Europa Universalis IV

faille

faille

Molten Core Raider
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What's the trick to cracking Great Britain?
I'm going for the Bohemians achievement and had solidified my position in europe, more or less, but no idea how to build a big enough navy to secure an amphibious landing on them, not to mention actually getting a CB to do do. At least, not without bankrupting myself irrevocably.
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
448
faille_sl said:
What's the trick to cracking Great Britain?
I'm going for the Bohemians achievement and had solidified my position in europe, more or less, but no idea how to build a big enough navy to secure an amphibious landing on them, not to mention actually getting a CB to do do. At least, not without bankrupting myself irrevocably.
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When I got a WC, I went to war early with GB and made them release Cornwall, which I then vassalized. At that point, you just amass troops there and then declare using a conquest CB on the rest of it, and vassal feed Cornwall in the south and Scotland in the North. Also, if its early enough you can also pop out Northumbria. The Bohemians achievement only requires Dublin?

If its later in the game, you may need to instead colony swipe and fight in the Americas/Africa until your warscore is high enough to pop out Cornwall, Wales, or Scotland and then vassalize.
 
Aaron

Aaron

Goonsquad Officer
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Arumbaon YouTube is probably one of the best EUIV LPers out there. He often explains why he does what he does. Try watching him, it's how I learned.
 
Jozu

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Whats the very first thing I should be doing? Do i just hire advisers and bide my time while I accumulate admin points? Do I build an army outright? Its so frustrating losing every game I watched the tutorials but a lot of them are long winded and overly ambitious in scope. Im just trying to figure out what I should strive for early on to set myself up for success later.
 
Agraza

Agraza

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getting your income sustainably growing is often my first step. if you're a german minor most can't even afford advisors early on. It's all about being in the black and seizing opportunities. The AI is an idiot, and will quickly enter into cataclysmic wars you can jump on. I usually prize income because you can be a paper tiger with $$ and always enter wars on your terms. Coalitions are dependent upon the idea that the coalition can actually beat you. If you have s 3 million men standing army, you can get all the aggressive expansion you want and they will silently piss themselves.

For land combat, always keep your infantry in a stack at or slightly above your combat width (displayed in technology UI iirc). Keep 2-4 cavalry per stack minimum early on for flanking. Cavalry has a base flanking range of 2 to infantry's 1. When you can afford artillery get at least 1 for siege stacks, but if you can afford it get 4 for important stacks. In the mid-game you'll want to get up to having 1:1 inf:art ratio as artillery goes in the back row, including behind cavalry, and they contribute their defensive shock/fire pips to the front row, making them supermen. Anytime you have more art than inf+cav, your art will get put in the front row. That is bad. They take double damage. Always make sure you have enough inf+cav to protect your artillery.

Certain conditions including mountains and river crossings will reduce the attacker's combat width. Take care not to charge an even force on disadvantageous grounds. Terrain plays a large role on deciding conflicts throughout the game. Sieging in winter can be brutal. Places like Russia which get harsh winter modifiers during winter months will devour your manpower through attrition. Use mercs or plan summer offensives.

Anytime I have the $$ I love using mercenary infantry. Infantry get melted in battles, and mercs don't affect my manpower. Having low manpower is a huge red flag to the AI that says "WEAK". Avoid having low manpower and you'll usually avoid being someone's target of opportunity.

tl;dr inf = combat width+1-3, cavalry 4ish*, 1 art when accessible for siege, 1:1 inf:art ratio when affordable for sieges and supermen, be careful with mountains, rivers, and winter.

*if you're a mongol or some other cavalry weirdo cavalry might be a lot more powerful than just wanting the minimum for flanking, but by the mid-game everyone needs to be using strong inf+art stacks.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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I usually go 1.5:1 inf:art so that reserve regiments of infantry replace casualties during the battle and keep the artillery always protected.

Combat width, terrain type, and supply limit almost never line up in this game, it's infuriating. Exercising your full combat width at any time is almost guaranteed to go over your supply limit by a big amount. I usually build armies up to whatever a typical province will support during winter, then have a duplicate army in tow, always one province behind. When the extra manpower is needed, I'll commit both to the same battle.
 
Agraza

Agraza

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Yea, I like to travel smaller stacks in 3s. Enemy doomstack goes for one of the 3, and I reinforce. Usually my 3 > their 1, and 3 often let's me plug entire pathways, squatting on all the good defensive terrain.
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
448
Agraza_sl said:
Yea, I like to travel smaller stacks in 3s. Enemy doomstack goes for one of the 3, and I reinforce. Usually my 3 > their 1, and 3 often let's me plug entire pathways, squatting on all the good defensive terrain.
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One big thing that helps with combat imo, is when you're middling or low on manpower, split off the infantry and consolidate regiments. Then, replace the losses in your stacks with mercenaries until your manpower is back to an acceptable level. Keep in mind consolidation also helps you by saving money; reinforcement costs on troops can be expensive early game
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
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New patch out today and a new DLC to accompany it - "The Cossacks". While this DLC gives a lot of new features for Horde nations, there's a few new mechanics in for all of the others. Estates are pretty interesting - basically you give a portion of your autonomy per province optionally to an aristocratic faction. That faction in turn gives you bonuses depending on what faction it is. You need to keep their loyalty to your nation high, while their influence somewhat balanced, to receive optimally their bonuses. They get too low on loyalty and they give detriments instead of bonuses, and if they get too high in influence they can try to revolt and leave with those provinces.

So far the DLC looks solid. There was also a ton of QOL changes in the client with this patch, plus a ton of new achievements.
 
Agraza

Agraza

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They update this game so often nowadays that the big modders are always running some old busted shit. It's a bit frustrating for those wanting both a more epic experience and the new update. Of course I blame the modders for operating colossally complex mods with too many interdependent elements. I have to go with a bunch of smaller non-conflicting mods or hash out any small conflicts in order to add some spice to vanilla.
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
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Agraza_sl said:
They update this game so often nowadays that the big modders are always running some old busted shit. It's a bit frustrating for those wanting both a more epic experience and the new update. Of course I blame the modders for operating colossally complex mods with too many interdependent elements. I have to go with a bunch of smaller non-conflicting mods or hash out any small conflicts in order to add some spice to vanilla.
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Which mods do you run? I haven't ran a mod in this game, so I don't really have any experience with it
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Did they add something in 1.15 regarding war exhaustion? I don't see anything in the patch notes but even after 2 wars, waiting for my manpower to refill in between, I still had non-insignificant war exhaustion after the second. And it wasn't a long war, just gobbling up some small neighbor.

I want to keep playing this game but they still need to do something about the frequent lulls. Managing your country in between wars is NOT fun. I can pause my game for that, and usually do. Seems like they keep adding more and more negatives to warmongering.

The last thing that really bugs me is that the gameplay doesn't really evolve much. Newer technologies and ideas allow you to play the meat grinder to thinner margins, but nothing that really changes how you play. Later admin tech that reduces coring might be the only exception. But they've made coring costs so damn high(see previous point), I'm not sure that will let you warmonger that much faster.

I know this is a game heavily steeped historical accuracy, but it's still a game. It's fun recreating the Mongol Empire, but the breakneck speeds at which they conquered doesn't even seem possible.
 
Jozu

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Deathwing_sl said:
Did they add something in 1.15 regarding war exhaustion? I don't see anything in the patch notes but even after 2 wars, waiting for my manpower to refill in between, I still had non-insignificant war exhaustion after the second. And it wasn't a long war, just gobbling up some small neighbor.

I want to keep playing this game but they still need to do something about the frequent lulls. Managing your country in between wars is NOT fun. I can pause my game for that, and usually do. Seems like they keep adding more and more negatives to warmongering.

The last thing that really bugs me is that the gameplay doesn't really evolve much. Newer technologies and ideas allow you to play the meat grinder to thinner margins, but nothing that really changes how you play. Later admin tech that reduces coring might be the only exception. But they've made coring costs so damn high(see previous point), I'm not sure that will let you warmonger that much faster.

I know this is a game heavily steeped historical accuracy, but it's still a game. It's fun recreating the Mongol Empire, but the breakneck speeds at which they conquered doesn't even seem possible.
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This is why I stopped playing this game.
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
448
Deathwing_sl said:
Did they add something in 1.15 regarding war exhaustion? I don't see anything in the patch notes but even after 2 wars, waiting for my manpower to refill in between, I still had non-insignificant war exhaustion after the second. And it wasn't a long war, just gobbling up some small neighbor.

I want to keep playing this game but they still need to do something about the frequent lulls. Managing your country in between wars is NOT fun. I can pause my game for that, and usually do. Seems like they keep adding more and more negatives to warmongering.

The last thing that really bugs me is that the gameplay doesn't really evolve much. Newer technologies and ideas allow you to play the meat grinder to thinner margins, but nothing that really changes how you play. Later admin tech that reduces coring might be the only exception. But they've made coring costs so damn high(see previous point), I'm not sure that will let you warmonger that much faster.

I know this is a game heavily steeped historical accuracy, but it's still a game. It's fun recreating the Mongol Empire, but the breakneck speeds at which they conquered doesn't even seem possible.
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Do you have the Cossacks DLC? Have you played as a Steppe Horde -- they're OP and really fun. While I understand your point, I'm still finding fun in the game by working on achievements where a lot of them aren't really about constant warmongering, but instead are focused on trade, colonization, or diplomacy. You may want to try playing something a little less involved in warmongering and see how that plays out. For example, I'm playing as Venice in my current game to knock out a few trade based achievements and it hasn't felt as pressing to war all the time as say, France trying to blob constantly
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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I don't have the Cossacks DLC yet, did they pull another thing where they half-assed the implementation of a feature like estates such that you got the downside in the patch and upside in the DLC?

See, I don't get that. Trade, colonization, diplomacy, all feel like distractions or things that feed into warmongering in this game. Trade: ok, I'll go park my merchants here and send my fleet(s) to increase trade power here. And then what? What do I do after I unpause the game?

I almost feel like this game would be better off as one of those web-based games where you can make X amount of moves per 24 hours. The game has bursts of activity followed by way too much dead time. If they get rid of the dead time, they probably have a truly awesome game on their hands. Not just a niche game appreciated by people who get a thrill out of reforming the Roman Empire to its zenith.
 
Z

Zajeer

Molten Core Raider
544
448
Deathwing_sl said:
I don't have the Cossacks DLC yet, did they pull another thing where they half-assed the implementation of a feature like estates such that you got the downside in the patch and upside in the DLC?

See, I don't get that. Trade, colonization, diplomacy, all feel like distractions or things that feed into warmongering in this game. Trade: ok, I'll go park my merchants here and send my fleet(s) to increase trade power here. And then what? What do I do after I unpause the game?

I almost feel like this game would be better off as one of those web-based games where you can make X amount of moves per 24 hours. The game has bursts of activity followed by way too much dead time. If they get rid of the dead time, they probably have a truly awesome game on their hands. Not just a niche game appreciated by people who get a thrill out of reforming the Roman Empire to its zenith.
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Horde Unity and razing provinces with Hordes are the main features. Razing basically means that when you conquer a new province and haven't cored it yet, you can reduce the development of the province for mana. It makes it so that the provinces gets more poor, but it also reduces coring cost (because coring is tied to development) and gives you mana. Hordes are real fun right now, even after the last patch where they got nerfed slightly.

As far as non-war actions being distractions - I guess if you look at this game as being fun when there's war, then yeah, I can see all of that being a distraction.

For me playing a trade game means that you pick strategic points in the game to attack other nations, specifically to get Centers of Trade and Estuaries (and possibly some specific trade good) which increases your strength within that trade node. It also means colonization in the Americas, and in the far east, all the while subjugating primitive nations to get more power within trade companies in select trade nodes. Additionally it means specific times within the game to war not for land, but for naval/trade dominance. This may not be as exciting as just conquering land for the heck of it, but positions your gameplay differently.

I guess my main point is, this game is all about picking your own goals and following through. If you only have fun warmongering, and find everything else to be boring, then I can imagine the lull between wars to be slow and boring. However, thankfully you can speed through the lulls at speed 5, while slowing down the game when you do go to war. These are obvious things which I'm sure you do, and honestly my best suggestion to keep the game fresh is to work on specific achievements to set a goal in mind - some of the achievements are pretty challenging and interesting.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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I stumbled upon Jan Mayen yesterday and it's been a lot of fun playing as that nation. It removes a lot of the warmongering checks. It hasn't been that challenging, been able to go toe-to-toe with France pretty early, but it's been interesting strategy change now that I don't have to worry about diplomatic costs, coring costs, attrition, all that sort of stuff.

I might try ratcheting up the difficulty and see if I can still conquer the world that way.
 
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