Europa Universalis IV

Furry · May 2, 2023

So, it's time to finally retake Constantinople in my Russia game... and WTF is this horror sitting there.

Apparently the Ottomans have 'problems'. Think I'm gonna siege around it and let the ottomans figure this one out.

On top of that, I have this going on in the new world. Rarely ever see the USA form, but having a massive independent USA in the early 1600s? Madness.

Euro view. Spain is an absolute beast. Well over 3000 dev. Showing off my border gore just for

Aaron

Araysar · May 2, 2023

Furry said:
So, it's time to finally retake Constantinople in my Russia game... and WTF is this horror sitting there.

View attachment 471573
Apparently the Ottomans have 'problems'. Think I'm gonna siege around it and let the ottomans figure this one out.

On top of that, I have this going on in the new world. Rarely ever see the USA form, but having a massive independent USA in the early 1600s? Madness.
View attachment 471575
View attachment 471576
Euro view. Spain is an absolute beast. Well over 3000 dev. Showing off my border gore just for Aaron

I never see AI form The Mughals either, it's always Timurids

Furry · May 2, 2023

Just finished beating up the ottomans again, and took a look at what is happening on the other side of the world. There's some serious manifest destiny going on. I've never seen the AI do anything remotely like this.

Araysar · May 2, 2023

Furry said:
View attachment 471628
Just finished beating up the ottomans again, and took a look at what is happening on the other side of the world. There's some serious manifest destiny going on. I've never seen the AI do anything remotely like this.

HELL YEAH

DickTrickle · May 2, 2023

Furry said:
View attachment 471628
Just finished beating up the ottomans again, and took a look at what is happening on the other side of the world. There's some serious manifest destiny going on. I've never seen the AI do anything remotely like this.

That is amazing. I've never seen the USA even form let alone do this.

Aaron · May 2, 2023

Furry said:
So, it's time to finally retake Constantinople in my Russia game... and WTF is this horror sitting there.

View attachment 471573
Apparently the Ottomans have 'problems'. Think I'm gonna siege around it and let the ottomans figure this one out.

On top of that, I have this going on in the new world. Rarely ever see the USA form, but having a massive independent USA in the early 1600s? Madness.
View attachment 471575
View attachment 471576
Euro view. Spain is an absolute beast. Well over 3000 dev. Showing off my border gore just for Aaron

Looks like Russia won't be wanting for warm water ports in Scandinavia in this timeline.

DickTrickle · May 3, 2023

I'm playing a Switzerland campaign and it's honestly amazing. Full mercenary army (though I imagine I might have to supplement some artillery later on) and it's glorious because I don't have to worry about manpower at all. I can throw doomstacks of mercenaries at anything and they never get low.

One mercenary regiment has as much reserve manpower as the Ottomans!

And this is only 1580. Much cheaper than regular army with that maintenance reduction. Plus, all the regular army bonuses (discipline, morale, etc), stack on top of the mercenaries so I have 125% discipline, etc. It's pretty fun and a rare treat not to have to worry about manpower. I actually only use it to advance great projects right now.

Definitely needing it as Otto was really out of control. Took all of Austria, Hungary, parts of Poland/Lithuania/Crimea and all of Mamluks at one point. I'm starting my third ward with them and they are still fielding 265k troops with 150k manpower reserve. I really need for them to crumble under their decadence ASAP.

I was thinking, a fun and hard challenge run would be to never use allies (at least offensively). Just thinking of this campaign and I think I would have gotten almost nowhere without the help of allies. I certainly couldn't have taken on Spain or the Ottomans without help.

Araysar · May 3, 2023

I just got Colonialism origin province with Ming China

Aaron · May 3, 2023

Time to build a treasure fleet and colonize the Americas from the East!

Araysar · May 4, 2023

Aaron said:
Time to build a treasure fleet and colonize the Americas from the East!

Getting 150 ducats every couple months from the Peru mines right now

Araysar · May 4, 2023

So I'm in 1550, playing the Ming.

What is the progression for the tributary system? Its tied pretty hard into the Divine Mandate score which you need to pass celestial reforms (which you need to go through the mission tree) but it keeps you from taking land since its easier to tributary everyone than fighting/annexing them. The malus from low DIvine Mandate score are also pretty brutal so the whole game kinda ends up based around the DM system, which is heavily propped up by the tributary system

Are you supposed to just camp out on China mainland and tributary everyone in the world? Sometimes I can just tributary tribes in South America without even having any relationship with them, its just a "Establish Tributary" option in the diplomacy menu if you have a shared border. Or am I supposed to eventually wean myself off the tributary system and the Divine Mandate system in general and dump the whole Emperor system?

Or should I just fucking YOLO it and create some parliamentary republic?

Furry · May 12, 2023

Ottomans just melted to rebels and other invaders once I broke their army. That Spain is stupid chonky. Fielding almost a million soldiers already, and then its colonies and allies can field another 2 million.

USA on the other hand contiues to consolidate and grow. This game has been weird... Colonial mamalukes are in the indonesian isles...

DickTrickle · May 16, 2023

Finished my Swiss -> Italy run and it was a pretty good time. Mercenary stacking is kind of fucking broken. It was in the late 1600s when I felt like I had done all that was worth doing and my mercs with hardly any artillery was destroying balanced same size and bigger armies with artillery because their discipline modifiers were so insanely high (I think I was at roughly +50-55%). Really only needed artillery for some siege.

Did a couple short achievement runs and was looking around for a nation with some differences to play with and Majahapit looks pretty amazing. Great national ideas, interesting government reform, high money making area and they get a mission that can give a CB with with 80% AE, 150% prestige, and 80% war score cost. I think it's realistic that you could get that in the mid 1500s, so it's basically like having Imperialism 125-150 years early.

With the Hindu religion and the Buddha deity, you can also get a ton of awesome great projects in the area. Looking forward to this run now.

DickTrickle · May 18, 2023

Yep, Majaphait is even more powerful than I realized. You can vassalize ANY nation with their unique CB for 90% war score. I just vassalized a Wu that was worth 400% war score. I'm looking forward to taking on late game Spain and vassalize their entire empire in one war, haha. I think that can possibly be lowered as well as I saw some stuff online about only taking 72% war score maximum.

The minor drawback of the CB is that you MUST vassalize to get any provinces, but if you have the war score, you can take provinces and leave them with a single province or whatever. Still, when you can take 400% war score of land, you take it and worry about it later, haha. It's going to be a while before all the various maluses go down enough to make them useful for me but that's fine by me.

I guess you can become Shogun and make all your vassals daimyos (thereby not taking up a diplo slot) but I'm not sure I want to go full degenerate like that.

DickTrickle · May 21, 2023

Love this AI border gore on the Timurids. Wasn't involved in this area at all, either.

Furry · May 22, 2023

DickTrickle said:
Love this AI border gore on the Timurids. Wasn't involved in this area at all, either.

View attachment 474576

That's definitely strange too, wonder if the ottomans are behind that. Timurids usually are pretty strong in their area.

Gonna wrap this run up. 16k dev, fielding 3m soldiers. It'd still be a tight race to get a WC in, because spain is just disgusting, and has a massive brandenburg and USA as allies. I stayed out of the new world, cause I just couldn't bring myself to do anything to the glorious AI united states. Speaking of which, it's just beautiful. The AI even cleared up its border gore. I gotta see where this ends up, so gonna slap speed at 5 and just let the game run until 1821. Only things I'll do from here out is agitate mexico, and support them if they rebel.

DickTrickle · May 22, 2023

For the first time ever in my time playing, Portugal PU'd Castille and finally integrated them. They're truly massive, having almost the entirety of the new world and half of England. Shit, it's 1651 and Aragon is an independent thriving nation.

I'm really looking forward to going to one war with them and being able to vassalize them for 90% war score, lol. Same with Ottos and their 1315% war score cost. Now, I'll probably never get them to be loyal to me, but fuck it... it'll just be funny.

Furry · May 22, 2023

DickTrickle said:
For the first time ever in my time playing, Portugal PU'd Castille and finally integrated them. They're truly massive, having almost the entirety of the new world and half of England. Shit, it's 1651 and Aragon is an independent thriving nation.

I'm really looking forward to going to one war with them and being able to vassalize them for 90% war score, lol. Same with Ottos and their 1315% war score cost. Now, I'll probably never get them to be loyal to me, but fuck it... it'll just be funny.

Playing ottomans at work on my steam deck. It feels like a cheat code. I'm entirely disrespecting the HRE in the early 1500s. After some wars in the west, Have some colonies without expansion or exploration, and have mostly deleted castile as a country. If I went full autismo and No-cb'd an Ireland state it be game over man. For my next serious game, I kinda want to play Brabant or one of the other netherlands PUs into America, and see if I can RP an america into something great.

DickTrickle · May 22, 2023

Furry said:
Playing ottomans at work on my steam deck. It feels like a cheat code. I'm entirely disrespecting the HRE in the early 1500s. After some wars in the west, Have some colonies without expansion or exploration, and have mostly deleted castile as a country. If I went full autismo and No-cb'd an Ireland state it be game over man. For my next serious game, I kinda want to play Brabant or one of the other netherlands PUs into America, and see if I can RP an america into something great.

Just the way they can stack CCR is insane, not to mention everything else. I kind of always avoided them for the reason that they seem like a cheat code but with the new rework in 1.35 it might be entertaining just from having a variety of things going on. Plus, sometimes it's fun just curb stomping shit.

DickTrickle · May 25, 2023

Just finished what is probably the biggest war I've ever fought.

Went up against a Portugal that had about 95% of the new world. Portugal's army alone was 850k and, unlike a lot of colonial nations, all of it was on the mainland in Iberia. I played very sloppily because I was just giving it a shot as a test run so my army management was terrible and when I moved to the New World, I was definitely having manpower issues despite starting with 500k. However, I did have some friends...

Thanks to the insane Majahapit CB, I was able to vassalize Portugal, thus effectively taking everything you see in red below in one war (when I diplo annex Portugal, I will get their CNs).

The funny thing is that I'll actually be able to diplo annex them at all. With the right combination of monuments, ideas, policies, placating, positive opinion, and the Age of Revolutions abilities, it won't even be a problem. Because I'm Shogun, all the above vassals and tributaries only compare their power to me (not to all other vassals), so all I have to worry about is their development.

Was quite a fun ride and I think I'm probably done now that I've finally tamed the beast in the West. This is the first long campaign that I've played in the Asia area. I'd argue the monuments in that area are better than the West and going as Hinda with Buddha deity opens up so many of them. Definitely strongly recommend a Majahapit Shogunate to anyone wanting a crazy run.

Europa Universalis IV

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭

Loser Araysar

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

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭

Loser Araysar

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

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

Goonsquad Officer

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

Loser Araysar

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

Goonsquad Officer

Loser Araysar

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

Loser Araysar

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

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler