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Every other month or so I try to get into this game and fail. Pls help I got into CK2 pretty quick tho
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Nov 18, 2017 17:52
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:46 |
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Dive in, take it one step at a time. Don't feel bad if you crash and burn. Ask gratuitous questions whenever a tooltip or the wiki page is unclear. (Or even if you just don't feel like looking it up)
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Nov 18, 2017 18:11
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Thanks for the tips. Gonna watch a youtube tutorial and dive in today. I always hear castille as the best faction for a starting player. Any other factions that start as a good intro point?
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Nov 18, 2017 18:18
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There's a lot of factions that are good but still precarious enough that you'll lose if you mess up or have a string of bad luck. So Castile, Ottomans, Muscowy, maybe France are all good starting nations that are powerful but don't feel bad if you still lose hard with them. EDIT: There's too many tips to really list for beginners but a few rules of thumb: Keep forts mothballed and armies on low upkeep if you don't expect a fight Monarch points are more important than cash 99% of the time, so if you have to lose one or the other, lose cash Keep monarch points for tech parity first, ideas second, and development if you really have nothing else to blow them on. If you are ahead in tech then feel free to use your monarch points on something else because being ahead costs a lot of extra mp. Military tech is super important in the early game so don't blow your hard-earned monarch points on suppressing rebels or a military idea group. Check alliances before declaring wars. You can use the ledger (tiny button at the bottom right) and filter on rivals/people with negative opinion/allies etc. to gauge relative strengths. Always try to defend from across a river and/or on a mountain, never attack into mountains. Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 18, 2017 |
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Nov 18, 2017 18:20
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Muscowy sounds like a cool start. Time to channel my inner russian
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Nov 18, 2017 18:26
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England is fairly good too. It’s pretty challenging at the start with France slurping up your continental holdings, and the war of the roses can be a bitch. But you learn some important things in the process, like more often than not, a lost war isn’t a game breaker for you. Also, the channel makes it super hard for AI to bring the fight to you, and the English navy owns the French anyway. Coupled with a reasonably good position to start the colonization of the new world, and you have a good, safe country to use to learn the ropes.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:13
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Just got slapped by Novgorod eyyy. I'm gon learn today. Couple questions. I have 2 armies off the bat as Muscovy. Should I disband them to get the extra monthly income until I decide to go to war? When i clicked the disband button the description made it seemed like the units would be deleted forever. Is it smart to get an adviser right away? The good ones seem pretty expensive and would take a big chunk of monthly income as well.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:33
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Don’t disband armies! They work as a deterrent; if the ai sees your land without any armies defending it, they WILL attack. What you CAN do, though I rarely do, is lower the upkeep costs at the economy tab. Also check on your military tab and learn all that’s there. Especially good care should be taken to fully understand the force limit feature. Building an army bigger than the force limit allows (which CAN be done but generally shouldn’t) will make the milItaly expenses go through the roof.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:37
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esn2500 posted:Just got slapped by Novgorod eyyy. I'm gon learn today. Keep your standing armies unless you're over the force limit or really really poor but (usually) disband mercenaries if you're at peace. The smaller your armies the more inviting a target you are to your neighbors. You can probably floor your maintenance costs as long as your armies aren't at risk of getting jumped, fighting with no morale is really really bad. If you can afford the 1-point advisors, you should hire them. A monarch point is easily worth 1 gold. If/when you become richer you can start to look at the 2 and 3 point advisors. What do you mean slapped by Novgorod? They're usually a first target for Muscovy since they start much weaker
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Nov 18, 2017 19:40
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Do not disband the armies. Building armies is expensive and takes time. Someone will surprise attack you while you have no army and then you'll be in trouble. If you want to save money, you can lower the army maintenance slider in the economics screen. Just make sure to remember to raise it again before declaring war. Low army maintenance lowers the max morale of an army, making them easily defeated in battle. In general, it's smart to hire as many advisors as you can afford, but a lot of countries can't afford more than one or so at the start. There are three levels of advisors, and you get one monarch point a month per level, which can be a big help when teching up. I find hiring a level 1 military advisor early can help you get those really important military techs before your enemies, which can give you a big advantage in warfare.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:40
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esn2500 posted:Just got slapped by Novgorod eyyy. I'm gon learn today. Don't disband armies: they take manpower to build, take a long time and a lot of cash. Only disband e.g. mercenaries that you spammed during a particularly close call. If you need to save money, go to the economy tab (click on your shield on the top left, then the tab with the little purse) and bring the maintenance slider down. This will lower the cost of your troops but also their maximum morale, and it takes a few months of max maintenance to bring them back, but it's the traditional way of saving out on military costs during peacetime. As for advisers: they're quite expensive but the level 3 advisers don't give anything extra compared to their level 2 or 1 equivalents except extra monarch power (you get +1, +2 or +3 per month depending on their level.) IMO this is the main benefit of advisers, but in the early game you probably only have enough cash to get a single level 1 guy, if that. If they increase tax, for example, their cost is partially offset by their benefit. Make sure you're not over your forcelimit, too! On your military tab you should see a number somewhere, like 10/12 or whatever as Muscowy at start. That's the amount of regiments you have compared to your maximum. you can go over your maximum but it'll cost you proportionally more, so it's a good way to crash your economy if you're not careful. Only go over your forcelimits if you have a huge amount of cash, and even then, only do it in emergencies. Completely unrelated:  I'm Hungary. allied to Austria, Poland, Ragusa and France. The Ottomans are pushing into Italy and are twice as strong as I am, and Muscowy is allied with them. How would an experienced player fix this? 
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Nov 18, 2017 19:42
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So I've been playing with Mandate of Heaven turned off recently and finding it okay. About to begin a new ironman campaign with the new expansion, is there any reason for me to turn it back on (the reason would have to be a serious effort by paradox to balance or rein in Ming and its behavior as regards tributaries and such)?
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Nov 18, 2017 19:51
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Randarkman posted:So I've been playing with Mandate of Heaven turned off recently and finding it okay. About to begin a new ironman campaign with the new expansion, is there any reason for me to turn it back on (the reason would have to be a serious effort by paradox to balance or rein in Ming and its behavior as regards tributaries and such)? If you're playing outside of Asia: no, feel free to turn it back on.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:53
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If you play in Asia you get easymode, only other tributaries will declare war on you.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:55
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Okay. So it's still crap then.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:57
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Don't disband armies. Got it. Interesting contrast to CK2 where you can instantly raise armies up even when they're humongous.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:59
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esn2500 posted:Don't disband armies. Got it. Interesting contrast to CK2 where you can instantly raise armies up even when they're humongous. EU4 takes place in an era where standing professional armies started to become a thing. In the CK2 era, armies were pretty much entirely based on feudal levies that were raised ad hoc as needed (it was actually the basis of the feudal contract). Speaking of standing armies: I'm actually really liking the new professionalism mechanic. It really underscores the grind of war when your pristine, top-professionalism army just wipes the floor with enemies for the opening battles of the war, only then to lose their training and discipline as they're replaced with fresh recruits. It makes wars feel even more grueling and satisfying to fight (and win).
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Nov 18, 2017 20:03
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Deltasquid posted:Completely unrelated: I haven’t played Hungary in ages so I might be missing a trick here, but that’s not THAT strong of an Ottomans so I don’t think you need to panic yet. I say don’t directly antagonize them, but move further into Italy yourself. It looks like you already have a couple provinces in central Italy, but if I were you I’d be looking at Venice. That end node is great to have, but any Italian minor will add good development and you don’t have many other avenues for expansion. Maybe Bohemia but you’d have HRE problems to worry about then.
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Nov 18, 2017 20:15
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Forgot to mention I'm protestant. I'd fight deeper into Italy but my warmongering there already caused a coalition. I could try heading into Bohemia since the emperor is my ally.
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Nov 18, 2017 20:18
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Deltasquid posted:Forgot to mention I'm protestant. I'd fight deeper into Italy but my warmongering there already caused a coalition. If you’re already coalitioned I’d want to be very careful about offensive wars in the HRE. If you feel you’re under non-immediate threat of invasion then don’t risk your strength but sit back for a bit, improve relations with everyone, make sure you’re rich and have plenty of manpower, maybe check on your forts and make sure they’re well positioned and up to date, spy on the Ottomans/Russians if you feel like it. Your allies look reasonably strong so I don’t think you’re in present danger, with Ottos a lot of the time you have to play the long game, admit you can’t take them yet, and slowly build up to their level. e: by the way you can probably expect that Muscovy alliance to go down the tubes before too long if Crimea is an Ottoman vassal — that’s territory they will eventually probably want, certainly if they form Russia. skasion fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Nov 18, 2017 |
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Nov 18, 2017 20:28
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Koramei posted:They're supposed to act like they have to, even though since it's an AI they can obviously know everything at all times. There could have been other reasons for them rushing the Caucasus, like trying to get back past your main army on the front lines and annoy your rear or something, without realizing there was an army back there at all I actually went delving on the Paradox forums and found a dev post that seems to confirm that AI does not deal with fog of war - the example given was that it'd bug out if it went into FOW, saw an enemy army, retreated, then went "hey I don't see any army" and moved back next to the previous army, etc. Nothing that couldn't be accounted for (short term memory, decaying information, etc. is nothing new) but I get why they may not have bothered. So yeah it seems that the AI just knows where your stuff is.
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Nov 18, 2017 20:35
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Is anyone else noticing less influenza outbreaks this patch?
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Nov 18, 2017 21:49
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 Oh yeah, this bad rear end managed to begin the War of the Roses and then bring it to an immediate end the same day he took the throne. I'm not sure how that even works, but I like to imagine the Yorkists sitting there before the coronation getting all angry and preparing themselves to declare war, then seeing this guy and going "you know what, fair enough".
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Nov 18, 2017 22:07
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Are middle eastern nations still viable to play as without the new expansion? The last one I got was Cossacks.
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Nov 18, 2017 22:22
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Flavius Belisarius posted:Are middle eastern nations still viable to play as without the new expansion? The last one I got was Cossacks. Yes they're still fine with just the new map setup and trade goods. You can still use the new governments, you just don't get all the features; but Feudal Theocracy still gives you ToTTF and missionary stuff, for example. Has anyone else noticed the AI going completely brain dead more often now? I have had a 25k allied Mamluk army sitting in one of my provinces doing nothing for like 2 years while we're running around fighting the Ottomans.
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Nov 18, 2017 22:58
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I had the same thing, the Ottomans just sat a third of their army off in the desert for a couple of years when I was at war with them. Totally saved my rear end too, they were pummeling me into the ground until that. It did totally used to happen before this patch too though. No clue if it's more frequent now or what. Unrelatedly, stealth addition of that army quality page on the ledger is a godsend.
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Nov 18, 2017 23:03
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Saving and reloading will usually "fix" the stalled AI, it has been an issue for a long time.
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Nov 18, 2017 23:30
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I've noticed the AI stalling more often too. It happens especially often when I set my vassals to supportive. They just sit around completely stationary far away from any action. When I switched from no focus to supportive the first time, they literally just stopped where they were and stayed there until I noticed.
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Nov 18, 2017 23:41
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Was going to try Austria again, but they hit it with a huge nerf bat. Why is this poo poo not in the patch notes.
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Nov 18, 2017 23:54
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Uziduke posted:Was going to try Austria again, but they hit it with a huge nerf bat. Why is this poo poo not in the patch notes. How?
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Nov 19, 2017 00:43
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Odd bug: if you roll a new general as the month ticks over, you’ll get two generals with the same name but different stats. I didn’t notice if it costs twice as much or one of them is free, probably still shouldn’t be happening though.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:52
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They start with about half the standing army they used to and only 14k manpower left.
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Nov 19, 2017 01:06
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I think I might be experiencing a bug. I took control of the Cape trade node and got a merchant, as expected. But, suddenly, the extra merchant disappeared. I still have a stranglehold on the node and I even tried removing the trade company and re-establishing it. Still no extra merchant.
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Nov 19, 2017 01:54
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Groke posted:Well, it's still possible to do the Ottoman -> flip to Orthodox-> form Romania-> shift to Greek and reform Byzantium thing. Completely disgusting, and fun.
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Nov 19, 2017 02:26
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Once you reach 80 Professionalism and get half-cost generals it's pretty easy to blitz the rest of the way up to 100 if you've got some mil points to spare.
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Nov 19, 2017 02:26
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Mountaineer posted:Once you reach 80 Professionalism and get half-cost generals it's pretty easy to blitz the rest of the way up to 100 if you've got some mil points to spare.
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Nov 19, 2017 02:29
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skasion posted:Odd bug: if you roll a new general as the month ticks over, you’ll get two generals with the same name but different stats. I didn’t notice if it costs twice as much or one of them is free, probably still shouldn’t be happening though. There's always been lots of bugs and exploits with end-of-month rollovers. Up until Mandate of Heaven, if you spammed the mouse button on the "add province to HRE" button during an end-of-month autosave, you'd multiply the imperial authority gain by the number of mouse clicks you managed to fit in.
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Nov 19, 2017 03:01
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Mr. Fowl posted:I think I might be experiencing a bug. I took control of the Cape trade node and got a merchant, as expected. But, suddenly, the extra merchant disappeared. I still have a stranglehold on the node and I even tried removing the trade company and re-establishing it. Still no extra merchant. Could you have lost a merchant somewhere else? What does your subject screen look like?
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Nov 19, 2017 06:45
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:How long did it take you to get there? I forget exactly, but it was somewhere between 1560 and 1580. That was with me deliberately trying to focus on Professionalism: never hiring mercenaries, always drilling as many troops as possible during peace time, always hiring generals up to my leader limit. I was the Mamluks, though, not every nation can afford to do what I did. Still, I think reaching 100 Professionalism by 1600 or so is entirely reasonable for just about anyone who makes it a priority.
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Nov 19, 2017 07:22
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QuarkJets posted:Could you have lost a merchant somewhere else? Nah, doesn't seem likely--I only have the starting two merchants. Cape was my only extra, bumping me up to three.
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Nov 19, 2017 07:52
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