Europa Universalis 4

In a general sense, your goals are going to involve expanding. You shouldn’t expect to conquer the entire world, however, which is what WC/World Conquest refers to. It’s typically not feasible without relying on various exploits (mechanically speaking, I don’t mean cheats).

As an example, when playing Austria, your goal may be to unite the Holy Roman Empire. For Naples, perhaps it’s creating a Mediterranean empire and controlling trade in that region. For Castile, perhaps forming Spain and being the largest colonial power could be your goal. For someone like Morocco, you goals might just be to survive.

No, not quite that. Wold conquest, in specific, is something that is barely achievable under the best situation. There is just so many provinces, 2528 approximately as of last patch, that you would need to conquer. That means that, over the course of the game, you need to conquer roughly 7 provinces per year. Which, effectively, means you need to be permanently fighting 3 wars or so, which you bring to near 100% victory. Especially when dealing with high development provinces like in the HRE, France, or Italy this is a huge difficulty.

But, beyond that, you are going to be playing much more slowly because you absolutely need to micromanage huge wars of conquest. Never can you slow down and recover for a few years. Forget developing any provinces yourself. War is all you do.

And if you get a regency or two? Fugeddaboutit.

The thing is the game launched with 100 less land provinces than now, a few expansions greatly increased the density in certain areas, like eastern europe and asia. These changes, I think, make WC an even more unrealistic goal.

Well in my current game, I’ve hit that point. The only thing keeping me going is that I want to see if I can get all of India before time expires. Curbstomping France, or Austira is trivial. Even the coalition of Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Savoy, France, Spain, Portugal, and so on is more of an annoyance than actual threat. I know I can beat them (I have done so, but it is long and careful), as I can trade land for time, and pick off armies that wander too deep, while letting attrition eat them. But it takes 10-15 years to do so, and I’ve no interest in that when my goals are elsewhere.

Which is why the WC gets boring. It is a grind that you know that you can’t be beat, but the question is do you have the time to take out your goal. And with the fast rate required, I have doubts it can be done without copious luck.

So you spend hundreds of hours, which can all be lost because the RNG gave some bad events, or you got unlucky and the Mughals and Hindustan formed slowing expansion there. Plus the only way to actually do it requires a very deliberate and careful maximizing the exploits of the game engine, which I don’t find as fun as using the full set of tools.

So, for me, playing ‘sub optimally’ is more fun, because I like to interact with the full range of options.

That said there are many other more fun goals. The achievements for EU IV are fantastic, and encourage all sorts of fun and interesting play styles. My Ottoman campaign started as Definitely the Sultan of Rum, which was fun. Find a fun, or funny, achievement and go for that. Do a few. I assure you that you will have a better time doing a Sultan of Rum game, then transitioning to an Electable game, and maybe a short The Iron Price game.

Looks like there’s even more goodies in the form of a 1.19 patch scheduled for November!

And @jpinard since I didn’t really answer the question of ‘is conquering large landmasses not fun’, the answer is: yes, it is fun. Going all in for Italy, then connecting to spain so I could Unify Islam? That was a hoot, it required a lot of planning. Being able to manipulate things so I could dismantle the HRE, and was the shadow broker behind the League War that lost the Austrians the crown? Those were a ton of fun.

World Conquest, specifically, was the thing I was saying was not fun. And not because hours 1-100 aren’t fun, but because hours 200-300 are not.

I don’t think it’s hard as it used to be. AE is lower than I remember it to be in some patches a long time ago, and as far as I know you are still able to vassal feed well enough to avoid much of that (I wouldn’t be going for one-tag WC). What inspired me to try this is I read on the official forums that the Ottomans were “easier than ever” to do a WC with in 1.18. They didn’t really elaborate as the discussion was about a WC with Austria in 1.18, which sounds like it takes a number of exploits. Well, I am not sure if you’d classify them as exploits, but it involves restarting until random events and AI attitudes go your way.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfgexzIO8A :)

Well, I wouldn’t worry about that too much, as the game is constantly setting you near and long-term goals, from which you can choose the ones that sound most appealing or most fit into your plan for the playthrough. If you’re still at a loss, just let yourself be guided by history. Playing as Portugal? You probably want to focus on colonising ASAP and keep Spain on your side. Playing as England? Secure your home island(s) and decide whether you want to contest the continent or go for the New World.

[quote=“Eric_Majkut, post:2506, topic:70125, full:true”]Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfgexzIO8A :)
[/quote]

Ha, yeah. I knew Jake did it. But even he, I believe, said that some patch changes made how he did it impossible with Ryuku. I gather that from 1.4 and beyond that the community has considered the Three Mountains completely unachievable.

Ha, yeah. I knew Jake did it. But even he, I believe, said that some patch changes made how he did it impossible with Ryuku. I gather that from 1.4 and beyond that the community has considered the Three Mountains completely unachievable.
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Yeah I know, just thought Jeff might get a kick out of it. And there’s hours and hours of it, so when he’s recovering he’ll have plenty to watch! :)

There’s a bunch of stuff which is also not doable in 1.18, but the WC was definitely doable after 1.4 with Ryukyu too.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ryukyu-three-mountains-one-tag-attempt-start-1-9-no-exploits-using-pu-mechanics.833582/

Oh right. I also had a question… :’(
I’m playing Manchu atm. The Mingplosion happened quite early (hastened the outcome myself quite a bit). Now I control most of the old Ming are either myself or through my 3 vassals. Since I was occupied with Ming for decades, I never expanded westward after taking Mongolia. I was discouraged there by the Chagatai+Yarkand+Uzbek+Nogai alliance.
I like playing a horde with their shock bonus on flat terrain, but the landscape in EA, SEA is not so forgiving of that shock penalty not in flat terrain (cleaning up stuff, rebellions and future conquest southward). I kind of like the tribe estate options. But I hate to raze provinces for points, ducats and Horde Unity in my culture are. I am either low on ducats or horde unity and mp all the time.

So the options are…
1.) I can reform to Qing turning into a monarchy. This replaces also the estates lowering the minimum autonomy and giving better options. This should give me a decent income upgrade too. But then I lose the very good shock bonus which could be very important when dealing with the other nomads to the east and also those heavenly CBs on neighbors.
2.) Or stay as a horde until I clean up most of the horde nations and live with the shock penalty in the Ming area.

The other question. I took up exploration as my first idea to try and get first to America and get the Colonialism institution myself. But the Mingplosion slowed the progress as I could not give up that sweet opportunity. Both Renaissance and Colonialism is a looong-long time away from spreading to me from the west.
1.) I thought it might be faster to get it from Americas by me colonising there. This way the Printing Press should be get to me faster too.
2.) The second option is to screw the americas and tech cost penalty and continue colonizing in the Moluccas/Philippines areas.
3.) Or the third one is to ditch the exploration idea and go for Influence to also lower the dipcost of annexing my vassals (they are at 1600+, 1300+, 800+ dipcost atm).

Anyone nice enough to give me some advice? :-)

So I guess it comes down to a matter of preference. What year are you in? Because the reform to monarchy gets increasingly attractive as time goes on. That shock bonus is nice, but once you crest into the 1600s and beyond I’d probably start itching to get that sweet sweet lowered autonomy. So it depends, how much horde clean up do you have? I see no mention of the Golden Horde, Timurids, or the other Central Asian hordes. Are they part of your plan?

Realistically it sounds like you should be powerful enough to simply be able to power through the loss of the shock bonus. Sure it may bleed your manpower a bit more in the short term, but it’ll make conquest easier south, plus the added money should offset the loss of shock. More money= more troops, and quantity is its own form of quality.

If you stick with colonizing then the Phillipenes should be more profitable, due to trade steering. Plus, eventually, Spain and Portugal will arrive there. They will arrive in the Americas sooner, sure, but whatever. The extra 50 years probably isn’t huge if you aren’t fighting them. Just get something to Australia, but leave them a spot.

Or, conversely, force the issue by exploring then declaring war on one of the North American tribes. Hey Zapotec, nice of you to exist so I can beat you up. Colonize SEA, conquer Central America.

Though I do love the influence group. It is one I tend to take early myself. Personally I would probably go for that first, and pick Exploration after.

Thanks for the response. I’m somewhere in the 1520s, so quite early. The Ming cleanup is somewhere around 15 provinces left + Dali. The horde cleanup is everything west of the starting Mongolia, so a lot. Golden Horde still exists and is still in a decent shape, but I expect them to die before I could get near. Timurids are still in one piece.
The general idea was to get to the Urals taking everything from the hordes, preferably before Muscovy gets any significant influence there. Then take a small turn south and take at least the northern desert/steppe areas from the Timurids. This should be the latest possible time to reform, preferably when I get near Muscovy.
Spain and Portugal will get here. True, but I already hate the 17x% tech penalty. And when they get here, I expect it to be in the mid 200s least, which is a lot more I’m “used” to.
But the “get to Central America, then continue colonizing SEA” idea is an interesting one.

I think poor JP is going to be confused by all of the options. Someone should just tell him to be nation X and go for achievements Y, Z, W.

I would fill in the blanks but I haven’t played the game in a long time…

Hello all!

“Events” since last post (not exactly in order):

  • Cleaned up the Ming area.

  • Took most of Chagatai and half of Yarkand in 2+1 wars. Timurids took a bunch between my 2. and 3. wars.

  • Uzbek’s norhtern half + a bit on the east is mine.

  • Made a border from the Caspian Sea to the Barents Sea out of Nogai. Muscovy did manage to grab 2 uncolonised provinces, but is sealed now. He also took some provinces from Nogai. Timurids took the rest.

  • Reached Alaska at last, then a jump right to Miwok. Further colonisation here halted due to the Muscovy expansion.

  • Colonised 1-1 provinces in Taiwan, Phillippines and Molucca nodes. Made some small wars around the Spice Islands.

  • Took a good bunch of land from Dai Viet in 2 wars, giving it to my Yue vassal and a newly diplovassalized Lan Xang.

  • Lan Xang lost half it’s provinces due to an untimely separatist revolt, none of us could handle.

  • Somewhere along the road, I increased my rank to Empire.

  • Was 1st in Great Powers table for a while, now 2nd for a long time due to the awful 228% techcost.

  • By taking Nogai lands, I have Renaissance in my empire, but spreading awfully slow, around 2% total development.

  • Got a decision in 1558 (58 years later than the Colonialism procced) to either give 300 ducats and 100 ADM(?) and get Colonialism maxed in Jeju or lose 5 prestige and gain nothing. The ducats hit was painful, but now I got it spread in like 15% of total development. ~1800 ducats to embrace. (:facepalm:) Fun fact: As Jeju is the small island between Korea and Japan, Hosokawa also got the Colonialism spread, which in turn sped up my own spread (at least, that’s my theory).

  • Went and accepted the Qing decision.
    Changes:

  • Tribes estate already wanted 50% land. This went to 20% combined (some breathing space).

  • FL dropped from 94 to 72 after giving out nobility estates here-and-there.

  • Religion changed to Confucian, turning Tengri heretic. Religious Unity dropped from 8x% to ~42%.

  • Got 2 new ideas improving Missionary Strength (:thumbsup:).

  • My ~1:3 cavalry ratio made me headaches. After a lot of battles, merging and new recruitment it’s ~3:2 now (still too much cavalry but I don’t want to just disband them).

  • Income increased by ~10%.

  • Due to decreased FL, monthly balance went from -10 to -30. After restructuring my forces for the new cavalry ratio and lower FL and whatever happened I can’t recall anymore, balance now would be around +5 if I hadn’t started rooting out corruption (~32 atm (:ouch:). “Constantly” adjusting corruption money to hover just above 0 balance.

  • Due to new decisions and whatnot, overall unrest increased by at least 3 (at least it feels that much). (Making my life “miserable”)

  • Due to lower FL, all my vassals are disloyal, between 54% and 94% liberty desire. :’(

Advice/opinion request:

  • Is it worth debasing currency / taking loan 3-4 times to embrace Colonialism?
  • What did I forgot to do to increase income (without conquest and province development)? That measly 10% increase in the income feel very low after the tagchange… Maybe the vassal income I miss from them being disloyal is that much (most of the old Ming is in their hands)?

I’d suspect there is a lot of high local autonomy going on. Did changing the government to the Qing push a lot more territory into other estates? I don’t know, I suspect this is probably why, and that over the next 50 years your income will raise drastically.

My other suspicion, has any Eurpoean nation shown up? Another thing going on is that much of the trade for the spice islands could now be shifting towards Europe, cutting your trade income drastically. Maybe trade was never a big thing for you, but I’d investigate that.

Third time’s the charm? Fort mechanics are being revised again, once more in an attempt to make them more clear / fewer edge cases.

  • Zone of Control in 1.19 will be tied to area, with more clear rules.
  • Zones are either neutral, friendly, contested or hostile, depending on fort in the area.
  • Hostile and Contested block passage into hostile.
  • Capital Forts affect area-status.
  • Rebels don’t impact area-status at all.
  • Fort Maintenance has been halved.

Is that in there now Kevin? or coming sometime in future? I keep getting started then stopping when I hear something is going to change yet again.

Forts are here now and work on the same concept. That is, they project a Zone of Control around them that prevents enemy movement until they have taken the fort in a siege. There’s been times where they can be a little confusing, though, when you have multiple forts with overlapping ZoCs. What Johan was talking about in his tweet is his attempt to clean up the mechanics so it leads to less potential confusion.

New dev diary up. There’s some great changes coming with the 1.19 free update!

First, Johan goes into more detail on Forts.

There is a ton of other miscellaneous changes listed in the dev diary. This one I thought was cool:

This really does sound like a fantastic update, and it’s coming on the heels of one of the most well-received expansions to date! It’s a good time to be an EU4 fan.