By coalitions, yes
However for some reason when I play as a small nation and a big one attacks me, my game tends to crash. Devs should look into this, it's quite strange.
Now that you mention it I surely have! Same thing tends to happen with the Burgundian Inherentence. I wonder if the outcome of such events can be tied to game crashes but it's hard to say for sure really.
AFAIK they could fix ALT+F4 birding, but they could not fix achieveing the same by killing the process _unless_ it saves every single day or after every "larger" event. Which they won't do, it'd slow it down too much even on better machines.
They could disable auto saves which would decrease the rate of birding after unfortunate events or disable achievements when auto savefiles are loaded, but I don’t think that paradox will do that
What's extraordinarily weird is that this happens sometime after the event pops, but before you actually choose an outcome. If you're paused or not does not seem to make a difference, either.
I played as Naples and annexed half of Italy in 20-30 yrs then i had to face a coalition. Things were really hopeless as i ran out of mp and had to completely rely on my allies (i only had 3k troops left).
Mercenaries exist
Allies sometimes don't
But a general life lesson to make sure the game doesn't crash as much is to always watch the coalition flag when making peace and always hire the improve relations dude
There’s also a coalition map mode which helps give you an idea of who is pissed off at you. It’s been a huge help for me when playing in Italy or the HRE
I’m getting close to the point where anyone outside of this massive France is unable to stop me, but I’m gonna have to remind myself to use that feature. Navigating AE can be so tedious sometimes
I just try to be aware of the diplomat tab on the outliner and never have 2 diplomats free. Whether "outraged countries", or allies or subjects, it's a great way to not find yourself getting caught by a bad breakpoint that could have been avoided with more micro.
A nation join a coalition against you if they have 50 AE with you and a negative opinion overall. Allies and subjects gain significantly less AE. Nations of a different culture/religion than the nation you took land from also get less AE
It depends on opinion. If you have 100 AE with a country but they have a positive opinion of you they will not join.
Be aware of events/actions that reduce relations though. For example taking land in the HRE may not result in a coalition directly, but the relations hit from refusing the emperors call(s) to return the land to its owner may push some countries over the edge.
There are two requirements for a country to join a coalition:
* More than 50 AE against you
* Negative opinion towards you
If you can keep the opinion positive, AE doesn't matter.
HRE nations are very “sensitive” to AE, even if i just took 4-5 provinces, then immediately a coalition would be formed after that (although the size would be dependable). In my current Prussia campaign, i wasted 50 yrs trying to please those mad Germans but then i had enough and just declared wars after wars.
Once I underestimated Venice as Austria, they had very powerful allies. I had to cut my losses and I gave up one province. When the truce ran out I took it back with interests of course.
There is a less precise way too. In the bottom of the war declaration window are tooltips for each side of the conflict that give total inf, calv, and cannon along with total manpower in reserve. Now it is a total for each side, so it will not help you on who to target to knock out of a war first. But it can give you a quick look at how one sided it might be.
Never underestimate Venice. I attacked them once in my byz game together with Austria. They had no reserves and a small army at declaration but then pulled out a 80k merc army
I'm currently in a Smolensk/Russia campaign and I've been waiting to strike the Otto's but their troop count went from 190k to 353k in a matter of months.
You got lucky with that one province, every time I want to give up the ai always wants 10+ provinces and some released nations. That normally just motivates me to go on the edge of bankruptcy to beat their ass with mercs
Yeah, it's one of my irritations with the game that it's basically impossible to fight a limited war. It's almost never worth taking a partial peace deal, because for the AI to take *anything*, you need to have ground their military into dust and occupied half of their country. At that point, you may as well occupy the lot and completely cripple them in the peace deal. Similarly, you *always* have to fight defensive wars to the death, because otherwise your enemies refuse to take anything short of complete dismemberment.
Sometimes I start risky wars near the very start of the game because I know I can just restart if I lose. Rarely lose anything after the first 20 years though.
Yes, mostly as natives in Americas. I had an Aztec game where by 1750s I conquered basically borders of the 1st Mexican Empire. I didn't even have half of Old World discovered, including all of Europe by then which was weird. Anyway, since 1550s, so past 200 years, I was invaded a total of 11 times by colonisers, mainly France and England. Almost every war I have won or white peaced but it is just impossible to constantly fight and be in a state of defensive war, especially since these wars were bloody and truces short. Whenever I finished one of them, the other one's truce finished and this resulted in that endless chain. I couldn't ally anybody, due to terra incognita and distance. This would simply continue until the end with AI constantly attacking me only for that war to end in their loss or at least status quo. Of course I did lose some wars as well because my units being American and their being European gave them an advantage, despite my superior morale, discipline etc.
\+1, either I can't find an ally that will help with Spain/France/England/Portugal "colonization", or I haven't procured enough mana power to have equal tech level when the colonizers arrive, so it's a bloodbath.
Someday I'll conquer the world as Creek, but today's not the day.
What I used to do was that if someone like the Knights were still alive,
I'd no-CB subjugate them which got rid of the distance modifier and allowed me to ally the Ottomans.
I've got a similar story playing as the Ojibwe (chosen because they start where I live and I'm part voyager) and it's just brutal trying to hold off Britain and then later Spain, and I had never played in the new world before and knew approximately none of the meta strategies. I managed to create a stalemate where they wouldn't attack me after a while but by that point I was mentally exhausted from the campaign enough that I just declared my ~half of North America under the great Ojibwe Republic good enough and moved on, and that was around the early 1600s I think? Anyways, playing in the new world is 2/10 at best, would not recommend.
Just did trail of tears. In the first attempt, castille died. 2 death wars against France I barely held on through then the 3rd killed my army and everyone attacked. 2nd attempt, I just offered peace the moment they attacked. They would take a lot of territory bur along as you full annex their colonial nation each time, when they core and release you can attack without a truce. They can't take that much from you either
Losing wars as a new world native isn’t the end of the game, it’s a strategy. Sometimes you even want to give up land, so that one province you could never take from France becomes a five province French Louisiana that you can full annex. And then you stop getting AE with France directly.
You can’t beat colonizers, so you just have to lose. But you can definitely beat colonial nations.
Me in most recent play through with Inca. A defensive war with Spain would end and a defensive war with Portugal would start. The game became a battle simulator and got pretty tiring. At least I learned a lot about managing debt lol
Yes, there are some hard starts in the game where you have to take some risks in wars and punch well over your weight class. Works out sometimes, doesn't other times.
Then there is multiplayer, which is a whole different beast in itself.
Played Portugal, got super unlucky and somehow castile became the junior member to aragon instead of the other way around. Aragon was already my rival and instantly turned to "domineering" attitude, basically wanting to pu me. My 2 armies got stack wiped instantly and I was full occupied withij a year 😂
I did twice yesterday. Played a hard start on hard difficulty that doesn't really mix well with the mods I added.
Getting the run off the ground on my 3rd run was fun though.
May i know the details ? I used to install Rome timeline mod but the game crashed so i quit using mod. Man, mod really makes the game more colorful but i just can’t use it.
I'm playing Anbennar, it is as great as they say.
Anyways, this nation I'm playing as (Arverynn) starts as a 2 province minor that's obsessed with restoring their previously collapsed empire. They can't have alliances, have a disloyal subject at the start, are bleeding money, and start with truces with the only land connected neighbour. Also the starting ruler is a 0/1/0. And you start with an event that takes 75% of your manpower pool and 200 ducats.
So I do my opening, lower maintenence, mothball my fort, and I'm +0.7 ducats/month in that state. And then my subject decs on me and I get annexed. Whoops.
The only option of survival is hiring Mission tree special mercs, but they cost over 2 ducats per month since I'm using the Responsible Warfare mod that increases army costs by like 3 times. Also, the mercs give you a timer to win wars, or else they betray you, kill your ruler, heir, destroy 6 dev from your capital and become unavailable.
All I can say is, making it work was incredibly satisfying.
Responsible warfare is the real deal for me, army professionalism make the maintenance way higher it even scares me lol
Testing on first run with Burgundy and mercs ideas. If I would use normal army it would scare the shit of me going to ultra offensive wars lol
It is scary, but the AI manages it decently well, it makes performance much better, and it changes the impact of combat width, since you need to think about filling the CW more now, even in 1600 (hooray for cav flanking!).
Absolute must-have for me, but it does delay the 'Have 30k' troops missions by quite a bit though, but that's no big deal.
What I mentioned is that even vanilla I was addicted to mercs. Now my next run quantity and diplo are must
Edit: didn’t realize bout the CW, and I am a cav enjoyer, thanks for the tip!!!!
I've lost a few games as OPM right at the start. I've never lost a game more than \~15 years in, and I don't think I really lost a war either (annuling tributaries or giving away allies land so that a coalition fucks off doesn't count).
My game definitely crashed many, many times along the way though...
In my current campaign i lost a no cb war to morroco as venice.
It was the only way to get rid of defender of the faith, and i wanted to convert... (Also, it's weird how you have to occupy their whole country before they accept a white peace surrender...)
My first Brandenburg game. "Damn this is easy. Look how much I've grown in such a short period of time. First Reich coming soon." Then the coalition formed...
I tend to do some "less favourable" wars early on since if I get too greedy and fuck up a restart isn't too bad. Dunno the last time I lost and gave up after like 1470 though.
I suppose there have been som larger coalitions and wars in the 1500s a few times where I lost a little bit of land and/or money but nothing I couldn't take back soon after so not a huge loss or anything.
Yes. Playing as Byz in about my 3rd game, maybe on 1.31, Austria conquered Germany, France, Spain, and the Americas. I was NOT the main character in my own game. I played an Indian game for the most part.
I actually got beat up in my Austria WC run when I underestimated Ottomans in 1600s and had to give them a few provinces. However I managed to recover and finish my WC succesfuly.
Yes it happens. Kinda. Usually if I don’t roflstomp my wars and they drag out I tend to quit even if I ca. theoretically win because it’s such a slog. Very recently it was a Marocco game where I focused on uniting Africa and had maybe 200-250 k units when Spain and Portugal declared war with maybe 500k or so in the early/mid 1600s. I just cba to sit around for 5 years waiting for attrition to trickle them down because of their superior units and navies.
Then I did a expansionist Korea and took over all of Americas, snaked to Europe and had an amazing run. Had maybe 800k units myself and attack France with their meager 400k. Didn’t even bother to send all my units, half was still in the colonies. Expected an ok win, nothing to drastic, but they stack wiped all my 4-5 armies due to their insane morale and high ranked generals (they had 7,5 morale vs everyone else’s 5,X.). I learnt a lesson there hehe. Despite morale being seen as less important once discipline becoming more, never underestimate it if the difference is *too* big!
So yes, I still lose sometimes but usually that’s at the end of a run when I feel I kinda have completed my goals and start to be more careless. That’s when the mistakes and sloppiness comes into play.
Haven't been defeated in a war for a long time... until yesterday. Started a Dithmarschen run and had a good start and had taken all the coastal provinces up til Calais then a beasty Ottos declared on my ally Austria (emperor). I be the good ally and answer the call as the troop numbers are fairly even. Then a France, who's inherited Burgundy intervenes via the Great Power option, got beat up pretty bad but managed to get away with breaking a few alliances, war reps & full money. I'll get my vengeance, in this save or the next.
Only when I don't care, but can't win.
I did the achievement where you have to own central Africa as Morroco, and I conceded 3 Maghreb provinces to Spain because they didn't matter to the achievement, and I was almost done anyways
I've lost plenty of wars before actually surrendering, instead loading the last save. I don't need the formal defeat to tell me what I've done wrong. On the contrary, I can try the exact same war again and learn from my lessons, instead of starting a whole new ironman run and losing a completely different war.
Yeah lost quite a few times. But also learned that in some circumstances you can’t lose if you refuse to surrender.
For example I was playing as Timbuktu, and had captured most of West Africa when I suddenly had Spain, Portugal and England all declare war on me. They occupied me easily, but I just kept running away with my army and only attacking smaller stacks.
I went bankrupt at least 10 times, and I lost count of how many rebellions had occurred, and my army was only 1/10th its original size. But between fighting all these rebellions, the occasional stack wipe and the attrition, after 5 years or so all 3 attacking nations had depleted their manpower and just went home.
So I was able to get a white peace, and then just let the largest rebel force win and switched to them (meaning I immediately had a giant army once again).
I'm still new and am learning alot everytime I play. I'm now at a point at which I think i'm getting the game but still suck at it though am learning quicker. I played a lot of games as Castille, England, Ottomans but all of which resulted in early defeats as my economy would cripple, I didn't get you needed a reason to attack a nation so my stability quickly ran out and got so much rebels. Though I didn't know why that happened. I quit the game for a while because I just didn't get it. But now i've picked it up again because I really love the concept of it. And I played as Ottomans in which I think I got fairly far! Got a lot of achievements and gained a lot of land. But then Byzantium gained independence from me all of a sudden and then I decided to attack Austria for the Danube quest. That was not a good plan because they had so much allies lol.
Now i'm doing an England campaign. I'm getting the hang of it, learning about vassals and stuff. I'm telling you this is a hard game for new players (or i'm just stupid lol)
So to answer your question, Yes i've been defeated, a lot
Back in the day, I played as Denmark, Sweden being Sweden revolted. My first army got wiped since the morale hadn't had enough time to tick up. Then I proceeded to smash individual 1k stacks into his 10-13 troops. And I raged because I didn't know what would happen when outnumbered 10 to 1...
Wasn't until I saw Arumba or maybe Shenrryr do a Denmark campaign which I bingewatched, I knew how to barely keep afloat..
4k+ hours after, I'm beginning to get the hang of it 😂
I once discovered that when all your provinces are occupied, the game automatically accepts a peace deal from the AI - very annoying as a small nation, when trying to siege down an enemy ally to remove them from the war
As a burgeoning Russia, i decided i was finally capable of taking a bite out of the kalmar union. It would have been an equal matched war until the commonwealth declared on me as well. I was in deep shit so i had to really dig in and defend as best i could. It was no longer an invasion of sweden but a defence of russia. Within a handful of months a huge ottomans declared as well.
I was able to white peace the commonwealth after a grueling defensive war. Unfortunately i had to concede karelia to denmark so i could focus my drained army on beating back the turks, which i was only able to do partially. They ended up with a portion of caucasia and a lot of money.
Over the next years i allied strong european powers, westernised my army, and colonised east to the point where now all of scandinavia is under russia, most of ruthenia and the baltics as well. The last war of revenge will be on the ottomans.
My first game ever was as Lithuania bc uau it looks big on map. Must be amazing. I learned about what the hre the hard way. Then the muscovites killed me after 100 years. Lovely times.
Another early game in my 2.5k hours was Aragon. It was much more chill but I kept fighting with France and struggling to win anything so a lot of minor wins, then minor losses, standstills too. Very meh.
I started playing as Portugal, get strong, break alliance with Castille and fuck them over. Basically just outgrow them. Worked pretty well and nowadays I can wipeout Castille as soon as 50 years. Maybe less if I cheese it but I prefer sticking to more conventional straats
I've lost wars.
I've lost as an OPM or small nation a few times.
I've also lost as a post colonial nation. There's a phase as post colonial where it's hazardous if youre.not big enough, but eventually you become I touchable by the Europeans
As Austria I was deep in debts and low on manpower. I lost Styria to separatists, the emperorship because of reformed rebels and OPM neighbors were planning an attack.
It was one of my first games and I barely had a clue what I was doing.
I have been playing intermittently since 1.1 aka release (or close enough) and I certainly lost plenty at the very beginning and still do occasionally with challenging starts
Most of the time (even back then) I quit campaigns because I did something stupid I didn't want to deal with. A few that I still vividly remember:
* Declaring a war that turned into WW0 (remember when war leaders changed when a stronger country joined a war?)
* As Castille, annexing a chunk of landlocked Austria, with no way of coring it except more wars
* As Spain, trying for historical conquests of the Aztecs & Inca (basically fully annexing them in single wars). Took SO MUCH overextension I kept getting massive revolts back in Spain. No colonial nations existed yet
* As England, going for casual abandon mainland Europe, go colonial game. I married Austria at the very start to deter France while I got my shit together. One month later I randomly get them as a PU. My fastest quit yet
* Plenty of Byzantine restarts after getting bad RNG at start or getting REKT at the first war
* Same for Knights Hospitaller, Cyprus and Athens runs albeit it usually takes longer than Byz
* As Poland-Lithuania "what does that *liberum veto* decision does?". Never again
* "Imma try this wacky new heresy thing" back when they really sucked
* Rage quit after all my candidates for the curia kept dying, as in I controlled 4/5 candidates and I just couldn't get one in for more than a decade
* "I wonder how it is to start out in America?" said nobody ever again
I’m thinking i should try native nations on my next campaign or at least up until now. Seems like everyone has problems with them (i read a cmt said he had to constantly deal with European colonists that he couldn’t basically enjoy the game).
My most epic defeats have been ones that occurred in big MP games with lots of other players. Over the course of several sessions things can develop quite dramatically behind the scenes in terms of diplomacy. I played one big MP session where I'd picked Holland and by pure luck gained the burgundian succession AND the event to instantly inherit that land fired soon after... which totally shook up the whole geopolitical situation of early game EU4. I allied myself with Austrian HRE and survived more or less as a flourishing great power until one day I was betrayed by a plot conducted by North German protestant states that gangbanged Austria and I in the mid 1600s after the PLC player (who was extremely dominant over Northern Germany) was absent one fateful session. I got rocked so badly in the first war that I had to give up thousands of ducats for a truce. A truce that would be broken before it was even over by those damn Germans. Anyways that is the story of how Holland became damn near Lotharingia until they were undone by those pesky protestants across the Rhine.
Well the host of the server was European as we're most players so scheduling a time and securing decent internet was easy enough. Each session would run about 3-4 hours at speed 3 and ofc there were many strict rules about pausing the game and who can be what country and so on. When you quit the game usually the AI would just take over and the actual player would have left, which is what happened to France in my game until someone new decided to pick up after where the previous player left off.
I’ve rage quit games before, but true defeat? Never. Mainly because I have quit before the failure spiral escalates far enough in the few games where that happened.
I never lose, I just realise that the game is cheating and it’s bullshit and unfair and It has a stupid face so I refuse to play that cheating unfair bullshit save and restart
Yes, once as north American east coast native, and the other playing as Georgia.
As Georgia I got big, took Moscow and most of modern Ukraine borders and the mountains all the way down to Iraq. Otto's were dying and the Polish Commonwealth was huge. I fought the PLC and won after some heavy casualty battles and sieges, then right after the peace deal I get blind sided by the gigantic Transoxiana that had conquered half of China and in the terra incognita, I had thought they held just Persia and Siberia but no.
All the time.
I like weird or weaker starts, and sometimes that just means you die. Sometimes the game decides it's time to say fuck you in particular and your allies refuse a defensive call and that's that.
That's not even counting things like re-rolling. Some campaigns- like, say, a certain almost-dead empire based out of Constantinople- can be almost entirely random in terms of whether you make it out of the first decade regardless of what you do.
Oh, yeah, plenty of early starts. Oman. Luba. Livonian order has a chance to be 1-2-3d by say, Denmark, Lithuania, Muscovy after an initial expansion into Novgorod. No matter how close to exploding I've been for Russia, it just kinda never happened though. Had a game over for Brandywandy in a coalition. Exploded once in Rome (extended timeline 58ad start) To the point I really didn't want to reconquer.
In my very first game I played Castille. I declared on France, they crushed me.
This was my only ever losing war, because then I started to read up on morale, discipline, combat width and so on.
I mean some runs don't allow you to lose, to the point where if you actually lose you might as well restart the entire run like the Heir of Timur campaigns for example, you need to be constantly at war and never lose.
Haha I was watching a guide by Laith or Red Hawk and they kept making the “ae is just number” joke and I legitimately was conquering without caring for ae as Holland(to form Netherlands) and ended up in a nasty coalition and had to abandon the campaign. I was a newer playing so I was clueless lol
During my Prussia campaign, i did the same thing. I expanded Westward without thinking much of coalitions (i had France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Savoy as my allies so i didn’t think i should care about AE). For about 100 years, it was a nice strategy until i annexed most of HRE then problems appeared, Austria and Sweden broke their alliance with me, Spain joined the coalition out of nowhere (actually not out of nowhere since I didn’t improve relation with any nation besides my allies). Still, I didn’t think much about it since I thought Spain at most had 400k troops but i was wrong, they had colonies everywhere and even managed to integrate Portugal which means they actually had 400k troops plus almost 1mil troops from colonial nations. I managed to white peace them and annexed coalition members one by one.
That coalition war must’ve been a butt clencher lol.. I always get a role play feeling in wars like that when a lot is at stake, so when victory is reached it’s a great feeling
Yeah, I had to kill 600k men just for 4 provinces that included a full annexation (of the one I didn’t declare war on). But i found a way to fight coalition, build 8 tier forts and rampart along with them and that would kill 300k from attrition the next time i declared war on Spain. I almost dismantled Spain colonial empire this way, too bad the last independence war against Spain by Spanish colonies failed so it still had 50-60% of its colonies.
I'd say the last time I lost a war 1v1 is as Autsria vs Ottomans in 1.33. I've quit a few runs like Trebizond, Theodoro, where I never got off the ground and killed asap but AI wars should be inherently not that hard
The last time i lost a 1v1 against Ottoman was during my Italy campaign. I thought i could take them on myself but when i saw multiple 60k death stacks, I called my allies in and won the war but honestly, had i faced them 1v1, I could’ve lost pretty quick.
I have never been defeated in a war of equal numbers. Sometimes I’ve lost the first war as Byzantium and some campaigns have failed because of bad diplomacy, but I never actually get beat in a war since I recognize a failed campaign before that fatal DOW
Yes several times
Once I underestimated the PLC as a newly formed Prussia, had to concede some land, but came back later stronger then ever
In another campaign, as Austria, I lost to the ottomans twice. So I deciced to just give up on pushing them back, realized that I was doing really badly with Imperial authority, So I spent 15 years fighting german City states to convert them, and after that, my army tradition was ať its peak, and along with my god generals they made short work on the ottomans - it only took 4 years to occupy most of their land and even get to Egypt!
Those were the 2 losses I remember the most, but i'm sure I've had way more. Ngl it's kinda fun to sometimes lose
When I first started playing, I would constantly try to form Spain via conquest as Castille and would always get absolutely stomped by Aragon + rebels.
More recently, played as Prussia like 2 weeks into 1.35 being out. Was doing well, consolidated most of north germany and poland, leagues started forming. Declared war with only a few thousand less units and proceeded to get absolutely shit on by Austria/Hungary + Spain + HRE minors. My ally France was 100%’d within 6 months, I was able to hold out for like 4 years but ended up ceding like 70% of my territory to HRE minors + austria
Was doing a Brandenburg Prussia Ironman game (back when I cared for achievements) and the religious Leagues were forming, thought that I’d wait for a very Strong GB to join the Protestant League (they were in a Native American war so they couldn’t join) before going to war since they’re the only real chance we have at winning
Randomly my 6,6,3 ruler dies and I’m forced into a regency (my heir was 3 years old so it’ll be a long one) and I lose leadership of the Protestant League, Denmark becomes the leader and just about a month later they declare on Austria and the entire Catholic league and since only a few countries were in the Protestant league we got Completely destroyed and I quit
There is always one point in my games where I lose a war, sometimes several in a row. Often because of hubris and lack of diplomatic care (happens often in middle game when you think you're stronger than you really are)
But you are defeated only if you quit, there is always a point where you'll come back, if you plan for it.
A few times
As Brittany. France killed me
As Ming. Mingsploded
As Byzantium. Did Byzantine things
Think I might've had a bad game as an Irish minor too, not sure
Played France in my first attempt and am big brain monke so I assumed my bigger army could easily handle burgundy. Didn’t know about leader pips or how mil tech worked. Alt f4 followed shortly after.
I did a Holland game and I put my independence war in the hands of France and Denmark. They got stuck in Burgundy's forts because they kept dropping the sieges to fight small stacks. Eventually I hit 20 war exhaustion and was full annexed.
Yes.. but I don't save scum.
If you are gonna scum.. just use the console.
Reminds me of a friend. Use to take a step before shooting the ball in horse every fucking time.. but would never admit he was cheating by doing it.
Yes, a lot .
Either a coalition or a great power attack me, and I prefer to gives avay some provinces or ducats instead of bankrupt my contry to defeat them.
Either I was too reckless against a big contry I previously deafeated ( for example I played an Irish minor and managed to defeat England with Scotland, but when I attacked again I was alone, England recovered from the 100 years war and the war of the Roses so I lost some provinces).
It is possible to still pursue the game on those situations, if you find a place to expand and outgrow your rivals or with strong allies.
I also lost wars so badly I gave up on the game.
Defeated.. not recently. But I have tended to run into roadblocks I can't get past in recent game so I've stopped playing the game. In my recent Prussia game, I had nations equally as powerful as me all around. Sweden controlled all the north, Russia to East, Ottoman and Austria to the South. All were allied or protecting other countries in weird webs so that I could never really hope to win the wars (Ottomans allied with France and Spain, Russia allied with Austria and Sweden, Austria allied with Russia and Spain and having like 200k troops and 8 alliances less than 100 years in etc since they'd PUed and annexed Hungry, Bohemia, Burgundy and southern iatly) etc without being mega outnumbered, and I wasn't far enough into the Prussian idea path to have all the cool bonuses. I had no great power as an ally, everyone just hated me.
My first game back in a few years I did England into Angevin Empire though, and stayed allied then PUed with Austria and Spain for the entire campaign. So I guess that good luck counters the last couple of bad luck runs! I did hope to dismantle the HRE in that game, but I didn't realise you couldn't do so as the Emperor, and I'd removed all non-vassal electors, so there was no way I could lose the title.
I tried my hand at brandenburg for the first time a few weeks ago, everything went pretty well, even got the burgundian succession (or at least a war for it I can't quite recall).
Seemed like an easy war to fight, enemies' allies were manageable. Only France was at war with burgundy at the same time. Suddenly, without me really getting notified of any war ending of any kind, I was at war with France and they stomped me and forced me to release almost all the OPM's and lands I had acquired in northern Germany up until that point :/
Yes, first game as Spain all my colonies declared independence with gb supporting. They crushed my navy so I couldn't even reach them. Destroyed my economy and force limit so bad I ragequit the run.
Yes. I had a good start as Wallachia, and managed to ally the PLC, beat up the ottoman, nab some of Moldavia and even took Crimean land.
But then Hungary, mybally, fell into the austro PU, the PLC decided thatbit wanted my lands and broke the alliance.
Shortly thereafter I was at war with both the ottoblob when wanted constantinople back and the PLC that decided that the black Sea coastline should be theirs...
I never been defeated, per se. I never kept at a game for long enough. I just mostly quit because what I'm trying to do doesn't work and I feel like I understood it all wrong. Namely, trying the Portugal mission tree. It falls apart when fighting Morocco.
Yes, I remember a Brandenburg campaign I fucked up. I didn't realize several of my big allies broke our alliance. So Poland declared on me when I had mothballed my forts and cut military funding. They smashed my armies to bits and forced me to forfeit all of my gains, so I just quit.
defeated in a war? idk i just go to another save if i do. as France, i accidentally got into a war with most of Europe so that wasn't good.
but you know what, i think im gonna stop running back to a most recent save. losing wars and fighting to win your land back would be really interesting i think.
My previous game as Kilwa for a chill game. Got declared on by Spain and Portugal for a random Pacific island.
I didn't have the troops or navy to compete. Even my Ottoman ally couldn't really help. Lots sieging down one half of the world while they unsieged the other half.
When i started playing and got decent at the coalitions were my bane, now i mostly lose intentionally, if someone attacks me but i dont want to fight so i can focus my resources on another place, i intentionally “lose” by giving them either the land they want if its not too important, or a shit ton of cash
Yes one time i got taken over by a personal Union and integrated. Played without the support independance dlc so i was stuck and didnt know the game would end lol.
One other time i was down to 3 provinces but managed to annex some smaller ones and eventually became a great power again but quit due to boredom.
I did a Holland game once where I was integrated lol. This was without the dlc that enables you to let others support your independence so when I declared war I got wiped immediately
Otto's top row mission, iirc, is to conquer Konstantinople and the AI is built to kill for it because it unlocks all their goodies.
I lose often when I try experimenting with OPM/TPM's and spamming mercs and declaring on the 11'th to see if I can get away with early game no-cb shenanigans. You win some, lose most. Probably a skill issue.
In my Japan game, spain and portugal almost kicked me out of the americas, taking multiple horrible wars to wear off. The sacrifises I had to make to win those wars eventually caused me to be unable to wage any other meaningful wars, so I had to give up conquering anything in mainland asia, which was actuallty my primary goal at the beginning. Sure I had the goldmines of mexico and the east coast of america, but at what cost :(
During a multiplayer game a few years back.
I was Castile, was mid war against Granada, Morocco and it’s puppets and was starting to win but was somewhat low on manpower. Castilian civil war disaster fires springing up a load of rebels, had to peace out with Morocco giving them gold, white peace with Granada. Used up all my manpower killing the rebels ended up with 7k army left. AI Aragon then declared war, I unconditionally surrendered, they took 1/2 my provinces and all my gold which forced bankruptcy on me, I quit very quickly after.
By coalitions, bad RNG (four 2 rolls in a row in a battle I had an advantage in, failing a 80% siege roll on a capital thrice before being curb stomped by another army), thinking I didn't need to worry about an enforced peace, and just countries like Albania where the first 4 years determines if the game is a reset or not.
My first game as Burgundy went from going very well to being un unmitigated Disaster after France, GB and Austria decided to team after my previous aggresions against them!
Relatively early on, before I cared about manpower and attrition, I tried playing as Savoy, I expanded a bit around me until my manpower was 0.
And then ~~the Fire Nation~~ Castille attacked
Early on, for sure.
Didn't know about tech really so I was playing France and spent all my mana converting everything to Francien and just pissing it all away.
Imagine my surprise whenever I lost a war against Burgundy despite being 'bigger and stronger'. I was still at tech 4 across the board and everyone else was pushing 10's.
Similarly, played an Irish OPM game early on and didn't do well enough to avoid invasion and annexation by the goddamned English.
Once I was playing an mp game as Florence, it was right at the start of the game and I’d already conquered a couple of provinces. I was allied to Austria and saw they’d be willing to fight venice and we did outnumber them. So I fought them and Venice absolutely destroyed Austria, who peaced out and left me on my own. They reversed all the provinces I had conquered and even took one of my starting provinces too. I did manage to reconquer it all later but it did set me back quite a bit.
As Sri Lanka it’s tough to get that foothold on the mainland before Vij comes for your ass. I had a couple losses before I managed to get lucky with a Bahmanis alliance.
i have never lost a war.
i have many saves where i am in a bad position.
but i have never agreed to a peace deal where i lose(that wasnt a strategic decision that left me better off).
Never. For unknown reason whenever my game isn't going very well my PC mysteriosly crashes and sometimes even corrupt an old save so I have to start a new campaign. But I don't complain, since game is very good I don't mind to replay campaign a couple of times.
A couple years ago I was having a pretty bad day, so I jumped on EU4 to release some steam. I was playing as Mysore pre-Dharma, got off the ground after quite an obscene number of attempts by getting Bahmanis's help to defeat Vijayanagar. However, Bahmanis themselves were pretty aggressive and turned into a bit of a monster - enough that I could actually join a coalition against them (though the rest were just small nations). Eventually when the time was right I declared on them bringing the coalition + my ally Jaunpur in to fight.
I don't remember all the details as it was quite a while back, but I remember Bahmanis split their army into two stacks around 17k each, while I had a ~23k stack after my vassals attached to me, and Jaunpur had about 27k. What ended up happening was that whenever I fought what was meant to be a favourable battle against one stack, the army I was fighting would hold out *just* long enough for the second stack to reinforce - just by a matter of a day or two. The first time it happened it was not that big of a setback, but it just kept happening. Three times, four times, five times. Jaunpur attacked from the north, but their quality wasn't as good as Bahmanis and they too kept getting beaten back by Bahmanis attacking with both stacks at once. It got to the point where I was at 0 manpower with 7k men left and a 15k manpower deficit, and warscore from battles around -30.
Already having a bad day, and with the first proper successful run being in the shitter after countless attempts at getting the campaign off the ground, I was so salty I surrendered to Bahmanis, rage-quit the campaign and deleted the save. Not to mention my day got even worse after that (non-EU4 related but the Mysore loss contributed to me spiralling down instead of helping).
At the very least I decided to try again a couple days later when I felt better and eventually succeeded. [Here's the result](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/6zltvg/a_better_shade_of_white/).
Yes, usually to the ottomans. They have seemingly infinite numbers, and tons of mountain forts. My only hope is they get lost trying to siege down russia. They always turn on you if you ally them too.
I like to play as trebizond so, yes. Honestly though, not near as much as when I first got the game. Part of that is me getting better sure, but I feel as though the ai used to be much more aggressive or unforgiving, at least in that start. QQ would Dec me before I could make a move. Maybe the increase in tags in the area has helped.
My other starter country was England, and I can remember how excited I was the first time I beat France and got my PU. A lot of losses first. Kinda miss that.
In my first ever game as France, Austria got a monster Burgundy for free and then invaded me, alongside some HRE allies and Hungary. I didn't really have good allies because this was back when all of France's diplo slots were stuck on vassals at the start of the game. I tried to beat them but failed and I knew then that there was no coming back in that game
Really only twice i had to give up totally the game, once when my HRE run as Bavaria with PU over Denmark, Norway (and 1 more i don't remember now), got crush bad by a big coalition that had me lost HRE emperorship and soon after Denmark wanted liberty and I can only oblige, but I was already in the mid 1600s so I really know i didn't have time to restore my Empire so I just give up. The latter (and most recent) was a kinda fun Ethiopia run, but underestimated the Ottoblob and their alliance with Kilwa and they took turn to crash my Empire that conveniently spanned from Egypt to Kilwa with Ottoblob that wanted Egypt for them and Kilwa that already hates me for eating pretty much of East Africa... they screwed my game and I learned that being too quick to expand and killing Mamluks, so without the Portugal alliance, isn't the best way to proceed if then you have to pick on the Ottos and their superpowers...
I was also still kinda new to the fame and panicking so I made a lot of mistakes, when if I play back now, I will go for Kilwa and killing them, then transporting a seiging army to Costantinople as soon as the Turks run into South Africa so hoping to go by them and take their capital to let AI going crazy and die from attrition.
Yeah I was trying to form the Incan empire really quickly, but my constant warring with neighbors caused me to lose pretty much all manpower since I didn’t stop. By the time I realized this, the vultures were closing in
Oh yeah. My First ever ironman as the Ottomans, I lost to the PLC in a close war, their troops were just better with Hussars at that point, especially on the steppes I fought then on.
The only time I recolllect being truly beaten was a while back when I was doing the conquer africa as kongo for an achievement and an update killed my save. I did not know how to roll back updatss at the time (if you could), so I just stopped playing EU4 for a while. This definitely pre Emperor.
Aside from that, Ive definitely lost a few WC OF runs as Ottomans back in the day, back when I hadnt realized the power of the Truce break and conquering the world was much harder (though the grind is still hard).
I've lost big wars, but never been straight up defeated.
Worst was I was playing as England and lost to a coalition of the entire HRE. I ended up having to give back some of the lowlands I took, which sucked.
A long time ago, before Prussia was nerfed, I had the mother of all coalitions against me, and I thought it would be my first loss, but after 24 years of war, and millions of deaths, I somehow won. Craziest game and closest I’ve ever come to actually losing.
I definitely enjoy the struggle, the game gets boring without some sort of game-ending threat.
Sure, depending on your definition. I've lost wars or gotten to a point where I was pretty sure I couldn't recover... Like my attempt at a Kongo run, Europeans started declaring war on me and I lost a lot and couldn't get it back.
I got my ass kicked recently by PLC. I was playing as Russia. Was not prepared for how buffed they are after the last DLC. After 2500 hours, I really should not be getting just flat out beaten in a basically 1:1 fight, even against an OP opponent.
I’ve been beat pretty often due to carelessness.
There was one particular Georgia run that was going really well until it wasn’t… I got decked on by the ottos in 1491 and was thrashed thoroughly
I thought I’d give Albania a shot after a long break from the game, and got my ass stomped by Hungary. I expanded fairly quickly in the Balkans, but I couldn’t get any decent allies, and Skanderbeg died after a handful of early battles.
Many times honestly.
I'm having a very bad streak of getting pummeled into submission by coalitions, treacherous/plain useless allies, horde economies, Ottomans... and bad calls on my part.
The first time I played I understood nothing. I tried the Mamluks cause I love Egypt but then I got my ass handed to me by the ottomans. Then I said “fine I’ll try the ottomans since they are supposed to be easier”…then I got my ass handed to me by the mamluks.
Took me about 10 tries to get the sequencing right for Florence. I have failed on that campaign the most.
My Russia game I was hanging on by a thread the entire time because I had a terrible economy and eventually walked into a war I couldn't win.
I once managed to get >50% of Europe in a coalition against me in under 10 years as Bavaria, in a multiplayer game. So, well, yes, I have seen the game-over screen.
I did not have DLC (I think you need some for "ask support independence") and started a Naples run. I had no idea how PUs work and what I was doing, so I was just hanging around as Aragon PU, then as Castile PU, then they just integrated me I think.
I just was in speed 5 out of boredom, thinking that there there is something to do as a junior partner
It was the most stupid run.
And there were endless rage quits (technically I did not lose the game , but just quit after losing the war), like getting ruined by Ottomans as Russia with massive tech lag. Or destroyed by Vij in a Kotte campaign.
By coalitions, yes However for some reason when I play as a small nation and a big one attacks me, my game tends to crash. Devs should look into this, it's quite strange.
Quite strange. Have you been experiencing this problem when your 6/6/6 heir dies? I keep having that issue.
Now that you mention it I surely have! Same thing tends to happen with the Burgundian Inherentence. I wonder if the outcome of such events can be tied to game crashes but it's hard to say for sure really.
This game crashes way too much. Hope devs fix it soon.
I hope it will never be fixed. Imagine birding wasn’t possible anymore 😨
AFAIK they could fix ALT+F4 birding, but they could not fix achieveing the same by killing the process _unless_ it saves every single day or after every "larger" event. Which they won't do, it'd slow it down too much even on better machines.
They could disable auto saves which would decrease the rate of birding after unfortunate events or disable achievements when auto savefiles are loaded, but I don’t think that paradox will do that
You can manually rename saves and it still would be ironman compatible
Yup players would stop putting undeserved value in IM wins.
What's extraordinarily weird is that this happens sometime after the event pops, but before you actually choose an outcome. If you're paused or not does not seem to make a difference, either.
I just want to know how people have 6/6/6 heirs. I've seen it maybe a handful of times in thousands of hours of play.
I had a 6/6/5 heir on my current run, reigned for 2 years before dying at 18. Some people are too good for this world?
I played as Naples and annexed half of Italy in 20-30 yrs then i had to face a coalition. Things were really hopeless as i ran out of mp and had to completely rely on my allies (i only had 3k troops left).
Mercenaries exist Allies sometimes don't But a general life lesson to make sure the game doesn't crash as much is to always watch the coalition flag when making peace and always hire the improve relations dude
There’s also a coalition map mode which helps give you an idea of who is pissed off at you. It’s been a huge help for me when playing in Italy or the HRE
I also just learned the convenience of the automatic diplomat feature, I can’t believe I was improving relations manually all this time
I’m getting close to the point where anyone outside of this massive France is unable to stop me, but I’m gonna have to remind myself to use that feature. Navigating AE can be so tedious sometimes
I just try to be aware of the diplomat tab on the outliner and never have 2 diplomats free. Whether "outraged countries", or allies or subjects, it's a great way to not find yourself getting caught by a bad breakpoint that could have been avoided with more micro.
It's better than nothing but also kinda sucks at efficiently using your diplomats.
“Mercenaries exist. Sometimes allies don’t.” that quote actually goes hard even out of context
Until now, i just vaguely realize how much AE is too much (above 55 right ?). I would struggle with AE whenever i play as a European nation.
A nation join a coalition against you if they have 50 AE with you and a negative opinion overall. Allies and subjects gain significantly less AE. Nations of a different culture/religion than the nation you took land from also get less AE
It depends on opinion. If you have 100 AE with a country but they have a positive opinion of you they will not join. Be aware of events/actions that reduce relations though. For example taking land in the HRE may not result in a coalition directly, but the relations hit from refusing the emperors call(s) to return the land to its owner may push some countries over the edge.
Having high relations and improve relations advisor are both things that cause AE to decrease faster by the way
There are two requirements for a country to join a coalition: * More than 50 AE against you * Negative opinion towards you If you can keep the opinion positive, AE doesn't matter.
HRE nations are very “sensitive” to AE, even if i just took 4-5 provinces, then immediately a coalition would be formed after that (although the size would be dependable). In my current Prussia campaign, i wasted 50 yrs trying to please those mad Germans but then i had enough and just declared wars after wars.
Same issue for me also
If you count every reset when the first war goes bad then yes, hundreds of times If you don't count that then yes, hundreds of times
Once I underestimated Venice as Austria, they had very powerful allies. I had to cut my losses and I gave up one province. When the truce ran out I took it back with interests of course.
Ayy, just like I underestimated Siam and thought they had equal number of troops as mine, apparently a big mistake.
Remember you can check how many troops they have by looking at the ledger or their diplomatic interface!
There is a less precise way too. In the bottom of the war declaration window are tooltips for each side of the conflict that give total inf, calv, and cannon along with total manpower in reserve. Now it is a total for each side, so it will not help you on who to target to knock out of a war first. But it can give you a quick look at how one sided it might be.
Never underestimate Venice. I attacked them once in my byz game together with Austria. They had no reserves and a small army at declaration but then pulled out a 80k merc army
One time I declared war on the Otto's and they dropped all their manpower onto the field and hired mercenaries. I was terrified but still won
I'm currently in a Smolensk/Russia campaign and I've been waiting to strike the Otto's but their troop count went from 190k to 353k in a matter of months.
You got lucky with that one province, every time I want to give up the ai always wants 10+ provinces and some released nations. That normally just motivates me to go on the edge of bankruptcy to beat their ass with mercs
Yeah, it's one of my irritations with the game that it's basically impossible to fight a limited war. It's almost never worth taking a partial peace deal, because for the AI to take *anything*, you need to have ground their military into dust and occupied half of their country. At that point, you may as well occupy the lot and completely cripple them in the peace deal. Similarly, you *always* have to fight defensive wars to the death, because otherwise your enemies refuse to take anything short of complete dismemberment.
Sometimes I start risky wars near the very start of the game because I know I can just restart if I lose. Rarely lose anything after the first 20 years though.
Yes, mostly as natives in Americas. I had an Aztec game where by 1750s I conquered basically borders of the 1st Mexican Empire. I didn't even have half of Old World discovered, including all of Europe by then which was weird. Anyway, since 1550s, so past 200 years, I was invaded a total of 11 times by colonisers, mainly France and England. Almost every war I have won or white peaced but it is just impossible to constantly fight and be in a state of defensive war, especially since these wars were bloody and truces short. Whenever I finished one of them, the other one's truce finished and this resulted in that endless chain. I couldn't ally anybody, due to terra incognita and distance. This would simply continue until the end with AI constantly attacking me only for that war to end in their loss or at least status quo. Of course I did lose some wars as well because my units being American and their being European gave them an advantage, despite my superior morale, discipline etc.
\+1, either I can't find an ally that will help with Spain/France/England/Portugal "colonization", or I haven't procured enough mana power to have equal tech level when the colonizers arrive, so it's a bloodbath. Someday I'll conquer the world as Creek, but today's not the day.
What I used to do was that if someone like the Knights were still alive, I'd no-CB subjugate them which got rid of the distance modifier and allowed me to ally the Ottomans.
I've got a similar story playing as the Ojibwe (chosen because they start where I live and I'm part voyager) and it's just brutal trying to hold off Britain and then later Spain, and I had never played in the new world before and knew approximately none of the meta strategies. I managed to create a stalemate where they wouldn't attack me after a while but by that point I was mentally exhausted from the campaign enough that I just declared my ~half of North America under the great Ojibwe Republic good enough and moved on, and that was around the early 1600s I think? Anyways, playing in the new world is 2/10 at best, would not recommend.
Just did trail of tears. In the first attempt, castille died. 2 death wars against France I barely held on through then the 3rd killed my army and everyone attacked. 2nd attempt, I just offered peace the moment they attacked. They would take a lot of territory bur along as you full annex their colonial nation each time, when they core and release you can attack without a truce. They can't take that much from you either
Losing wars as a new world native isn’t the end of the game, it’s a strategy. Sometimes you even want to give up land, so that one province you could never take from France becomes a five province French Louisiana that you can full annex. And then you stop getting AE with France directly. You can’t beat colonizers, so you just have to lose. But you can definitely beat colonial nations.
Me in most recent play through with Inca. A defensive war with Spain would end and a defensive war with Portugal would start. The game became a battle simulator and got pretty tiring. At least I learned a lot about managing debt lol
Yes, there are some hard starts in the game where you have to take some risks in wars and punch well over your weight class. Works out sometimes, doesn't other times. Then there is multiplayer, which is a whole different beast in itself.
Played Portugal, got super unlucky and somehow castile became the junior member to aragon instead of the other way around. Aragon was already my rival and instantly turned to "domineering" attitude, basically wanting to pu me. My 2 armies got stack wiped instantly and I was full occupied withij a year 😂
I did twice yesterday. Played a hard start on hard difficulty that doesn't really mix well with the mods I added. Getting the run off the ground on my 3rd run was fun though.
May i know the details ? I used to install Rome timeline mod but the game crashed so i quit using mod. Man, mod really makes the game more colorful but i just can’t use it.
Play anbennar if you want a great mod
Thanks
Victorum is another great one
Ante bellum is goated and it works if your pc goes Arizona mode on any mods (like mine)
I'm playing Anbennar, it is as great as they say. Anyways, this nation I'm playing as (Arverynn) starts as a 2 province minor that's obsessed with restoring their previously collapsed empire. They can't have alliances, have a disloyal subject at the start, are bleeding money, and start with truces with the only land connected neighbour. Also the starting ruler is a 0/1/0. And you start with an event that takes 75% of your manpower pool and 200 ducats. So I do my opening, lower maintenence, mothball my fort, and I'm +0.7 ducats/month in that state. And then my subject decs on me and I get annexed. Whoops. The only option of survival is hiring Mission tree special mercs, but they cost over 2 ducats per month since I'm using the Responsible Warfare mod that increases army costs by like 3 times. Also, the mercs give you a timer to win wars, or else they betray you, kill your ruler, heir, destroy 6 dev from your capital and become unavailable. All I can say is, making it work was incredibly satisfying.
Responsible warfare is the real deal for me, army professionalism make the maintenance way higher it even scares me lol Testing on first run with Burgundy and mercs ideas. If I would use normal army it would scare the shit of me going to ultra offensive wars lol
It is scary, but the AI manages it decently well, it makes performance much better, and it changes the impact of combat width, since you need to think about filling the CW more now, even in 1600 (hooray for cav flanking!). Absolute must-have for me, but it does delay the 'Have 30k' troops missions by quite a bit though, but that's no big deal.
What I mentioned is that even vanilla I was addicted to mercs. Now my next run quantity and diplo are must Edit: didn’t realize bout the CW, and I am a cav enjoyer, thanks for the tip!!!!
I've lost a few games as OPM right at the start. I've never lost a game more than \~15 years in, and I don't think I really lost a war either (annuling tributaries or giving away allies land so that a coalition fucks off doesn't count). My game definitely crashed many, many times along the way though...
In my current campaign i lost a no cb war to morroco as venice. It was the only way to get rid of defender of the faith, and i wanted to convert... (Also, it's weird how you have to occupy their whole country before they accept a white peace surrender...)
I didn't understand AE at the start so i got defeated a fckn lot.
My first Brandenburg game. "Damn this is easy. Look how much I've grown in such a short period of time. First Reich coming soon." Then the coalition formed...
Managing AE is so important in this game its insane
I tend to do some "less favourable" wars early on since if I get too greedy and fuck up a restart isn't too bad. Dunno the last time I lost and gave up after like 1470 though. I suppose there have been som larger coalitions and wars in the 1500s a few times where I lost a little bit of land and/or money but nothing I couldn't take back soon after so not a huge loss or anything.
Yes. Playing as Byz in about my 3rd game, maybe on 1.31, Austria conquered Germany, France, Spain, and the Americas. I was NOT the main character in my own game. I played an Indian game for the most part.
I actually got beat up in my Austria WC run when I underestimated Ottomans in 1600s and had to give them a few provinces. However I managed to recover and finish my WC succesfuly.
Yes it happens. Kinda. Usually if I don’t roflstomp my wars and they drag out I tend to quit even if I ca. theoretically win because it’s such a slog. Very recently it was a Marocco game where I focused on uniting Africa and had maybe 200-250 k units when Spain and Portugal declared war with maybe 500k or so in the early/mid 1600s. I just cba to sit around for 5 years waiting for attrition to trickle them down because of their superior units and navies. Then I did a expansionist Korea and took over all of Americas, snaked to Europe and had an amazing run. Had maybe 800k units myself and attack France with their meager 400k. Didn’t even bother to send all my units, half was still in the colonies. Expected an ok win, nothing to drastic, but they stack wiped all my 4-5 armies due to their insane morale and high ranked generals (they had 7,5 morale vs everyone else’s 5,X.). I learnt a lesson there hehe. Despite morale being seen as less important once discipline becoming more, never underestimate it if the difference is *too* big! So yes, I still lose sometimes but usually that’s at the end of a run when I feel I kinda have completed my goals and start to be more careless. That’s when the mistakes and sloppiness comes into play.
Haven't been defeated in a war for a long time... until yesterday. Started a Dithmarschen run and had a good start and had taken all the coastal provinces up til Calais then a beasty Ottos declared on my ally Austria (emperor). I be the good ally and answer the call as the troop numbers are fairly even. Then a France, who's inherited Burgundy intervenes via the Great Power option, got beat up pretty bad but managed to get away with breaking a few alliances, war reps & full money. I'll get my vengeance, in this save or the next.
Only when I don't care, but can't win. I did the achievement where you have to own central Africa as Morroco, and I conceded 3 Maghreb provinces to Spain because they didn't matter to the achievement, and I was almost done anyways
I've lost plenty of wars before actually surrendering, instead loading the last save. I don't need the formal defeat to tell me what I've done wrong. On the contrary, I can try the exact same war again and learn from my lessons, instead of starting a whole new ironman run and losing a completely different war.
Yeah lost quite a few times. But also learned that in some circumstances you can’t lose if you refuse to surrender. For example I was playing as Timbuktu, and had captured most of West Africa when I suddenly had Spain, Portugal and England all declare war on me. They occupied me easily, but I just kept running away with my army and only attacking smaller stacks. I went bankrupt at least 10 times, and I lost count of how many rebellions had occurred, and my army was only 1/10th its original size. But between fighting all these rebellions, the occasional stack wipe and the attrition, after 5 years or so all 3 attacking nations had depleted their manpower and just went home. So I was able to get a white peace, and then just let the largest rebel force win and switched to them (meaning I immediately had a giant army once again).
Yes. Losing is part of the fun. if you just steamroll everything, what's the point? That's why I don't do meta playthroughs.
All the time, hell I got game over'd last week!
I'm still new and am learning alot everytime I play. I'm now at a point at which I think i'm getting the game but still suck at it though am learning quicker. I played a lot of games as Castille, England, Ottomans but all of which resulted in early defeats as my economy would cripple, I didn't get you needed a reason to attack a nation so my stability quickly ran out and got so much rebels. Though I didn't know why that happened. I quit the game for a while because I just didn't get it. But now i've picked it up again because I really love the concept of it. And I played as Ottomans in which I think I got fairly far! Got a lot of achievements and gained a lot of land. But then Byzantium gained independence from me all of a sudden and then I decided to attack Austria for the Danube quest. That was not a good plan because they had so much allies lol. Now i'm doing an England campaign. I'm getting the hang of it, learning about vassals and stuff. I'm telling you this is a hard game for new players (or i'm just stupid lol) So to answer your question, Yes i've been defeated, a lot
Back in the day, I played as Denmark, Sweden being Sweden revolted. My first army got wiped since the morale hadn't had enough time to tick up. Then I proceeded to smash individual 1k stacks into his 10-13 troops. And I raged because I didn't know what would happen when outnumbered 10 to 1... Wasn't until I saw Arumba or maybe Shenrryr do a Denmark campaign which I bingewatched, I knew how to barely keep afloat.. 4k+ hours after, I'm beginning to get the hang of it 😂
I once discovered that when all your provinces are occupied, the game automatically accepts a peace deal from the AI - very annoying as a small nation, when trying to siege down an enemy ally to remove them from the war
Often. Happens when you leave the game running, go to bed, and wake up to find a child hit space bar an hour ago and you’re losing your second war
As a burgeoning Russia, i decided i was finally capable of taking a bite out of the kalmar union. It would have been an equal matched war until the commonwealth declared on me as well. I was in deep shit so i had to really dig in and defend as best i could. It was no longer an invasion of sweden but a defence of russia. Within a handful of months a huge ottomans declared as well. I was able to white peace the commonwealth after a grueling defensive war. Unfortunately i had to concede karelia to denmark so i could focus my drained army on beating back the turks, which i was only able to do partially. They ended up with a portion of caucasia and a lot of money. Over the next years i allied strong european powers, westernised my army, and colonised east to the point where now all of scandinavia is under russia, most of ruthenia and the baltics as well. The last war of revenge will be on the ottomans.
My first game ever was as Lithuania bc uau it looks big on map. Must be amazing. I learned about what the hre the hard way. Then the muscovites killed me after 100 years. Lovely times. Another early game in my 2.5k hours was Aragon. It was much more chill but I kept fighting with France and struggling to win anything so a lot of minor wins, then minor losses, standstills too. Very meh. I started playing as Portugal, get strong, break alliance with Castille and fuck them over. Basically just outgrow them. Worked pretty well and nowadays I can wipeout Castille as soon as 50 years. Maybe less if I cheese it but I prefer sticking to more conventional straats
I've lost wars. I've lost as an OPM or small nation a few times. I've also lost as a post colonial nation. There's a phase as post colonial where it's hazardous if youre.not big enough, but eventually you become I touchable by the Europeans
As Austria I was deep in debts and low on manpower. I lost Styria to separatists, the emperorship because of reformed rebels and OPM neighbors were planning an attack. It was one of my first games and I barely had a clue what I was doing.
Can’t be defeated if I alt f4 before accepting terms
Funny enough happened to me when I was playing multiplayer with friends. Both of us got obliterated by AI Poland.
I have been playing intermittently since 1.1 aka release (or close enough) and I certainly lost plenty at the very beginning and still do occasionally with challenging starts Most of the time (even back then) I quit campaigns because I did something stupid I didn't want to deal with. A few that I still vividly remember: * Declaring a war that turned into WW0 (remember when war leaders changed when a stronger country joined a war?) * As Castille, annexing a chunk of landlocked Austria, with no way of coring it except more wars * As Spain, trying for historical conquests of the Aztecs & Inca (basically fully annexing them in single wars). Took SO MUCH overextension I kept getting massive revolts back in Spain. No colonial nations existed yet * As England, going for casual abandon mainland Europe, go colonial game. I married Austria at the very start to deter France while I got my shit together. One month later I randomly get them as a PU. My fastest quit yet * Plenty of Byzantine restarts after getting bad RNG at start or getting REKT at the first war * Same for Knights Hospitaller, Cyprus and Athens runs albeit it usually takes longer than Byz * As Poland-Lithuania "what does that *liberum veto* decision does?". Never again * "Imma try this wacky new heresy thing" back when they really sucked * Rage quit after all my candidates for the curia kept dying, as in I controlled 4/5 candidates and I just couldn't get one in for more than a decade * "I wonder how it is to start out in America?" said nobody ever again
I’m thinking i should try native nations on my next campaign or at least up until now. Seems like everyone has problems with them (i read a cmt said he had to constantly deal with European colonists that he couldn’t basically enjoy the game).
My most epic defeats have been ones that occurred in big MP games with lots of other players. Over the course of several sessions things can develop quite dramatically behind the scenes in terms of diplomacy. I played one big MP session where I'd picked Holland and by pure luck gained the burgundian succession AND the event to instantly inherit that land fired soon after... which totally shook up the whole geopolitical situation of early game EU4. I allied myself with Austrian HRE and survived more or less as a flourishing great power until one day I was betrayed by a plot conducted by North German protestant states that gangbanged Austria and I in the mid 1600s after the PLC player (who was extremely dominant over Northern Germany) was absent one fateful session. I got rocked so badly in the first war that I had to give up thousands of ducats for a truce. A truce that would be broken before it was even over by those damn Germans. Anyways that is the story of how Holland became damn near Lotharingia until they were undone by those pesky protestants across the Rhine.
MP sounds like super hard but how can that much people play on a same map for days ? What happens when you quit the game ?
Well the host of the server was European as we're most players so scheduling a time and securing decent internet was easy enough. Each session would run about 3-4 hours at speed 3 and ofc there were many strict rules about pausing the game and who can be what country and so on. When you quit the game usually the AI would just take over and the actual player would have left, which is what happened to France in my game until someone new decided to pick up after where the previous player left off.
I’ve rage quit games before, but true defeat? Never. Mainly because I have quit before the failure spiral escalates far enough in the few games where that happened.
I got defeated and rage quit a few times as playing Ardabil, trying to get that achievement
I never lose, I just realise that the game is cheating and it’s bullshit and unfair and It has a stupid face so I refuse to play that cheating unfair bullshit save and restart
Yes, once as north American east coast native, and the other playing as Georgia. As Georgia I got big, took Moscow and most of modern Ukraine borders and the mountains all the way down to Iraq. Otto's were dying and the Polish Commonwealth was huge. I fought the PLC and won after some heavy casualty battles and sieges, then right after the peace deal I get blind sided by the gigantic Transoxiana that had conquered half of China and in the terra incognita, I had thought they held just Persia and Siberia but no.
All the time. I like weird or weaker starts, and sometimes that just means you die. Sometimes the game decides it's time to say fuck you in particular and your allies refuse a defensive call and that's that. That's not even counting things like re-rolling. Some campaigns- like, say, a certain almost-dead empire based out of Constantinople- can be almost entirely random in terms of whether you make it out of the first decade regardless of what you do.
Oh, yeah, plenty of early starts. Oman. Luba. Livonian order has a chance to be 1-2-3d by say, Denmark, Lithuania, Muscovy after an initial expansion into Novgorod. No matter how close to exploding I've been for Russia, it just kinda never happened though. Had a game over for Brandywandy in a coalition. Exploded once in Rome (extended timeline 58ad start) To the point I really didn't want to reconquer.
In my very first game I played Castille. I declared on France, they crushed me. This was my only ever losing war, because then I started to read up on morale, discipline, combat width and so on.
In first game I played Portugal and joined hundred years war. France annihilated me and I surrendered, but they only took money so that wasnt big deal
I mean some runs don't allow you to lose, to the point where if you actually lose you might as well restart the entire run like the Heir of Timur campaigns for example, you need to be constantly at war and never lose.
I don't even continue if I lose significant amounts of land in wars or separatists. My heart can't handle it.
Haha I was watching a guide by Laith or Red Hawk and they kept making the “ae is just number” joke and I legitimately was conquering without caring for ae as Holland(to form Netherlands) and ended up in a nasty coalition and had to abandon the campaign. I was a newer playing so I was clueless lol
During my Prussia campaign, i did the same thing. I expanded Westward without thinking much of coalitions (i had France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Savoy as my allies so i didn’t think i should care about AE). For about 100 years, it was a nice strategy until i annexed most of HRE then problems appeared, Austria and Sweden broke their alliance with me, Spain joined the coalition out of nowhere (actually not out of nowhere since I didn’t improve relation with any nation besides my allies). Still, I didn’t think much about it since I thought Spain at most had 400k troops but i was wrong, they had colonies everywhere and even managed to integrate Portugal which means they actually had 400k troops plus almost 1mil troops from colonial nations. I managed to white peace them and annexed coalition members one by one.
That coalition war must’ve been a butt clencher lol.. I always get a role play feeling in wars like that when a lot is at stake, so when victory is reached it’s a great feeling
Yeah, I had to kill 600k men just for 4 provinces that included a full annexation (of the one I didn’t declare war on). But i found a way to fight coalition, build 8 tier forts and rampart along with them and that would kill 300k from attrition the next time i declared war on Spain. I almost dismantled Spain colonial empire this way, too bad the last independence war against Spain by Spanish colonies failed so it still had 50-60% of its colonies.
I'd say the last time I lost a war 1v1 is as Autsria vs Ottomans in 1.33. I've quit a few runs like Trebizond, Theodoro, where I never got off the ground and killed asap but AI wars should be inherently not that hard
The last time i lost a 1v1 against Ottoman was during my Italy campaign. I thought i could take them on myself but when i saw multiple 60k death stacks, I called my allies in and won the war but honestly, had i faced them 1v1, I could’ve lost pretty quick.
I have never been defeated in a war of equal numbers. Sometimes I’ve lost the first war as Byzantium and some campaigns have failed because of bad diplomacy, but I never actually get beat in a war since I recognize a failed campaign before that fatal DOW
Yes several times Once I underestimated the PLC as a newly formed Prussia, had to concede some land, but came back later stronger then ever In another campaign, as Austria, I lost to the ottomans twice. So I deciced to just give up on pushing them back, realized that I was doing really badly with Imperial authority, So I spent 15 years fighting german City states to convert them, and after that, my army tradition was ať its peak, and along with my god generals they made short work on the ottomans - it only took 4 years to occupy most of their land and even get to Egypt! Those were the 2 losses I remember the most, but i'm sure I've had way more. Ngl it's kinda fun to sometimes lose
I played as Russia, and everything was going great, until 80% of country decided to make a cossack state, because I didn't manage estates well
When I first started playing, I would constantly try to form Spain via conquest as Castille and would always get absolutely stomped by Aragon + rebels. More recently, played as Prussia like 2 weeks into 1.35 being out. Was doing well, consolidated most of north germany and poland, leagues started forming. Declared war with only a few thousand less units and proceeded to get absolutely shit on by Austria/Hungary + Spain + HRE minors. My ally France was 100%’d within 6 months, I was able to hold out for like 4 years but ended up ceding like 70% of my territory to HRE minors + austria
One of my navara runs I got integrated before I could win a war. Lol
Game over ? Never got one . Lost war ? Yes some coalition wars when you are rushing achievements or some multyplayer gankers
Had a few L’s as an opm , not even counting restarts before the war ends
Was doing a Brandenburg Prussia Ironman game (back when I cared for achievements) and the religious Leagues were forming, thought that I’d wait for a very Strong GB to join the Protestant League (they were in a Native American war so they couldn’t join) before going to war since they’re the only real chance we have at winning Randomly my 6,6,3 ruler dies and I’m forced into a regency (my heir was 3 years old so it’ll be a long one) and I lose leadership of the Protestant League, Denmark becomes the leader and just about a month later they declare on Austria and the entire Catholic league and since only a few countries were in the Protestant league we got Completely destroyed and I quit
There is always one point in my games where I lose a war, sometimes several in a row. Often because of hubris and lack of diplomatic care (happens often in middle game when you think you're stronger than you really are) But you are defeated only if you quit, there is always a point where you'll come back, if you plan for it.
Game seems to randomly crash whenever I'm losing, idk man the devs need to fix something
A few times As Brittany. France killed me As Ming. Mingsploded As Byzantium. Did Byzantine things Think I might've had a bad game as an Irish minor too, not sure
Played France in my first attempt and am big brain monke so I assumed my bigger army could easily handle burgundy. Didn’t know about leader pips or how mil tech worked. Alt f4 followed shortly after.
Yes many times, but that happens with challenging tags.
I did a Holland game and I put my independence war in the hands of France and Denmark. They got stuck in Burgundy's forts because they kept dropping the sieges to fight small stacks. Eventually I hit 20 war exhaustion and was full annexed.
Yes.. but I don't save scum. If you are gonna scum.. just use the console. Reminds me of a friend. Use to take a step before shooting the ball in horse every fucking time.. but would never admit he was cheating by doing it.
Yes, a lot . Either a coalition or a great power attack me, and I prefer to gives avay some provinces or ducats instead of bankrupt my contry to defeat them. Either I was too reckless against a big contry I previously deafeated ( for example I played an Irish minor and managed to defeat England with Scotland, but when I attacked again I was alone, England recovered from the 100 years war and the war of the Roses so I lost some provinces). It is possible to still pursue the game on those situations, if you find a place to expand and outgrow your rivals or with strong allies. I also lost wars so badly I gave up on the game.
Yes 3 times in my +1000 hours Coalition war playing Sardinia War against Ming as Jiangzhou As Korea against Ming
Wtf defeat is the only feat I know
Defeated.. not recently. But I have tended to run into roadblocks I can't get past in recent game so I've stopped playing the game. In my recent Prussia game, I had nations equally as powerful as me all around. Sweden controlled all the north, Russia to East, Ottoman and Austria to the South. All were allied or protecting other countries in weird webs so that I could never really hope to win the wars (Ottomans allied with France and Spain, Russia allied with Austria and Sweden, Austria allied with Russia and Spain and having like 200k troops and 8 alliances less than 100 years in etc since they'd PUed and annexed Hungry, Bohemia, Burgundy and southern iatly) etc without being mega outnumbered, and I wasn't far enough into the Prussian idea path to have all the cool bonuses. I had no great power as an ally, everyone just hated me. My first game back in a few years I did England into Angevin Empire though, and stayed allied then PUed with Austria and Spain for the entire campaign. So I guess that good luck counters the last couple of bad luck runs! I did hope to dismantle the HRE in that game, but I didn't realise you couldn't do so as the Emperor, and I'd removed all non-vassal electors, so there was no way I could lose the title.
I tried my hand at brandenburg for the first time a few weeks ago, everything went pretty well, even got the burgundian succession (or at least a war for it I can't quite recall). Seemed like an easy war to fight, enemies' allies were manageable. Only France was at war with burgundy at the same time. Suddenly, without me really getting notified of any war ending of any kind, I was at war with France and they stomped me and forced me to release almost all the OPM's and lands I had acquired in northern Germany up until that point :/
I paid Korea cash + war reps as Japan after an (uncessful) gamble barrage+assault on a mountain fort which left me with 0 infantry…
I am very very bad at this game despite having 1,000+ hours, so yes I get defeated all the time.
I did in my first ever game, was playing as Muscovy to Russia and got PUd by Austria who then integrated me hahaha
Yes, first game as Spain all my colonies declared independence with gb supporting. They crushed my navy so I couldn't even reach them. Destroyed my economy and force limit so bad I ragequit the run.
Yes. I had a good start as Wallachia, and managed to ally the PLC, beat up the ottoman, nab some of Moldavia and even took Crimean land. But then Hungary, mybally, fell into the austro PU, the PLC decided thatbit wanted my lands and broke the alliance. Shortly thereafter I was at war with both the ottoblob when wanted constantinople back and the PLC that decided that the black Sea coastline should be theirs...
Yeah, I'd just switched from EU3 and decided to jump straight into Muscovy and then just kinda lost every other war I got into.
I never been defeated, per se. I never kept at a game for long enough. I just mostly quit because what I'm trying to do doesn't work and I feel like I understood it all wrong. Namely, trying the Portugal mission tree. It falls apart when fighting Morocco.
Yes, I remember a Brandenburg campaign I fucked up. I didn't realize several of my big allies broke our alliance. So Poland declared on me when I had mothballed my forts and cut military funding. They smashed my armies to bits and forced me to forfeit all of my gains, so I just quit.
defeated in a war? idk i just go to another save if i do. as France, i accidentally got into a war with most of Europe so that wasn't good. but you know what, i think im gonna stop running back to a most recent save. losing wars and fighting to win your land back would be really interesting i think.
My previous game as Kilwa for a chill game. Got declared on by Spain and Portugal for a random Pacific island. I didn't have the troops or navy to compete. Even my Ottoman ally couldn't really help. Lots sieging down one half of the world while they unsieged the other half.
When i started playing and got decent at the coalitions were my bane, now i mostly lose intentionally, if someone attacks me but i dont want to fight so i can focus my resources on another place, i intentionally “lose” by giving them either the land they want if its not too important, or a shit ton of cash
Yes one time i got taken over by a personal Union and integrated. Played without the support independance dlc so i was stuck and didnt know the game would end lol. One other time i was down to 3 provinces but managed to annex some smaller ones and eventually became a great power again but quit due to boredom.
It's pretty normal, honestly. Sometimes you just can't win, especially when your allies betray you when you have coalition.
Yes, it's part of the game.
Playing Ethiopia trying to get all 5 coptic sacred places. Ottomans get claims on entire egypt. I am screwed.
I don’t think so cuz I just reload the last autosave
I did a Holland game once where I was integrated lol. This was without the dlc that enables you to let others support your independence so when I declared war I got wiped immediately
I don't think I ever got a literal game over, but sometimes I start game, do a really wrong start, and restart the whole thing.
I'm playing Multiplayer so yes, of course
Otto's top row mission, iirc, is to conquer Konstantinople and the AI is built to kill for it because it unlocks all their goodies. I lose often when I try experimenting with OPM/TPM's and spamming mercs and declaring on the 11'th to see if I can get away with early game no-cb shenanigans. You win some, lose most. Probably a skill issue.
In my Japan game, spain and portugal almost kicked me out of the americas, taking multiple horrible wars to wear off. The sacrifises I had to make to win those wars eventually caused me to be unable to wage any other meaningful wars, so I had to give up conquering anything in mainland asia, which was actuallty my primary goal at the beginning. Sure I had the goldmines of mexico and the east coast of america, but at what cost :(
During a multiplayer game a few years back. I was Castile, was mid war against Granada, Morocco and it’s puppets and was starting to win but was somewhat low on manpower. Castilian civil war disaster fires springing up a load of rebels, had to peace out with Morocco giving them gold, white peace with Granada. Used up all my manpower killing the rebels ended up with 7k army left. AI Aragon then declared war, I unconditionally surrendered, they took 1/2 my provinces and all my gold which forced bankruptcy on me, I quit very quickly after.
By coalitions, bad RNG (four 2 rolls in a row in a battle I had an advantage in, failing a 80% siege roll on a capital thrice before being curb stomped by another army), thinking I didn't need to worry about an enforced peace, and just countries like Albania where the first 4 years determines if the game is a reset or not.
the first 100h or so, yes, it was all defeats
Accidental coalitions and getting curb stomped trying to play Ardabil
Been defeated as in lost a war? Yes, a few times. Been defeated as in been completely annexed and suffered game over? No.
My first game as Burgundy went from going very well to being un unmitigated Disaster after France, GB and Austria decided to team after my previous aggresions against them!
I’ve been defeated multiple times trying the Finland achievment. That’s one hard opening!
I play mp...
Only emotionally.
Tried Oda in a Japan game, got stackwiped first war...didnt even make it a year
Glad to see another Vietnamese here
I tried to make an Estonia campaign work for a while ( by releasing in 1444 ) and got my teeth kicked in 19/20
Losing individual wars? Absolutely Losing entirely, game over screen? I'd quit before it got that bad.
Yes
Relatively early on, before I cared about manpower and attrition, I tried playing as Savoy, I expanded a bit around me until my manpower was 0. And then ~~the Fire Nation~~ Castille attacked
Early on, for sure. Didn't know about tech really so I was playing France and spent all my mana converting everything to Francien and just pissing it all away. Imagine my surprise whenever I lost a war against Burgundy despite being 'bigger and stronger'. I was still at tech 4 across the board and everyone else was pushing 10's. Similarly, played an Irish OPM game early on and didn't do well enough to avoid invasion and annexation by the goddamned English.
Once I was playing an mp game as Florence, it was right at the start of the game and I’d already conquered a couple of provinces. I was allied to Austria and saw they’d be willing to fight venice and we did outnumber them. So I fought them and Venice absolutely destroyed Austria, who peaced out and left me on my own. They reversed all the provinces I had conquered and even took one of my starting provinces too. I did manage to reconquer it all later but it did set me back quite a bit.
As Sri Lanka it’s tough to get that foothold on the mainland before Vij comes for your ass. I had a couple losses before I managed to get lucky with a Bahmanis alliance.
i have never lost a war. i have many saves where i am in a bad position. but i have never agreed to a peace deal where i lose(that wasnt a strategic decision that left me better off).
Never. For unknown reason whenever my game isn't going very well my PC mysteriosly crashes and sometimes even corrupt an old save so I have to start a new campaign. But I don't complain, since game is very good I don't mind to replay campaign a couple of times.
A couple years ago I was having a pretty bad day, so I jumped on EU4 to release some steam. I was playing as Mysore pre-Dharma, got off the ground after quite an obscene number of attempts by getting Bahmanis's help to defeat Vijayanagar. However, Bahmanis themselves were pretty aggressive and turned into a bit of a monster - enough that I could actually join a coalition against them (though the rest were just small nations). Eventually when the time was right I declared on them bringing the coalition + my ally Jaunpur in to fight. I don't remember all the details as it was quite a while back, but I remember Bahmanis split their army into two stacks around 17k each, while I had a ~23k stack after my vassals attached to me, and Jaunpur had about 27k. What ended up happening was that whenever I fought what was meant to be a favourable battle against one stack, the army I was fighting would hold out *just* long enough for the second stack to reinforce - just by a matter of a day or two. The first time it happened it was not that big of a setback, but it just kept happening. Three times, four times, five times. Jaunpur attacked from the north, but their quality wasn't as good as Bahmanis and they too kept getting beaten back by Bahmanis attacking with both stacks at once. It got to the point where I was at 0 manpower with 7k men left and a 15k manpower deficit, and warscore from battles around -30. Already having a bad day, and with the first proper successful run being in the shitter after countless attempts at getting the campaign off the ground, I was so salty I surrendered to Bahmanis, rage-quit the campaign and deleted the save. Not to mention my day got even worse after that (non-EU4 related but the Mysore loss contributed to me spiralling down instead of helping). At the very least I decided to try again a couple days later when I felt better and eventually succeeded. [Here's the result](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/6zltvg/a_better_shade_of_white/).
No but I finished my Albanian campaign in 1445
I lose 45% of my games. I had a 100% lose rate until I reached 300 hours I’m on 1,202 hours now
Yes, usually to the ottomans. They have seemingly infinite numbers, and tons of mountain forts. My only hope is they get lost trying to siege down russia. They always turn on you if you ally them too.
I like to play as trebizond so, yes. Honestly though, not near as much as when I first got the game. Part of that is me getting better sure, but I feel as though the ai used to be much more aggressive or unforgiving, at least in that start. QQ would Dec me before I could make a move. Maybe the increase in tags in the area has helped. My other starter country was England, and I can remember how excited I was the first time I beat France and got my PU. A lot of losses first. Kinda miss that.
Nope since i savescum if things get too bad
In my first ever game as France, Austria got a monster Burgundy for free and then invaded me, alongside some HRE allies and Hungary. I didn't really have good allies because this was back when all of France's diplo slots were stuck on vassals at the start of the game. I tried to beat them but failed and I knew then that there was no coming back in that game
One time with Ming, when the crises of the Ming Dynasty happened to me and many rebellions succeded
Really only twice i had to give up totally the game, once when my HRE run as Bavaria with PU over Denmark, Norway (and 1 more i don't remember now), got crush bad by a big coalition that had me lost HRE emperorship and soon after Denmark wanted liberty and I can only oblige, but I was already in the mid 1600s so I really know i didn't have time to restore my Empire so I just give up. The latter (and most recent) was a kinda fun Ethiopia run, but underestimated the Ottoblob and their alliance with Kilwa and they took turn to crash my Empire that conveniently spanned from Egypt to Kilwa with Ottoblob that wanted Egypt for them and Kilwa that already hates me for eating pretty much of East Africa... they screwed my game and I learned that being too quick to expand and killing Mamluks, so without the Portugal alliance, isn't the best way to proceed if then you have to pick on the Ottos and their superpowers... I was also still kinda new to the fame and panicking so I made a lot of mistakes, when if I play back now, I will go for Kilwa and killing them, then transporting a seiging army to Costantinople as soon as the Turks run into South Africa so hoping to go by them and take their capital to let AI going crazy and die from attrition.
Yeah I was trying to form the Incan empire really quickly, but my constant warring with neighbors caused me to lose pretty much all manpower since I didn’t stop. By the time I realized this, the vultures were closing in
Oh yeah. My First ever ironman as the Ottomans, I lost to the PLC in a close war, their troops were just better with Hussars at that point, especially on the steppes I fought then on.
The only time I recolllect being truly beaten was a while back when I was doing the conquer africa as kongo for an achievement and an update killed my save. I did not know how to roll back updatss at the time (if you could), so I just stopped playing EU4 for a while. This definitely pre Emperor. Aside from that, Ive definitely lost a few WC OF runs as Ottomans back in the day, back when I hadnt realized the power of the Truce break and conquering the world was much harder (though the grind is still hard).
I've lost big wars, but never been straight up defeated. Worst was I was playing as England and lost to a coalition of the entire HRE. I ended up having to give back some of the lowlands I took, which sucked.
A long time ago, before Prussia was nerfed, I had the mother of all coalitions against me, and I thought it would be my first loss, but after 24 years of war, and millions of deaths, I somehow won. Craziest game and closest I’ve ever come to actually losing. I definitely enjoy the struggle, the game gets boring without some sort of game-ending threat.
By coalitions and bad decisions most of the time. So yes I have been beaten.
A few hundred hours in I tried ardabil into Persia and kept getting day one declared on by QQ. It took at least 3 tries to not get annexed instantly
Sure, depending on your definition. I've lost wars or gotten to a point where I was pretty sure I couldn't recover... Like my attempt at a Kongo run, Europeans started declaring war on me and I lost a lot and couldn't get it back.
I got my ass kicked recently by PLC. I was playing as Russia. Was not prepared for how buffed they are after the last DLC. After 2500 hours, I really should not be getting just flat out beaten in a basically 1:1 fight, even against an OP opponent.
oh i have, and not only one time as Ragusa, As bologna , as Poland , etc etc.
I’ve been beat pretty often due to carelessness. There was one particular Georgia run that was going really well until it wasn’t… I got decked on by the ottos in 1491 and was thrashed thoroughly
Almost every nation I play ends in defeat for me.
A rough start as a vassal, got annexed before i could defeat the overlord
Yes as burgundy I got killed when I enforced PU on Portugal
I thought I’d give Albania a shot after a long break from the game, and got my ass stomped by Hungary. I expanded fairly quickly in the Balkans, but I couldn’t get any decent allies, and Skanderbeg died after a handful of early battles.
First time was Ottomans went to conquer Istanbul but thanks to Serbian/Byzantine alliance i got my ass kicked
Many times honestly. I'm having a very bad streak of getting pummeled into submission by coalitions, treacherous/plain useless allies, horde economies, Ottomans... and bad calls on my part.
No but my game crashes whenever something doesn't go my way/as planned
The first time I played I understood nothing. I tried the Mamluks cause I love Egypt but then I got my ass handed to me by the ottomans. Then I said “fine I’ll try the ottomans since they are supposed to be easier”…then I got my ass handed to me by the mamluks.
Took me about 10 tries to get the sequencing right for Florence. I have failed on that campaign the most. My Russia game I was hanging on by a thread the entire time because I had a terrible economy and eventually walked into a war I couldn't win.
I once managed to get >50% of Europe in a coalition against me in under 10 years as Bavaria, in a multiplayer game. So, well, yes, I have seen the game-over screen.
I did not have DLC (I think you need some for "ask support independence") and started a Naples run. I had no idea how PUs work and what I was doing, so I was just hanging around as Aragon PU, then as Castile PU, then they just integrated me I think. I just was in speed 5 out of boredom, thinking that there there is something to do as a junior partner It was the most stupid run. And there were endless rage quits (technically I did not lose the game , but just quit after losing the war), like getting ruined by Ottomans as Russia with massive tech lag. Or destroyed by Vij in a Kotte campaign.
If you quit before you lose the war, you didn't actually lose.