I couldn't find a thread on this specifically yet so, since we're a week away from kickoff, I thought I'd start us off.It's another grand strategy game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. You don't have to be a to enjoy this title either. PI has come a long way in making their games more accessible to the masses a larger group of people than they were originally made for back in the days of EU2 or the original Vicky and CK.
EU4 is releasing on the 13th of this month, is available on Steam (or Steam keys from a couple other places like gamersgate.com) and will be playable on PC, Mac and Linux on day 1.The game span over hundreds years, starting on November 11, 1444 (after the battle of Varna) into the early 19th century I believe; possibly 1830s? You play as a country (kingdom, khanate, little one-province fife, etc.) and control many facets of your military, economy and trade, internal development and politics and so forth as befits a grand strategy title.
Trade from the Americas collects primarily on the East coast; the best node to focus on is the Caribbean. From there, trade can end up in Sevilla (from the Caribbean directly), Bordeaux (from the Caribbean and Gulf of St. Lawrence), the English Channel (from Chesapeake Bay), or the North Sea/Denmark (from the Gulf of St. Trade with no merchant eu4 england trade strategy edit In the reading forex trading charts absence of merchants: Because merchants increase trade steered out of a node, by far system most Trade control Trade - Europa Universalis IV Game Guide Trade nodes: 21 Mitchell, et al, England Biodiversity Strategy – towards adaptation to climate change, The Hudson Bay Company Candarid idea 1: Firstly, there is the Center of Trade.Production Now we can talk about Trade Value.
I've been a fan of Paradox titles for years and a semi-active member of their forums - which really aren't that bad at all considering some game forums out there. Games such as these can have a steep learning curve but the payoff is worth the bit of effort up front and PI has done decent work of late on better their tutorial systems.
There are a couple of preorder bonuses if you're so inclined; including a free title from PI - Crusader Kings 2 (Steam key, tradable but not marketable) and a CK2 to EU4 save game converter so you can play from the late 800s all the way to the early 1800s. Most all of their titles are built with modding in mind and the modding community for their games is second-to-none in my opinion.
You can expect very high quality modding work to be available in a relatively short time if that's your bag. The developers have close relations with many of the more prolific modders and regular contact/consulting/help occurs. Eh, the wikipedia page is saying you can play through 1820 and the game ends at the start of 1821. Minor nitpickReally intrested in this game as I've been reading a lot about the era recently (French Revolution, Lord Nelson, Napoleonic Era in general) and Empire: Total War is not scratching that itch for a game in that setting. Never played, or really heard of, the series before this but am I wrong to think its going to be something like Crusader Kings II?The UI will be similar - CK2 runs Clausewitz 2 engine and EU4 will run an updated version (2.5) so the looks will be familiar, especially the map. The big difference is the switch in focus from dynasty in CK2 to 'the kingdom as an entity' in EU4. It introduces a couple new concepts that are appropriate to the timeline (things like exploration/colonization), fleshes out trade and economy, has a tonne of great period events, etc.Complexity-wise compared to CK2 I would say it's 'easier' but only for low values of easy.
Less complicated but more to to keep track of so not less complicated. If that makes sense.
I'm actually playing the hell out of CK2 right now because one of the preorder bonuses for EU4 is a save game converter between the two games. So, I'm doing my best to keep a decent-sized Welsh kingdom alive as long as possible in CK2 in order to play that kingdom in EU4. Should be interesting to say the least because some strangeness is happening throughout eastern Europe! So, I'm doing my best to keep a decent-sized Welsh kingdom alive as long as possible in CK2 in order to play that kingdom in EU4.That's the best suggested use for the converter I've heard yet - the usual pan-european empires are hardly worth importing.I must confess, I'm curious to see how the Aztec invasions play out when converted to EU4.Yeah, those folks that blobs 2/3 of mainland europe and then convert - what's the point? You've already won before you start probably.Just a note - the demo should be up on Steam now for those who are curious and want to have a go. Note 2 - the older your gfx card the less likely the game will run smoothly.
Make sure you have updated drivers as well. It's not incredible graphics intensive but does require semi-modern hardware to play well. If its anything like EU3.
I always equated EU3 to conquering the world by spreadsheet. Thats not exactly fair - but the menu system is. As Pauli stated inscrutable and the economy system is.
Byzantine is a good word for it. Which all sorta works together to make the fact that you can crush your opponents under your military might sorta. Boring.Especially if you've spent anytime playing CKIIEdit for clarityWell, certainly it's like EU3 as you might expect from EU4 but they have made efforts to ensure availability of good tool tips and have overhauled many of the economic and diplomatic/administrative elements within the game. You still have trade, but you do it entirely differently than before. You still expand and 'core' and 'covert' territories but you do it differently. SO I would say the concepts are the same but the realization of those goals is sufficiently changed so that at least giving the demo a go to see how it's different is worth your time. FYI: one key portion that doesn't seem obvious from the country-picking screen is that some countries have special and often unique 'triggered modifiers.'
Once you start the game, you can find out more by finding the Triggered Modifiers button under the minimap, near the History button.For example, I decided to play my first game as Ming, figuring it'll be easy to play as the biggest fish around. It's true that the Ming have a very strong ducat income from internal taxation & production. However, until the Ming westernizes, they have Inward Perfection, which is incredibly penalizing of pretty much everything across the board, from research cost to trade income to force limit. I did a couple 'get to know me' games yesterday so I can post some first impressions:. This is probably the most polished PI release I've played. No overt game-breaking stuff, no crazy balance exploits, everything more or less works as advertsied.
The UI is different than EU3 but after spending some time with it I love it in comparison. I feel it is much more intuitive, the information you require is visible or easy to get.
I'll need to spend some time working on message settings to figure out what I want to create popups and what I want to cause pauses, etc. But that's to be expected. The UI for grand strategy games is always daunting for beginners but this one I wouldn't hesitate to call 'slick', for values of slick. It looks very pretty; if that is a factor for people. I know it is for me and this engine passes with flying colours. The different feel you can get by playing different countries is interesting.
While certainly there are always best practices that evolve for any strategy game, if you're playing different countries I think the game will have. Lasting freshness? Lol, I'm not sure what else to call it but because of some unique ideas and progression that some countries have you get different experiences and goals rising to the surface depending on who you play as. Obviously they don't have a lot of customization for every little kingdom in the game (yet) but the most popular are certainly nicely defined. They dropped down to ahving just Diplomats, Merchants, Colonists and Missionaries.
As past EU players will know, these are what you use to perform applicable actions. The type names are pretty self-explanatory but what is different about EU4 is that these become actual characters.
In that they are given names and aren't 'used up' when they perform an action. If you send a diplomat to do a mission - say, secure a Royal Marriage with a neighbour, then he goes and does that and comes back a couple weeks later and you can send him to do something else. A different sort of mission, like increasing positive relations, casuses them to be gone for a much longer period of time and you can recall them as required. I'm going to need more time to get a better understanding of trade.
The surface actions are pretty straight forward - send merchant to a market, profit - but which market has the best potential isn't obvious to me yet. Basically now trade moves along certain 'routes' and these routes have 'nodes' or destinations where some trade stops and some moves on to other nodes through other routes. You can have a merchant take money out of a node or you can have a merchant make more trade pass further down the chain. You might decide to make them pass more trade down the chain, for example, if the next one on the chain is in your territory.
You can also assign some of your navy (specifically 'small ships' like Barques) to patrol/participate in these routes which increases your trade power. Trade power I think just increases how effective your merchants are in a given node. The three main 'commodities' of a kingdom are Administrative power, Diplomatic power, and Military power.
These are generated monthly from a base value + ruler ability + advisor ability +/- external factors (from random events for example). You need these points to do anything of importance and it's interesting how the game can force you to put off something you want for another, larger goal. You certainly cannot just do everything you want, there is a balancing act invovled. These are also how you increase your technology level and discover ideas.
You need to be careful not to be constantly starved for a certain type of points which I think is very cool. There are no 'right' answers; it's a matter of what do you want to accomplish VS what can your kingdom actually exert itself to get done.More later; I have meetings today.
Any specific questions?. The different feel you can get by playing different countries is interesting. While certainly there are always best practices that evolve for any strategy game, if you're playing different countries I think the game will have. Lasting freshness?. I'm going to need more time to get a better understanding of trade. The surface actions are pretty straight forward - send merchant to a market, profit - but which market has the best potential isn't obvious to me yet. Basically now trade moves along certain 'routes' and these routes have 'nodes' or destinations where some trade stops and some moves on to other nodes through other routes.
You can have a merchant take money out of a node or you can have a merchant make more trade pass further down the chain. You might decide to make them pass more trade down the chain, for example, if the next one on the chain is in your territory. You can also assign some of your navy (specifically 'small ships' like Barques) to patrol/participate in these routes which increases your trade power. Trade power I think just increases how effective your merchants are in a given node.First re: different countries. It turns out I was playing Ming all wrong. Ming has that Inward Perfection which gives penalties across the board, but it also has 3 factions, each of which negates 1/3 of the penalties. So the trick is to switch to Temple faction as prelude to war, but switch back to Bureaucrats for the taxes afterwards.
Switching occurs as part of some random events, but you can also spend Diplomatic power to do so.The other thing about trade nodes is, pay attention to the direction of the trade flow. There's a -80% modifier to trade power when sent 'upstream' of the trade flow. Also, some trade nodes have a permanent merchant collecting money out of that trade node.
I think if you send a merchant there, it increases the money acquired, but it may be more worthwhile to send merchants out to collect from other trade nodes. The other thing about trade nodes is, pay attention to the direction of the trade flow. There's a -80% modifier to trade power when sent 'upstream' of the trade flow. Also, some trade nodes have a permanent merchant collecting money out of that trade node. I think if you send a merchant there, it increases the money acquired, but it may be more worthwhile to send merchants out to collect from other trade nodes.I'll have to look at this more specifically when I get home as I think that was a problem I was running into.
Better Trades Scam
I couldn't figure out why I was doing so poorly at a certain node but it could very well have been I was on the wrong side of trade flow.I feel the economy/trade side is much better laid out in this release. I like that there is no longer a tiny, monthly tax and a large, year-end tax. You just have a monthly income and that is either deficit or surplus and you can determine which at glance. You can take loans and it is much less punishing - you can actually use them and pay them off without going backrupt and having a peasant uprising. You can move sliders for army and navy maintenance and see, in realtime, the effect it will have on your monthly income. There's even a message indicator that tells you (which is me almost all the time) when you're at war and have forgotten to increase spending on military to proper levels.Somebody on the official forums (link escapes me now, sorry) had stated something to the effect that you can eventually get production and tax income from colonies, instead of just tariff.
I can only report that of the few colonies I've built so far I only received tariff monies from them. The same system is in place as was in EU3 for tariffs - basically you have to have at least 1 'large ship' (like a carrack) for every overseas colony or you suffer a malus to all their incomes as a percentage.
For example, you have 10 overseas colonies but only 9 large ships so you'll only receive 90% of the tariff monies from each colony. Note - you just have to own the ships so its a very abstract mechanic. You could have a bunch of old, big ships sitting in ports in Europe 'protecting' the tariffs you receive.
At least, that's how I've observed it so far.Nitpick - I hate how something a couple hundred kilometres down the western Sahara is a 'distant, overseas province' for deciding income when I'm Castile, but a province in northern Germany or Denmark, or even in Greece isn't, even though it's twice the distance. My current nitpick is that you can't convert a province's culture until you also converted to the state religion, since I only have one missionary, and he's severely underpowered. My empire is fairly tolerant of heretics, but I can't just pay a malus to culture conversion, which I would totally do.Yeah, the conversions that can take place - core, culture, religion - all seem less opaque and more defined to take on.
I really like that. That being said, try Castile after you have eliminated Granda. Sunni has specific modifiers such that unless I have specific ideas or technology that improves missionaries I can never convert them because their bonus to resist becomes greater than my ability to convert.
Actually I think one of the provinces (maybe Gibraltar?) can be converted by needs 1100 months. Not a typo; nearly 92 years. I can totally see how that would be a nit to pick though. Will have to investigate more into how religious conversions work.
My current nitpick is that you can't convert a province's culture until you also converted to the state religion, since I only have one missionary, and he's severely underpowered. My empire is fairly tolerant of heretics, but I can't just pay a malus to culture conversion, which I would totally do.Yeah, the conversions that can take place - core, culture, religion - all seem less opaque and more defined to take on. I really like that. That being said, try Castile after you have eliminated Granda.
Sunni has specific modifiers such that unless I have specific ideas or technology that improves missionaries I can never convert them because their bonus to resist becomes greater than my ability to convert. Actually I think one of the provinces (maybe Gibraltar?) can be converted by needs 1100 months. Not a typo; nearly 92 years. I can totally see how that would be a nit to pick though.
Will have to investigate more into how religious conversions work.So I guess this is the game telling you to get some National Ideas which change the conversion bonuses if you want to be the kind of empire which expands into territories held by other religions and cultures, eh. Still getting the hang of it.Coalitions, that's what it's all about! I suppose I should also type up some quick impressions. Please note that I've always been scared off by PI's older games' complexity until CK2 (thank you Steam Guides), so this is mostly in comparison to that.
Big thematic difference between CK2 and EU4 is, of course, going from playing a dynasty to a country. It is much easier to feel immersed in the rise and fall of your own dynasty, and it's plausible to purposely make suboptimal decisions in CK2 if it fits the character of the ruler. EU4 does have some thematically appropriate random events, like deciding whether retainer flogging is acceptable, but more often it's a choosing a tradeoff between two or more resources. The Admin/Diplo/Mil power points add a lot of strategic decisions, but it also limits your actions to only when you have points to do something with. There's a lot of 'let things fly by at fastest speed while I wait for my points to build up' that I'm doing.
YMMV. Overall, there is very little micromanaging that needs to be done, especially for an established empire like the Ming. Instead, I'm more concerned with the long term goals of my nation: do I make efforts to secure better trade? Should I spend my hard earned Admin/Diplo/Mil points on the next technology level or spend it now on ideas?.
Wars are both much easier and much harder. Casus Belli are often given by random events, and you can press for an impressively long list of concessions, not just your original claims. However, converting the people of the province to join you willingly is slightly more time consuming than improving vassal loyalty in CK2.
To follow up on conversion: there are three steps of conversion: convert to core province, convert religion, and convert culture group. They must be done in this order, and each step lowers the revolt risk within the province.
While a conquered province is not a core province, there is an overextension penalty extended to many other things throughout the empire, so you want to get started on that right away. Converting religion requires a missionary, so oftentimes this is the bottleneck of the process.
Converting culture is bizarrely fast compared to the other two.My only real criticism of the game right now is the conversion process. Specifically, there doesn't seem to be any reason to not convert a province to core.
Overextension has ramifications throughout the empire, converting a province to core costs very little admin power comparatively, and there's no limit I've seen on how many core provinces you can keep. Most other things in this game is a trade off between two or more good choices. But conversion is a no brainer, which is a bit odd. So I guess this is the game telling you to get some National Ideas which change the conversion bonuses if you want to be the kind of empire which expands into territories held by other religions and cultures, eh. Still getting the hang of it.Coalitions, that's what it's all about!Yeah, something like that. Actually, the one province that was 1100 months - what I did in a new game I started last night (knowing I would run into that) was employ an advisor that increased missionary chance; an inquisitor I think.
The time went from 92 years to about 96 months so, a long time but definitely managable. They other 2 were still out of reach so I replaced the advisor and continued on but I think the best thing about the whole exchange was that I could see exactly why the convert chance was so low and subsequently could figure out some steps to take that would improve my chances.
Such information was missing or difficult to find before. Aside - looking at some religious ideas, Castile can get the Spanish Inquisition. The tool tip description of the SI is 'No one expected it'. I absolutely love those small, entertaining finds.
My only real criticism of the game right now is the conversion process. Specifically, there doesn't seem to be any reason to not convert a province to core. Overextension has ramifications throughout the empire, converting a province to core costs very little admin power comparatively, and there's no limit I've seen on how many core provinces you can keep. Most other things in this game is a trade off between two or more good choices. But conversion is a no brainer, which is a bit odd.I think that's the point though. High overextension will cause you a never-ending cycle of problems till you bring it back under control. Get up over a 100% and see what happens - especially if you have zero, or negative!, stability.
I think they are using it as a mechanic to force a certain pace in war. You take a nibble, you digest.
Digestion takes time and truces don't expire overnight either. If you're incorporating a lot of land you will start falling behind on tech and other items that may require those points like buildings or colonies or whatever.Also, the AI and diplomacy I'm really starting to dig into. I like that you can see which actions are causing which modifiers. You know exactly why someone loves you, hates you, or just doesn't care about you.
I was surprised last night when, as Castile, my longtime friend Portugal and I lost our alliance but the message stated that I broke it off. Um, no I didn't. I investiagted and found that even though their opinion of me was high my opinion of them had degraded considerably because they got a string of random events that caused border friction and pressing claims on my stuff. Even though they wanted the alliance back and I as a player wanted it, my government hated them and so we couldn't do it.
They would have to improve relations with me if they wanted it back. On first reflections, I think this is an interesting dynamic.
The AI will be smart enough to work around some other diplomatic exploits that were common in EU3 - like giving transit rights to kingdoms you think may declare war on you. If you declare on someone that you have transit rights on you get a higher stability hit - now the AI will ask for transit rights for a specific reason but once that reason is fulfilled they will actively remove that right so as to free up their actions a little more. There are many little things like that, that I'm appreciating. Something weird happened. In 1644, I made the National Decision to form the Chinese nation. This would, as a consequence, drop that across-the-board malus that is such a big part of playing Ming.Oddly enough, my empire changed its name to the Manchus (though Manchu is not a tolerated culture group).More importantly, I kept the internal faction system that was meant to deal with the malus that is no longer there.
So if I want to build buildings, I can support the faction that gives me a -100% build cost modifier. If I want to go to war, I can support the faction that gives me +25% discipline and -100% core creation cost. If I want to do normal stuff, I can support the faction that gives me -75% research costs and -100% advisor cost.I'm fairly sure I won't catch up on score to the Western nations in time, but for now it's insanely nice. I have the most fun playing the traditional, colonial powers but have always been annoyed with the tariff and 'distant overseas' province system. Here's a basic rundown from discussion on the game forum and my favoured solution!Tariffs work only in overseas provinces - overseas means without land connection to your capital and on other continent.
Example:. Austria having Flanders (same continent) - not overseas. Russian Siberia (land connection but different continent) - not overseas.
Spanish colonies in America - overseasOverseas provinces act differently for income in that instead of regular tax + production you have tariffs, which are sum of what would be production (with all modifiers, just like regular province) and base tax (which means no modifier). On top of that comes base modifier of -85%. As you see this indicates that you are getting LESS money from overseas province by default. To make this even worse you need big ships to maintain tariff income - you need 1 big ship per overseas province, or you will get less tariff income. You can improve tariffs by hiring proper advisors, getting ideas which improve tariffs (like viceroys from exploration group or some national idea) and various decisions.BUT as I pointed out a few posts back, it can be very annoying as Castile or Portugal to take a province like Tangiers and have the game consider that 'distant overseas' because even though you can bloody well see the damn thing across the channel it's considered different continent and no land connection. Solution - make the entire Mediterranean costal area be part of Europe for this determination OR accept Palestine and north Africa as land connection to Europe.
Quick revision of how trade flows work:. Trade value is how much ducats are at stake in a given trade node.
Trade power is how much power each country has to claim that trade value. You get a claim to: Trade Value. Trade Power / Sum of All Trade Power @ Node. So how much you get to claim will vary depending on how much power the other countries have.
All trade nodes will shift upstream 20% of your trade power at that node if you have trade power upstream. This happens regardless of whether you have a merchant there, but it's only shown if you don't. You have a 'free' merchant collecting trade at the trade node that your capital belongs to. You cannot forward trade value from that node. Merchants can collect trade at a trade node or forward trade value downstream.
Collecting trade at a node that does not include your capital suffers a -91.5% modifier to trade power. This affects the trade power pushed upstream, BTW.So in summary, what the rules want you to do: maintain trade power in nodes upstream from your capital's trade node and use merchants to push trade value towards your capital, or at least away from rivals. You have a 'free' merchant collecting trade at the trade node that your capital belongs to. You cannot forward trade value from that node.I've seen this stated a couple times but have to ask - each game I start I've had 2 merchants and one of them is in the closest or home trading node, collecting.
If I recall that merchant and assign him somewhere else I will still be collecting with some 'free' merchant?I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but without merchants I still see downstream nodes transferring power upstream, upstream nodes transferring value downstream, and collection happening at my capital's node. Using merchant agents only seem to increase the local trade power by 2.0 and allow for steering of trade, i.e. Which downstream node to go to next.
So is there ever a reason to send a trader to collect cash instead of forwarding it on? For example, if it flows to some Capitol other than my own?It's not about enemy capitols, just whatever their power is and the direction of trade flow.I can imagine a case where, say, you have provinces in southern Spain (which feeds into Sevilla node) and England (which feeds into London node). However, the flow from Sevilla to London goes through Bordeaux. If you don't have high trade power in the Bordeaux region, you may just want to take what you can out of Sevilla directly. So is there ever a reason to send a trader to collect cash instead of forwarding it on? For example, if it flows to some Capitol other than my own?It's not about enemy capitols, just whatever their power is and the direction of trade flow.I can imagine a case where, say, you have provinces in southern Spain (which feeds into Sevilla node) and England (which feeds into London node). However, the flow from Sevilla to London goes through Bordeaux.
If you don't have high trade power in the Bordeaux region, you may just want to take what you can out of Sevilla directly.You'll see something like this as well if you play Castile - you can collect from both Sevilla and Bordeaux from the start. I don't have a lot to compare with yet but I would hazard a guess that it's always better to directly pull money out rather than forward it on? Having a blast playing as Portugal, about 150 years in and have colonies in South America, South Africa, a number of small islands and now, Australia. I'm probably playing terribly and making loads of mistakes, but I don't care, I'm absolutely loving it! EU IV just clicked with me like EU III did but Crusader Kings 2 has so far, unfortunately not.One thing I am struggling with though it the Force Limit.
Mine is currently about 28 which is starting to make defending all my colonies a bit tricky - manageable at the moment because if I really need to I can afford to be over the limit for a short time, but I feel it could easily spiral out of control. I'm not sure how the Force Limit is calculated, can I increase it? Or is it just there to stop me colonizing/expanding etc. One thing I am struggling with though it the Force Limit.
Mine is currently about 28 which is starting to make defending all my colonies a bit tricky - manageable at the moment because if I really need to I can afford to be over the limit for a short time, but I feel it could easily spiral out of control. I'm not sure how the Force Limit is calculated, can I increase it? Or is it just there to stop me colonizing/expanding etc. Too quickly?I believe there are some national ideas and normal technologies that increase the force limit - as well as other bonuses such as those offered by correct advisors. I believe the base force limit is a function of the size of your kingdom, to do with tax base and number of provinces. The only building that I think increases it is the Conscription Centre special building; which you most certainly will not have access to yet. I cannot download the manual while at work to double checked.
Basically, as I understand it, the smaller you are the smaller the limit is and if things like wrong culture and non-cores can affect your manpower drastically. Finished my first game as Ming/Manchu. Ended up 5th place in score overall, though towards the end I normally had 1st or 2nd in admin & military rank, and 4th in diplomatic rank. However, the western powers' years of score accumulation was too much. I did catch up to 31/31/31 sometime around 1810, though my ideas were overall quite behind. My rank was almost completely because of my high income and army size (I already had the highest force limit, and I actually went over it easily due to trade income).
As a sample number, in 1749 I had 130+ ducats from trade, 110+ of which were from one trade node that had 3 other trade nodes feeding into it.Towards the end, I had a bit of fun proving to the West that old adage, 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia.' Great Britain had colonized Taiwan, something I was not pleased with. So I went to wage war against GB and its ally Naples. I conquered Taiwan easily as it had no defensive army, but then I had to wage war against other GB colonies in the Pacific to gain the warscore to sue for peace. In the meantime, Naples and GB came down with their fleets that had 36+ heavy ships each, compared to my entire navy having only 20 or so.
So my defensive fleets were completely obliterated. Then both Naples and GB each landed an invasion force of 18 regiments. I had 4 armies remaining on the mainland having 25 regiments each. It was a hilarious massacre.Anyway, thinking of starting a new game as Aragon. My main goal is to unify the Iberian peninsula and controlling most of the Mediterranean trade routes. Though I suppose I should colonize the Americas if I want a hope of beating Spain's default score. Not sure I care to.