If you do have the expansion you actually get to do things before the Europeans arrive. Like, you know, colonize the huge swathes of land right next to you.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
So I bought this game plus all the expansions and played Castille for my first game.
I was doing pretty well and had the Iberian wedding fire and was integrating Aragon when I started a war against Algiers. Even though I outnumbered and out teched them by 4 levels, my stack was defeated. Thankfully Aragorn backed me up and we managed to subdue them.
Then, about 80% through Intergration a 19 stack of protestants fired in Naples (who I had previously integrated) while my troops were in Africa followed by Aragorn declaring war on me and my empire was suddenly gone.
Was an unexpected turn of events given Aragorn was at 200 love.
Is there a trick to having a large standing army without bankrupting yourself? My army costs were expensive for only having 20 odd units. Also, any tips on economy stuff? I don't think I was making as much as I should.
So I bought this game plus all the expansions and played Castille for my first game.
I was doing pretty well and had the Iberian wedding fire and was integrating Aragon when I started a war against Algiers. Even though I outnumbered and out teched them by 4 levels, my stack was defeated. Thankfully Aragorn backed me up and we managed to subdue them.
Then, about 80% through Intergration a 19 stack of protestants fired in Naples (who I had previously integrated) while my troops were in Africa followed by Aragorn declaring war on me and my empire was suddenly gone.
Was an unexpected turn of events given Aragorn was at 200 love.
Is there a trick to having a large standing army without bankrupting yourself? My army costs were expensive for only having 20 odd units. Also, any tips on economy stuff? I don't think I was making as much as I should.
Some military advisors lower the military upkeep (i.e. what you pay to keep a large army around). You'll also want to have at most the amount of units that your forcelimits can support. They should be stated somewhere in the military or economy tabs, I can't remember where exactly. Going above that limit can be done, but you'll incur extra costs to your upkeep the further away from your forcelimit you are. Some advisors also increase the forcelimit.
Also, keeping military and navy maintenance low during peacetime is a good way to save money, as it lowers the cost of upkeep. It also means that your troops and ships have shit for morale though, so you'll need to crank them back to max once you'll go fighting. Actually, slightly before going fighting, since it takes some time for the morale to recover. At low maintenance, reinforcing troop losses also happens a lot slower, so keep that in mind.
Lastly, the military techs help, and picking military ideas from the national ideas tab are useful. Offensive and Quantity ideas seem most useful for a large army, especially Quantity. Then again, it also depends on which nation you're playing, since some get natural bonuses that make them better for creating La Grande Armée. Also, having good provinces with high manpower and/or relevant buildings can help at recruiting/reinforcement and forcelimits. Completing the offensive ideas tree also gives the ability to Forced March, which consumes Military Points, but makes the army move 50% faster, which can be a real killer when used with forethought.
Lastly Part Deux, army composition. Cavalry isn't super great, but it's always a good idea to have some around for flanking phases in the combat. Every two units of artillery also gives a +1 bonus to sieges, in addition to the other benefits of having cannons. Having stacks that are too large tend to take a lot of attrition damage, so I usually aim for something around 12-20k troops, depending on the purpose I set them to. A usual stack might have 10k infantry, 4k artillery and 2k cavalry, for example. I'm sure someone's figured out the optimal composition, but generally I have around a half of the stack composed of infantry, with 1/3 in artillery and the remaining 1/6 in cavalry.
Then to Economy. Your economy is made of three parts: Taxation, Production and Trade. Depending on who you're playing as, you'll want to concentrate on these in a different ratio. A mediterranean trade power puts nearly 100% effort in trade, whereas a large backwater empire puts most of the effort in Taxation, and a nation with expensive trade goods gets more money from Production. Improvement happens through the usual tech increase (Diplomacy helping with trade, I think) and advisors. The greatest increases come from adopting relevant economic or trade idea trees, or whatever offers bonuses towards your nation's preferred method of income. Certain buildings also help with increasing income, with some providing an percentage increase to the tax from that province (build such buildings in provinces with a high Base Tax, shown when highlighting a province), while others increase the worth of goods produced in that province (increasing Production, use these buildings in provinces making a large quantity of goods and/or producing valuable or rare goods). Using the economic map mode also helps, and can be found near the mini-map. I can't remember if it's normally visible, but one button expands all the available map modes, and you should be able to find it, as well as the trade map mode. Thirdly, the trade. Trade is essentially done with Merchants, which you'll probably need more of than you have. Getting more of them is primarily done through certain special conditions, or by the Trade Ideas tree. Some nations might get nation-specific bonuses here too. Merchants do two things: Either they collect money at a trade node, getting you income, or they redirect trade. Redirecting trade forces a part of the "worth" of a trade node forward down a trade line, which can be seen in the trade map mode. You'll have a certain amount of Trade Power in different nodes, depending on a few factors. First, owning provinces belonging to that trade node's sphere of influence gives you power in that node, meaning that you can take a bigger cut from the profits in that node. This influence can be increased through some buildings in provinces, and by building Light Ships, and ordering them to protect trade at a given trade node. When selected, the ships should present a button with coins or something like that to allow you to order them to patrol waters near a trade node. They'll seek out and kill pirates, and give you more trade power at that node. Ideally, you'd want to have a lot of power at a valuable trade node (they have different worth, depending on the amount of trade going through, the number of nations trading there, and the wealth of provinces associated with that node's sphere of influence). Owning the province with the trade node also gives a ton of Trade Power in that node. Normally you'll want to gather money at the nodes where you have a lot of power, and use other merchants to redirect trade from nodes "upstream" to the node where you have power. This is indicated by the direction of trade flow in the trade map mode. This means that some of the wealth upstream (where you might not have much power) gets redirected to the node where you have power, and you can collect more of it.
If you can afford it, your artillery count should equal your infantry + cavalry. That way your entire back row is filled with artillery that can attack the enemy. Infantry and cavalry in the back row can't do anything until the front row dies.
Some nations get particularly potent cavalry and should have more of it. I think hordes and Eastern Europe have the best?
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Different tech groups let you have different percentages of cav in your armies. Hordes have the best cav at the start of the game, but it doesn't last long. Poland gets a ton of cav buffs.
I think the exact formula to use, is to have an amount of artillery that corresponds with your combat width. So if that's 10, then you field 10 artillery, with enough infantry and cavalry to not force the artillery into the front line. Then you cross your fingers and hope for a general with six pips of fire
I always get super generals with incredible fire attribute straight away at the start where there's no artillery, then once I get cannons none of my generals know which end of a rifle is the bit you point at the enemy.
So I bought this game plus all the expansions and played Castille for my first game.
I was doing pretty well and had the Iberian wedding fire and was integrating Aragon when I started a war against Algiers. Even though I outnumbered and out teched them by 4 levels, my stack was defeated. Thankfully Aragorn backed me up and we managed to subdue them.
Then, about 80% through Intergration a 19 stack of protestants fired in Naples (who I had previously integrated) while my troops were in Africa followed by Aragorn declaring war on me and my empire was suddenly gone.
Was an unexpected turn of events given Aragorn was at 200 love.
Is there a trick to having a large standing army without bankrupting yourself? My army costs were expensive for only having 20 odd units. Also, any tips on economy stuff? I don't think I was making as much as I should.
there's a known bug right now that just sends reinforcement costs through the roof, so you have to do some juggling until they fix it. if your war is over, turn your army maintenance down/off and wait for your manpower pool to replenish - when you have enough mans to fill your army back up, turn it back all the way on, and the insane costs won't last nearly as long (and you should've been making way more money with your maintenance down, so you can survive a few months in the neg).
alternatively, and i don't like this, but you can do it, you can just do unit consolidation and then rebuy all your units as you get the manpower to make them. i personally think that is a waste, since you have to pay the gold to recreate the unit, but it will also dodge the problem.
finally, don't be afraid to just drop cash on mercs to deal with bullshit rebels, or to fill out your army ranks. it's easier to deal with loans than it is to have your awesome PU crushed.
This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it at any time, by not fucking paying for it.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger. -transmet
AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
So, I've messed around in 4 games so far:
1.) Castille (no idea what I was doing, ended poorly)
2.) Shawnee- Doing well in comparison to those around me. Then the Brits show up and declare war on me from 4 provinces away and I was quickly curbstomped.
3.) Burgandy- Still playing. Allied with Castille/Aragorn. Thankfully Bohemia is HRE, so I've picked up quite a few German provinces because Bohemia is not Austria.
4.) The Teutonic Order -> Prussia. I'm attempting to get to Germany, but it's a sloooooow process. Austria is super Austria this game, having annexed Hungary. I'm allied with Austria/Russia/Naples and the Austria/Russia/Prussia alliance just stomps whoever it is we are fighting. Unfortunately, I'm running out of enemies between myself and Austria and the fact I'm the only Reformed Nation on the map means I have zero religious allies.
Something odd I found:
Russia/Austria/Myself are at war with Great Britian and Scandinavia. The War started poorly because Swedes pushed into quite a few of the small Germanic provinces and Austria quickly hit -35% on the wargoal (Austria declared it, but I forget what the actual goal was).
I have one army in the east (the smaller of my two) that I'm playing hit and run with trying to avoid Scandanavia's stack of doom. Russia and my second army are busy seiging out the entirety of Scandanavia with over 120 units roaming his mainland. The Swedes come back and we destroy his army and he runs and hides while we seige out even more provinces.
Somehow Austria decides to peace out and admits defeat as war leader and as punishment annuls his alliance with me along with small concessions to Scandinavia. I don't get why the AI surrendered when we were clearly winning despite the war score and Scandinavia was hiding his army from us.
Strange. In that case, Austria's army was probably slammed early on, and they may have had Manpower issues? Meanwhile if Britain stayed home with its armies, and Scandinavia matched your armies, then the AI was looking at a situation where your armies were outnumbered, your war leader had low troops and manpower, and the warscore was negative. Especially if it didn't much care about the war (who declared it?), I could see it getting out ASAP.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
Austria declared the war and did have manpower issues, but Russia is Russia and I was fine. If Austria would have simply stayed at home, eventually Russia and I would have stomped their army completely out of existence.
I was just annoyed because even though Austria and I had been allied for about 150 years (it's in the 1620s now), I had to figure out how to get reallied with them while my relations dropped to significantly below zero due to heretical relations, rival great powers, border disputes, Casus Belli issues, and refusing to give back HRE provinces. Even with maxed relations and a royal marriage I was sitting at -30. Took quite a bit of diplomatic juggling to get reallied.
The fun option would have been to ally Scandinavia and take over Austria. That'll teach 'em...
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
Yeah, wasn't any chance that was happening. I think I'm around -150 with Scandinavia with improved relations, with an angry Austria next door, both of us allied to Russia. I'd rather be safe and ensure I can slowly continue my march towards Germany and then eventually destroy Austria as opposed to having to face Austria while they are super powered by myself.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
Finished my Germany game. Eventually boiled down to France/Germany vs. Austria/Russia vs. England/Scandinavia. I was also allied with Spain, but they weren't that useful since France and Spain were enemies.
Sadly, it got to the point where I was literally surrounded by enemies and couldn't go to war much because a war on one minor province drug in Austria that drug in Russia. The last time I fought Russia/Austria, I sieged out Moscow and crushed his armies and still couldn't get any concessions out of him (I had to get concessions out of Austria instead). Of course, while I was busy doing that Austria was doing slightly winning the war versus France and had a roaming stacks of about 75 units I couldn't afford to break my army apart to completely seige out the Russians or have Austria smash me one at a time.
Score wise, I finished third behind France/Austria with over 14000 points and finished my tech tree, but didn't finish all my ideas. Also, because I started out as the TO and eventually subsumed Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, my Germany was pretty much all of northern Germany, but I did not manage to get about 1/2 of what we consider modern day Europe due to Austria blobbing.
I definitely learned a ton and will NEVER allow Austria to get that big again if I play in Central Europe.
I think I'll try maybe to unify Italy or perhaps play an Asian game next. Or maybe do Russia again and Westernize my correctly since I actually understand the concept this time. Doing it with no Admin points just meant Rebellions everywhere.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
With a good siege general and lots of cannons, sieges can sometimes be ridiculously fast. I remember the last time I was dicking around with a colonizer in the new world I had such a general and equipped him with ample canons. Had a number of native provinces get occupied within a month of starting the siege.
You also probably had something like an 18 day siege timer because of your advanced technology too.
But yeah, once available always have 1 cannon in a siege for the +1 bonus. Hover over the various icons to see what's giving/would give a bonus in that category. Pretty sure for cannons it's something like 2x the fort level for another +1 past the first cannon. (+1 is always 1 cannon)
Sell Ships
This is a new diplomatic action for when you are allied to a nation that does not have good shipbuilding capacity. You can sell any ships you have to any nation with a port for the price you want to set for it.
Finally you might be able to do something with old ships other than just junking them.
Sell Ships
This is a new diplomatic action for when you are allied to a nation that does not have good shipbuilding capacity. You can sell any ships you have to any nation with a port for the price you want to set for it.
Finally you might be able to do something with old ships other than just junking them.
Actually you can upgrade them in Art of War. And set the AI to do it for you, even. So it's a more complex decision than that.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Indonesia is getting an overhaul finally it has needed one for ages
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
So I started playing this with the Dei Gratiae mod that enhances religion parts of the game, and started out as Castille.
Taking out Granada was easy, and then I got the superiority Casus Belli and took Algiers since I had a truce with Morocco.
I am not doing a good job of it.
I would say my first mistake was sending a third of my army to help France with their wars (I had allied with France because Portugal, Aragon, and England formed one big alliance), and then 2 rebellions sprang up and for some reason I thought that maybe lowering army maintenance while occupying my new land which has provinces all over 22% unrest was a good idea. Then my army got wasted and I thought retreats would be like CK2 and I could move away one region then heal and come back, but no, and then, in the region my guys were running to REBELLION! and the rest of Algiers got fucked. Then a rebellion started back in the Iberian peninsula and I had no one to fight them.
I think I'm going to go back to an earlier save and will try to keep Algiers again. Not like I could take Aragon or Portugal with England, Portugal, Naples, and Aragon breathing down my neck if I tried to take more Spanish land.
So I started playing this with the Dei Gratiae mod that enhances religion parts of the game, and started out as Castille.
Would you mind talking a bit about how this changed the gameplay for you? I've yet to install any mods for EU4, but I strongly suspect I should be doing so.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
So I started playing this with the Dei Gratiae mod that enhances religion parts of the game, and started out as Castille.
Would you mind talking a bit about how this changed the gameplay for you? I've yet to install any mods for EU4, but I strongly suspect I should be doing so.
I mean, I tried, but then the mobile vanilla ate my post.
How useful are vassals, and how do you make them? I read the EUIV wiki, but I feel like I'm not getting the full picture.
Edit: So I went back a save, put about 9 dudes on each the four newly conquered regions, and cored and converted those bastards for 20 years. It cost me like 400 gold over the course of those years and almost put me in the red, but I got it. I still have an Ibadi presence in one of the regions threatening revolt, but they go from 3-7% chance and I'm not too worried, as the rest of the regions are pacified.
Then my war of superiority of Morocco which turned into a Crusade happened. It was pretty easy, I even won a few battles undermanned. One annoying thing they did was going through Terra Incognita to attack my Algerian provinces. I was able to stop them, but still.
At the end, I own that trade node near Gibraltar, and three other regions near near the north-western tip of Africa. I can probably annex them the next war outright, but I kind of want to try vassalizing them so I can go explore the New World (Or maybe starting a Castillian invasion of Japan.)
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
Fun fact:
I did TOO well in my first war against Novogrod as Muscovy and before I could force feed my vassals the new territory, every European country around me formed a coalition. Within 2 years, the Coalition declared war against me. So, it was me against Sweeden, Lithuania, the Orders, Poland, and the small one territory countries in my border not vassalized while I had no manpower to refill my armies.
Oops. Time to restart.
Re: Vassals
Vassals are pretty important way to incorporate territory into your country without pissing off the entire world. To vassalize, you need a military alliance with the country, they need to be same religion, have a +190 rating towards you, and they must be at peace. Even then, there's a sliding scale that will tell you if the country will accept or not.
That way in wars you can force your vassal to take on extra provinces so that when you annex them, you get everything at a much lower cost. Just make sure you don't buff your vassal so large that you can't annex it.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Can you militarily vassalize people? Like say, Aragon?
Can you militarily vassalize people? Like say, Aragon?
you can, but it's pretty restrictive size-wise. in order to vassalize aragon, you're probably gonna need to take some of their land in one or two wars to get them small enough to force vassalization. Sometimes you'll get a mission to vassalize someone next to you (usually someone small) & i think those numbers are different.
This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it at any time, by not fucking paying for it.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger. -transmet
Another way to militarily vassalize a country is to fully annex them then release it in your diplomacy screen. Reasons to do that are because they'll pop out with your technology levels and the state religion will be the same as yours, then they'll use their missionary to convert the lands, instead of having to use yours.
Battletag BYToady#1454
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
So... Things were going great, then they went in the shitter.
After I had captured that north Moroccan territory, I tried to save up my points so I could finally colonize the new world.
After a while, Tangiers captured more of Morocco, and I declared war them vadsalized them, because it literally takes me like 20-30 years to pacify North African regions, so I decided "Fuck that".
Then a great thing happened: Aragon got in a personal union with me. We were set to marry (Our lands) in thirty years, but fate would not have it.
After waiting like 20 years to get colony ideas and tech (My king was a piece of shit), I finally sail out and colonize the future site of the Dominican Republic, and western Cuba. Some natives even decided they liked Cathol enough to become an uncored region next to my Havanna colony. How nice of them.
Things were looking up.
Then Aragon attacked.
They just...did. Out of nowhere. With our relations score at like 110:110, they decided to break our union. I would have expected the Moroccans who I didn't even force to convert to stab me in the back before this.
Of course, normally I wouldn't worry "France totally has my back, I joined all of their wars"
I look, and they're in a personal union.
With Muscovy.
THAT IS SHIT!
France is seriously the strongest western power right now, why the fuck would they be in this union?
10 dudes are in Castille, 10 dudes in North Africa, and 10 dudes are in the new world.
Aright, 20 regs should be enough to take them out.
The majority of my navy is in the new world...FUCK!
Okay, it took forever, but I finally got them back and the North African guys are now in Castille, let's just mosey on over and-
A ten reg stack got in a fight when I wasn't looking. I think "Oh it's okay, there's only like 16 dudes vs my 20, it'll be fine" nope. I routed them, but they killed off more of my guys. I followed them into South France, where they DO NOT HAVE LAND ANYMORE, and they fucked me.
I have no one to defend Spain.
...
LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
(I'll reload an earlier unfucked save later)
I am actually having a lot of fun, a little more so than CK2, as I don't have to keep track of numerous lords to see if they don't like me.
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If you don't you may literally fall asleep waiting for the Europeans to arrive, as I did.
I was doing pretty well and had the Iberian wedding fire and was integrating Aragon when I started a war against Algiers. Even though I outnumbered and out teched them by 4 levels, my stack was defeated. Thankfully Aragorn backed me up and we managed to subdue them.
Then, about 80% through Intergration a 19 stack of protestants fired in Naples (who I had previously integrated) while my troops were in Africa followed by Aragorn declaring war on me and my empire was suddenly gone.
Was an unexpected turn of events given Aragorn was at 200 love.
Is there a trick to having a large standing army without bankrupting yourself? My army costs were expensive for only having 20 odd units. Also, any tips on economy stuff? I don't think I was making as much as I should.
Some military advisors lower the military upkeep (i.e. what you pay to keep a large army around). You'll also want to have at most the amount of units that your forcelimits can support. They should be stated somewhere in the military or economy tabs, I can't remember where exactly. Going above that limit can be done, but you'll incur extra costs to your upkeep the further away from your forcelimit you are. Some advisors also increase the forcelimit.
Also, keeping military and navy maintenance low during peacetime is a good way to save money, as it lowers the cost of upkeep. It also means that your troops and ships have shit for morale though, so you'll need to crank them back to max once you'll go fighting. Actually, slightly before going fighting, since it takes some time for the morale to recover. At low maintenance, reinforcing troop losses also happens a lot slower, so keep that in mind.
Lastly, the military techs help, and picking military ideas from the national ideas tab are useful. Offensive and Quantity ideas seem most useful for a large army, especially Quantity. Then again, it also depends on which nation you're playing, since some get natural bonuses that make them better for creating La Grande Armée. Also, having good provinces with high manpower and/or relevant buildings can help at recruiting/reinforcement and forcelimits. Completing the offensive ideas tree also gives the ability to Forced March, which consumes Military Points, but makes the army move 50% faster, which can be a real killer when used with forethought.
Lastly Part Deux, army composition. Cavalry isn't super great, but it's always a good idea to have some around for flanking phases in the combat. Every two units of artillery also gives a +1 bonus to sieges, in addition to the other benefits of having cannons. Having stacks that are too large tend to take a lot of attrition damage, so I usually aim for something around 12-20k troops, depending on the purpose I set them to. A usual stack might have 10k infantry, 4k artillery and 2k cavalry, for example. I'm sure someone's figured out the optimal composition, but generally I have around a half of the stack composed of infantry, with 1/3 in artillery and the remaining 1/6 in cavalry.
Then to Economy. Your economy is made of three parts: Taxation, Production and Trade. Depending on who you're playing as, you'll want to concentrate on these in a different ratio. A mediterranean trade power puts nearly 100% effort in trade, whereas a large backwater empire puts most of the effort in Taxation, and a nation with expensive trade goods gets more money from Production. Improvement happens through the usual tech increase (Diplomacy helping with trade, I think) and advisors. The greatest increases come from adopting relevant economic or trade idea trees, or whatever offers bonuses towards your nation's preferred method of income. Certain buildings also help with increasing income, with some providing an percentage increase to the tax from that province (build such buildings in provinces with a high Base Tax, shown when highlighting a province), while others increase the worth of goods produced in that province (increasing Production, use these buildings in provinces making a large quantity of goods and/or producing valuable or rare goods). Using the economic map mode also helps, and can be found near the mini-map. I can't remember if it's normally visible, but one button expands all the available map modes, and you should be able to find it, as well as the trade map mode. Thirdly, the trade. Trade is essentially done with Merchants, which you'll probably need more of than you have. Getting more of them is primarily done through certain special conditions, or by the Trade Ideas tree. Some nations might get nation-specific bonuses here too. Merchants do two things: Either they collect money at a trade node, getting you income, or they redirect trade. Redirecting trade forces a part of the "worth" of a trade node forward down a trade line, which can be seen in the trade map mode. You'll have a certain amount of Trade Power in different nodes, depending on a few factors. First, owning provinces belonging to that trade node's sphere of influence gives you power in that node, meaning that you can take a bigger cut from the profits in that node. This influence can be increased through some buildings in provinces, and by building Light Ships, and ordering them to protect trade at a given trade node. When selected, the ships should present a button with coins or something like that to allow you to order them to patrol waters near a trade node. They'll seek out and kill pirates, and give you more trade power at that node. Ideally, you'd want to have a lot of power at a valuable trade node (they have different worth, depending on the amount of trade going through, the number of nations trading there, and the wealth of provinces associated with that node's sphere of influence). Owning the province with the trade node also gives a ton of Trade Power in that node. Normally you'll want to gather money at the nodes where you have a lot of power, and use other merchants to redirect trade from nodes "upstream" to the node where you have power. This is indicated by the direction of trade flow in the trade map mode. This means that some of the wealth upstream (where you might not have much power) gets redirected to the node where you have power, and you can collect more of it.
Some nations get particularly potent cavalry and should have more of it. I think hordes and Eastern Europe have the best?
there's a known bug right now that just sends reinforcement costs through the roof, so you have to do some juggling until they fix it. if your war is over, turn your army maintenance down/off and wait for your manpower pool to replenish - when you have enough mans to fill your army back up, turn it back all the way on, and the insane costs won't last nearly as long (and you should've been making way more money with your maintenance down, so you can survive a few months in the neg).
alternatively, and i don't like this, but you can do it, you can just do unit consolidation and then rebuy all your units as you get the manpower to make them. i personally think that is a waste, since you have to pay the gold to recreate the unit, but it will also dodge the problem.
finally, don't be afraid to just drop cash on mercs to deal with bullshit rebels, or to fill out your army ranks. it's easier to deal with loans than it is to have your awesome PU crushed.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger. -transmet
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?800644-EU4-Art-of-War-Dev-Diary-4-Army-Builder-Rebel-Relocation-and-China
1.) Castille (no idea what I was doing, ended poorly)
2.) Shawnee- Doing well in comparison to those around me. Then the Brits show up and declare war on me from 4 provinces away and I was quickly curbstomped.
3.) Burgandy- Still playing. Allied with Castille/Aragorn. Thankfully Bohemia is HRE, so I've picked up quite a few German provinces because Bohemia is not Austria.
4.) The Teutonic Order -> Prussia. I'm attempting to get to Germany, but it's a sloooooow process. Austria is super Austria this game, having annexed Hungary. I'm allied with Austria/Russia/Naples and the Austria/Russia/Prussia alliance just stomps whoever it is we are fighting. Unfortunately, I'm running out of enemies between myself and Austria and the fact I'm the only Reformed Nation on the map means I have zero religious allies.
Something odd I found:
Russia/Austria/Myself are at war with Great Britian and Scandinavia. The War started poorly because Swedes pushed into quite a few of the small Germanic provinces and Austria quickly hit -35% on the wargoal (Austria declared it, but I forget what the actual goal was).
I have one army in the east (the smaller of my two) that I'm playing hit and run with trying to avoid Scandanavia's stack of doom. Russia and my second army are busy seiging out the entirety of Scandanavia with over 120 units roaming his mainland. The Swedes come back and we destroy his army and he runs and hides while we seige out even more provinces.
Somehow Austria decides to peace out and admits defeat as war leader and as punishment annuls his alliance with me along with small concessions to Scandinavia. I don't get why the AI surrendered when we were clearly winning despite the war score and Scandinavia was hiding his army from us.
I was just annoyed because even though Austria and I had been allied for about 150 years (it's in the 1620s now), I had to figure out how to get reallied with them while my relations dropped to significantly below zero due to heretical relations, rival great powers, border disputes, Casus Belli issues, and refusing to give back HRE provinces. Even with maxed relations and a royal marriage I was sitting at -30. Took quite a bit of diplomatic juggling to get reallied.
Sadly, it got to the point where I was literally surrounded by enemies and couldn't go to war much because a war on one minor province drug in Austria that drug in Russia. The last time I fought Russia/Austria, I sieged out Moscow and crushed his armies and still couldn't get any concessions out of him (I had to get concessions out of Austria instead). Of course, while I was busy doing that Austria was doing slightly winning the war versus France and had a roaming stacks of about 75 units I couldn't afford to break my army apart to completely seige out the Russians or have Austria smash me one at a time.
Score wise, I finished third behind France/Austria with over 14000 points and finished my tech tree, but didn't finish all my ideas. Also, because I started out as the TO and eventually subsumed Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, my Germany was pretty much all of northern Germany, but I did not manage to get about 1/2 of what we consider modern day Europe due to Austria blobbing.
I definitely learned a ton and will NEVER allow Austria to get that big again if I play in Central Europe.
I think I'll try maybe to unify Italy or perhaps play an Asian game next. Or maybe do Russia again and Westernize my correctly since I actually understand the concept this time. Doing it with no Admin points just meant Rebellions everywhere.
Wow sieges take waaay longer than in CK2.
Sometimes.
With a good siege general and lots of cannons, sieges can sometimes be ridiculously fast. I remember the last time I was dicking around with a colonizer in the new world I had such a general and equipped him with ample canons. Had a number of native provinces get occupied within a month of starting the siege.
But yeah, once available always have 1 cannon in a siege for the +1 bonus. Hover over the various icons to see what's giving/would give a bonus in that category. Pretty sure for cannons it's something like 2x the fort level for another +1 past the first cannon. (+1 is always 1 cannon)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?801813-EU4-Art-of-War-Dev-Diary-5-Diplomacy-Catholics-and-Southeast-Asia-amp-Indonedia
This is a new diplomatic action for when you are allied to a nation that does not have good shipbuilding capacity. You can sell any ships you have to any nation with a port for the price you want to set for it.
Finally you might be able to do something with old ships other than just junking them.
Taking out Granada was easy, and then I got the superiority Casus Belli and took Algiers since I had a truce with Morocco.
I am not doing a good job of it.
I would say my first mistake was sending a third of my army to help France with their wars (I had allied with France because Portugal, Aragon, and England formed one big alliance), and then 2 rebellions sprang up and for some reason I thought that maybe lowering army maintenance while occupying my new land which has provinces all over 22% unrest was a good idea. Then my army got wasted and I thought retreats would be like CK2 and I could move away one region then heal and come back, but no, and then, in the region my guys were running to REBELLION! and the rest of Algiers got fucked. Then a rebellion started back in the Iberian peninsula and I had no one to fight them.
I think I'm going to go back to an earlier save and will try to keep Algiers again. Not like I could take Aragon or Portugal with England, Portugal, Naples, and Aragon breathing down my neck if I tried to take more Spanish land.
Here's the wiki page, I wouldn't be able to explain it very well.
I mean, I tried, but then the mobile vanilla ate my post.
How useful are vassals, and how do you make them? I read the EUIV wiki, but I feel like I'm not getting the full picture.
Edit: So I went back a save, put about 9 dudes on each the four newly conquered regions, and cored and converted those bastards for 20 years. It cost me like 400 gold over the course of those years and almost put me in the red, but I got it. I still have an Ibadi presence in one of the regions threatening revolt, but they go from 3-7% chance and I'm not too worried, as the rest of the regions are pacified.
Then my war of superiority of Morocco which turned into a Crusade happened. It was pretty easy, I even won a few battles undermanned. One annoying thing they did was going through Terra Incognita to attack my Algerian provinces. I was able to stop them, but still.
At the end, I own that trade node near Gibraltar, and three other regions near near the north-western tip of Africa. I can probably annex them the next war outright, but I kind of want to try vassalizing them so I can go explore the New World (Or maybe starting a Castillian invasion of Japan.)
I did TOO well in my first war against Novogrod as Muscovy and before I could force feed my vassals the new territory, every European country around me formed a coalition. Within 2 years, the Coalition declared war against me. So, it was me against Sweeden, Lithuania, the Orders, Poland, and the small one territory countries in my border not vassalized while I had no manpower to refill my armies.
Oops. Time to restart.
Re: Vassals
Vassals are pretty important way to incorporate territory into your country without pissing off the entire world. To vassalize, you need a military alliance with the country, they need to be same religion, have a +190 rating towards you, and they must be at peace. Even then, there's a sliding scale that will tell you if the country will accept or not.
That way in wars you can force your vassal to take on extra provinces so that when you annex them, you get everything at a much lower cost. Just make sure you don't buff your vassal so large that you can't annex it.
you can, but it's pretty restrictive size-wise. in order to vassalize aragon, you're probably gonna need to take some of their land in one or two wars to get them small enough to force vassalization. Sometimes you'll get a mission to vassalize someone next to you (usually someone small) & i think those numbers are different.
So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger. -transmet
After I had captured that north Moroccan territory, I tried to save up my points so I could finally colonize the new world.
After a while, Tangiers captured more of Morocco, and I declared war them vadsalized them, because it literally takes me like 20-30 years to pacify North African regions, so I decided "Fuck that".
Then a great thing happened: Aragon got in a personal union with me. We were set to marry (Our lands) in thirty years, but fate would not have it.
After waiting like 20 years to get colony ideas and tech (My king was a piece of shit), I finally sail out and colonize the future site of the Dominican Republic, and western Cuba. Some natives even decided they liked Cathol enough to become an uncored region next to my Havanna colony. How nice of them.
Things were looking up.
Then Aragon attacked.
They just...did. Out of nowhere. With our relations score at like 110:110, they decided to break our union. I would have expected the Moroccans who I didn't even force to convert to stab me in the back before this.
Of course, normally I wouldn't worry "France totally has my back, I joined all of their wars"
I look, and they're in a personal union.
With Muscovy.
THAT IS SHIT!
France is seriously the strongest western power right now, why the fuck would they be in this union?
10 dudes are in Castille, 10 dudes in North Africa, and 10 dudes are in the new world.
Aright, 20 regs should be enough to take them out.
The majority of my navy is in the new world...FUCK!
Okay, it took forever, but I finally got them back and the North African guys are now in Castille, let's just mosey on over and-
A ten reg stack got in a fight when I wasn't looking. I think "Oh it's okay, there's only like 16 dudes vs my 20, it'll be fine" nope. I routed them, but they killed off more of my guys. I followed them into South France, where they DO NOT HAVE LAND ANYMORE, and they fucked me.
I have no one to defend Spain.
...
LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
(I'll reload an earlier unfucked save later)
I am actually having a lot of fun, a little more so than CK2, as I don't have to keep track of numerous lords to see if they don't like me.