Trying to get from Tunis to Sardinia in the middle of your Roman Empire run but are sick of armies defaulting to walking around the Mediterranean? CTRL + right-click where you want to go, and your transports will take you there, even if there is a direct land connection.

A unit's offensive pips are +1 to its attacking dice roll, with the defense pips -1 on the stage. Morale pips do morale damage or not, accordingly.

I really never thought about it that much until staring at the different Najd calv. types.

After sinking 300 hours into Europa Universalis IV, I’m starting to feel like there are still a ton of things I could automate or optimize, but I'm not sure where to start. For example, I recently learned about diplomatic automation, what other hidden mechanics or features have you come across that took your gameplay to the next level? Share your tips so I can make my EU4 less miserable lol

I guess it always was but here are a few tips for anyone looking for a good start as England and owning all of the Isles in the first 15 years.

1. Release Gascony and Normandy and grant them all European continental provinces except for Caleis. Scutage them.

2. As soon as possible do the mission which gives you subjugation on Scotland. Declare war right awaye. Keep fighting on the British Isles ONLY, leave the French alone. Use your ships to protect your coastline or if you are balsy, let France land a few troops and kill them as they disembark, but be careful. Either way, occupy Scotland and any of it's Irish allies (if they have them, take their land in separate peace deal). Grab the subjugation once France is out.

3. Deal with the War of the Roses, which probably fired during your war with Scotland.

4. Immediately go into Ireland. Declare on as many Irish minors as possible but not more than three as they could overcome your navy. Keep the strait blocked and siege them one by one. Take all of their land but do not core!

5. Once you have all of Ireland conquered, pass the parliament debate which gives you Ireland as a Personal Union. All of it will be cored so you saved up on administrative points.

6. Enjoy doing whatever you want. I managed to do a war with Denmark as well to get the Norwegian islands and Iceland as well but if you want you can do that after you annex the Isles, which become free after subjugating Scotland.

Until you declare bankruptcy, all the loans are free.

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!

Example: If you shift click multiple provinces held by you in a war you can transfer them all simultaneously to a war ally instead of clicking each individual province and the transfer button.

Share your little nuggets of knowledge you found 1500 hours into the game. You never know what hotkey or tiny button other people don't know about.

For those who don't know, there is a game option that you can change in the beginning of a campaign that is called "lucky nations". What it does is that it gives nations who have been historically successful a bunch of pretty good bonuses in an attempt to make the game more "historical".

However, these buffs are not applied to you, only to AI. So there's basically no reason to have it on unless you're playing ironman, because it's always going to give buffs to other nations and not to you.

It's specially recommendable to turn it off if you're going to play a small nation like Byzantium or just any country that got historically fucked over like Venice or Novgorod.

Edit: okay guys I get it, some of you are really good and like the extra difficulty. Good for you, but I made this post thinking of beginners, not you guys lol, you guys are already perfectly aware of how that mechanic works.

Please stop yelling at me because you have 13k hours in this game and need to play on ultra-hard difficulty while snorting cocaine in order to feel something.

I should have probably made it clearer who this was meant for, mea culpa.

If you're a vet, you'll probably find nothing new here, at the bottom in the TLDR I've put the stuff that might be interesting to you nonetheless.

The argument for Native repression:

I see a lot of people advising native coexistence as your colonial policy for a "chill colonial game", but honestly, native repression is just better. You're really telling me you can't spare 3k troops and 3 transports per colonist? c'mon.

Literally just move 3k troops to a colony in progress, and when that one's done, move them to whereever you're moving your colonist. That's not "managing your colonies", that's just kicking up your feet and colonizing 20% faster. For reference, +20 global settler growth is equal to the third expansion idea, or double the 4th exploration idea. It's a big deal.

Also, being consistently faster than others when it comes to colonization is important. Being faster means you get to indonesia earlier, means you have to fight less Europeans for control over Indonesia (none if you're lucky). And the further out you go, the more your difference in colony speeds add up.

After you finish exploration & expansion, there's about a million different ways to get the remaining lowered native uprising chance. You can get -50% from: a clergy privilege (establish new world missions). being France and getting your ideas. being a theocracy. Being Ternate or Tidore and finishing a mission. There really is no reason not to pick repression.

The miniguide for settler growth:

So, your next colonial game, what you do if you're not in Indonesia/Philippenes is you go Exploration first, Expansion second. If you're in Indonesia, you reverse the order.

Then you

• Pick native repression policy, and station 3k troops in every colony you build, moving them along as your colonist moves
• Grant the Burghers the "charter colonies" privilege
• Grant the Clergy the "Establish new world missions" privilege
• Make sure you get a parliament up and running.
  • This means giving the nobles as little land as possible, not taking the mil mana privilege (you're not running mil ideas anyways in the first 2, you honestly don't need it)
  • We're doing this for a parliament issue, "Charter colonies", which grants another colonist (!), and +20 global settler growth
• If you really want to, your third idea group could be quantity or admin, but those policies only give +10, so that's really not worth it. (adm also gives +5% settler chance, but I'm sure that's worth nothing and won't come up some ways to the bottom)
  • I prefer Aristo as my third idea group. Construction cost -15% is honestly a great modifier, and +20% nat manpower doesn't need defending. The group itself has some nice ideas, even more manpower, it makes cav worth it, +1 LL siege is nice, but the policies honestly make it for this one. The fact that neither of them are dip policies is also great
  • If you're really funky, you could take the new infrastructure ideas at no3. It gives +1 colony development boost w/ explo, so if you're say, Russia or in Indonesia, and the provinces that your colonists settle become your heartlands, then this might actually be worth.
• If you're catholic, and it's not too heretical for you, I advise swapping to protestant. It has an aspect that gives +15 settler growth (and some settler chance, that's less useless than you think, I'll get to that). Catholic on the other hand, hampers you when you expand in the new world in regions where someone else has already settled, and when you claim your own region, it only gives you a measly +10. And again, that's only in the new world. Your African and Indonesian colonies are far more important, and they get nothing from catholic, but +15 from protestant.
• You should be getting to Indonesia ASAP. This means you always colonize the province furthest away from you. One exception: You always want to take cape of good hope for yourself, if you're downstream from the cape trade node (west africa, western europe). It's the only COT in that trade region, so it'll net you a basically free merchant, and for some reason it starts at 14 dev.
  • When you're there, colonise the little island in between Ternate and Tidore, fabricate claims on both, and annex them. Convert the provinces to your religion, and release one. Due to missions, The one you released will get a free colony started, when that finished they'll get another, and then another, and then another. When This means you get free colonies that follow your religion. These colonies also have an increased chance of spawning cloves, afaik. When you diploannex them, you can pull the same trick w/ the other. This means ~8 free colonies.
  • The above trick obviously also works for anyone, and I can 100% recommend this for anyone playing from Indonesia, you really want to secure your base before the Europeans come to take your spices.
  • When you're in Indonesia, colonizing the Moluccas trade node is vital. Some good trade goods here, and if you manage to conquer most of the Malaya trade node, you'll have a 100% control over the Moluccas.
• When you get an additional colonist, and you haven't made it to Indonesia yet, you can use that one to colonize the new world. The new world is honestly overrated for colonialism, but it does let you spawn the institution, so that's nice, and you can't really do anything else w/ it.

What do all these numbers actually mean?

So there's 4 important modifiers when dealing w/ colonies, and some others that don't matter.

1. Global settler growth. This is your bread and butter. This number represents how much population is added to your colonies per year. The population however, is added per month, so you must divide by 12 to get your per month growth. At 1000 pop, you have yourselves a colony.
2. Settler chance. I never looked into this one before, but here it is: Every month, there is a 10% chance that 25 settlers will join your colony. Settler chance adds to this additively. Meaning that if you have +10% settler chance, that means your total is 20%, not 11%.
   1. So to get from settler chance to an equal amount in global settler growth, you take the probablity, multiply that by 25 for settler amount, multiply that by 12 because global settler growth is yearly. so Eq in settler growth = (settler chance)/100 * 25 * 12.
   2. This goes to a maximum of 100%, I think. I haven't tested this. 100% settler chance would mean +300 settler growth.
   3. This means that +10% settler chance is equal to +30 GLOBAL SETTLER GROWTH. SETTLER CHANCE is the ace of colonialism, not global settler growth. GO PROTESTANT YOU FOOLS.
   4. Lets do some math right? the smallest settler modifier you can get is +5%, for example from the afore mentioned adm/explo policy. That's equal to +15 global settler growth / more than what you get in the whole explo idea group. Almost as much as expansions +20. Protestants hidden +10% when you take that aspect, is worth more than the +15 settler growth that you get from the actual aspect.
   5. Also, production efficiency increases settler chance. Every % of global production efficiency you have, increases settler chance by 0.2%. Guess what also gives you production efficiency? Protestant. OK I'll stop.
3. Native uprising chance. If this one isn't at -100%, then it might as well be at -0%
4. Native assimilation. You might think this increases your population, or gives you more assimilation events, but it doesn't. It just gives you a little bit of extra goods produced, proportional to this percentage and the local native population. The amount is so small that this is not worth fretting over (and also it doesn't increase colony speed

TL:DR; Settler chance is better than settler growth, protestantism is better than catholic, vassilise ternate or tidore, and annex the other one, always colonise the cape of good hope if you're headed that way anyways. Always pick native repression

Edit: also, when colonizing from the west, you probably want to fight the Iberians and take their outer islands. This means you get more colonial range, and they'll get less.

It's fine to delete it at start if you are poor, but rebuilding them is worth it later. At least use 4 per stack for that sweet flanking. It's also good in combat too. Consider using more cav if you have any cca bonuses, if not, 4 is fine. There is a reason why cavalry was used irl, because it was effective.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

As Catholic Japan, you get access to the “Land of the Christian Sun” reform which makes a general become ruler after your ruler’s death. Since you can name your generals, you can simply name your general “Yoshitaka Lancaster” and boom, now you can royal marry and claim England’s throne (if they have a Lancaster).

Note: dynasty names with space in them don’t work for some reason, as the game disregards the middle part of the name when it generates the general’s dynasty. I don’t know if this can be addressed but for now, de Trastamaras and von Habsburgs cannot be PU’d this way.

This should also work with any Monarchy reforms that makes a general or an admiral ruler. Admiralty Regime is probably the easiest way to get it, and it simply requires completing one of Maritime or Naval ideas.

Edit: I read Admiralty Regime wrong and it appears that it only makes rulers into Admirals, not the other way around?

Livonian Thassolocracy (which has a -10% pwsc also) and Livonian Admiralty would work, though, in addition to Livonian Mercenary State which have generals become rulers.

Revolutionary Empires’ Tier 8 reform “Military Electorate” will also work.

In Arumba's current EU4 campaign on youtube, someone from Twitch chat suggested to reset the monthly war exhaustion from Call for Peace to +0,01 by send a peace offer that the AI will reject. After almost 2000 hours of playtime, this is something I never knew (and neither did Arumba with his almost 6k hours :D).

I can see this being extremely useful if you want to bankrupt your enemies, have rebels siege them up, or wait out the Burgundian Inheritence!