11 AMAZING Tips For EU4! (I Wish I'd Known When I Started)

Here's my most packed video yet! Lots of stuff for new and even veteran players to learn!
If you've never played EU4, it's a humongous grand strategy game, where the world is divided into tons of countries, almost all with unique abilities and strategies! With super complicated mechanics and endless ways to play each country, the conquering never stops, with Quarbit Universalis!
Quill18's Beginner Guide: • Europa Universalis 4 -...
My Beginner Guide (old): • Video
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[@matthewmcneany]

It's taken me about 5 years to get comfortable taking loans in EUIV.

[@ADCD-dj8gz]

Matthew McNeany I’m still not comfortable

[@Grentification]

For me it was a one play as manchu

[@MSDoL]

I discovered eu4 through florry, so i did not have the scary loans problem. But once i tried a fast-paced TTM after the Philippines patch. In 1470 i was 3000 ducats in debt and it became a race with time (bankruptcy). I min-maxed as hard as i could conquered most of India and Kilwa and by 1550 i reached positive income, albeit with 2200-ish in debt. Super-fun game.

[@matthewmcneany]

​@@Grentification I played as Cusco into Incas. I also think getting used to taking loans and hiring mercs happens at the same time.

[@TheRockhound119]

I'm only comfortable taking obscene numbers of loans right at the start, when you are gonig to do something like triple or quadruple your development in one war.

[@draconicimperium2713]

Him: Don't be afraid to take loans. Me: Flashbacks to my 30 loan Granada

[@CoverofWinter]

When you win you can just make Castille pay for them all on the peace deal though.

[@draconicimperium2713]

Yeah I'm aware... This was a while ago when I had only like 100 hours so I didn't take money in the peace deals.

[@IvanIvanov-gb5zx]

The ottomans paid them for me and kept sending subsidies even after i formed andalusia and got strong Edit:it was singleplayer

[@alexeyamosov664]

My 2 bankruptcies in 1480 France: “Pathetic”

[@timespaice]

@@IvanIvanov-gb5zx + easy mode

[@bradleymoore2797]

I wish the Ai could use the prepare for war button on me before they just declare and call me in.

[@KingJuJrdaMuffinMan]

you can still prepare yourself and move your armies and run for one month before joining the war if I'm not mistaken. Not quite a full year though...

[@phobics9498]

@@KingJuJrdaMuffinMan Yeah but thats not the problem, the problem is the AI usually calling you when you intend to do anything else, if it notified you that it was going to attack someone earlier you could postpone your stuff

[@FVMCRAFT]

What about ai suddenly attacks you(especially while playing as a daimyo and emperor wants your province and you have no allies because of ae.)

[@hollowhoagie6441]

@@FVMCRAFT I usually break my alliances as a daimyo because after the first few wars I need to focus on solidifying my rule, not running off to fight that OP daimyo my ally wants to fight

[@FVMCRAFT]

@@hollowhoagie6441 Yeah i didnt said "if your ally attacks someone" i said "if ai attacks you" because when you get bigger, shogun starts a war against you. I remember fighting a long war and taking kyoto after that.

[@plebisMaximus]

I have 1268 hours in this game at the time of writing this and I've never once thought of using privateering to damage the economic base of my enemies. Really good tip, thanks man!

[@gamermoment4327]

Lmao same, i thought blockading would be more efficient but privateers are just op

[@Gokaes]

i my self usually wont use fleet based nations so that wont help me but i know it since my dear friend who always go full naval always privateers my tradenodes in mp if we go to war

[@randomguy869]

Omg another furry 😂

[@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart]

@@randomguy869 meow

[@teutonicknight6132]

Maybe you should align the tips with actual video footage of you doing them would help to explain them more easily. Good Video tho! :)

[@infectious420]

ya watching random sped up video is distracting and annoying

[@martinaustin6230]

Disappointed I didn't learn anything from this video. It's not like I have nearly 700 hours in this... I'll give some tips of my own. 1) Want to take down a big nation with your allies? You can attack and vassalize a small nation that the target nation is attacking or is about to attack. If you do so, you will be in a defensive war and all your allies will almost certainly help you. You can grab some additional allies just before hand and go over Diplo relations temporarily. 2) Each regiment can reduce unrest on that province by .25 for up to -5 unrest for 20 regiments. Use this to deal with unrest in provinces with

[@xDawe36]

Disappointed I didn't learn anything from your comment... On the other hand, i didn't know that rebellions tick 3 times as fast when you are over 100% OE ;)

[@martinaustin6230]

@@xDawe36 Actually I didn't know that either. I just knew unrest massively goes up which does further contribute to it.

[@xDawe36]

I would also add prioritizing expansion into the same culture group as your country's, it can severely cripple a province's worth and significantly heighten unrest levels if you take a wrong culture province. In addition, trying to conquer specific states helps manage the state limit earlier, as territories are locked to 75% autonomy. Also using estates is a pretty significant help when conquering new land with high autonomy. You can increase autonomy to prevent a rebellion, and assign it to an estate corresponding to the highest dev type of the province, you can still profit from your newly conquered land massively. However, do not ever increase autonomy on gold provinces, it might be even worth to decrease it and deal with the rebels.

[@Halera-]

9) Form colonial nations. It hasn't been stressed. When you want to colonize fast, colonize 5 provinces in a colonial region. Then an autonomous colonial nation forms. And what is mostly important: it can colonize on its own. It doesn't get your settling bonuses, but it is still rather double the speed of colonizing. Especially since they have little envoy travel time. I wish I knew this during my first gameplay. The downside of having a colonial nation is you can't recruit nor build there. So I recommend starting market building just before forming a colonial nation. 9a) Maybe I make some mistake. But since my colonies got huge, I get almost no benefit from them. They are so rebellious they pay rather no tariffs and never help in wars. So all I get is: satisfaction, trade power and merchants. 10) It is possible to have several colonial nations in a one colonial region. I think you have to annex or inherit a country which has got a colony nation. This is handy because each colony of 10 or more cities gives you a bonus merchant. 11) My experience is I want to increase autonomy often, but almost never decrease it; which is against my intuition. Conquer land, then increase autonomy to neutralise separatism. Separatism drops down over 30 years, so then you don't need this. You want to decrease autonomy manually (to speed up the automatic process) when you have a safe reserve in terms of unrest.

[@xDawe36]

@@Halera- i think you can recruit and build in colonial nations, but you no longer get the production of the province, just a percentage of the trade power. Also always decrease autonomy on gold provinces, that's just pure money

[@JaceValm]

Me and my several hundred hours in EU4 are feeling a little bit foolish at never noticing the "prepare for war" button.

[@sims2mw]

i always forget that prepare for war and raise war taxes even exist

[@urmomgiey1013]

Wait where is this

[@benjaminjones8782]

@@urmomgiey1013 ...............

[@jorgosgustavus3183]

@@urmomgiey1013 bruh moment

[@BS-hl9me]

Is that feature from a dlc, I don’t have all of the dlc...

[@SebHaarfagre]

This video is old, but still great :) I've played 2400h myself. Here's a couple of more tips that people may have overlooked, which has been very useful: - 1: _Trapping enemy armies._ A lot can be done with a stronger navy and some deviousness. For instance, hire a mercenary or two (you may get unlucky and get a large attrition tick, you need 1000 to siege a province), place him on the other side of a strait near their large stacks so they'll go for him (preferably occupy the region with it). Keep your navy docked in the same sea province. You need to have an army able to beat the armies that are _not_ trapped nearby. You need to occupy the province the enemies walked across from, before they return after liberating the province you occupied with your mercenaries. Send your navy out after they went to liberate, but before they return. - 2: _Culture, you, your vassals and effeciency._ Regions with an unaccepted culture gives large penalties to taxes, manpower, gives lots of unrest, and makes the provinces much harder to convert to your religion. In addition to going for trade node provinces and estuaries, you should look to annex provinces of your own culture, or provinces of the same culture group, which doesn't have as severe penalties as completely foreign cultures. Your vassals gets the same penalties of course, so if you are going to conquer areas of a different culture group, you should preferably ready up a vassal of _that culture group_ to feed the land beforehand. _ALSO,_ as you might have noticed when making trade company regions: You can not culture shift a province that is not of your religion. Non-accepted culture gives -2 missionary strength. So note how these are tied together as well. - 3: _Coring costs:_ You probably know that you can have so and so many states. Well, once you add a state, every region you will get within the state province in the future will _force you_ to pay the full coring cost when coring. In other words, it might pay off to be careful with which states you add, to think about if you really are going to want pay the coring cost for other regions in the province in the future. You can always remove a province as state before conquest of course. For instance, if you are reaching your state limit and are going to do a couple conquests, you might not want to add that one region of one state when your next conquest will have richer provinces etc. etc. I usually let provinces with mostly (or exclusively) grain, livestock, naval supplies, fish, tropical wood, or similar (depending on age and events which lowers or raise their trade value) remain as territories. Or if I want to preserve admin mana for a while, I just wait with stating altogether in newly conquered provinces until separatism wears off, or if I need to raise autonomy due to rebels; - 4: _Autonomy and revolt risk:_ Some while ago, you could create a state (would usually lower autonomy in newly conquered/cored provinces to 50%), raise autonomy for -10 revolt risk, then remove the state so it goes back to being a territory, while keeping the -10 revolt risk. You can no longer do this, the -10 modifier will be removed when you remove the state status. However, you can still use this - being mindful of which provinces you state that is - to help managing your territories. You probably know that raising autonomy becomes a big no-no during Age of Absolutism and after that. Which makes this another tip-in-tip: Raise autonomy in the provinces your comfortable with 10 years or so _before_ the age of absolutism, so that you can lower it again for a nice boost to absolutism when that age starts. - 5: _Selling ships:_ Boy, did I avoid this one for a long while. Then I played pirate Malaya (Palembang) and with a capture ship focus. I mean, you capture so many ships, then you sell what's over force limit (doubtful you'll need to go over it, but depends on country I guess), you can even sell them to some of your enemies, then just recapture the same ships you sold when warring against them lol. It's expensive to have a large fleet, but you can also recoup quite a bit of those losses. The ships you want to sell have to be docked within supply range of the country you try to sell them to. The range of which you can raid coasts seem to be the same range. Note that minors will often buy ships too (and are less likely to be near forcelimit which makes them reject a deal, if they are small or newly lost a war or sea battles - be that you or somebody else), the median price seems to be 10 or 20 for a transport or light ship. Nations in debt won't buy. - 6: _Destroy Ming:_ There are many scenarios where they can be your big bad bully. Save up some mil power and money, hire mercenaries and use scorched earth. Scorched earth gives 5 devastation in a province, and using it with merc (spam) can also help hamper their armies speed towards your armies. This is more of a desperate measure or one-time thing to cause a Mingplosion, but it can be worth it. Not getting stomped and crippled for 10 years, or being able to gobble up one of the new spawns, can be worth more than an earlier tech. Sacriliege, I know. Note that occupying a province gives ticking devastation too. So just go for those forts where you absolutely HAVE to, if at all. You can also "sacrifice" an ally on the other side of Ming to try force a collapse, by having them occupy some provinces on the other end and generally be a distraction. - 7: _The Ottomans:_ They're just hard to stop. If you don't start next to them, they _will_ blob. I saw them 13 000 ducats in debt before 1650, expected them to collapse, almost declared war, then I saw them embrace institution and recover after like 5 years. Don't know what more to say. Even supported rebels (had too much money) but they just got stomped before they even got to occupy anything. Only complete occupation, rebel force spawns, and a followup war can defeat them. If you are one of those who love the excruciating pain of WC, then I guess they won't be a problem lol. - 8: _Fort defensiveness:_ Salt boosts a province's defensiveness. Might be another one I forgot. Build forts preferably in mountains that have salt if any. Jungle might also give a -2 siege (can't remember), but Hills, Forests and Marshes gives -1. For optimal deterrence, overlap forts so that there's (almost) always another fort 2 regions away. Armies can move in and out of fort's zone of control but _NOT THROUGH_ a zone of control - that is, they can't pass 2 zones controlled in succession. The armies will have to visit/siege the fort before that. Use this to setup a nice defensive network if you need that. They can be a great delay in a 2-front war, making you able to focus down one enemy at a time in wars where the odds otherwise would be firmly against you. You can also try to "tower defense" them by leaving paths open trough low-dev high attrition regions to try bait funnel them through. - 9: _Siege:_ Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact numbers. But each of these gives incremental bonuses to siege dice rolls: 2 cannons, 4 cannons, 6 cannons, 8 cannons (again I'm sure these numbers are not correct, but you can check them in-game while sieging a fort or something - or check wiki). If there are no enemies nearby, just put cannons in the siege and detach the rest (leave enough manpower total of course) so they don't take attrition. - 10: _Trade:_ I won't go into the different terms. But I can tell you that having trade power downstream will also grant you more power upstream. This is how nations like Portugal and Spain can pull lots of money from nodes where they don't even have a single province. This is why there's advantages to conquering both down and upstream. Controlling all nodes downstream one section will ensure nobody can pull trade out, while conquering upstreams lets you pull more goods towards your own node. Most campaign will see a grey zone of both. - 11: _Estates:_ Nobility estate boosts local defensiveness (remember those salt/mountain fort provinces?). Temple boosts local missionary strength. Burghers boosts local trade power. (estuaries and harbors are their friend). If you don't like the local autonomy regardless, I can tell you that you don't have to ever grant them a single province, and still be able to juggle them at 75+ influence for the mana for a loooong long time if you're lucky. You just need enough to be able to hire admirals and generals and advisors, and you should be good. Oh yeah and if you get the event where faction demands control of a region, you can, if fitting, remove it as a state and accept their demands, and no estate can be added since it's a territory. _Some last random ones:_ Silk (?) and cloth lowers local development cost, and maybe cotton too? I always mix these up. But point is, look out for +trade power or -local dev cost trade goods for your future focus regions in additon to just the terrain and if there's an estuary or harbor. Goods produced raise total value in a node so that's nice too (in addition to the money you earn straight from production). The magic number for regions required for a vassal to be more likely to develop their land is 5. There's exceptions. I can only remember seeing Jake talk about this in one of their Dev Clashes. No source. But it seems to work. Of course... whether they have spare mana is also a factor. Hordes rarely do much to their land, but again, there's exceptions. I am confident their rivals comes into play too. In my Ashikaga vassal swarm play, my rival vassals seemed to want to outdevelop each other, if they were about evenly matched in strength, to gain the upper hand. Even if they owned below 5 regions.

[@thomasnaess742]

What a great post! As WC masochist, I thought I could add a couple of points but couldn't think of anything Edit: I thought of one! Edit #2: One or two Coalitions: Obviously you should generally try to avoid coalitions (unless you are super-pro, florryworry level). However, if you have accidentally taken too much land and a coalition starts forming, don't give up hope. One good tactic is to declare war on the coalition as it is forming. It might be terrifying, but it is better to fight a few of the members than all of them at once. Even if all the countries subsequently form a coalition and declare on you, it will still be separate from the war you declared, making it possible to deal with them one at a time. Another tip is that if you are going to declare on a coalition, do it on the smallest country, nearest to you. Since the country you negotiate with is the one you declared on, if you can 100% them, it doesn't matter if an ottoman death stack is on the way, you can force the whole coalition to end! At least until the truce runs out, so get the longest one you can. Aggressive Expansion: The primary way to avoid coalitions is to reduce aggressive expansion, so ideas that reduce it are obviously useful. However, something you might not have thought about is improved relations. I used to think it was a pretty useless modifier, who cares if I have to wait a bit longer to improve relations with my diplomat for an alliance. The thing is, improved relations also affects how fast aggressive expansion goes away. If you stack the modifier to say 50% (easily done with humanist and diplomatic ideas), that will reduce the time you have to wait for your next conquest by a third. A great source of improve relations is prestige. At 100% it gives 50% IR as well as 10% AE reduction, ideas that give prestige really quite useful. Economy: When deciding which buildings to make, don't just compare how much the game tells you it will make, as this really undervalues manufacturies. The thing with them is that they also massively boost the trade goods produced. If you control the node where it's built, you double your money. It's even worth building in territorial cores (if you get the trade) and (with lower priority) on bad trade goods. Even grain is valuable if you have a metric ton of it.

[@MaitreCarreofur]

Great

[@OzzieTheHead]

In my current campaign, I had to let go off my belowed von Wittelsbach dynasty cuz that 6/6/6 Arenstroff looked darn good. I ended up having him around 50 years with +3 stability. Now preparing to conquer the other half of the world

[@octotitan4574]

As my first game I got a 0/0/0 monarch Pain.

[@Nick-mh8uv]

Well It can't get any worse

[@tkc_lucas9692]

@@Nick-mh8uv My beginner friend abdicated his 0/0/0 king only to get another 0/0/0

[@tendertoez2444]

England

[@yavyav2281]

For colonial nations it is better to colonize 10 provinces and then move on so you get the extra merchant and you colony is powerful enough to live its life

[@QuarbitGaming]

In my opinion, it's better to subsidize them and move on to another area so you can lay claim to as many colonial regions as possible. You can look at the numbers like this: either make 1 colonial nation with 10 provinces that colonizes 1 province at a time for itself, or 2 colonial nations that have 5 each and can colonize 2 provinces at a time. The extra merchants will usually matter well after you'd get them through natural colony growth anyway

[@skepticmonkey6923]

Thank you a lot! There's a lot of stuff here that as a new player never even CROSSED my mind. I'm going to using a lot of those in my next game.

[@EarnestWilliamsGeofferic]

1. Use loans to win wars. Loans are often cheaper than a long war, and expanding your territory pays dividends over time. 2. Use the Diplomatic Feedback Menu of the Diplomacy screen to hit the Prepare for War button, which gives the ally +20 desire to war for 10 favors. 3. Conquer trade nodes early. 4. The 18th century is when you really start to grow territory because of advancements and Imperialism CB. 5. An Ally will not leave your alliance to defend another of their Allies you are attacking if they are already in a war with you, so attack someone small to lock your Alliance in before attacking the real target. If less than 30 years has passed since the main war started, do not end the small war as your ally can still be Called to War by their other Ally. 6. Dump diplo into a gold mine province early. 7. If colonizing, avoid debuffs like Arid or Tundra territories, do colonize Natural Harbors, etc, and utilize every colonization buff you can. Focus on colonizing areas upstream from your trade collection node. 8. Release nations as vassals if they will have some territories you can grab on their behalf, saving you lots of Admin in expansion (and lots of Aggressive Expansion). 9. Also, when taking a ton of territory, feed much of it to a vassal to keep your Overextension low (basically avoiding a ton of debuffs). 10. If a pretender is lots better than your ruler, let the pretender take over. 11. Don't directly attack stronger enemies, attack via their allies, and cut off their income if possible.

[@averagejoe8854]

I didn't really understand the last tip, but your video was really helpful! I look forward to another one.

[@QuarbitGaming]

Glad you enjoyed it! To clarify, the last tip means to play to your opponent's weaknesses, especially when fighting a nation much larger than yourself. The example I gave was blockading a nation that gets a lot of trade income to "starve them out". It's a tactic I often use as Japan against Ming. Let them lose money and go into debt from their armies, while also having them gain war exhaustion from the blockades to weaken their economy and create national unrest.

[@huepjr5606]

@@QuarbitGaming Blockading is only possible with ships? If im a big nation with weak army compared to another bigger nation with strong army and we both are in land, what could I do to win the war?

[@someinsignificantguy4433]

@@huepjr5606 try to search strong allies

[@theredhunter4997]

@@huepjr5606 get allies, or use the terrain to your advantage especially mountains, take out a lot of loans and create even bigger mercenary armies, or do them all at once

[@MrHolden17]

Good video mate, been playing since euro 3 and picked up a few nuggets here. Nice work!

[@abhishekab1]

Great tips Thank you so much. Best part is that they are largely exploit free and also patch agnostic

[@chadhebner4185]

I used to play eu3 a lot back in the day I only recently purchased eu4 with all the expansions and dlc and I been getting better but there is so much to learn in this game

[@kilianprietoperal2322]

About the pretender. DO NOT let pretender rebels within your PU Partner win. You will loose your PU! The description of their demands is rather bad so I had to learn that the hard way.

[@laszlosandor9042]

I feel you bro, just yesterday I lost PU over Portugal and France, because I was in a war against Castile and Papal state( who is one of the great power in my current game) as English kingdom

[@lxi9648]

@@laszlosandor9042 It's your own fault if you're too stupid to know what a pretender is

[@laszlosandor9042]

@@lxi9648 Are you hated by others,right?

[@lxi9648]

@@laszlosandor9042 That's not how English works

[@nbajerome3114]

plz sub to ODDstan. He is close to 10k subz

[@byzantinetales]

Byzantium and loans is like a synonym for me by now XD

[@banosisbest4976]

I know i'm late but about that ally maneuver for wars, if the "main" war is more than 25% won for you, the AI gets -1000 reasons to join

[@loopyguy7611]

Awesome video. Thanks for the Tips :-)

[@yutahkotomi5156]

2:12 They also won't declare war for a year, I think. I desperately needed that respite after hauling one of my allies through its several DoWs. Thankfully, I at least got my fair share of money through participation score and also got lots and _lots_ of favors. It is, however, a bit disconcerting to see the 3 province country that I had allied purely for affection now rule all of North America and a lot of the South. Heck, they're over me in the Great Powers, now.

[@martinaustin6230]

4:30 so I believe allies of a nation that are attacked will not join if war score is 25+ in your favor or the war has gone on for more than 30 months. I forgot where I read this, but it seems to be the case as I've done this numerous times.

[@QuarbitGaming]

Interesting... I'll have to check that out myself

[@mbrusyda9437]

I don't know about the war score things, but I know that my allies won't join a war started more than 30 months ago

[@MrThefoxyone]

@@mbrusyda9437 The war score thing is true

[@Minimoimaximus]

@@mbrusyda9437 actually got the war score problem the first time I tried the Byzantium vassalisation, since they were occupying Serbia. Got a lot of heart attacks from it before being able to call Austria, Polland, Bohemia and Papal States in the war after they peaced out Serbia. Never used it for my own advantage though

[@mbrusyda9437]

@@Minimoimaximus it's not a problem, it's a feature

[@bad.at.videogames.5514]

this is really helpful, thank you!

[@ragefacememeaholic5366]

About the reconquest vassal the best and most obvious example is Algiers. Taking mitidja from Tunis and using that to attack Tlemcen or vice versa is a strategy I use pretty much every time I attack north Africa. I also love taking Tripoli because it can allow to me to attack Fezzan quite early.

[@blakerobinson8]

One tip which has helped me immensely was learning to raise autonomy after annexing

[@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart]

Nah, lower autonomy and murk the rebels.

[@jamesklebenow6885]

It took me awhile to get comfortable with taking loans but now they are just a means to an end. I think the burger 1% loan’s really help take some of the anxiety out of loans. That 4% loans are intimidating especially to new players.

[@LuckystrikeNQ]

The game running on fast as hell in the background made this video painfull to watch. I had to just listen instead.

[@comradeedwin1006]

Thx nice video i subbed and liked the video and hitted the bell for this amazing video

[@ultraheater3031]

This is exactly what my noob self needed to take my gameplay past AI stomper level and into the average multiplayer level thanks!

[@DJSbros]

I'm still getting stomped by the AI lol. Only 20 hours in though

[@urmomgiey1013]

@@DJSbros I'm at 50 hours in and I improved really fast. I really recommend not declaring wars too early. In the beginning I constantly declared wars and ruined my economy. Remember the game is 400 years long so you have plenty of time to conquer

[@tedbed1389]

@@urmomgiey1013 That is flawed thinking. Unless you are a secluded minor, outclassed by most of your neighbours (then the only option is to wait for your allies to help you and for collonization), to realy get the ball rolling you need to define your key military objectives and go! go! go!. It will give you tremendous edge, if you play it smart.

[@urmomgiey1013]

@@tedbed1389 hmmm I wrote this when a month ago lol I actually know better now oof

[@urmomgiey1013]

@@tedbed1389 the only thing I'm bad at is managing my monarch points especially diplo. Let's just say I'm playing castile and why happens is that since I'm spending diplo on the exploration idea, I can't get any for the diplo tech for colonization range

[@fossar_]

I usually avoid these kind of 'top 10 tips' videos cos they're often fairly surface level but this had some very relevant tips, cheers

[@marsing69]

i only play ironman and i have like an absolute phobia of losing wars, i think out of hundreds of hours of playing, i've only ever conceded like 2 or 3 wars and probs to the ottomans. usually i throw myself like 10 loans in debt hiring mercenaries before i even think of losing a war and if that doesnt work i usually end up quitting the save, its a big problem of mine hahaha

[@edwardbarthelemy4240]

Thanks for the vid man great advice for a new player. Do you have any advice for building credit then purposefully declaring bankruptcy? Why should I avoid that?

[@TSGPhilipp]

The loan thing was the most important one for me. I am slowly beginning to not always debase my currency although it still is tempting

[@orangeocean0756]

Yes please! More vids like this is great

[@younglord7805]

These are good tips

[@jarrivanleeuwen8645]

A nice collection of good tips! Shame I didn't learn anything new. I second the notion of playing past the 1700 year mark, as that will drasticaly change how you can play the game. Also a bonus tip: you might know you can level up advisors (they have to be from your accepted culture), so you can pick the best bonus the advisor give you. The nice thing is, it doesn't stop at +3, but you can actually level them up so that they give +5 MP per month. This does cost a lot of money, so it's probably only usefull in endgame scenario's, but that's also the reason why you can conquer more stuff. With tip #10 I would like to add that you have to be carefull of letting the pretender take the throne, as this might also change your government form. For example, if you play as russia and a pretender revolt is succesful, you lose your unique goverment form and turn into a regular monarchy. So always check what kind of government you will turn into when you have pretender rebels!

[@Halera-]

It is worth to notice, you probably have to trigger the "Court & Country" disaster to get a very high amount of absolutism, since it can increase your cape by 20.

[@choucroute5896]

Thanks for the tips, i didn't anderstand everything because you speak very fast. I think it can be the same for other people who don't have english as main language

[@rekon22231]

I have been taking aztec run and sth went horibly wrong and i have taken 28 loans XD

[@TheWorldInsider]

As Ireland wait for France to attack England and after a while you attack them too then take a lot of loans until your army can somewhat match theirs once you win the war you get new lands and 10 war score worth of their money can paid off your entire loan

[@andreasgonatas951]

If you ever are going to update this video i did like you to share with the audence that the threshold of war score that no party is able to join your war is at least 25 warscore. That should be noted in your part where you talk about conquering land with a 3rd party while having your ally in a war on your side.

[@TheWorldInsider]

For the pretender rebel also make sure your dynasty is not important imagine as Austria you have the same dynasty member as Spain and England then w pretender takes over now you just lost a potential for PU over two great powers

[@InakiQuintana]

Thanks for the video. Next time, I would appreciate if you try to avoid constantly moving the camera, as well as zooming in and out rapidly trying to get me sick and throw up. Maybe you could explain what you want to explain without the camera earthquake?

[@LudietHistoria]

Loans are not a big deal, just check my Japan let's play series in which I struggle with it for 10 freaking episodes xD

[@jonasbindslev9894]

I have 1405 hours in EU4 and I have never used the 'prepare for war' button, so I had no idea that it gave your ally +20 reasons to join your war. That is honestly massive! I did not expect to learn something new about the game, but there we go. Thank you!

[@bigworm3886]

4:13 Genius !!! Find a minor country to bring your ally into war against then declare the war against the intended target

[@enayatchoudhury5431]

Man, this video is so old that Quarbit still has life in his voice. Clearly the Three Mountains achievement was the last catalyst for his undeath.

[@QuarbitGaming]

nah, it was university that drained my happiness

[@dapizzasnake8462]

I have actually been looking for an answer for one of my issues I often come across mid-late game, where over time the army sizes of everyone around me slowly overtake mine until by late game, I heavily have to rely on strong alliances to protect myself, and to get land have to wait for a country to be attacked by everyone around them. I have tried using land force buildings, including my Byzantium game where I built loads but suddenly great powers around me I was catching up with exploded into enormous army sizes, anyone got an answer on how to keep my army size up with everyone else?

[@zookkee1189]

Agree with most of these, but I usually agree with florryworry with his vassal opinions, they are an annoying waste of space, because especially with core feeding and releasing, it's impossible to keep their opinion up and they will constantly be trying to break with you, but occasionally you can find the star and they can be super useful, like as Spain I prefer to keep Portugal as a PU until late game instead of annexing them because they pretty much double your colonising speed, but then again I'm not very good at the game so idk.

[@jonathonppful]

I’ve played for thousands of hours and never considered that I needed to subsidize colonies. I just thought they were coded to fail regularly. Neat.

[@lukaslundstrom5221]

I don't have some of the buttons he has(for exampel the button in tip 2) do I need to buy mods and expansions to get them?

[@walterhartwellwhite6482]

"Don't be afraid to take loans" Flashbacks to my first ever eu4 game where I kept taking loans and never bothered paying them back

[@truegamer_007]

Don't know if anyone commented this but the over 100% OE limit is actually 100.9% If you hit 101% that's when shit starts to happen. Weird but PDX logic I guess.

[@spencersss1251]

I took loans in a losing war that they had 98 % and wanted almost half my territory and a huge amount of money that would’ve put me in debt anyways. I had like 10 loans and I luckily saved my territory but had to spend all my money paying off the smallest loan and just pushing the others back.

[@ianmccabe2658]

i probably should of took corruption more seriously because i got 68 of it and the P.U of Argon i got as england started to be unstable and my techs were falling behind

[@Gokaes]

it took my until 600 hours of gameplay to be confident in my skills in the game and about half of that was multiplayer where i learnt lot now with my almost 1200hours the tips i would give myself to others 1. dont forget to exploit development if you are in need of small cash you can turn 60 adm to 30 ducats in early game in some provinces and that might help you a bit, 30 ducats is not much but if you start wit smaller nation, that might just help you avoid ending up in loans, 2. remember to use insults, they can help you get better relations with some nations if you scornfully insult their rivals 3. remember that if you say attack against a nation and their bigger ally is the problem in that war, you can go up siege the capital of that ally nation and almost always any nation will always will be willing to do at least 20% peace deal in your favor for just losing their capital fort no matter whats the overall situation of the war and will i can say always take white peace well these 3 were the only ones i could remember right now on top of these 11 gives on the video, i honestly expected these to be told but i guess not

[@misha130]

The best advice for over extension is don't press the separatist ok button

[@FabrisFanatic]

I'm a little confused by what you said about aggressive expansion for reconquest. Is it 75% AE or 75% LESS AE? I'm asking because I want to know if Reconquest CB is better than Excommunication CB which is 50% AE modifier. Thanks!

[@QuarbitGaming]

75% less. Meaning it's better than Excommunication by the additional 25%. eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Casus_belli Hope this helps!

[@tuvshinkhantaishir3910]

Release nation and reconquest. Thats the way you should play all the time.

[@FabrisFanatic]

@@QuarbitGaming Thanks Quarbit! Yes that's what I thought and it is how I play. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy because the way you said it in the video made it sound the other way around. :-) Thank you for the videos. I am really enjoying them. I'm racing for the Mare Nostrum achievement at present. It's 1800 and I have 2 more provinces to take and I'm fighting off what's left of the HRE in a coalition war. I think I can do it!

[@laiaa9178]

trust me always quit after 1650

[@benjaminjones8782]

1470

[@jnnfccc1794]

there is just no point

[@SapphicAshley]

@@benjaminjones8782 1445

[@danilobodroza7244]

Same here. Managed to go over that line only in one of my playthrough because I wanted to do world conquest and that would be my most boring campaign.

[@bartosz7463]

I still prefer not to take any loans if not needed. Missing tip - WHne over 100% OE just dont click anything on eny negative events. It slows spawning those events again. During WC this is the only thing that keeps my country more or less together.

[@PossibleTango]

The problem with late game is the amount of troops you have to micro becomes annoying. The game doesn't have anything that will help you deal with this.

[@grubygrzib6308]

I have like 700 hours in the game and while I am not necessarily afraid of taking loans, I always have the feeling that I am wasting money when taking a loan because I probably spend it unefficently.

[@vejolta]

The reason I tend to quit after 1600 is because i have either gotten so big and strong already that it's not challenging anymore. Or I accomplished whatever goal the campaign was for (like a specific achievement or personal goal) I have gotten to 1820 a few times but it gets kinda boring when you're so big you can fight literally the entire world alone.

[@thierryf67]

so increase the difficulty of the game... it will be more chalenging

[@kayjay.]

i barely understood the tips since there was no content showing these stuff and especially for new people like me (sortof, ive played 100 hours but only as castille) i had no clue what you was talking about.

[@LoneWanderer013]

When I first started eu4, I never wanted to take loans, but now I'm like gimme all the loans, I can pay it off with war reps and ducats in the peace deal

[@doyouevenpraise189]

are all these tips still relevant today? EU4 seems to change a lot each expansion and patches so idk

[@9forMortalMen]

The vassal cb is bread and butter pre-1700. For ex, I’m pretty sure paradox gave AQ exactly one Syrian core so that you could release them in a war and Diplo vassalize for stupid cheap provinces in Mamluk Syria

[@pingreemaac]

I have all paradox grand strategys ar least the new ones I still don't know how to play

[@axnoro]

As Russia, I declared war on Ming like 2-3 times and intentionally let them have Siberia while building forts along the Ural mountains. They were always numerically superior, but they would regularly lose more than half of their numbers to attrition. Eventually, they exploded because they ran out of manpower and out of gold for mercenaries. Fun times.

[@adamhedley8924]

i play eu4 because of the joys of map painting

[@arvidholmsten3315]

Yes

[@TurboTroller]

Can anyone tell me what DLC he has? I have the base game and a few of these things I just don't see

[@NapoleonBonaparde]

EU3 music noice

[@slawko553]

I do not understand this alliance thing. Could someone explain it in more detail?

[@Innengelaender]

After 1500 I actually learned sth here. I never used the prepare for war button. I only ever increased trust. Also what I wish I knew was the terrain. For some reason it was always too fiddly for me to use the terrain mapmode with its weird colors. But recently I actually went to the trouble of figuring it out which took about a minute and tried to use it to my advantage. And I also tried to only take defensive battles both in wars and with rebels which didnt always work out but it made my life so much easier and more fun. Especially river crossings but also mountains are not obvious on the normal maps I would use and often taking a slightly different route might massively save manpower and win battles more decisively.

[@emmanuelfrestad8476]

2K hrs and I still dont get the trade system and like take land to make my name bigger. All I know experience wise is that I get much gold from french and italian land, but else Im conquering pretty blind :P

[@QuarbitGaming]

I think I made a comprehensive guide for trade a little while ago if you wanna check it out

[@ragefacememeaholic5366]

Dude if you sunk 2k hours into eu4 and still don't understand how trade works, you aren't paying attention to what is even happening in your country.

[@bars6937]

I remember the time that I discoverd the keep the alliance by declaring war on a minor tip myself as the prussia, I felt like fucking genius and so powerfull that i became bored way too quickly and quit the game.

[@ColossusRhodes]

I'm at about 270 hours of experience. Not sure I understand the ally-allied-to-target tip. I'm supposed to start a war with a minor power and then start a war with the target power? I would think that ally wouldn't want to be dragged into two conflicts.

[@QuarbitGaming]

A minor war which you call your ally into, then a larger war which your ally would've fought you in. Simultaneously fight both. Only call your ally into the first one.

[@ColossusRhodes]

@@QuarbitGaming Got it! Thanks! I'll give it a go!

[@grxiv5608]

Another tip: getting bankrupt is not much of a bad idea. I've went bankrupt more times than I have taken loans, and I can say it actually saves your economy

[@thomasnaess742]

You have to be careful about your neighbours before you do (get truces, good allies etc), but I've done it in my last two campaigns to great success.

[@tearsplayz]

w8 how again? bankruptcy kills ur morale and ur allies will abandon u. the only reason I see bankruptcy safe is when u don't border strong nations or rivals

[@thomasnaess742]

@@tearsplayz it depends how you accumulated your debt. I, for example, used a bunch of loans to conquer Ming as Mongolia as fast and early as I could. Yes I had to wait five years doing nothing afterwards during the bankruptcy but I also owned all of China by 1530. A worthwhile trade off in my books. ps, if you become huge and get tons of truces for the bankruptcy, you don't even need allies.

[@flimpeenflarmpoon1353]

Sevilla is Sebeeya. Or you could just call it the English name which is Seville.

[@IlGab02]

@PEDRO GALVÃO JALES Siviglia

[@anakinskywalker7289]

PEDRO GALVÃO JALES Sebeeya

[@kevinboros7427]

There's still a thing I hate. Coalitions. They are so annoying. They pop up anytime I try to take more than 10 provinces or more than 2 in the HRE. And everytime I try defeating them by winning battles, I always lose the battles.

[@klake5375]

Well just slowly expand and then just chill when you have so much AE, also don't take Land form Non-Main Participants (allies in a war) they cause x2 A.E, and if you do find yourself in a coalition, Focus on taking the capital of the country that declareed on you and then win a couple of battlles, wait a couple of years and voila you can white peace

[@yutahkotomi5156]

I recommend sending your diplomats to automatically improve your relations with countries that have high AE towards you. It might not help much, but it'll get them off you a little faster.

[@klake5375]

@Deniz Yeah it just feels filthy wasting your admin and being behind on tech, for that I recommende admin ideas and Vassal feeding/core reclaiming

[@kevinboros7427]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll try to apply my newfound knowledge in future campaigns.

[@ragefacememeaholic5366]

Another strategy for dealing with coalitions is that if one has already spawned, just ally a nation that has a lot of land with dead nations with cores on them. Once that land gets sieged you can just release the land of your ally instead of anything you own. You also get tasty revanchism.

[@tigrecito48]

talking of quitting early, ive only ever reached the age of revolutions once in 800 hours of playing.. my main reason for quitting early on every game is being bored with micromanaging boring aspects of the game (mostly dealing with rebels constantly the more i expand, having trouble working out where rebels will spawn on a huge map cos they dont make it show up very clearly, and especially if you go over 100% oe - i spend most of my time poncing around spawning rebels than playing the game, i think a province should spawn rebels once and thats it.. its tedious as hell constantly having to go back and kill new rebels with an ever increasing list of rebel factions. its so annoying that ive started making custom nations with -10 years of separatism and -3 unrest and taking humanitarianism instead of more useful ideas and unrest advisors etc just for an easier life.

[@adamgoldbein3105]

- Do you play as Nogai? - No U

[@tigrecito48]

the problem with loans is, i see youtubers play and they always end up with good economies but whenever i play unless im ottomans, spain, england or italy ive always been broke and often negative money per month for most of my games cos i never know how to sort my economy out so, i can only ever get money from doing war taxes a lot and no forts and not maxing out my land force limit.. so i could never pay my loans back, unless someone can really suggest to me ways of making money on this game cos i have no idea.. even if i build all the money buildings i can possibly built im still usually in negative..

[@ahouais5620]

concerning colonies, it's somtimes better to get as much colonial nations as possible and the sooner possible For instance as france, i was catholic so i get the right to colonise all of canada and luisiana from the pope, and i only had to take out the british colonies in the early game

[@dexterzplace5553]

If you go strait for the centers of trade and the estuaries, it’ll prevent other colonial nations from colonizing there, you really don’t have to create a nation right off the bat, I can usually get all of North America as GB

[@petergama6074]

Well as Russia I had 23k duvets in loans some 32 loans so yeah winning wars isn't always good maybe just give some territory and get some allies and maybe fix your economy instead of squabble over worthless land almost XD

[@lightfallonthehead3842]

so my eleven loans each worth 80 ducats are fine? AMAZING

[@booogagaming5223]

Question is 20 money a month from trade good for Portugal in the 1550s?

[@QuarbitGaming]

Income or revenue?

[@booogagaming5223]

@@QuarbitGaming Income, my revenue is 5 per month. Also thanks! (I'm a noob)

[@QuarbitGaming]

@@booogagaming5223 Could be better, but don't worry about it. I suggest expanding into Africa and Asia while passively colonizing new world provinces.

[@booogagaming5223]

@@QuarbitGaming Thanks ill start taking over tiny Indian nations, I forgot about Asia lol

[@masv1pe694]

How to disable attrition?

[@antonwilen269]

1. Take loans

[@jmcburney658]

2 L's make a Y , Sevi-ya, there's my tip

[@jorgemartinez-qg3qc]

Haha I had some 15 loans 15 years in on my first playthrough

[@4lan866]

Lmao bro, you used EUIII art in the thumbnail for a video on EUIV.

[@QuarbitGaming]

because it looks nice :)

[@arthurmorgan6358]

Game: says you NEED 500-some MB of VRAM. Me: No, fck u. Game: Right, gatcha.

[@fredricknoe3114]

Maybe you could make regional guides like one for Native Americans or the Japanese.

[@Dopamine621]

tips for people just having fun ; cash 75000

[@victorpagotto]

he's playing with u.

[@kayjay.]

i have a feeling this is only dlc content tips. well mostly.

[@lightfallonthehead3842]

ah yes the glorius nation of U

[@PhantomMenace84]

Want to blob? Make first ideas: 1. Any military based on your country's manpower and quality of troops 2. Humanist 3. Religious and then kick the hell out of heathens and heretics