Things You Likely Didn't Know About EU4

Basically EU4 knowledge passed down through the ages by the greatest virgins of the eu4 community.

Twitch Vods Channel -🚨 @LudiClips 🚨

Personal Channel - 🚨 @Ludisan 🚨

More Starting Moves Guides in this playlist:

Europa Universalis IV is a grand strategy games published by Paradox Interactive. All rights reserved. This is an unofficial video, not endorsed by Paradox Interactive.

The following DLC is used in this series:

Eu4 Origins leviathan Emperor DLC, Dharma, Rule Britannia, Cradle of Civilization, Third Rome, Mandate of Heaven, Rights of Man, Mare Nostrum, The Cossacks, Common Sense, El Dorado, Art of War, Res Publica, Wealth of Nations, and Conquest of Paradise.

#eu4 #eu4guide

[Tomasco]

I gotta say my runs really started taking off when I stopped raising autonomy to keep rebels at bay. The autonomy advice you gave may be the best EU4 tip I've seen in the last year

[speedyx]

23:27 - there is one instance when increasing autonomy MIGHT be a good decision. When you have a useless island with litle dev you can increase autonomy, even tho it takes away benefits such as manpower and tax you wouldn't be getting much from a 3 dev minor island anyway and having rebels constantly pop up on an island and having to embark you army, ship them to the island, disembark, fight rebels, embark again, ship to mainland, disembark can waste you a lot of time for pretty much no benefit at all

[mirastor]

Ludi: Once you get Diplo tech 9 your spies may study technology.
Also Ludi: So for example you got 6 diplo and the ottomans have 8 diplo
Me: slightly confused

[tmax]

Important to note that a lot of achievements have "Not Using random new world" as a pre-requisite for unlocking the achievement.

[hndesohn]

i didnt expect to learn anything new, but even with 2500 hours i learned about 2 or 3 new things, so thanks ludi!

[jarlbreadmaker]

Additional point to the supply limit mapmode, if you select an army after turning it on, it will show where you can send the army without it going over and causing attrition.

[Chironex_Fleckeri]

Here's something very, very few people understand about EU4: Trade steering bonus to outgoing value is hard-coded to be influenced by tagID, the actual numeric value that a nation has in the game files. I'm pretty sure this mechanic goes back all the way to vanilla EU4 in 2013. It's a small thing because ducats should be immaterial later on, but keep reading because having a higher tagID is a hidden nerf to trade income potential. This is something that MUST be fixed by the devs in EU5.

Trade steering does two main things. It helps you pull trade in a particular direction (it adds extra 'weight' to your trade power). That's the less important facet of Trade Steering for this discussion. TagID does not affect this part.


The second effect of trade steering is more obscure and few people understand it. The outgoing value bonus from having a merchant in the node is determined by tagID, so every new tag is automatically worse at trading because this is hard-coded and breaks immersion once you understand what this means. Sweden is tagID 4, which means Sweden will ALWAYS have their merchant in slot 1, which is the one that has a base of 5%. Are you Sardinia Piedmont? Roman Empire? Your tagID is like 700 and 900 respectively, so there are literally hundreds of nations that will get their merchant prioritized over yours. Only 5 merchants will get to apply trade steering bonus in a node, so Sardinia Piedmont will probably never even get to benefit from this part of trade steering until it's so late that you're the only one in each node...

Basically we care because it gives us increased outgoing value, which multiplies as the trade passes downstream through nodes. It's sort of like earning interest, for those who don't have a good grasp. This is why people send trade through as many nodes as possible before collecting. You're 'compounding' interest at each of the 6 nodes, in a very rough sense.

So we know only 5 countries can increase outgoing value. Trade steering increases these base values by your 'Trade Steering Efficiency.' 100% trade steering doubles whatever base bonus you are assigned. Again, it's sorted by tag order. You may only get to double 1% instead of doubling 5% if your tagID is a large number relative to the other tags with merchants assigned in that node. A merchant that 'steers' trade is just one that isn't 'Collecting' in that node. The Tunis node only flows into Seville right? If you're Castile in 1444, a merchant in Tunis is considered to be steering trade, and you can hover over the outgoing value box and see the "Bonus to Outgoing Value" .

5% merchant 1 (Sweden will always be merchant 1 in any node they have a merchant steering trade in. Always. Check me on this)

2.5% merchant 2 (already youre halving your bonus from trade steering if you're

1.75%? Merchant 3

1%? Merchant 4

0.8?% Merchant 5


It's similar to this. Basically only merchant 1 and 2 have any material impact from their trade steering efficiency. The confusing part may be that this tagID is being ranked at each direction branching off of a node.

You can test this for yourself by just mousing over the outgoing flow node. See who is pulling trade in that direction. Then look at the countries that are increasing the value. All this info is just on a single tool tip and nowhere else. 100% of the time the outgoing value bonus will be ordered by tagID and not the order that maximizes value. On the wiki you can find the list of nations (tags) and their tagID . It would make sense that the nation with the highest trade steering efficiency would always get to be that merchant 1, that way the trade value is maximized for everyone. It doesn't work like that at all though.


There's one or two threads from about 7-8 years ago on this subject. That's all I could find. This isn't even written in the wiki but it's 100% how it works.

[VoxDargard]

2nd part would be awesome, would love to hear more about advisor combos for events. Keep up the great work!

[kazarium]

Amazing video as always Ludi, thx for the info! :)

[darthimperious]

I would 100% love a video about advisors! I was wondering why I never got the Radical Reforms event early on in the game, and that's because I tend to pick either the Inquisitor, the Natural Scientist, or the Tax one, and get the inflation reduction later, when I actually have inflation to reduce.

But yeah, here's one vote for making an Advisors guide video!

[vakar]

Great video and great pronunciation of Alicante, you make this spanish proud.

[DawidEstishort]

When it comes to maps you can change or assign additional map modes to the starting 10 ones by right clicking on them. For example I like to assign relations map to the diplomatic map, so I can quickly access both of them.

[wolfmin]

Great video as always ludi, keep it up! Would love to see a second part to this video. Been playing for around 6 month now and didn't know half of the stuff you covered. Would it be possible to do a culture shift video, how to go about doing it, when you should do it and the combinations you can do etc please? Would love to do an Italy campaign with this trick

[HdGKP]

Super informative! It would be great to keep going along the pattern you followed here of: choosing one aspect/stat someone may want to increase and exploring all the ways in the game that can help you out. For example, you want to increase Army Tradition? Decrease Corruption? Improve Nobility Loyalty Equilibrium? These is the stuff you can tweak. I find that way more intuitive and useful, than only talking about a mechanic (like Estates) and all the disparate effects it can have on dozens of modifiers, in different game plays, across different ages, etc

[MrMichelangelo]

PS about the Power Projection from privateering your rival, if the rival has a junior partner of personal union, you get extra 10 points from privateering both senior and junior partners (e.g. privateering Castile when it's a senior of Aragon)

[haritos]

The AE impact reduction due to spy network is something actually amazing, making a lot more sense to spy on your bigger neighbors even when you are ahead in tech!

[mmg]

Petition for Ludi doing an advisor events Video

[TheHustlinNation]

Definitely want a second part especially about the last info concerning the advisors and triggerable events

[BalleyBall]

saw the hate thread and your response on reddit, and i once again want to say thank you for making these videos because as a new player these videos have taught me so much about EU4 :-)

[incarnateblizzard]

Thanks for your videos, helping a lot. What I just realized: if you don't get the Burgandian inheritance, just wait until it's really inherited (not only the PU) attack, take 1 land with a Burgundian core and afterwards take back all the burgundian lands for no AE - some works for Lithuania after Poland formed the Commonwealth