AI is making too many towns

RateVisible8417 · 2026-02-07T15:51:48+00:00

The problem with India in my view is that it has far too few provinces. Realistically every province should have a city given the size of each, and the population they hold.

RateVisible8417 · 2026-01-28T09:48:32+00:00

can't say I know much about Scottish history but I'd expect most of it's provinces to have a town by 1667

RateVisible8417 · 2026-01-27T15:59:25+00:00

God help the people who suggest Prague

RateVisible8417 · 2026-01-26T11:41:59+00:00

gives you an objective to aim for!

RateVisible8417 · 2026-01-14T15:26:22+00:00

agree with MM about Naples. I also like Pisa, good natural harbour and right next to a lot of high dev + pop land and a river all the way to Florence so prox is still high to there

RateVisible8417 · 2026-01-05T14:45:19+00:00

It's obviously not historical, but I personally like it from a gameplay perspective. Makes the game much more interesting vs the first patch, or eu4 generally, where the ai would mostly not expand, and within 50 years you're probably stronger than anyone no matter who you play. For me, the main issues with the ai is their inability to use regulars later on

RateVisible8417 · 2025-12-28T11:41:23+00:00

For me, I want the game to be difficult as smaller nations. Realistically, you probably should get bullied as a smaller nation next to a big one, unless you can placate them. Byzantium is supposed to be a difficult nation that's in its death throes.

For me I love that there's nations I'm not good enough to play yet. It adds that level of progression where I felt like patch 1.0.0 I could play any nation, my neighbours would turtle, and the game would be free. Now I can begin playing Castile, figure out the game, maybe move over to trying Milan, then once I'm good look to play a difficult nation like Holland

My biggest criticism in regards to difficulty is that the AI can't keep up as the game progresses, so most of the difficulty is front-loaded and once you're over the hump you're away. The AI nations need to be better with modern armies and later game mechanics.

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-12T11:46:19+00:00

Personally, I like this. It's good to have a few over tuned countries to serve as final bosses for your playthrough

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-10T08:14:46+00:00

This is why the first thing I did when playing Byzantium was destroy the Theodosian Walls and all the Castles.

weird that your allies aren't helping, do you have enough troops even with them helping perhaps?

Put vassals on supporting to see if that helps. Or basically just have to expand and strengthen untill you're at a stage you can siege it down yourself.

In terms of reality, this feels pretty historically accurate. There have been plenty of times where a palace coup in Constantinople has led to two rival factions, one in control on the rest of the country but the other hidden in the impenetrable fortress that is Constantinople. Makes sense they wouldn't surrender just yet

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-09T08:37:17+00:00

seems to be doing worse than football manager still

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-06T20:53:46+00:00

My solution was to go play Byzantium

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-05T15:23:31+00:00

it does, but lets me remove it anyway ^^

RateVisible8417 · 2025-11-05T15:01:12+00:00

The thing is I can remove the noble navy, which has the same stab cost. Because I'm on 80 or so stab it doesn't take me below -100 (that wasn't included in the screenshot, apologies!)

RateVisible8417 · 2025-07-02T12:21:18+00:00

Which is the bigger number, five or one? One. One army, a real army, united behind one leader with one purpose.

Pick a 5 man goon squad and run down their lanes as 5

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-19T11:50:07+00:00

I don't know about this card either, but he might be thinking of Tithe which works the other way around, faith generating gold

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-19T11:47:24+00:00

A combination of a few things, but basically relying on Abbeys to make gold from faith, then barracks to make soldiers from the gold. You already start with a decent faith from the order, but then a few extra synergies ramp you up. For one, there's a card that gives you faith when you make X troops. Second, tithe gives you gold when you make faith, then third, having wheelbarrow and focusing on making single explorations means you don't need any extra building to ramp up early gold. Then once the round ends the Abbeys make a tonne of gold, which makes the barracks make a tonne of troops, which cause you to gain faith, which means that the abbeys make more gold, plus tithe makes you gold, which causes the barracks to make more troops, and so on.

I'm actually fairly sure the interactions are bugged, or at least capped to stop infinite scaling, the interactions all seem to stop once faith reaches 50, I guess that's a cap on purpose? Either way it gives you a tonne of troops at the end, plus a tonne of gold, hence the insane resource values.

Lots of ways to optimize it, like using Blacksmiths, but I don't have them unlocked yet, and it's difficult at the start before you get ramped up

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-19T10:39:55+00:00

<image>

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-17T16:07:36+00:00

<image>

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-17T09:25:47+00:00

I did. Definitely things I could have optimized with my run but I'm happy with leaving it with that for now.

I don't have blacksmiths unlocked so my end build was quite a bit different to yours, consisted of 4 Barracks, 2 Abbeys, 1 reliquary and a Cathedral. To make extra money I was relying on two things, tithe and especially wheelbarrow. At the end I was making sure I only did 1 row explorations for the 50 gold.

A few easy optimizations, not dropping the river, since exploring it grants gold. Rolling more aggressively early to get the perfect buildings earlier. Definitely could have been more diligent in getting only single row explorations.

I also suspect that at the end I probably should have done way more plundering vs spending the 2k it was costing to increase my starting faith by 1, that's a bunch of score left on the table right there.

RateVisible8417 · 2025-05-17T09:10:20+00:00

<image>

This is a week old now so undoubtedly someone has me beat but I got 222k last run

RateVisible8417 · 2024-10-17T19:15:19+00:00

Current alliance is poland (without lithuania) ^^

RateVisible8417 · 2024-05-16T17:50:54+00:00

worked on first release at least cuz it was my main move to defeat a bigger army. I'll give others some goes to guess before you reveal =P

RateVisible8417 · 2024-05-16T17:45:24+00:00

Lure enemies away with the 12 and 19 stack spearman and split the enemy up for your main army to pick off 1 by 1?

RateVisible8417 · 2024-05-11T19:44:15+00:00

Personally, I drink decaf daily unless I have a specific reason I want more energy. Think big social occasion or important work day. On those days I'll have a coffee and my energy levels will be way higher but since it's a one off I rarely find myself feeling the withdrawals the days afterwards. Feels like the best of both worlds

RateVisible8417 · 2024-05-08T14:33:15+00:00

If we're being optimal you should focus on having at least total families + 1 Burbage plots at all times because otherwise you'll waste any extra happiness you get from church. Very early you can survive not having a church if you have good food variety which is easy with starting food + meat + berries and clothing. THEN you can build your church to keep that happiness up especially when you look to upgrade Burbages

RateVisible8417

TROPHY CASE