The nuances of Eu4

A description/guide for a reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/gwdvwp/ok_what_am_i_doing_wrong/ leading to more optimal play.

Introduction

So welcome to my little guide for the reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/gwdvwp/ok_what_am_i_doing_wrong/

I will directly mention you, OP, but this can be viewed much more abstract as you, the reader.

First off, eu4 is a game of nuances. Little things snowball to huge effect over the timespan of the campaign, so it is most important to pay attention in the early game and play optimal. Eu4 is a game of nuances.

You say you manage to start snowballing your country when other nations strike you? I say, you most probably are far from it. You always have to see the context in which your nation is relative to the others at the beginning. This fact loses importance the longer the game goes as you, the player, will be able to comfortable snowball away from the AI, not needing to numbercrunch and worry about this stuff.

But till then, you will have to worry. A lot. About every little detail this game has to offer to you.

I'm not an expert myself, since often I can't be bothered to play absolutely optimal, but that's a different point. It's important to understand what optimal play is and what isn't.

Example: Rivalries and Startup

A rather verbose example: You are the livonian Order.

The first thing you do is not just jump in and have a go, no. We take our time and analyze the rivalries.


We can see Novgorod and Pomerania as our enemies. Those bastards, bridges are already burned, let's give them a good "no u" right? Wroooong. Let's analyze what their enemies are first.

Pomerania's enemies (as you can see in the pic): saxony, lübeck
rivals : us, brandenburg, saxony

novgorod's enemies (as you can see in the pic): tver, (muscovy)
rivals (as you can see in the pic): us, muscovy, lithuania

Though in this case, we can count muscovy as a de-facto enemy of novgorod by just looking at relations.

With this information, we already plot our first expansion route. Since novgorod has already burned bridges with lithuania, muscovy (never had a chance to begin with), denmark (too far away), sweden (puppet), the only viable alliance for it would be poland or great horde/kazan. We will have to wait a few days to see if they can manage it, though poland rarely cares about muscovy in the early game.

We will continue this thought, but let's continue with the analysis. We want to survive right? So what are our threats overall, meaning nations that could smack us?

Well Novgorod seems like strong enemy, though with a bit of mercs we could outnumber him. It looks almost on par. On the other hand, muscovy, denmark and poland/lithuania are intimidating. Luckily for now, denmark doesn't care (and if it does, we can easily just deal with denmark's troops and thus increase libery desire in sweden) and lithuania is neutral. If we're lucky/unlucky he will fall into a PU and we won't have to worry about him.

So poland and lithuania are nations of interest for us, meaning we should desperately try to get them on our good side. Muscovy could be a good ally too, if we plan on expanding into lithuania first, but can quickly become an enemy the moment we expand into his desired territory in novgorod.

See how we didn't pick any rivals/allies yet? We already got a pre selection of rivals + allies. Let's look for backups and temporary alliances.

From the first pic we see that hungary and teutonic order are rather friendly to us. But let's look a little closer.



See that poland? Big oof. This situation would already railroad us to a war against poland (allies are Brandenburg/Mecklenburg)/lithuania and us picking an alliance with muscovy. Is it worth it? 99% sure both nations would join in a war against poland directly, but we don't have a cb. Since I like to block muscovy myself, I'll say No-CB best cb.

Improve relations with muscovy, teutonic order and hungary.
Rival pomerania, lithuania. (To farm points, rival Novgorod after Muscovy declares on them)
Ally teutonic order. Hungary + muscovy later on when possible.

Next up, internal stuff.

Example: Internal Stuff

First off, look at the estates, autonomy and general fort locations/territory.


What a mess. In context of our current situation, we don't need the upper fort in reval. Grasslands, wrong frontier, complete waste.

Nextup, before removing unnecessary estates, let's get the nice points.
The following part is completely useless for 1.30, but I'll still post it to get the point of the guide across.

Seek support, always useful and lasts 20 years.

After that, get the papal influence. Why?

Now we can choose which advisor we want for half the cost and in emergency (when points are spare or an advisor dies) we can get both for 50% cheaper. This would not have been possible with a different order of picking.
Since everything is the same religion, I'll pick the unrest reduction guy.


I did the same for the rest of the estates. But don't pick the points yet! Can we remove some estates?
You bet we can! We could remove the burgher province, the nobles in Dörpt and the clergy in Wenden, Goldingen.

So we will definitely lose influence for all estates, especially the clergy. Therefore
let's pick 200 points instead! And after, we remove the estates we don't need anymore (in a year, enough time before the disaster).

Also about the event: Since we want some more punching power and we have enough money atm, we pick the guy with +10 prestige.

Thanks for chiming in, Johan!

Balance Clergy by investing some money via estates.

We want to expanding pretty early, so let's get mil tech 4/6 faster. You always need to set the focus on mil, 99% of the time.
Add another +1 mil advisor for 1 ducat/month.

Handle the trade accordingly + send tradeships.

Recruit a standing army up to 12 regs, since it's not too expensive for us. Turn down maintenance (keep fort maintenance up for now).

Example: Continued

So by now you see the tone of this guide and hopefully you can understand that I can't show every little detail of it. A regular campaign takes plenty of hours on speed 2/3 and requires effort which I can't put in in such a short time.

Though just keeping concentrated and following the previous "checks", you'll find yourself in a good diplomatic and territorial position later on in the game. By playing everything as optimal as you can, events won't have as much of an impact on your nation, therefore you will be able to keep snowballing.

There's also plenty of stuff to optimize regarding buildings and warfare itself, but that's it for now (especially since emperor 1.30 is rolling out soon, messing up some warfare stuff + building strategies).

[BGR]

152 comets hit my nation which figuratively and literally destablised my entire nation causing it to float off the earth and fragment into a million pieces

[Brady Gunner]

Your first mistake: Not picking Ulm

[blablaxx]

At least your gold mines didn't deplete, so that's something positive...

[M1A1 Abrams]

died in a hunting accident from a comet hitting the national bank which failed which caused me to lose the mandate 0/10