Presumably you still can't save, right? 1544, such WIM.

1492 start date too.

Yeah start date is still 1492 and no saving, just no restrictions on country or end date.

Gonna have to go home (EU4 at work #1), heres as far as I got.



Netherlands revolt from some event then them + France + Venice dunked Austria. Bohemia lost its PU with hungary quickly then expanded north. Italy divided into Venice/Milan/Naples, but Naples fully occupied by Spain/Milan so they prolly would be dead soon. Can't see in this pic but Bahamids (no idea who they are) control about 75% of india.

Commonwealth is 100% Catholic. I have aristocracy (started with), diplomacy, religious as ideas. If I knew what counter-reformation did I wouldn't have gone religious. Counter-reformation decision gives +2 missionaries, +2% missionary strength, and +papal influence but you get +5% idea and tech cost. Basically cause I had religious idea I had 4 missionaries which was great for rapidly mass converting Lithuania/crimea but now is worthless.

Also def never taking Hungarian provinces again, costs like 400+ admin power to core them.

oh the irony of my game crashing when I was alt tabbing to come in this thread... sigh

had max stability, biggest army, changed the religions and culture in almost all of my ottamans provinces, tons of gold per month DURING the war (which isnt like my first game! :O)... only at 1502 too and was about to win my first big war by a landslide over that huge country to the east forgot the name >.<

Yeah Hungary starts with +200% cost of core creation on their territory. Better off getting into a PU with them if you can and inheriting them.

Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli all have the +200% core creation too but since they count as overseas (probably a bug) it is still super cheap to core them.

the empire of Portugal will rise again

Played about 10-15 years as Austria last night. Some notes...

Seems like the missions let you wage war as often as you want, as long as your manpower allows. My wars went as follows:
- Flanders declares independence right after the game starts, I take back Antwerpen and the one between Brabant and Vlaandaren; as someone pointed out in EU4 forums, pretty annoying that by breaking away with provinces >100 warscore, even when their revolution fails I can't take all my provinces back
- I get a "claims on Northern Italy" mission giving me claims on Brescia, Cremona, and one other province from Venice, take them from Venice/Milan pretty easily. I like the new "claims" system where you frequently get claims on a province but that doesn't necessarily translate into getting a core on it like it did in EU3. Still undecided how I feel about being able to just spend power to get cores super fast though, having it for 50 years in EU3 made it feel like it meant something and not something that's basically a given once you take a province.
- With my 2/5/1 king, I get quite a few "unclear maps" or whatever events (the one that asks if you want to press the issue to get a claim) for Treviso, Friuli, and Elsass, didn't have time to wage these wars though except for taking Elsass on the way back from a lowlands expedition.
- Go back to the lowlands to finish off Flanders and also take Gelre and Friesland, which I barely even noticed I had cores on lol
- Missions I actually turned down during this timeframe: got one to put Brohemia in a PU (WTF THAT IS SO STRONK) but they were allied with Hungary and my manpower was low, also one to take France's provinces in the Spanish Netherlands region

So yeah, having a choice of 3 missions means you'll have lots of opportunities to go for aggressive expansion if you want it. I did spend almost the entire demo having 0 manpower; patience is required if you're actually playing with the long term in mind.

The monarch power system feels like macroing in SC2, gotta keep my power low by spending it on stuff or else I'm not making the best use of my resources. I didn't pay attention for awhile and then all of a sudden I had like 900 diplo power, lol.

It did feel pretty easy. But then again I was Austria so that's probably realistic. I thought it was funny when I looked at the Flanders rebels at the start of the game like WTF THEY HAVE LIKE 27 REGIMENTS HOW DO I KILL THAT, and then I looked at my troops and was like LOL I HAVE 60.

Anyone understand the trade system? Might try a little time as Venice. And yeah, I guess Venice was busy getting dunked by the Ottomans in 1492 so that's why their navy is nowhere to be found when you attack them? In EU3 (and I certainly hope at EU4 start) they have a much stronger naval presence.

how?

raise your stability gawddamnit.

Also most ideas and things like that require 500+ MP right?



Im also a bit confused by trade system, feel like I'd need an IQ of 200 to get it right away and be sure i'm not doing something wrong...

There's a button somewhere on the province screen, as well as in the stability/overextension page in your kingdom overview thing, where you can spend ADM power to make provinces into cores, and it takes like 3 years or so? In EU3 there were no shortcuts, it would take 50 years of holding a province for it to core.

And yeah, ideas are expensive, and I guess you buy new technology levels from that same power pool. So I guess it does become a tradeoff - the power you spend doing aggressive stuff like taking provinces in wars, making generals, and buying cores may seem small but will add up to prevent you from advancing as quickly in technology/ideas as nations that stay more focused on developing those things. Probably the sort of thing that isn't as obvious to us when we're plowing through other countries in the demo for fun but we'll quickly figure out when 80 years into our first game all of a sudden we can't beat Bavaria's army

sounds terrible!

idk, I kinda liked it. It took more the simple expenditure of some bureaucrats for a province to become part of your history and patrimony - it took blood, sweat, tears, and time!

what can you do or cant do when a province is a core or not?

You dont get PAID if its not core right?

What about building stuff on it?

Yeah you can build on non-core.

tyty

ive never played any of the EU so i have a ****load of questions...

Like I've allied people and done royal marriages, etc. But how do you get into a " personal union" ? And what is that anyway?

How bad do embargos hurt people or yourself?

Also, blockades, Im guessing this only works on the one province youre parking on? What about if you do a blockade on a spot that youre not in war with the country there? Youre keeping them from trading or only stopping them from reinforcing by cogs?

Also, vassals are kind of allies that dont have a choice to obey you when you go to war, etc.?

For future reference: http://eu4wiki.com/

Looks like in EU4 it's a 75% penalty to taxes in non-core provinces.

(well, technically you start with 0% tax collection, typical bonuses get you to around 25%, and cores get +75%)

also y u no casus belli after the a-holes try twice to fabricate **** on my ****.

Everybody decent plays on hard when they solo right?

Trade: Hard to explain but from what I have figured out you only want to be collecting trade in the node that your capital is in because you get a hudge penalty when doing it in a node that your capital isn't in. So you want a merchant collecting trade from whatever node your capital is in, and then any other merchants should be transferring trade from another node that flows into the node your capital is in. Light ships should be used to increase trade power in a node. You only get 2 trade power from having a merchant trading somewhere, which is basically nothing. Having provinces that give trade to a node and having light ships protecting trade give comparatively massive bonuses.

Example, playing as Mamluks, you want a merchant collecting trade in Alexandria. You will have very high trade power due to having so many provinces feeding the alexandria node, as well as your capital, and a fleet of light ships protecting trade. The only other country decently competing with you is Venice if they have a big fleet of light ships transfering trade to Venice, but you should still be able to collect a relatively big % of the Alexandria trade. You then want your 2nd merchant to be xfering trade from the gulf of aden, which will send more of the Aden nodes delicious monies to Alexandria instead of being transferred to Zanzibar or Persia or being collected in Aden. As monies are transferred downstream the amount gets increased. As I get more merchants I will have them transfer trade from Indus and Ceylon, which will then go through Aden and then to Alexandria, increasing the total monies.

In my current game, Alexandria has 5.19 local income and 2.23 incoming from gulf of Aden node. I have ~50% of the total trade power in Alexandria (no idea if this is good or optimal or what), which is netting me 3.74 income, and 3.71 is being transferred downstream to Constantinople and Venice.

Got to 1579 as Mamluks before Ottomans rolled me 2x. Not sure if I like having 5 year truces but 10 year manpower recovery. Ottomans as u can see in pic got huge, they took like 5-6 provinces from Poland/Lith and just got enormous and had 2x my troops and invaded during Westernization. After losing all my manpower in the 1st war, I was slowly rebuilding/recovering and they dec me again before my manpower can even recover .

Other highlights:
Lol France
Lol Poland
Persia started from 4 provinces revolting from AQ, now 20+ provinces
Big Russia

Is that Timurids in central Asia?

pretty much read the whole wiki, think I get how all the trading works now.

What im just curious about is if its clear which provinces are part of each nodes, etc. And how far they go.

Apparently the range of the node doesnt matter as long as A: you have the same number of provinces on the node and B: youre inside your max range?

There's a trade map mode (there's a map mode for everything, it's awesome , in particular you should get familiar with diplo map mode as it shows you graphically everything you need to know about any wars you're in, as well as some useful info like what provinces you have cores/claims on) which I believe shows which provinces belong to which trade node.

hehe im not that worthless ive tried out all the little modes

Same reason it wasn't colonized by the Japanese (til WW2 anyway) - too many people. China has often been around 25% of the global population.