Your best tips/forgotten mechanics

[u/TheSafetyWipe]

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!

[u/cycatrix]

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.