Jak's Game Guide: An EU4 Tutorial

jak7139 · Mar 18, 2024

Hello everyone! Welcome!

In the past couple of months, I've seen many people doing "first-time" AARs for EU4. Now, EU4 is a game I have a lot of hours in (just over 2000 according to Steam). It was also my introduction to Paradox games (from an old quill18 YouTube series) and the first one I decided to buy. I've had many great times with this game over the years, but I've never done a tutorial or anything like that. But probably most importantly, without discovering EU4, I never would've discovered the many great stories and writers of AARland (all of you)! And I never would've been inspired to write my own AARs, which helped me become a better writer for my own projects.

So, with all that said, this AAR will be a gameplay-tutorial series. Feel free to ask questions, critique the way I play, discuss different strategies, or maybe share some of your own EU4 memories from over the years.

But first, who should I play? That's up to you!

I'm limiting this selection of countries based on three criteria:

REQUIRED: Is a small or medium-sized nation at the start of the game (no great powers or larger nations)
REQUIRED: The nation exists in either Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East. Since this is Europa Universalis, I would like my nation to interact heavily with the titular region. These regions are all close to "the action" so to speak.
OPTIONAL: This nation would ideally showcase a variety of mechanics/ways of playing (colonization, HRE diplomacy, the Reformation, etc). Not every nation can hit every checkbox, but I would like people to use this guide to hopefully play most nations, regardless of starting circumstances.

Also, I have all current major DLC if that influences your thinking.

I'll go based off your comments and the general mood and pick the nation I'll be playing.

Below are some screenshots of the Mediterranean and Europe, so everyone can get a feeling of what nations might fit. Feel free to ask questions about the different nations and their starting situations, and I'll try to answer them as best I can.

This voting will close on April 1st in two weeks. This activity has been approved by Qorten.

Table of Contents
~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~
*N* means the chapter contains a Narrative interlude
*S* means the chapter contains a soundtrack

Voting Result: Brittany

Chapter One: Setup

Chapter Two: Our First Steps (1444-1446)

Chapter Three: Our First War (1446-1449)

Chapter Four: Anjou, Ireland, & Other Things (1449-1450)

Chapter Five: The Fall of the House of Munster (1450-1452)

Chapter Six: The Irish Wars Continue (1452-1453)

Chapter Seven: Rebellions & More War (1453-1454)

Chapter Eight: The Race for Ireland (1454-1455)

C hapter Nine: The Renaissance & Combat Discussion (1455-1459)

Chapter Ten: Peace! Prosperity! Power Projection! (1459-1461)

Chapter Eleven: Admin Tech Five, Alliances, & Prince Pierre (1461-1464)

Chapter Twelve: World Wars & New Tech (1464-1467)

Chapter Thirteen: Talking About Ages & Splendor (1467-1470)

Chapter Fourteen: Exploring, Economy, and Colonial Discussion (1470-1474) *N* *S*

Chapter Fifteen: Our First Colony! (1474-1476)

Chapter Sixteen: Shifting Diplomacy (1476-1478)

Chapter Seventeen: What is a Golden Era? (1478-1479)

Chapter Eighteen: Castille's on the Board (1479-1482)

Chapter Nineteen: New Ruler, New Faces, New Horizons (1482-1493)

Chapter Twenty: Whacking the Mikmaq & Settling Our New Home (1493-1497)

Chapter Twenty-One: Merchants & Colonial Nations (1497-1500)

Chapter Twenty-Two: Colonialism & An Important Decision (1500-1501)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Professionalism & Brittany's Next Top General (1501-1503)

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Death of a Legend, Tariffs, Studying Technology (1503-1507

Chapter Twenty-Five: Buildings & Trade Companies (1507-1508)

Chapter Twenty-Six: Oh Canada...Can You Hold This? (1508-1514)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: In the Land of Jungles and Gold, We Gain Glory (1514-1517)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Vassals, Artillery, and...France? Oh My! (1517-1519)

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Woe! Weep! War Has Come to Brittany (1519-1523) *ATL* *Not Canon* *S*

Chapter Thirty: Tariffs (again) & Development Strategy (1519-1523)

Chapter Thirty-One: New Ideas, Religions, & Rivals (1523-1532)

Chapter Thirty-Two: We Fight, We Die...for Brittany! (1532-1534)

Chapter Thirty-Three: A Narrative Interlude & Other Things (1534-1535) *N* *S*

Chapter Thirty-Four: At Least We Have Gold (1535-1541)

Chapter Thirty-Five: Finishing Diplomatic & A Spanish Proposal (1541-1545) *N* *S*

Chapter Thirty-Six: Bretons in the Kongo! Plus, Barrages, Assaults, & Disasters (1545-1550)

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Just a Sudden Major War (1550-1553)

Chapter Thirty-Eight: An Exhausting Peace (1553-1559)

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Schmoozing Ireland, Stackwiping Scotland (1559-1562)

Chapter Forty: Renames & Expand Infrastructure (1562-1571)

Chapter Forty-One: Trade Company Investments, a New CN (1571-1578)

Chapter Forty-Two: Annexations, Espionage, Claims. Ireland, at Last! (1578-1587)

Chapter Forty-Three: Growing Ever Larger, Ever Stronger, Ever Faster! (1587-1593) *N* *S*

Chapter Forty-Four: Wars, Colonies, Revolts, & Excommunication (1593-1600)

Chapter Forty-Five: The First Major Move (1600-1605)

Chapter Forty-Six: Flagships, Admin Efficiency, Universities (1605-1609)

Chapter Forty-Seven: War, Unexpectedly (1609-1618) *N* *S*

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Prelude to War (1618-1627) *N* *S*

Chapter Forty-Nine: More About Claims, Wargoals, GB Defeated! (1627-1629)

Chapter Fifty: Harsh Treatment & The Blasted Battle of Skagerrak (1629-1633)

Chapter Fifty-One: Absolutism & Coalitions (1633-1637)

Chapter Fifty-Two: Expand Administration, Chapter 49 Appendix (1637-1647)

Chapter Fifty-Three: Great Power Interventions (1647-1660)

Chapter Fifty-Four: War With Britain, War With Songhai, Court & Country (1660-1682)

Chapter Fifty-Five: Imperialism & Client States (1682-1697)

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Many Wars of Spain (1697-1717)

jak7139 · Apr 1, 2024

Well, here we are. Thank you very much @Bullfilter and @Rensslaer for your advice! I'll try to keep it in mind. I hope everyone was able to enjoy Easter if that's something you celebrate. I certainly did!

I will hopefully try to take the setup slow @Midnite Duke. It will be its own update (coming soon after this post).

Now who are we playing? After looking over everyone's suggestions and loading up the game, I've decided on...

Brittany!

They're a nice small nation with the potential for colonies. And we have to manage our nation carefully since we're surrounded by many larger powers.

An update covering Brittany's setup will come shortly. Stay tuned!

jak7139 · Apr 1, 2024

CHAPTER ONE: Setup

A/N: For some reason, some of these screenshots are slightly blurry, while others are fine. I'm not sure what's going on there. Hopefully, you all can still get the gist. Anybody know what's going on there?

So here we are in the land of Brittany! As soon as we load in, the game gives some historical background about our position. The long and short of it is: We’re a small fish surrounded by many bigger fish. Hopefully, we can succeed where the historical Bretons failed.

Our lands contain 5 provinces at game-start (modern city names in parentheses):

Bro Naoned (Nantes), our capital - produces salt, 4/4/4 development
Bro Roazhon (Rennes) - produces cloth, 4/4/4 development
Arvor (Saint-Brieuc) - produces cloth, 4/4/4 development
Bro Wened (Vannes) - produces fish, 3/3/3 development
Penn-ar-Bed (Brest) - produces naval supplies, 3/3/4 development

Our main trade node is located in Bordeaux where we control 21% mostly due to having 2 of the 5 trade locations in the node. The other 3 are split between France and England. Bordeaux flows into the Champagne node, and receives from two places across the Atlantic (the Caribbean and Gulf of St. Lawrence). This makes Bordeaux a weak node for us for a few reasons:

Cementing our control over this node requires us to attack and destroy France. We don’t have the strength to do this right now, so we’ll have to look elsewhere for expansion and trading opportunities.
The primary way of controlling trade, by directing the flow of money via our merchants, isn’t available to us. Since we can’t see the Americas right now, we cannot control how our trade flow is set up.
In tandem with this, we can’t create any “chains” of merchants all directing trade to Bordeaux. We would need to basically control all of North America and its nodes to do this. A huge undertaking for us at the moment. While this isn’t impossible later and is something we are going to want to do, we simply aren’t strong enough yet.
An example merchant “chain”: if we had taken @Rensslaer 's suggestion and played in Northern Italy, we could feasibly have our merchants direct trade from Sevilla, to Valencia, to our home node in Genoa. And more links could be added earlier in the chain as well if we took land in the Ivory Coast or Caribbean.

Improving our trade and moving into North America will be one of our long-term goals for Brittany. We need an economy that can rival our hostile neighbors. Both for defense, but also to strike out against them.

Moving on from trade, we take a look at the other screens. Our ruler is the 30-year-old Duke Francois. His stats are not very good, but it’s better than nothing. Same for his heir Pierre, but he’s at least slightly better.

Both of them do at least have a good trait. Francois’ charismatic nature will help us in securing some allies. While Pierre’s caution will help us in our conquests if he ever takes over.

We also have the Duchess, Isabel. Interestingly, and something I only noticed later, is that she is of the same House of Stuart that rules over Scotland. This doesn’t do anything in practical terms, but it’s a nice bit of historical info.

I skip over the Diplomacy screen for the moment and instead take a look at our economy. Our output is small, but right now we are making a tiny profit, something that will soon change (4.50 gross income, 0.26 net).

Next up we have our nation’s ideas. These are…okay. They’re not amazing, but definitely not terrible. Most of these are focused on the navy, trade, and being a good Catholic. I would’ve liked some economic or army bonuses in there but…oh well.

To save space, I’m not going to go over every bonus here. But if you want an explanation on what each bonus does, ask away and I’ll explain it more in-depth in the comments. I’ll still bring these up later on when we start receiving their effects, so not to worry (each number matches its tooltip)!

Then, we have our Estates. These will be extremely useful throughout the campaign, especially now when we are at our weakest. The bonuses from some of these privileges can really help us punch above our weight.

We seize land, summon the diet, and sell titles all on the same day (to keep their timers synced up) and pick the mission from the nobility to develop Bro Wened. We don’t complete it right away, but as long as we finish the mission before its time-limit expires we’ll be fine.

Next, we start handing out some privileges. From the Clergy we take:

Religious Diplomats: gives us another diplo rep and a small opinion boost with every other Catholic nation.
Clerical Education: some reform progress growth that will help us grow by getting various bonuses from our government.
Religious State: an extra admin point per month (for tech, ideas, stability, etc.)
Oversight by the Clergy: no inherent bonuses. But it does increase their loyalty.

From the Nobility we grab:

Primacy of the Nobility: an extra mil point per month (for generals, tech, ideas, etc.)
Nobility Officer Rights: gives us a decision with a cooldown to get a free general at the cost of some loyalty. We don’t take the decision quite yet.
Right of Counsel: The same idea as the one we took from the Clergy. Gotta increase that loyalty!

And finally, from the Bourgeoisie we snag:

Patronage of the Arts: some yearly prestige and loyalty at the cost of some tax. As well as a hit of prestige right now.
Free Enterprise: The same loyalty thing we took from the Nobility and Clergy.

Now, there were a few things we didn’t take at this time:

One, we didn’t take the privilege for an extra diplo point from the Bourgeoisie because we didn’t have enough Crownland.
Two, we didn’t take a privilege from each of the Estates for cheaper advisors. I meant to take it later, but completely forgot until a while had passed. We could’ve been saving money on our advisors all that time. Oops!
Three, we didn’t take any loans from the Bourgeoisie. These loans are special. Unlike a regular loan which has a 5% interest rate, this Estate’s loans only have 1%. However, you do take 5 of them.

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.

If I have to take a loan, I always try to take the 1% loans first. This gives me a nice sum of cash for cheap, which can then help in any wars (usually when you take a loan) or can be injected in the economy (through buildings).

Debt, like many things in this game, is just a number. Strategically taking loans to grow your economy (or your nation through war) is a viable strategy. As long as you can control your debt, it can’t control you. You just have to grow at pace and avoid bankruptcy (though planned bankruptcy is also a strategy that goes into this and that some players do. I personally dislike doing that. But it is very effective).

After managing our Estates, I check our income again. It has dropped from 4.50 gross to 4.27 gross. Probably due to the loss of tax income and increase in autonomy from our low Crownland and some of the privileges. But don’t worry, we needed those extra monarch points. And our Crownland can always be regained later.

Now we move back to trade for a moment. We start the game with 1 of our 2 merchants collecting in our home node of Bordeaux. Good. However, the other one isn’t doing anything. We decide to put him to work.

Usually with merchant placement, I like to sort the Trade Screen by “Our Current Trade Power” and find the highest node on the list that flows into our main one. Trade Power, by the way, being the amount of control we have in a node. However, that wouldn’t work in this case because we can’t see the 2 nodes that flow into Bordeaux and so can’t use our free merchant to transfer trade from there.

Instead, I sort by "Value", and send our merchant to Genoa to collect from there. He won’t make us a lot of money, but nowhere really will. As long as we can’t see across the Atlantic, our trade in Bordeaux will always be in a rough spot. We do get a minor penalty to our trade efficiency for collecting in somewhere other than our main node, but trade makes up such a small portion of our income, that the malus basically does nothing.

Finally, we go into the Diplomacy screen. We see that Provence and Portugal have both rivaled us (the AI always reevaluates its rivals when the savegame is loaded. This is why some strats on the wiki or elsewhere have you restart the game to get better rival placement by the AI).

We also see we have a starting truce with Burgundy, presumably for historical reasons. Though, as we’ll see, this soon isn’t relevant.

We can rival Portugal and Provence back, however we don’t. Rivalling the AI can be disastrous when in a tough position such as Brittany. The AI will see that the player has rivalled it and will immediately find more allies to defend itself. Since we are planning to attack Provence soon, I hold off for now on declaring them a rival.

We look at Provence’s situation. They have rivaled us, Switzerland, and the Pope. They rule over Lorraine in a Personal Union and are allied to France.

Portugal, meanwhile, is allied to England and is rivaled to Granada and Tunis besides us.

I take a look at the Macrobuilder to help us find some allies. Many countries, including France, would be willing to aid Poor Brittany. But who to choose?

As I’m thinking on that, I decide to send our 8 Light Ships to protect trade in Bordeaux. Our 6 Transports will stay in Penn-ar-Bed for now. I also lower army maintenance and mothball our fort to save money. We’ll need every cent. And war will come soon enough.

I was initially going to hold off on employing any advisors, but I change my mind. A level 1 for each category is hired, a Stateswoman (+1 diplo rep), Commandant (+5% discipline), and an Artist (-10% stab cost).

With that, our economy is now in the red (-1.24 net). But we do need the extra monarch points. Money is cheap by comparison.

Our first diplomat is sent out. We decide to marry Burgundy since they don’t want to ally us immediately and I want to take up one of their diplo slots before they’re all used on someone else.

I’ll briefly mention Brittany’s missions. We don’t have a full tree like some other nations, but we do have a few unique ones. They focus around colonization and the navy. The game seems to be pushing us very heavily in this direction, what with our trade setup, ideas, and now our mission tree.

One of the missions on the top row wants us to get 30 prestige and an alliance with either England or Burgundy. If we do that, we get a permanent claim on the Loire Valley area. Nice! After that, it’s all about going against France itself. Something we’re not ready for yet. All in good time.

And now, finally, after all that, I unpause.

jak7139 · Apr 8, 2024

CHAPTER TWO: Our First Steps
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(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.

jak7139 · Apr 15, 2024

Author's Note: So I tried looking at the preview for this chapter on mobile before posting. Even when these screenshots are full-sized, they are still tiny on my phone's screen. Is that normal for those of you on mobile? How do you see them?

I've made the images as large as I can to help readability. To compensate though for the larger images, I've cut four or five superfluous images from the chapter to reduce loading times. This will probably be an ongoing process as I try to find the right balance.

Anyway, enjoy the newest chapter!

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CHAPTER THREE: Our First War
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(July 1446-May 1449)

Even so far.

Um. Erwan?

Erwan?

Hmm...

Well, at least we have our allies to help. Come on Burgundy!

We start the siege of Anjou. Burgundy stands nearby in the province of Maine as support. There were times, long ago, when the AI did not care about attrition and would’ve parked its whole army on a fort to siege it. It still sometimes does. But it has gotten better.

We build a Spy Network in Provence to help us siege faster. I should’ve done it earlier, but I forgot. In October we get another bad event. This time it’s a dispute between the Bourgeoisie and the Nobles. We side with the Nobles because we don’t make very much off trade right now. You can’t lose much if you have very little to begin with.

It is now 1447. Holland and Flanders have come to help us siege. I notice Holland has a general with a +2 siege pip. I tell them to occupy the province, then move some of my units away so we don’t go over the supply limit. We keep 1k of infantry led by Erwan behind to control the siege (and get the bonus from having a Spy Network), while the rest move to Bro Naoned. As soon as I do that, the Dutch AI moves in (this is because it didn’t want to suffer unnecessary attrition, since by myself I had enough units to siege Anjou).

On the 9th of July, after 272 days, Anjou falls. We rejoice!

I mothball the fort to not pay for it. We aren’t made of money.

Now, we have a choice to make. Either, since I occupy everything I want, I could sit back, lower my army and fort maintenance, and let my allies finish this war. Or, I could help them and gain more “Participation” (how much the game thinks you contributed to the war versus everyone else on your side), but lose money and men doing so.

If I were a richer power, I would help out. But we need to stay home. Ireland is on the horizon. We’re losing 0.69 ducats with our armies turned off and our forts mothballed, and over the past 3 years we’ve nearly spent everything the Estates gave us when we sold off our Crownland (21 gold left out of the 160 we started with, 107 of it was from the Estates).

In December a very important event pops up: “Estate Statutory Rights”.

Option 1: gain 30 Crownland back from the Estates. But we can’t seize land anymore and all our Territories will be more autonomous (less income, manpower, etc) until this is revoked.

Option 2: do nothing.

I want to hear from all of you. What would you choose?

In the end, we do nothing. Why? Because having that autonomy in our lands would murder our economy. We would get less money from our provinces, but we’d also have a lower forcelimit. Which means a smaller army. Which means we’re less likely to win wars and expand our economy that way.

Moving on, Aragon gets an event that lets them abandon their union over Naples. Ever since Paradox added this event (the Emperor patch/DLC I think it was. Nearly 4 years ago) I’ve never seen the AI try and keep the union. Aragon has weakened themselves and a potential Spain if that ever forms, meaning France has no one to really challenge them on the continent. Austria and Burgundy are both much weaker and are too busy with HRE politics to care. So, it’ll be tougher for us if we ever decide to challenge France.

It is July of 1448, and we finally decide to start peacing people out. We start with Siena. We give Siena to the Pope in the hope that he stays strong. Separate peaces unfortunately don’t count to the “promised territory” we guaranteed our allies when we called them in. But we want the Pope to be stable enough in Italy to help us in the future.

Our decision to not help out comes into play here. Less participation means we get less of Siena’s money as it’s divided up between us and our allies. But it also means Burgundy and the Pope expect more land in the final settlement. I still stand by my earlier decision, but it’s something to keep in mind should we ever try this again.

I wanted to wait for Milan to be fully sieged down, but unfortunately Provence has unconditionally surrendered. This makes our warscore jump straight to 100% with Provence, but their allies remain in whatever state they were in before. If we don’t peace out the war soon, our war exhaustion will skyrocket.

I reluctantly peace out Milan. The war reparations we took thankfully aren’t affected by our participation in the war, so it all goes to us. However, I forgot that the prestige would still be divvied out. We still don’t have enough for our mission (15/30).

An event pops up, forcing the peasants to rebel in Bro Roazhon. The other option costs us more prestige and I don’t want that. We could deal with the rebel army ourselves, but I have a trick to show you.

Since rebels are considered “enemy” armies. And since we have helpful allies like Burgundy in a war with us. Our AI allies will see our rebels as an army of Provence and attack it. Sure enough, Burgundy and his vassals make their way back from Milan and do the work for us as January rolls into February.

Something else happened in the new year while I was waiting for Burgundy to arrive. We spent a few of our precious coins on a National Epic to give us more prestige. But, now we’re at risk of taking a loan.

Except, if you remember, we still haven’t taken our 1% Bourgeoisie loans. We take the loans on offer. We now have some debt, but this was necessary. You have to spend money to make money, after all.

In world news, the start of 1449 also sees the House of York come out on top in England. I had hoped the War of the Roses would go on for a while longer. The weaker England gets, the less trouble they’ll be in Ireland. Though it will still take them a while to recover.

After taking out our loans, it is time for this war to end. We take Anjou for ourselves, give Aix to the Pope, and give Barrois and Verdun to Burgundy. Neither of our allies are happy about this. They both think they deserve more, but we don’t have enough warscore for that (peacedeal costs 94%). We also take some cash, not that it helps much. The peace is signed on February 18th, 1449.

Since they didn’t receive enough land relative to their participation, Burgundy and the Pope trust us less. If their trust drops too low, they could decide to drop us as an ally. Thankfully, they don’t. Giving them at least some land has counteracted that a bit. But we need to be careful. I could use favors to bump up their trust a little bit, but I don’t. Right now, our favors are better spent on other things.

And that concludes our first war. Thanks for reading everyone! See you next time!

jak7139 · Apr 22, 2024

CHAPTER FOUR: Anjou, Ireland, & Other Things
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(May 1449-June 1450)

On the first day of May, we receive good news! Anjou has become home to a Cardinal. He’ll help us influence the Pope more. And, if the Papal Controller (the nationality of the current Pope) picks a certain Papal Bull (various decrees that he can enact), then the Cardinal will even spread Institutions to our provinces. Very helpful!

Now, Anjou has some Devastation from being under occupation for so long. It does go down naturally (slowly) while under our control, but we want to speed this process up. We could either spend some of our Monarch Points to develop the province a bit. Or we could turn on the fort in Anjou and increase the rate of decay. Even though it costs us more money, I choose to turn on Anjou’s fort. We need our points for tech and other things and shouldn’t be spending them willy-nilly.

Over the summer, we check out the closest of the Irish nations, Munster. Declaring a no-CB war would cost us 2 stability (currently at 0), some war exhaustion, and some Aggressive Expansion with the other Irish counts. A small Coalition would form, but nothing to seriously challenge us. I decide to wait until January of 1450 to then declare war. Why do I do this? A few reasons:

The first is that Aggressive Expansion (AE) goes down on the yearly tick. So, it won’t hurt to let what we accrued from taking Anjou decay a little bit.
The second is that we need some time to let our war exhaustion recover. It won’t go down while at war, and we will be doing many wars after we take Munster. Can you guess with who?
Thirdly, if we wait until January, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to fight the Provencal rebels that will rise up in Anjou. If they don’t rise up, then we’ll have to either ship our army back from Ireland or delay the war. And every moment we delay is a moment that England or Scotland could use to pounce on the Irish before we do.

In December, before we declare war, I notice that we can seize some Crownland again. We do so, at the cost of some Estate disloyalty and a small stack of rebels which we quickly deal with. In the battle with the rebels, Erwan gains a trait that will help him keep our men in the fight for longer.

We could Sell Titles too for some more money (and we still have the agenda to develop Bro Wened so can’t take another one), but I hold off. I decide to wait until we need the money. We have 119 ducats right now thanks to the loans from the Bourgeoisie.

It’s a good time to declare on Munster. We decide to mark Munster’s ally, Ormond, as a “cobelligernt”. This lets Ormond call their own allies (of which they have none), and removes the penalties for taking land from them as a separate participant. Those penalties being +50% AE and +100% warscore cost for taking any of their provinces.

It is the 15th of January, 1450 and we declare war.

We immediately spend some of our admin points to get us back up to 0 stability. Meanwhile, our Light Ships which were protecting trade meet Munster’s trade fleet in battle. It’s our 8 versus their 7, but the rolls are in our favor today. They lose 2 ships, bringing them down to 5. One of which we captured. Our fleet stays in the Celtic Sea to keep the way clear for our Transports.

We can only load 6 of our regiments onto our 6 transport ships, and we choose to only infantry. Why? A 4-2 (inf/cav) landing force would be a bad idea. Since we are in the Western Tech Group, we can only have a maximum of 50% of our army’s frontline be cavalry (soft-cap). If we go above this cap, we suffer terrible penalties to our combat effectiveness. This cap also counts the individual men in each regiment, not the number of regiments as a whole. So a 4-2 landing force is just asking to get defeated, especially with the -2 penalty we will get for attempting a naval invasion. We would need more Transports to make bringing cavalry work. Since we don’t, pure infantry is our best bet.

As we begin disembarking from our ships, the game says we will arrive in Munster on April 17th. Why is this important? Every month, if we have manpower, our armies receive reinforcements. However, since we are at sea, our armies instead take attrition. April 17th is before the next month-tick, so I can show something off about EU4’s armies.

A peculiarity of EU4’s combat system is that, assuming all other factors are equal, a full 1,000-strength regiment is more effective than, say, two 500-strength ones. And, thankfully, there is a handy little button on our army to consolidate our regiments down and take advantage of this. Although, weirdly, it is also hidden under a tooltip. Given how important this button is, this was an odd design choice by Paradox.

Be honest right now, how many of you knew about holding the Shift-key and pressing the Consolidate button? I certainly didn’t for a long while.

Back to my point about April 17th. Our 6-regiment army under Erwan has lot 60 men to attrition, leaving behind six 990-strength regiments. We want this naval invasion to succeed without any hiccups, so I “Shift-Consolidate” our forces, leaving behind five 1,000-strength regiments and one 886-strength one. They are now, through the mysteries of the game’s code, more effective at fighting.

To the uninitiated, this may seem like a small change. But wars have been won or lost based on players’ abilities to keep their army as cohesive as possible. You’d be surprised at how big of a difference this makes when fighting much larger wars against much larger opponents.

And so, we land. Our army is in as good of a shape as it can be, and we attack Munster’s 2-1 force. We actually suffer a -3 penalty in this battle (the naval invasion, plus attacking into woody terrain). But, after a bloody battle, we beat the Irish. The enemy army has nowhere to retreat to, so is instantly deleted. Leaving just Ormond with a capable fighting force.

We stand in Munster, ready to siege. But some of you may have remembered something. Something that I immediately try to rectify. We don’t have enough troops to start the siege! Munster is in fact, a level 3 fort. Which requires 9,000 men to siege. I reluctantly build another infantry regiment back at home. This brings our total number of regiments (not soldiers) up to 9 out of 11.

In June, Anjou finishes coring. I turn the Area of Loire Valley where Anjou is located into a State. This is useful. Let me explain.

EU4’s map is made up of Provinces. Groups of Provinces get assigned to Areas. Areas, if they aren’t turned into States, are called Territories. The main thing Territories do is they always have a minimum of 90% Autonomy, giving you less money and troops. Stating Territories removes that Autonomy floor.

The Core we created in Anjou is what is called a “half-core”. This is because Territories only cost 50% to core. To “full-core” Anjou now that it is in a State, we would need to pay the other half of the cost. This would set the Autonomy floor to 0%. However, leaving Anjou half-cored but Stated, lowers the floor to only 50%. Better than the 90% of a Territory, but not as good as it could be.

I would like to full-core Anjou eventually, but we need our admin points to core any Irish land we take. For now, we leave Anjou as a half-core. There are a couple of other benefits to States over Territories that I won’t get into right now. I’m sure you all want to get back to the war with Munster and see how that’s going…

Actually, one more thing before I end this part, an Alert popped up on our screen letting us know that we can gain Innovativeness from taking tech. And the opportunity to do so is expiring soon. I’ll bring this back up in December when I decide what to do.

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Author's Note: Yes, I know. A cliffhanger! But I'm hoping to keep these updates at a manageable length for people. Regarding length and rate of posting: Is this working for everyone? Is a once a week update schedule too much? Is the post length okay?

jak7139 · Apr 30, 2024

CHAPTER FIVE: The Fall of the House of Munster
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(June 1450-January 1452)

I notice that our army in Munster isn’t reinforcing. In fact, its strength has gone down due to the attrition of the siege. I build 2 more infantry, bringing us up to our forcelimit of 11. All 3 of our new regiments should be done before 1451 rolls around.

Our loans from the Estates are being chewed through quickly. We’re already down to 62 ducats by August. It’s not even been a year since we took them. Luckily, one of our diplomats has been building favors with Burgundy, and we now have enough to ask them for some money (the other diplomat has been spying in Munster to help speed up our siege). This costs some of our favors but keeps us afloat for a little while longer.

In October we get one of the many events Catholic countries receive regarding pre-Protestant grumblings. This one gives us some money in exchange for some Reform Desire. We take the money because, as the event says, we need it.

By the 1st of December our new troops are done. This fulfills the requirements for the mission “Build to Forcelimit”. We could take it now, but I hold off. The extra morale for our troops could be useful later, and we don’t need it when fighting the Irish. I’d much rather save it for a potential big war versus England or France.

Now that it is December, I check the Innovativeness alert again. There are 41 days left. Every January, the “ahead-of-time” penalty for tech ticks down. We are not ahead in any technology category. However, every January still has a chance for us to get a discount. The AI likes to take tech in January, so if one of our neighbors takes a tech we don’t have, our tech becomes cheaper. There’s also the possibility of us getting an event for decreased tech cost.

So, I like to wait until January, or as late as possible, before I take Innovativeness from tech. Sometimes I unfortunately miss out because I am doing something else and not paying attention to the number of days left. But I think the discounts are worth it. Points are precious. We take the tech on January 1st. It costs 568 diplo points, the same amount as it did back in June. We didn’t get any discounts this time. But we can always try again later.

January 1451 also heralds the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy. This will make techs that are tied to the Renaissance Institution harder to get if we haven’t adopted the Renaissance beforehand. You can see which techs are tied to which Institutions by the little yellow paperish pictures next to the clocks on the Technology screen. Our admin and mil techs (both at level 3) only require the Feudalism Institution, something all Europeans start with. The next level of diplo tech (5) will be more expensive if we haven’t embraced the Renaissance by that point.

I also take the next military tech level (4) since it will help with Ireland and it isn’t ahead of time. I have a quick look over at Italy to see which province the Renaissance appeared in. It’s in Milano, the capital of Milan. Seems our war with them didn’t stop the arts from flourishing.

On February 9th, something major happens. France and England are now at peace. France took all of the continental holdings except Calais. They also, helpfully for us, released Meath (Dublin) and the Isle of Mann. England is weak and we have more land to grow into. Sweet!

While I was discussing with you all about Innovativeness and Technology, I quietly shipped our entire army over to Munster. We are now successfully sieging the province. Hopefully, it will fall soon.

Our Transports take over the blockade of Munster temporarily while I tell our Light Ships to go repair in Penn-ar-Bed. They take 2 months to repair and are back in the field (sea?) by May.

Just before that, on the 20th of April, we get one of the many marriage events throughout the game, detailing the relations between our ruling family and our consort’s family. This one is positive (and it’s where I finally noticed Isabel’s Scottish heritage). We get a small amount of diplo points and a medium-sized relations boost with Scotland. Let's hope more relatives will come to feast in the future.

All goes well. Then in July comes news…

England has recovered quickly, and is already on the warpath against the Irish!

They're at war with Clanricarde and Tyrone. England’s 2 Irish allies, Leinster and Kildare, join against their brothers. We’ll need to move faster.

I start a Spy Network on Desmond (the Irish nation to the north of Munster). This also reminds me to switch our Merchant’s focus in Bordeau back to Maximizing Profits since we aren’t using the spy bonuses in France at the moment.

In November we get another Estate event. Although it angers the Bourgeoisie even more, I take their money. We are down to 28 ducats, and the event brings us up to 39. We’re losing roughly 3 a month.

On December 17th, after 593-day siege, Munster’s castle falls. I recall a diplomat and send our army north to Ormond. We destroy Ormond’s army easily and begin a new siege. I also mothball our new Irish fort to save a little bit of money. Munster’s navy (5 Lights and 3 Transports) is kicked out of the province and into our waiting fleet. They are no match. We destroy their whole fleet, capturing one of the Cogs.

Our diplomat arrives and I send a white peace offer to Ormond. With their army destroyed and their only province under siege, they have no choice but to accept. I would’ve liked to annex them, like we’ll do to Munster, but we have no land or sea connection to them, making this impossible. The best we can hope for is the 5-year truce white peacing gives us and that England will leave them alone.

We peace out Munster, annexing their nation and taking 10 gold. It is January of 1452.

jak7139 · May 6, 2024

CHAPTER SIX: The Irish Wars Continue
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(January 1452-March 1453)

We don’t have time to celebrate our victory over Munster. Through the work of our diplomats, we were able to get a claim on Desmond and I immediately press it. They are allied to Offaly (the orange nation in the center of the island). This is basically a repeat of the war we just had with Munster, only Desmond doesn’t have a level 3 fort and we don’t have to use transports.

I have 4 of our infantry under Erwan and his siege pip besiege Cork (Desmond’s capital). The rest of our army sits in Munster to deter rebellions and not suffer extra attrition.

We have 5 ducats left. To avoid taking another loan, we sell some land to the Estates. 134 ducats are now in the bank. We’re currently losing about 6 ducats per month because of Munster’s fort (currently mothballed) and some Corruption we got from an event that we’re buying down.

Corruption is very bad. Our loans are manageable, but if we start accumulating too much Corruption, then this run will be unsalvageable. As a side note, we can trade some Corruption for some money, if we’re truly desperate. But this should be an ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT.

We have other ways of getting cash (loans and selling Crownland) that don’t severely hurt our nation’s future. And there’s also another way we can get more cash as well, I just haven’t shown it yet. If the Corruption method is considered a last resort, then this other way is the step before that. it still hurts our nation but is not anywhere near as bad as Corruption.

Now back to other matters. Winning the battle against Desmond’s troops and our peace with Munster have finally given us enough prestige (we’re at 31) to fulfill our mission. We claim the Loire Valley for ourselves. Our nation is on the rise.

The next mission in this branch wants us to expand using our new claims. We own 1 of the 3 provinces in the Loire Valley area (Anjou). The other 2 are owned by France unfortunately (Maine and Tourraine). If we complete this mission, we get more claims on France (this time in Normandy).

In August, Duke Francois gets a new trait, Loose Lips. Even though this is a negative trait, it is probably the weakest debuff we could’ve gotten since it doesn’t hurt us in any way. Let me explain.

The AI is always fabricating and doing intrigue with their diplomats. By discovering their activities, we can stop them temporarily. But right now, nations don’t have access to any of the really annoying actions they can do (comes with certain levels of technology). Late in the game, any AI nation that has rivalled you will constantly be trying to incite revolts and disrupt your trade. But for now, we’re completely safe from our duke’s gossiping ways.

November sees Cork fall. We move to Offaly to repeat what we did with Ormond (white peace and hope England doesn’t take them before our truce is up). As we battle Offaly, England annexes Tyrone. Their foothold on the island has returned.

We get a bad event again. Lose stab or gain Corruption. We choose the Corruption. As annoying as paying it down might be, we can’t afford to spend more admin points right now on getting Stability back to 0.

Our navy beats Desmond’s fleet. We don’t capture any excess ships. I turn down the “Rooting Out Corruption” slider on our economy tab. It is still decreasing, we just aren’t spending as much on it. Our economy continues to falter.

During these wars, our diplomats have been hard at work in Ireland. In December we claim Thomond. They will be our next target. I notice, when checking the war balance against them, that Kildare would join. This would be a good opportunity to isolate them from England. And if we wait on peacing out Offaly, we could even annex Kildare as well (by the time this war ends, our truce with Ormond should be over, so we can attack them and get a land connection to Kildare and Offaly).

We leave 800 men behind in Offaly to prevent them from making any troops, and the rest of our army moves to attack Thomond. Their army is beaten and we leave behind a siege force as we move on to Kildare (their army is away fighting with England).

It is January of 1453 and Ireland looks like this.

In February, Kildare’s army is spotted in Meath heading to Leinster. I know the AI, so I know what they’re trying to do. I’ve kept the fort in Desmond (Munster’s former capital, not the nation of Desmond which is in the province of Cork) mothballed to save money. But the AI loves to siege down mothballed forts when the player isn’t looking. Thankfully, in this case, I notice them moving towards it.

We shift some troops around to intercept them, but Kildare spots us and turns back. I don’t pursue. A small victory. The siege work resumes.

jak7139 · May 13, 2024

CHAPTER SEVEN: Rebellions & More War
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(March 1453-February 1454)

Back in our capital, something happens. If you were keenly watching the outliner over the last chapter, you might already know what. A stack of 12,000 rebels appears in Bro Naoned demanding more autonomy. Our army could beat them if it wasn’t all in Ireland. But they do need to get through the fort in our capital before they can force us to accept their demands.

As I’m looking at that, Kildare attacks us in their capital. Erwan, who was leading the siege in Thomond, quickly moves to reinforce. We also bring over the troops from Offaly, leaving 1 regiment in the other 2 provinces to maintain our siege progress. Our reinforcements help win the day, and Kildare’s army is deleted since they have nowhere to retreat to.

We don’t have time to celebrate. In April, Anjou revolts as well, besieging the province with a force of 8,000 men. It was for this reason, the looming rebellion, that I’d kept Anjou’s fort maintained. With Kildare’s army dealt with, I continue to siege the 3 Irish provinces, hoping I can end the war quickly before the rebels make too much progress.

To help with that, it’s time I mention one of the other benefits of having States over Territories: Edicts. Edicts give different bonuses to all provinces you own within a State, but this makes the State cost more to maintain. For this reason, I don’t like keeping Edicts on everywhere, all the time. I only enact them when there is a need for it, like with these 2 rebellions.

I turn on the Defensive Edict in the Loire Valley and Brittany (your capital area is always a State, and costs less to maintain). This causes any sieges in these provinces to take 33% longer, giving us more time to finish what we’re doing in Ireland.

In June, England ends their war with Clanricarde, annexing them. If we don’t hurry, all of Ireland will be under their hands soon, locking us out of our only easy expansion route. I start a new Spy Network in Meath (the diplomat was in Clanricarde before, out of the hope that England would just take money).

In August Thomond falls and we fight their navy. What initially seems like an easy fight soon turns into an even match as Tyrconnell’s navy joins against us. We retreat out of there after the 10-day minimum battle timer expires. Luckily, we don’t lose anything. At least Thomond has already fallen and it’s the only coastal fort we have to siege. We could siege Tyrconnell and take it, but I don’t want an isolated northern province against England.

I move some troops around and have those who aren’t sieging sit in Thomond to loot the province. This does what you might expect, it gives us some money from the province (listed as “Spoils of War” on our Economy tab).

In October, England continues their ceaseless aggressions against the people of Ireland. We, on the other hand, are simply liberating our Celtic brothers. Totally different. They’ve attacked Thomond (which doesn’t matter since we already occupy the province). Kildare, because of our siege, has dishonored the defensive call.

Offaly falls next and the troops there are moved to Thomond to continue pillaging. I keep Erwan and 3,000 infantry on Kildare, and the rest of our army under Prince Pierre prepares to move to Tyrconnell. One problem, we can’t. we don’t have military access and would have to use Transports. I could get military access, but I check Tyrconnell again. It’s already under siege by England, there would be no point in me helping them. Let the English suffer in their siege camps.

With this moment of calm in December, I decide to have a look at our finances. We have 40 gold in the bank. We’ll need to take out another loan soon since the Estate interaction is still on cooldown. However, I notice that the size of our loans (37) has increased from when we last took them (the Bourgeoisie loans at the start of the game. 28 gold each).

With this increase, we can do some reshuffling. I take out 4 regular loans (enough to pay off our debt to the Bourgeoissie). Then I take out some new Estate loans with the increased size and pay back the normal loans. Our treasury has gained 10 ducats (33 ducats in January when we started, to 43 ducats after the reshuffling). This is a small increase, but it helps. Our amount of loans (5) and interest (0.11) hasn’t actually changed, even if our amount of debt has increased due to the larger loan size. But, in EU4 logic, the amount of debt doesn’t matter, only the number of loans.

After this, we receive word that Anjou has fallen after a 288-day siege. Our capital still holds on at +14% in the rebels’ favor. Seeing this, I quickly move the prince’s army to the Transports, our capital shall not fall! Not one step back!

I also take this moment to peace out Tyrconnell. However, I quickly try blockading them before doing so. This gives a small amount of warscore (25%) against them, letting us demand 4.3 ducats instead of a white peace. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I should also take this moment to mention that ever since June of 53’, we’ve been getting Call for Peace in our war with Desmond and Offaly. This hurts our war exhaustion, but I continue the war regardless. The land we gain (and keep England out of) is worth more at this point. We’ll have plenty of time for peace later once Ireland is done with. It is our only easy expansion route outside of the Americas, and I want to take full advantage of it before this opportunity is gone.

jak7139 · May 20, 2024

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Race for Ireland
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(February 1454-October 1455)

In March, as our troops arrive in Brittany, we get some good news: Arvor is now also housing a Cardinal. Our clout within the Church grows.

Sizing up the numbers in Brittany, it’s our 7,000 troops versus 12,000 and another 8,000 rebels. Someone might correct me on this, but I think rebel stacks only help each other in battle if they are the same type, Separatists, Peasants, Nobles, etc. So, the Separatists of Provence shouldn’t reinforce the Nobles of Brittany if I attack them. Meaning we could face each rebellion individually.

Even with that in mind, I would like more troops against the Noble rebels. I pull 2 out of the 3 regiments still sieging Kildare under Erwan out of Ireland. As my men sail to Brittany on the Transports, I get news. Kildare’s army was not totally destroyed. The regiment left behind in Ireland is defeated and our siege progress is reset.

The only good news is that the Anjou rebels have moved into Maine since Provence has a core there, where France is killing them. That’s one enemy army down. With the extra troops from Ireland, I attack the Nobles. I also put Erwan back in charge since he is now free from staying with the 1k in Ireland.

The battle is won on the 5th of May. I turn off the defensive Edicts in Brittany and Anjou. Most of my army moves back to Ireland. Except I leave 3 regiments behind to retake Anjou. I Shift-Consolidate the army while it is united. The weakest troops are left in Brittany to reinforce, while the strongest part of our army heads to finish off Kildare.

Kildare unfortunately got up to some mischief while we were away. They took the mothballed fort in Desmond. But, with Cork still occupied, we can land immediately without any penalties. We crush Kildare with our army, finishing off their forces for good.

In September, England annexes Tyrconnell, growing their influence. Also that same month, the minor Dutch state of Friesland is annexed. The dream of Frisian Freedom has ended.

It’s October, the perfect time to look at our finances again. Remember how I said there was another method of making money? One that was better than Corruption but still kind of terrible (Chapter Six). Well, I use that method here because I don’t want to take a normal loan.

In the Macrobuilder, there’s a section that lets you Exploit Development and gain either money, sailors, or manpower from your provinces (based on which type of Development you exploit). This lowers the Development of the specified type in your province by 1, giving you a lump reward. We choose to exploit the Base Tax of each of our provinces and get some cash from each (except for Anjou, where we can’t because it is occupied). We go from 4 ducats to 74. A nice amount that we will surely burn through. The cooldown on doing this is 20 years. But by that point, our economy should (I hope) be in a better position.

In hindsight, I should’ve taken out the normal loans first, then tried exploiting our provinces. Lowering the Development of our provinces has decreased our total loan size, meaning we can’t squeeze as much money out of our nation as we might’ve been able to. However, I really wanted to avoid taking too many loans, because the interest spirals quickly.

It's probably a case-by-case basis which order you should do these in or which of the various ways of getting some quick cash you should use (normal loans, Estate loans, Corruption, selling Crownland, using ally favors, or exploiting Development). If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, do what you’re most comfortable with and that will usually see you through.

In December, England continues its conquests. This time it’s against the nation of Sligo (the province separating English Clanricarde from their other holdings). Sligo’s ally of Scotland joins the war. This isn’t good. England will most likely annex Sligo and take some land off of Scotland, maybe even cutting us off from northern Britain. England without Scotland is already stronger than us. England with Scotland will have no rivals left on their island to challenge them, meaning they can build up and stay at peace.

In April, I get an alert that we can take the next admin tech. I hold off since we need our points to core stuff. It’s not like we have enough money to build any temples anyway. This also causes me to reevaluate our war in Ireland. I decide that I don’t have enough points to core everything. Instead, I vassalize our troublesome foe, then annex the other 3 (Desmond, Offaly, and Thomond). We took money from each of them as well, bringing our treasury to a nice 107 and our loan size to 44 (we lose 4.60 a month after the peace).

With the war in Ireland over, I can have Erwan help besiege Anjou. Our diplomats are busy in Burgundy building favors and in Meath where we almost have enough for a claim.

In June, I get some good news, Poland, the current Pope, has picked a useful Golden Bull. They’ve picked the one to spread Institutions in our Cardinal provinces (Arvor and Anjou). We put on an edict in both our States to help this spread. The Renaissance is also growing in our capital since it has 10-Development. This is a slower spread rate than our 2 Cardinals provide, but it is still decent.

In September, Ormond attacks Leinster, and England (due to their war with Scotland) dishonors the call. That’s both of the English’s Irish allies taken away from them. Great!

We also use our built-up favors to ask for more money from Burgundy, giving us 19 gold. But then, England send us a letter…

This isn’t good. A warning doesn’t prevent us from declaring war. But it does mean that if we declare on a nation that borders England, the English may join against us. This leaves just Leinster and Ormond as free targets, the rest of Ireland is under England’s sphere.

jak7139 · May 27, 2024

CHAPTER NINE: The Renaissance & Combat Discussion
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(October 1455-July 1459)

Kildare’s first benefit as a vassal comes into play here (and one of the many bonuses vassals give you. Vassals are great! And I will continue to shout their praises throughout this AAR). I don’t have a claim on Leinster, but Kildare does. So we can declare using their wargoal. We can do the same to Meath (though I also have a claim), and I notice that England won’t even defend Dublin. What luck!

I only have 4,000 infantry in Ireland. The other part of our army is sieging Anjou (we need 6 full regiments to take a level 2 fort). I quickly head to page 21 of the ledger, “Army Quality,” and search for Meath. Their army maintenance is low, our discipline is higher, and their ally Ormond is busy against Leinster. A plan forms.

More luck for us! Anjou falls in April. By May, our whole army is on Meath’s border, ready to strike! The battle is quick. So quick, I even forget to take a screenshot. I set our vassal to siege focus and tell them to specifically siege Dublin. They’re reluctant at first due to the supply limit. But after I take some troops away, they move in. Our other forces start to siege Ormond.

In September, Leinster is annexed. I check the ledger again, this time sorting by “war enemies”. The Prince attacks Ormond in Leinster with a small army. One more regiment is brought over from Dublin as Kildare sends more troops to our siege. We win, chase the survivors down to Cork, and end them there. A nice, quick operation.

We exchange 12 gold and 10 prestige for 25 admin points from an event. And I choose to take the next admin tech since we’ll have enough points by the time our war finishes to core everything.

I decide to lower army maintenance to help our budget (at full we’re losing 6.90). I contemplate the Corruption button, but don’t press it. More loans is the better play.

The Renaissance appears in Arvor. And we can embrace the Institution (it would cost 95.22 gold). We don’t embrace it yet. We are also forced to take out a normal loan to preserve our budget.

In March, Meath falls and I direct Kildare to Ormond (go on boy, fetch the stick!). That castle is taken in July. Both Irish nations are conquered and their gold is seized. I give Ormond’s 2 provinces to Kildare so they can core them instead. We do need the next admin tech if we want to go colonial (which is now our only viable expansion route), so we want to save our points. We keep Meath in order to have a border with Mann, Scotland, and Ulster, just in case England leaves us some scraps.

England would not defend Ulster. And neither would Scotland. In we go.

In February some sad news, not necessarily bad news, hits our nation. Isabel of Scotland has died. Francois and Pierre mourn her loss.

The alert pops up again telling us it is time to sell our Crownland. This also reminds me of something I should have done long ago (and perhaps you remember me mentioning it in the first chapter). We finally take each of the Estate privileges for cheaper advisors. I don’t even want to think about how much money we could’ve been saving (each advisor costs 1 gold a month, the privileges make advisors 15% cheaper, you do the math.

January 1445- January 1458 (13 years) + Dec. 1444, Feb. 1458 month-ticks (2 months)
13 years x 12 months = 156
156 + 2 = 158 months
1.00 gold/month -15% = 0.85 gold/month
0.85 gold x 158 months = 134.30 gold
134.30 gold x 3 advisors = 402.90 gold

We take this opportunity to also attack the lonely Isle of Mann. They have no allies and no navy. So this should be a breeze.

Sligo is conquered in June. England also takes many chunks out of Scotland but doesn’t cut us off. I take a look at Scotland. They’re guaranteed by France and allied with Burgundy, making it difficult for us to attack them. But those same difficulties apply to the English, so I take that as a win. England did not take the 2 Scottish provinces (Lothian and Aberdeen) they need to form Great Britain at admin tech 10. Hopefully, we continue to grow as England stagnates.

I enact the Dev-cost edict in Brittany for a moment. It’s finally time for us to Develop Bro Wened and complete that Estate agenda from the Diet (we go from 8 Development to 10). I also sell some more Crownland, since our treasury is about empty. Most of the money goes towards embracing the Renaissance Institution (81.24 gold). We will need this Institution to stay concurrent with tech, so even if spending that money is a pain, we have to do it. We take mil tech 5 (a very key tech as it provides us with new units). The next one, tech 6, will be even better as it’s a tactics tech. I’ll explain about the different military bonuses later. But a good rule-of-thumb is to never fall behind in military tech, ESPECIALLY if that tech gives you more tactics.

Now it’s time for some discussion. We have 3 new infantry units we can pick from to replace our current unit. Which should we choose? The 3 different categories of pips for units are Fire, Shock, and Morale. The yellow pips near the top of each unit card are offensive pips. The green pips near the bottom are defensive pips.

Offensive pips represent the amount of damage our units will do in combat. Defensive pips represent the amount of damage they will mitigate. All 3 pips (Fire, Shock, and Morale) will be used to damage the enemy’s morale and unit strength, with the Fire and Shock pips being applied to each of their respective battle phases (the two phases alternate. Each phase lasts 3 days. The Fire phase always comes first).

The effectiveness of your pips is determined by your tech level and ideas. When taking tech 5, we gained 0.15 Infantry Shock and 0.20 Cavalry Shock.

So, each unit would give us 1 Shock pip (a defensive pip from Men-at-Arms. An offensive pip from either the Longbow or Galloglaigh Infantry). The Galloglaigh Infantry would give us 2 offensive morale pips. While the other 2 units would spread these pips evenly between offense and defense.

What do you think I chose? Did I go for damage with the Galloglaigh, staying power with the Men-at-Arms, or did I choose a mix with the Longbow?

What would you choose, based on the info I gave?

I’ll bring the info about pips up again when we get some Artillery since it changes the way combat works a bit. But, for now, this is enough.

I choose the Galloglaigh. Dealing more damage and beating the enemy that way seems like a better bet than negating the risk of taking less. Our rivals have more men than us anyway, meaning we will be overwhelmed regardless of our defensive bonuses. But if we wear them down, we can weaken them. The only way to do that is by inflicting damage.

After that’s done, we start Stating some of our Irish land to increase our income, but keep the land half-stated for now. I’m saving for admin tech 5.

In October, Cork revolts and Provence is too weak to remain our rival. I’d kept the fort in Desmond maintained to hinder the rebels. When a rebellion occupies a province, they usually have an effect on it. In the case of Separatist rebels, they increase the Separatism modifier in the province, making it more likely to rebel in the future (you can see the amount of Separatism by hovering over a province’s Unrest). But, if a fort is adjacent to the occupied province, that effect doesn’t occur.

I decide to finish Ulster’s siege first (+49%) before tackling the rebels. In the meantime, we take diplo tech 5. It doesn’t do anything major for us, but there’s nothing better to spend our points on. I don’t want to use those points to decrease our war exhaustion, because it will go down fairly quickly on its own after our wars are done.

In February Ulster falls. And the same with Mann 2 days later. Erwan moves the army from Ulster to attack our rebels and we peace out sometime in March, annexing both Ulster and Mann.

With peace finally here, and with our army having nothing better to do, I decide to decrease the Autonomy of our provinces. This will cause revolts, but it will help our economy. And, like I said, the army has nothing else to do. We’ll just lower our maintenance until then and deal with whatever revolts pop up.

Our economy is losing 3.28 ducats. But once our cores are done and as our Autonomy decreases, we should be alright. We can still take loans, reshuffle our economy, and sell Crownland to keep us afloat.

Burgundy starts supporting Sweden’s independence from the Danish-led Kalmar Union. Sweden is also supported by Lithuania, England, and Muscovy. If they ever declare (something the AI is very skittish about), they should easily win. Denmark’s allies are nothing special: Münster, East Frisia, the Teutonic Order, and their union over Norway.

We’ve now played 15 years. Europe looks much the same, but we have grown a lot. And that’s the end of my first play session. See you all next time!

jak7139 · Jun 3, 2024

CHAPTER TEN: Peace! Prosperity! Power Projection!
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(July 1459-February 1461)

With our nation now at peace, I decide to take a look at our war exhaustion (8.34 yikes!). Our current level gives us various penalties, but the 3 biggest are:

National Unrest: affects the unrest across all of our provinces, making them more likely to rebel.
Core Creation Cost: increases the cost of coring any provinces.
Goods Produced Modifier: goods produced affects both our production and trade income. It is perhaps the strongest economic modifier in the game.

To help our economy a bit, I do something I probably should’ve done earlier. But we had a lot going on near the end of the last play session, so it slipped my mind. We can Share Knowledge with other nations, giving them progress towards an Institution. They’ll pay us for doing this, the amount varying on their income. Of the 4 nations who would accept right now, Switzerland would give us the most at 0.52 gold per month.

I turn off the Edict in Brittany to save us some cash as well. Our economy is recovering from the past decade of conflict.

In September, we get the opportunity to reform our government. Throughout the game, we’ll accumulate Reform Progress. This rate is modified by our Autonomy (higher levels mean less growth). Reforms let us shape our government to get bonuses from it. We started the game with the Feudal Nobility Reform unlocked. Now, I choose to strengthen the Nobility’s power to help with our manpower. Incidentally, this brings our Nobility's influence to 83%.

Our military advisor dies in October. I could hire a new one, but our economy is still pretty terrible. We’re already 7 years ahead-of-time before the next mil tech, so we leave that slot blank for now.

In miscellaneous diplomacy news, I forgot to mention at some point after all our wars that I picked 3 rivals. We’re only strong enough to rival 3 countries, so there’s not much deliberation. Our picks are England, Scotland, and Savoy. All of them already hate us anyway. England obviously craves our Irish land, Scotland has a core on Mann, and Savoy has already rivaled Burgundy. We at least get some positive opinion with Burgundy for standing together against Savoy.

Having 3 rivals (and embargoing each of them) also gives us a nice amount of Power Projection. We’re currently at 40 out of 100 and only need 10 more to reach the magical number 50. Having 50 PP earns us +1 extra monarch point in each category. A very nice bonus! And conveniently, there’s an interaction we can do to earn us 10 more points.

There are 2 types of insults you can send a country when doing diplomacy with them: regular insults and scornful insults. Insults, regardless of type, lower the opinion of the insulted nation towards the sender. But a scornful insult does a few other things.

For one, it gives an opinion boost with every country rivaling that nation. Two, it costs the sender 5 prestige. Three, most importantly, it gives the sender 10 PP when done against a rival. And four, it sends out a random flavor message to the nation. I choose England as our target to help solidify our alliance with Burgundy.

By this point, France has annexed most of their starting vassals. Only Orleans and Alencon remain. France’s unique vassals (called appanages) get increased Liberty Desire whenever one of them is subsumed. With most of the other subjects gone, Orleans sees what’s happening and calls on Castille to support their independence. France will need to make Orleans loyal again to incorporate them, so France will remain disunited for some time.

As December ends and 1460 begins, I remember to Divert Trade from Kildare. This toggle gives us 100% of our vassal’s trade income, at the cost of 30% Liberty Desire. Kildare is super loyal, so this is a no-brainer to help with our income.

I also click another toggle, Embargo Rivals, to have Kildare join us in not allowing English, Scottish, or Savoyard merchants, hurting those nations’ economies. This costs another 5% LD.

Now that we have Ireland under our control and are receiving our vassal’s Trade Power, we move our merchant from the English Channel to the North Sea. The value may be significantly less, but our control over the North Sea node is higher. Our trade income goes from 1.74 to 2.09 over the March month-tick. We’re losing 1.15 a month.

Also in March, Austria and most of the other HRE Princes decide to abandon Italy to its fate.

Although our 3 forts are all mothballed (located in Anjou, Desmond, and Penn-ar-Bed), we are losing 1.53 ducats (0.51 apiece) from each of them. We could turn our economy from red to black if we delete our castles. Which is better, defense or money? After a long time of deliberation, I choose money. We now have a positive balance for the first time in 14 years (0.39 a month). And I lower our army maintenance too, bringing us to 0.90.

Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the Munster separatists ticking up. In August our army is rudely awakened in their camps. We’re flung into a desperate fight! Although we outnumber the rebels, our low morale causes us to retreat. And we take a loan as well, since our army now has to reinforce. The rebels occupy the now fort-less Munster, giving the province some Separatism.

Some within our government see this as a cause for concern. They suggest we withhold the promised tithes to the Clergy. Naturally, we refuse, increasing our standing within the Church.

In December, our army recovers and prepares to engage the rebels. We win easily. But before the battle begins we get one of the regular events of EU4. We can choose to let our serfs move to the big city or force them to stay home. I always choose to let them move because the Development will move to a larger province, and the morale debuff we would get for 20 years

by not doing so isn’t worth it.

After the battle, more news reaches us of a rebellion by the burghers of Prussia against the Teutonic Knights. The Danzigers (?) and Poland will easily win against the theocracy.

Our core in Dublin (renamed to Dulenn) finishes, allowing us to add it to a State. Our income keeps growing. We also marry Kildare, giving us a new consort named Neassa.

jak7139 · Jun 10, 2024

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Admin Tech Five, Alliances, & Prince Pierre
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(February 1461-August 1464)

Our admin advisor dies in February, but we decide to replace this one. We need amin points more than we need mil points, and hopefully, our new Treasurer (+10% National Tax Modifier) will partially pay for himself.

In July more Irish rebels rise up, this time in Offaly and in Limerick. As we’re dealing with both of those, we hear about a war between Venice and Hungary and how mercenaries have become key in that conflict.

As we defeat the last of the rebels in October, Saxony’s king dies, ending our marriage with them. Finally, I can do something I’ve wanted to do ever since we got Kildare as a vassal. You may have noticed we’ve been over the relations-limit this whole time (our 4 allies+1 vassal). We’ve been paying an extra diplo point for this privilege, but I want to keep our other allies. Why does Saxony get kicked to the curb? And why did we keep them this long? Well, I’ll show you.

Despite their extra strength in their subject Thuringia, Saxony is currently the weakest out of all our allies. Thuringia’s independence is being supported by not one, not two, but three other countries: Brandenburg, Brunswick, and Wurzburg. Aside from the obvious risk of war at any moment should Thuringia revolt, there’s also the fact that, even if they don’t declare independence, they are dragging Saxony down. Disloyal subjects don’t help their overlord during wars.

Now, why didn’t we cancel our alliance earlier? Because we had both an alliance and a marriage with Saxony. We can break alliances easily. All it costs is a 5-year truce. But breaking a marriage costs one stability (unless we finish Diplomatic Ideas). And I’m sure you know how precious our admin points have been these past few years. So, I paid the 1 diplo a month to keep Saxony as an ally as long as we had a marriage. Now our marriage is over, and so is our alliance.

1462 comes around and France turns their guarantee of Scotland into a full-fledged alliance. Then, in July our last 2 cores finish (Ulster and Mann) and we State those provinces as well. Stating Mann will actually lose us money, but if the autonomy goes down and Prosperity (something I haven’t talked about yet) builds up, it should be fine.

After that, in August, we finish selling knowledge to Switzerland. The next richest country willing to accept our services is the Palatinate. They’ll pay us 0.41 ducats each month for the duration.

We also get an event about a devout preacher within our lands. We choose to send him to Rome, giving us 10 Papal Influence and allowing us to pick our first Catholic bonus. Most of these bonuses are useful in some form, but today we choose the extra tax income. And maybe we’ll even get enough money during its 20-year duration to use the decreased construction cost.

It’s October and our income is 7.11 gross and 1.66 net with a defunded army. We improve our relations with the Papal States some more to get more Papal Influence.

Now, in February and March of 1463, I have a side-by-side comparison to show you. Our income goes from 7.14 to…7.15! Yeah, I know, not a lot. But this is the effect of our slowly decreasing autonomy. Even while at peace we are growing stronger.

We have 22 favors with Burgundy, a perfect point to spend some. Instead of trading favors for money though, I decide to take some manpower instead (1,044), since the rebellions have bled us. We use the money-interaction on the Pope, giving us 26 more gold.

In April, Burgundy becomes the 5th-ranked Great Power. Good for us! But then, in June…bad news…

Prince Pierre is sick, gravely sick. We could spend 17 ducats on a 50/50 chance of saving him. But money is so tight right now. And Pierre isn’t that great of an heir. We decide to pray, but it does little to help the prince. We are now heirless, but maybe the duke can think of something. We already have as many marriages as we can without going over the relations-limit again (Burgundy and Kildare. Switzerland is a republic and the Papacy is a theocracy, no hope from either of them). The only thing we can do is wait.

When looking around the world in July, I notice that Sweden is heavily occupied by Pretender Rebels. This could free them from the union with Denmark peacefully (if you consider a rebellion peaceful). We’ll see what comes of this later.

There is a reason Denmark is not dealing with Sweden. They’re a bit distracted. Denmark is allied with the Teutons, so is fighting Poland and Danzig.

In February of ’64, we finally pay down the last of our Corruption. This was taking up a bit of our income to pay off, but it was necessary. As I mentioned in Chapter Six, Corruption is anathema, and we should never take it unless we are seriously desperate.

Also in March, our truce with Provence ends. We can’t attack them, and they don’t have any more land I particularly want anyway. I leave them be.

We can also take admin tech 5. This unlocks our first idea group slot, which will of course be Exploration. We also get an ahead-of-time bonus for now being current with technology.

The same month, Hungary’s woes continue. Bohemia declares on them, and Cilli and Albania don’t defend them. Hungary has also been at war with the Ottomans during this time, due to a Turkish attack on Albania. The Venetian war is still ongoing.

In July, we seize land and summon the diet again. I don’t sell any titles since our economy is on the up, and we don’t need the money for anything yet. This time, we choose to help the Bourgeoisie in developing Arvor. I don’t complete it instantly because we want to fill out our idea group, but we have 20 years before the Bourgeoisie will get upset.

Apparently after the diet, our duke was hosting a banquet. This is one of those events based on our ruler’s traits. Since our ruler has Loose Lips, he tends to gossip. In this case, the gossip gives us a small relations-boost with England, but that does nothing to overcome their hatred.

In August, at another party, Francois meets 2 interesting people, a noble lady and a distinguished gentleman. Unfortunately, the lady won’t give us a good replacement heir for Pierre. So, we talk to the man instead. We hire our new cheaper advisor immediately.

jak7139 · Jun 18, 2024

CHAPTER TWELVE: World Wars & New Tech
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(August 1464-December 1467)

In October a few months later, we get an event saying that a cousin of ours is doing a great job ruling. I notice the text “subject state” in the event and look at Kildare. I didn’t realize they were our same dynasty. This lowers their Liberty Desire a little bit, keeping them loyal. Unfortunately, we can't steal their 5/5/5 heir.

Our deal with the Palatinate ends in November. Next on the list is Liege (0.42 gold).

It is December 7th, 1464, and something important happens. Well, not really…We get the same event regarding the peasants that we did at the start of the game. I just thought it was strange we got the same event 20 years and a month later. Spooky. Just like last time, we choose to pay the peasants off.

That same month, I get an alert that we can take our first Exploration Idea and gain some Innovativeness for it. If you remember the last time I brought this up (Chapters Four & Five), we can wait a while before deciding what to do. I use that tactic again here.

This does, however, bode really well for our nation. Why?

When taking Innovativeness from a technology/idea, the timer only starts ticking down when a nation has already taken it. Meaning we can judge, since the timer still has a year left, that we are not that far behind the 2 other countries likely to take Exploration ideas this early into the game. Those countries being Castille and Portugal.

I look at the Iberians and find exactly what I expect. Both have selected Exploration, but only Portugal has picked the first slot (Castille actually hasn't selected Exploration yet, but they will whenever they reach tech 5). Despite our no-CB war and all the admin points we spent coring Ireland, we are still right on time in the rush for the New World.

I’m so excited by this development, that I reverse course on my previous decision to wait a year for Innovativeness. This was a minor mistake, but I was too happy at the time to care.

We can now recruit an explorer or a conquistador if we want, but we don’t yet. There are other ways to do that for free later.

At the start of the new year, 6,000 separatists in Mann revolt. But, expecting this, I kept our army and transports nearby in Dublin and fully maintained. The rebellion doesn’t even last a month.

However, in February, our nobility take the opportunity to rise up as well. They are a lot stronger (11,000 men). I start shipping everything over to Penn-ar-Bed. On the 9th of April, we attack. Despite their slightly larger army, the rebels have no general. We take an even number of casualties, but the rebellion is crushed.

In the middle of the battle, Venice and Hungary end their war. Things aren’t looking good for the Magyars.

In June our Knowledge Sharing agreement once again ends. The only nation who will accept our services now is our vassal Kildare. They’ll pay us 0.10 gold per month.

I also take this moment to look around the world.

The pretender revolt in Sweden is over. The Kalmar union has lost Stockholm’s support. Sweden is still embroiled in the conflict with Poland and Danzig, but they are no longer under the Danish crown. Sweden enters an alliance with England sometime later.

In September the Danish-Polish war ends. Albania is also annexed by the Ottomans. Two months later, the tiny HRE minor of Cilli declares on the remains of Croatia. Serbia also takes the opportunity in December to pounce on Hungary. And, the same month, abandoned by their Scandinavian allies, the Teutonic Order cedes land to both Poland and Danzig. Before 1465 is out, one last war is started, the War of Saxon Succession!

Time continues on. Lithuania and Poland’s alliance breaks down in April. In June, Bohemia takes a large bite out of the Hungarian pie. And…we get a brand-new heir!

Say hello everyone to Prince Francois! A 4/6/5!

This joyous news is tempered somewhat by the fact that an affair between Duchess-Consort Neassa and our Treasurer is revealed. I’ve learned my lesson from before. We can't trust the Pope to help. We lose 10 prestige and move on.

Also, since we are making money, I decide to hire a military advisor again. We choose the level 1 Master Recruiter (+10% national manpower modifier) because he’s the most useful out of the given options. More forcelimit won’t help since I’m not hiring any more troops right now, and we can’t afford a level 2.

In October we get 60 military power and some opinion with France from a nice event. This gives us enough points to take military tech 6. Since we’re behind-time on it, we don’t delay.

Techs 4,5,6, and 7 are all very key early-game boosts to our military. If you’ll remember back to Chapter Nine, we discussed unit pips. Tech 6 does not give us any new units, but it does give us some Military Tactics, increased Combat Width, and Infantry Fire and Shock (also a building, but we don’t have enough money).

Back in Chapter Nine, I mentioned that the effectiveness of our units’ pips in a battle is increased by our units’ Fire/Shock values. The increased Fire and Shock we got here for our infantry has buffed their pips.

The Military Tactics we got from this tech is also very important. While all the different stats for units and armies are useful, Tactics is the most important one by far. You never want to be fighting someone who has an advantage in Tactics over you.

Tactics are important because they reduce the amount of damage your army takes in battle. And with how damage is calculated by the game, being behind in a Tactics tech severely weakens your army. This is why European armies can so easily beat Native armies early in the game, even if outnumbered heavily. The difference is in the Tactics.

Combat Width (CW) is self-explanatory if you’ve played other Paradox games. But if EU4 is your first game, CW affects the number of units each side can have on the field at the same time. If you have a 20,000-strong army, but the CW is only 12, only 12,000 of your men can actually fight.

The other 8,000 will still be in the battle, just “in reserve” as the game calls it. Those reserve units will trickle in as your original frontline takes damage and retreats. While reserve units don’t take strength damage, they do take morale damage.

These reservists could’ve provided your army with morale later in the battle by marching in as reinforcements. But instead, they are just stuck in the battle, not participating, and sucking up your morale. Having more than a couple units over the CW (to replace your frontline) is a significant waste.

A few days after taking the tech, we lose 10 more prestige from an event. These hits to our prestige hurt, but they’re better than losing monarch points. In November, we get some loyalty with the Bourgeoisie and some Trade Efficiency from an event.

Apparently, nothing of note happened for the rest of 1466 because the next screenshot I have is all the way in August 1467. Duke Francois, having shepherded us for many years…

Gains a new trait! What? You thought I was going to say he died? No. I will spoil that our duke is surprisingly long-lived. He’s still going up to where I’ve played when writing this (1482).

Anyway, he is now Silver Tongued. The Improve Relations this gives us affects how fast our AE decays. Higher is better. We don’t have much AE left since we’ve been at peace for a while, but it helps, nonetheless.

Later in August, Cilli pays the price for their ambitious landgrab. Croatia has turned the tables and annexed their former foe. Then, in September, the Hungarian decapitation continues. This time it is Poland going in (the Serbian invasion is also still ongoing).

Finally, before the end of December, we see two new wars and one peace. Thuringia beats Brunswick, affirming their union over Saxony and taking the entirety of Brunswick too! Austria then invades Croatia, citing the restoration of Cilli as their casus-belli. And the Ottomans continues to dominate the Balkans, declaring war against Serbia.

jak7139 · Jun 24, 2024

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Talking about Ages & Splendor
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(December 1467-April 1470)

When February arrives, Serbia makes peace with Hungary, regaining Belgrade and some other provinces. This doesn’t look like it will save them from the Turks though.

In April our agreement with Kildare ends. The well has run dry on people willing to buy the Renaissance from us. That’s a source of income gone. Shucks!

The 1st of May is a historic day. Castille and Aragon unite their thrones. While the two countries are still separate, it is only a matter of time until we see a united Spain. That’s not good for us as a potential colonial rival. We’ll have to see what we can do.

Ulster revolts in June, but our armies are on it. As we move out, Austria takes Cilli from Croatia. Obviously, this is for Cilli’s “protection” and Austria had no other motives in doing this. That same July, portions of Transylvania are transferred from Hungary to Poland.

Our Treasurer, despite his affair with Neassa, is a good bureaucrat. We get some nice boosts to our prestige, admin power, and Reform Progress from an event in December. The other option was to help boost our military, gaining 100 mil points, 10 Army Tradition, and 10 Navy Tradition. I chose the administrative option since we’re ahead on mil tech, but behind on admin tech.

Meanwhile, our army stands in Dublin, ready to engage the Ulsterites. But I stay my hand for a few months. The people of Dublin are also uppity. But if I stand in the province for a few months, their unrest will subside. In March of 1469, we finally attack. Glad that’s finally dealt with.

In May we are finally able to take our first Ability. And now I need to explain all about Ages, Abilities, and Splendor. Ready? Here we go!

We are currently in the Age of Discovery. Each Age has specific optional objectives associated with it to guide your nation. For every objective you complete, you increase the rate at which you gain Splendor. Splendor can be spent on certain bonuses for your nation that only apply during that specific Age. Each perk costs 800 Splendor and we now have enough to buy an Ability.

Since we’ve completed two of the tasks of this Age, we gain +5 Splendor a month (+1 base, +2 for each objective). We’ve embraced the Renaissance and have it in all of our provinces and we’ve humiliated our (former) rival Provence. If we complete at least three of the objectives in an Age, we can enter a once-per-game Golden Era and get some nice bonuses for 50 years.

Right now, we can pick from eight Abilities to buy. There are also country-specific Abilities for nations during each Age, but those don’t matter to us.

Each of the Abilities during this Age is useful. But they are also all situational. What are our options:

An edict for less unrest in our provinces: This could be useful, but we’d have to turn it on to use it. And money is tight right now.
Less AE: This would’ve been nice when we were conquering Ireland. But our European conquests are over for now.
Claims Bordering Claims: Probably the strongest bonus out of the bunch. Allows us to claim not just bordering provinces, as normal, but also any provinces which border our claims. Then we can fabricate claims from those new claims, then claims from those claims. You get the point. Best paired with Espionage ideas.
Free War Taxes: War Taxes. A button on the economy screen that gives us cheaper armies, forts, and navies while at war. It normally costs 1 mil point a month. We’re not at war, so this isn’t needed.
Increased cav to inf ratio: Increases the amount of cavalry we can have in our armies without suffering penalties to our Military Tactics. We don’t have the money for more cav anyway. A moot point.
Better Colonies: every time we complete a colony, the province gets +1 Development in each category. Great for colonizers, which we plan to be.
Capital Terrain Bonus: If our armies fight in any province that has the same terrain as our capital, we get +1 to our dice rolls. A very good bonus. But again, we’re not at war.

So, what do we pick? We take the bonus towards our colonies. We’re going to use colonization as our primary means of growth (at least until we can beat the Europeans). This is the best choice for us given the circumstances.

In hindsight, Claims Bordering Claims might’ve been really useful for our colonial ventures. We could’ve fabricated a chain of CBs from France all the way down to North Africa, then gained some more Colonial Range that way. I unfortunately didn’t think of this at the time.

In August we seize land again. We don’t sell any titles or complete our current diet at this time. After that, we get 50 mil power from an event. The cheaper advisor would’ve also been nice, but we don’t have the income to support him.

Perhaps I also chose the direct mil points because the new advisor was a supposed “friend” of Consort Neassa. I’m not falling for that again.

In October we can take admin tech 6. This gives us some more buildings we can’t build, but at least we get the bonus for being ahead-of-time. This also unlocks a decision for us, giving us some minor bonuses to taxes and missionaries. If you read the flavor text, this decision isn’t as nice. But we’ll just ignore that.

We also use this opportunity to get 29 ducats from the Pope by spending some of our favors.

It is April, 1470. Our nation is at peace. Unrest in our provinces is low. Our diplomatic position is secure. I’ll leave you now with a look at our economy. See you all later!

jak7139 · Jul 1, 2024

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Exploring, Economy, and Colonial Discussion
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(April 1470-March 1474)

I start up the game again for a new play session. Let’s see what’s in store for Brittany today! I begin by looking around the map a bit.

Portugal has attacked Morocco, sensing weakness. But the aggressive Iberians are currently losing heavily. Lisbon is their only unoccupied home province. How did the Moroccan navy beat the superior Portuguese one, you may ask? That is because of how EU4’s military access system works.

Castille, being Portugal’s best friend, is giving their ally military access through their provinces to walk to Tangiers. Unfortunately, this same access agreement conversely applies to Portugal’s enemies, in this case Morocco. The Portuguese may rule the seas, but the Moors rule the land.

Looking over to another of Europe’s peninsulas, the Serbian kingdom is destroyed. The Ottomans now stretch past the Danube. That light blue spot in Hungary by the way is the Ottomans’ eyelet, a unique subject-type for them. It is basically an autonomous vassal.

June comes and we take the next slot in Exploration. We now have a colonist. But where to send him? Well, we don’t have the range yet anyway, but we will, soon. Regardless, before we send him out to claim new lands, we need to make some important decisions.

The first of these is choosing our Native Policy. There are 3 options:

Native Repression: This gives us +20 Global Settlers. This means our colonies will grow faster, receiving 20 more people per year. Pretty self-explanatory.
Native Trading: This gives us -50% chance of natives revolting in our colonies. It also gives +50% Native Assimilation. Native Assimilation is what happens when a colony finishes. The native population of the colony will add a bonus to the province’s Goods Produced. The higher the population, the higher the bonus.
Native Coexistence: -100% Native Uprising Chance. It allows our armies to stay at home and not have to police our far-flung territories.

Native Coexistence is the one I usually pick. I just hate having tiny stacks everywhere and transporting them. But today, I decide to be different. We go with the first option, despite its unsavory implications, because we need to grow fast.

If Portugal and Castille snatch up all the good land before us, we’ll be completely cut off. And our armies aren’t doing anything in Europe anyway. Aside from the occasional rebellion, which we can leave most of our forces at home for, we can send everything else to the colonies to try and expand.

The second thing we need to do is to hand out some new Estate Privileges that have just been unlocked by getting a colonist.

The Clergy now has a mandate to establish New World Missions, increasing our Native Assimilation and giving us a decision we can enact every 20 years to further increase assimilation and reduce uprisings.

The Bourgeoisie are granted New World Charters, giving us more Global Settlers and Settler Chance at the cost of some Global Tariffs. We also have another new decision, this one on a 10-year cooldown, to increase our range and give us a free explorer.

Settler Chance is a slightly different way that colonies grow. On top of the yearly growth, any colony that has a colonist present (you can recall the colonist from the colony to go somewhere else, giving you the ability to have multiple colonies at once) has a chance per month to add an extra 25 settlers to that colony. This chance is higher the smaller the colony is and is affected by other factors as well.

Global Tariffs is one of the ways you gain money from your Colonial Nations. Once we control at least 5 cored provinces in a Colonial Region (Mexico, Canada, etc.), we will release a subject to govern the region for us. Tariffs are what the colony pays us. Global Tariffs is a modifier, like Production or Trade Efficiency, that increases the amount of tariffs in the calculation.

We will only release colonial subjects in North or South America or Australia. The rest of the world runs on a different system, Trade Companies, which I will explain later when we get some.

I also at this point remember to get the +1 diplo point a month from the Bourgeoisie. We are paying diplo points to complete Exploration since it is in the diplomatic category. So, I should have done this earlier, but I forgot.

Anyway, with that all decided, we continue playing. In July the Ottomans enter their Golden Era. I also increase our opinion with the Pope by giving them military access. This will help us accrue more Papal Influence and solidify our alliance. We are receiving 2.94 a year.

I open the Macrobuilder to see if we’re strong enough now that any more nations would ally us. Our current allies aren’t bad, but it never hurts to go shopping. If we had France or Castille on our side instead of Switzerland, I’d feel a lot safer.

Castille is, in fact, only 3 reasons away from accepting an alliance. This is partially due to our common English rivalry. One of our diplomats gets to work improving relations.

In December, Muscovy takes another large chunk out of Novgorod, leaving them with only the province Soroka and the promise of a Danish guarantee.

I notice that England has taken the first slot of Exploration as well in February. We’ll have another competitor to deal with in the race for the New World. France, at least, hasn’t gone that route. They are already 6 slots into Administrative. And Castille has caught up fast because of Queen Maria’s skill. They’re on par with us currently in ideas.

In March, I decide to take the decision from the Bourgeoisie for a free explorer. Let’s see what’s out there!

"Equinox" from the video game, Kingdom: Two Crowns

(Not sure why there's a white line to the left of this image. It isn't there in PowerPoint when I go to edit it. :shrugs: )

Vougay d’Elbene, you are hereby tasked by the first of his name, Francois, duke of Brittany, count of Montfort, earl of Richmond, liberator of the Irish, to set sail from the port of Nantes, this day, the 2nd of March, the year of our Lord 1471. Your mission shall be to discover any lands of habitation for the potential settlement of pious Breton subjects across the Great Ocean; to establish contact with any native inhabitants; to investigate the rumors of a route to the Orient across the sea; and to take with you ships laden with goods for the use of trade. Go with God! Dismissed!

The Journal of Captain Vougay d'Elbene, 23rd-27th September, 1471:

~Sept. 23rd~

At last! After nearly seven months of sailing, land! By my charts, we have reached the land of the Inds and Persians. The Eden of China cannot be far beyond!

The place we are at is a bay at the mouth of a great river. A large island at the mouth has protected our vessels from the high waves. The land calls to us!

~Sept. 24th~

We made landfall in the pre-afternoon yesterday. I took ashore with me Friar Annick, Captains Ambroas and Morvan, and a dozen more men. This land is lush, surely a sign from God of its bounty! We saw no settlements, but the seas in this part of the coasts are rough. I have no doubt that some exist further inland. We will camp here for a few weeks to re-stock and re-pair.

The trees in this part of the world are thick and tall, perfect for our ships. Of wildlife, all we have seen are colorful birds. Captain Morvan shot one while on patrol. We cooked and ate it. Its flesh was delicious.

~Sept. 25th~

An incident!

Captain Ambroas has succumbed to a poisoned arrow! The treacherous inhabitants shot him from the trees. They were not brave enough to face him openly.

The men call for blood...but the re-pairs must continue. We will bury the Captain here and leave once the last caulkings are complete.

~Sept. 26th~

A group of men, led by Captain Menguy, has stormed off in the middle of the night. Those in the night watch were amongst them, so none of us were wiser until the dawn.

I was about to assemble a party to find them when the group returned bearing gold, cloth, and precious stones. They say they found a small village. The inhabitants of the dwellings were nowhere to be found (though Menguy admits that the trees are even thicker inland and provide excellent cover). The Captain and his band took what treasures they could and razed the town, citing it as recompense for the death of Ambroas.

~Sept. 27th~

We set sail today, lest we risk the wrath of the villages' inhabitants. Who knows how much they number? We have buried Captain Amboras on the big island and marked his grave with some spare wood. We will return to the land of our fathers immediately, bringing you all we have found.

I hope it pleases your grace deeply.

Our exploration will be going on in the background. I’ll bring it up again if we find anything interesting.

In November, Castille also takes their Golden Era. Morocco also ends their war with Portugal, taking Algarve and Beja. Although, curiously, not Ceuta which they have a core on.

Then, before the year is out, the big one happens. The Ottomans and Mamluks are at each other’s throats in a war to decide the fate of the Levant!

1472 begins and Denmark strangely sells Holstein to Dithmarschen. The Danish queen’s personality is Embezzler, explaining this event. Perhaps she spent too much on New Year's celebrations.

Our economy’s looking good enough that I pay back one of our 4% loans when it comes up for renewal in April. Our economy sits at 7.37 ducats gross.

This also reminds me to do something to our vassal Kildare. We toggle the Scutage option from them. They will no longer help in our wars, but they will pay us +50% more money. They go from paying a tithe of 0.36 to just over half a ducat at 0.54. Great!

In May, France allies Naples. This happens the same time as d’Elbene is exploring Africa. We discover that Arguin and Cape Verde, two jumping-off points for African colonization are still open. We still don’t have the range to reach them, but it’s nice to see they haven’t already been claimed.

That October, France guarantees our independence. If they ever want to attack us, they’ll have to break that treaty first, giving us a 5-year truce to prepare.

Life moves on. In March of 1473 our Statesman dies. We hire a Trader (+10% Trade Efficiency) as his replacement. Portugal also takes their Golden Era.

That May, Poland declares on Lithuania, seeking conquest. Venice does the same to Bosnia in July.

In February of 1474, we run out of things to explore. We need more range if we want to do anything else. But don’t worry, this same problem affects the Iberians as well. I send d’Elbene and our newly freed ships to help our existing navy protect trade in Bordeaux.

This gives us enough income that we could complete the associated mission and receive some bonuses to our construction cost and time in our capital State. We hold off on clicking it for now. But our economy is looking good (8.42 gold in total).

jak7139 · Jul 8, 2024

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Our First Colony!
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(March 1474-June 1476)

In April, yet another country agrees to support the independence of Provence’s disloyal subject of Lorraine. France, Savoy, and Saluzzo now all pledge their support. Provence is allied to Austria, Florence, and Konstanz, so whatever war does kick off is sure to be huge. Morocco also rivaled us that same month.

We pay off our last 4% loan at the start of July, leaving us with just the 5 one-percenters left. When we lower our army’s maintenance all the way we sit at a healthy 2.71 balance out of 8.46 total. And we make 1.13 when our troops are fully funded.

The Estate cooldowns end in September, and we take some of our Crownland back, bringing us to 14%. Three-thousand clergymen revolt in the capital to protest this tyranny. Thankfully we had a portion of our army in nearby Penn-ar-Bed to deal with such problems.

We request 32 ducats from the Pope with our favors in January. Venice also ends their war with Bosnia, gaining a predictable victory.

In March, we have enough diplo points to unlock the third slot of Exploration. It gives us +50% more Colonial Range, meaning we can now reach one province with our colonist. We send him out immediately to the sunny shores of Greenland. At least, I’m told they’re sunny. Why would the land be called ‘green’ if it isn’t lush?

Taking this third slot also gives us our first Breton idea. We gain an extra +1 Legitimacy per year, justifying our monarchs’ right to rule. Most of the time, you can safely ignore Legitimacy. As long as it’s above 80 you’ll be fine.

Of the two provinces in Greenland, Erikfsfjord, so the Norwegians call it, is the one we can reach. Once our colony reaches 400 people out of the requisite 1,000 needed to turn it into a full province, it will gain its Trade Good. In this case, we have a chance for either fur, fish, or, hopefully, ivory.

Fur and Ivory are both decently rich goods, fish would be a disappointment. Not that it matters too much given that Eriksfjord only has 3 Development. Mark the date, it is March 17th, 1475. That is when our colonial empire was first born.

The cooldown on the Irish rebellions has expired by this time and, seeing how they’ll tick up anyway and our army is currently free, I decide to decrease Autonomy yet again in every province we can.

Starting in May, I un-mothball our transport fleet and load 2,000 infantry onto them. We didn’t pick Native Coexistence as our policy, so we’ll need a small force to act as a garrison at Eriksfjord. Our fleet takes the long way around via Iceland and the Faroes to avoid the attrition of the open ocean (units take attrition whenever at sea, but ships only do so in open waters or if too far from home ports).

I've heard from reliable sources that in the most recent patch, Paradox has made it so your fleets now automatically take the route of lowest attrition. Currently, on the version we're playing on (1.36), your fleet would just take the quickest path. This path was also the most attrition heavy, because of how the sea provinces are distributed. So, if you are playing on 1.37, you don't have to worry about shift-clicking your fleets' orders to avoid attrition.

Just as our colony and fleet arrive in July, duchess Neassa passes away. Hopefully, this isn’t some sort of omen.

I take this moment to look at our admin point generation. We are currently 4 years ahead-of-time on the next tech, unlocking our next idea slot. We don’t have the 853 points to take it now if we wanted to, but, with our current bank of 555 points and monthly generation of 8, I realize we have enough points to full-core all of our Irish land.

With the decreased Autonomy floor (0% down from 50% before), our income jumps from 7.70 to 8.55 come September (it had dropped from the 8.46 I showed you before). With this increase, we are now making money again even with our new colony. We were losing 0.09 before, now we are making 0.72.

With the new range provided by our colony, d’Elbene can go exploring again. I send him out and look around. Cape Verde and Arguin are still unclaimed. I wonder what the Iberians are doing.

We get our first native revolt in November. It’s nothing special and it happens a lot with colonies, so I won’t mention every time this happens unless they defeat our garrison or something. Just know that it’s going on.

When looking at Eriksfjord, notice 3 Portuguese ships under their own explorer off the coast. Go away Portugal! We’ve already claimed this spot!

Our new explorations reveal no Europeans in Brazil or Columbia. Where are they?

(Four years and three months later, Captain d'Elbene returns to the sight of Ambroas' burial)

We get enough Reform Progress in March of 1476 for the next tier. For tier 3 we take the obvious choice: more growth. The others are more useful long-term, but for now, getting through our Reforms is most important.

England and Scotland have both rivalled us now. And France has revoked their guarantee. Ominous things are afoot. But the French still like us decently enough for now.

Castille declares war on Morocco in June. They don’t have Portuguese help, but with Aragon on their side, it is still an easy war. And, as that war kicks off, another ends. The Ottomans have unsurprisingly won against the Mamluks and have taken a chunk of northern Syria.

jak7139 · Jul 15, 2024

Author's Note: Next week's chapter won't be posted on the usual Monday time, since I'll be returning from a trip that day. Expect it to come on Tuesday instead. Thanks as always for your readership and comments!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Shifting Diplomacy
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(June 1476-May 1478)

We could take the newest mil tech in August for some Innovativeness, but it’s 3 years ahead-of-time. You know the drill. We wait.

That December, a comet is spotted streaking across the sky. We suffer an unavoidable Stability loss because of it. Oh well. Our admin points aren’t as tight as before, but it still stings a bit. We bring our Stability back up to 0 because you never want to have negative Stability. It’s bad news.

On July 6th, I try something. I don’t remember why I did this, but I decided to provoke some of our rebels. Provoking a rebellion causes them to rise up instantly, but also gives them +50% more troops. It can be useful if you’re planning on fighting a war and don’t want the rebellions to happen while your armies are busy in enemy territory.

Anyway, we provoke our heretic rebels (similar to Noble and Particularist rebels in that they want to increase Autonomy, but they all have slightly different effects). But I’ve underestimated the enemy’s strength. I hire 2 extra infantry to deal with the rebellion (and to replace the one we lost in Ireland a while back), but it’s not enough. We lose the fight in Arvor and retreat to Penn-ar-Bed.

Reluctantly, I take out the Bourgeoisie loans and hire 3 more infantry, bringing us up to our forcelimit of 15.

The rebels successfully occupy Arvor while our army recovers and waits for reinforcements. The penalties this gives the province for the next 2 years are nasty, but there’s not much we can do.

Now, before I recount the outcome of the rebellion, some other important news happens over the next few months.

First, during the middle of the battle, an event pops up. But I’ve never seen this event before. I’m not sure what’s causing it to trigger now, whether it is unique to Brittany (unlikely), new to this patch (maybe), or because we chose the Native Repression policy (also plausible because I usually never choose it). And I’m not even sure what the event text is referencing or talking about, except that it has something to do with Eriksfjord. Regardless, we get 50 free admin points to partially offset the cost of that Stability from earlier.

Also, in September, the Ottomans becomes the first country to reach mil tech 7, giving them access to cannons and permanently increasing the value of copper as a Trade Good. Incidentally, the Innovativeness timer for mil tech 7 starts ticking down.

And, finally, on December 20th, 1477 and on January 5th, 1478 our entire diplomatic situation is upended. Behold! The outcome of the Burgundian Inheritance…

We’ve not only lost our strongest ally, but France has also become significantly more powerful. The only silver lining is that our previous diplomatic work in Castille has paid off. We’re able to ally them as a replacement, but I would’ve preferred if France hadn’t grown because of this development. Austria or someone else getting Burgundy would’ve been much better for us.

We fight our heretics in January, finally putting them down. But still…these past few months have been bad news for us. I go to France and set our attitude to friendly with them, in the hopes that the AI will reciprocate.

100 ducats out of our 217 are spent on a new church in Bro Naoned. This will, when completed in a year, give us an extra +0.13 a month.

March sees a surprisingly small peacedeal signed between Poland and Lithuania. And in April, with 8 days left on the Innovativeness timer, I take tech 7. We now have access to cannons, as well as some extra Tactics.

To end off this update, in May something very surprising happens. Poland inherits Brandenburg’s throne.

Now, this is something that can only happen in very rare cases. Usually when a nation’s monarch dies, they can either fall under a Personal Union with another country (becoming a subject) or gain another nation’s dynasty. That’s what normally happens.

But if, when their monarch dies, that nation is an AI, weak enough, and if the potential overlord is strong enough, the overlord will just inherit the subject instead of creating a PU.

Poland just happened to be strong enough, Brandenburg just happened to be weak enough, and their king just happened to die at the right moment.

Austria chooses the minor of Wurzburg to replace Brandenburg as an Elector.

jak7139 · Jul 23, 2024

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: What is a Golden Era?
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(May 1478-February 1479)

Continuing on in the merry month of May, we decrease our Autonomy everywhere we can again. The heretic rebellion really hurt us, both because of its lingering effects on Arvor and us having to pay for more regiments and their reinforcements.

Our gross income is now 9.25 but we’re losing 4.77 ducats monthly. And, unhelpfully, we get a half-priced level 2 Trade Efficiency advisor from an event in July. Despite our money troubles, I hire him to help fill out Exploration quicker.

In August, Poland, having beaten the Teutons and Lithuanians and gained the strength of Brandenburg, decides to go after the Livonian Order as well. The only good news is that a strong Poland will hopefully keep the Ottomans out of Eastern Europe. And besides, maybe we can ally the Poles someday.

In October, we ask for some manpower from the Pope and begin currying favors with Castille. We might as well get some more tangible benefits out of our alliance with them. We also get some increased unrest in Anjou from an event. The other option was lowered unrest but increased Autonomy. Considering we just decreased Autonomy across most of our lands, that would be an odd thing to choose.

With our decreased Autonomy I take a look at our Reform Progress Growth screen. It says our average Autonomy is 28.46%, letting us gain nearly one point of growth per month. Overall, our economy is at 9.18 (it probably decreased slightly due to something temporary expiring). We’re losing 1.32 a month even with our army fully defunded. We have 36 ducats in the bank.

Before defunding our army, I provoke another rebellion (only 10,000 this time) in Offaly. They were going to rise up anyway and I want to turn off my army to save money. So, it’s better to fight any imminent rebellions now before that happens. They are defeated that November.

Now, we get very lucky here. The current Pope dies on the 20th, letting a Venetian grab the title. The new Pope automatically disables the Golden Bull for Institution Spread since most of Europe has the Renaissance at this point. Instead, he enacts a different Bull for Development cost and some Tolerance of Heathens. The Dev cost is what we care about here.

If you remember from Chapter Eleven, we still have an agenda from our last diet to Develop Arvor for the Bourgeoisie. With the decreased cost thanks to the Papal Bull, this is the perfect time. I turn on the Dev cost Edict to make the cost even cheaper (remember we are trying to save as many points as possible for our Ideas) then click twice in Arvor to complete the diet agenda. Our reward is 10 loyalty with the Estate and 33.13 ducats which our economy desperately needs. Our economy also grew to 9.29 gross.

Our mil advisor helpfully dies in January. We’re 13 years ahead on the next mil tech, so we don’t replace him. Then, in February, we can buy a new Age Ability. We pick the one allowing us to fabricate claims bordering claims. It is a very nice ability and could be useful in opening up new expansion routes for us. Also, we could enact our once-per-game Golden Era right now. We need to complete at least 3 objectives to do so. We’ve so far completed:

Discover America
Embrace the Renaissance
Present on Two Continents
Humiliate a Rival

I still hold off on doing so. But I’ll give a quick explanation on the two schools of thought about when you should proclaim your Golden Era (GE).

The first school reasons that enacting your GE as early as possible helps your nation grow stronger quicker, letting you become increasingly powerful during the early game when the GE’s bonuses and impact is most felt. This helps your nation snowball and reach the point where no AI can challenge you even if they tried, meaning the rest of the game can be played however you want without worrying about AE or other similar concerns.

The second school argues that it is better to save your GE for later in the game. In part because most AI will have already taken (and lost) their GE much earlier in the game, as we have seen with the Ottomans, Castille, and Portugal. But also, because a GE provides bonuses to Absolutism and the niche Revolutionary Zeal, mechanics that don’t unlock until later in the game.

Hopefully, those explanations made sense. Anyway, there’s one last thing we can do before I end this chapter. Just as we unlocked new privileges from the Clergy and Bourgeoisie for gaining a colonist, we can also take a new privilege from the nobility. This new ability passively makes our colonies cheaper to maintain (a must given our finances) and gives us a decision to recruit a conquistador without spending monarch points.

jak7139 · Jul 29, 2024

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Castille’s on the Board
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(February 1479-December 1482)

Another day, another play session, and another look at our economy before we unpause (9.22 gross. Losing 3.59 a month with 47 in the bank). When we finally do start playing, we’re hit almost immediately with an event.

As your Explorers and Conquistadors go out into the world, random flavor events will pop up from time-to-time. Yet they all boil down to a simple choice between 2 options:

The Top Option: Be kind to the natives, losing monarch power or money and making revolts in the colony less likely.

The Bottom Option: Be evil, gaining Prestige, points, or money and making native revolts more likely.

Now, I don’t think it’s a huge secret what most players (including myself) choose here. If you’ve ever experienced EU4’s colonization mechanic, then you know that native revolts are not a threat, and that money, points, and Prestige are all very useful (especially early in the game). The only time you should ever choose the top option on one of these events is for RP.

Note: I am not talking about the flavor events for your colonies here, just the events regarding expeditions. The events regarding colonies are much more varied and have different effects.

We’re able to take Admin tech 7 in May, giving us another slot for an Idea Group (plus the ahead-of-time bonuses to our production and Corruption reduction for the next 13 years).

What do we pick? Nothing for now.

In September, I notice the Cape Verde has finally been claimed by Castille. I look around. Everywhere else is still clear.

We can seize land and summon another diet in October. I decide not to sell any land back because I’d like to build up a surplus of Crownland, and I believe our economy can handle it. If we’re close to taking out a loan, then I’ll reconsider. Our objective this time is given by the Clergy. They want us to build a Church in Anjou (+0.13 a month if we build it).

By seizing land, our share is up to 19.983%. If we were at 20%, we’d lose some penalties to our tax and autonomy. Seeing how we’re 13 years ahead on military tech, I turn on the dev-cost edict in Brittany and click 3 times in Bro Roazhon (the cheapest province). It is now at 3/4/8 development for a total of 15. The penalty to our Autonomy is gone and the tax penalty is lessened.

We take some money from the Pope when we can, and in July of 1480 our Greenland colony is large enough (400 settlers) to be assigned a Trade Good. We get Fur. Fur is a decently rich good, but not as good as the potential Ivory we might’ve gotten. At least Fur is better than Fish. We also take the next part of Exploration, making our colonies grow by an extra 10 people per year.

A quick update on the Idea picks and tech of our 4 main rivals (we’re at 7/5/7 with 4 slots filled in Exploration and have not picked our second group yet):

England: Exploration (3 slots filled). Expansion (0). 7/5/7.
France: Administrative (7). Quantity (0). 7/5/7.
Portugal: Exploration (4). Expansion (1). 7/5/6.
Castille: Exploration (4). 6/5/6. (Castille will more than likely pick Expansion).

Our Treasurer dies in August and, seeing how we just took tech and are 13 years ahead on it, I don’t replace him.

A month later, we get an event for being the first European to discover Fur in the New World, permanently increasing the price of the good (2.00 -> 2.70). And then Castille defeats Morocco, taking 7 provinces including the Portuguese ones. I hope this causes some tension in their alliance. The TO also ceases to exist as Poland separate peaces them.

1851 arrives, and peace along with it. Poland ends their war with the Livonian Order, taking the southern portion of the country.

Our army has been fighting rebellions this whole time and I’ve neglected to mention it. The only reason I’m bringing it up now is…

I forget how old Erwan was when we hired him, but we had him 37 years. That’s quite good considering his dangerous profession. We’ll need a new general soon to lead our armies against our foes, but for now we wait and mourn the loss of Erwan de Machecoul.

With Erwan’s death, Duke Francois feels the weight of his age upon him. He’s 67 years old. Our heir, also named Francois, has just come of age. By becoming 15, Prince Francois has gained his first trait. In this case, it’s a very good one!

October comes again. This time, Bohemia decides to finish off the remnants of Hungary. But their CB isn’t for conquest. Apparently, Hungary was a junior partner of the Czechs at some point and I missed it. Whenever a union breaks via Pretender Rebels, the overlord always gets a free CB to regain the lost throne.

We continue playing. And, funnily enough, the next moment of interest is also in October. This time in 1482. We institute an extra tax against Kildare to help our treasury. They may hate us for it, but as long as they don’t become disloyal, it doesn’t matter.

One month later, the Bohemian-Hungarian war ends with the expected result. We also have enough Papal Influence to pick another bonus. I go with the Tax one again to help our economy. Then I spend another 5 points to get a chance at becoming Pope when the current one dies. Let’s see if we’re lucky (8.70% chance, but that will decrease as other AIs continue to spend on it).

Our nation is at peace and our economy is on shaky ground. But we’re managing alright. See you all next time!

Jak's Game Guide: An EU4 Tutorial

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