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Chin Strap posted:Yuck Taking the straits is a good old tactic. The AI is often too dumb to move its troops about by sea to cope with revolts so will often explode if it can't find a land route between Anatolia and the Balkans. I'm pretty sure it worked as long ago as EU3.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:57
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My error turned out for the best because I made sure to seige Antioch first this time and got Prester John finally.
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So how do I win a colonial war against the combined might of Spain and Portugal who have twice as many ships as I do and 15 more heavies? Do the AI split their fleets up so I can murder them separately?
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Jan 27, 2017 18:24
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Gleri posted:I thought you wanted your Trade Capital as far downstream as possible to maximize trade income? I'm new to the game so I might not understand. I would think that since Cape is completely locked down you'd want to maximize power in Zanzibar (and points east) and route the trade around the Cape and then collect in Ivory Coast to take advantage of the multiplier from daisy chaining multiple nodes. It's basically just one step removed from what Portugal or Spain would be trying to do in a traditional colonization run where they'd run Ivory Coast into Seville. The modifier is like 5% for each jump. 100% of 100 trade value from a locked down node is better than 50% of 105.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:35
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Pump it up! Do it! posted:So how do I win a colonial war against the combined might of Spain and Portugal who have twice as many ships as I do and 15 more heavies? Do the AI split their fleets up so I can murder them separately? Have troops already landed at locations ready to pounce? Keep an eye on their fleets so you can sneak transports into their backlines? Have 25 modern heavies in a fleet (max naval width) and a decent admiral and go smash things?
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Jan 27, 2017 18:40
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My point was more because it seemed people were telling him to go for east africa (still obviously something he should do) and set up zanzibar as his home node, but that didn't make sense to me since he already had ivory coast locked down, which going by my knowledge would make the cape a more valuable choice. e: Trade is something I'm still not comfortable with since I don't think I ever really figured it out completely, so whenever it comes up and people are giving advice I don't understand I feel the need to start asking questions.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:43
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Sage Grimm posted:Have troops already landed at locations ready to pounce? Keep an eye on their fleets so you can sneak transports into their backlines? Have 25 modern heavies in a fleet (max naval width) and a decent admiral and go smash things? Nah they seem to mostly be sailing around, the problem is that I only have one heavy while they have sixteen since I lost most of mine in a war against England.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:01
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Xinder posted:My point was more because it seemed people were telling him to go for east africa (still obviously something he should do) and set up zanzibar as his home node, but that didn't make sense to me since he already had ivory coast locked down, which going by my knowledge would make the cape a more valuable choice. Cape is the better choice, but if he has both it and ivory coast locked down he probably shouldn't move his trade capital there; he'll have 100% trade power and can collect with a merchant without penalty and keep his home node somewhere that's actually contested.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:41
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In my Italy game I felt that the AI was really into invading my relatively undefended colonies instead of my well defended mainland. Sometimes even left a few units stranded in brazil a long while after we peaced out, getting creamed by their neighbors afterwards. Maybe because I killed their fleets, but it sounds silly to ship half of your troops to America knowing full well I had a much superior navy. Also sailing across the atlantic while I siege your lands to start with isn't the best of ideas already. Is this intended, or just boneheadedness?
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Jan 27, 2017 21:36
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Agnostalgia posted:Cape is the better choice, but if he has both it and ivory coast locked down he probably shouldn't move his trade capital there; he'll have 100% trade power and can collect with a merchant without penalty and keep his home node somewhere that's actually contested. I see Spain all up in the Ivory Coast and the AI loves to embargo your poo poo when rivaled. Zanzibar seems the safest but either way is fine.
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Jan 27, 2017 22:04
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Good game, rest in piss: Spain/France/Portugal and Ottomans declared war on me within a month of each other. I guess this is the games way of telling me to go gently caress your African Power achievement. I couldn't get a single ally in Europe other than England. Russia, even though I shared the same three rivals as her, set me as a loving rival anyway, so any chance I had at fighting off the Ottomans is gone. Prussia (who is loving huge, holy poo poo) intervened in my war against Spain at least. Node fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Jan 28, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 06:25
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Node posted:Good game, rest in piss: Did you set them as friendly in your relationship management? And nobody rivalled except for the common enemies? In my current Ethiopia game the eventual trick was choosing the right allies and improving reputation with the right countries. I set everybody as friendly, but once Spain wanted my land, I rivalled them, so France wanted to ally me.
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Jan 28, 2017 09:46
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OperaMouse posted:Did you set them as friendly in your relationship management? And nobody rivalled except for the common enemies? The complete opposite happened for me, and you're a lot closer to Europe than I am. Plus you're Coptic I assume. I took all of Spain and Portugal's African land in a nasty war. Naval combat has changed. I had 100 heavies take serious losses against 20 heavies mixed with 30 light boats. I managed to expand farther north so the distance modifiers to Prussia were less, and I could ally them. However, they have a -60 attitude malus towards the Ottomans and won't join a war against them, despite having enough favors. It's 1790, and I have to take Ottoman's Egyptian lands, and Tlemcen, who is allied to them. I can break that alliance, however. But I just don't have enough time to build up a trusting alliance to take on the Ottomans, there is no way my 200k army can take on their 400k. European powers consolidating and becoming abnormally powerful compared to the usual is what lost this game, I believe. I went to war with Spain at least six times.
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Jan 28, 2017 10:50
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So Muscovy is kinda easy. Once I form Russia, I may go back to my white whale of Austria the Emperor run. Any tips? I always have the reformation ruin things, and I specifically don't want to just conquest and blob if I can avoid it.
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Jan 28, 2017 13:02
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Chump Farts posted:So Muscovy is kinda easy. Once I form Russia, I may go back to my white whale of Austria the Emperor run. Any tips? I always have the reformation ruin things, and I specifically don't want to just conquest and blob if I can avoid it. You don't have to conquer anything as Austria to blob. If Castile/Spain has France rivaled and no heir they get an event that forces a Habsburg heir. You get either a PU on Hungary or a CB to force one. You can force a PU on Bohemia at the start and after 1500 if they have less than 140 development. If your dynasty gets elected in Poland you get a PU CB for them too. The Reformation sucks because it slows you down but the war usually never even happens and the only hard part is not dying from boredom during the 40 years or whatever it takes for Catholicism to become the official religion through event. If you want to pass fast reforms expand into the Balkans asap and never stop while adding it all to the Empire. With some luck you can usually proclaim erbkaisertum before the Reformation but it's not at all required.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:16
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Chump Farts posted:So Muscovy is kinda easy. Once I form Russia, I may go back to my white whale of Austria the Emperor run. Any tips? I always have the reformation ruin things, and I specifically don't want to just conquest and blob if I can avoid it. Austria is all about PUs. You want to marry Bohemia at game start, you have a good chance of getting a Habsburg on the throne when the interregnum ends so you can immediately claim throne and force union on them. If you're lucky you will get a chance to do the same to Hungary -- they start out with a Habsburg heir and if they depose him in favor of the Hunyadis (usually this happens around 1455 I think?) you get a restoration of union cb on them as well. The annoying thing is that the Ottomans often guarantee Hungary in this patch, but if you can manage to get both Hungary and Bohemia PU'd and the Burgundian inheritance to fire you can be in an insanely strong position before 1500 without conquering a single province (though you might as well beat up Venice a bit if you get the chance). If you don't get these PUs you will get missions (iirc) to get them later, but the earlier the better. If Burgundian Inheritance does fire, move your capital to the Low Countries region before 1550 and you won't have to waste time and manpower fighting the Dutch revolts. The key to dealing with the reformation is squashing centers of reformation as soon as they pop up. Find any excuse you can to fight with Protestant/reformed HRE minors and force convert them. If the center is outside the empire then that sucks, you may just have to deal with it, but at least it's not going to be constantly converting HRE stuff in particular. Make sure there's at least a couple of major (hopefully Catholic) powers that don't hate you, you'll want them when the league wars break out because you'll probably have to fight France and possibly Ottos as well, in addition to any pesky converted minors you couldn't deal with before the leagues. Poland-Lithuania and Spain are good options for this. Everything turns on winning the league war, if you are victorious then it doesn't matter if you did a bad job keeping minors from converting earlier because you have most of the rest of the game to do it. Always always always keep an eye out for old kings with no kids, you can get extremely good chances at personal unions and sometimes with luck you will just get handed an uncontested PU with France or something. Integrate Hungary as soon as you have fed them the Balkan states, they don't do anything special for you. Bohemia is an elector so worth leaving that alone for a while. Watch Poland-Lithuania closely for when they shift to absolute monarchy -- they're highly likely to have an old king who may be heirless and you can swoop in and put a Habsburg on the throne there too. There's a really good Austria run on YouTube that I'm finding really helpful in my Austria run now. This guy is going for a restored Roman Empire so he is blobbing quite a bit, but he's a good player and explains a lot of what you should be trying to do as Austria. (Blobbing is also not a bad idea as Austria if you're having trouble passing reforms, because every new core province = 1 more point of imperial authority). https://youtu.be/EqZfueAQAOw
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Jan 28, 2017 14:32
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PU fishing isn't something I normally do, but I've wanted to try it. Any reason why every elector starts with minus 1000 relations at start date? Never seen that before, and a royal marriage alliance with Bohemia didn't budge it.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:56
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Chump Farts posted:PU fishing isn't something I normally do, but I've wanted to try it. Any reason why every elector starts with minus 1000 relations at start date? Never seen that before, and a royal marriage alliance with Bohemia didn't budge it. It's not -1000 relations, it's -1000 reasons to vote for your heir as the next emperor. Usually because you don't even have one.
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Jan 28, 2017 15:05
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I decided to try my hand at the African Power achievement, but I don't know if I'm aggressive enough as a player to actually be able to conquer everything. This is how I'm doing so far:  Lundu is my vassal that I'm going to feed the remains of Mutapa to before annexing them. Luckily, Spain is the only coloniser that seems to have cared about Africa and they stopped after the Ivory Coast. Granted, I did my best to close off the Cape and also grab those two tiny islands near Benin. I've also spent quite a lot of monarch points to seed institutions but I feel like it kinda evens out because you get some turbopowered provinces out of it. Printing Press recently spawned and I'm working on seeding it, though having to first finish Economic so I could get away from tribal kingdom status did slow it down a bit.
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Jan 28, 2017 17:24
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So I'm the Mamluks, and basically I'm like 3 tech levels behind everyone all the time. Should I have created a vassal and feed them all the lovely desert provinces? Is that the hot trick?
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Jan 28, 2017 18:03
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Any advice on a Papal State run? I've been playing as Savoy a lot lately (keep getting stuck towards the end) but didn't know if anyone else had good ideas on how to do this run.
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Jan 28, 2017 18:23
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take the venice and genoa nodes, become so rich that you can constantly hire +3 advisors and field overwhelming mercs
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Jan 28, 2017 18:28
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oddium posted:take the venice and genoa nodes, become so rich that you can constantly hire +3 advisors and field overwhelming mercs This. Religious is an amazing idea group for Papal States but not until you've expanded to the point where you're bumping uglies with the heathen horde, or the Reformation starts. I'd go Influence first because in the high-development, high-AE zone of the HRE you'll be doing a lot of vassal feeding. Be opportunistic early on, try to get Venice with the aid of Austria, but don't expect to be doing a lot of blobbing into Northern Italy, where you'll ultimately be swallowing everything, until after the Shadow Kingdom fires and everyone gets the hell out of the Empire. Then go nuts. e: also if you can, and aren't playing for achievements, pick up a mod that makes the Kingdom of God decision give you empire rank, because cultural union is the least you should get for gobbling all of northern Italy and eating all of those mutually-allying fuckers.
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Jan 28, 2017 19:18
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So I took everyone's advice and yeah, Austria can gently caress and fight their way to victory. I have Serbia and Bohemia under PUs, and want Hungary, but they are guaranteed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans are a mil level higher than me and have comparable troops and manpower, so I don't think I can take them since none of my allies want any part of it. The problem is they are getting a Hunyadi dynasty, so I'm afraid if I don't go now, I won't get another chance to PU them.
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Jan 28, 2017 20:51
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MrBling posted:I decided to try my hand at the African Power achievement, but I don't know if I'm aggressive enough as a player to actually be able to conquer everything. Speaking as someone who almost got that achievement, I found Administrative to be nearly mandatory. You're going to be coring a lot of provinces. Economics is a good choice too, definitely above Trade. The next time I try that achievement, I'm going to do that and settle a couple of provinces so I can get a CB on Mutapa and die rich in Mutapan blood gold early on.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:10
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MrBling posted:I decided to try my hand at the African Power achievement, but I don't know if I'm aggressive enough as a player to actually be able to conquer everything. Don't feed the gold mines to your vassal, because when you finally annex them they'll have a lot of autonomy. Also admin ideas are a better choice for reforming your government.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:16
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I can just never get myself to take Administrative over Economic. Yes, reduced coring cost is good but for me all the mercenary stuff is useless 90% of the time.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:43
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MrBling posted:I can just never get myself to take Administrative over Economic. Yes, reduced coring cost is good but for me all the mercenary stuff is useless 90% of the time. I think they are pretty situational, but I definitely give the edge for large, expanding countries to Admin ideas. Sometimes I'll just take the first two ideas for most of the game, though reduced tech cost is decent and even 5+ states will come in handy for someone expanding.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:56
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skasion posted:Always always always keep an eye out for old kings with no kids, you can get extremely good chances at personal unions and sometimes with luck you will just get handed an uncontested PU with France or something. Integrate Hungary as soon as you have fed them the Balkan states, they don't do anything special for you. Bohemia is an elector so worth leaving that alone for a while. Watch Poland-Lithuania closely for when they shift to absolute monarchy -- they're highly likely to have an old king who may be heirless and you can swoop in and put a Habsburg on the throne there too. So many 70-year-olds having kids and whose dynasty fails and gives me a free PU? Saxe-Lauenburg. 
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Jan 28, 2017 22:25
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:So many 70-year-olds having kids and whose dynasty fails and gives me a free PU? Saxe-Lauenburg. Yea, Brandenburg waited until he was well into his 70s and then had a kid. So my PU attempt there was a dismal failure. Still a valuable ally however.
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Jan 28, 2017 22:33
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MrBling posted:I can just never get myself to take Administrative over Economic. Yes, reduced coring cost is good but for me all the mercenary stuff is useless 90% of the time. Mercenaries are amazing, if you're not using a ton of mercenaries then you're not declaring enough wars!
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Jan 28, 2017 22:34
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Chump Farts posted:So I took everyone's advice and yeah, Austria can gently caress and fight their way to victory. I have Serbia and Bohemia under PUs, and want Hungary, but they are guaranteed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans are a mil level higher than me and have comparable troops and manpower, so I don't think I can take them since none of my allies want any part of it. You get an event to give you a a restoration of union CB against Hungary after 1500 if they have less than 200 dev, less provinces than Austria, and are also missing at least one province from Northern Transylvania, Southern Transylvania, Slovakia or Alföld. So, if you can steal Pozsony at some point when Ottomans are weak or if they let the guarantee lapse then you don't have to worry about who is on the throne. You and Poland should be able to handle Ottomans early, before they eat everything.
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Jan 28, 2017 22:41
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If I have a vassal with cores on another country, which of the following is better? - Use the Reconquest CB on the other country, make sure my vassal ends up occupying its cores, and then demand the provinces in the peace deal - Use the "Return Core" peace option in the peace deal I remember there being some discussion about this a month or two ago and that one option was better, but I forget which.
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Jan 28, 2017 22:46
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Tsyni posted:You get an event to give you a a restoration of union CB against Hungary after 1500 if they have less than 200 dev, less provinces than Austria, and are also missing at least one province from Northern Transylvania, Southern Transylvania, Slovakia or Alföld. Ottomans lost focus and I was able to snipe it. The problem now is my three PUs are weak until wars start. Hungary fielded 26k against me and now has a standing army of barely 14k. Bohemia went from 17k to 9k, and Serbia is barely 8k. They ramp up a bit in war time, but I was hoping for a more powerful swarm to do my battles for me.
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Jan 28, 2017 22:51
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I've been getting sporadic errors about the Ironman save being unable to write. Anyone know how to fix this? I've looked and it appears the savegame folder is Read-only. Is this intentional? I just lost a pretty decent (albeit 90% done) campaign as Papal States. The last bit from 1760 onward was filled with nonstop errors on the autosaves so I just deleted the file assuming it was incapable of writing over it for some reason. Got a CTD and found it wasn't capable of writing to the folder at all despite doing so for the past 12 hours.
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Jan 28, 2017 22:52
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Chump Farts posted:Ottomans lost focus and I was able to snipe it. The problem now is my three PUs are weak until wars start. Hungary fielded 26k against me and now has a standing army of barely 14k. Bohemia went from 17k to 9k, and Serbia is barely 8k. They ramp up a bit in war time, but I was hoping for a more powerful swarm to do my battles for me. Independent nations get a bigger bonus to force limit than subjects, though it's not giant. But you'll definitely notice they field a smaller army once you PU/vassalize them. The other factor is money. Sometimes subsidizing your subjects can allow them to afford larger armies, especially if they are only breaking even or in the red.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:02
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MrBling posted:I can just never get myself to take Administrative over Economic. Yes, reduced coring cost is good but for me all the mercenary stuff is useless 90% of the time. I feel the exact same way too, but I just convince myself by repeating the fact that -25% core cost reduction is the single best idea in the game, period. And it is the second idea in the group, so you can ignore the rest if you want. All the other ideas that you get with it are just neat little bonuses. The time I've found Administrative's mercenary bonuses really valuable are when you are starting out as Ming. Their manpower is such garbage for their size (33k!) and they have so much money, its worth it. Once you reform your government and get a billion ducat income and another billion Chinese manpower pool then it doesn't matter so much anymore.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:05
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If you rely on gold mines for your income at all, you will save more admin points from the inflation reduction in Economic than the reduced coring cost in Administrative.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:27
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dipwood posted:If you rely on gold mines for your income at all, you will save more admin points from the inflation reduction in Economic than the reduced coring cost in Administrative. I really really really doubt that
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Jan 28, 2017 23:37
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Imo the actual point savings aren't as big of a deal as the coring time reduction.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:41
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Started with Florence, now allied with England, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Genoa. I think France wants to be French Italy now. Also the Ottomans look in trouble after I weakened them on my Balkans crusade. 
Uziduke fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 29, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 23:42
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