Europa Universalis 4

[CraigM]

Yeah, but even in my Ottomans campaign I’ve been tight squeezed on MIL. Of the 5 Idea Groups I’ve taken, only Quality has come from Military, and that was my most recent one. I don’t think I’ve taken a military tech level before it hit 5% discount either. I’ve also had my focus be military for large stretches too.

Granted I had some really special rulers along the way, so that hasn’t helped. I’ve been over by 1 plenty, but usually as a result of PP dropping below 25. I don’t know, it just seems that would be prohibitive at times. Being able to keep 4-5 generals on staff has been really nice for the last 30 years.

Still the latest 3MA had a far more positive spin on the expansion, Rowan especially considered it essential. So perhaps I shouldn’t worry so much. Besides by the time I get to a campaign using it there will be several balance patches anyhow.

[KevinC]

Hmm, are we supposed to be getting extra diplomats and leaders from Government ranks? Just saw a bug report that seems to indicate we are. Perhaps that’s where the loss from the special buildings was supposed to be made up?

[CraigM]

Hmm, are we supposed to be getting extra diplomats and leaders from Government ranks? Just saw a bug report that seems to indicate we are. Perhaps that’s where the loss from the special buildings was supposed to be made up?

Ah, that would be a perfectly fine alternative. Though your link does not work.

[KevinC]

Works for me? I think you need to be logged in with your Paradox forum account to view that forum, though, if you’re not.

Here’s the post though:

gov_rank_1 = {
   
}

gov_rank_2 = {
    diplomats = 1
}

gov_rank_3 = {
    diplomats = 1
    free_leader_pool = 1
}

These doesn’t seem to work, I’m not getting the diplomat or leader as a Ottoman Empire. (Ironman)
I also tried modding in other values and testing it but I didn’t get those modifiers on any rank either.

There’s no confirmation that this bug report is legitimate, but it’s made me curious!

[CraigM]

Ah, that was it.

[pg1]

Is that really what you (people) think? That seems to me to be an unjustly cynical attitude towards a company that’s treated its customers well.

They are still a company. When Conquest of Paradise had a terrible random world they didn’t admit it until much later. I suspect they might also admit much later this expansion was terrible.

But what I’m seein here are speculations that they’ve suddenly turned into money-grubbing-gougers who put out DLC just to rake in the dough. I’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt and say the implementation didn’t turn out quite as they hoped. I really don’t think they deserve the harsh opinions being thrown out here.

They do way too much DLC I think. I’m fine with expansions but I also do agree most are relatively fluffy. The fort stuff seems to be the main positive in this update. Most of the other stuff is just tweaking numbers already there just because that is what they always do now.

Also am I the only one who thinks the AI hasn’t been getting any better lately? Given how fast no fort provinces fall now it seems absurdly easy to conquer land. The AI seems to barely fight back if it doesn’t have a clear advantage. While the fort system is interesting I think it might have messed up balance of sieges. Sieges were important to slow wars down and make land hard to take. Now it is blitzkrieg in 1444. It just seemed like they messed with a lot of stuff and it isn’t as good as it used to be.

[KevinC]

Hmm, are we supposed to be getting extra diplomats and leaders from Government ranks? Just saw a bug report that seems to indicate we are. Perhaps that’s where the loss from the special buildings was supposed to be made up?

Looks like it’s confirmed by Wiz that in 1.13 (their next bugfixing patch), getting your government to Kingdom rank will provide the extra diplomat. It looks like the fact that we’re not currently getting it is a bug.

[porousnapkin]

…As a whole, though, I like the added pressure on MP points, especially MIL. The loss of the Embassy just makes idea groups that provide free diplomats more enticing, which I like.

I don’t feel like my game has slowed down at all, but I do play differently. I take more diplomatic ideas and I utilize marches/vassals/client states more heavily than I previously did. While I’m pretty happy with how the game stands now, I can see why it’s not so popular with others.

I’m not as experienced or good at the game as many of you guys (in most games I play, I’m fighting to hold my territory the whole game with only a few provinces changing hands in either direction). That said, so far my experience matches Kevin’s above. I’d just add that I’m enjoying the challenge of figuring out how to develop my provinces. It seems like it could be annoying if I had a ton of provinces to manage, luckily I haven’t played France yet.

[CraigM]

I’m not as experienced or good at the game as many of you guys (in most games I play, I’m fighting to hold my territory the whole game with only a few provinces changing hands in either direction). That said, so far my experience matches Kevin’s above. I’d just add that I’m enjoying the challenge of figuring out how to develop my provinces. It seems like it could be annoying if I had a ton of provinces to manage, luckily I haven’t played France yet.

Heh, I’d dread it with my behemoth Ottomans game. Right now I’m quickly closing in on 1000 basetax and 300 provinces. So developing anything would be a no go.

Right now I’m not sure what I want to do next, I just swallowed what was left of the Russian states, have already spread my fingers into India, am beating up Ethiopia for lulz, and could probably take what remains of northern africa in one war. My only problem? Coalitions. Portugal, Spain (both only the northern half, I own the southern half of Iberia), France, Austria, Milan, Savoy, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and about 10 HRE minors. It is very nearly everyone in Europe that isn’t England or Scandinavian.

I’m considering poking that bear, just to see what happens. Considering Franceis nearly full occupying Spain and Portugal if I declare on Spain then France and Hungary would be out, and I think I could take the rest. In other words: me versus the full HRE, lets do this ;)

[KevinC]

Heh, I’d dread it with my behemoth Ottomans game. Right now I’m quickly closing in on 1000 basetax and 300 provinces. So developing anything would be a no go.

Yeah, I think Development isn’t really up the Ottoman’s alley. I mean, there’s nothing to stop someone from doing so, but they already start with a large amount of territory and they have that ridiculously good coring cost reduction NI. Warfare all the way with the kebabs, IMO!

What year is it now in your campaign?

[CraigM]

Yup, holy warrior all the way down.

Though I must admit that I was underwhelmed by finishing Unify Islam. Not even a pop up or anything. So much effort for clicking a button and disappearing :(

Don’t get me wrong, it was a cool goal, but having it be a decision with no acknowledgement was sad is all.

[KevinC]

Yup, holy warrior all the way down.

Though I must admit that I was underwhelmed by finishing Unify Islam. Not even a pop up or anything. So much effort for clicking a button and disappearing :(

Don’t get me wrong, it was a cool goal, but having it be a decision with no acknowledgement was sad is all.

Haha, yeah I know what you mean, you really have to satisfy yourself with a pat on the back in this game. :)

[JMR]

So what’s the best way to use mercenaries? Send them out to take on the enemy and use your main army to siege or vice versa?

Religious Zeal pegged at 100 - holy crap how do you deal with that? I searched and couldn’t find anything conclusive except that you have to wait it out for something like 30 years?

[KevinC]

So what’s the best way to use mercenaries? Send them out to take on the enemy and use your main army to siege or vice versa?

Religious Zeal pegged at 100 - holy crap how do you deal with that? I searched and couldn’t find anything conclusive except that you have to wait it out for something like 30 years?

I like to use mercs to help fill out the infantry portion of my army, since A) that’s where a lot of my casualties are going to come from and B) infantry is the cheapest and mercs are expensive. I try to reserve my manpower for cavalry and cannon, since they’re already expensive enough as it is! Sometimes my armies are 50/50, other times my armies are almost all mercs or all regular troops. It really just depends on what my manpower and finances are like at the time.

For religious zeal, you just have to wait it out.

[CraigM]

So what’s the best way to use mercenaries? Send them out to take on the enemy and use your main army to siege or vice versa?

Religious Zeal pegged at 100 - holy crap how do you deal with that? I searched and couldn’t find anything conclusive except that you have to wait it out for something like 30 years?

Depends, what are your constraints? Which country are you playing? What is your monthly income and what is your monthly manpower gain?

For me, typically, I use mercs as the initial wave, and back up with regular troops. That way the mercs take most of the damage, but I can get greater numbers for lower costs. After the armies are taken care of I will use mercs to handle sieges so I don’t take the war exhaustion from attrition.

I’ve actually been largely relying on mercs as the Ottomans. Probably a good 75% of my infantry are mercs, and I mostly use my manpower for cavalry and cannons. They are my standing army really, but I’ve also taken two idea groups that reduce their costs, and I dominate trade across the entire Med. So I can have 75 standing merc units.

My specific usage will change by situation though, I am about to start scaling that down, now that my manpower is no longer so tight. But for large portions of my coalition series I simply needed the mercs just to hold back Austria and France. So now I’m going to revert back to have them be mostly a shock force, consolidate, siege units.

[CraigM]

I like to use mercs to help fill out the infantry portion of my army, since A) that’s where a lot of my casualties are going to come from and B) infantry is the cheapest. I try to reserve my manpower for cavalry and cannon, since they’re already expensive enough as it is!

For religious zeal, you just have to wait it out.

Yup, Seal delayed my getting Unify Islam for about 20 years, took Varsad which had recently converted, and even with every bonus I could, max piety, religious ideas, religious advisor, I could not make any progress. With Unify Islam’s boost it would be just enough to make it over that hump, but only just. Unless it is 1 basetax it is virtually impossible to overpower.

[JMR]

Playing as Prussia and I currently have a manpower cap of about 58k and I’m currently reinforcing at 500+ men/month. I have Quantity fully unlocked as well.

Gold wise I do about 5g/month with 3 level 1 advisors and with my army spending at 1/2 during peacetime.

It was a bit hairy starting out as Brandenburg with such low manpower but I’ve expanded enough to where I’m about on par manpower wise with Austria who is a rival. I feel ok now that I’ve expanded a bit but I’m certainly nowhere rich enough to have 75 standing merc units! That’s insane.

[CraigM]

Yeah my last coalition war I got down to about 12k manpower, which considering each side was fielding about 130k infantry each was nothing. That’s one or two battles. So I sent every non merc infantry across the Bosphorus, while buying up every merc I could. But since I recover 2500 men a month it doesn’t take too long.

Given that, even with that many mercs my monthly income varies between 30-90 it’s no big deal. But this is 1675 Ottomans who can fight half of Europe to a draw ;)

The good news is that you are approaching the point where manpower isn’t a problem. Not because you’ll have a ton, but because your men can punch way above their weight. You’d probably do well hiring mercs only at the start of a war as needed, perhaps 4-5 units worth, and disbanding once the war is over. Sounds like you don’t have the economy yet for more, but I’d still be sure to keep some around. Not taking manpower losses from sieges is great.

[KevinC]

This isn’t intended to placate anyone, but Johan has responded to the discussions around Common Sense and which features get included in DLC (the link he makes to the old forum doesn’t work for me, FYI):

Anyway… it seems as if there are several people who have misunderstood a what we have said about expansions and features.

Please log in to the old forum, and read my old blog-post , from September 26th in 2011, where I outline our new patch and expansion policy.

http://oldforum.paradoxplaza.com/fo...sion-policy-for-the-Internal-Development-Team

Since we started doing modular expansions, there have been a large amount of features, which have made the experience better if you own the expansion or not.

When you play with the expansions in Eu4 compared to not having the expansions, you will be able to do more, and the game is balanced around the fact that people play with all expansions enabled, as most do.

I personally feel the game is far less playable without National Focus than any other feature we added to a dlc. Maybe the automatic transportsystem rivals it, but not being able to develop as much is not even top 10 in game-difference makers, IMHO.

There will always be people that disagree with what we do, but the metrics we get from amount of people playing and paying tells us another story than what userscore and forumposts does. Common Sense is by far the most popular expansion in units bought (% of users & raw numbers) and also in the amount of people who play 1.12 compared to previous patches.

However, we see that some are complaining that they feel they lost something cause they can’t increase the number of building slots in a province, while those that paid can, and for them this is wrong.

We can only promise to look more carefully when improving the game to support the minority that does not buy expansions as well.

[Dave_Markell]

A bugfix and balancing patch is coming next week. There are some good features in it (trade missions won’t trigger the “arrived at destination” popup anymore, for example, thank goodness), but one change stands out as a game-changer: AI nations…

• Will now refuse to be vassalised by a country that owns its cores