Pindicator Attempts The Three Mountains - a Europa Univeralis 4 Showcase

[pindicator]

I fondly remember the EU3 showcase that BRickAstley posted way back in 2012, and how it introduced me to a grand strategy franchise that I've played for over a decade.  Europa Universalis 4 was one of the rare release day buys for me and I still keep coming back to it over the years.  I've played countries in all regions of the world, mostly in ironman mode, and have just over half the game's 373 achievements unlocked.  One thing I have never done (or even attempted) is a world conquest, mostly because it is just so tedious to conquer all of the game's 3272 provinces before the end date of 1821.

With EU5 officially announced and likely coming out sometimes in the next year, I've decided it's time.  I'm going for a world conquest, and I'm going to try to share it here with you all.  But I don't want to just go for any world conquest: I'm very confident I could take a powerful country like France or Ming or the Ottomans.  I still want to challenge myself and perhaps give anyone following a bit of suspense, as well as show off some of the creative tech choices that other players have come up with over the years.  (Also, I want to force myself to slow down, because rushing through midgame decisions has caused me to lose some earlier attempts!)

So with all that in mind, I will be going for the infamous The Three Mountains achievement, where you have to conquer the world as Ryukyu.




It's very likely this will end in a fail, but it will still be fun to show off some of the tricks and tech that I've learned along the way.


THE PLAN

The only rule for a Three Mountains Run is that you start as Ryukyu: you can change your country to any other along the way, and I will be taking advantage of that several times this run.  My plan is to stack modifiers for Coring Cost Reduction and Province Warscore Cost, combining idea groups, religious mechanics, national ideas, unique mission tree rewards, monuments, and other game mechanics to stack both modifiers as high as possible.  The first ability will let us core provinces for much less Administration points than they normally would cost, and the second will let us take more provinces in a war at one time.  My goal is to get all the modifiers set up in the first half of the game (roughly by 1620), and then the second half will be a race against time to conquer the world.  I don't want to give away the full plan right now, but I'm not innovating much on what others have done before.

This is probably the easiest time in the history of the game to complete The Three Mountains, as newer formable nations, religions, and mission trees have power crept the game and given the player a lot more tools to conquer the world with.  Over the years there have been various strategies with Ryukyu which involve invading Vietnam, becoming the Shogun of Japan, becoming a pirate nation in the Philippines, and I've even seen streamers race into India at the start of the game.  As I'm writing this I'm watching one streamer (ThePlaymaker) try a new strategy where he invades Manchuria directly, using an early alliance with Korea, forms Manchuria, and then rushes to become emperor of China.  (Spoiler: he failed on the run I watched.)  I won't be following any of these strategies, but I will be adapting from one of ThePlaymaker's earlier Three Mountain strategies, and hope it will still be entertaining to follow for even those who aren't familiar with the game.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Woohoo! I'm all on board. 

all hail Chief pin of Ryukyu!

[Japper007]

Cool a classic run of EU4! (I've attempted it a few times myself, though I'm very bad at EU4, even worse than civ... ) 

I will be following along so please try to keep discussion of our current pbem together to a minimum

[pindicator]

Part One: Opening Moves
Nov 11, 1444

Thanks all!  I'm hoping for better longevity here than my CK3 attempts, because there's a clear goal in mind.

Here's the opening of the game and the initial setup:




Every new game of Europa Universalis 4 comes with a lot of opening work of things to set up or that need changing before you can actually play the game, thanks to all the new mechanics that have been introduced over the years in various DLC.  Gone are the days of assigning generals, making sure merchants are set right, and then unpausing.

The first goal here as Ryukyu is to get off of the island.  I'm surrounded by powerful nations with Ming, Korea, and the various Daimyos of Japan, and while it might be technically possible to invade one of them early, it would take a very skilled player using every exploit available to get a successful war against any of them at the very beginning.  Instead I plan on expanding via colonists (won't say where quite yet).  Colonists open up with the Exploration Idea Group, and I will need to reach Admin tech 5 to open up my first idea group.  And then I will need to further my Diplo tech in order to expand my colonial range.  So my opening moves will be made with the idea of generating as much Admin & Diplo points as possible.

First I'll start with the Estates:




There are 3 prominent estates to contend with as I govern Ryukyu: the Clergy, the Bushi, and Merchant Guilds.  Under each estate the game shows the estate's loyalty and influence level, and then the modifiers on your country due to how loyal and influential they are.  In the screenshot above the Clergy has a loyalty at 30% (just barely loyal, anything less would be disloyal), 65% influence, and gives a +20% modifier to taxes due to their loyalty & influence levels.  Below that is a list of icons that represent the various privileges given to the estate.  The game starts with no privileges granted and I was handing them out left and right to align with my goal of emphasizing Admin & Diplo points.

The Clergy get:

• Religious State: +1 Admin points per month, -10% Crownland
  
• Clerical Advisory Council: -15% Admin Advisor Cost, +10% Stability Modifier Cost
  
• Oversight by the Clergy: +10% Loyalty & Influence for Clergy Estate
  
• Religious Diplomats: +1 Diplomatic Reputation, +10 Opinion for other countries of the same religion
  
• Clerical Education: Government Reform progress growth +2.1% (scales with estate Influence & Loyalty)
  

The Bushi get:

• Primacy of the Bushi: +1 Military points per month, -10% Crownland
  
• Increased Levies: National Manpower Modifier +17.4% (scales with estate land ownership), can't lose Crownland
  
• Supremacy over the Crown: All Estates +10% Loyalty, Diet can be summoned for an Agenda at any time
  

The Merchant Guilds get:

• Land of Commerce: +1 Diplomatic points per month, -10% Crownland
  
• Commercial Advisory Board: -15% Diplomatic Advisory Cost, +10% Stability Modifier Cost
  
• Free Enterprise: +10% Loyalty & Influence for Merchant Guilds
  
• Patronage of the Arts: Gains 20 Prestige and 0.5 Prestige per year, -5% National Tax
  

All these choices have tradeoffs in Loyalty and Influence in addition to the bonuses I listed above.  Some of them also take away Crownland, in essence giving the Crownland to that estate in exchange for their services.  Ryukyu only starts with 30% Crownland, so I have effectively given away all the state-owned land in exchange for getting an additional +1 Admin/Diplo/Mil each month.  There are some serious maluses to having low or no Crownland.  In the screenshot above it shows I have -30 Absolutism (doesn't count until the 1600s so we ignore it for now), +0.2 autonomy per month (doesn't really impact us since the capital is always at 100% autonomy), +100% Liberty Desire in subjects (no subjects), and -15% taxes.  So a lot of the downsides are mitigated by being a one-province nation, but money is still tight and I'll be clawing back that Crownland over the years.  My primary tool for that is the 3rd button in the Crownland area of the menu: the Seize Land interaction lets you take 5% Crownland but at a cost of 20% Loyalty from all Estates.  And if an estate goes below 30% then it will spawn rebels that your armies will need to fight off.

Okay, before I get too deep into it lets do a quick UI overview:




In the upper left is our country name and flag.  To the right of that the UI shows in order: ducats, manpower, sailors, stability, Prestige, Legitimacy, and Power Projection.  Then comes four icons for Merchants, Colonists, Diplomats, and Missionaries.  Ryukyu starts with 49 ducats and is slowly losing money at -0.06 ducats/month.  It has just shy of 10,000 men as reserves for replenishing troops, and 300 sailors for ships.  Stability and Corruption start at 0, but that will change as the game goes along.  Stability gives bonuses for your tax, unrest, and religious conversion rate and typically needs about 100 admin points to increase manually, though events can swing it either direction.  Corruption increases with events and if you have uncored provinces.  Increased Corruption will cause everything to cost more - not just in ducats but also in admin/diplo/mil power costs.  Prestige helps with getting royal marriages or even claiming another monarch's crown, but more generally just helps improve your relations with other nations.  Legitimacy represents your right to rule and typically will want to be as close to 100 as possible - though events and actions can lower it, causing unrest in the nation.  And Power Projection shows your ability to influence other nations.  Obviously a zero for little Ryukyu.

The 1/2 below the Merchant shows one merchant is out working but another is unassigned.  Currently that merchant is helping trade in our home trade node of Nippon, but we don't have anywhere to put the second merchant yet.  We have no colonists, three diplomats that will be shortly put to work, and 1 missionary which I will not use for some time.  Below those icons the game shows we are in the Age of Discovery, and clicking on that will give more detail that I'll get into later.  To the left of the Age of Discovery, and just below the Prestige & Legitimacy, are where the Admin, Diplo, and Military points are displayed.

Below the display in the upper left you can see I have the Court menu open.  This was where Estates were shown earlier, but now I've selected the Court menu.  More on this in a bit.

On the map you can see Ryukyu surrounded by mainland China, Korea to the north, and Japan to the northeast.  On Ryukyu I start with 4 regiments in my army and 10 ships in my navy.  Off to the east we can see China with over 40 regiments and 37 ships.  I'm not even sure that's China's full strength at the start, either.  Thankfully Ryukyu starts as a Tributary of China and so they don't have any reason to attack us - in fact, they really tend to be bogged down with their own problems and have little time to look our way, so I am quite safe ... for a time.  In the lower right is the mini-map, and you can make out that we have knowledge of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and India but we will need to discover everything else.

Finally, the date, game speed, and any items I've chosen to show up in the quick view window are displayed in the upper right.  I'm still on the starting date of Nov 11, 1444, and will be for a little while longer as I still need to do a few more things.

Okay, back to the Court menu now.  




King Shitatsu Sho rules Ryukyu at the start of the game and he is awful.  He has no consort or queen, and also no heir.  1 admin, 1 diplo, 1 mil - with a range between 0-6 he is very much on the low end of the spectrum.  Unfortunately he's very young, and so if I'm unlucky I will have to live with him for a long time.  Each month the game gives 3 + the ruler's stat + any additional modifiers.  So for each of Admin, Diplo, & Mil I am earning the base 3 + 1 for King Shitatsu +1 for the estate privileges I gave earlier (Religious State, Primacy of the Bushi, Land of Commerce respectively).  The empty boxes show where I can pay advisors, who will add their points to my monthly total.  Later in the game getting above 12 is quite common, so I am truly awful with only earning 5 each month.

The easiest way to improve our ruler is to get a new one.  The fastest way to do that is to click on the Crown icon by the No Legal Heir line.  This will let me pay 20 Prestige and 20 Legitimacy to introduce a new heir.  However, the stats are completely random.  This is also why I selected the Patronage of the Arts privilege for the Merchants: I had to have positive Prestige in order to do this interaction.

This is the one place where I will reset to get a good start.  It's already difficult enough to have to start with a 1/1/1 king, and I want the heir to at least be average (3/3/3 or better).  My first start I got a 4/1/2 heir - not good enough.  So I reset and got a good one on my second try:




3/5/4 will be fantastic!  Now I just need to kill off my young king.  The game won't let me abdicate the throne until King Shitatsu is 60, a long way away, so I don't have any way of ensuring he dies.  But what I can do is make him a military general, and then drill an army.  Leading armies increases the odds that he will die in an accident.  So I do exactly that:  split off 1 regiment of infantry and have the King drill them over and over.  It's rather a shame too, as the king rolls rather good early general stats, getting 3 fire, 2 shock, 1 maneuver, and 1 siege. 




Next up I need to solve our money situation.  Again, currently losing money at the start of the game and not many avenues to improve the situation.  First up is the army:




Ryukyu's starting army is 3 infantry and 1 cavalry regiment.  At full maintenance, each infantry costs 0.22, each cavalry costs 0.55, and each artillery (not yet available) cost 1.1 ducats per month.  Each are good at different aspects: infantry forming the best frontline units, while cavalry have the best shock, and artillery the best fire.  I don't plan on doing any fighting for about 50 years so the cavalry is getting retired to save some costs.  Then I lower my army maintenance down to about 10%, so that every regiment except for the 1 drilling will not have funding.  Technically at no maintenance each unit still requires half of its monthly maintenance, so I can't have the army cost nothing to maintain without disbanding it.




Next I take an axe to the navy.  I start with 0 caravels (heavies), 2 barques (lights), 5 galleys, and 3 cogs (transports).  The galleys are useless to my purposes, so I go to Ming and sell them my 5 galleys for 50 ducats.  I order the 2 barques to protect trade in the home trade node of Nippon, and immediately start building a 3rd - I'll need 3 barques later for it's time to start exploring.  Finally the 3 cogs I'll just keep at home for now.  They're relatively inexpensive to maintain at port and it will be cheaper to hold them than to rebuild them.

All things done, now I'm almost making 1 ducat a month!




I use that money to go back to the Court menu and hire a Statesman.  Shiru Agarie will give me an additional Diplo point each month and in addition improves my Diplomatic Reputation.  This helps a number of modifiers when trying to make deals with other countries and is probably the best diplo advisor I could get at the start.




Finally I send out my diplomats and try to improve relations with my neighbors.  My first diplomat already went to Ming to sell the galleys, so I have 2 free while he travels back.  The first I send to Korea, hoping for a royal marriage (and later an alliance).  Since Korea will not agree to one yet, I have the diplomat improve relations with Korea.  This will increase their opinion of me over time, until it reaches +100.  I go to Ashikaga and they will agree to a Royal Marriage straight away!




As my other two diplomats return I send them to Improve Relations with Ashikaga, and then Curry Favors with Korea.  I have to wait 30 days between sending diplomats to the same country, so that didn't quite happen here, but it falls under the initial diplomatic moves.

But with that I finally unpause and can start the game!

[Cyneheard]

Following as well - EU IV shenanigans are always worth watching.

[Fenn]

Thanks for the overview of the basic mechanics - never played this game and I'd be mostly lost otherwise. Good luck conquering the globe!

[luddite]

Cool thread! I had always heard about EU4 and Paradox games, but never got into them until 2 years ago so I feel like I'm quite late to the party. It's been confusing trying to learn them and reading guides which seem wildly out of date, based on thow the game was multiple versions ago. The basics seem simple enough (beat up the weak neighbors and don't get coalitioned, right?) but some of the tricks people use for advanced strats seem bonkers.

[Japper007]

Cool thread! I had always heard about EU4 and Paradox games, but never got into them until 2 years ago so I feel like I'm quite late to the party. It's been confusing trying to learn them and reading guides which seem wildly out of date, based on thow the game was multiple versions ago. The basics seem simple enough (beat up the weak neighbors and don't get coalitioned, right?) but some of the tricks people use for advanced strats seem bonkers.

I got into PDX games late as well, they are pretty bad at onboarding players tbh. Really the only way is getting into them day one and gradually growing with the mechanics and the DLC. Though I've also seen players with literally thousands of hours in EU4 still learn new mechanics and strategies, so maybe it is fair to say that they are just very opaque.


If you're looking for a decent to good player to show you the ropes in new patches, LordLambert on YouTube is good at that. Also one of the only places that regularly uploads both MP matches and Single Player campaigns

[Krill]

Oh yeah, this is what I've been missing.

I'm following along to the end.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Honestly, the constant evolution of Paradox games is why I kind of drop out eventually. I can't afford to keep up with all of HOI4 or Stellaris's DLC, so while I have hundreds of hours in each game since launch I've barely touched them in years. My current love is Victoria 3, which like Civ VII I desperately wanted to be better than it was. Supposedly the new DLC improves things there, but, again, don't have the cash for it now and busy with other things anyway.

The best way to learn Paradox or any game really is just get your feet wet - dive in, fail a bunch, and learn each time and you'll soon find yourself comfortable navigating around stuff with no sweat.