Chapter 2 - Anatolian themata
The sun is rising and it is time for another chapter. Prophetic words as "Anatolia" literally means "place of the the rising sun". We are planning to re-establish
those themes in todays episode. Ottomans, even at one third of their original size
can still be a nuissance and for now they are the only nation eligible for a coalition that won´t cool of their ae within reasonable time. That only leaves us one option...
First we reward our former ally albania by allowing them to
put on the purple coat.
More free points ^^
A call to arms? Ah right... we guaranteed tunis in the last episode and aragon was stupid enough to declare anyways. I knew this was going to happen so we went out of our way to make it happen by ending our otto war early. Aragon is one of our primary targets in the upcoming decades. We have to be careful not to piss off too many muslim AND catholic nations at the same time, but we do want to balance our ae between those too to maximise our cool-off effect. So we do need catholic targets as well. Austria/Hungary we are allied to. Nothern italy still belongs to the hre. France is too big and might make a good ally if austria/hungary turns against us. That leaves iberia and southern italy. Both of them have enough distance from the nothern europe, especially the hre for the ae impact to be limited. Castile and portugal are still out of range, leaves aragon/naples. We also get early claims over naples from missions, but I might have other plans for them...
Anyways, the guarantee thing. Remember how we got a "there will be blood" message that aragon plans to attack tunis. That means the ai will attack no matter what, unless you savescum. Even if ming decides to ally them. So it guaranteeing a target nation will 100% give you a war against the attacker. Aragon is already allied to castile, but I knew that they wouldn´t join in, because they were in a seperate war with tunis. This will allow us to weaken aragon befor a likely iberian wedding, maybe even make them go hostile towards castile by cancelling their alliance. That would be the best case scenario where both of them weaken each other. Divide et impera! Btw, you get those "there will be blood" messages if the ai ruler has a mavevolent or babbling baffoon trait OR if you have a big enough spynetwork on a nation. If you have an aggressive rival you want to cut down...
I was just wondering... why are we allied to djerid, but yeah... tunis is the war leader. Might have to leave the party a bit early...
Our quick reaction forces
are quick to react, but unfortuntely they are two weeks late to get a free siege...
23 dev?
Time to develop our capital... Don´t want to hear that constantinople can only flourish under ottoman rule...
Albania annexed, This gives us claims over the balkans... half of it wasted as we already own most of it via vassals and those claims don´t reduce integration cost...
Naples down.
More intercepted chatter. This could actually be another good opportunity. We are allied to hungary, but need the croation provinces from them. Attacking them directly would also call in austria, who we definately would like to continue to be allied to. Since we are currently also at war with aragon we let this opportunity slide however...
That was one of the reasons why I wanted to keep the ottoman war running until mamluks peaced out. I knew they desired tekke. This province is required to fullfill one of the upcoming missions that give us a ton of free claims. Now we need to fight mamluks first, something I only wanted to do AFTER we annexed anatolia. So these claims might become useless as well... rip 25% ccr.
What do you know...
spouses can do other things then producing heirs...
Constantinople just became a large city. We want this splendor badly...
5% professionalism for 58 ducats... yes please!
Not being the war leader sucks in a way. We don´t get warscore from fighting battles or ticking warscore. We cancel their alliance with castile, which was our prime target and take two provinces that give us range and allow us to wage future wars...
Another stack of blue rebels... we sure are popular..
Already over 100 oe... clock is ticking...
France
is actually eager to hook up with us... They are likely to be our endboss, but we wouldn´t mind hooking up with them for a while. If just for the reduced ae...
Hello
mr champion!
Our ruler was already
a god on the battlefield, but theodoros is Ares reincarnated...
Candar, after being eaten by otto, was spat out again... Don´t want any food go to waste, already been eaten or not... yummy
We want you for phoenix army!
Interesting...
We are getting into coalition territory here. We still have truces and room for relation improvement though...
Another vassal?! We do have to pay 100% integration cost, you know that, right? Yeah well, owning those sunni provinces ourselves does pose some problems. Eretna is an interesting option too. Kangiri was the one province I wanted to take in the second ottoman war btw, but the mamluks occupied it before us. Eretna does own quite a few cores we can return for lower ae. Even more interesting it owns cores from several different nations, giving us cbs we couldn´t get so easily.
They hold cores on otto, karaman and aqq. All nations that need to be re-integrated in the roman empire...
Now we can dow all three of them...
Otto goes down first. We just want a reduced trucetimer from them...
Hmm, 57 month until futher 10% ae reduction.
I guess we can wait that long...
Embracing renaissance would give us another 2 splendor a month... but it needs to spread to every province. I guess we can dev push our capital a bit further without too much damage. Waiting a bit allows our ae to cool down a bit...
Our first idea group...
Religious ideas... CB with reduced ae, conversion power/reduced cost to get those juicy orthodox provinces... more stability and manpower. Also saved dip points to pay for those expensive vassal integrations ^^
Would have liked to take land further down south, but we can only return a province to our vassal and take one provinces adjacent to it. Still gives us options... and it does have another benefit, which is why we peace them out so early...
Even though we can´t make amida a core...
Amida belongs to asia...
Which nets us another 2 splendor each month...
Renessaince has spread to constantinople, so we embrace it. Somehow I doubt it will spread everywhere before we have 800 splendor. Got to buy it anyways, so now is as good a time as any...
Muslims are quite angry with us, understandably. Mamluks is already at 63, but as they also dislike the ottos we can still improve relations with them...
Diamonds are a phoenix best friends... we are operating under quite a deficit so new income sources are more then welcome...
Good timing hisn kayfa... get them while they are weak... They need 9k men to siege down your capital, but only have 5k...
Ha, the rebels actually succeeded. Not only do we get a free island from genoa... we also get to keep the men...
Good job hisn kayfa... Now is the time to peace out... they have your capital at 36%
Dude, I even give you military access so you can occupy the rest. Just need to ask...
A new heir... much better then the original one... yay!
10 days later he ascends the throne.
Suspicious, very suspicious...
Hisn kayfa, lol... you blew it big time. Saladin would turn in his grave. Aqq was already at 8x% warscore...
800 splendor... -10% ae, thank you very much. Originally I planned to take the -50% transfer subjects ability and take naples from aragon. However at our first opportunity we weren´t the war leader against aragon and too far away from 800 splendor. Now we also released eretna as our third vassal and taking naples on top might give us liberty desire issues. We might get another chance on naples and the next ablity will take only arround 9 years..
Now we can peace out karaman. We also build a spynetwork on karaman to further reduce ae. Something we have done in every major war and will continue to do so as ae is one of the major obstacles in this run... I do look forward to some coalition action, but in time...
Eretna gets the new provinces, except for two... Mamluks joins the coalition club...
Integrating an opm is a waste of 10 years -3 dip rep,
so we just break vassilisation...
I guess we can make it official. Mamluks become our next rival...
We start annexing bosnia... 239 dip, 10 years doesn´t sound that bad... even though they just have 4-5 provinces... Don´t even want to check how much eretna will cost ^^
Hmm, Something is going down at the wallachian border. Hungary is paying their troops suddenly. Maybe we should cancel our alliance with wallachia. I guess since we are over diplo limit we can rather use the +1 diplo point each month. I don´t want hungary to eat them up though... I guess we should keep the alliance. If hungary attacks them we can take the required provinces of them. We do have too little catholic ae currently anyways...
What did I just tell you? Tbh I don´t recall how this went down exactly. Maybe I got a "there will be blood" warning... or maybe there was a savescum involved
I usually do have a very good sixth sense what the ai will do after thousands of hours of eu4, but having my troops at the border fully maintained
is some nostradamus level psychic abilities...
Before joining we set our provinces of interest though, to not give our allies or subjects any ideas...
Damn, that I did not see coming. Austria joined in as well.
Loosing both of our allies at once. If poland or mamluks dow us we have a problem for sure. Oh, well... let´s play this out...
2 forts insta-sieged and mil tech upgrade. Bet you didn´t figure that into your calculations hungary
Give austria something to do by enacting defensive edicts on our forts..
While we siege down their capital to get them out of the war asap. Ottoman truce expired. Could become dangerous, but otto is also at war with karaman, one of the 4 coalitionaires. If he peaces out there will only be 3 left...
Vienna is down, but
austria doesn´t give a f*ck ^^
Venice had a core on serbia and makes use of the situation... their time will come...
Come on austria... kärnten has fallen too... do you need to be 100% occupied?!?
Finally... at least we got some much needed ducats out of them...
Our armies start working on hungary next....
Time to
refresh st. nicholas....
Ha, austria still wants to be allied to us. We can do so while at war, as it is of defensive nature...
We do our seperate peace with hungary. Right now I´m asking myself why we didn´t take all of the croatian provinces, since they are a mission requirement to get more claims and they are needed to form rome. Could be that I checked all the mission requirements in advance. Instead we
take some provinces in transilvania, which are not required, but belong to the constantinople trade node... guess we needed the money more and or those provinces produced less ae with the hre... Also austrian alliance cancelled.
Hungary opened up an alliance slot. France is willing and more then a good replacement for them... Did I mention that I love normal mode ^^
Wallachia is just a waste of good diplo points from now on...
Closing in on the big bois...
Alright, back to the ottoman front...
Otto is joke by now. We also annexed cyprus...
We don´t laugh about the mamluks though... Lucky for us they are still busy with qq... Once they peace out a coalition would form, so we have to act now.
"A mamluk walks into a bar...."
Anti-coalition management needs to be ace in this run... so we do even resort to influencing and bribing our enemies...
Damn, why do you keep 30k in your backyard when fighting qq...
seems a bit cocky to me..
Again with the castile alliance aragon... really...?!?
Crap, the war with qq ended at bit too early. Was hoping to siege down the two forts before that...
Castile is screwed. One part of us is cheering, as iberia will look like a cakewalk. The other part is dreading to deal with super-duper france...
Should have run a bit further mamluks...
Now how did you manage to do that hungary? Right... forgot that moldovia is a hungarian march..
Hmm, hmm... naples liberty desire at 64%
Cairo down...
this should end without major complications...
It did...
This let´s us be triumphant in asia minors coast...
... gives us free claims...
And let´s us release syria from a single desert province.
I know, i know... another huge ass vassal... but I just can´t help using the return provinces cb, especially when there are so many. Oh well, who needs diplo tech... it´s not that we want to colonize the new world or something...
That complicates matters. Venice was supposed to be one of our next targets... now they are allied with france :/
Hey, at least we reclaimed jerusalem, pushing our patriarch authority towards 100 and giving us an extra missionary... yay.
I guess we can spare some time to have a think while ae is cooling off. As usual I´m not so worried
when target nations like the ottos and mamluks get angry. They look pretty orange, but we will keep attacking them once truces run out. More problematic are secondary nations we can´t or don´t want to attack, like medina, great horde... We make sure that we are aggressively expanding, but not as much yet that we will have a coalition out of secondary powers that will stick. That will eventually happen when we get closer to the hre, but our powerbase is still too weak and it would cost us too much time and resources to deal with them...
Speaking of time... The time has come... to end this episode. Yeah, yeah I know you probably
want to see how we roflstomp venice with france right now... but a man´s got to eat. Can´t live like the phoenix eating only virtual provinces make out of pixels. I guess we have reached our quota for today. The eastern part of the roman empire is almost under our control... at least half of it. So we will set our focus elsewhere soon. Like I already mentioned iberia, southern italy are likely next targets, venice holds a couple of provinces. For the beginning I wanted to concentrate on provinces though that we can forward trade from to our main trade port. Money like ae will be an issue since we won´t be having any colonial nations or trade companies... or won´t we?! So long, take care!