Oui, nous pouvons - An HTTT British WC While staying under the BB limit

esk1m0 said:

Holland blah blah blah

Are you going to pick anti piracy act? I didn't as the BB limit hit was bigger than gains in BB reduction. It would be harder to sail between 0%-30% of your infamy limit as it will fire boundary dispute more often.

Edit: I was reading some event files and noticed that every Great Man event gives you a flag. So it means that it won't fire anymore? I couldn't find that event wich gives you a choice between 1 prestige and -3 BB / 3 prestige and -1 BB. Are you aware of this? Where can I find it?

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Netherland is also menacing my game but in other ways. They took QftNW as 6th idea, but that wouldn't do them no good.

Anti-piracy act is a certain no go.

You can only have 1 great man event per type of advisor and as I always have 3 diplomats, only one great man event in the entire game. The event is "Excellent diplomacy" in randomevents. It requires 5 diplomat and is twice as likely to happen if ruler has 7+ diplomacy rating. I often lack the spare diplomats and even then it will happen like once in a hundred years with a good leader.

Malurous said:

Good progress. Picking your spots is that much more important than in IN - as you pretty much can't take stuff from more than one nation in a war, truce timing becomes vital to make sure you always have someone to fight when you "need" the BB. Calls for some long-term planning as well to make sure that there aren't many behemoths left late game as quick low-BB swallowing of them is more difficult.

I believe you have some French/Burgundian cores to grab? Though of course using Holy War to the max is the priority.

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Picking the spots are indeed challeging. It is like cascading alliances: If I am going to figth A for some land, B and C will join. Declaring another war on B will bring in E and D, while declaring war on C will bring in D and HRE F. Ok, I will declare war on the world!

Late game I ideally want a few behemoths alive. My BB limit is high enough to sit idle for 5 years at a time. The problem is getting enough war score to get 30BB in a peace deal. What I want to avoid is too many annexation without cores.

Figthing in Europe is limited to, when I have truces with the entire sunni world to allow shipping troops back, or when mass building troops in Europe and do a quick war before shipping them east.

FlorisDeVijfde said:

It's going well so far. Most WC's will face problems near the time-limit because of BB though. Most people when they are all powerful then choose to go over it. I'm curious to see if you will manage to avoid that.

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I will not go over the BB limit! At least not significant and if so, only in the last days of the game AKA "Prawnstar epic fail"

krelian said:

Bah. Dropped to second page. Hoping for an update.

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Hey, I was playing the game! I had some close calls around 1650 Update is coming shortly...

Chapter 7: Iberia, Africa and further east...


1479 Jan: War is declared on Mali. Ottoman and Swahili join.

May: Land tech 7.

Aug: We take 7 provinces from Mali. BB is now 16.8 and WE is 5.92. We need a long period of peace, so we WP Ottomans.



Dec: A boundary dispute on Kilwa makes Swahili dead as soon as I get a Red Sea navy.

1480 Apr: Granada declares Jihad against Foix. Brandenburg, Brittany, France, Avignon, Burgundy and Provence join Foix, but only the Mamelukes join Granada. As I was just started gathering troops to take Toledo for the -2BB, I intend to intervene...

Jun: Lisboa cores.

Jul: As Foix just had a boundary dispute on Labourd I have a diplomatic insult CB, which I use. Everybody fighting Granada join bar Brandenburg, perfect! France ends up as alliance leader, which is better than Burgundy :wacko:



1481 Mar: Assaulting Vendee gets Brittany out of the war. Granada is doing OK and France is wasting time sieging rebel held Navarra with 16 regiments. The remaining army, 2 regiments is sieging Bourboun.



Apr: Replacing our ruler we get a 5/3/7 prince.

Jul: Trade 7. Granada gets a WP from Burgundy, so I ask for peace too. Granted.

Dec: Moving towards Free subjects loses us another point of stab, reaching -3.

1482 Feb: Finally Granada allows us into their territory.

Jun: Stability reaches -2.

Jul: Granada annexes Foix, perfect.

Aug: Granada takes one of their sourthern Iberian provinces and releases Guyenne from France, the rest of the alliance is harmless to them. I remove alot of french cores and some of their alliances. Unfortunately WE has risen to 6,71. Alicante is still french so taking Toledo will cut Granada in 2 :-(



1484 Aug: WE is down to 3.12 and BB is 8.1. With Ottomans being DotF we want to start a short war against Syria, get Mosul and wait the Ottomans out. When they will accept a decent peace we will start some holy wars and get a peace with the Ottomans.

Dec: War is declared on Mali to take one of their provinces. We OPM Syria.



1485 Feb: Boundary dispute on Armenia. This mean we will ignore in the next war on Persia and let it revolt and then take it.

Apr: Mali is OPM.



Sep: The first batch of Mameluke territory cores. A Red Sea navy is issued and Majerteen is colonised.

1486 Jan: Ottomans are ready to accept me to concede defeat, so I declare war on Persia and peaces Ottomans.

Aug: A 6* diplomat dies and we only get a 5* replacement.

1487 May: Naval tech 7.

Jun: Granada has been doing well, but now they ended up in a war against Burgundy. I recruit troops to obtain local parity. The real problem is HRE Austria, which has more troops than me and are not spanning 3 continents Fortunately it seems like Burgundy cannot pass the Pyrenees to get into Iberia. Aragon in Valencia and Navarra in Navarra, breaks free from France.



Jul: We take 5 provinces of Persia and assume Armenia to break free. BB is 9.8 and WE is 7.56.



Dec: Berbera, Awsa and Haud cores.

1488 Feb: Baluchstan owned Makran is discovered.

1489 Apr: Election time, we take a chance with a new diplo guy. A 5/375 guy, which is issued general duties as close to Sibiria as I can.

May: War is declared on Ashanti, nobody joins.

Jun: Stab -1. We take Kumasi and some cash for peace with Ashanti.



1490 Jul: BB is down to 4.8 and WE is 2.56, so we declare war on Kazan. Ottomans and Kazack join.

Sep: Sweden annexes Norway and as it is more than 50 years since we have fought Sweden the core on Orkney is lost

1491 Oct: We take 4 provinces of Kazan as the stack fighting in Perm is down to 238 men. Ottomans is ready for peace so we declare war on Nogai joined by Persian and Najd. GH is also DOW'ed, Candar and Syria join. Last Sibir is DOW'ed, joined by Crimea. BB is 5.4 and WE is 3.84.




1492 Mar: As the merchant fractures, we side with the protective ones.

May: Peace with Nogai for Uralsk.



Jun: Second batch of Mamelukian territory cores.

Sep: Peace with Persia, releases Armenia.



1493 Jan: Peace with GH. Poltava would be nice as it is propably the last time I've seen it in muslim hands, but Ufa is needed for a road to more BB lands.



Feb: Netherlands is forced to release Gelre, Oldenburg and Brunswick by HRE Austria.

May: Cleves releases Münster of the Netherlands.

Jun: Boundary dispute on Salamanca.

Oct: Our 5/3/5 king dies sieging Crimea. To honour his memory we elect a 5/3/5 diplomat candidate

1494 Feb: We take what we can from Sibir. BB is only 6,3 and WE is 6,02.



March: Milan forces Netherlands to release Brabant and Utrech.

Apr: We notice that Animist Hausa has conquered muslim Kanem Bornu. This allows for a quick war without Ottomans, gaining BB and losing WE at the same time, even with our "allmighty" ruler.

Jun: A few rebels later, we can see off 3000 soldiers and a general to beat up some animists. Congo joins, but is kinda outta reach.

Jul: Sourthern Arabian Peninsula cores.

1495 Apr: We annex Hausa for 4BB (usual screenie mishap for annexation ), resulting in 8.3. WE is 5.12.

Dec: Majerteen is secured by a fort. Africa is looking secure and no europeans have QftNW yet and most have taken their 3rd idea.

1496 Jan: We reach stab 0, switch to government tech for the 3rd idea. Running at negative stability for this period, has left us with 8.7% inflation.

May: The refomation hits: Venice. Tasty provinces, but surounded by Austria. Unam Santum is due in February...



Aug: We get our first protestant province on freaking Urungwe. The missionary chance is -11.9% for the next 25 years...

Sep: Oyo and Ife is discovered. We start marching.

Oct: Muscovy attacks Smolensk which Austria joins. Exciting

1497 Feb: Government tech 11 and Unam Sanctum. Production 9 is being researched. Venice get Religious civil disorder and choose to eradicate heretics. We declare war on Oyo, joined by Congo and Armenia joined by Muscowy.

Mar: We get the Cleansing of heretic CB. Schwaben and Trent also gone blue. War is declared on Venice. I want Crete and Adriatic coast but the Ottomans should take Greece. Oyo is annexed. Venice is also fighting a trade war against the rest of northern Italy, Austria and Milan doing the most.

Jun: Armenia annexed. Milan forces Venice to release Crete :-(

Aug: France is rotten: We get 60000 rebels up north or -10%tax in Normandie for 4 years, I'll take the latter. Down south Granada is fighting the other frenchies, but this time including Armagnac, so they can reach each other. Full minting and troop building... We get a WP with Muscowy.

Dec: Benin is discovered. War is declared on Burgundy, Brittan, Milan, Navarra and Aragon join. Milan is bad, but I like Austria staying out. I spot 20 burgundian regiments down to 5500 soldier in Poutoi...

1498 Mar: The forts in Ife and Oyo are done and Benin and Ashanti are sent a letter to.

May: Granada annexes Armagnac.

Jun: We take Istria, Görz and Friuli off venetian hands. Ashanti is annexed. Benin annexed. BB is 13.4 and WE is 2.78.



Aug: Milan accept a WP.

Oct: The remaining mamelukian conquest west of Cairo cores.

1499 Jun: Granada has become DotF. We will try to get Lothringen and Valenciennes off Burgundian hand and start warring in Middle East again.

Jul: Another 6* diplomat dies and again we generate a 5* replacement.

Aug: Muscovy forces Austria to release Tirol and forms Russia. We have the heretic CB, but Russia is larger than I can handle.

1500 Jan: We are able to take our two cores, but Granada sits on the burgundian string from Poutoi to Bourgougne without peacing out. I hope they can handle themselves. BB is 10.5 and WE is 5.28.



Feb: Moving towards mercantalism gains us a collector.

Mar: War is declared on Persia, joined by Trebizond, Khiva and Sind, the latter being alliance leader.

Jul: Production 9 and Workshops. We begin building them on the isles.



Next up: 1500 Interlude!

TonyJoe said:

Wow, that's a lot to keep track of. I'm not sure how you manage to juggle it all. What speed to do you play on?

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Normally 4, tricky wars are fought on 3, tricksy timing moves are done on 1. I pause ALOT and have set the game to pause on almost every message. The only major complaint I have on EU3 is it not being turnbased

Dewirix said:

Venice went Protestant in 1496? I thought the date had to be 1500 or later for that event to fire. In any case, it could give you a good angle of attack if it spreads through Central Europe.

I'm still somewhat bowled over by the speed with which this is moving.

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I really want(ed) Sweden to get hit to take Iceland and Gotland cheap.

Impératif de vitesse!

krelian said:

Since you spend a lot of time with negative stability and you seem to conquer provinces so fast that you will always have a ton of muslims provinces while you wait for conversions, don't you have massive rebel problems? I don't expect you to list every single revolt in the way Prawnstar did in his horde AAR, but could you give us a general idea? I'm tempted to try, but I think it will be too time intensive/tedious for me to finish. On average how many revolts do you get in a year? Btw, thanks for the update!

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Mind you I am quite ahead playing the game, but IIRC I had a few each month. Europe is mostly cored, so not alot there, Araby is heavily garrisoned. The trouble is Africa, especially with active missionaries. Just remember, this game is not about efficiency/roleplay, so even when rebels take a province I just have to retake it within 3 (?) years to avoid defections, the only price being 10 more years of nationalism. Later when the land cores most rebels will be Particularist, which can't defect.

And the rebels are nothing yet

esk1m0 said:

I could not play with negative stability for so long as it will spawn rebels and hurt research.

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I agree that it is against conventional wisdom to play like this, but in an unconventional game, conventional wisdom does not necessarily apply. If I had focused on stability first and government tech later, Venice might have converted some of the province, costing me 2BB apiece.

Malurous said:

Great progress, good job finding those wars. That Orkney core loss was a tough break, I thought the timer was supposed to go back to 50 years when the owner changes... Tech is lagging quite a bit, but of course that's to be expected with all those added poor lands, minting and low stab.

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I knew from my test game And my tech will get more and more behind, even government

PrawnStar said:

I see you did some clever BB management around Armenia - as I don't have HttT could you walk through the detail. Always good to show off a cunning plan!

Looking forward to a world map.

Research doesn't matter if you're Great Britain with no Portugal and gutted France and Spain. If there's a problem just hit until it stops being a problem*

* Don't do this is real life

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The "cunning" plan in Armenia: The first war was a holy war and taking province in such a war cost 1BB. As I had a core, I refuses to pay and just isolated the province. The next war was a holy war against Nogai, which Persia joined. The truce prevented declaring a separate war against Persia, and inddirect targets joining a war counts as no CB, so Armenia would cost 4BB. Even with no CB you can take money, annul treatments and release nations, so I had Persia release Armenia. If I hadn't I had to declare a reconquest war to take it, in which the rest of Persia would cost 4BB per province. HttT is really harsh on taking province, vassalising, PU'ing and force convertng without using the proper CB!

And tech matters, I need government tech for NIs and land tech to avoid embarrassment My test game showed that fighting Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, Prussia, Austria, HRE,... with a land tech deficit and not having military drill, is bad. In this game I'm plagued with low admin rulers too, which make WE my main enemy at times.

Sweboy said:

Could we have a map of your realm and of the world. I have no idea how much you have conqured now?

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Map is in the 1500 cut scene, probably posted tomorrow.

Chief Ragusa said:

Workshops in your cored wealthiest provinces will help income and you're doing well enough against the western europeans. Converting those African provinces will take some doing adding to expenses and possibly impacting the speed of military builds. Staying competitive on land is essential. Good progress on the world conquest, so far.

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Workshops and later constables will help. To a lesser extent so will conquering richer land and getting access to some rich natives.

Panopticon said:

I must say you have quite an odd way of doing research but I guess you know what you are doing. Is it faster to increase the tech if you don't invest so much in stability? Is that perhaps of all the wrong culture/religion provinces which makes it better to just hope for a lucky +stab event? Otherwise I have always seen it as better to invest all the way to 3 stab before switching to tech.. And also those huge ahead of time penalties. Are the NI's that important? You wasted a lot of research there.

And one other little thing. Have you thought about vassalizing the Pope? That would give you better relations with them and therefore more papal influence meaning more cardinals. And as an added bonus every nations that you go to war with would also get a lower relation with them decreasing their papal influence meaning less cardinals to them and therefore more cardinals to you.

EDIT: And your rulers. When you write 5/3/5 that would for me mean a 3 diplomacy guy following the order in which you have the numbers in the ruler screen but that's not possible if you elect a dilomacy leader..

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Generally it is better longterm to invest in stability first and then tech, but here I needed the NI ASAP, to save up to 6BB for the venetian provinces and help prevent the spread of heretics. The later reason may make this economically reasonable, as I could have many provinces changing religion and needing to be converted back. And I find that the number of stab reducing events are a little higher than that of stab increasing ones.

Vassalising the pope cost BB though Most of the game I just guarantee, ally and send gifts.

Looking at my save games I just have exchanged the last two number, will be edited, thanks.

esk1m0 said:

With vassalized and allied Papal states you can cause really bad relations between the Pope and big Catholic blobs. This will make them take Statue in restraint of appeals (correct?) = -10 influence/year. The problem is that there might not be CBs hanging around too much to hit those relations enough before ~1650.

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I wouldn't need to hit them, I just needed on average a tenth of a cardinal extra from me dominating the influence game. That would over the game net a little over 4BB which would pay the 4BB for vassalizing them in the first place. Furthermore it would prevent them joining wars against me, causing damage which requires diplomatic and monetary effort to repair.

Iwanow said:

Great conquest there - before reformation you managed to conquer great chunk of the world...

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Reformation won't slow me down

1500 Interlude - Another report from the statistical office

Fashionably late:


The cardinal game are going the right war:



Sorting by government tech I just behind Bavaria with 7/7/8/9/11:



The heavyweight and the lightweights



Again, the heavyweight and the lightweights. The only disturbing thing is the light ships, meaning that I am being outteched:



More than doubled the amount of provinces in the last 50 years, due to higher BB burn and not taking 4BB provinces.



You don't need a map, just look at the culture pie



Production already has a sligth lead on taxation



No longer conquering Subsaharan Africa, forts are no longer taking large parts of the budget. That part is now going to pay for missionaries.



Also more than doubled the number of COTs, the quality is just as good as the european ones, but the competition is much easier. Most of the new ones will improve as I conquer/colonize further.



The income hasn't doubled



The state of the world



And the civilized part of it