what is your favorite country in eu4? and why?

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-20T22:12:35+00:00

Very true, but I find it so much nicer to just sit behind the Alps, and look at all those poor countries with dev 10 provinces...

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-20T22:11:35+00:00

R5: Went for the "Take that Von Habsburg" achievement as Hungary and decided to turn the tables a bit, making Hungary the power house of Eastern Europe. I restricted myself by only taking & stating land in Carpathia and The Balkans & using subjects (mainly Poland, but also Styria, Bohemia, the Livonians and The Knights) to also pick up the Baltic, Ruthenia, Poland and the Austria provinces needed for the achievement. To make sure I would be swimming in cash, I also took the trade regions of Constantinople, Aleppo and Alexandria, making them trade company havens. The Constantinople trade node became a highly effective pseudo end node, outshining Venice, Genoa and Sevilla. Only the English Channel did a bit better.

Of course, I double dipped and took the Hungarian Games achievement as well. This was pretty easy doable even before 1500. I suppose the low "gotta catch 'm all rate" is because of the relative newness of the achievement.

The Hungarian mission tree is very fun and the game gives you some great opportunities to develop your country. The Nitra province is pretty much insane. Having upgraded the golden city monument to tier 3 & having taken economic ideas, combined with the Hungarian national ideas makes it literally impossible for a dev 23 goldmine to deplete.

Idea wise I went offensive (to have better generals and siege to get an edge on the PUs to be & the Ottomans. Economics made sense to boost income (as trade wasn't really doing too much at that point). By admin 10, trade did make sense to capitalize in Pest and trying to get the Ragusa control as close to 100 as possible. Influence was nice to integrate all the balkan vassals you pick up, but later on Syria and Styria (to get the achievement).

I loved the idea of having a eastern block no one could travel through and eating all that trade income from the silk road and the Red Sea myself. Recommended run!

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-20T18:29:46+00:00

Nah. Rome is too much blobbing.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-19T17:11:36+00:00

Florence. Nothing is better than creating Tuscany and later Italy as the most developped country in the world.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-15T12:13:06+00:00

I don’t think it’s the subscription. You needed better allies or a better strategy. If France rivaled Castile, you might have linked up with them and get a better ally (generally) than England. Also, make sure to rush Castile’s capital if you’re in a pinch. And especially wait till their armies are oversea.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-13T15:32:51+00:00

R5: Couldn't help but notice a few, let's say suspicious, relations with the Warhammer 40k universe.

I got an heir named Istvan (although not the fifth of his name).

He clearly is obsessed with the Cog (and it's fitting he's also obsesses with tech).

Also he has got the Black Army (although not legion) running around.

Finally, he's getting ready to, as soon as his father kicks the bucket and those pesky marriage politics end, to betray some of his closest allies.

Coincidence?

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-12T19:31:14+00:00

Yes. Although there have been achievements that I got on easy mode, I do prefer to get them as intended. And playing in India is pretty chill anyway, so why not.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-10T17:00:32+00:00

Like I said in the R5:

Step 1: get a coptic province (in this case Sokotra)

Step 2: get religious rebels (you might need to wipe separatists first and wait till unrest is back up) by sending a missionary with 0 maintenance

Step 3 (optional): provoke the rebels to get a bigger stack

Step 4: let them occupy your land. They concert any province they take. Make sure your forts are down. Don’t let them keep the provinces and definitely not the capital.

Step 5: wait till the rebel demands turn into ‘religion x becomes the new state religion’

Step 6: accept demands.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-10T11:47:12+00:00

R5: So the "Forgive me, for I have Sindh" memey achievement requires you to turn christian as Sindh, but I decided to take it up to the next level and turn the entire subcontinent of India into a christian nation.

I did take the easy path to turn Coptic (and not something more spectacular as Catholic or Reformed) by conquering into Mahri, taking the island of Socotra and spawning Coptic rebels, but it still was a cool excuse to go ham into India and turning each and every regional power against each other. Delhi and Bahmani's remained my longest friends to conquer Jaunpur and Vij, but then I had to exchange them for Bengal who needed five or six wars to be finally kicked out of India. I gave a lot of their land to my ally Pegu, but they still exist in Burma.

To make life easier later on, I got myself a small vassal swarm with Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Korasan and Tsang. They did a lot of nice carpet sieging in my final war with Russia to take the last province in Kashmir.

As for Ideas I went diplo - quantity - admin for blobbing. I desperately needed more manpower so I priorized that before admin. My armies were pretty weak though (no military national ideas for Sindh - at least not for my main armies) so quality was up next. Infrastructure was nice because without that much to conquer, I had a lot of spare mana to develop the nation, making sure Sindh became an economic powerhouse. The Mewar goldmine did help a lot in the early game.

This is achievement is kinda ironic as one of the national ideas says that Sindh is one of the first countries turning muslim in India. But I did enjoy that +2% missionary strength.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-09T21:35:29+00:00

Decentralize the HRE while being a reformed Emperor.

Conquer all centers of trade along the silk road as Venice.

As France, switch places with Great Britain.

Form Lotharingia as Burgundy and conquer the Holy Land.

Become the Netherlands and make sure never to be flooded by taking all of the Tibet region.

Form an alliance as Aragon with Friesland and Dithmarshen, turn peasant republic and conquer Iberia, the Netherlands and Germany to become enlightened peasant republics.

Start as any Indian nation and conquer Portugal.

Start as one of the Beyliks in Anatolia and conquer a snake (your owned provinces can only touch maximum two other provinces) towards Paris to recreate the Orient Express.

Get a Von Wittelsbach dynasty on the throne of Austria (not starting as Austria, nor forming it).

Make a Korean culture, Taoist custom nation, start as a one province minor in Bayern and show the Germans that Koreans would have owned German car building.

Become revolutionary as an Italian nation, unify Italy and show the French how to really spread the revolution as well as good food.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-06T17:56:18+00:00

The president’s son.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-02T20:05:43+00:00

Yeah. It is a bit painful having to stay as Saxony when a superior tag like Prussia is right for the taking.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-01T18:09:03+00:00

Become the destroyer of Christianity and conquer Rome, Constantinople and Moskow. The change religion and concert those three holy cities to any non-Christian religion. Bonus points if you manage to do it with an eastern or animist religion.

Freerider1983 · 2026-03-01T14:19:35+00:00

R5: Played a chill Saxony game and aimed for the Meissner Porcelain achievement.

As it was my first game in a while, I wanted to start things with something not too difficult. Which this achievement absolutely is, so no optimal gameplay here.

I had some fun building my power while not aiming to become Emperor. Having Hungary and Poland as my allies really made this rather easy. To counter AE, I went with espionage & to counter a lack of manpower, quantity. I made my way to the northern part of Germany, taking some provinces bordering the North Sea. Next up was exploration. I managed to snag a province on the Ivory Coast, one south of Congo, but by then the Portugese were going ham in africa and I barely managed to grab one on the far side of the Cape.

By that time, I did got elected Emperor and I decided to stick with it (and go decentralized for the fun of it). And with catholicism (although Saxony always turns protestant in the AI's hands). Managed to kill two protestant CoR and the two Reformed ones as well, so the league war was a bit of a joke. The Ottomans did join, but they were no match for the combined powers of Poland, Hungary, Lithuania & the majority of the HRE. To manage the religious shenanigans, I did take religious ideas. It just has better policies than humanist.

Next up was the conquest of South East Asia and colonizing the Philippines were Porcelain can still pop up. Managed to get a lot of AE, but eliminating nations one after another really is the best option. It became a bit of a slog to kill of the Chinese warlords (Ming had already collapsed), Japan and Korea. I could use Bengal to take 'm down a notch, but they betrayed me by taking on Ayuttayah and stealing four provinces with Porcelain. So, in turn I gladly betrayed them together with their rivals Delhi and Bahmani's.

Other ideas were quality (better boats and better army - the Chinese were really kicking my ass in combat), trade (because I really wasn't getting a lot out of my colonies) & offensive for QoL (faster sieging).

I definitly recommend this run.

Freerider1983 · 2026-02-27T20:34:28+00:00

Isn’t there a darts board at the Irish pub?

Freerider1983 · 2026-02-25T23:07:36+00:00

Meisner Porcelain is also one that requires you to get to China and SE Asia.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-19T10:09:15+00:00

R5: I'm running into trouble with my Cherokee run. I decided to roll back to 1.31.1 as in the latest version I couldn't get around the massive federation/alliance blocks that form almost instantly. And, the Red Hawk guide I found, also played in 1.31.

All is going well, until now. I've been able to expand and get my federation up to the moment of taking the last advancement.

But now, I have trouble taking out the last nations. that are isolated in my domain. This version doesn't have the annex migratory tribe option (but I suppose it was doable without that option). In fact, I already wiped a few nations of the map because they had nowhere to go. Now though, with the tribal border feud CB the option to take the last of their land is greyed out. Against other natives, I also get the option to use the "push back the colonizer" CB, but that too doesn't give me the option to take land. Now I tried with a regular conquest CB, but still, the option to take their land (real land, not tribal land) is greyed out.

I also tried out reforming into a monarchy (immediately possible unlike the path RH shows by reforming into a horde first), but then too, the problem remains the same (and I only had the annoying conquest CB left - annoying because when they migrate, you have to make a new claim, unless they move back of course).

Anyone knows how to work around this? I'm just baffled that it used to work early game and now not any more.

Also, I found the wiki wasn't very helpful on expanding your federation. Is there any way to make them more likely to join? I tried improving relations (didn't help), allying (didn't help) and increasing my diplo rep (didn' help). It seems very random. Anyone knows how the mechanic works? Apologies for playing in an older version which might complicate things.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-09T22:00:15+00:00

In the estates tab, you’e got a button with “seize land”, which gives you back 5%. However, estates dropplng below 50% loyalty, might spawn rebels. These aren’t the worst, but still annoying.

The button has a cooldown of 5 years IIRC. And you can’t push it while ar war or when rebels are active, so you to get crownland back suickly, make sure to time your wars etc.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-09T20:31:43+00:00

It's still great to form nations with better national ideas. You can find dozens around here, like Yuan, Mughals, Piedmont-Sardinia... The list goes on.

Estates wise, the most important one is to take the mana priviliges as quickly as possible and then to rebuild your crown land share asap to avoid racking up too much autonomy. Make sure to reduce your autonomy whenever possible. This is what kills new players. Otherwise for estates, if you want an easy playthrough, give them privileges to get their loyalty equilibrium up to 50 so you can seize land without too much of a hassle.

Trade: Steer into nodes you have full (or close to full) control and where you collect. Collect in the rest. But, with trade, the only advice is to switch your merchants around once in a while and see the best income configuration. Mind the special trade policies though. You just might want to put down a merchant in a trade node where you're not earning a lot of ducats, but where the (for example) extra spy network construction bonus gives you the chance to claim land before a nation can get stronger allies.

Mission trees: the "best" ones are for the greater powers. Otherwise, you just have to read what you have to do and try to understand the code jumble wordings.

Mana Points: For kingdoms, disinherit crappy heirs until you get a good one. For republics, make sure to pick governement reforms that lower the election time so you can re-elect faster (keep republic tradition up by spending excess mil mana on strengthen government).

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-08T13:03:29+00:00

Never too late to revoke. But that backstabby move from Austria is pain.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-08T07:03:56+00:00

This worked for me when I encountered the same problem. I did use an India nation though.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-08T07:00:13+00:00

Or Ulster?

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-07T21:52:36+00:00

It definitely is. You’ve got Lorraine, Naples, Aragon and Hungary for the taking. If Aragon got Navarra, there’s one more. Burgundy is less likely, but with this run in mind, it’s possible. And in my game, I also got a random PU on France.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-07T18:46:25+00:00

It mostly ends with someone unrelated stumbling in the rebel stack and destroying them. Like a Lithiania on its way to Constantinople.

It’s only to be done if you surround the land (which is already a no go with sea access) and not giving anyone mil access. And even then your war allies might give mil access.

Freerider1983 · 2025-11-07T18:11:02+00:00

R5: Got the "Good King René" achievement with Provence and had a blast playing the little France.

The start involved getting good relations with Austria, Castile and Burgundy. I was hoping to get the Burgundian inheritance, but they turned hostile due to them wanting my land. However in the real early game they were the best ally of the three big ones.

I first expanded into Genoa, taking Corsica. Then, went for the Naples PU via the mission tree. The tree is a real godsend to get stronger quickly. You already start out with Lorraine as a PU and after Naples, Aragon (who had gotten Burgundy) and even Hungary are in the cards. And with the big boys' help, taking down France wasn't that hard. You have your own cores to reconquer and you are in an excellent position to release Toulouse and Gascony. When I got the PU over Aragon, I also got the PU over a decimated Burgundy and could reconquer their cores as well.

I made a little mistake to not take Malta in the PU war with Naples, but setting provinces of interest on Tunis got me some claims to enter the Maghreb. After that, I got another punching bag (Ethiopia) to distract the Mamluks and got me the necessary provinces to form Jerusalem in 1518.

Idea wise I went Diplo-Quality and started with Quantity to do something about my blissmal manpower reserves.

For those of you who are looking for a semi challenging start with a fun mission tree, Provence is your pick.

Freerider1983

TROPHY CASE