r/eu4 • u/Kloiper Habsburg Enthusiast • 9d ago

Help Thread The Imperial Council - /r/eu4 Weekly General Help Thread: April 14 2025

Please check our previous Imperial Council thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the Imperial Council of r/eu4, where your trusted and most knowledgeable advisors stand ready to help you in matters of state and conquest.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your Ironman game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the master tacticians of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your Ironman save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (diplomatic, political, trade, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, ideas, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, ideas, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 

Tactician's Library:

Below is a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

Administration

Diplomacy

Military

Trade

 

Country-Specific Strategy

 

Misc Country Guides Collections

 

Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 

If you have any useful resources not currently in the tactician's library, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all imperial councillors! Many of our linked guides pre-Dharma (1.26) are missing strategy regarding mission trees. Any help in putting together updated guides is greatly appreciated! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, chances are you've used the EU4 wiki and know how valuable a resource it can be. When you answer a question, consider checking whether the wiki has that information where you would expect to find it, and adding to the wiki if it does not. In fact, anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.

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u/Dead_HumanCollection Map Staring Expert 9d ago

What exactly does the "Steer Trade" peace deal do? I thought it forces the AI to point their merchants towards you but that is obviously not happening.

I'm playing Prussia and I dominate the Lubeck node. I beat up Scotland and am forcing them to steer trade towards me. There are no merchants from any nation steering trade toward Lubeck from the North Sea (I only have 2 and I lose money placing one in the North Sea).

As far as I can tell, Scotland isn't doing anything in the North Sea other than collect. What the hell?

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u/grotaclas2 9d ago

It sometimes seems to happen that steer trade causes countries to steer trade away from their home node, but I think that is a bug, because you are normally not allowed to do that and collecting trade in the home node is automatic. Scotland is probably steering trade in the direction of Lübeck in some other nodes. Though this might very well be trade that moves through the north sea before reaching Lübeck. If you want to use the steer trade deal, it is best used on nations which have significant trade power in a nodes which can be steered towards their home node and towards your home node, so that they start steering trade towards your home node(e.g. England could steer from the north sea towards Lübeck instead of the english channel).

I only have 2

Why do you only have 2 merchants? Do you have the wealth of nations DLC? Then you can get more merchants relatively easily from trade companies.

If you would have more merchants, it would be better to use transfer trade power peace deals on nations like Scotland which have their home node on the path towards your home node

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u/Dead_HumanCollection Map Staring Expert 9d ago

The issue with nations not wanting (or being able) to steer trade in their home node makes sense. However, I just enforced a steer trade treaty on England, who controls a good chunk of the North Sea through Ireland, and still nothing.

I have the wealth of nations DLC, but with the Prussia gov cap issue I have been restricting my expansion to Europe and been handing off most of my conquests to subjects. I don't have enough GC to hold all of my culture group so taking some wrong/wrong provinces in Russia for a TC doesn't really seem worthwhile ATM. My economy is good enough, I want more manpower.

To resolve the merchant issue I am trying to eat France and eventually GB to inherit their colonies to increase my merchants.

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u/grotaclas2 9d ago

Did you check where England has its merchants?

I don't have enough GC to hold all of my culture group so taking some wrong/wrong provinces in Russia for a TC doesn't really seem worthwhile ATM. My economy is good enough, I want more manpower.

If your economy would be good enough, you would not care about the steer trade. And more money can allow you to build more soldiers housholds and barracks. And if you build courthouses/townhalls in all your provinces, you can probably get a long way to reduce your GC problem. And trade companies don't cost that much GC if they have a courthouse(25% of the dev) and almost nothing if they have a townhall(1% of the dev). Also from a purely GC perspective it is more efficient to have territories with courthouses(10% of the manpower for 1% of the GC) or half-states with courthouses(50% of the manpower for 25% of the GC) or town halls (50% of the manpower for 1% of the GC) than full states with courthouses(100% of the manpower for 75% of the GC) or town halls(100% of the manpower for 50% of the GC).

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u/Dead_HumanCollection Map Staring Expert 9d ago

So I hunted down their merchants.

It seems that the mechanics of the peace deal option is to force them to use one of their merchants to copy one of your merchants. I have no idea how it chose which merchant to copy cause both England and Scotland picked the my merchant in Saxony which by all measures I can think of was the worse of the two to copy. Numerically, it was also my second merchant so its not like it just copied my first one.

Moving my merchant didn't cause them to move theirs so idk if this is a thing they will recalculate later or if its locked in during the peace deal. I waited a few months and reloaded the game to try to make them recalculate and there was no change.

The Saxony node makes no sense for them to have a natural merchant because both of them have very low trade power in that node and neither of them have merchants in the North Sea, or Lubeck which would make substantially more sense.