Fargo Fukes posted:

My Ironman Tuscany game has reached a stalling point. I've eaten most of Northern Italy, from Milan down to the Papal State, but everything below that is MegaSpain (they fully inherited Aragon and Naples). Advancement to the Northwest is blocked by properly blobby France (who are nearly at modern day borders, which I don't hugely mind as they balance out MegaSpain), to the Northeast is Austria, who I thought were the weaker option but I just fought a gruelling war against them and it's like repeatedly running into a brick wall. Their troops are just plain better than mine, and whilst I have plenty of money to spend and mercenaries to hire, I still run out long before their stacks show any sign of weakening. During the last conflict they had Bohemia tying them down on the Northern front and I still couldn't make any headway against them since any major battle would attract their 50-regiment doomstack and wipe the floor with me. I'm stuck, and getting worried since so many powerful blobs are forming (aforementioned MegaSpain, Final Form France, Greater Britain and the terrifying COMMONWEALTH, which is apparently what you get when Poland eats Lithuania). I feel like I should be a moderate power by now, but instead I'm slipping into insignificance. Any advice? The ideas I picked were Admin for mercs, Trade because money, Quality because mercs are kinda flimsy amd Espionage because it looked fun but is starting to look like a complete dud.

Pellisworth posted:

If you haven't tried the Papal States they're monstrously strong after Common Sense added a bunch of event bonuses for them.

For example, it's 1490 and I have:

Sistine Chapel +0.1 yearly Devotion (meh)
decorated Sistine Chapel +0.1 yearly Devotion, +1 Dip Rep (also could choose -1 RR or +0.5 Prestige instead of the dip rep)
Swiss Guard +25% Manpower
Vatican Library -5% tech cost, +5% Discipline (also could choose +1 Dip Rep or -1 RR instead of the Discipline)

Toss those near-guaranteed bonuses on top of your strong NI set and the fact you're small enough to join the HRE at the start and it's very

TTBF posted:

After that I finally learned my lesson and ignored the continent, bee lined for colonizing the Caribbean, and got the entire Caribbean colonial region. At which point the achievement didn't fire. I'm guessing it means the trade node, but I'm kind of burned out on that particular achievement.

Guildencrantz posted:

I'll SHOW THEM ALL

Knuc U Kinte posted:

Is there some way to stop CoR from convertign my provinces? I'm the freaking Papal States and I got 2 provinces on the other side of Europe converting my poo poo and noone else is experiencing it. Cremona and Mantua just got flipped by Antwerpen and Thuringen.

Knuc U Kinte posted:

No it's really bad because it seems like a bug. I've already gone from 125% religious unity to 80 in a few years with nothing to do about it. The papal states used to be initially immune to reformation with the rest of Italy merely resistant but the way its working now is that I'm even more susceptible to reformation to the point where CoRs nowhere near me are converting me.

PittTheElder posted:

Dei Gratia. The guy who makes it is a pretty good dude too. It was an excellent for EU3, I'd consider it essential along with SRI (which expanded the HRE), though I haven't tried the EU4 version.

V for Vegas posted:

Is AE totally borked in the new update? I can't take a single HRE province as Palatinate without my AE skyrocketing and coalitions form against me while Cologne waltzes around gobbling up OPMs with no penalties at all.

VDay posted:

-Which religion should I go with? Protestant seems like an obvious choice for the settler bonus, but I vaguely remember someone mentioning some kind of colonizing bonus for being Catholic but can't find anything about it now.

TTBF posted:

GSD posted:

So how does the game tiebreak elections for the HRE? Like if two powers each have exactly 3 votes.

Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:

Can someone link me to that crazy Hansa game that someone posted an album to a while back? The trade one, where they were making money hand over fist...

Sorced posted:

https://imgur.com/a/5QEby

PittTheElder posted:

What the hell happened there? Did he hand all of that to AI Georgia in a 100% reverse peace deal?


This is as good an excuse as any to bring up a complaint I have with the game: Personal Unions really need some work. As Denmark, I actually had a lot of fun trying to keep a handle on Sweden, but the AI absolutely cannot handle it. Sweden winds up declaring war on Day 2 all the time, and then Denmark has to contend with typically Lithuania and England committing their entire army to Scandinavia. And when Sweden eventually wins, all the lost 10k vs. 1k battles means Denmark has negative prestige, and loses it's union over Norway too. The same issue shows up with Burgundy, where losing one war means all the lowland unions break, while by 1444 the administration of those territories had already been reasonably centralized.

In my same Denmark game, Spain got a PU over France; France and Spain were each their full grown selves, but France just spent the entire time as a loyal subject, which is kind of ridiculous. There's no way major powers should be content to live under a PU like that.

Deutsch Nozzle posted:

Was it confirmed that 1.13 beta saves will still work on 1.13? I haven't had the chance to play since the full patch dropped and don't want to lose the games I was playing on the beta.

TorakFade posted:

A question - I am allied with Great Britain and rival to France, and GB wanted to reclaim some cores on the mainland, so I thought I'd help them out; but while I'm sieging southern France and keeping them occupied, GB's 40k strong army is chilling in London, they didn't even try to cross the Channel.

Now, fighting alone against France and Spain while my ally has a full strength army in his capital and not using it kinda sucks, but if I peace out they will get angry at me.

Any idea why this happens? the Channel is not blockaded or anything, they could just load up on their boats and cross, but they just won't.

Rakthar posted:

Eastern lets you run 40% Infantry, 60% Cavalry. Western caps it at 50/50. It makes a difference if you actually want to run Cav heavy armies, you have more headroom for infantry losses before you start worrying about the combat penalty kicking in due to insufficient infantry. This works very nicely with the +33% cav combat ability that Commonwealth gets.

Western countries cannot make vassals out of Indian countries, so once you get past Afghanistan you either need to annex or Protectorate them if you're Western. If you're Eastern you can force vassal / integrate as normal while conquering.

Eastern countries get a -10% Western Arms Trade bonus, so the 20% tech penalty is really a 10% Tech Penalty. Whether you think 10% tech cost is worth being able to run more cav and make Indian vassals is up to you, but you have the choice.

Cynic Jester posted:

Don't ever pass Advancement of Religion. Ever. It's just awful. +1 RR is all kinds of bad and +1% Missionary Strength is not a worthwhile exchange. Maybe back when you'd need all the missionary strength you could get, it might have been worthwhile, but now, it is most assuredly not. It'll help you for the first 50 or so years of the game and then it'll suck for 400.

TheFluff posted:

welp

You mean like some general "get a foot in the door in east asia" thing which makes them just want to grab anything/everything there?

e:


Right. I'll probably keep playing and see what happens, it's just not ironman without the potential for everything going horribly wrong. Still, I really do hope they fix that because it's kinda bullshitt-y.