Europa Universalis IV
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Furry
WoW Office
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Finally hit the button, and things are not nearly as fucked up as I expected, so much for my 3000 ducat war chest. Was planning on waiting for 1600s originally, but I felt like it was time now and just went for it. I can still build the dutch special light ship, which is badass. Mostly went Dutch for the nationalism CB when I come back to europe. Feel like expansion would normally be a mistake, since Colonial overlords don't join wars against their colonies in.... but my Castile is a landlocked OPM, and portugul is only doing moderately better, so my new world is way less colonized than it should be, so I guess it worked out.
And I'm even more baffled by that AI USA I had now... US only gets claims on the Northeast and florida. The rest of that was pure AI shenanigans.
Furry
WoW Office
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This Europe has serious aids. The more I look at it, the more I realize how cursed it is. I did basically nothing to influence this. Mamluks are still a power in the 1600s? WTF even is bukhara Khgiva and bashkiria, I've never seen them. Ajam holding off ottos too? Iberian peninsula what? How is provence so large. Castile completely deleted from the game, not even overseas bastions left... And 1600s colonizer Brittany desperately wants to form a coalition against me. Commonwealth even holds Lund randomly.
I think the only reason france hasn't died in a fire too is because I've been allied to them. They keep chain calling me into wars, so I'm probably going to ditch them soon and it'll only get worse.
Kaines
Potato Supreme
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The true aids of that map is it's 1605 and Granada not only exists, but has expanded into central Iberia.
How did you allow this heresy????
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This is probably the best map painter game out there. But the combat is killing my desire to play. Siege racing is not fun, I want to beat them into submission. To that end, I utilized Ottomans and their Eyalets. Because they aren't called into your wars automatically, you can build long term defenses around your core territory. Leave some stacks to defend your forts and it works out pretty well to deter the enemy.
The problem becomes if your enemy is large enough to contain more forts than you can realistically siege down at once, you end up siege racing their forts instead of yours and theirs.
The problem becomes if your enemy is large enough to contain more forts than you can realistically siege down at once, you end up siege racing their forts instead of yours and theirs.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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After an extremely long, meticulous and tedious slog from about 1770-1819, I managed to get my first WC. Did it on Ironman too.
No enemies left standing. The only nations left were me, my vassals and my tributaries. If I had maybe 20 more years, I could have cleaned up all the tributaries too most likely.
I didnt get the WC achievement though because tributaries dont count as vassals
As of 1700 I was still very far behind because I wasnt even playing for a WC originally. It wasnt until about 1760-1770 or so that I realized there was a chance. I already had most of the the Americas and a good chunk of Africa though by 1700
All those other colors on the map are either vassals, client states or tributaries. The slightly lighter shade of beige in Americas are all crown colonies
Some new things I learned:
Its totally possible to play with -3 stab and 100-300% overextension at all times
Uh, you can level up all your advisors to +5. I remember coming across this in previous games but never bothered using it. Used the fuck out of it this game.
Definitely need to use vassals more and diplo-annexing to save admin points
Get more aggressive and much earlier.
You dont need to defeat all crown colonies first before going for Castile, Portugal, Britain, France, etc. but it helps. Once you defeat the main country, all crown colonies automatically become yours.
Always constantly be at war, as much as your stab and overextension can bear.
No enemies left standing. The only nations left were me, my vassals and my tributaries. If I had maybe 20 more years, I could have cleaned up all the tributaries too most likely.
I didnt get the WC achievement though because tributaries dont count as vassals
As of 1700 I was still very far behind because I wasnt even playing for a WC originally. It wasnt until about 1760-1770 or so that I realized there was a chance. I already had most of the the Americas and a good chunk of Africa though by 1700
All those other colors on the map are either vassals, client states or tributaries. The slightly lighter shade of beige in Americas are all crown colonies
Some new things I learned:
Its totally possible to play with -3 stab and 100-300% overextension at all times
Uh, you can level up all your advisors to +5. I remember coming across this in previous games but never bothered using it. Used the fuck out of it this game.
Definitely need to use vassals more and diplo-annexing to save admin points
Get more aggressive and much earlier.
You dont need to defeat all crown colonies first before going for Castile, Portugal, Britain, France, etc. but it helps. Once you defeat the main country, all crown colonies automatically become yours.
Always constantly be at war, as much as your stab and overextension can bear.
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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Awesome man. Definitely think it's still a WC even with the tributaries.After an extremely long, meticulous and tedious slog from about 1770-1819, I managed to get my first WC. Did it on Ironman too.
No enemies left standing. The only nations left were me, my vassals and my tributaries. If I had maybe 20 more years, I could have cleaned up all the tributaries too most likely.
I didnt get the WC achievement though because tributaries dont count as vassals
As of 1700 I was still very far behind because I wasnt even playing for a WC originally. It wasnt until about 1760-1770 or so that I realized there was a chance. I already had most of the the Americas and a good chunk of Africa though by 1700View attachment 478291
View attachment 478292
View attachment 478293
All those other colors on the map are either vassals, client states or tributaries. The slightly lighter shade of beige in Americas are all crown colonies
View attachment 478294
Some new things I learned:
Its totally possible to play with -3 stab and 100-300% overextension at all times
Uh, you can level up all your advisors to +5. I remember coming across this in previous games but never bothered using it. Used the fuck out of it this game.
Definitely need to use vassals more and diplo-annexing to save admin points
Get more aggressive and much earlier.
You dont need to defeat all crown colonies first before going for Castile, Portugal, Britain, France, etc. but it helps. Once you defeat the main country, all crown colonies automatically become yours.
Always constantly be at war, as much as your stab and overextension can bear.
You're killing me though... didn't know you could level up advisors to 5?!
Constant aggression definitely is the #1 trait you need for world domination but like you found out you can take on a lot more than you think you can.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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If you click on that star next to the "Youre dismissed" boot, you can level your advisors for a fixed amount of gold (from level 4 to level 5, I think it was 200-300 gold). it will be bright yellow if you can level your dude. The only catch is that you can only level advisors from your accepted cultures, cant do it with nonaccepted cultures.
There is also a monthly cost increase. If you dont have any bonuses to reduce costs, a lvl 5 advisor will run you somewhere around 75 gold per month, so it doesnt make sense to do it until you're netting a couple hundred gold in profit every month. However by inadvertently stacking a bunch of advisor cost reductions, I was able to reduce it by 90% to 7 gold for a regular advisor and 4 gold for a "50% cheaper to employ" advisor
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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Haha, yeah I know, I thought it was funny you didn't know until now. But I get it... it's easy to get microfocused on certain elements of the game when there's just so many mechanics.
You need to go full EU4 degenerate and start doing shit like culture shifting and tag switching, or try a one tag or one faith conquest! Though, it does get a bit tedious.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Honestly, I didn't think I had the autism to get a WC, it always seemed so daunting. And in the last 100 years of the game it's extremely tedious since you have to min/max and micromanage very meticulously. But now I know it's possible for me, I am going to go for an achievement WC, the question is with what nation?
I played Russia, Timurids/Mughals, Ming, Teutonic Horde, Sweden. And in my total newb days I played Portugal and Spain but I barely remember that.
Want to try something new. Any suggestions on what nation to try next for a WC? I'm thinking France or England. Also been thinking Ottomans but this whole eyelet thing people been talking about sounds confusing and annoying.
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Try a relaxing tall game with some colonies? Riga seems kinda cool with being basically an OPM. Me I’ve been playing Florence in a co-op game as tall - mostly playing in just Italy and developing land a bunch
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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I would try England. It got a major rework in domination and has two main mission tree paths that it can go on: colonization or European domination. Has a very safe starting location with a navy that can word off any pathetic invasion attempts. It can quickly control an end game node. The Angevin path is very powerful. Both have excellent permanent modifiers and you can also form Great Britain. I believe it has some unique ships and some unique interactions in India. You can take the HRE head-on or work around it with your naval superiority. If you've never dismantled the HRE it would be a perfect situation to play that out. You also get the Anglican faith eventually which I think is pretty decent (and got a bit better is domination) and if you go religious you'll be able to have a CB on basically the entire world.
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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I actually did play Riga a few times, but never past 1600. My problem was that I just couldnt get out of the Baltics. Youre surrounded by powerful Sweden, Commonwealth and Russia, so you try to expand overseas. Colonizable areas were always out of colonization range. The conquestable areas (Like Jolof on Atlantic coast of Africa) was out of coring range. I got tired of figuring out how to gewt out, threw my hands up and went to play something else.
Playing as England sounds fun. Never played them, plus been watching a ton of Youtube documentaries on English history from 1066-1600s.
Im assuming that Colonization path is probably the better payoff since you can probably get most of North America, plus expand down to Ivory Coast and Cape of Good Hope to create trade companies early and beef up your income?
Slogging through Europe without being a hegemon already sounds like a PITA.
Other thing I wanted to ask is that I've been reading about some strategy with HRE called "vassal swarm". So if I could theoretically make England the ruler of HRE, can I use this "Vassal swarm" tactic to do the WC? Does it still work? Is it worth it? Is there a better way?
Furry
WoW Office
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HRE vassal swarm is more about going down the reforms paths in the empire quickly. That’s probably pretty hard to do as an outside power with no easy path for joining the HRE. Any number of countries can do it, but Austria is the most straightforward, as their mission tree supports you.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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So are there any good tricks for doing a WC with England that I should be working towards? Or is it just a straight up "go colonize NA, make some trade companies for cash in Africa and Asia, start fighting everyone weaker around the world"?
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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Vassal swarm is not as good as it used to be and would be a much greater hassle for you since you're not in the HRE. It's better to dismantle it so you have less AE and enemies to deal with when you start attacking those countries, imo.
A colonization path does make sense simply because it's easier to have them if you're doing a WC and it does give you good money and force limit.
You can also do a parliament before most anyone else which I kind of like but not everyone does. With GB ideas, parliament issues, a mission tree permanent modifier and the normal ideas/policies you should be able to max out diplomatic annexation cost, which will really help if you go heavy on vassal feeding (which you should).
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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Pretty much but still keep an eye out for opportunities in Europe. At the very least, you want to try to completely dominate your trade node and it might be worth trying to kneecap Castile and Portugal.