|
 Eat my Ecumenial rear end Papist scum!
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 21:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:53 |
|
|
Ethiser posted:I just want to chime in again on how protectorates are really dumb. There doesn't seem to be any way to force a nation to stop having one. I just want to free Ethiopia from the Mamluks and there is no way to make it happen. Also can nations break free from them? Why would Crimea choose to be under one province Poland? There is no benefit for them. I was drawn into two unexpected wars in that Byz game because my vassal Georgia made a habit of establishing protectorates over the 2-3 province horde countries left without asking me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 21:16
|
|
|
Mans posted:What's the game logic for never ending royal marriages? It's really annoying. 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?) Last Emperor posted:Updated the thread with some of the new guides/country strategies so thanks for all of those. 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) 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Feb 1, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 16:20
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:Worth noting that there are several events tied to the Innovative idea group that give -5% to all tech costs and other individual bonuses. Some of the idea group associated events can give you pretty reliable bonuses and unfortunately that's information which is pretty opaque to most players unless you've taken those idea groups a few times. I'm thinking of Innovative and Quality in particular which routinely give you 5-10% tech cost reduction and discipline bonuses from events, respectively. Religious ideas gives common events that give free stability (reverse comets) Diplomatic gives events that can either get diplomatic insult CB or give +20-60 relations with multiple neighbors Exploration gives you events with +global settler rate They also have negative events, Diplomacy gets you an 'Inbred Diplomats' event that either spends DIP points to replace them or get a negative to claim fabrication for a few years and Defensive ideas gets you 'Cowardly tactics' that lower your prestige.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2014 05:02
|
|
|
Knuc U Kinte posted:Haha. Best start ever where I managed to hop through Serbia, Bosnia and Ragusa during the first peace with the OE ruined when Poland refused my CtA against ragusa when I vassalised Bosnia. I wish the AI wouldn't automatically CtA allies who won't accept. I guess my only hope is Austria coming to the party in time. I hate how the human player can;t overlook dishonor when survival is on the line. It's ridiculous. Early on as Byzantium I will never check the "Call Allies" box in the DoW menu. It's just too risky for that exact reason. I will look at the box to see if any allies might come, and then call them in manually via 'Alliance Options' in the diplomacy menu. The only thing that has really screwed me over is occasionally Venice will strike against me preemptively and Poland decides it cant be asked to fight such a distant war.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2014 17:57
|
|
|
OctaviusBeaver posted:Is it game over if the Ottomans warn you early as Byzantines? They keep warning me right after I sign a peace treaty but before my diplomat returns so I can warn them. Not entirely. But you are limited to wars that your allies will join in on. For example; if you were going to attack Wallachia, and Poland/Lithuania/etc. are down to join you then park your fleet in the Sea of Marmara and invade, I've seen ottomans ignore the chance to go to war with me multiple times when all my allies join in or they are otherwise indisposed. Just be sure to time the attack so that at least half their forces are stuck in Turkey and would have to march through Poland and Lithuania to intervene. This is also a pretty good way to get allies that wouldn't otherwise attack the Ottomans to help you out.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 01:10
|
|
|
CharlestheHammer posted:Sometimes you are screwed when your allies refuse to join any wars you fight. Yeah, Poland has their own problems. I really like to wait until the Ottomans declare war on me, getting me better odds of having 3-4 allies join me instead of maybe 1 ally + whatever vassals I've scraped together by then. Poland will never really help against anyone west of the Ottomans or South of Hungary in an offensive war(at least not early on), but if you cant get them to fight the OE it probably means they are either overburdened by their own wars, deeply in debt, or their manpower/force limits are drained from previous wars or revolts/peasants war type events.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 02:16
|
|
|
Mans posted:Jesus, i created Scandinavia and started collecting all the provinces on the Eastern European coast when my king dies and sends the country into a Personal Union with France Is this in MP? I was under the impression AI countries cant get into PU's over a Player.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 08:12
|
|
|
Beamed posted:Why is Innovative considered so good? I know it has the War Exhaustion, army tradition decay, and tech bonuses, but is there something I'm missing? +1 free leader, as far as I know outside of a few national ideas (Poland?) the only other way to get more leaders is the 1k ducat cost War College/Admiralty buildings Army tradition is a huge factor in large scale fate-of-the-empire type conflicts, and even a marginal gain means massive manpower regeneration and other bonuses. Between events and the base tech bonus you can get up to ~20% tech reduction for a specific branch or ~10% across the board There are also events that let you choose between tech bonuses and increased rebellion, or tech maluses and increased missionary strength (which put me just over the limit to convert Roma without Religious Ideas as Byzantium) Also it unlocks a few great national decisions that further reduce tech and increase income/productivity at some marginal costs in other things.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 14:39
|
|
|
Mans posted:Papal control also gives you an extra general. Defender of the faith too i think but i can't confirm. You're right about the pope, but I think DoF is just Prestige, Morale, and +1 Missionary Also being an AI gets you +1 leader
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 14:51
|
|
|
Zodium posted:
How on Earth are some of you guys getting so lucky with PU's? I've sat at ~100 prestige for over a century and never gotten so lucky as to get a Dynasty member on the throne.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 16:43
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:Can we stop talking about army compositions in terms of ratios? Because it's very misleading. If you tell someone you need 4:1:5, they might build an army with 4 infantry and 1 cavalry, or an army with 40 infantry and 10 cavalry, either of which is a terrible idea. I've had the best experience in large stacks (40+) of scaling up with my max combat width how much Infantry vs Cavalry I use, and having a full back line of Artillery. So in open plains or desert let's pretend my current max width is 32 regiments. 6 Cavalry, 28 Infantry, and 32 Cannons will simply bulldoze just about any army with comparable morale/discipline. As was mentioned it is very effective to keep a large stack of almost pure infantry nearby as they can take massive casualties during prolonged battles and cannons become useless very fast if your infantry are overwhelmed. If you're defending a mountainous province with a width of 10 I would probably go for a 8/2 Infantry/Cav split and 10 Artillery, when defending it's less crucial to be able to reinforce because mountainous terrain is impossibly hard to break into in EU4. The general idea is that you're going to want a full back line of Artillery, a significant chunk of Infantry to soak up bullets, and just enough Cavalry to fill out the wings of your formation. brocretin posted:Does anyone know if your colonial nations count as border territory for the purpose of Westernization? If you are a sub-Western tech and a Western Colonial Government is nearby, you can Westernize off of them. If you are a sub-Western tech and one of your colonies is near a Western nation or Western colony you will not be able to Westernize off of it.(edit: you can Westernize off of them if you do not develop a full colonial nation) 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 3, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 20:13
|
|
|
DentedLamp posted:But I do that already. There aren't enough dip points. England always starts with an awful leader and an even worse heir. Do your best to get them killed I suppose. Does anyone know exactly what defines a 'Great Power'? Is it some combination of Score + Army tech/size?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 14:58
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:you'll just never be able to completely freeze out the Iberians. A friend of mine once told me he'd managed to stop Castille from getting a single Caribbean colony as England by sniping their little starting colony (Azores? Canaries? whatever tiny Atlantic island they begin with). And it took them the better half of a century to expand out of Spain from then on.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:I suppose that does work. If you can snatch the Azores, Canaries and Madeira then you're golden, but that's a tough task on it's own. Well Castille only has the one, so taking it means 50% less colonial competition, leaving you and Portugal to duke it out. Farecoal posted:Why not? Taking a first idea slot Military idea will almost always end up in you having a substantially weaker military than your neighbors. Each idea costs 400 military monarch points, which if you are Western tech group is almost as much as an entire level of Military tech. The span of miltechs from 4-7 all get you a significant bonus to "Military Tactics" which is much much better than whatever tier 1 Offensive/Quality/whatever idea will get you. Compare this to dip tech levels which early game only let you build docks and trade depots when you dont really have the income to be throwing around ~50 ducats willy nilly on some trade power.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 20:24
|
|
|
Redleg posted:I often ended up with overrunning my ability to advance as my max accumulated points was less than the cost of advancing a level so I ended up with wasted mil points. I forget when this started becoming a problem, however. I want to say in the mid 1500s. I very commonly go DIP first, MIL next, and ADM last, especially on nations with very powerful National Ideas. Since there isn't a very abundant need for Mil points outside tech/ideas I tend to get ahead quite a bit on Mil tech before I get the Idea group, but hardly ever enough to go over the limit. You may want to make sure you aren't wasting ADM points where you could be saving them (do you really need to be at positive stability all the time?) as you need to get that ADM tech up quickly to get a 2nd idea group.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 21:13
|
|
|
Baron Porkface posted:I started out as a Muslim nation from an imported save in a similar position to the historical ottomans; westernized, and around 1520 I just couldn't loving beat any enemy army no matter how large mine was, my morale got vaporized in a second and I assume it's because I fell behind in tech. As a Muslim in a converted ck2 game, can you start out Western if your CK2 tech was high enough?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 21:50
|
|
|
DStecks posted:I feel like a great big idiot, but could somebody explain how sieges work? Playing CKII has completely buggered my instincts on this one, seeing as in that game you want the biggest army possible, whereas in EU4 you start taking attrition penalties if you've even got 2 regiments on the same province. 3 big things mandate how long a siege will take in EU4 come to mind. 1) Defensiveness. This is how long it will take each 'tick' of siege progress. Army tradition, Defensive Ideas, and some buildings and province specific events will increase defensiveness. High war exhaustion and I think low prestige or legitimacy will reduce it. 2) Siege modifiers. Things like how much artillery you have attacking(you get up to a +5 bonus for plentiful cannons), whether a blockade is happening (-2 for unblockaded, 0 or higher depending on naval tech if it is blockaded), whether the walls are broken or not (this happens on a natural 14 die roll). all these are listed in the middle of the siege screen and have helpful tooltips 3) die rolls. For every 'tick' of siege progress you get a die roll, when your roll is ~20 after bonuses the siege will end.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 16:48
|
|
|
A Tartan Tory posted:So, I fancy playing an African or Arabian nation for once, anyone have any recommendations? Morocco is probably the strongest African nation in vanilla, all the Sub-Saharan tech group nations suffer from an extreme case of "wait ~100 years for Euros to show up. Dont get Annexed for 5-20 years as you westernize. Then you can start playing the game." Edit: though if you dont care about achievements so much, Europa Gooniversalis really opens up the non-European locations with new/better ideas and smaller tech disparity. 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Feb 5, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 21:18
|
|
|
A Tartan Tory posted:Usually I don't care about achievements, but I've started to collect them for this game because some of them are literally insane to get. How would you even get Najd into the HRE?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 22:31
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Colonial Nations are only for the New World for some reason. This is a complete oversight for Paradox. Is there a reliably functioning mod that fixes the problem and let you have Colonial Nations in Africa/East Asia yet? Or better yet has Paradox mentioned including this in an upcoming patch? My greatest disappointment in CoP was my inability to found Californian Siberia as the Shoshone.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2014 06:08
|
|
|
For the achievement, does every province between Iceland and Australia/SEAsian Islands have to be owned, cored and Sunni?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2014 20:28
|
|
|
OctaviusBeaver posted:Are you supposed to manually core, convert and culture flip all of the Turkish provinces when you take them? That doesn't even seem feasible. There are enough Turkish Minors that you can easily split the entire Anatolian region into 2-3 vassals (Karaman, Dulkadir, Mentese, or Candar) until the Ottomans are nearly small enough to vassalize. You can usually take 30-80% overextension worth of provinces(depending on how well your armies can keep the peace) from them and sit your armies there quelling uprisings for 5 years when you can vassalize them entirely and sell them back their own core provinces. Having so many 4-7 base tax provinces Turkish becomes an accepted culture instantly and conversion is easy because of National Ideas + Patriarch Authority.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 01:23
|
|
|
RabidWeasel posted:The generic vassal neighbour mission is great but the way it's set up you will very rarely see it unless you're going out of your way to fish for it (you need to have >4 provinces and have a neighbour of the same religion group with <5 provinces and >50 relations with you but no alliance, and I think you have to be at peace as well) I've never seen one of these Missions as Byzantium, the only missions that grant multiple claims are to reclaim Anatolia/Greece/Balkans and the Patriarchates. Am I just unlucky or are the "subjugate neighbor" missions only coded for more historically 'lucky' nations?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 23:54
|
|
|
I SAID LISTEN posted:So now that vassal-feeding has been greatly reduced, what are the efficient methods of building up one's empire as Ottomans, Russia, etc. Trying to get claims on provinces you intend to annex and get Administrative ideas is about all I can come up with, barring NIs that reduce coring costs. Obviously vassalizing wherever possible. Ottomans still have plentiful neighbors that can be vassalized in one go, not to mention the goldmine of cores that is Persia. Russia has an even harder time about it as you cannot make a proper vassal out of a Nomadic Horde nation so going Administrative is even more powerful than it was before (you really want that 20% production efficiency anyways)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 01:37
|
|
|
Tahirovic posted:PA is arguably better because of the revolt risk and missionary strenght bonuses. Not to mention the manpower bonus 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 13:47
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:way too many admin points. #WesternTechGroupProblems Check your ubermensch privilege
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 16:20
|
|
|
CharlestheHammer posted:That is the problem I am having as the Byz. How many diplomatic ideas do you take? I usually start off with Diplomacy as a first group and will go into Naval as somewhere as a 3rd/4th/5th group. I intentionally avoid dip tech until I can westernize and even after that I usually have no trouble in the Med staying a couple levels behind. My fleet limits are so large by the mid 1500's that it takes 15+ tall ships inside a reasonably large fleet to crush my 80+ galley deathstack.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 17:18
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:This is going to sound kind of weird, but to figure out if I want the game or not I wanna see it in action, so are there any good youtube series on it? I normally decide to buy paradox games based on LPs, but none of hte EU4 LPs so far have been the tutorial kind that I like to start with. If you would ever want to live-spectate a match check out the private games server thread here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3577057 Though I dont think you can observe these games with the demo client, occasionally goons will bother to stream their view (along with goon mumble chat) via twitch or other streaming sites. grancheater posted:So I decided to give a try to a Byz game going with the strat that's been talked about in this and the previous thread, managed to secure an alliance with Pol-Lit and Austria. The war against the Ottomans started pretty badly since I lost the initial battles and almost all of my manpower, but eventually I managed to turn it around and sieged pretty much all their provinces in Europe, and was one or two siege ticks away from being able to grab my all coastal cores. Though I dont know exactly what metric is used for war leader, a good start is total province manpower or total forcelimits. You can check in the ledger, but the easiest way to make sure Austria or Poland dont take war leadership away from you is to get as many Balkan and Mediterranean provinces as you can in that first 5 year truce. Also a tip to save on manpower and ducats spent reinforcing your army. Where you leave your army to idle is very crucial in those early years. Any time the OE declares war on you they will likely have 15-30k troops waiting to march into Constantinople from Edirne or Burgas so leaving your whole army in the capitol is a death trap. Crete, Naxos, Corfu, and Cyprus are my favorite military rallying points as you can keep your troops safe and fully intact until reinforcements come down from Poland or Austria and you can join up with them. Also you can abuse how stupid the AI is sometimes, if they send a divided group of armies to attack you in Naxos or Corfu, let the first stack through and block the rest. Even slightly outnumbered, or out-teched (Always check ottoman mil-tech during wars) you can win a fight across a strait. Edit: Also, though it isnt the fastest way to start, any war where you dont lose territory to the OE is still a win. They are massive and probably the easiest start in the game for rapid expansion, eating their manpower, making them focus entire years worth of military conquests on you for no gain is amazing, as without Ottoman intervention in the east, their rivals will grow more bold. I've seen Timurids, Qara Qunluyo, and the Mamluks attack and annex some South-Eastern Turkish provinces from a drained OE. Or those tiny little Anatolian Beyliks managing to cling to life really deprives them of precious base tax. 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Feb 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
Huh, I have no idea how being a part of the HRE would influence the War Leader thing, but yeah it seems likely to be a factor, As far as trapping them in Naxos/Corfu goes yes it's amazing if you can somehow trap the lionshare of their army on the island and pillage the whole Ottoman Empire while the Sultan twiddles his thumbs, but from what I've seen the AI rarely throws around it's armies as one whole stack when they have the numbers the Ottomans do. As far as leaving your army in the Capitol, it will always take longer to march across a strait than from Burgas/Edirne into Constantinople.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
kalstrams posted:Yeah, Livonian Order, Latvia was not a thing back then. I will try Livonian Order then. If Dwarf Fortress has taught me anything then it is that losing is fun Sweden is a very fun and powerful start. You begin under Denmark in the Kalmar Union, but if you just never help them with their wars (just protect your own borders so they cant give away your land in the peace deal)their prestige will plummet and eventually you can break off, or alternatively you can declare war on them when they are in dire straits and take back the 2-3 Swedish cores Denmark controls. Novgorod is also a fun (but very difficult start) as the Russian republic, after winning a few against-the-odds wars against your Russian big brother Muscovy you can become a dominant Baltic Power. As any country near the Baltic (Livonian Order, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, North German Minors) try taking Danzig as early as possible, it is very rich and will get you a fair chunk of taxes and trade power. edit: kalstrams posted:Oh, sounds interesting. By forming Russia you mean an alliance with countries that geographically take the territory of ex-USSR? My first thought was just to slowly conquer everyone so that Livonian Order takes the whole map, but the more I read in this thread, the more complicated such idea looks like. 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Feb 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 23:56
|
|
|
Antares posted:Is there any cheeky way of taking another nation's colonial provinces for myself or my colonies, or do I just have to wait until they become independent / obliterate the parent state? Declaring war on a colonial government as a non-native or non-colonial government always drags the mother country in, but if your colonial subject is at war with their colonial subject, you can funnel war subsidies into them and hopefully they'll snag a few provinces in the peace and not drag the other overlord into things.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2014 01:35
|
|
|
Zodium posted:I released Byzantium and subsidized them to the tune of 500g/month for a few decades. Woah, you're going to have to step back and explain how Mega-Galicia happened.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Jean Pony posted:I'm new to the post DLC EU4. Is Lithuania supposed to be able to make a protectorate out of Crimea? I thought that was for the new world colonies?! Horde/Sub-Saharan/Meso-American/Chinese/Indian/North American Tech Groups all tend to be made protectorates instead of vassals by Western/Eastern powers.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
DStecks posted:Doesn't having a lot of gold production eventually bite you in the rear end via inflation? Or am I thinking of another Paradox game? It would take a dozen gold mines for the inflation penalties to even start costing much. When you compare the tiny inflation to the ~50 ducats a year before upgrades you get from a gold mine it's not a big deal.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
Elias_Maluco posted:About colonization and related stuff: I cant understand how come one of my colonies, Rio de Oro, is considered to be at a greater "trade distance" than Ivory Coast, which is pretty down there, obviously further. Where you colonize and what nodes you want to dominate depend mostly on where your Capital is, because you get a penalty to attempting to collect in any trade node that your Capital province is not a part of. If you are Morocco/Portugal/Spain then Seville is your best bet as a collection node, it usually becomes one of the richest nodes in the game without any help. Morocco will have to move their Capital north into Tangiers or some other base-tax rich province in the Seville node. Since Seville is such a well connected node you can get rich from colonizing anywhere, either pushing trade from Brazil and Caribbean back to Seville, or reaching all the way around Africa into the west indies to push that valuable trade back home. Great Britain/Scotland/Norway/Hansa and other Baltic countries will want to expand into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Chesapeake to bypass the 'Western Europe' Atlantic trade node entirely and just safely funnel trade into the North Sea/London/Lubeck nodes for collection. In general a country will want to colonize and dominate as many trade nodes directly downstream of their home as possible. Especially in areas connected to the coveted 'Western Europe' node that quickly becomes the most crucial trade node for Europeans to dominate, as any trade power you create from colonial nations will carry on up stream and be added to the trade power you get from patrolling the area with light ships.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
Tagged "Glorious Bhutan"
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2014 12:57
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:Dunno if anyone's posted about this, but there seem to be some weird diplomatic interactions with Protectorates. Namely, I vassalized Yemen (starting as Oman) who had Adal as a Protectorate. I wanted to attack Hedjaz without bringing in their allies the Mamluks and Qara Qoyunlu, so I used a Trade Dispute CB to attack Adal (allied to Hedjaz) thinking I could get a foothold in Africa and eat Hedjaz at the same time. That's not where the madness ends. I was chugging along in a Byzantine game without knowing my vassal Georgia had taken Golden Horde as a protectorate. Cue Russia invading the Golden Horde, dragging in Georgia and then myself without any prompting or earlier notification that this might happen. Protectorates are currently in massive need of either a streamlining or complete overhaul because the current system is more aggravating and unpredictable than a Call to Arms cascade.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Roadie posted:Is there any particular "best" way to handle Portugal declaring wars of colonial conquest on me as the Cherokee, pre-reformation? Is there any way you might be able to invade a Portuguese colonial state? Occupying the provinces of allies, vassals, and really anyone else in the war against you will give you warscore vs the warleader. Edit: This is more a preventative measure, but getting an Alliance to someone in a position to attack portugal might help, remember that AI's (though terrible at over-seas warfare) have no naval attrition at all, so if you can somehow get an alliance with a strong AI Portugal might not even bother with you anyways. Alternatively, you can also ally with one of Portugal's American enemies early on (Aztec/Inca?) so that even if you lose, it's probably just some gold + AI provinces to give up to them, and you can keep a truce up or even slow their progress into the Caribbean a tad bit. 420 Gank Mid fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Feb 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2014 23:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:53 |
|
|
Elias_Maluco posted:Any way to get CBs against non-pagan african and asian nations? Expansion gets you CB vs all Indian/Chinese nations (as long as you are Western/Eastern/Ottoman/(Muslim?)) Religious gets you CB vs anyone who is of a different religion than you (Heretic, Heathen, or Pagan) Diplomacy gets you CB vs other government types. I'm not 100% sure exactly what qualifies as other governments but in general this CB seems to work best as Monarchy vs Republic Edit: Also, more importantly, maxing out Diplomacy ideas reduces the stability hit you take from any diplomatic action that would normally give some. Meaning declaring war without CB is a lot more forgiving (only -1 stab and the inconvenience of not having a war goal)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2014 23:15
|
|