What missions are you referring to? Nearly all conquest missions give you a single province as a target.
Small nations are a literal grind now
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What missions are you referring to? Nearly all conquest missions give you a single province as a target.
The game has a speed setting for a reason. If you wait a couple years between these wars (which you ought to do for cores, manpower recovery, etc) which doesn't take very long at all then you won't get into a situation where you have to sit for 30 whole minutes at one time.
Also make sure you're playing on Normal and not on Hard. The Hard setting really doesn't do much except make you take more AE.
Although, I love this game (my current favorite game series of the past few years) there really is not THAT much to do in peacetime, certainly not much that feels fun or satisfying. In the Civ series I can easily go hours with no wars and have tons of fun building up my civilization/army/researching/exploring/building tile improvements, you really won't be doing much outside of expansion in this game, as was probably intended. So it is a bit strange to be made to spend 15-30 min just watching the screen after you conquer territory and wait for AE to decrease.
Well paired with the mission to fab the claim, that's enough to provoke a coalition . . . or even on its own if you're in the HRE. I was thinking of the Byzantium missions, however.
Have you looked at the missions to conquer Lombardia or Northern Italy?
Since OP raised Brandenburg as an example... here's my 1.5 Brandenburg > Prussia on the verge of boredquit. I might come back to this campaign after a break, but anyways... Just be sensible with the AE and have patience until you can deal with the coalitions. It did surprise me when Austria joined the coalition with -11 AE in the first few years, but even within the HRE it's still not as gamebreaking as some people make it to be.
Take breaks. Speed 5 your way through a few years. You need it anyways; you need to regain manpower, save more money, tech up, etc. Fly through a few years of peace with a few pauses.
Ask yourself if you can handle the AE. Your peace deal shows you're about to take (let's say) 35 AE. How long will it take to soak it up? How much BROT bonus do you have?
Are there good targets to return cores to? In this game, the AI Trier expanded too quickly, leaving 8 cores in the HRE before the coalition destroyed it completely. Hungary was PU-annexed by Austria, making the cores easy to return. Baden and Wurzburg each had their high points, combined they gave me about 10 cores as well. IMO, this is what you should be doing during the peace time - look around, note what everyone else is doing, who's expanding and who's collapsing, etc and search for easy prey.
Regarding the first day move: I took Neumark and left the TO untouched. Wait for Poland to destroy it; they will. Vassalize Pomerania in the mean time, annex it, and by then TO should usually be reduced down to an OPM. Vassalize it, take on Poland and make them return Teutonic territory. Annex TO. Attack Bohemia but don't take provinces; wait for them to annex Silesia and make them release Silesia - this gives +100 opinion, but cancelling vassalization doesn't. If you have the high-value Baltic coast, you should be able to vassalize released Silesia relatively easily, etc. I almost never take more than two provinces in the same war, and usually just one at a time. I vassalized even the OPMs like Anhalt, Mecklenburg or Luneburg in the early phase of the game instead of taking them directly to reduce AE as much as possible (on the screenshot I'm annexing Brabant, an OPM vassal), even if that means lagging behind in diplo tech... but if you're BB-Prussia, you're probably not planning to become a naval power.
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Ironically, I have the exact opposite experience in EU IV and Civ V. I'm way more of a lunatic warmonger in Civ because I find that a peaceful game bores me absolutely to tears. I'm constantly at war or planning for a war. Actually, on Emperor and Immortal you kind of have to be, but I absolutely can't stand peace. I played the old (G&K) culture victory as France one time. I ended up on a map where I was totally isolated from every other nation on my own continent. Won without ever fighting a single war. It was the most boring 8 or so hours of my life. I really like BNW, but mostly because the ideology system gives me a lot more reasons to go to war and because I really like ideological power blocs wars.
Now, I really wouldn't want to play a game of EU IV where I fought zero wars either. I did that once in Vicky II and it wasn't that fun. But of the two I actually find Europa MORE INTERESTING when I'm not at war. YMMV of course.
When I start getting bored in EU or CK, it's usually a sign that I have been playing too long and I need to take a break.
This game mechanics are incompatible with any feature that makes waiting too much mandatory in order to experience a good campaign. Europa Universalis IV shines only when you are at war or preparing to go to war. Of course, this includes things like diplomacy and it should..... except when "diplomacy" means merely waiting a lot - and right now it is the case.
This becomes even worse when you are in the role of a minor, where preparation for war takes a lot less time (since your wars usually don't have the scope of a Austria vc France type of war) and already includes waiting for a good opportunity.
Overall, coalitions as they are, especially for minors in the HRE take too much narrative from the game. It becomes a conquer/wait task, where the fun part takes a lot less time than the boring one.... and since it is practically JUST WAITING, you remember that it is just a game, and any kind of involvement with your empire fades away. I understand the concept behind coalitions, but I think they still need some fine tuning. As it is right now, it stands in the way of fun and even challenge in some aspects.
This becomes even worse when you are in the role of a minor, where preparation for war takes a lot less time (since your wars usually don't have the scope of a Austria vc France type of war) and already includes waiting for a good opportunity.
Overall, coalitions as they are, especially for minors in the HRE take too much narrative from the game. It becomes a conquer/wait task, where the fun part takes a lot less time than the boring one.... and since it is practically JUST WAITING, you remember that it is just a game, and any kind of involvement with your empire fades away. I understand the concept behind coalitions, but I think they still need some fine tuning. As it is right now, it stands in the way of fun and even challenge in some aspects.
Special unique missions are special. You have to use your brain, perhaps not conquer it all in a single war, or dismantle the HRE. Slavishly follow your semi-random orders and you risk suffering the consequences of listening to a blind and deaf man's directions.
Then don't play in the HRE.
Not being snarky, but if you legitimately don't have the patience to deal with the heightened AE in the HRE, then play somewhere else in the massive world. And if you absolutely need to play in the HRE, then pick someone that early on can pick on nations outside the HRE.
I really don't get the "I don't want to wait for 30 minutes" part. I don't like waiting too long either and I just don't. Here's my general rule of thumb: DON'T BUILD UP TOO MUCH AE THAT YOU CANNOT DISSIPATE IN 15 YEARS, MAX.
Let's say I take a province and incur 15 AE. How long will it take to vanish completely? Depending on your ideas/advisors, it can be less than 5 years. I take a couple of years of break, to keep my manpower high, and either come back to the same enemy or someone else in a different theatre. Once you gave Poles some beating, then give Dutch some whip the next time so you spread the AE without letting it accumulate in the same region over and over.
And returning cores to your vassals does not incur AE. Are you paying attention to nations other than you? The OP's screenshot shows he's coring Pomeranian provinces - does he think Europe won't notice if he doubled the size in five years of gameplay like that? (And annexing Pomerania is not even an efficient strategy to begin with.)
I agree that EU4 is a war game. It's not fun sitting around doing nothing. But if you're at peace, you're not just sitting around and doing nothing. You should be checking everyone's relationships, which provinces have what dormant cores, and actively plotting to take them as painlessly as possible. If you have AE in three digits and need to wait half an hour to get rid of them before you can do a thing, then I have to say it's just your fault. In my Prussia campaign (screenshot above), I was almost constantly either at war or planning for the next war.
Let's say I take a province and incur 15 AE. How long will it take to vanish completely? Depending on your ideas/advisors, it can be less than 5 years. I take a couple of years of break, to keep my manpower high, and either come back to the same enemy or someone else in a different theatre. Once you gave Poles some beating, then give Dutch some whip the next time so you spread the AE without letting it accumulate in the same region over and over.
And returning cores to your vassals does not incur AE. Are you paying attention to nations other than you? The OP's screenshot shows he's coring Pomeranian provinces - does he think Europe won't notice if he doubled the size in five years of gameplay like that? (And annexing Pomerania is not even an efficient strategy to begin with.)
I agree that EU4 is a war game. It's not fun sitting around doing nothing. But if you're at peace, you're not just sitting around and doing nothing. You should be checking everyone's relationships, which provinces have what dormant cores, and actively plotting to take them as painlessly as possible. If you have AE in three digits and need to wait half an hour to get rid of them before you can do a thing, then I have to say it's just your fault. In my Prussia campaign (screenshot above), I was almost constantly either at war or planning for the next war.
The 15 AE he shows in the mouseover won't take 50 years to dissipate. Most if it will be gone before a truce timer is even up.
Why is it that the people who go to the most trouble to make such threads often have the weakest cases? I personally don't like how coalitions work either, but with this "why is there a modest coalition against me for doubling my territory in five years?" view you're making the rest of us look bad.
Then here's a better case of how nonsense these things are right now. I'm Tibet, and am doing my merry business ASAP DoW Shan + vassal them, vassal Taungu, use cede fab gift to get a claim on Arakan, cede that too. I then vassal Bengal after Orissa owns them. None of this gives a coalition because I'm not in Europe and there is religious/culture diversity
.Then Ming declares. Remember that "China should not be conquered in 1600's" thread? What about the 1400's? Granted, I was impressed that Ming did anything at all whatsoever, but this wasn't a coalition war, yet it WAS flagrant suicide:
Still, nothing too unusual. Ming enters a 1 man coalition in outrage over me ripping out a ton of Zhou land and 1 for Xi/Shun. A few wars later, I've some giant vassals, barely scratching 1500 and no additional AE. So, how is this relevant?
I declare on Nepal, not even checking their alliances, and it turns out they were the vassal of Chagatai and brought in Jaunpur, Golden Horde, and Nogai. I make Chagatai give Nepal's last province and 2 other cores of it, but not before taking 4 provinces off Jaunpur.
BOOM! Coalition. Now, this is a reasonable time for a coalition...I kinda just hammered 5 nations with minimal losses and ripped 7 territories in one war. Okay reasonable, now let's abuse the mechanic a bit. Since Malwa just joined the coalition mid-war, I already fabricated a claim on them, so as soon as I was out of enemy territory post-war with Chagatai, I made peace and used my other diplomat to declare on Malwa, instantly dragging Ming & co back in, including my target vassal, Jaunpur. While this is harder to get to 100% than fighting just Jaunpur, obviously they have nothing...they were just in war! I carpet Malwa like the joke that AIs are taking military ideas after running through them like a hot knife through butter due to focusing a bit on military (I'm tech 9 to their 6, so much for Indian being hard for Chinese). They're more than happy to give me Jaunpur; after all I had them 100% carpeted and they were leader.
So...more coalition members right?
NOPE. Not only does nobody join it, Malwa leaves the coalition at 73 AE after I vassaled an adjacent nation in a coalition war.
Not only does this junk make things implausible for small nations, it's not even consistently doing what it's supposed to do, which is check the expansion of bigger ones. Sometimes, it's freaking helping because you can create de-facto truce breaks against nations that still have no units since their war ended 1 month ago!
So, what stops the world from joining the coalition? Multipliers
. I can do this all day every day and nobody outside the Eastern religion/culture groups will care...but only if the ship of fools actually stays in the coalition.This is definitely *not* a working model...but can we at least drop the "coalitions add challenge play easymode derp" arguments now?
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After this, I declare on Assam, pulling in Lan Na and annex them both completely. This gets Sukhothai in the coalition too. I fabricate a claim on them, then Ayuthaya (long time ally) attacks them first. They join when I declare anyway (somehow), and this doesn't draw the coalition? Only allies Lan Xang and Pegu. Let's see if I can instigate another coalition truce break SUCCESSFULLY this time...i'm risking going into high OE at this point...
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To all the folks who say "just keep your AE below 15 years of burn", do you have any idea how freaking bad that is for a grand strategy game?
So say I do that. Now 3 years in a Peasant War breaks out in Sweden. Normally this would be an interesting strategic choice - do I go after Sweden because they show momentary weakness or do I keep on the old plan because that is what I'm geared toward, I mean, afterall I've been setting up Sweden as a foil against Denmark, but wait doesn't Novgorod have Finland sieged, you know we might be able to work out an alliance, but is Muscovy going to eat up my armies ...
Oh wait, what the hell was I thinking, it will be another 5 years before I can take a province with spawning a huge coalition. Why was I bothering to follow the strategic situation again? Its not like it matters worth a damn, I'm just following a magic timer and not making strategic choices.
And that's the thing, when you can come into a thread like this and say "this is how you deal with coalitions", it means that strategic calculation has left the building. I'm not weighing tradeoffs, I'm doing a simple linear optimization.
I want a rich historical grand strategy game. Not some ahistorical timerfest that rips the strategic calculation out of the game. I want to wonder if I should go all War of Spanish Succession and seize the Austrian Netherlands, not because the timer is up, but because I worry how that will upset the balance of power, if the French declare war with their allies can I hold them back or will that lead to Polish and Swedish dogpile. I mean is having a freaking way to actually do the Napoleonic conquests too much to ask of a coalition system for the era?
So say I do that. Now 3 years in a Peasant War breaks out in Sweden. Normally this would be an interesting strategic choice - do I go after Sweden because they show momentary weakness or do I keep on the old plan because that is what I'm geared toward, I mean, afterall I've been setting up Sweden as a foil against Denmark, but wait doesn't Novgorod have Finland sieged, you know we might be able to work out an alliance, but is Muscovy going to eat up my armies ...
Oh wait, what the hell was I thinking, it will be another 5 years before I can take a province with spawning a huge coalition. Why was I bothering to follow the strategic situation again? Its not like it matters worth a damn, I'm just following a magic timer and not making strategic choices.
And that's the thing, when you can come into a thread like this and say "this is how you deal with coalitions", it means that strategic calculation has left the building. I'm not weighing tradeoffs, I'm doing a simple linear optimization.
I want a rich historical grand strategy game. Not some ahistorical timerfest that rips the strategic calculation out of the game. I want to wonder if I should go all War of Spanish Succession and seize the Austrian Netherlands, not because the timer is up, but because I worry how that will upset the balance of power, if the French declare war with their allies can I hold them back or will that lead to Polish and Swedish dogpile. I mean is having a freaking way to actually do the Napoleonic conquests too much to ask of a coalition system for the era?
I awe at why so many feel the need to insult me, i am merely stating my opinion. After being a huge Eu3 fan, and somewhat alright with pre 1.5 Eu4 I am extremely disappointed as it feels that the game has completely shifted course. Try to refrain from deriding my "case" without even presenting one. If I do not speak my word then how will my opinion be heard, that is my only endeavor.
"Special missions are special" isn't an argument. My point is, to accomplish that mission without incurring crippling AE, you would have to stretch it out over 50 years. And you still haven't addressed the fact that a single province capture or subjugation mission within the HRE has the potential to provoke a coalition all by itself.
All of what you say seems to be a part of a more general strategic decision-making process. It's up to you. Let's say Sweden in your game is usually a formidable enemy, and you have a chance to take on them. There is a higher risk (potentially dangerous coalition) and a higher reward (finally your time to weaken Sweden). If the game was set up in a way that you exploit everyone's weakness one after another and blob crazy, then I don't think that'd make the game more interesting.
I'm OK with staying low for fifty years if it's necessary. (There were campaigns where I did not declare a war for at least a century.) I'm also OK with jumping in when the bigger opportunity (and corresponding bigger risk) comes. I agree that the game doesn't really let you pull a Napoleon, but do you really have to? And if you are strong enough to crush the coalition (a la Napoleonic France) then why not pull a Napoleon? If coalitions are something you'd rather avoid, then why would you want to imitate Napoleon when you just can't?
I'm sorry, but I just don't get why you think balancing war and peace means that "strategic calculation has left the building." Is full-time warmongering the only strategy, or is balancing war and peace and expanding within your means also "strategic calculation"?
To put it briefly, bulldust. The strategic question throughout isn't "oh my god will this spawn a coalition?" If you can't handle a coalition forming then you shouldn't be playing a grand strategy game of any complexity. As a strategic planner you know that you don't just plan for the first battle or the current war but the subsequent ones as well (not to mention contingency stuff like what if halfway through our advance this happens). You go into a war with a plan for the resulting peace already in place, or at least a general idea of what it will look like. If you only plan up to the first fight and wing the rest you're asking for trouble.
Your strategic question is more along the line of "If I do this (attack Sweden for their land in your example) how much can I take before I can't handle the blowback?" or "Can I make the reward worth the risk involved in triggering a coalition of nations x, y, and z? If not can I make that coalition not happen by doing a, b, or c?" You can easily judge how winnable the war with Sweden is but you also need to judge what that win means-will it gain me a couple provinces without adding a major risk of a coalition gang banging me? Can I instead pop loose a diplo-vassal target as a reward? and so on. The coalition potential is just another factor to look at in your long term planning and decision making.