EU3 - ready for play yet?

[sbr]

I had russian borders plus 6 scan provinces, Baltic coast down to east prussia, Lithuania, all GH and steppe nomad provinces, Iran, Caucasus, North India, Inland SEAsia provinces China and Korea plus colonizing the entire corridor by 1650, when the holy war CB ran out. So, I had well more than 200 provinces. I beelined for magistrates.

Once I got caught up with the basic four levels of buildings (not forts and remember most provinces in inland asia get ports) I trashed the colleges and started building other buildings. I didn't play out the game though, too much of a hassle running all of asia.

Edit: At some point I also stopped building MP buildings, I had much more manpower than I could spend or use. Colleges take 24 months to build, not 6 years.

I meant from the start, a province that had no gov building would take 6 years to get to College.

[Solmyr]

On the subject of CT, you can also take Church Attendance Duty (always nice for large multicultural empires) and enact Gilded Iconography, it gives the same +3 CT and a bunch of other stuff. Also, once you build fine arts academies, PotA becomes irrelevant.

[sbr]

Also, once you build fine arts academies, PotA becomes irrelevant.

True, though how long does it take to build that many FAAs?  Anyhoo a lot of Ideas become irrelevant later in the game; if you are the only one running around with 3 6 star advisers in the 1400's you will have a huge advantage on everyone else for a very long time.

[Solmyr]

Anyhow, in last night's game France managed to destroy both Brittany and Burgundy almost by accident. I was happily declaring war on Orleans, when it called Brittany into the war, who then called Burgundy. Luckily my other vassals zerg-rushed Burgundy while I was occupying Brittany. The Burgundian armies spent their time chasing tiny one-regiment armies, allowing them to spread out and occupy their shit. When Burgundy went bankrupt it was all over. Rape of Burgundy by 1403 ftw.

[Solmyr]

One further question, which do people think is the better early cavalry unit, latin knights or chevauchee? I'm still somewhat fuzzy on the exact effects of all the offensive/defensive unit stats.

[Maximus]

Played for the first time with the illegal territory mechanic. Tried Milan... wow bad choice. How do you gain territory in the empire now anyway, is inheritance the only way?

[sbr]

Played for the first time with the illegal territory mechanic. Tried Milan... wow bad choice. How do you gain territory in the empire now anyway, is inheritance the only way?

You can get occasional event driven cores but inheritance is much more important there than anywhere else.

[DGuller]

Played for the first time with the illegal territory mechanic. Tried Milan... wow bad choice. How do you gain territory in the empire now anyway, is inheritance the only way?

Inheritance is definitely the best way, and a very good way at that.  You gain cores on every HRE territory you inherit, not just the same cultural union as you.  For that reason, Milan is actually a pretty good game choice, you will have plenty of opportunities to inherit deep into German lands.

[Maximus]

Well that's good, but inheritance is a slow and unreliable method. Or I'm doing it wrong. I can see if you force countries into personal unions maybe but that seems reputation-costly.

[DGuller]

Well that's good, but inheritance is a slow and unreliable method. Or I'm doing it wrong. I can see if you force countries into personal unions maybe but that seems reputation-costly.

Definitely force them into personal unions.  Analyze the ledger for the neighbors with low legitimacy, and start looking for obscure papers.

[The Brain]

My paper on post-coital behavior of Cro-Magnon Man was very well received.

[crazy canuck]

 

[Viking]

As a member of the empire you really need to choose if you want to become emperor, colonize/trade, expand outside the empire or leave.

So, you can as Pommerania or Hansa invade and conquer in the baltic, as burgundy in france etc.

Powermongering in the empire involves vassalizing the electors and become permanent emperor and then reform, upgrade and unify the fucker and conquer europe. I once unified the Empire as Milan/Italy with an Austria which joined which had managed to conquer all the balkans and the steppes as far as rostov on don, but only had 4 provinces in the empire. At that point I just quit... no point.

[Maximus]

Yea, I did that too, as Holland/Netherlands, but that was under the old rules when conquest was an option.

[jimmy olsen]

My paper on post-coital behavior of Cro-Magnon Man was very well received.

What the ...?