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unddu

Armchair Temüjin
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Jun 23, 2007
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Yes! Although the amount of replies to the original thread was , well let's say less than overwhelming I decided I would still go ahead and post the Meck Shadow WC aar. Even if people dont post, they still still read what I write, or so I tell myself :rofl:

So what are we up to now?

Well first of all no fancy story telling, no spelling checks and no rereading! I will just post updates as I did in the Mantua WC.

-All settings normal
-This means lucky on, gogo France!
-Difficulty=Hard
-No inheriting nor diplo annexing, both are considered cheating! by me ;)


I have actually started a new game and abandoned the old mirror game, since I was lacking in screenies, which means I would be left typing my ass off once again!

The good thing about restarting is that this time I already know what Im going to do and can act accordingly. No more wasting time looking at pixels, everything will have to serve the ultimate goal now. I play tested a lot, so we should be fine.... Theoretically...


Everyones favorite nation:

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Suprise suprise , a cent move it is!

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Advisors are lacking as always. Ah well you gotta make do with what the game throws at you. One play test run gave me two inf reduction advisors....

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Making some cavalary, as much as my huge mp pool will allow me!

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Money will be made using trade, this will be my main source of revenue for a long time to come. Ill only send to cots I have a decent compete chance at, dont be fooled by the place chance, only check the compete chance!

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Warning everyone and there mother, as long as they are tiny!

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A weak ally

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A slightly better one.

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Stab first

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Left over advisors! They sure are a lot better than the initial batch!

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Tada! Minting will mean more than enough trade cash will turn into real life ducats, which I will need with 2 cores total....
 
Last edited:
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There we go: Gov 4 here we come! National bank>trade ideas, even for a trader nation! Why? Because having a trade idea, might give you a better chance of placing a merchant, but without any minted money, you can not place ANY merchants! I mean with an army Im going to build most of the census will be chewed up before you can say "Look there are the Muscovian hordes!"

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Since none of the minors I warned will ever go to war at all.... I mean it's nice to have an HRE that lasts, but hey they are not helping at all here!

Ill just insult them into obediance!

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Decent shock on my king, thank god! With Bohemia not letting go of the HR Emperor title, I will need all the leverage I can get, I will not be waiting for them to pass the title on.... Normally Cleves would have been emperor by now, just my luck!

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Cancelling the autosend for a moment, not planning on sending any merchants, before my stab is back to 3.
Dowing Luneburg will mean some nice -3 stab no matter what I do.

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The invasion.

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The obvious result.

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The very very important aftermath. I mean I dont want anything from them, but they sure as hell seem angry! Not much tactics involved here, my army is too tiny to more then just moving in and running away when they look at me! Good thing the TO has some more soldiers to play around with, to bad they are AI...

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... What is this? Not Cleves? One might argue it's better than Bohemia or Austria, but Brabant can easily field 20k now....

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Thanks Bohemia, thanks TO you've been a real help there!

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Commence trading at once, my minions! I just recently decided to give Evil Genius another run for it's money, anyone played that game?
 
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As promised the long awaited NI! If someones wished to have a more indepth review of why I pick this idea and not any other, please feel free to say so!

Now for some statistics:

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And to top it of:

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rasmus40 said:
This is looking fun. Go Mantua, erh Mecklenburg :D

What made you choose Lüneburg for your first attack?

What are your priorities as far as initial conquest goes?

Luneburg became my prime target, because of her huge lack of allies :) I had to face the emperor in any case, so I wanted to minimize the amount of extra nations tagging along. Remember, my army is tiny!

Initial conquest will be based on how the game proceeds, if I see a weakness I will try and jump in. Any nation without allies, or a weak HR Emperor will dictate my course ^^
 
unddu said:
Luneburg became my prime target, because of her huge lack of allies :) I had to face the emperor in any case, so I wanted to minimize the amount of extra nations tagging along. Remember, my army is tiny!

Initial conquest will be based on how the game proceeds, if I see a weakness I will try and jump in. Any nation without allies, or a weak HR Emperor will dictate my course ^^

I'm playing Mecklenburg myself at the moment, so I know all about the tiny army, but that's what minting is for :D

Playing a trading nation like Mecklenburg you just need to be very aware of your BB. High BB from annexing german minors will send your merchants packing and you economy down the drain.
 
Good luck! Seeing a minor take over the world is always fun. Even if I never have enough patience to try it myself.
 
rasmus40 said:
I'm playing Mecklenburg myself at the moment, so I know all about the tiny army, but that's what minting is for :D

Playing a trading nation like Mecklenburg you just need to be very aware of your BB. High BB from annexing german minors will send your merchants packing and you economy down the drain.

I don't mind minting, but I'd rather save getting inflation for a moment when it means I get 100 ducats a month instead of 10 ;)

BB is a bitch, I will wait till 1500 and then go on a BB war spree. That's the planning at least.

Good luck! Seeing a minor take over the world is always fun. Even if I never have enough patience to try it myself.

It is! But if you are not paying attention to WE it will become a drag pretty soon ^^

Best of luck! I really hope you finish this, but I know how painfully boring WCs can be...

I finished one, I hope I can finish two ;)

alright, found a WC at the beginning. Now I can finally figure out how to do it.

I will go as deep into strategy as I can, if something is unclear, please ask!


Also since I forgot to say so in the first post:

-All settings normal
-This means lucky on, gogo France!
-Difficulty=Hard
 
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Having excess diplo's is bad! Must.. warn.... everybody...... and their cousin..


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Why brandenburg, aint they way too large for me to chew? Well they sure are with Bohemia at their side... Who just happened to become HRE once again :eek:

So waiting is then : Till I get a new king:

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If Im not mistaken he proved to be a 3 shock general! That's enough for me to try and take my chances!

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War with Altmark, Trier and ofcourse the Bohemian Bohemoth.

Ill remember all of this when I get big, Bohemia, so back of!

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I annex Altmark, only to find a nice Bohemia stack already parked in my land, they even took mecklenburg itself!

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That takes care of that little stack, bye Bohemia! Dont let the door hit ya on the way out! Hope they wont follow up with a 20k stack....

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I take back what's mine! The observant reader, might have spotted the single inf division I left behind when chasing Bohemia, I left them to siege Mecklenburg all by themselves, they will only slow my cav army down, while it needs to be as quick as possible, to make sure they will always arrive in a province before the enemy does.

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My armies reunited

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Ill just pay em of, shoo! Can't beat them anyways, 25 ducats is a cheap way out.

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Down goes the relationship!

So lets analyse a bit more, why take risks with Brandenburg? I mean they can field over 13k troops , combine that with the HRE and you have the recipe for disaster! But what choice do I have? Annexing HRE minor will yield an insane 6(!) BB a pop. 6! With a limit of under 20, this means I could annex less than three (since dowing costs bb as well) and after that I would have to wait for ages before being able to get me some more lands! The only possible targets that have more than just 1 province, are obviously Brunswick, Brandeburg, and everyones favorite enemy: Denmark. I really really wish for the AI to dow me, but brandenburg's liege Luxembourg doesnt grant wishes!

So what does an infant warmonger do?

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That's right! ....

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I did nothing :rofl:

But I was in for a treat with our comrade Brabant, taking over the position of HRE slighty later! I had to wait for BB to cool off anyway, got 8 or so for that Altmark incident.

EU3_44.jpg



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My money suddenly declined from a lot to a little? How come! Well I decided to hire an additional 12k mercenaries, I can't deal with Brabant and Brandenburg with my current MP pool, it regenerates at a rate of 270 or so per month... That doesnt scare anyone! So for the first and last time this game I will kindly ask the mercenary head quartes to fax me some fresh mercenaries.

Look at my 4 shock king! People that think generals are useless are wrong :rofl: You can't have a WC without generals

EU3_46.jpg


Thanks to my mercs the main army can proceed to claim Brandenburg, please take note that everything is are belong to me and nothing is taken by the TO , I made sure I raced 2-3k cav stacks to each province, before TO would arrive, nothing more vexing than putting in a lot of work and seeing an ally run of with the spoils. I only used the 2-3k stacks when I was sure they would not get eaten, I mean I cant regenerate at all, as I said just 270 MP a month.

The mercenary stack went for luxembourg, who happens to be the alliance senior. There 3k stack was no match for the battle hardened mercenaries. They all died miserably.

EU3_47.jpg



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Please sign away all your juniors land Luxembourg!

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Thanks!

Now back to potential target number two, as you can see there is a lot of time between each dow. The reason for this is two fold:
A) It will allow my BB to cool of. With a king that sucks at diplo this takes a lot of time. Again there are no proper advisors in sight.
B)Any excess WE that I attained, even though I always try to avoid it, can now be burned away as well.

EU3_50.jpg


Again my goal is to bring in the least amount of collateral damage. I dont want 6 countries jumping, just Denmark will do fine. Please note that it's not just land I want, it's also securing a flank, a Denmark that Inherits norway and manages to create Scandinavia will be a permanent (hahaha, yeah right!) threat. Taking their lands and increasing their WE early on will make sure they can't back stab me, or at least not as efficient! It will give them a permanent casus belli though (permanent as in 50 years for the cores to evaporate, and that's counting from their last war with yours truely).
 
I'm going to follow along, I like a good WC!

The no diploannex rule is pretty hardcore! I might try that for my next game. Right now my Castilian empire DV/DA'd Navarre, Aragon, Portugal, Sicily, England and Austria :rofl:
 
Nice progress :)

Have you considered going for emperor yourself? It'll solve your problems with MP and forcelimit and at the same time give you a huge bonus to stability. If you're emperor while still a minor you won't have to invest in stab at all. At the same time you won't have a powerful ai emperor keeping you from expanding.

All you have to do is use the fact that the current emperor is weak. Just find the weakest electors and vassalize them, which won't cost you a lot of BB even though you will have to start a few wars. Once you have vassalized three or four you'll be emperor permanently except during regency councils of course.

Once you have gained enough power to do without the title, you can always release those vassals again and annex them properly :)
 
PrawnStar said:
I'm going to follow along, I like a good WC!

The no diploannex rule is pretty hardcore! I might try that for my next game. Right now my Castilian empire DV/DA'd Navarre, Aragon, Portugal, Sicily, England and Austria :rofl:

DVing and DAing is something I personally don't like, it just feels weird for nations to just surrender their sovereignity!

Nice progress

Have you considered going for emperor yourself? It'll solve your problems with MP and forcelimit and at the same time give you a huge bonus to stability. If you're emperor while still a minor you won't have to invest in stab at all. At the same time you won't have a powerful ai emperor keeping you from expanding.

All you have to do is use the fact that the current emperor is weak. Just find the weakest electors and vassalize them, which won't cost you a lot of BB even though you will have to start a few wars. Once you have vassalized three or four you'll be emperor permanently except during regency councils of course.

Once you have gained enough power to do without the title, you can always release those vassals again and annex them properly

I dont want to abuse the HRE :rofl: I like a challenge and using vassalage to secure the crown, does not make any historical sense. If Austria would have done so it would get a lot of heat from pretty much all other HRE states ^^


Edit: Since I got a gazzilion more screenies, I will follow up with another update today.
 
EU3_51.jpg


As promised an updated with a lot of dead Danes to start off! The trick is actually pretty simple: I just wait for them to come to me, making sure they are the ones facing the -1 or for rivers -2 penalty to their attack rolls. Since the Ai almost never build pure cav armies, it's easy to be the first one in a province after the initial skirmish. Since the Danes are not that strong there is no reason to be even more cunning. No need to use the retreat after 5 days tactic versus Denmark. I will be using and explaining it later on though ;)

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Sieging, while maintaining 0 we a month added. That's the key


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Not much to see here, I just settled for the mainland Danish holdings. There is no point in claiming Fyn, too big a chance of getting cut of later on by ships and suffering WE because they can easily capture it.

Im also now running around with 1 cav army of 10k and an inf army of 5k.

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The liquor act, why not? I always tend to pick it up.

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An overview of my king and advisors

Also notice the huge lack of any ships being build, it will takes ages for me to start a navy.

What I did now was A) wait for some more BB cooling down and B) getting a lot of territory for the least amount of said BB

I also managed to get a hold of Vorpommern somewhere along the lines, I think it was during the war with Denmark, too bad I didnt screen the moment I DoWed!

So after some scouting I find the perfect target!

First a picture of the map:

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Then our prospective target

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It's Poland Im interested in.

Again I wait for a good moment to start the pursuit. I waited in Neumark with my main army and had smaller siege armies make flanking maneuvres in order to commence sieging. Once the Poles invaded Neumark and encountered my waiting cav army, I won the first battle and started chasing them.

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Kalisz was their Waterloo! And my Austerlitz!

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The defeat of Kazan's token resistance. Check my MP pool a grand 307 !

Now it's just mopping up, or is it? I have defeated one Polish army, but this being hard difficulty they might have another 10k chucked away somewhere, Im weary to split my army up to much. I pick the slower approach and use my entire inf army to siege.

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Their WE is obviously on the rise now!

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Sieradz falls, but as you can see, 'm also fighting in Jylland. Rebels caused by nationalism are simply unavoidable. I decided to head out with my entire cav army, since I would want to face another added 10 years of nationalism if I would use less than sufficient force.

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TO also grabs some lands, I wonder when they will white out as stupid AI nations tend to do.

As I suspected there is still some Polish resistance, do they have that annoying 15k army in capital decision?

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I'm outta here, no point in wasting precious resources and manpower, when the risks of revolts and invasions are increasing (THe AI is pretty capable of smelling blood.)

Good thing I checked whether or not the Poles would cede some more, and guess what? They didnt mind signing off Plock as well!

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And just in time as well! The danish and their many compadres decide to invade. Well well what a surpise there! Too bad that they dont have a foothold in Europe, hahahahahahahaha! I will simply move in and out with my tiny starting fleet to make sure the main danish army will stay put in Fyn.

They had plenty of allies that decided to jump in as well though, and my MP pool is still horribly insufficient.

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Pommerania, Brunswick, the Danes, Hamburg, Anhalt, Sweden, Norway Yeesh..... And Im bordering the BB limit as well so can't just annex at will anymore. Good thing the HRE will be on my side this time, gogo Brabant!

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That's 12k danes and another 8k Swedes and Norwegians trying to make their way to Mecklenburg, good thing I conquered Jylland and Slesvig early on ;)

Good news is that my buddies from Brabant are making short work of Brunswick! I decided that all I want from this war is a Denmark with 19WE and an annexed Pommerania, for a continuous empire, I hate to have to go through other peoples lands to reach my own!

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Anhalt was also hostile, but as I said , Im almost over the BB limit, and going over it now means game over.

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They receive the leave jail for free card as well, damn BB! I will wait a bit before accepting this peace though!

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A peace resulting from left over Polish allies!

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Finally an annexation without crossing the BB limit!

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Brabant took over the capital of Brunswick, the other province will be mine!
 
Harve said:
Wow this is rather speedy. And thanks for taking screenies in political mapmode, i really REALLY hate terrain mapmode.

Speed is my middle name : I finished the Mantuan WC before people even noticed I was doing it :rofl: I tend to only use political map mode during play, terrian map mode screenies can be considered mistakes ;)
 
Don't forget to modify the german unification decision! So that you will actually recieve cores and not Mecklenburg when you are Germany,

Anyway, what time is it now on your save game: 1434 or 1454 because I can't see it clearly.
 
1434 if Im not mistaken ^^ Kinda hard to see with toned down screenies, but I cant post them as bitmap, I think that this aar will consist of over 1k screen shots, meaning that it would take 10 gig to store them all as bitmaps ^^

Also: I'm first gonna be prussia!