I did do Austria and got my enforced unions on Bohemia and Hungary. Got a Habsberg on the throne of Milan, hoping to claim that one too. Might try to stop the Ottoman juggernaut before it gets going too far and then loop back around to Europe myself?
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I did do Austria and got my enforced unions on Bohemia and Hungary. Got a Habsberg on the throne of Milan, hoping to claim that one too. Might try to stop the Ottoman juggernaut before it gets going too far and then loop back around to Europe myself?
Naturally a 67 year old woman produces an heir before I can seize the throne of Milan. Dang it.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I did do Austria and got my enforced unions on Bohemia and Hungary. Got a Habsberg on the throne of Milan, hoping to claim that one too. Might try to stop the Ottoman juggernaut before it gets going too far and then loop back around to Europe myself?
I took a Byzantine province off them as basis for reconquest later. Serbia and Bulgaria are good candidates for this too. Depending on other provinces Austria has you can add it to the empire first for another prince.
There seem so many weird oversights with the new mission system, for example Provence can no longer contest the PU over Naples (IRL they lost control over Naples in 1442)
Some of the rewards you can get seem nonsensically overpowered (permanent -25% dev cost in Anjou) or don't make a lot of sense from a historical perspective (things which were regarded as super-aggressive moves reward you with less AE)
There seem so many weird oversights with the new mission system, for example Provence can no longer contest the PU over Naples (IRL they lost control over Naples in 1442)
Some of the rewards you can get seem nonsensically overpowered (permanent -25% dev cost in Anjou) or don't make a lot of sense from a historical perspective (things which were regarded as super-aggressive moves reward you with less AE)
Castile might not get the Italian Wars missions, but does Spain?
I think the missions you get in the new system are tied your country, not your NI's. I seemed to remember a tweet about how someone in playtesting or a dev clash jumped through a bunch of hoops to become Byzantium as the Ottomans so they could get all of Byzantium's missions (and the ridiculous number of claims they get from them) paired with the Ottoman's NIs.
Spain doesn't get them either, I checked - there are missions for the south of Italy but you gain those provinces through the Iberian Wedding, so they're a bit pointless
(You also can't form Spain before Admin Tech 10 which is ~1530)
There seem so many weird oversights with the new mission system, for example Provence can no longer contest the PU over Naples (IRL they lost control over Naples in 1442)
Some of the rewards you can get seem nonsensically overpowered (permanent -25% dev cost in Anjou) or don't make a lot of sense from a historical perspective (things which were regarded as super-aggressive moves reward you with less AE)
Castile might not get the Italian Wars missions, but does Spain?
I think the missions you get in the new system are tied your country, not your NI's. I seemed to remember a tweet about how someone in playtesting or a dev clash jumped through a bunch of hoops to become Byzantium as the Ottomans so they could get all of Byzantium's missions (and the ridiculous number of claims they get from them) paired with the Ottoman's NIs.
This was a great as a player coalition of Castille, France, England, Kazan, Lithuania, Denmark, and the Mamlukes attacked to stop them... and lost.
There seem so many weird oversights with the new mission system, for example Provence can no longer contest the PU over Naples (IRL they lost control over Naples in 1442)
Some of the rewards you can get seem nonsensically overpowered (permanent -25% dev cost in Anjou) or don't make a lot of sense from a historical perspective (things which were regarded as super-aggressive moves reward you with less AE)
Castile might not get the Italian Wars missions, but does Spain?
I think the missions you get in the new system are tied your country, not your NI's. I seemed to remember a tweet about how someone in playtesting or a dev clash jumped through a bunch of hoops to become Byzantium as the Ottomans so they could get all of Byzantium's missions (and the ridiculous number of claims they get from them) paired with the Ottoman's NIs.
This was a great as a player coalition of Castille, France, England, Kazan, Lithuania, Denmark, and the Mamlukes attacked to stop them... and lost.
They were incompetently led/coordinated, to be fair.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I'm not playing with the Purple Phoenix DLC so I don't get the overpowered missions... just the regular Byzantine ones. But considering a succesful Byzantium is basically just a few decades delayed Ottomans with usually better allies? You don't really need it.
The Eastern Empire, restored; now to reclaim the empire's granary before turning our sights to the traitors to the west.
edit: Also from another game, I'm so proud of the AI, they're growing up so fast!
I love how the forums were awash with "there is too much money in the game" afer the building AI changes and Paradox said, "we'll address it" and now there's coal and 10 times more money during the end game than before
I love how the forums were awash with "there is too much money in the game" afer the building AI changes and Paradox said, "we'll address it" and now there's coal and 10 times more money during the end game than before
This makes me wish/hope that the next DLC focuses on Economy, like the real heady stuff like fractal reserve currencies and gold/silver standards.
Especially if it lets you do what (in theory) you can do in Endless Space 2, and make so much money that you crash your neighbor's economies due to hyperinflation.
That reminds me of Victoria 2 where you could accumulate so much money that populations would start to starve because they didn't have access to enough money to buy food, even though enough was being produced for them
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
Going for the African Power achievement now (control all of Africa as Kongo).
Been going swimmingly. Initial wars for Congo region were incredibly easy as no unwelcome alliance chains formed. Took Exploration ideas and used the colonist to bridge the gap between Congo and the Great Lakes region. Took the whole region in two wars. Then colonised a bridge into the Zimbabwe region, which was a mess of borders. Wasn't really planning on this, but currently eating up the East African coast due to the fractured nations (my plan was more to block out the Cape then war into the Sahel region).
Absolutely no European colonisation so far. From what I can see of Europe, Portugal and Castile have been at war a lot. No American or African colonies at all from Europe!
I picked Exploration as my first idea, and so far I have Humanist as my second (but haven't unlocked any ideas yet). Do you think this a good pick? I was leaning towards getting either Innovative, Econ or Admin to reform the government but I feel humanist will keep my empire more stable. But now from the unexpected opportunity in Zimbabwe I have a tonne of gold mines that will be boosting my inflation, so perhaps Econ instead? But also the Admin core-cost reduction would be nice..... hmmm.....
I love how the forums were awash with "there is too much money in the game" afer the building AI changes and Paradox said, "we'll address it" and now there's coal and 10 times more money during the end game than before
Well I mean there's currently an exploit where if you have a gold producing province at the start of the game, and move your capital to it, you can get 50+ gold production in that province pretty quickly and basically have no money problems for the rest of the game.
In fact, it seems like this latest patch, while fun, has the most obviously unintended exploits of any patch in awhile.
edit: As Congo I would honestly go 1. Exploration, 2. Expansion/Administrative 3. Quantity/Offensive as my first ideas. After that? Probably religious as your next idea and maybe maritime after that if you need big strong navies to take any land off of Europeans. Humanist is quite good for countries in Europe, but as a Fetishist nation the religious CB would probably be too much for me to pass up.
If you don't stack enough -Unrest and Tolerance you will unfortunately only delay the rebel pop
The only religions which can covert fast enough to avoid rebels are Christians with the extra missionaries, they can get 5 to 7 whereas Fetishist is stuck at 2 because Fetishists also can't become Defender of the Faith
I mean you can use military power to reduce rebels. In fact with absolutism mechanics I consider consistently getting no rebels as a negative. And even if they do pop, if you're a big nation you have little to worry about from rebels.
Second try as Yas in 1469, I still got into a war with the Timurids but this time it went much better
I'm a bit bummed that you can't Enthrone a Timurid Prince as a Tribal Federation, I would've liked all those cores
I tried to get Ajam to spread their dynasty to me but either dynasty spread is blocked for certain government form or certain religions will now prevent it
Anyone have thoughts on the best way to handle development (common sense dlc) vs the other things monarch points are used for? I find myself typically playing wide instead of tall, so it doesn't seem to matter much. But if I went tall or with colonial-focused england or something, are there any metrics folks use when trying to decide whether to go ahead of time on a tech vs pump up some development? Is it better to spread it out across the country or concentrate it in a few specific places?
I haven't seen a lot online about it (though I haven't done extensive forum search either). Right now I tend to scatter it around when I find myself wealthy enough to have monarch points I won't need for a bit, which strikes me as a sub-optimal strategy.
Thoughts on the best ways to approach development?
I'm a few patches behind, so the meta may have changed a lot. But my most recent understanding is that wide is usually better than tall, and development is primarily useful for more quickly acquiring Institutions. If you can't get an Institution via its "natural" spread without waiting too long, developing a place to pop it can be a sensible alternative.
Playing tall is functional, especially if you stack modifiers (custom nation max bonus + Economics + capital / trade hub + proper terrain). You just have to determine what your "victory" state is, since "take all the things" is the common metric used when determining option efficiency.
Otherwise it's worthwhile to develop gold provinces within a specific range of production values; some is needed to get good income, but too much risks depletion. Unless that has changed in a recent patch.
And there's an exploit with gold capitals, it would seem.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Well I'll explain what it is, but I'll put it in spoilers:
The exploit works by using the delay caused by autosaves on the rollover from one month to the next. Apparently, you can click rapidly during the lag caused by the save to turn in a single mission multiple times. If your computer, or rather the autosave, is fast you can turn in a mission maybe only five or six times. But if your computer is slow, you may be able to do it dozens upon dozens of times. This seems to work for almost every mission that gives you a one time bonus of monarch power, money, etc. but the exploit is the worst for the missions that give you development in your capital. You can, assuming you have a slow computer or intentionally slow it down, add over a hundred development to your capital by this method. This in itself is bad enough, as it breaks the balance of small nations as it suddenly allows them to become much stronger than there usually equally small neighbors. What makes it absolutely game breaking is that you can do this with a gold province as your capital. Imagine the ridiculous sums of money you can make almost from the start of the game just by having a 50+, 60+, 80+ production gold province.
I've never really strategically developed beyond acquiring institutions. However, when I have excess monarch points I will generally use them to develop my provinces (as opposed to increasing mercantilism etc). I'll try to use them in the most sensible way possible - developing provinces with valuable trade goods, with centres of trade or with a pre-existing complementary building (military points + barracks etc).
You know what's another really fun unique nation to play? Provence. I'm playing a game as them because I was curious about forming Jerusalem as them. Forty years in and I've joined the Empire, kicking the Pope out of Avignon, and am slowly eating Burgundy. The only misstep so far, or at least something I wish I had managed, was to conquer Brittany before France went after it, but they went after them real early. Still, I'm slowly cutting off France's routes for expansion and will go into Italy as soon as they leave the HRE.
My eventual goal before heading east to the Levant is to grab firm control over most of Italy, get the valuable western Aragonese ports in the Genoa trade node, and, when I'm strong enough, force France into a PU.
But my most recent understanding is that wide is usually better than tall
A tall country with military ideas generally beats opponents a wide country can't beat before the very late game
Tall economies also perform better in the first half of the game, with wide expansion you generally end up deep in a loanhole
The main issue with tall play is that it's boring, people also have different standards on what "wide" and "tall" mean - my own personal opinion is that taking risks should be rewarded
(A number of things which are only critical to wide play were nerfed into the ground, for example interest reduction or ticking autonomy reduction from your government form)
Opening was to no-CB Georgia, vassalize them and eat the other Georgian states, then eat AQ after they declared war on me
Unfortunately it seems really difficult to fulfill my dream of slingshotting via those Timmy cores, I've yet see a game on VH where Timmy actually dies to his vassals
Whoever said Inca was boring was kinda right. The first couple times France attacked me were touch and go, but I ended up seizing their colonies. Too bad the Dutch found gems in Guyana, because I think the New World Diamonds event might only trigger for European nations? And I have so many gems that are now less valuable. Anyway, the Americas south of the Rio Grande are mine (well, except the Falklands), working on conquering the British possessions in North America now.
Other notable features of this game: Mamluk Indonesia, Scotland still going toe to toe with England into the 18th century, and Austria utterly annihilated. Last game had AI Morocco form Andalusia, which was maybe the strangest thing I've seen in a long time.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Yeah with Inca it's a very one note game. Your not really strong enough to fight the Europeans up until you are. There's not really a lot of meaningful diplomacy to be done except for the very early game.
edit: As for the above how do you plan to not, like, go bankrupt? That seems like a ton of loans and a lot of inflation and you aren't making money even with zero maintenance and no advisors?
Yeah with Inca it's a very one note game. Your not really strong enough to fight the Europeans up until you are. There's not really a lot of meaningful diplomacy to be done except for the very early game.
edit: As for the above how do you plan to not, like, go bankrupt? That seems like a ton of loans and a lot of inflation and you aren't making money even with zero maintenance and no advisors?
I had points saved for when I reformed, which I had set up to do as soon as I got a border. So my first war with them was one mil tech behind, and I had three times their numbers because hooray gold provinces. With Elan and everything they out moraled me badly, but that's what 60k to 20k is for. Basically I could fight them as soon as we had a border.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
edit: As for the above how do you plan to not, like, go bankrupt? That seems like a ton of loans and a lot of inflation and you aren't making money even with zero maintenance and no advisors?
As long as I can grow fast enough to avoid a bankruptcy I'll be fine - going bankrupt would mean the Ottomans would most likely dishonor the call when the coalition declares on me
Timmy is unfortunately over 500% Warscore now and the Mamluks took over the Gulf of Aden
What's worse is that the Ottomans took Trade Ideas which means they'll be siphoning a lot of my income over the course of the game
Oh, since Sunni sucks at converting since CoC, that also means 80% of my land right now is Orthodox, Coptic and Shia which has been a bit of a problem
Wars are vastly more expensive on Very Hard, especially in the early game since you have to go over your Force Limit
[edit]
My 0/3/2 and the fact I only have seven states available also don't help
Posts
Naturally a 67 year old woman produces an heir before I can seize the throne of Milan. Dang it.
I took a Byzantine province off them as basis for reconquest later. Serbia and Bulgaria are good candidates for this too. Depending on other provinces Austria has you can add it to the empire first for another prince.
Or Castile no longer gets missions to meddle in Northern Italy
Some of the rewards you can get seem nonsensically overpowered (permanent -25% dev cost in Anjou) or don't make a lot of sense from a historical perspective (things which were regarded as super-aggressive moves reward you with less AE)
Castile might not get the Italian Wars missions, but does Spain?
I think the missions you get in the new system are tied your country, not your NI's. I seemed to remember a tweet about how someone in playtesting or a dev clash jumped through a bunch of hoops to become Byzantium as the Ottomans so they could get all of Byzantium's missions (and the ridiculous number of claims they get from them) paired with the Ottoman's NIs.
(You also can't form Spain before Admin Tech 10 which is ~1530)
They were incompetently led/coordinated, to be fair.
The Eastern Empire, restored; now to reclaim the empire's granary before turning our sights to the traitors to the west.
This makes me wish/hope that the next DLC focuses on Economy, like the real heady stuff like fractal reserve currencies and gold/silver standards.
Especially if it lets you do what (in theory) you can do in Endless Space 2, and make so much money that you crash your neighbor's economies due to hyperinflation.
So far my losses are below 10k and Timurid losses are at 30k, Tribel Federation government is extremely strong
[edit]
Only wishing my 1/1/2 would die already
Been going swimmingly. Initial wars for Congo region were incredibly easy as no unwelcome alliance chains formed. Took Exploration ideas and used the colonist to bridge the gap between Congo and the Great Lakes region. Took the whole region in two wars. Then colonised a bridge into the Zimbabwe region, which was a mess of borders. Wasn't really planning on this, but currently eating up the East African coast due to the fractured nations (my plan was more to block out the Cape then war into the Sahel region).
Absolutely no European colonisation so far. From what I can see of Europe, Portugal and Castile have been at war a lot. No American or African colonies at all from Europe!
I picked Exploration as my first idea, and so far I have Humanist as my second (but haven't unlocked any ideas yet). Do you think this a good pick? I was leaning towards getting either Innovative, Econ or Admin to reform the government but I feel humanist will keep my empire more stable. But now from the unexpected opportunity in Zimbabwe I have a tonne of gold mines that will be boosting my inflation, so perhaps Econ instead? But also the Admin core-cost reduction would be nice..... hmmm.....
Economic is a good pick if you're going to be developing for institutions
Aww, Yemen and Warsangali also declared on me
I think this is not going to work out
In fact, it seems like this latest patch, while fun, has the most obviously unintended exploits of any patch in awhile.
edit: As Congo I would honestly go 1. Exploration, 2. Expansion/Administrative 3. Quantity/Offensive as my first ideas. After that? Probably religious as your next idea and maybe maritime after that if you need big strong navies to take any land off of Europeans. Humanist is quite good for countries in Europe, but as a Fetishist nation the religious CB would probably be too much for me to pass up.
Christian nations are the only ones which aren't painfully slow at converting right now
Also that wonderful +2 Tolerance of Heathens Fetishists get goes to waste if you try to convert everything
The only religions which can covert fast enough to avoid rebels are Christians with the extra missionaries, they can get 5 to 7 whereas Fetishist is stuck at 2 because Fetishists also can't become Defender of the Faith
I'm a bit bummed that you can't Enthrone a Timurid Prince as a Tribal Federation, I would've liked all those cores
I tried to get Ajam to spread their dynasty to me but either dynasty spread is blocked for certain government form or certain religions will now prevent it
I haven't seen a lot online about it (though I haven't done extensive forum search either). Right now I tend to scatter it around when I find myself wealthy enough to have monarch points I won't need for a bit, which strikes me as a sub-optimal strategy.
Thoughts on the best ways to approach development?
Playing tall is functional, especially if you stack modifiers (custom nation max bonus + Economics + capital / trade hub + proper terrain). You just have to determine what your "victory" state is, since "take all the things" is the common metric used when determining option efficiency.
Otherwise it's worthwhile to develop gold provinces within a specific range of production values; some is needed to get good income, but too much risks depletion. Unless that has changed in a recent patch.
And there's an exploit with gold capitals, it would seem.
My eventual goal before heading east to the Levant is to grab firm control over most of Italy, get the valuable western Aragonese ports in the Genoa trade node, and, when I'm strong enough, force France into a PU.
A tall country with military ideas generally beats opponents a wide country can't beat before the very late game
Tall economies also perform better in the first half of the game, with wide expansion you generally end up deep in a loanhole
The main issue with tall play is that it's boring, people also have different standards on what "wide" and "tall" mean - my own personal opinion is that taking risks should be rewarded
(A number of things which are only critical to wide play were nerfed into the ground, for example interest reduction or ticking autonomy reduction from your government form)
It's pretty great and I don't know why I haven't been doing this sooner
Opening was to no-CB Georgia, vassalize them and eat the other Georgian states, then eat AQ after they declared war on me
Unfortunately it seems really difficult to fulfill my dream of slingshotting via those Timmy cores, I've yet see a game on VH where Timmy actually dies to his vassals
Other notable features of this game: Mamluk Indonesia, Scotland still going toe to toe with England into the 18th century, and Austria utterly annihilated. Last game had AI Morocco form Andalusia, which was maybe the strangest thing I've seen in a long time.
43.59% Inflation before 1500 btw, this is how you do
edit: As for the above how do you plan to not, like, go bankrupt? That seems like a ton of loans and a lot of inflation and you aren't making money even with zero maintenance and no advisors?
I had points saved for when I reformed, which I had set up to do as soon as I got a border. So my first war with them was one mil tech behind, and I had three times their numbers because hooray gold provinces. With Elan and everything they out moraled me badly, but that's what 60k to 20k is for. Basically I could fight them as soon as we had a border.
As long as I can grow fast enough to avoid a bankruptcy I'll be fine - going bankrupt would mean the Ottomans would most likely dishonor the call when the coalition declares on me
Timmy is unfortunately over 500% Warscore now and the Mamluks took over the Gulf of Aden
What's worse is that the Ottomans took Trade Ideas which means they'll be siphoning a lot of my income over the course of the game
Oh, since Sunni sucks at converting since CoC, that also means 80% of my land right now is Orthodox, Coptic and Shia which has been a bit of a problem
Wars are vastly more expensive on Very Hard, especially in the early game since you have to go over your Force Limit
[edit]
My 0/3/2 and the fact I only have seven states available also don't help
Not enough coordination to actually beat him yet though. Waiting for Starnan to bother.