Things you wish you knew before spending many hours playing the game.

[Brawler]

I couldn't find a thread on this so I thought I'd start one for players to share their list of useful things you didn't know about the game that you wish you knew earlier. Feel free to share yours.

* You can change message settings so you are always informed with a popup message when a new government advisor is available or if one of your advisors passes away and the position is vacant. To do this bring up the game menu, click on Message Settings, click Government Tab. In To Me section you will see notifications for historical leaders arriving, advisors dying, advisors arriving. You can click the popup box for these messages so your Government is never left without an advisor again or has the best advisors suited for your current needs!
* With regards to above you can also set messages to automatically pause the game instead of your hand camping the spacebar. Choose the hourglass icon option for any events you want the game to be paused on automatically.
* There are other messages you may want to turn on in the Events tab of message settings such as when you receive a new mission or a historical event happens.

 

[Hashishin13]

I would have liked to know that claiming a throne is a real crap shoot when it comes to trying to form a personal union. Unless the monarch dies with no heir you won't get one, the exception being if the target monarch is in the same dynasty as you and you use the claim throne casus belli to aggressively form a PU.

Still trying to figure out how long it takes for the new missions to show up, but thanks for your info, I've never bothered to change the message settings.

 

[Geobog]

Things I can think of at the moment:

1. Morale is incredibly valuable when battling, perhaps most important out of all factors. You might be able to kill them better, but if you can't beat their positive attitude, you're going to scatter first. And the AI knows this, which is why is seems like everyone has the Defensive idea group.
2.Taking economic ideas apparently makes most of your populace disinterested in religion, at least as far as rebels are concerned. A religious missionary will incite a revolt of people who want lower taxes
3. Random lucky nations doesn't pick lucky nations totally randomly. Just turn it off if you want to be more entertained by more unique history.

 

[Glentoran]

For all those who decided not to read the manual: You cannot earn Steam achievements unless you choose the "Ironman" setting in the pre-game set-up options (which limits you to a single save file, auto-saving every month to the cloud). I wish I'd noticed that sooner than 25 hours in!!

 

[Cavalry]

And that ironman mode will slow your game when they save.

 

[Calbrenar]

I would have liked to know that claiming a throne is a real crap shoot when it comes to trying to form a personal union. Unless the monarch dies with no heir you won't get one, the exception being if the target monarch is in the same dynasty as you and you use the claim throne casus belli to aggressively form a PU.

Still trying to figure out how long it takes for the new missions to show up, but thanks for your info, I've never bothered to change the message settings.

This is relatively new as you used to be able to claim throne on them any time they had a child heir or low legitamacy/prestige. It was OP as hell.

 

[TheBloke]

I played many hours before I realised I could send separate peace offers to allies of the war leader.

I thought it was so stupid that they could send me peace offers but I couldn't send one of my own.

In my (very slight) defence, this was 1.2 before the flags of other nations became clickable on the war screen. But I don't know how I missed the sue for peace diplomacy option on the diplomacy screen of all my enemies. I must have assumed it just opened the general war leader peace treaty.

On the upside, it was like Christmas and my birthday all at once when I finally realised how much more I could get out of wars

 

[Dustman]

Got involved into huge coalition war declaring on a country I had conflicts before and who hasn't changed any alliances. Looks like being of certain size required to keep original target as a war leader.

 

[Pilot00]

*That when you force your enemy to release a nation, it aint neither your ally, vassal or same religion.
*When you force someone through war to become a vassal, they are not adobting your religion nor you can annex them cause you cant have royal marriage if the have different religions.
*When a nation is released as a vassal and has a religion that is the same group as yours (Orthodox-Catholic etc), the vassal keeps its original nomination.
*Corring provinces on your own is expensive as hell.
*Culture shifting is a crapshot.
*Winning a war has nothing to do with actuall victories but outmanuvering the warleader and bringing him to his knees (100% WS) and just keeping the objective.The rest will sue for peace and will give their pants to you even if they have occupied half your country in the process.
*As long as there is a theocratic nation in Europe with more than one province the Pope will not die.

 

[prey2112]

coastal cities get a -33% tax if the coast hasn't been patrolled recently.

 

[william188325]

That light ships give you MASSIVE income from trade if your a colonial power, or brining trade from india,

 

[TheBloke]

*When you force someone through war to become a vassal, they are not adobting your religion nor you can annex them cause you cant have royal marriage if the have different religions.

Not true, once they are vassalised the annexation requirement is just 190 relations.

The RM requirement is only for diplomatic vassalisation.

*Corring provinces on your own is expensive as hell.

Oh yeah that one for me too. In my first game I spent 800 admin points coring most of Morocco, at 200% Berber rates, all started just because I wanted a port with closer Colonial Range and couldn't buy fleet basing from them. Didn't know about vassal feeding, or indeed much else, at the time.

 

[unmerged(816141)]

*That when you force your enemy to release a nation, it aint neither your ally, vassal or same religion.
*When you force someone through war to become a vassal, they are not adobting your religion nor you can annex them cause you cant have royal marriage if the have different religions.
*When a nation is released as a vassal and has a religion that is the same group as yours (Orthodox-Catholic etc), the vassal keeps its original nomination.
*Corring provinces on your own is expensive as hell.
*Culture shifting is a crapshot.
*Winning a war has nothing to do with actuall victories but outmanuvering the warleader and bringing him to his knees (100% WS) and just keeping the objective.The rest will sue for peace and will give their pants to you even if they have occupied half your country in the process.
*As long as there is a theocratic nation in Europe with more than one province the Pope will not die.

If you vassalize a country by force you can annex them. Problem is you have to wait 10 years before that option becomes available. And a royal marriage is not needed. You just need 190+ relations in order to do so. Which is easy to achieve in the 10 year waiting period.

And the statement about victories not really counting towards war score is also not really true. Especially if you take into account a HOLY war, where holding provinces is not what generates the majority of WS, but instead winning battles. And even in normal casus belis via claims, even if you "out maneuver" your opponent you can only siege so many provinces before you have to fight them eventually.

And there is no need to culture convert unless you are doing it for a mission, or that culture group is a minority in that region you plan to conquer. Because if there are multiple provinces with that culture, and you conquer enough of them, eventually that culture will just become accepted among your people.

 

[Pilot00]

If you vassalize a country by force you can annex them. Problem is you have to wait 10 years before that option becomes available. And a royal marriage is not needed. You just need 190+ relations in order to do so. Which is easy to achieve in the 10 year waiting period.

And the statement about victories not really counting towards war score is also not really true. Especially if you take into account a HOLY war, where holding provinces is not what generates the majority of WS, but instead winning battles. And even in normal casus belis via claims, even if you "out maneuver" your opponent you can only siege so many provinces before you have to fight them eventually.

And there is no need to culture convert unless you are doing it for a mission, or that culture group is a minority in that region you plan to conquer. Because if there are multiple provinces with that culture, and you conquer enough of them, eventually that culture will just become accepted among your people.

Ill start for the ground up.

I dont know how the cultural acceptance works, but I come to believe that it has something to do with hard coding (each nation accepts some specific others) and something to do with tax income. I noticed (in the interwebz) that Byzantium gets Turkish 100% of the time accepted. That happened to me also but I also had Serbian accepted. When I expanded in the middle east and the started upgrading there with buildings both the Serbian and Turkish acceptance was cancelled but so far the Arbic ones are not accepted. I dont know if how it works but I speculate its economy based somehow.
On the cultural front the economic tool tips show reduced taxes from non accepted culture. Though that hardly can be rectified (or is cost effective) with the way monarch points work right now so it can be called a non issue, but it still exists.

About the vassals...Yes it seems I was wrong...I really really dont know how I got that impression, I must have read something wrong I assume.
Thanks for pointing that out.

On the war thingie: I really dragged the arguement from the hair so to speak but I said both target AND war leader. An example would be a coalition war I had with Crimea, Russia and Kazan. When I saw the war declaration, I shat bricks cause I really didnt want to go to war with Russia. However the war leader was Kazan. I let the Russians reach as down as Constantinople, mean while my entire army Besieged and occupied the whole of Khazan, the Target was Kaffa
which I held by sacraficing mercenary regiment after mercenary regiment. After the warleader abdicated though the Russians who had been ravaging me simply packed and left me alone.

So we can agree that my arguement is not 100% foolproof (but what is it in this game? Most of it is random anyway) but it can be done with a decree of success. Merely because mechanics allow it. Simply put holding the objective and defeating the war leader is more worth it than defeating the rest of the alliance even if said alliance has military superiority and by all rights would win the war. If that mechanic didnt work, I wouldnt have made any forays in Europe at all in my current game.

 

[grommile]

I dont know how the cultural acceptance works, but I come to believe that it has something to do with hard coding (each nation accepts some specific others) and something to do with tax income.

It's one hundred percent to do with tax income. A culture becomes accepted when it provides at least 20% of your base tax, and stays accepted as long as it provides at least 10% of your base tax.

 

[Yenzen]

- Just how useful expanding by vassalization is compared to direct conquest, even if you don't release them in order to feed them.
- The details of cultural acceptance and how to best deal with culture (wasted a lot of diplomatic points in my first game as Denmark, converting Hannoverian provinces that would have become accepted)

 

[TheBloke]

It's one hundred percent to do with tax income. A culture becomes accepted when it provides at least 20% of your base tax, and stays accepted as long as it provides at least 10% of your base tax.

Do you know which 'base tax' calculation it uses? Is it raw base tax - province listed base tax figure only; or is it base tax + temples and stock exchanges; or is it base tax + all buildings, i.e. what the game otherwise calls 'tax base'?

In other words, can the player do much, or anything, to boost the contribution of a given culture with a view to make it accepted, other than taking new provinces with that same culture (or dropping provinces that don't have it)?

 

[BootOnFace]

Change your message settings to pause upon conclusion of a land battle. You'll thank me.

 

[tnick0225]

Change your message settings to pause upon conclusion of a land battle. You'll thank me.

There's an option for that I need to look for that one!

 

[Pellaken]

That Colonizing Canada alone as Portugal is not a good idea
(Luckly I asked some questions before I went too far)