Europa Universalis IV

[Lady Error]

Some things I learned recently:

- Governing capacity: State Houses and Courthouses help to reduce the number of governing points being used.

- The fastest way to increase Mercantilism is by granting exclusive monopoly rights to the Estates. Each time the deal is extended, you get more Mercantilism increase.

- I never noticed that you can scroll down the Estates priviliges that can be given. I thought there were just three choices for each. Now the Estates all have high equilibrium (through several granted privileges), so that seizing land from them again and again is no problem.

- Clicking on the "find a Heir" button when you have none will create a "Restore Union" Casus Belli for the countries you have Royal Marriages with (though apparently only the one that would have been first in line to inherit your country).

- Increasing the development points of a colony province will reduce their liberty desire by 5% for each point. A good option in addition to paying off their debts.

 

[whydoibother]

I don't know if its from this patch or the last one, but Castile has a pretty interesting mission tree, including forcing a personal union on Austria.
Big rough at the start, with potentially 2 disasters going on at once, but once you stabilize, you grow fast.

 

[Theodora]

Did PDX finally release a patch people are relatively happy with?

What are some fun starts this patch, besides the obvious Ottoman Empire?

The suggested nations that show up when you click on an expansion's symbol in the menu or opening splash screen are usually decent suggestions pertinent to an update imo. That said, East Asia seems more interesting than usual (Ming/Qing/Korea) beyond the updates to Japan, and France has a lot more going on in its new mission tree than "conquer X" x 50.

 

[Average Manatee]

Did PDX finally release a patch people are relatively happy with?

No, its just a bunch of buffs to already strong nations. There's simply nothing to get angry over, this is what everyone expected.

 

[Axioms]

Some things I learned recently:

- Governing capacity: State Houses and Courthouses help to reduce the number of governing points being used.

- The fastest way to increase Mercantilism is by granting exclusive monopoly rights to the Estates. Each time the deal is extended, you get more Mercantilism increase.

- I never noticed that you can scroll down the Estates priviliges that can be given. I thought there were just three choices for each. Now the Estates all have high equilibrium (through several granted privileges), so that seizing land from them again and again is no problem.

- Clicking on the "find a Heir" button when you have none will create a "Restore Union" Casus Belli for the countries you have Royal Marriages with (though apparently only the one that would have been first in line to inherit your country).

- Increasing the development points of a colony province will reduce their liberty desire by 5% for each point. A good option in addition to paying off their debts.

Better to just cheese mercantalism using the burgher privilege trick. There's one you need 3 CoTs to get, then you give one away without closing the estate screen and then every day you automagically lose it and then readd it because Paradox doesn't update the menus.

 

[Average Manatee]

Or just ignore mercantilism because its pretty useless.

 

[Axioms]

Or just ignore mercantilism because its pretty useless.

Max mercantalism for nations like the Ottomans is actually quite good. Something like a 25% boost to income among other things. Of course it is only worth it if you cheese it. Getting 100% in a single month at no cost is a great deal. Obviously you shouldn't be paying DIP for ot or anything.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Did PDX finally release a patch people are relatively happy with?

People are happy with some of the additions (e.g. extra government reforms, extra estate privileges with decisions mimicking how estate interactions originally were way back, extra idea groups* etc etc), but there are some balancing issues with it as well. The new trees are hit or miss depending on your preferences I guess.

*Getting used to the new meta notwithstanding.

 

[None]

I haven't played since after Emperor, and it is amazing how easy this game has become. Not to say it wasn't all that difficult back then either.

Decided to play Austria and see if I'd have to patience to get the AEIOU achievement. My opening moves were the same as they've always been, even pre-mission tree. Get Bohemia and Hungary into union ASAP. The mission tree CBs made it easier and luck saw Hungary get a PU with Milan, which meant I had the three nations under my control by 1454. Burgundy was a useful ally in these wars, and they become a subject once the Burgundian Inheritance fired. I replaced them with Poland, who I went to war with to force a union after I traded some favors to make their heir a Habsburg. I ended up doing the same exact thing with Russia. I'd had already basically won the game at the point when I was asked if I wanted to fight Portugal for a union with Great Britain. After a lengthy war that required me to build from scratch a fleet to rival the navies of Portugal and Britain (peaced out Spain for most of the money) I now controlled the world's premier naval and colonial power. Somewhere along the way I had also managed to get Naples into a PU and Sweden as a vassal.

I had more or less stopped trying by the time I had Poland under PU. It became a game of declaring war and sieging a couple of provinces while my subjects did all the heavy lifting.

Shortly after war with GB

The Ottomans never materialized into a significant threat. They'd attack me every now and then and I'd siege them down and farm them for ducats and power projection. France never got off the ground and I broke them in our first war. Spain's armies were never actually in Spain, so a war with them was always a cakewalk. A significant look at game balance needs to be done. Especially favors, which made getting some important PUs very easy.

 

[Average Manatee]

Or just ignore mercantilism because its pretty useless.

Max mercantalism for nations like the Ottomans is actually quite good. Something like a 25% boost to income among other things. Of course it is only worth it if you cheese it. Getting 100% in a single month at no cost is a great deal. Obviously you shouldn't be paying DIP for ot or anything.

Not really.

1. You should be monopolizing nodes and mercantilism is only useful in closely contested nodes. i.e. its most useful when you have a bunch of nodes where you only have a 50% share in power.
2. Most of your trade comes from centers of trade and you get a marketplaces and other +trade power % bonuses already which heavily dilutes mercantilism. Outside of your home region you'll have trade companies which give similar huge bonuses.
3. Especially for ottomans (one of the strongest tags in the game) you can easily conquer Venice and own an end node.

Mercantilism is important in situations like if you are England and plan to share the English Channel node all game with a France and Netherlands (which only makes sense in an RP/MP game). In SP its pretty irrelevant.

Granted if you can get it literally for free then that's good because free bonuses are good, but otherwise mercantilism is probably the most overrated stat in the game next to innovativeness.

 

[Axioms]

I haven't played since after Emperor, and it is amazing how easy this game has become. Not to say it wasn't all that difficult back then either.

Decided to play Austria and see if I'd have to patience to get the AEIOU achievement. My opening moves were the same as they've always been, even pre-mission tree. Get Bohemia and Hungary into union ASAP. The mission tree CBs made it easier and luck saw Hungary get a PU with Milan, which meant I had the three nations under my control by 1454. Burgundy was a useful ally in these wars, and they become a subject once the Burgundian Inheritance fired. I replaced them with Poland, who I went to war with to force a union after I traded some favors to make their heir a Habsburg. I ended up doing the same exact thing with Russia. I'd had already basically won the game at the point when I was asked if I wanted to fight Portugal for a union with Great Britain. After a lengthy war that required me to build from scratch a fleet to rival the navies of Portugal and Britain (peaced out Spain for most of the money) I now controlled the world's premier naval and colonial power. Somewhere along the way I had also managed to get Naples into a PU and Sweden as a vassal.

I had more or less stopped trying by the time I had Poland under PU. It became a game of declaring war and sieging a couple of provinces while my subjects did all the heavy lifting.

Shortly after war with GB

The Ottomans never materialized into a significant threat. They'd attack me every now and then and I'd siege them down and farm them for ducats and power projection. France never got off the ground and I broke them in our first war. Spain's armies were never actually in Spain, so a war with them was always a cakewalk. A significant look at game balance needs to be done. Especially favors, which made getting some important PUs very easy.

It is trivially easy to become unstoppable pretty early on due to OP mission trees and fancy unqiue governments for all the major powers. And you could shave off 50 years or so with judicious save scumming even on ironman.

And you can do even more insane stuff with other potential cheese like mercantalism or hiding the capital or w/e.

 

[Axioms]

Or just ignore mercantilism because its pretty useless.

Max mercantalism for nations like the Ottomans is actually quite good. Something like a 25% boost to income among other things. Of course it is only worth it if you cheese it. Getting 100% in a single month at no cost is a great deal. Obviously you shouldn't be paying DIP for ot or anything.

Not really.

1. You should be monopolizing nodes and mercantilism is only useful in closely contested nodes. i.e. its most useful when you have a bunch of nodes where you only have a 50% share in power.
2. Most of your trade comes from centers of trade and you get a marketplaces and other +trade power % bonuses already which heavily dilutes mercantilism. Outside of your home region you'll have trade companies which give similar huge bonuses.
3. Especially for ottomans (one of the strongest tags in the game) you can easily conquer Venice and own an end node.

Mercantilism is important in situations like if you are England and plan to share the English Channel node all game with a France and Netherlands (which only makes sense in an RP/MP game). In SP its pretty irrelevant.

Granted if you can get it literally for free then that's good because free bonuses are good, but otherwise mercantilism is probably the most overrated stat in the game next to innovativeness.

Well early game as the Ottomans trying to do Mehmet's Ambition cheesing to max 100 mercantalism is super strong all the way to finishing the achievement. Of course if you aren't cheesing it super early then it sucks. I think you are just failing to understand that part.

 

[Average Manatee]

I mean if you're basically cheating then why not just cheat tbh.

 

[Theodora]

I mean if you're basically cheating then why not just cheat tbh.

I agree, but some people see autistic min-maxing to the point of near-exploits as just being a part of the game when it comes to systems games like this.

If you look at Axiom's gamedev stuff you probably ought not to be surprised by the way he plays.

 

[whydoibother]

I haven't played since after Emperor, and it is amazing how easy this game has become. Not to say it wasn't all that difficult back then either.

I already got bored of my Castile run. PU over Portugal, Aragon, Austria and France. Alliance with England and Bohemia. Gatekeeping everyone else from the Americas and Africa.
Ottomans doubled their development by vassalizing the Pontic-Caspian steppe and Persia region as vilayets or whatever meme words was chosen for their special mechanic, but they can't handle my swarm in a war, even if they are stronger in individual battles. And their navy is half of mine. Don't think I'll be continuing. The moment that coalition didn't fire, is the moment I "won the game".

 

[Average Manatee]

I mean if you're basically cheating then why not just cheat tbh.

I agree, but some people see autistic min-maxing to the point of near-exploits as just being a part of the game when it comes to systems games like this.

If you look at Axiom's gamedev stuff you probably ought not to be surprised by the way he plays.

I mean if you are doing something actually difficult like a VH minor start then sure, exploit away. But picking the strongest starting nation in the game then spending 5 minutes clicking 300 times to get a very minor benefit just seems retarded. Like literally get a life.

 

[Axioms]

I mean if you're basically cheating then why not just cheat tbh.

Almost any strategy in the game for the tough stuff is cheese. Because when you play a modifier stacking game that naturally tends towards some sort of cheese.

Some cheese is more onerous than the rest, like how doing anything in Europe can be done better by joining the HRE and becoming Emperor.

 

[Axioms]

I haven't played since after Emperor, and it is amazing how easy this game has become. Not to say it wasn't all that difficult back then either.

I already got bored of my Castile run. PU over Portugal, Aragon, Austria and France. Alliance with England and Bohemia. Gatekeeping everyone else from the Americas and Africa.
Ottomans doubled their development by vassalizing the Pontic-Caspian steppe and Persia region as vilayets or whatever meme words was chosen for their special mechanic, but they can't handle my swarm in a war, even if they are stronger in individual battles. And their navy is half of mine. Don't think I'll be continuing. The moment that coalition didn't fire, is the moment I "won the game".

The overpoweredness of swarms is one of the defining features of the game I hate the most. Although I suppose coalitions would be meaningless without it since having a 10x fort density and piles of base stat cheesing 1-3 province minors creates the vast majority of the threat.

 

[Axioms]

I mean if you're basically cheating then why not just cheat tbh.

I agree, but some people see autistic min-maxing to the point of near-exploits as just being a part of the game when it comes to systems games like this.

If you look at Axiom's gamedev stuff you probably ought not to be surprised by the way he plays.

Actually Axioms is cheese free. EU4 is an idle clicker with a map whereas Axioms is a fantasy social world sim or something, totally different genre. Axioms actually tries to represent the things that EU4 abstracts away to min-maxable modifiers.

If you aren't doing insane achievements or personal best speed runs with cheese, EU4 is like a 250 hour game max, even with all the DLC. There's barely anything going on in the game.

The people who are "autistic retards" are the ones who play OPMs. They are boring flavorless trash who cheese alliances before forming an actually interesting country. There's very little skill involved and it only adds 10-20 years of "hard", and I put that in square quotes to mock these people, gameplay before you are in the same position as you would be if you just touched grass and played a real nation.

I wish I had that handy spongebob meme for this:
"I'm playing an interchangeable generic german minor, forming Westphalia, then Germany, then becoming emperor!"
"Daring today aren't we?"

 

[whydoibother]

Feeling daring today, I think I'll play Oirat and reform into Manchuria and reform into Bavaria and reform into Timurids and reform into Golden Horde and reform into Siam and reform into Jerusalem and reform into Orissa and reform into Delhi and reform into Poland and reform into Croatia and reform into Persia and reform into Tunis and reform into Scotland and reform into France and reform into England and reform into Dai Viet and reform into Morocco and reform into Yuan and reform into Mongol Empire and reform into HRE and lose a war to the Ottomans and rage quit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Actually Axioms is cheese free.

uh huh

The people who are "autistic retards" are the ones who play OPMs. They are boring flavorless trash who cheese alliances before forming an actually interesting country. There's very little skill involved and it only adds 10-20 years of "hard", and I put that in square quotes to mock these people, gameplay before you are in the same position as you would be if you just touched grass and played a real nation.

People who call the shit GPs in EU4 get "flavor" are the autistic retards. Minors in EU4 require vastly more skill than GPs, what kind of joke claim is this?

 

[Axioms]

Actually Axioms is cheese free.

uh huh

The people who are "autistic retards" are the ones who play OPMs. They are boring flavorless trash who cheese alliances before forming an actually interesting country. There's very little skill involved and it only adds 10-20 years of "hard", and I put that in square quotes to mock these people, gameplay before you are in the same position as you would be if you just touched grass and played a real nation.

People who call the shit GPs in EU4 get "flavor" are the autistic retards. Minors in EU4 require vastly more skill than GPs, what kind of joke claim is this?

They don't require more skill. Are you nuts? Playing minors is an incredibly generic paint by numbers thing that varies little between OPMs until you get to become "big".

 

[Axioms]

Feeling daring today, I think I'll play Oirat and reform into Manchuria and reform into Bavaria and reform into Timurids and reform into Golden Horde and reform into Siam and reform into Jerusalem and reform into Orissa and reform into Delhi and reform into Poland and reform into Croatia and reform into Persia and reform into Tunis and reform into Scotland and reform into France and reform into England and reform into Dai Viet and reform into Morocco and reform into Yuan and reform into Mongol Empire and reform into HRE and lose a war to the Ottomans and rage quit.

Every formable nation should really have a "tier" and you can only form one at each tier. Of course that would upset the memer streamers and OPM cheesers and be a marketing disaster, but it would greatly improve the game.

 

[Average Manatee]

They don't require more skill. Are you nuts? Playing minors is an incredibly generic paint by numbers thing that varies little between OPMs until you get to become "big".

Confirmed retard. Do you even play the game or just spend 40 hours a week reading reddit posts about the game and talking about them here?

 

[whydoibother]

Feeling daring today, I think I'll play Oirat and reform into Manchuria and reform into Bavaria and reform into Timurids and reform into Golden Horde and reform into Siam and reform into Jerusalem and reform into Orissa and reform into Delhi and reform into Poland and reform into Croatia and reform into Persia and reform into Tunis and reform into Scotland and reform into France and reform into England and reform into Dai Viet and reform into Morocco and reform into Yuan and reform into Mongol Empire and reform into HRE and lose a war to the Ottomans and rage quit.

Every formable nation should really have a "tier" and you can only form one at each tier. Of course that would upset the memer streamers and OPM cheesers and be a marketing disaster, but it would greatly improve the game.