Europa Universalis IV announced

[Queequeg]

What are the best ideas for the Netherlands?  You start off with Naval, Trade and Exploration....going defensive so I can keep the Dutch sieging Flanders while I build up a stack-killer.  What else?

[crazy canuck]

You might be the only one here who is playing the Netherlands

[Queequeg]

You might be the only one here who is playing the Netherlands

Why?  Probably one of the hardest countries. 

[crazy canuck]

You might be the only one here who is playing the Netherlands

Why?  Probably one of the hardest countries.

Maybe, I have just never played them in any version of this game.

[garbon]

I've never played many later start dates.

[crazy canuck]

I've never played many later start dates.

I dont think I have played any of them.  It seems paradox puts a lot of time and energy into creating them but I wonder how many people use them.  Its kind of fun to scroll through the dates to see what changes over time.  But I only do that a few times.

[Queequeg]

1444 start date usually ends in a ton of a-historic stuff within a 50 year period that kind of annoys me, like Lithuania totally falling to pieces or the OE converting the entire balkans within a 20 year period.

[Viking]

You might be the only one here who is playing the Netherlands

I tried it and survived.

Defensiveness only really lengthens the time between siege events rather than actually strengthening the siege, so defensive might just be a way to prolong the length of a losing war rather than actually successfully defending what you have. I'd rather consider Quantity as your first military idea. It does give you extra ships, but more importantly it gives you a larger army stack. Defending in a swamp over a river might just be the way to survive. Another way might be to find the military width of your widest area, then build an army  that size, with a fleet of the same size and during war, sail to sea, and sail into besieged ports when the enemy army besieges.

It is hard, but, if you can get that alliance with france then you are good to go. As for trade, collect abroad, that is the only way. You can't really power through bordeaux or london without embargoing somebody and provoking a war. The thing about collecting abroad, your trade power is reduced, so you get a smaller part of the pie, but the pie remains the same size, so if you own the entire malacca trade center steer there and collect there. Same applies to cape town.

[MadImmortalMan]

I've found that gold is sort of odd as I've lots available to spend as Portugal but without the accompanying monarch points, it just sort of piles up.

I found the opposite playing as Naples. I went massively into debt trying to get out from under Aragon, got free and now I'm squeezed making about a ducat a month in cash flow and fifty something outstanding loans. I'm too far away from anything colonizable to go that route yet..

[DGuller]

Money is definitely a scarce commodity at first, and doubly so if you have to go deep into debt just to survive.

[Queequeg]

You can get an alliance and an RM with France if you act fast, including a Call to Arms, but right after you annex Flanders they break it off and you're stuck on perma-hostile.  I think I'm going to ask for Brabant to be released so I can annex it later on in the next one. 

[garbon]

I've found that gold is sort of odd as I've lots available to spend as Portugal but without the accompanying monarch points, it just sort of piles up.

I found the opposite playing as Naples. I went massively into debt trying to get out from under Aragon, got free and now I'm squeezed making about a ducat a month in cash flow and fifty something outstanding loans. I'm too far away from anything colonizable to go that route yet..

What DG said. At first it is really hard to make money (starting as Portugal I used to keep my army maintenance all the way down when not fighting wars or natives) but once you start raking it in, it begins to snowball. I now regularly have about 14k sitting in my war chest.  I noticed that people posted about this being an issue on p'dox forums.

[Viking]

the ai isn't capable of organizing it's own trade or sabotaging yours

watching hansa divert trade from the north sea to london is just baffling.. the ai sticks to putting light ships only into trade nodes where it has ports, I modded an ocean trade node for the north atlantic collecting from the north american nodes and transferring to london, bordeuax and north sea and the ai put merchants in the node, but no ships.  the ai doesn't seem to use basing rights either, it never makes it to the east simply because it doesn't build the infrastructure to get round africa. It's not until it starts getting the absurd colonizing range of the late game that it starts to colonize and then it often does it in strange places, merely because it can. Spain and Portugal have no business colonizing chesapeake when spain doesn't have antwerp

[garbon]

In my game, mid-17th century, Spain is now in Taiwan. But yeah other than them, no one else is around. Dutch went for Canada instead.

[Queequeg]

I FUCKING DID IT.  OH MY GOD.  YES.  THE KEY WAS TO NOT HAVE A LAND BORDER WITH FRANCE UNTIL YOU COULD DEAL WITH IT.  OH MY GOD.  IT WAS SO MUCH WORK BUT IT'S FUCKING DONE.  FRANCE SO MUCH AS FARTS IN MY GENERAL DIRECTION AND I HAVE A HUGEASS COALITION READY TO FUCK THEIR SHIT UP, AND MY NAVY WILL FUCKING BLOW THEIR SNAIL-EATING ASSES OUT OF THE FUCKING ATLANTIC.  I CAN AFFORD TO JUST THROW MERCANARIES AT THESE ASSWIPES.  I'M SO FUCKING NUTS THAT AUSTRIA VIEWS ME AS A THREAT TO THEIR INDEPENDENCE!  FUCK YEAH!  OH MY GOD IT FEELS SO GOOD.