All Hail King Grover Bacon!

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I'm going for a combined 'First Come, First serve' and 'For Odin!'

My old king died with no heir, so I got Sir Grover Bacon to take up the mantle as king. He is from a different dynasty altogether. He's every bit as dumb as his name, and just dreadful with money. Legend has it his son was blessed by Odin himself...

 

[Parapluman]

And.. five years later Albert dies from a hunting accident.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Lol, He actually took the throne and has been there for a while. He's easily the best ruler the game has ever generated for me.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

He's alive and well. I just got out of another defensive war with England(The 4th), but I'm about to get back on track with colonies. They(The English) never win, but I can't make it to England so I've not been able to cripple them yet. I take huge swaths of land from their CNs in-between attempts. American Culture so it cores fast and I have little unrest.

No backups

Aside from some serious BS in one of the English Wars this is one of the luckiest games I've ever had. I had an army suddenly stop walking, a missed battle even though the UI insisted there would be one, and a mountain fort fall with a 7% chance all within a month of each other. I was frustrated, but I pulled through. I think I'm going to at least get FCFS. Once I get the imperialism CB I should be able to complete 'For Odin' with little trouble.

 

[rinehime]

It's tough to tell from your screens, but it looks like you're locking up the coastline. A tip for FCFS, especially if you don't want to wait forever - Colonize/conquer the high dev stuff, but let the others colonize the crap provinces for you. Wait until the CNs get big to eat them or, as they grow, whenever you feel like it, take a couple of their provinces, but don't completely eliminate them so that new overlord colonies go directly to the CN. It'll take a lot longer if you try to do all the colonizing yourself.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Thank you for the advice.

I've been leaving one province from each CN so they would continue to expand, and their overlords have been putting down colonies next to theirs as well, so it's been much like you described. I've also not touched South America almost at all, and it's almost entirely colonized, while I focus on North America. I don't think I'm going to have much of any issue getting everything colonized. My issue is going to come when I go after Scandinavia. Russia already owns half of it, and they are allied to a massive Ottoman Empire. The last 100 years are going to be interesting, and as soon as I have nationalism I'm going to have to go ham.

 

[rinehime]

I've also not touched South America almost at all,

I would've gone after S. America sooner. Where did you start? (are you the one starting in Greenland? Oy Vey!) Starting in C. America just south of the Mayans allows for taking both the Mexican and S. America natives before the Europeans show up.

My issue is going to come when I go after Scandinavia.

I went after England first, I think, then used that as base for Scandinavia. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough time to convert everything, so I focused on getting a foothold there ASAP. Maybe the ottoman armies won't come for you and you can fight a quick war to break the alliance? IIRC, I had a European ally who kept calling me into wars against the Ottos which allowed me to take them down piecemeal and eat their land for myself.

 

[Badesumofu]

Disinherit Calvin is my advice. 2/3/4 is awful and you have 73 prestige in the 1644 screenshot.

 

[bradles0]

It's tough to tell from your screens, but it looks like you're locking up the coastline. A tip for FCFS, especially if you don't want to wait forever - Colonize/conquer the high dev stuff, but let the others colonize the crap provinces for you. Wait until the CNs get big to eat them or, as they grow, whenever you feel like it, take a couple of their provinces, but don't completely eliminate them so that new overlord colonies go directly to the CN. It'll take a lot longer if you try to do all the colonizing yourself.

keep in mind If you full annex a CN it loses all of its cores, so big daddy doesn't get reconquest CB on you. Which can be useful earlier if you can't stand up to britain/spain yet, but it does slow down colonization.
Also if you help the CNs get rich (E.G subsidize and don't take their money in wars) they colonize faster for you.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I'm not the guy starting in Greenland. I started in Mexico, just north of the natives. His topic did make me want to finally do this though.

I started there so I could both fight the natives, and also have a decent chance of getting gold in my first five provinces. I got a gold mine, so I'm pretty pleased with my start. Starting south of the Mexican natives is probably optimal, but I was playing the short game on trade. I wanted to dominate the Mexico node, the Caribbean, followed by Chesapeake.

I've not entirely ignored South America, I had the entire north coast at the time of that post, more since. England was stupid dominant in my game and colonized almost all of South America(Which suits my purposes just fine as I took American culture.) It's 1701(-ish) and there are only 4 CNs controlling all of South America, each of them less than 100% warscore. I'm no huge hurry, but I'll have them taken care of in 4 wars, with a bit of space inbetween to core and convert.

In North America I'm finishing up the heartland. Portugal has California and Alaska, each one war. I've allowed British Louisiana to keep a single province so they can help me finish there. I'm waiting for British Newfoundland to finish up a couple colonies, and that is a <100 WS as well. I'm looking at 10 more wars to totally finish the new world. 8 CNs, Portugal(A couple islands here and there) and England(a single island). When I fight England I'll have a big enough navy to put an 80 stack in Ireland. I think I can take over the area I need for 'For Odin' in the last 100 years without much issue. I took religious and I have missionary strength in my NIs, so I don't think converting will be too big an issue. I'm more worried about spawning a coalition. Worst case scenario I get 'First come, First Serve' this run, and I get For Odin in another run with much better NIs.

I did keep Calvin, but I've disinherited a few heirs throughout the game that were much worse than him. 2 admin is pretty wretched, I probably should have disinherited him. Other than Albert I've had pretty wretched luck with rulers this game <_<

 

[rinehime]

keep in mind If you full annex a CN it loses all of its cores, so big daddy doesn't get reconquest CB on you.

Good point. Can they use that CB if their CN has a truce with you or would that be a truce break?

I was a pretty decent size (had most/all of the mexican/andean natives) by the time the colonizers showed up so I wasn't too afraid of them and with FCFS you start Western tech, so it's not like you're reforming the natives.

Admittedly, I did this back in 1.22, so maybe I benefited a bit from the AI being reluctant/refusing to start overseas wars bug....

 

[Meshed Gear]

What does Europe look like at the moment? When I did my run I took two provinces from the British Isles in my first invasion, creating Norway and Sligo (which had cores on all of Ireland) as vassals.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Good point. Can they use that CB if their CN has a truce with you or would that be a truce break?

I was a pretty decent size (had most/all of the mexican/andean natives) by the time the colonizers showed up so I wasn't too afraid of them and with FCFS you start Western tech, so it's not like you're reforming the natives.

Admittedly, I did this back in 1.22, so maybe I benefited a bit from the AI being reluctant/refusing to start overseas wars bug....

They can declare offensive war and bring in their CNs even when the CN has a truce with you.

They certainly aren't afraid to declare war now. GB has declared on me 6 times now, and in the last three I had the bigger army. I've had better quality every time. I've won every war but it is a PITA and it's certainly slowed my progress by quite a bit.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Ottomans are blobbed out.

Prussia is a thing

France never got back its cores(Number one on my list of potential allies when I invade the Isles). They were actually the HRE for quite a while when Austria lost it(Which is why Austria is huge)

Netherlands is going strong. I got the prompt to ally them, but passed.

Castile declined the wedding. First time I've ever seen that in 1550 or so hours. They have one of the CNs in South America, which is who I'm fighting right now. GB has the other two, and Brabant has a tiny CN in La Plata.

Russia lost the Ottoblob alliance somewhere down the line and they fought a war. That's another potential ally, and one I can marry, so that will be nice for a few reasons.

Tunis has expanded well into Africa.

Last but not least, Milan is super strong in this game.

 

[Meshed Gear]

View attachment 322285

Prussia is a thing .

I believe you require one of their provinces, maybe several by the time you get there

Edit: Nvm, the formerly Danish provinces they hold are in North Germany, not Scandinavia.
Who owns the Shetlands though? Is hard to tell

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I have pretty good NIs all things considered, so I'm not super worried about fighting Prussia.

10% Morale
5% Discipline
10% Land Fire damage

I have Quality and Defensive Ideas, very high professionalism, and absolutism is as high as it can go considering my low legitimacy.

One of the crappy things I'm finding is that I don't have quite as much money as I would expect. Most of my provinces are low dev, which makes sense seeing as I'm in the new world. There are only so many states I can make. I've had to fight so many defensive wars covering so much territory that they were quite prolonged as I tried to hunt down carpet sieging stacks from 8 different countries(The new unit speed is killing me!) I've taken steps to make trade lucrative, and they are finally paying off, but it's nothing like being in Europe or India. The trade power Western European nations get in the new world is impressive, even if they don't send ships. Starting off with so much gold had me at 25% inflation at one point. I have very few forts but they were costing me massive amounts of money. I kind of needed them though to control war score with so many carpet sieging armies to chase down...

Also manpower. My manpower stays high because I'm good at the combat and picking my battles but what Dev I do have is very, very manpower poor. I have about 2000 dev and I'd be surprised if 1/5th of it is manpower.

If I was to start over I might put inflation reduction in my NIs. Maybe province development as well.

 

[Meshed Gear]

The Europeans can get trade power in new world nodes without having any fleets or provinces in the node, simply due to their presence in downstream nodes.

When I did my run I started out collecting in Panama. When I moved my trade city to the Gulf of St.Lawrence I earned roughly the same amount of trade income, despite controlling all the important trade provinces in North America. Simply because the Europeans would take a chunk of the Caribbean trade, a chunk of the Chesapeake trade, and a chunk of the St.Lawrence trade. Even end game I had ~90% control in each of those nodes with a dozen trade ships in each node and fully upgraded trade buildings in the important provinces. Unless you plan on conquering each downstream trade node the problem isn't going to go away. Though if you grab West Africa you can fight back by siphoning off the Ivory Coast trade.