Europa Universalis IV announced

[Alcibiades]

How's the new exploration mechanic limit/lock exploration?

[Monoriu]

What ideas do people pick? 

As Portugal, the first one is obviously Exploration.  I always pick Expansion as the second one for the additional colonist, permanent CB against Asian and African countries, trade power and increased settliers.  Third one is a little less certain, but my experience is that Quantity works best to solve the manpower issue once and for all, and the invaluable 50% land force limit modifier. 

I am currently agonising over the fourth one.  I am constantly at war and I need every ADM point I can get, so I tend to pick a military idea and turn down administrative ideas. 

Naval is obviously out, as I have zero probelms winning naval battles just by piling up heavy ships.  Aristocratic ideas don't seem very enticing.  So I am going to pick one of -

Offensive - +20% land force limit, better siege ability, 5% discipline.  I already have +50% land force limit from Quantity though. 
Defensive - 15% morale bonus (this is huge), +1 annual army tradition, -25% land attrition, better reinforce speed
Quality - +1 annual army tradition, better infantry, cavalry and artillery, 5% discipline.  3 naval ideas which are quite useless though. 

Trade ideas are obvious for Portugal, but I often have +50 monthly cash flow right now so there is no urgency to pick Trade. 

Leaning toward defensive at the moment, mainly for the morale bonus.  Thoughts?

[Eddie Teach]

If I'm playing a blobby game(which I usually am), then I go for admin early for the -25% coring costs. Quantity and Religious are also high priorities. Influence is a good dump for dip points.

[Liep]

How's the new exploration mechanic limit/lock exploration?

Much better in that it's easier and faster to explore the entire map, maybe a little slower exploring an exact province.

[DGuller]

I never claimed to have all the dlc. But it's patch 1.14, so I wouldn't call it out of date.

I know you didn't.  But it puts your enthusiasm for Columbus in context - its not that great with the new exploration mechanic. ie, you cant do all that exploration with the new system in the lifetime of Columbus.

I wish DLCs were the one innovation that game designers did away with.  They probably wouldn't, because it must be a cash cow, but it creates such an unmanageable number of permutations of the same game.

[crazy canuck]

How's the new exploration mechanic limit/lock exploration?

The zones you can explore get unlocked as you colonize further out.   So there is no more manually sending out an explorer to the limit of their ability.  And as Liep pointed out, once a zone is accessible it is very easy to explore.  Basically you hit an explore button and that brings up the regions you can explore (and those regions are broken down into exploring the sea and coastal areas).  You can no longer manually send an explorer to a particular unexplored area. 

[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

[Ender]

Is there a Complete version?
The 40 bucks version at Steam doesn't have Cossacks expansion.
Should i wait for a Complete version?

[Eddie Teach]

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.

[Caliga]

If for no other reason than 'Threaten War' (which I'm pretty sure you need to DLC to do), the expansion is worth it.  That's an awesome feature that should have been in the game way earlier.  I'm not sure if AI nations use Threaten War too as I've never had that happen to me yet.  But as the Turks I used it to get rid of Genoa in the Black Sea way easier than usual.

[Eddie Teach]

I managed to get into a coalition war today. 

Playing Florence, I've gotten all the other Italian nations good and pissed off. But I'm allied with Austria, Hungary, France and Savoy. 

I'd taken Siena and Lucca in solo wars, Corsica & 3 papal provinces with help from allies, then Sardinia and 2 of Naples provinces with allies by piling on when Aragon was getting clobbered by Castile and Otto/Tunis.  That triggered the coalition.

It looked like they were gonna fall apart, 5-10 years went by and nothing. Bosnia's AE had fallen into the 30s(though they stayed in). Then Milan just up and declared on me.  As expected, my alliance tore theirs to shreds. I took 2 provinces in the peace, so we may see this again in a few years. 

[MadImmortalMan]

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. 

[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.

[Monoriu]

I managed to get into a coalition war today. 

Playing Florence, I've gotten all the other Italian nations good and pissed off. But I'm allied with Austria, Hungary, France and Savoy. 

I'd taken Siena and Lucca in solo wars, Corsica & 3 papal provinces with help from allies, then Sardinia and 2 of Naples provinces with allies by piling on when Aragon was getting clobbered by Castile and Otto/Tunis.  That triggered the coalition.

It looked like they were gonna fall apart, 5-10 years went by and nothing. Bosnia's AE had fallen into the 30s(though they stayed in). Then Milan just up and declared on me.  As expected, my alliance tore theirs to shreds. I took 2 provinces in the peace, so we may see this again in a few years. 

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.

[Norgy]

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.