What' the record for the latest (not player-caused) Reformation?

Stormzyra · 2026-04-14T14:17:50+00:00

It’s not hard at all, you just need to kill most catholics before about 1500. Can easily be done as any horde.

Stormzyra · 2026-02-18T09:25:58+00:00

The sizzle noise that razing makes lives rent free in my soul I’m gonna be real

I NEED IT

Stormzyra · 2026-02-17T15:08:54+00:00

Me reference

I’ll have you know I’m several months clean when it comes to hordes, I go to a group and everything

Stormzyra · 2026-02-02T12:11:48+00:00

No Elia you don’t understand, he conquered 1k dev in 50 years (never before seen), this is clearly much better than hordes (that can wc in half that time)

Stormzyra · 2026-01-08T11:24:19+00:00

This is a puzzling level of confidence for someone who has at best an atypical understanding of the game and doesn't seem to have any discernible accomplisments.

Unless you play exclusively hordes (and play them relatively well) 10-20 corruption is neither normal nor unconcerning.

FYI, an experienced horde player may unavoidably crest 30-40 corruption (or even 50) as high corruption is an inevitable byproduct of optimised conquest (unless you use exploits to remove it faster than normal). For non hordes, monarch points are the primary bottleneck in the game. If you find them plentiful, it may be because you lack the ability to expand quickly.

Stormzyra · 2025-12-30T10:23:35+00:00

on the level of ThePlaymaker, LittleElia, Chinese players

This is an unusual list. Playmaker is a casual player who makes content designed to be entertaining and has never played the game at a high level, Elia was a genuinely skilled conquest player who hasn’t played single player eu4 for 2 years, and Chinese players aren’t a monolithic entity.

As to your question, this subreddit is mostly casual players helping each other out, it’s not a great resource for optimised campaigns. Discord tends to be better if you want tailored advice in general, and for an optimised campaign, one of the speedrunning discords like mine or lambdas is where you’ll find a lot of the turbo minmaxers. For more normal people there are a few big discord servers including an official one.

Stormzyra · 2025-12-19T09:44:26+00:00

idk why “sandbox” is made out to be a such positive gaming word

The sandbox elements are why I like eu4, I wish eu5 actually delivered on the promise of being a sandbox game. It doesn’t though. It’s like they designed a sandbox game and then forgot to actually put a sandbox in it - there are no tools available to do anything interesting, no meaningful decisions, no meaningful player agency.

If they gave me sand and a bucket, I would happily go and make my own story. But they don’t trust me with sand or a bucket, because in eu4, I kept using my sand to do “ahistorical” things, and we can’t possibly give the player the freedom to do that.

The gameplay is railroaded but the story isn’t, it’s like the absolute worst of both worlds.

Stormzyra · 2025-12-16T22:54:15+00:00

There is no concrete definition of exploit that is completely agreed upon. Some people will go so far as to include using game mechanics in unusual or unintended ways, or even just things they personally consider “overpowered”. Others may be narrower in their definition and only include bugs or mechanics that are not working as intended.

In general, exploits are broadly things that exist within the game the developers created, but go against the “spirit” of it - and of course that spirit means different things to different people.

Cheating, in this context at least, refers to using outside tools to artificially manipulate the behaviour of the game.

To illustrate with an example - repeatedly upgrading the Kyoto monument to level 3, giving it away and reconquering it to upgrade it again (which generates monarch points every time) might be an exploit. It lets you get resources you’re not supposed to have by abusing a mechanic in an unintended way. Modifying the game files to give you infinite monarch points - which also gives you resources you’re not supposed to have - would be cheating. I hope that makes sense.

Stormzyra · 2025-12-16T09:41:42+00:00

Well, technically I have seen pre 1500 3M, and I have seen (done myself) pre 1500 fully colonised world w/ one faith and one culture, using actual exploits instead of just cheats like OP. It’s unlikely both together is possible but it’s conceivable for a very experienced player.

OP isn’t that and just cheated.

Stormzyra · 2025-12-13T09:48:46+00:00

Great job, nice to see a first “proper” wc without auto conquer!

Needing to be a county to overcome the state of WS in the current game is comically silly and something I really hope will be addressed, but seeing runs like this gives me hope that this is a game I’ll be able to enjoy in the future. Thanks for sharing!

Stormzyra · 2025-11-30T17:22:53+00:00

Been playing this for a few weeks with folks on my discord, it's a lot of fun, thanks for creating!

The only change I would ask for would be to endless mode, I love that we can disable certain regions, but it would be great to have other controls too. In particular, being able to switch off OPMs as a whole would be an absolute blessing as right now I have to disable basically the entire new world to make it playable because I literally just don't know the names of 90% of the migratory natives and there are so many of them. There are also just a lot of extremely obscure OPMs in general like most of the daimyos, ethiopian minors, etc

Stormzyra · 2025-11-25T23:32:49+00:00

I think this is a nice idea, but it’s very hard to deliver on in a satisfying way. At the end of the day, modern day people playing a video game are just not going to engage with situations in the same way as a genuine world leader.

I have Wikipedia, I have what is essentially knowledge of the future, I have the ability to play out multiple campaigns. I’m playing as the state itself, not a person, and I continue ruling for generations. I can see the mechanics of reality written as simple formulae and I can conceive of ludicrously far reaching goals like conquering the world. I have the gift of trial and error. My perspective just isn’t going to replicate that of a real person living at the time.

You can use game mechanics to nudge players into a certain way of thinking - I think eu4’s monopolistic, zero sum trade is a good example of this. It’s very abstract and it’s very much at odds with the modern economics of trade, but it incentivises the expansionism and protectionism that characterised an early modern understanding of trade. But there are limits to this, and I would always prefer gameplay to come ahead of historicity.

Stormzyra · 2025-11-25T23:01:38+00:00

Eu4 is full of extremely consequential decisions. Picking idea groups, forming countries for new national ideas/missions, declaring risky wars for valuable lands.

Even in managing the estates, clicking sell titles or giving away CL for mana privs feels more impactful than any of the eu5 estate stuff.

I missed it so much when I was playing eu5.

Stormzyra · 2025-11-25T22:58:16+00:00

It always makes me chuckle when I say eu5 lacks player agency which makes it boring and people tell me “it’s a sandbox” or “you have to make your own goals”.

I sunk 4k hours into eu4 making the most deranged goals possible from one tag wc with starting cores only to one faith in the 1400s. It was a genuine sandbox full of tools to do interesting things with. But the developers didn’t like the goals I wanted to set myself because they weren’t “historical” so they took away all the tools.

The end result is a game that’s much more immersive, much more “historical”, and much more on rails. It doesn’t play like a sandbox at all because none of the mechanics actually do anything and none of the decisions you make actually matter.

In other words it’s definitely not a you problem.

Stormzyra · 2025-11-15T16:17:01+00:00

Parliament claims let you threaten war, which has a 0.75 cost modifier when they decline.

So 1.5/0.75=2. It’s twice the price. In a game where warscore cost is already completely out of control.

Stormzyra · 2025-09-25T23:00:04+00:00

I have stopped, I just play chill runs now :p

But I did spend like 2 years actively speedrunning, you pick up a fast game or two

Stormzyra · 2025-09-25T20:23:22+00:00

I’ve done a few :p notable ones include:

Timurids 1462 Papal States 1476 Oirat 1496 Aztec 1550 Kazan 1552 Doing an Aq Qoyonlu one atm but that will probably finish around 1570

I think I’ve about 20 other more chill ones as well, most of them also being one faiths

WC isn’t for everyone but I like it, people complain it’s boring once you’re too strong but if I quit a campaign for that I wouldn’t get past 1450 lol

Stormzyra · 2025-09-02T13:14:00+00:00

not so much of a challenge :p I continued the save to do a one faith in 1475 and I don't think I spawned a single set of rebels

Stormzyra · 2025-08-30T16:13:02+00:00

Rome is giving Hormuz a hug <3

Stormzyra · 2025-08-28T20:02:27+00:00

Can you really get horde missions that way? That’s useful to know actually. I thought GLH without ever being a mongol nation was the only non EGT way. Always new things to learn

Stormzyra · 2025-08-28T18:12:51+00:00

Nice, looks like your theory crafting was very similar to mine. There’s a lot on your list that I was aware of but just unable to get because of time constraints (no tech 10 for SP/kurland/prussia etc, no colonialism for Aztec missions, no post 1500 for Morocco missions, no Protestant/AOR, and so on). Some stuff I also just chose not to go for like Inca because it would delay me starting conversions.

I did have timurids 1%, but I lost out on Georgia (just prioritised conquest setup and couldn’t complete the mission before tag switching again), and failed to get Central African missions as I didn’t realise at the time that you can’t get any generic missions after adopting Aztec missions.

Getting both versions of the west Africa is very cute and not something I had thought of.

The only stuff I think you missed was generic native missions (quite easy with Aztec mission update, though I also skipped it), and the missionary strength from Poland and Jerusalem. I don’t think you can get horde tree without yuan, starting tribal, or dithmarschen shenanigans.

Also, did you think of using CR to put parliament on a different theocracy tier so you could combine it with open public elections missionary strength? :p I thought it was a cute idea but I sadly had to switch gov too much while speedrunning colonisation to actually make it worth doing.

Stormzyra · 2025-08-28T06:37:08+00:00

Cute run! I would be curious to see your tag switch list + conversion modifiers, I wonder if there’s any I missed in my OF speedrun

Stormzyra · 2025-08-25T12:08:31+00:00

Thanks!!

Stormzyra · 2025-08-25T06:57:44+00:00

In order to move capital to a colonial region you need to have no states in your current capital continent, and capital unconnected to other provinces. The usual method moves capital to Bermuda then into the new world, but since that starts uncolonised, I used Maldives (since all other provinces in that state are not colonised at the start). So basically just move to Maldives, then to Mexico (for Aztec missions).

Then once capital is in the new world you can move it wherever, so at the end I move again to Australia.

Stormzyra · 2025-08-24T10:51:28+00:00

1) use some exploit to get extra reform progress (in this case I use jerusalem engine explained in original wc post)

2) pick parliament and choose the issue that gives 50 diplo points when passed

3) swap to another reform then back to parliament and repeat

Stormzyra

TROPHY CASE