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

[ThuderLizard2]

Vassalizing a country that is at war will immediately cause your country to take over the leadership of that war. Now I always double-check to see if another country DOWed a soon to be vassal.

This can also be a strategy as I used this once at the beginning of a Byzantium game. Attacked Albania after allying with Serbia. Vassalized Albania which got me into their war against Ottomans. Serbia doesn't honor alliance. Concede defeat against Ottos than DOW Serbia for not honoring alliance.

Also, unlike euIII, vassals are attacked frequently in euiv and you again get dragged in as leader (this was a rare event in euiii as the attacker had to have a mission against the vassal rather than a plain old CB).

 

[TheBloke]

That you can use the Ledger's Building pages to build buildings! And it can be a much quicker - and much smarter - way to prioritise your building, versus the Production Interface.

E.g. you want to build all the manufacturies you're missing/can afford. Your provinces are spread all over the world, so scrolling around in Production Interface mode is a bit slow/tedious. Open Ledger page 15 - Buildings (Manufactory). Now you get a list of all provinces, sortable by name, Core, Tax amount, Production amount, Trade Good, Religion, and whether or not you can build there.

You can sort by the most valuable provinces, based on Production Income, and then click the build icon one by one. Keep one hand on the Enter/Return key so you can quickly say Yes to the popup with the keyboard while the other uses the mouse to click, click, click down the list.

Unlike the PI, this guarantees you're building in the provinces that have highest Production, and therefore highest potential returns from a manufactory.

And some of the other building pages show different columns, appropriate for the type of building. E.g. Army shows Manpower and Revolt Risk, Government shows Revolt Risk, etc.

Lovely.