Catholic so far. Only Essex went Protestant. Dispatched the missionaries to there. I really do not care what the religion is. So long as everyone plays nice with each other. took the humanist idea branch. Not sure if its doing anything or helping but apart from Essex everyone seems to be happy.

That's really surprising, because typically England is one of the nations that always flips to Protestant. It's virtually impossible to stay Catholic. I'd be curious as to which version your game is, but it's not important.

I'm currently playing Poland in about 1510. They are Eastern tech, so it's a challenge to keep up. The damn Swedes are a pain in the arse too. But we released Danzig as a vassal and are feeding them the Pomeranian and Teutonic Order cores. Vassal feeding is one of my main strategies. It essentially lets you core provinces at a much reduced cost. You don't spend any ADM MP's, just DIP MP's when you diplo-annex the lot.

I'm going for three achievements that I haven't gotten, and one, 'Poland Can Into Space', requires you to hit all 32 tech levels in all 3 tech trees, which is a challenge because Poland has the Eastern tech penalty.

We are just about to finish the Personal Union with Lithuania, forming the Commonwealth, at which point my nation will triple in size. Good stuff!

As I mentioned, I'm playing as Poland, and later formed the Commonwealth with Lithuania. I was minding my own business just absorbing the Teutonic Order and Pomerania. Then the religious leagues started forming in preparation for the 30 Years War. My Poland is staunchly Catholic.

When I fired the Commonwealth we went from 100% religious unity to 65% because of all the Orthodox Lithuania provinces. I had just unlocked the religious idea group, but only had the first idea, leaving me with a single missionary and a long slog to attain religious unity.

And then Religious Turmoil event happened. Great. It would take roughly 150-200 years to convert them all in the current setup, and even then a few provinces couldn't be converted until I raised my missionary strength, which would happen once I hit the 4th or 5th idea in the Religious group. But as mentioned earlier Poland is eastern tech, and the progress is slower.

So while I am dealing with this and all the attendant revolts, I'm keeping an eye on which nations are aligning themselves with the Catholics and the Protestants for the League Wars. I have interest in helping the Catholics win for the Catholic Empire modifier. But not at the cost of becoming mired in a never-ending League War that we have little chance of winning.

France, Scandinavia, Great Britain and virtually the whole of the HRE joined on the protestant side. With so much firepower arrayed against the Catholics I decided to stay out of the whole mess and play in my own back yard. Let the chips fall where they may, and when it's over we will come out unscathed. Like a Baltic Switzerland.

Satisfied with this decision I returned my attention to invading Russia. Yeah yeah I know, but it's soooo tempting...

And then a message.... the Electors have elected King Karol the Astonished of Commonwealth as the new Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. What? You gotta be freakin' kiddin' me. As the Emperor guess what that means. Yep, installed as the leader of the Catholic League. Oi vey. Turns out the Austrian King/Emperor died without an heir the silly sod, and the Electors in all their wisdom chose King Karol the Reluctant.

So now I'm thinking of how I am going to not be the Leader of the soon-to-be-impaled-upon-the-swords-of-the-Protestant-heretics Catholic League. Because if this war kicks off with me as the leader, my mighty Commonwealth will be invaded by huge Heretic armies lead by angry Swedes and we will be crushed pert quick.

I did get the 'Emperors New Clothes' achievement for this, but nothing else good could come of it. My King was about 60 years old. I need him to die. And I need to make sure the Electors aren't going to vote for me a second time. So much for all of the diplomacy and good relations we had spent the past 100 years working on.

Insults. yes, that should do it. The King of Augsburg must have spit out his teeth when a herald brought him the insult from long time friend King Karol the Disparager and wondered where he might hide while the Polish cavalry descended upon his tiny realm. No need chum, just don't wantcha voting for me. That's a good lad.

Then it was just a matter of keeping crap relations so they didn't stab me in the back by starting to like me again and waiting for King Karol the Immortal to kick the bucket before the war well and truly kicked off. Don't ya know the geezer kept drawing breath well in to his 70's, and they were mighty tense years indeed. But finally he fell out of his tower or somesuch and Austria was once again Emperor and now the Catholic League was their burden and we could go back to aquiring more Baltic swampland.

Then the 30 Years War kicked off and I watched from afar while my armies froze to death on the Russian steppe.

Gotta love the curveballs this game throws at you.

Now that I am into more of the 1600's, ya Protestantism is popping up all over my UK. Its not proving much of an issue. I think the humanist ideas are promoting in to barely be tolerated so far. Since I have been trying to be a nice European and not conquer all native folks, its starting to have issues. All the other European powers are jsut gobbling up everything threw conquest of the various tribes. It is simply faster to conquer everything in sight than try and go the more diplomatic route. France go a toe hold in Florida and is quickly doing a land grab. About to run into my borders in upper Georgia. Great, more wars....

The big issue is here is that I have zero control over the colonies now. So can not build what I really need to support an army. This is going to be an issue.

To increase the size of your army you can build temples as mentioned earlier. You can hire a force limit advisor, but when he dies you could be hit with serious maintenance penalty for being over. Build the armory line of buildings to reach the Arsenal and Conscription Center for +4 total force limit bonus per province. Once the Grain Depot is available build it ASAP for another 10% to FL and -10% to maintenance. And the Grand Army idea from the Offensive group gives another 20% and and you get +50% for completing the Quantity group.

Anything that raises basetax will help, it's +1 to FL for every 4 basetax. Vassals also help with a FL contribution, and there are some ideas to increase the vassal contribution, but it's not enough to make a huge difference. Making a vassal a march will help some, but if you plan to annex the vassal later, don't turn it in to a march.

Oh and by the way, the Reformation will end in 1650, but any provinces that have flipped will have a Religious Zeal modifier that will make them hard to flip back to Catholic until it expires. You're right that the Humanist idea group will help keep your unity up and revolt risk down, but won't help much with converting. There should be some Decisions available to help with missionary strength and a few will have no negative effects, like Sunday Schools for example and there is a missionary strength advisor. The Religious idea group is the best, and it's probably too late, but the 'Embrace the Counter-Reformation' Decision is strong, at the cost of higher tech and idea costs.

If half of your nation goes Protestant or Reformed you should consider flipping the state religion. Reformed is my favorite due to the Fervor mechanic. Protestant has some good bonuses too (+10 tax and -10% idea cost), but of course you lose any Papal bonuses. If you are the Curia Controller then maybe not, but otherwise it's not such a big deal to lose the Pope's blessings.

I've played the Commonwealth game until about 1750, so nearing the end. It's been a fun nation to play. This is actually my second Poland game. I stopped the first one when I neglected relations with Lithuania, or perhaps let my prestige drop too far, don't recall really, and Lithuania declared Independence, and then crushed poor little old Poland.

But this time around I paid more attention and kept the Union, forming the Commonwealth around the year 1520 or so. Some observations....


Drawbacks

- Poland starts in a geographically perilous position. I mean, you border the HRE, Brandenburg, Teutonic Order, Hungary, Austria, Bohemia, and several other nations, and each one has eyes on your territory. Poland starts landlocked, so no navy and little trade power.

-- Eastern Tech. That's a 20% malus to technology cost. That's pretty significant, though can be overcome with ideas. But of course those same idea are available if you don't have a 20% malus. I've been able to keep up with tech and ideas, even with the penalty. But you do have to be more careful with the MPs you spend on building, culture conversion, diplo-annexing and of course coring.

-- Government. Poland starts in an interregnum. This means essentially you start with no government. Within a few years if you are careful you can install the personal union with Lithuania. Doing so makes Poland the senior partner, and installs a Elective Monarchy. The elective monarchy is good and bad. If you can get your dynasty elected the candidates are very good. Usually something like 4/5/3 or similar. And you are far less worried about making your King a general because there is always someone to take his place, and I don't think you'd ever see a regency in an elective monarchy.

What I didn't like about it is that every other dynasty puts up a candidate. All the nations that lose the election have a -20 relations modifier. And legitimacy is constantly very low. Each new King sets the legitimacy to 20. In addition, it costs you legitimacy to keep your dynasty's candidate at the top of the list. So the effect is you almost always hover around zero legitimacy.

In addition to that, getting your dynasty elected results in a King with a weak claim, and pretender rebels pop up. Now, while that may seem a negative, you can use it to your advantage. I was growing tired of the elective monarchy, so wanted to get it changed to some other type. That's where the pretender rebels come in. Looking at their demands I saw they were to change the ruling dynasty to the pretender and change government to a feudal monarchy. Perfect.

So I let them win and enforce their demands. Basically I let them siege down my capitol. Gamey. Yeah. But I got out of the elective monarchy, and eventually switched to administrative monarchy at Admin level 12 and then to my favorite, absolute monarchy, at level 20.


Advantages

-- Religion. Poland is Catholic. But they are far away enough from the Reformation centers that Poland is largely unaffected by the Reformation. I've found it easy to maintain unity and establish Cardinal seats for the Papal influence. We are hitting 100 PI every 10 years, which is nice. The only bump in that road is forming the Commonwealth as mentioned in an earlier post. Integrating all of those Orthodox provinces at once caused me to get the Religious Turmoil event, but we overcame that without too much trouble.

Poland is Catholic yes, and they are surrounded on three sides by nations that aren't. If you take the Religious Idea Group you then get a free Cassus Belli on all of them. No need to fabricate claims to start a war. That's nice. Of course you get a relations hit as a heretic or heathen nation to them. But it's worth it.

-- Cavalry. Polish cavalry kicks arse.

-- Easy union with Lithuania. I mean, wait eighty years and triple in size. Oh yeah.


There's plenty more I could say but I've gone on long enough. As is true of so many nations in this game, Poland is a fun one to play.

Finished the Commonwealth game. Here's poor little old Poland...




It was an interesting game. It was three major phases really. Early game was expansion to the north - Pomerania, Teutonic Order and Livonian Order. Middle game saw expansion to the east. Many wars with Muscovy/Russia. I released Novgorod as a vassal and in successive wars with Russia I fed Novgorod their cores back, and they made a great vassal, holding down the front with Russia and Sweden allowing me to concentrate my armies against the HRE states and Ottomans.

The third phase was expansion to the south. It looks like I beat up on all the smaller Balkans states, but Ottomans had already annexed the region and we took that land from them. Taking Constantinople was a goal and we eventually vassalized then diplo-annexed Venice.

What happens with the AI nations seems to interest me as much as what my country is doing, and it's interesting to look at where Russia used to be. We beat them up pretty good, but I wasn't really interested in taking too much, just to Moscow, so I forced them to release all of those states like Kazan and Perm. That broke them and eventually they went revolutionary, and we crushed that rebellion too just for good measure.

One truism of EU IV is that it is a game of conquest. The mechanics are such that in order to progress or even keep pace, the player needs to expand. But there are some interesting changes coming.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/eu4-development-diary-27th-march-2015.847196/


These changes are focused on allowing the player to create a 'tall' empire, where you can grow powerful without taking huge tracts of land. Sounds really good to me.

How the heck did Perm and Kazan get so big?

Well, I, encouraged it

I decided to try and dismantle Russia as they were a big threat from the east and my attention was focused to the west and south. Instead of taking large swaths of land I didn't want nor need from them in our wars, I chose more diplomatic terms to settle, releasing nations and forcing Russia to return cores to those nations in subsequent peace negotiations. So the newly released nations loved Commonwealth for setting them free and returning land to them, essentially replacing hostile Muscovy/Russia with lifelong allies, securing our eastern borders and allowing us to concentrate our forces on other fronts.

Another development update.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/ind...il-2015.849816/

Some major reworking of the way forts and sieges are handled. And it will be harder to put the brakes on an army when you realize they are about to walk in to a stomping.

Paradoxrox

The latest DLC, Common Sense, was released today. I just bought it and downloaded the free update and have yet to play, but these are sweeping changes, especially in regards to diplomacy, religion, development of provinces and things to do in peace time in general.

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv-common-sense

Patch notes

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1-12-full-patchnotes.860245/

The reception on the Paradox forums is decidedly mixed, but if you've spent time there you would expect it. I will start a new game shortly, thinking of a Brandenburg>Prussia>Germany run. Love that Prussian army.

Since my last post I've played a number of games, all in ironman. Brunei into Malaysia and dominated the southwest Pacific. Tunis in a failed Sons of Carthage run that was oh so close. I twice failed at the Sun God achievement as Inca, but came not so close and then much closer. Got crushed by peasant rebels and half of Europe as Sweden. Played a game where I started as Brittany, then formed a colony in Columbia, released and tag switched to the colony, then vassalized my former overlord Brittany. Then took over almost all of South America.

Played a Portugal game where I owned half the world, even Japan was Portugese. And the last game I played was as Muscovy, forming Russia. It was a game where just about everything seemed to go my way. I had a long string of amazing Kings, colonization of Siberia of all places resulted in gold after copper after iron after fur and then gold again.

This is the first time I had played a Russia game. I've formed many powerful nations in the past. France. Austria into the Holy Roman Empire. Tuscany to Italy with both France and Commonwealth under a PU. Ottomans spanning Italy to China. But Russia is a beast. Here's a shot near the end of the game. Manchu is a vassal that would have eventually have been annexed, but the new DLC puts an end to this game. Check out the manpower, over a million men. Russia kicks everyone's ass.

Haven't bought Common Sense yet but I have been enjoying the patch.
Playing as Lucca, attempting to unify Italy and create a small colonial empire. The new forts and building system is pretty good. But the changes as a whole have really forced me to slow down. Can't just gobble up half the world any more.

Yes that's for sure. The cost of integration and annexing is much higher. Wars go more quickly, but it takes longer and is costlier to integrate.

My early impressions are favorable. I'm playing Brandenburg. They start with 5 provinces instead of 3 now. I've been able to double in size in the first 30 years or so. AE is much lower, which helps alot, especially in the HRE.

I am very happy that they reworked the rewards for missions. There is a lot to like in this new version, and a few wrinkles. I need to play more to have a more rounded opinion, but so far so good.

Yep, I'm also liking the CKII style loot system. Struggling to fund your army? Just start looting!

I haven't actually bought any of the expansion (only some of the unit packs) and it's great that Paradox keep patching and adding to the game. EUIV is practically a new game compared to when it came out. Still my most played game on Steam by far, so they're doing something right.

Yes, Paradox are great developers. Excellent support, and continual improvements. I have bought most of the DLC, well all of it aside from unit and song packs. I've probably got close to $100 spent on it, but then again Steam says I've played for 1600 hours

Only game I might have more in is one of the Football Managers. And over the years I would have had more hours in Falcon 4 and Grand Prix Legends, but I have no record of that.

My Brandenburg game is going great. It's about 1530 now and we've acquired all of the territory needed to form Prussia (going for the Goosestep achievement), we just need to wait for the Reformation to sweep over us. We are allied to France, Poland and Lithuania, which is nice.

So a little story, which won't be so short. In about 1480 or 1490 I decided I wanted Danzig. Danzig is one of the best provinces in the game, and certainly in the Baltic region. Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, and more all want it. Because Poland and Lithuania are my allies and I'd like to keep it that way for a while, I needed to take Danzig quickly in order to get claims on Konigsberg so I would have the Prussian lands, but before someone else did and I would be forced to break an alliance. And besides, Poland and Lithuania are stronger than me at this point.

At the time, I was allied to Poland, Lithuania and Bohemia. I decided to DoW Tuetonic Order for Danzig with a Conquest CB. TO was allied to Livonian Order, Sweden and one or two HRE minors like Gelre. Poland was willing to join, but not Bohemia (defensive relations) or Lithuania (allied to Sweden).

So I waited until Sweden was in a war with Denmark and kept waiting for their loans and war exhaustion to rise enough that they would not be willing to defend the TO. Once that happened we declared for Danzig. The early part of the war went well, Poland and Brandenburg defeated the TO army and began sieging, but at a fairly high cost to manpower, which seems at more of a premium in the current version.

In the meantime, Sweden peaced out of their war with Denmark. And soon after they answered TO's call to arms. Shortly after, a Swedish/Livonian Order deathstack rolled through and crushed us. I mean a thorough trouncing. Beat down. Ass-whooping.

Soon I had no army at all. The Swedish/LO/TO armies soon occupied half of Poland and most of Brandenburg. I couldn't try to rebuild my army, because each regiment would be wiped out immediately, so I had to just sit there and take it. I was seriously concerned for our future, because warscore was approaching 70%. All I could do was hope that I could eventually white peace out their allies from war exhaustion and loans. And it was slowly ticking that way when.....

Those cheeky bastages Pomerania declared on me. And then OPM Magdeburg declared on me! Opportunist little f#@!s but I'd do the same thing quite honestly. However these were defensive wars. And that meant Lithuania and Bohemia answered. So at this point I am fighting three wars with no army.

My fresh allies soon had Pomerania, Magdeburg and their allies under their grasp. And then a miracle! My dogged persistence (actually me hudling under a desk hoping for a miracle) paid off. TO offered to peace out and only asked for 351 ducats. Didn't have it, so needed a loan. But we lost no territory. Hallelujah!

And then I annexed Magdeburg and vassalized the 3 remaining provinces of Pomerania. So I went to war with TO and got crushed, but ended up with a new vassal and another province, all for 351 ducats and my army. Talk about a reversal of fortune.

Just an example of how fates and fortunes hang in the balance in a game of EU 4.

Nice write up, I might have to do my own AAR after I finish my current game.

Almost unified northern Italy, I control trade in the Med but Emperor Austria (who'll pull everyone from Burgundy to Livonia into the war) and the remnants of Milan are allied. All I have is an alliance with Serbia, who aren't going to be much help since they're currently fighting off the Ottomans.

Thanks. Italy looks more interesting now, more provinces. Tuscany has been one of my favorite nations to play. Love their NI's and it's perfect synergy when forming Italy. I mean, Tuscany's ideas are well suited to a smaller nation and Italy's to a larger empire.

I would enjoy reading your AAR if you decide to do one.

I've reached 1560 or so in my Brandenburg game and have yet to have any provinces flip to Protestant or Reformed. This is a problem as I need to convert to form Prussia. I have Religious, but I need the Reformation centers to do some of the work or I'll have Religious Turmoil in short order. It's always something

Still playing Brandenburg. By about 1610 still none of our provinces had been converted, but we were about 74% religious unity due to having annexed provinces from Protestant nations such as Bohemia and Saxony. With some trepidation I chose to flip the nation to Protestant. I had never flipped when so little of my nation had been converted, usually I would wait until we're approaching %50. But it went very well.

After flipping I immediately became Defender of the Faith for the extra missionary. In less than 5 years we reached 100% Protestant. It was only 5 months to convert each province, so it went quickly and smoothly. That allowed me to form Prussia. Once I get discipline to 125% we will get the Goosetep achievement.

It had been a a while since I had played a Protestant nation. I like the Church power mechanic. When was that added? It adds flavor to Protestantism which was rather boring before and yields some nice bonuses.

Now that I am 200 years in I would say I am liking the changes alot. Sure, it's more difficult to expand, but the game really needed that. There are players at the paradox forum complaining about how hard it is now to do world conquest. But should world conquest even be possible? I don't think so. The blob-a-thon that the game used to be has been reigned in and I think that's great. This game has come a hell of a long way since the beginning. And though I don't agree with all they have done, most of it is very good.