Showcases of Europa Universalis 3

[thestick]

How will you peacefully claim their empire?

[BRickAstley]

poor urbino, I don't think I've ever seen them last more than a year before the pope, Tuscany, or naples eats them up.

Yeah, they're quite sad, although the same thing happened to Navarre as well, and I'm not sad about that

Thanks for explaining the game a bit, Brick. The intro material was helpful to understanding what is going on. And the first report segment was entertaining. Keep up the excellent work.

Thanks! I appreciate your feedback! I want to have it be a mix in between entertaining and knowledgeable. I feel like I've hit both extremes now, and from now on I'm thinking that I would like to try for a hybrid, sticking solid explanation and my own thought patterns with some extra passages from Gil (As long as he still lives) to help add some humor and flavor to the adventures.

How will you peacefully claim their empire?

And this is why, I mentioned things in the report that you just can't properly explain without breaking the 4th wall.

From what I was able to discern from in-game, once you make a nation a vassal, there is a new diplomatic option that allows you to make an offer to that vassal to become annexed into your empire. This can only happen after 10 years straight of being your vassal and you must have very high positive relations with that vassal AND they can still choose to deny your offer if they don't want to accept it. It's not necessarily as easily to do as my commentary made it seem, but it's certainly possible, and I'm not too worried about how long it will take to add one province.

So, if anyone else has any questions to ask about the mechanics of anytime that happened in that last report, don't hesitate to ask and I'll clear it up. This really didn't take a long amount of time to play, and it basically amounted to moving my troops into Navarre and laying siege to the province until it fell into my control. But if anything mentioned or pictured is still puzzling you let me know!

[NobleHelium]

I prefer straight-forward out of character reports for the record.

[BRickAstley]

I prefer straight-forward out of character reports for the record.

*Noted. Since this report is special, in having the main purpose be to show off a new game to others, I'll tend towards making the report as close to common reader preferences as can be reasonably attained.

[Bigger]

I think the diplo-annex option has always been there. pre-HTTT it came with a -1 decentralization penalty, which made it a tough pill to swallow. Now instead it comes with a -1 stability penalty, which is more temporary and much easier to fix. if your infamy is low and your prestige is decent, the chances of it happenning will be "maybe" or "unlikely," which just means you may need to try 5 or 6 times before they finally accept (each time they refuse your relations will drop 50 points, which means you'll have to bribe them back up over 190 before you can try again). if you have maintained good relations with your vassal for many decades, sometimes you can get the chances up to "likely," but that doesnt happen often and isn't worth the wait.

The advantage is mostly in infamy - flat annexing them would give you a whopping 8 infamy (which I imagine would take Brick 12 or so years to work off at this point, since he probably doesnt have a king with a high diplomacy record). Making a vassal normally costs you 4 infamy, but since Brick had the "subjugation" causus belli thanks to his mission, it is 0 infamy in this case. But I probably still would have done it just to give your diplomat Gil something to do .

btw, did you move a slider yet? If you forgot, its not too bad - centralization is the obvious choice, but you probably couldnt do it right at the beginning of the game, as the revolt (66%chance) that will likely pop up as a result would probably have been bigger than the army you start with.

[Bigger]

I'm also curious if you are using chevalier's or latin knights for cavalry, and the same with the 2 infantry choices you have.

[Cyneheard]

I didn't realize CK2 was a paradox game. I'll have to check it out, Paradox is rapidly becoming my favorite Dev.

There is a user mod that connects several of the Paradox games togethor, allowing you to start in the first millennia and play through WWII (Victoria, EUIII, and Hearts of Iron II - I think there is a Roman game that starts before Victoria, even). I wonder CKII will be plugged into that at some point.

The CK2 Modding community on Paradox's forums has been working on it. Not sure how far along they are. Note: Europe has significantly more provinces in CK2 than in EU3 (Example: The De Jure Empire of Hispania covers 59 provinces in CK2, but the same lands are only 38 in EU3).

[BRickAstley]

btw, did you move a slider yet? If you forgot, its not too bad - centralization is the obvious choice, but you probably couldnt do it right at the beginning of the game, as the revolt (66%chance) that will likely pop up as a result would probably have been bigger than the army you start with.

Yes I did, I moved it once towards Aristocracy, as there didn't seem to be as many downsides to doing so, and it added my amount of diplomats and cheaper cavalry. Which isn't really that super, but I wanted some benefit without risking all hell breaking loose as soon as I start.

I'm also curious if you are using chevalier's or latin knights for cavalry, and the same with the 2 infantry choices you have.

I was using the one that gave 1 offensive morale and 1 defensive morale, but I realized that since I'm not facing much competition, I can probably go with the ones with 2 offensive morale and be safe.

[BRickAstley]

After I completed the mission to Vassalize Navarre, my next mission that I received was to Re-claim the island of Sardinia back into the Aragon Empire. Since I already have my King leading as a general, and my main army stack is barely affected by the previous war, I decide that I would probably would be interested in going ahead and fighting this war. I decide to wait until I can at least send a ship to the shore of Sardinia to make sure that they don't have a very large garrison already there. I will find that there are not any active regiments there, so I will be fine.

I also make note to consider the fact that Sardinia is allied to the Papal State, so if I decide to war upon Sardinia there's a fair chance I would have to fight Rome and whatever armies they might have as well. I'll worry about that later.

I remember also that I have to make some attempts at having an economy. The merchants that you accumulate over time can be sent to compete in Centers of Trade. I had previously sent two merchants to Genoa, and one of those crests under the 2 position is mine. I'm not exactly sure at this point in time what there is to do for my economy other than increase the number of merchants in a CoT, so I keep sending them there to increase the value of my trade as I get them.

(Note: If you've played this game before you'll probably see that I'm forgetting some major things in regards to economy. I've already played this update and the next one or two in game, so I won't be fixing any mistakes I've made there for a little bit. However I am reading up on how to properly manage an economy so before too long I will be able to better get into that side of the game.)

Now this is interesting. Apparently, Sicily declared war on The Papal State (or vice versa, I missed the notification), so now I also have an alliance Casus Belli against Sardinia. I will not use this one, as it only grants full prestige and no infamy if I do pretty much anything but annex them, and if I'm going to the trouble of sailing my army and king across the Mediterranean, I'd like to Annex the bloody place.

So I declare war against Sardinia, and to my relief the Papal State does not honor their alliance and the poor island is all alone against my marauding forces.

Also note the naval combat: I declared war while my scouting ship was adjacent to the island. This started our ships being in combat, which would be bad for me if I left my lone ship there against their three for a while. The combat window shows amount of different types of ships involved (bigger ones are stronger), and the percentage of health each ship is at. The green/red bar for each side is the side's morale. When the combatants of one side lose all morale, they lose the battle (even if not all of the troops are dead), and are required to flee the territory that they are currently in. You generally don't want to attack with troops that have low morale, as starting a battle at low morale against an opponent of equal strength and high morale will lead to an earlier and devastating defeat.

The battle also is in the "Shock" phase currently. I was able to finally dig up some info on the Shock/Fire mechanics. This is from the Paradox EU3 forums:

In the fire phase units use their fire attack against the opponent's fire defense and vice-versa (simultaneously). In the shock phase, they use the shock values. There's also a modifier based on tech level.

In general, in the early years units do most damage in the shock phase and hardly any in the fire phase; later this changes. Cavalry do mostly shock, artillery mostly fire, infantry a bit of both. ]

So they seem to just be two alternating phases of combat, with larger scaling of power as units advance through time, as well as making a noticeable difference for having different types of units in your army.

This was funny. See that pink province named Barrois in the middle of everyone? Yeah, they wanted a royal marriage with me. My instincts tell me that they probably won't last too long, and I have no interest in tying myself to a country I have no use for.

The rest of my ships finally arrived to Sardinia with my army, and dropped them off before doing battle with the Sardinian navy. I have 20 ships now to their 3, so I think I'm safe there.

Also, the King's army currently is holding the Siege of Sardinia. When a province is under siege, the city will slowly lose morale and food supplies, and the attackers stand a chance every month of making a breach in the walls to shorten the amount of time required to siege. You can also choose to assault the city, which will reduce the amount of defenders in the city, but often at a high cost to the attacking armies.

I decided to assault not long into the siege, and I got lucky and ended the siege before too long, around the same time as my navy destroyed their ships. Since I had such an overwhelming force of ships, I didn't lose one myself.

I was then able to annex Sardinia, and due to the mission I had to accomplish that purpose, I gained prestige and the territory without suffering any infamy. I suppose poor Gil the Diplomat still won't have any infamy to get rid of anytime soon. :D

[BRickAstley]

So I got my new national mission after the war was over, and it tasks me with building more military than Venice. Well... they're small so it probably won't be that hard, but they also are far enough away that I don't know how large their army is, and since it only gives me 5 Military tradition if I accomplish it, I won't worry about it and plan to either happen upon completing it while building enough military to do so, or just wait for it to expire.

I hire my third adviser when the first year is done and advisers from other countries are available. Senior Antonio will actually help me in diplomatic negotiations, and will be a welcome addition because I seem to be on a path of not being the most diplomatic. :D

Thanks to being victorious in both of my wars, I am not number 2 in the world in prestige! An honor to be sure, but I'm not satisfied with second best. Who is in first?

Oh, it's my nice and larger-than-I-am neighbors Castille. Notice that they are also at war with Morocco and Tunisia, so they should be very busy warring with people that aren't us, and our back is probably safe for the next few years.

Well this is a surprise! Rome is currently under siege by Sicilian troops, and it's no surprise why! They're at war with 6 countries, including the big dog Austria, and their only ally that I know of is a certain island that I rule now. That seems like it would have been a good dog-pile for whoever has gotten into it.

And my stability has increased with my spending all the way to +3, which adds all of those nice green modifiers listed there that make my nation run smoother.

So now, I've been taking care of general things around the empire to bring up my infrastructure at least a little bit. The question remains on what to do now. Do I concentrate on building myself up into an economic and technological power? Do I want to go on a religion kick and strive to spread the One True Faith around the Mediterranean sea? Do I prepare for the quest for the new world and aim to become a leading colonial power in the Americas? All of those are honorable and are sure to build up my empire without bringing myself into significant risk.

Or...

I can be a fool and try to steal Rome away from the Pope and under the nose of my ally Sicily.

What would you do?