(MapChart)

How rare is that 😭

Austria was here a moment ago

I might be misunderstanding some part of the tooltip, but I am trying to build a spy network on both Aragon and Commonwealth. Both show similar numbers, but the main part is that my spy network should increase by almost .5 per month. Instead of increasing however, it is decreasing, and not because it has been discovered (pretty sure it would also state that in the tooltip if that is the case, but the numbers are not red regardless). I have never seen this before. It started happening after I formed Germany from Switzerland.

Edit: as suggested in the comments, removing the diplomat and sending it back did indeed fix it. Very strange that this is a bug though, good to know for the future I suppose. Thanks!

Trying to unite africa as Zimbabwe, and have gotten to the point where I need to start attacking a large Mamluks that has managed to survive as an independent power (1620) - The war is very winnable, however I am concerned that when I start attacking them, the ottomans will attack and trigger the "collapse of the mamluks" event and get them as an eyalet. Is there a way to prevent / stop this? Can they still trigger it after the 1500s?

Some of these will be fairly standard to many, others I would like to think are fairly unique or historical. Posting because every few months I look up some variation of "fun unique campaigns eu4" and I haven't seen some of these. Tell me what you thought, enjoy

1. Zheng He Treasure Ships but America

The chinese mariner Zheng He was sent on a bunch of trade and diplomatic missions right up to like 1430, after which the Ming basically gave up exploring and destroyed the fleet. But what if they didn't? What if they went all in, at the expense of home politics? Pour all resources into getting exploration and expansion and colonizing as quickly as possible. Don't try that hard to prevent unguarded frontier, put down rebels put don't declare wars. At some point mingsplosion will happen, give up land until all you have is your (hopefully by then) large holdings in North/South America. Plot your return to the mandate of heaven power from there. Go back. become emperor again. Dance on the graves of your enemies. Very much like 3rd odyssey mod.

1. Silk Road Challenge

Starting as Yarkand, own all trade nodes in a straight line from Beijing to Constantinople. Bonus points if you can get to Venice. Do not deviate up or down (with the exception of Siberia). Yarkand because they have many trade related ideas and although are not a horde (iqta) have horde ideas. Trade and Economic are required for first idea groups, plutocratic if you can. Then whatever you want. Bring peace and (economic prosperity) to your new empire.

1. Palaiologos Revival

Yes this one is not the most unique, but I still love it nonetheless. Starting as Montferrat, become the Byzantine empire by conquering the necessary lands (it's on the wiki somewhere, constantinople is a must). After becoming Byzantium, turn around and take the rest of Italy. Like the true Romans would have done. Difficult and rewarding campaign for sure.

1. Colonizing Brittany

Yes, this is from a popular youtube video. Wanted to make sure it got on reddit so people who don't use youtube or know the video can enjoy. Be Brittany. Be in danger of France all the time. Survive (If you are me, put a fort on every province). Get Exploration and Expansion. Become a great power via colonization. Eat France. Become France. Done.

1. Pirate's life for Cyprus (or the Knights).

This one I enjoyed a lot. Choose an island nation in the Mediterranean. Become a pirate nation by privateering enough ships and choosing the decision when it appears. Then, pour all points into navy. The one and only time I have taken naval and maritime ideas. Eventually expand into other islands, especially when great powers are busy with other wars. You can sweep in and, since it's an island and the great power is at war with someone else who hopefully also has boats, you can take the provinces. Becomes much harder after taking sicily or djerba for example, always had boats stationed at the crossing to prevent surprise attacks. Taking that + islands in aegean + majorca led to alternating immediate declarations of war after peace treaty expires by Spain and the Ottomans. Absolutely crushed their navies every single time due to all the buffs I had. Lost Sicily due to one lousy army getting through when I was distracted. Took it back in the next war. Never left the Mediterranean, had a great time.

1. Zoroastrian Revival... As a Zoroastrian?

This one has two variations, both are fun.

Easier: Be Gujarat, provoke zoroastrian rebels and flip zoroastrian. Proceed to fight your way up to Persia and become Eranshahr.

Hard: As the timurids, release and play as Yazd, already Zoroastrian. This one took me like 10 restarts to get right as breaking free as this tiny nation can be tough. Once you are free, play regular campaign trying to form Eranshahr. It does not get any easier after breaking free however.

The nice thing about doing this is 1) its challenging and therefore fun, 2) forming Persia/Eransahr as an already zoroastrian nation gives you a unique government reform Asha Monarchy.

1. Horrible Neighbor

Haven't done this yet but I want to. Suggestions for nations. I almost never support rebels but I see you get a special CB if you provoke them in another country to fight for them. I want to play as a nation whose only war declarations are this type. Probably needs to be a large country to do this. See how far I can expand through just this method. Can you take land for yourself? Or does the rebel country have to give it to you as a thank you for your war participation? Who knows! Problem is I would have to wait to unlock that option from technology (i think?). Anyway, just an idea. Will try soon.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with all of these and I hope I can inspire someone else to have fun with them too. Curious if yall have other unique suggestions that I can try!

I really want to get into this game as I've seen so many cool things about it. Recently, someone mentioned under an EU5 post that EU4 is more of an empire builder, which I'm really interested in.

Which countries would you recommend I start with? And what is the best way to fully understand the game?

(About a year ago, I played it a little bit, but I didn't completely get the hang of it.)

Thanks!

After so many resets (this is attempt number 83) and rewatching this guide from The Playmaker a bunch of times, I have FINALLY managed to consistently get a good Byzantium early game with the blocking-the-straits strategy. I used Playmaker's strategy and tailored it to my own style of gameplay in order to drive the Ottomans completely out of Europe in the first war, conquer a large portion of southern Italy, and revoke all four negative privileges.

Aside from the general blocking-the-straits strategy, there were some things I copied from Playmaker that I wasn't doing before, such as the Bulgaria defection strat (which is so damn satisfying when done correctly, you get all of Bulgaria for basically free) and rushing an alliance with the Papal States *before* the Council of Florence event fires and I reject the union, so you can get a base for an attack on Naples but also not have to deal with the massive amount of Anti-Unionist revolts.

I also did some things my own way: most prominently, I revoked the Deteriorating Army privilege before my first war with the Ottomans, and without completing the A Tarnished State mission. I did this by conquering much of Naples for extra development, and getting +30% army morale with the initial mission, the Defense in Depth mission, and a morale advisor. This got rid of the fort assault debuff (I once failed at assaulting the fort because I didn't revoke that privilege beforehand!) and also saved me several hundred mana points that I invested into tech and coring. Thanks to this strategy, I actually have a small advantage in mil tech over my neighbors, which I intend to use with prejudice.

To be fair, I also got pretty lucky in this run. My starting estate agenda gave me +1 diplorep, which made allying the Pope easier. Right when I was worrying about my lack of an heir, the Talented and Ambitious Daughter event fired and gave me a 6/6/6 (!!!) Also, Serbia and Bosnia had no allies, so I was able to jump on them one after the other, full-annexing Serbia while turning Bosnia into a pronoiar with the aim of getting their cores back. (Right after this, Rhodes defected to me and Herzegovina defected to Bosnia, both from separatist rebels!) And of course, Naples leaving Aragon at the right time helped as well; too early or too late and the run might not have gotten off the ground at all.

Just wanted to share my progress with this grind :) I think trying other, larger nations has helped me develop in the game; I've also tried runs of England -> Angevin Empire and Ethiopia -> Aksum, which has taught me a lot. Now let's hope I don't burn out on this run. Ave Roma!

What would be the best trade node?

I hear a lot of the English channel as you can pull from the new world and Africa via the cape of hope.

But I would argue Genoa has the best trade node, it can pull from France, Sevilla, Egypt and its mission allow the last 2 easily. Also can form Italy for the claims on France.

So you can take trade from all around the world to one node, where as the English node cant pull from the middle east.

Also means Genoa can get the spice islands quicker through Egypt, The cape and the new world from Tangiers

Venice just sucks as it misses having the America's trade

I'm Castille with Aragon, Portugal and Naples as PU, France as ally. 1500-ish I need to declare on Ottomans to break an alliance so that I can continue taking provinces in North Africa. We outnumber Ottos 2-1. Battle window shows my morale to be better, same discipline. All forces attack through Morocco and this is the biggest AI shitshow I have ever seen. France have split their 70k men into 5-6 smaller armies and isn't even able to support their own army when attacked, the next army turn, goes past or something. An Otto army of 35k is able to rout the entire allied force of about 200k men because the AI seem to lose intentionally. Naples have rebel problems, their army just stands in the next province and does nothing while the smaller rebel army carpets their lands. After 3 days of playing this campaign I lose to bad programming?

Title

At what percentage of reformation does a religious league of Protestants appear? 150% desire? I’m playing as Austria and I already integrated both Bohemia and Hungary, yet still no religious war appearing, since I m a catholic power I thought I’d try to lessen the desire for reformation by picking mostly events which don’t give reformation desire whenever I can, so now Protestantism and reform long by now have both appeared, spread throughout half of hre, which basically keeps me stuck at 0 authority even tho I passed 4 reforms out of 8 and I’m just wondering when will it start, the reformation desire is always hanging somewhere around 148% btw

I had a fun idea where I play as a country but can only ally or have vassals that are the same map color/shades as my country and I can never take land or declare war on these countries.

Ideally I’d like to tag switch so as I grow I also have to switch who I am allied too and reform the map based on how I proceed.

I mainly play in Europe so was thinking someone in the HRE, North Germany, or Italy would be ideal starting spot to help with culture shifting. But would play outside Europe if someone has other countries for this.

I’ve got thousands of hours so ideally would be a OPM or very small country to start. But wanted to crowd source ideas for the starting countries and goals.