1821

It certainly is. HRE gameplay feels a lot more open and less constrained than it used to. You’re still limited in your warmongering due to how much aggressive expansion you build up when fighting within the HRE but Austria is no longer an Imperial jackboot stomping on all of your ambitions. :)

1822

OK, so first off, here’s my li’l world in general in 1457:

Were I to pan out more, you’d see Muscovy as a big ol’ blob on the other side of Lithuania. I’ll explain the craziness that’s going on in a sec.

Here’s a closeup of me, as Brandenburg. I’ve got my starting three provinces (Brandenburg, Potsdam, and Ruppin), as well as Neumark, Hinterpommern…and hey there, is that Ostpreussen? Yes, yes it is. No idea if I’ll be able to hold it, but for now, it’s mine:

So here’s the crazy stuff I did in my “one more hour” last night.

First off, I’d fabricated a claim against Anhalt, back when it was just a little province that wasn’t much. Well, then, Anhalt became part of Magdeburg, and Magdeburg formed an alliance with Saxony and the Hansa, which made them more than I could handle by myself, obviously.

Saxony had gotten worrisome, too. They’re not just Saxony: Thuringen and Wittenburg are their vassals. That made them a thorn in my side.

So my claim against Anhalt was in danger of expiring (I’ve had that happen before, I think) and I took one more look at it before resigning myself to dealing with them diplomatically if I could. Hey look! This time it says Poland will join me. Bohemia too! And as I’d learned, where Poland goes, Lithuania usually shows up. Well. Let’s pick this fight. I declared on Magdeburg (which is the provinces of Altmark and Anhalt). My allies agreed. Their allies agreed. Let’s have a war!

It really wasn’t that huge a deal. I easily subdued Magdeburg, and the combined arms of Bohemia, Poland, and Lithuania not only kept Hansa at bay, but they also utterly occupied (I helped!) Saxon provinces. I let the war go on a bit and collected money from both Saxony and the Hanseatic folk in separate peaces, and then made Magdeburg my vassal! So woohoo! When you look at that map, Altmark and Anhalt are my subject provinces.

From there, I set about raising my relations with them to get them to 190 so that in 10 years time I can annex them painlessly. While that was going on, Poland called me to arms in their fight against the Teutonic Order. They wanted Chelmin, so I thought maybe I could sneak Danzig from them. No such luck. They landed 14,000 men in Danzig before I could get there.

So…I took the next best. I took Ostpreussen, which I’ll need to form Prussia anyway.

Meanwhile, Hungary joined the fight as allies of the Teutonic folks. Bad move, Hungary. Rather than fight the weakened Polish army they’d smacked around when I started the game off with a war, this time they ran into a Polish army backed up by the might of Lithuania. SO…right now the Poles and the Lithuanians are giving them whatfor.

In the meantime, though, I’d also captured Marienburg, because I’m a good ally.

But then I started thinking. Poland could end this war at any time and take whatever chunks of Teutonic Order they want. I certainly would have that coming to me, for the way I’ve abused them diplomatically in war treaties. So I did something either really clever or monumentally stupid: I made a separate peace with the Teutonics. They ceded me East Prussia, I gave them back Marienburg, and sent the troops home.

So…I’ve got a valuable province–East Prussia–but no land route to get there, and only a tiny navy that consists of 4 barques. I’m already trying to core them at considerable expense, but still. I can’t imagine Poland is particularly thrilled about me taking what I’d like for me and mine there.

And so that’s where we stand!

1823

Aaand I finally got crushed.

For 55 years I built a small little country up to be 10th on the list with an 91 score (whatever that means) running Brandenburg. Thing is…I felt sorta like Dave Checketts owning the St. Louis Blues hockey club.

See, Checketts actually didn’t have any money when he “bought” the team, but as a respected hockey front office guy and former prexy of MSG and related entertainment fields, he found it easy to secure financing from a variety of venture capitalists. Problem: owning a hockey team is guaranteed to lose you money. You maybe make a nice profit when you finally sell, but not until then.

So, Checketts, a guy without money, owns an NHL team…until finally the bills start arriving and it all crumbles and he has to abdicate.

I sort of built Brandenburg up that way. I didn’t actually have much of an army, and I sure didn’t have anything of an infrastructure. So…I just sort of mortgaged one alliance for another, then to another. Used bigger countries with bigger armies to help me consolidate holdings against the little 1- and 2- province countries of the north-central HRE. Whee! Being Bismarck is EASY!

Until, you know, Poland decides they’re tired of you. And until, you know, you Danish allies decide they want you to join them in a war against an HRE buddy who’s protected by Austria, and then a few months later your Austrian allies want you to join them against your Danish allies. Oops. And then Poland and Lithuania finally decide they’ve had enough of your nonsense country with it’s 16,000 troops and “navy” of 9 barques and invades you and Denmark and Austria tell you “Yeah, that’s a shame, dude.”

Anyway, blast of a game. Feel like as I went, I was beginning to grok a whole lot of different systems.

Now I think I’ll start over as either Castille or the Portuguese. I’m curious to see some colonization, I think.

1824

OK, Portugal, at least compared to the continental hijinx that ensue in the HRE, is kinda dull, no?

You can’t really declare war on anyone, so you just sorta sit there and watch the numbers go up until you can start exploration. I see how it can be appealing, but I want the furball of armies.

1825

My last game was Brandenburg->Prussia->Germany, and early on there are a couple of set triggers you have to watch out for: Once you start to take parts of TO (Danzig) the alliance with Poland is worthless, even if you can keep it. The more TO you consume (and you will want most if not all of it) the more the hate you because they want it. With enough effort, though, you can keep them from attacking you while you then turn west to work on Pommerania and the Baltic OPMs. Keep Austria as a firm ally above all, though. If you can’t RM/inherent Bohemia, they are going to be the main course of the meal between you and Austria. Keeping some major power allies who won’t drag you into wars you don’t want are key to your military machine and your ability to stay afloat.

Once you start to get Prussia going, though, its a great spot to be in, with terminator armies and plenty of places to go.

1826

Play the Ottomans. You’ll quickly be powerful enough to have some margin for errors but if you want, you can be (almost) constantly at war for centuries. Even if things go horribly wrong, you are big enough to be able to buy someone off by giving him some territory or something.

rezaf

1827

If you have provinces left, then you haven’t finished yet! If you’ve only lost a single province or two, then that’s nothing. You can’t always win in this game, unless you save scum. (Which is why playing Ironman is great…)

1828

Exactly. Paradox games like EU4 are built to be ridden through the ups and downs. You’re surfing history. It’s not like Civ where you hit a point and realize that because you won’t come in first place, you might as well stop playing!

-Tom

1829

In my current game of EU IV my beloved Portugal dominates. We are #1 in score and have formed Spain, have 3 very large overseas subjects, own much of south Pacific and have considerable holdings in Africa and India. We did the normal exploration start because there is not much else you can do. But we also built a substantial army based on the revenues of my overseas holdings and fabricated claims on Castile. Inevitably Castile and France get into a conflict. If you can time it right you can sweep in from the back and grab 3 or 4 territories before ending the war. Castile had a very difficult time recovering after thoroughly getting beaten by France, so after that one episode Portugal was stronger than Castile. We attacked 3 or 4 more times over the next 100 years, claiming territory every time to the point that Castile ceased to exist. France is the only threat remaining and since they pretty consistently end up with great rulers they are not fun to try to take on. We have a good alliance with the Austrians and British that keep them from attacking, leaving me free to conquer other nations like Morocco.

1830

Yeah, if you don’t get involved in Spain, then Portugal can be pretty boring until you get your colonial/trade empire up (one reason I recommend it for beginners). But if you decide to mess with the formation of Spain, then it can be very exciting (and challenging).

1831

Strange, as far as I remember, in my Brandenburg game last weekend, I got Unlawful Territory calls twice on my claimed provinces. I took care to ask only for provinces I have claim on. Looks like, I’ll have to test it a bit more. And the emperor ally is unwilling to join against other HRE members in a war. :-(

It might be boring if you only wait for the colonization game. Have no idea, never tried that. Instead I pounced on Moroco at the beginning, then continued with Castile, then alternating between them when the truce ran out. France is my good o’ buddy, so no prob with them. Can’t remember which year did I stop it, but I had most of Northern Africa in vassals, a considerable chunk of Western Africa, the whole western-southern coast (except 2 English provinces near Golden Coast and Kongo which is my protectorate) and up to Zanzibar in the eastern coast. Also own a decent amount of south India, Ceylon and the whole of Borneo. Colonial nations in Argentina, Brazil, Guyene, Mexico, Carribiean and started working on the Thirteen Colonies.
So to sum up, there was a lot of colonization in the new world and Africa. Warfare on the Iberian Peninsula, northern-central-east Africa, India, Indonesia, with the expected rebel smack-a-mole. And also diplomacy with France, Austria to hold the major powers on the happy side and Papal States to keep those papal influence points flowing.

Question to the others: If you can form Spain by Portugal, is it worth doing? Are their ideas and events so much better? And how is this nation switching thing work with ideas? In a Date->Japan game my national ideas changed to the new set, but it did not in the Aragon->Spain militarily game.

1832

EU4 wiki says it’s core as well.

1833

The first question is entirely conditional: do you like the ideas for Spain more than the ones for Portugal? This is entirely dependent on the play style you are going for. Portugal is great if you are looking to make money, Spain has a mix of colonial and military powers, with some Papal stuff thrown in. Portugal is nice for having pure colonial empires, Spain is better if you involve yourself on the continent. That said the question is also a bit moot, as if you form Spain as Portugal, you do keep your Portuguese ideas. Some country formations will have you change ideas, such as forming Japan or Prussia, other just give you a new flag essentially. You’d have to look at the Wiki to really know which is which unfortunately.

1834

That’s strange! Maybe it has something to do with having good relations with Austria (I typically ally or at least royal marriage them as Brandenburg)? I haven’t had them demand any of my claims back in quite a while, and I’ve put at least 100 hours into 1.9.2.

From the wiki:

This section may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.8.

The HRE emperor may request the owner of unlawful territory to return the province to its original owner…

Emphasis is mine. There must be a relations-based component or they changed it in 1.9, because I’ve been playing a lot in the HRE with Art of War and have yet to have him demand anything back I didn’t have a claim on. Now I have to go home and test! :)

1835

Portugal is very tame compared to the HRE, but the second part isn’t true if you don’t want it to be. You have those filthy heathens surrounding your holding in Cueta and even get some missions to expand the buffer zone. You’ll want either Humanist or Religious ideas if you plan on conquering the Berber nations, though.

Overall, though, Portugal is pretty tame… until your Colonial Nations get established. I just played a Portugal game over the weekend where it was one bloodbath after another as Caraibas and Portuguese Brasil dragged me into war after war with other colonial powers, including my former historical ally, Spain. Pro Tip: If you want to remain buddies with Spain, stay clear of conquests in Ceylon (and perhaps elsewhere in India). We went from best buds to SPANISH RAGE once I took the province of Kandy. So Spain beat me up and took my Kandy, I guess. :(

1836

I’ll probably play an Ironman game as Brandenburg in the near future, since they’re a blast to play, but this really was my first-ish game where I felt like I was starting to grasp how every system worked together, and as it went on I kept having “Oh, that’s how that works. Shoulda been doing that for years…” moments.

So, I’ll go back and revisit as less a n00b sometime.

1837

Dev Diary #1 for El Dorado is up. The Aztec blood sacrifice religion sounds pretty fun. You basically have a Doom counter which continually rises. In order to hold it off, you need to wage war on your neighbors to gather slaves for blood sacrifices. You can also sacrifice the rulers and heirs of your vassals, getting a greater reduction for how skilled the ruler was that you slaughtered. Of course, your vassals aren’t too happy with this. If your Doom counter ever reaches 100, you lose all your monarch points as well as your head, having your current ruler replaced with a 0/0/0 one. All your vassals also break free and declare independence.

There are a series of 5 religious reforms you need to take to get out of Doom mechanic, each step providing boosts (such as a free colonist!). After completing it and getting a Western neighbor, you get 80% of their tech and it enables Westernization.

They also talk about naval Exploration and the Treaty of Tordesillas. Rather than microing your explorers around, you send them out on exploration missions to chart coastlines, circumnavigate the globe, etc. They don’t suffer from Naval Attrition anymore, but once dispatched you cannot issue them new commands until they complete their mission and return. You also to send them in fleets instead of one lonely barque.

And as far as the Treaty goes:

In the El Dorado expansion, Catholic nations will be able to gain a similar sanction for their colonization by being the first nation to create a colonial nation in a colonial region while having positive relations with the Papal States. The first nation to do so will be given a ‘Papal Grant’, which speeds up the growth of settlers for them by +10 in that colonial region and slows down the settler growth of all other Catholic nations there by -20. A Catholic nation that violates a Papal Grant also gets -50 relations with both the nation that has the grant and the Papal States.

1838

That either sounds incredibly fun and exciting, or the most annoying thing ever.

Count me in!

Trigger glad you enjoyed Brandenburg. There is a reason it is one of the favorites for many EU players. It is powerful, if played correctly. There is quite a bit of stuff for the Prussian line, so it has the challenge and razor balance of minor powers, with the lavish attention of a big boy. My Brandenburg–>Prussia–>Germany–>HRE (done at the end purely because I could) was a blast. Seems like you learned quite a bit, and next go round should be even better. Keep the stories coming!

1839

Tell me about the siege mechanics, because even the tooltips aren’t helping me much.

I think that siege is a unit and leader stat, right? I know that eventually I’ll develop cannons.

Besides that, though. What am I looking at? How can I influence a siege to go quicker?

I ask, because I was just fooling around with the Ottomans for a bit, and if you start them in 1444, you’re at war with Albania. No biggie. Invade with 26,000 troops, and you start to siege them.

This particular siege of Albania lasted 2 years. 2 YEARS!

My thoughts: does having sea access count? Albania’s there on the coast. Could I have put some ships on their coast to blockade them to speed things up?

1840

Siege is a die roll to determine how it progresses. Every month (not game month, month based on siege time) it rolls a D14. The siege ends when a roll plus modifiers equals or exceeds 20. Siege stat of leader, # of cannons scaled to fort level, siege status (gained through die rolls events, max +5 for 5x the fort level in cannon), breached wall event (+3) all add to the roll. So theoretically a siege can end on the first battle tick if you have cannons and max leader, though unlikely.

That said several factors subtract. -1 per fort level, -2 for unblockaded sea province (blockade imply negates, not adds bonus), these also modify the roll.

Link here for more detail.

The siege box does have tooltips for all these factors though, so you can see the roll, and you can see the modifiers applied. Look next time, you’ll see a ship with a -2 below it to indicate no blockade.

So lets say you are facing a level 3 fort (-3) with a port that isn’t blockaded (-2) you have 6 cannon (+2 for 6 cannon/ 3 fort) and a siege 3 leader. In this setup you start at a modifier of 0. It is not possible for you to capture this siege tick. You roll, it gives you the wall breach event. You are now +3. Still need to wait. A few months pass, the siege events tick up and now you have a siege status of +3, for a total of +6. It is now theoretically possible to end the siege, though not likely yet, as it would require the D14 to roll 14 (14+6=20, yay you win). Now as events happen it’ll increase the odds of a success. You will also see the % line, that’s what this means. At the beginning it would look like -47% at the 0 bonus. Each event increases the probability. At +6 modifier combined the bar should read 7%, at +7 14%. This is the odds of getting the roll you need. At a total modifier of +13 it is roughly 50%.

This does mean that leaders are huge. A +6 leader can literally take a year or more off a siege. Combined with cannon and low level provinces can go in 2-3 months. Lacking a leader is a huge detriment. So pay attention, the higher the siege level, the more likely good events.