Europa Universalis IV

Figured out my first major mistake. Didn't take calais in the second war with england. The result was that when sweden declared independence from denmark, my armies were all penned in on the islands. I guess I could have asked for mil access, but didn't realize my mistake until the war was going. All my boats sunk yet again, and my grand plan of getting enough war score that I could snap up iceland failed utterly.

Got the expel minorities gov reform to try out since I think it's new? I'm gonna be one very scottish island soon. Crushed england in war 3. They only had 1k soldiers... Don't think I'll have England completely eliminated until war 5, though. Gonna go Explore>Aristocratic>Expansion>Offensive>Admin>Influence probably.

Can you form america as scottland? I might try it just for the lols.

Furry said:

Figured out my first major mistake. Didn't take calais in the second war with england. The result was that when sweden declared independence from denmark, my armies were all penned in on the islands. I guess I could have asked for mil access, but didn't realize my mistake until the war was going. All my boats sunk yet again, and my grand plan of getting enough war score that I could snap up iceland failed utterly.

Got the expel minorities gov reform to try out since I think it's new? I'm gonna be one very scottish island soon. Crushed england in war 3. They only had 1k soldiers... Don't think I'll have England completely eliminated until war 5, though. Gonna go Explore>Aristocratic>Expansion>Offensive>Admin>Influence probably.

Can you form america as scottland? I might try it just for the lols.

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You still gonna play your Kilwa game or are you all in on Scotland?

Araysar said:

You still gonna play your Kilwa game or are you all in on Scotland?

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I have my work game and my at home game. I play both separate from each other. Been doing a lot of HOI4 between the two.

And if you want to see embarrassing....
Took this picture of a god tier move. Been stacking favors for just this moment. Put my heir on the throne of this S-Tier France. YES PLEASE.I'll PU you and ride you until you submit. Took the screeny for this thread and then got super distracted IRL for a couple hours and came back and resumed. Needless to say when I remembered, France had a 0 year heir. RIP.

I wasnt able to prevent the Prussian Confederation event firing off and thus I got raped. Game over. Will try again tomorrow

Definitely learning a lot

Novgorod is super weak and can be conquered relatively easily. I think I made a mistake in my game taking the neva and Novgorod provinces early and preventing Russia from spawning. So let russia spawn or plan on working some colonial in if you don’t want map blight. Burgundy is always a strong ally if you’re in Europe. It might take a minute for their armies to show up, and they may be reluctant to get called into a war are the biggest downsides.

Gotland can be a good vassal to feed if they go pirate, or just an easy conquest. Always keep an eye out for when the emperor goes into a war or if they have HRE rivals. That can lead to opportunities to snap up land in the HRE, though it’s rarely worth taking more than two or three claimed provinces.

Finally, some tricks I’ve used. If I plan on using mercs to win a war, sometimes I just delete my army. It’ll make the AI much more likely to attack you, though make sure your forts can hold them off a few months, so bust out defensive edicts. And don’t be afraid to go into a lot of debt early on. Winning your first war against Poland is everything for the Teutons. If Lithuania is not in a PU, see if you can charge in and white peace them by taking the capital. Danzig and konigsberg are both super valuable provinces that you should get faceting in asap, so you’ll dig your way out of a hole eventually.

DickTrickle said:

Yeah, I wasn't able to fight when the truce ended (was outnumbered 3 to 1). That seems pretty crucial.

A big problem was Bohemia flipped on me. We were allies and I had five favor then they broke and allied with Poland before the truce was up. I wasn't paying enough attention to understand why, but that was a lot of wasted effort.

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It’s likely because you had Austria as an ally. Bohemia and Austria tend to hate each other, so it’s a good idea to ally one or the other. I loaded a game up, and Austria is rivaled by burgundy. So If I were going to play this game id get relations up with Austria for the quest. But then I’d ally Bohemia, and aim to ally burgundy. Hungary is a solid fourth always.

If burgundy wasn’t rivaling Austria, I’d probably aim for Austria over Bohemia. Always check rivalries when considering allies. It’s the same thing if Poland allies someone. Even if you break that alliance, don’t expect them to suddenly become your reliable ally against Poland. They’ll still have a high opinion of Poland and a bad opinion of you, so they probably won’t even join a defensive war.

Zajeer said:

Yeah for that mission you really have to not give out any privileges with crown land keep seizing land (I think it’s like 2 or 3 times so like 15 years) and once that missions is finished, then give out privileges that take crown land.

It’s kinda annoying and I’ve seen many casters/pros even screw this one up

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I finally got through all that, and got the opening moves nailed down to beat Poland and Lithuania. Played it again yesterday. Got to the 1490s and by then I annexed almost all of Poland and Lithuania. Started to prepare for a push against Novgorod and Muscovy and got blindsided with this "coalition" that Austria and a bunch of other HRE goons put together



I'm out numbered by more than 3 to 1. I'm kinda broke, have 0 manpower and still need 10K at least to replenish existing units and my other allies bailed on me. Sweden was the only who showed up.

So I'm thinking, eh, its a "show your superiority" war goal, maybe it won't be so bad. I do the "suggest offer" thing to see what they want because I figure I'll just throw in the towel rather than waste resources fighting for years just to lose anyways.... they want me to give 8 provinces back to Poland, release Mazovia as a state (another 4 provinces), release Danzig as a state (where I basically make my money) and then release Krakow as a state which is another big money maker



Dont know whether I should keep trying to play this, or will this set me far back enough that I wont be able to do a WC. I can eat the province losses for the most part and get them back later, but losing Danzig fucks me permanently. My income will be crippled and Danzig will probably join HRE right away as well.

DickTrickle said:

If your goal is WC, this seems like a tall ask. By the time you recover from this, Muscovey will be all that much stronger. Have you tried manually changing what you given them, see if you can give them an offer they still like but doesn't hurt you as much? Maybe you can give away some different land or other actions (break alliances, give access, reparations, etc).

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Yeah I dicked around with all the offer options, but they are very upset about my expansion, hence the coalition. The only thing they will accept is me surrendering provinces.

WC is about riding -3 stability while truce breaking everyone once you hit the too powerful to stop phase. It takes a lot longer to hit that point in the HRE than in some ass end of the planet because of coalitions, which is yet another reason why people tend to recommend Oirat or other eastern hordes for WC.

Ottomans are a monster at mil tech level 5-7 or so. Do not ever fight them at that tech unless you outnumber hugely or they are otherwise crippled. That's the main reason a lot of the strategies of dismantling the ottos early involve rushing in to fight them once you hit tech 4.