Oh I know, and I should have focused on that rather than moneys early on (or admin power). I will do that once I restart tonight.

I just mean in general, it's ****ing CHINA, we have plenty of people to fill our armies.

I saw something from the Paradox forums where people were calling for a Brandenburg nerf, I had no idea it was op to this extent

Pic dump:

Europe after I took the provinces required for Prussia. Poland took a local noble, lol Poland.


Prussia formed, Ottos getting beat down


Shortly before League War. I took Sjaeland and Hamburg and am now crazy rich. Silesia, Bohemia, Palatinate, Brunswick are my vassals. Also note dat THICC Hungary, lol Ottos. Moscow just took about 20 provinces from Lithuania and Crimea.


League war aka ww1. Me + France + Russia + thicc Hungary was pretty much a stomp, I declared pretty quickly so Ottos and England never even joined a side.


Postwar, I became emperor shortly after this and might go for HRE which I have somehow never formed in ~6 RL years of playing this stupid game. IA gain is slow due to the lack of Italian HRE states, might have to release a bunch of vassals and add all of Poland and Lith to the empire.

Go Theodoro!! AI Theodoro already better than Namath Theodoro ever could hope to be

Brandenburg/Prussia is strong lategame, but they start medium-sized power so you can pretty much crush them with any major nation. (For example, you can just guarantee Teutonic Order and/or Poland to prevent them from getting the provinces required to form Prussia.)

Already did the first but good call on the second, where do I do that?

I'm at work and can't visualize where it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure you get there from the military tab and it's literally called 'Slacken Recruitment Standards.' It basically swaps -5% Professionalism for two years' worth of manpower.

Wait omg, I did a double take and looked up more detail to see if this was right, and you are, and LOL is this overpowered

Quoting from here on Reddit:

I just went from having an existential crisis over my manpower situation to laughing about it, this **** is ridiculous

Assuming you are talking about multiplayer, I think usually Poland culture swaps and forms them.

Bleh, I think I'm going to rapidly become bored with the Malaya game. I can take out the rest of northeast Asia... but then what? I'm way way way behind on tech, that's not going to change... I can colonize some more stuff (but only within my islands, because lol no diplo tech at all), I can't absorb any vassals (because they're mad because, again, no diplo tech).

So, I could play another 50 years and wait for the Euros to come eat me. **** that.

France update, thanks to the helpful advice ITT



I have learned that this is a magical button, and I should click it

*click*

*click*

*click*

Oops, I'm at 2.3% professionalism - time to hire a general!

*click*

*click*

*click*

Sick, that guy's 6/3/2/2!

Cool, now I get one more magic click:

*click*



Hooray!

(this feature is DUMB, should be like -20% professionalism for 5 years of +20% recovery or something, non-stacking)

Yeah, Slacken is really strong. At least it encourages me to keep drilling from 11.11.1444 to have manpower for the future

Since the next patch still seems to be at least over month away, I guess I could host the multiplayer game in the current patch instead. Are you interested in joining? The game will be on EU-time evenings at least few evenings per week, probably played with major nations. It won't be very many people, atm just me and 2 friends.

Yeah I need to get to the slackening ASAP. Two conquests into my Ming reboot and my manpower is just beyond ****ed. Mercs are making up part of it, but not nearly enough to take on the rest of the hordes

What about just cutting a snake path through India and up into the steppes and then eastern Europe? I read somewhere that the closer you get to Europe the faster tech spreads through the rest of your provinces (or something like that)

ugh, I'd love to try one of these, just to see, but I can't do Euro-evenings during the week.

@ Namath -- in the Malaya game ... I mean, I've taken Siberia and vassalized Uzbek to help them consolidate stuff. Tech won't spread faster (well, you get neighbor bonuses, so that helps a little)... I'm just soooo far behind that I think it won't be fun.

Same, though I don't think there's really any time I could consistently block off hours (I do most of my playing when my gf is asleep or not around).

Well, in theory it could also be on weekends if that is the only time it works. Weekends also mean it doesn't have to be evenings necessarily.

While I probably won't be able to join a mulitplayer game, you guys inspired me to try a new campaign. Just bought the latest DLC and will do a Scotland game. First goal is to unite the British Isles obviously and the rest of the London trade node. From there I'll see whether I'll try a New World game (Scottish North America) or an eastern Expansion one (Scandinavia + Baltic and North Sea coast line).

ummmmm ive only ever played total war 2 the japan one. i have zero experience with other games like this, but i want to try.

is this EU IV game something worth trying? like can a noob learn it somewhat easily? it looks pretty cool

I think the time that previously worked for multiplayer games was Sunday afternoon EST (so Sunday evenings for euros), trying to play for 3-4 hours or so which worked out to around 40-50 years at speed 3.

I just started myself and finished my 1st campaign and I'm hooked. TW is a good game but imho this one is much better. Initial learning curve is a bit steep, but the game's been out a few years now so there's a ton of online tutorials and content to help you learn the game.

It's a bit pricey if you get the base game + all DLC at once but you can watch for a sale, plus you don't really have to have all the DLC (I have Common Sense but I don't even have it enabled in my current game). DW alerted me to a Steam sale and I got everything for 57% off. If you can get past the initial sticker shock you'll quickly see than on a per-hour basis the game is actually quite cheap. I spent way more for way less on Hearthstone.

Hell I typically spent more on any given two Hearthstone xpacs than I did for this game + all DLC to date.

So I decided I wanted to beat the **** out of people and started an Ottoman game

It's going fine, but I had something happen I've never had happen before: Venice (who I took a lot of the outlying stuff from in an early war, and then they got plonked by some other people) offered to sell me Durazzo for $100.

Hell yes!

Your ****post of the day: someone needs to explain to England how this "Surrender of Maine" thing is supposed to work. (The event fired on like 11/16/1444, which was quite amazing, and yes France taught them how to war...)