So I've had, for the first time I can recall, my first 6-6-6 king:



I got the Lux Stella event, where my heir is born as a Caesar, Johan or Alexander. That put him at 6-6-3. He was then put in a regency counsel, which created the tutor event and finally the Jesuit Event, which I've never seen before. That was +2 and +1 to military respectively.

King of the North indeed.

 

EU4 is a really tough nut to crack, especially if you're completely unfamiliar with Paradox titles.

Though your game experience will vary significantly depending on the DLCs that you have, which is a little beef I have with Paradox. The rules of the game change a bit too frequently for my tastes, and more often than not (especially in the recent releases) the features are poorly done and cause more problems than they probably should.

I recommend checking out a few videos on Youtube or reddit threads (/r/paradoxplaza or /r/eu4) to relieve yourself of some of the frustration with hidden (and poorly explained) game mechanics.

Castille is a jack of all trades, with focus on colonialism, trade and warfare, but despite what the tooltip says, I wouldn't advise beginners try Castille first. The Ottomans to this day remain as the easiest nation to play as - period - and any mistakes you make shouldn't be too punishing. Give them a try if you don't have any luck with Castille.

 

An important aspect is not to get too discouraged by bad turns. Even if you lose a war or see a few comets, you can always come back from it.

 

Fuck the comets. Paradox trooling at his best.

 

Nearly stabbed myself in the face today. Was going for the 1000 development achievement at Ducal rank, nearly there...then accidentally upgraded my rank.

 

Hilarious events in my Byzantium game*.

Every single member of the Holy Roman Empire, including Austria, went protestant or reformed. But then Catholic France got elected emperor and a religious league war failed fire. Catholicism becomes the official religion of the HRE, meaning that no members of the HRE are eligible to become Emperor... or even Elector. The sole exception is Munster, which is still Catholic. France has completely disabled the HRE without destroying it.


*Totally cheated here.

Step one: start as Ottomans.

Step two: crush Byzantium and Athens.

Step three: release all vassals you possibly can, except those which have provinces that would belong to Byzantium if Byzantium were released.

Step four: sabotage the Ottoman state as much as you can by getting rid of all their money, armies and ships. Raise autonomy except in Byzantium cores. Dump all monarch points into developing Byzantine cores.

Step five: release Byzantium as a vassal and choose to continue the game playing as them.

 

Not looking forwards to some of the changes being talked about over on the Paradox forums for the next patch, but oh well. Paradox insists on continuing to make changes for change sake.

 

I like the sound of the features... however, I think the game already has stability issues and that they should focus on fixing everything that's broken before adding new stuff.

 

That is another concern with Paradox's new neverending DLC model. There's never a final version of the game, so there are basically always bugs of some sort, and of course the mods are never up to date.

 

Okay, so we're getting more info about Mare Nostrum and a lot of it is pretty exciting. Paradox has released three vlogs showing off and summarising the new features.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3


The stuff I'm actually most excited for are the map changes, which is part of the free patch. The expansion of Ireland, plus giving England and Scotland an extra province each, means that playing as England should be slightly more fun. With 6 extra provinces in the British isles, you should be slightly less outmatched against France in terms of development.

Also with the straight crossing to Calais, deploying armies to continental Europe just became a lot easier, especially for an AI England, as the AI has real problems deploying troops via ships. I suspect we're going to see England doing a lot better in this patch so long as it is able to conquer the British Isles. But at the same time, I think we're also going to see England get conquered by Scotland/Ireland a lot more - if Scotland can annex Ireland before England (maybe due to England being stuck in War of the Roses and wars with France) then it should be a match for England in a straight up fight, with the right allies and timing.

Africa map expansion isn't something I'm too fussed about, as I won't be playing as any of those nations, but more detail is always good. More stuff to conquer

The other two changes I'm really happy about are:

- Sailors (manpower for ships) which probably means England/Britain's status as a naval power will become more pronounced.

- State mechanic replacing overseas autonomy. Again, great for naval empires like England with distributed holdings. England has always struggled to keep up with its peers because even when it has comparable levels of development from colonisation, high autonomy in its overseas provinces means it gets much less manpower. I'm looking forward to colonising South Africa and having it at 0% autonomy.

I'm less enthusiastic about condottieri. They look potentially fun, but at the same time I feel like they're going to dramatically upset the balance of power and the way you play the game in unpredictable ways. I reserve judgement on this until I play as I think it's a neat idea but it depends on how well it has been executed. The new spy network/diplomacy system also falls under this "wait and see" category.

The mechanic I'm really not enthusiastic about is corruption. It feels like it serves no purpose other than to make the game more difficult. Between estates and autonomy I think there are already plenty of mechanics in place to simulate the costs of bad governance.

 

Double post but never mind. Doing a game on iron man mode for the first time. Playing as France because I've never actually played them properly before and also France is easy mode.

Things are kinda going spectacularly well lol. First I conquered all English provinces in France which I had cores on, before England could ally anyone other than Portugal. That was relatively easy and of course as I had cores, no coring cost and little aggressive expansion. Second I went after Provence and took their holdings in the south of France, as well as getting Lothringen as a vassal. (Brittany took the chance to gobble up Maine and Anjou).

Waited a while for aggressive expansion to tick down, then started a war with Brittany to take Anjou and Maine. Brittany was allied with Burgundy, I was allied to Castile and Savoy. I separate peaced Burgundy and forced them to release Holland and Flanders in the treaty. Ate up Anjou and Maine and took a lot of aggressive expansion, enough for a small coalition to form.

Sat around for a relatively long time improving relations with people, waiting for aggressive expansion to tick down and people to leave the coalition. While I waited Burgundy was forced to release their final subject.

Got a mission to subjugate Brittany, went to war with them. Once again Burgundy joined, though now much diminished. Mid-way through the war the Burgundian inheritance happened and I inherited the French provinces. And because Burgundy's subjects had all been released, Austria didn't get any of the low countries.

Won the war against Brittany and now they're my vassal.

It's 1475 and I've got almost all of the French region under my control. Unfortunately there's only a few more easy gains to make (Avingon, Hainaut) before I have to go after Austria to finish the set. But I'll leave that for later, as for the moment Austria is my ally. I'm probably going to try to take Genoa first to get more trade power.

Took innovative as my first group. Will go quantity second, exploration third, then economic, quality and expansion (not necessarily in that order). The plan is to ignore the New World and focus colonisation efforts on Africa and Asia.

Have been absurdly lucky with rulers. Had my heir die twice only to immediately get replaced with a higher stat heir.

 

Why I love playing as Italy

I had plenty of those moments in that war, but that was by far the most extreme. From Aragon I took most of Sicily and the rest of southern Italy; now I only need Sardinia. Dauphine was given my vassal Savoy, whom I plan to make a border march to France. Naxos was my first vassal, whom I gave the greek lands, when I destroyed the Ottomans 30 years earlier.

Just before this war, I was preparing to take the rest of Croatia from my ally Hungary to my last vassal, Croatia, but I ended up with a personal union over them instead. Lucky, because only a year later Aragon and France attacked.

Not my largest war by far, but surprisingly onesided in my favor, since we are talking 2 superpowers against 2 superpowers. France had the men, but kept rolling 1 star generals (which they been doing for the entire campaign for some reason). I did get about 400k rebels in stacks of about 50-60k afterwards. Fun.

 

So, I've been sick for almost a week now and having been bored out of my skull, I formed the Mughal Empire for the first time:


I'm the Mughal Empire of course and Yarkand and that small purple line in west India are my two vassals.


Timurids, despite being second only to Ming in terms of early development, is hella hard in so many ways. The Persian and Afghani mountains and the deserts will drain your manpower quickly. The numerous cultures will rebel again and again; not to mention that half of your population are heretics. You also have too many provinces, meaning around one fourth of your lands are just territories. Lastly, you have to go to war constantly, because you're a horde and that's what you do, I guess.

Surprisingly, the solution was simple: delete all my infantry, buy all the mercenaries that I could maintain alongside a healthly amount of cavalry, attack my smaller neighbors and vassalize them. Simple.

Since Hordes don't pay for reinforcing units you only have to pay for upkeep (and yes, surprisingly this also works for mercenaries!) and using mercenaries (infantry only, of course) means not using your precious manpower, which can then be used by your cavalry. Lastly, using vassals will help generate gold that you otherwise wouldn't get if you took the provinces yourself directly.

Surprisingly awesome campaign. Hordes are alot of fun to play since they start with the best units and that they always get a shock modifier on steppes, farmlands and plains (and a negative shock modifier on what isn't one of those). Give your army a high shock general and it's mongol horde all over again.

 

So a new DLC/patch has dropped called Rights of Man. It's probably the most substantial DLC so far, completely overhauling parts of the game. The biggest change is to technology, where they have got rid of tech groups (for everything except unit types) and have replaced it with a dynamic system of institutions which spawn under certain conditions over the course of the game then spread province to province based on a multitude of different factors. When the institution has spread to a sufficient number of your nation's provinces, you can pay ducats to embrace it (the price goes down the more of your provinces already have the institution).

Every year after an institution has spawned that goes by without your nation embracing that institution, you tick up a 1% penalty to tech cost.

Having played with it I'm enjoying it a lot. It's much more interactive than before, with you having to actually do things to get a tech advantage such as conquering certain provinces, building certain buildings, developing certain provinces, etc. And every game will be different because the institutions will spawn in different places.

I think it has also had the consequence of making the Ottomans even more OP (I'm doing an iron man run as Ottomans to test out the DLC).

Other major features include personality traits (with bonuses/maluses) for rulers and military leaders, Queen regents, and a Great Power system that allows the most powerful nations in the game to use their influence to intervene in wars for balance of power reasons, among other things.

Prussia has got a new government type as have the Ottomans, and the Coptic and Fetishist religions have been fleshed out.

Also the UI has been given many little tweaks that improve it a lot.

There have also been a number of rather good adjustments for game balance, such as the Restoration of Union casus belli lasting 20 years instead of 10 now, which means if you get that CB against an ally, it is now possible to dissolve the alliance, wait out the truce then go to war to enforce your personal union.

All in all I think it's one of the three "essential" DLCs along with Art of War and Common Sense.

 

This might be some of the funniest shit ever and none of my friends get it:

Every Byzantium game ever

There's a billion of these on youtube and some them are pure gold.

EDIT:

Oh, and this happened.

I'm HRE, starting as Austria. I PU'ed Burgundy (who had gained nearly all of France) and inherited them. I force PU'ed both Hungary and Bohemia as well.

 

Congrats on the Austria game. It's fun once in a while to go back and just blob your way to victory from a strong starting position. I've always enjoyed having quick Austrian games because you're just so much better placed to take over the HRE (or Burgundy) and play aggressively versus your rivals.

 

I just finished a campaign as Castile/Spain, what would you guys recommend I try next? I want something challenging but I'm hesitant to start a game with countries like Albania or Theodoro.

Otherwise, what are your opinions on Mandate of Heaven? It seems like an enjoyable expansion but the price looks a bit much for the content it brings.

 

I Love those types of videos. Milan

and I will leave this if anyone likes some ahistorical Byzantine and Norse flavor in America.

edit:
Dynrakmos

I would suggest Hungary, Burgundy, and Milan since they aren´t particularly hard.

Milan and Burgundy will teach you the HRE´s mechanics and how easy is to fuck up if you get greedy.
Hungary and Burgundy are both countries between powers and you have to pay a greater attention to diplomacy.

Byzantium is very doable with key alliances.

if you want something hard, you should go with HRE minors, Navarre, Brittany or Cyprus.

 

Seconding that. Third Odyssey is actually pretty fun and it adds an element of unpredictability to the game.

 

Interesting medium powers are the aforementioned Hungary/Burgundy/Milan (and I'd add Brandenburg to that list). The Indian nations are also an option, though you probably want to avoid Delhi/Gujarat/Multan for reasons of Timurids. Orissa is also harder than you might expect. Ethiopia is all about building up your power base before the Ottomans come a-knocking with few allies even possible.