Big Blue - A Guide to France (v.1.12) and achievement

France is easily considered to be the greatest superpower in Europe, and one of the easiest nations to do a world domination or conquest!

Additionally, I will attempt to get the Big Blue Blob achievement with France.
-Update: Got the achievement

With amazing national ideas and rich provinces, France has the potential to dominate the Western HRE, Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles and mainland England. However, beginning the game France is surrounded by potential foes, many plotting against the nation.

This guide will show you how to become the big blue blob and dominate all of Europe, or even conquer the world with enough luck.


NOTE: Guide will no longer be updated after 1.13 comes out.

Until my senior year finishes, I won't be able to play too much EU4 and by that time I'll have to catch up for their 1.16-7 updates and dlcs.

The Big Blue Blob (Achievement Path)

I got the Big Blue Blob achievement after three attempts.
My first was in a previous patch version because I thought it would work. But nope.avi
My second was focused on expanding into my neighbors and the HRE.

In the last game, I finally got the achievement.



Now I will tell you how, and in my opinion a more efficient way to earn the achievement.

First, you want to pursue a game where you will have Castile with friendly relations towards you and rivals England.

Additionally you'll want Poland/Lithuania to be friendly now or in the future, however this isn't completely necessary. You will want them to rival the Ottomans and (or) Hungary.

Even more unnecessary, if you want you can get Austria friendly with you at the start of the game. You can ally them too, along with the Polish commonwealth, although this isn't mandatory for the achievement.

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Regarding the Scandinavian route:

This route is definitely better for expansion as you can push into England, and as you take some of their cheap land along with Scotland and push into Scandinavia through Norway or using Denmark and declaring on one of their allies.

Through Scandinavia you will expand into what's left of Novgorod, and into places such as Livonia and Estonia if the oppertunity presents itself. If Muscovy is occupied in a war, try to take as much cheap land from them as possible.


Protips for gameplay:
- Ignore diplomatic technology, though not entirely unless you desire so. Use your excess diplo. points to lower down war exhaustion when necessary and use them in peace deals.
- Change your national focus to administrative. You need as many admin. points as possible to complete your coring.
- Choose rivals you will either conquer to the point where they won't be a rival, or rivals you would use for a diplomatic boost (i.e. rival ottomans to suck up to Poland)
- In conquered provinces which have above 8% unrest or those which are at 90% progress towards revolting, raise autonomy.
- Place your merchants strategically, one steering from Bordeaux to Champagne, and the other either collecting in Champagne or the English Channel after your war with England.
- Something you can choose to do is ally Navarra and vassalize them diplomatically before Castile or Aragon do so. Improve relations first, then at +95 relations, ally-guarantee-access-marry and then vassalize them. If you do this within the first four months of the game you will get Navarra as your one and only vassal. You can feed them provinces, too.
- Aggressive expansion: AE begins to pile up when you begin conquering your Catholic neighbors. As a countermeausure to doing this suck up to neighbors or people you will soon conquer. Attacking the Ottomans won't generate AE, as Europe supports inquisition.
- Truce Breaking: If you have ~88 or some provinces just after winning a war against the Turks and it's your last fifteen years for the achievement, and you have spare ADM points , feel free to break your truce against the Turks to go for more land. Against Muslims the Catholic world ignores the truce breaking and your spare diplo points can be used to lower the war exhaustion. And you can continue truce breaking, since stability is just a number.
- Advisors: Hire an ADM lv1 advisor along with a lv1 MIL advisor at the start of the game. Only hire a level 1 better relations over time advisor when AE spawns upon you. If there are none present then ignore this slot. Level 2 ADM advisors are recommended as soon as your economy can support it.

Luck-reliant
- Burgundy went to war against Austria in the mid 1460s and lost their unions during the war, splitting up.
- If Hungary allies Austria it will be fairly difficult to expand into them. Hopefully in your game this doesn't happen.
- Ottomans preferably are slow with expansion and ignored the Balkans for the Mamluks.
- Venice hasn't taken Ragusa and instead attacked the Mamluks.
- My heir died early in the game and I got a new one soon, a 6/2/3. Hopefully your heir has high administrative ability.


Now, back to the game. Choose your rivals. I picked Aragon, Provence, and left my last slot empty. You can choose whether to use this slot or not, it's probably better to rival England.

After allying Castile, you want to use your other diplomat to immediately declare a war upon England to retake all your adjacent cores.

Get a claim on Provence, Loire, and Rousillon sometime during your war. When you have a spare diplomat, improve relations with Poland or Austria.

After you retake your adjacent cores from England attack Provence for territory. If you desire it so, you can take as much land as you want from them.

After that war attack Brittany, and fully annex them.

Next is a slightly tougher one. Aragon. You'll declare on them, and call in Castile. Aim to take at least the wargoal, and then also a chunk of Naples.

Use Naples to claim Ragusa. Hopefully Venice hasn't sniped it. Take them out, then claim and annex the minor Balkan nations. You should have also allied Poland by now, because the Ottomans are going to be a menace.

Some of the game depends on your luck. By my luck Burgundy split into me fairly early during the year of 1462 and I was able to snowball further off that.

Once you have conquered the Balkan minors you can choose to attack either the Ottomans or Hungary. Or both. Attack Hungary with the help of Poland. In that war I'd take as much of Hungary's lowly-developed land as I could.

Similiarly, repeat this against the Ottomans, and take all the lowly-developed land. During these wars you want to get a claim on one of the Pope's lands besides Rome. Additionally getting claims on some Neapolitan or Aragonese lands will assist you in your campaign.

During your truces with these two nations attack Aragon more, taking more of their lands, or Naples, if Aragon lost their union. Also attacking the Papacy works well as long as you don't conquer Rome.

Hopefully when repeating these attacks you will have earned your 100+ provinces and got that achievement. Good luck!

France, 1444 (v1.11)

Before you read this I want you to know that this part of the guide is outdated as of the 1.12 patch.

Be aware this is my very first guide in my history of guides.
This is a guide which will be made as I play, I'm playing France in ironman while making this.

Before you unpause:

-Take the mission to "improve prestige" or "Protect against England", if possible
-Revoke your guarantee on Scotland
-Dismiss all your generals except "Jean Bureau" (optional)
-Place your military general in your armies attacking opposing ones, alternate/rotate your general when necessary
-Split the troop stack on your capital
-Send your troop stack with a general to attack the English army in Normandie
-Split off another stack of three units to siege the province of Caux, as Provence tends to take the siege
-Hire advisors, giving +1 only.
-Mothball/sell your few heavy ships. You won't need them against England's fleet.
-Anyone you ally can be called into the HYW, so drag people in as you please, seeking Austria, Castile, or Aragon as an ally.

The Hundred Years War

-Occupy Caux, Gascogne, Normadie, and Labourd, while crushing English armies. Wait 5 years (until Dec 1449), which will give you +25 warscore for holding the wargoal (your capital). Then make peace and take as many of your cores back as you can. If the war drags on long enough sometimes your vassals or Provence will get access through Burgundy and siege Calais.
-Aim for an ally of Austria, Castile, or Aragon

-An alliance with Castile is especially useful because it allows for easy expansion into Aragon.
-An alliance with Aragon secures your southeastern front and opens another front allowing for expansion into Castile.
-An alliance with Austria is useful if you percieve Burgundy as a threat to you, but if Burgundy splits the Austrians tend to stab you in the back.

Post Hundred-Years War

Expansion into Iberia

-With your ally of Castile Aragon, or Austria, aim to conquer your share of the Iberian peninsula.
-With Castile or Aragon you should choose one to conquer the other nation. With Castile as an ally you can use them to conquer the entirety of Aragon, and vice versa. Having Castile as an ally is favorable because declaring war on Aragon tends to break the Castilian-Portugese alliance, and you can have Castile transferring trade power to you as well.

The King of Burgundy Dies

-The great king of burgundy and his closest followers have tragically been killed! In an effort to win the current war, the king personally led his troops into battle, valiantly charging his enemies. His naked and disfigured body was later found in a ditch, his head having been cleft in two. The death of the last dynasty member of Burgundy has plunged the country into internal turmoil and left it vulnerable to intervention from powerful neighbors.
-France is the first in line to inherit her share of Burgundy.
-With Austria as an ally you can use them to help trigger the event through forcing them into war while their king is a general.

Expansion into the UK

War of the Roses

You want to avoid declaring a war against England while they have the War of the Roses. This will make sure their unrest stays as high as possible.

Final war for French cores

When you do your final war against England to go after your last couple french cores, you'll want to make England release Cornwall, (if they didn't already lose it to the War of the Roses).

With Cornwall released you should aim to vassalize them diplomatically.

Begin fabricating claims on England's southern coastline.

If Wales broke free during the war of the roses, you should get military access from them.

Conquest of the English mainland

After vassalizing Cornwall (or conquering them) you should begin to ferry your troops to Cornwall and Wales, if possible. Scotland could work for troop ferrying as well. Make sure your troops aren't taking any attrition in neutral lands. Alternatively, you could probably call in a friendly Scotland in a war against England, although it's unnecessary.

England is likely allied to Portugal, so if you call Castile in they would practically negate Portugal as a foe in your war.

Slowly conquer mainland England, taking your wargoal and a province you have a claim on, perhaps even one bordering Wales. In peace deals you want to focus on taking England's coastline or isolating or dividing their mainland. Also, if England hasn't intervened too much in Ireland, you can vassalize one of the irish minors and conquer the other two.

Truce Time

Multitasking is an essential during Europa Universalis IV. During truces with England attack the Iberian nations or expand into Provence, and Savoy while the Emperor is at a war with a mediocre/great power. (Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Burgundy)

If you plan on doing world conquest as France, you'll want to wage a war whenever you have sufficient manpower and your war exhaustion is near 0.

Azur semé de lis or

The French Cores Achievement

When multitasking you should be also using your diplomats, to either fabricate claims, improve relations, or annex your vassals. You should rush to annexation of your vassals when possible, and annex two at once; or more if you can spare the diplomats.

Make sure that when you do this the annexations end within a month of each other. You can see when they end by hovering over you diplomat which is currently annexing the vassal.

This frees up your diplomatic relations slots for more vassalizations (of the HRE members or English minors/Brittany) or more alliances.

Portugese Problems

If the oppertunity presents itself, give Castile one of Portugal's provinces. This will make them hate each other forever (unless Portugal is threatened by Castile), and make you have one less colonial power to deal with.

[h1Iberian Wedding[/h1]
After conquering half of Aragon with my good ally Spain, the Iberian wedding event fired off. At the time I had quantity idea 1 and the same tech level as them so I managed to fight the combined forces of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal in a war, crushing Castile and making them lose their union upon their king's death.

Colonization

At level 10 for administrative technology, take the Exploration idea group. Begin with a colony in Africa (if you can't reach America yet) and afterwards colonize Brazil until your colonial nation forms.
If portugal colonized Brazil already, use the Colonial dispute CB to feed your colonial nation.

Religion

Protestantism is not worth taking 90% of the time, because the French basetax should be high enough to hold the curia, which is far more valuable than the 10% idea cost and tax.

The HRE Game

On the other hand if you want to play the HRE game you can flip to Protestant and lead the Protestant league to victory against the emperor, becoming it yourself.

Backstabbing Spain

Backstabbing

If you're doing world conquest, and you aren't looking for a happy peaceful game, be the france that you've always wanted to do and stab spain in the back. You can do this at any point in the game; I did it soon as the Iberian wedding happened.

Begin fabricating several claims on Spain's coastline (this will cripple their colonization ability once you seize it).

Wait for the Spanish ruler to die, and don't remarry them. Instead, break the alliance, your trade transfer, and declare war. With your broken ideas you should squish the spanish army and begin carpet sieging.

Don't get yourself diplomatically isolated!

Doing so can leave you in a tough spot. So if Europe hates you, you can ally Russia as a failsafe.

Vassalizing Navarra

If you desire to do so, you can peace out of the hundred years war early, and aim to diplo vassalize navarra before Castile or Aragon does. Only do this if you see that neither Iberian nation is using a diplomat to improve Navarra's opinion of them.

Peace Talks

Take adjacent coastal provinces you have a claim on, and/or make them release Granada / Aragon.
For combat advice, try to not attack into the border mountains between France and Spain. Instead check that you're attacking into a plains, with at most a -1 modifier.

Progress?

From here on (1500s+) ideally you should have your french cores, half of what england's mainland is to start off, Spain's northern coastline and eastern coastline with granada free, and the northern three aragonese provinces, as well as a few vassals within the HRE.

Here's my progress as of 4.18.15:

Additional Notes:

Burgundy doesn't split

In my France game Burgundy didn't split between Austria and I. To deal with Burgundy I would wait for the emperor or a regional power to attack them/be attacked and join the fight against them about a month or two into their war to fight for my cores.

Vassalizing Brittany

With enough basetax and a diplomatic reputation advisor, you should be able to diplomatically vassalize brittany. An alternative option is to simply vassalize them through war or annex them province by province.

Into the Abyss

From the year 1508 and on, the world can be a very random place. Sadly, this guide can't predict everything, so you'll have to manage the rest of this game. You'll have a good foothold on Europe, and plenty of years to conquer the rest of the world with your expansion idea group finisher.

World Conquest

Pro Tips and Tricks (Ideas within Ideas)

Idea groups

Group 1
For your first idea group, you can take diplomatic ideas or influence ideas.
The better relations over time or the aggressive expansion impact reduction helps France reduce coalitions fast. A neat exploit to do, if your aggressive expansion modifier is around -15 or below, you can save your game and reload it to disband any coalition members with a low -15-0 AE modifier.

Group 2
For your first militaristic idea group, I recommend Quality, Offensive, or Quantity ideas.
In my opinion quantity ideas on France are amazing, primarily because France already has amazing troops with the Elan! modifier.

Group 3
Exploration. You need influence on the new world.
Exploration allows you to contest the new world against powers such as England, Spain, and Portugal. If you seek world conquest, exploration will be needed to simplify your run.

Group 4
Expansion
The expansion idea group is amazing. Along with what you'd normally get for rapidly growing colonies, you get an insanely cheap CB to abuse against all of the lower tech groups.

Group 5
Administrative / Other Mil. Group
Administrative becomes very useful when it comes down to coring several of the provinces you conquer. Of course if you are feeding your vassals then you won't need to core provinces and you'd rather just eat your vassals.

Group 6
Humanism Ideas / Economics / Other Diplo Idea (Dip/Inf)
Helps keep down revolts; further improves economy for a larger army over the forcelimit; simplifies diplomatic annexations/relation penalties.

Group 7/8
One of the above

My current France game in Ironman, 1490.


Additionally, in a different game, I got the Big Blue Blob achievement.




If you like this guide, or want to see more, please thumbs this guide up and favorite it! It helps others find this.

Current Guides

Big Blue: A Guide to France
Winning the Hundred Years War as England - 4 Simple Steps

[็]

"France is considered the greatest superpower in europe"
uhhhh AUSTRIA?
muscovy and england are way stronger than france too in EU4, even spain if you play it well

hell for any tryhard using multiplayer strats, the best nations in europe are stuff like Andalusia Rûm or Ireland for their ideas, starting developement is small compared to what you conquer and almost irrelevant

[ZestyGazelle109]

I once saw a meme, a very great meme is was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp_GycFaP2w
It's the first meme you will see

[Lombardia]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/633104240493138079/715C16A5780D4C4CDECB2BB7343193CF9413115A/

Here's an example of the pathing you want to achieve, I added a couple improvements below.

[Lombardia]

Goal of getting your golden age ASAP. I think now, your best opener bet is to immediately war England and build to your forcelimit. Ally spain and access. Then take the mission and a discipline/morale advisor. Siege Portugal's capital with your access through spain and separate peace them for Ceuta. Take all your homeland cores back in the main peace deal with England along with their Irish core. Take your missions reconquer Gascony and expand France.

[TheoBell_08]

This is outdated information. They need a fresh version of this guide to include the latest patch rules updates. With forts blocking all your moves I honestly don't see how to get 100 provinces before 1500 AD.

[SapphicKerfuffle]

Good points.

[Lombardia]

The WC achievement is far older, and many veteran players probably got it when exploiting still worked well, for instance you could have player bonuses on ironman back in 1.5. The game has lost some of its player base, after all the common sense rant, and perhaps less people are going for the achievements now as well.

[SapphicKerfuffle]

Oh yeah I got the achievement in 1.17 about a month back lol. Just had to get East Frisia as a vassal and expand a ton in the north didn't even get the Burgundian inheritance. Right now trying for world conquest which is harder for me despite more people having it....

[Lombardia]

@hottwiz, Politic Revolutionnaire, Cresswell; I would revert back to 1.11 and play, in my opinion it's much easier to shrug them off with a relations over time advisor and improve relations. Take all DLCs prior to common sense.

[hottwiz]

so my question is how do you deal with the coalitions,alliances and what dlcs