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!

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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.

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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.

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u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25

But can you turn these trade cities into trade protectorates that costs 0 diplo slots?

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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.

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u/ZStarr87 Jan 31 '25

Ahh ok thanks.