you can get 80-100 absolutionism cap with republics fairly easily once court and country fires, assuming you're not chasing merchant republic or pirates. the real issue with republics is there is no real way to quickly become one (or theocracy) if you want to do a zany fun gimmick game or some stripe, like vomit-all-the-morale-bonus republic/theo france.
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# ? Dec 20, 2020 18:50 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 10:39 |
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Yah, except for pirate republics, if you start out as some tag that can meet the qualifications without much groundwork. For instance Scotland can go yarr real fast, same with all those minor island nations in Asia.
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# ? Dec 20, 2020 20:45 |
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Gamerofthegame posted:you can get 80-100 absolutionism cap with republics fairly easily once court and country fires, assuming you're not chasing merchant republic or pirates. You can become a republic as France easily.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 01:06 |
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Groke posted:Yah, except for pirate republics, if you start out as some tag that can meet the qualifications without much groundwork. For instance Scotland can go yarr real fast, same with all those minor island nations in Asia. Can you elaborate on this? I've been wanting to try a Scotland game anyway and this sounds like loads of fun.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 01:47 |
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trapped mouse posted:You can become a republic as France easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VoRmjxvPs
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 01:58 |
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Jabarto posted:Can you elaborate on this? I've been wanting to try a Scotland game anyway and this sounds like loads of fun. If you meet the following requirements you can turn into a pirate Republic via decision (off the top of my head so the figures might be off a little): - all owned provinces must be on islands or in the Maghreb - own a maximum of seven provinces - doing the privateering mission with your light ships to have at least 15% privateering power in your home trade node - have 2 stability - not a tribal govt type - independent You lose estates and release all your vassals but you get big naval buffs and you can raid coasts every ten or so years, which is where you sail your navy into a naval zone and press a button on the naval unit screen and get a big lump sum of money and sailors for every neighbouring province. It causes devastation in all those provinces. I think it's locked behind the golden century DLC? It's fun to do in Europe because the low countries yield like 600 ducats per raid.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 08:22 |
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well, finished my first ironman run in a while, did a victorian three run. Honestly not very hard, even if it does take forever to finish.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 08:51 |
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Red Bones posted:It's fun to do in Europe because the low countries yield like 600 ducats per raid. And the best thing is it's inflation free!
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 09:47 |
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just trying to get a sunset invasion going and i think i’ll need to completely change up my plan, i’m starting to think a colonist race is a fools errand
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 11:10 |
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Red Bones posted:If you meet the following requirements you can turn into a pirate Republic via decision (off the top of my head so the figures might be off a little): Actually I think you have to get rid of your vassals before you can take the decision. As Scotland what you have to do is simply give the excess provinces to The Isles, then get rid of them. Buy up stability, build light ships to the limit, privateer the North Sea and that should quickly suffice. Now you will soon be swimming in ducats and can buy all the rum, peg legs and parrots you need.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 12:40 |
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Jel Shaker posted:just trying to get a sunset invasion going and i think i’ll need to completely change up my plan, i’m starting to think a colonist race is a fools errand Cheese your way around the racist assumptions of the game to reform your religion before the Europeans even show up, be a tribe and then a horde. Let the filthy colonizers establish their colonial nations, it's free real estate for you.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 12:42 |
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pirates also get imperialism cb at like 1500. wow !!
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 14:09 |
My game has, over the past day or two, suddenly stopped working. And I'm developing a bizzare theory that its somehow linked to me having left a (unrelated film) disk in the DVD drive for once and the game has now decided it needs to find something there so isn't working
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 17:05 |
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I do the pirate Republic as The Isles just because I like how once you've conquered the whole archipelago it says 'The Isles' over it on the map. It's nice and literal. If you do it as GB or Ireland it's only labelling one of the islands and ignoring the others, it ain't right. You gotta restart a few times to get a decent alliance for the independence war but after that it's pretty plain sailing (har har).
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 17:12 |
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Jel Shaker posted:just trying to get a sunset invasion going and i think i’ll need to completely change up my plan, i’m starting to think a colonist race is a fools errand What do you mean by colonist race? Because the Euros colonizing isn't a problem, it is extremely good news for you. They will settle stuff quicker than you ever possibly could by yourself, and it's trivial to strip all those provinces off their CNs.
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 19:54 |
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PittTheElder posted:What do you mean by colonist race? Because the Euros colonizing isn't a problem, it is extremely good news for you. They will settle stuff quicker than you ever possibly could by yourself, and it's trivial to strip all those provinces off their CNs. blocking myself with taking both exploration and expansion, obvious in hindsight completely redundant ideas when i should have gone eco and probably naval
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# ? Dec 21, 2020 20:14 |
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Yeah I'd say eco and trade, despite new world trade being generally trash. Sunset Invasion is easier than you might think though, since it only requires you to take 6 provinces in the old world, winning more or less one war each against the great powers. Surviving until 1600 is the hard part, past that it's easily achievable (but tedious).
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 02:08 |
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PittTheElder posted:until 1600 is the hard part, past that it's easily achievable (but tedious). EU4 in a nutshell
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 02:48 |
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100 years left and i don't have the heart to keep fighting plc and feed a brandenburg/prussia for this achievement maybe one day.....
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 05:35 |
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All the talk about Sunset Invasion reminded me to go back and give it another shot. Think this may be the cleanest + luckiest opening I've ever had in EU4, I got a ton of people solo-declaring on guys I was already siegeing down. Pretty happy with reforming in <25 years on VH.
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 06:44 |
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did you remember to get on the edge of madness though
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 07:04 |
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oddium posted:did you remember to get on the edge of madness though literally and metaphorically think the game bugged out the first time i did it and after 100 years it slowly dawned on me that maybe it didn’t register the doom correctly (lack of a month tick maybe?)
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 18:28 |
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You can get The League of Mayapan with similar strategies by buddying up to the Aztecs early and sticking close to their general
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# ? Dec 22, 2020 21:56 |
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canepazzo posted:How are you getting the Brandenburg mission early? As you need to either humiliate Austria or be a GP when they aren't If Austria doesn't get the free PU on Hungary then iirc they have a bit of a hard time becoming a great power. I don't remember the exact progression of my game but I think I got them to help me eat Slovakia and that got me to GP status but I might be wrong (I had at least one run where I never allied Austria and just pounced on them for an early Humiliate war). Actually now that I think about it I might have just gotten *extremely* lucky with a free PU (from marriage) on Brandenburg, but I definitely had a few unsuccessful runs where I PU'd Poland and Brandenburg in quick succession then got coalitioned by half of the Holy Roman Empire.
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# ? Dec 23, 2020 05:38 |
Cockblocktopus posted:If Austria doesn't get the free PU on Hungary then iirc they have a bit of a hard time becoming a great power. I don't remember the exact progression of my game but I think I got them to help me eat Slovakia and that got me to GP status but I might be wrong (I had at least one run where I never allied Austria and just pounced on them for an early Humiliate war). I eventually managed while doing the PU war on Hungary, with Ottos as my allies, to pull in Austria as cobelligerent and humiliate them; getting Hungary in a PU, then Brandenburg, coalitioned, set Silesia free and get the Poland Lithuania PU. Thanks for the heads up, PU hunting as Bohemia is super fun! Had a similar run with Provence for the Good King René achievement, with a bonus: as I was fighting the Aragon PU war (with Naples and Hungary in the bag already), Castile fell into a PU under Aragon, right as they were getting their asses kicked by Portugal. I win the Aragon war and end up with Castile under a PU as a bonus. The Mamluks did not know what hit them.
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# ? Dec 23, 2020 12:39 |
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Messing around as Jianzhou in MP and AI Oirat called me in a defensive war against Ming. Honored the call, sieged down the border fort, then saw the giant army coming (Mandate was in the 80s so not the paper armies you get on low mandate) and offered to become a Ming tributary again. Ming took a base 120 Aggressive Expansion in the treaty. Nobody outside of Manchuria cared (and they were also at war with two of the other Manchu minors) but it's sure keeping them out of my neck of the woods while I sweep up the rest of the Manchu cores now.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 06:01 |
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Cockblocktopus posted:Messing around as Jianzhou in MP and AI Oirat called me in a defensive war against Ming. Honored the call, sieged down the border fort, then saw the giant army coming (Mandate was in the 80s so not the paper armies you get on low mandate) and offered to become a Ming tributary again. Ming took a base 120 Aggressive Expansion in the treaty. Being tributary of Ming is always the right play. For the small price of whatever tribute they ask you get like 200k+ troops deterring coalitions from declaring on you and the ability to eat other tributaries for free.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 06:43 |
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Firebatgyro posted:Being tributary of Ming is always the right play. For the small price of whatever tribute they ask you get like 200k+ troops deterring coalitions from declaring on you and the ability to eat other tributaries for free. Yes, until it's time to stab them in the back and wreck their poo poo, of course. Also they will often in an absent-mindedly magnanimous way send a doomstack across your border to deal with rebels, so that's nice.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 07:34 |
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So, seeing that this game is 75% off in the Steam Sale, I'm thinking about picking it up. Is the OP up to date on what DLC's are essential?
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 05:02 |
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it's a little bit behind, the biggest single part of common sense, development, has since been made a free feature. From the OP's list I'd probably move common sense down to "The Not Necessary But Major" and probably also add Dharma and Emperor to that category.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 05:27 |
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Art of War is certainly the best DLC, but none are really mandatory
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 05:45 |
When i'm invading places, i normally just grab the territory and core it. Is there a better way to do things for ae purposes? I'm playing a milan game and i feel like theres gotta be a better way to avoid being dogpiled than just kicking back and hiring a diplomatioc rep advisor every so often?
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 12:05 |
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:When i'm invading places, i normally just grab the territory and core it. Is there a better way to do things for ae purposes? I'm playing a milan game and i feel like theres gotta be a better way to avoid being dogpiled than just kicking back and hiring a diplomatioc rep advisor every so often? Make a vassal out of someone with cores on stuff, then feed them back their cores in subsequent wars. Eat the vassal once they're out of cores for you to make war over.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 12:11 |
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:When i'm invading places, i normally just grab the territory and core it. Is there a better way to do things for ae purposes? I'm playing a milan game and i feel like theres gotta be a better way to avoid being dogpiled than just kicking back and hiring a diplomatioc rep advisor every so often? As THE BAR wrote, expanding via vassals is key, since that gets you less AE per development. In addition, you should definitely consider maximizing your Improve Relations (IR) when you're playing around in/near Central Europe (since it's high development and culturally/religiously homogenous). Since I don't know your level of experience, I'll just list most everything that matters for managing AE: 1) Most of the time, your diplomats should be improving relations with Outraged Countries (if any) or Neighbors. If you need claims, allies or annexation go for it, but by default you should probably be improving relations. 2) High Prestige both improves your IR and decreases the AE you take - it's a lot more valuable near Central Europe than basically anywhere else in the game. 3) Have your merchants use Establish Communities for the +15% Improve relations. 3a) If you need to bleed off AE right now, consider moving your merchants to whatever node(s) you have the most AE in, even if you don't have any trade power there worth mentioning. 4) seriously consider hiring nothing but Diplomat advisors (the +IR ones) for that slot - where you're expanding, there is unlikely to be anything that even comes close in utility, except maybe the +rep advisor when integrating vassals. 5) When picking ideas, Improve Relations is the key modifier to max for smooth expansion - Diplomatic then Humanist are the ones with direct boosts. They give +25%/+30% IR each, plus an extra +20% IR for the policy. 6) Apart from IR increases, additional Diplomats also help quite a but; to a lesser extent extra Merchants do too. 7) Remember that you get extra AE for taking provinces from enemies that aren't the target country or its co-belligerents. 7a) When declaring you can check the co-belligerent box and see the potential extra countries you'd get involved. You can always un-check if you don't want to bring in the extra enemies. 8) If you aren't already, max out your land forces; coalitions generally only form if the involved countries think they can take you on when they combine forces. 9) Allies tend to get way less AE than anyone else. If you have free slots, it's not the worst idea in the world to ally someone to help keep down the AE. 10) Countries can only join a coalition if they don't have a truce with you - if there's an acute danger of a coalition forming, consider going to war with someone for the main purpose of getting a truce timer - you can still extort money or have them give up provinces to others without getting extra AE. 11) If/when you have expanded far enough that you can conquer provinces in different Religious Groups and/or Culture Groups, alternating between them helps keep down AE. 11a) The religion of the provinces you take don't matter for AE purposes, only the state religion of the country you take them from. 11b) After the reformation, alternating between attacking protestants, catholics and the reformed also helps keep down AE. 12) When expanding in the HRE you can avoid the Unlawful Province demand if you're: a) allied to the Emperor. b) in another war. c) conquering core provinces for yourself or your vassal. 12a) It can sometimes be worthwhile to start an extra war where you don't intend to get AE, just to have time to core HRE provinces. TL;DR: prioritize Improve Relations, get Diplomatic and Humanist ideas - they're already excellent choices, for your location they're a slam dunk. Beyond that, Prestige, merchants, large armies and truces help keep down on coalitions. Caustic Soda fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Dec 27, 2020 |
# ? Dec 27, 2020 14:08 |
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Some other tips that are helping my current run (and my gameplay in general): Keep an eye on who will voluntarily accept vassalization through diplomacy. I thought I was going to have to go to war with my ally Austria (who was Emperor) to get Trent before I could form the Kingdom of God; I happened to flip into the diplomacy screen right as I was gearing up and noticed that they really wanted to be my vassal. I also got Orleans this way after Austria freed them, then fed them most of France. It's okay to keep a small coalition against you as long as nobody else joins. The Ottomans and Mamluks both have over 200 AE against me and it keeps going up, but all of the other regional Muslim powers are too small to coalition me without the big guys. Also if your coalition does form, attack the smallest guy in the coalition with everything you have. The whole coalition will join the war, but if you occupy the capital of the guy you attacked then you can probably get either a quick white peace or just pay them some gold to leave you alone. edit: some games are just better for expansion than others and moving into the HRE in the early game is tough in general. Milan is a game that benefits from slower expansion and building up your power base with buildings and developing your provinces up until you form Italy (or either France or the Balkans becomes a power vacuum, like if Hungary collapses) and you can suddenly afford to field a giant army and expand like crazy. Ideally you sit out the Thirty Years' War then pounce on a couple countries that got devastated in the fighting. Cockblocktopus fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Dec 27, 2020 |
# ? Dec 27, 2020 15:22 |
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I just had the AI offer to sell me one of their provinces, for the first and only time in 1400 hours of playtime I didn't even know that was possible before now!
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 19:37 |
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Mygna posted:I just had the AI offer to sell me one of their provinces, for the first and only time in 1400 hours of playtime I didn't even know that was possible before now! Yeah, I've had that happen to me a few times. Not sure what makes them offer it, I think I usually see it happen after they have a devastating war.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 23:08 |
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the Embezzler ruler trait makes AIs more willing to sell provinces if they're in debt. My understanding is that the ai sell province rules are somewhere around good relations, you have a claim on the province / they can't core the province for whatever reason (it's surrounded usually) and usually they need to be in debt.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 23:17 |
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Caustic Soda gave all the good AE reduction tips. Another thing to remember is the localized nature of AE. If you're finding expanding in Italy to be tricky, hop on over to North Africa instead. You'll still get some AE in Italy for that war, but not as much. Alternate between multiple regions and you can spread out the hate and hopefully not reach the critical mass needed for coalitions.Cockblocktopus posted:edit: some games are just better for expansion than others and moving into the HRE in the early game is tough in general. Milan is a game that benefits from slower expansion and building up your power base with buildings and developing your provinces up until you form Italy (or either France or the Balkans becomes a power vacuum, like if Hungary collapses) and you can suddenly afford to field a giant army and expand like crazy. Ideally you sit out the Thirty Years' War then pounce on a couple countries that got devastated in the fighting. I haven't played in a little while. Can you still sell out allies in coalition wars? In my experience you can (temporarily) get a scary coalition off your back just by offering your allies' land in the peace deal instead of your own. So the strategy becomes to ally people who has land the coalition members might want and then peace out as soon as the war is declared, giving away your allies' land.
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 02:06 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 10:39 |
milan can easily snipe byz at the beginning of the game and vassalize them to open an eastern front for expansion. keep powerful allies so that you can resist the ottomans periodically and you should be able to develop a good position in italy, greece, and the caucasus. get exploration and conquer overseas when you're too hot at home
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 02:33 |