Europa Universalis IV

[Sian]

People still playing? ... got a quite lovely game going on, helped by getting very good leaders (current leader is 4/4/5, previous was 4/6/4, previous again was 5/4/5).



Ayutthayan conquest of Asia, been chewing on Ming on/off for the last 80 years, with a bit of support as needed from Oirat and Haixi (now Manchu), and using the Religious CB to bite off large chunks of them to release as vassals which I then Annex. Currently Zhou is getting annexed (taking a stupendous ammount of time due to them being a different religion and different culture, and being quite sizable), and I'm keeping an eye on Miao and Nepal to time the annexation so they finish at the same time, and my other vassals are Xi (recently released, going to feed them rest of the Hangzhou trade note from Ming before vassaling them), Brunei (being fed assorted settled indonesian islands) and Sunda (going to be fed Java) ... sure i'm above my Diplomatic Relations (still rolling 1.8, so the changes to Embassies from 1.9 aren't in), but with my good leaders and the need for vassals, i'll manage ... and as soon as i annex Zhou/Miao/Nepal I'm going to take another swing at Ming feeding Xi, and then Bengal again for releasing Orissa, which i'll forcefeed eastern India

[darrelljs]

I quit after about 100 hours...it was a fun game but the OE mechanic after a while got old to me. Looks like you are having a good go at it .

Darrell

[Sian]

OE Mechanic is why i'm running vassals forcefeeding them, followed by annexation ... 10 diplo points per base tax (lowered by 25% due to 3'd idea in Influence) instead of coring it myself (which is 20 admin points per base tax)

If i personally cored more than 15% of the gained land i'd be surprised ... the vast majority was via vassals.

And playing a bit on, i've gotten the brilliant idea of grabbing either Expansion or Exploration next (not quite sure which one would be strictly better), and colonize Maldives and use that as a stepping stone (via getting close enough borders for peace-vassalizing Ceylon followed by forcefeeding them South India) to get some more India to chew on instead of only having the far northeast as a entry point.

Currently have a whooping 11 armies of 12 units each ... each army is subdivided into 4 groups for sieging purposes consisting of one of each type ... handy to keep control over, and good carpet sieging ability as soon as the opponent army is history

[darrelljs]

OE Mechanic is why i'm running vassals forcefeeding them, followed by annexation ... 10 diplo points per base tax (lowered by 25% due to 3'd idea in Influence) instead of coring it myself (which is 20 admin points per base tax)

Yeah, that's definitely the most effective way to handle it...I was reading about it on the forums and started out trying to master it, but for whatever reason I found it very un-fun and it ended up killing the game for me. Coring at least felt "realistic".

I never played outside Europe, this almost makes me want to try the game again .

Darrell

[pindicator]

I just started a game with winter break giving me some free time. Going for Ethiopia but I haven't played in quite a while so I have to remember all the tricks for expanding

[Sian]

actually considering started another game (as some north African country, say Marroco) with the self-inflicted quest to clear the New World for non-Muslims ... would probably need me to westernize relatively early to keep up with Spain and Portugal

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm currently playing two games, a Japan into Alaska and California game on Easy to learn the mechanics (I bought the game a year ago but was busy playing CK2 for a long while):

As you can see it is going quite well, I've colonised most of the Philipines, killed off Korea and am in the process of taking over the Spice Islands (modern Indonesia). In the west I've already formed Alaska and California. If I get the chance, I'll probably eat chunks out of Colima (orange blob which replaced the Aztecs). They are currently holding their own against New Spain.

I had a second part to my plan, take over Ming, which I half achieved, I broke Ming, but unfortunately the Oirats were the ones to profit (I got some nasty Chinese, Korean and Christian* rebels all at the one go, and China lost out, went from six to two provinces)

Europe is as Europe does, I used Spain to westernise, they colonised in Brunei I colonised beside them. England stopped eating Scotland, who used the time to build up quite the NA presence (Florida and St. Lawrence estuary {though that was war spoils off Norway IIRC}), France is busy blobbing, so is Sweden, Austria and Ottomans carved up the Carpathians (though haven't warred each other), and Lithuania and Poland are best buds (but not in PU) Lithuania is metastizing fairly rapidly actually. In colonies Spain own SAfrica and the Northern Mexican gulf, England, France and Scotland are in NAmerica, Portugal and Spain starting in SAm, and that's about it.

*The Japanese decision to stop the spread of Christianity was borked in 1.7 and didn't work. Christianity wouldn't stop spreading, every few years I get a 38-50 regiment rebellion in a province.

Second game used the converter to take a CK2 Rome game forward about three hundered years for the lulz:

Self explanatory really. Georgia popped up as a OPM for some strange reason (in the CK2 game King of Georgia is a Makedon 5th cousin of the Basileus), Sweden broke up just before the conversion (perils of having a Lappish Suomensko dynasty ruling a Norse Germanic/Orthodox realm), so Denmark are busy eating them, Eastern Europe from Pomerania is Animist (Pomerania, Poland, Lituania, Kurland, Rus and Ruthenia are the main players), the Cumans are everything and anything so everybody wants a piece. No catholicism, I was playing Byz so united the churches. Just after this pic I ate a chunk of Mesopotamia off the Arabians, and shortly after revolts caused them to release Najd as 2/3s of their empire. HRE are big because the king of France was elected, only to die five years later and lose both Aquitaine (which went free) and the Empire. It is really disunited with wars breaking out every time I unpress pause.

Game is fun when you don't optimise too much.