Questions coming back to EU3 after all these years

[Kovax]

The consistent near-immortality of any ruler with a PU continues to annoy me. The Ottoman emperor with PUs with Mamluks and Haasa has reigned for 52 years and counting...

The feeling of annoyance is well known. I had one ruler who was around upper 50s when he was coronated, and then ruled for another 50+ years. In other words, he lived to over 110. His heir did NOT inherit the throne of the junior partner, probably due to age (significantly less likely to inherit after some age, possibly around 30).

There was another ruler who had something like one total pip (like 3/3/4 or 4/3/3) and reigned for pretty close to 60 years. I ended up reloading the game around a dozen times when his heir (all stats at least 7s) passed away and was replaced by either a non-royal noble or a female heir, which would have negated long-held PUs with both Austria and Bohemia (playing as Hungary, Emperor of the HRE at the time, despite not being a member). The really amazing part is that the guy was still serving as a general at that ripe old age, while all of the other generals had passed away long before.

Note that inheriting a junior partner in a PU upon the death of the ruler becomes more likely after 50 years.

 

[jhhowell]

Wow. Terrible RNG!

The Ottomans finally got Suleyman on the throne (8/9/7; like the Timurid Babur 9/9/9 I saw, makes me wonder if the game tries to give good stats when the name of a historically good ruler pops up. I'm sure it's just more RNG, since that's the design of the game...). His father with the 53 year reign was 9/5/4, so at least I avoided the immortal moron scenario you described.

More RNG frustration - generals with almost all their pips in relatively useless places. 4/0/1/1. 1/0/6/0. Aargh!!! Give me shock! All the enemy generals have ridiculous amounts of it!

Doesn't look like Brandenburg will have much more success as Emperor than France. Prosecuting that Imperial CB against Burgundy is proving problematical (see above note about enemy generals...). And even if I could win, it looks like there's been enough warfare and diplo-annexing that everyone in the HRE has pretty low opinion unless they happen to be one of my useless idiot vassals and/or allies. I guess an Emperor who can pass reforms needs to have never done anything other than use that Imperial Liberation CB (figuring that the released members will balance the negative relations from the allies of whoever you're fighting). Looks like the only path forward is to impotently let Burgundy blob until their new military-9 king dies. Back to France and Ottomans.

Apparently steppe nomad provinces can only be colonized if they're adjacent to one's own province. Ottomans have that mission to take Kaffa, which looks like you'd just send a colonist across the Black Sea. But actually that would require taking Budjak, Cherson, and Crimea first? That's pretty ridiculous. In those WC games in the other thread, was there an unspoken "first beat up Genoa for Kaffa" step before the early Horde colonization?

 

[TheArchMede]

You have to lay off the expansion inside the empire for a couple of decades and bribe relations up. Diploannex in the HRE is very expensive for relation loss.

Being HRE allows you to do the human wave attacks without WE or manpower pool problems. Break their morale and wipe them out on the follow up. 6shock doesn't do them any good when their morale has gone. The bonuses don't affect the rate of morale loss, only the casualty rate.

Ottos just colonise around the Black Sea. Dump that mission if the time's not right for it. It'll be back. Help the GH expand until you are ready to colonise to the Arctic to seal it off from other colonisers. You want to take as much as possible by colonisation of hordes rather than holy war on the Poles and Russians.

I think the mortality rate in EU has a tortoise shaped function (hits a maximum with age) rather than a human one (exponential increase with age) and consequently there are a lot more very old characters in EU than there are in history.

 

[Kovax]

More RNG frustration - generals with almost all their pips in relatively useless places. 4/0/1/1. 1/0/6/0. Aargh!!! Give me shock! All the enemy generals have ridiculous amounts of it!

Shock is only marginally more useful than Maneuver, and the ideal situation is to have one army with each. The Shock general leads the combat against the enemy, taking most of the casualties, while the Maneuver general waits until the opposing army breaks, then beats them to the province they retreat to, sticking the enemy with terrain penalties against relatively undamaged troops, if they aren't automatically stack-wiped on arrival.

Morale loss can be more critical than actual casualties. Playing non-Westernized countries against all those HRE states with far better troop types and higher effectiveness, I was still frequently able to break the opposing armies, chase them down, and stack-wipe them. The "Drill" National Idea was a critical part of that, providing enough Morale to withstand heavy losses without breaking.

Incidentally, the best way to gain Army Tradition is to lose a lot of troops in combat. Those enemy generals with high stats are the direct result of getting slaughtered in previous wars.

 

[TheArchMede]

To get lots of tradition while winning, capture forts (0.5 per fort level), or fight battles that your vassals initiated. Tradition for the battle is based on the first to arrive, and sharing 5 with a vassal whose entire army has been in the front line beats getting 0.2 for winning on your own. One reason Burgundy gets lots of tradition from getting beaten up is that it can afford armies of mercenaries so it can have even more losses than a poorer country.

 

[jhhowell]

I tend to rely on Drill, but unfortunately Burgundy and Holland (Burgundy's only ally of significance) both have it too. I loaded up as Burgundy, and their manpower pool was just as full as mine. Brandenburg's total capacity was much larger, but the Imperial title is far too new to have filled up that high (just enough to be about even with Burgundy). So same sized armies, same sized manpower pool, much better leaders on their side. I was able to stack-wipe their unsupported northern army, but converging everyone to the south, even if I could beat a Burgundy army I'd lose the ping-pong battle in their retreat province. And my regiments got so beat up they were soon ghost regiments (200-300 men) that didn't do all that much. Splitting and withdrawing to neutrals with military access (Frankfurt, Ansbach, Ulm) could slowly start to recover them, but in that time Burgundy and Holland could flip Baden and Wurttemburg from my allies to their vassal-allies, and make a start on Bavaria.

Speaking of better leaders - in one attempt, Holland's 14k stack was able to one-shot stack-wipe a fresh, undamaged, full morale reinforcement army of 10k before it could retreat. I don't remember the leader's shock stat, but it must have been quite high.

Sounds like an HRE reform game is a different beast than the Brandenburg game, since the goal there is to form Germany. To which end I've done three diplo-annexations, with four more lined up for the coming decades as missions cooperate. So who exactly gets that big relations hit when you diplo-annex? The in-game text is unhelpful, just showing the start of a list, and often that list starts with countries that don't exist like "Livonian Order".

Here's another HRE mechanics question: France game, Milan annexed Parma. I got the Imperial Liberation CB popup, even though Milan has a core on Parma (and used the Reconquest CB, so no BB), and the wiki says "Be Emperor, target owns non-cored HRE provinces". Milan does not own any non-cored provinces, Parma or otherwise. Why did I get the CB?

Re: Ottomans, I don't particularly want any of that land. Kaffa would be OK since I have all the other Greek-culture provinces and Greek will probably remain accepted all game. I tend to be very culture-focused in these games (my favorite EU3 AAR was the one from the "Complete" edition era where the author did a world cultural conquest with Ming, making the world Han culture and Hindu religion - I see they've pounded Ming with the nerf bat since then so that's very, very impossible now ). So France's goal was to get all French-culture provinces; Brandenburg's is all German-culture provinces; Ottomans is all Turko-Arabian group provinces. In some cases with additional colonization; lots with France, a bit with Ottomans. I'm astonished to see Castille in Mutapa in 1492 in the Ottoman game. Really hoping somehow they don't take any provinces, since I've been working toward an East & South Africa thing myself. (I'm sure I could take Mutapan provinces from Castille, but it's not clear it would be worth such a huge war... A calculation I notice the AI in this game does not make. ).

Is there any predictability to when AI explorers will reach certain places? Based on the France game, the Americas seem approximately historical in terms of when regions are discovered. In that game I've seen no sign anyone else has rounded the Cape of Good Hope by 1530, or that anyone has reached the Pacific (other than the one French Zapotec Pacific-coast province with magical pirates off the coast...).

 

[TheArchMede]

Having more units in a combat is a major advantage in EU3 (and many other paradox games). 14 to 10 is why you got stackwiped. If the opposition uses larger stacks as standard than you do, you can't afford to leave any of your stacks in an unsupported position. You have to have a reserve to turn that 14:10 battle into a 14:20 battle or being unlucky with the die rolls will result in a stackwipe. You need a major tech advantage to see off a larger army with a smaller one and you need an artillery unit in the mix to guarantee yourself a chance to get away if you do get caught unsupported.

The AI is very reluctant to break off sieges to save threatened armies. If you have enough force to kill one of its stacks, you have enough force to kill all of them if you wait till they are all fixed by sieging. 1*20k vs 1*15k wins, but if the AI throws 4*20k stacks at my 3*15k stacks, it loses, because once its committed to sieges its vulnerable to defeat in detail.

Annexing anyone in the HRE annoys all of the HRE. Annexing a vassal annoys all your other vassals. The Liberation CB is a consequence of annexation.

Mutapa in 1492 is probably due to them joining a war against West African pagans while Castille had an explorer. I think they'd need a core from their first expansion wave to get that far otherwise. An event or mission might have allowed them to pick up one on a West African country during that wave but otherwise its a bit early to have cored a colony/conquest. You can expect the entire Atlantic to have been explored by 1500, and the entire ocean by 1600, if you haven't done anything to stop it happening. The AI won't systematically fill in mid-ocean gaps once it has a route across an ocean, but the combination of new bases in colonies and expanding range from tech will mean everywhere could have been explored before 1600.

 

[Kovax]

Note that the conversion of horde culture provinces has a much lower MTTH than other provinces, so if you can get one coastal COT province to convert to your culture, it spreads fairly quickly (at least compared to elsewhere). Other culture groups can be easier or harder to convert than normal, and there are numerous special cases for converting from one particular group to another particular group, such as between Germanic cultures within the HRE.

In one campaign, I managed to take Alexandria with its COT, built a COT in Crimea, and took London with a COT that they had conveniently built for me. Over the course of the next century, I manage to get about 4 former Mamluk provinces to culturally convert, the COT in London to adopt my culture but nothing further from there, and a long list (as in 10+) of former horde provinces to flip.

In an earlier Hungarian campaign where I put a lot of emphasis on forced cultural conversion in a few key locations, I had a strip of culturally converted provinces running halfway to China, and another crossing the straits through Anatolia, almost linking up with the converted provinces around Alexandria. In the opposite direction, conversion of former HRE provinces to the west was extremely limited in comparison, and I never managed to culturally convert all of the Croatian provinces that Hungary starts with.

 

[jhhowell]

In the 1490s, 14 to 10 odds doesn't normally stackwipe in one battle before retreat is possible. That was some anomalously heavy casualties there. Normal results would be a loss, with maybe 10-15% casualties for the loser and 5%ish for the winner. Those odds were very very similar to the fight against the Hansa's stack in the war for Brunswick (border dispute core) a few years earlier. It took quite a few rounds of ping pong to finally stack wipe them that way, never came close to wiping them in actual combat like this.

Good to know about the AI sticking to sieges. That sounds very exploitable!

The Burgundy situation probably has a solution now, "France has joined our alliance". Granted, it's the worst France I've ever seen, that got thrashed at 100% by Burgundy maybe a decade ago, so Champaigne, Normandy, and Auvergne exist, Paris is a frontier town, and Poitiers is the capital. But their army is comparable to Brandenburg's and Burgundy's, and only about 10% of it is trapped in Sicily without sealift... Good thing France is building up their navy. Of galleys. In Poitiers. Sigh.

The AI really doesn't seem to understand sea transport. Loading as Castille in the Ottoman game, my guess is that they used a conquistador to walk from Kongo to Mutapa. The exploration of African land provinces is suspiciously complete. They do have a sea route, but only one transport nearby. And only seven total (other six are in Almeria), so who knows how (or if?) they plan on getting one of their two combat-capable stacks back to Iberia.

Re: steppe cultural conversion, according to the wiki, only "Owner state culture is East Slavic, West Slavic or Baltic" gets quick cultural conversions on steppe provinces. So Hungary can certainly do that, but according to the wiki, Turkish culture cannot.

 

[jhhowell]

Whew, fourth time's the charm for Brandenburg vs. Burgundy. France was not the answer, they were a liability drawing a separate English DoW. But knowing that the AI usually (but not always - the nail in the coffin of the attempt allied with France was when a Burgundian army did the Detach Siege move to decisive effect) is rooted by sieges was extremely helpful!

So you mentioned not thinking highly of Bank. For a non-colonizing European power, which I guess can be considered a major power now, what would you do instead? (First two NIs were Drill and National Trade Policy). Brandenburg still feels very, very poor even though according to the ledger it is technically the richest country in the world (?!). Cultural tradition is still OK since I can't afford to use about half my magistrates, so Patron seems premature. I had been thinking Battlefield Commissions, but (a) the big war just ended so I probably won't be fighting much for a while, and (b) thanks to the big war, military tradition is really high now. Based on the Ottoman example, Bank seems pretty attractive. Trading is very effective (aside from periods of modest BB, and even then only a few merchants are lost) so Shrewd Commerce Practice doesn't seem that interesting. Bureaucracy? Kind of boring, and the wiki specifically advocates for Bank instead in this kind of scenario.

 

[TheArchMede]

Later in the game you won't even need MoM let alone Bank, though if you are only planning to play into the 1600s this won't matter to you. I like the defensiveness bonus from Engineer Corps, because that keeps enemy stacks that commit to sieges in place for longer. You can lose sieges very fast if you have defensiveness penaIties from slider settings. I like the ideas that boost papal influence, because that means cardinals which means faster BB burn, which means faster expansion. They also grant CBs which can come in handy for finding victims to expand into and extra missionaries means more innovation without giving up conversions. I will take Commissions at some point.

My current Holland game has gone QftNW, NTP, Drill, Colonial Ventures, Divine Supremacy, Engineer Corps, Cabinet so far. This did mean I had to conduct some wars without CBs as a result of being a republic without Supremacy. (Empire gives the same CB as supremacy does so that government type is an alternative to taking Supremacy early). If I was avoiding colonising and giving a high priority to taking over the HRE, the third would probably be Engineers. Supremacy and Unam Sanctum would be likely ones in 4th and 5th depending on what my religious priorities were. Commissions might be 6th, and Cabinet is always 7th. I find Bill of Rights for the CBs on other blobs can be useful just before or after Cabinet.

 

[Kovax]

Drill is generally my first pick, although in the current campaign (Burgundy - a cakewalk campaign after the last hard start) I chose the additional spy recruitment option, since Burgundy gets zero with its initial slider settings. I also took QftNW as a second pick, and had a colony in the Azores by 1452 and conquered Creek provinces a year later. Those are now mere months from becoming cores, and serious colonization should begin shortly. Drill was pick #3, and I'm expecting to take Cultural Tradition as #4.

Incidentally, I came really close to suffering a stackwipe last evening. 10K Mazovian rebels popped up (I inherited Poland, Bohemia, and Austria a few years earlier after forced PUs), so I sent a stack of 12K Men at Arms to deal with them. Easy, right? Turns out, those guys were Galloglaichs. Poland had grabbed that province early in the game, and at that stage, Mazovia could not have research that far, and Poland never had a chance to Westernize, so how did that happen? I can only assume that Poland's most recent research level was applied to the old Mazovian core. Worse, the general leading the revolt had 6 in Shock to my 0, and my initial melee roll was a 1 to their 9, costing me over 1400 casualties each phase. At that point, a SECOND stack of rebels generated, so instead of 12 vs 10, it became 12 vs 20. My second melee roll was a 0, theirs another 9. The remaining <4K men in my army were on the verge of annihilation when the timer ran out and I was able to break off the combat. A second army of 12K was brought in, my best 3 pip in Shock general assigned, and 6 months later (it took that long to bring that battered 12K army back up over 10K men) the revolt was crushed with minimal losses: broken and then beaten to the adjacent province by my 0 Shock, 3 Maneuver general.

As said, Maneuver can be powerful, particularly if used to support a Shock army that takes the initial lead.

 

[TheArchMede]

Burgundy does need those spies. I had Espionage 3rd in my Burgundy WC. I normally take it a lot later.

 

[jhhowell]

Why does Burgundy in particular need spies? And how do they pay for them that early in the game??

Engineers does look interesting. And I'd love to reach the 1600s; I don't think I ever have in any version of EU3. I've been curious about those mid/late game units with ridiculous numbers of pips since launch. Maybe I'll plug away at France long enough for them to get there.

Anyway looks like a moot point, I don't see a path from Brandenburg to Germany now that so many higher weight unwanted missions are in the way of Incorporate Thuringia and Saxony Into Our Country. Needed the Reformation to fire in the 1520s (the existence of Protestantism is what turns the Teutonic Order into Prussia, right? I missed it when it happened, but the timing suggests that), and a near-immortal previous Emperor so Brandenburg doesn't get Securing the Succession asking me to get relations from -200 to +50 with the Elector Burgundy... That's what I get for a game plan that relies on getting the right (oddly low weight) mission four times.

the revolt was crushed with minimal losses: broken and then beaten to the adjacent province

I notice some rebels don't care about being broken and beaten to the other province. They just keep fighting, and breaking, and fighting, and breaking, and fighting, endlessly, until they finally run out of men after almost a year of ping-pong. The case where I saw this was at the start of yet another game, Vijayanagar, since they can brute force their way to Hindustan unlike Brandenburg needing mission cores to become Germany. Rebels in Ceylon just kept fighting despite being at zero morale, arriving at the other province a couple days after my army (ruler had maneuver 2, almost as handy as his shock 2). This has happened with a couple of rebellions, so it seems consistent, but I don't see why they're different from the Nationalist rebels France, Ottomans, or Brandenburg brushed aside in Europe.

 

[TheArchMede]

Burgundy has virtually no chance of annexing the explorers before they explore, so it has to have spies to incite the indians in order to keep the americas for itself. Its also filthy rich and can easily afford spy missions. It can even afford mercenaries to help with the early lack of manpower.

That lack of stackwiping is a feature of low tech countries. I guess its because REB is a western tag. The first Westernisation will get rid of it.

You could brute force Germany too. It just takes a lot of infamy while you wait for the illegal territory to core.

You can bestow favor to improve relations as the Emperor if the gold is beyond you. A big sphere is very useful because the size of each relation boost is increased by the numbers in your sphere.

 

[Kovax]

Why does Burgundy in particular need spies? And how do they pay for them that early in the game??

Spies are critical to forge an "Obscure Documents" claim on the throne of another country, followed by a war to force a Personal Union. It's the only way to expand rapidly within the HRE, unless you're willing to suffer the "Dishonorable Scum" penalties for the infamy gained by taking and holding too many illegal provinces. In my recent Burgundy escapade, I manage to inflict PUs on Savoy, Bohemia, Poland, and Austria, as well as the rump state of France (down to 2 provinces after being forced to release several countries and surrender a couple of provinces) before 1500, most of those before 1450. ALL of them except most of Poland were inherited as cores (most due to inheritance within the HRE, and France due to common culture group). Now I've forced a PU on Polotsk (4 former Lithuanian provinces plus its namesake), although those won't be inherited as cores.

I've also used spies to sabotage a Portuguese colony attempt in South America, while I'm busily placing my own colonies there and along the North American coasts to block any other would-be colonizers. The Military Drill idea was sorely missed during the breakup of France, but I consider it well worth it to have gained all of those PUs. Burgundy can rush research on Production, allowing Constables, so income soon becomes sufficient to afford such expenses. Passing the "Gemeiner Pfennig" HRE reform made money practically irrelevant. Around 1529 it became pointless to continue, since there was no real challenge left.

 

[jhhowell]

You could brute force Germany too. It just takes a lot of infamy while you wait for the illegal territory to core.

In the most plausible scenario, Infamy would be in the 5-7.5 range for most of the 50 years (static or slowly rising, depending on ruler's Diplomacy score). A worst case scenario with the current ruler and his heir dying quickly and a DIP 3 moron ruling for the remaining decades would put Infamy into the mid-teens. Ouch. (This includes an assumption of continual 6-star Diplomat advisors. I have 20 years to go on Niederlausitz coring; maybe I shouldn't have taken a coreless province like that, but in the 1470s the sequence of Incorporate Vassalname Into Our Country plan looked to be on track).

The Bestow Imperial Grace button has been pretty nice for both Brandenburg and France. Brandenburg even managed to pass the first reform! France isn't there yet, but can easily replenish Authority by demanding conversions. So that one is a matter of time, spare diplomats, and player attention/willingness to micromanage. I suppose Imperial Grace could work around that annoying mission for Brandenburg to make up with Burgundy, but I expect to have to fight them again so it seems like a total waste (as does "go fight Prussia, because a mission told you to").

Spies are critical to forge an "Obscure Documents" claim on the throne of another country

Obscure Documents still requires the target to have low Legitimacy, which as far as I know is RNG. Is there a reliable way to tank a target's Legitimacy to enable Claim Throne/Fabricate Claims? In that Burgundy game, were you specifically targeting those countries with Fabricate Claims, or just using it on whoever was vulnerable to it? In my Brandenburg situation, I very specifically need Saxony and Thuringia, no other PUs would matter (I already got lucky and forced a PU with Bavaria, which includes Franken).

 

[TheArchMede]

You can also change the government to a republic or leave the HRE. The diplomatic option can't be DIP 3 (or 4) in an elected ruler and if its not high you can boot them at the next election. A republic in the HRE can hold 7-8 illegals if you maximise BB burn. Noble republic allows continuing diplovassalling. You can brute force an extra 1-2 every decade till you have the lot if you don't want the infamy to take over huge tracts of infidel land instead.

Low stab and high WE drive down legitimacy. The trouble is that you probably have to break the truce to use obscure documents if you've driven up their WE. The CB only lasts a year and the AI will normally recover its legitimacy in less than 9 years. Or there may not be much of a throne left to claim if your wrecking of the country leads to it being dogpiled or rebel breakaways.

 

[Kovax]

As pointed out, "Obscure Documents" requires a low-legitimacy target. That's mostly RNG related, but you can make a bad situation worse for them by either running up war exhaustion high enough that they'll take most of the 5-year truce (5 in DW, 10 in earlier versions) to recover, and/or funding rebels to keep the country from recovering. That sort-of worked against France, but it didn't leave much left to force a PU on after most of the pieces broke free.

In a few cases, I've even managed to fund a pretender to the throne to break the country and seize power illegitimately, as I did with Savoy after they lost a long and nasty war against Milan. Hard to stop a revolt when you don't have an army. As soon as the rebels took the throne, my spies were put into action.

Of course, all of that requires money. Burgundy and several of the other big fish in the European pond can afford it, most of the smaller ones can't.

 

[jhhowell]

You can also change the government to a republic

That is a very interesting idea! Thank you! One slight complication - I know the Emperor can't be a Republic. My expectation was that I'd be able to switch to Noble Republic and that would be an abdication. The game isn't completely clear but since Noble Republic is grayed out after switching to Despotic Monarchy, I now suspect I need to not be Emperor before attempting the switch.

Emperor Burgundy is not going to be great, but should be manageable.

The WE method of lowering legitimacy doesn't really apply here. Saxony and Thuringia are exactly as they were at game start, and have been vassals for 70 and 40 years respectively.

Unrelated question - why do monarchs in India die so young, so consistently? The wiki mentions "Monarchs die fast in India" on the Vijayanagar page, and that appears to be accurate. I just don't understand why Paradox coded it that way...