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[Loud Whispers]

This is easily my favourite one. The accomplishment of succeeding, of reforming everything, of pushing past all the instability to finally turn the tables on the Western powers - the deadlock and smashing the lock, what satisfying freedom! It was the way of the future

[Icefire2314]

I love EU4, but hate the AI. Useless 99.99999% of the time, unless of course they're your enemy.

The other thing I wish they improved on with EU4 is the pretty much hardcoded nation focus. By that I mean, native americans do absolutely nothing for 200 years until europeans arrive then just die

and europeans (COUGH SPAIN) seem to beeline for the Americas no matter what

i literally had a game where we reduced spain to nothing but The Canarias (read: -1 economy) and they still beelined to america and now have colonies

it would be cool if the ai was more dynamic, like japan unites really early on so the AI takes exploration ideas and discovers america, or something idk

[stabbymcstabstab]

The AI is kinda dynamic, but unless you mod or export a game you aren't going to see it. I mean currently I got the India kingdoms and Korea colonizing the wear coast, and Spain is... Special to say the least.

[ein]

you can run into some pretty interesting scenarios if you switch lucky nations to random. you can't get achievements unless you have lucky nations on historical, which kinda sucks, but the lucky nation modifiers are insanely good and taking those away from the usual players can sometimes cause weird shit to start happening

[ein]

possibly, but larger and more powerful nations are already at an advantage

the idea is more just to get the modifiers away from the typical france, ottobots, muscovy, castile, england. small changes, in my experience, tend to trigger a sort of butterfly effect, which is why most of the ahistorical shenanigans tend to be caused by player intervention. bohemia or bayern getting lucky nation instead of austria or brandenburg seems like a minor change when they're all more or less roughly equivalent nations in terms of base power, but it can trigger a fairly massive shift in the political landscape of the hre

[Loud Whispers]

I love EU4, but hate the AI. Useless 99.99999% of the time, unless of course they're your enemy.
The other thing I wish they improved on with EU4 is the pretty much hardcoded nation focus. By that I mean, native americans do absolutely nothing for 200 years until europeans arrive then just die
and europeans (COUGH SPAIN) seem to beeline for the Americas no matter what
i literally had a game where we reduced spain to nothing but The Canarias (read: -1 economy) and they still beelined to america and now have colonies
it would be cool if the ai was more dynamic, like japan unites really early on so the AI takes exploration ideas and discovers america, or something idk

AI is dynamic. In one of my games as the Knights, I decisively broke Ottoman power and began conquering all of their fiefdoms and states. The weak Ottoman Empire allowed the Mamlukes to grow strong and become a great power and regional hegemon, during which they adopted exploration ideas and expanded through the Indian ocean to become a major international spice trader, sending Indonesian spice from their plantations up into the red sea through their Indian Sultanate allies. Once the Knights turned their attentions on the Mamlukes, attacked on two fronts by the Indonesians in SE Asia and the Knights in Egypt, the Mamlukes were effectively exiled to one fortress island in the Malayas, form which they founded an effective city state to colonize the Americas. By this point however most of the Americas was taken, but with great effort the Mamlukes sent their desert dwelling citizens to Alaska. No doubt extremely bitter at this turn of affairs, the Alaskan Mamlukes quickly grew rebellious against the Mamluke city-state, and with the aid of the Spanish plotted for independence, becoming the first independent colonial nation and the only Egyptian/Sunni colonial nation.

Spoiler: Some other weird things from the same game (click to show/hide)

The Emperor of Trebizond started the Enlightenment. I conquered them just to see if that would speed up rate of adoption, but didn't seem to do much. RIP Trebizond

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spain, Venice, the Papal State, Hungary-Austria, Cyprus and the Knights Hospitaller formed a super alliance, Mediterranean NATO

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Byzantine Empire was finally destroyed in the late 17th century with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, where the Med NATO alliance went up against the rival alliance of France and Russia

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also hilarious is that Scotland nearly succeeded in destroying England. Cultural rebels undid the mighty Scottish conquest, however Scotland did remain powerful long enough for England and Scotland to create English Brazil and Scottish Brazil, which was eventually to include French Brazil. My absolute favourite though was that the Hungary-Austrian Empire formed. Not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the Hungary-Austrian Empire.
Austria inherited much lands and integrated many vassals in the early game HRE, and was shaping up to be an effective Emperor with mastery over the Empire, getting its first reform done in no time. Inheriting the lowlands, Austria gained a border with France, which was to be its undoing. Though France did not severely defeat Austria, the loss in prestige was enough to ensure that Austria fell under a personal union with the Magyar Hapsburgs. The entirety of the Austrian lands falling under the overlordship of Hungary completely killed all Imperial Authority and ensured the HRE would never unite ever again.
It's a pity, Hungary was 20 years away from integrating Austria when its PU was broken by a Franco-Commonwealth alliance.

[Icefire2314]

I wish trade was more dynamic, too.

For example, if you had a large economic base with lots of trade power in America, the trade routes could potentially flip to flow AWAY from Europe, to represent a large amount of people buying products FROM Europe, rather than having large amounts of goods eternally flowing into Europe, even if Europe's economically fucked.

I don't think that's realistic. The populations in the colonies would just be abysmally low.

Thing is, population is represented using development. If you have a high development, then you've got a high population. As little sense as that makes, that's how it works.

Again, one of the reasons I like the idea of the upcoming M&T population system.

What is M&T? Meiou and Taxes? or something else?

I also had the idea that it would be cool to overhaul trade and make each province effectively its own trade node. very high development provinces (given multipliers by the modifiers on the province ie: estuary) would exert a great force over nearby provinces and they would trade at the large trade hub. this opens counter play for countries like ireland, for example who want to become a great trading power but are restricted because of England, Holland, etc and the North sea doesn't quite cut it lol. This doesn't really explain for overseas provinces, or how trade flows between nodes, but I think it would be way more fun than the static nodes and "england is ub0r 0verp0wered bc end trade node op"

I love EU4, but hate the AI. Useless 99.99999% of the time, unless of course they're your enemy.
The other thing I wish they improved on with EU4 is the pretty much hardcoded nation focus. By that I mean, native americans do absolutely nothing for 200 years until europeans arrive then just die
and europeans (COUGH SPAIN) seem to beeline for the Americas no matter what
i literally had a game where we reduced spain to nothing but The Canarias (read: -1 economy) and they still beelined to america and now have colonies
it would be cool if the ai was more dynamic, like japan unites really early on so the AI takes exploration ideas and discovers america, or something idk

AI is dynamic. In one of my games as the Knights, I decisively broke Ottoman power and began conquering all of their fiefdoms and states. The weak Ottoman Empire allowed the Mamlukes to grow strong and become a great power and regional hegemon, during which they adopted exploration ideas and expanded through the Indian ocean to become a major international spice trader, sending Indonesian spice from their plantations up into the red sea through their Indian Sultanate allies. Once the Knights turned their attentions on the Mamlukes, attacked on two fronts by the Indonesians in SE Asia and the Knights in Egypt, the Mamlukes were effectively exiled to one fortress island in the Malayas, form which they founded an effective city state to colonize the Americas. By this point however most of the Americas was taken, but with great effort the Mamlukes sent their desert dwelling citizens to Alaska. No doubt extremely bitter at this turn of affairs, the Alaskan Mamlukes quickly grew rebellious against the Mamluke city-state, and with the aid of the Spanish plotted for independence, becoming the first independent colonial nation and the only Egyptian/Sunni colonial nation.

Spoiler: Some other weird things from the same game (click to show/hide)

The Emperor of Trebizond started the Enlightenment. I conquered them just to see if that would speed up rate of adoption, but didn't seem to do much. RIP Trebizond

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spain, Venice, the Papal State, Hungary-Austria, Cyprus and the Knights Hospitaller formed a super alliance, Mediterranean NATO

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Byzantine Empire was finally destroyed in the late 17th century with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, where the Med NATO alliance went up against the rival alliance of France and Russia

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also hilarious is that Scotland nearly succeeded in destroying England. Cultural rebels undid the mighty Scottish conquest, however Scotland did remain powerful long enough for England and Scotland to create English Brazil and Scottish Brazil, which was eventually to include French Brazil. My absolute favourite though was that the Hungary-Austrian Empire formed. Not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the Hungary-Austrian Empire.
Austria inherited much lands and integrated many vassals in the early game HRE, and was shaping up to be an effective Emperor with mastery over the Empire, getting its first reform done in no time. Inheriting the lowlands, Austria gained a border with France, which was to be its undoing. Though France did not severely defeat Austria, the loss in prestige was enough to ensure that Austria fell under a personal union with the Magyar Hapsburgs. The entirety of the Austrian lands falling under the overlordship of Hungary completely killed all Imperial Authority and ensured the HRE would never unite ever again.
It's a pity, Hungary was 20 years away from integrating Austria when its PU was broken by a Franco-Commonwealth alliance.

AI can be dynamic, just in my experience it tends to do the same thing every game. it's dynamic in small ways, like France might get beaten by England or something, or the Irish minors/Scotland may survive for 15 years instead of 10, but very rarely do I see anything like the Africans colonizing America or Ottomans attacking Naples while Aragon is at war. When I play, it just seems to consistently be the same game, the only difference that I feel is in how I play.

[MrRoboto75]

Playing Ironman Brandinburg.  Got poland as an ally, and the AI decided it had a brain and picked to have the PU over lithuania.  Don't think anyone will pick a fight with me for a while, except maybe those free cities backed by the emperor.

Poland promised me land in a war with the knight orders, but took all the taken land for himself.  What an asshole.

[ein]

yeah, poland seems like a natural ally for brandenburg because mutual friendly, but you should probably never ally poland. if you plan to form prussia, you're better off attacking teutonic order on your own before they do, maybe pulling in some hre allies that can't claim any of their land

if taking teutonic lands doesn't turn poland hostile, they're a safe ally once you have what you need to form prussia, assuming they actually get the union over lithuania

in my experience, allying lithuania out of the gate is generally safer, since they're less likely to compete for lands you need to form prussia and if poland doesn't take the union, lithuania tends to remain relatively strong while poland rapidly falls to shit

[Majestic7]

So do states have some hidden benefit I'm not getting? I'm playing Morocco and I've colonized down the African coast. I could turn my colonies into states since they are on the same continent, but disconnected from the Morocco proper. Should I do so? Only benefit I see is increased manpower, money comes from trade and not taxes anyway.

[forsaken1111]

Briefly:

Territories have a 75% local autonomy minimum. Once you core the territories you can turn them into states, which have a 50% local autonomy minimum. You can finish coring the state after that, bringing the LA minimum to zero.

So basically you'll only ever get, at most, 25% of the income from a territory that you could theoretically get from a cored state.

[Culise]

However, it's important to note that autonomy only affects tax income and production efficiency in this specific manner.  In your specific case as you outline, Majestic7, the relevant autonomy effects are its reduction to that province's trade power (-0.5% per point of autonomy), and possibly manpower and sailors (-1%) as you already state.  While not entirely insignificant, a local reduction of trade power by 37.5% of the province value for each province may not be as important an issue to you, especially if you can maintain control of the relevant trade nodes without converting them to states.  Trade power is not applied to trade value, after all; it only determines how much of the total value you receive. 

A territory is also restricted to only obtaining "territorial cores" on provinces in that territory; while cheaper, these are also lost if you ever lose the province to an enemy (say, Spain or France comes knocking).  You also cannot assign territories to estates, though this may not be a flaw per se depending on how you approach estates.  States will also disrupt trade companies; existing trade companies are removed from states, and new ones are not formed. 

[ein]

also, don't underestimate the income you get from taxes and production. the big money may be in trade, but especially later in the game once you start building workshops and manufactories, you can make quite a lot of production income

elaborating a bit more on estates, too, if you play with the cossacks: your older land is likely going to have a true autonomy below the 25% floor of a province controlled by the estates. by removing that land from an estate, the autonomy will instantly decrease and you'll make more money out of it. then you can give your newly conquered land, which should have 40~50% autonomy to an estate, reducing the effective autonomy for one of the province's sources of income to 0%

personally, the only time i wouldn't make states, if i have the slots for them, is if i'm making trade companies and/or colonial nations

[Majestic7]

I can't make trade companies in Africa as Morocco since it is on the same continent (I suppose) as my homeland/capital. My long-term plan is to snatch Zanzibar and get that sweet spice trade from Indonesia. Hmm, I hadn't thought about the estates angle, it is a good one. I'll look into making these holdings states, then moving all the estates land into former colonial holdings on the coast.

[MrRoboto75]

Poland already took the neighboring teutonic province.  There still another one in fabricating range, and I think poland has been focusing south for the most part.  I don't even know if I want to form prussia (though they apparently get good military), in fact I really don't have an overarching goal for the playthrough.

I took part of mecklinburg (Guy was a OPM with no army and no allies, sent a diplomatic insult), and two provinces eastern of Pomerania.  Means I have a coastline now and get to deal with SAILORS, what a mechanic.  Austria naturally has a -60 opinion modifier with me (why does he care who own what within the empire, its going to be a vomit of minors and bordergore anyway), but his overall opinion is still positive, and the emperor has the diplomat personality.  Stupid Pom separatists almost got me, defeated my army, had to take a loan and some mercs to put them down.  Getting the coastline and some trade ships has been good for income though.

I'd say Lübeck is my next target, though not right now.  His capital is a coastal center of trade, so it has to be mine.  He also owns the other half of Mecklinburg.  I just got tech 5, and thus the first idea group, but I don't know what to pick yet.

A comet happened.  I yelled at them about the economy, those fools.