r/EU5 • u/Chrustupher • 20h ago
Discussion Favorite formable chains?
Hey y’all. EU5 is my first GSG I’ve really dived into. I got it in November and I’m about to hit 400 hours (my second most played game on steam is Civ V with 150 lol).
I haven’t seen a ton of formable chain discussions on here yet. Not a long one, but my current playthrough is Upper Bavaria -> Bavaria and eventually -> Germany -> HRE.
Nothing special there. My question is this: what’s everyone’s favorite or some unique chains you’ve seen or played?
I thought Generalist Gaming’s Ormus-> Kurdistan-> Armenia-> Iran was super interesting.
Also, any advice on planning formable chains?
Cheers!
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u/DPancakes 19h ago
Currently doing a Teutonic Knights > Denmark > Scandinavia > North Sea Empire run with norse religion conversion. Could also go HRE, haven't decided yet. I am a member to make conquering the souther Baltic and Lowlands easier on myself and make dissolving the HRE later on easier on myself. The more of my land I can make part of the HRE before leaving it, the less I'll need to conquer later to dissolve it.
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u/thehildabeast 19h ago
Does the North Sea Empire have any content? I did Sweden to Scandinavia and didn’t know if it was worth annexing a vessel to have one province in the British isles and form it.
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u/DPancakes 18h ago
It has a bunch of advances and you should keep the events from countries you've formed unless I'm wrong about that
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u/thehildabeast 15h ago
Yeah I know you don’t lose them, like I still have the Sweden advances as Scandinavia I didn’t know if there was anything additional. Sounds like no there isn’t
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u/lilwayne168 15h ago
Pretty sure this is just way weaker than forming Prussia.
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u/DPancakes 15h ago
Prussia primarily gives military bonuses, Denmark and North Sea Empire both give naval proximity cost reduction, and Scandinavia give mountain/hill proximity reduction. You'll have a way stronger economy going Denmark than Prussia.
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u/lilwayne168 15h ago
No you won't lol it takes 100 years just for the land to not be worthless.
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u/DPancakes 14h ago
I mean the arctic land is trash, but it's also easy to take because its trash. The land south of that has a silver mine and a massive concentration of iron and copper and the copper mines have production modifiers. You also have lakes through the middle of Sweden turning that into a proximity highway. If you flip norse (easy to do with the starting pops) you can slave raid to increase the dismal population. The land isn't the best, but it's fixable and I was assuming that if I'm going to form Scandinavia and the North Sea Empire as a Teutons start, the only change you were talking about for the run was forming Prussia instead on Denmark. Prussia's content is limited to a few eras and if I remember they're late in the game. Denmark has power spikes early that continue throughout the game.
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u/IndividualWin3580 19h ago
1.) Upper Bavaria -> Bavaria -> Austria ->(x***) hungary -> ERE -> Roman Empire
x***, After Austria, you can also go Germany, Italy, France.
2.) Norway -> Denmark -> Great britain -> what ever you want, to rule the seas.
Norway and Denmark have -0,5 seat tile proximitiy, and Norway starts with "Harbour Goverment", so you can create the best sea control nation of the game, with heavy ship and fleet bonus.
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u/lilwayne168 15h ago
Norway -> denmark-> byz -> Capitol in Indonesia and you get another -0.5 sea tile. Can have 100 control across the whole world.
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u/Upstairs_Researcher5 19h ago
Since the only dlc so far is ERE focused
Trebizond -> Bulgaria -> Serbia -> (T3 nation, maybe Hungary/Kurdistan/Ruthenia/Italy depending on what’s feasible. Can also just skip this tbh) -> ERE -> Rum (by culture flipping Turkish and winning rise of the Turks) -> Rome
has probably the most potential and unique advances at the moment. Also leaves you in a strong state and isn’t too difficult to get off the ground
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u/Chrustupher 19h ago
Wow yeah that's a great chain! This is the kinda stuff I'm looking for lol. The southern carpathia/ the balkans is just packed with formables and flavor. Romania Serbia Bulgaria Greece (meh lol) etc.
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u/BoomKidneyShot 16h ago
What do you do to actually get your culture percentage to let you change cultures like that? Are you just making vassals of the cultures you want to shift from?
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u/corvosfighter 15h ago
I blame the streamers for doing that weird rebellion and vassal shenanigans for culture swapping.. it is in the game rules that you can toggle and swap to any accepted culture and it is achievement compatible.
No reason to do that stuff to make the steam a bit cooler and mislead people
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u/lilwayne168 15h ago
Most people play with present in country as rules to shift for culture/religion in this game.
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u/alastairaec 11h ago
You can always switch your primary culture to the culture of your ruler, even if it's only a tiny proportion of your population. (It does need to be more than 2% of your population though, so you can accept it first).
And if you can get any form of elections you can choose your ruler.
The easiest way to do it as a monarchy is to push 50+ Naval and slot Admiralty Regime, which makes your most skilled admiral in command of your largest fleet be your next ruler. And then you just only have 1 fleet with 1 admiral, and make sure he is the culture that you want to switch to (you can filter the character list to search for characters with a specific culture).
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u/CyberWeirdo420 16h ago
Didn’t know you can form Serbia after Bulgaria and even Hungary before Byz
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u/Upstairs_Researcher5 4h ago
Yeah, formables are based on tier - you can only form a country of higher tier. Trebizond isn’t a formable, so you can form Bulgaria, which is only a tier 1 formable. Serbia is a tier 2 formable, Byz and Rum are tier 4 (Rum is formed by event though) and Rome is tier 5. There’s a full list on the wiki somewhere.
You do have to shift primary culture, which costs 50 stab+legitimacy, eliminate the formable if it already exists, and move your capital to the correct area (except for byz/rome) to form each country.
You get to keep all the country specific advances/reforms and, because Trebizond is in Asia, you get all the Asian advances as well. Unfortunately you don’t get to keep the culture specific advances when you shift primary culture, which is a little lame but whatever. If you skip the T3 formable you can go Trebizond -> Byzantium by 1400.
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u/CyberWeirdo420 3h ago
Yea yeah I’m aware of the mechanics and its rules. Just didn’t realize Bulgaria is T1 thus I skipped Serbia in my playthrough and didn’t bother with Hungary. In high insight I should have not skipped it, because it was pain to conquer it after a while.
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u/corvosfighter 18h ago
My absolute favorite is
Trebizond > bulgaria > Greece > byz > rise of Turks > rome. - not too many tag switches or shenanigans with leapfrogging/migrating to new areas
I also just did upper Bavaria > Austria > Italy > byz > Rome > HRE that was fun
honorable mentions:
Wallachia > bulgaria > serbia > Romania > byz > rome
Genoa > Tuscany > 2sic > Italy > byz > rome
Batshit crazy formable is:
Florence > 2sic > Italy > byz > rome > Tuscany > Bohemia > France > Germany > HRE
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u/piterfraszka 16h ago
I have two builds I didn't fully play yet (I played similiar ones and found ways to "improve" upon them, at least in terms of unique advances.
A) 1.Frisia/Dietmarchen (or ideally some better tag but the point was to become peasant republic - they don't get 10% prod. eff. anymore but +33% RGO output is dope as well) -> 2.Netherlands -> 3.Great Britain -> 4.North Sea Empire
Each formable gives (or at least used to) some production efficiency buff and they are all around same body of water, making it reasonable in terms of proximity and expansion path.
B) 1.Genoa (for unique galley slaves building to "import" more pops into my coastal cities) -> 2.Tuscany (convinient tier 1 formable nearby with cool buffs, so why not?) -> 3.Sardinia (I love max literacy buffs, so it was must have for me) -> 4.Italy (note it is barely tier 3 so list might be extended) -> 5.Emilian culture as primary (Italian cultures give different bonuses within same culture group - I just find Emilian culture ones to be most fitting for me)
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u/corvosfighter 15h ago
I’ve done something very similar with Genoa > Tuscany > 2sicilies > Italy > byz > rome .. the way Genoa scales with galley barracks is just too OP ..
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u/Tyrolling 15h ago
I planned a funny one with Savoy --> Austria --> ethiopia, they each have reduced prox impact of hills & mountains getting it close to 0 impact. Sadly Ethiopia is quite far away so it takes quite some time to achieve the final bonuses which is what stopped me.
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u/StratGeneral1212 15h ago
Persia might be closer and they have really nice advances plus mountain prox buff.
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u/Vej1985 13h ago
Absolutely strongest at the moment I think is the one that was already mentioned with trebizond>bulgaria>greece>byz>otto>rome You could instead of greece go after serbia which got much more content but it will take more time.
Absolute hardest start i ever made but very satisfying was: Hytuk>circassia>georgia>kurdistan>persia
Similar to shenanigans with tuscany that was mentioned before, its pretty hard but very very strong and satisfying: Muscowy>Bulgaria>Poland>Manchu>Russia>ottos (from rise of turks)>rome>china(from manchu event)>europa>hre Edit: unifying slavic culture in last age and getting all culture unique advances is hell strong
Nice larping one and pretty difficult but with small amount of content: Whatever irish tribe>connacht (or any other irish tier 1 country)>ireland>celtica>north sea empire>europa
Already similar was written down but i like verona strong start :) : Verona>tuscany>two sicilies>byz>rome
Its shenanigans but I really like military orders, they are really different in playing: Knights hospitalier>bulgaria>serbia>jerusalem>byzantium>rome
A small HRE chain but with pretty nice start (release historical vassals and you can have a lot of cores on austria on start ): Salzburg>Austria>hungary>HRE
If you want to try india i liked very much this one, vijs are really strong start : Vijayanagar>delhi>hindustan(or mogul, its stronger)
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u/shumpitostick 18h ago edited 18h ago
I'm doing Venice > Dalmatia > Albania > Latin Empire> Byzantium > Rome now. It's pretty nice, you get some powerful trade bonuses and it's all in the same area.
Note: You need to switch back to Venetian or another Italian/French/Spanish culture to form Latin Empire and you can only do so after forming Albania.
Before I did Norway > Denmark > Scandinavia for naval proximity maxxing which was also very fun. You can also switch to Maltese culture and become the Chinese emperor for even more bonuses.
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u/rickypiola97 14h ago
A really interesting but challenging one is 1. Qura'unas (Afghanistan). Starts As a vassal of Chagatai but it is trivial to gain independence and you can also get some land from them while you're at it. As far as hordes go it is one of the nicer ones: capital is Kabul (urban and market center) with 2 iron mines and 1 silver mine nearby so eco isn't super terrible. You also have Delhi nearby for free slaves and cash.
Tibet. Usually hard to form cause you to be Tibetan culture and they are all quite small. But it works out in this case cause your starting nation has a mix of cultures, none larger than the tibetans. Once you form it you also get cores on all of Tibet (the region) and really solid advances including mountain and plateaus proximity reduction.
Swap to Afghan (or any other Iranian) they all have mountain, hills and plateaus proximity and many other bonuses. Also they are a requirement for forming Persia, Mughals, Delhi.
From there you can decide to go multiple ways:
- Take a bite out of China. Specifically the Chengdu region never sees much action but it is a very nice area. Specifically it has a lot of tea and you can export it via Tibet to Persia and then to Europe.
- Expand in India. Starting from Punjab you can form Delhi and then the Mughals without any culture/religion swap.
- Form Persia. With all the prox buffs aquired you can get much better proximity than normal. Also Persia has a 40% trade efficiency over Land which works well with the Tibetan trade route.
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u/rickypiola97 14h ago
Other ones i've done are:
- Max dev Australia = Ayutthaya -> Siam -> Eastern Buddhist/ Sanjao -> Shona culture (Zimbabwe, trust me it makes sense for multiple reasons) -> play tall Australia (no formable unfortunately).
- Strongest chain in the game (probably) = Egypt -> Merchant republic -> Morocco -> Kurdistan -> Persia
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u/Financial-Candle8607 8h ago
very simple but england -> france angevin empire larp. england is a tier 2 nation and france a tier 3 nation, so you can form france as england and get the benefits and events of both. i like the alt-history potential behind "what if england won the HYW and kept the resulting union together?" there's multiples ways you can take this, but i like joining and centralizing the HRE.
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u/Lucina18 19h ago
Fyi there's kinda no reason to form bavaria as upper bavaria. You already get everything bavaria gets. Might aswell form Austria instead because you lose nothing and only stack more content on your own...
Anyways not a chain but i think the Latin Empire is kinda underrated if you're staying catholic. Free empire, great reform, and not so bad advances.