Started a KANDY run last night, having fun so far. It took 11 years to get in position to break from my overlord. They were allied with Bahmanis, so I got Vijay to support my independence, I moonwalked all over my overlord while Vijay got rekt by Bahmanis (who were unable to reach me once Vijay peaced out). I control all but 1 province on the island now.

Were elephants always in the game?

Also it looks like Ceylon is completely gone unless I'm missing something, did it ever even exist in the first place? If so why remove it? They even renamed the Ceylon trade node.

Who were the Mamluks?

I knew who they were, but I didn't know who they were!

^ this is when the Mamluks were the slave army of the ruling Egyptian dynasties, until overthrowing the last Ayyubid sultan in 1250, though they continued to import slave soldiers after establishing their rule.

Seems like they should get some kind of tech penalty:

heh yeah I read up on the Mamluks a while ago and found them fascinating, and it does seem like they are way more powerful in the game than they ever were irl

lol the scornful insult is an instant classic

The new buildings for trade companies are soooo OP.

It actually makes sense to spam trade company provinces now just to increase force limits if nothing else.

It boggles my mind the AI won't pay to charter a trade company. It's basically an easy way to establish a beachhead on a new area where we would have had to no CB someone before.

Because they weren't before...

Is there an achievement for running a one province super power? I want to see how big I can get with just a single full state province and expand only via vassals, trade companies, and colonies.

I don't see anything in the achievement list but wondering if I missed something.

Ok so can I get a quick cliffs and tips on estates and how to utilize them? Also how can I best utilize trade companies? Also sorry this is prob a dumb question but do I wanna get exploration as ottomans or should I focus more on other tech/ideas?

I await someone with a clue on the first question. So far I'm haphazardly clicking buttons to get generals and a few other things. I'm sure it's not very efficient, but I'm also sure that you can do just about anything with it short of triggering a disaster and you'll be ahead of ignoring them completely.

On the second one, I feel very comfortable saying it's not a good choice until middle to late game, and by then you'll know when or if you need it.

Basically you will need to make your way all the way down through the Mamluks or thorough the Persian Gulf to even have a chance to colonize anything. Nothing is within range otherwise. Even from there you'll need pretty good diplomatic tech to have enough range to get anywhere (I presume you'd be headed toward Indonesia). I think you need enough other ideas first to comfortably wipe the floor with anyone around you before you even start thinking about that...

and you'll need a lot of ideas to do that, and there's a lot of very nice land around you in every direction that's perfect for "colonizing" once your armies remove the native Hungarians and Crimeans and others.


That said, it CAN be kind of useful say around 1700, maybe, if you enjoy that sort of thing, but if you enjoy that sort of thing you can probably play someone else and have a lot more fun.

Just pick up the exploration idea group after you get in a position to colonize. But if you're not colonizing by 1600s, just forget it and take over other countries' colonies instead.

Sevila gets you African and South American trade. English Channel gets you NA (and potentially all other Americas if you route that way) trade. English Channel tends to be the richest without human players interfering.

Estates are most valuable early game. The most important abilities are the 3 abilities that give you 50 mana per 25 influence (you really want to increase the influence to 75, then get 150 mana) and the free 40 tradition general. As a small nation, you often want to revoke some land from estate and give it to another estate to boost the next one to 75 as just one province and the estate interactions often get you to high influence. Don't worry much about estates becoming angry, something like -10% tax income in pretty irrelevant when your tax income is 0.5 ducat/month. 150 mana is way more valuable.

In the midgame you still want to get mana from them, but you don't really have to micromanage them anymore. In the lategame you can just ignore them and enjoy the small global bonuses they provide.

Exploration as Ottomans is fine, although I would only take after you have conquered decent part of Mamluks so that you can actually reach stuff in the east.

I didn't know any of the above. I always just treated estates as a nuisance and just did enough to keep loyalty above 50%

THanks Anssi.

I cant take any more of the discord pubs of this game. Enviably ends up with a host kicking a bunch of random people for whatever reason hours into the game or a mishmash of rehosts and people crying. People getting mad you don't know where all the expansion buttons are etc etc.

Thanks bro's I appreciate it all. I'm constantly blown away how helpful people are to type up semi long helpful posts. Haven't had a chance to play since the update so I'm pumped to try some new stuff.

For future reference, I strongly recommend playing England for beginners with the Rule Britainnia pack.

I am working on the achievement complete all English missions. I have to say I am super impressed by the mission tree. It's practically a extended tutorial on how to EU4.

Started a Timurid run in the new patch, my first real ironman game (I screwed around a bit with it early on). First try died fast when Shah Rukh died in like February 1445. Second one is going quite a bit better, as he survived long enough for me to get to military tech 4, which if you ever try Timurids seems to be the final break point for "I'm going to be able to get my vassals integrated"...



Random but vital aside: does the main part of the Timurid empire look like the Kool-Aid Man to you too?

So, this Mughal thing is good to do and I want that, right? Because I'm about to be able to do that once I get Delhi cored. I'm also about to very much ruin Mamluks day when I call in my good friends the Ottomans in a war against them. (Aden is a Mamluk ally, which is nice for me as I plan to start whittling them down as well, to secure the Arabian peninsula.) Then back to India for some whipping there.

Ottomans don't look like much on this photo, but not pictured: they, Poland, and Bohemia have already fully partitioned Hungary, with the Ottomans making it all the way to Austria's border. I'm glad they're on my side for once.

Oh God, I see it now.

brought a tear to my eye, thank you so much for that

I'd try to snake to syria and cut off Ottomans from expanding south. At the very least that badly weakens them in case they try to randomly rival you (or for you, if you want to kill them in the future), at the best they stay friends and push into Europe/Ukraine instead which is awesome.

And yes Mughals GOAT, not sure if they changed anything in Dharma but they have one of the best idea sets in the game and get perma claims over India.

yeah, my Mamluks war I didn't take a ton of territory, just three coastal provinces on my side of the peninsula but I released Syria from Aq Qoynulu (boy did I have to look up the spelling on that), and that will be the next war there, using Syria reconquest to cut them off. (We've got the same truce timer as Ottomans, so no worries about being sniped.)

I think I'm actually going to hold off on Mughals, at least for a bit; I did a backup and tested it and it tanked my economy hard (moved capital, and all my trade is downstream), so I'd have to pay to move the capital back... don't feel like it's worth it at the moment.

I can get enough claims -- and free real estate via diplo-vassals -- in India that that doesn't seem to be a big issue.

Timurids doesn't have missions into Europe right? Just grab all of Gulf of Aden and Alexandria and you'll have a really long trade chain coming from Spice Islands and China (if you want). It's too bad the AI sucks at colonizing trade company regions nowadays or it would be even juicier to cut off the Aden/Alexandria trade nodes.

I don’t have many of the DLC so I don’t think I have the trade company stuff to worry about.

I thought I was the only one who loved making memes from europa. Had a mission to take over Zanzibar so I put the lyrics to eff her gently by tenacious d to it where he says I'm not gonna cook it but I'll order it from zanzibar.