Europa Universalis III

[Beskar]

It does? There's some good news; EU3 kicks off at the point where my historical interest peters out and dies so it's harder to find a nation I want to play. To then have many of the ones I'd like to try lumbered with a research penalty is still more off-putting. I'm a researcher/builder/trader at heart, with a sideline in conquest.

I know exactly what you mean. I am pretty much the same and EU3 really doesn't give you options to play the merchant, research, builder game. (Research is really slow, Merchants don't have much chance, Buildings are too expensive)

Not necessarily more historical, just not so "Hur hur, you dumb [insert tech group label] are so stoopid you can't understand court houses, hur hur!" I can understand and agree with limiting access to the obviously western research outcomes (e.g. scientific revolution) but the approach taken by the game is blanket, heavy-handed and outright tedious in its effects on gameplay. I don't want to mod the non-western nations into becoming western nations with a different colour and name either; I want to see them keep some individual flavour.

You can make Japan into a Western tech-group. In a game, I forced Japan into it just to see what happens. The most noticable thing was they suddenly had access to all the area of Europe, but in Europe, they didn't have the FoW lifted from Japan, which I found weird.

[miotas]

One of the difficulties I have with EUII/EUIII, which HTTT won't fix, is the tech groups. I wouldn't mind playing as Japan, China or one of the other eastern countries I find historically appealing. Their tech group makes them unpleasant to play. On the one hand they are missing and/or slow at a lot of the key gameplay, and that makes them less enjoyable to play. On the other the attitude of "Har har, look, these countries were stoopid because they weren't like western Europe, lolz!" is embarrassing. It's not as if we're talking about an isolated tribe of head-hunters complete with stone spearheads ...

I think if any limitations are to be placed on Asian nations then it should only be very late in the game, it was only towards the end of the period covered that china started falling behind Europe. However, while that is very annoying, it was also quite satisfying when I westernised as Japan and started trouncing everyone in the region. All of east Asia is under my control. I vassalised(is that even a word?) all of Indo-china, Indonesia, Manchu and Korea. I've taken a large part of southern China, and forced them to release all their nations, and then I vassalised those nations, as well as China, and now I am colonising Siberia, all the nearby pacific islands, and Australia. I also colonised the islands in the Indian ocean to make it harder for any Europeans to get to Asia, and also to make it easier for me to get to Europe when the time is right.


Now, what's really frustrating is trying to play as an American nation, every time you start to get even remotely successful, some event comes along and causes MASSIVE rebel armies to rise up, and these armies are insanely huge. They are always many times more than your force-limit, and many times larger than the population of the areas they rebel in. Also, because your tech is non existent, you can't get colonists, and can't expand beyond your borders or those of your immediate neighbours. I'm not sure it's even possible to succeed there

[Beskar]

Now, what's really frustrating is trying to play as an American nation, every time you start to get even remotely successful, some event comes along and causes MASSIVE rebel armies to rise up, and these armies are insanely huge. They are always many times more than your force-limit, and many times larger than the population of the areas they rebel in. Also, because your tech is non existent, you can't get colonists, and can't expand beyond your borders or those of your immediate neighbours. I'm not sure it's even possible to succeed there

Yeah, I looked at those. Some of them can't even get research in areas such as government.

If had I to play as one, would probably have to turn a cheat-mode on, to allow you to get colonists, etc.

[miotas]

Yeah, I did that, at one point. Word of warning, if you do that, then make sure you have enough spare cash to fully colonise straight away, otherwise the colonial upkeep will send you either into a massive loans, or insane inflation which can't be reduced due to having no national ideas. I wouldn't mind it if they only had limits on land and naval (and maybe production?), but limiting government and trade is just plain stupid.

[frogbeastegg]

Thing is, I don't precisely want to westernise. At that point you're just playing one of the western countries with a different name and colour, and it throws the local power balance out. I want to play as the local government with courthouses and whatnot appearing at the same rate as western nations, but without the specifically western developments, and I want my neighbours to be doing the same. There's no reason for Ming to be 60% slower to develop something like a courthouse, and there is a reason for them to be slower to develop something like modern scientific method.

Now, what's really frustrating is trying to play as an American nation, every time you start to get even remotely successful, some event comes along and causes MASSIVE rebel armies to rise up, and these armies are insanely huge.

Can't stand events which seem designed to put nations back in their 'place'. "I'm sorry, your addition of a clock to your palace has caused massive riots across your entire nation. Your adoption of foreign sorcery scares the populace! Please enjoy watching most of your hard earned development go down the toilet." Meanwhile said backwards terrified populace has had pocket watches since their great-granddaddy's day thanks to years of heavy research. :sigh:

I also dislike historical events which no longer apply because the situation in-game is different to that of real life. EU3 got rid of a lot of that; in EUII I used to find myself being shoehorned into all sorts of ill-fitting situations because historically that's what had happened.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I know exactly what you mean. I am pretty much the same and EU3 really doesn't give you options to play the merchant, research, builder game. (Research is really slow, Merchants don't have much chance, Buildings are too expensive)

From the HttT demo, most of the western nations' provinces are already full of your opening buildings anyway. Is that true if you start at an earlier time period?

I also didn't have as much trouble being successful with merchants. You just need to zerg rush the nearest center of trade and then put the priority up. As a mostly broke and scorned Bohemia I managed to be at the highest-non monopoly trading level in Lubeck.

[Beskar]

From the HttT demo, most of the western nations' provinces are already full of your opening buildings anyway. Is that true if you start at an earlier time period?

I also didn't have as much trouble being successful with merchants. You just need to zerg rush the nearest center of trade and then put the priority up. As a mostly broke and scorned Bohemia I managed to be at the highest-non monopoly trading level in Lubeck.

I meant with far more than one trading post.

[TinCow]

It does? There's some good news; EU3 kicks off at the point where my historical interest peters out and dies so it's harder to find a nation I want to play. To then have many of the ones I'd like to try lumbered with a research penalty is still more off-putting. I'm a researcher/builder/trader at heart, with a sideline in conquest.

I suppose you need a decent understanding of the vanilla game before you try the mod?

Not necessarily more historical, just not so "Hur hur, you dumb [insert tech group label] are so stoopid you can't understand court houses, hur hur!" I can understand and agree with limiting access to the obviously western research outcomes (e.g. scientific revolution) but the approach taken by the game is blanket, heavy-handed and outright tedious in its effects on gameplay. I don't want to mod the non-western nations into becoming western nations with a different colour and name either; I want to see them keep some individual flavour.

The nations in Magna Mundi have a lot of individual flavor, particularly Japan. Japan actually starts as about 10-15 separate 'nations' representing the different clans, and the main part of playing Japan is succeeding in unifying the country. It can be extremely difficult and I would say it's easily the hardest scenario to play in Magna Mundi... and Magna Mundi is already several notches up on the difficulty level from vanilla EU3. I very much recommend a decent understanding of the vanilla game before trying the mod... and I recommend a decent understanding of the mod before you try to play as any of the Japanese clans.

From what you're saying about the Westernization situation, you may like Magna Mundi's system better. It's called 'Modernization' instead and is met by taking actions which open up your nation to the outside world. Generally, the more actions you take that put you in contact with the outside world, the less your research will be penalized. If you want to learn more about it, I would recommend reading the MM manual; it's got far more detail in it than I could hope to convey effectively. The section that explains Modernization is from pages 132 to 137. If you do take a look, there's also an extensive section explaining the Japanese scenario (Sengoku Jidai) that might be worth reading.

To be clear, Magna Mundi is an extremely complex and incredibly deep mod that radically changes EU3 to make it more historical. However, because it attempts to make the game as historical as possible, it makes a lot of the typical vanilla EU3 gameplay totally impossible. Not only is it actively impossible to conquer the world in Magna Mundi, even conquering Europe would be extraordinarily difficult (I would say it's probably impossible as well). The goals you have to set yourself in Magna Mundia have to be much more historically realistic than those you have to set for yourself in vanilla EU3. For instance, in vanilla EU3, forming Italy as an Italian minor is pretty much guaranteed if you know what you're doing and it can be achieved relatively quickly. In MM, unifying Italy in itself is a major achievement that can take you most of the entire game.

[frogbeastegg]

That does sound a lot better. The manual's outline of the Sengoku campaign makes it sound like a must try for that alone.

Is it easy to run vanilla and MM side by side? Sometimes I'm in the mood for a challenging, limited campaign such as the one you describe for Italian unification, others I want to relax a bit and play in a sandbox where anything is possible if I know how.

Heh, I never get more than middling decent at any version of EU3 before I lose interest thanks to the various things I perceive to be missing or badly done. HTTT looks set to address a lot of those lacks. Right now I haven't played since shortly after IN's release. I'm the same with most Paradox games; in theory I love them, in practice there's always something which means I don't. With EU3 it's basically HTTT's feature list combined with the treatment of non-westerns. With EUII it was the historical determinism and nasty UI. EU: Rome was way too simplistic without Vae Victus, and too unstable with release version VV. CK has a massive great gaping hole in its supposedly historically accurate gameplay, and that makes it intolerable for me. Vicky is awesome and micromanagement hell.

I've been gearing up for some EU: Rome to see if the patches released since last time I tried it have made it stable enough to play, and I've been dabbling with For The Glory's demo. Guess I can tack a EU3 learning campaign on after that. Any suggestions on how best to cover the things I'll need to know for MM?



I read a bit on the EU3 wiki last night, looking to see how western European versus other tech groups works in the current version of IN. It's worse than I believed - westernised nations no longer gain access to westernised units except for in that very narrow window of opportunity after conquering a western European owned and 'civilised' province and before gaining a core on it. So your troops can use western weapons, train hard in western drills, come from a western copy-cat society, and they're still inferior because they're not white Europeans. Disgusting.

In older versions of the game westernised nations would adopt the western unit table and their armies would become identical. The highest levels of Latin units are points ahead of their counterparts in all other groups.

[TinCow]

Is it easy to run vanilla and MM side by side? Sometimes I'm in the mood for a challenging, limited campaign such as the one you describe for Italian unification, others I want to relax a bit and play in a sandbox where anything is possible if I know how.

Very easy. You dump the mods into the mod folder inside the main EU3 folder. Then, when you use the launcher there is a dropdown menu for selecting the mod you want to play. 'Default' is the vanilla game, and all your installed mods will be listed under it. Just select the one you want and click launch. Everything is kept separately, including save games, so you can play the mods without interfering at all with your vanilla game.

Any suggestions on how best to cover the things I'll need to know for MM?

It sounds like you've got enough experience with EU3 and other Paradox titles to go right into MM. I would suggest just doing a MM campaign, but as one of the less difficult nations. Playing inside the HRE can be difficult due to the complex HRE mechanics which require some understanding, so I'd recommend something outside the HRE. England starts right at the Wars of the Roses, which is also a huge pain and not recommended for your first game. Since you're keen on Asia, I'd suggest perhaps one of the larger Indian states. Rajputana is interesting because it's surrounded by Hindu lands that are controlled by Muslim states. That opens up a lot of easy avenues for expansion. The Ottomans might also be a fun nation to try the first time.

[frogbeastegg]

Very easy.

Excellent.

It sounds like you've got enough experience with EU3 and other Paradox titles to go right into MM.

I don't know, it's been ages since I last played any of them and I don't think I ever became that au fait with EU3. I lost interest in it too quickly each time I tried it. For every important facet that I do know there's an equally important one I probably don't. Although I suppose I do understand concepts which will have carried over and the aspects I'm hazier on will all have been changed by the mod anyway. Knowing about badboy's existence is likely to be more relevant to MM than knowing how to make money.

I would suggest just doing a MM campaign, but as one of the less difficult nations. Playing inside the HRE can be difficult due to the complex HRE mechanics which require some understanding, so I'd recommend something outside the HRE. England starts right at the Wars of the Roses, which is also a huge pain and not recommended for your first game. Since you're keen on Asia, I'd suggest perhaps one of the larger Indian states. Rajputana is interesting because it's surrounded by Hindu lands that are controlled by Muslim states. That opens up a lot of easy avenues for expansion. The Ottomans might also be a fun nation to try the first time.

I'll play any nation if it makes a particularly good introduction. I'm so disinterested by the period covered that Sengoku Japan and Wars of the Roses England are the only settings which interest me, the rest I can take or leave according to gameplay. The East is more appealing because I know much less about them, it feels like a cleaner slate. With countries like China I don't feel like I need to go and colonise America, set up a trading empire, or whatever. I can do whatever takes my fancy.

[seireikhaan]

Well, I ended up deciding to get HTTT, and thus far I'm fairly pleased. I still need a couple of full campaigns to get a better grasp on everything, but so far things have been interesting, to say the least.

A few notes:

1) France is looking like they're still an unstoppable juggernaut. Starting from 1399, its been nearly 100 years and they've annexed nearly all of the vassals and look to be ready to whack someone upside the head real hard here pretty soon.

2) Playing as Denmark, I've been enormously frustrated by efforts to unify scandinavia. Sweden in particular is troublesome. Every tie relations got even decent, they'd start insulting me left and right to drop relations to -100. Even more aggravating, at one point they declared their own king and went to war with me, Norway, and Lithuania. Fortunately, I was able to put them down after a lengthy struggle, and forced them to acknowledge my line as titular ruler of sweden. However, they're at the insulting business once again, and it seems the game just flat out will not let me inherit sweden. Norway is being much more docile, on the other hand.

3) On casus bellis. There's no longer a stability penalty for joining an ally in an aggressive war, but only if the ally had a casus belli. Or, at least, that's what I think is going on. Either way, there's been some pretty large ally wars as a result. Penalties still apply for joining an ally against someone you have a truce with, good relations, etc....

4) Colonization is just starting to pick up, Portugal's got 2 provinces in Brazil. Its late 1480's, so that seems about right. We'll see, however, what sort of progress gets made as the game progresses. I'll be getting cores on two west african provinces that I took in a war, and hopefully there's still good colonization choices by then.

5) Thrones- player can claim the throne of anyone they have a royal marriage with, nothing new. What is new is the function of it. Now, instead of granting casus belli(which I found a tad redundant, since you took stability penalties for the marriage), if the king dies of the throne you claimed, there's a solid chance of union if he lacks a decent heir(weak heirs can be overridden, I believe, but its much simpler if there's no heir at all). Maybe just me, I don't seem to be getting a ton of heirs myself, and none of them are all that stellar. There's even a notice at the top of the screen for weak thrones in the area. Of course, this is leading to some interesting shenanigans.... Muscovy and Lithuania went to war over the throne of Brandenburg, who was a pretty strong power in east germany, having annexed parts of poland and all of Pommerania. In the end, both fizzled however, and Brandenburg got a new heir.

[TinCow]

2) Playing as Denmark, I've been enormously frustrated by efforts to unify scandinavia. Sweden in particular is troublesome. Every tie relations got even decent, they'd start insulting me left and right to drop relations to -100. Even more aggravating, at one point they declared their own king and went to war with me, Norway, and Lithuania. Fortunately, I was able to put them down after a lengthy struggle, and forced them to acknowledge my line as titular ruler of sweden. However, they're at the insulting business once again, and it seems the game just flat out will not let me inherit sweden. Norway is being much more docile, on the other hand.

I believe that's normal EU3 behavior. AI junior partners in personal unions try to break away with low relations when you are militarily weaker than them. In order to keep them in line, you have to have a larger army than they do. I believe this explains why Norway and Sweden are acting differently for you. If you increase your army to be larger in size than Sweden's they might start behaving themselves.

[seireikhaan]

I believe that's normal EU3 behavior. AI junior partners in personal unions try to break away with low relations when you are militarily weaker than them. In order to keep them in line, you have to have a larger army than they do. I believe this explains why Norway and Sweden are acting differently for you. If you increase your army to be larger in size than Sweden's they might start behaving themselves.

Right, now to find out how to make that possible. They've got two stacks of 16k man armies. I'd run myself into the ground trying to do that.v Times like that I curse AI bonuses.

[Beskar]

1) France is looking like they're still an unstoppable juggernaut. Starting from 1399, its been nearly 100 years and they've annexed nearly all of the vassals and look to be ready to whack someone upside the head real hard here pretty soon.

I haven't had much trouble with them at all. The only nation which always seems to grow like wild-fire is Castile. In every single game, they always annex Iberia, Morroco/Whole of North Africa, then conquer the Maya/Cherokee/etc.

2) Playing as Denmark, I've been enormously frustrated by efforts to unify scandinavia. Sweden in particular is troublesome. Every tie relations got even decent, they'd start insulting me left and right to drop relations to -100. Even more aggravating, at one point they declared their own king and went to war with me, Norway, and Lithuania. Fortunately, I was able to put them down after a lengthy struggle, and forced them to acknowledge my line as titular ruler of sweden. However, they're at the insulting business once again, and it seems the game just flat out will not let me inherit sweden. Norway is being much more docile, on the other hand.

Yeah, I struggle with uniting Sweden. Luckily, Sweden ended up in a big rebel problem and I had to resort to take land by force, unfortunately, not been fully successful. Just need to grab Stockholme so I got the cores.

3) On casus bellis. There's no longer a stability penalty for joining an ally in an aggressive war, but only if the ally had a casus belli. Or, at least, that's what I think is going on. Either way, there's been some pretty large ally wars as a result. Penalties still apply for joining an ally against someone you have a truce with, good relations, etc...

It is also quite annoying that if you refuse to join in an aggressive war, your alliance gets broken.

4) Colonization is just starting to pick up, Portugal's got 2 provinces in Brazil. Its late 1480's, so that seems about right. We'll see, however, what sort of progress gets made as the game progresses. I'll be getting cores on two west african provinces that I took in a war, and hopefully there's still good colonization choices by then.

Castile has always ruled the colonies in the games I have played.

5) Thrones- player can claim the throne of anyone they have a royal marriage with, nothing new. What is new is the function of it. Now, instead of granting casus belli(which I found a tad redundant, since you took stability penalties for the marriage), if the king dies of the throne you claimed, there's a solid chance of union if he lacks a decent heir(weak heirs can be overridden, I believe, but its much simpler if there's no heir at all). Maybe just me, I don't seem to be getting a ton of heirs myself, and none of them are all that stellar. There's even a notice at the top of the screen for weak thrones in the area. Of course, this is leading to some interesting shenanigans.... Muscovy and Lithuania went to war over the throne of Brandenburg, who was a pretty strong power in east germany, having annexed parts of poland and all of Pommerania. In the end, both fizzled however, and Brandenburg got a new heir.

Ohh nice, I never knew that part. I will have to incorperate that now.


There are also some things I noticed which produced some interesting results:

Uniting Italy as Papal States now gives "Kingdom of God", unfortunately, it doesn't actually rename the Papal States as that (I would love it to, mod please!) but the option does all but name does that.

You can unite the HRE as one nation. In one game, I managed to do this, I was playing as Austria and been pretty much lucky in winning a bunch of wars for masses of Imperial Authority (including releasing the annex'd french states making them HRE pawns). Pretty much all till 3rd last one gives nice bonuses to you if you are the Emperor, with the 3rd to last one making it that you are always the emperor (which starts making the HRE into a state). When you do the "make all the states into your vassal", this goes to all the nations and those nations pretty much choose to become a vassal or declare war on you. So you can end up in a lot of wars if you are unluckly, however these wars give you a large amount of imperial authority if you win them, which allows you to form the HRE state. However, the problem with forming the state is that you end up with tons of uprising and a very high revolt in all your provinces, especially nationalist one.

A gripe about the Holy Roman Empire is that now it costs one magistrate to get a province to apply to join, and everytime I have done this, the AI Emperor has always said no, even if at 200 relation with them. (makes no sense at all, probably needs fixing.)

[TinCow]

Right, now to find out how to make that possible. They've got two stacks of 16k man armies. I'd run myself into the ground trying to do that.v Times like that I curse AI bonuses.

This is why I believe the most common method of uniting Scandinavia as Denmark is to simply let Sweden break the union and then conquer them the old fashioned way. Norway is relatively easy to inherit and can help you in the conquests... it's Sweden that's hard to absorb without warfare because of its size.

[seireikhaan]

After countless rage-quits, I officially declare the Timurids to the most anger-inducing faction in HTTT. Now, they've always been pretty tough on the get-go, but now the game's just kicking you for trying to play them.

All the old reasons for their insane difficulty still there: tribal gov't, lots of enemies, need to work way to Delhi to escape tribalism, lots of unfortified provinces, lots of poor steppe provinces, lots of nationalist rebellions.

Now, to top it all off: The heir to Timur is locked in to the start setup. And he sucks, horribly. He gets three different "incapable ruler" tags. Can't recall two off the top of my head, but the last is utterly brutal: -15 to infamy limit. In other words, you simply can't conquer at all, under him, and if you conquer under Timur, you may well get punished horribly for it by the heir.

Basically, unless you manage to get the royal line overthrown while still keeping nationalists under foot, you're just not going to get the start needed, imo, to get a start on forming the mughals that would enable you to keep competitive with the west.

Lastly:

My game was soooo promising! Union with the Mamelukes, if I only hadn't been undone by rebellion!

[Greyblades]

I got into this game afew weeks agon and after 100 years as England I'm at war with France and I'm stuck in a stalemate, france holds calais and I hold connaught (which france inheirited and I need to take Ireland). I cant do anything as every time I try to invade they pull a 30000+ man army out of nowhere and every time they invade I sink them before they can even get out of the harbour. And as such I cant get a big enough advantage to be able to get them to even accept a white peace. I have no idea what to do and the constant rebellions from that blasted Irish province is getting annoying.
Edit- I got bored and quit that run. The war had lasted 64 years without anything of merit happened apart from 3 kings died of age and seeing as france didnt want peace I quit.

[TinCow]

I got into this game afew weeks agon and after 100 years as England I'm at war with France and I'm stuck in a stalemate, france holds calais and I hold connaught (which france inheirited and I need to take Ireland). I cant do anything as every time I try to invade they pull a 30000+ man army out of nowhere and every time they invade I sink them before they can even get out of the harbour. And as such I cant get a big enough advantage to be able to get them to even accept a white peace. I have no idea what to do and the constant rebellions from that blasted Irish province is getting annoying.
Edit- I got bored and quit that run. The war had lasted 64 years without anything of merit happened apart from 3 kings died of age and seeing as france didnt want peace I quit.

France is very difficult to beat, even for England. The best way to handle them is to go after them when they're weak. Wait until they get into a war with another major power or two, particularly Burgundy or Castile/Spain, then attack them while their armies are elsewhere. Storm a few provinces quickly and blockade them to run up their war exhaustion. Use spies to lower their stability. Run from their big stacks and stomp on any small stacks you see. With a bit of luck, skill, and naval dominance, they'll start to get overwhelmed by rebellions and you'll be able to defeat them. Smashing France also takes several wars. Generally, the first war should force them to release their current vassals and to give independence to nations they've already annexed. That will make them much easier to carve up later on, as France itself will be a lot weaker, and you'll be able to eat the smaller independent French states without fighting France itself.

If you're already in a war you can't win, you need to end it. If they won't take a white peace, offer them some cash to see if they'll go away without you having to sacrifice a core or lose a province. During a very long war, they will usually accept this. Before you make the peace offer, make sure you blockade every port you can as it will help a great deal with your war score.

[Greyblades]

I dont want to take france out I just want to force it to give up its irish provence. I loaded an earlier save to before they think I "cant be trusted even to die." so maybe they will be more recipient.

[TinCow]

I dont want to take france out I just want to force it to give up its irish provence. I loaded an earlier save to before they think I "cant be trusted even to die." so maybe they will be more recipient.

What version of the game are you playing? It the most recent versions, if you hold a province long enough during a war you will eventually be given an event to take control of it even without a peace treaty.

[seireikhaan]

What version of the game are you playing? It the most recent versions, if you hold a province long enough during a war you will eventually be given an event to take control of it even without a peace treaty.

I believe that's just in magna mundi. I don't believe there is such an event in vanilla.

[Greyblades]

Yeah I lost calais that way but waiting 64 years didnt work and waiting that long for a second time seemed tedious so I bribed them off after reloading and changed mission.

[Beskar]

Tin Cow is right, it is a chance for it to happen. I had it done before when I was invading Ming as Japan (which was taking some time)

[miotas]

Perhaps you could try stirring up rebellions in that irish province and then take them after they become independent.

Another option is getting military access to a nation bordering france and then just keep invading, taking a province or two and then retreating before they can raise an army to retalliate. It doesn't matter if they take the province back, because pretty soon their war exhaustion will be through the roof and they will be up to their eyeballs in rebellions. I've used that tactic to great effect against many a superior foe.

[al Roumi]

I'm playing a game as the Swiss, making the most of Free trade by dominating all COTs except Sevilla and Lisboa whilst absorbing bits of Lombard Italy as I can. I'm kind of annoyed though, being an Administrative republic (which is the only real advantage of playing as the Swiss) already means I can't partake in any of the HRE and Royal Marriage shenanigans, but I also seem to be getting zero Cassus-bellis other than excom/crusades & alliance ones. Maybe its just the Swiss and a freak lack of game events but having played HTTT games as the Ottomans and Castille, i'm surprised at the complete lack of border friction and other cassus-belli granting events i've had...

I might jack this campaign in and start an Austria one to see what the new HRE changes are like.

[TinCow]

I'm playing a game as the Swiss, making the most of Free trade by dominating all COTs except Sevilla and Lisboa whilst absorbing bits of Lombard Italy as I can. I'm kind of annoyed though, being an Administrative republic (which is the only real advantage of playing as the Swiss) already means I can't partake in any of the HRE and Royal Marriage shenanigans, but I also seem to be getting zero Cassus-bellis other than excom/crusades & alliance ones. Maybe its just the Swiss and a freak lack of game events but having played HTTT games as the Ottomans and Castille, i'm surprised at the complete lack of border friction and other cassus-belli granting events i've had...

I might jack this campaign in and start an Austria one to see what the new HRE changes are like.

You can always use the old school method: warn/guarantee every nation around you. You'll get into a free war eventually.

[White_eyes:D]

You can always use the old school method: warn/guarantee every nation around you. You'll get into a free war eventually.

Just make sure your the "Alliance Leader" or you well most likely waste your time...(It happened to me a few times...What is with the A.I.'s and having a white peace just before your are coming to a favorable peace deal?)

I mean are they hard-coded to detect when they think you well cut and run?

[TinCow]

Just make sure your the "Alliance Leader" or you well most likely waste your time...(It happened to me a few times...What is with the A.I.'s and having a white peace just before your are coming to a favorable peace deal?)

There is a way around that. When you get an offer to join a war due to a warning or guarantee, you also get a temporary causus belli. If you think you won't be alliance leader, you can just declare war on the target nation independently. You won't get the benefit of warscore from the actions of the nations in the other alliance, but you also won't have to worry about getting cheated out of a peace deal.

[White_eyes:D]

There is a way around that. When you get an offer to join a war due to a warning or guarantee, you also get a temporary causus belli. If you think you won't be alliance leader, you can just declare war on the target nation independently. You won't get the benefit of warscore from the actions of the nations in the other alliance, but you also won't have to worry about getting cheated out of a peace deal.

But you lose some Prestige.......I recall guaranteeing everyone around me as England....it made all my prestige which was 25 or so....to -5 when I choose not to....I didn't want to face Castille and France since I didn't have enough tech to blockade yet.

I only did it to make relations go up....not to fight a war I knew I would lose.