Europa Universalis IV: Buying all the DLC is just Common Sense

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Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Is there a writeup of the new buildings with tech unlocks and costs somewhere yet? I keep thinking about planning my province development instead of working :allears:

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 14:07

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 00:13

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Okay, Teutonic Order is actually fun now. I went somewhat balanced between development and conquest, staying medium-sized but taking enough provinces from Poland and Lithuania (thank God I managed to break up their union early) to eliminate them as threats, it seems to be working pretty well. Loose notes:

- TO + Defensive + Quantity is ridiculously awesome with the new fort changes. Whenever someone attacks me I just sit behind my network of forts twiddling my thumbs and laugh as enemy armies starve to death beneath my Great Wall. The drive to keep a defensible position also really supports pretty borders.
- Theocracies own pretty hard. That +25% tax income from devoutness is nuts, especially when you have a bunch of provinces with godawful goods and have to mostly just pump taxes. Also most rulers aren't poo poo. My only complaint is that devoutness is super easy to keep above 95.
- Development seems weak in the early game, but really picks up the midgame once you're able to stack discounts. The main thing is that you really have to be conservative about expanding and pick up strategic provinces rather than blob everywhere. (You can still blob everywhere, but you won't be creating obscene super-provinces)
- I stayed Catholic for RP reasons and picking up free stab boosts all the time is pretty sweet, but I probably should have gone Protestant because it looks like the opportunity to further fine-tune your nation for maximum efficiency is really fun.

Best expansion. My next run will definitely be a custom nation where I just stack devcost, defensiveness etc. and do the exact opposite of Old EU4, becoming the graveyard of empires. :regd08:

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 22:22

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Zurai posted:

That's 0.8 tax per month, which is a great deal frankly.

Plus it's completely hassle-free. No fighting, no AE, no unrest, no waiting for autonomy to tick down, no worrying about accepted cultures or alliance cascades. Simply click and turn your MP directly into more cash and forcelimits. Obviously it's still not as good as eating an enemy province, but sometimes you're just boxed in.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 22:49

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

So apparently this is what happens when you destroy Poland-Lithuania and bring peace to Eastern Europe as best bros forever with Russia.

The Crocodile Hunter in this timeline would be amazing.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 14:44

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Transmetropolitan posted:

Any recommendations for a new Common Sense save? I was thinking Sweden (never played it ), seems like a good one to try.

CS doesn't bring that much to a Sweden game outside of making warfare somewhat more challenging. I know a lot of people are going on about this, but seriously, try Teutonic Order. It used to be "hard mode Prussia", but now it's cool on its own merits. You get to experience theocracy mechanics, some of the best map changes, and above all really get your inner military engineer to shine with how viable true defensive warfare is these days. The true anti-blob.

Alternatively, England is apparently a very different game now, as are the Italian minors since that part of the map has been overhauled heavily.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 18:02

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Funky Valentine posted:

Turns out that the Teutonic Order is perfectly set up for a trade game. It would be absurdly powerful if it were possible to go from Monastic Order to Merchant Republic.

Danzig is literally built out of money.

Where do you run your trade routes for that? There isn't much that goes into the Baltic Sea without conquering vast swathes of land, in which case it's not really much of a trade game any more.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2015 15:45

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

So I just discovered that CoP screwed up American culture conversion and it hasn't been fixed since. Apparently the event that creates American culture only fires if England/GB owns provinces in the region, but their colonial nations will stay English forever.

It's a super minor and irrelevant thing, but too bad for my England - Thirteen Colonies - USA game, it loses a bit of flavor.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 10:37

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

In terms of weirdness, I've had two campaigns in a row where the exact same things happened:

- Spain forms but lags behind in colonization badly
- Portugal becomes the main global empire, grabbing enormous swathes of the Americas
- The Commonwealth doesn't form
- Everybody piles into the Catholic League and the 30YW never happens, with Austria comfortably declaring Catholicism the dominant religion quite early on

Has anyone had similar experiences or is this a fluke?

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 12:08

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Mugsbaloney posted:

Playing as Scotland early start all dlc but common sense. Given that North Sea trade node is.'upstream' from English channel, how do I stop the auld rosbif foxkillers from siphoning trade away from NS to EC? I can win more trade power in NS sure but that's only a percentage of the amount that stays in the node right? Am new to this game

Fortunately it doesn't work that way. England's power is what moves value downstream, so the more you get, the lower their percentage - and thus more trade value stays in North Sea, then after that your slice of the trade value pie is determined so it essentially doubles up. Embargoing England (IF you have more trade power than them), sinking their ships, taking their provinces (best option) and anything else you can think of that fucks with their trade power will also improve your income.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 13:41

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Sheep posted:

Whoever originally suggested Frankfurt as spot on, playing as a hyper-aggressive OPM the entire game is incredibly fun, and since you can't blob you also don't reach that inevitable tipping point where the game is over but you've still got 300 years left to play. Would highly recommend if you've not tried a free city game yet.

So what idea groups do you take? Economic is a no-brainer given the amount of development you'll be doing, as is early Quantity, but I'm kind of at a loss as to what else is good for a permanent OPM. Administrative for piles of mercs? Diplomatic?

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 18:01

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Bold Robot posted:

Anyone else getting a CTD on a Mac when they try to load a saved game while already in a game? Is this a stealth nerf to savescumming?????

I'm on PC and this happens all the time, it's been a problem since release. I generally go back to the menu to load a game to avoid it.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 15:36

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Fintilgin posted:

In fairness, that's the idea behind advisors and national focus. Advisors ARE pretty drat expensive, though. I'd sort of like to see advisor cost scale more by the size of your country, so that smaller countries could get +3 advisors more easily, but bigger countries would still find them prohibitive.

Oh god this, this so much. I find it incredibly frustrating that the DHE's that give you awesome historical figures as advisors are pretty much entirely useless, especially before 1600 or so, because unless you're a wealthy trading/colonial power you can't afford them anyway. Oh boy, I get Leonardo da Vinci, how cool is that? Except he's going to sit in my advisor pool idly until he dies because some noname +1 guy won't bankrupt me.

One solution I can think of is to give advisors that come from random and historical events some kind of special flag that would make them significantly discounted. Or add events and decisions that give a temporary advisor cost reduction. Something to let small countries briefly punch above their weight in terms of court quality.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2015 10:36

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

I've noticed that colonial nations tend to be a bit wonky with their independence wars. Often they're winning the war and likely to be able to take independence, but instead peace out with something stupid like a ducat settlement and some provinces. What the hell, where's your liberty fervor guys :argh:

OTOH,

I love the random poo poo that happens in the endgame. By the way that Norway doesn't actually own Norway, they just have the Faroe Islands and Nigeria :allears:

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 20:50

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

VDay posted:

Yeah the Ottomans have run rampant and been completely unchecked in every game I've played so far. They just shove the Mamluks over while picking and choosing their wars in Europe and around Crimea. When they hit Hungary/Austria they just go expand towards India and by the time any nation is a big enough blob to try and take them on they have twice the manpower/armies. It takes some real effort to keep them in check, unless you try to kneecap them early which has its own set of challenges.

Or, if you're western, just let it be, build a Great Wall to cower behind if necessary, and bide your time. Their units start to fall behind around the late 17th century, and a good miltech 23 timing push from any western power will loving wreck the Ottos. Lategame Ottoman units blow and they suddenly become a pushover regardless of size. They were a terrifying menace in my Milan-Italy campaign and it was incredibly cathartic to spend the entire 18th century systematically razing the House of Osman to the ground in ridiculously lopsided battles where each Italian soldier casually slaughtered hundreds of Turks.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 21:25

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Vanilla Mint Ice posted:

Units don't fall behind between tech groups and haven't for a long time. (Except for the horde who don't get any new units at all)

Yes they do, check for yourself. The differences were smoothed out a lot in whatever patch changed it so that westernizing doesn't give you western units, but they still exist, especially at the higher tiers (1-2 pips difference typically). The Ottomans are actually the most pronounced case of this, their infantry is superior until level 15, then gradually becomes consistently worse than almost every other tech group. It's not a huge difference, but it gives their enemies an edge and makes timed attacks even more devastating if you can pull it off.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 21:48

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Larry Parrish posted:

Actually they dont. They have to reform the government via a unique decision or the regular horde government ones to gain either muslim or chinese unit types. Until then they have the best cavalry and infantry for several levels, but will quickly fall behind past about tech 9.

Oh I meant units in the "normal" techgroups do differ, sometimes in quality. I wasn't addressing the point about hordes, that's correct of course.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 22:08

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Kersch posted:

Improving provinces more will be fun, but I'm worried there will be too much wealth everywhere. I kind of wish that base tax and base production were more different. One is an income generator and the other is the better income generator. Base manpower is much better differentiated in comparison

Not necessarily, in some scenarios investing into basetax is absolutely worthwhile. For example, the Baltic region has lovely trade goods all around, there's no reason to invest in improving your production of grain or fish. Theocracies (coincidentally, three of which are in the Baltic) also get way more from taxes thanks to their ridiculous 25% bonus from devotion.

Agreed that production is outright superior for most countries though, unless for some reason you don't have control of your home trade node, but in that case you have bigger problems.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2015 21:55

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Bort Bortles posted:

I havent gotten to play much since Common Sense came out. My usual go-to country to play as post-patches is the Ottomans. I got like 10 years in, had not acquired any new tech, had only conquered my cores in Anoatolia plus Greece when I took Constantinople, and looked around the map and said "gently caress, I dont have anywhere I want to conquer". It is going to be nigh-impossible to conquer the Mamluks in a timely fashion and fighting Hungary and France to make progress in the Balkans sure does not sound like fun. The changes to manpower and coring costs really puts the brakes on everything. I just do not feel motivated to do anything because I am going to be doing it all so slowly.

So it's bad that you won't be bored with the game by 1600?

The reduced pace of expansion owns imo. The lategame has never been this engaging in EU. Admittedly I have a tendency to play conservatively, but it's a fun change from the "total forever war" mindset.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 01:34

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

b0lt posted:

edit: Also, my heir is Karl, from Kongo

...the next King in Konigsberg.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2015 10:37

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Disco Infiva posted:

Now rename it Kongosberg.

Culture shift to Russian, Kongograd

# ¿ Jun 29, 2015 12:36

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

So the reformation fired for me in 1471 :stare:

Something is very wrong with this patch.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2015 23:21

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

I want to do my first Ironman Byz run. What are the criteria for Basileus, exactly?

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 01:48

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

aeglus posted:

Trying out a one province Frankfurt game. Beginning is a bit risky and you're still gimping yourself by not taking land, but it is pretty satisfying to have nearly 100 development by 1530. That said I'd recommend starting as The Hansa and releasing Hamburg to play as if you want to be more powerful. Lets you have a port and a real COT instead. My Nassau vassal is running out of free CBs so I wonder what if I'll have to go with no CB wars if I want to keep expanding or wait until imperialism.

This is something people always forget about, but you can get CBs on hard-to-reach targets by opportunistically supporting rebels. It's a bit finicky, and inefficient due to unjustified demands, but it's better than sitting on your rear end for a hundred years.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 15:04

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Pellisworth posted:

The cost is the same, 10 DIP and one month conversion time per development.

CS increased coring costs a bit and literally doubled diplo-annexation costs, but culture conversion is the same. Religious conversion is a bit easier.

Edit: if you wanna sperg it,

1 basetax ~ 2.5 development

Previously 20 ADM to core per basetax, now 10 per development, so 25% higher coring costs without claims. The change in claim discount means if you factor that in, +50% coring costs.
Diplo-integration used to be 10 per basetax, now 8 per development. Fully twice as expensive to integrate.
Religious conversion difficulty used to be +0.5% per basetax, now is +0.1% per development. So conversion difficulty from province size is halved, meaning rich provinces are much easier to convert.
Culture conversion was 25 per basetax, now 10 per development. It's the same.

I'd really tweak this to make Religious a viable alternative to Humanist. One thing that definitely needs to be done is increasing conversion difficulty because +missionary strength is mostly useless, but being the "oppressive" idea group, I think culture conversion needs to be improved. Buff the end bonus to, say, -33% and/or, for more hilarity, add a modifier to culture conversion cost that's the inverse of 2x tolerance. So, say, if you have +5 tolerance in a province you get -10% culture conversion cost, if you have -1 you get +2%.

This is already a genocidal game, no reason not to take it further! :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 13:32

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Wow, Ironman Byzantium is fun as hell. The start is rough, then you eventually get some absolutely obscene bonuses, especially when it comes to manpower.

Unfortunately, as I entered the lategame, my attempts to ~~recklessly blob into Europe~~ ~recreate the Roman Empire~ have increasingly been thwarted. Whenever I expand, all of Western Europe, including Mega-France, dogpiles me with a massive coalition. The last one thoroughly kicked my rear end and I had to let go of Hungary and Vienna.

But the war exhaustion and the negative prestige had a side effect. Now I'll show them.

I'll SHOW THEM ALL :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Jul 5, 2015 21:48

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

VDay posted:

And Lithuania's going on a trip out East apparently.

That's kinda my fault, I've been bros with them and Poland all game. Poland helps me out when fighting Western Europe while Lithuania and I helped each other in the Caucasus.

Also that Russia was actually formed by Novgorod. And North African Castile will be the first to go, if you squint you can see a tiny OPM Tunis that used to be pretty big and has a bunch of cores all over the place. After conquering everything around, Castile left it alone for decades, so I vassalized it. :getin:

# ¿ Jul 5, 2015 22:19

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Goddammit.

As soon as I loaded up that Revolutionary Byz save and grabbed a couple of provinces in Europe, I got completely dogpiled by literally the entire continent. Despite a heroic defense, I was completely overrun by forces three times my size, and the glorious revolution was drowned in blood. I had to make huge concessions and be brought back into the fold of the ancien regime.

I can't help but feel there are some painful parallels to certain IRL current events.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2015 21:18

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Chickpea Roar posted:

Regarding Revolutions:
I'm trying to spark one in my Ottoman game right now. Starting the disaster is easy enough, but the first rebels spawned besides a 50k rebel hunting army and was instantly wiped. I got an event a couple of months later that would have spawned three stacks on different isolated Indonesian isles, so I chose the non-rebel option. Years later and I haven't gotten a single revolutionary rebel uprising. Will there be more event-spawned revolutionaries? According to the wiki the revolution will be successful if my capital is occupied by rebels, but does it have to be revolutionary rebels? If not I'm just gonna move my capital next to the next rebel stack that pops up and mothball the fort...

Are you not getting natural rebels from province unrest? The Revolution increases it by like 10, so in that case you definitely have some unrest-lowering stuff. Get rid of it, tank your stability etc. and they should spawn naturally and march on your capital. Turn off rebel hunting on your armies and simply follow the revolutionaries recapturing provinces from them.

(And yeah, it has to be revolutionary rebels IIRC)

# ¿ Jul 8, 2015 19:18

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

It's shameful to admit this, but I've never really had a successful HRE game. I've decided to go for easy mode and pick Brandenburg->Prussia, as a way to relax after the grueling ordeal that was Blobzantium, but I kinda have analysis paralysis on what early idea sets to pick.

I'm thinking of a diplo set first, to do something with my dip points, but can't decide which one - diplo or influence? Same goes for the second military set, although I'm leaning towards Offensive. Third will probably be Economic, since you start so poor, but I'm open to suggestions. Advice?

# ¿ Jul 9, 2015 15:14

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Gitro posted:

Borders!

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

That Crimea is amazing, sitting there in the eye of the storm, a humble oasis of beautiful borders in what otherwise looks like the work of a bulimic cartographer.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 03:09

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Been a while since I played in Asia, so I started a Bahmanis game. Eating my way through India, I thought to myself hey, this isn't very challenging, looks like I'll be unbeatably huge soon.

Then I realized I'd left random lucky nations on. Ming is lucky. Oh boy.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 00:50

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

OneTwentySix posted:

He's right. Even as end game WC Ottomans, Ming with max level forts is a bitch. They'll have a huge army and manpower reserve and even if you beat them, they'll be back again a few months later since you can't chase them. Sieges take forever, they get crazy defensive bonuses, and overall they are a huge pain. And that's western Ottomans with Janissaries and amazing leaders and an unlimited manpower pool and huge rear end army - if they're a pain to THAT, they're going to be a nightmare to someone else. Attack them as early as possible before they stack bonuses and get better and better forts.; any forts you take are a pretty big deal.

Well gently caress. :smith:

Here's the situation in Asia:

Gondwana and Marwar are my vassals. To get to China, I'd have to backstab Bengal, my only ally, which isn't that huge a deal - all of my neighbors are smaller than me and behind on miltech and I've been wiping the floor with them even when they team up. Ming, however, has been blobbing hard and has almost twice my forcelimits. The Euros have shown no interest in rounding the Cape so far, so it'll be a long while before I can westernize.

Do I start working on Bengal ASAP or subjugate the northwestern states first? Suggestions?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 12:33

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

double nine posted:

I've been away from EU4 for quite a while and I'm going to jump back in - what are the current strategies for monarch point management? Especially when it comes to conquering new territory, and especially within the HRE? Beeline for administration? Or go for Influence and vassal-feed to the max?

Either is a legitimate option, they save you the same amount of MP, but from different pools. Strict land powers that have little use for diplo points are definitely better off vassal-feeding. If you want to blob hard, you need a mix of both. Within the HRE, though, the major limiting factor is actually AE, and there you mostly want to vassalize small, one- or two-province minors and feed them chunks of bigger countries by transferring occupations in war. (Vassalizing a big HRE state means shitloads of AE in one go)

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 14:35

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

TorakFade posted:

Hey guys, I played EU3 back in the day and now on a whim I got myself EU4 + plenty of DLC.

What's a good starting point? I'd love to start out in Italy somewhere.

Italy is fun as hell. Venice is good if you want to build a maritime trading empire in the Mediterranean and roll in dough forever (trade is actually enjoyable in EU4).

For uniting Italy and being a strong land power, I recommend either Florence or Milan. They both have similar idea sets that help you become a super-efficient, technologically and socially advanced country with strength out of proportion to your size. Forming Italy is a really cool transition point in that it gives you new ideas more suited to good old imperialist expansion.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 23:58

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Oddly, the thing I'm probably most excited for (apart from Estates) is espionage being actually viable, the tougher claim fabrication is probably intended to do that as well. Free monarch points plus loving with rivals' vassals seems cool, I hope it works well in practice and you don't just get kicked out after two months every time.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2015 16:36

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Bad things about working the afternoon shift: EU4 DLC come out exactly when I start work

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 11:52

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Hm, one thing I can't find in the patchnotes is something that Wiz mentioned having planned before: buffing New World provinces above the current wasteland of worthless 1/1/1 shitholes. Am I blind or did that project not make it in?

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 14:21

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Lori posted:

This is really dumb:

Actually this kind of owns, I really dig the design. Especially the mountain passes, and the strait through the middle as the only way through. It's not realistic, but for a fantasy new world it could give some pretty interesting results.

I started a game as England to just explore the RNW and chill. Most of the western hemisphere is just various medium-sized islands scattered around, so I thought to myself "hey cool I can just build a path to Asia through the ocean". Nope, the westernmost tile is this monstrosity. And the Burning Empire spawned on it. :allears:

This should be interesting.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2015 01:09

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Is there a viable exodus strat for the Knights in the current cycle? I'm really feeling theocracies right now and looking for a real challenge.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 03:02

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 00:13

Guildencrantz: May 1, 2012; Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

I swear I had nothing to do with this plucky underdog story. I just scrolled around and noticed that holy poo poo, Theodoro is a regional power. I'm happy to report that I'm allied to the lil' guy and I intend to do whatever it takes to keep the magic going. At least until Lithuania's ally France comes in to stomp me :gonk:

Also, interesting sidenote: in this game, the RNW generated a massive Atlantic ocean which is entirely empty, the continent starts far to the west. So far it's untouched, instead all the colonizers are gunning hard for Africa and Asia ahead of the normal schedule. I love this kind of butterfly effect in EU.

Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Dec 4, 2015

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 01:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Europa Universalis IV: Buying all the DLC is just Common Sense

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