Wow this game has a lot of factions, this is going to be fun

>wow this game has a lot of factions, this is going to be fun
>hours later
>still can't decide which faction to play

Send help

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game is boring unless you roleplay a faction you identify with

>factions
That's giving it too much credit, different countries don't play THAT differently from one another.
Just pick Portugal and have a leisure walk to success.

How do I even begin to learn and git gud at this game?

>faction
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>play Portugal
>only nation to start with an explorer
>send them to discover the new world
>die on their first expedition

i miss the days of starting as ming with an explorer after 1402 or something like that

The biggest step is learning the UI and the basic order of operations for what you do once you start a campaign. Everything else comes with practice.
>check your monthly income, make sure you're in the green and making bank
>check your monarch to know what his point distribution is
>hire an administrative or a military advisors [or both] if you've the money to spare, in the early game as a small to medium sized country
>define who you want to attack first
>define who you want to be allied with
>define who's likely to attack you
>never accumulate more than 50 Aggressive Expansion with multiple countries unless it's an emergency or you have much more powerful powers thank your enemies allied with you and thus guaranteeing your safety

It's not just the EU4. I have this problem in many games.

user, this is literally self-plaing game. Memes aside, EU4 is so fucking easy you can learn how to play just by sitting and watching what's going on.

Also, cheat. The best way of learning any Paradox game is to cheat heavily first few games, since you don't need to bother with waiting next 10 years to amass your army to see it all die in single battle.

Muscovy is a great tutorial country. You get an easy tutorial war against Novgorod, you get to interact with vassals, you learn how to colonise without having to deal with competition, you learn how religion and unrest works, you learn what bonuses hordes get and unlike playing ottomans or france poland-lithuania can actually threaten if you.

This is a very good suggestion.

At the very least if you're new to the game pick a big, powerful country so you have more room to make mistakes.

The greatest new feature in EU4 and CK2 is the random nation/ruler button

post liquor factories laddo

...

oh boy this sounds too fun, is there an excel plugin included?

>not playing as the nation/culture/region you're from
I sure hope you guys don't do this.

>TFW Welsh

You can release Wales from England.

Imagine being so stupid you think EU4 is too complicated

Maybe you shouldn't have got conquered before written history began.

You got to have perspective man, to some people even straightforward RTS are too hard to get into, paradox """"grand"""" """"strategy"""" games must look like rocket science.

Would their heads explode if they saw Command?

Doing this in the CK2 After the End mod is so comfy.

>sword mana for war
>bird mana for diplomacy and navy for some reason
>book mana for everything esle
Finally a smart game for smart people

Don't stop

>check your monthly income, make sure you're in the green and making bank

Ok, I'm on step 1.

After setting up merchants, mothballing all my forts, getting rid of all advisors, getting rid of all army maintenance and setting up ships to protect ships ( this is everything that was in the tutorial) I'm in the green.

Having to do all that just to get in the green is dogshit. Is there something I'm missing here?

only problem with Muscovy is that an early Polish/Novgorod alliance can wreck if you if you don't know what you're doing

it doesn't happen as much as a few patches back, when AI Novgorod virtually always became the dominant Russian state but still it could happen.

what nation are you playing as?
where and how have you set up your merchants?

Can I roleplay as a Machiavellian Prince? Which nation is best suited for this?

I tried playing as a custom Scando Empire from CK2 and then tried Scotland just now. It's the same with both.

Set up merchants in the north sea and lubeck

post a screenshot of your income screen?
also let it tick over a month, sometimes it displays your income wrong the first one

Just installing it on my laptop (cba going back upstairs and firing it all back up)

Then you are playing as a nation that sucks.

Milan.

I did this

Egyptian
Played as Muhammad Ali in Vicky 2
modernized, allied with russia and austria, reconquered middle east and north africa from the goddamned ottomans


if only

Form Prussia.

youtube.com/watch?v=c-qmdZWccHY&feature=youtu.be

Alright, where do I place the custom capital?

Got 40 hours in it, most recent playthrough as Hesse is going extremely well. I really hope I can get into Vicky and Hearts of Iron, although that may take some time too.

Playing with the Arcanum soundtrack in the background is heavenly

There you go.

Play as who then? A small but rich nation? Venice?

reykjavik

this is an image take from on the left baseline scottish economy with a trader in north sea and lubeck with ships sent on mission and all maintenance at high (jesus scotland sucks for trading at the start of the game)
right is the same date but with the military slider turned down, the cog fleet mothballed and the forth mothballed

I have done nothing other than let it tick over a month either way, my trade income would improve a bit if I were to embargo england (for free because I can rival them) but the difference is only 0.04 ducats

this should be sufficient money to start the game with

Oh, the Scando Nation I brought over from CK2 was Saxony, the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Lapland. It was the same deal with them. Take no advisors, turn off all forts and turn off all military morale if you want to be a little bit in the green.

Alright, nation name, adjective, emblem, and colors?

You are paying for 3 advisors, fire 1 of them

ah I see, you have 3 advisors right now, this is more than you can afford
take it slow, have only 2 to begin with

also your highest income by far is your taxation which is HEAVILY affected by stability, if you're lacking in that aspect try to boost your stability at least to level 1

you can also drop your land maintenance by a bit by getting your relationship with the noble estate up to 60+ (can be done with the call diet option), mothball your cogs for another .15 or so ducats and you can send your barque fleet on a trade protection mission in the north sea to generate some ducats extra (but scotland sucks at trading so you might want to mothball them instead, its not like you're winning a naval war against england)

alright that puts me to 0.27
I really need the other two though for morale of armies and spy networks

Jewish merchant republic

Thanks. I don't have the DLC installed for Estates on this laptop but I'll do that. I just boosted stability and it put the gold income up to 0.39

Not much but it's better than nothing I suppose.

Thanks for the help man.

Don't hire advisers until you have spare money.

>spy networks
meme

very similar situation to you but with a bit of optimization I'm getting to 1.06

boost your stability by 1, get better relations with your merchant and noble estates, mothball BOTH your fleets (your barque fleet brings in .06 in trade income and costs .20, seriously scotland sucks arse at trading)

also spynetwork isn't all that important, see if you have a money increasing one instead

> Alright, nation name, adjective, emblem, and colors?
Make a naval focus nation. Only take territories with sea connection.

also small bit of advice on something you can see I'm doing wrong in my picture

do not put a minimal maintenance army next to the border, put that thing into your highlands

that way when england invades you'll have some time to get their morale up to maximum while they're sieging down lothian, next to the border they can instantly attack it for a full stackwipe losing you the war in your first month

Since this is really my first game, I think I'm going to play as Venice. Fucking poor Scotland cunts.

And yeah, I got rid of an advisor that increases tax because I thought I needed to power claims through in order to get land faster so I can do something about that money situation.

spy network construction is plenty fast, you don't need to accelerate it, especially given you're not sabotaging anyone

as venice remember to use ALL your merchants for redirecting trade, putting one into venice proper is a complete waste

Considering doing a Venice run in EU4 tbqh lads, should I just release every single province that isn't Venice and do a 1 province game only

Whenever I do this someone calls me a memer, because I live in Ulm.

the complexity in paradox games is so misleading, they basically play themselves
at least in hearts of iron you can make different types of combat unit instead of 'the biggest number wins'

what's up with albania? did they add new provinces or is it a mod?

>cheat
wew lad

Niggers

My plan with Scotland was to grab as much of Ireland as possible and rely on guarantee from France while building relations with France for an alliance. England is split between mainland England and French possessions and he has to lose somewhere.

My idea was to actually invade England but I think I would be in the red too long and not have enough soldiers for it.

Nah, that's unmodded with no DLC. I just installed it on my laptop to take screens.

albania got extra provinces last patch

hope you're talking about 3 because 4 is a complete and utter meme

>M&"History is racist so we remove game features because fuck white people"T

What mod gives you that square frame?

...

>Culture: Greek
>Religion: Christian / Orthodox
>Capital: Byzantion / Constantinople

"Romans"?

invading england is an incredibly poor idea early on
try to have them invade YOU, you get bonus troops from events, have the highlands to abuse for bonuses and france will have your back

and yeh scotland is poor as dirt to start with, there's opm's with better income than them

MEIOU & Taxes
It has a direct affiliation to the Roman Empire because it was the Eastern half of it.
Latincucks never cease to amuse me.

>Belgium

byzantines were the biggest LARP in history

literally does not matter

its the same game either way, true for all paradox titles
>abuse 1 viable playstyle
>faction is just a different color to paint the map

I know
>belgium
and yet it conquered the mighty german reich while losing only 50k men

>founded by Romans
>run by Romans
>not Roman

hm

>run by greeks pretending to be romans pretending to be greeks

What to do as Portugal? Spain outclasses Portugal

What did he mean by this

Can I just take the UI aspect out of M&T and just make a mod out of that?

I'm not a modder, but probably.

you start out with friendly relationships with castille which you can easily maintain
from there on you can kickstart colonization getting all the juicy gold provinces for yourself while also getting a billion ducats from the indian trade

once you're filthy rich you can use that money to conquer whoever the fuck you want

Castille on the other hand has the force things with aragon before they're eaten by the big blue blob

>having money trouble in EU4
lol

Portugal starts with a huge trade income advantage in the area. They also start with an explorer so you can make tons of money importing tropical goods to trade ports you already dominate.

>diocletian
>not roman
>Constantine
>not roman

hm

Play one of the countries featured on the shields there, they are all good for first timers, Ottomans is newbie friendly as fuck in that it gives you a lot of weak enemies you can walk all over early game

>blobbing

Dai Nippon

>endgame
>only 460 trade income as GB

how does it feel to be this bad?

Is this more fun that crusader kings 2? Even when i had the gameplay mechanics down, i didnt find it very fun

was literally a millenium ago at that point

that's like saying
>egypt
>muslim

I couldn't manage to reform the Roman Empire in my first ever run through of Byzantium. I managed to take everything bar Spain and England. The only way I can see me doing it is by outright fighting dozens of Coalitions. I did 2-3 trying to do it. It's hard to get the final few areas from European countries, as they usually have colonies which you need to capture to gain Warscore. Which means either capturing fewer areas each war (and then 10 year cool off) or going over to America and fucking shit up there.

I mean, sure, I can do it with mods extending the game length, but I don't see it being possible without cheats or abuse.

No it isn't, current Egypt has no direct correlation to Ancient Egypt other than location.

I've got merchants steering as little as 6 ducats that I could place in more otpimal nodes. As you can see from my 90k bank, I'm beyond the point of giving a fuck.
If I were blobbing I'd have all of Italy, Scandinavia and Hungary. That's not blobbing, that's just building a large end game empire. Look at Persia and the Commonwealth for christ sakes.

AFAIK you can now (since Mare Nostrum) continue after 1821.

egypt wasn't muslim either when both of those guys were around

Can't win 'em all doggo

He meant that the Byzantium Empire was essentially Greeks who were pretending they were Romans n'd sheeit, who were in turn pretending to be Greeks. So, Romans pretended to be Greeks, became Greek, then pretended to be Roman again.

In short, culture-abooing.

Is that suppose to be impressive? I was make 1.2k a month as Byzantium. By the end of the game I had nearly 400k and an army of like half a million, over 1200 ships and so on.

also, you have 18 fucking merchants, how are you THIS bad? I had like 9 and made more than you.

did you at least pour your money into building the panama canal?

and maybe you could have even gotten suez early given you have that indian empire

>comparing your empire to AI
The AI has no agency and does not have a concept of blobbing. You as a human can create good borders and avoid blobbing.

not too complicated, just boring