Europa Universalis IV

DickTrickle said:

Austria has vassalized Bohemia and Hungary and they love me and owe a ton of favors. Things are going my way unless they betray me (they do want some of my lands, unfortunately).

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Thats what they did to me -_-

DickTrickle said:

Ugh, I'm retarded... forgot about allies claiming interest in lands I want to attack. Invited Austria to take down Poland to save my manpower and they basically wanted everything so none of the provinces were under my control. Wasted war...

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When you have a powerful ally, sometimes you have to just storm in and start sieging everything asap without any other care in the world, since the first man on tile will get control of the province, even if your 1k army storms in to start sieging the capital and get helped by Austria's 40k stack. I find this especially true within the HRE.

As for avoiding backstabbing, trading ducats for favors can do a lot. Normally I don't bother, but if you're working with austria, there's a good chance that they'll be a big picture in your life for a long time, so it can totally be worth it.

DickTrickle said:

Well, that's not encouraging. Did it happen suddenly or did you get one of those popup warnings?

I would consider giving them provinces to placate them until I was done with Muscovey, if they give me the chance.

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I got repeated popup warnings over a couple years that these small, 1-2 province HRE shitbirds like Stettin were entering the coalition against me one after another but I didnt know what to do about it.

During the same ~10 year period, Austria asked me to return a province to a HRE member (some HRE mechanic) and then a few years later asked me to return a second province to a HRE member. I was an HRE member so I agreed both times as both provinces were shitty. Plus, I was hoping they'd see me as less of a threat and stop with the coalition shit.

Then Austria joined the coalition anyways, that was that, and they declared war on me. I dont get how that can happen to me as an HRE member since I wrested land away from Poland/Lithuania (and a little nibble on Bohemia) but the lands they were asking me to return were Polish lands.

Is there even a point in joining the HRE if your plan is to storm Poland in 1449 as soon as the truce period is over?

Aaron said:

Yeah, I've seen people play it. Huge Fantasy mod. Looks very interesting.

You folks who play this regularly, do you play Ironman for achievements, or with it off and just for fun?

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Always Ironman, but I don’t care about doing achievements actually, I just always play every paradox game in Ironman cause fucking up and losing is how you get better. Especially so in EU4, because you can recover from virtually any fuckup, which isn’t so true in some of their other games.

Aaron said:

Yeah, I've seen people play it. Huge Fantasy mod. Looks very interesting.

You folks who play this regularly, do you play Ironman for achievements, or with it off and just for fun?

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Same as Furry . I started playing in Ironman for achievements but then realized it was making me better, so I never stopped. Ironman always on now.

DickTrickle said:

Yeah, once the cascade starts, I can't seem to stop it. I'm guessing your AE was right on the coalition line for a lot of those folks and the only real solution is to not get that close to it. Did Austria have an interest in any of your provinces? Countries who do have that interest eventually turn hostile and as long as they have that interest, there's no saving it as far as I've seen.

If a nation has positive relations with you, they won't join a coalition, even if the AE would normally be enough. So if you have spare diplomats to chain around the HRE, that could forestall things.

If you're always at war, the Emperor will not demand provinces from you, FWIW. Probably not an easy task as TO early on, though.



I have Ironman on simply because I can't resist the temptation to keep going back and perfecting decisions. I've even save scummed big things on Ironman but this time around I've stopped myself from doing that (so far). It does make for a lot better pace and forces some challenging situations you might not otherwise deal with.

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Honestly I have no idea what my AE was but I am sure it was high. I grabbed lots of provinces in my first 2 wars with Poland. Coring after first war was kinda touch and go since I got shitty rolls on Hochmeisters and was constantly starved for admin points, but eventually I got it done like 5-10 years after first war. Coring after 2nd war was going to be a fuckton of admin points and I was pretty close to getting Lvl 7 in Admin tech and getting that second set of ideas (admin) where you can get 25% off on coring. I was going to drag it out for a couple years and wait till I got the 2nd Idea (Core cost reduction 25% )and then start coring shit but clearly I waited too long. Another valuable lesson learned, AE can actually fuck you up.

DickTrickle

Doing this again, this time noticed these HRE eagles over territories in the offer window after I defeated Poland for the first time, hovered over them and ..... there you have it. They warn you about taking land that HRE might want back

Aggressive expansion is a huge part of playing in the HRE. It's very rare that you want to take more than 2-3 territories at a time there. Countries with a truce wont join a coalition, and countries with over 100 opinion of you will leave a coalition. Always check the AE flag in a peace deal there, and see if you can kick a major threat of a country out quickly with a gift, ect.

And I think you made the same mistake I did dicktrickle. You should have gobbled up the baltic and let Muscovy keep neva and novgorod. That lets Russia form, and Russia isn't a terrible threat, and their auto colonize the east feature lets you skip having to go with ideas to keep your border tidy.

What's the best way to optimize the Falun copper mine Great Monument other than maxing out the monument level?

0 autonomy I'm assuming?
Is there a soft cap on dumping diplo points to boost production? What's a good level?
What buildings should I build there to maximize income?
Anything else I'm missing?

Cc: Z Zajeer

Finally got a good run going. Money is good (20 bucks per month), manpower + army is good, but much smaller force limit still makes me an underdog against Muscovy which is the next area of expansion. Dont want to finish Lithuania yet as they give Muscovy something to stay busy with and ignore me for a while. The Ottomans creeping up into Southern Russia is a problem for me as much as Muscovy, Otto force is over 100K and Im barely half that. Currently allied with Britain, Hungary and Livonian Order. I guess I could save up a couple grand, buy some mercs and try to bumrush Muscovy but the maintenance cost would probably be 60-80 ducats per month from being 40-60 regiments over the cap AND paying the maintenance on the mercs themselves. To be honest, not quite sure how to solve the Muscovy thing for now.

A coalition was being formed against me a couple times so I found a menu option in diplomatic automation where the diplomats worked only on "outraged" countries to reduce AE impact and it works really well. They just switch to the next country when they finish a current one

Just finished cleaning up a good chunk of Scandinavia from Denmark, needed somewhere to expand that wasn't Russia and wanted to get that Falun copper mine, already threw a thousand bucks to upgrade it. For now, just gonna sit tight and catch up on admin tech. Im currently at 7, everyone else is at 11-12

Currently I am the 5th Great Power in the world, Muscovy is 4th

DickTrickle said:

Why let Russia form when Muscovey already isn't a threat? I feel like if I had left them alone completely they would have gotten too strong and none of the Baltic states were going to be a real threat ever. I don't mind an untidy border when it has forts the way this one does. Besides, in the next war, I shouldn't have any problems taking some areas.

Earlier on, just getting to the Baltics was going to be an issue in terms of accesss (I disbanded my navy at the start as I didn't want to waste resources competing in that arena). Either because of Muscovey blocking me or needing to get access through a bunch of shitter HRE countries.

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The russian special action of the great push east. They colonize a lot of shitty provinces super fast, which then lets you conquer them them later. It'll take you 10X as long to colonize them, on top of having to take colonizing ideas to even do it. The big thing about Russia is they have virtually no forts with a super large country. It's very easy for a player to get warscore on them and then peace out when they start a war in Asia, even if it is just a very minor victory, so it's rare they present a threat to a player.