Europa Universalis IV

Quintillus said:

I've never seen a nation so broken up into pieces, except possibly a collapsed Ming China. It's hard to say what will come of the ruins, but my allies are Saxony, Hungary, the Golden Horde, and Yaroslavl, so I'm rooting for the latter two becoming the dominant regional powers. Bashkiria has been doing decently as well.

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Don't worry too much. In fifty years one of those states will blob out as Russia and then it will be status quo.

grandad1982 said:

eep?

EDIT: I just joined the empire. Is that a good idea as Poland? I lost my kingdom rank but do the benefits of being an HRE member outway that?

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Wait, France leads that union, right? That actually seems great for Poland. The biggest problem Poland has is that Austria is often is the emperor. As a junior member of a personal union, Austria can't be the emperor. So I'd say that's a great thing.

Yes Austria is the junior member of the PU. My ally and RM partner Bohemia became Emperor and much to my surprise I could join the HRE without giving up any provinces. I joined as I want to expand in the HRE along the Baltic coast and this means I can do so without the Emperor interfering.

The only fly in the ointment is that the Teutons have allied Sweden (independent and also my ally) and Bohemia and Pomerania (my allies) won't join the war. I can probably win but I'd rather keep Sweden on my side for kicking Muscovy in the balls.

Dell19 said:

The Ottomans are probably the easiest to play as you can just expand east and south forever without any real issues.

Any small nation in Europe should give you an interesting game although if you have a hostile large nation next to you then its much much harder (eg Granada, Albania etc)

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Well any game can become a mess...
I once played a Ottomans game and expanded south/east without caring too much for Europe until a coalition of Castile, Austria, Poland and Muscovy DoWed me. France joined them a few months later. With reduced manpower from an eastern campaign the war was over quite soon...

Europe has just been revealed and its a bit of a mess and amazingly Denmark is still alive.



Does anyone know if the Goa event will still happen if the owner is human controlled? If not then westernising is going to be a bit of a pain.

Despite the mess in Spain and France I would say that I often see a similar Italy and Germany. Obviously the Commonblob is doing ok as per usual.

EDIT.

In my last Hindustan game it triggered when I owned the province. IMO the event should die or be radically changed but it didn't stop me using it to westernise!

Holy crap! I approve of the Iberian mess, and the only good France is a dead France.

Quintillus said:

Spoiler Crazy Russia :

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This looks very EU3

I like how musocvy is like 1,000km from Moscow.

cardgame said:

I like how musocvy is like 1,000km from Moscow.

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Yes. They lost Moscow in their last war before that screenshot.

That game is now in 1635. I took Friesland, Munster, and a province from Cleves to the west since horizontal Prussia is the best Prussia, then took western Poland to complete a mission. But by then I had 40-some legitimacy, 0 manpower, and -1 stability, and Internal Struggles hit, taking me to -3 stab instantly in 1630, though I did have 80 prestige.

And so it moved from resembling EU3 to resembling CKII. A pretender rose up, but was defeated. Then a palace coup happened, with the claimants pressing the heir's claim to the throne. Since he had mostly better stats anyway, I went with it.

And then Yaroslavl called me to war against Lithuania, so of course I went along with it since Yaroslavlian Russia is the best Russia. They gave me 3 provinces in the peace, making it perhaps my most successful -3 stability war ever, and delaying my mission to reduce overextension.

Venice (the city), meanwhile, has been conquered by Naples. I dishonored my alliance with Venice after deciding that fighting Naples and France while having no manpower, losing money, and being at minimum stability was not a great choice. I also ditched Savoy soon after, instead aligning with Moldavia, who's been conquering Lithuania and Poland. They must especially relish the latter.

I'm still allied with the Horde, but plan to slide with Yaroslavl over them if need be. I don't know if I'd help the Horde against the Ottomans, either - that may be a losing battle for little long-term cause. Saxony, too, might not be my ally much longer. They've been a great ally, and I gave them Brandenburg in a war recently, but they also control my ideal land for expansion, and are no longer crucial to the long-term picture.

For now, I'm still at -3 stab, but since I'm almost done with reducing overextension I plan to start increasing stab in the next couples years, along with recovering manpower. Then it'll be on to the next expansionist Prussian mission.

Out of interest what year do you most of you play till?

I find a lot of my games end around 1650 ish as by that point I'm usually no longer threatened. I think it doesn't help that I don't like breaking alliances so alliances are effectively forever. The other factor is that I'm not overly keen on creating gigantic nations so once I've achieved my initial aims I start to run out of ideas on what to do.

In my current game I've conquered most of India whilst the rest is held by my allies. At this point my immediate neighbours are not much of a threat although I guess I might one day border Russia or the Ottomans. I don't expect a European nation to launch a war whilst I have the second largest navy in the world so once I've conquered the remaining Indian provinces under Muslim control there doesn't seem to be a huge amount left to do. I guess I could try to conquer somewhere in Europe...

I like to try and finish my games. My games finish either in the late 19th Century (new patch comes up, game is almost over anyway), 1821 or 1500 (terrible, terrible worthless run).

By the way, I just noticed the Aragon AAR on your sig links to a Venice AAR.

Of course you'd click on the Aragon AAR

I think I've completed exactly one game of EU3 ever? And EU4 I've never gone past 1650, though that's more because my computer hates the game than anything else.

Thought I'd have a nice and quiet Poland game for those Polish achievements... PU-ing France around the turn of the century was not part of the plan!

How the PU happened is a mystery - I had barely any legitimacy (having just elected a Polish noble) and less than 30 prestige.

Too bad the French PU prevents me from creating the Commonwealth.

Anyway... time to vassalize some electors.

So I still overall dislike the new changes, but they have made Muscovy infinitely easier. Although the events that are supposed to give me patriarchal authority have dissappeared, so it's stuck at zero...

Anyway, how do I do trade well?
In this situation I own basically all of Novgorod, the white sea and Kazan trade nodes, and most of Astrakhan.

I thought Muscovy was already Cakemode Russia?

If being destroyed by all your neighbours and ending up with over 40 loans was cakemode I don't want to know how nightmarish the other Russians were

That sounds more like the other Russians normally. The game must've just thought you were Novgorod.

Novgorod: Officially worse than Ryazan

Started a game as Saxony and for once the mid game alliances are quite evenly balanced:



The early game involved allying Poland and vassalising some of my neighbours. There was one setback early on when I misjudged the strength of Bohemia and ended up losing 3 provinces. Austria in that time fully inherited the Dutch territories and proceeded to beat up France. At this point I allied Austria and continued gradually expanding.

The league wars came and went without the Protestant league ever declaring war and all was well in the HRE until Austria fully annexed Bavaria which if it was possible would have set my opinion of them to outraged. They then declared war on Switzerland and asked me to join which of course I refused and allied France instead which has led to two main alliance blocks forming:

Saxony alliance block: 234

Saxony - 52 (should really be 60)
Poland - 67
France - 77
Brunswick - 11
Ultrecht - 11
Liege - 11
Salzburg - 5

French alliance block: 214

France - 77
UK - 46
Saxony - 52
Portugal - 27
Tuscany - 12

Evil Austria and their allies: 240

Austria - 119
Spain - 64
Serbia - 10
Livonian Order - 29
Cologne - 11
East Frisia - 7
(plus until recently Hungary - 23 )

Due to a lack of Catholic electors, I've been able to become the emperor with Ultrecht and Liege backing me. Only France and Poland would actually join an offensive war against Austria whilst all their allies would back them so currently I'm waiting for a better opportunity*. The most obvious one would be the Netherlands appearing although I'm not sure how likely that is.

* I'm not planning on declaring war on a related ally to get at Austria.

A successful PL Commonwealth, I take it? Huge Austria and Hungary too.