Whenever I play now I just randomly pick an achievement to go for.

I feel like naturally though most games are over by 1650 or so. The vast majority of all my games in EU3 and EU4 end before 1650. I think if most of your games are lasting 1700+ you are some kind of masochist.

Heh I guess I'm having the opposite issues, I'm too much of a noob to do a WC with the consensus easiest nation in the game.

I think we are going to try multiplayer today. Probably going to start ~15 GMT time (https://time.is/GMT) and end at 19. Maybe continue tomorrow/next weekend/never.

lol need some more notice than that my dude

Well it was bit of an ex tempore thing. We played on to ~1480, then one guy had to go and we saved. Going to continue tomorrow about the same time, if you want to jump in, you are welcome to.

- Dharma release date: Sep 6
- One-day sale with most expansions 75% off to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the game. Naturally, the only one I don't have (Rule Britannia) is the only one not on sale

OK so I gobbled up Candar, Byzantium (vassalizing Athens in the process), Albania, the Trebizond capital, Karaman, and Serbia (in that order). My hope was that by ping-ponging back and forth between east and west I would limit my aggressive overexpansion.

It seems that now, however, I am starting to upset the Mamaluks and Wallachia in particular. I am not too concerned about either of them, but I am beginning to wonder whether I am not doing enough to contain my AE.

It seems like vassalizing nations creates nearly as much AE, so I am also not so sure when I should do that rather than just taking them. Just when I am short on admin points and diplo-annexing is more viable?

The primary worry with AE is coalitions forming against you, and it takes at least 4 nations with more than 50 AE against you for that to happen. So, you can piss off one of your neighbors repeatedly, just make sure it doesn't spread too much.

Yeah, and also when the vassal is in a strategic position where you'll be able to feed it more provinces from future wars.

Force vassalizing still causes two-thirds the amount of AE as annexing so keep this in mind.

There is a Coalition mapmode that will show you other countries AE against you. Basically look at who is pissed at you and which are the strongest nations. Raise relations with these countries. If you have a positive relationship with a country they won't join a coalition against you even with more than 50 AE. You can get a country to leave a coalition by raising their opinion of you to +50.

As Ottomans the only countries you need to worry about in a coalition are Austria, Venice, Mamluks, and Hungary (depending on how they are doing). So basically keep good relations with Austria and Hungary. Venice too if you have already taken their islands. Don't worry about Mamluks since you'll be ****ing them up soon enough.

If a country lost a ton of land and gets reduced to 1/a few provinces, and has a ton of cores on its lost land, if you force-vassalize them you can then retake those cores for very low AE. They can also be useful if there are a lot of wrong-religion and wrong-culture provinces that can be fed to your vassal where they would be same-culture and same-religion. For example, you could force vassalize Serbia and feed them all the Serbian and Orthodox provinces in Hungary, Bosnia, Ragusa, Albania, etc.

As ottos it doesn't matter as much because you can just steamroll over everything and get bonuses to core cost reduction and tolerance of heathens, but feeding your vassal its cores is extremely useful as smaller countries and when in high-AE areas like the HRE.

+ Poland, which I think it the scariest of them all.

Helpful comments from all. Thank you.

So life hack time guys. I watched some videos of other people playing this game and figured out that the reason I lose so many fights is not really understanding how the truce system and alliances work (when I declare war). Much much easier to defeat the opponents 2v3 than 1v6. Carry on.

I don't know if it is new with 1.25 or what but in a lot of my recent games Poland/Lithuania somehow find a way to failboat more often than not. It ends up being Bohemia and Hungary taking polish land and Muscovy/Russia taking Lithuania.

Same, and I'm 2/2 for Bohemia becoming the dominant eastern Euro power and HRE boss country

Hungary got a bunch of extra provinces, events, and dev a few patches back which made them much stronger, and Russia got an entire DLC boosting them. It used to take a few decades for Moscow to take out Novgorod and the hordes, now if the ai snowballs properly they can finish Novgorod in 2 wars while simultaneously taking huge chunks from kazan and GH.

Depending on who rivals who, Poland can also have a complete lack of allies. They usually get rivaled by Hungary, Denmark, and Bohemia, leaving only Austria as a decently powered ally, but Austria always allies with Hungary itself making any alliance with Poland almost impossible. So what happens a lot of the time is Moscow snowballs, attacks Lithuania for its claims while Poland/Lith are weak and dealing with the frequently spawning rebels. Poland gets wrecked, Hungary dogpiles and brings in Austria, then sometimes Bohemia dogpiles as well, now Poland is destroyed.

Poland also really has nowhere to expand after it takes TO/LO, preventing it from snowballing like Ottomans and Russia always do. West is HRE, south is Hungary/Ottomans, Ottomans get free vassal over Crimea to SE, and east is Russia. They used to be able to take Crimea and GH, but Moscow usually takes a lot of GH before you can finish off TO/LO, and Crimea almost always picks Ottoman protection. Obv this is Polish AI, a player poland can do filthy things like force vassalizing Novgorod after they get wrecked by Moscow and then dunking Moscow while they war the hordes and feeding Novgorod back all its lost provinces.

So I got bored of the Ottoman game, decided to play as Mali.

It’s 1500, I’ve taken over my part of Africa, and started colonizing Brazil (4/5 to a colonial nation thanks to native abuse). Also stole Cape Verde from Portugal in the least fought war ever.

Good second idea group? Ideally something from admin.

I'd almost always say admin but once you take most of West Africa there isn't much more to conquer until you start eating East Africa, so the core cost reduction doesn't matter as much. I'd go with Economic to deal with inflation and help develop institutions with the -20% dev cost. Plus great policies later in the game.

Also, pretty sure since you have QFTNW you have a chance at spawning colonialism which will be pretty lol for Europe. Even if you don't get the spawn, once you finish your colonial nation it will spread pretty quickly.

Yeah, didn’t get colonialism, Portugal did.

I was also thinking economic so thanks for confirmation. I am planning to start eating Kongo area soon enough.

Almost forgot my other thought... innovative for the tech cost reduction that comes early? Would help catch up there, some of the other stuff is useful....

Innovative is great but the way I look at it is that you are getting -10% tech costs but it costs +20% more dev to spawn the institutions (compared to Economic). Plus its not like you will be researching techs while you are like 50% increased tech costs, you will be spending dev on spawning institutions. Innovative helps you catch up faster once you get the institutions, but if you are regularly spawning institutions you shouldn't be all that far behind anyways. Innovative has the -25% advisor costs though, and you are so rich that you could likely run all lvl 3/4 advisors for higher monarch point income.

I decided over lunch I’d run with innovative. We’ll see if I like it.

Have a lovely 8 year regency council to deal with (5/4/3 at least!) so next few years should go fast haha.

Main reason for innovative is the policy you get with quality: +20% infantry combat ability.

Yeah, that will make my military group choice easier.

Random aside: there are few things I've done that are more amusingly satisfying than stealing English colonies and newly founded cores in the Caribbean in 1525 as Mali while they're stuck in a war with France and Scotland.

23 of my 26% final war score, which will be juuuust enough to take all their stuff, will be from the ticking.

I find this way funnier than maybe I should.