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It sucks when you forget what you were doing and screw yourself over. At least with the TYW having started, you can focus on that while your diplo points recover and vassals are annexed.
 
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awesome that you are continuing this

Tried my own run like yours in the current patch and all was going well. Muscovy was weak after a war and now is having trouble with Novgorod and Perm and got Crimea + Nogai + Sibir as vassals there. Arabian peninsula and east africa expanding is going nicely, india only small advances yet.
What might be my death is my westwards expansian. Just took Porto for myself, parts of Aragon for vassal Catalunya and Venice from Austria for vassal Serbia.
That somehow added to over 100 AE for most of the HRE and now I got this coalition war:
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hope I can defend it in the carpatian mountains
at least I got janissary event 90 army trad and a 6/5/1/1 general
 
Early European coalitions are really something you should look out for, as a Muslim you conquer Christian lands, so they all hate you to death. Sometimes it's not quite possible, but if you could, getting a European ally would benefit a lot. Like France. You could use him against Castile and he would also defend you if the coalition attacks. But it's tough to get that alliance sometimes, and he may just never turn green heart and stay defensive always, fine though, even the fact that he won't join the coalition is good enough.

As always, against the Europens, you must maintain naval superiority by building lots of galleys so that even if you lose, you can't lose much. You may go over limit as well if need be, because they cost nothing at all.
In lategame you can spam heavies and still have thousands of ducats anyway, but you probably would rather spend that money on land forces in early game so galleys should be fine in Mediterrnean, untill that moment you gotta take out GB.
 
Early European coalitions are really something you should look out for, as a Muslim you conquer Christian lands, so they all hate you to death. Sometimes it's not quite possible, but if you could, getting a European ally would benefit a lot. Like France. You could use him against Castile and he would also defend you if the coalition attacks. But it's tough to get that alliance sometimes, and he may just never turn green heart and stay defensive always, fine though, even the fact that he won't join the coalition is good enough.

As always, against the Europens, you must maintain naval superiority by building lots of galleys so that even if you lose, you can't lose much. You may go over limit as well if need be, because they cost nothing at all.
I had allied Poland early but now disbanded that because I have 8/5 vassals but they did not PU Lithuania. As for naval superiority it seems I am able to achieve that, already sunk some smaller navies and there is only the english fleet but they only have 8 heavies cause they lost many in a war against Denmark and Hansa.
So when I have naval superiority I blockade Northern Italy and french mediterranian coast and lock entrance right of gibraltar, right?
I will also try to resiege my Iberian lands with small merc stacks which should let some troops walk there again to split the giant troop stacks so fewer arrive in Serbia.
 
Yeah it makes sense. A Poland who didn't PU Lithuania is kinda meh, only strong due to pretty great ideas but other than that it's like a little stronger Bohemia with Eastern tech. Anyway, after accumulating all that AE, it shouldnt be easy to ally any European anyway so you can just ignore that idea. Though you should probably focus on Africa/East once you're done with the war. Do note however that you should always check out for truces. Coalitions may form, but if Westerners+Easterners join the same coalition it's gonna be hard to beat them, so you should plan it so that whenever countries in an area join coalition, the areas won't, either by having little AE in there or planning truce timers. Well, good luck :)
 
So the war was very tense because France is tough but I just managed to almost make it then a second Coalition war was declared with Spain + Poland + Lithuania + some minors. So now I am restarting another game :)

I still don't get where all that the AE came from because I did not even take a HRE province. But I suspect the high base tax Venezia that I took from Austria and gave to Serbia was the problem. Next time I will be more careful with peace I probably felt too invinvicle and clicked too fast. I think it is probably best to stay away from Europe the first 100 years, maybe only doing minor work in Iberia against Portugal and Castille. So this time I will stay away from Austria/Hungary and focus on these expansion directions only and stay away from central europe:
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Yeah Venezia is pretty high BT... Also you are heathen to them, so more reason to get increased AE. Ideally you should be doing work on all directions, but if you found Euro-focused start too difficult to manage due to AE, you may only do minimal work there as you suggested. I'd suggest not dealing with Venice or Austria but just the Iberians, they are on the corner of Europe so less people will get angry with you. And try an alliance with France if you can manage next time, it should help if France rivalled Castile, if it can be pulled out.
 
Current WC playthrough works nice, got Georgia, Crimea, Syria, Persia, Iraq as vassals early and Janissaries early after.
Timurids somehow exploded without me doing anything and some persian provinces autojoined. After that I DOWed them Persioa is now complete temporarily hat 60% liberty but now back to 45 again.
Muscovy released Perm and ceded some provinces around Moskow to me and is now being attacked by other nations after I crushed their armies
Expanded into India, Oman and Iberia until 1500 released Leon but did not vassalize it is currently my western arms trade partner. Annexed Syria and Iraq and now got Kazakh as a vassal killing the eastern hordes.

My current big problem is that it is hard to finish my Iberia conquest because France is Defender of the Faith. I am allied with them but I am thinking of breaking it and attacking Castille+Portugal and Aragon anyway (broke their Wedding already earlier).
I am in 1510 currently but France has same Army size (~90) as it already started blobbing after Inheritance. Should I risk it as I don't feel comfortable not stopping the colonizers. I have 90+ Army Tradition, Janissaries and very strong generals but France is still France plus the remains of Castille, Portugal and England.

I am unsure if France will loose its Defender of Faith. I never watched if AI is usually able to keep that or not.
 
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If France loses a war, he will lose it. Who are his rivals? Even as a dotf, AI doesn't like defending their rivals. Even if he has more positive than negative to join on Castile's side, France will go into a war with someone like Austria sooner or later, which will cause debt+exhaustion, you can attack Castile on that moment and he should refuse. Pictures could help me imagine the situation though.
 
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France has half of its troops in Muscovy (warscore 0) but still 90k manpower left
Unfortunately France only rivals Austria and Poland if I attacked those they dont care for Defender of Faith but everybody else they protect

England is in a PU under Portugal :(
I might soon enter a regency (heir 4 years because hunting accident ruler 66)
 
hmm. Then you have to attack either of his rivals first. If he declines, this will make him lose the title and he won't be taking it for a long time most likely.
Btw, your relations seem rather bad. Did you max Improve Relations to +100 already? or is it due to your high AE? Also, how did you get to Portugal? No CB? He should have started colonising btw.
 
Awesome AAR. As a player still struggling to subjugate Mamluks even by 1550s, I almost envy.
One question: Do you "ever" build any buildings at all? Even like manufactories, or unique buildings? Embassy might have helped you a lot with the additional diploat and the additional diplomatic relation.
 
Awesome AAR. As a player still struggling to subjugate Mamluks even by 1550s, I almost envy.
One question: Do you "ever" build any buildings at all? Even like manufactories, or unique buildings? Embassy might have helped you a lot with the additional diploat and the additional diplomatic relation.
Thanks a lot :) And yes, I build buildings, just not that often. Because buildings cost way too much power points. I got at average tier 2 trade buildings in Constantinople trade node for example. I remember building military ones as well, not because I need it but because I had way too much MP at some point anyway, also increased manpower didn't hurt either. Temples are good too. And, navy ones can be needed sometimes. The usual cheap buildings aren't great, as most of them require a lot of time to get back their investation cost but the monarch points never return, though, there are certainly times you should build. As for unique buildings, they are pretty much a different case. I build embassy in all of my games, whenever I have the needed money. I even remember taking loans just to get that relation limit :D Other unique buildings aren't bad either, there are pretty good ones, so you should consider them. If you want money, manufactories usually give a nice income, I haven't done the maths but most people consider it worth, I build it if I have a lot of spare cash, but If I just got around 1k, it's better to save it for a war in which I might need mercs probably.
 
Part 32(1596-1598)

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So we're back with Thirty Years War(though it might have a different name in our alternative universe!) France got some serious problems... Well, Religious War provides all nations in the war +50 war enthuatism, so he will likely have high enthuatism for a long time even if he gets sieged down.

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Bohemians have done a great mistake! A mistake that will affect the war badly for our side.

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Meanwhile we're busy clearing out the foreign troops inside the borders.

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So that's why France wasn't fighting like a BBB(Big Blue Blob) should, some of his troops were overseas... Oh. Talking about overseas, the Protestant side has a chance to fight back the Spanish in overseas colonies, thanks to British who sank the Spanish Armada.

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We gang up with Sweden to clear up the remainders in Lithuania, but that means nothing. The real war is ongoing in Central Europe, and if nobody decides to help out, we will face huge stacks there once our armies come from India. Well, anyway, this is not my war, I'm just having my fun :D

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That moment when you realize how strong French troops are once again.

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Found a nice spot to eliminate some Austrian troops.

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More troops pour in from both sides and the battle gets more exciting. But we still got the upperhand.

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Ottomans save the day once again.

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The number advantage is increasing on our favor.

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Example of that perfect event which requires you to have an +3 advisor. AFAIK it can happen to same advisor only once, so some people even fire that one and get another +3 just to get that event again. Though you're fine without doing it actually.
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My pc is old enough, and you can't even guess how fast Speed 5 pass time with all those armies floating around :D

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This must be the greatest battle the world has seen up to this day. And you don't even see the reinforcements coming on this way in the fog of war :D

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We win... But... Well, we lost way too many seasoned soldiers. But look at that war exhaustion gain of the enemy! That's surely a tooltip bug. I guess that's the total amount gained by all participants(still high though) and doesn't mean all of them got that much. Because I just checked Austria's and it's just little North of 3 WE.

Ah, also, Crimea is integrated. The integrations of other two should slow down due to diplomatic reputation... But it won't, since I lack diplomatic power anyway :p

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Ayyutthaya joins the coalition. I should pay them a visit, they got a Silk province after all.

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So I start the coalition war. Note that the strongest coalition members are already at war with me, so they cannot join.

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The coalition seems considerable still though... But I won't cancel my European campaign just for this. Better build up some mercs :)


Let's see how well we do in two large fronts...

 
You sure see some huge numbers during the Thirty Years War. It'd be nice to see a victory to stir up future religious trouble in the HRE.
 
is this moved to somewhere else?
Well, to be honest I've stopped writing... I lost interest in the game when I got so strong, and also another patch was up, and I also had some personal stuff took some of my time away. Still I wanted to finish this, as I was very close. But I just delayed doing so many weeks untill I finally realized that it would never happen. So no, it's not moved but that's just all I've written. I'm sorry if there were any folks that wanted me to end, I just got bored from ruling over hundreds of units all over Eurasia and the game was also slow due to that =/ The worst part is that I haven't even done the 2 achievements I was aiming for :D On paper I mean, because I could have ended Definetely The Sultan of Rum a lot ago, and there were just 2 or 3 provinces left to complete That's a Silk Road as I was already ruling all over Asia anyway.
 
With your empire being so huge were you building all the buildings you could? That'd be A LOT of points used.
 
With your empire being so huge were you building all the buildings you could? That'd be A LOT of points used.
Nope, ofc not. It's different now but back then it used to be that if you were gonna go blobby, there was almost no point at building because the points were so important. I might have done a little building in early game, and also Constantinople but other than that AFAIK I only built trade buildings for the most part(though not many of them still)