Ya theres an event series if Burgundy is AI and their king dies with no heir, instead of getting regency they get partitioned by Austria and France. France gets the Burgundy/French provinces and Austria gets the lowlands.

That explains a lot. In the game I am playing, Austria just steamrolled Hungary (and Bavaria and Switzerland) and is basically an unstoppable juggernaut now. Not sure if I want to keep playing.

Meanwhile France is failboating and losing to England and Castille in two seaparate wars.

Hm... maybe if I get my prestige up and get a royal marriage with Austria and hope for a luckbox inheritance. That doesn't sound like too much fun though.

Maybe I could do something with the dishonorable scum CB against Austria.

Ok actually it might be that france + whoever is HRE splits it, because in my current game Bohemia is emperor and wound up with the lowlands.

That makes sense. In my game it happened really early (like 1460) before the first emperor died. Austria went HAM on Naples and Hungary. Pissed everyone off and ended up losing a big war vs. England (my ally by 1510) and a coalition of poland, lithuania and like half of HRE. I intentionally dragged the war out to get relations up with all the electors and ended up getting elected HRE. I'm going to be nursing that for the next 100 years or so and hopefully will form HRE.

Broke alliance with Hungary when Ottomans attacked an exhausted Hungary. Took a big prestige hit but I just didn't have the manpower to fight the Ottomans. I had a diplomat getting relations up with Austria(just so they don't try attacking me again.) Somehow or another, Austrians offered me alliance. I snap accepted. I suspect it's because I was HRE and we both had Hungary and France as rivals.

Ottomans gobbled up like half of Hungary. My al-Misr Arab and Bedouin Provinces (accepted cultures) are still buffered by the remnants of Malmucks so I have some time before I need to deal with Ottomans but that's going to be coming up next... starting with directing my trade fleet to constantinopole and inciting peasant revolts.

My hope is the Ottomans take a few more Hungarian provinces before I need to start the attack and I can start expanding HRE boundaries (and imperial power) at Ottoman's expense.

Vassalized Savoy. Now I just need to consolidate my holdings and let manpower recover.

PS: Muster somehow managed to grab some territory from Austria and other HRE countries and is actually close to forming Netherlands (are they even eligible?)

Any interest in getting a mp game started? Def not on Sundays due to football starting, but maybe like a Saturday game? Might not work for some people due to college football etc though so not sure what day would be best.

Not sure if we have a ton of people here who want to try MP yet (or can make the commitment), so I'm trying to coordinate with FHC forums where we got some people for EU3 mp. There was some discussion over there about potentially doing a new MP game after the next patch which hopefully has some balance changes. If we consolidate people from here and there we can probably get 16+ people to start which would make for some pretty insane games.

What time settings are used in MP?

speed 3 normally, if big player wars or people are lagging speed 2.

We ran at speed 1 during some of the player wars. Generally the EU4 speeds are faster than EU3's. 1 was still pretty quick for such large wars.

It's been about 45 years per session. 3 rounds in and we're in 1587.

New game will probably be starting whenever the first big patch comes (supposedly sometime this month), so there's still some time to practice up. But generally speaking, I think EU4 is a lot easier to get the basic hang of than EU3 was. It shouldn't take too long to be multiplayer capable.

Yeah, Ottomans declared on me first. sunk 50 of my ships but i was able to force a white peace after blitzing constantinopole.

Rebuild time.

As Russia:



Doesn't it take two tries? Now that I know that forming Russia is +3 stablisation, I would wait til admin tech 10 to westernise?

If you guys need a sacrificial lamb for MP, let me know.

so i'm on my 3rd Byzantium game.
1st game crushed.
2nd game got some advice in here, made it much longer, but due to some tactical errors, ended up in a horrible position, and quit.
3rd game, going well so far. Some advice on playing byzantium, because i think its rather tough.
As has been pointed out in the thread, blocking the straight off Constantinople is key to every single battle against the ottomans. They would have an army of 20, i'd have 5, and i'd take 2-3 provinces because they couldn't get to my armies. So force of Galleys is key. Now, Ottomans get the mission to take constantinople pretty fast, so your opening moves need to be a beeline to 20 galleys. In my experience, this means no advisors, no buildings, I will often delete my starting cogs and trade ships, supporting 20 galleys on 3 provinces is pretty hard.
In wars against the ottomans, always know where their armies are. You dont want to go to war when they are on your side of the straight. Also, dont be afraid of the ottomans, its often in your interest to go to war with them so that it is on your terms. You dont want them to move onto your side of the straight, then declare war, its always better to move your ships into position, then declare war yourself.
Once you have taken athens and a couple other ottoman provinces. you're getting in better shape. you should be starting to stabilize finances and have a nice 25ish galley fleet. This lets you take naxos, rhodes, corfu and crete fairly easily. Your flee should be more than enough to take on venice at this point. At some point you should make an alliance with the mamluks, who can help on the naval front against venice/ottoman/crimea(generally an ottoman ally), and on land opening an eastern front against the ottomans.
Teching and leader points are kind of tough through this period. As I said, in the opening stages, you are going to be dumping so much cash into a navy, you won't be hiring advisors, so points are pretty sparse.
Obviously you cannot fall behind in military tech, so all your military points will be going here. The other place you can spend them is on harsh treatment of rebels. You are never going to have a huge military, so preventing rebels is pretty valuable.
That leaves admin and diplo. while you are building your 20 galley navy, save admin to get to admin tech 4, which gives you an idea group. after that, use admin to continue research, core provinces, increase stability, etc.
Now for diplo. I spent almost nothing on diplo tech. Once I had a free idea group, i dumped all my diplo points into the navy group. The navy idea group does some awesome things for Byzantium. First, naval moral +1, makes naval battles that much easier. +100% naval force limits. for the early stages, this helps big time as i was at times 25/16 my navy supply limit. getting this Bump really helps your tight budget by cutting navy support cost. latter on, once your established, you can still maintain a huge 40 galley fleet, and still have supply left over to start building trade ships to start recovering economically. +100% prestige from naval battles. You're going to be fighting a lot of them, and prestige helps just about everything. -20% ship costs. This comes too late to help with building your galleys, but when you are ready to switch to building a trade fleet, this helps a lot in reducing that cost.
At this point in my game, I think the Ottomans have 3 provinces left in the balkans. Not sure where i'll head after I take them. I could then continue east and finish them, head north into hungry, attempt a naval invasion of naples, or something else.
So I think for ~20 galley rush for byzantium is not an option, but i'm curious on peoples thoughts on completely disregarding one tech for maxing out an idea (navy in this case) as fast as possible.
Couple random notes: 4 artillery units makes sieges go much, much faster.
this game has given me some interesting ideas on the balance of points between tech and ideas. before i thought one strategy was to just use ideas as a dump for points once you hit the tech limit. Now I'm thinking another strat could be rushing thru ideas as fast as possible then catching up in tech. For instance, get economic/trade ideas, rush thru asap, use extra money to hire advisors and catch up in tech. Similar to this, get tech ideas, rush thru it, then use the reduced tech cost to catch up.
I think the improvement from EU3 to EU4 on a strategic level is huge. Much more strategy in balancing decision making

Agree with strategy, I can see why people played eu3 for so long. I had a go at Byzantium two games before my current one, but couldn't get anywhere. I didn't know about the ship-blocking thing at the time though.

I was idly considering going for the global conquest achievement, but realised it's pretty hard. The main problem is huge overextension, leading to constant rebellion, leading to needing armies at home, leading to huge upkeep costs, leading to deficits.

I figure that the way around that is to concentrate on rebel suppression (and maybe buildings?) and colonisation. You need all the free gold that African and American nations have. Presumably an extra diplomat would help too, as they're taking 100+ days going back and forth selling provinces.

So I guess it needs to go Religious Ideas, Exploration Ideas and Expansion Ideas. I think I'll try going Portugal, colonise everything in sight while teching to three idea groups and building up my economy, then invading. Diplo points are for negotiating peace and military points for teching.

oh, one other thing. I was in a situation where i was saving money for the accumulate money mission, went to war, and needed to spend money asap, but was still 30-40 ducats short of the accumulate goal. dont forget that repay loans is now an option. my reward for hitting the ducat goal was ~40 additional. The interest on a 45 ducat loan was 9 ducats. take loan, complete mission, immediately repay loan, profit.
the mission structure in eu4 seems more dynamic than eu3, so this may be an exploitable thing. get money mission -> take a loan or two -> complete mission -> pay back loans -> spend money -> get money mission again.
but i haven't tried it yet.

You fail the mission if you take a loan

i thought it said complete. must have clicked thru too fast, oh well.

Or maybe it failed me as the game auto-took the loan for mine.

I always find that I have more military points than I strictly need. Presumably it's worthwhile hiring 10 generals and firing all but the best one or two when that happens? You generally don't need to get 5+ year early tech penalties to stay level with your neighbours.

I still think the best thing you can with military points is take the military idea that gives you -10% tech cost when completed.

(Plutocracy)

Oh, interesting. Most countries can't get it.

Plutocracy

Countries without access to Aristocracy Ideas get Plutocracy Ideas instead.

Tradition Of Payment Possible Mercenaries +50%
Abolished Serfdom Land Morale + 0.25
Bill Of Rights Global Revolt Risk -1
Free Merchants +1 Merchants
Free Subjects Production Efficiency +20%
Humanist Tolerance Tolerance of Heathens +2
Emancipation Manpower Recovery Speed +20%
Bonus Technology Cost -10%

-10% tech cost is horrible compared to bonuses the strong military ideas like defensive or offensive give you. Especially since all the other ideas in plutocracy aren't really focused on military.

But I don't want to wage war

Hmm, in the Ryuku world domination thread, he talks about giving his vassals territories. How do you do that? Offer to sell for 20?

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...-A-Ryukyu-AAR/

you can create vassals somewhere in your country tab

think thats what hes doing... dunno. DOesnt lower overextension tho?

He conquers more land than would be manageable in terms of overextension. Then he immediately creates a vassal (if he has no adjacent one already), and sells the newly conquered stuff to the vassal at a minimum price. In this fashion, the provinces will be cored when he diplo-annexes later, and he does not need to spend Adm points or deal with the rebels. Only thing he needs to make sure before going to war is that the vassal will accept the lands when the war ends (no culture/religion negative acceptance modifiers.)

Makes sense. But what is the deal with overextension?

Well, your vassal's lands don't count towards overextension? Not sure what you mean. So if you have 12 provinces, causing 300% overextension after war, sell them to the vassal. Boom, 0% overextension. Then, 10 years later, diplo-annex the sucker and boom, nicely cored new lands ...