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[Andrew425]

A Spanish Portuguese alliance seems downright unbeatable in this game due to the way the trade is made.

As a Portugal player Seville is worth over 65 ducats halfway through the game. If the AI Spain built a few buildings in the Caribbean and tried to get some actual money out of it I could see it easily having reached 80 ducats by now.

England and France just can't compete with the massive amount of money that the two trading empires can establish before the hundred years war is even up.

[Tarran]

Um, does anyone know if Religious Turmoil modifier ever ends if you decide to be tolerant? From what I've read in the events, it seems as though the event will never expire!

[Wiles]

England and France just can't compete with the massive amount of money that the two trading empires can establish before the hundred years war is even up.

The game can play out differently. In my game Spain never formed because France (who are #1 score wise) holds land in the Iberian peninsula. Great Britain for their part has by far the largest navy of any nation.

[Chaoswizkid]

Sooo, that thing that I was upset with Ming over happened. They sat in a war with Korea for a long time, and as soon as Korea started taking back provinces Zhou declared war and Ming peaced with them and took back some land. That was nice, but what wasn't nice is that I ran through all of my money, all of my manpower, had tons of rebels freaking out due to war exhaustion being ridiculously high because you can't get out of a coalition war (at least change that so you can get out if your WE is high enough? Please Paradox?), so I decided to just abandon that game and start a new one as one of the vassals and see how that works.

For one, I was wrong. They don't start out at higher tech levels, they start out at the same tech level but some of them have better leaders and they can tech up better like that. So, instead of being 1562 Japan with two vassals left, I was able to use Uesugi to conquest Japan completely by 1472. The problem with this game is that Ming has absorbed Korea and doesn't like me because I took everything in Japan by force. I do like how Aggressive Expansion or w/e is different from EU3's Infamy, though, in that it has an area of effect and people care differently about it. Like, by the end I had -400 relations with my Japanese neighbors due to AE, but Ming and Korea are closer to -100. That's probably just due to the annexation of the Western vassals of Japan and Japan itself, and the nearness of Ming for the end of that since they owned Korea.

I'm pretty sure the best bet is to still use Japan, but diplo-annex the biggest vassals and use events or fabricated claims to get all the small ones. Still take it slow, but that way you won't build up ridiculous levels of AE. That's probably obvious, but I was just checking out the different ways stuff works. Probably going to do another playthrough now that I know how the game works a bit better and see how fast I can unite Japan. Also because Ming is super gigantic and doesn't like me, and it took a bajillion admin points to core everything and keep myself stable long enough not to collapse completely so I'm not Colonial yet and I think I was by now as the Japan playthrough.

After this I'll probably try going back to my EU3 roots and play colonial Teutonic Order.

[h3lblad3]

So, I ran across some Chinese revolter states, but they don't have the Chinese idea group.

I feel like that's kind of odd. Shouldn't they have it by definition?

[RedKing]

I really, really think they didn't playtest this before release at all...

I'm kinda with you on that one.

PROS:
--Love the admin/diplo/military point thing. Makes OPMs and smaller nations more competitive technologically and in terms of modifiers. Also eliminates the arbitrary tech penalty for massive empires.
--Like the new way National Ideas work. Gives you much more flexibility towards building a "style" of play without letting you cherry-pick just the best ideas.

CONS:
--Trade. WTF? I know it's supposed to make taking and holding key CoTs more important but I'm still mystified at how the mechanics work.
--Diplomacy. Let's face it, it's just fucking broken. Let me get this straight -- I am the Emperor, the chosen of God on Earth...but I can't sign a strategically important treaty because my population mildly dislikes that country?? WTF Paradox? And yeah, coalitions feel completely useless.
--Religion. Feels considerably more vanilla than EU3 or CK2, especially as regards non-Christians.
--CK2 Converter. Was bummed that exporting my heresy-laden CK2 game converted all those lovely Nestorians and Bogomils back to plain old Orthodox. It also converted the Mongol hordes into Sultanates rather than...y'know...Mongol hordes. And despite my Genoa being the jewel of Europe, decades ahead of its time and far outstripping the hinterlands of Europe....everybody gets a flat level 3 tech in everything and a lvl 2 fort. Lazy. I do hope there's a community-designed exporter (or mod to the exporter mod) that fixes all that.

Also, the Byzantine Empire force-converted the Pope to Orthodox a couple of decades into the EU4 game, and nothing changed. IIRC, that triggered a major event chain in EU3. Only thing that's happened in EU4 is that the Pope is now grouchy about being surrounded by all those damn Catholics. 


I dunno, I guess I'll go back and use a CK2-EU3 converter instead and play from there until they get a few patches out to fix the broken stuff. I'm trying not to be too harsh, because I hated EU3 when it initially came out and came to love it after the first few expansion packs. Just disappointed that some aspects of the game feel like they were built from vanilla EU3 rather than fully expanded EU3.

[Chaoswizkid]

Also, the Byzantine Empire force-converted the Pope to Orthodox a couple of decades into the EU4 game, and nothing changed. IIRC, that triggered a major event chain in EU3. Only thing that's happened in EU4 is that the Pope is now grouchy about being surrounded by all those damn Catholics. 

Ugh, that reminds me of my Teutonic Order game on EU3 I had. Everyone in Europe who wasn't me (and I owned a very large chunk) or Middle/Southern Italy was Protestant (or whatever the non-Catholic religion is). One of those Protestant countries goes and takes over the Papal States. Planning on bringing the wrath of God to the world in the form of war and Catholicism, this was a slight I could not ignore. DoW'd them, annexed their face (because at that point I was so strong I didn't even care what my infamy was), and then I got an event. I was Catholic, and I just took back Rome, so I should be a good Catholic and give that back. If I don't, Catholics will be upset with me, but that didn't matter since I was basically the only one left. Even though it went against my whole "Conquer the World!" thing I had going on, I decided that it was thematically appropriate, so I agreed to the event to reform the Papal States. Apparently, the country that took over Rome converted it before I took over their country. Rome was a Protestant province. The only province(s) that the Papal States had was Protestant, so their state religion was Protestant. The Pope was a Protestant, and I, with my seat of power in previously Pagan-infested forests and fields, was the last bastion of the True Faith of God.

It made me very sad.

Also, the whole religious fervor thing for that playthrough was 100% for flavor. Just figured I'd throw that out there.

[Pnx]

--Trade. WTF? I know it's supposed to make taking and holding key CoTs more important but I'm still mystified at how the mechanics work.

The trade works off of a system of gathering and steering trade, basically you gather trade using either your merchants, which can be set to either gather or steer, and/or your capital, which is always collecting trade from the trade node it's connected to. Other trade nodes you have provinces in, but no merchants will just automatically steer towards your capital I think.

Basically the more provinces you own in a trade node, the better your trade power, control over a node is divided amongst the various nations with merchants/provinces there according to how much power they have. You also get a chunk of power for having a merchant there, and also for sending light ships on a protect trade mission, which makes naval based nations potentially very good at trade.

Trade also becomes somewhat more valuable when it moves from one node to another.

CoT's still exist, but they're just provinces that give a special extra bonus to your trade power, certain other provinces like the ends of river estuaries also give bonuses.

[Rakonas]

Don't forget that light ships ARE instrumental in controlling trade, giving at least 2 trade power per ship protecting trade in a zone.
Merchants don't really give much trade power, unless you're destitute never use a merchant to collect trade in your capital CoT. You already collect there by default! It seems you actually need to have a merchant transferring trade power to make that work, so place your merchants wisely.
  For example, as the Ottomans I have the majority of trade in Constantinople and Alexandria, which are both 60+ trade power. I place my merchant to transfer trade from Alexandria to Constantinople, and about 7 ducats leave Alexandria each months, arriving in Constantinople as about ~9 ducats! I place my other merchant in the smaller CoT of Ragusa to collect trade. So almost all of the trade from Alexandria heads to Constantinople, I collect there by default (capital) getting a large sum of money, and then anything I don't collect goes to Ragusa where I also collect. I send my fleet of trade ships to Ragusa because it has less total trade power, making the ships more valuable in terms of percentages. I thereby prevent the Europeans from getting much of any benefit out of asia overland while reaping a profit to the tune of ~25 trade ducats monthly, or 25% of my income.
  Trade is really one of the most improved aspects of EU4 by far.

[cerapa]

--Trade. WTF? I know it's supposed to make taking and holding key CoTs more important but I'm still mystified at how the mechanics work.

Seriously? COT's give about as much trade power as 2 ships.

The trade system is far better than any other I have seen, especially the way it links up with navies. Right now Portugal has sent a huge fleet of light ships to my home node, is embargoing me, and stealing 1/4 of my trade profits. So my only option is to build up a greater war fleet and declare war simply to crush the Portugese navy and regain my monopoly on the Panama trade region.

You don't see that shit happening in Civilizations.

[Tarran]

Okay, something really weird happened while I wasn't paying attention.

Sometime after Greece was conquered by the Ottomans and converted utterly, Epirus, a greek Sunni nation composed of the most of modern Greece of was released. While the Ottomans, having previously converted everyone to Sunni, is now Orthodox. I'm not even kidding.

[Chaoswizkid]

Okay, something really weird happened while I wasn't paying attention.

Sometime after Greece was conquered by the Ottomans and converted utterly, Epirus, a greek Sunni nation composed of the most of modern Greece of was released. While the Ottomans, having previously converted everyone to Sunni, is now Orthodox. I'm not even kidding.

Sounds like they lost a war, and two of the stipulations were that the Ottomans release Epirus and that the Ottomans force-convert to Orthodox. Epirus, having only Sunni provinces and not a part of the force-conversion of the Ottomans, had its state religion set to Sunni.

That is pretty weird, though. Any idea who beat them in a war?

[Rakonas]

I'm pretty sure there's no way that you can demand the force conversion of a country from sunni to orthodox, only within religion groups.

[Dutchling]

Orthodox Zealot rebels will change the religion if the country collapses, even if it collapses due to a pretender: you only need one orthodox zealot in that case. Or maybe one occupied province not sure.

[Chaoswizkid]

Oooohh, then what probably happened is that there were a bunch of rebels, some Orthodox Zealots, and Ottomans either agreed to their demands or just wasn't able to handle them or the country collapsed like Dutchling said. Before the zealots won, there were some Patriotic/Nationalist rebels that won and got themselves an Epirus. Still Sunni provinces so Sunni state religion, but yeah, I think that's what happened now.