Need some tips

[aenariel]

Hey everyone.

While waiting for FTG I decided to give EU2 a try. A real extensive and intensive try, that is, because I've obviously played the game in the past, just not as "in depth" as I possibly could.
First of all let me say I'm a "veteran" EU3 player and I'm most familiar with its options and features. That gives me an edge, I guess, to learn to play EU2 because I know some of the basics. However, some basics are definitely not the same, and it's with those I'm having the most problems.

I 've download ExtraWATK (I've tried AGCEEP as a stand-alone and I found the map a bit too limiting ) and I started up a game with Portugal. I've focused in the first few years to get ahead in Infrastructure tech, as I thought it'd give me a bit of an advantage later on the game (having moar building possibilitiez!).The game has progressed, it's now 1510 and I'm doing well I guess, but not as well as I think I could be doing. Here's the main problems/questions:

- I'm afraid. Very afraid. I feel a war could wipe me from the face of the earth. I'm used to auto reinforcements (EU3) but here the troops keep losing men and my funds are not that great. Also, every other battle I'm involved in seems to end up badly for me; even if I outnumber the opponents I lose like half of the times... it's weird. I've also a good deal of scattered territories and it's getting very hard to ship troops all over the place, but that's my fault for not "centralizing" my overseas empire - am I wrong?).
- I've no idea of how bad inflation is. In EU3 high inflation means you get behind in tech, and getting behind in tech means you either have a massive army or you're going to be kicked around. Here I've no idea if I should get a bit of inflation and still get decent tech compared to the rest of the world or if I should get inflation as low as possible. I've decided to do the latter and it's getting hard to have spare change to colonize and improve my buildings.
- Is it a good idea to let the AI do the trade? I sincerely don't like to trade manually but the AI seems a bit idiotic, keeps sending merchants abroad for a lot more than I can afford without much return (not enough to pay off the investment, at least). If I have to trade manually it's going to be much less fun though.
- Should I get as many trading posts as I possibly can? Colonies are expensive to upgrade to cities, and don't seem too profitable if not developed; trading posts seem profitable enough, but if I only build them in the most rich provinces I'm scared of the other powers grabbing the rest of the provinces and leaving me with unconnected territories all around the place. I also think there's a limit on how many trading posts you can get before odds become affected, is this correct?
- Are manufactories vital if I want to keep my head above the water? They're quite expensive and to build one I have to stay put and do nothing for a couple of years or more, do they pay out in the long term? I know they give quite a bit of a tax boost to the cities.
- Also, I've no idea how big of an army I should maintain. Since outnumbering the enemy seems pointless in some cases, and being outnumbered seems even more pointless since I feel I'm going to get smashed anyway (lol) I really have no idea what figures I should be dealing with here. Should I keep a massive inf army? Go for smaller cavalry-only regiments? Help me out here!

I'm going to keep playing and hopefully learning from my mistakes, but any tips you can give me would be highly appreciated. This way when FTG comes out I won't be such a noob.

Cheers.

 

[unmerged(94521)]

Just some random replies from me:

Inflation: Inflation is bad, it reduces income and teching speed. However you will ideally always be at 2% inflation to take advantage of any inflation reducing events.

That said, sometimes i necesarry to accept a bit of inflation, if doing so gives yuo great returns. Examples of this could be big wars and establishing colonies early on when playing nations such as Portugal.

It is generally a good idea to get mayors ASAP, since they offer you practicly limitless minting, more than enough to spam factories all over the place

Trade: Don't let the AI trade, period it does a horrible job (and often gets you embargoed). The only exception is if you are playing Spain, France and England and don't really care about how much it costs. Do it yourself, the easiest way is to send merchants in batches of three.

My general strategy is:

1) Don't start any serious trading before you have trade level 3, unless discover vacant CoT's

2) The really money is in colonial CoT in the New World (and sometimes even Siberia). Usually only one other European power (most often Spain and Portugal) is trading there. It's easy to obtain a monopoly there, though the risk og getting embargoed is great, so a trading agreement with Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, England and France can actually pay of, you just need to have a a greater amount of monopolies than trading agreements.

3) When you start to get ahead of the world in TE, it's time to trade in the profitable far eastern CoT, here you might want to have trading agreement with China. All other powers you can just DoW when they embargo you.

4) Finally when you have a monopoly in pretty much every CoT in the world you can start trading in Europe, and just set the AI to trade for you (since it will mostly only send merchants to Europe)

Trading posts: TP's are great for claiming land mainly, so you can essentially box in the areas you want.

However TP's are great because they provide trade value while not increasing supply of their respective good. So instead of building colonies in Canada, which would greatly reduce the value of furs because of the huge increase in supply, you can simply build the much cheaper TP's, save the huge building cost of colonies and make a greater income from trade.

Generally you will want to have colonies in high tax value provinces and trade posts in low tax value provinces.

Do a search of this on the forums, there have been many a discussion about this

Manufactories: Refineries are essential, build as many as you can as early as possible. The rest of the manufactories are just iceing on the cake. I'm pretty sure somebody made some sort of mathematical proof that the best investment is always a refinery.

That said i usually build one Fine art in my capital province, and three of the other types of manufactories, of course in provinces with the appropriate resource, and then just spam refineries.

Wow, wall of text :wacko:

I'll let somebody else handle the military questions

 

[aenariel]

Thanks for the reply!

I went for Infra tech because I wanted to get mayors asap, however I haven't got there yet. I'm aware inflation won't be a problem once I get them, I just didn't know if I could be "careless" about it before I get them.

Shame about the trade, I really hate to trade manually, but if it's got to be done... then shall be it. I know how the system works and all, I just didn't want to have to do all the work.

Cool, guess I'll be spamming with TPs wherever I can, then. However, does it become increasingly difficult to place traders or is it always the same regardless of how many TPs you have?

I went for the Fine Arts very early on (so I could get a boost on the capital's income and a boost on stability investment). I've only built refineries since, well, before the money ran down. Thanks for the tip.

Hopefully someone can help me with the military part, it's really where I'm having the bigger problems.

Cheers!

 

[unmerged(94521)]

The chance of succesfully placing a TP is related to the number of TP at level 3 and lower, IIRC. Just upgrade your existing TP's to level 4 and you chances of succes should increase.

 

[aenariel]

The chance of succesfully placing a TP is related to the number of TP at level 3 and lower, IIRC. Just upgrade your existing TP's to level 4 and you chances of succes should increase.

Cool, didn't know that. Been upgrading everything to 4, and upgrading mayors in my cities. Everything is running much more smoothly now!

 

[unmerged(145825)]

The chance of succesfully placing a TP is related to the number of TP at level 3 and lower, IIRC. Just upgrade your existing TP's to level 4 and you chances of succes should increase.

I thought TP success was linked to your Monarch Admin (amongst other things such as natives present and where it is etc), more admin skill = more TP's were allowed under level 3. Level 3 being the the cut off point for the penalty.

So in other words you could have hundreds of level three TP's giving you no additional penalty to any new ventures.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

For limits on TPs, see this:
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Colonization#Sending_Traders

 

[unmerged(45368)]

Hey,

aenariel, I wonder what military problems you´re having at the moment? Who are your enemies, and who are your allies? Also, what difficulty/AI agressiveness are you playing with?

For Portugal, I'll just tell you this: trading and discoveries are THE essential businesses! Do not get involved in a war when it is avoidable, especially in Europe. On the European continent, you won't be threatened by anyone if you have one important ally: Spain. If you team up with them you don't have to worry about Europe. Focus on the outer world right from the start. Build a tradingpost empire in Brazil to boost yout CoT value in Lisbon. Discoveries are also essential for locating new CoT's, in the New World as much as in the East. Focus on those markets! They're far more profitable than in Europe! New World markets will prove to be easier to get in, because of the few nations who compete there, in contrast to Asia. But even there its definitely worthwhile. Finally, try go get in Europe's markets as well, just like Miscontruction said. In my recent game with Portugal, it wasn't until I realized the importance of trade that I started to make money - BIG time! When you have discovered and gotten yourself into a lot of CoT's for about 100-150 years, you should be earning enough money to realise some real political/military action anywhere around the globe

Just as important to actual trading is upgrading your trading level. Upgrading to a higher level just multiplies your trading income. Refineries are a great help in doing this! Try to get around 4 of them to start with.

Now what really helped me were those historical events, which granted me control over a number of tradingposts in Asia. Do you have those events too in the mod you're playing with? (were you playing AGCEEP or not?) They really help you on the way to succes!

Good luck!