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There is not a single military idea group that is, mathematically, objectively, provably, nearly as good as the benefits you get by more tactical application of other groups. Economic and Trade sound good, but the benefits they provide are dwarfed by the benefits of actually expanding more, which is made easier by other groups - so not only do you get the benefit of the other better group, but you more easily make money and make the lesser group even more obsolete.
You can skip Influence (maybe) for Exploration or Expansion if you want to compete as an early coloniser. Expansion is perhaps the better option because it lets you lower the autonomy in territories and trade companies, making them more productive.
Your fourth idea group after the Big Three should be either Religious or Humanist - if the former, stay Catholic (it is objectively the strongest religion in the game if you can maintain high Papal Influence gains) and go for Religious. Humanist is good for keeping your people calm and complacent without spending too much time and effort on it - it is a more passive play.
Always let trade flow guide your expansion. Look at which trade nodes you have power in. As England, you effectively start with the best node (English Channel) being your primary one, so check to see which nodes feed directly into that one. Conquer them entirely. Now see which nodes feed directly into those. Conquer them entirely. And so on and so forth.
What are you going to do about the HRE? You need to have a game plan for them if you start anywhere near them. Becoming the Emperor is mathematically the strongest option for you so that you can subjugate the lot of them, but otherwise you want to stay right out of it and let the Reformation do all the damage it can.
Regarding releasing nations, starting in England, you'll have next to no options for releasable nations that are worth it. Not until you reach places like the Balkans or Middle East (taking a single province from the Ottomans or Mamluks, and releasing a destroyed nation like Byzantium, Bulgaria or Syria for future Reconquest wars) anyway. If you are going to war in Spain, I advise waiting until the country itself is formed and then taking a province of Aragon (and in Italy, if you are lucky and they integrated them, Naples) for release.
You will also need to wait until the Age of Absolutism in 1610-ish before your growth can truly become exponential through mastery of the absolutism mechanic that becomes active then.
Provinces only cost diplo points when they're not part of the war goals set by your casus belli. E.G. if you fabricate a claim and declare a conquest war for it, any provinces you have a claim on will be free. If you declare a war for your vassal's claims, those provinces will be free. Etc. One of the advantages of vassals is that you can take one province from an enemy- even without a claim, the cost for a single low-dev province is pretty low- then release an extinct country that has a core there as a vassal. Then you can use that vassal's Reconquest CB to take all their other cores back for no diplo points, and then annex the vassal (which is where Influence + Admin ideas come in- together you can get -45% annexation cost).
So to take one example RCMidas mentioned, it can take a few different wars to conquer all of Syria from the Mamluks. Or you can take one province, release them as a vassal, and take pretty much everything else they back in a single Reconquest war.
As he mentioned though, there's not many opportunities for that in England's neighborhood. Unless maybe Burgundy gets lucky and inherits all their subjects or something.
I took those in that order: Aristocracy, Exploration, Economy, Trade.
1. Those Big Three (Admin, Diplo, Influ) ideas should be taken in that order?
2. I was thinking about dropping Exploration since I failed to get a PU over Portugal and Spain, they basically colonized most of the Americas and Africa by now.
3. Btw there's any way to increase the chance of getting a PU? I married and placed a heir using favors in Portugal, Spain and Austria, but they got rid of them somehow. I never got a PU or a chance to claim the throne trough war.
4. Also my religion is Anglicanism, I really like the church power abilities and I plan to eventually get religious for the Deus Vult thing. Is that a good strategy or there's something better to keep conquering?
5. I managed to ally all the electors and dismantled the HRE by occupying Austria capital. Now I'm wondering how do I conquer them since they keep entering in a coalition against me after each war nearby. That's another thing I don't know how to deal with, basically what I'm doing is grabbing some provinces from them and waging war against Spain and Portugal while the coalition cooldown, which takes a long time btw.
6. Spain is already formed and they annexed Aragon and Naples already lol. I have a vassal (Lucca) on the northern part of italy which I plan to get some lands, but it don't have any cores there.
The conquest on HRE lands are very slow then? Cause they often have multiple allies and If I only make peace deals with the target it will take a loooong time to conquer most of the region.
Yeah I just saw that opportunity, Burgundy wasn't very big in my game, France ate most part of it... So i starter a war and made Burgundy my vassal, i'm waiting for the truce to end to reconquer their land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKcqen47IE
But he doesn't show lots of important details.
What's your favorite EU4 youtubers?
Honestly, they're pretty much all terrible. They give mediocre to bad advice. They share rumors as fact and don't retract them when they're proven wrong. They want clicks and attention.
If you want good advice, this forum is WAY better than any streamer.
A) Extremely time-consuming.
B) Very boring to watch.
That said, I do recommend checking out Zlewikk when he actually streams, because you will then be able to see everything he does as opposed to an edited aftermath.
EDIT: The Big Three to listen to on the forums, however, would be Marquoz, grotaclas and the third doesn't matter if you pay attention to them two properly. Malvastor and bri are VERY good runners-up though, if I can be serious.
Up to you- it depends on what your needs are. Diplo is a popular first choice for AE management. I like starting with Influence sometimes to manage a lot of early subjects (like for France or Muscovy). And if you're someone who launches an early conquest blitz, like the Ottomans, Admin might be best.
Just keep in mind that you can't have more than 50% of your ideas from one group, so e.g. if you start with Diplo you can't take Influence immediately after.
If they've blocked off the colonizable areas then yeah, Exploration won't help you much. It's really only good if you can get to unknown regions first and start colonizing them early; some people don't even go past the first couple ideas in it, and abandon it as soon as they have enough range to not need it.
The Holy War CB from Religious is pretty much the best CB available early on. Getting access to it against literally everybody else is probably the best thing about Anglicanism; it's a subpar religion otherwise.
This is probably a result of taking land from multiple parties in separate peace deals. Your AE will rack up really quickly that way. Especially in a dense high-dev region like the HRE.
Personally, that's why I like to take over and consolidate the HRE instead; conquering your way through it is a nightmare otherwise.
So next time you fight Spain, you can take one province with an Aragonese core and one with a Neapolitan core (preferably small provinces, to keep your AE and costs down). Release both as vassals, and then take all their lands back in two big Reconquest wars. Prioritize any provinces that don't have the primary culture- those cores are likely to expire first, while a cores of a culture's primary nation (e.g. a Naples core on a Neapolitan culture province) will never expire.
There's this really humble guy names RCMidas I'd add to that list too.
The rest of you would blow me out of the water easily.
Nah, I'm pretty casual as a player and half of what I know is from reading posts from the rest of you guys. I'm a much more expert player in theory than in practice, lol.
And now we're done with this little circle jerk... :)
For significant expansion options, when playing as a Christian monarchy, learning the details of Personal Unions and how to force them if needed is also a step in the route to mastery. A very long, very difficult, very frustrating route it is too.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/guide-to-royal-marriages-personal-unions-and-claim-throne.788829/
It's a little technical in spots (and also a little old), but the upshot is that the result of a monarch dying childless is heavily contingent on what phase you're in of an internal cycle the game runs. Pay close attention to your target to see what you should expect at the moment.
Do I need to take a HRE member as vassal and feed him land?
You will need to remain Catholic in the early part of the game to qualify for this, and you must be led by a male monarch - without passing a certain decision that costs a fair bit of Legitimacy and Imperial Authority, gaining a female monarch instantly loses you the imperial throne - and not being a member of the HRE will make things a little difficult at first.
In fact, feeding land to HRE members is something a clever Emperor will try to avoid - instead, you want to break up as many of them as many to be tiny, releasing as many dead principalities (such as the one-province Lippe from three-province Berg) to have MORE individual nations in the HRE. This not only makes the Electors even more unlikely to vote for smaller nations, but the multitude of nations will increase the rate at which you gain Imperial Authority to pass various reforms.