Post your Europa Universalis 4 Empire

[klingonadmiral]

Spain's Empire in the twilight of the 16th century:

Damn is Castille an unenjoyable tag. Atrocious ruler and heir, a wagonload of shitty events and as a colonizer I can't even take influence and adaptability. I'm blocked from expanding left and right. England is allied to Austria, Savoy is allied to England AND Austria, France has developed it's provinces to such a degree that taking more than 2 means coalition by half of Europe. And good lord is my forcelimit atrocious.

 

[Silverbow]

Baltic Crusader that decided to become the Emperor for the lulz.

The only countries in Europe aside from my vassals, allies and allies' vassals are rump Portugal and ... Iceland in Faeroes.

 

[Sunspawn]

You can play poorly on purpose to screw around, but that doesn't make it a good addition to the game.

I'm not sure how else you would class "I'm going to intentionally select options I know for a fact offers me less utility/relative strength of position than alternative options, despite the latter being available"

"It helps when you're cherry tapping" is not a sound refutation that a given option is poorly implemented.

The only instance when I would consider that CB useful is as a vassal-feeding Buddhist, since returning cores is free for them (is it? I remember hearing about a bug in that feaure). That or as post-IW Castile that fed Aragon and Naples with Italian clay and wants to dismantle le blob without gaining any more AE due to being already on the threshold of a coalition.

 

[inunotaisho]

Thought I would start a new Byzantine campaign. Got this fine regency while waiting for an otto attack, also got a fine 3 star general from an event...

I cried a bit then I quit

 

[bauke67]

Is that necessarilly a bad thing? I mean yeah the point loss is bad, but you could still wait for the Ottomans to attack and have your presumed Polish ally help kick them out of Europe.

 

[JoeSteel]

Finally got Byzantium to work out, so I thought that I'd share.

Allies are Lithuania, Ethiopia, Austria, Scandinavia, and Japan to protect my Pacific lands.
Also managed to restore the Pentarchy by taking Rome in a war that involved declaring war on Leon. Converted them to orthodoxy for lulz.

 

[ianchen12345]

I'm going to post an Empire, not because it's at all good, but because I have a couple of questions about it. I hope it's OK to ask them in this thread. This is me as Ottomans in October 1526, which is about as far as I've played the game till now:

View attachment 199019

I bought some new dlc yesterday, and didn't quite understand how it worked, and that if I had it loaded on start it would be loaded in my game, and disable achievements. So I don't think I'll play this game any further. I learned a lot playing this one, and in retrospect I made a lot of mistakes. My first war against the Mamlukes cost me a lot of money and manpower, because I micro'd very badly, and I fought some unnecessary coalition wars in the East because I didn't rotate truces properly, etc. I won them, but they took a long time. I should mention that I got pretty lucky with rulers in this game. My first made it till almost the 16th century, and then I had something like a 5/2/5 for 10 years, and then something like a 5/5/2.

I'm beginning to see why people think blobbing is a bit boring, but... I can be pretty single-minded about things, and I'd like to WC. My pace was way too slow in this game (I'm sure a good player could WC from this position, but that's different from pace) but I'm not sure how slow. Where should I be at this point to realistically do it? I learned a lot in this game, so I think I could get quite a bit farther by this date now, but how fast do you have to be to do it?

The other thing is that I don't understand the release/vassal mechanics well (and hardly used them in this game, aside from not bothering to core Morea/Athens at the start.) Is it really important to use vassals for coring, etc. as expansive Ottomans?

Also, should I be expanding more into Europe at this point, and at what point should I really try to get Wien or Prague? I'm still figuring out how to deal with AE, and while I can win against coalitions in the East, I am scared of them in the West. Thanks.

Good possible vassals: Syria, Iraq, Persia, Catalonia, Galicia-Volhynia, Croatia. For Syria, fight AQ get core and that fort province and choose release Syria. Once you have no more wars you can get +190 and ask them to be ur vassal. Eating Mamluks land with reconquest CB (Syria have a lot of cores). Fight QQ get one Iraq province and a few Persia provinces (demand it for yourself) such as Tabriz and press release vassal, (Persia will likely be your vassal for a long while cuz over 300 developement), I use Galicia to feed Polish land, Croatia to get close to Wien (you can fight a war against Venice and take the province with Croatian core and release it as ur vassal) alternatively you can just eat your way to Wien through Hungary (take like 4 provinces). For Catalonia, either fight a war with Venice get Corfu, or get the western most province in Mamluks so you can core the Belares islands (this is where you release it as ur vassal), it gets claims in like half of Aragon.

Well by 1526, it's still quite early to think about what you should have/ not have since you can't blob quickly without adequant CBs and stuff. But like others have said in other posts, get Wien by 1550s and also try to get a base in Iberia and start heading North, stopping Russia to colonize.

 

[El_Cid_]

You can play poorly on purpose to screw around, but that doesn't make it a good addition to the game.

I'm not sure how else you would class "I'm going to intentionally select options I know for a fact offers me less utility/relative strength of position than alternative options, despite the latter being available"

"It helps when you're cherry tapping" is not a sound refutation that a given option is poorly implemented.

"Play poorly"!? In as much as this game is about empire building, it's also a sandbox game. Like I said before it's not always about conquer as much clay as possible, as fast as possible.

The only mistake they made was listing it at the top but it's a fine addition to the game in my view.

It definitely has its uses. Yesterday as Ryukyu a two province Keladi got spat out of Vijay and instantly rivalled me. I had a conquest CB ready to go if I wanted to use that, but instead I used show strength for 300mp AND 30 PP, for 3 units investment sieging their level 1 fort down. Is this poor play?

 

[Sunspawn]

"Play poorly"!? In as much as this game is about empire building, it's also a sandbox game. Like I said before it's not always about conquer as much clay as possible, as fast as possible.

The only mistake they made was listing it at the top but it's a fine addition to the game in my view.

It definitely has its uses. Yesterday as Ryukyu a two province Keladi got spat out of Vijay and instantly rivalled me. I had a conquest CB ready to go if I wanted to use that, but instead I used show strength for 300mp AND 30 PP, for 3 units investment sieging their level 1 fort down. Is this poor play?

That's an extreme scenario that will never happen once you stop being a pitiful OPM. Try justifying using this inferior CB as an Indian/HRE medium surrounded by equals.

 

[El_Cid_]

That's an extreme scenario that will never happen once you stop being a pitiful OPM. Try justifying using this inferior CB as an Indian/HRE medium surrounded by equals.

Little justification apart from roleplaying reasons, which ya know, some people do sometimes.

My point is that the CB has its (niche) uses and not garbage as the OP said.

 

[Sunspawn]

Little justification apart from roleplaying reasons, which ya know, some people do sometimes.

My point is that the CB has its (niche) uses and not garbage as the OP said.

Garbage has niche uses too. Just because it has uses does not mean it is not horrible.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Spain attempt number Ilostcount, this time I actually got somewhere:

Currently integrating Naples and preparing to wage war againstm the British to scam them out of their colonies., as well as establish a base of operations on the isles to drive a wedge between France and Scotland. My forcelimit is to pitifully small though =/

 

[Simon_the_digger]

Gather around, ladies and gentlemen, for the tale of how I formed the Roman Empire with the Ming dynasty.

Well, every grand story has a humble beginning.
As we all know, the Ming have the worst government type in the game; it was specifically designed to realistically nerf the crap out of them. Because of this, step one? Lose the shackles. The fastest way to Westernize as the Ming dynasty is to conquer a weird noodle of land through the crappy nations of the steppe to reach Sweden. This can be done (if done perfectly) by 1480. I managed to do it by the mid 1490's, and Westernization followed by 1520, and in the mean time I had taken a few territories off of my southern neighbors. Westernization hit around the same time I got a Catholic uprising. I let the Catholics win and then grabbed the first religion idea for the Holy War CB. I was now a Catholic Ming surrounded by yummy, weak, heathen nations desperately in need of conquest. I sold off the noodle of land to Muscovy and Chagatai and granted it to them.
I little while later I snapped up the exploration ideas and began colonizing the new world; establishing as many colonial nations as possible and letting them colonize on their own is the fastest way to grab up new land, and stealing colonies off of other nations doesn't hurt either.

Fast forward a century or so; Austria had gained PU's with Castile, Aragon, Bohemia, and Hungary. Naturally, they had bullied the crap out of France and I almost felt sorry for them. When the Protestant League attempted to leave the HRE, Austria stomped them, vassalizing most. By now we were allied and had two generations of royal marriages, so I was pretty friggin happy when they integrated their PU's and formed the HRE.

I was even more thrilled when my ruler died heirless and a Habsburg inherited my thrown, and in the Holy Roman Empire, a 13 year old boy with no heir sat the throne. A claimed throne and a 5 year succession war later, I had forced a PU with the Holy Roman Empire and inherited all of their colonial nations (which they had, in turn, inherited from Austria, Castile, and Aragon)

It took me over a century but I integrated them into the Ming Empire.

I dumped the Exploration and Expansion ideas in favor of economic and maritime, and after several wars with Great Britain and the Ottomans (the Ottomans actually turned revolutionary due to my abuses), on January 1st, 1800, I formed the Roman Empire as the Habsburg-ruled Ming.

I would later conquer Wales and the rest of Egypt, and I went in to the save game files to change the colors of my colonial nations for the sake of my eyeballs, but other than that I spent the rest of the game relaxing (and boxing in Russia every time they tried to spread Eastward).

All hail the master religion.

 

[TheDutchWarlord]

Considering the year, and the presumed Overpowered legions you must have, maybe try for the 1 faith achievement, if you were to be willing to truce break some of the bigger nations you could probably do it.

 

[Simon_the_digger]

Considering the year, and the presumed Overpowered legions you must have, maybe try for the 1 faith achievement, if you were to be willing to truce break some of the bigger nations you could probably do it.

I wasn't playing Ironman mode because I want to put this save game through one of the open source EU4 -> V2 converters and continue playing, but from the 1800 save I think I probably could have.

 

[CiderMuffin]

Well that's one way to restore Pax Romana

 

[raikaria]

Player mapmode from the moment I earnt Queen of Mercury:

Political:

Pretty simple run. I vassalized one of the Madagascans as soon as they all went to war with each other and fed Magagascar to them, letting them deal with the conversion there [I forced them to Sunni]. Later vassalized Yemen since they'd lost almost all of their cores and got them their cores back.

Kaffa got surprisingly large and actually was annoying. Oman was also pretty large and was in an alliance bloc. However; the hardest fight was the fight against Vij; who had Quantity and 4 allies. Even when I had 40% warscore and has won constant battles; Vij still has 30k manpower left [They were nearing bankruptcy however]. Still; I just settled for the objective and breaking some of their treaties.

I never fully annexed Mutapa. I didn't want inflation going wild and I had enough money. I also never took a combat idea group. Economic was first to reform out of tribal; although an event fired to let me do so just before I manually did. Also to not spiral out of control with inflation. Then I took Exploration to colonise. Then I took Religious since I was nearing the Copts and the Ibadis. I never reached Idea group 3.

Due to this; for once; I actually have unbalanced tech. This wasn't helped by my rulers having really high mil all the time. Still; being Mil 15 to Vij's Mil 13 helped a lot. Most hilarious thing is I never focused Mil; and often focused ADM!

Not sure if I'll continue. Probobly not. Ottomans decided to ally me and there's no danger to me anymore anyway. I'll probobly kick it into spectate and watch Europe and China.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Spain in the mid 18th century:

Or: How I learned that overseas expansion is totally worthless. I just lost two wars in a row, having to cede my Walisian posessions and Umbria. Trade companies in India just don't work >.>

 

[Olligarchy]

Spain in the mid 18th century:

Or: How I learned that overseas expansion is totally worthless. I just lost two wars in a row, having to cede my Walisian posessions and Umbria. Trade companies in India just don't work >.>

#SpainisUnderpowered

 

[klingonadmiral]

#SpainisUnderpowered

The force limit is far too low. I can't afford to have much more than 120,000 men in Europe, which are outnumbered and outmatched by the Italians, and I'm already operating like 40 units above my force limit.

It's less a problem with Spain, and more a problem with how worthless colonies and trade companies are militarily. I mean, it's depressing to outnumber the Italians 2-to-1 and still loose badly because 2/3rds of my forces are overseas and have no possibility of arriving in Europe in time. Also, even with a massive tzrade empire goign I'm in the reds and that is with my heavy ships having been sunk. Although I am paying Reparations to Austria

IRL, the presidencies of the EIC fielded tens of thousands of men recruited from the local population during the conquest of India, why can't I?