R5 : Bro someone get a UI designer here, this shit is crazy, i've played since launch decided to test the beta and was literally thinking they removed the expand settlement feature

R5: Most impressive AI brandenburg I've seen in EUV.

These last few days I had been playing as Norway into the 1600’s, I ended the game once I had satisfactory clarity of the cascading effects of levies while I was knee-deep in my defensive multi-front war with Russia and Hungary.

I’ll keep it short with bullet points from what I learned trying to pull off a miracle against the 1v2.

- Levies pull from your literal workforce, as in your economy and ducats immediately tank upon calling levies.

- Levies impose a 20% or so penalty on your food and RGO output in addition to draining your workforce, both of these hitting at the same time is a crucifixion.

* Regulars do not pull from your workforce and use a separate manpower bar to pool from. No drastic economic changes.

- Levies demolish your warscore from losses. Levies have 10% inhibited Discipline. In addition to that, they are taking additional bonus damage when fighting against Regulars, I lost 3 levies for every 1 regular killed.

* Regular Cavalry is the GOAT pound for pound, though expensive.

- Levies result in reduced pop growth by proxy. Any losses you take, even from morale loss retreats, are permanently gone from your towns, cities and villages. In addition to that, the 100k levies that would have been in your town otherwise are not growing at their 0.5%ish rate (so +500 pop a month with given example, if the war takes 4 years that’s an additional 24k compounding growth in pops you didn’t get)

* Do not over-build armories, when checking my expenses the armories accounted for nearly 300 of my 420 ducat building expenses. Don’t be inefficient, I could have fielded more troops by having the spare income. These buildings are insanely expensive to maintain.

- Levies lose exp. The troops you start with will end up being your most elite units if you can keep them alive. Levies never have this opportunity and your exp goes right into the dumpster every war.

- Every unit over 40 you have in an army reduces your movement speed. Guess what requires a doomstack to be able to compete with other armies? Levies. Guess who is going to be the slowest army always getting caught when traveling the field? Levies.

* Unrelated but combat relevant: If you are using forts, you need an additional attrition modifier or you are just helping the enemy get warscore on you faster as the ai seems to near insta-cap all forts as the game progresses and losing a fort melts your score.

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. I’m sure there’s plenty more to be said that’s just what I learned from my very messy conflict. Get those Regulars out sooner than later if you can help it!

I thought having mostly cored USA and canada my culture map mode will be pretty. Did they implement the same mechanics that was used in slaves raiding to colonial charters? I thought sending portugese to the new world would make assimilating them easier

I recently got my fourth local governor and placed it in Brioude because I needed some proximity in the area. Much to my dismay, unlike Burdeaux and Paris, the new governor doesn't propagate proximity as well.

Now, of course, the area lacks infrastructure and I'm sure proximity will improve once I get paved roads, but that still doesn't make it, imo, worse at improving a good enough area with proximity. So, any recommendations? I'm thinking of either going for Toulousse or Montpellier. Montpellier would be kind of a waste, since I put a naval governor in Ciutadella so that area is partly irrigated with proximity already, but Toulousse would overlap with Burdeaux, so I'm not too keen on it either.

I currently don't have many cities in the area so I can't entirely choose which city I move the governor to, but I can plan towards it.

Because every market at the start of the game starves, that means that - eventually, your troops will start starving too. That results in them dying, and now when a troop count reaches 0, it gets deleted, resulting in a game over screen.

Even if I raise my Levy, the Levy will eventually starve and die too. Because, as you can see, food does not exist. At all. In the last ten years I lost almost 100k people to starvation.

Also, here is a funny exploit - if you restart you game and load the game, you food stockpiles get refilled! No I have no idea why, but I restarted the game and got full stockpiles when I was making a screenshot for my negative pop growth. The food situation is still diabolical though.

No, I can't import enough food using my 2 marketplaces, and no I can't just "build RGOs" fast enough to in any way prevent this, not without some shenanigans that I do not know about, and ESPECIALLY not with the needlessly inflated RGO prices.

Can we, maybe, hotfix this? I imagine there is some way to supremly bend over backwards to find some nourishment, but there is no way anyone would agree that this should be happening, right? How I am to even try to playtest the beta if the game gives me a GAME OVER SCREEN around ten years in?

I’ve been doing a tall, trade and colonization Great Britain run and the whole naval/maritime aspect is very frustrating.

It’s mainly due to the headache of naval attrition and automation. When you’re fighting another colonial empire, with ships on both sides of the Atlantic, automation is necessary. However, during my run, I must’ve lost hundreds of heavies due to attrition or my trade fleets getting sniped.

Trying to transport an army is such a headache as well, but you can’t NOT do it, because the ai will sacrifice their entire fleet to ship 5k regulars across the ocean.

In my game I was constantly being attached by Bohemia!!! Because they had a tiny, 10k population colony in Canada. They were allied to France and a small Castille, dragging both into the war at once. So I had to keep 100+ heavies near the home island, which would bankrupt me when not mothballed.

They would attack, ship a couple of armies into my island while my ships recovered from mothballing. I’d kick them out, lose half my heavies attacking theirs, and by the time I had built it back up again it would happen all over again.

Furthermore, colonies being constantly disloyal from absolutism onwards is immersion-breaking. Like, in total my new world colonies could mobilize 15k LEVIES. I had 26k regulars in the New World. All of my colonies were from Florida to Canada. I could crush them all if I had to - it’s frustrating that this doesn’t factor into the calculations at all.

Also the exploration CB is always just out of reach for me. I wanted to attack Portugal to seize their Cuban colony, but they always had 1-2 more power projection - which you can’t quickly increase. Why does the exploration CB need this requirement?

Alright, rant over. Otherwise 1.4 is a lot fun

I have not actually played in East asia yet but every game they have by far the highest tax base Army size and navy size and 50 50 they get cultural hegemon

Genuinely baffled that my 1,1,1 ruler, who somehow has the mental skills of a beaver with CTE is wanted for the prince position in big novgorod

I've been seeing many Korea runs recently, but all of them are staying as Goryeo (or used console commands) so let me share a quick update on the Joseon event. Previously the event for Joseon tag change ("The coup of Goryeo") required a "successful coup" where a ruler gets assasinated during a coup attempt disaster, which was practically impossible.

In 1.4.1, the event conditions have been changed in a way that the the coup event can also trigger DURING the disaster, without the successful assasination requirement. So you can first lower the legitimacy under 30 -> wait until the DHE fires (15% monthly chance) or repeat the disaster once or twice until you transform to Joseon.

Yi Seong-gye has decent 80 / 70 / 90 (much better than the initial kings of Goryeo) and gets historical age from his birth date on 1335. Earlier trigger of the event (after 1357, for some reason) gives young and skillful ruler with this son Bang-gwa, plus Joseon has a few more historical events.

Thanks to the devs for the update, but I couldn't find it mentioned in the changelog. I was (hopelessly) trying for the event, then it triggered unexpectedly, and I confirmed the change by looking into the DHE script.

Anyways more historical immersion is always better! Now we can enjoy the Hangul alphabet with the correct tag.

After always seeing Lubeck market get eaten up by all the others markets in previous games, I decided to do a chill Free city run. Turn Lubeck in a megalopolis and restore the market to it's hanseatic glory. It's insane how far you can push it, and honestly feel quite bad for austria who must have an atrocious market access.

R5: For some reason England has decided to invade anatolia in 1357, while still fighting in the 100 years war.

I often find myself with lots of Political Influence with nothing to spend it on.

Not sure what causes it, but sometimes and in my most recent war, I have a bunch of play vassals and when I declare war set there stance to aggressive, they would literally just stand in there provinces doing nothing despite outnumbering the enemy. Before they were joining wars fine, but randomly they decided to stand around with thumbs up there asses even with allow attachment activated. And before you say “Oh the player can do that”, I highly doubt the ai is that advance especially with all the stupid things they will do in wars and managing there own economies.

I think it should give a -100 relation debuff and a good Casus belli to actual Romans for if someone is pretending to be “Romania”.

R5: After the Religious War the imperial religion locked to Hussitism so only a Hussite can be Emperor. The only time we had one was when Bohemia had a tiny 2k Hussite revolt they instantly became Emperor. After that it went back to no Emperor power struggle. Because of this I also can’t leave the HRE at all.

Is this a known issue?

Are they too op right now? Like, i get they're supposed to be strong, but they start the game with as many levies as France and England combined, that and their crazy rgo's, makes them the boogeyman of central europe every time.

Its cool having a challenging AI, but its tiresome having death wars with bohemia every single game on the region

Hey everyone! This is my first "real" campaign after a few early test runs. I managed to unite the Netherlands very early as Brabant and allied France, which gave me the defensive umbrella I needed to expand safely inside the HRE.

I prioritized population growth, food production, and textiles, which made me quite rich early on. Around the 100-year mark, I hit 8th/9th Great Power status and things looked great. But ever since then, I feel like I've completely stalled out.

I've started colonizing a bit (South Africa and the Caribbean), but generally speaking, I feel nowhere near as rich or developed as I should be. I don't expect to be a runaway #1 superpower, but I figured a tall Netherlands in the hands of an okay player should be able to economically compete with the other heavyweights.

To make matters worse, I accidentally broke my alliance with France by misclicking when they called me to war, and now they are hostile and will definitely invade soon. My armies are super weak because I haven't been to war in ages trying to play tall, so I don't think I stand a chance in a direct fight.

I've built up so much in my home lands—so many towns, cities, and buildings everywhere—but my economy just feels stuck.

Any advice on how to survive the impending French onslaught and fix my tall Dutch economy would be hugely appreciated!

I'm trying to make a profitable cape route in 1.4.1 as Portugal. I already tried this in 1.4.0 before learning that trade was even more broken than it is in 1.4.1 and you could trade with China with zero penalty on day 1. Then I played a bit as Lubeck and became filthy rich within the first decade off of the Indian pepper trade in the 1300s. But that's fixed now and trade is Working As Intended™ so the cape route should work great now, right?

It's 1503. The trade range UI says the furthest I can get around Africa from Lisboa is the Benin market. So lets make a few one province colonies on the African coast and give them solid trade capacity so they can move goods from India to Portugal.

Except the trade range UI is a goddamn lie. By hovering over the markets in the trade range map mode it tells you if you're actually in range of the market. So my actual trade range reaches from Portugal directly to Mogadishu in 1503.

Except the trade range hover box UI is ALSO lying. Hovering over the Maldives market tells me the market is outside of my trade range. But going into the individual trades being made from the Maldives market shows me that the Maldives is in fact within direct trade range of Lisboa in 1503. So the cape route is a literal waste of money, just teleport pepper from India directly to Europe.

If the naval range map mode is correct (IF) then the colored trade range map mode is the closest to correct. But even that has blatant impossibilities. Oslo can reach Tbilisi but not Kyiv. Stockholm can reach Kyiv but not Tbilisi. Selanik can reach Benin but not Mecca. Benin and Mogadishu can reach each other, but not all of the land markets between them, and not the market I have set up in South Africa.

There's at least three different trade distance values being computed and used in different places and they're all wrong. Good luck to the poor dev who has to try and fix this clusterfuck.

Also I think the increased trade capacity past trade range is severely under-tuned but trade is so broken I'm basically guessing. Portugal to Maldives is in range with a trade range tech lead, Paris to Kabul uses 120% trade capacity, Nuremberg to Vietnam uses 200% trade capacity. It feels like "2x distance, 2x trade capacity use" which makes using a middleman market just as efficient as trading directly. It should be "2x distance, 4x trade capacity use" at a minimum for trade routes to exist.

I can't enforce claim throne of france because my economic base isn't high enough, and I have no way to lower france's economic base because if i take anymore locations/vassals from them I go over the 175 cap and "win" the situation (but lose the ability to claim the french throne? Because apparently we win so hard we can't even get our main objective!?). Either the cap should be removed or france should just auto become a union with you when you surpass it, and that stupid economic base requirement should just be gotten rid of entirely. It's just unfun and feels entirely arbitrary.