For God's Sake - A Castile AAR

Update 64

Update 64​

To address my unfortunate stability problem I spend about 10000 ducats on temples before I get bored with clicking. There are lots of ‘untempled’ provinces; I’ll probably build more over the next few years. Do you like that casual mention of 10000 ducats, as if it’s not much? It’s not, I make 4500+ in census tax and a month’s minting is worth another 2500+

01/02/1674 Production 31

25/04/1674 Malacca converts

01/06/1674 Trade 31

A series of ‘Sail bys’ by a war fleet based in Maldives has destroyed nearly a hundred Vijayanagar ships over the last year. A sail by is just sailing a big fleet into the sea zone outside any enemy port turning around and sailing out – you normally get to kill whatever ships are in port as they sally out when you are sighted. Another fleet is guarding the Straits of Hormuz, the target of enemy blockade ships and it also inflicts heavy casualties.

India is increasingly well mapped. A Conquistador created at 100% Military tradition will probably have 6 manoeuvre and be able to map a TI province simply by riding into an adjacent province, it's fast

24/06/1674 Conversion of Laristan fails

09/07/1674 Orissa declares WAR on Castile

10/07/1674 Rajputana declares WAR on Castile in support of Orissa

Indian Politics for Dummies



Diplomatic mode shows the essence of the situation, if it moves I’m at war with it.

23/07/1674 Peace with Bali



Bali is now an OPM. Notice Ryukyu is currently beseiging Sulu, active for a micro!

13/08/1674 Tenasserim converts

09/09/1674 Conversion of Bursa fails

10/09/1674 Peace with Vijayanagar



This is a 96 point with a 38% score – but Vijayanagar has lost a lot of troops and well over a hundred ships.

01/10/1674 Naval 31

01/12/1674 Conversion of Kabulistan fails

01/01/1675 Gov’t 31

30/01/1675 Conversion of Balkh fails

11/04/1675 Mogilyov converts

01/05/1675 Land 32 – Level 5 forts, not usually a big thing except possibly in Multiplayer – I start building four of them in hard to convert provinces; Thrace, Cairo, Hormuz and Ayutthaya – that’s another 3000 ducats.

02/06/1675 Peace with Rajputana

03/06/1675 Peace with Orissa

The Indus Valley



This was a 94 point deal with Rajputana, who are now worth around 220 score in total and a 14 point deal with Orissa who are around 300 points. The problem with both countries is that they have holdings in Burma that border Ming or are isolated behind Vijayanagar territory. I expect both countries will hang on until I’ve forced a direct land connection across Northern India.

29/06/1675 Kyzyl Kum converts

Ming casualties are huge – whether this has any long term impact is another question.

4th Battle of Nadym



Yes this is 65 Ming regiments saying goodbye. At least a hundred Ming regiments have been destroyed in this campaign, the forthcoming battle of Tanna Tuva offers the chance to grind up another 40+.

06/09/1675 Qasim Khanate declares WAR on Castile

07/09/1675 Lithuania declares WAR on Castile in support of Qasim Khanate

25/09/1675 Qawasim converts

25/11/1675 Conversion of Aden fails

01/12/1675 Land 33

19/01/1676 Qarabagh converts

A minor theatre



The invasion of Japan, I don’t have nuclear weapons but I do have men wearing tricorns. It’s always good to have a technological edge.

01/04/1676 Production 32

20/04/1676 Conversion of Burtasia fails

16/08/1676 Chiang Mai converts

01/09/1676 Trade 32

02/09/1676 Peace with Lithuania

Non Castilian Christendom



That’s it - three OPMs, every other Christian province is Castilian.

03/10/1676 Urungwe converts – that’s the last Pagan province in Africa

29/11/1676 Conversion of Turkestan fails

25/01/1677 Conversion of Laristan fails

01/02/1677 Naval 32

01/05/1677 Gov’t 32

The land war against China remains stuck in the wilds of Turkestan and Mongolia – well over two hundred Chinese regiments have been destroyed.

03/05/1677 Kerey converts

30/06/1677 Balkh converts

04/10/1677 Chuy converts

27/11/1677 Conversion of Khiva fails

01/12/1677 Production 33

14/01/1678 Persia declares WAR on Castile

23/01/1678 Aden converts

05/03/1678 The first Persian peace offer arrives. Their DOW was badly timed, I was ready to DOW at the start of Feb!

21/04/1678 The idiot king dies.

The King is Dead, Long Live the Regency Council! :wacko:



The Regency Council A/D/M 4/5/4, I also find a 21 year 2* Theologian in the advisor pool.

The war in china continues. I’ve destroyed hundreds of regiments and sank nearly 200 ships but I’m no closer to immediate victory. However, Ming will need to recover and even China’s manpower pool can be exhausted.

comagoosie It took me long enough to strike back at Japan. I was going to try this 20+ years ago but distracted by the DOWs out of SE Asia.

Jambor I doubt I've killed that many, the wars don't usually last very long and army sizes are barely that of a WW2 Infantry division

Enewald Breaking China's manpower pool is difficult - it also refills very fast but I have done a lot of damage so far with more to come.

Vann the Red Attrition really helped in this campaign, Ming's troops have a long way to march through some low support provinces. Also, the advantage of inflicting casulties in the fire phase when your opponent doesn't is huge.

robou I think this is a case of 'Dress for Success'

aldriq I want Gotland to DOW me! Thirty years after I embargoed them I still can't drive out all their merchants o

Short update soon...

Update 65


25/04/1678 Conversion of Lamu fails

01/06/1678 Trade 33

21/06/1678 Gilan converts

18/09/1678 Conversion of Burtasia fails (rinse and repeat )

01/12/1678 Naval 33

The war with Ming continues to grind on. My armies in China are wearing down simply spread too thinly to hold everywhere. Well over 250 Chinese regiments have been destroyed, there are still over 150 in sight at the moment although most are ragged, very ragged.

I’ve finally got past the first phase in Japan, some 50 enemy regiments destroyed, their navy sank and the southern island taken. I’m looking for 3 or 4 provinces from Japan, that will probably need total victory. Taking anything from Ming looks difficult even though I’ve killed two Chinese kings.

03/12/1688 Conversion of Kabulistan fails

09/03/1689 Peace with Persia

Persia is down to two provinces



18/03/1679 Conversion of Ayutthaya fails

29/04/1679 Turkestan converts

There are two big battles raging right now, in Zhejiiang (32 Chinese regiments,2474 man) and Henan (45 Chinese regiments, 7669 men). Both end in th eutter destruction of the enemy army. Ming is starting to look a little short of war waging capacity, Taiwan is hugely valuable as Home Waters on the Chinese coast, a strong war fleet there is intercepting a steady stream of new built war ships.

01/06/1679 Gov’t 33 – another idea, but what?

I take Engineer Corps for the extra leader siege bonus – Ming is big and I get bored with having to do that many sieges over and over again.

27/06/1679 Hormuz converts

30/09/1679 Baluchistan converts

01/10/1679 Gov’t 34

11/10/1679 Peace with Japan



16/11/1679 Peace with Ming



This is a 98 point peace deal at 54% war score – I’ve destroyed something in the region of 400 Ming regiments.

Peace!

18/11/1679 Pensa converts

01/01/1680 War exhaustion is 3.16 and Bad Boy is 843.91


I'm on holiday this week so I may manage to update fairly frequently until next weekend.

Once I got the land border with Ming I knew it was just going to be endless war until they are annexed. At least I'm in charge of the timing as the two dead Kings has put them down to -3 stab.

IN rebels would be more of a problem for me than them - what would be nice would be 1.21 size AI armies, they were too small to reclaim territory before defection

I once had an 18 province turbodefection in China playing as Kazan

Feedback time

comagoosie End of resistance? - not quite yet Ming is still around 1600 points!

Babington-Smyth The war felt incredibly hard - I must have destroyed 200 hundred regiments on the frontier in the first year or so then when I pushed forward there were as many regiments again. One of the good things about coastal China is that several provinces are high enough support limit that my standard 13k army can happily rest and regain strength even when seiging.

Jambor I already have Taiwan as a jump off point for China. The general approach is to develop one front as a fullon war then a couple of years later drop seige forces at the other end of Ming's Empire to storm some cities and gain some fast war score. Once you get over 50% war score the AI is a lot more reasonable. I probably won't attack Korea or Manchuria until much later - anywhere that can revolt away from Ming should be given every chance to do so.

Just for you the next update is a quick update of colonial progress.

Update 66


Colonial development has been driven by the ‘New Colonial Policy’ of 1600. Provinces will have enough settlers sent to them that natural population growth will see the province reach city status (1000 inhabitants) by the end of the game. For much of the early part of the seventeenth century that meant three colonists, through he second part of the century four colonists – up to around 1685.

The colonial objectives have been a scattering of naval bases and the entirety of the Americas. Progress has been considerable.

Uncolonised North America



This is much easier than screen capping all the stuff that has been colonised There aren’t all that many full cities there but only four of those provinces won’t hit city size without more colonists.

The Caribbean



This is still a work in progress, as well as the two unclaimed islands there are six more where colonists have only recently arrived.

Central America



There are some provinces still working towards city status but this area is complete as far as colonists are concerned.

Brazil



Brazil is heavily populated by colonial standards. The three provinces on the northern coast are tropical. I’ve been waiting for a high admin monarch to help with the penalty so I don’t waste too many colonists getting these provinces started. Due to lower population growth they’ll need eight colonists.

Uncolonised South America



Australia



New Zealand is still populated with lots of hostile natives; I do aim to try colonising the islands but it will be quite a while in the future.