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Austrian EMpire>Austria-Hungary>Danubian Federation with Concert of Europe mod (started in 1821)

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As you can see, I don't like painting the map my color (in Europe at least). I worked to prevent Germany and Italy from forming (failed with the latter but it was no big deal) and I tried to expand the Empire against the Ottomans, while keeping the German minors under control with my diplomatic influence. I also colonized a big chunk of Africa.

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Great game overall. I was impressed by the amount of valuable resources this region of Europe has to offer: I was literally swimming in iron, coal and oil.

That's a really sexy Danubian Federation. :wub:
 
I had all of the basemap bits open from the Italy map I posted a few days back, and after finishing another interesting game, I figured I'd whip up another map again tonight, and here is the result:

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Using the Pops of Darkness mod, and this time playing as Estonia-United Baltic Provinces. It was a fairly easy playthrough surprisingly. Everybody wanted to be my friend for some reason, which was strange considering I had no industry, military power, or resources to speak of. I took turns teaming up with Great Britain and Germany, mainly for my own survival. Russia made a few lacklustre attempts at invading, but in the end proved pretty ineffectual. It did allow my German neighbours to grow considerably though, which was probably not wise, but it worked out in the end. Even when they went fascist they still wanted to stay friends. Russia's general weakness also left Austria alone.

Austria was pretty stale throughout. They never really allied with anyone, invade anyone, or were invaded by anyone. They just trundled along happily, right up until a liberal revolution dethroned the Habsburg's, leaving a relatively stable Social-Democracy in its wake. Outside of a brief spat with Turkey, Austria just sat back and built a massive ammunition and small arms industry, basically being the sole provider for the rest of the worlds constant warring.

France was doing great, right up until she tried to push her luck in demanding a free Poland from Germany, and was hit with a nasty great war. The great powers were more or less split, leading to a nice long world war one that stretched from 1901 to 1909, and ended with France being heavily dismantled, much to the United Baltic Provinces benefit as we absorbed almost all of her previously expansive colonial empire in Africa.

A few things of note though...

One: the communists... my god the communists. They were everywhere, and they were angry. Russia was hit first, followed by a successfully expanding Ottoman Empire. Egypt fell next. At one point basically all of South America decided to paint their flags red, but eventually democracies came in and kicked the communists out in a few spots. They never really teamed up, which is good or the world would have been communist before the end.

Two: The Sikh Empire. Usually they just sit there and let the Brits boss them around, but after somehow breaking free from the shackles, they decided to go all militaristic and push to the coast. By the end of the game they were back into the British sphere, but they had a heck of a ride while they were let loose.

and Three: The USA. In almost all of my games they really don't do much. They capture their traditional territory and then go all isolationist. But not in this game. In this game, they went colonial and anti-communist crazy. They colonized Guinea and invaded an expansive Communist Turkish North Africa, ripping it apart into Mali, Niger and Libya in successive wars. They invaded Egypt, who was going through a revolution, and crippled the country, leading to a fracture between Egypt and Sudan, who both ended up communist anyway.

But the best part... the crowning achievement in my time playing this game, was the US invading the Communist Turks, resulting in a US Sphered and allied Iraqi dictatorship.

From my end, the game was pretty standard. Build up literacy and eventually an industrial base, survive between big regional players, and steal a slice of Africa. I snagged Belarus from Russia in a couple of wars, mainly for something to do. I never hit Great Power rankings, but by the end of the game I was sitting in 10th and would have been in the running. After colonizing, and then acquiring French colonies after the war, I created several protectorates in Africa, because why not. I was the worlds leader in automobile and airplane constructions so there is that going for my little republic.

for anyone interested, here is a link to a much larger version of the map.

That world looks really cool and interesting.

Sorry if you have already answered this question but how do you create those fancy maps?
 
That world looks really cool and interesting.

Sorry if you have already answered this question but how do you create those fancy maps?

Thanks! Usually to make the maps I just use the games map screenshot you can get by pressing f12 and colouring it up a bit using gimp. You need to make several layers for things like the water, and cutting out the country borders and adding labels can be tedious. The map I made above though, I used an actual basemap of the world, divided up by regional boundaries which I made in ArcMap (a common geospatial tool), then followed the same routine by jazzing it up in gimp with the finer details.
 
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the world at 1915 ( time at which i became bore)
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most of my africa holdings. i also own formosa, tunis and some atlantic islands
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zulu payback to the british for their oppresive imperialism( basically they didn't want to share with me) zulu irland for the win

it was an interesting game. i westernize late( at 1880) and so i lost most of africa mainly due to me using pop demand mod ( i always westernize really slow with it). my best state was kongo that i conquer it fairly soon (at 1846) and it became a reactionary bastion. my most populous states where all colonial so i needed to stick with two national focus for all the game. overall it was a fun game, i manage to catch the european in terms of technology but i didn't get africa. next time i will use NNM that seem's to be better for the zulu, with all those unciv's around
 
The current status of my Siam Empire. The White Elephant has just Westernised, having eaten all it's neighbours, the Horn of Africa seems like the next tempting step.

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African Territories

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Japan Westernised a year before me, but I am further ahead. I feel like they will overtake me just because of how high their lit rate is. Going to focus culture techs and see where that get's me.
 
1878 and you only have 4.1% literacy!? I guess you didn't do any clergymen focusing which is quite odd.
I would seriously rectify that ASAP! Otherwise it is a great looking country.
 
1878 and you only have 4.1% literacy!? I guess you didn't do any clergymen focusing which is quite odd.
I would seriously rectify that ASAP! Otherwise it is a great looking country.

I did, but the devil is in the detail. I got most of Thailand to 4% clergy, but that only represents about half of my actual holdings. That Yun province I took was over 1.8 million, and Vietnam is about 2million+.
 
How much of Africa is colonial dominions and how much is post-colonial states? Which were historically colonized by which colonizors? I'm interested.

I think you're refering to my map? if so:

The British territories are obvious, as they still control them. German territories as well (Morocco, Horn of Africa). Portugal still clings to a sliver of the African west coast.

France had Algeria, Tunis, Mauritania, Mali, Gabon, Congo, Zaire and Buganda. Algeria gained its independence through revolt, and Mali was lost in a war with the United States. France granted Gabon independence as a Dominion almost immediately after colonizing it. The remaining colonial possessions were transferred to me (United Baltic Provinces) after a great war, and I granted them all independence as Dominions.

Libya and Niger were Ottoman controlled, until losing a couple of successive wars to the United States. The US took the territory and released it shortly after capturing Iraq in yet another US-Turkish war.

The United States colonized Guinea, then started the aforementioned wars against France and Turkey, stealing the colonies of Mali, Niger, and Libya. They eventually granted them independence while stuck in a colonial crisis with the Netherlands over Dahomey. They acquired Dahomey, then granted it independence after the war for Iraq. Dahomey fell to a communist rebellion about 3 seconds after the country became independent.

Chad, Darfur, Cameroon, Central Africa and Nigeria were all my colonial possessions. After claiming all of French Africa at the end of the Great War (I love PDM's events to break up the losing empire!) I granted the newly won land independence as Dominions as mentioned above. I created Dominions from my directly colonized territory mainly because I had no hope of doing anything with them (my primary and secondary cultures as Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian are tiny tiny populations), so why not build some nations. I held on to Nigeria because the land their is pretty valuable and diverse in production.
 
Update from my Siam game. For a while I though the best way to focus clergy, now I just expand. See the end result of my First and if I can avoid it Last Great War.

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That brown nation in Africa is a colony of mine. I've been planning the war with the British since I westernised, but it had to happen right after I had used most of my infamy points on eating China. This was a weird game for me. I've not played a nation in this region in a long time and I think I may have chosen one of the wrong ones to start me off. Siam while I had a lot of fun, before I had westernised I had already exhausted all my culture soldier pops and was using non-accepted. Vietnam has a much larger population and a puppet so early on things are certainly easier. I decided to see how quickly I could westernise using the conquest for rp system. I ended up westernising around the same time Japan did, but all conquests I had done gave me a much higher prestige level, boosting me to secondary. After that I focused culture and colonisation techs. I did very well in Africa. The French, British and Spain coming in later and fighting each-other got me the best provinces. Unfortunately I had to back out of the Pacific to make up for that. :(

Fast forward to four years ago. The French and I have always been uneasy about each other since they claimed territory in Vietnam I rightfully owned. Still I was willing to put that in the past following the Unholy Alliance between The German Empire and British Empire teaming up and tearing the Austrian Empire apart a few years before. So for some reason Germany had not taken Alsace-Lorraine. I think this was the latest I have ever seen them not try to take this territory. Witht he British backing them they made their move and madness ensued. The French called upon their limited ally in South America and then me. Then I...well Garry Oldman say it better.

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Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Turkey, Japan and the Netherlands. Not everyone, but close enough. The war for me was for everything but the last year confined in Africa and India. I made early moved to secure the British Territories behind me while pushing for that one Pegu province. Getting that province changed my war dramatically and became one of the most important battles of the war. Taking that province gives me not only a superior defensive position, but it means I only have to hold a two province front against the Imperial Forces. I went through the first two years just holding these two provinces and it was a slaughter.

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It went back and forth and due to me paying too much to the chaos that was Africa, the British punched though my lines. This made me panic. They actually got as far outside of Bangkok before I wiped them out. I rode on the momentum of crushing that break through to go back into India. By this point India was starting to fall apart. The Turks has got access through Persia and stormed India from the West while I pushed from the East. Once I was sure the majority of the Indian Colonial forces had been defeated, I split my forces sending half to France to support the war effort there. By that point the Scandinavians had joined the Alliance and was attacking the overstretched Germans in the north. Likewise in the south France had to deal with the Italians now joining the fight. In the end it was British that broke first. It seems like they invested too heavily in the colonies and were unable to stop the rebellion on the homeland. The British surrendered, quickly followed by the Italians and at last Germany.

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The world post The Great War. Germans recently went under a revolution, I'm sure everything will work out fine...Right?


[video=youtube;YTaauYDzjtw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTaauYDzjtw[/video]

On another subject Fascism and Communism seems to have been steadily growing in Siam for the last 20 years. Which way do you think I should swing?
 
The world post The Great War. Germans recently went under a revolution, I'm sure everything will work out fine...Right?

On another subject Fascism and Communism seems to have been steadily growing in Siam for the last 20 years. Which way do you think I should swing?

Step 1: Create post-ww1 Germany
Step 2: Be surprised at rise of Fascism
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Appeasement.

I'd suggest fascism purely because it's the most war-like ideology, so I always aim for it in V2, but you might have serious issues with such a small primary culture/ religion pop base under residency and moralism.
 
Step 1: Create post-ww1 Germany
Step 2: Be surprised at rise of Fascism
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Appeasement.

I'd suggest fascism purely because it's the most war-like ideology, so I always aim for it in V2, but you might have serious issues with such a small primary culture/ religion pop base under residency and moralism.

Lol. I had nothing to do with how that map turned out. I had enough free infamy to take the neighbouring colonies and that was it.

I do like the Fascism flag more, but I think the reason it started gaining popularity is because the British had a core province of ours in North Malay.
 
Lol. I had nothing to do with how that map turned out. I had enough free infamy to take the neighbouring colonies and that was it.

I do like the Fascism flag more, but I think the reason it started gaining popularity is because the British had a core province of ours in North Malay.
Moralism has literally no effect, according to the code, so it shouldn't be so bad.
 
Moralism has literally no effect, according to the code, so it shouldn't be so bad.

It doesn't have a straight effect, but it lowers cultural assimilation and raises religious assimilation iirc (or is it the other way around? not sure). I think it has other knock on effect on how pops do things as well- lower immigration & higher emigration for non-state religion pops, and higher clergy promotion being two.