So I kind of flamed out on my Russia game from a few weeks ago, and asked some people for suggestions on nations to play. The first suggestion was to play as Russia, which I vetoed because I had literally just gotten bored of that. The next suggestion was to play somewhere in the Middle East, which was kind of interesting because the closest I have ever come to doing that is playing an eastern expansion focused Ottomans. I ended up deciding on the Timurids since the Mughal Empire sounded like fun.
So I started up as Timurids, and I noticed that your starting position is incredibly fragile. My first couple attempts went poorly, my third attempt was going alright until I screwed up the first war and lost a ton of manpower, my fourth attempt was cut short because my starting ruler died almost immediately, but my fifth attempt, now that one worked out alright.
The first war against Ajam went pretty well, though I wasn't able to take as many provinces as I would have liked I was able to drain the armies of my vassals a bit, get back several cores and keep my own manpower largely intact. I started a war with Baluchistan before taking the provinces from Ajam, to make sure my vassals didn't get any ideas. This was a good plan as my ruler died about 7 years in, and Transoxiana went disloyal but not by much. I took a couple provinces from Baluchistan and expanded my army a bit to keep the vassals intimidated. Once I hit 1454 I annexed Fars and Khorasan, which ended all vassal disloyalty, then I started working my way into India and then curved back around to get some more of my cores back in the west.
Ironically enough during this period I lost more manpower to rebels than to enemy action, so in what was probably a minor error I took Humanist for my first idea group. Defensive ideas I took second. This has allowed me to keep my army at or near my force limit while still having a manpower buffer, which has been pretty nice. Because of my ruler stats I've been swimming in diplo points so I'll probably take Trade ideas next because I could really use more merchants and trade income as I move into India.
On my western frontier, things are kind of crazy. Rebels have been everywhere and various nations have come and gone and it's only been like 70 years so far. AQ and QQ still exist (AQ only technically, they are about to get their last 3 provinces absorbed by QQ it looks like) and a Coptic nation, of all things, popped up. I nearly have every province in the Persia node, and I have formed Mughals after completing the main missions for Timurids.
Holy moly the Mughals are pretty amazing. I have so many accepted cultures and so many states available now. I need to get the last Iranian culture group provinces and I'll have the entire culture group, and I have permanent claims and missions to get me more permanent claims on Hindustani and the rest of India. Now I just have to keep up with institutions and tech levels (I'll be able to embrace Colonialism fairly soon, well before most of Europe) and I'll be in good shape. I'm not sure I like the switch to Indian units instead of Muslim, but overall they seem fairly equivalent. It is possible I am missing something there.
Overall this has been fun so far. I think this run I'm going to try and take on Ming and maybe Russia. I am allied to Ottomans but they are kind of stagnating a bit, not really expanding like I expected. Mamluks are my rival at the moment and are in a Golden Age and possibly stronger than the Ottomans. Vijayanagar in Southern India is pretty strong currently as well, so they'll likely pose something of a challenge, as will Bahmanis. Hopefully they keep each other in check until I get to them. I'm not sure if I'll get to Goa before Portugal can take it through their mission, we'll see.
OK so I am a bit confused by the trust mechanic. My trust with the Ottomans has only moved by spending favors, even though the tooltip says it increases over time while allied. Even honoring the call to arms when Ottomans finally declared on Mamluks didn't get me any trust, though I did get 40 favors at the end of the war. I've been using my favors to increase my trust level with Ottomans, which is finally at 80 so that at least is settled.
I almost felt bad for the Mamluks at how badly they lost that war, considering it was during their golden age. They are still a major power, but just barely. Meanwhile I am the first ranked major power and have more development than Ming. Ming still has a crazy huge army, but they are quite a few techs behind. Meanwhile I may have goofed and gotten a ton of AE in India by taking a fair chunk of land from a non-co-belligerent, hopefully that doesn't bite me. If Mewar, Bahmanis and Vijayanagar all attacked me at once I could be in a spot of trouble, but hopefully the alliance with Ottomans keeps them at bay (and of course the angriest nations have a truce so they can't join).
Oh and I just found out that you can promote advisors, even beyond level 3. That is really neat!
So, because Mewar was fighting Bahmanis the feared coalition against me never materialized. Unfortunately the Ottomans got off their asses and expanded eastward, taking some Kurdish land so I can no longer get all the Iranian culture group provinces unless I fight them, so I'll live without the -10% advisor cost bonus. Printing Press has arrived so I developed my capital more and now I just have to wait for it to spread a bit. I also just figured out what drilling is all about, I even got lucky and got a general to gain skill already. I'm going to start the next phase of my Indian conquest soon, once I have Mil Tech 13 and better cannons. Portugal also owns Goa now, which is disappointing but kind of expected. I doubt I'll be able to threaten them for the province, even though that is the sort of thing the ability seems designed for. I'll have to see who Portugal has as allies, probably pretty strong ones.
I currently have the most valuable trade node in Persia, and I own literally every province in the node so if I can maintain top value I will be guaranteed to spawn Global Trade. My income is pretty impressive, but I do find myself needing more sailors now that I have started working on a navy. I can't even repair my ships apparently, which is bothersome. Also bothersome is that there really doesn't seem to be a way to guarantee getting a second institution to spawn in my nation, which would have been nice for the upcoming age objective. I will be kind of sad to lose my 50% discount on cannons though, that has really made building up my army a lot cheaper.
And in a real bit of weirdness, the Papal States have a colony in Western Africa. They don't seem to have any ideas that give a colonist, so I'm really not sure how that happened. Great Britain has a colony a bit further in, and I can't see South Africa yet, but I don't see any Europeans near Kilwa so that is encouraging. It would be way simpler if I didn't really have to deal with their shenanigans while I move towards Ming.
I do have a question about Golden Ages. Is that something I should take as soon as I qualify for one? I think I'll be able to start one in the Age of Absolutism, and if not then certainly during the Age of Revolution. Maybe take it right as I start beating up on Ming?
The Papal State probably bought it, if Dharma DLC is enabled countries can charter provinces in trade company regions (as long as they're not on the same continent)
You don't really have to fulfill all the Age Objectives, usually it's enough to fulfill three to gain all of the age abilities
You should start your Golden Age when you think you're going to spend a lot of monarch points (going on massive conquests, integrating large vassals e.g.) - the Mughals have extremely cheap coring so it might not have as much of an impact. It can also help you climb out of a hole if you've for example fallen behind in mil tech.
You probably won't need the 10% Morale against Ming, Ming on Normal is pretty much a paper tiger once their Mandate starts sinking
Pretty sure I have all DLC enabled, so I guess they bought the province then. That's kind of interesting. I'm mostly up to date on technology, even though I have spent a very large amount of monarch power on development, which was of course to get the institutions and keep my tech costs reasonable. The only immediately threatening nations near my border are the Mamluks (heavily in decline now that Ottomans has their act together), Vijayanagar (not quite on my border yet, but it won't be too long) who is also a great power, and Russia who is decently large but also somehow managed to deplete their manpower. I'm the largest nation by development by a decent amount, with only Ming and Ottomans also above 1000. Persia is the most valuable trade node by a decent margin with less than 30 years to go until Global Trading spawns. I think I'm in a pretty decent spot and my economy is quite strong. I just need to get a larger share of the Gulf of Aden and Gujarat trade nodes to feel more comfortable.
Vijayanagar took a huge chunk of Bahmanis, so I thought they might have overextension issues but then I looked at the actual provinces and they really weren't that large. I guess Central India isn't quite as populated / rich as other areas?
Well Bahmanis might have had Golkonda, but I'm pretty sure they don't now. Vijayanagar wrecked them pretty badly and they are down to like 2 or 3 provinces. Portugal did get Goa through a mission apparently, but so far no other Europeans have even arrived at the Kilwa / Madagascar area. If they can just buy their way into India though, that is a problem. Hopefully the stronger a nation is, the less likely they are to sell out? If so, that would be one advantage of Vijayanagar being kind of a monster. I'm really going to have to deal with them soon. Thankfully I do have way more money than they do. I have way more money than anybody, to be honest, which is kind of fun.
So I spawned my first institution, Global Trade! Persia might have been just under twice as valuable as the second place trade node, which was in fact Beijing. Third most valuable was English Channel. So that is pretty neat. Venice was the first to embrace the institution because they don't have much land, I'll hopefully be second but if not it isn't a huge deal. I'm now equal or ahead in tech in all areas, which is pretty nice.
Vijayanagar turned out to be not even remotely a threat, no doubt helped by my copious amounts of cannons and my having mil tech 16 while they were at mil tech 13. Also their army is only as large as it is because they took Quantity ideas, while I have Defensive. Ming's army remains ridiculously large, though their navy is actually weaker than mine currently. They have something like 300k soldiers in the field, it's kind of silly. Russia has rivaled me, and I have caught a diplomat from them building a spy network several times, but they haven't actually used that spy network to fabricate claims yet. No idea what they are up to really, other than apparently fighting Denmark a lot.
I am now kind of wondering if it was a mistake taking a ton of money off Vijayanagar in the last peace deal. That probably makes it more likely they will sell out to the Europeans doesn't it? I may have to accelerate my conquest speed, which probably won't be an issue because I'm not too worried about a coalition forming in India.
If you don't have to worry about Hindu coalitions, you can just truce-break Vijayanagar (it is well worth the ~200 admin you have to spend to get your stability up)
I would've taken additional provinces because Indian trade nodes are really rich and trade power is going to make you more money even in the short term
The funny part is I didn't even attack Vijayanagar directly (because we had a truce from an earlier war), I was attacking Mewar who they had guaranteed the independence of. I took about 65 overextension worth of provinces from Vijayanagar (everything they had that I had a claim on) and was able to finish coring them before I peaced out with Mewar and took 99 warscore of provinces from them as well. Now I have permanent claims on Junagarh and some more of Vijayanagar, and Junagarh is allied to (checks notes) Vijayanagar. It sure is convenient that I made Junagarh break their alliance with Mewar (but not Vijayanagar) a few wars ago. Though I guess tanking stability to increase Absolutism is a thing that can be done, so breaking truces might not be a bad idea anyway. I have sort of been trying to play as a semi-realistic ruler instead of as a gamer, so for example I don't think I'll be doing Court and Country.
I will definitely not bother taking money in the future though, honestly I have so much that I don't really know what to do with it. I built probably way more universities than I should have, and I still have tons of cash left. I would have the most cash on hand in the world if I hadn't built so many, but right now Ming has more money than me (though they did recently downsize their army from about 300k to 200k for whatever reason).
So just a quick comment, because something happened in game that I literally have never seen before. The Religious League War fired! With 26 of the remaining 29 HRE Princes being heretics, I figured this might be the time, and it did actually happen. Since I had never seen this happen before, I wasn't quite sure how it worked, but it appears that the Emperor still gets to call his allies into the war, even if they are not part of a Religious League, which kind of surprised me. Or maybe the Emperor's allies were allowed in because they were already in a war defending Austria from Ottomans? I really don't know.
What I do know is, that despite there being like 6 or 7 Catholic nations left in Europe, the Catholics are still going to win because France was allied to Cologne, the current Emperor. In fact the leagues are both fairly small, with like 7 nations in the Catholic and maybe 12 in the Protestant. Still, kind of neat to see the war actually happen. I am kind of curious if there will be any reforms passed at all, since if the Catholics win I don't see how they will ever get Imperial Authority, and since the leadership of the HRE changed hands often until the Reformation happened they never even managed the first reform.
On a different topic, I will say that these events that cost me 30k+ manpower during a war are getting to be rather bothersome. Especially when they happen while I have a -20% manpower recovery penalty.
So sometimes weird things happen in this game. Not so weird was the back and forth of the Religious League War, where the Protestants were ahead initially, but lost ground rapidly once Ottomans finished their war with Austria and the Emperor's ally France could focus on the war. But then nations started signing white peace deals, including France, which finally tipped the war back to the Protestants who ended up winning. Which is still kind of amusing, because there are more Reformed nations than Protestant nations, but at least there are enough to have a full set of electors again. I don't think there will be any reforms passed at all this game, because monthly authority gain is still negative even with the bonus for winning the war.
So that's not really weird. What is really weird is I was looking at the situation in South America when I noticed that one of the native nations in La Plata had provinces occupied by Sunni Zealots. The nation itself is Catholic, but somehow every single one of their provinces is Sunni. There are no other Sunni provinces anywhere in North or South America. I have no idea how this happened.
The Ottomans have purchased some trade company provinces in Kilwa and Madagascar, though I really don't know why they bothered. Also I was getting ready to beat the crap out of Vijayanagar when the Ottomans called me into war against Russia, which hey at least I get some power projection out of that. Also I'm kind of getting tired of Russia sowing discontent in my nation, so getting to thump them was therapeutic.
I did get to use Threaten War successfully against Tsang, which was nice, but I goofed by not realizing that forcing somebody to give up their tributary overlord status would give the former tributary a truce against not only their former overlord, but also me, even though they weren't involved in the war.
For the second time now, Portugal has declared a holy war on Vijayanagar. So Vijayanagar has obviously occupied Goa, but this time Portugal hasn't bothered to send its army over I guess since there have been 0 battles fought, and they declared well before I got called in to fight Russia (said war is now complete). I don't really understand what the AI is doing there. Last time they at least sent their army over, though they ended up taking a solid beating and ended up with a white peace. I'm also not certain that Portugal's navy is strong enough to beat the Vijayanagar navy. Portugal has by far the largest colonial empire, but their army is kind of a joke compared to the other great powers and their navy is mostly light ships so it would get thumped against Vijayanagar or myself. I would like for Vijayanagar to take Goa from Portugal, but with no ticking war score because of no battles I just don't see it happening. So maybe they will white peace out when I launch my next invasion south.
Are the colonizing powers likely to fold if I threaten war against them? The Ottomans are my steadfast ally and have the third largest army in the world behind Ming and myself, with the only other nation that is remotely close being Russia (who just got stomped of course), but Portugal in particular is allied to Castile and Great Britain which is a bother.
One last note, the estates system really feels like it needs a revamp. I probably shouldn't have been mostly ignoring it this run, but it's such a hassle trying to keep the various estates balanced without feeling like I'm costing myself a bunch with the increased autonomy. Then of course I find out that I have to hit certain thresholds of loyalty and influence for multiple different estates in order to progress down my mission tree, so now I have to try and figure out how to do that without screwing things up. I get the idea is to give you something to do during peace other than wait for AE/manpower/truce timers but it's just a hassle to deal with. At least now you aren't forced to give land to estates I suppose.
Portugal and Spain tend to expel Sunni minorities from Andalusia and the Maghreb - and their CNs sometimes declare wars against natives which they lose
The AI won't land if it doesn't feel safe enough, on VH they have enough boats and troops that they land everytime
Colonizers are probably too strong for Threaten War, especially now that CNs are much stronger than they used to be
Indian estates are the strongest estates in the game, the rationale behind them is that they're in a way supposed to offset the problems which come with an Asian capital - you should use them to circumvent Local Autonomy. Getting the full tax and production income from a 75 or 100 LA provimce is super-strong and helps snowball
I'm not sure I understand how it helps offset the issues with having an Asian capital, since the main issue is the inability to make trade companies I think? Which means you can only make so many states, and I could have sworn you can only give estates land that is in a state. I could be wrong about that? I'll have to check when I fire the game up again later today. If I can get the tax and production from non-state land then I have really been missing out.
Oh, sorry, that was general advice on how estates are best used - the way to play a small nation like an OPM for example is to conquer land and grant it to estates so you can get a portion of the benefit of owning that land. Otherwise you're doing your conquests on the back of your one initial province. A lot of people are concerned that this functionality will be lost with the rework.
I wouldn't worry about the 25% minimum LA so much, burghers for example give +50% Local Trade Power and that tends to offset any income lost to LA. Likewise, having influential estates gives +Trade Efficiency and +National Tax Modifier.
They don't actually compensate the problem of not being able to set up trade companies, but they're noticably stronger and this was given as a reason. Brahmins for example give you a reliable +1 Tolerance of Heathens and +20% Religious Unity on top of the +3 Tolerance you get from Indian Sultanate. Rajput regiments are also free manpower if you really wanna micro it.
Ugh, the AI in this game sometimes. "Okay Hesse, I've gotten the Commonwealth to 95% war score, peace them out so we can divert troops to the rest of the League war and relieve France." "No, it's gotta be 99%." "Aw, come on!"
Then a year later they unsiege a ton of stuff and it's down to 50%.
Maybe it was a mistake to get involved in a League War with Spain, Portugal and Britain as my enemies.
I'm now returning to Sunset Invasion on VH, I really want that achievement even though fighting the Europeans on Very Hard is like fighting The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones
Someone on reddit posted a guide for playing as Mexico, which sounded different. I didn't follow the guide much, but it was a lot of fun. Start as Portugal, focus on exploring the new world, create a colony, fight the natives, bankrupt Portugal for the sake of your colony.
At the end of the Age of Discovery I did a no-CB trucebreak after taking 60 loans, then switched to playing as Mexico. Became the #1 great power, fought the Spanish and British out, started colonising Africa and Asia... but with no achievements to aim for I'm kinda bored with it now.
Wow wrecking Portugal like that seems excessive considering you don't have to fight them
Does Mexico have unique ideas
It might not be necessary, but 60 loans can build a bunch of buildings. I also spent all Portugal's mana on developing Mexico, and colonised most of the caribbean and the columbian coast, and gave all that to Mexico.
A lot of formable colonial nations have their own ideas, but I stuck with the default colonial nation ideas, because it gave me about +2 republican tradition/year. The reddit post also explained that it would get max absolutism as a republic, but I didn't get that far.
I haven't played the patch yet, but I'm seriously looking at trying out Manchu (well Jianzhou technically I guess). I should roll my game back a version and finish up my Mughals game, but honestly there doesn't feel like too much else I want to do besides take down Ming, which I could do as Manchu instead. Maybe combine a Jianzhou > Manchu > Qing game with a colonizing game, which I haven't really done before.
I just played a game as So, the Japanese pirates. It was fun! I united about half of Japan, then Ashikaga declared war on me and I took Kyoto from them!
Then Ming declared war on me, and sunk all my galleys in one fight. Then Korea declared war on me. Bugger, that was over fast.
Yeah I was looking at those Qing ideas, and holy moly are they good. Only one idea directly impacts your army on the battlefield (I guess sort of two if you count the bonus banner units) but -20% Core Creation and -10% Aggressive Expansion Impact right off the bat is great.
Something I'm wondering about the banner units, it says they take less manpower so does that mean that their casualties use up less of your manpower pool, in addition to being cheaper to recruit? Or does it take 250 manpower to recruit the unit and then when they take casualties they use up normal amounts of manpower? Also I'm curious how impactful the slower reinforcement cost is, and if that makes reinforcement speed bonuses more valuable.
They use up less manpower as they reinforce and yes I would probably want the reinforcement bonus from Defensive
You might want to park them next to an enemy fort rather than directly on it after winning a battle because otherwise it could happen that they don't reinforce in time for the next attack
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Sooooo post-patch trying to launch leads to a "executable not found" error. This persists after validating the fines through Stan as well as a complete uninstall and reinstall. Trying to run it directly leads to the launcher losing with a greyed-out play button. Any ideas?
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
I've played as Oirat and Mongolia so far on this patch and Ming has exploded by 1455 in both games. The hardest part is chasing down the carpet sieges Ming puts out as you siege down Beijing.
Started up a game as Jianzhou, and the first start was real bad with enemy alliances so I started again and got super lucky. Haixi had one ally in Yeren, so I went and thumped them (full annexation) and I saw that Udege didn't have any allies so I attacked and annexed them, and then Donghai only had Nivkh as an ally so I went and annexed Donghai as well. I now have plenty of Jurchen land and the necessary provinces, I just need to wait for cores to finish and I can become Manchu in probably 1449. Unfortunately my income is pretty trash right now, and I have truces with basically everybody on my borders so I'm going to have to wait a bit to make any further progress.
I currently have claims on all of Manchuria, but I'm pretty sure those turn into cores when I form Manchu. I need quite a bit more development to hit the threshold for triggering the disaster for Ming, but I don't have much doubt I can do it. Really right now I just need to shore up my income, which should happen as devastation and autonomy tick down over time. Maybe I should take out some loans to build province buildings? I also don't have any allies at the moment (dishonored a call to arms when Ming declared a war over tributary status against Korchin, in retrospect I probably shouldn't have allied them as I never was in a war with their help, oh well), and I'm not really sure I can get any.
I think I am going to play this as a colonizer Qing, the mission tree supports it nicely and I haven't ever had colonial nations under my rule before. I've done colonizing of the Siberian frontier and as Aztecs in North and South America, but I've never had colonial nations. Really though my main goal is to take down Ming, and then once that is done I'm not really sure what I will do.
Oirat also seems interesting, though I haven't looked into their full progression yet. But that is definitely for later, if ever.
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
This is a thread for the Paradox Game, Europa Universalis IV, not Apple Arcade. I have no idea if you can even get EUIV on Apple Arcade since Paradox is a Swedish gaming company.
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
This is a thread for the Paradox Game, Europa Universalis IV, not Apple Arcade. I have no idea if you can even get EUIV on Apple Arcade since Paradox is a Swedish gaming company.
Whoops! You’re right, wrong thread. Sorry about that.
Posts
So I started up as Timurids, and I noticed that your starting position is incredibly fragile. My first couple attempts went poorly, my third attempt was going alright until I screwed up the first war and lost a ton of manpower, my fourth attempt was cut short because my starting ruler died almost immediately, but my fifth attempt, now that one worked out alright.
The first war against Ajam went pretty well, though I wasn't able to take as many provinces as I would have liked I was able to drain the armies of my vassals a bit, get back several cores and keep my own manpower largely intact. I started a war with Baluchistan before taking the provinces from Ajam, to make sure my vassals didn't get any ideas. This was a good plan as my ruler died about 7 years in, and Transoxiana went disloyal but not by much. I took a couple provinces from Baluchistan and expanded my army a bit to keep the vassals intimidated. Once I hit 1454 I annexed Fars and Khorasan, which ended all vassal disloyalty, then I started working my way into India and then curved back around to get some more of my cores back in the west.
Ironically enough during this period I lost more manpower to rebels than to enemy action, so in what was probably a minor error I took Humanist for my first idea group. Defensive ideas I took second. This has allowed me to keep my army at or near my force limit while still having a manpower buffer, which has been pretty nice. Because of my ruler stats I've been swimming in diplo points so I'll probably take Trade ideas next because I could really use more merchants and trade income as I move into India.
On my western frontier, things are kind of crazy. Rebels have been everywhere and various nations have come and gone and it's only been like 70 years so far. AQ and QQ still exist (AQ only technically, they are about to get their last 3 provinces absorbed by QQ it looks like) and a Coptic nation, of all things, popped up. I nearly have every province in the Persia node, and I have formed Mughals after completing the main missions for Timurids.
Holy moly the Mughals are pretty amazing. I have so many accepted cultures and so many states available now. I need to get the last Iranian culture group provinces and I'll have the entire culture group, and I have permanent claims and missions to get me more permanent claims on Hindustani and the rest of India. Now I just have to keep up with institutions and tech levels (I'll be able to embrace Colonialism fairly soon, well before most of Europe) and I'll be in good shape. I'm not sure I like the switch to Indian units instead of Muslim, but overall they seem fairly equivalent. It is possible I am missing something there.
Overall this has been fun so far. I think this run I'm going to try and take on Ming and maybe Russia. I am allied to Ottomans but they are kind of stagnating a bit, not really expanding like I expected. Mamluks are my rival at the moment and are in a Golden Age and possibly stronger than the Ottomans. Vijayanagar in Southern India is pretty strong currently as well, so they'll likely pose something of a challenge, as will Bahmanis. Hopefully they keep each other in check until I get to them. I'm not sure if I'll get to Goa before Portugal can take it through their mission, we'll see.
I almost felt bad for the Mamluks at how badly they lost that war, considering it was during their golden age. They are still a major power, but just barely. Meanwhile I am the first ranked major power and have more development than Ming. Ming still has a crazy huge army, but they are quite a few techs behind. Meanwhile I may have goofed and gotten a ton of AE in India by taking a fair chunk of land from a non-co-belligerent, hopefully that doesn't bite me. If Mewar, Bahmanis and Vijayanagar all attacked me at once I could be in a spot of trouble, but hopefully the alliance with Ottomans keeps them at bay (and of course the angriest nations have a truce so they can't join).
Oh and I just found out that you can promote advisors, even beyond level 3. That is really neat!
You only get favors from war participation, you have to spend them on trust
I currently have the most valuable trade node in Persia, and I own literally every province in the node so if I can maintain top value I will be guaranteed to spawn Global Trade. My income is pretty impressive, but I do find myself needing more sailors now that I have started working on a navy. I can't even repair my ships apparently, which is bothersome. Also bothersome is that there really doesn't seem to be a way to guarantee getting a second institution to spawn in my nation, which would have been nice for the upcoming age objective. I will be kind of sad to lose my 50% discount on cannons though, that has really made building up my army a lot cheaper.
And in a real bit of weirdness, the Papal States have a colony in Western Africa. They don't seem to have any ideas that give a colonist, so I'm really not sure how that happened. Great Britain has a colony a bit further in, and I can't see South Africa yet, but I don't see any Europeans near Kilwa so that is encouraging. It would be way simpler if I didn't really have to deal with their shenanigans while I move towards Ming.
I do have a question about Golden Ages. Is that something I should take as soon as I qualify for one? I think I'll be able to start one in the Age of Absolutism, and if not then certainly during the Age of Revolution. Maybe take it right as I start beating up on Ming?
You don't really have to fulfill all the Age Objectives, usually it's enough to fulfill three to gain all of the age abilities
You should start your Golden Age when you think you're going to spend a lot of monarch points (going on massive conquests, integrating large vassals e.g.) - the Mughals have extremely cheap coring so it might not have as much of an impact. It can also help you climb out of a hole if you've for example fallen behind in mil tech.
You probably won't need the 10% Morale against Ming, Ming on Normal is pretty much a paper tiger once their Mandate starts sinking
Vijayanagar took a huge chunk of Bahmanis, so I thought they might have overextension issues but then I looked at the actual provinces and they really weren't that large. I guess Central India isn't quite as populated / rich as other areas?
Bahmanis has Golkonda which has a +5 goods modifier to gems if I remember the number correctly
I can see an argument to use your Golden Age as early as possible if you start as an OPM but most people take it for the final push of the campaign
I would take the Indian coast quickly because otherwise you've got Europeans buying provinces and potentially conquering chunks of it
Vijayanagar turned out to be not even remotely a threat, no doubt helped by my copious amounts of cannons and my having mil tech 16 while they were at mil tech 13. Also their army is only as large as it is because they took Quantity ideas, while I have Defensive. Ming's army remains ridiculously large, though their navy is actually weaker than mine currently. They have something like 300k soldiers in the field, it's kind of silly. Russia has rivaled me, and I have caught a diplomat from them building a spy network several times, but they haven't actually used that spy network to fabricate claims yet. No idea what they are up to really, other than apparently fighting Denmark a lot.
I am now kind of wondering if it was a mistake taking a ton of money off Vijayanagar in the last peace deal. That probably makes it more likely they will sell out to the Europeans doesn't it? I may have to accelerate my conquest speed, which probably won't be an issue because I'm not too worried about a coalition forming in India.
I would've taken additional provinces because Indian trade nodes are really rich and trade power is going to make you more money even in the short term
I will definitely not bother taking money in the future though, honestly I have so much that I don't really know what to do with it. I built probably way more universities than I should have, and I still have tons of cash left. I would have the most cash on hand in the world if I hadn't built so many, but right now Ming has more money than me (though they did recently downsize their army from about 300k to 200k for whatever reason).
What I do know is, that despite there being like 6 or 7 Catholic nations left in Europe, the Catholics are still going to win because France was allied to Cologne, the current Emperor. In fact the leagues are both fairly small, with like 7 nations in the Catholic and maybe 12 in the Protestant. Still, kind of neat to see the war actually happen. I am kind of curious if there will be any reforms passed at all, since if the Catholics win I don't see how they will ever get Imperial Authority, and since the leadership of the HRE changed hands often until the Reformation happened they never even managed the first reform.
On a different topic, I will say that these events that cost me 30k+ manpower during a war are getting to be rather bothersome. Especially when they happen while I have a -20% manpower recovery penalty.
If you're playing in India and you swim in money, I would just use mercs for infantry (unless you picked Quantity)
So that's not really weird. What is really weird is I was looking at the situation in South America when I noticed that one of the native nations in La Plata had provinces occupied by Sunni Zealots. The nation itself is Catholic, but somehow every single one of their provinces is Sunni. There are no other Sunni provinces anywhere in North or South America. I have no idea how this happened.
The Ottomans have purchased some trade company provinces in Kilwa and Madagascar, though I really don't know why they bothered. Also I was getting ready to beat the crap out of Vijayanagar when the Ottomans called me into war against Russia, which hey at least I get some power projection out of that. Also I'm kind of getting tired of Russia sowing discontent in my nation, so getting to thump them was therapeutic.
I did get to use Threaten War successfully against Tsang, which was nice, but I goofed by not realizing that forcing somebody to give up their tributary overlord status would give the former tributary a truce against not only their former overlord, but also me, even though they weren't involved in the war.
For the second time now, Portugal has declared a holy war on Vijayanagar. So Vijayanagar has obviously occupied Goa, but this time Portugal hasn't bothered to send its army over I guess since there have been 0 battles fought, and they declared well before I got called in to fight Russia (said war is now complete). I don't really understand what the AI is doing there. Last time they at least sent their army over, though they ended up taking a solid beating and ended up with a white peace. I'm also not certain that Portugal's navy is strong enough to beat the Vijayanagar navy. Portugal has by far the largest colonial empire, but their army is kind of a joke compared to the other great powers and their navy is mostly light ships so it would get thumped against Vijayanagar or myself. I would like for Vijayanagar to take Goa from Portugal, but with no ticking war score because of no battles I just don't see it happening. So maybe they will white peace out when I launch my next invasion south.
Are the colonizing powers likely to fold if I threaten war against them? The Ottomans are my steadfast ally and have the third largest army in the world behind Ming and myself, with the only other nation that is remotely close being Russia (who just got stomped of course), but Portugal in particular is allied to Castile and Great Britain which is a bother.
One last note, the estates system really feels like it needs a revamp. I probably shouldn't have been mostly ignoring it this run, but it's such a hassle trying to keep the various estates balanced without feeling like I'm costing myself a bunch with the increased autonomy. Then of course I find out that I have to hit certain thresholds of loyalty and influence for multiple different estates in order to progress down my mission tree, so now I have to try and figure out how to do that without screwing things up. I get the idea is to give you something to do during peace other than wait for AE/manpower/truce timers but it's just a hassle to deal with. At least now you aren't forced to give land to estates I suppose.
The AI won't land if it doesn't feel safe enough, on VH they have enough boats and troops that they land everytime
Colonizers are probably too strong for Threaten War, especially now that CNs are much stronger than they used to be
Indian estates are the strongest estates in the game, the rationale behind them is that they're in a way supposed to offset the problems which come with an Asian capital - you should use them to circumvent Local Autonomy. Getting the full tax and production income from a 75 or 100 LA provimce is super-strong and helps snowball
I wouldn't worry about the 25% minimum LA so much, burghers for example give +50% Local Trade Power and that tends to offset any income lost to LA. Likewise, having influential estates gives +Trade Efficiency and +National Tax Modifier.
They don't actually compensate the problem of not being able to set up trade companies, but they're noticably stronger and this was given as a reason. Brahmins for example give you a reliable +1 Tolerance of Heathens and +20% Religious Unity on top of the +3 Tolerance you get from Indian Sultanate. Rajput regiments are also free manpower if you really wanna micro it.
New dev diary on the free update which looks very good
Then a year later they unsiege a ton of stuff and it's down to 50%.
Maybe it was a mistake to get involved in a League War with Spain, Portugal and Britain as my enemies.
I should take Quantity more often, there was a point on Normal where I always took Quantity but then kinda started treating it as a crutch
I started my next game as Karaman and Cyprus of all nations declared war on me in 1447
Hungary and Prussia are both Reformed and Wallachia put in a massive amount of work, they're the ones who fought and beat Poland
I'm now returning to Sunset Invasion on VH, I really want that achievement even though fighting the Europeans on Very Hard is like fighting The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones
At the end of the Age of Discovery I did a no-CB trucebreak after taking 60 loans, then switched to playing as Mexico. Became the #1 great power, fought the Spanish and British out, started colonising Africa and Asia... but with no achievements to aim for I'm kinda bored with it now.
Does Mexico have unique ideas
It might not be necessary, but 60 loans can build a bunch of buildings. I also spent all Portugal's mana on developing Mexico, and colonised most of the caribbean and the columbian coast, and gave all that to Mexico.
A lot of formable colonial nations have their own ideas, but I stuck with the default colonial nation ideas, because it gave me about +2 republican tradition/year. The reddit post also explained that it would get max absolutism as a republic, but I didn't get that far.
Oh Paradox
Then Ming declared war on me, and sunk all my galleys in one fight. Then Korea declared war on me. Bugger, that was over fast.
If anyone's wondering where the Manchu core creation cost went, it was moved to the excellent Qing Ideas
Old patch Sworn Fealty VH as Najd
Something I'm wondering about the banner units, it says they take less manpower so does that mean that their casualties use up less of your manpower pool, in addition to being cheaper to recruit? Or does it take 250 manpower to recruit the unit and then when they take casualties they use up normal amounts of manpower? Also I'm curious how impactful the slower reinforcement cost is, and if that makes reinforcement speed bonuses more valuable.
You might want to park them next to an enemy fort rather than directly on it after winning a battle because otherwise it could happen that they don't reinforce in time for the next attack
I currently have claims on all of Manchuria, but I'm pretty sure those turn into cores when I form Manchu. I need quite a bit more development to hit the threshold for triggering the disaster for Ming, but I don't have much doubt I can do it. Really right now I just need to shore up my income, which should happen as devastation and autonomy tick down over time. Maybe I should take out some loans to build province buildings? I also don't have any allies at the moment (dishonored a call to arms when Ming declared a war over tributary status against Korchin, in retrospect I probably shouldn't have allied them as I never was in a war with their help, oh well), and I'm not really sure I can get any.
I think I am going to play this as a colonizer Qing, the mission tree supports it nicely and I haven't ever had colonial nations under my rule before. I've done colonizing of the Siberian frontier and as Aztecs in North and South America, but I've never had colonial nations. Really though my main goal is to take down Ming, and then once that is done I'm not really sure what I will do.
Oirat also seems interesting, though I haven't looked into their full progression yet. But that is definitely for later, if ever.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
This is a thread for the Paradox Game, Europa Universalis IV, not Apple Arcade. I have no idea if you can even get EUIV on Apple Arcade since Paradox is a Swedish gaming company.
Whoops! You’re right, wrong thread. Sorry about that.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie