Eu 4 isn't that complicated at the tactical level so with a bit of practice

Tip five rush early military tech if you remember back to my second video in the
Series I had a chart that detailed the relative advantage of having a one tech lead
while it's always a great idea to push for a military tech advantage if you can it's especially pronounced early in the game be non tech for while your enemy is on tech three can turn a tough war into a series of lopsided stack pipes in your favor while being on tech six while your enemy is on tech five is akin to having a discipline advantage well in excess of 30% because mill tech is so critical early on a standard move for many nations is to put their first national focus on military points and to hire at least a level one military advisor even if they start in a tough economic situation .
Finally tip 6 if you can't win outright understand that a stalemate will eventually give you victory the mechanics of the game are set up such that the AI is very poorly suited to long conflicts hence as long as you can set up a sustainable status quo you can win basically anything a good example of this is the Hundred Years War this is one of the more well-known at difficult fights in eu4 but it can actually be fairly easy and lay back if you know what you're doing first I give my Continental provinces to vassals so I don't get taking war exhaustion when they get occupied then when the war starts I make the conscious decision not to engage the enemy on the mainland or they have a significant advantage instead I focus on Scotland and stack wiping any enemies that naval I invade England and then I just sit the reason this works is that more enthusiasm is largely predicated on the length of war modifier which makes allies unwilling to continue in the war after a period of time after about seven years the enemy's allies are willing to agree to a white
piece despite the fact that I had never engaged with most of them after I secured a military tech advantage I simply stroll into Paris uncontested and win the worry
easily now the downside of the stalemate
strategy is that it takes time which is
often the ultimate resource in strategy
games normally you'd never want to wait
this long to win a single war as I was
mostly just dragging it out for
demonstrative purposes however if you
have time to spare and are in a position
that makes this trap feasible then
stalemate is a reliable low-stress way
to win wars without numbered another
example of where this track can work is
in the second war against the Ottomans
where you can block the straights and
let the war exhaustion balloon by
occupying their European provinces it
also works as Japan fighting against the
main where you can get where exhaustion
taking from blockades with those tips
being said though it should be noted
that in general there's actually not a
lot of crazy things you can do to win
Wars if you have a large disadvantage EU
4 is primarily a strategy game not a
tactics game unless you have a specific
geographic or diplomatic setup that
gives you an ace up your sleeve
getting declared on by a nation with
three times your force limit really
isn't minimal no matter how good you are
the Kazan versus Muscovy example I
listed earlier as towards the upper
limit of what good players can do
through raw tactical skill alone newer
players might get the wrong impression
by watching some streams or videos where
a player wins against all odds against
some massive enemy well that's exciting
and makes for good video content that is
not the norm of what you should seek to
do on a consistent basis a far better
strategy is to seek to win war
sufficiently good players with wars
while great players when were swiftly
and at little expense Wars can roughly
be divided onto a continuum between
blitz peaks and slogs blitzkrieg czar
ryu sees down all the enemy's forts as
quickly as possible with only occasional
fighting whereas slogs are the wars that
come down to a battle of resources
between the two sides with lots of
fighting draining the resource pools of
both nations until one side loses the
ability to resist the efficient play is
to avoid the second type of war as much
as possible and focus instead on the
low-hanging fruit where you can win
easily without much exertion just
because you could win a war against a
roughly equal opponent doesn't mean you
should try in terms of expanding
yourself the trick
official whirring is to simply attack
nations that are weaker than you these
could be smaller nations those without
allies those being attacked by other
countries those that are bankrupt etc in
doing so not only will you win battles
consistently by bringing more troops to
bear you can also find yourself rarely
having to fight at all the AI has been
extremely skittish in the past several
patches and it will often abandon its
country altogether to go see some stuff
far away which means you can win with
very few casualties taken another trick
to efficient worrying is that you almost
always want to plan words such that the
result in total victory there are very
few places for partial wars in this game
you almost always want to fight until
you can take a hundred war score worth
of stuff words tend to cascade in ways
that make the second half easier and
less resource-intensive than the first
half combining this with other phenomena
like truce efficiency means it's
typically worthwhile to prosecute Wars
until you win decisively when you're
fighting an enemy with little strategic
depth you should defeat their army as
quickly as possible and then follow up
by trying to stack wipe out wherever it
shatters to don't let the enemy freely
replenish their losses catch them on the
back foot and strike them down so they
cannot get back up if transporting your
troops via boats or getting access
treaties through other nations allows
you to go for the stack light you should
do so at the same time you should place
at least one regiment on each enemy
province so they can't recruit new units
it's alright if you can't start seeing
things just yet focus first on
eliminating their ability to
counter-attack then you can focus on
seizing down therefore it's to bring the
war to a conclusion if you do this all
correctly these words should be very
cheap as in under ten thousand men loss
combined to both battle and attrition
these wars won't cost you much even if
you do things inefficiently but the
difference between an easy war taking
say eight thousand casualties and taking
sixteen thousand casualties snowballs
and adds up over the course of a
campaign
next let's talk about wars where your
primary target is a large nation in
general you should do wars against the
big guys either in the first 20 years of
the game or wait until at least the 17th
century after you get access to
absolutism some countries like Byzantium
navara are the European hordes face an
immediate existential threat without
many easy ways to escape in that case if
they want to retain their homeland then
they'll have to make use of the tips I
detailed at the start of the video going
for an early kneecapping of the Ottomans
or Castillo lore Muscovy can be useful
and even necessary for some starts but
if it isn't you should wait until later
in the game when you can take much more
land it just isn't worth while to plow
into the Ottomans in 1550 yes a good
player will probably win the war but it
will be very resource intensive and in
the end you'll only get a dozen
provinces or so there are some
exceptions to this rule with certain
mission trees or with specific mechanics
like the Mandate of Heaven or the Holy
Roman Empire but generally it's better
to exclusively prioritize the
low-hanging fruit until you get to
absolutism if it's feasible to do so
when you do go to war note that even if
you're much larger than them words
against big nations can still take a
disproportionate amount of effort I
still worry about facing an Ottomans
with 2,000 development even when I have
10,000 development because the AI can
still easily attain local superiority by
Death stacking all its units at one
portion of the front these words tend to
come down to monitoring where your enemy
is massing its troops and responding
with your own as you slowly peel back
each layer of forts they'll have to
fight the same armies over and over
again because rushing in for stack pipes
isn't an option
getting temporary allies for these words
can be very helpful not necessarily
because they'll contribute much military
prowess but rather to distract two enemy
troops the AI likes to allocate its
forces to focusing down weaker nations
so getting someone to serve as see fate
on the opposite side of your enemy can
make the first parts of the war easier
what do you eventually win the war it's
very important that you take the right
provinces since you won't be able to
annex them all at once you don't want to
take big cohesive chunks of their empire
rather you want to spread tentacles
reaching as far into their lands as
possible prioritizing taking forts when
the opportunity presents itself
this lets you shatter their strategic
depth disproportionately making
subsequent Wars much easier relative to
how much development you actually
deprive them of the deeper you reach the
more maneuverability you'll have in the
next war and the more force you'll be
able to see in parallel the tentacles
will also serve as an early warning
system for where enemy troops are
heading and will give the AI difficulty
in dealing with rebels and it'll give a
place to quickly replenish depleted
regiments it may seem silly to engage in
the poor tagore of chopping the country
to ribbons but rest assured that it is
the optimal way to play so thanks for
watching this series there's certainly
some topics that could be covered in
further depth which I may do at some
point I ended up cutting a lot of
content to just focus on the most
important stuff otherwise the series
would have been three times longer than
its already bloated size nevertheless I
hope it's given you insight and how
warfare works in EU four and how to
improve at it until next time
my name's Raymond and thanks for
watching you