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snoremac posted:It's best to just dive in and learn while you play, tackling new mechanics at your own leisure. Yes. My usual recommendation would be to start learning the game by playing Muscovy -> Russia. (Been my favourite method since EU2.) Muscovy in 1444 is a medium-sized power with potential to grow into a huge monstrous powerhouse. You have to beat up on various smaller neighbours and get strong enough to beat up on the bigger neighbours. Then you can form Russia and have tons of fun with expanding across Siberia and becoming a world power. And you can basically ignore the whole naval aspect of the game for now. I speak as someone who's had an on-again, off-again love affair with Paradox games since the first release of the original Europa Universalis. Played each game in the EU series extensively, but hadn't for a few years and didn't pick up EU4 until a few months ago, so it was a lot like starting over. My normal method is to pick one interesting country and play that a number of times until I stop making the really stupid mistakes (and rack up a few relevant achievements), then move on to another country that looks interesting.
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Nov 17, 2017 11:43
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Sprechensiesexy posted:Florryworry is highly entertaining but the way he plays is not new player friendly. He's got some pretty good hats and stuff, though. And also, one of the main attractions of Paradox games has always been finding (or watching other people find) weird exploits and loopholes to make completely idiotic things happen to world history.
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Nov 17, 2017 13:50
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I think for my first real CoC game I'm going to try the good old Ottomans and see how much more challenging they've been made. Then after that, an honest Byzantium run? I've been seeing reports of AI Byzantium surviving in the wild so it must be more feasible again to do so as a player. (Yes, I've succeeded at pulling off the Negroponte/Corfu trap strategy in the previous version and that's fun enough, but.)
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Nov 17, 2017 14:07
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TorakFade posted:I am doing an Ottomans ironman run too. In 1445 Poland chose to appoint a local noble instead. Well, that was helpful of them.
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Nov 17, 2017 17:07
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Well, it's still possible to do the Ottoman -> flip to Orthodox-> form Romania-> shift to Greek and reform Byzantium thing. Completely disgusting, and fun.
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Nov 18, 2017 17:05
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Dont you lose a bunch of the Ottoman bonuses for doing this, though? Also dont you have to do some other sort of shift to form Romania? Yeah, you lose the Ottoman government, so no more harem etc. And of course the Dhimmi estate evaporates. You do get a choice to keep the Ottoman national ideas, though. And their quite frankly superior early-game units. And of course as a Christian nation you can get royal marriages with other Christians, and personal unions and so on. And yeah, in order to form Romania you need to conquer Wallachia, two (I think) of Moldavia's three provinces, and a little bit of eastern Hungary; then manipulate things so you have a majority of your development in Romanian culture states (making Wallachia and Moldavia states and unstating everything else except for your capital state should be enough). Unstating and re-stating will set you back some in admin points, it cannot be denied. (Come to think of it, it might be more convenient to release some vassals in Anatolia instead of going through with all this, haven't tried that though.) Then you have to do a little more stating and un-stating to make your primary culture Greek instead of Romanian. But if you have enough admin and diplo mana saved up before you make the switch, you can do all of this in one day of gametime, I think.
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Nov 19, 2017 14:45
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Resurgent Byzantium is such fun to play. As soon as you've won one early war against the Ottos (whether by island-blockade cheese or some Albanian alliance Skanderbeg magic or by them tripping over themselves and losing badly to someone else without remembering to stomp you first) and you own Constantinople and Edirne with forts on both, you can kick an immense amount of butt. All you need is an okay navy, and one army stack with a good general that's strong enough to reliably beat one enemy stack at a time. The AI simply cannot resist the temptation to siege your capital; let them cross the straits and set up camp, sail in to block their retreat, then send in the lads... stack wipe, again and again and again. Exploited this to first reduce the Ottoman empire to a tattered remnant in Asia Minor, currently using it to completely wreck the grand coalition of Mamluks and what looks like almost every other Muslim state between the Caucasus and India. Whatever bottom-feeding fish live in the Sea of Marmara must be getting very well-fed by now. What a great strategic position (guess that's why it was the capital city of several great powers through history). It may not be very sporting but I guess I'm just a man of simple pleasures.
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Nov 22, 2017 10:37
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QuarkJets posted:Jesus christ that is such a meticulous sequence of things that have to happen It's dark sorcery, that's what it is.
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Dec 1, 2017 10:20
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Koramei posted:Mostly, anyway. There are some situations where you genuinely want the bonuses, like missionary strength or morale/discipline. A +20% colony range advisor helped me get that Portuguese achievement where you have to get to India and Indonesia by 1500 over 10 years ahead of the deadline. For example. +1 diplomatic reputation is also often very useful.
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Dec 2, 2017 23:01
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reignonyourparade posted:So, funny thing I've noticed: Ottomans can't form Arabia but if they specifically culture swap to Yemeni they should be able to form Yemen just fine and THEN form Arabia. Like how you can start out as the Ottos, conquer Byzantium, take a bit more of the Balkans, flip to a Christian religion and culture shift in order to form Romania or Croatia, then go Greek and re-form Byzantium. Christian Greek nation called Byzantium, completely legit, with all the Ottoman territory, military units and ideas, all the Byzantine claims and missions, and a ruling dynasty named Osmanoglu. Did it by the mid-1470s, still within the lifetime of my first glorious ruler.
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Dec 5, 2017 06:36
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Pellisworth posted:You can go over your colony limit by recalling early but that's almost certainly a bad return on investment. Colonizing in general has a very long-term payoff. It quickly gets very expensive, that's for sure. I only like to do it if it's necessary to immediately urinate on some territory to block off strategically important provinces from the competition (such as getting to Lesser Namaqualand or whatever first, so you can have a chance to block off the southern tip of Africa and win the spice trade race).
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Dec 11, 2017 10:23
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Well what do you know, I just started a Muscovy run to see if that felt any different under 1.23, and already in December of 1444 the Poles decided to go with a local noble. Best Christmas present ever!
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Dec 11, 2017 17:37
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Fister Roboto posted:Yeah, you used to be able to trap the entire Ottoman army on Corfu by parking a single cog in the Adriatic Sea. It was a little silly. Now it takes one cog in the Adriatic, plus sending one infantry regiment into whatever the province next to Corfu is named for long enough to occupy it (don't have to stick around after that). Not that much less silly.
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Dec 21, 2017 10:08
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Also as the Ottomans you can do all sorts of weird fun poo poo. For example I just started a run where I flipped Coptic early on, going to repaint the religious map like a motherfucker. Edit: Coptic Ottomans are a beast. It shouldn't take long to get all five blessings; then you have stupidly powerful missionaries, cheap coring cost, etc. Groke fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jan 1, 2018 |
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Jan 1, 2018 16:32
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If I'm going to be blobbing a lot early on, my current thinking is Admin and Influence as the first two idea groups (order depending on details; for Muscovy, Influence might be a good #1 because of all the vassal states etc.) -- Religious would be a fine #3. I have come to think that military idea groups are best saved for a bit later, because keeping up or slightly ahead of the pack in military tech is pretty important in the early game, so better to spend sword mana on that. Defensive is fun and appropriate for Russia but it's really mostly worth it a bit later in the game when you have an awful lot of provinces that invaders will have to trudge across. Maybe as #4? So by the time you might be interested in fighting Ming, they can leave a trail of frozen dead bodies all across Siberia.
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Jan 2, 2018 14:01
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pog boyfriend posted:the fort maintenance thing does not matter too much if you are blobbing hard and taking forts out the rear end because you can transfer the forts to a vassal and transfer back right before the peace deal if the vassal does not want it Did they change it back so that you can transfer occupation back from a vassal to yourself again?
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Jan 2, 2018 18:53
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appropriatemetaphor posted:Oh England has 100000k troops, awesome and/or how awful, soon they will attack/come to my aid and kill/save me! Nah, I had a Russia game the other day when England honored their alliance with some goddamn continental nation or other that I was fighting, and actually sent a big chunk of army to counter-invade my heartlands. Of course they all froze/starved to death in the Russian winter and/or were massacred by my quite frankly superior troops, but it did require a number of mouse clicks and some time and attention from my side.
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Jan 16, 2018 10:31
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Most interesting thing I've managed to do as Muscovy yet in current run: Formed Russia by 1509, then snaked out a border all the way to Ming by 1519. (And no, I'm not a tributary.) Wonder what's going to happen next.
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Jan 24, 2018 13:45
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Node posted:Byzantium used to be a lot easier when boats could block straits, even if the enemy controlled both sides. The strategy was to take a bunch of loans and build lots of galleys, way more than the Ottomans. Then when they took their armies over to one of the minor Anatolian powers and declared war on them (for their cores, which they mostly don't have anymore) you'd declare war, block the strait, and reconquest uncontested. The Negroponte/Corfu island trap exploit might still be viable, though? I used that to good effect a couple of patches ago, that was after they changed how blocking straits worked. Managed to lure the entire Ottoman army onto Corfu, only had to sacrifice half my own pathetic army, sent one guy in to piss on the territory across from Corfu and then parked a few boats in the way... Ottos ended up with zero manpower from all the attrition, and after I grabbed my own cores in the peace deal they were stomped by a succession of opportunistic vultures so that by the time I was ready for round 2 they were a weak tattered remnant.
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Feb 12, 2018 10:55
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Huh, in my current horribly abusive Ottoman->Georgia->Byzantium run, it seems Muscovy forgot how to Russia. Independent Novgorod and Tver well into the 1500s, and a huge chunk of steppe broke off as independent Saratov. Also Lithuania imploded and relased Polotsk, Smolensk and Kiev. Wasn't paying enough attention to see how all this happened (it wasn't me, at least not directly) but it is clearly a sign from God that someone needs to step in and provide solid Orthodox leadership to this troubled region.
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Mar 7, 2018 09:45
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420 Gank Mid posted:One of the only things stopping the Ottomans from forming Byzantium is the "Is not Ottoman Empire" requirement on the decision, so forming literally any other tag will let you swap to Byz. I think Romania used to be the easiest formable nearby but now with Georgia divided with a decision to form it that could be just as fast or faster. Yeah, going the Georgia route means you don't have to fight anyone even remotely tough. I did it by 1459 and I'm sure it could have been done faster.
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Mar 7, 2018 16:49
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Also you can choose to keep Georgian ideas and they seem pretty ok.
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Mar 7, 2018 16:55
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skasion posted:Did you attack Byz first or Georgia? Want to give this a try myself tonight. 1. Kill Byzantium, move capital to Constantinople 2. Kill Georgia, core everything 3. Provoke Orthodox rebellion, let them run amok for a bit, accept demands 4. Add Georgian as accepted culture, unstate everything not-Georgian, shift to Georgian as primary culture; form Georgia. 5. Re-state everything Greek, unstate everything not-Greek, shift to Greek as primary culture; become the purple monster. 6. Spend a good while getting everything back to full core. Steps 4 and 5 can be done within the same day of game time as long as you have the mana required to shift primary culture twice.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:36
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Eldred posted:Anyone else run into an event where you get a 100-tradition general in the 1400s at the expense of 25 prestige and legitimacy? I got that in my Brandenburg game so it's pretty safe to say that it's over I've had that happen from time to time, It's been around at least since 1.22.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:00
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cheesetriangles posted:Apparently this is a thing that can happen? Happened in one of my games a while back. Wasn't because of anything I did but I got the achievement anyway. Wasn't really in a position to exploit the situation and the game went to pot for unrelated reasons somewhat later so I didn't get to see the long-term effects, but in the medium term what happened was mostly that a bunch of OPMs got eaten so there was a decreasing number of growing states in the area.
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Mar 23, 2018 17:52
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Hmm. Seems like the decision to form Russia has no particular religious requirement, am I correct? (Coptic Ottoman Russia world conquest?) (Holy Catholic
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Apr 27, 2018 15:40
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So I'm 130 years into a Coptic Ottoman run, edging a bit close on the AE thing, about halfway through eating the Mamluks (already took enough of eastern Europe to prevent Russia from ever forming unless I do it myself), have almost all of the Balkans, have prevented the PLC, getting ready to start taking down the turbo-Timurids and expand towards India... ...and then the HRE goes and signs the Peace of Westphalia all by itself. This should make me eligible (at least, once I get a male ruler again). drat, dude.
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May 4, 2018 13:01
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sloshmonger posted:Small tip: taking the Reform the Roman Empire decision removes all your provinces from the HRE, so do that after you Proclaim Erbkaisertum. Did that in a Orthrodox Ottoman > Georgia > Byzantium, made Revoke The Privilegia easy. Hah, in this game I was actually planning to see if it would let me form fake-Russia. But I guess that doesn't remove your provinces from the Empire, does it? Actually getting to be Emperor took forever because before I could get enough support they elected some idiot from the (still independent) Isles and he lived into his 70s. But finally. In the meantime I ate a bit more of the Mamluks and Muscovy, got a couple new Coptic vassals in eastern Africa, started on the colonization game, got the beginnings of a profitable trade network up and running. Now the Imperial Authority growth rate is in the toilet because almost all the princes count as heretics (I suppose since the Emperor is Coptic everyone who isn't Coptic is a heretic, right?). Bohemia is a monster-blob and my strongest rival for the Empire. Actually it's also the strongest reformation I've seen, most of the empire is Reformed! Going to have some work to do to convert what princes I can and take/convert/break up larger states into more Coptic princes; just adding my own provinces (even as many as there are) won't suffice to pass all the reforms I need. In Western Europe, Great Britain and France are both strong. Spain hasn't formed, Castile is pretty strong (and my ally) while Aragon is a mid-tier punching ball. In the New World, the usual suspects are growing their colonies, but as a non-Catholic I don't give a crap about the Pope's opinion and establish my own colonial nations alongside theirs. Give me my money, honey! Timurids are still big and strong, I could take them in a straight fight but it would be too expensive at this point. Groke fucked around with this message at 09:35 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 09:30
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Fuligin posted:Whoa, the hre just abolished itself in the 1580s. As best as I can tell, the bohemian emperor died while the league war was ongoing and his heir was a woman, but there were still catholic princes. Not sure why it just dissolved That happened to me in an earlier game quite a while ago, didn't notice the circumstances well enough to figure out how... the bitter irony was that it gave me the achievement with no direct effort on my part, and it was in a game where I'd thought about actually trying to make it happen. Game went sour for other reasons a bit later so I never got to exploit it much or see the long-term effects, but the medium-term effect was mainly a consolidation of previously Imperial territory into a shrinking number of states as the smallest fish got eaten by the slightly bigger ones.
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May 7, 2018 11:41
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Detheros posted:
My ongoing Coptic Ottoman HRE game also features a mega-Timurid-Mughal state. Like, it spans the Urals, a huge chunk of Central Asia, Mesopotamia and northern India. It's my own fault though, I decapitated Muscovy and ruined the Mamluks and then became too preoccupied with Europe.
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May 9, 2018 08:41
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Wafflecopper posted:Yeah I've recently hit 80% of the achievements and I still don't have the WC one. I've started a couple of attempts but I just get incredibly bored long before finishing. I doubt I'll ever actually do it. Same. I've got like 1500 hours logged and still haven't even conquered all of Europe, never mind the world. Looks rather tedious. I'd rather just keep trying for weird little particular goals.
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Jun 11, 2018 09:02
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I get these weird CTDs whenever I accidentally sign a peace treaty with the enemy war leader instead of the separate peace I was planning.
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Jun 19, 2018 08:53
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I've got an England game going at the moment, up to about 1635; the league war happened early and was a quick affair which the Catholic Emperor won handily, BUT basically all of Germany is Protestant (and the whole of France and Iberia are Reformed)! The only Catholic members of the Empire right now are the Emperor and the Electors. This doesn't look like a recipe for success.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:47
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Captain Mediocre posted:Is the HRE meant to start the game in 1444 with 'Religious Peace'? Apparently this is a known bug that happens if you gently caress with the starting date before launching the game. E.g. set it to 1820 and then back to 1444.
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Jul 2, 2018 09:00
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Huh, in my current stupid Catholic HRE Ottomans game there was recently two Circassias. I didn't pay enough attention to see how it came about but there they were, both of them Orthodox and right next to each other. And fighting each other and occupying each others' clay. Eventually one conquered the other. Weird.
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Aug 2, 2018 20:23
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Another Person posted:different nations are good for tutorialising different things. i think you are best starting off by learning how war stuff happens, so I recommend the Ottomans as your starter nation. Ottomans are fun but I also like to recommend Muscovy. You start out as a strong regional power and can soon enough become a hugely monstrous blob, you learn about fighting wars and dealing with vassals, and as a bonus you can optionally mostly ignore naval affairs completely for a long time.
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Sep 10, 2018 11:23
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Another Person posted:my issue with muscovy is that they are so easy that they end up being fairly boring due to total safety, didn't want to recommend something i find boring to play, where your options are very limited. Oh it's not difficult to gently caress up a Muscovy run, it will teach you a lot about the game mechanics. ("Aggressive expansion", what's that supposed to mean? Why am I three levels behind in military tech now? Etc.)
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Sep 10, 2018 11:31
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Try using Enforce Peace when that happens.
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Sep 16, 2018 12:19
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Tahirovic posted:Wasn't there some "only same continent" rule for moving capital, so you couldn't move it to the New World as Colonizer to prevent CNs? I think the restriction is not "only same continent", but "not into colonial region".
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Sep 17, 2018 10:01
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Huh, seems Mingsplosions are back... I only started playing this game properly when the Third Rome expansion came out, and have racked up over 2000 hours since then (been on partial sick leave etc.); had never seen (not even managed to cause) that mythical beast called a "Mingsplosion" before, but since 1.26 I've seen it happen twice. Didn't have anything to do with it myself, the first time was in a Portugal game where they fell apart before I even got around to exploring that far, and now they blew up into a million bits around 1510 in my Timurids -> Mughals game (before my expanding frontier even started encroaching on their tributaries).
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Sep 19, 2018 08:16
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