Europa Universalis General Thread

[Kafein]

I have heard of MP communities in EU3 playing the game in a balance-of-power-ey fashion. When one of them really is too far ahead, others will team up against that guy. If someone is in particularly bad shape, others will help him. Winning a war over another player doesn't mean you will instantly crush him. Artificial, and requires likeminded people, but quite fun.

Also, playing cooperatively with ultra hard nations can be fun, but not for very long. I also like playing coop with countries that never ever would have done it in history (like aragon and morocco for example).

I always disable lucky nations. It just feels like too much cheating from the AI.

[SeQuel]

Idk how these big EU3 game actually manage to play. Whenever I play with more than 2 people others get Out of Sync error and then they're behind a few days and requires us to restart the game which takes forever, it's painful. I hope they fix multiplayer games and make them more....friendly and not annoying.

[Cyber]

If you want to have easier time as Byzantium you could try starting at 1405.

[Overdriven]

Just bought the 3rd after reading about it from you guys. After the initial 'WTF have I bought' situation where the interface ect made my head bulge to the point of near explosion I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of things.

Playing as England, after fighting one war on the mainland against Brittany and France I decided to simply forget the territories there and let them do their own thing. Then I got the take over Ireland mission so I'm now working on that. Fought a couple of wars, captured and annexed Ulster and Connaught and now need to work on Munster and Leinster. Only issue is I can't really see any easy way of declaring war on them without out right doing so and ruining my prestige and stability. Bit of pain, the only other way I can see is via the spy option. Most of the other options won't work in this situation as far as I can see.

Edit: Well Scotland kind of decided things for me. France, Brittany and Scotland attacked me at the same time but seeing as I'm ignoring the mainland I could focus on Scotland, took over them easily enough and left them with one province. Now I can concentrate on Ireland again.

[Teeth]

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I have started a Byzantium game. Doublepost because the other one was already way too big. You were right ptx, it is very challenging. One redeeming thing about Byzantium is that it has a lot of claims and cores.

I was off to an amazing start though, I was honestly pretty proud of how that all unfolded (after having had to restart twice because I doomed my nation). I expanded from 2 to 9 provinces in 8 years, uhuh.

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Almost twenty fucking years later now though and I barely managed to do anything. I hold 12 provinces now. My economy is incredibly weak and unfavourable sliders make trading a no go. I ramped up some crazy war exhaustion trying to hold Trebizond from the Qara something nomads, did not succeed, got a 12k rebellion in Athens now. Now a bad thing about having a shit ton of claims is that it gives you negative prestige, -8 percent a year. The only noteworthy ally that I managed to secure, Hungary, is getting fucked by Bohemia, Austria and Poland. Getting any other alliances with this prestige and having a different faith is pretty much impossible. So it's up to me now, without any small unallied nations in sight. Basically hoping that Ottomans will soon crash and burn and that I can secure some wreckage.

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Worst thing though is having a lot of water in between territories and having no money or naval unit limits to increase my navy much. Meaning that any war with a power with a more powerful navy is incredibly hard to fight. Ferrying over 9k troops with 4 cogs all the time is a pain as well.

Again almost twenty years later, expanded a little, but not much. Finally took over those prick islands Rhodes and Cyprus, which were finally not being guaranteed by every European superpower. Except Castille, but they had very little boats, so I took my chances. Also took over Kaffa, which rebelled itself to independence and I had a core there, because messing with the Golden Horde is always a good idea. At this point though I put a lot of money in construction and I had a pretty decent economy, a bigger fleet and a decent army.

At this point I had survived a war with Mamluks. I vanquished their armies in my mountains but went for a quick white peace because all my cores in Asia Minor would be gone in 6 years. So I started prepping for a war with Ottomans. I am a medium sized power at this point, but Ottomans were still the largest economic power, had a 40k army and had a way bigger fleet than I did. My prestige is beautiful.

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When they were in a deep war with the Golden Horde, had some rebellions and had their armies up north fighting the Horde, I funded some Greek patriots in Greece and assaulted western Asia Minor. Hungary actually finally turned out to be a useful ally, fighting the buffer vassals Serbia and Bosnia which the Ottomans have had since the start and helping my patriots out in Greece. Hungary pussied out rather quickly though, but then Bulgarian patriots started taking over stuff. Luckily they managed to leave my Greek Patriots alone. Golden Horde fought them up in their lands. At this point I got in a war with the Golden Horde as well, I let them take back Kaffa, because dozens of Turkish rebellions started popping up. Kaffa is now a core for another 50 years so I'll be back 

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I made peace one day before all my cores expired, trying to get the maximum amount of cored provinces. 4 of the formerly Ottoman provinces in the Greek mainland defected to me during the war due to the Greek patriots I funded, a greater success than I could have ever imagined. Patriots are awesome. When the province defects the patriot army actually becomes yours. The army on the above screen that is besieging Bosnia in Serbia were the patriots I funded in Larissa.

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So I now own 23 provinces of which only Mus and Smyrna (which somehow lost its core a year before the others) are not cores. The Ottomans are going to be zerg rushed by the Golden Horde and Qara something, so in five years I will either attack Ottomans again or start colonizing nomads. Mamluks are about equal now with me in terms of economy, but I have a brain. Sadly I did not end the vassalages of Serbia and Bosnia. They are my Orthodox brothers so I will be looking to vassalize them myself and use them as buffers while I expand to the east and south for now. One more slider move and I will be able to westernize if Naples gets a bit more ahead of me. So yeah, it's looking pretty good now.

Will upload again when I get anywhere close to this 

You mean, like this?

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[Christo]

I like how this is becoming an AAR thread of EU3, despite the Title.

OP might change it, would be cool. It's not really about the IVth game, but EU in general. 

[Overdriven]

Ok how is it possible that France have invaded me with 50k men in 1465...

Edit: I'd been at war with them before but I think the max they had was 10k which I could easily handle with my 16k army. Then this time they hit me with a ton of different armies, their royal army alone consisted of over 25k troops. They desimated my armies and pretty much steamrolled Ireland and then started on England. At that point I raged and decided to revert to my save from earlier this evening.

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Considering this is my first game so I'm a nub 

[Teeth]

Did you get the Europa Universalis III Complete pack by any chance? You have no magistrate bar, no legitimacy either and the entire interface is different. Graphics look shit as well. Europa Universalis 3 Complete does not in fact include the last two expansions, I agree that the name is highly confusing and poorly chosen. I highly encourage you to think about buying the two expansions or Europa Universalis 3 Chronicles, because as far as I know they indisputably improve the game a lot.

I've heard that the way the game works can differ massively between the different versions, so I really can't comment on this, as I have only played Divine Wind.

[Overdriven]

Ah ok no I didn't get those. I saw the expansions were separate but didn't think it would matter much. I'll take a look at them. And yeah complete pack is a bit of a daft title 

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

I've heard that the way the game works can differ massively between the different versions, so I really can't comment on this, as I have only played Divine Wind.

It does, originally just got the original version some time back, recently got Chronicles, HUGE difference, Chronicles is much better overall, graphics are capable of being looked at (and grands a decent overview), GK is much more aggresive and fun in Chronicles, there are real differences in the countries you pick besides starting conditions, shitload of other nice features, and with all the expansions it is a lot more difficult.
It also once again proves that 2d is the only way for strategy games to go.

[Zanze]

For those crazy EU3 players, a Georgia, Jalayrid, or Ryukyu campaign are some of the craziest I've had. Very fun and aggravating. (The Ryukyu one seems simple at first, but once Europe sees you... Lets just say you will never be at peace again)

[Kafein]

I started a Dai Viet campaign just for fun, not really intending to do anything grand.

In a successfull attempt to reenact a war yet to come, I first swiftly annexed my southern neighbour. I thought being of different religions would give me a CB, turns out we were in the same group. I declared war anyway. We gained control over Vijaya and Panduranga, uniting all of modern Vietnam under our banner.

At that point I started a very uneventful series of royal marriages with everybody. If "harassment" could be judged by international laws, khmer would probably have filed a case against me. It seems though that it was all vain, as our nation was more frequently guided by a regency than an actual monarch. Lucky for us, kings in the whole region suffered from the same exceptionally poor life expectancy and fertility. I did also behave very aggressively, claiming thrones left and right, which most of my neighbours didn't like at all.

After a while, we somehow obtained claims on a Siem Reap, owned by khmer. It is still mysterious to me why exactly we received this as that province was only adjacent to one of the provinces we just had taken from Champa (south vietnam), and had of course no legitimity to hold it. Anyway, our monarch jumped on the occasion and we won a very clean war, taking the province with us.

The events that follow were quite messy but I'm pretty sure they involve freeing a 1-province Ayutthaya in Rayong from the korean dominion (yes, Korea had the great idea to take land over there) and quickly turning them into vassals. And also retaking Prey Konor lost by those lazy Khmer to the Malaccans, in the name of religious protection.

The state of the country in 1480 :

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I surprisingly managed to maintain decent relations with China. But Pegu, which is way too powerful, hates me, along with everybody I know except Tibet (yay !), Manchu (yay !) and Ayatthaya (which are my vassals anyway). That would be fine if said Pegu didn't had a core on Rayong, which means I'm very regularly at war with them.

I got rich provinces and only one is uncored, but I had to use mercs in my first war against Pegu and my inflation is off the charts.


All in all, I made a lot of bad decisions early on and I don't think I'll be playing this save again xD

[Christo]

An interesting decision, while playing Byz caught my eyes:

"Restore Roman Empire"

lolwut. Googling it gave me this:

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This must be a D&T mod only thing, right?

[SeQuel]

I like how this is becoming an AAR thread of EU3, despite the Title.

OP might change it, would be cool. It's not really about the IVth game, but EU in general. 

Changed.

An interesting decision, while playing Byz caught my eyes:

"Restore Roman Empire"

lolwut. Googling it gave me this:

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This must be a D&T mod only thing, right?

Yes, D&T added that formable nation in.

[Christo]

It's pretty hilarious though, imagine Roman soldiers with Muskets, Scots attacking Hadrian's wall wearing kilts while playing the bagpipes