1861

Interesting. I really could go for more diplomats, and I’m probably going diplomatic next. I like to use vassal feeding, and though it i not nearly as dominant a strategy as it was in 1.3-1.4 days, it still helps. Right now I’m using the Byzantines to extract the remaining Greek provinces, and just wrapping up my last go against the Mamlukes to take all of Syria. Got the mission to conquer all the Levant, and after this war I should have around 4 provinces left to do so (counting the Syrian ones I’ll annex next). I’ve been running 2-3 over my diplomatic relations limit most of the game, though that is pretty normal for me.

Your route is very different than how I am going. It is an interesting path though, and given hindsight I may have taken the Administrative idea over religious. Granted it has helped, sped along religious unity nicely, but the holy war isn’t as useful as I hoped. Mainly since I still prefer to have claims before declaring war. It’s been nice, but not as useful at the moment. Perhaps once I start seriously pushing towards the HRE (got claims on half of Naples, moving troops to attack now).

I do really like some of the new features since my last game. In particular I have made good usage of transferring occupation status. For example being able to transfer Naxos to my Byzantine vassal. Same for growing Georgia against Qara Quenyu. That alone makes a huge difference, much better than having to try and sell provinces to a vassal after the war, yet taking full aggressive expansion for myself. Also the new feature showing trade effects for fleets is really helpful. Rather than simply having to send and see, I can actually get the effect in advance, and browse trade nodes for my fleet. Very nice.

Anyhow here is 25 years in

and the diplomatic map

1862

Dev Diary 4 is out. Still no announced release date, but PDXCON is going on now and I believe the lead designer for EU4 is up tomorrow, so hopefully that information will be available then.

Dev Diary is shorter than the previous ones but still covers some gems. You can send your Conquistadors on missions to discover the fountain of youth, the Seven Cities of Gold, etc, and that leads to all sorts of dynamic event chains. While the Fountain of Youth and the like don’t actually exist, you can still find some unique discoveries that confer permanent boosts to your nation’s tax, prestige, etc.

They also are tweaking trade a bit. Colonial Nations of 10 provinces or more now provide a merchant to the overlord, similar to Trade Companies. They’re also reworking inland trade and adding a Caravan Power component, which is based on your country’s base tax (capped at 50 tax).

1863

They also are tweaking trade a bit. Colonial Nations of 10 provinces or more now provide a merchant to the overlord, similar to Trade Companies.

Oh, that’s nice. I’ve been wondering what the point of expanding colonial nations was apart from denying territory to your rivals.

1864

I am making my first serious attempt at actually playing one of these paradox games. I watched a bunch of videos, but whoever recommended just jumping in and figuring it out as you go along was right. I’ve been treating it like a strategy roguelike, I pick a random country, make a bunch of horrible decisions, and die within the hour. Learning is fun.

I do have a question. I was playing as Castile the other night. I made friends with France while I was waiting for the truce with Grenada to expire. The hundred years war broke out and I got pulled in as France’s ally. Portugal was allied with England and had a puny military compared to mine, so I stomped them and sieged all their provinces. I didn’t get anything for my efforts though except a bunch of prestige.

Is there a way to sue for peace and annex the provinces you’ve taken over from a country who isn’t the main target of the war? The war was France vs England, Portual and I were allies of the opposing powers, can I sue Portugal for peace? If not, what is the point of going to war with your allies?

Being a country is hard. Especially when you don’t know much about history. This must be how normal people feel when they try to watch something like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones and haven’t been soaking in fantasy tropes for most of their life.

1865

In addition to the new merchant change, colonial nations provide you 50% of their trade power, a lot of naval forcelimits, and the tariff income off of them is not insignificant. Unlike vassals, who pay 50% of their tax but no production or trade, a CN tariff provides you a percentage of all their income.

1866

Oh good, at first I thought you were going to call me an idiot. :)

Regarding warfare, there are some rules in terms of peace deals:

-If you are the War Leader for your side, you can make separate peace deals with individual nations. There are some exceptions, such as if they are a vassal or a part of a coalition against you, but in general this is true.
-If you are the War Leader, you can make peace with the opposing War Leader which concludes the war for all nations.
-If you are not the leader, you can make a separate peace deal only with the opposing war leader. Peacing out separately tends to irk your ally a little bit, so make sure your relations are sufficient to take the diplomatic hit.

So in your scenario, you could make a peace treaty with England, but not with Portugal. France could make a separate peace deal with Portugal, though, including granting you land.

Now, I don’t want to bombard you with too much info, but the likelihood of your war leader ally granting you land in a peace deal is influenced largely by a couple factors: The casus belli under which the war is being fought and whether or not you have claims on the provinces you have occupied.

In the case of the HYW, France is fighting a defensive battle against England pressing their claim to the French throne. It is diplomatically expensive for them in this type of war to seize territory from an ally of England, such as Portugal. Because of this, and your lack of Claims on Portuguese territory, the French AI will be unlikely to pay the cost of granting you land in the peace deal. That Portuguese province is going to be 2-3 time as expensive as taking some of the English-controlled territory in France back.

In general, the AI is usually pretty good at making sure you get some land that you have occupied, as long as you have fabricated Claims on it. Of course, to make sure you get exactly what you want it’s best to prosecute your own war and convince France to come and help you. Then you get to set the peace deal exactly how you’d like.

1867

In addition to the new merchant change, colonial nations provide you 50% of their trade power, a lot of naval forcelimits, and the tariff income off of them is not insignificant. Unlike vassals, who pay 50% of their tax but no production or trade, a CN tariff provides you a percentage of all their income.

Sure, I get that, but it hasn’t been obvious to me why, given a limited number of colonists/manpower, I should try for a big colonial nation as opposed to lots of smaller colonial nations (or direct colonies).

1868

Oh, gotcha! For me personally, I find building up a large CN has some benefits. They’re stronger and less likely to be destroyed by another CN and they provide more tariffs and more trade power for each province I add to them. The more money they have coming in, the more they have to build up infrastructure and the more I can skim from the top.

I found multiple smaller colonies can have benefits strategically (more ports to base out of), but I may not have enough Merchants to take advantage of their trade. If I do, they can be quite nice as long as they don’t get swamped by another CN.

In general, I often colony-hop my way to the Caribbean and try to lock that up as much as possible. So much trade flows through there and the colonies are quite rich in terms of base tax and goods. From there I usually like to establish a CN foothold in each region, then expand the ones I’m most strategically interested in dominating. I’m really going to have to re-examine my approach with the expansion changes.

1869

Wow, that is great info, thanks Kevin.

1870

So not content to simply do Sultan of Rum, I’ve decided on even grander ambitions. Unifying Islam, and recreating Mare Nostrum as Bizim Deniz. So far 40 years and moving well. Already outside Rome. In the process of stripping Venice of all non HRE territory, completed taking Levant.

I’ve also taken an Idea Group I’ve ignored before. Already having religion, and having plenty of diplomats, I’ve forgone the diplomatic group, which was my plan nest. Instead I’ve gone for Influence. And it has been great. My income got a very nice boost, get faster claims, and annexing Syria got a major reduction (annexing a 50 base tax vassal is SLOW). It really is a very different feel from how I play, say, Brandenburg.

One thing, and Kevin you’d probably have an idea, how hard is it to convert Rome? I had moved aggressively into Italy, but when I decided to go for Unify Islam I wondered if Rome is even convertible. I’ve seen some talk from older versions that it was nearly impossible, I was wondering if after Art of War it was possible or not. If not I’ll take everything else and leave the Pope be… for now.

1871

Rome is difficult to convert, but the Cathedral (top-end Government building) adds +3 local missionary strength. I was able to convert Rome once I constructed that building. I was lacking Religious Ideas if I remember correctly, but full Piety + Cathedral + Missionary strength advisor was able to put me over the top.

1872

I knew you would have an answer! Between the two of us I think most of the minutia are covered ;)

Thanks, by the way, I feel much better about taking Rome now. It’s such a juicy, rich, province to leave alone for too long. Mmmm all that base tax.

1873

Haha, yes we do. Who needs a wiki when you can post on Qt3?!

1874

Dev Diary #5 is all about Pirates!

1875

HOLY CRAP DOES THAT SOUND AMAZING!

The colonial game has always felt like it lagged behind in terms of the historical spice. Treasure fleets? Spanish Banking Crisis? Being Piet Hein?

I’m so in. That should definitely give more historical flavor to colonies.

1876

That really does sound cool, though obviously only really for New World colonisers.

1877

Yep! So we had an expansion related to North America + Colonizing and now we have one for South/Central America. We also had one that dealt with trade and introduced Trading Companies. I’d love if the next expansion fleshed out Asia. Japan right now really suffers from the Autonomy addition in Art of War and Ming just tends to be horribly boring for me. It’s too crippled to be much fun but too big for it’s neighbors to bother you and attack you. That is until you Westernize and then you’re an unstoppable juggernaut that rolls over everybody.

The Celestial Empire mechanic does a good job of making sure the AI Ming doesn’t conquer half the world like it routinely did in EU3, but it sure isn’t much fun to play (IMO).

1878

Yeah, the biggest change in Asia is the increased province density. That is a good change on balance, but at this point what we need is basically the EU4 equivalent to Divine Wind.

1879

Patch notes! Get your patch notes!

1880

Hmmm, very interesting. One thing that caught my eye: they removed various byzantine cores on Chios, Naxos, Trebizond and Corfu. Glad I’m already past that part of the game, as they were very useful when feeding my Byzantine pet before annexing. While their reason, to keep Byzantium from popping back up after destruction, it does seem that will be the final nail in the coffin for Byzantines being playable at all.

Splitting Catalonia in two? Will be interesting to see how that is handled. Art of War basically buggered my long term Germany campaign beyond playability with the new provinces. It is only one add, so the impact should be minimal.

Royal palace is +.5 legitimacy? A 5x increase? That actually is nice, makes it useful. Maybe I should have taken the weak heir event when my 4-6-6 heir died (DAMN YOU RNG). +.5 would have helped a lot. +.1 was almost pointless.

The Occupation of Rome stuff is really interesting. Always been a pain to conquer Rome, which makes sense, and that will really up the pressure on Catholics. I like how they make forming Italy cancel all penalties though, a good choice.

The lower combat ability for conquistadors? I approve. It now makes sense to use regular generals, where before once you unlocked conquistadors or explorers why not make all generals that type.

Overall a bunch of interesting changes. Most are flavor stuff, and not huge deals. Doesn’t seem there is anything that will break current saves, or at least I’m not seeing it. Good, still running my Ottoman game, and nearly 100 years in. Would be really irritated to have it get screwed up when I’m closing in on several achievements. Could take Sultan of Rum almost at will, and working towards India for that one.