Balancing tech, dev, and other ??? eu4 newb paradox vet

[bardthehowler]

I recently picked up eu4, and it's really good. I've played ck2 and hoi4 previously, and have over 1400 hours between those two. ck2 is a cakewalk compared to eu4 lbs. Iv'e decided to go with sweden for my learning, because to me for the time period represented in game, they seem like they could have been the germany of their time. If sweden had been able to industrialize and populate, coupled with their early monopoly on copper and other abundant natural resources and their not insignificant amount of land they could have drastically altered events imo.

I'm having some trouble balancing some things though. I did some reading and it seems like the general consensus is that tech>ideas>dev is the way to go. The issues im having with this is that i'm constantly on the verge of negative money to the point of having to micromanage. I start dropping into negative balance territory, and then I have to invest dev to raise my revenues back into positive. It's slowing my tech, and that seems to snowball to the point of having to gg. I get my merchants to steer into the baltic from novgorod and krakow, and then I have one barque which sweden starts with protecting novgorod, and that gives me good value. To get more though takes even more dev. I focus on the copper and iron provinces, and stockholm. I then have to start spreading out where i'm developing though due to cost when my need for tax spikes. How can I become stable? As a player what can I do to become more efficient? When is it a good idea to spend on mercantilism? Should tax buildings initially be built in high tax or low tax provinces?

I just tried an iron man, and was able to break free of kalmar by ♥♥♥♥ with england, scotland, and muscovy helping. After that I was no longer able to keep my tech balanced. I quit at 5/7/5 with the economic idea at lvl 1 because i was getting much too far behind in mil tech, and I wasn't able to embrace the renaissance in good time. I didn't think to enact the institution spread until later on, but that's a lesson learned. Both norway and denmark had mil 7 to my 5, and that was just those two. I couldn't even beat revolt troops. Should I put all of my states under spread institution as soon as an institution is present? Should I avoid selecting a national focus? it's a benefit to be sure, but it seems that is also contributing to the unbalancing. should you be drilling at all times? how can you win battles/wars with an opponent that has higher mil tech? I can get larger force limits pretty easily by spending a little dev, but even with superior numbers, good drill, and being under the cav/inf ratio i'm still getting slaughtered. I really struggled with attrition initially, but I think I've gotten that figured out. Comparing my casualties from when I started to this last attempt I've cut my attrition losses by about 60%, with most coming now from the terrain and other elements of sweden that just are. is there a way to increse supply in a province, or can that only be modified by something? I know it's a lot of questions, but that's a paradox game for you lol.

[Medicles]

Sweden has a pretty bad economy and its not really that useful to dev up only to get more money. You should dev up when you have a surplus on monarch points.

If you have trouble with money, it usually is enough to just lower the army maintenance during times of peace. You should also consider your army compositions. I am usually fine with 2 cavalry and the rest infantry until cannons come into play. Cavalry just cost way too much maintenance and bring too little to the table to have more than 2-4 for the usual countries. Exceptions are hordes and countries building on cavalry, like Poland.

Tech balance should be quite easy. Military tech is always the most important one, you have to be on par with your neighbours. Diplo and Admin are not that important, its ok if you stay behind in tech, but at a maximum of two techs behind. In the early midgame, you should already be the number 1 in every tech anyway.

Drill is not that important early on, military tech is the most important thing. Again, you have to be on par with your neighbours. Get a military advisor, set the focus on military, get military points from estates. Dont use those points for harsh treatment, like ever, its pointless, except for really rare occasions, which dont happen in europe. You also shouldnt engage wars against countries that have higher military tech than you, the only way to win is with a high general, defensive boni and military ideas, which your enemy has most likely too, so it ends in rng against your favour eventually.

I would suggest to start with an easier nation to get to know the system first. Maybe Brandenburg, that should help you more. A relatively small country with a huge potential.

[Jack Slash]

Brandenburg is a good one, but were roadblocked by high AE in HRE and are generally limited to expand early on. And never deliberately spend diplo points on mercantilism unless you almost maxed out your diplo monarch points. But do picked events decision whenever it gave you mercantilism, unless it gaves you unnecessary rebel problems.

Early on, the best way to gain more money is from taxes, and that is to expand and gained more provinces. How to win wars early game? High mil tech (It's good to have higher mil tech than your war enemy), morale boost from defensive ideas or national ideas such as france, and mil advisor. And to significantly increase supply is to increase your mil tech.

Later on prod and trades will gives you more money, especially trade income will go through the roof if you're playing Netherland for example. I got 132 ducats from english channel with 75% trade efficiency in 1626.

My advice regarding how to get ahead in tech is to start saving monarch points when your +6 or +7 years ahead of time (60% / 70%), you can see it in tech panel, there's a circular watch next to your techs header. And remember to focus mil techs at the start of the game so you can get a head in mil tech whenever you wanted to start a war.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by bardthehowler:

I'm having some trouble balancing some things though.

As European nation you should not develop any provinces unless you are already maxed on tech and ideas. Developing provinces is fine for countries far away to spawn institution.

Sweden starts as poor country with many 1-1-1 provinces (most of northern part and finland), it will not become rich enough until late 1500s. You just have to be careful with your spending until that.

- never waste Military points on harsh treatment to reduce rebels. If you are having unrest you should raise Stability (+2 is ok) and place troops in the province or as last chance increase autonomy on recently conquered provinces. You can also make the rebels spawn intentionally so you can quickly kill them off and not worry about those for 10 years, but fighting them may be difficult and waste manpower/gold

- never raise Mercantilism manually. Only if random event pops. Also if you are asked to choose between losing Mercantilism and money/monarch points, give up Mercantilism first

- do not hire mercenaries

- keep your war exchaustion, corruption and inflation close to 0, but do not spend monarch points reducing these

- you can easily manage with 2 cavalry units (or 4 if you split armies) until artillery appears. You do not have to keep your troops maxed out to the limit, specially during the peace. If having money problem, destroy couple units, reduce Army maintenance

- drilling is waste of money (only useful thing about drilling is random chance to improve generals)

- mothball all forst during peace, consider destroying some forts that are not bordering enemy. For example if you have conquered Norway, no point keeping forts up there

- as Sweden I would not invest that heavily on fleet at start. If you fight Denmark, they will still have more ships and can easily kill yours, and there are not other countries you must use navy against. Light ships pay for themsevles by improving your trade so build couple of those, transports are pretty useless, heavies cost too much and even galleys can be ignored

- you should hire advisors but only if you can afford them. Even 1 to improve the points you lack most is enough

- one mistake new players commonly fall into is to expanding too fast. Consider taking only 1 province in each war but always add war reparations and money in the peace deal. If you are lucky, the enemy will go bankrupt and becomes easy target for next war. You can manage your money by asking gold in the peace deals and going negative during peace.

- when you unlock new buildings (church, workshop, marketplace) you should build these quickly on the most profitable provinces. I only build marketplace in trade centers (Stockholm) and church/workshop only in the provinces where these will increase more then 0.10 (start from highest improvement)

- if in war, consider also saving money. You do not have to win with 100% warscore. Save manpower and money by avoiding battles you can not easily win. Place troops in enemy provinces to loot money. If in deep trouble during war, consider raising war taxes. Keep an eye out for potential weak neighbours who are already involved in multiple wars (novgorod, livonian order) and have claims ready so you could have quick war and take few province + gold without wasting much yourself

- personally I never take loans unless I really want one for quick investment like embracing institution or building something

- autonomy reduces all the income. Your richer provinces should be 0% autonomy for maximum income, those poor 1-1-1 lands can be given to Estates

P.S. Post one question per time so it can be answered better, easy to miss some when there are so many.

Also, some of the information about the game out on the web is really outdated. If it is more then year old, I would not trust it much.

[Shai-Hulud]

I would really recommend learning with an independent nation. Ideally a recommended nation. The game has a steep enough learning curve without making things harder on yourself.

[Medicles]

tonypa with the best and detailed advices as always. Thanks for your service here in the forum, seriously.

[bardthehowler]

Good tips. It helped me alot. I managed to conquer the kola peninsuila, karelia, pomorye, estonia, and latvia. after that however the game fell to a crawl. due to alliances the game became very static with no one able to go to war really. and i fell behind on mil tech, and my other two techs were 2 behind my mil tech. i grew, but i became a backwater because i couldnt keep up with anyone. i fell behind by two institutions, and i couldnt catch up. all of that coupled with absurd amounts of unrest and then the religious stuff starting made for a game over by about 1549. i did try a brandenburg game but i quit very early on as i found again the alliances made any type of expansion impossible. no matter who i checked around me they would have multiple allys come to their aid, and none of mine ever want to help me. im still trying to figure that part out because its becoming an issue in all of my games.

[Medicles]

Hmm, you should be able to ally Poland as Brandenburg since you have most likely either Bohemia or Teutonic Order as the same rival. With Poland as your ally, its basically just a waiting game until you get enough favours. Your neighbouring HRE nations usually only ally other HRE nations and Poland-Lithuania should be able to deal with them, even without your help.

Dont want to be disrespectful, but your comment shows, that you still need basic knowledge about how to lead your country properly. Do not worry, we all had to go through this and even with my 1000 hours into the game, i still make mistakes or even learn something new.

I would now suggest you start with an actual easy nation to get to know the basics first. Still not Ottomans though, they are way too easy and you dont learn much. I suggest either Castille or England. Both are strong, somewhat safe and you can learn something about colonisation too.

Also, you might want to look up the Eu4 wiki for several informations. It helped me good in my playtime and i use it frequently up to day.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by bardthehowler:

alliances the game became very static with no one able to go to war

That can easily happen in late game, but normally not yet in 1549. Once at 1700s the world is usually covered by couple of strong alliances and nobody has much ways to expand.

Managing alliances is part of the game, same as improving relations. You can not get very far by blindly declaring war everyone around you, you need to pick right moment when your enemy is weak and your allies are ready to help.

Again, the goal of war is not always take as much land as possible, you could simply demand breaking up alliances and some gold - in the long run this can make next war much easier for you while breaking up the cobweb of countries all allied to each other. Another trick you should be using is not start the war against your real target but pick one small and weak ally they got.

For example if you want to attack france but they are allied to Austria and Spain and Brittany. If Brittany is only allied to France, you can attack Brittany instead, this will bring France into war, conquer France and get high enough warscore to make them break alliance with Austria and Spain in peace deal. Next war they are easy target.

[bri]

One thing to keep in mind, as long as your techs aren't drastically unbalanced it isn't a big deal for them not to all be the same. 5/7/5 for a little while isn't the end of the world (although low military tech can be a problem in itself). Sometimes your ruler skills and events happen that have you dragging in points in one area or another for a while.

Personally, as Sweden I would dev up to get renaissance ASAP (don't spend any points on development until renaissance has spawned). You can easily spend just as much on the higher tech costs before it finally arrives without gaining a high dev province in return, the same applies to colonialism. You have some grassland/farmland readily available near the Danish border.

I'd also only keep the fort in Narva, you don't beat Denmark to get free with forts, you do it with strong allies supporting you and running over them. Make sure you have plenty of claims on them for cheaper coring and grab their good provinces in the first war, not useless Norwegian crap you can easily take later like the ai is prone to do.

Don't be afraid to dump / backstab an ally once they out-live their usefulness, especially if it is your easiest route of expansion,