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Europa Universalis IV |OT| A Game of Blobs

R

robjoh

Member
I am still playing my Hansa game, and I doing decently been growing slowly in the north of Europe with the aid of France (which has a personal union with Denmark. My colonization effort is doing decently and I am for the moment hitting around 110 gold in trade per month.

I do however have a huge problem, every war I am fighting against any opponent with some kind of army (Austria, Poland). It comes down to me just throwing money on mercenaries. I am simply winning wars by using a large war chest.

Is there someone who could give some advice on how I should think when I organize my army? I do understand that my leaders is much worse than Austria as I am not fighting as many wars as Austria. But I am losing other wars that I think I should win.
 
K

Kabouter

Member
robjoh said:
I am still playing my Hansa game, and I doing decently been growing slowly in the north of Europe with the aid of France (which has a personal union with Denmark. My colonization effort is doing decently and I am for the moment hitting around 110 gold in trade per month.

I do however have a huge problem, every war I am fighting against any opponent with some kind of army (Austria, Poland). It comes down to me just throwing money on mercenaries. I am simply winning wars by using a large war chest.

Is there someone who could give some advice on how I should think when I organize my army? I do understand that my leaders is much worse than Austria as I am not fighting as many wars as Austria. But I am losing other wars that I think I should win.
Click to expand...

Are you behind in tech? Do you not have military ideas where your opponents do? Are you suffering too much attrition?
 
R

robjoh

Member
Kabouter said:
Are you behind in tech? Do you not have military ideas where your opponents do? Are you suffering too much attrition?
Click to expand...

Not behind in tech.
I have quality ideas and plutocratic (which I went with to strengthen the tech race and my trade empire, plus I have innovative ideas giving me total of -15% in tech cost).
Austria has defensive and offensive (I guess that explains a lot)
Some attrition, but not very huge.

My focus has mostly been on expanding my trade empire in Asia, the wars I am fighting is just to help my allies. I got some small land grabs from Austria but that it is.

By the way, I just noticed a thing:
I saved my game last night because I could not decide if I wanted to help the Netherlands in an offensive war that would include Austria on the other side. Now when I loaded the game I did not get the pop up, is it always like that? If you do not answer before you save you will auto decline?
 
F

Fitz

Member
robjoh said:
Not behind in tech.
I have quality ideas and plutocratic (which I went with to strengthen the tech race and my trade empire, plus I have innovative ideas giving me total of -15% in tech cost).
Austria has defensive and offensive (I guess that explains a lot)
Some attrition, but not very huge.
Click to expand...

Certainly does. :p Offensive and Defensive are generally the best military ideas, boosting almost every aspect of your armies. Most significantly the quality of generals, discipline, and morale. Quality is usually sub-par in the early game, with the % combat ability bonuses being better later on, the discipline bonus on its own isn't enough to compete with the other two tracks.

As far as army organisation goes a good rule of thumb per army is:
Inf : Cav : Art
X : 4 : X
e.g. 12:4:12, also ensure that total army size is ideally the same as your combat width.

Scaling down the number of artillery based on your income, increasing the cavalry numbers to 6, then 8 based on manoeuvre tech, and potentially lowering infantry numbers (keeping total inf + cav >= art).
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Yeah, went Offensive and Defensive in my current Brandenburg->Germany game. My armies wipe the board with everyone. Pretty neat, as I'm used to playing more trade/economy nations.

Those national ideas combined with Offensive/Defensive are really nasty. I can take huge casualties without losing morale.
 
T

TiredGamer

Member
I feel like I'm compelled as a military power to adopt Offensive and Defensive just to stay in the game, so I'd say those two shouldn't be as synergistic as they currently are.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Aristocracy/Quality/Quantity are just not that good. Too spread out or doesn't really help you win fights.

That said, I absolutely hate it when an AI takes Quantity because all it does is make my life harder.
 
R

robjoh

Member
So overall it seems that you have to go defensive and offensive independent on how you are playing. Just to keep yourself from getting crushed by some other player. As I for the moment do not have any open idea slot. Which should I go for first, offensive or defensive?

Colkate said:
As far as army organisation goes a good rule of thumb per army is:
Inf : Cav : Art
X : 4 : X
e.g. 12:4:12, also ensure that total army size is ideally the same as your combat width.

Scaling down the number of artillery based on your income, increasing the cavalry numbers to 6, then 8 based on manoeuvre tech, and potentially lowering infantry numbers (keeping total inf + cav >= art).
Click to expand...

My army size for the moment is somewhat larger than my combat width due to the fact that the stacks I am fighting against is larger than my combat width. So the X:4:X is close to what I am having. Somewhat more infantry as I thought that reserves could be a good idea. I am however already running with 8 cavalry and I am wondering if that might be wrong because I do not understand what you mean about manoeuvre tech.

Income is really not a problem, I am getting close to 100 gold per turn just from trade. My fighting style the last war has been wave after wave mercenaries. I can easily bleed away 1000 gold in one war, more if I stopped having around 5 colonies running at the same time.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I usually do 8/2/4 for early game and 16/2/8 for late game.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
It depends. Early game, cavalry is very good, and if you're Eastern or Muslim tech groups you should be much more heavily cavalry based than a Western tech army should be. It's not uncommon for me to start out early game even as Western to have more like a 2:1 ratio of Infantry:Cavalry. As Muslim 1:1 isn't terrible, and actually cav regiments are stronger than inf are (costlier too obviously). Later on when I start fielding large formations with artillery, cavalry becomes proportionally less effective. By the 1700's, strong artillery based armies are absolutely decimating cav heavy formations, especially with a good Fire leader.
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
So if someone were to attempt a world conquest, what would the easiest country to do so with?

I'm thinking it might be France > HRE. Other candiates I think would be the Ottomans, maybe Muscovy. Certainly England is a contender if you can win the Hundred Years War and get that PU with France right off the bat, then vassalize some electors.

Does anyone have a good strategy about winning the Hundred Years War as England?
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
Ottoman -> HRE. You can let rebels flip you to orthodox. Otto traditions give cheaper, faster coring. Take admin ideas for even cheaper. Add a claim and it's ludicrously cheap.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
How does becoming emperor of the HRE work as a non-HRE state. By Vassalizing electors?
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
HRE is so complicated ;~;

I should try to get into the HRE in the MP game.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
When you've done a lot of other stuff, it's pretty fun to deal with that new layer of complexity. My Brandenburg->Germany game has been my favorite so far because of it.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
My Brandenburg game was just me blobbing the shit out of the north HRE.
 
i_am_ben

i_am_ben

running_here_and_there
So what has been everyone's favorite goal they've set for themselves?

Mine have been:

1) wiping out Islam.
2) being the only European nation left as Russia.
3) controlling a single province wide nation that stretched from Lisbon to Singapore.
4) fleeing to the Americas as the Hansa and taking over the continent.

My next major aim is to wipe out Christianity but I have no Idea where to even start with that as not only would I have to take Europe (without any personal unions) but I'd also have to stop people colonising the americas.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Playing Austria is suffering. I assume it was easier during the previous patches but now it's just ridiculous how much I have to scrape and claw my way through reforms, unable to expand for fear of coalition blob, unable to diplo-vassal for fear of the relations penalty.

That or I'm just bad at this HRE thing.
 
Z

ZZMitch

Member
Do you guys have any way to deal with protectorate spam in the North America?

In my current game North America is so ugly because all the colonial nations have just been protecting all the natives instead of conquering them (for the most part), so now it just looks horrible...

For my next game I would like to get rid of this issue through a mod or even editing some code or something because it is annoying me and my Pretty Borders OCD :p
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
Haly said:
Playing Austria is suffering. I assume it was easier during the previous patches but now it's just ridiculous how much I have to scrape and claw my way through reforms, unable to expand for fear of coalition blob, unable to diplo-vassal for fear of the relations penalty.

That or I'm just bad at this HRE thing.
Click to expand...

It was worse previously. Maybe aggressive expansion and relations penalties about that were less severe, but there were a lot of cheap/broken ways you could lose the HRE. More than once I've lost the HRE because I was forcing people to convert back to Catholicism, causing me a relations penalty with EVERYONE. Now forcing conversions only pisses off protestants from what I understand.
 
G

Giard

Member
I'm having trouble understanding how colonists work. Here's a screenshot of my current game:
8LAFz8M.png
Click to expand...

I play as Scandinavia. The light blue and and pink territories are my colonies, the slightly darker blue territory to the west is still mine. For some reason, I can not send colonists to any of the remaining uninhabited lands, like the ones near the Great Lakes. Why? Two of my nations are touching it. It says that the closest unblockaded port I have is Stockholm, which makes no sense.

Any help?
 
Z

ZZMitch

Member
Giard said:
I'm having trouble understanding how colonists work. Here's a screenshot of my current game:


I play as Scandinavia. The light blue and and pink territories are my colonies, the slightly darker blue territory to the west is still mine. For some reason, I can not send colonists to any of the remaining uninhabited lands, like the ones near the Great Lakes. Why? Two of my nations are touching it. It says that the closest unblockaded port I have is Stockholm, which makes no sense.

Any help?
Click to expand...

It looks like because it is only counting the light blue territory as yours and since those territories you mentioned are only touching the Western most blue colony, which is landlocked. I bet if you conquered the light green nation there you would be able to colonize those territories since the uncolonized lands would be directly touching your coastal colony.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Having fun as France, I'm damn near invincible.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
fanboi said:
Hey hey!

Is this practice before an invasion on me?

I didn't realize our alliance was dissolved! Will renew.
Click to expand...

I had to bow out of the Austrian war so it went poof.

No, I was just wondering because I never really played European powers (Venice excluded) before now. It's only through my France game that I really understand the "Europa" in "Europa Universalis 4", They get to experience all facets of the game in full, whereas most non-western powers are stuck playing tech catchup forever. I actually spammed the entirety of France with Temples and Constables because I had too much ADM!

Oh yeah, I don't know if you guys know this but I think there's a bug where the AI takes ~25% less AE from everything, which explains why AI Austria blobs so much faster than Human Austria.
 
G

Giard

Member
Haly said:
Oh yeah, I don't know if you guys know this but I think there's a bug where the AI takes ~25% less AE from everything, which explains why AI Austria blobs so much faster than Human Austria.
Click to expand...

Isn't that just a Lucky nation bonus?

ZZMitch said:
It looks like because it is only counting the light blue territory as yours and since those territories you mentioned are only touching the Western most blue colony, which is landlocked. I bet if you conquered the light green nation there you would be able to colonize those territories since the uncolonized lands would be directly touching your coastal colony.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I wish I could get the light green nation, but my pink colony has it as a protectorate. :(
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...lth-of-Nations-expansion%96-Developer-diary-1

Welcome to the first of several dev diaries of the next EU4 expansion Wealth of Nations.

By now you have probably heard a bit about the upcoming expansion, there have been some press about it, but in particular you have been able to follow some of the new features in our Developer MP stream (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...XMdqg5ADde-G2o) Still, I will take this opportunity to just quickly go through what you can expect from it.

More gameplay, less fluff
The previous expansion had a few really visible game altering things such as a completely randomized new world, a new type of dynamic nations which changed how you controlled your American colonies and completely new mechanics for the native americans, perhaps a bit disrespectful to call it ‘fluff’, but bear with me. These features required quite a big investment in development time and made a big impact on how you play EU4. For Wealth of Nations you can look forward to towards more features but perhaps less headline grabbing features, in other words more interesting gameplay changes but perhaps not so many features that force you to completely rethink your priorities.

A focus on trade
The main focus of this expansion is going to be trade, as the name suggests. We are not, however going to change the the base concept but instead we are going to look into what we can do to strengthen the strategic choices and sharpen the conflicts that come from trade. We are going to add Trading Companies that allow for more specialized trading empires, we are going to add new diplomatic actions and types of peace treaties, privateers and things like that.

Not Just Trade
Just as with the previous expansion, Conquest of Paradise, not all features we add are going to fit the chosen focus. When we design features for our expansion we they usually fit the bill of either the what the expansion is about or what we really want to see in the game sooner rather than later. Like the Fervor features specially for the Reformed religion or a brand new mechanic dealing with competition among nations that we have not told you about yet, more on that in a later dev diary (or in the MP stream in a couple of weeks).

Some Free thing, some Not Free thing
As always some new features are going to be in the expansion and some in the major patch released at the same time. We want to be able to add radical changes, but we don't want to add features to expansions that are vital for the game balance or require us to remove old mechanics, so you get them for free. This is a living game that will hopefully continue to evolve for many expansions to come.
Click to expand...

attachment.php
Click to expand...

Pirates collecting trade income? Madness. But it does make the whole "protecting" trade mechanic make more sense.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I wish there was more stuff to do with money.

Right now your options are:
1) Make buildings. Usually not viable unless you're ahead of time in tech. Don't even get me started on non-European tech groups.
2) Hire new advisors. Advisors go tier by tier so sometimes you can hire one additional +2 advisor but you won't have enough to support a second one.
3) Hire Mercenaries. Mercenaries suck and are inefficient. I only use them as a last resort or to fight off rebels in an area I don't have overland access to. There is no way in hell I'm maintaining a Mercenary force.
4) Go over your Force Limits. This is the only real "dump" for extra cash at the moment.
5) Go over colony limits. This is also another option if you're playing a colonial power.

I tend to play trade empires so I'm sitting frequently on like +30 with nothing to do with all those ducats in the lategame, despite getting triple +3 advisors. I remember one game, I forgot which country it was, where I was sitting on 10k Ducats with nothing to spend it on. Ridiculous.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Shrink your army and build more?

But yeah, as a late game economy/trade focused empire, it becomes really apparent that the only true limit in the game is monarch points.
 
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