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Pureanger

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Jul 24, 2017
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Preamble

What´s up AARies. Pureanger back with my 12th report (How the time flies...signature is getting a bit crowded there ^^). Already you might ask?! Yeah well, it´s going to be a shorter and less ambitious then my last one. I had some ideas for new campaigns, but unfortunately... or maybe fortunately I haven´t been able to figure out how to approach those yet. My first idea was to do a bankrupt wc after seeing florry fighting the ottos while being bankrupt for memes. Turns out you can´t declare wars while being bankrupt, which complicates things. The other idea I had was playing vs the synthetics. I have been able to glitch them into the game, but they lose their invasion modifer which makes it pointless. I also contacted pdx if they could prepare an ironman savegame, but to no avail :/ Third option was to do a speed wc as maybe ryukyu or something. Not a normal one, I leave those to accordion/marco or a real time one that´s for the master of universalis. Those would probably kill me ^^

Being under risk of a eu4 burn-out anyways I decided to do a chill campaign in between. My youtube keeps spamming me with byzantium guides and tbh I haven´t played that tag since forever. I knew it is one of most popular and meme-iest countries in eu4. So I decided to check out what the craze is all about and take this badboy for a ride.


The goal is:

Enable the decision to form the roman empire as byzantium before the age of absolutism

(technically we don´t need to form it since we already are the roman empire.)


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The rules

- start as byzantium
- conquer all the provinces to form rome as quickly as possible

As this is something of a speedrun I will be playing on normal difficulty. I know, I know... but remember this is supposed to be relaxing.

Not hard rules per se, but I do look forward smashing some armies together after playing so long with mil tech 3. So this will be by design a brute force campaign without shenanigans like:

- turning horde
- hre vassal swarm
- abusing pu´s (if I get one I won´t abandon it, but I won´t force one neither)


The settings

- Eu4 1.28.3
- All dlc activated
- Ironman
- normal mode
- Exploits off
- Savescums on (I try to keep them to a minimum, particulary bad rulers, disasters, major f*ck ups that would require me to restart the campaign. Depending on the difficulty I usually end up with 30 to 100.)


This AAR is complete.

Chapter 1 - Otto... who?
Chapter 2 - Anatolian themata

Chapter 3 - Of vowels, corsican chiefs and schizophrenia
Chapter 4 - The golden age of reformation
Chapter 5 - Back to the roots
Chapter 6 - La Bohème
Chapter 7 - Rize of the Fenix
Epilogue - There can only be one





Keeping my new "chill" attitude I will be releasing new chapers not in my regular rushed manner ;)

 
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Chapter 1
Chapter 1 - Otto... who?

Alright, 1444, tag byz... where do we begin? Like I mentioned I keep getting spammed by byzantium guides. The most popular one arround seems to be from budgetmonk. For a guide it has rather a lot of steps involved, so I´m a bit sceptical as rng has more chances to f*ck us over. All in all it seems legit and doing a siege race with otto is right up my alley. I won´t argue with him when it comes to hre and byz as he seems to play those a lot, but let´s see if we tweak it a bit...

The general idea is to build up to and over forcelimit immediately and get otto to commit all their troops to a siege of constantinople, while we siege up the rest of their country. Could have come right out of my playbook...


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Already deviating from the guide and I haven´t even unpaused yet ^^ We take 150 power points instead of the suggested 100. This actually causes problems as the negative prestige delays our relations improvement with albania. It works out in the end, but it get´s very close to delaying the initial dow. That´s what you get for thinking you are smarter :p


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We also ask for contributions as money seems to be an issue with this strategy. Armies are on low maintenance.... New units are being recruited constantly.


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Otto allies crimea.


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The 5k rng stack is moving to anatolia. Good, good... so far everything as predicted.


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Kocaeli is mothballed and stays mothballed after we finish our 1k stack in constantinople. Something new I learned from this guide... I usually keep my armies 2 provinces away and move to the adjacent province on the 1st of the month. Turns out if you have your maintenance on zero the ai doesn´t care when you build new units next to their forts ^^


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Relations should be higher by now... thank you stupid brain :/


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We make up for it by sending albania a little present.


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On april fools we turn up the maintenance. Otto still doesn´t activate his forts in anatolia.


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Just in case we forget, activate defensive edict in the capital a bit early...


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On top, we hire a fort defense guy to delay ottos siege even further. Not sure why it wasn´t mentioned in the guide, but the upside seems rather tremendous... if available.


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Another deviation... I build a second unit in constantiople as I noticed that the ankara fort is also mothballed. Greedy is good, right? Make sure that it finishes on the first of the month we want to declare.


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Two weeks before dow albania accepts our alliance offer. Pfeww ^^


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This is what I was worried about when seeing the guide the first time. Otto parked one little light ship in the bosporus and doesn´t seem to move it. This will delay our strategy as we will want to move our constantinople stacks over to anatolia immediately. In the guide there was no light ship in the strait. It also messes up my greedier strategy to also siege ankara. Even if the naval battle takes only 1 day, the fort in kocaeli will be activated and we won´t be able to move our second unit to ankara...


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I know, I know I said no exploits, but I just can´t help abusing the promise land, but not giving land trick at the start of a campaign. Heads up, I must have f*cked something up there as it did not work later in the peace deal...


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Can´t see what though as I also desired the avlonya province after the dow... oh well, can´t have everything I guess.


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A savescum solved our lightship problem. Good, as this opening involved too many steps that require perfect timing to do it like 10 times. The rest of the guide was pretty spot on, except the otto fleet behavior. Seems like there are too many factors involved to predict where ottos ships will be in 6 month. Parking 1 light ship in the strait seemed very deliberate and was actually very smart by the ai. Lucky for us that it suffers from post-savescum dementia...


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Not sure if it was the savescum or some other issue, but 2 days before the dow ankara becomes un-mothballed... oh well, maybe we get lucky and get a breach.


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Dow day. Ready or not... here we come!


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Otto was successfully intimidated and moved all his greek armies to siege down constantinople. We reached selanik, kocaeli and even ankara before they could reinforce. However the 5k rng stack will reach our unit in kocaeli before it can finish the siege. Not sure why, maybe the stack was already moving, took a quicker route or the ai hired a fort defense guy himself. In any case, this is a problem....


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... that hopefully can be resolved by a savescum....


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Look at that... I did work. And seeing the screenshots now I realize where the problem was. In the first attempt otto attached a general to the 5k stack that most likely had manoever pips.... We lose our unit, but we got the siege....


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Two sieges actually...


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-64%, 42% defensiveness... we got some time....


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The major contribution of albania is actually ships which keep otto busy while we land 6k men in anatolia. Skanderbeg is nice to have too. We will move him to siege down crimea once their troops arrive in greece.


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Quite a big deficit, but only 2 loans so far....


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Crimea incoming. Skanderbeg waiting for them to pass by. We could easily wipe the 5k stack, but otto would most likely build new units in anatolia and move his units from constantinople...


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I forgot to also siege down ottos coastal provinces to prevent him from building new galleys. This threatens our naval dominance and he already completed one in hüdavendigar...


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Damn, otto just build 2 fresh units in anatolia and wiped our ankara siege. Luckyly we are paying attention and reinforce before the turn of the month :p


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Don´t mind if I do...


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Poland got the union. Not sure yet if that´s good or bad for us....


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Crimea fell and peaces out. Constantinople is at 7% and might get critical over the next couple of rolls. Anakara unfortunately didn´t get a breach, but I´m confident, that we will finish it soon. Looks like a good start. Props to budgetmonk!


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With crimea out of the war ottos siege of selanik won´t progress. His war exhaustion is currently at medium, definately want it go down to low before peacing out...


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Before we peace out we buy ourselves our favorite icon. Ae reduction and relations improvement...


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Hmm, serbia is attacked by venice... and otto garantees them.


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Reconquest cb, 40 spynetwork and 10% ae reduction from icon... nobody cares except otto. We even have some warscore left to give a province back to albania. They deserved it... also I f*cked up the exploit and not giving them land would have given us the broken promise penalty...


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We took all required provinces to finish our first mission and get new claims. Byzantium despite having a difficult start has a couple of things going for them. The missions are one thing. They give claims over most of the roman empire as well as some very nice permanent and non-permanent bonuses. So we are actually trying to use the railroads pdx has laid for byzantine expansion.


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Our current claims. Most are permanent with -25% coring cost and time. One claim on serbia we fabricated manually. Our loan situation doesn´t really look that bad despite quite going over forcelimit for 2 years...


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Ae is looking manageble..


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Venice becomes our first rival. Too bad you can´t rival otto from the start anymore :/


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Establish communties for further ae improvement.


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This is the second thing byzantium has going for them. Lots of events and decisions that revolve arround reclaiming the former roman empire...


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Possible Alliances are rare. Wallachia seems like a good option. Don´t want hungary to get any ideas...


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Some of our troops haven´t returned home yet and we fight our second war against otto via their garantuee of serbia.


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Otto is still at 30k, but our forcelimit increased. We currently field 16k men. Serbia is still busy with venice and albania joined in again.


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We still controll the strait and ottos new capital has 0 garrison. His armies will stay on the greek side and can do whatever they like while we take care of anatolia...


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(un)lucky lucca?


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Moldavia has become a march of hungary instead of poland. Don´t see that everyday. Poland would have been better, since we need a couple of provinces from hungary, but we don´t plan to take then anytime soon...


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Unlucky otto for sure...


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All we take from otto this time is money and a 8 year truce, instead of 15 years... He is non-co-belligerent and we don´t want to end up in coalition hell 3 years into the run. Our little phoenix needs to learn how to fly yet ;)


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Time to secure our naval dominance. The burghers "gift" 5 heavies....


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Hungary loooves and wants to marry us....


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Unfortunately We can´t take land from bosnia, so we vassalize them....


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Serbia gives us their land, including a gold mine... and becomes a vassal as well. I was very conflicted about the last part as vassal integration will be a bitch without influence ideas and or absolutism. Going overboard on vassals (no 3 with athens) so early is not such a good sign...


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... then again this gives us a free war against venice, who is still at war with serbia. They do have several provinces we want and we get to call in our allies ...


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This might come in handy...


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Otto is being smashed from all sides, like in a pinball machine. Sweet music in my ears...


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Austria and hungary often come in a pack...


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By all means milan... don´t wait for our permission...


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Can´t take all provinces in the agean, but venice will have much less forts to siege down the second time arround....


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Quick look on the ae map. Nothing too worrysome...


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We formalize our alliance with hungary...


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... and austria. This puts us over diplo limit, but it´s well worth it. We don´t want no beef with those two nations yet. They will acquire less ae and protect us from coalition threat in general...


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Otto is finally a valid rival.


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I guess we can save some diplo points by dumping albania... they rightfully belong to the phoenix anyways...


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Normal mode, lol. We are already among the top nations when it comes to forcelimit...


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Don´t see that everyday neither. Blue rebels... gogogo!


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What in the world made you think this is a good idea burgundy?!? We are already watching france as I expect it to be one of the last obstacles to form the roman empire. Super france is certainly not good for us...


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Kosovo certainly needs to be in a state. Delicious gold....


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Our rebels failed :/ I guess we have to do it the old fashioned way...


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Don´t underestimate the otto... a lesson learned by the former nation of candar...


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Now it is mamluks turn...


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Come on poland... what did we ever do to you? I guess we will go for a russian alliance then...


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Free annexation of athens.


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Free points, wohoo..


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Those 14681 belong to otto...


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...12782...


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Dow :) I waited with the declaration and watched the army ledger until the otto total unit counter went down. That meant that mamluks engaged them in a fight, most likely in the eastern part of their empire. If they retreat, what is likely, they will do so in our direction and might become a good target for a stackwipe.


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Like here. No need to do the heavy lifting when mamluks can do it for us...


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Let´s have a joust...


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Mil tech 5 is good to go...


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Small adversarial allies, like lucca are good prestige and money suppliers. They also prevent otto from taking bigger allies by blocking diplo slots... so we don´t cancel their alliance.


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Hmm, interesting. Tunis is already at war with castile and portugal and the message tells us that aragon will dow them seperately. I wonder if we can use that to our benefit....


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Darn it, they are too rich and powerful for us to guarantee them... but maybe....


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We peace out otto a bit earlier then planned. Originally we wanted to wait for otto to make their peace with mamluks as they occupied a couple of provinces we would have liked...


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Ha... it worked. The conquered provinces from otto made us rich and powerful enough. Now we can guarantee tunis...


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Too bad... not enough splendor yet...


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New claims over naples from missions.


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Mamluks at 40 ae. We don´t want to fight them yet so we better improve relations...


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1457 and we have surpassed england as a great power... not too bad.


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Gonna make a cut here. Our little phoenix has hatched and grows strong quickly. Our northern borders have been secured by alliances with austria, hungary and wallachia. Otto is battling a two front war for survivial and is most likely to lose it. Next episode we will find out if aragon dares to attack tunis with us guaranteeing them. Aragon is one of our upcoming primary targets together with otto and mamluks. We do want to get as much of their land before an iberian wedding triggers and complicates things. Hope you enjoyed it so far and come back for the next one. Bye!
 

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A good first start, once Byzantium has defeated the Ottomans a few times, it's pretty much set to achieve something greater in the future.
 
Chapter 2
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.


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More free points ^^


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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...


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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...


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Our quick reaction forces are quick to react, but unfortuntely they are two weeks late to get a free siege...


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23 dev? Time to develop our capital... Don´t want to hear that constantinople can only flourish under ottoman rule...


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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...


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Naples down.


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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...


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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.


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What do you know... spouses can do other things then producing heirs...


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Constantinople just became a large city. We want this splendor badly...


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5% professionalism for 58 ducats... yes please!


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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...


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Another stack of blue rebels... we sure are popular..


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Already over 100 oe... clock is ticking...


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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...


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Hello mr champion!


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Our ruler was already a god on the battlefield, but theodoros is Ares reincarnated...


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Candar, after being eaten by otto, was spat out again... Don´t want any food go to waste, already been eaten or not... yummy ;)


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We want you for phoenix army!


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Interesting...


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We are getting into coalition territory here. We still have truces and room for relation improvement though...


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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...


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Now we can dow all three of them...


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Otto goes down first. We just want a reduced trucetimer from them...


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Hmm, 57 month until futher 10% ae reduction. I guess we can wait that long...


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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...


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Our first idea group...


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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 ^^


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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...


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Even though we can´t make amida a core...


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Amida belongs to asia...


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Which nets us another 2 splendor each month...


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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...


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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...


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Diamonds are a phoenix best friends... we are operating under quite a deficit so new income sources are more then welcome...


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Good timing hisn kayfa... get them while they are weak... They need 9k men to siege down your capital, but only have 5k...


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Ha, the rebels actually succeeded. Not only do we get a free island from genoa... we also get to keep the men...


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Good job hisn kayfa... Now is the time to peace out... they have your capital at 36%


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Dude, I even give you military access so you can occupy the rest. Just need to ask...


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A new heir... much better then the original one... yay!


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10 days later he ascends the throne. Suspicious, very suspicious...


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Hisn kayfa, lol... you blew it big time. Saladin would turn in his grave. Aqq was already at 8x% warscore...


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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..


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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...


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Eretna gets the new provinces, except for two... Mamluks joins the coalition club...


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Integrating an opm is a waste of 10 years -3 dip rep, so we just break vassilisation...


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I guess we can make it official. Mamluks become our next rival...


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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 ^^


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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...


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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 :p 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...


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Before joining we set our provinces of interest though, to not give our allies or subjects any ideas...


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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...


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2 forts insta-sieged and mil tech upgrade. Bet you didn´t figure that into your calculations hungary :p


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Give austria something to do by enacting defensive edicts on our forts..


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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...


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Vienna is down, but austria doesn´t give a f*ck ^^


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Venice had a core on serbia and makes use of the situation... their time will come...


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Come on austria... kärnten has fallen too... do you need to be 100% occupied?!?


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Finally... at least we got some much needed ducats out of them...


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Our armies start working on hungary next....


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Time to refresh st. nicholas....


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Ha, austria still wants to be allied to us. We can do so while at war, as it is of defensive nature...


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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.


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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 ^^


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Wallachia is just a waste of good diplo points from now on...


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Closing in on the big bois...


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Alright, back to the ottoman front...


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Otto is joke by now. We also annexed cyprus...


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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.


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"A mamluk walks into a bar...."


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Anti-coalition management needs to be ace in this run... so we do even resort to influencing and bribing our enemies...


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Damn, why do you keep 30k in your backyard when fighting qq... seems a bit cocky to me..


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Again with the castile alliance aragon... really...?!?


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Crap, the war with qq ended at bit too early. Was hoping to siege down the two forts before that...


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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...


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Should have run a bit further mamluks...


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Now how did you manage to do that hungary? Right... forgot that moldovia is a hungarian march..


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Hmm, hmm... naples liberty desire at 64%


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Cairo down... this should end without major complications...


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It did...


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This let´s us be triumphant in asia minors coast...


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... gives us free claims...


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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...


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That complicates matters. Venice was supposed to be one of our next targets... now they are allied with france :/


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Hey, at least we reclaimed jerusalem, pushing our patriarch authority towards 100 and giving us an extra missionary... yay.


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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...


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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!
 

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Besides this bit being as interesting and intriguing as always with your narrative style, I really enjoyed most of the videos (except for the god of war one :D ), gonna make a Tinder account now to date Conan now ;)

I think troy was before the romans... we prefer to send real horses ;)
weeeeeeeell, you're more Greek than Roman (just look at your culture) :p and you did send Albania a gift.

(Also if I remember correctly, the Romans liked to pretend being descendands of Aeneas)
 
Besides this bit being as interesting and intriguing as always with your narrative style, I really enjoyed most of the videos (except for the god of war one :D ), gonna make a Tinder account now to date Conan now ;)


weeeeeeeell, you're more Greek than Roman (just look at your culture) :p and you did send Albania a gift.

(Also if I remember correctly, the Romans liked to pretend being descendands of Aeneas)

Can´t pick a winner every time :p Say hi to conan for me.

Decendants of decendants... battle of troy was 2600 years before this aar. After that time period it is just a big mixing bowl of dna anyways I guess ;)


But dealing with le BBB is fun, no? No? Anyone :oops:?

But oui monsieur. It is going to be beaucoup of fun :)
 
(Also if I remember correctly, the Romans liked to pretend being descendands of Aeneas)
Many important noble families did the same, prolonging their family tree all the way back to the Troyan wars. I think the most notable example I can think of are the Habsburg, but I believe many other families did the same.
 
Many important noble families did the same, prolonging their family tree all the way back to the Troyan wars. I think the most notable example I can think of are the Habsburg, but I believe many other families did the same.
Just an old Roman tradition that continued throughout the dark ages and even into the early modern age. Would be fun to see a modern day monarch try and do this.
 
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 - Of vowels, corsican chiefs and schizophrenia

Morning lads. Rise and shine... like the phoenix does. We got things to conquer! I totally forgot what we did last time, but I bet otto did not like it. Slurping my morning coffee the cloudy mist over my memory seems to fade away slowly. I start recalling that we wanted to do bad things to the mamluks and get a foothold into iberia. How about we find out together what happens next.


Right, sneaky venice allied our new best buddy france. Their friendship is on shaky ground thoug... 35 reasons pro, 35 contra...


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Hey, look at that... a vassal doing useful things. Bosnia laying claims over venice. Good job!


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Let´s go venice... Mainz got wiped and our main fleet locks venice in the adria.


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I hate to do this, but we have to spend mil points from time to time for harsh treatment at unconvinient moments like this. We pause at the start of each month and only buy down 100% rebels. Thank god that most of our heathen provinces are controlled by subjects. We would be in rebel hell right now...


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Howgh, Chief of the corsicans. They probably got released by crimea and adopted their government...


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The pope gifts us some much needed cash...


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We just cancelled ragusas alliance with the pope. Time to dismantle their trade league...


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You can´t see it on this screenshot, but I think we just took venice from venice :p


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More claims for us...


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Looks about right...


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Oh sh*t. Castile just got murdered by france and had to release granada... I wonder if we could exploit that situation...


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Speaking of exploits. I´m just gonna use one... it´s a very tiny one... just to showcase it... once. Found by arumba. Rebels are about to pop in our syrian vassals land. They haven´t finished the cores and I don´t want to move troops there right now and they don´t have an army yet....


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What you do is, you go to the province screen and click on the flag of the rebels of that province...


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From there you magically get redirected to the rebel interface, where you can harsh treat... even though those rebels belong to your subject.... yay!


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Buying down all rebels is just a waste of good mil points....


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Uh... canons... sweet!


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Dubrovnik secured... such a beautiful city...


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Balkans ✓


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Bosnia you wanted it... you core it...


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Wallachia restored. Bohemia grabbed hungaries gold province and returned cores...


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We catch a break on rebellions...


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2nd splendor ability... transfer subject at half cost. The opportunity with naples might have passed, but just in case...


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If nobody wants it... We don´t need it to form rome, but those provinces belong to the constantinople trade node and they are orthodox. No conversion necessary and less ae from the catholics...


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We do need aqq´s provinces though. This also allows us to shorten the mamluk truce timer...


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Huh, muscovy turned friendly. They made a nice addition to our super-hero club. PhoeniX-Men, The Legionaires, By-zexuals? Finding a good name is always the hardest...


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+3% missionary strenght... may the conversions begin!


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Mamluks got a white peace. Aqq isn´t that lucky. We finally can core the province we just took to get the extra splendor for being on two continents...


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This puts poland in the coalition... temporarily... I hope...


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The russian bear joins the phoenix force....


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Turkish becomes accepted...


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This removes the -2% conversion penalty and speeds things up quite a bit...


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Adding provinces to states and activating Religious edict gives us another boost...


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Toma... I like him. Finally a greek name one can pronounce...


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Our flagship prioritizes speed. On water as well with loading and un-loading of troops... Hit and run tactics...


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Look at those cores ^^


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Why isn´t our army tradition at 100%. We just took a short vacation...


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Good thing we have some triumphs on storage...


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Naval bombardment....


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2 month... 2 forts...


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What do you mean we have a man inside until the death of our ruler? Inside him?!? Inside his mind?!? I don´t understand....


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Brilliant manoevering... if I might say so myself. This denies the enemy to merge their stack and allows us to wipe the 10k stack before reinforcements can arrive...


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Cores returned to syria... Should have taken Antakya for ourself to complete a mission later on I forget to check in advance...


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... err Antioch or whatever it is named nowadays... thousands of provinces multiplied by constant renaming ^^


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Our finances are in the sh*tter. I have no clue how we are supposed to pay back our loans... but I do know another option...


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Building up spynetworks constantly to reduce ae has the added benefit of creating claims after the wars are over...


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We do take bessabaria from moldavia and finish another mission...


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Otto... any plans for today?


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Come on... this guy has twice as many vowels then consonants in his name. Who is supposed to remember that?!? I do like his conversion skills however...


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gg, otto....


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A haul... 4 missions at once


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Most of those claims are for our vassals though... I´m a bit confliced here. Eretna and syria will be a pain to integrate without influence ideas. Coring the these provinces ourselves would have seriously delayed our religious idea group, given us much more ae and tons of rebels... Anyways the die is cast..


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European ae has chilled down... As usually we stack both... ae reduction AND improve relations. Advisor, prestige, icon, trade communities....


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The missions kickstarted our authority to 100 already... Orthodox is just sooo good!


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Even though we can´t afford it we constantly buy down debt in our vassals. LD finally got low enough that we can enforce religion on bosnia. Since we are already integrating them we might as well start converting their provinces...


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Deus vult, yippy!!!!


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Tunis has a sixth sense about what is going to happen....


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Damn, we gotta hurry... france´s truce with castile is about to end...


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Claim ready...


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... set ...


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...gogogogo!


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Got it... Granada was allied to tunis and now we have a border with castile, giving us a cb powered by deus vult :)


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From tunis we just take djerba... It´s a fort and we get a border with tunis for future wars.


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We don´t have many dip points to spare, but if we do, we dump them in our gold mine... This should increase our credit-worthiness a bit.


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We buy a couple of world trade ports...


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... and claim the defender of faith....


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You can probably see what´s comming next mr. smarty-pants... but I bet you didn´t see the end of the episode coming, did ya? Real life things are calling for attention and nothing like a good cliffhanger to get consumers on the hook... at least that´s what I was told... or might have made up. Anyways expect the unexpected... or is it expect the expected in the next episode. Man, I´m confused today. Goal is to finish another episode before the week end. Until then!
 

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At least they didn't die. (mild Star Wars (1977) spoiler)
Uh... canons... sweet!
thanks... I guess.:eek:
Goal is to finish another episode
I hope you at least finished your coffee :)

Very nice episode, I think you'll do an emergency, quickly improvised bankruptcy :rolleyes: and I really liked the density of this video filled chapter.
Did you have a list/plan/milestones prepared or did you just go with the flow of the game?

I think the most notable example I can think of are the Habsburg
wow, I didn't think they would take it that far :eek: those were confusing times.