Some questions about my first planned game (England)

[XELANAMYT]

Hi,
I have just been playing through the demo of EUIV to get an idea of what to expect on Tuesday. However as this is my first EU game (played plenty of CKII though) I have some questions regarding some of the mechanics of the game and what choices I should make in my first game in which I am planning on playing as England.

My vague plan for England is to take over all the British Isles, colonise as much of North America as possible and start taking over mainland Europe. I would also like to become a powerful trade nation and have a powerful navy. So in short, very similar to what England did in reality with more expansion.

I know no one knows for sure, but some pointers would be helpful, especially from people who know the EU series.

1. Which Ideas and Technology would be a good choice for England?
2. How to improve trade in my nation? That was the most confusing part of the tutorial imo, especially redirecting trade flow towards different nodes.
3. At the beginning of the game I know I will be in a tough war with France, would it be best to fight it out (and probably loose) or sue for peace early on and give France some counties, in which case should I give them the northern or southern counties which I hold in France?

Any other pointers to help me out would be appreciated too.

Thanks very much.

 

[bbiaso]

On 3, I rather think I will peace out with France, give them my provinces in the Bordeaux trade node, sell my northern provinces, focus on trade, rule and convert Ireland, diplo annex Scotland, build a grand navy, colonize. I think I'll sell my provinces to Burgundy, maybe try to play Burgundy and France against each other

 

[MurkyAssassin]

Win the Hundred Years' War

 

[Cynical Dreamer]

Hello,

As said by Bbiaso, you should probably peace out with France ASAP.

My own plan would be to focus everything, and I mean EVERYTHING on colonization rushing to the Americas / Indonesia. You can always conquer Ireland and Scotland later. So build a navy, keep a very limited land army and concentrated everything on tech and money gathering : you will need it dearly once you start colonizing. Goal : own more than half of the Americas by 1550. At that point, take the British Isles, maybe a few African colonies and start actively creating wars against the next great European powers. I would probably then try to take over Japan, and possibly vasalize Ming china. And by the time a great power emerges in Europe, well : you own the world.

[video=youtube;4jqenaiqITs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jqenaiqITs[/video]

 

[XELANAMYT]

Thanks for the suggestions.

How can you rush to colonise? I thought you had to wait for an event to be able to go to the Americas.
Also, what would the best way to get more money, mainly by trade I guess but I'm not sure.

Thanks again.

 

[Haresus]

Thanks for the suggestions.

How can you rush to colonise? I thought you had to wait for an event to be able to go to the Americas.
Also, what would the best way to get more money, mainly by trade I guess but I'm not sure.

Thanks again.

Building stuff in your provinces will increase your income, conquering things will increase your income. Trade is always good. Colonization can be done once you can actually reach the New World, and that will depend on what provinces you own and how fast you tech up in diplomatic technology. Portugal is pretty close to Brazil, for example. Iceland is close to Greenland, and Greenland is close to Canada.

 

[Grimsley]

England has a very nice position regarding trade in that once you take Ireland (which is easy) you control 100% of the provincial trade power in your home node. Increase trade efficiency and you'll be raking in a fortune for anything steered towards London.

If doing the best economically is what you're interested in as England, trade and colonization is a very good way to go (especially if you give up your French lands). The best area looks like basically the entire north American coast - the provinces of the Chesapeake trade node. The area is very large and any wealth acquired can be steered directly towards the London node in just a single jump.

Secondary good targets are probably the Hudson node (the one in northern Canada) as this trade flows to the North Sea and you'll be able to build trade power there quite easily given that once you have Scotland their lands will be contributing and you'll mostly be competing with just Norway. From here you can steer it to London. You can also try and colonize the Caribbean and steer trade up to the Chesapeake node. If you've already consolidated huge power there as you should, it'll add to the wealth directed towards London.

Each of these routes will bypass the main Iberia and Bordeaux nodes which will increase your trade income dramatically without Portugal, Spain or France taking a slice for themselves, which will make you very wealthy.

In short, you'll want to try to get colonizing as soon as possible. Start by taking the British Isles, with Ireland first on the list. Once you get the exploration group (preferably as a 2nd idea group perhaps as your colonial range will not be high enough without being a few tech levels in), your objective will be to make the first jump at Greenland, coring it and turning into a valid port as quickly as you can, which will then allow you to jump into America ASAP without needing any additional range. From here go nuts taking as much in the Chesapeake node as is reasonable before the other powers get in the game. Furs will probably make for good trade income especially. Thankfully Spain and Portugal will be more likely to go south even when they do catch up, so the one you'll have to watch out for is probably going to be France.

As for other ideas, you'll definitely want Naval and Trade ideas at some point. Naval will be essential if you're going to stop others from messing with your light ships and to defend things globally. Trade will give nice economic boosts (although the additional merchants won't be the greatest benefit early on, as you can make a fortune just from a merchant at the Chesapeake node alone if you control NA), so naval might be the better earlier diplomatic pick if you think you'll be fighting off the navies of France and/or Spain at some point, even if just for the extra morale. If you're choosing a late game military idea, quality could be the nicest choice, as it'll buff your navy as well as your land forces.

 

[XELANAMYT]

That sounds like a good idea, I think I will try that.

Just a couple of things;

1. Why wouldn't you take the Exploration group as your first idea? Is there some restriction? This is one of the area of the game which I know very little about, but it also looks like you could mess things up early on in your game if you take incorrect ideas.
2. As for taking Greenland early on, I understand your reasoning for that, but when you don't have the colonisation range, does it simply not allow you to colonise further or are there just penalties? In the tutorial as Spain they send you to northern South America without any issues, it can't be much further from England to the North American east coast, so was that just tutorial bonuses or something else?
3. Finally, when I was playing Venice in the tutorial, I noticed adding light ships to a trade node(?) the trade power increased much more than any other way of increasing trade (as far as I could see), including steering trade, collecting trade at the node or adding trade buildings to provinces in the trade node. Does this mean that I should just pile loads of light ships on the London node, or isn't that required as I hopefully will have 100% control of the node withing a few years of starting?

Thanks.

 

[Lessing]

I am unsure if a colonisation rush is really worth it. Firstly, it'll take time to get that idea and expand colonisation range. Also, if you focus entirely on colonies, it'll be very expensive and take a long time to grow to a city, and you will need a big ship for each overseas province in order to get full tariffs.

imo you should colonise as England, but your focus should be to stomp Scotland and Ireland first to make your islands a grand fortress. While colonising, maybe you can improve your base in France while they are down/at war.

 

[beckermt]

3. Finally, when I was playing Venice in the tutorial, I noticed adding light ships to a trade node(?) the trade power increased much more than any other way of increasing trade (as far as I could see), including steering trade, collecting trade at the node or adding trade buildings to provinces in the trade node. Does this mean that I should just pile loads of light ships on the London node, or isn't that required as I hopefully will have 100% control of the node withing a few years of starting?


Thanks.

Trade power is relative. If you have 100 trade power in a node and someone else (Ireland) has 50, then you get 66% of the trade in that node. If you have 20 trade power in a node and someone else has 5, you get 80% of the trade in that node. With this trade that you control, you can either cash it in (automatically done on your capital without needing a merchant (but with one get +10%)) or steer that trade portion somewhere else.

With ships, if you already have 100% trade power in London, it makes no sense to send the ships there. BUT, early on (e.g. as Portugal) you won't have 100% trade power, meaning ships in the home node DOES make sense. In short, send ships to the most valuable trade node, where the other people's trade power is lowest, maximizing your ships' effectiveness.

Oh, and ships suffer diminishing returns after a fashion. If I send 20 trade power of ships down the coast to Kongo, and Kongo has 5 trade power, then I get 80% of the trade. If I send 40 trade power of ships, I get 91% of the trade. A minuscule increase for double the number of ships.

Trade is complicated, yo.

 

[beckermt]

I am unsure if a colonisation rush is really worth it. Firstly, it'll take time to get that idea and expand colonisation range. Also, if you focus entirely on colonies, it'll be very expensive and take a long time to grow to a city, and you will need a big ship for each overseas province in order to get full tariffs.

imo you should colonise as England, but your focus should be to stomp Scotland and Ireland first to make your islands a grand fortress. While colonising, maybe you can improve your base in France while they are down/at war.

I agree. Diversification is good. Once you've taken the isles, you'll be much safer from Scottish alliances or other nonsense. In addition, since colonization uses other resources, conquer and colonize won't interfere too much. e.g. diplomats, aggressive expansion, admin points for conquer, colonists and diplo points for colonizing.

Clearly there's some overlap, but yeah, diversify. Then you don't get bored during that 5 year truce with France.

Oh, and don't forget to liberate Brittany. Poor bretons need some friendly breton rulership to help them emotionally against the French.

 

[Victor Cortez]

England has a very nice position regarding trade [...]

Nice analysis, and I agree with you but here's a question:

considering that colonization is much easier if you can send some troops in the new colony (at least in demo with Portugal, creating a colony in Luanda without some army is impossible), do you guys think it's better to take Ireland and Scotland early on or wait?
The thing is, if you take Ireland and Scotland, you're forced to keep some troops on the Islands in order to deal with revolts, and you can't use them overseas.
On the other hand, if you don't take them, you will have a lower cap and less trade income, which is not bad per se, but I wouldn't like to wait for Ireland to unite before taking it. A unified Ireland, allied with Scotland, could be a problem if half of the English army is busy in America. What do you think?
The thing is, I found it harder with Portugal to create a colony in the Kongo area after I had taken half of Morocco.

As for taking Greenland early on, I understand your reasoning for that, but when you don't have the colonisation range, does it simply not allow you to colonise further or are there just penalties? In the tutorial as Spain they send you to northern South America without any issues, it can't be much further from England to the North American east coast, so was that just tutorial bonuses or something else?

As far as I know, if a land is out of colonization range, you can't create a colony at all. You will be able to send troops though (be carefull of attrition!)

Finally, when I was playing Venice in the tutorial, I noticed adding light ships to a trade node(?) the trade power increased much more than any other way of increasing trade (as far as I could see), including steering trade, collecting trade at the node or adding trade buildings to provinces in the trade node. Does this mean that I should just pile loads of light ships on the London node, or isn't that required as I hopefully will have 100% control of the node withing a few years of starting?

If you take Ireland (assuming you don't lose any province in England), you will have 100% control over the London trade node (or an extremely close value). Land is the most important factor in trade power.
So, pile loads of lights ships, no, but in case AI goes crazy and tries to compete in the London TZ (it'd be crazy to do so, because it would waste lots of resources and gain very little considering your overwhelming power there), you might want to put a few ships, and as England you should have a few to spare anyway.

Fight over the North Sea TZ shouldn't be too much of a problem either, unless Scandinavia unifies, but even then, I doubt they will do much as their resources will be split in different TZs.

 

[Grimsley]

• Why wouldn't you take the Exploration group as your first idea? Is there some restriction? This is one of the area of the game which I know very little about, but it also looks like you could mess things up early on in your game if you take incorrect ideas.
• As for taking Greenland early on, I understand your reasoning for that, but when you don't have the colonisation range, does it simply not allow you to colonise further or are there just penalties? In the tutorial as Spain they send you to northern South America without any issues, it can't be much further from England to the North American east coast, so was that just tutorial bonuses or something else?

Starting with tech level 4, your tech level purely isn't high enough to reach even Greenland, which as far as I know is one of the closest provinces to you as England (and it won't be for a while). The 50% range exploration idea will help a lot, however, but I'm pretty confident that you'll still need a few tech diplomatic tech level advancements at least even with that. Colonisation range is simply a restrictive number so if you don't qualify for the range because your range is lower than the distance value you simply can't send a colonist even if you have one.

You might see a little bit of benefit by going for the exploration ideas as the first group but nonetheless there will still be a good period where the group is doing very little for your benefit as even with it you can't reach anything. The second group doesn't take actually take a lot of time to unlock and seems to me like the perfect time to start getting ready to colonise, on the other hand. I keep forgetting it myself, but if you start in 1444 you'll be on the losing end of a war with France and you'll have to start deciding where you want to go with that. Colonising early will be easier if you give up France, but either way you'll be choosing your first idea at this point and I doubt that exploration will be the first thing on your mind.

Finally, when I was playing Venice in the tutorial, I noticed adding light ships to a trade node(?) the trade power increased much more than any other way of increasing trade (as far as I could see), including steering trade, collecting trade at the node or adding trade buildings to provinces in the trade node. Does this mean that I should just pile loads of light ships on the London node, or isn't that required as I hopefully will have 100% control of the node withing a few years of starting?

As the other poster explained you should already have 100% control of the London node if you have taken Ireland, so adding additional trade power won't help at all unless somebody deliberately sends their light ships to the London node to break your monopoly by adding their own trade power there. I'm not sure when the AI might try this, or if they will at all - from what I've observed the node has remained uncontested whenever I've checked it. Either way you'll have a lot of power from your 100% provinces contribution to compete quite comfortably anyway (and you can always build more TP buildings too).

With 100% trade power at the London node what you'll most likely prefer to have is additional efficiency as opposed to trade power there as it'll increase the bonus money that you reap in from the node. You'll probably want to keep your light ships in Bordeaux for a lot of the early game as the North Sea trade node isn't worth that much by comparison until overseas money starts flowing in. Doing so also increases competition for France there which is always a good thing.

Nice analysis, and I agree with you but here's a question:

considering that colonization is much easier if you can send some troops in the new colony (at least in demo with Portugal, creating a colony in Luanda without some army is impossible), do you guys think it's better to take Ireland and Scotland early on or wait?
The thing is, if you take Ireland and Scotland, you're forced to keep some troops on the Islands in order to deal with revolts, and you can't use them overseas.

As I described, I'd definitely go for Ireland first. Unless you get bogged down in the war with France for decades more or decide to go the take France route you'll otherwise have a period of time where you are doing very little once you peace out and wait for your colonisation range to increase. From my experience the revolts aren't that bad, and if you don't mind delaying your colonisation/diplo tech a little you can always culture flip them quite painlessly.

The extra income from having the Irish minors no longer nibbling your trade will help immediately, but definitely even more so in the long run - colonies are expensive, but once they complete they immediately start adding some reasonable boosts to trade in their node even if their tax/tariff income is poor. Having Ireland you'll be more prepared to have your complete colonial provinces help fund your partial ones and then some as your trade income starts to take over.

Scotland should be secondary simply due to being slightly more effort and a different trade node (a less useful one, early on), but they're still really nice to go for. I would recommend against annexing them outright - instead you should be able to get a mission to vassalize them at some point, which will give you a subjugation CB. I'd wait for a good time (like when they're not being guaranteed by France) or before your CB expires and then beat them down. Keep relations high and it's fairly simple to diplo-annex them from there. The nice thing about diplo-annexing them is that I'm pretty sure it gives you cores immediately - so you'll save admin power, time with revolt risks in Scotland and a period of over-extension as well.

... While colonising, maybe you can improve your base in France while they are down/at war.

I agree, I wouldn't necessarily be quite as quick and colonisation crazy if I'm playing an England game where I still want to hold on to (or win outright) in France. My advice was mainly for going the total island route. You'll get a small bonus for leaving France and so starts the quiet game, which I'm sure some people will like and others will hate. Either way with others powers being generally uninterested in the Isles the relative lack of war can do wonders for growing an unstoppable economic machine.

 

[LordChrinox]

When Britain first, at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
“Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
“Britons never will be slaves.”

 

[Lessing]

“Britons never will be slaves.”

I always wonder about that. Was there ever for Britons the danger of being slaves?

 

[LordChrinox]

I always wonder about that. Was there ever for Britons the danger of being slaves?

A little possibility. They can't be invaded by other countries.

 

[XELANAMYT]

Great information guys, thanks!

I think I will take Ireland first and then try working on Scotland, the diplomatic suggestion is intriguing, never thought about that as I usually go the conquest route. After that I will work on colonising the Americas. Just need to figure out exactly what I need to do with regards to the colonisation range.