2041

I’ve been thinking about a Scotland or Ireland game as well to test out the province development stuff. Scotland got a sweet buff to one of their early ideas as well (maybe it’s the Tradition, I don’t remember). 33% extra land forcelimits will be very helpful in holding off the English.

All I’ve had the time for thus far was to start up a quick Venice game. The changes they made which allow fabrication of claims across many parts of the Mediterranean have really spiced things up. I had the Mamluks jump me early on in order to seize Crete, which they were able to do successfully due to their superior navy. I just didn’t have the forcelimits to overcome them, at least when I was so unprepared for that attack. This was followed up very quickly by the Ottomans hammering at me as well. Looks like it’ll be an interesting game. :)

Speaking of the Ottomans, I’m not sure if this is due to the Western Focus decision, but they seem veeeery aggressive in the Balkans thus far. I don’t think I’m even 10 years into the game but they’ve pushed up through Serbia/Wallachia and are making inroads into Hungary, while simultaneously attacking me and my Bosnian vassal. Jerks.

2042

While that does sound useful, I find if you’re successful enough against Ireland early on that England largely ignores you. I’d be mostly concerned with the economic costs of the higher force limit and how it would impact the ability to fund colonists. In light of that, I might try to keep to the old force limit and rely on the boost to pay for the insta-highlanders should England invade.

Also, I wonder if the new ZoC stuff means we could get away with just fortifying Lothian.

2043

Not sure how I missed this bit on your original message :)

Anyway, I largely ignore naval force limits, particularly as the Mamluks. The penalties don’t appear nearly as severe as with land forces and when you aren’t at war you can just mothball the fleets. For Venice, given how dependent it is on naval power, I’d build up a massive fleet of galleys and then play the 2 months mothball/1 month active game with them if I was worried about someone.

2044

I’ve only played as France and the Ottomans, since they were recommended as “easy” games. I found out that France isn’t as easy as they’d make you believe (granted, they do have some pretty awesome advantages, but we discussed earlier in this thread how you have to be careful at the start).

I often look at the achievements to get ideas for my next games. As of now, I’m leaning towards either a small nation in the HRE (and trying to eventually become Emperor, of course) or maybe Sweden/Norway and going for the achievement you get for controlling all of the Baltic Sea coast. Of course, I also want to try a small trading nation to see if I can achieve economic domination as opposed to military.

2045

It’s probably obvious to anyone who’s played the game, but coring and diplo-annexation costs are enormous in the new patch. If you have big imperial dreams, idea groups like Influence (-25% to diplo-annexation costs) and Admin (-25% to coring costs) are more important than ever. If you get both, you can also activate a policy that lowers diplo-annexation by another 20%. I used that in my current Poland game to simultaneously annex Wallachia, Norway, and Denmark, then promptly turned it off again.

The Ottomans (with the huge bonus to coring that their national ideas provide) are probably the game’s best bet for a world conquest run now. Maintaining a couple vassals that you never annex but instead feed provinces to for the entire game would also be a big help.

2046

I haven’t touched EU4 in quite some time but I’ve noticed the number of buildings you can have in a province is dependent upon the number of slots you have available which can be increased by improving the province with MP. In the past I would always start off with temples for that tax increase but now I’m not so sure what to do. I’m playing Brandenburg with the intention of forming Prussia and I was thinking of building barracks first for the manpower boost - is that a sound idea?

2047

You’ve discovered the new building system introduced by the recent Common Sense expansion, which everyone is still adjusting to. But yes, manpower is very important , especially for small nations who can lose their entire pool in a single battle.

2048

Yes, barracks are probably one of my most highly prioritized buildings. If you utilize the province development mechanism (you need to own Common Sense), you can really specialize individual provinces. Barring that, just focus on what the province excels at. Gone are the +1 base tax temple, other than the forcelimits buildings they’re all percentage boosts. If your province has a lot of tax, build a temple. If it has a lot of trade power, build a market. Most of the others can be fit in anywhere that you have a free slot, regardless of province. A regiment camp that gives additional forcelimits is equally effective anywhere.

One thing to keep in mind about the buildings is that they UPGRADE into other buildings, you don’t necessarily stack them side by side. Look for the > arrow that show what upgrades to what (I think ever building except for the manufacturies have one upgrade at the least). That means that you use fewer slots than it might appear when looking at the building screen.

2049

Ahhh I didn’t realize that about the buildings upgrading into other buildings.

So what would you do with your capital that starts out with high everything?

2050

You get more building slots the more developed your province is (every 10 points of development), so if it’s highly developed I usually have a decent amount of slots to work with. My capital right now has a fort, temple, barracks, regiment camp, and I have a spare slot or two. It’s production isn’t great (grain) so I didn’t bother with the workshop and it has no trade power boosts, so I skipped the marketplace. If it was a trade node I’d prioritize the market over something like the regiment camp.

Another thing to note is that provinces that are of Farmland terrain type get +2 building slots, which is pretty cool. As Brandenburg all your stuff is Woods for the most part, if I remember correctly, so development is a little more expensive and you don’t get those +2 free building slots. I’d focus mostly on getting barracks down everywhere first, a fort or two as needed, and from there figure out if your province is going to be focused on Tax or on Production and build accordingly.

I haven’t played Brandenburg since the expansion rolled out so don’t recall specifics, but i don’t think they’re particularly well off in either tax or production, so I’m not sure which way I’d go to start. If you get a surplus of DIP points, boost production in one of the provinces that makes Cloth then build a workshop in place of a temple. If you have a surplus of ADM points (harder to do than DIP, especially if you’re expanding), boost tax somewhere. Make those your moneymakers while you boost your Manpower in provinces you don’t expect to get a lot of economic value from, since it gets more expensive the more you develop a province.

2051

Temple and barracks, in whatever order makes more sense given your ambitions. Money and manpower are the most important resources that provinces produce. Production and trade power matter, but they’re more special cases. For example, I only build trade buildings in estuaries, trade centers, and so on.

Edit: I didn’t see Kevin’s more detailed reply before responding. He nailed it.

2052

(Edit to add: I didn’t see this page so I was not aware of Kevin’s response but I’ll still throw out my questions!).

I’d like to hear a good strategy for how to develop provinces, both in terms of point investment and building strategy. I am playing as Sweden now and the Common Sense patch really made me feel the need for monarch points acutely - since they’re now used for tech advances PLUS province upgrades PLUS ideas it seems as though there’s never enough. Plus my monarchs have alternatively sucked and/or died a lot.

Is the strategy of spending your points to specialize provinces the way to go? I’ve been doing that, and I suppose it’s working out ok (though I find Sweden’s economy a challenge). I also have been trying to get provinces to the 10/20 point thresholds in order to open up building slots. But what do you do with a scrubby province that has, say, 3 or 4 points in it, where the trade goods there are unappealing and/or the upgrade costs are increased by terrain? Do you just write those provinces off? Put them at the bottom of the list for upgrades?

As for my current game, I’ve made putting Shipyards on coastal provinces a pretty high priority (I’m trying to get the Baltic Sea achievement so I figured I needed a reasonably strong navy). And provinces that have valuable trade goods (which for me is Copper, Silver, and now all of a sudden Beaver Fur!) I’ve been putting a … Workshop (I think it is) - the building that improves production by 50%. And Barracks go in some of the other interior provinces. But I am torn when it comes to putting Temples down. They don’t seem to add much in terms of tax income.

2053

Do you think it’s still a valid strategy to just say “temples and barracks first”? I’m not disputing that, I’m just asking.

I have been putting down production related buildings in all the provinces where I have valuable trade goods, and marketplaces in some trade heavy provinces. I haven’t put down many temples at all, and not many barracks. Maybe that’s my problem!

2054

It really does depend on the country.

Now I have not played with the new expansion yet, but my general plan has always involved building barracks early. Once I get to about 100 years in though, I almost never build any more. Now some countries this may be different, as a small HRE minor (or any non Austria HRE really) I would build them far later in to the game. Even as the Ottomans it always pays to have barracks early.

Temples were always golden, now I would probably be more choosy. But with all things it is a matter of scale. The math was always about long term benefit for short term cost. A temple in 1450 would pay for itself 5 times over, or more, over the course of the game. One in 1800 isn’t worth building. When you have 3 provinces building every possible building you can is what you should be doing, when you have 100+ I only build forts on my borders, trade buildings on estuaries, and unique buildings at my capitol.

But if you are less than 10-20 provinces you should probably have barracks and temples in every single province, if you can afford it. Just pay attention to the manpower gain for each province, and note any that are unusually high or low. High autonomy does cut down the benefit from buildings quite a bit, so putting one in that newly conquered province may not be the best idea.

2055

Bear in mind that with the new patch, at default development levels, most provinces can only host one building. On my current Venice game I’ve only built a handful of barracks and only a few more temples, but then I’m trying to let my allies do most of the infantry gruntwork while I clobber the Ottomans and Naples at sea.

2056

In general, yes, for the reason I mentioned in the post you quoted (that money and manpower are most crucial and those are the best way to generate them). I’m flexible, though. If a province’s gold income is only boosted by 0.06/month by a temple, I don’t build one there because it will take too many years to pay off. Similarly, trade buildings go in extremely high value trade provinces and production buildings in correspondingly high value production provinces. But as a default, money and manpower are still best.

2057

If I don’t care about the nation designer is El Dorado worth getting? I haven’t played EU IV in almost a year but I feel compelled to keep it up to date when major DLC goes on a big sale.

2058

I had great campaigns as the Aztecs and Maya, and I also had a nice one as the Spanish with lots of cool events. I never played a custom nation and I got my money’s worth at full price.

2059

Is the Common Sense DLC a bust for this game? It does not seem to be reviewing well with the rest of the package.

2060

I’m not a fan, personally. The problem is the change of pace. They’ve thrown major brakes on expansion and diplomacy by upping coring costs, upping diploannexation costs, massively adding to the time of diploannexation and integration, getting rid of the special buildings, adding relation penalties after you diploannex, changes to admin efficiency, and so on. If the game had come this way out of the box, it would have seemed normal. But it feels much slower now, and province development doesn’t make up for it because of the rapidly increasing monarch point cost, which are always in short supply.

I’m going to revert to 1.11, myself, and will only play 1.12 (and any subsequent patches) if there’s an achievement I particularly want that can only be earned there.