Europa Universalis IV

It's been too much fun playing with this custom nation. I did start with only a single province and that was a challenge for a while, but now it's just insane. I just cored some Italian provinces I had claims on in seven months. It's 1585 and as you can see I've annexed England, France, and Spain -- all of them still quite strong at the time. My custom NI of 20% war scored reduction, 20% from Diplomacy, and 15% from Malta (I went Protestant this game) led to some pretty amazing grabs. It's so easy to get a lot of land with very little war score.

Obviously this is overpowered, but it's been a nice casual run (though still a challenge when doing things like fighting Austria, France, and about 10 HRE nations at once). I still need to get Influence before I actually considering trying to annex these beasts (and it'll take a decade or two for England and France to drop enough in liberty desire). Portugal was my first annex and with Spain I've also got a pretty strong colonial position.

Started an England campaign and the game has crashed to desktop twice in the first two minutes, just from clicking menus... lol.

Edit: Just crashed after loading the game, opening the mission tree and mousing over the outcomes. Fucking buggy cocksuckers.

Looks like maybe it was just a shitty Steam update. Tried a few things that didn't work but it seems to be fine after completely uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Phew!

Kind of feeling that espionage is actually a genuine choice now. Being able to claim an entire state is really powerful. That combined with siege ability and AE reduction (as well as good policies) makes it super appealing. Plus it's diplo points which are usually the least important.

Started a Muscovy campaign and it's going pretty well. Have a solid chunk of the missions and land taken though I've got only one useless ally (first in debt and now bankrupt) and Poland/Lithuania/Sweden/England are allied together and strong so I can't really face them right now. Money continues to be really tight.

That mission that looks like a disaster was no big deal at all.

Can't wait to get to Russia. Need their way better ideas and empire rank pronto.

Araysar said:

I cant upgrade yet since I'm in 1750 with my Sweden game :|

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You can switch between various versions using the beta drop-down, if you want to try it out. Though, at 1750, you're pretty close to the end anyway.

It's been interesting seeing how differently some of the other countries are playing out this game (especially ones I've had no influence over). Spain does not exist and Castille doesn't seem to be colonizing well -- Columbia is owned by the English. Meanwhile, in England, Scotland still has a solid chunk of land. France has Foix and Britanny eating up its land. Portugal has two colonies but still seems slow compared to last patch?

When I allied the Mamluks to go after the Ottos, they were comparable in manpower and the Ottos didn't have much of the Arabian peninsula (though they certainly swallowed up Hungary). I've successfully butchered the Commonwealth and Ottomans such that they're no longer a real threat.

I don't know, it could be I'm just way ahead timewise for when I have a country this size. Usually I play much smaller nations so my timeline sense may be off (though England getting Columbia is definitely not the norm). It's 1536 and Russia is definitely wrecking things. I'm enjoying the new mechanics (and new ones to me, not just 1.35). I'm actually spying like crazy and it's kind of amazing and very fitting for Russia.

One more thing that is really a huge change is slacken recruitment. I find myself still using some mercenaries and being very careful about managing my manpower. If slacken recruitment was like the old way, I'd really be rolling right now. Definitely worth considering Quality again with other nations. Really looking forward to playing Sweden/Scandinavia and going hard with mercenaries and the merc idea.

finally got a chance to dive into the new DLC
anyone know a good guide / youtube about the changes? the patchnotes are always so dry I find it hard to work out what they actually mean in real terms.
The dev diaries are a bit too long and drawn out. Just need a simply summary of the changes and what they mean when actually playing. is that so hard?!

faille said:

finally got a chance to dive into the new DLC
anyone know a good guide / youtube about the changes? the patchnotes are always so dry I find it hard to work out what they actually mean in real terms.
The dev diaries are a bit too long and drawn out. Just need a simply summary of the changes and what they mean when actually playing. is that so hard?!

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I'm not sure any guide or video would really be less effort than the dev diaries, since most I've seen basically regurgitate the dev diaries with commentary.

A lot of it is very country specific, too, so a lot of it you can skip if you know what country you might want to play. Pretty much all the countries touched are majors or regional majors.

That said, I think the biggest non-country specific changes are:

1) Tons of new estates with myriad awesome options. I'm absolutely loving this as it adds a lot of flexibility.
2) Slackening recruitment no longer gives you direct manpower and basically sucks now. It's only useful if you have a huge store of manpower and want to doomstack opponents quickly.
3) Three new idea groups: Infrastructure, Court, and Mercenary. Infrastructure seems weak, Mercenary is powerful but obviously situational, and Court seems useful if you really go hard on using as many of the new estates as possible (though probably still weak overall).
4) Additional new government reforms across many tiers as well as a brand new military reform tier for many nations (Tier 5). A lot of solid, useful options there.