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skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Does everyone get a neat little scene-setting pop up on game start now, or just Timurids?

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skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Groogy posted:

Everyone gets it, unless you mean the Timurids "old & dying Shah" event

Nah, the CK2-style “this is what your nation is like” popup. It’s neat.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
I gave the Timurids a couple of hours before work. I don't have anything much to say about this expansion so far, there's no sea-changes but a lot of neat little things. The opening dynamic for Timurids is certainly different. I kind of miss the old scramble into northern India to form Mughals ASAP or else: right now it feels like a much more dysfunctional take on Ottomans or France, where you're clearly the biggest dog surrounded by a bunch of minors you're naturally supposed to eat, but can definitely get in trouble nonetheless. Once you lose your starting monarch the situation can get dicey, I had to develop vassals quite a bit just to keep them from sitting out my wars for my western cores.

The new Muslim mechanics are reasonably fun, nothing mind-blowing. The trade policies seem like they might be pretty useful depending on situation.

Army drilling seems to take a long time (=lot of money) and wear off really quickly. Might be better with financial situation less mediocre than the Timurids start with, but I'm not super impressed with it so far.

Army professionalism seems really slow to build. Probably that is working as intended but it means I won't have a very clear impression of it and the associated mechanics for a while.

Haven't noticed Ming sphering anything ridiculously far away in this patch yet.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

vyelkin posted:

I must have missed this, how exactly does Common Sense let you get institutions at will?

Developing provinces is still a paid feature afaik

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Yeah, it’s that (Afghanistan you only need to core a couple of provinces, but it still takes time). The difficulty is in keeping Shah Rukh alive till 1454 so you can eat Transoxania before they throw an endless tantrum.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Sephyr posted:

So Timurids apparently went from being a weird horde without a steppe to a proper kingdom with tons of unhappy subjects. the Denmark of asia minor, you could say.

Any obvious strats for it now? Since we don't need to rush desperately to form Mughals (and indian provinces are out of coring reach at first), I guess snacking toward Qara Qonlyu while you integrate a couple of vassals is the way. They are all pretty unruly, though.

The first ten years are the hardest. I aggressively tried to reconquer my western cores and I’m not sure it was advisable. It got reasonably ugly for a while there; your vassal swarm is formidable if loyal but your own economic and manpower situation is less than ideal. So maybe the thing to do is keep Shah Rukh alive and relations with the vassals high till 1454 (make sure you’re using the iqta policy for vassal happiness as well). Then you can instantly integrate Fars, Transoxania and Khorasan because you already core all their provinces. Afghanistan can also be eaten quickly but not instantly. Eat Transoxania first because they’re the strongest and will make the most trouble. Your starting heir not only loses the bonus to vassal happiness of Shah Rukh, he’s also a babbling buffoon so slows down your integration of Afghanistan and Sistan.

I haven’t tried this but based on my experience I would recommend not taking on Ajam until you have integrated Transoxania at least. You want to overwhelm them pretty quickly or QQ will probably dogpile Ajam and try to steal your cores. I don’t think you need to fight extended war with QQ really, it’s hard country and mostly not that good. Get back any cores they sniped and leave them to the mercy of the Ottos/Mamluks. Once you have your cores back you are likely to be strong enough to start feeling your way into North India. You should also be sure to clear out the minors on the south coast of the Caspian Sea and the minor at the head of the Persian gulf, they’re weak with few likely allies and there are some nice trade goods to grab.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Couple of other expansion related things not specifically about Timurids:

Drilling seems like a stealth buff to the AI: it essentially rewards an army for being passive; the more passively you play, the better the army gets. This is relatively easy for AI to achieve, whereas a player is frequently moving armies around. When I leave an army in one place, it’s often because I’m looking to hit rebels as soon as they pop up, which is not a situation conducive to drill. I’ve already caught myself wishing there was some way to set armies to automatically drill if they meet the requirements: clicking the button every time is the kind of minor busywork where the AI will never forget to do it but I frequently will. Granted I made a pretty hectic start of Timurids, maybe it’s easier to find time to drill with other nations, but I feel like my soldiers are still acting out the first verse of “Be A Man” while everyone around me is in goose step. I integrate Transoxania and their army is literally ten times as drilled as any of mine.

So far I haven’t noticed any ridiculously inappropriate Ming tributaries — they have Japan, Korea, most of Indochina, the steppe guys to the immediate north and the near side of the Himalayas, but no Indian minors or anything west of Oirat.

I have noticed that Ming’s gimmick of running out of manpower and rocking an almost all merc army like nothing hasn’t changed, 100% of their infantry is mercs in 1472. I don’t have the best view of them right now, but it also seems like increasing the reform cost doesn’t really hurt them much: they still make back mandate very rapidly and they’re simply too big for the slight penalty from sitting at 30 mandate for a bit to hurt them much. Maybe that will change as the game goes on, hard to tell what’s really going on over there when you can’t see half of China.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

TorakFade posted:

As the Ottomans, should I just be in constant war against everyone and blob like a madman for the first hundred years? Because it feels so good. It's 1480 and I am bordering the mamluks and hungary already, feeding my march Crimea some steppe land while waiting out truces.

Having a 6/2/2 heir I went for humanism as my first idea - looking forward to zero rebels ever and more accepted cultures.

Yeah basically. If you’re not currently invading Africa or Europe, try invading Asia! Though that may be less viable now with the Timurids changes.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Butch Banner posted:

Skasion covered most of it from my one run with them, but putting your vassals on aggressive to drain their manpower was very helpful, so was staying at war with opms because I think rebellious vassals are less likely to get independence support while they're at war.

I didn’t have any trouble with assholes supporting independence actually. Thank gently caress. I kept decent relations with the Mamluks and Ottos for just that reason though. The trick with aggressive is a good one, I forgot that.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Deltasquid posted:

Completely unrelated:



I'm Hungary. allied to Austria, Poland, Ragusa and France. The Ottomans are pushing into Italy and are twice as strong as I am, and Muscowy is allied with them. How would an experienced player fix this? :ohdear:

I haven’t played Hungary in ages so I might be missing a trick here, but that’s not THAT strong of an Ottomans so I don’t think you need to panic yet. I say don’t directly antagonize them, but move further into Italy yourself. It looks like you already have a couple provinces in central Italy, but if I were you I’d be looking at Venice. That end node is great to have, but any Italian minor will add good development and you don’t have many other avenues for expansion. Maybe Bohemia but you’d have HRE problems to worry about then.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Deltasquid posted:

Forgot to mention I'm protestant. I'd fight deeper into Italy but my warmongering there already caused a coalition.

I could try heading into Bohemia since the emperor is my ally.

If you’re already coalitioned I’d want to be very careful about offensive wars in the HRE. If you feel you’re under non-immediate threat of invasion then don’t risk your strength but sit back for a bit, improve relations with everyone, make sure you’re rich and have plenty of manpower, maybe check on your forts and make sure they’re well positioned and up to date, spy on the Ottomans/Russians if you feel like it. Your allies look reasonably strong so I don’t think you’re in present danger, with Ottos a lot of the time you have to play the long game, admit you can’t take them yet, and slowly build up to their level.

e: by the way you can probably expect that Muscovy alliance to go down the tubes before too long if Crimea is an Ottoman vassal — that’s territory they will eventually probably want, certainly if they form Russia.

skasion fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Nov 18, 2017

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?


Oh yeah, this bad rear end managed to begin the War of the Roses and then bring it to an immediate end the same day he took the throne. I'm not sure how that even works, but I like to imagine the Yorkists sitting there before the coronation getting all angry and preparing themselves to declare war, then seeing this guy and going "you know what, fair enough".

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Odd bug: if you roll a new general as the month ticks over, you’ll get two generals with the same name but different stats. I didn’t notice if it costs twice as much or one of them is free, probably still shouldn’t be happening though.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Linear Zoetrope posted:

The easy, hacky fix is just to make the AI not suffer a morale penalty (or only a partial one) while drilling. Similar to how the AI doesn't (didn't used to?) pay maintenance on certain forts because otherwise you could just steal their border forts on delcaration.

The AI is already constantly near 100% drill so I don’t see this as good solution, the system already just makes it so AI has troops that are almost always better than the players all else being equal and this would simply remove the big drawback. I think AI needs to be more judicious about how much it drills, similar to how a player isn’t going to be drilling all the time because of rebels and pending wars. Even if the AI doesn’t have to worry as much about these things it should maybe behave like it does.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
I could be tripping here, but didn’t they announce at one point that some patch or other had made Korea/Ming less likely to go bugfuck insane on the Manchu minors right away thus preventing a strong Manchuria from ever forming?

Cause if so they were full of poo poo

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

New Butt Order posted:

New DLC means the old ones are on sale and it's been a long time since I've played. Are there any super important features in Right of Man, Mandate of Heaven or Third Rome? Rights of Man seems pretty major, but can Mandate or Third Rome be skipped if I don't have any interest in playing in Asia or do they have important game-wide features?

Third Rome is basically for Russians only, it’s very handy for that but adds little for anyone else. Mandate adds the diplomacy macros which are really useful for just about anyone, but prepared to be annoyed by Ming’s bullshit if you ever go anywhere near east Asia.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Amazing.

“You sure we can just march past this fort? Looks to me like there’s at least a couple hundred guys in there, they’re gonna shoot the hell out of us!”

“The map says it’s empty.”

“Yeah, but there’s a couple hundred guys in t—“

“THE. MAP. SAYS. IT’S. EMPTY.”

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Unless they can get major powers in Europe to assist them or their colonial overlord is very weak to begin with, colonial nations rarely break away. The overlords tend to keep their liberty desire low by developing, so they only lose control on their own if the colonials have a superior army or they have more colonial nations than they can keep up with, and both of those are rare. As Commonwealth, you probably can’t do too much besides keep warring on the French so they’re distracted and under pressure. If you were a major colonial player yourself you’d have a better chance at it.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
I haven’t been keeping track of the changes to it, is Aristocratic a decent pick now or are Defensive/Offensive/Quality still way better?

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

oddium posted:

ahhhhh i wish i could see europe so badly



Is...that an AI Coptic Ottomans?

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Yeah if you don’t want to worry about colonies the Ottomans is probably the best easy start, even with the current patch having weakened them.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Mamluks existing forever and being consistently at least equal in power to Ottomans throughout the game may just be the silliest thing that has been added to EU4, even sillier than the indestructible Ming god-empire.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Koramei posted:

All I've learned about them has come from an episode of In Our Time, but according the historians on that, the Mamluks getting wiped out was really not an inevitability at all.


It makes a lot of sense for a Middle East expansion so we actually get to see the mechanics for the new nations for a while, and I do like how varied everything is there now, but I think I will miss mega-Ottomans. It's nice to have a genuine end boss in Europe.

Mamluk sultanate, while in decline, definitely wasn’t insta-doomed in 1444. Even as late as 1490 they could still resist the Ottomans in a straight-up war, but it put a very serious economic burden on them and the establishment of alternative Indian Ocean trade routes around 1500 was the nail in the coffin. That was a big money problem that they would always have needed to solve; combined with their failure to modernize their military along Ottoman lines and the general political instability and infighting among the Circassian Mamluks, they were heading for trouble from the beginning of EU4’s timeframe.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Imo it is usually a bad idea to force release nations unless you are quite confident you'll rapidly be able to diplovassalize the released nation or

Mantis42 posted:

Should've truce broke those conniving Turks.

this. Most nations that you will actually be able to release are so small and weak and will have trouble finding allies because everyone near enough to be of any help sees them as a free lunch and immediately gears up to beat the poo poo out of them.

Also if you do it anywhere east of the Hindu Kush, Ming will probably make them a tributary and THEN everyone near them will immediately gear up to beat the poo poo out of them.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Fister Roboto posted:

If your goal is just to cut another country down to size without incurring too much AE, it's better to cripple them with war exhaustion and devastation and then take a small peace deal, or even a white peace. That way they keep a lot of of the WE and don't get a big revanchism bonus.

Yeah this is really effective in particular on large countries with lots of cultures or religions. That way they’ll be busy dealing with rebels for years on top of any opportunistic neighbors they might have to worry about.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Mr. Fowl posted:

I've never had any luck with this, unfortunately.

Are you wiping their armies, looting all their poo poo and then white leaving once they have 20 WE? Even if that doesn’t trigger an implosion of their nation (and it might not for a homogeneous nation or one with few natural enemies) it’ll still keep them in oh-poo poo mode for a couple years and put you in an excellent position to crush them again when the short truce ends.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Another Person posted:

It also puts you in oh poo poo mode, because of call to peace. It isn't worth doing any more, at all.

Also the AI will just buy the worst of the WE down. If you stackwipe their army early on, when it is still large, they still get 50% of that manpower back (this happens with every stackwipe) and for the long waiting time when you have them without an army but occupied, they will be regenerating manpower and they won't be running any real costs. Yeah, they will take some production hits, and institutions might grow a tiny bit slower, but it generally isn't worth that much effort for that little payoff.

Further, the only nations which really warrant that sort of extreme thinking are historically large nations which are what would normally be lucky nations ingame. This means that they get -1interest per annum, so even if you do somehow manage to make them run additional costs on top of their full occupation so they lose money, the loans won't really be felt because AI nations usually take admin or econ (or both) idea groups over the course of the game. You probably won't be driving them to bankruptcy through occuputation because of this being stacked (especially Austria due to one of those groups, luck and their Fugger Banking NI). They also get -1 unrest, as well as stab cost reduction and manpower recovery speed buffs. The impact just won't last unless the AI gets dogpiled repeatedly in your truce.

Disagree completely. It's never better than just taking the territory yourself if you can, but if you can't take more for whatever reason it's sure better use of your warscore than releasing nations. If your war lasts long enough that call for peace kicks in then that's your problem.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
American Dream best DLC

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Tahirovic posted:

It almost always involves either Ming or that affected nation picking up exploration ideas. It seems like it's not the capital but any province that counts for tributary mechanics.
I'd still favor disabling the option of becoming a tributary trough diplomacy, it's just stupid. Make Ming fight for it's income.

Yeah, if Ming takes exploration it can get especially ridiculous with tributaries from south Africa or even California.

I feel like making Ming fight for all its tributaries isn’t really going to change much though. Ming can still easily crush all its neighbors at any given time so that is just a time delay added to the current system. My pet hypothetical change would be to link Mandate and tributaries to individual emperors rather than the nation as a whole. Each ruler starts with low mandate, maybe even no mandate (dependent on stats maybe?) because nobody has any idea if he is any good or not yet. If he can get all the neighbors as tributaries he will be able to get plenty of mandate and maybe even pass a reform or two if he lasts a while, but when a new ruler takes over there will probably be a window of opportunity for outsiders to pick off tributaries before Ming can secure their loyalty again.

e: this would also help alleviate the problem of Ming passing all their reforms by 1600 and then never dipping below 90 mandate at any other time, which happens in basically every single game

skasion fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Nov 28, 2017

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Mr. Fowl posted:

Yeah, I've gotten this bug too. One day my Cape trade company was giving me a merchant; the next, gone. And the subjects tab still claims I'm getting a merchant!

Also, is army professionalism as much of a pain as I think it is? There's a small discount on Cradle of Civilization on green man gaming and it got me thinking.

Army professionalism isn’t really bothersome tbh. Your armies get a couple of situationally useful powers over time, generals are cheaper, you can conserve manpower, a couple of decent events, all you have to do is drill when you can afford to. I still wish you could set armies to drill automatically, but it’s not that bad. By around 1600 you can usually get close to 100% and stay close to it for the rest of the game.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
To be fair, most people in Verona would have probably spoken Venetian as opposed to like, Latin. Or even whatever Italian dialect was spoken in the Papal States.

e: also, does a player pope really not get any say in who gets colonization rights? That’s lame. If I’m the pope and I want to reserve the whole new world for myself, I should be able to do it, dammit.

skasion fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 29, 2017

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

SkySteak posted:

Just wondering, but how fun is Burgundy to play? I was thinking of doing a Netherlands run but I don't often see people playing Burgundy so I was wondering if there was some lovely element to it, of it was generally unfun compared to other nations. I remember the Burgundy AI being fairly formidable but that was long ago and I am not sure if that applies to a player ran version?

It’s decent fun, yeah. A bit of a tricky start because you’re right between France and the HRE and are almost guaranteed to piss off at least one of them right away. But you have a good PU swarm, decent ideas, the Burgundian inheritance disaster only applies to the AI and not you, and you can strangle France in the crib with a bit of work. Once you clear out your PU juniors, you’re in a good position to dominate the English Channel node, form Netherlands, colonize, simply replace France, or really whatever.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Lagnar posted:

Important note when taking over the low countries: moving your captial there will prevent dutch rebels from spawning which is vital, as they can and will spawn constant 20+ stacks of rebels otherwise.

I can't remember if Burgundy starts with its capital there, but make sure to move it if it's not!

I should say it's been awhile since I played there, but I believe this is how it works still.

You can either move your capital there (Burgundy starts with its in Bourgogne) or culture shift to Dutch or Flemish (Burgundy started with Burgundian) or form Netherlands (if you’re Burgundy, this will do both of those things for you, at the cost of ceding all your French cores to France if they exist! I don’t remember this being the case but that’s sure a drawback if the wiki page is right).

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
code:
trigger = {
    is_year = 1550
    NOT = { is_year = 1650 }
    NED = {
        exists = yes
        ai = yes
        was_player = no
    }
    owner = {
        NOT = { tag = NED }
    }
    region = low_countries_region
    OR = {
        culture = dutch
        culture = flemish
        is_core = NED
    }
    OR = {
        NOT = { has_province_flag = dutch_revolt }
        had_province_flag = { flag = dutch_revolt days = 1825 }
    }
    owner = {
        OR = {
            capital_scope = {
                NOT = { region = low_countries_region }
            }
            NOT = {
                OR = {
                    primary_culture = dutch
                    primary_culture = flemish
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
This is the event that causes Dutch revolts to start firing. So they stopped because it was after 1650. THIS event will never fire if your capital is in the Low Countries region, or your primary culture is Dutch or Flemish, before 1550. HOWEVER, the individual revolt events do not check for any of these things. If you move your capital to the Low Countries or culture shift after this event has already fired, it will not fix anything and you'll continue to get the revolts. Do it before 1550 and you should be fine.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Inheritance in a personal union can definitely happen on monarch death, there’s a fixed chance for it which scales with country size and maybe a couple other variables. You still need to have had the PU for at least 50 years though.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Is it just me or is the Farm Estate building an utter waste of money

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Senor Dog posted:

At one point at least, there was a chance when a ruler died that you’d just outright inherit them instead of forming a PU. It wasn’t a large chance, but it definitely happened. I remember I inherited QQ as Oman back when Oman was still shia.

Yeah, this can still happen and I totally forgot. It’s pretty unlikely but you see it happen with HRE minors every so often.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Funky Valentine posted:

I like pumping up development because seeing the little building graphics grow make me happy.

Yessss. This is most satisfying in Italy or Germany or somewhere else with a bunch of tiny provinces, when the urban sprawl starts to overwhelm the borders and all the land becomes an ungodly pre-automobile megacity spanning whole states

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Imo highly developed provinces should give some kind of slow pulse event where you can choose a dev point in an adjacent province or something

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skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
The turfs belong on their serfs

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