So build trade buildings in trade nodes that you own but is it beneficial to construct those buildings in provinces that reside near trade zones to boost your power?
Not really because what nation is rich enough to tech that fast early game then have enough admin points and cash left over to immediately upgrade? Plus temples and constables are not nearly as big a boost now in 1.6+. I’d say temples now do half what they used to and constables about one third income wise. It’s always better to use some admin points early to conquer a few provinces than save up for admin five (for temples/constables). If you’re using excess admin points to tech up early those same points could easily be used to expand which will make you stronger and richer. If you’re richer you can afford better advisors. If you’re stronger you can more likely attack rivals for power projection and the +1 monarch point bonus.
That might be one reason you’re having issues. If you don’t have alliances the AI probably views you as an easier target to attack. Alliances are a mix of reward and risk. If you ally a bunch of nations you’ll be much stronger overall but it’s also a risk because they might get involved in wars too. Generally the best ally for Castile/Spain is France early game since it secures your main European border (and France is a beast).
Coalitions are very manageable now, I hope they stay like this. If you go wild they can be problematic but as long as you allow some cool off time you can expand very quickly. This is the AE map from my game last night. I did not have any coalition wars called on me. Once I hit admin tech ten I can form Germany.
I get trade nodes, however, how does local trade power work as well as local production? Does local production increase the value that goes to the local trade node?
So if I had a local production of say 100 (I guess that would be in currency), and 50% of a trade node was collecting and then out of that, I had 50% of the collection power, then from the 100 production I would get 25 gold a turn?
If I increased local production by 10%, then I would get 27.5 gold?
Now lets say I had 10 trade power in a node. If my local trade power was increased by 1, would I then have 11 trade power in the node?
In general it’s best to focus on trade nodes that have a) high potential value b) you can heavily influence trade there. So, to use my Prussia/ Germany game for example, Lubeck is a trade node with high value, as was Antwerp. Choosing to build in either one was almost always a worthwhile option. I had significant holdings in both, and any increase would represent a decent value. I also had significant holdings in Novgorod, Baltic Sea, White Sea, and Wein (others too, but point is same). Now of those I had a near total domination in the Baltic, but would build to keep Denmark down, since it fed to my Lubeck port. Wein also fed to Lubeck, but was not worth pursuing. It had decent value, but was far too contested and represented a worse investment than elsewhere. Novgorod was 50/50 between me and Russia, but the value wasn’t that high. The White Sea I easily could have dominated, but it fed to the North Sea where Norwegian, English, Burgundian, and Dutch power was so high to make this lucrative node a poor investment.
So from that example Antwerp and Lubeck were top priority investments, the Baltic was an investment that ratcheted down as I destroyed Sweden, but still valuable, and the rest were either too poor or too contested to make the building investment pay off.
That’s not quite how it works. Trade nodes have local production (trade goods produced within that node’s region) and incoming trade. These two add together to create the total trade value in a node. From that you determine the total trade power, and what percentage is collecting and what percentage is forwarding. For ease I’ll use an example Baltic Sea.
Lets say that the Baltic Sea has 30 local production, and has 20 incoming from Novgorod and Krakow. This means the total trade value is 50. So in your example of increasing local production by 10% the total value would go from 50 to 53 (33+20).
Now for simplicity let’s pretend trade is only split 3 ways, Denmark, Sweden and Prussia. If you as Sweden have 50% of the trade power, and are collecting, Prussia and Denmark are both forwarding that means you would get 25 gold, and 25 gold is getting moved to Lubeck. If Prussia decides to collect at the Baltic Sea instead, with 30% of trade power, then you’d collect 25, Prussia would collect 15, and the remaining 10 gets forwarded to Lubeck by Denmark.
In your theoretical 10% local boost the numbers would be you collect 26.5, Prussia collects 15.9 and Denmark forwards 10.6.
Keep in mind the numbers are rough, forwarded trade does get some value added the farther it moves, so it’d be more like 11.7, but for now we ignore that.
In a trade node with multiple outlets, like the North Sea, trade still splits according to the same rules. So if England has 30 power at North Sea steering to London, Scotland has 10 doing the same, The Dutch have 30 forwarding to Antwerp, and Burgundy has 30 doing the same, then 40% of trade there goes to London and the remaining 60% to Antwerp (nobody is collecting there).
If England and the Netherlands go to war and the Dutch trade fleet is sunk, so now they have 0 power there but everything else is the same, then 42.8% (30/70) goes to Antwerp by Burgundy and 57.2% (30/70 England + 10/70 Scotland) goes to London.
Just remember that for nodes other than your home node your merchants are less efficient at collecting, so unless it’s a very rich node you can project a lot of power at, you’re usually better forwarding trade. Trade efficiency is essentially a multiplier for trade power so higher efficiency means you need less resources to get the same result. Overextension severely hampers your trade collection (to the point that at 100% or higher you get essentially nothing in trade outside your home node).
Be sure and turn off Lucky Nations.
As a new player you’ll find yourself hating any wars against Lucky Nations because of their military bonuses. These are provided to help keep “historic” nations on track but it also means you will literally always be inferior at equal tech and usually substantially inferior if Eastern tech. Even an Eastern tech power like Russia ends up with doom stacks you can’t beat with Luck on.
As a new player turn that option off and save yourself some pain and frustration.
If you’re playing Ironman (which is the only way I ever play this game), that’s not an option. Good advice for a new player, though.
Ironman is not a good idea for new players but I found the constant pause to autosave to be extremely annoying to the point where I stopped using it. Ironman is also pretty damn hard if you’re trying to just survive, not to mention win, as some off the wall power.
EU4 is actually an easier game than CK2 (IMO) since there seem fewer decisions to be made and they tend to be about rationally maximizing your opportunities. What the long term players enjoy after mastering the systems is turning those opportunities on their head and working against the grain; the land power becomes the naval colonizer or the colonizer becomes a land power. Factions like Byzantium are the standard “hard mode” options for people who like swimming history upstream.
Also, why aren’t the comet events tied to historic appearances of Haley’s? It just make sense.
Because Johan hates us Enidigm. Johan is a jerk like that.
Also quit looking at the sky you stupid peasants!
You can with Conquest of Paradise DLC. I’m very new to the game, but can offer one tip I learned the hard way. Do not hire an adviser in the beginning. They will suck up all your monthly income. At least the adviser I hired did.
There are 3 levels of advisor, and each costs more than the one before. +1’s are cheap, +3’s are for ultra-rich nations only.
Sure as a new player turn lucky nations off if you want. I love lucky nations in my games however as it provides somewhat of a challenge. Major lucky nations are usually the only nations that can give me any sort of fight. With good play you can easily outpace lucky nations even ones such as France, Russia, Ottomans, etc. Also remember that lucky nations isn’t always hurting the player, you can easily ally with a lucky nation and use them to do your bidding.
I also never use ironman anymore. The constant saves are super annoying with start/stops and easily make games take 10-20% longer (yes, even with a super fast SSD). Plus ironman isn’t immune to bugs, nothing is more annoying than an ironman bug in a game you’ve put hours into.
I actually think CK2 is easier than EU4. The reason for that is because EU4 is a bit simpler focused, more about combat, and the AI handles it better as a result. I think CK2 can just be ridiculous (assassinations, plots, executions, prison, etc) and far more random. Both games probably suffer from the same issues in multiplayer in that it’s far too easy to gang up on people and the games reward such play. I think prestige should be reworked to encourage “fair/honorable” wars and such in EU4. I’m not really sure why France stomping weak nations into the dust should get prestige. It should be the opposite if anything.
Plus ironman enables lucky nations which is the worst. THE. WORST. Although even in CK2 I don’t play with official ironman just because the monthly autosave annoys me too much too. EU4 has even more reason not to use official ironman though.
I’d also agree on CK2 being largely easier. It’s harder to learn, but once you know what you’re doing you have way more options to mess the computer up. Been playing an ironman viking game from the Old Gods start this past week and I’ve nearly formed the empire of Scandinavia and there are more people following Odin than catholic or orthodox Jesus. Even was beating up the Byzantine empire one on one until they used trickery to end the war prematurely. Only around 1040 now, thinking about importing this game into EU4 once I hit the time limit just because I haven’t done a max-blob Old Gods CK2 to EU4 campaign yet.
I don’t know why you guys don’t like lucky nations. I always play with it on unless I have AI bonuses on. The AI just can’t compete not because it’s dumb but because it’s usually inactive and not expanding. Lucky nations helps put a few strong major players in the game. You can always ally them too, use them or pit them against each other. Why do you guys like importing games from CK2->EU4->Vic2, etc? You’ll be so huge the micromanagement would be dreadful and the game completely breaks down and offers no challenges (other than rebel squashing). I usually quit most EU4 games around 1600-1700 for the same reason.
Now that I’ve played a decent selection of nations I’m a bit torn on the rival system. For some nations it works real well and seems usable. For others it seems pointless. A good example is Portugal, at the start of the game the only rivals you can pick are Morocco and Algiers. Yay, 100% core costs with wrong territory and religion! Even if you make significant progress against these rivals as Portugal you reward is then usually one of them is removed leaving you with only one possible rival choice. Rivals can also drop mid war which is absurd. Last night I was playing Venice in multiplayer had Bosnia as a rival, declared then mid war they were dropped as my rival! So instead of being able to get a healthy amount of PP boosting me to over +50 I got just +15? from starting the war.
Rebels remain beyond silly. They are stronger and never stop coming. Bosnia had a 5k standing army but in the decade after I annexed them (which I did by accident since I thought they were my rival!) I killed at least 60k rebels much more than Venice’s combined manpower and FL. Also if you vassal a rival you get no PP where as if you annex them you get loads. That seems an oversight. Perhaps you should get less to vassal a rival but no PP at all is ridiculous.
Also AE is going back up to normal next patch it looks like so if anyone really hates the AE/coalition mechanics this is the patch you want to be playing as they are probably at an all time low currently. There’s also a terrible bug where it’ll say allies will come to your war currently and then they break alliance with you instead! I tried to call Poland (with PU over Lithuania) in to fight Austria last night with a green check and they broke alliance fucking me over. Good times. I was able to re-ally them shortly after but by then I couldn’t call them into the war.
Why would my ally ask for me to transfer my trade power to them? Is there anything in it for me if I were to do so?
How do you vassalize another nation if your government (or theirs) don’t allow royal marriages?
Edit: ok so you can’t vassalize countries that aren’t down with royal marriages and the only way to take them is to annex them from war which is weird because I have a mission to vassalize but neither one if us can do royal marriages.
I think transferring trade power improves relations a bit? I’m not sure since I rarely do it as it takes up a diplomatic relation slot. However if you are already using a slot for another reason (ally, marriage, etc) why not ask for trade power too? It’s probably sort of like military access if you give someone your trade power they are much less likely to declare war on you. I haven’t checked this but I suspect if you are transferring trade power to someone they can’t declare a trade war on you. I have used it a few times but the end result was so pathetic (like 10% trade power of small nations) it hardly seemed worth it.
The Lucky Nations thing is only for when you’re good enough at the game to win. If you’re not then it’s just another annoying bonus you don’t understand how to overcome.
It’s clear AE had been turned off because i more or less ran over Russia and Eastern Europe as a Reformed Lithuania and whenever a coalition would form, i’d wait 10 years, and then the coalition would fall apart. OTOH i almost never have problems with Rebels playing as any nation because i don’t play to Win the Game but to Win at Life. I like my nation stable, happy, and prosperous, so i like to run at +2 or +3 Stability, do almost nothing to ever reduce Stability, slowly and deliberately expand, and spend the points and Ideas to make sure the country is doing well. In my Normal Difficulty / No Lucky Nations Lithuania game i have 2x the income of France because i’ve upgraded virtually every building in ever province of Eastern Europe and Russia, but i’m sitting 1000 points behind in 3rd place in score overall. I’m happy with that, and by the end of the game i’ll have annexed most of Scandinavia and Poland and converted them to fire-and-brimestone with scarlet letters Calvinism.
I find this humorous. You do realize what Lithuania’s national ideas are right? They contain +4 Tolerance of heretics, -2 National revolt risk and -10% Stability cost modifier. They are probably one of the better suited nations in regards to rebels especially if you play a more inward focused game. They are also one of the strongest nations at the start of the game. Try playing a small nation with a weak army and no ideas that would help with rebels.
In my current game I’m playing as Novgorod and I recently managed to form Russia but one of my missions states “trade income should be 60% of total income” or something like that. OK, I guess that makes since I’m a merchant republic, but how in the hell do I manage to make 60% of my income come from trade?
Is it a combination of bulbing the Trade idea group and maxing out every province in the Novgorod node with trade buildings?
BTW, this game sure loves to kick you in the balls at the most opportune times to do so with stability rocking events or having to choose an option that saps my monarch points along with having to endure some sort of penalty for x number of years.
Have excess admin points for stability? Sure no problem. Woops, here comes a fucking comet.
Just spent points on idea to increase morale? Poof! Now you get to endure morale penalty for poor uniforms.
Declare war on an enemy? Shit! Where did all of those rebels come from?
That is so annoying and it feels like a cheap mechanic to keep the player’s power in check. Surely there’s got to be a better way to do that!
The game doesn’t fire events to specifically counter what you’re doing (i.e. poor uniforms because you got a morale boosting idea), but certain actions can influence them. Taking idea groups enables both positive and negative events or makes them more or less likely to occur, that sort of thing. The wiki has a lot of the nuts and bolts if you’re interested in seeing more of what goes on under the hood.