The Top Ten Player-Played Nations! (EU4) 

Conspiracy time: Paradox intentionally made Denmark's AI shit because they're a Swedish dev :P

here's my first try experience with the following nations. Castile: Ended up under an Austrian union that inherited Burgundy. France: Hey look the third coalition in 6 years. England: rebels, rebels and what do you know...more rebels. Now my second go at these England: Union leader of both Spain and France while crowning myself Holy Roman emperor. Castile: Formed Spain but first put France under my union. Owned Africa and the middle east leaving a thin vassal to stop nations from westernizing and forced all of Asia to be under my glorious protection. owned the Americas. France: it use to be called Europe

"Vaginagar" xD

Try doing a top ten list of the most underrated nations or formable nations

Tried to play Denmark because I was interested in it. I actually started off stupidly well, managed to grab Marienburg and other Teuton lands, as well as most of Livonia. Then, suddenly, Scotland declares on me to get Orkney back from Norway. No problem, I say, confident I can take on a shitty little kingdom with my PUs. Looking at the war screen, I feel my crotch becoming wet as I see that somehow Scotland has managed to enter an alliance with England AND France, and now they're sending their entire armies to grab some cold, rocky, shitty island. They absolutely steamrolled me, and took Norway from me. Sweden declares independance. It wasn't even 1500 yet ffs.

i don't know why, but it seems like every single time i play in Europe, Austria ends up losing the emperorship to someone weak like The Palatinate or Hesse. three time now i have seen Hesse take the throne in the first 60 years. then they never lose it because i just completely stomp through the HRE as either Brandenburg, France, or England. what is the point of the emperor getting called to defend the HRE if they are an OPM with 5 troops?

its an interesting video, but Ming was not even mentioned...? AI ming usually spits up all of its core nations, practically disappearing, while a player can snake up to genoa, to westernize and easily become world power #1

This moment, when you play as Ottomans and Byzantium kills you.

I really like your "without further ado", no blabla, straight to the point! Great Channel man!

you have a rare gift in that I can listen to you talk forever without getting bored of you. Very few people have this gift, the myth busters guys are one example

Thanks for giving me extra ideas as who to play as. Have been cutting my teeth playing as England or Castille before I watched this, now thinking I may go down the rest of your list.

top 10 most unstable countries in EU4

Very nice video...Brandenburg and Qara Qoyunlu are my all-time favorite options :)

nice videos man

WOO Isolated culture! There's nobody like us in Europe and the only people that have any sort of relevance to us is the Finnish and Estonians XD

I am pretty sure they fixed the Castille AI issue, because they set Portugal and Castile as Historical Allies

I started playing as Hungary yesterday, prior to watching this video, and i can just only concur with the 1st spot, Hungary is crazy if you manage your opportunities well

Is it possible to do an opposite list? Nations that tend to do exceptionally well under the control of the computer but are just average for human players.

I have seen Hungary forming Ausrohungary more often than Austria doing so.

AI Teutonic Order usually does quite well for me. They often end up allying Hungary, which AI Poland-Lithuania often is unable to defeat. If they survive the first period of danger, Muscovy usually wants to ally them. These two alliances together makes it so I have seen several strong Teutonic Orders while playing other nations, yet I have never seen them form Prussia, due to the religious requirement.

good video :) thank you

Your comment on the rarity of prussia only makes my last Byzantine run feel oh so much more special lol. I was under the impression Brandenburg and the teutonic order were the main countries to potentially create Prussia, yet in the early 1600s I noticed that not only had prussia formed, both Brandenberg and the teutonic order still existed. I still have no idea who created Prussia or how since I wasnt really paying northern europe a lot of attention prior to noticing the existance of Prussia. The ai did something different that game I guess lol

I saw scandinavia do really well in many games. Can't remember if it was denmark, sweden or even norway that formed it. Also i've seen novgorod form russia several times, giving me a nice wtf-moment :D

The best Hungary I've seen is in an on going lp by a RU-vidr named Kailvin where Hungary conquered the Ottomans and most of the middle east. Though Kailvin did help with his conquest of Greece and Albania from the Ottomans and do provide the naval support for the Hungarian Troops to cross into Anatolia

Old video I know, but just for clarification, "Only seen Prussia formed once" by AI?

Great video :) My own Top 10 would not contain Bahmanis because they often get half of India under their control while actually being stronger than Vijaynagara over all. I'd also leave out Ethiopia because I've often seen them getting the strongest nation in northeastern Africa. Nations that are in my top 10 are for example Genoa because they can expand into any direction they want as well, especially into the Crimea but can't make it because of incompetence of something like that. Athens is another candidate because they can break free of Byzantium, form an Alliance with Poland, because they're Catholic, with a little patience and finally overthrow the Ottomans. I haven't tried them yet but I think the Mamluks should also be able to overthrow the Ottomans at the game's start and expand into northeastern Africa. Rank one for this list is absolutely the Timurid Empire followed by Kazan and the Golden Horde.

Denmarks AI seems to be improved a lot, I very rarely see them losing the union and in my current mugal game they have eaten a lot of the old Novgarod and Muscovite lands.

how do you do timelines?. I got a game of epirus in mongol era. so Latin empire and me never fought cause mutual ally Hungary and we our 2 Greeks I have homelands and he has anatolia

Which version of EUIV do U have? I have a little bit different provincies (for example in Krym peninsula Crimea and Kaffa, while U have three, or in Guinea gulf just Benin and Oyo, while U have about 10 nations there) so where is the difference? By the way two the most powerfull nations are missing in your list. France and Muscovy (later Russia). At least for me was the easiest to play for these two nations...

I find that Muscovy, Turkey and the Ming or Manchus are also popular choices for Human players. I know that whenever I play any of them, the urge to expand my empire is irresistible.

In one of my games Spain got personal unions with all of scandinavia and annexed them. Now their enemies always go there and then Spain has to send their armies away from the enemy leading to them losing everytime.

80% of my game Prussia becomes my biggest problem to conquer into the HRE they would usually become emperor too

I was playing Eu4 as Bulgaria release state, and almost all of these nations just built massive empires by 1650.

I've only seen Prussia form once - when I as Russia very actively helped them in their formation. (Literally started wars just to give them the required lands). It was fun, though.

Lithuania. AI often falls into personal union under Poland and sits around until it is absorbed into Commonblob, but player can take advantage of very strong early game compared to it's neighbours to gain stable position in the region of their choosing. Early expansion into Crimea is good way to start, but I'm experimenting with starting solo war with Livonian and Teutonic orders in 1444 through missions.

Commentary time! First I want to say I have 1200 hours under my belt. That doesn't mean I'm _good_. But it means I've _SEEN_ a lot. OK let's go: 0:37 In more than 80% of my cases, Bahmanis has become one of the great powers and kept that spot throughout the game. Half of the time top 5. I think you mean to say "Vijayanagar" here. 1:15 Can't argue there. Ethopia has gotten wrecked in the vast majority of my games, and when I played them (great power), Ottomans were as blobby as ever and would rather conquest me than ally. 1:55 Agree, but not with placement. Venice has lost their "oversea" provinces in almost all my playthroughs, but successfully expanded in Italy/Balkans 20-25% of the time and become fairly strong. 2:30 Completely and utterly disagree. A year back or so, sure, but they did something(??), and now Spain forms every single time, sometimes even expanding into France/being a pain _everywhere_. 3:25 Kind of agree. Japan always form but never do anything else. And I've _NEVER_ (!!) seen them invade Korea. They're allied with Ming every. single. time. 3:57 Now we're talking. 4:40 OK, but just say "Teutonic Order". They usually get wiped off the earth. Even (!) after having blobbed. I don't know _how_ they manage to do this, but they do. Brandeburg better but not by much.. 5:33 Don't agree much. Denmark become very strong almost half the time I've play, the other times they're replaced by Sweden or get eaten by OP Russia. Placed too high on list IMO. 6:31 What the hell have you been smoking?!? 7:30 Mamluks, yes. Qara Qoyunlu, no. They're weak from the get-go. No place warranted on this list IMO. Novgorod, yes. And it should replace a lot of choices on your list. Same with Korea. Powerful start, rarely do anything at all. 8:01 Mmneeh. Well okay, just because of the Ottomans. But they do good more often than a lot of your chocies on your list. My list: #1 Ming. Not because they collapse so often (they do great almost 1/3 of the time or so from my experience), but just the severity of their collapse. RIP. #2 Burgundy. Because they are very powerful at the start, but keep using that ruler in battles and vanishing from the rest of the game almost exclusively, just like that. #3 Novogorod. Because they actually are quite decent at the start, but I can't recall a single game where they have survived. #4 Mamluks. Same reason. #5 Teutonic Order. Same reason. #6 Hungary. #7 Venice. #8 Bohemia. End game: Where the hell did they go? #9 Ethiopia. #10 Morocco. So many things they can do, but they almost exclusively screw things up. Mainly forming OK alliances/diplomacy and ideas. Honorable mentions: Savoy, Milan, Bavaria. Majahapit's neighbour which I can't recall the name of. Delhi. Vijayanagar.

0:27 Vijayanagar has a core on Raichur Doab, an instant cb.

Pretty surprised to see Venice and specially Castille here, but not any mention to Aragon. I mean, they are the other candidate to form Spain, since neither Navarra nor Portugal have any chance against Castile, and though the weaker option at the start, Aragon has a lot of options for expansion, specialy when the Italian nations leave the HRE. They have the most control over the Genoa trade node(potentialy the best in the game depending on how colonization is made) and Naples in a PU, which make them really interesting. Why? because not only can they try to push Castile and form Spain, but also can wait to annex Naples, make a cultural shift(which, is costly but needed) and form Italy. They are, maybe with the exception of Venice, the nation with the easiest time forming it. Their national ideas are pretty decent too and, as I said, they have access to not only one but to two other national ideas. Heck, you can even have a pretty decent colonial presence without even taking colonial ideas, since if you get the dominant position on the peninsula, you're the only one with access to beating up both Castile and Portugal, whom will most than likely take Colonial ideas. With this position, you can make them week enough for you to vassilize them in a future war while letting them get bigger colonial nations. Once you integrate them, their colonial nations are yours. The only thing from my experience that can screw you is not getting an alliance with France, because unless you somewhat manage to make England win the 100 years war they are the only country able to protect you from Castille while you expand in the Mediterranean, and without it your early expansion get substantialy slower. But overall, considering how poorly Aragon does when controlled by the AI and their potential, I think it should have been included, at least in the honorable metions.

Make a list of least seen tags like Sokoto

Also, I'd like to mention Florence (usually annexed by the Pope but great potential to form Italy), Ming itself, because a player can actually manage rebels and factions, and Bengal, which has the control of one of the richest trade nodes (Bengal) but is usually eaten up by its more militaristic neighbors such as Jaunpur and Orissa. (Also all of the Malayan nations can become absoultely terrifying in the hands of a good player, due to being as rich and un-invadable as a Great Britain of the East)

Burgundy could be an honorable mention as well, since unless you play them or ally yourself with them as a major power (e.g. Austria or England), they never do well against France (at least in my experience)

3:00 yes France blocks expansion to the north. Except in my game where they got a PU over France. (you can guess how that went for me)

AI Brandenburg often takes Imperial throne from Austria.

Burgundy! I'm not even a good player but I ate France and formed massive Dutch Republic. Not having Burgundian Inheritance trigger as a player is a big one, and kind of a cop out, but AI Burgundy seems to miss opportunities to strike France or England, and rarely expands before Burgundian Inheritance. I attack Provence and take Lorraine and then break my alliance with Brittany, sit back, and wait. in 1494 you can eat your Dutch vassals and attack allies of Utrecht, Gerle, and Friesland or otherwise wait until the Emperor is busy and form the Netherlands with Burgundian, Wallonian, and possibly Francien as accepted cultures

I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch the name of Bahmanis' neighbour. Could you repeat that into the mic please?

In my game as England, I beat France to an Alliance with Castile and Austria. Castile had the Iberian Wedding in 1470s, so I generally had no issue curb stomping France after conquering the British Isles by 1500

It's 4am. I started my eu4 campaign at 10pm.

Militarily, Brandenburg (into Prussia/Germany) are the strongest nation in the entire game. You can stack Discipline from their national idea finisher with discipline from Advisors, Protestantism, Quality and Offensive ideas, Weapons Standards policy and Absolute monarchy government. Get lucky with events and you can get close to 140% discipline. Stack morale modifiers on top of that with the 20% boost you get from Prussian national ideas and you become unstoppable late game.

Interestingly enough, the Teutonic AI in my game controlled every single piece of land in Europe aside from France, Germany, Italy, and the Iberian peninsula. But somehow they were obliterated around the late game for some unknown reason by a bunch of nations ganging up on them.

how about ai burgundy?? so strong in the start until the burgundian inheritance kicks in...

I really like the idea of this video and I can totally agree on your choices. But I think you left out Burgundy! :D

Actually, i've seen Prussia made by AI at least 4-5 times... Btw, I would really like to see a vid about the "Random" dice factor in the battles, i've made some statistics of mine that made me shft back to Crusader Kings, though it seems the same AI randomness catches me there too

the tutonic order blobbed in one of my games where I played a custom south American nation

Nepal has one of the best sets of military ideas in the game!

I've only seen Prussia form once too, and that's only because I gave Brandenburg Konigsberg

Poland. Everytime the AI plays it, it fucks it up. I've never seen it abolish the sejm but having those vassals on a leash (which could include Prussia) alone makes it OP.

I agree that Hungary is a of lot fun but they actually got wiped out completely in real history at 1526 and there are a lot of games where the player cant do anything if poland, bohemia, austria and ottomans group up in some weird alliances and tear you apart. You start as Hungary already with being being able to do nothing for 15 years and that is pretty ass. With Timurid its like reversed. The AI always fails completely every time no exceptions, because it doesnt use autonomy for making the persian uprising bearable, because it doesnt raze provinces and then makes a vassal of it for saving admin power and reducing aggressive expansion. It doesnt raze all the like 7 forts in the beginning for being able to finance the huge army and the only thing it does is fighting rebels in hills and highlands while not going for Delhi to become Mughal. There is absolutely no way to fail with Timurid if you do all the stuff mentioned above and like in every game ever a player can have Asia completely by 1700 even without trying hard or having good RNG.

IDK what EU4 games you have been in but the ones I have always seen do good are: Poland &Lith. , France, Austria/Hungary, Castile, Ethiopia, England, Sweeden.

HOLY FUCK VENICE IS GOOD. Well I know at least it used to be so good until the recent patch that nerfed merchant republics I think. Other than that holy shit Venice was by far my most fun play through. I mean it was fun conquering half of the Mamluks, halting Ottoman growth, and then colonizing all the good provinces in the east before the usual westerners got there.

That England id so weak really is a shame, because historically England would basically keep France busy by allying with Burgundy, Austria and later Prussia to somewhat contain France. As there is no strong England in most EU4 games, France is just OP and goes absolutely ballistic and swallows most of western Europe. I recently played as Muscovy and formed Russia, looked at the map about 1550 and France had already swallowed the whole of Spain and Portugal and was starting to nibble away at the HRE.

After some observation and my own little test play with Denmark made me understand why the other scandinavians declare independence early one. And it is very simple. That rebellion in Gotland knocks Denmark out, the AI can't handle their redeployment and simply lets them take over the fort in southern Sweden.

I once played as Muscovy, conquered Norway colonized Canada and Siberia, formed Russia and became a massive colonial power, conquering China, Scotland, the pacific, Korea, and the PLC

In my Knights/Jerusalem game (recent patch) AI controlled Ethiopia stomped half of the surrounding nations and spilled into the Arabian Peninsula. They were a huge threat to everyone around (except for me, because western tech group!)

Sweden is missing in this list. Ai-Sweden sitting most time with there mainland and getting destroyed by Muscovy. A Player Sweden... Well, a skilled player builds a glourious Sweden with this delicious combat ability

Why is Jianzhou not on this list? Some of the best National Ideas, can form Manchu and Qing, powerful horde bonuses and the flexibility of the Tengri religion... But instead of conquering China, they usually get stomped by Korea and the Ming and never recover. On another note: Today, While playing the Manchu, I was surprised to see denmark intergrate both Norway and Sweden diplomatically. It was beautiful.

I feel like Austria belongs on this list, the AI usually does almost nothing, perhaps it gets a union on Hungary, but as a player you can get Bohemia within the first few years by claiming their throne. Pick a bit of Italian lands, which gives you a claim to Hungary. Ensure the shadow empire of Italy doesn't leave, then you just need to defeat the reformation and you basically have the HRE formed. - You can even force the Burgundian inheritance, to get the Netherlands, you can get the strategic marriage with castile / Spain which gives you all of that, and due to your diplomatic reputation you're pretty much guaranteed the last election of Poland / the commonwealth. So without ever expanding on your own, you get Spain, Germany, Half of Italy, Hungary and the Commonwealth.

Muscovy should probably be in here as well IMO. They have great ideas and an excellent starting position, but an AI Muscovy nearly always gets eaten by Poland-Lithuania or Bukhara in my experience

Great script just need to slow down and put some emphasis on words while talking, sounds like you're reading straight from the paper at times.

Personally I would have to go with Muscovy/Russia. While the AI often manages to carve out a decent empire to start with, I rarely see them survive past 1600.

this only 1 prussia found i very funny bc in one of my latest games i had a prussia bigger than the hostorical that was quit a challenge to overcome bc they also allied russia and scandinivia

Doesn't Ming counts?

What about Poland? The ai doesn't always pick a Jagellion allowing Lithuania to turn rampant, like the first time I played Muscovy

For Ethiopia which idea groups should I go

I've seen Ethiopia eat most of Mameluk or Fatamid Egypt at the first sign of weakness when I've been playing as Ottomans or Persians

I often see Spain expanding in Italy (and more rarely France.)

I have played a bunch of games of EU4 and I finally had a game that France got pounded into submission. England and Spain both ate up France and ended splitting it in half for themselves. I have never seen England be so successful in the mainland of Europe, fun enough though it never took Scotland.

I want to mention Savoy: It's the best nation to make Italy, starting with the Montferrat as a vassal ( I've seen Montferrat doing things with his 3k men that humans cannot believe, like resisting for 21 days at the assault of 20 thousands frenchies), you just need to pick Albenga and then you are probably able to slay Milan into vassalization, and thus the road to the Italian unification is open! The only variable is France. You don't actually know what is like to deal with France if you aren't Savoy, if the Frenchies are hostile you just have to restart until they are friendly (thing that happens in the 60% of the cases though), but if you want Sardinia to form Sardinia-Piedmont with that extremely cool blue colour, then prepare to joust between Austria, The Ottomans, Aragon and Castille, Hungary and above all France. Really, if you play with Savoy, you know that shit is about to go down quickly.

In one of my games Brandenburg got a pu with the commonwealth and almost formed Germany but because the commonwealth owned all the Teutonic orders land so Brandenburg couldn't even form Prussia

I have 1000 hours in this game and have never seen Prussia form on its own, I actually installed a mod to remove AE from the game and watched Germany from afar to see if the ai would take the bait and they still never made it probably because it also removes AE from Muscovy, Poland and Denmark..... didn't think that one all the way through

i once got 4500 gold from venice😂😂bcs they sit there 300 years without many wars and i had to fight them bcs they were allies

what about the Jurchen tribes? you have great ideas and decent expansion routes. The AI can't handle Ming and get curbstomped but a good player can form Qing and do really well.

England, holland, Sweden muscovy and one of the many italian nations (ferrera) are my top picks.

Only countries that I have had good games with till now have been France, British Empire without India (I now that is embarissing but) and Prussia(Which was a kickass campaign though Poland-Lithuania were a pain in ass whole time untill me and russia partitioned crippled them)

Speaking about underperforming nations: Holland->Netherlands. The potential to become the largest naval power, richest trade power and has a strong army aswell, plus a rediculous amount of good events.

I played as Hungary, and NEVER succeeded to get back Dalmatie from Venice. I'm a full noob (it was my first game ever) but AI Venice plays quite well.

Kilwa is lots of fun (Intermediate to advanced players)

im playing eu3 and conquered 3/4 of milan to find im actually following history. im allied with hungary and tuscavoy., milan has pisa, the ottomons have Nice (formerly part of savoy), and ive vassilized athens. #lolsforlife

I’ve seen Prussia form almost half the games I’ve played

Can someone please make a guide how to play Japan?

My first experience as the Ottomans: Rebels rebels and more rebels Second experience: WC by 1600

ai timurids tend to live longer for me. In all my games in MP over 80% of people choosing timmies die to rebs.

Denmark Allied to the Poland/Lithuanian alliance = God Mode I destroyed Novgorod and Livonia, even swiped Danzig for trading (Had the Danish trade Mission) and curb stomped Muscovy with Swedes and the Polish/Lithuanians

... korea? as an AI they either 1. become a strong nation to the east, but fails to expand beyond annexing jurchen 2. gets curbstomped by japan 3. falls to manxhu when they form me? I gobble up a lot of land, and at the moment ming falls, invade straight to beijing (which the rebels NEVER get) and slowly gobble up china. if ming doesn't fall? time to take out japan and colonize!

Aaaaaah the old Timurids, with their big red blob

Turn on closed captioning for some hearty keks

If Spain inherit the netherlands or parts of burgundy - all the small states are easy pickings :D - in my games as France iam ally with spain and they just take what they want - with a our week and later fully anxted Austrian emporer :D

I played one macth as Russia. Korea conquests 80% of Quing.

Mi vagyunk az elsők! :)

If anyone is interested in seeing a massive Hungary/Bohemia blob there's a video on my channel which shows me and my brothers multiplayer game and it looks pretty good :)

I love playing as Timurids, had united islam by 1580´s or smthn such as them, then went on and formed Mughals and nommed up India v quickly. :)