Europa Universalis IV

Another question I can't find an answer to: how exactly does attrition work? If I've got 5% attrition does that just mean that 5% of that stack is dying each month?

Mountain Man_sl said:

Another question I can't find an answer to: how exactly does attrition work? If I've got 5% attrition does that just mean that 5% of that stack is dying each month?

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Yep that's what it means, every regiment in that stack taking 5% will lose 50 men per month.

So I started a new game as Vijayanagar on normal and got immediately crushed by Orissa and co. after taking a couple provinces from Gujarat. I restarted on easy and have been making some progress but Bahmanis has recently allied with Bengal and Jaunpur, the two largest powers nearby. I have been left with no powerful friends, so if Bahmanis declared war on me I would basically be toast. I feel like I may have missed my window of opportunity to weaken them since now the combined power of Bahmanis plus their allies would roll over me and my vassals and allies. I even tried declaring on them while they were fighting another war and way down on army size and manpower and they still won both wars lol. I was able to take and hold the province I had a claim on but since they were actually winning the war they obviously wouldn't peace out by giving me the province.

Anyway, something I am wondering about is: is there any way to improve my opinion OF another country? I could snatch a couple bigger allies if my opinion of them was positive. There are a couple countries where I have a -10 or -15 opinion of them so I can't ally or royal marry them, even though their opinion of me is at 90 or higher. The only negative modifier for Dehli, for example, is that we are a different religion. Here is how the map looks right now.

Thanks. I've managed to clean up a lot of the one province minors and stabilize after taking Mewar in one huge annexation so I'm getting in a much better position now. I'm thinking Bahmanis never declared on me because Bengal and Jaunpur may not have been interested in attacking me also. Now the three of them are sharing some borders so I'm hoping their alliance will eventually disperse when they desire each others land.

I took Quantity as my first idea so that I can hopefully just overwhelm them when I get a chance.

Also, are force limits for the AI more soft caps than hard? Bahmanis has been way above their force limit for most of the game.

Mountain Man_sl said:

Thanks. I've managed to clean up a lot of the one province minors and stabilize after taking Mewar in one huge annexation so I'm getting in a much better position now. I'm thinking Bahmanis never declared on me because Bengal and Jaunpur may not have been interested in attacking me also. Now the three of them are sharing some borders so I'm hoping their alliance will eventually disperse when they desire each others land.

I took Quantity as my first idea so that I can hopefully just overwhelm them when I get a chance.

Also, are force limits for the AI more soft caps than hard? Bahmanis has been way above their force limit for most of the game.

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I've noticed it too. One of the let's plays that I watched, Russia was about 80-120 units over their forcelimit for a long time and then later in the game it was the ottomans (russia fell off after some wars against the player). Dats a lot of maintenance cost if not...

There are some AI bonuses or penalties you can set at the beginning of the game. Luck, Difficulty, etc.


But only european nations should be getting "luck" unless you set it to random rather than historical. There are some other ways they cheat that are hard-coded, like their awareness of your fleets outside their line of sight (I'm told this was nerfed a little since we exploited it to lure their big navies to stupid places) and how they don't take any sea attrition AT ALL EVER because they can't comprehend it. An AI explorer could explore the entire planet in 1444 without docking. But they don't, so /shrug.

Man the trade changes in 1.9 were rough for my Venice game. They were totally appropriate, but rough.

I was over my forcelimits with a 90% mercenary army, so that shit was expensive. I could have cut my subsidies to a dozen nations that oppose my enemies, but my military is dogshit, so investing in the militaries of states who can actually win equal sized battles seemed prudent. It's fun watching France commit forces overseas and then losing. I strike at my enemies in year 4 of whatever prolonged conflict I'm sponsoring, when I expect them to be well off-balance. My entire strategy is barely winning battles 3:1 and rebuilding my mercenary army as I take brutal losses while I chip away at French/Austrian/Spanish manpower. After a battle is won and they're 20k down, I just build 60 mercs to replace my losses and keep trucking, with virtually no war exhaustion.

That westernization craze was pissing me off. I amped up the effects of westernization from +5 unrest to +12. A lot fewer try to westernize now, and those that do often fail. Russia still manages damn well, so working as intended imo.

Mountain Man_sl said:

Thanks. I've managed to clean up a lot of the one province minors and stabilize after taking Mewar in one huge annexation so I'm getting in a much better position now. I'm thinking Bahmanis never declared on me because Bengal and Jaunpur may not have been interested in attacking me also. Now the three of them are sharing some borders so I'm hoping their alliance will eventually disperse when they desire each others land.

I took Quantity as my first idea so that I can hopefully just overwhelm them when I get a chance.

Also, are force limits for the AI more soft caps than hard? Bahmanis has been way above their force limit for most of the game.

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I'm not sure how aggressively you're leveling up your ideas, but taking a military idea first is generally a pretty bad idea. You get boosts to military tactics at military tech 4,6,7, and 8 and tactics play a pretty big role in how your army performs. An army with mil tech 8 will crush an army with mil tech 6, even if its smaller. If you're managing to keep up with your ideas and military tech simultaneously as an Indian country, please tell me how you're doing it!

Trying to win the 100 years war in new patch... no luck so far... any tips? The margin of error is so small, need some way to actually kill the French trops and not just win utnumbered battles in mountains.

New DLC just came out?
Bit over the game, mostly due to how much time it takes up. Probably wait until this one's on sale before picking it up.

Was looking at this in the Steam Summer Sale. There is alot of DLC... would you suggest it all? There is a package for $50 that includes most of the DLC except the most recent few I think. Or, could just go base game for $20 to check it out. I dabbled a bit with EU3, but never really committed. What would you do if you were new to it? Thanks.

Yea, there is entirely too much DLC now, but a lot of it is just visual/audio. The big ones are Art of War, Res Publica, El Dorado, Conquest of Paradise, Common Sense, and Wealth of Nations. They introduce significant mechanics changes.

I'd probably just get the base game and see if you're into that and then go further if you want more. It's quite a lot to get into if you find out you don't like it. The game is substantially different from classic now, but a lot of that is available via free patches. The mechanics DLC are just unlock codes, all their content is actually still in the game so that multiplayer sessions don't get wonky.

Not all of the changes have been met with a positive response, but I'm happy with the current state of the game.

-75% right now on Summer Sale, everything except Common Sense I think.

Highly recommend this game, and grabbing it at 75% off is literally a steal.

Wiz_sl said:

Finally, and this is where we think a lot of game designers go wrong, we actually play our own game. Both Johan and Martin play EU4 in their free time, with thousands of hours of playtime between them

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Probably the only reason this game continues to improve rather than just get cluttered with a bunch of opaque junk.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ly-2nd.867431/

doublepost edit