The coalition, they will attack you.
Man I love your style, very detailed and I love the subtle humor
Thanks, though lately I have to make some consessions. To be honest I don't show every repeated event anymore, but I instead try sticking the unique or important ones.
I guess the AQQs. Convert them to Xhrist!
I'm sorry to sound foolish, but what are AQQs?
You mean I don't get points for predicting that you'd conquer Ceylon way-back-when?
Incidentally, I did go to the Wiki page to find out which events would statistically be most likely to fire for you before answering, so there was some method in my madness.
Malabar. For Malabar.
Another highly entertaining and enjoyable update. Always good to see more action from Naples.
Nah, I was always going to conquer Ceylon at some point if I wanted to establish myself in the Indian trade.
As for Malabar.. you'll have to read the update.
I am not sure about the new ways things work but when you release a nation as a vassal does it get released at your tech level?
They do not. Not anymore, at least.
I think you can still annex a country completely and then release it as your vassal. Vassals you release will have your religion and your tech group. After ten years you can annex them again. Will be a bit tricky though, since a nation has to be small enough to fully annex, else you'll have to take a few provinces from them and core them yourself. Also, I don't know if it's true for India, but if you control more than 5 overseas provinces together it will become a colonial nation.
My guess for arbitrary points:
Savoy joins the coalition and will try, with the help of their Big Blue Brother, to get their lands back.
Colonial nations are only for the americas. If I release cored indian provinces, I'll get another protectorate. Since I can't annex protectorates, selling them their cores back will do me little good :-/
There are a lot of new mechanics to consider in this update.
arbitrary points guess:
I'm gonna guess Castile. They haven't been seen much, but I have a feeling
They have not been doing much until this point. Up until now all their main aggression has been almost entirely been pointed at the new world.
Protectorates and vassals now count towards achievements like 'Master of India', so if it is just the Achievement you are going for you'll still be good. If you want a purple India, that's another matter. EDIT: I misremembered. That sucks.
I guess you'll see the gain admin/gain more for inflation event, patriot revolt, and war with Syria to complete the land bridge.
Syria was a vassal I annexed, they no longer stand in my way. I think you've missed some of my updates.
Things seem to be going rather well, but you're right to be wary of both France and Russia. From my limited experience, France seems quite happy to build an army that exceeds its force limits (so I'd expect them to have at least 100,000 troops) while Russia is swimming in manpower and quite happy to use it. Can you sell Azov off to anyone? There's not much point holding it.
As to the next war, with protectorates limiting your ability to expand in India, I'd guess a war with Yemen to transfer trade power.
Have you tried
Paint.net? I found it to be very good for AARs as you can use layers, allowing you to have a base image (such as a screenshot) and then a separate layer for overlays (arrows, captions, etc.). Because the captions are on a different layer you can move them around freely without mucking up the original image.
I might be able to sell off Azov to Russia, but y'know.. it's mine. I'm kind of weird about that unless I have to give it up in a war.
Paint.net seems interesting though. I gave it a spin this update and I was pretty satisfied when i used it.
All caught up. Excellent as always.
Quiz Question: The Franco-Dutch coalition.
Well, then I better make you fall behind again!
I am uncertain if I can make this is even two updates! Also, I'm not posting them all this time, so there's enough room for arbitrary quizzes between parts. I somehow managed to take over a thousand screenshots when a usual one part update only has about 300. However the second part (which will finish the chapter even if I have t split it in two) will come next week - I simply don't have the time to write it right now.
1. August 1651 - 11. November 1664 part 1/2
Loading up v1.4, let's see if everything blows up in my face...
[5 minutes later]
Okay, the only thing that blew up in my face were the 300< spam messages regarding nations blockading one another. France, Netherlands, Castile, Toulouse and the Ottomans are all blockading me.. which would be relevant if I shared significant power with them in
any node.
Oh well.
Impressions:
- The patch did little to affect the trade of Naples, since none of the pathways used by me were changed. Ethiopia remains a vassal because it was one to begin with.
- Each culture now has a primary nation, whose cores will never expire as long as that culture lingers on in their cores. Naples is not the primary nation of Sicilian though,
Sicily is! I'm a bit curious
(and insulted) about that. Interestingly, there are a few cultures like Georgian who has no nation attached to it, though I suspect that is an oversight.
- There are now about a dozen new colonial nations in the Americas, I'll go over them soon.
- Shawnee, Madras and Congo started westernizing the moment I started this game. If all Indian nations do that, making protectorates there may be a problem.
- Great Britain is laughing all the way to the Bank of London about the new Western Europe trade node - and Denmark is just happy this means they can steal all the income from the Gulf of Lawrence --> North Sea trade, 'cause it's too little for GB to bother with (they're steering from Bordeaux instead).
- It's shocking how easily some Indian nations will let me make them a protectorate (Vassals that can't be annexed, will break free after westernization, but give away 50% trade power not counting ships). Orissa just needs some oral treatment from Gioachino II and Marathas just needed to be closer and lose that vassal baggage, as far as I could tell. Quite amazing, considering that these two nations together make up about 60% of India by now.
Oh right. About India. The inability to vassalize any Indian nation means that I've come to this conclusion: Conquering India, in a way that will net me the achievement, would require me to put everything else aside in order to sink down thousands of admin points into coring and always staying at high overextension. It's just not worth it and I have other irons in the fire.
However, I'm not one to completely abandon a set goal of mine, and therefore I've decided to at least go for the second best solution: I will instead aim to have the entire Indian region in my indirect control. That is, all provinces in the region must be owned by me or a vassal/protectorate of mine. I still want to have some degree of hard power in India and will thus try to secure as many important centers and estuaries in the region as possible, in case I should lose protectorates to westernization.
Speaking of which, I sent a diplomat to Orissa to make nice with them. They will be the first gullible sucke.. er, the first
honorable partner of Naples.
But first, allow me to introduce
The new colonial nations:
England has had limited success, but still control the Hudson bay and Gulf of Lawrence almost completely.
- Newfoundland, covering approximately modern Canada and New England. In the west, they appear to make it down to the Great Lakes. A shame that Castile makes their north eastern borders look so horrible. It's almost worth going to war over by itself. I don't know why Abnaki isn't a part of it.
- British Cuba! For those who don't want to move from one cold, rainy, gloomy and grey country to another!
Castile is by far the largest colonizer and arguably, the winner of the colonial race lost in real life.
- To the north they have Florida, covering the entire east cost.
- South of that, broken by a few "normal" colonial provinces, there's Mexico covering Texas and modern day middle America. It's still unclear to me what determined the size of these nations.
- In the Caribbean, we find the Castilian East Indies.
- In South America, there's New Granada and more scattered normal Castilian provinces.
Portugal has done well in South America.
- Brazil.
- Rio De Prata.
- Peru
.. in other words, boringly historical other than spreading beyond Brazil southwards.
Independent and other things
- Shawnee will later amazingly finish its westernization undisturbed! It'll likely never catch up to the west, but now they can't just overrun by the colonials. You go Natives, there will be no bible belt for you!
- Iroquois is somehow still untouched, though not westernized.
- The Aztecs and Mayas live on as shadows of their former selves.
- The Incas have been pushed out of their mountains, but remain alive in the forests of western Brazil. I guess there's no gold for Portugal to steal there.
- Mighty Norway has no need to create colonial nations.. Well actually, if they did it'd be larger than themselves.
Resuming the game, in December Marathas left the coalition against me, and I discovered that they were annexing their vassal (having one gives a -1000 modifier to making a protectorate of them), due to be done in.. 1580. I didn't have time for that, but I had become convinced that making protectorates of both Orissa and Marathas would be the best way to boost trade power in the Indian nodes. Orissa however did not take long to convince.
Therefore, I concocted a plan: I would first annex Malabar, who had guaranteed Marathas, then make a protectorate of Marathas after demanding that it release its vassal. Declaring Marathas first would bring me into conflict with Malabar as a secondary participant. I could then annex Malabar and afterwards make peace with Marathas. Afterwards I increase relations and make a protectorate of Marathas since the distance modifier would be gone.
While I was preparing my armies, France has decided to support Hungarian Independence - which I guess means trouble if I should try annexing it?
Trouble for them, that is.
They also do the same for Norway. It was only afterwards I looked up what this meant:
Meanwhile, the nobles of Naples argued in favor of returning to two field rotations.
But.. it just tastes so much more organic and ecological when there are only two rotations. Three is unnatural!
In August 1653 I finished annexing Syria and finished hogging cash.
I spent all my new shinies to finish the production lines in Naples and Firenze. Syria also gave some surprisingly new ships, and I could afford to trash some of my old caravels in favor of early and late frigates.
Now, I had not forgotten my designs on Marathas and I had spent this time gather a larger army in India. The issue was quite pressing since Castile had just won provinces in modern Day Indonesia from Majapahit and would soon be colonizing the Maldives. The Indian race was on. However, I would need sufficient forces since Marathas may be in the Indian tech group, but it was no joke in terms of size and allies. I was just about to send a diplomat to forge a claim on Malabar, when the game decided to give me a freebie after finishing the prior mission. Everything was set then in September 1653 and I had an army of 24.000 prepared to face the largest Indian nation.
Wargoals:
- Annex Malabar.
- Make Marathas abandon vassalage of Bundelkhan
No secondaries. I could in theory lay siege to all of Marathas and demand they'd become my protectorate, but it would be easier and faster to just mend relations after the war. Besides, I was already strained by revolts because of religious conversions and overextension.
Marathas had a rather impressive navy, including five heavy ships. I wasn't about to challenge them on the open seas, since ships only improve slowly compared to ground forces, and I would have to kill my income in the Gulf of Aden to bring enough Light Ships to beat them otherwise. I simply marched through Malabar, crushing their army and leaving, and waited there for Marathas to respond.
On the home front, I performed a royal marriage and alliance with England. They would be somewhat useful against France and were far enough away not to get pissed at my expansion. Meanwhile Serbia declared war on the Ottomans for Constantinople. Considering that they were unable to even convert 5-basetax provinces, I had a hard time imagining how they were going to hold unto that in the end.
Gioachino II's musky seamen also caught some pirates the Gulf of Aden under a pretentious Portuguese flag. Carrying an obviously forged royal order for a transfer of some of the royal coffers. Moreover, for some reason the Portuguese ambassador kept harassing him for months, but he had better thing to do.
Look, the main thing is that piracy was involved and that Naples could now afford a mint in Venice and Trade companies in Egypt.
While even Aq Qoyunlu, and soon afterwards Dulkadir, were now also attacking the Ottomans. In India Malabar fell to the siege in March 1654 without a sign of Marathas' forces. I ventured north after demanding their full annexation to see what was going on. This might turn into a rather bloodless war. Or so I thought. (I also completed my accumulate money mission. Next mission: Religious unity, I love that mission since I keep conquering myself more heathen lands)
Let's try that paint.net thing
Afterwards I spread out and besieged some provinces. I only needed 9% warscore to make Marathas breaks its vassalization, so I could wait. Meanwhile I removed England as a rival and added France instead (It was about time, honestly). I then made Great Britain my ally, once the game stopped deciding that I hated them.
While Gioachino II felt the need to be able to appoint some higher ranking members of the Orthodox church (where else were all the extra royal bastards supposed to make a career for themselves?), but to make amends for offending Orthodox Christ, he allowed the printing of a bible translated into Sicilian (by someone from a Lombardic region). This had the added fortune of pissing off every nearby catholic power, which is a win in
my holy book.
Considering just how important such translation would be, this new bible would likely be the leading cause of the many Italian dialects gradually converging more on a more common language. Oh wait, these captions are supposed to be funny. My bad :-/
In January, 1655 in India, a surprisingly numerous Indian counterattack of two stacks of ~25k had forced Naples to unite their armies, after laying siege to only one province. Rather than wait for a new siege to complete, a lonely stack was attacked, which generated enough warscore to end the war early.
I sent a diplomat to repair relations with Marathas right away.
In September 1655, the great nation of Toulouse left the coalition against Naples and in October, the Netherlands followed suit. Now I only had France, the Ottomans and Netherlands intent on my utter destruction.
I had been spending some of my new income building up:
- Manufactories in Egypt and the Gulf of Aden.
- Trade buildings in the high tax power provinces in Egypt so that I could save some more light ships for other areas.
- Production and military buildings in Italy proper.
In November 1655 Serbia finished its war with the Ottomans.
They had been unable to convert even 5-tax Sunni provinces, so I had no idea how the heck they were planning on holding unto that many Turkish/heathen provinces. Then it dawned on me: The Ottomans now held eternal cores on all Turkish provinces and most of all,
they were of a vassalizable size.
Now, previously having been taught the lesson that holy wars
never change war leader, and knowing that the Ottomans were already under attack by two minor nations and might be engulfed if I didn't act fast, I declared war upon the Ottomans immediately, despite having to fight France as a secondary participant.
War goals:
Primary: Vassalize the Ottomans
Secondary for 100% warscore when the ottomans are sieged: Anything to hurt France. Release Brittany?
The plan was to simply overrun the Ottomans to 100% warscore and end the war fast, while defending against France in the Alps.
... Which sounds neat, but I failed to consider:
Coalitions are different
I'M IN DESPAIR. MY ERRORNOUS KNOWLEDGE OF COALITION MECHANICS HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR.
And thus, Naples was outwitted by a pre-pubescent kid.
At first glance, the numbers looked good. However, Lithuania joined France shortly after and they would keep Poland and Hungary busy. Add to the fact that in every other regard than Naval combat, England is almost useless and I had a real problem on my hands.
But I would be damned if I wasn't going to try. Change of plans:
- Use eastern 32k army to siege Ottomans.
- Use two western 32k armies to hold the line in Switzerland. Once French armies were tenderized, move into France and make the blue surrender monkeys do what they do best.
In December, before I was even able to gather morale after turning up military spending, the French had crossed the Swiss border. Unwilling to retreat and yield essential defense of the alps, I managed to lure the French into Wallis, where a small army could distract them, until I gained enough morale to move my main armies in. A dramatic and highly confusing battle then started. In the meantime I was humiliated in the Mediterranean Sea as the French Armada, that I at least expected the English to keep in check, had sailed all the way from Western France.
Okay.
1: France didn't bring a general in a 42k stack!?
2: I was defending in the mountains, with a good leader, against an army of lesser size with too much cavalry - and yet my losses were significantly higher?!
Meanwhile, while France and Naples were killing each another on the battlefields, another killer struck the beautiful city of Naples itself - and arguably, it was better at than any of my armies had ever been.
If only that doctor had not been able to spread the news, none of this would have happened!
Well, at least I had "won" the battle against the French. In the meantime, I was forced to declare another war in the east, as Dulkadir was attacking the Ottomans. I planned on simply keeping them occupied until their war ended without demanding any land from them..
Or maybe I just felt like I needed more wars, you decide.
After crushing the Dulkadir forces, I sent them northwards to re-enforce the eastern frontier where Poland and Lithuania were exchanging blows.
Meanwhile, Marathas accepted the offer to become a protectorate of Naples. They were currently allied with Shan who was at war with Ming and a few other nations. They were also the war leader. Do you see where this is going?
THIS WAS A GREAT IDEA.
Right. I wasn't allocating any troops to help the ally of my pseudo-ally before I finished my other wars.
But the while the war in the far east itself could relatively safely be ignored, it has other more ridiculous consequences, as I automatically called my allies to a war over ten thousand kilometers from their borders.
But... But I never wanted you to help me in the first place.
Yup. Me becoming war leader just snapped
all of my alliances and gave me a huge, slowly dissipating, negative opinion modifier towards them. Poland could overcome it and re-engage our alliance, Great Britain could not.
Silly game mechanics aside, in France, England made a pathetic landing in Brittany of 10k forces that were wiped out by the main French stack, but this also allowed me to move into France in the spring of 1656. However, it wasn't until the fall, where I was facing the weirdest of my many recent revolts - a buddist uprising in Ceylon - that I finally saw the French response: 43k French troops.. which would scare me more, if they weren't without a leader.
Again!. I carelessly attacked them across a river and after the battle, the pursuit follow down to southern France.
This felt almost like cheating.
On the Eastern front I helped Poland and Hungary defeat two more large, unlead armies. I was starting to suspect that this was some bug with 1.3, and it honestly felt like I was abusing the game somehow. When I looked up the ledger, these nations unquestionably had multiple military leaders. Where were they now? Heck if I know.
There was little question that I would win at this point. Following this, a long carpet siege of France ensued and I would strike any new armies they would raise with my hunter-killer group. I never faced a French stack with a leader and the largest army were two 17k stack and about five random revolts across Naples - and also, more angry Buddhists.
This time they actually managed to take the province before I made it there.
While the war with France was still active, the unabated primacy of the alps fell into my hands as Switzerland was annexed.
On the Ottoman front, I could not stop Aq Qoyunlu from taking an Ottoman province, but that could always be taken care of later and Dulkadir gave up shortly followed by me white peacing it. Amusingly, the two common enemies of the Ottomans would soon fight one another, resulting in Aq Qoyunlu annexing Dulkadir. Only the coalition war with France and the weird Eastern war to worry about now. More importantly, it sent down the required warscore to 58% to vassalize the Ottomans.
In fact, this entire was going so disappointingly easy that I was starting to feel queasy about it. Venice was the richest trade node
in the world and it had the hardiest, muskiest and manliest seamen in the entire world. National decline was running rampant in this desolate national and obviously the military - which had only been able to handle three or four wars at once - was to blame for this. They were nothing at all like the proud, industrious men of the sea and that's why the average life expectancy of a military officer was 3 years and a naval one 35. Oddly enough, at the same time, recruitment saw a strange shift.
So you're killing France. Why are you not also killing Muscovy and Spain at the same time. Hmm?
In July 1658, France had had enough and this peace was signed. The remnants of the Ottoman Empire was now in my hands.
In fact, the army had been such a disappointment, that Gioachino II abandoned any plans of reform. Just send wave after wave of the countless gutless wretches into the breach, until the enemy is too tired to kill more Neapolitan troops - and then finish them off.
Also known as "The Brannigan-killbot ploy."
Now I really should have stopped the session here. I was at peace and had some time to think things through. But I kept on playing, for it always seemed like there was more stuff to do.
During the war my diplomatic relations +5 leader had died and was luckily replaced by another - though he was only a +1 overall diplomatic advisor, which could be a problem once I get expansion ideas.
... But I still wasn't technically at peace. While I cared little for Shan, I should at least stop the war before it made it all the way to Orissa to hard my protectorate and increase the chance of
them having rebels. Besides, I figured that my 18k soldiers in the far east could use some exercise other than cutting down endless rebels. So the Neapolitan East India Legion, as I've fancifully dubbed them, started their offense against Ming and Brunei to defend Shan, the ally of my pseudo-ally. After a long campaign, I had to admit my
utter defeat though.
After this, for a (very) short period, Naples would have peace. We should take a minute to admire what is without a doubt my favorite unexpected expander in this game - Serbia.
For I intended to use my new Ottoman vassal's cores to dismantle them and to cut them off from the Adriatic Sea, by any means required. While their expansion had been impressive, I doubted their ability to hold unto most of the lands that had fallen into their hands - even with all the mission power bonuses it has, Naples will seemingly be unable to convert the Ottomans unless it had a missionary advisor.
However, there's time for more of that in future updates.
Oh, one last thing. Unreported Naples news, which I've taken screenshots of reveal that I had wine related events in:
- 11. April 1652
- 21. July 1653
- 8. January 1658
I usually don't skip on events, but the rampant wine obsession in Naples is getting a bit out of hand!
About the wars
I don't know why France never used leaders in their main stacks. It makes the entire thing feel like a very empty victory of sorts. I believe that I could have won regardless with effort and strategy, but this had been much too easy. Luckily other nations later picked generals normally and so it could just have been a fluke - maybe france had its generals stuck in a distant province on an army in exile? I don't know.
News of the world
- Friesland defected to the Netherlands from Denmark. Now only Utrecht remained an untaken Dutch core.. Which it of course couldn't help itself from declaring, even if it is now engaged alone against GB, Denmark and half a dozen HRE nations.
- Spain would soon start colonizing the Maldives.. which are a part of both the Ceylon node and the Indian region!
- Anne II Lancaster has crushed the parlimentarists completely. Too bad the game is staunchly determined that I hate her with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, otherwise I would re-engage the alliance.
Arbitrary Quiz:
Results
DensleyBlair: +4 for predicting the war with Malabar, indirect as it may have been to my larger goal.
Buckingham: +2 for predicting my war with the French coalition, though it was French-Ottoman at this point.
New Question:
- Since I still have five years of this chapter played through, this quiz is for once made with the gift of foreknowledge: other than Marathas and Orissa, I will make another protectorate in the next chapter. Who is it?
