Which one is the hardest boss in Eu4?

[Alpacayak]

In my game there are 2 bosses.

France - Spain Allliance
PLC

In my game Spain PUannexed France(better than the opposite at least) and is allied to the PLC.
But it's not IM so LN is off.
Still, poor Austria.

 

[fleetothemoon]

With the introduction of development points, I don't see mega empires mentioned in OP as often anymore. France always screws up somewhere in between and then just stagnates. Same for Austria...

Spain seems to do a tad better but they are nothing compared to full potential that can be realized by France or Austria.

PLC still forms often but is hardly invincible. In the rare cases when Russia becomes a blob, they always have to get involved in some pointless war as secondary participant and then stagnate from WE and low MP for decades to come.

And I swear Kebab is having it tougher than it used to be in the late game. They don't blob as often now...

 

[Krajzen]

Yes we get it the reofrmed HRE is a beast but how often does it really form? 1/20 times at most I'd say. From my experience austria either fails to win the religious war (peace of westphalen never protestant victory unless I'm participating), or the empire drops below 25 princes (no small part because of austrias habit of expanding inside of the empire), both cases results in the IA being stuck at 0 for the rest of the game.

The question in thread is 'the hardest boss in eu4', not 'which nation dominates the world most often'

 

[RELee]

Boss.

It's like watching my son when he played Zelda on the N64.

 

[TheDungen]

The question in thread is 'the hardest boss in eu4', not 'which nation dominates the world most often'

Yeah but a boss is someone you should usually face at the end of the game not just at the end of every 1/20th game. Like I said even ming is a optional boss because if you just ignore them they'll ignore you.

 

[IceTytanFang]

Truth-be-told, Austria post-unification wasn't that hard (please note, my example is from, like, 1.1 and I had a ton of good alliances), in fact, they were kind of a push over. Declare war, take a couple provinces, repeat.

My personal big boss was from my Qing game in 1.12: Russia. I had three wars: One where I was winning, taking Siberia, but after losing a couple of key battles I was ultimately forced to give some provinces
A Second where I was winning, taking Siberia, but Russia was suddenly out of whatever war they were in before so I suddenly had to rush to take a fort and end the war. I think I took, like 5 provinces (considering they were Siberian provinces, it wasn't that much.
A third war Russia was just a pushover by that point and I took 2/3 of Siberia

 

[Ungerargh]

I'm usually the endgame boss that no one can match. Reformed HRE? Pfft. I PUed that in the 1760s in my Albania or Iberia game. Midgame, though, it really depends on how big you were to start. Of late Otto's seem to have success more often finishing out their missions, at least in Asia and Africa. Not uncommon to see a 150+ FL behemoth around 1600. Quite imposing as a Moldavia start.

 

[Incompetent]

I'm usually the endgame boss that no one can match. Reformed HRE? Pfft. I PUed that in the 1760s in my Albania or Iberia game. Midgame, though, it really depends on how big you were to start. Of late Otto's seem to have success more often finishing out their missions, at least in Asia and Africa. Not uncommon to see a 150+ FL behemoth around 1600. Quite imposing as a Moldavia start.

By this relative measure of power, the ultimate boss is probably the first wave of Europeans when you are playing as a Native American.

 

[Zqrfmb]

My final boss was Spain with a PU on Austria, while I was protestant and france was allied with that unholy monstrosity and the catholic DoF, while the ottomans had obliterated hungary, lithuania, and most of poland (though they ignored me). I only got out of htat one because the netherlands appeared and while the unholy abomination of superpowers all teamed up against them, Sweden decided to get off its ass and help them, and myself (Brandenburg) and provide enough of a wall of bodies for me to march into Paris and enforce a treaty annulment and remove their defender of faith status.

...Then the aforementioned ottos attacked, but the tech difference and a strong mountain defense made that war a bit anticlimactic.

Edit: This was back in the day of warleader switching, so any catholic minor in the HRE was actually france and spaustria in disguise.

 

[bbqftw]

100+ regiment brandenburg can be pretty sad times

 

[rho]

Late game is seldom a problem for me in EU4. If I play a campaign long enough for the megablobs to for then usually either:

1. I've become sufficiently big and scary as well that it doesn't phase me.
2. I've been allied with them for the past 100 years so have nothing to fear.
3. I have a very specific goa in mind for the campaign that doesn't require fighting them.

Sometimes all three at thesame time.

I literally cannot recall having a single game where some late game megablob stopped me from achieving my goal.

For me, the early game bosses are more difficult, more interesting, and more relevant.. Castille when playing as Granada, Ottomans when playing as Byzantium, England when playing as Connaught, Vijayanagar when playing as Ceylon, and so on.

 

[FleetingRain]

An unholy Russia+Ottomans alliance. It's like a human player taking Quantity and using blockades to screw you. And also a million soldiers.

 

[Kazimierz IV]

In my last game as Castile->Spain most of those countries failed to blob/collapsed.

-Austria was doing well but got its ass kicked in the HRE religious war, forced to end its PU over 3 HRE states and release some OPMs (Tirol, etc.). Presently Austria is about 4 provinces and continues to get kicked into the ground every time it tries to retake Tirol.

-France shares the l'hexagone with a super-Brittany (which conquered all of England's former lands). Expansion into the HRE and Italy is blocked by an aggressive Burgundy as well as me (PU'd->integrated Savoy).

-Muscovy lost an early war to a Nogai-Ottoman alliance. In future wars Nogai conquered up to about Moscow; at the same time Sweden->Scandinavia gobbled up the remainder of Muscovy and then went on the offensive against Nogai. At present Scandinavia extends to the Aral Sea area. Siberia is uncolonized (I refuse to be the trolling Iberians that colonize the Siberian coast).

-Poland initially got its PU over Lithuania. It was able to conquer Hungary and stop the Ottomans from expanding north, as well as conquer the Golden Horde. However halfway through integration the PU ended. Lithuania is fairly weak after being bloodied by Scandinavia, while Poland is rising again after PU'ing+integrating Saxony and conquering inside the HRE.

-The Ottomans were doing fairly well, having expanded into Persia. However they didn't conquer the Mamluks completely, so I snatched western Egypt and have been using that and Southern Italy as a base to attack them. For the last 100 years I've been beating up on the Ottomans, visualizing the released Balkan nations as well as conquering Egypt and Greece.

 

[Wizzington]

Jan Mayen.

 

[Franz Limit]

It really depends on the date. The Ottoman Empire for example, even if it is huge, is a very easy target if you are western/eastern and attack them in the late game but if you have to fight a huge Ottoman Empire in the early midgame, they are scary as hell.
France, Spain, Austria, Burgundy, Bohemia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, Russia, Commonwealth have all the potential to be scary as hell in the late game if they managed to blobb enough but at the same time Spain for example play like a handicapped in the mid-game because he has usually about 80% of his troops in oversea provinces. France is quite weak in the early game at the current patch. Most of the games Prussia doesn't even form and Sweden mostly get half-eaten.
Whatever most common scary late game nations (if you let them) are Commonwealth, France, Russia and Austria (or Bohemia.. depends on the religion of the HRE) in my games.
Ottomans are usually allways big as well but the Ottomans usually don't take a lot of strong military ideas + their national ideas are not very military focused + the Ottoman units have less pips than western units..

 

[Incompetent]

Jan Mayen.

If you turn 'fantasy mode' on in The Cossacks (allowing High American new world empires and so on), will there also be a risk of Jan Mayen?

 

[ChildeR]

Any unexpected PU between two majors. Worst offenders have been Spain under France and Russia under Austria that ate Hungary.

 

[Ober]

My best single-entity boss so far was PLC in Russia game on 1.12 patch. What a hydra that was, Western, with absolute monarchy since early 1600s, with 6 MIL monarch living for 50 years straight (so always one tech ahead of me), able to destroy Ottomans or Austria with one third of their army, and most of the time protected by DotF France.

How do I get past that?

First three wars, despite my victories, were incredibly even. I would just camp my 150k of soldats around Kiev and try to bait smaller PLC armies that were still incredibly powerful. Eventually I would bleed'em down and push forward. Peace from 1633 (you know it was important one when you remember the year) finally saw Polish-Russian border change to OTL 1654 one, I managed to catch up with tech and ideas after that one, their beast king would not live for much longer, but even when drained completely out of MP and moniez that hydra would just merc up and insta-dow Ottomans right off the bat, do you know why, because it CAN.

Eventually I blasted thru that biatch and by 1745 PLC was reduced to OPM Administrative Republic in Kraków. Then my most favourite coallition kicked in. France, Austria and dozen of HRE cats jumped me and World War Zero has started. Five separate mega-battles of Kiev that involved 300k of people from each side (I had to lure them in, let them occupy Poland, but hell they went as far as Polotsk at some point) ensured Motherland's victory. Hell, after that I had to retake all the damn forts so war lasted even longer. Eleven years later I would sign a peace at last, half of Slovakia was "compensation" for draining my manpower and ruthlessly burning down righteously Russian (I mean game gave me missions to conquer Poland that counts aye?) Empire. One of my armies (30k each) had 9 infantrymen and some cannons left. And others weren't in better state. Most epic coallition war ever, literally East vs West.

***

But overall I believe most people will agree PLC is the worst, when it forms, breaks through Elective and gets Western Focus. Monster from the depths of hell.

 

[Tufto]

The bloody Commonwealth. I played a failed GH game a few months ago and they terrified me far more than Russia or the Ottomans ever did.

 

[nossnahoj]

Clearly the worst boss is January 1821.