Europa Universalis IV

Gask_sl said:

Does anyone know what it was before all of this? As it is now anyone you share a border with hates you based on the tax base of those provinces. Tax * 5 up to -200 relations that never adjusts unless you somehow get a smaller/poorer border... It's quite horrible even if you don't share a huge border in many cases especially in Europe.

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Yea, that got nerfed hard.

Friday update : Border friction reduced to 1 per basetax

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Hopefully this is light enough. Most of the prior situations were overblown and contributed to coalition issues. I'd seen someone ask for only non-cored territory and claimed/cored land that the other side owns to count toward friction. That seems more organic than this abstraction, but I imagine they didn't intend to flesh out this little opinion modifier to that extent, and are looking to work on other things.

Dunno if anyone has a good grasp on this but what add-ons add content and which just add art? It's kinda hard to tell.

This pagecovers them in detail, linking the contents if there are any to link. If you know how to edit their event and decision files you can re-create all the content DLC in a mod for yourself.

Purple phoenix adds a few events for BYZ b/c BYZ is popular on the forums, but it's generally a doomed country. American dream adds a bunch of flavor to the USA, but they only exist for 25 years of the end-game, which is barely functional regardless of the country you play. Star and Crescent adds a bunch of infrequent events to all muslim countries around islamic practices.

The hundred years war, winged hussars, horsemen of crescent, and national monuments are just graphics. Conquest of Constantinople is just music for the turks.

My most rewarding play through was as Byzantium, figuring out how to play rebels and the strait off against the Turks to gobble up most of Greece in one war was good fun. The historical blurbs that pop up when you retake territory in Anatolia were actually interesting and conquering the various holy lands felt in theme and gave you something to shoot for. In the end my empire stretched unbroken from Italy , wrapped around Hungary and the Black Sea down to Persia, Mecca and Alexandria. Good times.

I have no idea how feasible it is now though since Paradox decided to go all anti conquest with the last patch. Which wouldn't really bother me if there was anything else to actually do besides conquer or integrate in this game. You have to pay more attention to your diplomatic relations now which is fine but all they have really managed to do is ensure that you spend even more time just waiting around waiting for timers to expire. Manpower loss in the early game is also especially brutal now and equally frustrating as you are subject to the whim of the die roll.

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Gask_sl said:

if there was anything else to actually do besides conquer or integrate

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Really the constant criticism I have of all their games. V2 has the economy mini-game, and CK2 has the fuedalism one, but they're both easy to trivialize so they boil down to waiting out truce periods and infamy/agression penalties as well. There should be substantially more to do domestically.

Part of the reason this is necessary is because when you give the AI something to do other than conquer they don't spend every moment trying to ruin their economy building a massive army to conquer that next province. Like in CK2, the early plot system had few plots so you frequently had your son and heir plotting to steal your throne and every pissant baron trying to start a civil war. Paradox and/or modders gave your vassals more plot options and they spent less time plotting to overthrow the realm. All the AI has to do in the game is take and assimilate territory, so that is all that it does.

Finally picked it up, experience with Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings 2 has gotten me through a lot, but some parts just baffle me still.

Going to have to poke through that wiki a bit to answer some question.

My first go as an Irish lord lasted 33 years before the evil English wiped me out when I tried to take that last province from them though.

Portugal is sometimes considered the beginner country of EU. They're shielded from a lot of problems that happen in Europe such as France, Austria, Poland, Turkey, the reformation, etc. And they get to pick and choose how they approach trade and colonization with the best spot in the game.

For Ireland, not so hard to become for exemple a big coloniser, just have to be on top of your diplomacy game at the begining (if you can have allies like France + Danemark + may be Portugal when they break with England you can take this province) or wait for the war of the roses.

To start you can play:
-Portugal, one of the easiest to play (western, easy colonisation, only 1 neighbour), or Castille,
-England for an easy game too, just have to give back these provinces to France if you don't think you can win yet.
-France or Ming or Ottoman to play the big blob (be careful, you are the big blob but you can still be crushed if you go on rampage),
-Unite India as an Indian nation or Uzbek or Turmid (don't switch culture to be able to form the Mugal) but Uzbek might be very hard to start with,

Avoid Africa and New world countries...

(-Bizantium if you want fun getting wiped in few years until you master it then restore the Roman empire, my favorite)

I picked Ireland as I found it a good way to learn in CK2 starting with just the one province and growing outward.

The thing that peaked my interest most and I understood least was the Trade system, so I actually grabbed Portugal next. I figured out trade quite well, which I like quite a bit, and colonization (though I didn't figure it out until late so was behind the curve).

Recently I have been playing Muscovy-turned-Russia, which again has been a great learning experience. I'm dominating trade in my little slice of the world (I was able to capture a northern seaport early, then a southern one) and have been learning about war and diplomacy quite well.

Just like in Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings 2, each game you learn some more and are able to apply it better to next game. I'm finding this, just like the other two, quite brilliant and enjoyable.

One thing though, is there any trick to keeping an edge over your neighbors technologically? Or should you always just assume you're going to be about the same?

Every time I go to war with some pissant Muslim savages I think "My troops should be far superior with our awesome guns and whatever!" but it rarely seems that way.

Well a common mistake is spending too much on conquests and/or buildings. Buildings are good for income and forcelimits, but beyond having the money to defend yourself and hire rank 3 advisors you don't need to spend points on them. So don't go developing infrastructure where it isn't needed if you want to be a tech leader. Unless you've got cheap stability costs, don't spend tons of admin trying to stay at stability +3. And taking land also costs diplo and admin points to take and core the land. So use casus belli to take a few provinces cheaply each war rather than dozens of unnecessary provinces in lengthy wars.

Vassals are one of the best ways to expand regardless of the location. If you force-vassalize people and then diplo-annex, their land is cored for you. At the very least, high tax provinces should be vassalized rather than conquered to reduce admin spending. It's now possible to diplo-vassalize countries larger than 3 provinces, but it's now reliant upon their basetax values. This can be useful to vassalize members of your religious group peacefully that are large and poor like Naples or Scotland.

As a western tech nation you should easily be able to catapult past most muslims and every non-western in the 16th and 17th century, but the turks and russians may be able to keep up depending on their luck blobbing.

So I find I'm having a problem making everyone mad at me when I start sucking up provinces from people, even from defensive wars. I understand why and the aggression issue. My question is:

Is there a way to minimize the aggression problems?

Is there a way to get provinces without gaining aggression?

Is there a way to get provinces without war?

You can increase relations with small monarchies as a monarchy in order to vassalize them diplomatically and then annex them later.

You can minimize aggression by using casus belli of different types to conquer provinces and/or vassalize the state in the war and annex them later through diplomacy. You can also use claims to go to war against people holding your vassals' cores, then return their land to them for no AE. Like, I vassalize lorraine, and they lost metz to trier. I claim metz, attack trier, but rather than take it, I have them give it back to lorraine. I then annex lorraine diplomatically later, which does upset HRE nations and my other vassals, but doesn't cause AE.

You can acquire provinces in distant lands and only acquire neglibile aggression with your peers, but large aggression from residents of that land. For example, annexing native american minors only upsets native americans, and if you use the colonial conquest CB (casus belli) you'll barely even upset them. You get that CB for maxing the exploration idea group. Likewise if you use the expansion idea CB to attack primitive asians you'll be able to gather more land for less penalty.

Unfortunately there is a modifier in the defines right now that says as soon as you have like 200+ provinces each province will cost like 10 AE globally, and this applies to vassal/union annexations as well. It's pretty silly considering all the big powers should be above 200 in the latter half of the game.

I have a hard time Vassalizing, it often seems that there is this penalty of difference between tax modifiers? I am guessing this is like some kind of average tax value of provinces as I never found a way to adjust an actual tax rate.

For example, I seem unable to annex Korea as Ming (china) due to this modifier.

Zhaun_sl said:

I have a hard time Vassalizing, it often seems that there is this penalty of difference between tax modifiers? I am guessing this is like some kind of average tax value of provinces as I never found a way to adjust an actual tax rate.

For example, I seem unable to annex Korea as Ming (china) due to this modifier.

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It's basically just a limiter to keep players from gathering strong vassals easily. To do it you usually have to take a few provinces away first leaving them with around 3. In my Papal State game I control all of Italy, Venice and most of Iberia + the islands in between giving me a huge tax base. I also have maxed out +tax mod buildings and everything else but I cannot force vassalise Savoy or Switzerland who each have around 5 provinces unless I take away a few of them first... it's pretty lame.

Trust (basically long duration of peace) builds up to +40 which helps counter the tax issue, as does military strength which can go up to +20 iirc. diplomatic reputation matters, and you can get +dip rep modifiers with an advisor and a few idea groups.

But I just devoured Korea by force. Ming is so ridiculously overpowered if you bend the factions to your will. You go temple to attack and core provinces (iirc), bureaucratic to spend money on infrastructure (mostly I built trade buildings), and spend the rest of the time in eunuch to make money and advance tech. I may have gotten those a bit mixed but that's basically it. They actually core cheap under the appropriate faction, so I was rampaging across indochina and mongolia long before the russians arrived.

This was unfortunately in an earlier version, so Russia was hating on me due to massive border friction. Should be a lil more chill now. Then when I formed Qing and westernized my factions were bugged and I had literally 0 day core times due to some stacking issue. Shit was mad OP, and I didn't want to bother digging through the save file to unfuck it so I quit that play.

Zajeer_sl said:

Anyone have any luck with royal marriages -> claiming throne -> personal union? I've claimed a bunch of thrones playing as Spain against Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, etc and the only PU I've been able to make was with Naples, which I diplo-annexed years later. I was really hoping for a PU with Portugal late game, to try and annex a ton of land - Portugal and Spain were the only major colonizers in the New World and Asia in my current game

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You need to be on the lookout for older leaders without heirs. Sure, you can claim the throne of a newly crowned 18 year old without an heir, but odds are he or she's going to have an heir before death. I've found that a fair amount of it is up to the RNG Gods.

Also, you have to have more prestige than the country who's throne you're claiming to get into a PU. Otherwise a noble from your dynasty will be crowned and you then have to fight it out to force a PU.

And to answer the question, no I haven't had much luck.

I was a little curious about how weird battles are, and have read a few discussions, butthis seems to be the critical component.

The gist of it is unit pips don't factor into combat, which swings early battles heavily in favor of fire phase and generals strong with fire modifiers since there are no defenses, and makes it so later battles are extremely low-power because your units are not becoming any more deadly.

Paradox haven't responded to the thread as of today. It's possible this isn't the biggest problem, but his observations seem factual and telling.

Anomalacaris_sl said:

So there is much frustration over extreme combat casualties in the early game and dozens of men dead everyday in late game battle
To get to the bottom of things, I created a custom testing mod to check influences of various factors.

TLDR: The weapon modifiers (infantry fire etc) are currently NOT influencing combat at all!
EDIT: for those who are not familiar the formula, in general damage should be proportional to *weapon_modifier*discipline*combat_ability/target_tactics, this is implied from tooltips

Some other important insight from the simulations:
- morale damage you inflict is proportional to your own morale
- damage scaling from dice+modifiers is not linear: It is (from 0-9): 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 (-1 is 8 on this scale, have to do more test)
- morale has no influence on strength loss whatsoever
-peasant rebels do NOT have reduced morale(it says it's 80% in tooltip: it's NOT!)

EDIT: updated some conclusion from later test (also shown in this thread)
- as people already worked out, the pips act like modifiers to rolls (just like leaders and terrain)
-combat ability is currently useless too(Sorry quality tree! Bye Polish hussars!)
- discipline did not decrease damage taken
- rebels do not benefit from ideas

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EDIT: Since I'm always tweaking my end, I actually nerfed the shit out of rebels about a day after 1.2.2 released. I wasn't sure what the fuck was going on, but I was losing to rebels (larger than the stack I sent to fight them, but without military ideas) as France, which just shouldn't happen. And it just clicked to me that this is probably why that was happening.

I'm currently contemplating how to mod battles to work better until an official fix is released. I've never tweaked the military aspect of the game before, so /boggle. I'm thinking I can add tactics and discipline to each level of military tech to help the progression.

EDIT 2: A dev came in and addressed that the test isn't as useful as it could be because the test method nullified some of the values all by itself, but he did say changes were coming in 1.3 and he didn't address all of anomalacaris's claims.