Chapter 3: Channeling Our Inner Trader
Hello everyone, and welcome back the the Tale of the Time Traveling Belgians! Where the country is enlightened, but the neighbors are not!
We start off today with France wanting to know what our maps show.
We only show them a little more than what they know. I mean, we can't just REVEAL the whole world to them with our FUTURE maps, that could destroy the space time continuum! Or something
And then, several decades after the Blurple menace had died, their refugees have come pounding on our door, asking if they can crash on the couch while they get their life back on track. And they'll pay some rent so they're not just freeloading. And who are we to say no to such an offer?
And then Austria comes asking for a cup of maps. And we say "sure" since we're not giving them anything more than a poorly drawn picture on a cocktail napkin. It wasn't even of the earth, but the Austrians were happy either way. Stupid Habsburgs...
Next, we get our 2nd age ability! We want the bordering claims one! While transfering subjects is nice, there's a limit to the size of the subject you can get. IIRC, the biggest you can get is Norway. And who wants Norway? Gross...
Our modern sciences are slowly seeping to the lower dregs of society. But they don't seem to realize that we already know things like "if you tie a man to a table and cut open his stomach, you can see inside it but he'll die pretty fast", but hey, at least THEY'RE learning!
Unfortunately, on March 1st, 1486, we lost Albert. Which is gonna be hell to inscribe on his tombstone! April 8th, 1875 - March 1st, 1486? THAT oughta confuse some scholars!
Meanwhile, France is OK with us, but man are they going HAM in Iberia. We're gonna see a massive France this game. Here's hoping we can play the game of thrones once they annex Castile, given how PDX broke how PUing a nation with PUs works.
And, as usual, Burgundy declares a war that it really SHOULD win, but of course will lose spectacularly.
And now, for some raisin, Austria decides that they don't want us to be friends with them AND France, so we have to choose. And that's easy, since ONE OF YOU DIDN'T BOMB AND PILLAGE OUR LAND IN THE MID 1910s!
Double unfortunate is that Leopold the 3rd the 2nd is now the only person in the royal family. I'm hoping that he'll croak and get me a de Valois on the throne.
(It's a frog pun, because France)
But hey, we at least got our RM with Austria back, keeping us about 100 relations and in reach of an alliance, if they didn't hate France. the 100 relations is good because that means that they won't send us unlawful territory letters. Which we promptly reply with "we didn't get them, sorry!"
We get free claims on Burgundy. Because those proto-Frenchmen are just SO bad at their jobs!
Next, it's time to bash England again! But, what's that?! AUSTRIA?! ON THE ENEMY'S SIDE!?
That's it, England has OFFICIALLY betrayed us! Because alliances are a completely static thing that have NEVER once changed with the times! They MUST die!
We first sieged up the land we wanted that bordered France, and THEN called them in. That way we can get everything we want!
Large stack of Austrians and English in our vassal's land! But our brave Belgians with their bolt action rifles are here to stop them, with the French and their pointy sticks covering our flank!
Hah! Easy peasy! And the French are just about to arrive!
Unfortunately, we didn't kill enough of them to cause a wipe. But we WILL still kill a lot of them!
Oof, that hurts. I mean, we'll recover, but ouch, that's a lot of men lost.
I'm also trying to avoid mercs this run, since it looks like that's a mechanic that's getting gutted and essentially removed in the next patch. Unless PDX changes their direction with that between me writing this and the present.
More Austrians? IN OUR LAND?! GET OUTTA HERE!
About 2:1 casualties. Still too high on our side...
Huh. Looks like England doesn't like that 15k stack. Well, we'll take care of it for them, Old Yeller style!
Nearly a flawless victory
We peace out Austria, and get war reps, some cash, break their alliance with England, and make them unrival France.
The downside from being an orthodox nation in Catholicsville is that we ALWAYS get this event. Unrest galore. But Orthodox gives SO MUCH - unrest, we're fine with it.
And... we get an heir. A pretty shit heir, too. I'll disinherit him after we peace out, not like I'd forget to kill the dumb baby.
Next age ability, free war taxes. Because cash money is cash money.
Speaking of cash money, we're taking the last provinces that England had on the mainland (that were in the English Channel node), as well as Mann. Why? Because that gives us more places to make claims on!
And I tried to take something on the British mainland, but I was always denied due to "active forts" baloney. Hence why I only got Mann.
But hey, France is cool with this peacedeal, even though we now own a LOT of their cores. So that's pretty sweet.
And while we're on the topic, let's get more of those mainland CoTs, especially since Burgundy lost their war (big surprise
) and now their PUs are free. Free and unallied to anyone.
Their first and LAST mistake.
...Shit, did I kill the kid? No, I said I was going to do that next week. Well fuck, now we're stuck with an idiot on the throne until we get a better heir that's 15 or older. Here's hoping he dies prematurely and we can get that Valois on the throne. That'd be sweet, and it wouldn't mess with bloodlines and timelines! I think... Time travel is complex, OK?!
But hey, we're keeping in bed with the Habsburgs and their massive chins, so we're safe from them FOR NOW!
I failed to mention it earlier, but the protestant reformation has begun! We've got a bit of a pickle, now, since we gotta prevent Europe from becoming ALL protestant or reformed. We want a mix of the 3 branches of Catholicism, not just one or two dominating like they do this patch, due to busted AI conversions.
Seriously, why can't that get a priority patch to get fixed? Sorry for constantly complaining this time, but there are a LOT of boneheaded things that are coming up and I can't NOT call them out!
Next, since we won our previous war with little effort, we go after Lubeck, to get more trade nodes that lead into the Channel!
Plus, we can force convert some OPMs and weaken the reformation that way!
Even caught unaware with half our army split off, we're winning!
That'll teach them for coming into OUR land! HOME TURF, BABY!
Bremen peaced out for war reps, money, and making them follow Orthodox Christianity. All in all, good stuff.
Finally, 6 years late, colonialism has spawned! In Portugal iirc. Either way, we're not getting any growth naturally in our lands.
Hamburg has been peaced out as well, and we killed a protestant center of reformation, iirc. It had spawned there right before the war and I didn't notice until midway through. So that's one down, one to go, since we want to have one up and around. To lessen the AE gain for the time being.
And speaking of lessening AE generation, we vassalize Lubeck instead of eating them. But that's fine, that means we can convert them at the same time, saving us cash in the process.
And that's where I'll end it off here! Next time is when I decide to stop being cutesy about it and just go HAM with ideas, hence why there was a lot of alerts about innovativeness possible from taking ideas, but I never did anything with it. Speaking of, we're already at about 50 innovativeness, so it's not like we're barely having any.
I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you in the next chapter!