Questions coming back to EU3 after all these years

[TheArchMede]

If you have the tech its probably a PU that stops you changing to a republic. Being emperor won't. You'll just cease to be emperor.

Its my high stat heirs that die young. However I had pretty good monarchs with long lives in my last couple of India games. Confirmation bias is natural, if you don't run a lot of games, keep the records, and do the stats on them, you'll become convinced of all sorts of things that are actually random effects.

 

[Kovax]

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

Emperor Burgundy is quite manageable (easy, actually), except that you do NOT want to enact the final HRE reform to annex the HRE. Burgundy is not a Germanic culture nation, so even though it inherits the HRE as cores, it does not get their province upgrades (other than Forts) because of the different culture. Worse, the final HRE reform then converts your country to the HRE (name change), which results in all of your existing non-Germanic provinces (including all of your original holdings) losing their upgrades as they're incorporated into the newly created Germanic country. You end up spending the rest of the game rebuilding to where you were a century or more ago. About the only way around it is to move your capital well in advance and change your culture to a Germanic one.

I had a similar issue in one Hungarian campaign, where I annexed the HRE, only to find that I lost all of my province upgrades. That's a handful of upgrades (typically around 3-6 per province) in each of several hundred provinces, requiring well over a thousand Magistrates to replace. I was NOT happy.

 

[jhhowell]

When I say "Emperor Burgundy", I meant when I (Brandenburg) lose the Emperor title, it will go to Burgundy. And since we just fought a huge war, it's not great for me to lose the Emperor's manpower/force limit bonus and for Burgundy to get it... I think that big war weakened them enough that I'll be OK, but we'll see. I've been side-tracked with my new Vijayanagar/Hindustan game lately, which has been a lot of fun. Similar concept, much simpler and easier. But requires Westernisation later. I had never experienced a shortage of diplomats until the flurry of wars after getting all those cores! Brandenburg will need even more whenever I manage to form Germany (another 47 years or so, but requires actually putting time into that game...).

Apparently having a tag change while a colony is growing results in that colony having Nationalism. That was weird to see in the Andaman islands.

 

[jhhowell]

Returning to the topic of CoTs: If one has a very large CoT (1000-ish), is there any reason one wouldn't want to split it by building another one in some convenient coastal province? Another 0.1 colonist per year, and the tax and population growth bonuses are the same in total, just split between two provinces (which is probably slightly advantageous anyway).

Context is Hindustan, which seems to be able to support more CoTs than I thought. I'd figured on three, Kutch, Malabar, and Cuttack, but Cuttack picked up enough of SE Asia to still be around 1000d. May as well build a fourth in Vanga if I'm not missing some reason a single huge CoT would be advantageous.

The loading screen indicates that Europe is seriously weird in that game. Aragon ripped Castille in half, then Portugal took those provinces and most of Aragon. Austria's inheritance spree included Norway. Which Portugal went and took, because reasons. Portugal seems to be the only colonizer as of the 1520s. And Persia is also very weird. Tech is land 16, everything else 9s, and I don't know how an AI would get so imbalanced. They're rocking their way north into the steppes, yet still paying tribute to the remnants of the Timurids who I think they could easily clobber.

In the Brandenburg game, the situation looks quite good now, high diplomacy ruler is living a very long time (because he has a PU... ) which helps a ton with those non-core HRE provinces. And Burgundy couldn't wait for a rematch and attacked while I'm still Emperor, so that was a short and decisive war. But I'm mostly focusing on the Hindustan game for now, since it's so much fun.

 

[TheArchMede]

It takes more merchants to get the trade if you split the CoT. Your compete chance drops by 3%. The tax depends on CoT size, so you'll reduce the tax in the original CoT province as well as increasing it in the new one. You'll need to spend magistrates building up a province that you might otherwise have not built up. You might have to leave your focus in a place that's not particularly useful. The amount the AI tries to compete in your CoTs may increase (or decrease).
It will often be worth paying the price for the colonist boost, but its not a total freebie. I tend to get them by conquest but if you aren't using holy war to take over China and colonising the nomads instead, splitting a CoT for colonists is probably good strategy. (If your motivation is to get rich, colonising the steppes instead of conquering China is a bad idea).

Castille may well be back, because the AI is bad at controlling rebellions. Same as nations like England and France, they can massively implode but have enough inbuilt advantages that they normally come back if the player doesn't intervene.

Tech grows very fast in the teens, so if a nation prioritises one area it gets a lot farther ahead than it will in other periods. EU1 used different amounts of research for tech levels to get historical levels of tech spread via neighbour bonuses. EU3 has given up on trying to be historical with tech but there are a few vestiges of the old mechanics still in place.

 

[jhhowell]

Back to EU3 now (had been spending time in CK2... ), exploring the late game with Hindustan, now around 1650.

Am I correct in thinking that missions cease to be a relevant game mechanic after the early game? I like the concept, and have spent a lot of time save scumming to get anything remotely useful (colonize $PROVINCE, or grow a province to a city, mostly) but the game really likes to offer "build a useless manufactory somewhere" missions. With a ridiculously large income, all manufactories have been essentially useless for about a century now, which is disappointing. I remember them being more consistently useful in EU2/FtG.

I see what you meant a few pages back about how by the late game, Bank becomes a pointless Idea. I never took it with Hindustan, but between centralization, the gold standard decision, and tax assessor, there's more than enough space to mint without a Master of the Mint, let alone Bank.

I'm wondering if I was too quick to swap away from QftNW. I did so when I had discovered all sea zones and coastal provinces, and had enough range to colonize everywhere I'd ever care about without it. But maybe it would have been worth keeping for a while just for the colonialism CB. Portugal just annexed Shawnee (in the 1640s - AI seems very slow about conquering natives) and could potentially use that to block my colonization of inland North America. My remaining goal is to connect the two parts of Kannada Canada. I don't think Portugal will interfere effectively, since the AI seems very slow to colonize inland provinces, but in theory they could. I suppose if I have to DoW them, I can just do it without a CB and buy back the stability levels.

It is weird how stability stops being important once one has more money than one can possibly spend.

I'm starting to come around on magistrates, I think. They're annoyingly restrictive as soon as you have the budget to use them all, but at this point it's clear that I will eventually be able to build everything I want to build. Forcing the building program to take far more time probably extends the playability of a given game. I'm not sure the goal of connecting California to Ohio (Kannada Canada is a wee bit more extensive than actual Canada) alone would keep me going, without the long term building program on the side.

It's also interesting to watch AI Persia. They're basically Russia at this point, about to reach the inland side of Siberia (I'm guessing they'll get two, maybe three provinces in before meeting me colonizing west from the Pacific). And they still pay tribute to the Timurids!

 

[TheArchMede]

As a non-christian blob, you will suffer from a lack of useful later game missions.
You won't get manufactory missions once you have five of that type. They have a massive weighting so you are very likely to get them if you do qualify. If you are swimming in gold, you should build enough to stop the missions. You also won't get them while at war. I try to make sure I am at war when I cancel them. (Possibly this requires the bugfix mod, you may be stuck with them if you aren't using that)
QftNW gives you colonising missions.
If you have the right government, you get the Imperialism CB. Colonialism can be useful in your situation too, but if you've got infamy to spare to achieve your territorial ambition, then changing government to get Imperialism is a good tactic. Even in a WC there'll be a period of 50-100 years around 1700 when its the cheapest available.
Tribute is a proportion of your income when its first paid, but it doesn't change when your income does. So if Persia started paying when it was only a couple of provinces, it will be completely trivial now.

 

[jhhowell]

I'm super-confused about late-game battles.

I got a border incident on one of France's Virginia colonies. DoW, move in, crush their army (more troops, five tech levels better than them, better leader, a 4-star discipline advisor for lack of a better idea for what to do with an advisor slot). Move to Powhatan, arrive before them, and somehow I'm the one who gets instantly stack-wiped? WTF? After the first battle, numbers were 2:1 in my favor, and they're the ones whose morale broke. I seriously do not understand what's happening here.

Tangentially related random question - does the Cabinet Idea increase the frequency of border incident events? I've had as many since taking Cabinet as I've had in the previous 250 years.

 

[TheArchMede]

If the only troops with morale in your army are artillery, you will get stack wiped. You have to have front line troops with morale to avoid the zero morale stackwipe, if neither side has morale you are the one that gets wiped. (You will also get stack wiped by natives if you only have one unit in the later game when tech difference is extreme.)
There's an event pulse that generates an event every two years as well as the events that use MTTH. In the later game when you qualify for fewer of the pulse events, those that you do qualify for will become more frequent. Plus random numbers are pretty certain to generate a streak in some event or other. Border incidents is likely a consequence of more border provinces or a random streak.

 

[Kovax]

I'm super-confused about late-game battles.

I got a border incident on one of France's Virginia colonies. DoW, move in, crush their army (more troops, five tech levels better than them, better leader, a 4-star discipline advisor for lack of a better idea for what to do with an advisor slot). Move to Powhatan, arrive before them, and somehow I'm the one who gets instantly stack-wiped? WTF? After the first battle, numbers were 2:1 in my favor, and they're the ones whose morale broke. I seriously do not understand what's happening here.

Tangentially related random question - does the Cabinet Idea increase the frequency of border incident events? I've had as many since taking Cabinet as I've had in the previous 250 years.

As said about events, once you've ruled out a lot of the other possible "pulse" events (via tech levels, national ideas, or system of government), that leaves Border Incident as a significantly higher possibility. It seems like the game first decides that you get a pulse event, and THEN checks to see which one happens. I've seen it happen rather obviously in a couple of campaigns, including my current one, where I got something like 3 in the same year.

 

[jhhowell]

Thanks. I don't know for sure that the infantry and cavalry are at zero morale after the first battle, but that seems to fit the results I'm seeing. Based on EU2/FtG, my expectation is that artillery is a legitimate component of late-1600s armies (late-1500s onwards, really). Am I wrong to be using it that way? I found an old thread where the consensus seemed to be that something like 12I/4C/8A was a good late-game composition, combining two such armies for really serious battles. The 10:1 casualty ratio I see in the initial battle seems to suggest that what I'm doing is not too bad, anyway. I just need to resist the urge to pursue afterwards...

 

[TheArchMede]

Thanks. I don't know for sure that the infantry and cavalry are at zero morale after the first battle, but that seems to fit the results I'm seeing. Based on EU2/FtG, my expectation is that artillery is a legitimate component of late-1600s armies (late-1500s onwards, really). Am I wrong to be using it that way? I found an old thread where the consensus seemed to be that something like 12I/4C/8A was a good late-game composition, combining two such armies for really serious battles. The 10:1 casualty ratio I see in the initial battle seems to suggest that what I'm doing is not too bad, anyway. I just need to resist the urge to pursue afterwards...

You need to either check morale of the I/C after the battle or watch the battle carefully to see if there's morale left in them. If you don't have a front line overlap, its quite easy to have zero morale in the front line after the battle.
That sort of I/C/A split is pretty close to what I use in general purpose armies.

 

[Kovax]

I rarely put more than 2 CAV in an army, and gradually ramp up ART over the course of the 1600s to about half the INF figure. Before 1600 it's only a minor advantage in firepower, mainly useful for giving you a few more rounds of combat before being stack-wiped, but with the massive downside of slowing your army significantly. Note that INF and CAV have the same map speed since one of the early expansions, but ART is definitely slower.

Once the tech levels reach the point where ART is reasonably effective, I'll run pairs of armies, one with ART (and a decent Fire general) and one without (with a Movement general), so the army without it joins the combat a day or so after the one with it, takes less casualties and morale hits, and can outrun opposing armies to the next province in good order for easy stack-wipes. In many cases, the AI will also stack several non-ART units behind the lines, using a combat width which only overlaps your first army by 1 or 2 units per side. When your second army shows up a day or so later, it ends up overlapping the larger opposing army, inflicting extra casualties. Running pairs of smaller armies, each optimized for a different purpose, and be more effective than running a few big armies.

If you're losing a battle, unless your army's morale gets totally shredded in the first couple of rounds (I've had a couple of 20K-sized armies stack-wiped in 3 rounds, two to break the front line and one to break the ART - it can happen in the later stages of the game when the AI rolls all 8s and 9s and you roll 0 or 1 on every try), you can generally retreat to a province far enough away to restore some morale (you can even voluntarily retreat to a non-adjacent province), and the first-arriving army (the one without ART) will then have a chance to recover some morale and inflict terrain penalties on the pursuer.

Speaking of which, the AI often retreats along the same path it was already taking, which frequently leads all the way to your own capital or some other important province of yours, leaving you with the option of either chasing it or having another army waiting where you suspect it's heading. That can be VERY annoying, such as when I broke an opposing army near Paris, chased it across the entire HRE, and FINALLY managed to engage it somewhere just short of Muscovy where it stopped.

 

[TheArchMede]

I rarely put more than 2 CAV in an army, and gradually ramp up ART over the course of the 1600s to about half the INF figure. Before 1600 it's only a minor advantage in firepower, mainly useful for giving you a few more rounds of combat before being stack-wiped, but with the massive downside of slowing your army significantly. Note that INF and CAV have the same map speed since one of the early expansions, but ART is definitely slower.

All troops have the same speed in DW.

 

[Kovax]

All troops have the same speed in DW.

Not really. CAV used to outrun INF in the original game, but that was changed in one of the expansions, since there were numerous complaints that CAV actually slows down an army on the march over long distances due to the need of the horses to graze. Artillery remains a little slower, so any army with artillery will take slightly longer to reach a distant province. I've relied on that fact time and time again, where my non-ART army beats the retreating opposing army with ART to the next province, DESPITE my general having the lower Movement bonus. My army WITH artillery arrives a few days later, even if the general has a decent movement modifier......and I am using DW.

 

[TheArchMede]

Not really. CAV used to outrun INF in the original game, but that was changed in one of the expansions, since there were numerous complaints that CAV actually slows down an army on the march over long distances due to the need of the horses to graze. Artillery remains a little slower, so any army with artillery will take slightly longer to reach a distant province. I've relied on that fact time and time again, where my non-ART army beats the retreating opposing army with ART to the next province, DESPITE my general having the lower Movement bonus. My army WITH artillery arrives a few days later, even if the general has a decent movement modifier......and I am using DW.

From the 5.2 patch notes.
- Artillery now moves at the same strategic speed as cavalry and infantry.

 

[jhhowell]

I've seen mention that if you occupy provinces for a long time during a war, they will start to cost less in peace negotiations. How exactly does that work? How long does it take? Do you need to achieve 100% occupation for the decrease to start happening?

I've started working on my Brandenburg game again, and even with the Subjugation CB, Prussia costs 101% to vassalize. I've occupied everything but Gotland for a couple years now and so far nothing about the peace costs has changed. I'm wondering if the better option would have been to ignore the Prussia mission for a few more decades until I can form Germany and get (hopefully) useful missions again...

 

[TheArchMede]

I've seen mention that if you occupy provinces for a long time during a war, they will start to cost less in peace negotiations. How exactly does that work? How long does it take? Do you need to achieve 100% occupation for the decrease to start happening?

I've started working on my Brandenburg game again, and even with the Subjugation CB, Prussia costs 101% to vassalize. I've occupied everything but Gotland for a couple years now and so far nothing about the peace costs has changed. I'm wondering if the better option would have been to ignore the Prussia mission for a few more decades until I can form Germany and get (hopefully) useful missions again...

Its calculated at the province level, the longer a province has been occupied, the less its worth. It takes a few years, maybe 4, to start dropping and it doesn't drop forever.
100% occupation can make this more difficult, because you'll trigger a white peace if there isn't some fighting.
Occasionally long occupied provinces will decide to switch sides without waiting for a general peace, thats another way the requirement for annex or vassalise can come down.

 

[jhhowell]

because you'll trigger a white peace if there isn't some fighting.

Thanks! I'd forgotten about that detail. Thankfully the Gotland Nationalist Rebels gained independence in time. I think the cost reduction had started to kick in too, but the effect was extremely small.

I'm finding that I still don't really understand the HRE (and I'm the Emperor...). What is the use of the Imperial Liberation CB? For example, Venice holds Brescia and Verona and refused the event to return them. They're Milanese cores, and Milan still exists. I could DoW and take them for 1 BB each, but then I'd be the one with unlawful Imperial territory, and I couldn't even release them as a vassal since their rightful owner still exists.

Similarly, I had been thinking of annexing Prussia, since that's what the missions overwhelmingly want me to do. But that would result in holding four unlawful Imperial provinces up around the Gulf of Riga, and short of releasing Prussia again I don't see anything I could do about that. Looking at the requirements for the Prussian Military Reforms decision, I don't think there's any point to annexing Prussia anyway. Form Germany in 1552, or wait to get Land 30 around 1650ish to get the bonuses from that decision first, not a hard call.

Will the AI ever add or remove provinces from the Empire? I've seen AI Emperors add provinces, but have never yet seen an AI non-Emperor add a province or remove a province from the Empire. I find the idea of Champagne joining the HRE entertaining but I'm not sure it can happen in practice. And Hungary has a couple provinces I'd rather they removed.

 

[TheArchMede]

Imperial Liberation is extremely useful for taking over the HRE if you aren't in the HRE. Not so much if you are a member. You can still use it to trigger a war for other purposes if you don't have a better CB.
You might be able to sell those provinces to some Russian or Scandinavian country that has a core or borders them. You could also arrange to lose a war and hand them over for peace.
The AI never removes provinces as far as I can tell, but it will add them and weak AI friends of the AI Emperor will be allowed to join. Champagne won't join while you are Emperor, but if they were a friend of a Burgundy Emperor, they quite likely would join. I've seen the HRE extend to the Pyrenees when France got balkanised.
The Emperor gets a cheap CB to grab HRE provinces off non-members, and any member that takes HRE provinces off non-members gets cores when they grab them. e.g. if Portugal should annex Genoa, or Denmark annex the Hansa, as they have done in my current game, then those CoTs become major targets for HRE powers because they'll get cores for taking them off outsiders. I have my eye on them, but they have the wrong allies at the moment.