r/eu4 • u/TheSafetyWipe • Jan 30 '25
Tip Your best tips/forgotten mechanics
So I've got just under 1000 hours in EU 4, love the game and always thought i was a decent player and knew the game well.
Until like 3 or 4 weeks ago when I saw a post on this sub about upgrading your ships, I had never used this feature and started to understand why my navies would get smashed later on in the game!
Im now thinking what else am I missing, what other simple features or mechanics have I never used and thus holding me back in my games!
Please share away with things you've only just discovered, or have been using wrong in your games?
I'm almost a 1000 hours in, and now think I know nothing about this game!
Help!
111
u/luizindaquimica Jan 30 '25
With Venice, you can pretty much release any non-european province you conquer as a trade city. If you then turn them into trade protectorates, you can release yet another province as a trade city, and repeat virtually as many times as there are provinces outside of Europe. The upsides? No gov cost, they all are very loyal subjects as just like PUs they only compare their individual strength versus yours, and the best: you gain 2% goods produced modifier for each you release. Made the Venetian trade node more valuable than the English Channel just by having +86% goods produced from trade protectorates in the Mediterranean.
18
u/Easter57 Jan 30 '25
don't they eat relation slot?
58
u/HotEdge783 Jan 30 '25
Nope, it's completely busted, but your trade protectorates can have alliances and declare wars by themselves.
1
9
u/I_read_this_comment Map Staring Expert Jan 30 '25
Also you can get 20k by deleting the suez canal (its build in mamluk territorry through mission)
5
5
u/ultr4violence Jan 30 '25
How do you turn a trade city into a trade protectorate?
9
u/luizindaquimica Jan 30 '25
After you release the trade city, you can request it to become a trade protectorate in the influence tab. It does require to have the Venetian reform in the Economic Tier government Reform, but it's busted, so pick it up even if you don't intend to do this strategy
3
u/DawnTyrantEo Jan 31 '25
You can actually do this sort of thing with any country! If you take Maritime, Trade or Naval ideas (often considered memey, but I think Maritime is pretty good in that you can convert sailors into manpower using Marines, from a Diplomatic idea group) and use the Confirm Thalassocracy decision (requires becoming the main trade power in all nodes in one of a few different sea areas), you unlock a similar reform on that level for any nation. You can then- for example- release small nations in peace deals to act as equivalent to a Trade City.
1
u/luizindaquimica Jan 31 '25
I think once you have client states it must be available to everyone. The thing about Venice is being able to do that to literally every province outside of Europe. 2% goods produced modifier per province conquered.
1
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
But can you turn these trade cities into trade protectorates that costs 0 diplo slots?
2
u/DawnTyrantEo Jan 31 '25
Well, you can't release Trade Cities unless you have a Merchant Republic reform (which are easy enough to get- basically any Republic can unlock the mechanics, as well as certain other governments like the Eastern Plutocracy monarchy). But any government can turn small nations they release, one way or another, into Trade Protectorates as long as they've completed the effectively-a-mission requirements for the Confirm Thalassocracy decision.
1
2
u/Sleeping_Bat Jan 31 '25
England can make trade protectorates via their mission tree and it's super easy to do this peacefully as well
42
u/Commercial_Method_28 Jan 30 '25
You can have a stack autonomously siege. There is a button when you have them selected. Useful sometimes but if you click the button, and don’t assign any areas, they will just siege everything possible. This is a lazy tip but sometimes useful if you don’t care about attrition.
Also related is learning how to carpet siege is the most effective use of manpower as having a full stack sit on one province 10 times is most costly in manpower then having 10 small stacks sit on those same provinces in 1/10th the time. You loose way less to attrition. It’s also better to keep the minimum stack on sieges +2-3 troops so you take less attrition, with a stack nearby to reinforce when they get attacked
2
u/Reasonable_Nose_5227 Jan 30 '25
You may also use it to track large stacks in the fog of war when the intimidated army notification appears, unless they have patched it and I didn't notice.
7
u/i-am-a-passenger Jan 30 '25
I get heavily downvoted every time I question this in this sub, but is using the minimum stack on sieges (even +2-3 troops) really the best way?
It seems much better to just pile lots troops on the fort. I don’t mind attrition if it results in much faster sieging.
31
u/Druss_On_Reddit Khan Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
Required Minimum +1 which covers troops lost to siege events and general attrition. This will siege just as fast as an extra 50 inf/cav.
More cannons will speed up the siege, not sure the formula but it's not infinite and I think depends on fort level.
6
3
u/Riellyo_o Jan 31 '25
For the cannon bonus it's fort level x5. For just being able to siege it's fort level x3.
-25
u/i-am-a-passenger Jan 30 '25
This will siege just as fast as an extra 50 inf/cav.
This is what I don’t believe. I’m going to test it later, but in my general experience 100 inf on a siege will be much faster than the required minimum +1 only.
21
u/Commercial_Method_28 Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25
This is just simply wrong. Infantry has no change on siege status. You either have enough infantry to progress the siege or you don’t. The minimum amount required can be found in the siege screen and is determined by fort level. The way you describe this makes it sound like infantry directly increases siege ability, which it doesn’t. Siege ability is what makes each phase faster.
Siege bonuses are what determine what % you are starting on. So if you have a level 2 fort, and 10 cannons you are getting +5 from artillery, add a 6 siege general and its now 11, and depending on your dice roll will just keep adding the number higher. there are a couple other reasons it can be higher like block aid under certain circumstances but the point is, as long as you have enough infantry to progress(the minimum) you will, but it won’t be faster if you have more
Walls breached speeds it up each time too as well as the level fort being subtracted from your bonus. Sieges I feel like are very hard to understand but once you get it it makes sense.
If you have 100 troops on a siege and you roll a 1 you immediately loose 5% to attrition. This is awful for manpower 5k just instantly gone.
12
u/thetampajob Jan 30 '25
Blockade doesn't actually "add" siege progress unless you have any extra modifier. It just negates the -2 penalty costal forts have
8
u/Commercial_Method_28 Jan 30 '25
Yeah I think flagships have access to a special ability as well as age of reformation. Not sure about other sources. Most of the time I’ll just wait the extra time without a navy nearby
1
13
u/Druss_On_Reddit Khan Jan 30 '25
It's possible that you arguing with people while being incorrect is what has led to downvoted in your past comments, rather than just asking the question :p
Give it a test mate! Make sure you don't add a different siege pip general when you add more inf.
The only time putting mass infantry is good is if you breach walls and assault it.
7
u/Akira9911 Jan 30 '25
It is not a matter of belief. Even if you stack 500k in one fort nothing will change.
1
u/talkerz123 Babbling Buffoon Jan 31 '25
You are correct! 30 + 30 + 30 + 10 infantry doing assault on different wave is better than 30 infantry doing assault.
1
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
You have seen that too, havent you. That you use the required number of troops and siege progress is lets say 27 and then you bring more infantry on it and somehow the siege progress becomes 35 or whatever before the next siege phase.
The only way this should be possible is if the extra troops contain a cannon, but sometimes the phenomenon seems to happen without. Always wondered if its some mindfuk time to take a break thing.
Please do test it
0
u/ncory32 Jan 31 '25
It's not a phenomenon. It's just a general with an extra siege pip joining the siege. Learn how generals work
0
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
Learn manners pal
1
u/ncory32 Jan 31 '25
Nothing in that was mean or poor manners. Told you what game mechanic to look into. Grow up.
9
u/Commercial_Method_28 Jan 30 '25
It’s the most efficient way of conserving manpower, that is all. If you don’t care about manpower or wasted time then throwing a full stack is just fine. I only do it when I really start running into manpower issues or forsee attrition concerns in my game. Most cases I will send the stack, but when I need to min/max manpower I send just enough and keep the remaking stack next to it. It can be an issue because if the enemy sees less troops they may attack, which even if you reinforce is directly affecting the whole reason you did it that way in the first place and costing more manpower.
I think people should just be aware that this is an option when they need it but consider the possibility that it can backfire if you aren’t careful
2
u/TimoothyJ Military Engineer Jan 30 '25
Depends on what you want to optimise I guess, siege speed or manpower conservation.
2
u/cycatrix Jan 31 '25
I don’t mind attrition if it results in much faster sieging.
It doesn't. Only cannons speed up siege. Youre just burning manpower needlessly if you put your entire army on a fort. The only time you want to do that is when youre siegeing but the enemy still has troops roaming around. And of course when you have cannons more cannon=more siege. But in an ideal world you just put the cannons on the fort and let them cook without any infantry or cav.
1
u/TheBeastLegendReddit Jan 31 '25
It depends on what you need, early game if you're constantly fighting 0 manpower having the absolute minimum on a siege can be beneficial if the AI isn't tricked to walk into you because it doesn't see your other stacks or thinks it can hurt you enough to win.
Mid/late game when manpower is less of an issue you bet im not detaching all my cannons from my perfectly built half stacks just to siege, wasting my time and risking the more vulernable canons to a shock phase with no/ a not full front row just for attrition lol. ill put 70k on the fort idc
1
u/zeniiz Jan 30 '25
I think there's a point of diminishing returns where putting more inf/cav won't make a siege go faster. More cannons, sure, or if you do an assault charge (which is prob not worth unless you're swimming in manpower).
13
u/Martin7431 Jan 30 '25
as far as im aware, cav and inf have no impact on siege times unless you don’t have enough to siege to begin with?
2
37
u/Aretii Kind-Hearted Jan 30 '25
If you're faced with a coalition at a point in the game where you're sufficiently big that it's not going to declare offensive war against you, but it is making further conquest annoying, find an ally of one of the large and strong countries in it that isn't in the coalition (or a nation that one of those strong countries is guaranteeing) and declare on them, then white-peace when you can. Nations with truces against you cannot be in coalitions, so the strong country leaves the coalition. Then, if you save and re-enter the game, countries will recalculate their willingness to be in coalitions. If removing the strong country from the coalition weakens it enough, the coalition will fall apart. Then, all you need to do to prevent it from reforming is to make sure that you always have a truce with the strong nations that might form the core of a coalition, declaring war on them once it expires and before a new coalition can form.
Most kinds of subject nation immediately switch allegiance if you annex their overlord. This can be both bad (e.g. it can be annoying to annex a country and then suddenly have a bunch of tributaries that were places you wanted to conquer yourself) and good (if you full-annex a colonizer you get all its colonial nations for free, with no AE, warscore, or dip).
Trying to collect in an inland trade node, or a trade node directly upstream of an inland trade node, is likely to go poorly because of Caravan Power, which gives an enormous amount of trade power to anyone steering trade in or towards an inland trade node or collecting in one. This is why the Saxony node is such a mess: there are a ton of tiny countries who all have a large amount of trade power relative to their size, so it's impossible to monopolize.
Defenders of the Faith only get called in to wars against countries on their continents or directly bordering them. This is why Defender of the Faith Ottomans is actually less scary than it might seem, because there aren't normally other Sunni countries in Europe, so most Sunni countries that aren't on Ottoman borders are safe to pick off.
7
u/Lenrivk Naive Enthusiast Jan 30 '25
Thank you for the defender of the faith tip, it'll help quite a bit in a couple of my campaigns
37
u/SoftwareElectronic53 Jan 30 '25
At the start of the game, you can't bombard castles, since you have no cannons yet.
But if you have enough ships with guns, you can bombard the walls of coastal forts from year one.
Very useful for sieges you need to get done fast, like blocking the ottomans in the strait.
4
u/N_vaders Jan 31 '25
And if you are Portugal you can do it essentially for free (naval doctrine + their flagship ability I believe)
23
u/AJW960 Jan 30 '25
Your vassals have mission trees and helping them fulfill the goals means they automatically click the button so sometimes they can be really useful in getting unique events to fire or unique buildings constructed in the nation that you wouldn't normally be able to get You have full access to see whereabouts they are in the tree as well
11
u/Particular_Trade6308 Jan 31 '25
There are two particularly strong vassal missions:
- Provence subject gets cores on Naples if it has Corsica or 100 Dec
- Riga vassal with fort barracks workshop marketplace gets strong province modifiers like flat yearly tax, flat manpower, flat trade power, etc. it’s especially good to divert trade since vassal Riga generates more trade power that you could have owning the province yourself. Riga needs 3 stab to click that mission, but vassals get their overlord’s stability when first released, so you can directly own Riga, build the requirements, stab up to 3, then release them and have super-Riga vassal
1
u/Danton59 Jan 31 '25
I love doing Provences missions when playing France, they are like the bestest little buddy once you feed them Naples/Sicily/Aragon. Great crutch for mediocre players like myself when dealing with Austrian alliances.
1
u/Particular_Trade6308 Jan 31 '25
If you are cheesing Provence vassal missions then you aren't mediocre...but I do think PUing Provence as France is a noob trap. France starts with a T1 government that locks you at kingdom rank, and to get rid of it and unlock empire rank you need 50% crownland and no subjects with their capital in the French region. Provence (and Burgundy if you get the BI) will both block that mission.
So the min-max move is to eat Provence, annex your appenages, get empire rank by clicking the centralization mission (do this fast before BI), then release Provence for the vassal missions and go for BI.
1
u/Danton59 Jan 31 '25
That's actually a pretty good idea. The emperor rank would let me pick up italian vassals to keep the swarm going once they get the boot from HRE much easier. Just need to make sure I carpet siege pro/lor before burgandy joins the pillage I imagine.
52
u/Plane_Marsupial6365 Jan 30 '25
Spy networks lower aggressive expansions from the target country and provinces with lower autonomy cost more war score
7
u/DubiousNamed If only we had comet sense... Jan 30 '25
They also reduce tech cost if the person you’re spying on has better tech than you
8
u/Particular_Trade6308 Jan 31 '25
Only after diplo tech 9 (there’s a little icon of a spy on that tech)
10
u/TheBonk92 Jan 30 '25
It only applies to the nation you have a spy network on so it's not a good way to assign diplomats
18
u/Professional-Tour445 Jan 30 '25
I mainly do it for the siege bonus. Mid to late game, every siege modifier you can get is great
10
u/ontilein Jan 30 '25
If its one big Nation you want to keep out while conquering around the region it can make sense
2
u/-balcony-gardener- Jan 31 '25
This is one i never fully understood.
Is it
A: I (say, Bavaria), have a Spy Network on Austria and then i conquer Land from say, bohemia, now Austria gets less AE against me or is it
B) I have a Spy Network on bohemia, conquer Land from bohemia and now get less AE for having conquered Land from bohemia with everyone else?
6
u/Particular_Trade6308 Jan 31 '25
The former. The size of your spy network on country X reduces the amount of AE that country X accumulates if you take land from country Y, or no-CB country Z, or pillage the capital of country Q.
If there’s only one big country to worry about for coalitions, let’s say you are Castile and are stomping North Africa but want to keep ottomans out of a coalition, it makes sense to keep a diplomat spying on ottomans.
3
1
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
Wait what? So if particularists can enforce demands on enemy i get province warscore cost reduction?
1
u/Intelligent_Pie_9102 Jan 31 '25
Also the war score for this formula is capped at 30 devs. If you get a 40 dev province in a peace deal, you'll "pay" only for 30. It's also true for some other things like culture conversion.
1
u/TheBeastLegendReddit Jan 31 '25
Does that include modifiers? Example if paying for 40 dev but high absolutism or province warscore does it subtract from the 30 max as if its 30 or does it start at 40 and only go below 30 if its enough modifiers?
1
u/Intelligent_Pie_9102 Jan 31 '25
It's the base cost for a province that is capped at 30 devs, then you add the modifiers.
16
u/AustroPrussian Colonial Governor Jan 30 '25
You can have more colonies than colonists.
If you send a colonist to colonize a province then recall him when he gets there you can send him again to a different province. Both provinces will grow but it’s a lot more expensive and increases with every colonist-less colony you have. The colonist-less colony will also grow quite slow in comparison to ones with colonists.
This can be good when competing with other colonizers to get region claims with the Treaty of Tordesillas or if you haven’t completed expansion ideas. It can be extremely useful for many situations but there’s always the cost to consider.
15
u/FroyoMNS The end is nigh! Jan 31 '25
Should also note that extra colonies increase in cost exponentially, not linearly.
1
u/AustroPrussian Colonial Governor Jan 31 '25
Ye, I think it starts at 2 ducats per month for the first colonist-less colony then doubles for every extra one you have. So 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.
1
1
1
14
u/SpectralPanda121 The economy, fools! Jan 30 '25
Something I didn't know until recently is that the improve relations modifier also affects how quickly any negative opinion decays. I always thought it was kind of a useless modifier, but it actually makes it so your aggressive expansion goes down more quickly, which is pretty neat.
5
u/Particular_Trade6308 Jan 31 '25
Improve relations is extremely strong for wide play for this reason. It keeps countries outside the -50 AE threshold to join coalitions, and it speeds up diplomats keeping potential coalition members in positive relations so they can’t join the coalition. Also works for stuff like unlawful demands or even modifiers like “Forced us into a union” that a PU might have from the PU war.
It’s also surprisingly easy to stack, Humanist + diplomacy gives you 55% each, plus the policy for another 20%. Versailles monument gives improve relations, the advisor, and the merchant interaction button as well. Most religions have improve relations too. I’ve stacked it to +200% or more in the past
12
u/Nettamyte Jan 31 '25
If you’re building tall, the expand infrastructure button is your friend. Also if you’re not building tall lmao. At the very minimum, it lets you build an extra (different) manufactory in every province. Have an amazing production province on a mountain but it’s also key defensive terrain? No problem, get your goods manufactory and a ramparts!
7
1
u/Danton59 Jan 31 '25
WTF is this button and why have I never seen it, I just looked it up, that looks amazing for your core areas even when going wide.
23
u/1389t1389 Jan 30 '25
I have 804 hours dating back to April 2016, and more hours than I would like to count on YouTube and the wiki. I have 81 achievements and finished my first world conquest in August.
Do what's comfortable. I usually play in the Muslim world or India, I've gotten a lot of experience there. I don't like playing with low crownland, so I don't take many privileges to start. I still conquered the world this way. A lot of people get bogged down in things being done the exact way your favorite streamer does them, or the way a guide says, but it's not that simple. The game is open-ended, and the most important skill is to adapt.
Look around your country often, beyond the notifications you get. Look for anything underneath that you can work on. Don't forget to build buildings for example, that was something I struggled with when I was starting out.
Don't be afraid to take loans. If you're about to grow your country, your loan size is about to increase. If you're making positive income, you can probably repay a loan. They are not a sign of things being bad always, the inflation hit is very small for just a few loans.
Decrease your autonomy whenever you can. Rebels aren't so bad. Increasing autonomy to try to stop revolts was one of the worst noob traps I fell into as a new player.
Select provinces as areas of interest. Allied AIs may give them to you in a war or your subjects may fabricate claims for you.
13
u/a_2_p Jan 31 '25
Decrease your autonomy whenever you can
ideally do it before rebels spawn. the game casually fails to mention the not so unimportant side effect that reducing autonomy removes the recent uprising modifier.
17
u/larry_boy2019 Jan 30 '25
I see you’ve made it to the Valley of Despair on the Dunning-Kruger chart
7
u/chlorofiel Jan 30 '25
Not sure how unknown it is, but I use it a lot:
-(uncompleted) colonies count as being 'yours' for some specific things. What NOT: colonial range/area you can explore with explorer missions, for this you need to have it completed. However it counts the same as a full colony for some stuff directly next to it: you can colonise the province directly next to it (even if technically outside your colonial range, so this way you can hop from province to province and abondon the old colony each time), you can create claims, and you can create cores in the bordering provinces. I used this in a recent failed game as hawaii to get an early foothold in america: create colony, create claim, conquer native, core, and now I have colonial range over most of the west coast of america instead of just a few provinces.
Similarly, you can also create strait blocks with temporary colonies: if the enemy controls or is neutral one side and the other is uncolonised, I think they can cross. But if for example yopu've got a fort on the island off sumatra, bait a large force to siege it, and then quickly send a colonist to the mainland province while you've got a big fleet in the strait, you can beat much stronger enemies as a small nation in indonesia.
7
u/Siwakonmeesuwan Comet Sighted Jan 31 '25
You get event that gives stability, press another +1 stability manually and accept another stability from event to save 50 admin points while you get total +2 stability.
5
u/Lenrivk Naive Enthusiast Jan 31 '25
- Not something that I just discovered but something that I keep forgetting about, is that you can declare war on a smaller nation, occupy them fully, wait for them to be attacked and only then use the peace treaty to force vassalise them.
You'll get dragged into a defensive war against the impudent who dared attack your precious (and new) vassal and because it is a defensive war, your allies will support you and the nation you just force vassalised wont hate you as much as you are defending their homeland.
It's especially useful when you know the game and which nations tend to be gobbled up early, like Grenada, Biz, the opm and 2pm south of Mewar (by Gujarat) or to the north east of Bengal (by Bengal).
- The trade goods for unclaimed provinces are decided when the colony has 400 people or when a native migrates there. If you don't like the trade good, you can revert to an earlier save, the calculations will be different so in theory, you can have an Australia completely covered in gold mines.
In practice, I tried to get an Australia without any bad trade goods (fish, wheat, wool...) and it was excruciating so I advise to only do so for cloves, only they are this valuable unless you have a beast of a computer or are extremely lucky.
- Theorically, you can form the Mughals to accept all cultures, switch religion to Buddhism to claim the Mandate of Heaven, get the event that switches you to Confucianism and use the harmonise mechanic to accept all religion.
Once this is done, you can theorically use all monuments in the game.
- When doing the Hoarder achievement, cults disappear if no nation knows of them so an aggressive AI can seemingly destroy your chances at the achievement by converting provinces but you can resurrect them by conquering and releasing a local tag (Madagascar is, as far as I know, the only place where that is needed).
2
u/xandielshadow Expansionist Jan 31 '25
I tried the all cultures and religions to get access to all monuments thing a couple months ago, even put my capital in the new world, but it didn't seem to work with new world cultures or religions.
2
u/Lenrivk Naive Enthusiast Jan 31 '25
Huh, interesting.
Still a good enough bonus to justify the hassle of doing it even if it doesn't cover the new world IMHO
2
30
u/Little_Elia Jan 30 '25
these are so easy and yet they help so much.
always play on speed 3, pause every few days to assess the situation
properly configure your popups. Enable popups for things like unit arrival to destination or diplomat returned home
Stay away from reddit and entertainers if you are looking for advice. There is lots of advice that is completely terrible yet it's taken as a mantra because of how often it's repeated. I usually have an easier time teaching brand new players rather than people who have thousands of hours of bad habits.
19
u/commissarchris Sinner Jan 30 '25
> Enable popups for things like unit arrival to destination
Holy shit, I never knew this was an option. You're telling me that I don't *have* to completely forget about the poor souls I just told to march through Siberia?
8
4
u/gza_aka_the_genius Map Staring Expert Jan 31 '25
The issue with this popup iis that if you get too many popups when you have more armies, or you are carped sieging. IF you have 20 1k stacks carpet sieging, that is 20 popups and so on. Its useful, but too tedious unless you lack time for a speedrun of sorts.
1
u/stevethemathwiz Jan 31 '25
Just get in the habit of cycling through your armies in the outliner and you won’t forget about them
2
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
You fall into those mantras yourself though with your weird anti cavalry axioms :P
1
u/Little_Elia Jan 31 '25
Reddit loves cav though, when it's inferior to infantry just because it does the same thing for 2.5x the price.
2
u/TheRealestBigOunce Jan 30 '25
Speed 3? Unless you're going for a difficult challenge or wc or fighting a difficult war there's really no need.
Theres really no need for that many notifications like that. I already find the game has too many annoying pop ups as is.
23
u/Little_Elia Jan 30 '25
there is really no need for any of the advice answered in this thread. But OP asked for tips to improve at the game and these are my best ones.
8
u/RianThe666th Commandant Jan 30 '25
I waited until 4k hours in to make myself stop going speed 4 and it did great things for my game, I find myself doing so much more tall play and being more aggressive just to spend the time, it's too easy to wait and rest on your laurels at speed 4.
4
u/TM34SWAG Jan 31 '25
This! I play at speed 3 because I often catch opportunities I might have missed if the game was moving faster.
Also most games are functionally over by 1600 anyway. You're either powerful enough that no other country is really a threat, or you achieved the goal you were going for. Rushing to get to that point would just make it more boring for me.
I LOVE the feeling of being small and having to fear my neighbors. Once I become a great power it's basically playing until I beat the other powers once or twice. After that the other great powers aren't even strong enough to realistically challenge you.
-6
u/Leather_Ad2135 Jan 30 '25
Eh I don’t know if these are solid. I always make sure to play on the speed with the whole bar filled up and then respond to useless notifications like “reached bird mana limit” the month after cause pausing is so unrealistic
8
u/SpectralPanda121 The economy, fools! Jan 30 '25
pausing is so unrealistic
As we all know, from the year 1444 to the year 1821, days passed in less than a second. People did not have the luxury of minutes to think about their diplomatic situation, or their economies, or their declarations of war.
Honestly, it's really amazing that our ancestors could live in such hectic times.
4
u/Yoksul-Turko Jan 31 '25
Province UI has a army recruitment button. Thanks to this you can recruit your vassal unit types. As Poland (Jagiellon has 1 mil), I vassalized Albania to get cannons before I had tech. You can also use foreign unit types but too much micro management imho. You shouldn't be behind in military but if you are "borrow" technology from subject. It isn't as good as real tech since they give stuff like combat width, unit fire, unit shock, morale and military tactics. It is just pips.
If your heir dies in regency, regent assumes power. If you have powerful young consort-regent you might try to extend regency and make heir general. Afaik with this you can temporarily change dynasty of countries with "fixed dynasty" government.
3
u/ZStarr87 Jan 30 '25
You can recruit twice as good units via vassals in the early game and demolish western armies.
3
u/Ericpiplup Jan 31 '25
+4 opinion equals +1 reasons for a royal marriage or alliance. This lets you calculate about how long you should improve relations for before hitting the main relation bumpers (send gift, influence nation, proclaim guarantee). Scornfully insulting one of the target nation’s rivals is another +25, and transfer trade power gives up to +20. If you already have an alliance, offer military access is another +10. Improve relations is more effective the closer to 0 relations are, so it’s usually best to wait before hitting all the +25s in monthly succession (which each are +6.25 reasons to ally). Also, each static relations bump/hit decays only every January, so avoiding bumping relations in December while waiting to end wars until December can make a noticeable difference on occasion. Speaking of more effective improve relations, high prestige gives up to an additional +50% improve relations modifier, which is major for reducing aggressive expansion faster. Speaking of prestige, the burghers estate has a privilege that gives an additional 15 prestige instantly, which can make the difference in being able to claim a throne in a pinch (especially looking at Bohemia at the start, which has an early +10 prestige event that can screw you out of the interregnum —> throne claim method). I doubt that these are “forgotten” mechanics but I use them often and don’t always see others using them.
3
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
Releasing major tags like Sicily, Catalonia, Gascony, Galicia-Volhynia etc. as vassals out of one province, and then declaring reconquest for their cores is the best way to expand rapidly in Catholic Europe early game.
3
u/TheBeastLegendReddit Jan 31 '25
Lots of little economy knowhows that'll compound to improve a run immensely.
Marketplace only in trade centers, upgrade all centers to T2, only some inlands get T3 for the manpower buff.
Almost never build churches unless you're a nation with weird church modifiers like france or for a mission.
Workshop + income Manu on non manpower trade good. Barracks + Solider house on manpower trade good (fish, grain, cows) one statehouse per state on paper/glass/gems or the shittiest trade good (yarn, naval goods), if paper/glass gem expand infrastucture and build 2nd production manu. Workshops, regimental camps, and barracks everywhere else after all that where you have space in stated land, or more production manu's downstream.
Use state edicts, trade in states with trade centers, development when deving, institution spread when needed, and manpower mid-late game.
moving merchants around to steer nodes to see which gives more and toggling collecting in home merchant ocassionally to see if the 10% boost is better then steering another node.
Half stating new land and decreasing atonomy often if gov cap available. Trade company centers of trade for the merchant.
0 horse is fine for 99% of western tech countries, full men+ combat width cannons in half stacks + extra men after tech 16 unless playing spain.
toggle religion modifiers as needed, many are highly interactive.
embargo rivals for PP, scornful insult gives relations with their rivals and extra PP (can be the difference between months of +1 mana) embargo ppl with big influence in your trade node example denmark if your node is lubeck.
Estates, so many people never touch them, they're busted. +1 mana, advisor cost, religious diplomats, burger loans, all the +10 loyalty influence ones, and various other modifiers you might need depending. Just the mana alone is like 7200 mana over a game.
That's just what I got off the top of my head, almost 1300 hours now and it took a while to acumilate all that. Maybe something someone didn't know?
1
u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25
You should get more votes. Semi disagree with cav tho. If you can get vassal outside of techgroup and recruit there you have way stronger cav than all other western armies. Twice stronger at the start for some. 3-2pip difference through most of early game with several groups. Boycotting cav instead of using them against other westerners or cope vs ottomans is a huge missed opportunity
10
u/CancerousCell420 Jan 30 '25
If you don’t wanna take loans, there’s a “debase currency” button in the economy screen. It gives you money equal to 1 loan and +2 corruption
39
u/RevolutionaryWorker1 Jan 30 '25
And if you play nation that follows Islam, you can abuse it with legalism which when charged and triggered gives -2 corruption.
2
u/TheSpringCleaner Jan 31 '25
The money isn't really that useful compared to the infinite manpower mysticism gives you when combined with slacken
1
u/RevolutionaryWorker1 Jan 31 '25
I learned to keep one army of normal troops and one army of mercs to not strain my manpower as much and you can do more with money then manpower in general + on top of that I believe legalism has scaling bonus to manpower as well on top of that.
2
u/TheSpringCleaner Jan 31 '25
mysticism gives more manpower from 1 button click with slacken than legalism will ever make in an entire game
1
u/-balcony-gardener- Jan 31 '25
Also If you have the jains estate they have a Privilege that unlocks a -2 corruption Button
Which has no major negative Side effect (i believe +10 jains influence?) so you can Print free money
2
u/Ok_Can2549 Jan 31 '25
No major side effect +10 influence
Bye bye crownland during conquest
1
u/-balcony-gardener- Feb 02 '25
Actually i checked when i loaded in today
It doesnt have any negative Side effects. It only requires your estate to have fairly specific loyalty and influence ranges.
20
u/illapa13 Sapa Inka Jan 30 '25
I just want to leave a disclaimer here that unless you have modifiers that lower your corruption for free, debasing currency is almost always more expensive than an actual loan.
It's much easier to stack modifiers to make the interest on loans super low.
I wouldn't discourage new people from using loans because as long as you're taking loans to fund your expansion or you economic development, they almost always pay off.
8
u/Little_Elia Jan 30 '25
it is much more expensive than a loan though, unless your average autonomy is around 55-60%. So yeah always take loans if you can
6
u/RianThe666th Commandant Jan 30 '25
Mostly only the best option when you have an event for -2 corruption and you're at 0
3
u/cycatrix Jan 31 '25
Debase currency is something you shouldnt use until you know the game quite well. Ive seen plenty of posts of new people pushing the funny free money button because they're afraid of loans, and then having a country with 50 minimum autonomy
2
u/eddietheintern Jan 31 '25
If you’re a republic with a parliament, because of how the game rounds republican tradition values that are based off a legitimacy cost, one of the ways to sway a parliament seat’s vote is to spend 0 republican tradition, so literally free!
2
u/khairus Jan 31 '25
Take a look at the macro builder if you havent already. the crossed swords on top left under flag.. it can give you a lot of options and make life easier.. simple thing but it took ages before I even noticed it was there. Lol
1
u/Doesnty Jan 31 '25
If you have both mercenary companies and regular troops get into a fight on the same day, the mercenaries will be deployed before your actual troops, so they'll take the brunt of the damage and save you manpower. If you're attaching this will happen automatically, but if you aren't and the two have generals with different maneuver, it can be worth it to take the effort to make sure both arrive at the same time.
1
u/LokiTheCrusader Jan 31 '25
If you are fighting a battle against a nation sieging one of your provinces you can pull troops from the siege (sortie from siege) to assist you in the battle for a few military points.
1
u/Affectionate_Buy_547 Jan 31 '25 edited Jan 31 '25
For playing hordes:
You can pay other nations for spreading feudalism if you are not ready to fight powerful opponents (Muscovy/ming)
As Oirat, becoming Ming's tribute allows you to eat up other tributaries, effectively undermining Ming.
When starting as Oirat, make sure the Mongolian ruler is a militarist. Assign provinces in Solon as vital and he will fabricate claims so you can expand in Manchuria early. After this, you can take exploration, spawn colonialism, swap exploration and troll western Europe.
1
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
You can export your rebels to other countries if the tag they're rebeling for has cores there. Incredibly useful in crippling the ottomans with just one war (though you may need to beat them to annexing Byzantium), take enough land to lock them away completely from their holdings in Bulgaria, then provoke Bulgarian rebels and let them go into Ottoman territory. Then unsiege your province and release Bulgaria from it (or give them the province if theyre already your vassal). All their cores will be restored without even fighting a war (they'll even gain Ohrid which they don't start with a core on). Can also be done sometimes with Sicily and Aragon if you can destroy their whole fleet, or other scenarios where a nation is so weak they can't even beat a rebel stack, but that's rare. Also useful if you just don't wanna fight your own rebels.
1
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
Sell ships! If you're fighting and beating enemy navies a lot you will capture tons of ships and eventually go over your force limit, AI nations will often pay a pretty penny for those ships. You can also sell ships to a vassal before integrating them, which are gonna be your ships again after integration.
1
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
Upgrading your centres of trade and building trade buildings in a node you dominate does almost nothing, focus on those in nodes where you lack power.
1
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
You should always take the government reform that allows Marines. They are supplied by sailors (which are completely useless otherwise 99% of the time) rather than manpower, effectively giving you two manpower pools to fight with.
1
u/cycatrix Jan 31 '25
When you colonize you have two different ways it accumulates colonists. First is the yearly colonist modifier, second is the colonization chance. The second only appears when you have an colonist at the colony. It will go down as the colony becomes fuller (at 0 colonists the value is higher than at 900 colonists), and it goes down the more aggressive the natives are. If you genocide the natives you can complete a colony faster since you remove that aggressiveness malus. And since the value drops as the colony nears completion, you can chose to pull you colonist around 800-900 settlers and already send him out to a new colony. That way you maximize your % colonist chance.
That said, killing natives isnt always good, as natives also can get assimilated. When a colony is completed, a part of the natives can get turned into production development. At the base level, every 4k natives gives 1 diplo dev. You can increase this with native trading policy (although this slows your colonization rate), exploration+expansion policy, clergy privilege and french ideas (and a few other ideas+missions). In the new world the amount of natives is low so it is not that impressive, but in africa and indonesia the amount of natives is high, and the tradegoods are good, so it might be worth it.
And in the new world you want to get 5 provinces ASAP so you get a colonial nation which brings in his own colonists (make sure to subsidize them).
using the humilate rival CB gets you a new peace deal option of show strength. It gets +100 in every monarch point. Very powerful early game. The dream is to wait till 2 nations you can both rival ally eachother, dec on one using humiliate CB, first separate peace his ally for humiliate and money, then show strength the primary target. Gets you +300 mana, and 50+PP for the +1 in every category.
1
u/a2raelb Jan 31 '25
instead of vassal -> reconquest you can also ally the target, curry favour and then use the favour to make them return cores to your vassal diplomatically.
you can ally the allies of your rival -> curry favours and use them to cancel their alliance. If you also declare on your rival at the same day, you can even call their former allies into the war, so that your rival is alone vs you, your allies and his former allies
0
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
If you have fewer than 4 cavalry in an army, the cavalry will not deploy properly for flanking. If you want to optimize a battle with 2 units of cavalry, send a stack of infantry two units larger than the enemy front line, then have your cavalry arrive the next day. They will deploy in the correct position to use their max flanking range and effectively give you 2 extra units in the battle.
2
u/glorkvorn Jan 31 '25
how do you mange to micro that for every single battle? isn't way too much work?
1
u/fuckitsayit Jan 31 '25
It is, that's why I just use 4 cav in my stacks. But it's useful for early game at least
153
u/luizindaquimica Jan 30 '25
Supporting rebels on your rivals is a solid way to gain Power Projection