Hope and pray. Generally speaking, the higher your army tradition, the higher the total amount of pips the general has. Some ideas increase those further. Some ideas and buildings help with having a higher tradition.

Afaik, if you turn your ruler/heir into a general, their stats are based on their Mil stat. And if you have a shitty ruler, if you are lucky he dies in the war.

Constantly hiring and firing generals is probably not a good idea, because mil points are important. Each general rehire could be military buildings, or 1/8th of a military idea.

Mercy13

United States718 Posts

April 24 2014 16:14 GMT

#1023

Ok, so even if you get a crappy general you should just suck it up and do the best you can with him?

Sermokala

United States14104 Posts

April 24 2014 16:48 GMT

#1024

Or you can keep throwing the dice and use up military points hopeing for something decent. Thats how I got my first 6 shock general.

Qbek

Poland12923 Posts

April 24 2014 16:56 GMT

#1025

If you invest to much into getting a good general he will die in his first battle. True story

WindWolf

Sweden11767 Posts

April 24 2014 19:08 GMT

#1026

Finally found the time to play through the tutorial. What should I play for my first game of EU4?

LuckoftheIrish

United States4791 Posts

April 24 2014 19:11 GMT

#1027

Play a minor major. Big enough to have room for learning and mistakes and error, small enough that there are bigger fish out there who can still scare you. I've always enjoyed the colonial ventures side of the game, so I tend to recommend Portugal, or for a bit more of a challenge, Denmark.

Mercy13

United States718 Posts

April 24 2014 19:53 GMT

#1028

I'm about finished with my first game playing as the Ottomans. It's been a lot of fun, though I sort of cheated a bit by saving the game a lot and reloading when wars/battles went badly for me : )

You start out next to some weak neighbors who are relatively easy to annex or conquer, then can start fighting some stronger eastern powers like the Mamluks, and can finally start taking on the Western powers if you're strong enough. At least for me, there was a natural progression in the difficulty of the rivals I was facing.

The big drawback was that I wanted to do some colonizing, but the Ottomans seemed pretty bad at it. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but by the time my colonial range was long enough to start reaching colonize-able areas other countries had been there long before me.

SKC

Brazil18828 Posts

April 24 2014 20:07 GMT

#1029

I think its fine to start as a major power, and even to save scum ocasionally. At first its all about learning the mechanics, and learning to push some limits and where to draw the line without having to restart a whole game is fine.

Simberto

Germany11791 Posts

April 24 2014 20:11 GMT

#1030

Yeah, i'd say go for Ottomans, France if you wish to fight for european/Asia Minor dominance, or Spain/England if you want to do colonial things. Or Austria if you want to complicate things with HRE politics.

And yes, the Ottomans are not exactly colonizers. They are just to stuck in the mediterranean. If you really wanted to you could make it work of course, but generally speaking if you wish to colonize play England/Portugal/Spain.

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

April 25 2014 05:59 GMT

#1031

To get reliably good generals, you need 100 AT + offensive ideas, even then ~20% of the generals are going to be crappy (anything below 8 fire/shock pips in my opinion, as you'll simply get blown out against lucky nation 6/6 with anything less).

At about 70-80 (which is easier to maintain) you need around 2-3 rolls to get a decent 8/9 fire/shock combined general

It's hard to get army tradition with a big blob normally, as sieges only give +1 AT, and battle AT gains are scaled against force limit (so if you have 200 force limits you have to kill a lot to get good AT gains) - the way to get around this is to join in on battles with your vassals, since your vassals have lower force limits, which means you can get 5 AT from each battle.

WindWolf

Sweden11767 Posts

April 25 2014 06:05 GMT

#1032

I just want to play something that gives me a better understanding of the game mechanic as a whole

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

April 25 2014 06:09 GMT

#1033

For an overall game, I think France - you can do colonization / diplo / war game all at once.

Yurie

12078 Posts

April 25 2014 06:30 GMT

#1034

On April 25 2014 01:08 Mercy13 wrote:
Is there way to ensure you get a good general, or do you just have to keep hiring and firing them until you get lucky?

You can cheat, army tradition above 100 increases stats, at 900 you always get 6/6/6/6.

Other than there there are ideas that give you +1 and AT decides the base it is rolling from.

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

April 25 2014 07:08 GMT

#1035

Operation tartarsphere going decently - goals are to culture convert all East Slavic provinces, bonus points for all West Slavic cultures as well (Czech, Polish, Hungary), as well as Lithuanian

Muscovy and Novgorod are vassalized and I fed them back all my Orthodox lands because I badly need religious ideas to convert them. Currently working on blocking Ottoman expansion by holding Persia, did some serious truce breaking to get Timurids under control, now they are my vassal and I am reclaiming all their cores.

Kleinmuuhg

Vanuatu4091 Posts

April 25 2014 07:21 GMT

#1036

that is so awesome haha

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

April 25 2014 09:35 GMT

#1037

triple alliance cascade, whoops did not expect this

didn't call in my ally ottomans because I'm not a bitch, should be a fun war. half my troop numbers are crappy horde vassals (aka free -warscore)

Also, can anyone test this? If it works, it would essentially be a free stack wipe.

Basically, get the enemy into a fight that you know you will win and have a small army next door, however at the very end when their morale is nearly completely broken (you can see this on the 'tactical map' of the unit deployments), then retreat and move your next door army onto them. They will have the 'lock' thing. I accidentally wiped a 20k polish army doing this but I'm not sure whether this is repeatable.

ShiaoPi

TAIWAN NUMBAH WAN5956 Posts

April 25 2014 10:34 GMT

#1038

On April 25 2014 18:35 419 wrote:
[image loading]

that sounds almost ddrjakeesque if true

419

Russian Federation3631 Posts

April 25 2014 10:39 GMT

#1039

here's me successfully executing it I think.

LSB

United States5171 Posts

April 25 2014 18:47 GMT

#1040

You can also do stackwipes by leaving a small army to where the larger army will retreat to, or by using forced march and outrunning the retreating army.
Either way has it's tradeoffs I guess, though I would consider it a minor cheese.