Showcases of Europa Universalis 3

[thestick]

Have you avoided Anatolian irrelevancy yet?

[BRickAstley]

Yeah, sorry you all I've let the ball drop in this court, due to WW and other interests. I do have some time blocked off this weekend to play though, so expect a writeup in the next few days.

[BRickAstley]

To start off our series of showcases, we're going to begin with what I would consider the most common theme of any strategy game that bases itself on humanity, war. I'm leading the Ottoman Empire starting in the year 1701, when they were a large nation with a correspondingly large army.




There is certainly lots of territory under my rule to work with, as my empire stretches from the Balkans to Persia to northern Africa.

Other nations of note: Austria as always is a respectable size to my northwest, sure to field a strong army. Russia is that dark green blob to my north, and already stretches through much of its current day territory. I'd really prefer not to go fighting any land wars up there. Spain controls half of Italy, so if I have any desires of going and making Rome a Muslim city, I'll probably have to watch out for them.

As far as neighbors go, Persia is the only other large one, but because they are farther removed from Europe than I am, they will be slightly behind me in technology, so over time my military will continue to grow more powerful then theirs. (non-European nations suffer a slower rate of research, unless they enact decisions to "westernize", which take a long time and throw their nation into turmoil. If a European nation such as Spain's research speed is said to be 100%, mine will be 80%, and Persia's will be 75%)




This is the Diplomatic window, which shows all of my lands in darker green. The three nations to the north that are a lighter shade of green (Wallachia, Moldavia, and Crimea) are my vassals. Vassals are nice for overall empire in that they give you 50% of all monthly revenues, and nice for military in that they give you vision of and allow movement through their lands. An important distinction compared to Civ is that vassals DON'T automatically go into any wars that you go into. You may sign an alliance with a vassal, and if you do that then they will follow you into every war, but as their owner you may choose whether or not you want to ally with them and bring them into war or not. In this case, these allies are small, and likely worthless when it comes to a standing army, especially since they stand in between me and Austria/Russia, so I do not plan to be signing alliances with them anytime soon.

I like this view also because it allows me to very clearly see which areas are under my jurisdiction and which aren't, which makes planning for conquest a lot easier. Since this first update is just the layout here at the start anyways, where do you think I'll be attacking first?

The other view of note I forgot a picture of is the basic terrain view. Different territories have different terrain, and the type of terrain makes a difference on the effectiveness of different types of units in combat.




This is the military tab that can be accessed form clicking your nation's crest in the upper right corner. Under the column "Ottoman Unit Tech" are listed all of the current units that we are fielding in game. You do not construct different types of the same type (Infantry, Cannon, Transport, etc) in EU3; instead, your units of each type are upgraded as you research higher levels of technology.

Shock and Fire, the two following columns, represent the two stages of combat. When combat is occurring, the dice rolls + modifiers that determine unit losses changes between shock and fire every few attacks. They do nothing functional besides add modifiers to each stage of combat, so the best rule of thumb is to have good numbers in each for each army that you field.

INFANTRY: Infantry are the backbone of any army, and a must/required in any force that is to be considered seriously. Infantry usually have numbers balanced between shock and fire, so they are effective in both areas of combat. Infantry are also more effective when they are defending in rugged terrain (mountains, forests, etc), and less effective when they are attacking in open terrain. Infantry are essential to a siege, in that if you assault a fortress, you have to have infantry units to make an assault. More will be covered on sieges when we undertake one later on.

CALVARY: Calvary have the advantage of having an very high shock value, which makes them very important for first strikes, since shock is the first phase of battle, and an army with a good amount of cavalry attacking one without will gain a large victory in numbers towards the start of the battle. However, they are less effective in defending overall, and have a very low fire number, making them relatively useless in that stage of combat. They are also more expensive than infantry, and are completely useless in a siege.

ARTILLERY: Artillery have a higher fire value, so they lend a bit more of an advantage in that phase. However, their main use is in conducting sieges., as they add very large modifiers to the speed of taking out defenses in an assault. They have a slower movement speed than infantry or cavalry, and will slow down stacks of those units when combined. So it is usually preferable to keep artillery back in the armies assaulting fortresses, rather than in the armies chasing around standing armies.

SHIPS: In order: Big ships have the most firepower, are the most expensive, and are the slowest ships. Light ships have the second most firepower and expense, but are the fastest ships and good at chasing down retreating navies. Galleys have low firepower, the lowest expense, and second fastest speed, and gain a bonus when fighting in inland seas (black sea, Mediterranean, etc) Transports are cheap, slow, and weak, but can transport one regiment of troops per ship, and therefore are necessary to any nation wanting to transport units across the seas.

Let's see, what else is of note here... Ah, war exhaustion. Your people get upset if you're fighting too much, who would imagine that? This number is increased by your troops dying, your core provinces being occupied, attrition, and blockades on your ports. If your war exhaustion is high, it makes it cost more for your nation to gain stability, and increases the revolt risk in your own provinces. Not only does higher revolt risk reduce the amount of money you gain from a province, in EU3 revolts take the form of hostile units laying siege to your fortresses, so a high number here is definitely something to be avoided.

Lastly, we have army and navy maintenance and support limits. Maintenance is a slider that determines how much money you are putting into your army/navy's upkeep; the more money you put into them, the faster your regiments will reinforce while standing in your territories, and the higher morale they will have, which is a crucial measurement in battle. Your support limit is the amount of units you can support well with the current number of provinces you have, which varies based on the quality of the provinces. You can always build over this number, but any troops you build over this will incur much much larger costs to maintain, so that's usually not advised unless it's a life or death situation.




Yay a new picture! This is what was brought up when I clicked on the current type of infantry that I am using. Here you can see all of the past types of infantry that I have researched before, and that I *could* use if I wanted to. The dots under each column are the rating each type of unit has in each category, and you can see a clear progression in the units' strength. Some levels of units for some nations will present actual choices in which unit to select, often with one choice having a ranking of say 2 dots in offensive fire and 0 in defensive, and the other choice having 1 dot in each. I do not have that choice though it seems, so I'll be using the obvious top of the line unit.




Something else I noticed that I am able to select is the option to become the Defender of the Faith. Since I am a large Muslim nation, I can claim that title for my religion. Those listed modifiers will provide boosts to my military, while also somewhat slowing my research rate. I think with my current focus this game though, I'm not worrying too much about the potential research slowing, better fighting it certainly is.




Last for today is the Leaders screen. At the top is Military and Naval Tradition, numbers which are raised by successful combat, as well as certain events. You can hire/train a General or an Admiral to lead your armies, which uses up Tradition, and is also modified by how much tradition you have when you hire them; higher tradition equals better leaders. I hired the General Silahdar here when I had 0 Army tradition, so he provides benefits, but not any very strong ones. The 4 categories here are fire (better fire modifiers), shock (better shock modifiers), maneuver (makes the unit sack he's attached to move faster), and siege (increases the effectiveness of sieges).


So, that's a summation of many of the military workings you can see from info screens and upon starting the game up. Next installment will be me actually attacking somebody, which I hope will be more fun. Remember the homework question, who am I going to not-so-peacefully try to integrate into my empire first?

[thestick]

Tripoli?

[NobleHelium]

Not sure why you're starting with such a large country...pretty boring.

[Bigger]

how exactly do artillery help in sieges? Just like cavalry, they don't siege . I used to have equal stacks of infantry and artillery in my siege groups, until I noticed that if the war dragged on and my manpower dipped, the siege would stop even though my morale was still 50% or so. The reason was because because the infantry were all dead (0/1000 per division) and all that remained were artillery - which wouldnt siege.

Or do you just mean passive sieges (i.e. not assaulting the walls, waiting for the fort to give up for lack of water, heh).

Do cavalry actually move faster than infantry in divine wind? They certainly did in In Domine, which was awesome, I used them quite a bit as a main attack force, with infantry divisions bringing up the rear for sieging. But since I upgraded to HTTT, it seems cavalry move the same speed as infantry, the only factor really affecting speed is the maneuver rating of your general. Really quite a bummer, I see little use for calvary now (especially since it takes a really high tech rating to upgrade them). I use them almost exclusively for conquering natives in the new world and africa (since natives don't have forts). I play mostly Christian nations, granted, I know the muslims have stronger cavalry and weaker infantry so they may make more sense for them.

[BRickAstley]

Not sure why you're starting with such a large country...pretty boring.

I'm starting with a large country because I wanted to have a start date later in time than 1400. In 1400, there are no cannons around the world yet, or light ships, and fortress are all the same basic level across the world, so there's no variety there. Basically, I wanted to have a chance to show off all of the different aspects of military in the game without waiting through 100 years from the start of it.

Of course, just cause I'l large doesn't make it boring. I have a feeling I'll end up making say Persia & Austria & Russia all mad and at war with me at once somehow, so it'll definitely be interesting even with the size.

how exactly do artillery help in sieges? Just like cavalry, they don't siege . I used to have equal stacks of infantry and artillery in my siege groups, until I noticed that if the war dragged on and my manpower dipped, the siege would stop even though my morale was still 50% or so. The reason was because because the infantry were all dead (0/1000 per division) and all that remained were artillery - which wouldnt siege.

Artillery significantly reduce the amount and morale of defenders when assaulting during a siege. But I'm going to be showing that next update.

Do cavalry actually move faster than infantry in divine wind? They certainly did in In Domine, which was awesome, I used them quite a bit as a main attack force, with infantry divisions bringing up the rear for sieging. But since I upgraded to HTTT, it seems cavalry move the same speed as infantry, the only factor really affecting speed is the maneuver rating of your general. Really quite a bummer, I see little use for calvary now (especially since it takes a really high tech rating to upgrade them). I use them almost exclusively for conquering natives in the new world and africa (since natives don't have forts). I play mostly Christian nations, granted, I know the muslims have stronger cavalry and weaker infantry so they may make more sense for them.

Cavalry and infantry do have the same speed in Divine Wind.

[Brian Shanahan]

I was going to suggest taking out one of the Minors of Tripoli, Najd, Yemen or Fun..., but then saw that the Venetians still have some Adriatic/Mediterranean assets that need a liquidator and thought you'd have the accountants in your Janissary corps to do just that.

[Bigger]

ok, in my current Castille game there are two popes! this is most strange.

After I diplo-annexed Rome and refused to let them setup a new state in Rome, the papal states were relocated to Luneburg. A century later they somehow got control of both Iceland provinces (which is pretty strange in of itself, since Luneburg is landlocked so they could not have had a navy). then a decade or so later they somehow lost their capital, luneburg, which became the country of luneberg again, and only control the non-cored iceland provinces.

A decade or so later, I fight a big war to force Austria into a personal union. I went a ahead and vassalized their ally, OPM magdeburg (in the province of anhalt). Later I noticed that magdeburg has adopted the "papacy" government, and has a "pope" leader - a different pope than the papal states in Iceland. Really bizarre, because the papacy government is not supposed to be available to anyone but the papal states (theocracy anyone can do, but "papacy" is only supposed to be available to the papal states, from everything I've read -although granted I've never attempted to become a papacy).

So apparently there is a great schism in Catholic land. the Papal states seem to have the official pope (that affects "papal relations" for control of cardinals), not really sure what the magdeburg pope is doing, heh. I guess I'll end up diplo-annexing it eventually anyway <G>.

[BRickAstley]

Hah. my only weirdness with the pope is when I use console commands in-game to make the world all one nation, and then speed through a few years so rebels take everything over and revolt and break away into new nations to see what sort of nations come up where. I learned that if you do that with a catholic nation and annex the Papal State as well, it will force your country to become the Papal state, which I thought was funny.