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Ehh – why should I bother – too low return rate for the badboy invested 
Milestone no. 5: annexations of at least half of Chinese states. Deadline set: till 1885-12-31
A. Nature of the goal
Annexation of Chinese states as early as possible is the best and fastest way of giving your boat a full speed ahead towards the world domination. The total population waiting for you in all these substates is larger than the whole of Europe combined and as they are normally all till late 80s uncivilized, you can annex them outright (apart from Guangxi, which is originally 6 states strong) – 1 war per country. Typically the fastest to civilize (typically in 1880s) are still the 1-state-strong Xinjiang and Manchu – so it doesn’t matter when you take them, while it’s really worth all your time and effort to work on the large ones – Guangxi, Yunnan and Qinghai.
B. How to do it
So the Chinese states we have to deal with are:
- Chinese Empire – no issues here, already down to 4 states and needs to be annexed first to liberate the rest;
- Guangxi – the largest target – the issues: 6 states (needs 2 wars), sphered by Krakow;
- Yunnan – annexable 4 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Qinghai – annexable 4 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Mongolia – annexable 3 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Manchu – annexable 1 state, sphered by Krakow;
- Xinjiang – annexable 1 state, sphered by Krakow;
- Tibet – annexable 1 states, sphered by Krakow (remark: this is formally not a substate, but a puppet like Korea, but due to the present day situation and to make the count even, I’m adding them and Korea not)
As there will be no issues of getting rid of Chinese Empire, the rest of the pack needs some working on. The annexation war with Chinese Empire starts the domino (1st Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1879-05-13 and finished on 1880-05-18.
The big issue is being sphered by Krakow, as the game does not allow ‘unsphering’ in any way. Thus you need to count on one of the following to happen:
- other top8 nation removes a particular country out of your sphere – as it was in case of Guangxi removed by US some time ago. If you want to go this way – I suggest reducing the influence to zero and wait for someone to be as bold as to do it – it takes some time, but it doesn’t require much of your effort;
- there is an internal event in that country (random or revolt, I believe) that they seize your embassy – of course you pick the option that lowers your relations the most and claim for annexation (relations need to be under 50) – I’m not 100% sure how this works, but I see it happen when the local government has no or very limited number of troops in the country. Additional remark regarding the level of relations – if you want them go down – don’t forget to cancel your alliance agreement as it will keep on boosting them;
- the country gains a top8 status and liberates itself;
- you lose the top8 status by accident or … on purpose
The last trick is a very nice and quick one – you can do it in a number of ways – the most efficient are:
- disbanding all your armies/navies + going bankrupt, if necessary a number of times – as there is no industry in the country you can end up with pretty low status please note – it’s bit unsecure method and you can always end up with someone declaring on you;
- declaring on someone, and later after some initial successes and claiming as much as possible – letting them crash you really nicely and settling for white peace – this method is also efficient – you loose your army, your allies, in particular ‘sphered countries that need to be conquered’ are also losing their defenses, so won’t be able to attack you all to soon.
After quite a long consideration I end up with the following idea – I will declare on Russia, call my allies and let’s see what happens – if they burn me down to the ground I will go for losing the top8 status and if I and my allies somehow manage to crash them I will take as many of my free claims and speed up the restitution of PLC. So any outcome of this war will be good for me and it will be even better if it happens immediately. So I declare on Russia. To my highest surprise also UK and Italy joined me.
C. Hell on Earth
To be honest – every war with Russia is a hell of the war – they have huge armies and the number of provinces to be occupied is countless. As I declared basically without any preparation by the time my troops reached the front the Russians were already seizing Mongolia and Manchu. This was actually the best that could have happened to me, as I quickly go for the encirclements and annihilations. In the second phase the Sino-Polish alliance storms from the Far East and huge battles are fought around Baikal Lake and in Turkestan and later also in Ural Mountains with troop count going up over 100 per side per battle. Eventually Krakow manages to overcome the Russian forces and heads west with the first units arriving at the shores of Caspian See.
During the Russian war first Xinjiang and later on also Yunnan broke free. As my badboy was quite low I decided to claim for annexation on Yunnan and just occupy and wait with Xinjiang. War with Yunnan was completely without any history – they lost almost all their troops in Russia, so I just had to even up the lawn (2nd Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1881-06-08 and finished on 1882-11-18.
But a great success in the war against Russia would neither be possible nor even close to possible without an extreme help from my allies. UK crashed Russian navy at the Baltic See and landed their troops a couple of times in Lithuania and Petersburg, additionally they were also pretty active with their Indian forces, yet it took some time for them to play the key role on the eastern front, but were highly welcomed to clear to pots of entrapped Russian armies. Italy, which had an access through Austria and Turkey, invaded Poland and southern Ukraine. I believe that without their help and engagement of the Russian troops at the western front I would have absolutely no chances to proceed that fast from the east.
Once I got to Europe that war was close to being over, so I speeded up my troops towards Caucasus, Finland and Poland and kept on claiming further and further PLC CB states with the general idea to have the access to both Baltic and Black sees (from Estonia to Cherson). War started on 1880-07-02 and finished on 1883-08-28.
D. Opportunity ahead
Getting all my troops all the way to Europe was a huge effort, so let’s use it once again. With a constant CB on both Austria and Prussia I don’t need to wait too long to implement the idea.
I quickly check the status – Austria was having a smallish army, but was at peace and had a number of allies, including France, which I wouldn’t like to fight right now, while Prussia also had allies, but only German minors, Italy, which couldn’t join the war on me and US, which had very good relations with me by that time. In the other comparison – Austria had quite low literacy and Prussia and their allies were doing just fine – this might be important once I take over the Russian provinces with pretty low literacy value.
The key factor was that Prussia was at war with France. France declared that war some time ago without asking allies to help and now were loosing badly with the whole western and south western France occupied by Prussia, Italy and their allies. This will normally mean that all the Prussian alliance armies shall be right now fighting France.
I declared on Prussia and within half a year all the provinces down to Saarbruecken were occupied without any major resistance, apart from some fights in Saxony and Hessen.
The first major German troops will only hit me after almost 1 year, but by that time majority of their provinces is already under my control. I decided to keep them occupied without granting them any peace. To my amazement Scandinavia decided they need their Norrland back and had their allies of Austria and Turkey join them – I guess they must have been pretty disappointed later to learn that there was nothing left to take. War started on 1883-02-01 and finished on 1884-01-17 (Mecklemburg), 1884-03-08 (Weimar), 1884-03-08 (Hessen), 1884-09-14 (Oldenburg), 1886-07-10 (Nassau), 1887-01-01 (Meiningen), 1887-08-01 (Lippe-Detmold), 1888-02-02 (another Hessen), 1888-07-02 (Holstein), 1889-03-11 (Coburg), 1889-07-04 (Hamburg), 1891-06-02 (Frankfurt), 1891-06-02 (Bremen), 1892-05-03 (Prussia).
E. Crossing the Rubicon
Alea acta est said the Ceasar – when playing Viki 2 it’s crossing the badboy limit. If you decide to do it – you’d better be ready to fight or better – be strong enough to discourage any potential takers.
BB limit was passed during claiming annexation on Dai Nam to get connection to southern part of the country. War started on 1883-07-01 and finished on 1884-08-09. But to be honest – noone seemed to have noticed this fact. Quite soon I started adding further claims and exploded it to a constant 100+.
In Europe once the Russian war was over and my troops fully recovered and the Prussian war was decided and all I had to do was waiting for high enough jingoism, pretty boring really, I declared also on the third of my dearest neighbors – Austria.
Once you cross the BB limit there are 2 good strategies I suggest to implement when fighting the countries you have a permanent CB on:
- reducing the size of the enemy after 100% victory as much as possible – normally 103-104% can be enforced, possibly with taking over only 1 CB province and the rest made of non-CB provinces – or if necessary 0 CB provinces and only non-CB ones (yet in this way you lose 1 jingoism turn). Please note that it’s sometime quite cheap in warscore terms to claim the large size population states in the mainland, as the additional required warscore is added for forts etc. which typically are only in the border states;
- right after the peace treaty is signed and you remove or disband all your troops on their territory – declare again and again, till only your last CB province is left apart from the capital. Please note that in this case neither your nor enemy’s allies can join the war, so don’t bother asking them for it.
This was the strategy I started using on Austria. A quick summary of wars tells it all:
- first Austrian War – gained provinces: western Galicia (CB), Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Baden and Wurttemberg annexed, Bayern reduced to capital state. War started on 1884-06-02 and finished on 1884-11-12 (Baden and Wurttemberg), 1885-07-13 (Bayern) and 1886-08-03 (Austria).
- second Austrian War – gained provinces: 0 CB, Transylvania, Hungary and part of Morocco. War started on 1886-08-12 and finished on 1888-12-08.
F. Cleaning up
Furthermore in the meantime, as soon as the BB limit was passed, on one hand I kept on using up all the jingoism on annexing German minors (see the details by the Prussian war) and on the other – clearing the leftovers from all the previous wars and correcting the borders here and there:
- I added annexation in Xinjiang war (3rd Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1881-04-01 and finished on 1884-01-17;
- Sokoto – war started on 1884-05-27 and finished on 1885-03-01;
- Egyptian (for corridor from Ethiopia to Suez) – war started on 1884-05-27 and finished on 1889-08-06.
- Kokand (for access to India and isolated Russian province) – war started on 1885-04-03 and finished on 1886-10-12;
- Ethiopia – war started on 1886-02-24 and finished on 1886-08-07;
- Madagascar – war started on 1887-01-15 and finished on 1888-02-14;
- Transwal (annexation CB due to random event after their discovery of diamonds) – war started on 1888-03-19 and finished on 1888-09-09;
- Saxony – war started on 1888-08-01 and finished on 1888-12-30;
It was all possible in such a short time, as after taking over the vast areas in Russia I was eventually able to force the election victory of the conservative promilitary party, which greatly reduced the claiming cycles.
I also declared on Spain – partly because I needed my Chinese troops to be somehow transferred to Europe and it seemed a good idea to claim the Philippines and the rest of Morocco under way and partly because I didn’t want to loose any jingoism occasions for claiming and such a long and slow war with many claims I would be capable of enforcing for a 90%+ victory would do the trick. War started on 1886-01-01 and finished on 1892-09-13.
In the meantime UK decided they love Tibet too much and freed them from my sphere, so the final goal – the 4th Chinese state annexed was reached with the annexation of Tibet. War started on 1887-10-28 and finished on 1888-07-02.
G. Summary
Krakow’s position against the master plan:
- milestone 5, status: accomplished
- milestone 5, deadline: accomplished, delayed (1888-07-02)
- buffer/delay: delay of 3 years, 6 months, 2 days
- assets (as of 1888-12-08, no saves for 1888-07-02, but should be similar): population close to 117m (top, roughly 31% worldwide), some 380 provinces (top), over 600 regiments on the pay roll (top, roughly 26% worldwide), over 100 ships (4th place), clergy level over 2.00
- issues: literacy dropped to 49%, but rising fast
Next update: annexations of all the remaining Chinese states! Our rice is better than your rice!
Milestone no. 5: annexations of at least half of Chinese states. Deadline set: till 1885-12-31
A. Nature of the goal
Annexation of Chinese states as early as possible is the best and fastest way of giving your boat a full speed ahead towards the world domination. The total population waiting for you in all these substates is larger than the whole of Europe combined and as they are normally all till late 80s uncivilized, you can annex them outright (apart from Guangxi, which is originally 6 states strong) – 1 war per country. Typically the fastest to civilize (typically in 1880s) are still the 1-state-strong Xinjiang and Manchu – so it doesn’t matter when you take them, while it’s really worth all your time and effort to work on the large ones – Guangxi, Yunnan and Qinghai.
B. How to do it
So the Chinese states we have to deal with are:
- Chinese Empire – no issues here, already down to 4 states and needs to be annexed first to liberate the rest;
- Guangxi – the largest target – the issues: 6 states (needs 2 wars), sphered by Krakow;
- Yunnan – annexable 4 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Qinghai – annexable 4 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Mongolia – annexable 3 states, sphered by Krakow;
- Manchu – annexable 1 state, sphered by Krakow;
- Xinjiang – annexable 1 state, sphered by Krakow;
- Tibet – annexable 1 states, sphered by Krakow (remark: this is formally not a substate, but a puppet like Korea, but due to the present day situation and to make the count even, I’m adding them and Korea not)
As there will be no issues of getting rid of Chinese Empire, the rest of the pack needs some working on. The annexation war with Chinese Empire starts the domino (1st Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1879-05-13 and finished on 1880-05-18.
The big issue is being sphered by Krakow, as the game does not allow ‘unsphering’ in any way. Thus you need to count on one of the following to happen:
- other top8 nation removes a particular country out of your sphere – as it was in case of Guangxi removed by US some time ago. If you want to go this way – I suggest reducing the influence to zero and wait for someone to be as bold as to do it – it takes some time, but it doesn’t require much of your effort;
- there is an internal event in that country (random or revolt, I believe) that they seize your embassy – of course you pick the option that lowers your relations the most and claim for annexation (relations need to be under 50) – I’m not 100% sure how this works, but I see it happen when the local government has no or very limited number of troops in the country. Additional remark regarding the level of relations – if you want them go down – don’t forget to cancel your alliance agreement as it will keep on boosting them;
- the country gains a top8 status and liberates itself;
- you lose the top8 status by accident or … on purpose
The last trick is a very nice and quick one – you can do it in a number of ways – the most efficient are:
- disbanding all your armies/navies + going bankrupt, if necessary a number of times – as there is no industry in the country you can end up with pretty low status
please note – it’s bit unsecure method and you can always end up with someone declaring on you;- declaring on someone, and later after some initial successes and claiming as much as possible – letting them crash you really nicely and settling for white peace – this method is also efficient – you loose your army, your allies, in particular ‘sphered countries that need to be conquered’ are also losing their defenses, so won’t be able to attack you all to soon.
After quite a long consideration I end up with the following idea – I will declare on Russia, call my allies and let’s see what happens – if they burn me down to the ground I will go for losing the top8 status and if I and my allies somehow manage to crash them I will take as many of my free claims and speed up the restitution of PLC. So any outcome of this war will be good for me and it will be even better if it happens immediately. So I declare on Russia. To my highest surprise also UK and Italy joined me.
C. Hell on Earth
To be honest – every war with Russia is a hell of the war – they have huge armies and the number of provinces to be occupied is countless. As I declared basically without any preparation by the time my troops reached the front the Russians were already seizing Mongolia and Manchu. This was actually the best that could have happened to me, as I quickly go for the encirclements and annihilations. In the second phase the Sino-Polish alliance storms from the Far East and huge battles are fought around Baikal Lake and in Turkestan and later also in Ural Mountains with troop count going up over 100 per side per battle. Eventually Krakow manages to overcome the Russian forces and heads west with the first units arriving at the shores of Caspian See.
During the Russian war first Xinjiang and later on also Yunnan broke free. As my badboy was quite low I decided to claim for annexation on Yunnan and just occupy and wait with Xinjiang. War with Yunnan was completely without any history – they lost almost all their troops in Russia, so I just had to even up the lawn (2nd Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1881-06-08 and finished on 1882-11-18.
But a great success in the war against Russia would neither be possible nor even close to possible without an extreme help from my allies. UK crashed Russian navy at the Baltic See and landed their troops a couple of times in Lithuania and Petersburg, additionally they were also pretty active with their Indian forces, yet it took some time for them to play the key role on the eastern front, but were highly welcomed to clear to pots of entrapped Russian armies. Italy, which had an access through Austria and Turkey, invaded Poland and southern Ukraine. I believe that without their help and engagement of the Russian troops at the western front I would have absolutely no chances to proceed that fast from the east.
Once I got to Europe that war was close to being over, so I speeded up my troops towards Caucasus, Finland and Poland and kept on claiming further and further PLC CB states with the general idea to have the access to both Baltic and Black sees (from Estonia to Cherson). War started on 1880-07-02 and finished on 1883-08-28.
D. Opportunity ahead
Getting all my troops all the way to Europe was a huge effort, so let’s use it once again. With a constant CB on both Austria and Prussia I don’t need to wait too long to implement the idea.
I quickly check the status – Austria was having a smallish army, but was at peace and had a number of allies, including France, which I wouldn’t like to fight right now, while Prussia also had allies, but only German minors, Italy, which couldn’t join the war on me and US, which had very good relations with me by that time. In the other comparison – Austria had quite low literacy and Prussia and their allies were doing just fine – this might be important once I take over the Russian provinces with pretty low literacy value.
The key factor was that Prussia was at war with France. France declared that war some time ago without asking allies to help and now were loosing badly with the whole western and south western France occupied by Prussia, Italy and their allies. This will normally mean that all the Prussian alliance armies shall be right now fighting France.
I declared on Prussia and within half a year all the provinces down to Saarbruecken were occupied without any major resistance, apart from some fights in Saxony and Hessen.
The first major German troops will only hit me after almost 1 year, but by that time majority of their provinces is already under my control. I decided to keep them occupied without granting them any peace. To my amazement Scandinavia decided they need their Norrland back and had their allies of Austria and Turkey join them – I guess they must have been pretty disappointed later to learn that there was nothing left to take. War started on 1883-02-01 and finished on 1884-01-17 (Mecklemburg), 1884-03-08 (Weimar), 1884-03-08 (Hessen), 1884-09-14 (Oldenburg), 1886-07-10 (Nassau), 1887-01-01 (Meiningen), 1887-08-01 (Lippe-Detmold), 1888-02-02 (another Hessen), 1888-07-02 (Holstein), 1889-03-11 (Coburg), 1889-07-04 (Hamburg), 1891-06-02 (Frankfurt), 1891-06-02 (Bremen), 1892-05-03 (Prussia).
E. Crossing the Rubicon
Alea acta est said the Ceasar – when playing Viki 2 it’s crossing the badboy limit. If you decide to do it – you’d better be ready to fight or better – be strong enough to discourage any potential takers.
BB limit was passed during claiming annexation on Dai Nam to get connection to southern part of the country. War started on 1883-07-01 and finished on 1884-08-09. But to be honest – noone seemed to have noticed this fact. Quite soon I started adding further claims and exploded it to a constant 100+.
In Europe once the Russian war was over and my troops fully recovered and the Prussian war was decided and all I had to do was waiting for high enough jingoism, pretty boring really, I declared also on the third of my dearest neighbors – Austria.
Once you cross the BB limit there are 2 good strategies I suggest to implement when fighting the countries you have a permanent CB on:
- reducing the size of the enemy after 100% victory as much as possible – normally 103-104% can be enforced, possibly with taking over only 1 CB province and the rest made of non-CB provinces – or if necessary 0 CB provinces and only non-CB ones (yet in this way you lose 1 jingoism turn). Please note that it’s sometime quite cheap in warscore terms to claim the large size population states in the mainland, as the additional required warscore is added for forts etc. which typically are only in the border states;
- right after the peace treaty is signed and you remove or disband all your troops on their territory – declare again and again, till only your last CB province is left apart from the capital. Please note that in this case neither your nor enemy’s allies can join the war, so don’t bother asking them for it.
This was the strategy I started using on Austria. A quick summary of wars tells it all:
- first Austrian War – gained provinces: western Galicia (CB), Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Baden and Wurttemberg annexed, Bayern reduced to capital state. War started on 1884-06-02 and finished on 1884-11-12 (Baden and Wurttemberg), 1885-07-13 (Bayern) and 1886-08-03 (Austria).
- second Austrian War – gained provinces: 0 CB, Transylvania, Hungary and part of Morocco. War started on 1886-08-12 and finished on 1888-12-08.
F. Cleaning up
Furthermore in the meantime, as soon as the BB limit was passed, on one hand I kept on using up all the jingoism on annexing German minors (see the details by the Prussian war) and on the other – clearing the leftovers from all the previous wars and correcting the borders here and there:
- I added annexation in Xinjiang war (3rd Chinese state to be annexed). War started on 1881-04-01 and finished on 1884-01-17;
- Sokoto – war started on 1884-05-27 and finished on 1885-03-01;
- Egyptian (for corridor from Ethiopia to Suez) – war started on 1884-05-27 and finished on 1889-08-06.
- Kokand (for access to India and isolated Russian province) – war started on 1885-04-03 and finished on 1886-10-12;
- Ethiopia – war started on 1886-02-24 and finished on 1886-08-07;
- Madagascar – war started on 1887-01-15 and finished on 1888-02-14;
- Transwal (annexation CB due to random event after their discovery of diamonds) – war started on 1888-03-19 and finished on 1888-09-09;
- Saxony – war started on 1888-08-01 and finished on 1888-12-30;
It was all possible in such a short time, as after taking over the vast areas in Russia I was eventually able to force the election victory of the conservative promilitary party, which greatly reduced the claiming cycles.
I also declared on Spain – partly because I needed my Chinese troops to be somehow transferred to Europe and it seemed a good idea to claim the Philippines and the rest of Morocco under way and partly because I didn’t want to loose any jingoism occasions for claiming and such a long and slow war with many claims I would be capable of enforcing for a 90%+ victory would do the trick. War started on 1886-01-01 and finished on 1892-09-13.
In the meantime UK decided they love Tibet too much and freed them from my sphere, so the final goal – the 4th Chinese state annexed was reached with the annexation of Tibet. War started on 1887-10-28 and finished on 1888-07-02.
G. Summary
Krakow’s position against the master plan:
- milestone 5, status: accomplished
- milestone 5, deadline: accomplished, delayed (1888-07-02)
- buffer/delay: delay of 3 years, 6 months, 2 days
- assets (as of 1888-12-08, no saves for 1888-07-02, but should be similar): population close to 117m (top, roughly 31% worldwide), some 380 provinces (top), over 600 regiments on the pay roll (top, roughly 26% worldwide), over 100 ships (4th place), clergy level over 2.00
- issues: literacy dropped to 49%, but rising fast
Next update: annexations of all the remaining Chinese states! Our rice is better than your rice!
Last edited:
Omg, originally I had god worried, why did we have to wait for so long for another update. But now I see the reason - the ungodly mess of fighting almost everyone on the Euro-Asian continent must have taken some time and attention.
I can just imagine the facepalming going around in Italy and the UK for actually helping you become that large
Yes! Krakow is displayed across the map!
...what, I'm easily amused. Look, some men want riches, others want power, I just want to see really unlikely names splayed across maps from time to time.
...what, I'm easily amused. Look, some men want riches, others want power, I just want to see really unlikely names splayed across maps from time to time.
Maybe it lacks localisation, or maybe it's already a Latin name.
I will be disappointed if I don't see "Krakow" (I guess Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is also acceptable) plastered over all of Eurasia and Africa. It doesn't look like you'll disappoint though. Keep it up, you crazy person.
Ok - as i'll focus in the next update on showing evolution of places where 'Krakow' is spelled out on the map ;p
I confirm - Mongolia is the same. I think it might be from latin or maybe the word came to Europe with the Golden Horde in dark ages - with the first to adopt in Europe being Russians and later spread to the other countries. Please notę the same happened with the word 'China', which in Russian is Kitai, from one of the xinjiang or mongolian tribes.
Ps. Polish localization is quite without errors as far as i can judge.
Ps. Polish localization is quite without errors as far as i can judge.