Europa Universalis IV

Hmm, how do you become a Theocracy?
When I played other countries, I've always seen Tibet go Llama, but now that I'm playing as Tibet I don't see any relevant decisions or any revolt risk to speak of.

 

As england i noticed i wasn't running into any spaniards in south america, decided to see what was going on with them and i discovered they're locked into a broken AI loop with aragon. Here's hoping for the hundred years war dago edition.

 

Yet another uprising in Japan.

 

Mighty Poland is no more, now France is the new super power. And me ofcourse.

 

In my Sweden campaign, right now I'm looking at a Japan where somehow every province got turned Catholic by a horde of Zealots.

 

Good luck taking more than 2 provinces now.

 

I think you've taken quite a bit more than 2 provinces there...

Try releasing some nations as vassals, it can massively lower your aggressive expansion while you re-annex them diplomatically later. I was trying to integrate Ming in my Mongol Khanate game, but they had a ridiculous -180 aggressive expansion modifier that was only wearing off by +2 a year (nevermind that I wanted to go do other things that would cause more AE penalties). But by releasing 10 Shun provinces as a vassal I was able to take 80 AE off instantly, then do it again after diploannexing Shun.

Also, raise relations and all that jazz. Yet another reason why diplomacy idea is good.

 

Or just keep expanding. What are they gonna do? Beat you in a war? In MY EU4? Not likely.

 

Don't you have some serious penalty for non core provinces?

 

Yes, but that applies to all wars/expansion, meaning if you want to expand, you can.

 

Problem with coalitions is that you can only negotiate with the war leader, which sucks serious balls. So even if you don't give a damn about fighting the entire world you want to avoid coalitions to maximize your plunder.

 

Yeah, that's true. It's incredibly faggy--and I can't imagine this is really the way it's supposed to work--that even if you control 100% of the territory of an enemy, you can't annex them if they aren't the war leader.

 

It also really fucks up those countries, they get stuck with max war exhaustion while you're busy fighting the coalition leader. It's absolutely devastating to them. They'll be screwed over by rebels for decades, and if there are any nationalist rebels you can be sure those countries will break off.

Incidentally, this is also why AI England sucks so hard, at least early on. They don't know when to peace out of the hundred years war, causing maxed WE and every one of their provinces to get 20% revolt risk. Seems every game around 1450 England has 0 regiments, 90% of provinces are occupied by rebels, and it's nothing but 20k stacks of peasant rebels fighting 20k stacks of heretic rebels.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't always completely annex a nation if they're big enough even if you have 100% warscore and fully sieged all their provinces, right? I wanted to try that at one point and it wouldn't let me, IIRC. Just like you can't (I believe) make a nation a vassal if they have 4 or more provinces.

Speaking of which, France game is still chugging along nicely enough. I would be in much worse shape if I didn't have a rock solid alliance with the Brottomans, because I keep ending up with "Aragon and Portugal and Great Britain and Castile and the entire HRE attack you at once in a coalition" wars, and Ottomans poking at the eastern side of Austria and throwing their big fleet of light ships around helps. Main thing stopping me from blobbing even faster is not having enough admin points to core lots of shit at once. Had a few sucky admin kings in a row, and I don't want to ignore admin tech since I want more national ideas.
Talking to my buddy it sounds like I've got an absolutely garbage economy since I dip down to -20 ducats a month when I turn up maintenance for a major war, but that's probably because I've completely ignored colonies and have been focusing on euro-blobbing.

 

Played Scotland for a century. It felt like a non-stop pop-a-Englishmen.

 

If the warscore cost is too high you can't, and capitals tend to have massive warscore costs for annexing them. So realistically, most large enemies you can't annex in one go.

 

If you aren't making tons of money as France, the nation with the highest value provinces in the fucking world, you are doing something extremely wrong, even without colonies. I was making 80 ducats per month with full forcelimit at half maintenance.

Constables and counting houses/marketplaces everywhere is the key. Don't give a fuck about any tech other than military tech and just spam buildings.

 

Warscore cost per province is related to the base tax of a province, but generally 4-6 is the max range for annexation/vassalization. If you have a wargoal that lowers the peace cost of annexation, you can do more though. For example, a war to take cores will cost 50% for land with cores, so you could annex a nation around 8-10 provinces if you have cores on it. Border friction wars will have 50% cost on border provinces, and revolutionary wars will have 50% cost on all provinces (which is part of why it's so abusable).

Also, pagan religions have a special property that lets them be 100% annexed in one war no matter how big they get. Good luck with overextension if you annex the entire Aztec empire in one go (though you can always release some of the other nations as vassals and diplo-annex later).

Are you hiring high-tier advisors? lvl 2 and lvl 3 costs go up exponentially, a level 3 advisor will cost more than a 100k army. Also Big Ships are generally wastefully expensive. Other than that you should be rolling in money.

 

Oh, that would be my biggest problem then. I've been building everything (Regular buildings at least) in Paris and mostly ignoring my other provinces (Except Normandie which is my major shipyard) because the admin points scared me away. Probably cost me a couple hundred admin points to get temples/constables spammed everywhere. I guess it might be worth it so I don't have to scale back maintenance so much during peace though.

I've mostly been hiring first level advisors, only gone to level 2 a couple times when I really wanted a master of the mint to get rid of some inflation that had been sitting around the whole game. I do go heavy on the big ships though, and it (Sometimes) has let me win naval battles against England/Castile/Portugal/Sweden/Austria. I say only sometimes because England has max naval ideas and a fuckhuge fleet, and I only sometimes win with my big fleet of heavy ships. Not that it matters too awful much now that I've got a foothold on England and leave a 30 regiment army stationed there at all times.

Edit: Sum-bitch. Just spend two years and around 200 admin points building econ buildings and my economy is still screwed up.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/902131725084172111/172B3A7CA13F3EA69EFA6A51CE5828D78A789E02/

 

So how is this game? I haven't played a Europa Universalis before, but have a strategy game itch. Is 3 or 4 better?

 

If you like broad sandboxes, this is the game for you

 

EU3 with all expansions/patches is better. EU4 might eventually be better, not sure. About 25% of the changes were absurdly dumb, another 50% stemmed from that and made the game worse, but then 25% of what was changed was really good.

 

I would say EU4 is better in all respects. At the very least, there's a lot more going on all the time and more to do.

 

Colonies and tariffs seem a bit shit to be honest, better off just keeping the aztecs and inca alive and farm them at will.

 

Annexing does seem to be shit, having them as vassals also means you can get their help (mostly less micromanagement to get sieges going) in wars without hampering your hard to increase force limits. Unfortunately there's a penalty for having too many diplomatic relationships, which I only figured out once my monarch points kept decreasing over time when I got a shit king with nearly 0 diplo skill. It was definitely fun having -100 diplo for decades, as dropping vassals means you incur a -3 stability penalty - fuck that.

I've also noticed that vassals will do shit on their own, like grabbin colonies from the despicable Dutch.