The Ottomans feel especially brutal in this patch. I can get about 100 years into a run with various nations trying for the Zoroastrian achievement before they just come and steamroll me.
I really like the big nerf to manpower.
It has really become a limited resource (for me at least) and I have to take big rests between wars. Also fascinating watching my subjects and other nations deal with the limitations.
Attrition was always important, but now I really have to keep an eye on it.
I need a nice big sale so I can grab the 5 major modules I’m missing.
Which ones? I may have some spare keys.
Pretty sure I’ll have Dharma, and maybe some of the others. Know Ii won’t have Leviathan or Emperor, but I’ll check tomorrow.
Awesome thanks :)
I finally did it!
Had to go easy mode and start as the Timurids in order to finally stand up to the Ottoman steamroller. Actually converting to Zoroastrianism took a couple revolts to finally convert enough provinces for me to give in to their demands. Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing as India stayed splintered enough to never put up too big of a challenge. Ottomans were willing to ally with me just prior to us becoming neighbors and we kept that alliance going the rest of the game so they never really threatened me.
And my newest achievement campaign was to go with Mongolia and get the achievement for forming Yuan and taking over all of China. I naively thought I could springboard that into Mongolian Empire and shoot for an achievement or two there. But not being familiar with the China mechanics it took until 1720 to get the Back in Control achievement and the Mongolian Empire stuff is way too much territory for me to manage in the next 100 years against the Ottomans and Russia.
Doing it again I’m sure I could take China much faster, but might be better to stay Mongolia and just push west at the start. Hordes can pretty much sustain permanent war.
Forming Yuan excludes you from the Mongolia Great Khan achievement. You would need to do that first, then form Yuan after.
I’m glad they’ve gotten better at making achievement conditions a bit clearer since EU4. I believe the games wording for that is “Starting as Mongolia…” which implies you wouldn’t have to stay Mongolia. But you’re right, if I look up the real conditions I have to complete the territory requirements as Mongolia. Oh well, not going to happen in the time I have left anyway.
Yeah if you go in the in game achievement browser it should show up, but for sure it is complicated.
Also its Mongoloa or The Great Horde. So you could start as them with their early and easy access to both Russia and Persia.
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/The_Great_Khan
This game still surprises me at times.
I’m currently doing a relaxed Lubeck run, where I’m focused on just building trade and conquering the Baltic/North sea (so far).
Playing as Lubeck, you have to be careful pushing too hard into the HRE.
Anyway, it has been one of those fun wild games:
- Poland did not take the PU with Lithuania, but does have the PU with Hungary
- France blobbed hard, about as early as I’ve ever seen, and they own southern coast of England, northern Italy, and a few provinces in Iberia
- France also colonized as fast as I’ve ever seen, and own a number of crown colonies in North America
- Great Britain hasn’t formed
- Castille did not get the PU with Aragon. Aragon absorbed Naples and conquered northern coast of Africa (Tlemcen, Morocco mostly). Also means Spain didn’t form
- Russia formed like normal
- Ottomans are big, but lost an early war to Austria/Poland and had a lot of their eastern lands released
- Almost the entire North and South America has been colonized by 1550
So, it’s been a fun game for me. I’ve conquered Denmark, Bremen, Hamburg, Verden, Mecklenburg, Wolgast, Rugen, Stettin, Teutonic Order (Poland also took some)
I converted to Protestant super early in the Reformation, which has hit very hard. When I conquered Bremen and Hamburg I also pulled in Austria and their allies into that war. No big deal, cause I have allied France. I then spend the war forcing religious conversion on the HRE, and it ends with me release Stryia right in the middle of Austria, who is now just a handful of fragmented provinces.
I then vassalize Norway, leaving one province, then use their claims to take northern Scotland from England.
The league war mechanics start, and the Protestant group is just absurdly powerful at this point:
- Protestants: Me, France, Castile, Venice, Russia, a good chunk of the HRE states, Bohemia
- Catholics: Poland (strong), Ottomans (strong, but not as strong as most games), Aragon (middling), England (greatly weakened), Sweden (greatly weakened), Austria (greatly weakened), remaining HRE states
Before the war starts I figure I can take my last claims in the Hanseatic area, so I declare on Oldenburg, who for reasons I don’t understand refuses to surrender. I am operating at like a 26k manpower deficit, but figure I will have some years to recover before the actual league war starts.
Of course not. League war kicks off right around 1570, but I figure we’re still going to completely stomp the Catholics. We outnumber them 2:1!! I use my riches to hire out like 50k in mercenaries, and join Russia in going to work on Sweden, figuring that everyone else should hold out just fine.
Nope, Catholics proceed to deathball together and rage throughout Europe. Protestants inexplicablly break apart their forces and get piecemealed by the Ottos and Poles.
Aragon gets almost completely conquered but refuses to surrender. Sweden does eventually surrender, but the AI gives all the ceded provinces to Russia (thanks!).
England never gets troops to Europe because I control the seas. But no one can make any meaningful progress against the Catholics. Catholics focus west and burn through the opposition, so Russia encroaches from the East. The deathball moves back East and drives Russia out. Meanwhile the western Protestants regain their ground, until the deathball turns its attention back west and drives them out again.
The whole time we’re sitting there with twice the manpower, even as the war progresses.
Finally, after however many years, the war ends in a stalemate. Austria remains Emperor.
Poland is just ridiculously powerful these days, and I love that even after 1500 hours I can still underestimate Poland and Ottomans
How is the new Lubeck mission tree?
I swear they purposely have your allies be extra disorganized during wars and have the enemy allies work as one. It’s so damn frustrating to see enemy ally armies reinforce and generally stick together while your allies sit two provinces over refusing to help out in battles they could easily be the deciding factor in.
It’s ok - not enough permanent bonuses or permanent claims for my liking - but I still love playing as Lubeck!
Guess they save the fun stuff for the premium mission trees. I’m okay with Lubeck not getting many permanent claims, but seems like you’d get more bonuses for building a trade empire.
Yeah - not many trade bonuses either! Plenty of ship discounts and stuff, but it doesn’t feel wildly more powerful then the old missions.
My biggest complains with EU4 right now is colonization. I think it needs a complete overhaul, because it just isn’t fun. I don’t like how fast the new world is colonized - it is almost completely covered by Spain, Portugal, and then either Great Britain or France by the mid-1500s. It is just waaayyyyy too early.
Even if you rush colonization, it is still pretty unfun, in my opinion. Just really tedious, and gets difficult to manage navies and stuff. I usually avoid colonization now, because of how much i hate the mechanic.
So my Mughals campaign is continuing apace. I decided to do Dar-Al-Islam since I never got the achievement (I did do it before, prior to them introducing the achievement and special government type). Finished it in 1650, but could have done a lot sooner if I had not focused on eastern expansion into China and Malaysia.
But finishing that was pure pain. Not only has Spain gone nuts, conquering all the way through Tunisia, Ottomans were super strong and went all the way to the Urals, but also because I triggered Court and Country during my last war with the Ottomans (intentionally) to feed Constantinople to my vassal Cyprus.
Step 1, conquer a bunch of land from Ming and Dai Viet to take all the Mon-Khmer land for that sweet sweet -5% dev cost, going to 150% OE.
Step 2 Immediately declare on 3 province Ayutthaya bringing in their tributary overlord Dai Viet to pause coring since it takes less than a year with all my bonuses.
Step 3 declare on Ottomans one month later to beat out all the Bulgarian and Greek provinces.
Step 4 realize that my unrest still isn’t high enough as a few cores finish and so my OE drops to 108%, putting me below +1 unrest, so I need to declare a trucebreak no CB war on 2 province Ajam so I get instant war exhaustion and drop my stability so now I will be able to progress the needed 3 years.
Step 5 holy hell at one point my unrest reached +8 due to unfortunate event timing
Step 6 mother… ok particularist rebels spawned. Fine, except it was 450k rebels! While I’m fighting Ottomans, and half of Malayaia and Vietnam, and Tunis, Morocco, and Aden. I have to accept demands because I simply do not have the resources. Which the global +30 autonomy means I lose 200 ducats a month, 2000 troops a month, and 200 force limit from before. JFC the pain
I can not express to you how painful that rebel hell was for a few years there. Fortunately my reserves were such I could push through, but finding you are suddenly 150k troops over your force limit with 25% less economy is… not great.
0 of 5 stars, would not reccomend.
But I got the achievement, and Court and Country is not terrible now that I’m not fighting the breadth of Eurasia, and could lower autonomy again. High unrest is bad, who knew! But I had been doing too well, stability wise, so triggering C&C required such extreme measures.
I have PUed England, Sweden, Naples, and a well established Russia in my current France run. Just feels good.
I’ve had something like a 9 month break from EU4, but got a bunch of gaming time in over the Christmas holiday. I’ve been intrigued by Venice for a long time, but the trouble has been that when I’ve seen videos or read strategy ideas for Venice, they all seem to follow along the lines of beating the Ottomans to Constantinople, acquiring all of the Balkans in the process, then conquering all of Italy (or even forming Italy) etc etc. None of this seems very venetian.
So after playing with a couple failed starts as Venice - one failure where I hadn’t realized that the Ottomans could use my guarantee on Albania to force me into a war that I was so not ready for, and the second when I hadn’t noticed that I was annexing an Imperial province until pretty much all of Germany formed a coalition and came crashing down on my head - I’d got a sense of how the early Venice game worked. So my plan is to play a version of Venice that never expands beyond about 20 provinces in Europe, and uses vassals, trade cities and lots of money as tools for imposing my will.
I’ve got to about 1530 and expanded into all the European provinces that I want to take (mostly Genoa, Constantinople, Ragusa, the Lombardy area and Cyprus). Where I’ve conquered territory I don’t really want to keep (mostly to fulfill missions) I started creating trade cities. And the Balkans are owned by my vassals (Montenegro, Byzantium and Bulgaria).
I made a bit of a meal of the first war with the Ottomans because my army was so outclassed; but it turned out that I could keep throwing mercenaries at them, losing every battle in the process, but whittling their manpower down to zero and causing them to peace out with Constantinople still in my greedy hands. Money was pretty tight in the very early game, but once I got to properly dominate the Mediterranean trade the ducats started rolling in (currently close to 200 / month in trade).
It’s been a lot of fun trying to find ways to leverage money into military power without blobbing. Venice still doesn’t have much more than 20k manpower, so most of my army is mercenaries. And I’ve now turned into the guy who tours Europe paying off other countries’ debts so that they’ll join my next war in return.
I have a small trade company in Crimea that owns the center of trade provinces that Genoa starts with, and my next step will be conquering and building another one in the Nile delta to dominate the Alexandria trade. Longer term I aim to push down the Red Sea with the ultimate goal of diverting all Indian and East Indies trade back to me.