I'm continuing to love my current Europa Universalis IV game, continuing as Prussia into the late 1600s. It's had a very different rhythm from my Portugal game, with much more warfare and a stronger European focus. As I head into the endgame they are growing more similar, as I'm now leading (conquered) subjects in the New World and fighting various wars in Africa and India to control trade. It remains to be seen if I'll see this game all the way through, but so far I'm having a blast.
As I expand, the "clockface" organization from my previous posts doesn't make as much sense, but I'll try doing something similar. Let's start off with Persia and India. For a while my influence extended to the shores of the Black Sea, as the edge of Europe and as far as the HRE can expand. My last post ended around the time of my first war against the Mughals, who are mutual foes with my allies the Mamluks. The Mughals at one time had the (geographical) largest empire in the world, stretching across a vast territory; but it seems like they were badly overextended, and there would be times I would check on their status and see that they're defending against five separate wars.
Part of my motivation was to soft-block the Mamluks from extending into Persia and India, and that's kind of worked. We thrashed the Mughals and I had a ton of war-score to spend, but they also had an enormous empire, and I ended up taking a very snaky chain of provinces rather than clean borders, prioritizing Centers of Trade and Great Projects, and secondarily coastal provinces and strategic chokepoints. After this kind of evisceration it's nearly impossible for an AI power to recover, and I'm sure that's contributed to their ongoing woes.
Dealing with the conquered lands was slightly more tricky than usual due to the sheer distances involved. If a revolt broke out, it could take a year to march troops over from Prague to deal with it. I think this is the first part in this campaign where I've started to maintain permanent standing armies in distant territories. I know they'll eventually be used in future wars, and in the meantime they can drill and put down revolts.
In general I've been having an easier time with unrest in this game than in the Portugal game, thanks to taking Humanist ideas, so it's pretty rare for me to worry about revolts, but when they do happen (so far only once or twice since Absolutism) they can erupt all over and be a pain. I think I ran into trouble when I had high Overextension plus lots of Separatism (both from big conquering sprees) along with unusually low Legitimacy, which in turn decreased Tolerance. Now that my Legitimacy is high again I haven't run into problems, even when actively converting recently-conquered provinces.
Apologies for the tangent / stream-of-consciousness, but while I'm talking about Legitimacy: One thing that initially annoyed me after Revoking the Privilegia was the endless stream of Royal Marriage proposals I received from my new vassals. At the start of each new play session I would dismiss or decline literally dozens of them. After a while, though, I started to wonder: why not? Why shouldn't I be loved?
When you accept (or initiate, more on that later) a RM proposal, there's an immediate hit to your Legitimacy, either -2 or -5 depending on the partner's own Legitimacy and Prestige. But then there's an ongoing monthly benefit for as long as the ruler lives: a big but not usually important boost to New Heir Change, a mildly important boost to Improve Relations, and a tiny but very helpful boost to Legitimacy. So after some time the marriage will "pay for itself" in Legitimacy, either about 2 or 4 years, and after that you'll get surplus Legitimacy.
Legitimacy is kind of interesting, in that there's a hard cap at 100 and any surplus value is wasted. It usually isn't terribly hard to get it to 100 and keep it at 100, so I'd been loathe to marry down from it. But if you get a lot of Royal Marriages (which usually isn't an option, except for the Emperor of a Revoked HRE, who doesn't use Diplomatic Relationship slots for vassal relations), then you can get pretty significant ticking monthly Legitimacy, so when it does drop (due to an event or a bad Heir or something), it will bounce back pretty quickly. Keeping Legitimacy high helps a lot with Unrest, and also gives Max Absolutism and a few other things.
The higher Improve Relations is nice. It isn't communicated very clearly in-game, but Aggressive Expansion's decay is largely driven by your passive Improve Relations modifier, so keeping that high will cause AE to melt away before coalitions can form.
Finally, while you don't often need the New Heir Chance, it did embolden me to disinherit a thoroughly average heir. The very next day I got a new heir, a better heir! Let's hear it for my harem of concubines!
So being in this situation of tons of Royal Marriages (I currently have over 80) is nice, but getting there was rough. Legitimacy has a hard cap of 100 and also a hard floor of 0, so once you get down there, there's no penalty to entering into additional marriages. So I went through a long stretch of accepting literally every proposal from my vassals. In less than a year I was all married up and started ticking up in my Legitimacy. I had planned this around the time that my Empress-Regent was about to step down and the new Emperor Heir would take the throne; but as I learned to my chagrin, you can't Abdicate while you have low Legitimacy, which I would think would be the whole point! I think I ended up burning some Military Mana on Strengthen Government just so I could get back over 50 Legitimacy and switch over. Abdicating gives a -20 Legitimacy hit, so my heir took the throne at 80 instead of 100; but again, thanks to all the active Marriages, I was able to get back up 100 before too long.
Oh, and finally a note on timing: you can either send or receive marriage proposals. The marriage lasts for as long as the person who sends the proposal. So, from the player's perspective, and marriages you initiated will end when your monarch dies, and marriages you accepted will end when the other monarch dies. So, if you want to keep your marriages high, you definitely want to receive and not initiate. This lets you maintain Legitimacy at nearly 100 indefinitely: periodically other rulers will die, then you'll receive an invitation, your Legitimacy will drop to 98 or 95 but will be back up at 100 before long. Going in the other direction, you'd need to re-marry all 80+ rulers when your ruler dies, which means wading back through the Low Legitimacy morass again.
Final (phew!) observation: at least in my game, I don't seem to ever receive royal marriage proposals from my vassals while we're at war. I do receive marriage proposals from other nations, both in the HRE and outside it, whether at war or not. So lately, after wrapping up a war, I'll usually go for at least a month or so of peace to catch up on any pending proposals before kicking off my next war.
I can't believe I wrote all that in the middle of writing about war against the Mughals!
After the Mughals, I hit Gujarat next. I was now moving into Sunni territory, which is tricky: the Mamluks are my very good friends, and they're also allied to many large Sunni nations, and they're often the Defender of the Sunni Faith, so I definitely don't want to break that alliance (at least, not yet!). But fortunately this is usually pretty easy to work around: I can just declare any other war I want, invite the Mamluks in as war allies with my stock of 100 Favors, and then declare on the original target. A red "X" will appear in the war interface showing that the Mamluks won't honor the call to arms since they're already fighting on my side in another war. Humorously, sometimes I can even call them into that war on my side - I haven't thoroughly tested this, I think it works if they received the Call to Arms from their Defender of the Faith role, but not if they are allied to the war target.
Gujarat was an easier war than the Mughals; they were also large and powerful, but not nearly as vast and sprawling, so we could do a few more focused wars without chasing them all over the globe. I think that it's a bad sign when my HRE minions have time to get all the war to a war in Asia and meaningfully contribute.
As with the Mughals, I prioritized trade provinces and Great Projects, but also strategic positioning of borders: in particular, I wanted to get good borders on my next target, Vijayanagar, so I could Fabricate Claims on them. Having taken Espionage and Aristocratic Idea Groups, I can take claims on multiple large areas of provinces in a very short amount of time. I've been leaning heavily on the Conquest Casus Belli for most of my recent wars: I think the new Imperialism CB may technically be better since the War Score Cost is low, but what's great about Conquest is that you pay 0 Diplomatic mana for any province you have a claim on. This is especially great against wealthy European powers like Spain, but is handy everywhere.
Once my rebellions were under control, I declared on Vijayanagar. They had managed to consolidate pretty much the entire Indian subcontinent, which was pretty impressive; in my previous Portugal game there was much more of a partition. I was pretty shocked at how much territory I could take from them in a single war: I ended up taking the entire Indian coast, as well as most inland provinces with Centers of Trade and some other "pathways" through the north under the Himalayas. I now could walk from Lisbon to Bengal.
In my last post I'd mentioned making use of the Charter Trade Company diplomatic option to buy provinces for expansion. That was really helpful for these Gujarat and Vijayanagar wars, as I could fabricate claims around those provinces to help me maximize my future wars. So far I haven't operated in East Asia; I do periodically Fabricate there as well so I have claims ready to go, but I'm not ready for military action there yet.
My next big target will be Bengal, but right now that's looking like a really tricky war. They're allied with Wu, who are the current Emperors of China and have been doing surprisingly well. They're also allied with Malacca, which is allied with the Mamluks; Malacca is the most powerful regional player in the East Indies, we've butted heads a few times there around my Trade Company provinces. Overall this game is lagging far behind Portugal in my East Indies approach, by this point I had totally dominated that area and monopolized production of Cloves, but currently I just have a couple of tenuous footholds and am blocked from easy expansions by powerful webs of alliances. Which isn't a huge deal just yet, just something I may eventually deal with.
Phew! Moving along the clock dial:
I've been getting more active in Africa. The most important action took place nearly a century ago when I took control of the Ivory Coast from France and Denmark, letting me drive most of the world's trade to the English Channel and away from Spain, Portugal and France. Since then I've made a few attempts at breaking into Mali (who are allied with Denmark) but have not yet succeeded. Mali has a huge army, is up to date on tech, have high-level forts, and most of their territory is Terra Incognita so movement in there would be incredibly slow. They also have strong local alliances, so making them a co-belligerant will pull in Air, Yao and others. I usually C-B them intending to take territory, but end up fighting defensively on the Ivory Coast, eventually defeating their armies but unable to take land from them. Maybe next time!
Spain colonized most of South Africa, and I was able to take that from them - more on that later. This is one of the more satisfying parts of the game, as whoever owns the Cape of Good Hope province automatically dominates that Trade Node and will get a free Merchant, which they can use elsewhere since trade from here only flows to the Ivory Coast.
Between Mali and the Cape, I fought a war against Kongo. I already dominated the Ivory Coast but they did have a few Centers of Trade that I wanted for completeness sake, plus they have a nice Monument in Mambuka. This was a relatively straightforward war, with the mildly interesting wrinkle that Kongo was the one Catholic nation in Africa. I focused on taking their provinces, but in the future I may try and turn them Protestant.
The war I just won before starting this post was primarily against Zimbabwe, but pulled in Mombasa and Mahafaly as co-belligerents and Aljuraan as a non-co-belligerent. This war was all about trade. I already have a pretty good route to move trade from India through Astrakhan to Crimea to Kiev and on into my totally-dominated European funnel to the English Channel. Most siphoning happens in Aden, Aleppo and Basra, where the Mamluks dominate. This war for the east cost of Africa should give me very strong control of the Zanzibar trade node, which may help in drawing some other trade away from the Aden path to Alexandria. Once trade hits the Cape of Good Hope I have a straight shot through Ivory Coast to the Channel. Unlike in my Portugal game I'm not routing everything through this, it will mostly be local trade.
Moving on from Africa back to Europe: My main focus lately has been conquering the colonizers. Spain is the biggest priority as a long-term #2 power and the biggest colonial overlord, but Portugal is a lot smaller, and very shortly before my Zimbabwe war I managed to conquer Portugal. I think this only took two wars, thanks to my Administrative Efficiency and multiple nice war score cost reductions.
During my first war against Portugal, I was reminded that there's a huge malus to accept a treaty that would result in the war leader's complete annexation. This is especially painful against colonizers, since even if the mother country is fully occupied, you'd need to siege down like two whole continents to make them accept. The "trick" is to declare on one of their allies and make the colonizer a co-belligerent, since the ally won't have the malus for sacrificing their friend.
But I'd been too successful in isolating Portugal and they didn't have any allies left after Spain annexed Guanmar in a previous war. Fortunately, Portugal was the Defender of the Faith. Unfortunately, I'd also been too effective in stamping out Catholicism in Europe. The only independent Catholic states left were the Papal States, who I had a truce with, and Spain, who I also had a truce with and who Portugal hated and wouldn't defend. I ended up getting around this by declaring on the remnants of France, who had fallen into a Personal Union under Brittany, a landlocked OPM in the HRE. I couldn't declare on Brittany itself due to Perpetual Peace in the HRE, but somehow declaring on their junior subject worked.
Once I was finally able to get into the war, it ended pretty quickly, as Portugal was already exhausted from its previous Spanish war. I took their few remaining inland Maghreb provinces and the rest of Portugal proper, and a single token province from France, but the real prizes were the beefy colonies of Brazil, Rio de la Plata, Mexico and California, which now joined by former English colonies.
Now that Town Halls are available I don't really need to worry about Governing Capacity any more, but I've been giving provinces to my HRE vassals when it makes sense. My general priority is:
- I'll keep provinces with a culture I already accept.
- I'll keep provinces with Great Projects that I can use (either immediately or after accepting a culture).
- I'll keep non-European provinces with a Center of Trade or an Estuary. I'll convert these to Protestantism and then give them to Trade Companies.
- European provinces with a culture I don't accept will go to an adjacent vassal Prince.
- Provinces that are outside Europe but adjacent to a Prince will get fed to them. I've now "snaked" states like Perm and Astrakhan far east to Siberia, and others like Provence and Catalonia across the Mediterranean to North Africa.
- Provinces that are outside Europe and far from any HRE princes are kept by me as regular (non-Trade Company) territories. Once I build a Town Hall they're basically free to govern.
One little administrative trick: after winning a war, I'll often get a big chunk of territory, and I might want to keep one or two provinces inside it while giving the rest away. You can start to Core all the territories as long as you own everything that's in range and contiguous to your borders. But, once you give away border provinces, those interior ones won't be considered "adjacent" and you'll need to wait for your vassals to finish coring before you can start to core yours. So you should click the "Core" button for everything you want to keep before transferring provinces you want to get rid of.
I've also been fighting Spain, and those wars have been going well. Spain is stronger than Portugal, both in Europe and the New World, but the Vassal Swarm is incredibly strong, and the Mamluks have been happy to help me out too. In the first war I took all their islands other than a couple like Galapagos that I didn't have range for. Over successive wars I've taken their remaining Pacific holdings, the North African coast, and so on. This has been another great phase of expanding the HRE. In one war, I'll take a single province from Spain that has a core for, say, Leon, and another single province with a core for Catalonia, and so on. I'll core those provinces, convert them to Protestantism, add to the HRE, and then release them as a OPM vassal. They automatically join the HRE as a vassal prince. The UI will say that they release with the Catholic religion, because most of their cores are still in Catholic land; but in my experience they'll almost immediately convert to Protestantism, probably because their one owned province is Protestant. In the next war, I'll fight a Reconquest war, and will be able to take all of the remaining Leonese, Aragonese, Catalonian, etc. provinces. This leaves extra War Score, and my Spy Network will have given me a ton of claims to use to take more lands. Even the ones I take for myself I'll end up giving away as described above; this is a lot cheaper, since I have much more Admin Efficiency and stuff, so I'm better off taking the province and giving it than transferring the occupation and giving directly in the peace deal.
I think I have one more big war to fight against Spain before finally defeating them and taking their New World colonies, which will put me firmly in control of four continents. I think I'll be able to do that before worrying about their colonies revolting.
I fought a bit more against Denmark, they're very diminished now and I'll probably be able to add them to the HRE before long. I missed the opportunity to release Norway as a vassal since Norway has a core on a Great Project I already took for myself and want to keep, so instead Friesberg, Mecklenberg and other states have gotten to rule much of Scandinavia.
Muscovy is also a shell of its former self, and as noted above I've granted most of their lands to my far-east-European vassals. I kind of messed up after the last war and their capital ended up in Asia, so I just fought a war to take those Asian provinces and force Muscovy back into Europe. They'll eventually become part of the HRE.
I'm at the point now where money is meaningless. I'll hit 1 million Ducats in the bank before long. I still focus on trade when planning my strategy, which is largely from habit but also helps starve potential enemies and hopefully make future conquests easier. I'm also getting near 1 million maximum Manpower as well. For well over a century I've been throwing bodies into Great Projects to speed their completion. I haven't built anywhere near my Force Limit yet and haven't felt the need until now because the Vassal Swarm can crush anything near Europe and my main armies can handle the stuff outside. However, if I do start a war in China I'll probably need to raise some more serious armies for that... probably still nowhere near my Force Limit, but more than I've had to date.
Let's see, I think that's it! I'm coming up on Enlightenment, and will finally be able to start making use of all the Coal provinces I've been acquiring. I need to refresh my memory on the Revolution mechanic. In my Portugal game I hadn't gotten very involved in European expansion outside of Iberia, until the Revolution started in... I think France? I remember that being an exciting war but the details are fuzzy for me. Anyways, I don't think there are any European powers in my game who could become the Revolution Target. It would be interesting if it happened to the Mamluks or Wu or something. I think there might be some benefit to spawning the Revolution in my own borders so I can more easily crush it, but I'm not sure yet if I want to go down that path.
I'm also not sure exactly what I'm doing in this game. Earlier I had vaguely thought of forming Rome, which would probably still be doable, but very expensive to annex all the necessary vassals and would require many wars against my faithful allies the Mamluks. Trying for a World Conquest also sounds tempting, but I imagine that could get really tedious. As before, I'll keep playing this game until it isn't fun any more. Fortunately, so far it's still really fun!
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