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After a few abondoned starts getting used to the ideas in this game, I am pushing forward my first real game. Playing as Ottomans. I took over Albania, Ragusa, and one Hungarian province in my first war, and made a second war against Byzantium + Serbia ally. I peaced out Serbia taking the province I needed to connect up Ragusa to the rest of my blob, but by the time I went to peace out Byzantium (to finish my conquer Constantinople quest) I had so much AE that even just asking for Constantinople and nothing else was going to make a bunch of countries hit the 50 point "may join a coalition" mark. I was afraid enough of that that I just peaced out Byzantium by taking all their gold, taking war reparations, and making them transfer trade power to me. Now I have a 15 year truce against them. Questions:
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Dec 1, 2016 14:01
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Chin Strap posted:After a few abondoned starts getting used to the ideas in this game, I am pushing forward my first real game. Playing as Ottomans. I took over Albania, Ragusa, and one Hungarian province in my first war, and made a second war against Byzantium + Serbia ally. I peaced out Serbia taking the province I needed to connect up Ragusa to the rest of my blob, but by the time I went to peace out Byzantium (to finish my conquer Constantinople quest) I had so much AE that even just asking for Constantinople and nothing else was going to make a bunch of countries hit the 50 point "may join a coalition" mark. http://www.eu4wiki.com/Relations#Aggressive_expansion is all you need to know about AE But generally speaking, if you grab land from someone, everyone around you will gain AE towards you. That AE will be increased by countries with the same culture group (if you start taking South Slavic land then all those countries will be pissed) and increased even more if they're the same Religion (Catholic countries will be pissed, however Protestant and Reformed ones will actually cheer you on to a certain extent). Expanding eastwards puts you in a totally different culture group + religious group so the AE gains from European countries will be minimal. As for waiting for AE to tick down, there's a Diplomatic advisor (Better Relations Over Time) you can hire which will increase the speed at which AE decays but aside from that, might I suggest Speed 5 and just chilling out for a bit?
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Dec 1, 2016 14:14
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Chin Strap posted:After a few abondoned starts getting used to the ideas in this game, I am pushing forward my first real game. Playing as Ottomans. I took over Albania, Ragusa, and one Hungarian province in my first war, and made a second war against Byzantium + Serbia ally. I peaced out Serbia taking the province I needed to connect up Ragusa to the rest of my blob, but by the time I went to peace out Byzantium (to finish my conquer Constantinople quest) I had so much AE that even just asking for Constantinople and nothing else was going to make a bunch of countries hit the 50 point "may join a coalition" mark. Your big mistake was probably taking land from the allies of whoever you declared war on. That gives double AE
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Dec 1, 2016 14:46
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ae scales with province development and constantinople is a pricey prize to begin with
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Dec 1, 2016 14:48
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Senor Dog posted:Your big mistake was probably taking land from the allies of whoever you declared war on. That gives double AE B-b-b-but I just wanted to connect up Ragusa  OK good to know. I know I'll make many mistakes for my first full on game.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:04
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Chin Strap posted:After a few abondoned starts getting used to the ideas in this game, I am pushing forward my first real game. Playing as Ottomans. I took over Albania, Ragusa, and one Hungarian province in my first war, and made a second war against Byzantium + Serbia ally. I peaced out Serbia taking the province I needed to connect up Ragusa to the rest of my blob, but by the time I went to peace out Byzantium (to finish my conquer Constantinople quest) I had so much AE that even just asking for Constantinople and nothing else was going to make a bunch of countries hit the 50 point "may join a coalition" mark. AE grows more the closer someone is to your target, as well as if they are the same religion or culture group. Thus if you fight one war vs Byzantium/Serbia/whatever in the Balkans, then fight a war vs the Mamluks, different people would be getting the AE relations penalty because they are pretty far from each other, plus different cultures and religions.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:07
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Eej posted:As for waiting for AE to tick down, there's a Diplomatic advisor (Better Relations Over Time) you can hire which will increase the speed at which AE decays but aside from that, might I suggest Speed 5 and just chilling out for a bit? This is something I don't have a good feel for. How often are you just sitting around in this game waiting for things to decay? It feels odd not using armies when I have available CBs and no truce and enough manpower and cash. I'm not even colonizing or anything.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:07
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Chin Strap posted:This is something I don't have a good feel for. How often are you just sitting around in this game waiting for things to decay? It feels odd not using armies when I have available CBs and no truce and enough manpower and cash. I'm not even colonizing or anything.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:11
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in my first game i played as burgundy and vassalized lorraine and the whole hre retaliated. in my restart austria helped me take most of france but then the netherlands rebelled and my awful understanding of the military and what ideas were good brought me down. looking back burgundy is not a good first time nation, or really a good nation in general, but it always warms my heart when they survive into the late game and do well
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Dec 1, 2016 15:16
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Chin Strap posted:This is something I don't have a good feel for. How often are you just sitting around in this game waiting for things to decay? It feels odd not using armies when I have available CBs and no truce and enough manpower and cash. I'm not even colonizing or anything. As Ottomans, pretty much never. You have easy opportunities for African and Asian expansion as well and you need to take them or you'll be left behind when the Europeans gain the ability to match you on the battlefield. If you can't declare another European war without a coalition forming, then go crush the Anatolian minors or the Mamluks. Later you can look at North Africa, East Africa, Persia, the Caucasus, the steppes, or even India as avenues for expansion while your European truce timers and AE tick down. Alternatively if you're seriously exhausted for manpower or money, it is best to sit back, stand down your military maintenance, and let your nation recover. But this should pretty much never happen as Ottos unless you fight multiple theater level conflicts at once, trigger a disaster, or get your rear end beat by a coalition.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:16
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skasion posted:As Ottomans, pretty much never. You have easy opportunities for African and Asian expansion as well and you need to take them or you'll be left behind when the Europeans gain the ability to match you on the battlefield. If you can't declare another European war without a coalition forming, then go crush the Anatolian minors or the Mamluks. Later you can look at North Africa, East Africa, Persia, the Caucasus, the steppes, or even India as avenues for expansion while your European truce timers and AE tick down. Alternatively if you're seriously exhausted for manpower or money, it is best to sit back, stand down your military maintenance, and let your nation recover. But this should pretty much never happen as Ottos unless you fight multiple theater level conflicts at once, trigger a disaster, or get your rear end beat by a coalition. Yep, looks like I'm heading east. Thanks
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Dec 1, 2016 15:27
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When should I be building things like temples? I feel like when I unlock them the +.2 monthly I get for building one takes forever to pay off the 100 cost or whatever, and 100 is a lot that early. Do the increases get more significant further down?
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Dec 1, 2016 17:54
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Chin Strap posted:When should I be building things like temples? I feel like when I unlock them the +.2 monthly I get for building one takes forever to pay off the 100 cost or whatever, and 100 is a lot that early. Do the increases get more significant further down? Temples are a very questionable value proposition. Your capital generally has pretty good tax income so I usually build one there, but other than that I almost never build them. In terms of buildings: - Marketplaces and Barracks (and their upgrades) are definitely worth building - in the right province they can make a noticeable effect. - Workshops are are more situational but should be built on provinces with good trade goods. - Shipyards are useful; don't go hog wild but definitely have at least a few if you are a naval power. - Manufactories are excellent, but expensive. It can be worth taking on debt to finance a few of these. The best way to take advantage of these is to build them on provinces in trade nodes where you collect or that flow into trade nodes where you collect, since they add to the value of the center of trade. - Universities are good if you are trying to build tall. The rest of the buildings are either not great or very situational. I'm not sure if building Courthouses is worth it, but I guess the state maintenance reduction might be useful? Regimental camps are super expensive but can be worth it if you really need forcelimits. I haven't played enough since Sailors were introduced to say whether Docks are any good, but I suspect they probably aren't worth the cost.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:09
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I don't know if this is good advice, but personally I build buildings thusly: Temples and Workshops if they increase monthly income by at least 0.10 Barracks if they increase manpower by at least 500 Marketplace in every Centre of Trade Manufactories if they increase monthly income by at least 0.50
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Dec 1, 2016 18:18
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I build nearly all the buildings. Docks are the only useless ones. Temples and workshops provide you with a lot of stability in your income, whereas trade income will wildly fluctuate with your overextension unless you have a stranglehold on the routes, so they're pretty much always worth building unless you're dirt poor. e: shipyards are a big one actually, if you're a naval power build them on all your coastal provinces. The +2 force limit is applied before your modifiers, so in actuality it's a lot more with filled out exploration or maritime ideas. e2: also, manufactories are complicated but basically: as long as you have good control of the trade, build them as far upstream as possible on valuable goods. They give you a flat +1 goods produced, not a 100% modifier to production or whatever, which means you get the same benefit from their goods feeding into the trade network out of a 1/1/1 100% autonomy province as you do out of a 10/10/10 0% autonomy province. In low autonomy nodes they also give you the production income, not just the extra trade value, but in practice often the extra trade value they gain being sent all the way along from Malacca (can be up to 10%+ each node they hop through), plus the far more valuable trade goods like spices and chinaware you get in those regions, means you can sometimes get more out of building a manufactory halfway across the world than you do at home. Worth building them in both places though, really. If you can afford it, build them literally everywhere. Money feeds money in this game and by the 17th century it really starts to snowball. Koramei fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Dec 1, 2016 |
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Dec 1, 2016 18:26
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The higher tier temples also add a pretty good conversion bonus (I think 3%) which can be really useful for converting highly developed provinces (the same kind where you'll benefit a lot from the tax bonus). It's especially noticeable if you're playing as a religion that's otherwise lovely at conversions, like Confucian.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:36
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Chin Strap posted:This is something I don't have a good feel for. How often are you just sitting around in this game waiting for things to decay? It feels odd not using armies when I have available CBs and no truce and enough manpower and cash. I'm not even colonizing or anything. The advantage to the Ottomans, and one of the reason they are an easy nation, is that you can always turn to another front while waiting for AE to dissolve away, so Coalition wars are rare. If you've gone hard in Eastern Europe, then you should turn your attention south or east instead. Beating up Muslims/Hordes etc. won't really raise AE with the European nations, and vice versa. So yeah, you never really need to be waiting for AE to dissipate. Just keep that front quiet, and expand elsewhere. This gets even easier as you go, since you can develop like 4 separate fronts to cycle through (Eastern Europe, Africa, South-East towards India, and North-East to the steppes). If you mess up and a coalition does form, it's not the end of the world. Keep border forts strong, and try to keep that front quiet if you can. Just because a coalition exists doesn't mean they will declare on you, and over time members will start leaving as your AE falls.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:45
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oddium posted:in my first game i played as burgundy and vassalized lorraine and the whole hre retaliated. in my restart austria helped me take most of france but then the netherlands rebelled and my awful understanding of the military and what ideas were good brought me down. Burgundy isn't newb friendly, certainly, but they are actually a pretty powerful country to start as. They also have good NIs. Jay Rust posted:I don't know if this is good advice, but personally I build buildings thusly: I follow some of this. A temple on a province that will increase monthly income by .10 will take about 80 years to make itself profitable, at normal building cost.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:45
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Tsyni posted:Burgundy isn't newb friendly, certainly, but they are actually a pretty powerful country to start as. They also have good NIs. you get the +10% morale and some good nis, but then you gotta sink a lot into annexing nevers/the netherlands, deal with the netherlands rebelling, expand into either the hre or (if you're not quick) elan france. burgundy is strong and my friend but it's an uphill battle
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Dec 1, 2016 18:52
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Thanks. Final question for now. Should I be moving my capital to Constantinople after getting it?
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Dec 1, 2016 19:06
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Chin Strap posted:Thanks. Final question for now. Should I be moving my capital to Constantinople after getting it? You get a decision to do so, which also converts it to Sunni and gives it some free development. No reason not to.
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Dec 1, 2016 19:11
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Chin Strap posted:After a few abondoned starts getting used to the ideas in this game, I am pushing forward my first real game. Playing as Ottomans. I took over Albania, Ragusa, and one Hungarian province in my first war, and made a second war against Byzantium + Serbia ally. I peaced out Serbia taking the province I needed to connect up Ragusa to the rest of my blob, but by the time I went to peace out Byzantium (to finish my conquer Constantinople quest) I had so much AE that even just asking for Constantinople and nothing else was going to make a bunch of countries hit the 50 point "may join a coalition" mark. Going over 50 AE isn't the end of the world. The key word in the tooltip is that the country MIGHT join a coalition against you. Countries won't join a coalition against you if: -They have over +50 relations with you -They have a truce with you -Nobody else has over 50 AE against you (obviously you need more than one country to form a coalition) -You're the biggest baddest motherfucker on the block and nobody wants to mess with you
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Dec 1, 2016 20:11
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After thinking about it some more, the main problem you ran into here was taking Ragusa, and land from Hungary and Serbia. Taking land from allied countries that aren't co-belligerents incurs a lot of AE, and even more so if the provinces you take aren't part of the war goal. Add in the fact that Ragusa and Hungary are both Catholic, and that will make a lot of very powerful countries very angry at you. And the land you took probably wasn't all that great anyway. As the Ottomans, it's always a good idea to take Constantinople ASAP and then focus on taking back your core territory. You get a shitload of free development that can easily make you the #1 world power.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:28
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Burgundy is actually incredibly powerful. Your three personal union subjects can field some sizeable armies. If you feed them a tiny bit of land it isn't uncommon for them to be running around with about 15 troops each. You need to be aggressive vs France to keep them contained but if you can do that then it is pretty easy. I had a Burgundy game on the 1.19 beta where I even got voted Emperor despite not being in the Empire. That just made it even easier to eat some HRE land.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:41
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Jay Rust posted:I don't know if this is good advice, but personally I build buildings thusly: This is roughly my strategy as well. If you've got a bunch of spare ducats (I try not to go below 200) then it's usually better to build up your income rather than just sit on your wealth.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:00
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Damnit, all this Ottoman talk makes me want to play as them. Especially after playing all these games as Mali.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:03
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Speaking of Ottoman after a dozen restarts as I get a hang on the game I'm planning on doing my first full game as them (or at least a couple hundred years this time). Is there a good achievement to aim for in a casual run (so not like WC or 1001 provinces) for the ottomans? Even if it's not specific to them as most achievements in general are still open for me. Would be good to have some kind of goal.
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Dec 1, 2016 22:49
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jpparker55 posted:Speaking of Ottoman after a dozen restarts as I get a hang on the game I'm planning on doing my first full game as them (or at least a couple hundred years this time). Is there a good achievement to aim for in a casual run (so not like WC or 1001 provinces) for the ottomans? Even if it's not specific to them as most achievements in general are still open for me. Would be good to have some kind of goal. Unify Islam is a reasonable one to shoot for, very easy to accomplish with Religious ideas as Ottomans; the "hard" part is taking land as far away as the Iberian Peninsula, which isn't actually hard at all. You can easily do it in a casual game (just don't wait until 1800 to make progress on it), if you follow the normal Ottomans mission chains then that will get you most of the way there. Only downside is that Ottomans have good religious tolerance so it's sort of wasting potential by converting everything Sultan of Rum is also easy, just requires that you be Ottomans and take Moscow plus I think one other specific province (possibly Rome iirc) . By the time that you reach Moscow you should be unstoppable anyway, and you really won't need to rush anyway
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Dec 1, 2016 23:02
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Unify Islam seems like an obvious target to aim for. A Pile of Gold should be pretty easy too, since I think Islam would require you to get into Africa anyway. Depending on your definition of casual game, it's super easy to rampage through India and China, which would let you pick up Silk Road as well.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:07
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Bold Robot posted:Regimental camps are super expensive but can be worth it if you really need forcelimits. I haven't played enough since Sailors were introduced to say whether Docks are any good, but I suspect they probably aren't worth the cost. I ran the numbers on regimental camps a while back. You have to be running way over your force limits for regimental camps to ever break even, much less before the game ends. Don't build them. Docks are exactly as useless as sailors are, i.e. completely.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:07
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It's a shame the AI loves Regimental Camps so much, meaning I have to actively seek them out and remove them after taking their provinces, so that I can build useful buildings in their stead.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:17
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PleasingFungus posted:I ran the numbers on regimental camps a while back. You have to be running way over your force limits for regimental camps to ever break even, much less before the game ends. Don't build them. Good to know, I will never build one again. Thanks for spergin' so the rest of us don't have to.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:21
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A little trick with Unifying Islam, that might save some hassle. All provinces owned by you must be converted to Islam, provinces owned by a subject don't count. I've done it twice, both times as Ottomans and both times I've just released a vassal Granada instead of bothering to convert Cordoba and any other pieces of southern Spain I happen to conquer.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:21
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Damnit, all this Ottoman talk makes me want to play as them. Especially after playing all these games as Mali. Majors are boring, even if you don't want to do random awful OPM starts etc. starts such as Mali are awesome because you start off fairly strong but you have to fight tooth and nail just to keep on even footing with Europe.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:27
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I still can't quite grasp institutions as a non-western country. So as I understand you grab the lowest cost province and spend 2k MPs or so and it force adopts in that province then starts spreading. It worked fine for colonialism, then I got to printing press, got one province to adopt and...nothing. Neighbouring provinces take ages to spread, so much so that I am at like 5 or 6 provinces with printing press, 2.5k gold cost to adopt when global trade fires. What am I missing?
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Dec 2, 2016 00:41
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Mouse over the institution in the province institution view, and it'll tell you exactly why it's spreading or isn't. What I've learned from playing Muscovy is that as a non-western major, be prepared to spend a lot of cash to adopt institutions, thousands of ducats worth, and accept that being at 0% tech penalty on the regular is not realistic. You definitely want to be planning your buildings to encourage institution spread, and ducats can and should be taken from others. Printing Press just is a slow one though. As is Colonialism really, unless you're very coastal. Alternatively, spread factors are here: http://www.eu4wiki.com/Institutions#Printing_Press
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Dec 2, 2016 00:50
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QuarkJets posted:Unify Islam is a reasonable one to shoot for, very easy to accomplish with Religious ideas as Ottomans; the "hard" part is taking land as far away as the Iberian Peninsula, which isn't actually hard at all. You can easily do it in a casual game (just don't wait until 1800 to make progress on it), if you follow the normal Ottomans mission chains then that will get you most of the way there. Only downside is that Ottomans have good religious tolerance so it's sort of wasting potential by converting everything Awesome! Thanks for the suggestions QuarkJets and co! Funny that you mention it's a waste...so far I'd had my 1 missionary constantly converting provinces since the start of the game. Not the thing to do? (assuming I didn't start with that cheevo in mind). jpparker55 fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 01:13
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Elman posted:Though I can see how it might wear you down in a WC since you'd be forced to micro more, pay more attention and stuff. I think I'll give it a shot eventually. Not anytime soon though. Okay I lied. I did some reading and kept thinking about how I'd do things differently and suddenly:  Only problem is I'm gonna have to buy Mare Nostrum to steal people's maps or I'll waste too much time walking through fog of war 
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Dec 2, 2016 01:20
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jpparker55 posted:Awesome! Thanks for the suggestions QuarkJets and co! Same religion is always better than off-religion. Ottomans have a couple abilities that help make off-religion provinces much less of a problem, but always convert if you can.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:23
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jpparker55 posted:Funny that you mention it's a waste...so far I'd had my 1 missionary constantly converting provinces since the start of the game. Not the thing to do? (assuming I didn't start with that cheevo in mind). If you're going to Unify Islam, Religious Ideas are basically a must I think, for an extra missionary and extra conversion strength. Defender of the Faith gives you another one as well, and there's some policies too which can speed things along. You can also play as Najd, who I think has a +5 missionary strength bonus or something crazy. You can also go the Humanism and tolerance path with the Ottomans, but while it'll make your casual game much less annoying, it's not the way to go for crazy blobbing and WCs.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:26
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