Europa Universalis IV

Dammit, guys, this is the place I visit to talk about EU without Poland memes (and scary Eurocentric people)

So which nations aren't lucky now if Poland and Brandenburg are? Or did they increase the number of lucky nations?

Poland's been interesting in my pre-1.8 games. If they keep the union with Lithuania, and eventually form the Commonwealth, they can be very powerful indeed. In my 1.7 multiplayer game, they're pretty scary right now, such that Bohemia, Muscovy, and the Ottomans have at times joined in a coalition against them (IIRC, in that game Lithuania is lucky, which helps Poland, but not as much as Poland being lucky). But if they lose the union, they can indeed become a marginal player. While it was unpredictable how they would fare previously, I didn't think they were underpowered.

I don't think they removed any lucky nations just add the extra 2 nations to the list.

I'm playing my first ottoman game for about 3 or 4 patches so we'll see how lucky they really are!

I've only just noticed this, but when you look at EU IV in your Steam library, the background image is always something related to Byzantium, whether it's the 1463 reconquest of Edirne, a victory over Venice, restoring the Pentarchy or what have you.

Well, replacing all these screens with things like Sweden annexing Denmark/Pommerania would probably have been thought as uncomfortable and stupid.

Instead, they made Sweden lucky and gave them enormous discipline bonuses. Yay?

Playing as Timurids -> Mughal with the new patch. I love the new additions so far.
One thing that is confusing. I understood trade before, but now i can't seem to grasp why my nation keeps transfering trade AWAY from my trade centers. It's like every trade center i have transfers trade power everywhere except toward my capital.
Also something wierd i have 9% of my people afghan; so they are a non-accepted culture. Got the Humanism idea that lowers the accepted culture threshold. Afghans still not an accepted culture - and it's the same with the other cultures that are close to 10%. What gives ???

It seems to be quite an easy play so far, all i have to do is think my expansions through and keep an eye out for those ticking rebellions. They become completely overwhelming if i expand like crazy (as they should be).
Some good things i've seen the AI do so far.
More countries successfully westernizing !
The western powers no longer colonize africa & india like crazy.
Ottomans no longer rampage through everything so early. The bizzies survived till 1550 with some province in greece. Constantinople is venetian tho.
The big blue blob no longer has half of Europe by 1550 which is good. Before the patch, by this year, europe was divided between blobs, now it's a lot more intresting.
Russia no longer reaches the pacific in 1500. It still has a long way to go, me as Timmy having not atacked the siberian hordes kept them strong and a constant challenge for Russia.

As a disclaimer i never play with lucky nations on ... so there's that.

Are the provinces with them cored?
Otherwise they don't count towards acceptance %, so if it's freshly conquered territory that might be the reason.

IIRC the threshold is 20% by default, with the Humanism idea lowering it to 10%. So if it's 9%, it won't be quite enough, even if it's cored (which would also prevent it).

I took my Italy game through the EU4 -> Vicky 2 converter. Armies weren't preserved, so there were a lot of silly wars at the beginning, although a few actually suceeded. Controlling the entire Mediterranean, I was a dirt rich absolute monarch, so the first 5 years have been a frenzy of building all sorts of factories, railroads, armies, and navies, as well as conquering Ile de France. Alas, my Suez Canal got de-constructed sometime between 1821 and 1836, so I'll lhave to build it again .

20% to become accepted and 10% to remain accepted (base rates).

GAGA Extrem said:

Are the provinces with them cored?
Otherwise they don't count towards acceptance %, so if it's freshly conquered territory that might be the reason.

Click to expand...

All the afghan provinces have been with me since the start of the game. They were also accepted then.

grandad1982 said:

20% to become accepted and 10% to remain accepted (base rates).

Click to expand...

I had no idea there were 2 thresholds to the accepted cultures thing.
Here is something i found on EU4 wiki:

A culture will become accepted if owned, cored provinces of that culture provides at least 20% base tax of total base tax from all your cored provinces . If the tax percentage drops below 10%, accepted cultures will be lost. With the 'Cultural Ties' idea, from the 'Humanist' Idea group, the percentage needed for accepted cultures is lowered to 10% and loss of accepted cultures is reduced to 5% of the total base tax. The threshold can be further reduced by a number of national ideas and policies:

Click to expand...

So i guess the problem is i lost afghans as accepted culture when they fell below 10% which was BEFORE i got the humanist idea. And now, they have to get over 10% to become accepted again. And since that can't really happen ... on well.

Thank you for the help

You could release some of your primary culture as a vassal and the reintegrate them when afghan is accepted. Its probably more hassle than its worth to be honest!

EDIT: actually releasing anything that isn't afghan culture would work as long as the percentage of afghan went up to 10%

Or i could conquer more and make them lower than 5% !

Just finished my first (real, as opposed to 10 years then bored) game of EU4. I wanted something that was ezpz so I went Burgundy.



Playing vanilla with a few graphical mods. I liked it overall, and the UI improvements are very welcome though there's still some things I miss or preferred from EU3. The Revolutionary country was Portugal, which was rather disappointing as they fell in about three months. I ended up colonizing a lot more of South America than I initially intended and a lot less of North America. The only reason I have splotches of Louisiana is because people kept giving them to me in peace treaties when I really didn't want them and I just never bothered selling them.

Final world map:


USA split off from Portugal in the mid 17th century or so, as did Haiti. The byzzies are in their third incarnation already, having been annexed and released twice now. The ottomen died hard at some point in the 1600s, I wasn't paying much attention to them. Aq and Syria ended up filling the vacuum there. Kiev and Polotsk are the result of a Spanish-Polish succession war and the fact I supported every kind of nationalist I could in Lithuania. Spain and I are best buddies, having had an alliance since pretty much day 1. The entire HRE hates me passionately as about forty years before game end I decided I was bored and was going to conquer the left bank of the Rhine, then I had to fight in a major coalition war against the Empire.

Are those the Burgundian Americas, I see?

Interestingly, in our timeline, Philippe the Bold and Jean the Fearless died in 1404 and 1419, as your history notes. In fact, Jean died on 10th Sept, 1419, almost to the day your version did!

Arakhor said:

Are those the Burgundian Americas, I see?

Interestingly, in our timeline, Philippe the Bold and Jean the Fearless died in 1404 and 1419, as your history notes. In fact, Jean died on 10th Sept, 1419, almost to the day your version did!

Click to expand...

They died on the same day because its that way in the history files. The history files were pretty much copy-pasted from EU3, just that starts before 1444 were disabled.

As to the Burgundian Americas, once I secured the hexagon I pretty much didn't change my European borders until the late 1700s (when I annexed the left bank), so I spent a century or two just colonizing.

Colonial Nations:
Adelaide - Brazil
Arelat - Colombia
Bernardia - La Plata
Carolina - Guyana
Philippines - Caribbean
Mariana - United States
Maryland - Peru
Mosheria - Canada

Adelaide, Mariana, and Maryland were named for saints (St. Adelaide and Mary), Arelat for the medieval kingdom of, Bernardia was named because it was originally a Portuguese colony that an army lead by a Bernard something conquered, Carolina after the great Burgundian hero Carolus Magnus, the Philippines after one of my Philippes, and Mosheria for a friend. The Philippines were first, then Mariana, Mosheria, Arelat, Carolina, Adelaide (Adelaide may have come before Carolina), Maryland, and last was Bernardia.

I had intended to get more of Canada but my attention was directed towards sealing off more of SA, and by the time that was done, Britain and the scandinavians had taken most of the Canada region.

Ah yes. I've been playing with a pre-1444 start recently, so I'd forgotten about EU IV's later start date.

It's 1493 and I'm Navarra/a terrible person.

Do tell how you did so well as Navarre. Powerful allies, I reckon, but which ones?

I've started a new solo game in 1.8, as Friesland. I plan to make this my first real colonization game in EU4, and as such took Exploration as a first idea. Which was all well and good, except even with +50% range I can't reach anywhere, and won't be able to for several decades at least. Now I know why Paradox made it so only Portgual and Castile take Exploration first - most other countries wouldn't get any benefit from it.

At least it's going well on land. I nabbed alliances with France and Denmark, and France immediately called me in to help in the Hundred Years War, with I did, occupying Calais. Munster-of-Germany saw opportunity, declared war on my when my armies reached Calais, and France was kind enough to dishonour the alliance, for which I insulted them. Fortunately the Danes were more faithful, and the combination of Danish, Frieslander, Swedish, and Norwegian arms turned the tables and resulted in Munster becoming my vassal. Still haven't figured out how I'm going to make more progress towards forming the Netherlands, but at least it didn't end in annexation in the first war.

In my 1.7 multiplayer game, overseas colonization appears to be in full swing in the early 1600s. Portugal, in particular, is noteworthy. They tried to invade Nepal, the surprise leader in northern India. And failed. So they tried again:



Nepal won again, and forced Portugal to release Morocco. I don't think I'd ever seen a crusade against a Hindu nation before, and I know I'd never seen Nepal make an impact in Africa. Both Portugal and Nepal are AIs.

Well, I basically restarted the game over and over until I got both a Castile and Aragon who didn't want to annex me on day 1 because there was literally no other way to stay alive. I then allied/RM'd with Cas over the course of a few days because they offered an alliance, fulfilling a couple missions. In further abuse of mission mechanics, I took one to conquer Labourd and reunite the Basque culture (it's literally a third, with the others being Viscaya and, of course, Navarra), which gave me a CB to do just that. I DoW'd England after their army went away to get murdered by the French. I sieged Labourd with two of my infantry, relying wholly upon the French vassal doomstack to take Gascony because my other one infantry got there first. In the meantime, Castile went to town on Portugal, England's ally, and that pretty much fulfilled the WS requirement for actually taking the land I was occupying.

Afterwards, I allied Aragon and Portugal, and prepared for a longass wait til I got decent exploration tech with MAYBE an interlude wherein I murdered Brittany. However, it was not to be, as Aragon decided to be a flaky piece of crap and went domineering towards me. Not too long after, Castile thought they had the right idea and I went full panic mode. Looked at my options and basically they were England and Burgundy. Burgundy was slightly closer and I allied them literally days before Aragon DoW'd me. After what seemed like forever, I evaded the Aragonese army while Burgundy shenanigansed up some MA from France (it took MONTHS) and Portugal saved my 7 troops from being murdered. Managed to sink a Neopolitan fleet with my traders and lure Aragon into getting dogpiled by Portugal, then settled in to cherrypick all the sieges. Got out with half of mainland Aragon and spammed cores.

Around this point, the Iberian Wedding fired. I proceeded to laugh hysterically when Castile didn't actually take it. Not too long after that, Burgundy dissolved in a war on France and I convinced England to ally with me. Castile also wanted to get back with me, presumably because I'm way cooler than Aragon (who didn't even have a PU with Naples anymore). Am also allied with Savoy, have half a standard doomstack (so 15 divisions), and FINALLY got a colony. Freaking Portugal kept stealing all the damn stepping stones. YOU DON'T EVEN NEED ARGUIN YOU ASSCLOWNS, NOW CANCEL YOU ALLIANCE WITH ARAGON SO I CAN STAB THEM SOME MORE.

I've been having a really fun game as Nepal. I've been using a mix of mostly vassal feeding and some annexing to expand. My first goal was to secure the most of the Himalayas and grab what I could in the plains on an opportunistic basis. With the poor base tax of the area I really liked having the vassals as they could support a larger army than if I'd just annexed that land.

After the first phase I wanted to do something about my low income which meant getting what lowlands I could but trying to push into the Bengal trade node as much as possible. During this time I was allied with Orissa and then later Vijay too. I took a small Delhi as a vassal and feed them most of there cores, the same with Malwa and one of the states in NW Bengal (the name escapes me). I also diplo vassalized Koch, Assam and a couple of other minors. At one point I had 10 diplo relations. During this time the Timmy's collapsed into Persia and the Oirate came to eat them too. Ming has been surprisingly stable and has started to take lands to the east of Bengal.

I have made a start on the 3rd part of my plan which is to destroy Vijay. They broke our alliance as they decided they wanted most of my land. Fools. I waited till they were at war with Maltan then pounced. It was a manpower killer but I soundly beat them and took some Gujarat lands and I'm now going to feed them their cores. Bahmanis also jumped on Vijay, so I jumped on Bahmanis! Grabbed some land and released another vassal to feed.

I made a mistake with my first idea group and went offensive when I feel I probably should have gone diplo or influence with all these vassals. I have taken diplo now. There is only 1 non Hindu province in my lands and thats high bast tax Sikh centre I can't convert. Ming just rivalled me which is a worry but I'm doing to consolidate then kick his teeth in! Spain has arrived on the islands off the coast and GB and Portugal have heir claims which is a worry.

My next goals are to form Hindustan, westernise and then deal with the Ming. Obviously I'll keep eating India too. After Diplo ideas I'm thinking Humanism to help me deal with all the cultures I'm going to have and to help me reduce my autonomy.

Does anyone have any westernisation advice? I've never done it in hundreds of hours of play!



Not the most recent point in the game as I'm still warring Vijay.



Europe was just exposed and this is what I see. Super Austria, France doing badly, Castile doing well, no commonwealth, larde Cologne and Saxony, Netherlands, Large Bulgaria and Byzantium in greece (!), and super Mamluks and NO OTTOMANS!!!!!! Its a crazy crazy world.