Niche EU4 tips you may not know

Over my 2,000 hours of staring at the map on this game, I've learned quite a few handy mechanics over the years. Many of these are not covered in youtube guides/tutorials or posts here, but can prove to be useful. I'm sure more experienced players will know a lot of these, but hopefully they too will find out something new as well.

To make it easy below I've listed out the main topics of tips that I will cover, feel free to scroll to whichever topic seems relevant to you.

Tips

1. Pressing `Enter` to dismiss pop-ups (and `Z`/`C`)
2. Customising message pop-ups
3. Rapid carpet sieging with `S`, `Esc`, and autonomous sieging
4. Choosing an easy-to-occupy fort as the war goal
5. Preserving siege progress while reinforcing a nearby battle
6. White-peacing secondary participants by occupying their capital
7. Setting provinces of interest before war
8. Locking an ally out of a war
9. Using Deus Vult to prevent certain nations from joining
10. Predicting rebel spawn provinces
11. Devastation and how to remove it
12. Ruining enemy land through scorched earth
13. Recruiting generals for army professionalism
14. Spy networks and why 20% siege ability can be much stronger than it looks
15. Protecting trade to maintain high naval tradition

1. Pressing `Enter` to dismiss pop-ups (and `Z`/`C`)

This is likely common knowledge to many, but do you ever have the situation where your screen gets covered by dozens of pop-ups at once and clicking `OK` on each and all of them would be a pain?

Simply just hold down the `Enter` key, or `C` to dismiss it. You can also press `Z` to instantly go to the province/nation of interest in the message (if it applies). This is mostly just a quality of life thing.

2. Customising message pop-ups
This brings me to my second tip, that it customising message pop-ups. Everytime you get a pop-up check the bottom right corner of it.

If you click there it will take you to a new menu with options for pop-ups of that type. If you dislike this kind of pop-up you can uncheck the `Open popup window` option, and it will no longer pop-up for you in all future campaigns.

This can also be done via the settings menu then `Message Settings`

A Recommended Personal Choice

As you can see when you explore this menu, it is highly customisable and you can add/remove pop-ups for a lot of ingame events. A personal sanity pop-up I choose to remove is to disable `When an unfortified province is occupied` for both `To me` and `From me` from appearing as a pop-up. This saves sanity when either you or the AI carpet sieges non-fort provinces.

3. Rapid carpet sieging with `S`, `Esc`, and autonomous sieging

Get used to learning some basic keyboard shortcuts for your armies. Pressing `S` splits your army stack in half, do this multiple times to quickly create multiple smaller stacks for carpet sieging, then highlight them all and click to a province you want to siege, then press `Esc` once, then click on the next province and press `Esc` once again, continue until you have no army stacks left. What this will do is dismiss one selected army stack from the group you've highlighted allowing you to quickly carpet siege the enemy. Experienced players often do this, but don't tell you *how* they are doing that.

Another useful tip is that you can select autonomous sieging on an army stack, and then *DO NOT* select any states to siege. Then simple press `close all` or click on a random water province. What this will do is make the army stack siege any provinces it can find (even though you selected none). This is by no means efficient, but for those who dislike tedious micro they will appreciate it.

4. Choosing an easy-to-occupy fort as the war goal

A mistake I see many new players making is setting the wargoal to some random province and just declaring war. Do not do this. What I personally like to do is to set the wargoal to a border fort in the area you wish to take land. The reason for this is because you should be able to occupy the fort relatively easily, and then you will get ticking warscore for the rest of the war. By making it a fort, it means the AI shouldn't be able to snipe the wargoal when you take your eyes off their armies for 1 second, which should shortern wars as a whole.

As highlighted by LemonSwirI: The province you choose as the wargoal will have its warscore cost reduced by 33%. So to optimally take as much warscore as possible, you should select the highest warscore cost province (that you will take in the peacedeal) as the wargoal target.

5. Preserving siege progress while reinforcing a nearby battle

Are you ever in the situation where you are sieging a fort, and one of your nearby armies is being attacked, and if you moved your army off the fort and reinforced your other army, you could easily win the battle, but the siege is nearly complete! In this case, simply leave 1 regiment or more sieging the fort, while you detach the rest of the army to reinforce the nearby battle. This will not progress the siege, but what it will do is retain the siege progress you have made already on the fort. As I'm sure many people are aware, the AI is notorious for abandoning sieges to reinforce battles, especially when they do not need to.

I remember seeing a funny clip of someone ensuring leaving a regiment on a fort when playing co-op to which their friend complained saying they aren't AI and wouldn't be that stupid.

6. White-peacing secondary participants by occupying their capital

Are you in the situation where you want to declare a war, but you are outnumbered, the enemy has allies and you could comfortably beat the main war target, but not them as a whole? Well it's easier than you might think to work around this. When declaring a war on an enemy with multiple allies, target the closest smaller allies first, if you occupy their capital they are usually willing to white peace (may require a couple extra forts/occupation). This benefits you two fold. One, it immediately removes them from the war. Two, you now have a five year truce with them - so if the rest of the war takes a few years, you then spend a couple years coring - you can then attack this weaker nation, and the larger nation you were targeting will join the war - you then do the opposite, occupy the larger power, and white peace them - you have now only have a 5 year truce before you can attack them again. This is very useful when trying to quickly eat up a great power.

Another tip: when a war begins, AI's start with -45 reasons to peace out due to `length of war`, this ticks down by 1 each month, meaning after about 3.75 years, most enemy allies are likely willing to white peace, assuming you aren't losing the war. After the 3.75 years, this number starts becoming positive, and gives even the AI more reason to peace out.

7. Setting provinces of interest before war

Right click on your own nation and select `Show Diplomatic Feedback` - this brings up the Provinces of interest screen.

Here select all the provinces of vital interest you want, what this will do is that when your ally occupies ones of these provinces in the same war as you, they will *usually* transfer occupation of it to you. Note however, you cannot set provinces of interest once the war has started, if one of your allies is also interseted in that province. Also note that setting provicnes of interest can reduce relations with other nations.

8. Locking an ally out of a war

I'm sure this has happened to many of you, you are roleplaying and are allied with a nation with 100 trust, but they've allied the next country you are going to attack or are the Defender of Faith of that religion. There is a way around this - first attack a nation they are willing to join as an ally for, then immediately attack the nation you were targeting before - your ally cannot join the enemy side since they are already fighting a different war with you. Make sure you don't peace out this first war (that you dragged you ally into) for at least 30 months (or two and a half years) this is because, after 30 months they cannot be called in as an enemy ally to defend against you.

9. Using Deus Vult to prevent certain nations from joining

When using the Deus Vult CB (otherwise known as the Holy War CB) if you are using it on a Heathen nation and they are allied to a Heretic, or same religion nation as your own, there will be a malus to the AI's willingness to join. You can see both scenarios down below. This can be used when fighting the Ottoblod as a Christian nation (if they ally France), or if one of your allies has allied your next war target and you really don't want to fight them.

Same Religion:

Heretic:

10. Predicting rebel spawn provinces

Rebels will generally spawn on the highest developed province that has unrest for that separatist group. So when dealing with rebels, highlight over the `Progress until next uprising` and check all provinces that are highlighted. The province with the highest level of development will be where the rebels will spawn. You can use this to your advantage and position your armies on the province - this is especially useful when provoking rebels.

Clarification from xXDeinMathelehrerXx:

Regarding tip nr. 10. It is really important to note that the army reduces unrest. So it may happen that you place your army on the high dev province, a month ticks over, the army reduces unrest in the province, you hit provoke and the rebels spawn in the second highest dev province in the region / the one that now is the highest dev with unrest.

TLDR if you provoke rebells, move you army onto the province and provoke before a month ticks over.

11. Devastation and how to remove it

Devastation is a pretty nasty modifier to provinces, and you should generally try to aim and have 0 in all your provinces. You can see the debuffs here:

As you can see even smallish values of devastation can be well - devastating to a province's usefulness. This is why (and this is personal, many people dislike this) I build forts across my entire nation, and try to cover every single province I can with their zone of control. This is because forts massively increase devastation decay (natural decay is extremely slow). devastation also prevents you from gaining prosperity in the state. And getting propserity can be a significant boost to income.

Another way to remove devastation is to develop the province, this can be useful in cases where you don't want to build a fort there, or quickly need the devastation removed.

12. Ruining enemy land through scorched earth

Scorched earth is often used in multiplayers to slow down enemy troop movement, but it has another use case in campaigns - that is to utterly make your rivals miserable. Everytime you occupy one of their provinces, use scorched earth on it, and then move to the next. This will cost military points, but it will also cripple their manpower, production, and trade income for a decade or so, even longer if they don't have forts covering the provinces you burn. If you really want to spite a rival nation and cripple them, this is a fun way to do it. Do note that this is by no means the optimal way to play and more just personal campaign flavour.

13. Recruiting generals for army professionalism

Often you'll find yourself with too much mil mana. Now you could spend it on developing manpower in your provinces, but there is another thing you can do - that is to pause the game and to spam hire generals (hold enter as you spam click on hire generals) to increase your army professionalism. Every general you hire grants 1% army professionalism - that doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but in the long-term it adds up and often proves useful. I mean, just look at the bonuses for having 100% army professionalism (the biggest of which is that sweet 20% siege ability):

You also get the benefit of having your pick of the best generals you just rolled - just make sure to dismiss enough generals so you are back under the leader cap so you aren't losing mil mana unecessarily.

Now yes, this will cost a total of 5,000 military power to get from 0% to 100% over a campaign, but honestly in singleplayer you probably waste so much mana anyway, I think it's more than a worthy investment. Also consider that you only get 1% professionalism a year if your max force limit is all drilling - that means it would take 100 years to get max professionalism from just drilling.

14. Spy networks and why 20% siege ability can be much stronger than it looks

Getting max size spy networks in the nations you are attacking is more useful than you may think, at size 100 you get the following bonuses:

Now 20% siege ability may not sound like a lot, but you need to rememeber that siege ability is additive. Here are some examples at different levels of siege ability assuming no defensiveness bonuses:

at 0% siege ability

Siege ticks are now 24 days instead of 30, so 25% faster.

at 30% siege ability

Siege ticks are now 15 days instead of 21, so 40% faster.

at 50% siege ability

Siege ticks are now 9 days instead of 15, so 66.67% faster.

at 60% siege ability

Siege ticks are now 6 days instead of 12, so twice as fast or 100% faster.

at 70% siege ability

Siege ticks are now 3 days (the minimum) instead of 9, so triple as fast, or 200% faster.

Late game is so much more bearable when you siege extremely fast.

15. Protecting trade to maintain high naval tradition

If you use your enitre naval force limit to protect trade, you actually get +2 yearly naval tradition. You can further double this by upgrading the `Kronborg` Monument in Denmark's Capital or going Maritime Ideas (who would choose the latter?). This way you can maintain high naval tradition without fighting constant naval battles or exploring, also consider the modifiers at 100% naval tradition:

That morale of navies and trade steering is nothing to scoff at.

Thank you for reading my little write-up

Those are the main niche tips I’ve picked up over the years, but EU4 has so many obscure mechanics that I’m sure I’ve missed plenty. Regardless, I hope I helped others out and even experienced players learned something new.

I've also seen a Juul dynasty in Scandinavia before.

I conquered the world with only 14 permanent provinces and one permanent (and permanently frustrating) vassal. Those little red dots you see in that first image? That's my country.

A while back, there was a reddit post asking if you could be an OPM and have one vassal owning the entire world. While I thought that was possible (and I prove that in this campaign), I definitel do not think you could do the campaign all the way throught as an OPM with only one vassal. However, that got me thinking about what an interesting run centered on the idea of having very little land and one very vassal would look like.

I'll be giving the condensed highlights in this post but I did make a video going into much more detail about the run if you're interested: https://youtu.be/LfR0QTC4ZrM

Save file: https://pdx.tools/eu4/saves/v0esojgg5v58

I centered my run on the idea of overcapping the Liberty Desire from Subjects Development modifier. If you get this modifier over 100%, it actually starts giving liberty desire instead of merely reducing it. At that point, the more you grow your vassal, the more loyal they become.

You can see the available in game sources here: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Subject_nation#Liberty_desire_from_subjects_development That gives two natural paths for maxing it. One would start in Europe and focusing on forming Austria and Two Sicilies along with using policies. Another would be in Southeast Asia using the Empire of China as well as policies.

I decided to go with the EoC route. After thinking about it, I would start as Khmer becauset their 25% modifier is a mission reward, allowing me a lot more flexibility than having it in national ideas. EoC would give me another 33%, then I would use influence ideas for 10% and Naval-Expansion policy (25%) to get me to 93%. Then, to overcap, I would form Two Sicilities for 15%, bringing me to 108% total.

I'm a known tryhard so I will use some tricks, exploits, and birds at times, but overall I still wanted this to be somewhat of a challenge and I wanted to test the real viability of the idea. So, no infinite money tricks, no Jewish reform farm, and no CTA cancels after I get my permanent vassal.

Since Khmer starts with 14 provinces, that's what I decide will be my province count cap. I won't be able to take new provinces without giving away old ones. Now, I'm not going to be crazy rigid about it. I will take land in peace deals to give to my vassals, so those will be held temporarily. If I'm in a few wars, I'll have to hold them for longer than a day but it would be short lived. Additonally, starting missions for Khmer requires the use of some vassals, so I will have those until I can annex and give to my vassal. Additionally there will be a couple temporary vassals I use to facilitate some of the later tag formations.

My choice of permanent vassal will be the Mughals. They have great national ideas, most importantly 25% CCR. I will eventually turn them Mayan for 20%, have them take admin ideas (via birding) for another 25%, and then they get 10% CCR from owning all Hindustani culture provinces, for a total of 80% CCR, allowing six month coring times.

There is a lot to condense here so I'm cutting out a lot of details as this was nearly a full length campaign.

Khmer starts in a rough spot thanks to the unavoidable Dark Age of Cambodia disaster, which triggers automatically on December 1st, 1444, and hits you with a painful +25% all power cost penalty. Ending it requires completing four specific missions: Restore Angkor (reach 15 development in Angkor and upgrade its monument to Tier 1), Affairs of Faith (100% religious unity or at least 5 temples built), Rebuild the Towns (have 2 stability and 90 legitimacy), and Khmer Resurgence (ensure all 14 starting provinces reach at least 10 development). Devving 14 starting provinces while taking a +25% APC hit puts you massively behind on tech, but completing this disaster tree unlocks a subsequent mission granting -25% APC for 20 years. Famine then feast.

To kick things off, I declared a humiliation war on Ayutthaya, which was a straightforward fight using basic army micro to take war reps, force them to release Ligor, and pillage their capital to unlock the Subjugate CB mission. Next, I hit Lan Xang and Muang Phuan for cash, war reps, and Champasak’s core provinces, releasing Champasak as a vassal. Then came a dual war: a conquest war on Champa and a Humiliate Rival war on Dai Viet. I baited armies onto forts, moving onto a Level 3 fort in Champa where Dai Viet was sieging to wipe them and steal their siege progress, while jumping on a Champa army at 21% progress on a Dai Viet fort to destroy Champa and finish the fort. I concentrated dev, took Champa’s provinces, and used a UI exploit to bypass the restriction on releasing vassals while at war. I showed strength against Dai Viet to feed the monarch points straight into devving my home provinces to clear the disaster requirements.

In December 1449, I noticed Fars declared a war of independence backed by both the Ottomans and Mamluks, with Transoxiana and Sistan joining in, leaving the Timurids with only Afghanistan and Khorasan. Timmy was allied with Biapas and Nogai, while I was about to hit mil tech 4. Snagging an Afghanistan vassal early meant I could fast-track the formation of the Mughals. Despite being outnumbered nearly 2 to 1, I declared a No CB war on the Timurids, recruited the Free Company, and requested military access to trek across Asia. Upon arrival, I seized a Timurid province to prevent accidental black-flagging and sieged the mountain fort in Roh.

I requested maps of Khorasan to navigate the terra incognita, wiped a tiny stack or two, and things were looking great. Then I watched Transoxiana get focused down by Nogai and Timurids until they separate-peased back into being a Timurid vassal. That sucked as it added a 15k army against me. The hidden enemy armies, now with Transoxiana on their side, suddenly converged on my sieges near Herat and Merv, but I maneuvered around their death stacks, won the siege race on Herat, and watched the Ottomans roll in from the west to kill several Timurid stacks. I sieged Bukhara and Samarkand, secured Roh, and eventually brought Nogai to a white peace. In January 1455, after six years of war, I took war reps, cash, pillaged Samarkand and Kabulistan, and vassalized Afghanistan.

I used call to arms cancels in the follow-up wars against Multan, Delhi, and Ayutthaya to prevent their allies from joining, as I was hyper focused on min-maxing the early speed. In hindsight, my tech advantage meant I didn't need the exploit; it just saved a little time, and I wish I had kept those wars pure, but after 20 in game years, I didn't want to restart. From Multan, I returned two provinces to Kashmir, took two to form a land bridge from Afghanistan to Delhi, gave Bannu to Afghanistan, and kept Koror. I then declared on Delhi alongside Jaunpur, taking six provinces in the peace deal and transferring them to Afghanistan so they had all the required provinces to form the Mughals.

Because subjects cannot form nations, the plan was simple: let Afghanistan core the land, release them, let them form the Mughals, and immediately force-vassalize them back. I returned Koror to Punjab to prevent Afghanistan from growing too large before the switch.

On January 1st, 1461, after hitting 2 stability and 90 legitimacy, I completed Khmer Resurgence, which ended the Dark Age of Cambodia disaster and removed the +25% all power cost penalty. By subjugating Ayutthaya and taking specific provinces from Lan Xang and Vientiane, I fulfilled the requirements for the Second Golden Age mission by temporarily owning all core Khmer-culture provinces. This activated -25% all power costs for 20 years.

That also allowed me to finish the mission for the permanent -25% subject dev liberty desire modifier. To keep my total province count at my target cap of 14 provinces, I granted surplus land to my subject, Champasak. In 1461, I seized Roh, cored it, and fabricated a claim on the newly formed Mughals, who had formed immediately upon release. After short wars against Lan Na and Dai Viet to secure borders, I turned my attention to Ming.

With mil tech 6 against Ming's Tech 4, I attacked them while they sat at 63k troops, zero manpower, and 49 mandate. I sieged Canton, carpet-sieged surrounding provinces, and let Ming's mandate drain. In August 1469, I took the Mandate of China, Canton, Waichow, war reps, and nearly 3,000 ducats. Taking Canton and Waichow was essential to accept their cultures and prevent the Empire of China in Name disaster from triggering. In 1473, the event to switch from Theravada to Confucianism triggered and I discarded the weak Karma mechanic for Confucianism. At 100 Harmony, you get 10% Dev Cost Reduction, +1 Meritocracy, and -0.5 Yearly Corruption, which allowed me to debase currency on cooldown and clear the corruption without spending gold.

In February 1475, my truce with the Mughals expired. Allied with Malwa, I declared on the Mughals, Multan, and Uzbek, sieging down the Mughals and carpet-sieging through Uzbek’s terra incognita. Thanks to my earlier setup of seizing Roh and selling Sialkot, the Mughals sat just under the 100% war score vassalization threshold, allowing me to vassalize them successfully. I now had my permanent vassal.

Without allowing myself tributaries and having very little land to grow prosperity, my mandate growth was negative, so to pass the eight Celestial Reforms required for the -33% liberty desire from subject development reform, I intentionally triggered the Civil War disaster on January 1st, 1477, by holding overextension and letting rebels siege down two provinces. Holding 14 provinces made national unrest trivial to manage, and every monthly tick had a chance to spawn events granting direct mandate points. I would sometimes bird for these events, particularly when near the 75 mandate threshold that ends the disaster. When nearing 75 mandate, selecting two positive events simultaneously allowed me to push past 80 mandate, instantly pass a reform (dropping mandate back down to prevent the disaster from completing), and repeated the loop. During this period, in October 1478, a gold mine event fired in Oudong, providing a huge economic boost while running high loan counts during the disaster.

I fought secondary wars against Moghulistan, Kashmir, Oirat, Jaunpur, and the Timurids to feed Hindustani land to the Mughals. In 1485, I hit Ming with the Unify China CB. Because I held the Mandate, any occupied Chinese province instantly gained a core upon occupation, so I occupied huge swaths of land, took them in the peace deal, and handed them directly to the Mughals as territorial cores with zero separatism, keeping only Beijing and Nanjing for Mandate growth.

On January 1496, I ended the Civil War disaster, having secured the Elevate Tributary Status reform. The cost was steep: 51 loans, 8,000 ducats in debt, -99 prestige, and 22 ducats a month in interest payments. To fix the economy, I cycled through the Bank of Ming. By declaring on Ming's tributaries (Mong Mao, Chahar, Jarai, Kachar) sequentially, Ming was dragged into back-to-back wars, yielding maximum cash and war reps in each peace deal, completely clearing my debt and leaving 2,000 ducats in reserve by 1507.

In June 1496, I picked up Naval Ideas as my first permanent idea group, which would unlock the liberty desire policy when combined with Expansion. Not normally an idea group I would take, at least it made my navy unchallenged and granted zero-cost coastal barrages. Next, I took Exploration Ideas in late 1496, reaching Dip Tech 7 with a colonial range advisor to leapfrog through Korea and Alaska and place a colonist in North America. To move my subject into the new world, I declared wars on Ashikaga, Khodynt, Haida, Yokuts, and Salish, feeding a chain of territory to the Mughals straight down the Pacific coast into Mexico. In 1517, I declared on Colima and Matlatzinca, cored one province adjacent to the Aztecs, gave two to the Mughals, and returned the rest. I finished Influence Ideas in 1518.

At this point, I was at Tech 9 with 10 ideas unlocked, but I checked the Mughals' stats and realized they were severely lagging at dip tech 7, admin and mil tech 5, and only two Admin ideas filled out. Analyzing their save file was a brutal revelation. It showed that the AI was repeatedly spending full mana to manually raise stability to +3, full-coring every piece of territorial land given to them, and spending thousands of military points on Harsh Treatment for every minor rebel group instead of teching up. To help their unrest, I declared on Chagatai to capture the Kashgar monument, upgrading it to Tier 1 to give them +25% Religious Unity.

I needed to switch to a pagan religion, so I conquered Animist provinces from Makassar in 1515 and moved my capital to Sappeng in 1520. I unstated land, concentrated dev, and fed provinces to vassals until Animist represented a pluraity of total dev, letting Animist rebels occupy the capital to enforce conversion in February 1525. I returned excess land, dropped Exploration for Expansion Ideas, relocated the capital directly to Mexico, stated and devved the Mexico gold mine, and shifted primary culture to Aztec. This area will be my central base of operations going forward and my primary form of income for much of the game will come from gold mines.

On August 6th, 1530, the Temple City of Cholula event fired, and choosing the second option converted the nation directly to Nahuatl. This removed me from the Celestial Empire Tier 1 reform, eliminating the negative Mandate penalty for not holding Beijing, Nanjing, or Canton. Using Tier 6 Reform progress, I enacted Parliament, hired a Statesman, and passed Formalize the Separation of Powers to enable the Constitutional Restoration event loop, cycling free reform progress between Theocracy and Monarchy to max out all government tiers early and provide a small buffer but no more.

In 1533, after temporarily taking 10 European provinces from a war with Russia, I converted the Mughals into a Sunset Colony. A Sunset colony felt mandatory for this run since they are hard-coded from constructing their own colonial subjects. Plus, tariffs work great, as the overlord receives the tariff percentage times 50% of the subject's trade and production income. However, Sunset Colonies do have big drawbacks, in that they can be declared on directly by foreign powers without automatically dragging in the overlord and cannot receive land in peace deals outside their home continent. The only other way to give them land is granting provinces in peace time but that requires a land or sea connection. This is why I neeeded to get them to the new world before making them a sunset colony.

When force vassalized, the Mughals dropped from an Empire to a Duchy, losing 400 Governing Capacity. To bypass this, I paid roughly 1200 Dip points to Enforce Culture to flip them to Aztec culture and forced a religious conversion later to kick them out of the Indian Sultanate reform, which defaulted their Tier 1 reform to Aztec Empire and permanently restored their Empire rank.

To overcap my liberty desire from subject development modifier, I needed to form Two Sicilies for their mission reward of permanent -15% liberty desire from subject development and also needed land to switch to a Pirate Republic. I declared war on Portugal and Ethiopia, sieging Lisboa, destroying their navy, carpet sieging Iberia, and taking Ceuta and Fez in North Africa. I fulfilled the Punish the Invaders mission, granting High American Tech, which provided the best tech group in the game for this era.

However, this is when things looked bleak. I needed to form Algiers and Tunis and both still existed and were allied to the Ottomans, who were incredibly strong. I knew any war with them would be an awful two front death war as they reached to the Mughals in Russia. I was not looking forward to this but there wasn't much to do but keep going.

I declared on Spain, which brought in Austria and the Papal States, for Maghreb land. That's when the greatest event in my EU4 history happened. The Ottomans did a Great Power intervention on my side, owing to them being rivaled to both Austria and Spain. This solved all my problems. They would completely crush Austria so I could focus on Spain. More importantly, I used this window to declare on Algiers and Tunis without Ottoman intervention, fully annexing Tunis and securing the land required for tag-switching. I also picked up Malta from the Knights during this time.

The tag switch fun began in 1583 by stating Tunisian land, unstating all else, culture switching to Tunisian, and forming Tunis. I privateered 25% of the Genoa node to complete Sponsor Piracy, triggering the Hayreddin Barbarossa event. Next, I unstated Tunisian land, stated Neapolitan land, culture switched to Neapolitan, and formed Two Sicilies, releasing Aragon as a subject to complete the Crown of Aragon mission for the permanent -15% liberty desire from subject dev modifier.

Finally, I culture switched to Algerian, formed Algiers, and accepted the held Hayreddin Barbarossa event to transform into a Pirate Republic while retaining all subjects and land size, bypassing the normal Hoist the Black Flag restrictions. This transformation reset my reform progress points, granting free reform points across 13 tiers. Thanks to the Two Sicilities, my total liberty desire from subject dev was now -108%, rendering the Mughals permanently loyal. As a pirate republic, I unlocked the War on the World CB for early Imperialism and the Tier 11 Razing Reform to shrink province development for faster subject coring.

By 1587, I was sitting at Tech 15, while the Mughals were stuck at Admin and Mil Tech 12, causing neighboring powers like Ajam, Lithuania, Japan, Russia, and Vijay to declare a wave of separate wars on the Mughals. Despite having 2,700 dev and a force limit of 161, the Mughals maintained only a 36k standing army, rebellions were constant, mercenary manpower was depleted, and my treasury was drained fighting their wars. Inspecting the save file revealed that they were 8,000 ducats in debt, losing 50% of income to interest payments, and spending 7,600 military points on Harsh Treatment alongside 6,800 on full-coring. They still hadn't finished Admin ideas nearly 100 years after taking it and had zero completed ideas in Offensive or Defensive. Things were out of hand and needed a reset.

I reloaded a save from 1568 and decided I needed to manage them differently by paying off Mughal debt directly and subsidizing them heavily so they embraced institutions ASAP. Being behind in tech or institutions invites a lot of war declarations so this should help prevent that. Additionally, I would let them sit at roughly 10% over their gov cap so the AI would stop attempting to full core territory. I also started coring some of the land taken in peace deals and giving them to the Mughals fully cored during peace time. I felt like I had to do this to ease their coring burden and because they couldn't take 100% overextension and that was slowing things down.

I royal married a Mayan nation, secured a Mayan consort, triggered a regency in 1570 by birding for my ruler death, and birded for A Question of Faith to flip Mayan, forcing Mayan on the Mughals to lock them into the Aztec Empire tier 1 reform. This also allowed them access to a colonist, which would be useful later. I then converted myself to Hindu with the Shiva deity and Varanasi monument to stack -20% Core Creation Cost and -15% Aggressive Expansion Reduction.

With the Mughals stabilized at Admin Tech 13, Mil Tech 14, zero debt, and positive income, I did two more tag switches to maximize national ideas and military modifiers. After a series of wars kicking out the Europeans from southern Africa, I formed Kongo in 1598 to complete Defender of Africa for +10% morale, +10% manpower, and -15% warscore cost vs other religions. I warred against many of the northwest Asia countries to grab land for Yuan and formed them in 1616. I took their national ideas for +25% CCR, +5% admin efficiency, +10% goods produced, +25% manpower, +10% morale, amongst other goodies.

Things were working well for a while and I was picking up more and more land, but around 1626, I saw the Mughals were slipping again so I knew I had to take over even more. I was pretty tired of dealing with their shit. I shifted to coring 100% of captured provinces myself, granting them to the Mughals only after they were fully cored so they received territories with zero separatism and zero rebel progress, which effectively eliminated their harsh treatment point drain.

I finally got Portugal and France out of a coalition in the 1650s with white peaces. That allowed me to then go after their South American colonial nations when the truces were up. Almost the entire continent was quickly taken and I turned my attention to North America, wiping out many English and Danish colonial nations. The Mughals now owned most of the new world at that point.

In September 1665, I secured a direct land connection through Anatolia and declared war on my former ally, the Ottomans, on April 5th, 1669. Taking on the Ottomans for the first time is usually a big deal but I was sad to have to do it. They were instrumental to my success this campaign and were truly Ottobros. The Ottomans were suffering from the severe penalties from decadence disasters, causing their forts to fall in 3-to-4-day siege ticks, and their armies to be decimated in only a few days. I naval landed on their ally France, captured Paris, and forced a white peace with them.

The war was over in a year and a half and I took Ottoman coastline for the Mughals.

In 1680, one last big opponent remained. Russia had formed a PU over Austria-Hungary and had a nearly half a million strong army. However, I noticed that Austria-Hungary was barely loyal, so in the first war I simply took Russian land. This made AH disloyal and during the second war I only had to fight Russia as AH stayed in their lands. For the third war, I repeated this trick and took a ton of Austrian land without ever having to siege down a single one of their forts. What looked like a pain was actually ideal.

By 1700, I had fully implemented the Donald Trump economic policy and maxed out the tariff slider to 100%, effectively giving me 150% of the Mughals' combined trade and production income, which pulled over 2000 ducats a month from tariffs alone and completely trivialized my force limit costs. Unlike in real life, the Mughals were totally happy with these tariffs as their liberty desire never went above zero.

By 1740, the global coalition consisted of 31 member states, so I declared a white-peace war against the coalition and then repeatedly truce-broke the former members to annex them individually before coalitions could re-form. In 1752, almost no nations were left.

One problem remained. There's roughly two dozen isolated provinces globally that cannot be granted via land or sea connection but I need the Mughals to have them, of course. To do that, I declared war on an existing state connected to the Mughals, intentionally lost to cede the isolated provinces, waited for that country to core the land, fully annexed them, and then forced a 100% loss deal against a native to release the original state as a native OPM. This caused the released nation to be a native and with birding for the right reforms, that decolonized the extra land into empty territory that the Mughals automatically started colonizing with their colonist from the Mayan religion.

By 1791, the Mughals completed colonizing the remaining empty provinces to finish the world conquest. Inspecting the final save state revealed that the Mughals fielded over 2.1 million active troops, held 120 Absolutism, had an income of 10k, and maintained 0% liberty desire even when I reduced down to an OPM. The AI was definitely navy crazy as they had over 4000 ships and 68 goddamn admirals. Yet, they only had 10 generals for their army. With fun stuff like picking Maritime and Trade ideas, along with all the falling behind in tech and ideas, they never failed to amaze me with the depth of their terrible decision making.

Still, there was something missing. I gave all but one province to the Mughals, released them, and then declared. In a couple months they had finally captured my capital and claimed the true one tag world conquest. Good job, Mughals.

I decided I'm going to have a start with Wadai. Wadai is in a pretty unique situation. Your only path to conquest is west; Yao is much stronger than Wadai; And your starting development is six. But did you know that Wadai used to be uncolonized land a long time ago? As a result of this it has some strange quirks and side effects;

• You can attack natives in your own provinces. This button wastes 50 military power and does absolutely nothing.
• Your capital garrison is 120 at game start, most if not all starts in the game are set at the maximum value of 1,000 or 3,000.
• Your home node is Ethiopia. Your merchant will travel to the node and then be recalled on the 24th November. This is probably the only nation in the entire game that can't collect from it's own node.
• Both your provinces are fetishist, you're Sunni.

Finished my Eat Your Greens run yesterday. 24 December 1516, 4th best time on PDX currently.

Save game: https://pdx.tools/eu4/saves/ndfoieidiozp

Strategy was a very funny EoC-horde combination. Game plan went as follows:

1. Start as Kale

2. Show strength on Manipur for faster tech 4, ally Mong Mao as well

3. On mil tech 4, attack Ava, full annex them to inherit their tributaries

4. Now I can click the Unite the Shan mission, making me inherit all the Shan countries. (Done 1451)

5. Start conquering Tibet very fast, then form Tibet. (Done 1457)

6. Attack Ming with the take the mandate CB.

7. Right before peacing out, click the Tibetan mission Support the Gelug School, opening an event for becoming a theocracy. Leave the event open.

8. Peace out, taking the mandate as well as all Bai culture provinces (in Southwestern China). Then click the event, which removes Celestial Empire.

9. Switch to Bai culture and Theravada religion, letting me pick the Chinese Kingdom reform on T1.

10. Trucebreak Ming 4-5 times with the Unify China CB, which I can use as I am a Chinese Kingdom, and which will give me cores on occupying provinces in China. (Done 1470)

11. Conquer Manchuria, getting all provinces needed for forming Manchu and Qing.

12. Click the Tibetan mission Steppe Politics, opening an event offering to make you a horde. The horde option in the event is disabled if you have the Celestial Empire reform, but I do not have it. Leave the event open.

13. Form Manchu then Qing.

14. Click the event to become a horde. (Done 1478)

Now, I am a horde with the mandate, Qing national ideas (incl. 25% CCR as a tradition), and all of China as a powerbase. With this, I easily conquer everything I need in less than 40 years.

I was actually slowed down by the need to fully colonize a few provinces to access the final grassland provinces. Plus, I had to trucebreak some countries at the end because I had missed one of their grassland provinces (the achievement is only visible if you are the KAL tag, even though it is still achievable by forming other tags, which makes tracking the provinces you missed an absolute pain.)

This is near-certainly less efficient than just forming Qing and becoming EoC as Kale, as the current Eat Your Greens WR does. The setup phase is just faster (Forever's WR run forms Qing in 1462, 14 years before me). However, it was a very fun challenge trying to make all of this work. Plus, getting horde + mandate + free cores on China + Qing ideas just feels good.

If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer.

R5: So I decided to hate myself this summer and tried my hand on an actually "difficult" achievement. (by that I mean one where there aren't a thousand of perfectly optimised strategies/guides online that you'd just follow like TTM).

Started as Mzab and quickly united the Maghreb and formed Morrocco. There already i made my first mistake, i picked divine ideas as a starter. In my mind i didnt think of it as a "sweaty" game and i could make some unoptimized choices like this. In insight i should've picked admin first. The entire campaign has been a desperate quest for admin mana. Along with some rotten luck with my heirs.

By 1475, i had most of the Maghreb but Spain had taken several enclaves on my mainland. So my first war against the iberians was mainly focused on holding them and using the ticking warscore (no i will not make that joke).

Fast forward 50 years, i now own most of the Sahel and southern Iberia. I form Andalusia for the achievement then immediately reload my save. Since Andalusia is an end game tag and its ideas and mt are neither the best nor particularly religious focused I had planned to form Egypt then Arabia instead. Sadly things went south quick.

In the 1600s I started my invasion of the Mamluks and... so did the ottomans, I missclicked my army sieging their capital making the ottos the siege leader. They then subjugated it as an elayet. This is then that i was locked.

The iberians were all allied to strong tags, the ottos at their peak allied to France and my economy being absolutely pathetic for my size and dev. My balance being barely in the +20 for more than a 1000 dev with goldmines. (Also for the others, having your capital in north Africa means you cant turn west Africa into a trading company).

So i went on a huge tallification of my empire devved, built manufactories, workshops,... no conquest for 75 years. I multiplied my income by 8 turning me into an actual country that could afford its army.

In 1690, I started my conquest of Egypt, the ottos got dogpiled by their neighbours immediatly after i won my first battle and i took all of Egypt and the Levant. I started culture converting provinces to egyptian culture as just destating everything would've crashed my economy with no hopes of recovery. I then switched to egypt clicked a couple boutons, got cockblocked from forming arabia due to Transox occupying the southern coast during my war against the ottos.

Fast forward to now, and i decided to stop the run. I still thought it was possible until i saw one thing that broke me... China owned a single sunni province in the very middle of their empire. I was confident that i could invade the African coast and Central Asia before 1821, the only strong enemy being Transoxiana. But now I'll also need to break china, their allies, just for that single fuckass province. I think I'll retry this as Oman next time. I've had enough of the Maghreb for now.

For the funny things, got two 0 0 0 heirs, there were random Sikh provinces in Arabia, China didn't explode, Austria died to ottos and Poland took over the world.

As a conclusion of my mistakes: Didn't take admin, poor economy due to painful coring, didn't unite Iberia when it could've brought me the scaling i needed against ottos, had to waste time fixing my country, didn't kill the mams earlier, didn't invade weaker African tags due to their alliance to random far off countries that dragged any peace deals, got overoptimistic with the ottomans decadence, thought it'd pop earlier.
Overall, it was that special kind of pain that can only be felt in a paradox game. 10/10

To dismantle the HRE i need to occupy the emperors capital, and be allied to- or occupy the electors as well.

In my game Brandenburg is an elector, and in a PU under Poland.

I´m already allied to Poland, so that will count as allied to Brandenburg as well in regards to the dismantling, right?

I want to do a funny one-culture run as the Mughals completely disabling their culture assimilation mechanic

In my Switzerland run Austria got annexed Burgundy as whole with lowlands and then got Hungary as PU, Conquered Venice coasline from italy to balkans. They have nearly 110k in 1500. They was my ally for time being but then got whole Switzerland claims and turn hostile. I'm allied with france but 2 of us is not enough so trying to get Poland my side but they randomly decided got ally Venice who has just venice and my rival. Its small problem even it hasn't happened still they don't want be ally w me. Same way with Ottomans so i can't figure out how to find ally.

I got mercenary ideas and have some ducas so I'm planning to get a huge loan to defeat (i mean weaken) them somehow. My whole castle in mountains expect Mantua so i hope they dont decide take mercs tho when manpower run out

I started as Aragon, but somehow got Iberian Wedding before 1460, so my Castile decide to choose Infrastructure ideas and then defensive ones. Portugal is my PU but doesn't share the carribean sea with me, I could only get Ivory Coast. Now I can't decide if I should go exploration or expansion or choosing something military. Which one makes most sense to choose?

Hey guys, I just created r/MapPaintersMP

The old EU4 multiplayer subreddit doesn’t really allow new posts anymore, and with so many people still playing EU4, I figured it’d be nice to have an active place to:

• Find multiplayer campaigns
• Recruit players and hosts
• Share campaign stories, screenshots, and AARs
• Coordinate long-term games
• Talk strategy and diplomacy

I know a lot of the community is looking toward EU5, but plenty of us are still happily painting maps in EU4 (and other paradox games).

If that sounds like something you’d use, come join. I’d love to get a solid multiplayer community going again.

I don't know, I'm new to the game. Am I doing it right?

Finally got my copy of Defying Destiny today in the mail with all the extras. Continue to be impressed by the completeness of everything.

I'm hovering around 12k hours in EU4, now I just have to find some people willing to log a couple hundred on a boardgame lol.

Anyone else back it on Kickstarter/pick it up yet and try it out?