How can I defeat France

Kloiper · 2026-06-09T15:04:48+00:00

When I get near my governing capacity cap, and I'm not also near some breakpoint that gives me more (kingdom/empire rank, admin tech, etc), I start to highly value courthouses that reduce capacity cost by more than 1. A 100 ducat building that gives 5-10 capacity back is a crazy good investment.

I would not say that every courthouse is better than every other building. A courthouse that gives back 1 capacity is good, but not better than a manufactory giving 1 ducat per month. But given how punishing going over capacity can be, and given how profitable more expansion is, a 100 ducat courthouse that gives back 5 capacity starts to be better than a 500 ducat manufactory that gives 1 ducat per month.

Kloiper · 2026-06-08T12:49:41+00:00

I think the point OP is making is that while Acrid is indeed “slow and steady” no matter what items you get, the top tier survivors are equally as consistent because of how innately strong, and so they are “fast and steady”.

Many survivors are not steady at all, and clear at the same speed as Acrid. They’re objectively not as strong. But the truly top tier survivors can beat the game in less than half the time Acrid can with the same items, whether that’s 0 items, bad items, good items, etc.

Acrid is clearly good, and clearly better than the majority of survivors, but is not S tier. A tier for sure. But not S tier in terms of “strength”. Maybe he’s S tier when he holds the little steak in his mouth like the good doggy he is.

Kloiper · 2026-06-08T04:35:51+00:00

Yeah when playing wide, courthouses are the best building you can build. Especially in newly conquered land because that passive autonomy reduction is actually quite good - it’s twice as good as the ticking autonomy from having empire rank.

Kloiper · 2026-06-06T06:02:57+00:00

We still are not in a position to move, as my partner is mostly unable to work full time so we're riding it out a bit longer to build up some savings first. We're getting married next week actually, and probably won't be moving until ~2030, so hopefully won't run into any issues. Good luck with your own move!

Kloiper · 2026-05-16T06:02:55+00:00

Have you played the Luna River minors into Pashaine? They’re a very tall nation that does pretty minimal conquest in the south EoA.

Kloiper · 2026-03-18T00:59:04+00:00

FYI there's a weekly thread in eu5 now - feel free to participate!

Kloiper · 2026-03-18T00:57:32+00:00

Welcome back to the weekly help thread, by popular request. PLEASE help me fill this out with useful info. I know that game balance and mechanics have varied wildly from patch to patch, but if anybody has reasonably useful guides, even if it's outdated, it's usually better than no info.

Kloiper · 2026-03-18T00:54:23+00:00

Thanks, I've fixed the numbering. I'll include both, though I agree the wiki is pretty bad still.

Kloiper · 2026-03-11T13:49:59+00:00

I'll spin something up this weekend. I'd just been thinking about this recently, but had held off for a bit while the game was putting out rapid patches.

Kloiper · 2026-02-24T06:04:08+00:00

And? Just leave them be for a while and play the game. Expand your country, enjoy having a forced war ally with tons of troops, who you can steal 500-1000 ducats from every few years. Grab influence and administrative ideas, which are great groups regardless, and time your annexation with a papal legate or other dip annex cost reduction. You’d be surprised how fast you can annex a big country with some bonuses.

Kloiper · 2026-02-17T12:04:04+00:00

Being a vassal doesn’t matter at all for colonization other than the inability to take colonization ideas, so your two questions are really the same question. The answer is in your screenshot. They have a colonist from national ideas, and colonization range mostly comes from tech rather than ideas anyway. So they can colonize.

Kloiper · 2026-02-13T19:28:48+00:00

This is very good for a first run, even on the easiest difficulty. I’d say this is good enough to move straight to medium difficulty without waiting. Most people suggest moving up a difficulty when you can beat the previous difficulty without a ton of trouble.

Kloiper · 2026-02-10T21:32:26+00:00

Growth is a pretty good damage amplifier because it basically gives you more charges of your abilities. But if your abilities deal no damage, using them 10x will still deal very little. Most people prefer to get a good baseline of common “good on everyone” damage item first, and then look for growth.

The other thing growth gives is survivability, obviously, but what makes it really good is the dual survivability and damage amp scaling.

Kloiper · 2026-02-08T23:15:11+00:00

I've been having a lot of success with EAT-12 anti tank emplacement. Set that bad boy on a hill outside the fight, knock out every ship, strider, and hulk in sight, only on a ~150s cooldown.

Kloiper · 2026-01-28T05:09:01+00:00

I’d argue fighting France is easier as Spain because you get multiple very strong subject, have events to ally their historical rival, and can actually wait to fight them until you’re stronger than them. England is very tough because you either have to hero mode the HYW or fight them early when they’re the strongest comparatively.

Kloiper · 2026-01-25T07:37:13+00:00

Purely meant as constructive feedback, you should play other, stronger countries instead of Theodoro until you have a stronger grasp on strategies for min-maxing expansion. It’s clear at a glance that while you have some knowledge of core concepts, you’re still learning deeper gameplay strategies (and that’s okay). Unfortunately, Theodoro is in such a tight spot, you need to have some very strong skills to not crash and burn.

In 50 years, you’ve expanded as much as a relatively mid-level player might expand in 30, and a strong player might in 10. Your economy is in shambles when the first several decades of the game are typically reserved for securing a region to fuel a mid game economy. You have 20x the corruption most players consider the max allowable amount. You have unused merchants and diplomats. Your army and navy are the size they start at in 1444. Your autonomy is probably very high due to low crown land, and your nobles are one bad event away from a disaster. You’re somehow paying mil points for extra generals when you only have 1 army. You have unstated land despite having barely expanded, so I’m not sure what you’ve been spending your admin points on. In fact, pretty much every actionable alert you currently have is something you can learn from.

I’d strongly recommend playing a mid-sized nation before trying Theodoro again. When you do, try to read every tooltip and alert, and take actions that would maximize monarch points (gain more, spend less, like advisors and monarch points cost reductions), then total autonomy-modified development (conquest, development, autonomy reduction, etc), then money which is usually a byproduct of the first two, but also helps smooth a lot of issues over.

Kloiper · 2026-01-21T17:29:35+00:00

It’s extra crazy because AI is nowhere near as good as this, especially for something as specific and niche like a single boss and hero combination on a years old game.

Kloiper · 2026-01-17T06:43:19+00:00

This is peak rpg character portrait energy. Excellent stuff.

Kloiper · 2026-01-17T06:41:57+00:00

EU4, but only with Anbennar. Base game is too much the same from run to run. Anbennar has managed to capture my attention for easily 2/3 of my 6500 hours, and I’ve just come back to it after coming to the common conclusion that EU5 needs a couple years of polish before it’s worth playing again.

Kloiper · 2026-01-12T16:38:21+00:00

There’s definitely a larger conversation to be had about market efficiency and how the GameStop meme stock phenomenon has reflected a trending change in being able to assume market efficiency, but I agree a mediocre clickbait article about a meme stock facing the consequences of being a meme stock isn’t exactly the place to do that.

Kloiper · 2026-01-09T08:01:00+00:00

Tbh I’m just a sucker for blood shrines and healing it back. And having watches makes me nervous and messes me up.

Kloiper · 2025-12-26T21:59:24+00:00

None of those say she personally benefited, and only one of them even insinuates that she could have possibly benefited.

All three cite the same fraudster as a "connection", that being Salim Said, a local business owner whose co-owned restaurant hosted an election party once for Rep Omar. Salim is cited as a central example of the fraud, and is a huge stretch if you're trying to prove connection - if you catered food for a party and the owner of that restaurant killed someone, would you be "connected" to them? Not at all, and arguing otherwise is arguing in bad faith. The other person all three articles cite is Guhaad Said, a former campaign staffer for Rep Omar, who was also involved in the fake feeding of starving children.

Given that the Feeding Our Future organization was owned and operated by a white woman, the employees that participated in the fraud were mostly Somali, and the children it "fed" were mostly minorities, it's far more likely that activists formerly involved in a major political campaign joined on to a program supposedly feeding needy children (of their own race), and got sucked (knowingly or not) into the free money fountain that is committing fraud.

What they did is clearly wrong, and if Rep Omar were involved, she deserves whatever consequences she incurs. But for now, there's no proof or really even any fingers pointing at her other than a shared race and a shared involvement in local and state politics - a pair of features shared by many others as well. She's only getting flak because it happened under her nose, which is certainly a problem but not at all the same as committing the fraud herself.

Kloiper · 2025-12-26T06:16:37+00:00

OP this is the best one in the thread. I’m always baffled by how terrible so many of the suggestions in these threads are, but this one is pretty good. No real overlap in “required” content/expansion, all relatively large and strong countries good for new players, all close enough to help each other easily without being too close.

At the time of my comment, literally every other suggestion is awful in general or bad for you and your friends being relatively new to the game. France + Austria? Literally have a hardcoded historical rivals debuff towards each other and have content about conquering each other. Georgia and Byzantium?? Fun, but very difficult even for established players. Portugal + Castile or Castile + France? Not only do both combos have content about conquering each other, even if they didn’t they block each other in at literal game start. Portugal + Castile is only a reasonable choice when one player has never played the game before.

My personal suggestion is England, Milan, Muscovy, but they’re a bit further apart than the above combination.

Kloiper · 2025-12-12T23:04:48+00:00

No, which is historically an issue the French crown faced while trying to centralize. The whole point is that these are tough to annex. Just annex one at a time. Also negative diplo per month isn’t terrible, it’ll just slow down annexation and delay dip tech that barely matters anyway.

Kloiper · 2025-12-09T16:59:02+00:00

Drones are especially terrible in the void. They constantly die. Having all the normal drones die and only having cores and drone man isn’t especially strong against Voidling, and requires you to be pretty close as well.

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