^Per title

I win the first war and kind of destroy Ottomans in 1467, now I am in a crossroad between forming Rum or continue playing as Mamluks in the future.

I have all DLCs as well and I am not doing WC in this campaign

I don't know if this has been discussed recently but I found a way to bring back the good ol' very fast loading times. For the longest time I thought it was Eu4 that became too heavy with DLCs and stuff.... Turns out it was windows defender all that time, it scans every files.... Simply add The entire eu4 folder in the windows defender Exclusion list and Voila.

France in Western Europe is one of the most flavourful and powerful nations, and its mission tree in 1.37 gives quite a lot of options. Here below you will find my guides, opening moves and options I select with the branching mission tree for what I think is the most powerful version of it.

1. Opening moves and Reconquest war against England

• Estates: +1 mana monthly in all three categories, religious diplomats, burghers' loans, rest is up to you
• Diplomacy: royal marriage Orleans on day one to decrease their LD. I usually revoke my guarantee on Scotland and ally Navarra to diplomatically vassalize them (edit) while my war against England has started. I only set up my rivals on December 11th 1444 to avoid bad surprises: England is the obvious pick for power projection, the rest depends who has set me has their rivals.
• Set my vassals' attitude as supporting, I reorganise my armies in three stacks. On December 11th 1444 I declare my reconquest war for Bordeaux, which will drag Portugal in the war. This is not a really tough war but you still must be careful about the English, they can disembark troops pretty much anywhere on the map. Vassalizing Navarra is a move I use here to get their mountain capital fort on my side and destroy the enemy armies while saving my manpower.
• In the peace deal, I take all my cores back + Calais and Ceuta. Sometimes Portugal will block the straight and you can't cross, then I take Algarve instead.

2. Burgundy and Provence

Burgundy will always hate you at the start because they desire your land. If they do not start as your rival, then I start improving relations with them during my war against England. The goal is to get them to change their opinion and ultimately accept your alliance. If they start as my rival, there are a few options:

1. Sometimes if you set the same nations as rival and scornfully insult one of them, they can switch rivals. But that is not something I could reproduce a lot.
2. If you adopt the Renaissance before they do, you can become too powerful for them.
3. Force them in a war to end the rivalry. This is by far the scenario I prefer to avoid. Either you can declare on them directly by setting them as rival with the Humiliation CB (and combine the Humiliate with end rivalry for a lot of Power Projection), or if you are lucky they ally Britanny which you have permanent claims on. Anyway in this case, Burgundy with 4 subjects is quite an opponent to fight with a lot of forts. That's why I prefer to avoid the fight.

That being said, I never struggled to get them as my ally and get the Burgundian Inheritance. The question is rather when.

For Provence, I used to break the alliance on day one and wait for the Pope to excommunicate them. Often I could split their land between me and my future Junior Partner Burgundy. However I just find this method a bit unreliable now. Provence usually gets wrecked quickly and sometimes even joins the Empire. I prefer to keep the alliance and improve their trust to get them as a junior partner and exploit their mission tree to quickly get Naples. They get cores on Naples, so in terms of AE it really does not cost much. The only drawbacks here are the fact you must wait 50 years to integrate them.

3. The HRE

France has two options in the mission tree after you get Burgundy. You can either swear to destroy the HRE and get the special War on the Empire CB on each prince. Or you can just replace Austria and try to unite the HRE. The rewards for destroying the Empire looks good, but actually becoming Emperor has many advantages making France instantly more powerful:

1. One of the biggest struggle France for me in the early game is really the governing capacity. And since France has a locked Kingdom rank because of its tier 1 government reform, the only way to quickly get the Empire rank is to become HRE Emperor
2. War on the Empire CB means fighting the HRE emperor over and over again and means also potential problems with coalitions. So even if the rewards look good on paper, that is clearly not a mission path which can be completed very quickly. On the other hand, the vassal swarm speaks for itself.

4. The Pope and Italy

That's really in this part that the path to become Emperor of the HRE impressed me. With Empire rank and influence ideas, I could just diplomatically vassalize Milan and Florence. I was just impressed by the speed at which I could just takeover Italy, and fix my economy by putting my main trade node in the Genoa trade node. Siding with the Pope might be cool for flavour, but definitely not as powerful as getting Italy for yourself.

5. Iberia

After getting Naples, you can get permanent claims on Aragon and after getting more than 14 provinces in Iberia, you unlock permanent claims on the entirety of Iberia. I tried pure conquest at first, but in terms of AE and GC a but complicated to deal with. But there is a way to fasten things up. If you can get Castile or Aragon as a subject, instead of you unlocking permanent claims your Iberian subject will get cores on the entirety of Iberia. So here, my plan was to fuck up Aragon but without taking their land directly. I fought them and forced them to release Sicily and Sardinia (which I could diplomatically vassalize). Then they lose the cores. They were attacked by Tunis and Castile, so I could use my favourite trick, diplomatic vassalization.

6. Other expansion routes

From Ceuta it gets easy to expand into the Maghreb region to unlock merchants from trade companies. From the Apulian provinces reconquested you can also make claims on Greek provinces to eventually release Byzantium. In my current save file, Venice still had Creta so I took it to make claims on the Mamluks and Byzantium to conquer land directly for myself.

7. Idea groups

I chose to open up with influence ideas since I massively used vassals to expand. Then I took admin to help with GC and vassal integration with the policy, and followed up with diplo to help with the HRE and future wide expansion. The combo offensive / humanist as fourth and fifth is tempting, but actually for now my biggest struggle is that I lack of claims and religious will just help massively there until I can unlock the imperialism CB.

Clicking their icon only takes me to their european land.

I lost my save for an ironman Byzantium run, in which I'd taken most of the Balkans, Southern Italy and the Anatolian Coast. I really don't want to deal with the early game nonsense again.

Does anyone have an ironman save from around 1500 as Byzantium that they'd be willing to share? I don't mind if there's a little less land held.

I have been Austria and France and lost to armies half the size when my military tech is higher. Is it putting some kind of cheat to slow me down?

I was doing the Ultimate Military achievement and decided to leave Prussia for last, to have a bit of a final boss so I take my time and snipe Wolgast in the mid 18th century, to get them as a pet vassal and feed them bits of a giant PLC in the next war.

It goes swimmingly, I get what I want in an enjoyable slog. I then spent ~40 years calming down the coalition, as I can enjoy WWI type wars but not when the other side has five times my army and went it dies down I get the rest of what I need from the PLC, being careful to take the (Catholic) land myself to give it to Wolgast piecemeal so that he doesn't abandon Protestantism simply because 50+% of his dev is of this religion.

Long story short, before long the Southern Baltic coast is all Wolgast, all cored and all Protestant but that inkstain on the map wouldn't evolve into a Prussia, even when I revoked the march status.

So, to check if the wiki was wrong and because I had no other ideas, I released Wolgast and just like that, he evolved into a beautiful Prussia !

I didn't have the will or the time to continue the game or to even take a screenshot (I deleted the save in a fit of rage) but I thought I'd make a post here to warn people.

I'll go see about editing the wiki and reattempting the achievement, this time with less early mistakes and more Europe rushing but at a later point

I attached two images, the Aragonian soldiers and the rebels are just chilling at the same province for months, not fighting. Neither army is moving or low on morale, retreating or anything.

During my Ottoman WC attempt, I took out the HRE in one war, and now my PU Burgundy hates me because they think I am too agressive.

I didn't pay attention to the Castile at all this run except that they didn't get union over Aragon and when I randomly checked technology map I noticed that they are around 20 technologies behind rest of the Europe. First time seeing that.

guess who i am 👀👀👀

around 1560

How the hell do you guys beat up the French???

I can't do it as England, Burgundy, or even the Ottomans. For the first two, I even did it with Castile and Austria as friends. Castile did alright, but Austria always get their asses beat. I was able to win some battles as Burgundy (but barely and they were pyrrhic victories at best) and siege down Paris. That got me enough war score to take Troyes and Valois alone.

For the Ottomans, I have to do strange shenanegans to get around them as defenders of the faith if I want to conquer the Genoese colonies, the Balkans, or Hungary. They ALWAYS get DotF when I play Ottomans, lol.

I've played EU V for a five dozens of hours and realized that I like EU IV more. But the military system of EU V is not that bad. So, is there mods which would add militias to the older game?

I wanted to test if the union with France in the 100 years war was an actual thing as France offered it in a peace deal with playing modded AND I GET AN HEIR NOT EVEN 182 DAYS (half a year) INTO THE RUN! Guess I have a new England game before me (and let's hope Henry VII doesn't like hunting 🙏).

Edit: Also why is France so mad at me in that other run? What do they mean "Forced us into a Union"? You proposed that! I would've just taken sum land of yours!

tons of achivements earned, also mentally destroyed, managed to complete it before finishing the tutorial (I have 993h in the game so still during the tutorial period:P)

Hi r/eu4! I've just released Persia Expanded, a content mod for Ajam and Persia, from the Timurid splinter state of 1444 to the Qajar Shahs. It builds on the vanilla King of Kings content instead of replacing it.

What's in it

• Ajam: a full 24-mission tree with a religious fork - stay Hanafi, go Twelver, or return to Zoroastrianism - plus the Black and White Sheep and the road to forming Persia.
• Persia: 27 new missions below the vanilla tree - the Indian Ocean and the Shirazi legacy, Persepolis and the Shahnameh, New Julfa and the silk trade, the shrines of Iraq (or a Zoroastrian branch), the age of Shah Abbas, Khorasan, Nader's restoration and the Qajar state.
• 80 events: everyday life (carpets of Kashan, coffeehouses of Isfahan, qanats of Yazd) and big historical moments (Chaldiran, the exiled emperor Humayun, the Peacock Throne, the Sherley brothers, Abbas Mirza's new army).
• New national ideas for Ajam and Persia - from Sasanian archers to Safavid gunners.
• 3 disasters: the Fall of Isfahan, the Collapse of Nader's Empire, the Safavid Succession Crisis.
• 4 monuments with 1840s engravings: Persepolis, the Blue Mosque of Tabriz, Si-o-se-pol, the Dome of Soltaniyeh.
• Government reforms, estate privileges (soyurghals!), a new advisor, the Ni'matullahi holy order, valis for your vassals, the Eranshahr CB and 14 decisions (move your court from Tabriz to Qazvin, Isfahan or Tehran).

Missions and events only reward you - choices are between different bonuses, not bonus vs. penalty.

Works with 1.37, best with all DLC (especially King of Kings). There's also a full Russian translation as a separate submod.

Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3822353612

It's my first released mod, so feedback and bug reports are very welcome. If you enjoy it, a rating on the Workshop helps a lot!

R5: Cotton Kandy / Buddhists Strike Back achievement run. Hardest part was getting out of the starting position of defeating Kotte and getting onto the mainland. Took a couple of rerolls at the start and then the Bahmanis did most of the lifting early on.

Mid-game easy enough. Sure, Bahmanis eventually break the alliance, but you're strong enough to stand on your own. Mid- to late-game was a bit of a pain and dragged the run out a lot. Lots of northern Muslim nations, which meant constant coalitions and waiting for the right time to strike.

So I've started to want to try playing as releasable nations like Island, Nitra, etc., however most of them have the base mission tree (which feels wrong for some nations). So I've looked at the mods, saw EE and wanted to try it, however I've now read that it's apparently bugged in that no matter if you choose the AI to use their vanilla or the modded tree, they'll always pick the custom one (which I don't want).

SO I would like to know if anyone knows a fix to this, whether it's another mod fixing this, somehow finding an older version of this mod and use that, if there is an alternative mod that also does this or if I just have to live with that.