EPTEuropa Universalis IV - Page 68
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Qbek
Poland12923 Posts
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
I was doing pretty well up until the point where I fought Hungary in a Holy War, not because I didn't beat them, but they didn't have enough troops for me to get 80% warscore (by a few percent- wow, talk about an annoying caveat to a CB), so I effectively wasted a ton of resources for them to give up their core on their Bosnian holdings instead of the 3-4 provinces I wanted to conquer. Spain, Portugal, and the kitchen sink warred me after, and I lost my entire navy but won almost every major land fight, and in the meantime I rebuilt my navy from scratch and completely wiped out the Spanish fleet (not bad considering how crappy my navy was all game). Unfortunately I overplayed my hand a bit, and didn't end the war when it would have been optimum (2 provinces+force the Spanish to end their alliance with Venice). So I only got Serbia out of it. I started founding colonies in West Africa and stealing them from Portugal, but that attracted all of the attention of the Spanish alliance blob again, and this time they showed up with about 60 heavy ships and promptly wrecked my fleet of about 30 heavy ships with some early frigate support, which meant I couldn't properly wage war against them given that I couldn't project my forces to Italy properly anymore. So that's my quitting point, because I don't think I can properly wage a two front war anymore (Spain and company, and the Mamluks still hate me and were warring me offensively at various points) I feel like I was slowly slipping behind Western nations in tech- not a whole lot, but enough that in combat I had to have pretty overwhelming numbers to win. And their military tradition also was a lot stronger than mine for reasons not entirely clear to me. I also was a bit too slow in retaking the Ottoman core provinces in Anatolia, and they became parts of larger entities before I could take them. Which really slowed down my eastern progression to an absolute halt. I also waged a few pointless wars that really increased my military aggression, because I didn't entirely understand the CBs or how pissy Christians get when you start taking most of eastern Europe (or more succinctly, how utterly useless the holy war CB is in comparison to CK2, at least as a Muslim). I'm not real impressed with how Muslim nations are handled. The Mamluks rivaled me early, and there's very few allies worth taking early aside from them, at least that was my impression. I got a personal union with the Timurids and had a 40% chance of inheriting them at one point, but I didn't realize that was a one time shot so I wasn't ready to fight them in a succession war. Going fairly secular with the piety pretty early seems like the only way to survive against the West. Seems like Muslims never really unite to any degree, whereas in CK2 they unite for short periods of time and wreck Christianity's armies, then go back to squabbling amongst themselves the next 20-30 years. I felt pretty isolated as an Ottoman diplomatically- it was mostly on my own with some extremely minor allies, with the exception of the Timurids, who were pretty key to beating the Spanish in the 1st crusade against me. The other problem is, there's like no other Muslim naval powers in the world if the Mamluks rival you (North Africa largely got assimilated by the Mamluks, at least the part that wasn't taken by Portugal), so how the hell are you supposed to fight a fairly united Christianity? Even if I wrecked their navy like 5 times (which I did), their force cap and persistence is going to beat me eventually, and they can deny me military access which leaves me in a really awkward place. Although a lot of this would have never happened if some of the CBs weren't extremely limited, but meh. Here's the maximum extent of my empire shortly before the disastrous 2nd (major) crusade against me. I probably shouldn't have taken all of those colonies from Portugal, but I was pretty pissed after they burned my colony down the 3rd time. xD ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iuFFqpo.jpg) | ||
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ShiaoPi
TAIWAN NUMBAH WAN5956 Posts
simply no way out of the less than 30 Legitimacy trench | ||
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Gladness
United States59 Posts
On July 18 2014 04:32 zer0das wrote: ... I was doing pretty well up until the point where I fought Hungary in a Holy War, not because I didn't beat them, but they didn't have enough troops for me to get 80% warscore (by a few percent- wow, talk about an annoying caveat to a CB), so I effectively wasted a ton of resources for them to give up their core on their Bosnian holdings instead of the 3-4 provinces I wanted to conquer. Spain, Portugal, and the kitchen sink warred me after, and I lost my entire navy but won almost every major land fight, and in the meantime I rebuilt my navy from scratch and completely wiped out the Spanish fleet (not bad considering how crappy my navy was all game). Unfortunately I overplayed my hand a bit, and didn't end the war when it would have been optimum (2 provinces+force the Spanish to end their alliance with Venice). So I only got Serbia out of it. I started founding colonies in West Africa and stealing them from Portugal, but that attracted all of the attention of the Spanish alliance blob again, and this time they showed up with about 60 heavy ships and promptly wrecked my fleet of about 30 heavy ships with some early frigate support, which meant I couldn't properly wage war against them given that I couldn't project my forces to Italy properly anymore. So that's my quitting point, because I don't think I can properly wage a two front war anymore (Spain and company, and the Mamluks still hate me and were warring me offensively at various points) I feel like I was slowly slipping behind Western nations in tech- not a whole lot, but enough that in combat I had to have pretty overwhelming numbers to win. And their military tradition also was a lot stronger than mine for reasons not entirely clear to me. ... The most important thing I ever learned about army tradition is that you gain +1 for completing a successful siege (helping an ally's siege doesn't count). Farm it aggressively. The Defensive idea group under military and the Innovative idea group under admin both have a significant boost to your army tradition. Past that, it's a matter of fighting more wars while avoiding long stretches of peace. If you leave them an unoccupied and unsieged province, they usually try to rebuilt some regiments. But yes, the "win 80%" cassus belli burns everyone at least once. That's the only drawback I can think of, aside from the usual stipulation that you can only target direct neighbors. Yes it is indeed a long way from the absurd CK2 mechanic. The weirdest thing about the Ottomans is that the trade system of EU4 encourages you to expand eastward. There is a lot of mediocre land to gain before you can threaten Vienna, but almost any gains on the eastern front will strengthen your trade economy. Especially if you're interested in colonization idea groups, which really demand a serious investment in the trade game. I'm not sure this is the best choice for early Ottoman ideas, when the military idea groups are so good and especially if you feel your diplomatic situation is dangerous. It takes a large amount of money and time for colonies to repay their cost. Also you should be able to force Christendom to fight your navies inside the Med, where you can use galleys to be more cost-effective than their ships-of-the-line. Colonizing westward will drag you onto the high seas before your economy is prepared to defend them. | ||
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
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Lucumo
6850 Posts
On July 17 2014 20:48 419 wrote: DDRJake is once again streaming and is attempting another Ryukyu WC Watched it a bit, slept in though. Apparently he didn't make it. | ||
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
I started expanding eastward into my core, and then after grabbing most of those, I finished off the Byzantines and took Cyprus and Crete. Venice conveniently had a trade war where they slammed the Mamluk's navy and knocked its army down to a third its size, which let me swoop in with my newly built navy and take the Levant and Egypt in pretty short order. I also diplo-annexed Georgia (which later came back as a Shia state, oddly enough). I won a pretty big trade war with Venice, which effectively neutered them. From there I started conquering Nubia/Ethiopia, expanding in the Balkans (beat Russia and the Ukraine trying to protect Wallachia, which I had intentionally kept alive), and diplo-annexing my way west in Africa. Here's where I'm currently at (note: Tunisia is my vassal). ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2A7DoBO.jpg) I also understand the trade system a lot better now (and building... and how to value your monarch points and spend them very judiciously). I'm currently at 200 income before expenses, which is roughly equal to France and Austria combined. My path to becoming massive seems relatively easy- diplo-annex Tunisia, keep expanding in the Horn of Africa, beat down the coalition consisting of the Timiruds (weak), Yemen (also weak), and a bunch of other paltry states while avoiding the Golden Horde by declaring on Najd (so they won't be pulled in, but the Timurids will be). From there, I can start entering eastern Europe/western Europe. Moscow and Austria are the last major roadblocks from complete domination. I also learned the importance of meddling in Eastern European politics and how to game the aggressive expansion penalties by having Hungary as a buffer state between me and Austria. The Balkans falling to me in pretty short order was the work of quite a few guarantees of protection and warnings. | ||
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419
Russian Federation3631 Posts
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
If they had actually had time to get their trade set up, I'd agree. But they've been pressed on all sides for a while now. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
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Lucumo
6850 Posts
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
Long wall of text ahead about my run: + Show Spoiler + My Ottoman run continued like I thought it would, except it took a lot longer to make a significant dent into the Timurids and Golden Horde than I thought- not because it was hard, because I had to capture like 3/4ths their provinces to get enough war score to take what I wanted. It ended up being a really long slog, because it took like 4-5 wars to get all of their Arabia lands and Persia. I kept plowing through the Horn of Africa, and diplo-annexed Tunsia as planned. Persian nationalists are a pain in the rear- when I took over the Timurid land they had about a 50% base chance of revolt, and I had to crush about 10 of them before it got under control. Then I allied Morocco and things got pretty interesting. I decided it was time to push into Europe proper, because if I waited any longer the chance of Austria uniting the HRE was a time bomb waiting to happen. Austria broke off chunks of Hungary into Croatia and Bosnia, and took some for itself. So I declared war on all 3 and took them in fairly short order. But in the process a pretty big coalition formed against me. I didn't want to wait it out, so I did another invasion of Hungary and France, Naples, Aragon, and most of the Italian states got pulled into it, France as protector of the faith. I didn't really expect France to participate much given how the previous Balkan wars that they joined went. I was wrong. Very wrong. I made a small miscalculation early in the war- I didn't realized my navy was filled with obsolete ships, because France was one diplo tech ahead of me (which I gained in the war), so its 20 galleons beat the crap out of my navy when I split it up (was a bit overconfident because I had wiped out everyone's navy but France's and was trying to get a good blockade going- I had about 30 carracks and 80 caravels). I did get the event that let me jack up my bank loans to an obscene amount (24 months of income for one loan), so my credit line was huge, and I took 3 loans for a total of 4500 gold (spread out over about 5 years), fought the French army in the Balkans and eventually turned them back, got Hungary out of the war (and my token province for it), got all of the little Italian states out of the war, swatted the tiny Aragon army in the Crimea that was causing problems, rebuilt my entire navy and routed the French and Aragon combined fleet, took Aragonese Corsica and Sardina, pushed across Africa, then engaged in a fight to the death with French army that was now trapped in Tunisia. It took about 13 combat rounds between my army and the French army to finally destroy it (morale recovery and morale bonuses are a pain in the ass- after I routed them, they beat me 3 times even though I had a morale lead and a numerical lead at the start of every subsequent fight- it took another 30 regiments from Egypt to finally end the damn thing- and it started out as about 120 vs 60 regiments- SCREW YOU LUCKY NATIONS). I tried to take some French territory (I really wanted Provence badly, even though I knew I had no chance in hell of holding the French Mediterranean coastline), but gave up after a bad fight and settled for walking way from the war with Corsica and Sardina. It took about 20 years to fight this war, and somehow I beat their stupid lucky nations 17 in stats generals. It wasn't a profitable war, but damn it I showed them who was boss. Not being a smart person, I declared war on Hungary again, this time Austria was the protector of the faith. I was expecting a big fight, but when my 120 regiment stack kept facing more and more reinforcements without the Austrian bloc's morale breaking, I started to think "I'm not going to win this." I came back with 211 regiments on plains against their 120ish or so, lost that too. Now I'm like, good god, what the the hell do I have to win against these generals. Well, I had decided to give up and fall back to Anatolia, and use my massive navy to prevent the Austrian army from crossing the straights. Just wait until they bled enough from attrition that I could come back with reinforcements. The Austrians made a really weird move. They landed in western Anatolia, taking down a 20 regiment army, but losing a lot in the process (and depleting their army's morale). All of my armies were gathered there, and while I was weakened due to manpower concerns, I still had about 150 regiments sitting there. I threw 70 at them almost as soon as they had landed and crushed their main army. They had no manpower reserves left either, and all of their bloc started white peacing out, and I'm like "wait... they have no army. They literally just lost all of their support and have no man power." Once I realized what happened, I crossed the Bosphorus Straits, cleaned up the major fragments of their army (120 regiments vs 20 regiments in plains TRY TO WIN WITH MORALE NOW JERKS ). I raced to Vienna, and took it while Russia's bloc declared war to vulture on them to help the Ukraine get a province, and then France declared war on them (and about 10 others) to back up some Papal claim on something in Italy. I didn't have a claim on Vienna, so I couldn't leave the war with it, but I took the provinces on the way there, 600 ducats, and ran away cackling like a maniac because I just beat Europe's two main powers in two separate, bloody wars. The war was pretty expensive though- I took out 7500 ducats in loans. And then got the event that lets you "invest in trade" or get the immediate reward from having a trade company- the immediate option gave me 6600 gold, and essentially got me out of debt instantly instead of having to wait 8 years or so. I laughed so hard at my fortune, it couldn't have happened at a better time. Also, Morocco randomly insulted me during the Jihad for Hungary, and then left the war early. I'd been wondering when to break relations with them so I could steal their land, and I was like YOU DON'T INSULT ME WHILE I'M FIGHTING A JIHAD. Needless to say, I'm currently making them regret their petty tribal insults. Meanwhile, in Asia I had diplo-annexed Sind and was working on Delhi. I got a personal union with Delhi, but Ach (which controlled most of modern Thailand and Indonesia) got pissy and declared war on me, which was concurrent with the jihad on Hungary with Austria as the protector. I think Dai Viet manhandled them before I got there, or possibly the British- because on the mainland of Thailand, they had nothing. I stole Taiwan and the two provinces right around Bangkok, and got the Cold War achievement and thought to myself "well, that was baffling- but thanks for the eastern territory." So here's how I'm looking now: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/toCFJky.jpg) Currently beating down Morocco, going to head east after that and take over Smarkand from the Timurids so I can unite Islam eventually (I hope). I just have Ifni, Cordoba, and Smarkand and I think that's it. Rest of my time is probably going to be spent beating down as much of Austria/Europe as possible. Maybe if I'm feeling snarky I might go for Moscow. But poking that faction is probably flirting with annihilation. Also strange but true: before I took it, Taiwan was already Sunni. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10830 Posts
If you reform as Timurid you get Muslim/Muslim Tech/Units… As Mughals you get Muslim/Indian Tech/Units. As far as i know Muslim units are just better than Indian ones? | ||
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Bourneq
Sweden800 Posts
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Bojas
Netherlands2397 Posts
On July 22 2014 17:45 Velr wrote: Can someone tell me why you should ever create the Mughals? If you reform as Timurid you get Muslim/Muslim Tech/Units… As Mughals you get Muslim/Indian Tech/Units. As far as i know Muslim units are just better than Indian ones? You get claims on all of India. That in combination with the low coring cost from national ideas is ridiculously awesome. Also Indian troops aren't weaker than muslim troops. http://www.eu4wiki.com/Land_units#Indian I've been doing a Timmy game. I'll form the Mughal Empire as soon as Hindustan leaves the coalition. Zhou and Chagatai are my vassals. They have lots of cores but as everyone is in the coalition against me it's hard to expand at the moment. By the way, humanist ideas have a weird bug, it gives me the religious tolerance conflicts conflict just about every year. I select strive to form a tolerant society, it doesn't really spawn any rebels and gives me +1 stability after a month. So that's why I have +3 stab. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Dh6Yi5w.jpg) Got greedy and agressive, so most countries don't like me. I wasn't able to expand much the last 20 years because of this. In hindsight I would have done things differently. Ironman mode is pretty unforgiving. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/r4eT60Y.jpg) Edit: let me fix those images. They don't resize automatically. | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
it's only the year 1280 , the mongol invasions have spawned but I allready killed them off so all they do is be a hassle to persia and the last remaining steppe tribes. Catholicism has been exterminated after I reunited the pentarchy. If this keeps going I will have conqured almost all of the old CK2 map and probably also big parts of India before that game ends. Continuing in EU4 should be a cake walk. My goal is to finish EU4 and have everything conquered by the Roman Empire. | ||
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Derez
Netherlands6068 Posts
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myzael
Poland605 Posts
On July 23 2014 01:16 Derez wrote: Is there any mod that reverts the peace duration to what it was before this patch? I am 99% sure there is. If not, it is very easy to do it yourself. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10830 Posts
Once i was a little bit to late to stop russia from going east (well, muscovy at the time). Once i was to scared to take a 2 stab hit when Ottomans declared on Tunis so now north africa is off limits for the moment. Well... Gonna eat up India now and brace myself for Ottomans + Krim final Boss  (my Miltech and Ideas are behind  )http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=289984488 For some weird reason i can't get relations with Oman high enough to Vassalise them (i took the whole arabian peininsula and most stuff north like that). | ||
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ShiaoPi
TAIWAN NUMBAH WAN5956 Posts
maybe the different religion is screwing with you as well | ||
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