How do you activate Ironman mode? I can't find it anywhere.

In the options menu on the country select screen

Thank you very much. Just curious: how did you know this? I've read the manual, the wiki, most of the developer diaries. Googled a bunch. Unless I've missed something.... Also, any way to increase this?

Thanks, again!

Was probably from this threat and then experiencing it myself. It is definately annoying how hard it is to google information about game mechanics.

There are few ideas that unlock more diplomatic relations slots. Some governments also grant extra slots, at least Shogunate gives +4.

Random things I'd like to know:

How exactly is neighbor bonus for tech calculated?
How am I supposed to have 60% of income coming from trade? This is one of the mission but even as Venice only 40% comes from trade.
Can you change Venice's government to any other republic or other governments?


Btw I really like opening with the military idea that gives -10% tech after you complete all the ideas in the tree. Also helps getting your national ideas.

60% of income coming from trade probably means...
- get ideas/tech that increase trade efficiency/income/power
- build marketplaces/docks not constables/temples

This was probably true for me at some point in my current Venice game, though I never had that mission so I didn't specifically check.

racking in like 80 ducats per month yoooo

VENICE: Part Three

(Part One)
(Part Two)

When we left off, the War for Cyprus was about to begin. Our surprise attack on the Mamlukian fleet takes them completely by surprise:



Decimated! The siege of Cyprus begins promptly. With not much going on as I attack the siege 3 fort, I take a moment to figure out how the **** sieging works because I've found it very confusing up to this point:



Ok, so it's actually not so bad. The siege modifiers - the 7 numbers on the left of the percentage - are all added together each siege phase; at the start of the phase here, they add up to -5 (-3 for fort level, forget what the -2 is but obv you can mouse over it to see). Then, a dice is rolled to get a random number from 1-14. Your siege modifiers are added to that number (so, I can only roll between -4 and 9 thanks to the -5), and depending on the result, various things happen:
- roll from 5-7 - supplies shortage, siege phase (the far left modifier) increases by 1
- roll from 12-13 - food shortage, siege phase increases by 2
- roll from 14-15 - water shortage, siege phase increases by 3
- roll from 16-19 - defenders desert, think this is phase +1 and the garrison gets smaller
- roll 20+ - the province surrenders!

If this looks hopeless for me, the way you eventually win a siege is that the siege phase that gets increased by these rolls is one of the modifiers - the dice rolls increase the siege phase, which increases the siege modifiers (or, to begin with, makes them less negative), which eventually gets the modifiers high enough that they will add to your dice roll instead of taking away from them, and when that happens you will finally have a chance of rolling a 20+.

If you roll a 14 exactly on the dice (modifiers not taken into account for this one), that's a special case and you get the "walls breached" bonus, which is a +3 modifier. So when you see the crumbling walls icon in your status window, it means you have that working for you and your siege should advance much faster than usual.

So, the number displayed next to a siege that you see everywhere (on the map, on the status bar on the right) is your odds of winning the siege (rolling a 20+) on the next dice roll. It kinda looks like a progress indicator (and it kind of is, since it will get better over time), but that's not quite what it is. Hopefully this makes sense! I found it very confusing before taking the time to read all the popups and figure out what was going on.

Eventually Cyprus falls, but our warscore is a pathetic 5%; the enemy will not give in to demands without 10%, and Cyprus is worth 21% warscore anyway. Hmm. I don't see any armies around, so I take a risk and dive into the great unknown, hoping I can quickly occupy Alexandria to force the Mamluk navy to fight mine and win a big naval battle:





Whoops. My army doesn't get back to the ships in time, but they luckily escape from the losing battle and I take them back to Cyprus.

I come up with another plan: bring enough troops that I can outnumber the Mamluks. I only have 8 cogs, so I'll have to transport the second wave of troops before the battle ends if my army is intercepted before they all land.



This does not go as well as I hoped.



My land army is of course stuck, and I didn't get a screenshot but the regiment is hunted down and destroyed.

I do notice around this time that my warscore is steadily increasing due to holding Cyprus, my war goal. That's a pretty nifty mechanic!



Additionally, the Mamluks' Timurid allies decide they want out eventually (they and Golden Horde never showed up, obviously, as they have no way to get out here):



which gives a nice boost to my warscore, and soon after I'm finally able to take Cyprus!



And so, in 1477, Cyprus finishes coring and things are looking bright for the future of Venice. My infrastructure investments are paying off in the form of an exceptionally strong economy, from both trade and taxes.



My next mission has taken me closer to home: I am to take the province of Cremona from my rival, Milan.

NEXT TIME!

so admin pts are worth way more than anything else right?
stability, unlock national ideas, creates cores, and just tech.

Depends, I think diplo ideas are pretty clearly the best so those are pretty valuable.

I ran diplo leaders in Venice all the way and then finally took my first admin leader in the last election so I can get up to admin tech 7 and unlock a military idea group (have too many mil points stacking up and not doing anything useful).

playing as a non euro is pretty interesting. with poland, it seemed i had enough pts to stay at tech limit, but was very sparse on ideas. vijay game, struggling horribly for points. vijay gets 50% tech penalty, so each tech is 900 pts.

also, if you play a non euro, make sure you hover over the westernize button, it sounds fun

yeah admin pts are worth millions more than anything else.

Take it from the guy who has had a leader with 1 admin, 2 admin, and 0 admin in a row for my king.

Man it would seem to me that attackers coming into my lands would be the ones suffering the terrain penalties, not the other way around....

Sounds like they were in your territory but they were defenders in the battle?

Attacker always gets terrain penalty. Being in hostile territory does make your opponent more likely to suffer attrition though.

Alright that's good to know.

Sieges....I'm supposed to just wait until their garrison whittles to zero or assault them and lose 50% of my forces??

I explained sieges in my latest VENICE post (#582), check that out.

If you knock their walls down then assault can be viable. I've only really found it useful when I've had huge numerical superiority but I guess there can be times that you need to take the province RIGHT NOW too.

Has anyone tried lowering naval maintenance? It seems likely that it's worthwhile at certain points - losing 5% of light ship trade power could save you money if your trade isn't that high. I just can't be bothered working out when that happens.

I am beginning to feel genuine affection for Castille as they've twice sent their armies to put down rebellions in (my) Granada.

Randomed a Vijay game, same exact problem. Not only does tech cost more, you get 1 less point per month compared to other techs.

Having a lot of fun with this game so far just roflstomping people with England and other various superpowers, but I'll probably pick a more challenging country soon. Are there any of the smaller/lesser countries that are particularly interesting?

We got a narwhal!

Byzantium is supposedly pretty hard, and if you got the preorder DLC they have some cool events/missions to help you along.

Is there a way to tell how much money someone has?

Not that I'm thinking of invading the Incans again.

They thought there was no way that Mighty Burgundy could win without its allies against the biggest coalition the world has seen yet?!

Mwaha haha aha ha!



Killed about 100 000 soldiers in this war so far. 80k to go.

what happens if I make austria (head of HRE) become protestant?

EU 4 on sale for 15€ on a brazilian site

http://www.nuuvem.com.br/produto/126...universalis-iv

will buy it this afternoon

Yes you did, thanks for the info.