Europa Universalis 4 Thread 2: Comet Sighted!

[Frog Dragon]

So, Art of War is coming tomorrow. The associated patch also has a lot of interesting stuff.

I like the idea of more Asian and African provinces. Playing Western Europeans doesn't appear hugely to me in this game (currently trying a Mamluk run. Kebab+Timmy alliance is a problem. My current plan is to provoke war with Timmy, then try to punch out the Ottoman navy with an over-force-limit galleystack of my own and blockade Istanbul, hopefully forcing white peace and allowing me to go to town on Timmy).

Anyway, there are some things that I'm a little leery about. The colonial local autonomy thing is one. Apparently all colonies have a permanent minimum of 50% local autonomy, which was intended to make same continent colonization more on par with overseas colonization (which have their own penalties). Unfortunately, this would seem to shaft Americans, sub-saharan Africans, and Polynesians hardcore (because they will only ever get 50% returns out of land that is literally right next to them). It also swings a nerfbat at Russia, which might be appropriate given that they often eat northern China. However, stronger and more numerous Asian provinces would also curtail this behavior.

Unsurprisingly, this change got a lot of flak over on the paradox boards. Luckily, this can be removed by changing just one variable.

Also, apparently hordes never upgrade their unit types? I just read about this and it seems silly. In general, it seems like hordes become easy to roll over by 1600, which seems rather silly and ahistorical. Maybe I should just download MEIOU and Taxes....

Also, since I wrote this post over a long period of time, I played through the Timmy+Kebab vs Mamluk war in between. I managed to get Kebab out of the fight by crushing them navally, but I still had to revoke cores on their territory and give Algiers back cores to get them to accept peace. However, I then realized that Timmy+their vassal Georgia still outnumbered me twice over, and while they had worse units than I did, they had better generals. I wound up with +20% warscore through my tried and true tactic of "hide on the mediterranean coast and pick off siege stacks that wander too close", and I got peace on Timmy off that. While I didn't fulfill my original goal of destablizing Timmy, I did get a rather important concession. Annul treaties with Ottomans.

Isolating the Ottomans has been the #1 foreign policy goal for a while now.

Now, onto forcevassalizing Algiers while Ottoman is still truced.

Edit: Nevermind, that doesn't work. Ottoman will answer a defensive call even when truced.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Question: why are the central Asian Turks being called Kebabs all of a sudden? It strikes me as a bit racist, I'm confused as to where it comes from.

[Frog Dragon]

It's a Polandball joke, and one I've seen used quite a bit with regards to EU4. I just found it amusing for entirely childish reasons. Similarly, French are Baguettes and Austria are Schnitzels. I can stop using it if it's inappropriate though.

Edit: Aw yisss, Timmy wound up in a war against the Ottomans, and they're losing, and I have CBs on them. It's over now Timmy, time to collapse like you should've 50 years ago.

[Leecros]

I've gotta say, i really like the addition of all of these new provinces and nations to play with, but i have to wonder why they decided to add some eastern siberia tribes in. Chavchuveny, Khodynt, Kamchatka, and Chukchi(ChuckyCheese). I've played around with them a bit and they tend to end up having some of the same problems that native americans do...There's just nothing to do. They don't even have the Conquest of Paradise stuff that they added to native americans to make them more interesting to play.

Heck, the only advantage they have over the native americans is that they have the chinese tech group and honestly, i'd have been happy if they were given the native american idea group and worked on the native american mechanics....or something similar.

They're just kind of there and I don't see them having any impact on the game except as fodder for Russia, Japan, Manchu, or the Oirats.

[Terraoblivion]

Fodder for the Manchu, Oirat and Japan isn't a bad thing, though. Making them stronger in the face of Russia is definitely helpful for game balance.

[Leecros]

Fodder for the Manchu, Oirat and Japan isn't a bad thing, though. Making them stronger in the face of Russia is definitely helpful for game balance.

except...there's only four of them, each only has one base tax and doesn't border anybody. So it's pretty unlikely that the AI will go for them.

players...sure, but they're all only 1 base tax, so i don't really think that it helps them that much. the Increased provinces in Asia are probably much more relevant to the asian nations being more competitive than 4 tribal nations that doesn't really seem to fit in.

[Terraoblivion]

Okay, if they were only given one province each, then yeah, they're pretty much pointless. Even Kongo has three provinces and one of them is actually great and the North Americans have their special mechanics giving them stuff to do and making them more able to stand up to Europeans than their tech group would lead you to believe. Better provinces too.

Still, can't hurt to give members of those people or their descendants some recognition.

[GnomeGninjas]

Has anyone played as Provence before? I've reclaimed Avignon and vassalized the Papal State. My allies are Castille, Hungary and Milan. The Hundred Years War is about to end and France has ~6.5 war exhaustion and ~3.5K manpower. I feel like I should stab them as soon as it ends (Or possibly I should separate peace England and declare war now?), before they annex their vassals. What should my strategy be?

[Leecros]

Okay, I was wrong....I think they can migrate, they just don't get the other native shenanigans.

Which, doesn't really help them in the long run, except in monarch points, but even then...

Has anyone played as Provence before? I've reclaimed Avignon and vassalized the Papal State. My allies are Castille, Hungary and Milan. The Hundred Years War is about to end and France has ~6.5 war exhaustion and ~3.5K manpower. I feel like I should stab them as soon as it ends (Or possibly I should separate peace England and declare war now?), before they annex their vassals. What should my strategy be?

I've been considering playing them, since they have their own National Ideas now, but I haven't gotten around to it yet...

I don't know what position you're in manpower-wise, but when dealing with France...It's probably best if you try and get an alliance first. Check to see if Aragon or Castile or Austria will ally you when you're not at war and if they do, then i would probably separate peace England and attack France. Not that i think separate peaceing England will do a lot...It's probably most likely that France will ask them for peace when you declare war on them, but on the off chance that they don't...

[Narkis]

except...there's only four of them, each only has one base tax and doesn't border anybody. So it's pretty unlikely that the AI will go for them.

players...sure, but they're all only 1 base tax, so i don't really think that it helps them that much. the Increased provinces in Asia are probably much more relevant to the asian nations being more competitive than 4 tribal nations that doesn't really seem to fit in.

It's very likely that the region will be overhauled in a future DLC. The hordes as a whole are in a pretty sorry state as it is.

[Leecros]

It's very likely that the region will be overhauled in a future DLC. The hordes as a whole are in a pretty sorry state as it is.

Maybe...It's a bit too far north to have much to do with Hordes though. I mean we're talking about Northeastern Siberia, not Mongolia or Manchuria. My disappointment is the fact that they already have mechanics in place for them to be more interesting than they are(the native mechanics in the Americas), but the only mechanic they appear to get off of it is the ability to migrate(I think...at least the button's there when you click on the province).

I guess it's probably just that they want to keep Conquest of Paradise DLC stuff out of the Old World, but that seems like a dumb reason*

*I'm a little biased though considering i own Conquest of Paradise



edit: They do get the ability to migrate

[Narkis]

I don't see Paradox fixing the hordes and not touching these guys. It wouldn't require that much effort.

[Frog Dragon]

Looks like there's a beta mode for 1.7.3 now, so I can let my game patch. Wouldn't want to break my lovely Mamluks --> Egypt run.

Timurid and Ottoman actually managed to ally each other AGAIN. This became apparent when I actually went for my long-since planned vassalization of Algiers, and Timurid, Ottoman, Milan, and Mali all joined the war. On my side? Me and vassals.

....whoops.

No worries though. By that point Ottomans and Timurids had both been weakened by both me and Europeans, and Mali, despite a respectably sized army, was a non-factor because their techs suck (my mil tech is actually Europe-level at 26). So I just sieged up Anatolia and kicked Turks about a little bit before peacing out for some Algiers provinces (couldn't full-vassalize Algiers. Had to grab provinces, eat the overextension, and attack again later for the vassal) and some other minor stuff.

At this point it seems like I can scrap with basically all of my immediate neighbors and come out on top.

Also, is there any way to peacefully annex a Sub-Saharan African nation? Due to an alliance with me and me honoring calls, Adal has grown quite large (Because if I so much as sneeze on their neighbors, they're done for). They have been somewhat useful in letting me have grab stuff for myself while helping them conquer (most notable, they went after Kilwa, who was guaranteed by GB.... great chance to steal their colonies in Zimbabwe and Madagascar). However, once I chunk Mutapa and Kilwa for good, Adal will be hemmed in by my territory and useless to me as an independent state. Do I have to war them to annex them? Protectorates are useless unfortunately.

Also, tactic I have found useful. Naval forcelimits are not a limit, they are a misguided suggestion. Having like 160 ships to a forcelimit of 100 lets me both protect trade and stomp on Otto on the mediterranean. Since Galleys are cheap and strong on inland seas, the maintenance costs don't really hurt. Light Ships pay for themselves anyway.

[Leecros]

Also, is there any way to peacefully annex a Sub-Saharan African nation? Due to an alliance with me and me honoring calls, Adal has grown quite large (Because if I so much as sneeze on their neighbors, they're done for). They have been somewhat useful in letting me have grab stuff for myself while helping them conquer (most notable, they went after Kilwa, who was guaranteed by GB.... great chance to steal their colonies in Zimbabwe and Madagascar). However, once I chunk Mutapa and Kilwa for good, Adal will be hemmed in by my territory and useless to me as an independent state. Do I have to war them to annex them? Protectorates are useless unfortunately.

Unfortunately the only way to do so would be to hope for them to westernize....This is quite rare and i usually only see at most 1 or 2 nations do it each game.

Plus after they westernize, they'll auto-break free of being a protectorate. Which if they've grown too large to be diplovassalized, you'll have to go to war with them anyway.

[Frog Dragon]

I guess I'll just have to invade them then. There's no way they're westernizing since in a short time, I (Egypt, non-westernized muslim tech) will be their only neighbor. Unfortunate. That's a lot of minority-culture provinces to core. At least they're Sunni. Would Personal Union also work since I have Royal Marriage with them? Not that it's very likely anyway with the Sunni heir chance boosts.

[GnomeGninjas]

I guess I'll just have to invade them then. There's no way they're westernizing since in a short time, I (Egypt, non-westernized muslim tech) will be their only neighbor. Unfortunate. That's a lot of minority-culture provinces to core. At least they're Sunni. Would Personal Union also work since I have Royal Marriage with them? Not that it's very likely anyway with the Sunni heir chance boosts.

Non-Christians can't get personal unions anymore.

[Frog Dragon]

I was still in 1.7.3 because I didn't want to break my save.

Spoiler: Finished Egypt

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The OE in the last screen is because I warred Otto just before the end date and didn't have time to finish coring the two provinces I took.

I wound up just annexing Adal over two wars. Given their small size relative to my Egyptian empire, their lack of allies, and their inferior technology, they could offer no meaningful resistance.

Most of my lategame was beating up Otto and Timmy, though Otto's European allies made that a little more difficult than I expected. I actually had a serious scrap with Brandenburg when they came down to Anatolia to fight me. Let me tell you, fighting 40-stacks that forced march everywhere is not pleasant. Somehow, Timmy managed to deal with its rebel problems, despite constant attacks and rebel supporting from me, in addition to conflicts with Russia and Malwa. That was genuinely quite surprising.

Malwa also did very well. It seems like they managed to ally with the unusually stable Timmy, gain strength in comparison with the rest of India, and then roll.

Castile did badly. Never formed Spain, got kicked out of North Africa (and only kept South Africa because I never got around to attacking them for it), and doesn't have that many colonies in general. They had their Iberian holdings sieged for 20 years straight at one point (France attacked them for some colony, and apparently couldn't actually get to the colony. Lacking the ability to take the wargoal, they threw a tantrum all over Iberia and refused to peace out. At least, that's my guess). Granada got released again, and freaking Morocco managed to siege up most of their European holdings. I was technically in the war, but not actually helping.

All in all, pretty nice run. One thing I noticed though was that when I warred Otto lategame (they tended to have pretty big alliances and I would up scrapping with the likes of Milan and Brandenburg), I could only take provinces I had claims on. Anyone know why? In the same timeframe, I could still demand huge territorial concessions out of Adal.

[Leecros]

Kudos to Malwa for (almost) uniting India...Although i'm quite sad at the size of dat Russia, but that's generally my thoughts whenever i see an enormously large Russia. When i'm playing in Asia, my first mission is to always cut them off as soon as possibru. They're annoying enough to fight when they don't have the resources of half of Asia.

[AgentPaper]

Loving the new map. Started a game as Mongolia, and while it took a while to get started (Oirat smashed Uzbek and Oirat, who I'd hoped would support my independence), but a good alliance with Yarkand, a long and draining war with Uzbek*, and their only ally Buryatia getting distracted by an almost as long war with Korchin allowed me to break free, with a nice gift of 5 (poor) provinces to boot.

Now I'm stomping around vassalizing all the eastern hordes, and just about to start a second war to take even more land from Oirat (possibly vassalizing them back -- take that!), and am well on the path towards Great Khan. It remains to see how strong Ming is after the patch, though.

*Which actually lasted for the duration of, and for a while after, my war of independence, though they still ended up winning and taking a bunch of land anyways. Sibir and Kazakh got spit out a bit later and now Oirat seems set to take even more land off of them, furthering their western migration.

[tonberrian]

All in all, pretty nice run. One thing I noticed though was that when I warred Otto lategame (they tended to have pretty big alliances and I would up scrapping with the likes of Milan and Brandenburg), I could only take provinces I had claims on. Anyone know why? In the same timeframe, I could still demand huge territorial concessions out of Adal.

Sounds like you were in a coalition against them, maybe. Being in a coalition limits the things you can demand.

[Frog Dragon]

I had them rivaled, but never actually fought a war against them. I believe by the end of the game I was about on equal footing with Russia as far as war capability went, though they did have around double my manpower. I guess if the game went on past 1821, conflict with Russia would be inevitable. My missions kept prodding me to war against them. It would've been a meatgrinder, since Russia had also been rushing miltech so I don't think I would've had any quality advantage. Probably would be very difficult to actually get anywhere in that war.

Interestingly, Kazan was actually pretty strong for a good chunk of the game before Timmy cut them down to size. For a while it looked like Russia was going to be choked out by unusually strong hordes. Luckily for them, Kazan wound up in conflict with Ottomans and Timmy.

Also, coalition does that? Damn. I had just left the anti-Otto coalition on in hopes of pulling extra support against them from Europe. Didn't really work, and by the endgame I was kicking them around all by myself anyway.

[Leecros]

(Oirat smashed Uzbek and Oirat, who I'd hoped would support my independence)

It would have been an impressive feat to get the Oirats to support your Independence considering they're your overlord. Good thing they smashed themselves.


I do agree though, the new map is amazing. Even if i think those northeastern Siberian tribes should be having existential crises'. It must be a sad existence to know that your entire purpose of existing is to be eaten by Russia, or some asian power who decides to colonize in your general direction.

[AgentPaper]

It would have been an impressive feat to get the Oirats to support your Independence considering they're your overlord. Good thing they smashed themselves.

Whoops, meant Chagatai, of course. Though the Oirats did do a good job of smashing themselves by sitting giant stacks in norther Siberia in the Uzbek war. And then again just now trying to put down Kazakh rebels while I carpet sieged them. Of course, now they're my vassal so said Kazakh rebels are my problem now, but at least I'm not sucking on attrition to do so. (ya maneuver 4 generals!)

[Frog Dragon]

Well, no AoW for me yet, but I think I'll play around with the new patch now. I did fiddle with defines.lua a little to correct what seem like industrial-strength blunders by paradox. I set the colonial autonomy floor to 0. The 50% autonomy seems to illogically and unnecessarily **** over Indonesian and American natives. While same-continent colonization may be strong, especially for American natives, this really doesn't make sense.

The ideal system would perhaps start the colony off less useful, but allow the player to get a fully utilized and integrated province out of it later. However, in absence of that, I find the old system infinitely preferable to the clunky half-provinces of the new patch.

I also slashed the 75% autonomy of diploannexed vassals to 50%, because it seems exceedingly silly to get less tax out of a recently integrated territory than the same territory as a vassal, or as a recent conquest.

I also checked the wasteland coloring. Prettier maps, hooray!

Edit: Whoa. Started a Khmer run (hooray, don't start as vassal anymore! ) and I glanced at China.

Spoiler: This is only 13 years past the start date.

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[Leecros]

Well, no AoW for me yet, but I think I'll play around with the new patch now. I did fiddle with defines.lua a little to correct what seem like industrial-strength blunders by paradox. I set the colonial autonomy floor to 0. The 50% autonomy seems to illogically and unnecessarily **** over Indonesian and American natives. While same-continent colonization may be strong, especially for American natives, this really doesn't make sense.

The ideal system would perhaps start the colony off less useful, but allow the player to get a fully utilized and integrated province out of it later. However, in absence of that, I find the old system infinitely preferable to the clunky half-provinces of the new patch.

I think that's something that will eventually get fixed, there's a lot of frustration on the forums about it and a lot of interesting ideas flying around to fix it. I feel like the 50% autonomy floor was something that they just stuck in as an afterthought, without thinking of how it might affect player natives or Indonesians.

I also slashed the 75% autonomy of diploannexed vassals to 50%, because it seems exceedingly silly to get less tax out of a recently integrated territory than the same territory as a vassal, or as a recent conquest.

Eh....I'm inclined to disagree. You can reduce the autonomy by 25%(bringing it down to 50%) immediately after you diploannex the nation...although that does run the risk of revolt depending on how stable your nation is.There would have to be a degree of autonomy involved to make sure the integration went smoothly without the risk of people getting uppity about it.

Also, while the autonomy of recent conquests is lower(50%) it's offset by that increase in unrest from nationalism. Which you can all but get rid of with an increase in autonomy to 75%. The same amount of autonomy that a newly annexed vassal starts at. So it's a tradeoff, you either have to deal with the rebels from conquering someone militarily/reducing the autonomy of a recently annexed vassal, or deal with a bit more autonomy and no rebels.

[Frog Dragon]

In unrelated matters, does anyone know who Malik Muhammed Humad was and why he was so awesome? The bookmark for 1756 has him as the ruler of the Sultanate of Aïr as a 7/7/8, which I didn't think was even possible in EU4.

Also, did 1.8 nerf hordes again? Apparently they have local autonomy floors as well. I thought hordes already got rolled by Muscovy/Russia ahistorically early.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Can't find anything on him. At that time Air was ruled by Tuareg Sultans. In fact in the 17th century it had suffered a steep decline economically and socially according to Wikipedia. However, I found a French article on the Mosque of Agadez (the capital of Air) that states that he and his twin brother Sultan Muhammad al-'Adil, were the two most celebrated and venerated Sultans in the 300 year history of the Sultanate. Only reference to him I could find without spending too much time looking up the history of Agadez instead of reading Sayyid Qutb's letters from America like I really should be doing...

[Leecros]

Also, did 1.8 nerf hordes again? Apparently they have local autonomy floors as well. I thought hordes already got rolled by Muscovy/Russia ahistorically early.

They do have a 25% autonomy floor(which they can presumably get rid of by reforming their government). Also keep in mind that Muscovy has been nerfed a bit too, since most of their land that they colonize in Siberia is going to have 50% autonomy. In fact, in the two games i've played so far, I've seen the hordes around and doing okay well into the 1500-1600's. Granted 2 games is hardly enough of a baseline to say if this is the norm or not, but i have seen a slowdown in how quickly Muscovy eats the hordes. Whether it's because of the 50% autonomy from colonies or because the hordes get a lot more land now(The Golden Horde went from like a 5-6 province minor to something like 15 or 16.

[Frog Dragon]

Has anyone seen AI Ming not implode within the first 50 years after 1.8? In my Khmer game, I've been watching them collapse, fragment, and get invaded non-stop for 60 years. It seems like they are incredibly vulnerable to rebel waves which destroy their ability to even begin to recover, especially since they're locked at 50% autonomy due to Celestial Empire. I think so far 4 nations have split out of Ming, and most of the hordes have taken a bite. About 2/3 of their territory seems to be occupied at any given time.

From what I've read, this seems to be pretty close to the average case. My moves so far have been vassalizing Champa and chomping on Lan Xang, so I don't think I'm responsible for it.

[Eldan]

Grumble grumble grumble frigging dice...

Declared war on Turkey, knowing that my allies (Austria and Lithuania) outnumbered them handily. Then, my army of 12000 meets a Turkish army of 13000 and promptly... disintegrates. No survivors. Haevn't ever seen such a short battle, either. Not sure what happened there.