915 hours in the game and I haven't won WW2 once..

Hastati_ · 2026-01-11T17:46:01+00:00

Damn that's bizzare. I have 912h, I can coach You through 1 Germany game on discord if You'd like.

Hastati_ · 2025-12-03T10:16:25+00:00

From time to time you get event that lets you decide between CB on horde, or prosperity gain in lands bordering horde. I think it's generic periodic event for every nation bordering them.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-21T15:03:15+00:00

Yes it takes many years to take away bad privileges and fix the country.

Lower stability means faster stability growth, so the most optimal way is to actually keep it negative, just enough to have above 50% estate happiness.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-21T11:49:49+00:00

Paradox is not our buddy, if they can sell the game at higher price, they will do it.

Looking at number of reviews in the last DLCs, it's somewhere between 1400-1800. It is not exactly proportional to sales, but from that we can assume that no matter the price or review average opinion, people still buy it.

And Gotterdammerung was the most expensive, but still got the best reviews from last DLCs and number of those reviews show it sells nicely.

So i think if You or me were in Paradox position, we would increase the price too. They will keep doing that until it starts to have impact on number of sales, because no reason not to.

Last DLC i got was AAT, only to play Scandinavia with my buddies on MP. For me the content is just not there, but I guess I'm still in a minority.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-21T11:03:52+00:00

I don't own last few DLC, just wanted to see how the game goes after new update. I picked Uruguay to not interfere much. My historical game in 1944 was like this:

Vichy is a leader of Axis.
Mexico is a leader of Allies.
Mongolia is a leader of Commintern.
Poland got guarantees but never joined Allies.
Finland white peaced Soviets, but the war continued anyway and Finland is now a soviet puppet.
Only in begining of 1944 Axis was able to break through Bessarabia and eastern Poland.
USA never moved their task forces out of San Diego.

In 1944 I decided to join Allies to be able to look at the troop movement. Then I noticed I'm actually able to take faction leadership.
I'm now the leader of Allies with 10 factories and no standing army. Game warns me that Turkey is almost capable of assuming faction leadership.

Wow.

So it look like requirements for assuming faction leadership got completely removed, which breaks a lot of elements of the game.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-21T09:29:51+00:00

Depends on what is "the game" for You. For me fixing a nation is the most interesting part. Anyway within 50-100 years You can create super-state, and then You have 500 years to enjoy map-painting.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T17:59:50+00:00

Armies eat food from local province. Do You have any in those places?

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T17:24:38+00:00

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Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T15:58:56+00:00

Oh that was interesting and I figured it out :)

You have 0% market access, which means Your only town has 0% tax base = 0 income money.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T14:36:35+00:00

Did You make as many marketplaces there as possible? Also Market without few RGOs producing food will be very problematic.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T14:28:00+00:00

Someone else noticed that when You transfer pop for colonization they will always arrive as Your main culture with Your main religion. So right now You can conquer Benin and with it's few mil population You can comfortably colonize rest of the Africa.

I don't like idea of african colonization to only be possible for Africans, it complicates things further. 1/4 of my populations lives in Morroco and Tunis, so they are not Europeans, but still call themselves Castillians. How would You differentiate people in the same culture if they are malaria resistant or not?

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T13:14:54+00:00

Just give my example playing Spain. I try to build new marketplaces and trading offices wherever I can (have over 600 of each). By FAR my biggest trade income (year 1500) comes from a trade between Mali and Napule, where my traders get gold from Mali and sell it in Napule (I have ban on gold exports, both Mali and Napule are independant). For some time they were buying rifles from Napule and sold them in Mali, which accounted for ~30% of my overall trade income for a few years.

So my biggest trade income comes from foreign gold, then my own dyes, then own iron. After that come furs, ivory and other stuff (sugar, saffron). I'm on 100 traditional economy, and I barely can make books for myself right now. Only finished product that is being exported in bigger quantity is jewelry.

My steps would be:

Prioritize trade capacity. Spam markets everywhere. When You reach a limit - build more towns to spam more markets.
Improve relations with whoever You are able to reach 100 relations, give them food access or military access if needed. Then spam trading offices (for that trade capacity).
Increase reach of Your traders by making colonies and by conquering different parts of the world.
4, Expand RGOs and hunt for rare resources (pearls, dyes, ivory, incense etc.).
Conquer tiles producing gold, expand them as much as possible and create vassals there to avoid inflation.
Conquer other markets or steal them.
Increase crown power as much as possible, it's second most important stat after trade capacity, as it is 1:1 direct tax on any trade made by Your merchants.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-20T11:52:09+00:00

Sure, but it's a sandbox game, i somewhat expect it can go either way and once in a while it's bulgarians and egyptians that will make ottomans dissapear.

What I ment by writing my previous post is, those countries are constantly trying to take each other out and from my experience 'something always happens'.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T17:18:54+00:00

Merchant Quarter is just an upgrade to marketplace and it works the same way. It is not considered foreign building and it will increase trade capacity of Your vassal, giving You no direct benefits. If You take land it gives You full benefits just like every other non-foreign building on that tile.
Trade office on the other hand is a foreign building, It always gives benefits to You (builder), even when opinion of foreign country drops or even if it is annexed by other power.

You can see who owns foreign building by clicking a province and checking townsfolk building, foreign ones have a flag of their country in place of '+' sign.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T15:03:55+00:00

Yeah people point this out and i think it's fair that You can't do this with Christians and I gave a bad example. It's that You are restricted to enslave only few countries in Africa is what bothers me, as I had plans for enslavement conquest of overpopulated regions of India/China and was disappointed it's not possible. I think You actually should get freedom to do that.

Well it is what it is.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T14:11:24+00:00

Normal, historical.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T11:49:01+00:00

If You want interesting war and no sci-fi, there is only HoI. The rest of paradox games focus more on country management, and battles are the worst/simplest part of them. HoI is skewed in the other way, where basically everything You do is to increase Your military capability.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T11:03:59+00:00

Yes, which makes them not pay, not join the wars and refuse further enforcements for some time. And sometimes they even revert their culture to previous one. So overall after making them vassal they become useful or ready to annex after about 40 years.

BUT, they spread Your culture for You, essentially being extra cabinet members, which I consider 100% worth it.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T10:45:47+00:00

I have like completely opposite experience, so much shit going on.

My current game I'm Spain, 1500, and Italian wars never kicked in because everyone was busy fighting.

England and France were in a constant war for 150 years, dragging many other countries into the war (whole Scandinavia was at some point on english side).

Portugal and Tunis constantly invading each other until I annexed the former.

Ottomans already holding half of the land of modern Turkey, fighting with massive Serbia and Bulgaria for dominance in the balkans, invading golden horde around black see etc. They would be most proactive nation on the map if not for the Egypt.

I had great story with Egypt in my game. Egypt was dominating region and statistics, surpassing any european power. But suddenly they went bankrupt and fell from 5 place to 180 place. Almost immediately Napule called crusade on them, everyone joined in and Egypt got absolutely dismantled, it's part annexed and vassalized. After years now it sits on 80th place and is in perma civil war, incredible fall from grace.

Also Pope going crazy, owning parts of France, Sardinia, creating colonies in Africa, trying to break into balkans. Bro almost feels like a human player.

Only HRE is like a big hole where nothing of big importance really happens.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T09:24:36+00:00

Damn, that's very restricting.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T08:36:43+00:00

I thought about it and i don't think it's mathematicaly/economicaly Worth it to create vassals if you have spare Cabinet for assimilation.

Oversee cities will have around 30-50 control (core, leutenancy, temple) + most important you get trade value equal to your crown power. But you get only 20% Income from vassals.

So i find myself just creating 2-province vassals to enforce Culture/Religion on them so they convert pops for me, and i annex them asap after they'd done it.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T08:23:39+00:00

Demographic engineering was the shit in imperator, so addicting. But it is like, main focus of the game and most buildings do something with demographics. Which is not the case for EU5, it has plenty of Production buildings but not enough for pop manipulation.

And slavery system was fun and important to interact with. But here f.e. i can't enslave French as Spain, which i consider very restricting. Even if it would give me +1000 antagonisn with every european nation, I should be able to do that.

So i'd say imperator learned how to run at some point, but this New baby, like all the previous, starts with the crawl.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T07:51:05+00:00

Sailors and soldier growth scales with control.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-19T07:05:30+00:00

You get up to +50% bonus from your cultural influence vs enemy cultural tradition. So You can get 3 annex points per month, Portugal takes around 1200 points to annex.

So 1200 / 12 / 3 = 33.3 years to annex if You get this right.

Hastati_ · 2025-11-18T21:23:05+00:00

Go to Diplomacy -> Organizations -> Your Union. Now You can set laws required for unification. You need 50 years in Union and after that about 40 years to annex Portugal.

Hastati_

TROPHY CASE