Europa Universalis IV (and other Paradox titles! :3)

Daklore

So, part of me was wondering... HOW many Achaeans have heard of, or played, any of the Paradox titles out there? The prime examples people may have heard of/played are(in order of timeline used in the game) Crusader Kings II (700AD-1440AD), Europa Universalis IV(1444AD-1821AD), and Hearts of Iron(world war era... I've never actually played it...).

Don't know what they are? They are grand-strategy titles, with varying devices and tactics, but overall... the goal is, "how can -you- develop Europe, and the surrounding world, contrary to how it developed in our history, by taking control of a family(CK2) or country, and bringing it to glory... or utterly destroying it?"

Recently, well, yesterday actually, I started a new campaign in EU4 using the new custom nations designer that came with the latest expansion(also, released yesterday), and I decided to pit the Achaean city-states against Europe at large at see how they'd fare. ... Which means, the AI is in complete control of them, I'm actually off in Africa lulzing it up with a super-easy campaign ... for now...

I'm only going to, theoretically, post links to the maps on imgur, rather than spam this post with them XD.

First up, we have Mhaldor. Mhaldor is an orthodox(contrary to the rest of Europe being Catholic, and like the middle ages, religion is kind of a big factor) theocracy, with a focus on military ideas, and a little bit on navy. Ruth -apparently- changed her last name in this, because I -know- I didn't give her that last name ... I don't think dynasties normally change last names when they're ... still alive... But anyway, Ruth runs Mhaldor ... mostly because I wasn't logged in... Mhaldor started out owning the southern coast of England, and the Normany coast. They have since ate a little bit of England. Poor Brits (oh, and they forced out cornwall as a sovreign state)

Next up, Ashtan who replaced Denmark(not sure if 1444 Denmark is modern day Denmark or not...), they have sinced invaded Sweden and took a little land, and allied themselves with Hashan. Apparently, Tanris died... cause that's not the leader I gave them(again, not logged in ... and I never even thought about using the wiki...). They have the military and navy ideas... and they're the only custom nation whom I gave bonus to pirateering. So... that's a thing...

Until we came to Eleusis... Who, as a republic, elected in a new official... probably by 1448. But still, I used the wiki at this point. Eleusis is smack dab in the middle of Poland ... and has pretty much done nothing. Go figure. They're focused a bit more on being diplomatic and tradey. But again, they've pretty much done nothing.

And then there's ... Hashan .... who has done absolutely nothing outside of allying Ashtan. They've got ideas focused on their navy, a little on trade, and a wee bit on military(mostly on manpower recovery).

Aaaand... i may have made Targossas OP as heck... One thing I did to all the custom nations, is made their primary culture Greek ... cause... I don't know why. Anyway, long story short, the nation designer only makes your -capital- Greek, not all the lands given to them during design... Why is this a problem I bring up now? Well.... uh.... Targossas is right in the middle of the Greek culture group to start with, having half of Greece, Constantinople(Istanbul) as their capital, and Turkish lands on their west. So... right from the start, they have a lot of accepted culture, whereas the other city-states have to deal with unaccepted culture... which gives a penalty to everything a province gives. Including revolt risk ... so, looks like Targossas is probably going to swell and spread out across Anatolia. Also, Targossas is a Coptic Theocracy, still in the Christian group, but not Catholic. Because... Targossas, yo.

And finally... Cyrene. Now I know what you're thinking, "obviously, biased Daklore made Cyrene stronk as hell, because, Cyrenian." ... and you'd be wrong. Cyrene is ... doing typical Cyrene things ... ... and lost land to France. !_! Cyrene, pls Verrucht was the leader, but, again, republic, so they eventually voted him out for someone else(as the AI usually does, they don't usually keep a leader around more than two terms in a republic) ... and noble rebels want Cyrene to become a monarchy ... that's what those striped lands are in eastern Cyrene XD

Waow, long post... ramble over, everyone will ignore this, gg no re.

Anyway, talk about EU4, CK2, HoI3/4, Victoria II, this campaign and what lulz you expect from the AI controlled city-states, whatever. Or ignore it, that too.

Erasariel

I absolutely adore Europa Universalis IV, but I'm behind in the DLC. I think I can fix that soon, though, given the sale.  



I'm currently playing as Malacca-turned-Malaya. The arrival of Portugal in the early 1500s enabled me to westernize in an EU4 game for the first time, and it just spiraled out of control after that. Thanks to my obsessive caretaking, I never really did have trouble with westernization. Now, the Malayan culture has spread to Africa, and Portugal and Castile have a really hard time crushing my fleets even with superior technology. Hail Malaya!

Achimrst

I like EU4 although I play Crusader Kings II more/find it a lot more fun.

Kresslack

I've never played them (and probably won't have the time for a while), but sounds pretty interesting. Also, c'mon Cyrene, losing land to France? Way to go.

Erasariel

Oh and it's the purple blob. Can't edit anymore

Riashain

Ck2 is ossom. Euiv is pretty good.

Kafziel

I played the shit out of CK2 until the raja DLC made it run like a slug on my ghetto computer and I had to shelve it

Daklore

I had a really good run in CK2 as Castile->Hispania. Considering I'm a CK2 noob... I had all of Iberia, half of Aquataine(HRE got the other half through war -very- early into the campaign, I got the other half through inheritance), Poland, Ruthenia, bits and pieces of Italy(just a couple counties and a duchy through marriages)... until I managed to get the throne of France--which had inherited Scotland, so I got that too--as well as England, who had captured the kingdom of Greece in a much earlier crusade ... and pretty all of northern and central africa(as is by CK2 standards).

Apparently, I also somehow managed to get a county in India ... i have -no- idea how that happened... It was glorious when I converted it to EU4 XD

Razzlo

I actually took the whole map in an older version of CK2. I might have to show screenshots to brag. I put literally a 1000 hours into that game.

Weirdly though, I like EUIV better and have played less than half the time I invested in CK2. 

Awesome customization though.

Amranu

EU IV > CK2 but I can't convince my friends to ever play eu4 multiplayer. Argh.

Achimrst

You just don't play CK2 to it's full potential, fighting your sons/now brothers for all the land back. Scheming to take over a country through inheritance and plotting against other kings and stuff. It's really fun.

Amranu

I'm pretty good at either game

Aedin

Hmm might check this out when I get home sounds interesting

Erasariel

Aedin said:

Hmm might check this out when I get home sounds interesting

You're just in luck! Europa Universalis IV is free to try and is 75% off this weekend on Steam, and it's worth trying for at least a couple hours and see if it's worth the absolute steal at $9.99.

Aedin

Hmm 10$ huh hmm yeah I'll check it out how big is the download

Daklore

Surprisingly small. About 150 mb total? If even.

Erasariel

You should try it out first, though. It's not really easy to get into and if you're not really that into strategy or politics or wargaming it might not be the right choice. That said, it's amazing and will still be worthwhile at sale price even if you won't end up spending 200 hours on it.....

<.<

Amranu

I have 769 hours in Eu4, and 126 hours in ck2

Aedin

Hmm I do enjoy and hmm that'll be a 1 minute download time idk if I should or not

Silas

EUIV is a lot of fun. I wish there were no time limits, so you could take your civ further, but but the gameplay is good. I suck at trade, but rebuilding the world is cool, and some of the goals for forming territories are really neat.

Daklore

There's a mod you can get to extend the timeline, actually. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217416366 I've never used it, but, it's right there in the title of the mod

Aedin

Tried it, played the tutorial, played a single mission as the Ottoman,  started a few wars, poked Athens. Seems the rest of the world didn't like this to much... So I had a 12 Nation collation against me.. Needless to say, I lost.. Funny but couldn't quite grasp all the features of it sadly.

Achimrst

You have to be a bit more subtle then go to war with everyone. Just use the missions and espionage to get a claim on a territory and use that to go to war so you don't get huge coalitions against you.

Daklore

Learning to manage your Aggressive Expansion(AE) is half the fun. "Will this piss off anyone that is a threat? How much will it piss them off? ... Is it -worth- it?" ... Kind of irritating how the AI seems to take 1/8th the AE a player takes, though.

As one of the reviews for EU4 goes, "AI France takes half of Iberia, and no one cares. I take two provinces from Pomerania and start a world war. 10/10 would cry again."

Achimrst

Just remember that if you are not in the Empire, do not eff with the Empire. Either join it or be ready for Austria/Bohemia to steamroll you if you try to take anything.

Edit: And if you do somehow end up with Empire territory, they will probably attack you for it back.

Daklore

Unless you're France. In which case, as long as you play smart, you'll lulz all over Austria.

Remember all the modern day jokes about France rolling over and surrendering? Yeah... they don't do that in EU4...

Daklore

So I was playing a CK2 campaign yesterday, as Ireland... minding my own business, making long term plans to bring about the Irish empire of Brittania. ... And then all these weird plans I never actually put into place started to fall together. First, Scotland falls apart to rebels, and the game informs me that, "heeey, you know what? Your grandmother was the Scottish king's sister... sooo... you've got a claim on the Scottish throne... you should go do that."

And since Scotland was all busy, and wasting their troops on fighting their internal problems... the Irish army flooded the Scottish highlands ... and I became King of Ireland and Scotland. Of course, I had to piss off the Scots because I've got a Tanistry succession for Ireland, so I destroyed the Scottish kingdom title so I wouldn't have to worry about succession issues.

On an aside, ANYONE know how to influence tanistry succession?

Next I went about unifying England, I already had about half of that prior to Scotland so that I could form Brittania. It took a while, but I did it, more or less... Norway still had land here and there. Stupid game not letting me press all de jure claims for Brittania in a single war. BUT this did set up a future plan I wasn't even planning on. I conquered one of the pagans, made him my vassal ... only to realize the Kingdom of England didn't have medium crown authority to take away his title without pissing everyone off. So... I let him be. For now. This would prove fortutious. ... Is that the right word?

I instead set my sights southward. How could I set myself up to inherit France and Aquitane when I can't influence Tanistry ... very well, if at all. The answer came in the form of a child King inheriting France(West Francia), and two of my uncles saying, "hey, uh... Mr. Tanist-Emperor-King guy... I have a claim on that throne. Could you press it for me pretty please?". France had no allies willing to join him... a grand total of less than 4000 troops ... and Brittania had a delicious 10K waiting to rock. Easy choice.

First war was a bust, uncle died of old age within three months of declaring. "That's okay, I've got more claimants back at the court." Second war was more successful. 3 year war and West Francia became a vassal of the Irish empire. ... And then one month later my uncle got his title usurped by another French dude. I laughed, because it didn't really matter, West Francia was still my vassal. Following that was a quick claim war on the entirity of Brittany. I -really- wish I knew how to influence claim fabrication so I could fabricate on duchy titles instead of county titles. I don't understand it. Sometimes, I fabricate on a duchy ... sometimes on just the county u_u

Peace for a while. Realized that, "oh, right, I need to get medium crown authority in england to revoke that pagan's title and put a proper irishman in charge there." Click the button to raise crown authority, start browsing through the claims I can press for my vassals/court ... and there it is, "Hey, man, you forced me to be your vassal a while ago, I know I'm a Germanic pagan ... but ... wanna conquer Norway for me?" 10,000 irish versus 3,000 norse? I actually agonized over this, because I -really- want to try and convert everything I get to Irish ... but he was willing to convert to Christianity(for a small bribe of gold so he'd like me enough to do it), and it meant bringing all of the norse territory in the British isles into the realm, as well as norway... and future holy wars against Sweden to get rid of these god-damned raiders. So, Norway "joined" the Irish realm.

And this is when I gained a chance on Aquitaine. Aquataine was in an elective monarchy... and I could usurp a title that belonged to the kingdom of aquitaine... I didn't realize it at the time, it was like, "eh, why not, it'll give me a claim on another county" ... and then the, "you should nominate a successor to Aquitaine." Hells yeah, voted for me. There were four electors, counting myself... a little bribing, a little assassinating, and BAM. Aquitaine willingly joins the Irish realm.

Then I declared a holy war on Uymmad's child sultanate for the duchy of Barcelona.

This is my best CK2 run so far. I can't wait to see how it's all going to fall apart (no screen shots, though, I'm not in-game currently, I just felt like babbling about it after I woke up this morning)

Achimrst

I think you have to find the person who holds the duchy title and fabricate where he is, having a spy network set up there helps speed things up. Otherwise it is probably random.

On the Tanistry, I have only used it once to gain king of some Kingdom I was a duke in. That said, I can think that if you give titles, likely something major like Seneschal, it might improve the way others think of that person. Other then that kill the people until you have who you want next in line.

Amranu

The easiest way to get a claim on anything is to find a claimant with a strong claim that will join your court, give them a piece of land then declare war for their claim.

Pretty sure this works even against empires. Fun times.

Daklore

Such Empire, much reach.


Yes, this is the CK2 game I was talking about earlier... except about 20 years in the future. All will become Irish! ... ... eventually... That's part of my plan for this campaign.. try and convert all the cultures in my territory to Irish. Little by little, I am educating children from all across the lands... and making them into proper Irish lads. (keep in mind, I'm still a CK2 noob, so culture converting is still a pretty big thing for me I'm still not even sure I'm doing it right XD ... especially since i have to try and convert the French and Norse through education, rather than just conquering and putting in fresh Irish vassals instead)

Ridlyn

One day I might sit down and try and make a proper Achaea mod for CK2.

 Would be fun to take over the world as a certain village/city