Yes We Can! - A France IN AAR

[PrawnStar]

Yes We Can!*
A France IN AAR

This is a France Grand Campaign in IN 3.1 played on Very Hard with no mods or edits. All settings default except Lucky Nations to Random.

There is only one goal, world conquest with a twist, no breaking of the BB limit**

House Rules

• France to stay Catholic
  
• France to stay a monarchy
  
• No diplomatic vassalisations
  
• Only one diplomatic annexation attempt at a time
  
• No declarations of war while there are troops in any target country
  
• No cheats / No exploits

Credit to Kebzero for getting me interested in this game challenge. There's also been a discussion thread, with a screenshot of how my test game played out.


* Bob the Builder, obviously.

**Unless accidentally caused by the replacement of a monarch by a lower diplo-rated monarch.

[Capibara]

Count me in! I've always enjoyed WCs with France. And the rules (especially the BB thing) will make this AAR interesting.

*Suscribed*

[whitesoxfan]

I don't think you can do it without exploits. But I'll watch!

[elbasto]

Yes we lurk!

[enkhuush]

I hope you will achieve WC before Kebzero did. Good luck!

[L Lawliet]

Interesting.... although as france you can hardly exploit someone else to blob in the HRE to save BB points. Except Denmark, perhaps. Good luck!

[Nodscouterr]

Interesting, interesting....

[kebzero]

So, who will you help to help you in the HRE? Denmark, Burgundy, Bohemia, Poland, Austria, Milan, England? Even helping Novgorod grab some Catholic lands early could prove a 'cheap' eastern Europe. You'd better hope Lithuania doesn't get the 'lucky' tag. A Catholic power eating all of Orthodox/Sunni eastern Europe would be bad news. Same with Hungary vs. the Ottomans. Ideally, Novgorod, the Horde, the Ottomans and Denmark would be lucky nations.

Very much looking forward to you besting me completely.

[cezar87]

This should be interesting. WC AARs normally don't have any appeal to me but this sounds a lot better.

Good Luck!

[sprites]

hmm with increased difficulty ...
good luck with it ^^

[Hitmanalex]

I smell a bb war that you will get into by mistake

[aldriq]

I smell a bb war that you will get into by mistake

Mistake? PrawnStar? I doubt it... My only concern is how much good or bad luck can impact on the BB burning. For example if you were stuck with a 3-dip king for the entire game, with only a 1-star reputation advisor you'd burn 0.35 x 420 = 147 BB points through the game. On the other hand if you had a 8-dip king and two 2-star advisors you'd burn 1.2 x 420 = 504 BB points. Quite a wild swing, although I'm sure you've done the maths already.

[The Arch Mede]

I have got a game that I play from time to time a bit like this. Rather than WC, its a nobody else shall colonise game, but I suspect you will not want anybody other than France colonising much either.

[jhhowell]

I think the monarchy house rule may prevent PrawnStar from succeeding. That's a 64-84 BB swing right there (average 5 for monarchs, average 7 for diplo candidates in a republic, assumes a switch to republic within the first century sometime), not to mention the boundary disputes from the dip-8 and 9 guys who would be much more common under a republic. Though staying Catholic should roughly put Yes We Can on an even footing with Cosmopoli-taint and There Must Be Order - compared to kebzero's protestant empires, 300 additional years of Curia control is 75 BB. That's almost certainly more than the Reformation wars free province shenanigans one can get from switching. Still, considering that it has not yet been demonstrated that low-BB WC is possible I think it's a mistake for PrawnStar to handicap himself by staying a monarchy.

Best of luck, and I hope you do succeed!

[PrawnStar]

FEEDBACK

Capibara - I hope it's interesting as well since this will probably eat my free time until the new year!

whitesoxfan - I'd rather fail than use exploits, but fingers crossed I'll manage it.

elbasto - Views are good, comments are better.

enkhuush - Me to

L Lawliet - In my test game Hesse did much of the work! Someone will consolidate, I just need to help them.

Nodscouterr - See my response to Capibara LOL

kebzero - Someone will consolidate the HRE. As for a Catholic Eastern Europe, that's not too much of a problem, I'll bypass it until the late game and try and have a cunning plan. In an ideal game I wouldn't DOW anyone.

cezar87 - Everyone should do one WC just to appreciate what's involved. But yes AARs do need a point, an objective, to stay interesting.

sprites - Thanks!

Hitmanalex - Mistakes are possible but I tend to be very careful in AAR games. Accidental crossing the line through monarch death can happen but I'll probably just pick up warnings.

aldriq - The amount of BB burn available is hugely variable but I'll be able to take Cabinet by 1650 as well as aim for Papal Controller. I haven't bothered with too many calculations.The trick will be minimising BB gain.

The Arch Mede - Interesting challenge you have there. My plan is that the onlyother colonies made by Europeans will be Madeira and the Azores, the Portuguese missions. It worked in my test game - but financing the colonisation of everything was a huge economic strain.

jhhowell - True the concept hasn't been proven but (house) style matters

Update shortly, please note image hosting is with Tinypic who I've not used before so any prolems let me know. Imageshack just won't load for me and since Photobucket cut the free bandwidth to 10GB a month I've started getting warning messages again from the 'Audacity' screenshots.

[PrawnStar]

Chapter One

The initial situation

Diplomacy



France has a pack of vassals and a lot of unclaimed cores.

Government and Policy



I won’t greatly worry about my sliders in this game. Centralisation is good for taking National decisions so I’ll push in that direction. However, I’ll eventually end up totally decentralised through diplomatic annexations. The other major slider move I’ll make is full mercantilism to maximise my gains from my COTs. This France will not be competitive as a trading state. I’d also like to more one point narrowminded to centre that slider and reduce the effects of religious events.

I centralise a point as my opening move and manage to have rebels before unpausing the game. A pretender rises in Rougerie with three thousand supporters. Even Richard Dawkins would see this as a sign.

The Court



I’ve hired a 3* diplomat to go with the two low value starting advisors. I’m hoping that there’ll be more diplomats available in a year’s time. The quest for diplomatic advisors will haunt this AAR.

I switch my cavalry type from Chevauchee to the more commonly used Latin Knights and start a recruitment drive. My initial army of 4 Cav / 8 Inf will receive a further 10 regiments of cavalry. The reason is to have the option to be able to recruit upgradeable troops in foreign cores across Western Europe straightaway.

One religious decision is taken, the Advancement of Religion Act.



The trade off isn’t great but conversions are the most effective way of reducing overall revolt risk. While global Catholicism isn’t an explicit goal it’s very likely.

There are few key considerations:

1. Prevent European colonialism. Realistically this means destroying England, Portugal and Castile so that there are no colonising nations. Simple and obvious, it’s also the first thing to do as the targets are on the doorstep.
   
2. Provinces from countries with a different state religion group (i.e. Muslims and further east) only cost 0.5BB each before 1650.
   
3. Catholic provinces taken from non-Catholic Christian states are 0BB before1650.

Next the first diplomatic moves, would anyone like to guess what my first 4 diplomats (all before starting) will be used for?

[kebzero]

One Diplomat advisor already? Good start.

As for the four starting diplomats... My bets would be they would go towards guaranteeing Granada and Scotland, and get MilAcc through Aragon and Navarra. Castille is nicely vulnerable right off the bat.

[Nodscouterr]

Warnings!

[The Arch Mede]

FEEDBACK

The Arch Mede - Interesting challenge you have there. My plan is that the onlyother colonies made by Europeans will be Madeira and the Azores, the Portuguese missions. It worked in my test game - but financing the colonisation of everything was a huge economic strain.

This is France we are talking about. They are not exactly poor I also am making a lot of trading income where you have abandoned it. I have been quite careful about taking CoTs to avoid getting the non-core CoT penalty and building new coastal ones to get the extra colonists.

I failed quite early on, the Castillians managed to finish a colony in the Bahamas before I even discovered them, but otherwise everything that was started has been burned and replaced by true blues and the coastline the offenders set out from placed into trustworthy hands. Castille still exists, it just doesn't have a coast any more. You dont have to eliminate them entirely to stop them colonising.

I usually use a house rule of no DoW without CB. In this game that is relaxed for any country with any colonial ideas or colonies.

I also didn't use your monarchy only rule. I burn a lot more BB with the diplomatic candidates always being elected . However, you look as if you are concentrating on what allows you to pick up provinces without BB, while I was not aware of the BB details on muslim and non-catholic catholics and haven't been striving to get the most from the pre 1650 low BB.

On the diplomats. You seem to have only 3 CBs on non-vassals. Not that I would have thought 4 DoWs was the right thing anyway. One DoW if the starting position allows a war with the right opponents. Otherwise some guarantees and warnings. Granada is an attractive guarantee as some point, or warn Castille for the same effect, and you badly want to be ready to stomp Portugal. Getting some allies and pwning the English or Bungundians cant be bad. I really don't remember whether these were opening moves or early moves though.

[sprites]

guaranteeing granada/navarra
alliying provence
asking MA portugal


let the brgundians eat some HRE ^^