Totally unsurprised the Anno 1800 music mod works so well in this game as the first thing I thought when I heard the theme to V3 was "this is a way better 'Anno 1800' theme than the theme to Anno 1800!" There's only one song in the pack that I don't think fits, except for wartime, which it actually played as soon as war broke out.
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.
My problem now is that I seem to have built more factories than I have the population for, so all the employees abandon the arms manufactories, which drives their price up, so then they abandon the ammunition factories and work in the arms factories, which tanks the price of arms and raises the price of ammunition, so they swap back... it's a very volatile market.
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?
It kind of feels like the population density in Japan kind of breaks parts of the model? It has hundreds of units of arable land with millions of peasants and I am trying to do the journal entry to get down to 35% peasants but after building pretty much as hard as I can for decades I still have 60% peasants.
I also permanently do not have enough taxation capacity and would have to build like a hundred government administrations.
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.
I must have hit a 1% chance or something. I had a no warning civil war break out. At least with my current knowledge of the systems. I was playing Belgium. Hadnt expanded at all other than colony. Still just my 2 states. No unemployment. #2 GDP in the world almost to #1. I guess it must have been laws I was enacting. But there was no warning of political party so unhappy it was going to decide to rebel and kick the country off the british market thereby destroying the run with like 30 years left till end of the game. I was starting up my colonization. Taking chunks of Africa because I could just keep increasing colonization with my insane bureaucracy generation. Guess got to work on core market building heh.
It kind of feels like the population density in Japan kind of breaks parts of the model? It has hundreds of units of arable land with millions of peasants and I am trying to do the journal entry to get down to 35% peasants but after building pretty much as hard as I can for decades I still have 60% peasants.
I also permanently do not have enough taxation capacity and would have to build like a hundred government administrations.
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.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I have continued my game as Sweden into Scandinavia, and I think I'm starting to get into a groove. I have a very liberal setup now, with a parliamentary republic, census based voting, multiculturalism and no migration controls, plus even some unemployment insurance along with public schools and private healthcare. I keep getting notifications that large numbers of immigrants are showing up and my population is climbing arguably more quickly than I can build places for them to work. If I can keep growing my GDP I can become a Great Power, I'm actually quite close and if I had taken the +100 prestige from liberalizing I would have the score for it already, but I instead went for a permanent +25% immigration attraction. I have a disturbing number of radicalized pops, but my standard of living is climbing again as I heavily invest into my economy so hopefully that'll keep things in check.
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.
I am enjoying the game so far but in all my runs so far at some point I hit a money spiral where no matter what I seem to do I just keep losing money. So I guess I am terribad at economics
I think I pushed Sweden's welfare state thing too far:
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!
I have many questions about that Scandinavia. You're a few years further in than I am, with a lower GDP but massively higher tax income. You have much better literacy than I do, but a much smaller construction industry. You're also a major power instead of a great power, and not all that close to achieving GP status really. From the flag it looks like you are some sort of Republic like my Scandinavia. I can't tell what your population is in comparison. Your standard of living is much higher than mine as well. I can only guess you passed a tax reform and/or cranked up the tax setting, which I avoided in order to avoid my pops getting angry.
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.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
So i never played EU outside of Europe so decided to give Ming a try. I more understand why they always start out huge every game then drop off the map in reformation. I'm two Institutions behind and neither has spread to any province anywhere on my map yet, and i have two disasters developing despite doing great. I think i can stop one by picking a war with the Uzbeks and never being behind on warscore. The other has no end conditions and while I'm able to stall progress but not passing Mandate of Heaven reforms there seems no way to actually end it and if i do pass reforms it's going to give me a ton of debuffs.
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.
Smrtnik on
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited October 2022
You can develop up to force an institution to appear in your territory. Pick a farmland province, apply the state edict to reduce development cost and go ham. Whichever the first institution you're missing is should pop at around 40 dev.
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.
I seem to have hit a weird bug in my Teutonic Order run. I'm going for the Holy Horder achievement, which requires me to conquer most of Asia, but I keep declaring war on Scandinavia, the HRE, and the Ottomans. I can barely get into Asia at all with all the European wars that are somehow kicking off. How do I stop fighting in Europe?
There are two different disasters which threaten to cause Mingsplosion:
- 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.
Yeah i ended up working through both disasters. The Nomad one i ended up warring the Uzbeks into becoming a tributary. High mandate stopped progress on the other one but eventually i wanted to get reforms passed and start absorbing vassals so o bit the bullet and managed to pass two reforms before the disaster fully activated. That resulted in a couple of years of all my armies being on auto-supress mode until i got back to full mandate AND had a moment with no spawned rebels.
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.
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.
I wanted to resurrect the thread to share this strange game I'm having. I'm playing as Lubeck, my goal is the For The Emperor achievement (form Germany, be an empire, have 40,000 marines). I've focussed on eating up inner Germany, because I didn't want to waste AE on provinces I didn't need.
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.
I wanted to resurrect the thread to share this strange game I'm having. I'm playing as Lubeck, my goal is the For The Emperor achievement (form Germany, be an empire, have 40,000 marines). I've focussed on eating up inner Germany, because I didn't want to waste AE on provinces I didn't need.
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
There's something wrong with the Teutons in my current campaign. This is the second time they've declared war on Mazovia, on their own, with no allies. Which is fine, Mazovia's tiny and weak... but they're controlled by Poland, who is controlled by me, allied to Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. I try to chill a bit between wars and this happens
How do I dismantle HRE again? Fight a war with all members at the same time and have them all be full beligerents (checbox at declaration) and have that be the settlement?
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.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited May 2023
IIRC you need to have every elector and the emperor either occupied (in a war) or vassalized by you or the emperor.
Edit: Regular members don't matter.
Kane Red Robe on
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I'm having a really fun, stressful game as Tunis right now. I quickly knocked over Tlemcen and the little tribes, then pounced on Granada when Morocco (allied to both of us) wouldn't help them. Landed on their capital, Castile and Portugal each declared war on Granada, Castile beat me to every other province. So I'm sitting there with my one province, and decide to vassalise them, so I can call in Morocco and the Ottomans. Ottoman troops take about a year to arrive, by which point Castile has overrun Morocco and peaced them out. My troops are running all over Africa putting down rebellions, but then the Ottos arrive and we force the Iberians out of Africa. Unfortunately, the Ottos never send their boats, but my galleys just barely win about 4 battles with the Iberian heavies. I lose enough boats that I can't send them out of the Mediterranean any more, so for the rest of the war my galleys sit on one side of Gibraltar and their heavies sit on the other side.
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.
The Ottomans reduced the Mamluks to a Rump in the Arabian desert. This gave me ideas.
*snip*
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.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
The Ottomans reduced the Mamluks to a Rump in the Arabian desert. This gave me ideas.
*snip*
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.
The Ottomans reduced the Mamluks to a Rump in the Arabian desert. This gave me ideas.
*snip*
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
The Ottomans reduced the Mamluks to a Rump in the Arabian desert. This gave me ideas.
*snip*
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.
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.
RMS Oceanic on
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited October 2023
So, it turns out you can reliably hit 130% discipline as Mewar/Rajputana and occasionally stretch to 140% (plus your Rajput infantry gets another +10% on top). Anyways, Mewar, Mewar never changes was an easier cheevo to hit than I expected. Probably going to shelve it without trying to take out England; that just sounds tedious.
I just finished a Korea campaign, and man, it was so different to my other recent campaigns. Ideas cost about 100 mana, tech cost about 60. I had level 5 advisors from around 1480. I had monarch admin skill +3, monarch dip skill +1, and the two times I got a mediocre heir there was an event that replaced them with a 665. So I'm swimming with mana, might as well spend it on deving, right? I had so much dev cost reduction that deving most provinces cost 4 mana. I had cities with 25 dev and 4 dev cost! By the end of the campaign I owned Manchuria, China, South East Asia, and most of Indonesia, and everything was over 15 dev, mostly around 20-25. When I spawned Printing Press I saw that it was going to take too long to spread, so then I spawned it in another 4 provinces, and I was still ahead of tech.
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.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited January 24
I love to be doing great, 200 years into an Ironman playthrough as Kongo to get the achievement for owning all of Africa, maybe also the one for having a bunch of cults unlocked and then a message pops up while I am trying to click on something else so I pick "Why yes, I would like to convert to Buddhism and royally fuck myself thank you" without meaning to. That will teach me for buying a province on Sri Lanka I guess.
I love to be doing great, 200 years into an Ironman playthrough as Kongo to get the achievement for owning all of Africa, maybe also the one for having a bunch of cults unlocked and then a message pops up while I am trying to click on something else so I pick "Why yes, I would like to convert to Buddhism and royally fuck myself thank you" without meaning to. That will teach me for buying a province on Sri Lanka I guess.
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.
I love to be doing great, 200 years into an Ironman playthrough as Kongo to get the achievement for owning all of Africa, maybe also the one for having a bunch of cults unlocked and then a message pops up while I am trying to click on something else so I pick "Why yes, I would like to convert to Buddhism and royally fuck myself thank you" without meaning to. That will teach me for buying a province on Sri Lanka I guess.
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.
Just open the save folder (for me it's home\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\save games), ctrl c, ctrl v. Looking at mine now I see my Aq Qoyunlu game has backups from 1449, 1481, and 1586.
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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.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/246050/victoria-3-party-like-its-1836
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?