What a difference in game play Brandenburg vs. Milan

[ladner]

After many, many hours of game play finally received the early Reich achievement during a Brandenburg-Prussia-Germany play through. I've sort of paused this game and moved on to Milan to get the form Italy achievement. Holy cow what a different experience, if I had known earlier how much fun Milan is and how rich northern Italy is, would have definitely played more games in the region. If I expressed the experience as a meme, Brandenburg is definitely the "virgin" and Milan the "chad".

As Brandenburg and to a lesser extent as Prussia, at least until you get a proper "space marine" army, you kind of cower from the Emperor if it is Austria. As Milan I was rich enough to fight Austria multiple times, early with France, later with just some minor allies. Probably played more hours as Brandenburg than any other nation, but it was enlightening.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

Congratulations on your achievements!

I found both games are fun when I did them myself.

Most of the difference boils down to Milan and its neighbors will leave the HRE, Brandenburg and most its neighbors won’t.

 

[Marquoz]

If you really want to form Italy fast and easily, play Venice. It's far stronger than Milan and can absolutely explode. Check out this screenshot from 1565 from my last Venice to Italy run:

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

What you can't see is that I'm also HRE Emperor and just revoked the privilege.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

I specifically chose Milan to form Italy because it gets a special form of Republic, but that’s just me.

 

[Namepending4]

It's kind of funny I played as Milan and then tried playing as Brandenburg. I don't really like playing in the HRE much so I personally prefer Milan, they can also go Military dictatorship instead of the special republic, kind of wanna try doing that also.

 

[themrspartan]

Try Florence next, very fun experience

 

[The Macedonian]

Milan is disgustingly good to play. You can do the Ambrosian Republic and have a ton of fun, then do the Military Dictatorship, which is also interesting -- but success seems to be predicated on keeping your military tradition as high as possible. This can be tricky and requires you to pick different idea groups in a different order than you might otherwise.

Venice is objectively and measurably more powerful than Milan, but for some reason people don't seem to play Venice much. I suspect that it is because they are one of the villains of your Byzantium campaign that never quite developed or because they are right underneath Austria's giant chin or because they are always getting sieged down by the Ottomans. I'm not certain.

P.S. the best nation to form Prussia with is not Brandenburg or the Teutonic Knights, .... it is Poland. The game hands you all of the provinces you need. Sure, you'll have the Eastern Tech unit pips, but this is like arguing that the Dark Angles aren't as good as the Space Wolves ... while true enough, the point is that you are playing with Space Marines...

P.P.S. If you want maximum mayhem, use Poland to form Prussia, then flip to Orthodox via rebels and form Ruthenian Tsardom, keep Prussian Ideas and conjure Space Marines from thin air using Streltzy button.

 

[L'Afrique]

I think lots of people avoid Venice just because they're immediately in Otto's sights, and people are afraid of Ottos. Venice is actually well-positioned to beat them, even if you don't do the no-cb Byz cheese and strangle them in the cradle, but nevertheless. Milan is almost as rich plus better government and starts removed from Otto within the imperial shield.

 

[Marquoz]

I think lots of people avoid Venice just because they're immediately in Otto's sights, and people are afraid of Ottos. Venice is actually well-positioned to beat them, even if you don't do the no-cb Byz cheese and strangle them in the cradle, but nevertheless.

Venice has no need to no-CB Byz. They're neighbors. Venice can (and should) start fabricating a claim on Day 1 of the game.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I like a pretty recent Milan strat: After taking a few provinces (Genoa, Your Cores, Sienna, maybe a province from Florence), you can spend a lot of war score spitting out OPMs which, after the Shadow Kingdom, aren't too hard to diplovassalize, especially if you get to it before the Ambrosian Republic and have royal marriages to play with. It lets you expand with a lot less AE than taking it yourself. The downside is it can get hard to control six or seven vassals if you don't keep up in Tech, and the Annexed Vassal relations penalty can also be hard to control.

 

[Danskjävel]

I think the problem with playing in the HRE (even though it improved with the Emperor-DLC) is excactly that: Unless you are powerfull enough to ignore the maluses from Unlawfull Territory, which only Bohemia is from the get go, you either have to become the emperor or cower in fear and ally him to avoid the UT. Or eat the UT-maluses and have gameplay speed (meaning conquest speed; this is EU4 after all) reduced significantly.

Why is there no option to form a - more or less diplomatically based - opposition to the emperor? It would be so cool if there was an option to work against the emperors actions in reforms, demanding conversions, Unlawfull Territory and so on. It could be the option to form a loosely based alliance of empirial opposition - it could even be as simple as trade leagues with the UT-malus not applying to members or something similar. In fact the decentralizing reforms should be placed within this opposition, instead of at the will of the emperor.

 

[themrspartan]

or because they are always getting sieged down by the Ottomans

That would be it tbh. Milan is safely tucked away from the Ottomans, while Venice is right up in their grill. Personally when playing EU4 I like to ignore the Ottomans if possible because they are not fun to play around. Their buffs are cheat-like especially in the early to mid game.

 

[hayseed]

One of the reasons this game has so much play value, is that there are lots of fun countries to play. And fun, not just because they have a good start, but because they have different religions, governments and special powers.

 

[cuendillar]

I think some players also avoid Venice due to bordergore intolerance - I don't think any other nation have so many disjointed regions at gamestart. I actually count 9: Terra Firma, Ravenna, Istria, Dalmatia, Kotor, Corfu, Negroponte, Durrës and Crete.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

I like a pretty recent Milan strat: After taking a few provinces (Genoa, Your Cores, Sienna, maybe a province from Florence), you can spend a lot of war score spitting out OPMs which, after the Shadow Kingdom, aren't too hard to diplovassalize, especially if you get to it before the Ambrosian Republic and have royal marriages to play with. It lets you expand with a lot less AE than taking it yourself. The downside is it can get hard to control six or seven vassals if you don't keep up in Tech, and the Annexed Vassal relations penalty can also be hard to control.

Thats why you integrate them in waves.

I think the problem with playing in the HRE (even though it improved with the Emperor-DLC) is excactly that: Unless you are powerfull enough to ignore the maluses from Unlawfull Territory, which only Bohemia is from the get go, you either have to become the emperor or cower in fear and ally him to avoid the UT. Or eat the UT-maluses and have gameplay speed (meaning conquest speed; this is EU4 after all) reduced significantly.

Why is there no option to form a - more or less diplomatically based - opposition to the emperor? It would be so cool if there was an option to work against the emperors actions in reforms, demanding conversions, Unlawfull Territory and so on. It could be the option to form a loosely based alliance of empirial opposition - it could even be as simple as trade leagues with the UT-malus not applying to members or something similar. In fact the decentralizing reforms should be placed within this opposition, instead of at the will of the emperor.

That’s… what the religious wars are for.

 

[Kapi96]

I haven't actually tried Milan, I do really enjoy playing in Italy though. Especially as Florence. I love their government form, ideas and map colour!

 

[Kapi96]

I think the problem with playing in the HRE (even though it improved with the Emperor-DLC) is excactly that: Unless you are powerfull enough to ignore the maluses from Unlawfull Territory, which only Bohemia is from the get go, you either have to become the emperor or cower in fear and ally him to avoid the UT. Or eat the UT-maluses and have gameplay speed (meaning conquest speed; this is EU4 after all) reduced significantly.

huh? Unlawful territory penalties aren't anywhere nears as bad as you make out. An extra 10 unrest (typically in only 1 province at a time) for a few years? So what. You don't need to be Bohemia to deal with that, literally any HRE country can deal with that just fine.

Conquest speed is reduced yes, but that's due to the bonus HRE AE. Unlawful territory isn't the reason.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

huh? Unlawful territory penalties aren't anywhere nears as bad as you make out. An extra 10 unrest (typically in only 1 province at a time) for a few years? So what. You don't need to be Bohemia to deal with that, literally any HRE country can deal with that just fine.

Conquest speed is reduced yes, but that's due to the bonus HRE AE. Unlawful territory isn't the reason.

Unlawful Territory isn’t just a pile of extra local unrest, it also lowers relations with every other prince in the HRE by -30, and I believe that can stack per incident. That helps make coalitions bigger, trigger faster, and persist longer.

 

[Jespoke]

The Unlawful Terriory opinion penalty decays so slowly, and stacks, so you end up completely unable to do diplomacy in the HRE after a while if you get hit with it a number of times. It is not the end of the world, but it is significant.
It is really annoying when your people break your own alliances because your ally took a bunch of unlawful terriroy though.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

The frustrating thing for me with Unlawful Territory is the change that the Emperor will ask for it even when you're at war now. Functionally this means it's impossible to take land from the emperor himself without eating the penalty, because if you somehow fight another war with them you can't core the province. Maybe it was too easy to avoid the penalty by chaining wars, but now it's way too hard. And can really futz with HRE diplomacy as mentioned above.