Blobbing VS Playing Tall

[SaxonWarchief]

So I'm still pretty new to EU4 and every time I play I pretty much just try to blob out as much as possible. I see threads on playing tall as a country and was just wondering if there is any advantage or reason for doing this? Or is it really just a preference thing?

 

[bly08]

There's rarely any advantage to playing tall when blobbing is possible.

 

[Cookiepie]

Depends on your goals, for most you'd typically want to blob as much as possible. WIth that said, blobbing blindly might harm your nations performance more than it helps (even if more land = better is a general rule), for example if a piece of land is the wrong religion, wrong culture, doesn't feed into your trade nodes and you can't state it, it's very likely going to harm you more than it'll benefit you (especially if you used the admin points in a better way).

 

[creativitypersonified]

No there is no advantage to playing tall. Playing tall is simply something done for fun/roleplay/certain arbitrary goals. It is logical that you would stop blobbing for a while at times to catch up on admin/dip tech ,stabilize or because it's just not possible to do so right now but that's not playing tall.

 

[Tom D.]

Some people also just don't like to blob, or find other fun things to do in a tall run.

 

[byebytoad]

So I'm still pretty new to EU4 and every time I play I pretty much just try to blob out as much as possible. I see threads on playing tall as a country and was just wondering if there is any advantage or reason for doing this? Or is it really just a preference thing?

As the game is now, there's no advantage at all in playing tall.
Blobbing is clearly the best way from a winning perspective view since there are basically no cons in doing it.
I think it's more about a game style choice : which could be different ones.
Personally I like seeing my provinces more developed and don't expand too much because it keeps the challenge and the 'politics' alive (once you get a certain size you have basically no realy enemy and the only thing left is conquer the whole world which could be boring for some like myself) as also keepint it more realistic (I mean...conquering the whole globe is not really...)

 

[Dominion]

Playing tall is worse than playing wide.
Now that we got that part out of the way: 2099 development is worse than 2100 development.
You get my point?

Yes, playing tall does put you at a disadvantage, but you won't ever get a competent answer about the difference between both styles out of this board because every commentator so far - including me - as well as the majority of board members is trying to optimize their gameplay.

That doesn't mean playing tall is bad, ineffective or whatever synonym you can come up with.

It's just different and slightly weaker, meaning you have to invest almost the same energy into learning the style while gaining a bit less.
If you wanna go for achievements, WC, OF, etc. you will stay away from playing tall because playing wide is better. No discussion.

Doesn't mean playing tall is weak.

 

[Ironside121]

Playing tall can still work well. I personally enjoy playing Sweden tall, so it feels like I'm a smaller nation beating up a larger one, like Sweden did historically despite it's much smaller population compared to their neighbours.


The onlys issue with playing tall are:

Development Cost vs Coring Cost. Per Monarch Point you spend, coring is cheaper for the development you get. You can stack a lot of dev cost modifiers, yes. But it becomes more and more inefficient. Plus Coring Cost modifiers pull that even further ahead.

Trade Power. Yes you can develop, and it will bring you more trade power. But there's still other nations in the node you're getting power in. It's better overall to own it all, instead of owning 80% of the trade power with 60% of the land there.

Trade Goods- Manufactories. Blobbing makes it easier to get things like Leading Producer and the "Trading In" bonuses. And on top of that, there's manufactories. You can build one of every province which equates to 5 Production Development. The more provinces, the more you can build. This in turn increases trade substantially, making you even richer, especially if you blob fully into trade nodes. In friendly MP games my friends and I divide land by trade node, and refuse to pick nations who will get in each others way. Because blobbing works best for trade.

Making Power for yourself- taking it away from others. This one is fairly obvious. You take the land. Someone else doesn't have it. Why White peace a guy and let him keep 40 development? That's 40 you could take away, that's 40 for you. Plain and simple. Blobbing makes you stronger, weakens other nations, or blocks their path.

Blobbing is better, in almost every single way, hands down.

Playing tall is still viable- but definitely less efficient in the long run. It's something I do for my own personal satisfaction- it's nice slapping down bigger nations like they aren't shit when they're physically 8x your size.

 

[StefanFan]

Mathematically speaking there is no advantage in playing tall. Game wise, it's fun to play from a historical point of view and try to do your best limiting your wars to raids and looting and little conquests. But the biggest downside might be your starting position. It might be very hard to play tall when your neighbors can eat you without the smallest effort

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

The advantage to playing tall is that your growth comes at minimal cost and zero risk. There are several starts that benefit from a tall playstyle that slowly changes into a wider game as you use development to tilt the numbers in your favor. This is especially true if you're playing in multiplayer where staying in a tough war too long can leave you open to opportunistic human players.

A wide playstyle is however objectively optimal in almost all situations. It's not enough to empower your own country, you must also weaken your enemies. Tall play doesn't manage this very well unless you dedicate yourself to constantly breaking apart blobs, and even then you're spending all of that time and energy while never improving your own situation, which negates one of the only advantages that there is to tall play.

Wide play>Tall play almost all the time.

 

[Incompetent]

Playing tall is worse than playing wide.
Now that we got that part out of the way: 2099 development is worse than 2100 development.
You get my point?

That really depends on how the development is distributed. But on the broader point I agree, blobbing gives you so much more development than going tall that blobbing is always going to make you stronger in the long run (at least until you run out of land you can zero-autonomy). Going tall is self-limiting in a way that going wide is not.

A big part of what makes blobbing OP at the moment is the sheer quantity of land you can have at zero autonomy and no culture penalties. Generous state limits and culture acceptance slots are part of it, but even more so, the way you can take over the entire 'trade company' part of the world and run it with perfect efficiency from your European capital, kind of makes a mockery of compact countries that stick to a single continent.

 

[Dominion]

The onlys issue with playing tall are:

Development Cost vs Coring Cost. Per Monarch Point you spend, coring is cheaper for the development you get. You can stack a lot of dev cost modifiers, yes. But it becomes more and more inefficient. Plus Coring Cost modifiers pull that even further ahead.

Trade Power. Yes you can develop, and it will bring you more trade power. But there's still other nations in the node you're getting power in. It's better overall to own it all, instead of owning 80% of the trade power with 60% of the land there.

Wild question: Is it?
Because I ran into a few interesting scenarios recently where people said x, but they had nothing to base it on.
Is playing tall really that much more expensive or can you/we find a scenario where it does pay off, even if it's just for a few decades.

I'll throw in estates once again. Is Estate micro really worthless or do people just refuse to micro Estates effectively to save time?

Playing tall is a part of EUIV which has barely been explored imo and calling it worse by default means we are convinced we know better with nothing to base our opinion on other than personal experience.

If we get a few numbers together my opinion may change, but as of now it's "There's a certain playstyle that isn't meta and nobody knows how it works".

Personally I'm not satisfied with that kind of answer. Especially after Empress Kaori's Switzerland run.

That really depends on how the development is distributed. But on the broader point I agree, blobbing gives you so much more development than going tall that blobbing is always going to make you stronger in the long run (at least until you run out of land you can zero-autonomy). Going tall is self-limiting in a way that going wide is not.

A big part of what makes blobbing OP at the moment is the sheer quantity of land you can have at zero autonomy and no culture penalties. Generous state limits and culture acceptance slots are part of it, but even more so, the way you can take over the entire 'trade company' part of the world and run it with perfect efficiency from your European capital, kind of makes a mockery of compact countries that stick to a single continent.

I wish I could disagree, but TC land being overpowered has been an issue for quite a while and I absolutely despise it.

"Just TC it" shouldn't be a strategy. Sadly it is.

You are 100% correct.

 

[Steel_atlas]

As Austria/HRE you don’t want to blob for awhile and once you revoke you want to just have a massive vassal swarm .

As a republic you can only have 20 core counties and non-stated territories are horrible, so outside of trade company regions there no point in blobbing.

As the plc if you want to be buddies with the emperor and not have to take expansion your have to be pretty patient and I find it as close to playing tall with a big nation.

And if you don’t want to deal with continental wars as Britain your going to need to build up Britain’s dev to deal with ld of your colonies once they get big

 

[Badesumofu]

Trade Companies are incredibly imbalanced right now to the point that they leave any other strategy in the dust.

If there weren't so many trivial ways to bypass the state limit and get 0 LA or the rough equivalent (like CNs with high tariffs) then jamming as much of your development into your states might well make sense. As it stands the most optimal strats and the best players are tending towards a one-state strategy for ease of tag-switching.

That said I do appreciate Dominion's point as well - we've all kind of decided that wide is better and so no one, well almost no one, is really putting an effort into optimising taller strats.

Something I've thought on TCs is that they should give an autonomy bypass for Production Income and Trade Power, rather than just lowering the autonomy floor. That way you don't get full FL from them, and you don't get full value from the buildings in them like Churches, Barracks, and Regimental Camps. It might be something that can work if you have to get your Force Limit and Manpower from your state core land, but you can get the money to support a large army from rich overseas holdings. Of course with enough money you can just hire mercs anyway and ignore your force limit, but hey if it was balanced correctly there could at least be an interesting choice in general approaches to answering the question of how do I field a large enough army to conquer everything?

 

[Steel_atlas]

Wait are we considering trade companies part of a blob?

 

[Ironside121]

Wild question: Is it?
Because I ran into a few interesting scenarios recently where people said x, but they had nothing to base it on.
Is playing tall really that much more expensive or can you/we find a scenario where it does pay off, even if it's just for a few decades.

I'll throw in estates once again. Is Estate micro really worthless or do people just refuse to micro Estates effectively to save time?

Playing tall is a part of EUIV which has barely been explored imo and calling it worse by default means we are convinced we know better with nothing to base our opinion on other than personal experience.

If we get a few numbers together my opinion may change, but as of now it's "There's a certain playstyle that isn't meta and nobody knows how it works".

Personally I'm not satisfied with that kind of answer. Especially after Empress Kaori's Switzerland run.

A big thing it comes down to also is how to define "tall". Eventually it'll become 100% ineffective developing lands because of the increasing costs per current development level- meaning you'll have to expand to take land that is more effective to develop.

Technology and Ideas also need to be taken into account too when considering all this- not just pure MP vs Dev. And I don't mean efficiency techs and ideas, I mean the points being spent on them- as coring only uses one power, whilst developing *can* - not always - require all three. You could just focus on throwing only dip and adm points in, so you don't fall behind on mil tech, but that could then all depend on how good your ruler is- per stat.

You're right in saying we've got no exact numbers for anything at this point- but we can rely on our current knowledge of game mechanics.

It's all very situational too- because terrain plays a huge impact, there's a what.. 55% difference in modifiers from terrain? -5% Farmlands up to +50% in Wastelands.

I'm currently playing a Jaunpur MP game and most of my growth has been development, due to huge Alliance blocks. My growth is being sustained at an acceptable level, it's not expensive, I'm not falling behind on tech, and I'm just short of being a GP in the first 30 years. I've only taken 3 provinces from Bengal. It's only because of terrain and Cloth that I can do that. So I'm not saying playing tall is all that bad. It's effective and nice when you've got the right situation.

Who is Empress Kaori? Forumer or YouTuber? I'd like to see this run.

I will openly admit that my playstyle is very expansionist based on trade. Blobbing is the best way to trade- period. So I'm rather biased based on that. Trade is the best way to make income in the game, so the best way to get it- blobbing- is the best way to play the game in my opinion.

 

[Steel_atlas]

A big thing it comes down to also is how to define "tall". Eventually it'll become 100% ineffective developing lands because of the increasing costs per current development level- meaning you'll have to expand to take land that is more effective to develop.

Technology and Ideas also need to be taken into account too when considering all this- not just pure MP vs Dev. And I don't mean efficiency techs and ideas, I mean the points being spent on them- as coring only uses one power, whilst developing *can* - not always - require all three. You could just focus on throwing only dip and adm points in, so you don't fall behind on mil tech, but that could then all depend on how good your ruler is- per stat.

You're right in saying we've got no exact numbers for anything at this point- but we can rely on our current knowledge of game mechanics.

It's all very situational too- because terrain plays a huge impact, there's a what.. 55% difference in modifiers from terrain? -5% Farmlands up to +50% in Wastelands.

I'm currently playing a Jaunpur MP game and most of my growth has been development, due to huge Alliance blocks. My growth is being sustained at an acceptable level, it's not expensive, I'm not falling behind on tech, and I'm just short of being a GP in the first 30 years. I've only taken 3 provinces from Bengal. It's only because of terrain and Cloth that I can do that. So I'm not saying playing tall is all that bad. It's effective and nice when you've got the right situation.

Who is Empress Kaori? Forumer or YouTuber? I'd like to see this run.

I will openly admit that my playstyle is very expansionist based on trade. Blobbing is the best way to trade- period. So I'm rather biased based on that. Trade is the best way to make income in the game, so the best way to get it- blobbing- is the best way to play the game in my opinion.

Now that I think about in theory playing y’all in trade would be controlling key provinces in trade zones and using dev, buildings and ships to control them but in reality it’s better to control the whole zone.

So even my “tall” Netherlands game were I just controlled the Low Countries I still “blobbed” in the trade company zones +gulf of Aden

 

[Ironside121]

Now that I think about in theory playing y’all in trade would be controlling key provinces in trade zones and using dev, buildings and ships to control them but in reality it’s better to control the whole zone.

So even my “tall” Netherlands game were I just controlled the Low Countries I still “blobbed” in the trade company zones +gulf of Aden

That's exactly how I play MR's. It's so much less effective than owning the whole node though.

I do get a very.. immersive..? feeling from playing the game like this. It's nice in it's own way. Kinda like "haha I'll steal your money and influence the worlds trade from here". And I really do like that. But for efficiency.. meh. My Venice games mostly involve taking key trading points in Alexandria, Venice and Ragusa and then colonizing the Spice Islands, forming TC's and then using a bit of conquest and trade fleets to bring trade from Malacca through India into Alexandria.

 

[Steel_atlas]

That's exactly how I play MR's. It's so much less effective than owning the whole node though.

I do get a very.. immersive..? feeling from playing the game like this. It's nice in it's own way. Kinda like "haha I'll steal your money and influence the worlds trade from here". And I really do like that. But for efficiency.. meh. My Venice games mostly involve taking key trading points in Alexandria, Venice and Ragusa and then colonizing the Spice Islands, forming TC's and then using a bit of conquest and trade fleets to bring trade from Malacca through India into Alexandria.

Well part of the problem with trade companies is that the player is usually the only one setting them up.

If it was more historical Britain France the Netherlands and Portugal would all be diving up most of this regions

 

[Dakka]

Well part of the problem with trade companies is that the player is usually the only one setting them up.

If it was more historical Britain France the Netherlands and Portugal would all be diving up most of this regions

Yes. Expanding overseas has been boring ever since the AI colonizers stopped expanding there too. There aren’t any European wars over colonial territories anymore.