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@Ashantai
Thank you ! I don't get that much taxes from them, since they get most of their income from trade. I will show a income breakdown in the next update.
I'll play to the end.

@Uokko, gremlok, dragonizer, sprites : Thank you ! I will go for world dominance in the last years. Update will come soon.
 
1808-1821: Race for world domination and the end.

We sell Ingermanland to Finnland. In August 1809 we annex Malwa (Luckow).
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In November 1809, we annex Bohemia.
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Ukraine is annexed in January 1810.
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The Knights are annexed in May 1810.
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We gain 1 innovative. In October 1810, we annex Sweden.
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We sell Bohuslan to Norway. We go back to Republican Dictatorship for the Empire casus belli. In January 1812, we vassalize Ansbach and Poland, and we get 2 provinces from Aragon.
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Peru is released in January 1812. Through an event we gain 40487 ducats. We get a Adm 5/Mil 7/Dip 3 Lord Protector.
In June 1814, we get several provinces from Denmark, who has now three provinces left.
EU3_2029.jpg

In August 1814 we peace Muscowy, but to our horror we find out that the cost of their provinces is very high. We will be able to fight another war with them, and it won't be enough to annex them.
EU3_2030.jpg

Meanwhile, Zaporozhe, Yaroslavl and Nizhni Novgorod get vassalized.
We release Pskov and diplo-annex Tripoli to fulfill our mission. Next one will be to build a lvl 6 fort in Rhodes. But we have a missionary there, so at first I let it be and when I change my mind, it is too late.
EU3_2040.jpg

No new world country pops up, so to lower infamy we release Lithuania, who has poor provinces.
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We use the Empire CB to declare war on Khorasan. And then we switch back to Administrative Republic and we can elect a Diplomatic Candidate. We are back to having a Doge.
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In February 1818, Aragon is annexed.
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Murom is vassalized and Khorasan has to cede two provinces. Here too the cost was too high to vassalize. Not sure now if I could have annexed though, but the two provinces just took me to 24.9, just 0.1 from the BB limit. Khorasan will survive too regrettably.
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In February 1818, Aragon is released.
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In June 1818, Italy becomes a Constitutional Republic. A new government type for the new century.
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Then we start the last wars in this game : against Denmark, Gotland and Tachibana. Tachibana is annexed.
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Denmark is annexed. We get the Sound Toll Modifier (+20% Trade)
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And Gotland is annexed too. Using the Cleansing of Heresy CB, we declare war on Muscowy. As expected, we can get three provinces out of them, but annexing or vassalizing them is not possible. I would need 5 or 10 years more to finish mopping up. Oh well.
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In January 1821, as expected, the game ends. The first full game of Europa Universalis I manage to finish - ever.
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Maps, statistics, pies and comments in the next update.
 
Congratulations, great effort, good game and a good AAR :)
 
Maps and Statistics

Well, and now to the maps. First I will show the diplomatic maps of Europe of Asia, who are green, apart from the ugly holes where Moscow and Khorasan are.

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And here are the world maps.

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Best world incomes.

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Income overview. Production is a winner.

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Technology leaders. Bar managed to have better technology than us at the end.

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Our generals are not that bad either.

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And our army is pretty big. Everybody else is a vassal.

EU3_2103.jpg


I have shown a list of COTs in the last update. Just two new COTs popped up, Cornwall and Liege. The only two countries we don't control, Muscowy and Khorasan, don't have any COTs.
Our best COT, Nazca, regrettably has been ceded to Peru. I will show you again the complete list, since I am in love with COTs.

EU3_2112.jpg

EU3_2113.jpg

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Did I mention that I like COTs ?

Considering my limited experience, I am very happy with the result. I almost managed a world domination, which has never been a stated goal of this AAR. Maybe I will write later some summary about what I think I did right or wrong in this game, but right now I will just write how I would play this AAR if I restarted it from the beginning - or how I will play my next AAR, if there will be one.
In fact, the world map at the end is totally unplausible and if my goal had been to create a plausible alternative history, then I would have failed. In my next AAR, I would strive for this.

  • Difficulty level : I chose Normal difficulty level, because I don't like giving the AI unfair advantages. Regrettably, I found out the AI is incredibly bad at dealing with attrition, at warmongering and at economics, so giving them some help is necessary. I would play my next game at difficulty level Hard at least.
  • Infamy :To prevent myself from overblobbing, I gave myself an Infamy Limit. I think this made the game more interesting, but not as much as I expected. Later it just meant that I had to wait for my infamy to go down before peacing. I couldn't keep this rule till the end. I would probably keep an infamy house rule, although not that restrictive.
  • Province grabbing : Alternatively, a rule about which provinces can be grabbed might have been better. "Only cores can be grabbed", maybe, like in the AAR "Gentlemen in Germany" from Malurous. Or something less restrictive, like "A province can be grabbed or a country can be vassalized only if the cost is less than 4 ( or 3), unless there is a mission" .
  • Later start : a 1399 allows for "unhistorical" strategies, like Venice colonizing the new world and the Hordes. Probably a 1453 start would lead to less ridicolous scenarios.
  • National Ideas : Alternatively, pick the National Ideas the AI picks when playing that country. Venice never picks QFTNW as far as I know, and the human player shouldn't either.
  • Human-only Actions: Not to do the things the AI never does. Which includes declaring several wars at the same time, releasing vassals, or declaring war separately instead of answering to a call to arms. I would probably set some house rules about this too.
  • Missions : I liked that I could fulfill most missions, although at the end I had to remove the "Convert to Religion" and "Build Manifactories" missions, which I consider flawed.

Thank you to everybody who followed this AAR, and I hope that you enjoyed it and maybe that you learnt something that you could put to use in your games. I certainly did.


THE END
 
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A fantastic AAR, congrats on finishing it! Barring a half dozen provinces all the world is your dominion! :)
 
Congrats on finishing this fine AAR! And the game of course since it's a first for you. :) Pretty cool that you got that close to world domination despite going for it so late. And indeed, the primary objective of the CoTs was hugely successful!

I also like your ideas on what you'd do in a future AAR - as you noted yourself, ways to limit the human player's dominance is something I've spent some time looking at myself - so here's hoping you end up making one. :)
 
Magnificent job from one point to another. Too bad you couldn't do what you wanted ( the against Venice part ) due to massive AI incompetence ... I wonder if the AI would not be capable of ruining your empire to dust from the 1808 stop until the end of the game :D
 
@medd, Ashantai: Thank you !
@vasziljevics: Thank you ! In the end it was actually boring, but I was curious to find out how much money I would make at the end.
@Dauth: Thank you! I edited the files "missions/Construction.txt" and "missions/Religious.txt", and remove the missions I don't like :)
@Malurous: Thank you! I hope I can write another AAR, but probably not before the next patch. We'll see. As I said, liked the House Rules for Gentlemen in Germany and could be something similar. Or it could be Victoria 2...
@Ricardo Rolo: Thank you! Yeah, I wasn't aware of how bad the AI is. The AI, though, needs more time to ruin an empire. But I think that maybe on level "hard" Venice should have been able to survive longer -maybe.

And thank you again to everybody who followed!
 
Well done, kudos for making it to the very end.

I agree whole-heartedly with you regarding the performance of the AI. Humans can always outsmart the AI, e.g. the infamous Bosporus strait crossing, prevent Ai units from attacking by repeatedly feinting attacks against an area only to fall back the day before, etc. Even un-gamey stuff like coping with attrition, naval warfare in general, the AI is not very competent.

For me I have come to a point where I have lost interest in the tactical part of warfare as its simply too unbalanced. The best way of keeping the game entertaining and challenging has been to set some serious restraints and try to focus more on roleplaying than focusing on the mechanics of the game engine. I would actually love to see some details be masked instead of an absolute value. Knowing that one thing gives +5% vs another option that does +10% it too much insight and knowledge - something that the rulers of the medieval certainly did not have. Random modifiers would also help, e.g. the actual time to move from one province to another should not be 100% precise, so armies might move faster or slower than expected, leading to surprising results. I'll stop now :confused:
 
Great AAR, you created a really huge empire...I mean constitutional republic :)
If you start a new AAR I can't wait to read that.

The best way of keeping the game entertaining and challenging has been to set some serious restraints and try to focus more on roleplaying than focusing on the mechanics of the game engine.

I agree with that, the best way to keep the game challenging is to set your own goals, for example converting all Europe to sunni faith, or only expanding in some areas of the world.
 
I just finished reading this AAR and I have to say, well done. It was an interesting read, and kept me occupied for hours! Thank you for writing it, and I hope you do more.
 
Well done, kudos for making it to the very end.

I agree whole-heartedly with you regarding the performance of the AI. Humans can always outsmart the AI, e.g. the infamous Bosporus strait crossing, prevent Ai units from attacking by repeatedly feinting attacks against an area only to fall back the day before, etc. Even un-gamey stuff like coping with attrition, naval warfare in general, the AI is not very competent.

For me I have come to a point where I have lost interest in the tactical part of warfare as its simply too unbalanced. The best way of keeping the game entertaining and challenging has been to set some serious restraints and try to focus more on roleplaying than focusing on the mechanics of the game engine. I would actually love to see some details be masked instead of an absolute value. Knowing that one thing gives +5% vs another option that does +10% it too much insight and knowledge - something that the rulers of the medieval certainly did not have. Random modifiers would also help, e.g. the actual time to move from one province to another should not be 100% precise, so armies might move faster or slower than expected, leading to surprising results. I'll stop now :confused:

Thank you. Being relatively new to the game I wasn't fully aware of the game's horrible AI, so I thought I had to beat it. It turns out that is not the best way to enjoy the game after a while. Sometimes editing save games or firing events may become a necessity, not to cheat but to make the game challenging or consistent.
But maybe in 10 or 20 years time the AI will beat us in such a game...

@Uokko, Omen : Thank you for your feedback ! I myself hope that I will find the time to write another AAR. But right now I am going on vacation, so we'll see in October if I get some ideas.