Post your Europa Universalis 4 Empire

[hwoosh]

This is me sieging the most unexpected final boss I've ever met, Bukhara. They blobbed into mongol lands unopposed while I was busy conquering seven millions chinese states and Russia was busy pushing the Ottomans out of Ukraine. RIP Commonwealth, you were too nice for this world.

Oh god, learn how to carpet-siege, dude. Those 20-stacks hanging out in arid Central Asia are painful to look at. I shudder to think how much manpower you must have wasted over the course of the campaign...


That's probably one reason why you weren't able to blob more, by the way: sieging two or three provinces at a time, rather than all of them at once, is so inefficient that each of your wars must have taken three or four times as long as it should have.

 

[HabemusZlatan]

Oh god, learn how to carpet-siege, dude. Those 20-stacks hanging out in arid Central Asia are painful to look at. I shudder to think how much manpower you must have wasted over the course of the campaign...


That's probably one reason why you weren't able to blob more, by the way: sieging two or three provinces at a time, rather than all of them at once, is so inefficient that each of your wars must have taken three or four times as long as it should have.

That's a valid point, let me anwer:

1 - I'm China. I have infinite manpower (not in that case, but whatever)
2 - Bukhara had something like 120k troop (70k from Bukhara proper, the others from alliances and stuff) , I was sieging as much as I could to build warscore while they were busy creating a megastack of doom they would eventually force through the only point where they could access my territory. The reason for the 20k stack was to avoid some early aggression by them by reinforcing the defending stack asap.
3 - I've disregarded strategy when I became the one throwing infinite dudes to the enemy. Besides, before I carpet siege, I like to destroy enemy's doomstack. Expecially when it's as massive as Bukhara had.
4 - Well, yeah, I reached Taraz in 1770, so you might have a point.
5 - I took like 200 years to conquer all of China proper. You have to thank truces, no cores, claims disappearing and exagerate base tax resulting in humungous overextension, limiting my advance a bit (had to wait, core, give authonomy, attack next chinese state, take as much provinces as I could if I couldn't outright annex, rinse, repeat).

p.s. I don't claim this is the right strategy, I just said why I took so much time and why it made sense in my head.

 

[achmedino]

Oh god, learn how to carpet-siege, dude. Those 20-stacks hanging out in arid Central Asia are painful to look at. I shudder to think how much manpower you must have wasted over the course of the campaign...


That's probably one reason why you weren't able to blob more, by the way: sieging two or three provinces at a time, rather than all of them at once, is so inefficient that each of your wars must have taken three or four times as long as it should have.

That's a valid point, let me anwer:

1 - I'm China. I have infinite manpower (not in that case, but whatever)
2 - Bukhara had something like 120k troop (70k from Bukhara proper, the others from alliances and stuff) , I was sieging as much as I could to build warscore while they were busy creating a megastack of doom they would eventually force through the only point where they could access my territory. The reason for the 20k stack was to avoid some early aggression by them by reinforcing the defending stack asap.
3 - I've disregarded strategy when I became the one throwing infinite dudes to the enemy. Besides, before I carpet siege, I like to destroy enemy's doomstack. Expecially when it's as massive as Bukhara had.
4 - Well, yeah, I reached Taraz in 1770, so you might have a point.
5 - I took like 200 years to conquer all of China proper. You have to thank truces, no cores, claims disappearing and exagerate base tax resulting in humungous overextension, limiting my advance a bit (had to wait, core, give authonomy, attack next chinese state, take as much provinces as I could if I couldn't outright annex, rinse, repeat).

p.s. I don't claim this is the right strategy, I just said why I took so much time and why it made sense in my head.

It does make a lot of sense to destroy the enemy's doomstack before carpet sieging. If you don't, the enemy will just end up destroying a couple of your armies before you're able to gather all your troops. This is even more true in central Asia, where it takes two months to travel to an adjacent province.

 

[TenderPeaches]

From Friesland to Netherlands. I've spent most of the last few centuries in a rolling coalition against literally the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, the Ottomans frequently declare war to take their Balkans claims. I can take on either individually, but when they both declare at the same time it's too much to handle. I was going for the Orangists in China achievement but apparently you need cores for that. Being unable to beat Spain (through a coalition) to take their Indian holdings, I can't quite make the connection so that's a shame. Otherwise though, I feel pretty good about how this game went, considering it started with an OPM.

Polotsk is my vassal, otherwise everyone else is against me.

 

[illusiondrmr]

Sunda, just for the cool black yellow flag. I wanted more of this game, like conquering all Asia at least. Oh well, failed i guess due to wrong vassal handling and some heavy coalitions in the way.. Next time !

 

[Deo89]

From Friesland to Netherlands. I've spent most of the last few centuries in a rolling coalition against literally the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, the Ottomans frequently declare war to take their Balkans claims. I can take on either individually, but when they both declare at the same time it's too much to handle. I was going for the Orangists in China achievement but apparently you need cores for that. Being unable to beat Spain (through a coalition) to take their Indian holdings, I can't quite make the connection so that's a shame. Otherwise though, I feel pretty good about how this game went, considering it started with an OPM.


Polotsk is my vassal, otherwise everyone else is against me.

Now, you have 70 years to fix the borders.

 

[Magean]

I don't know how you guys can do WCs and conquer half the known world, this took me almost the entire game. And I expanded pretty much historically, just missing a couple provinces and have conquered a couple provinces Qing didn't own (Russia did), but oh well. Being Buryatia is suffering though.

This is me sieging the most unexpected final boss I've ever met, Bukhara. They blobbed into mongol lands unopposed while I was busy conquering seven millions chinese states and Russia was busy pushing the Ottomans out of Ukraine. RIP Commonwealth, you were too nice for this world.

Things I've learned from this game:

Ming is still a paper tiger, Oirats got nerfed to the ground, Haixi are assholes.
Korea needs to stop attacking Japan. Had to vassalize them just to avoid having my eastern border flooded with screaming japs while I'm busy conquering deserts.
Qing needs to get cores instead of claims, speeds up the process a lot and helps you not lagging in adm and dip techs like a madman.
You can change dynasty as many times as necessary without repercussions, Aisin Gioro house died when I was still Jianzhou. Now a Persian family rules Qing.
Base tax in China is crazy.
You can westernize off cores from OPM Holland, whose only remarkable feature in game (except existing) was colonizing Taiwan. That didn't stop Austrian doomstacks from marching all the way across Europe to siege Dzungharia and being a bitch about letting Taiwan go though.
An Asian cosmetic pack would be balling. No, seriously.
And, finally, never play with historical lucky nations again, it evolves in some creepy stuff and serious bordergore.

Not giving Qing core in China (at least in the Northern half, the Cantonese area could be left with simple claims) is one of the reasons why it's impossible to see the AI replicate history. If Jianzhou ever becomes a lucky nation (if there are nations that were historically lucky, well these Mandchous were among theme, for sure), they may be able to unite the Mandchous consistently and feed from the North-Easternmost part of Ming, but they'll never rule China.

 

[Lord Finnish]

A bit too early I suppose but I'm doing pretty good here:

At first I almost restarted when almost immediately after independence war I was hit by a 14-year regency and a 2-0-0 king after that. But then I saw Muscovy was weak and I beat them up a total of three times with Poland and Lithuania. I've had a lot of luck with AI alliances so far, but a few years ago Poland lost a war and is no longer overlord of Lithuania - and of course first thing Lithuania did was rival me which took away my most powerful, and with Poland the only, ally.

I have 25 forcelimit now, Muscovy has 20. I took Administrative Ideas so I'll also have some cheap mercenaries if it comes to that.

My only worry is Lithuania. If they attack me while I'm in Russia, I'm toast.

 

[Sousuke123]

Why even bother conquering Norway? Sweden has mission on them to vassalize them in one go. You should have vassalize Livonian Order and annex and sell it Riga to them. Is Holstein and Oldenburg your vassal? Why feeding Hansa? You're future food. Administrative seems fine but when i did run i took Economic, Quantity and Offensive and it worked magic with 20% artillery CA and 33% FL policies

 

[Lord Finnish]

Why even bother conquering Norway? Sweden has mission on them to vassalize them in one go. You should have vassalize Livonian Order and annex and sell it Riga to them. Is Holstein and Oldenburg your vassal? Why feeding Hansa? You're future food. Administrative seems fine but when i did run i took Economic, Quantity and Offensive and it worked magic with 20% artillery CA and 33% FL policies

Only vassal I have is Tver. Haven't gotten any missions to vassalize Norway.

I am probably going to vassalize Livonians in our next conflict. To be honest I try to avert vassal feeding because I find it a completely absurd game mechanic, and basically easy mode for blobbing (also AI never vassal feeds and I want everyone to play by the same rules).

 

[Sousuke123]

I'm not saying you should feed them, just vassalize by force or diplo and diploannex them later besides if you want to cut through HRE it is convenient to do this through diplomacy unless you want to have fun with Austria and co. . Strange with not getting mission, maybe you should have take and cancel mission to get it desirable one giving it's importance, having negative opinion of you increases chances
http://www.eu4wiki.com/Swedish_missions

 

[negativekarz]

Gave an unpopular and supposedly slow start a run:



Lots to do still, I might stay Totemist and make all new world Totemist (with it #1 faith) for fun. All Iroquois stuff is cored so I have a springboard to relevancy on the East coast. These guys and Haida are basically the same as the other native councils, but their ideas are solid.

Nice start as Salish!
I remember once playing a game as Chinook (back when 'primitives' could still build boats) and I explored, colonized all of Siberia, and conquered Japan.
T'was before I knew of the forums though, I had no reason to take screenies.

 

[ceteris.paribus]

My casual Knights > Jerusalem run. Became HR Emperor and revoked, but wasted too much time cat herding and passing reforms. Should've pushed my borders farther east.

 

[Apollyonna]

My Palatinate in the year 1803

France is my long term ally. Commonwealth finally turned against me so I beat them up together with France and made them release Sweden. I also took Wallachia, Moldavia and other border provinces to make it look a bit nicer.

My vassals are Leon, Aragon, Switzerland and Luxemburg. I didn't want to integrate them all as I kinda like the way my country looks now. All I will take now is Pomerania to finish off 'the look'.

During the last war with Ottomans they were beaten badly I then started to support rebels here and there and the moment they spawned, I started to support other rebels. The had taken pretty much all of the Arabian peninsula and most of Ethiopia/Adal, etc. The result of the implosion was similar to that of Ming (whenever they do).

I kept a diplomat permanently in Ile de Frogs to make sure France stayed on my good side. At times they wanted some of my provinces and the relationship fell down to 50% (mainly due to being allied with their rival (Commonwealth at the time) and me being reformed (-40). Luckily they stayed with me.

Bahmanis formed Hindustan. Bengal was quite large but got beaten up by Ayutthaya. Brazil, USA, Argentina and Mexico got their indepence quite early.

And Songhai stronk

My tax base is 1178.60 with 159 provinces owned (not counting vassals)

I like to think that for once I managed decent borders..... ? I even took Antwerp once but sold it too France (even though they did not want that province but one owned by Aragon) just so I would not have a stray province.

 

[Afaslizo]

I finished a new Hansa to Germany game with a few Custom Nation I edited in. Funny enough they came to bite me in the back. Algarves just sit there and did nothing for the whole lifespan while New Cornwall which I forgot to rename into a better name due to creating it last united the British Isles from scratch and became the only surviving Nordic country with colonies. But that is not the best.

The best is that France and Germany are allies and have been so since the Hansa became big enough to be attractive for France. Though while both rape their neighbors of course only Germany faces a coalition. France never once faced any reasonable foe.

The Protestant Reformation flopped in Europe, even Reformed thrived better due to Brittany creating two successfull colonies bevor their overlord France annexed them. Muscowy became Shia without any intervention. Ottoman broke down and then Egypt happened.

At one time I had to release my two biggest colonies due to manpower and admin point problems. At least that makes for a more pleasent America. US and Canada as my former colonies, German West Indies (founded as Cuba with the Hansa), Oregon and Utah being my remaining colonial empire. Louisana was Norwegian before it became free. Colombia is evolved from a Dutch colony. Spanish colonial independence wars were won by Spain.

Asia is tame so it is followed by ending screen

 

[TheGrouch91]

Did you have a slow start? Or did you face some complications? I tried Germany (the boring Brandenburg-Prussia-Germany route) and it was easier than I thought.

Situation in Europe (Bohemia and Hungary are Vassals):

Asian and African German holdings (the indian ones are hard to see):

Stopped, again, because no one could possibly beat me anymore. And I also wasnt sure what to do next.


PS: Next time you play Germany for the love of god use a flag mod. The vanilla flag is hideous.

 

[dragoon9105]

But! you forgot the rest of Elsaß-Lothringen this cannot stand!

 

[Afaslizo]

Did you have a slow start? Or did you face some complications? I tried Germany (the boring Brandenburg-Prussia-Germany route) and it was easier than I thought.

PS: Next time you play Germany for the love of god use a flag mod. The vanilla flag is hideous.

I do not like power plays and play on a more reasonable expansion speed - and even with mercenaries I ran out of manpower thrice(twice due two Aristocrats revolting via Merchant Republic event and fielding an army four times my force limit) and was just saved from gang bang by being allied to Austria and later France.

Eastern Europe was once dominated by custom nation Belz which I gave tons of military ideas but a war against Lithuania, Sweden, Austria and me left them broken. Being allied to Austria and France and their constant wars slow down too. But mostly it is self restraint which I abandoned at 1750 after forming German and never being without coalition.

And I like vanilla German flag!

 

[erisiamk]

Behold, the Archduchy of Italy! Thought I'd give this a try before the new patch came out, as it depended on starting as Austria and culture-shifting into Lombard by moving your capital to Venice (or somewhere else Lombard), which clearly wouldn't be possible based on the new map screenshot. Was fairly slow due to the Admin Tech constraint, as the initial 2/5/1 isn't ideal and was followed by a 0/5/3, and you have to buy the stability back from culture-shifting pretty quickly. Also have Burgundy as a vassal and Hungary as a PU, and a succession war with France is likely some time in the next few decades. Also, Savoy is Spain's PU buddy. Not that that matters for Austro-Italy... I have claims now, and they even converted Vaud and Wallis to Lombard! That Ragusa also formed natually somehow.

 

[RadRussian]

1001 provinces achievement with Ottomans. Forgive my borders, Uzbek did not want to leave coalition for decades.

I haven't done so much micro in a EU4 game ever and this is why I'm not going to do WC. I had to attend pretty much every battle across the globe, not to mention what my PC went through. The WC, however, is possible. One just needs to create a mini HRE swarm.

I became friends with Burgundy to keep France at bay and I didn't notice as he ate half of HRE and a baguette for a desert. But in late 1700s he decided to form France, lol
It's like that Chinese story about a warrior who defeated a dragon only to be corrupted by dragon's wealth and turn into dragon himself.