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Issue #24
Reason VII
This game is not sandbox enough.
Issue Twenty-four


Because if it was, it would be prepared to handle a multi-cultural, multi-religious administrative monarchy emerging from the reiligious turmoil of the fifteenth century. But instead I'm stuck with the Religious Turmoil modifier and it is pretty much guaranteed to stay in effect for the rest of the game because I can't hire Missionaries to convert the provinces I own and they randomly switch religions every other Sunday on their own anyway. I could of course rather easily create some decisions or events to circumvent this but I officially refuse to. I should not be required to make my own scripts to reach a perfectly logical and historically plausible conclusion!

Oh, well. Anyway, in early 1650 (yes, we are half way through!!), Austria was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. I noticed that they had 38 Imperial Authority which is not that bad at all, so I decided to take a look at what's up over in Germany. Wait, what?

holyromanempire.png

It's very nice of you guys, but I'm not even part of your little private club...

How on Earth could the Papal States vote for me? Is it even legal? I checked the map and I had no provinces that were a member of the HRE, nor am I as a country. But if two of the electors already support me, wouldn't it be nice if I bribed convinced the rest to support me as well? There's not much I can do anyway. Swallowing Siena can wait. The only current elector that will never support me is Croatia because they are Refrmed bigots and they can go to hell for all I care.

In the meantime I enact the Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité decision. It's nice to be ahead of time :p This will cause a lot of internal trouble but I don't really plan on any major offensives in the near future, so I should be able to handle it and it lowers Tech costs while also providing tech investment points at the same time. From the two the cost reduction is the more important one because with a country as large as mine, the costs are around 5-10.000 points, so +20 won't do as much as a 2-4.000 points reduction... This action triggered two technological advancements right away!

liberty.png

Although it cost me an arm and a leg...

By September of 1653, I convinced Anhalt that it would be much wiser to support me than their latest protegé, Transylvania. That means I have three of the seven Electors behind me. Austria also has three while the seventh one, Croatia is currently supporting Brandenburg. Only a year later I already had four supporters. This definitely looks good!

Anyway, in March, 1655, Spain called me into arms against Sweden (and Tunisia) because of some nonsense. Having nothing better to do, I accepted. Their armies are rather pitiful and they are overstretched as well, having multiple colonies in the North Americas yet owning only four big ships. Shouldn't be much of a hassle. And it wasn't: after losing said four big ships, they sent a white peace offer.

A year and a half later I reached level 33 of Government Tech, which means I can get my 8. National Idea. Awesome! I chose Regimental System, because having Land Maintenance takes a considerable amount of money, and I will get like 150-200 more per year now. I also realized that some of my older Ideas are no longer beneficial. Press Gangs were useful at the time but I don't build new ships that often now and I can afford them either way and Colonial Ventures is outdated as I don't care about new colonies anymore. I will abandon them and replace them with Bill of Rights and Humanist Tolerance instead. Lowering National Revolt Risk is a major concern right now. It will take some years to restore Stability, but it's better than having completely useless Ideas.

I'm not exactly sure what caused this (Human Rights, level 33 of Government Tech, simply a date or something else entirely), but I recieved a new Casus Belli type: Liberation. It is available against anyone with potential puppets or current puppets that could be released. Insert random troll-face here.

Unfortunatelly in February, 1657, I was hit by a Regency Council which will last for about four years. Which also means that I won't get elected Emperor during that time even if the king of Austria dies. Then again they have three supporters again because they are a large country within the Empire while I'm outside of the Empire. It's much easier for them to make friends with the Electors even with the -170 penalty for their 17 Infamy. Oh, well. It was a fun plan. On the other hand they are quite the public enemy right now, so I might have more supporters later on as well... Meanwhile I also annexed Cornwall just for fun.

My attempts to gain more allies to support me in a potential election resulted in me getting involved in a regional conclict:

papal_states_war.png

That should be fun!

The participants when I intervened were only the Papal States on our side and Holland, Switzerland and Brabant against us. Of course I was not prepared for the war at all, but I had several armies at home so I wasn't in any trouble either. In the end, the war was mostly fought in Switzerland and we came out ahead with the Pope gaining Brabant. It was the best we could do since Holland moved to Argentina some years ago... And with this I close this Issue. There are still a few more to go, but the end is getting closer with every single step :)
 
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It's not just that they're trying to vote France as Emperor, but it's the Pope as elector that's doing it. :D

And yeah, Bill of Rights gives the Liberation CB.
 
Issue #25
Reason VII
This game is not sandbox enough.
Issue Twenty-five

Alright, so where were we? It's 1661, 26th of January. And right now there's practically nothing to do. Well, I guess I could build a new Manufactury. For example, a Refinery in Berry. Sounds cool, huh? Because I'm literally swimming in money, so even with a somewhat high cost of about 2300 Gold, I can easily afford it. I have a net gain of over 700 Gold a year anyway. I could also become Defender of the Faith. Not that I want to, mind you. Then there's this Discovered Spy Casus Belli I have against Navarra. They have no friends to speak of, so they really should have minded their own business.

Meanwhile, some nobles started feeling marginalized by my good pal, the William from Rights. They really should have come to me directly with their problem instead of starting some stupid revolts! Don't they realize that they have no chance? Then again, maybe they didn't come directly to me because they didn't find me! My Master Spy was kind enough to erase all the written evidence as to my name from all documentation of this whole liberalizing process:

no_text.png

It wasn't me!

I just noticed that Navarra is building a Weapons Manufactury and it's due in January, 1664! Awesome! Manufacturies are not destroyed when a province changes hands (which is the main reason why I have like 10 Universities by now) although I'm not sure about Manufacturies under construction at the time. So I won't annex Navarra until then, just to be on the safe side! I might be assisting with friendly occupation though. And while we are waiting for that, here's a random funny picture:

swimming_championship.png

The annual Spanish National Swimming Championship in the Bay of Biscay. Military Personnel only.

Later that year Spain started a war against Sweden which I joined just for the laugh. I have absolutely no intention of fighting in that climate, no sir! In case you were wondering, the reason for this war is probably the fact that Sweden has some leftover provinces from Portugal, which they inherited after years of being in Personal Union. Of course that only happens to the AI.

Oh, and by the way, my mission is still conquering Milan. Why, oh, why can't I get rid of this bullsh*t get a more convinient mission for a change?

Anyway, in November, 1664, I reached Production level 31, allowing me to build a Grain Depot, which is really awesome because it increases the Land Force limit and also decreases Maintenance costs. Except I can't. Why?!?

grain_depot.png

So which one of the "Neveres produces Grain" condition did I not fulfill?!

Do you still remember my plan for becoming the Emperor of the HRE? Well, it didn't work out that well in the end. In the last round, Austria was elected and I didn't really pay much attention to it at the time but I'm pretty sure I had a majority with the Electors (and I still do!), so what the hell? I can't even get myself elected? The AI is cheating!!!

So, a little later I recieved a Call to Arms by the Pope against Hesse:

war_on_hesse.png

Why do I have the feeling that the Pope will intervene against me based on their Guarantee of Hesse, their enemy they are calling me to help destroy?...

This is a great chance to grab some land from Milan at last! Unfortunatelly Aquileia also joined the fight and they sunk my 25 Big Ships like they were rocks. Funny, huh? The good news is that they keep sending forces to their death on the shores of Malta. Fortunatelly their involvement was short-lived: they quickly accepted a White Peace with the Pope. Still, it was rather easy to defeat Milan. I only demanded that they release Brunswick, Gelre and Hannover, leaving my core of Verona in their hands. I will need a Casus Belli for the next war as well! ;)

In the next few years I started building more and more Manufacturies. They can help a lot with technology. Meanwhile Spain is still at war with Sweden and they call me back regularly. These little interruptions tend to be very short and also tend to end with White Peaces because I can't reach Sweden and they can't reach me either.

In January of 1678 I reached Land Technology 34, introducing the Grenzer Infantry, Caroline Infantry and Line Infantry. I have some idea of the Line Infantry from Empire Total War and after comparing the three options, I went with that here as well. I also recieved +10 Military Tactics, whatever that is...

By that time I was running out of stuff to build so I started building Churches everywhere. I hope this won't make my Religious Turmoil even worse... Also, Brunswick asked me to help them against the Dishonourable Scum Austria (current Emperor of the HRE) and so I did. They were already at war with half the continent and then some. And here's the shocker:

mali_again.png

Mali, Y U insist on me kicking your ass?! Oh, yeah, and screw you, Spain!

Fortunatelly Austria was desperate enough to offer a White Peace in a few months, so that leaves "only" Morocco and Mali to worry about. The good news is that Morocco is about 10 levels below me in Land Technology and Mali is at level 6. I quickly accepted a White Peace with Swahili, a minor paritcipant in South East Africa, because I have no intention of actually going there. But Mali and Morocco won't get away that easily! It's about time something is done about Moroccan Expansionism! I managed to force them to release Algiers, Tripoli, Ramazan, Crimea and two provinces of the Golden Horde. Mali had to cede Wasuju and then release Hausa and Kanem Bornu.

And when this was finally over, I got a call from my dear friend the Pope. Switzerland, Hesse, Meissen and potentially Brandenburg, as the Defender of the Faith. But that didn't come to pass: after a relatively short war, I recieved Freiburg as my prize (gaining 4 Infamy, eventhough I had a core in the province!) and Switzerland was officially defeated. This didn't really effect the Pope though, but ask me if I care.

And this also concludes this Issue because it's already 1683 and I'm really getting annoyed here...
 
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Issue #26
Reason VII
This game is not sandbox enough.
Issue Twenty-six


Long time no see! At any rate, it's August 17th, 1683 and I just ended a war with Switzerland (and a few other countries). So, I'm not about to wage any wars in the near future. So I take that LEF decision again. By the way, it's funny to have "Liberté, Egilté, Fraternité" at the same time as "Trading in Slaves", don't you think? ;)

With the boosts in tech, I got to level 29 in Naval tech in May, 1686, allowing me to build my Admirality in Vlaanderen. It's a small step for a few hundred masons but a huge step towards building a Navy worth a damn. Meanwhile, as stuff keeps happening all around the World, I get notifications about lost and gained (but mostly gained) Casus Belli. Of course I get the most of these when I don't even care about it anymore. I'm busy building churches! Why is there no Papal Influence modifier for the percentage of Churches you have in your country? Not that it would matter, mind you... And I still can't build a Grain Depot! Why?! Turns out it's because there's a bug in the buildings.txt file. It may even have been fixed in a patch I didn't apply. Whatever... (The really funny part is that despite the syntax error, the interpreter could still interpret the lines after the error. Oh, well.)

Then suddenly I get a notification about Berber Rebels taking control of Aures after 195 days of siege. Would have been nice to be notified when they started the siege, thank you very much! The message settings went crazy after Reason VI for whatever reason and I'm recuperating eversince... No matter, I have an army in close vicinity. Which I could have used to end the siege before it finished if only I knew about it!!!! Bah!

October of 1687 brings us a new level of Land Tech, allowing a new tier of Cavalry. My choices are Arme Blache Cavalry, Latin Dragoons and Latin Hussars. Hussars would be the balanced unit, while Arme Balche are shock-focused and Dragoons are fire-focused. And considering that the only role Cavalry should have is as a shock force, I went with Arme Balche.

January of 1688 brought yet another of those stupid question type events: I was asked if I want a new University for free or rather lose one point of Prestige. In such an event, why even bother with a second option at all?

Again, nothing really important happened for quite a while, so here are some pictures instead:

ottomans.png

I'm starting to think that the Ottoman invasion is hard-coded. How else could have they achieved such greatness?!

shogun.png

Redundant events in Minamoto are redundant. But at least they are consistent. (In the background you can see my efforts to diplo-annex Corsica, which won't work of course because they won't accept an Alliance with me, the bastards!)


bachelor.png

So I got this "Wedding Bells" event at the very same moment two of my three advisors died. Coincidence, huh? (The marriage proposal came from Trier, so you might not be too surprised that I went with the other option, giving me insane benefits for the rest of the game instead!)

And that's it for now. Due to the restrictions of the game, I couldn't do anything interesting even if I wanted to. See you next time! (Well, technically I won't see you, nor will you see me, but that's just a figure of speech I guess...)
 
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Well, I guess interest in this sorry attempt of comedy has dropped below the point of no return. I might as well call it a day. Thank you all for your attention.
 
Well, I guess interest in this sorry attempt of comedy has dropped below the point of no return. I might as well call it a day. Thank you all for your attention.

Original text removed...didn't want to spoil anything...

Edit: I see what you did there ;)
 
Hmm, that reminds me... Happy birthday "Ten Reasons why Europa Universalis III is the worst game EVER"!
 
Well, I guess interest in this sorry attempt of comedy has dropped below the point of no return. I might as well call it a day. Thank you all for your attention.

Hey, I'm still here! Just because I'm not commenting doesn't mean I'm not interested! :)
 
Alright, I don't really want to abandon this AAR (noone's left behind!), but I don't have much spare time recently (the Galaxy needs to be saved from the Reapers and stuff), so expect the frequency of updates to be... Well... Irregular. Thank you for your patience :)
 
So, I feel a bit guilty about this because I didn't post any updates in weeks, but it's for the greater good!

Every three months a reader's choice award is given to an AAR in four categories for every PI franchise (EU, CK, HOI, V) plus an open category for any other AAR on this forum. Recieving such an award (or even votes, for that matter) is a great honour and can be a huge motivating factor for writAARs, this event keeps the community going. If you are reading AARs, then you probably like one or two at least (and if you don't, you wouldn't be reading this post either). So for the sake of the community, take the time (which would be like 5 minutes, tops) and fill out a ballot for the current round! In the name of all writAARs, I can assure you, we appreciate it! :)


Cheers,
Slan

P.s.: Look! There's a new Issue to distract you from my kinda-shameless sort-of-selfadvertisement!
 
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Issue #27
Reason VIII
This game is too easy.
Issue Twenty-seven


We start this Reason in January of 1700. As you can see on the picture below, I have the greatest empire in Europe (the Ottomans are mostly in Asia, that doesn't count!) and I'm basically uncontested in Western Africa as well. Morocco might look intimidating but I handed their ass to them on multiple occasions, so I don't think I need any proof that I could do so again if I had to. The Ottomans have slightly more troops than I do, but they are like ten levels behind me in both Land and Naval tech, so they aren't a real threat either, despite their insane size. I could most likely kick England around with my hands tied behind my back if I wanted to. I can't really imagine who would be a relevant enemy at this point.

europe_1700.png

The state of Europe and Northern Africa in January, 1700.

So what should I do now? Waging wars is boring and doesn't really provide any benefits. Colonizing is even less fun than it sounds and we are actually running out of colonizable land (most of the gray area in Africa is Wasteland). Building factories was fun for a while and with over 1000 gold annual income (after taxes!) I could easily afford more of them (they cost over 4000 now, so it would take over four boring years, but they take five years to build anyway), but I'm sure you see why that doesn't really appeal to me now either.

Alright, I can't sit this Issue through entirely (well, technically I could, but that wouldn't be too entertaining now, would it?), so let's do something half-interesting at least: try and end this idiocy of a mission I have been cursed with for the past two centuries and beat Milan once and for all! Here's the situation:

  • From the mission, I have a Conquest Casus Belli, which is nice but since I also have a core in Verona, I have a much better Reconquest Casus Belli as well.
  • Milan is allied with Baden, Bavaria and Aquileia, and also part of the Empire, currently under Brandemburgian rule. Baden has three provinces and 14.000 men, Bavira has a single province and 8.000 men, Aquileia has about four provinces and 26.000 men. Brandenburg is a little more intimidating with 102.000 men, but they have their own war to fight right now and they are pretty far away so they shouldn't effect the war too much.
  • I have a miriad of minions as usual and they should do well for cannon fodder.

After positioning one of my two major fleets outside of the Aquileian ports and the other in Öresund to block Brandenburg (They have like 8 ships total! Ridiculous!) and redeploying my armies on the Milanese border, I give the order to attack. By the way, Milan is also five levels behind me in Land tech. But before I could have done that, I recieved this event:

holstein.png

Sought after Bachelor, you say?

As you can see, the event is kinda borked. If I chose the obvious option, ie. telling the b*tch to scr*w herself ASAP would lower my relations with myself (How can you look into the mirror after telling an ugly girl that you won't marry her?!) and also my king will try to commit suicide and he has a 50% chance to fail, making himself the laughing stock of Europe. The other option would be a Royal Marriage with noone and increased relations with said noone by 100 points. Plus losing the "Sought after Bachelor" modifier, which gives -0.5 Infamy and +2% Prestige a year. Now this is what I call a dilema. Still, losing my king and thus not being able to declare war would be a serious setback with a two years old bastard next in succession and I don't think 50-50 is a good chance to avoid that (losing 5 Prestige wouldn't be that catastrophic).

Hmm. Alright, I'll be honest. I was reeeeealy tempted to take the second option and hope for my king to succeed in his suicide attempt, which would have allowed me to wash my hands and sit out this Issue after all, but... I don't know, maybe I'm geting old and sentimental? :) So I took the offer and lost the bonus modifier for nothing. By the way, if you are interested why I didn't get the Royal Marriage and the bonus relations, it's quite simple: Holstein does exist at the moment, but they have a Regency Council so they can't have Royal Marriages right now... Or so I thought. But actually it was only a display error, because I recieved both the Royal Marriage and the relations bonus (Skyrocketing from -161 to -61! Woooohooo!). Whatever.

Soooo, as I was, I finally started the war against Milan in late April, 1700. All of the allies have joined right away on both sides, so no surprises there. Their side had an average War Capacity of about 35-40%, which is very bad news for them, but much better news for me of course. Aquileia was also 100% blockaded right away and Brandenburg wasn't much better off with their 40% either. Turns out it's not a good idea to have colonies in the New World with 8 ships total after all.

French Military Supremacy was undeniable from the start:

milan_beaten.png

A five levels difference is a lot, even when it's less than 15%.

The funny thing is that my minions were really afraid of Aquileia. For whatever reason they didn't notice that I'm completely blockading the country off and that their entire Army was sitting in their capital (Friuli, what a stupid sounding name...) to avoid collapse! Idiots!

Anyway, Bavaria was very quick to go down and they became my Vassal, losing all their now-foreign cores and stuff. They'll think twice before betting on the wrong side next time!

Milan of course had a stray province left somewhere outside my reach. Don't you just love that? When a single province on the far end of the world keeps you from annexing a country? Truly an awesome feature of such a beautiful game! Fortunatelly it wasn't really that hard to find: Estland. Seems legit. Bah, whatever, I probably couldn't annex them anyway. So let's just take three of their five provinces now and we'll be back for the rest!

That leaves Baden, Brandenburg and Aquileia. I suffered heavy losses in sieges in Aquileia and also in Baden. I really don't understand how this works. Having a lot of cannons should give me a huge advantage in sieges, shouldn't it? Yet I'm a lot more efficient in sieges if I only have Infantry. And they are also cheaper. Go figure...

A little later Brandenburg managed to bring some reinforcements to besieged Baden, cathing me completely off-guard and wiping out one of my otherwise perfectly good Divisions I had there! Because the notification messages are still messed up and I didn't even know about the battle! In the end I accepted their White Peace offer after decimating twice as many of their troops. Good riddance. I also started to consider increasing my standing army.

After defeating Baden (forcing them to release the Palatinate again), I could focus my whole attention to Aquileia. And Wales, who joined a little while ago and was vassalized rather quickly (after costing me like 20-30.00 men on their damned walls!). And when I managed to take most of Aquileia, I realized that they don't really have anything left to give. They had no money, their provinces were crap except for the ones that weren't occupied by me and they didn't have any minors to release either. So I took Görz just to gain a foothold in the middle of their lands. That should teach them! And thus ended my first war to finally get that stupid mission done. I could take another shot as early as November, 1705, so it was only a year and a half of waiting.

1706 began with my final invasion of Milan. This time I chose not to call any of my allies because they are not needed and would only complicate things with their surrendering to irrelevant enemies. Milan brought Brandenburg into the conflict again but that shouldn't be any more of a problem now than it was the last time around.

By June, Milan was already defeated (the 10 Prestige I got is kinda underwhelming and my next mission, turning Switzerland Catholic isn't that exciting either) and Brandenburg was sending huge forces to take my lands. They will be defeated promptly and my lands returned to my proper rule.

Later on Brandenburg managed to bring a surprising amount of buddies into our little party. How can they have so many allies with a rather bad reputation and like 20-30 provinces?! No matter, evne Holland with pretty much all of South Africa under their belt is nothing more than an annoyance. The best Brandenburg could manage before they started bombarding me with White Peace offers was losing two thirds of their army. So, it quickly became a question of what my war goal against them should be. Originally I decided that the release of Bohemia should be a worthy goal but later on I noticed a sizeable army of Bohemian Nationalists, so I went for Mazovia, Thuringia and Münster instead, with some money thrown in for good measure. I let Holland and the minors go with a simple warning and after a lightning campaign with my 40.000 strong Army, Brandenburg was quick to dissolve, although by the end of the campaign, my army shrink to a mere 12.000. Still, the morale of the story is that you don't f*ck with France. (Sorry for the rude word, but it was necessary for the alliteration :D)

After that easy victory I spent the last two years of the first decade of 1700 training some more Infantry and building another Weapons Manufactury in Périgord. And with this the Issue #27 is concluded. I wonder what my next goal should be. How about the dissolution of the HRE?

hre.png

The current electors are Croatia, Meissen, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Silesia and the Papal States, plus Brandenburg... None of them looks too scary...
 
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And the funny part is that it happened decades ago and the Pope no longer even has cores anywhere in Italy :D