Post your Europa Universalis 4 Empire

[unmerged(804580)]

Here it is, the Shi'ite Ashikaga Shogunate. I just gave up my weekend - it was such a blast. Thank you penco for such an awesome game idea.

My Westernization was kind of late, Sep. 7, 1627 as I decided to go religious first to get the conversion done ASAP. I do have MIL tech 31 at this point, but I was still a few techs behind the Europeans for a long, long time because I went for religious ideas instead. I didn't want to conquer too much so that I cannot convert everything - my religious unity isn't 100%, but I don't let it fall below 90%. Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism are all extinct, and I'm permanent DotF as Japan and Bali are the only Shi'ite nations in existence. I kept Bali as a pet vassal because it's kind of lonely being the only nation of the true faith.

One thing I noticed was that I could do the "Japan is united" decision during the Westernization, which would have been a big boost to the monarch points but I refused and remained the Shogunate. If you're playing Japan, it might be better to wait on the decision until you're Westernizing.

Being a Shogunate, my vassals always formed alliances and went to war with each other as long as they can find a valid CB. A few minor vassals like Kathiawar, Sibir and Khmer got annexed by other vassals. It's not that much of a big deal unless you're planning to feed the minor their cores, and it did keep the game sort of more interesting. I diplovassalized Qara Qoyunlu and Persia and they were in permanent state of war against each other until I annexed them. So were Gujarat and Bahmanis. Fortunately, annexing a vassal during war did not drag me into it. It would have been pretty worrisome if you had a mega-vassal like Shun with all its cores, and it went to war with Manchus who you're just annexing, and you're suddenly at war with it. Fortunately it didn't happen.

I don't have any of the New World, and I played most of the game at speed 4 while avoiding micromanaging too many things at one time, like multi-front wars. I think penco is going for exploration first, so his result might be even more impressive in the end. Other than pushing a bit into Siberia I didn't have a chance to fight a war with the Europeans. It's a shame when you realize you don't have a coalition against you... if you don't have a coalition, you're not playing the game hard enough as you're not conquering people. It took something like 11 or 12 wars of returning cores to finally click the 'full annexation' on Ming. Damn they're huge.

I moved my capital all over the place. Historical capitals of Japan: Kyoto, Pattani, Alxa and Kathiawar. It's a waste of ADM points and the potential trade income, but it saves a lot of diplomat/colonist travel time.

 

[penco]

Here it is, the Shi'ite Ashikaga Shogunate. I just gave up my weekend - it was such a blast. Thank you penco for such an awesome game idea.

My Westernization was kind of late, Sep. 7, 1627 as I decided to go religious first to get the conversion done ASAP. I do have MIL tech 31 at this point, but I was still a few techs behind the Europeans for a long, long time because I went for religious ideas instead. I didn't want to conquer too much so that I cannot convert everything - my religious unity isn't 100%, but I don't let it fall below 90%. Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism are all extinct, and I'm permanent DotF as Japan and Bali are the only Shi'ite nations in existence. I kept Bali as a pet vassal because it's kind of lonely being the only nation of the true faith.

One thing I noticed was that I could do the "Japan is united" decision during the Westernization, which would have been a big boost to the monarch points but I refused and remained the Shogunate. If you're playing Japan, it might be better to wait on the decision until you're Westernizing.

Being a Shogunate, my vassals always formed alliances and went to war with each other as long as they can find a valid CB. A few minor vassals like Kathiawar, Sibir and Khmer got annexed by other vassals. It's not that much of a big deal unless you're planning to feed the minor their cores, and it did keep the game sort of more interesting. I diplovassalized Qara Qoyunlu and Persia and they were in permanent state of war against each other until I annexed them. So were Gujarat and Bahmanis. Fortunately, annexing a vassal during war did not drag me into it. It would have been pretty worrisome if you had a mega-vassal like Shun with all its cores, and it went to war with Manchus who you're just annexing, and you're suddenly at war with it. Fortunately it didn't happen.

I don't have any of the New World, and I played most of the game at speed 4 while avoiding micromanaging too many things at one time, like multi-front wars. I think penco is going for exploration first, so his result might be even more impressive in the end. Other than pushing a bit into Siberia I didn't have a chance to fight a war with the Europeans. It's a shame when you realize you don't have a coalition against you... if you don't have a coalition, you're not playing the game hard enough as you're not conquering people. It took something like 11 or 12 wars of returning cores to finally click the 'full annexation' on Ming. Damn they're huge.

I moved my capital all over the place. Historical capitals of Japan: Kyoto, Pattani, Alxa and Kathiawar. It's a waste of ADM points and the potential trade income, but it saves a lot of diplomat/colonist travel time.

Nice! You actually did much better than I did. I gave up because a combination of low manpower and neverending rebels made it impossible to accomplish anything. I also wasn't able to beat Europe to the American nations even after beelining to Exploration. The Eastern tech group is just such a drag.

I am guessing the game got easier once you were able to expand beyond Japan?

 

[Terant]

That's one badass Zhou/Shun/Xia/whatever in china. Also Britannia in North america must be one though sunavabirch.

It's the Holy Britannian Empire!

 

[Sousuke123]

My Poland can into space campaign. Never pushed too much in expansion since i wanted this icon . Around 1600 got union with Austria so from that point everything went smooth( HRE Emperor became Brittany). When i was thinking about annexing Pomerania in 1804 got union with them as well. Thankfully Denmark inherited Sweden and Norway so i didn't get nasty alliance between Sweden and Muscovy. I took Diplomacy, Defensive, Religious, Offensive, Exploration, Administrative, Aristocracy and Quality idea group but didn't make it in time to finish last one.
The only bad thing is i never diplovassalized Nogai since they had too high base tax. Not to mention Peru revolting in East Coast ^^




Probably the most enjoyable button in game



Even without piety Poland can get pretty high morale


Btw bonus for unlocking NI should be changed, my missionaries were working 24h/7 day a week and still one third of country is shia, "ulema concerned" was firing more than 3 times per year it's complete bs. I know that in CoP colonization will be changed but still it's too fast historic wolrd around 1850 we can easly see in 1700, making colonization harder would be nice and make ai focus on some more or less historic part so castille or portugal don't colonize Siberia.

 

[Stategem161803]

Beware the French Hordes!

Yeah, seriously. I had about 1.5 million troops and I was still making 1000/month.

 

[Novacat]

Btw bonus for unlocking NI should be changed, my missionaries were working 24h/7 day a week and still one third of country is shia, "ulema concerned" was firing more than 3 times per year it's complete bs. I know that in CoP colonization will be changed but still it's too fast historic wolrd around 1850 we can easly see in 1700, making colonization harder would be nice and make ai focus on some more or less historic part so castille or portugal don't colonize Siberia.

Theres a Conventicle act and something else that reduces heretic tolerance... Enact those before conversion to sunni/shiite and you should be good.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

Nice! You actually did much better than I did. I gave up because a combination of low manpower and neverending rebels made it impossible to accomplish anything. I also wasn't able to beat Europe to the American nations even after beelining to Exploration. The Eastern tech group is just such a drag.

I am guessing the game got easier once you were able to expand beyond Japan?

There were some really, really, really dicey moments and the aftermath of conversion was really tough and I have to admit I actually collapsed back to Shinto once and had to load the last autosave. I guess it was worth going for religious first... dumping down tons of ADM for the missionary strength was a lifesaver. It kind of reminded me of the Kirishitan rebels in the earlier patches which used to wreck Japan all the time.. except it came much quicker. One of the worst thing was that Korea declared war for conquest of Suo. One of the best thing that happened was that Korea killed the Shinto rebels and nearly got wiped in return in Suo.

But with the missionary strength, I was able to convert the provinces as I integrated the smaller Daimyos. I actually annexed Brunei back as soon as I could, and while this meant both Shinto AND Sunni rebels, neither was the dominant religion in Japan anymore so the rebels couldn't enforce demands.

Once I went halfway towards consolidating / converting Japan and integrated Brunei, however, the Shi'ite morale plus Japanese discipline was pretty potent against other Chinese tech nations. As long as the tech level is more or less the same, I could stackwipe Ayutthaya or Aceh pretty easily. My max morale in 1543 was 5.1, while Ayutthaya had 3.6. While fighting Ming (with their faction penalties) I just rushed into Ming's 30k stack sieging in Tibet with 20k of my own and still expect to win.

It took more than a hundred years to finally destroy Ming once and for all. I took Manchu, Zhou, Xi and Shun cores as soon as I could and just kept Jihad'ing every time the truce ran out (took a break during Westernization of course). Maybe I could have saved some more time if I took provinces and sold them directly once I unlocked Overseas Expansion. Nanjing cost more than 60% by itself... well, the national pastime of carpet-sieging Ming gave me a lot of army tradition (every siege won gives you a bit of it) and my conquistadors usually had 4~6 pips across the board. By this time expanding into India was a joke, as I was stackwiping 30k stacks on the first day of the battle.

One thing that I should have thought of while playing the game non-stop in a half-dormant state late in the night was that I was wasting too much time on Ming and Ming alone. I demanded total annexation only in 1745. Maybe I should have just left Ming alone and go for unifying Islam or something.. as you can see, the Ottomans didn't succeed very well in this game, Mamluks mostly held onto themselves and Lithuania is carpeting the Ottomans right now as of the last screenshot. Perm got loose early and it really delayed Russia. Lots of could'ves and should'ves, but in the hindsight the road to unify Islam was kind of open. Having Han as an accepted culture gave me an insane FL over 500, but what good is it if I ran out of time to use them.

In the end, it was a great fun and the very fact that I'm playing a Shi'a Shogunate was craptastic eough, but the late Westernization kind of balances out the benefit from the Shi'a bonus. I kind of miss the chances to go for the New World, but with that late Westernization I had to focus on the home continent since I caught up in tech only around 1750s.

 

[Turtlezilla]

How is everyone converting to Islam? Is there another way other than becoming an OPM and collapsing to zealots?

 

[orthezuma]

The first paradox game i ever finished! Tuscany-> Italy game. Extremely passive gameplay, I kept setting myself small goals so its not what it could've been. My initial objective was to unite all Italy and build all buildings, then it became taking control of Ivory Coast, then Timbuktu, and i found myself in Arabia. Got into India out of boredom near 1790s. Took a huge piece of land and released vassals. Kinda regret i didn't go for achievement now.

Had Granada as vassal so it did all my colonizing out of Africa, nothing big except a nice chunk of land around Mexico. Missed loads of PU opportunities thanks to rulers ~age 70 producing heirs, France, Portugal, England, twice Castille. Finally got Aragon in PU at 1715. Wanted to unite my lands by Anatolia but Ottomans allied HRE and couple more European nations for a big part of the game.

Really wanted to take Oman and Yemen but cascading alliances mixed with coalitions kept me at bay. Didn't want to fight France, HRE and Portugal for Oman. Still pretty happy i finished a game, late game is so boring.

 

[Novacat]

How is everyone converting to Islam? Is there another way other than becoming an OPM and collapsing to zealots?

You dont have to collapse to zealots. If they become the majority religion you can just accept and then you will be that new religion.

 

[Sousuke123]

How is everyone converting to Islam? Is there another way other than becoming an OPM and collapsing to zealots?

You don't collapse, simply conquer as much as possible muslim lands and look at rebellion if the condition is met with amount of land and then incite zealots and accept their demands. In my playthrough despite annexing moldavia, mazovia, teutonic order i conquered only part of crimea and kazan and this was sufficient to convert. If you have any pu at that time remeber to have improved relation with them as high as possible since you may lose union - at least in my fisrt attempt as poland it happened to me.

Oh btw, there is two more thing before i pued Austria they had PU with Palatinate and pu wasn't transferred on me yet interestingly they weren't independent since they weren't highlighted in a HRE panel. Austria had vassal Thuringia and same thing happened, maybe it should be fixed this

 

[PrinceCola]

Is it possible to be successful like you guys without understanding trade? I really like the game, but trade is beyond me.

 

[lordelenath]

Sure, just pick a nation where trade is mostly irrelevant, some possibilities would be Austria, Muscovy, Ming, Ottomans, France, Poland, Lithuania or most HRE minors. You can do all of these without really looking at trade at all - although I don't quite understand what's your problem with trade, since at least the basic principles are pretty easy to grasp (it obviously gets a bit more difficult if you want to really optimize).

 

[Camtheman]

Is it possible to be successful like you guys without understanding trade? I really like the game, but trade is beyond me.

Yes, you can focus on production and tax instead, I find production/tax to be a more stable income than trade anyway. But trade is much easier to understand than in EUIII, I had to cheat my arse off because EUIII was too confusing for me. Now I can manage EUIV very well without cheating with even very difficult New World nations...

Basically, at every node, trade value is added. If you forward the node's trade down to other nodes, the trade value is added, and down further to other nodes, the value is added more and more, it's compounded. Also helps if you build trade buildings. You collect at the final node in the chain and make a ton of money. The longer the chain the more money that is made.

 

[Rey]

Is it possible to be successful like you guys without understanding trade? I really like the game, but trade is beyond me.

Trade isn't hard. Place 1 merchant on the node where your capital is located and collect there, place the others in nearby nodes to steer the trade into the one where you are collecting. Build light ships up to your naval force limit, send them to protect trade in the node you collect, and some ones to the nodes where your merchants are steering. Try different combinations to optimize the money you make of it. Provinces also give trade power, it's sometimes useful to take high trade power provinces in valuable nodes.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

You dont have to collapse to zealots. If they become the majority religion you can just accept and then you will be that new religion.

To add: I don't know how the formula exactly works, but my hunch is that there just needs to be more target religion provinces than your own religion provinces. As Perm, I couldn't accept the rebel demands when I was 3 Sunni vs 3 Orthodox. I had to wait 'til it flipped to 4/2. Maybe, maybe it also has something to do with the base tax or something else but "more than half of all your provinces" should be just about right.

As Khmer, I converted to Orthodox by conquering Ethiopia, and that brought not only the Orthodox but a couple of Sunni provinces as well. Based on the screenshot I took back then I sold all but three mainland Asian provinces to my Buddhist vassals. Orthodox had to be the majority, and that probably means 50% or more of your provinces, not just the biggest denomination.

Two ways to get the target religion provinces:

1. Conquer more of them. This is how penco and I converted Japan to Sunni. Japan has 3 Shinto provinces, conquering 4 Sunni provinces from Brunei suffices. Regardless to say, it's easier when you're smaller.
2. Let rebels rise and convert the provinces for you. If a zealot rebel occupies a province, they convert the religion of the province. This is how I converted Perm to Sunni while still being under Muscovite vassalage, as neighboring Kazan has two provinces of my culture (Uralic). One was taken by Muscovy and sold to me, the other defected thanks to the patriot rebels. Two out of six, the rebels had to force convert just two more. It doesn't help if a Sunni zealot occupies a Sunni province while Sunni is still the minority religion; you need to wait for them to move and occupy more Orthodox provinces.

Alternatively, conceding defeat and offering religious conversion can work, but only if your own total warscore is below 100%. This can be done only within the same religious group (i.e. heretics, like Sunni vs Shi'a). But although you're actually conceding defeat and offering to convert yourself, you still have to win the war heavily. Penco and I already had a Sunni Japan, we declared war on a Shi'a state (Gujarat in our cases) and we could offer the conversion because Japan's three starting provinces have a total warscore value of 70%. Of course you can't do this if you're not Muslim to begin with.

So, as long as you're willing to take the trouble, you can theoretically convert any nation to any religion. I thought Japan wasn't allowed to convert to Catholic, but Sunni worked just fine. Does anyone know if the Papal State is set to be unable to convert at all? I wonder what would happen if a non-Catholic Papal State proclaims the Kingdom of God. Getting the Curia benefit plus the piety scale would be pretty potent.

 

[PrinceCola]

Sorry, i still don't get it...i really really want to like this game. But the trade is unlike anything i have ever done before...and people told me it was similar to CK2 -.-

 

[hwoosh]

Sorry, i still don't get it...i really really want to like this game. But the trade is unlike anything i have ever done before...and people told me it was similar to CK2 -.-

There are already literally hundreds of threads where people have patiently explained trade. Go read them, and read this: http://eu4wiki.com/Trade, and play around with the game until you do get it. There's no great mystery, it's highly straightforward and transparent, and if you don't "get it", that's 100% your problem, not the game's. SIGH.

 

[durvas]

To add: I don't know how the formula exactly works, but my hunch is that there just needs to be more target religion provinces than your own religion provinces. As Perm, I couldn't accept the rebel demands when I was 3 Sunni vs 3 Orthodox. I had to wait 'til it flipped to 4/2. Maybe, maybe it also has something to do with the base tax or something else but "more than half of all your provinces" should be just about right.

I think it can be a 50/50 split as long as your capital is in the religion you want to change to. I've done it as the Ottomans.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

Sorry, i still don't get it...i really really want to like this game. But the trade is unlike anything i have ever done before...and people told me it was similar to CK2 -.-

Go look at the trade nodes where you have provinces. See which ones have high "trade value." Basically, a node made of rich provinces have high trade value, and a node made of relatively poor provinces have low value. Let's say, Ceylon node has 10 ducats value, while Bengal has 50 ducats value. You have monopoly over Ceylon, so you can take 10 from Ceylon. You only have 50% of trde power Bengal, so if you decide to collect from Bengal, you only get 25. You have two merchants. If you steer trade from Bengal to Ceylon and collect from Ceylon, you get 35. This is a veeeery gross oversimplification, but that's basically the idea.

Whether you decide to collect from the node or steer it to another node where your capital belongs is up to you. For example, Spain's capital lies in Sevilla trade node. But most of Aragon belongs to Genoa node. Once Aragon is integrated, Spain can either try to steer trade from Genoa to Sevilla, or collect from Genoa.

But Spain is not the only nation in the Sevilla node. Spain can try to steer trade from Genoa to Sevilla, and this will benefit Portugal as well. Let's say you bring 10 ducats from Genoa to Sevilla. Portugal takes 40% of what is collected in Sevilla. Portugal can get more money without sending a merchant to Genoa because you are doing that. Alternatively, you can collect in Genoa. Since Genoa is not your capital node, you will not be collecting as efficiently as you can. But, if for some reason Portugal has too much trade power in Sevilla, you may end up making more money from collecting there. Is it better to collect or steer? Depends. Just try experimenting.

So, your trade income will fluctuate all the time. Say, if France just decides they're going to be assholes, they can send a merchant and tons of light ships to Sevilla to gain trade power there and steer the wealth flowing from the New World to Bordeaux, their home node. If they do this, you lose some of the income. You can embargo them of course, but this gives trade dispute CB to them.

I think that's pretty much it. I don't know how else to explain it. If you still don't get it, just go conquer rich places, send a merchant and tons of light ships and collect there.