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Regarding Elizabeth, it's hard to say. The geopolitical environment is so much different for this Elizabeth than for the real one. My gut tells me it's probably closer to pale imitation than mirror image, but then I haven't fully finished playing out her reign. There may be some undiscovered greatness in it.

Oh, well, I meant like base stats for Admin, Dip and Mil. But yeah, the geopolitical environment is different for this Elizabeth (although a belligerent Spanish power is certainly similar).
 
Invade Morocco! Avenge Malta.

That thought did come to mind, but Morocco has devoured most of Algeria and is now huge. I have left them alone in the hope that between them, Morocco and the Mameluks will destroy all the other Barbary states, making it (theoretically) easier to get a reprieve from pirate activity by judicious diplomatic pressure on one or both.

But in reality that's a pipe dream and I'll just have to endure a couple hundred years of pirates ravaging Malta and Gibraltar.

Oh, well, I meant like base stats for Admin, Dip and Mil. But yeah, the geopolitical environment is different for this Elizabeth (although a belligerent Spanish power is certainly similar).

Ah, I see. Well, Magna Mundi Ultimate's "historical" Elizabeth I has über stats—ADM 9, DIP 9, MIL 8—so the odds are kind of stacked against any other monarch measuring up. In fact, out of all the MM games that I have played over the years, I have never had a monarch with a 9 in any single stat, let alone a couple of them!
 
Nice progress. Really, really, ridiculously well written sendoff for William there. Thumbs UP.
 
I have had two monarchs with a 9 stat, and that is after playing a ton of manga mundi, one was a pretender that seized the throne as Mongol Horde and the other was an incredible 8,9,7 as Genoa, so while not technically a monarch he still ruled for life, though sadly a short ten year reign. Really tested my conviction not to reload. I could be wrong but when they do happen they seem to have all good stats not just the nine.
 
Too bad William didn't see the end of the Crusade. Henry looks like he'll be a good king to end the Crusade with a victory and keep a steady hand on the tiller if he listens to mom.;) I liked the colonial update as well, too bad about the pirate scum.
 
As high quality as always. I loved the 'colonisation' maps.

Gibraltar and Malta had largely been spared pirate assaults for two very good reasons.
Malta as an island is less prone to pirate raids, as the 'raided neighbouring province' factor is not affecting it. As for Gibraltar, you must've got lucky.

one Dorothea Haraldsdatter, recently returned from the English court
:eek: Aims high this girl, and won't stop until she gets it.

The Electoral Palatinate is subsequently inherited by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Saxony, Christian I von Askanien. The Duke is already a prince-elector on behalf of his own realm, and is now in the unique position of being eligible to cast two votes
A very interesting development; still it's not enough to outmanouvre Austria.

Though it pains him, Charles Button has no alternative but to send soldiers from Edinburgh to crush his rebellious brother.
The way the game picks names opens up possibilities for fascinating stories! Oh and Hugh's very sad end, yet very much in the spirit of the times. What happened with the wife?

called the Ballet of Chestnuts, the feast was attended by many ecclesiastical luminaries—and over fifty local ladies of the night. After the dinner, candles were lit and placed about the room; then chestnuts were strewn across the floor, and the naked prostitutes were encouraged to crawl about and pick up them up. The guests, of course, were encouraged to have their way with the women
"the said 'ladies' were just regular servants, there were only fifteen of them, the chestnuts fell and got spilt all over the place by accident, some women bent down to pick them and clear the mess, the guests were not encouraged to anything, they were merely grateful for the efficiency of the cleaning ladies' service" from a note by Holy See's secretary

Henry VII Lancaster (ADM 6/DIP 8/MIL 3)
We don't know much abut the new king (apart from his weakness one Dorothea :p); wouldn't his poor military skills combined with excellency in diplomacy affect the final outcome of the Grand Crusade somehow? ;)
 
Is it possible to keep a Personal Union without ever inheriting in MM? I love the idea of England/Britain and Rome against the world. It'd be a shame if you had to either inherit or release them as a vassal later. Unions > Vassalage.

Sorry for missing this, I didn't mean to skip over it in my replies.

There's no way to definitely retain a PU through multiple monarchs without avoiding the possibility of inheritance. You can spike the various MM junior-nation autonomy events, which means that the PU will end when the current ruler dies. But if you want to keep a PU long-term, inheriting the junior is always a (small) possibility, in MM as it is in vanilla EU3.

Fantastic i check this AAR almost daily for updates and today i was happy to be rewarded with one. Huzzarh. Now i really need to get out of bed....:/

Sucks when life interrupts leisure, doesn't it? One day we'll find a cure. :D

The one bad thing about this AAR is that its partly ruined reading a lot of other AAR's. I used to lurk in several threads, now I'm stuck checking here hoping for an early update.

Well thanks! I enjoy the epic history-book AARs the most, too (as one might have guessed), but I like the other styles as well. I am itching for some of the narrative AARs like Salik's and Ashantai's to get back into production (hint, hint, fellas). ;)

Speaking of which, this is probably the absolute best narrative effort I have ever read—merrick's The Walls of the City - Snapshots from Constantinople. It's got less than a dozen entries, but they are all of extremely high quality.

As far as an early update goes, I have some good news and some bad news. I'll give you the bad news first. This first years of Henry VII's reign were actually played several months ago, and way back when I had moved some savegames and screenshots around. The savegames for past monarchs get moved out of the EU3\mod\savegame folder and into a savegame archive so that I don't run into the "more than 120 saves" crash. The screenshots likewise get moved out into an archive for later sorting and editing.

Well, somehow while I was doing all that I managed to delete a bunch (meaning hundreds) of screenshots from the middle of Henry's reign. I only have a week's worth of backups on site, so all that stuff that happened months ago is lost. I did take copious notes, though, so I know what happened. But in essence I was screwed out of images for the next update! So I "reconstructed" some events by loading saves and playing just long enough to get a screenshot that kinda-sorta illustrates the event that occurred the first time around.

Now the good news. In what is some kind of record for me, I have actually completed editing all the images for the next update, and all that's left is the writing. I can't promise a delivery date, but ideally I'd like to get it done within the week. I am itching to move the story forward into the tumult of the Reformation, but there a couple of updates yet before that happens.

As high quality as always. I loved the 'colonisation' maps.

Thanks! I cribbed colony/city names from knuckey's Colony Ingame Name Change Mod. Seems to work well enough with MMU 1.26.

Malta as an island is less prone to pirate raids, as the 'raided neighbouring province' factor is not affecting it. As for Gibraltar, you must've got lucky.

Makes complete sense, thanks for the explanation.

I may not get pirate raids on Gibraltar too often, but I do still get revolts (despite it having cored long ago). The every-5-years-like-clockwork revolts have me belatedly wishing I had expelled the Moors, just as my Iberian neighbours did decades ago. :( If it gets really out of hand I might move national focus there and try to culture-convert it.

:eek: Aims high this girl, and won't stop until she gets it.

She was originally going to be an ongoing foil for Henry and Christina; in an early draft of the last update, Dorothea would have accompanied her new husband to Bulgaria with the Danish crusade, and had a chance encounter with old flame Henry in Constantinople. Then many years down the road a whole "Wars of the Roses" situation would develop with Henry's legitimate heir by Christina fighting it out with his bastard offspring by Dorothea.

Ultimately that all got cut as I played further into the game, and that original story arc started to not make sense with what came after. So she got an honourable mention in the Scandinavian regency wars instead.

The way the game picks names opens up possibilities for fascinating stories! Oh and Hugh's very sad end, yet very much in the spirit of the times. What happened with the wife?

An epilogue there also got cut—that section was already longer than I wanted it to be, and I didn't want to bloat it any further. But in essence, the wife's father (Lord Sinclair) is a Lancastrian loyalist while she herself is not. But the Council's not sure whether executing his daughter would cause Sinclair to shift loyalties to the independence party. So in order to avoid antagonising the father, the Council would have deliberately avoided following up on evidence strong enough to convict the daughter.

"the said 'ladies' were just regular servants, there were only fifteen of them, the chestnuts fell and got spilt all over the place by accident, some women bent down to pick them and clear the mess, the guests were not encouraged to anything, they were merely grateful for the efficiency of the cleaning ladies' service" from a note by Holy See's secretary

An innocent misunderstanding, then. Cardinal della Rovere had said that the maids of the Palazzo Apostolico are typically hard at work after sunset, and that the Bishop of Rome gives them leisure to enjoy privy draughts. Sometimes they labour so diligently and at such length that their groaning can be heard throughout the Passetto di Borgo.

We don't know much abut the new king (apart from his weakness one Dorothea :p); wouldn't his poor military skills combined with excellency in diplomacy affect the final outcome of the Grand Crusade somehow? ;)

The Crusade is all but concluded; at this late stage there's not much opportunity to really screw it up. If William III had hung on for just one more month, he would have seen the end.

The effect of Henry's skills distribution can be seen later, certainly.
 
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"An innocent misunderstanding, then. Cardinal della Rovere had said that the maids of the Palazzo Apostolico are typically hard at work after sunset, and that the Bishop of Rome gives them leisure to enjoy privy draughts. Sometimes they labour so diligently and at such length that their groaning can be heard throughout the Passetto di Borgo."



...lmao
 
Frankly I'm surprised that Merrick is a real name
 
Again a truly epic update. Love the Kalmar Union references but am slightly worried that seem to have forgotten so much of my homelands history that I cant remember who was in charge after Sten Sture the Older. Svante Nilson doesn't ring a bell but I might know the historic one by his dynastic name rather than his father's. And oh yes. I did vote for you :D
 
Another great update. this is an amazing aar, best ive ever seen,
 
Outstanding work. You just made me use a day reading this AAR. Very addictive.

Only one miniscule complaint. Footnotes. I like the information they provide, but scrolling all the way to the bottom of the post to see them and then scrolling back up takes me out of the narrative. Maybe they should be at the end of the paragraph instead of at the bottom of the page? Or just encapsuled in parantheses?
 
Only one miniscule complaint. Footnotes. I like the information they provide, but scrolling all the way to the bottom of the post to see them and then scrolling back up takes me out of the narrative. Maybe they should be at the end of the paragraph instead of at the bottom of the page? Or just encapsuled in parantheses?

I understand. When reading other AARs, I hold off on reading the notes until the very end (so that I don't accidentally read a spoiler on the way to the note). I assumed everybody else did likewise, but that was a failure of imagination on my part. :(

I'm not sure what the ideal solution is, but perhaps I'll experiment with note placement to try and strike a better balance. Or be more descriptive in the footnote so that by the time you get to the end, you don't have to scroll up to remember what the note was referring to. Would that work, too?
 
That depends on the note. Eg. the one about courtesan being the correct feminine form of courtier would really be better at the end of the paragraph, because it's a short little nice-to-know. On the other hand, a lengthier note about which historical event you modelled something or other over is best (at least for me) placed at the end, as they tend to break the immersion. Being more descriptive in those would really help.

Thank you for giving me something so enjoyable to read, that I actually care about immersion and footnotes. You obviously spend a great deal of time and effort on these, and it shows.
 
That depends on the note. Eg. the one about courtesan being the correct feminine form of courtier would really be better at the end of the paragraph, because it's a short little nice-to-know. On the other hand, a lengthier note about which historical event you modelled something or other over is best (at least for me) placed at the end, as they tend to break the immersion. Being more descriptive in those would really help.

Thank you for giving me something so enjoyable to read, that I actually care about immersion and footnotes. You obviously spend a great deal of time and effort on these, and it shows.

Thanks for the compliment, and your suggestions for improvements to endnotes/footnotes is greatly appreciated. I have gone back and tried to rationalise the notes by placing the shorter ones after the relevant paragraph.
 
Once the crusade is over it will be interesting to see whether the new monarch can resist further eastern advantures.

There's no money or babes in writing AARs

This is terrible news!