LOL after integrating norway + sweden, killing hansa, and taking most of the baltic coast, i completely dominate lubeck, the north sea, and the baltic sea. If I get another merchant I'll have him forward from novgorod too where I have provinces trading (finland area). In my most recent war with novgorod I had them transfer me 30% of their trade power, which was forwarding trade to the baltic sea node. Because almost every country that was heavily trading in the baltic is dead no one besides me really has trade power there, so my merchant/fleet is forwarding 9.94 from there to lubeck.


Luneberg has a merchant forwarding to lubeck from the baltic too. After the forwarding bonus lubeck is getting ~14.5 from there, turning lubeck into by far the richest node with over 2x value of the 2nd place node seville.



Dat moneyyyyyyyyyyyy


Europe 1501, Moscow has been my ally for 50+ years and is probably the only reason I haven't been wrecked by the Polish-Lithuanian juggernaut.

Merchants give you 2 trade power in the node where they're sent, and make it possible for you to use light ships to add more power to that node.

Basically - you get trade power in a node by a.) having a merchant there (gives you 2) b.) having provinces that belong to the node c.) having light ships adding to your power there (can only do that if one of a.) or b.) applies).

You then control a share of the trade in that node proportional to your trade power - if all the countries w/ trade power in a node have a sum of 10 power, and you have 2 power, congrats, you now control 20% of the trade.

With that control, you can...
- collect $$$ - converts your trade power in that node into $$$. Can only be done by a merchant and should only be done in the node that your capital belongs to, because there's a big penalty (-80%?) doing it in other nodes.
- steer trade - directs the trade you control towards your home node, increasing the $$$ value of your home node, which means your merchant there makes more $$.

As you get more merchants, you'll want to do this from even farther and farther away - like, Venice has Wien, Ragusa, and Alexandria feeding into it. Wien is landlocked so **** that noise (as you can see from my screenshot above, my ability to do anything there is not great), you'll want merchants in Ragusa and Alexandria steering towards Venice. Once you get more merchants, you'll probably want to add them to Constantinople to steer towards Ragusa (which will in turn get steered by your merchant there towards Venice).

how the hell am i getting my ass kicked by france as england

I guess im not really supposed to fight on land and just let them have the provinces?

Dat...Palatinate? wtf is the bright turquoise country NW of Austria? And jesus Cologne

Things that might cause you to get your ass kicked:
- smaller army
- attacking into someone in hills/river (defending is generally better, if you can make them attack you instead of vice versa), in the battle if you see a "-1" or "-3" or something like that in the row with your dice rolls that means you have terrain disadvantage
- if they have kickass generals and you don't (mouse over their leader during a fight, if his shock value is really high and you don't have a high shock general then gg) - also make sure you assign your generals to lead armies, I'm sure France prob starts the game with some good ones (as will England)
- if they have NIs/tech increasing morale and you don't, battle screen will show the corresponding morales of your army and theirs for you to compare
- if their discipline is way higher than yours (neither this nor last bullet point should be the case at start of game though)
- if they have better troops than you (i.e. they have land tech 8 unlocking Galloglaigh Infantry and you're on land tech 7, rut roh)
- probably not the case but one thing that can cause you to have worse morale that might cause an "oh ****" moment you don't even realize until a fight starts - you're gonna want to have your army maintenance at 100% during war

the only thing they have is a bigger army, and theres no way I can have a bigger army at the start of the game.

They have like 7 allies and probably 80k troops together at the start, even bringing portugal in your troops in normandie and others plces are guaranteed for slaughter

I tried a couple of times to win this. I evacuated the troops from the northern province and let France siege the two. I shipped them down to the bottom and took the two small vassals. Then I spent quite a lot of time microing to pick off small parts of France's army. In the end I had a couple more troops than him and was able to take the capital, though it probably wasn't worth it - it just meant I kept everything I started with.

It helps a lot to have Portugal join in. Also to spend all your money early on on more troops and ship them across as soon as you can. Not losing stacks is very important at the start, it's so easy to get into a 2:1 underdog fight.

So for my first game at the spur of the moment I selected Timurids. Not intending to play seriously I learned 2 things:

1. You can only declare 1 war at a time, which sucks.

2. Manpower is very painful to recover.

But I did get 5 achievements!

Ta for the trade advice.

Is there a way to break people's alliances? I'd really like to invade Scotland but if I did I'd lose my three northern French provinces to Burgandy and I'm too poor to build enough infantry to stop him.

Timurids look hilarious:



27 years later, still dealing with the same rebels wandering around, trading seiges.. looks like so much fun.

Augsburg! They and ulm somehow killed bavaria and each had 3 provinces, then I turn around and somehow they took Austrian provinces

i'm forced to wait a week to start this game. what's the verdict? are certain strategies OP?

lol, I read Kirby's post wrong and thought he was France getting his ass kicked by England, was gonna go look at France's starting position and strategize and stuffs.

For England, though, there is the inescapable fact that they aren't in a great position in 1444 and historically lost the war within the next 10 years. Which isn't to say that they can't win it in EU4, but winning the Hundred Years War is gonna be some EU4 For Advanced Players stuff and not something I'd get your heart set on accomplishing in your first game.

Give up the positions in france, grab scotland and ireland then push back in later imo.

Pff, just do both! Like I'm failing to at the moment!

Listen up, ye wee English lad. Scotland is THROUGH puttin up with yer crap.

Ottomans might put an end to my 2nd game. Poor Byz

So it looks like i got a copy of ck2 to gift away.
First PM with over 100 posts gets it, if anyone wants it.

WORLD FIRST!

Seems a lot harder to get out of PU's. You have to not like the senior country, so that "increase relations" makes it super hard to get out of one.

Oh wow, that's disappointing (@daer)

Screw it, declared war on Aragon to get out of this. Rolled a pretty great king at 5/5/3 too, at least I will go out in flames.

what's the best/fastest way to make money in this game? i'm playing as portugal and control most of morocco (including the province with gold), yet my budget is still in the negative.

Turn army maintenance down in peacetime, build temples/constables, work on dat trade income

I just played as Denmark up to 1502 and it seemed a bit too easy. Integrating Norway and Sweden is just a matter of time. My Denmark looks similar to Nonfictions. Now I have to wait til I can form Scandinavia.