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[Sheb]

I just got this game and it's been fun. Now, I have a few questions and need for some tips.

1) What determine which factions lead a siege when many allies are fighting? I often found myself sieging a province only to have an ally come in (often with a smaller force) and then claim control of the province. This is coumpounded by the fact that I have a crapton of allies (see 2).

2) Partly as a result of 1), I've found myself vassaling a lot of other powers rather than claiming provinces, since the provinces that would be useful are usually claimed by my allies and I don't fancy to fragmented a realm. My vassals' list is getting huge: Wales, Leinster, Munster, Hainaut, Fez, Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli and Aquilea. Is there any problem with a "Let's vassal the whole of Europe" strategy? Sure, it brings less cash, but then I don't have to deal with rebels.

3) Speaking of which, any hint on diplo-annex? I need to unify Ireland for a mission, but there seems to be a kind of 10-year waiting period between diplo-annex. Any way to shorten this? Also, diplo-annex push my sliders toward decentralisation, which seems sub-optimal.

4) Speaking of which, any tips with sliders? I'm just not sure what to do, I've been pushing toward centralisation and open-mindedness, but I'm not sure if it's good.

5) Also, due to some earlier mistakes, France got Lothian and the Highlands. Now, I'd very much like to get Lothian, but I'm not sure how to. France is quite the land juggernaut, and invading Lothian, the Highlands and the Baleares (where the Royal Navy prevent reinforcements from coming in) and sinking their navy is not enough to get the warscore high enough, and even with my allies (Brittany, Portugal and Denmark) and vassals getting in, it's not enough to fight their stacks on the French mainland. Worse, my allies keep sending troops in and getting beaten, which lower our warscores (otherwise, I'd just blockade them until their war exhaustion get problematic or something).

Any tips for that?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

It's been a while since I've really played EU3 but it should all still be the same.

1) Allies will take control of the siege if you've change your army composition. Combining two armies while sieging for example will requalish control.

2) Vassals are awesome. If you really want to power game then vassals are the way to go. Remember that a big realm will take a technology and stability hit while a country supported by vassals will not have these problems. They also fight for you and can help secure fronts you may have forgotten. The vassal taxes will likely be more than holding a non-cored province.

3) If you can't diploannex you can always just break the vassalhood/alliance and then proceed to grind them into the dust. If you do this quickly they'll likely not have had the time to find any strong allies. You can also try to inherit them with personal unions since vassals generally have low legitimacy.

4) Centralisation/Decentralisation. Centralisation is in almost every case better. Decentralisation can be used if your country is collapsing since it only yields positives events.
Free Subjects/Serfdom. Free Subjects is again almost always better due to the tech gain. It will likely have to be maxed to cancel out your Narrowminded malus in the early game.
Narrowminded/innovative is a bit more complex, personally I tend to stay narrowminded at the start of the game or if I plan to play the papal controller, innovative is much better in the later game when the papacy is less powerful or if you plan to reform.
Quality/Quantity depends on how you have your army set-up. If you're a zerking land mass that throws infantry at sieges then quantity is a decent choice. Quality is better for every other situation.
Offence/Defence works much in the same way. Defence is great for throwing infantry at sieges or large land masses that can scorch the earth and let attrition slay your enemies. Offence is good at dropping enemy armies. Pick whichever suits your army.
Free trade/Mercantile, pick free trade if you want to trade outside your country at all. Mercantile is best if you're not investing in trade tech and just want to suck some gold out of your own CoTs.
Aristocracy/Plutocracy. Plutocracy almost always wins but aristocracy can be decent if you want to enmass cavalry. Usually better for non-Europeans since they don't suffer the strict non-conbined arms penalty.
Land/Navy. A hard choice. Pick whatever your forces excel in. You can leave it at midway if you want a balanced army.

5) I'm assuming you're playing as England here.
Just sink every single transport ship you can find. Hopefully they'll be dumb enough to load a doom stack and you can sink it to the bottom of the sea. If you have complete naval dominance and a naval blockade isn't going fast enough use your transports. Transports move a lot faster than armies so you should be able to "raid" coastal provinces with a large infantry stack and get the hell out of there before the French catch you. Combine this with funding rebels/alliances and hopefully you'll be able to divide the french army into bite sized chunks to be raided from the coasts.

You also must understand that some alliances are just bad news. Personally I would consider dropping the alliance with Brittany since they'll unlikely do anything else but get pwnt in wars and drag you into wars. If you want France to not expand into Brittany just guarantee them. I tend to avoid allying anything that is bordering France, it just means I'm dragged into a war every few years.

[Dutchling]

To add to what lolcat said:

1) Normally it is the first one. Also, vassals and junior PU partners will give yo control, unless they have a core there themselves.

3) If you do what lolcat said you will fail the mission IIRC.

4) Offense triggers negative events and defense does not. Other than that, I don't think it really matters which side you pick.

5) If you already destroyed the French fleet, you can spawn rebels using spies and hope French cannot stop Scotland from forming. Then just annex Scotland.

I had a whole lot more typed but I am at my uni and Bay12 wanted me to log in which killed my post ;_;

[Micro102]

Austria is one tough nut to crack. They got pretty big, took Venice too. I blockade all their ports and take Venice, and hold it for years. They have had max war exhaustion for years, and I've been throwing in all sort of spy attacks, rebels, got Bohemia, England, and Sweden to attack them all at once..... They just won't die. They always seem to be able to draw from a pool of soldiers and keep their uber death stacks up.

What the hell are you suppose to do? They aren't even emperor yet.

[FritzPL]

Bohemia hates everyone around them except for OPMs, so try to ally with them. Poland is a senior in a PU with Lithuania and has got Moldavia as a vassal, which makes an alliance with them count as 3. Hungary has some potential to be dangerous, but not as much as the former countries.
Do you fight in good terrain?
Fight in beneficial terrain.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FIGHT IN GOOD TERRAIN
Some people don't know this, but if an army is defending in the mountains, the attacking force gets a -5 to everything. If there's a river, that's another -1. With -6 even a 9 roll will not do much, which allows you to win normally hopeless battles, like 2 vs 10.
If there's, say, 18 regiments headed to a province defended by only 3 units(I really hope they are in good terrain), don't send reinforcements in immediatly - wait for the enemy troops to get in a fight, those 3 thousands will put up a nice, if lost, fight. Right after they move in, send in reinforcements - the honor(tm) doesn't allow the enemies to fall back, and so, you can change a battle of 4 vs 22 into a battle of 13 vs 22. And if you're fighting in GOOD FUCKING TERRAIN, that's a battle won already.
I don't think I have to say use generals. They rarely do much if you've got <5% army tradition, but they are always something.
If there's no doomstacks nearby, divide your army. What good are they gonna do if there's a 25k army in a province with 5 supply limit? Siege provinces with 3-5 regiments each. Make sure that you end war with any buddy countries Austria could have gotten an alliance with. Leave Austria as a dessert. A crunchy, hard to chew, but in the end, a very delicious dessert.

[Twiggie]

I wrote out a whole spiel about how quality is better than quantity. But it was too complicated.

Always go quality, even if your empire is huge. Take my word for it.

(actually, try it. play as russia and see how far you can get whilst maxing quantity)

RE austria, i find its best to beat them hard and beat them early - ally with bohemia or jump in when bohemia is at war with them. free styria and tirol, then leave them to rot until you're in a position to take all those lovely rich provinces.

[Karlito]

I think there would be some validity to quantity, if attrition wasn't a factor. As it is, more than half your zerg swarm will die just marching to your target, and then you've lost your one advantage.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

"March divided, fight united"

all your arguements... gone.

[stabbymcstabstab]

"March divided, fight united"

all your arguements... gone.

AMEN

[Twiggie]

Gonna go ahead and assume that remark was sarcastic...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

All remarks are sarcastic on the internet, but should always be taken at face value.

[Heron TSG]

I wrote out a whole spiel about how quality is better than quantity. But it was too complicated.

Always go quality, even if your empire is huge. Take my word for it.

I'd say especially if your empire is huge. You're likely to have enough troops to manage any given threat, or at least some limit beyond which you don't want to pay more money for more troops. If you're max quality with 100,000 troops, that beats a max quantity army with 150,000 any day of the week.

[Sheb]

Just spent 24 hours on my seat playing this game. Went to the toilet twice. This game is going in the "too addicitve for my own good" pile. I spent hours saying "Okay, I'll just colonize Mali, wait, I need to attack the Mameluks. Oh, those Aztecs make great prey. Ahah, if I continue this war, I can vassalize Lorraine. "

Fuck that shit. I need to sleep.

[Twiggie]

I hope people are still up for an eu4 multiplayer game on release? I believe its q3, not sure though

[FritzPL]

EU IV multiplayer on release? Oh please. We all know how Paradox games suck without a month of releasing patches and fixes.