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Crush...oh well
A further drive on India?

:p

hmm so you are going to switch this to viky I for one have never played Vicky so it'll be intresting I wonder what you are going to switch to. That would be cool have a Mega-Campain where you switch countries every game like CK-EU3-Vicky-HoI3

I've said all I could (which is probably more than I should). There's still some 220 years left of EU3.

Methinks that another punitive expedition into Austria is required...

Eventually. At this point I'm starting to play it less as if it were a game, and more as if it were real life, so already the treaty with Austria was crazy extreme, and if I invaded again I'd get a coalition of France, Spain, and Scandinavaia attacking me, but since that kind of politicking can't really be replicated within the game engine, I just have to place myself under house rules.

Perhaps a Plater could be put on the throne in Austria...

Excellent AAR, by the way.

Well...

This was posted after the Plater dynasty took over the crown of Georgia:
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And this is the banner on the front page of this AAR:
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Notice anything? :D

Maybe even Akos himself ... "Akos I Plater King of Transylvania and Austria, Lord of Jerusalem, Despot of all Greeks, Tsar of the Bulgarians and Wlachs, etc."

Edit : Please Emperor Akos, spare me, it was a honest mistake, i didn't mean to call you king.

Ákos will be the nice guy this time...but I'm watching you! :rofl:
 
:eek:

That's... That's just...

Excellent. :D
 
Of course, it could mean another crown beside Austria's...
 
I ment after you finsh all this, A huge 4 country mega-campaign to see how well the the computer handles things like a Europe-CK, then Asia-EU3, then It's up too how the world progresses for Vicky and HoI3 that would be so cool :eek: but I'am not an expert on modding so what do I know :cool:
 
Or maybe you are planning to live up to the title of the AAR and now play the long and deep fall of Transsylvania.
Well it wouldn't be a very intresting story if we knew the end would it... however if he wanted us to think it would end one way but in fact he's going to end it in another way... well, now that could be awesome! :D
 
Probably Poland.


Bloody poles.

Oh poor Poland :(

I ment after you finsh all this, A huge 4 country mega-campaign to see how well the the computer handles things like a Europe-CK, then Asia-EU3, then It's up too how the world progresses for Vicky and HoI3 that would be so cool :eek: but I'am not an expert on modding so what do I know :cool:

It would be a lot of work modding everything so its still in the same world, so I doubt I'd be up to the task.

Or maybe you are planning to live up to the title of the AAR and now play the long and deep fall of Transsylvania.

Nono. I have a different story roughed out for Victoria if I get around to doing it.

Well it wouldn't be a very intresting story if we knew the end would it... however if he wanted us to think it would end one way but in fact he's going to end it in another way... well, now that could be awesome! :D

:D

---

Also, this is a collage of the most commonly used words from all the past chapters:

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Just so people know what they're getting into before they start reading haha. Update should be done by tonight (sorry for the lateness)
 

“You know what I want?”

“A new wife?”

Ákos chuckled with a hint of annoyance, “A new wife, what?”

“I’m not going to call you Emperor, brother, we’ve been through this a hundred times by now.” Gábor gave a crooked smile in his brother’s direction as they walked down the palace grounds in Koloszvár.

“I should have you executed.”

“At least that would be somewhat interesting.”

“Bored? You would prefer to have been with István as the Szekely cavalry broke the Turkish lines at Tarten, hm?”

“Aye.”

Ákos sighed. He got the feeling as well that perhaps his brother had been born in the wrong age. Europe was finally moving away from the chaotic times of old into an era of boring politics and diplomatic tomfoolery instead of solving its disputes the ancient way – by steel and shield. Ákos opened his mouth to speak more on the subject, but his brother had already moved on.

“What is it you want?”

“Oh. I want the world to remember my name. I want the name Ákos to be uttered in all the tongues of man for centuries to come.”

“You’re already a bloody Emperor.”

“But I want more.”

----------------​

1607 came to a close as Austria crippled the recently independent nation of Brandenburg, taking all but Berlin, which would lay surrounded by Austrian territorial holdings anyways. They took provinces from Utrecht, from Wurttemberg, and Bohemia as well. Austria had clung to the sides of the deep abyss with all its might, and slowly it was climbing out from the edge of that pit. Though, in order to climb to safety again, they needed to drag others into the same pit, and very quickly the political minds in Europe were calling for action against the Austrian Kingdom who they believed was out of control. Ákos ignored such people; Austria knew its place now, they would not challenge Transylvania again for quite some time, the wounds that the Empire inflicted still fresh in their minds. The sole thing Ákos did against Austria was to ally with Lithuania yet again, and assist them in their war to vassalize Moldavia, which considering Moldavia’s position surrounded by Lithuania and Transylvanian, ended fairly quickly with total victory.

D9RJE.png

The Internal Government, after a rocky start in Constantinople, was finally beginning to perform the duties of provincial governance admirably, setting forth a number of reforms that resulted in a relatively smooth and surprisingly bloodless integration of Persian lands conquered during the Second Transylvanian Crusade (Luristan, Gilan, Sharizhor, Hamadan, Ajam, Khuzestan, and Mazandaran cores – Culture Accepted: Persian).

The next 6 years or so passed with relatively little going on. There was a scandal in the court as a rather well born lady was discovered to be having relations with one of her stable boys, and the Emperor’s brother fell off his horse and broke his leg, but other than that Transylvania remained fairly static, uncaring towards the Austrians regaining their power, and intent to simply wait and enjoy the massive wealth that was flowing into the purses of noble families who had 200 years previously been considered impoverished by other nation’s standards.

It wasn’t until Transylvania’s cardinal and representative to the Holy Father came to Emperor Ákos in July of 1613 with a letter bearing the seal of the Pope that things started to get a bit more interesting. Within the letter that Cardinal Zápolya gave to the Emperor was a request that the Transylvanian monarch would receive the full blessings of God’s representative on Earth if he would but take the province of Karbala from the Muslim nation of Hedjaz.

This was the point in which Ákos gained the nickname ‘The Great’, but it’s even still today conjures up a very heated debate whenever someone attaches the title to Emperor Ákos. You see, in Transylvania and Europe in general, what happened during this pursuit for the province of Karbala was seen as a wondrous display of Christian military might, but in other parts of the world, particularly those parts that were predominantly Muslim, Emperor Ákos is not seen as ‘The Great’, but more as ‘The Devil’.

The Army de Stiboricz and Koloszvár were brought to the border region between Transylvania and Hedjaz shortly after Ákos received the letter from the Pope, but it wasn’t until April of 1616 that war was declared, due to the necessity of assembling enough supplies and other necessities to brave the Arabian deserts. Hedjaz was already a rather fragmented country before the Transylvanian armies crossed the border, with rebellions wracking the Northern part of the country, and so the war was predicted to be a quick affair, shortly over with the objectives accomplished, which ended up being true, even with Hedjaz’s allies joining into the fray…but the war had far reaching effects that nobody could’ve predicted.

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The Transylvanian War for Karbala, started April 24th, 1616

Karbala fell quickly to the Army de Stiboricz, and Jabal Shammar followed suit in July of 1616, and if one were to look closely of the conduct on the armies there, already the warning signs were apparent, but Ákos, who was leading the Army de Stiboricz personally, either did not see them, did not care, or perhaps most damning of all – encouraged such behaviour. You see, when the Army de Stiboricz took the city of Ha'il in Jabal Shammar, more than a tenth of the population of the city was immediately put to the swords, and mosques and places of worship were burned all across the city. But this sort of destruction paled against what was to come.

The Army de Koloszvár had been tasked with advancing through the Mamluk provinces of Hawran, Al Karak, and then down into Hedjaz’s province of Tabouk in order to link up with the Army de Stiboricz for the final push to take Medina and finally Mecca. They accomplished their objectives by September, and the two armies finally rendezvoused with each other outside the gates of Medina in early November.

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The Arabian Campaign of the Karbala War
The assault on the city of Medina was relatively quick and bloodless despite the defenders numbering over 6,000 men, but in contrast to the fighting for the city, the fighting in the city was not quick, and was certainly not bloodless. The military units quickly surrendered, but the destruction of property, religious centres, and seats of governance was way beyond anything a city had experienced from Transylvanian armies before. A full quarter of the population of the city was killed, and it was said that the flames of Medina could be seen for hundreds of miles beyond the city walls.

To understand exactly why the Transylvanian armies commited such violence and atrocities you need only to look at Transylvania’s early history in the Balkans and its spectacular rise to power. Transylvania had undoubtedly been an exploited country throughout its early history, being passed along between the Magyars, the Turks, and any other regional power as a sort of bargaining chip in war. Thousands died from wars that nobody in Transylvania had even wanted to fight in, and when finally it gained its independence it was threatened by these same regional powers. In order to survive Transylvania had needed to be tough, and it needed to be united. The easiest, and perhaps the only way of accomplishing this was unity through faith, since Transylvania was a patchwork of different cultures and genealogy, and the toughness was accentuated through that same faith. If Transylvania would ever see itself in a position of power, it would absolutely need to be an extremely militant Christian power…and that was exactly what it did, and what it was.

If you understand that bit of Transylvanian history, then you can see why these cities in Arabia were being sacked so viciously – this was the birthplace of Islam, and Islamic nations had threatened the independence of Transylvania until only just recently, only after Ákos had rose to the throne of Transylvania. And these soldiers, generals, and counts were paying back their enemies for centuries of death and destruction in the only way they knew.

When the Transylvanian army left Medina in early December, it was a broken husk of a city, a shadow of its former glory. Most of the populace had fled after they realized what the Transylvanians intent was, and now those Transylvanian armies marched on Mecca.

The call was raised all across the lands of Islam that their Holy City was threatened, and if the destruction of Medina was any indication, under threat of annihilation. All who could pick up a blade or fire a musket made their way to Mecca, Bedouins from the deserts of Arabia, soldiers from Yemen and Oman, Mamluks from across the Red Sea, all came to defend the city of their faith against the Transylvanian armies that drew closer.

On January 19th those Transylvanian armies arrived outside the city, and the preperations for the siege began immediately, digging placements for the cannons that would shatter the walls and punch a hole for the infantry to climb through. But the city was brimming with defenders, flying the banners of 6 different nations and housing soldiers of three times that number of countries and peoples. It was the age old fight, the Christians against the Muslims; the crusader era had long past, but the world was still much the same. The costumes change, the sets, the stage, but the actors all remain the same.

By the end of January the preparations were ready, and the first assault began, led by the 12th of Larissa, a Greek battalion who had remained loyal to the Transylvanian crown during the Greek Independence War, but they were beaten back in a bloody pulp by the sheer weight of numbers the defenders had massed along the walls.

The second assault fared just as worse the next day, the 2nd of Ajam getting thrown back in bloody ruin from the breach, and so Ákos tried something different. It was a rather ghastly tactic he chose to try, but it showed the desperation of the situation. Mecca needed to fall quickly, or else volunteers would flood to Hedjaz in order to fight Transylvania, and the gains of the previous year would be nullified in the face of that manpower surge. What Ákos decided to do was keep firing his cannons, even while the assault took place. It was likely to kill just as many of his troops as the enemy, but he needed the breach, he needed a hole the Army de Koloszvár and Stiboricz could flood through.

Ákos wished he had the 1st of Banat in his army, but it was off in India stamping down revolts, and so he chose the only regiment there that he knew could do it – the 9th of Burgas, the Wild Bulgars that had held the line in the Dinófs Brigade in the First World War. The third assault began on the 3rd of February, 1617.

The 9th went forward with pikes, swords, and burnished armour into that hellish breach that already held the broken bodies of the two failed assaults before it, and over their heads screamed the cannonballs and canister shot that flayed apart the defenders at the top. But whenever a number went screaming down in an explosion of stone and metal, others simply took their place. It was hellish work for the 9th, stabbing upwards with pikes and scrabbling over their dead comrades to get at the defenders at the top.

The breakthrough finally came as a knot of Bulgarian officers rushed forward with belts draped across their shoulders brimming with the crude blunderbuss pistols, which they shot in quick succession at the knot of defenders at the top, punching a crude hole in which other Bulgarians surged into, hacking with swords and stabbing with pikes. The fighting for the breach lasted for 30 hellish minutes, but at the end a Bulgarian soldier stood at the top of the breach and waved the flag of Transylvania, and soon the Christians had the city.

Iqv4s.jpg

Emperor Ákos enters the gates of Mecca, February 3rd, 1617

The destruction that followed the taking of Mecca would last for 3 days and nights, and at the end when the Transylvanian armies finally left Islam’s holy city, it had been plundered dry, its populace either killed or fled, and every centre of worship that could be found destroyed. Mecca would not recover from the sacking until the late 18th century, and even today bears the scars of Transylvanian cannons and demolition parties. It was a sacking that had not been seen in terms of violence since the dark ages, and sent a collective shiver up the spines of Transylvania’s neighbours.

jLq3p.png


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Whoa man, that was some pretty awefull stuff.



I mean seriously the Wild Bulgars? Not anything better :p. Anyways great job as always, keep it up :cool:
 
My my, the Muslims must be completely irate.
 
Unnatural deeds afoot, foul mutterings...eh...wrong AAR?

Akos the Terrible! Works both ways. The Great is such a copout.