CAARolus Rex - A Swedish AAR

Let us begin.



Sweden's position in 1399 is....well, fairly bad to be quite honest. Burdened with colonial costs and an average ability to trade and a need to mint to make money, I'm predicting high inflation for a very long time. I've started by recruiting the best potential advisers I had, and wasted no time in getting to work.


Unfortunately, a move towards free trade meant I lost all merchants I could have used in Lubeck. I always try to send as many merchants to CoT as I can, and without these two merchants it's going to be incredibly tough to get into the Lubeck and Novgorod markets.


Everywhere else, the usual wars started.


I know it's going to murder my economy, but I have to get this Lappland mission off my mind, lest Norway decides it wants to colonize it as well. With another colony in Osterbotten, I may as well try to expand those colonies to get rid of the costs as fast a possible.


I made sure to tell the Danes every so often that they had bad-tasting pastries.


With Lappland colonized, a new mission appeared: Try to get on Novgorod's good side. All fine and dandy, let's just send a gift to th-


Oh. Hm. That'll be a problem.


With a few more insults that equated to "neener-neener" I lowered relations far enough that should he suddenly die in about ten seconds, Sweden would be independent.

Such wishful thinking. King Eric VII Gryf didn't die, and I still had to live under Denmark. Probably for the best, anyway, I highly doubt I could survive on my own at this point anyway.


Unfortunately, the priests in Osterbotten began preaching heresy! Rather than risk higher revolt and lowered tax, I took the stability hit...shouldn't take too long to recover that.

For the next two years, nothing truly interesting happened. Burgundy took the Church and excommunicated the rulers of Hainut and Holland, then annexed Hainut the next few months. Holland might be able to get out by asking for WP, but I doubt it. My merchants hate me, and seem to be getting revenge for moving towards free trade by getting into Lubeck then leaving almost instantly when merchants from Pskov arrive. I stopped in mid-May 1402, hopefully 1403 will be the year that Swedish merchants rightfully begin to come in force and help fix the economy. Inflation is going up by .52 per year and it's currently at about 1.2. This is really going to wreck building up the colonies.

Rifal said:

Play friendly with Denmark but Break your military alliance with them. Then when they get tied down in a war with Germany you declare a reconquest of Halland or Skåne and boom: You are independent and hopefully a few provinces richer.

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I find it's easier on me to just break the alliance and insult them every so often. It hasn't worked against me yet. *knocks on wood*

Memento Mori said:

I guess that after you finally break off the PU, you can say "All embrace me... its my time to rule at last... X years have I been waiting to sit upon my throne..."

By the way, was your title inspired by this song?

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But of course This certainly hasn't been the first time I've used a Sabaton song in reference to a game. I've made a few Sabaton-themed game montages, but this is the first I've written using a Sabaton song for the title.:rofl:

Update coming today when I actually wake up...

Not a lot truly happened, unfortunately. This popped up in November 1402:


Rather than jack my inflation up to 4.6, I opted to go for Plutocracy. However, I forgot to check my sliders...


Oops. Oh well, that's better than adding more inflation to an already crippled economy.


The colonies in Lappland and Osterbotten grew by the day. (Fun fact: I forgot I had to send more colonists >.<)

In 1404, Sweden's luck seemed to be improving. Between the option of add inflation (Lord no) and take -2 stability hit and gain a master of mint, I think my choice is obvious.


I got this message a lot more than I wanted to. Curse you Alsace!


In 1406 I said "screw it" and began pouring money into Government tech. At least two other countries had already gotten it, I needed to catch up!


After long enough, I could FINALLY send Novgorod the last gift they needed for 100+ relations. Woohoo!


With that out of the way, let's move on to our next mission.

Improve our prestige? No problem, I'll just-

Wait.

-12?

.........Verdammt.

Memento Mori said:

Don't worry, just send your 12 daughters to petty princes in Europe, Swedish girls are (probably) hot, and you need to send pretty pictures of them anyway, after all who in medieval Europe got to see their bride before the wedding?

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I'd love to, but I'm still in that darned PU. Can't send off any hot Swedish ladies to marry unless they go to Denmark and stay there.

We start in 1406 again with a new mission on our hands: Improve our Prestige. With royal marriages out of the question, I'll have to look at...."other" means...(no, not cheats. I'm not that unscrupulous.)

The Hansa asks for trade rights to Fur in July 1406. Accepted, what problem could it cause me?


Good Lord, I just can't get a break can I? Stability loss after stability loss...I must have gotten one of the unluckiest nations possible.


Lappland and Osterbotten grew even more. Osterbotten would become self-sustaining within the year while Lappland became so around 1407/1408 (I forget which).


New adviser. He may help with all of these stability hits I'm taking.

Alas, even with the Master of Mint and Osterbotten becoming self-sustaining, I'm still suffering a huge inflation increase.



The merchants didn't do too hot either. Seeing this makes me sick.

AND THOSE BLOODY HERETICS. Come on, Finland, really. You should know better than to listen to those Russians.



When Lappland became self-sustaining, it helped with my costs slightly, but I forgot to check the inflation before I took the screenshot. Probably still going up.

Denmark annexed Holstein (I forget the fancy name...maybe I should revisit my German notes)



And now we end this part of the journey in 1410. Not a whole lot has really changed, per se, but it's still significant to get an idea of what the whole world looks like, even this early in the game.

Double update for my birthday! First part will be posted now, I'll play the second part after I get this done.

On October 5th 1410 my level 4 Artist died. How dare he die before I could use him to his full potential!


With his death fresh in my mind, I recruited a Philosopher shortly after. He wouldn't do a terrible lot quite yet, but some gain was better than no gain.


A great event - +10 prestige because of a focus on quality!


I made the move for centralization in 1411, but unfortunately that caused a foolish pretender to arise. I will have to deal with him.


After over a year of combat, I finally defeated the pretender. Unfortunately, he took the upper colonies which made me lose prestige each time he took it, kicking me back down to -7 prestige.


I stopped after defeating the rebels, knowing even more work would have to be done...Gotland had declared independence from the Teutonics, meaning I had a new enemy to annihilate.

Next update will actually come tomorrow after I get done with overseeing some auditions. Didn't have as much time as I wanted to play through today.

I'm minting because of what I'm spending on forts and merchants. Those alone usually empty the treasury to near-zero, and none of my merchants are successful enough to raise my MI enough so that I don't have to mint quite so much. Hopefully that'll change later in the game.

Or not. Either way works.

Gah, next update will be on hold for a bit. Some RL issues came up and I need to do some more work on the screenshots before i can throw them up. I did advance to at least 1417 though so hopefully we'll make some more progress.

We begin again with a new even popping up in 1415...


Shortly after that, Government tech went to level 4, providing me with a new idea...my choice was obvious: National Bank!


With the National Bank reducing inflation even more, the economy could finally start getting back on track.


Unfortunately, no more breaks for Sweden...a generation of cowards arose!


Thankfully, due to traders finally getting use and the national bank, inflation could go finally begin going down.


But wouldn't you know it, those same stupid traders went from 4 to 2 nearly overnight, and it seems my stability is stuck at +1. Looks like Sweden will need to do some serious maneuvering or praying to the gods (and by that i mean cheats) to get ahead.