Jak's Game Guide: An EU4 Tutorial

[Rensslaer]

So, if I'm not mistaken, at the end of the update you have a royal marriage with Burgundy but no alliance?

And you have no alliance with anyone, is that correct?

Alliances are double edged swords, of course. They bring the risk of unwanted war along with the protection of aid during voluntary wars or aggressive action against you.

Will you ally after you're stronger? France, I assume, is your biggest danger. An alliance with them could protect you but also you'd help them become stronger. An alliance against France might not be a bad thing early, before they grow too powerful.

And England offers some of the same dangers and potential benefits. But allying with either England or France will inevitably bring you into a larger and less predictable conflict with one or the other.

What are your evaluations on this? Can Brittany survive long without a powerful ally?

Rensslaer

 

[Rensslaer]

Ooh! And you took your crownlands down to 5%?!

Explain that, please. I know there are maluses for having below 30% crownlands, and I've seen other players take steps to maintain that level so I've been doing it also.

What advantage do you gain at 5% that isn't outweighed by negatives?

Rensslaer

 

[jak7139]

Thank you @Rensslaer for the advice regarding my screenshots. I'll spend the week playing around a bit to try and see what's causing the issue. If I find out, I'll edit the setup post with updated images.

You say that your screenshots are automatically saved as a BMP? Mine are auto-saved as a PNG, which I then turn into a JPG. Is that a specific setting you use?

The number and size of images in this will probably shift as I get the hang of things. As someone on PC, it's hard for me to judge when a screenshot is "too big" for someone on mobile.

If any mobile users are reading, please let me know if the screenshots are too large for you.

So, if I'm not mistaken, at the end of the update you have a royal marriage with Burgundy but no alliance?

And you have no alliance with anyone, is that correct?

Yes to both of these.

Since Brittany starts the game as a duchy, I only have 2 diplomats. And the AI's relation-slots will fill up rather quickly, so I want to make the most of these first few days in-game.

I couldn't ally Burgundy right away, but I could marry them. This guarantees I'll be able to ally them later, without being locked out.

I will get other allies as future updates will show.

Alliances are double edged swords, of course. They bring the risk of unwanted war along with the protection of aid during voluntary wars or aggressive action against you.

They are. But since we are in such a weak position, we need protection.

Will you ally after you're stronger? France, I assume, is your biggest danger. An alliance with them could protect you but also you'd help them become stronger. An alliance against France might not be a bad thing early, before they grow too powerful.

France was willing to ally on day one, and I was tempted to consider it. But I decided on Burgundy instead.

And England offers some of the same dangers and potential benefits. But allying with either England or France will inevitably bring you into a larger and less predictable conflict with one or the other.

Also true. England, due to decisions that will become clear, was not possible to ally.

What are your evaluations on this? Can Brittany survive long without a powerful ally?

We cannot. We aren't protected by the HRE like other smaller nations, so we do need protection from someone.

Ooh! And you took your crownlands down to 5%?!

Explain that, please. I know there are maluses for having below 30% crownlands, and I've seen other players take steps to maintain that level so I've been doing it also.

What advantage do you gain at 5% that isn't outweighed by negatives?

This of course depends on your playstyle, but I prefer having more monarch points and the other bonuses early on. We can regain our Crownland through either seizing the land back later, or by developing provinces.

Seizing land and keeping the estates loyal, requires me to give them privileges to keep them happy. And the more monarch points we have, the faster we can develop our provinces, negating the issue.

5% Crownland gives us 4 penalties, only 2 of which are actually relevant ( relevant ones in bold):

• Autonomy Change: This is only bad if we let it tick up over time. It will affect our provinces hard in the short-term, but I can take steps to manage it.
• Less Taxes: Just like it says, we make less money from our taxes.
• Liberty Desire from Subjects: We don't have any subjects.
• Lowered Maximum Absolutism: Absolutism comes into play much later in the game. We don't have to worry about it yet.

 

[HistoryDude]

Do you have a royal marriage with Scotland, in line with history? Or would you need to arrange a different marriage to get the benefits of those dynastic ties?

I feel like the clergy's proposal is better if you're aiming to stay at peace and colonize when the Americas are discovered, but the nobility have a better proposal if you plan on fighting your neighbors eventually.

Brittany looks like a difficult start! I look forward to seeing how you do!

 

[Rensslaer]

Thank you @Rensslaer for the advice regarding my screenshots. I'll spend the week playing around a bit to try and see what's causing the issue. If I find out, I'll edit the setup post with updated images.

You say that your screenshots are automatically saved as a BMP? Mine are auto-saved as a PNG, which I then turn into a JPG. Is that a specific setting you use?

It's been my experience that any Paradox screenshots have always been saved as a BMP. Now that's the "Paradox" screenshots, and if you're saving to a Steam folder or something it may save it as PNG. Steam didn't keep screenshots in the ancient past, and I've gotten into the habit of using the Paradox folder. It's also possible that you've changed a setting or you somehow have a different default than I do, which saves as PNG.

And I bet that's your problem. Maybe the PNG doesn't convert well to JPG. Or maybe there's information loss in the transfer, because the PNG is a much larger file for the same image than JPG.

See what happens when you do this -- pull up the PNG screenshot and take a snip (using MS Snipping Tool or some other copying tool) and paste it into your graphics editor (again, I use Paint, but whatever you use should be fine). Then save it as a JPG and see if it's clear on the other end.

Rensslaer

 

[jak7139]

Do you have a royal marriage with Scotland, in line with history? Or would you need to arrange a different marriage to get the benefits of those dynastic ties?

Usually, having a consort from another nation does mean you have a royal marriage. But we don't have a marriage in this case. I think this might be an oversight.

I feel like the clergy's proposal is better if you're aiming to stay at peace and colonize when the Americas are discovered, but the nobility have a better proposal if you plan on fighting your neighbors eventually.

Well, we really need our admin points for other things (as you'll see). We do want to colonize, but there is one place in Europe we can expand to away from France. Of the 3 point types, mil points are less precious in our current situation.

I'll probably talk more about development later, but for now I don't like developing with admin points. I prefer to use mil/diplo for various reasons I'll get into.

 

[jak7139]

and if you're saving to a Steam folder or something it may save it as PNG.

Hmmm. I just save to my computer's screenshots folder (this pc/pictures/screenshots). There might be some setting somewhere I don't know about.

See what happens when you do this -- pull up the PNG screenshot and take a snip (using MS Snipping Tool or some other copying tool) and paste it into your graphics editor (again, I use Paint, but whatever you use should be fine). Then save it as a JPG and see if it's clear on the other end.

I'll try that. Thanks!

 

[Rensslaer]

Hmmm. I just save to my computer's screenshots folder (this pc/pictures/screenshots). There might be some setting somewhere I don't know about.

Do you use the F11 key to take a screenshot, or do you take a screenshot with a clipping tool? The way you worded that made me wonder. I always use the F11.

Rensslaer

 

[jak7139]

Do you use the F11 key to take a screenshot, or do you take a screenshot with a clipping tool? The way you worded that made me wonder. I always use the F11.

I use the Window key+print screen. All those shots automatically go to my screenshots folder, then I use the snipping tool afterward to crop stuff out.

 

[jak7139]

Okay. I've played around with the screenshots and have edited chapter one with the new, clearer images. Some of them are still slightly fuzzy, but they're readable and I don't want to have to reedit all of them. Hopefully I can avoid this issue in the future. I've also sized the images down somewhat to help for those on mobile. Thanks for your patience everyone!

 

[jak7139]

CHAPTER TWO: Our First Steps
|-|
(November 1444-July 1446)​

Almost immediately I get hit with a bad event. Thanks game. As nice as the prestige would be for our mission (and as much as I want to save every coin we can), it’s not worth a stability. We’ll try to improve the peasants’ lives I guess.

​

Our diplomats grow busy over the next few months. I ally Saxony (who also rules over Thuringia) and Switzerland. They are two nice, mid-sized HRE powers who can deter other greedy eyes from our lands (looking at you France).

I also want to try and ally the Pope, but he won’t go for it. Since our ideas have a bonus only available to Catholics (the yearly Papal influence), I am basically forced to stay Catholic otherwise one of our ideas would be unusable. With that in mind, it would be a good idea to stay on the Pope’s good side, so we can get the most out of our religion.

Even though he won’t ally me, I find a quick way to circumvent this. Provence and the Pope are rivals. If I rival Provence, the Pope might like me enough to become my ally. I try it, and, a few months later, he accepts.

​

While the first few months tick by, I notice among my pop-ups that England has allied Austria. Not good for us. But we’ll just have to adapt.

Around this same time, we are able to ally Burgundy. Now we have four allies and their different subjects protecting us: Saxony (plus Thuringia), Switzerland, Burgundy (plus Holland, Brabant, and Flanders), and the Pope (plus Urbino and Spoleto). A grand coalition!

At some point during all of this I moved our merchant from Genoa to the English Channel because the value was higher. We’re still losing money (-0.72), but our income has increased to 4.81 gross.

After the initial flurry of diplomatic activity from the AI and ourselves, things settle down. I send one diplomat to curry favors in Burgundy. I send the other to improve relations with the Pope.

Favors are the currency the game uses to interact with your allies. Want to call an ally to war, ask them for money, or break their alliance with someone else? You need favors to do that. We’ll need lots of favors if we want to make the most out of our new friendships.

Favors grow automatically over time, but the process is very slow for a small nation such as ourselves. Our diplomat increases the rate of growth. Burgundy is our strongest friend, and I want to have enough favors to call them into a war should any opportunity arise.

As for our other diplomat, the extra relations with the Pope will help us gain many bonuses from our religion. And having high relations means their less likely to break our alliance later. Good stuff!

We could build 3 more regiments to fill out our army’s forcelimit (a soft cap on our army size). But I hold off. We’re saving our money because we will need it. And the 3 extra, let’s be honest, infantry we can’t afford cav, wouldn’t do much.

Another bad event happens in April. Our Duchess is having an affair with our Artist advisor! Seems she was quite the muse for him. I always take the top option for this event. Minus 10 prestige is nothing. But today, I do something different. We need that prestige for our mission, so I call on the Pope for aid. But I guess our alliance isn’t enough “leverage” as the game calls it. We lose the prestige anyway. Sigh…

​

The “Surrender of Maine” event happens in May. England and France go to war. England is considered the attacker for breaking the historical treaty, so their Austrian alliance is no use. France and her allies have the obvious advantage.

This causes Provence to break their alliance with France. Now’s our chance! We immediately recall both our diplomats and begin building Spy Networks in Provence and Paris. Who knows? Maybe France will be weak enough after their war with England that I can attack them too.

We also set our merchant in Bordeaux to the “Hostile Trading” policy to help our networks grow faster.

​

It’s at this moment I must mention something. I don’t like reading guides for countries. I prefer to just let events unfold without knowing what I should rush towards. But I broke this rule a little bit for this AAR. I skimmed the Brittany page on the wiki. Now, I’m still going to play my own way, but I will take some inspiration from the wiki for this.

We can, if we wanted to, and as the wiki advises us to do, declare a “no-CB” war on the Irish county of Munster (hopefully there are no Vikings, fairies, or other-dimensional beings around to stop us).

I hold off on doing so. Just for now. But we’ll need to go into Ireland soon. We need to grow somehow.

I receive news from Austria about the HRE's waning authority over Italy. Then, news comes from Poland. They don’t want a Lithuanian as their king. Burgundy also allies Scotland. Maybe this will prevent any English expansion against their northern neighbor.

1446 comes and I pull our diplomat back from France. They’re still at war with England but have beaten the English handily. They occupy most of the continent minus Calais, and England is content to sit on their island. It’s just a waiting game from France to get enough warscore.

In March we create a claim on Provence’s province of Anjou. We look at the war balance. It would be us, plus Burgundy and the Pope (called in through promises of territory, not favors), versus Provence, Milan, and Siena.

We raise our army maintenance and use the decision we got from the Nobility to hire a general, Erwan de Machecoul. He’s a 3/1/2/1 (fire/shock/maneuver/siege). Much like everything else about our nation, he’s not terrible, but not great. We work with what we’ve got. At least he has a siege pip (every siege pip a general has is just a straight +1 bonus per number of pips to whichever siege they’re leading. Very useful).

I’ll go into what all the pips do at a later date. For now, we want to prioritize shock and siege.

It’s at this point I remember that we can make our ruler and heir both generals for free. I don’t do it to our Duke, but Prince Pierre gets a commission. He’s…awful (sorry Prince). What’s that? Executioner? No, no! What I meant to say was…um…Prince Pierre’s skills lie in other areas! Yes, that’s it (phew)!

In July, after a few months of waiting, we declare on Provence. We outnumber them about 2 to 1 and immediately march in.

 

[Chac1]

Off to war you go!

(hopefully there are no Vikings, fairies, or other-dimensional beings around to stop us).

Let's hope not! If more of that spreads throughout this and other AARs Paradox will have an entirely new game.

 

[coz1]

I'm not sure if it is a stroke of luck or bad fortune that Scotland allied with Burgundy rather than France. I have noticed that France is not auto allied with Scotland as the game starts so as the French player, you have to jump on it quick once the game starts. It is bad for France (though it sounds like they handled England fairly well) but now that they are allied with Burgundy, as are you...you will likely see the English at some point.

Good to see you choose Brittany. Extremely well explained so far and I must admit, I hardly ever grant privileges. You've explained why that was a mistake.

Good luck with Provence!

 

[Midnite Duke]

Good Luck on Provence and thank you for the update. Did you royal marry Burg/Thur? Could you make Irish claim or do you have to no-cb? What is rule on claims?

 

[jak7139]

Let's hope not! If more of that spreads throughout this and other AARs Paradox will have an entirely new game.

Funnily enough, you can use the console in EU4 to spawn a Stellaris easter egg tag, similar also to Jan Mayen. There's probably some AAR potential with spawning either of them, but I've never done a game with them spawned in.

I'm not sure if it is a stroke of luck or bad fortune that Scotland allied with Burgundy rather than France. I have noticed that France is not auto allied with Scotland as the game starts so as the French player, you have to jump on it quick once the game starts. It is bad for France (though it sounds like they handled England fairly well) but now that they are allied with Burgundy, as are you...you will likely see the English at some point.

France does start the game with a guarantee on Scotland. It's not a full alliance, but it still protects them from England. I've played up until 1470 and the diplomacy continues to develop regarding England, Scotland, France, and Burgundy. Stay tuned.

Good Luck on Provence and thank you for the update. Did you royal marry Burg/Thur? Could you make Irish claim or do you have to no-cb? What is rule on claims?

I married Burgundy to secure the alliance, and also Saxony (Thuringia is the junior partner in the union).

You can claim any province that border you or is one tile away by sea. Using the last screenshot as an example, I could claim across "The Channel" sea tile into Cornwall. Ireland is 2-3 away, so is impossible to fabricate on. A no-CB is our only option.

There is one exception to this rule. For the Age of Discovery (the age we're currently in) you can pick a perk to fabricate claims on any province that borders your existing claims (and claims on those claims, etc). But we don't have enough points to choose any perks yet.

 

[HistoryDude]

Provence shall fall! What will you demand from them? Territory? Money? Both?

Whoops! What did the Duke do to his wife's artist lover?

Will Ireland become a source of friction with England after a while?

 

[Rensslaer]

Switzerland is a great ally choice I hadn't thought about.

Saxony and Thuringia are powerful but might get you into wars (corrected - said ways) you don't want over Germany way. You won't have to send troops necessarily unless the war just goes on and on. And in these versions of EU IV it seems like in long wars the armies can easily wander your direction for no particularly good reason (due to the military access rules).

Very clever trick with Provence/Papal. Clever also to try attacking Ireland! Lol

I had no idea you could promise territory to allies in return for joining a war. How do you do that?

When would you and wouldn't you use hostile trading in a CoT? I've always been afraid to use it since I assume it causes irritation with your opponents.

Rensslaer

Ps edited for typo

 

[filcat]

Brittany-tag. Yeah, why not. <rolls eyes>

The “Surrender of Maine” event happens in May. England and France go to war. England is considered the attacker for breaking the historical treaty, so their Austrian alliance is no use. France and her allies have the obvious advantage.
This causes Provence to break their alliance with France.

This is a curious one, that the code-provence breaking the alliance with the code-france, which never happens.

Code-france occasionally breaks its alliance with code-provence during that war due to war exhaustion, being in debt, and being friendly with any potential attacker on code-provence - usually code-papacy, code-brittany, or one can see fairly regular if code-burgundy and code-france start without a rivalry, thus code-burgundy explodes on code-provence.

But the code-provence never breaks its alliance with code-france at the beginning, as there are not enough parameters for it to do so, unless some new events-parameters are introduced after leviathan and beyond, are they?

 

[jak7139]

Provence shall fall! What will you demand from them? Territory? Money? Both?

Both, hopefully. We need land and we need gold.

Whoops! What did the Duke do to his wife's artist lover?

I kept the artist hired. We will need every extra admin point we can get, and I don't want to spend extra money on hiring someone else.

Will Ireland become a source of friction with England after a while?

Most definitely. But we need somewhere to grow during these early stages before we start colonizing.

Switzerland is a great ally choice I hadn't thought about.

Saxony and Thuringia are powerful but might get you into ways you don't want over Germany way. You won't have to send troops necessarily unless the war just goes on and on. And in these versions of EU IV it seems like in long wars the armies can easily wander your direction for no particularly good reason (due to the military access rules).

Yes, Saxony and Switzerland could drag us into HRE wars we'd rather not be in. And the same is true of Burgundy and the Pope as well. No calls-to-arms have happened yet up to where I've played, but we'll keep an eye out.

Very clever trick with Provence/Papal. Clever also to try attacking Ireland! Lol

Thanks! Ireland is a wild play, but their land is a necessary springboard.

I had no idea you could promise territory to allies in return for joining a war. How do you do that?

When looking at the declare war screen (using chapter two's final screenshot as an example), to the right of the checkbox are some icons. For Switzerland and Saxony those icons are white speech-bubbles. For Burgundy and the Pope, the icons are some sort of tan blob (idk what it's supposed to be). If you click those icons it cycles between calling for favors versus promising territory.

When would you and wouldn't you use hostile trading in a CoT? I've always been afraid to use it since I assume it causes irritation with your opponents.

None of the trading stances cause a relations penalty. They're all just bonuses to your nation within that node. So hostile trading gives bonus spy network construction speed to everybody with a merchant in the Bordeaux node and/or everyone whose home node is Bordeaux.

I like using hostile trading when I am building spy networks against other nations within the same node (which in this case was Provence).

Brittany-tag. Yeah, why not. <rolls eyes>

I like challenges sometimes . Plus, I've never played in the France region. Mostly just done the HRE or Italy.

But the code-provence never breaks its alliance with code-france at the beginning, as there are not enough parameters for it to do so, unless some new events-parameters are introduced after leviathan and beyond, are they?

Maybe? I know that France's different vassals are unique and different from other subject-types. Burgundy and France haven't rivaled each other yet either. It could also be a scripted thing having to do with the Surrender of Maine event. No idea.

 

[Bullfilter]

Had to catch up after some time away, so this covers the last two chapters.

We seize land, summon the diet, and sell titles all on the same day (to keep their timers synced up)

What’s the significance again of synced timers?

So, I have a discussion topic for all of you: which would you choose? Would you rather want five 1% loans or one 5% loan? No right or wrong answer, just curious how people see it.

Gut feel would be more small increments: sounds more flexible.

The game gives us BMP of course.

I find for most (using the F11) it’s the higher definition png, certainly for EU4, but maybe it depends on one’s computer. Is it only HOI3 now where it’s bmp?

I save those images as JPG

Same here, mainly to reduce the download bandwidth for readers. Even though my main target is for viewing on a computer monitor. I always try to crop them as much as possible, and shrink a bit if necessary (say a max of 1,200 pixels where possible) so long as it doesn’t muck up the definition too much.

As someone on PC, it's hard for me to judge when a screenshot is "too big" for someone on mobile.

I’ll periodically view my own pix on phone and iPad to see how they look. At least you can always zoom for detail on a small handheld screen. As long as you haven’t shrunk so much they’re blurry.

We can regain our Crownland through either seizing the land back later, or by developing provinces.

By developing provinces? How does that work?

If any mobile users are reading, please let me know if the screenshots are too large for you.

Per above, recommend some sample checks on bigger shots once in a while to see how they look.

Maybe the PNG doesn't convert well to JPG. Or maybe there's information loss in the transfer, because the PNG is a much larger file for the same image than JPG.

I find it converts well enough. A little bit of colour and definition loss, but far less strain on bandwidth. I find with some AARs which use large pngs (even if the chapters are short but there’s lots of them) they can take a long time to download if using a mobile device on roaming.

I always use the F11.

Same here. Saves to the relevant screenshots sub folder in the Documents folder (in Windows, anyway) for that game under Paradox folder, which is handy for keeping them sorted, especially if, like me, you have multiple AARs going at once. I keep the chapter pic subfolders in the same game folder too. But whatever works!

I use the Window key+print screen. All those shots automatically go to my screenshots folder, then I use the snipping tool afterward to crop stuff out.

I have used that for some games when the f11 key wasn’t working due to a bug.

If I rival Provence, the Pope might like me enough to become my ally. I try it, and, a few months later, he accepts.

Nice trick!