I'm playing as France and I'm getting war declared on me by a super power every so often, which gets England, Spain and Portugal involved against me usually. My only hope is to usually stack troops on a mountain and defend and just hope they keep attacking that mountain defense. What should I do to keep them from declaring war on me all the time? I just want to live and conquer in peace!
Getting dominated by multiple super powers while playing as France. How to do
europa-universalis-iv
Related Solutions
If anyone else is having this problem, you just need to core 5 provinces, or the amount of provinces you need to have 5 in that place. You dont need 5 to colonize, you need 5 cores to make a colonial nation. Of course, colonize give you free cores.
This is actually a confusing issue because the DLC expansions wildly change the mechanics for Terra Incognita, and there is very little documentation about this on the wiki.
'Vanilla' EU4 Terra Incognita Discovery Mechanics
In 'vanilla' EU4, you discover new ocean provinces by moving a fleet with an Explorer on to the unknown ocean tiles. You also randomly reveal coastal land tiles when you move into an adjacent ocean province. To normally reveal land tiles, use an army with a Conquistador. An army with an a Conquistador can also directly disembark from a fleet containing transport ships to a coastal province with Terra Incognita.
DLC Expansion EU4 Terra Incognita Discovery Mechanics
If you have certain expansions enabled (El Dorado), the mechanics are almost completely different. Explorers can no longer move into Terra Incognita tiles at all. Instead, any group of 3 or more Light Ships or Transports will have a "Send Explorer" option which shows you a list of possible 'Exploration Missions'.
There are two different types of Exploration Missions. One is "Explore the waters of X", which sends the fleet out to systematically reveal ALL ocean provinces in the 'X' region. The second type of mission is only available after the first Exploration Mission is completed (or partially completed), and it is "Explore the coast of X", which sends the fleet out to systematically reveal ALL coastal provinces in the 'X' region. Which missions are available to you depends on your Colonial Range from one of your provinces to the region in question. You need a certain range to enable the first mission and a bit higher range to enable the second type of mission.
Comparisons and Conclusions
There are pros and cons to each approach. With vanilla mechanics, there is no limit to how far you could reveal Terra Incognita. You could take your very first fleet directly from Japan to Africa and disembark and conquer the Kongo. With the DLC expansion mechanics, this is impossible. However, you suffer no naval attrition damage when on an Exploration Mission. Some missions, like "Explore the waters of Australia" or "Explore the waters of Oceania" would take many, many trips for an Explorer to complete without the DLC expansion mechanics enabled. Additionally, unless you are using the disembark method, it can sometimes be hard to reveal the coastal land province you want using the vanilla mechanics, since the provinces you reveal are completely random (and not remotely comprehensive).
In my opinion, neither version is superior. I play with the DLC expansions enabled because the other mechanics they provide are excellent. However, if you were trying to do some very specific early exploring (for the purposes of pure conquest), I could see how the Exploration Mission mechanics would be limiting, since they are based on the premise that you would want to colonize the regions in question.
A Note About Full World Exploration
Note that there is no way (with either mechanic) to reliably discover uninhabitable land patches of Terra Incognita. You have a chance to discover them over time if you have a province near the area (or an ally does), but it's pure luck. It makes getting the World Exploration achievement annoying when you have 99.9% of the world explored and are only missing a patch of uninhabitable land in Siberia.
Best Answer
And therein lies the problem :) As France, it's not very difficult to be universally hated, due to its central position and multiple powerful neighbours. You have probably accumulated too much aggressive expansion(AE) from conquering left and right (particularly provinces these superpowers consider part of their rightful domain) and everybody's outraged or hostile. There's a reason why AE is sometimes referred to as "badboy" :-)
It happens. What you need to do is find powerful allies to keep an armed peace, not unlike the Cold War. Hungary and Poland/Commonwealth are good choices, the latter mostly useful against Austria. Some of the Scandinavian powers can help with England's fleet. Larger HRE princes that do not border you can also be of assistance -- Savoy, Brandenburg, Bohemia are typically strong contenders. Generally, you need to be looking for allies among coalition's bitter enemies. Declare some of the stronger coalition members as your rivals (they hate you anyway), and placate, bribe and befriend their enemies into allying with you. Doesn't matter if they are not very powerful by themselves, they have friends of their own that might help. And for all that is holy, don't participate in wars on the aggressor side until tensions are eased.
The take-home lesson is to be careful when expanding. Don't take too much provinces in one go, prefer vassalizing and releasing small nations, and always check how much AE your current peace offer will cause. It takes a long time before coalitions dissolve, typically more than the duration of a truce, so it's preferable to take small bits at a time to keep everybody happy.