Europa Universalis IV

Furry said:

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Just finished beating up the ottomans again, and took a look at what is happening on the other side of the world. There's some serious manifest destiny going on. I've never seen the AI do anything remotely like this.

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That is amazing. I've never seen the USA even form let alone do this.

I'm playing a Switzerland campaign and it's honestly amazing. Full mercenary army (though I imagine I might have to supplement some artillery later on) and it's glorious because I don't have to worry about manpower at all. I can throw doomstacks of mercenaries at anything and they never get low.



One mercenary regiment has as much reserve manpower as the Ottomans!



And this is only 1580. Much cheaper than regular army with that maintenance reduction. Plus, all the regular army bonuses (discipline, morale, etc), stack on top of the mercenaries so I have 125% discipline, etc. It's pretty fun and a rare treat not to have to worry about manpower. I actually only use it to advance great projects right now.

Definitely needing it as Otto was really out of control. Took all of Austria, Hungary, parts of Poland/Lithuania/Crimea and all of Mamluks at one point. I'm starting my third ward with them and they are still fielding 265k troops with 150k manpower reserve. I really need for them to crumble under their decadence ASAP.

I was thinking, a fun and hard challenge run would be to never use allies (at least offensively). Just thinking of this campaign and I think I would have gotten almost nowhere without the help of allies. I certainly couldn't have taken on Spain or the Ottomans without help.

Finished my Swiss -> Italy run and it was a pretty good time. Mercenary stacking is kind of fucking broken. It was in the late 1600s when I felt like I had done all that was worth doing and my mercs with hardly any artillery was destroying balanced same size and bigger armies with artillery because their discipline modifiers were so insanely high (I think I was at roughly +50-55%). Really only needed artillery for some siege.

Did a couple short achievement runs and was looking around for a nation with some differences to play with and Majahapit looks pretty amazing. Great national ideas, interesting government reform, high money making area and they get a mission that can give a CB with with 80% AE, 150% prestige, and 80% war score cost. I think it's realistic that you could get that in the mid 1500s, so it's basically like having Imperialism 125-150 years early.

With the Hindu religion and the Buddha deity, you can also get a ton of awesome great projects in the area. Looking forward to this run now.

Yep, Majaphait is even more powerful than I realized. You can vassalize ANY nation with their unique CB for 90% war score. I just vassalized a Wu that was worth 400% war score. I'm looking forward to taking on late game Spain and vassalize their entire empire in one war, haha. I think that can possibly be lowered as well as I saw some stuff online about only taking 72% war score maximum.

The minor drawback of the CB is that you MUST vassalize to get any provinces, but if you have the war score, you can take provinces and leave them with a single province or whatever. Still, when you can take 400% war score of land, you take it and worry about it later, haha. It's going to be a while before all the various maluses go down enough to make them useful for me but that's fine by me.

I guess you can become Shogun and make all your vassals daimyos (thereby not taking up a diplo slot) but I'm not sure I want to go full degenerate like that.

Love this AI border gore on the Timurids. Wasn't involved in this area at all, either.

For the first time ever in my time playing, Portugal PU'd Castille and finally integrated them. They're truly massive, having almost the entirety of the new world and half of England. Shit, it's 1651 and Aragon is an independent thriving nation.

I'm really looking forward to going to one war with them and being able to vassalize them for 90% war score, lol. Same with Ottos and their 1315% war score cost. Now, I'll probably never get them to be loyal to me, but fuck it... it'll just be funny.

Furry said:

Playing ottomans at work on my steam deck. It feels like a cheat code. I'm entirely disrespecting the HRE in the early 1500s. After some wars in the west, Have some colonies without expansion or exploration, and have mostly deleted castile as a country. If I went full autismo and No-cb'd an Ireland state it be game over man. For my next serious game, I kinda want to play Brabant or one of the other netherlands PUs into America, and see if I can RP an america into something great.

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Just the way they can stack CCR is insane, not to mention everything else. I kind of always avoided them for the reason that they seem like a cheat code but with the new rework in 1.35 it might be entertaining just from having a variety of things going on. Plus, sometimes it's fun just curb stomping shit.

Just finished what is probably the biggest war I've ever fought.



Went up against a Portugal that had about 95% of the new world. Portugal's army alone was 850k and, unlike a lot of colonial nations, all of it was on the mainland in Iberia. I played very sloppily because I was just giving it a shot as a test run so my army management was terrible and when I moved to the New World, I was definitely having manpower issues despite starting with 500k. However, I did have some friends...



Thanks to the insane Majahapit CB, I was able to vassalize Portugal, thus effectively taking everything you see in red below in one war (when I diplo annex Portugal, I will get their CNs).



The funny thing is that I'll actually be able to diplo annex them at all. With the right combination of monuments, ideas, policies, placating, positive opinion, and the Age of Revolutions abilities, it won't even be a problem. Because I'm Shogun, all the above vassals and tributaries only compare their power to me (not to all other vassals), so all I have to worry about is their development.

Was quite a fun ride and I think I'm probably done now that I've finally tamed the beast in the West. This is the first long campaign that I've played in the Asia area. I'd argue the monuments in that area are better than the West and going as Hinda with Buddha deity opens up so many of them. Definitely strongly recommend a Majahapit Shogunate to anyone wanting a crazy run.