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Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



axeil posted:

Dear god. Austria allied France :gonk:




Additionally, is it possible to get the PU with Lithuania if you don't do it in the first 3 years? I didn't realize I needed +1 stability so I feel like I screwed up...


https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/for-the-love-of-god-lower-the-coring-costs.860610/page-3#post-19439002

You can do it up until Lithuania loses their jagiellon King. I think it has to be the original King, but I forget, having just done it like two hours ago. Poland in this patch is fun. Hungary somehow allied Austria, France, Castile and Genoa but they haven't declared on me yet, so here's hoping Austria wakes up and remembers they actually hate France. I revoked Moldavia's March status so I can get some coastline and expand into the Crimean lands.

Now I'm just racing to tech 10 to be the commonwealth before Hungary, ottotams, Muscovy or the HRE stomp me.

edit: oh, and something's definitely going on with OPMs and fort maintenance. I was just watching the toggle for the Livonian Order's one fort click on and off repeatedly.

Prop Wash fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jun 10, 2015

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Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Broguts posted:

Ever win a battle so decisive you actually feel bad? Like these Poles, Moldavians, and Lithuanians form a big 37 regiment stack to take out my glorious 20 regiment stack of brave crusaders of the Teutonic Order. The Slavs and Baltics made a few key errors: they crossed a river, I was on a hill,I had cannons while they did not, and my general was crazy good, like 4 shock, 3 fire, and 3 maneuver (no siege but whatever). What followed was a victory so loving incredible I wish I had screen capped it, I only lost about 5 thousand infantry and like a thousand cav, they lost a good 20 thou, RIP Poland.

No, the real key error they made was allowing the Teuts to survive to Cannon Times.

Also, learn from my dumb mistake: that shiny new Force Religion button works like a charm, but it does not guarantee by any means that your newly Catholic vassal will be able to convert their entirely Orthodox land.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



In my Poland game I kept getting embargoed/unembargoed every month by Syria, a vassal of Otto, for no real reason that I could tell.

I wonder if there's a bug with the new vassal interaction where an overlord can tell their vassal to embargo their rivals.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



I like that France can lose the HYW now, regardless of whether or not it was supposed to be impossible or whatever. For what it's worth, France is doing just fine in my current game. Big blue blob still in full effect here. It's really pissing me off, since they're BFFs with my arch rival Hungary.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



I envy all of you with crazy messed-up Europes, mine was so boring and normal the whole time. No Burgundian Inheritance, but otherwise everyone more or less made it into their historical shapes. France never did get its cores back from Great Britain, but that's probably because the English navy makes it impossible to invade that awful island and so all continental wars that the British got involved in ended with us white peacing them out after taking and holding those cores :v:

The new world went nuts, though - I don't know if the AIs received any bonuses to colonization, but between Britain, Spain and Portugal they had most of the Americas covered. Then in the late 1600s everyone warred for independence and now there's no more European presence.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Another Person posted:

nope, gotta wait for their cores, also never give a vassal or PU partner over 100% overextension, especially not one as bad with rebs as Lithuania, they will explode

If you give Lithuania a lot of wrong culture land they may take Humanist ideas and if you don't then you're in for a world of hurt when you press the big button and integrate them (true story)

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Contingency Plan posted:

Is there any rule of thumb for investing in province development? Can I even ignore development altogether? With monarch points being so scarce I'd rather put my points into sexier alternatives like tech, ideas, cores or even reducing inflation.

From what I've seen so far as Western tech, if you're spending a lot on cores and diplo annexation then you won't have a lot of points left for development.

I understand conceptually that development should allow me to get bigger without having to keep invading and vassalizing, but... my neighbors just broke their alliance, and their provinces are right there... And I'm already paying army maintenance, so...

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Haha wow, I've never had a game go wrong so quickly, and a Muscovy game at that :cripes: I could salvage the situation, because I'm Muscovy, but it would take a while considering my alliance with Poland was broken after Lithuania got pretender rebels and actually overthrew the PU only to immediately rival me, Sweden declared independence without calling me in (somehow?) and got beaten back into submission, and then the Golden Horde, who vassalized all their neighbors except Kazan, declared on me. After I fought them off, Kazan declared on me too. Ingrates.

I only wanted that "form Russia" achievement. Clearly this is the game's way of telling me to play as the Golden Horde, eat Moskva and Novgorod, culture shift to Russian, and form Russia from that.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



The best change of common sense: fixing that drat lake.

I don't think I've ever read a plaza thread before, but I was prepared for the torrent of self-described "byzantophiles," one of whom suggested that Constantinople get a 4-level fort.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Baronjutter posted:

Other than farming trade value is there really any point to colonies? I guess they pay you a bit of coin.

Kind of underselling the trade, I think, a properly colonized new world pours crazy ducats through the trade system back to whomever controls the end nodes. The money is normally small peanuts compared to the trade ducats. Then again that sort of assumes that you do own the end nodes.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



GSD posted:

So what happens if you're over 1000 points in some category when you finish westernizing, and thus now have a cap of 999? Do you just lose those excess points, or are you simply capped at whatever you have, until you fall under 999?

As of art of war, when you clicked over to western tech you'd have until the end of the month and then they'd reset to 999. No idea if they've changed it.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Node posted:

huh? A lot of nations do that. Build up your relations with them and it'll lower their liberty desire. How on earth is that a game ender?

No, like, that specific combination of nations has a modifier to their vassal/overlord relationship that adds an additional permanent +50% liberty desire that will never erode over time (at least, it didn't pre-CS). France and Burgundy have the same thing going on, and I think there's a few others.

I don't necessarily dislike the mechanic but I hate that it's completely undocumented. You have no way of knowing it exists until you vassalize that one specific country.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



A Buttery Pastry posted:

If Catholicism is so great, why do we allow the Hapsburgs to be part of it?- Pope Paul IV

I appreciate that you took the time to look up the actual sitting pope in Anno Domini 1556

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Speaking of ridiculously overpowered, the Holy Roman Papal State is just as nuts as people were saying it is. The best part is that somewhere around 1500 the rest of northern Italy will actually leave the HRE, probably according to script, but not considering that the HRE now encompasses the entire peninsula below them.

It's just too bad a Pope can't become emperor.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Larry Parrish posted:

I'm starting to really hate the new garrison system. I have zero fort maintenance. The enemy takes it in one month. I immediately counter attack before the garrison increases from 50. The siege lasts 500 days and I get 12 war exhaustion from one occupied province.

Should the garrison have replenished? If you take it in the same month then it should still be 0 and it should automatically fall. Even if not I don't know how 50 dudes can hold out that long, that seems like exceptionally bad luck. Either way this is a problem that could have been solved by maintaining forts on borders with enemies that have the will and means to go to war, so

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Poil posted:


So why the hell am I not allowed to colonize this? It is in range, I'm a proper monarchy in the Chinese tech group. Is there some hidden bullshit against pagans again? But I can clearly build ships and if this is intended the +1 colonist from ideas is UTTERLY WORTHLESS SINCE ONLY ONE PROVINCE IS IN RANGE OF YOUR CAPITAL! :mad:

Is it actually, like, 160.1 arbitrary units of distance away? That would be a total kick in the dick, but afaik it should be possible given how EUIV rounds numbers.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



aeglus posted:

something something kebab something something bird mana

Paper Mana
Bird Mana
Sword Mana
Baguette
Blurple
Skandenberg
Wrecked
Ottoscum

Sorry for your aneurysm!

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Koramei posted:


I thought you can't use Random New World in (achievement-available) Ironman games though can you?

I haven't tried it in 1.13 but in 1.12 you absolutely could. Give it a shot at the main menu, it should still say achievement-eligible.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Back To 99 posted:

I feel disgusted when people actually care about achievements. You could come up with much better gimmick runs on your own if that was the point.

Nah, a lot of these achievement gimmick runs are actually pretty good. Don't be all weird about achievements.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Ming is surprisingly hard to take down in this patch. I punched them until their war exhaustion was at 20 but unfortunately the only thing that can break the Mandate is low stability, which is extremely difficult to affect. I took Beijing out of spite but that didn't really help. It's annoying that the player has no option to remove the Mandate - you just have to get lucky.

This Ayutthaya game is a lot of fun though, balancing karma is a bit of a pain but the bonuses are worth it. It almost makes me wish that Buddhist countries got a special CB to release nations for low cost, since it's a karma boost for them but normally the dip costs make it a fake option.

Surprise vassal MVP has been Ternate, who got their colonist and are busy filling out Manila and Taiwan for me. Too bad it's all Animist!

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Rivalries do seem messed up since CS. As Ayutthaya i westernized and almost immediately got rivaled by England, Spain and Russia, none of whom I (yet) border. Europe is an extremely peaceful place because all these idiots are rivaling me instead. Meanwhile my real enemy Ming, despite being bigger than me and equal in military tech (while Chinese tech group, gg Paradox), isn't a valid rival.

All I need to do to get Indochina cored is integrate Hsenwi and then gently caress this campaign, having all of Europe breathing down my neck makes no sense.

Edit: I mean it makes perfect sense but not to this extent

Prop Wash fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jul 13, 2015

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Pellisworth posted:

Offensive Defensive Quantity and Quality are all great right now, I'd say they're roughly equal in strength just depends on your situation. Aristocratic is good in the current live patch because it has +1 Diplomat and leader slot, quality of life stuff that was lost with unique buildings in CS. But the beta patch gives you a diplomat at King rank and a leader at Emperor so imo it will go back to being a bit of a niche pick after the patch.

Personally I usually take Defensive or Quantity first, but that's part playstyle

Edit: the way I think of it is Defensive and Quantity give you more staying power and longevity in lengthy, spread out, or high attrition wars. Offensive and Quality give you more straight up battle power but if you don't have the manpower (and/or money for mercs) you won't last long. I like the latter two once I'm a decent size.

Morale is really not talked about as much as Space Marine Sweden 125% discipline troops but I think most of the losses I take are because I stacked on other modifiers and sort of lost track of morale, so I've started really valuing Defensive lately. Plus in addition to its amazing +1 army trad idea it also has an idea that makes forts cheaper, which if you think about it is really another army tradition buff since more forts = more tradition. The land attrition bonus is especially nice now that forts regularly require a ridiculous amount of troops - I haven't run the math but I have to think that it's saving me a lot of troops.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



TTBF posted:



I don't think I've ever seen a base figure for unrest before. Certainly nothing as high as this. At one point it was at +26 base. I don't know where it came from or why it's going down.

Dahomey and Oyo have cores on that province, start Animist, and that province is Sunni. Maybe they tried to convert it and kept getting that one event where your missionary screws up and you get base unrest?

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Gitro posted:

Borders!



Featuring Novgorodian Russia and Poland as a junior PU partner under France.

I imagine that you probably have Munster on the vassal feeding plan but I prefer my Munsterlands interpretation.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Yashichi posted:

That's probably the German minor Münster instead of Irish minor Munster

Good call, the Irish minor is kind of a bluish grey. Still, those umlauts are drat near invisible and I just kind of assumed when I saw he was Tyrone

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



I would like the ability to make a vassal forge a claim, maybe through the vassal interactions menu?

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Mutapa is pretty fun, if anything they're a little overpowered since you can steamroll Kilwa and friends with no problems at all. I went Economic first, both to reform my government and control inflation, and I would definitely recommend it, although you're a bit behind the curve if you do want to westernize. I got lucky in my game and Genoa somehow grabbed Alexandria from the Mamluks, at which point I bumrushed to make the land connection and finished in 1582. The biggest hurdle so far was Ethiopia, which didn't put up much resistance but did cover the entire area in high-unrest Coptic provinces. The resulting rebels have been more of a challenge than their armies were.

Zanzibar starts Ibadi, so I went with that instead of Sunni, which was interesting but not very good. Naval morale :toot: They do have a unique decision that gives you 5% discount on ideas, but you have to finish Innovative ideas to take it. Still, blue is the prettiest moon color.

I've mentioned it before, but it's still frustrating that upon Westernizing most of the European nations notice that there's a new Western tech power that they all have negative relations with (due to different religion) and almost immediately declare my nation a rival. It also leads to a stagnant Europe, since they all end up united in hating me instead of each other.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Haha, I don't know if the background images on Steam are from user profiles or what, but the one that's showing up right now for me is a screenshot of the Ottomans as the Holy See controller.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Mercs are excellent for early game even for majors, in fact that's probably the time they're most useful since most majors haven't completely shored up their manpower issues and the early game is prime time to get big. It may just be because I've had to reform a bunch of governments recently but I really like taking administrative now.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Poil posted:


40 years of Mamluks. I assume I'm hopelessly screwed because the Ottomans are just too strong to take on and have been the entire time. I've vassalized Byzantine and Karaman. Genoa are so boned the instant they leave the HRE, which they will do because who needs the emperor's protection, right?

That seems like a really good position for the Mamluks though? I don't get what about that picture says "hopelessly screwed." You've even got the ability to fabricate on Constantinople and if you do a bit of pushing into the Georgia/Persian area then the Ottomans will be completely bottled up until Europe gets their poo poo together and starts pushing them out.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Yeah but you also gotta consider that no matter how financially screwed your country gets, they're still capable of convincing people to loan you a couple hundred.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



PittTheElder posted:

Finally, don't pick Quantity as Russia, and definitely don't pick it first. You want Religious first, and as Russia you get the least out of Quantity ideas, given that you already have massive bonuses to manpower and infantry cost. Money is going to be your limiting factor, so invest in making your troops better instead.

Yeah, I don't think forcelimit and manpower bonuses stack the same way that morale, discipline, etc. bonuses do. You can have too much forcelimit in the early game, especially with the limitation being primarily money. I think Defensive is fantastic for Russia, both because they don't get any inherent army morale bonuses and also because Defensive + winter attrition means you won't even have to fight invaders half the time. Either way I really, really don't think I'd take a military idea group first as an Eastern power because keeping up in tech levels is so essential.

If your provinces are revolting, and progress is nearing 90%, then station some troops in the provinces that have unrest and are also Mountains and/or have rivers on all sides. Rebels don't start off at half morale anymore but they still count as the attacker and you can at least get some terrain bonuses against them. As other people have said, suppressing rebels is a button you should only ever click if you're already in a war and you absolutely cannot afford to have those rebels rise up. Always fight them if you can, and don't be afraid to raise autonomy if that will make the difference between them rising up and them not rising up. Those provinces suck anyway (and once you press the Russia button you become an Empire and get bonus autonomy reduction).

If you can take both quantity and Russian ideas and also build to forcelimit with no money problems, then you have won the game. Congratulations, now grab your achievements and quit.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



I just started a Muscovy game, because I've never actually played one, and I noticed that in 1444 your Kazimov province starts off Sunni and also part of the Tatar culture group, which includes every culture between you and the Caspian. Rather than having to deal with wrong-culture wrong-religion provinces that I can't convert, I just released Qasim out of Kazimov. Between Qasim and Perm, the Golden Horde and Kazan turned into a bunch of vassal land. At some point I'll finish religious ideas and annex/convert those lands, but until then, I would say they aren't even worth bothering with unless you've got a vassal to give them to.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Whorelord posted:

That's a dumb and gay feature that I think has been addressed in the beta patch, but I might be wrong

The beta has some bugs still, I converted Gal-Voy's 2 cores that I owned to Orthodox but they still came out Catholic. Maybe it's taking into account all of their cores, not just the ones you own? Gal-Voy's remaining Polish and Lithuanian-held cores were still catholic, so that could be it.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Control of the gulf of Aden is pretty key if you want to divert some Asian trade up toward Alexandria. The gold provinces are pretty awesome too. Plus if you take the cape you can drain away whatever trade would otherwise move towards Western Europe.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



No pigs will be shivved because it will be space Islam, and you will be able to import any euiv save in which Islam reclaimed all its holy sites

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



The only way you could possibly lose a Ming run is by losing the Mandate of Heaven, which you keep as long as you're not western/westernizing, stab of 0 or more, legitimacy of 60 or higher, and 20 provinces or more (lol).

To keep the mandate, play a bit conservatively. Keep some admin power in your back pocket in case you hit a string of stab-hitting events. You'll also want some significant cash reserves. If you roll a lot of bad dice and get a weak claim heir, you're going to go below 60 legitimacy and you will lose the mandate, and then you'll need to spend that money while you wait for a better ruler. If you do get rebel swarms, kill the separatists and nationalists first.

Thankfully as long as you have the mandate you're an unstoppable juggernaut. Since they lost the inward perfection penalties in CS Ming has been extremely powerful. I haven't seen them break in any post-CS game, although it could still happen very quickly if they got a weak claim ruler.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Take the Hindu decisions and then go Sikh

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



I only ran this Muscovy/Russia game to get the Patriarch Authority and Australian colony achievements, but when I saw that popup in 1705 that gave me an option between -1 stability or -5 stability and become a Republic, well, what could I do? Now I'm about done with the Master of India achievement too! Thanks, random insane event!

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Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



Node posted:

My Russia run was a failure. I was trying to go for 1001 provinces and one million manpower. I didn't even come close. I might get 500 provinces and 500-600k manpower if I kept playing. I have a 360 force limit and can afford it all. I'm chewing into Ming and the Commonwealth.

I think my biggest mistakes were 1) keeping patriarch authority low because I was scraping by. For manpower, 100 PA is important. 2) I allied the Commonwealth for most of the game until 1700 when they rivaled me. I should have been beating them up from the start, but I never felt strong enough to take them on. 3) I just wasn't aggressive the whole game.

My idea order was Religious -> Defensive -> Administrative -> Trade -> Expansion -> Quantity -> Offensive -> gave up

Anyone have suggestions for how to handle my mistakes, or any alterations to my ideas? Since I don't have humanism, every time I conquered a region, I would have to sit some armies down to quell the initial rebellions and I felt like it really slowed me down. And I just didn't declare enough wars. Getting my cultural union provinces from the Commonwealth would have been really helpful, but they were so powerful, and I could never find allies to help me take them on.

What worked for me was to abuse the colony mechanic. I started out taking Religious/Exploration/Defensive/Administrative/Offensive/Expansion/Quantity, so similar to yours, except I took Exploration early on to start on the Siberia train. Why exploration instead of expansion when expansion has that nice policy set? Well, I was first into the Pacific, so I needed to explore to keep colonizing down south in the Indonesian region. I took Expansion later but it turned out to not be a great idea because by then I was mostly done colonizing.

I started off aggressively with Poland/Lithuania but I also got lucky in that in my game the PU broke, partially because I was kicking Poland early on. I took Danzig for the free westernization. I fought a series of wars in the west but mostly finished up fighting Europeans by 1650 or so, by which time Lithuania was completely gone and Poland was its original borders minus the shoreline. Hungary was a good ally this game, they seem a lot stronger than they used to be. Scandinavia is absolutely not worth your time, as a vassal or otherwise. Take Neva and forget about them. For the manpower achievement European provinces are good but they're a pain in the rear end to take and imo not worth your time after the initial expansion.

After I had a fair powerbase built up in the Pacific I started getting those "foothold in India" missions, which ended up being the key to A Decent Reserve. I ripped into Bahmanis and just started eating the Indian subcontinent as quickly as I could. Here's the thing: as long as there's no land connection, Indian provinces count as colonies, so the price to core them is discounted by 15% for Russian ideas, 25% for Adaptability (Administrative 2), and 50% for colony. That's a 90% discount. You pay 1 admin per development. So I got Master of India on the cheap and as soon as the achievement popped up I declared on Khorasan and connected India to my mainland, at which point almost all of India dropped to 0% autonomy (because, and I don't know if this is a bug, but the "real autonomy" level is tracked independently of the 75% autonomy floor) and added around 200k manpower instantly.

Because I owned all of India, I steered all the trade in the area to Goa and collected it, which made me about 100 ducats a month alone. I had enough money to blanket my entire territory, even if it only had 1 military development, in Training Fields for 100% extra manpower. I fired advisors until I got the Manpower Modifier guy, enacted the Quantity/Exploration policy for another 10% manpower modifier, and it clicked over to a million.

Master of India done, A Decent Reserve done. I didn't even touch Ming all game, because they were terrifyingly stable and had a billion forts everywhere. I did punch the Ottomans a bit, but only to restore the Pentarchy (which is kind of a wet fart of an event, honestly).

I didn't go for the 1000 provinces because I already had it, but my suggestion to achieve it would be to do the India trick with Africa. Punch the Ottomans, take their southernmost provinces, don't link them up with a land bridge, and they also count as colonies. Then just start pushing south and west.

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