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What are your expectations for the EU5 release?

  • Total voters
    83
  • Poll closed .
Yap said:
Not his hopium specifically, but overall yes, it is hard to not be exited about the game. Everything we have been shown looks amazing, and only concerns left are AI and performance. Flops like Vic3 had controversial shit shown before the game released, so it's easy to contrast that against EU5 and be hopeful
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The hopium has reached even my jaded black heart, but maybe its because other things in my life are also improving. Maybe we really can Manifest a good game into being with positive energy.
i do have some other concerns related to events or situations getting bugged.

Bad UI and Poor Performance i can deal with. Im used to playing Meiou and thats a clusterfuck
 
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Blackstar said:
300 year AAR on England in the latest EU5 build
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rY24MCKQI4UIn 1337-1338 it took him 45 seconds on an Intel Core i7-12700KF, 1891-1802 was 95 seconds.
On a Ryzen 9900X3D first year took 27 seconds, 1801-1802 was 45 seconds
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Well, taking that into account, I'm starting to feel this game will be a slam dunk.
 
A fucking lunatic mad genius has done an EU4 1460 world conquest

This is the full write up of my campaign where I completed a world conquest on December 19th, 1460, an in game time world record. It's essentially what I used to make the video, so no need to look at both.

For many years, Lambda's December 1472 record stood without serious competition. His tolerance for birding and attention to detail was at a level few cared to match. He was the one who introduced me to the idea of playing EU4 as a turn based game. However, as is often the case, later expansions offered significant power creep, particularly through mission trees, reform progress farms and easy access to razing. Trisolarian beat Lambda's record early this year, by over three years, then smashed his own record by six and a half years, finishing in January 1463, both with an Oirat into Mughals run. Storm had a Timurids run that was so chill, he had to regularly defrost his PC, and that beat the record by four months, even though his ultimate goal was a record fully colonized one faith.

Part of my desire to explain this run is to somewhat demystify a run like this. A lot of times on Reddit when these kinds of runs are shared, there's a refrain of disbelief or awe. "I'm not playing the same game as you." Yet, I think in a lot of ways, this kind of campaign is more simple and easy than you might realize. Some of the concerns that might exist in a longer or less optimized campaign simply never matter in a compressed time run. A lot of what makes this kind of run hard to do is the initial acquiring of knowledge and having the patience to treat EU4 as a turn based game. There is surely some strategic complexity and forethought of planning required, but it's only part of the equation.

Disclaimer: Yes, there is much exploiting going on. I bird plenty, use broken interactions and cheesy mechanics, CTA cancel to prevent allies from joining wars, exploit to gain max ducats and tons of reform progress, and have no respect for the purity of role-playing as a 15th century monarch who longs to dev their land. That's just the nature of a speed run world conquest. If you don't like it, this is your off ramp.

For a world conquest speedrun, you need only focus on a surprisingly few elements.

Core cost reduction -- Diplomatic annexation is far too slow (and effectively impossible when frequently carrying high overextension) so the only real viable way to expand is by coring your land yourself. Ideally, you want 80% CCR so that you can get coring time down to six months. With that and enough unrest reduction in some form, you can core any amount of overextension without ever getting rebels.

War score cost reduction (religion or province): This is very important because you want to avoid ever having to fight two wars to annex a country. The more war score cost reduction you can get, the better. In this time period, you don't need full war score reduction to annex most countries, but the more you have the more countries you can annex at once, avoiding unjustified demands. Some large countries like Ming or France will require close to the max, along with a good CB like Great Holy War.

Siege Ability - While it's nice to have this maxed so you get three day sieges, it's not completely necessary. You do want some reduction to avoid long sieges, as that could restrict your ability to get deeper into land masses for more war decs. Because of the constant war declarations, you just need to make sure you can wrap up all your sieges by the time you're ready for your final peace outs.

Envoy travel time or a way to get instant diplomats: As you expand around the word, the travel time of diplomats become an issue. Being able to peace out a dozen countries in a single month is essential in making sure your coring all happens in the same month block instead of getting staggered and causing rebel issues. Plus, as you get into the new world, some of the travel times can get to 100+ days without any reduction. Peacing out just the North American natives without any reductions could alone take years.

Colonial Range: You need this to get access to the new world and some of the far flung islands like Hawaii. The sooner you can get to the new world, the sooner you can get conquistadors exploring and removing terra incognita. Plus, of course, you need the range to be able to take the lands in a peace deal.

Years of Separatism: This is not strictly necessary, but it's a nice quality of life bonus, since it will reduce the potential for rebels. With this high enough, rebel progress should always decrease when you don't have overextension.

Tech cost reduction: You really do want to reach tech 7 across the board as soon as you can. Admin tech 7 opens up two idea group slots, offering a lot of flexibility in temporarily taking ideas for certain uses. Dip tech seven gives you colonial range to reach the farthest islands. Mil tech 7 unlocks cannons to hasten sieges and breach forts.

Mana generation beyond your ruler: With all the land you're taking and the need to core it, you will have to generate a lot of admin mana. While slower campaigns can get by with other methods, the only real competitive way to do that in a speed run is by razing. A masochist could probably do it via parliament issues, but it would be a true test of endurance.

Reform progress: This is the big one. All the most recent world record speed runs were made possible by reform progress farms. With enough reform progress generation, you can max out your reforms, allowing you 45 war score cost reduction from Theocracy. The extra reform progress can also allow you to swap reforms and even government types with ease. A very common move is to peace out your wars while a theocracy then switch to monarchy to benefit from the Timurids razing Tier 2 reform.

Parliament: All that reform progress also unlocks the incredible power of parliament issues. Normally, parliament is fine but having to wait ten years between issues lessens its usefulness. With spare reform progress, you can simply switch to a non parliament reform and then back into parliament, allowing you a fresh issue. Through this, you can effectively get as much dip as you want, admin (with some hassle), stability when you need it (useful for the government switching, especially when overextension makes the cost prohibitive), and as much manpower and ducats as you could ever need and then some.

Sources of Important Modifiers:

CCR:

  • Anatolian ideas - 20%
  • Land Acquisition (Iqta government power option) - 5%
  • Rise of Yemen (Yemen mission reward) - 10%
  • Resurgent Georgia (Georgia mission reward) - 10%
  • Gurkanid Empire (Timurids mission reward) - 10%
  • Conquest of India (Timurids mission reward) - 10%
  • Beylik (T1 Turkish culture monarchy reform) - 10%
  • Direct Royal Administration (English mission reward) - 5%
  • Regional Representation (T10 monarchy reform) - 5%
The total with all of those in use is 85% which means I can cap CCR without needing Admin ideas, allowing for a lot of flexibility in using and dropping idea groups.

War Score cost reduction:

  • Military hegemon - 10% province war score cost
  • Wrath of Christendom (Georgia mission reward) - 10% war score cost vs other religions
  • Malta Forts (Great project) - 15% war score cost vs other religions
  • Kabaa (Great project) - 10% war score cost vs other religions
  • Open Public Elections (T10 theocracy reform) - 15% war score cost vs other religions
  • One State Under God (T13 theocracy reform) - 30% war score cost vs other religions
With all those active, I can achieve 90% reduction.

Siege Ability:

  • Turning the Tide (Georgia mission reward) - 20%
  • Gurkanid Empire (Timurids mission reward) - 10%
  • Increased Offensive (4-4 pulse event) - 10%
  • The Beating of the Drums (2-1 conqueror personality pulse event) - 15%
  • Beyond the Great Wall (Timurids mission reward) - 10%
  • Army tradition - 5%
  • Army professionalism - 20%
That puts me at 90% which is good enough to get most forts down to three day sieges. For those with defensive bonuses, it's still usually not more than 8 or so.

Envoy Travel Time:

  • Petra (great project) - 33%
  • Clerical Commission (T10 theocracy reform) - 50%
However, for the most part, I simply swapped T4 reforms to get a fresh diplomat when I needed it.

Colonial Range:

  • Overseas Exploration (T3 Exploration idea) - 50%
  • New World Companies (Burghers estate decision) - 10%
  • Navigator advisor - 20%
  • Navigator advisor event - 10%
  • Diplomatic Tech 7 - +115
Tech cost reduction:

Technology cost:

  • Madrassa event - 10% (complete luck fluke)
  • Madrass for Fiqah and Imaan (theocracy 3-1 pulse event "New Schools") - 10%
  • Legalism (muslim piety interaction) - up to 10%
  • Dhimmi estate bonus - 10%
  • Dar al-Hadith Sponsorships (Clergy estate privilege) - up to 10% but only up to 6.4% in this run
  • Fund Expansion of Universities (parliament issue) - 5%
  • Pursuit of Knowledge (T9 theocracy reform) - 5%
  • Patron of the Arts (ruler personality) - 5%
Administrative Tech cost:

Curtail Clerical Privileges (T4 reform) - 10%

Military tech cost:

Qollar-aghasi Regiments (T5 Iranian culture reform) - 10%

All Power costs:

  • Golden Era - 10%
  • Innovativeness - up to 10%, but more like 5% this run
  • Corruption: every 1% raises the mana cap by 6 points (once the combination of all power costs and corruption is positive).
  • Control over Monetary Policy: All power costs +5%
Years of Separatism:

  • Conqueror ruler personality - -5
  • Capture of Taiz (Yemen mission reward) - -5
  • The Good Mercenary (mercenary idea group pulse event) - -5
  • Indirect Ruler (Humanist idea 2) - -10
  • Constitutional Theocracy (T10 theocracy reform) - -10
That puts me at -35 years, which completely removes all separatism when annexing a province. In practice, I often did not have the T10 theocracy reform enabled simply because my other unrest reduction was enough to counteract the small unrest malus from five years of separatism (when I had minimal overextension).

Mana generation: The Timurids mission tree nomad path unlocks a T2 monarchy reform that allows razing at -50% efficiency. This is more than enough to handle all mana needs for coring.

Reform Progress: This is the big one, and the one that the run was centered around. Earlier this year, user "Mithra" on Florryworry's Discord discovered this and it was then spread to the speed run community. There is a Jewish decision called The Third Temple that is unlocked by owning Jerusalem and converting it to Judaism. It pops up an event that offers three options. The first two allow you to advance the Holy City of Jerusalem great project by one level. The third option lets you hold off on making a final decision but has the side effect of increasing your clergy influence by 10 for 20 years and decreasing your clergy loyalty by 10. You can select this decision and third option indefinitely, granting you massive amounts of clergy influence. Why would you want this?

Well, most estate privileges that scale based on influence aren't actually capped. As such, you can get your clergy influence all the way up to approximately 2.1 million. If you have the clergy estate privilege "Clerical Education" that grants reform progress growth, it will scale based on your influence. As long as you can get your loyalty above 30, it will be a positive gain (above 60 makes it increase even more). You can easily get up to 500000% reform progress growth, allowing you to net nearly 4000 reform progress per month. And that will be valid for the 20 years those events are still active. Insane, right?

Now, in practice, going up to that high of an influence has some real physical world drawbacks as it greatly increases the size of your save file and thus the loading speed of saves. With near max influence, my loads would take two times as long -- pretty rough if you're going to be birding for parliament issues and the like. I settled at about 1.2 million influence, which was enough of a slowdown in loading speed that I could tolerate. I believe I was netting close to 2k a month in reform progress (which would slowly decrease over time as my average autonomy increased). That genuinely was more than enough.

The Campaign:

Any world record speed run campaign is divided into two sections. The first is the setup, where you form all the nations you need and gain all the modifiers required for your run. Then begins the Total War phase, where you are declaring a war every single month until your last peace out one month after your last war declaration.

My pick for starting choice is the Mamluks, for a few reasons.

  1. Location. They have a central location, enabling balanced outward conquests. This location also allows me access to all the major oceans quickly so I can explore and uncover oceans and land more quickly than other starts. They're also near enough to most of the land I want to acquire in the setup phase.
  2. Their mission tree is perfectly set up to give me claims on most of the important land I want to conquer, ensuring I don't need to no-cb anyone or lose too much in unjustified demands.
  3. Most importantly, they are close to Ethiopia, which has Jewish land from which Semien, a Jewish nation, can be released. Using the A Question of Faith pulse event, I can use that proximity to Semien to convert to Judaism.
The first priority is to find a way to attack Ethiopia such that I can release Semien and have a land border to them, with the least amount of hassle. I do bird a few times to get an alliance network I find palatable. Here Anizah is allied to Beja who is allied to Ethiopia. Since I already have a claim on Anizah, I can start the war right away on December 11th. I also declare on Ramazan, Dulkadir, and and Karaman in ensuing months to begin reaching towards Georgia and Persia. In the west, I start a Fezzan/Tlemcen war to get some land near Gibraltar to increase my coring range. As those wars wrap up, I go further into Arabia and eastern Anatolia, taking Arabia minors and AQ.

Since I use it frequently in the setup phase, let me briefly explain CTA cancel. It's an exploit where you can declare a war but prevent enemy allies from joining that war -- thus cancelling the call to arms or CTA. I first learned about it from a by Magier, though the true origin is probably different. I'll include the link below as his explanation will be fuller. It was an exploit that was fixed for a while but then became possible again in the 1.37.3 version of the game, which is what I'm playing on. All you have to do is bring up the exit game screen and your war declaration screen. As you click on the Declare war button you also quickly hit the C key to exit the game. If the timing is right, when you reload the game, you will only be at war with your main target and any cobelligerents that you checked. The timing can be hard to get right and seems to be affected by your CPU speed, as well as things like number of saves in your saves folder. Eventually you get a feel for it and it's not hard to reproduce. Here is an example from my campaign where I declare on Ramazam and prevent his allies from joining, with the empty birding and loading screen removed.

During this time, I'm making sure to keep my autonomy low and stating what I can because I need my reform progress to be as high as possible. I need to get 50 reform progress so I can switch to Elective Monarchy before Dec 1448. I bird for the 4-4 pulse event "Excellent Minister" to get 15 reform progress and eventually have 50 saved up.

With Semien released and having a land border, I now need to make sure that I create a situation where everyone I'm not at war with and border is at 100 dev or less. The reason for this is the way Elective Monarchy works. If you're a non-Christian, it will choose any neighboring independent nation you're not at war with based on development. However, it's not as simple as the neighbor with the highest develpoment (the wiki is currently wrong here). It puts all your neighbors into groups based on development with each group being separated by 100 dev. So, all neighbors with 300 to 399 dev will be in one group, neighbors with 200 to 299 will be in a different group, and so on. So, any countries that are in the same group have the same chance to be chosen as a local noble. Since Semien is only around 15 dev, they are in the lowest dev bucket, thus I need to make sure that any neighbor I'm not at war with has 100 dev or less to give me a chance of getting a Jewish ruler. This is why I release Karaman as a vassal and give them land so I don't border the Ottomans. Likewise I give Syria land from QQ so I don't border Ajam and to save on coring costs. I'm also at war with Tunis evetnually, who has 111 dev, so they're not a factor.

Here, the starting ruler and governement type of the Mamluks is a huge boon. The starting ruler is over 70, which gives him a yearly death chance of approximately 33%, thus a fairly non crazy amount of birding to get his death in a small time period. When he dies, you get an event popup from the Mamluk government to select a new ruler. If you switch to Elective Monarchy after you get that event, you will then get the Elective Monarchy event after choosing the Mamluk government event ruler. Thus, you can save when the Mamluk government event is active and then just rebird the outcome of the elective monarchy event, ensuring you don't have to constantly bird ruler deaths (and young rulers, at that). Without this, I doubt I would have had the birding tolerance to do this.

This is how I get my Jewish ruler in late 1448. When the 2-1 pulse event comes around in December 1448, I bird for the "A Question of Faith" event, which allows me to switch my state religion to my ruler's religion. Now my country follows Judaism. The next step is getting my missionary strength as high as possible so I can convert Jerusalem to Judaism and be able to use the Third Temple decision and start the reform farm.

To get my missionary strength up, I bird for my new Jewish ruler to be a Zealot, giving 1% strength. I full core Jerusalem, giving another 2% strength and enact the religious conversion edict for another 1%. I bird for the Theologian advisor event (a 300 MTTH event, so this took some time, even though I ultimately got it in a reasonable amount) for 2% more. I enact the "Religious Culture" and "Enforced Unity of Faith" privileges for an additional 2% total. There is a Jewish decision to grant 2% strength for -1 tolerance of heathens which I take. Funniest of all, when my Mamluk ruler died and I chose the new ruler for Mamluk government, I got a hidden delayed event for Muslim rulers that 40 days later gives an event with some choices. One of the choices can grant 2% missionary strength. I had to bird for this by replaying those 40 days a few times as the event options are set in stone upon the new ruler ascending. This event happens even though I got rid of that ruler immediately and am no longer Muslim. Ah, Paradox, I love you. I also exploit dev in Jersualem and concentrate dev in Palestine to get Jersualem down to 9 dev. With 11% missionary strength, that leads to a conversion time of only 10 months.

While all that was going on, I was continuing to expand. I take a path through QQ to get needed provinces for Georgia missions. I also start killing Arabian minors to get towards Fars and Yemen. In the west, I attack Tunis to get Tunisian land for a future Tripoli formation. Slightly annoyingly, Aradbil did not get annexed or warred on by QQ, so I have declare a separate war to take it to get claims on all of Persia via the Mamluk mission tree.

When Jerusalem finally converts in October 1450, I'm ready to start the Jewish reform farm, I use an auto clicker to repeatedly do the Third Temple decision and event, to spare myself carpal tunnel. I settle on around 1.2 million influence. I use a combination of estate decisions that grant loyalty, selling titles, and summoning the diet to get my loyalty over 30 right way so that my reform progress is positive. The first month, since I'm below 60% loyalty, I get around 900 reform, which I use to get parliament issues for more clergy loyalty. On the second month, I'm gaining close to 2k reform progress and we're off.

I switch my capital to Malatya, a Shia province that I have a core on, and thus become eligible for the "Adopt Islam" decision, allowing me to switch to Shia. With the religious CB from Theocracy, I'll be able to have a CB on almost the entire world now, plus benefit from all the normal positives of being Muslim. I do a couple more capital changes to get the coring reduction bonus from same cultures and end up in Ayntab because it is low dev and the only province I own from that state, helping to facilitate later culture shifts.

I use some parliament issues to get to admin tech 5 and dip tech 5. I take exploration ideas and get some explorers to begin discovering the new world. I get a colonial range advisor and bird for his event, because that was the only way I could get coring range deep into England and Burgundy.

I use my cash reserves (gained from parliament farming) to get a number of charter companies. Thanks to my high colonial range, I get a charter company right next to Burgundy and one next to England (lucked out here in that the English-France war resulted in a strong win for France and Scotland gaining land). Plus, for England and Burgundy, it will allow me to core inland right away without having to wait on a coastal core first.

Now is the next phase of wars to get all the land I need for my nation formations and associated missions. I seize some Hejaz land so I have a land path to the Yemen lands and can start coring immediately. I declare on Burgundy and bring in Aragon so that I can get Malta in the peace deal. I have France as an ally to make things easier. Georgia, Trebizond, and Ajam and its vassals are the next wars, against to get mission requirements and needed cores for formations. England comes next and since I own a province on the island, I don't have to worry about its navy at all. I declare on Fars, who is still a vassal of Timurids, thus Tim and Sistan join the fight. More Arabian minors get declarations. Khorasan managed to win their independent from the Timurids (and then somehow lose land to Mazandaran) so I declare on them next. Transoxiana and Afghanistan are also independent and I declare on Shirvan to bring them in as cobelligerents. With all of these peace deals, Timurids is fully annexed (though sadly I have to take a Fars vassal as I didn't have enough to annex Sistan, Timurids, and Fars directly), as well as is much of Caucasia and Arabia. The last war I start is against the Ottomans. During these wars, I do some culture shifts and core Georgian and Yemen land quickly.

I form Yemen, completing a number of missions, the most important one being the 10% CCR and -5 years of separatism. I then form Tripoli, culture switch to Turkish, and accept the National Ideas popup. Since Tripoli is not tied to any cultural national ideas, I get the national ideas associated with the Anatolian culture, which has 20% CCR. I form Georgia immediately after, getting a whole host of modifiers. 10% war score cost vs other religions, 10% CCR, 20% siege ability, 0.25 tactics, and a Deus Vult CB I can use if I'm not currently a theocracy and don't want to deal with switching.
 
Blackstar said:
A fucking lunatic mad genius has done an EU4 1460 world conquest
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You forgot the gigachad:

1000045820.jpg
 
I may actually buy and play this on release. It sounds like it could be modded into Victoria II's timeframe and if it comes out of the box deep and functional then that's better than having overbuilt Autism Simulator (MEIOU and Taxes) or the base game (which I played some of, it was fine, but I never wanted to touch after touching Autism Simulator).
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I may actually buy and play this on release. It sounds like it could be modded into Victoria II's timeframe and if it comes out of the box deep and functional then that's better than having overbuilt Autism Simulator (MEIOU and Taxes) or the base game (which I played some of, it was fine, but I never wanted to touch after touching Autism Simulator).
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It is 100% getting a Victorian era mod soon after release.
 
I hope that whenever they do make societies of pops functional that there is some way it can render the idea that a population lives in one province but hunts over a much larger geographical range. Even potentially sharing it. This has bothered me for ages about the Americas, where agrarian tribes usually had tiny core territories (like Upstate New York or Nickajack) while the whole sticking point with some lands like Kentucky were that then were demilitarized commons that nobody was allowed to settle towns in.

Hunting grounds are fluid things you war and trade over. Wealth generation but not essential to immediate survival.

Losing core farmland is more like the strategic death of the tribal nation.

A civilizing tribe can even viably come out better by sacrificing hunting grounds (population too small to effectively exploit it, urbanizing requires pulling inward, etc).
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I hope that whenever they do make societies of pops functional that there is some way it can render the idea that a population lives in one province but hunts over a much larger geographical range. Even potentially sharing it. This has bothered me for ages about the Americas, where agrarian tribes usually had tiny core territories (like Upstate New York or Nickajack) while the whole sticking point with some lands like Kentucky were that then were demilitarized commons that nobody was allowed to settle towns in.

Hunting grounds are fluid things you war and trade over. Wealth generation but not essential to immediate survival.

Losing core farmland is more like the strategic death of the tribal nation.

A civilizing tribe can even viably come out better by sacrificing hunting grounds (population too small to effectively exploit it, urbanizing requires pulling inward, etc).
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I would say to properly do this, you'd need to have a hybrid SoP and LBC. Where your tag controls some core exploited agricultural lands, while your SoP pops represent the broad H-G populations that are a part of the nation.
 
Trying some new (to me) mods before EU V comes out and:

peace.JPG
I honestly didn't even know a country could win an independence war and choose to remain a subject. The annoying part is, aside from fucking themselves over, they fucked me because that unexpected AE was enough to ruin my careful balancing act and tip most of the HRE into a coalition.
 
East_Clintwood said:
Trying some new (to me) mods before EU V comes out and:

View attachment 8032626
I honestly didn't even know a country could win an independence war and choose to remain a subject. The annoying part is, aside from fucking themselves over, they fucked me because that unexpected AE was enough to ruin my careful balancing act and tip most of the HRE into a coalition.
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Which mod?
 
Computer God Autism said:
Which mod?
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That's Ante Bellum, I run it using extra sub mods to add even more content with it:


Another mod/s I would recommend is Third Odyssey

 
East_Clintwood said:
Trying some new (to me) mods before EU V comes out and:

View attachment 8032626
I honestly didn't even know a country could win an independence war and choose to remain a subject. The annoying part is, aside from fucking themselves over, they fucked me because that unexpected AE was enough to ruin my careful balancing act and tip most of the HRE into a coalition.
Click to expand...
That doesn't sound that unrealistic to me. I can't think of an example off the top of my head but if a subject felt it had negotiated a peace that resolved its main gripes, or was favorable to independence, I could see it happening.
 
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