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    Home Unlabelled EU4 Everyone likes thicc goths right? (Gothic Invasion)

    EU4 Everyone likes thicc goths right? (Gothic Invasion)

    October 24, 2019

    EU4 Everyone likes thicc goths right? (Gothic Invasion)

    Everyone likes thicc goths right? (Gothic Invasion)

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 12:46 AM PDT

    Fixed a bugg where russia missed a P

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:38 AM PDT

    Ummmmm...

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 12:34 AM PDT

    True Heir of Timur- 100% Stable

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 02:00 AM PDT

    Just finished my most successful game in EU4 as Great Britain!

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 04:57 AM PDT

    Ulm can't be stopped

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 10:57 PM PDT

    No Opium Wars coming up in this timeline!

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 06:49 PM PDT

    Sweet Home Qaraqorum

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 07:59 PM PDT

    China: What Concessions do you demand? France: Yes

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:49 AM PDT

    Longistan anyone?

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 10:50 PM PDT

    Got that Double BI, Iberian and Danish PUs, plus revoke... Die Ottoblob

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 07:40 AM PDT

    Well, folks. It's been nice knowing ya, but looks I am obliged to head to Victoria II.

    Posted: 22 Oct 2019 08:00 PM PDT

    Where should I expand (or more accurately which of my allies should I betray)

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 03:03 AM PDT

    Sponsored by Persian trade node

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 07:15 PM PDT

    nice.

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:41 AM PDT

    I don't think they're getting outta this one....

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 06:41 PM PDT

    uh I don't think that's where Texas goes....

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 08:55 PM PDT

    What is the best Eastern European Country to play as in the earliest possible start date?

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 11:31 PM PDT

    A summary and guide for a casual Ming WC

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 08:19 AM PDT

    Many of you might be thinking: Why even bother bragging a Ming World Conquest when it starts as the No.1 great power and thus offers no challenge at all? Well, I consider myself more of a casual player. I have done WC several times but usually don't enjoy it that much. Ming WC is however the most casual WC experience I have ever had. So, if your preferred playstyle is like me:

    1. Hate merc spam
    2. Hate loans and starts to panic with negative net income.
    3. Don't like truce break and prefer +3 stab all the time
    4. Prefer wasting points to be always ahead on time on tech rather than upgrading 10+ levels of diplo tech in one day.
    5. Like a casual chilling colonial game.

    I recommend you to give Ming a try, rather than its more powerful neighbours such as Oirats->Yuan or Jianzhou->Qing, which have been posted 10 times a day since 1.29 while I haven't seen a single Ming post. Probably people consider it too easy and are ashamed to post it. But I found it a quite satisfying experience and I don't have much shame, so there you go.

    To begin with, WC is separated into two phases: to prepare yourself before absolutism and continuous conquering after absolutism. The ultimate challenge of WC is the limit amount of time, which marks the difference between "I can beat anyone in the world" and WC. The time limit also always offers a challenge: You can always try to do WC earlier if you find it too easy, a pre-1700 WC is exponentially more difficult than a standard WC, a pre-1600 WC is just insane and probably only few people can do it without exploits. To be on time you need to be constantly at war, coring and annexing vassals, with high overextension. This gives a much higher test for your country in terms of monarch points, income, unrest and manpower (which can be converted to income if you merc spam) comparing to a hegemony.

    ​

    Let's talk about Ming's speciality for WC:

    1. Mandate reforms

    As Emperor of China it has 20% Core-creation Cost Reduction from Mandate reform and decrees, which makes it on par with Anatolian tags, just behind hordes and Italy.

    This means we need to pass mandate reform at least till the 4th one and makes the Crisis of the Ming Dynasty disaster almost inevitable. So, to pass the reforms and survive the disaster is one of the main goals in the pre-absolutism preparation phase. The disaster would start ticking starting from the Age of Reformation once you pass a reform. It's really difficult to stop it from happening at all, and in fact there is no need. It's not that hard to deal with as a human player.

    Let's see what will happen. You get 0 Mandate, which means your army quality is bad, you probably need superior numbers to even deal with rebellions, which will happen very frequently due to the +5 unrest on top of losing -2.5 unrest modifier with high mandate. You can't hire more mercs and you have -50% manpower to fight the rebellion. What's more, if the Shun and south separatist rebels siege 10 province, you will lose land to them, so you really have to deal with the rebel army, asap. You also need to get rid of the 5 corruption in order to finish the disaster, which means you have a huge money loss, on top of that you have -50% goods produced which means you lose a big part of your income, in short you start to lose money like anything. Eventually you have to take loans, which again increases your mandate loss.

    All of this sounds like a death spiral, and it indeed is for AI most of the time. However, paradox does kindly provide some saving options. During this disaster, every once a while you get events that a peasant rebellion is going to happen, you get 5 mandate to take it and you just need to kill it asap. If you are prepared by having your army on place before clicking the button of the event, hired some mercs before the mandate reform to compensate for manpower, you can safely get your mandate back to 50. Once it's back to 50 you are safe, provided you have a good economy to pay off your loans quickly.

    And once this disaster is over, it won't be triggered again. Usually it's around the 3rd reform, so you can safely pass the 4th and last reform without the disaster. Yes you still have the low manpower and money loss during low mandate phase, but if you have taken Humanist ideas and hired -unrest advisors, you should not have too many rebellions to deal with. You can pass all reforms before the age of absolutism, Court & Country will be the last internal threat you have to deal with.

    Btw, C&C is essential for Ming because it doesn't have the +10 max absolutism from legitimacy. I consider this an oversight, just like it missing the +1 tolerance from legitimacy as well.

    2. The meritocracy system

    It allows you to use level 5 advisors very early due to the advisor cost reduction, and to use level 3 advisors from the beginning of the game.

    Advisor cost reduction is addictive, which means the higher you stack, the more powerful it is. 100 Meritocracy gives -25%, trading in tea gives -10%, harmonizing Theravada gives -5%, full innovative gives -25%, Inno + Influence and Diplo policies give another two -10%, one of the level 4 government reforms gives -10%, one of the parliament issues gives -10% (not necessary to use it). So you can get -95% reduction easily, and this means you pay 1/20 of the normal price. The -25% and -50% cheap advisor from estates is calculated multiplicatively, so you still get 1/20 of the discounted price compared to a normal discounted one. -95% means 5 ducats for a level 5 advisor, even with -85% reduction it's 15 ducats, which is completely acceptable in the middle game. I sometimes choose -85% because some policies and parliament issues are more important, namely the diplo annex reduction ones.

    This is the biggest reason why I think Innovative ideas, although not optimal for WC most of the time (essential for multiplayers because of the military policies), is actually a good choice for Ming.

    3. The tributary system

    It not only provides mandate increase, but also give you monarch points and manpower, or money (less important). You should always ask for extra money or prestige whenever the liberty desire is manageable.

    The more important use of tributary system is AE management. First, tributaries won't be affected by AE. Second, even if you are declared by a coalition, you can just offer to release a tributary. This is the most painless way to deal with coalitions, especially since you can easily get the tributary back later.

    Cancelling tributaries gives 5 years truce, unless your trust towards them is zero. This means if you don't want to wait, you can let them be unloyal and refuse to give tribute. Usually for a new tributary it takes less than 5 years in a row to let the trust down to zero. It's kind of tricky since I don't know how to look at the trust you have towards other countries, so I usually don't bother. But I didn't see this being mentioned much so I just leave it here.

    Since 1.28 you can only peacefully establish a tributary when you have border with them. This makes Exploration ideas an even better choice in early game, since you can start a colony to get a border with Southeast Asia, African or Native American minors, establish the tributary, then cancel the colony.

    4. Confucian religion and the harmonization mechanic

    It essentially makes all religions to be considered as the true faith, which helps you to achieve rebel-free state.

    You only need 20 development lands with the corresponding religion group to start harmonization, which usually takes less than 30 years due to events. This means you can harmonize Islam and Hinduism before your conquest of India and the Middle east when you are in Southeast Asia, also harmonize Christian before the major conquest of Europe when you just block off Russia with a few taken Orthodox lands.

    I would recommend to wait till harmony above 75 to start a new harmonization, because harmony below 50 gives unrest. Again, Humanist ideas is good because it helps the harmony increase. It also ensures 100% religious unity, even though you are not going to convert any land, as well as +2 tolerance of heathens, so that you are not bothered much before the harmonization process finishes. I wish mandate or meritocracy could give +1 tolerance like legitimacy, so that the heathen tolerance can reach 0 instead of -1, but yeah…

    5. The most obvious and important reason for a casual WC:

    Ming starts as the No.1 Great Power, so you can (and you should) take it slowly.

    In fact, one could probably not expanding as Ming at all before 1600 and still get WC. Unlike other powers which have to expand to have a power base, which means costing lots of Monarch points early on before absolutism, Ming doesn't need to do that. This is another reason why I consider Innovative is a decent choice, you can just get ahead on tech and get full innovativeness very early. Be ahead on tech also means higher production and trade efficiency so more income, lower yearly corruption so less outcome. It helps with the economy situation, which can actually be a bottleneck for Asian countries who are not privileged to have a good trade node nor be able to make trade companies. As Ming you start with more land than your state limit, so mindless expanding would hurt your economy rather than improving it. I would say maximizing income is the goal of expansion before absolutism, once you establish a good economic base to cover the inevitable corruption loss later, you can start the massive conquest after absolutism, and you will have more than enough time to do it.

    ​

    Since we are here, let's talk more about the money issue:

    Income are mainly from tax, production, trade and gold. Tax and production are modified by autonomy therefore limited by state slots. Ming starts with its best provinces assigned to Nobles, or say Qinwang aka princes. This is annoying but somewhat historically accurate, the expense of princes is indeed a big problem for Ming. It is not necessary, but I recommend starting with the national tax decree, and revoke all Nobel lands on the day of 11.11.1445, then just accept rebel demand on the same day before they siege down any province. It will hurt your manpower, but I feel it's worth it. You can then assign some trade center land to burgers. I think parliamentarism is always the best choice so you will lose the Nobel estate anyways.

    Next is gold. Ming has a gold mine in the start, there is also events to get another. Again, it is not necessary, but I think developing the gold mine is a good choice since you anyways need to develop for Renaissance. The gold mine state (Hunan) also has a trade center, which means you can upgrade it to level 3 to get development cost reduction, and +33% local manpower for the entire state. You might want to do that and change decree to development cost reduction before developing the gold mine. Zhu Qizhen is a terrible emperor, so you probably won't get prosperity for more development reduction, but it's Ok. Get production to 10, then focus on manpower, it's worth it because of the modifier. I also recommend upgrading to level 3 trade center for Chengdu, Xi'an, Wuhan and use extra military points to develop in those states, it really improves the manpower situation.

    Another resource of gold is colonial nations. Exploration ideas are essential here, again. I would recommend to discover America to get Colonialism institution (may take a few save scums if you don't mind, but the chance is pretty high since the only competitors are the Iberian brothers usually), jump to get a colony in Mexico. You can use war to get the Mexico colonial nation, which is useful for gold. You get 400-500 gold per fleet, which is quite good. Don't bother with Peru, because again, you are not privileged enough to be at the downstream of the trade flow to get the gold for most of the game. California, Alaska and Australia also have a chance for gold, but not as much as Mexico, and they can wait. For trade purpose, I think it's better to directly go to Cape and block the Europeans ASAP after the 1st colony in Mexico, then Southeast Asia, then other colonial nations. You may want to charter company from East African countries to speed up the process, also for the Ivory Coast to establish tributaries.

    Last, it's trade. Trade will be your primary income source in middle to late game, especially since it's not modified by local autonomy. Let's start with some basics.

    Every single trade node can be a pseudo-end node, if you can take all lands in all its downstream nodes. The difference is how much trade value you get from upstream, and how difficult it is to block off downstream.

    Beijing can get trade values from all China-proper, as well as the north America – Japan/Girin route. It only has one downstream node Yumen, which can be easily block-off as Ming. So it's great as your trade capital early game. This is also the reason why AI Ming can be quite rich as well.

    To utilize it, you need to get as much trade from Guangzhou and Hangzhou as possible, since Malacca can steer trade from them. Once you control Malacca you can steer trade towards it instead. But in the beginning, you need to block off the downstream of Beijing. I actually recommend to embargo Mongolia on the 1st day, it's worth it. The entire early game strategy will be focused on the Beijing trade. Cancel tributary and take Jianzhou as a vassal, feed it all Manchuria land and divert trade. Wait till the 1st age objective, choose transfer vassal, take Mongolia from Oirat as a vassal, make it a march, feed it all Mongolia land and divert trade. Take Yarkand from Chagatai as a vassal, give it central Asia land and divert trade. With 3 vassals in the north, you prevent any trade values loss from Beijing, also prevent the possibility of Unguarded Nomad Frontier disaster. They can be handy in wars as well.

    Malacca will be the focus middle game. Malacca can have all Southeast Asia and half east Asia, it's excellent in terms of upstream trade values, but it's not that easy to block downstream. Every single European country who owns any tiny island in the Southeast Asia region will put a merchant and try to divert the trade away. You can only try your best to block them, but usually can't do it completely, just try your best and then spam light ships. Manually collecting at Malacca won't hurt your trade income in Beijing because there is no competitor in the Beijing node, so you still fully control it even with the -50% multiplicative modifier.

    To block-off the downstream, the most important part is to block-off the Cape. Use your money to colonize all coastal province in Cape asap, you can do 5 to 6 colonies at the same time with only 2 colonizers (1 from parliament). Conquer the East African coast (especially Madagascar) to prevent the Europeans chartering company. Zanzibar is the best collecting node for Asian countries middle to late game when you control India and middle east. If you are too late for the Zanzibar node, it's OK as well, as long as Cape is yours, they won't have much trade power in Malacca. Focus on southeast Asia and try to get Bengal as well since it's also downstream.

    If you managed to control the Asian trade, you won't be losing money at all except during the mandate reform phase. I forgot to mention the basics to build factories and workshop everywhere you can. I basically controlled the Malacca node before age of Absolutism, and after that the continuous conquest engine was fuelled without any problem.

    ​

    Now about military, just like other major countries, Ming doesn't need to take any military idea group early game at all. Defensive and Offensive are good choices later.

    Offensive helps with siege, with Innovative and full army professionalism, you get more than +50% siege ability and that reduces sieging time to half. The policy with Humanism is nice as well. It also provides discipline, you can get 120 with advisor, which is better than most AI in a SP game.

    Defensive helps with attrition, which is the biggest manpower loss. The -corruption policy with Admin and -war exhaustion policy with Humanist are both great. With Innovative, full meritocracy, I never need to reduce the war exhaustion at all. And of course the +moral and +army tradition improves with your army quality a lot.

    With no military ideas taken early game, you are likely to have too many military points. You can spam generals to have high army professionalism, and once that's full you can also develop, focusing on provinces in a state with level 3 inland trading center. The slacken standard button can help with manpower once necessary, it's basically 250 mil points for 2 years manpower. Accept cultures in your state, turn on the manpower edict everywhere once you have enough money. Once defensive is completed, you probably don't even need to slacken standard. If you get nasty events that reduce manpower, you can always build army to get to 0 manpower, click the button to lose nothing, then cancel the build to get back manpower.

    The most important thing of battles against AI, both land and navel, is combat width. Start with full combat width and then reinforce, you can win most land battles if you are not terribly behind on tech. Start with full combat width of Heavy ships, retreat before losing any ship, then reinforce a new fleet before the enemy fleet run away, you can win all naval battles.

    ​

    The idea group choices in my run are:

    Exploration, Humanist, Innovative, Influence, Administrative, Defensive, Diplomatic replacing Exploration, Offensive, Quantity. The last one is just for fun.

    ​

    This is a really long post. Thanks for your patience for reading it.

    TL;DR: If you are a casual but want to try WC, Ming in 1.29 is a good choice.

    submitted by /u/HuangZJ
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    Is an Aristocratic/Espionage start with Hungary doable?

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 03:18 AM PDT

    I wanna capitalize on their tradition with the +20% cav combat ability policy because roleplay/fun, is a start with these ideas on a normal/ironman game doable? I just plan to conquer the Balkans, destroy Ottomans and play a tall game.

    submitted by /u/Talpa_purpurea
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    One Province Major

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 08:21 AM PDT

    Was enjoying my run as Korea until...

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 04:25 PM PDT

    Sibling rivalry

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 11:19 AM PDT

    Basque(ing) in Glory

    Posted: 23 Oct 2019 02:54 AM PDT

    How do you form Wales?

    Posted: 24 Oct 2019 12:00 AM PDT

    What it says on the tin. Want to play as wales but they start out as part of england. And I've got no idea how to break them off.

    submitted by /u/Shepard131
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