A Trade-focused AAR with The Hansa (not interactive at all but advices are welcome)

[Grozny Von Raoe]

Edit a posteriori : here is the up-to-date outline of this AAR

Part I : Building a half-decent income (1444-1472)
1.1 What's under the christmas tree?
1.2 Where Poland, I mean, Lithuania is a good ally with an annoying agenda.
1.3 The fate of Novgorod

Part II : Naval struggle for the Baltics (1472-1508)
2.1 Sometimes no ally is better than a shitty ally : the failed 1470's
2.2 The Coalition War
2.3 The rebirth of the Hanseatic System
2.4 The Final Blow (to Danish supremacy)

Part III : The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1508 - 1540)
3.1 A house divided
3.2 Fighting for our faith is fighting for our trade
3.3 Too many ships for that lake
3.4 Religion is perhaps not people's own business after all

Part IV : Securing baltic trade against all these mighty evildoers (1540 - 1566)
4.1 Building a Stronghold for the Smalkalde league
4.2 Mourir pour Danzig?
4.3 The eastern powers must cooperate with our merchants

Part V : Pushing to the Atlantic (1566 - 1590)
5.1 German settlers, latecomers on the market.
5.2 Change in balance among European powers
5.3 Dealing with spanish and portugese traders : two opposite strategies

Part VI : Drang Nach Osten (1590 - 1612)
6.1 Time of troubles
6.2 Facing the crisis: coming with new solutions
6.3 Im Westen nichts Neues
6.4 A detailed example of re-organization of our Trade
6.5 The birth of the Deutsche Ostindien Kompanie

Part VII : Race for the Spice Galaxy (1612 - 1628)
7.1 First indian commercial wars
7.2 Religious strife never ends
7.3 The fall of Malacca

Part VIII : Last lone session in the playground (1628 - 1647)
8.1 Conquest of Paradise
8.2 Roadway to Hell

Part IX : First big conflagration (1647 - 1663)
9.1 One by one the guests arrive
9.2 Securing naval supremacy is the key
9.3 Massive depopulation in Germany
9.4 Last to leave puts the light off
9.5 Britain, my very last enmy
9.6 In the meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean

Part X : Colonial rivalries (1663 - 1677)
10.1 Forward to the Pacific trade!
10.2 War with Britain, Russia and Portugal : the naval theater
10.3 War with Britain, Russia and Portugal : the european theater
10.4 War with Britain, Russia and Portugal : the colonial theater
10.5 Trade expansion and changes in trade policy.

Part XI : Like a Hurricane (1677 - 1697)
11.1 All is lost but honor
11.2 Resistance is futile
11.3 Aftermath
11.4 Siamese market
11.5 Time to contain Russian traders

Part XII : Full Control over Asian market (1697 - 1722)
12.1 New and fresh anglo-russian war, who wants?
12.2 Last Indian trading center
12.3 Opening the chinese door

****

Hello all,

Although I'm a huge vet of EU (started with the boardgame in 1997, then played endlessly EU1, EU2, EU3 and now EU4), I'm total n00b to the AAR thing. Also I've never been very good at optimizing and I'm not native-speaker. So don't hesitate to tell if something I do is wrong or poorly written I won't take offense.

So what is this about ?

My first concern, as a merchant republic, is to focus on trade. I want to try different configurations as the game progresses. For example, I could at some points focus on driving the russian trade to Lubeck, or the north american one, or try to build an autonomous asian trade empire, or even move my capital to the west (after all, I'm a confederation and headquarters are suppose to cycle among big places) to take my share of the big american trade etc etc. So most of the screenshots and comments will be about how happy my merchants are, and not much on the provinces I own.

My second concern is to keep interest to the game on the long run. I usually quit my games around 1600 when it's clear I've cleared objectives specific to the country and things are turning into an annoying WC (or sometimes much earlier when I have tried to play an OPM and miserably failed!). I really enjoyed reading the Random World Order AAR, finding there a nice way to overcome this, and I plan to do something in the same way someday. Here still I want to play a single country.

So in order to get a reasonable challenge all the way long, I'm going to stick to some houserules :

- lucky nations on

- no vassal feeding and no vassal of more than 3 provinces

- no cultural conversion except possibly in America

- respect of the big nations development which means :
1) no vassal liberation in France, Spain, England, Ottoman Empire (before 1700), Moscovy/Russia, Poland/Commonwealth (before 1700), Austria, Netherlands, China.
2) no more than one province annexed in each of the following regions : France (incl. Brittany), Iberian Peninsula, Great Britain, Sweden mainland, Danemark mainland, Netherlands, Anatolia+Constantinople+Bulgaria+Northern Greece (before 1700), Austria+Hungary+Bohemia, all provinces of russian or tatar culture, initial Poland+Lituania (before 1700), Syria+Egypt (before 1700)
That leaves plenty of historical playgrounds if needed : Belgium, Italy, south and east Baltics, part of Balkans and med. islands, germany (but see below) and of course most of ROTW
3) no colonization/exploration before 1550, no attack on Aztec/Incas/Am. Indians before 1650
4) no attack on spanish/portuguese oversea provinces before 1550, on english/dutch/french overseas provinces before 1650

- respect of the HRE structure, which means only limited and progressive constitution of kingdoms inside of it, say :
1) +2 provinces max in the XVth
2) +2 provinces max in the XVIth
3) +2 provinces max in the XVIIth
3) +2 provinces max in the XVIIIth century

EDIT : I didn't stick to the last rule finally. I remained moderate in my german development, but with more like 2 provinces every 50 years.

 

[GreatUberGeek]

Subbed! Good idea, always wanted to play with Hansa.

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

Introduction

For a long time, The Baltic Sea had been providing Europe not only furs, wax and stuff from the North, but also tons of amazing goods from the far East. For a long period, it was the very most important source for all these materials, and we, the german traders, had almost a monopoly on that.

Now,we're facing some difficulties. The Mediterranean - Persian road to the East is becoming more important everyday, and we've even heard that some crazy iberian lords (a suitable number of them from german ascendency, btw) have planned to open new paths, south of Africa or even straight to India through the very Ocean.

But before to investigate this further, our main difficulty is even in our own lake, the Baltic and North Sea. The king of Danemark and Norway that we bent down one century ago is now more powerful than ever, and his control on the Sund is struggling our Trade. Our second capital in Gotland is now under his feet. In addition, many german powerful lords, like the Teutonic Knights or the rulers of Pommern and Köln are removing proud and mighty towns from the League. Not speaking of the Dutch, everyday more numerous to cross the straits and steal our markets!

Let's have a look at the (small) picture

The red part is our very trade zone, the blue part are trade areas that are quite likely to feed us with nice goods, and the lightgreen ones are landlocked trade areas that possibly can bring us something but it's not so safe to rely on it. Orange is the desmene of the evil Dutch.

Red stars are the important centers of trade. Almost all of them used to be our trading posts! Man, even London was. Now we still control 3 of them. Getting the other ones back is our priority.

Alas, Danemark is way too powerful right now for us. Let's focus on bringing back into the League the old sisters. Pomerania and Eastern Frisia should be our first objective.

Oh, btw if somebody can explain to me how to get pictures (directly from my website) in the main text and not as clickable attachments, it'd be great!

 

[GreatUberGeek]

The best option is using a free image service, such as imgur or tinypic. You don't even need to sign up.

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

Part I : building a half-decent income​

I.1. So, what's under the christmas tree ?

See the picture just below ? That's trade incomes for one of the biggest trade organization of all times. Already a bit declining, I agree, but hey! Less than 2 D$ a month, and that's more than 1/3 of the global income. It's hard to imagine building a powerful fleet to rule the Baltic Sea out of that. We'll have to keep a low profile in the beginning, I guess.

Notice still that we have great mercantilism, which brings hope for the future. In addition, all our (3) provinces are estuaries, which explains this big ratio between trade and other incomes. And my, the traditions are great too. We wanted a trading nation, we get the best one. Except, yay, perhaps, the Dutch. But we're alive as a country at least, while they're only a bunch of independant territories right now.

Less funny, we have what is called a regency concil, namely no supreme ruler. Well, that's the way the league worked actually, this was a confederation of cities, not a real state with a real head of state and stuff. Still, I hope here that the historical realism will disappear soon cause I can't imagine not being able to declare a war forever.

So let's start with some diplomacy, which looks vital here. Sure we are part of the Holy Roman, that's quite a relief in the beginning, but for trade we need bases and for bases we need expansion and for expansion we need good guns, that is, allies.

We start with a bunch of old friends Magdeburg, Oldenburg, Bremen, Lüneburg and... wow, Riga. Not that I want to be rude or anything but that looks like GW Bush coalition to invade Irak. It's lacking of a real good partner. So let's pick Poland on our side. And since I don't want to waste too much Dilpomatic Power, byebye Riga. You're big girl now, I'm sure you can have your own way and stuff.

So, the Hansetag isn't empowered to wage any wars for now. Makes sense. We're just a band of peaceful traders right? So let's start with buying a decent trading fleet first. We already have nine barques, and we can build nine more without exceeding our support abilities. Since such a nice piece of wood is D$20 and we hardly save D$12-13 a year I think we have business for a decade. Hey ho hey ho.

"Your faithful ally, Oldenburg is requesting your help in a war against Eastern Frisia"

- Wait man, can't you see I'm in the middle of something here? Plus my army supply is low and I must... Eastern Frisia you said ?
- I said so, and things are not getting well. We've been routed already and since you're our only ally...
- JACKPOT! Er, I mean, I will gladly help you my brother, for the sake of the alliance.

If you have played some north german or dutch state before, you know what I mean. Eastern Frisia is not in the HRE, they're a bunch of pirates whith a big "HIT ME" on the forehead. Plus their territory ix extra-cool. Moderate tax value, and an estuary on Antwerpen center of trade. And they're hanoverian, just like me. All the neighbors had already claimed their territory, but Oldenburg had the nerves to strike first and the extreme politeness to fail and call me for help.

The most important battle of the game. I epically seized a barque, which saved me more than the expenses of teh war. The cherry on the cake.

Long story short, nothing interesting in this war. I ransomed Sachsen-Lauenburg who was on my way and on the wrong side, and annexed the pirates. More interesting, let's have a look at the trade screen right after the end of the war.

A nice +50% boost already! What happened?

First, you notice that my Mercantilism has increased. I got the first of a big serie of events that helped me become greedier and greedier. For this part of the game, I'll always make the choice to sacrify some diplomatic power to ensure the rise of the mrcantilist faction in the league.

Second, I have more light ships patrolling around Lübeck, and I also benefit of the danish and norvegian fleet bringing the big money respectively from baltic and north sea.

At this moment, I decided to remove my merchant from Francfort, whose contribution was neglectable to send him collecting cash in my new footstep in Antwerpen. Not for a very huge increase in income for now, but that's symbolical. Now it's no more the Dutch coming to trade by us, but our fierce vessels that go to Antwerpen

So that was for the starters, now let's focus on the Baltic Sea!

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

I.2 Where Poland, I mean, Lithuania is a good ally with an annoying agenda.

My first objective is obviously Pommern. First reason, they are historical towns of the Hansa. Second, they control the end of the Oder river, which give big trade bonus. Third, they are tempting preys for the neighboring Brandenburg and Poland and I don't want them to expand in my direction. So I didn't wait long to fabricate a claim of Vorpommern.

The beginning of the campaign was a bit rough for several reasons.

First my old friends Bremen and Lüneburg refused to join. The later even entered in the opposite side! Well, I kinda expected it, but that's still a blow deep in my heart. Bremen stayed neutral, but when they noticed that things were getting bad for Lüneburg they bravely started their own war and annexed it as they had no forces left. A bad attitude they'll pay later, and not from me, but let's not anticipate.

Also, Brandenburg and Mecklemburg attempted to defend Pommern. The second was no trouble, but the fierce margrave managed to defeat my army during a courageous counter-attack. No big deal, cause 20k Lithuanians arrived soon after to explain them the sense of the word 'ingerence'. Poland rushed for the quick plunder separate peace, but once they were gone the land was open to my armies.

But that's not what mattered the most during that war.

The thing.

The very big thing.

The very big expensive and useless thing we're so proud of in this town.

CAPTION : BUILD THE ADLER VON LUBECK (an early carrack...)

Yeah, now I have a cool boat just like the Portuguese. Now I can go to Africa of wherever I want. But I mean, the Baltic coast is good enough for us folks, yeah?

The Poles didn't make separate peace for no purpose. They had a plan. And apparently I was part of it.

CAPTION : The Nation of Poland, your faithful ally, is calling for Help in a war against the Teutonic Order (the Livonian is here too cause it's so cool to get punched by the Poles and the Danes at the same time)

You know bro, that's very nice and all but I think I'll... Mmm OK, I cannot really let you down so here I come. And here come the hordes of Bohemians over my small armies... Sic.

Ok, passed the first fear, that was not so much of deal. I secured the vassalization of Pommern and even successfully besieged a couple of Teutonic towns, not for annexation of course, but that allowed me to get out of the war with a little more cash.

So what about the trade now? Did we make some substantial gains after these two wars without annexation ? Let's have a look at the big picture.

My trade power has increased, both because of mercantilsm and through building some marketplaces. Efficiency is still very low, but the market I have access to now is bigger too. My TP in Antwerpen has a ratio of 5%, higher than in Lübeck. Unfortunately, the baltic steering is now left to my own now, cause the Danes are waging livonian wars with their trade ships.

At this point my conclusion is that I'm doing wrong with that Baltic steering. As long as I haven't annexed Eastern Prussia (and Im not sure I will considering how agressive the Poles are), my power there is low, and my ships are of better use elsewhere (like in Lübeck). I shouldn't wait for the russian trade to flow through the swedish hands, but go and pick some myself.

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

1.3 The fate of Novgorod

CAPTION : We are pleased to inform that the Poles are coming to help kicking some Novgorodian merchant asses.

You guessed well, if God or whoever gave me a casus belli against all the other merchant republics, I'm pretty sure he didn't expect me to use it on Venice. These russian folks hold two interesting wargoals : first, the province of Neva which is an estuary. Second I would gladly ask them to give me a share of that nice trade power, for I've been smelling it and yumming for awhile now.

But you could say, why not go for a vassalization or conquest of Novgorod itself? That would be pretty badass as of a matter of trade power and incomes. Sure this would be, but that would also prevent the birth of Russia and thus be against the rules I set in the beginning. So let's not profit of the weakness of Novgorod to destroy in advance the future russian empire.

Looks like I'm selling the fur before to kill the beast? Ok, Novgorod has no ally, has just lost a war to Muscowy and Lithuania is on my side.

Let's not focus too much on the military here, not much to say about it. Jump to the aftermath.

CAPTION : Congratulations, you succeded the mission of having 60% income from Trade. That's the spirit!

Notice that in the meantime, Poland seized Danzig. That's bad news, but I cannot really afford to play frenemies with them now. My very big enemy, Denmark is getting bigger too and I must secure the friendship of the biggest offensive army around.

So I have changed my traders. No more collecting in Anvers, all my boats in Lübeck or steering in the Baltic, and I collect in Novgorod using the occupied provinces as a source of Trade Power. Soon, the war will end and I will release them but Neva, but the 50% share of Novgorod TP will be enough to keep the same income.

Now more than 60% of my Income is Trade. And than earns me 1 extra mercantilism. Hurray!

****

After that, I stopped expanding and focused on development.

I waged wars on Novgorod every five years to ensure that I would keep these nice export privileges, and finally seized Ingermanland when it became clear that Moscow was about to finish the merchant republic on its next war. Okay for letting Russia develop herself, not for giving it an access to the Baltic sea 200 years in advance !

In the meantime, technology and trade values finally helped my Trade Efficiency to grow a decent level, and my trade income beated up to 10. So now I have a decent sum of money, I can start considering plans for the Baltics...

Caption : As the Trade Values progresses, I also get the benefit of the nice Hansa value (increased Global Trade Power, yum!)

Hum.

Except that in the meantime Danemark has pushed his own plan quite far already.

Some epic challenges in next episode perhaps ?

 

[GreatUberGeek]

I'm sorry, I don't know any Dutch. Do you think you can translate for each picture? Especially casus bellis and new ideas. Thanks.

 

[sigeena]

How about Relative Trade Share (RTS) in each of the Trade Nodes?

I think 50% RTS(+/-5%) is always the point before diminishing marginal returns hit. So if you're already enjoying 50% or more RTS in Lubeck Trade Node, then it may be better to deploy the merchant and light ships to the other trade nodes to steer trade into Lubeck.

I see that you are collecting 0.46 ducats from Antwerp and I'm guessing at that early in the game, it's probably a good income for collecting from a non-capital province trade node.

Wow. You posted faster than I thought! All my points have been superseded by your update. Great work!

 

[hjarg]

French screenshots make it a bit hard to follow, but no matter.

Anyways, you are doing fine- though i would have advanced more on Novgorod. Plus- when Denmark annexes Sweden (and pray that they do), trade on Baltic gets much easier- Denmark also steers stuff to Lübeck then.
But instead of collecting from Antwerpen, wouldn't it be better idea to steer some trade to Lübeck from somewhere?

 

[sigeena]

Well, he's collecting 0.75 ducats off Antwerp. And only managed to steer 0.95 ducats from Baltic Sea. It's likely that he did his sums and found it more profitable to collect from Antwerp despite the non-capital province penalty, rather than steering to Lubeck.

My only consideration would be that the Naval NI is probably more suitable for Merchant Republics than the Trade NI. It allows more Light Ships to dominate trade nodes. Merchant Republics already start with 3 merchants, which need either provinces or light ships to dominate the trade nodes. Since you don't seem intent on WC, it's more likely you'll need light ships to dominate the trade nodes.

 

[Seelmeister]

Really enjoying this so far. Grabbing a Russian outpost is a very interesting move, will Muscovy turn against you in the near future? In the long term, do you intend to expand outside Europe?

This looks like a great AAR, I'm looking forward to the next update.

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

I'm sorry, I don't know any Dutch. Do you think you can translate for each picture? Especially casus bellis and new ideas. Thanks.

Sure thing, I'll do that asap! That's french actually but anyway it's so small that it's difficult to read. I don't know why I set up to french btw, the translation is quite poor and I often understand only because I've played it in english before...

I think 50% RTS(+/-5%) is always the point before diminishing marginal returns hit. So if you're already enjoying 50% or more RTS in Lubeck Trade Node, then it may be better to deploy the merchant and light ships to the other trade nodes to steer trade into Lubeck.

Well, I guess you're right in general. Here I tried various configurations depending on what other countries were doing. The only places where I was steering profitably at this point of the game were North Sea and Baltic Sea. Steering from Russia wasn't good cause of the first cut in Baltics. Plus, steering hard in North Sea was often useless because the Danes and Norses were doing the job. So all was about balancing between Lübeck and Baltics. Depending on where the danish boats were, I had to adapt quite often.

Anyways, you are doing fine- though i would have advanced more on Novgorod. Plus- when Denmark annexes Sweden (and pray that they do), trade on Baltic gets much easier- Denmark also steers stuff to Lübeck then.

Thas would have been optimal. But in this game I deliberately choosed not to prevent the development of historical big countries, including Russia, so I could keep some fun for the end of the game. For the same reason I tried very hard to break danish-swedish union despite this is counter-productive for my trade center as you mention it. But we'll see about that soon!

It's likely that he did his sums and found it more profitable to collect from Antwerp despite the non-capital province penalty, rather than steering to Lubeck.

That's it! And same for Novgorod as long as I had a (relatively) weak share in the Baltics (and recurring embargoes in my face)

My only consideration would be that the Naval NI is probably more suitable for Merchant Republics than the Trade NI. It allows more Light Ships to dominate trade nodes. Merchant Republics already start with 3 merchants, which need either provinces or light ships to dominate the trade nodes. Since you don't seem intent on WC, it's more likely you'll need light ships to dominate the trade nodes

Agreed. I fell for trade for global trade power and efficiency cause I wanted the easy cash (I was fearing I couldn't maintain a huge fleet anyway), but I did hesitate a lot. Anyway, each merchant comes with 5 naval forcelimit, so +15 is not that bad compared to what I would have with Naval with my small nation. I'll take Naval third I think after Ploutocracy (I need to save some diplomatic power to progress in technology)

Really enjoying this so far. Grabbing a Russian outpost is a very interesting move, will Muscovy turn against you in the near future? In the long term, do you intend to expand outside Europe?

Thanks a lot! No spoiler now, more report soon!

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

Part II : Naval struggle for the Baltics (1472-1508)
​

2.1 Sometimes no ally is better than a shitty ally : the failed 1470's

At this moment, things were looking pretty bright. Well, except that Denmark had annexated half of both Teutonic and Livonian Order, Holstein and Sachsen-Lauenburg. I needed a little rest, for building some galleys and big ships.

After a couple more trade values,

CAPTION : We discovered National Trade Policy.

and the diplomatic annexation of Pommern with the estuary of Oder now under our control, we now make a pretty decent share of Lübeck's trade income, with our global trade income roaring to 15 already!

Notice that until this very moment, the optimal was still to leave minimum ships in the Baltics and concentrate on maxing the share of Lübeck. Indeed, I was benefitiating of good danish steering. But that was no more the case, as you can notice from the figures : 6,58 D$ lost in the swedish harbours, while I was already making 12/13 in Lübeck. But I had still too few lightships, and with the predictable wars on Denamrk, its was not the building top priority.

Then I had a stupid idea.

I noticed that the Poles where a bit reluctant with the idea of joining my crusade against the vikings, despite their common border. So I was lacking an ally for the war. An ally with big boats and stuff and some interest in attacking Denmark. Denmark who, after the integration of Norway, now held some scottish islands. I think I don't need to give you much further clues.

Yes, England. Unfortunately I forgot to notice three things.

1. England was at war with Scotland. Big news. They were already +40 so no biggie, they would soon be available for my war as well. Actually, fdue to some british total lack of involvement I never understood, that war lasted more than 5 years from that moment on...

2. England still held pieces of Normandy and Labourd

3. France was allied with Castile.

CAPTION : Your "faithful" ally, England is requesting your help against France and Castile and crap.

Within a few months, the spanish fleet was sinking ten of my barques in the first battle of Jutland while french and aragonese armies were crossing the whole HRE to besiege my capitals. I managed to defeat the first ones at the expense of 2/3 of my manpower but I realized that that couldn't last for years so I accepted a dishonorable peace with France, giving them 99 D$ and cancelling my treaty with the Brits. Well, good riddance!

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

2.2 The Coalition War

Since I couldn't expect no help from the Brits nor the Poles, I started to sacrify some of my diplomatic power increase to build a couple extra local alliances : Brunswick, Mecklenburg and Münster (the german bishopric, not the irish doormat). At least they will provide helpful manpower for land battles in Jylland.

But my better chance here was king Christian's greed. The danish blob annexated the very remains of Teutonic Order, leading to the birth of a mighty coalition I empressed to join.

Yeah man, Austria was in it. And that's not a small Austria, I would say. Finally the emperor felt concerned too with what threat the northern monarchies are for freedom to trade, germanity, freedom to trade, the sancticity of the HRE and freedom to trade.

No time to differ any more, I should strike. Especially now that the Swedes and Danes have both started to embargo me, a pretty efficient strategy that decreased my incomes by around 10%.

I started the 'dishonourable scum' war with the bad surprise that Austria was the war leader. That means I cannot really hope any annexation, but that's a minor point. The big idea is to sink their fleet, ruin their prestige to the Swedish court, possibly have them release some territory, in one word decrease their power so the next wars could be easier.

And.

And a little something else.

Did I already mention freedom to trade? Have a look.

CAPTION : with Sjaeland occupied by our forces, we were able to enforce the mission 'open the Sund' that greatly increases the Trade Power in Lübeck.

How did the war go? At first, I couldn't prevent the Swedes to besiege and take Neva and Ingermanland. The naval battles were pretty at my advantage, without any decisive battle but at least their fleets wouldn't dare to go at sea after the first big encounters, so I could occupy all the islands. The Austrian and their puppets submitted Jylland while the Poles made good job in teutonic lands. Finally, I counter-attacked on Neva, seized the south coast of Finland and destroy the swedish army in front of Stockholm.

At this moment the Austrians decided that they had better to do elsewhere, and that we had to. We humbly agreed. The emperor is our liege and his armies are mighty.

CAPTION : The peace deal : liberation of Holstein and Sachsen-Lauenburg, Narva back to the Livonian Order.

We could have hoped for better, but that's already a serious blow. Will it be enough? More about it in 8 years!

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

2.3 The rebirth of the Hanseatic System

Here comes 1497. After having mastered the secrets of Trade, we started to research more into plutocracy, which sure will help solving our little manpower problems. Now we roughly double the size of our army with mercenary each time a serious war starts. Like, the next war on Denmark and Sweden.

Traditionnally, the Hanseatic league had 3 capitals : Lübeck for the center, Köln for the West and for the East an alternance of Visby (Gotland) and Riga. In addition to that there were 4 big hanseatic Trading Posts, namely : London, Brugge, Bergen and Novgorod. With the assimilation of Brugge with Antwerp, notice that these latter four are all center of trades even now. We already have a footstep in Novgorod and Antwerp, London is far from reachable, but Bergen seems a nice objective. Consider also that it's the only important trading place in the North Sea.

Ok, North Sea isn't especially the very center of all markets, but notice that :
- who knows, perhaps this idea of America isn't that stupid after all, in any case we'd better secure an open door on it, just in case.
- the Russians could want to develop Arkangelsk in order to bypass our baltic merchants with the help of british traders
So this node could have a bright future, and after all it's the only other coastal node to jump into Lübeck, so securing it would be a good idea.

Other interesting wargoals on the Danes include Ostpreussen, which is an estuary (of the Niemen I guess), Sjaelland (ok, good luck with that) and Gotland, mostly for historical reasons.

And as if it wasn't enough, we are enduring an embargo from the Danes and the Swedes.

So you know where this leads us.

CAPTION : In the middle of the war, we finally mastered Fast Negociations and Improved Shipbuilding Yeah!

The war went quite well. The Poles rushed teutonic territories, leaving us no option to occupy Prussia (we still have too few armies not to let our allies take the first losses). We opened two fronts : while the main army, under the direction of our stadthouder was conquering Finland, some small marine squads secured the danish islands. That's the problem Denmark : without naval supremacy, you're very vulnerable to that kind of attacks!

Still naval warfare was not unbalanced. We lost many ships in epic fights that we won tightly. At the end of the war, Denmark was clearly losing but its naval power was almost intact. And despite a very negative prestige, the integration of Sweden into Denmark wasn't stopped. Christian is only 34 years old so I'm afraid he could succeed uniting Scandinavia.

CAPTION : Denmark accepted peace offer : Bergenhus to the Hansa, freedom for Gotland

We could have annexated several provinces, but we didn't want to upset too much our neighbors : The Hansa is a small country with an extreme vulnerability to coalitions. So we decided to annex only Bergen, which is still of great strategic interest, and give freedom and our warmest blessings to the old bros in Gotland.

So now let's conclude this war with an overview of the Trade picture.

We've past 21! 75% of our Income is Trade. How so?

First, notice that our steering ability is now 92,7 % That's due to our values, but also to the many epic battles in Baltic Sea and the long run protection of trade by our vessels. The merchants in Baltic Sea don't want no protector but us!

Second, by winning the war, we were able to keep the embargo on the Swedes while they couldn't. That's not the least interesting consequence of the war for sure!

Our fleet also grew in size, thanks to our merchants and trade centers. Plus, after this war, we dismantle some galleys for light ships instead.

Also, Scotland and Novgorod have finally been conquered by their more powerful neighbors, and England has not much interest in the small North Sea node, while Muscovy isn't very good at that stuff. So we can dry entirely the first one and get a sgnificant part of the second one without too much effort. Even in Antwerp, our small TP (22,8) earns us some good money (1.81) because of the lack of a real commercial power in the area. Probably that won't last forever...

Our strategy at this point is 30 ships in Lübeck, 8 in Baltic Sea, 5 in Novgorod and 5 in Antwerpen. Keeping an important ratio between Lübeck and Baltic Sea discourages the Danes to abandon steering for a full-collecting in Lübeck strategy. Since I didn't embargo them to benefit of their steering, they remain an important parameter.

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

2.4 The Final Blow.


At this moment the guy in Holstein considered it a good idea to insult me. I mean, they have no ally like at all, I'm part of the HRE so Austria won't move a finger. What the hell could have crossed their mind? In any case, that was an excellent opportunity to prevent any comeback of the Danes in the area so I vassalized them.

More annoying, some Norvegian didn't appreciated much of being ruled by pacific merchants instead of harshless tyrans. Ok, perhaps they didn't like the Danes much either but still, I felt bad about it. I should have treated them more harshly from the beginning.

I mostly felt bad for the widows of the 6k hanseatic soldiers and 10k mercenaries that died trying to stop the rebellion. Disembarking in a moutain province right into the enemy's troops has never proved to be a great strategic move, but hey, what choice did I have? That was the price for saving too much on transportation ships for the sake of the Trade. I hope this conforts you in your grave, fellows.

Anyway, let's jump to 1504 and the third Danish-Hanseatic war. For once I took a shot in the beginning of the war, so let's analyse this together.

CAPTION : The second HRE reform is issued during the war

Notice first that the reason of this shot is the Reichsregiment. For now on the imperial pressure is still outweighted by the benefits, but beware how Austria handle religious strifes.

Also, this time my forces are divided between the traditionnal expedition Korps in danish islands, and a small unit directly sent to Ostpreussen. This province is my main wargoal, for controlling the Niemen estuary, and I don't trust the Poles for sharing their dibs.

As you can see, there is this battle in Northern Baltic Sea that doesn't seems very well engaged. I have no galley and my moral is getting low. Plus, swedish reinforcements are close, while my fleet is far away, because of the disembakment in Sjaelland mostly. How will this end?

Pretty good, actually. The reinforcements didn't make it in time, but there was a second battle shortafter with is fleet already damaged which was successful. Only minor losses during that battle, but after 4 additional ones, I completely destroyed the swedish fleet and inflicted serious losses to the danish one. This time, the supremacy of the hanseatic navy over the Baltic was clearly stated for the first time!

As a result, I was given Ostpreussen. A few years later, I waged a war against livonian order and annexated Riga, which was the last non-hanseatic estuary (Düna) on the Baltic. At that point, I owned all the important trading places in the whole area, except the capital of Denmark. This necessarily had an important influence on my Trade Income

I have now banned the danish traders, so I can reconsider my distribution of ships. I send 25 in Lübeck, 15 in baltic sea, 10 in Antwerp and 11 in Novgorod. Nothing in North Sea cause everything is already cleared thanks to Bergenhus, to my merchant and to the danish TP in the area.

I now make 1D$ for only 10 TP both in Antwerp and Novgorod despite the no-capital malus, better than in Lübeck and much better that why I steer from Baltic Sea (in fact, if you remove the income bonus, which now is quite high already, the steering in Baltic Sea has a similar marginal benefit ratio.) Competition remains high in Baltic Sea compared to neighboring nodes.

At this point I tried to steer in Novgorod instead but that resulted in a significant loss of money. I would need to lower more the Swedish TP in the Baltic for that. Also a concern is that I still cannot send ships to help my merchant in White Sea, I dunno why. This would be extremely profitable considering that 100% of North Sea is redirected to Lübeck with nice bonus. If you have a clue?

That's the end of the second part. The third (tomorrow probably) one will deal with spread of protestantism and a new direction for trade expansion, now that the initial objectives are achieved. Stay tuned!

 

[sigeena]

Very interesting. You lent a new perspective to how I usually consider my trading strategy.

I usually use RTS to determine where I deploy more light ships to influence TP. And it's a rather rudimentary one sometimes.

I will reconsider some of my own trading methods with your perspective (marginal benefit ratio).

1 more thing, I didn't realise that each additional merchant gives another 5 naval forcelimit. It's a good tip for the smaller Merchant Republic like Genoa as well.

 

[hjarg]

That is one nice restoration of the Hansaetic power. Good going!

About the White sea- you can send ships to help that, just send a fleet to White Sea and then you can select it. At least worked out for me. But the main problem is- they are out of range. You need to take something from Kola peninsula to give your ships a harbour or the attrition will get your ships though.

Any plans to colonize America?

 

[Grozny Von Raoe]

I will reconsider some of my own trading methods with your perspective (marginal benefit ratio)

Very glad if I can help It took me a certain while to understand how to use my light ships correctly, and even now I'm sure I don't master every parameter. I think all these methods can give nice clues which are usually enough when you don't want to spent crazy amount of time on optimizing your trade. In this specific game I really try-check-change-etc all the time in order to acquire some better intuition but I doubt I can come with a ready-to-use method.

About the White sea- you can send ships to help that, just send a fleet to White Sea and then you can select it.

Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna use that in my next session, at least if I still have a merchant there. And for America... My merchants are keeping that in mind but right now they have a couple other things to worry about. Coming soon!