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It's clear to me now that this game does not hold a candle to EU2. I simply don't enjoy it, and I don't think it is likely to improve sufficiently with patches.
Even if it does improve radically with patches, I can just go out and buy it more cheaply in eight months, and save myself some money and the monotony of being an unpaid beta tester.
I'll outline what I see as the main failings of the game:
Bugs. The game hasn't been properly tested. This is obvious when you come across the same bugs again and again; AI not using it's vassal armies and inheriting claims on yourself, for example. Given that Paradox has a track record of adding new bugs with each patch, I'm not that hopeful.
The map. It's not very pretty. The EU map had an added functionality of clearly showing the type of terrain in each province; the CK map doesn't.
Provincial management is complicated and boring. There's no hard information anywhere about the effects of the loyalty of the four groups (peasants, burgers, clergy and nobility), nor the tax rate, nor the power rating. I've yet to find a good reason to bother with increasing the power of a group, or messing about with tax rates.
EU2 had a complicated province system as well, but it differed in that you could more or less control the provinces from the centre via the domestic policy. Each province has to be managed individually in CK.
I'd jettison the power and loyalty ratings for the provinces and simply have a choice of which group is the dominant one. I'd also make the military units produced by each province much more varied; a province with dominant burgers would produce nothing but burger units. Culture should also play a role in determining the military units produced; it doesn't seem to at the moment.
Generally, the game has an obsession with percentages, even though much smaller scales would be appropriate. Is it really necessary to have vassal loyalty measured to the nearest 0.1%? Should I care that the nobles in Atholl are 67% loyal, or that building a sawmill in Lothian has increased income by 5%?
Vassal loyalty could easily be represented by a scale of 0 to 10, as long as relations were more permanent and less 'liquid'. As it stands, your relations with your vassals tend to slosh towards 100.0% or 0.0%, with no solid middle ground.
One of the best inventions in EU was the +/-3 stability rating. Somehow, I get the feeling that if Paradox were to make EU today, stability would be represented by a percentage.
There's no real way to tell what other realms think of you, and alliances are impossible. Again, a regression from EU, where alliances were vital.
The interface is dodgy; icons are too small, everything takes at least one too many clicks, there's no right-click menu for provinces. Your court (which quickly becomes jam-packed with children and country cousins) is difficult to manage and finding the best bishop out of thirty or forty courtiers (only 4 of which are eligible to become bishop) is pure tedium. And there's no ledger or family tree, a real let down.
I'm genuinely curious as to why many are saying that this game is better than EU2, or has the potential to be.
What is so good about it?
Even if it does improve radically with patches, I can just go out and buy it more cheaply in eight months, and save myself some money and the monotony of being an unpaid beta tester.
I'll outline what I see as the main failings of the game:
Bugs. The game hasn't been properly tested. This is obvious when you come across the same bugs again and again; AI not using it's vassal armies and inheriting claims on yourself, for example. Given that Paradox has a track record of adding new bugs with each patch, I'm not that hopeful.
The map. It's not very pretty. The EU map had an added functionality of clearly showing the type of terrain in each province; the CK map doesn't.
Provincial management is complicated and boring. There's no hard information anywhere about the effects of the loyalty of the four groups (peasants, burgers, clergy and nobility), nor the tax rate, nor the power rating. I've yet to find a good reason to bother with increasing the power of a group, or messing about with tax rates.
EU2 had a complicated province system as well, but it differed in that you could more or less control the provinces from the centre via the domestic policy. Each province has to be managed individually in CK.
I'd jettison the power and loyalty ratings for the provinces and simply have a choice of which group is the dominant one. I'd also make the military units produced by each province much more varied; a province with dominant burgers would produce nothing but burger units. Culture should also play a role in determining the military units produced; it doesn't seem to at the moment.
Generally, the game has an obsession with percentages, even though much smaller scales would be appropriate. Is it really necessary to have vassal loyalty measured to the nearest 0.1%? Should I care that the nobles in Atholl are 67% loyal, or that building a sawmill in Lothian has increased income by 5%?
Vassal loyalty could easily be represented by a scale of 0 to 10, as long as relations were more permanent and less 'liquid'. As it stands, your relations with your vassals tend to slosh towards 100.0% or 0.0%, with no solid middle ground.
One of the best inventions in EU was the +/-3 stability rating. Somehow, I get the feeling that if Paradox were to make EU today, stability would be represented by a percentage.
There's no real way to tell what other realms think of you, and alliances are impossible. Again, a regression from EU, where alliances were vital.
The interface is dodgy; icons are too small, everything takes at least one too many clicks, there's no right-click menu for provinces. Your court (which quickly becomes jam-packed with children and country cousins) is difficult to manage and finding the best bishop out of thirty or forty courtiers (only 4 of which are eligible to become bishop) is pure tedium. And there's no ledger or family tree, a real let down.
I'm genuinely curious as to why many are saying that this game is better than EU2, or has the potential to be.
What is so good about it?
Sure, it has some bugs, but 1.02 made it a totally new game, and knowing Paradox, it will get better and better, and be supported for a long time still. After all, EU2 is still supported.
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