This is going to be the first AAR i know in which your country has 3 different names. 
)
Connaught -> Ireland -> HRE
)Connaught -> Ireland -> HRE
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1629-1629: The End
I give you Connacht's humble beginnings, 230 years before 1629.
A 0.7 income OPM, with decent traders and big dreams!
The results of the diet:
Huzzah!
The funny thing about annexing almost all of continental Europe and North Africa? My income doesn't really go up much. They are all colonies, and so in addition to their distant overseas penalty, I don't have near enough ships for tariffs to be efficient.
And I think I lost that +50% tax income bonus for being emperor. Doh!
Oddly enough, overextension is not a problem yet. And the Irish people are still the clear majority.
You have to go down another 10 spots or so before their combined income beats ours. And after building a fleet to get tariffs up, then turbo-annexing Britain, Netherlands, and Scandanavia, we could get up to having more income than the rest of the world combined pretty damn quickly.
That's a lot of money!
There are 1249 total inhabitable land provinces in EU3. We have almost half!
Here it is in black so it's a bit easier to see:
Maybe the craziest thing about all this is that I have conquered almost half the provinces in the world, and the highest my infamy has ever been is 10.9.
I give you Connacht's humble beginnings, 230 years before 1629.
A 0.7 income OPM, with decent traders and big dreams!
The results of the diet:
Huzzah!
The funny thing about annexing almost all of continental Europe and North Africa? My income doesn't really go up much. They are all colonies, and so in addition to their distant overseas penalty, I don't have near enough ships for tariffs to be efficient.
And I think I lost that +50% tax income bonus for being emperor. Doh!
Oddly enough, overextension is not a problem yet. And the Irish people are still the clear majority.
You have to go down another 10 spots or so before their combined income beats ours. And after building a fleet to get tariffs up, then turbo-annexing Britain, Netherlands, and Scandanavia, we could get up to having more income than the rest of the world combined pretty damn quickly.
That's a lot of money!
There are 1249 total inhabitable land provinces in EU3. We have almost half!
Here it is in black so it's a bit easier to see:
Maybe the craziest thing about all this is that I have conquered almost half the provinces in the world, and the highest my infamy has ever been is 10.9.
Game Reflections
So I said at the outset this would not be a true WC, for I do not have the patience to grind through all those rebels and all that micro-management. (I am only at 2 times the income of my next 5 rivals, not 10 times, but given the facility with which I have beaten these guys down in the past, the WC doesn't really seem at all in doubt to me anymore.)
I'd rather start thinking about the next project. Which I hope to start after the next patch comes out. Tuore has done some very inspiring work over at his Creek AAR and will assuredly do more very cool things with his Ryuku AAR.
But enough about the future. Let's talk about this game.
The thing that really enabled Connacht to get its "sealegs" in the beginning was, without question, trade. In 1425, Connacht was the richest nation in Europe with 41.6 ducats of trade income. (The second richest nation in the world after Ming.)
That being said, I had to choose every possible option to maximize trade: slider moves, advisors, and National Ideas. There was only one thing Connacht was good at. And Connacht was only able to dominate trade because at the beginning it starts toward the "free trade" end of the spectrum. So perhaps from a strategic perspective, trade is not too broken.
However, it might be good to double the penalty to merchant compete chance for placed merchants. I think I had like 45 placed merchants at one point. For most of the game, I had upwards of 30. Which is partly why I had SO much cultural tradition.
One thing that seems "broken" is how easy it is for small nations to switch between being totally specialized in one thing to totally specialized in another thing. I ping-ponged back and forth between trade and colonialization three or four times I think.
The ability to gain massive numbers of cultural tradition and magistrates, and thus being able to switch 6-star advisors at will, has some profound effects on gameplay. I could keep revolt risk from war exhaustion at 0 all the time, for instance. Then, as soon as war exhaustion had gone down, it was back to inflation reduction. Whenever I got a new king with weak legitimacy, I could get him up to 100 very quickly, then switch back to inflation reduction.
I think this is going to be fixed in the next patch. I was trying to find the tech level for provincial decisions like build post office, and according to the wiki (which says it is updated for 4.1b), building a post office and road will only give 0.01 magistrates per year (instead of 0.05) and declaring an arch diocese will only give 0.01 magistrates (was 0.10). So that will make recruiting a six-star advisor more of a "once-in-a-generation" thing, versus a "three-times-a-year-thing"--as I could do at the end of this Connacht game.
The broken-ness of the HRE is well-understood and looks like it's going to be fixed, so I won't belabor that point. With the next patch, the human won't be able to maneuver Castille and Portugal and Lithuania into joining. And hopefully that +50% tax bonus is reduced too.
In EU3 vanilla, colonization was terribly broken. Now, it's expensive enough to make it a huge financial burden, especially in the early days when the price of sugar/coffee/spices are super-low. For the most part, I didn't even really pay the "real" costs of New World colonization for most of the game, because I had my capital over there for most of the game.
I know the colonization mostly changed back in IN, but still, my hat is off to P-dox for making colonization strategic, exciting, and fun.
Also in EU3 vanilla, pagan conquest was terribly broken. Now, due to the increased dangerousness of rebels and the perils of overextension, I feel like pagan conquest is a much more costly endeavor. Also, the speed with which Portugal and Castille move are going to make it hard for any small nations to take and hold the pagans. Especially small nations without a capital in the New World.
I didn't really use the dynasty dynamics much. so I can't comment on that.
The big thing I would do differently if I were to do this Connacht game over again would be to use trade even more than I did. There was a point where I switch away from trade completely in 1526 because I thought my infamy was going to shoot up because of constant wars with Spain and Portugal (which obviously never happneed) and I wanted to conquer Ontario (and thus gain another non-core CoT penalty). In retrospect, all that was totally unnecessary. I could have conquered Ontario, abolished the CoT there, and built a new CoT in one of my neighboring provinces that did have a core on it.
Also, in my initial slider moves, I think I would maximize free trade before going for centralization. Trade was such a big part of my income for so, so long.
It would also have been nice to be quicker about taking over the pagans so Portugal didn't get any and switching away from Colonial Ventures (+1 colonist per year) the moment I finished my ring of colonies to keep the other European powers out. All those 1 and 2 tax provinces I took in inland america probably hurt me more than they helped me.
***
All in all, EU3 with HT3 is loads more fun than vanilla EU3. And it will get even better after the next patch comes out.
So I said at the outset this would not be a true WC, for I do not have the patience to grind through all those rebels and all that micro-management. (I am only at 2 times the income of my next 5 rivals, not 10 times, but given the facility with which I have beaten these guys down in the past, the WC doesn't really seem at all in doubt to me anymore.)
I'd rather start thinking about the next project. Which I hope to start after the next patch comes out. Tuore has done some very inspiring work over at his Creek AAR and will assuredly do more very cool things with his Ryuku AAR.
But enough about the future. Let's talk about this game.
The thing that really enabled Connacht to get its "sealegs" in the beginning was, without question, trade. In 1425, Connacht was the richest nation in Europe with 41.6 ducats of trade income. (The second richest nation in the world after Ming.)
That being said, I had to choose every possible option to maximize trade: slider moves, advisors, and National Ideas. There was only one thing Connacht was good at. And Connacht was only able to dominate trade because at the beginning it starts toward the "free trade" end of the spectrum. So perhaps from a strategic perspective, trade is not too broken.
However, it might be good to double the penalty to merchant compete chance for placed merchants. I think I had like 45 placed merchants at one point. For most of the game, I had upwards of 30. Which is partly why I had SO much cultural tradition.
One thing that seems "broken" is how easy it is for small nations to switch between being totally specialized in one thing to totally specialized in another thing. I ping-ponged back and forth between trade and colonialization three or four times I think.
The ability to gain massive numbers of cultural tradition and magistrates, and thus being able to switch 6-star advisors at will, has some profound effects on gameplay. I could keep revolt risk from war exhaustion at 0 all the time, for instance. Then, as soon as war exhaustion had gone down, it was back to inflation reduction. Whenever I got a new king with weak legitimacy, I could get him up to 100 very quickly, then switch back to inflation reduction.
I think this is going to be fixed in the next patch. I was trying to find the tech level for provincial decisions like build post office, and according to the wiki (which says it is updated for 4.1b), building a post office and road will only give 0.01 magistrates per year (instead of 0.05) and declaring an arch diocese will only give 0.01 magistrates (was 0.10). So that will make recruiting a six-star advisor more of a "once-in-a-generation" thing, versus a "three-times-a-year-thing"--as I could do at the end of this Connacht game.
The broken-ness of the HRE is well-understood and looks like it's going to be fixed, so I won't belabor that point. With the next patch, the human won't be able to maneuver Castille and Portugal and Lithuania into joining. And hopefully that +50% tax bonus is reduced too.
In EU3 vanilla, colonization was terribly broken. Now, it's expensive enough to make it a huge financial burden, especially in the early days when the price of sugar/coffee/spices are super-low. For the most part, I didn't even really pay the "real" costs of New World colonization for most of the game, because I had my capital over there for most of the game.
I know the colonization mostly changed back in IN, but still, my hat is off to P-dox for making colonization strategic, exciting, and fun.
Also in EU3 vanilla, pagan conquest was terribly broken. Now, due to the increased dangerousness of rebels and the perils of overextension, I feel like pagan conquest is a much more costly endeavor. Also, the speed with which Portugal and Castille move are going to make it hard for any small nations to take and hold the pagans. Especially small nations without a capital in the New World.
I didn't really use the dynasty dynamics much. so I can't comment on that.
The big thing I would do differently if I were to do this Connacht game over again would be to use trade even more than I did. There was a point where I switch away from trade completely in 1526 because I thought my infamy was going to shoot up because of constant wars with Spain and Portugal (which obviously never happneed) and I wanted to conquer Ontario (and thus gain another non-core CoT penalty). In retrospect, all that was totally unnecessary. I could have conquered Ontario, abolished the CoT there, and built a new CoT in one of my neighboring provinces that did have a core on it.
Also, in my initial slider moves, I think I would maximize free trade before going for centralization. Trade was such a big part of my income for so, so long.
It would also have been nice to be quicker about taking over the pagans so Portugal didn't get any and switching away from Colonial Ventures (+1 colonist per year) the moment I finished my ring of colonies to keep the other European powers out. All those 1 and 2 tax provinces I took in inland america probably hurt me more than they helped me.
***
All in all, EU3 with HT3 is loads more fun than vanilla EU3. And it will get even better after the next patch comes out.
Congratulations! That's a pretty decent result but you really should paint the map
Hey, finish the game. It have fans out there!
But more seriously, congratulations. It was great game and more importantly great AAR. My personal favourite. Can't wait to see your next one.
But more seriously, congratulations. It was great game and more importantly great AAR. My personal favourite. Can't wait to see your next one.
Well done! A most impressive WC (were you to keep playing this game, we know beforehand nothing is able stop this HRE from achieving a WC). I'll await your next project with great anticipation.
