mid-game strategy as England (w/ Europa Portugalis)

[unmerged(52751)]

Hi,

Playing my first EP game as England, I successfully concluded the 1588 "Spanish Armada" war against Spain and Portugal, winning Cuba, Leone (with its gold), the Azores, and Fernando Po (the island in the bight of Africa).

My question is : now what? It was a long terrible war, and even though I won it, it doesn't FEEL that way... I minted for the war (at 7% inflation now), but my tech is chronically behind everyone else and I have no money hardly for province improvements AND my merchants are banned from almost every CoT, even in China.

What's a good post-war pre-Cromwell strategy here? Another war with Portugal? India?

Is it worth sacrificing high innovate-ness in order to get missionaries? Is it worth converting captured cities? Even if I plan on going Reformed via Cromwell? Is Reformed a good idea for England? How big a fleet do I need? I saw Portugal with a 200 warship fleet in the Channel and Drake ran!

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

kilolima

 

[unmerged(4344)]

I don't know about EP, so I am not sure about those trade embargoes. My guess is they were put in by the scenario designer? Anyway, if you want to get much of any trade at all, you're going to have to beat every single country embargoing you in a war. This is not all that hard to do with a tech edge, or if they have three or four unguarded colonies somewhere. It may be pretty hard in your situation.

I'd suggest sitting idle for a while in Europe, building up trade in the places you can, while getting your tech back up to parity. Naval 18 in particular is pretty important (extending your sight range at sea). You probably need it to discover coastal provinces, but also to make attacking enemy navies doable. Drake is a pretty huge leader, right? So don't risk him attacking Portugal; attack the guys embargoing you who have naval 1 or whatever. If you can get their fleet somewhere and beat it back and forth until annihilating it, you can rack up a handful of warscore and hopefully get a peace for 50d, meaning, you win the war and their embargo is off.

But you do need to decide, now, what sort of strategy you want to go with. If you are going to try for a trade dominance game, which is what I'd suggest given that you seem to be behind on land tech, then Reformed is a good idea later, and wars now to free up trade.

On innovativeness, it's usually a good idea to lower it down just enough so that your rate of getting missionaries is slightly positive, i.e., 1 missionary every 5 years. More than that you probably cannot afford. But having a few to throw at super-cheap opportunities (colonial cities on other continents) is nice.

 

[unmerged(52751)]

Thanks for the advice. I didn't realize that winning wars would cancel a trade embargo... so if I DoW China, and win a few island provinces from them, will I be able to aggressively control their CoT again? It's one of the largest in the game and there's hardly any competition.

cheers,

kilolima

 

[unmerged(40707)]

Yes, but you just have to win the war (gold is sufficient). Be aware China will not embargo you again during the truce (five years). You have plenty of time to get monopolies before the end of the truce.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

Yes, when you "win" a war any trade embargo is removed. You may have noticed that you can now trade in Portugal and Spain's CoTs.

"Winning" a war in EU2 is defined as:
* getting tribute, if you were the aggressor
* getting tribute or a white peace, if you were the defender

Both of these are for "normal" war ends, via diplomacy and white peace. In the case of strange war endings (govt collapse, annexation) I don't know who is considered to have won. It seems reasonable in both cases that the side that collapsed or was annexed loses.

It mostly doesn't matter if a country wins a war. There are only two effects it does have, that I know of: canceling trade embargoes, and for keeping a title of Defender of the Faith.