Europa Universalis IV Catch-All

Like Dovebrown said, a tooltip pops up when you hover over the checkboxes on the declare war screen. Distant war seems pretty likely but there are a bunch of reasons nations may not go to war with you: their manpower is low, they're in debt, they're already fighting another war, you've called them into a war recently.

I picked up Rights of Man during the Steam sale and man is it good, the 3MA episode on it was spot on. I've been wondering if the regents, abdicating, and replacing heirs might make things a bit easier but the other Great Powers intervening in your wars certainly dampers things a bit.

Thanks for the advice, I now know the importance of having good allies after Hungary, Poland, Malkmus and Persia all started wars with me in quick succession. Fair to say that's the end of my Ottoman adventure, but a good learning exercise. I'm starting a new game with Castille to really drive home my understanding of the game, playing it actually made me not cash in on my Hearts of Iron interest in the steam sale due to how much fun I was having.

(the fun soon dropped with the four wars though )

This game has taken up my entire January. After my unsuccessful campaign as the Ottomans, I am currently doing very well as Castille, I've colonized Brazil and some of the Ivory Coast, integrated Aragorn and Naples, and just, finally, broken into North Africa, after overcoming my fear of the Ottomans (allied with Morocco.) I've been an ally for France since the start, and that's worked out well with me, although I'm starting to become wary of their current expansion. I've basically made a tactic of also keeping Austria as an ally while also hoovering up nations around them (Provence and Brittany), in order to keep their power from expanding. I've been reading a lot of geopolitics lately, so I know all about keeping the power balance in Europe to not allow anyone bigger than me

I think my favourite thing about this game is how deep it is, I was recently reading about the game of thrones aspect to this game, which i just find amazing. There's still so much I don't know after 33 hours, although beyond my Castille game, I'm not sure where to go. I'm tempted to give Hearts of Iron a go after, but the thing that put me off buying it in the Steam sale is the fact I'm loving EU IV so much.

Tip about Ottomans: Crimea are assholes and should be put to heel ASAP because they'll either force you into wars with England if you're an ally(this happened one game), or declare war against you without an army or navy because you're the nearest non-Christian state to them(this happened in the subsequent game where I decided to be friends with anyone else).

In either case, the best way to manage that is to conquer them so they can't do anything anymore.

cube wrote:

Tip about Ottomans: Crimea are assholes and should be put to heel ASAP because they'll either force you into wars with England if you're an ally(this happened one game), or declare war against you without an army or navy because you're the nearest non-Christian state to them(this happened in the subsequent game where I decided to be friends with anyone else).

In either case, the best way to manage that is to conquer them so they can't do anything anymore.

I noticed in my original game that they became quite big, but when I was Castille, the Ottomans seemed to take over much more land rapidly, consuming most of Crimea and Malkmus within the first 200 years.

Rights of Man... man... definitely the best expansion since the one that changed the fort system. I've had a blast doing more Europe-focused games. One where I went Brandenberg-->Prussia-->Germany was quite fun and I'm winding down on an Ottoman--> Roman Empire play through now. Converting the Ottomans to Orthodox and then going religious ideas first for the casus belli is quite overpowered.

I really like how the great power system changes how you use alliances. You can't just ally with as many great powers as you can and use them as your battering ram because you risk other powers intervening. Allying with nations outside the top-10 makes a lot more sense now.

Roke wrote:

Rights of Man... man... definitely the best expansion since the one that changed the fort system. I've had a blast doing more Europe-focused games. One where I went Brandenberg-->Prussia-->Germany was quite fun and I'm winding down on an Ottoman--> Roman Empire play through now. Converting the Ottomans to Orthodox and then going religious ideas first for the casus belli is quite overpowered.

I really like how the great power system changes how you use alliances. You can't just ally with as many great powers as you can and use them as your battering ram because you risk other powers intervening. Allying with nations outside the top-10 makes a lot more sense now.

Indeed, the Commonwealth have taken quite a few beatings on my game, but I'm happy to be allies with them, as it means the Ottomans become more focused on them. I've done the same with Persia, meaning not only are the Ottomans surrounded if they declare war, but they'll also have to deal with must closer enemies.

Mandate of Heaven now out and live on Steam. $20.

Robear wrote:

Mandate of Heaven now out and live on Steam. $20.

I saw a few people streaming early release and they were playing as European nations, what gives? I thought this expansion was meant to be a flesh out for Far Eastern nations.

Well, it includes the following:

Historical Ages and Golden Eras:
Meet objectives in four historical ages from the Age of Discovery to the Age of Revolutions, earning new bonuses and powers for your country. Declare a Golden Era to further increase your chance of success

So I'm guessing they were showing off that aspect?

As with all EU expansions, there are changes everywhere but the focus is on the Chinese hegemony and Japan (if you don't think of it as part of the Chinese tribute system). Quill and Feedback are both doing games in that area, Quill as the Shogun, Feedback as Korea.

The other massive change is the introduction of desolation and prosperity for areas which has much warfare over them them/are spared looting. Together with the the ages system, these seem to significantly shake up how the game plays back in Europe. At least from reading the dev diaries.

With every expansion I generally play at least one game with one of my favourite Europeans Brandenburg, France (Le roi, c'est moi) or Lubeck to see what the changes feel like someplace completely familiar before trying out an area I don't know all that well. I've tended not to play in Asia because Japan was just broken and Ming was boring to play and annoying to fight.

Still I'm massively stoked to play Mandate this weekend. I've already bought it on Steam so I just need to switch on my PC.

Interested to know if anyone got the DLC and what they think of it? I don't actually have all the DLCs (late player who just got one of the editions on offer that came with like one or two DLC), but I've been slowly building up the collection through sales. I'll probably get them all in the next Steam sale, but I'm interested to know how this one has impacted the game for others, it's hard to tell with some of the streamers online since they move so fast.

Hi everybody! I was a relative latecomer to EU3 and didn't start playing it until shortly after its last expansion, but then tried it and loved it. It really sank its teeth in me, and I ended up playing multiple starts including Portugal and Croatia. So I was very excited for EU4 and preordered it. Upon release, I played through as either Portugal or Castille first and then as Oman in the version 1.2-1.3 era. I then moved on to a couple of other games with the intention of coming back after DLC started dropping.

Then my marriage disintegrated, I moved, got a new job, had medical issues, and stepped away from games and the site for a couple years until last year when my life stabilized. I dove back into games. Last year was mostly Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, Stellaris, Civ 6, and a lot of Diablo 3 with my kids and wife.

Now I'm ready to step back into EU4 and have discovered that Paradox has been busy. - 10 real expansions and a bunch of cosmetic stuff. Don't worry this isn't another "what should I buy" post. From reading this thread and watching some pieces of Quill Let's Plays I think I have a handle on the various releases and at least some of the bigger changes. However, I'm definitely not in a position to drop the cash for ALL of the expansions at once. I also think that I'd be missing out by jumping from launch to the current version and skipping all of the intermediate steps along the way.

It has come to my attention that the Beta tab will actually allow you to play different older versions of the game so my plan is to:

Buy Wealth of Nations and Art of War first for the trade and warfare upgrades and play a game or two of version 1.9.

Buy Common Sense and Cossacks next for Development and Estates and play version 1.15.

Buy Rights of Man next for more major changes including Institutions and play version 1.19.

Backfill with the other four older expansions and/or the just released Mandate of Heaven and current 1.20 as sales allow with the possible earlier purchase of Conquest of Paradise and El Diablo if I decide to play a New World game.

Do these splits sound reasonable and am I understanding what you're allowed to do with the beta tab correctly? I have no timetable for stepping through all of these versions, and I expect it may take me a year or so. This just seemed like a reasonable way of spreading out the expenditures and enjoyment of the game evolution that I missed over the past 3.5 years. It also has the benefit of allowing me to wait and pick up most expansions during summer or winter sales.

Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to contextualize where I'm coming from and to see if my plan made sense. I welcome other suggestions if I missed must-have DLC or if anyone thinks there is another strong intermediate version I should try. If you've read this far, thank you.

If you scroll back I think Tboon has a nice "should I buy this DLC post".

I bought pretty much all of the systems heavy dlc's (not the location ones), and would recommend it.

Muscovy is really fun man!

I'd say just play the latest version with whatever DLCs you want to use. Not sure going back, for example, 1.9 for Wealth of Nations is necessary. I think the quality of life updates in the patches would make it not worth it, to be honest. Although, I guess if you have not played with the new patch you might not know what you are missing? Still, I'd just roll with 1.20 plus whatever DLC you have.

The beta thing is really there for people in the middle of a game when they release a patch that may break their current game, so they can stay with the older version and finish the game. Some crazy internet people also hate this feature or that feature and will only play old versions from before the thing they hate was put in ("ruined the game") but that seems like an extreme set of cases.

Ok, I'm all-in. I've had this game for a couple years now and bounced off several times. Every time I hear it talked about I really think if I could just get over the hump I would really enjoy it.

So, yesterday I bought all of the remaining DLC that I didn't already have, started a Muscovy game and "won" a war with Novgorod where I took one territory plus some reparations, then realized it was already an hour past my bed time.

Now I wonder of some of you veterans, if you could look back and remember when you were just starting to catch on to some of the basic systems in this, what couple of things do you really wish you would have spent more time to understand better?

Hmm... one of the most important lessons that isn't super intuitive is how on the military side of things Organization is all important. In EU, as in real life, battles are not fought until the destruction or near destruction of one side, they are fought until the loser concedes and quits the field. The loser then will attempt to withdraw with the bulk of their army to re-organize and fight another day.

So Generals and Technologies that increase Organization are far more important than those that increase Strength, because typically it is the Organization that will fail first.

Related to that, you will have similar frustrations to Lincoln during the civil war, where he struggled with a few generals that did not smash and destroy the Confederate armies, letting them live to fight another day. Just like then, armies are vulnerable to "ping-ponging" where you chase and bounce around an army that you beat, but that isn't hugely weakened in the long term by those engagements. Surrounding and trapping the army to force a surrender is crucial.

Also crucial is flanking an enemy from multiple provinces in the fighting. Not only does that give the enemy a significant penalty, but it also widens the battle, forcing more troops to fight at the same time. It is in these scenarios that losing Strength actually begins to be an issue, as more of your troops (and even more of the troop being flanked) are fighting and dying, while the rate of Organization drop isn't effected as strongly. Additionally there are minimum fight times, I think that it's a minimum of 1 week that a battle will go on, the weaker side can't flee in that time, only fight or be destroyed utterly.

Later on in the game, as fronts widen due to tech (putting more soldiers on the front lines even without flanking) and better training and tactics makes Organization catches up to Strength a bit, and you see less fighting where Organization is dropping far faster than Strength.

So with flanking in mind, is it better to split a 20k army in half and enter a territory from different borders than just take the whole force head-on? Does that affect sieges too?

I lost a lot of manpower just to gain that small territory in the end.

Metredneck wrote:

Ok, I'm all-in. I've had this game for a couple years now and bounced off several times. Every time I hear it talked about I really think if I could just get over the hump I would really enjoy it.

So, yesterday I bought all of the remaining DLC that I didn't already have, started a Muscovy game and "won" a war with Novgorod where I took one territory plus some reparations, then realized it was already an hour past my bed time.

Now I wonder of some of you veterans, if you could look back and remember when you were just starting to catch on to some of the basic systems in this, what couple of things do you really wish you would have spent more time to understand better?

I've tried this game a few times as well, and just failed to get a good grasp on the mechanics. Maybe I should reinstall it (again lol)

Sparhawk wrote:

I've tried this game a few times as well, and just failed to get a good grasp on the mechanics. Maybe I should reinstall it (again lol)

This one has particularly gnawed at me. I play a lot of strategy/Euro board games and typically the deeper and more varied the mechanics the better. I just refuse to believe this game is too dense for me to figure out.

Metredneck wrote:

So with flanking in mind, is it better to split a 20k army in half and enter a territory from different borders than just take the whole force head-on? Does that affect sieges too?

I lost a lot of manpower just to gain that small territory in the end.

Yes it is, assuming that the enemy only has the one army, flanking is usually better. If they have multiple armies then half of your flanking force can in turn be flanked, etc, etc, etc. One case in which splitting up and flanking isn't better is if you have one general way better than your others, in that case keeping more of your troops under his command may be better.

Flanking is definitely necessary during sieges. You need as many bonuses as you can to balance out their own defensive bonus.

When you have multi-province battles don't be afraid to tell one of the flanking forces to stand down for awhile if they are starting to suffer. Your other army may be able to keep the fight going while the tired one recovers.

Spoilered because I just looked at it and I wrote a whole book.

Spoiler:

Yonder's advice is pretty confusing to me, as it seems like it comes mostly from Hearts of Iron IV and not EUIV. However, Yonder did nail it here though

Yonder wrote:

In EU, as in real life, battles are not fought until the destruction or near destruction of one side, they are fought until the loser concedes and quits the field. The loser then will attempt to withdraw with the bulk of their army to re-organize and fight another day.

So morale (not organization - that's HOI4) becomes very important, but not quite all-important, since the number of combat pips and combat ability boosts you have (analagous to HOI4's strength) partly determines how much morale damage you do. If you have more morale you're more likely to win engagements and to inflict more casualties.

Flanking is also very important. Whenever possible you want to have a force that is wider than your enemy's, but not too much wider. Every unit has a flanking range that allows it to attack units that are beside it instead of right in front of it. So if your enemy has an army with 10 infantry and nothing else, and you show up with 12 infantry and 2 cavalry, the enemy units at the end of the line will be attacked by an extra infantry and cavalry that they can't counter and will take much more damage (both in casualties and morale). This doesn't scale up forever, though, and if you show up with 30 infantry most of them will stand there and take morale damage without even participating in the fight. Yonder suggests that it is important to attack from multiple directions, but as far as I know this isn't a mechanic in EUIV (it is in HOI4). You can also have too much cavalry - it depends on your particular nation, but there are typically penalties if your force is more than 50% cavalry. It's also really expensive to maintain.

You should also understand why stackwipes happen. If a force engages or is engaged by a force that is more than 10 times its size it will be instantly overrun and will disappear from the map with no chance to recover. This will also happen, irrespective of the size of the force, if morale reaches zero within the first 6 days (1 shock and 1 fire phase) of combat, during which you can't retreat. You can retreat to a province of your choice if you retreat before your morale drops below 0.5, but your retreat will be uncontrolled if your morale reaches zero (after the first 6 days) or you retreat when your morale is below 0.5.

Generals that boost shock are more important in the early game, and generals that boost fire are more important in the late game (when cannons are king). The quality (total number of pips) of general that you can recruit depends on your army tradition, with break points at 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100.

You also want to understand some basics about forts. You've noticed, I'm sure, that they project a zone of control. Not immediately apparent is how the combat bonuses work. If there is a fort, that fort's controller (owner or occupier, not sieger) gets any defensive terrain bonus. So if you're sieging down an enemy fort in the mountains, then you get attacked before the siege completes, you will get the terrain penalty as though you were attacking into the mountains, including a river/strait crossing if you crossed when initially entering the tile.

As for the macro, first priority is monarch points. Anything you don't buy with ducats you buy with monarch points, and it's very difficult/expensive to increase your supply of them. Advisors convert money into monarch points, and keeping your power projection above 50 by taking land from or humiliating rivals gives a boost as well. Unless you're near the monarch point cap, you should usually be trying to conserve/maximize monarch points. If I have a -8% to technology cost because I can't embrace an institution yet, I'll probably hold off as long as I reasonably can on taking those techs, because 8% is a ton of monarch points! If I get close to the cap I'll consider taking a tech, but even then I usually try to spend the points on something that doesn't have a penalty, like stability or development. Development has the bonus benefit of stimulating your institution spread (though I think you might need a DLC - cossacks? to spend points on development). Usually, admin > military > diplo, but this can depend on your strategy/nation.

If you know you're going to lose a war, don't be afraid to throw in the towel early. If you wait until you're fully occupied, the demands will become more, not less, punishing. This is true in the other direction too. Don't waste manpower fully occupying a foe that is already willing to give you the provinces you want. If you're winning, don't expect that you'll be able to take everything. As a general rule, try to keep your overextension below 100%, as really bad things can happen at higher levels.

Another thing I really wish I'd understood much sooner is trade. Trade is too big and complicated to explain here. For the basics, I'd suggest: (1) you usually collect in your home trade node, and you usually steer in upstream trade nodes, (2) you want as much trade power (i.e. land) as possible, especially in your home node - this means prioritizing centres of trade/estuaries, (3) build buildings that boost trade power in estuaries/ centres of trade, (4) take boosts to mercantilism when you can, and (5) use light ships to protect trade wherever you need a boost in your percentage of trade power - it can sometimes even be worth going into debt for the ships.

You might check out Arumba's new tutorial. He is a min/maxer and is very, very thorough about slowly explaining mechanics. I haven't watched it as it is hella-long, but if you're set up to watch it in the background you might consider it.

Yonder wrote:
Metredneck wrote:

So with flanking in mind, is it better to split a 20k army in half and enter a territory from different borders than just take the whole force head-on? Does that affect sieges too?

I lost a lot of manpower just to gain that small territory in the end.

Yes it is, assuming that the enemy only has the one army, flanking is usually better. If they have multiple armies then half of your flanking force can in turn be flanked, etc, etc, etc. One case in which splitting up and flanking isn't better is if you have one general way better than your others, in that case keeping more of your troops under his command may be better.

Flanking is definitely necessary during sieges. You need as many bonuses as you can to balance out their own defensive bonus.

When you have multi-province battles don't be afraid to tell one of the flanking forces to stand down for awhile if they are starting to suffer. Your other army may be able to keep the fight going while the tired one recovers.

Again, to my knowledge there is no flanking mechanic in sieges, and never any benefit to attacking or sieging from multiple provinces. Perhaps in a much earlier patch? It doesn't give you any benefit to split an army in half and attack from two provinces, in fact, it will often hurt you a bit if your timing is off or your deployment isn't planned correctly.

It does give you a benefit to split an army so that you engage with an ideal force (in terms of flanking), then reinforce with the extras as your morale starts to dip. This is micro intensive, but can make a big difference in close engagements.

BushPilot is correct that I've played more HoI more recently than EU, so I definitely may be confused about how Flanking works.

I forgot my number one mechanic I wished I'd know when I started. Aggressive Expansion! When you take territory you get an AE score with your neighbours. It's higher or lower depending on proximity, religion, diplomacy, etc. In the peace deal screen there is an icon you can mouseover to tell you the projected AE with all of your neighbours. AE slowly decays over time (there are bonuses that speed this decay), and is worse if you're playing in the Holy Roman Empire. If any nation's AE score with you gets above 50, they will consider joining a coalition against you. Coalitions are bad - they will all defend each other against you and have a very high threshold for peacing out. Avoid getting AE too high! A coalition will take everything you've worked so hard for and more. If a coalition is forming against you and you know it's going to get a lot bigger, you might consider attacking it before everyone can join in order to split the coalition in two - maybe you can beat it half at a time.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm just far enough in that for once all of that didn't got *completely* over my head.

Trade is definitely something else I've been trying to wrap my head around. From what I'm reading early on it doesn't really pay to use a merchant to collect in your home trade mode if you could use him to steer trade to it instead.

It seems that playing landlocked Muscovy has crippled me slightly in trade since I don't have ships to protect it. Is that accurate? I'm considering campaigning my way through Novgorod to gain a defensible foothold on the coast to remedy that.

Trade is pretty opaque, and one of the toughest areas to understand. The trade interface doesn't really help anyone learn it.

Metredneck wrote:

From what I'm reading early on it doesn't really pay to use a merchant to collect in your home trade mode if you could use him to steer trade to it instead.

This is usually true, I'd say, depending on how the steering bonuses work out. It's probably better to collect at home than to steer in a node where you have no power, but not always. I usually use merchants to steer until I have so many merchants that I can't find a useful place to put them, and then I collect at home. A common strategy is to 'trial and error' a bit. Note your trade income, move merchants and wait for them to arrive, check your new trade income. In some cases where you have a poor trade situation at home it might be best to collect away from your home node, but this isn't the typical case.

Metredneck wrote:

It seems that playing landlocked Muscovy has crippled me slightly in trade since I don't have ships to protect it. Is that accurate? I'm considering campaigning my way through Novgorod to gain a defensible foothold on the coast to remedy that.

Novgorod starts as a relatively strong trade nation, while Muscovy does not. Muscovy, on the other hand, starts in a stronger military position. I think your choice is clear.

It's also possible to move your trade capital (maybe this is part of a DLC?). This doesn't always pay, but if you've expanded to the point where you capital is now a backwater you might consider it.

These videos are a bit old, but they might be helpful:

Play as Venice and mess with the nodes. That's how I started picking up how to get trade to work s but more efficiently. It is pretty centralized, a strong trade nation and has some options trade steering that you can totally try out

BushPilot wrote:

Novgorod starts as a relatively strong trade nation, while Muscovy does not. Muscovy, on the other hand, starts in a stronger military position. I think your choice is clear.

I thought it was too, but was concerned with aggressive expansion and had no idea at what point it could become a problem.