Europa Universalis IV - Page 40

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 09 2014 10:48 GMT

#781

goddamnit of all the people that convert to protestant, fucking venice does

there goes my 500g investment, at least I got some good mileage out of it

enforce peace is pretty amusing to abuse as HRE (hence the multiple wars I get into)...though holy shit switching to protestant as brandenburg is BRUTAL if you aren't prepared (made sure I had enough admin points to survive the initial stab hit, then spent 5-10 years losing all my manpower to rebels)

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 10 2014 10:08 GMT

#782

Rhodes is a boring place and we're just going to get killed by Turks, lets go somewhere else:

[image loading]

these angry guys sieging down our province seem to want us to convert to hinduism. eh, whatever:

[image loading]

Hindu Knights Hospitaller will pay back evil Turk...maybe in the next 200 years.

(inspired by this guy who took a random OPM in germany and took over all of Asia: http://imgur.com/a/hpdXl )

seriously though, this is an amazing strategy, you just have to hope to get force converted by zealots. The tech advantage of Western is just insane.

Broetchenholer

Germany1961 Posts

January 11 2014 21:12 GMT

#783

Hey guys,

need some quick advise. Out of nowhere, i became the lesser partner in a personal union...with the HRE. I am Portugal, i could buy the whole word but i can't win a war against the HRE. They have about 400k men standing, their allies have 260k more. I have 120k. What are my options here? I have no idea what it means being in a PU but i am pretty sure i don't want to be in it. Attacking the HRE seems to be out of the question, even if i could amass allies, i don't think it woud be enough, the only one close to enough troops would be Russia and although i could build up huge army stacks and live from the 40k ducats i have on the bank, i don't have the military technology to win battles with even numbers. Is their a diplomatic way to get out of it? what happens if i stop the royal ties? Does that help?

RvB

Netherlands6272 Posts

January 11 2014 21:17 GMT

#784

Just get your relations with the HRE under 0 and then when the king dies you'll be out of the union automatically.

Ramong

Denmark1706 Posts

January 11 2014 21:33 GMT

#785

Some previews of the 1.4 changes have been posted over on the forum

http://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/1uwt7v/previews_of_14_changes/

Chocolate

United States2350 Posts

January 11 2014 22:11 GMT

#786

Hmm 419 I am also interested in doing that strategy, but how did you discover those provinces in Asia? Did you just use cheats, or did you wait for conquistadors? It looks fun.

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 11 2014 23:31 GMT

#787

no cheats required, general outline:

- rush exploration tech, get military access from mamluks (need relation improve first), move your troops onto mamluk territory, and hope the Ottomans don't get the mission to conquer you. You need conquistadors to deal with the terra incognita, basically you click into it and it will reveal the owned land once its done "travelling," then you can get military access (it shouldn't even need relation improve).

-Once you've set up the right things (army slider to zero), you can run it at speed 5 and wait for admin tech 4 + 800 diplo points. If you get Orthodox rebels (you did move your army to Mamluk territory so they don't kill it right?), surrender to their demands ASAP, you will get more tax money this way. When you're close to getting conquistadors, build 3 infantry and ferry them over when you can. This gives you 6k infantry. Also, at some point around the 1960s, forge a claim the Ottoman province Mentese.

-Get military access from mamluks -> qara -> timurids->baluchistan, cancelling access as you go and that gets you all the way to India.

-I did do something gamey where I exit the game upon arriving in India, and look at the political situation in the game map before loading the game up. Check for nations with lack of alliances. My situation ended up pretty nicely all things considered: a 4-province country with no alliances and a weak army, and some adjacent OPMs with weak / no alliances.

-Once you've decided who your initial target is, PUT UP YOUR ARMY MAINTENANCE SLIDER. Wait 4 months for morale to regenerate and DOW. I DOW'd the 4-province country. Obviously you won't have a proper CB.

-the tech advantage early is still pretty substantial, I won 1:1 battles quite easily. Once you're sieging multiple provinces, DOW Ottomans. Concessions - you want at least 2 provinces. If you're lucky like me then you'll be able to vassalize the remains of the country you've just conquered (I took only 2 provinces as I didn't want to get overwhelmed by rebels). You're an OPM, AE penalty will be fairly low.

-By this time Rhodes should have fallen to the Ottomans. Jokes on them, we didn't want it anyways. They will peace out for Rhodes + all your remaining bankroll. You have no choice, you need your capital to move to begin coring.

-Use military power liberally. You'll be running way ahead of time on military tech, and revolts will be a giant pain in the ass due to wrong religions + 0% religious unity. Also you will want to set army maintenance slider to zero so you can't actually deal with revolts. If you do end up with them, just run up army slider for 1-2 month ticks and then fight.

-In the next 2-ish decades you will want to do the following: get converted, expand a little. Basically you want to generate religious zealots (this generally happens when you try to convert a province with a missionary), then accept their demands. Hindu is probably ideal though I could see a conversion to Sunni working too and I believe the pious/impious bonuses are quite nice, better than Hindu. If you have a chance to take some of the normally "Christian" decisions such as Act of Uniformity before converting, then do so, the conversion bonuses for Hindu are a little weak. At the very least the Act of Uniformity modifier stays even if you convert.

-Annex OPMs, vassalize countries with 3+ provinces.

-The hardest part of my campaign was a series of wars against the Vijayanagar, who had united the lower Indian subcontinent, and DOW'd me when I was low on manpower from vassalizing 3-province Sind. Using mercenaries, I managed to inflict decent pain on their manpower pool (note that while you have a tech advantage, even 11 vs 8, the shock phases still hurt, don't underestimate the native troops). Managed to get out with a concede defeat. I then noticed that there was a 3-man coalition against Vijayanagar, I joined the coalition, and DOW'd once truce was up. This was a pretty brutal war, they had naval superiority so could get a lot of WE ticking from blockades. I went up to 7 WE before managing to force some concessions out of them (release 2-3 provinces). After the next war I took another province + released a 4-province nation and they were pretty much broken.

-One of the more useful things to do is to ally people, use them to fight wars, then break ally and vassalize them when they are done being useful. This is aided by the Knights absurd amount of diplomatic relations (+3!!!!!). Later on you can use these diplo relations to have 8-9 simultaneous vassals, as you don't really need allies in the region.

-From here, you can pretty much do whatever. Except expanding to the West, depending on the game state your Western neighbor might be allied to Ottomans. Once you complete diplomatic tree, you only take -1 stab for no-CB wars, take advantage of this. Another way of getting free CBs is to ally to a friendly / threatened target, DOW another country, call-to-arms them in once they won't accept (you can always wait for "war started more than 60 days ago" modifier), then DOW them for dishonoring the call. As long as you can handle both wars, you can handle two objectives at once.

-I went exploration -> religious -> diplomatic -> offensive -> expansion. not sure the next ideas to take. I really want +1 diplomat but aristocracy is meh and espionage is well, espionage. Advisors - diplo rep is amazing, I was quite unlucky and didn't roll an affordable one until 1610s. Your diplo tech level is going to suffer filling out diplomatic tree and then expansion soon after but the idea bonuses are more important.

Here's my current game (all dark green are vassals).

[image loading]

I'm ripping apart Ming and the rest of Southern Asia should fall soon. At some point I figure I'll stop caring about AE in that area as I'm more than comfortable fighting all of them at once. Then I will take Jerusalem. For Brahman, of course. Ottomans should provide a good challenge, they've just won a war against Poland.

This was amusing, they DOW'd me twice, the second time I managed to extort 200d from them from ticking warscore because AI bad at naval invasions.

[image loading]

Sermokala

United States14104 Posts

January 12 2014 07:55 GMT

#788

Defensive I would have to recommend above all. The manpower advantage that you get from the increased attrition and fort defense time and the reduced attrition you take from that tree is game changing. the moral bonus your whole stack gets is also pretty huge for the grinding battles. combine that with the massive amount of manpower and units you'll get with the quantity tree and you'll be able to fight a different kind of war. where you lose terribly with your entire stack 3 times isn't a problem because you're coming back with a fourth and your enemies don't have anything left in the tank. Finaly the extra seige point your generals get makes a big difference when you retake your provinces and carpet seige theirs. shuttle around the generals in infantry stacks to use their points when each seige cycle is up and you can make them go really fast.

I like to fight hugely outnumbered against regional coalitions They require preperation, tactics, and tenacity but in the end they're useualy a lot scarier on paper then they are in practice.

Big ups on that knights game though. thats sounds crazy fun. I wonder what other countries would work really halariously good in the crucible of india.

Sermokala

United States14104 Posts

January 12 2014 19:48 GMT

#789

I was wondering if our resident m&T guy could answer a question about if hey're planning on supporting ck2 to eu4 conversions. most impressionably the aztec and inca "high american" tech groups.

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 13 2014 06:35 GMT

#790

I know a lot of people are huge fans of the defensive tree so I'm probably missing something because I find offensive and quality higher-priority picks (that said I do tend to pick up all 4 of offense / quality / defensive / quantity in non-colonial games).

1% attrition doesn't seem all that amazing, even with a 200k+ stack romping around your territory that's just 2k manpower burned per month. Force march on the other hand can easily annihilate leaderless 20k+ stacks and this happens quite often in wars on that scale. Admittedly even with full defensive, my carpet sieging of all of Russia to 50% warscore (with rare battles) burned down a 300k manpower pool to 150k so I guess I'm somewhat underestimating the power of attrition. I generally don't commit to sieges until I've won the decisive battles though.

Then again most of my outnumbered wars involve running to Alps (Waldstatte / Graubunden / Tirol / Trent), Caucasus, Pyrenees (Bearn / Castilla la Vieja) and baiting dumb AI into my 10k cannon + fodder stacks.

myzael

Poland605 Posts

January 13 2014 07:30 GMT

#791

On January 13 2014 04:48 Sermokala wrote:
I was wondering if our resident m&T guy could answer a question about if hey're planning on supporting ck2 to eu4 conversions. most impressionably the aztec and inca "high american" tech groups.

Work in progress.

Broetchenholer

Germany1961 Posts

January 13 2014 11:12 GMT

#792

To continue my question above, i managed to get the HRE opinion of me to negative values, however, the HRE keeps improving relations with me, so my people like them quite a lot. And i can't piss them off any further, all i can do is insulting them once every five years, i broke the royal ties and the only thing i've got between us is competing great power and relative strength to vassal. Is there any trick how i can get the opinions lower? It is really pissing me off, i guess i have to wait for the next war they start and fall into their back?

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 13 2014 12:14 GMT

#793

if the senior partner has negative prestige the PU will break on monarch death. What you could try is getting small victories to tank their prestige, never decisively engage. They'll lose like 2-3 prestige each small stack you kill. not saying it will work but its a thought.

if you want a decisive place to fight battle, the best place in Iberia to get that fight is Castilla la Vieja

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 13 2014 14:36 GMT

#794

in some horrible alternate universe, Hindu Knights of St. John have enslaved all of Asia and are now exacting revenge on the Turks that drove them from their last fortress of Rhodes

[image loading]

Bourneq

Sweden800 Posts

January 13 2014 16:59 GMT

#795

Thats a very sexy knights game! Well played.

Ramong

Denmark1706 Posts

January 14 2014 11:45 GMT

#796

Patch 1.4 notes are out:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?747365-Europa-Universalis-IV-v1.4-Patchnotes
http://www.eu4wiki.com/Patch_1.4

Patch will be out later today along side the new DLC!

Some of my favorite things in the patch.

* Added cocoa trade good

* Westernization changed
Westernization no longer requires non-negative stability.
While westernizing, you no longer get +200% stability costs, but instead +5RR.
Westernization no longer depends on stability, but instead progress +10 from each power each month if possible.. When progress hits 5000, modified by techgroup, its finished.
Westernization events are now "bad effect" or "give up 4 months progress".
You can now see more details about effect of westernization and estimated finish date in the interface.
When westernization is finished, it will be truly finished, and no rebels can change that fact.

* Sevilla is now an end-node.

* Mecca and Rome are now religious centers, which are practically impossible to convert.

* Nerfed Prussian & Japanese ideas slightly... NOOOOO!

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

January 14 2014 12:33 GMT

#797

good thing I pulled off the indian cheese strategy before this patch, it looks like not getting to annex protectorates = no early Western dominance of Asia unless you're a major :/

- Boosted diplomatic ideas some, including 'reduced stab impacts' no longer giving stability penalties for breaking royal marriages.

As if diplo ideas were underpowered LOL

- The cores of annexed nations now take twice as long to disappear

- Fixed an issue with cores not disappearing on the correct dates.

france being dismantle-able past 1644 gg

- Large countries no longer get any additional AE for being large when gaining AE.

................................................................

- Some cases where AE was not scaling over the world, now scales properly.

RIP the declare war on OPM -> release countries in peace deals -> lose 60 AE penalty strategy?

Sbrubbles

Brazil5776 Posts

January 14 2014 17:26 GMT

#798

I wonder how the east indies trade is supposed to work out now, especially as Portugual. Seems like it would be a pain in the ass to spend a big chunk of your time and resources to establish yourself in india, indonesia and china only to have other countries park a couple hundred light ships in the western europe node and undo your work. I suppose conquering/colonizing the ivory coast and sending trade through timbuktu/safi/tunisia would be an option, but that sounds silly.

Well, at least you don't have to spend light ships to defend sevilla any more, and I suppose you'll be getting a share of everyone else's american colonies by parking yourself in the western europe node