Europa Universalis IV

[thesecret1]

Is MEIOU 3.0 out yet?

Not yet, but it's actively developed. In fact it entered closed alpha testing last week or so. Reading the dev diaries, they're trying to do something really monumental there, basically taking the old and beloved mechanics (pops, privilege system, communication efficiency, buildings, provicial wealth, etc.) and rebuilding them from scratch into something even better. They're redoing the UI too, so the frequent criticism of menu hell should be addressed now. It should be hell of a lot more polished than before. It looks really awesome (hell, the detail the pops are done in is approaching Vicky 2's levels, down to their average wage and savings and tax rate per province) and I can't wait to play it.

And what do you do instead of blobbing?

Meme runs and LARPing, for the most part. There's not much in the way of flavour for that in vanilla, but that's where mods come in.

And what is the real part of the game?

The mods, of course. They make the game so much more complex and flavourful. My favourite kind are total conversion ones that basically create a completely different kind of experience. There's MEIOU, which adds assloads of complexity and detail, as well as flavour (you can, for example, play as the Pope and try to reform the Church from within. Very fun!), but it can be pretty overwhelming when you first play it. Veritas et Fortitudo is also pretty good – nowhere near as extensive as MEIOU, but with its own share of cool stuff, while not too diverging from how vanilla plays. Then there's also mods like Voltaire's Nightmare, for example, which gives you a massive map of Europe where you can properly enjoy playing in HRE with its million mini states, giving you a lot different kind of run from vanilla without changing core gameplay.

Really, there's a lot of really good mods for the game after which you'll never touch vanilla again, and it's where people are leaving all those 2000+ hours of gameplay.

 

[fantadomat]

Please clap.

Fair enough,Gazikumukh's achievements are impressive. Haven't seen him get that big till now.

Eh, blobbing and shit.

Nigga are you retarded? What fucking blobbing? She hasn't even conquered Evropa you bitch about blobing lol. Also people that bitch about blobbing are just shit at the game.......that is all about blobbing lol.

 

[NJClaw]

Nigga are you retarded? What fucking blobbing? She hasn't even conquered Evropa you bitch about blobing lol. Also people that bitch about blobbing are just shit at the game.......that is all about blobbing lol.

No, the game is all about unifying Japan as soon as possible and then spreading your empire of daimyos throughout the world, watching your vassals constantly fighting among themselves while you gain infinite mana forcing them to commit sudoku.

Bonus points for vassalizing the pope, converting him to Shintoism, and then forcing him to commit sudoku. Massive incline.

 

[fantadomat]

Blobbing is the first stepping stone towards mastery of the game. Then the "real part" become the so-called meme runs which are generally difficult to pull off and tend to incorporate a degree of pure luck as you tackle them. I'm talking along the lines of driving out the Ottomans from the Balkans and Anatolia as Knights of Rhodes, getting Wallachia/Serbia/Albania into HRE before you get roflstomped by the powers around you, unifying Japan as fast as you can to reverse-colonize Europe etc etc.
The real fun of these grand strategy games is in pushing the boundaries to see how crazy can your playthrough get.

Which part of that is crazy? Getting in to HRE at this point is pretty easy as those countries,the fun part is to disable the HRE as orthodoxy country by converting all the princes to orthodoxy and not having a prince that could become the emperor. A very fun run is mongolia on super hard doing all the missions in the tree. Also the Knights are a blast,using their raid ability and getting all the Mediterranean islands means that you will not have friends and be constantly at war with a lot of big powers. It is the best naval supremacy campaign,just get a 100 galleys with good combat buffs and you rule the waves for sure . The trick is to get orthodox jerusalem.

 

[Lady_Error]

Played Russia (Muscovy) for 140 years and now kind of lost interest:

Takeaway: Should have stayed allied with the Ottomans instead of having endless wars now over the Black Sea real estate. One possibility would be to attack him with Mamluks, Austria and Aragon again and again. I already took Constantinople once but had no chance to win the overall war since he has 50% more force limit. The 10% war reparations from him over 8 years are worth a lot though.

Integrating Circassia and Rostov (whom I initially gave the Muslim lands to deal with) will require something like 1300 diplo points. And Bukhara is fucking bugged, cannot even be selected.

I got Iceland from Denmark and that was a good way to jump start exploration and colonization. Was planning to get all of California trade node, since it is the only one that connects to Russia. The only alternative colonization route would be owning all trade nodes in India in late game.

 

[NJClaw]

Integrating Circassia and Rostov (whom I initially gave the Muslim lands to deal with) will require something like 1300 diplo points.

If you want to rely on vassals integration, you should seriously consider Influence ideas (-25%) and the Administrative-Influence policy (-20%).

And Bukhara is fucking bugged, cannot even be selected.

You probably can't see its capital yet. You need to be able to se a nation's capital to interact with it.

The only alternative colonization route would be owning all trade nodes in India in late game.

That's where the real money is. Especially in single player, Africa, India and Southeast Asia are much more profitable than the Americas. With Russia, you can easily control 100% of the land that surrounds India, so you can steer a lot of curry trade.

 

[Lady_Error]

If you want to rely on vassals integration, you should seriously consider Influence ideas (-25%) and the Administrative-Influence policy (-20%).

Yeah, I underestimated how expensive it would be to integrate a huge vassal.

You probably can't see its capital yet. You need to be able to se a nation's capital to interact with it.

I could interact with Uzbeks no problem and even explored all his land with a conquistador. When it turned to Bukhara I cannot even select it, instead it selects some other country.

That's where the real money is. Especially in single player, Africa, India and Southeast Asia are much more profitable than the Americas. With Russia, you can easily control 100% of the land that surrounds India, so you can steer a lot of curry trade.

Yeah, America hardly does anything, except giving you some naval support in long wars.

A question: The force limit depends on the tax income? How does it work exactly - per province once a threshold income is passed or based on cumulative income?

 

[fantadomat]

Russia is pretty fun to play with the missions,just eat everything. Also you pretty strong units,being able to recruit streltzi and cossacks cavalry. Also always get admin tech first and power trough it for cheap coring and admin tech. Also russia has a unique tech about mass colonization,the colonist techs are pretty useless until you get to the eastern end and the only if you are in colonizing the pacific/indian ocean. Also money is pretty useless in the game.after the early game,you only need it to be in the green. The best money making building is barracks,when you have enough manpower you will have no need for mercs.

 

[NJClaw]

I could interact with Uzbeks no problem and even explored all his land with a conquistador. When it turned to Bukhara I cannot even select it, instead it selects some other country.

I don't think that's a bug, since that always happens with countries whose capital is unknown to you. Try to glance over its land to see if you find a province with a crown on it: if you can't find it, then that's the problem. You can try to enter a war against him by attacking one of his allies, so that you can explore his land with a conquistador, or you can pay its neighbors to share their maps with you (but I think you need the Mare Nostrum dlc to do that).

A question: The force limit depends on the tax income? How does it work exactly - per province once a threshold income is passed or based on cumulative income?

Force limit depends on your provinces' total development (and local autonomy) and your buildings (regimental camps and conscription centers). You can also increment it through various ideas, traditions, and policies. Vassals increase your force limit by 1 + 10% (20% for marches) of their own force limit, so in the very beginning of the game having a vassal boosts your force limit more than directly annexing conquered land to your nation (that's also true in the mid-late game, but it becomes far less noticeable). You can find all the modifiers here.

 

[Lady_Error]

I don't think that's a bug, since that always happens with countries whose capital is unknown to you. Try to glance over its land to see if you find a province with a crown on it: if you can't find it, then that's the problem. You can try to enter a war against him by attacking one of his allies, so that you can explore his land with a conquistador, or you can pay its neighbors to share their maps with you (but I think you need the Mare Nostrum dlc to do that).

Yeah, you may be right. His capital should be Tashkent and that one is probably in the one province I haven't explored yet.

The best money making building is barracks,when you have enough manpower you will have no need for mercs.

I didn't rely on mercs, but instead went over the force limit. Both are expensive though. How are barracks good for money making though?

 

[Delterius]

Russia is super comfy to play as. Though I haven't dared to try one of the smaller princedoms, Novgorod is also a fair challenge.

 

[Sergiu64]

Missions are kinda OP in general. In my Lithuania game I could make Poland, Russia, Hungary and Bohemia my junior partners for example.

There are a lot of things that are OP. The toughest part of the game is surviving the beginning as someone small or doing some of the crazier achievements.

 

[Higher Game]

I'm now thinking innovative/influence/administrative is the strongest opening idea set for world conquest. You'll do over 90% of your conquering after the age of absolutism, so openings that offer 2000 development by then rather than 1700 or whatever really just don't matter because you'll conquer over 1000 development per decade soon enough. What matters most is what helps in the long run.

But maxing out innovation, and of course mercantilism and crown land and military professionalism and government reform progress etc etc is what matters. Influence helps the most in terms of keeping up the most monarch points and not missing any innovative beats, and of course annexing a huge vassal to max out absolutism ASAP by autonomy reduction when it's time. Ditching innovative for religious in time for your mass conquests is key too, when you just can't keep up conversions without it, and ditching influence for espionage when coalitions start to become a problem.

 

[Eastwood]

Haven't followed the game's development in a while. Have they fixed the game yet, after the whole Emperor fiasco? Like the AI debt spiral and HRE stuff?

 

[Stavrophore]

I think it would also be possible to sneak in the Marajoarans

Wow never knew a spice was a tribe back in the day.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm now thinking innovative/influence/administrative is the strongest opening idea set for world conquest. You'll do over 90% of your conquering after the age of absolutism, so openings that offer 2000 development by then rather than 1700 or whatever really just don't matter because you'll conquer over 1000 development per decade soon enough. What matters most is what helps in the long run.

But maxing out innovation, and of course mercantilism and crown land and military professionalism and government reform progress etc etc is what matters. Influence helps the most in terms of keeping up the most monarch points and not missing any innovative beats, and of course annexing a huge vassal to max out absolutism ASAP by autonomy reduction when it's time. Ditching innovative for religious in time for your mass conquests is key too, when you just can't keep up conversions without it, and ditching influence for espionage when coalitions start to become a problem.

90% of that doesn't matter. Innovative is awful and innovativeness should be almost completely ignored. The only edge case in which innovative ideas are good is when you have a nation that can stack -advisor cost discounts up to like -75%, which means you can hire rank 5 advisors for peanuts at the start of the game. Mercantilism doesn't matter. Crown land does matter but is easy to max out. Military professionalism doesn't matter to be maxed out (spending professionalism for manpower is good though and it's not bad to have, just no need to max). Government reform progress doesn't matter unless you switch government type and lose a lot of progress, otherwise you'll get more than enough to max out all the things. The vassal annexation->lower autonomy->max absolutism trick does work but is not terribly necessary and you never need to take influence for it. An alternative is accepting the demands of particularist rebels to get +autonomy across hundreds of provinces. You have to go through court and country anyway to max absolutism so getting country-wide revolt risk to do this is all in the plan anyway.

Do Humanist/Quantity/Administrative in whatever order. Assuming you want the lowest skill required world conquest you're most likely going to be bottlenecked by actual fighting of the AI and rebels. Quantity and Humanist will take care of that for you. Beyond that there's not much that is important. Going full space marine mil group stacking would probably be fine. With max absolutism and 5/5/5 advisors the speed bumps in world conquest aren't needing another -x% discount from innovativeness, it's always having your troops sitting on an enemy with the war finished ready to annex new land as soon as the old land finishes coring.

 

[Higher Game]

90% of that doesn't matter. Innovative is awful and innovativeness should be almost completely ignored. The only edge case in which innovative ideas are good is when you have a nation that can stack -advisor cost discounts up to like -75%, which means you can hire rank 5 advisors for peanuts at the start of the game. Mercantilism doesn't matter. Crown land does matter but is easy to max out. Military professionalism doesn't matter to be maxed out (spending professionalism for manpower is good though and it's not bad to have, just no need to max). Government reform progress doesn't matter unless you switch government type and lose a lot of progress, otherwise you'll get more than enough to max out all the things. The vassal annexation->lower autonomy->max absolutism trick does work but is not terribly necessary and you never need to take influence for it. An alternative is accepting the demands of particularist rebels to get +autonomy across hundreds of provinces. You have to go through court and country anyway to max absolutism so getting country-wide revolt risk to do this is all in the plan anyway.

Do Humanist/Quantity/Administrative in whatever order. Assuming you want the lowest skill required world conquest you're most likely going to be bottlenecked by actual fighting of the AI and rebels. Quantity and Humanist will take care of that for you. Beyond that there's not much that is important. Going full space marine mil group stacking would probably be fine. With max absolutism and 5/5/5 advisors the speed bumps in world conquest aren't needing another -x% discount from innovativeness, it's always having your troops sitting on an enemy with the war finished ready to annex new land as soon as the old land finishes coring.

Innovative easily pays for itself even in the most naive calculations, but what matters most is when you figure out that before administrative efficiency most monarch points are just wasted on a relatively trivial amount of expansion unless you reach the era of absolutism severely underweight, like lower than 1000 development, because you picked Ulm or something. Optimizing pre-absolutism expansion just for a few hundred more development by 1612 just doesn't mean much, but getting 100 innovativeness by then will make the next couple centuries much easier to blob. The other long term bonuses I mentioned are of the same nature, seemingly trivial but ultimately more important than a few hundred more development. (playing humans in multiplayer is entirely different of course)

 

[Agame]

Haven't followed the game's development in a while. Have they fixed the game yet, after the whole Emperor fiasco? Like the AI debt spiral and HRE stuff?

 

[Average Manatee]

90% of that doesn't matter. Innovative is awful and innovativeness should be almost completely ignored. The only edge case in which innovative ideas are good is when you have a nation that can stack -advisor cost discounts up to like -75%, which means you can hire rank 5 advisors for peanuts at the start of the game. Mercantilism doesn't matter. Crown land does matter but is easy to max out. Military professionalism doesn't matter to be maxed out (spending professionalism for manpower is good though and it's not bad to have, just no need to max). Government reform progress doesn't matter unless you switch government type and lose a lot of progress, otherwise you'll get more than enough to max out all the things. The vassal annexation->lower autonomy->max absolutism trick does work but is not terribly necessary and you never need to take influence for it. An alternative is accepting the demands of particularist rebels to get +autonomy across hundreds of provinces. You have to go through court and country anyway to max absolutism so getting country-wide revolt risk to do this is all in the plan anyway.

Do Humanist/Quantity/Administrative in whatever order. Assuming you want the lowest skill required world conquest you're most likely going to be bottlenecked by actual fighting of the AI and rebels. Quantity and Humanist will take care of that for you. Beyond that there's not much that is important. Going full space marine mil group stacking would probably be fine. With max absolutism and 5/5/5 advisors the speed bumps in world conquest aren't needing another -x% discount from innovativeness, it's always having your troops sitting on an enemy with the war finished ready to annex new land as soon as the old land finishes coring.

Innovative easily pays for itself even in the most naive calculations, but what matters most is when you figure out that before administrative efficiency most monarch points are just wasted on a relatively trivial amount of expansion unless you reach the era of absolutism severely underweight, like lower than 1000 development, because you picked Ulm or something. Optimizing pre-absolutism expansion just for a few hundred more development by 1612 just doesn't mean much, but getting 100 innovativeness by then will make the next couple centuries much easier to blob. The other long term bonuses I mentioned are of the same nature, seemingly trivial but ultimately more important than a few hundred more development. (playing humans in multiplayer is entirely different of course)

This entire video is idiocy. "paying for itself" does not make something good, it makes it better than literally throwing away your mana. Any other good idea group pays for itself many, many times over. Furthermore his calculations are incredibly poor and make stupid ass assumptions. Furthermore your problem in the late game isn't mana. It's coring time (can't core more than 100% OE at a time, unless you stack a lot - unrest), coalitions, and truce times/WS costs.

The only reason to take innovative is if you are something like Mamluks who can stack -75% advisor cost and run level 5s from the beginning of the game for pennies. It's a decent option then. But innovativeness is a joke stat.

 

[Higher Game]

This entire video is idiocy. "paying for itself" does not make something good, it makes it better than literally throwing away your mana. Any other good idea group pays for itself many, many times over. Furthermore his calculations are incredibly poor and make stupid ass assumptions. Furthermore your problem in the late game isn't mana. It's coring time (can't core more than 100% OE at a time, unless you stack a lot - unrest), coalitions, and truce times/WS costs.

The only reason to take innovative is if you are something like Mamluks who can stack -75% advisor cost and run level 5s from the beginning of the game for pennies. It's a decent option then. But innovativeness is a joke stat.

In 1620, would you really rather have 2200 development, 50 mercantilism, 50 army professionalism, and 30 innovativeness, or 1800 development, 100 mercantilism, 100 army professionalism, and 100 innovativeness? How much does that 400ish development ultimately matter at that point? I bet the innovative opening catches up in development within 30 years at most.

 

[Average Manatee]

This entire video is idiocy. "paying for itself" does not make something good, it makes it better than literally throwing away your mana. Any other good idea group pays for itself many, many times over. Furthermore his calculations are incredibly poor and make stupid ass assumptions. Furthermore your problem in the late game isn't mana. It's coring time (can't core more than 100% OE at a time, unless you stack a lot - unrest), coalitions, and truce times/WS costs.

The only reason to take innovative is if you are something like Mamluks who can stack -75% advisor cost and run level 5s from the beginning of the game for pennies. It's a decent option then. But innovativeness is a joke stat.

In 1620, would you really rather have 2200 development, 50 mercantilism, 50 army professionalism, and 30 innovativeness, or 1800 development, 100 mercantilism, 100 army professionalism, and 100 innovativeness? How much does that 400ish development ultimately matter at that point? I bet the innovative opening catches up in development within 30 years at most.

Literally no one competent at EU4 is taking innovative. Sorry.

Mercantilism is a joke. Professionalism is easy to get by spamming generals. Also not sure how you think innovative ideas helps with either of these? Innovativeness is worthless and if you have only 2200 dev in 1620 you're pretty bad. The cost of innovative ideas alone is 2700 admin, or 270 dev that could be cored (without modifiers), and that ignores the fact that you skipped out on admin ideas which would save you a grand total of 5.5k-11k admin trying to core 2200 dev worth of provinces (depending on whether its a territory or a state). So you've spent 2,700 admin on bunk, you've lost out on saving at least 5,500 admin, you're also investing god knows how much more extra mana buying tech ahead of time to get innovativeness, and in consolation you'll maybe reduce your mana costs in 1700 by 7%. Just fucking wow, that is awful.

The correct admin ideas if you want to blob in EU4 is admin and humanist. There are no contenders. Something like Quantity->admin->humanist is what you'd want to open with. Then you form Mughals and get at least -60% coring cost and never have admin mana problems for the rest of the game. You never have dip or mil mana problems even from the start of the game because there's just nothing worth sinking them in to.

 

[Higher Game]

Literally no one competent at EU4 is taking innovative. Sorry.

Mercantilism is a joke. Professionalism is easy to get by spamming generals. Innovativeness is worthless. And if you have only 2200 dev in 1620 you're pretty bad. The cost of innovative ideas alone is 2700 admin, or 270 dev that could be cored (without modifiers), and that ignores the fact that you skipped out on admin ideas which would save you a grand total of 5.5k-11k admin trying to core 2200 dev worth of provinces (depending on whether its a territory or a state). So you've spent 2,700 admin on bunk, you've lost out on saving at least 5,500 admin, you're also investing god knows how much more extra mana buying tech ahead of time to get innovativeness, and in consolation you'll maybe reduce your mana costs in 1700 by 7%. Just fucking wow, that is awful.

The correct admin ideas if you want to blob in EU4 is admin and humanist. There are no contenders. Something like Quantity->admin->humanist is what you'd want to open with. Then you form Mughals and get at least -60% coring cost and never have admin mana problems for the rest of the game. You never have dip or mil mana problems even from the start of the game because there's just nothing worth sinking them in to.

Admin isn't so important early on because you're exclusively forming states, not territories, so annexing vassals is exploited instead. I like innovative --> influence --> administrative for the best mix of present and future growth. And 2200 dev by 1620 is only bad if you started out as France or Ottomans or something, but who wants to do that? Might as well pick Ming. Or Mughals.

Quantity starts to get good when you can use it as bulk mass to "threaten war" across every charter company you bought, or to become a military hegemony early if you run out of rivals too soon, but early on nah.

And reducing mana costs by 7% is great if the cost is slightly delaying conquering 2% of the world's development. The context of mana is what matters, not just bean counting, but innovativeness naively helps the most with the latter too.

 

[Average Manatee]

For reference Florryworry did a WC three mountains on VH speedrun (measured in IRL time) where he did in fact just sit on speed 5 doing nothing until absolutism after he conquered Ming. According to you this should be the best way to use innovativeness. Major spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

He went Admin->Diplomatic->Humanist->Offensive because you didn't need quantity back then since mercs were OP. You absolutely need quantity nowadays to conquer shit well. Threaten war is nigh useless, I don't think you've really played EU4 have you?

And reducing mana costs by 7% is great if the cost is slightly delaying conquering 2% of the world's development. The context of mana is what matters, not just bean counting, but innovativeness naively helps the most with the latter too.

No, reducing mana cost earns you literally nothing if admin mana isn't your bottleneck on conquest. Which it isn't late game.

Even if it was, the solution is to do some of the tag switches that can earn you multiple permanent +5% admin efficiency bonuses. Because Admin Efficiency is just better. Admin Efficiency lets you annex more total land in a war and stay under 100% OE, while -coring cost lets you both core land cheaper AND faster (meaning less time before you can annex more land). And both of those modifiers are bigger than innovativeness's discount.

Just go here and form the nations that give permanent +admin efficiency and aren't end-game tags, then form mughals https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Overextension#Administrative_efficiency

 

[Higher Game]

For reference Florryworry did a WC three mountains on VH speedrun (measured in IRL time) where he did in fact just sit on speed 5 doing nothing until absolutism after he conquered Ming. According to you this should be the best way to use innovativeness. Major spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

He went Admin->Diplomatic->Humanist->Offensive because you didn't need quantity back then since mercs were OP. You absolutely need quantity nowadays to conquer shit well. Threaten war is nigh useless, I don't think you've really played EU4 have you?

And reducing mana costs by 7% is great if the cost is slightly delaying conquering 2% of the world's development. The context of mana is what matters, not just bean counting, but innovativeness naively helps the most with the latter too.

No, reducing mana cost earns you literally nothing if admin mana isn't your bottleneck on conquest. Which it isn't late game.

Even if it was, the solution is to do some of the tag switches that can earn you multiple permanent +5% admin efficiency bonuses. Because Admin Efficiency is just better. Admin Efficiency lets you annex more total land in a war and stay under 100% OE, while -coring cost lets you both core land cheaper AND faster (meaning less time before you can annex more land). And both of those modifiers are bigger than innovativeness's discount.

Just go here and form the nations that give permanent +admin efficiency and aren't end-game tags, then form mughals https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Overextension#Administrative_efficiency

Threaten war is the best way to chip away at the HRE without slamming into the hardest coalition wall in the game. And before nationalism, using charter company is how you spread out in the world, and threaten war in those areas is basically free real estate when the opportunity presents itself. The highest developed province I took with threaten war had 50 development, some place in Bohemia. It's easily worth over 1000 free development over a game. And it doesn't require nearly as much muscle as you think if you manage your vassals well. Threatening war for vassal core provinces while warring for exclusive provinces is straight based play.

Innovative is worth using until it isn't, and then switching to religion later when the blog gets going is best. And I don't see why humanism is so good when quantity gives you plenty of manpower to stomp all the rebels you need to. It's good after religion, yeah, when you can combine religion, humanism, military hegemony, and trade company use to virtually eliminate rebellions in that late game sprint.

And yes I know it's silly to avoid tag switching abuse when on a world conquest but such is my honor.

 

[fantadomat]

innovativeness

Should be ignored and let it be a back thingy. It builds up throughout the game and by absolutism,most of the time it ends up around 80-100. Innovation group is pretty shit,i never use it,most of the bonuses are pretty shit and fluff. The best opening is always admin ideas then fallowed by dip/aristocratic depending on the country you play.

Florryworry

Is pretty good player and chill dude,but he plays very cheesy and it gets old after some time. His WCs always end up with a shitty rebel spammed country.