Europa Universalis IV

Onigen

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Well since you're playing Castile. You're supposed to conquer Iberian peninsula, form Spain, maybe conquer Morocco, rape the gold mines there. Then you're supposed to move southwards towards Mali, conquer them and rape their gold mines. Then you colonize South America, the Caribbean or North America. Or you could colonize even more south and take over Africa and keep pushing that trade towards Seville, eventually pushing the trade from Asia across Cape Town to your own trade hubs, bypassing those filthy people in the middle east. It's EU4 so it's extremely OK to be xenophobic and uncaring.

All jokes aside, Paradox made Castile/Spain and Portugal to be played as a colonizing nations so that's where they're the strongest.

PS. Find a way to fuck over Portugal, they'll disrupt your colonizing adventures, it's usually a pain in the ass because they're allied to England.
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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Onigen said:
Well since you're playing Castile. You're supposed to conquer Iberian peninsula, form Spain, maybe conquer Morocco, rape the gold mines there. Then you're supposed to move southwards towards Mali, conquer them and rape their gold mines. Then you colonize South America, the Caribbean or North America. Or you could colonize even more south and take over Africa and keep pushing that trade towards Seville, eventually pushing the trade from Asia across Cape Town to your own trade hubs, bypassing those filthy people in the middle east. It's EU4 so it's extremely OK to be xenophobic and uncaring.

All jokes aside, Paradox made Castile/Spain and Portugal to be played as a colonizing nations so that's where they're the strongest.

PS. Find a way to fuck over Portugal, they'll disrupt your colonizing adventures, it's usually a pain in the ass because they're allied to England.
Click to expand...

I guess i already fucked up that campaign haha. I actually helped Portugal fight Morocco in a war they started and helped them take a bunch of Moroccan provinces meanwhile they took all the jumper islands: cape verde, Azores, etc.

I didn't realize I need to research the *idea* of travelling to Nee World and I didnt get the idea until the 1520s
 
Onigen

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
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It's near impossible to beat Portugal to those islands anyways because they get an explorer even without the "conquest of the new world"-idea and I think they also get a colonist from their nation-bonuses. Easier to just annex the areas from them.

You can exploit gold provinces by increasing their production development value btw
 
Chris

Chris

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I seem remember that annihilating Portugal isn't too hard since they are so isolated, just time it when France is attacking England. Should be your first job as Castile. Perhaps try an alliance with France and Scotland.

Aragon is a bit more difficult as they get entangled in Italian politics and islands in the Med, I think there's some sort of marriage event you can go for to unite Spain peacefully though like IRL.
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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I started the campaign all over again. This time i beat the crap out of Portugal, fully annexed them. Didnt waste a set of Ideas on Military at Admin level 5, beat up on the Moroccans too to secure the gibraltar straight, colonized cape verde and tenerife.

Now I have a reunification project goig with Aragon that is almost complete, i filly integratted Navarre into my kingdom and I have colonies in Hispanoola, Cuba and Central America.

What areas should I be pushing towards for the gold?
 
Aaron

Aaron

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EU4 is one of those games I'd love to be good at, but am shit. But I love watching good players play it, so I just watch it a lot on Twitch and YT. If you want to watch one of the best players play it then check out Arumba07's Twtich and YT channels. He even has a couple of tutorial LP's and even during his regular campaigns he explains why he does what he does a lot.
 
Onigen

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
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232
Araysar said:
What areas should I be pushing towards for the gold?
Click to expand...

With that progress, you don't really need to concentrate on gold anymore. It's a great starting booster because it can raise your taxes relatively fast in the early game. (You should have a trade goods map-mode and it shows gold/silver provinces).

After you form Spain, it should be all up to you what you're going to do. But since you already started colonizing, I would continue that westwards and while you have the tech lead on aztecs and the other heathens, go conquer those. North America is faster to colonize though since there's no rainforest and other maluses. There should also be some mechanic for your conquistadors where they search for seven cities of gold while exploring. (if you have el dorado-dlc)

Also every colonial nation that's over 10 provinces big gives you a merchant. You need to push all the trade from the new world to Sevilla, otherwise it goes to London.
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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Onigen said:
With that progress, you don't really need to concentrate on gold anymore. It's a great starting booster because it can raise your taxes relatively fast in the early game. (You should have a trade goods map-mode and it shows gold/silver provinces).

After you form Spain, it should be all up to you what you're going to do. But since you already started colonizing, I would continue that westwards and while you have the tech lead on aztecs and the other heathens, go conquer those. North America is faster to colonize though since there's no rainforest and other maluses. There should also be some mechanic for your conquistadors where they search for seven cities of gold while exploring. (if you have el dorado-dlc)

Also every colonial nation that's over 10 provinces big gives you a merchant. You need to push all the trade from the new world to Sevilla, otherwise it goes to London.
Click to expand...

That helps a lot. So lets say I want to push trade from the Caribbean node to Sevilla... I go in to the trade screen, click "Send" on the Caribbean node and tell the merchant to transfer power?

SO far what Ive been doing with every merchant is
1. go into Trade screen, and sort all node by total trade power (regardless if i have any share in it or not)
2. ignore the nodes where I already control most of the trade power like Sevilla and assign merchants to push power in Nodes that have a lot of trade power but I dont control (Genoa, English Channel, Alexandria, etc.

am I doing this right?

I got most of Cuba and Hispaniola colonized right now and the tip of Florida for later. I made some colonies in Central America and then proceeded to fight my way into Mexico and take over all Aztec provinces that had gold. I stopped fighting for like 20 years afterwards to reduce my army and pay off all the loans I took and build up a 2K treasury to finish a mission. Then I used it the money to buy a bunch of churches, marketplaces and whatever else makes money. Now I got a bunch of money and really zero interest in fucking around Europe. I should probably explore Africa and get in on the Ivory Coast trade. Is my next move now just to fight all the way up Mexico ino North America while? Or should I colonize the Atlantic seaboard to deny it to the British?

Also, is fabricating claims the only way to create CBs to fight all these natives? Its a real pain int the ass.
 
Onigen

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
163
232
Spain is in a shitty position trade-wise at the early game since the trade nodes all push past your trade-capital and it's completely useless to try and wrestle control of the trade in Genoa or English channel because there's a million smaller nations/merchant republics all putting their trade fleets (light ships) on the nodes that bypass you. Without knowing the world situation where you're at, I'd push trade from Tunis/Ivory Coast(very important later), maybe collect in Genoa 'cause you're going to have at least some trade power there from your lands In Aragon. All the Eastern Mediterranean nations are going to try and push the trade from Alexandria to Constantinople/Venice, that's why I'd also keep colonizing African coast so you start pushing that trade through Cape Town, bypassing Middle-east.

If you can deny the English access from North America, that's great. But there's a lot of coast and as soon as they get a foothold they'll keep spreading. Colonial wars are actually kind of the "mid-game" of EU4, followed by imperial wars in the late-game.

You don't need to fabricate on the natives yourself if you colonize and form a colonial nation next to them, they'll fabricate claims and you can push those. Or you could take religious ideas and deus vult all the heathens.
 
A

a_skeleton_05

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Have they managed to turn this into something that wasn't just a map painter with a hundred systems designed to make you jump through hoops in order to do it?
 
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Kaines

Kaines

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Dom said:
Have they managed to turn this into something that wasn't just a map painter with a hundred systems designed to make you jump through hoops in order to do it?
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Sounds like you want to play a different game. I hope you find it.
 
faille

faille

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Aaron said:
EU4 is one of those games I'd love to be good at, but am shit. But I love watching good players play it, so I just watch it a lot on Twitch and YT. If you want to watch one of the best players play it then check out Arumba07's Twtich and YT channels. He even has a couple of tutorial LP's and even during his regular campaigns he explains why he does what he does a lot.
Click to expand...

I find following any of the countless guides you can find on reddit / youtube, a good way to achieve things in the game while always learning more and more about the game. It's pretty shameful how little I actually know about the game despite the thousands of hours I've spent in it.
 
Rathar

Rathar

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I'm with ya man. I realllly wanted to play the shit out of that game. Haven't found a good culture simulator in forever but.. I .. Just... Couldn't... like it.
I don't want to have to carry the individual buckets of water for the Empires stableboys in order to forge the steel to etc etc.

Maybe it's just too many bells n whistles right in your face.
 
Kaines

Kaines

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Rathar said:
I'm with ya man. I realllly wanted to play the shit out of that game. Haven't found a good culture simulator in forever but.. I .. Just... Couldn't... like it.
I don't want to have to carry the individual buckets of water for the Empires stableboys in order to forge the steel to etc etc.

Maybe it's just too many bells n whistles right in your face.
Click to expand...
Have you looked into Victoria 2?
 
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Rathar

Rathar

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I understand your words individually but the way you're stringing them together right now means zero to me so no no I haven't.
 
Agraza

Agraza

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Maybe look into Crusader Kings III (in development). It's the next gen of their grand strategy games. I'm sure EU5, V3, etc. will follow.

Personally I prefer playing more agile navy based nations like Venice, Oman, the Hansa, etc. than the OG hyper powers. Obviously England transforms very quickly into mega Venice, but Venice is absurdly more efficient (cultural/religious tolerance and high monarch power). If you can evade an early confrontation with the turks you basically own the mediterranean, and every italian border territory you get is hilled/mountained so you can slowly build a fortress out of the alps to keep the germans, french, turks, etc. out while you win at sea. The stupid losses I made a polish/french/papal coalition face in the 17th century as Venice was laughable. I went on to pillage and rape the French New World, China, and Indonesia once I demonstrated to Europe that I shall be the sole winner of incoming trade. The meta-challenge is conquering Egypt and being able to defeat the turks on land. You can't wall it up nearly as easily, but it cuts all of western europe out of the late game economics. If you can make the turks fail cascade to war exhaustion or use the other land powers to carry the conflict it's doable.

Spain can easily do the exact same thing with far more advantages, being handed half of the new world and only needing to fortify the pyrenees. I just prefer republics where available.
 
A

a_skeleton_05

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I didn't mind the map painting, I just hated how every new update to the game seemed designed to make doing it harder (through annoyance, not challenge) and didn't give you anything to do during peace. At least with CK2 and Stellaris you can focus on roleplaying concepts and inner development.
 
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