Wow. Newbie lost.

[Velociryx]

Therein lies the trouble....

If you have anything less than a 100% war score, you cannot carte blanche dictate the terms of peace to the enemy. If they have a province out of reach, then the "provisional government" can hole up there and thumb their collective noses at you. This, however, is not without risks on their part.

Any time you offer peace that is more generous by 10% or greater than your current war score, a refusal on their part will result in a hit of -1 Stability for them. Do that often enough, and eventually they will face rebellions. If their capitol should fall to the rebels, then every province of theirs that you currently control will automatically be ceded to you. This is known as "Turbo-Annexation" from EUI days, when it was not possible to win more than 3 provinces at a time from an enemy nation.

Best advice is to wait them out and find or make a way to that last province and conquer it as well (cozy up to whomever is blocking your access and gain military access with that nation).

They will be much more agreeable when you control them, lock, stock, and barrel.

Also, I second the advice made earlier here. Don't bother spending your 200d on 100 tech points. While that is a valid use of your money, the funds are better spent for other things. That's sort of a last resort expense, if you've bought absolutely everything and are just idling till you complete the tech trees (and once in a while, it is useful to give you +3 stab just before January 1, when taxes are collected, but you have to be understandably huge for this to pay dividends).

Best course is to focus on one tech at a time, to the exclusion of all the others. This is because of the neighbor bonus, and the fact that you don't get "partial credit" for partially researched techs.

Infrastructure 5, by the way, is the hands down most important tech in the game. Get it, and no matter who you're playing, your problems are OVER!

Inf. 2 is pretty pivotal too, in the sense that, instead of spending your 200d to get you a 100d increase in tech, you could spend that money to build refineries, which give you a permanant boost to a province's tax base and +5d per month added to trade research, which will (eventually) be the largest component of your economy (this, in addition to giving you a +1% boost to trade efficiency, per refinery built).

Alternatively, if you're fed up with the war, then take the 3-4 provinces you can get, take all their money, and hit them again in five years...

-=Vel=-

[Micha]

Just back for a day, and already writing books of advise...

I bow to mighty Vel

btw: Good to see you back!

[Akka]

Thanks for the advices

I was finally fed up, reloaded a savegame that was ten years earlier (where I was already at 99 % ^^) and just asked for 48 % worth of victory, which, being less than half of what I earned, they accepted immediately. Of course, I'm holding quite a bit of a grudge against them, so they can expect that I'm back on them in a few years :P
Didn't knew that if they only had to have their capital falling to the rebels. I

For the economy : I didn't knew you could gain whole new step suddendly. I thought concentrating on trade (to reach trade 3 and get the possibility to have monopoly), but it seems that infra is even more important ?
(though, are you sure that refineries are in infra 2 ? I'm already on infra 2, and the only manufactory I've noticed is arts school, or something like that).

I suppose I know what I'll do tonight, anyway ^^

[pg]

I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way but you seem a real war monger Akka. There are only a few nations that are made for war mongering like Mughals, Russia, Ottomans, Burgundy/England in 1419 scenario or maybe even Sweden (if you read the official EU2 forums long enough you'll get this joke).

Anyhow, EU2 is more about being patient and waiting for opportunities than steam rolling over every other country. The real fun in EU2 is taking some back water nation like Pommern, Mantua, or Duchy of Athens and making them into a great nation. That takes skill, patience, and luck. It is also a much more satisfying and challenging way to play.

War mongering will just make you burn out EU2 faster because once you get so strong there is no challenge or thought left. After you get to 10-20 provinces you will rarely be challenged in anyway. If you want to be a real war monger play EU2 in multiplayer.

[Akka]

Ah well, not really a warmonger (I'm rather the "builder" type in Civilization, in fact ^^).
But hey, I have Byzantium, and I have to get back my core provinces and regain the ancient borders of the empire !

And taking a backwater nation without any decent fame, well, it doesn't really inspire me. I need to feel the flow of grand history, to get in character.
And, well, Byzantium is as small as you can get while still playing "grand" historical nations ^^

And I'm not afraid about burning out the game too fast due to lack of challenge. I've never been really interested in challenge, much more in consistency and immersion ^^

[Velociryx]

Just double-checked myself. Inf 3 is the pre-req for refineries...sorry 'bout that!

So yes, I'd recommend building a Fine Arts academy ASAP in your capitol, and if possible (you should be able to) put all efforts into Infrastructure until you gain at least Inf 3. If you have already smashed the Ottos, you'll prolly have no serious warring to face (unless you severely tick off all of Europe) until you can hold out for Inf 5 and mayoral promotions. At that time, you can mint some coin without inflation (which is the biggest killer in the game), and see a tidy monthly income, in addition to your annual taxation.

After that, you will prolly need a period of focus on military (land) tech until you get to Land 11 (muskets...graphic change for your units) and then, ply all efforts into Trade.

Trade is ultimately the most important element from an income perspective, but you will find yourself wasting a lot of resources getting serious about setting up a trade empire before you have at least a 50% trade efficiency, so I'd not mess with it too much till then (unless you find a totally empty CoT and can build up a strong presence there early, with no competition).

In the early and mid game though, nothing will aid you more than Inf. 5, and anything you can do to a) lower your tech costs and b) gain more infrastruture research (go to war and leave your slider settings to full infrastruture, then when you pillage, all the pillage money is put into Infrastructure research too!) will do wonders for your economy.

-=Vel=-

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Akka
Well, it's still the same thing against Karaman.
But this time, with a stability of +3. In Smyrna, when I'm still the one having the advantage of numbers in cavarly, and in Shock Rating.

I'm starting to REALLY be fed up to randomly lose and win. Is this all the game long, or is it just due to the initial settings ?

As the game goes on you build up your land warfare rating and things get much easier. Other things like bankrupty, low stability, or fighting a power with a higher CRT (Higher land warfare) will result you you losing badly. You're at level one in land warfare and that's like a baby learning to walk so don't expect to run at that level.

[Akka]

Ok, so full speed toward infra, then.

It'll be long, though. I went a bit conquest-happy, withough having yet the grasp of the subtle checks and balances of the game, and I find myself with quite a lot of territories (all Turkey but Candar, all the coast from Aleppo to Cyrenaic except for Egypt, most of the Balkans and all Nubia), with a big part of them not being of my culture neither my religion. Thus, I'm afraid I've seriously slowed down my tech research, by augmenting the cost due to the size, but having an income rising slower due to the twice 30 % penalty in taxes :-/

Oh, a side note : I am allowed to colonize Sinai, Cataract, and a province of Nubia and one just aside Cyrenaic whose name escape me at the moment, and still their population is well above 2000 people. Is this normal ?

[Velociryx]

Very well put! And yes...in the early game, before you build up your Land Military Tech level, you will observe that combat tends to be a good bit more random than it is once your tech level climbs (and especially after hitting Land 11). Once you reach that stage, you will rarely see bizzare and unexpected results (sometimes they do happen, just like in real life, but the frequency will certainly decrease).

Nonetheless, bear in mind that if you stack enough odds against you (attacking into a mountain or marsh province, across a river, facing military commander of note, etc, then even a modest force can and will chew your larger army to pieces, so be aware of this, and use it (terrain) to your advantage whenever possible.

Also bear in mind that when fighting in rough terrain, having more cavalry than infantry actually penalizes you in combat, so keep an eye on your army composition and always be sure to use the "right" composition for the job.

I have written some general strategy tips earlier (one of them just recently got bumped) that you may also find helpful, and I will have to crack open the game and do a strategic analysis of Byzantium (akin to the one I did for Venice before I got sick)...that could be fun!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Yes...if you have gone conquest happy and have a lot of off culture, off religion provinces in-hand, you may want to consider releasing some of these as vassals. You see a -33% tax malus for off culture, and another -33% for off-religion (total hit of -66%), whereas if they are your vassals, you gain 50% of their incomes, so you actually come out better AND you wind up lowering your tech and stability costs. Recommend forming an alliance with your vassals as a core, and that should keep you in good steading (spending money to keep your relations up with them).

Colonization: Any province that is less than 5k population, you can send colonists to, so what you are seeing is well within the realm of possibility. IIRC (and don't quote me on this), any province that is outside of Europe proper and under 5k population will gain your culture when all nationalism fades (not sure if this applies to the ME, but it seems to apply to captured colonial cities in NA).

Sounds like you're learning fast!

-=Vel=-

[adi321]

for the record Stability doesn't affect troops morale.

and if you need lots of strategy tips and help about the game come to the official forums.
we are a really friendly bunch on the euii forum.

Another thing.
EUII gives you lots of info if you have patience.
Almost any value ingame can be broken down to many factors if you are patient and hover you mouse pointer over the value in question

[Akka]

Ah, so THIS is the use of releasing Vassal ^^
I'm afraid I'm far too nationalistic to let any province going out of my grasp, though ^^

But I admit, I'm wondering if I won't be obliged to do so if I want to catch up. I'm insanely backward by now (all tech but infra at 2, infra at 3, while most enemies are on 5 or 6, year 1550).
I've had a great monarch, doubled with a good nifty minister and his +3 to every abilities, and have been able to strike a good deal in heresy and convert most of my empire to the One Good Religion That Reduce Revolt
But I feel like I'm overextended into quite poor regions (particularly the African ones).

Adi321 : I've already sneaked into the official forums, though only posted only one thread yet ^^
It's true that the game is quite addicting once you understand the interface and the concepts. Extremely well-thought out, and include countly ideas and mechanisms I'm dieing to see intergrated in Civilization and Total War. Very much more realistic than everything I've seen yet in the genre.

Only grips : the interface and the graphics are really to be improved, and the amount of unfavourable events is just plain maddening. Dealing with constant revolts is perhaps quite realistic, but it's getting on my nerves to the point I'm often reloading when it happens *shame*

(yes, I know, there is good reasons for these revolts happening, like lack of stability, difference in religion and culture, but well, it's still too much for a difficulty "easy" ^^)

[Velociryx]

Yes...you are in a relatively poor region, tis true, and while it is entirely possible to keep all those provinces under your control and (eventually) gain a decent tech level, it will be unduly hard on you, I suspect.

Even if you don't want to give away toooo much land to vassals, I'd recommend doing it at least on a limited basis (and you will see some improvement in your overall situation), and then focus on Infrastructure to boost your income.

Important slider positions for you would be:

Centralization! (need the production effie and 2% research price break per step. Full centralization is a must have!)

Plutocracy (+1 Inf and +1 Trade Effie per slider move....good long term growth potential)

Innovation/NarrowMinded slider is a two edged sword for you, so tread carefully!

On the one hand, it's mighty tempting to gain that nice cut in tech price by going innovative....a real godsend, HOWEVER....given your high numbers of off-culture and off-religion provinces, going Innovative will absolutely CRUSH your stability (making it prohibitively expensive to maintain) if it's not there already. And you will lose missionaries, and the ability to convert provinces to your religion. OUCH!

On the other hand, going Narrow Minded will decrease stab costs, at the expense of tech cost. Centerline is the SAFEST choice, or slightly narrow minded for missionaries, and if/when you can convert some provs to same religion, then drift toward innovation.

If you're behind in land tech, then you NEED quality! (might want to stay in serfdom to help control stab, and the morale hit isn't that bad, esp. if you go quality to offset).

-=Vel=-

[Akka]

I have to make quite a lot of work with the sliders ^^

Byzantium is quite conservative right from the start, and I took several events that forced me to go even further in this direction.

Not so long ago, I was at only one step before the max of narrowmindedness, decentralization and aristocracy... You can imagine how fast I'm discovering things ^^

I've been heading on centralization, and eased narrowmindedness, but I'm still not on the center. My stability is horribly expensive, and I can't really allow to take hits on it. Especially considering the widespread off-culture of my empire, and a lot of off-religion (though this is now a marginal problem, due to missionnaries ^^).

I was heading for Free citizens and Quality right from the start, so no problem here (hey, Roman legionnaries were known for being very high quality troops, and the population was mainly free citizen ^^).

I hope that trade monopolies and infra really give a good deal of bucks, I'll need all this as soon as possible if I don't want to become the backwater hole of the world ^^

[Velociryx]

Free Citizens are quite good, but bear in mind that this too, will increase your stability costs (it also comes with higher troop morale and greater production effie tho, so in this case, you may be able to offset the stab hit in other ways). If you have already converted some of those off-religion provinces, then you can get away with lessening narrow-mindedness, although each step you take in this direction (toward innovation) will increase your stability costs. Definitely keep enough of a narrow minded focus to keep getting Missionaries...very expensive, but when you finally succeed in conversions, you will see immediate economic benefits.

Ways to boost your economy are primarily these:
* Build toward Infra 5 and promote Bailiffs, Justicars, and Mayors in all provinces (and when you get to Inf 5 and have eliminated all current inflation, begin minting some coin).

* Build Manufactories whenever possible! The two biggest and most important ones in your case will be fine arts centers and refineries. Just as each refinery adds +5d per month to trade research, each fine arts center adds +5d per month toward stability, provided that you are not already at max stability. Not to mention the fact that all manufactory types add a permanant bonus to the tax base of the province they are built in.

* Conversions to state religion. Again, very expensive, but a successful conversion removes the 33% tax malus for off-religion, which directly impacts the bottom line

* Once Trade Effie tops 50%, gaining a strong mercantile presence in every CoT you can see will take you far (and at this point, start trading maps like crazy to uncover those far eastern CoT's which are HUGE!).

Best recommendation regarding building a trade empire: Do not focus on monopolies right away. Build up a strong (3-4 merchant) trade presence in all CoT's that are visible first. This provides durable, long term income. Once you have accomplished this, revisit the largest of these and make monopolistic plays in them. After that, it's all a matter of maintenance.

-=Vel=-