Gundi, one thing you could try to do, watch Byzantium for the next time it goes into a good sized rebellion and try to raid Constantinople, then, after looting all the provinces (so many cities!) go back and conquer it. Don't give it to anyone else, tech spread works from anywhere if you personally hold all the provinces in question.
But my capital is already more advanced than Constantinople overall.
Gundi, one thing you could try to do, watch Byzantium for the next time it goes into a good sized rebellion and try to raid Constantinople, then, after looting all the provinces (so many cities!) go back and conquer it. Don't give it to anyone else, tech spread works from anywhere if you personally hold all the provinces in question.
But my capital is already more advanced than Constantinople overall.
Eh, still a lotta gold in them, just begging to be raided. Also Rome. So much gold in all those churches.
Rajas of India is out now! The patch means that old savegames are no longer compatible, but you can select the old branch under "betas" if you would like to continue them or would like to play without India and the added mechanics. Thought I should point that out!
I've already bought the DLCs at work through steam, but I won't be home until much later tonight. Fortunately I have off the next two days, so I think I know what I'm doing way too much of this week
so now that RoI is out i decided to play an old gods muslim game in the arabian peninsula, figuring that would be more fun what with the improvement to the decadence system and the extra territory to conquer
i started as the hashimids, who control mecca, and are a super easy start because they're surrounded by shia infidels and whatever the fuck ibadis are
so i made myself king of arabia with disturbing quickness and had a great idea what to do with some of the duchies
my jewish spymaster is now the doge of the all-jewish merchant republic of oman. it's him and four houses of "of muscat", the name generator not being prepared for this. he doesn't even know how to make boats yet but i avidly await the day a bunch of seafaring ashkenazi sail into ceylon and claim it for the king of araby
Oh man, new patch not good for my Poland play. These Lithuanians will not stop kicking my ass and the shittiest mercenaries doubled in price. I need the Rus Band to lay siege to some bitches.
Novgorod fell into my lap though, so I'ma keep going.
If you wanna have some silly fun in EU4, if you scroll through all the years in the menu, then scroll back to 1444 and start it up.
Everyone will have -200 opinion from being at war with everyone else, and you'll probably have tons and tons of strange CBs on all your neighbors. Also a ton of stuff will probably be considered a core province.
Apparently RoI has like infinite bugs right now fyi
For example, India has absurdly high revolt rates, events keep repeating (for me it was tournament victory events doubling up) and married men keep wanting to break up with their wives because they can't handle seeing a married woman
I started an Indian campaign, but I put it on ice until they fix the bugs. There's nothing really game-breaking at the moment, but it bugs me that they oversaw problems which you can encounter within five minutes of starting your campaign.
I guess I could continue my LP campaign, but I unfortunately deleted all my save files because I didn't know at first you could go back to an earlier branch, and I've been unable to retrieve any from the LP. I also got a bit negative after playing a kickass game as Armenia - playing a Pagan faction is pretty by-the-numbers compared to what can happen when you play a Christian lord.
I got ROI a few days ago and started playing for the first time since the ROI patch went out. Despite the bugs, the most annoying of which seems to be a sequence of events which can fire which leads to non-stop peasant and religious revolts, I've been having fun playing as the Maharaja of Lanka. I like that start for a number of reasons: 1.) You're a king. A king of a tiny kingdom, but still a king. 2.) You're one of the few independent realms that is completely religiously unified at the earliest start date. 3.) You're on the southern edge of the peninsula, which means you don't have to worry about either the muslims or any of the three large Indian kingdoms attacking you. 4. You only have baron level vassals at the start of the game, meaning you can freely shape your realm without having to worry about overly powerful vassals.
My thoughts on the patch as a whole: Jains, and to a lesser extent all the Indian religions, seem kind of overpowered. The ability of Jains and Buddhists to pick their heirs is amazing, the opinion and domain limit bonuses for being a Jain are amazing, the learning bonus for Buddhists isn't quite as good but certainly isn't anything to scoff at, and all the various religious branch traits for all three of the religions are all pretty great. (My favorite religious branches being the ones that give you +1 health. Having your rulers live an average of five or ten years longer than usual is incredibly useful.) Hindu bonuses are noticeably worse than the other two religions and on top that Hindus have to dance around the caste system; but on the other hand Hindus keep the normal holy war CB, which is probably the single most generally useful CB in the game. Also, War Elephants are pretty rad.
I like EU4 but I have to admit the huge advantage given to Europe kinda bugs me
Like Europe before contact with the new world was not particularly noteworthy compared to anywhere else in the world, there's lots of theories but it was largely the huge economic boost from New World trade that really moved Europe up into its own league and whose huge stores of raw materials later encouraged the industrial revolution. The corresponding increase in naval power that the new world funded in turn let Europe dictate trade terms to more and more of the world.
But with the way this game's set up, I can start as China, colonize the new world, be the dominant force on the world stage and kick Europe's ass... But westernizing will still make my culture smarter and better. I get that they're trying to still steer the game so that things end up recognizably divergent from real history instead of just being a massive toss-up every time, but it just feels like a chunky and deterministic way of achieving that.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Personally I think it's the disproportionately high tax base both in Europe and the Americas, as well as the fact that all trade routes go to Europe, that really gives the Europeans an advantage in EUIV. Even as a westernized nation that controls all of India you can still have trouble fighting large European countries like France or Russia. And that's kind of ridiculous. Or hell, France able to field larger armies than China? Also ridiculous.
At least with the new westernization system you frequently see a lot of non-European countries end up with western tech group and so at least they get some kind of fighting chance now. Before, you'd never see any AI countries successfully westernize.
Well, EUIV starts in the 1440s, just before the fall of Constantinople right?
The collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the Fall of Constantinople specifically in 1453, and the resulting diaspora of classical Greek knowledge and thinking, is often regarded as the start of the Renaissance, which in turn is regarded as the point at which European science first started to pull away from the rest of the world.
So if you assume that "westernization" refers to more to the proliferation of that neoclassical post-Byzantine philosophical-scientific paradigm than to just European culture in general, it might be more agreeable.
Obviously it is still pretty deterministic, since there's no way for unrelated events in India or China to trigger a similar process to the Byzantine diaspora as I suppose they conceivably could have, and it takes no account of the possibility of the Byzantine Empire surviving etc etc, but for a game set at the start of the Renaissance it makes sense to model the proliferation of Renaissance thought.
And, of course, one might not be surprised for a game called Europa Univeralis to turn out just a little Eurocentric
Just picked up EUIV in the sale and hoo boy I have no idea what I'm doing. I've been in CKII for too long.
This trade system is really weird. This game's interface does a lot to help you find efficient use of your resources (like buidling / training), so why isn't it there for merchants? I have to either perform fairly convoluted math on not terribly-available data points or try all the options and compare results to decide whether I should be collecting or forwarding trade.
I feel like this whole system could have been a lot simpler. As is, I'm not sure if it's really adding much to strategy? It seems to incentivize owning all the provinces within a trade node, which seems really bizarre and counter-intuitive for how you might actually build a trade empire.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
The exception to that being provinces with trade modifiers, where it may behoove you to build the entire line of trade buildings and thus stack the modifiers.
Anyways, I've been wanting to try and play as a Jewish character for awhile now but I also didn't want to play as the Khazars and have to hope to be lucky. Lo and behold, I discovered that in some patch, possibly ROI, there are now Jewish characters in Abyssinia. The Old Gods start is in a lot of ways almost as bad as the Khazaria start, but in the normal start the good ole Duke of Axum is now Jewish. I saved up some money, hired some mercs, and went on a holy war spree. I am now King of Nubia and have most of Abyssinia under my thumb as well. (You can't usurp the primary titles of members of different religions now, so I can't create the kingdom/empire of Abyssinia for awhile yet.) I've been having a lot of fun. In fact, considering you can holy war both Miaphysites and Muslims in Africa it might actually be the easiest east African start in the normal start date. Now I just need to try and slowly gather strength and wait for the right time to start pushing against the Muslims.
Third try at starting a new game in EUIV. I've chosen Portugal, as that seems like an interesting choice that isn't too easy or hard for a newcomer.
The usual advice is to befriend Castile / Spain and keep them happy until you have a world-spanning colony empire. So of course I did the exact opposite. I allied Aragon, Guaranteed Grenada, and when Castile attacked, I jumped in. I pulled in Aragon and England and wound up with a coalition of about 10 nations against lone Castile. There were a few close battles, but I joined all of them mid-way through and led each to victory. I took Grenada from Castile and forced them to give up their core on Gibraltar (which I had just fabricated for myself).
Next I'll attack Grenada to take Gibraltar and maybe annex the whole thing while I'm coring Galicia. As long as the Castile / Aragon event doesn't fire to suddenly merge them, I should be able to prevent Spain from ever forming. But it just hit 1450. Not seeing any way I can prevent this beyond save-scumming for that 10% chance...
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Apparently they fiddled with the facial graphic files to free some memory usage, but caused characters' features to become misaligned. There's a fix for that on the official forums.
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I keep getting the failure to save file error. So frustrating when doing iron man mode and that starts popping up every month.
I've now taken all of Grenada proper, as well as Andalucia and The Canarias from Castile. I've colonized the strip of Africa between Morocco and Mali, one place in Brazil (which had enough events to boost its Base Tax to 8), and the Gold Coast. My next Colonial Range boost will let me nab Bermuda; if I can also get Greenland I'll pretty much have the New World to myself. No one else has Explorers, so I've avoided exploring too quickly to prevent having my discoveries shared too soon. So far I think Castile is the only other nation that's unlocked Exploration I, and I plan to keep them way too busy to let them do any substantial colonization. Both it and Aragon still have male kings, so no wedding yet.
It's almost enough to make me think I've broken the game already, but for two things:
1. Castile's heir is female. The Iberian Wedding may still happen. I can postpone it by dragging Aragon into war with Castile and keeping it going for as long as possible. Will I make it to 1500? I think it's around 1465-1470 or so, so I guess that depends on how long the Castilian king lives. If the wedding happens, I'm in real trouble; I've tilted things just enough in my favor to be able to handle Castile on my own right now, but united with Aragon there's no chance. And they hate me now.
2. France. France is probably the world's most powerful nation (right there with the Ottomans, who absorbed Byzantium quickly), having won pretty much all of its early struggles. Many of its vassals have been annexed, and Burgundy's fate was sealed when it allied with Castile. France has defeated England in multiple wars, jumping in to help Scotland and Connacht every time fighting breaks out; England has actually lost its northern territory to Scotland and became such a minor power I had to ally with Brittany to get my strength back up. I could probably ally with France, but then I won't be able to do anything to stop it from building a colonial empire to rival mine. But... could I anyway?
I must now choose my second Idea group. I'm considering Quantity. While various Diplo groups would be more advantageous, I can't afford the Monarch Points right now (and fell behind in trade tech while rushing colonization). I've had some serious Manpower issues, and I'm going to need a much larger military to stand up to France or Castile+Aragon. In particular I need more ships; it's a shame how far down the line the -10% Ship Cost bonus is, but better later than never.
Also, I guess a patch has done something to fix tribal gold reserves. I tried to follow the path of some LP/AARs that enjoyed raiding Mali and various native Americans for cash. But Mali only had 38 gold when I defeated them in war. I can get more than that from Castile. So the question now is, do I take enough of Mali to get the gold mines? For whatever reason I don't have any kind of subjugation CB, so I'm actually having to fabricate claims on a tribal African nation (which is about as silly as it gets). It's almost wacky enough to get me to take Religion just for the first idea.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I've now taken all of Grenada proper, as well as Andalucia and The Canarias from Castile. I've colonized the strip of Africa between Morocco and Mali, one place in Brazil (which had enough events to boost its Base Tax to 8), and the Gold Coast. My next Colonial Range boost will let me nab Bermuda; if I can also get Greenland I'll pretty much have the New World to myself. No one else has Explorers, so I've avoided exploring too quickly to prevent having my discoveries shared too soon. So far I think Castile is the only other nation that's unlocked Exploration I, and I plan to keep them way too busy to let them do any substantial colonization. Both it and Aragon still have male kings, so no wedding yet.
It's almost enough to make me think I've broken the game already, but for two things:
1. Castile's heir is female. The Iberian Wedding may still happen. I can postpone it by dragging Aragon into war with Castile and keeping it going for as long as possible. Will I make it to 1500? I think it's around 1465-1470 or so, so I guess that depends on how long the Castilian king lives. If the wedding happens, I'm in real trouble; I've tilted things just enough in my favor to be able to handle Castile on my own right now, but united with Aragon there's no chance. And they hate me now.
2. France. France is probably the world's most powerful nation (right there with the Ottomans, who absorbed Byzantium quickly), having won pretty much all of its early struggles. Many of its vassals have been annexed, and Burgundy's fate was sealed when it allied with Castile. France has defeated England in multiple wars, jumping in to help Scotland and Connacht every time fighting breaks out; England has actually lost its northern territory to Scotland and became such a minor power I had to ally with Brittany to get my strength back up. I could probably ally with France, but then I won't be able to do anything to stop it from building a colonial empire to rival mine. But... could I anyway?
I must now choose my second Idea group. I'm considering Quantity. While various Diplo groups would be more advantageous, I can't afford the Monarch Points right now (and fell behind in trade tech while rushing colonization). I've had some serious Manpower issues, and I'm going to need a much larger military to stand up to France or Castile+Aragon. In particular I need more ships; it's a shame how far down the line the -10% Ship Cost bonus is, but better later than never.
Also, I guess a patch has done something to fix tribal gold reserves. I tried to follow the path of some LP/AARs that enjoyed raiding Mali and various native Americans for cash. But Mali only had 38 gold when I defeated them in war. I can get more than that from Castile. So the question now is, do I take enough of Mali to get the gold mines? For whatever reason I don't have any kind of subjugation CB, so I'm actually having to fabricate claims on a tribal African nation (which is about as silly as it gets). It's almost wacky enough to get me to take Religion just for the first idea.
I would almost never advise taking quantity. Having better leaders, better discipline, and better morale is more important than having bigger forcelimits or more manpower. The latter two issues can be solved with money, and as Portugal you can make literal boatloads of money.
The real benefit of quantity isn't the higher max manpower, it's that it refills a lot faster. That can be a big advantage if you're fighting a lot of land wars
Also taking quantity as Russia is just required, because it's hilarious
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I've seen Quantity poo-poo'd a lot around the web, and I understand the reasons for this. In the long term, it's an essentially useless idea chain, and most people optimize for the long term.
Problem with that is, Europa Universalis is probably like the worst game to optimize for the long term, because unless you're really terrible or doing some kind of weird RP challenge, in the long term you win. Eventually you'll be large and rich enough to solve all your problems with some form of brute force. Yeah, maybe France will be a bit bigger than you, and you might even lose some wars, but that'll just cost you a small amount of your territory and power. Losses in the early game can cut you in half, stunting you for a century.
In short, the early game is basically the only thing that matters. Late game is just a playground, and it doesn't really matter if you could technically be a wee bit stronger by having some more Discipline or whatnot.
Portugal's early game is defined by its proximity with very strong nations. It has some of the greatest potential of any of the starting nations, being optimally positioned to own colonization of both Africa and the New World and utterly dominate with funds (enough so that you could probably just win with trade and mercs before too long). However, in order to reach that position, Portugal must survive, relatively intact, while also battling natives in the early-game that possess great numbers and only somewhat inferior troops (at least in the 1400s). Even acts as simple as crushing native uprisings (or hunting them down, if you prefer) can be a massive drain on your tiny manpower.
This is where Quantity really shines. The very first idea gives a whopping +50% boost to Manpower. Going from 15k to 30k is extraordinarily strong; 15k can't even supply your standing army, but 30k gives you plenty of buffer to handle costly wars with Castile while still being able to continue your colonization and occasionally take on Mali or even Morocco to further your goals of trade domination. You could do everything with mercs instead, but that can be prohibitively expensive, slowing your colonization and restricting your ability to build ships (your lifeblood) and create buildings.
Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever complete Quantity. Maybe if I have some military power to spare because I'm ahead in military tech or something. I'll definitely get the 20% recovery speed, but beyond that it's just when I have nothing better to do. But that 50% boost from the first idea slot? It's kept me from losing two wars and helped ensure I haven't had to slow colonization efforts at all. And if it can do that in the first 100 years, then that gives me more long-term benefits than any other single idea I could have spent the points on.
I note that the common Portugal strategy is to pacify Castile diplomatically instead, utterly ignoring Iberia and trying to rush your colonization as quickly as possible. This is certainly viable, but at a huge cost. Spain has not formed in my game, and it's unlikely to for quite some time (and when it does, it'll be Aragon that forms it instead). Castile has just acquired Quest for the New World, but they have little ability to colonize, especially since I took the Canaries from them (and can easily take any colonies they try to create moving forward, if need be). Had I left Iberia alone, they would already be Spain, and we'd be fighting for control of crucial trade nodes and valuable provinces. Fights I would probably lose. By making Aragon the real power of Iberia, I have guaranteed that Spanish power is instead focused eastward into the Mediterranean. Once I reroute Indian trade around Africa, this will have been a losing proposition for them, my greatest rival.
Fleur de Alys on
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The reason why it wasn't considered necessary to attack Castille/Spain as Portugal before was because both Portugal and Castille forward trade the same way, and by taking over Moroccan and Algerian centers of trade you could easily compete with Castille in the node. (As opposed to having to compete against France or more particularly England.) Now though, colonial nations will drag you into wars with other overlords of other colonial nations regardless of what you want, so it's not particularly viable anymore.
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Eh, still a lotta gold in them, just begging to be raided. Also Rome. So much gold in all those churches.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?1876-Crusader-Kings-II-Rajas-of-India-to-Release-March-25th
How did I miss this was coming out
i started as the hashimids, who control mecca, and are a super easy start because they're surrounded by shia infidels and whatever the fuck ibadis are
so i made myself king of arabia with disturbing quickness and had a great idea what to do with some of the duchies
my jewish spymaster is now the doge of the all-jewish merchant republic of oman. it's him and four houses of "of muscat", the name generator not being prepared for this. he doesn't even know how to make boats yet but i avidly await the day a bunch of seafaring ashkenazi sail into ceylon and claim it for the king of araby
Novgorod fell into my lap though, so I'ma keep going.
Everyone will have -200 opinion from being at war with everyone else, and you'll probably have tons and tons of strange CBs on all your neighbors. Also a ton of stuff will probably be considered a core province.
For example, India has absurdly high revolt rates, events keep repeating (for me it was tournament victory events doubling up) and married men keep wanting to break up with their wives because they can't handle seeing a married woman
I guess I could continue my LP campaign, but I unfortunately deleted all my save files because I didn't know at first you could go back to an earlier branch, and I've been unable to retrieve any from the LP. I also got a bit negative after playing a kickass game as Armenia - playing a Pagan faction is pretty by-the-numbers compared to what can happen when you play a Christian lord.
My thoughts on the patch as a whole: Jains, and to a lesser extent all the Indian religions, seem kind of overpowered. The ability of Jains and Buddhists to pick their heirs is amazing, the opinion and domain limit bonuses for being a Jain are amazing, the learning bonus for Buddhists isn't quite as good but certainly isn't anything to scoff at, and all the various religious branch traits for all three of the religions are all pretty great. (My favorite religious branches being the ones that give you +1 health. Having your rulers live an average of five or ten years longer than usual is incredibly useful.) Hindu bonuses are noticeably worse than the other two religions and on top that Hindus have to dance around the caste system; but on the other hand Hindus keep the normal holy war CB, which is probably the single most generally useful CB in the game. Also, War Elephants are pretty rad.
Like Europe before contact with the new world was not particularly noteworthy compared to anywhere else in the world, there's lots of theories but it was largely the huge economic boost from New World trade that really moved Europe up into its own league and whose huge stores of raw materials later encouraged the industrial revolution. The corresponding increase in naval power that the new world funded in turn let Europe dictate trade terms to more and more of the world.
But with the way this game's set up, I can start as China, colonize the new world, be the dominant force on the world stage and kick Europe's ass... But westernizing will still make my culture smarter and better. I get that they're trying to still steer the game so that things end up recognizably divergent from real history instead of just being a massive toss-up every time, but it just feels like a chunky and deterministic way of achieving that.
At least with the new westernization system you frequently see a lot of non-European countries end up with western tech group and so at least they get some kind of fighting chance now. Before, you'd never see any AI countries successfully westernize.
The collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the Fall of Constantinople specifically in 1453, and the resulting diaspora of classical Greek knowledge and thinking, is often regarded as the start of the Renaissance, which in turn is regarded as the point at which European science first started to pull away from the rest of the world.
So if you assume that "westernization" refers to more to the proliferation of that neoclassical post-Byzantine philosophical-scientific paradigm than to just European culture in general, it might be more agreeable.
Obviously it is still pretty deterministic, since there's no way for unrelated events in India or China to trigger a similar process to the Byzantine diaspora as I suppose they conceivably could have, and it takes no account of the possibility of the Byzantine Empire surviving etc etc, but for a game set at the start of the Renaissance it makes sense to model the proliferation of Renaissance thought.
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This trade system is really weird. This game's interface does a lot to help you find efficient use of your resources (like buidling / training), so why isn't it there for merchants? I have to either perform fairly convoluted math on not terribly-available data points or try all the options and compare results to decide whether I should be collecting or forwarding trade.
I feel like this whole system could have been a lot simpler. As is, I'm not sure if it's really adding much to strategy? It seems to incentivize owning all the provinces within a trade node, which seems really bizarre and counter-intuitive for how you might actually build a trade empire.
Anyways, I've been wanting to try and play as a Jewish character for awhile now but I also didn't want to play as the Khazars and have to hope to be lucky. Lo and behold, I discovered that in some patch, possibly ROI, there are now Jewish characters in Abyssinia. The Old Gods start is in a lot of ways almost as bad as the Khazaria start, but in the normal start the good ole Duke of Axum is now Jewish. I saved up some money, hired some mercs, and went on a holy war spree. I am now King of Nubia and have most of Abyssinia under my thumb as well. (You can't usurp the primary titles of members of different religions now, so I can't create the kingdom/empire of Abyssinia for awhile yet.) I've been having a lot of fun. In fact, considering you can holy war both Miaphysites and Muslims in Africa it might actually be the easiest east African start in the normal start date. Now I just need to try and slowly gather strength and wait for the right time to start pushing against the Muslims.
The usual advice is to befriend Castile / Spain and keep them happy until you have a world-spanning colony empire. So of course I did the exact opposite. I allied Aragon, Guaranteed Grenada, and when Castile attacked, I jumped in. I pulled in Aragon and England and wound up with a coalition of about 10 nations against lone Castile. There were a few close battles, but I joined all of them mid-way through and led each to victory. I took Grenada from Castile and forced them to give up their core on Gibraltar (which I had just fabricated for myself).
Next I'll attack Grenada to take Gibraltar and maybe annex the whole thing while I'm coring Galicia. As long as the Castile / Aragon event doesn't fire to suddenly merge them, I should be able to prevent Spain from ever forming. But it just hit 1450. Not seeing any way I can prevent this beyond save-scumming for that 10% chance...
It's almost enough to make me think I've broken the game already, but for two things:
1. Castile's heir is female. The Iberian Wedding may still happen. I can postpone it by dragging Aragon into war with Castile and keeping it going for as long as possible. Will I make it to 1500? I think it's around 1465-1470 or so, so I guess that depends on how long the Castilian king lives. If the wedding happens, I'm in real trouble; I've tilted things just enough in my favor to be able to handle Castile on my own right now, but united with Aragon there's no chance. And they hate me now.
2. France. France is probably the world's most powerful nation (right there with the Ottomans, who absorbed Byzantium quickly), having won pretty much all of its early struggles. Many of its vassals have been annexed, and Burgundy's fate was sealed when it allied with Castile. France has defeated England in multiple wars, jumping in to help Scotland and Connacht every time fighting breaks out; England has actually lost its northern territory to Scotland and became such a minor power I had to ally with Brittany to get my strength back up. I could probably ally with France, but then I won't be able to do anything to stop it from building a colonial empire to rival mine. But... could I anyway?
I must now choose my second Idea group. I'm considering Quantity. While various Diplo groups would be more advantageous, I can't afford the Monarch Points right now (and fell behind in trade tech while rushing colonization). I've had some serious Manpower issues, and I'm going to need a much larger military to stand up to France or Castile+Aragon. In particular I need more ships; it's a shame how far down the line the -10% Ship Cost bonus is, but better later than never.
Also, I guess a patch has done something to fix tribal gold reserves. I tried to follow the path of some LP/AARs that enjoyed raiding Mali and various native Americans for cash. But Mali only had 38 gold when I defeated them in war. I can get more than that from Castile. So the question now is, do I take enough of Mali to get the gold mines? For whatever reason I don't have any kind of subjugation CB, so I'm actually having to fabricate claims on a tribal African nation (which is about as silly as it gets). It's almost wacky enough to get me to take Religion just for the first idea.
Also taking quantity as Russia is just required, because it's hilarious
I also have no real reason to ever westernize at this point.
Problem with that is, Europa Universalis is probably like the worst game to optimize for the long term, because unless you're really terrible or doing some kind of weird RP challenge, in the long term you win. Eventually you'll be large and rich enough to solve all your problems with some form of brute force. Yeah, maybe France will be a bit bigger than you, and you might even lose some wars, but that'll just cost you a small amount of your territory and power. Losses in the early game can cut you in half, stunting you for a century.
In short, the early game is basically the only thing that matters. Late game is just a playground, and it doesn't really matter if you could technically be a wee bit stronger by having some more Discipline or whatnot.
Portugal's early game is defined by its proximity with very strong nations. It has some of the greatest potential of any of the starting nations, being optimally positioned to own colonization of both Africa and the New World and utterly dominate with funds (enough so that you could probably just win with trade and mercs before too long). However, in order to reach that position, Portugal must survive, relatively intact, while also battling natives in the early-game that possess great numbers and only somewhat inferior troops (at least in the 1400s). Even acts as simple as crushing native uprisings (or hunting them down, if you prefer) can be a massive drain on your tiny manpower.
This is where Quantity really shines. The very first idea gives a whopping +50% boost to Manpower. Going from 15k to 30k is extraordinarily strong; 15k can't even supply your standing army, but 30k gives you plenty of buffer to handle costly wars with Castile while still being able to continue your colonization and occasionally take on Mali or even Morocco to further your goals of trade domination. You could do everything with mercs instead, but that can be prohibitively expensive, slowing your colonization and restricting your ability to build ships (your lifeblood) and create buildings.
Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever complete Quantity. Maybe if I have some military power to spare because I'm ahead in military tech or something. I'll definitely get the 20% recovery speed, but beyond that it's just when I have nothing better to do. But that 50% boost from the first idea slot? It's kept me from losing two wars and helped ensure I haven't had to slow colonization efforts at all. And if it can do that in the first 100 years, then that gives me more long-term benefits than any other single idea I could have spent the points on.
I note that the common Portugal strategy is to pacify Castile diplomatically instead, utterly ignoring Iberia and trying to rush your colonization as quickly as possible. This is certainly viable, but at a huge cost. Spain has not formed in my game, and it's unlikely to for quite some time (and when it does, it'll be Aragon that forms it instead). Castile has just acquired Quest for the New World, but they have little ability to colonize, especially since I took the Canaries from them (and can easily take any colonies they try to create moving forward, if need be). Had I left Iberia alone, they would already be Spain, and we'd be fighting for control of crucial trade nodes and valuable provinces. Fights I would probably lose. By making Aragon the real power of Iberia, I have guaranteed that Spanish power is instead focused eastward into the Mediterranean. Once I reroute Indian trade around Africa, this will have been a losing proposition for them, my greatest rival.