Really tryhard strategy. You intend to PU an area. Release as a subject and enforce dynasty. Attack a nation who has very strong diplomacy. Separate peace the enemy ally by canceling overlord of the same subject. Just to PU them as soon as you can claim throne. You will also gain revanchism which is amassing for manpower. You need to resort to this sort of playstyle if you wish to achieve the kind of crazy goals that I have in the past.
@@unlustig1 His train of thought is. If you're england and tend to PU ireland, release any irish state as vassal. England starts with Meath. Place a relative on their throne, then attack a nation with strong allies. Separate peace one of the allies by giving tribute and cancelling subject (in the offer tribute part of the war). After your truce, you can claim their throne and then PU them. Revanchism comes from 'losing' the war by losing the vassal.
Also might be worth mentioning denmark when talking about PUs. Every single PU you get will give you a stacking 5% manpower nuff and a flat 5k additional manpower. In addition, if they would qualify for March bonuses they get March bonuses. Having a 250 dev Bavaria, Ireland,burgundy, and hungary as PUs all with huge morale bonuses in addition to a 1k dev Scandinavia is pretty wild, and I could crush all of europe on very hard easily by the time absolutism rolls around.
One addendum to this. If you want to do what Budget Monk suggests and make Asturias or Leon a personal union for colonizing because they have a colonist. They will colonize but it will be very slow. As personal unions and vassals will never take exploration and expansion, you have to wait for them to take it themselves, and then subjugate them.
Another way in which PUs are stronger than regular vassals is that they share your ruler. So if you disinherit aggressively for god rulers your subjects will benefit from that.
It's free real estate. Great vid as always. I also believe PUs keep the very hard nation bonuses whereas vassals don't. Also apparently since last patch PUs of emperor (possibly nay HRE member, haven't tested either) automatically joins HRE no matter their size which is huge.
No, they won't join if they have too much dev. (I think 100, but I'm not sure.) Last game I played was Austria and Hungary was able to expand before I PU'd them. Once I had the Union, they wouldn't join the HRE.
If they are too big they cannot join. They did fix it though so that direct subjects of the emperor that can join the empire will join the empire, which is nice for diplo expanding the HRE in an area where you dont really want to directly expand.
I think there's a 200 or 250 dev limit on that. I always take enough land from hungary before 1556 for this since hungary+ croatia dev is slightly higher than the limit at the start
While I agree with your points, it might be good to mention that marches are similarly overlooked and can be used for similar purposes, while easier to set up and they have juicy modifiers on their army quality - the big downside to marches is the liberty desire, as you said, but if you can manage it, they can be really nice, if you don't have many other subjects (A mix of marches and Pus does well for me) - also they pay no tribute as well, which means their economy is stable
Nistra is also a very good subject as the get fort defense bonus and fort maintenance in their ideas. So when you siege down an enemy fort, you transfer that fort to them and that makes it a lot more difficult for the enemy to take back
I've always considered PUs as a sort of better and loyal ally sometimes for a long time. Russia or France as PUs are so awesome. Thanks for the video. There is so much potential for the trade shenanigans you've shown us.
C'mon Monk, how could you make a whole video about PUs and not mention inheriting them? Especially Navara, which is pretty easy to inherit over the course of a longer run if you don't feed them too much.
Nice vid, learned couple of things once again :) Btw, that are some thick Ottomans you got there! Thats the main reason why i came to prefer Aragon over Castille cause you re in a better position to vassalize Byz and cut the Ottos down early on with a buffed Galley fleet. Plus you get so many perma claims around the Med. The only wonky thing is the Wedding as Aragon. If you cant deny it from firing early, then Castille wont colonize for you. In the current patch Castille doesnt disinherit Henrique anymore which means they usually take ages until they got Adm 5.
Nice video. One thing that wasn't brought up is exchanging favours with an ally to place your dynasty on their throne too. Great for getting bigger nations. Make them an interesting nation and wait for their ruler to pass away and hope he doesn't get an heir right away.
Nice. I have returned to France this week and have both a PU with Milan and with Naples. I took out the Genoa and Lucca provinces for both of these in the last session and your video has inspired me to continue down this path (okay, maybe Naples in Tuscany was not the best) as government cap is becoming an issue. I know Naples can get claims in Greece which is a great way to expand there and not use my mana. Always insightful, BM. Thanks.
the whole cultural union part sounds great. I want to do that with a Prussia --> Germany run. Germany gets claims over basically all of Europe, but if you're forming it as Prussia you have reduced governing capacity. So forming it, only taking German culture provinces, then having PUs own France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Balkans. I may choose to do this with a German minor, though, since I've done a Prussian run already. A real diplomacy HRE minor, perhaps a Bavarian nation.
The income argument is rather moot, considering you can always subsidize your vassals to stabilize their income. A big problem for me tends to be the lack of Transfer trade power, a player tends to optimize their trade income far more efficiently than the AI ever will, and the player is better at deciding where the money is spend. Especially since the AI is terrible at choosing which buildings to build. PU's also don't increase your land force limit by as much as vassals or marches do (do they even?) A big point you missed is that you can inherrit PU's in one go, by focusing on Diplo Rep, you can get whole swaths of land without having to spend a single MP
i also think that subjects are cool for roleplaying and making your borders look good, i personally dont like blobbing mindlessly and only thinking how to get stronger because eu4 is already too easy if you play big nations
I was thinking of doing this in my England campaign, I had reconquered for Novgorod and vassal fed him chunks of Muscovy, but unfortunately he cannot form Russia as a Subject, so I wonder if it is worth to Place Dynasty, Break Vassalage, Wait for Novgorod to form Russia, Claim PU, then have a big loyal subject who can colonise Siberia for you, they’ll also useful in your Central Asian wars (if doing a WC), since it takes ages to traverse those 3 dev wasteland provinces
@@edgarbm6407 Yeah I could’ve, but I was running out of places to expand and I like constantly warring even if this habit increases my IRL hours spent with speed 3 and constant pausing. Sweden declared independence from Denmark with the help of Muscovy and I wanted to expand into Sweden too as well as Denmark/Norway for clean borders and cuz they had AE on me. So I thought I might as well mutilate Muscovy too so they wouldn’t obstruct me again in the future, plus my ally Poland declared on them a few times too and gave my Vassal land
Would you consider releasing the spanish tags (galicia/leon/etc) -as- Spain for their colonists? Seems like it might be worthwhile if it meant more CNs
I love PUs, but I think my favorite subjects is marches. There are so many nations that can be made into uber powerful marches with a relatively small amount of provinces dedicated. Any nation with good military ideas, plus the march interaction to give them better quality armies, and if they are positioned in a trade node I have 0 interest in, and they will rofl curb stomp just about anything.
My last France playthrough, I got a bit lazy and wanted a subject to autonomously siege far-away provinces in wars. Released Bologna as a march, fed them some venice and genoa provinces to make them really rich. Dev them a bit, do the recruit generals thing. They made an 80k stack and I had fun.
Hi monk curious why you didnt keep portugal with their lands under PU? i use this strategy a lot as they mega colonize for you for free. not having a go at you genuinely interested in your strategies
Yo, my friend megatomicdragon got banned from your twitch for "glowing in the dark". I can assure you that he isn't a fedrat. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Could you maybe do him the service of telling him the real reason why?
I really like PUs because it give me the opportunity to have a cracked out march the size of a 2nd GP. I never understood why you would want to fully Amex France as England when you have the opportunity to have French troops with crazy quality
PU develop their land . I don't think they have the dev cost increase of subjects. Release Ireland as PU versus keeping Ireland as a march shows a significant difference. Keep Desmond as a vassal as France they will do nothing for the entirety of the game. Never develop never build more than 10 troops. Whereas if you release them as PU as Britain you will see every province with 15 to 20 dev and they will travel all the way to India to help you.
You only need vassals in singleplayer, if you dont have special cb from mission or you do alt+f4 to get a PU In early part of your campaign for force limite and claims Then you dont need their claims you have so much of fucking core creation reductiond mods, adm efficiency and cost in peace deal so you can just ignore it I am only talking about WC runs because in every other singleplayer non WC run you can play whatever you want
And this is vassal because you can annex it easily and you dont need to gamble and do these machinations. Plus vassal can transfer trade power to you - pu only can embargoe
so lets say.. you play as England, you kill off every irish minors but release one of them as vassal, royal marry them, place relaitve on throne and get them as PU. Before that, they manage to form Ireland, and small chance is they will go colonial. My question is: If you let them go and get colonies in America and you as England/GB focus on Europe/Afrika. Is it worth? Or just useless strat
Seems like it's quicker just setting up 5 provinces (or conquering 5 provinces) in each colonial region and then subsidising them (or 10 provinces if you have time). I mark all the tribes as "important" so the colonies make claims on them, then keep starting wars while I'm doing stuff in Africa/Asia. Maybe leaving an army or two to help them
Really tryhard strategy. You intend to PU an area. Release as a subject and enforce dynasty. Attack a nation who has very strong diplomacy.
Separate peace the enemy ally by canceling overlord of the same subject. Just to PU them as soon as you can claim throne. You will also gain
revanchism which is amassing for manpower. You need to resort to this sort of playstyle if you wish to achieve the kind of crazy goals that
I have in the past.
Unfortunately I can't follow you
@@unlustig1 His train of thought is. If you're england and tend to PU ireland, release any irish state as vassal. England starts with Meath. Place a relative on their throne, then attack a nation with strong allies. Separate peace one of the allies by giving tribute and cancelling subject (in the offer tribute part of the war). After your truce, you can claim their throne and then PU them. Revanchism comes from 'losing' the war by losing the vassal.
@@goawayrayy thanks Sir! I also couldn't follow
@@goawayrayy thank you, that makes it more clear!
Also might be worth mentioning denmark when talking about PUs.
Every single PU you get will give you a stacking 5% manpower nuff and a flat 5k additional manpower. In addition, if they would qualify for March bonuses they get March bonuses.
Having a 250 dev Bavaria, Ireland,burgundy, and hungary as PUs all with huge morale bonuses in addition to a 1k dev Scandinavia is pretty wild, and I could crush all of europe on very hard easily by the time absolutism rolls around.
One addendum to this. If you want to do what Budget Monk suggests and make Asturias or Leon a personal union for colonizing because they have a colonist. They will colonize but it will be very slow. As personal unions and vassals will never take exploration and expansion, you have to wait for them to take it themselves, and then subjugate them.
Another way in which PUs are stronger than regular vassals is that they share your ruler. So if you disinherit aggressively for god rulers your subjects will benefit from that.
It's free real estate. Great vid as always. I also believe PUs keep the very hard nation bonuses whereas vassals don't. Also apparently since last patch PUs of emperor (possibly nay HRE member, haven't tested either) automatically joins HRE no matter their size which is huge.
No, they won't join if they have too much dev. (I think 100, but I'm not sure.)
Last game I played was Austria and Hungary was able to expand before I PU'd them. Once I had the Union, they wouldn't join the HRE.
If they are too big they cannot join. They did fix it though so that direct subjects of the emperor that can join the empire will join the empire, which is nice for diplo expanding the HRE in an area where you dont really want to directly expand.
@@edgarbm6407 there can be an imperial incident making them join though (very rng)
I think there's a 200 or 250 dev limit on that. I always take enough land from hungary before 1556 for this since hungary+ croatia dev is slightly higher than the limit at the start
While I agree with your points, it might be good to mention that marches are similarly overlooked and can be used for similar purposes, while easier to set up and they have juicy modifiers on their army quality - the big downside to marches is the liberty desire, as you said, but if you can manage it, they can be really nice, if you don't have many other subjects (A mix of marches and Pus does well for me) - also they pay no tribute as well, which means their economy is stable
Nistra is also a very good subject as the get fort defense bonus and fort maintenance in their ideas. So when you siege down an enemy fort, you transfer that fort to them and that makes it a lot more difficult for the enemy to take back
I've always considered PUs as a sort of better and loyal ally sometimes for a long time. Russia or France as PUs are so awesome.
Thanks for the video. There is so much potential for the trade shenanigans you've shown us.
C'mon Monk, how could you make a whole video about PUs and not mention inheriting them? Especially Navara, which is pretty easy to inherit over the course of a longer run if you don't feed them too much.
I'd assume because when you use a PU in the way he talks about in this video inheriting them is going to be rare and even potentially undesirable
@AmateurThespian I think you’re overreacting. Nothing about that comment was aggressive.
Nice vid, learned couple of things once again :)
Btw, that are some thick Ottomans you got there! Thats the main reason why i came to prefer Aragon over Castille cause you re in a better position to vassalize Byz and cut the Ottos down early on with a buffed Galley fleet. Plus you get so many perma claims around the Med. The only wonky thing is the Wedding as Aragon. If you cant deny it from firing early, then Castille wont colonize for you. In the current patch Castille doesnt disinherit Henrique anymore which means they usually take ages until they got Adm 5.
Nice video. One thing that wasn't brought up is exchanging favours with an ally to place your dynasty on their throne too. Great for getting bigger nations. Make them an interesting nation and wait for their ruler to pass away and hope he doesn't get an heir right away.
Nice. I have returned to France this week and have both a PU with Milan and with Naples. I took out the Genoa and Lucca provinces for both of these in the last session and your video has inspired me to continue down this path (okay, maybe Naples in Tuscany was not the best) as government cap is becoming an issue. I know Naples can get claims in Greece which is a great way to expand there and not use my mana.
Always insightful, BM. Thanks.
the whole cultural union part sounds great. I want to do that with a Prussia --> Germany run. Germany gets claims over basically all of Europe, but if you're forming it as Prussia you have reduced governing capacity. So forming it, only taking German culture provinces, then having PUs own France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Balkans.
I may choose to do this with a German minor, though, since I've done a Prussian run already. A real diplomacy HRE minor, perhaps a Bavarian nation.
Every single video.... "Wow! I'd never have considered that"...... Thanks for all the insights
Another great, educating video on EU 4. Thank you
I rallye enjoy watching your explanation Videos with this hottake style, were you point out mechanics that Arena easily overlooked
The income argument is rather moot, considering you can always subsidize your vassals to stabilize their income.
A big problem for me tends to be the lack of Transfer trade power, a player tends to optimize their trade income far more efficiently than the AI ever will, and the player is better at deciding where the money is spend. Especially since the AI is terrible at choosing which buildings to build. PU's also don't increase your land force limit by as much as vassals or marches do (do they even?)
A big point you missed is that you can inherrit PU's in one go, by focusing on Diplo Rep, you can get whole swaths of land without having to spend a single MP
These are good points. Having Influence can really wreck your subjects economy because you don't really have a choice but to take their money.
I don't think the subject pays more, you just receive more. It's like having vassal income efficiency
i also think that subjects are cool for roleplaying and making your borders look good, i personally dont like blobbing mindlessly and only thinking how to get stronger because eu4 is already too easy if you play big nations
Perfect subjecy, loyal subject
I was thinking of doing this in my England campaign, I had reconquered for Novgorod and vassal fed him chunks of Muscovy, but unfortunately he cannot form Russia as a Subject, so I wonder if it is worth to Place Dynasty, Break Vassalage, Wait for Novgorod to form Russia, Claim PU, then have a big loyal subject who can colonise Siberia for you, they’ll also useful in your Central Asian wars (if doing a WC), since it takes ages to traverse those 3 dev wasteland provinces
That might be worth it.
Or just wait til Russia forms, then PU them. Russia seems to always have problems with the heirs
@@edgarbm6407 Yeah I could’ve, but I was running out of places to expand and I like constantly warring even if this habit increases my IRL hours spent with speed 3 and constant pausing.
Sweden declared independence from Denmark with the help of Muscovy and I wanted to expand into Sweden too as well as Denmark/Norway for clean borders and cuz they had AE on me. So I thought I might as well mutilate Muscovy too so they wouldn’t obstruct me again in the future, plus my ally Poland declared on them a few times too and gave my Vassal land
Informative. I didn't think about siphon income actually.
Seing Cili chilling this big is chilling, might aswell eat some chilli against the chill.
thanks for the amazing content
Would you consider releasing the spanish tags (galicia/leon/etc) -as- Spain for their colonists? Seems like it might be worthwhile if it meant more CNs
100%
big brain moves
I love PUs, but I think my favorite subjects is marches. There are so many nations that can be made into uber powerful marches with a relatively small amount of provinces dedicated. Any nation with good military ideas, plus the march interaction to give them better quality armies, and if they are positioned in a trade node I have 0 interest in, and they will rofl curb stomp just about anything.
My last France playthrough, I got a bit lazy and wanted a subject to autonomously siege far-away provinces in wars. Released Bologna as a march, fed them some venice and genoa provinces to make them really rich. Dev them a bit, do the recruit generals thing. They made an 80k stack and I had fun.
Alos note Navarra has GREAT missions they can fulfill even if a PU and get a TON of free claims all over France.
i love this content
i got two 15s unskippable adds.
save my soul
Nothing to say, just trying to make the algorithm like you more.
Great content!
Ty sir!
Very informative.
Genius
OMG BBB Beardy Budget Monk
Freshhhhhhh
Hi monk curious why you didnt keep portugal with their lands under PU? i use this strategy a lot as they mega colonize for you for free. not having a go at you genuinely interested in your strategies
I was mostly messing around. The answer to your question is because I wanted the trade power. I also wanted them to colonize for me.
Something stinks around here...PU! 👃🏻
How can you prevent fully inheriting a PU when your King dies?
Just give them more land
sick ty
Yo, my friend megatomicdragon got banned from your twitch for "glowing in the dark". I can assure you that he isn't a fedrat. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Could you maybe do him the service of telling him the real reason why?
Daily uploads? :O 👍👍
I remember eu3 times when you could pu and inherit non Muslim nations
I really like PUs because it give me the opportunity to have a cracked out march the size of a 2nd GP. I never understood why you would want to fully Amex France as England when you have the opportunity to have French troops with crazy quality
cus AI is fucking retarded
Because the AI often makes dumb decisions.
@@anthonyscott1997And I want my name bigger on the map
Awesome
I been playing Pu's wrong. I don't think they're overrated, and I'm apparently playing too subpar to say this confidently, but they aren't underated.
Hey, hows it going?
PU develop their land . I don't think they have the dev cost increase of subjects. Release Ireland as PU versus keeping Ireland as a march shows a significant difference. Keep Desmond as a vassal as France they will do nothing for the entirety of the game. Never develop never build more than 10 troops. Whereas if you release them as PU as Britain you will see every province with 15 to 20 dev and they will travel all the way to India to help you.
You only need vassals in singleplayer, if you dont have special cb from mission or you do alt+f4 to get a PU
In early part of your campaign for force limite and claims
Then you dont need their claims you have so much of fucking core creation reductiond mods, adm efficiency and cost in peace deal so you can just ignore it
I am only talking about WC runs because in every other singleplayer non WC run you can play whatever you want
And this is vassal because you can annex it easily and you dont need to gamble and do these machinations.
Plus vassal can transfer trade power to you - pu only can embargoe
AI is much better at moving main trade node nowadays
Interesting. I didn't know that.
so lets say.. you play as England, you kill off every irish minors but release one of them as vassal, royal marry them, place relaitve on throne and get them as PU. Before that, they manage to form Ireland, and small chance is they will go colonial. My question is: If you let them go and get colonies in America and you as England/GB focus on Europe/Afrika. Is it worth? Or just useless strat
Seems like it's quicker just setting up 5 provinces (or conquering 5 provinces) in each colonial region and then subsidising them (or 10 provinces if you have time). I mark all the tribes as "important" so the colonies make claims on them, then keep starting wars while I'm doing stuff in Africa/Asia. Maybe leaving an army or two to help them
Monk are you lifting or something? You're looking kinda swole