Europa Universalis IV

[thesecret1]

While the mod is good, the devs are not so much. I had a friend, who was willing to help expand some of the MEIOU code, get kicked out of the discord, all because he had beef with a guy the devs were friends with. Beef he didn't start nor wanted to get invested in, but had all the same, as the other guy had accused him of doxxing and was following him through various discord servers, trying to get him banned everywhere. Course he also used some screens from another server, of him saying some non-politically correct stuff to justify this attempt at getting him banned on the MEIOU server. My friend only learned about what was going on on the day of, where instead of banning him directly, they put him in a timeout box and gave the impression that he would be judged or something like that. In the end his defence got ignored and he got banned.

Sounds like your average internet drama, tbh.

 

[Average Manatee]

Almost my first 5000 dev by absolutism Russia run if I wrap up this succession war. The trick to getting this big is getting a golden age ASAP and using the "transfer subject" power on Sweden and Lithuania (you need a couple regular wars first) and then making 50+ farm estates in your first strategic bankruptcy debt cycle. After that you can use at minimum level 3 advisors from then on.

Also, using the winter palace to diplo vassalize HRE nations is probably better than those central Asian vassals. I could go for military hegemony now but the Ottomans still count as a "rival" so I don't need to for the power projection. I just forgot to insult them in the screenshot.

What idea groups did you go for? And what difficulty?

The transfer subject deal is pretty sweet. Naples or Aragon are also good targets. Sometimes even bohemia/hungary/Burgundy.

Otherwise, not bad, not bad. HOWEVER

Played Vijayanagara on VH. Went Admin->Diplomatic->Influence->Humanist (didn't finish). One thing I've found on the current patch is that favors are bonkers overpowered and if you have diplomatic+influence your diplorep basically allows you to ally anyone and call them into endless wars as a punching bag so long as you can pay off their debts, and your diprep also allows you to ally basically anyone who hasn't rivaled you including far away heathens. So fights wars where you just siege and the AI does the fighting and losing land (to pay off allies of the target). Vassals of course massively lower your AE (vassalizing a broken timurids and feeding them their land back is basically a free 500 dev) , and allying major powers lowers your AE against them, which is essential for anyone fighting muslims due to the worldwide muslim coalition you face otherwise. Still didn't manage to finish off jaunpur, a single war causes like 35 AE with Ottomans and I didn't want to fight them since they went quantity and field 350k troops, though I probably could have beaten them by calling in Mamluks.

Indians also get an overpowered great project in Doaba which can be upgraded for 3500 gold to lower your autonomy floor by 10%. That means all the territories that normally only have 90% autonomy produce twice as much at 80% autonomy. It also gives -monthly autonomy so you can safely spam sell crownland for dosh down to ~10% and raise autonomy to prevent rebels without any real long term penalties.

 

[Manfred]

Played Vijayanagara on VH. Went Admin->Diplomatic->Influence->Humanist (didn't finish). One thing I've found on the current patch is that favors are bonkers overpowered and if you have diplomatic+influence your diplorep basically allows you to ally anyone and call them into endless wars as a punching bag so long as you can pay off their debts, and your diprep also allows you to ally basically anyone who hasn't rivaled you including far away heathens. So fights wars where you just siege and the AI does the fighting and losing land (to pay off allies of the target). Vassals of course massively lower your AE (vassalizing a broken timurids and feeding them their land back is basically a free 500 dev) , and allying major powers lowers your AE against them, which is essential for anyone fighting muslims due to the worldwide muslim coalition you face otherwise. Still didn't manage to finish off jaunpur, a single war causes like 35 AE with Ottomans and I didn't want to fight them since they went quantity and field 350k troops, though I probably could have beaten them by calling in Mamluks.

Indians also get an overpowered great project in Doaba which can be upgraded for 3500 gold to lower your autonomy floor by 10%. That means all the territories that normally only have 90% autonomy produce twice as much at 80% autonomy. It also gives -monthly autonomy so you can safely spam sell crownland for dosh down to ~10% and raise autonomy to prevent rebels without any real long term penalties.

To sum up: EU4 is currently super unbalanced.

Considering what they have written in the dev diares for the upcoming dlc, I think they have given up any attempt to remain balanced. You can be a teutonic catholic horde for an example. Sweden gets a mission, which removes non-accepted culture penalty for (central-)germanic cultures. Etc etc.

The balance they used to try keep for MP's sake has been forsaken, but they haven't switched to SP historical imbalance, but just althis wank imbalance.

 

[Space Satan]

If playing Russia\Muscovy, then I almost every time take Economic-Quantity-Trade-Religious. With religious being first sometimes because you'll have to take Admin idea first.
Because your main source of income as Russia is production and the best bonus in the game is "goods produced modifier". Quantity provide so much needed manpower in neverending early wars, allows you to stand toe to toe with overpowered Ottomans and blobbed PLC. And late game it will stack with your natural bonuses to manpower and, in turn, war exhaustion. And policy provides a whooping +20% goods produced. You can field a million with production income alone.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

other than if you're going for colonization, i still have to find a reason not to pick quantity first.

 

[Average Manatee]

Quantity and Economic are the meta picks for MP to break game balance without even needing to blob (which is obviously limited and dangerous in MP). They then go Quality and keep spamming military ideas to stack that shit but it's definitely not needed in SP.

Only reason to do anything else is if you are trying to turbo-blob in which case you have to take admin first. Even then Quantity is OK because having a huge army is what stops coalitions from forming. Though you also kind of automatically get quantity as you expand (spam forcelimit buildings) and with tech (the brokenly overpowered +manpower manufactories on grain are like buying 6 manpower dev)

 

[Higher Game]

Almost my first 5000 dev by absolutism Russia run if I wrap up this succession war. The trick to getting this big is getting a golden age ASAP and using the "transfer subject" power on Sweden and Lithuania (you need a couple regular wars first) and then making 50+ farm estates in your first strategic bankruptcy debt cycle. After that you can use at minimum level 3 advisors from then on.

Also, using the winter palace to diplo vassalize HRE nations is probably better than those central Asian vassals. I could go for military hegemony now but the Ottomans still count as a "rival" so I don't need to for the power projection. I just forgot to insult them in the screenshot.

What idea groups did you go for? And what difficulty?

The transfer subject deal is pretty sweet. Naples or Aragon are also good targets. Sometimes even bohemia/hungary/Burgundy.

Otherwise, not bad, not bad. HOWEVER

Played Vijayanagara on VH. Went Admin->Diplomatic->Influence->Humanist (didn't finish). One thing I've found on the current patch is that favors are bonkers overpowered and if you have diplomatic+influence your diplorep basically allows you to ally anyone and call them into endless wars as a punching bag so long as you can pay off their debts, and your diprep also allows you to ally basically anyone who hasn't rivaled you including far away heathens. So fights wars where you just siege and the AI does the fighting and losing land (to pay off allies of the target). Vassals of course massively lower your AE (vassalizing a broken timurids and feeding them their land back is basically a free 500 dev) , and allying major powers lowers your AE against them, which is essential for anyone fighting muslims due to the worldwide muslim coalition you face otherwise. Still didn't manage to finish off jaunpur, a single war causes like 35 AE with Ottomans and I didn't want to fight them since they went quantity and field 350k troops, though I probably could have beaten them by calling in Mamluks.

Indians also get an overpowered great project in Doaba which can be upgraded for 3500 gold to lower your autonomy floor by 10%. That means all the territories that normally only have 90% autonomy produce twice as much at 80% autonomy. It also gives -monthly autonomy so you can safely spam sell crownland for dosh down to ~10% and raise autonomy to prevent rebels without any real long term penalties.

I play normal difficulty, and that was an admin/influence/religious/diplomatic run. But now, I've figured out that admin/influence/diplomatic/religious opening is even stronger, if you grab Malta and Granada early with a "claim chain to Spain" and rushing those projects with a debt cycle, and of course keeping the national focus on diplomacy for about a century. In my latest Russia run (I'm in the mood because of the war) I could have made 6000 development by the era of absolutism if I hadn't just missed Africa due to getting back to back force vassals of Provence and Savoy but France beat me to it when I was in those wars. And Poland didn't merge with Lithuania for some reason and this slowed me down early. And I let Spain and Ottomans get into a coalition against me that shouldn't have happened.

I don't see how humanist is any good. Expansion for East Indies and Africa would have been stronger since you're in India and rich enough for lots of colonists.

There's no possible coalition that can stop me here and only mana limits me. But I had to fight in Asia constantly to keep the coalition away so no African and American gold for me, though I probably just should have retired advisors more and always used a diplomat, then I could have grabbed the best lands, though the Spanish/Ottoman coalition surprised me. And I do have a dynasty in England here.

A relatively early PU on Austria or France would make a 7000 development Russia totally viable by this point...

 

[Average Manatee]

Humanist = almost never fight rebels even when you're at 200% OE. Expansion wouldn't have done anything useful. If really tryharding any admin idea group after taking admin is probably a waste of mana compared to coring land.

 

[Higher Game]

other than if you're going for colonization, i still have to find a reason not to pick quantity first.

Aristocracy is better if you have good cavalry and that +1 leader siege is brutal on the AI. Aristocracy/espionage has beautiful synergy.

If playing Russia\Muscovy, then I almost every time take Economic-Quantity-Trade-Religious. With religious being first sometimes because you'll have to take Admin idea first.
Because your main source of income as Russia is production and the best bonus in the game is "goods produced modifier". Quantity provide so much needed manpower in neverending early wars, allows you to stand toe to toe with overpowered Ottomans and blobbed PLC. And late game it will stack with your natural bonuses to manpower and, in turn, war exhaustion. And policy provides a whooping +20% goods produced. You can field a million with production income alone.

Russia has lots of quantity as is, and money too if you manage debt and bankruptcies well. Mana is the biggest issue.

Humanist = almost never fight rebels even when you're at 200% OE. Expansion wouldn't have done anything useful. If really tryharding any admin idea group after taking admin is probably a waste of mana compared to coring land.

Colonial regions are ideal expansion locations as mana gets exponentially more expensive, but manpower and money are issues if you're juggling an Asian coalition too. Expansion also gets very good policies with diplomatic and aristocratic. It's probably a good 4th idea group since by then you benefit the most from the autonomy reduction in territories. But I go with religion since I just like Mamluks as an ally too much so no Mecca and Jerusalem, and Asia has lots of little provinces that require lots of missionaries. I should probably let Ottomans beat them up though since they need to be as strong as possible to remain viable as a "rival".

Quantity 4th is probably best since that's when you're aiming for military hegemony, which is very nice with diplomatic ideas and of course Malta. Admin/influence/diplomatic/quantity for any top 10 starting nation.

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Delterius]

added norman culture

sounds like somebody is gonna learn how laggy vicky 2 gets if you keep adding cultures and tags to it

 

[Tyrr]

No one even has any idea how the economy works.

Just like in real life.

 

[Riddler]

A question regarding playing nations in colonial areas:

I recently returned to the game and thought I could try playing the Aztecs. All good fun but when I started earnestly trying to conquer the colonial nations I noticed something strange, I didn't get any overextension..

When I conquer land from nations from let's say the Incans I get overextension just fine but when I conquer the entire of the Carribbean in a single war I get literally 0% overextension.

Is it supposed to work this way?

EDIT: After some googling i found out that this apparently is intended lmao

 

[Average Manatee]

There's CBs that take whole colonial regions at once if you are a colonizer attacking another colonizer and your poor CNs would be completely fucked if you forced all that OE into them. It's already pretty bad when you are trying to feed a CN Aztec/Incan land and they continually go bankrupt, killing all their cores in progress, making their army useless and removing all their mana meanwhile you have to deal with their rebels.

 

[Higher Game]

6715 dev Russia, admin/aristo/esp and an early PU on France. Would have broken 7000 if not for a regency.

 

[whydoibother]

How is the current version of EU4? Did they fix fortresses, colonies, the game shitting itself in late years?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So I started playing EU4 again, this time as Spain. England was a surprisingly difficult start for a beginner because of that surrender of Maine event.
Spain is a lot easier.

I think I actually prefer EU4 to CK2. CK2 gets really annoying and tedious after a while because of the constant scheming and cucking your idiot nobles get up to, and Paradox is allergic to fun so you can't just execute the lot of them and replace them with nobles who aren't absolute cunts. Well, unless you want to fight constant pointless rebellions that is.
EU4 feels a little better in that regard, although in true paradox fashion it comes with it's own nonsense.

 

[Riddler]

How is the current version of EU4? Did they fix fortresses, colonies, the game shitting itself in late years?

Not really, but it seems much of the stuff will be fixed in the patch next week, which might break new things of course.

Colonies don't seem like they are getting fixed though. If you're colonising North America odds are you're going to have to invest place an army there to deal with natives, which also leads to very rapid expansion...

 

[Higher Game]

The next patch is going to nerf the patronage of the arts estate privilege exploit that let you roll a day 1 new heir.

 

[Stavrophore]

Patch is huge, looks very promising. But how many times we read patch notes with fixed AI, only to find that the promise was empty.

 

[whydoibother]

Patch is huge, looks very promising. But how many times we read patch notes with fixed AI, only to find that the promise was empty.

It can't possibly be that hard to make it so the AI parks half its army NEXT to the siege, and the other half on the siege, to avoid attrition damage. I could probably write that behavior, test it and ship it in an hour.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Patch is huge, looks very promising. But how many times we read patch notes with fixed AI, only to find that the promise was empty.

It can't possibly be that hard to make it so the AI parks half its army NEXT to the siege, and the other half on the siege, to avoid attrition damage. I could probably write that behavior, test it and ship it in an hour.

Don't sieges go faster the more troops are there though? When you're in a war you want those fortresses to fall quickly.

 

[whydoibother]

Patch is huge, looks very promising. But how many times we read patch notes with fixed AI, only to find that the promise was empty.

It can't possibly be that hard to make it so the AI parks half its army NEXT to the siege, and the other half on the siege, to avoid attrition damage. I could probably write that behavior, test it and ship it in an hour.

Don't sieges go faster the more troops are there though? When you're in a war you want those fortresses to fall quickly.

The AI doesn't take this into account, and always optimizes siege speed while disregarding losses.
Especially notable if you are trying to play Novgorod or some horde. Muscovy constantly putting 30k troops on a fort during winter.

 

[Stavrophore]

Patch is huge, looks very promising. But how many times we read patch notes with fixed AI, only to find that the promise was empty.

It can't possibly be that hard to make it so the AI parks half its army NEXT to the siege, and the other half on the siege, to avoid attrition damage. I could probably write that behavior, test it and ship it in an hour.

Don't sieges go faster the more troops are there though? When you're in a war you want those fortresses to fall quickly.

Number of troops is irrelevant for siege timer as long as you fulfill the minimum, only number of cannons. Number of troops is relevant in assault, you need five times the garrison for optimum assault, ie. 2000 garrison needs 10k men, garrison of 9000 needs 45k men.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is that how it works? I thought it worked like CK2 where the more troops you have the faster it ticks down.