Best way to spread dynasties?

[Armoguy]

So, in my zeal to get PUs or at least spread my dynasty, I have completed diplomatic ideas so that I can enter/exit royal marriages with heirless nations at free will without taking a hit to stability. So far, this has amounted to 0 countries taking my dynasty by 1618. Am I doind something wrong? What is the best approach to this? BTW, I have finished influence ideas as well, and my stability is usualy 2-3, while my prestige and legitimacy are always 80+.

[tonypa]

Honestly, I have played over 1000 hours (not always in Europe of course) and so far I have managed to get exactly 0 PU if we exclude events. I have managed to spread my dynasty few times, but in most cases it ends like this:

Oh, look, this nice country has 65 year old ruler and no heirs, let's make royal marriage!
They accept.
Check the potential claims, I am first!
Check again.
Again.
Checking for next 5 years.

...

The old ruler has managed to get an heir. Ruler itself dies next month. Country goes into Regency instead.


Not saying it does not work... Just that it is based on luck and does not happen very often.

[Sodaspender]

well it is very difficult to influence indeed, what helps are the right ideads (which you took) and being the biggest nation arround. PU is given to the country with the most developement of all potential PUs

there is actually a pretty massive explanation to the mechanics in the Paradox forum if you are keen on finding out every detail

[tinisiyo]

I bet one day Paradox will release dynasties DLC

[OscarTheGrouchiest]

Originally posted by tonypa:

Honestly, I have played over 1000 hours (not always in Europe of course) and so far I have managed to get exactly 0 PU if we exclude events

Wow, that's really unlucky (or lucky, depending on the situation obviously)

I'd say Spain (Castille) is the one where it happens to me most (not counting Aragon in this case as it's event based) Getting France happened a couple of times, and there's also a event that you get Austria's dynasty on the throne, which means Austria suddenly becomes a PU possibility afterwards. But also every other nations that over time have gotten the Habsburg dynasty.

In my last Spain game I suddenly got 2 minor HRE nations as a PU, simply because Austria spread their dynasty over the years, and I was the one who got the advantage for it when their rulers died.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by tinisiyo:

I bet one day Paradox will release dynasties DLC

But hey, at least that mean they will be ADDING something instead not including key mechanic in the first palce (or in the case of building tall, took it away and replaced it with develoipment and dumping it behind DLC!

[Armoguy]

Originally posted by tiberiansun371alexw:

Originally posted by tinisiyo:

I bet one day Paradox will release dynasties DLC

But hey, at least that mean they will be ADDING something instead not including key mechanic in the first palce (or in the case of building tall, took it away and replaced it with develoipment and dumping it behind DLC!

What do you mean took it away? How could you build tall before? Also, I did just get an event to give Poland an heir with my dynasty. It's a start :/

[OscarTheGrouchiest]

That one comes and goes though. Poland has an elective monarchy or whatever it's called. If you have a royal marriage, you can support your heir (it's below the royal marriage option I believe) to become the ruler of Poland, if you manage to do this you get some MP and prestige.

With Austria (it hasn't worked with other nations for me) however, if your heir becomes ruler of Poland a couple of times. There's a possible event that can make Poland(/Lithuania) your actual pu.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Tall play didn't exist before development.

There was only wide players and bad wide players.

Buildings gave a fixed effect regardless of the territory you built them in and wide players could build more buildings. Didn't matter if it was 2 base tax or 10, those buildings were the same and outside of pretty much just a handful of unique national decisions, base-tax could never be changed. And cost the same. The tall (bad) player could never compete or catch up unless the ai itself was just stupid (as it was back then).

(for any newbies who weren't here back then. Base-tax is basically development. Everything in the game basically was derivied from it. The change to development split it into 3 sub-parts, each taking over some of the derived factors increasing the variety value of provinces (such as some being better at taxes, or production, or manpower, similar to how trade goods give provinces different values as well instead of it always being the same), as well as a few factors being based on the total development (like force limit calculations). All in all it's just a more flexible system overall. One of the most important bits though was that base tax was nearly impossible to modify outside a handful of unique national decisions or scripted events).




Now not only are buildings more heavily restricted in general, their value is based mostly on the development of the province, and a tall player is much more likely to focus their holdings on high development provinces (which can also build more buildings) which also are more valuable for the same cost since the buildings work better in higher development provinces.

Not only that, certain idea groups (innovative, economic, trade) were granted new random events that could randomly increase development that are more potent the smaller your number of holdings are as you're more likely to develop the same province more than once, while a wide player only their capital is ever likely to gain any significant development (via take from one and transfer to the capital event). (warranted, these gains are small, but they're gains relatively to the old system none the less. It's unlikely to gain more than about 50 development over the course of a whole game this way if you have all 3 idea groups).


Tall play ultimately got better post-development. It still can't compete fully with a wide player, but it never did to begin with, though it's at least a little stronger than it used to be.

Only with Common Sense can you actually specialize in true tall play for the first time in EU4 history.




----------------------------

The ONLY time an ability was actually cut out and put back in by a DLC, and not simply a base change in economy and strategic focus, was the removal of the ability for native americans to westernize after CoP without the DLC. (this only applies to Natives with native council government. The central Amercians already had reformed governments and could westernize normally)

The new government (Native Council) was mechanically better than the old tribal ones they had, BUT until just recently, it wasn't possible to get rid of it without the dlc, and you were forever trapped on the American continent with no way to build boats or get rid of the crushing penalty you'd had since day 1. The old tribal governments worked the same as any tribal government and allowed reforming out of it once you completed a handful of relatively easy requirements (though the huge tech penalty North/South Americans had made this much more difficult than say, the Africans, had to deal with.

This was FINALLY fixed in 1.18 which added a special non-CoP Decision to native council governemnt to reform out of it if you don't have the DLC. (if you do have the DLC it uses it's own reformation path instead).

to celebrate, one of my first vanilla playthroughes after 1.18 was to burn down Europe as the Cherokee. it was a fun playthrough, I vassalized Trier and fed/sold it a line territory from brittany to Moscow, to make a Trail of Triers.