Post your (DW) Empire

[TheArchMede]

Delhi. I did the Hindu version a while ago, this time its the Muslim. Initial order of business: taking over India by using the other Muslims first as allies, and then feeding them to the Hindus so that Holy wars can be used.

The Timurids haven't done all that well, so I've been forced to acquire the remnants. There's a lot of Ming in the other direction, but first I head over the sea.

I acquired a bit of Zimbabwe but since the Europeans dont seem interested in rounding the Cape, I take QftNWesternisation.

Western neighbour bonus, and the army heads East. 50 years of holy war, and its Ming time.

The Orthodox horde of Astrakhan and the army in place for the last round of holy war declarations.

Pretty much everything to the East has been taken over. Delhi can be seen moving up both sides of Africa. The Ottos were still taking territory off Europeans into the 1680s, but Austria has recently grabbed a slice of the Balkans. I decide I'm not going to let it get any more, and to see how much more it can grab if I beat up the armies of their enemies for them. That is them in Rome. Also, its 1700, and that bit of coast immediately south of Morocco still hasn't been colonised!

1750 and so far my decision to stick with Indian units hasn't been an issue. The Revolutionary CB is about to appear, BB burn is 2.5, just how far West can the elephants get? That province still hasn't been colonised!

 

[jhhowell]

Neat!

So 2-3 rounds of Westernization is achievable as early as 1600? I thought it would take longer, but I've never really tried it myself...

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

1750 and so far my decision to stick with Indian units hasn't been an issue. The Revolutionary CB is about to appear, BB burn is 2.5, just how far West can the elephants get? That province still hasn't been colonised!
View attachment 943305

Could your elephants make it to Maine ? Please do something about that Austria...

 

[TheArchMede]

Neat!

So 2-3 rounds of Westernization is achievable as early as 1600? I thought it would take longer, but I've never really tried it myself...

Patron of the Arts NI has an event to move the innovation slider around a lot. That can be a big help in getting the sliders in place. (and was in this game) I had a streak of high Adm rulers, so that wasn't a delay either. Then its about getting stab back as fast as possible, which I help by having all 3 advisors capable of triggering Great Men events. I think I got half my stab back with those +2 stab events. Once you've decided to go for it, there's no point stopping before Western tech unless you have to because the ruler dies and you no longer have the ADM for it.

 

[TheArchMede]

Could your elephants make it to Maine ? Please do something about that Austria...

My objectives were:
i) prevent europeans taking any more provinces off the Ottos and help the Ottos gain more off them.
ii) acquire the rest of Africa (except the bits held by Ottos)
iii) acquire the rest of Asia (except the bits held by Ottos)
iv) push the Westerners as far West as possible. (There wasn't enough BB available to make it to Maine)

While the elephants were functional at 1750, by 1800 they weren't. I was taking 100x the casualties in shock phases and I didn't realise just how much artillery my field armies would need in time to build enough to squash Austria (I reckon I'd have needed 400k of 50% artillery armies to devote to squashing them) and without that level of force I was having to manage the risk of them forcing provinces out of the Ottos in a separate peace. Austria got nibbled, but the elephants never marched on Vienna.

I could take down level 4 forts readily enough, but there were a lot of level 6 ones by the end, and keeping sieges of those going with the threat of 150k Austrians materialising out of the fog of war to relieve them was tricky. Thats how they kept Gotland. I wanted them out of the war so I could grab lots of Prussia and the siege didn't complete in time.

The Ottos only got one of their Balkan provinces back off Austria, but they did pick up several more in various locations.
I failed to grab all of Scandinavia due to them having just too much of Flanders for me to annex them in the last round so they kept their capital (in Finland!). This is why there are elephants in Antwerp. Castille and England had bits of Scandinavia, which is why there's a Delhi chunk of Spain connecting some of the Otto bits.

There's an OPM vassal in Hedjaz that escaped annexation due to joining a war in which the Ottos were the leaders so I couldn't get it peaced out but thats the only holdout in Asia or Africa. Lots of revolters in the Americas (helps to keep the sphere large). I tended to keep wars against England short, because they could transport annoyingly large armies and trounce everything except my main fleet so thats why a few Americans weren't force released.

Surprisingly enough, that is Chile where Chile is.

 

[Kovax]

Neat!

So 2-3 rounds of Westernization is achievable as early as 1600? I thought it would take longer, but I've never really tried it myself...

I managed it with Dai Nam in a game several years ago, starting the process somewhere around 1590 (plus or minus a couple) and completing it within 15 years. The turning point was seizing a province from the Mamluks adjacent to one held by Castille, enabling Westernization. The screenshot was from later in the campaign, in 1682, with a bit more territory added around India and Arabia, but shows the linkup with Castille.

https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/563562/EU3_MAP_DAI_1682.6.20_1.jpg

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

My objectives were:
i) prevent europeans taking any more provinces off the Ottos and help the Ottos gain more off them.
ii) acquire the rest of Africa (except the bits held by Ottos)
iii) acquire the rest of Asia (except the bits held by Ottos)
iv) push the Westerners as far West as possible. (There wasn't enough BB available to make it to Maine)

While the elephants were functional at 1750, by 1800 they weren't. I was taking 100x the casualties in shock phases and I didn't realise just how much artillery my field armies would need in time to build enough to squash Austria (I reckon I'd have needed 400k of 50% artillery armies to devote to squashing them) and without that level of force I was having to manage the risk of them forcing provinces out of the Ottos in a separate peace. Austria got nibbled, but the elephants never marched on Vienna.

I could take down level 4 forts readily enough, but there were a lot of level 6 ones by the end, and keeping sieges of those going with the threat of 150k Austrians materialising out of the fog of war to relieve them was tricky. Thats how they kept Gotland. I wanted them out of the war so I could grab lots of Prussia and the siege didn't complete in time.

The Ottos only got one of their Balkan provinces back off Austria, but they did pick up several more in various locations.
I failed to grab all of Scandinavia due to them having just too much of Flanders for me to annex them in the last round so they kept their capital (in Finland!). This is why there are elephants in Antwerp. Castille and England had bits of Scandinavia, which is why there's a Delhi chunk of Spain connecting some of the Otto bits.

View attachment 943439

There's an OPM vassal in Hedjaz that escaped annexation due to joining a war in which the Ottos were the leaders so I couldn't get it peaced out but thats the only holdout in Asia or Africa. Lots of revolters in the Americas (helps to keep the sphere large). I tended to keep wars against England short, because they could transport annoyingly large armies and trounce everything except my main fleet so thats why a few Americans weren't force released.

View attachment 943440
Surprisingly enough, that is Chile where Chile is.
View attachment 943441

I remember you doing quite the same with Vijaynagar but this one looks significantly more successful. I guess you made the most of the Holy War CB. Allying with other Sunni Indians and letting them pay the price of your common wars until you're left alone to take on the big Hindus... it's evil, but smart.

Your elephants didn't make it to Maine but Austria still had to worry about Delhi troops directly at their borders, and I like it.

 

[TheArchMede]

Its not that unlikely to see Holland converting Japan in the late 17th century, but this game Kyoto is Hindu!

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Its not that unlikely to see Holland converting Japan in the late 17th century, but this game Kyoto is Hindu!

Is this a... Dutch WC ?

 

[TheArchMede]

Its Dutch being Dutch. Lots of the wrong things for WC. Reformed religion. Free Trade. Merchant republic. Holy war in India and further east after sailing there rather than after conquering everything in between first. NL not even formed yet when a WC would need to be sealing off the GH from others colonisation. Taking colonies off other powers rather than stopping them colonising in the first place (at least in the Americas, the VOC is being a bit pre-emptive in the Pacific). The best colonial scalp has been Paris after the French moved capital to Peru, exposing France to the colonial CB. A lot of the world is going to end up Dutch, but it won't be anywhere close to all of it. All spice provinces will be conquered, the VOC will have a monopoly in its part of the world, everywhere that was Dutch at some time in its history will end up Dutch, anyone that gets in the way will have colonies seized from them, and there will be an anti-monarchical rampage in the closing decades. However I suspect there'll still be over 300 provinces that aren't Dutch in 1820.

 

[jhhowell]

Is Hindu Japan so unusual? Vijayanagar is a powerful Hindu state with a decent navy, seems plausible that they could come into conflict with Japan at some point and force convert them in a peace settlement. (I may do that shortly in my Hindustan game...)

The best colonial scalp has been Paris after the French moved capital to Peru

I think you posted the wrong screenshot!

I suppose in the interest of staying on-topic, I'll post Hindustan in 1562:

This is about the last point I'll be able to get everything on one screen (for clarity - Calabar, Mutapa's former coast, the Indian Ocean islands, Java & provinces just to the east, and Taiwan are Hindustani). Westernization complete a decade or so back, two of each manufactory built (aside from Fine Arts, still waiting on tech for that), focusing on colonizing Indonesia since it's not "distant overseas". I have a vague notion of eventually trying to take over Canada, since my state culture is Kannada, but I'm not working very hard on that. Spies knock out Austrian colonies (yay full Mercantilism!) but I doubt I can keep them, France, and Great Britain away for long enough. Probably will get western Canada colonizing from the Pacific, eventually. AI weirdness - Persia went nuts on the hordes and has a lot of territory in Russia. The Persia/Muscovy/Golden Horde borders are not the clearest, to put it mildly. For some reason Persia never stopped paying tribute to the Timurids, though.

Fun game, quite possibly the best I've had in EU3.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Its Dutch being Dutch. Lots of the wrong things for WC. Reformed religion. Free Trade. Merchant republic. Holy war in India and further east after sailing there rather than after conquering everything in between first. NL not even formed yet when a WC would need to be sealing off the GH from others colonisation. Taking colonies off other powers rather than stopping them colonising in the first place (at least in the Americas, the VOC is being a bit pre-emptive in the Pacific). The best colonial scalp has been Paris after the French moved capital to Peru, exposing France to the colonial CB. A lot of the world is going to end up Dutch, but it won't be anywhere close to all of it. All spice provinces will be conquered, the VOC will have a monopoly in its part of the world, everywhere that was Dutch at some time in its history will end up Dutch, anyone that gets in the way will have colonies seized from them, and there will be an anti-monarchical rampage in the closing decades. However I suspect there'll still be over 300 provinces that aren't Dutch in 1820.

Looking forward to see that then ! One screenshot is not enough

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Well, since there are people on board, I join in, just to say that I eventually finished my French WC a while ago. Not a surprising achievement with the BBB, but still a very good game (and my only WC so far).

I made a whole lot of screenshots in the process but now I'm afraid it would be a bit tedious to tell the whole story. I'll just mention that :
- colonization was never an issue and was complete by 1750 , except for Mauritius and Bourbon I had completely forgotten to discover and ended up taking around 1800 !
- the only country that actually took QFTNW and I had to destroy in a hurry was Brittany ;
- I integrated my PU Naples in the1640's to take advantage of the Italian ambition mission, right before I turned against Sunni Sicily and Malta in the last round of Holy Wars ;
- I had to wait until 1704 (and a long period of peace, leading to a BB close to 0) to duly inherit my other PUs Aragon and Bohemia ;
- I was quite obsessed with BB management until the very last part of the game, and somehow managed to reach a BB reduction level of 4/year, which I didn't think was even possible.

Now for something different...

The plot : Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French) was the former capital city of Charlemagne empire, so I decided to recreate the latter on a republican and Protestant basis. Here I am almost halfway in the process : the HRE is gone, most of its members are my vassals, and I have started to conquer France. I plan to have them force release Britanny (which was never part of Charlemagne's empire). I also prevented Poland to go into space after they inherited Lithuania (and made a good friend there : that Ukraine is one of the most impressive I have seen) and put Castille in its place (they had taken Provence !), releasing Aragon, Granada and Galicia as fellow Republics. Same with England after they had annexed Scotland... the rest of the world, I don't really care about.

And now for something completely different...

I have started a new series of Moghol formations with each one of the Hordes who can do it (apart from Timurids and Chagatai, which I had already done).


Oïrat Horde :

Kazakhstan :

Golden Horde :

Similar requirements, but quite different strategies here, especially on the long term. Still wondering which one will be the most interesting to play... I like the Buddhist Oirat Mughal, but they will lack some proper CBs to expand. GH Mughal is obviously the most powerful and is facing two possible destinies : catching up in tech level with the Westerners and expanding towards Russia and Lithuania (I've been in peace with them all for a while, they used to pay me tribute) ; or going back to the ancestral lands in the East and even further - that would mean a complete conquest of Manchu, Ming, and a sucessfull assault where the previous Mongol attempts failed for some Divine Wind reasons : Japan.

I'm usually not very comfortable with playing Hordes, I find permanent wars, crappy tech development, and above all TSCs, very annoying. But here I must confess I've been using an exploit that AI itself taught me... remember that Spanish game where Golden Horde was canceling wars just by calling their vassal Siberia to arms ? Well I've been doing that. Made sure to keep one neighbour Horde as a vassal, so each time I was exhausted, and especially right before forming Mughal, I peaced out with all the dangerous foes I was facing (especially Rajputana, Vijaynagar and Bihar) and I got a long enough truce to put things in order in my realm. It has proved useful since large Indian armies become quite impossible to beat with Horde armies once they reach level 6 or 7, as I had experienced with my Chatagai Mughal game a long time ago. Now I can wait to have reformed my army to Muslim type before I get to fight the Indians again.

I have yet to try to form Mughal with the Mongol Khanate, but I'm afraid this one is well beyond my player skills...

 

[TheArchMede]

4.5 BB burn might require something cheesy to get, but over 4.0 is definitely on in the closing stages when you can monopolise the cardinals. I think you don't even need the enlightened despot bonus, but there's definitely leeway if you have that government.

Dutch homelands. Pretty small compared to the overseas empire, which is quite constraining.

Note the small amount of manpower available. The force limit is close to 1M but the manpower pool is only 170k and easily exhausted whenever I decide I need to raise a few more armies. I'm actually quite dependent on the event bonuses to fill it up. Note also the hundreds of frigates floating around, I had to take Grand Navy last time I got an idea and I'm now close to running out of naval force limit again. That Great Spy is coming in handy for getting back the stab from the latest vassal annexation. The Dutch have been force vassalling mission targets and annexing a vassal a decade for centuries, which is how most of this territory was acquired. A few mission and event cores plus a few French colonies. Interestingly, while I can't take French provinces in South America with the colonial CB, I was able to take one off their English allies along with Limousin in the last colonial war.

 

[BurningEGO]

Damn impressive, 2023 and people still playing eu3!!!! These graphics are so horrible that I would prefer to be playing EU2.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

I might have changed my mind about Mongol Khanate.

jez9999 was right : if you win that first big battle against Manchu, the road ahead gets a lot clearer. But for me it was when I realized I could actually take provinces from Ming (including Beijing, which I promptly renamed Khanbaliq) that I started to enjoy it.​

Not sure about what to do in the long run though. I'm overextended for the moment (which means an average rate of 1 or 2 random revolts a month, at least), not to mention TSCs. I will eventually have all Ming territory cored around 1520 but my tech development is painfully slow. Looks like a long and dull time to wait before I can modernize the country, either by reaching Gov Tech 10 or by conquering my way to Mughal region (but the Indians could be pretty unbeatable for me at this point).

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Also, Deccan is all about beating Vijaynagar early on. The PU with Delhi was kinda random though.

Westernization and modernization went surprisingly smooth and quick (thank you Holland for purchasing that Kongo colony). Deccan is now a rich, advanced and powerful country with lots of potential. It's almost a shame to form Hindustan and get rid of this nice color map, but it's the best way to expand further on into the subcontinent now.

 

[jhhowell]

Nice! Are you playing with a self-imposed no colonization restriction? What is the purpose of fully occupying the Timurids multiple times? I eventually mostly-occupied them to get them to pay tribute and stop annoying me with the automatic wars.

Re: Mongol Khanate, that seems as impressive as it is masochistic!

 

[TheArchMede]

If the Timmies are fully occupied they can't mess with your colonists, no-one else can colonise them, and Persian revolters can't grab all the good provinces before you can colonise your way to them.

Meanwhile the era of colonial warfare progresses. Castille had a lot of colonies.

There go 17 of them, but they still have quite a lot. There were 4 wars with similar sized chunks being peeled off each time. Colonial warfare is a bit like peeling an onion, the CB just allows you to take the outermost layer each time. However, all those colonies filled the gap from holy religious wars until holy governmental wars. I barely had to resort to 2BB/province CBs at all.

Its a few decades later than 1688, but the Glorious Revolutionary Dutch are on their way.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

As you said, TheArchMede :

If the Timmies are fully occupied they can't mess with your colonists, no-one else can colonise them, and Persian revolters can't grab all the good provinces before you can colonise your way to them.

I started to really get the upper hand over them while I was in the middle of the process of Westernization, and I figured out I'd better keep them under control, but without colonizing because I needed to recover from stab hits as fast a possible - and for that purpose I'd better not expand my territory. Then I formed Hindustan and the wars to recover my cores took a few more years (not that they were difficult at all with my modernized army, but big countries like Rajputana and Bihar had to be occupied for a while until they accepted full annexation). The Timurids remained under my control all this time. Truce would only last 5 years whether I made them pay tribute or concede defeat and I wouldn't bother starting a fight all over. In the meantime the Mamluks got in touch with the Tiimmies and they were very likely to start colonizing theses provinces if I released them. Right now I'm thinking about ending that long war though, because revolt risk has gone through the roof, it's annoying and I have other plans (attack Tibet and make my way to China).

Good job with NL, I never thought of colonial wars as a handy replacement to holy wars for a cheap BB CB. Shall we have a world map when you're finished ?