Is there a change or known bug where armies can just go through a (non-capital) fort? It’s like that particular one is not there (yes, it’s up, and it takes its time to siege).
I’ve noticed some weirdness with forts too, but I can’t find anything about it on the forums. All I see are people talking about how broken the HRE is(which you mentioned above). The weird thing is, I haven’t seen that issue at all. I had one nation join early on in my campaign and haven’t had any countries join since.
The other big thing I came across on the forums is that you can apparently get down to 1% crownlands and continue to give more away to the estates forever.
How do you get back into EU4? It’s been years since I’ve played it and there are so many expensive expansions now, things like Estates, lots of nonsense, and when I fire up a game I kind of don’t really grok what’s going on. I’d like to make a trading empire as Kilwa.
Me too but a different place.
Same as always, watch a let’s play :p
I don’t really know, I hadn’t played since pre-Dharma and was a bit lost myself. Maybe pick an easier start, it should flow back and allow for mistakes, while having a bigger custom mission tree that gives you progress goals.
If you’re doing a trader nation, then just focus on trade stuff for that game and don’t worry as much about the other knobs and dials. You can do just fine by ignoring a lot of the mechanics in EU4 as long as you pick a nation that isn’t too difficult at the start. Estates just got reworked(and I believe made a core feature) to be less annoying and something that you can probably just ignore for awhile.
I have no earthly idea what is going on with these Revolution mechanics. I’ve got some center of Revolution spreading ideas and the text says “Unless it is dealt with it will continue to spread”, but I see no actual way to deal with it. It’s a WC run so I don’t think I’ll ever hit 100% revolution, I’m taking provinces faster than the revolution center, but I’m sort of unsure what if anything I ought to be doing about it.
They hotfixed the game today to try to help the HRE. Even though I wasn’t having a bunch of countries joining the empire, I ended up being able to race down the rest of the centralization track in the early 1700s. The reforms keep giving +25% authority gain which gets pretty ridiculous. I got the second-to-last reform that vassalizes everyone in the empire and am enjoying the absolutely absurd vassal swarm before completing unification. I know vassal swarms are the preferred method of powergaming for a WC, but I think they probably should do something to make the HRE swarm a bit less unstoppable.
If you end up figuring this out, please let me know. I have the same thing happening as Austria and there appears to be nothing for me to actually do to try to fight back against the revolutionary spread.
There really needs to be a “let them eat cake” button.
Well this was a fun run: Aragon -> Spain -> Rome
Aragon actually has a really nice starting position. You get easy access into Italy and North Africa, and you can PU Spain and Castile as easy as Castile can do it.
I was quite hampered in the early-mid game because of the HRE bugs that was in the launch version of the new patch (fixed now). All of north Italy and ilyrian coast was part of the HRE. Yet I made do, was able to beat a really scary Ottomans in the mid to late game. I realised with ~120 years to go that if I really pulled my socks up I could go for the mare nostrum achievement, and made it with 50 years to spare. Expansion becomes exponentially easier in the late game (by design).
Overall I really like the changes to the Estates, Mercs, and other systems. Revolutions are a bit puzzling to me, as posters above mentioned I was not sure how to interact with the system. Also in my run (not saying this is representative) it led to very ahistorical behaviour as not only was France revolutionary but also Poland, Russia, and many of the smaller German states. This started happening long before the historical French revolution had even happened.
I know the political stuff during the 1800s is really interesting and cool, Paradox, but please try to put this zeal into Victoria 3 or at least a timeline expansion for EU4 rather than letting mid 1700s EU4 look like the late 1800s!
Looks like a fun game, with a few interesting divergences from the average game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Westphalia become a notable European power, and Hungary seems to get either absorbed by the Austrians, Ottomans, or Commonwealth in my games before this late.
But if I was playing that game I’d be itching for a war with England so I could fix that border-gore. Haha.
I have really been enjoying the DLC. I did an Austria run early on before the changes to imperial authority and got a bit bored towards the 1700s. I was trying for the achievement with the pope as an elector and Catholicism as the dominant faith, but seems if you stamp out protestantism before revoking, no faith becomes dominant and the pope leaves.
Playing France now on the other side of the coin has been interesting. I tried for the pope achievement again, but couldn’t get elected in time for the league wars and Bohemia rolled over to the Protestants even with my 90% war contribution. So I dismantled the HRE by force converting all electors and emperors to catholic. The downside is I have over 1000 AE on the German minors and started having Ottomans join the coalitions even though I am nowhere close to them. I usually declare on an OPM in the coalition to buy a few years of peace. Will hopefully get a chance to play around with the revolution mechanics this weekend.
I tried to start out with Brandenburg and I think my EU4 combat skills have eroded. I mean, I know that I don’t get the wonderful troop quality bonuses at the start, but I can’t seem to successfully prosecute a war. I think I was one victory in three starts (and the one I was successful I followed up with getting completely rocked in the follow-up war).
I think that last time I played Brandenburg many years ago I could count on an ally to help me out in the first war or two, but that seems to be out of the picture now. Another part of the problem is that my prospective victims pull out all the stops buying a lot more troops and borrowing armies from others. Not that I fault them, but matching those gold outlays would put me so far into the hole for the starting economy that it doesn’t seem worth it.
The Brandenburg wiki seems to say something like “win these 3 easy wars in the first couple of years” and I can maybe if I am lucky pull off one. Are you to take out 4-5 loans to finance these wars? Or just be more canny in intercepting smaller stacks?
Yes, and also yes.
Thing is, loans don’t matter. At least short term. Taking a few* loans to win a war, especially early, is worth it 100%. Just take slightly less land to get money/ war reps.
Lets say you take 10 loans for some 250 ducats to finance a war against Poland. You then take 200 ducats and war rep as well as two provinces, instead of taking 4-5 provinces.
In my recent Palembang campaign at one point I had 30 corruption and 25 loans by 1480. But I used that to finance a huge growth and become the big dog in my neighborhood. As a <20 dev minor surrounded by bigger and richer neighbors this was almost required.
It did lead to about 30 years of consolidation with minimal new growth as I brought the economy back in line, but still. Worth it. Doing so allowed me to take about 2/3 of Sumatra and most of Java along with half of Borneo. With my pirating ways I paid off all the loans inside 5 years (Brandenburg would instead fabricate trade disputes and beat up Lubeck or something for money).
*few being anything under 30
Ok, thanks. I guess I am being way too miserly and failing to see the immediate profit opportunities in the wars.
It goes against my instincts as well. But if you are in a tough war, taking as many loans as you need to merc up and turn the tide? Worth it.
And for a really extreme example, Planned Bankruptcy! Zwellik does a whole series on Saving Your Ruined Campaigns, where he takes ‘hopeless’ situations, and just goes hog wild with loans to win a war, and declare bankruptcy immediately after. Admittedly an extreme option, the penalties are tough, but it can really bring back things that seem beyond salvaging.
I have never done this, but it really did change my thinking on how to address the EU4 economy.
I’m probably not as experienced as @CraigM in the game but I think it’s important to understand loans aren’t just a cheat. Yes, they allow you to win absurd wars against a superior foe. However unless it’s a war for survival you might not want that victory. Before absolutism and imperialism you will only be able to get just a few provinces from 100% victory. It will still probably be worth it but you could probably spend this money and manpower on several smaller quicker wars on weaker opponents.
I think the Hundred Years War as England is maybe the best example of using loans to leverage into the easiest WC you’ll ever get with a PU’d France in the first 20 game years.
I’ve just finished my playthrough with France. It was not a full playthrough (finished around 1785) but I got an achievement I wanted (Better than Napoleon - as France own Berlin, Wien and Moscow) and I didn’t think WC is possible. I have ~600 hours in EU4 but it was always episodic since release so I think I still don’t understand the game well enough for that. I could go for other achievements that are easy to get when you’re hegemon but I save them for later.
As WC doesn’t seem to work for me even when I start as a freaking France I’ll try something completely different now. Namely So, it’s a Japanese Daymo that is also a pirate republic and it sounds insane enough to be fun.