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Thank you, I appreciate the support!

Glad you are enjoying! I try to post regularly so people can watch the whole way through!

Thank you! Every EU4 game goes a little different, this one took a much more diplomatic turn than I was originally planning.

We're trying to complete the French mission tree. It has received several updates and enhancements since I completed the Better than Napoleon achievement a few years back. Hope that you'll join us!

I was pondering that for Milan, I don't think I've annexed them yet in the next few videos recorded. Lower AE would be great and I knew they still had those cores on Venice. I had not considered the possibility of proactively trying to interfere with the Ottomans to keep them under the control, but the Ottomans are certainly having a great game... probably in part because I keep messing with and weakening Austria!

I didn't even think of that either, I don't use threaten war very much (normally because I want to take way more than one province and don't like the truce). I've released vassals with cores though and made extensive use of the trade favors to return core mechanic to get land from allies.

Unfortunately I don't manage to grab Naples with the Provence cores you suggested. Later in the run they've fallen into PU with Castile, so that's going to be fun to unwind. But a governing capacity monument would be great!

Agree! I accept it a few episodes from now and start improving the Bourse, Polders, and Tower of London. The goods produced on the Polder is particularly strong. Ironically I keep passing on improvements to the French monuments...

Yes, slowly working on making them states as I get admin capacity. Too much territory to state right now, a good problem to have! I should accept Dutch as soon as I stop burning so much diplo points on annexation and too many relations. My understanding is that you need your capital in the Low Countries to prevent the special Dutch Revolts disaster (which is much more frustrating than the traditional separatist uprisings).

Good point! I remembered the Genoese provinces over there afterward, though normally Genoa loses them so fast it doesn't end up being relevant. This time looks like Muscovy decided to keep them relevant!

Thanks for the subscribe and excellent suggestion! Provence has a very interesting mission tree. I have permanent claims from the mission tree, but being able to return core for low AE would be really useful. I start integrating Provence a few episodes from now, so I'll have to see if I can move quickly enough to feed them back those provinces...

Agree! They're a large nation with a lot of moving parts and lots of flavor. You can play them a couple of different ways as well which keeps it interesting!

Glad that you're enjoying! Once you've completed all five reforms you're ready to reform as soon as you border a colonizer or one of their colonial nations. You need that border to reform, so that's why I try to colonize towards places they normally show up like the Colonial Colombia region. It's unfortunate they don't have an alternate way to reform without relying on a European nation.

@@Embark_Gaming Oh okay, thank you, I'll try going towards Brazil cuz that's the only way I got let

Welcome aboard and thanks so much for the sub!

You are totally right, I had forgotten that! I was so used to England holding Ireland and needing to rush the disputed crossing.

Yes, that's one of the fun aspects of EUIV. To live out all the things that might have been if things had been a bit different!

Yes, in EU4 Portugal is mostly a trade, exploration, colonization game. HOI4 tends more towards industrialization and war. I've played HOI4 before, but only as the major powers. I'll have to give Portugal a try!

I should probably look at that, the main issue is that if you take defender of the faith you essentially guarantee all Catholic nations if attacked by non-catholics. I didn't want to get drawn into wars that I didn't care about, like if the Ottomans attack Balkan nations. But if all the Catholic nations are large and unlikely to be attacked by non-Catholics it would be worth doing.

You are right, probably not the best use of diplo points (unless you just have nothing else to do with them). Really I should not have added the gold provinces to the trade company and should state them instead. A good observation!

I normally wait to add provinces to trade companies until they are converted because adding a province to a trade company reduces missionary strength by -20% (basically impossible to convert). Converting the provinces is generating lots of papal influence for me, which I keep turning in for stability and other bonuses. In one of these videos (perhaps this one) I needed to add a few provinces to the trade company to get more states in the trade company so I could make trade investments required for a mission. But in general yes, I wait for the conversion.

Yes, it's interesting to see where the AI decides to settle. In my game Spain was all about Colombia and Peru, but left places like Mexico alone and didn't go around to South Asia until quite late. Late game the problem is colonizing AIs want all your colonial provinces, so they have -200 opinion modifier and start breaking alliances with you. You'll see it get interesting in later episodes...

Sorry! You're right, I've been continually pushing it down but that wasn't enough. We've just switched to a different recording software recently so that should fix future ones. I do these in batches, so the new software shows up on video 28. The joys and challenges of technology!

Yes, one of the challenges as you grow larger is the revolts all over the world. You end up having to fan out little army stacks all over. It eventually settles down so long as you stop each revolt before they get a chance to siege provinces (which adds more years of separatism and perpetuates the cycle). A lot of my rebels are coming from provinces that I conquered off other nations (like Kongo, Benin, Philippines, etc.); so not much you can do on those ones. Unless you take Humanist ideas for it's years of separatism reduction.

Happy to share! I try to plan out which ideas are going to give me policies that I want as well!

Yes, I haven't done circumnavigation in a long time so had no read on how much range I needed (especially with the flagship movement and Portuguese special naval units that have less naval attrition). I've been steadily colonizing since that so we'll get there! Luckily the cost of a few ships is pretty minimal at this point.

When you get your first colonist you have the opportunity to set your Native Policy. They're shown as three buttons on the Stability and Expansion tab (same place war exhaustion and rebel progress is shown). I normally pick the Native Coexistence option which reduces the chance of native uprising by 100%. It means colonies grow slower than some of the other options, but not having to move troops around to babysit colonies is a major plus.

Happy to elaborate! Tunis starts as a large nation, but in this game lost most of their land to Tlemcen. By vassalizing Tunis I can now declare a re-conquest war on Tlemcen and return Tunis's cores back to them. There are a few benefits: 1) Returning cores in a reconquest war gives less aggressive expansion, 2) since Tunis already has cores on the land they don't have to pay admin cost to core them like I would as Portugal, and 3) my main goal is to stop the coastal raiding from Tlemcen and as a vassal Tunis isn't allowed to raid me. Basically it allows you to gobble up land more cheaply and later annex the vassal with diplomatic points instead of admin points. It's hard to vassalize diplomatically though, so them leaving Tunis as a one province minor was a lucky find. You'll probably see me declare the reconquest war in a later episode!

Good question! You automatically collect in your home node (Seville as Portugal) without having to place a merchant there. The home node receives a +10% bonus to trade power for each merchant who is steering trade. So by placing more and more steering merchants it's giving me a bonus in Seville. The trade mechanics are confusing and the system is dynamic though, so sometimes you just have to try things and see what gives you the highest monthly value!

Appreciate for this advice. Didn't know that. Will give a try!

@@user34268 Happy to help! I've played for a long time and still learn some new tidbit regularly!

The main advantage in game is that it helps your colonies grow faster, which is useful right now when I'm trying to move fast and gobble up the high priority provinces (trade value, missions, etc.). It does reduce the development in the home province, but it culture converts it as well so I think it's a net benefit overall when you have the exploration idea that makes it free.

Got it and will do! I do batches of these at a time, so I'll adjust the settings and it should improve on the next batch that comes out!

Thanks! I try to go for the trade, high development, and mission driven ones first; otherwise the other colonizers show up and get in the way. There's always some luck to it though, in this one we got lucky that Castile is mostly staying out of the way!

@@Embark_Gaming Castile isn´t the problem, But england and France are always annoying.

@@paulavasconcelos68 We've been fortunate that they haven't really done any significant colonizing this run yet (or if they are it's up north in North America so not in conflict with Portugal's missions).