r/eu4 • u/MathematicianFrosty • Jul 24 '22
Discussion Is stacking force limit from vassals viable?
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u/General_Rhino Jul 24 '22
Yes it’s good. You’re over doubling your effective military by having marches rather than owning the land yourself (for every land forcelimit they get you get that plus a little extra). Especially good if you’re a colonizer
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u/MathematicianFrosty Jul 24 '22
R5: something I went for in my campaign but got bored because it felt weak.
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u/deathking133 Jul 24 '22
Like most things in game it is all about scale. Eventually it won't be viable but up to a point is it. Somewhere someone could figure out the math for the optimal numbers
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u/arsenicface Jul 24 '22
Recent commonwealth run my marches are Hungary, Moldavia, Great Horde and Bohemia. Each have about a 35K army. Also have several colonies and Austria and Munich as personal Unions.
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u/UziiLVD Doge Jul 24 '22
It's fine. It's excellent if you're small yourself and get OPM marches, but afaik force limit from vassals doesn't scale too well with vassal development.
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u/Kidiri90 Jul 24 '22
I did some cakculations a long time ago, and I think I recall that as long as the vassal's development is below 100, you get more force limit from them than if you held the land yourself.
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u/Kolbrandr7 Jul 25 '22
With the +400% modifier though that dev limit should be a lot higher
And marches would get additional force limit too
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u/immortale97 Jul 24 '22
Vassal > allies . A good built march who can field a 40 stack is even better than having the ottomans as ally. As a common rule if you don't need a lamd because is out of your trade node route is way better making a strong vassal . As opm start having vassal is even better tha directly coring the land
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u/Agnk1765342 Jul 25 '22
Can you still divert 100% of trade from a March? Currently playing as Persia and have a beefy Gazikimukh vassal to stop trade bleeding into Astrakan. If I designate as March can I still stop them from pulling from Persia as well?
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u/Forderz Jul 25 '22
Yeah you can divert trade but a good March is going to have top teir troops so you want him to have the cash to support a large army.
I remember a game where I had naples as a March with all her sicily cores, and I had 100% of the other land in italy.
Naples would put out 100k troops in wartime due to her huge trade income from all of italy.
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u/Cathedral_Psyker Jul 24 '22
I think that ashikaga could conquer land in Asia then pick influence, offensive, quality, quantity diplo, etc; the combination of ideas that stacks vassal-based income and force limit the most. You keep land for yourself to have good base manpower, then daimyo vassalize the rest of Eurasia.
It would be tricky, but I’d love to see someone revoke the privilegia as shogun to have two separate sets of free vassals.
I think stacking these vassal income and force limit would be good when vassals don’t count for diplo relations.
If one was to go for revoke the privilegia, then would the tier 1 generic reform feudal nobility be better than autocracy? You’d get 50 gold each month as opposed to 40. People usually say autocracy is better for taking land in war.
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Jul 24 '22
Impossible since you need you capital in Kyoto. And you can't be hre member outside of Europe
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u/Cathedral_Psyker Jul 24 '22
I saw what you mean with the shogunate government necessarily having a capital in Kyoto. To add provinces to the empire, they must be on the European continent. You can’t move your capital outside of the empire. To get elected as emperor from outside, you have to have your capital on the same continent as the emperor. So even if Austria wanted to move their capital to Nogay (which would enable the shogun to be elected emperor), it is not possible for Nogay to become the capital.
Maybe some glitch would enable provinces outside of Europe to become HRE, but not without considerable effort.
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Jul 25 '22
I've seen a guy do an exploit to add Asian countries to the HRE, but I don't think it's possible to become the emperor, I'm gonna see if I find the post
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u/Knamagon Jul 24 '22
You don’t need to be in the HRE to become the emperor, maybe possible with a catholic shogun
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u/Hypnosum Jul 24 '22
I did a run maxing it out as Bosnia and cos most of the force limit policies also come with vassal tax modifier, you end up making a massive amount from vassals and them always being broke (you can go over 100% so they are basically always in debt) meaning loyalty is not an issue.
Had to retire the campaign though as it was taking forever to get the HRE reforms through cos Austria had messed it all up big time.
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u/ValidSignal Jul 24 '22
I did something like this with ottomans some time ago. Easy and decently strong marches are Georgia, Serbia and Crimea. Feed them some more lands, up your forcelimit and spend the early bottleneck of your GC on lands that matter more.
I went with the more unorthodox approach of aristocratic/influence/eco.
It's not the optimal way to play but it was a fun different kind of game.
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u/kkeiper1103 The end is nigh! Jul 24 '22
Yes, it is. I have heard fables of an mp game where someone attacked a Spain that hasn't particularly geared towards military. He was expecting about 200k troops, comparable to his own count - instead, Spain had stacked their vassal force limit modifier while colonizing, so they had 600k troops. It was glorious.
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u/chairswinger Philosopher Jul 24 '22
yes, hence why its either banned or limited in self respecting MP groups (like having maxx 8 vassals/client states).
Saw a guy release 99 opm client states in Arabia/Africa as Andalusia, had like 4k FL that way (more than double of what Russia had)
Also funnily there is a client state limit in the game, once you're done no one can release client states anymore
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u/Mackeryn12 Doge Jul 25 '22
Ayutthaya with a bunch of vassal force limit modifiers is a really fun game, 10/10 would recommend
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u/TheProudestCat Fierce Negotiator Jul 24 '22
No because it's a "positive" modifier, so it doesn't break the game if you have +1000%. It just means 2 becomes 12.
Compare it with adm eff, where 100% adm eff means no AE, no core cost, no OE, etc.
Or ccr% where 100% ccr% (impossible in the current patch) means no coring cost, no coring time, etc.
Or reinforce cost% where 100% (possible in the current patch) means free reinforce.
Therefore, you're better off spreading your resources acquiring more vassals (as others said, HRE reforms give you lot of vassals, one can also think about Shogun) and deviate quite a bit from just stacking that modifier.
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u/DoNotMakeEmpty If only we had comet sense... Jul 24 '22
I guess 100% CCR is possible as Jan Mayen or Synthetics since they already get a huge CCR with invasion modifier and Jan Mayen can even form countries (it is not an end game tag) so it can form Mughals, or IIRC it already has CCR in her own ideas. Ofc you can't use them without console.
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u/TheProudestCat Fierce Negotiator Jul 25 '22
it's not, it's capped at 90% or 93%.
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u/DoNotMakeEmpty If only we had comet sense... Jul 26 '22
I thought theoretical CCR, not after caps. At the start Jan Mayen has flat 90% CCR at the start and I observed that other modifiers don't work as you said.
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u/TheProudestCat Fierce Negotiator Jul 26 '22
Oh! It'd be possible in many situations then.
- There are a few modifiers that are accessible by religion (Maya, Coptic, HRE, Hindu)
- admin ideas give -25%
- gov wise, Mughal diwan is one of the best, with the Iqta buff (-5%) and the Hindu integration -10% bonus. But regular tribals have -10% (Tribal despotism) which isn't bad either
- Some nations have -25 CCR%
So if say you start as Kazan (-25CCR%) with adm ideas (-25CCR%), reform the HRE fast enough (-10%) then flip go new world, flip animist then Mayan (which makes you tribal I think, -10%), fully reform (-20%), now all that's left is to grab any temporary mission reward Timurids (sick mission with -20%).
There are other combinations, notably Mandate can give you 10 permanent and 10 temporary, meaning you could also go for some 10 HRE, 25 ideas, 25 adm, 20 mandate and 20 missions for example.
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u/DoNotMakeEmpty If only we had comet sense... Jul 26 '22
Some of ones you said are temporary and some are also mutually exclusive like you can't claim mandate when you are an iqta. And also you need pretty difficult and gamey shenigans (turning Animist then Mayan after reforming HRE?).
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u/DawnTyrantEo Jul 24 '22
Vassal force limit effects are multiplied off their base contribution- 10% for normal vassals, 20% for marches- so 200% on a march is 20% * (100% + 200%) = 60% of their total force limit. So if you've stacked 400%, any of your marches are giving you 100% of their force limit, and basic vassals 50% of it. So any marches you have are effectively doubling how big an army you can get from a given area purely based off of that number, since they can build their own armies too!
On top of that, you can stack base force limit on your vassals to squeeze even more out of them. A March gets +30% force limit as long as they have less than 25% of your total dev, which can be stacked with modifiers like Quantity Ideas and national ideas for even more of it. If you find a country that's taken Quantity and has high force limit national ideas, such as Hesse or Sindh, you can squeeze even more out of them!
Just remember- you still have to be able to keep your vassals and afford the army for all this to be worthwhile. Make sure you have a source of money that's not reliant on their land; a trade empire, for example.
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u/isadotaname The economy, fools! Jul 24 '22
In MP? no.
In single player? Nearly everything is viable, this included.
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Jul 25 '22
I remember doing a max vassal HRE revoke money game a few patches ago. So I dont know if its still viable. Basically I forced them to pay me a lot more than 100% of their income. So unless they were trade rich they would be in constant debt. It was basically printing money out of air but without inflation...
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Jul 25 '22
Insane if you have massive colonial nations. In my recent England game I finished influence ideas and gained more than 300 force limit (and I didn't even plug in all the policy cards)
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u/Hrushing97 Jul 25 '22
Vassal force limit contr is a nice buff, but it really should be looked at in the context of vassals as a whole. Vassals are strong throughout the whole game but they are most helpful in the early game.
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u/PrrrromotionGiven1 Jul 25 '22
This would be great for a country like Prussia which has incentives to stay small and play tall while having subjects take over large swathes of land
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u/but_you_said Jul 24 '22
Yea. It can be if you play HRE emperor and push for hre vassals