Let's Play: Europa Universalis III (Divine Wind) -- England

[Nybling]

Let's Play Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind

(or.. EU3: Chronicles)

So I've seen and heard a few people recently express some interest in Paradox strategy games, and I thought I could maybe help drum up more interest by doing a pretty point-by-point playthrough of an entire 1399 to 1821 grand campaign as England, focusing on mostly a colonial game. Depending on things, I may go ahead and do another LP using a German nation.

I'll probably also do one of these for EU: Rome, Victoria II, and Hearts of Iron III... and maybe Crusader Kings 2. Depends on how long these end up taking me, and how much interest actually gets drummed up.

So anyway, without any further commentary on my part for now...

Britannia Rules the Waves!



Royal Standard of Henry IV Lancaster

Table of Contents

Henry IV Lancaster (1399 -
1. Introduction to Europa Universalis 3
2. Before Unpausing
3. More Interface Information
4. Before Unpausing 2 & Opening Moves
5. Anno Domini 1400 Ledger

[Nybling]

Before I get more into the actual campaign, here are some of the basic interface elements that are out there:



This is the top of the interface and contains most of the information you need at a glance. Going from left to right these numbers represent:

Manpower
Manpower represents how large of an army you can field and how fast you can reinforce. When creating a new ground unit (infantry/cavalry/artillery), it requires 1,000 men from your manpower pool. Manpower will also be reduced when reinforcing units that are not at maximum capacity.

Stability
Stability is a number between -3 and +3. Negative is bad. Positive is good. Stability factors into a lot of different elements. A positive stability means you can generate more merchants each month, more magistrates each month, have a better national tax rate, and have lower revolt rates. It is key to try to keep this number over 0 as much as possible, and keeping it at +3 will help a lot.

Cash
Cash is cash. Though it's called ducats. You have two incomes. On the first of every month you get your monthly income (and most likely this will be negative, and if it is, that's not really a bad thing), and on the first of every year you get your yearly income, which should help fund whatever you need + your monthly income for the entire year.

Prestige
Prestige can range from -100 to +100. The higher, the better. Prestige factors into a whole bunch of different elements of the game, and so you want your prestige to be a solid number, though fair warning, nations with low prestige tend to be jealous of your high prestige and you can take a monthly relations penalty with that nation.

Infamy
Also known as Badboy, you want this number as low as possible (0.0 is good). Some wargoals will reward you with infamy for completing them, so often you want to chose the Casus Belli (more on this later) that gives you the lowest infamy rating for those goals. There is a limit to infamy though, that depends on difficulty level, your ruler's diplomacy rating, and a couple of decisions that you can make... if you or any other nation go over it, every country in the world gets a free Casus Belli on you for being a bad guy that needs to be smacked around.

Legitimacy
This will only be around in any government that has a monarch/emperor. Basically it represents how strong your claim to the throne is. Nations that break free from Personal Unions, or declare independence from another nation will start off with a low claim. Revolts that overthrow monarchs have the same thing. You can use other nations legitimacy problems to work in ways to claim their throne, force them into a Union and then inherit their nation. This might not happen in this playthrough, but I might explore this in a second one.

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The next six numbers represent your pools of 'great people' that you can use for a variety of functions. You can only have 5 of each type at once. They are awarded 'per Year' (example: you will be given 6 merchants a year), but this number is divided by 12 and divied out each month, so the higher the rates, the better.

Merchants
You send these to centers of trade to wheel and deal and gain trade revenue for your nation.

Colonists
Colonists are vital for forming colonies in unsettled land, or settling land that is controlled by Hordes (eastern Europe thing). You also use them to create Explorers/Conquistadors to run out and explore the world.

Diplomats
Any diplomatic function you want to perform with other nations requires the use of a diplomat.

Missionaries
Used to convert the religion in a province to your religion, also can be sent to the Pope to increase your standing with the Papacy.

Spies
Spies are used for doing missions in other nations, the best use is to fund rebellions that can cripple your enemy while you are fighting them. Pretty damn near vital if you are playing the Byzantines and trying to survive against the Ottomans.

Magistrates
These guys are your workhorses. You can use them for a number of different cultural decisions, provincial decisions, and most importantly building provincial improvements. The better the form of govt you have, the more stability you have, the more centralized you are, the more of these guys you'll get each year.

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Now you have the date, Friday 14, October 1399 (the start of the Grand Campaign). The +/- will change game speed (right now it is paused).

The button on the end pops out a small information panel that just shows you the state of various things in your realm at the moment.

Now for the next major part of the interface:



Starting on the right hand side, going down.

HRE Authority
This is the Authority of the Holy Roman Emperor within the Holy Roman Empire. This will not play a part in this campaign.

Papal Influence
The higher this number is, generally the better chance you have of getting a Cardinal into the Curia. the more Cardinals you have, the more likely you are to become the Papal Controller.

The five circular icons on the left are messages that are posted letting you know what is generally going on in the world.

Going back to the sidebar..

Triggered Modifiers
This brings up a panel letting you know if you have gotten any triggered modifiers. This will not really be an issue in this campaign unless we get Overextension (which is possible).

National History
This just brings up a little journal that gives you an overview of the major things you've done and what provinces you've won/lost during each monarch's reign.

The next three buttons are 'Go to Province', 'Go to Capitol', 'Go to National Focus'. The last two will send your map view to your Capitol and Focus province (will either be the same at the start, or will be different later on). The first lets you go to any province you type in.

The next button brings up the main menu. The button after that brings up the ledger (more on that later).

The last two buttons are zoom in/zoom out.

Okay, for the map, there are 2 layers worth of mapmodes, but for the most part you will see me playing in the Political Mapmode, but I will point out other mapmodes from time to time.



This is England in 1399. Besides our main chunck of territory, we control a small portion of Ireland (Meath), and have three provinces on the European continent (Calais in the North, Labourd and Gascogne in the SW portion of France).

We have two standing armies, the Royal Army which only has 1,000 men in it at the moment, and the Army of Scotland with 9,000 troops.

We have the largest fleet in Europe with 41 ships. England is in the best position to have the most dominant navy in the game. Given our status as an island, we use our fleet as our 'Wooden Wall'.

We are also allied with Portugal.

[Nybling]

Before we unpause the game, there is a lot we can do/look at in order to plan and prepare for the game. In this game, my main goal will be to dominate colonial activities while trying to be as hands off as I can in major European affairs for as long as possible. By that, I mean I don't want to involve myself in too many large scale conflicts on the actual continent.

First, let's get ready to increase our Trade revenue.



While there are a number of Centers of Trade (COTs) that I can go to, the best COT in the game is Lubeck in N Germany. They are a trading powerhouse and have the most valuable COT for a good chunk of the game. I'm going to put my Autosend priority up to Green so that I don't have to worry about actually manually sending my merchants out.

Some other information that can be gleaned here is that it will cost 3.07 ducats to send a merchant and I have a 72.70% chance of successfully sending my merchant to trade.

The total value of trade (942.13) is insanely high for the time being, and this makes it the most sought after COT in Europe (with Venezia being #2).

Next, let's set up our Court:



Our King, Henry IV has rather low stats (4 Admin, 4 Diplomacy, 3 Military), so he's pretty mediocre. His heir is Henry who is 13 years old and has a strong claim to the throne.

We begin with Geoffrey Chaucer, and we can keep him around for a while since he adds +12 ducats a month to our stability investments (we have +1 and we want to build up to +3).

I'm going to go ahead and add a Trade and Govt tech advisor to our court. Why? Because we want to bolster our Govt Tech to add some National Idea slots, and we need Trade Tech 7 (we have 3 atm) to get the Quest for the New World national idea.

Now we can set up for a future war.



We're going to send an insult to Scotland. This will give them a Casus Belli against us, but most importantly it lowers our relations (it's bad to go to war with people you have over 100 relations with).

Okay, let's change a slider!



Sliders are your national values so to speak. Also, since we're on this page, you can see that we are currently a Feudal Monarchy and out of 12 possible National Idea slots, we have 0 available.

Anyway, depending on what country you are playing and what your goals are, you will adjust the slider accordingly, and you tend to be able to only adjust one slider one point every decade or so (though some events and decisions will give you free slider moves).

Since I am going for a colony building game, I'm going to move my Serfdom/Free Subjects slider from the -2 it's at now to -1.

By doing this, I will be losing some of my benefits to reduced infantry/galley costs and stability costs, but I'll also be reducing my penalties to army morale, spy defense, and most importantly Tech costs. This is key because I am leaning so heavily towards Narrowminded which reduces my tech progress even more (and is something I will need to keep where it is at in order to bolster colony growth later on).

Here is the aftermath of the shift:



Sadly, I also had to deal with losing 1 stability. Slider adjustments can be risky, but they are important to the long game and not the short game.

[Nybling]

Now I'm going to veer off into more interface details, this time being your kingdom panel.

First up is the Overview:



Right off the bat we can tell that we are a Feudal Monarchy, that my primary culture is English, and my monarch is Henry IV Lancaster.

I can also tell you that the 33 is my Prestige, and that the #1 means that I am the highest ranking nation in Prestige.

The cross on the right shows that I am a Catholic nation, and the stuff to the left of center means I am the Papal Controller (more on that in a second).

On the bottom you can get some details about your nation, on the left you can see that I am Allied and have a Royal Marriage with Portugal. I also have Casus Belli's on all 4 Irish nations, as well as on Armagnac, Burgundy and France to reconquer old territory on the European continent.

YOu can also see what my relations are like with several nations there. Portugal and the Papal State are the two nations I am closest too.

You can also create vassal states from here, and I might show that panel off later.



This is the Curia. As you can see my Papal Influence is 51.7% and my chance to get the next Cardinal is 17%. I'm also the controller, so I can Excommunicate people and call crusades. I also get some sweet benefits as you can see.



This is the military panel. The main details you can takeaway from this right now is that my default infantry unit are Latin Medieval Infantry, and my default cavalry unit are Chevauchee's.

For ships I can build Carracks (big ships), Galleys (galleys - useful if you are a Mediterranean power), and Cogs (transports).

I have 10 Land Units out of a maximum supportable of 38. You can build more than 38, but you start paying out the ass for army maintenance.

My navy is 41 ships out of 43 total supported.



Next up, the Religion pane. You can make a number of decisions here, though none are available to me at this time. You can also see your Tolerances here. I am very tolerant towards other Catholics, but for Heretics (Orthodox) and Heathens (muslims, animists, pagans), I am not very tolerant. Tolerance affects pop growth and revolt risks in provinces that you conquer, so it's important to convert people as quickly as possible.

The button on the bottom becomes active if you have a good bit of prestige and cash, basically you become Defender of the Faith and can join any war where a non-Catholic is attacking a Catholic. Can be useful, but not a path I'm going to go down in this game. It can get kind of insane, especially with war-mongering nations like Castille.



This is our Leaders page, this is where you can recruit Generals, Admirals, and stuff. England starts off with a rather good general (Robert Knolles) to start with. Recruting a General or Admiral chews up Army or Navy tradition plus some ducats, so it's best to recruit them when you have high traditions. You can also convert your ruler to a general, though you risk having him die on the battlefield.

I'll talk more on Discipline later on.



This is the Culture panel. You can keep track of your traditions here, as well as use up tradition points to recruit Great Men for your Court for bonuses. You can also do a number of Cultural Decisions for other neat bonuses (though more on this later).



This is the Missions and Decisions panel. On the bottom are the National Decisions we can make, though none are available to us right now. One of our first major goals will be to 'Form British Nation', but that is in our future.

On the top is our current mission. This mission wants us to conquer all of Ireland, and after we do that we'll get cores on all of the provinces. This is great, as a province that is your core provides more revenue, less chance of revolt, and less chance of getting overextended.

Okay, now to our Economy panel.



The left side will display all of our monthly incomes and expenses. For a good while tax income will be the biggest source of income for us, as you can see our Production and Trade incomes are low and the efficiency (20 and 26 percent respectively, are pretty bad. This builds up over time).

For expenses, investments are our tech investments to the right. Advisor salaries are for your Court. Then you have maintenance expenses for Colonies, your military, and missionaries you send out. You also factor in for loan interest if you take out a loan.

Finally you can be paying or receiving tribute (from Hordes, so not applicable here), or be gaining or paying War Subsidies (you can get this from time to time from a nation when you are at war with one of their rivals and they kind of want you to win.

To the right is our Tech panel. We are in the Western Technology group (the best tech group). All of our techs (Govt, Production, Trade, Naval and Land) are currently level 3. I've gone ahead and adjusted them to fit my main goals for the time being.

I've also 0'd out any monthly investment to my treasury.



As you can see in this screen shot, I have 212.9 ducats currently. My YEARLY income is 108.29, and since I lose 4.62 per month, my real annual income is 52.81. So even though I'm losing a good chunk of cash each month, I am actually gaining 53 ducats a year. This is how you manage your budgets in EU3. You want to ensure that your annual expenses never start diving into the negative, or else you start dealing with bankruptcy and having to deal with bad bad things like inflations and huge debts.

[Nybling]

First up, we assign Robert Knolles to the Army of Scotland, as we will use this army to begin our Irish conquests.



As you can tell, this army is made up of 6 infantry units for 6,000 men, and 3 cavalry units for 3,000 horse. My preferred army set up to start with is an army of 10 units (6 infantry, 4 horse). I'll actually go into more details why later on.

Anyway, Knolles provides 1 fire bonus (useless for this army as there are no guns), 3 shock (very useful as these are all melee units), 1 siege (could be better, helps with sieging provinces), and 3 manuever (very nice, means he moves faster than most other armies).



One of our last moves before unpausing will be to sell our continental province of Calais to France. It's not that we're buddy buddy with France, but this province is in the middle of Burgundy's territory, so I do this in the hopes that this creates some strife between two of the larger continental powers to they leave my other holdings alone for the time being. Either way, grabbing 140 ducats for it isn't too bad.

I unpause, load up my 9k army onto my fleet and transport them to Meath on Ireland. And now..



I Declare War on Ulster (no, the red hand is not Matrim Cauthon's band in Wheel of Time, lulz). I use the Conquest Casus Belli. This means I get 25% of the normal infamy for annexing this one province minor. I also get the standard amount of prestige for it, and 100% cost means I need to actually conquer the province to really win the war.

The siege begins shortly after, and thus ends 1399, and so begins Anno Domini 1400.

[Nybling]

Let's discuss the Ledger. The Ledger shows all sorts of information, but I'll go over some of the main pages.

First page is the Nation Statistics, sorted by income.



As you can see, we are the 6th largest nation in income. Castille is #1 (for those who don't know, they made up most of what is now Spain along with Aragon. The Golden Horde is currently massive and is #2. Burgundy and France, are 3 and 4, and Austria is 5. We are in a good position to build up from here, I think.



This is the comparison of Armies, as sorted by total troops. We are not on the list, but as you can see, Timur's Empire has a massive army, as does the Golden Horde. In fact, the only European nation in the top 5 is Bohemia and they are the current Holy Roman Emperor.



Comparison of navies, as you can see, we pretty much dominate. Portugal is probably the only nation that is even close to us in Big Ships. We could probably swing straight into a naval war with both Castille and Portugal and crush their navies.



Always a cool page, this shows your previous rulers. As it stands we only have that mediocre bastard Henry IV.



Charts! As you can clearly see, all of our provinces are Cores (a good thing), and we are 100% catholic. Culturally speaking, we are dominated by Engish, though Welsh comes in a distant second.

Our main goods are Grain, Iron, Fish and Cloth, though it seems we also produce some Wine and Copper too.



Another interesting page, this is what bonuses are provided by technology and decisions and stuff. I don't want to go into detail with this yet, but it should give you an interesting overview of what kind of details the game keeps track of.



This page lists the known Centers of Trade in the world. We are still trying to keep a foothold in Lubeck as it's still #1. Venezia is #2 but we can't trade there because our Trade Tech doesn't let us go that far yet. For smaller trading nations you can make obscene amounts of money trading. We are not yet a real trading power, and probably won't be for some time. It's okay though.