Europa Universalis IV

Araysar said:

If I was going to be creating vassals to offset coring costs, whats the general strategy? Realistically you're limited to half a dozen or so.

Do you create them strategically at 1 per region and then structure your war land grabs so that theyre adjacent to vassal so you can feed provinces to them? So you might have 1 in South France, 1 in Baltics, 1 in Italy, 1 in Iberia, etc.?

Do you just keep growing them and then using game mechanics to try and keep liberty desire under 50%?

Or do you regularly diplo annex the vassal once it gets to a certain size and then create a new vassal state where its georgraphically advantageous to you? Should you always have a diplomat diplo-annexing a vassal? Just trying to figure out what the cadence looks like

I did the vassal feeding in last game but I barely annexed any vassals. At the end I had like 10 diplomatic relations simultaneously eating up all my diplo points.

Another problem is that I reguarly had vassals in last game that couldnt absorb more territories because they would become overextended. At that point do you wait until they finish coring their current queue and then try to feed provinces to them a year or 2 later, or do you just core them yourselves?

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I generally vassal feed then annex after a certain point. What you want to do is find vassals with a lot of cores, take one of their provinces, then release then. Now you have a reconquest CB on a huge amount of land for way less cost and AE. That's a classic thing to do, for example, when taking on the ottomans. If they wiped out the Mamluks, that's probably at least 50 provinces with their cores that you can reconquest on. When all the reconquesting is done is an ideal time to annex them unless you really need their military power.

You can find what has a lot of cores by mousing over provinces and hovering over grayed out nation cores. It will bring up a highlight of all their cores.

You don't want your vessels to be too big because then they're harder to control and the more you get the harder it is to control as well. So I'll annex when they either get too big, ate not close enough to my current battles to really help out much, or I'm going to need the diplo slots for a new vassal.

You can give client States overextension. But they still need to be able to core them so you don't want to completely cripple the country by fully overloading. If they get in the negative stability they'll spiral and waste all their admin points on raising stability instead of coring but that makes them get stuck so that they never core their land. You can't make client states until admin tech 23 unless you have certain policies.

Also, you obviously want to maximize your diplo annexation cost.

25% influence ideas
15% admin-influence policy
10% influence-quality policy
15% great Britain ideas
15% parliament active issue
10% England mission tree modifier
10% papal mod if you stay Catholic
5% noble integration policy

So, as you can see, it's totally feasible with different options on getting to 100% and super easy to always be at 80%. When you have some of those ideas you'll sometimes get an event that gives you diplo annex as well.

I've been trying for the Australia-Hungary achievement without doing any glitches, gimmicks (like disabling certain DLC), or other unintended stuff and it's been brutal. Starting as an Australian tribe has to be the worst tech situation in the game. You go horde to be able to get out of the continent but the horde reform tree is short and you only get one estate -- not ideal when you're probably going to play somewhat tall at times.

It was roughly 60-70 years before I could get off the island after much speed 5ing. But the real zinger is that if you reform out of a horde into a monarchy, republic, or theocracy, you go BACK to you original tech group, of which there are ZERO other nations in the game. Since you have to dev for each institution and don't even start with Feudalism you are waaaaay behind the curve and since you're the only one with the tech group you don't get a neighbor bonus from being the same tech group. Just move the capital to get near countries for that neighbor bonus, you say? Nope, as soon as you move the capital out of Australia, Australia becomes a colony and you can't do the achievement. Sure, you could move out and later on do something where you release the colony, take back same provinces and move the capital, then retake the rest, but I think that really goes against the spirit of the achievement and it's still a huge pain.

So my option was to conquer land from another religion such that I could accept religious rebel demands (getting a different religion) and then turn into a different government (which only then switches the tech group). It's the early 1600s and I've just become up to date on tech. My plan to befriend the Ottomans to help take Hungary has failed because the Ottos are getting buttfucked. Austria is the Emperor, huge, has Russian as an ally, and has all the Hungarian land, so now I need to get super swole to even be able to take that. The mission tree for an Australian tribe offers no useful permanent military modifiers and I haven't been able to afford a military idea group. If I declared war right now, it'd be their 600k troops to my 170k. Ouch.

It's been hell and I probably won't finish until the 1700s at this point (currently 1638), even though I'm just barely the #1 great power.

Look at this fucking Venice. I don't think I"ve ever seen the Ottos wiped out by 1638.

Furry said:

That’s the funnest part of playing the ass end of the world, getting to see how cursed Europe is. I had an ottomans that imploded on its own after one bad war with me. Rebels were everywhere, I think they entered a decadence spiral or something. Still haven’t ever seen the ottomans die witho it me at least nudging them too.

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Yeah, definitely played zero role in their demise... the one goddamn game I WANTED the Ottomans to do well. Fucking EU4 knows what I'm doing. Mamluks are still around and decently strong but I was planning on going through them. If I don't do that I'm going to have to go up through North Africa, I fear (or wait until unlimited coring range, maybe).

On a side note, really enjoying playing as a Republic when I'm not trying to go ultra wide. Right now, I have elections every two years. So, that's me keeping a 6/6/6 for like three decades at this point and every two years I get a +50 mana dump. I really don't think I could have caught up like this if I had gone Monarchy or Theocracy.

Fucking christ. This game really is out to screw me over and somehow knows exactly the achievement I'm going for. Russia is now a vassal of Austria. How the fuck is that even possible?! Austria vassalized a country with TWICE its own development. It must be a PU but I didn't look too closely; I just turned off the monitor and told the game to go fuck itself.

Araysar said:

It's 1490.

I already conquered all of England and Ireland and am colonizing in New England, Caribbean and Africa. First province I conquered in Ireland I vassalized them fed them every remaining province on the island then diploannexed them so I could save admin points and rush for Exploration Ideas. I got more colonies in New World right now than Spain and Portugal put together. Still have all my provinces in France too though I see France licking its chops.

Second set of ideas I took was Innovation Ideas. Every guide says it's one of the best idea sets because of -10% to technology cost but I'm skeptical. I guess it does pay off when you realize theres 96 techs in the game and you probably save 50 points on average for each one. That's around 5000 mana points.

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That and Anglican gives you +Innovative boosts as well. The way GB can boost Innovative is insane and is a huge mana cost saver late game.

Furry said:

I had one game where I got the pop up that Russia had fallen into a PU with odoyev. I was just like WUT. PU's can make some silly shit happen sometimes. Try to think of it as an opportunity. If Russia was PU'd, they'll probably high liberty desire, so if you support their independence that might be an easy big win on Austria.

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Yeah, after taking a nap and checking it out, they're already almost at 50% liberty desire so I'm definitely supporting that shit.

It's all starting to come together...



They invited me to take their land for the lowly ass sum of a blazing 420. I did have to ally them but once I break the alliance and either truce break or wait, I should be able to siege rush and take enough war score to grab one province. It's so close now after looking so far!

Furry said:

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This has been a strange experience. My biggest limiting factor is by far my admin points. Probably more than half of my states don't have cores, and that aint changing anytime soon. Once I'm done conquering the western hemisphere and australia, I'm gonna have to smash that ugly ass europe. Trying to core all of the americas and WC is just an awful idea unless you are horde. Maybe when absolution kicks in 1710 or so I'll be able to finally catch up on admin mana.

I've never really played in japan much. Maybe I'll have to try that ryukyu achievement next. Won't be too serious about it. If things go tits up, they go tits up.

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I have the same experience. As an Australian tribe I knew I could keep all that land for myself but almost all of it is half stated. A little annoying when I need to core stuff but not really a big deal.

Funny how quickly things change. Once the foolish Austrians sold me that province, I was able to get even more alliances and now it's just going to be a brutal gang bang.



And at long last, after a super sloppy war where I lost half of my troops (LOL at not accounting for having no military ideas and no mission tree modifiers AND trying to siege down seven forts at once) and Ming peacing out after like five seconds.... none of that mattered because Hungary was finally mine (as usually, European power rules -- thanks Venice and France).