Europa Universalis IV announced

[Eddie Teach]

I fought the most glorious coalition war when I played Portugal under a previous patch.  I was allied with France.  Austria and most of the HRE minors joined a coalition and declared war on me.  They had several times the number of troops as my alliance.  What happened was I expanded my holdings in India and dealt with rebels when hordes of coalition troops invaded France, who fought valiantly.  After a year or two France alone could no longer hold it.  At which point I signed a peace with the coalition leader by having France release some provinces. 

Everybody was happy.

[Josephus]

There's not gonna be a complete version any time soon, they want as much of your cash as they can get.

However, it's perfectly fine without Cossacks, or several other dlcs.

Damn I just realized how many DLCs this thing has. 

Too many.

Just wait until HoI4; you will be able to buy DLC for gameplay.

What do you mean? Like in an app, where you could buy upgraded tanks and stuff?

[Josephus]

Sometimes I find this game frustrating. No sooner do I understand the trade system then they throw me for another loop--the fort movement thing.

Playing  my worst game ever as Russia. It's 1730. The Ottomans run the world. The y're literally at the gates of Vienna. The Commonwealth is quite large but they never go to war with Otto.

It's frustrating first of all because as Russia I can't make decent allies. Commonwealth would be a nice friend against Otto, but they hate me. I understand we have border issues.

But I tried to make nice with France, but they see me as a rival. And the distance between our borders is also a hindrance, despite that we have a common enemy between us.,

So Otto has been slowly chipping away at me, Russia. Every war I've lost.

My most recent war in 1730 , they DOWd me, and we were fairly close in military strenghth. But that quickly went sour. The biggest issue I had was land movement. I quickly build some mercs but they were unable to gather to a designated spot because of occupied forts.

I don't understand why I couldn't move from Volgoda to Belozero because of a fort in Yaroslaval, adjacent to Volgoda but no where near Volgoda).  Yet Otto was able to chase my final retreating army all the way to St. Petes, despite my having forts all around it, including Novgorod and Ingermarland. Why didn't those forts impede the Otto advance?

[Eddie Teach]

Normally, when you enter a province adjacent to one with a fort, you enter that fort's "zone of control" and can only advance on the fort or back away the way you came. But I think that gets wonky sometimes when there's two forts adjacent to each other.

Side note- the capital forts of South American tribes don't seem to restrict movement at all. Not sure if this has to do with their low tech, or maybe none of the level 1 forts exert zone of control? I haven't paid enough attention. 

[Josephus]

So based on that I have two questions.

My mercs were created in one province, but were unable to move out (they didn't actually enter the province), every province adjacent to Volgoda was out of bounds I guess because a province next to Volgoda had a fort? (theoretically speaking what would a fort in every province do?)

2. Should Otto have been able to chase me to St. Pete's when I had a slew of forts along the way?

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah, that happens sometimes when people create units or land them off a ship, they're unable to move them anywhere. It's not a very well-designed system IMO.

Sometimes when you have forts adjacent to each other, it'll allow movement between the two forts when it wouldn't if there was an open space there. I guess the game gets confused too?

[Eddie Teach]

One helpful thing I've found for coalition avoidance or mitigation- the better relations over time bonus affects the rate at which AE fades. The most common way to get that is 20% boost from an advisor, but you can also get 30% for taking humanism. Italy has 50% as a national idea, so in my current game I can go from outrage to zero in 10 years, rather than the default 20.

Sadly, I don't have El Dorado so no extra merchant for size 10 colonial nations. The trading companies have been most helpful though. 

[Sophie Scholl]

I'm beginning to miss the old fort system.  It looks like others are as well.

[Caliga]

I think because I picked Expansion instead of that other idea, I'm screwed as the Ottomans.  I have a poor colonist sitting around with nothing to do... and I so wanted to create Ottoman Australia.

G'DAY EFFENDI

So even without explorers I've been able to cobble together a nifty little colonial empire.  Along the Indian Ocean rim I have Zanzibar, a fort on the coast opposite, a colony in the interior of Kenya (!), Aden and Mocha, Socotra, the Maldives, and all of the island chains off the west coast of Sumatra.  I'm debating whether to try to conquer Sumatra, Malaya, or Ceylon next.  The Bahmani Sultanate (as usual) controls virtually all of India and is one of my rivals, as well as the rival of my closest ally, Afghanistan, so I'm leaning toward Ceylon.

I also probably need to destroy Kilwa soon before they get powerful enough to retake Zanzibar.

[Eddie Teach]

Started my first Ironman game, Ottomans. Found out when I get a little too aggressive and run out of manpower too soon, I can easily bail myself out with mercs. 

Overall, pretty lucky up til now. 1584, Regency, heir is only 4 years old.  Oh well, I'm behind on admin points anyway...

[Eddie Teach]

So much for that game. Just ran into one of those wars where Poland magically* gets odds on every battle though you have twice as many troops on the front, and even when you get odds they win anyway due to better generals. And they're willing to empty their treasury hiring mercs too.

I should probably get Art of War dlc if I want to do any WCs. It's getting old being always behind in admin points while having diplo points to waste. I need to be able to grow vassals, but can't do that if I can't give them land in peace deals.

*Ok, not so much magic as that they hide behind their forts and have one or two big armies that use forced march. I could do the same, but then I'm not conquering Polish territory. And it's a very long border, sometimes they'll siege my provinces down before I can even get to them.

[Caliga]

Overall, pretty lucky up til now. 1584, Regency, heir is only 4 years old.  Oh well, I'm behind on admin points anyway...

I actually had a long regency in my game and I feel like in retrospect it turned out to be a good thing for me.

It forced me to stop expansion in the Balkans and, more importantly, built up my manpower reserves to massive levels.  I still fought some wars in support of Crimea, but overall it was a period of peaceful nation building.

[Eddie Teach]

I try not to get 10 years behind on manpower as a rule, but it does happen sometimes. Usually that's not when I get a regency though. 

[Kleves]

Which of the more recent expansions are worth getting, if any are?

[crazy canuck]

all add to the game in important ways.