Europa Universalis 4 Thread 2: Comet Sighted!

[OrcusMcP]

Because the old thread appears to be lost.

Europa Universalis 4 is the 4th in a series of Grand Strategy games by Paradox Interactive, set in the years 1444-1821, the Age of Exploration, Enlightenment and Empire Building. You control a nation from the period and seek to guide it to a grand destiny, through trade, conquest, religious strife, colonization and technological ingenuity. You can visit the Paradox Forums for detailed information, and there is a good fan-supported Wiki (http://www.eu4wiki.com/Europa_Universalis_4_Wiki) for more stratefgy and reference.

Also, if you REALLY want a long game, Paradox has created an in-house converter for your Crusader Kings 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?311133-Crusader-Kings-2-Thread-II-Sparkly-Vampire-Invasion) game to bring it into the EU4 age, and there are fan made converters to take your game in the Victoria 2 engine as well!

The game currently has 2 major expansions, along with minor graphical/event DLCs.

1st - Conquest of Paradise, which expands on the colonial aspect of the game, particularly in the Americas. Form dynamic colonial nations that can throw off the yoke of the old world, or play as one of the many Native tribes and resist the invaders from across the Atlantic, or even create an entirely random New World to explore!

2nd and just released - Wealth of Nations, which expands on the trade aspect of the game, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Form Trade Companies that allow you to extract more of the wealth from the less developed East and bring exotic goods to Europe, play as a Merchant Republic and play the dangerous game of extracting value from the world while avoiding the more militant monarchies, send privateers to steal wealth from your dangerous enemies, or explore the new religious option available in the Sub-Continent of India.

With Wealth of Nations came with patch 1.6 which had some dramatic effects on the base game:
-A massive re-balancing of the military system. There are more incremental ship types, the land troops are much reduced in power for all tech groups and all eras, and growth is much flatter, and different tech groups have their units peak in different eras.
-Many former decisions a nation could make are now policies that are enacted for a specific amount of time. They are tied to the policies that a nation completes and cost monarch points.
-You now must pick your rivals from a list of peers and actively be working against them, lest your nation be seen as weak. This is measured with Power Projection, which if maxed will give the nation bonus monarch points.

Has anyone had any recent successes before the latest big expansion and patch? Anyone enjoying the new systems? Any particularly epic conversions from CK2?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Haven't had a chance to play the new mechanics yet, waiting for MEIOU+T to update to buy the expansion, I find it hard to go back to the unmodded without it, even if there are fancy new mechanics to play with.

[OrcusMcP]

I haven't had a chance to try MEIOU+T, but it seems excessively granular. Is there anything in particular about that mod that you'd recommend?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

How do you mean, granular?

Well for one, the map (and interface) is GORGEOUS, and more accurate, and has more provinces and countries and cultures. It benefits from porting over all of their EU3 work so they already had systems mostly in place there so instead of getting up to basic functionality they've been improving on stuff and adding stuff, so they've already gotten EUIV to beyond the point EU3 was at the end of it's life cycle. Downside of this is that it runs a lot slower.

Secondly, it has Dei Gratia fully integrated, which is a must-have in my opinion. Religions are just... DULL without it, and religious conversion happens unrealistically fast without it. Also makes it run a lot slower though.

Also makes, for example, non-European playthroughs a lot more interesting because of more things to do and people to fight. More South and Meso-Americans, for example. Many many start dates too, many of which are designed around a non-European base. Two start dates are based upon Indochina affairs, for example.

[Grif]

I haven't got the two new DLCs, so I can't exactly say how good the expansion is.

Power projection is a nice touch though. It gives you a reason to actually set rivals, instead of buddying up to everybody anyway.

(Also, I have this annoying bug where rivals set cannot be unset if they become disqualified or were annexed.)

[tonberrian]

Used to love playing as Castile, but with colonial nations early colonies do pretty much nothing in the great wars of Europe. Currently my new favorite country is Milan. As for the new features, I like the new rival system (the old one was basically declare rivals of who you wanted to go to war with for the unreasonable demand cost reduction), though I wish that whenever a rival became no longer valid the power projection ticked down instead of instantly cutting out the points from longtime rivals. I also like the new mechanics for vassal integration. I'm very willing to pay the diplomatic point costs to save the huge amounts of time integrating. Trade wars are interesting, though I've never been able to do navies effectively. I haven't managed to grab enough territory to make a trading company, so I can't speak for them. I don't like that policies cost monarch points, though I haven't played enough to get a lot of them. Likewise with the canals.

[Terraoblivion]

In addition to the changes to the combat system and rivals mentioned above, the patch seems to do a lot of rebalancing. Rebels have gotten a lot more teeth and I have actually managed to see countries get torn apart by rebels without significant outside prodding or being Chinese and losing the mandate of heaven or holding the Netherlands while it spawns. In a recent game I played, Denmark was paralyzed for roughly fifty years trying to stop Sweden, Norway, Finland and Holstein from respawning and the only reason I didn't make a move then was because they were allied to France. Similarly I saw Hungary get broken by religious rebels twice in the same game.

Another thing that has been buffed considerably appears to be aggressive expansion and coalition. I lost a game as the Hansa where I tried to form Germany when I played too aggressively and ended up with a coalition consisting of France, Denmark, Bohemia, Poland and around ten German minors constantly using the coalition CB to declare war on me. In comparison when I played as the Ottomans before it and tried smashing all of Europe for several centuries straight, the largest coalition I got was Russia, the tiny remnants of The Golden Horde that I'd knocked out of Russia and Ethiopia.

A final thing that seems improved is the Protestant reformation. It appears to actually be a thing outside Scandinavia and England now, though that's possibly because Austria was very weak in the one game I've played after the patch that got far enough to hit the reformation and as such didn't get to beat the other states into compliance as much as normal.

In general, I find these changes to be good, because it was getting dull to see Europe remain staunchly Catholic forever and blobbing was very, very easy before. The added cost to annexing vassals helps in that regard as well.

Also, creating a big, grey blob in the center of Europe to counter the big, blue blob to the west and the big golden one to the east is nice. Even if I'm not looking forward to having to go punch France in the face repeatedly to get the last provinces I need for my goal of getting out to at least the 1914 borders of Germany.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Another thing that has been buffed considerably appears to be aggressive expansion and coalition. I lost a game as the Hansa where I tried to form Germany when I played too aggressively and ended up with a coalition consisting of France, Denmark, Bohemia, Poland and around ten German minors constantly using the coalition CB to declare war on me.

Aggressive expansion drops really quickly, so I didn't get any seriously threatening coalitions when I formed Germany pretty much as early (1549) as I could with Bavaria because I had to play it slow until I reached admin tech 10 anyway, which is pretty slow when you're buying cores because annexing vassals isn't so cheap anymore.

On the other hand in my Hansa game Austria has united the Holy Roman Empire and is allied with Poland, Lithuania and Castille, so my best bet there is abandoning Germany plans and migrating to asia.

[IthilanorStPete]

I haven't played with the latest couple of patches; sounds like a lot of interesting changes. My biggest success was in a patch 1.3-era game as Austria, forming the HRE and blobbing like mad across eastern Europe, dividing France between myself and Spain, and colonizing India. Honestly, though, an Austra/HRE blob using the old diplo-annexation mechanics and abusing vassal creation isn't terribly interesting to talk about.

[tonberrian]

I also like how there are now 3 choices for the comet event.

[AgentPaper]

Eu4? Yeah I may have heard of that game:

http://i.imgur.com/0KiWRN2.jpg (http://imgur.com/0KiWRN2)
(Vassals: Kazan, Golden Horde, Nogai, Iraq, Korea, Shun, and Xi)

Maybe played it once or twice. I guess I do OK.

[Leecros]

I like most of the changes that they've done recently(although there was some issues with aggressive expansion there for awhile before it was fixed with the 1.6.1. However I don't think i would recommend Wealth of Nations unless it was on sale. Unless you have the extra cash to burn, I don't believe that $9.99 is really worth the content you get. Most of the changes and tweaks to the game came with the 1.6 patch, which you don't need Wealth of Nations to play with. I see the value of the expansion at $5-7 and think that 10 is asking a little bit too much. It's nitpicking over a few dollars, i know, but when you release as much DLC as Paradox has been for their Grand Strategy Games...you really want to make sure that you're really getting your moneys' worth.

That said, after i purchased the DLC i had a really fun game as Burgundy where i crushed France and had the largest army in Europe and was still making 100 ducats/month easy. There was even a period of time where I had a 5/5/5 King and was making more Monarch points than i could actually spend. Had i made the right decisions early on and known that i'd have outclassed everyone by so much, I would have gone full conquest mode and attempted to conquer Europe, but by the time I had the realization that I probably could conquer Europe...It was already in the 1750's and would have been much more difficult.

I do have to give Austria props though; I managed to crush them in an early war with a fortunate alliance with Bohemia. i released Styria and allied them and then a war right after forced Austria to release Tirol, bringing them down to 4 provinces i believe. However, somehow they still managed to make a nice kingdom for them in central Germany by the end of the game. As for the end of my game, I managed to conquer modern-day France and most of North Germany and Denmark. It was a nice little game.

[Flickerdart]

So I've finally figured out how this game plays, and started up a South Asian kingdom with the intent of colonizing everything down to Australia before the Europeans arrive. I managed to secure a delicate power balance that ensured I wouldn't be bothered at home while I colonized, and snapped up a couple of islands essentially unopposed. Unfortunately, when I got up to take a break, I accidentally left it on speed 5, and when I came back everything had spectacularly exploded - all of my land was gone, and a seemingly unlimited number of popups explained how it all happened. Does nothing in this game have the decency to auto-pause?

Also, how can I get a Personal Union going? I buddied up to Dai Viet and the Mings, whose succession is always in trouble, and have kept up royal marriages with both, but whenever the succession says a member of my dynasty will inherit, nothing happens.

[Grif]

Also, how can I get a Personal Union going? I buddied up to Dai Viet and the Mings, whose succession is always in trouble, and have kept up royal marriages with both, but whenever the succession says a member of my dynasty will inherit, nothing happens.

Usually it's a combination of factors:
a) You must have higher prestige than the target nation
b) The target nation has no legal heir. If he has a weak heir, that counts as a legal heir
c) You have claimed the throne*

* - Optional. Sometimes you get the throne without ever claiming it. But claiming it gives you something of a surefire chance to do so, at a cost of a relation penalty.

Also, when it says a member of your dynasty inherit, that means they get a new king with your dynasty, not that they'll fall under a PU. For that to happen, it must explicitly say "Personal Union with X."


EDIT: Is it normal for overseas colony to act like it is on your own continent? I'm getting both taxes and production from them. It used to be that you only get tariffs.

[OrcusMcP]

EDIT: Is it normal for overseas colony to act like it is on your own continent? I'm getting both taxes and production from them. It used to be that you only get tariffs.

If it is "sufficiently close" then you get full tax and production. They added this to address the "Spain can't administer Tangiers?" problem.

[Grif]

If it is "sufficiently close" then you get full tax and production. They added this to address the "Spain can't administer Tangiers?" problem.

An interesting mechanic. Though it is odd even Cuba is close enough for Spain to administer directly.

[Terraoblivion]

That's because they chose to tie it to colonial range. I believe from cores on the continent your capital is on. Either that or from your capital.

[Flickerdart]

I'd like some advice on the strategic situation - how to cut through a bunch of unpleasant alliances.

I'm currently colonizing the Phillipines as Ayutthaya. I've conquered everything in my vicinity down to Aceh, up to Ming and Shan, left to Peng, and right to Dai Viet and Lan Xang. However, Ming has declared me as a rival (their only rival, in fact) and have nearly +200% of army on me. I have a diplomat permanently parked in there to lick their boots and keep relations from slipping too far into the negatives. The other four all have alliances to one another. I also have royal marriage and alliance with Dai Viet and Lan Xang, and believe Dai Viet will back me over Peng and Shan in a war (Lan Xang never has).

Is there a way that I can break up the alliances to make these wars more manageable? Should I go south and take out Aceh and Brunei first?

[OrcusMcP]

Is there a way that I can break up the alliances to make these wars more manageable? Should I go south and take out Aceh and Brunei first?

It may be better to go south, first. If you have a superior fleet, then blockading should convince a lot of the countries that go to war against you will crash their own economy. Also, if you have the Espionage ideas, then you can sabotage reputation of the bigger countries to try to break up alliances.

[Grif]

It may be better to go south, first. If you have a superior fleet, then blockading should convince a lot of the countries that go to war against you will crash their own economy. Also, if you have the Espionage ideas, then you can sabotage reputation of the bigger countries to try to break up alliances.

Wait, that works? :smalleek:

[Leecros]

Wait, that works? :smalleek:

It can work. Basically you stick your diplomat in an enemy country and all neighbors, enemies, and rivals get an opinion penalty towards the target which can cause opinion changes and alliance breakage.

However, as nice as the espionage idea group is, there's others that i would prioritize beforehand. Namely Diplomatic and Trade or exploration depending on your location and plans.

[Flickerdart]

It may be better to go south, first. If you have a superior fleet, then blockading should convince a lot of the countries that go to war against you will crash their own economy.
My fleet kinda sucks, but I did build it up a bit to help against Aceh. Now they, Mataram, and Lan Xang are my vassals. Ming got Zhou'd, Shan is being destroyed by conquerors from India that are really starting to worry me, and I have an alliance with Pegu just to have some friends...

But now I'm trying to annex Lan Xang and it tells me it will never finish because of basetax. What does that mean and how can I fix it?

[IthilanorStPete]

My fleet kinda sucks, but I did build it up a bit to help against Aceh. Now they, Mataram, and Lan Xang are my vassals. Ming got Zhou'd, Shan is being destroyed by conquerors from India that are really starting to worry me, and I have an alliance with Pegu just to have some friends...

But now I'm trying to annex Lan Xang and it tells me it will never finish because of basetax. What does that mean and how can I fix it?

Lan Xang is too big compared to you to be annexed. Get some more provinces (preferably ones with high basetax), then try and annex them.

[Flickerdart]

Ok, so the Europeans have started showing up - I decided to start colonizing America by hopping through Kamchatka and Alaska, and now Russia is breathing down my neck. I managed to place two colonies north of California, which is currently occupied by Castille. So now I have the option of Westernizing. Should I do it?

[OrcusMcP]

Ok, so the Europeans have started showing up - I decided to start colonizing America by hopping through Kamchatka and Alaska, and now Russia is breathing down my neck. I managed to place two colonies north of California, which is currently occupied by Castille. So now I have the option of Westernizing. Should I do it?

If you have a good monarch, an ok buildup of MP and can afford level 2 advisors (keeping in mind the increased cost to advisors when you start westernizing), then I'd say go for it. Also, make any generals/admirals you want to make before you start.

[AgentPaper]

Ok, so the Europeans have started showing up - I decided to start colonizing America by hopping through Kamchatka and Alaska, and now Russia is breathing down my neck. I managed to place two colonies north of California, which is currently occupied by Castille. So now I have the option of Westernizing. Should I do it?

In any version but the latest, I would have said definitely ASAP. Now, it's much less important. For a Chinese tech group country, it's probably still worth it to save monarch points in the long run, but in general, if you can keep up in tech there's no real benefit to it.

The reasons are that you no longer get western units from being westernized, and also that units have been changed a lot such all the tech groups have decent units throughout, and units don't get better as quickly as they used to either, so being, say, 5-10 tech units behind is, while still a major disadvantage, not a death sentence that allows Modena to take down China despite 100-1 odds.

[Grif]

How does one manage colonial nations, by the way? Apparently now all my Caribbean holdings are absorbed into a colonial nation, and it's not really giving me much by way of income. :smallfrown: (Stupid tariffs.)

[OrcusMcP]

How does one manage colonial nations, by the way? Apparently now all my Caribbean holdings are absorbed into a colonial nation, and it's not really giving me much by way of income. :smallfrown: (Stupid tariffs.)

It's a balancing act of increasing tariffs without making so high that the colonial nation decides to go their own way. They also provide you with some trade power, so you can get money that way. They'll build-up their own buildings/armies/navies so you don't have to worry about that.

[Flickerdart]

In any version but the latest, I would have said definitely ASAP. Now, it's much less important. For a Chinese tech group country, it's probably still worth it to save monarch points in the long run, but in general, if you can keep up in tech there's no real benefit to it.

The reasons are that you no longer get western units from being westernized, and also that units have been changed a lot such all the tech groups have decent units throughout, and units don't get better as quickly as they used to either, so being, say, 5-10 tech units behind is, while still a major disadvantage, not a death sentence that allows Modena to take down China despite 100-1 odds.
Is there any way to tell how far behind I am? I'm not very good with the monarch points (both getting them efficiently and spending them intelligently) so I'm probably super boned if I ever have to actually fight a European power, despite my standing army being something like the 5th biggest (the score thingy says I'm 15th in military). I tried fighting Zhou for a bit, and they would wreck me despite having much fewer troops, which I suspect is due to a tech advantage. I did manage to beat them through numbers eventually, but it left my manpower exhausted.

[Grif]

Is there any way to tell how far behind I am? I'm not very good with the monarch points (both getting them efficiently and spending them intelligently) so I'm probably super boned if I ever have to actually fight a European power, despite my standing army being something like the 5th biggest (the score thingy says I'm 15th in military). I tried fighting Zhou for a bit, and they would wreck me despite having much fewer troops, which I suspect is due to a tech advantage. I did manage to beat them through numbers eventually, but it left my manpower exhausted.

You can usually check the countries' military tech level in their respective country tab.

http://www.eu4wiki.com/images/b/b2/Diplomatic_interface_other.png

It's the crossed swords with gear icon next to the national ideas counter.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

iirc, doesn't hovering over a country with your mouse while in the tech map overlay also show a breakdown of their tech? Easy way of seeing who's generally ahead of you and who's behind, even if the tech map overlay itself doesn't show you the specifics of each tech.

[tonberrian]

So in my current Milan game (I have a habit of getting to around 1520 and deciding I haven't done enough and starting over), I was buddy-buddy with France, using them to help me grab bits of the Empire. Then, in the middle of a war against a huge Argonese-Austrian-Polish alliance that they started, their king dies. The new shlub was greedy, and broke our alliance.

Needless to say, I was pissed.

I got out of that war ASAP, and since I was a major contributor to not being swept away by the huge armies of the enemy alliance, France got swamped.

I didn't stop there.

After a brief war to get a foothold in England, I started gunning for France, crushing their army every time the treaty expired until the rebels broke the country, releasing nations and gobbling up territory until France was left with like 8 provinces in the northeast. I would have continued, but now I'm running afoul of nationalist rebels everywhere, and while I can handle them, my admin points and manpower reserves are low. Once that replenishes, however...

[Leecros]

I've come to the realization that the Golden Horde actually might be one of the better starting positions for playing a steppe nomad nation. I was looking at them as an option for the Turning The Tide achievement, but discovered that if you could get your traction...I used to think that they were just there and they usually get crushed by just about everyone around them, but you could potentially do a lot with them.

All of it lies within two provinces. Circassia which is on the GH border, a base tax 4 gold region. Georgia can be vassalized in a day 1 rush. The rest of their territory is rather mediocre though. Most importantly though is the beautiful, beautiful province of Samara. a Base tax 9 gold region that the Golden Horde just happens to have a Core on. However it is held by Kazan at the start of the game, Although I actually found them harder to crush than Georgia due to an inopportune alliance with the Timurids, but i managed to snatch it during a war they had with Muscovy. That region alone added like 5 ducats/month to my income. They also have a great spot to westernize if they can keep Genoa alive and well. If not, they can always war through the eastern European nations with some work.

The thing is that if you can get an alliance with the Ottomans and Timurids...Muscovy isn't going to attack you at the start. They'll likely hit more squishy targets like Kazan and Novgorod, which will deplete their early manpower and give you an opportunity to strike at them early on. I don't usually see them ally with Lithuania, the only other real power in the immediate area. Of course if that fails, you can always just head east. Cut off Muscovy and expand east for a hundred years. The hordes are always fighting each other and the Golden Horde has probably the second or third largest army of all of them at the start of the game.

so yeah, barring any unfortunate tragedies, I think i'm going to have fun with this game. The biggest hurdle right now is going to be finding a way to cut Muscovy down to size.

[Terraoblivion]

Okay, **** Paradox. Apparently trading companies spawn immediately when Europeans sit next to non-Europeans in Africa or Asia. I put down a colony next to the Portuguese colony at the Cape. It was literally the only other settled province between Kongo and Mutapa and it was in a trading company on day 1 after finishing. Which meant I couldn't westernize after all. I'd have to, I don't know, sneak in a province in Brazil or something to maybe succeed at it. And with the ridiculous penalties people beyond the Muslim tech group gets, that's basically just a huge **** you to people wanting to play East Asians or Indians.

[OrcusMcP]

Eh, I'm not so sure. I definitely get the frustration, but they also flattened the military progression, so the Europeans aren't roflstoming everyone east of Anatolia just cuz.

[Terraoblivion]

Eh, I'm not so sure. I definitely get the frustration, but they also flattened the military progression, so the Europeans aren't roflstoming everyone east of Anatolia just cuz.

Yeah, they merely get slightly better units and to be far ahead in tech at all times. The units is a move in the right direction, but I'm not sure it was worth it if they destroy reasonable options for westernizing for people west of the Arab peninsula and Persia in exchange. You still really do want to westernize to keep up. Also the whole thing is really uncomfortable since it gives the impression that they're hellbent on making sure that because Europe came to be ascendant in the world it must be so and anything that can change that is wrong and must be stopped.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Eh, I don't see that as an issue, I see it as a feature. No country in the regions you pointed out Westernized in the game period, despite having access to European Trade Company-controlled land. It restores a semblance of historical plausibility to the region. Looks to me like it worked as intended.

[IthilanorStPete]

Yeah, they merely get slightly better units and to be far ahead in tech at all times. The units is a move in the right direction, but I'm not sure it was worth it if they destroy reasonable options for westernizing for people west of the Arab peninsula and Persia in exchange. You still really do want to westernize to keep up. Also the whole thing is really uncomfortable since it gives the impression that they're hellbent on making sure that because Europe came to be ascendant in the world it must be so and anything that can change that is wrong and must be stopped.

I agree with this. If you're going to have "westernization" be a thing, it should be a reasonably feasible option, not completely blocked b y the trade company system.

[Terraoblivion]

No, but that's mostly because westernizing is a nonsense term when applied to periods before industrialization. While Europe did become dominant in certain fields of technology, most notably shipbuilding and how to mount cannons on ships, it was a poor backwards region compared to the Middle East and East Asia at least into the 17th century. I've heard at least one expert on Indian history, Niels Brimnes from the department of history at Aarhus University, comment that when England fought Mysore in the late 18th century they almost had parity in military technology on land and English victory was a product . These countries didn't westernize because, bluntly speaking, European social organization and practical technology wasn't any better than their yet.

Eventual European dominance was more of a product of politics than of Europeans being smarter or better at science. It was basically a product of the relative strength and stability of the modern state, which didn't really start developing until the 17th century, exploiting moments of weakness or conflict in other countries and leveraging the superior naval technology that Europe had developed to get to where stuff people wanted was. It wasn't in any way a given that things would shake out like that and making the Chinese and Indians technologically inferior to Europeans in 1444 is absolutely absurd, they weren't. European shipbuilding hadn't gone off the ground yet, while China was sending fleets of ships larger than anything Europeans would built until the 18th century all the way past Africa.

For that matter, a number of European countries were hideously backwards in this period. Denmark, with the exception of Slesvig and Holstein, is an obvious example. Similarly, Spain, Portugal and Italy fell hideously behind the rest of Europe. On the other hand, Japan developed a more commercial economy than the Netherlands with sophisticated banking, marketing and a large spread of popular culture.

So, yes, no countries in Asia westernized, but that's because westernizing wasn't a thing and the idea that Europe was superior to people in Asia until well into the 18th century is a product of ignorance and 19th century self-congratulatory rhetorics. And just about any historian of anywhere that isn't Europe and a lot of the ones studying Europe who deals with the period will confirm this.

[Guancyto]

that's basically just a huge **** you to people wanting to play East Asians or Indians.

Oh, it gets better. Did you hear a summary of how the various changes to Production basically cut the entire rest of the world's income (and also manpower and forcelimits) as compared to Europe's?

Because that was a thing that happened in the last patch as well. They did some good things, and they made some giant mistakes.

[Terraoblivion]

Oh, it gets better. Did you hear a summary of how the various changes to Production basically cut the entire rest of the world's income (and also manpower and forcelimits) as compared to Europe's?

Because that was a thing that happened in the last patch as well. They did some good things, and they made some giant mistakes.

No, I didn't hear the details of that. How does it work? It does explain why I could get so ridiculously rich as The Hansa compared to countries dominating the trade and production of valuable East Asian goods.

[Guancyto]

Basically they tied Goods more closely to province base tax, which is... not well-thought-out, in the world. (The most oft-cited example is Paris being 15 base tax at 1444, while Vijayanagar, then the most populated city in India, second most populated city in the world, and one that beat Paris like a red-headed stepchild for wealth, is... 2 base tax)

It's not a direct nerf, but it made high basetax provinces (which Europe is full of, particularly France and Germany) much more valuable in both money and manpower, and low basetax provinces (which are much more common in the rest of the world, although it hurt Scandinavia substantially too) much less valuable.

Someone ran the numbers and found that, at baseline, the entire rest of the world combined isn't that much wealthier than just Europe now. I'll see if I can't find the exact numbers, although the EU forums search function is being difficult.

I should note, I don't think they did this on purpose (because it also disadvantaged their home country of Sweden), but it is... very eurocentric.

Edit: Found it, or a reference to it at least.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?777390-Asia-is-too-poor-Historically-it-should-be-5-times-richer-in-basetax

Base tax plus base goods produced:
Pre-WON/WON/Change
Europe: 498/453/-10%
RotW: 995/570/-43%
Asia: 451/296/-34%
Africa: 174/86/-51%
North America: 229/116/-49%
South America: 99/54/-41%
Oceania: 42/18/-57%

Bear in mind this is at baseline, and is offset by buildings and value of goods, which are both dynamic so you can't really put a hard number on them. Still, it is considerable.

[Leecros]

I think part of the problem is that Europa Universalis IV doesn't portray population at all. Admittedly it's only part of the problem, but i feel like that was just a terrible decision on their part.

Population is...kind of an important part in determining the wealth of the region.

[Terraoblivion]

Honestly, as far as I can tell the problem is that Europeans and people in countries derived from European settlers have an overinflated sense of their historical worth and superiority. That and that a lot of plain old misinformation is floating around as facts and commonly accepted as such, along with weird teleological views of history as something that by necessity had to flow towards some natural order that tends to benefit the speaker.

In short, I think the problem is a whole lot of unrealized, unaddressed, eurocentric superiority that has piled up over the last two centuries.

[OrcusMcP]

Honestly, as far as I can tell the problem is that Europeans and people in countries derived from European settlers have an overinflated sense of their historical worth and superiority. That and that a lot of plain old misinformation is floating around as facts and commonly accepted as such, along with weird teleological views of history as something that by necessity had to flow towards some natural order that tends to benefit the speaker.

In short, I think the problem is a whole lot of unrealized, unaddressed, eurocentric superiority that has piled up over the last two centuries.

Truth.

Europeans got really lucky, had some very influential ideas and innovations take root and rode that to a pretty commanding position in the last couple centuries.

[Terraoblivion]

And even then, the only place outside of Europe they truly dominated before the 19th century was the Americas, which not only didn't use metal, but had become a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to disease by the time the Spanish reached the mainland and where the main powers were collapsing from internal conflicts at the time. India was still mostly a patchwork of smallish British holdings, allied local rulers and vassals, not a huge country under direct British administration like it would become after The Great Mutiny. China and Japan were places for minor trade, Korea was an insular protectorate of China and the Ottomans still dominated the Middle East and North Africa. At the very least both Vietnam and Thailand were independent in Southeast Asia and Laos, inland Burma and southwest China were a wild frontier that weren't under any strong central governments. Also, China included considerable parts of what is now Russia, along with Mongolia and having Central Asia still be independent. Persia was a thing too, while Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and most of Subsaharan Africa hadn't been colonized and weren't under any central governments. The whole carving up the world thing is a 19th century thing.

So Europe was really a whole lot less dominant than people tend to imagine. Even if you choose to count the Ottomans as European. Not just that, the Europe that was dominant abroad was Spain, England, Russia if you count formally taking control of the largely empty lands in Siberia and The US, which is still European in this regard even if it gained independence. The Dutch had some colonies in modern Indonesia and Portugal had Brazil, but that was it for major colonies not held by the three above. It's not like all of Europe dominated, Italy was a poor backwater by this time and Iberia wasn't doing much better and Scandinavia was pretty far from being the wealthy, comfortable region it's known as today.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Eh, I'm not so sure. I definitely get the frustration, but they also flattened the military progression, so the Europeans aren't roflstoming everyone east of Anatolia just cuz.

No, they're even worse. China has been partitioned between Russia and Castille in my Hansa game.


I've heard at least one expert on Indian history, Niels Brimnes from the department of history at Aarhus University, comment that when England fought Mysore in the late 18th century they almost had parity in military technology on land and English victory was a product.

The Indians had kind of westernised in the area of military tactics, with foreigners regularly training Indian troops (European Officers were also imployed by the Ottomans, a job Napoleon considered early in his life). On the other hand the East India company had been fighting in India for decades and most of its troops were locals so it was just as much that they were developing off each other as anyone was copying the west.

Also, England didn't fight Mysore since it hadn't existed for decades and Wellington was Irish anyway but I don't suppose that's a distinction non-British people care about.


Not just that, the Europe that was dominant abroad was Spain, England, Russia if you count formally taking control of the largely empty lands in Siberia and The US, which is still European in this regard even if it gained independence. The Dutch had some colonies in modern Indonesia and Portugal had Brazil, but that was it for major colonies not held by the three above.

You missed out France. British dominance isn't until 1763, before then France had parity with Britain in India and had far more territory in America. England never dominated everything since again, it was dissolved as a country in 1707 back when it was a very minor power that had only escaped becoming a Dutch satellite state out of luck.

[Terraoblivion]

Only British people care about the England/The United Kingdoms of Great Britain distinction. Everybody knows what England is, but people from most of the world will look at you blankly if you say United Kingdoms, Great Britain or UK and even in places where people do know those names England is the name used. Complaining about it is like complaining about people calling the US America and its inhabitants Americans.

And, yes, France was big in India before the Seven Years War and had massive territories in Canada, but I was talking about the end of the period. And even adding France, you're still not looking at "Europe" dominating, but countries with a big Atlantic coastline dominating. And they still didn't dominate Europe itself, France was far more invested in the continent than in the Colonies, Prussia was rising as a great power, Austro-Hungary was massive and Russia was a major power...In Europe. It hadn't established most of its Central Asian and Manchurian presence yet and Siberia was largely just as undeveloped as before Russia had taken it. The end of the 18th century was the period were the three big dogs were a France that had lost most of its colonies, Austro-Hungary and Russia, with Spain having descended into irrelevance despite its colonial empire still being largely intact. Great Britain was the only great power with a significant colonial investment at the dawn of the Napoleonic wars. France had the big, largely empty Louisiana territory and Spain was no longer a great power and Russia hadn't conquered Central Asia yet or started seriously messing around in China.

So, really, the whole narrative of European dominance before the mid-19th century is also inaccurate in that it was limited in terms of what parts of Europe were involved, not just in that it was limited where Europe dominated. Europe was mostly focused internally on Europe until the industrialization was well under way. And with the exception of Great Britain, the most successful parts of Europe were ones more focused on Europe than the colonies, even at the height of its colonial empire France never put as much effort into it as had been put into the British colonies. And, really, this might be because Great Britain was sitting on the rim of Europe without good ways of building power in the continent, so they had to look elsewhere.

[Closet_Skeleton]

According to wikipedia
New France had 44,000 colonists in 1740.
The Thirteen Colonies had 1,000,000 in 1749

The main cause of this was probably that France banned religious minorities from the colonies while Britain did not. Instead, French Huguenots fled to eastern Germany instead. It wasn't that Britain was more focused on America, it was that it used it differently. France cared about trade with the natives and didn't need a large population there, the British government didn't have much interest in settling America but that was irrelevant due to private companies.

The main difference in French and English colonisation efforts was that England (and the Netherlands) had much more involvement from joint stock companies. France took its medieval guilds under government control while England was doing the opposite. The economical differences between the two countries are what mainly had the effect. Parliamentary democracy allowed capitalists to have a say in foreign policy, British strategy resulted from its economic and political culture rather than intelligence. The country's nature as an island was of little importance seeing how the Dutch were doing the same thing despite not being one.

Britain was not isolated from Europe, the personal union with Hanover from 1714 tied them deeply into European politics and they conquered Gibraltar in 1713 and tried to get a base in the baleric islands at the same time. Britain mainly entered the 7 years war because it needed Prussia as an ally to defend Hanover.

[Flickerdart]

I have a feeling that Paradox just wanted to make a game that was significantly different than Crusader Kings so they added the colonization aspect as a major feature, and then made sure the AI could use it because otherwise the Americas would be 100% player-owned.

[AgentPaper]

I have a feeling that Paradox just wanted to make a game that was significantly different than Crusader Kings so they added the colonization aspect as a major feature, and then made sure the AI could use it because otherwise the Americas would be 100% player-owned.

Er, Europa Universalis came before Crusader Kings, you know. And this is something that's been around since EU1.

[OrcusMcP]

For games like this, whether it's Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Total War, Civilization, etc. where you're playing in the middle of historical periods, there's always a tension between 4 different things:

1)Actual history
2)Historiography
3)Theme
4)"Balance"

The first two are always contentious and you will never get anything perfect or acceptable to everyone. Even trying to get things right is hard to do from a development standpoint. A game can only get so specific and granular before it becomes unwieldy, so some abstraction is necessary if only to make sure the game actually functions. Balance is a pretty tricky thing to get right in any kind of game, let alone games where it gets wrapped up in actual history and historiography.

Thus, it's often easier to just double down on theme. Crusader Kings is less about the actual medieval period than it is about CREATING A GRAND FEUDAL DYNASTY! Victoria is less about actual Victorian era history than it is about THE SPRINGTIME OF NATIONS AND THE FIRE OF INDUSTRY! Civ 5 is about BUILDING A CIVILIZATION THAT WILL STAND THE TEST OF TIME!

Europa's theme seems to be more along the lines of EXPLORE! INVENT! CONQUER! GLORY! I don't think they're quite at it yet, but the last 2 expansions seem to be moving in the right direction, at least.

While it doesn't get history or even the historiography right, can we at least agree that they're trying?

[Terraoblivion]

They're trying, but I'm not sure I'm sold on their competence at it. Some elements of this latest patch was pretty bad for all points except the theme, where they enhanced it for Europeans but made it much harder for everyone else.

Also, it seems like they rebroke France. Every game I've tried the rest of Europe cowers in fear of the big blue blob and that didn't happen to a degree like that before the most recent patch.

[Leecros]

The game i had with Burgundy had France falling flat on it's face, but at the same time that was with player intervention. I took advantage of an alliance with Castille and Denmark and pushed wars against France every time they went to war with England. So ultimately the reason there wasn't a BBB was because there was a B...B...B. I didn't think that through did i? At least BBB stands for Big Burgundy Blob instead of Big Blue Blob.

And it was laughably easy...As i mentioned in the post i made earlier about it, if i had known i'd be THAT much more powerful than everyone else, i would have been more aggressive.

[Flickerdart]

Er, Europa Universalis came before Crusader Kings, you know. And this is something that's been around since EU1.
I know. But "colonizing stuff" is the first thing most people think about when someone says "Europe in the Age of Sail."

[Grif]

Also, it seems like they rebroke France. Every game I've tried the rest of Europe cowers in fear of the big blue blob and that didn't happen to a degree like that before the most recent patch.

The weird thing is nobody hates France for conquering half of the HRE either. Did they break the coalition mechanics as well?

[Terraoblivion]

They work just fine against the player at least. I've had big coalitions happen on multiple occasions.

[tonberrian]

It's size, I think. If you're a lot bigger than the other guys, they won't join coalitions against you. Because it pisses them off.

[Guancyto]

Coalitions are... wunky, to say the least. Nations with the Threatened attitude won't join them (which happens easily if you're huge). Also, neither will nations with the Hostile attitude, which often covers a lot of people who just want your land (which happens easily if you've a lot of land).

But your rivals? Oh, they'll get in them and never leave.

[Alipuriaharsh]

This game is not available in India. Bring it in India please.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

This game is not available in India. Bring it in India please.

Not even off Steam?

[Flickerdart]

So, uh...I made a claim for the throne of Japan, because Portugal was getting uppity and I wanted some more manpower. They had an uncertain succession and I had a royal marriage so I thought why not.

Except now they hate me, they broke off the alliance, and the massive Manchu blob also made the claim. Any advice for fighting a superior enemy?

[tonberrian]

So, uh...I made a claim for the throne of Japan, because Portugal was getting uppity and I wanted some more manpower. They had an uncertain succession and I had a royal marriage so I thought why not.

Except now they hate me, they broke off the alliance, and the massive Manchu blob also made the claim. Any advice for fighting a superior enemy?

Make sure to take the defensive. Attacking armies will get penalties for all sorts of terrains, while defenders will not.

What tech level and type are you and Manchu?

[Flickerdart]

Make sure to take the defensive. Attacking armies will get penalties for all sorts of terrains, while defenders will not.

What tech level and type are you and Manchu?
Thankfully we have a very narrow shared border - there's still some Ming, Zhao, and various other rump states left over. So it should be pretty easy to park my guys there and wait until they come. Unless they arrive by sea, I guess. My navy isn't very good.

I don't remember what tech levels we have, but I'm Chinese and they're Steppe Nomad (I think) so I should have a bit of an edge there.

[Narkis]

I'm not sure how the geography over there looks like, but try to lure them into a mountain if at all possible. Defenders in mountains can hold off vastly superior forces, and inflict massive casualties on them. And make sure you have a decent general in command!

[Leecros]

So in my latest game, I decided that as Brandenburg, I would attempt race the Protestant Reformation and Form Germany before things started getting shaken up...Or at least gather up the Cores needed to form it, as the 10 admin tech requirement would be rather difficult to do unless you managed to delay the Reformation by 20-30 years.
I almost got! At the end of the day, the only piece of land that wasn't either directly mine or my vassal was Nürnburg and it was to be my next target. I probably would have made it too, if it weren't for those meddling HREmperors. The unlawful territory penalty that hits every member of the HRE when the Emperor comes calling really put a strain on my alliance with Austria, who was not emperor, but all but necessary for my early expansions. There was a few times where I had so much Aggressive Expansion that if i had lost my alliance with Austria, I would have been hit by a nasty punitive war. I threw a screenshot at the end of the post. It's 30 years after the Reformation started, but I haven't really done much expansion since. After I failed in my mission, I decided to go after the HREmperor title myself and try for both forming Germany and unifying the HRE. So i spent a good deal of time just sitting and waiting for relations to improve. I think i'll probably have Denmark, Poland, and most of Germany(especially after i get those claims from forming Germany) under my control in the next 60-70 years, because I am the Emperor now. I don't have to worry about him yelling at me and causing relation hits with everyone i know and love(To subjugate)


http://oi57.tinypic.com/xmk9k8.jpg

[Flickerdart]

Started a new Huron game. I don't have CoP so I just sort of waffled about beating up neighbours until France dropped by. Now I'm successfully Westernized (although Catholic) and slowly catching up...if only my manpower would recover faster!

[Grif]

Definitely not regretting leaving France as a "final boss" sort of deal in my Castile game. Turns out once colonial interests collide, you don't really want the BBB as your friend anymore. :smalltongue:

Took several 100k vs 100k battles with France on one side and me and Austria (and Mantua, who got fairly large somehow) to whittle down their absolutely enormous manpower.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Anyone interested in an EUIV succession game?

Maybe with a republic so we can actually vote for people from the forum to lead our country. With savegame editing we could even put our names in.

[OrcusMcP]

Sure, I could be interested in some EU4 action.

[Guancyto]

The problem with an EU4 succession game is that (I think) everyone needs to have the same checksum.

And, well, does anybody still play this game unmodded? :smalltongue:

[AgentPaper]

The problem with an EU4 succession game is that (I think) everyone needs to have the same checksum.

And, well, does anybody still play this game unmodded? :smalltongue:

I used to play it modded, but I haven't in quite a long while. The only mod really big enough to be worth losing Ironman is MEIOU & Taxes, and that's a bloated mess, so...

Personally, I'd be more interested in a multiplayer game than succession.

[Narkis]

I'd be interested in either a succession, or a multiplayer game. I doubt mods would be a problem, iirc Paradox stats were that something like 5% of the people use a mod at all.

[Vauron]

I'd be interested in either multiplayer or succession. In a succession game I could be slotted in after someone has a really good run as I'd likely flail ineffectively before being choked by rebels.

[Grif]

And, well, does anybody still play this game unmodded? :smalltongue:

*raises hand* :smalltongue:

(Except for a small minimod I made myself to include EU3 songs.)

[Flickerdart]

So, in my Huron game I've finally come into conflict with England. France is on my side but they're not helping much, and I have yet to win a victory against the English despite having Westernized and acquired horses and cannon. I'm about 8 levels of tech behind, but I'm throwing triple to quadruple numbers at the Redcoats without accomplishing anything. It seems that the simple effort of marching is depleting the morale of my troops, making them quickly crumble...what do I do?

[Grif]

So, in my Huron game I've finally come into conflict with England. France is on my side but they're not helping much, and I have yet to win a victory against the English despite having Westernized and acquired horses and cannon. I'm about 8 levels of tech behind, but I'm throwing triple to quadruple numbers at the Redcoats without accomplishing anything. It seems that the simple effort of marching is depleting the morale of my troops, making them quickly crumble...what do I do?

Defend in mountains? I'm not sure of the geography of North America ingame, but there should be places where you can force crossings?

Barring that, I'd just play a defensive war and just unsiege any province they manage to take. (Also, you might want to pick up military ideas if you haven't done so already. Defensive is a very good complement to low tech nations.)

[VonFenris]

I'd also be in for some multiplayer action!

[Flickerdart]

Defend in mountains? I'm not sure of the geography of North America ingame, but there should be places where you can force crossings?

Barring that, I'd just play a defensive war and just unsiege any province they manage to take. (Also, you might want to pick up military ideas if you haven't done so already. Defensive is a very good complement to low tech nations.)
They win when I'm defending, too. It's weird.

I do have a military idea, but it's Quantity (I was tired of having no manpower available, it's really helped a lot).

[Closet_Skeleton]

Mods aren't a problem, since everyone can download them for free unlike DLC.

[Murmaider]

So, in my Huron game I've finally come into conflict with England. France is on my side but they're not helping much, and I have yet to win a victory against the English despite having Westernized and acquired horses and cannon. I'm about 8 levels of tech behind, but I'm throwing triple to quadruple numbers at the Redcoats without accomplishing anything. It seems that the simple effort of marching is depleting the morale of my troops, making them quickly crumble...what do I do?

Eight levels of tech? Military tech or just tech in general? If it is the former, there is no way you're going to win a single battle no matter the numbers. If it is the latter then some additional information could be helpful.

What's your combat width? Using less infantry than your combat width, or not having enough in the second line to resupply the first line may cause you to have artillery in the first line.

How do your generals compare to those of Great Great Britain? with 1.6 generals matter much more than they used to and lucky nations like GB have usually really strong ones.

How do your other stats compare? As far as I can remember GB has +5% discipline right off the bat.

Some other pointers: Quantity is arguably the worst military idea group. Even aristocratic is better most of the time. I'd take Offensive, which has both manpower and land forcelimit modifiers.

Also, even after westernization you may tech faster but you no longer gain western units like you used to.

[OrcusMcP]

Some other pointers: Quantity is arguably the worst military idea group. Even aristocratic is better most of the time. I'd take Offensive, which has both manpower and land forcelimit modifiers.

Quantity isn't bad, but if you're taking it to offset manpower issues then you're using it wrong. It's not usually a good first military idea to take, but that's a different story.

THe military ideas should be enhancing your military situation, not making up for your lackings. DO you have national ideas that boost discipline? Make your troops even more beastly with Quality! Lots of land and manpower? Take Quantity to give yourself almost infinite troops for no money! Small country with not much forcelimit/manpower? Take Offensive so that your (likely only) army is lead by the best possible general! Trying to deal with advanced enemies who really want your land? Take Defensive to bleed them white!

[Murmaider]

Sure, Quantity is not bad, it's just the worst military idea. I would probably pick it over Espionage and... I don't know, Exploration as Austria?

[Guancyto]

I dunno, Espionage got a lot better just by virtue of being a Diplomatic idea group now instead of an Administrative one...

Oh, and rebels getting hilariously stupid in the last patch.

[OrcusMcP]

Sure, Quantity is not bad, it's just the worst military idea. I would probably pick it over Espionage and... I don't know, Exploration as Austria?

Eh, I think they all have their place. Espionage is really powerful if you have Ottomans/Russia/France/Ming/Other-powerful-country as an angry neighbor. Giving a bunch of revolts, ruining alliances and knowing troop placements can be a very useful precursor to war with major powers.

On the Succession Game front, if people are interested in it, we should start figuring out who to play.

Very important decisions to make:
-Mods? Do we want to use MEIOU & Taxes? Something else? Vanilla?
-Expansions? Looks like there'll be a mini-expansion coming out soon, should we wait for it? Only use specific ones?

Country choices:
-Western country? If so, should be something smaller to add challenge.
-Muslim country? Steppe Nomads? Fight the backwardness inevitable conquests from Europe!
-India? SOme new stuff went into India in the latest patch/expansion, could be neat!
-New World? East Asia?
-Any other cool ideas?

[OrcusMcP]

Oh, and rebels getting hilariously stupid in the last patch.

I might be in the minority, but I actually like the strong rebels. I much prefer them being an actual threat you have to worry about and negotiate around rather than just mosquitos you have to swat occasionally.

[Guancyto]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to complain.

I was just saying that Espionage Ideas are in a much better place right now, as Support Rebels has gotten a lot stronger with the substantial increase to rebel strength.

Also they give spy offense now it's kind of funny that they didn't do that before.

[Grif]

For the succession game, I only have one suggestion.

Ulm.

:smallamused:

[OrcusMcP]

Oh! Oh! Idea!

Play the Hansa.

Tagline: Contiguous provinces are for chumps.

Only own provinces that are centers of trade/estuaries, no owned province can be adjacent to another owned province.

[Flickerdart]

Speaking of the Hansa, is it possible to get anywhere as Novgorod? It seems like Muscovy declares war on you pretty much immediately, and they have way more soldiers than you.

[VonFenris]

Oh yes! NSFW for HRE minors. (http://www.reddit.com/r/UlmGonewild)

[Leecros]

Speaking of the Hansa, is it possible to get anywhere as Novgorod? It seems like Muscovy declares war on you pretty much immediately, and they have way more soldiers than you.

I seem to recall that i did pretty well as Novgorod once. Granted it was way back around when the game first came out and it was so long ago that I don't really remember how I managed it, nor was it a game that i played very well afterwards. Your best bet is probably to get an alliance with Lithuania, but i don't really know how likely it is for them to be friendly towards you at the start. Other than that you could try an alliance with Denmark, but again I don't know they feel about Novgorod at the start. If you could get an alliance with a horde...you won't get an alliance with a horde...








least helpful post ever

[Flickerdart]

Your best bet is probably to get an alliance with Lithuania, but i don't really know how likely it is for them to be friendly towards you at the start. Other than that you could try an alliance with Denmark, but again I don't know they feel about Novgorod at the start.
My game pretty much followed history - I sent diplomats to butter up Lithuania, and Muscovy dogpiled me before I could cement an alliance. Denmark is too far away to do anything and IIRC also doesn't like you at game start.

[Narkis]

Eh, I think they all have their place. Espionage is really powerful if you have Ottomans/Russia/France/Ming/Other-powerful-country as an angry neighbor. Giving a bunch of revolts, ruining alliances and knowing troop placements can be a very useful precursor to war with major powers.

On the Succession Game front, if people are interested in it, we should start figuring out who to play.

Very important decisions to make:
-Mods? Do we want to use MEIOU & Taxes? Something else? Vanilla?
-Expansions? Looks like there'll be a mini-expansion coming out soon, should we wait for it? Only use specific ones?

Country choices:
-Western country? If so, should be something smaller to add challenge.
-Muslim country? Steppe Nomads? Fight the backwardness inevitable conquests from Europe!
-India? SOme new stuff went into India in the latest patch/expansion, could be neat!
-New World? East Asia?
-Any other cool ideas?

I say we pick a republic and instead of randomly determining who gets to play next, we vote.

[OrcusMcP]

I say we pick a republic and instead of randomly determining who gets to play next, we vote.

Interesting idea, how do we want the process to go?

-4 people throw their hat into the ring (one for incumbent, one each for the ADM/DIP/MIL candidate), offer campaign promises/goals inline with their attribute, and then everyone not running votes?

-Person finishing the last round offers directions for each candidate, then everyone votes?

-Something else?

EDIT: Also, which republic?

[Narkis]

#1 sounds good, though it'll be a bit slow.

As for which republic to play: I looked at the list of nations to find what republics were available. And I saw Switzerland on the list. The ones you least suspect.:smallwink:

[OrcusMcP]

Switzerland would be an interesting start, true. Plus, obvious hilarious callbacks.

Personally, I think Tuscany, Genoa or Milan in 1447 would be an interesting choice.

[Grif]

#1 sounds good, though it'll be a bit slow.

As for which republic to play: I looked at the list of nations to find what republics were available. And I saw Switzerland on the list. The ones you least suspect.:smallwink:

Heh. Callbacks to that would be hilarious. :smalltongue:

[Closet_Skeleton]

I restarted about 10 times as Novgorod. Eventually I formed Russia and it just turned into a boring slow expansion game.

Basically you just have to beat Moscovy badly once and get your cores back, then smash them around at every opening you see until you're the top dog and then your rise to global superpower is guaranteed.

They nerfed Ivan's Hundred, back when I tried it that idea was amazing.


I say we pick a republic and instead of randomly determining who gets to play next, we vote.

Well, that was my original plan when I suggested it.

I'd vote for a noble republic, since they had a longer election cycle. On the other hand trade republics are more interesting.

We also need to decide if incumbentwill be allowed to automatically give themselves a limited number of extra terms or if they're have to apply to be re-elected at the first possible circumstance.

Hansa is cool but I vote for somewhere Italian or Switzerland. As long as it isn't weak and hard to get a port with like Ulm or Frankfurt. Friesland would actually be ideal but that start is hard thanks to Burgundy.

[Leecros]

Bah, I keep seeing you all suggest Western Republics.


Go for Broke: Tibet.

:smallamused:

[OrcusMcP]

Bah, I keep seeing you all suggest Western Republics.


Go for Broke: Tibet.

:smallamused:

Are you sure it's a republic? The wiki says so, but I thought it was a theocracy in game?

Edit: Plus, there'll be a lot of "OH GOD IT'S MING!" or "OH GOD IT'S MANCHU!"

[Leecros]

Are you sure it's a republic? The wiki says so, but I thought it was a theocracy in game?

Edit: Plus, there'll be a lot of "OH GOD IT'S MING!" or "OH GOD IT'S MANCHU!"


Nope, it's definitely a Noble Republic at the start of the game. they have the option a bit later to turn into a theocracy which i presume the AI usually does.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/30k4ub5.jpg

As far as Ming goes...who cares about Ming? They're a glass cannon. If they get beaten up in a couple of wars, they'll fall apart. Even if they don't, it's no more dangerous than having to worry about Austria or France...Possibly even less so, because they tech slower than their neighbors. The real danger will be mid-game when Russia comes over to say "hi"

[Narkis]

Well, that was my original plan when I suggested it.

Wow, your actual first post completely slipped my mind by the time I answered Orcus. I knew a voting game was a great idea, but I forgot it wasn't my idea. I wonder if I'll be able to remember my own name in 50 years...

[OrcusMcP]

Nope, it's definitely a Noble Republic at the start of the game. they have the option a bit later to turn into a theocracy which i presume the AI usually does.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/30k4ub5.jpg

As far as Ming goes...who cares about Ming? They're a glass cannon. If they get beaten up in a couple of wars, they'll fall apart. Even if they don't, it's no more dangerous than having to worry about Austria or France...Possibly even less so, because they tech slower than their neighbors. The real danger will be mid-game when Russia comes over to say "hi"

Hmmm. That could indeed be interesting! I'd be down for Tibet.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well, that was a long war.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/577899631312870762/FE1C357D61E9014A15007CFD99A443C4C584BAF3/

Managed to get Luneberg and Stade back from the HRE.

I doubt there will be enough time after the truce runs out to retake Hamburg and Danzig :smallfrown:

[Flickerdart]

So, in honour of the date, who's all starting up MURRICA campaigns?

[Guancyto]

I'm kinda surprised that there isn't a sale on the MURICA DLC for MURICA day.

But then, Paradox is Swedish, so...

[Terraoblivion]

That's quite the map. A gigantic, reformed HRE? Norway eating most of Sweden? Riga having grown? A huge, independent Ukraine? Scotland, Ireland and Albania independent? Algeria conquering most of North Africa? Crimea surviving? How did you get this?

[IthilanorStPete]

That's quite the map. A gigantic, reformed HRE? Norway eating most of Sweden? Riga having grown? A huge, independent Ukraine? Scotland, Ireland and Albania independent? Algeria conquering most of North Africa? Crimea surviving? How did you get this?

Five imaginary dollars say it's a CK2 import.

[Guancyto]

CK2 conversion wouldn't have Albania, nor Riga, nor Ukraine, nor generally the Ottomans.

My bet is that Lucky Nations (and therefore all bets) are off.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Its Ironman, so lucky nations is guaranteed. I don't see how Austria would have got that powerful without it. Only Lucky nation that isn't incredibly powerful is Sweden and that got integrated into Denmark, revolted with only some of its provinces and then Norway eat it.

How did I get that map? By not interfering in Europe at all and seeing how big a colonial Empire I could get with just the Hansa's starting provinces + Stade, Luneberg and Danzig (not getting launberg or holstein was a bad idea since it cuts you off from several decisions and missions but I stopped doing well in this game once I let Austria pass too many reforms). Can't say its an achievement since I've been playing so badly and had very few options, Reformed is powerful sure but it isn't worth having no friends.

I almost always see Ireland independent, England just never goes for them in any of my games. Albania gets released a lot too because its very low war score and Ottomans don't win all the time.

Ukraine and Riga just comes from rebels and then blobbed. As did Norway after Denmark integrated them, I think Iceland is still Danish.

The Austria got a PU on Hungary and when it unites the HRE there's no real stopping it blobbing. France doesn't have a chance.

Scotland got released in a war against France a few years ago.

Castille only formed Spain like 10 years ago.

Rest of the world maps since people showed a minor interest.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/50979744391417501/9B44384EFAD6CDFDAF77F94C98906185ADB59A41/

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/50979744391416461/057ED066B41D7D1B5A5E7541F8EE34F323BEF3BE/

[Flickerdart]

A British Kamchatka? Now that's weird. How did they get all the way over there?

[mythmonster2]

It's almost always Britain, Portugal, or Spain who gets Kamchatka and Hokkaido in my games. Russia takes too long to reach there, so by that time their colonial ranges from the west coast of the Americas or from Indonesia let them colonize it, and so for some reason they must.

[Leecros]

All things considered, Lucky nations doesn't give that huge of a bonus. I've certainly seen Austria do very well(get close to reforming the HRE) without it.
...
and then i crush them, because I've had some bad experiences with reformed Holy Roman Empires in EUIII.

Natural luck can often be a better advantage than just the Lucky Nations buff.

[Closet_Skeleton]

One achievement got, one more to go for this game.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/50979744420556529/46439A60D6FEC526926497218550089FB2348A9B/

Did a stupid trick to get Uzbek culture for Mughals and now I've somehow kept my Nomad ideas anyway so don't need to.

Hopefully dat France won't get in the way.

Hilariously, Persia is Sikh.

[Flickerdart]

Are you Westernized? Because France+Spain is scary stuff. :smalleek:

[Leecros]

That's about as far as i got in my Khazan game when i realized that they weren't eligible for the Great Khan achievement. Then i got sad.

Silly pompous Golden Horde/Mongol Horde. Thinking you're better than the other hordes....:smallfrown:

[Flickerdart]

I tried a Norway game the other day, thinking that they could be good at reaching America first by hopping through Greenland. Everything went well at first - I allied with Sweden, who promptly broke both of us out of the Kalmar Union and helped me partition Novgorod. I also made alliances and royal marriages with Lithuania, England, and Scotland. Things were going great until I realized that Greenland was out of my reach - before 7 diplotech, Norway's colonial range is only 160, boosted to 240 from the +50% from Exploration. Greenland's provinces are 324 and 328 away.

Before I could get 7 diplotech, Sweden announced that I was their rival, broke royal ties and alliance, and declared a war of conquest on me. All of my allies refused to heed the call, and poor destitute Norway was trampled by an army double her size.

Is it better to start as Denmark with this route and form Scandinavia before colonization? Or can Norway into America?

[Terraoblivion]

It might be a good idea to make sure the Kalmar Union holds until you're ready, actually. Because then Sweden can't do **** to you and as a whole the Union is strong enough to shield you from a lot of enemies.

[Closet_Skeleton]

You took exploration with Norway? Have you like, actually checked what their ideas do? Norway has a thousand problems but Diplotech shouldn't be one of them. Don't even try and be friends with Sweden, they start with cores on you, helping them win wars is just a terrible mistake, you should be destroying them as quickly as possible.

I've tried Norway -> America, both before and after the patch. The patch made it easier by moving Expansion to Administrative so it isn't conflicting with diplomatic tech for power.

The sad news is that without a monarch with really high admin monarch to complete Expansion you just can't get to America before Spain and Portugal. You need to take a military idea group first to free up admin points to unlock the second idea group but even that's not enough with a stat of 1-2 like you're probably going to have.

Norway's explorer idea just unlocks way too late (after the second idea group is available) to compete with other atlantic nations that just pick exploration with their first group. So yes, Denmark actually colonises early easier than Norway because Norway's ideas that make exploration redundant also hurt you early.

To be honest, starting with Scotland and using the 'Shetlands' mission to attack Norway early and stealing Iceland will get you colonising earlier.

I'll try Norway again next patch with national focus solving the admin problem and naval being moved to military.


Are you Westernized? Because France+Spain is scary stuff. :smalleek:

Just finished. That was the first achievement. Great Khan is next.

[OrcusMcP]

Well, now that I've got some available time again, I thought I'd take point in getting the Republican Succession game going!

Everyone who wants in will need to decide on the following:

DLC & Mods
This will likely take a bit of time to finalize, so Res Publica will likely be out by the time things start. Which DLC, if any, do we want to have active?

Conquest of Paradise. Not strictly necessary, but makes for more interesting North America, whether or not we randomize.
Wealth of Nations. Lots of good stuff for Merchant Republics. Plus, pirates, always fun.
Res Publica (not out yet). National foci, other republic stuff.

Also, do we want any mods? MEIOU & TAXES is the most likely contender, but there are multiple options.

Country
Our top suggestions for our nation so far are:
Tibet! Fragile, poor, but it's a Noble Republic in Asia, and that's just awesome.
Switzerland! Hilarious callbacks! Acronyms! Efficiency! Short Election Cycles!
Tuscany! There's Noble Republics, and then there's Tuscany. Who likes Renaissance Princes? We do!
Genoa! Too much love is given to Venice. Genoa can give us a possible western facing, rather than an eastern facing Mediterranean Merchant Republic.
There's always room for another suggestion, I'll call a vote later on once people are settled.

Rules
Similarly to the CK2 succession game, we will have a Die-Rolling thread to determine who goes next, but because this is a republic there will be a twist: Elections!
The top 3 rollers will each take on one of the ADM, DIP or MIL candidates, develop a platform with a clear objective (Go to war with X, get to tech Y, open idea group Z, colonize A, build fleet B, etc) and people will vote for it.
The incumbent, provided that they are still alive in game, can also run to keep themselves in power.
However, the incumbent, whether running or not will need to give a clear indicator of the Republic status before elections (income, ideas, tech, rivals, SotW, etc).

So, who's in?

[AgentPaper]

I'm in, and since Merchant Republics have been changed a lot and I never really played one anyways, I'll vote for Genoa. I'd also suggest strongly against any mods. Partly because I prefer the game un-modded, and partly because adding mods only makes it more likely that we lose the save at some point due to corruption or version changes or what have you.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I vote for no DLC or Wealth of Nations only if we're getting a merchant republic. We just can't assume everyone will have the latest DLC the moment it comes out, no matter how relevant it is. On the other hand we should wait for the DLC to come out so a big patch doesn't ruin the rules a week to two in.

I'll vote for Tuscany. Lots of options even if they can't go colonial as easy as Friesland or Hansa.

[Flickerdart]

The top 3 rollers will each take on one of the ADM, DIP or MIL candidates, develop a platform with a clear objective (Go to war with X, get to tech Y, open idea group Z, colonize A, build fleet B, etc) and people will vote for it.
Are we allowed to make vague promises of prosperity while belittling our opponents with toxic and partisan discourse?

[Closet_Skeleton]

Are we allowed to make vague promises of prosperity while belittling our opponents with toxic and partisan discourse?

Only if you also include your actual game plans like declaring war against certain targets, saving money for buildings etc.

[Grif]

I'm fine with any of the DLCs, since they do add a lot. (In particular, WoN seems to add a lot of options. Conquest of Paradise, not so much if you aren't playing a colonial game, and most of that are in the base game already.)

No preference for nations though. I am tempted to suggest Byzantium, but then we probably wouldn't survive the first decade. XD

[OrcusMcP]

Are we allowed to make vague promises of prosperity while belittling our opponents with toxic and partisan discourse?

Such things are best done when they are in line with actual plans.

ie: "Why would we want to concern ourselves with the influx of smelly Sardinians my opponents war would bring? Best we stay at home and back in our vast wealth and be the envy of all Italy!" (No war, invest in tech, bank up money, etc)


I vote for no DLC or Wealth of Nations only if we're getting a merchant republic. We just can't assume everyone will have the latest DLC the moment it comes out, no matter how relevant it is. On the other hand we should wait for the DLC to come out so a big patch doesn't ruin the rules a week to two in.

I definitely think Wealth of Nations should be included regardless, if only for rival mechanics and trade, but I do see your point. And yes, waiting until post-Res Publica patch is a good idea.

[Leecros]

If i could vote without playing, I would vote for Tibet.


Mostly due to my enjoyment of watching people playing outside of the Safe zone(Western Tech).:smalltongue:

[VonFenris]

I'm tempted to vote Switzerland, for all the memories, but I'm afraid it would feel like it's all been done before.

Either Tuscany or Tibet will do, with my preference for Tibet.

[tonberrian]

So I just subscribed to MEIOU & Taxes on the Steam Workshop. Now I get a crash whenever I try loading the launcher. Any ideas what to do?

Edit: Apparently the launcher doesn't like downloading them all at once. Piecemeal worked better.

Edit the second: Now it's crashing while loading the world after choosing a nation. Joy.

Edit the third: Now the game seems to be launching properly (I accidentally enabled the random new world module in the launcher but not in the lobby), but I can't seem to be able to view all the information on the in-game menus - for example, on the government tab, I can't see far enough down to choose my military advisor.

Edit the fourth: Figured that out, was an HD mod. Now if only I could figure out how to make all the colors less brown, I'd be happy.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Mostly due to my enjoyment of watching people playing outside of the Safe zone(Western Tech).:smalltongue:

The problem with Tibet is that you're actually really safe unless you're inexperienced. You also have very few options (expand against Ming, expand against Oirat Horde, expand against Bengal) until you really blob. Ming AI sucks at war even more than other AIs, you have an abundance of mountains to defend. Seriously, Tibet is easy mode. Only drawback is how terrible Buddhism's bonuses are but you can convert to Sunni easily enough it you focus on Chagatai and muslim India for a bit.

Italian states are a lot less safe early on because they play in a bubble of other western tech nations.

[OrcusMcP]

Yeah, I would not describe Italy in 1444 a safe zone by any stretch. Genoa has Genoa and Corsica in Europe, then Kaffa and Azov in the Black Sea. It not only has to worry about normal Italian craziness, but also threats from Crimea and Ottomans. Tuscany has a couple wealthy provinces, and is well poised to take a couple more, but it's also surrounded by the Papal States (who either fade or soar), Milan, Naples, Venice, Aragon, and isn't far from Austria, Castille and France.

I didn't even mention starting at Friesland, because while it's possible to survive and eventually form the Netherlands, its REALLY hard.

[Leecros]

The problem with Tibet is that you're actually really safe unless you're inexperienced. You also have very few options (expand against Ming, expand against Oirat Horde, expand against Bengal) until you really blob. Ming AI sucks at war even more than other AIs, you have an abundance of mountains to defend. Seriously, Tibet is easy mode. Only drawback is how terrible Buddhism's bonuses are but you can convert to Sunni easily enough it you focus on Chagatai and muslim India for a bit.

Italian states are a lot less safe early on because they play in a bubble of other western tech nations.

My comment about Western Tech being the "Safe Zone" had nothing to do with personal(or national in this case) safety. Obviously not every nation that has western tech is easy to play. I should probably also include Eastern and Ottoman tech in that since they hold very similar positions.

If you head over to the EUIV:AAR section on the paradox forums, then you start to see a pattern. Of the time of this post there's let's plays for Luxembourg, Naples, Bohemia, Austria, Castille, Spain(imported from CKII), and many other western nations...along with a few others.

If you head onto youtube and look the the part 1's of Europa Universalis IV's let's plays you'll find a similar trend.

People like playing western tech nations, it's where they feel most comfortable and it's in an area they can relate to more(usually). They don't start out with all of the disadvantages that non-western nations start with, mainly that their tech, manpower, and income is going to suck compared to their European counterparts. So that's why i called it a "safe zone".

As far as why i suggested Tibet, yeah i know they're not difficult for an experienced player, but they're small and weak enough at the start that a few errors or really bad luck early on could get them into a heap of trouble and later on they get to play with european nations that are more technologically advanced than Tibet is. Also they're a Republic that most people don't know exists(they tend to turn into a Theocracy when the Dalai Lama comes calling.

[OrcusMcP]

People like playing western tech nations, it's where they feel most comfortable and it's in an area they can relate to more(usually). They don't start out with all of the disadvantages that non-western nations start with, mainly that their tech, manpower, and income is going to suck compared to their European counterparts. So that's why i called it a "safe zone".


"Comfort Zone" might've been a better phrase, then. :smallwink:

For the record, my vote would be for Tibet. Secondary choice for Tuscany.

Also, one more reason to wait until the Res Publica patch (which might be next week): scaled Republican Tradition!

[Terraoblivion]

Also, honestly, it might be because the costs of playing beyond the Muslim tech group are so punishing that you'll spend vastly more time not really doing much of anything to save monarch power when you're out there. Especially with how more and more things cost monarch power, making loss of it and greater tech costs increasingly punitive.

[OrcusMcP]

Also, honestly, it might be because the costs of playing beyond the Muslim tech group are so punishing that you'll spend vastly more time not really doing much of anything to save monarch power when you're out there. Especially with how more and more things cost monarch power, making loss of it and greater tech costs increasingly punitive.

Again, with the upcoming patch they are finally eliminating the MP malus that Chinese tech used to get, which helps, and national foci should help make the game more dynamic if we go that way.

Tech level will be lame, but we should still be fine to get buildings/ideas/policies and have some character to our nation by the time we can leech tech off of westerners.

[tonberrian]

Too bad that Milan isn't Ambrosian Republic in the first start...

[Closet_Skeleton]

Too bad that Milan isn't Ambrosian Republic in the first start...

Its still an option for voting, you only miss a few years of predictable stuff.



As far as why i suggested Tibet, yeah i know they're not difficult for an experienced player, but they're small and weak enough at the start that a few errors or really bad luck early on could get them into a heap of trouble

Which makes them questionable for a succession game that should be open to players with a range of skill levels.

[Leecros]

Which makes them questionable for a succession game that should be open to players with a range of skill levels.

I'm not sure i'm following the point you're trying to get across, earlier you were talking about how Tibet is really safe and its easy mode while the Italian Republics are a lot less safe early on because they're surrounded by western nations. Are you just arguing for the sake of argument? Or intentionally playing Devil's Advocate?

If you make a few errors with any of the republics on the list you're going to be in a bad spot.

Tibet is on par with the other Republics. They each have their own advantages, disadvantages, and challenges. If someone can play as Tuscany and Genoa and do well(or even all right), then they should be able to play as Tibet and do all right. The only major thing that Tibet doesn't have that the other republics on the list do is that they don't have Big Brother Austria watching over them and they don't have western tech.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'm not sure i'm following the point you're trying to get across, earlier you were talking about how Tibet is really safe and its easy mode while the Italian Republics are a lot less safe early on because they're surrounded by western nations. Are you just arguing for the sake of argument? Or intentionally playing Devil's Advocate?

Tibet is safe if you have a decent amount of experience, it is easy to screw up if you jump in without much. That's all I said and there's no contradiction.

[Leecros]

Tibet is safe if you have a decent amount of experience, it is easy to screw up if you jump in without much.

Yeah and the other republics on the list are largely similar in that regard.

[OrcusMcP]

Yeah and the other republics on the list are largely similar in that regard.

Republics in general are in a tough spot early in EU4, because this is still the age of Kings and Popes. It's not until the 1700s that Republican/Enlightenment ideals really start to take hold in the Western world.

But simple miscommunications are not worth internet fights.

Can we agree that no matter what this should be an amusing game?

[Driderman]

Man how I loathe France. Even with Ambrosian republic Milan with both Plutocratic, Quality and Offense Military idea groups, almost max prestige and a morale and/or discipline military advisor, equal military tech level and low war exhaustion, I still get my ass kicked when fighting defensively in a mountain region with my March building and a star fort, against a lesser force. Oh yeah, and of course being allied with Naples, Castille, Hungary and Great Britain is nowhere near enough to contain the French either, they'll just fight all 4 Great Powers (and Naples) at once and peace them out one by one. Man, France is ridiculous!
/Ragevent

So, how does one France?

[OrcusMcP]

Man how I loathe France. Even with Ambrosian republic Milan with both Plutocratic, Quality and Offense Military idea groups, almost max prestige and a morale and/or discipline military advisor, equal military tech level and low war exhaustion, I still get my ass kicked when fighting defensively in a mountain region with my March building and a star fort, against a lesser force. Oh yeah, and of course being allied with Naples, Castille, Hungary and Great Britain is nowhere near enough to contain the French either, they'll just fight all 4 Great Powers (and Naples) at once and peace them out one by one. Man, France is ridiculous!
/Ragevent

So, how does one France?

Yeah, I have a Papal States game going right now. France can take on literally the ENTIRE WORLD and still come out on top. It's friggin nuts. Go BBB.

People hate it, but Espionage is actually a decent way to destabilize big powers. They will overreach eventually, and when they do you are there to ruin their reputation/alliances, increase their revolt risk and prop up their rebels. Then, when they show the slightest crack, crowbar the **** out of it with all your allies.

[tonberrian]

Man how I loathe France. Even with Ambrosian republic Milan with both Plutocratic, Quality and Offense Military idea groups, almost max prestige and a morale and/or discipline military advisor, equal military tech level and low war exhaustion, I still get my ass kicked when fighting defensively in a mountain region with my March building and a star fort, against a lesser force. Oh yeah, and of course being allied with Naples, Castille, Hungary and Great Britain is nowhere near enough to contain the French either, they'll just fight all 4 Great Powers (and Naples) at once and peace them out one by one. Man, France is ridiculous!
/Ragevent

So, how does one France?

Every time I've toasted France I've let them crash against the HRE and then attack them.

This works significantly less well when I am the HRE.

[OrcusMcP]

Well, patch notes are out (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?789336-Patch-Notes-1.7), and should be live tomorrow.

Tibet currently has the lead in votes for the succession game, with Tuscany close behind, but that's with only a few votes. Is there no one else interested?

(Note the "Republic may turn into dictatorship at low tradition" patch note. :small amused:)

[AgentPaper]

Well, patch notes are out (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?789336-Patch-Notes-1.7), and should be live tomorrow.

Tibet currently has the lead in votes for the succession game, with Tuscany close behind, but that's with only a few votes. Is there no one else interested?

(Note the "Republic may turn into dictatorship at low tradition" patch note. :small amused:)

I don't think I voted, so I'll vote on Tuscany. Mostly because Chinese tech group is terrible.

[Grif]

Well, patch notes are out (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?789336-Patch-Notes-1.7), and should be live tomorrow.

Tibet currently has the lead in votes for the succession game, with Tuscany close behind, but that's with only a few votes. Is there no one else interested?

(Note the "Republic may turn into dictatorship at low tradition" patch note. :small amused:)

I'm mostly iffy about playing a small Chinese republic. Thing about EU4 that it's still Euro-centric, and thus most of the flavour events are similarly concentrated.

Voting for Tuscany.

[Tebryn]

Patch Notes make me excited, a lot of neat fixes. Still not a whole lot of love or help for the East but that deserves a DLC or two all their own. Hopefully we'll be seeing that at some point. Especially to fix the Sengoku Jidai.

[Grif]

Not too shabby for a Byzantium game. And still got 200 more years to recreate the Roman lake. :smallsmile:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/48729219165373447/0E1209F32EEB8C201870B52B366253963A5C6435/

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'm mostly iffy about playing a small Chinese republic. Thing about EU4 that it's still Euro-centric, and thus most of the flavour events are similarly concentrated.

Voting for Tuscany.

Technically Tibet isn't small. It has multiple provinces, all of which are huge. The tax is just terrible.

[Narkis]

Another vote for Tuscany.

[Closet_Skeleton]

My Hansa's trade income is high enough in 1465 to run two level 3 advisors.

This feels weird.

[Grif]

New patch looks like it has some serious bugs. Any succession game will have to be postponed until it settles down somewhat.

[OrcusMcP]

New patch looks like it has some serious bugs. Any succession game will have to be postponed until it settles down somewhat.

That's pretty typical for big Paradox patches. There should be a hotfix soon.

[AgentPaper]

I doubt that the bugs will cause anything like a save break, so unless any of them is specifically going to hurt us within the first 50 years or so, we should probably just start. The longer we wait, the more likely people are to lose interest or forget about it, after all.

Do we have someone designated to start out, or are we rolling for it? We could at the very least start rolling for the first turn, if nothing else.

[OrcusMcP]

I doubt that the bugs will cause anything like a save break, so unless any of them is specifically going to hurt us within the first 50 years or so, we should probably just start. The longer we wait, the more likely people are to lose interest or forget about it, after all.

Do we have someone designated to start out, or are we rolling for it? We could at the very least start rolling for the first turn, if nothing else.

I'll set everything up tonight after work, looks like Tuscany is the winner.

[Grif]

I doubt that the bugs will cause anything like a save break, so unless any of them is specifically going to hurt us within the first 50 years or so, we should probably just start. The longer we wait, the more likely people are to lose interest or forget about it, after all.

Do we have someone designated to start out, or are we rolling for it? We could at the very least start rolling for the first turn, if nothing else.

As it is, Japan is currently broken. (Apparently annexing a daimyo will cause you to become the Emperor of Japan, and another daimyo annexing another will continue to do so, etc). This extends to any vassal-overlord wars in general.

There's also the small matter of rivalries being rather broken at the moment, with unselectable rivals, but that is a smaller issue, albeit still annoying.

[OrcusMcP]

Beware, I Live! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?362573-Europa-Universalis-4-Succession-Election!)

[Flickerdart]

So, I gave Byzantium a shot, fully expecting to be wiped off the map by a vengeful Ottoman Empire with seven times my troop count. Instead I've bungled into getting a bunch of land back from Venice and the various minors (though Crimea forced me to concede Kaffa). I'm still nowhere strong enough to take on the big green with something like 18K troops vs their 42K.

But a weird thing happened. When I retook a province, it gave me a +15 or so modifier to each of my administration score when determining my world ranking, propelling me to #1 in the world by a long shot and allowing me to build up enough score to become the #7 world power before vanishing. All conquests since (and all conquests by NPCs) give +0.0. What the hell happened here?

[OrcusMcP]

But a weird thing happened. When I retook a province, it gave me a +15 or so modifier to each of my administration score when determining my world ranking, propelling me to #1 in the world by a long shot and allowing me to build up enough score to become the #7 world power before vanishing. All conquests since (and all conquests by NPCs) give +0.0. What the hell happened here?

Is it a one-time bonus for getting back cores, maybe?

[GnomeGninjas]

Is it a one-time bonus for getting back cores, maybe?

I don't think so, in my Majaphahit game I got it after conquering Aceh and I didn't have any cores there.

[Leecros]

Interesting story.

Apparently the Auld Alliance mission is borked for Scotland. Or at least not working as intended. Despite already meeting the objective of the mission, it still appears in my list of possible missions every other mission.

Not that i'm complaining or anything, +1 free stability every couple of years is handy.

[Eldan]

It's only my third game, but I finally discovered how to win the 100 years war as england.

1. Immediately give up. Will cost two provinces
2. Ally and intermarry with everyone close to France. For me, that was Provence, Brittany, Austria, Castille, Portugal, Aragon and Savoy.
3. Build a medium-sized army
4. Wait for truce to end
5. Declare war
6. Laugh maniacally as your side now outnumbers the Frenchies 3:1 at least.
7. Be sad because you now probably have negative diplomacy points.
8. Be consoled by ownership of entire French coast
9. Repeat conquests as necessary


Next is inheriting the throne of Spain and renaming myself the European Empire inofficially. Mwahaha.

[Driderman]

6. Laugh maniacally as your side now outnumbers the Frenchies 3:1 at least.


Since when did this pose a problem for The Terror That is France? :smallwink:

[Leecros]

Since when did this pose a problem for The Terror That is France? :smallwink:

Generally speaking, if you take France down early enough, then they don't have the full extent of the France Powers to resist a simple numbers game like that.


Specifically things like Elan! which gives them +20% morale or any of their Idea groups finished.

[Driderman]

Generally speaking, if you take France down early enough, then they don't have the full extent of the France Powers to resist a simple numbers game like that.


Specifically things like Elan! which gives them +20% morale or any of their Idea groups finished.

I guess that might work. It's basically why I stopped playing EUIV (for now, at least), I got tired of games either having to revolve around hindering France, or taking place far away from Europe. I don't really like to be forced to worry about how to curtail France from the get-go when I start a game as Tuscany, Pomerania or such, for example.

[Leecros]

I guess that might work. It's basically why I stopped playing EUIV (for now, at least), I got tired of games either having to revolve around hindering France, or taking place far away from Europe. I don't really like to be forced to worry about how to curtail France from the get-go when I start a game as Tuscany, Pomerania or such, for example.

unfortunately, that's just generally how things go in Paradox games and i think Napoleon proved how dangerous France could be historically too. However, you don't really have to always worry about France. As you metnioned, you could play outside of Europe, even playing a nation such as Russia or The Ottomans tends to be far enough away for me to not really worry about them(unless they get !!ENORMOUSLY MASSIVE!!). I've also had some of my most enjoyable games as Manchu and Ming...With Ming being the most recent.

and currently i'm actually playing a rather successful game as Scotland and have no intentions in curtailing France as they've been my ally from the start. So France isn't really all gloom and doom, but I do agree that they can definitely be a pain unless you're far enough away or best buds with them.


In other news, I really wish there was something you could do with map information. Right now I don't really explore more than i need to to colonize, because i feel like exploring too much speeds up map spread, which of course leads to the AI discovering uncolonized land, which then leads to messy colonial borders. Maybe if you could sell map information? I know that would speed up map spread even further, but it'd at least be some sort of incentive to exploring more than you have to to colonize.

[Flickerdart]

and currently i'm actually playing a rather successful game as Scotland and have no intentions in curtailing France as they've been my ally from the start.
Whenever I try to do this to countries they randomly declare me as a rival half-way through (because there's nobody else strong enough around). How can this be stopped?

[mythmonster2]

I don't really think there is a way. Just about every time I ally with France, once I get too powerful, they turn on me and declare me a rival. Probably just the way the AI works.

[Leecros]

It's probably more along the lines of how Rivals work rather than how the AI works. I've certainly been in situations where I've had only one option for rivals...that being an ally. I, as a player wouldn't pick an ally as a rival, because i know better. However, if the AI is programmed to always have maximum rivals, then they will pick you as a rival even if you're an ally.

I think it'd be easily fixed if there was some distinction along the lines of "If one has over 100 relations with a nation, they will not even appear as rivals". I thought they did add some sort of mechanic along that line, but i guess they didn't.

In my scotland game, i've avoided becoming France's rival largely by focusing on colonization...thus most of my power is distributed between my colonial nations rather than concentrated on myself.

[IthilanorStPete]

On the topic of colonial strategies, as a country like Spain or France, what's the best way to keep other countries from establishing major colonies? (Or at least limit them)

[Vauron]

'Devour Portugal before it colonizes' is a good way to start. Alternatively, you should be able to get fleet basing rights from Portugal if you ask before they pick the exploration idea.

[Leecros]

On the topic of colonial strategies, as a country like Spain or France, what's the best way to keep other countries from establishing major colonies? (Or at least limit them)

In my personal experiences....you can't, or at least it's incredibly difficult to do so. If you're playing as Spain, the best way to take down early major colonies is to crush Portugal into the ground, but that isn't going to stop England or France from colonizing.

However, if you want to do any kind of colonization with anyone, Spain and Portugal are your biggest enemies....er threat. They just have so much of an advantage between already having some early colonial expansions(portugal starts with the Azores), National Ideas that promote colonialism(Portugal gets +25% colonial range and +15 yearly settler increase and Castille/Spain gets a +25 yearly settler increase and straight up +1 colonist), and Idea group selection(Both Portugal and Castille will both take Quest for the New World very very early).

They also have the advantage in Colonial Nations. Colonial National Ideas do NOT give colonists and Colonial Nations go with the same Idea groups as it's parent nation would(If it was controlled by the AI). So that means if you play as a nation that doesn't do any colonizing...like Ulm, You simply won't see your colonial nations colonize at all...Whereas the Castilian and Portuguese colonial nations will.

My personal strategy with Scotland was to colonize through Greenland and hit Canada and then just beeline down the coast, doing what i can to cut off all coastal access for other nations to colonize. You could use the same strategy in EU III and take complete control over the whole americas...However, because EUIII started earlier, you could start colonizing before the timeline of EUIV even starts. Thus, while i currently have most of North America and parts of mexico completely shut down from other European Powers, South and Central america are still divided between Castile and Portugal

Something to keep in mind though: They can't or won't colonize without their coastal provinces. That means that if you don't want to full annex a nation like France or Spain to stop them from colonzing(as that would take too long), just take their coastal provinces.

[AgentPaper]

On the topic of colonial strategies, as a country like Spain or France, what's the best way to keep other countries from establishing major colonies? (Or at least limit them)

Annex them. No, really, as Castile you can pretty easily take down Portugal from the get-go, and then take your time picking apart France and England, since they take a long time to start colonizing anyways. And of course, France if France, and can easily stomp all over Castile before they so much as take Exploration, or at least before they can do anything special with it. England is harder, unless you can win the HYW, but still very doable.

[Grif]

On the topic of colonial strategies, as a country like Spain or France, what's the best way to keep other countries from establishing major colonies? (Or at least limit them)

I hear creating a colonial crust on the New World's coast to block other nations from colonising can work as well. (Though with slower colonisation in general with recent patches, that becomes debatable)

[Leecros]

Annex them.

I can't think of a problem that annexing someone doesn't fix...except overextension.

[AgentPaper]

I can't think of a problem that annexing someone doesn't fix...except overextension.

It fixes that too. Got overextension from conquering the Ottomans? Annex them, then release them as a vassal!

[tonberrian]

It might be best as Spain to vassalize portugal, and then let them continue to colonize.

[IthilanorStPete]

It fixes that too. Got overextension from conquering the Ottomans? Annex them, then release them as a vassal!

Ah, diplo-annex cheese. :smallbiggrin:

I think I'll try a Castile game, aiming to conquer Portugal early on, move in on Central/South America in earnest, trying to grab the North American coast to stop other countries colonizing. Thanks for all the advice!

[AgentPaper]

Yeah, Spain is a pretty fun game.

Currently playing as Genoa, and it's been lots of fun. Been trying to limit my blobbing, instead focusing on trade, specifically trade through Tunis and Alexandria. An early war with Provence (for Provence) gave me the early boost I needed to survive, start a trade war with Tunis to vassalize them, and eventually beat up Aragon, taking Sardinia, Malta and then later on Valencia. Castile is helpfully beating them up as well, so I should be able to take Barcelona from them as well.

I now have naval dominance over the Mediterranean, and the Ottomans are finally smashing into the Mamluks, which allowed me to steal Cyprus and Alexandria from them, and soon I'll be taking Gaza and Sinai as well, probably along with some other lands around there like Judea and Dumyat, which will let me start projecting into the Arabian Peninsula and then India, with the goal of conquering all trade company land and making Genoa into a real world power.

[Leecros]

It fixes that too. Got overextension from conquering the Ottomans? Annex them, then release them as a vassal!

Yes, I actually thought about that after i went to bed, but i had already turned my computer off.... Oh well.




As far as Spain/Castille goes, I always harbor some resentment at playing as them, because i have never had the Iberian Wedding event fire. Ever.I've played Castille through 1500 at lesat 6 times so far and nothing. The game knows it too, because it always fires for the AI and usually at its earliest convenience.

I want that Double the Love achievement dangit! :smalltongue:

[Closet_Skeleton]

Current work in progress.

Europe, which I have no real effect on other than that one time I declared war on Russia.
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/39723915329058702/2313CB12470CF94D2F5BA9AEB3626A0E52D8222B/
My Empire

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/39723915329059954/37A61CCF06F4596E1AB38932D947B1DE5FBDC8BC/

[Leecros]

Interestingly enough, I just finished a Ming game last week.

http://oi62.tinypic.com/289brd3.jpg


Honestly, i'm not really happy with mine...I made a few bad decisions early on in the game regarding National Ideas. The biggest one being the decision to not begin colonization early(I didn't start colonizing until the late 1600's). Had i started earlier, i would have gimpped Russia much like you have and I'd probably be much larger. Also the decision to westernize in the late game was pretty bad. I was already competitive with the western powers(and managed to beat Portugal, Spain, AND Russia off of me several times. I had hoped, however that by westernizing it would make wars with Russia less of a slog. In the end it just turned out to be a giant waste of time and resources though.


Dat Russia though.
Dat Scandanavia though.
Dat Ottomans though.

Actually, no...The Ottomans at that time are a shadow of their former glory. They used to be one, contiguous mass spanning from Lithuania all the way down through Persia and Morocco, but around the 1700's they were just beaten back by the rather nasty alliance of Spain, Portugal and Russia. An alliance that caused me many, many problems.


At least i got Japan in a Personal Union. That saved me a lot of trouble.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I was basically racing Russia on parity to get to the coast, so I cut them off by war instead.

Then they fell under a PU with Britain :smalleek:, but really that just means they're very very safe and quiet as a neighbour.

For ideas I have in order

Humanism
Quantity
Exploration
Innovative
Influence

I'm not planning on westernising at all. Which is a pain because it means I can't create protectorates so all my vassals are taking up diplorelations and I don't have an easy way to get more of those.

My main problem is that Persia is Confusian and refusing to buy uncored sunni provinces, so getting Khorasan is slow. Ottomans also just joined the big coalition against me after I annexed Iraq which sucks, so I may have to go poke Russia and hope for the best.:smallamused:

Bukhara is also being a pain and not wanting to siege its own cores whenever I go to war to increase his size.

[Leecros]

My Ideas were:

Diplomatic
Defensive
Religious
Offensive
Exploration
Innovative
Quality
Trade

Knowing what i Know now though, I definitely would have scrapped Diplomatic Ideas. I've no idea what i was thinking taking that Idea group other than it's basically a staple for almost every nation that i play, but effectively useless for Ming. Instead i'd probably have gone somewhere along the lines of Defensive, Exploration, Innovative, then trade.

Innovative gives a bunch of events that give Monarch points and by the time i'd have gotten exploration in that set up, i'd have access to SOMETHING to colonize.

The other problem that I had in my game was that i was just so afraid to expand. I've seen the horrors that is Ming losing the Mandate of Heaven after overextending itself too much and it's generally not pretty. It tends to start a downward spiral that can be hard to get out of. So i was always afraid to really push hard or destabilize myself too much for fear that everything begins to go horribly wrong.

[IthilanorStPete]

Humanism? *looks up idea groups* Wow, there's been lots of changes. Are there any idea groups that got noticeably stronger or weaker? How good are the new idea groups?

[Grif]

Humanism? *looks up idea groups* Wow, there's been lots of changes. Are there any idea groups that got noticeably stronger or weaker? How good are the new idea groups?

Humanism is a godsend. The reduced accepted culture threshold alone makes the group really worthwhile if you're planning to run a multi-cultural empire like Commonwealth. (It reduces the culture acceptance threshold to 10% overall, from 20%.)

Offensive has been nerfed somewhat, losing the admittedly OP manpower bonus. Still powerful though.

I hear Maritime isn't quite worth the price, and Espionage is still meh.

[Leecros]

Espionage Ideas have become more useful since they were moved over to Diplo Ideas(from admin ideas) and the addition to privateer efficiency. Privateers are a nice way to make money and power projection if you're rivals with a nation like Venice or Portugal.


But yeah, it's still pretty meh. I miss Ye Olden Days of EUIII where spies were actually useful. Not only did all of those Ideas things you could do right off the bat, but supporting rebels had a flat percent chance of actually spawning those rebels immediately.

I get why it's nerfed, i remember one multiplayer game where i spawned 120k rebels on Alexandria, but it still made Espionage useful.

[Eldan]

Soo... it's now about 1560 in my England game. France still has no coastline. Somewhat worryingly, Burgundy is now slowly eating them, while I vassalized Bretonia, giving me the entire French coastline, except for that bit that is now Provence. I've had four major wars with France/Scottland now and with help from Austria, Provence and the Spanish states, beat them pretty badly every time. Which means that Burgundy is now becoming a major threat to everyone. They have eaten the Netherlands, the small French-ish states, some of the Western Empire (though Austria now borders France) and, when Scandinavia fell apart unexpectedly, they also got Denmark.

On the other hand, I somehow vassalized Norway. Which at that point consisted of Iceland and one other province. Meant that I didn't have to get any of the colonial ideas to start on Newfoundland. I got them anyway, later. Also, as Spain, I conquered natives. What a foolish idea. THey love me and want to join my empire, now.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The other problem that I had in my game was that i was just so afraid to expand. I've seen the horrors that is Ming losing the Mandate of Heaven after overextending itself too much and it's generally not pretty.

I've had at least 30% over-extension for a century and only lost the Mandate of Heaven temporally from stability hits until by dynasty died out and I had below 60 legitimacy for a bit. During that time I was pretty much fine, even with the over-extension being a steady 80% at times.


Humanism is a godsend. The reduced accepted culture threshold alone makes the group really worthwhile if you're planning to run a multi-cultural empire like Commonwealth. (It reduces the culture acceptance threshold to 10% overall, from 20%.)

So far I've found it pretty dubious to be honest. If you're too big it doesn't help that much except with really big cultures.

[Leecros]

I've had at least 30% over-extension for a century and only lost the Mandate of Heaven temporally from stability hits until by dynasty died out and I had below 60 legitimacy for a bit. During that time I was pretty much fine, even with the over-extension being a steady 80% at times.


Yeah, In hindsight, I did worry a bit too much. However, it was definitely a thing that influenced my decisions. If i started over, i would definitely have worred a little less about it. The only time I lost the Mandate of Heaven was when like 3 or 4 of my heirs died in short succession; ending with a low legitimacy one...and of course when i westernized.

[AgentPaper]

So, about that talk on France and long-term allies in general...I'm currently playing through as Brandenburg (now Germany), and I've had France and Poland as my allies basically since the start of the game. Austria and Denmark were also good allies for a while, and only stopped being so because I intentionally spurned them. France especially has had my back in almost every major war I've had to fight, and recently have even started taking to granting me lands in peace deals, something like a dozen in total now over the course of a few wars where I was their ally. The alliance even managed to last through me being at war with them at one point due to a war between them and Austria (which ironically enough, was when my alliance with Austria ended, due to a reformation event).

Relations are getting slightly strained now due to the Allied to Rival, Heretic Religion, and Competing Great Power modifiers, but I think that the fact that I've kept them generally above 100 relations and they have a high amount of trust for me has kept them on my side when in earlier versions of the game, they would have rivaled me long ago basically just for being there. Case in point, after losing Burgundy as a rival (they annexed them, the event to split them up never fired) they chose the Mamluks of all things as their next rival.

Of course, it's only 1547, so there's still plenty of time for them to turn on me (and eventually I'll likely have to do so myself, after they inevitably start pushing into German lands), but it's definitely a lot easier to have long-term allies now. Hasn't stopped me from buttering up England and Spain just in case, of course. :smallwink:


Edit: Also, privateers are OP. Not because they make you money or even for denying your enemy trade power, but just because they allow you to easily clear 50 Power Projection on a permanent basis. Just find a nice rival who has a lot of trade power in some node, then send a few privateers there and you'll easily get 20+ power projection. Combine that with the +30 for 3 long term rivals and maybe a bit from embargoes and you'll have no problem keeping 50 Power Projection and the free monarch points that come with it.

[Flickerdart]

How does the game define a Great Power, exactly?

[OrcusMcP]

How does the game define a Great Power, exactly?

I'm pretty sure it's a measure of where you are in the score rankings, but the wiki doesn't say anything about it.

[Leecros]

It's based on how much score you're gaining each month, or maybe a combination of both.


Edit: Actually i'm completely clueless, The Hansa is #3 in the world score-wise and #5 in the world in terms of score gain, but they're not a competing great power.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

So the next EU4 expansion was announced: Art of War. Focuses on the latter half of the game period, with "revolution, counterrevolution, reformation and counterreformation", customizable armies, Napoleon and the 30 Years War.

Which excites me more than the CK2 expansion which is just another pushing the start date back, farther in my opinion than the engine can handle. Charlemagne. Eh.

[Leecros]

So the next EU4 expansion was announced: Art of War. Focuses on the latter half of the game period, with "revolution, counterrevolution, reformation and counterreformation", customizable armies, Napoleon and the 30 Years War.

I suppose we don't see Rev. France as much as the devs would like...

[IthilanorStPete]

So the next EU4 expansion was announced: Art of War. Focuses on the latter half of the game period, with "revolution, counterrevolution, reformation and counterreformation", customizable armies, Napoleon and the 30 Years War.

Which excites me more than the CK2 expansion which is just another pushing the start date back, farther in my opinion than the engine can handle. Charlemagne. Eh.

This definitely sounds exciting. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the Thirty Years' War. Hopefully they'll rebalance the base tax of provinces worldwide... *grumble*

[GnomeGninjas]

Hopefully they'll rebalance the base tax of provinces worldwide... *grumble*

I don't know if non-European provinces will have more base tax but there will be a lot more non-European provinces (if the screenshots I've seen on the forums are to be believed).
http://i.imgur.com/HFlCElX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/4sl2FJr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vlwsjHv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/b0g0pSh.jpg

[IthilanorStPete]

I don't know if non-European provinces will have more base tax but there will be a lot more non-European provinces (if the screenshots I've seen on the forums are to be believed).
http://i.imgur.com/HFlCElX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/4sl2FJr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vlwsjHv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/b0g0pSh.jpg

That could help; at the very least, they're not ignoring the issue.

[Terraoblivion]

Oh, hey, you can no longer march armies around at random in the middle of the Iraqi desert now.

[tonberrian]

Hee. So I'm playing as Milan. I managed to get a Valois on the throne, and France and I have been best buds ever since (I've made sure to not share a border in case of the Conquer Milan mission). I was crusading against the Mamluks when apparently the Portuguese queen died, willing Portugal to me! Yay! Apparently France was unhappy with that decision, though, and they declared a succession war on me. Being as I was currently fairly involved and really couldn't take France on (they won Hungary in a succession war earlier), I looked at what it would take for them to leave me alone. All they really wanted was 1600 ducats, which I was quite willing to share with them. Everybody's happy!

[Driderman]

Hee. So I'm playing as Milan. I managed to get a Valois on the throne, and France and I have been best buds ever since (I've made sure to not share a border in case of the Conquer Milan mission). I was crusading against the Mamluks when apparently the Portuguese queen died, willing Portugal to me! Yay! Apparently France was unhappy with that decision, though, and they declared a succession war on me. Being as I was currently fairly involved and really couldn't take France on (they won Hungary in a succession war earlier), I looked at what it would take for them to leave me alone. All they really wanted was 1600 ducats, which I was quite willing to share with them. Everybody's happy!

France will happily vassalize Savoy, resulting in you bordering with them and them acquiring a taste for Lombards. Or, they'll pick up an Italian Ambitions mission. Not actually sure them bordering you is a requirement for the Conquer Milan mission.
As you may be able to tell, I've had plenty of grief with France playing as Milan :smallsmile:

[AgentPaper]

France will happily vassalize Savoy, resulting in you bordering with them and them acquiring a taste for Lombards. Or, they'll pick up an Italian Ambitions mission. Not actually sure them bordering you is a requirement for the Conquer Milan mission.
As you may be able to tell, I've had plenty of grief with France playing as Milan :smallsmile:

The requirements are:

Milan owns Lombardia.
Milan is a neighbor of France.
Milan shares France's religion group.
Milan is at peace with France.

So, you could avoid it by giving up Lombardia to a vassal, having a vassal buffer (probably Switzerland) that you grant the borderlands to, or by switching to a different religious group (ie: Sunni). I guess you could also try to be at war with France whenever they would be eligible to get a new mission, until they get a different mission, as well, but that seems a bit...harder.

Of course, the best way to avoid it is to simply stop being Milan, presumably by becoming Italy.

[tonberrian]

Well, I don't want to go to war with them quite yet. We share a dynasty, so theoretically I could claim their throne. But they're bigger, and also pu'd hungary.

[Leecros]

Whelp, got to see a huge Ottoman Empire Republic turn Shia today. I was wondering why they were having so many issues, i guess that's what happens when an enormous country changes religion. that's even ignoring the fact that they turned into a republic.


see, it's things like this that keep me coming back to these games. Just the 1 or 2 weird things that can crop up in every game.

[Grif]

The requirements are:
Milan shares France's religion group.


The course is clear. Embrace Islam! :smalltongue:

[AgentPaper]

The course is clear. Embrace Islam! :smalltongue:

I think DDRJake has shown us quite clearly that Animist is the superior religion. :smallbiggrin:

[Leecros]

I think DDRJake has shown us quite clearly that Animist is the superior religion. :smallbiggrin:

DDRJake has shown us many, many things...

[GnomeGninjas]

I think DDRJake has shown us quite clearly that Animist is the superior religion. :smallbiggrin:

I don't think its possible to embrace Animism (or Shamanism or Totemism), Animist zealot rebels can't force conversion.

[AgentPaper]

I don't think its possible to embrace Animism (or Shamanism or Totemism), Animist zealot rebels can't force conversion.

Sure it's possible. Become a one-province minor and go bankrupt. Of course that means moving your capital to an animist province and selling your homeland to a vassal, but hey, if Ming can do it, so can you! :smallamused:

[Leecros]

So France has decided to "Conquer" Spain and by conquer i mean sit on their land for 30 years. There's been a war going on between France and Spain where Spain was trying to do a reconquest war against France and France just outright crushed them.

...unfortunately they've been sitting on their land for the last 30 years. No peace is being made and France has gone through several wars(something that usually breaks habits like this). This is behavior i've seen before, In my first game as Aragon, I crushed Castille and around the 15-1600's I attacked France in my overconfidence and they obliterated me, occupied my land and refused any kind of peace offer i could give them.

To my knowledge this generally happens when the AI nation wants a certain province from you, one that has a core or claim on it by that nation...but they can't actually reach it or can't take it. In my game, they couldn't 100% occupy me, because i had colonies overseas(and this was before colonial nations). I presume France or its colonial nation wants land over in the colonies, where Spain's colonial nations have completely destroyed any kind of French resistance.

The thing is... I seem to recall an update somewhere fairly early on that dissuaded this behavior. It's kind of annoying, because even though it's not bad to be happening to an AI nation...If it happened to me(again) I would get so sick of the game that i would quit(Like i did in my Aragon game).I thought this was fixed. Apparently i was wrong...

I actually pity Spain, so i've been funding peasant rebels to overthrow French rule. Some of the provinces are up to 53% revolt risk and i Declared War on France with the backing of both Austria and The Ottomans, so France should release their death grip on Spain soon...

[Terraoblivion]

Still not as absurd as the one game I actually played to the time limit. In that one England and Castille were at war without pause for 120 years without either side actually doing anything to end it. It was just a bizarre absurdity and a farce, that made it hugely inconvenient to attack either of them because most of their provinces were occupied by the other.

[tonberrian]

Obviously you attack both at once.

[Flickerdart]

Still not as absurd as the one game I actually played to the time limit. In that one England and Castille were at war without pause for 120 years without either side actually doing anything to end it. It was just a bizarre absurdity and a farce, that made it hugely inconvenient to attack either of them because most of their provinces were occupied by the other.
Maybe they did it on purpose, exactly so that you wouldn't attack them? All while winking conspiratorially at one another?

[Leecros]

So after defeating France, getting them to end their long war with Spain and taking parts of Normandy...France has evolved into Revolutionary France!

It's amusing mostly because it's actually the first time i've seen the elusive creature when i'm not starting a game when they actually exist or playing a modded game and because i didn't think i actually pressed them that hard. Yeah, i defeated their armies, forced them to end their war with Spain, and took two provinces in Normandy, but it's not like i fully occupied their territory and took out all of their armies.

Of course looking at the requirements, they really only need 10 war exhaustion...which they probably had by the end of the war. Although the AI normally burns off their war exhaustion at the end of the war, so it must have just been luck that the event popped so quickly(literal days after the end of the war).

[tonberrian]

Okay, so when I released Najd as a vassal, why did it release as a protectorate? :smallannoyed:

[GnomeGninjas]

Sure it's possible. Become a one-province minor and go bankrupt. Of course that means moving your capital to an animist province and selling your homeland to a vassal, but hey, if Ming can do it, so can you! :smallamused:

I didn't realize bankruptcy did that.

[tonberrian]

France got the Conquer Milan mission. Unfortunately for them, they were low on manpower because fighting Austria, and had a weak heir. After a long war, I unionized them, becoming the greatest land-power in Europe.

[Eldan]

I had no idea playing as the Emperor was so much fun. I never have to declare war on anyone. Just sit there with my 40'000 troops, wait for someone to call me for assistance, crush the aggressor and vassalize them to some imperial power. Burgundy, Denmark and most of Italy are now imperial.

[IthilanorStPete]

So about that Big Blue Blob...
It's 1522 in my latest game as Castile/Spain. I'm doing well in the colony game, I've beaten up Portugal a good bit and I'm looking to vassalize them, but France is rapidly expanding into the HRE. They've beaten Austria handily in two wars so far; I nominally participated in one, but didn't have the troops to make an substantial contributions. I'm really not sure how I'm going to deal with France; even allied to Austria, England, and Naples, France and its allies (most notably Bohemia) have the numerical advantage. I started from the 1492 bookmark, so France has Brittany in a PU and Bohemia has a PU with Hungary. My idea groups are Exploration (completed), Offensive (have 4/7), and Trade (1/7). Any suggestions for how to keep France from conquering everything?

[Grif]

So about that Big Blue Blob...
It's 1522 in my latest game as Castile/Spain. I'm doing well in the colony game, I've beaten up Portugal a good bit and I'm looking to vassalize them, but France is rapidly expanding into the HRE. They've beaten Austria handily in two wars so far; I nominally participated in one, but didn't have the troops to make an substantial contributions. I'm really not sure how I'm going to deal with France; even allied to Austria, England, and Naples, France and its allies (most notably Bohemia) have the numerical advantage. I started from the 1492 bookmark, so France has Brittany in a PU and Bohemia has a PU with Hungary. My idea groups are Exploration (completed), Offensive (have 4/7), and Trade (1/7). Any suggestions for how to keep France from conquering everything?

Just colonise everything in the New World, then use the ducats you get from the Colonial Nations to fund your own merc armies. You'd want to wait for France to busy itself with some war in the HRE before declaring. Your aim should be to dismember and break France down to its constituent duchies. (May take several truce breaks if you want to do it definitely, since a 100% WS will now entail a 15 year truce. 100% is also required to release Guyenne. You can imagine how long it'll take.)
Possible allies are any Italian majors, England (this one is usually a joke), Sweden and PLC, if they haven't collapsed.

[mythmonster2]

So, other people may have known about this, but I just learned of it and figured I'd share it with any like-minded people. The Extended Timeline mod (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?740866-MOD-Extended-Timeline), from 51 AD to 2014. Even better, I've tried it out for a while and it doesn't seem nearly as crash-prone as Steppe Wolf was for EU3.

[IthilanorStPete]

Just colonise everything in the New World, then use the ducats you get from the Colonial Nations to fund your own merc armies. You'd want to wait for France to busy itself with some war in the HRE before declaring. Your aim should be to dismember and break France down to its constituent duchies. (May take several truce breaks if you want to do it definitely, since a 100% WS will now entail a 15 year truce. 100% is also required to release Guyenne. You can imagine how long it'll take.)
Possible allies are any Italian majors, England (this one is usually a joke), Sweden and PLC, if they haven't collapsed.

Thanks for the advice! I've got a solid game plan now. Haven't declared war on France yet; I'm waiting to get military tech level 10 to upgrade all my units. In the meantime, I've been working on the Americas. I'll probably go after Portugal again, and it looks like I'll be breaking the alliance with England, hopefully replacing it with Sweden.
As an aside: colonial nations make things kind of odd. I conquered most of the Aztec territory, had a bunch of admin points saved for coring and shiny new Counter-Reformation missionaries to use, but all the territory went to Castilian Mexico. :smallsigh: Pretty sure I'll have to keep an army there to put own revolts while the conquered territory slowly gets converted and cored.

[Leecros]

So, other people may have known about this, but I just learned of it and figured I'd share it with any like-minded people. The Extended Timeline mod (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?740866-MOD-Extended-Timeline), from 51 AD to 2014. Even better, I've tried it out for a while and it doesn't seem nearly as crash-prone as Steppe Wolf was for EU3.

It's a fun mod, but You really have to play in a time where there isn't a massive empire like the Roman Empire or Mongolian Empire. Otherwise the game just becomes you vs them. Unless there's events built in which eventually collapse them, but I've not seen anything happen quite yet.

It also needs a lot more flavor and an end date. As much as i don't really like how EUIV just stops abruptly, you really need an end date to establish goals. So that you can say "Okay this is what i want to accomplish by the end of the game". However, it doesn't have one. It starts at 51 AD and goes all the way to 9999. So you can establish goals if you want, but there's no real problem with missing them, because you'll always have 6000 more years to finish them in.

In the end it just becomes a world conquest simulator. A "How fast can i conquer the world as X Nation".

It does have its advantages though, for example it makes culture conversions a viable tactic considering they'll eventually pay for themselves and the gap that exists between techs at the start of the game. I was playing as Parthia and i was something like 145 years ahead of time. So there was basically nothing to do with my monarch points other than sit and wait.

[Flickerdart]

So, other people may have known about this, but I just learned of it and figured I'd share it with any like-minded people. The Extended Timeline mod (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?740866-MOD-Extended-Timeline), from 51 AD to 2014. Even better, I've tried it out for a while and it doesn't seem nearly as crash-prone as Steppe Wolf was for EU3.
Downloaded it, started as Han China. You start with 0/-1 diplomatic relations, which costs you 2 diplo points per month, and if you want to attack Dai Viet you are warned it's part of the Holy Roman Empire and Saxony will defend it.

[SilverLeaf167]

Sorry for the shameless plug, but I didn't realize until now that the Playground actually has a sizable Paradox fanbase and thought you might be interested.

I've been writing a Let's Play of sorts over here in this very section (link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?368412-Europa-Universalis-IV-After-Action-Report-Tibet)), and some of you might like to check it out if you haven't already. I'm playing as the Republic of Tibet, and the readers get to participate in the elections in basically every update.

To actually contribute something semi-related: there's an awesome bundle sale for Victoria II going on! Link here (http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/victoria-complete-bundle/?utm_source=Bundle+Stars+Newsletter&utm_campaign=67855a68ee-Victoria_Complete_Bundle_Active_8_26_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3437eaaeba-67855a68ee-419803193&mc_cid=67855a68ee&mc_eid=18a729c912).

[tonberrian]

Boy, is Austria strong. I managed to get a Hapsburg on the French throne, and then PU'd Burgundy through the mission (giving France -200 "wants your provinces" modifier). Then I managed the Hungary and Bohemia PU missions. Finally I married Muscovy and then like the next week got a Hapsburg on the throne, and then proceeded to PU them.

The year is 1529.

Edit: and by 1547 I had unions with France and Aragon as well. And the last 5 unions were done under one incredibly long-lived 5/4/5 ruler. Sadly he died before the Argonese Succession War was finished. Requiescat in pace, Johann Leopold von Habsburg.

[IthilanorStPete]

Arg, France. 55k of Spanish troops versus 11k of theirs, and they win. IIRC, they had a ridiculously high morale, and I'm not sure why; it was more than just the boost from Elan.

[Tebryn]

Has anyone been playing the Super States Mod? It's amazingly in depth. All 50 states with unique ideas and a lot of national decisions. All the Canadian Provinces and Territories, a lot of Mexican states and all of Australia are also in with unique ideas and national decisions.

[Leecros]

Arg, France. 55k of Spanish troops versus 11k of theirs, and they win. IIRC, they had a ridiculously high morale, and I'm not sure why; it was more than just the boost from Elan.

If you go into a battle with them, you can mouse over their morale to see what's influencing it. It's probably Elan! coupled with Military drill plus the morale boosting advisor.

That's a 45% increase in morale right there. That plus a little bit of luck can win most battles.

[Grif]

Arg, France. 55k of Spanish troops versus 11k of theirs, and they win. IIRC, they had a ridiculously high morale, and I'm not sure why; it was more than just the boost from Elan.

I'd imagine if a high proportion of that 55k is Infantry/Calvary, then they'll be sitting around doing nothing because they can't engage. Even more so if you happened to battle over a hill/mountain.

[mythmonster2]

Well dang, this thread's been quiet, especially considering we've been getting all these dev diaries about Art of War. I, for one, am very excited about all the map changes. A lot of the new features are also quite interesting. The terrain changes with each province only having one terrain is the only thing that I don't like yet.

[Frog Dragon]

Welp, I got this game last weekend in the steam sale (with DLC), and I'm liking it so far (even though it's hard). I do wish the Universalis wasn't quite as Europa though. I was quite enjoying my Kathiawar run until the British and the French rolled over my longtime ally, destroyed my army and left me wide open to a spiral of debt, nationalists, general rebels, and mongol attacks that made short work of glorious Kathiawar. I understand there's a very robust modding scene around EUIV, but I want to get the hang of the base game first.

Somehow my attempt at playing Kathiawar was much more long lived and successful than my attempts at playing Muscovy, France, and Castile. In all of those I got rolled by a powerful neighbor after prosecuting some early wars.

[Eldan]

I'm rather enjoying my game as colonial-expansionist Japan. I got to Hawaii and Kiribati, but now I seem to be stuck in the middle of the Pacific, unable to find a way to America. Colonized a good part of Indonesia, though.

In the absence of any other targets, I used all my valuable trade money to build up an army to take on Korea. I have the penninsula, but they have taken a good bit of China, which they are still holding.

China in general is a mess. There's about six nations there and everyone around the edges took themselves a few pieces. Dai Viet, Lan Xang, Oirat and Ayutthaya all have bits.

[Leecros]

Well dang, this thread's been quiet, especially considering we've been getting all these dev diaries about Art of War. I, for one, am very excited about all the map changes. A lot of the new features are also quite interesting. The terrain changes with each province only having one terrain is the only thing that I don't like yet.

It's more along the lines of the thread getting lost to obscurity(for me at least).



I've been playing a lot of EUIV multiplayer with two of my friends who got the game over the big Steam Sale. I'm doing amazingly as the Mughal Empire.

[Frog Dragon]

Any suggestions on what a relative newbie should play? So far I've tried France, Muscovy, Castile, and Kathiawar. I also made an abortive attempt at Sweden.

I'm not hugely interested in playing the historical "winners" like France of Britain. Still, I want something that won't get rolled right away. Would Livonian Order be good for me? Maybe I should play with lucky off.

[AgentPaper]

Any suggestions on what a relative newbie should play? So far I've tried France, Muscovy, Castile, and Kathiawar. I also made an abortive attempt at Sweden.

I'm not hugely interested in playing the historical "winners" like France of Britain. Still, I want something that won't get rolled right away. Would Livonian Order be good for me? Maybe I should play with lucky off.

For Europe, something in Italy might prove a bit more challenging, with Savoy, Milan, and Naples being the major players. Any of the mid-sized German states would also be a bit easier, especially Brandenburg. Livonian Order is a bit tricky, since it has poor base tax and no really good expansion options. Teutonic Order is a bit easier. Poland and Burgundy are both fairly strong countries that didn't win historically, and both are surrounded by enemies, making them potentially harder than those you mentioned. Burgundy is certainly the more difficult of the two, being penned in by the HRE to the east and France to the west, but is very doable.

Outside of Europe, there's plenty of regional powers to play, such as Ayutthaya, Vijayanagar, Bengal, Timurids, and Mamluks all make for fun games. Any of the Japanese shoguns can also be fun, though a bit different from a normal campaign due to the mechanics involved.

Also, as a bit advice, the biggest difference between a player who does OK and one who does very well is that the new player watches what's going on in their country, while an advanced player watches what's going on in other countries. It's the difference between managing your country (which after a few games you should be able to do without much thought), and managing the larger geo-political game, knowing who's weak, who's strong, who you should ally, who you should attack, watching for signs of weakness to prey on or danger to avoid.

[Driderman]

I don't think Italian nations are particularly newbie-friendly as you'll likely have to counter Spanish or French Italian ambitions at some point.

[Frog Dragon]

That "watching other countries" may have been why I could manage Kathiawar reasonably well. I was kind of forced to try to find a diplomatic solution to the "angry neighboring Gujarat" problem rather than simply raising an army and having at it. My tactic wound up being "sic Vijayanagar on them" for a good chunk of the early game until I was strong enough to prosecute wars on my own. Of course, the Vijayanagar alliance became a problem in itself when I kept dragged into Vijayanagar vs Big Orange Blob Orissa fights. But that tactic of "have big friend" worked for me well into the 17th century.

On a complete sidenote, does anyone know of a mod that revises the trade system to do something other than funnel all the wealth into western Europe? While I understand that EUIV is intended to be rigged in favor of the historical colonial powers, the end-trade nodes of Europe seem like a very contrived and ahistorical way of accomplishing this. It doesn't seem feasible to do things like channel wealth to Manchuria if you manage to become a massive, colonial Manchu empire, which seems backwards. Wealth did not funnel itself to Europe because it "naturally" does so, it did so because colonial European states consciously acted to gain control of greater slices of the pie. This should be possible for anyone who is strong enough.

TL;DR: Trade offends my history nerd sensibilities.

[Leecros]

Burgundy is certainly the more difficult of the two, being penned in by the HRE to the east and France to the west, but is very doable.

My solution when i got stuck in a coalition against France and Austria as Burgundy was to make buddy-buddy with Castille and Denmark and go and invade England. It worked quite well. :smallbiggrin:



Also, as a bit advice, the biggest difference between a player who does OK and one who does very well is that the new player watches what's going on in their country, while an advanced player watches what's going on in other countries. It's the difference between managing your country (which after a few games you should be able to do without much thought), and managing the larger geo-political game, knowing who's weak, who's strong, who you should ally, who you should attack, watching for signs of weakness to prey on or danger to avoid.

This is actually a recent realization to me. Since i'm playing with a couple of friends. They both come from EU3, but one is quite a lot less skilled than the other. I found that i was the one informing him of events in europe that he should be paying attention to(I'm the Mughal Empire and he's the Ottomans) and I was the one telling him when his armies were being attacked when he was invading other people and other such things.



On a complete sidenote, does anyone know of a mod that revises the trade system to do something other than funnel all the wealth into western Europe? While I understand that EUIV is intended to be rigged in favor of the historical colonial powers, the end-trade nodes of Europe seem like a very contrived and ahistorical way of accomplishing this. It doesn't seem feasible to do things like channel wealth to Manchuria if you manage to become a massive, colonial Manchu empire, which seems backwards. Wealth did not funnel itself to Europe because it "naturally" does so, it did so because colonial European states consciously acted to gain control of greater slices of the pie. This should be possible for anyone who is strong enough.


Well, not a perfect solution, you could just take the Trade Ideas and cut trade off from Europe. It's pretty easy to do when you control the land around the node.

[Closet_Skeleton]

TL;DR: Trade offends my history nerd sensibilities.

That's not the way EUIV is supposed to be representing things.

You can make all the money you want off trade as an Asian power, you can't make European trade go to Asia because Europe doesn't have much to export to Asia (the main exception being weapons). Asian goods flow to Europe not because Europe was historically powerful but because Europe was historically an importer and Asia was historically an exporter (well, techically Europeans exported their money but made more back because Asian goods were cheap). The person at the end of the supply chain always decides the final prices. Despite the direction, Asian Trade doesn't naturally flow to Europe in EUIV, if you let the AI just play by itself then all that happens is Kongo gets loads of free money.

The problem is that they redesigned the trade system that way and then refused to redesign the production and technology system to make sense with it.

You still make money selling your goods, that's what production income is for, trade income represents import duties, tariffs and stuff you get for transporting goods, it doesn't represent the actual price of the goods, but the profits made by the difference between selling and buying prices. You do make money off Europe, because their provinces increase demand which drives up your production income. Asian goods are cheap in Asia and expensive in Europe, that's why trade can flow to Europe and make European trading powers rich, there's nothing that's cheap in Europe and expensive in Asia, that's why Spain had to use American tobacco and silver and later on Britain had to use Indian Opium, everything Europe traded in return for Asian goods was pretty much equal in price in Europe and Asia, therefore Europe got more profit. Being able to reverse the trade system with a ahistorically powerful asian power makes no sense as such a power would still be exporting to Europe, at best you could cut out the middle men or enforce export duties (like by building a ton of light ships to keep money from leeching out). Raising prices in Asia would reduce European profits in favour of you since there's a limit to how much Europeans can hike prices and still sell stuff, which is pretty much what the trade power mini-game represents, your ability to set prices.

If you want to stop Europe getting rich off exports from your colonies you can just collect trade in the Americas. That's what European powers are better off doing anyway most of the time.

The one missing historical part of the trade system is Philippines -> Andes

Sadly, you can't mod the trade system much. It has to be the way it is because any potential loop immediately crashes the game.

[Terraoblivion]

You can't sell SEA spices in China and Japan either, who actually did want those like everybody else did. Also, the Japanese are hardcoded to never wanting Chinese stuff, which seems kinda odd as well. I mean, yes, Europe didn't make anything anybody wanted to buy, but that doesn't mean there was a neat hierarchy of stuff people wanted to buy with Asia at the top and distance from Asia making it worth less and less. Also, internal Asia trade goes all weird like this too.

[Frog Dragon]

Sounds like I didn't grok the trade profits system as well as I thought I did. I guess that does make a little more sense. The trade production thing is particularly opaque

Another thing you can't do is export goods via the indian ocean as a Swahili state with any efficiency (which they did quite a bit), but making that happen would probably have to cause looping, and the swahili did get bombarded into submission by portuguese trader fleets pretty shortly after the start date.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Another thing you can't do is export goods via the indian ocean as a Swahili state with any efficiency (which they did quite a bit), but making that happen would probably have to cause looping, and the swahili did get bombarded into submission by portuguese trader fleets pretty shortly after the start date.

You can profit off indian trade fine as a Swahili state. The AI does it all the time, stopping the Swahili from getting the larger share of the profit I'm drawing out of asia is half the effort when I'm playing a European power.


You can't sell SEA spices in China and Japan either, who actually did want those like everybody else did.

Also, internal Asia trade goes all weird like this too.

Internal asian trade doesn't work at all, but its not that you can't sell spices to things higher up in the supply chain because the trade system doesn't represent selling goods at all.

Japan and China not wanting certain goods is part of a broken supply and demand system that makes Tobacco worthless and is getting axed completely at the end of the month any way.

Its not the best system and its really abstract, but at least it represents one aspect of the time period, unlike EU3 where landlocked OPM Frankfurt can make more money off asian trade than anyone else once they research the trade range just by moving a slider in the right direction, taking 2 ideas and spamming merchants.

[Frog Dragon]

You can profit off indian trade fine as a Swahili state. The AI does it all the time, stopping the Swahili from getting the larger share of the profit I'm drawing out of asia is half the effort when I'm playing a European power.
That's not what I said.

The trade flow direction represents the flow of goods, does it not? What I meant was that modeling the flow of trade from the Swahili states with the trade node system would require one of those nifty arrows to go towards other regions around the Indian Ocean. It's not that Swahili can't profit, it's that they were major exporters historically.

[Closet_Skeleton]

That's not what I said.

The trade flow direction represents the flow of goods, does it not? What I meant was that modeling the flow of trade from the Swahili states with the trade node system would require one of those nifty arrows to go towards other regions around the Indian Ocean. It's not that Swahili can't profit, it's that they were major exporters historically.

Everyone is an exporter and an importer, that's why its called trade. What's important is who ends up making the bigger profit when everything has gone through a chain of deals.

The trade direction can't represent the flow of goods, that makes no sense. Swahili states don't make any money off their exports to India and Indonesia because all that money gets spent on buying goods to import back to Africa. Africa still gets some production income from their slaves and ivory so its not like they only get profit from Indian trade.

Also remember that merchants aren't actually represented. Private enterprises make money for private individuals, states just get some of that via taxes, duties and tariffs. EUIV confused that issue a lot though when it decoupled income from research but kept EU3's income types that didn't entirely represent state wealth.

[Frog Dragon]

Determining whether the Swahili states actually wound up importing as much or more as they exported would probably require some rather detailed study. Unless you actually do know, in which I salute your incredibly specific knowledge of East-African trade history.

But I digress, trade still confuses me. So basically, a trade arrow just means that a region from which the arrow originates from sells more stuff to the region the arrow goes than they buy from the region the arrow goes to?

[tonberrian]

Okay. In game, each trade node has 4 basic sets of ducats. What is incoming, what is outgoing, what is produced in the node, and what stays in the node. Each line on the trade map with represents a route, arrows the direction. The money produced in the node comes from all the provinces therein, based on goods produced and prices thereof (which currently depends on supply and demand, but won't at the end of the month). This is added to any ducats incoming from any other nodes, and then, based on the trade power pie chart, this total is divided up among nations collecting in that node and nations trying to bring it forward.

As an easy example, I believe the California node has no incoming trade - it's a beginning node, iirc. So say you are the only trade power in California - your capital is in the Americas, so no colonial nation there, and no-one is paying enough attention to send ships there. Your trade capital is there too, so you're automatically collecting all that trade. You basically double your production income in the provinces in that node, except instead of multiplying by production efficiency, you use trade efficiency.

This is not a good way to make money off of trade.

Oh no, Great Britain has decided to send a bunch of light ships to the area! They now control half the trade power in the node, and they are forcing half the ducats that would normally go to you to instead go downstream to Mexico! You control some of the trade power in Mexico as well, but not nearly as much - it's much more contested. You control a third, Great Brittain controls a third, and the Aztecs control a third. The Aztecs are collecting in the node - they take a third of all the trade money produced in the node plus whatever Great Britain is siphoning off from California and add that to their pool of money. You think you're okay - you control all of the Panama trade too, and like a third of the total outgoing trade should go there, right? Because there's three trade routes out of Mexico?

WRONG! Great Britain has a merchant there, and you don't! With no merchants present, it would be true that a third of the outgoing trade would go along each outgoing trade route. But with merchants present, the trade is divided up based on only the power percentage of the nations with merchants there. So since you don't have a merchant there, and Great Britain is the only one controlling outgoing trade, they control all the outgoing trade, sending it to the Carribean, where you have no presence. So you send your merchant there, but accidently pick to collect trade there. Your trade power goes drastically down - now you only control a sixth of the trade power in the node, while GB and Aztecs each control 5/12. This is because if you use your merchant to collect in a node other than the one with your trading capital, you suffer a 50% penalty to trade power in that node. Luckily, you can just click to change him to transfer trade power. But you still aren't seeing any increase in Panama! If you check the trade map mode, you'll see that your merchant is instead diverting trade to Nippon! This example is exaggerated, but the computer automatically assigns what direction your merchant diverts trade down, which might not be your best choice. Additionally, each merchant directing trade down a certain path increases the value of the trade going down that path by a certain percentage, meaning that what leaves California to go to Mexico could be less than what arrives in Mexico from California.

So finally, after years of purging the Christians and securing your place in Europe, you control the Sevilla node. Sevilla, and a few others in Europe, are the end lines for trade routes. Nations can't force trade out of those nodes to go somewhere else, which generally means they accrue a bunch of value from all the previous legs - though not as much as it used to be. You've still got your trading capital in California, because that's where your capital capital is. And you've got a merchant collecting in Sevilla, because you controll all the trade there - no one challenges you. You can choose to move your trading capital into the Sevilla node, where you'll collect that trade automatically, and the California trade ducats will instead move into the system, hopefully being increased a bunch along the way by merchants. You can also choose to collect in Sevilla with a merchant - this adds on an additional 10% to trade income in that node, which might be a lot... but it still might be more money to collect trade elsewhere. Everything is going smoothly... until Great Britain strikes again! This time, they've sent a whole bunch of privateers to Sevilla! Privateers use their trade power to collect for the Pirate nation, taking a significant chunk out of your profit for the node. Great Britain also profits off this - they get half the money the Privateers collect. Currently, the only way to deal with this is by declaring war on them, but this too changes at the end of the month.

You can also choose to embargo a nation. This gives a relations hit and a cb against you to them, and decreases their trade power in nodes based on how much trade power you have in those nodes - if you have no trade power in a node, theirs is unaffected. Unfortunately, if you haven't set them as your rival, you also lose some of your trade power, which generally makes it not worth it to embargo them. They would lose the causus belli if they chose to embargo you back, and you don't get a causus belli in return. Additionally, using privateers and embargoing nations that are your rivals gains you Power Projection. Also, if you control above a certain percentage of a trade good (not produce, control the trade thereof through trade power) you get a bonus, based on the goods. If you produce the most of a certain good, all provinces you control that produce that good produce more of that good. Both of these bonuses can be tracked on the ledger, under Trade -> Strategic Goods.

This is all what the trade routes do in game. Generally, they follow historical trade routes. The desire for certain goods is a very complicated beast known as supply and demand, which you can effect in some minute (or possibly more than minute) ways, but again is phasing out at the end of the month for a more event based approach.