Alright Boyz, Here we go....Europa Universalis 4!!!

[Abe Sargent]

Released today baby!

[Coffee Warlord]

Booyah!

[Coffee Warlord]

Heh. Their big email announcement about the game coming out ... misspelled Universalis.

[Peregrine]

I'm playing through the tutorial now - game looks great and I like how cleaned up the interface is from EU3.

[lungs]

Downloading. I loved EU3. I got Crusader Kings II for free. I've never played that.

[Peregrine]

I'm really liking some of the new options, like the production interface which lets you build troops/fleets or buildings in any province from one screen - saves a lot of clicking. The new trade system looks a bit tricky, will take some exploring.

[OldGiants]

Downloaded the demo and manual. Never really got into EUIII and not sure why other than not having the time to get experience playing so I got comfortable with it. Lots of Portugal and Venice as I remember.

I enjoy the board game HERE I STAND which is Europe in the Reformation. Can I play EU as Martin Luther, or the Schmakaldic League, as in that game? Or as the Dutch Protestants or French Heugonauts, a little later on?

Being Hesse or Saxony seems like the way EU has handled this, but I never really tried a Reformation option.

[Arles]

How does it compare to CK2?

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Arles

How does it compare to CK2?

I just never could get into the EU series or any of the other CK games because the country control bored me compared to the dynastic aspect of CK. EU:Rome I haven't checked on. Still have the disk around somewhere but the pre-order was a waste.

[Coffee Warlord]

Alright, first thing I need to beg Paradox on.

For the love of god, they need to either shrink ships on trade route patrol, or add a toggle to make them completely invisible. Or something to make it way less obnoxious.

[Peregrine]

Very happy with the game so far - Paradox did a nice job of providing you a lot of things to tweak and change as you play, which helps avoid some of the problems in previous versions, where if you ran out of money you didn't really have anything to do. I do wish they would have a way to reduce the obnoxiousness of the trade patrols as CW mentioned though.

[Coffee Warlord]

After several days of on and off play...

It goes without saying, but this is definitely a Paradox game. Meaning...a whole lot of gameplay bugs. It badly needs a lot of patching.

[JPhillips]

With CK2 and EU4 I'm finally able to wait until after the first or second patch before I buy.

[Coffee Warlord]

Surprised this thread has gotten so little play, to be honest.

Though my point still stands from above - the hotfixes have dealt with some of the performance issues I've been having, but I'm largely hoping for a very big patch.

[Dutch]

EUIV is off to a good start for me. It's the first of the series that I have really dug into and so far I'm having a blast. The colonization of the new world is exceptionally well done for my tastes.

[McLovin]

I started with Castile and am getting steamrolled by Aragon within the first hour.

[DaddyTorgo]

I spent like 20 minutes last night clicking "download demo" in steam and wondering why it wouldn't download, only to finally look at my games library and realize i had already DLed the demo.

hahah.

[Abe Sargent]

Lol to both

[Bisbo]

Absolutely loving this game.

Started off as Denmark, and was cruising along, about to form Scandanavia after bringing Norway and (almost) Sweden into my empire. Decided to take one more province from the weak Livonian Order to boost my trade power in the Baltic Sea. Checked to make sure their only ally (Hansa) was occupied fighting Poland before launching my 'surgical strike'. That's when all hell broke loose.

Hansa promptly negotiated a truce with Poland, and came after me - hadn't noticed before that its ground forces were two tech levels higher than mine. As my troops were being slaughtered, I begged for peace, but to no avail. Finally a couple of armies from Sweden joined the fray and bailed me out. But by then, rebel armies appeared in several Norwegian provinces, demanding independence. Sweden refused to help with this, and I had to take out numerous loans to raise lots of new troops to fight the rebellion.

Now I'm out of cash, deeply in debt, and trying desperately to hold on to my 'empire'. My new king sucks, and he's got a bastard son as his only heir.

Great fun!

[Alan T]

I have been playing my first EU4 game as England. Other than having to be pretty smart with how I handled France in the 100 year war, after winning that, it has been pretty much easy mode for me for the next few hundred years so far.

Which is good because it has given me the ability to try to figure out all of the new mechanics better. I'm still a bit lost as far as understanding trade.

[Mota]

I started as France in the earliest suggested save, and didn't realize that I was immediately at war against England (as I was being sieged). It was a very short game, I lost all my troops within a year because I didn't know what was going on. Next time I try the same save point and will do a better job defending myself immediately.

[Grover]

Hey guys, how do I form regimens into fully functioning armies? Is it possible to make two regimens of 1,000 infantry into one regimen of 2,000?

I'm working hard to fully understand the game, not as straight forward as Civ V like I'm used to!

[bhlloy]

Highlight them (drag and drop around them), there is a button in the top right that looks like this >< to merge them. And they have to be in the same province.

[Grover]

Ah ha! I had seen the button to split the armies in half, but I clearly missed this one.

[Peregrine]

I'm currently playing Japan - managed to bring all my vassals into my state to take over all of the main islands, and then with some exploration ideas I have assembled massive colonial holdings including Taiwan, the Phillipines, a bunch of islands south and east of there, Hawaii, and now my first colony on the North American west coast. Who knows how far I can go - at some point I will conquer those annoying Maya and Aztecs and take over their lands as well.

[Mota]

I was playing a dynasty as France (relatively new to the franchise so I wanted something easier). I was doing well, plowing over a few smaller countries and working my way through Burgundy. A coalition formed against me, and while I won the war, it did a lot of damage to my armies.

Then the game had enough of me, and both Spain / Portal / UK declared war on me, and then Burgundy with about 10 other countries also declared war. I had 30 units built and there were multiple armies with 30-50 units each running through my country taking over. Then the riots started, uprisings everywhere. And then after a few years of getting smacked down and not being able to raise a single unit without it getting targeted and killed within a turn, I was allowed peace. And by peace, I mean peacefully giving freedom to every country that I annexed, and coughing up every core that all these armies had against me. I was actually at a worse place than I started!

It was still fun though, but I"ll be completely honest that I went back to a slightly earlier save to see if I could have only 1 coalition declare war against me. It didn't work, so I just went back to my original save and kept playing.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Mota

I was playing a dynasty as France (relatively new to the franchise so I wanted something easier). I was doing well, plowing over a few smaller countries and working my way through Burgundy. A coalition formed against me, and while I won the war, it did a lot of damage to my armies.

Then the game had enough of me, and both Spain / Portal / UK declared war on me, and then Burgundy with about 10 other countries also declared war. I had 30 units built and there were multiple armies with 30-50 units each running through my country taking over. Then the riots started, uprisings everywhere. And then after a few years of getting smacked down and not being able to raise a single unit without it getting targeted and killed within a turn, I was allowed peace. And by peace, I mean peacefully giving freedom to every country that I annexed, and coughing up every core that all these armies had against me. I was actually at a worse place than I started!

It was still fun though, but I"ll be completely honest that I went back to a slightly earlier save to see if I could have only 1 coalition declare war against me. It didn't work, so I just went back to my original save and kept playing.

Yes the perils of aggressive expansion - it can definitely bring you down when those mega coalitions form.

[lungs]

I'm having fun with this game, probably my favorite Paradox game yet. I started as Denmark and eventually formed Scandinavia. I surround the Baltic sea completely minus one final Pommeranian province that I can't conquer because of their personal union with France. I've also taken chunks of Poland and Lithuania out.

The Ottomans made some massive gains into Europe until I put together a coalition to go down there and kick their ass. And then they tried to get me back in another war and I kicked their ass again.

I also have colonized most of the USA and Canada along with the Western half of Cuba, Colombia/Panama/Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Southern California/Baja.

[whomario]

This has definitely jumped to the top of my list in recent weeks, hoping for an appearance in the Steam Christmas Sale

[Dutch]

Started up a campaign with the Castilians after doing a full walkthrough with the Aztecs.

[Bisbo]

Lungs/Peregrine - how do you expand your colonial distance limit? I've pursued the trade and colonial expansion ideas, but for some reason I can't expand my colonization limit to more than 240 miles - so I can't even get to North America from Iceland. Help!

[Coffee Warlord]

Easiest way is to get port access from Portugal, colonize somewhere in the Caribbean, core it, and then move upward.

(Even easier if Portugal's already cored something there.)

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Bisbo

Lungs/Peregrine - how do you expand your colonial distance limit? I've pursued the trade and colonial expansion ideas, but for some reason I can't expand my colonization limit to more than 240 miles - so I can't even get to North America from Iceland. Help!

Pretty sure diplomatic technology levels will give you an increase in colonial range because that's where you get naval upgrades too.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Bisbo

Lungs/Peregrine - how do you expand your colonial distance limit? I've pursued the trade and colonial expansion ideas, but for some reason I can't expand my colonization limit to more than 240 miles - so I can't even get to North America from Iceland. Help!

Can't you get to the coast of greenland from iceland core after a few diplomatic upgrades?

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Can't you get to the coast of greenland from iceland core after a few diplomatic upgrades?

That's how I did it.

[Alan T]

Going against virtually all of Europe in a coalition against you is fun for the first 20-80 years. After a while it just gets rough

[Peregrine]

Yes, you get improved colonization range from diplo tech as has been mentioned - if you look at all the icons on the right side of the tech screen and mouse over them, it will show you what levels of tech improve what - very helpful.

As Japan, I first started colonizing north to Kamchatka to try to get to Alaska, but didn't have the range, then I went south, took over the Phillippines, then into various islands like Timor, Papua, the Solomons, and from there once I discovered Hawaii I had the range for that, once you have Hawaii then you can hit the west coast of NA. By my current point in the game I have the whole west coast of NA, all of the Mayans who I diplo-annexed. several colonies around Panama, and slowly working my way around the bottom of South Ameriaca.

You know you have a crazy colonial spread when you have both Kamchatka and Tierra del Fuego.

[Grover]

This is going to sound ridiculous. But where do I load my Ironman saves? I notice they're not with the regular saves.

EDIT: Cloud Saves, found it. Yaaaay.

[Grover]

Another note: I am absolutely terrible in war management.

[lungs]

The thing that sucks about this game is that it infiltrates my dreams after a long night session before bed. And it's always bad stuff happening.

[Grover]

I think I'm getting the hang of it.

I was amazed at how the peasant riots absolutely decimated what Lithuania were.

[Alan T]

Ok so far my ironman game of Frankfurt has been my most boring yet. Basically a several hundred year goal of making lots of money from trade while balancing friendships enough to never be gobbled up by the larger fish.

Just mainly a bunch of sitting around shuffling diplomats everywhere

[Grover]

Definitely getting the hang of the game, after my work with Muscovy, I've started a game on Normal as Mali and am doing quite well. Very close to earning colonists. Time to suck up the entire west coast of Africa, though I think Portugal has annexed what was once Morocco.

[Arles]

Just picked this up on the $19 Steam sale. As a CK2 vet, any advice to my first entry into the EU line?

[Coffee Warlord]

Castile is always a good one to start out as, as is France. Two relatively easy countries to get the hang of things.

Common Mistake #1 - Make sure you don't hire the level 2-3 advisors too early. They're hideously expensive, and almost no one can afford them out of the gate.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Castile is always a good one to start out as, as is France. Two relatively easy countries to get the hang of things.

Common Mistake #1 - Make sure you don't hire the level 2-3 advisors too early. They're hideously expensive, and almost no one can afford them out of the gate.

I hope they redo the advisors. The extra point or two in research points just isn't worth the extra cost. I only hire level twos if I need the inflation reduction that badly and I never hire level threes.

[Arles]

What's the main difference between CK2 and EU4? My assumption was that there was less religion and more fighting. Is that close?

[Coffee Warlord]

There's a ton of fighting in both. And a ton of religion in EU4. (Hi Reformation!) The biggest difference in gameplay really goes into trade, naval & exploration considerations. There's not really a CK equivalent to that.

At its simplest...

EU4 - You're managing a country.
CK2 - You're managing a family.

[Abe Sargent]

Anybody played the new expansion yet? Downloading it now. Perhaps might start a dynasty....

[Coffee Warlord]

The new expansion really only offers...the random maps. I think the vast majority of the other new features are patched into the base game.

And the random maps BADLY need work.