I have no Idea what they have done, maybe it's from dacke war disaster or some shit but this is pure madness lmao

Definitely recommend them, it's my first time playing this campaign and it's been really fun. If you've got the same issues as me where you prefer pretty borders over world conquest and like collecting modifiers, Hisn Kayfa is really rewarding.

R5: I started as a custom nation and currently am leading the hereditary HRE. I originally wanted to form Germany but then I realized I cannot form Germany as a custom nation and so far I have not had any option to tag switch to anything else.

I can chase the HRE tag by Im allied with Austria-Hungary with 100 trust but I am pretty sure they will not agree to be my subject through `Revoke the Privilegia`.

Today, after my terrible Sweden run, I started an Austria run, and this time luck was on my side:

• I got Hungary almost immediately as a junior partner
• I inherited Burgundy
• I managed to get Bohemia
• Poland chose the local noble, so I could force her into a personal union too
• After that I somehow became extremely powerful
• I crushed France, the religious league, the Ottoman Empire and I even managed to create a fat Georgia, to support me in case the Mamluks would decide to attack me(not a chance).
• And then, if it wasn't enough, I didn't have to integrate my vassals as in 100 years I have inherited them all, Poland and Hungary at the same time, when my old emperor died.
• I also have a Bulgarian, Albanian vassal, with the Latin Empire as well.
• Furthermore, I have managed to get Spain into a personal union with me, with her fat colonial empires.
• Now, I think it will be a bit boring, but I thought that I would go and form Germany and delete England as well as they have some provinces in the France region( I almost totally deleted France early game. This is one of my main goals in all games, as fat France is hard to defeat).

R5: Formed the Kingdom of God, can barely see my name

Stuck as Theodoro, have restarted a bunch of times but can't seem to get a solid start. I've tried the normal way of expanding through the Caucasus but I always have no money and can't expand fast enough to stop the Ottomans invading. I've considered no CB on Byzantium but I don't see how that makes anything better.

I've now even tried that strategy were you trick the Ottomans into siegeing Trebizond but it doesn't work. Please tell me how I can take Constantinople before the Ottomans.

I opened this old save from 2 years ago and it's the best start I've ever pulled out. Weird peace deal unfortunately, I took really random provinces to give back to Bulgaria.

But man, look at my Morale in fcking 1451, (3 different morale modifiers fired without birding pulsing events). You're supposed to have like 2.5 morale and be unable to cancel the creepling nobility privilege but I could revoke it via decision easily thanks to that. I totally stack wiped otto armies again and again, and they only have 10K mercenaries.

Plus I won the war without taking any loans and now have a good 700 ducates to scale.

I remember that back in the day I had instantly trucebroken, took another 100% peacedeal and then declared on ragusa who is guaranteed byt Ottos, white peace to reset the truce. Is it the best strategy in this case ? Would you just not truce break, only white peace and wait 5 years ? The thing is my other obvious target is Naples, allied with Ferrara and the Pope, almost 30K troops together. But fighing ottos again and again seems just easier, and the -3 stab is manageable imo

I’m going back to play vanilla-ish eu4 after not having touched it in years. What are some of your favorite vanilla mods.

I am playing Savoy and just forced Burgundy to peace. He was a secondary participant (so his opinion of me is still decent).

Anyway, I forced him to give up claims on me and Geneva. The malus decreased but did not go away.

Additionally, Burgundy has no claims on these provinces. So, why is there still a malus at all? I looked at the cultures, and Burgundian is French and Swiss is Germanic, so I don't think it is that.

So, how do I get rid of the malus?

R5: Poland did not

- PU Lithuania (who is now at war with England for Swedish succession

- Vassalise/ March Moldavia (they are independent now and allied to me). They didn't even ally them!

However, they did rival both Hungary and Bohemia, so there's basically no chance of them ever expanding really (Hungary didn't even rival them).

How much worse could it get?

As we know, ai loves taking a lot of provinces in a war, but instead of making thoes new borders look good, they do the "art" of Borders (and of course they let live a small nation as a opm for the rest of the game like Great horde etc.). i Really wonder tho, what is the most shitty border that ai has done. that's way i woud be pleased if you sent a tleast 1 Screenshot of a Goofy ai Border :)

First time playing the Teutonic Order.

Achievements

- Baltic Crusader

- Holy Horde

Thoughts

I love the thought they gave to there mission tree, would of been interesting if they had applied the same theory to each nation ie non historical vs the mostly historical mission tree we have now (i say this with a heavy grain of salt).

Pretty straightforward campaign once you break Poland/Lithuania. Starts to snowball once you unlock the Holy Horde reform (access to razing).

Ideas in order

- Admin
- Espionage
- Offensive
- Religious
- Quantity
- Diplomatic ( should of done prior to quantity, warscore cost for provinces did slow me down)
- Quality
- Horde

I've been working on a small vanilla+ mod as a hobby project of sorts. I know eu4 has been modded to hell but this a project to address some of my more obscure personal complaints. After a couple months of adding various bits and bobs its left me wondering what others would want to see in their ideal vanilla+ style mod?

As for me, I started out playing around with trade. I wanted to add a handful of new trade goods without going overboard. I settled on two new goods, Lumber and Stone. I felt like wood is really underrepresented in the game, Naval Supplies and tropical wood just weren't cutting it so I made a dedicated Lumber trade good. Same thing for stone, I wanted something distinct to represent the production of limestone, granite, marble, etc. The biggest trade good change was adding Rice as a Grain analog for south, southeast, and east asia. Its economically similar to Grain but has unique effects. I added a handful of rice provinces to Africa and the Middle East for balance.

Next up I did some "small" trade node changes, I wanted to keep the bones of the system the same but add a few nodes to slow trade down as well as better represent how trade moved historically. I added a coastal Kongo node and a Senegambian trade node. This is nice because it keeps the flow of trade the same but slows it down. It also allows for further transatlantic routes to try and model the Triangle and Brazilin trades routes. My biggest change was also last, and that was reworking western Europe's nodes. I added a Rhone trade node, Reworked Bordeaux into a bay of Biscay node that includes northern Spain. Paris gets a node and the Lowlands get split from the English Channel. Naples also gets a node, Valencia becomes a new wester med node. I also went and redid the German minors giving them new missions and creating a Rhineland formable with custom missions and ideas.

What I've spent the most time on is redoing how Natives play. I built an entire system of events and modifiers to flesh out how migration and tribal land work. Migrating gives bonuses based on the province you move to and adding tribal land similarly gives temporary buffs based on the province. A whole bunch of natives have gotten new ideas and cultural mission trees and I built a whole new custom mission tree for the Iroquois.

I have like a half dozen more things I want to add but really I was curious what y'all would want in your dream mods?

Playing a run where the main goal is to play tall. I've been expanding primarily through vassals as a side objective, but my primary focus is on maximising development. With that in mind, is it fine to keep estate priviledges (e.g. the mana ones) even though it'll tank my absolutism?

The number of restarts to get Stetin not to ally Poland, TO, or other large nations was incredibly frustrating. Finally, I found a better way thanks to a random YouTube video: instead of picking a rival on Nov. 30 and hoping they don't ally someone, you pick them on Dec. 11 and send a diplomat off to embargo someone. This refreshes the CB list, letting you declare for Show Strength without giving them any time to get a friend.

What made the start (nearly) perfect after so many frustrating restarts was the unexpected perfect synergy: no Stetin allies, the Nobility Diet mission was to obtain all of Neumark, and the TO firing off "The Fate of Neumark" on Feb. 26, 1445. The only thing holding me back is Poland making Austria a rival so I couldn't ally both from the get go. I'll just have to grab Saxony and a few others to make sure I end up with Danzig and Koenigsburg.

Anyway, on to messing this all up. I really wanted to try out Court Ideas. The problem there is the lack of synergy (there's that word again) with other idea groups for policies and with Brandenburg/Prussian NIs. I was thinking Court -> Innovative -> Mercenary, which would save a ton on +5 Mil advisors and Mil. Tech, but the other merc bonuses seem wasted, unless hired units also benefit from national ideas. The saved military mana could be used to spam the hiring of generals to boost professionalism, though. Court -> Innovative -> Offensive helps out a bunch with sieges and will maybe remind me to send Scornful Insults more often. Court -> Infrastructure -> Quality looks to give a passive +0.45% professionalism along with extra Absolutism when 1600 rolls around.

Thoughts on these options? Other fun Court combos that would work for Brandenburg? The main goal is to form Prussia, maybe Germany, super stretch goal is the "For the Emperor!" achievement.

I was doing and Ottoman run with the goal to achieve historical borders of the late 1500's.
I don't really know what else to do with the save tho

Guys, Ive completed tutorial (over 3k hours), but Ive never done world conquest!

Im on my way, Im playing France, control most of europe and all americas+most of north and west africa with some parts of east africa and australia fully. Its 1643, I have 140/160 absolutism and my country is far superior than anyone else in the world militarly and I have over 8k development (2nd timurids have 2042). Should be doable.

But

Since Ive never finished my world conquest actually - I want to ask for advise. Is there anything I need to remember about to not screw this up?

I wanted to spark a discussion and hear your opinion on the following subject.

As we know, while doing a WC, you’d love to stack optimal modifiers (CCR, PWSC, annex cost etc) as soon as possible. And to do so, you prioritise getting Religious (best pre-imperialism CB), Admin, Diplo and Influence ideas asap.

Unfortunately, idea group slots come around very rarely and the difference between having a crucial idea group already or having to wait 3-4 techs before unlocking it, may slow down your conquests a lot.

Due to that, we got to accept necessity of sacrificing or heavily postponing the quality of life idea groups (including army quality or economy related groups).

But waging war after war, you may find that manpower is bottlenecking you. Or that you have to waste too much of it to win against countries like Ottomans, Commonwealth, France or Spain.

Usually to prevent that, people either use mercenaries (especially in the early game) or fill up Quantity ideas. I personally find mercenaries more useful in the mid game, because you conquer way more than in the early game and your manpower may be drained way quicker.

Quantity at the same time helps your economy with -10% regiments’ cost (huge) and provides solid bonuses to both manpower and attrition reduction, but lacks on army quality that may make things less painful.

There comes my idea - aren’t Mercenary Ideas the perfect solution?

They solve ALL the issues with manpower by rotating different mercenary bands. The bands also get 30% more manpower themselves from the ideas.

They make military tech and advisor cheaper, so you have more mana to barrage forts.

Mercenary ideas have huge economic impact by making them 25% cheaper to recruit and 25% cheaper to maintain. And if you go this way, you can stack A LOOOT of other modifiers.

And while doing all of following, they do not lack on supporting your army quality, as they both get 5% discipline and 10% infantry combat ability (and let’s be honest, infantry is king in WC, where you rush forts what cavalry cannot do).

What I personally love about Mercenary Ideas, are their top-tier policies with WC-oriented Idea Groups.
Religious? 2% missionary strength and 10% morale of armies (this policy is HUGE)
Administrative? -20% mercenary maintenance and you can construct supply depots (even when below 20% army professionalism)
Diplomatic? 2 additional relationship slots (useful if you use marches/ vassals/ client states)
Influence? +50% vassal force limit contribution and you can create client states already (without having to wait for the 23 diplo tech)
If you take Court later on (for Admin and Rel policies or to be able to have some privileges without absolutism loss), it gives you 33% mercenary cost

Additional pro of mercenary usage is the accessibility - you can recruit them fast and everywhere. With these ideas, you get „can recruit mercenaries from anywhere” which makes it even more player-friendly. This way, you can easily and quickly get rid of any revolts without walking or sailing there and losing troops to attrition + you don’t lose army professionalism anymore as well.

Wouldn’t all these reasons make Mercenary Ideas very versatile group for different WC purposes at once? You solve quality, quantity, accessibility, money issues and even get somewhat ahead on mana (with cheaper advisor and tech). You don’t have to waste any further idea slot on any military related thing and benefit from many useful policies.

If you open Mercenary -> Religious, your armies will be stomping everyone, while not getting short on manpower. And I believe in most scenarios (outside of the HRE) you can easily find a way to make best use out of Holy War CB and blob fast.

What is your opinion on this strategy?

I've probably only used it once in my time playing, other than that I feel like it's more worth it to snag some land. Plus, you get PP for declaring and taking land from your rival

Apparently the entire world starts a violent protest in the capital when i do this, i mean 300k men... How is this even possible and can you avoid this?