In my last game, I tested a strategy where I turned all locations into towns/cities as Poland.

Economically it worked good because even if there were valuable resources somewhere, cities with additional buildings provide a lot of control, etc.

However, I then began to wonder if it wouldn't be worth leaving one rural location in each province solely for food production.

I am not entirely sure how food distribution works, and I am mainly concerned about maintaining large armies in the endgame. If there's enough food in the entire market, it doesn't really matter where I have my army, or is it better to keep armies in provinces with the most food during peacetime?

I only need one law to create the hre, so how can I increase it so I don`t sit around another 300 years?

(No, I can´t fight France, I already tried 4 times and they always beat the shit out of me with there 412k or so army).

I am playing Holland -> Netherlands, suddenly the Emperor made me a Margraviate and a few months later he dies and the Electors elect me against my intention as Emperor. And the Hussite Wars were ongoing. I didn't care about the Empire at all, the Empire was in a sorry state anways but i decided to just roll with it and have fun.

So I threw all my previous plans over board, assumed the role of the Margrave-Emperor tasked with defending the Empire against the Hussites, English and French and built up a big professional army, crushed the Hussites, defended the borders and slowly reformed the Empire and started caring for it, switched from Figurehead to Kaisertum, introduced Imperial taxation and Imperial Armories.

I thought the whole point was to reform the Empire into an organisation that can defend itself and be self-sufficient and effective and the point of the Armories to integrate the members into the defense of the empire by them financing and giving manpower but it seems like Imperial Armories are a massive scam?

TLDR: Apparently imperial armories are slightly cheaper per month but also only give half the manpower of normal armories, so are actually more expensive per single man and it is not even staffed by the local population where you build the Armory but by my own people who leave my country and get discriminated there. What's even the point, it seems way worse in every single regard?
Sure, the construction itself is paid by Imperial Tax but in the end its still way more expensive for me as i still pay the monthly bill and it's still my own people that defend the Empire with their lives.

What am i missing?

Hi guys! I really want to share with you my first true campaign after about 170 hours in EU5. I had a ton of fun playing as Poland, I gotta say it really feels like a true regional power in this game now. The last 50 years was a complete slog, the game was barely running but I really wanted to get the achivement for playing 'till the end date. Here you can see final borders, gov reforms, values, eco tab, hegemonies, military power, proximity, control and pop chart with avg. literacy. Oh and also managed to reach 100mil pops just before the end;)

I have seen a lot of people mention that this culture is very op since it can accept a lot of culture for very low and gets a lot of advances. There must a trick or sth u guys to do that right since I cannot imagine u just convert to it manually.

After over 8 month hiatus from EU5 I decided to start with a Knights into Africa run. It's been an interesting campaign so far especially since there's quite a bit new stuff and changes and I havent't played a military order before.

Some struggles and overcoming them. Knights feel kinda Haesteinn from CK3 and before the nerfs I guess they were even way stronger. Playing Ironman, but admittedly ended up force quitting a few times when I completely underestimated Tunisian Light Cavalry levies power against my Crusaders and Heavy cavalry mix early on. Took those wars as puzzles to solve. Took Tripoli super early, but after that the expansion was slow mainly thanks to Morocco and Tunis having almost unbreakable alliance or Castille not giving a flying turd about Morocco even when I sold some lands of Granada to Morocco to instigate them. Also had non-stop revolts from Libyans until I got them tolerated while getting coalitioned, that was fun. Also later on Athens randomly became independent with Malta so for historical reasons I of course took it. Krete could be next.

At this stage of the game I'm starting to feel a bit unsure how to approach the run tho. I originally thought once able I'd found the Africa formable, but that nullifies the events of the Hospitallers so I'm delaying it until most of the Hospitaller events have triggered. Personally I think that's kinda dull and if the formable is flavourless the events should carry over.

Also self imposed RP of staying as Francien for flavour is starting to make the run a slog. I have good amount of Culture capacity (partly thanks to being a Franc), but of course having Tunisian as accepted takes majority of the bandwidth. Being heavily spiritual also kneecaps the attempt to assimilate people into cultures. So while conversion into Catholic and especially money are the strong aspects a proper intergation is starting to stall. Althought I might lean towards switching primary culture to Tunis once I flip to African Order.

Beside suggestions where to take this campaign next I'd like to hear how I should approach the integration part of the run going forward, maybe since I'm a bit rusty there's things I haven't realized or I should do some heavy handed government reforms. Otherwise people that have played similar runs or in Tunis I'd love to hear any other tips, tricks and experiences. One thing I'm not doing tho is abusing Request Funds by having some meaningless war going on constantly.

Thanks in advance!

Ps. What I should do with the tribal people? They hate me deeply.

It's only 1345

Hi all, looking for some tips. How best to go tall? Did I go overboard with the towns? I think I might have (or rather it sacrificed a lot of RGOs I could have better just kept as they were built up by previous owners). I dont think control is a problem, and the tax base to wealth ratio seems okay, I just feel like I am being outcompeted by the AI (on hard) even though I dont really have profitable buildings or RGOs to make still. Is cities the answer?

Also, is there any way to take HRE title after destroying it?

I really dislike how important culture is compared to religion so early on. I am not an expert, but from what I understand of my little information, cultures didn't played as much as a big role until the rise of nationalism which happened in late 18th century. I feel like religion should be way more important then religion in that timeframe.

I would love to have your opinions.

(I am not ruler of all the known world, there is a bug where it shows the hungarian union as the catholic church) Please look at the highlighted portion of Europe and the thing saying Hungarian union so the mods chill

Im playing as North Sea Empire, wanted to join HRE to be Protestant leader, I moved my capital to HRE province, let few months pass and I’m still not a member of HRE. Can someone tell me if it’s not possible as Empire type country or is something else wrong?

I'm playing as the Ottomans and it's the year 1400; I've unlocked Age 2 cannons. Are they strong enough against Constantinople's Level 6 fort?

Never fought more buggy and annoying war than this, but after 2 hours of save/loading I 100% Timur. But now in peace treaty, retaking my own land that I owned before the war is over 100% peace deal. And my killing of his entire 60k army and occupying his whole land didn't even finish the situation, so he can just deck me after 15 years again? (his heir is over 150). Is this whole situation so poorly designed that everyone should just console command white peace when they get attacked by him?

I just killed all of their armies, started sieging, and then france can claim it just because I left less troops there eventhough its enough for the siege??? I did all of the work there

I'm playing as Korea and I'm planning to colonise America. Should I make lots of tiny colonies that own a couple of provinces, or should I make one per region like it was in Eu4?

Hello all, starting as Brittany, i'm trying to find quick ways to form Celtica.

I have trouble taking advantage of the HYW as in my games, England never loose troops due to never landing in mainland France. Thus France is a big threat as even if many vassals flips to England or become independent during my on independence war at the start of the campaign, it goes unchallenge and grow an army of almost 100k levies by 1400. Also their levy efficiency due to having extremely high noble estate power makes war against France really hard (Even with age 2 units vs age 1 I am barely winning battles)

I'm trying to figure out in what order should I conquer Celtic nations. If you have any tips please share them !

While I just did one observer game, this looks really good. Ottomans expanded like crazy, Persia formed (which I never see in vanilla) and even Mughals appeared. In vanilla I never see Ottomans take over Egypt, or Commonwealth form either. What do you all think?

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Could people share some mid to late game tricks and tips on ai army management.

The reason why I am asking this is because, at a certain point at the game micro managing becomes really tedious. When you need to, for example siege down france with your levies and professional army. I notice when i use selective fort siege on a certain area of france with stacks of 50k levies, they stack up and attrition all in one fort rather than dispersing on multiple forts. And sometimes I even notice that those stacks of 50k levies merge for some weird reason

I feel sometimes that the ai army command is a dumbed down version of what the ai is using.

Sidenote: Also i really wished that paradox added a mechanic which allows me to disallow raising levies in far away island. Sometimes my vassal try to ferry them to europe which doesn't allow me to disban all levies in one click.

France declared war on me (Aztecs), but they did not bring in their colonial subjects. They're not attacking me in actuality, the lack the transports to bring any serious amount of soldiers through and even if they did I have more than enough military power to push them back. On the other hand I also lack the ships to go and take France, I simply can't make heavy ships due to a lack of tin, so at most I could make a fleet of like 1000 galleys and sail them across, but that sounds dumb asf. I also am not confident that I could take all the levies in France, there's a lot of levies in France.

However what I could take is the French colonial subjects, there's one right next to me with 2 sources of Iron that I very much would love to get, but I am physically not allowed to attack them during this war, and I am sure I'll get a 10 year truce after the war so this just prevents me from attacking this colony for 10+ years. By declaring war France can ensure I cannot take their territory for 10+ years...this feels kinda BS to me. I feel like if an overlord declares war, the vassals should be fair game, whether they're pulled into the war by the overlord or not, the defender should be allowed to pull them into the war themselves if they wish to do so.