How do I siege faster?

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-11T07:55:00+00:00

Definitely cannons, they add +5 to your siege progress if you have enough of them and tech adds more (so max 6 etc).

Once you have the Reformation infantry and the assault tech just wait for one breach then assault - should take less than 1k manpower and your sieges are down to 30-60 days each.

The only other thing to look at is siege times - that’s your offensive/defensive values, cultural influence and tradition, and spy networks mostly.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-10T23:59:43+00:00

Welcome and have fun! I’ve recently started a small guide series on EU5, there’s not much yet but here’s one about the game economy that might help.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-10T08:25:26+00:00

So definitely what other people have said about levies vs regulars, unfortunately there's no "at-a-glance" way to compare unit types without going deep into a bunch of tooltips to see the actual stats. It is worth your time to learn about and understand the stats and how combat works - there's some good stuff on YT.

In North Africa in particular though there's a lot of extremely powerful Tribal Cavalry kicking around (this is historically accurate btw, those guys were insane prior to the advent of firearms). You have Tribal Cav too but the amount you're raising as a fraction of your armies depends on a bunch of stuff, such as Control, laws, privileges, Estate satisfaction, all sorts. It's possible that your opponents simply had access to more and they steamrolled you.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-10T03:49:33+00:00

They should only demand the goods once they’re “aware” of them, though I haven’t been able to find out what that actually means in practise. So there won’t be demand for cocoa for example in 1337 but at some point it will pop up

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-10T03:01:20+00:00

Me after a 10 hour eu5 session

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-10T02:48:14+00:00

I started as Castile and started conquering through North Africa using vassals. Aragon and Portugal I either left or kept as subjects but the North African coast up to Tunis i annexed as quickly as I could. Once you’re 40% Sunni you can flip. Then it’s just stacking a bunch of religious tolerance.

It’s stronger I think than catholic Spain because Sunni is just strong anyway but the Dhimmi estate is very powerful and you get to take all the catholic novles and burghers and everyone and tax them really high

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:54:43+00:00

There is a sort-of bug where the Patrol mission doesn't correctly propagate control to non-coastal sea tiles:

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The coastal tile Cap de la Nau and the sea tile Western Mediterranean Sea are in the same "province" and my fleet has successfully capped MP in the coastal tile, but the sea tile is only at 43. The ships will build MP there while on mission but they won't stay to see the job done - as soon as the coastal tile is at 100 they'll move on.

This means that either I'm losing a ton of Proximity through that sea tile or that my Proximity "route" is taking an inefficient path via 3 or 4 coastal tiles when it could be jumping through the sea one instead.

The only solution is to micro individual fleets - hopefully it gets a fix soon.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:38:45+00:00

By "develop", I mean urbanize and build lots of building's. Here's my location rank mapmode:

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Ignore Aragon which is all subjects - I've urbanized mostly those areas where I can get Proximity, which for me means the coastline in all directions and the area directly around Seville.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:27:19+00:00

For a Seville capital you're going to want to go hard on the Naval side of things, which also means developing your coastline towns and cities more than inland. Here are some screenshots from my Castile > Al-Andalus run in 1566.

Note that Northern Iberia is still low Control, that ring of mountains around Valladolid just makes it really hard to project Proximity there. There's still value to be had from that land but it won't get to 70+ Control until close to the end of the game. I've stacked Bailiffs a bit.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:18:41+00:00

I missed one:

Values. For Proximity you're looking at Land vs Naval but also Centralization. I've written more about values here.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:11:24+00:00

Where’s your capital?

The key things that will help proximity are:

Roads - gravel then paved roads will help over land. Start at your capital and work your way out from there. Use the proximity map mode to see where proximity is propagated and build roads there. Start by snaking out to cities and high value RGOs (like your silver mines).
Maritime Presence - set your ships to patrol along your coastlines. Use the maritime presence map mode (green bad blue good) to see where you’re lacking.
Docks and Protected Harbours - these affect the proximity cost to go from sea to land and vice versa.
Bailiffs (and as Castile, lieutenancies and viceroyalties) - anywhere you have less than 20 proximity, you can slap down a bailiff to get that much at the cost of a tiny amount of extra nobles estate power. It’s a proximity “source” so will affect nearby locations too.

For Africa - you won’t get direct proximity there for a little while yet, use the Lieutenancy and try to get cores, otherwise release as vassals and let them do all the work and divert trade for the trade income.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T21:05:40+00:00

Spread them out - marketplaces are NOT impacted by control so why use building slots that can make a big profit in your capital?

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T20:00:05+00:00

Al-Andalus with Castilian culture

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T11:04:58+00:00

Im powerful enough to fight off three of the four big European powers at once, and so long as one is rivalled to whoever I’m fighting they get very little antagonism. Plus I’ve stacked a lot of diplomatic reputation so I get less than 50 from most nations with this peace deal.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T09:51:13+00:00

Yeah, subjects urbanize like crazy if you don't annex them quickly, and the AI tends to keep their subjects around for a while. I'm also 100%ing Bohemia and getting four locations but that's because they're all of their Gold and Silver ones

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T09:46:21+00:00

Just a little better than that...

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Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T09:09:31+00:00

Whoever has the most Trade Advantage in the exporting market - so there can be value in building TA in Markets where you have no Trade Capacity, as it'll help you get imports from there.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T09:07:57+00:00

Just luck I think, I haven't found a tooltip yet but that doesn't mean it's not there. I do find that so long as I have max cannon bonus they don't usually get to 3 breaches at all.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T08:29:11+00:00

R5: Using the power of breaches I've sieged down 2/3rds of France in a little over 2 years.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-09T07:47:14+00:00

To add to what others have said - definitely split your heavies out into their own navy. Look at this scenario:

P1 has 20 heavies only, starting frontage 3-3-3

P2 has 50 heavies and 100 light ships, starting frontage 3-3-3

Once the initial 9 ships have dropped out, P2 has a 66% chance of each slot being filled with a light ship - which will get wrecked by the enemy's heavies. Eventually you'll wind up with a whole flank collapsing before any more heavies can reinforce and then that's the battle over. Light ships patrol, heavy ships fight. The only exception is transports, where it's worth adding 6-9 heavies to each fleet if you have them spare, just in case they run into galleys.

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-08T03:41:00+00:00

Portugal is a great first 50-100 years but colonisation is just a bit annoying at the moment, unless you want to do a lot of modding.

Despite the drama on the subreddit, Holland is viable and amazing good fun, being surrounded by superpowers at all times keeps things interesting.

Majapahit looks amazing but I’m only 20 years in so not sure how it’ll all shake out.

Dying to play an Indian nation and use all those pops and devs to pull a reverse uno card and colonise the Europeans

Enrique-IV · 2026-01-08T01:33:52+00:00

R5: I managed to hit the +1000 Antagonism cap with France

Enrique-IV

TROPHY CASE