Europa Universalis IV

Deathwing · Jul 6, 2015

Haven't played this much since release. Bought all the major DLCs that were on sale recently. I think it was everything that list a few posts back except Common Sense. I've noticed some things have changed, like some buildings are actually worth it. I thought it was kinda cheap to buildings fort worth by making fort-less provinces fall to sieges in one month, but it really works(and I likely wouldn't complain if I didn't know the state beforehand).

But is there a comprehensive list of changes with each DLC? Like, my UI said I have 5/5 forts active. So, my EU instincts said I better not build anymore. A province is ceded to me with a fort, now it says 6/6. I can't figure out if having the forts active costs ducats, do I need to have armies stationed there, etc.

Agraza · Jul 6, 2015

Forts garrison themselves to full over time regardless of manpower or troop presence. Your UI is saying 5/5 are funded and 6/6 are funded. There is a checkbox on that element to unfund all of them (then they act like the fort isn't there) or you can visit each province a fort is in to unfund it specifically. It costs 1/2 as much to maintain when unfunded, the amount of your fort expenses is listed in the budget window.

I don't know of a list of changes over time. They're iterating quite a bit atm with development, a major feature of common sense, so we're on a beta patch atm.

Deathwing · Jul 14, 2015

Am I playing this game wrong? There seems to be an inordinate amount of waiting or doing nothing. Playing an easy game as Ottomans just to get the hang of the updated rules from the DLC. Without the steep discount to coring(at least -83%), it would be even worse. Adding just a few provinces would cost decades worth of admin points.

But now I have the problem where I can't attack anyone in Europe because the about half the damn continent automatically joins in. So, I decided to expand into Africa and Asia. No problem, those provinces are just as rich. Woops, expanded "too" fast and I have 7-10 active separatist factions nearing rebellion for the next 30 years. I either continually punch them down with military points, which I guess isn't a bad thing because wtf else is there to spend those points on? Or I just sit around waiting for them to rebel, parking a couple armies near the hot spots. Which means I can't use those armies to expand anymore.

Cost of coring and separatism length seem to be the biggest problems with this game. I'm going to give diplo-annexing a try, but feeding your vassals in geographically tight spots(i.e. islands and peninsulas) makes that really inefficient.

hodj · Jul 14, 2015

From my experience with Crusader Kings 2, this is just how these games work. They're very obtuse at times.

Zajeer · Jul 14, 2015

Deathwing_sl said:
Cost of coring and separatism length seem to be the biggest problems with this game. I'm going to give diplo-annexing a try, but feeding your vassals in geographically tight spots(i.e. islands and peninsulas) makes that really inefficient.

I haven't played in a while myself, but I remember that you have to increase local autonomy on newly acquired provinces to keep them in check. Then later you wait for the autonomy to slowly decay, or force lower autonomy instead. Also, diplo-annexing a vassal gives you much less unrest from an autonomy standpoint.

What I used to do was, if the land I was going to take was going to be a different culture than my culture group, I would instead make a vassal that has that culture group. As an example, if you want to conquer into the horn of Africa, its best to make a vassal there and feed them land of the same culture group. I used Ajuuraan there because they are in that Somali culture group, but their first idea gives them better missionary strength to convert everything to your religion.

Deathwing · Jul 14, 2015

Hmmm, not remembering that mechanic since I played last. Is local autonomy something that was added in a DLC? I'll check it out. I'm awash in gold and manpower as it is, so upping autonomy shouldn't be a problem.

I do find it somewhat ironic that they switched all buildings to gold and I STILL have too much after building all useful ones(I'm not going to build a barracks on a province that only nets 375 manpower, for example).

Is there a way to get around the prestige cost of selling vassals cores? Actually, the wiki mentions that this cost is new as of 1.12.

Zajeer · Jul 14, 2015

Deathwing_sl said:
Hmmm, not remembering that mechanic since I played last. Is local autonomy something that was added in a DLC? I'll check it out. I'm awash in gold and manpower as it is, so upping autonomy shouldn't be a problem.

I do find it somewhat ironic that they switched all buildings to gold and I STILL have too much after building all useful ones(I'm not going to build a barracks on a province that only nets 375 manpower, for example).

Is there a way to get around the prestige cost of selling vassals cores? Actually, the wiki mentions that this cost is new as of 1.12.

Good question - not sure. I haven't played since the patch where they removed the mana cost on buildings and made them straight gold. So there's quite a bit of changes that I haven't seen yet. Maybe ask on Reddit about the prestige cost thing? I haven't played with that mechanic yet

Agraza · Jul 15, 2015

They updated the rebel system a while ago and made rebels stronger when they did it as the update gave you a tad more control over rebels. You can increase autonomy via the macrobuilder or per province. It should be on the left near where the unrest is shown in the province menu. Decreasing autonomy is very often bad, and I don't recommend it unless you have a strong set of anti-unrest ideas.

You can change the occupation controller during wars to your vassals so that they are awarded the province in the peace, avoiding the need to toss their cores at them later.

Long periods doing nothing is a thing, but I play on max speed to reduce it. I just pause to make serious decisions occasionally.

You really need to weigh aggressive expansion impact when you make peace deals. Try to only go for things covered by your casus belli, and make friends of local powers before you begin to reduce the AE impact. Allies don't get hit with the maximum amount, so if I allied Milan and attacked Venice, even if Milan isn't participating, they hate me less for taking adjacent property. As Turkey invading Europe, that's rarely a real option, but France and Turkey can buddy up, and historically they did.

As the Turks you should only be solidifying control of the Balkans and Crimea regarding europeans. Ragusa, Constantinople, and Crimea trade hubs are all I care about taking from them. If Hungary is diplomatically isolated (rare these days) then I might snipe at them. If you're very good you can go after Wien for the free westernization, but I'd delay that. It's not that important, and the moment you westernize any of your more primitive neighbors can begin to westernize too. The same basic strat should be applied to the east, but at least here you can play one enemy against another as many muslims like you.

Europe just isn't very valuable given the trade orientation of the turks, and letting the italians live can be profitable as they often help steer trade to Alexandria rather than around the Cape. Sadly North Africa is also not very valuable economically, but it's a nice base to fuck with Spain. Tunis's trade node really should flow to Istanbul, prompting Turkey to acquire those territories.

Deathwing · Jul 15, 2015

You can award vassals provinces they don't have cores or claims as long as they occupy it during the war?

Agraza · Jul 15, 2015

Yea, and you can swap occupation to other entities so long as they own or control an adjacent province. So I can set Wallachia's occupation of Hungary to cover all of Hungary if I start by adjusting the occupation near Wallachia. And then in the peace deal I can have them receive them. It doesn't avoid AE, and there was(is?) a bug about vassal conquest AE values. I need to see if they fixed that. I've been away for a few days b/c of Win10.

Deathwing · Jul 15, 2015

I'm not too concerned with AE since it's localized and decays. By the time the truce expires, the effects of AE have worn off. As long as your theaters of war are far enough apart, you can be at almost constant war. Use Improve Relations to soothe over anyone who might be caught in the middle, literally.

Zajeer · Jul 15, 2015

Yeah this is definitely true for the Ottomans - just rotate between Europe, N Africa, E Africa, Middle East, East Asia, and North Asia (towards Russia) and you'll have little issue with AE. Ottomans and Byzantium are one of the more fun nations because you can fight in different theaters and not gain a lot of AE

faille · Jul 15, 2015

Trying a re-reconquista game with Granada. Really challenging, though I've managed to make a nice base in Africa, vasseling Tlemecan, Morroco and should make more moves on tunis. Finished westernising but taking a while to catch up on techs. Think I made a mistake in releasing Aragon as a vassal though since I'm not getting attacked by france in addition to spain / portugal, and it's just my ottoman alliance keeping me alive.

fanaskin · Jul 16, 2015

as the Byzantines I got ahold of georgia eventually by marrying a young daughter to the old king and assasinating all the pre marriage heirs, so it fell to me when he died. Another way to expand territory without taking on a lot of penalties. mostly though I find it's about planning out goals over the long run and speeding up the gamespeed during lulls.

Zajeer · Jul 16, 2015

fanaskin_sl said:
as the Byzantines I got ahold of georgia eventually by marrying a young daughter to the old king and assasinating all the pre marriage heirs, so it fell to me when he died. Another way to expand territory without taking on a lot of penalties. mostly though I find it's about planning out goals over the long run and speeding up the gamespeed during lulls.

Wrong thread? That sounds like CK2. Unless they added in a way to assassinate people in EU4 in the last few patches...

fanaskin · Jul 16, 2015

oh yeah whoops I forgot what thread I was in, hodj mentioned ck2 which threw me off. my bad.

Deathwing · Aug 17, 2015

Combat mechanics is probably the next thing I know very little about. My current standard is to build 1 army full of 13 merc infantry, 4 regular cavalry, 5 regular cannon and 1 regular army with the same amount of units, all regular, and 1 less infantry(to easily tell them apart so the merc infantry can fight the bigger battles).

Should I make my armies bigger with more flanking cavalry? Wider with more infantry? Thicker with more cannons? I like to keep them at their current size to keep the effects of attrition down. But some of my battles versus Eastern and Western tech groups(I'm Ottoman) seem quite in their favor even though I have a numbers advantage.

Jozu · Aug 17, 2015

Can someone post a beginner tutorial about learning this game? I tried it months ago as Wallachia with Vlad Dracula as my leader and actually ended up annexing serbia and Moldova. Sadly I got wtfstomped by Ottomans for no fucking reason after they randomly decided I couldnt expand anymore.

It took forever to do that and then the game just shitting on you and destroying everything you worked for kind of sucked lol. Im sure I could of avoided it If i actually knew how to play.

Zajeer · Aug 17, 2015

Jozu_sl said:
Can someone post a beginner tutorial about learning this game? I tried it months ago as Wallachia with Vlad Dracula as my leader and actually ended up annexing serbia and Moldova. Sadly I got wtfstomped by Ottomans for no fucking reason after they randomly decided I couldnt expand anymore.

It took forever to do that and then the game just shitting on you and destroying everything you worked for kind of sucked lol. Im sure I could of avoided it If i actually knew how to play.

Honestly, for a beginner the best country to play as is either Spain or Portugal. Portugal is the most insulated and let's you expand into the Americas and avoid most conflicts within Europe proper. Spain gives you the same expansion as Portugal, but at least there you can play in Europe more, which while being a beginner country, makes it a little more difficult than Portugal.

Edit: Also 2 great resources are theEu4 Subredditand theEU4 wiki

Dyvim · Aug 17, 2015

With CK2 i started out watching lots (10-15hours) of one continouing lets play and proceeded playing the demo they had (limited to 10 years) with a variety of nations, before i finally bought it and started my rule over half of europe game, damn those horde of doom stacks.

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Europa Universalis IV

Deathwing

Agraza

Registered Hutt

Deathwing

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider

Deathwing

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider

Agraza

Registered Hutt

Deathwing

Agraza

Registered Hutt

Deathwing

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider

faille

Molten Core Raider

fanaskin

Well known agitator

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider

fanaskin

Well known agitator

Deathwing

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider

Dyvim

Bronze Knight of the Realm