Poland can into Space … and empire
Here’s my Poland can into space achievement-run finished yesterday, barely 1.5 days before AOW-release:
The game was fun, Poland’s mechanics are definitely not broken and Poland itself is rather strong – I guess even good World-Control-material considering that I stumbled into emperorship and did a lot of role-play and testing of some mechanics and how they play out. Taken seriously and especially not going for all techs at level 32 I could have driven them far, far further.
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Even though there have been some threads during the last few weeks a brief reminder of some of Poland’s peculiarities, which are not given so clearly in the wiki: You get elective monarchy almost at the beginning by event.
Very soon you can enact a decision to get Lithuania under you as PU. (Check decisions for details. If you should lose the option due to bad luck before you can gather enough monarch points, consider re-starting. (And that should be the only re-start, because now your power base is good enough!))
At Admin-level-10 you can decide to form the Commonwealth of Poland & Lithuania. I pushed that decision a bit, because annexing TO took some time due to AE. Afterwards you can try to collect Personal Unions. (I didn’t, but some people suggested that the elected monarchy would be especially good at it.)
Getting out of the elected monarchy is no-where explained properly. (I browsed the event files to be sure, because even forum entries contradicted themselves.) There is an event-chain leading to absolute monarchy, which grants an achievement and is really neat in itself.
First let’s look at elections: There are foreign rulers (average to bad values, but good relations with the winner of elections) and there are local rulers (good values, but bad legitimacy and you have to lower it yourself in order to support them). In order to start the event chain you have to have an incompetent king, so that the nobles can enforce strong concessions on you (Pacta Conventa), which can really hamper you – especially when happening too early. After 1600 another event happens triggering a power struggle – nobles against you. Beating up all rebellions, you become an absolute monarchy. I did not have this Pacta Conventa and thought, I would have broken the game by not doing any of the concession-options of the flavor event, but no.
What you have to do is easy: No concessions ever, keep local ruler ever (--> no Pacta Conventa), after 1600 allow foreigner with at least one stat 0 or 1 (that is bad enough for Pacta Conventa), than the power- struggles will kick in soon. When there is no active rebellion left, a final event makes everything good again and turns your government into absolute monarchy.
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My achievements:
- One King to Rule!
- Winged Hussars
- Aggressive Expander (I usually do tall empires.)
- The Emperor’s new clothes (I usually do heavy house-rules and mostly republics.)
- Poland can into Space
- A Kaiser not just in Name
Here are my Ideas:
- Humanism (7)
- Aristocracy (7)
- Diplomacy (7)
- Religion (7)
- Quality (7)
- Trade (7)
- Administrative (2)
- Offensive (3)
Humanism is almost a must-have as first idea. Even with it, I had religious turmoil, until the counter-reformation kicked in. However rebellions overall even then have been rather small and manageable throughout the game.
Aristocracy and Quality are good for the Winged-Hussar-achievement and are as well good as sufficient for you anyways. Aristocracy is all-around good and if Pacta Conventa should hit you early due to bad luck, the diplomat is nice, too.
Religion is nice for conversions and for going east and south-east. (The locked war-leader did not work always, but that is becoming obsolete anyways.)
I should have taken Administrative earlier and filled it out completely – perhaps as 3rd and at latest as 6th. For the first 5 or 6 ideas I did not get the feeling, to lack admin-points for coring, though that was probably the case. Most importantly at the end there is a trade-off between coring, admin-efficiency and idea-slots. Had I filled-up Administrative earlier the coring and teching, would have been cheaper especially when it counts.
My general plan was to have two military and two diplomacy ideas including those with the 10%-finishers for Poland-can-into-Space. Trade was more spite and diddling around with inland-trade-effects than necessity. Had I pushed in to the HRE earlier and more coordinatedly, Influence would have come in handy.
Timeline
Apart from-vassal-Brandenburg, my main allies were Austria and Sweden, which I supported for independence. I could keep both for a while as Sweden slowly gobbled up Scandinavia and supported me loyally against Muscovy. At the beginning I was too greedy and had to fight with both Baltic orders and Muscovy in a near permanent coalition. At times Hungary joined and brought France into the fun too, until it became France’s junior-partner and then integrated.
The formation of the Commonwealth was late due to high AE of the TO … and me annexing anybody else did not help either. Muscovy was tough, but having reduced it to two provinces and Siberia, I let them be. Thus they colonized for me with an accepted culture and my power projection stayed high, while their army size was rather small-ish.
The rift between Sweden and me was gradual and I pushed for it after they had outlived their usefulness, i.e. after Muscovy was safely contained and Scandinavia would only grow stronger while siphoning away my trade.
Only then I went slightly east and mostly into the HRE, because I like to fight challenging wars and the hordes started to become mere paper-tigers. Having Austria as ally I could not attack HRE-members directly, but draw them into wars and keep their lands without punishment.
At this time I allied Venice in order to have two potential neighbors for Western-Arms-Trade (Austria & Venice).
The whole HRE thing was entirely uncoordinated – I just grabbed whatever land I could get without increasing the border with Austria too much. I even annex elector repeatedly. Only after 1650 or 1690 I realized that I had a realistic shot at emperor-ship or word-control or both, if I gave up Poland into Space. However since I wanted just that achievement and had hampered myself already repeatedly, I abstained. After all, I had already paid too much in order to weaken the HRE and Austria started to diplo-annex the rest of it.
So when I became emperor, I got a romp-state and guaranteed my re-election by eating up three of the electors and having two of the remaining four as my vassals. The force-limit was of the size of the level-6-army-building in Liege. The last four of the seven reforms were done almost exclusively by adding provinces. I did those only when there were Austria, me and 7 others including 5 being my vassals left. (The last two reforms I did in 1819.)
So the whole HRE-thingy was mostly titular and for achievements, but no vassal-swarm for world-control or so.
Had I been only a bit more planning-ahead or had I not conquered 100 basetax in northern France and 50 more at the Caucasus after 1800 alone, Master of India had been possible. Furthermore a better HRE-handling and no Poland-can-into-Space-achievement could have led to word control. In fact, I believe Poland is very good for that.
However I am a compulsive micro-manager and this was tough enough for me. And while I can appreciate the tricks and moves of others, no WC for me.
Fun-event: Turko-Polish Tension: Basically being a neighbor to the Ottomans and not being cozy with them, showers you repeatedly with man-power.