Europa Universalis 4

[CraigM]

I’m playing a game as Denmark and I’m having some trouble integrating Sweden. When I try to annex Sweden, it says that I need to have her as a personal union partner for 50 years. Well, it’s been more than 50 years, and the only reason I can think that she won’t join is because she’s tried twice to break away. I’ve taken her back both times but I wonder if that resets the clock. I’ve tried to improve relations with her and have relations at +190, but she is still hostile (flame icon). How can I get her less hostile towards me?

Get bigger. No really, there is a certain amount of hostility inherent when a junior partner in a union is bigger/ stronger than the senior partner. I’d have to read up on the specific mechanics as of the latest patch, but if the size/ wealth of a vassal or union partner is too large compared to yours it makes integrating harder/ impossible.

[KevinC]

Yea, a superior force (or an equal one) is going to chafe at being a lesser partner in a union. If you’re big and nasty enough, you might be able to dissuade them from attempting independence. There was one game as Prussia where I got “lucky” and entered a PU with France, with me as the senior partner. It was pretty awesome but there was no way to hold onto them. After crushing their independence bid three successive times, at enormous cost, I eventually cut them loose. You tend to have fewer problems with you’re quite a bit stronger than the junior partner, though!

[pg1]

Generally the way to get Sweden integrated as Denmark is expand into the Baltic first. Take over Hansa or Teutonic Order or Livonian Order so you are stronger and have more provinces. Then you want to integrate Norway. Once Norway is integrated Sweden should be possible next.

Also autonomy is amazing. You can pretty much cut revolts to nothing if you raise it after conquering land. It makes you not as strong but it seems vital when you are small. Revolt risk and natural autonomy decrease also seem close to equal early game. If you conquer a province and it has 10% RR then you pop autonomy up 25%, it’ll go to 0% RR typically and stay that way even as the autonomy drops over time.

I still wish the AI was more aggressive in it’s peace deals. I once saw Prussia do like 5 wars for an OPM and they didn’t annex them until the 5th one. Makes no sense to me. Also the AI seems tweaked to be slightly less smart in movement. It means us less than perfect humans can catch them much easier.

This expansion is extremely good overall. Maps and game levels are often overlooked for their impact on the game balance and such yet they play a huge part in it. EU4 is very refreshed now that the map is completely different and expanded. Colonization probably has the biggest change due to it but it touches near everything.

[Benhur]

I eventually left a diplomat there to keep my relations at 200. At 200, they would see me as their rightful overlord, but anything below that and it was utter hostility. I eventually formed Scandinavia and got into a big rivalry with the UK. I’m embarking on a naval expansion and I have two big colonies overseas.

One thing that got me was my relationship with Lithuania. We were bestest buddies for many years, and then they suddenly got hostile. I didn’t get a big swath of land near them or change religion, but they got really hostile with me and I thought we were gonna throw down. Eventually they got nice with me again and now we’re besties once more. Weird.

[CraigM]

Had that with Hungary in a recent Brandenburg->Germany->HRE game. I was their greatest ally against Austria and Ottomans for 200+ years. Had a patch come in and alter some of the calculations for relations, and they broke our alliance. There is sometimes just weird things that go on like that. The fairly recent ‘wants your provinces: x,y,z’ really damaged the possibility of neighbors being friendly for too long.

[Benhur]

Hey, maybe Lithuania had a new ruler come in and covet some of my provinces. If I can actually trace something like that to a ruler with higher military skill or just a new personality, that would be awesome.

[KevinC]

Different rulers actually do have different personalities such as diplomatic, expansionist, etc, and they’re focused on different things. You can see a small icon for the personality type when you’re looking at the diplomacy window for that country.

I believe the AI nations also get relation-related events like players do. Pay 100 diplomatic power or lose X relations with a country, lose stability or gain a claim on another’s province and reduce relations, etc.

[MrGrumpy]

I picked up AoW and a couple other expansions I had missed a few weeks ago; didn’t start a game for a while, couldn’t decide who to play. Finally I kinda randomly picked Switzerland … and boy, am I glad I decide to make friends with France. Holy hell they are uber. My entire (relatively modest) expansion is due to France - they can squish pretty much anyone they want, whenever they want. Well, except the sprawling Ottoman empire and their ginormous navy.

Really liking a lot of the new changes; the army/navy template is really cool. Policies, beefed up rivalries, all good stuff. I’ve not done any colonization yet but thinking my next game will be w/ Pomerania and I’ll try it with them. Not sure how how I feel about the aggressive expansion penalities from force vassalization in a war. Pretty much guarantees instant coalition against you.

Still far too many negative random events though for my liking; I get a cycle of the same negative events repeatedly. I just find that really, really annoying

[KevinC]

Did you vassalize someone in the HRE? They definitely get a little upset about that! The new(ish) Influence idea group can help a lot with the AE and it helps to have diplomats improving relations with those around you.

Coalitions are especially sensitive early in the game, when you might be the only dog in the area that has AE. It seems like that really makes you stand out in the crowd. But hell, if you have France with ya, maybe you can just kick that coalition in the jimmy. :)

[MrGrumpy]

I did, Ferrara (sp.) Eventually the members left after biding my time and working the diplomats. You’re right, France could have beaten them all, but I didn’t want to risk their ire lol.

Also finding it strange which nations choose to rival me; Portugal rivaled me for a while and i have no idea why, I had no interaction with them, or threatened their trade, etc. Maybe we had a similar ‘power level’ or something.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

I saw this on my facebook feed from Paradox this morning. Worth a chuckle or two.

[KevinC]

Hah, that’s pretty good. :) Thanks for sharing that, BtF.

[CraigM]

Yup, it’s from their ‘Call to Arms’ preorder promotion. My favorite ‘Do you like lying to their faces while planning to swindle and backstab them?’

[KevinC]

Paradox is releasing the 1.9 update next week. It’s mostly about bugfixing, but they’ve also thrown in a few new features. One of them is implementation of a Disasters system, which replaces major revolt event chains like Peasants War, Civil War, etc.

Disasters are a new system that reworks the old ‘major revolt’ event chains such as War of the Roses, Peasants’ War and Civil War. Previously these would have a starting event with certain conditions, such as the Peasants’ War being able to start if you have low manpower and high overextension. The problem with these starting events is that the player did not know what caused them, and thus could not know what they did wrong or work to prevent them in the future without reading the actual event files or looking them up on a wiki. Furthermore, the event system in itself made them rather random, so that you could get a Peasants’ War even if you were below 25% manpower for just a single month.

This is all solved with the new Disasters system. Disasters occupy a part of your Stability and Expansion screen, and will show you which of these event chains you are at risk of experiencing. Each event chain has a number of conditions to be able to start, such as low manpower for Peasants’ War and low legitimacy for Civil War. Once these conditions are fulfilled, a Disaster can begin to progress towards occuring. Each Disaster has a number of conditions under which it will tick, for example high Overextension for Peasants’ War and low Stability for Civil War. It is possible for none of said conditions to be fulfilled, in which case the Disaster will not progress’ and its corresponding event chain will not start, but any previously accumulated progression towards starting will stay in case it is able to start progressing again.

Once progress for a Disaster hits 100%, the starting event for said Disaster will fire and the Disaster’s corresponding modifier will take effect. This modifier differs for each Disaster, but typically involves raising revolt risk across your nation. Each disaster has a number of events that can fire while it is active, such as the events that determine which parts of the country supports which warring house in the War of the Roses, and an ending condition, which if fulfilled will immediately end the Disaster, fire its ending event and remove its modifier.

The overall goal of the system is not to weaken these event chains, but rather to make them predictable, understandable, and to some degree controllable, removing much of the frustration and randomness from getting a Peasants’ War or experiencing Religious Turmoil.

[robc04]

I’ve barely played EU IV (or any other version). I always dabble for a game or 2 then move on. It’s one of those games that I get excited reading about it but then get paralyzed when I go to play. Once I get going it really isn’t as bad as it initially seems, but it does take a large amount of effort to get over the ‘inertia’ of not playing it.

This sounds like a great change to the system. There are so many moving parts that EU benefits from as much transparency as possible.

[Bateau]

Seems like there’s never a good time go get into these games. Every time I decide to give this or CK2 a serious try I read a post or news about an upcoming patch or expansion. I almost wish they’d stop working on these two games for a while.

[CraigM]

Eh play 'em now. They’re perfectly good as is, and honestly many of the features they are tweaking are the kinds of things you’ll only meaningfully interact with after 20-30 hours.

As for getting over the hump, well I think one of the most interesting possibilities of the Steam streaming is the possibility of having a friend ‘coach’ you while you stream the game for them. EU4 would be a perfect candidate for that kind of thing.

[KevinC]

Seems like there’s never a good time go get into these games. Every time I decide to give this or CK2 a serious try I read a post or news about an upcoming patch or expansion. I almost wish they’d stop working on these two games for a while.

Right now is an excellent time to jump in. The latest expansion, Art of War, has been the best Paradox expansion yet, IMO. And just to be clear, I’m talking about the base patch version of the game that released with Art of War. You don’t need the expansion content itself.

[robc04]

Right now is an excellent time to jump in. The latest expansion, Art of War, has been the best Paradox expansion yet, IMO. And just to be clear, I’m talking about the base patch version of the game that released with Art of War. You don’t need the expansion content itself.

I always get confused. What is in the free patch and what is in the paid expansion?

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Yeah, do I need the expansion to have the latest patch or can I play with the bundle I bought during the last sale that had everything except that new expansion?