Trade? Not really but I'm making a lot from Beijing and Canton. I've got trade as one of my ideas, so plenty of merchants and I'm lead trade power in all but one node. With technology I'm slightly ahead in Mil but roughly equal on Dip and Adm
Nice English America by the way!

I had a few hours on Sunday to put in a good century of gameplay. It's 1649 and I've accomplished my goals, take Japan, control Manchuria and have some colonies.

I took Yan in two wars and diplo-vassalised and annexed Qi, a united Japan formed and I took them apart in three wars. With my long term ally Oirat we more or less removed anyone that stood between us, such as Mongolia and Jin. Having finished colonising the Philippines, I set up a new army and invaded Brunei. I've since moved on to Siberia but I'm not sure if I'll bother fleshing out the colonies up there.
Not visible in the screenshots but England has an Indian presence near Bengal.

Nicely done, dominant. That's a nice color with which to paint the map. Any designs on Java or Sumatra?

I'd probably look to colonize Australia, maybe get a treasure fleet out of it, but that's down to the RNG. I usually end up with at least one gold province there.

England game is going well, we're in about 1710. Only goals left at this point are to reach Empire level and paint all of North America various shades of red. If I choose to annex Holland that would get the 1000 development needed for Empire, and I'll get a new colony (Nova Hollandia) out of the deal, though annexation will cost 700+ diplo points (I fed Holland a few provinces).

I commented in my last update how well Spain is doing. I was going to say how remarkable it is that they've held it together, because they hold territory, especially in North Africa, that is difficult to get under control, and prohibitively expensive to core. Well they are now in meltdown mode.

I was able to successfully support the independence of Caraibas and Portugese Louisiana. Each became my ally, but as they were rather useless in that role, I DoW'd Louisiana and vassalized them, and took Havana and Antigua from Caraibas. We will slowly take over the Caribbean, or that's the plan. And while we're at it I think we will invade French Columbia, because I like cocoa.

I know you're not in to achievements SDE, but there's one I just got, called Bleed Them Dry. You get it for having war reparations from at least 10 nations at the same time. I had attacked Brabant to feed some territory to Holland, and of course the Emperor and all his minions jumped in. peaced out all of these HRE OPMs and TPMs and was making about 22 ducats a month in reparations. Silly sods

Very nice! The HRE is always fun, at least from the outside.

What DLCs include treasure fleets and empires?

I forget sometimes that we are all playing different versions of the game. Like when I said to move your trade port, but it can't be done unless you have Wealth of Nations.

Here is the DLC

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Downloadable_content

I have all of the ones listed in the first section, expansions. I also have American Dream and Star and Crescent under flavor packs. I don't bother with music or cosmetic stuff.

I highly recommend all of the expansions. But to answer your question, treasure fleets are from El Dorado. When you have a colony that has gold provinces, every few years a treasure fleet arrives at your capital. How much you get depends on the number of gold provinces in that colony. In my current game only two of my colonies provide gold, and between the two fleets we get around 420 ducats every few years, at the cost of a little inflation.

The government ranks, which are duchy, kingdom and empire, are from the Common Sense DLC.

I've got the Purple Phoexnic DLC because I preordered as well as number of cosmetics such as the Muslim portraits and ships. I thought I had Res Publica but it turns out that was actually the CKII republic expansion. Funny, I've got all the major CKII DLCs but none of the EUIV ones.

Pretty sure I'll have to get Art of War and Common Sense, they look pretty good.

As for actually gameplay I'm starting a game as Australia. This took quite a bit of set up. (Maybe there's a better way?)

Start as England
Open console, remove terra incognita
Use console to integrate Majapahit (closest to Aus)
Use console to tech up Dip
Start colonising
When Colonial nation forms, tag switch and declare independence.
Use console to win war.
Finish colonising Australia.
Now that you have a new country, turn terra incognita back on and play legitimately* as Colonial Australia

*I can't work out a way to reverse tech gains so you just have to play with a dip tech level about 200 years ahead of everyone else.

I suppose that would work, but, and I do not work for Paradox in case it appears I do lol, but the El Dorado expansion includes a custom nation designer that would let you do that much easier, and with custom NIs, form of governement, colors, flags, rulers, you name it.

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Nation_designer

You should work for paradox because you've successfully sold me three DLCs in this thread!

Haha, you won't regret it when your glorious nation of Toowoomba is dominating the world!

Res Republica is another good DLC to have. Especially for the national focus feature that lets you boost monarch points by +2 in one category at the cost of -1 in each of the others. I do believe that you will get National Focus if you get Common Sense however.

Well my Australia game ended before it started. You can't play as a colonial nation without Conquest of Paradise!

Oh well, just gives me another reason to open my wallet this weekend.

Yep, that's true innit? Well I'm sure you'll like the nation designer. I used it to create a nation that owned Sicily and Malta. It was a fun game, and it's cool to choose all of your own NIs.

The England game is in the books. The latest version of EU IV makes England much more interesting, if perhaps less challenging to play than before. By starting at peace with France it is infinitely easier to remain on the continent. The Constitutional Monarchy grew on me as the game progressed. Stability and war exhaustion are much more expensive to raise and lower, respectively, but there are also some strong benefits, and quite nice bonuses when you win the parliament debates. I went for an additional colonist whenever it was available, but there are other such as increased base tax, lower build cost, army cost reductions and more.

This was the first game in which I was one of the very first nations to flip to Protestant, but it all went smoothly. Spain and Austria were longtime Allies, but I lost Spain when I moved to end all competing colonialism in the New World. I supported the independence of all the other nations and aside from my colonies, no other colonies existed in North or South America at the end.

Here is Europe near the end of the game. Spain went Revolutionary after being wracked by revolt for many years. They lost most of what they had built. Ottomans were very successful as you can see. When Spain imploded, Ottomans took full advantage, sweeping across Tunisia, and eventually even taking territory in Iberia. In all of the time I've spent playing this game, I've never seen Ottomans do that.




In the New World we simply dominated. The AI isn't very good at supporting their far-flung empires, so it was all rather easy. By deciding to concentrate on only colonizing in this region, it was far easier to defend my realm, and no problem to take other nations' colonies for ourselves. We made no friends by doing so, but by game's end no one could match us.

If we had a weakness it was manpower, but even that was overcome through development. All in all a very fun run, and what would the world be like today if this had been the state of affairs in 1820?

Great job!

Maybe the same as the Spanish Empire is today?

What happened in India and Asia? In my games I often see Portugal and France gain small chunks of the subcontinent but then either lose them or fail to expand them, same in the East Indies, sometimes someone like Spain or a united Netherlands will own a bit but it seems that without player assistance the game is less Europa Universalis and more Europa America-and-maybe-a-bit-of-Africa-alis.

I didn't pay close attention to that part of the world. One thing I noticed was that after helping Brazil gain their Independence, they invaded Japan. And they crushed them, took half of the island and then lost most of it to revolts that they couldn't or wouldn't deal with. So Japan was broken up. And then Portugal invaded and took most of it for themselves.

Spain established themselves well in the Spice Islands, and other nations had a few outposts there. I ended up getting an island from our annexation of Holland, but I sold it to Brunei. Portugal colonized Australia, but they won their Independence and grew quite large in the region. No Euros established themselves in India, though many had missions for it. Portugal lost Goa, and all of India was Bahamis.

Have started a new game as Sweden.

Interesting, thanks.

I loaded up an old save as Brabant, I wanted to finish up some old games in case the DLC changes made them inconpatible.
How the heck did Hungary become Emperor when they're not even part of the HRE?

Being a member of the HRE is not a requirement to become Emperor, strange as it seems. The only requirements are to be male, to be correct religion and be a Monarchy. I've seen nations like Portugal and even Croatia as Emperor.

Ah that makes sense, in a way.

What's your plan for the Swedes, Great Northern Empire?

As Brabant I wish do create a greater Netherlands, that is control all Flemish, Walloon and Dutch provinces plus the German borders. Then move out and start colonising. I think I'll aim for the Georgia and the gulf area. Just to be different since I usually hit Canada first. Hopefully the English and Spaniards won't have developed the area to much by the time I get there.

That's a great region you have designs on. I held alot of that region in the England game. It gives you power in the English Channel node, which is rich of course, plus high base tax. But expanding in the HRE is a challenge in the latest version. Which DLC did you end up getting? (Edit, upon actually comprehending your post I see you haven't pulled the trigger, and all of those old saves will be rendered incompatible)

As for Sweden, my main goal is to get the Sweden is not Overpowered achievement. That means holding all of the Baltic coastline. I would also like to get the Lion of the North, which requires Sweden to lead the Protestant League to victory, but it requires some luck. We are approaching 1550 and we have a reduced Norway as a vassal, and have taken half of Denmark, and several provinces from Novgorod. We won Independence quickly, I think by 1460. Was able to also get all of our cores back in that war, save Gotland, which we took in the next.

We have flipped to Reformed and are unified, save Sjaelland, which was hit by a Protestant CoR and will be 30 years before I can get it in the flock.

We are allied with Poland, France and Austria. Took Defensive first, of course, and Administrative second, mostly for the core cost reduction. But oone of Sweden's traditions is -25% merc maintenance. Combined with the mercenary bonuses from Administrative, that gives us -25% merc cost, -58% maintenance and +50% available mercs. Manpower is a weakness of Sweden, and with winter wars on the Russian steppe on the horizon, it all synergizes well I think. I rarely make use of mercs, but in this game I plan to use them often.

Nice, I bought Conquest and El Dorado but have not activated them.

This has actually been one of the easier games, I started with a large army and wars all around me, so I've been opportunistically taking provinces including stealing Calais off England while they were losing a massive coalition war.
I'm rolling in gold and thanks to Protestantism, I'm good friends with Emperor Brandenburg, making up for all the 'illegal territory' penalties*.



The religious situation



My sole colony, Portugal actually settled first but for whatever reason abandoned her colonists, so I snatched it up.



Annoyingly if you load up a save while experiencing the 'illegal territory' modifier the Emperor will send a second or even a third request that you return the province. Very annoying since the modifiers stack and it can easily double the diplomatic pain.

Nice Brabantian, er Brabantish? er nice realm. Is there a chance for the Netherlands to revolt and emerge when the player controls that territory? Are you able to form Netherlands?

I'm always interested in what the AI nations are doing in other player's games. I don't know what power you hold over the Sultan, but the difference in your screens versus mine for Ottomans is striking. Might just be down to the DLC or version. What year is that? Must still be fairly early if Mazovia is still a thing. Could you put up some shots with the GUI? That shows some useful and interesting info. Judging by the Reformation I'll guess around 1540?

In the Sweden game things have gone well so far. But I missed my chance to lead the Protestant League because we were at war, and that's the luck thing I mentioned. There are only about 8 or 10 nations on each side, and France joined the Protestants so we would have won no problem. Doh!

My biggest hurdle at this point is that Commonwealth has formed, and are big, strong and my ally. In order to take the Baltic coastline we will eventually be at war with them. I diplo-annexed Norway. Got two nice Decisions out of it. The first was to vassalize them, and we got +20 Army Tradition from it, and the second was to annex them and we got +1 Stability and +20 Prestige. Prestige has been a struggle in this game. We lost all Prestige and Legitimacy when winning Independence, and then lost -100 Prestige when flipping to Reformed.

Now our former overlords Denmark are our vassal, and they were none too pleased let me tell ya, but they've started to come around. I have my eyes on The Hansa, to hopefully take Bremen and Lubeck and lock down the node. Once done I plan to move my capital and trade port to Sjaelland, making Lubeck my home node.

As mentioned I took Administrative, and rarely do. Combined with Influence it enables a policy for -20% diplo-annexation cost. Combined with Influence ideas it will give me -45%, nice. Do you use Policies? I often do, some are very powerful, but I get the sense on the Paradox boards that most players don't.

Thanks, I can form the Netherlands but I think I'll stay as Brabant. Grown attached to her.
I've had no influence near the Mediterranean or the Ottomans, I assume Hungary being Emperor gave them plenty of allies to fight off the Turks.
Never seen the AI form the Commonwealth, though I've done it myself.
I do use policies but only on occasion as most idea groups seem to unlock policies that or sort of useless.

I'll have some UI shots up later today.

Edit: Here we go. I've diploannexed Friesland finishing up my continental goals. Probably going to take trade ideas for the extra merchants, need cash to build up my provinces. France is suffering, I guess that's what happens when you turn lucky nations off. I just don't the huge bonuses they get even if it does create a more historical timeline.