Europa Universalis IV - Page 117

+Core creation cost useful in keeping people from stealing your lands, but doesnt exactly make you stronger in wars, and people could still weaken you if they so choose by making you release stuff or cancel vassals.

On January 29 2015 06:19 DrunkenOne wrote:
Aristocratic is good in a vacuum but several ideas are pretty worthless, and its major positives are outweighed by the other groups. It is less of a straight military idea group and more econ/diplo focused. +1 diplomat is much more useful in SP where you are improving relations with AIs, annexing fed vassals, etc, and less useful for MP where relations dont really matter. -20% WE reduction cost is nearly worthless. +Core creation cost useful in keeping people from stealing your lands, but doesnt exactly make you stronger in wars, and people could still weaken you if they so choose by making you release stuff or cancel vassals. -Tech cost is ok, but everyone will be keeping up in tech if you are in western tech group anyways. Definitely more useful if you are playing an eastern country or a horde and can stack cav bonuses to wreck early game. +1 leader w/o upkeep is ok I guess but is more of an economic bonus in that it saves mil points.

So actually useful in combat you get +10% cav CA, +1 leader shock, +25% manpower. Offensive gets +1 leader shock, +1 leader fire, +20% siege, +20% force limit, +5% discipline, and forced march, giving you a larger, better army which sieges faster and can force march compared to if you take aristocratic. Quantity obv gets massive bonuses to army size and lets you have a MASSIVE advantage early game if taken 1st (as seen in my current mp game where france took it 1st).

On top of that, aristocratic's policies are all pretty much garbage in comparison to the ones unlocked by quality/quantity/offensive. The only good looking one is +20% cav CA, cept you also need espionage for that which is itself suboptimal to take, especially early on.

On January 29 2015 14:26 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
So I was looking at some of the presets they have in extended timeline, and I actually like the look of the 1066 start:



All the European powers are small, there's a decent African presence but smaller than Tunis, and the hordes are small and manageable. As far as it goes, it's a blank canvas and anyone can get big. Franconia is emperor, Austria isn't close to being elected, and everyone's looking local at this point.

I shall be playing as Aachen. (The other reason I went with pre-1200 to dodge the Mongols instead of 1300s like I usually do, is to avoid having fucking France breathing down my neck).

On January 30 2015 12:08 Blackfeather wrote:

Not to sure, Byzantium has Ottoman tax income in a time where other powers are a quarter of what they later are. So in comparison they are probably much stronger than France is at 1444 simply bc everyone else is so much weaker than them.
Might be that their diplo situation is really bad though, I mean they collapse for a reason.

@El Dorado:
Not sure about the idea part of the custom nation thing, there'll be just a way to go in 90% of the situations (f.e. , -core creation cost, -aggressive expansion, +manpower, +missionary strenght, + discipline, +inf/cav combat, +morale and two out of Diplomat, army tradition, -revolt risk, artillery combat).
So yeah just go Brandenburg on a bigger base tax at a position of your choice with the two national Idea that Prussia is missing, missionary strength and core creation. Sounds possibly easier than France. HRE Hungary superpower incoming.

Did they say anything about National Events? Cause most great powers in EU are great because they get cheap great events.

@[UoN]Sentinel Is your Byzantium into Rome playthrough a mod? Or did they implement it at 1.8 or 1.9?
Those Roman Ideas btw, holy shit

On January 30 2015 13:23 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:

I know that the ET mod makes Rome (as in original Roman empire) collapse somewhere around the time it actually fell via stability drops and other time-based nerfs. AI Rome is meant to disintegrate although it's not crippling to the point a human player couldn't hold it together, especially with preparation. Byzantium might work the same way, although only time will tell. I remember I ran a game starting around 1240, and is now the reason I avoid the 1200 starts like the plague, because the Mongol Empire just kept expanding and by 1350 I figured it wasn't going anywhere since there was no sign of it falling into disrepair, and it would be a while before the west got the tech bonuses needed to go against it. So we'll see.

France turned out to be pretty deceptive. They're pushing their northern border to me, so I might stop aggroing all over Westphalia to get some sort of alliance or coalition against them. I'm avoiding the sea for now, but I wouldn't mind a French port or two where Emperor Franconia can't demand I return it to whoever else I'm invading at the time.

Byzantium into Rome is part of Extended Timeline mod (I also have the national decisions from original Rome, such as splitting half my land into the Western Roman Empire and picking which of the two I want to play as, and presumably to form it again and continue the cycle). However I believe you can form Rome from Byzantium in CK2 and import it into an EU4 game.

On January 30 2015 17:40 419 wrote:


what fun