Hi,

I wish it wouldn't have had to come to this. But I was lanning eu4 with a friend, and he gets into a vassal independance war which I joined. After my friend was defeated, he refused to surrender or accept any peace deal. Luckily the AI would eventually send him something he agreed upon,
However he immediatly truce breaks and declares war upon me (out of spite?), and demands his lost territory back. Natuaraly, he is promptly defeated but this time he does not accept any peace with me.

He let his -3 stability, 3xbankrupt completly occupied country run for 70+ years, while I deal with rebels, a rising call for peace, war exhaustion and in the midst of it all several other wars I have to manage because of this moment of struggle and weakness for my own country. It was honestly the worst piece of gameplay I ever experienced just because he was so, so petty to accept his defeat and any peace deal (I was even giving him very, very beneficial peace deals like 1 province or white peace).
It was such a struggle, mentally too, to play against someone with so much spite and hate and ' cartman' like strategies.

My ultimate question is: How can a Human Player force or trigger a peace deal with another Human player who physically refuses to do so?

Paradox has a tendency to nerf Byzantium with every patch in order to make it more difficult for players to avoid annihilation and remove Kebab. A lot of major changes in the game came from shortcomings Byzantium players found and exploited (strait blocking, available rivals, available allies, available missions, military access exploits,...). But, they can never nerf Byzantium as much as we can break the game!

This is a simple Byzantine strategy that is effective 99% of the time. And you end up with full manpower and no loans! I've wrote it like defensive strategy, but it is also valid as offensive one if Ottomans get involved in a war in Europe.

1. Byzantine greatest advantage is Constantinople, because it makes around 90% of money and FL for Byzantium. The rest of the provinces are not important at all. That's why, on day 0, you should boost production in Achaea by 1 point so you can give it to the Burghers. Take admiral, 150 diplo points and money from them. Also, take a general and 150 mil points from Nobility. Then release both Achaea and Morea as vassals. Why is this important? Having 3 vassals (all loyal, btw) will keep your FL mostly on the same level and you'll have pretty much same level of cash and everything else, but the Ottomans will now have to siege 4 forts - 2 of them capital 2nd level forts. Also, you'll now have around 20k troops at your disposal, while you have only 13-14k when you just have Athens as your vassal. I've tried a couple of scenarios here - if you gift provinces to Athens, instead of releasing vassals, you get disloyal Burghers and Nobility and your FL drops to 9 (or 10). But, if you release vassals, you keep your FL and your estates loyalty remains 40%, even though you got 300 power points, money and a general and an admiral!

2. Couple of patches ago, rivalries got reworked so now you can't rival the Ottomans as Byzantium anymore. However, increase in available troops when you release vassals, will make the Ottomans a valid rival, so you can rival them.

3. Another huge benefit is that now you are an OPM which means you can join trade leagues. You can never get Venice as an ally if you are Byzantium, however, joining Venetian trade league is very easy if Venice doesn't rival you - you only have to boost your diplorelations for couple of months. If Venice rivals you, then you have Genovese and Hansa trade leagues at your disposal. It is not that important which league you join, you only need to have few distant capitals that Otto needs to siege to confuse the AI.

4. Also, couple of patches ago, Paradox decided to change available missions for Byzantium so players can't exploit "Conquer Southern Greece" mission, in order to trap Ottomans' troops in Negroponte. However, mission to conquer Asia minor coast, which gives you claims all over Western Anatolia is available, so you should take it.

5. Move your troops to Athens, build up to the FL, put your navy in Aegean Sea and wait for Otto to DoW you. If you got into Genovese trade league, you can boost your diplo relations with them and move your troops to Chios, which is even better solution, because you can go over FL and lower maintenance so you don't lose money.

6. When Otto DoWs, it will move all its troops to European side and start sieging Constantinople. You should move your army to Biga and siege it superfast. That will enable you block the strait very soon, since Biga doesn't have the fort. Otto's navy isn't a problem, because AI is not that much clever making use of it - they will split their navies in 3-4 stacks and park them in their provinces. Your navy, combined with Venice/Genoa and their allies will be enough to kill off any Ottoman naval stack (plus, you probably got a great admiral from Burghers).

7. Then, move on to siege the rest of the Anatolia. Kocaeli (because of the strait) and Ankara (because of access to Eastern Anatolia). You are in a position to siege forts very fast, because you got 40 AT general from Nobility + plus you can roll one more general and make generals from your ruler and heir, so chances that you will get a 2, or even 3 siege general are huge.

AI will then get completely confused. It is increadbly satisfying to watch Ottos 30+k death stack franticly strolling between Constantinople, Edirne and Salonica :) They simply don't know what to do - siege one of the 4 forts of me and my vassals, siege forts of my trade league buddies or chase their stacks all over Europe, so they end up not sieging the forts at all :)

When sieging of Anatolia is done, Ottomans will suffer huge WE and they won't recruit more troops, because they are already at their FL, so they will be willing to accept any peace offer. Peace offer should include all provinces required to complete the mission (Asia Minor coast) IF you are defender in the war, because you get 1% AE discount PER development, so you'll have AE around 15-20.

If you are attacker in the war - take 3 provinces around Strait of Bosphorus and return all cores you can - to Candar, Karaman, Knights and release any nation you can. In one of my test runs I fucked up and took everything, only to be killed by massive Islamic coalition (Mamluks, Candar, Karaman, Dulkadir, Ramazan and AQ), because you will get around 120 AE.

Don't raise autonomy in conquered provinces, core everything (you can also release one Sunni vassal and give him the land if you don't want to bother with coring) and lower autonomy. Why? Ottomans will die for the opportunity to get access over your territory, so, when your rebels spawn, allow Ottomans military access and they will kill them all :) so you'll get -100 unrest and be able to convert those lands with advisor and edict.

Strategy for after the war - build fort in Biga. The one in Kocaeli is not necessary, because you can block the strait by owning Constantinople, but, you need a fort in Biga in order to block their troops in Anatolia until you can siege Edirne.

Pay close attention to where their troops are. If they end up in Anatolia, just block the strait and DoW him for your cores. If they are in Europe, transfer your capital to Hudavendigar, delete fort in Constantinople and DoW him for land in Anatolia. You should be able to ally, at least, Karaman and AQ or QQ to keep your back safe and to reduce effect of AE in Anatolia.

Hey guys, it's Kaiser RRDFlorroBurrito, with a guide on how to get the achievement "Until death do us apart." My aim is to try to make this guide as new-player friendly as possible! Alright, let's begin.

Introduction

Until death do us apart

Secure a Royal Marriage with another country.

This achievement is actually one of the harder ones, and only 24.2% of players have completed it due to its difficulty and luck-based nature. Difficulty-wise, I’d say it’s a bit easier than “Raja of the Rajput Reich” or “Norwegian Wood.”

First Steps

So, the first thing you're gonna want to do is to launch Steam. You do this by double clicking with the left mouse button on the Steam Icon, whether that may be in your desktop, in your Start Menu, or where ever else it may be. After waiting for it to load, click on the Library tab at the top, find "Europa Universalis 4", and open it. It will open a little launcher; just press the play button and you’re ready to go!

You should hear either some calm orchestra starting with a couple of bell sounds, or if you’re feeling a little rebellious, some neat guitar riffs. If your music is orchestral but has vocals, you may have accidentally opened Crusader Kings 2 instead. This is a bit of a problem as the achievement does not exist in CK2. You will have to solve this with two steps:

• turn down the volume because the CK2 title music gets really loud

• close the game (or, you could go for “The Marriage Game” in CK2; might as well kill two achievements with two stones!)

If you instead hear some weird guy repeating the phrase “Terra Nova”, you may have accidentally opened Civ 5. You may want to uninstall the game and rethink your life on where you went wrong.

Preparation

Europa Universalis 4 should now be opened. If you still have doubts, the game helpfully says “Europa Universalis 4” on the title screen. Next, you will have to choose a country.

You have to be a bit careful choosing countries. Only a monarchy can do royal marriages, so if you pick a country such as Venice, it’s a no-go. Vassals and junior partners in personal unions will not work either. There are some other government forms and religions that have restrictions on royal marriages as well. All in all, it may take some trial and error. You could go for a really strong country like Granada, but I’d recommend France; it’s a hard start and doesn’t have great ideas but it’s a fun challenge. Next, when selecting, check the ironman box and make sure that it says “Achievements are enabled.” As long as ironman is active, all the settings are default, it is singleplayer, Steam is online, and the game checksum has not changed (usually due to mods; it would be unfair if you could install mods that made the game easier, such as MEIOU and Taxes), you should be good to go!

In the Game

Once you’re in the game, you’re gonna want to open the diplomacy screen of another country. You can do this by right-clicking on any country, or by pressing F and searching for one. Make sure that you did not click on your own country; this isn’t CK2, you can’t marry your own country (unless you disregarded my advice and kept CK2 open this whole time). A window should open on the left; on the right side of this tab, you will see a bunch of interactions under subcategories. Open the subcategories and you should find a button to request a royal marriage. You will require a free diplomat to do this, and there are some factors on whether or not they will accept, such as how much they like you, their number of open diplomatic relation slots, and so on, but I will not be getting technical; as long as there is a green check mark they will accept. You may have to click around until you find a country willing to accept. Anyone who has done achievements such as "Basileus" will be accustomed to this tedium and luck-based strategy.

Finishing Moves

Unpause the game, and after a day you should see a popup saying if they accepted or not. If they did, you should soon see a notification that you got the achievement! Congratulations! You are now in the top 25% of EU4 players in the world!

Conclusion

Alright guys, thanks for reading this guide. Hopefully you learned something about the game, picked up a few tips, and maybe even attempted the achievement for yourself!

A CONCISE GUIDE TO WORLD CONQUEST​

By Kingshorsey​

The objective of this guide is to provide a clear, accessible overview of the general strategy underlying world conquest (WC) runs on Ironman with no save scumming. It focuses on the concepts, mindset, and task prioritization necessary to succeed from most starts. It prioritizes information by order of importance, omitting less critical details. This is because there is a reasonable margin for error in all but the most difficult WC runs. People who fail do so because they make large strategic errors, not because they forget to micro or min/max here and there. The guide does assume the player is familiar with basic game mechanics and knows how to win wars. It assumes competence but not mastery. It does not rely on any exploits, since people differ in their willingness to use them, or on extreme bonus stacking, because those strategies cannot be generalized.

This guide is current for 1.24.1 (Japan). It takes account of all content DLCs but does not rely on any of the recent ones.

STATING THE CHALLENGE

For the “World Conquerer” Steam achievement, you must play on Ironman mode and on normal difficulty or higher. By game end on Jan. 2, 1821, there must be no tags left in the game other than the player's and the player's non-tributary subjects. This means that there can be no subjects of subjects, such as a vassal's colonial nation. It also means full colonization is not required. Also, you don't have to have everything cored.

A related achievement is the one-faith WC, in which all provinces (except uncolonized) must be your religion. The EU4 community has come up with several other variants of the WC run, such as the one-tag (no subjects except colonial nations) and one-culture WCs. There are no separate achievements for these, only community bragging rights. They do not alter the basic structure of a WC run other than forcing you to be more efficient and influencing idea group selection.

This task can be helpfully quantified in terms of the development you need to acquire. According to the EU4 wiki, in 1.23, total world development at the earliest start date was 19,210, including uninhabited, colonizable provinces. Whatever the exact starting number, it will trend upward over time, as development and colonization contribute more than horde razing detracts. Higher difficulties yield higher end totals, because AI bonuses lead to more development and colonization.

Based on WC after action reports from recent patches, total world development at game end ranges from about 22K on normal up to about 27K on very hard. Probably about 2-4K of that is in colonial nations, which may need to be conquered but usually don't cost monarch points.

Acquiring other people's development usually requires conquest and monarch points. The exception is personal unions The precise number will depend on how the development is acquired. The following table lists base costs before modifiers:

Fed to a subject but never integrated - 0 points (for you)

Conquered colony on different continent - 0 overextension, 0 points if fed to colonial nation

Cored as territorial core, not stated - 5 admin points

Fed to subject, then integrated - 8 diplo points

Cored and stated - 10 admin points

Essentially, then, success comes down to answering yes to two questions:

1) Can I generate enough monarch points for my nation and subjects to own (but not necessarily core) all provinces by game end? This is a question of monarch point efficiency.

2) Can I win all the wars I need to in time to own all the provinces by game end? This is a question of pacing.

If you play at all sensibly, you should have no problem getting enough monarch points, so a WC run is mostly a question of pacing. To set the correct pace, we need to understand the overall shape of a game.
 

THE SHAPE OF A GAME - BLOBBILITY

A WC run is divided into three phases.

1) Preparation: game start to age of absolutism start (˜1610)

2) Transition: age of absolutism start to admin and diplo tech 23 (˜1700)

3) Blobbageddon: admin and diplo tech 23 to game end

Before detailing each phase, let's understand why this is the most helpful way to divide the game. It reflects the extreme difference in blobbing ability (blobbility) between game start and game end. Before the age of absolutism, minus some modifiers you've cobbled together from ideas, CBs, and/or situational bonuses, you pay full coring cost and full war score cost for provinces while taking full aggressive expansion and overextension. You are also limited in the number of nations you can attack without penalties from no-CB wars or truce breaking. All of these are bottlenecks, and all are substantially lessened in the transitional period.

Once the age of absolutism begins, you unlock the country modifier absolutism, which is the major contributor to another country modifier you unlock about the same time, administrative efficiency. Every 1% admin eff. grants a 1% reduction, multiplicative with other modifiers, to coring cost, province war score cost, overextension, and aggressive expansion—everything holding you back. 100 absolutism grants 40% admin eff. You also get 10% admin eff. each from admin techs 17, 23, and 29. At diplo tech 23, you unlock the advanced CBs nationalism (50% aggressive expansion and war score cost for same culture group provinces) and imperialism (75%, 75% against almost everyone else). So, by admin and diplo tech 23, just from absolutism and tech you can have the best general-purpose CBs and 60% of the 70% admin eff. you're going to get.

Here's a quick comparison to illustrate how big a deal this is. Taking and making a territorial core out of a 20 development province, ignoring other modifiers, will have very different consequences.

Game start, no discounts: 100 base admin cost, ~25% war score cost, 20% overextension, 15 base AE, 36 month coring time

A realistic scenario around 1500: admin + inf ideas, conquest CB w/ claim
65 base admin cost, ~25% war score cost, 20% overextension, 12 base AE, 23.4 month coring time

A realistic scenario around 1700: 60% admin eff., admin+inf+dip ideas, imperialism CB
30 base admin cost, ~6% war score cost, 6% overextension, 3.6 base AE, 27 month coring time

Comparing our two realistic scenarios, in 1700 we're paying less than half the admin points and about one fourth the war score while receiving less than a third of the overextension and AE. Only coring time is unaffected. There are other ways to stack some more coring cost and time reduction, but coring time remains the variable most dependent on national ideas and situational factors like permanent claims.

(Note: There are hard minimums to some costs. Minimum coring cost is 2 points per dev for a full core, so 1 for territorial, before admin eff. is applied. Minimum coring time is 6 months. I think AE reduction caps at -90%.)

The conclusion is that development acquisition speeds up over time at a rate far faster than linear. 90%+ of your development will be acquired after 1600. This is the point on which first time WCers most need to reject their intuition and adjust their expectations. Positively, around 1600, you have far more potential ahead of you than you thought possible. Negatively, you have a proportional amount of work in store for you. Once you grasp that game play (and sometimes game performance!) slows down as blobbility scales up, you may realize that WC is not for you. If so, that's fine.

GOALS FOR EACH PHASE

So, what should you focus on in each Phase? We can discover this by working backwards from an ideal endgame. By about 1700, your nation needs to be configured so that you have no concerns other than conquering land and getting rid of overextension as fast as possible. What specifically enables this? Your army must be of sufficient quality and force limit that it is capable of cleanly, quickly winning any war and often engaging in multiple wars. So, your economy and manpower pool must be able to support this near constant warfare. Furthermore, all of your idea groups that contribute to monarch point efficiency and pacing need to be in place, so you can do something with all that land. To achieve this, you should prepare from game start.
 

In the PREPARATION PHASE, your goals are 1) to build an economic base, 2) to secure avenues for expansion, and 3) to ensure you can generate max absolutism as soon as the age arrives.

In building an economic base, quality of development is preferable to sheer quantity. You want both income now and income potential later. Once again, understanding the shape of the game is key. Early, tax and gold income usually contribute the most; late game, trade income will dominate, and usually production will surpass taxes. Thus, early game expansion should prioritize seizing and boosting gold provinces for quick cash while setting up to win the trade game. By 1610, you should have conquered in such a way that you dominate a valuable trade node into which you can continue to funnel more and more wealth. The end nodes in Europe are optimal, but any node is fine if you can feed it rich land while limiting outflow (e.g., Zanzibar, Yumen, Persia).

Trade company land and colonial nations are valuable even if you aren't a colonizer or can't make full use of their trade potential at first. Those extra merchants will come into play, and tariffs and gold from CNs can grant a considerable economic boost. Also, based on institution spread mechanics, the tech disparity between Western nations and Asian trade company lands will be the greatest around 1550-1650. Asians get the least benefit from trade companies and CNs, simply based on the Western flow of trade.

A good benchmark for your economic base is whether you can support a force limit with a good army composition (cannons) that lets you keep winning wars quickly and cleanly, while still having the cash to hire higher-level advisors, particularly in admin and dip. Advisors are the principle way to convert cash to monarch points, so leveling them up is a good indicator of how ready you are to accelerate expansion.

To secure avenues for expansion, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, there's the raw geography. Do you have enough people to attack so that you're not sitting around waiting for truce timers to expire or forced into inefficient no CB wars? Second, there's the diplomatic angle. Can you time your conquests in such a way that you either don't accumulate too much aggressive expansion or will be able to ignore it? Generally, you can spread your conquests, focus them on a particular group, or combine both methods. Even if your strategy relies on focusing, you will need access to be able to attack a sufficient number of nations in the target group. Also, you should have filled out most or all of your idea groups that save monarch points or speed up conquest.

To ensure you can generate max absolutism when the age hits, see the guide linked below. You will need about 1,000 stated development that you can lower autonomy on. You should also save up some admin and mil points to raise stability and strengthen government. Maintaining absolutism requires you to stop raising autonomy on rebellious provinces, so this implies that you already have in place a way to prevent rebels or deal with them quickly. An In-Depth Guide to Absolutism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oi9DkyqoPA&t=476s

In the preparation phase, vassals function mostly to ease the burden on admin points and to hold high unrest land land until you have the bonuses to deal with it. Vassal claims diversify your expansion options, and core reconquest CBs can drastically reduce your AE.
 

In the TRANSITION PHASE, your goals are 1) to generate max absolutism as soon as possible, 2) to fill out any remaining idea groups that assist monarch point efficiency and pacing, 3) to complete your economic base, 4) to maximize your force limit and manpower pool, and 5) to hit diplo tech 23 on or ahead of time, all while 6) accelerating expansion.

The transition phase is probably the trickiest part of the game, because you are balancing different priorities. By far the most important is generating max absolutism, since it has such an outsize effect on the game. For most nations, you will want to trigger the court and country disaster as soon as possible, resolving it successfully to gain the +20 max absolutism. If that takes you above 100, that's not a waste; it's a cushion. If somehow you mess this up and don't ever get 100 absolutism, you can still WC, just a bit less efficiently.

Idea groups are discussed below.

Completing your economic base depends somewhat on your situation, but it usually means continuing to boost your trade income. You can do this by strategic conquest and by building manufactories. Manufactories are very expensive and pay off only if you reap the increased trade they generate, another reason dominating a trade node was such a priority. Focus on trade also lets you stop stating provinces earlier, thus reducing your admin cost. Local autonomy affects trade power only half as much as it does other values. Also, trade companies generate double trade power and receive no autonomy penalty to goods produced, making them the most monarch point efficient provinces in the game. Your economic benchmark is the same as earlier: can you support a force limit adequate for your conquest pace and have high-level advisors where you need them?

For serious conquest, you need to maximize your force limit and manpower pool. Because you're going to be stating less land from now on, you will rely more on buildings to increase these. You will probably also be switching to mostly merc infantry to preserve manpower and cannons for both combat and sieges. This again highlights the need for an immense economic base. How much force limit do you need? It's situational, but if you ever find yourself thinking you would be winning faster if you had more troops, you need more. Clean, quick wars. Rinse and repeat.

I'm sure you understand by now why diplo tech 23 matters. The sooner you get advanced CBs, the sooner the brakes come off. Also, client states are nice.

Accelerating expansion must be strategic and careful. At the beginning of the transition phase, you are probably one of the strongest nations, but you're not invulnerable. Coalitions may not kill you, but they can slow you down. Alliances become mainly about preventing coalitions. Quality development is still more important than quantity until your economy and army are so strong that you are truly an unstoppable juggernaut and coalitions won't even bother forming.
 

In the BLOBBAGEDDON phase, your only goal is to conquer everything as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you know how to wage war and you set yourself up correctly, this should be a straightforward, repetitive process. Your benchmark is how efficiently you are processing close to 100% overextension.

Only at this point do you start focusing on the strongest nations. You should look at each nation in terms of the number of wars it will take for you to fully conquer it. Assuming you can win a fairly quick, clean war, start with the highest number and work your way down, picking off tiny nations as the opportunity arises. This will save you from having downtime or needing to break truces at the end. On the other hand, the occasional truce-break isn't a big deal if you have the monarch points to spare and a coalition won't slow you down.

Vassal feeding really comes into play here, though it is always useful for balancing power costs. You will constantly be taking more overextension than you can handle, so spreading it among one or more vassals or client states keeps you moving quickly. If you have both influence and diplomatic ideas, plus the +2 dip rep bonus for trading in ivory, you can efficiently cycle vassals, starting new integrations even during the -3 dip rep penalty from the last integration. Alternatively, especially with Mandate of Heaven bonuses, you can simply keep feeding your vassals often enough to keep them loyal. Vassals of 500+ development are fine.

Admin and diplo tech also become significantly less important after tech 23. You may want diplo tech 25 for threedeckers and admin tech 27 for that last 10% admin eff. Otherwise, only tech military. Save all those points for processing land.

If your capital is in Europe, you can choose essentially to extend your transition phase to around 1710 by activating the Revolution disaster. If you become the revolution target, you get even better CBs and some helpful bonuses. This usually isn't necessary to WC, but it can be helpful, so check it out.

If you're running out of time and getting worried, conquer faster and release vassals like crazy to deal with overextension. If that's still not enough, go over 100% overextension and just deal with it. You can even harsh treatment everywhere and fall behind on mil tech if you're just cleaning up stragglers.

GENERAL STRATEGIC PRINCIPLES

When in doubt about a course of action, remember this key question: what will most help me use monarch points efficiently and allow me to win quick, clean wars? (efficiency, pacing)

Identify the bottleneck. If you’re having trouble answering the key question, identify the single variable most holding you back: aggressive expansion, insufficient income, etc. Rectify that problem.

Eat the weak, avoid the strong. Because nothing slows you down more than having to defend against a superior enemy, do everything possible to delay that possibility. Since a human player with a good strategy will always blob more efficiently than the AI, every year you delay a major confrontation benefits you. Time conquest of trade company land to maximize tech difference.

The first war is to cripple the opponent. Whenever you encounter a nation that will take multiple wars to conquer, the goal of the first war is to make all subsequent wars as easy as possible. Take their forts, especially those that allow them to shattered retreat where you can't finish their armies. Cripple their income. Nullify any troublesome alliances.

Don't just win, win big. Maybe it's less fun this way, but every war should be fairly easy. I play on Ironman with no save scums, so minimizing risk is paramount. If necessary, take some loans or corruption and blow your treasury on mercs early to win decisively. It's better than doing so later just to avoid losing. Winning a war in 2 years rather than maybe winning in 5 minimizes risk and gives you time to recover.

Good allies and PUs are better than diplo points. Going above your relation limit is inefficient but often worthwhile. Early game, good allies help you win wars. Mid game, they watch your back and limit your enemies' blobbing. All through the game, they don't join coalitions against you. Using alliances to prevent coalitions from forming or firing saves you a lot of time and effort. For Christians, taking some shots at PUing large nations often pays off.

Use vassal cores to limit AE and OE. Early to mid-game, resurrecting a dead nation or vassalizing one that's been eaten by an opponent can yield Reconquest CBs. Late game, you can take a vast swath of territory, release a dead nation inside it, and feed it for much more efficient overextension processing. Example: Mid-game, Bahmanis blobbed over India. First war, take some forts and one Vijayanagar core. Release VJ. Next war, lots of cheap territory.

Strength comes from money; money comes from gold, then trade. Since money can be converted directly into monarch points, army size, manpower, and future money, it's your most basic resource. Eventually, trade will be its primary component.

Inflation is just a number. The penalties from inflation don't even come close to the advantages of having more money now. Occasionally, though, war reps are better than gold in a peace deal.

Decide whether you need that land. Stop stating provinces after you have a sufficient economic and military base. It just wastes admin. Also, if you're not trying to one tag, integrate vassals late game only if you need to make room for more vassals.

IDEA GROUP SELECTION

People agonize over this too much. There are a few no-brainers, a few awful picks, and a lot of room for variation. The early choices matter the most, and order does matter, though there is some flexibility. You may not fill out all your idea groups, because your points are doing more important things late game.

Administrative and Influence ideas should definitely be in there for point saving, AE reduction, and a smoother diplomatic game. They should be somewhere in your first four, occasionally five, groups.

Exploration ideas, if you can strongly benefit from them, should be your first or second group. You may eventually scrap it for something that contributes more to the endgame.

Religious and humanist ideas are situational, but in most cases I prefer religious and take it as my first or second group. Putting all else aside, the CB is fantastic. The fact that it does not require claims saves diplo points, frees up your diplomats, and makes it much easier to juggle truces to prevent coalitions. Catholic nations will rake in papal bonuses with it. The CB also synergizes with colonizing. If you take religious early, you may still be able to take humanist late. If your nation really can't use religious within the first three slots, probably don't take it at all, as the advanced CBs reduce its usefulness.

Diplomatic ideas are very useful for further smoothing diplomacy, speeding vassal integration, war score reduction, and some point saving. If you can fit it in early, great. If not, try to fit it in later. Somewhat more useful early in HRE and for Christians seeking PUs.

All other admin and diplo idea groups are either never or rarely ideal for WC runs, except as filler. Economic ideas is tempting, but it shines only early on, and is it really worth delaying admin or religious? Most nations that would get a lot of use from econ will also want religious.

Military groups -- very situational, depends mostly on early game position. If you have strong national ideas, you don't really need these. For most of the game, you should have plenty of prestige, power projection, army tradition, and absolutism, all yielding morale and discipline bonuses. The principle of eat the weak, avoid the strong makes army quality less critical. Offensive ideas is the most consistently useful for the +20% siege ability, +20% force limit, and general pips where it counts, winning you wars faster. If your nation has crap military ideas, take offensive and quantity or defensive. You'll be ok. You can fill in later idea groups with whatever you want. If you really think you need quantity early on to stay afloat, take it. It saves you money and synergizes well with religious and colonization. If for some reason you are a republic, plutocratic is useful and fits most positions, perhaps replacing humanist.

So, here are some examples, not exhaustive.

Colonizer: Colonization, Religious, Influence, Administrative, Offensive, Diplomatic, Humanist, whatever or Administrative, Colonization, Religious, Quantity, Influence, whatever

Non-colonizer, good expansion opportunities, strong military: Religious, Influence, Administrative, Diplomatic, Offensive, Humanist, whatever

Stuck in middle of HRE: Diplomatic, Administrative, Influence, Offensive/Quantity, whatever

CHOOSING A STARTING NATION

Fun is subjective, difficulty is more objective. You should rate the difficulty of a nation in terms of how well its national ideas synergize with WC and how difficult it will be to achieve the goals set for the Preparation Phase (or become HRE emperor and revoke privilegia, see below). Top-tier ideas include reductions to coring cost, war score cost, and aggressive expansion. Ideas that grant good military bonuses will save you from having to take military ideas early. Ideas that reduce unrest or boost religious ideas will save you from having to take humanist ideas. Extra diplomats, diplo rep, and relations are all good. Economic bonuses to goods produced and trade are valuable.

Areas where institutions don't spread naturally and can't be developed cheaply will be handicapped in the early game. Also, anything outside the Western tech group will be a bit harder, because their late game units have fewer pips.

So, most of the nations you would naturally think of as easy probably are. Other surprisingly easy nations are any that have a good shot at HRE emperor or that can quickly establish a strong economic base. A good example is Kilwa. The gold mines in southern Africa plus quick colonization and domination of the Cape and Zanzibar trade nodes will set you up perfectly. Also, Kilwa has good national ideas for trade and diplomacy.

SOME SPECIFIC SITUATIONS

HRE: The HRE mechanics make it the single biggest variable in the difficulty of a WC run. Revoking the privilegia gives you free vassals, which act as both extra armies and coring machines. Being the HRE also means you don't have to deal with attacking into it. These advantages are so powerful that it almost makes strategy redundant. If you can revoke the privilegia by 1610 or so, the WC is yours to lose. So, if you can become emperor and pass reforms in a timely manner, do so. If you can't or don't want to become emperor, your aim should be to dismantle the HRE in as few wars as possible, because otherwise it slows you down considerably.

Asia: At some point, you have to deal with Ming. You may just have to accept tributary status and sacrifice monarch point efficiency to get expansion opportunities and a chance to strike when the time is right. This is probably the biggest exception to the "Eat the Weak, Avoid the Strong" principle. A pagan or eastern religion nation that manages to destabilize Ming before the age of absolutism can expand rapidly through the Take Mandate of Heaven CB. But don't actually take the emperorship unless you know what you're doing.

Hordes: At some point, you're still going to transition over to a trade-based economy, but you can afford to play in a more reckless style, piling up corruption and keeping high autonomy. You can also somewhat disregard the "Eat the Weak, Avoid the Strong" principle, striking early to cripple future rivals. If you can cripple any 2 of the big 3--Ming, Russia, Ottomans--you should have an easy time ahead of you.

New World: Get all the trade funneled to Caribbean, keep as much as you can. Keeping a bordering European nation friendly will get you tech discounts.

Loans: There are two play styles, conservative and aggressive. Conservative players aim to be generally fiscally responsible, taking loans never (DDRJake) or only occasionally to ensure decisive wars or to embrace an institution. Aggressive players use loans freely with the intention of snowballing conquests earlier, paying back the loans with the increased earning potential from more development. In the late game, you can take loans with no intention of paying them back. You can WC with either style. Aggressive play can probably WC faster, but it requires more skill.

DLCS:

I assume you have most of the older DLCs up through Rights of Man. You really must have Common Sense and Art of War.

The Cossacks makes WC much easier for nations with access to the estates mechanics. At the cost of some tedium, estates offer decent global bonuses and some very helpful province-specific bonuses. Most importantly, you should be able to get 100-200 monarch points of each type from them every 20 years. This really helps out in the early game, when you're filling out key idea groups. Dhimmi estate makes it easy for Muslims to switch religions.

Mandate of Heaven is the ultimate DLC for WCers. The age bonuses and golden age mechanic give you everything you could ever want: monarch point saving, reduced AE, reduced war score cost, economy buffs, more/faster absolutism, faster sieges, more loyal vassals, etc. The bonuses also favor religious and colonization ideas. State edicts help out a fair amount. The most significant is -10% development cost, making spawning institutions less painful. Bonuses to conversion speed, manpower, and fort defense are also sometimes useful. Finally, it lets you perform an artillery barrage, spending 50 mil points for a permanent +3 to siege rolls. Basically, press the button and win the game. It's better than taking a late game military idea group.

Third Rome makes WC significantly easier for the nations that get buttons to press for free stuff. If you're not one of those nations, the fact that the AI can press those buttons makes your life slightly harder. Russia in particular is a good deal stronger.

Cradle of Civilization also makes WC easier, again especially for the nations that can press buttons for free stuff. The biggest change is the ability to promote advisors up to level 5, making cash to point conversion even more powerful. It also introduced army professionalism, which helps more than hurts. In the early game, you should have a relatively low force limit and some downtime, so drilling is a decent way to bank professionalism for future advantage, if you can afford it. Note that both these changes strongly favor nations that can build a powerful economic base early on.

EXPLOITS OR NEAR EXPLOITS

This is a somewhat subjective category, including things I personally find distasteful. It’s also not a comprehensive list of exploits. Also, if you're not playing on Ironman, do whatever you want.

Save scumming. Literally cheating. Do you play chess with infinite takebacks? Of course you can accomplish anything when you suffer no consequences for your mistakes or from bad luck, which is a real part of this game. Now, I do make a backup save every so often in case a legitimate bug (in a Paradox game? Nay!) derails the game. If you insist on save scums, at least keep count, so you know exactly how scummy you are.

Playing past game end. Unless it was recently patched, opening the statistics menu in Ironman before game end will prevent the game from actually ending, allowing you to play on with achievements enabled. This is flagrant cheating. The time limit is what defines the world conquest as an achievement. Anyone could conquer the world given infinite time.

Infinite nation/ruler/general points. You can do it. Don't.

Patch 1.20 absolutism. The developers apparently forgot to cap absolutism bonuses at 100, allowing clever players to go far above that and get extreme admin efficiency. If you did this on 1.20, congratulations for being clever. But if you’re just now rolling back the patch to make WC easier because you can’t do it otherwise, shame on you.

Florrynomics interest rates. Prior to 1.24, you could stack interest reduction to get a .25% interest rate. Essentially, infinite free money. I think about this much like 1.20 absolutism. Congratulations to the people who figured it out. If you’re rolling back the patch because you can’t WC any other way, shame on you.

Nationalism everywhere. Siu-King** has demonstrated that once you have a sufficient economic engine, you can afford to unstate pretty much all your land. This can allow you to culture shift to your next target’s culture group, enabling nationalism CB instead of imperialism. The effect is huge. Stacked with enough CCR, you can core so fast overextension ceases to be relevant. This is a really, truly clever strategy, and perfectly legitimate. But it’s so powerful I don’t use it myself.

WHAT IF I STILL CAN’T DO IT?

From anything but the most difficult starts, if you started the game intending to WC but failed to do so, that signals that you either weren’t focusing hard enough on the right goals for each phase or that there is an aspect of the game in which you aren’t sufficiently competent. To be fair, focusing hard enough is a challenge in itself. WC is a grind. The battle in phase 3 is mostly psychological: not slackening the pace, timing your overextension, managing multiple large armies simultaneously. It requires both careful planning and precise execution.

If your wars are dragging out, determine whether your economic base is insufficient, you’re focusing on targets too strong too early, or you need to improve your warfare skills.

If you’re struggling for monarch points on anything but very hard difficulty, determine whether your economic base is insufficient to get you high level advisors or you are using points highly inefficiently. Sometimes this is a result of wars dragging on or overly frequent truce breaks and no CB wars.

If you have trouble building an economic base by ~1610, for most non-horde starts it’s probably a sign that you’re neglecting trade or don’t have a good grasp on EU4 economics.

Happy blobbing, you blobsters.

This account is largely separate from my other socials, but some of you may recognize me solely by the vitriol with which i regard the rhetoric surrounding unit pips.

Everyone knows more pips is better. Most people know that pips influence the diceroll result. Most of these people know the specifics of how the diceroll result is influenced, most of which know that a higher diceroll translates into more damage, most of which know how the gist of how diceroll translates into more damage dealt, most of which knows the exacts on how the diceroll translates into actual results, most of which have considered how much tangible effect unit pips have on the outcome of the battle, most of which have made a value judgement on how important unit pips are.

So most people know how important unit pips are, right?

No. That couldnt be further from the truth. If you're reading this, chances are that you have no clue how important unit pips are, because if at every step a majority of 60% of people knew the next deeper fact, less than 3% of people would be remaining to know how important unit pips are.

So this has led to a sort of... cult like mysticism surrounding unit pips and some rather strange myths in the community:

- The strange idea that if you dont go back in time and kill mehmet when he was a baby, the anatolian unit pips will knock on your door demanding your slavic lands

- The judgement that only countries with western pips can have the highest quality troops late game

- The conclusion following that countries that can westernize their unit pips are something you should keep an eye out for

- maybe even a youtuber possibly appearing on your youtube feed telling you that you should release qasim to exploit their broken nomadic cavalry pips. Ok, maybe i made that part up. Everyone knows youtubers only give perfect advice.

Do you feel called out? It's okay. I don't hate you personally, I just want to help. So let's get started demystifying Unit Pips.

Step 1 to understanding unit pips: Pip Difference.

Pip Difference is when you take how much offensive pips your attacking unit has, and you minus off the number of defensive pips the defending unit has. So in the smallest case of 1 infantry regiment vs another infantry regiment, if yours has 2 offensive fire pips, and theirs has 1 defensive fire pip, you have +1 pip difference when you deal damage to them. If you have 4 defensive fire pips, and they have 3 offensive fire pips, they have a -1 pip difference when dealing damage to you.

This might give a little insight to why some people dont even know that unit pips influence the diceroll. Every other diceroll modifier is shown on the battle interface, except for unit pips.

Step 2 to understanding unit pips: Diceroll.

Diceroll envelopes pip difference, and therefore has to be more complicated than pip difference. (i.e. if you don't know how pip difference works, then you wouldn't know how diceroll works either. But the good news is now you know how pip difference works! and the step up from pip difference to diceroll is much smaller.

Every day in a battle, both sides roll a dice and can get any number from 0 to 9. Then, global modifiers are added to the diceroll, which you can see on the battle interface. There are actually more global modifiers for diceroll than you might think, so i'll just point out the 3 most common ones: terrain, general pips and crossing penalty.

After global modifiers are added to the diceroll, the pip difference is added to the diceroll, and that influences the final diceroll number that goes into damage. Simple, right?

Step 3 to understanding unit pips: Damage.

Now we know how diceroll works precisely. For the last piece of the puzzle on how it works, how does diceroll fit into damage? When a unit does damage to another unit, before any other modifiers happen, the base damage is given by 15 + 5*diceroll,

Step 4 to understanding unit pips: the rest of the fucking owl.

I apologize if this is difficult to follow, but i do not have the time or energy to write in an easy to digest way what is already in the wiki to explain every single fact of how combat modifiers work, so this will be a little rambly.

base damage is given by 15 + 5 * diceroll, but 15 is a multiple of 3, and therefore the equation can be represented as 5 * (diceroll + 3). In the case where diceroll is not affected by any global modifiers, your average diceroll of 4.5 is modifier by + 3 to get an average 7.5 diceroll. since unit pips only matter either half the time (or only for morale, we will get to that) this means you have an average of +0.5/7.5 for getting 1 pip more. that works out to 1/15 or 6.66%.

If you want to do an apples to apples comparison, 5% discipline makes you take 5% less damage, and deal 5% more damage. This means that 2 pips, which is the astronomical difference many people cite as being a big part of the reason the ottomans are supposedly overpowered, does about as much as 5% discipline. But okay, 5% discipline isnt useless at all, its a good modifier. The thing is though, nobody pays attention to when their enemy nations have 5% discipline. Tell me the last time you were playing as like russia or something, and saw poland with 4 of their 7 national ideas filled out, and you thought to yourself, oh no i need to kill them now before they get their 5% discipline, or i cant fight them until 1570.

Chances are, you've never done that. Wanna know the best part? Poland's final national idea is 15% morale of armies; The difference between fighting the ottomans before they get their 2 pip advantage, and fighting poland before they hit tech 10, is poland spikes HARDER on tech 10 than the ottomans do between techs 5 and 14.

For the final part of this hopefully at least productive rant: I'm not an mp player. I don't live somewhere where I can find convenient games of mp to play. But for my friends that do play mp, theytell me that, at the least in vanilla, morale is king. Consider for a second, that 10% morale of armies is effectively speaking a 22.2% better morale ratio. Meanwhile, 2 morale pips is a 26.7% better morale ratio. Tell me, without checking, the techs where anatolian pips' pip advantage are both in morale. Because those are the techs that are truly important, where 10% morale of armies fails to pierce the pip advantage.

Chances are that you can't. That's okay, because it really doesn't matter to you.

TL;DR: If you don't remember a thing in this post, good. It's worthless to know any of this. That's the whole point. The one thing you should remember is only this: Better unit pips are an advantage. But theyre an advantage that are very easily compared to other basic advantages, that are never treated with the same level of reverend deification.

Final Note: I made a reference to TheStudent earlier, and I have interacted with him on discord before and it kinda feels like he thinks there are groups of people who have something personal against him, so I feel obligated to say: this post isn't because the video is bad, the video he did about unit tech groups is honestly fine, you can watch that video and copy what he did if you're gonna use cavalry anyways, or copy it with a different tech type for infantry pips if you want, its fine. It's just a discussion on pips that tipped me over the edge of writing this. (But also, dont use cavalry)

You may have seen exploits in the past allowing you to go to the 1 million ducat cap. But let's be honest, it's 2026, and with cost of living increasing, a million ducats doesn't buy what it used to. This post details a combination of a couple of new exploits that will allow you to go far past the ducat cap, and give you infinite manpower and sailors as well.

This exploit is easiest if your naval force limit is low, so I'll be writing this guide from the perspective of having the minimum of 12 naval force limit, although it can be done so long as your naval FL is lower than about 23 (or higher if you do some black magic).

Step 1: The preparation

To become a billionaire, you need two things: starting capital, and good business relations in a developing country. In our case, this means we need:

• ~50k ducats (this can come from loans, ming banking, some other money exploit, etc)
• An unreformed coastal native as a vassal.

Step 2: Seamen accumulation

The next step to becoming rich is getting a workforce. In our case, this means we will need a lot of sailors. This is where the native vassal comes in, and is the first exploit:

Exploit 1: Templates built in a subject that contain only units that cannot be built by the subject in question do not check if you have enough manpower/sailors to afford the template, only if you have a positive amount.

Make a template of 1000 galleys, and set it to build in 1 province. Queue it in the vassal, and cancel a single galley to make your sailor count positive again. Repeat this until you're out of money, at which point you'll have about 5000 galleys queued. Cancelling them will get you back the 50k ducats you started with, but you'll now have about 300k sailors. You can now continue to step 3.

PS. This same trick can also be used for infinite manpower with either a native vassal (they cannot build cavalry), or a <tech 7 vessel when you are tech 7 (they cannot build artillery). Yes, really. Any time you hit tech 7 and you can vassalize a nation that has not teched up yet, you have access to a free 100 manpower per ducat you own. If you own 1000 ducats, that's a bank of 100k free manpower that can replenished infinitely every time you run out so long as the vassal does not hit tech 7.

At the moment, this exploit is still limited by the number of ducats we own, because it limits how many galleys we can queue, and thereby how many sailors we can get. Soon, this will not be an issue anymore.

Step 3: Our first million ducats

We have the starting capital and large quantities of seamen, everything one could need to start a succesful enterprise. Now it's stonking time. We start making a template of 720 heavy ships, again set to build in one province. We queue it, this time in our own province. We now make use of a pretty obscure EU4 feature: If you are over naval force limit, building additional ships becomes more expensive, and this even counts ships currently under construction*. Well, the ships we've just queued put us about 60 times over naval FL. This is where the second exploit comes in:

Exploit 2: Templates that cost more than 2.147 million ducats have their cost overflow to negative, allowing you to "afford" them, even though you shouldn't be able to.

Because we are now so far over naval force limit, the 720 heavy ship template that cost 36000 ducats just a moment ago now costs 60 times as much, making its cost negative. We can therefore immediately queue the template again. We'll now be at -1 million ducats, but with more than 2 million ducats worth of heavy ships queued. Simply cancel about 720 of them, and you'll now have 1 million ducats. We can use these 1 million ducats to repeat step 2, this time getting millions instead of hundreds of thousands of sailors.

* But interestingly, only those under construction in your own land, not vassals, which is why we didn't notice the cost increase during Step 2.

Step 4: Taking off the shackles

We now have millions of seamen. Time to fire off that rocket and go to space. Make a 1000 heavy ship template, and queue it as many times as you can. Whenever you run out of sailors, simply repeat step 2. Whenever the cost of the template is in the "dead zone" (positive and above 1 million) where you can't afford it, simply cancel a few ships from the queue, until the cost drops below 1 million again. This way, you can bank as many ducats as you need. After you've queued however many you want, you can play the game, and whenever you need ducats, simply cancel a few boats from the queue to get refunded and empty the bank.

The amount of ducats you store in this way is about 2N^2, where N is the number of heavy ships in the big queue*. The quadratic scaling makes this a very effective banking method compared to alternatives. By queueing about 700000 heavy ships, you'll hit a trillion ducats. In reality, even at a reasonable deficit of 1 million ducats a month, that'll take you about 83000 years to spend, so it's probably not worth going that far. It's fairly trivial to go to 7000 ships though, which will net you a bank of a hundred million ducats, which should be more than enough for most campaigns.

* The exact formula is (50*N*(N-FL))/(2*FL)

Final remarks

If you want to actually try this, bear in mind I have not tested the wider gameplay consequences of doing this trick. I'm not sure if the large boat stacks used here could cause ingame lag, increased loading times, or even save corruption, so please be sure to backup the save files. One thing I have noticed is that in uncompressed, non-ironman saves, every 10000 ships queued adds about 2.5 megabytes to the save file size. If you actually go to 700000 ships in non-ironman, your save files will exceed 100MB, which may not be desirable.

Disclaimer: This Guide may rely on DLC features!

Introduction

Brandenburg has an interesting, but a bit challenging start. This guide seeks to guide the player through the first 10 years while aiming at maximising Brandenburg's strength and fulfilling all territorial requirements to form Prussia later. This Guide has some RNG requirements, therefore restarting may be required a few times. Alternatively one can make backups at critical points and revert to them to save time and effort re-rolling in the case of bad RNG.

​

Step 1: 11th November 1444 - Before unpausing

Goals: Allying Austria, approaching Poland and maximising income

• Check Brandenburgs, Austrias and Polands rivals. Poland and Austria must not be Rivaled with each other
• Send an Alliance Request to Austia, as well as an RM request to Poland(Austria should almost always start with a friendly attitude towards Brandenburg, while Poland always is neutral)
• Lower Army Maintenance to 0% and mothball the Fort in Berlin
• Send the Merchant from Wien/Vienna to collect in Saxony
• Uncheck "Automatically raise Maintenance during war" in the Military tab
• Estates:Burghers: Grand Monopoly, Recruit Minster, Demand DIPClergy: Seek Support, Recruit Minister, Recruit Inquisitor, Send Emissary, Demand ADMNobility: Call Diet, Demand MIL
• Recruit 3 Infantry regiments and give your ruler military command
• Don't hire advisors
• Don't rival anyone!

Step 2: The first months - Gaining strength

Goals: Allying Poland and Saxony, Pawning Neumark and Conquering Pomerania

• RM Austria
• Poland may break the RM, don't worry just Improve Relations. They will turn friendly eventually, allowing Brandenburg to ally them
• Ally and RM Saxony
• Improve Relations with Austria
• Don't complete the Mission "Imperial Ambition", the Extra Diplomat and Improve Relations Bonus can be used later when you need to manage AE
• Wait for the "Pawning of Neumark" event. If it does not fire until July 1447 restart.
• Once the Event has fired and you bought the province raise Army Maintenance and wait 3 - 4 months to let moral recover
• Complete the Mission "Reclaim Neumark"
• Move your troops to Neumark.
• Pomerania usually only allies one or two OPMs, if not restart.
• Set Pomerania as Rival and declare war and attack their troops. Since your forces outnumber theirs by about 2:1 you can easily stackwipe them.
• Take Stolp and Kolberg and vassalize the rest of Pomerania, also take money to repay loans taken to Pawn Neumark and finish the Mission "Pomeranian Succession"

Step 3: December 1449 - Fooling Poland and taking East Prussia

• Wait until about 20th December 1449, then Polands truce with the Teutonic Order will end
• Mark all Teutonic Provinces as vital interest (Cossacks feature IRC)*
• Declare war for Königsberg, calling in Poland
• Make sure you occupy all provinces Poland considers of vital interest first, the other occupations will be given to you as you set them as desired. Poland must not hold occupation of any of the Teutonic provinces! If they do restart!\*
• End the war by taking all provinces in the East Prussia Area (for neat historical borders) and releasing Danzig.
• Since you set all provinces as vital interest, Poland will not lose trust if you do not give them any land!
• By releasing Danzig you prevent the "Prussian Confederation" event chain which would allow Poland to truce-brake and conquer the rest of the Teutonic Order, preventing you to come back later to take them out.

Depending on how long the war with the Teutons lasts it should be somewhere around 1454/55. This means that within 10 years all the required provinces to form Prussia were conquered, while also securing a decent income and strong allies.

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*If you do not own Cossacks the trust mechanic is also disabled, therefore the strategy may work without The Cossacks DLC

Edit: Spelling; Note about Cossacks DLC

Over the past few months I've seen a couple people ask if it is possible to get every institution to spawn in one province, and I believe I have figured out how to do this.

Please note: this guide is intended for all DLC and you will need to save scum like hell to do this.

Now I am going to make a big assumption for this because of the way some institutions are time dependent - specifically one about the industrialization and getting it prior to 1780.

​

First we have the regional requirements for this:

• The Renaissance requires the province to be in the Italy region
• The Printing Press requires a province to be in either North or South Germany UNLESS you are Protestant or Reformed - which is crucial to doing this as it means we can accomplish this whole thing

So far we have an Italian province that is Protestant or Reformed and owned by a Protestant or Reformed nation.

Next we need to briefly discuss what qualifies as an island in the game. The game has three definitions of an island:

1. The province can not have any strait crossings or land borders with other islands. This means that a province can not spawn a centre of reformation or an institution. This disqualifies Malta from this goal.
2. A province which shares only a strait crossing with another province. This province can not spawn the trade good of slaves which is the only limitation of this. This is provinces such as venice
3. A province which is on an island but has a land border. This means provinces such as the ones on the British isles or Japan or Sicily or Sardinia.

This means we have ruled out all provinces outside the Italian region and Malta.

Out next task is trade good dependent ones:

• Printing press requires Paper or a 15 dev province
• Manufactures: fish. naval supplies or salt (naval manufactory), cloth, dyes, silk, wool (Textile manufactory), copper or iron (weapons manufactory), coca, coffee, cotton, sugar, tea, tobacco (plantation), cloves, fur, incense, ivory, slaves, spices (trade station), chinaware, gems, glass, paper, tropical wood (mill).
• Industrial revoultion: Coal requires a furnance.

This rules out all provinces in Italy bar one - Cagliari. This province is why we had to add the island definitions in to point out that this in fact possible to do.

Now I will go over the development and buildings for each institution

• Renaissance - the province is the capital province OR has at least 20 development (I highly recommend doing both)
• Colonialism - At least 12 development or a centre of trade. You may notice that Cagliari does not have a centre of trade but there is a way to change this. Savoy and Bavaria (Landshut, Munich and Ingolstadt) all have missions to create one in their capital city.
• Printing Press - At least 15 development and being either Protestant or Reformed.
• Global Trade - Capital city or a level 2 centre of trade.
• Manufactories - 20 development, with two neighbouring provinces having 15 development each (luckily all three provinces in Sardinia border each other) and a weapons manufactory
  
• Enlightenment - 30 development, a seat in parliament or a university (do both)
• Industrialization - 30 development, a furnace.

Now I will get on other things that are related to the nation as a whole that need to be completed

• Colonialism - Has quest for the new world, discovered a province in the new world, owns a province in the new world.
• Printing Press - Switch to Protestant or Reformed
• Global Trade - Genoa is the most valuable trade node in the world.
• Enlightenment - Though this is not necessary if you have a parliament or university I highly recommend a ruler who is at least a 5/5/5. If you don't have a parliament or university then you'll need that 5/5/5 ruler.
• Industrialization - Genoa will need to still be the highest valued node, you'll need to be leading producer of cloth, iron and coal, while having 3 trade bonuses. I have a rough guide below that should help achieve these things. To get a trade bonus you just need to control 20% of the global supply of a province.

To achieve all this I highly recommend starting as Aragon. They start with control of the province and are in the ideal spot to capitalize on this. Also, at the start it's hard to beat them up with a lesser power quickly and still have time to get Cagliari ready for the Renaissance. Start by moving your capital to Cagliari and developing it to 20. Then you'll want to declare on Byz and beat the Ottomans up, getting a border with Hungary is very important. Then you'll want to declare on Hungary, and snake all the way to Austria. The next part will get you a lot of AE. You'll want to declare on Austria, and then get a border with the Bavarian minors. Then annex the minors and culture shift to Bavarian and form Bavaria. Then complete the mission "Develop Munchen" to get a centre of trade in Cagliari. Remember your first ideas should be Exploration ideas to find the new world. After this point you should try to expand as much in Iberia, France, Italy and around the Mediterranean. Basically this campaign just becomes a Roman Empire run after 1500. To gain control of the cloth, iron and coal goods, just develop a lot of cloth, iron and coal provinces but you've got roughly 250 years to dominate the trade of those goods to get industrialization.

One recommendation for global trade: conquer the Champagne, Tunis and Constantinople nodes and transfer to Genoa there plus in Valencia, and expand your colonial empire as you should conquer Iberia then bring all the profits to Sevilia and send that through to Valencia, which leads on to Genoa.

To those who try this. Good Luck.

Tired of having to spend 2800 dip on exploration ideas to reach the americas? Want to speedrun getting there without waiting for tech 5? Well, I've got just the exploit for you today. Here's how to discover the americas without exploration ideas.

1. Start as Chukchi (a Siberian native).

2. Annex both the Kamchadals and Chavchuveny.

3. Save the game. You're going to need it.

4. Open the release vassal screen.

5. Very quickly double click on the Chavchuveny icon. This is much easier to do during an autosave, but can be done outside of it. Click "Play as the released subject", but don't click send yet. If you are doing it over an autosave, you can load the save you made earlier to try again.

6. You'll have succeeded if, a glitchy release-and-play-as screen remains (without the top bar) when you close the create vassal screen, as below. This will allow you to do other actions, while keeping this screen open. From now on until step 12, make sure not to save and close eu4, as this glitchy screen will close.

1. Open the release and play as screen again, this time clicking Kamchadals (you can do this the regular way, don't need to do the double click business here). Again, click "Play as the released subject", and click send. You'll now be playing Kamchadals, but with the release Chavchuveny (from Chukchi) screen still open.

1. Declare war on your overlord Chukchi.

2. Offer Chukchi peace. In the peace deal, offer to have yourself fully annexed. This will bring up the game over screen, but with the release as Chavchuveny screen still up (I'm testing this in normal mode, in ironman the spectator button won't be there, but the overall trick still works). You may have noticed all of the Terra Incognita is now revealed.

1. Press the Show timeline button in the top right of the game over screen (below "Your Score").

2. Right click on Chinook to open the diplomacy screen.

1. Press the "c' button on your keyboard. This will accept the release and play as screen we've kept open all this time (hidden behind the diplomacy screen). We're now no longer game over, but playing as Chavchuveny, and with the diplomacy screen of Chinook still open. Be very careful not to close this diplomacy screen, you won't be able to re-open it, as the Terra Incognita has returned, and Chinook is very much in it.

1. Improve relations with Chinook. This will allow you to re-open diplomacy with Chinook at any time, by clicking on your own diplomacy screen, and then clicking on Chinook in there. Do not retract your diplomat here (be especially careful when improve relations caps out and the game asks you if you want to retract the diplomat.

1. Get your independence from Chukchi.

2. Convince Chinook to share a map of North East pacific with you. You can improve relations, gift, subsidize, get a diprep advisor, etcetera.

1. From here, you can sail to the americas. You can request maps of the land from Chinook, and the other natives. If necessary, you can force tributary on the natives, which will make it very easy to request maps.

I hope this tutorial/exploit showcase was useful or amusing!

Hi, I am a turkish player with 2.5k hours in the game and Holland is one of my favorite nation along with Brandenburg. Recently I did 1469 netherlands unification and I wanted to share my takes on this campaign. It will a bit long but I believe it has valuable info so thanks for reading. If you want to try hollands please read it all and ask any question you have before following steps, I would like to explain everything and take some advices from you. If I have any error I am sorry, I dont have the game open as I write and english is not my native language 😭.

First of all, I want to explain why I did this. I wanted a fast unification followed by exploiting colonial richness and deving lowlands to sky. Sort of a historical gameplay but 200 years early :). Also I wanted to see how fast I could unify it without truce break ( with trucebreak it would been faster but its not mp and few years is not a big deal)

okay lets start.

When you open the game you will encounter your first rng, namely the rivals of burgundy. I will give you the usual rivals and explain them one by one:

- Austria (if not restart) : this is a must since you will conquer hre provinces and allyin austria later is nightmare.

- France (2nd important) : France army is vital but if you have another strong nation (maybe castile) you can still safely declare the war.

- Denmark (sort of exchangable with England) : I choose denmark over England for 3 reason. Firstly england might start hostile with you and you want to declare indep war as soon as possible to mitigate ae. Secondly england might have (most of the time) vital interest in flanders and you want to take flanders in the first war. This is rng during battle but if england sieges brugge the save is not optimal (you can still continue but for me flanders is more important than antwerpen). Lastly denmark usually allys some lowlands nations so you being their ally and rivaling those nations might prevent that. If not, 50 favor is not that hard or you can call denmark into another war and then declare war on that nation.

- England : navy power (same as denmark) and explained above.

So the best rival combo is Austria France Denmark but you could start a campaign with for example Austria Denmark Savoy (bcs france usually rivals burgundy at december)

between 11 november and 11 december:

estates : just plus 1 mana bcs after the war you will have 16 crown control and at 1450 it will be 21 percent.

Hire lvl1 advisors. they dont matter that much but I will give you some options

- military : fort defence is best if not doesnt matter

- diplo and admin : if you have trade and inflation both lvl1 hire both since we will rush espionage and we need the mana event now rather later in the campaign. if you dont have both, admin doesnt mater and for diplo hire improve relation or diplo rep. you will have either 3 of those all the times. and look for trade and inflation advisors later.

move army to amsterdam and hire free company

select 3 cog and sell them one by one since your money is just enough to cover 3 advisors and free company.

if you managed to get all rivals of burgundy to support you, disband the one cav at your own army so you will have 4+4 (free company) total army size.

declare vital interest in all provinces of flanders and brabant.

at 11 december save the game before starting the war.

War and ruler rng:

Im gonna be honest, I savescummed until a careful ruler. The trait is more worth then the stats. You can still have powerfull holland with 0/0/0 and carefull ruler. In my campaign I had 4/4/4 with carefull so my advice is that:

start the war at 11 december, if you have a ruler that you liked the stats save the game again and speed 5 to next month. The trait is revealled at 1 of january 1445. and if you didnt liked the ruler just savescum and declare war at the next day (12 of december) and continue until you have a ruler that you are okay. Actually the trait is only necessary for the first war since we want to take all of flanders and antwerpen.

If you are okay with the ruler the war is pretty much waiting until france and austria to siege down burgundy and using your ships with denmark to have naval advantage. Naval advantage is important bcs if you don't have it burgundy can wipe your army through friesland.

If you dont feel confident you can use state action for more fort defence

get royal mariages with austria and denmark, leave france for later.

peace deals :

If you done everything right you can finish the war with no debt.

peace out allys of burgundy and only take war reparations. money and prestige will split between war participants but reparation will only go to you.

for burgundy peace:

I will explain why we do and want each option and you can decide for yoursevles.

- firstly give occupation of all lower burgundy to france:

if you have occupation of even one province, autria will get -20 trust if you dont give them anything but if france holds the occupation of lower burgundy, they will be okay to get no province since they only want 2 province at lower burgundy.

- obviously we get independece

- why we want flanders: flanders has a special modifier that boosts renaissance spread and overall 3 nice province. renaissance spread is more important bcs we want to have as much as splendor as early as possible to get ae reduction from age objectives.

- antwerpen: best province you can get. and candidate to faceting event.

- release brabant: we have to do 2 wars with burgundy and braband and having seperate wars is nicer.

- give france 2 province: after multiple runs ı couldnt understand this but sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are not. If someone can explain it I will update but for now we can say the france alliance is rng.

If you have careful ruler you can do everything I mentioned above, if not choose between antwerpen and flanders and if you choose antwerpen also ask for release of flanders.

Most of the time you will finish the war at september or october 1447 which is perfect. Do the peace deal at 25-31 december for yearly ae reduction. This is optional, in ny last campaign I did my peace deal at may 1447.

After the war:

now you have 16 percent crownland so complete your estate priviledges how you like. this part is your gameplay and everyone has different opinions but give relation priviledge from clergy and take 1 percent debt you will need both.

now we will do a humiliate war in order to show strength bcs we want 100 mana and age objectives for humiliate rival ( since show strength also counts)

your BEST option is liege. I know they have lvl 2 forts but all your rival options will be from lowlands and having this war will postpone conquest but after 1 or 2 months burgundy will warn you so in the and you couldnt do liege conquest no mater what.

preperation for 2nd war (liege show strength):

I told you to get 1 percent loans and this have 2 reason. we will recruit a second mercenary army (recruit which has general with more siege pips) and we will buy indulgence from pope with remaining money. our 4th ally will be pope bcs we want curia controller to get even more ae reduction. unfortunatelly most of the time the pope will die before you can become a serious candidate but it doesnt matter. I even tried with giving clergy priviledge that gives you +3 papal influence every time you construct churches and still didnt worked but you can get the curia controller second time and it will usually happen before or during your second wars with burgundy and brabant so still worth.

so now we have 2 mercenary army and one real army so go declare the war ( dont wait too long since burgundy will warn)

liege usually has 1 ally so you can mana the war with ease.

peace out ally or allys and take max prestige ( cancel 3 rivals for +15 prestige, if you peace them by wiping their army and just sieging their capital without completing the siege just cancel 2 rivals since they wont accept 90 percent war score deal and take the +10 prestige) this is important for faceting

peace out liege with show strength.

At this point you will have mana to get all lvl 4 tech with innovativeness and develop amsterdam to 30 dev for another age objective. now the year is 1450, 1451 ish and you should be in the situation:

- all of flanders and antwerpen

- 2 age objective : humiliate and 30 dev

- allys : austria, denmark, papal state, france or ally from hre for ae mitigation (munster is best)

- lvl 4 techs and 8-12 innovativeness

for your new provinces, state them after liege war (the cores will finish during the war) but dont fully core them we need the admin mana.

look for renaissance and try to get knowledge share as soon as possible. most of the time you wont be able to get it but it doesnt matter for admin tech lvl5 . take it as soon as you can.

espionage ideas: you will need 800ish diplo mana to take ae reduction so we wont take diplo tech 5.

but firstly why we do espionage ideas first: holland as colonial nation wont start until you take diplo tech 7 bcs it has colonial range so taking explo early doesnt matter. my first strat was focus admin and take Infrastructure but I dont like taking admin first. So we will take espionage first and fill first 2 to get ae reduction. Dont conrinue filling it since we will drop it at tech 7 (when you get another idea slot) and we will take infra and explo at there. for diplo mana since we also want to fill first 2 of explo you can hold your mana and just take tech 6 early or if you really want to save diplo mana just start culture conversion and cancel it. I didnt cared about it that much and I can continue my life with a few diplo mana wasted so idc.

for 800 diplo you might need a second show strength and you can do it on lowland countries. best option is utrech bc is you wipe their army gelre will likely conquer them and you dont have to wait for truce to end. the worst option is gelre bcs no one can conquer both province so you will likely wait for that peace to end to get the other province which utrech cant take.

now the unification process:

- peace with burgundy and brabant until 1464

- if you done show strength against gelre or done a conquest before you can fully annex gelre you will likely have peace until 1469 like i did.

- in my campaign I did 2nd show strength against utrech and gelre eaten it and I immedately attacked them before I can take the last gelre province which is locked bcs of brabant.

with espionage and age objective ae reduction you will conquer all of lowlands except burgundy and braband at 1464 ( I also missed one province from gelre) and you can attack brabant burguny and gelre to complete lowlands. if burgundian inheritance happened just for emperor to demand lowland and then you can conquer just make sure that you have a claim. This is the last war we will have inside hre so you can have a little coalition.

At 1470 or even early if you can do it, take the mission to unify netherlands and form it ( since mission gives you the option to form it before admin tech 10) you will leave hre but doesnt matter we got everything. drop espionage and get infra explo and go start colonize as you with. since your european wars are finished you can colonize province in africe next to gabo, benin and congo one by one and conquer them to have everything in ıvory coast, since you dont need to move your army from africa to homeland everytime to finish lowlands.

This is the guide, obviously it is not 100 percent complete since everyone has different gamestyles. For example I didnt formed trade company immedately and after I changed to reformed I first converted african colonies to reformed or ı actually couldnt get curia controller but you might get it in the first try etc.

Thank you for reading and I cant wait for your own experiences and feedbacks.