Europa Universalis IV

Zajeer

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Curry favors with them to break their best alliances, then break your alliance and beat up the Ottos after your 5 year truce. Like Furry said - you should be able to demolish them. Also try hooking up with France - they look beefy this game and would be a good ally
 
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Loser Araysar

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With that much money, why not find your best war against the ottos and merc swarm them down? You should be able to afford to go way over force limit for a long war.
I need the Ottomans as bros to bulwark against Western Europe and to help me tag team the Commonwealth.

Plus it's the kind of war that even if I do spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to fight them and theirassive resources, I only get a few provinces out of it and then likely a consistent rival.

I think I'm going to try suck Russia into a war by attacking some of their allies.
 

DickTrickle

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I need the Ottomans as bros to bulwark against Western Europe and to help me tag team the Commonwealth.

Plus it's the kind of war that even if I do spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to fight them and theirassive resources, I only get a few provinces out of it and then likely a consistent rival.

I think I'm going to try suck Russia into a war by attacking some of their allies.

It's been awhile since I've played but if you do that, you'd be able to peace them out separately and force an alliance break with the ottomans as a condition (assuming enough war score), no?
 

Loser Araysar

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It's been awhile since I've played but if you do that, you'd be able to peace them out separately and force an alliance break with the ottomans as a condition (assuming enough war score), no?

Yes, but..... It's not an alliance, it's an independence guarantee, so Russia can't revoke the Ottoman guarantee even if I trick them into assisting some of their random allies.

I read that independence guarantee is automatically broken though should the guarantor fail to come to their aid (like if they are embroiled in another large war) so that's probably my best course of action, to time the war when Ottomans are fighting another major power
 
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Furry

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That ottoman empire looks like it'll be just fine vs western europe with or without allies.

Also jesus christ this battle. Normally my austrian soldiers give up quickly, but they decided to fight to almost the last man this time. 120k soldiers, with only 900 infantry surviving when they finally decided to peace out. At least we killed 30,000 ottos in our losses of 100k. My war score ticked up enough for me to grab my claims and exit the war at least. #winning.

wooop.jpg
 

Loser Araysar

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Just gonna leave this here...


LMAO, i lost it at "Religious ideas" and then fucking died at Quantity ideas, wish I was ressurected at Defensive Ideas because I was ready to die again
 

Furry

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wooop.jpg

About six years until I can hoover up my next 4 vassals, gascony, nassau, finland and the mighty Knights. I'll probably do a quick and easy war to claim more of switzerland and then position myself to take on Spain. Manpower continues to be a big issue holding me back. Will the HRE just implode at some point? Honestly never tried taking it down from the inside by gobbling everyone up as the emperor.

I actually only need four provinces to form germany. Realistically I could do it within a few years if that was my goal. I'll probably aim for it in a couple decades, as I don't think the empire has long left in this world.
 

Loser Araysar

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View attachment 451283
About six years until I can hoover up my next 4 vassals, gascony, nassau, finland and the mighty Knights. I'll probably do a quick and easy war to claim more of switzerland and then position myself to take on Spain. Manpower continues to be a big issue holding me back. Will the HRE just implode at some point? Honestly never tried taking it down from the inside by gobbling everyone up as the emperor.

I actually only need four provinces to form germany. Realistically I could do it within a few years if that was my goal. I'll probably aim for it in a couple decades, as I don't think the empire has long left in this world.

bro your capital city automatically collects trade profits from the trade node its in, you don't have to waste a merchant on it (Wien)

maybe thats why youre poor :|
 
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Furry

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bro your capital city automatically collects trade profits from the trade node its in, you don't have to waste a merchant on it (Wien)

maybe thats why youre poor :|
sheet, learn something new about EU4 all the time. I'll be honest, I got no clue how trade works. I just collect places where I have a lot of power. That said, I wouldn't describe myself as poor this game. I'm running level 3-5 advisors and making decent money. It's certainly no Russia run where I'm turning off army maintenance, deleting every fort and begging for money everywhere I go.
 

Loser Araysar

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sheet, learn something new about EU4 all the time. I'll be honest, I got no clue how trade works. I just collect places where I have a lot of power. That said, I wouldn't describe myself as poor this game. I'm running level 3-5 advisors and making decent money.

yeah i have a hard time with trade too. my rule of thumb is to collect trade from nodes where I have the highest proportion of my own trade power relative to trade power of the whole node. but also to make sure to prioritize nodes where the total trade power is high. so i wouldnt put a merchant in a node where i control 99 out of 100 of trade power, but instead i'd put that merchant where i control 500 out of 800.

trade steering is basically too useless to try and min/max from what i understand
 

yerm

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Annoying allies can often be dealt with by calling them into some bullshit war against a nobody, and then attacking their ally/guarantee/whatever while they cannot be called against you. The hre has rules against this for the emperor but otherwise you can do it in cases like an otto guarantee over russia.

Trade can be super complicated, even if you think you understand it. It can be worth just experimenting some with trial and error to see which merchant combo scores the biggest income.
 

Zajeer

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You probably have enough in the Lubeck trade node to move your trade capital to there. Then flow everything from Wien on through - you'd make some pretty good cash that way. Then prioritize any other CoTs in Lubeck to conquer. If you trade company stuff in Eastern Europe, you likely can get yourself an extra merchant or two to use to steer more trade into Lubeck (like the Baltic node for example)
 

Loser Araysar

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Declared war on Korea who was allied to Russia. The Ottos joined me and Russia joined Korea.

Independence guarantee broken.
 
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Rajaah

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Does this game take geographic barriers into account? Things like Germany's elevation and the Rhine making them harder to invade, the Pyrenees separating France/Spain, etc.

Also how feasible would it be to start an African Empire and take over the world? Is there even such a thing? Seems like everything of importance in this game is Eurasian. I'd probably either do that or try to take over the world with India.
 

Loser Araysar

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Does this game take geographic barriers into account? Things like Germany's elevation and the Rhine making them harder to invade, the Pyrenees separating France/Spain, etc.

Yes, very much so

Also how feasible would it be to start an African Empire and take over the world? Is there even such a thing? Seems like everything of importance in this game is Eurasian. I'd probably either do that or try to take over the world with India.

Its hard but feasible. Youre also racing against a time limit. Game goes from 1444 to 1815 or some time thereabouts

But WC with any country is possible

 

Kaines

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Does this game take geographic barriers into account? Things like Germany's elevation and the Rhine making them harder to invade, the Pyrenees separating France/Spain, etc.

Also how feasible would it be to start an African Empire and take over the world? Is there even such a thing? Seems like everything of importance in this game is Eurasian. I'd probably either do that or try to take over the world with India.
There is an achievement that requires you to start as Ryukyu and complete a world conquest.
 

Furry

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Does this game take geographic barriers into account? Things like Germany's elevation and the Rhine making them harder to invade, the Pyrenees separating France/Spain, etc.

Also how feasible would it be to start an African Empire and take over the world? Is there even such a thing? Seems like everything of importance in this game is Eurasian. I'd probably either do that or try to take over the world with India.
An African country starts as objectively the most powerful country day one, the mamluks, where you have a strong position to dismantle the ottomans early. Other African countries on the east coast are pretty strong too. There’s some countries where fighting defensive wars on mountains is vital to your strategy. Using terrain to your advantage can give massive bonuses.

Conquering the world typically involves very aggressive play with no CB wars and truce breaking. It is very tedious, as you’ll spend more time fighting rebels than conquering land usually.
 
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yerm

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They added content for a lot of foreign regions so it's really not all euro centric anymore. A few highly popular spots like the byzantines or japan may seem a little more exciting than others, and minor nation nobodies in the middle of nowhere may have nothing going on... but you can find "interesting" anywhere on the map at least.

Many of the African Kangdoms have wild possibilities if you get really big with them, although a lot of it is more military or trade and less powerful for world conquest. India if you form the mughals they're arguably one of if not the best world conquerors.
 
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Rajaah

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They added content for a lot of foreign regions so it's really not all euro centric anymore. A few highly popular spots like the byzantines or japan may seem a little more exciting than others, and minor nation nobodies in the middle of nowhere may have nothing going on... but you can find "interesting" anywhere on the map at least.

Many of the African Kangdoms have wild possibilities if you get really big with them, although a lot of it is more military or trade and less powerful for world conquest. India if you form the mughals they're arguably one of if not the best world conquerors.

I might try to re-create Khan Noonien Singh's attempt to conquer the world using some sort of India/Middle-East based empire. Though it's also appealing to take over Africa and turn the continent into one big powerhouse country that sits on and utilizes the world's biggest reserves of natural resources. You know, like it could be in RL if not for the absolute ineptitude