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[EUIV] Reducing the Reduced reduction in cost of reducing war exhaustion for some NI's
BlindPsychic
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
What is Europa Universalis IV?
EUIV is a Grand Strategy Game from Paradox, makers of fine games such as Crusader Kings and Sengoku. You can play as any nation in the world at any time between 1444 and 1789. The game ends in 1821. The game is a sandbox, where you make set your own goals, such as starting as a small nation in the HRE and forming Germany or Prussia, returning Byzantium to its former glory, or hitting speed 5 as the Inca until the Spanish destroy you.
Where can I get EUIV?
EUIV is steamworks, so it is available on Steam and other fine retailers like Amazon
Wow this is a lot of DLC
Paradox has been using a model similar to CK2, where there is a lot of smaller cosmetic DLC and a few large expansions. Here's some descriptions from wikipedia:
Conquest of Paradise, which adds more native American nations, and a random world generator which randomizes the landscape of North and South America.
Wealth of Nations, which improves the game logic for trade and merchant republics, and patches the rest of the game for balance.
Res Publica adds improvements to governance and trade, while overhauling some events.
Art of War focuses on the Thirty Years War, while making changes to vassal mechanics and naval management. It also increases the number of provinces on the game map, in regions which previously lacked detail, such as Asia and Africa.
El Dorado will introduce a custom nation designer, as well as changes to native Central and South American nations, exploration and trade fleets.
If you have questions on what you should get, feel free to ask the thread.
This game seems pretty complicated, where should I start?
Portugal is probably one of the best places to start as a new player, you are given an explorer right from the beginning and can begin learning the ropes of colonizing without worrying about getting into land wars. Just be nice to Spain/Castille and you'll be a-OK.
I've also learned a lot from watching players play LPs on Youtube. Arumba, Shenryyr, MadDjinn, FlyingMacguffin and Quill18 are all good players to watch.
Also feel free to ask questions here.
I'm a grizzled vet who wants more
Check out Veritas et Fortitudo and MEIOU and Taxes. They're both complete overhauls of the game systems and have two slightly different takes on what EUIV 'should' be. And they're both in fairly stable releases right now. You'll have to grab them from the Steam Workshop, or by registering a CD Key on the PDS forums to gain access to the mod pages.
BlindPsychic on
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Faction system without Inward Perfection?
Highlight is the 2 adm per Base tax coring cost and negative coring time.
I allied Aragon and vowed to protect Grenada, which caused a hilarious war to erupt when Castile attacked them anyway. War leadership passed to me, which meant I got to pull in Aragon and England, and also Grenada's allies Morocco and Tunisia came along for the fun. We pretty much curbstomped Castile, and I came away from it with Galicia. As soon as reasonably possible I then charged Grenada and annexed them.
This really pissed off Castile, so they allied Burgundy and charged. By this time, though, England had managed to halt its spiraling destruction and laid waste to Burgundy while Aragon and I took care of business in Castile. Aragon had really thrived, so it was pretty straightforward to team up and smash Castile's armies. That war gave me Andalusia and the Canaries and spelled the beginning of the end for Castile.
My manpower was constantly getting drained, so I went against every piece of advice I've ever seen and picked up Quantity. The +50% manpower boost from the first idea slot saved my ass as I got dragged into a war with France. They marched into Portugal and put down mass siege, so I teamed up with Brittany (Aragon had since dissolved our alliance, becoming hostile to me upon beating up Castile some more and acquiring borders with me) and destroyed their hunter-killer stack. After that, it was just cleanup, and France was forced to peace out, dropping Foix. By this time an anti-France coalition (consisting of, basically, the entire HRE) divebombed them with both troops and tons of rebel support. France deteriorated, losing all of its armies and eventually all of its provinces. Either in the peace deal or as a result of rebellions, they wound up releasing vast amounts of vassals as independent states.
Meanwhile England has lost Northumberland, Wales, and Cornwall, as well as chunks of northern territory to Scotland and all of its Irish holdings. This makes me the most powerful nation in western Europe. Though, Algiers just gobbled up Morocco, and Aragon has taken half of Castile, so my rivals are growing fast...
Here's the part where I need help.
I've colonized enough of Brazil to get a CN, several Caribbean islands, chunks of West Africa (I have large portions of Mauritanian Coast, and the Cape), several islands in Zanzibar plus a quick capture of half of Mutapa, the two centers of trade in southern India (Ceylon and that one just off the southern tip), various islands in the Indian Ocean, and about five provinces off of Aceh over in the spice isles. It's around 1565 or so, and my trade income remains a paltry 12.5 or so.
I'm not sure how to improve it. I only have 4 Merchants (only Diplo idea so far is Exploration, which I just finished; Portugal needs diplo points like whoa). All four are trying to steer trade from various places (one in Western Europe, one in Mauritania, and I forgot where the other two are), but it's bringing in a fairly small sum overall. I have 1-6 light ships in each of these locations (except Gulf of Aden, which is going to take a more concerted investment). But really, it doesn't even seem like there's enough cash in these trade nodes to be worth the expense of forwarding with more naval vessels or conquests. By far I'm getting better results just conquering gold provinces from African nations.
Am I just to soon? Does trade income pick up in another 100 years or so? Or am I overlooking something really bad here?
Lol I was just reading about this. This dude is a master of exploits.
I don't profess to be an expert at trade since my income has always been miserable but:
1. You can rival/embargo people along the route of trade that are sucking up power and blow away their navies and force trade power out of them.
2. Protectorate some of the weaker guys along the line to get more trade power
3. To some degree, yes, if its earlier in the game its harder to get money out of overseas places. The main modifier you want to watch is trade efficiency, which will increase with naval tech as well as ideas.
4. Watch what is getting sucked away in the Western Europe Trade node
5. There are numerous events that will give you a boost in trade efficiency if you meet the requirements. I think you can look in the 'active modifiers' screen (like where it tells you who has Jerusalem and such) for info.
Here's the modifiers, but these may be out of date.
Overseas provinces are mostly important for the trade power they'll give you, because other wise they receive huge penalties in production/taxation income that you can make basically nothing off a base 10 province. You'll want to grab places that have the river estuary and important port modifiers for more trade power (they're little harbor icons on the province info screen)
Also two super useful factoids I didn't learn until recently:
1. Merchants increase your naval forcelimit, so trade ideas is actually a great way to boost your force limit.
2. Available Mercenaries bonuses give you increased Land force limits, which actually makes Admin ideas a half decent military group.
Things to consider:
1. Many trade nodes have only one exit. There is no need to place a merchant or significant fleets there, trade will automatically flow if you have power (e.g. Zanzibar)
2. Nodes that are actually important: Ivory Coast (though the other exit is to the Caribbean, which flows into Western Europe, less important), Western Europe, Gulf Of Aden (try and conquer Yemen or Oman), Ceylon, Malacca
3. Protectorates are awesome in Africa. 50% Trade Power to you: use them on Kongo, East African Sultanates, anyone in your way to Europe. Not only that but you benefit from trade propagation from their merchants!
4. Consider Trade ideas soon.
5. As Portugal you'll be cash rich and manpower poor. Mercenary boosting Ideas are excellent.
The result? All trade in the Cape completely vanished. It shows something like 3.5 ducats coming in, 0 local, and 0 going out. There's an arrow next to Portugal in the list (of two, there's natives somewhere in the middle incognita) that claims I'm forwarding trade, but nothing is happening. Nothing is arriving in the Ivory Coast, and no money is being collected in Cape at all.
It's like everything bottoms out if there are literally no merchants from anywhere in a node doing anything. Maybe there's a raw trade power minimum? I achieved that 50% with something like 15 total trade power.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?770873-Community-Decision-on-WoN-1.6
You will never find a more wretched hive of entitlement and racism.
Here's one of the updates for EUIV to Vicky 2
Steam: CavilatRest
I want to do a Reformed Swiss game with the new mechanics they've added for Reformed and over-land trade. And then get some ports and invade India.
I'm especially happy about changes to the rivalry system and what exactly it is that makes a neighbor hostile. The number of times I've wanted to reach out to someone who should be a natural ally but nope, rival. These moments are beyond measure.
Allies breaking a military alliance nurtured over a long period of time over a recent 1-2 province claim was always just dumb, in my opinion. Glad to see that is also being addressed.
PSN: TheBrayster_92
Just dropped the patch notes. Jesus christ I can't believe they still haven't fixed the Rebel's coat of arms not showing what kind of rebels they are. That's been broken for a year now. It seems that may be fixed now.
EUIV forum is in full revolt right now. I'm mostly trying to figure out how I'll go about Westernizing with Mutapa now. Without creating the world's most hideous borders, that is.
It can be a bit daunting, but I love picking a small-ish country and trying to turn them into massive empires. Byzantium is an old favorite (starting with only a few provinces and lots of enemies). Quite a few others work too.
I'd recommend against trying countries without Western or Eastern tech groups, since they're kinda problematic when it comes to tech development.
1. Always be employing your diplomats somewhere: Now, most people probably know to improve relations with countries you want to be your allies, but it's also important to to improve relations with basically all your neighbors, and even sometimes bitter enemies. You see, when you... ahem, acquire new territory through force of arms it causes nations near you to dislike you and consider you a warmonger. If they dislike you enough, they'll even join coalitions against you. If you improve relations with your neighbors beforehand though, you can maintain relations enough so they won't all plot your imminent demise.
2. Speaking of war, some more quick tips: Always have generals leading an army if you engage the enemy. Combat is simulated by a series of dice rolls, and what generals basically do is add to bonus numbers to those dice rolls depending on their skills. It makes an absolutely massive difference. Likewise, also pay attention to terrain, which you can view by hovering over provinces in the terrain mapmode. Bad terrain, like mountains or river crossings basically subtract numbers from combat dicerolls, and can also limit the combat width of a battle, essentially making numerical advantages almost meaningless. Try to bait enemies into attacking into mountains and you can beat 5:1 odds.
3. Trade is straight up almost always the best way to make money. Invest in trade fleets, expand into your capital trade node, you can usually make lots of money. (Exceptions include landlocked nations.)
4. Don't fight France in 1 to 1 odds. Just don't.
I do share the sentiment about forcing history to happen though. Some people who make mods for EU games are the kind of douchenozzles who basically make it impossible to do anything ahistorical. Like MEIOU for EUIII putting a huuuuge penalty on you for playing Byzantium called 'Wrath of God', that makes it practically impossible to survive. Because Byzantium didn't survive. So the player shouldn't either. It gives something like +100% unrest, your manpower dropping to 10% of what you should have and all sorts of ridiculous penalties with zero basis on reality.
Early game an equivalent Ottoman stack will always beat an Eastern (& Western!) stack, late game the reserve is true.
Is this true even if you turn off lucky nations?
With lucky nations off, it's a lot more reasonable. Still, with how they're set up to start, they have a metric piss-ton of troops, an absurd amount of money, and seeming immunity to war exhaustion. It doesn't help that basically all of their national ideas are geared towards fielding more, and better troops, as well as increased income.
It is super satisfying when you mess them up though. I've never seen their supposed weaknesses in late game, since by then they're usually extinct (by courtesy of yours truly).
Yup, this sounds exactly like my game as Naples. Managed to gain independence from Aragon early on, but that was the only luck I ever had. Naples is in a difficult enough position as it is - Aragon and/or Castille causing problems in Sicily, and any lands north of your starting Territory belong to the HRE.
So naturally, the last thing I needed was Aragon (who had whittled down Castille dramatically) being on super-friendly terms with France, Portugal, Austria and Venice. Attacking one just brings pretty much all the big players of Europe against you. I sorta rage-quit that game.
PSN: TheBrayster_92
Currently I've been playing my first Serbia game and it's been about fifty years and I still see no chinks in the Ottoman's armor. I've conquered Bosnia, Wallachia, and Ragusa, and I even managed to snag Dalmatia away from Venice after a very difficult war. With Dalmatia I was finally close enough to the HRE to join it and I promptly did so to get all the benefits and protections the empire affords. I'm allied with Austria and Poland and I'd love to go after Hungary (They no longer have any stupid increased coring costs.) but I can't thanks to their alliance with France. Until France gets embroiled in a losing war or Hungary loses that alliance I've had to look for expansion elsewhere. And lo and behold, I manage to snag Urbino and discover that Naples has no allies of any real significance. Naples and Sicily are both independent, so if I'm lucky I'll be able to grab them both. If I can get all of it I'll basically double my tax base. As to the Ottomans... well, Georgia is allied to Muscovy now, so I'm hoping that'll result in numerous Ottoman-Russian wars. Muscovy/Russia is the only nation that regularly fights the Ottomans that has a chance to beat them. If the Ottomans get wrecked by Muscovy and I can get Poland or Austria to join a war against the Ottomans I'll be in good shape. If I can take back Greece and Bulgaria that'll seriously cripple the Ottomans.