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Europa Universalis IV |OT| A Game of Blobs

D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
If you want your game to be any fun, never ally France. You may as well just push the "win" button.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
There's instances when it's needed for a time. If Austria gets out of control quickly and eats up Burgundy, then the only way to stop them from becoming world hegemon is through a French alliance. Just use them long enough to break up Austria through forcing Austria to release nations like The Netherlands. Then go back to beating on France.

I find most European games boil down to managing France and Austria, pretty much.
 
R

robjoh

Member
mkenyon said:
Try taking out France to be #1 before ending your game. :p
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Will not happen anyway, Ottomans, France, Spain and Portugal all have an higher score than me, and Spain is allied with France. I will however try to get through the last remains of Polen to be able to go for Ottomans.

mkenyon said:
I can't offer any advice on the Horde nations though. I've read on the forums that they've been nerfed to non-existence. But there's a lot of hyperbole on the official forums.
Click to expand...

I expect it to be rough after around the first 50 years if I can not break Muscovite. If I can do that an expansion ideas I should be able to at least push for reforming my government to get Muslim units. After that grow into Siberia and attack china.

Crab said:
If you want your game to be any fun, never ally France. You may as well just push the "win" button.
Click to expand...

The game was really fun until around 1600, now I am going a little bit on autopilot. I really needed that alliance to be able to grab the Baltic sea.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
You'd be surprised at what you can do, and how the nations act when in a war. Spain is generally spread out over the globe. Just wait for an opportune moment when both Spain and France are engaged in a war. Then Spain might not even join in defense.

If you weren't Sweden, I wouldn't advise it, but those Swedish troops are just so freaking strong. My last two playthroughs have been the Netherlands and Denmark->Scandanavia. My armies just get shit on by France.

Do you have any potential allies? Even someone like GB could help tons with taking overseas provinces to get that warscore ticking up.
 
R

robjoh

Member
mkenyon said:
You'd be surprised at what you can do, and how the nations act when in a war. Spain is generally spread out over the globe. Just wait for an opportune moment when both Spain and France are engaged in a war. Then Spain might not even join in defense.

If you weren't Sweden, I wouldn't advise it, but those Swedish troops are just so freaking strong. My last two playthroughs have been the Netherlands and Denmark->Scandanavia. My armies just get shit on by France.
Click to expand...

Have not seen Spain in a war for very long time. Still thinks it is better to go for Ottomans first. Just to get to France I have to march through the remains of HRE that I have happily left between me and France to not need to fight France.

mkenyon said:
Do you have any potential allies? Even someone like GB could help tons with taking overseas provinces to get that warscore ticking up.
Click to expand...

Not really GB hates me after I have fought them a number of times. I think going for Ottomans (the present leader) is that the best way to go. And that would be more fun I think, the Scandinavian "liberation" of Byzantium :)

Plus I can take Hungary in marching in that direction...
 
R

robjoh

Member
mkenyon said:
Varangian Guard rebirth? I like it :p
Click to expand...

Something like that.

The game is starting to get interesting again, I have a small coalition against me consisting of:
Russia, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, Pomerania (now located in the central part of the HRE as I first helped them than crushed them), Bohemia (the emperor) and Magdeburg. Or to be precise every country bordering to me except Münster and Ukraine.

So the plan for the moment is to forge a claim on Munster which is allied to Austria, attack Munster to drag Austria into the war. Kill every trope Austria can create so I can attack Poland again without needing to think about Fighting a two front war against Austria and Russia.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
If any one of the coalition nations goes to war against you, the rest will be dragged into the war. So despite Austria not being the primary nation you're declaring war on, Russia will still be part of it.

The best thing to do is to get some +% better relations over time in effect and have Russia or Austria drop out.

Unless you're pretty comfortable with being at war with both of them, in which case, crush them for me. In my current Scandanavia game, Austria basically controls the entire HRE outside of the Baltic region, northern Saxon provinces, and Holstein. I think their force limit is around 300.
 
M

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
robjoh said:
For the moment I am playing as Sweden, I game that starts to get boring. Allied with France and together we have more or less fought HRE, Poland and Lithuania to ruble. The last wars against Russia has shown that I can expand in that direction. I have roughly 150 years left to play so I am planing what my new game should be.

I have some idea to play as Kazan, something I think can be quit rough for me. So I have some questions:
1, I am still playing without any of the expansions. Is it any expansion that I should buy before starting a Kazan game?
2, Any good advice how to play as the horde?

My average idea is to try to get an alliance with Novograd and hit Muscovy as hard as possible with the goal to prevent Russia to be formed. Then somehow succeed in westernize. I have however never played as the horde and I am not really sure what to expect.
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Keep in mind I haven't yet played as a steppe nation, but my advice is to...

1. Recruit eastern and western infantry as much as you can.
2. If you want to preserve manpower during war, then recruit lots of mercenaries and keep your income positive by looting enemy provinces. That isn't a nomad specific tactic, but it helps against Muscovy.
3. Steppe nations apparently receive a bonus for fighting in home provinces that are plains and desert.
4. If you get a tribal succession crisis, then place your army in the province in which the pretenders will appear and end the crisis immediately.
5. I would try to take advantage of the unique steppe mechanics for as long as possible. However, by reforming the government you'll automatically be placed in the Muslim tech group, so that has its advantages. I don't know if it's worth westernizing or not.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
The number one strategy as any horde is to go for Muscowy as soon as you are capable, but you have to use the right CB. Don't use Fabricate Claim and then Conquest unless you're a BAMF who knows their shit, because General Winter will make occupying that province hell when Muscowy comes rolling over. You need to reverse that principle on them - use a Superiority CB, defeat one of their vassals' armies, then Scorched Earth and avoid them. You should be able to generate warscore to cut off their vassals, but the second war won't be much easier either, because this time you will actually have to take territory, so as long as you've managed to devassalize and conquer Perm to cut off the northern route, then you can take a while to prepare for this one. After the second war, you've more or less won as the hordes can rip China a new one once they're confident Muscowy is gone and you will be swimming in manpower and owning most of Eurasia.
 
R

robjoh

Member
mkenyon said:
If any one of the coalition nations goes to war against you, the rest will be dragged into the war. So despite Austria not being the primary nation you're declaring war on, Russia will still be part of it.

Unless you're pretty comfortable with being at war with both of them, in which case, crush them for me.
Click to expand...

Actually only Russia joined the war, did not matter much. They were just sitting on my eastern border meanwhile me and France attacked Austria with an army close to 300k. Even GB joined in on the side of Austria, even if I did not see them do much good. End result of the war:

The army of Austria is destroyed, Bohemia is now a vassal of mine. Austria lost two provinces and Munster one.

Overall in good shape to for an assault against Poland or Lithuania

Mgoblue201 said:
1. Recruit eastern and western infantry as much as you can.
Click to expand...
I have seen this mentioned on the Paradox forum, how can I do this what is the requirement?

Mgoblue201 said:
2. If you want to preserve manpower during war, then recruit lots of mercenaries and keep your income positive by looting enemy provinces. That isn't a nomad specific tactic, but it helps against Muscovy.
Click to expand...
Well Kazan holds a gold mine at the start, but I guess this is a good idea anyway. Never looted a enemy province in any game so far.

Mgoblue201 said:
5. I would try to take advantage of the unique steppe mechanics for as long as possible. However, by reforming the government you'll automatically be placed in the Muslim tech group, so that has its advantages. I don't know if it's worth westernizing or not.
Click to expand...

Is there any regular rule when too westernize or not?

Crab said:
The number one strategy as any horde is to go for Muscowy as soon as you are capable, but you have to use the right CB. Don't use Fabricate Claim and then Conquest unless you're a BAMF who knows their shit, because General Winter will make occupying that province hell when Muscowy comes rolling over.
Click to expand...

I really do not see the problem with fabricate claim, I have fought Russia as Sweden and Scandinavia. The usual drill is send in a merc army and place the rest of the army behind in one of you own provinces. When Russia comes for you reinforce the merc army. You win and then you step back again. Should not be impossible as you have a clear advantage in unit strength as the horde early on.
 
M

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
robjoh said:
I have seen this mentioned on the Paradox forum, how can I do this what is the requirement?
Click to expand...
I don't remember the exact requirements. Obviously, you need to conquer a core from an eastern or western nation. I think you need the equivalent military tech to take advantage of the better units. I don't know whether or not that nation needs to still exist. You can test this quickly before starting a serious game, though.
Well Kazan holds a gold mine at the start, but I guess this is a good idea anyway. Never looted a enemy province in any game so far.
Click to expand...
The only requirement for looting is to stand in an enemy province, and the cool down is something like six months. You obviously don't need to do it, but it's a lot easier to defeat and stack wipe Muscovy if you're recruiting mercenary armies that would otherwise require loans to sustain.
Is there any regular rule when too westernize or not?
Click to expand...
If I'm not mistaken, westernization should pay for itself as a Muslim tech nation after 12 tech progressions. That doesn't count the additional costs of the westernization process (the stability hit, the advisers expenses, the increased revolt risk, the nasty events) and the more intangible cost of falling behind in tech in the first place. I don't think there's a definite rule, though. If you're the largest nation in the game by 1650, then westernization isn't a huge priority, but it would still save you points in the long run.
 
X

xenist

Member
After quite a long while away I figured I'd get into this again.

And I got reminded instantly that alliances suck ass. I have never been in an alliance where I didn't end up fucked in the ass. Dammit.

Also, France is deceptively difficult. Still easier than most but after doing the whole unification thing everyone hates your guts.
 
R

robjoh

Member
Mgoblue201 said:
I don't remember the exact requirements. Obviously, you need to conquer a core from an eastern or western nation. I think you need the equivalent military tech to take advantage of the better units. I don't know whether or not that nation needs to still exist. You can test this quickly before starting a serious game, though.

The only requirement for looting is to stand in an enemy province, and the cool down is something like six months. You obviously don't need to do it, but it's a lot easier to defeat and stack wipe Muscovy if you're recruiting mercenary armies that would otherwise require loans to sustain.

If I'm not mistaken, westernization should pay for itself as a Muslim tech nation after 12 tech progressions. That doesn't count the additional costs of the westernization process (the stability hit, the advisers expenses, the increased revolt risk, the nasty events) and the more intangible cost of falling behind in tech in the first place. I don't think there's a definite rule, though. If you're the largest nation in the game by 1650, then westernization isn't a huge priority, but it would still save you points in the long run.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the information!
 
R

robjoh

Member
So I finished my Scandinavia game, ended up as the number one nation after crushing Ottomans in the end game. Won over France with 1000 points so it was close :)

So I started a new game with Kazan, results so far:
* First start ended up in disaster, so I quit that game after a couple of year.
* Second start was better, took a province from Golden Horde and from that I took Ryzan as a vassal. I got some early problems in the first war with rebels in Uzbek that popped up in the provinces I tried to siege. So a rough start.

Something I however do not understand is why Paradox thought it was a good idea that the Horde cannot take Muscovy as a Rival. This makes it very hard to actually form an alliance with Lithuania or Novograd to pull Muscovy down.

To be honest I think this game will be much harder than I thought when I started. Especially has the only rivals I can have is other horde nations.
 
K

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
There are more details about upcoming Art of War expansion. Most interesting tidbits:

The fleet menu now has a button that allows you upgrade the entire fleet to more modern ships of the same type. How much will this shiny new option cost? The same amount of money as building a new fleet in that location would, and putting each ship at 0% strength for a while.

Each individual fleet can be now be mothballed (or not) while at port. While mothballed, they lose 5% strength each month, down to 25% minimum. They do not repair while mothballed, nor can they move out of port. A mothballed fleet always costs as if the maintenance slider is at 0. At any point in time, you can always toggle a fleet back from its mothball status, but, if they have been mothballed for a while, it will take quite some time until they are fully repaired.

Every 30 years, you can directly increase or decrease the autonomy of a province. Increasing it will give the province -10 unrest or 30 years, and adding +25% autonomy. Decreasing local autonomy adds 10 unrest and removes 25% autonomy. (What is unrest, you may ask? It's a replacement for revolt risk, but we'll talk about that in more detail next week!).
If you are at peace, autonomy decreases by about 1 point per year, with more advanced forms of governments decreasing it far more quickly. An occupied province slowly increases its autonomy by 1 per year, so long bitter wars are not entirely ideal, even if you may recover your lands.
Conquering a non-core province adds +50% autonomy to that province, while having a claim reduces the impact to 40%. It will take time to establish a firm foothold on newly taken lands.
Local autonomy lets us change some things in the main game to avoid some weirdness. For example, we removed the overseas penalties, and instead an overseas province can never be below 50% autonomy. This, we think, captures the economic problems of managing large overseas empires better than a penalty based on map location, which did not always make sense.
Click to expand...
 
F

Fitz

Member
After getting sick of the default music, I made some changes to this EU2 period music mod to make it compatible with Ironman mode (and thus multiplayer). You need to have a copy of EU2 for the music, and then convert it all to .ogg format, which you can do easily with something like vlc.

Mod here. You can essentially follow the instructions from the original version to the letter when installing, but if anyone wants further details, just let me know.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
bjaelke said:
Would love to join next time around assuming you go again - coinciding with the release of AoW perhaps?
Click to expand...

If you're quick you can still jump on board now, we don't start til Sunday.
 
B

bjaelke

Member
Excellent
Crab said:
If you're quick you can still jump on board now, we don't start til Sunday.
Click to expand...
That was my original plan (been lurking in the mp thread for some time). Unfortunately I'm going offshore for the next couple of weeks so I would be relying on the AI to get me off to a decent start.
 
F

Fitz

Member
Sir Fragula said:
The new religious coalition thing for the HRE sounds interesting, but it's a damn shame it ignores Reformed/Orthodox sects.
Click to expand...

Need to find the specific post, but quite sure I saw a Dev post on the forums saying that Reformed/Orthodox can also get involved and shift to the primary HRE religion if they win the same as Catholic/Protestant.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
EU4 trailers are the exact opposite of hype.

Menus!

Filters!

WOW.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Does anyone who's not AI actually build forts?

Aside from doing missions.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I use Defensive Ideas for Supply Limits :>
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Kabouter said:
Sup. I frequently build forts, particularly on borders where I'm preparing to station armies, because forts raise supply limits.
Click to expand...
Same here.

They're handy if you're bordering the BBB/BGB too. Long siege times + attrition means you have a decent shot at winning a war by sapping their typically low manpower.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Well I try not to station 100k units in a province!

I work in multiples of 2 and 3. Usually, 10k -> 20k -> 30k -> 20k + 20k -> 30k + 30k, etc.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Kabouter said:
You clearly don't play enough outside Western Europe if you think this issue only crops up with >100k per province :p
Click to expand...

I avoid severe attrition regions like the plague for this very reason.

Fucking Mongolia and the Middle East.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I started on Silencer back in the DotA days.

Fed so hard I was told to leave and kill myself.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
I don't builds forts because I don't lose wars.

Unless I'm Gelre. Then I ragequit, forts and all.
 
F

fanboi

Banned
Crab said:
I don't builds forts because I don't lose wars.

Unless I'm Gelre. Then I ragequit, forts and all.
Click to expand...

Thanks Swedish train system.

Also, our EU4 game might be delayed now untill Art of war is released... anyone want to jump in now?
 
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