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NihilCredo posted:Can I ask for an opinion? I'm pretty close to the end of this Scandinavia playthrough, and while I'm doing well economically, from what I've seen of others' empires I think I ought to be doing much better. I control North Germany and the Baltic with both their trade nodes, and I have a fairly long chain of colonies (random new world) sending cash to Lübeck, plus another trade company in the East Indies. E: Like, why are you still futzing in Novgorod? Unless I'm crazy (I haven't ever played Denmark) trade flows will deemphasise the Hanseatic and Novgorodian trade nodes long before 1719. Who cares who has trade power in Novgorod when you're shunting the loot to Lubeck via Africa? Hambilderberglar fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Aug 23, 2016 |
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Aug 23, 2016 19:08
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You're paying 35 ducats in fort maintenance. That's 35 ducats more than I would pay. Seriously though, I can't imagine a situation where you ever need that many forts. I can't help with trade, but you're sitting on a 1,900 ducats. Are you saving that for something?
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Aug 23, 2016 19:09
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Hambilderberglar posted:Why are you collecting in malacca? Forward that poo poo and park your light ships & merchants in nodes where other european traders are going to compete with you. Ivory coast/west africa, east africa, hormuz, ceylon, goa. Or you can even bypass those all and send directly to east africa. Nodes that have only one entry/exit like south africa you can ignore safely, since any european merchant will be doing you a favour until they get to west africa and try to steer towards sevilla. West Africa trade doesn't go to the North Sea / Lübeck; it goes to Seville, Bordeaux, and/or English Channel, all of which are downstream from Lübeck. Going through the East is no bueno as well, there's a bunch of land nodes along the way where others (mostly the Ottomans) would collect all my cash. My plan for the 1700's was to build up enough trade fleets / seize enough land to take control of the Japanese nodes, and route the East Indies trade all the way through the Pacific and my New World colonies. I don't know if it's a good plan, though. Vegetable posted:You're paying 35 ducats in fort maintenance. That's 35 ducats more than I would pay. Seriously though, I can't imagine a situation where you ever need that many forts. Good point, I should be more proactive in turning them on / off. They are useful at the right moment though, mostly preventing Russia and France from swarming all over my mainland before the Bohemians / Ottomans can bring their own doomstacks. But yeah, with strong Netherlands I can now turn off all the German ones, and pnly maintain the one in Novgorod at most. quote:I can't help with trade, but you're sitting on a 1,900 ducats. Are you saving that for something? Yes, ship upgrading. A good chunk of my trade fleet is a couple of tiers out of date, and since I've recently hit my forcelimits (again) that seemed like the best use for my cash. I've got a lot of buildings built already, and I do want to save 500-1K for mercenary swarms.
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Aug 23, 2016 19:27
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NihilCredo posted:West Africa trade doesn't go to the North Sea / Lübeck; it goes to Seville, Bordeaux, and/or English Channel, all of which are downstream from Lübeck. Going through the East is no bueno as well, there's a bunch of land nodes along the way where others (mostly the Ottomans) would collect all my cash.
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Aug 23, 2016 19:32
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Hambilderberglar posted:west africa goes to the caribbean. i have never played with a random new world, does a caribbean-analogue trade node exist? from there you can steer up to the "east coast", into the gulf of st lawrence, north sea, and into lubeck. If the node layout doesnt work that way its obviously a nonstarter, but if you can get asia to lubeck via the pacific via what I assume is some sort of manila galleon route adjusted for your landmass, I see no reason why such a path shouldnt exist from west africa. Seems like a bit of a kneecap for would be new world traders not in an end node. That is, in fact, the case. The closest Caribbean-analogue woul be Ruayuta, the southeasternmost island in the New World, which takes in trade from the rest of the NW and sends it to West Africa and Safi. It's why I decided early on not to scramble for Africa. I guess the upside is that a lot more of the NW trade is going through the Arumbia -> North Sea route, where I can steer it directly to Lübeck. If there were more paths to Europe, I'd have to do a fair bit more steering to get the cash to go all the way up north.
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Aug 23, 2016 19:58
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You can always just use a lot of lightships privateering to not-very-efficiently collect in valuable nodes. In my last game I parked a few hundred in the Lübeck node and grabbed almost 40% of it. 
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Aug 23, 2016 20:33
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NihilCredo posted:Can I ask for an opinion? I'm pretty close to the end of this Scandinavia playthrough, and while I'm doing well economically, from what I've seen of others' empires I think I ought to be doing much better. I control North Germany and the Baltic with both their trade nodes, and I have a fairly long chain of colonies (random new world) sending cash to Lübeck, plus another trade company in the East Indies. I'm in no way an expert but it really seems like you could easily take India right now.
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Aug 23, 2016 20:36
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So I've finished Administative, Offensive, Defensive and Influence, what should I get now? Should I get Economic or should I go and try to colonize? The only ones that have really colonized so far are England, France, Léon, a small Castille and Scotland so I was wondering if I should just get Expansion and start filling the world with colonies. (Portugal in this game got eaten up, they own 2 provinces and neither of them are any good)
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Aug 23, 2016 22:27
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Koorisch posted:So I've finished Administative, Offensive, Defensive and Influence, what should I get now?
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Aug 23, 2016 22:32
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Hambilderberglar posted:Who are you playing as? Sweden, I've managed to get Poland, Lithuania and Bohemia as my PU's so I'll inherit them in a while so I'm getting pretty mighty, especially when they start stomping all over the place with their armies. Also I have so much cash (nearly 100 ducats in total income) that I only use mercenaries for infantry because it'll cut my manpower loss in half or more.
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Aug 23, 2016 22:42
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Koorisch posted:Sweden, I've managed to get Poland, Lithuania and Bohemia as my PU's so I'll inherit them in a while so I'm getting pretty mighty, especially when they start stomping all over the place with their armies.
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Aug 23, 2016 22:52
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Hambilderberglar posted:Are you just Sweden or do you also have Norway-denmark-iceland? With Iceland and free north american provinces you can colonise at what i think is a pretty decent clip for a latecomer. I see AI norway/sweden show up in canada every few games. Although economic gives you that sweet 20% development discount and it's really hard to argue with going from 70-80 monarch points per upgrade to 30 to 40 when you stack that with university and some other poo poo. I haven't managed to eat up those guys yet but I did nick Iceland from Norway so I could go colonize whenever if I decided doing that. Here's a picture of what I've done so far. 
Koorisch fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Aug 23, 2016 |
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Aug 23, 2016 22:53
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Koorisch posted:I haven't managed to eat up those guys yet but I did nick Iceland from Norway so I could go colonize whenever if I decided doing that.
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Aug 23, 2016 23:43
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Hambilderberglar posted:Take colonization. Snatch up some stuff in greenland and canada. Try and get something in the st lawrence node so you can actually not lose it all to the wrong node. There's a chance for ivory on at least one of those provinces, plus you'll be making GBS threads furs, but I expect that to be the case anyway given the provs you have. Your puppets/PUs are mostly grain so colonizing should give you the chance to pick up some cool resources. I'm thinking of loving up England so I can nick their overseas provinces because they've taken most of northwest South America.
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Aug 23, 2016 23:55
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Koorisch posted:I'm thinking of loving up England so I can nick their overseas provinces because they've taken most of northwest South America.
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Aug 24, 2016 00:11
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Hambilderberglar posted:Easily done. Just find out how many heavy ships they have, build two or three more and stack them with some light ships. The AI i've seen tends to group its galleons with the transports, and if you build an equivalent amount of heavier ships you can shred the screens and gently caress their battleship fleet up. Once their transports are out of business it's just a matter of piling troops into whatever theater their armies were stuck in. Once you land on britain england folds like a wet paper bag. I've got a force limit of over 80 and with the surplus of cash I'll be able to stomp them with mercs alone if I so wanted it. I love mercenary cost reducers 
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Aug 24, 2016 00:15
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NihilCredo posted:That is, in fact, the case. The closest Caribbean-analogue woul be Ruayuta, the southeasternmost island in the New World, which takes in trade from the rest of the NW and sends it to West Africa and Safi. It's why I decided early on not to scramble for Africa. Yeah you're losing out on a lot of cash because you're missing Africa. I think India is indeed the right way to go here, and just the East in general. If you can't steer Asian trade home you're just going to have to make a home in Asia.
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Aug 24, 2016 00:55
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Hambilderberglar posted:I'm looking into the ideas in depth again and the policies and bonuses I get from maritime are pretty dumpy and definitely too much of a good thing. I poo poo sailors already, my force limit is usually well north of 200 ships, and while ships penny and sheltered ports are nice-to-have, it does seem overkill. I think you're overestimating the value of policies a bit, though this shows some of my own personal bias: I pick idea groups for the ideas mainly and policies are a nice bonus to turn on sometimes, but I don't think you want to be running them most of the time. Consider the relative costs. Policies cost 1 MP / mo and must be activated for a minimum of 10 years, so they cost 120+ points to have active. -10% development x 50 base cost = savings of 5 MP for every development purchases. That means to break even in points, you need to purchase 24 development over 10 years. My hunch would be most of the time you're not going to break even on that, or at least the benefit is going to be small. Or think about settlers, they're nice, but you could also speed up your colonization by going one over your colony limit. This costs 4 ducats / mo (2 base +2 for being over limit) and that extra colony will develop a bit slower, but ask yourself, would you rather spend 4 ducats or 1 point? I guess my point is that policies often don't have a great return on investment and I think they're something you activate situationally. For example, maybe you just unlocked the University building and are drowning in monarch points, that's a good time to activate -10% development since you can build a bunch of Unis and buy a ton of development for cheap. I'm working on a land combat megapost which I'll put up later tonight, hopefully it's helpful. Teaser: it's going to be titled "Morale is King"
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Aug 24, 2016 01:13
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Morale is King: an effortpost on land combat I'll start with a bit of a disclaimer that there's certainly a lot of my own bias in this and I'm not gonna claim it's all 100% correct, the combat mechanics in EU4 are somewhat opaque and have changed a lot, so please do correct me if I'm wrong somewhere. This is going to get a little mathy at parts, I'll try to keep it pretty simple though. I'm also not going to be exhaustive in explaining every mechanic, I'm assuming you've got a basic knowledge of combat and I'm mostly going to be addressing big picture strategy. Let's talk about army composition first before we get to combat mechanics. You always want to have as much combat width as possible to avoid being flanked. Flanking happens when you have a smaller front line, which allows the outside units of your opponent's army to double up on your flanks and is really bad. This a specialty of cavalry, who have a long flanking range, but it's worth noting you don't actually need cavalry if you want to be a cheapskate, so long as you have a full front rank of infantry to avoid being flanked yourself (and you also won't flank as well). But you can totally do an all inf/arty army if you wanted. You always want as close to a full front rank of inf + cav as possible to avoid being flanked, then your artillery goes in back. In the first roughly half of the game (before early 1600s, mil tech 16) artillery is pretty lovely in combat. You don't need to bring a full back rank of artillery and often it's better to bring more reinforcements than spend a lot of money on artillery. Mostly they are for speeding up sieges early on. Mil techs 16 and 22 make artillery tremendously strong in combat and you definitely want a full back line of artillery by the 1600s if you couldn't afford it before. Combat mechanics largely boil down to a modified die roll which is then multiplied by various bonuses (all of which are multiplicative). your modified die roll ("pips") is going to be die roll + general bonus + unit offensive pips - terrain - enemy general bonus - enemy unit defensive pips 15 + 5 * modified roll determines the base casualties (dead dudes) you will inflict, the base is modified by Discipline and Combat Power (again these are all multiplicative). This is then divided by Tactics * Discipline to get the actual casualties inflicted. Note that Discipline makes you do more damage and also receive fewer casualties. The result of a battle, however, is not determined by casualties but by morale. Casualties are multiplied by your max morale divided by theirs (like Discipline, it double dips and benefits both offense and defense) to determine the morale damage inflicted. Units will fight until they reach a low morale threshold (not sure exactly what that is) when they will rout and leave the field. In a literal sense, morale is what wins battles. An army with superior morale can beat an army with superior Discipline and general because their troops are harder to rout and also push the enemy units off the field more easily. Yes, in that scenario, the Morale army would probably take higher casualties, but winning battles is usually more important. Let's take an example, an army with +20% Morale vs. one with +20% Discipline (and remember, 20% Morale is way easier to get than 20% Discipline). The Discipline army will inflict more casualties, but both armies have the same chance to win the battle (all else equal). Or a more complicated one, let's take early game Sweden (+20% Infantry Combat Ability and +5% Discipline) against Pellisworth with equivalent 20% Morale from Defensive (15% + 5% from AT). Swedish infantry inflicts 1.2 * 1.05 = 1.26 casualties, but 1.2 * 1.05 / 1.2 = 1.05 Morale damage. Pellisworth inflicts 1 / 1.05 = 0.95 casualties, but 1.2 / 1.05 = 1.14 Morale damage So, you'd want to be careful because the damned Swedes are going to hurt, but you have an edge in actually winning battles, lure them into poor terrain and bring reinforcements and you've got a fair fight. Bottom line, Morale is more or less equivalent in value to Discipline in winning battles, and it's a lot easier to stack Morale early on. As the game progresses and you unlock more idea groups, getting a mix of Morale, Discipline, and other stuff is a great idea since they're multiplicative with each other. Tactics and fighting the AI. Mostly, the AI likes to ball up their armies into doomstacks which is actually a bad idea. They take more attrition, and they will lose to much smaller armies who reinforce one combat width at a time. In addition to losing Morale from casualties, every unit engaged in a battle loses a small amount per day and this really adds up in large battles. Ideally, you want to send in exactly one combat width of troops (+artillery) and reinforce when your front line starts to get low on morale. Your enemy can only have one combat width fighting at a time, but all the rest of his doomstack is hemhorraging Morale without contributing to the battle. You can defeat much larger forces this way. The AI also seems to evaluate enemy armies based on size, so you can park a one combat width army in the mountains and bait a deathstack into attacking, then feed in nearby reinforcements to smash them. I generally prefer to build important forts on plains or other terrain without any penalties, because then I can send in armies to attack the besiegers without penalty. Having forts in the mountains or other hostile terrain is great for slowing down and attriting enemies, but they're a pain in the rear end if you need to relieve the siege by attacking into them. Maneuver is an underrated stat, I believe. The attacking army will get a -1 penalty when crossing rivers unless they have more Maneuver than the defender, so it can be very significant when played right (effectively +1 Shock and Fire if you have more Maneuver). It also speeds up army movement, reduces its size for calculating attrition, and increases reinforcement speed +10% for every Maneuver pip. Idea picks. I've already kind of made the argument that combat width and Morale are the most important things early on. When choosing your first military idea set, ask what the relative Morale of your likely enemies is. You want to have similar or better Morale, if you're way behind you'll get dunked on. I think Defensive is the all-around best first pick, the first three ideas (+1 AT, +15% Morale, and +1 Maneuver) frontload a huge amount of combat power and the maintenance and attrition stuff is great too, there's really nothing wasted in the idea set. Quantity is great if you're a colonial power with a small manpower base and few enemies that can reach you (England, Portugal) or if you get a good Morale bonus from your NIs (France, Spain, Prussia, Poland). I think most nations want Defensive though, it lets you punch upwards or at least not get wrecked by France or similar dickhead rocking +40% or better Morale. Offensive and Quality are good as later picks. They have some filler-ish ideas that aren't that great (-10% recruitment speed, +100% prestige from battles, -25% naval attrition) and neither of them help in terms of cost (maintenance) or staying power (manpower etc). The +20% Siege Ability from Offensive is fantastic later in the game against high-level forts, and Quality has some alright stuff for ships. Naval may be replaced by a post-it note reading "build more heavies." e: clarified maneuver and river crossings. oh and I forgot Aristocratic, it's a weird diplo/military hybrid and is not as good as Offensive, Defensive, Quality, or Quantity. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 02:25
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Great post, it's very helpful. A follow-up question: How do you decide when to reinforce your stack? Also heavies are good if you're fighting in open seas, but I'm pretty sure assuming you don't hit your force limit, Galleys are better for your dime.
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Aug 24, 2016 04:51
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Very useful post! I'm curious, though: what's a good, quick way to figure out how much calvary vs infantry I should keep in a complete army?
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Aug 24, 2016 05:03
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Vegetable posted:Great post, it's very helpful. A follow-up question: How do you decide when to reinforce your stack? Uhh, I dunno to be honest. Usually I watch the green/red morale bar and I try to get reinforcements in before it gets below maybe a third or so. The important point is that there's no reason to have more troops in a battle than can be on the field, they'll bleed a significant amount of Morale and be lovely when they do get into battle. Also consider the generals and other troop quality bonuses; if they have a better general and troops you want to send in your reinforcements earlier so they don't get a lucky roll and gently caress you up. Don't forget mercenaries train super fast (25% normal speed) and can be recruited in occupied enemy provinces, if you've got the cash to spare it's often best to consolidate your regiments and replace with mercs hired quickly at the front. Galleys are way more cost efficient in inland seas, heavies are expensive but always best in combat. You're right in general, my point was there is no naval battle that can't be won by having more heavies, if you're inland you can get away with a lot of galleys. Despite the changes to naval combat in Mare Nostrum, it's still simply a numbers game and Naval is a waste, largely for the opportunity cost. There are so many things better you could pick. Jay Rust posted:Very useful post! It depends. Like I said, if you really want to be a cheapskate you can roll 100% infantry for the front line, so long as you can field enough to not get flanked. But, cavalry are stronger overall early in the game per-unit than infantry. They're more expensive, but stronger and if you can flank an enemy army with ~4 or more cav you can put on some serious hurt. Different tech groups have different limits on how much cav they can have without penalty, Western is 50%, Eastern is 60%, Hordes can go 100%. That gets expensive though. If you have a lot of strong cavalry bonuses (POLAND), you might want to do something crazy like take Aristocratic and go whole hog cavalry, it's not a bad idea. Though it loses strength later in the game as artillery become dominant. Basically, early in the game (first 100 years or so), having as much cavalry as you can afford is nice (since they're better than infantry) but not strictly necessary. Once you get past 1600, cavalry is much less impactful and artillery is king. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 05:06
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Devil's advocate: could you argue Naval lets you get away with less heavies so you can have more lightships for trade?
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Aug 24, 2016 05:12
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The colonist policy was great, colonies sans colonists take dramatically longer to finish, and besides which you could take the colony-colonist and automatic colony together and have yet another one over the cap. Each successive colony beyond your colonist caps costed double, so thst one extra could make a significant difference. It was one of the few policies I would regularly take. They removed it though so Also things like the development policy aren't at all what I would plan an idea group pick around but you don't just use it randomly by its self- maybe you get an event for cheaper development for a period, then buy up merchant guild loyalty, and after that get the policy after that. 24 develops in 10 years isn't something that happens regularly but if you plan around it and stack bonuses, it can save you a significant chunk.
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Aug 24, 2016 05:13
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StashAugustine posted:Devil's advocate: could you argue Naval lets you get away with less heavies so you can have more lightships for trade? build some shipyards, get some trade companies or colonial nations to increase your forcelimits and have both a lot of heavies and light ships? presumably you're a wealthy trading power edit; besides, you're talking a small number of ships and a couple dozen tradepower is pretty insignificant there's also that the naval AI seems very cowardly, like maybe it's afraid of losing sailors and will retreat if you have more ships than them, they won't slug it out to the death like land armies Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 05:14
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Pellisworth posted:build some shipyards, get some trade companies or colonial nations to increase your forcelimits and have both a lot of heavies and light ships? presumably you're a wealthy trading power Makes sense
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Aug 24, 2016 05:17
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I dunno about naval. The opportunity cost argument is definitely valid, but it's not just a matter of wholloping them with twice the number of ships and calling it a day anymore, the combat width change to naval battles means naval quality actually seriously matters now- more than 20 ships (depending on maneuver) physically will not be able to fight at once, so their first rates will chew through your balsa wood junkers effortlessly and rout you because your morale will break, regardless of whether your navy was 10 times their size or not. I read people talking about it in the Paradox forums a bit ago and figured they were over blowing it, but got to experience it first hand the other day when I tried my old tricks against the Royal Navy and got wrecked. 10% ship durability is no joke I think you still can totally produce like 3 fleets for every one of theirs and win through sheer attrition, losing a few battles in a row but eventually breaking them, but there's much more of a place for naval ideas than there ever used to be. Still it's perfectly feasible usually to bypass the AI navies, and there are only a few tags that have ideas that make this an issue.
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Aug 24, 2016 05:28
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The biggest problem with Naval is that it costs Military power and Maritime exists. If you want a better Navy, you can do that without compromising your land armies by picking Maritime. Maritime is also better economy and opens up Thassalocracy. And unless you're playing multiplayer, Naval competition is practically non-existent. Once you hit 20 or so heavies, you can crush pretty much any fleet the AI will field up until the mid to late 1700s.
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Aug 24, 2016 05:34
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Yeah I think if you're really worried about naval competition, consider Maritime and Quality rather than Naval.
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Aug 24, 2016 05:44
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I wished they'd make combat width more obvious, considering how important it is. I never know my width at any given time
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Aug 24, 2016 06:07
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They used to hide it in the Tech Tab but you can find it in your Military Tab now
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Aug 24, 2016 06:12
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Pellisworth posted:It depends. Like I said, if you really want to be a cheapskate you can roll 100% infantry for the front line, so long as you can field enough to not get flanked. But, cavalry are stronger overall early in the game per-unit than infantry. They're more expensive, but stronger and if you can flank an enemy army with ~4 or more cav you can put on some serious hurt. One big thing to keep in mind is that cavalry units tend to have weak defensive stats, so they'll get shredded if they're not flanking. Putting more than 4 cavalry in an army can be a bad idea some times.
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Aug 24, 2016 06:22
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Fister Roboto posted:One big thing to keep in mind is that cavalry units tend to have weak defensive stats, so they'll get shredded if they're not flanking. Putting more than 4 cavalry in an army can be a bad idea some times. in particular they have really weak Fire defense, so they get owned by artillery late-game iirc cavalry actually have better Shock defense than infantry late-game, but Fire is a lot more relevant at that point
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Aug 24, 2016 06:25
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Pellisworth posted:I think you're overestimating the value of policies a bit, though this shows some of my own personal bias: I pick idea groups for the ideas mainly and policies are a nice bonus to turn on sometimes, but I don't think you want to be running them most of the time. On the other hand, if he's already going over the colony limit then he could be easily saving tens of ducats / mo. Then the argument becomes "do you really need to build up that many colonies simultaneously?" If you're in a race to lock down important trade nodes, then I'd say yes, but if you're just coloring in the map with a bunch of <=5 dev provinces then hell no Vegetable posted:Great post, it's very helpful. A follow-up question: How do you decide when to reinforce your stack? alleys are definitely way better for your dime in inland seas, but now that combat width is a thing you will get hosed if you're facing an opponent with a large number of heavies. Now you should only field galleys if you can't afford to fill your combat width with heavies Jay Rust posted:Very useful post! In general, you probably want twice your total flanking range in cavalry, just to take advantage of the flanking bonus that cavalry have. That means 4 cavalry at the beginning of the game, then 6 at miltech 18, 8 at 23, and 10 at 30. You can field more cavalry than that, but those are good minimums for taking advantage of the flanking range bonus. Fielding more cavalry than that is a tricky proposition. They're more expensive in every way (to buy, to maintain, to reinforce) so fielding a 100% cavalry army as a horde nation can be expensive as hell. But they're also better in combat than infantry. If you can afford them or if you have a bunch of cavalry bonuses then it can be useful to have more cavalry in your army so long as you're not exceeding your tech group's cav:infantry limit
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Aug 24, 2016 09:05
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Pellisworth posted:I think you're overestimating the value of policies a bit, though this shows some of my own personal bias: I pick idea groups for the ideas mainly and policies are a nice bonus to turn on sometimes, but I don't think you want to be running them most of the time. As for development bonuses, NL stacks em pretty high, and having one as the third national idea seems to reinforce to me at least that it's a gentle shove onto the path of playing tall and doing a "historical" Netherlands. Let's summarise: 10% from polders 20% from full economic 20% from a university (which I can drop down nationwide because as the dutch I'm swimming in ducats from NOT going over my colony limit )5% from organized through bishops 5% from trading in tropical wood, which again, as NL, you should be able to do. 10% from the policy If forming NL didn't drop you out of the HRE you could score another 5% from one of the reichsreforms lol. And if you're willing to put the work in to schmooze with the burghers during a development spurt it can drop down a further chunk. Without those two, that's a 70% reduction in cost, and even assuming the most uncharitable mathematics and diminishing returns, that seems pretty hard for me to compete with. Especially since I do well over 24 developments in a given decade. With the dutch monarchy I get a continuous stream of ballers, and shitheads will last four years max, since when faced with two poo poo choices you just grab the statist and reelect ASAP. Your monarch point cost at this point has gone from mid seventies to dropping down to the 30s, and sometimes even 20s. Obviously this rises, but you can have improved a province at least 10 times and still not hit the original expense of the development. That means if every point of development I make is around half price, I only have to develop around 7 or 8 times for me to get the costs out. 120mp over 10 years to go from spending ~600 MP for 10 boosts, or ~300. That's a ~240 MP win, in any category too, since the development bonuses are equal opportunity. And an even better deal if you don't stack those in a province but develop the lowest cost province first every development cycle. In my mind, I'd much rather spend points than ducats. Ducats go into the military to buy things, and to raise my base tax, trade power and manpower so I can raise even more ducats and spend them on grand palaces. But a significant reason for that calculus swinging towards points is that my government form guarantees good leaders. If you have a stream of Enriques on your throne, running a policy for 10 years is obviously going to kneecap your technology. QuarkJets posted:On the other hand, if he's already going over the colony limit then he could be easily saving tens of ducats / mo. Then the argument becomes "do you really need to build up that many colonies simultaneously?" If you're in a race to lock down important trade nodes, then I'd say yes, but if you're just coloring in the map with a bunch of <=5 dev provinces then hell no Hambilderberglar fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 10:32
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I'm playing as Malacca; it's my first time in the region. It's nearing 1500, things are going well, I'm perhaps the prime power among my neighbours, I've taken Exploration ideas... Any tips? Should I already start preparing against the eventual European encroachment? I have no allies, because my rival to the north (I forget their name, but they have an elephant on their flag) is kicking rear end up there, and all of my other neighbours are small enough to be my next targets.
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Aug 24, 2016 15:25
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Jay Rust posted:I'm playing as Malacca; it's my first time in the region. It's nearing 1500, things are going well, I'm perhaps the prime power among my neighbours, I've taken Exploration ideas...
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Aug 24, 2016 15:35
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Jay Rust posted:I'm playing as Malacca; it's my first time in the region. It's nearing 1500, things are going well, I'm perhaps the prime power among my neighbours, I've taken Exploration ideas... Grab South Africa before the Euros, enjoy uncontested hegemony of the East for 200 or so years. Get a colony next to some Euros while you are in the neighborhood to Westernize off of eventually. Or purposefully hold off on teching to do it ASAP to save MoPo in the long run.
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Aug 24, 2016 15:36
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Cynic Jester posted:The biggest problem with Naval is that it costs Military power and Maritime exists. If you want a better Navy, you can do that without compromising your land armies by picking Maritime. Maritime is also better economy and opens up Thassalocracy. And unless you're playing multiplayer, Naval competition is practically non-existent. Once you hit 20 or so heavies, you can crush pretty much any fleet the AI will field up until the mid to late 1700s. I like Maritime a lot and have defended it ITT in the past but it doesn't really do poo poo for you for slugging it out in a fleet battle since the changes in Mare Nostrum. Other than the naval leader maneuver I guess. The reason ~20 heavies is so good is because that's literally all that can fight, barring a few extra based on leader maneuver. People worked this out in the Paradox forums a bit back- you actually don't want more ships than 20 now. A fleet of 20 heavies will actually win against a fleet of 30 heavies and 50 galleys because since only 20 can fight at a time and it's randomly determined which match against which, their heavies will match against your galleys, and chew through them all, steadily lowering your morale while your heavies can't actually engage them. By the time it's heavies v heavies, your fleet will have dramatically lower morale and lose. The old tactic of "pile on more ships" actually makes your fleets worse now. Pellisworth is right though about Quality, I always forget it has naval bonuses, they're probably enough to give you the edge you need against the not-perfectly-composed AI fleets. And yeah you can always try to just dodge the fleets, which is what I ended up doing in my slugging match against AI England the other day when I found out my super fleet couldn't actually beat them.
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Aug 24, 2016 17:23
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Koramei posted:I like Maritime a lot and have defended it ITT in the past but it doesn't really do poo poo for you for slugging it out in a fleet battle since the changes in Mare Nostrum. Other than the naval leader maneuver I guess. The reason ~20 heavies is so good is because that's literally all that can fight, barring a few extra based on leader maneuver. People worked this out in the Paradox forums a bit back- you actually don't want more ships than 20 now. A fleet of 20 heavies will actually win against a fleet of 30 heavies and 50 galleys because since only 20 can fight at a time and it's randomly determined which match against which, their heavies will match against your galleys, and chew through them all, steadily lowering your morale while your heavies can't actually engage them. By the time it's heavies v heavies, your fleet will have dramatically lower morale and lose. The old tactic of "pile on more ships" actually makes your fleets worse now. Maritime does make it easier to field 2 fleets of 20, but I still won't pick the ideaset in singleplayer as the Naval AI is pretty much worthless and once you go into the mid and late game no nation can match a developed player and coalition navies aren't really a thing.
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Aug 24, 2016 19:19
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