Be careful with that, as you need to have Naval 7, I believe, in order to even get QFTHW. And even then, you’ll need to have a naval tech high enough to be able to reach the new world, although I think the Azores is reachable from Iberia.
Yes. They’ll become more useful later on.
(BTW, be careful with the merchants. Depending on the cost to send them, you might actually be losing money)
Well, good goddamn. Focusing everything I could on Quest for the New World, I was able to get it by about 1435. Took Azores, lost my whole fleet in going further west. Just as I was trying to get another one ready, Spain (annoyed, apparently, by my unwillingness to keep allying with them in their constant wars against everyone) decided it was time to reconquest me and sent a crushing army after me in 1440.
I just can’t seem to get the hang of this game.
This thread has caused me to fire up my copy.
The main thing to remember is you have nearly five hundred in game years to play. You don’t need to do everything right away. Slow and steady wins the race.
Did you have good relations with them at the time? It won’t necessarily save you, but it helps. Also, make sure that you keep your army size up to your maximum forcelimit even if you’re planning to be peaceful.
I’ve never played as Portugal (or really done the peaceful colonization thing) so I can’t offer too much specific advice there. I generally play as a warmonger (even when I don’t intend to).
I can say that I’ve played 9 “serious” games (that is., ones where I don’t quit in the first couple decades) since getting back into EU3 in December but am still learning new things with each game. My current game (as Holland) is the first time I’ve ever tried using the personal union mechanics, for example. It’s also the first time I’ve dug into the Holy Roman Empire mechanics as emperor, as well.
Just so everyone knows, there are great resources available on the intricacies of EU3 linked off the EU3 wiki page , and the good folks at the Paradox forums can answer pretty much any further questions you might have.
FWIW Divine Wind plus the 5.1 patch (currently in late beta) are looking pretty solid. It’s fair to say some folks prefer HttT though, and most of the popular mods are still for that version.
Sounds like you’re doing fine - you’re just forgetting it’s a long game.
Castile can be stupid and war monger all over the place - however just because you say you’re going to help doesn’t actually mean you’re going to help. Agree, raise war taxes and get a peace treaty when you want. No need to actual chew up your troops.
Any hints from people on personal unions/royal marriage diplomatic expansion
Here’s a pretty concise article on it.
So yeah, apparently I suck because I always read that Castille is a really easy country to play as. So I’m trucking along, doing what I think is pretty well. Then I get excommunicated fairly quickly into the reign of my emperor. Now, it’s been fifty years and this guy will.not.die. So now everyone has a cause for war.
And France decided I was annoying it by existing. They slaughtered me. Put me out of commission. I had the 2nd highest troop count, and they doubled what I had. There was nothing I could do. So I cheated, gave me money and a tech lead, and they still destroyed me.
I think I’m done with this game and am going to try England in order to hide behind my wooden fortress or Austria or Brandenburg and try to form Germany as a counter to France.
Hey, this thread. While I’m waiting for Paradox to get their shit together and patch HOI3:FTM (which just came out, and is an expansion, and already needs a friggin patch), I decided to give Magna Mundi a try. Not bad. It’s pretty much a mod based on nerfs, to make expansion slow and expensive. I decided to do a Poland game, since I had never played them before. You start out in a personal union with Lithuania, and I took out Mazovia (Warsaw) and vassalized the Teutonic Knights in short order, but I inherited Lithuania’s territory, which I thought would be awesome, but was actually a lot of work trying to assimilate and keep profitable.
Right now I’m trying to keep Protestantism at bay while Russia glowers at me from the east and the Ottomans rip chunks out of Hungary and edge closer to my border. Should be pretty interesting.
Okay–reloaded from a saved-game and have made it to 1462 with a handful of colonies–Madeira and the Canaries producing sugar, Azores and Bermuda making fish–and seem to be doing better. I’m dealing with some inflation by now. Also, my trade is high enough that I can keep merchants in foreign capitals sustainably; they’re actually profitable, rather than being a giant financial sinkhole for me. (I suspect I pissed away several hundred gold on useless merchants in the game’s beginning).
I’m pretty heavily decentralized, which I think may have been a mistake; is that a bad idea for a colonial power? I still am not sure what the different stats on that scale mean, and what the advantage of decentralization would be (except that it makes sense to me for colonization). Also, I’m having trouble expanding my colonies to Cuba and other places in the New World, even though Bermuda now has a population >1,000; is there something I can do to speed up the process?
Two possible reasons:
- Lucky Nations get bonuses to their leader’s stats, so the French generals were likely better than yours.
- France probably took the Military Drill NI. Early on in the game that +1 to morale makes a huge difference.
I’ve heard that people have had luck defeating larger AI armies by using scorched earth tactics, but have no experience with that myself.
Some of the slider positions are no-brainers, including this one. You should pretty much always centralize as much as possible. The only case I know of where decentralization might be beneficial is for world conquest attempts; it will help hold off Overextension and reduce war exhaustion.
The distance you can colonize is calculated from your closest cored port province. So you likely have some time to wait. Other ways of expanding your colonization distance is through an advisor and your naval tech. You might consider conquering the Aztecs while you wait.
yeah, unfortunately I read some EU wiki pages after I wrote that that told me decentralization was stupid and that colonies became core after 50 years. D’oh! (I think all my decentralization occurred through unfortunate events, not through my use of the once-a-decade slider control, but still, I shoulda taken the hit to stability or whatever).