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Beginners' Guide to Europa Universalis 2: Part 2

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Strategy Guide
Article Date: February 27, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Europa Universalis
Category: Real Time Strategy
Developer: Paradox Interactive
Publisher: Strategy First
Release Date: Released
Minimum Spec: P200, 64 MB RAM, 180 MB hard disk space
Files / Links: Click Here

Back to Part 1

The second part of our Beginner's Guide, covering Religion, Diplomacy, War and Peace…

Religion

Every one’s true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

—Montaigne


There are two kinds of religion in EU2: State religion, which is the officially recognized religion of a nation; and provincial religion, which is the religion actually practiced by the inhabitants of a given province. The interaction of these two is very important in maintaining provincial stability.

How to find the religion sliders

If you click on the religious symbol on the monarch window, you’ll be taken to your “religious tolerance sliders”. As explained in the manual, this is a zero-sum game. Being more tolerant of one religion makes you less tolerant of another. States which contain only one religion get a very free ride in domestic terms: crank your state religion slider all the way to the right, and you’ll get the maximum provincial religious stability bonus in all your provinces. It can keep you out of a lot of trouble.

If you have several different religions in your provinces, things get more difficult. It’s still best to crank the tolerance for your official religion as high as it will go. Then try to balance the sliders for the other religions in your country to a highest common denominator. Put the tolerance for religions not present in your country to a minimum to support this.

Religious tolerance sliders

These tolerance settings also affect your international relations. States having a religion you are tolerant of will tend to be friendlier, while relations with states having a religion you do not tolerate will steadily sink. If you are playing a heavily diplomatic game, then this is important. However, most players are highly aggressive in the international arena, and the negative effects of this aggression will tend to override any diplomatic benefits you might otherwise gain from religious tolerance. Worry about your internal stability first and second, with international effects a distant third.

Missionaries are expensive, take a long time to do their work, provoke a revolt when they fail—and they fail rather often. However, they are also almost the only means you have of changing a province’s religion. Provinces that do not share the state religion and culture suffer from taxation and production minuses that can quickly add up to over half the province’s revenue (at which point you’d make more money from the province if it was your vassal!) Missionaries can convert the religion (and the culture alongside it) to that of your current state religion and culture. For provinces that are economically important, or that are proving troublesome for revolts, it’s well worth it. Just be sure to station an army in or near the province to deal with the revolts when the missionaries fail. Note that colonial provinces are much easier to convert!

If a province has fewer than 700 people, you can use settlers to change its religion and culture. This is fairly foolproof, but only useful in limited circumstances. Historical and random events will also change your provincial religions, but these are beyond your control.

Many countries in EU2 are stuck with the religion they begin with. Muscovy (later Russia), for example, is going to be Orthodox Christian and you cannot change that. A number of the Central and Western European nations have the option to shift, however. Changing religion is a strategic decision of the highest order: view it not as changing a suit of clothes, but as a planned major maneuver to further your long-term goals. Note that pages 72-73 of the manual list the advantages and disadvantages of each religion. You should read them all, both to know what your religion does, what a religion you’re considering adopting does, and what your opponents are benefiting from (or suffering from).

The manual points out that when you change your state religion, you suffer a loss of 5 levels of stability. In addition, most of your diplomatic relations will be shattered: alliances and diplomatic marriages will break while relations with your former co-religionists will become rather frosty. Your religious tolerance slider settings also become obsolete: change religions while paused, if you can, and immediately reset the sliders to reduce the number of provincial revolts you have to face.



Diplomacy

Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.

—Isaac Goldberg


Don’t ignore diplomacy, even if your long-term goal is to conquer the entire world. You may or may not want allies along the way, but you’re probably going to want to break up the coalitions of your enemies! Note that if you intend to play a heavily diplomatic game, you should try to be Catholic for the bonus diplomats.

The various gifts and insults are mostly self-explanatory. You hand out money and hopefully get better relations from the gifts, though the increase is not guaranteed! If you have a lot of cash, though, this is a sure means of gaining a friend. Note that the AI will never give you cash! Insults rarely provoke the AI into a war and thus are rarely worth the cash. Claiming another nation’s throne is not worth the loss in stability: if you’re going to lose stability, you might as well just lose it on the declaration of war. Warnings and guarantees are useful but not certain to have the desired effect of either protecting a smaller ally or gaining a casus belli against an enemy.

“Royal marriages” are the cheapest diplomatic tool. On the bright side, they improve your relations slightly. However, they are a double-edged sword, because declaring war on a nation with which you have a Royal Marriage costs a level of stability. The AI will sometimes try to trap you in this manner, by enticing you into a marriage. You can do the same. In general, however, if you have diplomats accumulating and nothing to do with them, either through a lack of funds or lack of better things to do, a scattering of Royal Marriages among nations you don’t intend to fight is not a bad idea. You net a few victory points, a bit of goodwill, and a few nations that will think twice before attacking you. Note that you can normally only enter marriages with states that share your religion (though Orthodox states can marry anybody, and Counter-Reformed Catholics can marry Catholics.)

Military access is useful if you can get it; it allows you to march through the other country at will. However, you cannot declare war while you have military access and you cannot revoke the military access while you have troops stationed in the other nation.

Ever wondered what those symbols around the national shields mean?

The meat and potatoes of diplomacy is alliances. You can ask your allies to join in any war you become involved in. They will accept if their relations with you are reasonably good compared to their relations with your enemy. This provides you, incidentally, with a means of breaking up an enemy alliance: if you have better relations with one member of an alliance than the member upon whom you declare war, chances are the one with whom you have good relations will refuse to go to war, breaking it out of the alliance. Perhaps now it will join yours?

The “leader of the alliance”, in peacetime, is the country that asks the others to join. If another country asks you to join, they will be the alliance leader, and not you. This is important if you intend to use alliance as a stepping-stone to vassalization and diplomatic annexation: while the manual and game don’t say so, it appears you must be the leader of the alliance to accomplish these tasks.

In wartime, the leader of the alliance is the state which declared war (or upon which war was declared). This is important because that state is permitted to negotiate peace on behalf of all other allied states. If you want to ensure maximum gains from a war in which you are not the alliance leader, you must negotiate a separate peace before the leader decides on a general peace! (The AI tends to be forgiving about this, especially if you help it continue the war with some cash donations.) Note, too, the value of negotiating separate peaces with all the disparate states you are at war with. This can provide you with more net gains if you are doing well, since you can extract separate concessions from each state. Defensively, it may break up enemy coalitions by offsetting their truce timers. The Truce Timer is the 5-year truce begun by a peace treaty: if you declare war in those 5 years, the cost in stability is enormous. By setting your enemies on different clocks, you may be able to avoid fighting all of them at once or at least increase the duration of the truce.

Keep the Treaty of Tordesillas in mind when colonizing

Also note that enemy alliances can be used to skip around some of the Declaration of War stability costs. For example, if you want to fight Spain, but you have no casus belli and you are both Catholic (so a Declaration of War would cost you 3 stability), but Spain is allied to Denmark, which is Protestant and refusing you trade (the trade refusal gives you a casus belli and the different religion avoids the loss of one stability level for declaring war on co-religionists). You can declare war on Denmark in hopes that Spain will honor the alliance with Denmark, allowing you to fight the Spanish without losing three levels of stability.

You can make another state your vassal if certain requirements are met: the intended vassal must be smaller than you are, and you must have a Royal Marriage (which requires that you share the same religion), be allied, and have relations of at least 190. You can also force some states to accept vassalization in a peace treaty. Having vassals is quite nice: you get half their income and military access. Keep your vassals happy, though: if your relations fall below 120, the vassal can renounce its ties to you by declaring war. If you win the war, you can always subjugate them once more. Gaining a diplomatic vassalization is difficult most of the time: if you have a monarch with a high diplomatic rating (four or five dots), it gets easier, especially if the other state’s monarch has a low diplomatic rating. If the vassal’s situation is fairly desperate—losing a war, or low stability—it gets easier.

The ultimate diplomatic stroke is annexation. You can annex states that have you’re your vassals for at least ten years, with whom you share a religion, and with whom your relations are at least 190. Diplomatic Annexation is usually very hard to achieve unless you have a monarch with a high diplomatic rating and the vassal’s diplomatic rating is very low, or the vassal’s situation is fairly desperate. Keep plugging away with raising relations and offering annexation, and eventually it will work: and the nation is completely absorbed into yours. Victory—diplomacy is war by other means! Conquering a state by this method is expensive, because of all the payments you must make to keep it friendly, but it may still be cheaper than a war.

Finally, note your country’s rating. This is a verbal expression of a value known as “badboy”. Badboy increases as you annex provinces and increases a great deal when you annex a state; it decreases slowly over time. A high badboy value will severely impair your relations with other nations, because they feel threatened by your expansion. This provides a concrete form of other nation’s worries about the balance of power. If you are going to conquer any substantial amount of territory, your badboy value is going to soar. The only consolation for your bad reputation is that your size and power will be enough to see you through the resulting wars: but if your enemies sense weakness, they will try to cut you down to size. Territories conquered in Europe tend to count for more than territories conquered in the colonies, so it is easier to gain a massive empire in Asia, Africa, or the Americas than in Europe and the Mediterranean. Even so, rapid annexations of countries in the Americas or Asia will cause the other nations of the world to distrust you. It’s still worthwhile because of the value of many of these provinces, the weak defence put up by the natives, and the rapiditiy with which you can therefore expand your empire.

War

Money forms the sinews of war.

—Cicero


Cicero’s comment was almost certainly already proverbial in his day, and it is certainly true in EU2: if your economy is not up to the task, you will have a hard time winning your wars. Thus, it’s worth repeating: Don’t invest in land warfare technology to the detriment of Trade and Infrastructure. Don’t build fortresses to the exclusion of manufactories. Don’t build armies to the exclusion of colonies and merchants. Finally, don’t routinely keep an army beyond what your country can easily support. Keeping your finances in order will ensure you have the ability to prosecute your wars to a successful conclusion. Actually fighting them is the next step….

An example of a military machine that's slightly too big

There are two basic kinds of wars: offensive wars, which you declared, and defensive wars, which come at you by surprise. Since preparation for defensive wars is also your peacetime “rest state,” and offensive wars can become defensive wars all too easily, we’ll look at defensive wars first, then offensive wars, then battles and sieges.

Your peacetime deployments need to deal with two threats: invasion and revolts. Revolts are best dealt with by keeping armies distributed around your country so that you have an army within a few provinces of any potential revolt. If you know that a given province will revolt, then station a force in it to deal with the revolt as soon as possible. Because newly-built units have very low morale, you should build reinforcements for such armies in different provinces and march them in after they have full morale.

Invasion should be countered in two ways: armies on the frontier, and fortresses. Fortresses in EU2 can get incredibly expensive, because the base cost of each level of a fortress is $100 more than the previous level. Thus a level 1 fortress costs $100, a level 2 costs $200, and a level 6 costs $600 (for a total investment of $2,100 to build a level 6 fortress - plus inflation!) Every province should have a level 1 or 2 fortress, to force an invader to besiege the province in order to capture it. However, larger fortresses are expensive enough that you should think twice before building them.

If you are willing to let the enemy besiege your frontier provinces, and possibly slip some raiding forces deeper, consider the following defensive strategy: build up the fortresses on your threatened frontier, and keep your armies as a reaction force a province or two back from the frontier. The enemy armies will besiege your frontier provinces, and probably suffer significant losses to attrition as the siege wears on. Once the enemy force is worn down, your army, still fresh, can attack and lift the siege.

If you are planning an offensive war, try to ensure you know what you want to take. If possible, line up your forces to accomplish this goal beforehand, or have the monetary reserves to build reinforcements. Remember that you’ll usually need to conquer two provinces for every one you want to claim in the peace treaty (unless you take every province in the country). It is usually best to attack across the width of your frontier, if you can do so in sufficient strength to besiege them all. This makes it difficult for the enemy to react to all your advances at once and also blocks enemy raiding parties. You are usually better off not sending many raiding parties, as they tend to die of attrition because they move beyond your supply line (of provinces you control). The exception is colonial warfare, where you can often seize numerous undefended and unfortified colonies, provinces, and trading posts with a small force. Remember that you can immediately burn the trading posts to free them up for your own colonization attempts!

If fighting a smaller country, aim to annex every province except the capital, and then take the capital province in a second war. If fighting a major power, try to carve critical economic or positional provinces out of them. Another useful strategy is to steadily annex a path to the enemy capital. This will allow you to rapidly attack the enemy capital, and hopefully capture it, bringing the enemy much nearer to accepting your peace terms. If you plan to win your sieges by assault, be sure to line up plenty of replacement infantry, both as armies already built and in the ready cash to build more.

Battles are often a perplexing phenomenon to the EU2 beginner. Forces clash, there’s a lot of noise, a couple of arcane numbers are displayed, the morale bars drop, and somebody wins. If it’s a medieval battle, the side that loses often completely disintegrates. What’s going on here?

First, consider the three arms: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Infantry starts off weak, but has doubled in effectiveness by Land Tech 6 and becomes the mainstay of the army by the midpoint of the game. Cavalry starts off very powerful, but steadily loses influence until it is the least important of the three arms by the end of the game. Artillery doesn’t even exist in the beginning of the game, but steadily gains in power after its arrival and is critical in sieges.

Battles are fought in a series of two alternating segments: fire and shock. Cavalry has no firepower until late in the game, and even then it has little, but it has terrific shock power. Infantry and artillery steadily gain in firepower, and slowly gain some shock ability. Thus, cavalry is critical in the early medieval battles. Moreover, a side that has twice as much cavalry as its opponent gains a shock combat bonus, and cavalry is the arm that damages an enemy force when it routs (and since medieval battles involve lots of cavalry, they tend to result in the destruction of a routed force).

Both of these segments cause troop losses and morale losses. Unless one force is quite small, morale is usually the deciding factor. Higher military technology levels, and some domestic policies, will raise your force’s maximum possible morale, which in turn will make it easier for your forces to win their battles. Medieval battles are quick because neither force has much morale to lose. They are also unpredictable because they last for fewer combat rounds and the impact of a bad combat die roll or two is not evened out. Rebel forces become weak as your technology improves because they stay at low tech levels with poor morale.

They outnumber me 2:1 - so what?

What can you do to make victory more likely? Build your forces to take advantage of your current land technology: mostly cavalry early in the game, shifting to mostly infantry and artillery later in the game. However, also consider terrain: cavalry performs poorly in mountains and forests, so you’ll want infantry around to win those fights. Also, forces crossing rivers to enter a province or disembarking from ships fight with significant penalties, so find a means of avoiding this if possible (or force your enemy to do it.) Finally, try to face default commanders with good commanders. The difference between your commander’s ratings and the enemy commander’s rating is used as a die-roll modifier in combat. This is why Napoleon (a 6-6-6 leader) tends to destroy a default leader (a 2-2-2): his die rolls are 40 percent better than the average leader's. Remember that you can have better default leaders through domestic policy! Also keep in mind that conquistadors perform much better in combat outside Europe.

Sieges are also mysterious at first glance. You line up at least as many forces as the fortress has, the siege begins, the little cannon bangs away every so often, the two numbers in circles on either side of the burning city change… But what’s actually going on? Those numbers are the relative advantage of the attacker (left) ands defender (right). Every month, the game compares the level of artillery available to each side, with the attacker getting a major bonus for having lots more artillery than the defender. The siege rating of an attacking leader is also taken into account, and a high siege value is extremely useful in reducing fortresses quickly. This generates a modifier to a die roll used to decide if the city’s fortification is degraded. If it is, then the defender’s number gets worse and the probability of a surrender increases. The difference between the attacker’s and defender’s number is also used as a modifier in the combat if the attacker launches an assault.

Should you sit the siege out, or assault? If your morale, through domestic policy and/or technology, is significantly better than that of your opponent, you should assault and get the siege over with fast. If you have lots of infantry and can afford to make more rapidly, assault. If you’ve worn down the defenses a fair distance and can afford to risk your infantry, assault. In general, assaults are worth the pain in lost infantry, because you avoid the pain of attrition and time wasted in the siege. However, early in the game you have no choice, because you don’t have the land technology needed for an assault. Equally, later in the game, massive enemy fortresses may be too difficult to assault successfully. In these cases, try to make your army large enough to maintain the siege, and keep a separate force in an adjacent province in case an enemy army attacks to lift the siege or to provide reinforcements in case attrition wears down the besiegers.

What about naval warfare? A dirty secret of navies in EU2 is that Mahan was wrong: naval power is necessary but not critical if your armies can win their battles. Nations such as England have to keep their naval power development equal to their land power, but navies can usually ferry troops where you need them if you are careful and willing to retreat from a lot of battles. However, after technology, the prerequisites for naval victories are similar to those of land battles: bring more, bring a better leader, and have better morale. The AI will often split its naval units into small groups, which you can hunt down and destroy with a powerful combined fleet.



Peace

Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars.

—Nietzsche


You’ve found a breathing spot of a few quiet years. What to do with it? The answer depends, of course, on your situation. Regardless, however, the first order of business is to ensure you are working on improving your stability. Without high stability, you cannot get the revenues you need to do everything else.

If this peace is essentially a breather after the enemy beat you up, concentrate on surviving the next round. Set your stability in order, save up cash, build fortresses, and work on your diplomacy to try to break apart the enemy coalition or acquire more allies.

If the peace comes after a victory, regain any lost stability, and decide if you’re headed back to war soon. If so, concentrate on your diplomacy to isolate the target or to gain a casus belli. Rebuild your armies and maneuver them into position. Check on the state of your economy to milk it for better returns.

If you feel secure, give consideration to a longer period of peace, concentrating on internal development and colonization. Invest in improving the infrastructure of your provinces by promoting tax collectors, judges, and governors. Expand your overseas empire into lucrative colonies and trading posts. Put lots of cash into your investments in technology. Examine your trade arrangements and gain some monopolies. Use the time to create a stable economic powerhouse able to deliver the monetary muscle to demolish your competition in any arena you choose to fight in.

In other words, don’t view peacetime as some sort of intermission from the main event. Fifty years of warfare can break your country’s back. Fifty years of well-governed, stable, peaceful development can make you a juggernaut.

Putting It All Together

The fate of every nation rests in its own power.

—Moltke


Grand strategy in EU2 is less clear-cut than in a game such as Civlization. Civ has precisely defined goals: conquer the enemy or beat them to Alpha Centauri. EU2, by contrast, measures your progress in victory points, but rarely gives you an overarching goal beyond that. In a sense, it is a software toy, SimWorld in the same way SimCity’s main scenario presents you with lots of tools but no defined goals. You can aim to have more victory points and consider yourself the winner. You can play as a major power and aim to conquer the world (though that’s a very difficult task). You can play as a small power and aim for survival in the international sea of sharks. You can decide you want to win specifically on diplomatic or economic victory points and the game’s VP breakdown (when you quit the game) is detailed enough to let you measure that progress. However, EU2 doesn’t force you to any of these decisions. It’s up to you.

In all probability, you’ll wind up seeking to expand your nation’s wealth, power, and territory, and this guide was written with that assumption in mind. How should you juggle your efforts in pursuit of these goals? Here are several pointers to consider:

Geography is Destiny. England has to be a naval power to get anywhere, and is relatively unhindered by the threat of continental wars, making it easier for England to be a colonial power. Russia’s path of least resistance is to punch through the Khanates and Golden Horde into Siberia, so the Russian Navy is likely to be an afterthought. You can overcome geographic position if you desire. England can become a continental European power, and Russia can colonize eastern North America, but it takes a lot of work.

History is Destiny. EU2’s events will recreate things that historically happened to your nation. France will suffer from the Wars of Religion. Russia will suffer from the Time of Troubles. Equally, both of the will eventually bask in the rule of Louis XIV and Peter the Great. You can only partly overcome history. If you know the history of your nation, you can predict some of what’s coming and be prepared for it (an advantage real rulers would give several major limbs for!)

Domestic Policy: Think globally, act locally. You should know where you want your domestic policy sliders to be, and act to move them there when possible. However, if you have to choose between major instability or a slider shift, it may well be time to accept a tactical setback. Don’t think of the domestic policy settings you need now so much as the ones you will need in a century’s time. If you are concentrating on European wars now, but know you want to focus on colonization a century from now, you need to start arranging sliders to provide colonists now.

Money is The Root of Power. Without money, your nation is helpless. Sufficient cash can overcome any other disadvantage you face. Technologically backward? Your military shattered? Need to make peace or acquire friends? Money will solve all of these problems and more. Attention paid to your economy will literally reward you richly. Exploit any opportunities to expand your income, especially your long-term income.

Try to acquire a defensive frontier and stop. Unless you intend to conquer all of Europe, the shorter the frontier, the better, since it requires you to defend fewer border provinces. France, for example, can in theory have a six-province frontier with Central Europe. China can acquire one-province frontiers with India, Siberia, and Central Asia. By reducing your required outlays on defense in these areas, you’ll have more money to spend on other endeavors. In the colonies, try to find ways to colonize so that you limit rival’s access to the continent you are working on: put out trading posts and low-level colonies along as much of a coastline as possible to try to reserve the interior of the continent for yourself. (This is most important in North America.)

Make your short-term opportunities serve long-term goals. For example, gaining a casus belli out of a random event is of little use unless it helps you further your long-term goals. It may be that you can find a way to fit it into the puzzle. If not, ignore it.

Immediate survival is more important than long-term goals. If you have to lose ground on some long-term plan in order to survive, do it. Go bankrupt and immediately court it again by raising five loans if you cannot find operating cash any other way. Surrender a province to get out of a disastrous war. It’s a long game, and you have to survive to make it to the finish line. Give a little, gain time to lick your wounds, and plan your vengeance.

There is one sure means by which I can be sure never to see my country’s ruin: I will die in the last ditch.

—William III, Prince of Orange




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