1581

Does it? Damn, that was my go-to method for not dealing with Nationalism. Probably was too good to be true, now that I think about it. No ADM cost and no Nationalism for all those cores? It was a no-brainer for me.

I’m not at home yet so can’t check, but there’s now ideas and policies to reduce nationalism, isn’t there? I might have to shoot for those. Either that or take a look at the new Ideas that boost vassal benefits, maybe I’ll keep them around longer.

1582

Well the AI does seem better. I’ve been playing Poland->Commonwealth to test out the changes. When I formed Commonwealth Lithuania had armories in every province and other assorted buildings. That was not happening ever in 1.6. France is way weaker now maybe too much so. I’ve been jumping in almost every way vs them just because I can beat them without breaking much of a sweat. Their force limit and manpower seem way down while other Europeans are stronger. If I had this same nation in 1.6 I’d not be willing to fight them so much. I’m saddened that Ottomans and Moscovy seem even more nerfed than France however. I’m hoping it’s a fluke but I suspect the truce changes really hit them hard as their expansion and future strength relies almost completely on fast conquests (Novgorod, Mamlukes). Mamlukes are actually a strong power in my game still around 1600 which is extremely rare. Novgorod died in the late 1500s which is much longer than they usually last.

Poland is very unique now and their extremely cheap stability is useful now as elective monarchy has you dancing between kings every few years (you still get stab hits for it). However it’s a weird system in a way because I could never elect my own heir. They always had weak claims and you’d have to spend legitimacy to strengthen them. So even if you blew enough legitimacy to elect a Polish heir he’d come to power with no legitimacy meaning you couldn’t do the same feat again. The elective heirs seem to have better stats than average however. Commonwealth is very strong now maybe too much so. Scandinavia also formed real fast as Denmark had their PUs integrated by the 1470s! They are quite scary and the leading European economy in the game right now with 91 over my 75. Ming is beating everyone though with 132.

1583

In my current game playing as Genoa, I declared war on Milan who is allied with Hungary, Austria, Wurtenberg, Naples, and Siena (I’m allied with France so I’m no too worried abou Milan’s allies) but why is it Poland/Lithuania join in on Milan’s side? Austria is allied with Poland but I didn’t think they could call any of their allies in because I didn’t declare war on Austria. Is this something new or has it been there all along and I just never noticed it before?

Also, anyone else find the latest build to be buggy with crashing and freezing? Pretty damn annoying.

1584

Austria is war lead, which jumped to them because they Defend the Empire as Emperor? War lead can call in their allies too. That’s why it’s very dangerous if alliances jump, at times it’ll go through 2-3 war leads before settling which means you could be fighting near 20 AI nations (worse than a coalition war). It’s not something new at all but it happens most often when you attack the HRE as Austria/Emperor will get lead over most nations. If you attack any nations allied to France the same thing almost always happens.

The only issue I’m having is the game likes to crash/lock up when I exit it. Otherwise it’s been fine.

1585

Ahhhh that’s what it is. Of course the Emporer is going to come to the aid of a member under attack doh

The wiki for genoa lists Tunisia as a good target to vassalize and take control of the Tunis node but I’m concerned about the Ottomans -.it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be at my door once they gobble up The Mamluks and Tripoli. The Ottomans are also allied with Algiers so it seems to me going after Tunisia is a lost cause. Any thoughts on that?

1586

I wouldn’t be too worried about the Ottomans getting all of the Mamluks and Tripoli in the early part of the game, which is when they’re dangerous. Once you get around land tech 15 or so Ottoman units start to become significantly inferior to Western ones, which you can use to your advantage. Just make sure to keep a large enough war chest to afford stacking up some Mercs above your forcelimits, if needed. Mostly, though, if you can control the Mediterranean you’ll probably be alright. That way you can shuffle armies back and forth between Europe and Tunisia as well as blockade the Ottomans, which helps build up war score and the enemy’s War Exhaustion.

1587

Ottomans are probably at their weakest yet in 1.7. I haven’t seen them kill off Mamlukes once in my 1.7 plays (which is frankly depressing!). Moscovy is doing almost just as bad now.

Genoa is real hard, they are basically a way weaker version of Venice in the same neighborhood. The only advantage they have on Venice is being in the HRE and they typically seem to get more mercantilism events. I don’t have any major tricks for them, it’s all situational. I would strongly suggest getting Trade ideas first however as that’ll up your naval FL and drastically increase your income. Going for Italy is probably your best expansion bet (vassals!) Doesn’t Tunisia start with a PU over Tripoli? That probably means you can’t vassal them in one war (not sure though). That’s not a good place to fight until you are stronger as the desert eats up manpower like crazy. Expanding in Crimea is possible if they attack you and Austria defends you (make sure you have some claims on them just in case). You can often ally Poland or Lithuania too. I’d go for Italy first if you can swing it, then Crimea and leave North Africa for later.

1588

I think one of the things holding the Ottomans back at the moment is that previous to 1.6, they used to have superior troops to the Muslim nations. Now their infantry is significantly weaker than Muslims starting at Land tech 15. Their infantry falls even further behind the muslims after that, until finally achieving parity… at tech 26. Ouch. That makes it really important to press the early-game unit advantage, which the AI isn’t really going to focus on like a player would.

1589

Wait, the Ottomans fall BEHIND the Muslim tech groups in military tech?

1590

Genoa was my first AAR! And they’re extremely difficult. I do have a bit of impatience today with the one or two province minors in that surviving for the first 50-100 years seems largely a matter of luck in opportunity. If the cards fall correctly there are opportunities you can exploit; if not, you get inevitably crushed and restart. That’s awesome but it takes a lot of backtracking over well worn ground till you get the result you need.

1591

Yeah they are difficult. I was riding high off of my Friesland —> Netherlands game and Genoa looked like it would play out like my last game but I failed to notice that can’t change your government to get a royal marriage with France and without France it’s very difficult to take new territory. I eventually expanded enough and formed Italy but I later regretted the decision and besides if I had started with the goal of forming Italy I would have picked anyone else except for Genoa.

There is a mission to grab Tunis but I took it so in the game that my missionaries were powerless to convert the provinces and so I just owned a bunch of useless desert.

1592

I thought the idea of the change generally was that instead of giving ROTW countries european units when they westernised (which made very little sense), they would buff their own tree of units and fill out gaps so that they were more comparable. However, they still have large tech debuffs so unless they westernise they won’t be going toe-to-toe with the europeans anytime soon since their tech will lag far behind. Isn’t the same applicable with Ottomans vs. Muslims, or are there unintended consequences here?

1593

ROTW units are closer to their Western counterparts, yes, but they are still noticeably inferior. The major difference now is that early Ottoman units used to be superior to everyone (especially Muslims), with a very large advantage through mid game. This combined with their better tech group really allowed them to beat up on the Mamluks. Looking at the wiki, Ottomans have some really shitty infantry from 15-26 whereas the Muslims have some stellar ones in that range.

The Ottomans still have a 25% tech penalty vs the 50% Muslims get, but now they not only lost the unit advantage but are at a disadvantage. I’m sure it’s a limitation a human player can work around, especially since their cavalry remain solid, but it’s my theory as to why the Ottoman AI is underperforming compared to what it used to do.

1594

So what are the differences between the Humanist and Religious ideas aside from the tooltip tips. I mean it sounds like you would pick Religious if you wanted to convert provinces to your religion while going the Humanist route means you intend on having your new provinces keep their native religion and everyone has to learn how to get along with each other. Is that about right?

1595

Pretty much. You can think of Religious as the aggressive group and Humanist as the passive. The former greatly enhances your ability to change religions and cultures to what you desire as well as providing a CB to everyone not your religion. Humanism on the other hand makes it easier to coexist with differing religions and cultures and provides a relations over time boost instead of the CB.

1596

One area of the game I still really wish they would overhaul is the economy, specifically trade goods. Sure, I get that this isn’t Victoria, but at the same time I feel like trade goods are largely generic, bland, and interchangeable. I tend to not care if a province has cloth vs grain vs fish vs iron, it’s all pretty much the same. I do appreciate that there is a bonus if you are the largest trader of a particular good, but that only benefits one country apiece, and only if you’re the top.

What I’d like to see is a system where trade goods can motivate me. For instance, if I’m planning on building up a navy, I’d love to look around the map to see where I can acquire some naval supplies. Sure, maybe I want to colonize the New World, but it’s just to get some tariff money from the colonies. There’s no motivation to go out there because I want/need access to tobacco or sugar or coffee.

Right now, there’s only a handful of trade goods that I pay attention to, such as chinaware, spices, and tea. It’s not because they provide anything interesting, they’re just the only good that is noticeably more valuable than the others. I was hoping this would be addressed in the first expansion since it dealt with colonization, but perhaps it’ll be tackled at some point in the future. Again, I don’t expect an economic simulation like Victoria 2, but it’d be nice if these trade goods made some sort of difference in the game.

1597

I’ve lamented this since the first EU Kevin - ironically I felt trade goods had a more noticeable profile than they have now.
By now I’m not convinced they even have a desire to “fix” this, and even if they do, I wouldn’t guess it to be in an expansion.

rezaf

1598

It goes back all that way, eh? I first started playing the series with the release of EU3 and while they were nothing special then, I seem to remember things like Iron and Wine being noticeably more valuable than grain and fish.

It seems like the VeF mod approaches trade goods along the lines I was wanting. Some trade goods provide bonuses based on how many manufacturies you have producing it.

It is a total conversion mod, though, and I tend to be a little wary of those since they’re often a very mixed bag. Does anyone here have experience with it?

1599

I seem to remember there also being certain bonuses if you had the most of different goods in EU3. For example wine would reduce revolt risk, unless you were a Muslim nation. Various other ones had reductions in ship costs, building costs, etc. Also manufactories were linked to the research sliders, and so goods that could support manufactories with a bonus (iron or copper for weapons, wine or sugar for refinery, silk for textiles) were more valuable. I’d always prioritize wine provinces when working around the Mediterranean for example.

Now it’s more or less irrelevant. Partly because the research is based on discrete values of monarch points, partly because buildings are greatly depreciated in EU4 compared to EU3. In EU3 I would build like crazy at all times. At the end game, in a large enough empire, I’d be building 2-3 new manufactories a year by the end. Now, by mid game, I almost completely stop building buildings at all. This in turn makes the manufactory bonuses less important, as they don’t get built. Compounding that is the bonus from having a matched trade good/ manufactory. More money, or trade goods which is the same thing, becomes increasingly less relevant. In a landlocked center of trade, maybe less, but for a Lubek, Antwerp, Constantinople it’s laughable. I’ll just build more light ships. It’s faster, cheaper, and doesn’t take monarch points.

So while a wine province is still preferable to a fish one, it has been subsumed under the general economic model. The added value is simply in the income the province provides, and that is neatly seen during peace negotiations in the warscore cost. Before I might take a less valuable province if I’d get a more valuable trade good. Now it’s max value all times.

1600

I’m not sure what they could do with trade goods to make them interesting and workable. Right now EU4 can be brutally unfair, tying trade goods into building ships or armies or anything would make the game even worse in that regard. If they just give you a slight bonus for production it’s not real change from how it is now. I sort of think their model now is good because only if you control a large portion does it give a bonus (and there’s no negatives). Certain nations are also predisposed to control certain trade goods and the bonuses generally compliment their nations. Also consider each province only has one trade good so most nations start with just a handful of different types if that.

The only things I’ve been disappointed with is PP is all funky now and it’s impossible to really stay at +50 unless you do a bunch of silly things on your rivals (privateers, support rebels, etc) that you normally wouldn’t do. Yet you’re forced to do it if you want +50 PP. So the PP system now is basically paying for PP if you want above +50, which means only large empires can really afford it. I liked it a lot better last patch, while it wasn’t perfect at least most nations could get lots of PP conquering rivals (which could be very situational and you sometimes never did). They also said you could rival anyone who rivaled you but that doesn’t work. If you look at PP values in the ledger you’ll notice that usually not one AI nation in the whole world is ever 50+. It’s clearly broken.

Also if anyone has been watching DDRJake’s WC of Ryukyu it looks like he’s going to do it again. His main exploits thus far have been forcing The Knights to make him a protectorate (-20% tech and AE no longer counts on him) and various exploits with missions. The main one is achieve religious unity where he sits at like 74% unity with humanism (so really 74+25=99%) then he builds a colony and gets 100%. Then the mission completes and he gets +25 ADM and +25 DIP and cancels the colony. Then he usually gets an easy mission like recover manpower after he queues up a bunch of troops and it completes after he cancels building them. Rinse and repeat and it provides roughly 150 ADM and 150 DIP a month.