Post your MM2 Empires

[Urza]

My Alsace game is now finished. I cannot say I have reached all my goals or what CJL78 had in mind (integrating all of Charlemagne's former empire would have been nice), but things went pretty well (this seems to be a common issue actually: Magna Mundi tends to make the early and midgame very interesting and often challenging, but when a certain stage is reached, the challenge level drops to very low; rebellions and revolutions, civil wars or other internal problems are rarely a threat for a large player-controlled country -- I have to admit, though, that usually I don't play the games which didn't go well in the earlier stages all the way to the end, that is of course part of the reason for this). The only real obstacle during the last 100 years or so was badboy, which made the endgame somewhat tedious. Nonetheless, all in all it was a fun and satisfying game!


A pretty yellow engulfs Gallia, Germania, Lombardia and beyond.. According to my NIs the Alsacian empire is an encompassing nation state.. will this prevent the world wars?


Straßburg is also near the geographical center of the empire.. Madeira is a place I like to conquer in most games, sorry Portugal


World map (Click for a larger image). Has some mildly interesting stuff like Mali having won wars against Netherlands, Ceylon in mainland India, Ottomans in Ukraine (they also lead a PU with a very strong Morocco) and a Cuba which has been and stayed independent since the 16th century. Also, a mighty Sweden and a decent-sized USA. Oh, and Ethiopia.


Internal affairs.. A really large army is not needed, because almost all provinces have zero revolt risk. The dutch rebellions are an exception, though. My inflation is that high, because there is no way not to spend all money on minting when every tech has been maxed (which happened in the 1780s) and stability is at +3.


GB, Spain and Ottomans were the strongest AI nations, but I didn't have a lot of contact with them in the game

[SpartanSoldier]

HAH!!! Awesome!!! You were impressed with my Silesia->Poland, but I think this feat matches and probably surpasses that! France, the Lowlands, Italy, Austria, and most of Germany. That is quite an empire from very humble beginnings! Maxed techs to boot! Kudos to you my friend. I am thoroughly impressed with this bloated yellow monstrosity that you call the Enlightened Empire of Alsace

P.S. I am working on something that should surpass both my Poland your Alsace (started with Burgundy) right now. Seeing this inspires me to challenge you to a Europe Conquest. If you care to and if you have the time, I challenge you to start with any nation (1453) and somehow own every European province (in region map mode) by 1821. I will do the same. So take a break and then let me know if you want to do it.

[Urza]

Thank you for the compliment. Concerning your challenge, I appreciate it and would love to try something like that in due time, but I really need to take a break from this game for a while. Surely, after a few weeks I will think differently about that, though - I always find myself wanting to come back to MM after some time.
By the way, Burgundy sounds like a perfectly suited candidate for that endeavour; even more so than France. I would go with Bohemia by the way (they are underrated!), although I don't know if conquering all of Europe is even practically possible in MM. Staying Catholic is probably a must, to get the BB reduction bonus from the curia.

[myLAAN]

Yes, go for it Urza, the two-tailed lion has to paint Europe with strangely golden colour

Though honestly, I deem complete Europe Conquest nigh impossible, mainly due to the BB->WE->positive WE feedback(+tedious rebel chasing) chain of events. I mean, even your humongous Alsace still leaves a half of Europe up for grabs! Although in real world, you would probably buy it with the pocket money you accumulated A solid amount of military and state NIs and maxed AI aggressivness comes to mind as some possible counters.

Also, it will be an interesting comparison between different versions of the mod, since you are using MMP2 and SpartanSoldier seems to use MMU (at least the financial ledger seems like yearly rather than monthly averages). So good luck to you both and let slip the dogs of war!!!

[Yeekim]

Though honestly, I deem complete Europe Conquest nigh impossible, mainly due to the BB->WE->positive WE feedback(+tedious rebel chasing) chain of events. I mean, even your humongous Alsace still leaves a half of Europe up for grabs!

If one can conquer half of Europe as Alsace (damn!), conquering the whole thing with France should be possible.

[JacktheJumper]

The sheer awesomness of things you guys have accomplished melts my mind, so let me just present you with my completely normal, down-to-earth, still on-going (it's merely 1654) game as Poland, or one episode of it: my war against Bohemia.

First of all, I run test-war, and things went far from ideal: Bohemia's infantry could, and did, go completely Rambo on my armies, delivering impossible damage and generally just caring more about destroying me utterly than sieging my provinces. I ended this game without saving and decided that I won't war with Bohemia AT ALL, or at least just now. But then I saw, hey, Ottos warned Bohemia, and Ottos are big and have constitutional government, and with all hidden bonuses they get they can't really be beaten by AI, right? So I warned Bohemia alongside Turks. Bohemia decided that, screw you guys, I'm HREmpror, I can do whatever I want to do, and attacked Sweden, which they don't even border. I waited full month before answering the call, but once OE (at the time at war with Ak Koyunlu) moved its armies into Bohemia, I decided to go.

Man, that was one hell of a war, especially on Bohemia-Ottos front, with multiple 30k armies marching against each other and laughing at face of terrible attrition. Bohemia's armies still used my stacks as target dummies; the most egregious example is battle of Poznań, where my 5cav, 5inf, 1art army got smashed by their 7inf, 2art army. Still, Bohemia's armies were spread too thin, and soon Austria, Thuringia (!) and Transylvania (!!!) entered the war. But then Regency happened to me, followed by Minor Noble Opossition, and so I had to think about exiting the war. I played till Bohemia accepted to realease Croatia, give me Carpathia and renounce their claims to Transylvanian provs.

And that is all.
Here's map for ya:



I annexed Moldavia before the war.
Transylvania is still not my vassal, that's why they could enter the war on their own.
Crimea ain't my vassal now, after they wanted to break free for second time, I decided it's too much of a hassle to keep them.
Hosokawa is one province away from forming Japan.
Yes, that's Pope in Canada, he also holds one isle in Carribean.
Green country around Aral Sea is Delhi. They must've had had PU with Uzbeks.
Russia is still my best buddy, but I fear that now, as they can colonize freely, they won't be so nice.

As for NIs, I went with RegSys, and now here's my question: Is it worthwhile for me to get Ecumenism, since I already have +1 tolerance towards heretics, or should I go for EliteRegs and EngCorps so I can get SciRev as 10th or 11th NI?

[Waffen9999]

Honestly, I don't find Scientific Revolution all that great. All it does is drop your research costs, which can be met the same with just later level buildings. I'm not even sure Elite Regiments is worth it anymore either. Generally Military Drill and or Combat Engineers is all I need. At full quality and offensive I'm doing pretty good. Since you have to Humanist tolerance for Ecumenism I don't usually find it worthwhile to do. Just like if I get Liberte Egality I don't get Ecumenism or Humanist tolerance. The reason being, they don't stack with AE so basically to Ecumenism you're wasting an AE idea. I've never tried though and maybe somebody could answer me this.

If you have Ecumenism and Liberte Egalite Fraternity, say for instance as a Protestant, do you still get "Persecuted, Oppressed etc." penalties on minoritiy religions? I don't see why since you'd have +3 tolerance to them, same as your own religion. They'd basically be equal.

[Rabid]

If you have Ecumenism and Liberte Egalite Fraternity, say for instance as a Protestant, do you still get "Persecuted, Oppressed etc." penalties on minoritiy religions? I don't see why since you'd have +3 tolerance to them, same as your own religion. They'd basically be equal.

If you have +3 or better tolerance then you actually get the same bonuses for having minorities of those types as you would for your state religion. It's quite powerful under the right circumstances

[Urza]

It all depends on playstyle. Personally, I think Ecumenism is a great NI (although it does not give additional AE bonus if you already have Humanist Tolerance, yes): The basic tolerance for heretics is -1, so it is raised to +1 by this NI, which already ensures that religious minorities in the same group are treated as 'tolerated', resulting in far less disadvantages for those, to the point that there is no real (gameplay) reason to spend money on converting these minorities anymore. Especially countries in Central Europe will profit greatly from this, with all the minorities usually spawned by the reformation no matter which side you choose. More tolerance also means more tax and less RR in the provinces where a heretic religion has the majority, while it is still possible (albeit a bit more difficult) to convert these provinces. Ecumenism also enables the religious buildings (e.g. religious universities) and, like Humanist Tolerance, cuts the MTTH for the coring events by 20% (edit: this is cumulative by the way, so Humanist Tolerance+Ecumenism means 36% reduced MTTH). That all plus the huge effect on stability. Of course it makes no sense to take this NI if you have any of the other religious NIs geared towards conversion.

JacktheJumper, that sounds like a fun and intense game. Thanks for sharing.

[PhroX]

Honestly, I don't find Scientific Revolution all that great. All it does is drop your research costs, which can be met the same with just later level buildings.

I'm a fan of Sci Rev. Now, certainly, if I was a relatively rich western nation without any of the prerequisites to start, I wouldn't even consider it, but the further away from those conditions you go, the more useful it becomes IMO. If your research is lagging - either through low income or tech penalties (for the latter, it's not so much to deal with the penalties, but to catch up once you've got rid of them) - and you can get SR by gov tech 22, then it can be a pretty powerful idea and one I will usually get.

Definitely wouldn't bother for a 10th or 11th NI as Jack was considering though. Sci Rev should be early or not at all IMO.

[PhroX]

Very nice Korea game, PhroX. And it's good to see Russia colonising Siberia once in a while- that rarely happens in my games.

I am planning on a Korea game myself one of these days, but I intend to go for ME&C so that I can colonise the Pacific area.

In all honesty, much of the game was pretty boring. With all the modernisation events, my economy was crippled and I tended to be in negative stability, so my options were pretty limited. As I said, I took a couple of Manchu provinces, but the rest were poor, wrong religion, wrong culture (I did eventually get it accepted, but it took ages), non-core nomadic provinces, so taking them wasn't worth it at that stage. Ming, needless to say, wasn't an option until my tech had gotten a good way ahead of them, and Japan was so tied up in alliances that I'd probably bring most of the country in on me. As such, I spent ~200 years watching and doing the odd building upgrade when I got some cash.

Once I got to the stage of being able to expand, it was great fun, but getting there was a drag.

[JacktheJumper]

Waffen9999, Rabid, Urza, Phrox - thank you all for you comments!

After all this discussion I think I'll go with Ecumenism just to be able to build religious universities, which, as I recall from Empire's thread, actually lower tech costs and can be more useful than SciRev. After that, I'll get EliteRegs, and then we'll just see

I shall post once more in this thread when I finish the game.

[Aegisthus]

The first game I actually finished playing Brandenburg -> Prussia -> Germany. I feel somewhat ashamed of my empire considering Urza's far more impressive Alsatian empire above. I played cautiously because I forbid myself to save and reload if something bad happened.

Still I had a hard time The reformation was very weak and with both France and Bohemia on the Catholic side I was mostly lucky to manage to win the war of religion. It wasn't easy to dismantle the HRE. In 1744 I finally managed to do it. Forming Germany was quite easy although it took me till 1802. The last years of the game I focussed on uniting Germany. Nobody put up any serious opposition against my armies. I was only worried about revolutionary France getting involved but they seemed content to do nothing even when my infamy reached 30.

Some notable things:
- France and the Ottoman empire were locked in an early decades long war. France did not colonize and the Ottomans did not attack Hungary until the end of the 17th century.
- England was a pathetic colonizer and did not do much beyond the American west coast and even that they managed to lose to the USA.
- Portugal colonized Brazil, Southern Africa and later Canada too. I'm really starting to hate seeing half the cognizable world green halfway through every game. (Sorry Ubik)
- The Dutch seemed determined to return to Catholicism after I released them and even force converted them to Protestantism. They even did some colonizing taking Cuba, Haiti and a big chunk of West Africa.
- Venice took Mexico when the Spanish left it alone and even moved their capital there.
- Spain held on to it's Latin American possessions. It did not conquer the Inca's though. Modern day Brazil is a mess of colonial revolters.

[k_merse]

Wow... Colonization is very weak in your game. GB, France, Russia... Epic fail

[CJL78]

Wow... Colonization is very weak in your game. GB, France, Russia... Epic fail

No kidding... did France colonize at all? Is that Austria in West Africa and Madagascar?

[Aegisthus]

No kidding... did France colonize at all? Is that Austria in West Africa and Madagascar?

Yea, quite an epic fail. I didn't really notice it until after finishing the game. Only the Portuguese and Venetians did well.

France did have Mass Colonization and Exploration but no naval NI's. They did not even set foot outside of Europe. You spotted the lone piece of Austria in Madagascar correctly.

[Waffen9999]

I help them out later myself by colonising the provinces myself than editing the save file to make them their culture and transfer ownership. I like to have a bit more dynamic conflicts going on. In my England game I did that with the east indies. I colonised the Philippines and all the spice islands and gave them to their respective owners. The Netherlands wound up in a war with Spain and they're battling back and forth across Indonesia.

[elboludox]

I feel by looking at that game that continental european powers were bloodily long and frequent wars, and that Portugal and Spain enjoyed a much peaceful enviroment.

Sweeden seems very powerful in your game, probably got into war with Novgorod early and then with Russia, which would explain Russia's fail against the hordes.

[k_merse]

I think that the Austrian colonies were originally colonized by the Netherlands or some other country, and Austria took them in a war. Sometimes they do that - start a war and demand a colony as a prize.

[PhroX]

Waffen9999, Rabid, Urza, Phrox - thank you all for you comments!

After all this discussion I think I'll go with Ecumenism just to be able to build religious universities, which, as I recall from Empire's thread, actually lower tech costs and can be more useful than SciRev. After that, I'll get EliteRegs, and then we'll just see

I shall post once more in this thread when I finish the game.

Some more thoughts on the subject: Religious Universities can be useful, and in your situation are probably better than SciRev, but in general I'm not totally convinced by them. I tend to find that by the time I can get a meaningful number of them built, I don't need them anymore. For example, in the Lithuania game I posted a few pages back, I was, thanks to several factors including an early SciRev, already more advanced than everyone barring trading minors by the stage I could get RUs.

They're fun for breaking the game though