The Historic Inevitabilty of Epic Failure

[dragonizer]

Opps typo, Khorasan blue country in Gazni.
Kick Mali butt again
still can't spell.

[Dasfubar]

Great progress so far!

Could we get a screen shot of your empire, and maybe a religious one too?

[Arakhor]

Hey no cheese! LOL

I thought it was compulsory to employ lame puns in these sorts of things.

[Chief Ragusa]

You've already found a lot of mali, so the attrition isn't going to be so bad and the movement times a lot quicker. Malian provinces are expensive in war score.

I like cores on Horde lands. They can be turned into army bases and local recruitment centres. They're springboards for further eastwards expansion. It's going to be a while before you have all those lands cored.

Dalmatia was okay. I'd have preferred Orkneys or Sana as a core. I think Guyenne is the last of your vassals - 1545 to diploannex, maybe.

You've finished off Oman and Persia with its coastal CoT. After the Ottomans are annexed that just leaves Mentese, Najd and Yemen.I imagine Najd and Mentese will swifly follow. The fleet you have ought to allow you to get an army into Najd and take it. Durrani hasn't got that much. Khorasan is somewhere beyond it. You may not have enough troops pushing east, but you're not letting that deter you. You're managing your BB with what seems to be ease. A first war with Hindustan in 1550?

[homy_dog34]

Europe is gonna be a pain to take, but it looks like India is gonna keep you preoccupied anyways.

[Floodturka]

1. Declare on Hindustan
2. Liberate countries
3. Break your alliances with them
4. Declare on five of them at once
5. Annex all five
6. Rinse and repeat

Did I get it right?

[morningSIDEr]

More good stuff, progress remaining as impressive as ever. I think you should perhaps make use of Hainaut's seeming teleportation abilities to make said progress even faster however!

[Nikolai]

Nice PrawnStar AAR going on. No surprise on the quality! Subscribed.

[aldriq]

Nice going, the Timmies were easier than the Horde after all – though like with Mali (compared with say, the Mamluks) I suspect the Land tech at this point is what makes these later enemies less of a grind.

Question from your last war with Bohemia: what's the current limit of WS you can achieve purely through battles in DW?

[Tallfellow]

Almost time to take out India then. Hope that'll go over easy

And if you want a really big challange, try playing MEIOU and taking over the world

[Anjwalker]

I wanted to drop in and comment on this great AAR. I found it recently after it got Weekly AAR Feature just the other day, and I've been reading it since. You've certainly got me hooked back with EUIII after reading this, as I'd not been playing it much until after reading this.

[DeadeyeDave]

I forget, were you planning on forming Great Britain? If so, when?

[PrawnStar]

FEEDBACK

Malurous - About Mali I suspect I used a very good Manoeuvre General, can't remember for sure but seems likeliest reason invasion proved easy.

Rendap - I was pleased to get to India, running low on targets otherwise.

Barsoom - I out tech Hindustan, by enough I expect a fairly easy if very long war. Colonial range is calculated from your nearest cored port (exception IIRC from core for your own continent - allows the great drive east to the Pacific from Europe). Cores on the Horde is OK - as soon as I settle them they are cored but I'd rather that event fire on provinces that otherwise cost BB.

dragonizer - Mali is on a slow spiral of doom

Dasfubar - Thanks, I'll do a 'Round the Empire' post at 1550. I have got the conversion push going hard - 15-18 missionaries active at any given time.

Arakhor - See my Sig

Chief Ragusa - I'm already coring on the Horde lands but yes it's going to be a few decades before the whole area calms down. Dalmatia is a good core, better I feel than either Orkney (get by going GB) or Sana'a - but that's Yemen's capital and I don't think you can core on those. No hurry with Guyenne. The push East / Middle Eastern clear up continues. 1550 for war with Hindustan lacks Audacity!

homy_dog34 - The plan for Europe was always to wait until after 1650. This game needs the Holy War CB to be used very very hard.

Floodturka - But I could use the war score for liberating countries to just take provinces? In fact I'll probably have to take land as I burn BB prety fast.

morningSIDEr - I'm hoping Burgundy will reclaim their core on Hainault province and force the capital to relocate to Iceland - then I want to see culture flipping

Nikolai - Thanks

aldriq - Land tech is helping now I've got to 18. DW allows +40 WS through battles - so much easier than 1.21 / 1.3!

PiriReis - In my test game I made Southern China by 1650 - ideally the same again or better. Japan I usually take late with a big wave of high tech forces - say post 1760.

Tallfellow - Not tried MEIOU looks quite interesting.

Anjwalker - Thanks, good to have you along.

DeadeyeDave - There's not much to gain from GB although I can form now. Basically just +2 Centtralisation which isn't all roses when you're already at your centralisation limit for government type.

[PrawnStar]

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Ottomans annexed - April 1538



Durrani annexed - August 1538



Brunei offers White Peace in November which I accept - somewhere in there I’m back at war with Kazan so I’ve stormed the capital and I’m just marching back (three months travel time) before making peace. OPM Najd on the island of Bahrain, an English core, is DOWed in February 1539 and annexed a month later. It’s a year later before anything else interesting happens with a new neighbour.



So time to review where we are and think about strategy but first, peace with Mali.



BB is 8.75 / 24.00 falling at 2.10 a year.

----------

Seventy years ago I said:

“I now have three main concerns for the next 75-100 years:

I need to make sure no one else takes the lands of the Golden Horde so I don’t have to pay BB to take that land later.

I need to breakthrough the BB free monster that is the Timurids to get to the ‘Holy War’ rich areas of India and South East Asia for the run-up to 1650 when ‘Holy War’ ends.

I need to keep finding targets for the ‘Holy War’ CB so I can take land cheaply”

Where am I with these objectives?

The Horde:



I need to wait for Astrakhan to flip (before end 1541) and the long war started in 1481 will be over. I didn’t get everything but I have grabbed virtually all of the Horde’s European territories. For now they can be ignored until I have spare colonists - as can the other minor Steppe nomads.

Timurids:



As Jim Morrison sang, break on through to the other side. The Timurids are far, far from destroyed but they are beaten. Another multi-decade war should be enough to settle everything I need to reduce the nomads to minor irritants.

Holy War targets before India; that’s gone well there aren’t many left! Mali, Mentese and Khorasan - Yemen remains safe until Socotra is discovered.

So what now?

For BB it has to be an invasion of Hindustan which looks quite daunting with a huge amount of TI to explore and only 29,000 soldiers at the front. Elsewhere I’ll continue to eat the Timurids province by province and finish off the remaining Muslims mentioned above.

Goal here has to be Hindustan all but gone by 1600 and English armies fighting in South East Asia or even better Southern China.


Your thoughts please.

[Thandros]

Ambitous Goals Hindustan's Infantry should fall apart in front of you but They will have the better Cavalry since there default game start Cavalry is better than yours. You'd better have crushed them before they get Land tech 15 or it'll be an awful lot harder to finish them off.

[zwitterion117]

It all depends on how long you think it will take to get a decent peace with Hindustan. If exploring all that TI and travel time for reinforcing armies would put that back more than four years, then you have to think about taking on more BB before then. I don't remember if you have more vassals that you can annex, but that would be one place. Of the minor Holy War targets Mali is out, because you'll run out of BB by the time the truce runs out. Mentese is fine, but probably too small to be much help. Khorasan is a good size, but opening another front when you're already thin there is a bad idea. If you can take it before reinforcing armies arrive, then you should attack them first (and maybe even Kashmir). That should give you enough BB to win a prolonged campaign against Hindustan. However, if you think you can wrap up that campaign quickly, then by all means it is time to cross the Indus.

On a personal note how about some pie and a world map? Please?

[Herbert West]

What about munching through Nogai and making a second anti-Timurid front there?

[homy_dog34]

Sounds good! Maybe you can reach Kazmir through Khorasan, and then check what's on the other side?

[Comrade Kalle]

I think it's looking pretty good so far. It seems like it's going to be tough to get all of Asia before 1650 though, and the longer it takes, the more land Ming/Manchu (maybe others?) are gonna take from the remaining hordes, now that they've been stomped by you. As for Europe... I'm glad I don't have to face that Bohemia. You'll manage it of course, seeing how you control most of the world, but they'll probably put up some significant resistance. On the other hand, it would've been worse if it was Austria who blobbed.

Looking forward to the next update!

[Ricardo Rolo]

Why haven't you colonized Astrakhan already? It is supposedly a CoT ( or it is gone in your game ? ).

On your end of thread request ... Well, go east The sooner you break Hindustan, the better: they have their land fully cored and , given your border with them, they should be starting to get some ( relative OFC ) speed in techs. It would be nice to know their land tech level ( I assume something around 10 at most ) and manpower, but anyway, it will take quite a while to get something on the western branch that beats a Indian cav of the same level ... while their infantry should be easy to break. Getting up to Kutch in the first war would be nice ( it would allow the EIC decision )

Comrade Kalle is right about the Asians eating the hordes via east. By 1650 either Manchu, Korea or one of the Chinese states ( most likely Ming, but if it breaks sometimes you see Qin or even Wu eating up the hordes ) start appearing near the northern timmy border in most games and is not unusual for that to happen earlier. You should give a eye on that .