Breaking EU4 With Merc ONLY Switzerland 

I won't be responding to comments until I get home on saturday evening! Any other really good mercenary countries you'd recommend?

For a Swiss Mercenary, payday is just walking up to the HR desk and getting slid a single bar of pure gold.

Ah the good old days where mercs was just 1k troops you could hire

for the army professionalism, the t1 government reform offers it. that looked insane, although it's sad you don't get real possibilities for big mercenary armies

The reason you got Knights separatists in Savoy is because they are primary culture Occitan, the primary culture in those two provinces, while Savoy is Piedmontese. Normally the game makes the rebels of the primary tag of the culture (Provence) but I guess it chose Knights Hospitaller this time.

Hey don't forget but regular discipline stacks on top of mercenary discipline, so mercenaries can end up with like 50% discipline without temporary modifiers.

Merc meta is so OP nowadays

Haven't done one of these in a while but here we are, Margaret: a (not very) brief summary of the geology of Switzerland. Unfortunately in my opinion, but probably fortunately from the perspective of Swiss people, Switzerland does not have any active volcanoes. Despite this, in 2025 I'm going to a volcanology conference which is typically held in volcanic regions but which will be held in Geneva in that year. Go figure. There are three main geographic/geological divisions of Switzerland: the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura Mountains. The Alps are formed by the tectonic collision between Africa and Europe, which began 100 million years ago and continues today and is the reason why there's volcanoes in Italy in Greece. Due to this continental collision, the Mediterranean actually almost completely dried up about 6 million years ago, as tectonic forces closed the opening to the Atlantic and evaporation in the Mediterranean Basin was greater than inflow from rivers (which is still true today, so there is a net inflow from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean is saltier than the oceans). This dry period was called the Messinian Salinity Crisis and, depending on who you ask, either ended violently over a short period with a massive catastrophic failure of the opening called the Zanclean Flood or ended gradually over a long time. Personally, I think the Zanclean Flood theory is way cooler, but also evidence points towards a more gradual refilling. Anyways, back to Switzerland. That tectonic collision that formed the Alps, which is still ongoing, raised Switzerland up. As recently as 16 million years ago much of Switzerland was below sea level-many of the rocks that make up Switzerland are marine in origin-so it's been uplifted fairly dramatically. This uplifting, as well as horizontal compression, caused the Alps to form as rocks folded and faulted. The Jura Mountains on the other side of the Swiss Plateau from the Alps also formed as part of the same tectonic process as created the Alps, with rocks buckling and folding and being forced up to form the mountains there. The reason why the Swiss Plateau-a relatively low and flat area between the mountains to the northwest and southeast-didn't form mountains like the rest of Switzerland is because there were already structural weaknesses in the Alps and Jura Mountains, so further deformation was focused there (if there's a weak spot generally it will continue to break and bend repeatedly rather than a new spot deforming, like when you break a bone and it becomes more susceptible to breaking later). Also, fun fact: the Jura Mountains are what the Jurassic period is named after!

Merc ideas' coolest feature IMO is being able to unlock client states centuries early with Influence ideas.

It's amazing you did this run right after I just finished my own Switzerland merc game. Honestly it was one of the best games I have ever had in EU4. I am absolutely amazed how Mercenaries can stack such great bonuses. By the end of the game I had 200k manpower merc stacks that I could just summon and stomp my foes with, it was an absolute blast.

8:00 it's literally right there lmao

As a swiss in a normal fight i lose but if someone pay me one ducat and a half ducat pro months The Rock is weak for me.

Hovering over Gov't mechanic for their tier one reform "why isn't it taking my professionalism?" meanwhile the tool-tip "Government Mechanic: Merc Companies do not cost professionalism" XD

Merc Games are really fun! I had a lot of fun with Aragon Peasants Republic + Merc Ideas because Aragon has a custom reform for Military that gives three VERY good Merc Companies. *HOWEVER* , Mercenaries are NOT as powerful as it appears, unfortunately on the current patch (and basically since merc discipline modifiers were added) Mercenary Discipline doesn't apply defensively properly. This leads to Mercs taking a ton more casualties and morale loss during battles, making them MUCH weaker than units with normal discipline modifiers. This unfortunately makes Merc Ideas very niche as they cannot actually buff your units that much.

If there’s a second part you should try to get as much discipline as possible as a side goal

There's something about saying "your country is stinky" casually and nonchalantly that cracks me up Truly scornful

I had already done a Switzerlake run, so I tried out merc ideas with Hungary, making the two black armies the centre of combat. Not nearly as broken as Switzerland, but still pretty dang strong (and Hungary's company's have proper composition).

Switzerlake is my second favourite achievement in the game so I'd love to see you do it!

Yess! More Switzerland!!

Alpine state enjoyers having the time of their life watching this video rn

That strat was AMAZINGLY BONKERS!!

Sounds like a fun time to do switzerlake!

Part 2 let’s gooo

so called "Free Companies" when Swiss vaults begin opening:

I'm just imagining Swiss Mercenaries Goose Stepping towards Prussians, and the Prussians completely losing their shit and running away in fear xD 140% sounds insane, I wanna see that!

21:28 Virgin PLC Regular Calvary vs Chad Swiss Merc Infantry Halberd goes brrr

Switzerlake OP

Please continue this

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO

Continue this campaign!!!!

i hope you'll do the second video :)

Gotta meme around and get John Calvin as your president or whatever

u better make part 2!!

Man just made the largest most dangerous army in europe through the power of swiss banking

Obligated to say that you can just get an event to vassalize the three leagues with an event (Swiss have a fair few events early game)

I'd love a follow up

This is how Carthage felt before rome

19:12 prices get crazy with inflation, they discount much more than what the game tell you (because the way it evaluates is cringe)

I kinda liked the old mercenary system a bit more, much more viable late game

Pikemenpilled

Part 2!!!!

this is absolutely disgusting, reminds me of a meme vid i saw once where a dude made a Tengri horde Poland that had like, almost 70% cav combat ability and full cav armies

right now there a bug with mercenary discipline. It is acting like combat ability and not discipline meaning a 10% mecs discipline is inferior to 10% flat discipline. The dev are correcting this or changing the gameplay i don't know

You remember promising to speedform Roman empire? As your 50k goal? Weeeell?

Everyone, we need to stop talking about Mercenary Ideas. When the devs realize how absurdly OP that set its, it's Nerf City. Btw, I say this knowing there's a glitch with the Merc Infantry Discipline that they're supposed to be fixing. Even so: Merc Ideas S Tier, other (best) MIL ideas at B in comparison. Oh, and you don't have to be Switzerland to enjoy the benefits, either.

7:03 mercs by default cost 250% of regular unit cost. So you'd think it's a 60% discount to make them better. But actually 150%((

Not every game is as good as Vic 3 IG I think Denmark also has a mercenary path?

I never use merc companies, is there a limit to how many can you employ at any given time? Depending on how far you play this campaign, you should try to hire every merc company in the game

Swiss with merc ideas are absolutely broken. If you haven't done Switzerlake now is the time.

Their missions do kinda suck but you can still form a nation with better missions, and you have a lot of options of nations to form. But since you are going for Switzerlake then yeah you cant really form anything

0:15 you didnt mention the no consuming professionalism from the start

switser lake pls

when Switzerlake?

2,7k likes - when is vid 2 coming? ;)

SORTITION Brooooooo sortition is the no-brainer! It regularly gives you 15+ monarch point rulers with no effort and no reason to lose your republican tradition.

Do mercs drill at full morale maintenance wtf?

Which level of difficulty is this run?

the twink moira uploads again thank you 🙏🙏🙏

You can just improve and ally with the three leagues and you'll get them for free

2.7k likes. Vid 2?

WAIT NO YOU ARE A VTUBER NOW NAH MANNNNNNNN

QUARBIT IS A VTUBER??? Very pog

Getting PP from declaring war on a stronger power doesn't quite check out, the rest of the world would probably be like "Why are you doing that you idiot?" but winning the war and taking land off them should because then people go "Oh wow you actually did it?"

How do you get better republican rulers? instead of re-electing them.

Ok, don't know if just down bad tonight! But the avatar and the commentary is getting me a bit 🥵🥵🥵

💋 *promo sm*

8:00 I love that you are literally hovering over the "Hiring Merc Companies doesn't cost professionalism" tooltip in the gov reform lol. Yeah I mean, literally the only thing that keeps Merc Ideas from being a top tier idea group is that Mercs in general fucking suck. The Idea Group has to be amazing in order for them to even be ok, nevermind good, on top of still being uber situational and somewhat contingent on a nation already have a mercenary theme to stack with. Like they're good with Byz (though you definitely still want other stuff first), and most of the Italian states have Merc stuff in their ideas too. And obviously, as this video shows, they're busted with Switzerland.

If there’s a second part you should try to get as much discipline as possible as a side goal