EUIV: Tactics, Tips, Strategies, Questions....

[Kushan]

Blockades - how do they work?


As Castille I'm trying to blockade the port at Gibralter. I hit the "Detach Blockade", and a ship does indeed detach, but then what? I can't find a way to actually get the ship to sail into the port.

The ship just needs to be in the sea zone that that province's port is located in in order to blockade. Have to look at the map. It doesn't matter if it connects to 2-3 other sea zones, only the one with the port graphic on the map matters. If a sea zone has 2-3 provinces with a port in it, then you can effectively blockade all 3 at one time. Detach blockade is like the detach siege button, use it if your moving your fleet through a province and want to detach a small unit as your main force moves elsewhere.

[Nefaro]

Some tips I picked up from extensive play of the demo and a bit of time as Castille yesterday:

1) All 3 schools of MP are important, but Admin is first among equals, since you can't open new slots for Idea Groups without moving up the Admin tech tree.  Also you need Admin for everything from improving Stability to creating Cores.

Hell yes.  Get Admin all you can in early game!

2) Advisers are a LOT more expensive than they were in III. When money is tight, see about getting by with only 1 or 2.  Depending on your Monarch's stats, it might make more sense to have 1 Lev. III adviser producing 3MPs/month than 3 Lev I.

As an addition to point #1 above, you probably want to at least hire an Administration Adviser ASAP.  Each of the three advisor slots are for one of the three - Admin, Diplo, Military.  Advisors will give you a bonus, depending on their level, to the appropriate point income!

3) Never reduce naval maintenance if you are at all relying on trade, as it will reduce your trade efficiency.

Dunno if I'd fully agree with this since some nations with a big Navy can have absolutely crippling Naval Maintenance, especially at the start of the game when everyone is relatively poor and low tech.  The English fleet in 1444 is pretty insane.  I even had to scrap a few of their Large Warships to get back in the black aside from dropping fleet maintenance quite a ways during peacetime.  The trade income boost from the light ships' trade support was nowhere near what I was spending on maintanance at the time.

5) You now apparently have a limit to the number of diplomatic agreements you can have (that little 2/4 or whatever on the diplomacy screen).  I THINK it really is a limit to the number of countries, not the number of agreements, so if you have an alliance, a royal marriage, and are guaranteeing independence all with the same country, it only counts as 1. I don't know if that's a bug or WAD.

Yes, only counting a single foreign country as one, no matter how many of such agreements you have with it, is WAD.  I read it in the "Hints" pop-up regarding the specific term (Diplomacy Limit??).  That also tells you which specific agreements count against this limit - there are only about 4 or 5.  IIRC... Alliance, Royal Marriage, Personal Union, and one or two others. 

I suppose this was an additional lock on the ridiculous runaway alliance DOWs from EU3 that ended up in constant world wars.  Hopefully the AI behavior in EU4 got a workover regarding that problem too.

6) Similarly, in addition to force limits, you have a limit to the number of commanders you can field. Each commander above the limit costs 1 military MP/month. Converting your ruler or heir doesn't count, so if you're stuck with one with crappy stats, ship him off to battle and hope he doesn't make it home.

LOL!  Just make sure you have an heir with a strong claim!  ;D

7) Harsh Treatment is VERY effective in dealing with rebellious provinces, but also very expensive (50 military MP).  Use as a last resort only.

It also only gives -5% revolt risk there, so it's not a huge payoff either. 


Good suggestions TGB, I just wanted to add to them!

[sandman2575]

Detach blockade is like the detach siege button, use it if your moving your fleet through a province and want to detach a small unit as your main force moves elsewhere.

So the button is just redundant for the usual "Separate forces" button - ?? I'm confused.

Also confusing to me is the talk about "Upstream" and "Downstream" when it comes to trade flows.  I understand that you collect money from trade by having a merchant in a node that covers territory you own.  I also understand that, for nodes that aren't within your territory (but still within your 'range' - ?), you can send a merchant there to "Steer" trade back to a node where you can "collect." 

But I don't get this idea of transferring "trade power" Upstream as opposed to Downstream?   ???

Also, it seems that you can *still* collect and steer trade from nodes within your territory *even without a merchant there* - ??

[tgb]

Also, it seems that you can *still* collect and steer trade from nodes within your territory *even without a merchant there*

You can, but not nearly as much. Try it.

[Nefaro]

Also, it seems that you can *still* collect and steer trade from nodes within your territory *even without a merchant there*

You can, but not nearly as much. Try it.

Pretty sure you get a +10% trade income bonus in your home trade node, with one of your merchants collecting there.

Considering most of the peripheral trade nodes that feed into these bigger ones are pretty thin at game start, it's often the most value to set one of your Merchies to collect at home in the early game and the other to "feed" it from "upstream".   Then send your Light Ships to patrol the home trade node to gather more trade power in it, and therefore gain more of the income available there.

I'm sure that later on after trade routes have matured, trade tech has increased the bonuses & production, ideas give you more available Merchants to command, and the New World trade nodes start providing an inflow of new high-demand resources, then it'll be time to branch out your merchants and light ships out along the nodes.

I'm diggin' the new stuff in EU4, such as this new Trade system.  Another huge improvement is the Monarch Points system - it makes for more tough decisions.   It really seems like there are fewer crappy exploitative meta-gaming tricks in EU4, compared to EU3.

[Kushan]

Detach blockade is like the detach siege button, use it if your moving your fleet through a province and want to detach a small unit as your main force moves elsewhere.

So the button is just redundant for the usual "Separate forces" button - ?? I'm confused.

Detach siege/blockade only splits 2 units off of your army/navy. The split force button which will split off half of your force. Unlike CK2, you don't have to have a huge army to siege a province. It helps if you do but you can siege with much less. This allows you to split your armies up and siege multiple provinces at once. As long as you pay attention and don't let your forces get picked off in detail by superior numbers of reinforcements.

[Yskonyn]

As a rule of thumb, 2 to 3 batallions is enough to keep a siege going.
So if you have a bigger army, you can detach the Siege section of the army and have the rest roam about again.

Same goes for blockading ports with a fleet. But there I have no idea what a rule of thumb is for minimum blockade amount. But the technical function of the button is the same.

As pointed out above, the split army button just divides your army in two parts.

[Nefaro]

Does the 'Make Core' diplo option seem to take effect rather quickly to you guys?  You can pretty much lay claim to any territory adjacent to one of yours, or even along any sea coast you can reach, by sending a diplomat for less than a year.   ??? 

Similarly - converting the population of a province you control to your culture or religion doesn't take long at all and the biggest hurdle is spending the Monarch Points to do so (which can slow down how quickly your next idea/tech advancement is achieved, of course).

It seems like time isn't a big factor in these things anymore.  I'm okay with that.. but maybe it's too quick now??

[tgb]

I haven't tried to change a culture, since I haven't played long enough to have the need, but I have converted religion in Granada.  It took a Missionary, not MP's, and took about 3 1/2 years for one province.

[Nefaro]

I haven't tried to change a culture, since I haven't played long enough to have the need, but I have converted religion in Granada.  It took a Missionary, not MP's, and took about 3 1/2 years for one province.

That's good.  At least the religion change takes longer.

I've changed two provinces' culture to my own and it too something like 246 days and 50-75 Diplo MPs.   

While the Diplo MP cost was pretty high, the time it took seemed rather short.   The one I wanted to question most is the time it takes to place a Core claim on a foreign territory through a diplomat.  You can do it in something like three to six months.   :o  I suppose that the limited amount of available Diplomats is supposed to be the retarding factor to how quickly such claims are made but I've had the AI spamming claims on my stuff quite steadily thus far.  Seems to be happening at a rather rapid pace.

I'd say the time it takes to place Cores on foreign provinces is about my only head-scratcher thus far.  I wouldn't be surprised if they adjusted it somewhat, or better yet placed some kind of cooldown on it, in a future update.

[Jarhead0331]

So...is this a must buy or what?  I was trying to hold off, but the futility of this approach is starting to sink in...

[Nefaro]

So...is this a must buy or what?  I was trying to hold off, but the futility of this approach is starting to sink in...

I say YES. 

If you don't get the 'Stutter' bug permanently stuck in your game.  Mine came and went in a short period and hasn't reared it's ugly face since then, fortunately.  It didn't make the game unplayable for me, but was a bit annoying at the time.  No way to know if you may suffer from this without buying, however, since it reportedly wasn't present in the Demo.  Devs & betas are looking into it, either way.

The game itself is a huge improvement over EU3, IMO.

[PanzersEast]

So...is this a must buy or what?  I was trying to hold off, but the futility of this approach is starting to sink in...

Am I the meanest.... Sho Nuff
Am I the prettiest.... Sho Nuff
Am I the baddest mofo lodown around this town... Sho Nuff

Who's tha MASTER.....

[undercovergeek]

So...is this a must buy or what?  I was trying to hold off, but the futility of this approach is starting to sink in...

yes, shame on you!

[jomni]

What is more profitable?
Sending a merchant to participate in a trade zone?
Or directing trade to a trade zone (that you dominate)?