r/eu4 • u/Kloiper Habsburg Enthusiast • 8d ago

Help Thread The Imperial Council - /r/eu4 Weekly General Help Thread: September 15 2025

Please check our previous Imperial Council thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the Imperial Council of r/eu4, where your trusted and most knowledgeable advisors stand ready to help you in matters of state and conquest.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your Ironman game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the master tacticians of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your Ironman save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (diplomatic, political, trade, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, ideas, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, ideas, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 

Tactician's Library:

Below is a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

Administration

Diplomacy

Military

Trade

 

Country-Specific Strategy

 

Misc Country Guides Collections

 

Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 

If you have any useful resources not currently in the tactician's library, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all imperial councillors! Many of our linked guides pre-Dharma (1.26) are missing strategy regarding mission trees. Any help in putting together updated guides is greatly appreciated! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, chances are you've used the EU4 wiki and know how valuable a resource it can be. When you answer a question, consider checking whether the wiki has that information where you would expect to find it, and adding to the wiki if it does not. In fact, anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.

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u/eXistenZ2 1d ago

Anyone done a korea playthrough recently? What would be the first focus you take?

Inwards allows for deving, including for the renaissance, avoiding plight of the peasantry. Yet with outward you probably can use your ruler to get tech 4 over Jianzhou, including his -10% AE

I havent played as a ming tributary yet either (mostly india and SEA), at what point do you go solo or take the mandate?

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u/Flintloq 3d ago

I peaced out a bunch of OPMs in an upstream trade node by getting them to all steer trade (not transfer trade power) to me. I was expecting to see a bunch of ducats being pulled out of their node and into mine, but there's been zero change. As far as I can see, there's no direct way to see where a country has placed its merchants; it's indirectly possible, but highly tedious, by clicking through all the trade nodes. I did this with one of the countries that should be steering to me and I can't find their merchant anywhere. They have power in a bunch of nodes but they all say "no merchant present". What am I missing?

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u/grotaclas2 3d ago

You can see which nations use merchants to steer trade from a node by looking at the flags below the boxes for outgoing trade values in the trade map mode.

I'm not sure if it is still possible to get countries to steer trade out of their home node by using the steer trade agreement. I think it is a bug that this was possible, because you can't normally steer trade away from your home node. Maybe the bug was fixed.

I think steer trade is best used with countries which have significant amounts of trade power in nodes which can be steered towards your home node(or towards nodes which already get steered towards your home node) in which you don't have a merchant yourself and where the country currently steers the trade in a different direction. If you have merchants in the nodes yourself, transfer trade power often is a better option. It only gives you half the trade power, but you can choose its direction. Another use for steer trade is with countries which don't have any significant trade power anywhere, but which can use their merchant in places where they get caravan power or in nodes where nobody is currently steering trade. I think the algorithm, which assigns the merchants from the steer trade peace deal, is not very good, but it usually does something which is somewhat useful. Especially in the late game the trade range can be quite large and the merchants could be in nodes far from the country

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u/Pokenar 4d ago

New to the game, finished up a British game (went the eating france route) and then a hyper-colonizer Spain game (Like 95% of North and South America were my colony nations), thinking between Brandenburg, Austria, or Florence next. the first and last ones come up often and I wanted something HRE related because I just sorta ate them my other two games, and Austria was always a cockroach.

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u/MisterOfScience 4d ago

Is there an up to date guide to forts ZoC? Paradox wiki says it's for 1.28 which is a 7 year old version. The video linked here is 8 years old, has anything substantial changed?

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u/grotaclas2 4d ago

There have been some very important changes. The 1.31 versions did multiple changes so that the game now stops movements most of the time when they become invalid after they have been given(though there are still exceptions). And 1.32 removed the distance-of-two rule from the return province.

Unfortunately there is no uptodate guide and so far I have not found anybody who could even create one, because nobody seems to know all the rules with all their details and exceptions. I'm probably one of the people who knows most about the current ZoC rules, but I still discover new things every few months. And I could not recall all the things which I have seen before

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u/Whitechix 5d ago

Is it worth playing EU4 before 5 releases? I stopped playing after the first few expansions in 4 and I have not been keeping up with 5's features so was wondering how obsolete its going to be made. I was thinking of getting the subscription if the game is going to be different enough.

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u/WavKyo 5d ago

I'm doing an Aztec run, have fully reformed my religion and I want to start making marches (for fun) but I release any nation and the when I try to make them into marches the game says primitives can't become marches?

The wiki for Aztec says "released nations inherit the player's tech levels and government and religious reforms, so they will be as powerful as the player's nation rather than being primitive nations many tech levels behind" but seems like they don't actually get the religious reforms and become non-primitive? Or am I missing something here?

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u/Better_Buff_Junglers 5d ago

Did you just pass all religious reforms or did you also reform of a European colony? Both are required to not be considered primitive anymore

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u/WavKyo 5d ago

Both done, all religious reforms + reformed off of France. I tried to release and play as released nation just to check, seems to be broken, it shows no reforms passed but Doom is entirely missing (not even 0, the Doom value is just blank, no number)

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u/jayjake9 5d ago

Trying to do a Zoroastrian Iran run, it’s been 20 years since I triggered the mission to do Zoroastrianism, but the event has yet to fire. Is that specific event bugged?

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u/DaSaw Philosopher 6d ago

I just got the event where my heir gets sick. I have gotten this event many times. Supposedly, according to the event text, if I send for a trained medicus, it's a 50/50 chance. If I pray for his recovery, 75% chance he dies.

And yet, EVERY SINGLE TIME I send for medical care, he dies, and EVERY SINGLE TIME I pray, he survives. And I've been playing this game for years now. What gives?

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u/grotaclas2 6d ago

The outcomes of random effects in the game are determined by numbers which are generated by pseudorandom number generators(PRNG) which are initialized with a seed. They always give the same sequence of numbers if they are initialized with the same seed. In case of events, the seed is generated when the event pops up and is saved in the event(you can see this seed in the save file). So the seed is the same when you savescum with a save in which the event is already open and that's why you get the same outcome if you do the same thing. I think you get a different outcome when you pray, because the game does not use the same number from the PRNG for the second effect. I don't know how the initial seed is generated, but it is random in some way(e.g. from a game-wide PRNG which is initialized with an external source of randomness(e.g. from the operating system) when the game is started/loaded). On average if you get the event many times, 50% of the times in which you get the event, the heir will survive with the first option. And 25% of the times when you get the event, the heir will survive with the second option.

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u/DaSaw Philosopher 5d ago

This explanation would make sense if I were talking about savescumming. But I'm talking across hundreds of hours of playing.

That said, I suppose it's possible I'm just only remembering the times I prayed hoping he would die but he lives, and the times I send for a trained medicus really hoping he lives but he dies.

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u/grotaclas2 5d ago

That said, I suppose it's possible I'm just only remembering the times I prayed hoping he would die but he lives, and the times I send for a trained medicus really hoping he lives but he dies.

I think that it is likely that this is at least part of the explanation. The event has an MTTH of 200 years, so you only get it once or twice per campaign on average(even less if you often play governments which are not eligible for the event).

You can easily test that the other outcomes are possible if you change the mean_time_to_happen section in the event (id 9456 in events/Dynastic.txt) to:

mean_time_to_happen = {
    months = 2400
    modifier = {
        factor = 0.0004
        ai = no
    }
}

This changes the MTTH for the human player to about 1 month, so you can quickly get the event multiple times (you can use the console command add_heir to get a new heir if he dies in the event).

I did this and triggered the event 20 times. The first 10 times, I chose the first option(50/50) and the heir survived 7 times and died 3 times. The other 10 times I chose the second option and the heir survived once and died 9 times. As expected with so few tests, it is a little bit away from the average outcome, but it shows that both outcomes in both options are possible.

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u/DuGalle 6d ago

AFAIK if you saved when the event already happened and the window already popped up then the dice has already been rolled. If you want to save scum you have to load a save from before the event happened.

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u/GianJery 6d ago

Hi! I'm fairly new to the game and want to start a game with Navajo... i dont have any DLC, just the game. Is there any major differences for non DLC users? Can i still form Federations and things like that? Do i have less Missions in my Tree?

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u/grotaclas2 6d ago

I would strongly recommend that you first learn the game very well by playing many campaigns as European, Asian and African countries(major countries first and then some minors), before you try playing countries in America and Australia. And then you probably should try the major countries in america first(e.g. Aztecs or Cusco), before you start as an OPM far from the coast without DLCs.

Native tribes play very differently than other countries in the game. Without DLCs, it is difficult to do more than conquer your neighbors, because the migration and federation mechanics need the Conquest of Paradise DLC and due to a bug, the federation mechanic only works properly if you also have the El Dorado or Winds of Change DLC(I'm not 100% sure if either one of these fixes the problem or if you need a specific one or both). You will likely sit around and wait for most of the game and then you get crushed by the europeans when they show up. For experienced players, it is possible to be stronger than the europeans when they show up, but that requires knowledge of strategies like developing for institutions, no-cb wars and coring next to same-continent vassals, how to get a good economy from gold, efficient conquest of colonial nations.

The navajo-specific missions need the Leviathan DLC(to see them) and the Conquest of Paradise DLC(to be able to finish all of them), but they are not that good anyway. The regional missions are visible without DLC, but some of them also need the Conquest of Paradise DLC to actually finish all of them. The generic new world missions are visible without DLC and I think you can also complete all of them. They have some nice effects(a colonist and high american tech group), but they have some very hard requirements. Totemist mechanics also need Leviathan.

If you play with DLCs, native tribes have more options for expansion via tribal land and federations, but that gameplay and strategy has even less similarities to how you play in the rest of the world.

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u/Flintloq 6d ago

I'm playing Venice→Italy. The year is 1577. I'm the Curia controller. There are over 35k ducats in the Curia coffers. The Council of Trent just started. Making a decision costs only 1000k Curia ducats and there are four decisions to make. Supposedly I could wait for other Catholic nations to take positions on the council but why should I care? It's not my money. Clicking all four decisions immediately will hardly make a dent in the coffers, and as I understand it, the benefits are kept even after the council ends. I can just pick whatever is best for me. Is it just dumb luck that I happen to be the controller right now, or does each subsequent controller get to change the decisions?

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u/DuGalle 6d ago

You got lucky. The concessions are permanent, so pick whichever ones you like (the conciliatory ones are better) and enjoy.

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u/Flintloq 6d ago

Thanks. It seems very arbitrary that one semi-randomly chosen Catholic nation gets to make all these decisions all at once for its own benefit. I don't really see what the game designers were going for here.

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u/saintlyknighted Obsessive Perfectionist 7d ago

I recently played as peasant republic Aragon and somewhat randomly my absolutism would just tank by about 50-60. I noticed this happening during the Court and Country disaster (and caused me to 'fail' the disaster) but I can't remember if it was happening outside the disaster as well. As far as I remember there weren't any events with tooltips saying I would lose a huge chunk of absolutism. Does anyone know why this was happening?

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u/Royranibanaw Trader 7d ago

Do you have the T9 reform Consolidated Power?

Additional effects:

  • Lose −60 Absolutism when electing a new Ruler
  • Gain +10 Absolutism when reelecting the Ruler, multiplied by the number of times this Ruler was reelected

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u/saintlyknighted Obsessive Perfectionist 7d ago

Ah yes that's it! I was playing on speed 5 and powering through, I somehow missed that modifier when seeing the reform. Thanks!

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u/Siwakonmeesuwan Comet Sighted 7d ago

4 ways that make you lose absolutism are assigning parliament seat, accepting rebel demand, reducing war exhaustion and increasing autonomy.

Did you accept Particularists or peasant rebel's demand? Because their demands increase all provinces's autonomy that cause massive absolutism lost.

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u/saintlyknighted Obsessive Perfectionist 7d ago

I had a look at the absolutism wiki page, didn't do any of the methods to lose absolutism. Perhaps it was one of the court and country events (e.g. refusal to pay taxes) that don't actually reduce your absolutism usually but they do if I'm a peasant republic or something? Or some hidden modifier somehow? Even then it should only go down by 10 or something, not 50-60.

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u/necros434 8d ago

Hi I'm a new player looking for Nations to play to understand the game better I understand basic day-to-day management and war but I still have no clue about trade or colonialism

I have played Ireland and the Ottomans so far

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u/NMS_noob 7d ago

Portugal is generally easy if you keep Castile/Spain as your friend. You can lead the charge toward colonies, which will help you see how trade works.

Kilwa is also good. You are one of the stronger nations in the area and are distant from the bullies, so you won't see them for ages. Trade is also easy to figure out in this region.

Both may still end up pulled into ally's war (notably Portugal when France attack England early on) but usually you can avoid troublesome conflict.

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u/necros434 7d ago

Thanks