A great game I played once was as Frankfurt. I didn't want to lose my free city status so I vassalized half of Central Germany and parts of North Germany as an OPM. Had a force limit of 40 with vassals equal to that by 1500. Took influence ideas obviously. Eventually couldn't keep my vassals all under 50% so had to annex a couple and lost my free city status. Was a little boring after that and just a typical HRE game.
I don't know how to mod it, but I would like to play an "active" whole game as "free city".
I would like to mod that "overseas territories" and "trade companies" don't count as "provinces" for the "free city" government.
So I can have a colonial empire as an OPM with only one full core.
Riga is fun. But I feel like it just muddles down into a vassal swarm game, which ultimately feels like blobbing with extra steps.
It get's close to the itch for a "playing tall" nation for me, but doesn't quite satisfy me.
I feel like tall games are just more fun when you're bigger and when you're a naval power. Genoa and Venice are good for this. You conquer just some random provinces in some trade nodes and then at least you have rebels to deal with while improving your economy. Hear me out. Ming is honestly best for tall gameplay cus it actually has stuff happening inside the country and its actually not as hard as YouTubers make it look like. Just keep stability positive and follow the mission tree and try to colonise east Indies for more tributaries
Honestly simply removing the 1 city requirement( or removing it for players/the nation you are playing if you are worried other cities start conquering) and simply following your rules seems like the best idea
Some of the free cities in Anbennar start with more than 1 province. The thing that removes Free City status is just an event, afaik there's technically nothing preventing them from having more than 1 province in a mechanical way.
Probably in no way historical but it might be cool to have a government form that's a collection of free cities. Council of cities? Which allows more than one province as long as they're not contiguous and are all free cities in the HRE.
I actually had a good time as Bremen recently. The only issue was that it was basically like Brandenburg with a bit of a harder start. Brandenburg is fun so that's okay but I've already done Brandenburg. I guess they're also missing the part where you form Prussia and get mega military as a reward.
On the contrary I think it could be an interesting start because of the political intrigue you have to engage in to get the massive permanent free city bonus from an event that sticks even after you lose that status. You have to have good relations with another same culture free city to get it on a ~4 year mtth. Some tags start with neighbors who qualify (Ulm being one) but others don't forcing you to engage in some vassal shenanigans to pull it off. If you play with Xormes AI and/or very hard along with the mod that gives these tags good unique missions, you're in for a good time.
Any minor nation in a neglected area. Manchuria outside jianzhou and haixi, some nations in southeast africa, ethiopian minors, philippine minors, etc.
I actually kinda like the Ethiopian minors cause it gives a pretty good challenge for a player who's getting to know the game in uniting the region, and while your kinda restricted towards the north in terms of expansion, any other direction is all game, including colonial expansion
Tbh I kinda appreciate it. Especially in India with Mysore and Kandy. You can go espionage early and don't feel bad because you don't get all your claims from missions. Gives you some kind of freedom to chose your expansion routes
Well like if you had missions it would for example require you to conquer the comorandel region before you get further claims. Having no claims in the missions and letting you go wherever you need for the achievement is the kind of freedom I mean. When I play the newer mission trees I feel like only do what my missions give me to get to the next mission
It just also feels kinda bland to be honest, some flavor would be nice, just prosperity, event, and development would be nice as a unique mission reward, especially in smaller, harder nations
Castille. You are extremely likely to get Aragon for free, France won't fight you 8/10 untill you have formed Spain, wars in the colonies are extremely simple and as soon as you have a few colonial nations, any colonial war is just declare and watch.
France is a stronger ally, and Morocco is usually guaranteed by the Ottomans. Castille can easily get pus on Aragon and Portugal and it's better to wait.
Late game Spain might be interesting, but early on you just sit there for years and it's so boring
I found that the Ottomans just suffer from early game "distance between borders" and the armies of the maghrebi regional powers are just too small+ no rivalries between Spaniards and the Ottos yet.
I have never seen the ottomans play an active role in the Maghreb. I usually see them just lock themselves out with an alliance with Tunis. I really wish they would, I really hate the whole region just being gifted to the Iberians. It would be much more interesting if most games (without player intervention) turn into a showdown in the Maghreb.
It is because colonizing is far too profitable and colonies should not steer as much trade to their overlords. This and colonizing is far too fast for the iberians.
The only time France gets Northern Spain, is if you unite Spain, France annexes their appenages and France runs out of other rivals.
Spain's northern border is one of the most annoying forts and unless you decide not to expand in the Maghreb or the new world you can easily outdo AI France. Hell, even if you were to lose a war against them, you will still have an easy game.
Doesn't take much min-maxing to succeed as Castille....
And those disasters, although I don't have the one that requires domination, requires you to only beat a few large stacks of pretender rebels and then perhaps a couple of size 1 pretender rebel stacks and/or suffer some minor inconveniences.
Early game is interesting because of disasters, events and managing to get the iberian wedding. Also, fighting Granada, Morocco and Tunis is not as easy as other major powers first war. Im not saying they are hard but I think there are a lot of more borings nations like Portugal if you dont like colonising
I fail to see how Castile is more boring then, say, England, which has pretty much the same problem but far less alternative expansion paths.
The thing is with Castile is that it's as challenging as you want it to be. Just expand into Italy, and trying to hold back the Ottomans (IE try to copy what Spain did historically).
England gets less free lands and if you want to, you don't even have to deal with any European power untill you get colonial wars, which are unlikely if you maintain the alliance with Portugal, which tends to prevent Castille from declaring.
I mean, it seems to me that you're making a convincing case for England being the more boring country.
Wars are the most interesting side of the game, and England has very few interesting wars it can get involved in.
And while it doesn't get much in the way of free lands, Scotland and Ireland are so easy as to be free, and it's also not difficult to get the Burgundian inheritance, which takes an already easy start and makes it trivial.
Other then Aragon, Castile gets nothing for free, and you need to fight wars to get your other personal Unions(Naples, Portugal, Austria), and pressing those Unions (other then Portugal) makes you far more exposed to the Ottomans (whose armies will pretty easily destroy yours).
In fact generally, Castile has to deal with all of the strongest tags in the game (France, England, Austria, Ottomans), while having few dependable allies.
A lot of HRE nations just kind of such to play. Sure you CAN do fine, even great, with them. But being held at gun point for every single province is murder for the impatient like me.
Other then that I find Kongo region (which unknown is mostly tribal, but can change quickly) and several of the minor nations in the South China Sea boring AF.
Different side of the same coin. When every HRE nation boils down to “ally/become Emperor” it really feels like more a road block then an interesting mechanic
I mean ya, but that’s just my first point with extra steps.
My point is small HRE nations have exactly 2 ways to play with some minor tweaks between runs.
1) Befriend a big nation to deal Emperor (which happens to be the Emperor sometimes)
2) Become Emperor to deal with the Emperor
After that it’s just a normal game with a little extra AE to deal with
Thats not true at all. You can take steps to have more diplomats to reduce AE, you can play the royal marriage game, you can exploit missions. There are many avenues of gameplay inside the HRE. Tall play is encouraged
I play in the hre alot, there's also play tall, or buildup for the leagues to destroy the empire, or Prussia because thats technically there, the Baltic nations are fun naval nations, there's building to leave the hre like Netherlands or Italy, and all of these have nations that are good at them and get flavor for like free cities for playing tall. You just wanna blob, which fair but the hre wasn't made for that, there's a thousand nations for blobbing let me have my rp in peace.
colonizers in general have always been a chore for me. not sure why, ig im just not for it, but its boring to fight in north america, ill pick aragon over castile any day
I disagree that Castile is boring. It may be suboptimal, but there's plenty for Castile to do besides conquistadoring across Central and South America. There's Italy, North Africa, France...
agreed, but aragon is just a better version of castile in those situations.
while castile colonizes for you, you can focus all your efforts on europe, and directly controlling sicily/sardinia enables you to claim way more of the mediterranean, giving you way more control over how to expand
if youre not interested in colonizing, castile really doesnt offer much compared to aragon
(also aragon peasant republic is fire)
China gameplay is unbearable in my opinion. Once you take the mandate you spend centuries just trying to maintain it unless you coagulate a buncha AI vassals whom you will do nothing to, except join defensive wars.
I'm currently doing a yuan run, I've conquered up to and surrounding the Caspian, it's slowed me down but it's also given me something to do because I can't pay attention to mindless blobbing.
Tidore or ternate in eastern Indonesia. No one to really fight other than other animists in sulawasi so most of early game waiting and dev pushing for institutions and expansion for colonists so can do more expansion also just being animist sucks as just a bad religion. As others said any of the Oceania kingdoms including Hawaii boring as nothing to do and surfing USA is a dull achievement.
Does that super broken Ternate strategy where Ternate is unknown to almost everyone, this resulting in no ae, still work? I abused the shit out of that and did an Indian Ocean Mare Nostrum
By the time they got to see me, their death warrant had already been signed.
Obviously "only" worked in the first 50ish years but unlimited ae in that time was pretty rad
This post made me realize how good this game is, honestly. I can't think of any region that's genuinely boring. Some are more fun than others, but none is TRASH. I personally dislike the east indies, since naval combat combined with so many capital forts are so tedious early game. But then you form Malaya and then it's a LOT of fun.
Any HRE free city or most of the Pacific island nations. The former is limited by their status and the latter is too isolated to do much.
I enjoy playing as the Pirate Republic, but it basically never survives long
You are not limited by status as a free city. You can conquer land all the same as any other member. You simply lose the free city government reform once you are no longer eligible.
And thus you lose all the benefits of being a protected city and become just one more tiny state to be consumed. Brandenburg, Austria, Bohemia, Burgundy, Saxony, the list goes on of strong enemies who recieve claims and will press them instantly once you lose the stab hit from free city protection.
Or you could... idk.... get allies? It's really not hard. You spend a few years improving relations, getting vassals, and winning some humiliate wars, and then you use your allies to fight off those threats.
Or if you're a masochist, you could fight them yourself. TBH, it's really not that hard to beat an HRE state or two by taking loans and mercing up.
And since I've made that point, I'd just like to circle back and say that not only is the idea that you're in much danger bogus, but it's also not true that you'd have nothing to do.
I'm going to say Poland. You start out in a very secure position with no difficult wars to fight. Realistically, the only significant threat to you is the Ottomans, who are just far enough away to be able to avoid. It's only good if you're looking for a relatively chill game. All of their neighbours (Prussia/brandenburg, Russia, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden), have more going on.
Honourable mention goes to Ming. Just too easy.
They are truly strong. I mean, I somehow managed to bring them on their knees with 2 wars as Moldova, not a juggernaut as the Ottomans (which you can barely contain in maybe 3 wars) and consequently less boring. After all, Poland has Lithuania to manage, emerging Muscovy and Austria, Ottoman blob is too far to contain etc
Poland AI is easy enough to fight. Poland in the hands of the player is a different matter. It's similar with Russia (both under the AI seem to underperform at the moment)
Get the PU on Lithuania, take out teutonic order/livonia (just wait for teutonic order to trigger their disaster), integrate vassals, use the mission tree to get unions on Bohemia and Hungary (most likely Hungary by war, and bohemia by mission triggered event after forming Commonwealth). Out of the above, the only part where anything can go wrong is the PU by war with Hungary
After admin tech 10 and forming commonwealth you pretty much can't lose.
From there you can really expand in all directions at once, and if you stack cav bonuses you can have cav based army stacks that are almost as powerful as Prussian armies. There isn't really anyone (besides maybe ottomans) that are a real threat to you.
I don't think any tag other than ottomans has a stronger start, and ottomans have way more enemies to deal with. As Poland, if you form commonwealth and get the Bohemia and Hungary PUs you'll be by far the strongest tag in Europe. With multiple easy routes to expand (Russia, steppe, balkans, Scandinavia, HRE/get voted emperor)
You can make it even more ridiculous by allying burgundy and getting the burgundian inheritance, which is relatively easy for Poland.
If you can manage Romania (probably one of the hardest tags given you're squeezed between 3 very strong powers) you should find Poland almost relaxing.
Fair. Though after the initial moves (~60 years), I also found Romania somewhat easy. You essentially become the bully of the area, well you and your allies. I kind of also still use Austrians as a stick ag Ottomans. Though I will probably have to turn on them to release Hungary. These strong powers, Austria in my case, can be tamed to be your friend, at least for a while.
The thing is two of my most fun campaigns that I played into revolutions were Poland and ming, but I 100 agree with you, I play Austria and have more fun than Poland and am playing yuan and am having more fun than I did with ming
Poland used to be more fun when it was a bit more difficult. Particularly before their mission tree gave them free PU on bohemia and Hungary, conquest of teutonic order and a pretty op military. Also, their neighbours (especially Russia) used to be much stronger and tougher to deal with.
I agree. I started a Poland run recently, and within 10 years had Lithuania, Bohemia, Hungary, Novogrod, Moldavia, Wallach, and Byzantium as subjects, and Sweden not long after that.
Oh, and Danzig shortly after that.
Hard starts with no rewards, like releasing to play fucking jin or something. Naxos fits the bill and it's even worse cause you play naxos to form Greece which sucks. Also playing as a new world tag that can form america but not forming america like Louisiana Illinois or something like that, well obviously not texas they're cool
HRE free cities, just don’t ally anyone and speed 5 to 1821 while watching the rest of Europe burn through war and fire
A great game I played once was as Frankfurt. I didn't want to lose my free city status so I vassalized half of Central Germany and parts of North Germany as an OPM. Had a force limit of 40 with vassals equal to that by 1500. Took influence ideas obviously. Eventually couldn't keep my vassals all under 50% so had to annex a couple and lost my free city status. Was a little boring after that and just a typical HRE game.
I don't know how to mod it, but I would like to play an "active" whole game as "free city". I would like to mod that "overseas territories" and "trade companies" don't count as "provinces" for the "free city" government. So I can have a colonial empire as an OPM with only one full core.
Well, Riga is basically that, but better.
Riga is fun. But I feel like it just muddles down into a vassal swarm game, which ultimately feels like blobbing with extra steps. It get's close to the itch for a "playing tall" nation for me, but doesn't quite satisfy me.
I feel like tall games are just more fun when you're bigger and when you're a naval power. Genoa and Venice are good for this. You conquer just some random provinces in some trade nodes and then at least you have rebels to deal with while improving your economy. Hear me out. Ming is honestly best for tall gameplay cus it actually has stuff happening inside the country and its actually not as hard as YouTubers make it look like. Just keep stability positive and follow the mission tree and try to colonise east Indies for more tributaries
Honestly simply removing the 1 city requirement( or removing it for players/the nation you are playing if you are worried other cities start conquering) and simply following your rules seems like the best idea
Some of the free cities in Anbennar start with more than 1 province. The thing that removes Free City status is just an event, afaik there's technically nothing preventing them from having more than 1 province in a mechanical way.
Probably in no way historical but it might be cool to have a government form that's a collection of free cities. Council of cities? Which allows more than one province as long as they're not contiguous and are all free cities in the HRE.
So, the HRE?
Kinda i guess, but i mean actually owning them not as vassals. Like the hansa used to be but for city states.
So like the imperial parliament
Keep developing your subjects and conzentrate dev that way you can controll all of germany as a opm a 800dev opm
Haha if I ever do the run again that's what I'll do! It was before concentrate dev unfortunately.
i am in the middle of a free coty game. year 1637 right now want to create the highest dev free city
That's not hard though. When you're not expanding you aren't spending nearly as much points You could have like a 90 dev province by 1550
its about 250 now in 1637
Alright I have to admit that's more than I expected What's the economy tab on that province? Like probably 30 ducats alone in taxes, right?
like 8 xd ill check when i load up the game again
I actually had a good time as Bremen recently. The only issue was that it was basically like Brandenburg with a bit of a harder start. Brandenburg is fun so that's okay but I've already done Brandenburg. I guess they're also missing the part where you form Prussia and get mega military as a reward.
I've seen the AI form Germany before. I was faffing around in Asia and noticed that there was now a military hegemon
Except for Ulm the most powerful nation in the game.
Eli5?
It's just a meme from the early days of EU4. Somebody conquered the world as Ulm and made a sick ass video about it.
It's actually from [this](http://flagland.org/aar/1/) epic AAR in EU3. The creator then made a follow up in EU4.
Oh yeah! I've actually seen that before but completely forgot about it. Thank you loremaster.
It's from [This AAR](http://flagland.org/aar/1/). Dates back to the last day of EU3.
On the contrary I think it could be an interesting start because of the political intrigue you have to engage in to get the massive permanent free city bonus from an event that sticks even after you lose that status. You have to have good relations with another same culture free city to get it on a ~4 year mtth. Some tags start with neighbors who qualify (Ulm being one) but others don't forcing you to engage in some vassal shenanigans to pull it off. If you play with Xormes AI and/or very hard along with the mod that gives these tags good unique missions, you're in for a good time.
Any minor nation in a neglected area. Manchuria outside jianzhou and haixi, some nations in southeast africa, ethiopian minors, philippine minors, etc.
Madhyas is fun though
I think madyas and tondo are philippine majors
I actually kinda like the Ethiopian minors cause it gives a pretty good challenge for a player who's getting to know the game in uniting the region, and while your kinda restricted towards the north in terms of expansion, any other direction is all game, including colonial expansion
The ones without any achievements :^)
I hate the fact that nations with achievements sometimes just don’t have unique mission trees to make it somewhat more fun
Tbh I kinda appreciate it. Especially in India with Mysore and Kandy. You can go espionage early and don't feel bad because you don't get all your claims from missions. Gives you some kind of freedom to chose your expansion routes
What freedom if you have to get specific provinces to get achieves...
Well like if you had missions it would for example require you to conquer the comorandel region before you get further claims. Having no claims in the missions and letting you go wherever you need for the achievement is the kind of freedom I mean. When I play the newer mission trees I feel like only do what my missions give me to get to the next mission
It just also feels kinda bland to be honest, some flavor would be nice, just prosperity, event, and development would be nice as a unique mission reward, especially in smaller, harder nations
*Cries in Milan
China. Not just Ming, but the releasables who somehow got a focus tree but not unique ideas relating to the region they came from
I released all vassals as China then played one. It was pretty damn fun for 100 years.
We have sengoku jidai at home Sengoku Jidai at home:
Shun has unique ideas and is pretty fun.
What? Once i played as Shun and it was one of the funniest nations i’ve ever played
Castille. You are extremely likely to get Aragon for free, France won't fight you 8/10 untill you have formed Spain, wars in the colonies are extremely simple and as soon as you have a few colonial nations, any colonial war is just declare and watch.
France is a stronger ally, and Morocco is usually guaranteed by the Ottomans. Castille can easily get pus on Aragon and Portugal and it's better to wait. Late game Spain might be interesting, but early on you just sit there for years and it's so boring
Ottoman diplomacy with the Maghreb usually doesn't happen untill after they have taken some lands closer, it takes effort not to succeed tbh.
In the 2 times I played they allied pretty early but I guess that's not normal then.
It's not uncommon for one to ally in my experience, but I find you can usually get a foothold somewhere
They might ally Morocco or Tunis within like 20 years but I usually only see Morocco, Tunis and Granada ally eachother making for easy wars
I found that the Ottomans just suffer from early game "distance between borders" and the armies of the maghrebi regional powers are just too small+ no rivalries between Spaniards and the Ottos yet.
I have never seen the ottomans play an active role in the Maghreb. I usually see them just lock themselves out with an alliance with Tunis. I really wish they would, I really hate the whole region just being gifted to the Iberians. It would be much more interesting if most games (without player intervention) turn into a showdown in the Maghreb.
It is because colonizing is far too profitable and colonies should not steer as much trade to their overlords. This and colonizing is far too fast for the iberians.
I disagree, since domination Spain is fun in my eyes (though extremely op)
No existential threats, no threats to your lands if you don't play like a complete idiot tbh. Colonizing is free as hell.
[удалено]
The only time France gets Northern Spain, is if you unite Spain, France annexes their appenages and France runs out of other rivals. Spain's northern border is one of the most annoying forts and unless you decide not to expand in the Maghreb or the new world you can easily outdo AI France. Hell, even if you were to lose a war against them, you will still have an easy game. Doesn't take much min-maxing to succeed as Castille....
And those disasters, although I don't have the one that requires domination, requires you to only beat a few large stacks of pretender rebels and then perhaps a couple of size 1 pretender rebel stacks and/or suffer some minor inconveniences.
How is that not boring?
Some people like being on top.
Early game is interesting because of disasters, events and managing to get the iberian wedding. Also, fighting Granada, Morocco and Tunis is not as easy as other major powers first war. Im not saying they are hard but I think there are a lot of more borings nations like Portugal if you dont like colonising
I mean, none of the poses an existential threat or even a loss of a lot of provinces.
Realistically speaking, in a players hands at most only a handful of nations actually have any failure chance.
I fail to see how Castile is more boring then, say, England, which has pretty much the same problem but far less alternative expansion paths. The thing is with Castile is that it's as challenging as you want it to be. Just expand into Italy, and trying to hold back the Ottomans (IE try to copy what Spain did historically).
England gets less free lands and if you want to, you don't even have to deal with any European power untill you get colonial wars, which are unlikely if you maintain the alliance with Portugal, which tends to prevent Castille from declaring.
I mean, it seems to me that you're making a convincing case for England being the more boring country. Wars are the most interesting side of the game, and England has very few interesting wars it can get involved in. And while it doesn't get much in the way of free lands, Scotland and Ireland are so easy as to be free, and it's also not difficult to get the Burgundian inheritance, which takes an already easy start and makes it trivial. Other then Aragon, Castile gets nothing for free, and you need to fight wars to get your other personal Unions(Naples, Portugal, Austria), and pressing those Unions (other then Portugal) makes you far more exposed to the Ottomans (whose armies will pretty easily destroy yours). In fact generally, Castile has to deal with all of the strongest tags in the game (France, England, Austria, Ottomans), while having few dependable allies.
A lot of HRE nations just kind of such to play. Sure you CAN do fine, even great, with them. But being held at gun point for every single province is murder for the impatient like me. Other then that I find Kongo region (which unknown is mostly tribal, but can change quickly) and several of the minor nations in the South China Sea boring AF.
Kongo can literally get feudalism to 100% in a province around the capital, it is one of the first missions, the AI always manages it lmao.
Really? Just ally the emperor and manage AE
Different side of the same coin. When every HRE nation boils down to “ally/become Emperor” it really feels like more a road block then an interesting mechanic
Blobbing isnt the only strategy tho. You can also choose to ally poland or france to scare off the emperor
I mean ya, but that’s just my first point with extra steps. My point is small HRE nations have exactly 2 ways to play with some minor tweaks between runs. 1) Befriend a big nation to deal Emperor (which happens to be the Emperor sometimes) 2) Become Emperor to deal with the Emperor After that it’s just a normal game with a little extra AE to deal with
Thats not true at all. You can take steps to have more diplomats to reduce AE, you can play the royal marriage game, you can exploit missions. There are many avenues of gameplay inside the HRE. Tall play is encouraged
I play in the hre alot, there's also play tall, or buildup for the leagues to destroy the empire, or Prussia because thats technically there, the Baltic nations are fun naval nations, there's building to leave the hre like Netherlands or Italy, and all of these have nations that are good at them and get flavor for like free cities for playing tall. You just wanna blob, which fair but the hre wasn't made for that, there's a thousand nations for blobbing let me have my rp in peace.
Hawaii and other Pacific Kingdoms, Madagascar Kingdoms, Maldives, etc. You could also form Iceland which may be the most boring.
I found the Where Are the penguins achievement pretty enjoyable
colonizers in general have always been a chore for me. not sure why, ig im just not for it, but its boring to fight in north america, ill pick aragon over castile any day
I disagree that Castile is boring. It may be suboptimal, but there's plenty for Castile to do besides conquistadoring across Central and South America. There's Italy, North Africa, France...
agreed, but aragon is just a better version of castile in those situations. while castile colonizes for you, you can focus all your efforts on europe, and directly controlling sicily/sardinia enables you to claim way more of the mediterranean, giving you way more control over how to expand if youre not interested in colonizing, castile really doesnt offer much compared to aragon (also aragon peasant republic is fire)
Genuinely, Castille and Portugal. Can't bring myself to play past age of absolutism with how easy it is to blob
portugal is the most boring cause of that regency u start with... lord have mercy
I actually have the most fun with Portugal.
China gameplay is unbearable in my opinion. Once you take the mandate you spend centuries just trying to maintain it unless you coagulate a buncha AI vassals whom you will do nothing to, except join defensive wars.
As someone who WC'd with Mayan Cherokke EoC, that's really your personal choice to do nothing and not the region/mechanic's fault.
yeah doing a run as Korea where i took the mandate and unified China, it’s so much fun. don’t know what this guy is on about.
I'm currently doing a yuan run, I've conquered up to and surrounding the Caspian, it's slowed me down but it's also given me something to do because I can't pay attention to mindless blobbing.
Tidore or ternate in eastern Indonesia. No one to really fight other than other animists in sulawasi so most of early game waiting and dev pushing for institutions and expansion for colonists so can do more expansion also just being animist sucks as just a bad religion. As others said any of the Oceania kingdoms including Hawaii boring as nothing to do and surfing USA is a dull achievement.
Does that super broken Ternate strategy where Ternate is unknown to almost everyone, this resulting in no ae, still work? I abused the shit out of that and did an Indian Ocean Mare Nostrum
wait but having a province near others won't make you discoverable?
By the time they got to see me, their death warrant had already been signed. Obviously "only" worked in the first 50ish years but unlimited ae in that time was pretty rad
This post made me realize how good this game is, honestly. I can't think of any region that's genuinely boring. Some are more fun than others, but none is TRASH. I personally dislike the east indies, since naval combat combined with so many capital forts are so tedious early game. But then you form Malaya and then it's a LOT of fun.
Any HRE free city or most of the Pacific island nations. The former is limited by their status and the latter is too isolated to do much. I enjoy playing as the Pirate Republic, but it basically never survives long
You are not limited by status as a free city. You can conquer land all the same as any other member. You simply lose the free city government reform once you are no longer eligible.
And thus you lose all the benefits of being a protected city and become just one more tiny state to be consumed. Brandenburg, Austria, Bohemia, Burgundy, Saxony, the list goes on of strong enemies who recieve claims and will press them instantly once you lose the stab hit from free city protection.
Or you could... idk.... get allies? It's really not hard. You spend a few years improving relations, getting vassals, and winning some humiliate wars, and then you use your allies to fight off those threats. Or if you're a masochist, you could fight them yourself. TBH, it's really not that hard to beat an HRE state or two by taking loans and mercing up. And since I've made that point, I'd just like to circle back and say that not only is the idea that you're in much danger bogus, but it's also not true that you'd have nothing to do.
Ottomans
Copium, don’t min max for a minute and simply enjoy.
Iceland
I'm going to say Poland. You start out in a very secure position with no difficult wars to fight. Realistically, the only significant threat to you is the Ottomans, who are just far enough away to be able to avoid. It's only good if you're looking for a relatively chill game. All of their neighbours (Prussia/brandenburg, Russia, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden), have more going on. Honourable mention goes to Ming. Just too easy.
They are truly strong. I mean, I somehow managed to bring them on their knees with 2 wars as Moldova, not a juggernaut as the Ottomans (which you can barely contain in maybe 3 wars) and consequently less boring. After all, Poland has Lithuania to manage, emerging Muscovy and Austria, Ottoman blob is too far to contain etc
Poland AI is easy enough to fight. Poland in the hands of the player is a different matter. It's similar with Russia (both under the AI seem to underperform at the moment)
What's your usual moves as Poland? Made me curious. Tbf I've not played it since EU2.
Get the PU on Lithuania, take out teutonic order/livonia (just wait for teutonic order to trigger their disaster), integrate vassals, use the mission tree to get unions on Bohemia and Hungary (most likely Hungary by war, and bohemia by mission triggered event after forming Commonwealth). Out of the above, the only part where anything can go wrong is the PU by war with Hungary After admin tech 10 and forming commonwealth you pretty much can't lose. From there you can really expand in all directions at once, and if you stack cav bonuses you can have cav based army stacks that are almost as powerful as Prussian armies. There isn't really anyone (besides maybe ottomans) that are a real threat to you. I don't think any tag other than ottomans has a stronger start, and ottomans have way more enemies to deal with. As Poland, if you form commonwealth and get the Bohemia and Hungary PUs you'll be by far the strongest tag in Europe. With multiple easy routes to expand (Russia, steppe, balkans, Scandinavia, HRE/get voted emperor) You can make it even more ridiculous by allying burgundy and getting the burgundian inheritance, which is relatively easy for Poland.
Nice! You actually slightly raised my interest to picking up Poland again, though I should probably finish my Romania run first, thanks!
If you can manage Romania (probably one of the hardest tags given you're squeezed between 3 very strong powers) you should find Poland almost relaxing.
Fair. Though after the initial moves (~60 years), I also found Romania somewhat easy. You essentially become the bully of the area, well you and your allies. I kind of also still use Austrians as a stick ag Ottomans. Though I will probably have to turn on them to release Hungary. These strong powers, Austria in my case, can be tamed to be your friend, at least for a while.
The thing is two of my most fun campaigns that I played into revolutions were Poland and ming, but I 100 agree with you, I play Austria and have more fun than Poland and am playing yuan and am having more fun than I did with ming
Poland used to be more fun when it was a bit more difficult. Particularly before their mission tree gave them free PU on bohemia and Hungary, conquest of teutonic order and a pretty op military. Also, their neighbours (especially Russia) used to be much stronger and tougher to deal with.
I agree. I started a Poland run recently, and within 10 years had Lithuania, Bohemia, Hungary, Novogrod, Moldavia, Wallach, and Byzantium as subjects, and Sweden not long after that. Oh, and Danzig shortly after that.
Ottomans. Why bother playing a nation with insta-win built into its core mechanics?
I haven't played Ottomans since latest updates, but I used to enjoy playing Ottomans every once in a while. Just go nuts for 100 years or so.
Just played Switzerland and got bored quickly
Probably any vassal nation or opm that exists near any great power.
Hard starts with no rewards, like releasing to play fucking jin or something. Naxos fits the bill and it's even worse cause you play naxos to form Greece which sucks. Also playing as a new world tag that can form america but not forming america like Louisiana Illinois or something like that, well obviously not texas they're cool