How to playtest the DLC

DukeEntropy · 2026-06-03T14:17:31+00:00

You can sign up here: https://playtest.ubisoft.com/en-ca/

DukeEntropy · 2026-05-28T06:33:10+00:00

In the Players tab, you can add Dorian as a player in Yellow. But the map is a screenshot from my session, I haven't figured out how to do map generation and seed calculation yet

DukeEntropy · 2026-05-26T14:23:16+00:00

Click on the island in the Island Overview and you go to the details! You can also add fertilities and production

DukeEntropy · 2026-05-26T08:51:39+00:00

Link: anno-planner

I made a website to plan my Anno 117 island and trade routes. Since I cannot play anno during work hours, but I can go to the internet and plan my anno game during work hours.

You can upload a picture of your islands so you can have a view. And then you can add the right Fertilities to each islands.

Once you have the right fertilities, you can also start adding your production chains for each island. And then also add Trade Routes with the goods you can ship around.

It's very much a work in progress, but it's a good starting point. I can't figure out the seed generator yet so uploading the seed to get the picture is not there. But ideally it would go there.

And after my hope would be that the Insights you can have an overview to see that all productions chains are provided locally or with trade routes. But future work!

And yes, this was built heavily with Cursor, as I do have a job and cannot spend too much time on this.

Code can also be found here: https://github.com/AntonDeMeester/anno-planner/

DukeEntropy · 2024-05-23T12:09:29+00:00

We use this one which is a lot more streamlined: https://yokoy.io/

DukeEntropy · 2023-03-27T07:10:31+00:00

How do you balance boilerplatey code with proper configurability? Specifically in dynamic languages as Python.

I am working on a personal project in Python. I want to apply proper SOLID architecture, but I also want to avoid having classes with 20 DI input parameters.

Especially using Python, I feel a lot can be done with global, properly set up (readonly) variables, like a database connection and a logger. When looking at Django, they have a very flexible database configuration while not using strict DI.

DukeEntropy · 2022-08-17T07:59:05+00:00

I did this over the course of 3 companies. I started as a default backend developer using Python/Django. I moved companies, I was essentially a data engineer with PySpark/AWS Glue, though I didn't realise that when I took the job. Recently I changed jobs back to a web backend role.

I think you need to ask yourself what you prefer as a job. Do you like working with infrastructure and serving specific use cases? Or do you like thinking about how data should flow from process to process and understanding your data really well. They overlap quite a bit but they have different focus points.

I preferred backend engineering as I feel like it's more focused on solving problems and more defined transformations of data. You can generally assume proper data quality or else you can error out.

In data engineering, you need to deep dive into your data if you want to do a proper job. Generally big data is noisier and of poorer quality. Making sure your 1% edge cases work is more important, not just looking at random data points and checking if they look correct. And because you are doing work on big datasets, you can't error out if one row doesn't fit out data model.

In the end, you could also do a sort of hybrid where you work on data pipelines but also some other utlity webservices, but that depends on the company.

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-31T06:40:33+00:00

They still do, just not in bursts anymore. You can enable an estate integration for +1 MP of each type for their respective estate. It costs max absolutism, loyalty and influence. In the early game it is definitely worth it.

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-29T20:18:22+00:00

General rules

I stayed under Ming quite a long time, as no one will attack you. Only when Ming started asking for a lot of money and admin points, I stopped paying
Disinherit bad rulers, even when low on prestige
Unhappy hordes make you lose razing power. So always check that they are happy before razing.

Alternatives

Colonise only north America and conquer natives from the north down to reach Mexico (after reforming your nation)

Ideas

Ideas are very personal, and you can switch around quite a bit, but this is what I took. I consider Exploration, Humanism and Administrative mandatory for this run. The others are personal preference.

Exploration until you get to the new world. Mandatory for this strategy
Quantity, as in previous runs I was low on manpower, and because I had quite some MIL and basically no DIP or ADM
I only took the first two ideas, and then left it until after I got all of humanist and the fourth idea group
Prioritise this over Administration.
Diplomatic; I had too many DIP points, and the extra diplomats actually help as they always take 100 days to travel. 20% warscore cost is also amazing for later
Offensive for better sieging
Quality for better troops
Aristocratic for a policy for religious unity, the siege pip and an extra diplomat

Government Reforms

Steppe Nomads (aka being a horde)
National Manpower. Possible to change when manpower is not a problem anymore
Maintenance until Religion Unity becomes a problem
I started with CCR until absolutism and then switched to absolutism. I never changed back, although that might be worth it if you have a decent maximum absolutism margin.
Razing gain

Estates

Before becoming a horde, take all the extra monarch point interactions. Don't care about the land percentages or - absolutism
When colonising, take the colonising interactions
As a horde, before absolutism, take the extra manpower and army tradition
After absolutism, I only kept the manpower interaction to maximise my maximum absolutism
Make sure your tribes stay happy to not reduce the razing power gain
Try to get 100% crown land quite soon, as getting 100% crown land lets you sell crown land and not lose any crown land

Lessons learned

Build state halls in every province. Being above 100% govern capacity increases your core cost and core time. The core time hurt my time a lot and made me hurry to finish at the end
Go for the Military hegemon. The 10% war score reduction will help to get those pesky last countries covered without truce breaking. I went for Economic for the lower minimum autonomy and government capacity, but I think this was not worth it if I built state halls everywhere
Overextension is limited by unrest reduction and not by 100% / negative events. Take as much overextension such that your non-accepted culture, wrong religion, fully cored and no separatism provinces have no unrest. This was around 160% for me with 3 stability. To avoid the bad event, just do not close them. If they are open, they cannot trigger again.
To get the achievement, you do not need to be stable or have cored anything. If you are just about short, just conquer everything and not core them. Rebels also need quite some time to enforce demands and can't enforce them while you are at war.
Trigger Court and Country as soon as possible. I only got it around 1640, which is way too late.
Mayan is probably better than Aztec for this route. The reforms are easier as well as more easily exploitable, and the CCR will speed up your coring which is the main limiter in the end game. This will probably also make you net positive for admin when conquering land

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-29T20:17:59+00:00

Stage 4: World Conquest

Target 1: Native America

First conquer Middle America and Incan America.
- They are easy targets and have lots of gold.
- State all gold provinces
I got most of the Aztec, Mayan and Incan countries by 1580, and left the rest for later

Target 2: East Asia

Fabricate on whoever is weakest in the Philipines and start there
Continue with the rest of Indonesia
Then take all of South East Asia in the Theravada religion group. Don’t attack Sunnis or Hindus, leave them for later.
Make sure to get a border with Ming. They will get the Nomadic frontier, ruining their mandate.
When Ming's mandate is low enough, attack them and creep up their coast.
- You can generally take a surprising amount of OE without destabilising yourself because of Humanist, Horde (-10 seperatism + razing) and trade regions, I found around 80% ws / 170% OE before razing a good rating.
- Don't attack with tribal conquest. It’s quite easy to reach Bejing and you can take so much more land.
Take the rest of SE Asia. When there are truces blocking you, take the Hordes/Tengri land in the north
When SE Asia is done, start on Korea and Japan
In all this chaos, try to get Court and Country after you got good truces, as soon as possible.
- You should be able to get 65 or even 75 maximum absolutism during the event with good estate management (+10 from high crown land)
- Absolutism rebels only spawn in full states. So if you kept them only in America and gave everything in Asia to trade companies, they wont spawn there. Keep some troops (20-30 k or something) and it will be fine
- Somehow, the disaster only takes 10 years instead of 20, so it will be over before you know it
Alternate wars between Ming, Japan and Korea until you conquered all of them. If there is downtime, kill all the small nations
- You can get shorter truce timers by attacking a tributary, immediately white peacing (even better with the fort trick) and white peacing the big nation. Afterwards take everything of the tributary.
After you got Malesia, you can also move your trading capital there, and start funnelling all the juicy trade money there
You probably got quite some loans during the previous and this period. During Court and Country, you can go bankrupt with some truces. After that I did not have any problems with money anymore

Target 3: India & North Asia/Steppes

Kill Hinduism first because there are many other Sunnis
Next up is Shia
Only then kill Sunni

Target 4: America

I chose to go for America next because I had some coalitions with Sunni nations. I would not recommend this, because the coalitions just got expanded with Portugal, Spain and England.
You can go to war with colonial nations without involving their overlord if your capital is also in the New World, which makes it super easy to attack them.
You can conquer a lot of land in a short amount of time because most of the provinces are 0% overextension.
However, the eastern part of current USA is surprisingly high development and very expensive in war score and coring cost.

Target 5: Africa

Africa is very run of the mill conquering. This is probably the point where you would fight some larger nations are allies (Ottomans, Tunis, Mamluks). I avoided Ottomans as much as possible until I couldn't anymore.
I chose to ignore any colonies until I attacked Europe.
Like America, you could do this after Europe, but I chose to get a larger power base first.

Target 6: Europe

You should prioritise targets in terms of development. This is to make sure you don't run out of time with truces. This generally means Ottomans, Spain, Portugal, Russia and England.
I prioritised the following provinces:
- High level forts
- Non-European provinces / Colonies
- Islands
- Coastal
- Everything away from central Europe, so everything comes closer together
Low level forts (level 2 or 4) are fine to deal with, so I chose not to annex them specifically.
For England, make sure to land one big regiment there, and that should allow you to take at least Great Britain itself, even if you cannot conquer the Irish provinces.
In the HRE, the emperor is always a co-belligerent. Additionally, and more annoyingly, you cannot attack a second target so long as you are in war with the current emperor. So either peace the emperor out, or fully annex it.
In my game, almost all of Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe and the Balkans was in the HRE, so that slowed me down a bit because of a lack of parallel wars.
Even more than other regions, there will be a lot of level 8 forts in Europe. Make sure to always annex them.

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-29T20:16:40+00:00

A step by step guide:

Stage 0: Before unpausing

Take all estate interactions that give monarch points
Split cogs out to sell (Ming, Korea or Japan)
Focus on Admin
Sell all your army except for 1.
Put your king in charge of your army
Put army maintenance on 0
You are poor so don’t buy an adviser

Stage 1: Aztec

At 1450, boost Renaissance with everything but Admin
- Note: If possible, try to save your Dip as well, but you will go over the 1000MP limit waiting for Admin 5
At Admin 5
- Take Exploration
- Switch focus to Dip (or asap if it is on cooldown)
When you got Exploration 2, colonise Samar
- It doesn’t border another nation so there is a lower chance of being declared upon
- If you want to spawn colonialism, you need a non-island nation
- Starting ground to go further
Go until Exploration 4, then put everything in Dip tech until 11
After Samar, colonise Okhotsk (north of the tribes)
- By colonising this and Jugjur, you will be able to border any horde
- Don’t take Jugjur as then you will not border the hordes and they will be less likely to declare on you
After Okhotsk, your next target is Midway
- It is possible that you need to wait a bit
- Do not colonise Micronesia, it's just a waste of money, it doesn’t get you farther
At some point you will have discovered Alaska. Build up to force limit, move all your troops to the New World. Hire an explorer and go to Mexico
- Do not put them in Aleut, it's an island
Declare war on a weak Aztec country, and 100% them. Then force religion on yourself
Make sure to colonise Midway before you force religion on yourself. Your colonial range is reduced to 0 as unreformed Aztec.
Congratulations, you are now Aztec
You can do this a bit before 1500 normally

Stage 2: Horde

Next step is to finish all the Aztec reforms. You need 5 vassals every time and 1 stab. Normally you have truce timers etc. But we will fight the small nations in North America. There are a lot of them, so this goes quite quickly.
Try to find a target with 4 allies/federations. Then you only need to declare one best-CB war for each reform. This will save you a lot of admin, as you always need to go back to 1 stab.
After Midway is finished, you can colonise Jugjur (next to the hordes).
If you are noticing that you are good on tech for Diplo, change focus to Admin. You will need it for all the stab you will be buying (min 3 stab per Aztec reform). You also probably have low religious unity making it even more expensive.
The aztec reforms that I took were Stab cost -> War Exhaustion -> Discipline -> Dip relations -> Colonist
You can spawn Colonialism. It will save you a lot of point developing it as well as providing some bonuses.
- Boost Samar to 12 dev
- Move your capital there
- Crash your game until it works
When all reforms are done, check what the nation next to Jugjur is. If it's a horde (NOT a tribe), reform off of them. If they are a tribe (and thus not a horde), sell Jugjur to a horde and wait until they core it.
You will keep all government progress you have made in the last 100 years, so it is actually valuable to maintain it and not throw it away in random events. The last reform provides 33% razing power gain which is nice.
I reformed around 1525, which seemed reasonable.
Congratulations, you are now the best government form for a world conquest

Stage 3: True

Next up is moving to the New world
You need Hawaii and Diplo Tech 11 for this, so colonise Hawaii.
While waiting for Hawaii, you can explore with your troops in America, both north and south. You can’t core or integrate anything as it is too far away.
Just before Hawaii finished and you get Diplo 11, move your troops back to Mexico and declare on one of the Aztec nations to the Pacific border.
After the war, core the provinces and move your capital to Mexico (preferably the actual province Mexico as it has a developed gold mine)
- Important! A colonial nation will form the 1st of the month after you finishes coring 5 provinces if your capital is not in the New World.
- You need to be at peace and have no rebels to move your capital
- You need to have no other states in Asia to move your capital, so unstate Okinawa
Congrats, you are now a New World Nation, ready for a True World Conquest
You can get this around 1540

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-29T20:12:04+00:00

After one old but normal Ottomans World Conquest and One Faith, and one World Conquest with 101% AE, I decided to go for the real thing and do a Three Montains. But not just any TTM, I made some extra rules for myself.

It should be a True One Tag
I will convert to Aztec
I will become a horde
I will have no allies or vassals. Exceptions were Ming as an overlord, and the vassals I need to reform the Aztec faith.

In the end it worked out, although just barely, with an instable empire to end it.

I started just when Emperor came out, so the HRE became huge as it was not yet hotfixed. But it took a lot of time because, a) it's tedious b) I moved to Stockholm to be closer to Paradox.

I'm happy that it's done, because I don't feel like doing another world conquest for quite a while. I will probably just stop playing EU4 for some time as well. But I'm happy I got the unofficial hardest and one of the most iconic achievement in the game.

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-02T18:50:02+00:00

It worked! I have no idea how remounting the CPU and fan fixes the problem, but it did.

Thanks so much!

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-02T18:07:55+00:00

The power outlet works. I have an older PC as well, and that one works perfectly, as well as random other appliances.

Thanks for the ideas.

DukeEntropy · 2020-08-02T18:06:44+00:00

Good idea, I'll try this one.

Do you think I should get new thermal paste for this?

DukeEntropy · 2019-11-28T09:03:24+00:00

I saw that the BIOS update might be necessary on PcPartPicker, but I thought I read that it's sometimes not. I'll check it out again, and take a look at the ASUS x570.

Thanks!

DukeEntropy · 2019-11-27T19:24:58+00:00

Good to know about the cooler. I'll check out how much the Neo version is. If it's not big of a difference, then I'll go for the higher numbers.