New to game...some questions

[Akintude]

I'm pretty experienced at Victoria, HoI2, and Crusader Kings, so I decided to step back in time and try out EU2. I'm getting that same "Paradox Daunting Syndrome" where you're confronted with a new Paradox game and are sort of generally confounded and intimidated by all the complexity and so forth. I was sort of hoping to jump right in and elevate a dying power to ahistorical heights or at least ensure it would survive (I had in mind Byzantium and the Golden Horde, but neither of those seem possible or ever practical-- oh man, the Byzantines are on the damn ropes, just two provinces left, the poor rascals )

Anyway, I'm playing 1.09 Vanilla (not even sure what the favored mods are, really.) I've read all the basic Beginner's Guides in the appropriate section in the EU2 Wiki (or at least skimmed them) but I'm still rather lost, or at least feeling a bit intimidated. I'm wondering if I can get some information about the game that those FAQs might not have provided, such as:

Are there any particularly suitable scenarios and/or nations to play for an absolute beginning, one relatively free from mandatory wars or other potentially destructive events, along the lines of Switzerland/Brazil in Victoria? Also, what's up with the Fantasia campaign? It seems incredibly strange, I don't really "get" it-- do people ever play this? If so, what is the objective...just colonize the world?

Also, any general advice, along the lines of "one thing you must always pay attention to is x," would be greatly appreciated. I'm still entirely new at this game, and would love to have a firm grip of all the Paradox greats, so naturally any advice or suggestions are welcome.

Also, is it even possible (or practical, ie without cheating) to do really well as either the Golden Horde or the Byzantine Empire? How about as the Native Americans (of either the South American or North American persuasion?) Since I'm not really familiar with the game mechanics I'm not really in much of a position to judge.

Any information about how badboy works in this game would also be appreciated. I'm well used to scrupulously avoiding it in games of Victoria, and as I understand it, it has its most severe implementation in EU2, so anything is helpful

 

[Duke of Wellington]

France or Spain in 1492 (Age of Exploration Scenario) are both well set up and basically free for you to do what you want. You can go to war, but it;s not necessary or focus on colonisation. Most events are pretty good.

Fantasia scenario is not one played by many. It can be fun but often isn't. Don't worry about it.

There's few single things to pay attention. Other than I'd say getting a basic understanding on monthly incomes to avoid inflation and bankruptcy. The key things being spend your income you get at the start of the year, set minting slider to far left and keep troop numbers under the support limit.

Quite possible to do both. Both are somewhat challenging. In my sig you'll find a link to an AAR of the Golden Horde I'm currently writing (note: It's called Black Horde currently).

Native Americans are harder and a lot more boring.

The Badboy FAQ should answer all questions

 

[Akintude]

I think I'll try Spain, they seem sort of out-of-the-way, yet wealthy and comparatively powerful.

What should my research priorities be? Are there any particular goals I'd be shooting for?

 

[Duke of Wellington]

Research should be directed into trade and infra techs first. Once you get to about 4 in each then invest in land.

Goals for tech or game goals?

 

[Akintude]

Goals for tech or game goals?

Either works But in the preceding sentence, I was referring to tech goals, ie any particular tech advances people typically "sprint" toward.

I'm honestly fumbling around in the dark here. I just got my copy of the game today, and installed it an hour ago. I have no idea what I ought to be doing, literally. Not just long-term goals re: colonization and/or industrialization and infrastructure improvement, but where/when/how often I should be sending my merchants/missionaries/colonists, what scary events I might face in the future, how much of an army it's appropriate (practical?) to keep on hand at the time, how to maintain fiscal solvency, what I should do about those stubborn Grenadans clinging to the vestigial tail-stub of Iberia. Or anything, really. I honestly don't have a clue.

 

[Duke of Wellington]

I know the feeling

Techs that people usually sprint to are trade 3 which allows monopolies and infra 5 which allows the promotion of governors which handle inflation.

With regard to merchants have a look here.

If you click the helmet shaped tab at the top left it gives you a supportable number of troops. This is the maximum you can support before costs go up exponentially. Keeping at this number isn't a bad idea since you've got the max on hand for any war/rebels.

Don't worry about no cash for 11 of the months a year. Just keep it at 0 by spending all your money in January. You won't get into any trouble as long as you keep monthly costs below income (Monthly costs are military maintenance and interest on loans).

The Granadans are fairly easy to beat in a war. It's the only way to get rid of them. There's various ways to do it. But one is to build an army of cavalry and wait until the Granadans attacks Andalusia. It's plains and cavalry get a bonus on plains that should help them to severely reduce or entirely wipe out the enemy.

Keep asking questions we're happy to help, but just experiment you're a powerful country. You can't go too wrong.

 

[CatKnight]

Welcome! Let me look at your basic questions then we'll go into tactics, though I see Duke's done a great job!

Are there any particularly suitable scenarios and/or nations to play for an absolute beginning, one relatively free from mandatory wars or other potentially destructive events, along the lines of Switzerland/Brazil in Victoria? Also, what's up with the Fantasia campaign? It seems incredibly strange, I don't really "get" it-- do people ever play this? If so, what is the objective...just colonize the world?

I see you started up as Spain in '92. Good choice! France is a good one. Austria's okay in '19 or '92, just need to be careful with them. The Ottomans in '92 are very strong.

Fantasia...bah. Haven't played that in years. To answer your question, the point is to colonize and build up enough to have a stable empire and get the most VP...but it's really not worth it. I find it boring.

Also, any general advice, along the lines of "one thing you must always pay attention to is x,"

Hmm.

Keep an eye on your support limit. Click on the guy with the helmet, that tells you how many troops you can comfortably support. Sometimes (like in mid war) you have to go above it, but don't make a habit of it.

This screen also shows what % of maintenance you're paying your troops. In peace time, 50 is plenty. In war time buff that up to 100.

Keep an eye on how you're spending your money. (Techs, stability, treasury.) That's the first button to the right of your country shield. As Duke said, most people raise Infra and/or Trade first. Do this by sliding their slider all the way over. Keep your treasury as far left as you can without running out of money. The ideal is to be able to 'live' off your annual income, for as you move the treasury slider to the right you pick up inflation.

Keep an eye on badboy, which we'll discuss below. To do that click on your diplomacy screen (the thing that looks like a note towards the mid-bottom left.) You'll see something like "You have an honorable reputation." Put your mouse here and it'll tell you your badboy. The number on the right is how high you can let it go before people REALLY hate you....usually I try to keep it below half that, or even less.

When you start a scenario, click on that screen and take a good look at what it says. It'll tell you who your allies are, if you're in any war, if you have a 'casus belli' on anyone, and so forth.

Also, is it even possible (or practical, ie without cheating) to do really well as either the Golden Horde or the Byzantine Empire? How about as the Native Americans (of either the South American or North American persuasion?)

Yes. In fact, Duke's "Black Horde" AAR concerns the Golden Horde. The Byzantine Empire's been done to death. In both cases some luck helps, but very doable. The Native Americans are...not harder so much as more boring. You know far less of the world, you get penalized for it, and when the Euros come they'll have a massive advantage. (Fortunately, they'll also have an incredibly dumb AI.)

Any information about how badboy works in this game would also be appreciated. I'm well used to scrupulously avoiding it in games of Victoria, and as I understand it, it has its most severe implementation in EU2

I imagine this is similar to Vickie:
You get BB for starting wars without a casus belli. (This also hurts your stability, which in turn hurts your economy and increases the likelihood of rebels.) You get BB for taking territories that are not 'core' to you.

RIGHT below the map there are three buttons: The left one gives you the terrain/army view and it's default. The middle one gives you the national borders. Wherever you see a Spanish shield, that's core to you.

You get BB for force annexing non-Pagans. You can only force annex someone (non pagan) with one province, so for example if you wanted to take Granada out, you need two wars - one to take Gibraltar away, then you can take their capital.

Above I mentioned your BB has two values, ex: 0.00/36. The left is your current value, the lower the better. The right is ... when the AIs pretty much HATE you. At about half that value you'll notice a serious decline in relations worldwide. At the full value, at very hard level, most every AI on the planet will declare war on you. This is known as the BB Wars..... Avoid them unless you're going for a world conquest, or the idea of fighting 100 nations appeals to you. Generally the lower the better.

Mods

I must have erased it, because I thought you asked about other mods.

For now, I strongly recommend you get used to vanilla. It's a solid game, though the vanilla AIs are...lamentable. Still, it'll get you used to the screens and stuff.

Once you're ready....there are plenty of mods out there, going from 476 AD to 1913, and probably before and after. One of the more popular ones is AGCEEP ... this is the rough equivalent of VIP and CORE .... more historical events and AI tweaking. I also like EP (Europa Portugalis), which has many of those events and a heavily fortified AI .... probably not suitable for people new to the game unless you WANT a fight.

Also, a few people have changed the map itself, making it more... accurate I suppose. I use WATK (World According to Kasperus.) There's a new version out called WATKAB (....African Beta.) Others swear by MYMAP.

As I said..plenty of mods, and plenty of time. Let's get you through a game or two of Vanilla, then we can cross that particular bridge

Lastly, DoW is right: Experiment! There's very little catastrophic you can do with Spain. For now I'd consider building up an army, and kicking Granada out.

 

[Akintude]

Quick question.

Playing as Spain, I'm promoting a horde of bailiffs to tax collectors, I crushed Grenada in the initial war almost immediately and annexed them, and then an event fired relating to, I suppose, expelling Muslims and Jews from Spain. I chose what seemed to be the less extreme option, the top one, "expel those we don't trust" rather than "execute a clean sweep for jesus," though I may come to regret that because the extra stability loss and revolts don't seem all that serious.

My question is, if my stability drops below the optimum (it is presently at +1) should I invest maximally in stability investment until it gets back up to +3? It dropped from the expulsion event and earlier when I moved my domestic slider one click toward Aristocratic (hey, I hear cavalry and extra diplomats are ) I seem to be constantly hemorrhaging money despite dropping about 300 of my initial 600 bux on promoting tax collectors (who are about to come online) but my yearly census tax or whatever it is doesn't really make up the cumulative monthly losses from the preceding year. Since I'm sure Spain 1492 is a familiar scenario to everyone, what's the best way to achieve a "balanced budget?"

EDIT: How do I make it so I can see and move troops around on the political map?

EDIT NUMERO DOS DE ESPANA: It seems I've got Iberian trade pretty locked down, having 5 doods in the Portuguese CoT and evidently SIX in Andalusia...but I thought that was only possible with a monopoly, which this doesn't seem to be, since there's a handful of foreign merchants still hanging around.

My peasants just panicked and decreased my stability because...they saw a damn meteor. What a bunch of tards :rofl:

 

[Duke of Wellington]

Don't worry much about stability. Keeping it at 1 is perfectly acceptable. You're better to put money into other research.

You will always be losing money unless you mint money. But that brings inflation so it is better to use up all your money and just stay at 0 in the treasury.

You can't see and move troops on the political map as you can in other Paradox games

Random events are a pain. They pretty much conspire to keep you at less than +3 Stab whatever. That's the main reason not to invest in stability because it becomes a permanent exercise.

 

[CatKnight]

I don't worry much about stab unless it falls to -2 or so. -1 is...regrettable and good to avoid, but I figure my automatic investment in stab will hlelp me there. 0 and 1 are perfectly liveable.

You will lose money throughout the year unless you change your treasury slider, which DoW and I advised not doing unless you're in trouble.

Think of it like this: You have a yearly chunk of change, then monthly payments. So long as that yearly chunk covers the twelve months, you can afford to lose money during those months. Again, I don't worry unless it's obvious I'm going to go below 0. Then I mint, and that just enough to stabilize me til next January.

(SOmetimes minting in war is unavoidable. That's another tale.)

Political Maps/Troops: Can't be done. I agree it's annoying.

Trading: Not sure how you have 6 in Andalusia so fast...but you WILL see foreign merchants even in a monopoly situation. Indeed, you want them there as periodically the game will do a sweep of the CoTs, and those not receiving enough trade will disappear....and take your 6 merchants with it!

In EU2 terms, there are 20 slots in any given trade center worth 5% of the trade. A monopoly means any unused slots go to you.

 

[unmerged(53580)]

Beeing below +1 stab is bad for trade, though it may not matter that much when playing against the ai (annoying as hell in MP though)

 

[Akintude]

Beeing below +1 stab is bad for trade, though it may not matter that much when playing against the ai (annoying as hell in MP though)

Why not? Do they tend not to focus on dominating single CoTs, like I've already found myself trying to do? Is trying to dominate particular CoTs usually the best thing to do, rather than get a little piece of the action everywhere? Also, are there any particular CoTs its usually better to try to dominate no matter how far you are from them? Does the country that owns the CoT itself get bonuses on how easy it is to inject their own merchants/compete away others? Do you get penalized for distance?

 

[Akintude]

A further question:

What is the best way to make money? I've tried promoting tax collectors from bailiffs in my provinces, but as far as I can tell, that just improves the monthly income which should never be put into the reserves from the treasury slider anyway, right? Is it by sending merchants away to establish themselves in CoTs? What exactly do manufactories do, refineries in particular (as I just discovered them)?

Also, is it really not worth capturing cities that don't have the same culture as you?

 

[unmerged(53580)]

Generally cities that has same religion or culture are usually worth getting. If it's a cot, take it if you can, no matter what. If you play a christian, only take non-christian provs if they give you about 3-4 times as much income as your average prov. Rich provs that has other christian religion and culture are usually worth it too, espescially if it doesn't cost you too much to convert it.

The way to earn cash is to invest in economical techs early, I usually invest 100% in infra until I reach level 3, then I either go for infra 5 or trade 3, a country like England, France, Spain or Portugal that has a good base for trading (those that usually gets their hands on/start with cots) should aim for trade 3. Countries that receives few merchants should go directly towards infra 5, if you make a significant amount on trade you should go trade 4, infra 5, otherwise infra 5, trade 4.

You should keep up in LT, note that there is little difference between LT8 and LT2, but the difference between LT8 and LT9 is significant, also of note is that LT2-LT7 takes time to get a level increase, but LT8 and LT9 usually is reached within a year.

Early on, tigth economical policies are required, you should live on your census tax only, and not mint anything at all (minting is pulling the to treasury slider towards the rigth). Once you have infra 3 and believe that you won't expand any more further or gain any significant increase in income, you must expect to be at peace too. Set your slider to full mint, and save up money for three years, then you begin to build refineries, build them in provs that are unlikely to be invaded (sugar/wine provs is preferable, but it doesn't matter in the big picture), and build as many as you can, continue to mint and start to build a new refinery once you get enough cash to do so, I usually find it best to start building in march, when the first refinery is about to be completed, take up loans to get the last one up (if you can loan enough money to do so). The trick is to start to build as many refineries as possible before the first one is finished. You get inflation for this, but it's worth it. Keep inflation down at all times, except special cases like Portugal, Spain and England where you want to use every single colonist (england will get 7% inflation cutted off via historical events, 5% in 54 and 2% in 67 iirc so you can take advantage of that).

Next minting period should be the second you reach infra 5, mint and build governors everywhere, as fast as you can. With Governors installed everywhere you will get 25% deflation each year. This means that your inflation will drop by one point every four years, it also means that you can set minting to 25% without increasing inflation. I usually mint fully when I need money and let inflation be reduced when I have enough.

As for trade, at higher trade levels, trade can easily yield you half of your yearly income. Have monopolies where you can and 5 merchants everywhere else, trade is usually worthless before your TE (Trade efficiency) is above 40%, higher trade tech will give you more TE, monopolies gives +2% and refineries +1%, going towards naval and plutocracy will also give you higher TE. If you ban someone or make a TA (trade agreement) you loose 3%, only sign TA's with nations that has valuable/many cots, so that they won't ban you. colonial cots are the easiest to monopolise, in europe I find that it's usually the iberian cots, london, novgorod, constantinople and the cots around the baltics that are easiest, flandern and the italian cots is best left alone.

 

[Akintude]

excellent post

Very comprehensive, thanks, and answered pretty much all the questions I had, and fully too.

My real question, though it's more of an interface one, is whether or not there's an overall budgetary screen were I can see my a) overall trade efficiency, b) expected yearly census tax income (which I'm assuming is that big lump sum you get on Jan. 1st.) and c) my inflation level and its rate of increase. What exactly is that lump payment based on, exactly? Your monthly income, times some particular number? Does money from trade go directly into the research/mint monthly budget, or does it get saved up and dropped into the yearly payment?

Also, since my learning game as Spain is mostly just so I can get the skill I'd presumably need to play as the Byzantines and restore them to greatness (which is the reason I got this game in the first place,) does your advice to take most decently profitable Christian provinces you can if you're Christian yourself hold true if you're Orthodox rather than Catholic/Protestant?

 

[unmerged(3931)]

a) overall trade efficiency
You will find this in the monthly income window. Trade efficiency is the amount your trade income is multiplied by. You also find trade efficieny in the rollover when you roll your mouse over one of your placed merchants in a CoT. You also find it in the ledger on the comparison page near the end. In the trade column is every remaining nation's trade efficiency.

b) expected yearly census tax income (which I'm assuming is that big lump sum you get on Jan. 1st.)
No, you cannot find it calculated for you. You can calculate it yourself most easily by waiting for January 1.

c) my inflation level and its rate of increase.
You see the current level of inflation at the bottom of the monthly income window. You see the current rate of inflationary increase in the budget window where there are all the sliders for treasury and other investments. When you roll the mouse over the treasury slider, a box pops up that gives you the current inflation. Note that gold inflation is always reported as zero during the month of January and right after a reload. Gold inflation may go up during the year as well.

What exactly is that lump payment based on, exactly?
Census tax is based on the modified base tax for all your provinces. Modifiers to base tax are +1 tax for tax collectors and legal counsels, plus percentages for high stability, and minus percentages for wrong culture, wrong religion, no land connection, and revolt risk. For players, there is no census tax from looted provinces. The modified base tax is given for each province separately in the province window. When you roll over the income of the province, there is a breakdown of the tax; but it does not include tax collectors and legal counsels which you have to add in to the base tax yourself then modify it by the various percentage.

Additional modifiers are applied to the base tax before you receive it as census tax. You receive a certain percentage for core provinces. You receive a certain percentage for being more centralized. And if you have a tax collector you receive an additional percentage. Without tax collectors, you do not receive much census tax.

Does money from trade go directly into the research/mint monthly budget, or does it get saved up and dropped into the yearly payment?
Trade income is available in the monthly budget.

 

[unmerged(53580)]

All the income you see in the budget window (summed up in the monthly income) goes directly to the budget sliders.

The cencus tax you get each jan (that goes directly to treasury) is based on the tax income in all your prov. Each province contributes to the cencus the tax income it gives per year ((basetax+officials)*modifier)multiplied with a factor for each province: if it has a tax collector 0,75 is added to the modifier, if it's a core 0,25 is added. For each step towards centralisation 0,025 is added. this modifier can't be more than 1. So a core with tax collector will give all it's yearly tax income, same with a noncore with tax collector when centralisation is 10 (maxed). Check the economy faq for all the details.

If you go to the ledger and check the page "income-breakdown", you'll see what you received in census last year and as long as your stability stays the same you'll likely get the same amount (unless you gain more provs, build officials etc). All income except census, events and peacedeals goes trough the budget.

A clear majority of your provs should be rigth religion (or rigth culture as those can be easily converted for the most part), and you shouldn't have more than three of the religions that you have sliders for in the religion screen, settings (though cots are cots).

Early on wrong religion, wrong culture provs aren't worth it IMO. They cost a lot in stab and it isn't before later that tolls and production values becomes more significant.