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Europa Universalis IV |OT| A Game of Blobs

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
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Just fucking bullshit all the fucking time.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
It is actually possible. Move your capital to the "connecting" province between continents, which I think is the Sinai province for Asia to Africa, and then it'll let you move from Sinai to Damascus. Annoying you have to do it in that two step process, though.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
It is actually possible. Move your capital to the "connecting" province between continents, which I think is the Sinai province for Asia to Africa, and then it'll let you move from Sinai to Damascus. Annoying you have to do it in that two step process, though.
I sold all those provinces to the Ottomans because he was declaring war on me and taking my shit every 5 years.

Wound up baiting him into attacking me so he took Oman, and then it automatically moved my shit to Cape.

EU4 has given me a burning hatred of the Ottomans.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
I sold all those provinces to the Ottomans because he was declaring war on me and taking my shit every 5 years.

Wound up baiting him into attacking me so he took Oman, and then it automatically moved my shit to Cape.

EU4 has given me a burning hatred of the Ottomans.

If you think Oman makes you hate the Ottomans, play Albania. You will rage.
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
Man, I am so getting this:

What If? The Anthology of Alternate History
Stories in the Era of Europa Universalis IV


Coming soon - this is the ultimate collection of short stories set in a history that never was, inspired by the critically acclaimed Europa Universalis IV computer game by Paradox Interactive.

The Master of Alternate History himself, mister Harry Turtledove, is joined by twelve other writers, each of them creating their own history of what might have been. The point of divergence of every story in this volume is set in the age of Europa Universalis: 1444 to 1821. Three of these stories are the winning entries in the Paradox Short Story Contest 2014.

This book will be available soon, in ebook and a softcover printed versions, from major retailers. Like the Paradox Books Facebook page and follow us on Twitter to get the latest news!



Authors: Harry Turtledove, Janice Gable Bashman, Lee Battersby, Luke Bean, Raymond Benson, Felix Cook, Aidan Darnell Hailes, Jordan Ellinger, James Erwin, Anders Fager, David Parish-Whittaker, Rod Rees, Aaron Rosenberg

Editor: Tomas Härenstam

Type: Anthology of Short Stories

Release Date: May 15
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/books/eu4anthology

Harry Turtledove and Paradox, it's like the peanut buttercup of alternate history. I can't believe I didn't know about this before now.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Harry Turtledove? Wow!

I hope someone writes an alternate history where VENICE somehow takes over the Mediterranean.
 

Clevinger

Member
So I'm trying an Ethiopia game and it feels like even if my army is 3x the size of my enemy's I'll still probably lose the battle.

Any tips? Is becoming a protectorate of the Mamluks a good idea?
 

Kabouter

Member
So I'm trying an Ethiopia game and it feels like even if my army is 3x the size of my enemy's I'll still probably lose the battle.

Any tips? Is becoming a protectorate of the Mamluks a good idea?

- A protectorate is not a bad idea, the reduced tech cost is nice on top of the protection, and until you've expanded a ton, your trade income isn't going to be that massive anyway, you'll mostly rely on your one gold province
- Do not ally with the Mamluks, it will get you into a ton of wars you don't want to be in, mainly with the Ottos
- Do not expand too aggressively early on, if you become large enough, the Mamluks will see you as a threat rather than something to protect
- If you make it to 1550 or later, you will get an event chain that will give you good bonuses and excellent relations with the Portuguese, who are in search of Prester John. Rely on this.
- Grab exploration ideas and hop around the cape as quick as possible to get to European provinces which you can westernize off of
- Also, just an extra little thing, early on, the Arabian countries have a tendency to bash each other's faces in. If Yemen loses, and you have a claim ready, you can jump on and immediately siege everything. Meaning you don't fight their troops, but you can occupy all their stuff and vassalize. That will give you a buffer from the rest of Arabia as well as an ally with better units. It goes without saying that you shouldn't annex them before you've finished westernizing.
 

nacimento

Member
I hate that there seems to be a bug which makes it impossible to colonize a landlocked province next to your own if the coastal provinces became a colonial nation.
Goodbye, Russian central US dream...
 

Facism

Member
After a few days of fiddling with this game, i think i've got the hang of it. Western expansion as the Ottoman's going somewhat smoothly.
 

Mr.Mike

Member
What is the exploit (for those of us on trains through the English countryside)?

Starting as Ming you get military access through Tibet and a few other countries so you can reach Delhi. Give Delhi a loan, which they will surely fail to pay, giving you casus belli. Through some shenanigans you get the province of "Roh" as a core. (You can core a province if it is next to a vassal ) This allows you to move your capital to Roh, at which point you will get a decision to Form the Mughal Empire. Doing so removes the harsh "Inward Perfection" buffs from China, whilst leaving the factions system and all of their bonuses intact. This, plus the Timurid ideas you have now, mean you can basically core provinces for free.
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
What is the exploit (for those of us on trains through the English countryside)?
DDRJake found a way to remove the inward perfection modifier from Ming while retaining the benefits of the faction system. As a result, once he puts the temple faction in charge, he can instantly core any province for barely any adm points. He can also use this exploit to switch factions and cheaply increase his technology level. Essentially, the inward perfection malus is tied to Ming, but the faction system is not. The way to rid himself of inward perfection is to tag switch. Normally it's not possible for Ming to do this. However, due to some quirk in the programming, going bankrupt can also switch your culture. So apparently (I only watched part of the video) DDRJake conquered a province in northern India, released his Chinese provinces as vassals, and succumbed to bankruptcy, which allowed him to switch to the Iranian culture group and the Muslim religion. This allowed him to form the Mughal Empire and get rid of inward perfection. Plus he has the Muslim piety bonuses and the Timurid ideas.

There is one thing I didn't quite catch. He mentioned that, due to the way his vassal income contributes to the loan amount but not the interest payment, it would take him 33,000 loans to eventually go bankrupt. I'm not sure how he got around that problem.
 

Mr.Mike

Member
Europe Universalis has really made me realize how often steam goes down. Suddenly being forced to stop playing EU4 (well, ironman at least) really sucks.
 
There is one thing I didn't quite catch. He mentioned that, due to the way his vassal income contributes to the loan amount but not the interest payment, it would take him 33,000 loans to eventually go bankrupt. I'm not sure how he got around that problem.

That was about timing the loans: full-size Ming can get ~500 loans that garner up to 10K ducats, but as the two-province Ming he would need tens of thousands of loans to get the same amount (and guarantee bankruptcy). Loan amount is tied to base tax, not real income.

The bankruptcy quirk is a leftover piece of scripting from EU3 because of how poorly the AI handled collapse due to rebellions and bankruptcy.
 

Facism

Member
hours melt away with this game. Glad i got into it :)

European expansion had to stop after taking territory from Hungary because that little shite Austria has a bit of an entourage and Venice with Castille are cunts. Managed to take the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean from the Mamluks all the way to Alexandria, whilst making Vassals out of Tripoli and Fez. 10 years time i'll own the North African Coast. Mamluks ain't shit these days.

I'm allied with Crimea but they're being very aggressive in regards to eastward expansion. Timurids, likewise. Going to be a shitstorm when one of these alliances breaks down because every fucker in the vicinity is allied with all 3 of us.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Not Getting The Joke
Time to edit out my mistake...: -1 Stability
No one cares!: -50 Prestige
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I hate the AI peace making algorithms. I am playing a Byzantium game now and I had an alliance with Spain. The Ottomans declared war on me and Spain took over the leadership of the war. And in the first part of the war everything went smooth (mostly because I was outsmarting the ottomans army and got some big wins). We reached a +22% war score and although meanwhile another war started Spain did nothing to sign peace at this time. They signed it much later with two of my provinces gone, our alliance gone, their ducats and prestige trashed. Stupid AI. If I didn't have the alliance with them I would have been way better.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
I hate the AI peace making algorithms. I am playing a Byzantium game now and I had an alliance with Spain. The Ottomans declared war on me and Spain took over the leadership of the war. And in the first part of the war everything went smooth (mostly because I was outsmarting the ottomans army and got some big wins). We reached a +22% war score and although meanwhile another war started Spain did nothing to sign peace at this time. They signed it much later with two of my provinces gone, our alliance gone, their ducats and prestige trashed. Stupid AI. If I didn't have the alliance with them I would have been way better.

...why did you not unclick the option allowing your allies to give away your stuff when Spain started losing?
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
There is no option to unclick when it is a war against yourself (a defensive war with one of my provinces as the target of the war).
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
There is no option to unclick when it is a war against yourself (a defensive war with one of my provinces as the target of the war).

Huh. This is why I just don't ally AI nations unless I absolutely have to.
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
Even if Spain was willing to make peace (and they were probably not), the Ottomans wouldn't have accepted it. You need something like 40 or 50 war score to sign white peace early in the war. I think that's fair. With only 22 score, the war is still indecisive, and the Ottomans proved that it was advantageous to keep going. Of course, assuming the Ottomans wanted white peace, Spain never would have accepted it, because the AI can't recognize when it's in danger of losing a war even as it's still technically winning. That's a problem with most strategy games I've played, and I'm not sure what the solution would be. Maybe the AI should be more willing to accept white peace if it can't project military power or has no strategy interest in a certain region (which is probably more difficult to implement than it sounds). Or perhaps a simple palliative measure is to simply let the player signal to the AI that it wants to accept white peace as soon as possible.
 

Mr.Mike

Member
I would think that the AI does factor in strength and will seek white peace even if they're ahead in warscore if suddenly they lose a bunch of troops or whatever. Although perhaps the flaw in this is that it looks at this at a war by war basis, and not at all of their wars at once. Thus if they get into another war and are suddenly in over their heads, they wouldn't see that because each individual war they are in still looks to be in their favour. Perhaps if they considered a more holistic set of variables they would be better at figuring out when to white peace and such.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I think in a defensive war it makes sense for AI (as an ally and leader) to sign a peace as soon as possible, unless it "sees" a huge potential advantage. I think a leader of an alliance should behave differently if it's not the one directly targeted by the war and it has no real interest in the attacker's provinces.
 

i_am_ben

running_here_and_there
My wipe out Christianity game is not going well.

There simply doesn't seem to be enough time to conquer Europe without royal marriages or forming the Holy Roman Empire. I've got 120 years left and I've barely touched the Holy Roman Empire. Plus the western half of Russia still exists.

Moreover, Austria, Russia and a huge Bohemia have formed a super alliance and i can't seem to attack anyone without triggering a ridiculous alliance.

oh and don't even get me started on the coalitions.

I don't know why I'm continuing. Unbeknownst to me, in one of the last patches they added a "holy site conversion penalty" so i can't even convert Roma to islam.

Finally wiped out Christianity and on Easter no less!

God this was hard. Even though I didn't play it on Ironman it was still probably the hardest game I've attempted.

This game had a lot of challenges:

Taking out Portugal and Castile before they could colonise
Taking out France's coastline before it could colonise
Taking out England whilst desperately trying to track down its colonies
Stopping Moscovy before it could get to Siberia
Westernising whilst at war with both France and Russia (I noticed France had no manpower and the opportunity was too good to pass up)
Taking out a Commonwealth sized Poland with local nobility
Realising I couldn't convert Roma
Realising that if I unite Islam i'll have just enough to convert Roma
Seeing that Japan was being overrun by Catholic rebels despite the fact a Christian had never set foot in Asia (This was truly rage inducing)
Being absolutely despised by every county in the Holy Roman Empire
Breaking truce after truce after truce with the HRE coalition.
Rebels Rebels Rebels

Mann I don't know how people like DDR Jake do this shit. It was not fun at all.
 

i_am_ben

running_here_and_there
He uses exploitzzzzzzzzz.

Well I was tossing up whether I could feed the HRE electors Muslim provinces so I could flip them and they'd elect me.

I wasn't sure whether it would work though, or whether it would be any quicker than straight conquest.
 

Saganator

Member
Just a friendly PSA:

Gamer's Gate has both CK2 and EUIV and a bunch of DLC for 75% off. You can get each Digital Extreme Edition for $11.25. Pretty damn good deal. I just picked up Old Gods for like $3
 

Lyng

Member
Man I am thinking I should try Portugal and try to go for "peacefull" colonization....

Been trying to follow advice from here and Quill18 to do Muscovy, but getting hammerede every freaking time because the same thing happens.
I go to war with Novgorod and as soon as I am wiping them out, Kazak declares war on me and I end up in a two front war and get slaughtered...

Any advice? :) Any help is much appreciated.
 
I've started a new game as Burgundy and damn, I have a hard time replicating my strategies from EU3 : annexing the HRE OPMs is costly (and the Austrian emperor is warry of any of my tentatives), securing a corridor between Bourgogne and the low-lands is a headache, and there is France at the doors, patiently waiting for any mishaps... I'm at loss defining a good strategy for a secure expansion ^^;;
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I hate Westernization. I'm currently playing an Apache game (Ironman, random new world). I had level 12 for Admin and Diplo and level 16 for Military,+3 stability and around 500 points each when I started the Westernization. I have a big territory and I had 79 regiments. I was upping the stability to +2 as soon as it started (after the drop due to the Westernization) but immediately I got 3 events in a row that dropped it to -1. I managed to run it for 10 years, keeping the revolts under control, but then there were like 3-4 revolts popping up at one time so my 55000 man power went down the drain and after 3 more years I had to stop it.

Now I'm gathering more points and will try again, but it really kills me.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Were you maxed out on manpower, with a high army tradition? Those count for a lot, leaders especially.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
As much as you can as a native nation. It will take until the end of the game to be max on manpower with 71 provinces as I have now. I have the 7th manpower, bigger than Spain's.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
The time to fill manpower is static, because manpower growth per year is 10% of your max manpower, so it always takes 10 years to get to full manpower without any wars in between.
 

ZZMitch

Member
As much as you can as a native nation. It will take until the end of the game to be max on manpower with 71 provinces as I have now. I have the 7th manpower, bigger than Spain's.

Maybe next time stay small before you Westernize to keep it easier to manage? I guess that makes it harder to deal with the Europeans though.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Maybe next time stay small before you Westernize to keep it easier to manage? I guess that makes it harder to deal with the Europeans though.

Yes, that's a better strategy. But I managed to "connect" to a Western nation almost too late because of where I was on the map and how the map is. I would have lost a lot of time for nothing.

The time to fill manpower is static, because manpower growth per year is 10% of your max manpower, so it always takes 10 years to get to full manpower without any wars in between.

I had the manpower fully recharged, but I didn't have all the buildings in all the provinces, that is what I meant.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I made it on the second try after building Courthouses in almost all the provinces. I had just 3 revolts in 13 years.
 
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