The Historic Inevitabilty of Epic Failure

[Selenimar]

This had to be done
http://memegenerator.net/instance/23845203

[Leonoob]

This may be a stupid question, but how do you get enemies to:
a) hand over a sum of money that isn't a multiple of 25, and
b) hand over so much money - when I beat countries, I can never demand their whole treasuries.

[PdoxNewbie]

This may be a stupid question, but how do you get enemies to:
a) hand over a sum of money that isn't a multiple of 25, and
b) hand over so much money - when I beat countries, I can never demand their whole treasuries.

If you right click until you can;t anymore, you might get all of your/their money.

[PdoxNewbie]

Prawnstar, what is your favorite AAR so far?

[PiriReis]

Prawnstar did you ever play Multiplayer?

[Fentonator]

First post on the forums despite lurking for a VERY long time just found prawnstar and am loving all of your AARs. Given me some great ideas for my own WC as have never really taken advantage of the holy war before. Looking forward to how the new world progresses.
As for production versus trade:

I find that in all my large expansion games production far outweights trade around 1700 and until the end by 2:1. For this reason I have been very sucessful with investing in +production buildings and the Smithian NI instead of boosting trade.

This seems to be the case for big empires even when you own most of the COTs. Anyone else has this experience?

I noticed you don't auto send your merchants so have you cleared everyone else out of them? As even when auto sending it just gets you the monopoly as opposed to continually sending merchants until its just you taking in all the money for that centre of trade. So this is where Klarum probably loses lots of easily accessed trade money

[blsteen]

The BB pot is emptying quickly as usual. Impressive in getting something out of both Milan and Bohemia after the fighting.

[PrawnStar]

I have just spent 90 minutes or so writing a big feedback post and then managed to delete it. Please kindly imagine you received a witty, insightful and informative response.

Thanks

[PrawnStar]

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Ming in early 1605



I’m hoping Kazakh will be able to claim those border provinces - and possibly a few more as well.

Peace with Ming - March 1605



Tibetan cultured Ladakh far to the West and a land route to Manchu. BB is 9.61 / 24.00 falling at 2.50 but war exhaustion has climbed to 7.04. Revolts are noticeably more frequent. This starts a war with steppe nomad OPM Mongol Khanate who are quickly overran and a settler sent. Brunei and Wu both attack Ming and Kazakh continues to invade.

South Atlantic - December 1605



I’ve 8 colonies and 5 nomad provinces being settled so the economy is hurting. That said I’ll send a colonist over the Atlantic as soon as I can to give me a port over there. Colonial range isn’t a problem as I’m cored on the West African coast.

By September 1606 BB is down to 5.88 / 24.00 falling at 2.40 a year. War exhaustion at 5.16 isn’t falling as quickly.

I’m at war with nomadic Timurids,(+100), Mongol Khanate (+100) and the Golden Horde (0).

Nonetheless…

1. Holy War with Hindustan bringing OPM Punjab
2. Reconquest on Wu for my core
3. Holy War on Manchu which brings in Ming as war leader. Ming is regrettable but makes it clear Brunei is the next target.

Wu only lasts weeks before handing over my core.

Peace with Manchu - August 1607



BB is now 7.65 / 24.00 falling at 2.40. Ming is peaced out for gold straight after.

Peace with Hindustan - January 1608



The next year and a half is quiet although events cause me to lose a point of stab and around 3000 ducats and ultimately start minting again. By September 1609 BB has dropped to 6.62 / 24.00 at 2.30 a year. War exhaustion is 4.20. Much as I appreciate my ruler’s diplo 9 stat the 3 for admin is painful. War is declared against Burgundy to reclaim my core, they’re already at war with Bohemia so no imperial intervention.



Holy Wars are also launched against Mali and Brunei.

Burgundy doesn’t last long; by late January 1609 they’ve lost this round.



That’s a very nicely developed province.

Have I ever mentioned I’m not very good at the naval side of this game?



That’s my naval presence in the Indian Ocean gone.

October 1610 - Boundary dispute with Ming



Elsewhere war exhaustion has climbed over 7 although both wars are going pretty well and peace isn’t too far away. A rebellion on Ceylon is awkward since I’m around a year from having any transports in theatre…

Peace with Brunei - December 1610



Not as big a victory as I might have gone for but with no navy and struggling with war exhaustion there wasn’t too much more war score to gather. The army on Sumatra is effectively lost to garrison duty for several decades.

Peace with Mali - December 1610



With BB up to 19.71 / 24.00 falling at 2.40 I hope to have the time to rebuild my Indian Ocean fleet and clear war exhaustion of 7.09. There’ll be warnings I‘m sure. 1611 and 1612 are very quiet, putting down rebels and similar although events give me another 2 points of inflation. I do get another core on Bohemia towards the end of 1612.



May 1613 and the Khorasani menace has been ended. The only remaining Timurid provinces are all Uzbek cultured and nomad only cores.



Also check out just how long my Diplo 9 ruler has been in charge - this has been a key factor in both high BB burn and the significant numbers of Boundary disputes I’ve had. Our diplomat dies at the start of 1614 and the carefully hoarded 100% cultural tradition is used straightaway to recruit an acceptable replacement.



Finally in September 1614 Macau defects to Wu and Wu has two provinces again.

BB is 10.78 / 24.00 falling at 2.30 and war exhaustion is 1.95.

[Arakhor]

Invest in the Lazarus plugin.

[Franconian]

Thank you for your witty, insightful and informative response. Also, cats.

Nice to see you really kept the stars and even improved them! Otherwise it seems to be a really costly period, although it did not hurt your conquering.

[sprites]

Ouch ... Brunei had quite a good amiral .. and now they have 47 big ships , too!
it wont be easy to cross the straits!
Do you intend to leave the west part of Ming fall to the hordes?

[homy_dog34]

Take out Wu!

Also, getting that navy lost really sucks. Building new fleets is a real pain.

[Malurous]

Nicely done getting the needed downtime to get rid of the high WE.

So, Hindustan is down to just those four provinces? Looks like an opportunity to use your core on Madurai to save yet another point of BB!

[Ricardo Rolo]

Yup, Lazarus plugin FTW

So, 1615 ( sort of ) and all goes for the best, except the loss of the entire Indian Ocean fleet That will take ages to rebuild ... well, not that you don't have enough of mainland Asia Brunei and other sprovinces to conquer, though , but if you want to go Japan before 1650...

Besides that, nice lucky shot in having Burgundy and Bohemia exchanging blows. How convenient for you And OFC the almighty RNG wants you to give yet another visit to Prague

P.S Couldn't you have "helped" the Mongols carving up some Ming for you ? :/ Or were they too weak for that ?

[Floodturka]

Dont worry about the huge-thanks-to-you Brunei fleet, the AI will scrap them for razors soon enough. You took large chunks of their coastline and the AI hates keeping ships over its forcelimits.

Keep up the Imperialism, Mr. I-dont-need-no-stinking-admirals :P

[Chief Ragusa]

I see you left Brunei's Ming territories for a later time. You've enough coastal provinces to rebuild that fleet quite quickly, the only restricting factor is the cash or perhaps the rebuilding is why you haven't much cash.Await a core on Macau and you can then engineer a transfer of Hainan from Ming to Wu. Inferior tech, no admiral and you sent your numerically inferior fleet against a larger navy with a good admiral. You should have expected to lose. Keeping your fleet away from that navy would have been a better idea. It's only there to transport troops and fight much weaker enemies like Hindustan, Korea and Manchu.

Your DIP 9 ruler probably wouldn't have lasted so long without the ADM 3 drawback.

You were above the 80% BB, when bad things start to happen. You've enough cores to take, whilst the BB declines. What was the outcome of the Bohemia-Burgundy war? The next war with Manchu would provide an oportunity to take provinces to bring you a frontier with Korea.

You stated that you were going to settle the Atlantic Islands. You have currently overlooked St Helena and the Falklands.

[Aminti]

A rebellion on Ceylon is awkward

It's not like they need to use the harbor for anything but their own tea party. :P

Good going, though, if memory serves, the non-coastal Chinese provinces are absolute bovine fecal matter for support limits. It would explain your WE and that 3 ADM doesn't help. Your ship building times must be through the roof with the WE you're usually keeping around - 10 % increased time to build per 1 WE and when you started rebuilding, your WE was probably quite high and it doesn't go down all that fast. On the other hand, the 9 diplo has been awesome for you. A ruler on the throne for over 30 years is a godsend, but unfortunately also a bit of a rarity. I wonder how you're going to deal with possible low-diplo rulers once you go and take Republican Dictatorship (assuming you will post 1650 because Imperialism CB and so on). The method of having them bash their heads against a level 4 fort in the middle of nowhere is unfortunately not a guaranteed thing - as much as we'd all like it to be.

[Selenimar]

You have currently overlooked St Helena and the Falklands.

You'd think Britain would never do that

[Gibskov]

Long time lurker signing in.

Really enjoying you AAR, and thought that I might pose a question:

What will you be looking for in your next ruler?

Obviously diplo 9 will cover any faults, but will you keep a diplo 8 if he has good admin?

What about diplo 7 ?

And do you even look at the military rating?

Once again thanks for a really good AAR, that I learn a lot from following.