Thanks! I've always found the trick to forming HRE is using papal points and the bonuses from the Papal Shop. That and always tell HRE members to release nations and/or convert to catholism in peace offers.

This is from yesterday.

France attacked me over Calais, but wanted Cornwall as well as me to release some scottish province. I was too stubborn and believed that I could wait him out. Fifty years later and the fucker was still going strong. I could have kept this going on for much longer (as I was actually seeing some real develpoment of my income and strengthening of my fleets during the war), but I gave up and gave him what he wanted. It was easy to take it back, even though it would take nearly a 100 years for Calais to return to me.

Longest war I've ever had or seen in EU4 yet and not a single life was lost.

EDIT:

Why not try Sardinia-Piedmont? It's not terribly difficult if you can balance kissing up to both France and Austria after Shadow Empire fires. Main difficulty lies in taking Sardinia from either Aragon or Castille. And surviving afterwards, of course

Albania and Theodoro are both quite advanced.

 

Albania is not advanced any more. It's just army micro. Ally Hungary day one, ally Ragusa, ally anyone and just fight with Iskender Bey. So long as you're on normal difficulty this will work 9/10 times if you don't attack across river into woods or hills.

 

I've been thinking a lot about ideas today.

First up, suggestions for new idea groups.

Colonial ideas (military)

The premise of this idea group is that it is a military idea group for colonial powers. Diplomatic has Exploration and Administrative has Expansion, but as of now there is no obvious military idea group for colonial-focused nations. Like other colonisation idea groups, it should offer a mix of useful ideas for the specific colonial playstyle but should also mean you miss out on the more powerful ideas that are available in more dedicated military idea sets. The focus on artillery and fire is supposed to reflect that colonial powers' military superiority against non-Europeans was largely due to gunpowder-based weaponry.

Recruit natives: +20% National manpower modifier

Global fleet: +33% Naval force limit modifier

Colonial armies: +20% Land Force limit modifier

Advanced cannons: +10% Artillery combat ability

Overseas commissions: +1 Leaders without upkeep

Gunboat diplomacy: +20% Light ship combat ability

Superior firepower: +1 Land leader fire

Bonus: +1 Colonists

Artistic ideas (diplomatic)

The premise for this idea group is "defensive diplomacy". Diplomatic and influence ideas are both largely focused on expansion whereas this idea group is for tall gameplay. It is inspired by the idea of city states.

Center of learning: −15% Advisor costs

Respected neutrality: +50% Hostile core-creation cost on us

Aggressive traders: -20% Mercantilism increase cost

(For those without Mare Nostrum, +10% Provincial Trade Power Modifier)

Grand architecture: +1 Diplomatic reputation

Merchants' quarter: +1 Merchant

Cultural hub: Accepts all cultures of primary culture group (same bonus as Empire rank)

Masterpieces: +1 Prestige

Bonus: −10% Development cost

Centralization ideas (administrative)

The premise of this idea group is the promotion of national unity/homogeneity through repression and a strong central government.

Dissolve regional government: −0.05 Monthly autonomy change

Expand the bureaucracy: −50% National focus cooldown

Create a police force: -2 National unrest

Appropriate church income: +10% national tax modifier

Book burning: +3% Missionary strength vs heretics

Imprison rivals: -25% Strengthen Government cost

Martial law: +10 Maximum Absolutism

Bonus: all estate loyalty +10%

------------

Secondly, English national ideas. I've gone through several iterations of fiddling with English national ideas. This had two goals:

1. To make English ideas stronger, to make them true rivals to France and Prussia. Since historically Britain ends the EU4 timeline as the preeminent world power, the English idea set should logically be the most powerful, but at the same time, the ideas should ideally be calculated such that their effect is cumulative so that they're not too powerful in the early game, at which time England was arguably a 2nd tier power.

2. To capture elements of British history that had not been included in current English national ideas, especially the start of the industrial revolution.

To those ends I have created a more modest change to the English national idea set (compared to previous total overhauls) that achieves something of the above aim but which is completely compatible with current flavour text. The idea set is as follows:

Traditions

Naval morale +20%
Goods produced +10%

Royal Navy

Embargo efficiency +33%
Heavy ship power +10%

Eltham ordinance

Development cost -10%

Secretaries of state

Diplomatic relations +1

Navigation acts

Trade efficiency +10%
Global tariffs +10%

British Bill of Rights

National unrest -2

Reform of commission buying

Army tradition +0.5
Land leader fire +1

Sick and hurt board

Navy tradition +0.5

Ambition

Discipline +5%

 

+1 Land leader fire is waaay too much in an already way too powerful idea group. There's only 1 idea in there that has to do with colonization directly and that's the bonus!

Perhaps it would be cooler to have a idea group that would produce fewer but far more capable colonies, like modifers to development when the colonist finishes and like you said assimilate the natives into manpower. Maybe also more tariffs and/or less liberty desire through military force.

I like the others, though, especially the one for Britain.

 

I think I'd change out Colonial Armies and Advanced Cannons, maybe tune back some of the others as well. Colonial Armies could become a -attrition bonus (think about Defensive's finisher, only in reverse) to reflect the entire new lands thing and being cautious about exploring. As for the now-open remaining slot... Perhaps something about tariff efficiency - a Viceroys-esque idea.

Oh, and an assimilation bonus for Recruit Natives would be great, but tune down the manpower in exchange.

I think I'd tone down the core creation cost for Artistic (to also distinguish the idea from Local Nobility over in Aristocratic, and because I sodding hate +core creation cost anyway), and maybe add a cost reduction for making cultures accepted for Cultural Hub. Oh, and just put Patron of the Arts in there and make a new Innovative idea - fits far better.

As for Centralisation... Four of the ideas are straight up in Religious, Humanist, and Economic already. Probably need a bit of differentiation there - I don't mind cross-discipline overlap (like Humanist-2 and Plutocracy-3: both -2 Unrest), but under the same Administrative (the mana, not the group) banner? In addition, I think I'd like to see a loyalty decay modifier for the finisher - loyalty decays 25 % slower and goes up 25 % faster to reflect the intermingling of estates and government - mostly the former realising that they can't really exist without the latter.

I'd shuffle the goods produced around a bit in the English ideas - perhaps exchange with the navy tradition. England was probably solidly second tier for most of the first half of the game's timeline - the entire kerfuffle that is the War of the Roses didn't help them in projecting strength and although the Armada was sunk in 1588, subsequent events didn't help England's expansion any. If you want to reflect that, the better stuff has to be backloaded.

 

Anyone hyped for Meiou and taxes 2.0?

Dynamic Centers of trade, Population with three types of pops, you can actually play tall creating a urbanized highly educated nation, you can choose the goods produced in your regions, estates can develop provinces, build troops and steal all your money and a new loot system.

You can literally go to a rich infidel region Genghis Khan style´s and kill all their pops and loot everything turning their region in a wasteland. You, the ruler, only get 15% of the loot but your troops will invest their cut in buildings in your home.


its time for a Prosperous and Genocidal Portugal,
or Granada.

I am so hyped.

 

I'm only slightly hyped for it, I would be much more anxious to play if I knew I could play a month in under 10 seconds.

 

Honestly I thought M&T was disappointing as all hell after enjoying D&T for EU3 and thinking that MEIOU was at least interesting.

A lot of good concepts, but precious few of them were implemented well the first time around. Part of that is probably due to EU4 (bluntly) sucking a ton of dick early on before the inevitable deluge of expansions.

 

Welcome to the horror show:



I am Italy.

Starting as Milan, I struggled against my neighbours for the first 200 years. Early game was dominated by France, who PU'ed Aragon very early. French and Milanese troops died by the tens of thousands in the Piedmontese Alps for my campaign's first 150 years. Then an unholy alliance between the Ottomans and Russia threatened eastern Europe, where Lithuania and Poland-Hungary fought bravely against the meatgrinding easterners. Then we hit the 17th century and the rising star of central Europe, Austria, started hitting the later HRE Edicts. It was because of Austria's power throughout, that the Religious League never happened (not just the war, the event never hit!) and the reformation primarily happened in Scandinavia.

The year here is 1687.

Europe is divided into 4 alliances: The Scissor Alliance with France, Aragon and Poland; The Edge Alliance with Italy (me), Great Britain, Portugal and Russia; The Center Alliance with the HRE and Great Britain (bastards!); The Eastern Fucks with the Ottomans and Tunis.

I predict, that the next 100 years are going to be a clusterfuck of wars. Normally, when the Religious League doesn't fire, late game becomes dull, but I got high hopes for this one.

I'm using 2 significant mods: Historical Border +, which adds more provinces and changes to the map including country colors (which is why Ottomans is red) and Stable HRE, which makes it easier for the Emperor to push through Edicts.

EDIT:

Aaaand there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen:



The German Sausage Fuckers tried to take my sweet Parmesan cheese and spicy Bologna and all they got was more holes than in Swiss cheese. Obiviously none of my allies bothered to help me (except for you, sweet Knights of Rhodos) when Hitler v. 0.5 attacked me while I was helping Russia deal with Poland and France. I tried making a mad dash back to northern Italy, but 2 of my 3 50k armies where caught in Poland, and 1 of those got destroyed. Luckily I was prepared and my friendly German neighbour only met a handfuld of my wellplace alpine level 8 fortresses.

The conflict cost the lives of just about a million lives (as you can see from the bottom numbers). Luckily two thirds of those were German.

 

The real horror show is Ottomans in red, even if it is modded...

I've been achievement hunting lately. Last run was Morocco with 5 (2 country, 3 generic). The generics were a bitch to get - having to invade Denmark and Russia for Lolland was annoying, but fighting a 20y war 1v1 with Revolutionary France (For the anti-Revolution achievement) was worse, though it did get me 'We bled for this' very comfortably.

 

Thought about buying EUIV

Is it worth the 200+ price tag?

 

Generally the best thing to do is just ignore all the cosmetic unit pack DLC and then wait for a good steam sale to grab the base game plus content packs. You should be able to get it for ~$60 depending on which ones you prioritize, which is pretty good considering how many people have been able to spend 1000+ hours on the game.

 

I would say buy the base game, plus the following DLCs:

- Art of War
- Common sense
- Rights of Man

Those are what you might consider the "essential" DLCs which add huge amounts of content. From there on you can buy further DLCs if you get into the game and know you're going to play a lot more hours.

The "second tier" DLCs are the following:

- Wealth of Nations
- El Dorado
- The Cossacks
- Mandate of Heaven

DLC that falls between second and third tier, focusing on specific nations:

- Purple Phoenix pack (Byzantium content)
- Star and Crescent Pack (Muslim content)
- American Dream pack (USA content)
- Third Rome (full DLC but highly focused on Russia)

Third tier DLC:

- Conquest of Paradise
- Res Publica
- Mare Nostrum

 

Highly appreciated Taure.

That guide is a godsend

 

I'm a glutton for punishment.

Timurids. The "I'll graze my horse here... And here..." achievement. In a patch (1.22, because 1.23 shifts Timurids to Iqta) that has hilariously stable Ming and powerful Ottomans well into the 17th century. Ottomans are also pretty much guaranteed to rival you from 1444 on and the most obvious/natural allies of Muscovy or the PLC (if it forms) are also sitting on huge plains of grain. I'm slowly starting to get into India and am also encroaching on PLC ground. (Muscovy is my ally.)

Pardon the border gore:

 

Map changes in the latest patch are pretty epic. The Middle East is completely transformed. I don't think there's any area of the world left now that lacks detail. In fact, the game as a whole now feels quite complete, though probably in need of a slight rebalance to counteract the massive nerf that the Ottomans just received.

The remaining problems the game has are not surmountable with DLC. The big ones are:

- No dynamic trade and trade goods that have no real connection to your population's needs or desires. You cannot have shortages of food, for example. It's all basically just gold with different pictures.

- Naval warfare and its impact on trade are not powerful enough and the AI is rubbish at managing all things naval, which prevents the rise of European powers in the far east.

- No decline mechanic which allows empires to fall as well as rise, meaning that once you achieve a certain size you can just keep growing indefinitely, and the AI empires stagnate, resulting in a boring late game.

- No mechanic which allows small states to endure much more powerful expansionist neighbours, and in particular insufficient impact of terrain upon military campaigns. (The ease of counteracting manpower problems with mercenaries also feeds into this).

- Shallow ruler mechanics, despite some superficial recent additions such as ruler traits to give greater flavour. EU4 shouldn't have a full family system like CK2 (for performance reasons alone, if nothing else) but it would be nice for heirs and advisers to come from somewhere other than being summoned out of thin air. That leads to the next one.

- No population system that could give armies, advisers, rulers etc. meaningful connections to certain regions/cultures. It's too easy to homogenise your empire, or otherwise just accept all cultures. This in turn feeds into the lack of a decline mechanic as there's no significant separatism that can't be handled by putting down the occasional weak rebellion.

Anyway, all these problems (with the possible exception of increasing the role of terrain in combat) seem to me to be linked to the game engine and as such, while DLC may be able to tweak them (making trade more interesting by adding more trade goods, for example), the fundamental problem remains. I think EU4 has now reached a state where advances can only be made by changing the game engine - that is to say, EU5.

 

Is anyone interested at all in a multiplayer game at some point?

Also - Otto nerf is nice but doesn't help much when you're trying to form Rum and the AI mamluks take the worst possible fights to wipe their entire army into an Ottoman garrison on hills against a better general. >.<

Great for europe though

 

@Taure meiou and Taxes adresses your points. You should give it a try.

@Plotless I would be up for it. A DLP game would be fun.

 

Meiou and Taxes is terribly implemented. It's not their fault as they've tried their best within the limitations they have, but unfortunately the game engine just doesn't have the modding capacity to properly implement the game concepts they are trying to use. The end result is that basically every game mechanic works through the medium of province-by-province modifiers.

 

On Saturday I’ll be starting a 40+ player EU4 multiplayer game. You can see the map here. The last week has been treaties and backstabbing in private messages so I'm pretty hyped to see how it goes down.