>>725182969
No such thing exists for EU IV. The railroading only works about 30-50 years in. You'll never see the rise of AI Prussia in most playthroughs. If PLC forms, they will never get partitioned. If Manchu forms Qing, they will be content with just Manchuria and Northern China and will not attempt to conquer all of it like they did historically. Mughal Empire NEVER forms or conquers anything in India.

EU V is even worse. With even less railroading, it's the never-ending 1337. In EU IV hordes started divided, without feudalism and with tech group that got increasingly worse as the game went on, so they almost always got conquered by Russia. In EU V Golden Horde will still exist in 1800s simply because of how strong they are at the beginning. EU V doesn't have "emergent behavior." It barely has any behavior at all. The AI pretends to play the game by stagnating forever. If it conquers anything, it creates awful bordergore. This game is about spending an insane amount of time just to get bored.

For a game to have "depth," there's needs to be challenge in completing a complex task. This game has no challenge. The complexity just exists for the sake of it. The player countries will always be managed better and do better than their AI counterparts, even if someone barely knows how to play the game. Yes, that's also the case in most other Paradox titles. The difference is that those titles are easier to learn and provide better challenge at the same time because they're simpler. The AI can cope with game mechanics better because they're simpler so they provide a better challenge to the player. There's a reason why barely anyone plays MEIOU and why 3.00 failed. This game will share its fate.