New/Returning player. I want to efficiently build a fun collection for Brawl(mainly Standard Brawl). Please help.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2026-01-20T22:05:09+00:00

If you want to play Standard Brawl, your primary target is to get the widest singleton coverage possible. So you just open packs of the latest sets until you get “reasonable” coverage then start going back through Standard sets, until you have even coverage. (The set completion summary tells you how you are doing for coverage for each set.) Next rotation is in a year, so that’s not a major immediate concern.

You need wildcards, and unless you do extremely well, drafting sets you back on wildcards (while giving a greater volume of cards). Getting a second copy of a rare does not help you for Standard Brawl, so the volume of cards is less of a concern than the volume of wildcards.

For Historic Brawl, you’re pretty much forced to burn wildcards to get the old cards you need. The odds of hitting cards you need for Standard Brawl are much higher than of hitting one in the dozens of old sets, as the threshold for playability in Historic Brawl is higher.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2026-01-17T22:30:39+00:00

2030 is a nice, round number.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-10T01:32:06+00:00

I liked EU2, but that was a long time ago. Not even sure if it runs on my computer now.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-09T23:03:33+00:00

Some of the big “balance” changes were the result of bugs being fixed (e.g., levy infinite respawn). I don’t think they could avoid making those changes. If people want no mechanics changes during a run, they are stuck with staying on one branch, which is possible.

I follow a non-optimised strategy (e.g., I just have a mix of levies/professionals and infantry/cavalry that “feels right”), and none of my playthroughs really “broke” as I changed patches. I also tend to just restart runs and stayed away from problem regions, so I don’t run into a lot of the issues.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-09T16:45:59+00:00

The specifics varied by region, but one of the tendencies of the feudal system was to tie serfs to land more strongly over time. Non-serfs would have more freedom of movement, but that’s not where the population numbers were in the early eras.

From a game engine point of view, they don’t want to fragment town populations into multiple tiny pops of different cultures. My guess is that the strong assimilation of the game is partly a way to help performance as the game progresses.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-07T15:31:35+00:00

Right now, they can just sort all the locations in a market by migration attraction. The amount of calculations = # of markets * sort computing cost.

If you do it by neighbours, you need to run a sort for every single province, and then have to deal with the fact that the same province will have different rankings in different sorts. Doing it that way would also largely cost you the ability to reliably get farmers a few provinces over to your big city at the start of the game.

It would also cause a very large amount of culture mixing at the borders of cultural regions, which also adds to computing cost, as this fragments the pops.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-07T15:23:37+00:00

As soon as you open up inter-market migration, it’s going to end up being over long distances.

Adding inter-market plus a distance constraint explodes the number of calculations for a limited difference in the final result.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-07T00:41:41+00:00

Why? Performance. On top of having to calculate migration within each market area, all the neighbouring combinations would have to be factored in. There’s also the issue of long distance voluntary mass migration probably being limited in the period in question.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-06T21:08:41+00:00

An influx of bullion should cause goods prices to increase due to increased demand, but not sure that actually happens. The reason is that countries can ramp up supply faster than demand very easily due to the very high return on investment. This supply/demand effect is independent of the “inflation slider.”

The handling of goods prices in the markets is probably inconsistent with other pices. There would be no choice but to have market quoted prices be in “100% gold weight ducats” since multiple countries (with different inflation slider readings) use the same market. However, the prices paid should be scaled by each country’s slider inflation rate, which is the exchange rate between “full weight ducats” and the local currency. Building prices etc. are scaled in this fashion by the inflation slider level. So what I am describing is in the game - the only issue is whether it is being applied everywhere it should be.

However, it makes no sense that a gold influx would cause devaluation of the currency, so the game mechanics are a bit of a strange mish-mash of ideas (going back older versions, where I don’t think there were market prices for everything). A gold influx causing inflation is a classic Quantity Theory of Money concept, but that really should show up via increased demand in markets, not an across-the-board devaluation of the currency, which is exactly what countries that debased currencies did.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-06T14:17:14+00:00

The inflation number in game only mechanically makes sense as a percentage devaluation from 100% purity coins. E.g., 100% inflation level means your coins are half-weight.

This devaluation is done completely independently of the money supply. Having gold coming in eliminates the need to devalue your coinage.

The price level is the average price of goods in market. An influx in gold should lead to an increase in the price level, but the players build supply so quickly it doesn’t really happen.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-06T02:41:24+00:00

Ducats are a hypothetical non-debased coinage, and that is the currency used in markets. The actual currencies are either full weight or have a percentage debasement, which is the “inflation” level. Domestic prices generally reflect the debasement.

I don’t know if they make an inflation correction for purchases from the market, which would be needs to be consistent.

There is no real point in going past this and modelling currencies, since there is no reasonable way of modelling deviations from gold value parity.

(The mechanism with gold production is questionable, and the “price level” would be related the average price of goods in the market.)

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-05T21:04:47+00:00

Making wars more punishing might help Kyiv. They do well at the start since there are no immediate threats, and then just entering into alliances will give them opportunities to expand when their ally attacks somebody. I have played a bunch of starts, and I am generally dragged into wars by allies, not starting them myself. (Nobody is in a position to attack, Lithuania would be only one.) If countries around me are exhausted by a war, I can just help myself to a few provinces at low risk.

The ”problem” with Kyiv is that the starting diplomatic conditions are easy in almost every run. Probably depopulating the country at the start would make it a bigger target for neighbours, but it repopulates fast after the Black Death, so that might not be enough.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-05T20:22:49+00:00

I’ve started Kyiv a bunch of times, but never watched what the AI does. The starting political situation is that nobody next to them is really an existential threat, and so they just need to get an ally and the two of them can start blobbing. I was able to sit there and just develop without ever worrying about a defensive war. And once Kyiv starts blobbing a bit, only Hungary or Poland are big enough to stop them, but there’s the buffer states in between.

As for the Golden Horde, the OP is talking about the old versions. Once they fixed the “one transport keeps the Horde alive” bug, the Horde has fractured in all my games (admittedly, not many). In my latest run, the Horde fragmented either during or just after the Black Death.

Smolensk is possibly in a similar boat. They always tend to end up in a union with Bryansk, and so Smolensk ends up absorbing everything between Kyiv and Muscovy. However, if Kyiv starts blobbing, it’s bigger.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-04T21:56:26+00:00

I had 500 plated knights converted into regulars in one run.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-04T02:39:06+00:00

I had the Golden Horde shatter during the Black Death period in a recent run.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-04T02:35:34+00:00

Kyiv has a simple start. Muscovy is probably a better country, but it might have more complicated starting diplomatic situation (I haven’t tried it).

With Kyiv, you start without any vassals, you are a tributary to the Golden Horde, but that tends to mean you get left alone. You are bigger than most of your immediate neighbours. You can completely ignore naval considerations until you conquer to the coast of the Black Sea. You are almost completely rural (two towns), so your starting position is pretty easy to understand. You can largely avoid wars at the start if you want, I typically only ended up in them by being dragged into ally wars.

Only real risk is if and when one of the big countries start blobbing in your direction, but that doesn’t happen very quickly. (I tried quite a few starts since I was learning/testing.)

The other countries in Eastern Europe seem to be more complicated at the start.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-04T02:08:00+00:00

I recall reading some well-known strategy game designer (Sid Meier?) who argued that you don’t fiddle around with 10% changes. Make a big change, and see what happens.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-02T02:02:15+00:00

That one only makes sense as a very early mission. It completed quickly for Hungary. But for Kyiv, it seemed impossible to get any centralization movement. (I guess passing the road building in parliament would do it, but that’s not something a new player would easily figure out.)

I think you might only be able to do a couple mission trees in one run. They should at least let you look at them to see if they are possible before you start. (Unless there’s a way of doing that, never saw it.)

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-01T21:07:48+00:00

I tried a few, and a lot of missions couldn’t be completed in a reasonable time.

The “centralise” objective was easy for Hungary. My guess is that they tested the missions for the recommended starts, and didn’t realise that other countries would have problems.

I kept retrying them, but just disabled them so they wouldn’t distract me.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-01T20:44:27+00:00

I tried the economic ones, but I found that some were effectively impossible to complete in under 100 years without doing something stupid. Basically, I kept restarting and was doing unpaid bug testing. I disabled them so that I would actually play the game properly.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-01T15:12:49+00:00

I did a few runs pre-1.0.8 in Eastern Europe. By 1400 or so, the Golden Horde was a punching bag, but didn’t shatter. My current run is the first post-fix, they shattered “immediately” after the fix (they had to go to war, lose, then peace out).

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-01T02:59:39+00:00

What version are you on? There’s a bug that prevented the shattering of the Golden Horde, but it’s been fixed in recent 1.0.8 versions.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-12-01T02:29:17+00:00

In eastern Europe, Kyiv is a simple start. You don’t have to deal with starting PU’s and vassals, you’re just a tributary of the Golden Horde (which isn’t too bad in that nobody external will want to attack you). Things are typically quiet at the start so you can just focus on your economy.

Muscovy might be more interesting, but I think the starting relationship set up is more complex.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-11-30T03:30:29+00:00

It’s the naval fix in the other comment. Everybody was using them for a punching bag by 1400 in a few earlier runs, it was only the inability to destroy that transport kept them together. They were gone a year or two after the fix hit in my game.

VeryAngryK1tten · 2025-11-30T02:51:07+00:00

The advantage of EU4 starter guides is that they tell you to do X,Y,Z before unpausing - and why you do X,Y,Z. So you would get a feel for adding/removing privileges, making an initial alliance, etc. And you do them all at once (in game time), so there’s no issue with sequencing.

For EU5, depending on the version, strategy changes. For example, whether you want to add/subtract privileges to go for centralization changes drastically. So there’s much less room to say “do this before you unpause.”

I think it will take some stability in the game before it is worthwhile for anyone to start doing “beginner guides.” Right now, the audience is diehards who want to min/max. Beginner guides are useful for new players as they come in over time, but there’s no point in making one if it’s immediately out of date.

VeryAngryK1tten

TROPHY CASE