Beginners Guide to United Provinces Campaign Empire Total War 

Once on my Britain campaign years ago, Persia took over the united province... One of the strangest things I have seen on ETW in a while.

I'm now at the end stage of the Dutch campaign, year 1792. I had a really cool mid campaign where you had a big alliance between United Provinces, Great Britain, Prussia & Hannover (I had given Hannover allot of land & wealth, so now they are also pretty much a major power). And we had a war against the alliance between Poland Lithuania, Wurttemburg, Courland & Saxony. This was such a cool war where Europe was split in 2 and both East and West side fought each other.

The United Provinces is a very interesting campaign, but it has the disadvantage of overstretching across three theatres at the beginning. Moreover, France tends to be quite aggressive from the start (they always declared war on me within the first 5 turns, at least in vanilla). You can fix it by using some diplomacy bug (turn 1: sell all you American possessions to France for Alsace-Lorraine, declare war on Louisiana, invade Paris with all your forces in Amsterdam; occupy and squeeze it for taxes in 1 or 2 turns, then sell France to another neutral faction and France is gone forever)... you will only maintain Ceylon as colony but it will be a launch pad for Bengal, and the pirates will keep at bay any potential competitor in the trade nodes... From here the road is to reconquer your lost positions and expand, for instance by taking advantage of the vacuum left by France.

Congratulations on over a thousand subs Dave! You have earned it and deserve it.

Definitely the hardest campaign for me by far, depending on colonies but being fated to go to early war against two of the three super strong navy nations, all while having the downsides of a republic. The only viable strategy I have found for myself is focus pretty much everything on France to destroy them early, as you have zero chance to keep navy superiority on hard or very hard against both France and Spain. Take the weaker pirate region in America, then prepare to take the two French colonies in South America. Deal with the Spanish region bordering your capitol, and try to destroy France right away. No investments in the early game, building stuff is a waste until France is dead, put everything you have in line infantry to crush the two french settlements and destroy the faction. Holding onto France will be difficult but doable, but even if you do not hold onto Paris, destroying the faction once means all their ships are gone, so it is only Spain you have to deal withfor a while, giving you an actual chance to stop your main port from being perma blocked, even more so if you managed to defend Paris, which will give you pretty much the best settlement in the game making a lot of money and giving you several ports, while also allowing you to take some colonies from North America if you are fast enough. From this point on you can slowly take the Spanish colonies in America and decide for yourself whether you want the pirates to live or be destroyed. Since defending ivory and spice trade ports against any of the large navy nations is basically impossible if they are still supposed to make profit, I usually let the pirates live until I am ready to crush the last naval super power. With France gone and some of the Spanish colonies taken you are free to either focus on Spain to try and destroy them, focus on the east against Prussia, focus on India before the Marathas become the strongest faction in the game, or sometimes even turn on the British by blitzing all their Europe regions away, destroying the faction and laying the rest of America bare for you. All of these approaches work, but only after France is killed early. Whenever I did not focus on France as early as possible I always ended up with massive fleets blocking my ports, me therefore having next to no money, being unable to build new ships in Europe with blocked ports, all while the Brits did not use their ships to help much, so basically unplayable due to having very little money while fighting several strong nations at once.

It is so cool being able to play as my nation in strategy games (empire and age of empires 3)

Congrats on the get 1k sub good job

I tried to play as this nation but I went bankrupt and I tried to take Flanders too quickly and then I tried to take Paris but that backfired fast, when is the best time to take Flanders?

These guys are pretty fun

I'm on a campaign with UP right now, H/H. I found a guide, and used it. From the start, use your ships to take every trade port in the game, even with war ships. Replace the war ships with trade shipsas soon as you can. Do not attack anyone but pirates. Once you have all year ports you will be pulling 10-15 gs turn. Take over Westphalia, then Wurttemburg, then Bavaria, by turn 15. This will give you 4 universities. From here take the pirate regions, Mysore in India for another uni, and then take on the USA to get NY. Ally with Hanover early, and at some point they will war with Swed en. Go to war and take on Sweden. Domination folks.

the pirate race-built galleons are pretty much the fastest ship in the game, only getting faster with the late game naval tech. if i'm playing a naval heavy campaign i try to keep the pirates around for as long as possible, letting them re emerge if possible. also you could've touched on the gentleman agents your faction typically starts with. if they're not randomized. while stealing tech can be a fumble, disrupting other faction's gentlemen tends to work better.

Wicked video, you do what I do almost, I try not to get sucked into Austrias wars so I decline to join but maybe I could for the money of Prussian fleets, in the Americas I conquer all the pirate and french regions in a few turns. And I just build in India but I don't let the Martha confederacy get too strong, most of my conquest is india and try not to get into too many wars with Europe except for France and Spain which is unavoidable, trade is everything with the Dutch. My biggest wish is they had made the fluyts stronger and been more accurate to history the Dutch sailors were fantastic and the fact the galleons have better reloading is criminal wish the fluyts were just a little bit stronger with reload skill and firepower and the Dutch would be more accurate to history as no naval port is such an issue

w if I remember well how I did this firs turn. Indonesian trade theatre Take out pirates in Indonesian trade theatre, (they are at left side up trade hup) don't destroy the ships but catch them. Sail the catched pirate ships to all the other trade hups in giving you the famish dutch species trade monopoly on the east. Indian theatre Develop the mine and roads in Ceylon destroy the industry and make a university. Keep your religion agent here for the time. You need him to cool things down because of rebellions that a university might give. When religious unrest is gone send him to India to cause trouble there and make easier future occupation. Get rid of the batallion to save cost, keep the general because he's cool and put him in the harbor. Send your fleet to Indonesian trade theatre for some extra money. Start building the best ships to get a fleet to send to Madagascar asap. You need at least a fleet of 5 to be able to take the trade hubs (and defend them) in Madagascar. (Timearrival of this fleet with construction of ships in Americs as you have more harbours here.) Mongols and Marathas will not bother with you as they are busy amongst themselves. European theatre Get rid of canons, bad troops (who needs pikeman and militia we're professional), cut down on cost. Build the farm because it's cheep. Build roads because we are a developed country... You need to build ships and you need the best to protect Rotterdam, When someone blocks Rotterdam you are gone. Building ships is a preference everywhere, but absolute in Rotterdam. Keep an eye on the French fleet and make sure you can match them. American theatre. Devolep the mines and road in Suriname, but give preference to building ships if you need to choose. Take your army from Curacao by ship to Trinidad, on route catching all, not destroying the pirate fleet (shoot at there sails). Change the maritime port for a trade port. Abuse your militia in the battle. Left overs are cheap garison for Suriname port later. After that just slightly damage the other pirate port with one ship, not your fleet. So that they can't produce ships there. Don't forget to get your ship out, otherwise they'll put a garison there. Keep doing that every turn. Don't take the second pirate island out yet. You need there heracement in the other trade theatres (Madagascar and ivory coast specialty) to prevent other navies of taking the trade hubs) This will loose you some money in beginning as they will raid your trade in Madagascar and Ivory coast. At this moment you need only one ship in the Americas. If you gained more from your battle with the pirates send those to the trade theatre of Brasil for $ugar. The Portuguese are already there, but you should be able to get 4 trade hubs meaning a lot of money. Also here start building the best ships in every port. Diplomacy Get trade with the to German states. For alliance they will except. (Don't respect these alliances in the future though in case they get attacked) Check your ministers every time and replace. You can only change one each turn. Research the one to be able to build bigger university at first and every turn try to trade techs with other countries (don't be cheap) it will save you time for having to research them yourselves, specialty military

hey faramir,i tried this tricks on my very hard campaign with united provinces,normal unit scale,and i must say that some of them work,some didn't can you please do a livestream or a video,playing with this faction doing these incredible steps

Ok Every thing now works. I could make a rather nice video from this !!!!!!!!!!

Cool video Faramir! I’ve been dying to know how to start a UP campaign. Also do you recommend darthmod or any other mods for Empire?

Here's the strategy. Ignore Europe and take colonies and trade routes. Win with infinite money

Netherlands is far too easily conquerable, when historically until the time of Napoleon the Netherlands had a long history of being able resist for very long time against their much larger neighbors thanks to their many series of forts and the ability to literally turn large parts of their lands into shallow seas that were almost impassible for any invading army as the flooded areas would be too dangerous to advance on foot while being too shallow to use boats

What is the campaign difficulty you use?

I put the save file in my folder and cannot find it ?

in what dificult are you playing im playing on hard and everyone declares war on me

That music is way too loud, and I can't hear what you're saying 😔

Give the Mughals anything you can. The late mid game will thank you

Disaster !!!!!!!!!!!!! My Graphics Card seems to have a fault !! Trying to play the Empire Battle i was getting 12FPS.!!!

I normally don't do this, but your pronounciation of "Curaçao" is really bothering me. It isn't pronounced as "Curago". The "ç" is a "c", and should be pronounced as a soft "c" (as in cyber), and "ao" is pronounced in a way more similar to "aw" in "shawl" (smiling while saying it might help). Furthermore, you got to stress the last syllable: "CuraÇAO". I know it isn't a name that lies 'in range' of most Americans, and you probably won't use it very often. But it'd be great if you look for the correct pronunciation of a place when you know you'll be talking about it, little effort, big difference. This is the second video I see of this channel, but I hope you make use of my advice if you're going to make more of these, because the info is helpful

Curaçao = cur-ass-ow

I actually won with the Dutch however. I invaded Inda pretty early and than took all of the ottoman empire. Had most of America and did poorly in Europe. Problem I have seen, and that I hate is you have to fight every battle at sea and land. If you don't you take way more casualties and the AI is just really frustrating. The other thing I have seen with the AI, you can have three countries that are waring each other and you also fighting all of them, they all go after you. no matter what, they pass cities, or whatever. The entire world declares war on you except Britain. Even countries with a friendly status kind of pisses me off. it would seem if you went way to fast in this game it compensates by throwing the entire world at you. FYI I am playing the normal difficulty.