My first post over here but thought that I`ll share some results of my campaigns in EUIV. Started playing in late August 2013 and up to date I played only on Ironman. Had a rather succesful playthroughs ... or comparing to the stuff being posted over here it`d be better to be called medicore - but I`m proud from what I have achieved.
So to start off, my first ever EUIV game, picked Poland as a you can probaly quess by my avatar. Decided that I`ll try to go for colonialism and try to test as many aspects of the game. I have managed to take some land in Northern America, surviving in Europe while waging wars with Great Britian for dominance in Chesapke Bay and Austria in Europe. Around 1700 I had some war which I don`t really remember against who was exactly, but it included Austria. They lost and a few weeks later I was spammed with messaged regarding HRE.... I was picked the Emperor thanks to my 2 vassalized electors (wasn`t aiming for this, I ignored HRE completely back then). After getting the throne I never gave it up and moved on with the Reforms (managed to pass a few thanks to adding my lands to HRE). I didn`t even knew back then that Revoke the Privilegia can result in such bloody wars ... I managed to form HRE in the end. Very educational game. Papal States are the white in Italy and white in Balkans and Anatolia is Austria. This was played on 1.1.x
For second game I picked Spain to test out how much diffrence is between colonial focused country with all the rest. Well ... the results proved to be predictable. I managed to colonize whole bunch of land. The Iberian Wedding fired, even got an Portugese PU event. Played that one very passively overall, tried to get India achievement but went to do it too late and didn`t knew really what I was doing
o Results are as follows (I have most of the India, Australia and some random islands on Pacific):
For my third game wanted to be as active as possible and went for Austria ... but after several failed attempts I dropped that idea and went back to Poland. Focused heavily on Military Ideas, had them all if I remember correctly, managed to win very easily against Ottomans and Russia, but Western Europe was 1:1 and sometimes with f. e. Sweden and France it had to be 2:1 or even 3:1 ... damn op Sweden back then. Didn`t knew about vassal feeding back then or even how to properly execute fully profitable Return cores. for me it was plain and simple claim,war,core,repeat. Fun game thought, had to fight only big coalitions from 1660 till the very end. Saved my ass several times when DOW`ed on me by coalition by massacre Russia, hit 40% warscore from battles alone and took one province or two. This was on 1.2.x
For fourth picked Portugal, I know colonizer again, because there was floating back then a topic on forum about Trade. So I decided I wanted to be a dominant trader ... should have really picked Venice or Hansa... oh well. Overall very fun game, was focused only on colonizing for most of the time, but after really quick HRE forming by AI, I think it was in 1560s, had to help out my Spain ally with France and HRE (which later got PU over my personal Rival -Great Britain...). Few wars broke out in Europe, enforced peace a few times, had some real big sea battles, we managed to stop the HRE behemoth and force it to release some countries. Fun game, much more than Spain.
When 1.3 hit the Steam I decided it was time to fell the OPnes for myself and picked Sweden for the army melting and achievements. Had some knowledge back then already as a result I managed to dig into Russia quite well. I sucked at not allowing them to colonize Siberia I know. That game was really fun, Vassal feeding, return cores, I managed to grow Nizny Novgorod to gigantic size I mean really, my whole southern border was Nizny Novgorod (sigh VF bye bye). Spain in that game some tremendous luck, firsly Austria got PU over Hungary early, integrated them, then Spain got PU over this blobbed Austria, integrated them late. As you can see France also got herself Poland in PU. Spain was really beasty that game but combined forces of the Europe`s tag team BBB managed to show Spain whos the real force in the Old Continent. Fun game as hell.
And my latest finished game, the Ottomans after 1.4. My God thats a real monster in players hand. I`m not even a good player and I could do with them so much, really I now know that putting Ottomans as first in the line for Interesting choices at 1444 start date is for a reason. I tried to be as aggresive as I could, didnt break truces, but had overextension constantly over 100%. Even at 1740s after won war against Portugal, Spain and their protectorates in Africa I brought myself to over 400% overextension. It was really hard, costly and tedious but my 500k army managed to hold my empire intact. Westernized at 1690s after securing whole India for achievemnt. Fun game as hel (yes I know I have an issue with not allowing Russia to reach Siberia - I`ll work on that one in futurel.
Some summing up. I`m really unlucky with PU`s, through all my games I managed to get just 2 lucky PU as Austria over Hungary in failed game, and also as Poland over Austria in another failed game (Intolerance and switching to Protestant ... bad idea). France proved to be most reliable ally of them all in most games, well at least up to the moment you border them or antagonize them in any other way. All of this I managed to achieve with 420+ hours played according to steam. Single game takes me as a working father of a 2year old daughter from 2 weeks to 3. I`m sinking almost all my free time into EUIV. Game is great just needs a slight polish (<-no pun intended)!