Posted on 04 February 24 at 21:14
Yesterday, I finally gained the "World Conqueror" achievement in Europa Universalis 4. I've been playing the game for years, and still found the achievement to be moderately difficult and time-consuming. I've long wondered why it was worth so few points, so on a whim I had a look at a few of the other people who have recently gained it. On my estimation, 3 out of the 4 other accounts who have gained it this year look massively suspicious, and I believe they cheated to get it. I haven't yet looked at people who gained this achievement earlier.
So, how common do you guys think achievement cheating is? Is it a big enough problem to heavily devalue the efforts of those of us who strive to do things legitimately?
I will individually report all these accounts.
Some more detailed game related info:
- World Conquest in EU4 is moderately hard. Even some experienced streamers consider it to be a quite serious effort.
- My attempt took me more than a week of quite heavy play. Obviously, someone better skilled than me with multiple world conquests under their belt could do it faster, but we're not talking about those people - for someone's first world conquest, I'd expect it to be similarly hard.
- In particular some of the larger powers like, in my game, the Spanish Empire, took half a dozen wars to dismantle, with each war lasting several hours, and substantial gaps between the wars, waiting for truce timers etc.
- EU4 has a pretty steep learning curve - the community generally considers the first 1000 hours played to be the tutorial, where players get their head around the basic mechanics of the game, learn how to fight wars, how to manage Aggressive Expansion, run an economy etc.
If I see someone achieve "World Conqueror" and a dozen other even harder achievements in the same day, then I'm going to call bull. There's simply not enough hours available.
If I see someone conquer the world and also pick up some really common beginner level achievements in the same day, then I'm again going to be massively suspicious.
Whilst world conquest can be done from initially very weak nations, normally the first world conquest a player does would be with one of the countries better suited to the task - in particular, Austria, the Ottomans, the Mughals or a steppe horde like Oirat. A little harder might be the major European colonial powers, or Manchuria. But if I see someone seems to have got the achievement from an initially much weaker start, I'm again rather suspicious. That might not be enough to automatically assume cheating, but if combined with other dubious signs, it will further weaken their credibility.