Europa Universalis IV: Is that... is that backwards singing?

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Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

Europa Universalis IV is the newest iteration of Paradox Interactive's long running grand strategy series. Running from 1444 to 1820 you rule as one of a number of nations throughout history and attempt to set them up for greatness through conquest and diplomacy. Any country is playable from the Kingdom of France right the way across the globe to a Japanese Daimyo or Chief of the Cherokee with many having their own unique national ideas and situations to play around with. Boasting improved intelligence the AI is able to strike when you're down or gang up on a nation who's growing large and powerful at their own expense. Through straight up territorial conquest or colonisation there are many paths on the road to complete global hegemony and with Paradox's new DLC strategy (in the vein of Crusader Kings 2) there will be continual additions and improvements to the base game for a long time to come!

Taking the role of a nation within this era of history it is your goal to remain independent and work your way towards becoming a global superpower. Like in past EU games you have control over your military with which you can use to fight your enemies on land and sea or, if force does not work, you might use your diplomatic cloud to organise grand coalitions or attempt to vassalise weaker neighbours through peaceful means. You might also want to try to achieve trade hegemony by using your merchants and navy to make your empire rich off the backs of others. Even then if the Old World does not appeal to you then you can organise explorers and conquistadors to head out into the Terra Incognita to find new lands for which you can send your colonists into with the larger and more powerful colonies eventually become nations within themselves with the potential to declare revolution and independence from the mother country.

Combat & your view of the game

It's important to note that EUIV is not turnbased (although you may change the speed with which time passes) with the GIF above demonstrating how combat takes place in the game. The strategy comes not from commanding the battles themselves but from army composition, the use of good commanders and an eye for the right terrain to fight on. For instance, fighting defensively on a mountain will greatly increase the amount of casualties your enemy will take and allows smaller armies to beat much larger ones often, especially with the right general. It is not just a matter of winning battles however as you will also need to occupy enemy provinces or blockade their ports to be able to enforce complete victories over opponents. You will need to both when it's the right time to start a war but also when you should end it as a prolonged conflict will often see you hurting at home as your war exhaustion increases and your population grows restless.

Most of the world in terrain view

Most of the time you will be playing the game in either the terrain mapmode or, like myself, using the political mapmode which colours provinces based on their owner. EUIV comes with a host of new mapmodes with more still being added and, while not all of them are useful to have on all the time, you will switch between some of them frequently to assess things like trade zones and to see a visual representation of who is in a coalition against you.

Just a short list of the improvements/changes in EUIV over its' predecessor:

New trade system that focusses on controlling and steering trade towards your home node
Improved AI & graphics so that your ships and soldiers look nice while they're being destroyed fighting over river crossings
Revamped Idea & Technology systems that allows you to focus your nation down specific paths and unlock unique national bonuses
Introduction of Monarch Points which, depending on your ruler and advisors, can limit or assist you in various ways
More stable multiplayer for when you all want to collectively crush France and be crushed by Russia
Steam Workshop integration which makes it easier to find new mods and keep the ones that you have updated
Using the converter dlc for CK2 you can even import your saves over into EU IV at any point with unique ideas for certain nations such as Roman, Jerusalem and a bunch of others!

With there being so much more.

Yep and it is much more stable than in previous EU games having been integrated with Steam. You can find games in two ways:

1) The Europa Universalis Goons Steamgroup
2) The Paradox Multiplayer Forum

More detail about the Goon group can be found in the link but here's just an example of some of the things we've gotten up to recently:

Useful Links

More to come!

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Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

FAQs

- Why do my armies keep losing?

There are a number of factors as to why you might lose a battle even if you completely outnumber the enemy 2 to 1. Firstly check that your army maintenance is on full and what your max morale was, a quick loss of morale will easily lose you a battle. Sometimes you will go into battle at full morale but when it starts it may look as if it's not, this is because the enemy has higher overall morale than you so make sure you check the morale of the enemy army too. Secondly you will need to check who is leading your army as a good commander can devastate armies quickly if, for instance, you have a General with a lot of cavalry and a high shock value. Also make sure you check the terrain that you were fighting on. Attacking across a river or into a mountainous region will leave you with huge casualties whereas you want to make sure you try to do the opposite as a defender. Luring your enemies to attack over rivers or into mountains is a great way for a smaller army to devastate one that is much larger. Next make sure you check the technology level you have with your opponent, bear in mind that sometimes even a single Military tech level will give a huge bonus while others are negligible. Alongside this your Tech Group also has an effect on the types of units that you can field as the two images below show as certain groups (ie. Chinese and Muslim) have units that end up being outpaced by their Western counterparts.

Infantry pip comparison

Cavalry pip comparison

- Why are the mods I download from the Steam Workshop not showing up in the launcher?

For whatever reason EUIV doesn't usually display a mod you've downloaded right away or, if it's updated, it might not immediately have the newest version running. The fix is, thankfully, rather easy. If a mod you have subscribed/downloaded via the Workshop isn't displaying simply load up the game as-is and click on Singleplayer or Multiplayer, then quit out of the game again. The next time you run the game the mod should now appear in the launcher for you to select.

If this still does not work when trying to get the latest version of the mod then the best thing to do is to delete the mod files you already have in your mod folder (default location is Documents>Paradox Interactive>Europa Universalis IV) and get the workshop to redownload it again. Then repeat the above steps.

General Guides

Income:

Cast_No_Shadow posted:

Put as simply as I can.

You have 3 main sources of income in EU3.

Tax, trade and production.

Trade I wrote a big old explanation in the EU4 tutorial LP here.

Tax is pretty simple, add up the base tax of all your provinces, add on any additional bonus from buildings\advisers and ideas, divide by 12, get monthly tax income.

Production is a function of trade value. I'm sure you've noticed various decisions and ideas that give production efficiency. Basically, each province has a trade good for example coffee. That has a value based on some behind the scenes stuff (it does change) and each province produces a certain amount of that good. So coffee might be worth 4 gold and Province A might produce 1.2 units.

As in the trade explanation, that makes a "trade value" for the good which goes to the trade node and is then split based on how various powers are spreading their trade influence. The owner of the province also gets some income from this based around the same numbers and very heavily affected by the owners production efficiency. I haven't bothered to look into exactly how this works yet but you can really start pulling in crazy money if you have a big land empire with gold\some good trade goods and max production efficiency.

Really short version is long term you really want to pick and specialise in either trade or production income, either can produce staggering amounts of money. Tax is pretty meh.

Jackson Taus posted:

The "beat up on Mali/Aztecs for 5000g" strategy is dead, but 1.4 has sort of brought part of it back. You can now beat up on American Native OPMs for 400g-1000g. If you're England/Spain/Castile and you're first to colonize over there, you can grab a Conquistador and a 6-7 stack and just chain declare on them. Then you wait your 5 year truce and re-declare and annex them (or let your colony do it). If you're big enough, the inflation hit won't be bad because it's a function of your tax base (and a few thousand gold is worth 75 Admin Points to reduce the inflation). Also on colonizers and gold, the gold provinces in North and West Africa are Sus (Morocco), Bambuk and Bure (both Mali). They're Sunni and so hard to convert, and since Bambuk/Bure are high tax base while Sus has Berber Traditions, they can be kind of expensive to core/convert, but once you do they're worth 40g/year (more with Workshop) and are un-impacted by "distant overseas" penalties. Early game this can be painful, but if you find yourself with admin points mid-game it might be worthwhile, especially if you need land in those trade nodes anyhow. Mexican gold is worth a lot less now because it goes to your colony instead of to you.

Now that you don't need an Idea to use ADM to cut inflation, it's a lot less scary to take inflation. I know a lot of EU players can be adverse to inflation spirals but it seems pretty manageable now.

Pellisworth posted:

Goods Produced is sort of the base multiplier for Manpower, Production, and Trade which makes it really powerful. A province has a base 100% Goods Produced, plus 1% per base tax. So, base tax does indeed increase your manpower, production, and trade income, but not to a large extent. A Manufactory adds +100% Goods Produced, effectively doubling it.

Tax Income = Base Tax * Tax Income Modifiers
Goods Produced = 100% + 1% per base tax
Trade Value = Goods Produced * Price
Production Income = Trade Value * Production Efficiency
Trade Income (potentially) = Trade Value * Trade Efficiency * Trade Income Modifier * Steering bonuses
Manpower = (Base Manpower * Goods Produced / 40 + manpower from buildings) * Modifiers

That's why Goods Produced is so good, it multiplies everything but your tax income.

I don't believe it increases force limits, though.

Trade:

Cast_No_Shadow posted:

Eu4 can get a little complicated but its nowhere near as bad as you think it is!

It makes a lot more sense when you get going. Maybe I could offer a little clarification.

Money is a key resource in this game and you can usually buy something to help shore up almost any weakness. Genoa is a trading power but otherwise small and weak.

France is known as the big blue blob, because its a very rich, very strong military power that usually rolls around stomping on anyone nearby.

Currently our LPer is planning to try and leverage Geona's trade advantages into a trade empire so he can get rich and powerful.

To help with this, he has allied himself with France. France are friendly towards Genoa right now because AI nations like to keep their near neighbours small and will often ally with the weaker powers to stop them getting gobbled up. Protecting the balance of power. Admittedly they will only look after a nation until they want to invade and take over them themselves but hopefully Genoa will be ready by then, as right now France has a lot more pressing issues on her plate.

Trade seems to really confuse people. But the easiest way to think of it is like this. The world is divided into trade zones known as nodes. These are meant to reflect the trade hubs of the regional area at the time.

Each trade zone has two stats that matter. Value and Power.

Value is the easy one. All the provinces in the zone or node produce a trade good. Each good is produced in a certain amount and has a certain value, wine is expensive, fish are cheap. It all gets automatically gathered up and totalled in the trade node. Value can also be increased by taking trade from another node upstream and moving it downstream. But we'll get into that in a moment.

Power is a representation of how much influence each nation has in a trade node. You get power by owning land in a node, the amount of power can be upgraded with buildings, some historically important provinces get a large boost to power as shown on that pretty map if you care about trade you'll want to own these in nodes you care about. You also get power by sending in your light ships to help protect trade, more ships or better ships give you more trade power. There are also small boosts for things like having your capital in a node (apparently) or sending a merchant but they are negligible. Its all about ships and provinces

Now if you want to interact with a node you have to send a merchant. This offers you a choice of two actions. Well three but "Send trade power upstream" is retarded and useless never use it.

You can collect trade.
This means your merchant will go to the node and try and make you dollah. This basically takes the value of the node and gets your share based on trade power. Say the total power of everyone in the node is 100 and you have 50 of that. You get 50% of the money or value in your bank each month. Easy. This isn't exact as various modifiers make this go up or down, usually up, but its about right. Also if you try and collect in a node that isn't your home node (where your capital is) you take a penalty to your trade power so that 50 would only count for 25. Ouch.

You can also steer trade.
This means your merchant will try and move the goods to the next node downstream (or your choice if there is more than one). All the nodes are connected in a stream, trade travels in one direction in EU4, the LPer made a map. This takes your share of the value (the same as when collecting but without the capital penalty) and transfers it downstream with a 5% (i think) markup in value. This means if you LPer moved some money from Tunis to Genoa, he could collect it in Genoa without the penalty and with an extra boost to value. This can add up to mega money as you start draining off value from everyone else around the world.

The basic proviso is.
1) Get power in your home node start making ok money.
2) Send merchants and ships and taking good trading land from other nodes and sending all their fine goods back to your home node. Now you make more money.
3) Send more merchants and ships further up the stream and siphon off even more money, chaining it along the trade routes back to your greedy hands. This is where you start fat stackin Benjamins. As an aside this is the whole point of colonisation.

So with that in mind. It looks like the LPer wants to improve his power in Genoa (sending his light ships to patrol it) but can't do much else there yet, everyone is too powerful or a member of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) but that clusterfuck should get its own update, basically unless the current Emperor (usually Austria) is up poo poo creek without a paddle don't touch it unless you're willing to fight every last god drat person in it. But still, he is keeping an eye out for possibilities and wants to leverage the military strength and diplomatic goodwill of France to help him should an opportunity arise.

He also wants to start looking at likely candidates to steal trade from and move it to Genoa. He has identified the Byzantine Empire and Athens as likely targets. The lands they hold can be protected by a strong navy (which he hopes to build) due to their island like nature and they give him access to a trade node that is upstream and feeds into Genoa allowing him to move goods to his home node and hopefully profit. They are also good provinces because they are rich enough to tax well and have lots of warm bodies that want to be soldiers but that's by the by.

His plan is, if he can, fake an internationally acceptable reason to conquer them, thats the CB part, and take them before the powerful Ottoman empire can (its very likely the Ottomans will want to annex them soon). He will then use his hopefully better Navy to stymie the Ottomans clearly superior land army.

He has allied (or at least got military access) with the tiny, barely viable nation of Naxos just to the right of Athens on the map so he has a safe place to form up his army and maybe a few extra men to throw forward in an invasion. Attacking over the water will incur a heavy penalty and be risky, it clearly favours the defenders, but he intends to buy expensive mercenaries to get a numbers advantage and then land and attack quickly before the defenders in Athens have a chance to ready themselves.

Hope this clears things up. Keep it up OP, its a good LP but a bit of an info dump to start. I look forward to you actually playing.

Jackson Taus posted:

If you're playing a trading/colonizing power, dominating your home trade node is crucial. As Spain, it doesn't do a lot of good to be dragging in trade from all over the world only to share 40% of it with Portugal. Similarly, as England if you bring trade through the North Sea and into London you need to (a) lockdown London from Netherlands spamming 900 light ships and (b) dominate the North Sea node so Norway and Hansa's fleet don't steal half your trade. You do this buy building a crapload of trade-power buildings in these nodes and grabbing the Trade Centers (+5 TP +1 navy) and Estuaries (+5 TP). As Spain/Portugal you may want to consider sucking it up and grabbing Tangiers early for this (before the other gets it) and Oran as well.

The biggest Trade Power drain is actually a cluster of OPMs. Every OPM gets 5 TP from their capital and has a merchant, so while a 3PM might have 8 TP, three OPMs will have 5-6 each in their capital node. In North America, this means that wiping up the tiny tribes is pretty clutch in terms of moving trade, and for Netherlands it means you want to cut down on the OPM/TPMs in the Antwerpen node. Also with the new Trade Nodes, Western Europe node is super-clutch, since you can park a ton of light ships there and siphon off everyone else's incoming trade. As England, you can avoid this by bringing trade along West Africa -> Caribbean -> Chesapeake -> St Lawrence -> North Sea, and Spain/Portugal can go through Timbuktu(?) to avoid Western Europe.

War:

Cast_No_Shadow posted:

A bit late but I noticed a few people asking about cascading alliances and how it works so thought I'd post up a quick run down as people might find it useful.

The main point to take from any of this is that only the war leader can call in their allies.

This applies at any point and forever and will hopefully clear up instances where the player cannot call in their own allies to conflicts and cannot work out why.

The tricky part is working out who is going to be war leader and why it changes, but its really not as hard as you think and is hard capped at I think two changes.

The second rule that is important to know is that war leader will only ever change for the defensive side. Whoever starts the war will always be war leader for the attacking side, they can call their allies but that's it.

So when we come to the defensive side, we need to know how the war leader changes. I don't know the exact formula but the game works through a strict order of progression. Note as well that The AI places a very high priority on answering defensive call to arms from its allies this is much higher than its offensive priority and will only refuse if its already very heavily hosed itself or in a huge number of other wars.

The first war leader is automatically the person being attacked. Lets say we attacked Riga and they are allied with The Livonian Order and Poland. Riga is war leader and will call Liv and Poland to their Aid. Assuming they both accept the AI will now look at the members in the war and say, Poland is the biggest and strongest in the war by a significant margin, they will be the new war leader. Now Poland can call in her allies. Lets say Poland is allied to Lithuania and France. They will receive the defensive call to arms and usually answer. The AI checks again and says, ok France is a lot stronger than Poland and so they will be the new war leader.

Here I'm fuzzy as the leader has changed twice now, I can't remember if France gets to call her allies (I never start a war where this might happen) but assuming she does France will now call their allies to the war with the same defensive CTA. Lets say they are allied to some minors and Austria. Here Austria may be technically stronger than France (again in this hypothetical) but not by much. France would remain as war leader (even if it wasn't already locked due to the two move maximum).

So you can see how it could spiral out of control. The important thing to follow is the strongest members of the alliance chain. That Poland in this example might be allied to Milan who is allied to half the HRE, doesn't matter if Milan will never take war leader from Poland it wont be able to call in its allies because it is not war leader.

There are two main differences to this. If you attack someone in the HRE, the current emperor will get a special "defend the empire" call to arms. This, again, has a very high acceptance priority from the AI and will automatically make the emperor war leader and able to call in all their allies. This is normally Austria and Austria has a habit of having 50 or so allies so be careful.

Coalitions are their own bag of fun. Attacking a coalition member pulls in every member of the coalition, keeps the original target as war leader and pulls in their allies then starts passing around war leader so you end up fighting every mother fucker on the planet.

The last point to mention is that assuming they were sent at the same time Defensive call to arms arrive BEFORE offensive call to arms so if you are attacking a dude who is allied to France, and you are also allied to France it might say France would be willing to join you in your attack. This is not to be taken as gospel it just means if they were not allied France is happy to join you. What will actually happen is you will declare war and call France, the defender will call France, the defensive call to arms will arrive first France will almost certainly accept and be at war with you. France would have said yes to you as well, the tooltip didn't technically lie, it just doesn't get the option because it says yes to the defender first. Its a bit silly but easily predictable.

Jackson Taus posted:

A common diplomatic issue is "Country A is allied to myself and Country B, how can I attack Country B without Country A intervening and costing me my alliance?" Normally a country in that situation will aid the allied defender instead of the allied attacker. The trick is to get Country A (but not Country B) in a war with you first - attack some random minor power with any CB and call Country A in on your side. Wait a month and then attack Country B. So long as you don't totally screw it up (by attacking a minor who calls in France or something) you can now beat on Country B and win that war and then White Peace on Country A afterwards.

Another quick thing I thought of: Rivaling matters. If you pick someone as your rival, you can embargo them without trade efficiency penalty, and you get reduced DIP costs in peace deals. You also get a solid relations bonus (grows +1/month, caps at +20) with anyone else who set that country as a rival. Rivals only cost 10 DIP to change, so remember to change them frequently. If you're taking two territories off someone, it's worth it to rival them because even if you have to swap rivals back afterwards, you still come out like 14 DIP ahead.

Expansion:

Jackson Taus posted:

"Vassal feeding" is a key mechanic that's somewhat counter-intuitive. Basically if you conquer land you have to do the coring and maybe religious conversions and between that and overextension it can be very expensive to expand. However, if you sell the provinces to a vassal, they can do the hard work and when you diplo-annex them you get the cores for free (and maybe the religious conversions if you're lucky). Paradox has cut down on this a bit by making AIs a bit stricter in terms of what land you can sell them - vassal Brittany isn't going to buy North African provinces off you. The mechanics are complex, but if the vassal's king is militaristic or they have low over-extension or they have a core/claim on the land or it's adjacent land of the same religion they're more likely to accept. Note that you can do this to some degree with colonies automatically - if you grab land in the Caribbean off of a rival, that land goes to your subject colony down there. So now coring and converting Jamaica is your subject's problem, not yours (and they have their own A/D/M pool and missionary).

Baudin posted:

An extension of this:
If you're relatively stable and have a hostile neighbour you cannot quite afford to vassalize in a war (it's based on their base tax, once you hit ~30 or so they cannot be vassalized without a mission at all) you can take enough provinces to vassalize them in the next war (once you get enough provinces in the first war the peace menu will show they have less than 100% war score requirement for vassalization).

Wait for the 5 year truce to end, DO NOT CORE their provinces. Declare war again, vassalize, and sell their cores back to them. This works particularly well in North Africa which has a nasty coring penalty due to Berber Traditions.

Specific Country Strategies

Winning the Hundred Years War as England:

Pellisworth posted:

Here's my opening strategy for winning the HYW as England, current for 1.4:

The general idea is to get alliances with Austria, Castile, and maybe Denmark, fabricate a claim on Scotland in order to war dec them and pull your continental allies into the Hundred Years' War against France. Castile will set you as a rival maybe one-third of the time, if this happens in the first month before you establish an alliance, restart. Otherwise, as long as you get the alliance with Castile and don't have the War of the Roses trigger, this strategy works reliably and is relatively painless.

Your day-one moves and the timing of your troop movements in the first month or so are really key here, because you need to evacuate your armies on the continent and do some rapid fire diplomacy.

Put Richard Plantagenet in charge of your army in Gascogne(fire the rest of your generals), and have them march to kill Armagnac's stack. In a few days, have them march back to Gascogne and catch Foix's stack marching north, after destroying the two vassal stacks immediately march south to Labourd for evacuation. Build four more cogs so you can transport an army of size 18.
Send your troops in England up to the Scottish border, your light ships to patrol London trade node, your heavies can go sit in Cote d'Argent to blockade, and your transports to Normandie. They'll arrive a couple days before France's stacks, load your troops up and ferry them back to England (you can Scorch Earth in Normandie if you like), immediately send your transports south to Labourd to pick up our main man Plantagenet and his crew. The timing on the transports is fairly tight and you're off by more than a few days you'll lose one or both of your stacks.
Day one get Marriages with Austria and Castile. Keep an eye on Denmark's willingness to accept an alliance, once you've killed a few vassal and siege stacks they'll often be willing to ally with you without a marriage, which would be great (you'll eventually want two relations slots for PU'd France and vassal Scotland). Denmark and pals aren't super helpful in fighting France since the AI is pretty terrible at projecting force across bodies of water, but they're not useless. Immediately on December 12th, get alliances with Castile and Austria, if Castile has set you as a rival you'll need to restart, thankfully you'll know within a month of the start!
You definitely want the +5 Diplomatic Reputation adviser and the +25% Fort Defense adviser is less common but also very useful for helping your continental provinces hold out longer.

Once you've evacuated your armies and secured your alliances, fabricate a claim on Ayrshire and keep an eye on the French siege stacks. You can easily snipe smaller stacks before the province is captured by sending your transports directly into port, once the province is captured you'll have to do a landing and that usually takes long enough you'll get caught trying to escape and crushed. Wear them down where you can, after you finish your claim on Scotland, declare war but DON'T check the box to call any allies, this is key. You need to manually Call to Arms each of them, they'll ALL accept and enter both the HYW and your war with Scotland. Take Ayrshire from Scotland but don't core it, you can vassalize them once the truce runs out and sell it back. Now it's you, Portugal, Castile, Austria, and probably Denmark against France and not too difficult to stomp them!

Surviving as Byzantium:

Soviet_Russia posted:

The 1.4 patch changed it so that Royal Marriages would no longer end when of the married countries entered a Regency. Though I believe they still end when there is a change in ruling Dynasty, I've never checked to see exactly what conditions will result in the loss of a RM, or whether getting a new Dynasty will get you a new set of RMs. If you have Diplomatic Ideas maxed out or are the Papal controller you will not suffer any negative penalties for manually breaking a RM. (maybe -1 prestige?)

The most successful starts I've had are still permutations of the "Ally Serbia Day 1, Attack Albania day 2" strategy but there are a lot of ways to go about this, the important thing is simply to get a truce with the Ottomans at all cost to buy more time as you secure Alliances from powerful Christian countries close enough to help you. (Poland/Lithuania are probably the easiest to get involved in your wars, especially when they are combined by a Union. Austria, Aragon/Spain, Venice, and sometimes I've even heard of the Mamluks helping out but I've rarely been able to get any of them in on the crucial early wars)

Step By Step this is my most sure-fire way to start a Byzantine game.

Day 1
Load up the game, Make your leader a general, buy an admiral, and check to see if Serbia will ally you (do not accept a Royal Marriage offer from them just yet). If Serbia wont ally you or you get absolutely terrible leaders consider reloading for a more generous starting situation. When you're happy with your beginnings send Serbia an alliance offer, build 1 regiment of infantry in three provinces(you want a final total of 1k Cav and 7k Infantry), assign your leader to the army (you can use your heir if he is a much better commander but losing the heir can result in pretender wars as your leader is already a little old to make a new batch of heirs) and your Admiral to the fleet, load up the 4k troops you can fit in your fleet and sail for Zeta (Serbian coast near Albania). Declare the Ottomans as your Rival (this will get you extra prestige when you win and Poland, Lithuania, and Austria all occasionally declare them rivals too getting you improved relations) You'll have ~20 ducats left at this point, and you can either use it to queue up some galleys to bolster your fleet or to hire an adviser (early on the only adviser I find worth the money are military ones, +morale +reinforcement rate and +manpower modifier are all very good but you really just want to stay as far ahead or on par with the ottomans as you can on mil tactics/new units)
Advance one day

Day 2
Serbia should have accepted the alliance so send your fleet to land troops in their port. At this point check on Albania, 99/100 they will be unallied but as of patch 1.3 Aragon will almost always ally them eventually even as they are getting crushed by the OE, I've never seen them allied by day 2 but it could happen, if it does I would restart. Declare war on Albania DO NOT CALL ALLIES you will see why soon. Unpause and keep the game on low speed as you really dont want to be wasting any time.

The First Albanian-Ottoman-Byzantine War
I'm sure the Sultan in Edirne must chuckle to himself every time he sees the puny Greeks contest him for what must certainly be the poorest province in Europe. But Greek-Turk hostilities do not begin and a de-facto alliance against the Albanians holds for now. Get your entire 8k army into Zeta and send a diplomat to either Ragusa or Bosnia to get Military Access, as soon as your troops are safely outside Serbian territory, park your fleet off the coast of Albania blockading the coastal province. The blockade should get you enough warscore to vassalize them, make sure you have both of your diplomats at home and ready for work before you send the peace offer.

Vassalize Albania and demand as many ducats as you can get (sometimes they wont quite accept, wait a few months and let them realize the hopelessness of their war with the Turk and they'll come around.) As soon as Albania is your subject you will inherit their war with the Ottomans. This is a war you can not win so pause on the first day to lose as little as possible. Hide your money by queuing up galleys or infantries and use your 2nd diplomat to sue for peace immediately and accept their demands. Before patch 1.4 they would usually accept 30-60 ducats or sometimes even a 'concede defeat' option, since CoP came out I've never seen them accept this again. Now they seem to always demand the same thing, release Athens and Albania as sovereign nations. It may sound like a bad idea to go into a war knowing you'll only lose a vassal and everything you won from the first war, but you have cores on Athens and Albania, and this forced release ends up speeding up the re-integration process quite a bit.

The First Byzantine-Ottoman Truce
So, you just lost your only vassal, you're down to 3 provinces, the clock is ticking 5 years down until the Turks come for you, and your army is hiding with their tails between their legs in Ragusa or Bosnia, what now?

Now is when the Phoenix rises.

As soon as your diplomat returns with the Olive Branch from Edirne, you send him with a sword to Serbia. Those Balkan Bastards didnt want to march to war with you when the Ottomans attacked your vassal Albania (or so Byzantine revisionists will insist) so declare war on your first Balkan subject-to-be and make a dash right for their main army. Your 8,000 troops at full morale (your troops should never fight before this, so you dont have to keep the budget full all game, just make sure they're ready to strike when the time comes) should be able to wipe their unsuspecting stack of 5-6 almost always sitting at half morale or lower in the Serbian Capitol. When their army is dealt with split into 4 groups of 2 to siege down all their provinces. As soon as the diplomacy cooldown with the Ottomans run out, send another emmissary to Edirne to 'send a warning' to the Ottomans not to declare war, as you will have a truce you shouldn't even get called to war against them but this will prevent them from doing the same to you for the duration of the warning (10-20 years?)

During the sieges you may want to send one diplomat to Poland to begin improving relations. Check their diplomacy page for what countries they have declared as rivals, They will almost always have the Teutonic Knights as a rival, but that's not the best use of a rival slot for you. If they have Bohemia declared as a rival (50/50) this is much better because Bohemia is a common rival of Austria and Hungary as well, either way you'll need the +20 relations so set one up. You may also want to check Bosnia/Wallachia's attitudes toward forming an alliance with you, they often declare rivals with Serbia and will like you jumping in to show them what for (for a very brief window considering what we'll do next)

When you have fully sieged down Serbia you will want to only annex Zeta (gotta get those fleet limits up as fast as possible) and vassalize the rest of Serbia. If you managed to get another Balkan state to ally with you during this war, send them a call to arms. The AI will always refuse a call to arms after 60 days of war, but them refusing will still get you the same casus belli you just used on Serbia. You can then use that CB to pull the same trick on Bosnia/Wallachia. With the new changes to vassal feeding you can still feed all of Bosnia or Wallachia to your vassal Serbia if the Serbian Duke/King has a militaristic personality (you can now see the personalities in the diplomacy page for each nation, Warlike/Militaristic is a little hatchet in a box)

Depending on luck with sieges this war should have lasted no more than a year or two, keep an eye on Poland and get a Royal Marriage as soon as relations are high enough, shortly after that you should be able to get an alliance (it takes ~3 years to get the full +100 opinion boost and depending on a few variables you should need +60-90 along with the boost from common Rivals and RM but all that gets you a huge army to come defend the empire (I've seen the Pol-Lit PU machine send several 20-30k stacks at the Ottomans) If PU has not formed by this time you might consider sending a diplomat to start currying favor in Lithuania (the PU event sometimes just doesn't fire, but you can still get both of them to come to war with you, it just takes time and another diplo relations slot)

This is when the 'formula' of my opener wears thin. But the rogues gallery stays the same, it's all about picking the weakest target and pouncing on them for all they've got. Your Polish Alliance will act as a great deterrent for war with the Ottomans, the biggest mistake you can make at this point is looking at the ledger and your alliances huge troop disparity vs the Ottomans and attacking them when the truce is up. They have friends. Crimea, Algiers, the "Qunluyu" countries. And knowing your luck they probably already had the Janissary events fire. Let them come to you. Keep your manpower as high as possible, keep relations up with Poland, and when they attack for Constantinople, trap them in Europe while your allies run them through a Slavic/Polish/Belorussian meatgrinder a few times and your own troops sip daiquiris in Cyprus. Speaking of Cyprus, these are the people you should be declaring war on in the meanwhile.

Greek OPMs
These are the small islands and counties that share your Greek/Orthodox population and or you have a core on in the Eastern Med. Albania, Athens, Trebizond, Cyprus, Rhodes, Naxos, Crete, Corfu, and Kaffa

Most of these places start out under someone else's protection; Venice, Mamluks, Austria, or Georgia. They will however occasionally break off and rebel and join you without a war, this can be helped along by the diplomatic support rebels option, or just prayed for. They do warrant constant monitoring though, as with a little vigilance you will almost always find a few of these places vulnerable and it's a great opportunity to mop up prestige and an extra province or two.

The Balkans
If there are any independent states left here you should always be on the lookout to snatch them up. Not much to say here, they're easy targets who very rarely form alliances outside of each other. Early on if you get every Serbian province they will become an accepted culture but the window for that closes quickly as there just isn't enough base tax there. You may want to convert culture in a few of the richer nodes (Munteia/Serbia/Zeta/Ragusa/Dalmatia) and leave the rest.

Hungary
With Poland or Austria as an ally, it is pretty easy to put Hungary to the sword. As they often ally -> vassalize Ragusa it will be impossible to expand West without meeting the Hungarians on the field. With 1-2 allies you can just hide your armies in Greece until your friends clear out a the big armies and begin your work sieging down all the turf you want. If you already took Dalmatia from Venice I would suggest releasing Croatia as a vassal before doing this as you can easily get all Hungary's Crotian provinces in one war (including Ragusa) and maybe one or two more that could be fed to a Militaristic Serbia or Croatia.

Venice
Your first Big Boy war. Austria or Hungary sometimes help in these wars if you chose to ally them, but ultimately you will have to beat them yourself at sea to be able to get anything out of this war, and if you can do that you can probably take them 1v1. The Venetian Fleet is very competent and usually has a 0/18/10/8 stack, give or take a few ships. The best way to take them is to park your fleet somewhere in the Adriatic/Ionian or the Straits of Messina and wait until their trade fleet (and hopefully just the trade fleet) lands on top of you before declaring war. You will still want at least 18-20 galleys (trade ships will not pay for themselves this early on for Byzantium) and 6-8 cogs along with a talented admiral or naval morale advisor(the extra dip points can also be used to hire a new better admiral). But it is amazingly profitable as once you crush their fleet send a few regiments to siege down their safe harbor and kick the snot out of them a few more times. You will be rewarded with up to a dozen new ships (at this stage I usually disband the expensive trade ships to save on costs and maximize my military fleet) and free reign to siege down the numerous Venetian provinces where you have a core. If left alone for long enough, Venice will often invade either Albania, Cyprus, Athens, or diplo-vassalize The Knights of Rhodes, so depending on how successful they've been you might not even be able to fleece them in a single war. But in most of my games, the crushing of Venice is sweet payback for memories of the Third Crusade and the Latin Empire that gets me one step closer to fighting The powerful Turks. Istria and Dalmatia are rich provinces on par with Athens (5 base tax?) and still just outside the HRE's grasp to keep them off your back for another few decades. I would recommend against taking any HRE provinces this early in the game as you will have no choice but to turn them over. Rather wait until Venice is down to 2 provinces and make a vassal of them. Austria is usually fastidious about removing Venetian cores they ought to still have a few. (don't Annex Venice as it will be ages before you can affordably core+convert it.

Aragon
Unless you can get Castille on your side, never to go war with Aragon, they will shipwreck your fleets and leave you helpless to defend your home. But if you've got the allies to take them a successful war can be very lucrative, it could get you a vassal Naples or Sicily while making sure that Spain or other Western powers wont dominate the Mediterranean a century down the line.

Italy
Rome, the Ultimate target for any Byzantine Reconquista, and her surrounding provinces are within your grasp, even before you retake Greece and the Balkans, Italia is sectioned off amongst various nations, none of them any larger than you are for the moment. Tuscany, The Papal State, Ancona, Naples(independent), Siena, Mantua, and Genoa in particular are vulnerable either because they are puny or not protected by the HRE. Declaring war directly on an HRE minor is suicide this early as the Emp will almost always defend them, but there are a few tricks to get around that.

Attacking a Non HRE ally. Commonly in my games, Venice will find an Ally in Tuscany, the Papal State, or Genoa, though this makes the initial hurdle of overcoming their fleet more difficult (those extra 5-10 ships make a huge difference) this just means that you can get 100% warscore worth of provinces twice from the same war. For this to work you'll usually need enough cogs to transport the bulk of your army at once (8-12) but making a vassal out of Tuscany, taking Kaffa from Genoa, or just getting your toe in the boot is often worth it, as Italy will not stay this divided forever. If Naples breaks off it is very cheap to core and convert those poorer South Italian provinces, while anything you take north of Roma should probably be left to vassals. Having Western Tech group vassals can be very helpful. Be mindful though, as Catholic vassals who are given Roma (not even sure if they would accept such an offer post 1.4 patch) receive an event of the Pope demanding the province returned to him and seem to accept it more often than not.

The Mamluks
As they begin the game protecting the independence of Cyprus, and holding 3 of the 5 Patriarchates you will no doubt eventually go to war with the Mamluks as well.
Their fleet is comparable to Venice at the start of the game, but they are rich enough to build a much larger fleet as time drags on, even mixing in tall ships with the usual galley/tradeship Mediterranean fare. Scout them out, and if you can take them at sea, go ahead and declare war on Cyprus. If the Venetians or Mamluks have already taken Cyprus and it is no longer independent, it's best to postpone war with the Mamluks until you're more established, and either war with Venice for it, or support Patriot/Orthodox rebels in Cyprus.

The Barbary Coast
Tripoli and Tunisia aren't the most helpful of wars, but hey, with this rough of a start you should take what you can get. The +dr slots from the Diplomacy ideas tree (which I highly recommend as Byzantium as a first idea) means you can afford to keep sub-optimal vassals. Signs of weakness are usually if the Mamluks are having a bad start these two nations will either break free or stay independent of them. Both can be vassalized in a single war, and beyond the monthly revenue their fleets can really help out in a pinch. If you eventually go on to getting religious ideas it can be easy to annex them, convert them and re-release them as independent Orthodox nations, or just releasing them if you need new relations after they've served their purpose.

Whatever Muslim/Horde country that gobbled up Georgia
Georgia doesnt always get dogpiled right away, hell I've even seen it dominate the region one out of a few dozen games. But it is very common that either Crimea, Aq Qunluyo, Qara Qunluyu, or even Candar snag one or most of the Georgian provinces. If it is Candar (Northern Turkish Minor) that made it so far East they must've gone through Trebizond first, so you can declare war on them with the CB for your core province and take Trebizond + Imereti(coastal neighbor to Treb and part of Georgia) from them in a war. Fabricate a claim on the nearest weak horde/muslim country to hold a piece of Georgia. As soon as your claim is ready release Georgia as a vassal and wait for a good time to declare war. In the war you can return cores to Georgia to plump them up. Circassia is an incredibly strong province as it is the only gold mine you might reasonably get your hands on soon. (Tirol in Austria is the next closest but it'll be awhile before you can beat Austria in the Alps)

The Ottoman Empire
Every Byzantine game begins, and sometimes ends with a war against the Turk. Pray that enough of your allies answer the Call to Arms when the time comes, they must be the hammer to your fleet's anvil. When the Ottomans declare war on your, the CB will almost always be for your Capitol city, this is good! They will bring troops into Edirne or Burgas before the war begins, they know your fleets would block them out otherwise, but usually they dont bring everything over at once. Blocking the strait will prevent any retreat or reinforcements, and give your Polish/Lithuanian/Autrian allies a single target to dogpile. The biggest advantage to letting the OE declare on you is that they are less likely to bring allies. Crimea still joins in sometimes, but Algiers/Qunluyu and whatever other countries they have allied usually dont join offensive wars for the Ottomans. If Crimea joins the war, the AI Lith/Pol will almost always rush to them while Constantinople is sieged, this isnt always a bad turn of events. If you can force a separate peace with Crimea that annuls treaties with the Ottomans, they will not be able to take the long walk across the Black Sea, and whatever troops they have left in Europe is the sum total of lives you must take to reclaim Greece and the Southern Balkans.

The war isnt always this clean though, as long as you have naval superiority there is always a path to victory. If you have used your navy well early on in the war, you should have crushed their fleet entirely, this is hugely beneficial as it allows you to split your fleet and scout the location and troop movements of the Ottomans, while maximizing your blockades. With the time it takes to march across the Black sea while you are hopping back and forth in a matter of days lets you siege provinces in either Greece or Anatolia even when you cannot defeat any army the ottomans have on land. Keep them marching back and forth, blockade his ports, siege the cities back and forth until both of you are at such high war exhaustion that rebels are liberating your cities and conquering his! (dont worry about all the Turkish national rebels in Anatolia, they are stuck in Anatolia forever (will never march around the Black Sea), but as soon as you have Orthodox/Greek Patriots you can hold the Strait just a little longer and you can still pull off what must be one of the most desperate victories in the game. While you can only demand provinces you have sieged yourself (not rebel controlled seiges) rebels can make any province in the game flip to you including Edirne, so rebels capture the capitol you might want to keep the war going a year or two and you can kick them out of Europe in the first war (this rarely ever happens, and tends to be a very messy war with a lot of consequences economy/manpower wise)

Burgundian Succession:

Pellisworth posted:

The Burgundian Succession and You!

The Burgundian Succession is a complex and commonly seen event that fires early in the game and usually (but not always!) divides Burgundy between France and Austria. If you're in Western or Central Europe, it's probably worth keeping an eye on Burgundy before the year 1500, you might just be able to inherit a bunch of those provinces. If you're the Holy Roman Emperor or have ambitions to become emperor it's even more important to take an active role in determining the fate of Burgundy.

How does the event work? It can fire before 1500 in one of two ways, either Burgundy is at peace, heirless, and in a regency, or Burgundy is at war (higher chance for negative warscore). In either case, all of Burgundy's land is split between France and the Emperor (usually), though it's possible for other nations to inherit the Netherlands. Here are the requirements for the event to fire and the list of priorities on who gets the land:

Must be before the year 1500
Either at war or at peace and have an heirless regency
France must NOT be at war with the Emperor <--- this is important

French region provinces always go to France

HRE provinces go to the Emperor IF they are Austria with 6+ provinces or anyone else with 8+, if that's not the case the priority is
Neighboring HRE member with 3+ provinces and a Royal Marriage
Any HRE member with 3+ provinces and a Royal Marriage
Castile/Spain, if Royal Marriage

Most of the time the Burgundian lands will split between France and the Emperor (usually Austria at this point). However, if the Emperor is a smaller nation, keep a close eye on Burgundy's marriages, you may very well be able to score the Netherlands as another HRE member or Spain. Additionally, the event will never fire when France and the Emperor are at war, so if you want to keep Burgundy intact as the Emperor simply ally with them and accept their calls to arms against France, they're almost guaranteed to survive past 1500 (Austria specifically gets a CB to PU Burgundy past 1500 so it's usually best to ally with them against France).

Edit: just to clarify, this event ONLY fires for AI controlled Burgundy. You don't have to worry about it if you're playing Burgundy yourself. Which I should really do sometime, just to see how viable replacing most of my army with mercs would be

Last Emperor fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Feb 7, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 15:44

Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

DLC
Paradox is attempting to emulate the same successful dlc strategy that it used in Crusader Kings 2, that is to say, to continue releasing small and cheaper unit & music packs as well as also offering larger 'expansion' type content. Alongside this they will continue to things into patches that are free and, like before, if you play multiplayer only the host needs to have access to the dlc for you to be able to play with it.

Major Content

Conquest of Paradise - Aside from a bunch new Native American factions, new mechanics for them and the ability to play as colonial nations CoP is the first Paradox dlc that allows the creation of a random map. Specifically, you can toggle to have a 'random new world' when starting a new game which will then remake the Americas from the ground up, often into very unusual looking shapes.

Minor Content

American Dream
Purple Phoenix
Star and Crescent

Unit & Cosmetic Packs

100 Years War Unit Pack
Conquistadors Unit Pack
Horsemen of the Crescent Unit Pack
Winged Hussars Unit Pack
Native Americans Unit Pack
Native Americans II Unit Pack
Colonial British and French Unit Pack
Muslim Advisor Portraits
National Monuments Cosmetic Pack
National Monuments II Cosmetic Pack

Music Packs

Conquest of Constantinople
Songs of the New World
Songs of Yultide

Jackson Taus posted:

On the (inevitable) question of "which DLC should I buy":

Conquest of Paradise - buy if you want a randomized New World or to play as Natives or Colonies (ie Cuba or Thirteen Colonies, not Castile)

Flavor Packs (American Dream, Purple Phoenix, and Star and Crescent) - worth a couple bucks if you want to play as USA/Byzantium/Muslims and have a few special events.

UI Packs (National Monuments, Unit Packs) - they look nice, but they don't really impact anything. Grab them on a 50% off sale (should be one a few times a year).

Music Packs - It's only a few songs (about 10 minutes) of music. If you like the EU4 score, grab them, otherwise don't.

Mods

Europa Gooniversalis

Alikchi posted:

Europa Gooniversalis is a goon-designed alternate history mod, with contributions from Alikchi, Last Emperor, Dibujante, Obliterati and others. Originally a CK2 conversion, months of work have made it more resemble one of the old EU3 Miscmods alt-history scenarios. We're inspired by the Miscmods/EU3+ tradition of making the game more fun and interesting without bloating it up with needless tags and provinces. Features include:

A totally retooled scenario, with many areas "balkanized" to make outcomes more interesting and unpredictable, and make more nations viable powers.
Lots and lots of new nations, including almost a dozen in China alone.
Non-western tech penalties have been lessened, and the monarch point penalties for some tech groups totally removed.
New religions (from the CK2 religion converter): Teotl (Aztec), Inca, Romuva, Zoroastrian, Norse, Tengri, and Fetishist.
New idea sets for: Swabia, Azerbaijan, Wales, Bosnia, Ajuuraan, Bhutan, Occitain nations, Bulgaria, Pannonia, Magna Graecia, Khazaria, Nanman, Shu, Wei, Wu, Yuan, and Kansu, with more coming.
Extra formable tags, lots of them retooled versions of stuff from Wiz's EU3+: Turkestan, Maghreb (a North African union), both normal and Muslim China, Great Albion (Scottish UK analogue), Occitania, Iberia, Arabia, Illyria, Belgium, and more.

Last Emperor fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Feb 26, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 15:44

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

This game sucks up way too much of my time. Anyone who likes strategy games can get at least 100 hours of solid entertainment out of this, and a lot of people can get more.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 15:52

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

quote:

Most of the time you will be playing the game in either the terrain mapmode or, like myself, using the political mapmode which colours provinces based on their owner.

I think you mean 99.9% of the time you'll be playing in political mapmode. Just like everyone does. :v:

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:11

Qwo: Sep 27, 2011

Everyone except the evil bastards at Paradox.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:13

Orv: May 4, 2011

Qwo posted:

Everyone except the evil bastards at Paradox.

The crazy comes from inside the dev team.

Nice OP Emperor.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:16

Beamed: Nov 26, 2010; Then you have a responsibility that no man has ever faced. You have your fear which could become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.

Qwo posted:

Everyone except the evil bastards at Paradox.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: I'm convinced they play in Terrain mapmode because the artists demand they be recognized for their work.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:16

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

Every new game we get this sort of foolishness:

quote:

But it�s the amount of information presented neatly, without the need for switches between map modes, that is most intriguing. For the first time, I can imagine playing a Paradox game with the terrain view active rather than flicking between various political and diplomatic options.

It's never true!

Just surrender, Paradox. Political mode forever.

Beamed posted:

I've said it before but I'll say it again: I'm convinced they play in Terrain mapmode because the artists demand they be recognized for their work.

What's wrong, artist man, you've been pouting all day?

:smith:

... nothing.

Seriously? Because-

I SAW YOU! I SAW YOU PLAYING IN POLITICAL MODE! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I WORKED ON THOSE TREES?! [bursts into tears]

Fintilgin fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jan 31, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:18

Qwo: Sep 27, 2011

Johan, please weigh in on this important issue.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:19

Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

Orv posted:

The crazy comes from inside the dev team.

Nice OP Emperor.

Thanks, going to be spending the weekend trying to get things a bit more organised.

As I mentioned in the other thread if people have anything they want me to include let me know. I'd love to see some more useful guides/strategies to put in as well as cool mods, or questions/answers for the FAQ. Any neat screenshots would also certainly be welcome, I've still got a few I'd like to post up too.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:19

EightDeer: Dec 2, 2011

Last Emperor posted:

DLC
<snip>

Nitpicking: the National Monuments DLCs are just graphical, they don't offer gameplay changes like AD, PP and SaC. I'd recommend renaming the Unit Packs category to Cosmetic or Graphical and listing the Monuments there.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:37

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

Qwo posted:

Johan, please weigh in on this important issue.

Makes games about painting the map Your Color.

Tries to discourage people from using the map mode that shows Your Color.

Calls company "Paradox". :c00l:

/Johan

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:44

Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

EightDeer posted:

Nitpicking: the National Monuments DLCs are just graphical, they don't offer gameplay changes like AD, PP and SaC. I'd recommend renaming the Unit Packs category to Cosmetic or Graphical and listing the Monuments there.

Good point, I'll do that.

I need to think of a better name than 'minor' as well. I was thinking event packs maybe?

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:49

Beamed: Nov 26, 2010; Then you have a responsibility that no man has ever faced. You have your fear which could become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.

So hey, uh apparently EU4 and DLC is only $10 right now.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 16:59

ZearothK: Aug 25, 2008; I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

I'd suggest linking to the EU4 Wiki for general information and pointing to its modding page on the mods section as well, since every one in a while someone asks about tools or instructions on how to edit the game.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:00

EightDeer: Dec 2, 2011

Last Emperor posted:

Good point, I'll do that.

I need to think of a better name than 'minor' as well. I was thinking event packs maybe?

Actually, I think using the category names Major Expansions (just CoP right now) and Minor Expansions (AD, PP, SaC) work well to convey the fact that these are the DLCs that give gameplay.

If you really don't like the Major/Minor distinction, you could keep Event Packs category as-is and rename Major to Expansions.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:11

Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

ZearothK posted:

I'd suggest linking to the EU4 Wiki for general information and pointing to its modding page on the mods section as well, since every one in a while someone asks about tools or instructions on how to edit the game.

Done!

Still need to trawl through the Workshop/Mod section on the PI forums.

EightDeer posted:

Actually, I think using the category names Major Expansions (just CoP right now) and Minor Expansions (AD, PP, SaC) work well to convey the fact that these are the DLCs that give gameplay.

If you really don't like the Major/Minor distinction, you could keep Event Packs category as-is and rename Major to Expansions.

I went ahead with the former. I'll get some proper write-ups of the other dlcs done as well. The CoP one is terrible short right now + I need to distinguish between what you get in the dlc and what was available just from the patch.

Also links to any ongoing/useful LPs might be something worth having?

I thought I should crosspost this from our PGS thread, the Multiplayer schedule for this weekend:

Tonight/Friday - 8PM GMT - ??? I don't know if we're doing anything here, I'd like to if possible so I'll hang around in chat.

Tomorrow/Saturday - 8PM GMT - EG We're continuing our Europa Gooniversalis game from last Saturday. As always there's still always room for more people to play, I believe we still don't have anyone in the HRE for instance and we have a growing France that needs carving up. Savegame

Sunday - 5PM GMT - HRE Continuing our long running HRE game. We had some new people join last week outside of the HRE and that was all fine and good. We are also looking for someone to manage our current Emperor and eastern superpower of Prussia. Savegame

Last Emperor fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Jan 31, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:11

Kanthulhu: Apr 8, 2009; NO ONE SPOIL GAME OF THRONES FOR ME!

IF SOMEONE TELLS ME THAT OBERYN MARTELL AND THE MOUNTAIN DIE THIS SEASON, I'M GOING TO BE PISSED.

BUT NOT HALF AS PISSED AS I'D BE IF SOMEONE WERE TO SPOIL VARYS KILLING A LANISTER!!!

(Dany shits in a field)

"Is Their Multiplayer"? is wrong grammarwise.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:15

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Kanthulhu posted:

"Is Their Multiplayer"? is wrong grammarwise.

"grammar-wise" :science:

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:19

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Also, Tuesday the 4th of February at 8:15PM PST is the continuation of the other Europa Gooniversalis game (the third screenshot in the OP's list of multiplayer screenshots).

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:20

Last Emperor: Oct 30, 2009

Grammar issue fixed.

I need to go around to updating the stuff in the PGS thread with what our current running games are.

Suffice to say I'm open to starting a new continuation game tonight if there's enough interest!

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:30

Jackson Taus: Oct 19, 2011

Last Emperor posted:

DLC
Paradox is attempting to emulate the same successful dlc strategy that it used in Crusader Kings 2, that is to say, to continue releasing small and cheaper unit & music packs as well as also offering larger 'expansion' type content. Alongside this they will continue to things into patches that are free and, like before, if you play multiplayer only the host needs to have access to the dlc for you to be able to play with it.

On the (inevitable) question of "which DLC should I buy":

Conquest of Paradise - buy if you want a randomized New World or to play as Natives or Colonies (ie Cuba or Thirteen Colonies, not Castile)
Flavor Packs (American Dream, Purple Phoenix, and Star and Crescent) - worth a couple bucks if you want to play as USA/Byzantium/Muslims and have a few special events.
UI Packs (National Monuments, Unit Packs) - they look nice, but they don't really impact anything. Grab them on a 50% off sale (should be one a few times a year).
Music Packs - It's only a few songs (about 10 minutes) of music. If you like the EU4 score, grab them, otherwise don't.

Last Emperor posted:

As I mentioned in the other thread if people have anything they want me to include let me know. I'd love to see some more useful guides/strategies to put in as well as cool mods, or questions/answers for the FAQ. Any neat screenshots would also certainly be welcome, I've still got a few I'd like to post up too.

My most recent games have been Gelre->Netherlands, Great Britain, and Portugal, so this is all from that perspective. Feel free to chop this up/remix it/generalize it in whatever OP or guide.

The "beat up on Mali/Aztecs for 5000g" strategy is dead, but 1.4 has sort of brought part of it back. You can now beat up on American Native OPMs for 400g-1000g. If you're England/Spain/Castile and you're first to colonize over there, you can grab a Conquistador and a 6-7 stack and just chain declare on them. Then you wait your 5 year truce and re-declare and annex them (or let your colony do it). If you're big enough, the inflation hit won't be bad because it's a function of your tax base (and a few thousand gold is worth 75 Admin Points to reduce the inflation). Also on colonizers and gold, the gold provinces in North and West Africa are Sus (Morocco), Bambuk and Bure (both Mali). They're Sunni and so hard to convert, and since Bambuk/Bure are high tax base while Sus has Berber Traditions, they can be kind of expensive to core/convert, but once you do they're worth 40g/year (more with Workshop) and are un-impacted by "distant overseas" penalties. Early game this can be painful, but if you find yourself with admin points mid-game it might be worthwhile, especially if you need land in those trade nodes anyhow. Mexican gold is worth a lot less now because it goes to your colony instead of to you.

If you're playing a trading/colonizing power, dominating your home trade node is crucial. As Spain, it doesn't do a lot of good to be dragging in trade from all over the world only to share 40% of it with Portugal. Similarly, as England if you bring trade through the North Sea and into London you need to (a) lockdown London from Netherlands spamming 900 light ships and (b) dominate the North Sea node so Norway and Hansa's fleet don't steal half your trade. You do this buy building a crapload of trade-power buildings in these nodes and grabbing the Trade Centers (+5 TP +1 navy) and Estuaries (+5 TP). As Spain/Portugal you may want to consider sucking it up and grabbing Tangiers early for this (before the other gets it) and Oran as well.

The biggest Trade Power drain is actually a cluster of OPMs. Every OPM gets 5 TP from their capital and has a merchant, so while a 3PM might have 8 TP, three OPMs will have 5-6 each in their capital node. In North America, this means that wiping up the tiny tribes is pretty clutch in terms of moving trade, and for Netherlands it means you want to cut down on the OPM/TPMs in the Antwerpen node. Also with the new Trade Nodes, Western Europe node is super-clutch, since you can park a ton of light ships there and siphon off everyone else's incoming trade. As England, you can avoid this by bringing trade along West Africa -> Caribbean -> Chesapeake -> St Lawrence -> North Sea, and Spain/Portugal can go through Timbuktu(?) to avoid Western Europe.

Now that you don't need an Idea to use ADM to cut inflation, it's a lot less scary to take inflation. I know a lot of EU players can be adverse to inflation spirals but it seems pretty manageable now.

A common diplomatic issue is "Country A is allied to myself and Country B, how can I attack Country B without Country A intervening and costing me my alliance?" Normally a country in that situation will aid the allied defender instead of the allied attacker. The trick is to get Country A (but not Country B) in a war with you first - attack some random minor power with any CB and call Country A in on your side. Wait a month and then attack Country B. So long as you don't totally screw it up (by attacking a minor who calls in France or something) you can now beat on Country B and win that war and then White Peace on Country A afterwards.

"Vassal feeding" is a key mechanic that's somewhat counter-intuitive. Basically if you conquer land you have to do the coring and maybe religious conversions and between that and overextension it can be very expensive to expand. However, if you sell the provinces to a vassal, they can do the hard work and when you diplo-annex them you get the cores for free (and maybe the religious conversions if you're lucky). Paradox has cut down on this a bit by making AIs a bit stricter in terms of what land you can sell them - vassal Brittany isn't going to buy North African provinces off you. The mechanics are complex, but if the vassal's king is militaristic or they have low over-extension or they have a core/claim on the land or it's adjacent land of the same religion they're more likely to accept. Note that you can do this to some degree with colonies automatically - if you grab land in the Caribbean off of a rival, that land goes to your subject colony down there. So now coring and converting Jamaica is your subject's problem, not yours (and they have their own A/D/M pool and missionary).

# ? Jan 31, 2014 17:44

Bandanna: Nov 3, 2005; Bulletproof

Oh man am I itching for another EU4 music pack. That wood flute line is starting to get to me.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 18:58

AAAAA! Real Muenster: Jul 12, 2008; My QB is also named Bort

Excellent OP Mr. Emperor.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:04

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Bandanna posted:

Oh man am I itching for another EU4 music pack. That wood flute line is starting to get to me.

I slap some of the EU3 music in there just to fill more time. Love me some A Cruce Victoria.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:13

Jackson Taus: Oct 19, 2011

Another quick thing I thought of: Rivaling matters. If you pick someone as your rival, you can embargo them without trade efficiency penalty, and you get reduced DIP costs in peace deals. You also get a solid relations bonus (grows +1/month, caps at +20) with anyone else who set that country as a rival. Rivals only cost 10 DIP to change, so remember to change them frequently. If you're taking two territories off someone, it's worth it to rival them because even if you have to swap rivals back afterwards, you still come out like 14 DIP ahead.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:17

Baudin: Dec 31, 2009

Last Emperor posted:

As I mentioned in the other thread if people have anything they want me to include let me know. I'd love to see some more useful guides/strategies to put in as well as cool mods, or questions/answers for the FAQ.

I'd appreciate country specific guides for the hard starts (winning the hundred years war, Granada, and Byzantium in particular stand out as non obvious wins)

Jackson Taus posted:

"Vassal feeding" is a key mechanic that's somewhat counter-intuitive. Basically if you conquer land you have to do the coring and maybe religious conversions and between that and overextension it can be very expensive to expand. However, if you sell the provinces to a vassal, they can do the hard work and when you diplo-annex them you get the cores for free (and maybe the religious conversions if you're lucky). Paradox has cut down on this a bit by making AIs a bit stricter in terms of what land you can sell them - vassal Brittany isn't going to buy North African provinces off you. The mechanics are complex, but if the vassal's king is militaristic or they have low over-extension or they have a core/claim on the land or it's adjacent land of the same religion they're more likely to accept. Note that you can do this to some degree with colonies automatically - if you grab land in the Caribbean off of a rival, that land goes to your subject colony down there. So now coring and converting Jamaica is your subject's problem, not yours (and they have their own A/D/M pool and missionary).

An extension of this:
If you're relatively stable and have a hostile neighbour you cannot quite afford to vassalize in a war (it's based on their base tax, once you hit ~30 or so they cannot be vassalized without a mission at all) you can take enough provinces to vassalize them in the next war (once you get enough provinces in the first war the peace menu will show they have less than 100% war score requirement for vassalization).

Wait for the 5 year truce to end, DO NOT CORE their provinces. Declare war again, vassalize, and sell their cores back to them. This works particularly well in North Africa which has a nasty coring penalty due to Berber Traditions.

Baudin fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jan 31, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:28

Fuligin: Oct 27, 2010; wait what the fuck??

Baudin posted:

I'd appreciate country specific guides for the hard starts (winning the hundred years war, Granada, and Byzantium in particular stand out as non obvious wins)

Alongside this it would be nice to note fun starts/starter nations other than the ones listed ingame: Burgundy -> Netherlands, Brandenburg -> Prussia, uniting Japan, etc.

Fuligin fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 31, 2014

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:38

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

PittTheElder posted:

I slap some of the EU3 music in there just to fill more time. Love me some A Cruce Victoria.

I keep intending to mod it so CKII music plays in addition to the regular music for the first ~100 years or so, and then Victoria 2 music also plays for the last ~100 years or so.

But, y'know... :effort:

(also I've been playing other stuff lately)

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:40

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

So is it just Steam being screwy or is there some reason mods I'm grabbing from the workship won't show up in my launcher?

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:46

Captain Mediocre: Oct 14, 2005; Saving lives and money!

Baudin posted:

I'd appreciate country specific guides for the hard starts (winning the hundred years war, Granada, and Byzantium in particular stand out as non obvious wins)

A link to the excellent country guides on the wiki might be easier. It doesn't have a comprehensive guide for every country but what is there is pretty handy.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:48

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Mister Adequate posted:

So is it just Steam being screwy or is there some reason mods I'm grabbing from the workship won't show up in my launcher?

Steam and EU4 don't play well together in that regard. To get a mod to download or update off of Steam workshop, you need to start EU4, get to the launcher, launch vanilla EU4, then open up the single or multiplayer menu, then close EU4, then start EU4, then go to the launcher and pray that it's there.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:49

Cowcatcher: Dec 23, 2005; OUR PEOPLE WERE BORN OF THE SKY

We should have a Conquest of Paradise contest

First one to generate Dong Island wins

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:01

MLKQUOTEMACHINE: Oct 22, 2012; Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill

Beamed posted:

So hey, uh apparently EU4 and DLC is only $10 right now.

So does this bundle have Conquest of Paradise included?

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:18

Baudin: Dec 31, 2009

Captain Mediocre posted:

A link to the excellent country guides on the wiki might be easier. It doesn't have a comprehensive guide for every country but what is there is pretty handy.

Honestly several of the guides goons have come up with are more accurate for the current patches, filled with more information and in general just better than the wiki.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:18

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

I wouldn't use the Wiki guides, a lot of them are very outdated.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:36

Gwyrgyn Blood: Dec 17, 2002

nutranurse posted:

So does this bundle have Conquest of Paradise included?

I'm looking at it on the mobile site but it looks like it's $10 for just the base game, but some of the DLC is also on sale for 75% off.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:40

AAAAA! Real Muenster: Jul 12, 2008; My QB is also named Bort

Dibujante posted:

Mister Adequate posted:
So is it just Steam being screwy or is there some reason mods I'm grabbing from the workship won't show up in my launcher?

Steam and EU4 don't play well together in that regard. To get a mod to download or update off of Steam workshop, you need to start EU4, get to the launcher, launch vanilla EU4, then open up the single or multiplayer menu, then close EU4, then start EU4, then go to the launcher and pray that it's there.

This should go in the OP.

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:48

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 13:37

Pellisworth: Jun 20, 2005

Here's my opening strategy for winning the HYW as England, current for 1.4:

The general idea is to get alliances with Austria, Castile, and maybe Denmark, fabricate a claim on Scotland in order to war dec them and pull your continental allies into the Hundred Years' War against France. Castile will set you as a rival maybe one-third of the time, if this happens in the first month before you establish an alliance, restart. Otherwise, as long as you get the alliance with Castile and don't have the War of the Roses trigger, this strategy works reliably and is relatively painless.

Your day-one moves and the timing of your troop movements in the first month or so are really key here, because you need to evacuate your armies on the continent and do some rapid fire diplomacy.

Put Richard Plantagenet in charge of your army in Gascogne(fire the rest of your generals), and have them march to kill Armagnac's stack. In a few days, have them march back to Gascogne and catch Foix's stack marching north, after destroying the two vassal stacks immediately march south to Labourd for evacuation. Build four more cogs so you can transport an army of size 18.
Send your troops in England up to the Scottish border, your light ships to patrol London trade node, your heavies can go sit in Cote d'Argent to blockade, and your transports to Normandie. They'll arrive a couple days before France's stacks, load your troops up and ferry them back to England (you can Scorch Earth in Normandie if you like), immediately send your transports south to Labourd to pick up our main man Plantagenet and his crew. The timing on the transports is fairly tight and you're off by more than a few days you'll lose one or both of your stacks.
Day one get Marriages with Austria and Castile. Keep an eye on Denmark's willingness to accept an alliance, once you've killed a few vassal and siege stacks they'll often be willing to ally with you without a marriage, which would be great (you'll eventually want two relations slots for PU'd France and vassal Scotland). Denmark and pals aren't super helpful in fighting France since the AI is pretty terrible at projecting force across bodies of water, but they're not useless. Immediately on December 12th, get alliances with Castile and Austria, if Castile has set you as a rival you'll need to restart, thankfully you'll know within a month of the start!
You definitely want the +5 Diplomatic Reputation adviser and the +25% Fort Defense adviser is less common but also very useful for helping your continental provinces hold out longer.

Once you've evacuated your armies and secured your alliances, fabricate a claim on Ayrshire and keep an eye on the French siege stacks. You can easily snipe smaller stacks before the province is captured by sending your transports directly into port, once the province is captured you'll have to do a landing and that usually takes long enough you'll get caught trying to escape and crushed. Wear them down where you can, after you finish your claim on Scotland, declare war but DON'T check the box to call any allies, this is key. You need to manually Call to Arms each of them, they'll ALL accept and enter both the HYW and your war with Scotland. Take Ayrshire from Scotland but don't core it, you can vassalize them once the truce runs out and sell it back. Now it's you, Portugal, Castile, Austria, and probably Denmark against France and not too difficult to stomp them!

# ? Jan 31, 2014 20:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Europa Universalis IV: Is that... is that backwards singing?

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