-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Hi @Pureanger, I realize I'm a little late here, but I had a specific question about this. I was very much under the impression that integration costs was based off coring costs, which in turn is based on claims (-10%) or permaclaims (-25%). Are you 100% convinced that permaclaims don't lower integration costs?
Lets see if they pull the golden trigger.
*gets popcorn*
It is not supposed to be an official speedrun, as I winged most of it and a couple of things could have been more optimal... But yeah I was going for speed this time as I had no plans to conquer the world this time
Good thing I was slacking off with the new chapters then
Bettter late then never
Integration cost is not based on coring cost. Claims and CCR do not matter. You are probably under the impression, because admin efficiency reduces integration cost. Other then that only diplo annexation cost reduction reduces the cost. You are correct. I always had the notion that claims (not ccr) should factor into the integration cost. Maybe it is difficult from a game development perspective, but in my view it would make kinda sense...
I have the day off and hopefully I will be able to finish the last two chapters today. I will get my writers cap and start working on them right away...
Chapter 7
Chapter 7 - Rize of the Fenix
Just checked the timestamp on the first screenshot... almost two and a half month since I started playing this campaign. I better hurry completing this AAR before memory fades away. Good thing is we are already close to the finish line. Before I start the chapter I want to let you in about some of my pre-campaign thoughts. I already mentioned a couple of times that I wasn´t completely happy with how a couple of things went. Making too much use of vassals for one, the bankruptcies (which might have been unavoidable at this pace, but maybe one less...), not starting earlier with the feeding of allies to reduce coalition members...
The original plan was to have a chill campaign to calm my strained nerves after the brutal no-mil wc. That being said I was also looking forward to some bloody bare-knuckle streetfighting. Brute-forcing the roman restoration against wave after wave of coalition armies after having to run away for centuries only being equipped with bow and arrows. Yes there was always going to be a grace period to gain a powerbase in order to be able to take on a european coalition even on normal. Not having this planned out completely and basically going from situation to situation I realized in early 1500s that there will be a second limiter to earliest restoration. Namely vassal integration as we have to hold all the required provinces ourselves. Sure there is always the possibility of breaking vassalization and conquering your own subjects. Since I didn´t plan for that neither it would have created a whole bunch of new problems which might have delayed me for the same period. So I went with the comfortable route and integrated the vassals regularly, after all this run was supposed to be chill ^^.
With better planning and execution I´m pretty sure that I could have shaved off another 10-30 years though. How? If you read the requirement to form rome carefully you will notice that you don´t need to have all required provinces cored. My plan for the late-game was to prepare the map and make an old-school huge final push and end up with 1000 oe. I haven´t done or seen that for a while, but that´s how wcs used to end usually back in the days. Would have broken our country a few month afterwards, but we´d had a green button. This plan became unfortunately less likely as france was going nuts. Having to trucebreak them 5-7 times in a row while surving the oe would have been a challenge. Otherwise we would have started working on them earlier, losing them as ally and adding them to the coalition. You see, bad options where you look. I hope you forgive me for taking the easy way out. I will try to do a campaign where we just don´t give a f*ck and just murder coalition after coalition and everybody else who stands in our way
Back to present things and the easy way... This is the current situation we are dealing with ^^
Bohemia was the weight that could have tipped the scale to either side. We managed to get the relations in the positves and keep our alliance intact for now... barely. Our other allies are gb, russia and timurids if I recall correctly. I doubt that they would be much help in a war, but lucky for the the ai does not know this...
Our income finally made a decent jump from 150 to arround to 200 ducats a month. I kid you not, I´m scared sh*tless about a third bankruptcy and try to avoid it at all cost...
We are about to enter not-give-damn mode now as I saw an opportunity by truce breaking burgundy. This will break our alliance with bohemia, which was most likely to break after the next war or two. The extra aggressive expansion doesn´t even matter too much as 200 or 500 ae makes no difference. Everybody inside of europe is already against us and countries outside of europe don´t care. The only one we care about it terms of ae is our allies. Most in danger was the bohemian alliance, who we are at war with now. Next in line will be gb, who we will have to finght in the future anyways as we need two provinces from them... It is most useful that we are able to call them in in this war... Oh right, why are we fighting this war? We do need several provinces from burgundy. Burgundy is also allied to brabant, who holds zeeland, which we also need. Also milan. On top we get truces with bohemia and it´s allies. This keeps the number of eligible coalition countries low...
Easy as pie...
Blitzkrieg...
Why are we giving money to the clergy?!
Ah right, stab cost reduction. Man 9.2 corruption, that does not go well with our vassal integration cost...
Just need zeeland. You do your thing now, brabant...
Seems like we are in a hurry. Peacing out bohemia at 35% warscore. A longer truce might have been useful...
Nowhere to run... nowhere to hide...
That stab hit reduced the number of loans available down to 35 :/
Pfew, stab 0 raised it to 47... we got time
Which provinces do we need? Hmm, better check the wiki... don´t want to make any mistakes here. Looks good...
Gb at 31 relations, good enough...
Renewing our truce with morocco...
... and tunis.
Bankruptcy looming ^^
How is our vassal integration of naples going? 1188/2545, eta oct 1604... way too late.
I think we should give back some tunesian land that we accidentally granted to naples... This was quite stupid.
Maxed out on loans. Corruption at 12 and rising...
Giving away naples land did not only reduce integration cost, it also gave us revanchism...
300 dip points and 8 years saved...
Another truce break? Right, annoying provence that stole away quite a bit of money from our genoan trade node while being part of the empire. Us being allied to the emperor could not declare on them before...
Stab comes cheap, even with corruption...
I was just thinking the same thing like you probably did. How in the hell... but then I recalled provence bought some trade company land with all the money they stole from us, so we did not fully annex them here...
Seizing land whenever we can...
Whoa, now that is a bit much...
I see, changed my mind on regular integration. At first I thought this vassal would not make much of a difference since it was way smaller and sooner integrated then naples. As long as we had enough dip points no problem... Then I realized that after seizing a couple of provinces from them they would be a one war job with 99% warscore cost...
... I then realize that I miscalculated and that gascony isn´t a one war job. We made them orthodox, removing the -25% warscore cost vs other religions modifier. Stupid, so stupid!
Finally dip tech 9 ^^
We started another war against milan, who we did not annex earlier due to being non-co-belligerent and over 50% warscore. We give back görz to austria. Another province we don´t need to form rome and is owned by naples... I pains me to do this as like the tunesian provinces it makes the borders look much more pretty, but 12 years is 12 years.. Wait, what? Austria does not want their core back? Ok they don´t have a land connection, but as far as I recall they still have a core.... Oh well
We just returned a core to gascony to peace out austria, since we need to fight another war against them anyways it does not matter. Milan gets full annexed and we don´t need any more provinces from burgundy...
This completes our mission tree and grants us 10% ccr for the next 20 years. Got to love the byzantine missions...
Lol, totally forgot about the third one.... I thought we´d make it...
At least we have truces for the next 5 years...
Gb wants to cancel their alliance... not enough favors to stop them...
Oh well...
We are still losing money... maybe there will be a fourth bankruptcy?!
Where were you couple of month ago....
Now I recall why dip tech 9 was so important. We still have a war with gb on our list and that requires a navy. Dip tech 9 is still decades behind, but at least we get a couple of new units. To make the most of it, we exchange our flagship...
We finally peace out gascony. There was still 80% something oe when we declared bankruptcy and had to take care of it first... No need to take 100% now....
France is 100% warscore... I swear if you develop anything....
Dip rep is at full capacity again, eta feb 1580... sounds more like it...
We are out of bankruptcy. Let´s quickly dow france, before they get any ideas...
Right, truce times ran out as well... yikes
That´s not even half of it...
Damn, too late... gb already joined and commonwealth is a member as well...
Lucky for us portugal is still dicking arround and hasn´t applied for membership...
Hey, our debt is gone... what does the world cost?
Gimme those ducats...
Isn´t that beautiful? Russia trust us utterly. We do the same, they have been such a reliable ally...
Traitorous russians, desert us in our moment of need. Scum of the earth!
This is quite inconvenient. We are so close to finishing our goals and now the coalition decides to pull the trigger. As stupid as the ai might be, sometimes it has a sixth sense about the best timing... meaning the worst timing for us :/
Barbarians at the gates! Sound the alarm!!!
Well, wargoal is superiority. I guess we better hit them hard...
Oh I see what you are doing... Sneaky f*ckers, I told you ai sometimes has a sixth sense. They are planning to occupy neapolitan provinces so integration gets halted...
Let´s finish our other wars first... Mainland france was less then 100% warscore as some of their territory is outside of europe. False alarm...
Ha, now that is funny. The ai calculated our paper strengh before they declared war on us. They saw that russia woulnd´t join and we were busy with france and gb. Now this fires back in their face when the ai calculates against the ai... The religious league war got triggered, lol.
Now half of the holy roman anti-roman league is in a league war against the other half...
Another mastermind move from the ai. The graubünden fort is a key choke point for us to enter the hre from the south. Which we need to do if we want to also protect naples provinces. If we take it we could peace out several nations seperately. Somehow knowing this sweden parked a stack in the tirol mountains and does not move an inch. I tried attacking that stack but it gets reinforced in 2 seconds... so we have a stalemate
One of our stacks got locked inside the hre and can´t actually get out. Maybe that gets movement into the situation. I´m also hoping that the ai will decide to dodge us by invading our western or eastern fronts. As soon as he walks down from his mountains to the south he will get a bloody nose...
We got 45% warscore on them. Enough that they accept timurids releasing 3 nations to peace out... More then we would have needed, but a longer truce is nice...
Already 20k in debt again... forming rome ain´t cheap...
On the plus side. Gb got cocky and landed their main army stack on the continent. We just engaged their navy and if we beat them we have few obstacles left to siege down their capital...
The mandatory second gascony war... Cost us like 8 stab, hmpf...
We managed to beat them, most likely to our awesome admiral and flagship...
Hip hip horray. London has fallen...
Awesome, naples has debt...
This allows us to seize another province... 51 ld though...
So we develop mantua. Developing vassals and seizing provinces from them is cost neutral. Meaning if you seize 10 development from them it gives as much ld as you reduce it from developing the same amount... only one exception...
If you develop the highest dev province they have and seize it as a last push. It does not matter if you are at 100 or 120% ld after the seizure as long as your integration process is over 100%...
We peace out portugal. Azores, canaries.. check, check...
Are you kidding me, we have to wait to the next year because there are no diplomats available... sry rome in 1578.. no diplomats
Annex gascony...
Oh right, had to wait for naples too... 1579 ain´t too bad... now we can enjoy....
Wait what????!!!! Motherf*... That´s what I get for trusting the wiki and not using the cool in-game feature that high-lights the required provinces...
The war against burgundy was in 1566... ages and a coalition war ago... I´m not going back that far...
We savescum a few days back to not have to suffer the oe from peacing out portugal and gascony and truce break burgundy half a year later...
So, turns out integrating vassals wasn´t the last thing we needed to do :/
Being rome in 1579
Unfortunately I haven´t found a better quality video of this, so we have to celebrate the rize of the fenix with the pg13 version. It was a pretty fun run and relaxing for me. Hadn´t played byzantium or on normal mode since forever. Maybe I´m getting old and it is time to retire from those crazy world conquests... ah wth , who am I kidding... Anyways, this is not the end yet. There will be a short epilog as we still have some scores to settle. Don´t want you guys leaving with blue balls after talking about bloody street brawls at the beginning of this chapter. So stay tuned just a little bit longer...
Just checked the timestamp on the first screenshot... almost two and a half month since I started playing this campaign. I better hurry completing this AAR before memory fades away. Good thing is we are already close to the finish line. Before I start the chapter I want to let you in about some of my pre-campaign thoughts. I already mentioned a couple of times that I wasn´t completely happy with how a couple of things went. Making too much use of vassals for one, the bankruptcies (which might have been unavoidable at this pace, but maybe one less...), not starting earlier with the feeding of allies to reduce coalition members...
The original plan was to have a chill campaign to calm my strained nerves after the brutal no-mil wc. That being said I was also looking forward to some bloody bare-knuckle streetfighting. Brute-forcing the roman restoration against wave after wave of coalition armies after having to run away for centuries only being equipped with bow and arrows. Yes there was always going to be a grace period to gain a powerbase in order to be able to take on a european coalition even on normal. Not having this planned out completely and basically going from situation to situation I realized in early 1500s that there will be a second limiter to earliest restoration. Namely vassal integration as we have to hold all the required provinces ourselves. Sure there is always the possibility of breaking vassalization and conquering your own subjects. Since I didn´t plan for that neither it would have created a whole bunch of new problems which might have delayed me for the same period. So I went with the comfortable route and integrated the vassals regularly, after all this run was supposed to be chill ^^.
With better planning and execution I´m pretty sure that I could have shaved off another 10-30 years though. How? If you read the requirement to form rome carefully you will notice that you don´t need to have all required provinces cored. My plan for the late-game was to prepare the map and make an old-school huge final push and end up with 1000 oe. I haven´t done or seen that for a while, but that´s how wcs used to end usually back in the days. Would have broken our country a few month afterwards, but we´d had a green button. This plan became unfortunately less likely as france was going nuts. Having to trucebreak them 5-7 times in a row while surving the oe would have been a challenge. Otherwise we would have started working on them earlier, losing them as ally and adding them to the coalition. You see, bad options where you look. I hope you forgive me for taking the easy way out. I will try to do a campaign where we just don´t give a f*ck and just murder coalition after coalition and everybody else who stands in our way
Back to present things and the easy way... This is the current situation we are dealing with ^^
Bohemia was the weight that could have tipped the scale to either side. We managed to get the relations in the positves and keep our alliance intact for now... barely. Our other allies are gb, russia and timurids if I recall correctly. I doubt that they would be much help in a war, but lucky for the the ai does not know this...
Our income finally made a decent jump from 150 to arround to 200 ducats a month. I kid you not, I´m scared sh*tless about a third bankruptcy and try to avoid it at all cost...
We are about to enter not-give-damn mode now as I saw an opportunity by truce breaking burgundy. This will break our alliance with bohemia, which was most likely to break after the next war or two. The extra aggressive expansion doesn´t even matter too much as 200 or 500 ae makes no difference. Everybody inside of europe is already against us and countries outside of europe don´t care. The only one we care about it terms of ae is our allies. Most in danger was the bohemian alliance, who we are at war with now. Next in line will be gb, who we will have to finght in the future anyways as we need two provinces from them... It is most useful that we are able to call them in in this war... Oh right, why are we fighting this war? We do need several provinces from burgundy. Burgundy is also allied to brabant, who holds zeeland, which we also need. Also milan. On top we get truces with bohemia and it´s allies. This keeps the number of eligible coalition countries low...
Easy as pie...
Blitzkrieg...
Why are we giving money to the clergy?!
Ah right, stab cost reduction. Man 9.2 corruption, that does not go well with our vassal integration cost...
Just need zeeland. You do your thing now, brabant...
Seems like we are in a hurry. Peacing out bohemia at 35% warscore. A longer truce might have been useful...
Nowhere to run... nowhere to hide...
That stab hit reduced the number of loans available down to 35 :/
Pfew, stab 0 raised it to 47... we got time
Which provinces do we need? Hmm, better check the wiki... don´t want to make any mistakes here. Looks good...
Gb at 31 relations, good enough...
Renewing our truce with morocco...
... and tunis.
Bankruptcy looming ^^
How is our vassal integration of naples going? 1188/2545, eta oct 1604... way too late.
I think we should give back some tunesian land that we accidentally granted to naples... This was quite stupid.
Maxed out on loans. Corruption at 12 and rising...
Giving away naples land did not only reduce integration cost, it also gave us revanchism...
300 dip points and 8 years saved...
Another truce break? Right, annoying provence that stole away quite a bit of money from our genoan trade node while being part of the empire. Us being allied to the emperor could not declare on them before...
Stab comes cheap, even with corruption...
I was just thinking the same thing like you probably did. How in the hell... but then I recalled provence bought some trade company land with all the money they stole from us, so we did not fully annex them here...
Seizing land whenever we can...
Whoa, now that is a bit much...
I see, changed my mind on regular integration. At first I thought this vassal would not make much of a difference since it was way smaller and sooner integrated then naples. As long as we had enough dip points no problem... Then I realized that after seizing a couple of provinces from them they would be a one war job with 99% warscore cost...
... I then realize that I miscalculated and that gascony isn´t a one war job. We made them orthodox, removing the -25% warscore cost vs other religions modifier. Stupid, so stupid!
Finally dip tech 9 ^^
We started another war against milan, who we did not annex earlier due to being non-co-belligerent and over 50% warscore. We give back görz to austria. Another province we don´t need to form rome and is owned by naples... I pains me to do this as like the tunesian provinces it makes the borders look much more pretty, but 12 years is 12 years.. Wait, what? Austria does not want their core back? Ok they don´t have a land connection, but as far as I recall they still have a core.... Oh well
We just returned a core to gascony to peace out austria, since we need to fight another war against them anyways it does not matter. Milan gets full annexed and we don´t need any more provinces from burgundy...
This completes our mission tree and grants us 10% ccr for the next 20 years. Got to love the byzantine missions...
Lol, totally forgot about the third one.... I thought we´d make it...
At least we have truces for the next 5 years...
Gb wants to cancel their alliance... not enough favors to stop them...
Oh well...
We are still losing money... maybe there will be a fourth bankruptcy?!
Where were you couple of month ago....
Now I recall why dip tech 9 was so important. We still have a war with gb on our list and that requires a navy. Dip tech 9 is still decades behind, but at least we get a couple of new units. To make the most of it, we exchange our flagship...
We finally peace out gascony. There was still 80% something oe when we declared bankruptcy and had to take care of it first... No need to take 100% now....
France is 100% warscore... I swear if you develop anything....
Dip rep is at full capacity again, eta feb 1580... sounds more like it...
We are out of bankruptcy. Let´s quickly dow france, before they get any ideas...
Right, truce times ran out as well... yikes
That´s not even half of it...
Damn, too late... gb already joined and commonwealth is a member as well...
Lucky for us portugal is still dicking arround and hasn´t applied for membership...
Hey, our debt is gone... what does the world cost?
Gimme those ducats...
Isn´t that beautiful? Russia trust us utterly. We do the same, they have been such a reliable ally...
Traitorous russians, desert us in our moment of need. Scum of the earth!
This is quite inconvenient. We are so close to finishing our goals and now the coalition decides to pull the trigger. As stupid as the ai might be, sometimes it has a sixth sense about the best timing... meaning the worst timing for us :/
Barbarians at the gates! Sound the alarm!!!
Well, wargoal is superiority. I guess we better hit them hard...
Oh I see what you are doing... Sneaky f*ckers, I told you ai sometimes has a sixth sense. They are planning to occupy neapolitan provinces so integration gets halted...
Let´s finish our other wars first... Mainland france was less then 100% warscore as some of their territory is outside of europe. False alarm...
Ha, now that is funny. The ai calculated our paper strengh before they declared war on us. They saw that russia woulnd´t join and we were busy with france and gb. Now this fires back in their face when the ai calculates against the ai... The religious league war got triggered, lol.
Now half of the holy roman anti-roman league is in a league war against the other half...
Another mastermind move from the ai. The graubünden fort is a key choke point for us to enter the hre from the south. Which we need to do if we want to also protect naples provinces. If we take it we could peace out several nations seperately. Somehow knowing this sweden parked a stack in the tirol mountains and does not move an inch. I tried attacking that stack but it gets reinforced in 2 seconds... so we have a stalemate
One of our stacks got locked inside the hre and can´t actually get out. Maybe that gets movement into the situation. I´m also hoping that the ai will decide to dodge us by invading our western or eastern fronts. As soon as he walks down from his mountains to the south he will get a bloody nose...
We got 45% warscore on them. Enough that they accept timurids releasing 3 nations to peace out... More then we would have needed, but a longer truce is nice...
Already 20k in debt again... forming rome ain´t cheap...
On the plus side. Gb got cocky and landed their main army stack on the continent. We just engaged their navy and if we beat them we have few obstacles left to siege down their capital...
The mandatory second gascony war... Cost us like 8 stab, hmpf...
We managed to beat them, most likely to our awesome admiral and flagship...
Hip hip horray. London has fallen...
Awesome, naples has debt...
This allows us to seize another province... 51 ld though...
So we develop mantua. Developing vassals and seizing provinces from them is cost neutral. Meaning if you seize 10 development from them it gives as much ld as you reduce it from developing the same amount... only one exception...
If you develop the highest dev province they have and seize it as a last push. It does not matter if you are at 100 or 120% ld after the seizure as long as your integration process is over 100%...
We peace out portugal. Azores, canaries.. check, check...
Are you kidding me, we have to wait to the next year because there are no diplomats available... sry rome in 1578.. no diplomats
Annex gascony...
Oh right, had to wait for naples too... 1579 ain´t too bad... now we can enjoy....
Wait what????!!!! Motherf*... That´s what I get for trusting the wiki and not using the cool in-game feature that high-lights the required provinces...
The war against burgundy was in 1566... ages and a coalition war ago... I´m not going back that far...
We savescum a few days back to not have to suffer the oe from peacing out portugal and gascony and truce break burgundy half a year later...
So, turns out integrating vassals wasn´t the last thing we needed to do :/
Being rome in 1579
Unfortunately I haven´t found a better quality video of this, so we have to celebrate the rize of the fenix with the pg13 version. It was a pretty fun run and relaxing for me. Hadn´t played byzantium or on normal mode since forever. Maybe I´m getting old and it is time to retire from those crazy world conquests... ah wth , who am I kidding... Anyways, this is not the end yet. There will be a short epilog as we still have some scores to settle. Don´t want you guys leaving with blue balls after talking about bloody street brawls at the beginning of this chapter. So stay tuned just a little bit longer...
Attachments
Last edited:
Epilogue
Epilogue - There can only be one
Having completed the roman restoration was fun and all, but a feeling remains that something else is still unfinished. There is an imposter infridgeing on our naming rights to the north. After all... there can be only one! But first let´s have a look at some of the finishing screenshots....
We ended up with a measely 289% oe... like I said, I planned to end it with at least 1000 oe
Economy hasn´t improved. We are half way to our next bankruptcy...
Technology wasn´t as important as the campaign ended very soon. Especially coring and integrations kept us behind in admin and dip.
Didn´t even finish admin ideas to save on points. The final national idea would have given us +3% missionary strenght, but we already had tons of it....
All that missionary strengh combined with 7 missionaries made conversions effortless. Maybe they were responsible for one of the bankruptcies, but this was totally worth it. No unrest in converted provinces and tons of extra manpower...
Largest standing army by far... 176k manpower
4050 dev
Alright, we jump back to an alternate timeline.... nah, this is too easy...
We murder morocco...
... and release tafilalt as a vassal. They are very carmouflaged, having pretty much the same color as we do...
... we give russia another chance to redeem themselves.
QQ is next...
We vassalize qq and declare on rayazan to return cores to them...
Having tafilalt and qq as vassals serves two purposes. If there was to be a huge war, they act as buffer states and will take care of the regional threats, so we don´t have to run arround that much... Secondly by diverting trade we receive a piece of their trade nodes to improve our shitty economy. Especially persia is quite lucrative...
Not having to conquer the world we dump some of our admin in full coring our states... Really don´t want the fourth bankruptcy to happen....
Beefing up qq...
Better secure that border too...
Ethiopia will play the police man down here...
Timmy gets a bit sour as we are allied to russia and boxed them in ...
Byzantine Colombia... without taking exploration
Alright, I guess we can make it official now....
What´s our army quality like? We can play with the big boys I guess....
What do you mean has expired... you probably meant ... has risen...
Coalition truces are running out...
... and it is forming again...
Wth?! We improved relations with you before the month tick and you are friendly to us...
Very odd, now they decide to ally us. There might have been a savescum involved. I honestly don´t recall what happend here exactly...
That´s what I call a coalition... and the so called holy roman empire has the full amount of electors as well... a worthy foe...
Let´s go then. We declare on anhalt, which is an elector, but not part of the coalition. The coalition gets triggered anyways, because the emperor is part of the coalition (check the last screenshot). This is important because in a little bit I realize that I accidentally used a bug/exploit that I wasn´t aware of up to this point...
Looks like a fair fight... I don´t think I have realized it by that point, but you can already see the effects of the exploit. All coalition nations have become co-belligerent war partners and can be peaced out seperately. 1000 oe here we come (the -999 dip barrier will prevent that though). I was told this was known already for some time, except by me apparently... It is very powerful to deal with coalitions. Basically all you need to do is to indirectly declare on the emperor (who is part of the coalition), via a nation that is not in the coalition but allied or protected by the emperor...
HRE vs RE
That must have hurt...
Hmm, a second coalition... well russia and timmy will protect us...
That is the first score we settle. This is mare nostrum!
We are 5 loans away from bankruptcy... I kid you not... We better max out the loans now.
Enemy occupations reduced the number of loans we can take and we don´t want to deal with this with 50% morale...
Motherf*..... Aight, russia... your are gone for good...
We do lose quite a few men, but recover way quicker then the hre does. The scale is starting to tip in our direction...
Shamelessly exploiting the bug and peacing out coalition members seperately. Hey our beef is with the hre, not sweden nor the coalition in general...
This is the second coalition, which I´m a bit annoyed that it fired. Since we already formed rome, we decide to give them back london an a few other provinces we don´t necessarily need anymore... you got lucky gb, this time...
Yeah... go eat a d*ck russia!!!
So shameful... That´s why I don´t use exploits anymore. If I start, I can´t stop ...
Size doesn´t matter, strenght does...
Our legions retreat... Time to boost their morale!
That´s what I´m talking about!
We are in the year 1593, all of germania is occupied by the romans... all of germania? No, a few unruly germanian villages do not stop resisting the invaders...
... but they don´t have any magic potions. HRE dismantled. The end!
Order is restored and there is only one roman empire on the map. Like I said before this was a very relaxing and fun run for me... with only a few hickups. I hope you were at least mildly entertained as well and join me again in the next AAR. I´m currently neck deep in my next campaign, but I did enjoy the slower pacing I must say. So no idea when I´ll start the next AAR or IF I´m actually able to pull this off... Special thanks as always goes to everybody who commented, you know who you are! Take care!
Having completed the roman restoration was fun and all, but a feeling remains that something else is still unfinished. There is an imposter infridgeing on our naming rights to the north. After all... there can be only one! But first let´s have a look at some of the finishing screenshots....
We ended up with a measely 289% oe... like I said, I planned to end it with at least 1000 oe
Economy hasn´t improved. We are half way to our next bankruptcy...
Technology wasn´t as important as the campaign ended very soon. Especially coring and integrations kept us behind in admin and dip.
Didn´t even finish admin ideas to save on points. The final national idea would have given us +3% missionary strenght, but we already had tons of it....
All that missionary strengh combined with 7 missionaries made conversions effortless. Maybe they were responsible for one of the bankruptcies, but this was totally worth it. No unrest in converted provinces and tons of extra manpower...
Largest standing army by far... 176k manpower
4050 dev
Alright, we jump back to an alternate timeline.... nah, this is too easy...
We murder morocco...
... and release tafilalt as a vassal. They are very carmouflaged, having pretty much the same color as we do...
... we give russia another chance to redeem themselves.
QQ is next...
We vassalize qq and declare on rayazan to return cores to them...
Having tafilalt and qq as vassals serves two purposes. If there was to be a huge war, they act as buffer states and will take care of the regional threats, so we don´t have to run arround that much... Secondly by diverting trade we receive a piece of their trade nodes to improve our shitty economy. Especially persia is quite lucrative...
Not having to conquer the world we dump some of our admin in full coring our states... Really don´t want the fourth bankruptcy to happen....
Beefing up qq...
Better secure that border too...
Ethiopia will play the police man down here...
Timmy gets a bit sour as we are allied to russia and boxed them in ...
Byzantine Colombia... without taking exploration
Alright, I guess we can make it official now....
What´s our army quality like? We can play with the big boys I guess....
What do you mean has expired... you probably meant ... has risen...
Coalition truces are running out...
... and it is forming again...
Wth?! We improved relations with you before the month tick and you are friendly to us...
Very odd, now they decide to ally us. There might have been a savescum involved. I honestly don´t recall what happend here exactly...
That´s what I call a coalition... and the so called holy roman empire has the full amount of electors as well... a worthy foe...
Let´s go then. We declare on anhalt, which is an elector, but not part of the coalition. The coalition gets triggered anyways, because the emperor is part of the coalition (check the last screenshot). This is important because in a little bit I realize that I accidentally used a bug/exploit that I wasn´t aware of up to this point...
Looks like a fair fight... I don´t think I have realized it by that point, but you can already see the effects of the exploit. All coalition nations have become co-belligerent war partners and can be peaced out seperately. 1000 oe here we come (the -999 dip barrier will prevent that though). I was told this was known already for some time, except by me apparently... It is very powerful to deal with coalitions. Basically all you need to do is to indirectly declare on the emperor (who is part of the coalition), via a nation that is not in the coalition but allied or protected by the emperor...
HRE vs RE
That must have hurt...
Hmm, a second coalition... well russia and timmy will protect us...
That is the first score we settle. This is mare nostrum!
We are 5 loans away from bankruptcy... I kid you not... We better max out the loans now.
Enemy occupations reduced the number of loans we can take and we don´t want to deal with this with 50% morale...
Motherf*..... Aight, russia... your are gone for good...
We do lose quite a few men, but recover way quicker then the hre does. The scale is starting to tip in our direction...
Shamelessly exploiting the bug and peacing out coalition members seperately. Hey our beef is with the hre, not sweden nor the coalition in general...
This is the second coalition, which I´m a bit annoyed that it fired. Since we already formed rome, we decide to give them back london an a few other provinces we don´t necessarily need anymore... you got lucky gb, this time...
Yeah... go eat a d*ck russia!!!
So shameful... That´s why I don´t use exploits anymore. If I start, I can´t stop ...
Size doesn´t matter, strenght does...
Our legions retreat... Time to boost their morale!
That´s what I´m talking about!
We are in the year 1593, all of germania is occupied by the romans... all of germania? No, a few unruly germanian villages do not stop resisting the invaders...
... but they don´t have any magic potions. HRE dismantled. The end!
Order is restored and there is only one roman empire on the map. Like I said before this was a very relaxing and fun run for me... with only a few hickups. I hope you were at least mildly entertained as well and join me again in the next AAR. I´m currently neck deep in my next campaign, but I did enjoy the slower pacing I must say. So no idea when I´ll start the next AAR or IF I´m actually able to pull this off... Special thanks as always goes to everybody who commented, you know who you are! Take care!
Attachments
Mind blown. Vassals truly aren't worth much, are they?Bettter late then never
I wouldn´t say that. I personally don´t hate them as many eu4 player tend to nowadays. Yes you need to babysit them and their direct military support in conflicts is questionable at best. Indirectly they do have many benefits:
- they let expand quicker then you could only by yourself. for me personally getting ahead of the curve is one of the most important things as it protects you from ai declaring on you and you having to fight unnecessary wars...
- return cores is one of the best early game cbs with reduced cost and extreme ae reduction. I love vassals that do have plenty of cores left...
- they are not an enemy ai. even if they are not super helpful... at least they don´t work against you if you can manage the ld. they let you close down theatres quicker or act as buffer states so you can set your focus on other parts of the globe
- for the most part they handle their territory better then you could. that is if those provinces are their cores (0 autonomy), of their culture/religion.
- they used to be helpful with conversions and probably will be again in the next patch
- in early game they increase your forcelimit, pay some money and do have other minor benefits like patroling the sea and sieging provinces
- their paper strenght is calculated to yours by the ai
- some vassals colonize, upon integration you get their cns
So there are a lot of advantages to vassals (don´t consider this a complete list). The reason why I was bitching about vassals so much in this run was that it was a speedrun. I often integrate vassals in the age of absolutism earliest, except for maybe 1-2 smaller ones. Absolutism -> admin efficiency is a huge reduction to integration cost. The other of course in diplo annexation cost reduction. Influence ideas + admin ideas for the policy (+plutocratic back in the days) makes a huge difference. Problem was, in this run I had neither of those... So I had to pay the ful 10 dip points per 1 dev which is astronomical. I think usually it would be 1-2 dip points with full admin efficiency + integration reduction...
I'm going to repeat this quote at the back, after reacting to the others.
This use-case is indeed my most-used one. I can understand this.
In my most recent game as Pegu Pirates, I had vassals hold mainland SEA and put them on scutage. That way I enjoyed the trade power and some taxes, without having to fight on the mainland: my navy could handle any war, including the trade conflicts I did with Ming.
This is something I experience differently. Your 'that is...' exception highlights the issue: if the provinces aren't culture/religion, the vassals tend to be very trigger happy on raising autonomy. Do you share this experience? I wonder if I'm over-feeding vassals, thereby triggering their panic-mode of 'oh noes, too much unrest, must raise autonomy to 99% everywhere, even before coring'. What do you think?
I share this hope! This used to be my second-most used reason for vassals: conversions.
Early-game OPM vassals are great, due to base income and manpower. Of course, this assumes they aren't competing with better dip slots.
Good point, I forget this.
That actually brings a question to mind: if you create a vassal from dead cores, do those vassals every have exploration ideas? I understand that they get their idea groups randomly, but is exploration or expansion included there?
Given my experience of vassals raising autonomy everywhere they go, without converting stuff, if there are gain for using vassals to 'expand quicker'? I can think of two reasons, am I missing any other obvious ones? Reason 1: reconquest. Nuff said. Reason 2: allow you to get more than 100% overextension without hurting.
I´m just talking about core land, which is instantly 0 autonomy for them. If you give them additional land it becomes a whole different story and then often times you are better suited to deal with those provinces. Exceptions being maybe same culture/religion of the vassal. Sometimes you do have special vassals with humanist ideas or national ideas that reduce unrest or give tolerance. Without these exceptions vassals can be a total pain in the d*ck with rebellions...
Depends if i want the vassals to have my techlevel or not and if they already have too high ae to tick down over time. When you release a nation they have default idea sets they will take. You can check those in your eu4 folder under \common\countries ... There are countries that take exploration etc by default, like spain, england, portugal... I usually don´t use colonization vassals though. Most of the time I prefer them to take religious and in some cases military ideas or maybe admin ideas...
Don´t let your vassals become too big and integrate them once they served their purpose and it is convinient. They should never be a primary source of power as they can turn against you. I see them as a useful overflow device...
What a great end! I didn't fully grasp the reason for reverting a few years back to dismantle the HRE, but I guess, it has something to do with a ruined economy. Looking forward to your OPM Shogunate bankrupt WC playing with the left hand only and blindfolded while doing a headstand.
Thanks. It had something to do with the fact that I had 10-15 years before the coalition could form again. Having pushed the nation to the limit, close to bankruptcy and with 280 oe, I decided not to suffer thru that and decided to go back a bit. Remember this was a chill AAR
Working on the handstand, but gave up on the bankruptcy thing for now. I would take the negative modifers, but I haven´t found a satisfying solution for the no war thing. I could make special rules to make it work, but meh. For now I´m working on another project...
Note that exploration and expansion ideas (and some other groups) have modifiers with "factor = 0" in common/ideas/00_basic_ideas.txt. These prevent the ai from grabbing the ideagroup, even when they are being released and e.g. explo is in their list of historical ideagroups. Example: Subjects aren't allowed to pick exploration so if you release a country as a vassal the can never have it. Expansion is blocked if the tag doesn't already have exploration, unless they are a colonial subject or neighbour an uncolonised province. As such a subject Castile can't pick exploration but is allowed to pick Expansion if nobody has colonised Tenerife.