Big Bad Belgium: Making the Largest Coalition Possible (1.29)

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 1: From Confusing Beginnings

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Belgium! But if you were to ask the neighbors, there's no such thing as a Belgium. Only some bizzaro land that has appeared in the Burgundian Benelux!

But that's not our primary concern. Our primary concern is with the fact that Belgium has been thrust through time itself to deny the world the right of using it for a battlefield in World War 1! Or something. I don't know, once time travel's introduced, all logic goes out the window.

First order of business, preventing the Central Powers from prematurely forming and invading us!

By marrying the walking chins, we're definitely going to provide safe haven for our people!

But no alliance yet, we gotta bump our relations more. But we got a slot reserved for us with this wedding.

Hopefully none of our family members are related to the Habsburgs, we might have just become our own ancestor if they are.

And with the wedding comes people staring in awe at our futuristic ways of managing a country. You see, we pay people to enter the army, instead of drafting farmers with pitchforks.

Also we have some pretty impressively build homes. And saxophones!

In fact, our saxophones are so beloved internationally, that the globe is in awe of our innovative thinking! Which lets us get our diplomacy and military reforms slowly working towards the newly immigrated peasants we now rule over. It's a slow process, we don't want to overload them with future knowledge.

Alas, there are some traditions we cannot break the rabble from enjoying. Jousting being one of them. Oh well, as long as they listen to us, let them keep their silly custom for the time being.

Despite our wishes for peace, we know that the Netherlands are nothing but trouble, and will not help us in our dire hour. So we will FORCE them to help us, by bringing them into the fold!

Wow, it's a wonder what 400 years of training will do. Our morale is through the roof, knowing that our end goal is beyond just!

But really, 4.1 morale? Hmmm, I wonder if that has to do with our custom idea set...

Just a casual stackwipe, nothing to see here.

Brittany decided they wanted to try their hand at breaking through to our modern soldiers. Alas, they were no match for superior Belgian technology!

Not long after, we vassalize East Frisia. Because we could. I mean, NOT being in the HRE in 1444? They were ASKING to be force vassalized! I did them a FAVOR!

Forgot to enforce religion on them, though

Brittany is too big to be vassalized, so we just steal their money and trade money. We'll get you next time, Brits!

And we mean both you AND the future GB!

Time for peace! We eat Utrecht, and take their treasury. More power in the Channel is ours! *Ahem* I mean, we're ONLY looking out for our future safety, this was a necessary evil. Yes, quite.

But all that war got Leopold in the mood, and just a few months later, we had a baby! And even more surprising, it SURVIVED despite local "doctors" trying to help!

Now, I noticed Chinstria would ally us, but the bar says otherwise. Oh well, worst case, they use our land as a battlefield.

....

Um, sure AI. That makes sense. Total sense. Great. I'm not complaining.

Well, anyhow, we're plowing along with tech, and I figured I'd give a look at our army stats. As you can see, we're pretty stacked in the morale front!

And finally, in 1454, we heard that the Renaissance has started. Better bring out all those Renaissance paintings we have hidden away in the palace, make sure the world sees us as the REAL originators of the Renaissance!

I think we might be causing some sort of ripple effect with our meddling in time. Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine!

Next, to (attempt to) align ourselves with the frogs. They're big, and more importantly, next to us. Two very imposing things, if I must say so.

It turns out that the Dutch-Belgian rivalry has transcended time itself, and as such we're looking to steal our neighbor's radio so their place looks worse than ours in comparison!

But in this case, the radio is Zeeland.

Tech 5 admin means it's IDEA TIME! Oh boy, I can't wait to get that Maritime-Naval Policy! Said no one ever.

We're getting innovative. So we can get to work on our electric saxophones.

But then, local news broke, in the form of some guy running down the street, shouting on the top of his lungs. And it may be trouble for us...

The Baguette has the Castilian crown, in addition to the French one!

Well, if we're lucky (and PDX's bugs don't screw us), we may be able to get both crowns for ourselves! Or we could just kill them. Either way works for us.

Anyways, it's reform time. And we decide that we need more soldiers! ALWAYS MORE SOLDIERS!

Downside is, because of the how PDX designed the HRE to NOT consider custom nations, doing this demoted us to duchy rank, despite spending 10 Belgian dollary-doos on being a kingdom.

Also, we're Prussian government. Because when the world sends you back in time, you decide that Prussia had some good ideas, militarily at least!

Now, it's time for us to continue our crusade against the Dutch! This time, we're coming for Gelre!

Hide yo kids, hide you wife, the Belgians are coming, bringing nothin' but strife!

Well, strife and some authority to the churches. Gotta avoid the protestant reformation somehow!

We peaced out both Munster and Alsace for their money, as well as changing their religion to the eastern orthodoxy. May as well see how long I can delay the reformation while I'm at it!

Next, we've finally re-introduced the Renaissance to our people. And everyone was all "Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that. Is THAT what's going on now? Oh shit, we're never going back to the 20th century..."

AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

And then, on July 10th, 1464, our engineers had finally gotten our factories to work on steam power and not coal, allowing us to resume production of our most stalwart weapon of the Great War, the Mauser M1889!

Allow me to transcribe the idea text here:

Mauser M1889
Due to our superior Belgian technology, we have managed to bring back our ultimate infantry weapon from the Great War, the Mauser Model 1889. With this, we will make sure that our future enemies shall never rise to prominence.

+20% Infantry Combat Ability
​

So yes, our ideas are a TAD OP. But we're from the future, we got better smarts and stuff! Also a really dumb goal to achieve.

I'll leave this first chapter off with the peacedeal. We only took Gelre, because we could force their religion as well, which saves us a couple hundred ducats and some unrest. Remember, it's only after we finish our national ideas that we need to get the coalition building going.

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 2: Time is a Wibbly-Wobbly Thing

Welgekomen! It's time for more of the Adventures of Belgium and It's Time Traveling Government and Military!

...

That's a long title, I'll workshop it a bit, make it less lengthy and gross.

Anyways! It's time to see what kind of crazy shenanigans Albert, Leopold, and those goofy generals get themselves into!

...But it looks like we're not the ONLY time travelers!

King Arthur has come forward to the 1400s for some reason! But, he did something much more vile, something that would seal the fate of England. He, and his cohorts, decided to "Not go to Belgium, it's a rather silly place"

Albert will not STAND for such indignity from some Dark Age myth! But, the people still like England for their help in the Great War. And there are a few people debating the "ethics" of "completely altering the course of history by targeting a nation that will form the largest empire in history", or as they're better known as, COWARDS!

Whilst we root out the cowards in our society, we turn to a front that we can ALL agree upon. Destroying Germany!

After a quick wipe of the Clevian Army, we're left with a paultry 7k Mainzians to deal with! But... where are they?

They're... blackflagged in Saxony? And not attempting to move. OK. Sure. No problem. That's fine. Not like we're burning your nation in a siege.

AI gonna AI.

...

AI gonna AI

Not gonna complain about AI idiocy in my favor. Man, I wish that the AI was actually competent. I remember a time when it was. But that was a long, long time ago...

Mainz becomes Orthodox, and gives us their lunch money, and their trade power. The more we convert, the more we cripple the Germans! Plus, we can eat them later for less AE. Because for now, AE is NOT just a number.

Cleves is cleft from existence.

Looking to the east, we see that the Poles are doing well in their war against the Hungarians. And we feel some kinship with the Poles, being used as the battlefield between the Russians and the Central Powers. So we decide to ally them! And definitely not just because they're big and strong atm!

The unfortunate thing about being in the in the 1400s is that people are more gung-ho about their religion of choice. To the point that it sometimes falls on the state to do church stuff. But we get some good benefits, so we put up with it.

ANOTHER unfortunate thing about living through the Renaissance is that, as time travelers, we already HAVE a LOT of Renaissance era art. And we don't want dupes of existing art, it lowers the prestige by acknowledging they're not one of a kind.

Looks like the Burgundians have started to come around, and at least admitted that we're a nation. And you know what, that''s fine. We want Burgundy to live past the magical date of December 31st, 1499. Hence why we aren't attacking them yet.

YET

It's time for our first splendor ability doodad! We're getting the AE reduction, we'll need it while we eat the HRE. Like I said, coalitions aren't kosher juuuuuust yet.

It looks like it's taken a while, but the world has finally acknowledged that BELGIUM was the first nation in the world to make cannons. Granted, they're FUTURE cannons, but they're still the first cannons in the world!

OH HO HO! BAGUETTE! FOIS GRAS! ESCARGOT! Frogs. We got France as an ally, and Castile by extension. Looks like All's Quiet on the Western Front

But then, tragedy struck.

Prince Leopold the 3rd was killed in a freak hunting accident. He tried to wrestle a bear, but then realized he wasn't Russian.

BUT just then, a younger Leopold the 3rd appeared from another time portal, picked up the crown off the dead Leopold's head, and went about his usual business.

I think we might only have 3 names available in Belgium. All our kings will be named either Albert or Leopold III, and our queens will be named Elisabeth. Custom nations, SO GREAT!

Time to finish off this minor dutch nation, no sweat.

No sweat whatsoever.

But, in the downtime, we managed to convince the people that King Arthur had unleashed the bear the had murderified Prince Leopold the 3rd the 1st! And with the backing of an incensed people, we declare war upon the rotten English! And as they're wrapped up defending the Portuguese from the Moroccans, we'll have free reign in their continental holdings!

Provence dies pathetically. We know the drill with these small nations.

A few years into the war, and we've seen neither hide nor tail of the English. Must be scared of how INNOVATIVE our miniature boomsticks are!

Spoke too soon, it looks like the English have bailed out of their Moroccan war, and King Arthur is leading his men into a hail of bullets!

Unfortunately, we need to conserve ammo, so we end up in a bayonet charge!

FIX BAYONETS AND AIM FOR THE EYES!

Reinforcements are on the way, we need to win before they arrive and outflank us!

In the nick of time, victory was reached. Oof on those casualties, but we'll survive.

TIME FOR ROUND 2, YOU PROTO-BRITS!

UNLEASH THE CANNON BARRAGE!

More warscore, and at a little over half the losses that England felt. Unacceptable. We must CRUSH them!

Recovered and ready for more, but this time we got a plan!

Reinforcements mean nothing to us, we have superior tech, skill, and musicians!

LOOK AT THEM RUN, THE PANSIES!

More 2:1 casualties in our favor. One day, we'll make it be 5:1. One day...

That day may come soon, as we're getting our next idea group. And of course we're going for Quality ideas! Infantry combat ability, cannon combat ability, discipline, and a policy for even MORE infantry combat ability is the stuff space marines are MADE of!

Unfortunately, we couldn't force convert Provence, as they were too big. So we just took a bit of change to get them out of the war.

... Not sure WHY the AI abandoned this siege, while I was moving into Alencon. They would have had a severe numerical advantage, but hey, who am I to turn up free WS?

And all during this war, we've been building up our idea set, and we've unlocked our SECOND national idea! Allow me to write out what it is, for those who are on mobile and can't read the screenshot so well.

What's a Belgium?

The nations of this time period are unaware of any state called "Belgium." As such, we are free to make our presence known by claiming land, and claiming that it is our birthright. And if they disagree, then we shall send in the army.

Core-Creation Cost: -20%
​

So basically, we can core things faster and cheaper. Which is nice in areas with dense amounts of rich provinces.

Now it's time for the final bit of our trap. FIRST, we kill the English!

NEXT: we pursue the fleeing Englishmen!

We follow the English to Labourd, and then we stackwipe them! Destroying their entire army in a matter of moments!

And with that, we peace out England for their continental CoTs in the English Channel node. With only minimal potential for coalition. Hurrah!

And I think that's where we'll call it for now. We're getting more power, both in and out of the HRE. And despite taking French cores, France still wants to be our ally! For now. They'll probably dump us in the middle of a war and not get a stabhit. I'M NOT STILL BITTER ABOUT THE OTTOMANS DURING ZOROAFRICA! YOU'RE STILL BITTER ABOUT THE OTTOMANS DURING ZOROAFRICA!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this entry!

 

[firezatswill9]

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!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 4: Operation Sealion

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Belgium! I hope you had an excellent Christmas, it's currently 5 past midnight on the 27th as I write this sentence, so consider this a belated Christmas gift!

Anywho, let's jump into it!

France has started integrating Castile, and they've eaten 99% of Aragon, meaning that France will rule over most of Francia and Iberia

Not like we have plans for them or anything

But, for now, let's get some extra scratch from the frogs by selling them Colonialism. Because who doesn't love money?

Age ability time! We take the only sensible one, being Orthodox and all!

I don't remember when, but a while back, PDX patched the whole "inland forts counting as blockaded for purposes of the +1 siege age ability", meaning that it is no longer the single most powerful age ability in the reformation age.

And now we're going full throttle with our ideas! And we unlocked another national idea!

Pick a God and Pray

There can be no way that a merciful god would allow such horrors to befall our people, and yet the Great War came. As such, we care not for which god people pray to, so long as they pray for our safety and victory.

Religious Unity +20%​

So, we should be safe from religious unity based issues, for the time being at least!

France peaces out Provence, and we get two provinces! Pretty nice of ya, France!

And now, for no particular reason, let's look at Nuremberg.

All I can say is bravo! But they're probably gonna fall apart due to rebels or some silly war.

Now, it's time to bash the Dutch once again, with a side helping of Hamburger!

And when I say we're bashing the Dutch, I mean we're bashing ALL of the Dutch we can!

Pathetic show, Bremen!

Hamburgers don't realize that they're food, not people!

But, just like any good hamburger, they go down with ease. Especially if you have a side helping of fries and beer to wash it down!

Now, in a surprise move, we annex Hamburg. AND WE DON'T GET A COALITION!

I know, right? Impossible, or so I thought it was!

Guess we're too good or something

And even though we don't have everyone landed and in position, it's time for Operation Sealion to commence! Our initial 16k crack squad will be able to crush anything the English send our way!

We peace out Friesland to make them follow the right flavor of Jesus (mmmm, tastes like salvation), and some cash and trade power.

Holland also gives us their power and cash, because we don't wanna trigger a coalition once we take England to the cleaners.

Speaking of...

We wiped the floor with the English! All is right with the world!

And in the meanwhile, we've managed to get our next national idea!

Mors-Minerva Armoured Cars

The battlefield is no place for slow movement. As such, the use of "Automobiles" designed by our future seeing scientists have allowed for quicker movement to and from the front lines. Plus, they have guns and armor, making them more dangerous.

Movement Speed +20%​

Yup. We're super futuristic! Or modern. Or whatever you'd call a bunch of time traveling Belgians that have thrown caution to the wind and decided to embrace the butterfly effect.

And then we ALSO take the Innovative-Quality policy, giving us an ADDITIONAL 20% infantry combat ability!

Do you want space marines?! BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SPACE MARINES, KAREN!!

Now, let's see how our newly minted space marines fare, starting with a pretty bad fire phase.

Oh, by the next fire phase, they managed to turn it around entirely in just one shock phase!

W-W-W-WIPEOUT!

And now, it's time for us to TRULY put ourselves above these primitive screwheads. But instead of showing them our boomsticks, we'll reinstate our Parliament!

(*I have no idea if Belgium has, or has ever had, a Parliament. I'm just gonna assume so, or at least has something similar enough)

And now, before the age of absolutism rolls around, we're gonna give seats to all of our non trade center provinces!

And we're able to push through issues with ease, giving us a much needed additional diplomat, and faster spy networks, which means more claims!

And, while we're taking a step back from the war, let's look at the religious progress in Europe. We've managed to make the vast majority of the Frisian coast Orthodox, with pockets of it here and there in central Germany. Unfortunately, the other CoRs are in hard to reach spots, and not even an extendo-wand sponge will let us reach them!

(Translators note: The sponge thing means that the CoRs aren't in a nation's capital, meaning we can't force convert them away )

Man, the English must be desperate if they're making the IRISH fight for them, instead of against them!

Different Isle, same results.

And now, the peace deal! We take almost all of England's CoTs in the peace, leaving them only with London. By doing the deal this way, we not only get a lot more land and PP as a result, but we also block Scotland from getting too much land when they inevitably jump on the smoldering ruin that is England.

Plus, we also took most of the land that we can convert, as it's not Anglican.

France, fighting the Burgundians? Of course we'll help! And we'll occupy most of the lands that we want, since you're already working on a siege for a province we also want.

Next age ability is the one that gets us more prestige!

More prestige means less AE! Simple enough, no?

Germans invading Belgium? NOT ON MY WATCH!!

GET OUT OR GET DEAD, BRATWURST BOYS!

Dithmarschen has dipped out.

And that's when we noticed our map of the world didn't QUITE match up to the one we knew and loved...

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?!

Welp, it's official. Time travel boned the Americas. No USA for us, it's all on us to stop the German menace!

But you know what, who cares! We just harvested a freaking HUGE turnip! And we sold it for a king's ransom! Which made us better at administrating, due to investments.

No peace deal shot from France, but they took a lot of land and we got a whopping 0 land from Burgundy. But that's fine, we can finally send our King for a long walk off a short pier, and get his heir on the throne!

And then we immediately get another heir who is pretty good. Good enough to keep, at least!

But alas, the Commonwealth doesn't like us anymore. Apparently, we're "too big" or something. Oh well, it's their funeral, we know what SHOULD happen to them.

But anywho, it's time to bash the Dutch once again! MY FAVORITE PASTIME!

And we've officially hit the point where we can vassalize members of the HRE diplomatically. We'll dismantle Germany one nation-state at a time!

And it took them a while to realize this, but England just came to the conclusion that the nation who kicked the tar out of them wouldn't make for a good rival!

Also visible is the Scottish takeover of Ireland, after winning a war against the dying England in a vulture-esque fashion, as I said they would.

Thanks to our constant warfare and general ingeniousness with regards to guns, cars, and everything inbetween, we're able to reform our military to include something else. What is it, you ask?

Why, it's the M1894 210mm Mortar (with Explosive Shells), of course!

M1984 210mm Mortar (with Explosive Shells)​

With our knowledge of things to come, and the knowhow to make machines from many centuries in the future, we have created the ultimate artillery piece for this era: the 210mm mortar. No man can survive a shell this size. And if they do, it also explodes.

Artillery Combat Ability +20%

And that's where we'll leave off for now. Combat wise, we're very formidable! But we're also reliant on a smaller army than I'd like, and doubly limited by our manpower pool. But those are problems for future me. Present me doesn't need to worry about that, future me always is able to figure things out and pull ahead!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 5: Europe Goes to War Over a Dead Carpenter

Hello everyone, Happy New Years! Welcome back to Belgium! After a break for the holiday season, I'm back and ready to go, so let's just hop into it!

And what better way to start than with Scotland hating us? The Scottish are such a contentious people, after all the help we gave them!

Oh well, makes it easier for us to eat them then

Speaking of eating, we're taking Zeeland from the Dutch, and then making them a vassal of ours.

Why did we do this?

AE is less this way (and Zeeland is -4% WS? ), so we don't need to worry about them joining coalitions against us. This makes our growth period much less annoying, seeing how they constantly had about 50 AE against us.

And as we were dealing with our newly made vassal, Austria decides that it's a good time to jump into Italy! And as we don't have anything else going on, we say "sure, we'll join and cheer on the Italians! I mean, cheer AGAINST the Italians!"

But, while we're on the topic of allies, our OLD ally, the Commonwealth, is looking a lot worse for wear. That's what happens when you stop being allied to Belgium, you get absolutely steamrolled!

Thanks to our EXPERT assistance, Austria won their war. Which actually is a good thing for us. For you see, Milan has a reformed CoR in their capital. And now they're at less than 100% WS. So if we can call them into a war as a co-belligerent, we can destroy that center by flipping them Orthodox!

I'm sure that Catholic will end up dying, as is typical in the latest version, but at least we can slow its demise down.

Anyhow, this is one of the Parliament issues that we will be going for when it comes up. As I said, this is a merc-less run, so we'll need all the manpower we can get! To that end, we're definitely focusing on idea groups that give manpower and recovery speed.

And with that, we're kinda out of good age abilities. Since the blockade one got patched to work as intended, it's useless to us, since we barely have a navy (it's something like 12 lights and 20 transports iirc), we're just going to get that sweet institution spread speed.

And not a moment too soon, since the printing press has just arrived! Between our location, and our insane amount of excess points, we should be able to get the institution right quick.

Alas, it's finally happened. France and Austria have come to a head, and we must choose a side. *Sigh* Such a difficult choice...

FRANCE ALL THE WAY BABY, SUCK IT AUSTRIA!

While France destroys Austria, we're going back to the British Isles to cause some chaos!

Yeah, this war is pretty much wrapped up already.

And apparently the English rebels couldn't understand that they can't win against us. IF WE CAN TAKE OVER YOUR ENTIRE HOMELAND WITH NO TROUBLE, A SMALL 28k STACK ISN'T GONNA DO ANYTHING!

It's time for peace! Now, I know what you're thinking, why did I only take that land there? Well, the answer is simple. One, we wanted to get the last CoT from England. Two, we were watching our AE. And 3, I have a plan.

Oh boy, league war time! This ought to be fun! Just gotta remember to choose a side...

But not right now, we have other things we're doing right now.

Like praising John Wolfe for his great work at being diplomatic, while also not giving up all of our secrets we know from the future!

We had a BIG party with a huge cake. It was pretty sweet. There was even a clown, that's how great the party was.

OK, sure France. You could have won that, but you didn't. You gave up too easily. You have a good 20% of the land of the Roman Empire (and some of the good land, too, none of that desert crap), and you couldn't win?!

AI, man. Makes you scratch your head.

...Shoot, we didn't join a side, did we? No, we partied too hard and forgot. Well shit. Oh well.

I MEAN, UH, EXACTLY AS PLANNED! BELGIUM DOESN'T WANNA BE A BATTLEFIELD AGAIN! Or would it be for the first time, since we're in the past. Huh...

Well, either way, while Europe burns, it's time to descend like the opportunist I am. Let's roll, Pomerania!

But, before we get too far into it...

Let's finish up our national ideas!

The Maxim Machine Gun

We are no longer bound to the rules of early modern warfare. With the Maxim Machine Gun, we can cleave through waves of enemy soldiers, all with a single man and a single gun.

Land Fire Damage +20%
​

Oh, and our ambition gave us another 2% missionary strength. Just as an added bonus.

So with that, we're at our FULL POTENTIAL, at least regarding our NI's.

Had I not tried to be sneaky about it, we could have filled these out a solid 20 years earlier, at the very least.

Frankfurt gets the usual peace deal. Flipped, gave us cash and trade.

BREAKING NEWS, FRANCE HAS NO HEIR AND IS LED BY AN INFERTILE 61 YEAR OLD QUEEN!

Looks like a Meinrad is gonna be on the throne in the coming years

Brunswick is peaced out, but for a different deal. We made them our vassal. Why? Well, they have cores on a LOT of provinces. They expanded a LOT before they died to a combo of rebels and neighbors dogpiling them.

Which means we can use the reconquest CB and get the land for cheap.

And we peace out Pomerania for our usual deal. No need to eat them yet. Not while they're a heretic religion, at least.

Meanwhile, Austria has fallen into obscurity. If we have a say in it, they will never regain prominence.

And now that we have the reconquest CB, it's time to go to work. Oldenburg, you're first on the list!

Easy-peasy.

Now, this is something I love to see. We're at high AT due to our wars (and the fact that we have maybe 3 forts and only a couple dozen provinces, keeping our AT high), we're rolling really GOOD generals as of late, at least in terms of number of pips!

Now it's time to go after Aachen, we just flat out don't like them!

I can't remember exactly WHY we did this, but it was probably to break an alliance chain or something.

Now, this event came at a great time. We've been using the icons available to the Orthodox faith (right now, it's the -AE impact one. After 1610, we're going for the mapower recovery and discipline for the rest of the game), and it was time to renew the icon.

Just pointing out that this is something that I've been doing.

Ulm, usual deal, get outta here!

Bavaria, usual deal, get outta here!

Looks like Saxony might have been our target, seeing as we took a province from them. Huh. I think they might have been allied to Bohemia and the Commonwealth? I don't remember, but I'm sure I had a good reason for doing it this way.

Anyways, since we can't have peace lest our vassal give up the land we just took, we're going after trier next!

Muster gets the Belgian special at the peace table.

DAT'S A BIG FRANCE!

Hope we can get it under a PU, otherwise we're gonna have a fun time fighting THAT Big Blue Blob!

Speaking of the BBB, we can see how they stand up to the Ottomans.

And I gotta say, compared to our god tier army, they both look pathetic.

Trier just flips religion. For now. We'll see what happens next time.

Burgundy, that's a nice Luxemburg you got there. Be a reeeeal shame if something were to happen to it. But we can protect it, you don't want that nice land being hurt, do you? You don't? Well that's good. We'll keep it nice and safe for ya.

Now, it's time for the war I talked about a good 30 images ago. We're dowing Stade for their land, sure, but we're calling in Milan so we can kill their CoR.

Also Friesland because they have no other allies, so why not?

AND THE LEAGUE WAR ENDS WITH A CATHOLIC VICTORY!

That's actually interesting, seeing as there's maybe 4 catholics left in the empire. It might end up collapsing in on itself, who knows?

And this (formerly rare) disaster is happening in France! So, what's the betting look like, will France go protestant or reformed?

And speaking of religion, I'll leave us off with this map of Europe and their religion. Italy is almost entirely reformed, thanks to 2 CoRs spawning in Milan and Savoy. But otherwise, we've made a noticeable dent in the northwest!

I hope you all enjoyed, and I'll see you in the next chapter!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 6: The Calm Before

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Belgium! We're about 40 years away from us going bananas and trying to make a massive coalition, so let's have a nice, relaxing few decades this time around, ok?

Milan is force converted, destroying the reformed CoR in the process. Only 2 left in the world!

Next, we're going back to England, because we forgot to take something in our last war.

Well, not forgot. More like "chose not to."

And with that, our hopes of getting a succession war are dashed. But we now have a much greater chance at getting a PU on the BBB!

More peace deals, our vassal grows big and strong!

We take a short peace with England, and all we want are their Wales. And to be fair, I think that they're more than happy to get rid of the Welsh and their impossible to pronounce words.

Now, it's time to beat up the Danes. They've gone untouched for TOO LONG!

And now, we officially have Meinrad on the French throne!

We're holding off on the PU attempt for now, we've got other wars to declare in the meanwhile. There will be plenty of time to get France under heel.

This is pretty sad, Denmark. Pomerania is coming to help, but I doubt that it'll do you any good.

Wiped out to the last man. As expected.

This time, the Danes outnumber us roughly 2:1, let's see how they do this time!

Thanks to OUR reinforcements, we'll win handily. But even then, we barely had a dent be made in our morale.

18k Danes dead, for 3k Belgian casualties. Not a wipe, though. Unacceptable!

Having crushed their army, we peace out the Danes. We won't be able to get much more, since we can't beat their navy and we don't wanna trek all the way to Scandanavia via Russia.

We immediately give our new lands to Lubeck, for safekeeping.

Next up, it's time for MORE WAR AGAINST THE DUTCH!

Unfortunately, we have to push people to join our army, since they've been dragging their heels. They claim it's the paperwork, but I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

You know what, I don't care if it takes an extra few months to get our new soldiers, so long as they're like THIS MADLAD!

This is the first 6 siege general I've rolled in over 3k hours of EU4 (unless I forgot one at some point). Just, wow.

OK, that's it, we're getting England finished! After this, no more wars with the English! I mean it!

This is a thing of beauty. Sieging like crazy, true lightning warfare right here!

Throw in some boats, and we're at the max siege bonus possible!

We peace out the Dutch, taking one province due to AE. I think. Seems like something I'd do, at the very least.

A merchant dies? Great news, we can take their cash and use it for something else! What that is, I don't know, since we have manufactories literally everywhere! Maybe we'll get a really nice hat or something.

Well, while we wait, let's go an keep doing our thing. Waging small wars on unsuspecting nations!

Oh, what's this? France AND Austria have no heirs, and we have marriages with them? Spicy spicy, let's see what happens here.

But, before we do anything else, it's time to say goodbye to Holland. We meant to use them to eat Friesland, but that plan never came to be. Oh well, diplo points were never an issue for us, so having them take a slot was no big deal.

Next, it's time to end our war with the English. How? By making them our vassal!

This way, they can colonize the new world, and move towards the TC land that we'd like.

Sure, it would have been smarter to just let them colonize unprovoked, and then eat them later, but this way we keep them out of the coalition (and prevent them from becoming a coalition leader)

Just because I want to make a big coalition doesn't mean I want to have an unbeatably annoying coalition!

The peace deal, colorized.

Shortly after winning our war with the English, we spotted a comet in the sky. But, unlike our neighbors, who are bass-ackwards and stupid, we don't see this as a sign of the end of days. We just see it as a space rock flying by the Earth. And it's really pretty.

Trier is next on our target list, so let's hit them hard and fast!

Despite our wars, France calls for aid! And being the excellent allies that we are, we shall send that aid to Gondo- I mean, to France!

Also, we peaced out Trier, but didn't take anything. I think it was literally just coalition prevention at that point. Don't know, don't remember anymore. Probably not important, seeing as we gained nothing in the war.

Next up, it's time for war against Burgundy! The stupid proto-Dutch-French barely have any land left, so we'll do them a kindness by holding on to it for them.

Wiping made easy!

Ansbach gets our typical peace deal, and they'll happily accept it!

Ferarra is forced to send their trade to us, even though I don't think it's gonna do anything for us. But oh well, it sends a message.

Lorraine is actually SUPER HIGH development, meaning that we're happier to force flip them for now. We'll eat them soon enough...

Burgundy gives us two provinces, flips to orthodox, and gives us some cash. All in a day's work.

Seeing how we are the scientific center of the world, it only makes sense that we're the cultural center as well! As such, artists are flooding to our beautiful lands!

Holland is no longer. GOOD RIDDANCE!

Tech reduction costs are coming hot and fast, this is why we're pretty much at 100 innovativeness!

Next up, Brittany. They got spit out at some point, and it's time for us to get the last province for our state!

Next up, another war to break alliances and get more clay!

37 dead on our side, 6k dead on theirs. How tragic.

Until the CoRs are gone, we'll keep sending our our usual peacedeal. And they'll keep taking them.

Brittany is gone for good this time!

Magdeburgian-Bohemian alliance: broken.

Next up is Friesland, again!

We really just like bopping them in the schnoz.

Next, we feed Hesse her claims, and keep the war with Friesland going until they finish coring. Otherwise they'll be dumb and give the land back, like the idiot AI that they are.

And we'll end this chapter with what is inevitable in any campaign: the Ottomans rival us now.

Pretty relaxed couple of decades, but we're just a mere 30 away from us not caring about coalition avoidance. So consider this the calm before the storm, I suppose.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 7: And 0 F*cks Were Given

Hello again, and welcome back to the glorious Belgium AAR! According to pollsters, we don't exist, just like Belgium!

But we're back baby, let's get rolling!

Right now, we're looking down the barrel of a potential regency council, or worse, a low legitimacy heir from France!

But it's fine, he'd be a Meinrad, so we can still get the french throne. We're staying at war though, to keep us out of the realms of PU-underling-hood.

Speaking of war, we peaced out Friesland for something not worth mentioning, I'm sure, and we're now looking at the Saxons of Saxony! They have land that our vassals have claimed, and we're more than happy to claim it for them, and by proxy, ourselves

Lucky us, the throne is safe! Sure, better admin abilities would be nice, but hey, at least he can fight a war!

Three peace deals, only one of them worth talking about. Our vassals got their claims, and for minimal AE. But pretty soon, we're not gonna care about such petty things as AE.

Speaking of vassals, let's get Bavaria back to being big and strong!

Plus we get to beat on Bohemia, them and their stupid HCC ideas...

I think all our military ideas are paying off! I think this is related to quantity ideas. Or maybe not, I don't know. All I know is that I rarely ever take quantity, since I'm usually big enough and rich enough to not need the group. But for Belgium, our empire's size IS a bit of a limiting factor.

That and my refusal to use mercs, seeing how they're (as of writing this) being gutted in 1.30

Speaking of military, just look at our glorious stats! 120% discipline, 6.6 morale! We're a real force to be reckoned with!

We could do with some more cannons, though.

We crushed Bohemia and forced them out of the war for 100 WS. We took no land, I THINK we might have humiliated them or something. Either way, we got a big truce with them for now.

And we got Bavaria's cores back. And there was much rejoicing!

Speaking of core retrieval... Hey Brunswick, you got some stuff you wanna repossess?

Gotta love getting free stability from your advisers, that tech reduction cost might actually be useful!

Brunswickian cores get.

Next on the chopping block is Scotland. The Belgians and Scots are natural enemies, like the Germans and Belgians, or the Dutch and Belgians, or the Italians and Belgians, or Belgians and other Belgians! Damn Belgians, you ruined Belgium!

GET YOUR KNOCKOFF BELGIAN YELLOW AWAY FROM MY LANDS!

We took land and then gave it back to England. They were... happy? I think? I dunno, the Brits are always so hard to read.

MORE WAR MORE WAR!

And apparently we're too big and scary for the Commonwealth to be our rival. Little ol' us makes the PLC quake in their boots.

And rightly so!

War, once you pop you just can't stop!

Trier is now our vassal. Who needs diplo points, anyways?

Pomerania gets off with a light warning.

Over here in Belgium, we're declaring wars like they're going out of stock!

Luneburg is friendless now. Serves them right, THEY KNOW WHAT THEY DID!

Our future medicine has finally spread to more of the masses, meaning that less people are dying of stubbed toes, and can make more stuff!

ULM! YOU WILL BE ORTHODOX AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!

Munster gets one more reprieve from our onslaught.

Cologne, time to die. We're sick of your scent wafting over into our lands!

Mo' money, mo' relations w/France.

Pathetic display, Austria. Might have done more damage if you ran at us, chins-first!

We spawn global trade, who else would?

And that means we're a scant 10 years away from the age of absolutism...

Thanks to our endless wars and massive pile of military ideas, we have insane amounts of AT, giving us some pretty decent generals!

Danzig, you gotta ask yourself "Why Die for Cologne?"

Really, you should consider it.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get admin 17 with our tech reduction. But still, 1000 points for admin efficiency is admin well spent.

Plus we gain innovativeness, we're nearing 100 now.

Lorraine, get in mah belly!

Austria, just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.

Danzig's gonna stop dying for Cologne, even if we have to hold their hand as they sign the peace deal!

Now, a French Throne Update! They have no heir, and their king ascended with not great legitimacy, so we have a good window to claim the throne and just win the game outright. But we should really tie up loose ends first.

Austria gives Bavaria back some of their cores. And we break them up with Naples. I'd actually LOVE to see Italy form, it's such a rare occurance.

Nurnberg, it's time for your trial.

Bohemia smelled the bloody and friendless Chins of Austria and are descending like the vulturous blob they are.

Saxony, time to finish cleaning up your mess.

Cologne is dead, and we don't need to smell their rotten scent anymore!

That's a lot of AE for just a few provinces.

...

Eh, fuck it, BALLS TO THE WALL MODE ENGAGED!

BALLS TO THE WALL!

BALLS TO THE WALL!

Bohemia lost, but barely anything. Austria needs to learn more about BALLS TO THE WALL MODE! Or, as it's called where I'm from, "Eh, Fuck It" mode!

FROM THE WINDOOOOOOOWS...!

...TO THE WALLS!

Saxony should have just given up, now that we don't care about AE.

Professionalism and discipline for 10% less men? That's an easy "hell yes" from me, chief!

Yuck. Bohemia and Ottomans, gross. I mean, we could EASILY win, but that's gross and I don't wanna do that.

Luneburg's time is up, they should have repented, but they did not.

Good event, bad nation. I don't wanna hang on to Brunswick for 50 years, so I best avoid falling into being their PU senior.

Anhalt learned the hard way what it's like when HRE AE modifications don't phase us.

Friesland, it's FINALLY time for you to die. Nothing's gonna save you this time, bud.

AE? Never heard of it.

Bohemia is beaten to hell and back.

Balls to the- hello, what's this? We gave land back... TO HUNGARY?! WHY?!

Oh yeah, that deletes the land border that Bohemia had with the Ottomans, meaning that they aren't guaranteed anymore.

Brandenburg is almost dealt with. Just a little more time and we're good.

Anton has ascended to the throne, and it turns out his father was really, REALLY bad at naming, seeing how his younger brother is also named Anton.

Either that or he really wanted an Anton to rule Belgium.

Time for round 2, Scotland!

Aww, that's sweet, France likes us. And we like them.

Well, their throne, to be specific.

And I think we'll end off with the start of the age of absolutism. We've gone a bit ahead of schedule with our AE ignoring, but who cares. It's just a number, right?

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you in my next update!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 8: My Numbers Are Bigger Than Yours

Hey everyone, hope you're all doing well and staying inside during these confusing times. I've been busy with a bunch of stuff these past few months, like my visa and stuff as I am living overseas for my job, and a lot of the diplomatic processes had been eating my time. And seeing how we're still not under lockdown just yet, I've been trying to get other stuff done while I still can, and while I avoid going out as much as possible. It's a balancing act, to be sure.

But enough about me, let's get back to the reason you're here. BELGIUM!

Free stability AND tech cost reduction? Man, soon the game will be paying US sword mana to tech up!

Luneburg is gone. Good riddance, they know what they did...

We can't get 100% worth of land from the Scots, so we end up breaking their bank as well. That coalition list is growing by the day, but who cares. Not like they'll be able to stop us.

Friesland and Magdeburg are no more, and that list just keeps on getting longer. Now we have the Danes, the Poles, the Naploites, and the remainder of the Balkanites against us. But will any of them be brave enough to start the coalition list?

Well, since our troops are in the area, why not take care of the Danish? They're probably sweating bullets after seeing how we crushed the northern and eastern Germans, and hearing tale of our conquest of the British Isles.

The fact that they're allied to the Commonwealth doesn't bother us. In fact, it's a GOOD thing! Two birds with one Maxim machine gun burst.

OH-HO! WE FINALLY HAVE A COALITION STARTED! Naples, you beautiful bastard, congratulations on being the first nation to say "hey guys, I don't think these weird future spacemen from Belgium should be allowed to own most of Britain, and a solid portion of Germany. Anyone else? Anyone? Hello? Mama mia..."

They were also the ONLY ones to join the coalition. Could be a bug, could be that the other nations are too scared to. Not sure, the AI has been increasingly skittish with each patch, so it's hard to tell.

12 years after it showed up, we embrace global trade. We're already filthy rich, but more money is more money, not gonna complain after several years of playing solely in Africa and Asia.

LOOK AT THIS TINY BELGIAN! He held off this TITANIC Polish soldier with just a spear!

I had no idea that the Poles in the early modern era were goliaths!

Well, as I mentioned before, we're swimming in dosh, so we may as well become the DotF to help with all these conversions. I mean, what else are we gonna do with these buckets of ducats?

A look at our combat stats, compared to the Commonwealth's (for scale.) We've reached mad levels of combat prowess, but we can still go even further.

7k Belgian casualties vs. 22k Poles and Hungarians? Unacceptable.

The Danes tried to ambush one of our smaller stacks with a force of roughly double their size. Looks like it's not going so well for them, huh?

Now that we're getting to the mid to late game, cannons are very important in combat, as Frederik has learned. Why? Because FIRE COMES FIRST.

We pay a hefty penalty for being 8 years ahead of time, but we grab admin 18 for our next idea group. Which, of course, will balance out our very military-heavy ideas with something that ca- PSYCHE WE'RE GOING DEFENSIVE, BITCH!

A well balanced idea set if I must say so myself.

And we IMMEDIATELY burn our sword mana to get the first two ideas, with the bonus morale being the biggest reason we chose defensive.

Now, with our extra morale, we're already seeing a MASSIVE difference in battle results.

Absolutely massive change.

That extra .15 morale has given us a HUGE advantage against most other nations. Because we're able to deal more morale damage each day, which means we get to the "routing" phase (enemy has no morale but is still locked into combat) sooner, which in turn gives us a MUCH higher chance to stackwipe.

Unfortunately, though, even with all our bonuses, we can't control the dice rolls.

But that's more like it.

I have no idea what this event is tied to. Innovative ideas, maybe? Or is it just because I'm in Europe? I got no clue, gentlemen and ladies.

We peace out the Danes for a good deal of land, which we immediately hand over to Lubeck. We don't need to waste time coring that, we got bigger fish to fry.

Time to keep going for the Baltic coast, solidify our control over they node.

And now that our king is an inspiring leader, we have gained a grand total of 20% morale in the past decade. THAT'S THE SAME AS 2 ELAN'S!

Token resistance from Pomerania is laughable. But what I wouldn't give to have a general like Ulrich. 5 siege? Just shut up and take my money!

Oh yeah, don't think I mentioned this before, but we're using St. Michael from now until 1821. The only other one that COULD be useful would be Eleusa, but that's really situational. Especially compared to the manpower recovery and the discipline.

Trier loves hotdogs so much that they ate the entirety of Frankfurt! And I'm sure people were upset about that, but no one made a new coalition (the one Naples made collapsed immediately upon loading in on a different day, so it was likely just the AI being stuck), so who cares?

Miltech is reaching critical discount, I don't think we'll have to worry about being behind in it.

And now, we FINALLY claim the French throne. They have an heir with a weak claim, and we just want to sort out other external affairs before we turn our attention the the French. So we have time to putz about a bit.

Bohemia and Austria, fighting? No, that won't do, we don't want Bohemia spreading their FILTHY HCC modifiers any more than they already have!

Oh, what's this? Bohemia is the emperor, you say? Well, that's an interesting turn of events...

So I think we'll just SO HAPPEN to DOW Wuttemberg. Some schmucks will join, but that's not a probem. We'll siege down Bohemia and the Swiss, as well as the Wurttembergians in a flash.

And happy day, we can make better lenses for our glasses! And with such luck, we've been able to use our better glasses to read the fine print on the contract that's holding together the HRE! And would you look at that...

There's a "Byebye grayskin" clause! And we meet the requirements! Well, I never say no to dismantling the Holy Roman Abomination, so here we go!

Munster gets munched on.

Ulm gets Ulm-liminated.

The Swiss get away with just a religious swatting.

The Pomeranians get perforated.

And seriously, what causes this event?!

The Bohemians get broken. And the Wurttembergians get walloped.

Huh, more free points. Jesus Christ is this what it's like to play in Europe? My God, it's super easy mode if that's the case!

New day, new war. Memmingen and Austria? Child's play.

Oh, right, Austria and the Commonwealth are allied. Not like it makes even the slightest bit of a difference to us.

We outclass them in every aspect, aside from artillery numbers. Need to work on rebalancing our stacks, if I can bother to remember to do so.

Oof, rough battle. Equivalent casualties is a bad thing.

I mean, we're pretty equal in troop counts, but still, it's not equal. They'd need a solid 3 or 4:1 to make us a little worried.

Attacking into mountains? No. Big. Deal.

I mean, if it's good enough for Hannibal, it's good enough for us!

"I love it when a plan comes together." - Hannibal after crossing the Alps, probably, 218 BC.

Now, I don't remember if I said I HAD to take 100% WS from belligerents or not. So if I did, I forgot and made a mistake. But I'll look past it seeing how I started my balls-to-the-wall strategy a decade or so early.

Oh great, even the frogs want some schnitzel!

Absolute annihilation. Just give it up, Poles. You're done.

Oh, what's this? One of our stacks is engaged, and about to be outnumbered 3 to 1, maybe even 4 to 1? Now THIS is gonna be good.

Enemy has a full line of infantry, and we're equivalent artillery, so they have a flanking advantage.

Cannons are moving to the front line, but we have more morale, and their frontline is completely shattered.

JUST A FEW MORE SHOTS AND WE'RE HOME FREE, BOYS!

26k Belgians went in, 17k left. 9k casualties.

80k Danes, Poles, and Hungarians entered. And we SLAUGHTERED 32k of them. Renard, you beautiful man, you're getting a really nice fruit basket as a reward. And I swear it won't be full of mostly honeydew melon or other shit like that.

This time, it's a more even fight. But it's never going to be a TRULY even fight.

No end screen for this combat, but suffice to say, we beat them bad. Not a wipe, but a sound thrashing.

Ah, yes, our heir, young Ralph. He knows nothing of administrating, but he's ALL about fighting!

Memmingen is gone, and we also steal the Danish capital from them, just to add insult to injury.

And now with most of Eastern Europe locked to truces, we break out alliance with France, in preparation for our upcoming war for their throne.

And France, in retaliation, took out their anger on Austria. But hey, that's fine with me. What's their is mine, and what's mine will still be mine.

During our brief period of recovery (manpower recovery), the French decided they wanted to test their luck by insulting us. But don't worry, we're bigger than that. We won't stoop down to their level for just some petty insult. No siree, we're bigger than this...

BTW, we have so much cash coming in that I'm able to convert AI held provinces (AKA ludicrously expensive ones) and still make a massive profit. 88 ducats a month for 8 months? Chump change.

The world should tremble in fear as we upgrade our military might.

Russia, seemingly unphased by our takeover of western and central Europe, want some maps of the new world. And I don't see why not, it's just a bunch of islands that are out of their range anyways.

Drilling is paying off, Renard can now fight like a man possessed, and is able to exploit weak spots in our enemies defenses.

Trier, our good buddy, has run out of land he can claim, and therefore has completed his purpose. So we let them join us in full.

And as a result, we're the #1 power in the world. And all it took was some time traveling magic to make it so!

However, France seems to have been emboldened by our refusal to return an insult after they sent us one. But that's fine, we're the bigger nation, we're bigger than them. We-

BURN IN HELL, FROGS! WE'RE COMING FOR YOU AND YOUR THRONE!

But that'll be next time, this one is already quite long as it is.

Hope you enjoyed!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 9: Tour De France

Everyone, quick, grab your rifle and find a Frenchman to fire at, we're going for the throne! We're gonna drag France forward technologically, whether they want to or not!

Last time, we declared on France to make them our junior partner in a PU.

France and her subjects can't even hope to muster the same amount of troops Belgium and her subjects can. Even if the Bavarians, Brunswickians, and Hessites weren't called into this war, we'd be more than a match for them, and probably around even in terms of troop count.

But Venice joining in on France's side makes things a little more balanced. But just a little

Holy moly, ANOTHER 15% morale boost?! Sweet baby Jesus, we're reaching generic Revolutionary Country levels of Morale!

IT'S 1636 AND WE HAVE 8 MORALE, COMPARED TO FRANCE'S 6.9 (nice) MORALE! We could probably stackwipe most any other nation based off our morale alone.

Allies pile in, seeing the French commit fully to a battle they haven't a snowballs chance in hell of winning. This is gonna hurt you more than it hurts me, Francey-pants!

Worst case, we pull more troops into the battle to give ourselves a morale boost, but it's not like we'll need it

Ouch, that's a rough roll, we've not done too well here. SHOOT BETTER, YOU COWARDS!

A devastating blow to both sides, it'll take France a while to recover those losses, while it'll take us maybe a week to do so

But it's not like we're gonna give Louis the chance to recover and regroup

Something changed and made France lose .4 morale, just widening our lead against them. No idea how that happened, maybe 2 modifiers expired at the same time?

Wiped out to the last man, but Louis escapes. Because we aren't kinslayers! We're just gonna lock him up and send him on an expedition... We swear!

Oh-ho! A challenge, eh?! Outnumber us 4 to 1, and with another 40k nearby to pile on? LET'S FUCKING DO IT!

More bad rolls, but barely a week into combat and we've already forced them to send in their reinforcements. The only terrain advantage we have is the river they had to cross to get to us, and we barely have any cannons. I SERIOUSLY need to fix my army composition

We end up losing (or was it a tactical retreat right before the end of the month? It's been a while so I don't remember), but look at the casualty screen. About 6k Belgians were lost, but we traded that for about 14k Venetians and French. If we had a full backrow of cannons, I honestly am convinced we would have won that due to morale losses from casualties. Army composition is 1000% getting sorted out for next time!

You guys may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. This is the ideal siege stack composition for the 1600s. For you see, if enough of your men die, you can just build a ramp and walk DIRECTLY up to the enemy's walls and take the fort that way!

Just a look at the manpower pools of our enemies. We outnumber them without taking our vassals into account, and we have more cannons than they do. AND we have a larger manpower reserve than the rest of them combined. Stack mil ideas and you get crazy results

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the battle, but we sent in 2 stacks to try and relieve the siege of Wurzburg, but failed to do so. France basically sent their entire army in to reinforce, and the constant morale bump was too much for us to shoot down. Once again, I believe our army composition is the biggest issue. We got the cash for a larger army, we really need to just commit to it.

More men being sent into the grinder, peak AI performance. Also shown; our armies getting into position for another attempted relief of the siege. Unfortunately, I believe we were too late and the fort fell before we could get our last army into place.

However, it looks like the AI's doomstacking has led them to fall. Our spies reported that the French leadership were quoted saying such:

If we are victorious in one more siege with the Belgians, we shall be utterly ruined.

-Louis XIII Meinrad​

But hey, that's not our problem, is it?

Time to strike while they can't recover. Teach them the error of their ways!

Also I'm taking care of the cannon issue, as you can see.

Some stacks are still waiting for their new artillary, and as such work as a single unit in the meanwhile. Venice is definitely feeling the burn.

France is going all in on this battle, a foolish move. They have way less discipline, morale, tactics, and general combat prowess (don't forget we have 150% infantry combat ability!)

Also pictured is Venice getting stomped by Naples after France declined a CTA against them. Fingers crossed for Italy forming!

4 to 1 casualties, with our greatest general thus far. 6-6-3-4 is among the best generals I've ever pulled!

And we're out for blood, the French army will be eliminated by our hand!

And with this battle concluded, our generals spy a white clothe tied to the end of a baguette, France's national sign for unconditional surrender.

With the end of the war comes an era of Belgian-French dual monarchy. And as the dual monarch, Anton uses his right to combine treasuries as he sees fit, taking 2.5k French ducats and adding them to his personal account.

With France under heel, but rebellious, we start to declare wars to aid in our attempts at cooling them down. It's just a phase, they'll grow out of this rebellious period of their life

Huh. Weird. I never knew that PU subjects could have their own subjects, too. I thought that was limited to tributaries and potentially CNs. Learn something new every day, I guess.

And lastly, I'll point out something amazing. THE AI IS CONVERTING A PROVINCE, WITHOUT ME SUBSIDIZING THEM BILLIONS OF DUCATS A MONTH!!

It's a Christmas miracle, one the likes I've never seen before!

I can't wait until PDX finally unbreaks the AI wrt conversions, it's silly that they haven't been converting for nearly 2 years now.

But that's all I'm going to cover now, I have finally gone through my backlog of screenshots and will start collecting more. Will I finally get a coalition? Will Italy form? Will the Ottomans just roll over and die like literally every other nation I've fought? These questions and more MIGHT be answered next time, on BELGIAN BALLS (to the walls) Z!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 10: Screw the Birds, I Want Land!


Well hello there, it's been a bit, hasn't it? But welcome back to Belgium, our legendary space marines will soon show the world who's boss!

Full disclosure, I MAY have had a bit of a mental block (aka game fatigue) when playing into the 1640s and as a result, took a break, then fired it up again and forgot the exact rules I had. So I'll elaborate when I get to that part, but for now, we're back and gonna hit 1821 or die trying!

First up is just a general overview of our nation. 3 relations over the limit, rivaling the Ottomans, and a coalition forming. All wonderful things to be seeing!

So much for that coalition, I guess our 1.1k development is too scary for the PLC and the Chinmeisters

We say goodbye to Pomerania, who had been too scared to even consider joining a coalition against us, even before we DOW'd their buddy.

Speaking of saying goodbye, wave bye-bye to Augsburg!

Next, these peasants are revolting! We'll introduce them to a neat little invention called SOAP!

Subject overview, since iirc, @atwix was curious about it. Or maybe I'm wrong and he didn't care and I took this picture for no reason, hurting my feelings immensely and ruining my day immeasurably.

Economy, because it's good to show this off now in case I happen to explode and expand like mad. But that's never gonna happen, right? It's not like there's some sort of imperial decree that's gonna be showing up in the next few decades, right?

Time to go and Czech out these Bohemians!

Peasant republic is all washed up.

We take some land from Danzig, including their namesake. So now no one will ever have to ask the question "why die for Danzig?" because we've got it under control!

Scotland, it's time to take you out to the Yard.

Bohemia lives, but barely. Gotta kill them before they magically make a comeback and spread their disgusting HCC all over the place. I'm SO glad that's gone in 1.30, that literal cancer of an idea.

Scotland is tenacious, so long as they have their "new world" province being settled, they're not giving up the ghost! Just roll over and die already!

Not sure why I took this. Maybe I just wanted to show that I was well within coalition range and didn't get a new one triggered? IDK man, there was a bit of time between me taking this and me posting it. And a lot of beers in between.

Scotland is now my land. Including their colonial nations. Woo-hoo. I am sooooooo happy to have them. This joke would be funnier if you could hear my monotone voice as opposed to reading it in a multitude of possible tones, but whatever. I'm not gonna make a video, and I'm sure as hell not gonna take this part out.

BUT WAIT, COULD IT BE?!

Is it my lucky day?

Well, Venice is busy and won't join the coalition, so let's tackle them!

And these blokes didn't join, so maybe we need to knock their skulls around, make them remember why they're scared of us!

Venice is ours, and I am NOT gonna let that go back to them! It's mine, I sieged it and I'm not giving it up!

Naples is trying to attack us. Too bad we have two of our armies ready for juuuust such an occasion!

BWAHAHAHAHA! WATCH THESE GELATOS MELT!

Good lord this overwhelming strength is something to behold. Prussia, in 1.29, is probably just a few steps behind us in terms of potential combat ability, and they would be my go to if I didn't have Belgium staring at me from the corner after the previous runs that I totally didn't drop.

Something close to 6:1 casualties, could be better, it could be a complete wipe!

Alas, our old king decided that he didn't want to live on this planet anymore, so he left. And in his stead, his son Ralph took the throne. No admin hurts, but the diplo stat is kinda nice at least.

Venice gives us a shit ton of stuff, bird mana be damned.

Naples, you need to learn...

It's quite simple, really, Pizza Boy.

We are better than you, in every conceivable way.

Just roll over and die, okay?

The fall of the Italian peninsula to Germanic-Franco invaders, colorized.

BIRD MANA BE DAMNED, WE WANT TO CONNECT WITH ITALY!

Even MORE morale?! I'm pretty sure we could stop paying our soldiers and stop giving them rations and they're still be in high spirits!

brb converting an unstated Venice. nbd it's just 81 ducats a month.

I now see why some people complain about there being too much money in the game. I still vehemently disagree with the notion, but I see how they can reach that conclusion. Playing in Europe in an end node is super lucrative, especially after all the RoTW games I played.

Portugal is spreading their cancer around like, err... cancer. So let's stop that. I'm kinda giving up on the notion of a Christian coalition at this point. If they don't form now, they'll never form as I keep getting stronger and stronger.

Habsburgs trying to kill us by running at us with their chins. But unfortunately for them, fire comes first!

Not a month after that decisive battle, Austria peaces out for some cash. And THIS is where I kinda bent some rules, if I even had the rule to begin with. I said that I'd take 100% in the peace deals after 1600 or w/ever, but I made the executive decision to apply that to only the main target of the war, with the co-belligerents being exempt from the rule. For now. Maybe once imperialism cb is available, I'll change that, but that's a problem for future me. I'm sure he'll deal with that in a consistent and fair manner.

Anyways, the proto-Scots are now Orthodox. Not like they'll do anything now that they are, but it's one less province that we'll need to convert ourselves.

Portugal has some surprising discipline, all things considered! We might be in trouble!

Nah, we're fine. Had you going there for a second! And there's no way you can prove I didn't!

"BIRDS BE DAMNED I WANT THE AFRICAN COAST!" King Ralph Meinrad, 1662

Oh, right! Russia is an ally of ours! Maybe that's why coalitions aren't happening! Eh, oh well. I'm dumb and I'll probably take care of that later. But for now, let's help out, because we're such swell allies!

Not gonna lie, it's a bit one sided

Killing Austrians, one of our favorite past times!

Danzig, don't you know better than to fight us? Well, hopefully you get it now.

Oh lordy they coming! Let's crush this army before the reinforcements arrive!

FIRE IN VOLLEYS, BUT WITH A BOLT ACTION RIFLE INSTEAD OF A MUSKET! ACTUALLY, TO HELL WITH VOLLEYS, FIRE AT WILL!

Just over a week before they arrive, we gotta hurry! Shoot harder!

Crushed like bugs. But oh no, we missed the reinforcement tick!

Good thing we have a trick up our sleeves! The bonus fire and shock damage should be a boon, no doubt!

FIRE THE ARTILLERY!

Outnumbered 2:1 and we came out on top. If it wouldn't automatically wipe us, I'd like to see our chances at winning while outnumbered 40:1!

POLES! GO! HOME!

You'll live longer, trust me.

Well, you'll live longer if your home isn't in Wolyn.

Oh? This is looking close! High rolls on both sides!

We had another stack sent in as an insurance policy, but it looks like that was unneeded. They're routed and being cut down with machine gun fire as they do.

Too. Easy.

Austria peaced out, giving us some land, both directly and to our vassal. Not bad, not bad.

But they took the lions share of the land, eating a huge chunk of the PLC in the main peace deal. Oh well, we'll get them next time!

But that will have to happen at a later date, since I'll leave you with this for now.

However, you don't need to worry about another one of my infamous "inexplicable extended breaks", as I plan on making an update for this every day, or every other day, depending on a few things. But the fact that the forum is now AAR friendly again (I can upload all my images in one go, AND I can add them all to my post with one button click!!!) has really invigorated me and my drive to play is also back, so I'm gonna finish this run while PDX keeps plugging away at the 1.30 hotfixes, that way my next AAR run can be on a stable version of the new patch (hopefully) and I can get more dumb ideas out there.

But anyways, I hope you enjoyed so far!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 11: Imperial March

Salutations, and welcome back to Belgium! Last time, we decided we didn't give a flying fuck about birds, and ignored them when making peace deals. Let's see if that bits us on the butt, or if we got off with two in the hand.

Well would you look at that, the man with the impossible to pronounce last name is giving us some sweet, sweet discipline! Thank you, Mr. Duff Beerman!

Thanks to the power of Duff Beer, our soldiers are even deadlier in combat! *This post was sponsored by Duff Beer*

Now, we've allied Macina and gotten both their relation and Russia's high enough to be considered "trustworthy", so we could gain the dip rep bonus and then move straight on to the acquire subjects mission, letting us integrate some of our vassals in the blink of an eye! Well, maybe the blink of a sloth's eye.

Well, shoot. We WERE gonna use Gaeldom to give us a shorter truce with Portugal, but APPARENTLY 4.7k worth of debt is a "big problem" for them! Puh-LEASE! I've fought wars when on the very brink of bankruptcy, with TENS OF THOUSANDS of ducats worth of debt, 4k is NOTHING, you pathetic Iberian!

Unfortunately, this also means that we get exactly ONE battle using our 145% discipline. And it's against a 5k stack. Oh boy, yaaaaaaay~.

Holy Novels, Batman! That's one long event text! Better share it with the world and get the bonus that I definitely remember exactly what it is to a T!

Eh, to heck with it. Macina, you're in. We need someone to core the interior of western Africa, anyways. And you'll take admin ideas in a bit, so you're good enough.

And with one vassal gained, we also bid farewell to 2 of our other vassals. Hess, Brunswick, you did good, but now it's time to join your overlord in full.

The Turks have finally decided to have some Austrian clay, after having stopped a few decades ago. I guess they needed a pallet cleanser or something?

Also, look at that HANDSOME BELGIUM, it's so beautiful!

Macina gets some land from Jenne. Because we would have broken their kneecaps if they didn't!

Oof, that's a decent chunk of Austrian land. Oh well, at least we'll be able to kill Austria even faster now.

But, we've reached the point where our PP is only at half mast, and we need to raise it above the 50 PP threshold, otherwise we're losing out on FREE MONARCH POINTS!

I'm kinda upset that I started this campaign in 1.29, since 1.30 has the whole hegemony thing, and THAT would be so nice to have right now. Bonus power, and a whole hell of a lot of an easier time getting coalition'd. Oh well, maybe I'll revisit this idea in the future, who knows.

Ralph ended up eating one too many purple berries and died. We have rare footage of the event here:

He died as he lived, eating things he shouldn't.

Oh well, we have our new Emperor, who is better than Ralph was. Long live Emperor Burkhard!

And Burkhard's first real decree was to dedicate a church to Ralph, so that people may learn the dangers about eating purple berries that they know nothing about. Oh, and to teach about that Jesus fellow.

Truce with the Austrians is up, soon the Ottoman Empire will be the remaining member of the Central Powers, and with them gone, our safety is assured!

Alas, thanks to SOMEONE'S bright idea to ignore bird mana costs, we've had to basically sit on our laurels for the past few years, building up points so we can tech up to diplo 23.

I'M LOOKING AT YOU, RALPH (who was controlled by past me, that idiot! Present me is SO much smarter than that guy, what a moron!)

As a result of our frugal diplo point spending policy, we have to resort to threatening the Danes. Oh well, it's better than burning the points to get more.

OH MAN, LEIBNIZ! HE GIVES US SOME INNOVATIVENESS! THAT IS SOOOOOOOOO USEFUL! Let me just put it with all the others!

Well, so much for peace, Russia's at it again! But hey, may as well join them, we might be able to block them from getting TOO much land.

But, juuuuuust in case they DO give us land, let's pay the extra dip to get tech 23. Then we don't need to worry about it ever again and can use it to integrate our subjects.

Also, our ARISTOCRATIC IDEAS advance, giving us EVEN MORE MANPOWER. We're absolutely SWIMMING in bodies now!

And now, we pay the extra points to get admin tech 23! Alright! Now with both admin and diplo tech 23, we're gonna really step on the gas!

Speaking of stepping on the gas, Russia gives us a speed boost in our quest to annex Venice, giving us 4 provinces, and for the small price of 264 birds and 110 AE. Too bad AE is officially just a number here in Europe now.

Russia peaces out, we get a single province. But we did block a lot of land from the Russians with our occupations, so I'll take that as a win!

Plus, the nations Russia forced the Poles to spit out are defenseless and ripe for the picking!

Alright, time to dance, Danzig!

Silesia is silenced!

Danzig is just one short war from destruction. And since the Commonwealth has their only other province occupied, we can be sure that they're done for.

Alright Austria, we're gonna finish you off! With the power of the nationalism CB, we'll be able to eat you in one bite!

And I'm not content with just one war. Bohemia, I don't care that you're occupied, we're gonna crush you!

Or, if you get annexed and war leadership transfers to Venice, that's also good. Totally not what we're hoping happens, I swear.

Thanks to the Bohemian occupation by the Poles, we're able to annex all of Venice, AND force convert Bohemia, in the peace deal with Bohemia. Meaning we ate Venice for 0 dip points!

But we're not stopping there! It's time to go and take a bite out of Italy, like how Scruff McGruff takes a bite out of crime!

Ah yes, the traditional 25/0/20 stacks, kept mere days away from reinforcing each other. Naples is doomed!

I always have a few more infantry in the stacks, because I don't want to end up with cannons in the front row if a reinforcement stack is delayed or takes too long to arrive. Basically, I play it a bit cautiously with my endgame stacks.

And even without the backup, we absolutely DEMOLISH the Napolians...? Napletons? Napeons? THE ARMY FROM THE NATION OF NAPLES, OK?!

Austria, Palatinate, you won't be invading anyone else ever again. You were the weakest link of the central powers, goodbye.

Naples gets absolutely SMACKED, and we're just a short war from kicking them out of Europe entirely. And that OE is fine, no problem for us and our superior Orthodox unrest reduction!

158% OE, like I said, just a wee little tinsy bit of OE, no sweat.

Alas, it is time to annex France. Well, START the annexation. Thanks to our heavy, heavy, HEAVY focus on military ideas, our diplo game is leaving much to be desired, and we won't officially integrate them until 2016!

But, we also have several dip rep maluses that will expire soon enough, so we'll be fine. I hope.

Well, while we core our newfound land, let's take an exotic safari in Africa! Now that we have Italian land, we've heard tale that some engineers are looking to make a car called a "Ferrari," so let's take that on our safari!

I have to say, this has been one successful safari! I've seen so many things, like Fulo waving the white flag!

Fulo, Mali, you're through. Macina is now the owner of your lands!

Next on the block is Portugal! I think it's time we show them what happens if you don't help out your allies!

The Portuguese Home Defense Force is laughably pathetic. 13k men? That's it?!

Practically perfect on our end.

Oh, APPARENTLY our subjects are taking umbrage with the fact that we "annexed 2 of our larger subjects" and "only used them when we needed spare paper and bird mana" and "are plotting to keep them in perpetual debt so that they're totally dependent on us for survival."

Bah, what do they know? We'll throw them some pigeons and they'll forget about all those silly ideas.

The rest of the world has been revealed to us, and I gotta say, it's nice seeing such colorful consolidation. India's a sunni hugbox, as usual, but Vijay is holding out. But that Hormuz is Hor-mongous! No Qing, though. Of all the games I've played since the free China update, I've NEVER seen Qing form by the AI's hand.

Time to convert the Pope! Or, at least, the old guy squatting in the Vatican. The Papal States died a LOOOOONG time ago, so it's probably just some homeless guy.

Macina, really? REBELS? I guess I'll take care of those for you. Sheesh, I want you dependant, but not THAT dependant on me!

Ah yes, Tuscany. Stating that right away, 104 dev in a single state is just *chef's kiss*

Oh goody! We're salt traders, boys! That means more armies!

Looks like we've beaten Portugal so badly that they got stuck in C&C! They're gonna try and get more absolutism, but we all know that's not gonna happen.

Lucky for us, we don't need to do C&C this run, thanks to our government form, as well as some of the reforms we took.

Portugal, give us some of your homeland, and a whole heck of a lot of your colonial possesions!

Ordulf! Buddy! I'll gladly take the missionary power and the stability!

Now, it's been a LONG time coming, but you all knew it was gonna happen.

BELGIANS! IN THE KONGO!

An added bonus is that we were able to shorten our truce with Naples thanks to their guaranteeing the Kongo.

1700 rolls around, and we spawn the enlightenment. I mean, was there any doubt? We have universities everywhere, and we have knowledge from 200 years in the future! We know all about Darwinism and stuff, we're so smart!

OK, OK, OK, this is nuts. 121 mil for a tech up? By the end of the game, we'll probably be getting PAID in mil points to tech up!

Hah, take that, China! We're able to make our own fine china now!

Dangerous ideas are spreading? Hmm, this seems vaguely familiar. But that was probably in another universe, several years ago. Nothing to be worried about here.

Here's a look at our general pool. We're getting consisten 3 star generals (the occasional bad apple slips in, like that 2 star general you see just southeast of Berlin), but I've yet to get another 6 siege GOD.

Buha is allowed to live to fight another day. Our concern is the Kongo!

Looks like the Kongo spreads further south in this version of Earth than it does in the one I'm familiar with.

But, I think I'll leave you with that for now, we're in the home stretch. Just under 120 years to go, and we've just started heading east. Hopefully the Sunnis and Hindus and Confucians and Buddhists and Shinto people will be more militant and ready to coalesce against us! A boy can dream, can't he?

I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you soon!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 12: Colonizers, Congo, and Coalitions(?)

Hello everyone, welcome back to Belgium. Right now, we're trying to spend the last quarter of the game to get a big ass coalition on us, now that we pretty much own Europe.

Speaking of, let's remove the "pretty much" part of that statement.

Oh Commonwealth, it's time for your beating! Your friend, the Danes, can come too!

Looks like the Danes weren't prepared for their beating. Oh well, maybe next time they'll learn

Until they learn, their army privileges have been revoked!

Looks like the PLC's fabled "winged hussars" aren't anything special.

We encountered the other portion of the Polish army with one of our smaller stacks that we split off to do sieging work. But I'm sure we'll have no problems here.

See? No problems. Having generals that are gods of combat also tends to help.

Portugal, you failed the C&C disaster so hard that you LOST absolutism?! Ok, that's pretty funny, not gonna lie.

We kick Denmark to the curb, and leave them with just a few provinces we couldn't take due to their magical "making the gains" modifier. YOU'RE SIEGING DOWN THAT ONE NORTHERNMOST PROVINCE, THAT'S NOT A GAIN!!!

Stupid Danes, don't know when to roll over and die...

And immediately after kicking the Danes out, we take our leave from the PLC. We make sure to block the Ottomans from eating any more land, and Russia isn't looking too hard towards the PLC right now, so leaving them with a border is OK for now.

While we leave those cores in the oven at 375 to bake for 3 hours, let's prepare our next course. And I'm feeling like some Italian food!

SO. DAMN. CLOSE!

We're ONE PIP from having the max we could roll. ONE! 23 pips max, and of course we're just ONE OFF! Our AT is stellar, our ideas give SO MANY bonus pips, we're just SOOOOOO CLOSE!

Uh-oh, is that C&C brewing for us? I mean, on the one hand, that'd be a nice buffer for us. But on the other, that's 10 years below our possible max Admin Efficiency. Oh well, let's roll with the punches.

Especially when we're getting some rebel stacks popping up, thanks to our "questionable expansion policies."

Actually, know what I said about C&C? Scratch that, we're too stable for it to fire in time, so I'mma just ignore that popup. Nothing to worry about.

Never seen this before, it looks like it's due to our high professionalism. Free claims on the Ottoman is always appreciated, even if I don't get to use them in time.

Unfortunately, Tlemcen occupied a handful of Napolianeseian provinces, so we can't full annex them now. But I'll get them next time!!

Uh-oh, if history-errr, if FUTURE SIGHT tells us anything, revolutions in France is a bad time for the entirety of Europe. So let's just squash that before it gets out of hand...

SQUISH!

Yaka, Luba, last I checked, you're in the Kongo area. And as the famous song says "Belgians in the Congo," so we're here to collect!

Yaka, I'm sorry, but we didn't start the fire. But we're definitely gonna enjoy watching it burn!

Ah, we now own the Kongo. Good. Too bad we don't have it as a full TC (as opposed to only the coastline), but hey, it's a must in a Belgium game!

Russia needs help in SE Asia? Sure, we can pretend to give them a hand...

...Especially since it frees up Kilwa for a quick 20 minute war!

Morocco, please, don't do this to yourself!

Think of the children! The poor, orphaned children that you'll be leaving behind by sending these men into the meat grinder!

Looks like we have a report from the Moroccan high command after our pleas for them to think about the children. And it's in graphic form, too!

Ahem, it says...

Well, it's blunt and to the point, I suppose.

Revolution is upon us, and I don't think we'll struggle to get age abilities!

Thanks to our occupations in Africa, we now trade in ivory, something I've been aspiring to get! Gotta integrate France faster! Gotta go fast!

Morocco knows they got Morocked, so they peace out for some Moroccash.

Brunei, stop defending your castles, we're just gonna blow the hell out of them!

And we have NO qualms about demolishing your soldiers, either!

Somehow, some Kilwans have arrived in Brunei. But it's not gonna help them at all.

I don't think they're gonna be recovering from that anytime soon!

Brunei peaces out for the fortified province, as well as one of their CoT's. We'll get them later. But on the plus side, it's additional AE in the area!

-5% missionary strength in a fetishist province? Pffft, so we'll only have 7% power instead of 12? Oooooh nooooooooo~...

Kilwa peaces out for their entire coastline, and several of their inland gold and ivory provinces. We've isolated them, so we'll be able to eat the rest of them without worry.

BTW, Madagascar is all owned by rebels, so one of the nations there will be spat out any day now.

And I know for a fact, from previous wars, that Russia isn't gonna give us jack squat, so we're bowing out now for whatever we can get.

Alas, our Emperor's ticker couldn't handle the stress of betraying the Russian's trust and it gave out. Oh well. All hail the new Emperor!

Next up to be chopped is Portugal! We should be able to end them now!

Oh boy, a new baby! He's not the best, but he's better than bad, so we'll keep him!

... Well son, I know you're only 6 days old, but it's time to prove yourself as a man and beat this common cold without any assistance, bar any coming from God himself. You can do it, I believe in you, you got thi-

Easy come easy go, I suppose.

But Albert is SO MUCH BETTER, so it's like the old saying. "When God murders your newborn son with a deadly plague, he then gives you a new, smarter, handsomer son in exchange."

First ability, unlimited coring range! Now we truly don't care about petty things like "borders" or "range" or "pretty maps!"

Oh, that's good to see. The Ottomans had colonized Taiwan, and the Ming took umbrage with that. So now they're duking it out!

Ok, it's about time for us to be enlightened. 5.6k is a pretty fair deal, I suppose.

And we THEN get the institution spread modifier in Hoya, which is just about as useful as a chocolate teapot now. Oh well, the goods produced is good.

AND BOY OH BOY DO WE HAVE COAL!

Coal is soooooooo damn good! Like, gat-DAYUM it's good, and we got a metric buttload of them! Time to build furnaces everywhere!

We have so much that we're IMMEDIATELY trading in the stuff. Our income is going to EXPLODE in the next 5 years!

Portugal is done, FINISH HIM!

Hey, Vijayanagar, I see you're willing to sell land for cheap. I'LL TAKE IT!

Don't worry, I won't use it as a stepping off point for a future invasion. Pinky promise.

Russia, AGAIN?! Fiiiiine...

Hey Vijay, buddy, remember what I said just a few months ago?

I lied.

A single 40k stack of ours against all of Vijay and Ayutthaya? I almost feel sorry for them! Almost.

And, as I said before, Madagascar was gonna break free, so let's now go jump on them!

More money, trade power, and goods produced. I love it!

PUNY FORTS ARE NO MATCH FOR BELGIAN ARTILLERY!

PUNY INDIAN ARMIES ARE NO MATCH FOR BELGIAN ARTILLERY!

Oh, would you look at that? A coalition list is starting to form, and in decent size, too. Fingers crossed we get the list big enough for one to ACTUALLY form!

Antemoro ante'd it all and lost big.

A look at the economy, just a few months before our first wave of furnaces get made. We're looking at a massive budget for expanding the army, I'd wager!

Commonwealth, Denmark, please just don't fight. I'm trying to help you here.

I asked politely, and what do you do? The thing I asked you not to do. No WONDER you got partitioned!

Speaking of partitioned, we cut up Vijay something fierce, and start making plans for a full blown Indian invasion!

But that's for another day. We're getting close to where I stopped playing, and once we're there, I may or may not have a question I want to pose. But that's a question for then.

I hope you enjoyed, and I'll be seeing you soon!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 13: Outnumbered? No Problem!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Belgium. We're in the home stretch, just under 100 years left in this campaign, and nary a coalition to be found. Let's see if we can fix that or if I've truly failed this challenge I made for myself.

First up, let's get another age ability!

Time for some bonus cannon fire! Let's turn these punks into Swiss cheese!

Danes are done for. European coalition possibilities? Zero.

Serfs upset, who ca-

10% more morale?! Hell to the yes!

Commonwealth has been consolidated into a 2pm. We'll finish them off later.

Russia looks like they're getting rather colonial now. Be a shame if someone were to export their rebels to those Russian lands.

Coalition map of the world. We need to hit China/Japan/Manchu hard and fast, and THEN we'll have near universal coalition coverage!

BTW I have NO idea what happened to that war I was in. I forgot to get a screenshot, and I can't seem to remember who that was even. I mean, we clearly won, but I haven't the FOGGIEST idea who that was or what we got. Some African nations we full annexed and fed to Macina? Some random war Russia declared and pulled us into and gave us nothing in? Probably, but I can't say for sure. Whoops

More money, but a price drop for coal? That's OK, so long as we're the ones flooding and controlling the market. We'll need more hands to dig it out...

SEND IN THE CHILDREN! THEIR SMALL, SMALL BODIES WILL BE ABLE TO REACH HARD TO ACCESS TUNNELS!

And with all those kids getting up at the crack of dawn to dig, we're able to sell even more coffee, at a higher price!

Oh no, the former Danish colony is mad at me. Oh noooooo....

Thanks to the "all hands on deck" approach, our furnaces are able to increase our productivity by 70%! Hence why we're able to make boomdollar. Well, even MORE boomdollar.

Next, let's make it so that France, Bavaria, Lubeck, and England stay loyal to their Belgian overlords. And that's the last of the really useful abilities we can get, since we can't form Prussia for their combat bonus ability they get this age.

We're getting some solid exponential growth here. The rich get richer!

Next, let's get Timbuktu! Macina's looking a bit hungry!

And you know what, Naples, you can get a DOW, too!

Jenne is annexed and will be fed to Macina at our nearest convenience. Should happen within 4-6 weeks.

Timbuktu gets Timbuktaken out.

Naples is no more.

And not quite the cheapest we've seen it, but 136 mil for a tech is pretty damn cheap!

And we also get our penultimate idea group! And we're choosing influence, because HOLY SHIT do we need it to integrate France this century!

But now, with all the money we're making, and we're getting from events, we're in dire need of something useful to spend it on. We're expanding the army to FL, and probably beyond. Maybe we can do something for our navy, too...

That's it, let's build the KIEL CANAL! The most USEFUL of the 3 canals you can build (well, 2 if you use RNW)

And after waaaaaaaay too long, we've FINALLY dropped Russia. And we've thrown away the "Friendship Badge" they gave us. Why? Because, where we're going...

I COULD HAVE GOTTEN ANOTHER 20% OFF THAT MIL TECH! I COULD HAVE PAID THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM COST! NOOOOOOO!!!

Oh well, next tech will be DEFINITELY be at the cheapest price we can get.

Next up, we're going forward with our invasion of India. We have 96k men stationed there, and we're JUST fighting Bengal, Malwa, and Afghanistan. I'm sure that the near 100k will be more than enough for these endgame Indian-Persian blob tags.

About 400k vs. our 96k? We got this, no sweat! I'm sure!

See? We even got a level 8 fort in a mere 100 days!

A rough shock phase, but this is NOT a problem for us!

See? We wiped the wimps with our superior weapons and tactics! Also our insane modifiers.

Oh, this is looking like it's gonna be a dogpile. Let's get the full stack together for this one. Full backrow is gonna be vital here, I can tell.

Oh no...

Oh no... Oh no no no...

Oh no no no, not even our navy win...

OK, so we might have dealt more casualties to them, but they have more men (in the area), more ships, anda very rich area. We have just ONE hope. Bring in another 50k stack we have in Africa as reinforcements.

But to do so, we'll need to use all our cunning and skill as a tactician to evade the Indian blockade and slip our units into India unscathed.

....

HAAHA JK! We just bumrushed it after a small pit stop in the Maldives and got in without anything resembling an issue!

Naval AI never changes. Despite constant complaints about it, it's like the old saying goes. Only 2 things are certain in life, death and PDX AI being unable to even remotely handle their navies.

OK, 150k men are in the subcontinent. If we can't win with this many men, well we can't win... with that many men. We'll need to send in more.

On the plus side, our waiting for reinforcement has allowed our enemies to occupy almost all of our Indian land!

Hold on, I'm getting an update right now. You say that's a what?

...

Upon further briefing, I've been informed that that is, in fact, a BAD thing. So, as I was saying, waiting for reinforcements to arrive was a painful ordeal.

Not waiting to allow a deathstack to form (come to think of it, I haven't seen a good old fashioned deathstack in a while. I miss the old days of seeing the French or Russians or Ottomans moving around several massive 100k stacks and not having manpower issues due to their NIs. Damnable "balancing" changes!), we take the offensive.

And it looks like this is going to be one of, if not THE, deciding battle of the war!

KILL THEM HARDER!

SHOOT BETTER! THEY'RE ON THE ROPES, AND WE HAVE REINFORCEMENTS ON STANDBY!

FUCK IT, SEND IN THE RESERVES! BLAST THEM TO KINGDOM COME!

Now that....

THAT is a nice looking casualty comparison. We even had the right general in charge this time, not that stupid 4/4/?/? guy!

And a quick visit to the ledger shows that Bengal, Malwa, and Afghanistan are really feeling the burn from that battle.

Bengal's brave to challenge us without their allies to back them up.

O-BLIT-ER-ATED!

Oh boy, another big battle. Not as big as the first dogpile, but a big one nonetheless!

The prince of Afghanistan even got involved! Let's commit regicide, boys!

Unfortunately, the prince lived, but the same can't be said for a large number of the enemy.

IT'S THE RETURN OF THE TEENY TINY BELGIAN!!!! OH MY GOD HE'S SO CUTE! LOOK AT HOW GOSH DARN SMALL HE IS! *squeals in Belgian*

Afghanistan's army is annihilated.

Malwa has always been the biggest of the 3 nations, army wise, so if we can kick them hard enough, they'll cease to be an issue!

Malwa's army got minced.

And with that, we kick Malwa out for nothing. The shorter the truce, the better. We wanna hit them again soon.

Trust your neighbor? I think our neighbors are a bit TOO trusting, seeing how they don't coalition us EVER!

Bengal fights some of our rebels for us. Gotta love it. Especially when they beat them and only have their 2k cannons remaining. Thanks, Bengal!

SO. CLOSE. TO. FLAWLESS.

Bengal's trying to recuperate in the plains. Plainly speaking, that's a bad idea.

Now, it's a bit early to pop the endgame Golden Era, but I have a reason...

Admin tech 27! GIVE ME THAT ADMIN EFFICIENCY!

AND INFLUENCE IDEAS ARE CHEAPER! We want to get that 3rd idea, and ideally the 5th as well.

Y'know, let's get one more battle in with Bengal. For old time's sake.

Thanks for the memories, Bengal. Crushing you was pretty fun, all things considered!

Here's a look at the peacedeal we're getting. That's a pretty sizeable chunk of land!

And even better, that's a sizeable amount of AE!

AE map, circa 1735. Note how east Asia doesn't care. That's a big issue. If they cared, we'd DEFINITELY have a coalition by now.

And lastly, it looks like old allies are now at each other's throats. Europeans claiming land creates instability in the region? Color me surprised!

But that's a pretty good spot to end, especially because I'm out of screenshots! That's right, I've gotten you all caught up in the span of 4 days! And I'll be posing a question after I post this, so please weigh in on it because I'm of 2 minds on it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you soon!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 14: Indian Cuisine

Hello everyone, welcome back to Belgium. We've been eating a lot lately, and we're gaining a more refined palette, and are craving more international foods. Let's see what we can get in our bellies in the last 85 years!

Malwa, our enemy, is at war with Ming? Honestly? Go nuts, kill each other, see if I care!

And now, for the first part of the main course. The Ottomans are the strongest nation that is not subjugated by us, so fighting them should give us an idea about how a coalition could go.

Oof, not good. Barely a third of what we have. I mean, Belgium alone has nearly 1 million men in the field, and our army grows stronger all the time.

I'm starting to think we're too big to fail at this point, a coalition won't spawn.

We get proceed with our influence ideas, and now France will be ours by the turn of the decade! Nice!

Tlemcen is out, we'll maybe use them to shorten our truce with the Ottomans. Or not, we got a lot of war to do.

The Turks have been rather skittish in the field so far, this is the first real battle we've gotten. None of those wimpy 1-9k easy stackwipes.

So far, the Ottoman's heir is nothing but hot air.

Consistently terrible rolls, Ottoman? That's a shame.

Not a wipe, but damn close.

OK, let's see if we can wipe them out this time!

Roughly equal rolls, but nearly double the artillery, and MASSIVELY better stats leads to a huge difference in casualties!

Wiped out to the last. Pa-thetic.

Casualties listed here show that we're roughly equal, but that's also counting from battles we've had with NUMEROUS rebel stacks. Like, SO FREAKING MANY REBELS!

I now remember this is why I hate going for late, sudden-decision WC attempts. Especially after basically turtling in Europe and not expanding into the RoTW until the 1700s.

More bodies for the corpse pile!

1338? Just one off from being "leet" losses!

...That's still a thing the kids say, right?

Right?

Let's take a look at the ledger. We CLEARLY outpace our enemies, we can field an army DOUBLE the size of the Ottomans theoretical limit, and we're still making a MAD profit from trade. And once our investments pay off, it's surely to keep growing.

A slightly rougher battle, but still an easy win.

I gotta wonder, where are the Ottomans? I've had free roam of their lands for a while now!

It took me 2 years, but I finally found where the Ottomans went! Apparently, they're intrigued by this "Sweden" place.

Alright, peace table time. We're claiming most of the Balkans, Jerusalem, Mekka, and nearly enough to start making ANOTHER canal! Huzzah!

And all it takes is about 400 admin points, thrown in the oven at 350F for 2 years, depending on how rebel-proof your oven is.

While our cores are baking, let's start preparing for another batch! These ones will be a bit spicier, as they're inspired by Indian cuisine!

More men for the army? Yes please, the bigger our army, the more powerful we are!

OK, that sounded SLIGHTLY less dumb in my head, not gonna lie there.

But, we got news that is the opposite of dumb! The Kiel Canal is finished! It's SOOOOOOO useful!

And, as we have part of our next batch chopped up and ready to be thrown in, let's keep going and start working on our NEXT next batch!

Apparently, these guys were in our land and walked over us in Madurai, but somehow, WE'RE the attackers! WHAT?!

WHY DO WE GET THE NEGATIVE MODIFIERS!?!

How is it that the Malwan Indians are MORE POWERFUL than the Ottomans?!

Wow. Just wow. Equivalent losses. That's something you don't see often.

However, it looks like our OTHER battles went well. And we have several armies in the area, we LEARNED our lesson last time!

We may be outnumbered...

But we got better modifiers, better rolls, better generals, and most importantly, BETTER HATS!

JUST GIVE UP ALREADY!

FINALLY. I thought they would fight to the last.

But we can't be that lucky, I suppose.

More victories come rolling in.

Oh-ho, what's this? Mori is isolated due to being freshly released? Well, let's make a foothold in Japan! Our subjects will be able to take care of them easily, no need to sully our hands in this war.

Note, please watch the wars in the bottom. Something confusing happens.

Well well well, time to protect our holdings in Mandla.

Shit rolls all around, this might be more painful than it needed to be.

Hahaha! Reinforcements are fleeing, they know a lost cause when they see one!

DE-CI-MATED.

But oh, what's this?

Huh?

SOMEHOW, Japan became Mori's overlord? How? They weren't allied, they weren't in the war until now, what gives? How the hell did this happen?

Seriously, this is weird. This is like when the Ottomans broke alliance with me mid-war all those years ago.

Unless there's some obscure event I don't know about, I think I found another weird bug.

Naguar, get on out of here, we've got no need for your land yet!

Vijay gives up the ghost, and we're now getting that second batch going.

Fighting in the Himalayas, who cares? We don't need to be some "elite Nepalese troop" to win here!

That's rough, Malwa.

In another effort to massively expand the coalition list, we annex this schmuck as a non-co-belligerent. Decent sized list, but not much in the way of heavy hitters, to be honest.

Ouch, that manpower loss. But losing professionalism would be worse, much more costly in the long run.

Well, we may as well clean up these pinkish blots on the map.

Easy-peasy.

Malwa gets a MASSIVE chunk taken out of it. This list is looking disappointingly static.

Next up, Morocco! I'm mostly tired of them raiding us and stealing our money.

But, before we get further there, we get some good news...

France is now fully integrated! Hurray!

Granted, they were nearly uniformly Reformed, so our RU tanked to 70% or so, but we got 5 missionaries, so we'll get working on bringing that back up pretty fast!

Now, I gotta say, THAT is one HANDSOME Belgium.

But, I think that's all for now. I've got some plans going forward, and this run might be ending pretty soon depending on that plan specifically. But we'll see.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 15: ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!


Hello everyone, welcome back to Belgium's crazy world tour! First off, let me show you the religious state of the old world, since no one cares about the new world and it's weird, broken self (it's up to you to determine if I'm talking about mechanics or the fact that it's a bunch of shattered islands!)

As you can see, orthodox is pretty dominating here, but the French lands are a little... unorthodox.

Ok, maybe a LOT unorthodox. Ah well, nothing our 5 missionaries (Karl, John, Walter, Frank, and another Walter) can't fix!

For the love of frites, if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself...

We also have some revolts popping up, and that surprised me. So I decided to look and see if we had anything recently that would have increased our unrest.

And there we have it! The Enlightenment has caused our people to be disturbed. Why oh why did I ever accept it? Stupid sexy tech cost reductions...

Got our toehold in Kyushu.

Troops desert in massive numbers. Honestly, at this rate, we may as well hunt them down, that's at LEAST 4 divisions worth of soldiers, most likely 4 or 6. That's a threat to national security!

SEE?! THEY DESERTED AND MADE THEIR OWN REBEL CELLS!

Now, since this is patch 1.29, there's no hegemony to be gotten. But we COULD have the military AND economic ones if it were available. But alas, it isn't.

And all hopes of a coalition, even one made by my hand via dowing every single nation left alive, are dashed after seeing how we'd just BARELY be outnumbered. But thanks to our modifiers, it'd still be even ground. And at that rate it'd be more of an annoyance than anything due to the inability to siege down most of the enemy land.

ToTF is always acceptable, especially since we don't have humanist or religious ideas.

Kilwa gets CHOMP'd.

Oh, look, the brave samurai of Japan are FLEEING! What a load of wimps!

Man, Japan really is missing that 10% discipline they used to have in the NI's. Shame, too. That might have made it less one sided.

Well, that was an absolute massacre.

Never before, not counting mothballed forts, have I seen a siege progress to actual 100%. I've seen plenty of 99% sieges, but never 100.

Not even a contest. It's sad, really.

Morocco? Yes, I would like some More Rocco!

Oof, manpower is looking low, thanks to all those events and rebels. We'll get it back up soon, but ouch.

Oh, hey, someone broke free! Well, let's send in the welcoming party!

How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, Japan?!

Belgian is officially part weaboo.

Tea and sugar are worth more? Hell yes!

Ah yes, the shrine in Ise. Beautiful place, really. Gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, since ~700 AD, due to the humidity from the area causing the wood to decay. But they get the lumber needed for the new temple from the surrounding forest, and have enough trees to be able to rebuild the temple for the next 400 years. Amazing planning, to be sure.

...

Tear it down, and build a temple of JAAAAAAY-SUS!

Cyprus, did you think we forgot you? Don't worry buddy, we'll come visit!

The Belgians, having taken over the dutch lands, have in turn been corrupted by the dutch ways of thinking, and cannot help but lose control after thinking about the spices in South East Asia.

I feel kinda bad. With these stat comparisons, it's like I'm beating up a little kid. Or, as Europe calls it...

IMPERIALISM!

Well, that's over with.

Huh, the Turks are actually LOSING a war to QQ? Color me surprised!

Oh, look, a coalition list! But don't worry, it's just for show.

Cyprus gets CHOMP'd as well.

Oh wow, that's a bit of a stack. Too bad we have LUDICROUS discounts on tech, and can tech up 7 years ahead for the same price as most nations get when they tech up on schedule!

Oh yeah, it's killin' time!

FIRE STRONGER, MEN!

Yeah, we got 'em in the bag.

11k deaths to 35k kills. A typical day in Belgium.

10k deaths for an absolute massacre of a stackwipe. A typical day in Belgium.

Pasai might be a bit spicy, but those spices are worth BOOMDOLLAR. Plus, by my calculations, we should be at exactly 100% OE.

...

GOD

DAMMIT

DOUBLE DAMMIT!

ALRIGHT, I'M GONNA TAKE OUT THIS ANGER ON SOME OTTOMAN MEATBAGS!

Looks like they hate us the most. GOOD! It'll make them fight harder!

LET'S FRICKIN' DO THIS!

That's all you can muster? For shame, AI, for shame...

Oh ho, what's this? Not quite a doomstack, but more of a... doom swarm? Now THIS is interesting!

In fact, it's interesting to use something I've completely ignored until now. The Prussian Government button! Just a couple of clicks here, and...

Oh yeah, it's killing time!

IT'S TIME TO DIE, OTTOMAN!

Not bad as a prelude.

But here comes the main event!

Oh man, this is gonna be rough...

FOR YOU! 12 to 2 roll, I HOPE YOU LIKE THE SIGHT OF YOUR OWN BLOOD!

Literal 10 to 1 casualties in the fire phase, you LOVE to see it!

We decimated their front line SO BADLY that they can barely muster a charge during the shock phase.

Seriously, these rolls we're getting are FILTHY!

Combat is coming to a close, we're at the point where both of us are barely doing anything to the other.

Look at those kills! 42k dead Turks to our 6k dead!

And you know what? Tlemcen, you're off the hook!

But I think I'm gonna put a pause on this for now, next time we have MORE WAR and stuff!

See you soon, hope you enjoyed!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 16: Colonialism

YO! It's Belgium. We're doing Belgian things. Let's GOOOOO!

Let's make these fez wearing weirdos bleed!

Bing.

Bang.

Boom.

Peace deal time! This time, it's ALL about the forts! No forts for you, Otto Man!

Now that we have the proper land, let's flash our cash by building a canal. AGAIN!

Loyal subjects? Sweet, get them inside me faster!

Speaking of getting inside, let's properly own the African interior!

Nice event is nice, but we only get the 100 mil points. But that's still pretty not bad.

Belgians? Owning land in and around the Congo? Who'd've thunk it?

But, Africa isn't as lucrative as India is. So let's get some spice, boys!

I don't know why I bother showing this anymore, it's so hilariously out of balance for them.

Oh, look, good guy Delhi is sending in their troops to fight us! I'm SHAKING with fear. /s

Ouch, a 0 to an 8 roll.

Ouch, a 7 to a 0 roll.

Mediocre casualties all around.

Bengal, get out of here! And don't associate yourself with the Turks! They're a bad influence on you.

Man, low rolls for us here in India. It's almost like they don't want us here.

Too bad we don't care about what THEY want.

Goog guy Delhi gets gutted.

Malwa gets minced.

Oh no, our king died! And the new king's heir is absolutely GREAT! I mean, LOOK at him! He'll make for a great paperweight! Maybe he can be promoted to executive door stop!

But this kid? Pah, he's useless. We'll just let him lead the country when his old man bites the dust.

England is added to the Belgian Union.

And a mighty handsome union it is!

Delhi, HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO BE TOLD THIS LESSON!?

Nagaur is no more.

Get out of here, Transoxiana!

And Malwa, let's talk. You have spice. We want spice. We take spice. Ya dig?

A nice look at the GP list. We went from something like 5k dev to over 12k in the span of just a few decades. Pretty nice!

Our vassal is looking hungry, so we decide to chew up Katsina before momma birding it to them. We're such kind parents.

Soon it will be pre-chewed and soft for the baby vassal.

Hey, Japan! We saw this "Anime" thing you had, and we want more! But, our only criticism is that it could use more sax music, so we're gonna make our way to your studio and have a "chat" with the heads.

Looks like the talks are going well!

Alright, I think we've come to an agreement!

And in fact, Japan loved the deal so much, they PAID us to sign the contract. And who are we to say no?

We don't want a BIG conflict with Brunei, so we just settle for "borrowing" their namesake province.

But what we DO want is the clean up this DISGUSTING new world. So let's do just that!

Oh? What's that? A Perm in Russia? We can't have that, that's against the Orthodox code!

And since Russia allowed it, we can't let them protect it. WE'RE GOING IN!

Natives annexed.

Natives eaten.

Bengal, time to fight!

Malwa, time to peace!

Lubeck is no more. All their trade are belong to us.

And Perm is no more. NO MORE PERMS!

But that's all for now. I've gotten a bit of a groove going, so I'll be back again tomorrow. Same Belgian nation, same Belgian channel!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 17: The Late, Late Game Pivot

Hey, welcome back to Belgium. Or as it's also known as, ruler of Roughly 1/3 of the world. Let's just jump into it!

First, we need to do some thinking, and I have an idea....

Alright, influence ideas did their job. I regret filling them to capacity, but oh well. Not like bird mana is even useful past tech 23. Time to drop it.

And instead, let's welcome diplo ideas!

Basically, we want that -20% WS cost.

Economy looks pretty damn solid now that we own India!

More cleaning up the new world. Our CN's will do all the lifting here.

Full annexation, without any of the work put in by the player!

Tea imports? Who needs mercantilism, we need UNREST REDUCTION!

Oh, would you look at the time. Russia, it's time for war!!

What? An event GIVES me some manpower? I thought they just took it away from me!

Suez canal is completed. We are the best canal builders ever! We built a whopping TWO canals!

Russia is still fielding WAAAAY too much infantry. No surprises here.

To be expected.

Next, we got these mission things I haven't touched in centuries. Let's bang them out real quick.

BAM!

Oh-ho-ho! 102k Russians are approaching us? Well, let them come!

Despite the good fire phase roll for the Ruskies, their lack of cannons means we can just shrug off the damage!

Shock rolls are more dangerous, though.

But fire, FIRE is where it's AT!

That's a LITERAL mountain of bodies. It reminds us of the bodies piled up in No Man's Land during the Great War. Oh well, at least they're not OUR bodies!

... Very rarely do generals gain traits that make sense, in terms of what caused them to acquire the trait. But not here. This makes COMPLETE and total sense.

Emperor Albert has grown into quite the conqueror! Good, we don't need any "nationalists" with their "independent realm" ideas popping up!

We take Siberia from Russia. Why? It's big, it's hell to siege, and it's worth 0 OE. We're already over the state limit, so we're not gaining extra corruption by taking it. Plus, it SERIOUSLY keeps Russia from holding out for too long after we siege all their level 2 forts.

Malwa, NOW it's time to dance. AGAIN!

Tlemcen, STOP HOPPING IN MY WARS!

ESPECIALLY since we're gonna fight you again, thanks to your dumbass alliance with the Turkish Delight!

STOP! BAD TLEMCEN! BAD! STAY OUT OF THE WAR!

Pathetic.

Better, but too late, Ottopotato.

Gotta love it when you absolutely SLAUGHTER the front row!

More skulls for the skull throne!

And now, we get admin tech 29. Our final idea group. What could it be...?

Why, it's ADMIN of course!

And, thanks to us banking admin points by phony-coring the Siberian lands we took from Russia (we'd cancel and restart the core before it hit 10%, so we would keep 100% of the admin spent on the core), we are able to get the first idea filled out. One more to go!

Transoxiana, you're free to go.

Turkish mulch is a very good fertilizer, it grows the BEST tulips!

We peace out Malwa. But for hardly any Malwan land. No, we want CHAGATAI!

Oh, taking a clue from the Russians, and having a 100k+ stack attack us? Too bad for you, we have reinforcements nearby!

But I don't know if we'll NEED the reinforcements.

Eh, brought them in, but the slaughter was already done. They fled like cowards once our winged hussars arrived. Well, not REAL winged hussars. Just men bashing coconuts together and going "neeeeeigh."

Mil tech for 93 points? I don't think it'll ever get any cheaper!

Afghanistan is kicked out of the war, and we took their only level 8 fort. We ain't got time to deal with that shit!

Finally, we are considered adaptable enough to eat a lot more WS at 100% peacedeals!

Time to celebrate with a war against Pegu! Who is also allied to a BIG Ava!

But only big in name, their army is small and trash.

Shoot, Albert died just a year too early. Now we have a queen with a horrible admin skill on the throne. It's just a year, but O O F.

Ah well, no matter. Let's just carve up the Ottomans even more!

And I think I'll pause here for now. By my measure, there's maybe 3 or 4 chapters left in this AAR, so we should finish by Tuesday or Wednesday if I don't get distra-hey look at that weird chicken!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 18: Assert Dominance

Hi. Belgium. You know what's up. You know why you're here. Let's cut the small talk and get back to it!

OK, time for us to FINALLY eat this guy's land! No more separate peacing them!

Ottomans got run over by revolutionaries, but not the kind that wanted a REAL revolution. And you know what, that's good. Beheading people is bad, studies say.

New heir! He's not bad, just a slight bit better at admin than his pops, but that's fine. Good enough to keep, doubt we'll need him.

Gazi, you're out! We'll get you another day!

But Tlemcen, however, it's time for them to be smacked down!

Malwa's peaced out for jack diddly squat.

And we FINALLY get our cheaper provinces in peacedeals! Huzzah! The pivot is complete!

Tlemcen, sorry, we didn't mean to accidentally a war with you. See you later!

Pegu gives up the ghost, as well as the majority of Avan land!

Adal is next on the chopping block!

And, as we've been building up in the background, we're FINALLY able to complete our mission to build to force limit! Man, it took 300+ years to build over TWO MILLION UNITS!

Darfur is safe. For now...!

And now, it comes down to this. Ming, Ming, Ming. Let's see how well you hold up. Last time I fought you, you were a paper tiger.

Man, Sarig Yogir was such a fun campaign. Horde life is the best life.

Sulu is solo no longer.

Free tax and production? Not necessary, but who are we to say no?

Wow! We got a: Horn of Africa!

No idea why the Italians had such trouble with this, it was a peace of cake!

OK, so we've got no competition anywhere on Earth. I guess that's a good thing, so we can change something REAL quick.

The 5% discipline isn't needed anymore, and we're constantly going above 100% OE. So the bonus -3 to unrest is going to be the most useful thing we can get.

Orthodox, man, it's STUPIDLY strong.

While we get to beating down Ming, let's also take care of the Republic of Blobchu.

Oh, look, Manchu wants to help their overlord!

They can help by dying alongside them.

Oh, trying the Russia strategy, eh Ming?

Granted, you actually have cannons, but it turned out about as well as it did for Russia. Nice attempt, though. You actually damaged some of our cannons.

Side note, look at the INSANE amounts of army tradition these battles are giving me. I have NO idea why they're doing that, they've been like that for a while now and I just can't figure it out. Can't complain, but holy SHIT that's a lot!

OK, since SOMEONE decided to occupy the majority of Transoxiana (looking at you, PERSIA!), we can only take this jigsaw puzzle of land. We'll be back for the rest later, we don't wanna DOW Persia juuuuuuust yet.

Man, vassals are so fickle. You save them from killing themselves, and what do they do? They get all pissy and act like not paying us taxes is gonna hurt us in the slightest.

Oh, what's this? A loss against Ming? Well, we had no leader, and they had double our numbers. But that's fine. One lost battle does not a war lose.

Ka-pow! Payback time!

Manchu, how're you gonna do?

Spoiler, not very good.

Korea is peaced out. We'll use them later.

And now, the peace with Ming. We take their forts, and ATTEMPT to carve a massive "B" for Belgium in their lands, but unfortunately are a few points shy of being able to do so. Oh well, them's the breaks.

230% OE, and we're STILL just BARELY below 0 national unrest. We've got this under control!

Especially when we get free stability!

After a batch of coring, we peace out Manchu for their massive terrible wastelands. But better to take them now and NOT have to siege them, than to not and have to siege them later.

Afghanistan, let's get you separated from the Ottomans.

OK, Malwa, let's go for yet ANOTHER round!

Claim strength? Phillip is entirely legitimate, no need to worry about his strength!

But also, I don't get it, I checked and none of my advisors were Rheinish. Weird bug I guess.

Ottomans, let's go again! Last time was just SO much fun!

And Tibet, you too! Let's dance!

This is the same thing I used in my Sarig Yogir campaign, using Ming's tributaries to shorten the truce timer I have with them, removing the need to trucebreak them.

And BAM, the (15 year) truce is GONE!

Gazi, Gazi the HECK out of here!

That pun is terrible and hard to follow but I'm not taking it out because I'm stubborn.

Malwa is Malwiped out.

Next, time for Sadiya to go down, and drag Ava with them!

No officers? No problem!

And lastly, the Ottoman peacedeal. They're looking mighty scattered about right now!

That's all for today. We really started speeding up, now that it's just a bunch of cleaning wars. But I'll still show the process, because it may be entertaining or something!

That's all for now, see you soon with the next bit!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 19: CHOP CHOP CHOP

Hey, welcome back to Belgium. We're in the midst of cleaning up the world, seeing how someone ACCIDENTALLY spilled a bunch of nations on our map!

OK, Russia, time for another round with the BELGIAN MENACE!

Been a few years, and yet you've learned nothing.

Oh? Maybe they DID learn, just a little bit, that artillery wins wars!

Too bad they didn't realize how MUCH artillery they needed!

OK, Persia, I'm sick of your shit with the whole "occupying Transoxianan land so we can't full annex them" schtick, so it's time for you to pay!

Delhi, get out! This is between ME and HIM!

Oh yeah, let's clean up this part of the map.

And Russia, give us all your bigass provinces. Keep the forts, they're all level 2 and a complete non-issue for us.

254% OE and STILL negative unrest? I guess the stupid "corruption from territories" is has its SINGULAR upside.

So glad that idea has gone the way of the dodo.

More war?

Nah, it's a fake out!

More discipline? Why not?

If we stacked the modifiers we could THEORETICALLY get still (icon, advisor, and max militarization of state), we could have 150-155% discipline. Literal supersoldiers.

Persia, we'd full annex you if we could, but some stupid thing is preventing us from doing so. But we'll finish you off soon!

But oof, that's a bit too much OE, even for us. If only we had someone we could offload some of it onto...

Of course! Why didn't I think of that sooner?!

Everyone, say hello to Rugland, our client state!

State of the world, via GP listings.

Hey, Ming, you ready for round 2?

I asked, ARE YOU READY?!

They weren't ready.

Korea gets annexed this time, since we were able to verify that Ming will defend their tributaries still. Sometimes they don't, and AFAIK, allies have a higher "defense rating" than tributaries do.

Ming gets chopped up, but in a cleaner fashion this time. AND we completed our "B!"

Tibet, you know the drill. Quick "war" for a month, then the peace.

But the former Portuguese colonies, on the other hand...

OK, NOW it's time to finish off Transoxiana. NO PERSIAN INVASION CAN SAVE YOU NOW!

Plus, we get to shoot at the Russian prince!

Russian princes only knowing about shock tactics? How... SHOCKING!

Russia gets a short peace deal.

Bengal, STOP HANGING OUT WITH THE OTTOMANS!

I heard they smoke drugs, like aspirin. So I don't want you hanging out with them anymore, OK?!

CHOMP!

Thanks to New Lisboa occupying 2 provinces, we can't full annex the CN in one go. But we'll get them next time!

Delhi war! Feat. Ottoman Co-belligerency!

Honestly, they shouldn't even BOTHER with an army at this point.

Same with Delhi, it's just laughable at this point.

Super laughable.

I'm laughing so hard right now.

My sides. They hurt from laughing so much. Please stop.

Anyways, I'll leave you here for today with the Ottomans being split in two, one in Africa and the other in Europe.

25 years until the end of the game, will Belgium be able to pull it off? FIND OUT LATER!

 

[firezatswill9]

Chapter 20: I'm Running Out of Chapter Names

Hey, welcome back to Belgium. Please don't try and study a map for a while, it's being constantly updated and what you learn now will be obsolete in just a handful of months, maybe a year tops. So just wait a bit, ok?

Time to remove those stubborn stains from the new world!

Merchants are outraged? Who asked them about their opinion? Was it Johnathan?! GODDAMMIT JOHN, YOU MADE THEM THINK AGAIN!

Delhi gives us a pretty nice chunk of their lands. So close to a full annex, dammit!

Ming, let's dance! I have an idea, and I'm sure that you'll just LOVE it!

But first, let's get rid of that pesky army of yours.

Speaking of pesky armies, Russia.

STILL speaking of pesky armies, Manchu!

But with this general, we'll have no problems!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to break the 22 pip barrier this game, despite taking literally ALL of the military ideas that aren't naval. Well, naval and plutocratic.

Hah, we don't need no stinkin' general to kick your ass!

Next, an invasion of Indochina.

*Fortunate Son intensifies*

Russia gets split in two, but unfortunately survive to see another day. But that day will come, eventually...!

Eh, Brunei, we'll talk to you later. Ta-ta for now!

Last of the Manchurian defenses fall, circa 1800, colorized.

Malindian war?

Naaaah.

HAH, these southern forces are trying to evacuate before our armies overrun their city! But the last chopper just left, you're out to dry!

I said DRY, not DIE. But both work for me.

Oh no. Ayutthaya hates us more. I'm so upset about this.

I'm not upset about this at all.

More stains to be removed!

And one of my personal favorites, Ryukyu, has got to go down.

Just one rinse cycle and the stain's gone! THAT'S THE POWER OF OXY-CLEAN!

We couldn't full annex Ayutthaya, so we left them with the lands that still have Dai Viet cores on them. HCC is such a vile, disgusting modifier, I'm glad the devs took it out behind the barn and shot it full of lead.

PERFECT OE. UNDER 0 UNREST!

Darfur, let's fight. Why? I dunno, just got some bloodlust in me or something.

Ternate, same with you! But I actually want your cloves!

Manchu gets mopped up.

Ming, however, gets off with all their land and money. WHAT?!

Well, between our OE being high, and their lands being wrecked by rebels, I think we made the right choice. Nations will pop out of them, and we can pick them off individually.

But we can't leave the Ottomans alone. ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH!

DE-CI-MATED!

Ryukyu joins the Saxophone and Waffles empire.

Malindi. Just. STOP JOINING WARS!

Ah yes, more dead fez's!

Hormuz is getting dow'd. AND GODDAMN IT MALINDI, WHY ARE YOU ALLIED TO EVERYONE?!

Fuckin' hell, Malindi gets around...

Afghanistan gets a separate peace deal, because FUCK the forts they managed to swipe. Defensibility 100% my ass....

And lastly, we peace out with the Ottomans. They're barely hanging on, one more push and they're done and dusted.

But, that will come TOMORROW! In the FINALE!

So yeah, stay tuned, folks!