Since no one has mentioned it yet, and while it does remove some of the challenge this game has to offer, you can extend the end date to whatever you want, just like you could in EU3. Assuming you have it installed in Steam, just go to \Steam\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis IV\common and edit the defines.lua file with the text editor of your choosing (I use Notepad++). Should be at the top of the file.

On topic, while I haven't really played EU4 much, I did thoroughly enjoy doing this in EU3 (at least until I got bored) .

 

This patch updated the random new world and it is amazing. Portugal and Spain can be screwed or all trade goes to sevilla.

It looks much better and sometimes you can find hindus in the new world xD

High american tech groups(100%) nations are no longer exclusive of CK 2 imports and they have their own set of ideas. One has a chinese religion.

Edit: i love doing trading games and control every ducat xD
Portugal. Netherlands and The Hansa are my Nations.

You should try a norse (choose your bonus) or a zorastrian( 10% trade income and tolerance to the true faith) religion.

 

Here's a fun role-play idea I was fiddling with yesterday which I call "Early Enlightenment". The idea is that the enlightenment has arrived in a part of the Holy Roman Empire, resulting in the expansion of science, rational thought and tolerance. However, the inevitable side effect of this is that your people disagree with wars of conquest: you cannot use the "Cede Province" function in peace treaties.

1. Pick a Holy Roman Empire one province minor, 1444 start date. I recommend a duchy. A free city is possible but much harder.

2. Open the console.

3. Type the following commands:

add_idea_group influence_ideas
add_idea_group defensive_ideas
add_idea_group innovativeness_ideas
add_idea_group humanist_ideas
adm 800
dip 400
mil 400

4. Go to ideas tab and spend the monarch points to complete your 4 idea groups.

5. Play the game. You can fight wars but you cannot ever take any provinces in the peace deal. If an ally gives you a province in a peace deal you must return it. You CAN force vassalisation but cannot "feed vassals" because you can't use cede provinces.

6. When the Reformation hits you must turn Protestant.

7. Your goal is to pass all reforms as the Holy Roman Emperor.

The following idea groups are FORBIDDEN as incompatible with your enlightenment principles: aristocratic ideas, offensive ideas, religious ideas, expansion ideas, espionage ideas.

One thing to take into account: you will start the game with the first four of your national ideas, but will be unable to unlock any more national ideas until you open up your fifth idea group at admin tech 18.

 

Trying to decide whether I should get the Cossacks or not. I want the diplomatic interactions, but I really don't want the Estates, and I'm pretty "meh" about hoard mechanics.

 

Estates really aren't bad at all, especially for nations with little development. You can actually benefit from them then.

It's only when you get to roughly 500-1000+ development that you can no longer interact with them as that would cause high influence. Edit: At which point you no longer need them.

 

http://www.eu4wiki.com/The_Cossacks

It isn' t game changing.


Horde mechanics,revanchism and new world are the big stuff.

 

Generally speaking, what idea groups are your favourites?

I tend towards something like this (in no particular order):

Administrative
Diplomatic
Aristocratic

Influence
Humanist

Defensive
Quality
Offensive

That's what I consider my "basic loadout" - the three tech reduction groups, the two groups which allow stable expansion, and three military groups.

Of course, this gets adjusted depending on the nation. If I'm playing as a small nation I might ditch humanist as small generally means stable. Instead I'd have quantity ideas.

And if I want to play the colonisation game things change dramatically - you need exploration for sure, and then ideally expansion and trade ideas. This is one of the reasons why I don't like playing colonisation games. You gain a lot of extra territory but because you're sacrificing powerful idea groups that territory is of a lower quality. I generally prefer quality over quantity. Not to mention that Colonial Nations are often more trouble than they're worth.

I'm a sucker for economic ideas because of the -20% development cost, so I'll often swap that in for, say, diplomatic ideas (if you have influence ideas and aristocratic, diplomatic can be a bit of overkill and really the only thing in there you need is the tech reduction). Often the way I evaluate how well I'm doing is how green my country is in the development map mode. (As a consequence, I also hate high autonomy - I'll never increase autonomy, preferring to actually decrease it to trigger rebellions at a time of my choosing, putting the rebellion down and enjoying the -100 Recent Uprising modifier.)

 

I started playing again recently and I feel all out of whack with the ideas. Quantity for instance was never a thing I ever really contemplated, but with the manpower mechanic the way it is at the moment I nearly feel like it's required. That or running with merc heavy armies.

Speaking of starting to play again though, I'm on a Brandenburg/Prussia play through and find myself in the really awkward position of being squashed between blobbed France and Austria (who are allied), with the latter also having blobbed Hungary as a vassal. Plus Russia is cruising around and a massive Livonian Order. To be fair, it's probably my fault for not paying enough attention to break them up, but I've been on the back foot constantly this game. Fun times.

 

My loadout really depends on what my (achievement) goal is, and therefore also which country I am playing as. There's no real one group I will always take - I'll decide per game.The closest things to a staple choice is that I'll usually grab Defensive and either Quality or Quantity. With the exception of Espionage (which I haven't played the countries for), I've used or seriously considered every group in my most recent games, including Naval and Maritime.

You don't need Trade for a colonisation / overseas empire game if you're willing to work with Trade Companies. Between CNs and TCs, and the bonus one from Expansion, you get all the merchants you need to ferry money to your home node. Trade is an expansive land-based empire's lifeblood - think Russia, an expansive Commonwealth, Timurids, Persia, Ottomans - with a nice little side bonus for HRE nations because there's a ton of nodes there.

If there's a group I'm a sucker for, though, it's Innovative, which has some absolutely amazing combat-related policies (+20 % infantry combat abillity with Quality, +1 leader siege / 10 % siege ability with Offensive, +1 Naval leader manouvre / 10 % Heavy Ship combat ability with Maritime) and excellent individual bonuses. (Optimism alone is worth an entire idea group if you're fighting in terrible territory for any prolonged stretch.)

 

Great: Defensive, Offensive, Diplomatic, Humanist
Good: Religious, Economic, Admin, Quantity
Occasional: Trade, Aristocratic/Plutocratic, Quality, Influence
Useless: Naval, Maritime, Innovative, Espionage

And the 2 colonial ideas are not ranked because you will either take them both or you won't take either.

I tend to avoid aristocratic entirely, it may look great but it has the most bad events tied to it. These days I only ever take it if I'm trying to switch to a republic in the early game as it has the highest chance of giving revolutionary rebels among the idea groups, then I cancel it when the rebels succeed. Trade, well, its main benefit was the extra merchants which only really matter if you are colonising. Thus, trade is only useful if you can't get colonial nations for the merchants; if you are playing in the Americas. Probably for the custom nation achievements they recently added.

Let's get the utterly useless ones out of the way. Innovative used to be quite strong but for whatever reason they nerfed it down to the point where it's useless. It lost its army tradition decay to aristocratic, the tech cost modifier went down to 5%, and the advisor cost modifier is not worth an entire idea group. Naval and maritime are and have always been useless: you can either build more heavies than the AI or you can't and that is that. And Oment, I honestly don't think there ARE countries for espionage. They did buff it recently, but most countries that would benefit from the study technology thingamajig would be much better off sparing two idea groups for colonisation.

The biggest strength of diplomatic isn't the extra diplomat or the tech cost, rather it's the 20% province warscore cost. Between diplomatic and influence (since they are quite similar I tend only to take one unless I'm going for the HRE), diplomatic is quite simply superior unless you really, really need to lower AE impact (hence, HRE) or are doing culture conversions (religious+diplo gives -20% to culture conversion in addition to religious' -20%).

Humanist makes it so that you can actually prevent revolts in newly conquered provinces that are of the wrong religion. Offensive speeds up sieges dramatically, defensive has a massive morale boost and army tradition is fantastic. Moving right along...

So here's my problem with admin. It has only two ideas that actually help unless you're a nation that already has a boost to its mercs (Burgundy, for example). However, those two ideas are just amazing if you are conquering a lot. I'm talking about the coring cost modifier (best idea in the game) and the admin tech cost, of course. Then the problem is, however, that you don't want to spend all those admin points there when you can just core more provinces. So... I seem to only take the first 2 ideas and leave it as that. Similarly, quality has the army tradition +1 as its second idea but from the 2nd idea to the 7th it's just meh. Now, unlike Admin ideas it's much easier to fill out because military points are the least sparse of the three but it makes me question if it is worth it. Quantity got a massive, massive nerf this patch where it lost the +1 colonist policy with expansion (it shall be missed), but it's still really good for any state that starts out small (Brandenburg) or possibly remains that way (Portugal). Or you can take it with the Ottomans or Russia and you will have enough manpower to staff every country's army twice.

Economic has some good decisions for France, the inflation reduction helps for any colonizer or gold mine owner, and the development cost really helps with small nations. However, it's an admin idea group. Which means it has fierce competition, and colonisers tend to have to really pick their ideas well anyway. Religious, well... it's on a need-to basis. It does what it does very well, but you don't always need what it does.



Oh, and as for my playstyle... I'm fully an achievement hunter on this one. CK2 was great for roleplaying, in fact, that was what made that game fun (otherwise it was easily exploitable and repetitive once you played it for the first 500 hours, which is still a good money-playtime ratio). This game has the same repetitiveness but much less roleplayability for my tastes, so I use the achievements to give myself a sense of direction.

 

My favourite ideas are:
Religious
Trade
Defensive/offensive, quantity if i start as a small nation.

I like religious because of the cb and missionary strength. Trade is just great for money and it's usually my first idea. Defensive has the morale raise so it's good, offensive has the discipline and siege.

 

Influence is a really good one, it has completely replaced diplomatic as my go to first idea and it works really well with the Prussian ideas, the multitude of vassals Poland starts with, and the rush to form Italy before France starts taking chunks out of you if you're playing Savoy/ Milan. Plutocratic is pretty good if you're turning a republic into a monarchy as well seeing as there is a good spread of ideas mixed into it.

Religious is really good for a lot of the eastern nations. And Humanist is great if you're going for a big empire.

I think common sense made choosing ideas much more dependent on how the game is going, rather than before where there was a specific set that worked best for whatever nation you were.

These days the only thing I make sure to do is wreck Muscovy before it can get rolling and Poland decides it hates me if I'm playing as Sweden.

 

Just Custom Nation things.

 

Alright, I have to tell someone who appreciates it. This is not me.

One-Tag Yeren by 1582

That is ridiculous.

 

If anyone is interested on how to do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/41escp/that_was_easy_a_yeren_singletag_wc_by_1612/

 

Would anyone be interested playing online?

You don't need to have dlcs, only the host.

 

Bought this game two days ago, played as Castille twice to get the hang of it so far, suspect I'll need to play as Castille for about another month before I start making sense of it.

First playthrough Allied with Portugal and France, then France attacked England and we were called into battle, Portugal were already allied with England and most of the warfare abruptly happened in our country.

Second playthrough has seen me take Granada too early and a revolt has since seen Granada taken over by rebels and seceded from our empire, so I'm battling to get it back.

 

You can increase autonomy on single regions.
you get less tax but you also get less revolt risk.

You can also try to conquer Portugal(my heart hurts) when France attacks England.



If you want an easier game to play just go with Portugal, canceling your Alliance with England and making a new Alliance with Castille or a Game with England and giving up France territories.

It helps learning the basics with a very small chance of losing.

You can use the ledger to compare your army size with other nations when you want to conquer someone to make sure that isn´t your greatest mistake xD

Useful Ideas:
Exploration: You can discover new land and colonize it(best picked early on with Portugal and Castille).
Religious: Convert Kebag and less revolt risk in provinces of your religion.
Quantity: More manpower, a bigger force limit and cheaper troops.

 

For those of you who are unaware, vlad did a EU3 quests and I just started a EU4 quest. Thought some of you might be interested in participating in those.

The World Is Not Enough, EU3 "Quest" by vlad

The Rising Sun - EU4 Quest by Basilisk

 

Currently playing with a mod called "The Tenth Idea" which I'm enjoying a lot. Basically it allows you (and the AI) to unlock two more idea groups. But more importantly, to make it work the admin tech where you unlock each idea group has been moved forward, meaning you get access to more groups quicker.

Since idea groups are my favourite part of the game this makes me very happy.