Europa Universalis IV Catch-All

And the fact that you usually do have to *recover* from wars adds immensely to the verisimilitude.

My first paradox game was Vicki. Boy that was a tough one, but once I figured it out, boy was it intertaining. As far as this game goes, it is far easier to get into - a lot of playtime will be spent mastering aspects of the game. There are little buttons everywhere you can push, but you can hover over them to see what it does, usually that’s helpful.

By far, it is one of my favorite games - I’d recommend starting as Castile, ottomans, or Muscovy just to get a feel for everything. They’re easier plays until you get the hang of things. Castile might be best because you get to tinker with land and sea some and colonization. Not much more to be said than what’s been said - vanilla is a great game in and of itself. If you find you like it, just start snapping up dlc later.

The nicest thing about this game is that even if you lose a war, at least as a major power, you’re not done. This game spans a ton of time so you’ll have to recover and reset your goals- and the goals are what you make of them. The beauty of the game to me is that each one creates its own unique narrative. I’ve formed Prussia and Germany a ton of times with different minor powers and all have been interesting.

So I did wind up buying it. First round I did the tutorial and tried England. Did fairly well for a little while but messed up research and ideas since I had no idea how they worked. Eventually got blindside by Burgundy and decided I needed to know more.

So I watched all the tutorial videos you guys mentioned earlier. That helped a bit. Now I'm playing Castile and doing better. Really fun but at random Burgundy (always messing my games up) decided to up and give me all their land. Then the Castile civil war occur. Which would spawn troops in the middle of Europe in my new lands. Was a tad stupid so I save scummed a bit until it was a bit more reasonable. Course I didn't realize I could turn them into a vassal til afterwards.

Is there a way to release a vassal? The new vassal is not loyal at all and makes me no money. They also cause huge pains during any war. Specially since I keep fighting England by accident. Who then beats them up for war points. I think the dlc gives you a diplomatic options to break vassals but vanilla doesn't.

Also tech wise I seem to be always behind...

master0 wrote:

So I did wind up buying it. First round I did the tutorial and tried England. Did fairly well for a little while but messed up research and ideas since I had no idea how they worked. Eventually got blindside by Burgundy and decided I needed to know more.

So I watched all the tutorial videos you guys mentioned earlier. That helped a bit. Now I'm playing Castile and doing better. Really fun but at random Burgundy (always messing my games up) decided to up and give me all their land. Then the Castile civil war occur. Which would spawn troops in the middle of Europe in my new lands. Was a tad stupid so I save scummed a bit until it was a bit more reasonable. Course I didn't realize I could turn them into a vassal til afterwards.

Is there a way to release a vassal? The new vassal is not loyal at all and makes me no money. They also cause huge pains during any war. Specially since I keep fighting England by accident. Who then beats them up for war points. I think the dlc gives you a diplomatic options to break vassals but vanilla doesn't.

Also tech wise I seem to be always behind...

Fairly sure it's on the subjects panel (final one?) where you can release them. I think at first though, most vassals you forcefully take don't like you, you've just got to improve relations with them to try build it up.

BlackSheep wrote:

Castile might be best because you get to tinker with land and sea some and colonization.

I recommend the opposite actually. Unless you are really interested in Naval stuff (totally fair) you may want to start with a country that can safely ignore the sea to limit your considerations on your first game.

Clusks wrote:
master0 wrote:

So I did wind up buying it. Snip

Fairly sure it's on the subjects panel (final one?) where you can release them. I think at first though, most vassals you forcefully take don't like you, you've just got to improve relations with them to try build it up.

Since I released them we have fairly good terms. +150. They are just too economically strong. Maybe once I control Aragon that will go down.

master0 wrote:

Really fun but at random Burgundy (always messing my games up) decided to up and give me all their land. Then the Castile civil war occur. Which would spawn troops in the middle of Europe in my new lands. Was a tad stupid so I save scummed a bit until it was a bit more reasonable. Course I didn't realize I could turn them into a vassal til afterwards.

This event (Burgundian Succession Crisis) is very common; I'm sure it's occurred in more than half of my games. Some of Burgundy usually goes to France, and some of it usually goes to one of Spain or Austria. I've never seriously played Castille, but from what I've seen of the AI the land can be a big boon if you're Spain, but it is disconnected from your main territory and hard to control, especially if you're hostile to France and they won't grant you military access. To make matters worse, if the civil war fires some of the rebels will be in the disconnected land and your enemies will often take the turmoil as an opportunity to pile on and attack you.

master0 wrote:

Is there a way to release a vassal? The new vassal is not loyal at all and makes me no money. They also cause huge pains during any war. Specially since I keep fighting England by accident. Who then beats them up for war points. I think the dlc gives you a diplomatic options to break vassals but vanilla doesn't.

Interactions with subjects are an additional level probably not covered in most tutorials. Subjects you force-vassalize will be grumpy for a long time afterwards, especially if they're pretty powerful in their own right. If you diplo-vassalize or release a subject they are much happier. There is a button to create a vassal/subject nation out of your own lands - I think it is at the bottom right of your 'self' diplomacy screen. You can see a subject's liberty desire on the subjects panel, and anything higher than 49% is something to be concerned about. Above this level subjects won't pay you anything, won't help you in wars (they will still defend themselves, though), and will seek alliances against you for their independence war. Mousing over the liberty desire will tell you why they're disloyal. Aside from correcting the things listed, there are subject interactions on the subject panel which might help (placate rulers), you can improve relations through diplomacy, you can grant them additional provinces during peacetime, or you can do development in their lands (some of these options might require DLC). If you don't plan on taking the vassal's land anytime soon, you can also make them a march through diplomacy, which will generally make them a bit happier and will give them some military bonuses to make them a bit better in a fight. If you're really desperate, I think there's a button at the bottom of the subject interaction panel to grant them full independence, but I could be wrong as I've never used it.

master0 wrote:

Also tech wise I seem to be always behind...

There could be a number of reasons for this. If memory serves, Castille has some early rulers who are scripted to be really terrible in terms of monarch point generation. If you're not making any monarch points, you will fall behind on tech. Try to conserve and value your monarch points as much as you can, as they are pretty much the hardest currency to come by in the game. I'll usually take opportunities to turn ducats into monarch points, but not usually the other way around. After a while you'll pick up on tricks to save yourself points here and there. For example, if you're about to spend 600 admin on coring, but there is a 6% penalty to coring cost due to war exhaustion, you might want to wait for it to tick down, or you might want to spend 75 diplo points to reduce war exhaustion and save yourself the 36 admin penalty, depending on how much you need the different kinds of points at that time.

I'm not sure if it's DLC-only, but you also need to keep an eye on tech costs related to institutions. If you haven't embraced the appropriate institutions the monarch point penalties for teching up can get very large. There is a button on the tech screen for institutions, and then you can explore the tooltips in that menu for a bit more info (there's also a province-specific button for checking institution spread progress).

Better ruler skills, spending ducats on advisors, and having power projection above 50 can all increase monarch point generation. There is also a system to 'focus' your generation on one type of points but it might be DLC-only.

I think the focus is DLC only, it also goes on for quite some time before you can revert, so I tend to avoid it. A few starter tips that would've helped me when I started:

- Build lots of churches early on for the best return!
- Monitor how many forts you have. They are fairly costly, and you don't need too many, especially since they give war score to opposition. On the contrary, make sure you target the opponent forts first to build up war score. You want to place them in provinces where the terrain is good (drylands, etc) because...
- The terrain in battles plays a bigger part than you'd first realise. As a rule of thumb, I'd say never go in to attack someone in the mountains or woods. You have river penalties too, but I tend to not take as much notice of these, as pretty much everywhere has a river in Europe, and you've got to attack at some point.
- Remember in peace time, you can go to your economy page and lower the cost of your army to minimum. This will make you a bit more money when you don't really have too much of a need for them. Remember to put them back up to max a short while before you declare war on someone or fight a battle, as they take time to get their morale back.
- This might be a personal preference for me, but I never fill up the allowed units with core soldiers, I usually just hire a few mercs for wars and then dismiss them after.
- Remember in sue for peace to take all the opponents money. This is a really good source of income, especially if you can sue for peace individually the junior partners in a war to get them out first.
- Always try to assign a general before going into a battle.

Those are all I can think of right now, I'll add more if I can think of them. Oh, if you're Castille, make sure you get one big buddy, as the Ottomans will come knocking eventually

Once I found out from the suggestions here that DLC wasn’t necessary to start, I decided to dive in as well. Followed the advice from tboon and others of just watching quills tutorials and following along in the game. There’s still much I don’t understand (looking at you Trade), but it’s definitely interesting and I can see myself dumping a bunch of hours in.

Thinking about making friends with France, but nervous about getting pulled into a war I don’t need.

I have played several games and still don't understand trade. Maybe my next game should be as Venice to force me to actually explore the system.

Once you figure out trade, let us all know. Probably including the EU4 devs.

Edit:

fogrob wrote:

Thinking about making friends with France, but nervous about getting pulled into a war I don’t need.

Don't worry about it too much. If France starts something and calls you in, you don't have to actually help them. If someone starts something with France, then you need to make sure to defend yourself but you don't need to help them out then either. Just accepting the call will be enough to stay in the alliance.

If it is something scary, like a big coalition getting ready to stomp France, you can always refuse the call. You will no longer be in an alliance with France but if it is something that scary, France won't be much of an ally for a while. And the negative hit is not that bad and is relatively short-lived, so you can re-ally with France after the war.

Another one here with almost 85 hours of game time and little understanding of trade. I just see a green plus sign and go for it.

Don't worry, the AI will ease you in to the fact that sometimes it is better not to join in to defend your ally by completely and totally abandoning you when someone really big declares on you.

Yonder wrote:

I have played several games and still don't understand trade. Maybe my next game should be as Venice to force me to actually explore the system.

I need to try Venice again.

Last time, my mttnd(mean time to new doge) was about 6 months, which meant that I really didn't have any admin points because they were all going to maintaining stability.

As it turns out, electing 77 year old dudes in 1444 means they die a lot.

Republican tradition was off the charts, though.

Clusks wrote:

- Monitor how many forts you have. They are fairly costly, and you don't need too many, especially since they give war score to opposition. On the contrary, make sure you target the opponent forts first to build up war score. You want to place them in provinces where the terrain is good (drylands, etc) because...
- The terrain in battles plays a bigger part than you'd first realise. As a rule of thumb, I'd say never go in to attack someone in the mountains or woods. You have river penalties too, but I tend to not take as much notice of these, as pretty much everywhere has a river in Europe, and you've got to attack at some point.

Lots of good advice here, but I feel compelled to add something re: terrain and forts. The advice to new players used to be that you should have all of your forts in flat terrain. The way forts and defensive bonuses work changed in the Prussia patch, however, so that this is no longer true. Terrain plays a big part in many battles, but the way it works with forts is not the same as in unfortified provinces. If you attack an enemy sieging one of your forts in the mountains, YOU will be considered the defender (the opposite of what would happen if there was no fort). This is extremely valuable for defense, and if your borders are defended by forts in mountains you can push a similarly-size and -equipped enemy off again and again. Of course, the same goes for you when you try to siege down enemy forts in defensive terrain, so beware.

tboon wrote:

Once you figure out trade, let us all know. Probably including the EU4 devs. :)

If you want a deep dive, these are pretty good:

Though, in my opinion, you don't really need to understand it to get the trade system to work pretty well for you. You can usually do fine with a few rules: (1) collect in your home node, (2) maximize power in your home node by conquering high-trade-power provinces, by building trade buildings in provinces with estuaries or trade centres, and by sending light ships to protect trade, (3) steer to your home node from upstream nodes where you have some trade power (ideally in a single long chain), and (4) secondary to improving power in your home node, increase your trade power in upstream nodes using the same techniques from (2). I'd also add that, despite various tutorials saying they're helpful, the tooltips for how much profit you'll make by sending light ships to protect trade are (to me) completely inscrutable. I just use trial and error, and eventually you get a feel for it. Using just these rules I've got my merchant republican Portugal up to about 240 ducats a month in trade income by 1700 - without ever taking another province in Europe.

cube wrote:

Last time, my mttnd(mean time to new doge) was about 6 months, which meant that I really didn't have any admin points because they were all going to maintaining stability.

As it turns out, electing 77 year old dudes in 1444 means they die a lot.

Republican tradition was off the charts, though.

They might have changed this recently, as my first 'republican' campaign was only recent. Now you only lose admin from the doge dying if he's leading an army. Also, re-elections while maintaining you republican tradition at high levels seem to be much more feasible now that they've added the 'strengthen government' button. It's probably worth another look now - having a 6/6/6 leader is immensely satisfying.

For the tech difference I just thought it was a bit weird. I just hit military level 7. It currently has 110% penalty for the next level because it would be to early. While both France and and England somehow have level 8 military already. So they had to pay what? 1200 military points? AI definitely doesn't follow same rules for tech. Or perhaps just fudges it a little. Small thing though.

Probable the most useful thing I found is turning off you military and forts in peace time. If you get jumped it can be bad. Still just keep your armies battle free for a few months and you're fine. I've even turned of forts in war time. If I'm crushing might as well save the dosh.

Thing I'll keep the vassal for now. Once I merge with Aragon maybe then they'll start to behave. At that point I might start to move into France. I still want Portugal's land but they are allied with England which is a huge headache.

Also started a colony but that process seems super slow. Still it's fun. Might start conquering some natives too.

master0 wrote:

For the tech difference I just thought it was a bit weird. I just hit military level 7. It currently has 110% penalty for the next level because it would be to early. While both France and and England somehow have level 8 military already. So they had to pay what? 1200 military points? AI definitely doesn't follow same rules for tech. Or perhaps just fudges it a little. Small thing though.

Probable the most useful thing I found is turning off you military and forts in peace time. If you get jumped it can be bad. Still just keep your armies battle free for a few months and you're fine. I've even turned of forts in war time. If I'm crushing might as well save the dosh.

Thing I'll keep the vassal for now. Once I merge with Aragon maybe then they'll start to behave. At that point I might start to move into France. I still want Portugal's land but they are allied with England which is a huge headache.

Also started a colony but that process seems super slow. Still it's fun. Might start conquering some natives too.

I thought it was the level of your neighboring states and not the overall level that dictated if you were ahead or behind in technology. As your neighbors level it makes it more affordable for you to do as well.

I learned trade from playing brabant / Netherlands and England. Both have nodes you can steer into, and usually one really efficient way to get trade there.

I know for England, I tend to try and colonize a carribean nation or two, then really focus on North America. I steer all the trade from south through the carribean > Chesapeake > then North Sea > into London.

Venice has a lot of options about which way you’d like to steer and you’re competing with Genoa’s node heavily too. It’s interesting and fun, but it can be difficult to maximize.

If you push ‘E’ you can see not just the nodes but the provinces that ‘feed’ that node. When you look at the little flags below the monies coming in, you can see the various trade powers of those in the node. Light ships add to it if you protect trade, and marketplaces will help as well, especially for inland trade nodes with little access to water.

BlackSheep wrote:

I thought it was the level of your neighboring states and not the overall level that dictated if you were ahead or behind in technology. As your neighbors level it makes it more affordable for you to do as well.

I'm 90% sure the ahead of technology penalty to tech cost is based solely on what year it is. There is a neighbour bonus that is based on what techs your neighbours have that can give you a reduction in cost even if you're ahead of time, though this doesn't get much greater than 10-15% under typical conditions, in my experience.

According to Paradox the AI doesn't cheat at all on tech cost, unless you count the lucky nation system as cheating. It is possible for them to get techs that you can't afford because of the monarch point cap based on various tech cost reductions that are available. France in particular has a 10% reduction in their national ideas. There's also a 5% reduction in innovative ideas, and there are tech-type-specific reductions available in other idea groups. Not to mention events and HRE bonuses that can reduce the cost too. Careful timing of institution adoption could theoretically allow you to afford over-the-cap technologies too.

tboon wrote:

Once you figure out trade, let us all know. Probably including the EU4 devs. :)

Very funny

Even with those explanation tutorials I still had trouble figuring out trade. Playing Venice now in CK2 and wondering if trade works there too :P. I simply assume that somehow trading works when I get some cash. So probably I could get more, but ...

One thing I found very important when trading: put your tradefleets on go back home automatically when at war. Also naming that something like trade1, trade2 helped me to find them

It's not at all a sign of cheating for a nation to be ahead of the tech curve in a couple areas, identifying a high priority or two to try to keep ahead in is a totally valid and doable strategy, especially if you have bonuses aligned with that path to lower your research penalty a bit. Obviously that depends on what country you have, but it's absolutely manageable for France to be a tech ahead.

I have dabbled a bit and learned a bunch! I’ve conquered Grenada, made a vassal of that yellow V country to the northeast, made allies with France/Portugal, and started an embargo on Aragon.

I’m finding all this really interesting. Does anyone have a good beginners guide book suggestion for the time period? It’s been so long since I’ve had a history class, I can’t remember most of it.

I started a game as the Ottomans just to get a real power rush, and so far it's going well

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/d19hrK3.jpg)

I'm going to drill into the Mamluks next, Shammar are a vassal of mine, so hopefully I can feed a few places to them to help bring down the costs before eating them whole!

fogrob wrote:

I have dabbled a bit and learned a bunch! I’ve conquered Grenada, made a vassal of that yellow V country to the northeast, made allies with France/Portugal, and started an embargo on Aragon.

I’m finding all this really interesting. Does anyone have a good beginners guide book suggestion for the time period? It’s been so long since I’ve had a history class, I can’t remember most of it.

This Reddit thread has some good suggestions. I highly recommend Vanished Kingdoms by Norm Davies. It is very readable and makes me want to play some EU whenever I think about it.

Not specifically EU4 related but I read these based in part on playing so much EU4:
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World from Prehistory to Today by William J. Bernstein

Awesome! Thank you. Things really started to heat up in my game tonight. I ended up allied with Portugal in a war with Morocco, was steadily putting down revolts/trying to convert Grenada, and dealing with Aragon and England building spy networks and fabricating claims in a bunch of my provinces. I didn't realize so much fun could be had staring at a map for 3 hours!

Just for clarification...Portugal called me to help in their war vs Morocco. My army was standing in Tangeirs(?), who is the war goal, but I guess I can't actually take it since it's Portugal's war?

Edit: Picked up Vanished Kingdoms on Kindle for $9. Thanks!

fogrob wrote:

Awesome! Thank you. Things really started to heat up in my game tonight. I ended up allied with Portugal in a war with Morocco, was steadily putting down revolts/trying to convert Grenada, and dealing with Aragon and England building spy networks and fabricating claims in a bunch of my provinces. I didn't realize so much fun could be had staring at a map for 3 hours!

Just for clarification...Portugal called me to help in their war vs Morocco. My army was standing in Tangeirs(?), who is the war goal, but I guess I can't actually take it since it's Portugal's war?

Edit: Picked up Vanished Kingdoms on Kindle for $9. Thanks!

Yeah, some of the higher level play involves working those alliances to your advantage - if you and an ally want a province but you’re not ready to take it yet and they might be closer CB - wise, it can be a good idea to start a war that drags them into it, let it work down their manpower and up their exhaustion - bonus points if you drag the other guy into the war that the province(s) you both want is fighting the other side. Since you started the war, most often, you’ll be making to truce agreements - when you do truce out, you’ll give yourself more time by white flagging them for a bit.

Doing something like this makes taking the Teutonic Order out from under Poland’s nose a bit easier when you’re Pomerania or Brandenburg and you need some of those provinces o form Prussia.

When you go to war for an ally is the only way to get any reward is by signing a separate peace treaty?

Also is there a way to convince an ally to end a war? Like they are winning but just keep fighting? Or is that series peace only too.

master0 wrote:

When you go to war for an ally is the only way to get any reward is by signing a separate peace treaty?

Also is there a way to convince an ally to end a war? Like they are winning but just keep fighting? Or is that series peace only too.

The separate peace knocks your relations with them but it isn’t a huge knock; and no, unfortunately if they started it, they’ll have to finish. The computer doesn’t usually cede provinces or anything to me- it happens but not often. You want to mess with your ally, take their War goal if it’s a province and you’re able - or any provinces they might want. That way they can’t ask for them at the table.

So how do I take the war goal province? I was standing in it with a 21k stack, but it wouldn’t allow me to siege and it said Portugal occupied it even though I was the only army there...

Wait...could they have already taken the fort but not had exterior troops?

BlackSheep wrote:
master0 wrote:

When you go to war for an ally is the only way to get any reward is by signing a separate peace treaty?

Also is there a way to convince an ally to end a war? Like they are winning but just keep fighting? Or is that series peace only too.

The separate peace knocks your relations with them but it isn’t a huge knock; and no, unfortunately if they started it, they’ll have to finish. The computer doesn’t usually cede provinces or anything to me- it happens but not often. You want to mess with your ally, take their War goal if it’s a province and you’re able - or any provinces they might want. That way they can’t ask for them at the table.

Spoilered because it's apparently much easier for me to write several pages here than in my thesis (i.e.
it's really long)

Spoiler:

Some of this might require DLC (Art of War, mostly), but I'm not sure exactly which aspects.

If you sign a separate peace it will hurt their trust toward you. You will be able to see whether this will be the case by checking the tooltips on the little icons to the left on the peace screen - it will show a thumbs up on the country crest if they're happy, nothing if they're indifferent, and something else (thumbs down?) if they're not happy. Getting a separate peace as a secondary participant usually hurts relations with your allies, but sometimes it's preferable to continuing to fight. If you have enough favours with the ally you can increase their trust of you in the diplomacy interface (even before signing the peace) to offset the relations hit.

Note that peacing out secondary enemy participants when you are the war leader won't hurt your relations with your allies, and can often be a useful and profitable thing to do.

Sometimes, particularly when your ally is the aggressor, they will stay in the war because they can't yet get their goals in the peace deal. Sometimes this is just a matter of having enough warscore, but sometimes YOU are the holdup. If they want a province, but you occupy it, they can't take it in the peace and they may wait patiently for quite some time for you to transfer the occupation to them. Transferring the occupations of provinces they desire might cause them to sign a peace right away. The war goal is the obvious one, as they most likely want that province, but you can check which other provinces are important to your ally in the diplomacy interface (let me know if you can't figure out how, it's a bit finnicky).

This can be leveraged to your advantage in many ways. If you also want the provinces that they desire, you can rush to occupy them first and refuse to transfer them so that your enemy keeps the provinces and you can take them in a later war where you are the leader (this will likely be the beginning of the end of friendly relations with your ally though). You can mark which provinces are important to you, and if your ally doesn't want them AND you occupy them, your ally might just give them to you in the peace deal if your war participation is high enough. It also seems (anecdotally) that if you mark provinces as important to you early on (before your ally develops an interest in them) then your ally is less likely to desire them, provided your relations remain very good.

The provinces of interest map for your allies is useful when you're the leader as well - you can see if your ally is likely to accept a call based on a promise of territory, and you can see exactly which territory they'll be willing to take in the peace.

Transferring occupations to the war leader is usually good practice unless you have a good reason to keep the occupation for yourself. Usually this would be because you want the province, you want to raise mercenaries in the province, or the province has a gold mine that is still productive during the occupation. Indeed, keeping occupations can be costly, since (I'm pretty sure) you have to pay for enemy forts while you occupy the provinces. Thus, even as the war leader you may have strategic reasons to transfer occupations to your allies or subjects.

There is a little button on the province screen when it's occupied that allows you to transfer occupations. There's also a little button during war that allows you to set enemy provinces as siege objective for specific allies or subjects, but they may or may not listen depending on the situation (pretty sure this one is DLC only).

Be careful choosing provinces to transfer to your non-subject allies, as they won't transfer them back to you (your subjects will).

I could go on and on...

fogrob wrote:

So how do I take the war goal province? I was standing in it with a 21k stack, but it wouldn’t allow me to siege and it said Portugal occupied it even though I was the only army there...

Wait...could they have already taken the fort but not had exterior troops?

Assuming that Portugal is your ally, it sounds they they've already occupied it. That is, it should have hatching in Portugal's colour, and there is something in the province tooltip or the province window that says 'occupied by Portugal.' If that's the case, then there's no need for you to siege it further, as it's already controlled by your side, and you should be able to see that you have a positive ticking warscore in the war overview window. The war is probably still going because Portugal needs more warscore to actually take the provinces it wants in the peace (usually far more occupied territory is necessary to get enough warscore to take a single province), or Portugal is waiting for you to transfer specific additional provinces to them. You can see how much warscore a province will cost in the province window, but there are other limiting factors too that are more opaque.

It can also be that you have the war goal, but if there is no enemy fort occupied near it the war goal can't be taken in the peace yet. So if there's no fort in Tangiers but there is one in the adjacent province (Casablanca?) you or Portugal might need to occupy that first.