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[EUIV] Reducing the Reduced reduction in cost of reducing war exhaustion for some NI's
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Which I have been trying to do but it's still barely putting a dent in my peasants.
Speaking of, last play session I jumped into war with Denmark for shiz and gigz, and the might of the Diplomatic Play system really shined: in any other game, Denmark would have been boned, but the interest system (and Russia's reliance on several European countries for products) meant that EVERYONE (except #2 France who jumped to #1 when GB got involved at my urging) got involved. I fought one fight on my homefront, and my allies (Great Britain and someone else I forget), fought everywhere else. Initially I was losing, but before quitting the game I thought "Meh, I want to see what happens when I lose" because the game hadn't yet given me the war journal tutorial. Interestingly enough, after going down in score real quick, I stabilized as the other side absolutely tanked. I went from 70 - 85 to 50 - -100, entirely I'm sure on the back of my strong economy: the "war cost" for our side was 1/5th of the other sides and we were taking half the casualties. I was going to load the game after the war as I also had decided to enact Free Trade right before going to war, but given the a posteriori knowledge, figured "Nah, I'll ride this out." Half the country has been radicalized, with the upper strata who were working in largely small, production buildings have had their wages gutted and their standard of living now at a measley "secured."
I will say I do not feel like I understand the war system at all after that and was hoping going to war would pop the tutorial quest, but that's okay. I learned a bit it the war system seems interesting, and definitely preferred to futzing about with individual armies.
Are you spreading your your industries or building in certain states? Similarly, are you investing in switching production methods to free up labor so that there's always someone willing to slide into those lost jobs?
I believe for less-developed countries the taxation capacity problem's a research thing, not just a government thing - there's stuff in the society tree that addresses it, but I'm not sure which ones since the multiply-nested tooltips are a bit byzantine for working out full effects of stuff.
Not really. There are tech lines for increasing capacity and better production methods for government admins but the impact is not that big. The biggest difference seems to have been changing away from the hereditary bureaucrats law.
I do think there are some serious issues with warfare, like Prussia has been at war with Oldenburg for something like the past 30 years, but since they have no way to actually get to Oldenburg the war just can never end. Other than that, I really like it. The society and economy building aspects are exactly what I wanted, the diplomatic plays are quite interesting, it's just the warfare that is holding things back a bit for me. I like the concept, I just think it needs a decent amount of polish on the implementation.
Almost half my expenses are welfare payments, because 1 million people are unemployed. I'm guessing I set welfare payments too high and it's higher than they can get from working? Also I set the minimum wage really high, maybe I set it too high for industry to still make a profit?
At least I'm #1 in the world for standard of living!
Very interesting to see the same nation play out in a completely different way. You have also managed to not go into debt at all, which is not something I was able to accomplish.
Pretty silly.
Edit: got rid of one disaster by warring on Uzbeks and turning then into a (giant) tributory state. I have no idea how to get rid of the other one. Meanwhile I'm at +175% research cost.
Edit: Ming has a couple event strings coded in to try and force them the break up, not sure exactly what they are though, I've always been on the outside gleefully watching the Mingplosion.
- Unguarded Nomadic Frontier, when a large Horde borders you and is not your subject.
- Crisis of the Ming Dynasty, when it's the reformation and you have low Mandate or have lost it.
During either of these disasters, if you have too many rebels in a certain region, it's scripted for a large state to break away in that region, either as a disloyal vassal that will declare for indepence in a few years, or an independent nation that immediately declares on you for the mandate.
Very smooth sailing after that. Made allies with Ottomans and Brits so the very scary Spain didn't bother me while i caught up on institutions. Ended up having to develop Bejing to 79 to get 2 institutions. One eventually ended up spawning in Korea which was really nice.
As of my latest save:
- i have a ton of vassals and tributaries which are all on a slow conveyor belt of absorption. Current big vassals are Brunei and Chagatai, and i just absorbed Japan (Eastern half. Western half is all that remains of Korea).
- have accomplished everything in mission tree except spice trade one, i need more trade power in the listed nodes. My best bet is the Malacas where i have a trade company at 29%but Spain has most of the rest or is about to get it. So that may have to be dealt with
- total dev is is almost 6k. Can claim economic hegemon but i have a fully professional army and no mercs so don't see the point. Ally Ottoman has army hegemon which i would otherwise qualify for. Spain lags me by over 1k at this point on Great Powers list
- i have built town hall, university, and cathedral in every province. I have some religion the thing that gives my -unrest in temple/cathedral provinces. I have a dozen fully upgraded monuments, and an working on newly acquired ones.
- i have harmonized everything i ran into so far except Theravada (almost done), Shinto, and Hindu. To be fair i didn't quite understand it at first so doesn't a lot of time early on converting provinces
I know it's not a big deal to veteran players but I'm still learning and have yet to do ironman even though a almost never do the "oh that was dumb. Reload" thing anymore. Haven't done it as Ming yet. For example i finally got some use it of setting region settings (+33% institution spread, + manpower, etc...), which i always avoided before.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/europa-universalis-iv-domination-announced.1572221/
I've been following the Dev Diaries, and the content looks good from my end, but I have some foibles about how Paradox have(n't) been messaging or managing expectations which helps explain the disappointment I'm seeing, and maybe feeling just a little?
So coming into 2022, I think it was commonly agreed that several regions needed an overhaul, last being touched before even Missions were introduced. Paradox even had a twitter poll and Scandinavia, rightfully so, won in a landslide, but strong runners up were the Middle East and Mesoamerica. Sure enough, we get Lions of the North, the opening dev diary for which makes it clear we're focusing on Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea, so we know which countries are in line for an update. And I think Lions of the North was really successful, railroaded reformation AI notwithstanding.
So what next? Hard call, but I think the community expectation was one of the runners up from that original poll would be next in line. So diaries start in January and we get... a Ming mission tree? That was confusing, but Ming effectively had no mission tree, so it's not like it's not worthwhile. Then next week was the Ottomans. Oh, does that mean it's Middle Eastern after all? Then the next week was Japan. And then several weeks in western Europe covering France and Spain and England. While most people had pegged the general scope, we didn't get confirmation until yesterday.
So what's the problem? Well the reason people would have liked a Middle Eastern update is their mission trees are borderline vestigial, with some only having two or three unique missions. Persia's tree still requires you to be Shia to fully complete it, despite Zoroastrian becoming a popular alternate playstyle. The Ottoman tree was more detailed, but still pretty thrown together from the old mission system and needed some streamlining and rationalisation. It got that, hurrah, but now places like Persia and Egypt look even more barren. It's a little worse in England, in which England/Britain got a new tree, but their original tree was servicible from my perspective, if a little dull compared to later trees (not as dull as Byzantium's tree, but I digress), meanwhile Scotland and Ireland maybe have trees to cover unifying the British isles, but nothing else. So now England (and France/Spain) gets a second update of their trees, while because of the non-geographic focus of this DLC the contrast with Scotland and Ireland look comparatively barren, though even they have it better than the Mamluks. There was a promise of some lesser powers also getting a look in, and now we know that's just Korea, Prussia and Portugal. But since we only learned this in the announcement for Domination people were wondering whether that meant places like the Netherlands or maybe some of the Indian powers. In not being clear about Domination's scope, and in not really explaining why they were bucking expectations of another regional update, Paradox has allowed speculation to develop into disappointment. I think they should have been more clear about their plans earlier on.
Austria has used the opportunity to go wild and conquer just about everything outside Germany, and now I'm surrounded. Even worse, they've just passed Ewiger Landfriede, no internal wars. I had only just grabbed the last province I needed, a few years earlier and they would have really screwed me. They passed that reform while I was at war, so I used the opportunity to eat a couple of Free Cities, took about 200 AE, a massive coalition has formed but it's all HRE members so they can't declare.
I guess I'm spending the next 40 years conquering Scandinavia, since I've got nowhere else to go.
Ally with the Ottomans and Castille (how has Castille not formed Spain by 1613), wait for the coalition to go away while you build favors, then beat the hell out of Austria and get them to spit out OPMs like a big inbred pinata
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Have to do that to complete an Ottoman mission and they're all in a coalition vs me so i guide they might be good.
Also does it matter that The Paltinate i have force vassalized in an earlier war? They're good little muslims in western Germany now which is LOL.
Edit: Regular members don't matter.
IIRC electors allied to you count as occupied for the dissolution condition.
More importantly for my personal preferences, Byzantium is in scope.
This wasn't even a particularly big Commonwealth
Quickly peace Portugal out for money, and we've sieged down about half of Castile, with the Ottos sitting on Toledo... and they white peace out of the war. Now Castile outnumbers me, their troops had been hiding behind their forts but now they come out and start unsieging everything. I've got about 30% warscore, but no forts, so I can't demand land, and hell if I'm going to leave without land after all this, so I take out some loans and merc up. I siege down Toledo while they keep popping out, trying to catch troops I've got sieging other provinces. I finally take the fort and then win a decisive land battle, and I can take about 60 warscore worth of land. But that's not enough, this war is ruining my country so goddamit we're going to really win it.
About 11 years after the war started, I can take 98%... but I'm two admin techs behind and already have a bunch of unstated land, so all my prizes go to my Granadan vassal. Hopefully they stay loyal, or I'm going to get really cranky.
Hee hee hee
Also Milan -> Sardinia-Piedmont -> Italy is a great powergamer path if that is your wont.
I did something like that in my Stern Des Sudens game, it was wonderful. It's always frustrating to fight a massive Ottomans, have a massive victory... and then take so little land from them that they recover in no time and they're even stronger by the time your truce is up. Reconquering all those cores cuts them down fast.
Integrating something that big is going to be a pain in the ass though if that's the end goal.
Can yank a couple of provinces first if you can absorb the liberty desire
Next idea group will be Influence and I will be yanking up my absolutism like no tomorrow. Sardinia-Piedmont helped with its -10% diploannex cost and +5% Admin Efficiency modifiers.
Also, the Unify China CB is ridiculous. I knew it gave half-cores on anything you occupy, which saves on admin cost. What I didn't realise is that because it's a core when you take it, it has no separatism, no unrest, no autonomy. Once you take the mandate your economy will become 5-10x bigger in about 10 years, it's probably the most dramatic power boost in the game.
I think I'm going to need to take a break from the game for a while, because if I play in Africa and need to spend 2000 mana deving an institution I may go mad.
That's what birding is for!
I tend to make a backup save every 50 years or so, just in case something goes stupidly wrong.
How do you backup save Ironman?