Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)

[vertinox]

EUIII Version: 1.3
Mods: Magni Mundi IV 1.01
Country: City of Frankfurt
Difficulty: Normal (the mod supposed to be played on normal)
Start Date: 1453
End Date: Whenever the city is annexed, save game corrupted, or 1789 (probaly the first two)
Summary: An accidental AAR about the City of Frankfurt which I started playing with Magni Mundi. I'm got another 200 years or so to go, but if any patches are released for either EUIII or MMIV I'll probably not update for fear of fatal CTDs in game saves. I played a game of Lubeck, but I got bored with peace and trading and decided to pick a small German minor with lots of production power in which I would focus on production rather than conquest, taxes, or trading.

However, one thing led to another and my peaceful Imperial City of Frankfurt got angry and decided to become a major power which is kind of hard for a minor in the HRE with Magni Mundi events but considering the AI was asking for it... Well... Things started to get interesting.

In the Spirit of Phargle, I'm going to post lots of pictures with little words from the prospective of the city rather than from the leaders as some anthropomorphic conscious entity.

Secondly, the first part of the AAR until the 1500's is rather boring and not many pictures due to fact I didn't think I would make an AAR of this. In fact, often times I just didn't bother to make pictures.



(Rawr! I'm an angry bird!)

BTW: This is my first AAR... EVAR!

[Petros]

This should be interesting - I shall be following.

Good luck in your adventures with "Mainhattan"! (read the wiki entry obviously )

Is Frankfurt as exposed to enemy fire (or shock) as that bird?

[Gigalocus]

looks good, i do love MM, and enjoy AAR, are you going for a difficult make of Germany, or continue as a sole province?

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter I: Boring Stuff
1453 - 1490s

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



I am the City of Frankfurt. In a sea of other random HRE members I am surrounded in. My neighbors already seem to be enjoying war as a monthly entertainment event.




Burgomaster Burkhard Heidleburger? Say that 5 times fast. What is a burgomaster? Shouldn't it be borgomeister. Wait according to Wiki (yes the benefits of being a non-corporal enity is that you can have access anything in the past, present, or future) in German it should be Amtsbürgermeister. Never mind. I'd hate saying that every day. Burgomaster is hard enough to pronounce. Anyways....




It turns out that I'm also an Imperial City which according to Wiki (again the benefits of having no sense of linear time) is a bit different than a free city in that I still have a Arch-bishop diocese or something related to a Burgomaster. Oh whatever... If you haven't noticed I've given all my neighbors military access so they won't declare war on me for the -5 stab hits. *coughs* Also I notice the current Burgomaster is Otto Sub. What are with these Hessians and their strange name?




A more close lookup look at Frankfurt shows that we have 15,000 or so souls with a nice manufactory and tax income. Note I also have a tax accessors to extract more taxes out of the burghernites or whatever you call them. Also the Market places brings my population growth up to 10% so hopefully I will have more people to tax in the future. I'm focusing on production rather than trading since I plan acquire my neighbors resources for proactive use of things I don't have. Also why is this picture from 1460s and not from the 1470s... Must be something to do with my non-linear sense of time.




My budget and techs. Note that I'm going to get the ability to Naval Blockade soon and I think that might be rather useful in a sea of land or in the public baths... What am I talking about? We don't have public baths in the 1400s. I'm thinking Roman times. Suddenly the usefulness of blockading public baths is not that great.




Dedrick Betz? Anyways... My useless advisers except for the really nifty reputations fellow who dies before I ever go to war.




Oh really? Did they really take the plan of blockading the public baths seriously? I don't know about you, but I know which choice I took. Hint: Its the one a land locked nation would take.




I take a loan by accident. Luckily its just the small ones to due Magni Mundi. I make up for it by loaning out the money I got from the loan to others.



I get really bored and loan out more money to lots of people. I make a tad of money off exploiting my fellow nations, but its boring after a while. So... Boring... Mind... Going...

*coughs*

Errr... Um... Well least I'm rich. Maybe I'll buy an army or something.



Surprise! Another Burgomaster whose name I can't pronounce without Germans frowning at me for butchering their language! Funny how an ancient German city can't speak German, no?

Thus Ends chapter one of the boring stuff. Will Frankfurt every do anything of use besides earn taxes, collect interest from loans and small amounts of tech? Will Frankfurt ever learn German well enough to pronounce its ruler's names? Will Frankfurt even buy an army?

Find out in Chapter II: Not so boring stuff as before, but as not as interesting as what it could be.

[vertinox]

This should be interesting - I shall be following.

Good luck in your adventures with "Mainhattan"! (read the wiki entry obviously )

Is Frankfurt as exposed to enemy fire (or shock) as that bird?

Well if nothing else... EUIII has been a impetus to read up on random facts. I always wondered where the term Manhattan came from. (although wasn't NYC sweedish?)

And the expression on the birds face is on discovery that longbow archers have no fire value!

looks good, i do love MM, and enjoy AAR, are you going for a difficult make of Germany, or continue as a sole province?

Originally, I had intended to remain peaceful as possible, but events conspired against me and I end up taking a completly different route and I "accidentally" annexed some of my neighbors in a series of wars. With Magni Mundi, its rather difficult to do and keep a hold on war gains so that is where the story gets interesting. But I'll save that part for the AAR.

And maybe... Just maybe I'll form German, but its a long road ahead and I've only played till 1580 so far.

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter II: Not so boring stuff as before, but as not as interesting as what it could be.
1490s - 1503

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



Jock-a-min? Pitt-shaft? I think I can say this name for once.




Now is one of those times I'm missing about 5 pictures I forgot to take. See what happened here? Welllll.... My game started to CTD around 1497. I couldn't figure out what was happening. I was minding my own business staying at peace and yet I'd get the universe to collapse in on itself because someone over in the Ottoman Empire made a butterfly flap its wings that made someone in Ming perform a Schroedinger's cat experiment which caused the universe to fold in on itself. Now being one of those non-corporal entities that can travel time, I kept backing up time and it still happened. Sooo... I zipped back and figured I would just do the opposite of what I was normally going to do (which was sit peacefully and grown my techs) and decided to expand. Hesse had a nice copper province in Nassau and I had enough money from those loan sharking to build one (yes it was very tedious and I 10 loans going at once). So I get a spy to infiltrate their spy ring and then I put a claim on Hesse's capital so I keep a cassi belli on them so I can declare war a second time to make them give up their cores. However, England invaded them and made them cede a province so I figured... What they heck... I'll just annex them! Whatever I did, it bypassed the CTD and I kept going.




All of a sudden an HRE event fires off in the background for England and they give Nassau back so I made a change of plans and decided to grab that one province since it had the copper for the manufactory I had planned to grab initially. As you can tell, I'm winning hands down.




Another event that has no advantage or disadvantage seeing I gave up on trading a long time ago since I only had National Bank as my starting idea and just now was reaching the point on which I could have my second. (Which I forgot to take a picture of) So I went with the one with the least stability hit. I think there were some other events but I forgot to take pictures of those too.




The truce expires and Hesse declares war on me saving me the trouble of getting a stab hit for having the same religion. I suppose everyone is suicidal in the HRE (I forget why I didn't get an HRE even to give back the province, could be that I had a small state tag. This whole lack of linearity has gotten confusing). Rather than risk finding out what the HRE does to you to get back a province, I force Hesse to give up its core in Nassau which has the strange effect of that I can recruit any troops whatsoever in that province. To be fair, if I can hold on to it for 75 years it will look like mine all along.




Another Burgomaster! Oh and I'm at war with someone... I think I forgot I was at war with England so I do a white peace.




My economy and technology. I'm getting a bit of inflation and even with National Bank its getting hard to keep the rate negative so I took Bureaucracy (which has some inflation bonuses in Magni Mundi) rather than Guild Production.



One of these pictures...




...is not like the other. Can you tell what happened between 1500 and 1503? I'm not sure what went on, but I try not to get involved in those kind of strange cosmic disturbances.



I get impatient and take out a few loans and start building the Weapons Manufactory. I suppose guns beats loan sharks any day. *yawn* Now for a bit sitting around. I seem to be doing a lot of that as a German Minor. At least I can watch the feeding frenzy and province release that is the HRE.


Thus Ends chapter two of not so boring stuff as before, but as not as interesting as what it could be. Will Frankfurt go bankrupt in the scheme to build a Weapons Manufactory? What happened to the black hole that is Burgundy? Why are one province minors so suicidal?

Find out in Chapter III: Lets watch the progress in the ledger for 10 more years!

[Cliffracer RIP]

Now is one of those times I'm missing about 5 pictures I forgot to take. See what happened here? Welllll.... My game started to CTD around 1497. I couldn't figure out what was happening. I was minding my own business staying at peace and yet I'd get the universe to collapse in on itself because someone over in the Ottoman Empire made a butterfly flap its wings that made someone in Ming perform a Schroedinger's cat experiment which caused the universe to fold in on itself. Now being one of those non-corporal entities that can travel time, I kept backing up time and it still happened. Sooo... I zipped back and figured I would just do the opposite of what I was normally going to do (which was sit peacefully and grown my techs) and decided to expand. Hesse had a nice copper province in Nassau and I had enough money from those loan sharking to build one (yes it was very tedious and I 10 loans going at once). So I get a spy to infiltrate their spy ring and then I put a claim on Hesse's capital so I keep a cassi belli on them so I can declare war a second time to make them give up their cores. However, England invaded them and made them cede a province so I figured... What they heck... I'll just annex them! Whatever I did, it bypassed the CTD and I kept going.

Delete the Cache files every time you start a new game.

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter III: Things get interesting
1503 - 1516

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



In World News: The Ottomans go into a fetal position and cry their eyes out. 30% war exhaustion. Ouch!




The Weapons Manufactory is finished. Hopefully I'll make enough money from it to not go bankrupt when the loans are due.




The reformation takes off in full force! Well... In the Balkans. Apparently the Ming Schroedinger's Cat has some strange affect on the Universe.




Ah! I'm coming along nicely with the economics. Look at that high tax and population growth! More people to tax and more tax on people! Also I've got a few more buildings built since the last time.




I see a free merchant slot in Novgorod and in the first time in 20 years I send a merchant to a CoT.

He fails to even compete against a free slot.




When in Rome, do as the Vandals do? Seems like everyone and their grandmother wants to invade Roma for some reason even though the Pope is back in power. I saw Sweden take it for a bit before giving it back to the pope. Hrm... Looks like the TO wants to ally me.




Huh? I must have forgotten about that old man in the retirement home. He must have not died after all. 61 years in service and still kicking.



Now I'll stop here... This event changes everything.

Another one of those situations where I seem to have forgot to take more pictures. Basically, I get call to arms to beat on Austria which Austria is actually loosing so I can't resist to beat up on a blobber and go wild down there with cavalry. That escapade is cut short when it get the following event.
(que serious music) *Duh! Duh! Duh!*



Thus Ends chapter three of things get interesting. What will Frankfurt decide in the event? Can anyone read the event? What is going to happen to Austria? What about the old man in the retirement home? Do they even have Depends diapers in the 1500s? Will Vertinox actually remember to take screen shots of all the Magni Mundi events he has been getting?

Find out in Chapter IV: Do we get to keep the funny hats if we convert?

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter IV: Do we get to keep the funny hats if we convert?
1516 - 1524

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



Oh my! This could be serious! How could anyone in their right mind go against the Papcy!
What you say? You get 10% bonus on production for being protestant?



Damn the stability! Recall the troops! Make white peace! Full speed protestantism ahoy!
Apparently, not having a priest around to relieve people's guilty conscious makes them work harder instead.
Apparently must be a good thing.




Apparently not everyone thinks so.




Hooray! Two of the biggest HRE members duking it out and not trying to annex me... Or something.




Since we're sitting around at -3 stab, now is as good as time to any to convert to a new government.
Now we've got a bonus of 15% production increase total! Work your slaves... err... I mean citizens!




Whelp... Here we are with administrative monarchy and protestantism.
Am I still an Imperial City? Ah who cares.
At least the citizens are working harder to make me more money!
(don't tell Martin Luther about this)
Hey... I've got CB on Ming. Must be their Schroedinger's cat again.




Three years and were back into positive stability. Things are looking up.



Except I get into a war with Brandenburg and finally annex Hesse. The Emperor slaps with me a silly "Imperial Embargo".
Phsah! I don't even have merchants in any CoT!
Luckily the population of Hesse converts through event to Protestantism and I gain a core in Hesse.
Huh? That was easy! I wonder why people don't stand up to the Holy Roman Emperor more often? (*FORESHADOWING*)



Now to take Brandenburg about of the picture. They'll make a nice vassal.
As soon as this final war is done, I'll just pay off my loans and get my inflation and bad boy down...



Unnnnngggghghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
(I hope that is a white peace offer from Brandenburg)


Thus ends this narrator closing which is getting really old. Will that mean this silly questions will be asked at the end of each chapter? Can anyone read the events? Is Vertinox's 1600x1050 resolution too outlandish? Has the old man in the retirement home croaked yet? How is Poland this time of year? Shouldn't we be asking the Polish soldiers how they like Frankfurt this time of year?

Find out in Chapter V: Why do I always get the short end of the deal in royal marriages?

[Gigalocus]

hmm, 3 (brilliant) updates in one day, theres only one thing to say to that:

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwight!

[vertinox]

hmm, 3 (brilliant) updates in one day, theres only one thing to say to that:

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwight!

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I'll only have two days out of the week to update. I can't play EUIII where I"m at right now so I thought to use the time to make an AAR with the screen shots I burned to CD.

I think I'm running out of time today, but I'll make another update next weekend. I still got about 60 years worth of AAR to post even if I don't get more time to play.

[BBBD316]

Really interesting, I can't play the game myself so lots of pictures = me likey!

[theycallmetight]

good aar, I like the humor. Too bad about being shafted by the royal marriages though.
*subscribes*

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter V: Why do I always get the short end of the deal in royal marriages?
1524 - 1539

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



I deal with that succession war the only way I know how. Sack the capital! Despite being one of the largest nations I have fought against, the Poles appear to a big nanny pushover and I force them into a white peace. (Screw the Scottish crown)



On a side note, Thuringia declared war on me after laying claim to our crown right after I joined in a royal marriage with them.
I gotta stop from doing this royal marriage thing.
They lay siege to my castle and I deal with another royal marriage war the only way I know how... Call up a bunch of mercenaries and kick their butts!
I also call up a general to help whose name is... Adam Assmann? What? I'm not making this up! I wonder if anyone has told him about his name. Is this something from MM or vanilla? Am I seeing either some vague Paradox humor here? I certainly didn't put him in the list of names.
Either way, he kicks their butts to kingdom come.




Poor General Assmann. We hardly knew ye. But we will remember you for all time.
Oddly enough, there was a constant snickering at this state funeral during the eulogy.




Same year as the picture before. Too many damn loans from all these wars and I don't even have a bad BB. Inflation starting to get up there from minting.



Whats this? An upstart religion being tolerant of another upstart religion? Pfah! Like whatever! Get out! Pacifists apparently don't want to pay taxes so I suppose might as well kill them off now.




The Palatine with delusion of grandeur and no understanding of geography decide to take advantage of their alliance with France and declare war on me.
Why are all the one province minors so damn suicidal? Well at least I don't have to take the stab hit for this one.




Besides having no education on geography and the times of travel it would take a French army to reach them, they also have no understanding of defense and cave in faster than the poles did.



I'm not sure, but for some reason my nation looks like it is doing something naught with Mainz now.



The French diplomat replied "We had an ally? Called who again?"



Fearful of the beating I gave them last time, the Poles (who are now the Holy Roman Emperor) offer a secret meeting in order for me to take Rheinzer-ful-plazer-ich-something. Although they ran out of paper and the diplomat didn't really know who we were going to have the secret alliance with...


Thus ends the chapter where the chapter thus ends. Aren't you going to ask those silly end of the chapter questions? Why? Why not? If so, explain in 50 words or less why we should have end of the chapter questions? Its not like we already know how this turns out? You mean we get annexed by Ming? No? I meant the other Ming?

Find out in Chapter VI: What do you mean its not my province?

[BBBD316]

MMM great event, pay 50 ducats to get 50 ducats

[theycallmetight]

pity how your royal marriages don't work out, but i'm sure the game will make it up to you by letting you inherit france or something.

[vertinox]

pity how your royal marriages don't work out, but i'm sure the game will make it up to you by letting you inherit france or something.

lol, well... Not really. I need to update, but I don't think I'll be able to get around till tomorrow. I actually beat the game yesterday. Well... Beat as in I finished. I don't think I really won, but I didn't loose any dignity in the process.

[vertinox]

Frankfurt: A tale of an angry little German city that could (Magni Mundi IV)
Chapter VI: I lied... The chapter about the HRE war is not this one. Actually this one is rather boorish.
1539 - 1549

Not many words, but lots of pictures (which some I have forgotten to take)



Given the choice of upsetting my neighbors and making money, I go with the making money.



Champagne? Caviar? Why did no one tell me we had these in the conference room?



Hrm... Upset Poland which I already beat the pants off once or getting a core? You know cores aren't cheap these days. I go with the obvious choice.




I accept their language, but I'm sure I won't be able to pronounce their names either.



Poland hates me so much that I get nominated as an elector.
Or maybe the everyone who is an elector hates Poland?
Who elects the electors anyways?




As for a time out, I decide to show off my current techs and budget to the audience.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it is something to brag about. At least I have a higher land tech than my neighbors.




Also, I get a slider change and go full centralization and I will spend this time showing off my sliders and national ideas.
Moving on...



As elector I get to loose all the negative effects as a member state.



Damn. Why didn't anyone tell me the electors had it this good. I would have annexed one years ago.
Actually, its not that great... It like getting a promotion at the office where you get more responsibility without the authority. Or the pay...
And I don't do any trading so this does nothing really.



Yes. More tax money.


Thus ends Chapter VI in which Vertinox forgot the part about the HRE getting angry at him or was it because he could only post 10 screen shots at a time? If no one replies soon will this thread of all pictures on the first page destroy a poor 56K modem of a forum goer? Are all the persons posting on the CK forum? Or are they just on the Viki forum complaining about how CK is getting a new expansion pack? Or are they just complaining about pops?

Find out in Chapter VII: I'll get around to the HRE war one of these days

[M4 Emperior]

When you have more time, u can convert the save into Victoria .

[vertinox]

When you have more time, u can convert the save into Victoria .

I've seriously thought about it, but I'm thinking about going with Nappy first but if and only if Magni Mundi games will be compatible.

Chances are it will be a bit fat no because I believe Johan said the event hooks have changed which MM relies on a great deal.

I'm going to get Nappy anyways and if it works then it works, but if not, then I'll just have replay an MM game from the beginning, but I'd doubt it will be a Frankfurt.

Of course if that is the case... I'm probably going to stick with DV for CK and create a game from 1066 to 1950 depending if they ever get the conversions to work (I bet photobucket is going to hate me if that does happen)