The Morean DrunkAARds

[Parcae]

Edit: Like all my AARs, this is MMP2.

I woke up this morning with one strong conviction: I want WINE, and I must have WINE. So I went looking for WINE.




I have found WINE. So, apparently, has my monarch. And my monarch's mother, before his birth. And probably all of his ancestors.




That could explain why we're stuck in the ass end of Greece while the crusader states and the evil Turk have all of our non-wine-producing land. But, hey, at least we have the important parts, i.e. the ones with WINE.

You can tell the Turks are evil because they do not permit the consumption of WINE. Also because they are the strongest military power in the world in this mod, with one or two possible exceptions, whereas we currently have a support limit of three.

Morea is not one of the easier countries in the world, and I, at the moment, do not have the impressive lack of a life that once made me so feared among nerds. For this reason, I will be permitting myself to replay wars, but not battles. In other words, I will not be replaying things because of bad luck, but I may occasionally reload to try different strategies. This prevents me from having to replay from the start every time I decide that it would probably not be a good idea to start by invading Siber, as I am wont to do.

In the interim, I have noted that one of the Mediterranean islands appears to be a natural target for expansion:

[dinofs]

Looking good so far, but it could use more WINE!

[naggy]

Next stop...cheese.

[Parcae]

Let me step back a moment and talk about strategy.

In some versions of Magna Mundi, there is no land connection at the Bosphorus, which makes sense, since there isn't. This makes the Ottomans pretty easy to defeat – it's simply a matter of forming alliances with naval powers, making their fleet afraid to exit the harbor, and then sending a ship or two to block the straights. This turns a war against the Ottomans into a war against two mini-Ottomans. Much better.

For this very reason, the Magna Mundi dev team decided to make Thrace straddle the Bosphorus, allowing troops to move freely from Asia Minor into Europe (and vice versa). This made the task of defeating the Ottomans much, much harder. Naval power alone is no longer enough; you need to be able to defeat the Ottomans in a straight-up fight. That's hard. The Ottomans are up there with Muscovy and Ming among the world's consistently strongest land powers, and, like Muscovy, they start with a whole bunch of cores on their neighbors to increase that advantage. Because the AI is dumber than paint and is rarely capable of taking its cores, MMP2 has also added a system whereby the other minors in Asia Minor join the Ottoman Empire after a few years unless they're human-controlled.

Defeating the Ottomans as a Greek minor, therefore, requires two things:

1. A period of build-up to get land forcelimits, money and manpower high enough to have a prayer of taking on the colossus.

2. A moment of opportunity when the Ottomans are embroiled in a costly war.

Most people start out as the Byzantines (with Thrace) or Georgia (with a gold province) so that they will begin with at least some of the criteria in 1. The Byzantines, however, are not present in the 1453 start (which is how the mod is meant to be played) and Georgia isn't Greek. That leaves Trebizond or Morea, and I chose the one that starts farther away from the Ottomans.

And so, without further ado, we will now return you to Morea, proud home of fetal alcohol syndrome.

[Kapt Torbjorn]

Next stop...cheese.

Oi he's Greek not a Frog!

[tuore]

What? Conquering only wine provinces? These AARs get stranger day by day...

[Parcae]

I'm not limiting myself to wine provinces, just using that as a theme for the AAR.

[gabor]

i'll follow this one; so do i get it right Cyprus is your firs target?

[JDMS]

Sounds good. I'll follow.

[Parcae]

The war for Cyprus' WINE is not a simple one, even though we have two provinces and they have one. For one thing, their one province has a higher tax base than our two. For another, their navy is bigger than ours, which makes invading an island rather complicated.

I have no naval ideas, and hence will pay double for any ships I build as soon as the modifier kicks in. We start with two galleys and two cogs, so I queue up a third cog immediately. That should be just enough to siege a level two fort, which, in Magna Mundi, is basically all of them. I also make a slider move towards serfdom, since I desperately need cheaper infantry, and queue up two infantry units. I'll need to move towards free market later on, since we start with a 25% tech penalty and need to have high free market to get rid of it, but that isn't as immediate a concern. A little later, I queue up a third infantry unit in Achaea, where the cog is in production.

My first two units, and the cog, finish production a little after Cyprus' second infantry unit. I move three thousand soldiers, led by my monarch, to the north of Cyprus and declare war. They predictably, if stupidly, load a single infantry unit into their cog and head off to invade me. The lone remaining unit is easily overwhelmed.

I need to be clever here – I have no way of reinforcing the troops in Cyprus once their navy is done escorting their cog, so losses cannot be replaced. I sneak my navy around theirs the long way, and trim naval maintenance back to zero, as I can't defeat them at sea. Their 1,000 troops arrive just after my fourth unit finishes in Morea, and is duly (and slowly) pingponged to death. (I was bound to win this fight, as my unit can reinforce and theirs can't, but I was lucky to do so without having my provinces looted.)

In 1456, Cyprus finally capitulates, and I immediately start minting to build up to my forcelimit. I'm not sure what I'll do with my forcelimit, once achieved, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. After burning off my war exhaustion, I eventually decide to invade Athens, since I have a mission to annex them. I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, that's a lot of bad reputation for not much gain, and it puts me in the front line of the Ottoman advance. On the other, I don't really have much else to do at the moment. I could go conquering someplace exotic, such as Astrakhan, but that would be difficult and timeconsuming, and remove the possibility of hamstringing the Ottomans if they should happen to get into trouble.

Athens is annexed in 1459, and the bewildered Moreans face the hideous prospect of producing olive oil. They try drinking it, but it isn't nearly as good at producing “special” monarchs as WINE, so the effort is abandoned.

Later that year, the Ottomans go to war with the Mamluks and their Georgian allies. Both armies are quickly wiped out, creating an opportunity for me. I could declare war on the Mamluks, whose fleet is in the Red Sea, and take Alexandria, one of the best provinces on the Mediterranean. Alternatively, I could invade Georgia. Georgia is in the Byzantine culture group, meaning that I won't have severe penalties and can expect them to core soon, becoming an accepted culture; and they have some awesome provinces – high manpower, decent taxes and a gold province. They're also a very good region for letting the Ottoman forces attrite to death, due to their cold winters. Georgia it is, then.



Whoops.

[gabor]

you tease!
anyway, hat off - getting straight to the point; i admire your courage (foolhardiness?); this will be interesting.

[JDMS]

That's certainly ambitious. Good luck!

[dinofs]

Good luck, you're gonna need it.

[Parcae]

This game was played a while ago, and I didn't take many screenshots at the time because I thought I was unlikely to do well. Right now, I don't have time to go back and load up the saves to take the screenshots I need, so I'm going to do a screenshot-less update. Sorry about that.

My forces at the outbreak of war consist of 4k cavalry and 9k infantry. The infantry divides neatly into three province-sieging stacks. The cavalry's role is to whack newly formed units, an essential task when fighting a larger opponent.

I have the advantage of a head start - the Ottomans are apparently relying on their newly formed units to get rid of me while their real armies siege Mamluk and Georgian territory, so my game of whack-a-mole effectively gives me a few years to siege Greece. I manage to buy more time after they peace out with the Mamluks (who lose two provinces) and Georgia (who get off scot-free) by the Bikini Babe strategy - a temptingly small detachment of cavalry leads their main army around and around in circles in their own territory while the defection timer ticks down on their occupied provinces. In the end I am forced to sign a white peace, but not until Epirus has defected - a small reward for all the inflation I accrued, but beggars can't be choosers.

[dinofs]

What year is it?

[JDMS]

Nice work. Every province gained is one less province the Ottomans have.

[gabor]

long-waiting, my favourite strategy when I play a minor!
now when I think of your gain, would Alexandria actually make a better aquisition?

[ve3609]

interesting! I was never good at MMP as a major (even as portugal!). Good luck

*Subscribed*

[Zitanier]

How can your people be so clever while drunk?

[Parcae]

@Gabor: Yes, Alexandria was far more valuable. But it would have weakened the Mamluks as much as it strengthened me, and weakening the only significant counterbalance to the Ottomans in the region was not a good idea. One of the objectives of the war was precisely to give breathing space to the Mamluks.
@Dinofs: The war ended in 1469, making it one of the longest in history. I accrued quite a lot of inflation.

The end of the war brought some breathing space. I had alliances with Genoa, the Mamluks, Wallachia and Serbia, so my policy of surrounding the Ottomans was bearing fruit. Now there was time to rebuild, pay off some inflation, maybe build a few improvements.

Or, you know, go to war with Venice in 1473. Whatever works.