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[Catastrophic lolcats]

I vaguely remember reading something like that in patch notes or the wiki ages ago but I never trust my memory and tended to try to stick on the "safe side" for the few times I was a vassal state. Always remaining under 190 relation. Not sure if the lack of AI diplo-annexing me is a good thing or would just make that run tedious.

[Dutchling]

I played as vassals in hands off games and the offer is just like an alliance / trade league / etc one. You can just ignore  / decline them, but if you accept you (obviously) get a game over screen.

[Twiggie]

Yeah I'll probably be running another MP game in a couple months...

[Johnfalcon99977]

Maybe an event then? I'm pretty sure events can give CBs, right?

Same point. If they did, it would have been conquest.

Phooey.

By the way, I've never had a case of "damn cheating AI!". More then likely you just didn't notice they had a core on you before it was removed after the 50 year limit.

Nope. I know for a fact they didn't have a core on me anywhere.

[Karlito]

Well, I don't seem to be able to hold my interest in a single nation for longer than 100 years, so I ended up starting a new game as Austria in MEIOU. There was a weird 100 Years War event chain that resulted in Burgundy getting inherited by France even though they were in a personal union with me and an HRE member to boot. 

Shortly after that I was completing a vassalization mission (in addition to the target, I made vassals out of whatever allies jumped in defend it as infamy allows), and somehow that fulfilled the requirements to form the nation of Germany. Mind you, this is 1380, and I haven't expanded my own territory any more than reconquering the cores that didn't start under my own control. Anyway, now Austria is Germany who can use reconquest on basically every member state.

I think my game might have gotten corrupted somewhere along the line.

[Twiggie]

This is what I really hate about EU3. I just PU a guy and before I get a chance to ally, someone pounces on my PU. I'm fighting another war, so I can't spare men right away. Eventually though, I manage to send me to siege the two (of three) provinces of my PU'd ally, and all of the enemy's provinces. The enemy no longer has any army.

And then my PU gives in, offering both provinces in exchange for peace, all because the AI is too dumb to call its senior partner into existing wars.

[Rez]

I've found that personal unions and vassalizations are lousy ways to annex additional territory.  Personal unions are pretty frustrating, since you need their leader(dynasty?) to die before yours does.  Annexing vassals sucks since you take a stab hit for them.  I guess the way to do it is to allow them to capture land while you're warring, thus using them to eventually annex a larger portion of territory by having them act as an infamy buffer.  Unless you take the infamy hit for giving land to your minor war partners?

From the perspective of someone who's building a single nation empire, as opposed to a sea of vassals, it's just a whole lot of trouble to mess about with vassalization when I can just roll over minors for 2-6 infamy depending on the casus belli. 

Embassies and advisors make bb a lot cheaper than stab at my tech and improvement levels.  Byzantine empire that's conquered all of the Arabian Peninsula.  Whoops.  These provinces aren't worth the trouble, even now that they're cored.  It makes it easy to go after the Orient and African colonies count toward taxation and production now, though.  I had to do it though.  Stupid mamluks have luck and just roll over everyone.  They owned all of the Mid-East and over to Tunisia in N. Africa before I got to them and were pushing toward India.


If you're cool with vassals, what's the best way to go about that?  I'm probably going to start trying to smash France into itty pieces and I'll want lots of buffer states to soak up abuse and prevent anyone from being friends with France again.

[dogstile]

Building a nation supported by vassals is hilarious fun. As Denmark I had to stay in war constantly to stop sweden from sending insults and breaking the PU apart, so I just started beating on german minors. By the time Sweden was ready to be diplo-annexed, I had a good 10 or so vassals. Useless in an actual fight, great for capturing territory while you stomp all over the armies.

[Rex_Nex]

The thing about PUs is that you can annex pretty much anyone with a smaller army then you in a single war, it is just delayed. Bohemia giving you trouble? Instead of spending 50 years chipping away at them for full infamy every time, just win in a PU war and have them be your slave until they are integrated, meanwhile you can spend the rest of those 48 years annexing elsewhere.

[Andrew425]

So I just played a fairly fun game as England.

Formed Great Britain fairly early (1460s) Then I just sat around for 100 years building up my infrastructure. Converted to protestant so it delayed my ability to colonize as soon as I had hoped. After that I started colonizing the northwest of America and generally staying neutral towards the rest of the world. Around 70 years in Castille builds a bunch of colonies right next to my mature ones and immediately attacks me. My previously good Carracks get destroyed but I manage to escape with a white peace. Fast foward 20 years and I was ready to fight. I end up blockading all his ports and taking all his North American colonies 3 years before they become cores.

So I had 226 big ships by the end of the game. In my seaports I had an event that went off that allowed me to build all my ships in 1 day.

I fight France at the end, who has conquered a good chunk of the holy Roman Empire. Blockade all his ports and just wait. Slowly his war exhaustion crept up. Then his colonies all started to rebel. Then Switzerland decides it's a good time to take a chunk of France. I'm funding revolts keeping him occupied.

This goes on for the last 24 years of the game.


Though I did have a cool thing happen. At the beginning of the war France had a lot of troops in North America. We fight a battle in Quebec cored territory. My commanders last name was Wolfe.

I find this game has a lot to do with waiting until you have the majority of troops then annihilating the other guy. How do you guys manage to fight land battles against a far larger opponent?

[Tarran]

Get one or more of the following: good terrain advantages (make them attack mountains/hills), better generals than your enemies, better national ideas than your enemies, better unit types than your enemies, and hope for good rolls.

[Rex_Nex]

AI stupidity. You cant do it fair, and terrain advantages are overrated, so its not like you're going to be defending very well from a guy with 5x your army. Evidently using attrition via scorch land works, but I never use that either. Good generals are very important, mostly for the maneuver stat, and then the shock.

If I'm fighting an uphill battle, the first thing I do is gather into one or two megastacks. Not so much that its like 15% attrition and it burns through WE like crazy, but still big-ass stacks. Wait for his big armies to split up (they will), kill one, kill the other, etc. Over and over. I win my wars by killing half a hundred regiments without losing one, and then allowing his WE to max out so high that he can't make troops at any decent speed. Just steamroll his provinces then.

Also, I usually don't siege while my opponent has troops. Assaulting is so amazingly overpowered in the early game and the AI rarely ever take advantage of you dropping all your morale into their forts.

Stuff like this will let you do silly stuff like punch Bohemia in the face as Brandenburg. If you have good troops, you can do this.

Also, before I forget, military access. Very important to remember you can do this. Going to lose a battle and don't want to lose all your troops? Simply pause the game and get military access from a country owning a neighboring province to the battle and retreat there. AI won't try to get access. This doesn't work with the emperor in the HRE, of course.

[Karlito]

How do you guys manage to fight land battles against a far larger opponent?

High discipline, morale, and good generals would help, as you'd expect. This means investing in the quality slider and a few national ideas. Also, it's probably a good idea to invest heavily in Land technology from the very beginning of the game. Get an army reformer and slide the land slider all the way to the right and you can build up a sizable land tech lead.

But if you haven't done any of that, then the real trick to fighting superior forces is to let attrition do the work for you. Make good use of the "scorch the land" button and lure the other guy's stacks onto the scorched provinces and watch their numbers plummet.

_{Dang ninjas. You should all be asleep.}

[h3lblad3]

Out of curiousity, what would you guys do if you wanted to convert to V2 but the world was a technological backwater?

Spoiler: History (click to show/hide)

Playing EU3 with some slight personal modding, as Castile, I managed to unite Spain. I ate Portugal, Aragon, and Granada (with a few Moroccan lands, too). Unfortunately, as I dealt with my ambitions in the new world (NOMNOM AZTECS), France declared war on me and destroyed me. Stupid me, not leaving enough troops behind to defend.  The end result, I was forced to release Portugal, Aragon, Granada, my Moroccan lands, and, of all things, Castile. This of course left me as Spain in Aztec lands.

So I tag-switched to Mexico. It only seemed the right thing to do.

As Mexico, I finished eating the natives in Central America and the Incans and formed a vast empire,later turned republic, from Inca to the British Columbia, sharing the new world with mostly Castile. My issues in the new world mostly revolved around France, who later gave up on me, and a new Spain mostly united by Castile.  In Spain's last war with Mexico before the game's end, I bogged them down for years and years until they lost land to the USCA, USA, Quebec, Paraguay, and La Plata. The effects of the constant war have turned Spain into a technological backwater (by 1836, they'd probably have tech about the level of 1760s-1780s) just like England (and France, with 1780s-1800s by 1836) who has been bullied for quite a long time and whose only colonial possessions are 2 provinces in India and a small chunk in South America.

I want to convert to V2, but I can't figure out how. The only country that I feel qualify for techs is the Revolutionary Republic of Bavaria (has the tech level it should have by 1836) and they leave everyone else quite far behind in the tech race. Instead of westernizing, should I just make every country uncivilized and, instead of westernizing, have it as "Bavarianizing"?

My Mexico has really destroyed the tech progress of the world by bogging Europeans down in attrition wars.

[Lightning4]

Bad tech is pretty common right now, unfortunately. Most major powers mint money like it's going out of style and rack up enormous inflation, which drags them far behind.
I think the next patch is supposed to somewhat address this, since a significant factor to their rampant minting is how they balance their military budget, or rather, how they fail to.


Bavarianizing though, that's pretty funny. Sounds like a fun scenario.