I’m having some trouble getting through to the Europa Universalis 4 super mod. While the game is not massively active I have suggested some new categories to which he created a strawpoll to put in the most popular ones (I guess).

That’s all fine and dandy. But he hasn’t responded ever since, hasn’t made any changes whatsoever, and even ignores my forum-posts. It’s been almost a month now and it’s really slowing everything massively down. He has even been online and verified runs. My point is that he definitely has seen my posts, but haven’t had the decency to discuss or even reply the last 24 days - and that’s a key mod-quality if there ever was one. As he has no other active social media connected to his profile, he really leaves me with no other option than to request his mod-position this way.

After all, it would be a shame if a perfectly complicated game like EU4 with sweet juicy RNG-based gameplay was diminished to a 10 seconds any% meme-run :)

So, @MDK_ , should I interpret your silence as an annoyingly passive no?

I fully understand and accept that you might not have the time to keep up with the speedrunning community every day or even every week. But it kinda slows things down if you, the only mod, do not participate actively in the discussion (even if the only counterpart is me) - especially in the defining phase. There are still decisions to be made, e. g. we have to decide how to treat glitches and if different kind of glitches should be treated differently.

If it is because you don’t have that much time right now, would you maybe consider having 2 super mods? :) I’ll gladly be the second mod, but it can essentially be anyone committed to EU4 and with the time to moderate and adapt the ruleset every once in a while (as new glitches and exploits are bound to happen with a game that releases a new patch every 3-6 months).

Yo, @MDK_ , did you make a discord? :)

It’s been a week now with the strawpoll, so could you just add a “Roman Empire” and “Form HRE”-category for now? It seems they’re the most upvoted (and coincidentally the ones I am doing runs in atm 4Head )

From there on more categories can be added when people actually make runs and request them :)

Yeah, it would be great with a EU4-discord - I can spam my ideas in there :)

I have some ideas regarding the setup of the leaderboards if we at some point get too many categories (it will probably happen). Essentially it’s making the actual categories as subcategories. I’ll do some Photoshop-magic to visualize my idea and post it on the discord CoolCat

My opinion is that we shouldn’t blindly add every new categories. People with a new category in mind should request them, post videoproof of a run and explain the requirements. From there we can make an informed decision on whether to accept or decline the category.

Regarding the patch I meant official EU4 patch. You can easily downpatch the game in Steam. Well, at least version 1.6 and up (there was no ironman from 1.0 to 1.5). I tried going through the patches, and it seems most Euro-nations always require admin tech 10. Luckily that is not the case with Rûm, Qing and really most non-European nations.

Modding is a whole different beast that shouldn’t be accepted unless the category explicitly says so.

Okay, after the post-rambling adrenaline wore off I realized it probably would be a terrible idea and a complete mess to add all possible categories at once.

Maybe we could take inspiration from the GTA Category Extensions leaderboards ( https://www.speedrun.com/gtamemes#Non-existent_category ) and make an empty category where runners can submit any run describing any new category not yet on the leaderboards. From there on mods and/or the community can discuss, evaluate and vote, whether or not it would be a valid new category. This way we encourage people to actually do a run before requesting and thereby effectively avoiding heaps of empty categories.

While the community is still small a forum thread for new categories will probably suffice, but preparing for the EU4-speedrunning community to blob like early game Otto I feel like the aforementioned solution might not be bad.

I bring forth my suggestions for new categories:

It would be great to have some of the more popular achievements like "Big Blue Blob" or "Luck of the Irish/Re-Reconquista/Sunset Invasion/Basileus". Also a “Renovatio Imperii” or “Dismantle HRE”-category.

A 500 or 1000 total provinces speedrun (or a short 1 province in every continent). Win the HRE-religious war as leader of a Protestant or Reformed league (or Anglican in the new Rule Britannia dlc, depending on however that works). Unify islam. Have your colonies own or directly own all of americas yourself.

Maybe a form Roman Empire-speedrun. Other speedrun-viable formable nations could be:

• Hindustan/Bharat/Mughals
• Arabia
• Japan
• Qing
• Rûm
• Jerusalem
• Persia
• Malaya
• Romania

Unfortunately most formable European countries isn’t really viable as they require admin tech 10 and would be mostly waiting. Maybe there’s a patch where admin tech 10 isn’t required to form some nations, I’ll look into that.

Mind you, I’m not saying all of these would be good or even runnable categories. It’s merely just me blurbing suggestions from the top of my head.

Now, let’s get some runs rolling in a category that is not any% PogChamp

I've long considered speedrunning and requesting this game. Cool you've taken it upon your shoulders to create it :)

The only thing that's been holding me back is that EU4 isn't really a speedgame by nature, and the whole IGT-thing seems a bit counter-intuitive to me as a speedrunner. I find it problematic that a speedrun legally could be in multiple segments. It completely eliminates the rushing-perspective a speedrun should have. IGT also allows save-scumming which if RTA-timing was used would result in timeloss, but instead now is free and almost encouraged.

A rule change disallowing quitting the game would prevent this, but that would require runners to record the whole run not just the recap.

To be fair if time was measured by RTA the strongest computer would have an advantage, so IGT might be the lesser of two evils. It just feels like breaking the constitutional laws of speedrunning when the timer is directly controlled (pausable) by the runner. It's at least a topic that should be discussed thoroughly.

TL;DR: I'm suggesting an RTA vs IGT reevaluation, my point being that EU4-IGT never should be used in a speedrun, maybe as a tie-breaker. If IGT is kept I'm suggesting disallowing quitting/restarting the game. Furthermore every run should be fully recorded and be done as a single segment.

Hey man :)

The timer itself is LiveSplit with some background, but I made a PNG-image as an overlay to make it look like it was an integrated part of the game.

LiveSplit should be fairly easily found through a google-search, but if it's the overlay you're looking for, I can upload and give you the link to the PNG-image I use as well, just let me know :)

I guess that is kind of ironic, but worried might be a bit of an exaggeration. It's more a question of moral than the consequences of being "caught" - not that I claim to have any kind of moral highground in general on this topic.

I think emulating a game is at least morally okay while owning an original copy of the game and the machine you emulate. From a legal pov it's probably not, but meh.

I've never tried but the PC-version does seem much faster in loading times alone. The lack of runs is probably just a question of accessibility as the PC-game apparently is rather rare. Of course piracy is an option, but... yeah.

I use emulator because I don't have the necessary recording device, but mainly because I only own the local PAL-version which is painfully slow. It's a shame since the Danish version is far superior (well, in a non-speedrunning sense at least).

Hi! Can you change my name to "MiklMaar"? :)