Yeah you get a CB and get your prestige back after you have won the war

It works off of tech level only. The years listed are just part of the tech's cost equation (there are terms for [next level's year - last level's], and [next level's year - current year]). And yes, at lvl 18 you get a big bonus to tactics which will make all your armies fight better. New unit types help a ton too.

When I get bored of destroying Europe as Austria and get ready to take it to the next level (normal difficulty ZOMG!) what's a fun country to play? Considering...
- Burgundy - expand west now that I know how impossible it is to expand into the HRE, take France/England/Iberia
- Mutapa - according to my ledger they have a lot of gold mines? sounds cool!
- Novgorod or another Russian power - try to unite Russia, expand east
- Golden Horde - no clue how this works!
- Mamluks - try to westernize and take over the Middle East
- Borneo or some rando country out there - try to form Malaya and resist colonization

Fun countries I've played. All of them are also fairly strong so they are good for a first game on normal. All of them also have the ability to be absolutely destroyed if you get in over your head.:

Burgundy - lol france. **** up the HRE.
Teutonic Order - Try to break up Poland-Lithuania. **** up the HRE.
Ottomans - Just all around awesome. Go east into Europe or west.
Vijayanagar - Form Hindustan.

Up next for me after I tire of the current games I have is try out a Horde country (probably Timurids->Mughal Empire). Also play one of the Russian countries.

How? When the CPU gets Imperial Ban on you is it kind of "lol look at them trying to take my ****, so cute"?

When you annex HRE provinces remove them from the HRE. It is a provincial decision.

Ohh. lol why doesn't the CPU do that?!?

Silly Poland, if you just removed the provinces you jacked I wouldn't own half your country right now

My experience begs to differ, unless I had better relations with these countries than I thought or they were permanently at war. I'd have to see what my relations are w/ France and Sweden right now but I've had Imperial Ban on them for a LONG ass time, and I've been in enough wars with both to assume that my relations with them are terrible.

AI is terrible, yes

In return for Milan's assistance Spain enabled Milan to reach the Indian subcontinent, a feat that could not have been done otherwise, so it was very much in Milan's interest to support Spain. We find it curious that Portugal condemns Milan while at the same time contending that Milan did not really affect the outcome of the last Porto-Spanish War.

As for Austria's involvement in the war, Milan had nothing to do with it. We believe the cause of Austria's entrance was a pre-existing alliance between Spain and Austria. While we are not privy to the details we believe it was a relic of the period of time when Austria was under control of her nobles rather than her rightful king.

O SNAP CRIMES AGAINST PEACE ITT

war criminals itt

- Holland, megarich trader-colonizer that has missions to get the rest of the dutch culture provinces so bunch of free cores.
- Some indian country to learn westernization (vijay prolly)
- Morocco >> Mamluks
- Timurids-->Mughals
- Poland, relatively poor provinces, bad sliders for economy, but awesome sliders for war and big manpower, plus lithuania as a pet.

Why's that? Aren't Portugal and Castille getting missions to **** your **** up every 5 minutes?

I got the impression that playing as Timurids is hard as **** because of what happens when Timur dies.

you get one stack of rebels on a random core and more stacks on every non-core province. I believe all the starting territory is cored so you could just not expand for the few years until Timur dies.

Mamluks have to reform their government, they start as some tribal **** iirc which is annoying. They also have to contend with Timurids and Ottomans for territory. Morocco you have to deal with castille/portugal yeah, but you start with a gold province and awesome sliders for trade, you can be richest in europe within ~5 years. Spain/Portugal can be annoying but you will have a decent sized army and can just crush every landing til they peace. Muslims start with shock 3 cavalry instead of ****ty latin knights so you can really **** things up with an all cav army. Once you take Algiers you will have a large enough army that you will be basically invincible. In my Morocco game I crushed north africa then went south and took out mali for the gold, and then wound up colonizing south america.

Also for a good challenge you can try Byzantines. Hard going initially but as soon as you get up and running you quickly become unstoppable due to the huge amount of free cores you have/get, and awesome missions too

Yeah as byzantium try to go to war with either Candor or Karamon at the beginning and annex them. You'll have reconquest CB so can get their provinces for cheap. Take out other small nations you have cores on if you can. Then just wait for the right opportunity to take out the Ottomans.

my Ottomans game in 1462 (hard, aggro AI) honestly its like I'm a horde the way European Christians insta-Holy War on a Muslim superpower

at war now with France, England and Austria, each its alliances which now encompass about 70% of Europe. Not sure how this will play out:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Doesn't look too pretty but my recovery should be fine once I get a land buffer between me and the French monster Think I made a mistake not taking military drill for my first NI, the French is wailing on my ass cos they have it.

I first made peace with Timur by paying tribute, think that is strategically optimal unless you somehow lucksack the Timurs collapsing off the bat. Having a 30k fighting army is nice but not so much when the other guy has 80k+, that does not seem promising for present and future expansion.

LOL you play EU3 too ?

if we don't have something like 14 people for the next eu3 MP game I will be very disappointed

Treaty of Antwerpen, 1522

The Great French Empire and the Glorious Free Republic of the Hansa, acknowledging their mutual interests of peace, freedom, and harmony in Western Europe, do hereby agree to the following:

1) Antwerpen, a Hansa core, will be transferred from France to Hansa

2) Hainaut and Lorraine, which are currently vassals of the Hansa with French culture, will be partitioned between the French Empire and the Hanseatic Republic. Hansa will receive their core province of Liege from Hainaut as well as the German culture province of Elsass from Lorraine. France will receive the provinces of Hainaut and Namur from Hainaut and Metz and Lothringen from Lorraine.

3) Having settled their border issues, France and Hansa shall sign an alliance of mutual defense. Any aggression against one state will be considered aggression against both.

Signed, The Glorious Free Republic of the Hansa

The French Empire is happy with the treaty and will honor the alliance at all costs.

Portugal will pay a bounty of 100 ducats each for the elimination of Bar and Ulm, by any means. The merchants of these insignificant nations are causing minor disruptions to our trade (along with every other trader's) and bringing no benefit to the world's more important nations. We hope that other merchant nations might see the value in this cause and add to the incentive.

So I decided to play a new game with France on normal with a different approach. Of course the goal is always to fist**** whole Europe, but I have vassalised+alliance a lot after wins, and generally sought to weaken big powers (austria, bohemia).
I like vassalise + alliance because if you do it a lot, everytime you DOW anyone, you can just for the big stacks if it's a big country and relax, all the sieges being taken care of. Not sure what its worth though, but I like it thus far. Also I diplo annex the vassal with the best economy every 10 years.

Overall it worked pretty well, I managed to keep my infamy in control, but also to get a humongous alliance, ready to destroy basically any country in Europe. The only country which is powerful is castille (and a bit England but that's only cause I can't reach them), because I never got CBs to weaken them. I think next time I get a +2 stability bonus I will just DOW them and make them release a lot.

One question about personal unions, I have had a few, but I am not sure how it works exactly. I got them by claiming the throne + fighting a war, but is claiming the throne enough to luckbox/inherit ? Also sometimes it seems that you lose them when your king dies, but sometimes not ? I just managed to integrate Tirol this way, so I am not sure how efficient is.

If somebody (daer?) would be kind enough to take a look at my save here and tell me how it looks, I'd be most happy. Also I just became papal controller, so who would you excommunicate and why ?

Cheers

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OZ2TW7SD

If you have a personal union with someone, you will eventually inherit upon ruler death. However, if you have negative relations with them or negative prestige and your ruler dies the PU will be broken. Its also not usually a good idea to force integrate a PU because you do not get any cores and get a bunch of infamy.