Europa Universalis IV announced

[Josephus]

The scope of this suggests that it will be the final DLC for the game and that's why the revisit each of the majors one more time.

If they do an EU5 after this, I hope they more or less keep diplomacy and warfare, but rework exploration, colonization and trade. Let's see.

Yeah. looking forward to this DLC. Honestly, not sure we need an EU5 after this. they've thrown the kitchen sink at this game now.

[crazy canuck]

I would like a 5th edition to the series if, as Zanza suggests, they rework exploration, colonization and trade.  If they could create new systems for those, it would be worthy of a stand alone game.

[Syt]

I fired EU4 up again to take another stab at it.

What I'm struggling to figure out is:

Development - is it worth investing in it (and if so - when), considering that it costs precious monarch points? In fact I'm often very unsure what it's worth spending them sweet sweet points on, considering that I need them for that ever important tech advancement and keeping stability at +1 or +2.

Estates - what are good/bad levels of influence? How much loyalty is "enough", and what are general benefits of high loyalty, and are privileges worth it to keep them happy? Does it make sense to give them monopolies or would I lose out too much income in the long run for short term gain? And that's not even going into ohw much land I should grant them or not, or how much of a max absolutism I should aim for.

Buildings - my instinct from EU2 days is that if I can build a building I should do so, but I've seen comments that there's some buildings and/or situations where it's just not worth it (not to mention money is usually in short supply).

I started a game yesterday, just reading through all the menu screens for almost two hours to try to piece things together for me and then it was time for bed, without ever unpausing.

[Syt]

Nvm, I see the EU4 wiki has strategy tips on all those; for some reason I never noticed those.

[Solmyr]

For development, early on I get my tech to 4 and then develop the capital to 30 to fulfill the age objective. This is especially important for non-western countries as it's the only way to spawn Renaissance in your state. Later on, generally speaking you shouldn't get tech if it's ahead of time or you haven't embraced the appropriate institution yet, since those waste monarch points. Those time are good for developing. Remember to activate the -10% development cost edict in any province you are developing.

Estates: Early game you can give out privileges without bothering about influence too much, as long as it doesn't go to 100. Usually the best privileges are the +1 mana ones, -25% advisor cost ones, religious diplomats for the clergy (+25 relations with countries of your religion), +manpower for nobility (but be careful with that one since it prevents you from seizing land from the nobility), and Patronage of the Arts (+prestige) for burghers. Also you should give the privilege where you take cheap loans from the burghers, since you can get quite a lot of money from that. Once you've repaid those, take them again since the loans will be bigger as your economy grows. It's a great way to jumpstart early conquests and buildings. Monopoly privileges essentially give you 80% of the money you would have gotten over the next 10 years from that trade good. You can give those if you really need the money right now. I haven't really used them, loans (burgher and regular ones as needed) are generally enough.

Remember to call the diet and seize land every 5 years or as much as you can. You want your crownland to go up all the time. You want to keep estate loyalty equilibrium at 50 so they don't rebel or give penalties after seizing land, since that reduces loyalty by 20. The rebels aren't too dangerous, but can be annoying. Less land for estates also means less influence, and at some point you want their loyalty to be higher than influence so you can revoke some privileges once absolutism comes around. You probably want to get absolutism to 100 eventually, so get rid of anything that reduces max absolutism (you don't need to do it all right away, since absolutism only goes up by 1 per year normally). Which privileges you revoke or keep depends on whether you get any other max absolutism bonuses so you can eventually get it to 100. This is why some people like to trigger the Court and Country disaster, since if you win you get a hefty max absolutism bonus and can keep more estate privileges.

For buildings I use this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/wbzzp8/building_guide/ . The only difference is that courthouses don't take a building slot anymore, so you can build them in pretty much every province and will probably need to if you expand a lot, to stay within your governing capacity.

[Syt]

 

[Threviel]

Been playing Anbennar a bit lately, been having great fun. Seems like a Kaiserreich for HoI equivalent in that I will probably have a hard time to go back to the base game.

[Zanza]

Current Dev Diary is on Russia, next one on France. That suggests they want to update almost everything...

Also:

And before you ask for it: No, there will not be dynamic trade in EU4. Period.

Dynamic trade in EU5 confirmed.

[Syt]

Been playing Anbennar a bit lately, been having great fun. Seems like a Kaiserreich for HoI equivalent in that I will probably have a hard time to go back to the base game.

Was listening to the latest Three Moves Ahead podcast yesterday where they spoke about it for 90 minutes. It sounds pretty amazing.