|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
I think inflation + tech delay is a pretty large penalty though the alternative of being in a very annexable position in some starts is even worse (e.g. during my VH Candar game where I loaned up and beat England + Portugal with just Scotland's help). I think that game the early loans and debase corruption set me something like 50 years behind on tech. of course that's still not too hard to recover once you stabilize but it does come with its costs and I've been finding myself manually lowering inflation a lot earlier than I normally do
ddrjake went relatively tame ever since he joined paradox (which makes sense, he works on the game as a job so why do the crazy stuff that requires a lot of preliminary testing). of course there is still a lot I learn from him (though his stream chat is pretty insufferable sometimes), but I do think that loan management is an essential aspect of playing 'well' on VH. It'd be just as negligent as never microing armies yourself and attaching them to AI vassals/allies.
you can save a lot of loans by actually waiting around for allies but I often consider myself as not really pushing myself if I'm in a position where I am waiting for favors to do wars
|
Jake himself even says, "If you aren't taking loans, you aren't trying hard enough." It's an arbitrary rule imposed to make the game more difficult, like forbidding the Quantity idea group.
When is debase currency stronger than loans? Debase feels more painful, but I don't play aggressively enough to have an informed opinion.
|
Czech Republic11293 Posts
On November 18 2016 03:00 Gladness wrote:
Jake himself even says, "If you aren't taking loans, you aren't trying hard enough." It's an arbitrary rule imposed to make the game more difficult, like forbidding the Quantity idea group.
When is debase currency stronger than loans? Debase feels more painful, but I don't play aggressively enough to have an informed opinion.
As funny as it is, I am not a huge fan of Quantity idea group. It's very good, but I think I prefer Quality or Offensive (or both) based on what other thing I have available for policies. The ideas I took in the Dahomey game were as tryhard as I could get. Then again, manpower issues can often be solved by excruciating speed1+lots of pausing during wars, which I do, and Jake doesn't.
Then again, I'm a sucker for Economic, and that idea group has excellent policies with both Quality and Offensive.
|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
I generally elect never to take a military idea in my first 3-4 (even on VH) and quantity just happens to be a nice ideagroup that allows you to pay for significant economic benefits with a military group. I just feel like the force limits are too prohibitive picking another group. And religious + quantity + quality used to provide a sizable chunk of morale (it still gives morale but not as much), so at least your troops while kind of bad won't constantly get stackwiped.
When is debase currency stronger than loans? Debase feels more painful, but I don't play aggressively enough to have an informed opinion.
The more high-autonomy land you have the stronger debase currency is, as the root out corruption cost is scaled against autonomy adjusted development while the debase amount is scaled against total autonomy.
|
On November 18 2016 04:08 Scip wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2016 03:00 Gladness wrote:
Jake himself even says, "If you aren't taking loans, you aren't trying hard enough." It's an arbitrary rule imposed to make the game more difficult, like forbidding the Quantity idea group.
When is debase currency stronger than loans? Debase feels more painful, but I don't play aggressively enough to have an informed opinion. As funny as it is, I am not a huge fan of Quantity idea group. It's very good, but I think I prefer Quality or Offensive (or both) based on what other thing I have available for policies. The ideas I took in the Dahomey game were as tryhard as I could get. Then again, manpower issues can often be solved by excruciating speed1+lots of pausing during wars, which I do, and Jake doesn't. Then again, I'm a sucker for Economic, and that idea group has excellent policies with both Quality and Offensive.
Almost no games unless im Muscovy or something I won't take quantity. On small countries that start with like 10k manpower its almost stupid not to i feel like
|
I usually pick a Military idea group for 3rd or 4th since otherwise I run into huge proplems with unbalanaced reasearch and combating corrupting draining all my $$$.
Usually I go like:
1) Diplo/Influence/Exploration
2) Admin
3) Economic/Religious/Quality
4) Economic/Religious/Quality
5) Offensive
I also like to get Defensive later on since the -10% land maintenance and -10% fort cost help with my money woes and it has the nice extra morale.
I also feel like is should value Innovative more highly, esp. when not in Europe.
I can imagine Quantity being better on harder difficulties to keep up with the insane number of troops the AI is fielding, but I am a scrub and play on normal still. =D
edit: actually defensive vs quantity is a close call. might want to consider that more carefully in future games. still think i will get either rather late(ish).
|
Dependent on the start you are doing, i feel like you don't need better fighting most of the times. If you are going for massive expansion, like a wc run, you will probably have your biggest concern with the stupid rebellions you have to crush all the time everywhere in your empire. For that, quantity is excellent, as you now have the mapower and the money to have troops anywhere and still keep conquering land. Other countries need it just for the manpower recovery, i am thinking everyting that fights in jungles especially. Playing on hard might be different. But i usually don't think that i need to be better at winning wars right now.
|
On November 18 2016 19:25 Broetchenholer wrote:
Dependent on the start you are doing, i feel like you don't need better fighting most of the times. If you are going for massive expansion, like a wc run, you will probably have your biggest concern with the stupid rebellions you have to crush all the time everywhere in your empire. For that, quantity is excellent, as you now have the mapower and the money to have troops anywhere and still keep conquering land. Other countries need it just for the manpower recovery, i am thinking everyting that fights in jungles especially. Playing on hard might be different. But i usually don't think that i need to be better at winning wars right now.
Actually makes a ton of sense. Haven't looked at it this way, since I haven't really tried my hand at a WC yet. Still have a ton of other achievements I want to do first and most of those don't really require you to conquer a huge amount of stuff.
Maybe I should try to play more aggressive/expansive though.
|
What are the exact mechanics of stack wipe? I know that if you keep chasing a stack that lost a fight and they are kind of "trapped" they might get wiped but I don't know the exact conditions are.
|
On November 19 2016 00:44 IgnE wrote:
What are the exact mechanics of stack wipe? I know that if you keep chasing a stack that lost a fight and they are kind of "trapped" they might get wiped but I don't know the exact conditions are.
One condition that used to be true was if you broke their morale within the month the combat started. Don't know the others.
|
For a stack wipe you need to have the enemy morale drop to 0 within the first x combat phases. (basically before they are allowed to retreat). not 100% sure how many combat phases x is. it is like the first few. 2-3?
So attacking an army that is low on morale, e.g. cause they recently lost a battle, helps a lot.
having good rolls, generals, discipline and a fuckton of art. helps, too.
generally vastly outnumbering your enemy helps too imo.
|
On November 19 2016 01:08 disformation wrote:
For a stack wipe you need to have the enemy morale drop to 0 within the first x combat phases. (basically before they are allowed to retreat). not 100% sure how many combat phases x is. it is like the first few. 2-3?
So attacking an army that is low on morale, e.g. cause they recently lost a battle, helps a lot.
having good rolls, generals, discipline and a fuckton of art. helps, too.
generally vastly outnumbering your enemy helps too imo.
When talking about outnumbering there is also the 10:1 factor which results in an instant wipe. Pretty commonly used by American nations fighting against Europeans to be able to win wars at all.
|
An army outnumbered 10:1 will also always be wiped regardless of morale.
Edit: too slow on mobile 
|
Ah, thanks. 
|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
Unless you seriously out-tech your opponent (like Euros vs. Natives), you also need to outnumber their front to get a stackwipe.
|
Playing as Brandenburg and back in HRE reminded me how important Aggressive Expansion is for playing in HRE. Every little land you take, you may have a coalition on your back. Thankfully I have good econ and about as big as Denmark, so these little countries teamed up can't do much. It's another story if a big country gets involved tho.
|
it honestly seems like playing anywhere in europe is frustrating. the AE makes it such a slow process to unite anything. even for some country like france.
ive been trying some starts on genoa. between trying to hold onto land in crimea and trying to unite italy without getting a coalition against me its been frustrating. what is the earliest reasonable decade to even unite italy? sometimes taking a single province gives you 50 AE with france or austria ready to pound you into the ground.
|
They question of idea groups constantly pops up and the answer always is: "Depends on what you are trying to do."
In this thread alone you can see a variety of players/playstyles and skill levels. The question "what is best" is just too vague.
If we're talking about maximum expansion/blobbing aka world conquest or something along those lines the question is way more easily answered. For your first two idea groups there's pretty much no way around Admin and Influence, usually in that order, because they give massive monarch point savings (coring cost/diplo annex cost/unjustified demands) along with strong bonuses particularly for greedy early game fighting against strong odds (merc maintenance/cost/availability/interest reduction, vassal contributions AE reduction). After that you're pretty much always forced into Religious Ideas because the land you gobbled up will almost never be of the same religion (in fact it should not be because you want to spread the AE around to avoid coalitions). After that most people will go diplomatic for the reduced warscore cost, extra diplomat and dip rep for faster annexations.
At that point you're already so late in the game that the rest pretty much doesn't matter that much. There are some scenarios where you might be forced to go religious first/2nd but with the options available through estates these should be very rare.
|
Started One Faith as Castille, its 1470 i already Vasalized Portugal, Tlemencen PU Aragon/Naples, eat large chunk of North Africa. Currently pushing inside Egypt, so next war probably vs Otto which went ham on Mamaluks. I am allied to France.
Went Admin first and i am thinking hard on second Idea set. The tricky thing is i want to do all Spain achievments during this run. So i need to take colonization for colonial nation thing and diplo/influence for becoming Emperor.
Any advices?
|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
On November 21 2016 00:49 parkufarku wrote:
Playing as Brandenburg and back in HRE reminded me how important Aggressive Expansion is for playing in HRE. Every little land you take, you may have a coalition on your back. Thankfully I have good econ and about as big as Denmark, so these little countries teamed up can't do much. It's another story if a big country gets involved tho.
If you want to expand without too much AE considerations, you pretty much want to go for Denmark's throat and vassalize Novgorod, which gives you a good base to expand without getting HRE hate.
Depending on rivalries Hungary + Bburg can also solidly beat PLC assuming the latter didn't get any good allies earlygame (like bohemia)
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
