- For the ideas of individual countries, see national ideas.
- For the ideas of American natives, see native ideas.
As a nation develops technologically, it unlocks the ability to gain additional idea groups. Investing into a full idea group can take a long time and cost several decades worth of power. The act of choosing at any point of time a certain idea group over the other and advancing in it represent the time and focus nations choose to spend historically along certain administrative, diplomatic, and military specializations.
- 1Mechanic summary
- 4Administrative groups
- 5Diplomatic groups
- 6Military groups
Mechanic summary[edit]
Each nation can have up to 8 idea groups from a pool of 19 groups (only 18 are shown as 2 idea groups are government type exclusive). Idea group choice is only restricted by the requirement for a balanced mix of groups; a new group must not have its affiliated monarch power be the in same category as more than 50%[1] of the total idea group composition the nation holds at the time. This limit can be turned off before starting a game and works on Ironman. There is no restriction on the groups themselves and any nation may pick any group at any point in the game. That being said, AI nations have had weights assigned to the idea groups to simulate random but somewhat historical idea picks.
Each idea group itself consists of 7 ideas. Advancing within an idea group is done sequentially and each unlocked idea enhances a certain aspect of the nation. Unlocking the last idea in the group also unlocks the group bonus.
Unlocking new slots[edit]
New idea group slots are unlocked with the advancement in Administrative technology as described below:
Administrative tech level | 5 | 7 | 10 | 14 | 18 | 22 | 26 | 29 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of idea groups | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Abandoning idea groups[edit]
Abandoning an idea group can be used to free up an idea slot if it no longer serves the nation and there may be others more suitable groups that do so. It is important to note, however, that doing so will result in losing all the given bonuses from said idea group and will only refund 10% of the monarch power points invested in the group[2]. Discarding idea groups will also impact the number of Ideas a nation has towards unlocking National Ideas and Ambitions.
Due to the low refund rate and the importance of monarch power points, picking an idea group should be done with its future usefulness to the nation in mind. However, this option should not be disregarded either as it is extremely useful in the right circumstances. For example:
- Primitives can take only the first 3-4 Exploration ideas, get a colonial border with a western power, then drop Exploration for something else. Some would benefit more from the Expansion idea group; but Expansion doesn't allow Explorers or long-range island-hopping. They could even opt out of colonization altogether after getting the border they needed.
Technology cost reduction[edit]
Each unlocked idea grants a −2% Technology cost reduction. The reduction can result in up to −14% for a fully unlocked idea group (without accounting for further reductions that may be applied from the ideas themselves). The type of the reduction depends on the affiliation of the idea group; for example, the Espionage idea group grants Diplomatic tech cost reduction.
Policies[edit]
- Main article: Policies
Policies become enabled when a pair of 2 idea groups are fully unlocked. Picking a policy provides a bonus to the nation at the monthly cost of 1 monarch power per policy (type of monarch power used depends on policy affiliation) if the limit is overwhelmed (base: 1 policy of each type can be picked for free) . Once picked, a policy cannot be canceled for a duration of 10 years. There is no restriction on policy composition and a nation can activate up to 9 policies at a time.
Idea cost[edit]
Unlocking an idea has a base idea cost of 400 monarch power[3] (the type of power depending on the idea group).
The base Idea cost is modified by the following:
Conditions | |
---|---|
−25% | for the AI at very hard difficulty |
−10% | with Protestant or Anglican as secondary faith |
−7% | as Confucian country harmonized with Mahayana |
−5% | with a ruler which has the ‘Free Thinker’ personality |
−5% | as Mahayana country |
−5% | with “Individual creeds” aspect as Protestant country |
+0.2% | for each point of doom of Nahuatl countries |
+20% | during the Dominance of the Clergydisaster |
+25% | during the Janissary Decadencedisaster as |
+50% | during the Dominance of the Tribesdisaster |
Ideas and policies:
Traditions | Ideas | Bonuses | Policies | |
---|---|---|---|---|
−10% |
|
|
|
|
−5% | -- |
| -- | -- |
Decisions and events:
Event modifier | Trigger | Duration | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
+5% | Counter-Reformation | Catholic decision: “Embrace the Counter-Reformation” | until one of the following:
| |
−5% | Islamic center of Scholarly Learning | Muslim decision: “Establish an Ibadat Khana” | until the state religion is changed. | |
−10% | Expanded Royal Bureaucracy | Ottoman event: “The Expansion of the Royal Bureaucracy”
| until ruler changes. | |
−10% | Kösem Sultana | Ottoman event: “Kösem Sultana”
| until one of the following:
| |
+25% | Powerful Magnates | Hungarian event: “Decline of Royal Power”
| until ruler changes. | |
−10% | Renaissance Glory | Neapolitan event: “Renaissance in Naples”
| for 20 years. | |
−5% | Reichshofrat | Austrian event: “Reichshofrat”
| for the rest of the campaign. | |
−10% | Reform of the Bureaucracy | Austrian event: “The Reform of the Bureaucracy”
| for 20 years. | |
−25% | Prussian Reforms of Enlightenment | Prussian event: “The Enlightened Reforms of Frederick the Great”
| until ruler changes. | |
−25% | Prutenic Tables | Prussian event: “Prutenic Tables”
| until ruler changes. | |
+10% | Sejm Veto | Polish culture event: “The Sejm veto all your policies”
| until ruler changes or the event “Pacify the Sejm”. | |
−10% | Sejm complied | Polish culture event: “The Sejm comply to your policies”
| until ruler changes or the event “Pacify the Sejm”. | |
−10% | Sigismund's Column | Polish event: “Sigismund's Column”
| for 30 years. | |
−5% | Merkuriusz Polski Ordynaryjny | Polish event: “Merkuriusz Polski Ordynaryjny”
| until ruler changes. | |
+25% | Konfederacja | Polish culture event: “Konfederacja”
| until ruler changes. | |
+10% | Closed China | Ming event: “The Closure of China”
| for the rest of the campaign. | |
−10% | Open China | Ming event: “The Closure of China”
| for the rest of the campaign. | |
−15% | Genroku | Japanese culture event: “Genroku-era”
| for 10 years. | |
−5% | Kokugaku | Japanese culture event: “Kokugaku”
| for the rest of the campaign. | |
−10% | Gossip | Japanese culture event: “Spreading Rumors”
| ||
−25% | Astadiggajas | Vijaynagari event: “Astadiggajas”
| for 60 years. | until ruler changes. |
−20% | Golden age of Timbuktu | Songhain event: “Golden Age in Timbuktu”
| until ruler changes. | |
−5% | An Independent Church | Ethiopian event: “Independence from the Patriarchate”
| for maximum 10 years or until the state religion changes. | |
−5% | Andalucian Moors | Moroccan event: “Moorish Refugees” | for 10 years. | |
−5% | Shiite Migration | Persian event: “Shiite Brain Drain”
| for 20 years. | |
−5% | Moorish Refugees | Muslim event after the fall of Granada | for 25 years. | |
−10% | Celestial Globe[4] | Muslim event: “Muhammad Salih Tahtawi - The Celestial Globe”
| for 20 years. | |
−5% | Mian Mir[4] | Muslim event: “Mian Mir”
| until ruler changes. | |
−5% | Reza Abbasi[4] | Muslim event: “Reza Abbasi”
| until ruler changes. | |
−5% | Baha al-din al-Amili[4] | Muslim event: “Baha al-din al-Amili”
| until ruler changes. | |
−5% | Serafeddin Sabuncuoglu[4] | Muslim event: “Serafeddin Sabuncuoglu”
| until ruler changes. | |
−5% | Al-Birjandi[4] | Muslim event: “Al-Birjandi”
| until ruler changes. | |
−10% | Free Freethinkers | Event: “Freethinkers Not Persecuted”
| for 10 years. | |
−10% | American Academy of Arts and Sciences[5] | American event: “American Academy of Arts and Sciences”
| for 20 years. | |
−20% | American Philosophical Society[5] | American event: “American Philosophical Society”
| for 20 years. | |
−5% | Sistine Chapel decorated by Michelangelo | Papal states event: “Decorate the Sistine Chapel”
| for the rest of the campaign. | |
−10% | Accademia del Cimento | Tuscan event: “Accademia del Cimento”
| for 10 years. | |
−5% | The Medici Oriental Press | Tuscan event: “The Medici Oriental Press” | for 30 years. | |
−10% | Innovative Court | Personality event: “Heresiarch?”
| until ruler changes. |
National ideas[edit]
- Main article: National ideas
Every country has seven national ideas. These ideas do not cost any monarch points but instead are unlocked; one national idea is unlocked for every third idea bought normally from an idea group.
Many nations have unique national ideas while a large number of others have national ideas based upon a common geographic region or a shared culture. The rest of the nations, who lack unique NIs or don't share a common NI group, draw their national ideas from a common generic set of ideas.
- National tradition
- Every nation also starts with a national tradition: two abilities which define the history and heritage of the country.
- National ambition
- Countries also have a “national ambition”, which is a bonus that is unlocked when a nation has gained all seven of its national ideas. This bonus is also unique for each country.
Administrative groups[edit]
Administrative power is required to unlock ideas within these groups.
Organized Mercenary Payments- −25% Mercenary cost
Adaptability
- −25% Core-creation cost
Benefits for Mercenaries
- −15% Mercenary maintenance
Bookkeeping
- −0.5 Interest per annum
Mercenary Recruitment
- +25% Available mercenaries
Administrative Efficiency
- +1 Possible advisor
Civil Service
- −10% Administrative technology cost
Bonus:
- +5 Number of states
- +10% National tax modifier
Organized Construction
- −10% Construction cost
National Bank
- +0.10 Yearly inflation reduction
Debt and Loans
- −0.5 Interest per annum
Centralization
- −0.05 Monthly autonomy change
Nationalistic Enthusiasm
- −5% Land maintenance modifier
Smithian Economics
- +10% Production efficiency
Bonus:
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- −20% Development cost
- +1 Colonist
Additional Merchants
- +1 Merchant
Faster Colonists
- +20 Global settler increase
Factories
- −50% Fort maintenance on border with rival
- −20% Center of trade upgrade cost
Additional Diplomats
- +1 Diplomatic relation
General Colonization Law
- +1 Colonist
- +5% Settler chance
Competitive Merchants
- +20% Global trade power
Bonus:
- Can fabricate claim overseas in trade company regions
- +5 Number of states
- +25% Religious unity
Local Traditions
- −2 National unrest
Ecumenism
- +2 Tolerance of heretics
Indirect Rule
- −10 Years of separatism
Cultural Ties
- +2 Max promoted cultures
Benevolence
- +30% Improve relations
Humanist Tolerance
- +2 Tolerance of heathens
Bonus:
- −10% Idea cost
- +0.25Yearly harmony increase
- −1% Prestige decay
Empiricism
- +50%Innovativeness gain
Scientific Revolution
- −10% Technology cost
- −10% Institution embracement cost
Dynamic Court
- +1 Possible advisor
Print Culture
- +25% Institution spread
Optimism
- −0.05 Monthly war exhaustion
Formalized Officer Corps
- +1 Leader without upkeep
Bonus:
- −25% Advisor costs
- +1 Missionary
Church Attendance Duty
- −25% Stability cost modifier
Divine Supremacy
- +3% Missionary strength
Devoutness
- +2 Tolerance of the true faith
- +2 Yearly papal influence
- +0.25Monthly fervor
- +0.5Yearly devotion
- +10%Church power
Religious Tradition
- +1 Yearly prestige
Inquisition
- −50% Missionary maintenance cost
Deus Vult
- Permanent casus belli against neighboring heathens and heretics
Bonus:
- −25% Culture conversion cost
Diplomatic groups[edit]
Diplomatic power is required to unlock ideas within these groups.
Foreign Embassies- +1 Diplomat
Cabinet
- +1 Diplomatic relation
Grand Banquets
- +1 Diplomat
Benign Diplomats
- +25% Improve relations
Experienced Diplomats
- +2 Diplomatic reputation
Flexible Negotiations
- −20% Province warscore cost
Diplomatic Corps
- −10% Diplomatic technology cost
Bonus:
- Lowered impact on stability from diplomatic actions
- +50% Spy network construction
- −10% Advisor costs
Agent Training
- +1 Diplomat
Vetting
- +33% Foreign spy detection
State Propaganda
- −20% Aggressive expansion impact
Claim Fabrication
- May fabricate claims for subjects
- −25% Cost to fabricate claims
Privateers
- +25% Embargo efficiency
- +33%Privateer efficiency
Audit Checks
- −0.10 Yearly corruption
Bonus:
- +50% Rebel support efficiency
- Allows recruitment of explorers & conquistadors
Colonial Ventures
- +1 Colonist
Overseas Exploration
- +50% Colonial range
Land of Opportunity
- +10 Global settler increase
Viceroys
- +10% Global tariffs
- −20% Envoy travel time
Free Colonies
- −25% Expel minorities cost
Global Empire
- +25% Naval force limit modifier
Bonus:
- Can fabricate claim overseas in colonial regions
- +25% Income from vassals
Additional Loyalist Recruitment
- −15% Liberty desire in subjects
Integrated Elites
- −25% Diplomatic annexation cost
Buffer States
- +1 Diplomatic relation
Diplomatic Influence
- +2 Diplomatic reputation
Postal Service
- −25% Envoy travel time
Marcher Lords
- +100% Vassal force limit contribution
Bonus:
- −50% Unjustified demands
Not available for primitives.
Merchant Traditions
- +100% Naval tradition from protecting trade
Merchant Marine
- +50% National sailors modifier
Sheltered Ports
- +10% Global ship repair
- −10% Sailor maintenance
Grand Navy
- +50% Naval force limit modifier
Ship's Penny
- −10% Ship costs
Seahawks
- +1 Leader without upkeep
- −25% Admiral cost
Naval Fighting Instruction
- +50% Blockade efficiency
- +25%Privateer efficiency
Bonus:
- Ships can repair when in coastal sea zones
- +20% Global trade power
Free Trade
- +1 Merchant
Merchant Adventures
- +25% Trade range
Best National Ideas For France Eu4
National Trade Policy
- +10% Trade efficiency
Overseas Merchants
- +1 Merchant
Trade Manipulation
- +25% Trade steering
Fast Negotiations
- +25%Caravan power
Bonus:
- +1 Merchant
Military groups[edit]
Military power is required to unlock ideas within these groups.
Notes:Enabled by most monarchies (except the Plutocracy reform), theocracies, steppe nomads, and the Noble Elite republican reform.
Noble Knights
- −10% Cavalry cost
- +10% Cavalry combat ability
Military Traditions
- −10% Military technology cost
Local Nobility
- −0.025 Monthly autonomy change
- +0.10 Yearly absolutism
Serfdom
- +33% National manpower modifier
Noble Officers
- −1% Yearly army tradition decay
- −1% Yearly navy tradition decay
International Diplomacy
- +1 Diplomat
- +1 Leader without upkeep
Noble Connections
- +20% Available mercenaries
Bonus:
- +1 Leader siege
- +1 Yearly army tradition
Military Drill
- +15% Morale of armies
Improved Maneuver
- +1 Land leader maneuver
Regimental System
- −5% Land maintenance modifier
Defensive Mentality
- −10% Fort maintenance
- +20% Fort defense
Supply Trains
- +33% Reinforce speed
Improved Foraging
- −25% Land attrition
Bonus:
- +1 Attrition for enemies
Not available for primitives.
Boarding Parties
- +1 Naval leader shock
Improved Rams
- +25% Galley combat ability
Naval Cadets
- +1 Naval leader fire
- −33% Morale hit when losing a ship
Naval Glory
- +1 Yearly navy tradition
Press Gangs
- +25% Sailor recovery speed
Oak Forests for Ships
- +20% Heavy ship combat ability
Superior Seamanship
- +10% Morale of navies
- +10% Global naval engagement
Bonus:
- +10% Ship durability
- +1 Land leader shock
National Conscripts
- −10% Recruitment time
Superior Firepower
- +1 Land leader fire
Glorious Arms
- +100% Prestige from land battles
Engineer Corps
- +20% Siege ability
Grand Army
- +20% Land force limit modifier
Esprit de Corps
- +5% Discipline
Bonus:
- +5% Recover army morale speed
Enabled by most republics (except the Noble Elite reform) and monarchies with the Plutocracy reform.
Tradition of Payment
- +10% Available mercenaries
- +2.5% Mercenary discipline
Abolished Serfdom
- +10% Morale of armies
Bill of Rights
- −2 National unrest
Free Merchants
- +1 Merchant
Free Subjects
- +10% Goods produced modifier
Free Cities
- +25%Caravan power
Emancipation
- +20% Manpower recovery speed
Bonus:
- +10% Institution spread
- +10% Infantry combat ability
Quality Education
- +1 Yearly army tradition
Finest of Horses
- +10% Cavalry combat ability
Corvettes
- +5% Ship durability
Naval Drill
- +10% Morale of navies
Copper Bottoms
- −25% Naval attrition
Massed Battery
- +10% Artillery combat ability
Bonus:
- +5% Discipline
- +50% National manpower modifier
The Young can Serve
- +20% Manpower recovery speed
Enforced Service
- −10% Regiment cost
The Old and Infirm
- −5% Land maintenance modifier
Camp Followers
- +33% Supply limit modifier
Conscripted Garrisons
- +25% Garrison size
Expanded Supply Trains
- −10% Land attrition
Bonus:
- +50% Land force limit modifier
Events[edit]
- Main article: List of idea group events
Idea group events are pulse based events. They occur at regular intervals (5 years) based on the nation's idea groups (not all groups are on the same interval).
In addition, the choice of ideas also has some influence in how often an event may happen, known as MTTH; meaning they can increase or decrease the likelihood of a certain to happened in over other events in their pulse group.
AI preference[edit]
The AI is dynamically determined according to the current conditions of the country.[6]To decide which idea group it should take, the AI employs a 'weight system': each idea group is given a certain weight and the higher this weight is for an idea group, the higher the chances that the AI will choose it. The AI will never choose an idea group with a weight of 0.[7]
Idea group | Base weight | Weight modifiers[8] |
---|---|---|
Aristocratic | 0.45 |
|
Plutocratic | 0.4 | |
Innovative | 0.3 |
|
Religious | 0.9 |
|
Espionage | 0.75 | |
Diplomatic | 0.67 |
|
Offensive | 0.94 | |
Defensive | 0.77 | |
Trade | 0.7 |
|
Economic | 0.85 |
|
Exploration | 0.75 |
|
Maritime | 0.41 |
|
Quality | 0.49 | |
Quantity | 1 | |
Expansion | 0.48 |
|
Administrative | 0.96 |
|
Humanist | 0.9 |
|
Influence | 0.5 |
|
Naval | 0.31 |
|
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua: MAX_IDEA_GROUPS_FROM_SAME_CATEGORY = 0.5,
- ↑See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua: ABANDON_IDEAGROUP_REFUND = 0.10, -- The part of the idea group spent that will be refunded upon abandonment.
- ↑See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua: PS_BUY_IDEA = 400
- ↑ 4.04.14.24.34.44.5Only available with Star and Crescent DLC.
- ↑ 5.05.1Only available with American Dream DLC.
- ↑It is still possible to revert to the old system by changing 'AI_USES_HISTORICAL_IDEA_GROUPS' to 1 in /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua. Note, however, that the AI will never use historical idea groups in a custom/random setup.
- ↑The weights and their modifiers are defined in /Europa Universalis IV/common/ideas/00_basic_ideas.txt at the bottom of each idea group (ai_will_do).
- ↑Multiple valid modifiers will stack
Monarch power | Ruler • Advisor • Idea groups • National ideas • Technology • Stability • Policies |
Other | Decisions • Missions • Events • Modifiers • Disasters • Government • Factions • Prestige • Institutions • Overextension • War exhaustion • Power projection |
Retrieved from 'https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Idea_groups&oldid=112310'
First off, let’s not fall to finger-pointing of the laying of blame. It’s nobody’s business but your own why this article is suddenly relevant and important to your well-being. Europa Universalis IV [official site] is a game of ruthless caprice, where even slight mistakes, misjudgments, and lapses in attention can bring you to ruin.
Perhaps you declared war on someone the day before they hit a new level of military technology. Maybe you gambled that your enemy’s powerful ally wouldn’t actually bother to travel across Europe to fight you, but they did, and now they have arrived, unwanted and obligatory guests at your war, and they look hungry. Or maybe you just got unlucky, and your enemy had a military genius in their back pocket while you’re stuck with the equivalent of Ambrose Burnside.
The point is, you’re losing a major war in EUIV, and you’re losing it badly. And getting out isn’t going to be easy. If it were easy, if it were just a matter of agreeing to a minor settlement, you wouldn’t hesitate. But no, this is a war that poses an existential threat.
It seems like all is lost. But this is why EUIV is a game where it pays to never give up, and never reload. The chances are, you can not only survive this crisis, but come out of it almost unscathed.
You might be watching a rout unfold, but here is how you turn that into a victory.
First Principle: Stay Alive
If you can’t win pitched battles, you need to give up on the idea of fighting them. The most important thing you can do when a war is going wrong is to keep a credible army in existence.
It doesn’t have to fight. God no. That’s defeats the whole purpose. It’s more like the naval strategy of keeping a “fleet in being“. As long as you have an army in play, it’s something that forces the enemy to stay relatively concentrated in case you decide to fight. If your enemies spread out across the countryside to start dismantling your nation, your ineffectual little army can attack the small siege detachments and start whittling down their strength. If they group up to fight, you melt away.
Remember, siege progress resets once the besieging army moves, so just forcing them to respond to your army is a victory that causes the war to drag-on.
Playing a “where’s my army” shell-game is easy to do if you have a fairly extensive country. Russians can always withdraw deeper into Russia, for example. But what if you don’t have enough space to protect your army?
Easy: you create some.
Second Principle: Gaining Space
You can’t hold ground in battle, so you need places to run and hide. Your own territory is being overrun, so it’s time to look to your neighbors.
Find neighbors who don’t hate you, and ask for military access to their countries. If all your neighbors hate you (all of them?!) then we may need to talk about basic diplomacy. But chances are, you have some people next-door who are happy to lend you a cup of sugar, jump-start your car, or let you conduct guerilla warfare from their sovereign territory. In that case, you open the diplomatic relations window, go to “Access Action” and “Request military access”.
The trade-off here can be significant. Agreements with other countries count as “diplomatic relationships” against your country’s maximum. You can go over those limits, but each extra relationship costs you a monthly diplomatic monarch point. If the war drags on for a long time (and a long war is your best chance here), those lost points will add up, and cause you to fall behind on the naval and economic technologies that those points would have bought.
But getting military access is worth it when things are dire. The enemy can chase you and fight you on neutral ground, but they can never occupy the territory, and therefore they’ll have to contend with the fog of war. Neutral territory becomes a perfect place to hide.
Or from which to launch sneak attacks. Another way to pull enemy troops off your territory is to open a circuitous passage through neutral countries from your territory to theirs. If they’re running short on troops, you can usually force a significant recall of forces from your homeland simply by laying siege to their capital for a couple weeks. Even if you get caught out, your army will probably be able to retreat to safety and partially rebuild itself before the enemy’s pursuit catches up.
Of course, to rebuild an army requires soldiers, and here’s where we encounter some controversy.
Third Principle: Lives Are Cheap, so Buy Them
Mercenaries are as much a source of debate in EUIV as they were for statesmen in Machiavelli’s day. There are players who refuse to use them except in the most dire circumstances. If you wage an extended war via mercenaries, you will end up paying off the debt for decades. They are economy-crippling, game-stifling money-sinks.
But it’s all gone wrong? I love them.
There are a lot of negatives associated with mercenary troops: their upkeep is far higher than a standard national army. They cost a fortune when they’re replacing losses.
But those are problems for later. In the desperate short-term, mercenaries work. They will fight for you when there are no more able-bodied soldiers to recruit in the kingdom. Mercenary regiments will form within days of hiring, making them perfect for those times when your country is being overrun by enemy armies. They are an almost-bottomless resource if you don’t burn through them too quickly, and their deaths only cost you money. And even if you don’t have money, you can always borrow some.
Mercenaries enable you to keep bleeding your adversaries, harassing them, and denying them an ultimate victory.
The alternative is capitulation. I don’t recommend it.
Fourth Principle: No Surrender
If wars like this were easy to escape, we wouldn’t even be discussing them. What’s scary is when your enemy is coming after you and won’t accept even absurdly generous peace terms. At that point, you have no idea what you’ll be left with once the fighting stops.
For anyone less than a great power, a punishing peace settlement can be devastating. Your best provinces might be taken, your country split apart, and a hated, once-conquered enemy brought back to life. There are a lot of ways a peace settlement can undo hours and hours of work and deal your game a setback from which it is very hard to recover.
But you can only influence the outcome as long as you’re still able to resist. If you just “think of England” and try to get your defeat over with, you are basically risking your game on a peace settlement you will not be able to affect.
Fifth Principle: Know Your Enemies… and Their Enemies
Even when you’re only at war with one country (which is rare, given how often EUIV is a game of alliances), you need to identify the diplomatic weaknesses in your opponent or opponents. Check out who is fighting against you by clicking on the “war score” button the appears at the bottom of the screen when you’re at war, then take a look at who is lined-up against you.
The nightmare scenario is that you’ve got a formal Coalition arrayed against you, because at that point a separate peace becomes impossible. Coalitions are deadly in EUIV because they are collective wars, where every member is committed until the bitter end. You just have to try and hold out until the war-leader calls it quits.
But coalitions are also rare. Most of the time, what you’ll be facing is a standard set of alliances. And at that point, you need to figure out who in that alliance really hates you, who is just showing up out of obligation, and who can be made to have other problems.
Usually there are only one or two real opponents in any war. Those smaller satellite powers who send small detachments? They are good targets for your army. Give them a bloody nose and they’ll probably leave you alone for a while, then come asking for a White Peace later.
The remaining enemies have to be defeated or simply exhausted. The good news is that they can become the focus of your diplomatic efforts. Or, more accurately, their neighbors can.
It’s very rare that you’ll be able to bring help into a war. Most AI nations are smart enough to see there’s little point in joining someone else’s war, especially when it’s already in the process of being lost. Still, it’s worth it to try. Even if you can’t get a friend in the middle of the war, a postwar alliance can help you stay safe after the fighting stops.
But it’s also good to just familiarize yourself with your enemies’ enemies. If they have serious rivals (and the diplomacy window helpfully shows who each nation’s main rivals are), then the odds are good they’ll find themselves fighting another war on another front if you just hang on long enough. I’ve started more than a few national collapses by sucking enemy powers into an endless quagmire, then watching in glee as they get ganked by their rivals and torn to pieces. That’s why you should know your enemies’ diplomatic relationships as well as your own.
Sixth Principle: Picking the Time and the Place
It’s important to set expectations for the rest of the war. You’re probably going to lose a lot of battles. That’s the whole reason you’re in this mess: you can’t win the fights.
So what you’re trying to do is notch small, slight victories that will improve your war-score and inflict casualties on your enemy. Most siege detachments only number a few thousand men, so even a small army can usually overpower them before reinforcements arrive on the battlefield.
Usually, but not always. There will always be battles that drag on just a day too long, giving the main enemy army time to arrive and crush you. But that’s a risk worth taking. Those types of battles tend to be bloody for both sides. You lose, but you had days of combat with smaller detachments to inflict casualties. Very occasionally, you’ll get lucky and the enemy will feed troops into battle piecemeal, letting you defeat far superior forces. A single bloody debacle can change the entire complexion of a war, and put your foes on the back-foot.
If you can manage it, it’s also worth trying to find a highly defensible province. Don’t corner yourself (no matter how good the terrain, this is not a road you want to go down), but keep an eye open for provinces with mountains, rivers, or even dense forest. These are good places to bait a fight. If you can get their first, you will enjoy a huge defender’s advantage.
They don’t have to be your own provinces. Again, invading enemy territory can sometimes let you provoke a battle on good ground. Austria, for instance, is easy to lure into an Alpine death-trap. Will you win? Maaaaybe. Will you at least kill a lot of enemy soldiers? Absolutely.
Final Principle: Know When to Quit
Now here’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed near the end of particularly hard-fought wars in Paradox games: they get personal. Decision-making gets more and more detached from pure reason. I don’t just want to win the war, I want to humiliate the make-believe person I’m playing against.
It makes sense. Fighting a war like this takes intense determination. Otherwise you’d give up, or start a new game, or go play something else. But to stick it out, for session after session of grinding attrition? That’s something you do out of spite and anger.
But when it comes time to call it a day and make peace, those same feelings can start whispering bad advice: “Hey, screw those guys. You don’t need to take this offer. After all the crap you’ve been through, they should be offering concessions to you.”
But that’s just Pride talking.
There are times when it’s worth it to keep fighting. If your opponents are suddenly collapsing, and are beset by other enemies, it could be worth it to push your luck to try and nab some territory or financial reparations. Continuing the war also postpones the post-war, which is going to bring a lot of complications on your head.
Still, when your opponents are getting dragged into other wars and starting to teeter, and the game is swinging in your favor, you need to remember that peace is a game of musical chairs. If you press your luck, and your enemy manages to reach settlements with their other rivals, you might be right back where you started, except now you’re already exhausted down to scraps. If it goes wrong again, your position is likely to be irrecoverable.
In general, if you’re offered mild peace terms or a White Peace? Take it, and chalk it up as a victory.
Winning the Peace
As bad as the war might have been, the aftermath can be worse. Broke, crushed by debt, low on manpower reserves, and almost certainly with slightly less territory than you started with, it can sometimes feel like you fought an epic war just to achieve a Pyrrhic stalemate.
But don’t get discouraged. You have a truce that will protect you for ten years, which should let you partially de-mobilize. Once you’re not spending oceans of cash on warfare, you’ll be stunned how quickly you can start paying down your national debt.
The first step is to consolidate under-strength regiments. Replenishing regiments is expensive, so if you have a bunch of units down to 10% strength, they are costing you much, much more than would one unit at full-strength. That said, don’t rush to consolidate artillery or cavalry regiments. Those are expensive to establish, so it can be worth it to leave them around so they can come up to full strength without costing you the start-up costs of a new unit.
The second step, once you know how many full regiments you have, is to dismiss as many mercenaries as you safely can. Get those mercenaries off the ledgers, and that should give you a positive cash-flow.
Your biggest threat during peacetime (excluding predatory neighbors) is the unrest related to War Exhaustion, and the most extreme form of this is The Peasant’s War. This is a capital-D Disaster (if you want more detail on how they work), one of only a handful in EUIV. Peasant’s War is a long fuse leading to national collapse.
When your national manpower is low, the peasantry will start getting angry and a percentage will start counting up to 100. At 100, Peasant’s War triggers and your national unrest goes through the roof. Progress goes faster if you have more than 10 loans (which of course, by now, you do) and high war exhaustion. Peasant’s War is not a game-ender, but it does mean that you probably won’t have a quiet, uneventful peace for licking your wounds and retrenching your empire.
See the problems here? On the one hand, you’ll need to retain at least some of your mercenary army to quell potential revolts and discourage your neighbors from descending on you like a pack of hyenas. On the other hand, your ruined finances desperately require you to reduce your army to a shell of itself so you can pay off debt and address some of the root-causes of looming disasters.
A good compromise is opening your finances tab and reducing the funding for your armed forces. It will lower their morale and make them more brittle in battle, so I don’t recommend pushing the slider lower than 33%, but it’s an easy way to fix your cash-flow without dismissing all your soldiers.
Surviving peacetime after a near-miss of a war is like taking a ship through a minefield, and there’s no surefire recipe for doing it successfully. But in general, you keep just enough troops around to put down revolts, and then pay off your loans as quickly as possible. You will lose years’ worth of progress as you fire advisors and forgo building infrastructure. But it will help you get out from under the crushing cost of war faster.
What it’s worth
So why did you go through all of this? Chances are, if you survive this war, you spent the better part of five or ten years fighting, and then another ten or twenty years dealing with the fallout. All to stay in the same place.
Except that’s not really true. Europa Universalis is a game in which windows of opportunity eventually close. The person who is kicking you all around the map in 1480 is taking one of the best shots they can. They have the right alliances, the right diplomatic situation, the right technologies, and the right army and commanders. If you can survive in the face of all that, they may never again be able to pose such a threat. Especially because they will have squandered all those resources trying to break you. Yet there you stand.
First off, let’s not fall to finger-pointing of the laying of blame. It’s nobody’s business but your own why this article is suddenly relevant and important to your well-being. Europa Universalis IV [official site] is a game of ruthless caprice, where even slight mistakes, misjudgments, and lapses in attention can bring you to ruin.
Perhaps you declared war on someone the day before they hit a new level of military technology. Maybe you gambled that your enemy’s powerful ally wouldn’t actually bother to travel across Europe to fight you, but they did, and now they have arrived, unwanted and obligatory guests at your war, and they look hungry. Or maybe you just got unlucky, and your enemy had a military genius in their back pocket while you’re stuck with the equivalent of Ambrose Burnside.
The point is, you’re losing a major war in EUIV, and you’re losing it badly. And getting out isn’t going to be easy. If it were easy, if it were just a matter of agreeing to a minor settlement, you wouldn’t hesitate. But no, this is a war that poses an existential threat.
It seems like all is lost. But this is why EUIV is a game where it pays to never give up, and never reload. The chances are, you can not only survive this crisis, but come out of it almost unscathed.
You might be watching a rout unfold, but here is how you turn that into a victory.
First Principle: Stay Alive
If you can’t win pitched battles, you need to give up on the idea of fighting them. The most important thing you can do when a war is going wrong is to keep a credible army in existence.
It doesn’t have to fight. God no. That’s defeats the whole purpose. It’s more like the naval strategy of keeping a “fleet in being“. As long as you have an army in play, it’s something that forces the enemy to stay relatively concentrated in case you decide to fight. If your enemies spread out across the countryside to start dismantling your nation, your ineffectual little army can attack the small siege detachments and start whittling down their strength. If they group up to fight, you melt away.
Remember, siege progress resets once the besieging army moves, so just forcing them to respond to your army is a victory that causes the war to drag-on.
Playing a “where’s my army” shell-game is easy to do if you have a fairly extensive country. Russians can always withdraw deeper into Russia, for example. But what if you don’t have enough space to protect your army?
Easy: you create some.
Second Principle: Gaining Space
You can’t hold ground in battle, so you need places to run and hide. Your own territory is being overrun, so it’s time to look to your neighbors.
Find neighbors who don’t hate you, and ask for military access to their countries. If all your neighbors hate you (all of them?!) then we may need to talk about basic diplomacy. But chances are, you have some people next-door who are happy to lend you a cup of sugar, jump-start your car, or let you conduct guerilla warfare from their sovereign territory. In that case, you open the diplomatic relations window, go to “Access Action” and “Request military access”.
The trade-off here can be significant. Agreements with other countries count as “diplomatic relationships” against your country’s maximum. You can go over those limits, but each extra relationship costs you a monthly diplomatic monarch point. If the war drags on for a long time (and a long war is your best chance here), those lost points will add up, and cause you to fall behind on the naval and economic technologies that those points would have bought.
But getting military access is worth it when things are dire. The enemy can chase you and fight you on neutral ground, but they can never occupy the territory, and therefore they’ll have to contend with the fog of war. Neutral territory becomes a perfect place to hide.
Or from which to launch sneak attacks. Another way to pull enemy troops off your territory is to open a circuitous passage through neutral countries from your territory to theirs. If they’re running short on troops, you can usually force a significant recall of forces from your homeland simply by laying siege to their capital for a couple weeks. Even if you get caught out, your army will probably be able to retreat to safety and partially rebuild itself before the enemy’s pursuit catches up.
Of course, to rebuild an army requires soldiers, and here’s where we encounter some controversy.
Third Principle: Lives Are Cheap, so Buy Them
Mercenaries are as much a source of debate in EUIV as they were for statesmen in Machiavelli’s day. There are players who refuse to use them except in the most dire circumstances. If you wage an extended war via mercenaries, you will end up paying off the debt for decades. They are economy-crippling, game-stifling money-sinks.
But it’s all gone wrong? I love them.
There are a lot of negatives associated with mercenary troops: their upkeep is far higher than a standard national army. They cost a fortune when they’re replacing losses.
But those are problems for later. In the desperate short-term, mercenaries work. They will fight for you when there are no more able-bodied soldiers to recruit in the kingdom. Mercenary regiments will form within days of hiring, making them perfect for those times when your country is being overrun by enemy armies. They are an almost-bottomless resource if you don’t burn through them too quickly, and their deaths only cost you money. And even if you don’t have money, you can always borrow some.
Mercenaries enable you to keep bleeding your adversaries, harassing them, and denying them an ultimate victory.
The alternative is capitulation. I don’t recommend it.
Fourth Principle: No Surrender
If wars like this were easy to escape, we wouldn’t even be discussing them. What’s scary is when your enemy is coming after you and won’t accept even absurdly generous peace terms. At that point, you have no idea what you’ll be left with once the fighting stops.
For anyone less than a great power, a punishing peace settlement can be devastating. Your best provinces might be taken, your country split apart, and a hated, once-conquered enemy brought back to life. There are a lot of ways a peace settlement can undo hours and hours of work and deal your game a setback from which it is very hard to recover.
But you can only influence the outcome as long as you’re still able to resist. If you just “think of England” and try to get your defeat over with, you are basically risking your game on a peace settlement you will not be able to affect.
Fifth Principle: Know Your Enemies… and Their Enemies
Even when you’re only at war with one country (which is rare, given how often EUIV is a game of alliances), you need to identify the diplomatic weaknesses in your opponent or opponents. Check out who is fighting against you by clicking on the “war score” button the appears at the bottom of the screen when you’re at war, then take a look at who is lined-up against you.
The nightmare scenario is that you’ve got a formal Coalition arrayed against you, because at that point a separate peace becomes impossible. Coalitions are deadly in EUIV because they are collective wars, where every member is committed until the bitter end. You just have to try and hold out until the war-leader calls it quits.
But coalitions are also rare. Most of the time, what you’ll be facing is a standard set of alliances. And at that point, you need to figure out who in that alliance really hates you, who is just showing up out of obligation, and who can be made to have other problems.
Usually there are only one or two real opponents in any war. Those smaller satellite powers who send small detachments? They are good targets for your army. Give them a bloody nose and they’ll probably leave you alone for a while, then come asking for a White Peace later.
The remaining enemies have to be defeated or simply exhausted. The good news is that they can become the focus of your diplomatic efforts. Or, more accurately, their neighbors can.
It’s very rare that you’ll be able to bring help into a war. Most AI nations are smart enough to see there’s little point in joining someone else’s war, especially when it’s already in the process of being lost. Still, it’s worth it to try. Even if you can’t get a friend in the middle of the war, a postwar alliance can help you stay safe after the fighting stops.
But it’s also good to just familiarize yourself with your enemies’ enemies. If they have serious rivals (and the diplomacy window helpfully shows who each nation’s main rivals are), then the odds are good they’ll find themselves fighting another war on another front if you just hang on long enough. I’ve started more than a few national collapses by sucking enemy powers into an endless quagmire, then watching in glee as they get ganked by their rivals and torn to pieces. That’s why you should know your enemies’ diplomatic relationships as well as your own.
Sixth Principle: Picking the Time and the Place
It’s important to set expectations for the rest of the war. You’re probably going to lose a lot of battles. That’s the whole reason you’re in this mess: you can’t win the fights.
So what you’re trying to do is notch small, slight victories that will improve your war-score and inflict casualties on your enemy. Most siege detachments only number a few thousand men, so even a small army can usually overpower them before reinforcements arrive on the battlefield.
Usually, but not always. There will always be battles that drag on just a day too long, giving the main enemy army time to arrive and crush you. But that’s a risk worth taking. Those types of battles tend to be bloody for both sides. You lose, but you had days of combat with smaller detachments to inflict casualties. Very occasionally, you’ll get lucky and the enemy will feed troops into battle piecemeal, letting you defeat far superior forces. A single bloody debacle can change the entire complexion of a war, and put your foes on the back-foot.
If you can manage it, it’s also worth trying to find a highly defensible province. Don’t corner yourself (no matter how good the terrain, this is not a road you want to go down), but keep an eye open for provinces with mountains, rivers, or even dense forest. These are good places to bait a fight. If you can get their first, you will enjoy a huge defender’s advantage.
They don’t have to be your own provinces. Again, invading enemy territory can sometimes let you provoke a battle on good ground. Austria, for instance, is easy to lure into an Alpine death-trap. Will you win? Maaaaybe. Will you at least kill a lot of enemy soldiers? Absolutely.
Final Principle: Know When to Quit
Now here’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed near the end of particularly hard-fought wars in Paradox games: they get personal. Decision-making gets more and more detached from pure reason. I don’t just want to win the war, I want to humiliate the make-believe person I’m playing against.
It makes sense. Fighting a war like this takes intense determination. Otherwise you’d give up, or start a new game, or go play something else. But to stick it out, for session after session of grinding attrition? That’s something you do out of spite and anger.
But when it comes time to call it a day and make peace, those same feelings can start whispering bad advice: “Hey, screw those guys. You don’t need to take this offer. After all the crap you’ve been through, they should be offering concessions to you.”
But that’s just Pride talking.
There are times when it’s worth it to keep fighting. If your opponents are suddenly collapsing, and are beset by other enemies, it could be worth it to push your luck to try and nab some territory or financial reparations. Continuing the war also postpones the post-war, which is going to bring a lot of complications on your head.
Still, when your opponents are getting dragged into other wars and starting to teeter, and the game is swinging in your favor, you need to remember that peace is a game of musical chairs. If you press your luck, and your enemy manages to reach settlements with their other rivals, you might be right back where you started, except now you’re already exhausted down to scraps. If it goes wrong again, your position is likely to be irrecoverable.
In general, if you’re offered mild peace terms or a White Peace? Take it, and chalk it up as a victory.
Winning the Peace
As bad as the war might have been, the aftermath can be worse. Broke, crushed by debt, low on manpower reserves, and almost certainly with slightly less territory than you started with, it can sometimes feel like you fought an epic war just to achieve a Pyrrhic stalemate.
But don’t get discouraged. You have a truce that will protect you for ten years, which should let you partially de-mobilize. Once you’re not spending oceans of cash on warfare, you’ll be stunned how quickly you can start paying down your national debt.
The first step is to consolidate under-strength regiments. Replenishing regiments is expensive, so if you have a bunch of units down to 10% strength, they are costing you much, much more than would one unit at full-strength. That said, don’t rush to consolidate artillery or cavalry regiments. Those are expensive to establish, so it can be worth it to leave them around so they can come up to full strength without costing you the start-up costs of a new unit.
The second step, once you know how many full regiments you have, is to dismiss as many mercenaries as you safely can. Get those mercenaries off the ledgers, and that should give you a positive cash-flow.
Your biggest threat during peacetime (excluding predatory neighbors) is the unrest related to War Exhaustion, and the most extreme form of this is The Peasant’s War. This is a capital-D Disaster (if you want more detail on how they work), one of only a handful in EUIV. Peasant’s War is a long fuse leading to national collapse.
When your national manpower is low, the peasantry will start getting angry and a percentage will start counting up to 100. At 100, Peasant’s War triggers and your national unrest goes through the roof. Progress goes faster if you have more than 10 loans (which of course, by now, you do) and high war exhaustion. Peasant’s War is not a game-ender, but it does mean that you probably won’t have a quiet, uneventful peace for licking your wounds and retrenching your empire.
See the problems here? On the one hand, you’ll need to retain at least some of your mercenary army to quell potential revolts and discourage your neighbors from descending on you like a pack of hyenas. On the other hand, your ruined finances desperately require you to reduce your army to a shell of itself so you can pay off debt and address some of the root-causes of looming disasters.
A good compromise is opening your finances tab and reducing the funding for your armed forces. It will lower their morale and make them more brittle in battle, so I don’t recommend pushing the slider lower than 33%, but it’s an easy way to fix your cash-flow without dismissing all your soldiers.
Surviving peacetime after a near-miss of a war is like taking a ship through a minefield, and there’s no surefire recipe for doing it successfully. But in general, you keep just enough troops around to put down revolts, and then pay off your loans as quickly as possible. You will lose years’ worth of progress as you fire advisors and forgo building infrastructure. But it will help you get out from under the crushing cost of war faster.
What it’s worth
So why did you go through all of this? Chances are, if you survive this war, you spent the better part of five or ten years fighting, and then another ten or twenty years dealing with the fallout. All to stay in the same place.
Except that’s not really true. Europa Universalis is a game in which windows of opportunity eventually close. The person who is kicking you all around the map in 1480 is taking one of the best shots they can. They have the right alliances, the right diplomatic situation, the right technologies, and the right army and commanders. If you can survive in the face of all that, they may never again be able to pose such a threat. Especially because they will have squandered all those resources trying to break you. Yet there you stand.