The Sweden talk made me interested in trying Norway and the Norwegian Wood achievement. I was still small enough after eating some of Denmark in the Independence war to get into the HRE. I dropped all my early allies and allied electors. Habsburg something or another died just before 1500 and I ended up Emperor. Should be interesting to stop the Reformation without the benefit of Austria PUs and barely able to support 25k troops. After that, I have to decide if I want to cheese the colonizers into the HRE or just Revoke and eat them.
Wow… It’s almost 1600 for me and I feel like I’m still way behind.
Though I have essentially knocked Denmark out of the running. After I reclaimed continental Sweden (so to speak) I had trouble crossing the strait–in my first war my navy wasn’t up to it (I think they were a tier up on ships) so I settled for reparations and trade power, which gave me a ton of money, enough to build up the dominant navy. Then, over two wars, I took their capital, the two other island provinces on that state, and Gotland. I also successfully fought off Muscovy, which I really didn’t think I’d be able to, and even took two provinces that blocked them off from the Baltic (heh). My alliances have shifted around a bit, though, and I’m not sure if be able to do it again.
My next goal is to get Norway (after I took Gotland I got claims on it and realized I should pay more attention to the missions screen). I’d really rather just make them a vassal or whatever but I don’t know how to do that–is it possible? They’re still the junior partner of Denmark.
I’ve also been avoiding taking provinces when it says they’d make me a coalition target. Is that wise? It’s annoying to have to wait 10 years to take two more little plots of land.
I also discovered two more mechanics: institutions (turns out that’s a button on that screen!) and the papal points thing. I had like a hundred of them just sitting around so I cashed them for a stability. Nice.
I’m still like two tech levels behind Denmark (not that they’re a threat) and one behind puny Norway, so I feel like a failure. (And they have more ideas than me.) Should I be spending more on the fancy advisors? I want to blame my monarchs who seem terrible (skill-wise) but I don’t know if that’s fair.
I decided colonization would be too much of a stretch and went with the money idea group instead. I’ll try that game next time.
I’m also still Catholic, but my religious unity is pretty low (like 35% I think). I was going to wait until Stockholm converted before I did, but maybe I should just do it?
Anyway I’m sure my next game will be much… cleaner.
If you fight Norway you’ll be at war with Denmark too, but I believe when suing for peace you can demand Norway as a vassal (if they’re small enough). If they’re too big to vassalize in one go, I think you’ll have to take provinces in the first war then in the second war vassalize them and return the provinces back to their ownership.
It depends on how many countries will go into a coalition against you. If it’s more than you can handle in one war, don’t do it. If you’re becoming strong and it’s only small countries entering a coalition, it’s usually not a big deal, but you want to be careful as you could be facing a huge war if you let it snowball.
People who have played more recently will have to chime in on ways to minimise the amount of aggressive expansion you spread as you expand, but one tip is to conquer in all directions. You accrue AE based on the proximity of the countries to what you just conquered, so if you take some land to the west it’s usually a good idea for your next war to be in the east.
Yeah, things that influence AE:
Allies/ royal marriages with targeted nation
Same culture
Same religion
Proximity
Claims on territory
Cores on territory
High relations
And maybe a few more. But the long and short of it is that if you take territory from, say, Pomerania who has the same culture as Brandenburg, they are both Protestsnt, are neighbors, have friendly relations and a royal marriage then your AE will be many multiples what it would be from Catholic Venice, who is rivals with Pomerania (for some reason). In fact due to distance and other factors you may get no AE from them while getting 20+ from Brandenburg.
Muscovy, being Orthodox and not particularly close to Pomerania, may not care that much, except they are your neighbor so maybe they get 5. France maybe gets 2. Austria is HRE emperor, but catholic so maybe gets 10 AE.
All numbers are fake, but convey the concept. If you focus only on a specific area, the neighbors will hate you. But take some Danish land, bounce some territory from the Russian states, maybe in your next war take Iceland instead of Norwegian homeland territory because being remote reduces AE. In fact if they have any colonies, that is mostly AE free!
But since you were taking mostly Danish mainland, I imagine Lubeck, Holstein, Hansa, maybe the Dutch, Pomerania would be the ones getting most upset and threatening coalition.
In the peace screen you can see how much AE each nation gets from the deal.
I think my record for AE was 700 as the Ottomans. From Austria due to me eating and dismantling the Empire. France was something like 500 too.
So I conquered India instead.
Usually yes, every single country can field at least 8 regiments(?) with no penalty, and it adds up. And they only leave at 0 (I think) opinion, which takes a while. But they might be busy in a war, beat up or poor, which might buy enough time for them to drop lower than -50 - sometimes it’s worth waiting on a peace deal for AE to drop (and thus opinion to go higher). Regardless, you’re probably still too weak for those games.
A big deal, they add 1% cost to tech per year. Each has their own requirements to spread, but developing always helps. In Europe, you can generally wait for it to spread, but not all start near, and sometimes you really need that military tech.
If you don’t have anywhere to spend the money, yes; but everything else, from mercs to buildings (even if they take a few decades to pay off) is good early on, so, usually not the priority.
I don’t remember the bonuses and thus the timing, but at 35%, just switch.
I don’t see that as a CB and iirc from the last time the option was to release them, but maybe it will be different next time.
Thanks. I doubt my ability to take on Muscovy (or Lithuania, who became my rival after I dissolved our earlier alliance), but you never know.
Yeah, I paid something like 250g for printing press, which was maybe not worthwhile, but after enlightenment got to a 50% tech penalty I was kind of annoyed.
Maybe that’s why I’m so far behind on tech…
You sound well on your way over the learning curve to me. Enjoy the next 800 hours of your EU4 life
The other day I started playing around a bit as Sweden to see how I could offer more advice to progress that campaign for independence. Despite what seemed like a promising start that included a completely independent Lithuania guaranteeing my freedom and Denmark struggling to deal with rebels, I succumbed myself to my own fights against rebels while also fighting Denmark. That campaign got scrapped in the end, I was rushing things too much and that leads to mistakes.
And that segues nicely into my talk about my new game as Florence, which has since become Tuscany. The first 30-40 years was doing not much beyond sighing wistfully as the Pope excommunicated me… again. Well, every leader that was elected was swiftly excommunicated. I allied with Milan and I thought we were best bros until he decided to enter into a stupid war. No way I could pull him out of that chasm, and I killed that alliance after sitting on the pause screen for a few moments. But from that war, and the weaving of diplomatic relations, I was able to start my own expansion. Sure, it was territory promised to me should I have gone to war with Milan, but I preferred in this case to war on my own terms against enemies that weren’t so huge (Burgundy). Breaking out from 3 provinces to 4 doesn’t seem much, but it gives me an extra unit to fit into my army and a slight boost to my overall economy and manpower pools.
As diplomatic relations unfolded in Europe, I was able to secure an alliance with Austria. Not the best alliance I’ve had. I hoped to use their military might to help me start getting some land, namely the provinces that let me switch from the ugly red colour of Florence to the cool purple/mauve of Tuscany. Austria bailed on me halfway through, and I was in a war I didn’t know I could win. In fact, I couldn’t. I took my single province gain that I secured seperately before Austria ditched me (Siena), and let Lucca have their white peace.
This game kept me going past midnight as I promised myself one more goal to hit. And that’s what drives me forward with games like EU. Hitting goals. Thanks to the network of alliances, my relative army strength and shock 6 general, the implementation of cannons, weak as they are, I was able to push my borders out rapidly from here. Genoa lost their capital, I started to increase my influence in the Venetian trade node for more sweet ducats, wiped Lucca off the map and have a bit of a messy border pushing into the Alps. Importantly, I’m now 9 provinces in size, able to field a respectable army and pulling a decent income with my advisor slots all filled. One important decision was picking up the Diplomacy idea early. Very powerful with the +2 diplomats, and I was able to smooth over the coalition that formed against me with my rapid aggressive expansion north and west. That included France being in on the coalition that brought a “oh fuck” moment. France hasn’t done shit against Burgundy though, so there’s that…
The year is 1527, and already I’m finding myself in a position of the game opening up with a lot to do. And it all started from being patient in the beginning and letting various diplomatic avenues evolve over time.
If you go this route, keep in mind that not all potential coalition countries show up in the peace deal screen depending on religion or distance. You could have 3 Catholic nation’s over 50 AE, but when you go over 50 AE with someone like Muscovy, you may not see those Catholic nations in the peace screen AE calculation and get a coalition later when truces are up.
For me, it is mostly trying to avoid multiple truces expiring in a short period and paying attention to which country I need to have a CB ready on when a truce does expire. As soon as a country enters a coalition, I usually try to DOW them or another potential coalition member. A white peace is preferable to a coalition that snowballs. If your economy can support it, an improved relations advisor, diplomats set to work in outraged countries and using a merchant with the improve relations option in trade view helps avoid coalitions.
I had another Denmark/Norway war, and this time finished up Denmark–they only had two provinces left after Mecklenberg and some other little country started in on them. I’d like to reclaim Schleswig-Holstein for the, uh, Danes, but since I’m currently allied with Mecklenberg that will have to wait a bit. I was unable to make Norway a vassal (required 118% war score) so I took another 3 provinces from them. Next time, ugh (it will hardly be worth it at that point since they basically just have the crappy parts of Norway, Iceland, and a colony in Nova Scotia or somewhere out there).
I then noticed that Lithuania (who has been my rival for quite a while now) was tied down in a war with Austria (don’t remember how it happened) so I rolled through there with my Bohemian allies. It was no trouble at all–the only issue was deciding whether I wanted to actually try to chase down their (admittedly surprisingly alive) army to get some more dollars in the peace deal (I didn’t). So I got Estonia and Riga and somewhere else that completed that mission. I now have Norway and Lithuania ready to coalition-ize against me, but you know what, bring it. (Famous last words.)
Is there any way I can check my current AE penalties?
I paid 500g to be defender of the (reformed) faith, and while it did help me convert my Catholic and Protestant provinces quickly, I don’t think it was really worth it. I got called into a couple wars, and eventually there was one way down in Italy that was impossible to get to and when they surrendered I lost my title (I think, I’m not quite sure what happened). 500g is a lot of buildings, or a lot of months of a better advisor or two.
What is absolutism? Where can I see what it does? I have some of it, I think.
The truce with Norway just ended. I almost immediately clicked the declare button, but then noticed they were guaranteed by Muscovy. So I look at Muscovy… and their manpower is almost entirely gone. (Something out east, I guess.) So I think it’s now or never. Let’s see if Bohemia is up for another round… (probably not)
I was having serious manpower issues so I went with the quantity ideas. Just the first one in that group makes a big difference. I think the second one that increases manpower recoupment will be even more necessary. But I’m having a hard time justifying spending it on that instead of getting the next better infantry… then the next better cavalry… then cannon…
I should probably also build some barracks to increase my force limit, too. I feel like that’s what’s holding me back, or at least that’s what has me intimidated.
Also I think I know the reason I’m so behind on techs: I keep blowing like 1-2 techs worth of points after each war on coring things.
Should be on the diplomacy screen. AE is different per country, based on a lot of different factors. The Ottoman Empire doesn’t care much if you rampage across northern Germany, but it might be Austria on edge. I’m trying to visualize the UI in my head, but you should be able to see the value in a country’s opinion of you but I believe it’s the Coalition map mode that will color-code the level of AE and give you a value when you hover over them.
It’s been a while so I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but that should be mostly accurate and at least get you going.
I believe you can see this on the… government screen? Icon looks like a crown. It provides some admin efficiency (cheaper coring) and gives your troops a little Discipline. It grows based on how authoritarian your government is. Harsh treatment on rebels, strengthening the government (raises legitimacy at a cost of MIL power, should be on the same government screen), things like that.
Yep - AE shows up under the tooltip when you hover over your relationship with a specific country, and it also shows you the rate that it is decreasing
Ding ding!
Pin this one @ooomalley, learn to love it and use it. This is the single best way to track coalition danger.
And always give it a peek before any peace deal you suspect could cause trouble.
As for Russia, beware. Even at empty manpower their National Ideas mean they gain manpower quickly. So don’t assume they are impotent. However if you can knock out Norway quick enough, that may not be a concern.
Also beware, if you vassalize Norway, they may hate you. Be prepared to push hard to improve relations. One thing I love to do in the peace deal vassalizing someone with high negative penalties from taking land is the following:
Since you just took provinces from them, don’t core them. Instead when you vassalize, give them back to Norway.
Try and get them to revoke cores in a peace deal before vassalizing them. Any provinces you’ve already cored of theirs will put you at a steep penalty unless you do this.
Take money in the peace deal, max it even. Then give them gifts of money that you took from them. ‘Free’ relations.
Given their size this may require two wars. One to set up (revoke cores, take money, break alliances) and another to vassalize. However another path is potentially open.
Don’t go to war with them. Try and diplo vassalize them. Improve relations, give gifts, roayl marriages. If AE isn’t too high (and using the diplomatic relations advisor to burn it faster) you may be able to achieve the same end result through peace.
Also Defender of the Faith is often a trap. The tech penalty alone is enough to ward me off many times. It is beneficial if you can take advantage of the CBs. The best case for it is Orthodox Russia using it to give extra ability and reason to punch around the Ottomans due to the Balkans. But the ones that would involve me in more HRE squabbles I usually avoid, unless I am actively looking to intervene with electors.
It is a good way to help push against Austria if you are Protestant, for example.
I wish the map filter wasn’t just shades of red. I usually pull up the peace screen shortly after declaring war, pick what I want and then preemptively send diplomats to improve relations of potential coalition targets. If war exhaustion is manageable and you have occupied everything, you can also sit on a peace deal for a little time while you reduce coalition members by improving relations.
So I’m trying to get into EU4, but I can’t get past the idea that as a historical simulation, it fails at simulating the way nations can’t just take over the world. I’m glad to hear they’re changing mechanics to make expansion harder, but ultimately, if you’re not looking for the next territory to conquer – there’s just not much to do. I think this is perhaps the brilliance of CK2. There’s enough happening outside of plain conquest that you can just go tall - and that includes mostly character-based stuff - instead of wide. There doesn’t seem to be any such option in EU4, which renders the point of simulating the world moot IMO.
Well, the point of the game is to expand the size of your dominion… But I think it’s very unfair to say that directly conquering territory is all that there is to do. The diplomacy system is so great, there’s a good rebellion system, there’s a good trade system, religious division, colonisation, and a bunch of other layers of mechanics.
It may be that the full scope or depth of many of these systems don’t become apparent until you already have a fairly sizable country.
For a ‘map painter’ type of game, it is chock full of interesting systems other than war. But yes, you have to be willing to accept that the game is about expanding your territory. CK2 is a brilliant piece of game design, can’t argue with you there, but the reason I have 2-3x more hours in EU4 is that the core gameplay loop is just so addictive.
Play as a horde or an American tribal nation, and try and survive to westernize. Play as a colonizer. Play as Japan or Manchu, and see their unique government types. Play as Austria and try and fully reform the HRE. Play as a merchant republic like Lubeck or Venice and build trade posts and become an economic powerhouse.
There are other ways to play, and going tall is viable. I mean, yeah, if you are Muscovy going tall isn’t the way to play, but many other options are available.
Now unlike CK II you are a nation, not a family. Which gives a different focus. Now players, with the foreknowledge of history and clarity of strategy across centuries, can overcome the obstacles to expansion. They are there, they do follow historical limits, but they are systems. As systems they are manipulative. You can use the mechanics to plan and work around these limits.
I see your point. I remember how at some point was disenchanted with Paradox games because of similar things. But it’s not a bad thing. Yes, you can use a relatively superfluous strategy, just eat everyone small around you. But this way you’ll only get so far. Eventually, you see that a lot of mechanics are already aimed at making an expansion for expansion’s sake not optimal. Granted, having an additional land is always good (even if you get some rebellious and contested lands it’s almost worth it) but spending time on wrong expansion limits you.
In thoughtful strategy game, there’s no tall or wide strategy per se, there’s a variety of uses for your resources. There are factions that are considered to be “wide”. Like Muscowy (or any other Russian principality uniting Russian lands) gets a natural way of expanding into Northern Asia: it’s full of hordes that you want to beat anyway cause they won’t ever be good allies to you, and the trade “flows” from Siberia into Novgorod so expanding there is natural. But at the same time Russia is ill-suited for expanding into Europe: this land is much better but Europeans will almost always be more developed than Russians for the first half of the game; it’s easy to befreind and Royal Marry many of them fellow Christian nations; even if you capture those lands they aren’t integrated into Russian trade system - to get proper benefits you’ll have to move your capital or Trade Capital into Europe and this will devaluate your core Russian lands. If you play something like England then trade winds bring ships from America, Africa and Asia to you. Conquering, say, Baltics or Germany or Italy gains almost nothing to you. You can say that England has to play “tall” but in reality it means that its situation doesn’t provide natural expansion: you conquer Scotland and Ireland just because you don’t want them allying some foreign powers and attacking you, but then you heavily develop your isles letting them get great benefits from trade, and then you very deliberately colonize and buy land around the world just to support trade routes bringing you money. Later your core lands become so advanced that conquering whole foreign countries in India or China becomes viable and natural and then you might call your playstyle wide. But you still will rarely have any reason to get any land in Europe cause it means directly competing with other powerful nations for the land that worth much more to them than to you.
So of course if you’re skilled and experienced player you can conquer the world as any nation (but so you can in Crusader Kings 2). Your point is probably that you’re pushed into the expansionist mindset. And I say it’s fine. Those missions and events give context to your expansion. Economic system makes expansion much more thoughtful than it seems.
Disaster has struck! But first…
I managed to get to war with Norway when Muscovy was weak (and unwilling to enter the war) so I had a pretty easy vassalization of them. When I did so, I was then at war with Scotland, which was trying to reconquer some Norse islands somewhere. Make hay when the sun shines, and all that, so I made Scotland a vassal, too.
With that out of the way, I finally felt like I was hitting my groove. Without blowing a bunch of points on coring and other misc stuff I was able to catch up fairly quickly on tech, and even invest in some ideas. I was kind of boxed in by the HRE–I couldn’t reclaim the last Danish province (nor Shlewig-Hotstein… someday I’ll figure out how to spell that) because Austria and Brandenburg (my ally, too) would jump in, so I made what was almost certainly a sub-optimal move and took an expansionist idea (I think that was the name of it) to get a colonist and set off for Greenland. (Sure, it’s way up north, but how bad could it be? They call it Greenland, for Pete’s sake!)
While that was going on I managed to annex Norway, which was just as well because they were rather pathetic by that point. (I still had to give them money to make them like me enough, but I had plenty by that point.) I thus picked up Vinland as a colonial dependency and am now figuring out how to do that (I guess you have to keep them happy enough so they actually give you money).
I reached the tech level so I could found the almighty state of Scandinavia, which didn’t seem to make much of a difference besides changing the color and the flag and getting me all confused thereby.
I spent some time getting more land for Vinland with my lonely colonist (and army of 5k or so that seems to be necessary to put down rebellions and actually land a colony). I wanted Kola (rightfully part of Scandinavia, currently occupied by the Russians) and I figured by this point I could probably handle Muscovy, myself–but they allied with England, which would have swallowed up my Scottish vassal trivially and probably sank my navy, too.
But it turned out that almighty France would deign to be my ally, so I figured they could hold off the redcoats while I waded into the steppes (together with the Bohemians, who should help to speed up that process a bit). They should also help if I ever wanted to get that last Danish province from HRE member Mecklenberg. The issue with that was that this “imperialism” thing happened and France was basically never at peace, so that “-30 already in a war” seemed to always be present. Ugh.
Finally, though, it happened. I declared war, with France and Bohemia, on Muscovy, England, and–as it turns out–Mecklenberg. Mecklenberg was right on my doorstep, of course, so things started off pretty exciting as they (and England) sank half my fleet and scattered the rest, and marched through Denmark and into Sweden proper (turns out that un-upgraded forts from 200 years ago fall pretty quickly). I force-marched half my army back to retake Skane, though, and once the English fleet was pulled off to deal with their colonial issues with France I retook Denmark and moved into Mecklenberg itself. I eventually managed to get a separate peace with them, retaking the last Danish province and Schlesvig-Holstein as part of it. So that ended up being the best possible outcome.
The Russian bear must have been hibernating–I got Moscow without even seeing any troops, though eventually an army of 45k or so showed up. I beat it off with an army of 60k, plus 10k Bohemian reinforcements, and it never reappeared. Go figure. So I set about besieging as much of the vast steppe as I could. (I guess there’s a bunch of forest there, too.)
All the while there was a whole bunch of back-and-forth in the new world between the British and the French. I didn’t really pay too much attention to it, but Vinland had some initial success against the Thirteen Colonies until the real British army arrived, and a whole bunch of stuff happened in South America, too.
Eventually my manpower drained (from all the sieges, I guess, though I tried to be careful about supply limits) so I called it and took the (single) province I wanted. I also gave some territory to Vinland, some to Florida, some to some random people on the other side of Russia because I couldn’t get any more gold from them, and made the Thirteen Colonies release an indigenous nation in what is now central Maine, because why not.
So now I’m sitting pretty, and I even colonized a region in the Ivory Coast and conquered an indigenous nation next to it–seemed like the thing to do. (Though one of the provinces produced slaves, which is, shall we say, distasteful, even if historically accurate. At least I was able to abolish slavery shortly thereafter.)
And now the disaster.
At this point I noticed that my ruler was getting on in years, and somehow his heir is only four years younger than him. I don’t really know how this is possible, but I’m sure you EU4 vets see where this is headed. The ruler kicks off, and I get a 65-year-old dude with no heir (really? he couldn’t do anything in those 65 years?). I desperately try to get as many royal marriages as possible, but to no avail. Soon enough France and Austria are fighting the War of the Scandinavian Succession and though I’m technically allied to France I just sit it out. I’m too dumbfounded by the whole thing, and I don’t really like France much at all right now, thank you very much.
So now the mighty Scandinavia (still in 6th place!) is a junior partner to France. I’ve almost got as many troops as them (thanks to the quantity idea group finisher), but they’re allied with Morocco (which has much of Iberia) and the defender of their Protestant faith is Tuscany, which has most of Italy, so declaring war on them is going to be dicey. What’s more, my liberty desire is only around 35% or so, despite having 80% of their strength, as apparently we like France (who do you mean we, kemosabe?) and they have a Diplomatic Reputation. This means we can’t declare independence while they’re at war, which I think is really my only hope.
So what do I do now?
Hey, you’ve come around full circle! The Swedes once more chaffing under foreign rule. :)
Same things that applied to Denmark should apply here. When you come to blows with France, you have a major advantage in that you just need to protect your capital to gain ticking war score. And France being France, they’re often involved in wars that put a continuous drain on their manpower and treasury.
Can your navy handle theirs? If so, it’s a looooong march from Paris to Stockholm.