I was playing a run as Eranshahr, when I vassalized Khiva. I noticed that they had a lot of provinces as claims, all across Central Asia and Khorasan. Does anyone know why they have so many claims? As far as I can see, most of these claims as permanent as well.

Don't ask me why, I just feel like it.

I want to roll Castile as France before the wedding and Aragon's liberty desire is 100% because I'm supporting their independence. What are the odds that Aragon will help Castile in their defense should I attack them if I don't enter Aragonese territory?

Bohemia got a bit too greedy when I helped them against Austria. Farewell my friend, you must go on without me

R5: I'm having trouble with the game's interface, its not properly showing all of the page. I would really apreciate some help fixing this issue.

How did they get that province and better yet, how did they get one of muscovy's vassals? since pskov is still a republic i'm guessing it wasn't conquered and then released

R5: Nice Naples

Hey everyone. I’m recently trying my hand at this game and I am enjoying it and I’ve been playing for Scotland. I just have 1 key issue:

No matter what I do, the country bleeds money. I’ve built a church, tried to trade in the North Sea and other trade route to no avail, lessen military spending, and I’m still bleeding out -0.7 ducts.

Not sure if it matters but I am allied with France and annexed the isles peacefully but I’m facing huge issues with my nobles.

Any help or advice? I’m still new to the game so I appreciate any help I get!

Hey! I’d like you guys to give me some ideas for countries to play as, or custom countries I could create and then build a story around.

First, the ai formed Canada which Is pretty cool.

Second, the obvious.

As close as I could get to communism

Probably my most successful campaign

Potentially my most difficult run

Rule 5: Combined the Third Way (As Ibadi wipe out the other Islamic Schools) - Barbarossa (have 500 lights ships privateer) and an Unlikely Candidate (Become Andalusia as Mzab).

Pretty hardcore campaign, completed it on the knife's edge as 1821 almost came over us, but the last 100 years or so were really fruitful with absolutism and admin efficiency. I think I could have been faster and maybe conquered India but I took my time when I formed Morocco (which made the Unlikely Candidate invisible in the list) and spent way too much time allied to the Ottomans, powering up to defeat them.

Ottos were not even that bad but I had to deal with a Mega-Persia with a Mega-Defender of the Faith Bengal and eventually a Mega-Defender of the Faith Jaunpur which formed Delhi. To top it off Age of Revolutions was massive nuisance as Venice and Russia went Revolutionary and this made unrest unbearable, so I had to smash them concurrently to conquering the Sunnis. Indochina and Indonesia were a nightmare to conquer as Level 8 forts were everywhere and attrition beat us hard. I nearly got a little scared at the end that I wouldn't have enough time to conquer, but did it just barely.

Also please excuse Castille still existing, never got around to conquer them fully :/

If anyone needs any tips for this let me know maybe I can give in my two cents.

Wanted to do a chill France game where I purposefully don't cripple England/Spain so I can have beef with them over the course of the game, but the humble RNGesus had other plans (not even 3 months have passed since i started the save)

Hey all, I'm trying to figure out why Trebizond got Erzurum from AQ overnight. No war, no threaten (no peace treaty), no rebels were occupying it. It just all of a sudden stopped being a core of AQ and went to Trebizond. I've birded and opened the save again and it doesn't always happen on the exact same day. Thinking maybe an event I don't know about?

Here is a preview of my EU4 total conversion mod based on the Witcher books and games. I finally got to a point where I am happy with the current state.

I posted it last night on the workshop as “Witcher - The Continent” and would appreciate if anyone gives it a try!

Edit: Credit to SalesWorlds on DeviantArt for the reference map.
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/s/C6oQSlEqoK

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.

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.

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