This is the path I'm attempting. There's a small island chain just south of Kamchatka peninsula that I finally uncovered, I'm settling it now. But I'm not sure it's even adjacent so I still may need to no-CB attack in order to take it.

I mean, they kinda look like they're connected...but now that I think about it, there's no dotted line there so maybe not?

If two provinces share a coast in a single sea tile, they are considered neighbors for fabricating claims. Sea bridges or whatever the dotted lines are officially called are only for movement of troops.

Okay great, looks like I'm good then.

So I just conquer up that peninsula and it will open up Alaska?

So I'm playing this Ottoman game, I've already got six vassals in 1499 and am in the process of pounding the Mamluks for I think the fourth time, and Crimea volunteers to be my march through an event. Mind you, they've taken over most of the Great Horde lands already.

I mean, seven is a ridiculous number of vassals (I'd just started integrating a couple of them before declaring war, but it's going to be a while), but as the saying goes...



All I need to do is keep this 3/6/5 ruler in bubble wrap for about 45 years and I'll be okay!

So, yeah, here's the situation. This seems... very very good?

Crimea is a march as noted above (note their nice work moving north before I brought them in).

Vassals are (counterclockwise from bottom left) Algiers, Tripoli, Hejaz, Haasa, Hisn Kafya, and Imeriti. I'm in the process of integrating Hisn Kafya and Hejaz, but it won't be done for about 10 more years each at current rates (will be more like 7 when overextension goes away from last war).




Edit to add: I could diplo vassalize a few other people right now, including Lucca which just seems goofy to me, but I'm going to hold off until I get a couple others integrated. No reason to have Tripoli exist any more, for instance.

wow yeah that's pretty solid, no reason not to go WC with that kind of early success

Me, 450 hours in this game, playing Ottomans:

DWetzel, 1499: all the above areas vassalized or annexed plus Mamluks mostly shredded, all of North Africa from Mamluks to Morocco under control, most of Arabia vassalized, already extended to Basra and near the Caspian Sea

I am trash

Maybe

I’ve had a very lucky run. Getting Tripoli and a bit of Tunis has meant that my last three Mamluk “wars” have consisted of them running up to siege Kef while I ravage their lands. I don’t think there have been any battles involving more than 5k troops on each side. I’ve also had no ruler with less than 14 ADM so far. Hungary and Austria never teamed up for some reason and I was able to punch them in the face (and the AI has used them and Venice as punching bags the last few years, it’s pretty funny). Actually NOT taking all the land I could has been key at some points just to avoid coalitions — I did have one coalition war but it was Hungary as the leader missing one of its border forts, Venice, and like Circassia and Albania, so it didn’t do so good.

One tip for Ottomans in particular (stole this from someone’s Byzantium run YouTube video) is that by taking certain provinces you can release vassals and then use Reconquest CB to take a bunch of stuff at very low AE.

Also, keep the eye out for free diplovassals. If you’re not taking Ramazan and Hisn Kafya at the start, you should. Tripoli popped up randomly due to luck but that was free and a crucial entry into Tunis (Tripoli had like 5-6 cores there tonreconquest where Incouldnt even get a claim). Taking Haasa was free real estate and (not shown) let me take some stuff from Oman. I now own the island of Hormuz, diplovassalized one province Baluchistan, who — guess what — has cores all over Sind. I need one province from Fars to be able to walk there, but that’s on the list soon. In about 15 years I’ll be knocking on India’s doorstep.

Don’t worry, there’s a France/Castille (feat. Aragon and Naples)/Portugal triple alliance I’ve been studiously avoiding for a while. That’s not going to be great.

You're both doing massively better than I did with Ottomans. I obv had nfi what I was doing though (still don't for the most part). If I do another run with them I'll definitely make North Africa an early priority for the reason DW said, I found out way too far into the game that you can game Mamluks to leave their Eastern doors basically wide open while they fart around with whatever Tunis was before it formed.

The thing about WC I don't get is when I declare on European nations even if I run up 100 war score I can still only take 2-3 provinces. Like one big trade province will be 50 war score. With a 5 year truce between wars (and crazy alliances/coalitions make war decs impossible half the time) how do you grab them all in time?

You need a bunch of avenues of expansion basically. Two provinces here, three up there, three over yonder. Always be warring.

Disclaimer: I usually get bored about 1650-1700 and have never actually done so.

Mid-late game, administrative efficiency massively lowers warscore and coring costs.


+10% Administrative tech 17
+20% Administrative tech 23 (cumulative)
+30% Administrative tech 27 (cumulative)
+0.4% Per point of Yearly absolutism.png Absolutism (max +40%)
+5% Administrative efficiency ability (Age of Absolutism)

Also, at diplo tech 23 you also get the imperialism cb which is 75% warscore cost modifier for all provinces.

Province warscore cost is calculated by:

Base: 5 per province.
Development: 1 per development, cap at 30
Trade power: 0.2 per base trade power (before modifiers applied)
Capital: +2% of (base + development) cost if the province is a capital

Local autonomy: −0.33% per percentage point
Size of nation: −1% per 15 development of nation (owner)
Administrative efficiency: −1% per point of of the annexing country's administrative efficiency

Diplomatic Idea #6 gives 20% province warscore cost reduction.

So small nations (trade nations especially) are fairly expensive. As the game goes on and you grow bigger and admin efficiency grows you can take bigger and bigger chunks of provinces. By the mid 1700s you'll be taking huge chunks in each war.

Revolutionary for 50% WS

The Administrative idea seems must-have for Euro warring, am I wrong? -25% core creation cost (the 2nd idea in the group) seems prettay powerful there.

I've never quite understood Revolution mechanics, and looking at the history of the French Revolution I realized there's a massive gap in knowledge I had there: I always thought of it (and it's always portrayed like this, I feel like) as an internal struggle, while they were actually fighting massive wars - first against ~all of Europe (Prussia, Austria, GB, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy), then trading a couple of powers for others (subtract Prussia + Spain, add Ottomans + Russia), and winning both of them, all while people are being sent to the guillotines in Paris?

The ****?

I had thought of Napoleon's conquests and the Revolution as separate events, not concurrent ones; that's clearly wrong. I think EU4 might be missing the part of being Revolutionary where you spawn a 6/6/6/3 general.

Another reason: Berber provinces (all provinces in their culture group, I think?) have +50% core cost (I think Hungarian works the same). Using vassals to integrate that area (which takes more time obv) thus becomes highly preferable to conquering.

In my game Portugal (allied with ~everyone) swallowed ~all of Morocco, making expansion west of Algiers a little dubious.

levee en masse OP plz nerf


Anyways ya, first 2 coalitions were before Napoleon officially took power, he was just a general for most of them. France was blessed with a bunch of elite generals who mostly gained their position through merit, whereas most of their opponents were just ****ty aristocrats. Here's a post-2nd coalition map, couldn't find a post-ameins map but there were ~no border changes after that treaty afaik. France had "natural borders" of Belgium + left bank of Rhine and also had "sister republics" (aka puppet states) in Netherlands, Switzerland, and most of Italy.



You should listen to the revolutions podcast imo, exceptionally good. I think you listen to Chapo too(?), they had Mike Duncan (who does revolutions) on for an episode which was pretty great.

Yeah, I didn’t have that issue.

As far as admin: if you are planning to conquest a lot, it’s a must have and pays for itself. Most of the ideas are actually mediocre imo (depends on how much you use mercs— I have none right now) but that 25% is just amazing.


I’m trying to decide on a third idea group, have defensive and admin (first two ideas only) right now. Influence seems obvious I guess. It’s that, Exploration (to beat the world to the spice islands via the Arabian peninsula), or another military group — thanks to amazing military rulers I got full defensive ideas and am ahead on tech, whereas I’m behind on diplo... which makes me both want to take influence and afraid I’ll fall behind. I guess I will need to just focus it for a while.

Note that annexing the berbers still costs more, it’s just in diplomatic mana.

I started the first season (think it was the English Civil War?) and it kinda put me to sleep - struck me as very history textbook-y, "this guy was a general who went here and fought this battle" type of stuff. DVaut1 has written about it in the Politics forum as an analogy to current USA politics a couple times (making the case that unresolved religious animosity from the Reformation in the mid 1600s ~= unresolved racial animosity from the Civil Rights Era today) and I think those posts have presented it in a significantly more interesting way, albeit with the luxury of skipping over a lot of details that Duncan covers.

My understanding was monarchies at the time didn't know how to react to "levee en masse" because they couldn't afford to keep a professional standing army of similar size and politics didn't allow them to do a levee en masse of their own either.

The plague of ****ty generals among traditional European powers was at least in part due to the monarchies struggling to raise armies without giving aristocrats prestigious posts. It's kind of hard to ask "Insert Noble Title" to contribute his subjects to the army if you don't let the dude command it.

Other than as Portugal (mostly because well, Portugal doesn't have a lot of places to expand to), I basically never bother owning and coring the Berber provinces. It's so much easier to just have a vassalized Fez or some other random Berber nation hold the provinces.

In eu4 there are 2 revolution "disasters": French Revolution and Revolution. French revolution can happen only to France and it has ton of flavor events, including getting Napoleon, a 6/6/6 ruler.

You can get either disaster to fire around 1715 at earliest. Of course, the earlier the better. When the disaster starts, you spawn some rebels, and once you let the rebels occupy your capital, you become revolutionary republic. The first successful revolution nation become revolutionary target for the rest of the game (giving insane bonuses, pretty much like 2 full idea groups' worth). During the french revolution you also get choice to become revolutionary empire, by far the best government in the game. The rest of the world have to tank their republical tradition first to switch to revolutionary empire.

(Btw, if you start from 1800s date, France has Napoleon as 6/6/6/2 general.)

That sounds like an incredible amount of fun and I actually never read about it...