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Sunset Invasion run in 1.13.2, which went surprisingly well. I got one of the target cities (London) by 1600 and got the achievement in 1745, at which point I kind of took it easy.

I was "lucky" in that Castille DOWed me in the 1530s, so I was able to complete Westernization before 1560. It also helped that France, England, and the Iberians all hated one another, unlike in my previous attempt in which they were all allied for a ridiculously long time.

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No opium wars will happen in this one, as the Son of Heaven rules supreme over more than the half of the entire world! With this said, Qing is ridiculously OP now: starts as a horde, free reformation + permanent claims over the entire China. Combined with taking Administrative as a first idea group: 25% + 20% (from the first manchu idea) + 25% from permanent claims = -70% admin cost on the richest region of the world and -45% anywhere else by 1480! The only problem were the constant rebellions. Even with -2 revolt risk from the manchu set, i still had about 30-40 rebel groups active in my country closer to the endgame. Basically, every unconverted province took up arms to rebel every 5 years. 1300 land forcelimits and 120 Heavy War Junks stand ready to enlighten the world of confucian wisdom.
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Religious map:
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Fun Facts:
1) There is an Ottoman Australia!
2) I managed to colonise all of Siberia myself despite only picking Exploration ideas in 1650
3) The capital province of Norway has 15-19-23 in development. And it is both Arctic and Mountains!
4) Stronk Timbuktu with 90k troops!
5) Aragon exiled to Africa
6) There's also a Savoyard Canada in the New World!
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The Bohemians run, 1.14.3. Notice the whole blobbiness of the game. Austria has been my BFF and Emperor for the whole game, they didn't manage to pass more than one reform, though, since between me and them we annexed all the princes but two (holland and trier, all the other ones are vassals). Iberian Marriage and Union of Krewo both happened and broke, the Spaniards in the 1600s and the Polish-Lithuanian ever earlier. Big grey blob by Brandeburg>Prussia as well, they ate all of Scandinavia, first with the help of Poland and then by themselves with their OP ideas. Since I never do colonization games, I also used this one for Down Under and At Every Continent, as soon as I had advance CBs i DOWed four small nations in Asia, Africa, NA and SA and from the indian core I colonized oceania. it was a fun and always on edge run, since Le Blob switched from ally to rival and back at least twice and sometimes I was worried that Austria would break alliance and declare.

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My Mongolian game for the Great Khan Achievement (Couldnt bear to do it as the Golden horde)

Hordes are such fun this patch, however I was really getting irritated with the estates at the end, a string of loyalty cutting events made it so the tribes were rising up in massive numbers every 5 years'ish. Really wish estate events that cut loyalty really need to be temporary... Had some lousy luck in colonizing siberia. All fur, a couple iron provinces, and no gold at all :(

Really fond of that Kaffa, Completely Coptic. I owned Rome at one point and just took it to burn and pillage (was 40 dev before i sacked it). Then proceeded to sell it to the ottomans for laughs. Constantinople is also mine.

Finland is a march, Malwa is my vassal.

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Alaska and the provinces in the USA and Mexico were grabbed so i could get the 'blood for the sky god' achievement. Beijing was razed for the mountain of skulls... Khorne was pleased this run...
 
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Finally gotten around on converting one of my favourite CK2 playthroughs. It's still a work in progress, but I present to you the Liao Empire. :)

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I couldn't expand westward as much as I wanted because Hungary's not only a powerhouse, they also had a lot of allies over the centuries. So I bided my time, reformed my government and westernised. Afghanistan is a march I carved ouf of the Fatimids' holdings in Persia and several local minor fiefdoms. Thinking about integrating Multan into it. Finland started out as a OPM and I vassalised and force-converted them. They later converted to Vajrayana Buddhism by event as did I post-reform.
The Fatimids and Persia were both westernised from the start, so I haven't yet gotten around to kicking the latter out of Central Asia. Still not sure if I want to conquer all of China or only the north - mostly because I want to convert the game to V2 later on and I dread the massive POPs I have to appease then. :/

I should probably start looking for some allies now that I started integrating some of my vassals.

Here's a screenshot of the starting scenario to compare:
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So this is my second run EU IV, stopped playing a month ago due to studies and shit and then i came back, with the cossacks update the game ran so slow that combined with the boredom of a late game super state I concluded that its time to call it the end.
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First The player map

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Then world map
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Religion

I Present you the French Empire in 1700

I chose Quality as first idea and Exploration as second, meaning that I was second nation to reach the new world behind Portugal.
I tried to make a game focusing half my energy on colonies, other half on expanding in Europe.
Early ally was Austria, meaning that between game start to 1630ish Central Europe was Dominated by the French/Austrian alliance, effectively nobody dared attacking either of us, resulting in a stable HRE and a HUGE Austria that while emperor fielded a larger army than the French.
With Austria as ally, I needed little attention to the east, turning all my focus on Iberia, the Iberian colonies, British Colonies, and North-westen Italy.
With only 2 colonisers, around half of the colonial territory is acquired from GB and Spain. Catalonia and Aragon are direct results of my intervention in Iberia :D
around 1600 i got a PU over Bohemia, giving me a reason and extra power to interfeer with the HRE and my all time ally Austria.
The Religious league war ended in a stand still, however do to the ibeians sticking to Catholic side, i finally removed Spain from South america, and Portugal from Louisiana.
The last 50 years was me trying to provoke Austria into an offensive against me, since they where coalition leaders. I was ahead in all tech groups,
having 2-3 levels more than austria in Military tech, with offensive and quality ideas, combined with the french ideas, and creasy force limits.
My armies was practically unbeatable.

About the world:
Otto was actually pretty strong the most of the time, however due to my sceme of wakening the Austrians, I played Otto into an offensive war against Austria. Ottoman never recovered from that defeat, and Austria went offensive against them a couple of times. Allowing Persia to go west into former Otto Irak.

Sweden broke the Kalmarunion as usual, Norway got alliance GB, and after the rebellion DK was under alliance with Austria for the rest of the game. (Karma hid Sweden pretty rough this time)

PLC never formed, and greater easter europe area was often a boxing ball for Austria, Russia and later in game Brandenburg, i wanted to somehow help poland to have a possible ally against Austria however they hated me the entire game.

Pretty Awesome Russia,
Ming Exploded i dont know how really, as my focus was the americas and Africa.
Only Independent colony is former British Mexico, after the independence, GB was pretty much reduced to a minor power with some colonies in alaska.

Portugal: I never understand how they do it but they are everywhere
Spain: I think i dow'ed them 7 times, warred with them 15 times, stealing their colonies when i could, they acted as my colony feeder :D

Religion: east coast america, i settled before turning Protestant. so they stayed catholic, the reformation was not that succesfull, with only GB/NO turning protestant, and the majority of the HRE states reformed, it was only when i actively went protestant the more equality between the religions happened
 
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Some 1.14 achievement runs.


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The Saxon merchant republic sells Porcelain done as a colonizier of a world never before seen by Europeans. Restricted my conquering to Saxon, Lubeck and North Sea provinces in Europe, so I would not get too strong in Europe. Just taking provinces in these nodes left lots of ducats for the AI to have significant armies. Because of the trade setup in my random new world, I was not able to direct most of the trade to the North Sea, so I mostly concentrated on just the provinces in the East that I needed for the achievement once I had Saxony setup in Europe. Tried out forcing transfer trade power from the remaining North German trade nations. That was pretty effective for controlling most of the trade in Lubeck without taking Hamburg or Bremem, but obviously with this setup you can never collect all of it.

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5 restarts for this. 5 times Poland allied Bohemia. 3 losses in the independence war when it was Mazovia/Hungary/Teutons vs Pol/Mol/Lith/Bohemia/Silesia/random other minor. One Pyrrhic victory with 2000 ducats of debt. One successful run.

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The key here was to declare independence before the Poland/Lithuanian union, since formation of the Union kicks your most dangerous opponent (Lithuania) out of the war. Once the Union occurs it is probably better to wait and see if you can find another major to support your independence. I also think a start that has Poland and Bohemia rivaled would be interesting to play, but I did not see that in my Mazovia starts, just my Saxony run.

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Lots of conquering in the steppes. Never got around to annexing Perm as well. Having Poland as an ally made this run rather easy.

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At the start I was able to finagle my way into an alliance with Kilwa. That made the early part of this run mostly about managing rebels in all the wrong religion provinces. Also, it has been a while since I have played a Tribal government, so I was surprised I was able to westernize without reforming my government. I never felt there was a time where I had 700 admin points to spare to click the button to reform.

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Much Ibadi. I really should have gotten these achievements during my Nogai WC, but I did not prioritize missionary strength until it was too late in that game. Here I went Religious first, and rarely had a problem even though it too me 350 years to fill out that idea group. Also, I ran 20% inflation for the last half of the game. I feel like I wasted quite a few point during this game.

Had some time at the end waiting for religious zeal in some sunni land, so I even force converted the remain Indian Sultanates to Ibadi. I don't know if countries that follow Sunni but have no Sunni provinces would validate the achievement, but I did it anyway.

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Probably the scariest Prussia I have seen the AI create. This Prussia was helped by a Sweden over France PU in the late 1600's, so France lost momentum right when Spain was falling into a bankruptcy spiral. Plus Branderberg and Russia formed a strong alliance to destroy a powerful Poland.

Quite a fun run topped off with some fine wars against the Russian/Prussian alliance. I was not able to save Poland ... or Austria.

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Made an OPM of the one Zoroastrian province inside the Timurids. DOW in the first year from them in all three of my attempts. I may have to rethink my strategy.
 
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You need Thatta to enact Rekindling the Fire so i would suggest starting there. In my run I took every province with important CoT and joined them in Indus Node and work my glory from there.
 
You need Thatta to enact Rekindling the Fire so i would suggest starting there. In my run I took every province with important CoT and joined them in Indus Node and work my glory from there.

I was just hoping to keep myself alive long enough to get any sort of ally, but the Timurids did not leave me much time.

I did start a game where I took provinces from Yazd to Hormuz, and that game is going well, but I am far from getting the flame restarted. The Pate game seemed more interesting in the same location, so I played that instead.

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This is my favourite one so far, going for the Re-Reconquista achievement without fleeing to the new world, with the added goal of recapturing the territory of the Umayyad Caliphate and grabbing any extra stuff along the way. Could have done a lot more in the last years but decided to move on to another run instead.
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Behold; the Empire of Sardinia-Peidmont!

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We'll start with the worldview, on a Player Mapmode; to show all of the belongings of this glorious Empire. I didn't actually realise I had land in Africa until I looked at this. I guess the Bretons got busy.

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Oh boy these borders.

Sardinia is split because of a war I tried to help an ally in gone bad. I first took just the middle province, to become SPi. Then lost it in that bad war where I was just a war ally. Then Parma took it back from Genoa. Now I own the 2 provinces I did not initially own, and I'm scared of actually attacking Parma because for some reason the Reformed Italian nation is allied to the Ottoman Empire, probobly the only force in the world that could stop me right now.

Sicily was actually French. It broke free recently in revolts so I ate the old French lands.

Normandy entered a PU with me, [I had to fight Russia, the rightful claimant, for it], explaining how I... well... own Normandy. From there I vassalised Brittany; who had by this point done a not insignificant amount of colonization. I intergrate Brittiany, Breton Gacoree declares a war on a nearby British Colony, a few years later me and GB get dragged in, I invade GB from Normandy in a reverse D-Day that I'd been building my navy up for and I take my English holdings now. [My newest aquirement.]

I currently am the leading trade power in Venice, Genoa and the English Channel. All at once. You can see my trade income from Venice and English Channel is massive, and I'm getting a good 50+ ducats more from Genoa. I'm not even using a massive trade fleet, most of it is just fowarding from Sevillia.

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Northern New World is pretty empty. I have a Breton colony there.

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The Southern New World gholds New Peidmont with sole ownership of that region. That little yellow blob is a RNW bug and is in a different trade node; colonial region and teleports you into wasteland if you try and walk to it. All CN's that are not mine are independent.

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Australia is more of a stepping stone for me towards the Spice Islands. I was happy to let the colonial-crazy France have most of it.

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I've mostly been grabbing what I can in Eastern Asia. However, between European Wars and rebellions [Worse; 40+ stacks from Britian's Japanese holdings walking into my Japanese holdings] diverting my troops elsewhere, I've given the AI time to colonise. And with my recent European wars against Spain and GB; I've not really had time to ship my army over to the other side of the world and expand my holdings here. I took the +8 global unrest event that gave massive tech discounts, which meant I was playing whack-a-mole.

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Because of taking the +8 global unrest but tech discounts event, and generally having very good rulers and a massive economy to fuel advisors, Sardinia-Peidmont is the leader in technology across the world, and has had a massive amount of monarch points to dump into development, particually production. Trade and Production both give massive incomes for Sardinia-Peidmont.

Normandy is the best developed province I own. Normandy for some reason massively developed both of their 2 provinces to 37 and 40.

We actually only recently topped 1,000 development. But intergration of Florence [4 Italian provinces]; Brittiany [4 decent dev French provinces + their colonies in Africa and Spice Islands] and taking 5 provinces from England [Includeing London] have catapulted my Total Development by almost 400 in about 15 years. It took me almost 300 years to get to 1000!

I'm very proud of this game. I'm not quite sure what to do next. I'll probobly do something abroad first before attacking Britain again. I've got less than 100 years left. Let's see how far this can be pushed.

Also we have returned Rome to the Pope TWICE now, and get +21 Papal Influence every year, basically letting me have permanent +3 Stab and every Catholic bonus up at once. Eat THAT people who say Catholic is weak! Catholic is ridiculous at this point, and Catholic Empire just makes it better. [I have +7 TotTF...]

Oh; and this is Ironman. Not really an acheivement run, although I got Respected+It's all about the money+Down Under. I might form Italy right at the very end [If SPi can form it] just to get the acheivement, but I kinda want to keep my blueskin+#1 SPi tag on the leaderboards.
 
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Nothing special here, but this was my first full game played in SE Asia, and my first full Cossacks game.

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I was going for the White Elephant achievement, although I had a bit of a panic around 1700 when I realised I actually needed Burma as well as Indochina to get it. Luckily, I was able to keep up in tech effectively despite never westernising so I easily rolled over the Asian powers + Spain to get the last few provinces. Prior to that last rush, I'd mostly been messing around in the East Indies, New Zealand New Malaya, and China.

There were a few interesting things that came out of this run.

For some reason the Europeans never put much investment into the East Indies. I didn't even see European ships until ~1580 when Great Britain arrived. It later turned out that Portugal had actually lost their capital to Morocco at some point (although they got it back), which I guess really set them back. As a result, even ignoring my territory, the East Indies are dominated by the locals. Both Pagaruyung and Ternate have decent amounts of territory (although mostly because I couldn't be bothered to turn on them while dealing with the achievement).

At one point the Ottomans dominated Eastern Europe, but then they lost it all to Russia and Ragusa(!).

Taberestan is doing really well for itself, easily supplanting Persia.

At one point Bukhara stretched from the Caspian to Korea and was the most powerful state in Asia by far, but I guess a combination of the Bear and constantly getting drained fighting in the the Thunderdome that is China finally did them in.

I might continue this game, to see if I can drive Britain out of the East Indies as well. I'm earning the most money by far, although my navy is a bit behind theirs in size. That'll probably have to wait until after Christmas though. Part of the reason I was rushing to finish is that I'll be without my EU4 computer for two weeks while I'm at my parent's.
 
Nothing special here, but this was my first full game played in SE Asia, and my first full Cossacks game.

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I was going for the White Elephant achievement, although I had a bit of a panic around 1700 when I realised I actually needed Burma as well as Indochina to get it. Luckily, I was able to keep up in tech effectively despite never westernising so I easily rolled over the Asian powers + Spain to get the last few provinces. Prior to that last rush, I'd mostly been messing around in the East Indies, New Zealand New Malaya, and China.

There were a few interesting things that came out of this run.

For some reason the Europeans never put much investment into the East Indies. I didn't even see European ships until ~1580 when Great Britain arrived. It later turned out that Portugal had actually lost their capital to Morocco at some point (although they got it back), which I guess really set them back. As a result, even ignoring my territory, the East Indies are dominated by the locals. Both Pagaruyung and Ternate have decent amounts of territory (although mostly because I couldn't be bothered to turn on them while dealing with the achievement).

At one point the Ottomans dominated Eastern Europe, but then they lost it all to Russia and Ragusa(!).

Taberestan is doing really well for itself, easily supplanting Persia.

At one point Bukhara stretched from the Caspian to Korea and was the most powerful state in Asia by far, but I guess a combination of the Bear and constantly getting drained fighting in the the Thunderdome that is China finally did them in.

I might continue this game, to see if I can drive Britain out of the East Indies as well. I'm earning the most money by far, although my navy is a bit behind theirs in size. That'll probably have to wait until after Christmas though. Part of the reason I was rushing to finish is that I'll be without my EU4 computer for two weeks while I'm at my parent's.

I'm playing a Ming game and it's 1600 and the Westerners have yet to turn up, Russia got owned by Oirat too so I'll I guess I'm all alone conquering Indonesia
 
Okay so I don't know how interesting this is but I just wanted to show my German nation at the dawn of the 19th century with two decades left to play. This is not ironman because I'm kind of a "beginner" (never played beyond the 16th century before) and I'm just playing for fun rather than achievements anyway. Lucky nations are off which has made for some fun quirks.

Edit: Oh, and also I still play on 1.11 because I never got into the whole development thing and I don't have Common Sense or Cossacks anyway (not planning to get them anytime soon either).

I started as the Teutonic Order, reformed into Prussia, and later reformed into Germany. Below is what my European homeland looks like currently. Estonia and Byelorussia are client states I formed to handle coring, conversion to the true faith of Protestantism, and to take care of cultures that weren't accepted in my empire. I also have a third client state, Wallonia, which is that red-ish country between me and France. That one I made to take care of conquered HRE provinces to avoid unlawful territory requests. My Teutonic Order was initially an HRE member (starting strategy was to join through alliance with Austria, to avoid being eaten by Poland) but after I had formed Germany in the 1650s I felt like leaving so I did - a little prematurely but it worked out okay.

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The glorious German Empire was in the beginning solely a European power but somewhere along the line I took Exploration Ideas and by the year 1800 Germany is a world power with colonies all over the place. In North America lies the very first colony, New Prussia, which is also the only one that formed a colonial nation before Prussia became Germany. Other lesser colonies in North America are German Canada and German Louisiana, aswell as the 5-province New Germany in Alaska that is the newest addition to the German colonial empire. (Alaska was the only place left to colonize by then.)

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As you can see Haiti has colonized far into Lousiana. I'm not sure when it happened but Portugal seems to have been forced to release their Caribbean and Brazilian colonies already in the 16th century so an independent Haiti formed and became a North American power in addition to holding all of the Caribbean. USA was formed by Scottish colonists in Florida who were left alone to revolt when Scotland was a OPM surrounded by England. On the west coast there is a new Portuguese colony in California, losing all their colonies didn't exactly make them stop building new ones.

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In South America there are three German colonial nations. The first and biggest one is Klein-Venedig in the northwest. German Peru is the former Portuguese Peru, I took most of their land in a war. Then down south in Patagonia lies König-Friedrich-Land which I mostly took from the Netherlands. Left is one Dutch province which became independent as the republic of Dutch La Plata after I vassalized their motherland in Europe.

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Something I find funny about South America is the fact that in Brazil there is both the independent nation of Brazil aswell as the newer Portuguese colonial nation Terra de Vera Cruz that came into existence after Portugal lost the original Brazil.

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Last but not least Germany also has a colonial subject in Australia, New East Frisia which holds almost the whole Australian continent aswell as most of the North Island of New Zealand. This one sends me gold!

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Other colonies include East Timor and two other Indonesian islands, Hawaii, the Galapagos, and a few not so significant provinces along the African coast. I haven't really had a strategy for colonizing, I mostly build them where I like them.

Europe is pretty evenly divided between Protestantism and Catholicism, with the Reformed church not gaining much ground at all. The biggest reformed nation is actually the Scottish USA, which brings me to the New World where Catholicism has been historically more popular than in Europe, but less so since Germany conquered Portuguese Peru. Most of the Protestant provinces in the world belong to either me, my subjects, Great Britain, or British subjects while there is a multitude of Catholic countries. Sunni Islam used to be big in Eastern Europe because Crimea ate most of Poland and Lithuania, but it has been pushed back east thanks to my client state Byelorussia.

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That one Catholic province in Patagonia is the one belonging to Dutch La Plata. The Netherlands were Protestant in the last few decades before I vassalized and annexed them but the La Plata colony was Catholic already and stayed Catholic.

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I'm really proud of this Germany mostly because it'll be my first complete playthrough when I reach 1821. It has been a fun game. :)
 
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Just a messed bordergored Europe just before enacting the last HRE reform as Austria :

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Some weird things indeed, and some of them weren't because of me!

- Byzantium resurrected a few years after being eaten by ottoman (Kebab failed in a war against Hungary and the glorious ERE was liberated) BUT as a muslim country! In fact I thik the Otto event to convert Constantinople is wrong because it's lead to a muslim byzantium who convert the totaly of Greece to suni in light speed... I think Constantinople have to stay greec and orthodox (it remained IRL until 1926...)

- France, who was my ally for the first centuries failed horrificly. I know they can't touch the HRE lands because of me, but that's not too hard to drive the british out of the continent... but they even failed at that and was eaten by various HRE minor without any intervention from me.

- Russia failed too (and was also my ally) because they couldn't beat Kazan. I tried to give them russian lands from Lithuania, but they collapsed by rebels and a weird Cossack state even formed.

- Despite a few war against them, Lithuania expended furiously eastward and took the hordes place in the steppe.

- England eaten by Scotland is completly my deed (I want to weaken them in order to get the "all our trade belongs to us" after I reform the HRE). Same with the balkanized Poland into 7 polish HRE free cities...

- Stronk Mings, Japan, Persia and Kazahkstan.

About my proper game :

I started by attacking Venice and the pope as soon as possible to prevent the Shadow Kingdom. Both of them were allied, so it was easy. I allied with Hungary and France.
I did the "HRE homework" (liberate princes) and destroyed the reformation early by force converting the COR, even by no-cb wars. I took the PU missions over Bohemia and Hungary asap and passed succeffuly all HRE reforms. For the rest of the game, I used my over-mighty vassal-swarm to get some achievment and redraw some bordaries (I failed indeed).

Idea : Diplomatic - Religious - Offensive - Influcence - Economic - Administrative. For the two last, I'll catch Commercial for the "all your trade belongs to us" and perhaps some military for the last one. Even after the last reform, I'll have a big militaristic march : Prussia! so noone can oppose me in the field.
 
Yesterday, I just finished my first Ironman PLC run on 1.14 patch. As you see it’s not a big deal, but 90% of my provinces were gained after 1670, when I finally broke Muscovite-Ottoman unholy alliance, (they were buddies since 1490, so I wasn’t able to destroy Muscovy early on, before they signed alliance, Ottos form and lead few coalition wars against me). After that, I also experienced 2-3 long regencies in 18th century, few defensive wars and dumb heirs (those good ones died in hunting incidents :p), so I had about 100 years for brutal expansion: mostly crusades and purging heresies over and over again. This was my first time when I blob this much, I prefer playing colonial powers like Portugal and Castile, or expanding in historical ways. This shows how much you can take in the late game, I’m pretty sure that I will do WC in the future if only I will have just a little bit more luck than this time.

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proof:

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More details in spoilers:

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This time it's Switzerlake. The opening move is to seize Milan at mil tech 4, and conquer Ravensburg before Austria to get a land connection to northern Germany. Austria is too strong and too well-connected to be defeated in the first century of the game, which makes early progress very slow. What I did is to slowly take Italian provinces one at a time. The alliances with Bohemia and Saxony deterred Austrian aggression, giving me enough time to get development from rich Italy for an alliance with France. While my back is secure by 1480, I need to struggle for another century before getting an equal footing with Austria.
It's only at around 1600 when I am able to declare the Styria reconquest war to finish it as a great power. Then it's a push to the north limited mainly by coalition size. I finally reach 99 provinces at around 1690. At that point, the Empire has been dismantled (Catholic League victory but all Catholics got annexed by me) and almost every ex-Imperial inland province belongs to me. A couple of screenshots:
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World map:
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For this run, I have unlocked 3 achievements and plan to get another 2. I got:
1. Grand Duchy (got it at province count of around 65, due to how reach HRE land is. Staying at duchy is required as an HRE member, so no sacrifices at all)
2. Center of Attention (Reformed center at Nuremberg, and Protestant center at Gelre. Have to sell Gelre after getting the achievement due to it being coastal)
3. Switzerlake (primary objective)
Planned achievements:
1. All Your Trade Are Belong to Us (income is already close, position is optimal for conquest in all the 3 nodes)
2. Trustworthy (France, Papal States, Commonwealth, Hungary, Mamluks already allied, waiting for trust to build up)
 
Byzantium Fun Time :), needed Basileus achievement. Took a couple tries and a lot of salt only hard war was the 1st war with the Ottomans.
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Wasn't to hard but I only blocked the strait for a short while to prevent em from crossing into Constantinople so they crossed into Edirne where my allies and I had our armies. It worked pretty well, helped that a couple times a 12 stack would try to cross without a general. :p
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Stupid succession war, seriously does the ai even think about this? (Provence is the attacker btw)
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Scary France is scary :confused:, I manged fortunately to break that up
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Basileus git
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:eek: :confused:....... No comment
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Nahhh
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All the dynasties got overthrown at least once, no Hapsburg, no Valois, no Tudors, Lancaster, or Trastamara (Romonovs are still in power in Russia though).
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1st time seeing Hindustan, seen Bahrat once before.
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The world (Ottomans still live as an opm :D)
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I was only here for the achievement but honestly this wasn't to hard. After beating the Ottoman Empire the only thing that could hurt me was having to fight a multi-front war with Austria and Russia (which I did, and was surprisingly easy). Hungary ended in a pu under Austria. I could've been far more aggressive and tried to dismantle the Hre or simple expand more but I just wasn't really interested in continuing after conquering Italy and just speed 5'd for the last 30 years.

Below is a walkthrough of how I survived the 1st war:
Opening was the only challenge because I never got a dip rep adviser in all my restarts, but you only need Hungary and Wallachia to win. I got money by selling my non-galleys and loaning up immediately before the Ottos attack. You can tell when they most likely will attack when they put a stack in Edirne and the other adjacent province to Constantinople (not across the strait). Hopefully you'll have at least Hungary, Wallachia and an ok general by that time. Money before war should be used to get galleys and build up to 10 infantry, you only need ~20 galleys so Ottomans won't attack, this will help prevent them from besieging your capital and forcing them into a strait crossing penalty when moving into Endirne. You'll need to have Hungary's army group with your 10 stack and just leave it on Edirne after forcing the Otttomans back across the strait (This may take some reloading if your into that or some time to maneuver them into a bad fight). Train some mercs in Greece and get Athens to attach to you and siege all the forts on your side. Once done with sieges just prevent the Ottomans from crossing (navy isn't need at this point) Hopefully you'll get some help from the Ottoman's neighbors QQ and the Mamluks indirectly once you've done enough damage to draw away some heat. Make peace and don't stay in to long so you can pay off loans and burn off war exhaustion. After that just wait and build up strength and get more allies, Austria is a good choice, then attack at your leisure as you will have most likely crippled the Ottoman Empire now.

Things to note:
  • Don't attack the Ottomans let them attack you especially earlier on because you probably won't have any favors early on with your major allies ( or possibly any major allies at all)
  • In I noticed in one restart Austria and Aragon might give subsides during the war (about 3 ducats each)
  • Only take cores in the 1st war so you don't have to pay increased coring cost due to high WE
  • Most of the Ottoman development is in Anatolia so don't let QQ and the Mamluks take to much or they might become to strong to handle and your allies maybe unwilling to join in an offensive war due to the distant war penalty
  • Don't let Patriarchal Authority get to high or you may find yourself rapidly losing cash during a war ( I was making about 5 ducats a month at peace w/ full army maintenance at 100 authority)
  • Byzantine's +2 prestige yearly guarantees 100 prestige 24/7, great for buying down vassal LD
Well hope this helps out the BYZ lovers out there if they still need it or people busy achievement hunting. :)
 
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Possibly my slowest campaign as the Ottomans, when my regency ends in 7 years we will see how Europe fares. Vassals are Tunisia, Baluchistan, Ajuuran and Walachia.
The world 1580 AD
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