Europa Universalis IV

Zajeer · Nov 30, 2022

Couple notes about devving - if you're playing tall, since there's a few nations built for this (Netherlands, Tuscany, etc) then yeah you really don't blob and can spend it on development instead. Otherwise if you're playing wide, what Furry mentioned is how I also play - as a dump for maxed out mana. However there are a few exceptions:

1) Getting to dev 30 in your capital (or another province with good modifiers like it being on a grassland) for the objective in the first age, age of discovery. Double bonus, if you wait until after Colonialism spawns, you can dev after and spawn it in your land, killing 2 birds w/ 1 stone
2) If you have a gold province, get it to 10 production dev to maximize the money it makes
3) When you need to spawn a new institution in your land. This is especially important the further away from Europe you are (like playing in Japan, good luck getting most institutions quickly w/o developing)
4) Needing to upgrade a Center of Trade - Level 2 harbor needs 10 dev, level 3 needs 25 dev
5) Needing to unlock a new building slot; since they unlock at 10 dev, 20 dev, etc

Kharzette · Dec 1, 2022

Furry said:
Have I told you about Jesus Asia????

View attachment 445221

Reformation war was absolutely brutal and went on for a 10 year slog, as I was on the weak side. Managed to siege down Constantinople, and the ottos lost some territory in the deal at least. In a few years I can start the vital reconquest of Alexanderov-gay, which nogai has been desperately seeking as part of its vital cores.

rhinohelix · Dec 1, 2022

Zajeer said:
Couple notes about devving - if you're playing tall, since there's a few nations built for this (Netherlands, Tuscany, etc) then yeah you really don't blob and can spend it on development instead. Otherwise if you're playing wide, what Furry mentioned is how I also play - as a dump for maxed out mana. However there are a few exceptions:

1) Getting to dev 30 in your capital (or another province with good modifiers like it being on a grassland) for the objective in the first age, age of discovery. Double bonus, if you wait until after Colonialism spawns, you can dev after and spawn it in your land, killing 2 birds w/ 1 stone
2) If you have a gold province, get it to 10 production dev to maximize the money it makes
3) When you need to spawn a new institution in your land. This is especially important the further away from Europe you are (like playing in Japan, good luck getting most institutions quickly w/o developing)
4) Needing to upgrade a Center of Trade - Level 2 harbor needs 10 dev, level 3 needs 25 dev
5) Needing to unlock a new building slot; since they unlock at 10 dev, 20 dev, etc

I regularly bitch about this but allow myself to introduce myself. I started playing EU4 after a long time playing EU3 in 2010? and had like 1000? hours first year. I don't recognize a single term other than CoT in your whole post. I keep buying expansions but can't stick with a game long enough to relearn how to play again again again again. I will stop and wait for EU5 now.

Furry · Dec 2, 2022

The heretics in Constantinople are finally being converted to the true faith, while the relentless march east has finally met the end of the world. The Teutons now head to the south, cleansing the last vestiges of heresy from the south of the eastern lands. Though Austria is a brother of the true faith, we are beginning to wonder why they allow heresy in their empire.

Aaron · Dec 2, 2022

rhinohelix said:
I regularly bitch about this but allow myself to introduce myself. I started playing EU4 after a long time playing EU3 in 2010? and had like 1000? hours first year. I don't recognize a single term other than CoT in your whole post. I keep buying expansions but can't stick with a game long enough to relearn how to play again again again again. I will stop and wait for EU5 now.

When you say you're going to "stop and wait for EU5", do you mean so you can finally start playing EU4 now that you can learn it "once and for all" and can power through everything? Cos if you're going to buy EU5 you're just setting yourself up for the same.

rhinohelix · Dec 2, 2022

Aaron said:
When you say you're going to "stop and wait for EU5", do you mean so you can finally start playing EU4 now that you can learn it "once and for all" and can power through everything? Cos if you're going to buy EU5 you're just setting yourself up for the same.

Then it will be a new game and I won't feel so chagrined at having to learn all new game mechanics for the same 12 year old game. Same thing for Stellaris but I am not so attached to Stellaris: Once I put it down I haven't tried to pick it back up. Do they revamp that game as well every expansion too?

Zajeer · Dec 2, 2022

I can understand your frustration. However I think the biggest thing that reinvigorated EU4 for me and made it a much better game were mechanics they brought out like 5 years ago (missions and institutions) that made this game a lot deeper/balanced compared to what this game was at release. So if you haven't played the game recently, I'd recommend giving it a go, especially at this point in its maturity, the game won't have any major changes or new mechanics in any future releases; any new DLCs will likely play much more like content packs than mechanics changes.

Honestly, you have to look at these games more like an MMO - I'd imagine I'd have a similar frustration picking up WOW since I haven't played that in like 6 years. Waiting for the sequel is definitively a choice; but the content/publishing model these games go through isn't going to change. It kinda sucks that players are more like beta testers for a year or two while the game is live until the devs find their footing on the balance/mechanics, but this isn't a new thing; I can remember back to Civ4 where it didn't get good until year 2 with DLC2 (Beyond the Sword)

EU5 won't be coming out for a few years, so you're missing out on a good game in the meantime

DickTrickle · Dec 2, 2022

rhinohelix said:
Then it will be a new game and I won't feel so chagrined at having to learn all new game mechanics for the same 12 year old game. Same thing for Stellaris but I am not so attached to Stellaris: Once I put it down I haven't tried to pick it back up. Do they revamp that game as well every expansion too?

But EU4 is effectively a new game to you since you say you don't recognize hardly anything about it. Learning it now shouldn't be any different than as if you never played it before. Just relabel it as EU5 in your steam directory and you're good to go.

rhinohelix · Dec 3, 2022

DickTrickle said:
But EU4 is effectively a new game to you since you say you don't recognize hardly anything about it. Learning it now shouldn't be any different than as if you never played it before. Just relabel it as EU5 in your steam directory and you're good to go.

"effectively" is a new game is like "we have EU4 at home". I've already played this and learned it a few times; I'm done. Hopefully I'll be successful in not bitching about it here. Edit: My tiresome was not with your post but with Paradox. I wish that I was able to approach it in this way but I find it frustrating. It feels much more like a live service game than what I perceive as its genre. I don't mind it in Destiny 2 (which has seemingly changed far less than EU4) but for some reason it feels out of place for me here.

yerm · Dec 3, 2022

rhinohelix said:
"effectively" is a new game is like "we have EU4 at home". I've already played this and learned it a few times; I'm done. Hopefully I'll be successful in not bitching about it here. Edit: My tiresome was not with your post but with Paradox. I wish that I was able to approach it in this way but I find it frustrating. It feels much more like a live service game than what I perceive as its genre. I don't mind it in Destiny 2 (which has seemingly changed far less than EU4) but for some reason it feels out of place for me here.

Ive put thousands of hours into paradox games while only mmos come close. I like that I can basically get a fresh outlook when I redo it. If it followed the expac model of something like a civilization game, I doubt it'd have drawn nearly as much of my free time. I think imperator my played time is under 200 hours, even though I actually did enjoy it a lot. Instead I'm playing stellaris at the moment, with its awful as fuck popups and literally retarded pop mechanics, because there's a new combat rebalance for me. I didn't really enjoy my own teutonic horde run, felt like old school muscovy spam bs, but gotland was a fucking blast and I fucked up repeatedly getting that one going so it felt great once it worked.

Deathwing · Dec 5, 2022

What's a good army composition? I know there's some vague concept of infantry to combat width with reserves, some percentage of artillery behind the infantry, and some percentage of cavalry for flanking. But I can't find the right mix. I build to combat width and then suffer heavy attrition in the winter because the army is just too damn big. I run into equal stack size armies but with higher cavalry ratio and my infantry take a mauling.

Based on supply limit, combat width, and cavalry ratio, how do I arrive at what my armies should nominally look like?

faille · Dec 5, 2022

I tend to be very lazy with my army sizes. I've tried looking into the theory of them and implementing them but it never seems to make a huge difference in my games. So I tend to stick to my standing compositions
10/4 (or 2 if money super tight early on)/1 -> 10/4/10 -> 16/4/20

Zajeer · Dec 5, 2022

Deathwing said:
What's a good army composition? I know there's some vague concept of infantry to combat width with reserves, some percentage of artillery behind the infantry, and some percentage of cavalry for flanking. But I can't find the right mix. I build to combat width and then suffer heavy attrition in the winter because the army is just too damn big. I run into equal stack size armies but with higher cavalry ratio and my infantry take a mauling.

Based on supply limit, combat width, and cavalry ratio, how do I arrive at what my armies should nominally look like?

This spreadsheet is an ok guide, though old (not sure how it still holds up) -

Before Mil tech 16, no stacks should have cannons in them, unless you want to run 1 per stack for the +1 siege bonus. After Mil tech 16, you want cannons to fill your entire back line of army width, with enough infantry to fill the front line; cavalry also fill the frontline, but I usually go combat width size = infantry stack, because you need some inf in reserve.

Problem is, you can't really run armies at max size because of supply limit, so you should think about splitting those armies in 2-3 stacks instead and just combine them while at war and on the front lines. For example, from the spreadsheet above the army size is supposed to be ~66 units at mil tech 16, however no province in the game can give you 66 supply limit at that early of the game. So likely you'll run stacks of something like 22 units each, and combine 3 of them on the front lines while at war. Also, its ok to eat supply limit attrition at war, unless you're good at micro'ing or playing the game at low speeds to coordinate 3 stacks of movement at a time.

Furry · Dec 6, 2022

Deathwing said:
What's a good army composition? I know there's some vague concept of infantry to combat width with reserves, some percentage of artillery behind the infantry, and some percentage of cavalry for flanking. But I can't find the right mix. I build to combat width and then suffer heavy attrition in the winter because the army is just too damn big. I run into equal stack size armies but with higher cavalry ratio and my infantry take a mauling.

Based on supply limit, combat width, and cavalry ratio, how do I arrive at what my armies should nominally look like?

It really depends on the country/era. A lot of games I aim for combat width of infantry, 2 cavalry, 1 cannon early game, then as many cannons as I can afford once they start getting good around 16 or whenever it is. 20/2/16 is solid if you can field it by then. Current game I'm running 10/20/26 armies. I split them in half a lot of the time outside of war, and in war I double them up for sieges. It's wider than combat width currently, but a little extra never hurt. I'm so cavalry heavy because I'm a horde and they are super strong. Armies just melt in the shock phase.

Morale, discipline, and the general are a HUGE part of how effective an army is.

Hey there Mr. king, a position to lead the vanguard of the 1k elite force striking the first blow in the next ottoman war just opened.

DickTrickle · Dec 6, 2022

It's worth noting that such a calvary heavy army is not going to be good for most countries in the game. Zajeer's post is more generally applicable.

I definitely second the idea of splitting your armies and only combining when you're very close to the front lines or a battle is imminent. Being more conscious of the supply limit had such a huge effect on my ability to wage war with a country that didn't have a lot of manpower.

In that same vein, try to have seige armies that have a general and composition that make the siege faster because you're likely to spend a lot of time on that one province and it can eat a lot of manpower if you're going over the limit.

As a side tip, if you have extra military points and/or have discounts on general purchases, you can buy five of them, dismiss them, then instantly slacken recruitment for a manpower boost. They provide 1% professionalism and you can slacken whenever you have 5% or more professionalism. If you are intending to buy mercenaries and you have extra professionalism you should slacken before you buy them because buying mercenaries decreases professionalism. Professionalism is nice though if you don't need the manpower and aren't reliant on mercenaries.

Aaron · Dec 6, 2022

A lot of the min/max streamers I have watched early on when playing EU4 would spend lots of time min/maxing the perfect army composition until they figured out that it was just a waste of time and basically ran something like this: only infantry with 1-2 cav early on (talking about starting as a shitty OPM here) until they got to a 20 unit size, 1 cannon for the siege bonus. Once at 20 they'd field 2 cav, 1 cannon and 17 inf until Mil 16, then 2 cav, 8 inf and 10 cannons. They'd use this until supply could handle 40 stacks and then just combine. Worrying too much about army composition apart from the absolute basics is just for autists and people going for super hard achievement runs early on.

Furry · Dec 6, 2022

Damnit paul! That's not the popup I wanted while chatting about Catholicism in SE asia.

Furry · Dec 6, 2022

Constant wars are raging in the east to purge the last of the heretics. My fellow brother of the faith castile is playing their part. But Austria's policy of 'tolerance' and accepting of all faiths cannot be overlooked. The second war of subjugation against the heretics of the HRE is about to begin.

My little special needs france ally looks so weird.

Aaron · Dec 7, 2022

Mongol Greenland. Don't see that every day!

Zajeer · Dec 7, 2022

Looks like a real fun playthrough - did you feel a power spike when you could finally be a horde and raze land?

Europa Universalis IV

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