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Yeah I think it depends a lot on the person. I still recommend playing a medium-hard country and going nuts on overextension, aggressive expansion etc so you get exposed to the worst of those mechanics quickly, and then cheating when you find yourself inevitably running into trouble. But if you might grow dependent on the console from doing that then obviously it's not a good idea. in other news, I remember a while back they mentioned that for Cossacks, whenever you do a nation forming decision that gives you new ideas (e.g. Italy), the game will now give you a choice about whether you wanna take them, or just keep using the ones you already have. Wiz even said that, now that you can choose, he'd like to eventually give every formable nation its own unique ideas. so when I reformed as a horde, I was surprised to discover that wow, not only are they doing unique ideas for reformed hordes too, they've already added them to the game!  horde ideas are already pretty powerful right so these are bound to be amazing?   oh gee, national ideas, my favourite. fe: sarcasm aside, it is pretty cool that there might be actual unique ideas for reformed hordes some day.
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Jan 20, 2016 19:30
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Koramei posted:Yeah I think it depends a lot on the person. I still recommend playing a medium-hard country and going nuts on overextension, aggressive expansion etc so you get exposed to the worst of those mechanics quickly, and then cheating when you find yourself inevitably running into trouble. But if you might grow dependent on the console from doing that then obviously it's not a good idea. That is mostly how I learned EU3, but it still doesn't seem like a good idea. My best advice is still to pick one of the big 3 blobs (France, Ottomans, Muscovy), and leverage the massive starting advantages you have to bully your neighbours. Aim for no more than what those countries achieved in reality. You'll gently caress up a lot, but have enough raw power to bounce back and recover. Upon encountering mechanics that don't make any sense to you (what is trade, why am I losing all these battles), go googling, or come ask the thread with screenshots.
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Jan 20, 2016 19:42
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I vassalized Yeren as Japan and I can't use their reconquest cb for their cores. Why?
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Jan 20, 2016 20:14
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Too Poetic posted:I vassalized Yeren as Japan and I can't use their reconquest cb for their cores. Why? Probably something to do with Japan not being able to use subject CBs. Japan would vassal swarm the mainland when using subject CBs was added. If you're still a Shogunate then hurry up and stop being that. If your government type isn't a Shogunate then its probably just a bug.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:21
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Koramei posted:Yeah I think it depends a lot on the person. I still recommend playing a medium-hard country and going nuts on overextension, aggressive expansion etc so you get exposed to the worst of those mechanics quickly, and then cheating when you find yourself inevitably running into trouble. But if you might grow dependent on the console from doing that then obviously it's not a good idea. That event really oughta tell you WHICH ideas you're changing to.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:10
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So I started a Portugal game, since I haven't really played a colonizing game since EU3. Any tips? I only have the DLC up to and including Art of War. It's 1480-something and so far colonies are looking wildly expensive without much going for them, when should I expect it to turn around?
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Jan 20, 2016 22:19
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Gonbon posted:Probably something to do with Japan not being able to use subject CBs. Japan would vassal swarm the mainland when using subject CBs was added. If you're still a Shogunate then hurry up and stop being that. If your government type isn't a Shogunate then its probably just a bug. I was an empire. Either way I rage quit after falling behind on tech massively due to a string of terrible monarchs. Playing non western and getting a lovely king is super terrible. I went from a 0 0 6 to a 2 0 3 to a 0 4 0 loving rng.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:40
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Tevery Best posted:So I started a Portugal game, since I haven't really played a colonizing game since EU3. Any tips? I only have the DLC up to and including Art of War. It's 1480-something and so far colonies are looking wildly expensive without much going for them, when should I expect it to turn around? Colonization won't pay you back at all in direct returns, and is instead about the trade value you generate and drive back home. So try and monopolize important nodes that feed Sevilla; the Caribbean and Ivory Coast will be the most important, Cape, Zanzibar and Malacca are other big ones. Note that if Castile/Spain monopolizes one of them for you, that's really just as good, since they're still going to steer it all to your home port.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:48
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PittTheElder posted:Colonization won't pay you back at all in direct returns, and is instead about the trade value you generate and drive back home. So try and monopolize important nodes that feed Sevilla; the Caribbean and Ivory Coast will be the most important, Cape, Zanzibar and Malacca are other big ones. Note that if Castile/Spain monopolizes one of them for you, that's really just as good, since they're still going to steer it all to your home port. Yeah, to add to this, tariffs (basically vassal tax for colonial nations) are a pretty terrible source of income and when you get events you should choose to not increase them, as this will piss off your CNs and increase their Liberty Desire. Late in the game, CNs get increasingly rebellious. Colonizing the New World is a really long-term investment. Don't expect to see much return until, say, 1550 and onward. You get a bonus Merchant and +5% global Trade Power for each CN with 10+ provinces, so essentially they're just allowing you to control the flow of trade. Don't forget to build a small army and send them on a hunt for the Seven Cities with a Conquistador. This gives you some pretty great events with +50 monarch points and a good chance for discovering one of the mythical cities and gaining a permanent nationwide bonus. For example, my current England game I found the Kingdom of Saguenay for a permanent +10% Trade Power and +10% Trade Efficiency which is awesome. Plus a bunch of free MPs. You don't have much else to spend your money on as Portugal, spray your settlers everywhere. Get the South African Cape ASAP and hop to India and SE Asia. Edit: New World colonies are really a bit of a vanity project. It's pretty easy and cheap to strip an enemy colonizer of a bunch of their provinces. For example, buddy up to Castile/Spain and you can wreck England and France's colonies and take them all for your own. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 23:00
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Yeah, the Hunt for the Seven Cities events are awesome. Also, use the ledger to check which native nations have been hoarding like dragons, and go relieve them of all that metal. The inflation is minor, and that gold will buy you a lot of manufactories and other income boosting buildings in the home country.
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Jan 20, 2016 23:14
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When I mean New World colonies as a vanity project, they're largely their own thing and long-term what they are giving you is control of trade. Colonial nations and trade companies give you trade power, merchants, and naval forcelimits. They don't give you much directly, instead they let you control trade. If you're Portugal and buds with Spain (or vice versa), you don't care all that much whether it's you or them colonizing a given region. The trade is coming home to the same place anyway. Tariffs are poo poo, so what you care about is controlling the trade flow more than actually owning colonies and colonial nations. England I feel has a somewhat different approach than the Iberians; Portugal and Spain get lots of direct colonial settlement bonuses and colonize rapidly. England has a very strong navy but somewhat slower colonization, they do well by wrecking the poo poo out of the other colonizers and taking their (cheap) overseas provinces. I would recommend colonizing trade power bonus provinces (natural harbors, estuaries, centers of trade) first, then filling out a colonial region until you hit 5 provinces and it becomes an independent nation. Subsidize it by 2-3 ducats/mo if you can afford it so they can colonize independently. They're slower than you are but it very much adds up when you get going in the mid-1500s and have a handful of CNs each running their own colonists in addition to yours. So basically, prioritize: 1) trade power provinces, remember above all you want to control the flow of colonial trade 2) five provinces in a colonial region to spawn an independent Colonial Nation, subsidize if possible so they can rock and roll on their own 3) ten provinces in a colonial region to give +1 Merchant and +5% global Trade Power each Having more than ten provinces in a given colonial region has very rapidly diminishing returns. It is very cheap to take other colonizers provinces or if you already control the trade in your favor it doesn't matter. Ideally you want as many 5 then 10 province colonies as possible, prioritizing trade power bonus provinces.
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Jan 20, 2016 23:18
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Dear Paradox, When an event is going to change merchant loyalty by + 9 and merchant influence by + 15 and aristocrat loyalty by -23 and aristocrat influence by -10 maybe the tooltip could show a compact breakdown of the estates current stats or it could be displayed as a underpanel on the event box or something? Minor thing, but it's a pain to pop have to pop open the side panel and then open up the estates tab and then mouse back over the event choices. 
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Jan 20, 2016 23:20
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I just managed to get the "Win a battle against a great leader without a leader of your own" by losing a battle against a great leader with a leader. 
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Jan 21, 2016 03:52
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Odobenidae posted:I just managed to get the "Win a battle against a great leader without a leader of your own" by losing a battle against a great leader with a leader. I got the achievement for dismantling the HRE by playing a game in which Austria passed every imperial reform, thereby uniting the HRE. I was Vijayanagar.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:12
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I got the Jihad achievement when resigning a game. I was the Cherokee.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:14
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Finally finished my Germany game...even with a coalition of everyone left in the HRE and France, it was pretty easy pickings at the end. Austria and Bohemia were rivals for most of the game, but my alliance with the Commonwealth pretty much guaranteed my success until I was big enough to take them on my own.
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Jan 21, 2016 08:59
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"Ottoman Russia" is an abomination
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Jan 21, 2016 09:14
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Those sure are some Ottomans you got there
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Jan 21, 2016 09:14
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PleasingFungus posted:I got the achievement for dismantling the HRE by playing a game in which Austria passed every imperial reform, thereby uniting the HRE. Good job. Congrats!
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Jan 21, 2016 09:18
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What is the reasoning behind not being able to use concede colonial area along with return cores/release nations? I spent a bunch of time beating up on Spain and Portugal and it annoys me that I can't dismember their empire in one war.
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Jan 21, 2016 09:27
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Thanks all of you for the comments. I've started my first game as France, my plan is to become a continental power and pretty much ignore colonialism for now, my aim for this first game is to learn more about wars, economy and diplomacy. My first move was to fabricate a claim to Anjou and use this CB to declare war against Provence. Everything worked smoothly, I defeated the armies of Provence and Lorraine easily and already conquered some provinces when suddenly they signed an alliance with Austria and 25k troops appeared through Switzerland, it caught me by surprise and had to offer peace to avoid major losses. Only had enough warscore to take Anjou and some money, nothing else. Oh well. I waited some more years and allied with Savoy and Castille and then declared war on England using the reconquest CB. From this war I wanted to take the southern English provinces where I had cored (Gascoigne), I divided my army and trashed the English army. My big mistake here was not checking that Portugal, England's ally was also an ally with Castille and had military acces from Navarra, so they sent a 20k army through there to siege Bearn, my southern province bordering Castille by surprise. I didn't have enough troops there to attack them, especially having to cross rivers, so I waited for them to finish sieging Bearn and moving to another province, meanwhile I reinforced that army with other troops and ambushed the Portuguese army when they moved on, and defeated them easily, then I was able to siegie the remaining English provinces. The problem is that war went for too long and end up bankrupting me and I had to take a loan. The upside is I demanded the two southern English provinces and 130 ducats, which covered most of the loan. I'm pretty satisfied at the moment but Burgundy worries me, it has made a net of vassals and allies, he and Brittany are now warring (and winning) against Provence and Lorraine, they will be a tough nut to crack and I don't know how should I dismantle them, but for the time being I need my economy to recover, we'll see how it goes.
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Jan 21, 2016 11:03
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Having to take loans in wartime is 100% normal. It is nice when you can avoid it, and you might want to build up sizeable savings before going to war because of that, but don't feel bad about it.
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Jan 21, 2016 11:09
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Angry Lobster posted:I'm pretty satisfied at the moment but Burgundy worries me, it has made a net of vassals and allies, he and Brittany are now warring (and winning) against Provence and Lorraine, they will be a tough nut to crack and I don't know how should I dismantle them, but for the time being I need my economy to recover, we'll see how it goes. There's an event that can happen before 1500 where Burgundy is inherited by France and another nation, most probably the HRE emperor. It won't trigger if France is at war with the emperor, but it's massively more likely to happen if Burgundy is in a war and losing. The quickest way to force it to trigger is to attack and occupy all of Burgundy, then just wait at 100% warscore until it triggers.
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Jan 21, 2016 13:30
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I am fiscally responsible and have never taken more than two loans (at a single time) after ~1200 hours. I know I am not playing properly but I just can't stomach loans.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:02
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I've had extreme underdog starts where I ended up taking like 30 or more loans early in the game. But if taking 30 loans means you end up surviving/expanding instead of languishing or getting a game over, I think it's worth it.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:19
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Early games you can very easily end up fighting wars for survival that force you to take 15+ loans. Usually if you end up winning you also end up in good position to keep expanding which makes your income balloon compared to the size of the early loans so they are real easy to pay off as you go onwards. Taking a huge amount of loans really is no big deal as long as they put you on the winning side of whatever conflict you need them for. Better a couple thousand ducats in debt than losing a war.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:25
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Tsyni posted:I am fiscally responsible and have never taken more than two loans (at a single time) after ~1200 hours. I know I am not playing properly but I just can't stomach loans. I, on the other hand, will take loan after loan as long as I think I can put the money into something that pays more than the interest on the loan. e: I once paid down 16,000 in loans as a medium-sized power. In multiplayer.
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Jan 21, 2016 18:04
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There's pretty much no way to succeed as some nations without taking a tremendous number of loans. See: Byzantium, Scotland.
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Jan 21, 2016 18:13
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I'm pretty sure I've never had a campaign where I didn't take a loan; in the early game I'm nearly always in debt, and if there's a particularly tough war I'll take dozens out pretty routinely. As long I have an avenue of expansion it almost never hurts me, you can always pay them off surprisingly quickly, especially now you can take money and full annex in the same peace deals. The only time loans really sting are if you're hemmed in by enemies and have to sit on them for a while.
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Jan 21, 2016 18:15
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Loans do get annoying later on when your treasurer will notice a deficit of 50 cents, shriek in horror and take out a 2000+ loan to cover it. 
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Jan 21, 2016 18:31
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Then you forget that happened, and spend all that money on buildings.
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Jan 21, 2016 19:10
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I'm so bad at this game, I'm STILL trying to form Qing. I'm starting to get a grasp of some of the advanced mechanics (and by advanced I mean razing, and then releasing as vassal, about as advanced as 9+3) And I actually almost beat Ming my last game, and I totally would have if I had waited a little longer. Manchu cavalry are crazy good, like wow, and that land leader shock+1 that they get is incredible. I once had an army of 18k swarm cavalry beat an army of 25k ming and 7k koreans. Ming only won because they had at least a trillion mercenaries, I had totally depleted their manpower but then they just starting sending army after army of Mercs. So I thought "Well If I start taking cities Ming will surely start to lose and I can raise the green banners or whatever" then I remembered that Ming has more cities than my country has molecules and my hard work sieging Shenyang went to waste. In hindsight I should have just sieged Beijing as soon as the war started. WHOOPS
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Jan 21, 2016 20:41
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Tsyni posted:I am fiscally responsible and have never taken more than two loans (at a single time) after ~1200 hours. I know I am not playing properly but I just can't stomach loans.
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Jan 21, 2016 20:56
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Glass of Milk posted:Finally finished my Germany game...even with a coalition of everyone left in the HRE and France, it was pretty easy pickings at the end. Austria and Bohemia were rivals for most of the game, but my alliance with the Commonwealth pretty much guaranteed my success until I was big enough to take them on my own. Q I Also, mega-Tabarestan. 
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Jan 21, 2016 21:06
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Q Things like mega-Tabarestan makes me wish that EU4 had a country formation mechanism that was more like CK - based on what percentage of certain territory you control. If you control like 90% of the territory that makes up some "kingdom" area and are the right culture then you can tag-switch unless there's a specific instance of that country formation decision that adds restrictions, e.g. you should be able to form France as anyone with French culture who controls enough of France by default. Similarly with Empire-level tags - the Spanish formation decision should just be built-in. You either control or vassalize/PU 90%+ of "Spain" and are an Iberian culture - you can be Spain. This should trigger automatic inheritance of your vassal / PU territory that is within the area that you're forming. Any territory left outside gets handled in one of two ways: if the vassal / PU capital is in that territory then they continue as-is. If the vassal / PU capital was annexed by you during that decision, they get turned into a new random nation but the vassal / PU mechanic continues. No more using the Spanish nation decision to inherit France from PU'd Aragon, for example. Then it would be really easy to just spam nation formations all over EU4. Just define a province list + culture group or religion req or something similar. Of course, you can specify custom formation decisions and these should override the default ones. This would work, for example, for Prussia - there's a generic formation if you are a German who rules enough of Prussia. But there's also a specific formation scoped to the Teutonic Order that lets them do it if they rule enough of Prussia and go Protestant, etc. Getting back to mega-Tabarestan - there is no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to become Persia aside from a nation-formation system that places emphasis on controlling specific provinces.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:14
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so Denmark is pretty easy now with the changes to Scandinavian diplomacy. Not sure when it changed, but Sweden no longer starts as your historical rival and thus basically impossible to keep loyal. It's really easy to preserve the Kalmar Union now. There's an event to sign the Scandinavian Constitution - signing gives you 100 MP in each category and legitimacy, but makes Sweden a historical rival. Tried it once and they immediately DOWed me with Muscovy & England supporting. It's hard to turn down 300 MP but I reloaded and kept them loyal. I also got lucky and Poland DOWed Teutonic Order before getting the union with Lithuania and it seemed that the union never happened - which also meant Poland lost against TO leaving me free to come in and scoop up the Baltic. I was unsure if I should integrate my subjects or not but I went ahead and did it ASAP bc Denmark has terrible force limits and the Subject AI isn't always the most helpful in war. Had a frustrating couple of decades where I had the 2nd highest development but still had unimpressive force limits and income but once the autonomy ran down I was sitting pretty. By 1600 I have every coastal province in the Baltic, something like 1000~ development and an income of 130 ducats (I took Trade as my 2nd Diplo idea). Not sure what to do next. I didn't do so hot in the Religious Leagues war - I only had around 90 regiments at that point. We outnumbered the Catholics by 30%, but bc they held almost all the center of the HRE they were able to separate and pick us off while I was stuck trying to siege enough forts that I could move in. In hindsight I should have shipped my troops to Netherlands before launching the war, so I could take out France/Burgundy/Castile before they link up with Austria. Couldn't get a decisive victory - I went Quantity and so my troops just couldn't match in morale to most of my enemies, and eventually even my 100k manpower ran out. Had to sign the Peace of Westphalia (and snagged Lubeck for myself). Fun game aside from trying to convert all my provinces to Protestant and then dealing with that goddamn "Count's Feud" disaster. Really miserable if you don't prepare first by placing a 20 stack in every corner of your empire.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:25
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Thanks, guys, that's real helpful! Hopefully I'll finally get the hang of trading in this game, then (not likely. I couldn't make real money off trading in EU1, EU2, EU3 and I sure as hell can't now.). Are Colonial Nations a thing without El Dorado? The Hunt I'm fairly sure isn't, but with CNs I'm not so sure.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:25
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They are, CNs are always a part of the game. El Dorado added native stuff and the Seven Cities hunt, and you need Conquest of Paradise if you want to play as a CN.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:30
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Loans are great, actually a little too great. Once I get the tech for it, I always take out a ton of loans and carpetbomb my realm with manufactories.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:49
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Yeah I used to be loan-averse but you really can't Ironman a medium or smaller power without them.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:54
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