The Three Mountains: A Ryukyu AAR

[DDRJake]

Good luck!

Your AARs are the best I've ever read and it's an honour to have such a skilled writer reading. I can't do narrative, so I don't even try.

subbed. Loved your Ryukyu WC for Eu3

Cheers. Let's hope for more madness!

I have a feeling that this will be glorious no matter what

Glorious yes, but maybe not for Ryukyuns, at least not yet

Ryukyu for the win! I'll be following this with much anticipation

Thanks. They have a special place in my heart ever since I found AI Ryukyu crushing South-East Asia when I finally discovered them.

Good luck certainly gonna watch this AAR

Cheers, I'll need it

HAIL RUYKU guys

Hail!

Jesus, I wish you good luck

No, it's not Jesus, it's DDRJake

Madman! You are a madman! Good luck!

I get called mad a lot.

Will follow. I want to see this madness!

see above

it's here! praise the sun!

The sun won't set on the Ryukyun empire, we cannot be trusted in the dark.

we shall conquere the world by peace WITH FORCE!

I almost shared my lunch with the screen laughing at that.

Subbed, good luck!

Thanks!

May the best of luck be with you.

I'll need better than that

I want to believe!

Me too

Oh good.May the Sun always shine upon you DDRJake

I'm working on it!

Bringing communism to the masses again?

Subbing, always enjoyed your investigations of game mechanics - especially now since my PC is too flaky to run EU4 - as I found out the hard way last night

That's nasty news. You were an inspiration in my early years of EU3 and I hope you can rise to glory when you upgrade.

This promises to be worthwhile.

I promise little.

Nice to see you try it again. Even if you do not succeed, I expect the AAR to be very educational.

For both you and me. I'm already discovering horrible things to my financial peril.

I never saw your EU3 one, but I'm in time for this!

Welcome! You should make some challenges for EU4 once everybody has had a chance to get a few normal games done.

The is the achievement called "The Three Mountains"?

From the three principalities of the Kingdom of Ryukyu: 北山, 中山 and 南山, 山 meaning "mountain"

Bearing in mind that other than a couple of short games as Alsace and Mongol Khanate, this is my only EU4 campaign. Things have already been going wrong with my 1/1/1 ruler living to well over 65, but those are the breaks.

Jumping right into the thick of it I vassalise Champa and took one piece of land to forge claims on and then further vassalise Lang Xiang, Pegu and Dai Viet. Aggressive expansion penalties don't really mean much to me right now, I feel pretty safe on my island. The drawback is that I had to annex Pegu, I couldn't vassalise them for some reason (they weren't in a PU or already a vassal) so I annexed them and released them. What a fool I was, I forgot that this makes them Animist. For the next 50 years or so, Pegu was in a constant state of revolt, constantly collapsing to rebels.

Unfortunately, and I mean really very unfortunately, Ming got torn to shreds by revolt and a massive coalition. This means that my trade income from their node, which previously brought in over 7 ducats a month (the key to finding the Ryukyun armies) was reduced to about 1 ducat per month. Ming never recovers.

The war for Dai Viet was truly awful. I had shipped over 14,000 of my finest men, but did not count on Khmer being able to fund such a large army while being a subject of Ayutthaya. Thankfully, Dai Viet remained war leader and an agreeable peace deal was decided upon.

Now I feel that I have a decent powerbase, I think about where to aim my new subjects' spears. I don't have any CBs at all so I send a loan to Ayutthaya thinking I could punch some money out of them and any others who join in. I was in luck, Ayutthaya was at war and full of revolting muslims when they failed to repay me and I launch in with an attack. Unfortunately, I did not notice their troops advance upon me and before my reinforcements arrived, they wiped my main force and then mopped up what little I had left, before making short work of the vassal armies. Things looked very bad and I thought my run was already over, but rebels swiftly became my friends. Ayutthaya was so rife with rebellion that I was granted a blessing. Doubly so when I found indirect benefits from this otherwise failed war.

Previously in EU3 I became a horde and marched West, devouring everything in sight. For this attempt at least, I've decided to look to a new horizon.

We are now American Japanese! We punch money and land out of natives, then sell it back for more money to fund our colonies!

I set up as many colonies I can until I notice...I was running a 90 ducat per month deficit! It seems that while 1 colony may cost 2 ducats in upkeep, 2 cost 5, 3 cost 12, 4 cost 20 and so on. I Thought again that my run had ended due to my greed, but I decide that my best American friend can "borrow" these from me, at least for a short while.

Go away Spain. Goawaygoawaygoaway.

 

[DDRJake]

Already, your strategy is incredibly crazy . Shame that I can only barely read the text in the images.

Yeah, that's a frequent criticism I get when posting up things like this. linking to Steam with IMG tags is just so easy and I love preserving the full 1920*1080 res.

Rickt click -> view image to see it in full or come up with a suggestion.

 

[DDRJake]

Great AAR, I'm not reading too many AARs right now, but this one I would follow for sure. As to the Peasant War. I was very unlucky playing France. After 4 years of Hundred Years War, I was victorious but I have minimum manpower, then coalition formed against me and I have no manpower, and then after 5 years of game, Peasant War stared destroying my Ironman mode game. I Hope that you will not experience that.

I've been reading about that. I've also been reading about the horrible endless Catholic zealots destroying Japanese-cultured countries. I'll have to be on my guard or Paradox had better get patching fast!

You've gone for the hardest achievement in your first game!

I maintain that Nadj will be harder

Impressive, keep going

Thanks. With the shorter timeframe (game still ends in 1820, right?) I'm very anxious about any time where I'm not conquering new lands one way or another.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to attempt the famous Ryukyu world conquest. Apparently not long at all. Good luck.

I'll keep trying 'till it's mine, even if this AAR is 99 pages of failure.

Now for a short update to see if this is working. I cropped down my pictures so that they should display better here. It also saves on how much I need to upload (running off of mobile internet both when I post and when I play here)

I set up a colony next to Maya so I could forge a claim and fight them without losing precious stability. All my ADM is being spent on coring and advancing tech while every drop of DIP is being put towards the colonisation tech tree. When I can afford it, I'll be getting the Diplomacy tech tree as well. It's all about gaining some CBs and coring cheaper. I would love to get the expansion tech tree so that I can have more colonists, but it looks like Nei Wibaru is going to have to do all the hard work himself.

I almost feel sorry for how poorly these Americans fight but I should be warned, this is doubtlessly how the Europeans will be feeling when they meet me. I sell a couple of provinces back to Maya for a total of about 800 ducats to fund a new, better DIP advisor and to give me a large pool of money for colonisation. I am always running a loss.

The year is 1518. Spain has 3 Brazilian colonies nearing completion. I need to begin defending the Americas very soon.

By the way, being Animist means that sieges progress 50% faster. At one point in this war, I was getting a siege "tick" every 3 days

 

[DDRJake]

That's quite the advantage

Ryukyu is Animist. sieges will be 50% faster against me, and I'm not spendng precious MIL points fortifying all my everything.

 

[DDRJake]

Great progress so far! Even if it is rather 'inventive'!

Thanks for your kind words also.

Honestly, every time I think I've got a solid game plan and know what I'm doing, I discover a little bit in the game that prevents me from doing it, as if paradox knew what I would try to do. Things aren't so much inventive as the are "made up on the fly"

Wow this is such a crazy AAR! Wish you good luck!

Crazy, mad, insane! I'll show you all!

Following with interest. ^_^

Glad to have you

Does Ryukyu have Japanese culture? If so, would it be possible to somehow become Shogun? Would be quite handy to have 10 diplomatic relationships...

Ryukyu is the only Japanese nation not involved in the Shogunate system as far as I'm aware. There is no way to become a shogunate unless through some miracle you can become one through rebels or revolutionary war. But by becoming Japan you would no longer be eligible for the achievement.

This is quite the AAR. Following

Cheers!

I remember conducting a siege against pagans (Portugal vs Kongo) with 4-day phases, so being native with negative defensiveness modifiers is really fatal for an animist country. Will follow the AAR till the very end.

Thanks. No idea how far away that "the end" is. It certainly won't be in 3 days like the last time.

Hopefully the Ming stay shattered and weak until you've wrung everything you can out of the New World. Punish them for ruining your economy and all that.

The Iron Mountains march on!

Honestly, Ming falling apart was a massive blow to me. As Ryukyu, you don't want Ming losing any territory to anyone for as long as you trade through their node.

And I adore that name. If I could roll back the clock I would make The Iron Mountains this AAR name. Perhaps a kind passing Moderator could do such a favour.

I shall follow this madness! >.<

If only the real Ryukyu got this many followers

Dont worry about Spain, they will get beated by France. France beats everyone, it's the return of BBB.
Anyway, good luck. I'd love to see the huge 'Ryukyu' spanning from Lisboa to Kamchatka. (And few other small 'Ryukyus' on Americas, Africa and Australia.)

Like this?

Spoiler

You may be a prophet. From what I've seen Spain are having exactly those problems.

On with the game! I continue to give my pagan friends some territories to grow for me. Cherokee finish off three of them and I take them back, before giving them 2 new ones to foster. Interestingly, the colonies still grew under my occupation without me paying for them. This may come in handy for future colonial wars.

I marched and sailed around Spain's lands to see how they are doing. Frighteningly well is the answer but they are also periodically waging wars of reconquest on France and getting well and truly nailed for it despite strong allies. I never thought I'd be cheering on the BBB but I'm hoping they can keep Spain in check for me. I also finish bringing the Mayans into the fold. It seems that you can demand all of their land AND more so long as you have a discount on your reasons to go to war, which thankfully I have because, hey, what else are those DIP points going to be spent on?

A quick look at the map just to get things in perspective.

Immediate goals are to seal off all areas for European colonies and to gain strength. Overextension is going to be a killer but I really need to get conquering.
It's 1530. There are 290 years left with which to conquer...about 1700 provinces?

 

[DDRJake]

The Caribbean is likely the richest area in your immediate proximity. If I were you, I would focus on colonising the isles instead of Gran Colombia. It's not as if you're spending much money on wars.

Gran Colombia will not give me overextension until I connect it to my capital. The Carribean will. I don't mind if Protugal grabs a few of the islands, but I must secure Northern South America. Overseas provinces of your culture also, unless I am -horribly- mistaken, cost only 10% to core.

 

[DDRJake]

It appears we will soon find out, potentially to my peril.

 

[DDRJake]

My dearest sir,

Why U NO MOAR UPDATE ?

Don't underestimate how much of my play time is spent sitting, staring at the world map, then getting up, taking a walk and pondering, mulling over how to progress.

For every breakthrough I've had in said thinking sessions I've found several drawbacks in-game. I've actually hatched a masterful plan which I think should not only work, but actually make this achievement rather easy and leave me with time to spare, unless of course, there are setbacks. And there are always setbacks.

None the less, it would require a restart and I am going to see my current run through to the end.

Sure enough, coring overseas provinces of your culture appears to make them trivial in cost. For this reason alone, I am not joining up South America with North America until all of my colonies there are cored. One of the biggest choke points for a WC, as far as I can see, is having the ADM points to core as much land as you can, before going on an all-out blitz and ignoring overextension. For this reason, all of my ADM points have been going towards coring and getting tech level 7 to get my next tech tree. Level 7 is close, but I will not go to level 8, probably ever.

remember good old pagan Pegu? It took about 13 years but I brought them into the fold. One of the troops they left me with was a literally useless, 0 morale shell of a regiment. Another one to chalk up on the bugs list.

Here's a dastardly idea I had. I couldn't stop Portugal and Spain from colonising some of these lands, but I got military access form them, lowered my maintenance and marched on and off of their islands to invoke constant native uprisings, damaging their colonies. If I had thought of this sooner, I could have left Spain and Portugal with only about 4 colonies each in total. At this point though, it's not really worthwhile. A shame, but perhaps it'll come in useful another time.

I'm just finishing off the natives now. It's about 1555 I think. I'm absolutely dripping with thousands of ducats and have a lot of MIL and DIP stored up, most of my lands are cored or coring. The next session is going to be the heavy one: I'll have to launch my attack on Europe. The big 4 are all tied together: Portugal is allied to both Spain and Great Britain, while France is defender of the Catholic faith. I'm confident I can win such a war, but the cost could be astronomical.

 

[DDRJake]

Deep breaths now..

 

[DDRJake]

Bring it on, Iberian Westernised scum!

I DON'T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MANY MERCS I CAN AFFORD, AND HOW LITTLE I CARE ABOUT THEIR LIVES

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[DDRJake]

I am interested in how you moved your capital to the Americas. It is a great idea, basicaly for anyone, but how to pull it off?
you can declare on the natives without a CB, conquer a province.. but you can't core it because it's not in range, and you can't move the capital there normaly because that requires a core (the tooltip says). So how did you do it Sir?
EDIT: do you somehow have to lose your current capital? how is that possible?

There is no need to lose your capital. If you have fleet-basing rights from a nation you can use their "coring" range. Since I vassalised Shawnee, I was therefor able to core any province next to them. Once I had my core, I moved capital.

This is a painful update. Pictures first, then explanation.

The war with Spain went well, very well in fact. You could even say it went perfectly. I had them down on their knees and I was able to get exactly what I wanted without costing me too much of anything. I released Castille as a Pagan vassal, ripping the guts out of Spain while at the same time giving me a powerful ally that I could later integrate.

Or so my feeble understanding led me to believe. Well no, it seems that once a nation ceases to exist, it stops teching too, so the Castille that I had released had even worse technology than I had. Well my future plans were to do exactly the same to Guyenne and England but they too would have pathetic tech and be no help in future wars so...yeah.

Never mind though, I soldiered on. I rushed the "counter revolution" idea" so I could become a republic and ensure I always had a ruler with good ADM while also preventing loss of stability from royal deaths. I encountered the Noble Republic of Cyprus. Yes, they'll do, but damn, I need a land border to get the CB. Not a problem, I'll sell them one of my Iberian holdings. I declare war and they have powerful friends, but I don't care, they remain war leader in a counter-revolution war so they quickly make peace, turning me into a noble republic.

Okay, I become a noble republic with one point of republic tradition. Okay, that does make sense, I'll just have to maintain it by making new leaders every year, not much of a drawback.

Except that I was very close to annexing Shawnee, and when I did an event popped up costing me 10 republican tradition. This put me back to a Despotic monarchy with a worse ruler than I previously had and 0 legitimacy. Sensing my weakness, Spain declared war, resulting in the total loss of Castille.

I decided a do-or-die war with Ming would sort things out. I declared war on them with no CB, planning to vassalise them, get all of their former lands back and then integrate them, but I feel that it is too little to late. The rebels are there on purpose: if I let them collapse me I can revert back to 0 stability and 0 War Exhaustion at the cost of 50% taxes in some select provinces which isn't too bad because I am still dripping with thousands of ducats and make plenty from trade, but I really feel that I should take the lessons learned and start anew.

A much more aggressive start is in order.

 

[DDRJake]

My second attempt will be here, in fact every attempt will be kept to this thread until I manage to nail it. Thanks for the kind words. I'm not all too surprised that this run ended in a ball of flames, but from the burning wreckage I think I've hatched a new, even crazier idea.

 

[DDRJake]

A lot has been learned and i am currently in the early stages of a very promising attempt. I've broken a bunch of game mechanics to the point where I really think this will work. We're not exactly at "inherit Ming and become a horde" level but I've certainly unearthed some dark magic which will surely be patched out.

Progress will be posted in a couple days or so, if I can complete my all or nothing gambit by then.

Edit: you cannot declare more than 1 war per month. A nice touch.

 

[DDRJake]

I hope nobody minds cheese, because this playthrough is absolutely honking of it. If you read any of my games you'll have come to expect it though I'm sure

I want to keep the details under wraps just a little longer. I showed my housemate and his reaction was "this is dangerous, I wish I didn't know that now"

None the less, here's where we are to date: It's 1485

DON'T KEEP ME WAITING, PORTUGAL​

 

[DDRJake]

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Those Iberians are around here somewhere, I can smell them!

 

[DDRJake]

The first attempt you headed east and colonized the Americas and now you're marching all the way across Eurasia. The surprises never end. I'm guessing you're hoping to beat up Portugal and Spain before they can colonize, right?

Somebody give this man a gold medal!

Jeez Castile, you look crap. Aragon, thanks for the military access and fleet basing rights. I promise that won't come back to haunt you.

Not so hot without your guns this time, are you Poortugal?

I bring Castile into the fold. I had to break truce, I have WE up the arse but absolutely everything has been accounted for and steps taken to ensure Ryukyun superiority!

Except I didn't expect Aragon to Annex Castile months after I vassaliased them. A painful loss, I wanted to keep them Catholic, but not to worry, I gob them out with some of my conquered provinces. They may be Pagan, but they still have cores to be reclaimed.

I don't think I've ever hit the WE cap before ever. Hurray!!​

 

[DDRJake]

Ryuthulhu? Well, even if Ryukyu is not the representative of Cthulhu on earth, the puny catholics doesn't have a chance! What's your tech like, btw, and what, if any, idea group did you pick, and what is overextension like?

Overextension is at a managable level. I took Tibetan provinces because they have awful basetax so are quick to core. I need to have a superior number of provinces compared to my vassals or else they get all up in my face about it and refuse to be integrated. I don't know if they will ever declare war from feeling superior, but I dare not take the risk.

As for tech? I should have picked exploration, but I went diplomatic. Fortunately, the Ryukyun dynasty, regents included, are descendents of god and have all had incredible ADM, allowing me to reach ADM 7 in time. I got my conquistador and, well, more to come about that.

The little black flags. The exiled troops can march into terra incognita without a conquistador? That is interesting.

EDIT: Maybe the point is not about the conquistador (seeing you could have got the exploration ideas now). But the exiled troops bit is already impressive.

Mmm~ not quite

This is exploitative gameyness at a scale so grand that it is almost beautiful.

I play only by the rulebook written by paradox.

Vassals annex very, very quickly. Xi had reclaimed almost all of her cores and I felt her use had expired.

I let me WE cool off to a degree before snagging land off of Aragon. It was a very long war but I fought it at the right time. Everyone still had Men At Arms which are on par with my offensive eastern foot troops. I made sure Castile occupied their own lands so that in the peace deal, the cost to my own diplomatic points were low. I had hoped that Aragon would be so crushed that Castilian revolts would break them but sadly, they were too powerful and bounced back fairly quickly.

I'm sorry Portugal, your time as an independent nation is Ogre.

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I'm waiting for black magic report!

Me too !

Okay, here is reveal #1 of many. Spoilered for those who would rather not know

Spoiler

Exiled troops. There are a few ways to get them. End a war with them inside another nation, lose military access from a nation that they are situated in or even sell land which they were in. Exiled troops remain exiled until they land in a province controlled by you or someone you have military access from.

While exiled, the troops will not fight. Not enemies, not rebels, not natives, they are simply invincible to all but attrition. They make excellent spies to lift fog of war and can walk on any land. I had thought that they could even walk through Terra Incognito but sadly, that does require a conquistador. None the less, I used them to "island hop" most of the way West.

So what can you do with exiled troops? After some initial testing, me and the guys who fought against Rome along side me in the quest for Pink set out to see what could be done with them. We had hoped that the AI could be fooled by them and develop a "black curtain" tactic but the AI was having none of it. For a while these exiled troops were looking a bit useless, until we saw that they loot.

Invincible troops, and they loot.

If you are a dev and reading this, there's one for the bug list. Also, say hi!

That's all for now. I have a massive red beast and a big blue blob to dismantle.

 

[DDRJake]

Breaking up the Big Blue Blob is something that must be done in every EU game. They managed to get 3 colonies in Africa and 1 in the Caribbean but I'm not too concerned, their back is broken.

I won't feel safe until I manage to secure a steady border in Europe, a line from Calais to Provence would do, because I cannot recruit any mercs in Europe and I'm not keen on using my precious manpower too much over there. I'm trying to snake my way West at the same time so I can simple march my mercs over there but, man, these coalitions! European troops are now getting far superior to mine and although Portugal and Castile can punch hard, Guyenne has tech levels of about 5-5-5. What a pain.

I had so much ADM that I was able to get my 3rd idea. Defensive! We need to do something about that -50% fort defense that animists get.

 

[DDRJake]

More Dark Magic will be revealed at arbitrary intervals. If you think you some of it then feel free to PM me, but let's keep the story going without such deviations for now.

And what's happening is horrible. Firearms are spreading throughout Europe like, well, wildfire. I believe that any revolts from my core provinces keep their pathetic pointy sticks but those that aren't, well...

​

But at least we're getting some real momentum going.

Does anyone know what happens when you integrate a nation who has some non-cores? Do you also not get cores on it?

 

[DDRJake]

My men are dying and I am crying but maybe if we throw more bodies at them they will drown in our blood.

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