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Mechanical Ape posted:I'm 25 years into a Kilwa run, my first African effort, and it's been fun so far. The challenge of sub-Saharan Africa combined with the advantage of being a strong local power (e.g. all that delicious trade) offers a lot of goals to work toward and the hope that I can actually achieve them. Even upgrading to Feudalism and a proper monarchy will feel like an achievement. One of the tribal governments has 15% coring cost reduction so you should keep that forever instead of reforming
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Jan 5, 2017 22:15
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Has anyone tried any Random New Worlds recently? Have they improved much since they were first released?
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Jan 5, 2017 23:19
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Node posted:Is there an easy way to look at foreign debt? Since I'm getting treasure fleets every other day, I figure I could get an easy achievement and take someones 1000+ gold debt for them. But I don't see any way you can find that information in the ledger. I haven't found a way to see debt easily. You could go to the country ledger and look at inflation. Big countries with high inflation often have big debt. Speaking of which:  My comrades here are riding at 62% inflation.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:29
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Node posted:Is there an easy way to look at foreign debt? Since I'm getting treasure fleets every other day, I figure I could get an easy achievement and take someones 1000+ gold debt for them. But I don't see any way you can find that information in the ledger. Easy, no. But you can get some info by going to the ledger and hovering over countries' admin score. If they have a small negative modifier for loans, they have debt. I think it may be something like -0.1 for every 1000 ducats.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:35
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I found one of the Vietnam area nations that had accrued 2,000 of a debt. I wonder how that plays out. "Hi, we're a megapower from the west, its nice to meet you. Say, you don't have a gigantic debt problem do you?" Now to corrupt some officials, and that's all I can milk out of this run.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:37
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I had Behmanis hit Genoa's numbers of debt from Tsyni's screenshot. Which I then paid off in hopes they would religious convert its sole 3 colonies in Alaska and the tail of Mexico from Shia to Sunni for me in the ~3 years left before completion. Sadly religous unification was not to be and if I were a smarter man I would've figured out how they were hiding those last bastions from me before it was too late.
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Jan 6, 2017 00:34
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Sage Grimm posted:I had Behmanis hit Genoa's numbers of debt from Tsyni's screenshot. Which I then paid off in hopes they would religious convert its sole 3 colonies in Alaska and the tail of Mexico from Shia to Sunni for me in the ~3 years left before completion. Sadly religous unification was not to be and if I were a smarter man I would've figured out how they were hiding those last bastions from me before it was too late. I am noticing that Genoa is paying as much for forts as their entire income, lol...
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Jan 6, 2017 00:38
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Sage Grimm posted:convert its sole 3 colonies in Alaska and the tail of Mexico from Shia to Sunni for me i love eu4. this gave me a good laugh and it's not even close to some of the ahistorical stuff i've seen in my own games.
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Jan 6, 2017 02:03
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I recently finished a game where the Ottomans, being colonial latecomers, had to settle for leftovers, leaving Turks in control of Samoa, the Aleutians, and parts of New Zealand.
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Jan 6, 2017 02:34
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Baron Corbyn posted:Speaking of Mare Nostrum, I've got a really good start in my Aragon game (France allied, Navarra vassalized, reconquista complete, Iberian wedding 15 years in and Renaissance embraced before any other great power) and I'm thinking of trying to parlay that into restoring the Roman Empire. For strategy, how does annexing Portugal to let Castile colonise the new world while I take religious ideas and holy war across North Africa as quickly as possible to reach the Ottomans before they get too beefy then some military idea to put them down, before conquering Italy and then backstabbing France sound? If you want to get at the Ottomans without dumping a lot of points and time into North Africa you could have Naples fabricate claims, assuming the Ottomans posses Albania or any other province on the coast there. Getting the troops there might be a little tricky, but if you have the claim on them you could wait for them to fight Hungary/Austria and then jump in. I always like to save most of North Africa until some of the core reduction tech comes around.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:18
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Jay Rust posted:Has anyone tried any Random New Worlds recently? Have they improved much since they were first released? I think they added a few new tiles, but otherwise I don't think it has changed much.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:19
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IncredibleIgloo posted:If you want to get at the Ottomans without dumping a lot of points and time into North Africa you could have Naples fabricate claims, assuming the Ottomans posses Albania or any other province on the coast there. Getting the troops there might be a little tricky, but if you have the claim on them you could wait for them to fight Hungary/Austria and then jump in. I always like to save most of North Africa until some of the core reduction tech comes around. On the other hand, getting raided by the Berbers is mildly annoying (it loots your provinces) and you don't have all that much to do early game as any Iberian. I recommend making a vassal or two in North Africa and feeding them coastline.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:23
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Thanks for the advice guys, I'll probably go with vassal feeding in North Africa while keeping the centres of trade I need for myself. Xinder posted:i love eu4. this gave me a good laugh and it's not even close to some of the ahistorical stuff i've seen in my own games. In my Poland game France annexed Castile and then kicked Portugal out of Europe so the major colonial powers in the Americas were Scotland, Granada and Brittany. After Scottish California went independent, Apache allied with Mexico and conquered them then converted all the Scottish settlers to Totemism, which gave me a kick.
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Jan 6, 2017 04:20
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So after messing around with this game for waaay too many hours to get the basics down, I'm starting my first Ironman game to actually learn how to play decently. I'm playing as Sweden since they seem pretty straightforward (make super powered infantry and smash everybody), and so far in 1454 I've won independance from Denmark, managed to suppress the unrest from taking their four northernmost provinces, and am now working on repaying the loans I had to take to win the war. Does anybody have any good advice/guides for playing Sweden? Right now the plan is once I shore up my finances is develop Dalaskogen into a production powerhouse and dominate the Baltic Sea trade node to finance a millitary big enough to take out Norway and Denmark and create Scandinavia, probably going Quality>>Innovative>>Offense for my first ideas so that my armies should be extra nasty. Any advice would be appreciated, although I fully expect that this and my next few runs will end in tears as I learn to play properly.
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Jan 6, 2017 05:38
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Sweden has such powerful mil ideas in their national group that your best bet at improving your military is to get economic focused ideas so you can afford to hire more of your super soldiers on a shoestring budget you start with Quantity is also very good at this is you are bursting at the seam with mil points. You can always get Quality and Offensive later to get literal demigods when you've got a nice economic base to afford a large army
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Jan 6, 2017 06:02
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Silvergun1000 posted:So after messing around with this game for waaay too many hours to get the basics down, I'm starting my first Ironman game to actually learn how to play decently. I'm playing as Sweden since they seem pretty straightforward (make super powered infantry and smash everybody), and so far in 1454 I've won independance from Denmark, managed to suppress the unrest from taking their four northernmost provinces, and am now working on repaying the loans I had to take to win the war.
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Jan 6, 2017 06:17
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420 Gank Mid posted:Sweden has such powerful mil ideas in their national group that your best bet at improving your military is to get economic focused ideas so you can afford to hire more of your super soldiers on a shoestring budget you start with That's a good point. It's looking like the immediate problem I'll be having is money so getting those should be pretty great in both the near term and long term. AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Dont actually click on the "Form Scandanavia" button because then you miss out on all of the Sweden-specific events that happen. Oh, I didn't know that! Thanks for the heads up! I'll be sure to report back on how I botch things.
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Jan 6, 2017 08:29
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My biggest problem as Sweden was money and institutions, which take forever to spread to your shitton of undeveloped Finnish / norwegian provinces. Also, Russia. Pay close attention to them, or even better cripple them while they're still small. And to dominate the baltic sea trade you'll probably have to fight with poland-lithuania for their coastline (gdansk and stettin account for like half of the trade power in the node) and that's bad news too. Be friends with their enemies if that's the case. TorakFade fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 09:07
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Poland is the loving worst ally ever. I can't count the number of times they've let me down and made me lost wars we should have won handily. Just recently I started doing the Dracula achievement so as Wallachia I had Byzantium, Hungary and Poland-Lithuania as allies, fighting Ottomans and the Crimea. And despite starting the war with around 95k vs 50k, we still lost. The Ottomans lost like 10k soldiers while Poland and Hungary got slaughtered running around like idiots.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:32
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Hungary are an absolute joke and pushover, I hate them so much.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:36
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Agreeing that you will need to kneecap Russia in one way or another, otherwise they will probably become a big problem. You will get more power in the Baltic trade node if you control the Novogorod node so pushing into Russia a bit is not a terrible idea. If/when I try a game as Sweden I am considering releasing Finland as a vassal and then turning them into a March so I dont have to worry about dealing with all of those low development poo poo provinces.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:39
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Baron Corbyn posted:Hungary are an absolute joke and pushover, I hate them so much. Hungary has surprised me at times though, if they get some of their NIs active they can punch quite hard. But Poland... just centuries and centuries of compounded disappointment and frustration. In this case Lithuania by themselves could almost match the Ottomans in forces. How loving hard is it to mass your armies and attack...
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Jan 6, 2017 15:45
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Jay Rust posted:Has anyone tried any Random New Worlds recently? Have they improved much since they were first released? The workshop has some good tiles you can download, and there's a few mods to the whole generation setup that actually make it cool and enjoyable in my view.
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Jan 6, 2017 16:06
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Star posted:Hungary has surprised me at times though, if they get some of their NIs active they can punch quite hard. But Poland... just centuries and centuries of compounded disappointment and frustration. In this case Lithuania by themselves could almost match the Ottomans in forces. How loving hard is it to mass your armies and attack... The AI isn't guaranteed to put its energy into a war, that it's not having a large enough stake in.
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Jan 6, 2017 16:10
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Longtime Civ player, but this is my first real foray into a Paradox game apart from trying and failing to learn HoI a few years ago. I've got most of the basic mechanics down, but I'm not entirely sure how merchants are supposed to work or be maximized. I'm playing a game as Venice, so I figured being smart with my merchants is the way to go. I do have a positive income, so I'm clearly doing something right, but the Trade tab is a little confusing. Is there a good tutorial somewhere for merchants, or can someone give me a quick rundown of what I need to look for to maximize?
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Jan 6, 2017 16:30
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Just missed Spain is the Emperor because the Protestants won the league war. I was in the middle of another war when the league war started and by the time I finished off my opponent and turned my attention toward securing victory for the Catholics, most of them had already crumpled. I was making good headway but Emperor Saxony surrendered before I could push the score high enough to get the Peace of Westphalia. So I said gently caress it and just killed most of the Protestants (and other Catholics) anyway and got Mare Nostrum instead.   I'd kill off Mali and take the eastern US from the Dutch and maybe some more of Europe/Africa for pretty borders, but as it turns out, Rome's colour is horrible and I can't be bothered. e: also I subsidised my CNs 5-10 ducats each per month for the last 100 years and they did jack squat to colour in the inland provinces for me, wtf Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 16:39
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Jay Rust posted:Has anyone tried any Random New Worlds recently? Have they improved much since they were first released? Institutions broke the High American empires again. They're now completely threatening.
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Jan 6, 2017 16:45
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Silvergun1000 posted:So after messing around with this game for waaay too many hours to get the basics down, I'm starting my first Ironman game to actually learn how to play decently. I'm playing as Sweden since they seem pretty straightforward (make super powered infantry and smash everybody), and so far in 1454 I've won independance from Denmark, managed to suppress the unrest from taking their four northernmost provinces, and am now working on repaying the loans I had to take to win the war. Like others have said you don't really need to go overboard with military-focused ideas since your national ideas are already so good, you're probably better off building up your economy or getting Influence/Diplomatic to make expanding into the HRE easier. Take Quantity or Defensive as one of your first three ideas and then maybe Economic and Influence/Diplomatic. Developing Dalaskogen won't do much, the special modifier it gets is flat and not multiplicative. Slap a Workshop there and that's all you need, I wouldn't dump a ton of points into it. Longer term it's probably a good idea to start sniping the small northern German nations so you can move your trade node to Lubeck. If Poland hasn't already conquered the Teutonic Order, it's a high priority to attack them yourself and take Danzig and other TO provinces. That and smack Muscovy/Russia around so they don't get too nasty. Denmark and Norway are chumps, not much of a threat.
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Jan 6, 2017 17:01
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Peas and Rice posted:Longtime Civ player, but this is my first real foray into a Paradox game apart from trying and failing to learn HoI a few years ago. I've got most of the basic mechanics down, but I'm not entirely sure how merchants are supposed to work or be maximized. I'm playing a game as Venice, so I figured being smart with my merchants is the way to go. I do have a positive income, so I'm clearly doing something right, but the Trade tab is a little confusing. Is there a good tutorial somewhere for merchants, or can someone give me a quick rundown of what I need to look for to maximize?
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Jan 6, 2017 17:01
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Peas and Rice posted:Longtime Civ player, but this is my first real foray into a Paradox game apart from trying and failing to learn HoI a few years ago. I've got most of the basic mechanics down, but I'm not entirely sure how merchants are supposed to work or be maximized. I'm playing a game as Venice, so I figured being smart with my merchants is the way to go. I do have a positive income, so I'm clearly doing something right, but the Trade tab is a little confusing. Is there a good tutorial somewhere for merchants, or can someone give me a quick rundown of what I need to look for to maximize? Generally you want you merchants daisy chaining upstream from your capital, all forwarding towards it, with Light Ships boosting your power where able/where you have the least. AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 17:11
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THE BAR posted:The AI isn't guaranteed to put its energy into a war, that it's not having a large enough stake in. The complaint is that they fight like idiots, not that they don't fight.
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Jan 6, 2017 17:58
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Yep, the general game for trade powers and Venice in particular (being a Merchant Republic which gets maluses for grabbing too many provinces) is to swipe high-trade-power provinces in your own trade node and upstream, so you can most effectively steer all of those sweet delicious ducats into your mouth, send light trade ships to protect trade where you're weak, and generally be that bastard who always won at hungry hungry hippos by shoving everyone else out of the way. Remember that you don't need to steer trade in every single node if the trade is flowing in your direction anyway, but in places like Ragusa and Alexandria there's likely to be a fight over which way trade goes so you want to muscle in and tell them how it's going to be. This can be an end in itself (there's a really stupid achievement to have huge trade power throughout the mediterranean as Venice without having basically any provinces) or just a way to fund your military adventurism elsewhere. Reform the Roman Empire as Venice, I dare you.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:02
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A primer on trade as I understand it: Every trade node has a certain amount of trade value. Trade value comes from two sources: 1) Trade goods produced in the trade node. Each province produces a certain amount of a trade good, which has a certain value. The amount of the good produced is multiplied by the good's value (or something like that - I'm not sure if it's a straight X times Y equation) to determine the province's contribution to the node's trade value. 2) Trade value that is sent, or "steered," into the node from other nodes upstream. The total trade value in a province is locally produced value plus trade value steered in from upstream (again, not sure if it's a straight addition but close enough). Two things can be done with the trade value in a given node: 1) Collect from trade. A country collects automatically in its home node, without needing a merchant assigned. Your home node starts out wherever your capital is, but you can move by paying diplo points. If you assign a merchant to collect in your home node, you get bonuses to trade power (on which more later). You can also assign a merchant to collect in another node, but this carries certain penalties to how much you collect there and you only want to do this if there is a particularly valuable node outside of your home node. The amount you collect is determined by the trade value in the node multiplied by your trade power in the node, which is then further modified by your trade efficiency (on which more later). 2) Steer trade to another node. Trade flows through the nodes according to the arrows that you see on the map. When you have a merchant in the a node where you aren't collecting, you can select where you want to steer the trade to using the little buttons in the trade map view. Your ability to steer trade is affected by your trade power in the node. If you have trade power in a node but you don't have a merchant, it will steer automatically based on what other nations in the node are doing. Sometimes it steers it where you want it to go, other times it doesn't and you need a merchant there. Even if it is already steering it where you want it to go, you get a bonus to trade power from having a merchant. Trade gains value as it moves downstream, depending on how many nodes it goes through. I don't know the exact calculation but the upshot is that if you steer trade value from the node next door and you steer an originally equivalent amount of trade value from the other side of the world, the latter will end up being way more. Trade power is an important concept that determines how much trade value you can either collect or steer from a given node. Trade value comes from a few sources: 1) Provinces controlled. Some provinces have bonuses to trade power - you can see these on the map with a little colorful square that provides more info when you mouse over it. These provinces are important to control and can often be the best source of trade power in a node. Even aside from these provinces, all provinces provide at least some trade power, although it's often a small amount, like 1 or 2 (compare to 5, 10, or sometimes 20 from provinces with bonuses). I think this amount comes from development. 2) Light ships. When light ships protect trade in a node, they add to your trade power. Better models of ships provide more trade power. Naval maintenance affects how much trade power the ships provide. If you have the ships patrolling in a node with a good amount of value, generally they pay for themselves. As someone already noted, the game gives an inaccurate/misleading tooltip about how much trade power light ships will add. 3) Caravan power. This is the inland analog for light ships. Nations project power into adjacent nodes depending on the amount of development they have in their home node. You can see this in effect in south asia - the steppe nations will project power into the coastal indian nodes and siphon off some trade value there. Caravan power is kinda confusing and there's generally not much you can do to affect it, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. 4) Diplomacy. Some diplomatic actions cause nations to give you some of their trade power in nodes where they have power. There's a Transfer Trade Power treaty you can sign with a defeated opponent. Protectorates give you a bunch of their trade power. There might be one or two other similar things. 5) Merchants. Having a merchant in a node increases your trade power there by... some amount. Often there are multiple nations with trade power in a node, meaning that they are competing to get to control what happens with the trade value. Some nations will be trying to collect from trade in the node, while other nations will be trying to steer trade out of the node, which in turn may be competing among themselves for where that trade power goes. How the trade value gets divided up to these various sources depends on the relative share of trade power. The game gives decent feedback in the trade map view and trade node screen about how this all shakes out. Your nation also has trade efficiency, which is a number determined by technology, ideas, events, and advisers. As mentioned above, your national trade efficiency is part of the calculation for how much you collect in a node. I think it also has some effect on your trade power but I don't know how this works. Here's a quick and very rough example. Let's say there is a Node 1, which feeds into Node 2, which feeds into Nodes 3 and 4. Country A has its home node in Node 2, Country B has its home node in Node 3, and Country C has its home node in Node 4. All three nations are going to try to get power in Node 1, so that they can steer trade downstream to their home nodes. Let's say they manage to steer 20 trade value from Node 1 to Node 2. In Node 2, Country A has 50 trade power and Counties B and C each have 25 trade power. Country A is going to be able to collect 50% of the trade value in Node 2, so it will earn 10 multiplied by its trade efficiency. Countries B and C will be trying to steer trade into Nodes 3 and 4, respectively. Because Countries B and C each have 25% of the trade power in Node 2, 5 trade value will flow to each of Nodes 3 and 4, where Countries B and C will collect. (This example ignores how trade gains value each time it goes to a new node). There are a ton of moving parts here, making it difficult to predict how any one change will ultimately affect your income (which is the only number you care about in the end). The trade system is deep and actually pretty fun once you get used to it, but it's very complex and one of the least intuitive systems in EU4. As others have said, there is a lot of trial and error involved. It's way easier to fiddle with stuff and see how the numbers come up than to crunch all of the numbers yourself.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:09
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Bold Robot posted:4) Diplomacy. Some diplomatic actions cause nations to give you some of their trade power in nodes where they have power. There's a Transfer Trade Power treaty you can sign with a defeated opponent. Protectorates give you a bunch of their trade power. There might be one or two other similar things. Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Going the Merchant Republic route of few provinces, much trade gives you a lot of freedom when you beat people up (which you should). Sure, take their high-trade-power provinces, and split off vassals to feed you cash and fight for you, but also be sure to make them Transfer Trade Power and take all their money. Cackle madly upon your Doge-sized pile of cash. Repeat.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:14
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Senor Dog posted:The complaint is that they fight like idiots, not that they don't fight. Yeah, they were absolutely motivated. Rivals, promised land, etc. They just sucked. I am thinking that perhaps it is better to restart and try to ally Poland again but this time see if I can attack Hungary and build up some power base that way, and first after that turn to the ottomans. The problem may be that the ottomans are often warning me and that means I can't declare war on Hungary.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:26
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Senor Dog posted:The complaint is that they fight like idiots, not that they don't fight. That is indeed the problem. If anything the AI should probably be less motivated to fight.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:37
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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lmao everything in this Aragon game is going in my favour to such a ridiculous loving extent. I just got a personal union over Austria and my former ally France declared war on me leaving them to fight off my vassal swarm, Burgundy and their vassal swarm and Austria itself.
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Jan 6, 2017 19:22
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Update from my Pope run for the patch. As someone with a million failed Byzantium runs this is always satisfying to see.  #LargeCountryProblems  Between waiting for truces and dip points I've done a lot of looking at the ledger and   The Knights are a March, and no I won't be connecting this so enjoy the gore. The Papal State is probably my favorite country to play as, I always have a lot of fun. 
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Jan 6, 2017 19:38
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Do you ever trigger the Kingdom of God? It always seems to me that the Curia bonuses are more valuable.
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Jan 6, 2017 20:00
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Austria owns one of the provinces I need and is my ally for now, but otherwise I would have in 1650 because I'm a spiteful jerk.
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Jan 6, 2017 20:02
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