Europa Universalis 4 Thread 2: Comet Sighted!

[IthilanorStPete]

Frankly, I'm not sure what cleaning those up would even entail. All I could think of is conquering the Timurids and all the nomads in the way.

Conquering the minor hordes; Kazan's allied with the Timurids, but the Golden Horde and Sibir should be easy to mop up. It'll also help to clear up the Caucasus; need to conquer Georgia (Golden Horde vassal) and annex my vassal Gazikumukh (the orange country). It won't be hard (I can deal with even the Timurids pretty easily), it'll just take time and lots of admin points, which is annoying when I'm trying to get to Admin 14 to get Exploration ideas and start colonizing.

[Leecros]

So something i just noticed recently is that auto-transporting troops often get confused when handling multiple transports. I have two or three transport fleets(Which i used to land armies in Spain) and i've noticed a tendency for two armies to attempt to use the same fleet instead of deferring to a free fleet instead.


also if you want some border gore...

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Muscovy got Smashed by the Golden Horde early game and then smashed again by Scandanavia mid-game...then i decided that it was time to smash the Golden Horde and released Azov as a client kingdom.

and Ming....well......Ming....

and we don't talk about Japan whose middle is owned by Spain.

At least my borders are nice....mostly.That'll change when i annex Azov. At least the Sultan of Rum achievement is pretty much assured at this point.

[IthilanorStPete]

How worthwhile are Res Publica's features? Are national focuses good? Do any countries besides Poland-Lithuania use Elective Monarchy?

[Murmaider]

National Focus is good when you want to adopt a certain idea group but don't have the ruler stats to support it at the moment. So it gives you a bit of flexibility at times. you can only change it every 25 years or so though.

Only Poland has elective monarchy but I think you get another government form for the Netherlands aswell.

[Leecros]

How worthwhile are Res Publica's features? Are national focuses good? Do any countries besides Poland-Lithuania use Elective Monarchy?

Considering Res Publica is only $2.50(USD) on Steam right now, I think it's probably worth that much. I've found myself using national focuses constantly and Poland-Lithuania electiveness can be fun to play with. You get Monarch Power and i think prestige for your dynasty getting the throne and a nice, fat relations boost which can keep them as your ally for a long time and if they're still on the throne when they go into a normal monarchy it gives a decent Personal Union opportunity. The extra flavor for Republics are nice too.

Now would it be worth the full $4.99(USD)?

mmmmmm....probably not, but if you can get it on sale, then it's another story. I can't help but feel that Res Publica would have been better off as just stuff added in a patch than its own DLC.

[Murmaider]

mmmmmm....probably not, but if you can get it on sale, then it's another story. I can't help but feel that Res Publica would have been better off as just stuff added in a patch than its own DLC.

Well, there was a patch that came along with the DLC. It's just that you get so many things for free with the patch, that paying 10-15$ for an expansion seems not really worthwhile in the end.

[IthilanorStPete]

Ok, I'll probably go ahead and pick up Res Publica since it's on sale. (Also going to get Wealth of Nations)

[Leecros]

Well, there was a patch that came along with the DLC. It's just that you get so many things for free with the patch, that paying 10-15$ for an expansion seems not really worthwhile in the end.

Well, Res Publica is only $5. So considering what you get for it, it's nice that it's not as expensive as the other DLC.

That said, I still don't think it's worth full price for just a couple of extra things. It just seems more like something that could either be added in a different expansion if they really wanted to make some money off of it, or released with the patch for free. Especially considering Res Publica was announced and released not long after Wealth of Nations.

[IthilanorStPete]

Steam made it even easier - there's a sale at 75% off for EU4 and DLC (except Art of War) right now.

EDIT: Borders are looking much cleaner in my Ottomans game. One major war against the Timurids and allies, a few minor wars against the hordes. Kazakh and Uzbek are still ugly, but they're vassals of Sarig Yogir, and I don't really feel like getting into a war that far east.

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[Leecros]

gotta say, i love that War Exhaustion now increases liberty desire in that nation's colonies now. It gives a way for you to effectively force colonies to break off of their overlord and makes it so there's a slightly better chance of colonial nations gaining independence in the 1700's-1800's than what was transpiring before 1.8 where colonial nations were basically permanently stuck under their masters and independence wars were rare.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

That... is actually a remarkeably great mechanic add. I would like to see more things linked to War Exhaustion across Paradox games, though. I mean, in the CK2 modding thread for the 480AD mod, we were discussing how likely the Rise of Islam would be successful, but there's very little chance of them doing anything. Give a type of 'war exhaustion' mechanic in CK2 which hits your morale HARD after long wars, and you can finally model both the strategic successes of Islam (two huge empires both exhausted from fighting each other collapse against a newcomer) and the tactical successes (I mean, how in the world does 13,000 soldiers defeat 100,000. Honestly.), especially if combined with the historically genius generals that the Arabs had (Again, 13,000 versus 100,000).

[Frog Dragon]

Something I've been thinking about.

Do you think this game (and games like it) should tend toward historical results, or historical potential?

For example, take a look at a map of the Swedish Empire in 1658. Sweden controls most of the Baltic Sea. In this, Sweden was opposed by Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia. Particularly the latter two could lay claim to greater resources and manpower bases that Sweden. Nevertheless, Sweden managed to gain hegemony in the Baltic Sea, even if for a limited time, against such opposition.

How? Well, Sweden had extensive economic support from France, a competent administration, competent kings, and a system of conscription that allowed them to utilize what manpower they did have much more effectively than their rivals. Nevertheless, when the end came, Sweden only needed to lose once (Poltava, and it's worth noting that even if they had won here, Russia would still have had the resources and manpower to keep trying) for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down.

My point here is that Sweden was an overachiever, and if we started considering how things could've gone for a country with those resources at their disposal... in most scenarios they wouldn't get very far.

Right now, if Sweden manages to gain independence from the Kalmar Union, they tend to blob. This means they tend more towards their historical borders.

So, what do you think? Should the AI, left to its own devices, usually produce something fairly close to what actually happened? Or should it produce something extrapolated from the resource bases of the various countries at the start date? Of course, both are difficult to do successfully, and the latter is even harder and more open to interpretation.

[Terraoblivion]

I consider the latter vastly more interesting. The fact that you can have a strange run of luck and end up with a giant Polotsk as the main country in Eastern Europe is quite appealing to me. That said, the game has a distinct tendency towards blobbing in general, but I prefer to give countries a fair shake at being the ones forming a big blob depending on their available resources. Even if I understand that Ming needs handicaps or it conquers the world on its own.

[IthilanorStPete]

I lean towards the latter, but with slightly more options for random chance to shape events. Specific events and AI that aim to reproduce historical events get monotonous and overly deterministic, but relying solely on existing resources also tends to produce the same sort of games again and again, especially with the tendency towards blobbing.

[Guancyto]

I think EU4 even as it stands uses too much historical determinism. If Sweden loses a war and is forced to release Gotland, and Gotland winds up conquering the entirety of Sweden, they will still have Generic Ideas and a lack of good missions or events despite being Sweden for all intents and porpoises.

On the one hand it'd kind of suck if you were playing England, and you took over France (in the classic WC opener), and you lost your English Ideas and events because you're not really England any more you're this all-consuming continental monster thing. On the other hand that really makes more sense for that to happen if you're busy conquering Europe and not giving a damn about your navy.

I'd love to see even more events/missions tied to policies, ideas that you can choose, and sociopolitical status, because recreating history is much less interesting than creating it.

[tonberrian]

I saw an interesting suggestion on the forums, that you be able to pick and choose national ideas based on countries that you've eaten. I like it, but I'd like it more if it was more tied to cultures.

The way I'd set it up, each culture and culture group would have their own set of national ideas. You get a free national idea every 3 ideas you take, and you can pick from ones from your nation, primary culture, accepted cultures, primary culture's group, accepted cultures' groups, and any nation who you've annexed, integrated, or tag switched from. You can change the national idea by spending 400 monarch points of a type depending on the bonus, but doing so gives you a hefty unrest hit in any province that doesn't share culture with the new idea and you have a 25 year cooldown before you can change any other national idea. If you lose the accepted cultures threshold you lose any ideas from those cultures - and you do not get free repicks. Cultural unions do not get ideas for their nation; they get less choice in ideas but more cultural freedom. I'd also allow you to change culture to any accepted culture, but all culture changing has a premium based on makeup percentages, and I'd throw in some unrest based on cultural differences at borders.

I'm tempted to gut the national ideas for nations entirely, leaving nations with only traditions and ambitions.

[Frog Dragon]

Well, I found a workaround to the Rev. France occupation crash and managed to finish my Hindustan game.

Spoiler: Pictures!

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Vassals at the end: Timurids, Khorasan, Afghanistan. I expanded pretty recklessly right at the end. Right after getting out of the war with Ming (and using the console to give them back a province in the middle of nowhere Brunei had given me... couldn't core it or release it as anything, and Ming had me rivaled and wouldn't buy it. I guess that's what you get for helping your allies....) I warred OPM Bengal for their last province, and Portugal (and Castile... and Norway... and France... and Colonies) for their one province in India. I wanted every Indian culture province to be mine.

I used the Conquest CB rather than the generally superior Imperialism CB because my plan was to siege the wargoal fast and then sit tight and hope they didn't bring the hammer down on me too hard. While any individual member of the alliance arrayed against me was winnable, all of them at once might have actually defeated me on my mainland had they all devoted all forces into it.

Luckily, they didn't and the worst I had to deal with were a couple 40-stacks of Spaniards in the Philippines.

Then I warred Timmy because they had two Kashmiri provinces. I then noticed that with the Imperialism CB, it was actually possible to annex all of Timmy if I did it right. I guess they had a lot of LA because the entire Timurids were less than 100 warscore to annex. Of course, the OE from that would've been death. So what I did was siege them up fully, annex enough until I could vassalize Timmy (strangely enough, I couldn't just straight out vassal them, but I could annex a huge chunk and vassal the rest). Then I released Khorasan, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and started selling the remains to vassal-Timmy and cored a bunch myself.

Brunei called me into another war, and I ate a few more provinces of Southeast Asia before separate peacing to be able to start diploannexing my acquisitions. I managed to get Baluchistan diploannexed, but Khorasan and Afghanistan didn't have time to complete before the end date. It wasn't yet possible to diploannex Timurids because they had insane AE against me.

Also, I attacked U-Tsang because I thought taking their land would make my borders look nicer. It did.

And yes, dat Castile. Also dat Nogai, and dat Ethiopia. I play with lucky off. Pasai was also big, but fighting the player rarely ends well for the AI.

[Leecros]

Well,I expanded pretty recklessly right at the end.

To be fair, the entire point behind the Nationalism and Imperialism CB is reckless expansion. So, expanding recklessly at the end is kind of encouraged.

[Frog Dragon]

Finally ran into a situation where a no-cb stability-can-go-kitten-itself trucebreak seemed reasonable.

Playing Songhai, and trying to vassalize/annex all the sub-saharan tech civilizations before I westernize. I'm kind of starved for admin, and I go for Kongo.

Turns out they are just too large to forcevassalize in one fell swoop.

So what I did was 100% them once, take as much land as possible, and then immediately trucebreak to take the capital. The war exhaustion was annoying, but I had spare dip. The stab hit was annoying, but less so than having to core all of kongo. This way, I could immediately release a vassal and get rid of the overextension.

I then chunked my longtime ally Katsina. They were less annoying to deal with (despite also being above 100% to forcevassalize) because I could actually release enough stuff from their territory for it not to be a massive adm sink. I left their capital for later.

Next step, westernize and remove Iberian from premises.

[IthilanorStPete]

Fairly big new patch! Lots of bugfixes, but probably the biggest change is the "Disasters" system for handling things like the Wars of the Roses or Peasant's War, making them more transparent to the player. Some new national ideas were also added. Dev notes are here, full changelog is here.

[OrcusMcP]

Fairly big new patch! Lots of bugfixes, but probably the biggest change is the "Disasters" system for handling things like the Wars of the Roses or Peasant's War, making them more transparent to the player. Some new national ideas were also added. Dev notes are here, full changelog is here.

The much maligned (and rightly so) autonomy floor for same-continent-colonies are gone! Praise Jeebus! What's that? No automatic cores, but they're cheap instead? Yeah, that's a fair cop.

Also: Canadian and Quebecois national ideas. Yessssssssssssss.

[Leecros]

Fairly big new patch! Lots of bugfixes, but probably the biggest change is the "Disasters" system for handling things like the Wars of the Roses or Peasant's War, making them more transparent to the player. Some new national ideas were also added. Dev notes are here, full changelog is here.

Of course, the 1.9 patch would come out just was i was downloading the latest release of MEIOU&Taxes for 1.8(which was released yesterday, but I wasn't aware until today). It was literally between the time of me downloading it and installing the files that the game updated before i noticed and when i went to play MEIOU&Taxes it was all "Nope, sorry wrong version." Let's just say that i was greatly confused for a few minutes...



As far as the disasters system...i know i'm probably in the minority here, but i feel like they keep eliminating random variables that influence the game. The change to Revolt Risk to Unrest is welcome and adds(in my opinion) a fair balance between chance and the ability to predict when it's going to happen. However, they also took out variable terrain in 1.8. which i was sorely disappointed in. I liked that the type of terrain that you fought on was determined which general had the best maneuver(and some chance) and made maneuver a bit more important than it is now. The 'Simple Terrain' is also incredibly silly at times with examples such as China being 3/4 jungles when it's really not.


Now even the peasant's keep to schedule to revolt. don't get me wrong, i like the transparency and them showing what modifiers influences these really bad events into happening, but I wish that's as far as it went. I'd like it if the game told you "Hey, you're in danger of a peasant's revolt" while risk of it happening at any time. Not this slow tick up to 100% and then it happens.

i just can't help but feel that they're setting up a lot of the really bad things(getting caught in a field, rebels, disasters) and making it so that they're easily avoidable. In that case, if they're easily avoidable, then why even have them in the game except to penalize the AI? I've seen three Peasant's Wars hit the AI since the newest patch. That's more than I've seen in entire games before.

[OrcusMcP]

As far as the disasters system...i know i'm probably in the minority here, but i feel like they keep eliminating random variables that influence the game. The change to Revolt Risk to Unrest is welcome and adds(in my opinion) a fair balance between chance and the ability to predict when it's going to happen. However, they also took out variable terrain in 1.8. which i was sorely disappointed in. I liked that the type of terrain that you fought on was determined which general had the best maneuver(and some chance) and made maneuver a bit more important than it is now. The 'Simple Terrain' is also incredibly silly at times with examples such as China being 3/4 jungles when it's really not.


Now even the peasant's keep to schedule to revolt. don't get me wrong, i like the transparency and them showing what modifiers influences these really bad events into happening, but I wish that's as far as it went. I'd like it if the game told you "Hey, you're in danger of a peasant's revolt" while risk of it happening at any time. Not this slow tick up to 100% and then it happens.

i just can't help but feel that they're setting up a lot of the really bad things(getting caught in a field, rebels, disasters) and making it so that they're easily avoidable. In that case, if they're easily avoidable, then why even have them in the game except to penalize the AI? I've seen three Peasant's Wars hit the AI since the newest patch. That's more than I've seen in entire games before.

I'm pretty sure that maneuver still matters, since now it can let you force the defenders into using terrain penalties when you are attacking(I think anyway).

And while I see what you mean about the less randomness, I think it actually models internal bureaucracy better. Where before a 2% chance could suddenly become this gigantic revolt out of nowhere, with this system you can see the clear fruits of your country's dysfunction. Your leader (or the AI) would have to be pretty tone deaf or desperate to make decisions that will anger the populace when it's already really angry, and from an emergent narrative perspective it's much easier to see the straw that broke the camel's back in such a system.

To take something like the War of the Roses into account, the tension between the Lancaster and York families did not just spring out of thin air, and there's an argument to be made that if Henry the 6th had managed to produce a viable heir sooner or was of sounder mind the conflict could have dissipated.

[Artanis]

So after getting distracted by multiple shiny objects before playing much of the game, I finally got around to really sitting down and playing EU4. I played a while as Portugal, but made the mistake of exploring WAY before I had any colonists, so I wound up having to race Castile and England in the New World. After that, I started a Castile game, and it took until 1512 to finally get a ruler with more than 6 total stat points...and she's my second straight randomly-generated Lancaster queen .

Aaaaaaaanyways, I think I've mostly got a handle on the trade system, though there's still a lot of trial and error trying to figure out where my merchants and light ships will make me the most money due to the tooltips being utterly useless. Any advice in that regard? For reference, Merchants are collecting in Sevilla (with high 40's trade power) and pulling Genoa, Tunis, and Ivory Coast towards Sevilla, plus Timbuktu towards Ivory Coast. 23 Light Ships are protecting in Sevilla while 14 are pirating various rivals. Non-trade-related advice would also be helpful as well, of course

[Leecros]

I'm pretty sure that maneuver still matters, since now it can let you force the defenders into using terrain penalties when you are attacking(I think anyway).

all Maneuver does now is influence the speed of the armies, reduce attrition(which i admit is nice), and it can negate crossing penalties if attacking an army with a general that has a worse maneuver skill. the exception might be if two armies arrive at the same day and that situation is(and has always) been highly debated as to who gets the terrain penalties in that situation. I've never been in a situation where having a higher maneuver has let me force terrain penalties on defenders. However, I tend to fight defensively and rarely push an attack unless i'm confident i'll win.

And while I see what you mean about the less randomness, I think it actually models internal bureaucracy better. Where before a 2% chance could suddenly become this gigantic revolt out of nowhere, with this system you can see the clear fruits of your country's dysfunction. Your leader (or the AI) would have to be pretty tone deaf or desperate to make decisions that will anger the populace when it's already really angry, and from an emergent narrative perspective it's much easier to see the straw that broke the camel's back in such a system.

To take something like the War of the Roses into account, the tension between the Lancaster and York families did not just spring out of thin air, and there's an argument to be made that if Henry the 6th had managed to produce a viable heir sooner or was of sounder mind the conflict could have dissipated.

As mentioned, i don't think that the changes to revolt risk and Unrest is bad. it gives you a view on how discontent the people are while still leaving some uncertainty as to when exactly things would explode out of control through a percentage chance of the rebel factions rebelling based on the provinces.

For disasters, i feel like the method is just a bit heavy handed to basically use the same system as unrest with modifiers and a lot more certainty. there has to be a way to make it better while still having a bit of uncertainty. War of the Roses is kind of a special case, because it is based on chance whether you get an heir or not. As far as Peasant's wars and Revolutions are concerned, there's clear cut modifiers that cause them to trigger. Now that they're a lot more predictable, they're very easy situations to avoid.

[OrcusMcP]

As far as Peasant's wars and Revolutions are concerned, there's clear cut modifiers that cause them to trigger. Now that they're a lot more predictable, they're very easy situations to avoid.

Considering that Peasant's wars and revolutions have pretty much the same triggers now as they did then, they're just more visible, I think my point still stands. The aristocracy probably knew that the peasants were super pissed off about being sent off to die in wars that don't benefit them, but I doubt they could have predicted they'd revolt to such an extent, hence their tone-deaf decision making. It being something that simmers to a boil makes more sense than just low manpower + low stability = major chance of peasant war

[Leecros]

Considering that Peasant's wars and revolutions have pretty much the same triggers now as they did then, they're just more visible, I think my point still stands. The aristocracy probably knew that the peasants were super pissed off about being sent off to die in wars that don't benefit them, but I doubt they could have predicted they'd revolt to such an extent, hence their tone-deaf decision making. It being something that simmers to a boil makes more sense than just low manpower + low stability = major chance of peasant war

It's more than just being more visible though, It increases by a percentage now and when it hits 100% is when the event fires. It seems as if not only do the aristocrats know that the peasants are super-pissed, but also exactly when they'll rebel.

Oh well, a lot of my disconnectedness probably stems from me being an EUIII veteran. EUIV has always been easier than EUIII. that's not so bad in itself than the fact that it seems like with each passing patch, there's less variables to take into account when coming to a decision. I don't have to be worried about being at risk for a peasant's war when deciding when to go to war with low manpower, because as long as I can get my manpower back up to 25% before the ticker hits 100%. I'm good.

Oh well, Like i said. I'm sure that i'm in the minority here. Most people won't protest to them making the game less random.

[Frog Dragon]

Apparently 1.9 has a rather nasty bug.

Basically, if you gain a land connection to formerly overseas provinces that you had previously cored, you lose the cores on those provinces.

Better not play Ottomans or anyone close to a continent barrier before hotfix. It's also really abusable against AI Russia and Ottomans. Just break them into two halves at the continent barrier, then intentionally lose a war and give them back their cores. Boom, huge core loss and insane overextension, from which the AI will promptly explode.

[Eldan]

Also: Canadian and Quebecois national ideas. Yessssssssssssss.

And the first one is called "Singing Lumberjacks", too.

[Rockphed]

And the first one is called "Singing Lumberjacks", too.

But of what do the lumberjacks sing?