you at least respond to what i wrote? My point was that it should be a category lower because of how unwieldy the exploit is. Can you point to where i wrote it wasn't an exploit?
A world conquest is a chore by itself, dedicating a week or 2 for save scumming and rerunning the same months over and over again, just to get ahead a bit more is making the exploit not easy to implement at all. The previous one is an ingame exploit that you could use at any time when it's convenient and with it shortening alot of conflicts, making your run go that much faster.
@@AwoudeX sorry, I will be honest I misread you there, my bad.
In fairness I wasn't really considering it by the time requirement when I made the tiers, it was more of a 'how far you are willing to compromise the game' as a level, instead of requirements by time when I was making the initial ranking. If you are looking at it from a time commitment I guess I see your point, but I wasn't really taking 'time to execute' into account here.
@@LemonCake101 I was going with the likeliness of it being mass abused actually, kinda made sense for me.
Also thank you for not immediately being ultra defensive when someone points something out that went wrong, seems too rare these days
@@AwoudeX oh no worries, before I would put a touch more time to read every comment as it where but I get a couple more of them these days and with a lot of them being very similar its easy to read one thing but your brain thinks of another, so you end up responding to a non-existent point.
As for the probability of abuse, I would wager birding is by far the most used exploit out there, because there aren't even that many level 1/2 things to use and it is so conceptually easy to understand/do.
1:12 i'm sure that this exploit work in 1.30 or higher, maybe even on this patch this exploit or similar still work. I've tested this few patches away, but I don't have fun playing in that way
That was recorded on current patch, so I can confirm it works on the current version. As for the morality or fun playing this way, well that is a separate debate entirely.
There was an "exploit" patched a few months ago with Moslem nations. You were able to invite a scholar that was of the wrong piety with estate privileges. Apparently having -10% shock damage taken was never supposed to be possible if you leaned toward Legalism.
Oh that was a fun one. Honestly wasn't that bad, but still a pretty neat buff!
I exploited development from your sub count since it was 140k I lowered it a bit
Oh no, what have you done!
what does england say to france when it caughts them cheating?
"Illegimate!"
nice
lol i remember using the 4th one back in the day to delete every country except ryukyu to get a free three mountains
Honestly that must have taken you a while, but damn, go for a legit one to try and make up for your sins!
Surely you can just use the integrate command instead of annex if you dont want to deal with overextension?
That's not how the exploit works, regardless of the command used that method does not grant cores, you are basically messing with the ownership data of the province and not the core section. I should have been more in the clear video.
Did you use AI to upscale the AE Reduction icon? maybe others too but thats the one i noticed
The original icons are 48 by 48 pixels with around 5 pixels blank space on the side, so I would use the paint drag box upscale method initially, but yeah for this one I used an online upscale thing. Is it AI? Probably.
@@LemonCake101 it has the tell-tale AI upscaling "shimmering", which is why I thought its AI
@@australiananarchist480 oh interesting, good to know. I know my linear algebra for how the AI works, but not a lot that helps with noticing AI work in fairness.
Lvl 2 is somehow hidden as lvl 3 and 1 are top of the iceberg
I Consider a Exploit Something Paradox Did not Intend to Make or the Player to Use.
Or Something Thats to Just to Broken Which makes the Game Boring.
Yup, an un-intended use of a mechanic.
Wait,You can alt f4 in Ironman save? I though when you quit it will save right there instead of back 6 month? Can you explain birding a little more?
Well if alt f4 the game quits before a save can be performed. Quitting normally still makes a save.
I've never seen AI cancel a landing, locked in or otherwise
They do cancel it if you can move some troops in before they lock in, enough troops where they think they will lose the battle, from my experience.
Getting free core in 1444 by changing starting timeline.
Many attempts at fixes, many unsuccessful.
I did exploit level 2 by accident once! It was actually bad for me, I think.
Honestly its not impossible to do by accident, but it can happen for sure!
Tier 6: Save editing
Tier 7: Not even playing the game and just using Steam Achievement Manager
I mean those are pretty much tier 5 too, just running external code.
Levell 3.5: the 'Force Tributary CB' exploit for negative WS.
Shh, we don't talk about the forbidden province warscore cost
there is also a exploit where you can remove your self as a shogunate as ashikaga and make your self a fully obedient op vassal svarm
Interesting, I have yet to hear about it though. Would you even want that, since you would be so over Dip Relations?
Well daimyos dont take up a diplo relations and they count other subjects strength as your own so they dont have a high liberty desire @@LemonCake101
@@LemonCake101 Daimyos dont take up a diblo relation and still works in the latest patch also the Daimyos don't fight each other which is nice
@@DekuTheDestroyer oh fair enough, I assumed doing what you described would mean they start to take a vassal spot.
Here is a non exploit for you but extremely impressive: I witnessed the AI take the Danzig disaster, lose everything except 2 provinces as Teutons, then they won against Poland Lithuania and Danzig at the same time, reclaiming all of their 1444 land. It was glorious. And it was my first time I've seen it in over 3000 hours.
Oh damn, that's quite impressive for an AI, and in fairness I feel like a player would have quite well before that situation would have happened too.
with number 5 what is the best time to save a modded file ? before or after checksum ?
You would need to do so after checksum calculation, but I would prefer not to elaborate.
Birding makes event-driven nations overpowered. If you're willing to bird, play Austria. Burgundy and Hungary for free!
Austria is very much a SP tag for me I feel, because of how much stuff you can get by being lucky in events: I mean there is even an event to put a von Habsburg on Castile/Spain!
I do find that in SP when that event fires its basically a "Kill Spain now before they become even more powerful then normal" alert.@@LemonCake101
@@SpookyScarySkeletor or you know, let them blob and let them be a fun challange!
i would love too but in order to end the war its either wait 10 years or invade all of south and north america ;-;@@LemonCake101
@@SpookyScarySkeletor ah a classic problem to be fair, colonial empires can definitely be annoying in this regard.
HRE being Hussite in 1444 is also pretty easy to do, dunno if it got patched
I don't think I am aware of that one to be fair!
do you just mean date switching so theres religious peace in 1444?
Yeah, that's a part of the strat. @@GlizzyGoblin757
Which level is the "creating custom nations with the random development value option, then switching to normal"
Setup manipulation so 4.
For me an exploit is using an intended game mechanic in an unintended way and using unintended game mechanixs is bugabusing.
Fair enough, and with a term like ‘exploit’ definitions will vary
I think it is an exploit if you for example use the console to full annex Uzbek
Reasonable take, if the console gets opened overall that's usually not a good sign!
How could you make a exploiting tier list without showing off the one named exploit?
Exploting dev.
That's intentional :)
All if fair in World Conquest
Even if you finish it without unpausing?
If you really want half these exploits you can simply use cheat engine and edit memory to allow console commands in Ironman
Yup, memory editing is pretty much level 5 though, aka code manipulation. Same as editing save game files.
Can't you just use integrate or assimilate for exploit 4? Integrate cores the provinces. Assimilate even culture converts them
Doesn’t matter what I do in the save, I just needed control of the province: that exploit gives you no cores regardless of console command used.
Yeah, the phantom nation obliterates all cores, it just happens to assign ownership in an interesting way.
@@LibertyMonk Who doesn't love the game code operating in interesting ways!
It’s when you exploit development
The level -1 exploit
Think i only did lvl3 when i did ryuko world Conquest. After 3 failed.
If you are open about it, fair enough!
Game crashed(not intended) the last 40 years before end on 3rd try which corrupted the save file... So I felt kinda okey to cheese as revenge on the game.
You do this for enjoyment so in single player do whatever you like. The problem with doing higher than ingame features it becomes unfun and just map painting. Fun to do once but not something that will keep you playing regularly.
To be clear, my issue is less with 'playing a specific way' and more if you want to cheat, just be open about it and use the console. My issue is people using exploits like this to gain achievements for false bragging rights.
@@LemonCake101 You're not wrong and I see your point but I've also not ever been in a meeting at work and the topic of my Eu4 three mountain achievement came up for me to brag about. You're a youtuber we see you clearly have skills. You're a much better player than I am if that's what you're looking for. Sometimes I want a good training wheel game though to blow off some steam.
@@friendlyskyguy I would like to make a clarification here: I am not looking to 'flex Eu4 skills'; I play MP quite a bit and there I get regularly bodied so I have no illusions of grandeur as it where.
My issue is the only reason to use say level 4/5 exploits is if you want to specifically do those things WITH Ironman enabled. If you are doing a training game/blow of some steam just use the console commands and instead of spending 8 hours on setup, you can be done in a couple min. Hence why anyone using the exploit is clearly using it to cheat 'in a bad way' : if you want a chill training wheels game or something similar, the console achieves all that with so much less effort.
@@LemonCake101 again I do see your point and you're perfectly right. I would say does it change your opinion at all that in other paradox games they allow mods now with achievement runs? I'm fine either way but I can see and understand your views. I now view achievements more as a suggestion from Para to play the game as x country to see a different experience more than I'm going to bird 5000 times to simply ensure Burgundy goes the way I want... Just my 2 cents and I'm totally against any cheat in multiplayer, but in single player I set my own personal levels of what is a cheat on your scale.
@@friendlyskyguy yup, CK3 and now Victoria 3 I believe allow achievements with mods, which is interesting: it devalues them even more, as it means it is literally possible to mod a win right away.
Well, honestly I am not a fan of the concept, but it has meant that people care even less about achievements now then ever, so I guess there will be less people seeking exploits out. I do like pushing games to their limit as you may have noticed, but I like to keep it all above deck as it where.
Eh, there are lot worse things to complain about then achievements being trivial anyway, since I believe there is a Steam tool out there anyway to simply add them to your account if you really wanted to go that way.
Otherwise, from a purely enjoying Eu4 in your own SP universe: have fun!
I mean… Is copying an ironman save to potentially reload it later if you fuck up considered an exploit?😎
I mean its pretty much a bird with extra steps, but lets be clear I am not saying I haven't done so myself.
what woudl you say about abusing "exclusive trade rights" estate priviligies to get 100% mercantalism early on? the way I see it is that at this stage when paradox have known about it for so long its legit to use but people have different opinions about it. for me it's clever use of game mechanics and not an exploit atm.
Mercantilism Exploit: I believe the newest one. Yeah its a Level 2: in game intentional abuse of an unintended mechanic.
@@LemonCake101 new and new. Its been around since the ”new” estates came
@@simonlandenstad9719 I was more referring to the previous Mercantilism exploit that was patched (AFAIK) and this being the 'new' one used.
take this comment with a pinch of salt, I believe EU4 uses some kind of seed system, so that RNG are predetermined in a specific sequence, meaning I do not think it is possible to have a pure 9 dice rolls, and perfect sieges, you can definitelly change the outcome for a better one, but I do not think it's possible to make it perfect
There is somewhat of a seed system, but it tends to take real time as the seed, and I can confirm that because I have seen someone... testing this and getting 9 vs 0 rolls took a while to bird, but was doable.
You said that Exploit 4 was patched, but is there a work around? Could it work if I play the cheated outdated ironman save with the latest patch and still earn achievements?
… there are ways and versions that work on the current patch, yes.
@@LemonCake101 Could you point me in the right direction? I don't mind if it's complicated. But then again, the one you highlighted in this video looks complicated.
@@KarolusImperator sorry I am going to have to reject the question as it where, I would rather not promote the use of exploits for Ironman, but if you want to use a 'custom game' or something similar feel free to mod the game conventionally, or use the console.
In Sp, nothing is too far. Its their game, if they enjoy exploiting it to the maximum, all power to them.
If they have to brag about their crazy achievemts later one can only feel sorry for them.
I believe that is reasonable too, but if you are doing so, be open about it. And if you are being open about it, just use the console. Using the exploits mentioned here from the higher levels are only 'useful' if you want to get things like achievements without actually playing the game as it where.
@@LemonCake101 If they have to deny it, its the same as sharing an "crazy" achievement on reddit.
I would not understand why one would feel the urge to get a shortcut for all those funny little pictures, but if they really want to see them shine and don't feel like working for it; I don't care if they cheat. I would claim that they would feel better about themselves if they were to do it the intended way. But I wont judge them.