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while it would be good to be able to form a cultural union for South Slavic countries it should not be named like that... you know... not quite successful (and very "20th century" like) try.
Well, Yugoslavia is literally "Land of the Southern Slavs," so it's somewhat difficult to find a better name.

Russia already exists for Eastern Slavs, and Jagiellon is technically a union of the major Western Slavic nations. All that's missing is a South Slavic union.

But I digress.
 
My Swedish campaign year 1516, playing with a no vassals rule =)

Ottomans imploded (rare in my games at least), Prussia formed early and is a powerhouse, as is Austria, Castille, France, Bohemia and Yemen, you cant see it on this SS but they own the southern Arabian peninsula and the land down to (and including) Swahili, i guess they inherited the mamelukes without me noticing it.

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My latest game as TO -> Prussia -> Germany.


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Definitely one of the more fun games I've played so far, and my first time playing as either TO, Prussia, or Germany at all. I originally planned on simply forming Germany without becoming HRE, but we all know that never works. It's just too easy.

Most of my warring in this game was done opportunistically through missions, up until the point when I formed Germany and could pretty much do whatever I wanted. It's pretty amazing to go from such a vulnerable start to being the sole superpower on Earth. I probably wouldn't have survived at first if it weren't for Novgorod, who faithfully allied with me for about 300 years and protected me from pretty much every threat. They conveniently disowned me after I didn't need them anymore, so I didn't hesitate to beat them up when I got a mission against them. :laugh:

Austria was HRE for the first half of the game and so they were my biggest opponent, but I was able to take them out of commission (when I was still Prussia) by concentrating my relatively small army on their heartland and conquering their richest provinces or force-releasing countries from them. After I did that, the show was all me.

After I became HRE I decided to bring as much of Europe as I could under my control, so I attacked France and then force-released and diplo-vassalized a couple minors. If I had time to finish the job I would have taken out Spain next.

The only bad thing about having so many vassals is that you have to babysit the big ones sometimes if you want them to remain powerful, and I definitely learned that from this game. Burgundy was a pretty big power under my command, but for some reason they started having stability problems in the late 1700s, their revenue and army size shrank, and they failed to crush Mexican and UPCA revolutions. Their stab was at -3 for over a decade. I wanted to protect them because they were my single most powerful vassal, so I had to build a transport fleet and ship 40,000 troops across the Atlantic to put down the Mexicans and Central Americans for them, give them back the provinces, and hunt rebels until their stab recovered. It was pretty pathetic.

Other than that, it was a very successful game overall, and I'm very happy with how it went. I've got an army of 1.4 million, which is the largest I've ever had, so that's a nice personal accomplishment. Pretty fun stuff.






And here's another recent game as England -> GB using the Death and Taxes mod.


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This has got to be my favorite game of all time. It was also the first time I used the D&T mod, which was pretty interesting but also pretty imbalanced. The tech rates are so out of whack that some Asian countries ended up getting guns before I did.

Nevertheless, this game was extremely successful and fun. Basically my goal with this game was to make Great Britain reach its full historical potential, by being the unparalleled naval power of the world. So I did exactly that. By the end of the game I had over 1200 fully up-to-date combat ships. 400 on the British Isles, for use in European wars, 400 in North America, and 400 throughout the Indian Ocean. I figured if it was worth doing, it was worth overdoing.

This game also taught me a lot about the naval aspect of the game that I never knew before. Even though I created a colossal navy, I eventually learned that good admirals are way more important than how big your navy is. I realized that by putting a perfect admiral on a 25-strong fleet, I could obliterate a 300-strong fleet without a scratch. So I focused on NI's that would give me more naval tradition (I really like the overhauled NI's in this mod). Eventually in the 1700s I got to the point where I could recruit one usually-perfect admiral every four years, and by endgame I had about 5 or 6 perfect admirals at my disposal. (Would've had more if they didn't die so dang fast!) :angry:

A lot of times I just used my massive navy for no strategic gain whatsoever, but simply to have fun trolling other countries. For example, one time I DOWed Ming just for the pleasure of obliterating their 300-strong galley fleet, blockading them 100%, and watching their WE go through the roof and revolts pop up everywhere. :laugh: It goes to show that naval power can be almost as deadly as land power. The only catch is, being a naval power is kind of a full-time commitment. Through experience I've learned it's much harder to build a powerful navy, keep it updated, and supply it with good admirals than it is to do the same with an army, and doing both is pretty much out of the question. Even at the endgame--taking into consideration that Ming's troops are still halfway-decent at the endgame in Death and Taxes--if I were to build an army worthy of challenging Ming, the maintenance costs would probably destroy me.

Another thing I wanted to do with this game was kind of RP a little bit and make Britain more politically glorious than it was in real life by taking over the the entire modern-day US and Canada, and as rich as possible by taking over India, the Caribbean, and Indonesia. My income is a couple thousand ducats a year, but it would be ridiculously higher than that if my army wasn't twice the size of my force limit. (That's what you get for going full naval and quality!)

It took a while before I was able to do a lot of conquest though, because of the disproportionately strong tech of the Asians. Hindustan was a massive, solid power for a very long time (with guns almost as good as the Euros), and I only managed to break them by jumping on them when they were at war with a bunch of Europeans, and blockading them 100%. Then I was able to start taking bites out of India. Indonesia had to be taken piece by piece as well, accelerating only in the 1700s as my tech lead got larger and larger.

I also focused a lot on trade. I'm at full free trade and I have monopolies in most of the big COTs of the world. I own four COTs, one of which serves both the British Isles and all of my North American colonies combined, so it's worth over 3000 ducats.

And yes, that is the Inca empire thriving in South America. Just goes to show how imbalanced (albeit interesting) the mod is.
 
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Yeah I got a random PU on Sweden and kept it until I inherited, then released Gotland and Finland (who I forgot to list as my vassals).

I might turn into Illryia depending on what color they are. I need to diploannex Croatia and Venice before I can do that though.
 
And yes, that is the Inca empire thriving in South America. Just goes to show how imbalanced (albeit interesting) the mod is.

I wouldn't say the mod is imbalanced if it gives non-Western powers a better chance to resist Europeans. The mod basically makes it more difficult for the player to advance in economy and technology, yet the rewards of such are much better.

That is an interesting map you have as Great Britain by the way :p . Byzantium in Kamchatka and Sakhalin, Sweden in Egypt, implosive Bohemia and France, and landlocked Austria in Hokkaido :D . Maps like these are just part of the fun.
 
Aachen's decision to move from the ancestral homeland to the Middle East has taken a detour deeper into Asia. And Africa. And, uh, back towards the ancestral homeland.

The Aachener people have decided to have their leader become the Holy Roman Emperor (after having previously left the Empire :)), and so have converted to a kingdom. Current -1 stability is due to that. It's going to take like a decade to get it back up.

We currently have one province - Zaporozhia - bordering an HRE province (Podolia, of Bohemia). To rejoin the HRE as a nation, we'll need to have provinces all the way from Zaporozhia down to Sinai (our capital) individually join. Unfortunately a joining province has to be a core, and we just got Zaporozhia in 1580, so we'll have to wait until 1630 to start joining.

In the meantime, there's a lot more of Asia :)

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Aachen is the new Byzantine Empire.
Even has the same colour. :D
 
Speaking of the Byzantine Empire, here's a Byzantium that I've been working on since... friday-ish. Had the weekend off, and I ended up playing a wee bit too much EU3. I rolled back the tech group changes I made so that they're all at the 'default' rates. Mostly because I wanted to get the Basileus achievement.
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My western-most provinces used to belong to Morroco, but I snagged 'em during one of the dozen or so wars against me they involved themselves in for whatever reason. They seemed to have it out for me in the early & middle parts of the game--actually, they probably still do, given that they jump into every war I get involved in--but they've long since ceased to be anything resembling a threat.

Italy... securing my Italian provinces was a nightmare. Great Britain had annexed Naples (!?) a century before, and had been digging in that entire time. Conquering the provinces themselves wasn't difficult--they had an army there, but it was only of moderate size. No, what was difficult was preventing a superior naval power from getting into the Mediterranean long enough for them to decide that Italy wasn't worth it. Had to exceed my naval force limits, and they eventually still broke through, but they caved at the last moment and haven't been back since.

Curiously, about half of my leaders have been female, and pretty much every single one has possessed high (7-8) diplomatic and administrative ratings, with middling military ones. Because of this, I've gotten quite a few claims on my rivals' provinces. My most recent King, Demetrios I Palaiologos, bucks the trend by having a 7 in military skill, though he's still got great (8) administrative abilities. His heir is basically identical, except with military & administrive flipped, and slightly better diplomacy (4 vs 5).

As far as military power goes, I'm... either first or second in land, and second in navy. Austria, when they're the HRE, exceeds my land limit by a moderate (~70k) amount, and Great Britain has a better navy. I'm at peace now, so I've cut my army down to about 120,000, which is roughly half my landforce limit. Most of them are busy maintaining order in my newest acquisitions--namely, the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

Westernized, oh... late 1560's/early 1570's, and switched to administrative monarchy some 20 years later, and then to absolute monarchy in 1656. Wanted the extra magistrates & discipline. I'm slightly above-average as far as tech level goes, though I'm only the highest when it comes to land tech, I think.

Anyway, enough ranting. Here's the world view...

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Funfact: Castille was almost entirely pushed out of Iberian Peninsula and now has their Capital in South Africa. Little Karoo, I think.

And world view w/just Byzantium & her vassals...
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Oh, speaking of Byzantium (again), I've got an old Byzantium game that I completed several months ago but was too lazy to post here. But hey, what better time than now?


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Basically my goal in this game was one thing and one thing only: Crusading. Crusading, crusading, crusading. Crusading as far east and west as possible, within reason. Obviously I avoided worthless areas such as the steppes and the Himalayas, as you can see, but other than that it was just killing spree after killing spree for the whole game.

And you can't be a crusader without being highly religious, so almost all my provinces are Orthodox at this point. I also Restored the Pentarchy a while ago (conquered the Italian provinces through missions).

This was from a 1401 start because I wasn't anywhere near good enough to handle Byzantium from 1399 (probably still not good enough :blush:). Obviously it's not nearly as good as what other people have done with a warmongering Byzantium, but I'm pretty happy with it myself.

You might notice I own a big chunk of Japan. That's because the daimyo's DOWed me in the late 1700s, so I decided to teach them a lesson and just eat a piece of Japan for the sheer novelty of it. :)





And here's another really old game as Denmark -> Scandinavia.


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This was also a pretty conventional game. Starting as Denmark I just had to keep the Kalmar Union together, which proved a little bit of a challenge at first, but once I inherited Norway and Sweden it got a lot easier. I decided to do some RPing with this game, colonizing only areas that were geographically similar to the Scandinavian homeland, meaning Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the NW United States (I had no interest in Siberia). Other than colonization, another goal was to make the Baltic my private lake, which was a fun challenge.

This game taught me firsthand, for the first time, how worthless the far northern provinces are. Only after getting my hands on some Canadian fur did I begin to rake in some decent amounts of cash.

I originally planned to stay out of HRE politics, but as was the case with my Germany game on the previous page, it was impossible. In the very early game, alliances and small mission wars around the Baltic inevitably brought me into conflict with several of the HRE minors to my south, which were easy pickings for force-vassalization. And of course, a few vassals = more power = more war = more force-vassalizing = vassal electors. Also, as happens pretty often, when other electors got eaten, a couple of my vassals got chosen as new electors. So becoming HRE was pretty much automatic by 1500, and following it through to Revoking the Privilegia was just irresistible. :cool:

Also, note the monster Persia. It's been like that for almost the entire game, so I'm pretty proud of it, because it's not every day you see the AI create a stable, powerful Asian empire. :)
 
Oh, speaking of Byzantium (again), I've got an old Byzantium game that I completed several months ago but was too lazy to post here. But hey, what better time than now?

<snip>

Basically my goal in this game was one thing and one thing only: Crusading. Crusading, crusading, crusading. Crusading as far east and west as possible, within reason. Obviously I avoided worthless areas such as the steppes and the Himalayas, as you can see, but other than that it was just killing spree after killing spree for the whole game.

And you can't be a crusader without being highly religious, so almost all my provinces are Orthodox at this point. I also Restored the Pentarchy a while ago (conquered the Italian provinces through missions).

This was from a 1401 start because I wasn't anywhere near good enough to handle Byzantium from 1399 (probably still not good enough :blush:). Obviously it's not nearly as good as what other people have done with a warmongering Byzantium, but I'm pretty happy with it myself.

You might notice I own a big chunk of Japan. That's because the daimyo's DOWed me in the late 1700s, so I decided to teach them a lesson and just eat a piece of Japan for the sheer novelty of it. :)

<snip>

*whistles* That's a mighty fine Byzantium you've got there. Makes mine look, well, puny. Nicely done.