Europa Universalis IV

Furry · Mar 14, 2023

Absolution is a big deal because it raises administrative efficiency, which has a lot of really, really powerful bonuses. It's one of the most important numbers to get high in EU4.

Time to tackle this monster France today. Do I feel bad for doing that to england? Not one bit. It's weird having castile and portugal both as my PU's. Since the coalition against me is spanning three continents, I think it's time for me to chill for like a decade, and then aim for figuring out a war that would let me dismantle the HRE. Seeing a fat brandenburg like that makes me happy. France has a missions that let you subjugate naples and commonwealth both, which is kinda crazy.

DickTrickle · Mar 14, 2023

Furry said:
Absolution is a big deal because it raises administrative efficiency, which has a lot of really, really powerful bonuses. It's one of the most important numbers to get high in EU4.

View attachment 463398

Time to tackle this monster France today. Do I feel bad for doing that to england? Not one bit. It's weird having castile and portugal both as my PU's. Since the coalition against me is spanning three continents, I think it's time for me to chill for like a decade, and then aim for figuring out a war that would let me dismantle the HRE. Seeing a fat brandenburg like that makes me happy. France has a missions that let you subjugate naples and commonwealth both, which is kinda crazy.

I don't know why, but I always loved taking out England and it looked pretty much exactly like that. Looks like a pretty good situation there with Austria being pretty well neutered.

Furry · Mar 14, 2023

That coalition was gigantic, so I just chilled in europe the last almost 30 years, spending 25 or so of it integrating Castile. It completely fell apart just before castile integrated. Mostly been waging war in africa, indonesia, India and the new world. I think it's going to take me 20 minutes just to figure out all the shit that's going on. Concetrating dev to remove 30+ dev in a state to gain 4 in my capital feels pretty wrong, but this is the way.

DickTrickle · Mar 14, 2023

Finally got control one of my favorite Great Projects.

One reason I loved Portugal so much was getting both this and Alhambra before 1600 (though I don't think I maxed them until after).

I wish Spain didn't have Malta Forts because that's another great one I miss.

Edit: Obligatory fuck overextension and rebels, I need that land!

DickTrickle · Mar 15, 2023

Some people really know how to break the fuck out of this game.

Here's all the nations he was: TO -> Jerusalem -> Kongo -> Sardinia-Piedmont -> Austria -> Poland -> Manchu -> Qing

Unreal, but seems super sweaty. Playing with 150-300 OE for a large portion of the game feels like a huge hassle, though he might have had the unrest reduction to not make it suck.

Aaron · Mar 15, 2023

Furry said:
View attachment 463458

That coalition was gigantic, so I just chilled in europe the last almost 30 years, spending 25 or so of it integrating Castile. It completely fell apart just before castile integrated. Mostly been waging war in africa, indonesia, India and the new world. I think it's going to take me 20 minutes just to figure out all the shit that's going on. Concetrating dev to remove 30+ dev in a state to gain 4 in my capital feels pretty wrong, but this is the way.

You need to eliminate Sweden as their colour is too close to yours.

Furry · Mar 15, 2023

Aaron said:
You need to eliminate Sweden as their colour is too close to yours.

I’ve been looking for a good excuse to go after them, but have been pushing into Italy to follow my mission tree, and going after them would have made the coalitions big enough that it would have attacked I think. I’m actually surprised it didn’t. I think it’s now the appropriate time to go after the ottomans though. They have shitloads of allies, way more than the ottos usually have, probably because I’m rivaled to them.

DickTrickle · Mar 19, 2023

I decided to restart my TO run because of a few different reasons after reaching about the 1720s or 1730s. I was still rusty so there was a bunch of things I kind of missed or just didn't know about and they kind of bugged my min/maxer personality. A big one was learning that at Tech 12 or 13 you start getting diminishing returns on the Horde razing as TO. With regular hordes it's 4 but I never played a Horde before so I didn't know about any of it. I wasn't really careful about following the mission tree so I didn't even get to be a Horde until I was tech 20 or 21. I also ran across some other TO campaigns that made me want to try some different things, like tag switching, since I've never done stuff like that before. I think I'm going to try for a true one tag, one faith, one culture run with this campaign. There's a bunch of other minor things that I didn't know or forgot about that I'm keeping track of this run.

Anyway, after a handful of restarts of the first 10-20 years, I've arrived at a pretty damn good place compared to my first run. 1547 and #1 world power. I'm already down to Jerusalem and past the Black Sea (Kazan is my vassal). I think I'm probably 40-60 years ahead of my last run and that should only snowball, ideally. Austria is mega strong this campaign (and is actually the Emperor this time), so that should be a fun battle down the line. After the first decade, I think I've spent 80% of my time in war, which has been fun but hectic.

Furry · Mar 19, 2023

In my chill kilwa game, Spain has turned into one of the most grotesque monsters of a nation I’ve ever seen. They got a PU over England now, and allied Portugal and ottomans again. If I were to attack them I’d be facing an army of almost 2 million soldiers in the early half of the 1600s. It’s the most obscene force I can recall seeing an AI nation make… and France decided to contest the English PU. They made a lot of gains at first, but when the horde showed up they went down in flames fast.

DickTrickle · Mar 19, 2023

Furry said:
In my chill kilwa game, Spain has turned into one of the most grotesque monsters of a nation I’ve ever seen. They got a PU over England now, and allied Portugal and ottomans again. If I were to attack them I’d be facing an army of almost 2 million soldiers in the early half of the 1600s. It’s the most obscene force I can recall seeing an AI nation make… and France decided to contest the English PU. They made a lot of gains at first, but when the horde showed up they went down in flames fast.

Yeah, I was reading that the 1.34 turned Castille/Spain into absolute monsters. Way more likely to take Italians areas and PUs or alliances with the other big powers (not to mention the armies all the vassal force limit shit gives them). It's not a fluke that you've seen that, apparently. It seems like they're almost the new Ottomans in that not crippling them early can lead to some real ungodly power. I'm avoiding most of Western Europe for a while so I kind of hope they turn into a monster. The worst part about the late game if you've had a good early/mid game is there isn't much of a challenge left.

Furry · Mar 19, 2023

DickTrickle said:
Yeah, I was reading that the 1.34 turned Castille/Spain into absolute monsters. Way more likely to take Italians areas and PUs or alliances with the other big powers (not to mention the armies all the vassal force limit shit gives them). It's not a fluke that you've seen that, apparently. It seems like they're almost the new Ottomans in that not crippling them early can lead to some real ungodly power. I'm avoiding most of Western Europe for a while so I kind of hope they turn into a monster. The worst part about the late game if you've had a good early/mid game is there isn't much of a challenge left.

Yea, I’ve been thinking of playing a game where I just chill and play super tall and do nothing but dev and fight defensive wars only til the 1700s on speed 5 and then try to explode outward, just to see how viable it is. Somewhere rich like the holland area or perhaps Italy with a custom nation.

Zajeer · Mar 20, 2023

DickTrickle said:
I decided to restart my TO run because of a few different reasons after reaching about the 1720s or 1730s. I was still rusty so there was a bunch of things I kind of missed or just didn't know about and they kind of bugged my min/maxer personality. A big one was learning that at Tech 12 or 13 you start getting diminishing returns on the Horde razing as TO. With regular hordes it's 4 but I never played a Horde before so I didn't know about any of it. I wasn't really careful about following the mission tree so I didn't even get to be a Horde until I was tech 20 or 21. I also ran across some other TO campaigns that made me want to try some different things, like tag switching, since I've never done stuff like that before. I think I'm going to try for a true one tag, one faith, one culture run with this campaign. There's a bunch of other minor things that I didn't know or forgot about that I'm keeping track of this run.

Anyway, after a handful of restarts of the first 10-20 years, I've arrived at a pretty damn good place compared to my first run. 1547 and #1 world power. I'm already down to Jerusalem and past the Black Sea (Kazan is my vassal). I think I'm probably 40-60 years ahead of my last run and that should only snowball, ideally. Austria is mega strong this campaign (and is actually the Emperor this time), so that should be a fun battle down the line. After the first decade, I think I've spent 80% of my time in war, which has been fun but hectic.

Very good pace so far! For reference, this was where I was at in my game that I finished a WC by like 1720, then one Faith around 1750:

650A350B7AE4B08A2B528849C9A3C0B11A2A4178

I think you can get WC/1Faith since you're 400 dev ahead of me just 20 years later. 1 Culture is so tough / tedious - you have to diplo bank until you can get every culture conversion modifier.

Zajeer · Mar 20, 2023

Furry said:
Yea, I’ve been thinking of playing a game where I just chill and play super tall and do nothing but dev and fight defensive wars only til the 1700s on speed 5 and then try to explode outward, just to see how viable it is. Somewhere rich like the holland area or perhaps Italy with a custom nation.

Throw in some show superiority wars each time you can for that sweet +300 mana. Farming 900 mana every 15 years from your rivals sounds like great dev boosting.

DickTrickle · Mar 21, 2023

EU4 is such a crazy deep game.

I just completed a culture shift to Qirat and then formed Jerusalem. I now have (after completing almost the entire TO mission tree), both the Jerusalem and Mongol mission tree to work on. This is going to end up getting me Malta without war (-15% WS reduction to different religions) and some nice permanent modifiers (-3 unrest, -15 WS for anyone, other small nice ones). My economy took a small hit but after restating what I could, it was honestly a pretty small blip.

Furry · Mar 21, 2023

1694 and pretty much everything has been colonized. Time to start integrating Portugal. Surprisingly it will only take 5 years? I figured it'd be closer to 30 like Castile. Gonna integrate my other colonizer, Tidor while I'm at it. They get a mission tree colonist, so whenever I see them colonizing I like to vassalize them, even if I have to No-CB it. Nobody cares about them for the AE to matter much.

I could have spent the last two wars trying to kick the ottomans out of europe, but I want the HRE to die in a fire so I can subjugate the Commonwealth, so I've been pushing them out of africa and the middle east with my vassals the mamluks and syria, and really, what's the difference between germans and turks anyways.

One of the stranger things going on in this game is the AI just stomped the Japs into the ground, Usually they're pretty safe on their island. I had no part in this. Only the brave samurai of Hojo still stand.

DickTrickle · Mar 22, 2023

Furry said:
View attachment 464840

1694 and pretty much everything has been colonized. Time to start integrating Portugal. Surprisingly it will only take 5 years? I figured it'd be closer to 30 like Castile. Gonna integrate my other colonizer, Tidor while I'm at it. They get a mission tree colonist, so whenever I see them colonizing I like to vassalize them, even if I have to No-CB it. Nobody cares about them for the AE to matter much.

I could have spent the last two wars trying to kick the ottomans out of europe, but I want the HRE to die in a fire so I can subjugate the Commonwealth, so I've been pushing them out of africa and the middle east with my vassals the mamluks and syria, and really, what's the difference between germans and turks anyways.

One of the stranger things going on in this game is the AI just stomped the Japs into the ground, Usually they're pretty safe on their island. I had no part in this. Only the brave samurai of Hojo still stand.

View attachment 464846

I always love seeing how the rest of the world turns out when I've played no part in it. Transoxiana being huge seems pretty uncommon too. I think the oddest thing I've ever seen is Ryukku having like ten of the Philippines islands. No idea how that happened.

On the topic of things I don't like... not being able to choose your own country. Can't even mod it without disabling Ironman.

This shit... ugh. Two different countries that look just about the same and there's nothing I can do about it outside of wrecking Austria's shit (which I'm doing). I'm 100% going Poland -> Commonwealth after I finish the Jerusalem/Mongol trees just to change my color.

My favorite color I've played is Asturias... such a pretty, non eye-raping blue.

DickTrickle · Mar 22, 2023

I feel dumb. Just today I realized that co-belligerents (not just war allies, but one's specifically marked as co-belligerents) don't get the CB reductions that the main belligerent gets. So, doing shit like a holy war with 75% AE reduction only applies to the country you attacked and won't apply to marked co-belligerents. I feel that's kind of lame. Making someone a co-belligerent makes them bring in their allies, so why shouldn't they get discounted by the CB as well.

Alas.

Araysar · Mar 27, 2023

After 2,000 hours it has dawned on me that I fight EU4 wars like a retard.

For the first 2,000 hours I would slowly crawl across the enemy map, painting provinces, sieging forts as I came across them and rerouting armies and forces to engage moving enemy armies in favorable scenarios, to keep them out of my lands.

Then I discovered the "Fort" map view in EU4 in the past few days and stopped doing anything but sieging forts. I try to max out my siege stats, make sure I have generals with good siege pips in stacks that siege forts and focus on sieging forts exclusively. I never bothered to do any of this before.

Now I dont bother painting the map and I dont bother incrementally moving across the map like actual historical wars were fought.

Right before I declare a war, I stage my siege stacks (with ample artillery), assign to them my best siege generals and then rush straight for the forts. Siege them down, move on to the next forts. I dont bother fighting enemy armies unless theyre literally right next to me. I dont even care if theyre roaming in my lands, sieging defenseless provinces.

The result is that my wars have gone down from 4-8 years, to 2-4 years, even against Great Powers like Ottos.

I feel like a retard for just figuring this out.

Araysar · Mar 27, 2023

DickTrickle said:
Officially a Holy Horde finally (probably could have gotten there a lot faster, but got a bit too focused on good land versus getting the missions done ASAP, meh). I do wish I had done it before I chose my previous Idea group, though.

Ready to really rape and village now!

I only got the Holy Horde government by 1702 or so.

I like the HH play mechanics but feels like it takes too long to get there to really get full use out of it.

But thats just might be my pretty conservative play style. I dont fight multiple wars on multiple fronts and I dont ride -3 stability like

Furry does lol

Araysar · Mar 27, 2023

DickTrickle said:
If it's not on your mind, you should be preparing for absolutism and how to max it out if you really want to maximize your conquests.

I used this as a refresher: Absolutism – EU4 Guides.

DickTrickle said:
It's a big difference maker in how much land you can get and keep since it directly increases your administrative efficiency.

You don't *need* to do court and country to get capped at 100, but if you do you can increase your overcap so you can then take a few estates (or get rid of the +15 reform) and still be at 100. The event is annoying but not that bad -- I actually was doing easy wars after the first three years of the event. And remember you can delay events by two months by not making a choice if you need to move armies or do something else.

I've been thinking of changing my Divine Cause reform to Pursuit of Knowledge. Army morale and shock is so powerful but being able to see ruler stats when you get six choices is pretty damn strong. I didn't realize it had that effect originally and I've had two horrible rulers in a row. Though, now with razing available it's not quite as useful.

I got mine to 90 pretty easy (without doing court and country) and thought that where the bonuses capped out. Didnt realize you get another huge one by going up to 100. The only estate privileges I have for all 3 estates is the +1 mana for admin, diplo and mil and the +150 governing capacity for each one. Probably will dump a single +150 GV estate privilege and +1 diplo point estate privilege to get to 100. I'm already way over the governing capacity limit but the 40% administrative efficiency boost should significantly correct for that I think

Europa Universalis IV

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Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Reporter. Stock Pals CEO. Head of AI.

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Reporter. Stock Pals CEO. Head of AI.

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Reporter. Stock Pals CEO. Head of AI.