Chimu - the gutsy natives!
Click here for take two if you want... the first time round did not end well.
OK, having played EU3 for a while now I've decided to try pretty much the ultimate challenge: Chimu, the Native American OPM surrounded by Inca. The game pretty much gives these guys every disadvantage to the point where if you don't get lucky, it's basically impossible to survive as them, so I will be doing a bit of saving and re-loading from time to time. However apart from that, it's vanilla EU3: DW.
On the first day, I move the slider one notch towards centralization (reducing stability by 1, no problem); the country starts out fully decentralized and narrowminded. This is going to be a very, very long journey. The first order of business is obviously to take out the Inca. Allying with them will get you nowhere, so we convert our leader to a general (0 fire, 3 shock, 3 manouver, 1 siege) and declare on them on a tribal feud CB. We lose 1 stability as we have good relations but who cares? We'll get that back in a month. While my leader might convert into a half-decent general, he's no good long-term as we'll see later and we hope he dies as soon as possible.
Beating the Inca here requires some luck, basically. What makes it even possible is the fact that it seems you can seize native American provinces like you can colonies! Normally you'd have to get them as part of a peace deal. I send one regiment straight for their capital, another to get Cajamarca, and another to get Tumbes. I seize each province I land upon, so I end up with Tumbes, Cajamarca, Huanuco, Tarma, and Lima. It's at this point that I see the 10,000 Inca troops bearing down on me. They march onto Lima and occupy it with sights on my capital, so I desperately sue for peace. I "cede" Lima and they accept the deal! This is the bare minimum needed to get Chimu into the game.
Tarma is a gold-producing province so it provides me with about as much monthly income as the yearly income for the whole empire. So far, only a small amount of extra inflation from gold production.
Nearly 5 years go by and not much happens apart from me slowly replacing my mercenaries with regular troops. This is a slow process as my manpower builds up slowly and maxes out at about 2500. I check the Inca mission and it's to reconquer one of the provinces I took. Predicting that they would DoW on me shortly after the ceasefire ended (they had built up 11000 troops), I kept building more and more troops over my force limit. Sure enough, a few days after the ceasefire ended, they DoW'd on me. I was ready with 7000 regular troops and I quickly bought about 4000 more mercenaries. Their 11000 clashed with my 11000, but as they walked along to attack me I had a huge terrain advantage as well as a better leader. We won and annihilated all of their army! Quickly I moved mine forward and seized most of their remaining provinces, then agreeing to a peace:
I'll have some money please, and they can drop their cores on a bunch of provinces. It's at this point that at the end of the month, I discovered something truly sadistic that Paradox had added. Native American tribes aren't nerfed enough, apparently, so they have yet another penalty - the "Incapable Ruler" penalty, which gives you a horrible revolt risk increase, a horrible reduction in yearly tax, and a horrlbe max infamy limit reduction. This applies if you have more than 9 provinces, a tribal government, and a leader whose admin skill is below 7. For now, I give away a couple of provinces to the Inca to get my province count down to 9. Long-term, this is going to be one of those things where we need to keep reloading to ensure we're the luckiest native American tribe ever. Every leader we have from now on must have at least 7 admin skill. Anything less is game over for a native American tribe. Not to mention that we need high admin for Westernization as well, anyway.
In anticipation of being able to get more provinces, I want to get a colonist or two (that's another area where we'll do the reload-until-lucky thing - colonization must always succeed!). As we're literally hundreds of years off our first national idea, pretty much the only way we can get a colonist is with a coastal centre of trade. Luckily, the inland Incan one stagnates and dies, and a new one opens up in our coastal capital:
This gives us one colonist every 10 years... as long as it doesn't stagnate and die. Which it will. Yay.
More waiting for revolt risk to go down and every captured province to core, and then this happens:
For a poor country that needs to lose money annually to keep inflation down, this is sweeeeet.
More waiting, and after the latest ceasefire with the Incas ends, I decide which 3 provinces I want them to keep - one gold province (to help reduce my inflation), and two poor grain provinces. I also vassallize them:
Now I have a 6-star master of the mint and a 6-star sheriff, too. Not much else to do with the magistrates except commission paintings, and the religious stuff you can do as Animists helps raise cultural tradition too.
Then my coastal centre of trade stagnates and dies, and another one pops up in the Incans inland capital province of Huanuco. I tried reloading this several times, but it always happens. I guess the game finds a capital of a neighbour to open a new CoT in and as the Incans are my only neighbours, it puts one there. I'm now stuck on 0.74 colonists. However, as my leader isn't dead yet and I need to wait for an admin level 7 leader, we can't use the colonists yet anyway - it would increase my province count beyond 9 and screw me over. When I get a decent leader, I can diplo-annex the Incans and start colonizing (hopefully when I deconstruct that CoT, a new one will pop up in one of my coastal provinces; perhaps my capital?)
Upon loading my game one time, I notice that England has been rather successful...
Castille, Portugal, Aragon, Naples, Brittany, France, and Burgandy look like they're fine too. This game could end rather quickly and brutally when they start to arrive. Oh well...
More to come next time!
Click here for take two if you want... the first time round did not end well.
OK, having played EU3 for a while now I've decided to try pretty much the ultimate challenge: Chimu, the Native American OPM surrounded by Inca. The game pretty much gives these guys every disadvantage to the point where if you don't get lucky, it's basically impossible to survive as them, so I will be doing a bit of saving and re-loading from time to time. However apart from that, it's vanilla EU3: DW.
On the first day, I move the slider one notch towards centralization (reducing stability by 1, no problem); the country starts out fully decentralized and narrowminded. This is going to be a very, very long journey. The first order of business is obviously to take out the Inca. Allying with them will get you nowhere, so we convert our leader to a general (0 fire, 3 shock, 3 manouver, 1 siege) and declare on them on a tribal feud CB. We lose 1 stability as we have good relations but who cares? We'll get that back in a month. While my leader might convert into a half-decent general, he's no good long-term as we'll see later and we hope he dies as soon as possible.
Beating the Inca here requires some luck, basically. What makes it even possible is the fact that it seems you can seize native American provinces like you can colonies! Normally you'd have to get them as part of a peace deal. I send one regiment straight for their capital, another to get Cajamarca, and another to get Tumbes. I seize each province I land upon, so I end up with Tumbes, Cajamarca, Huanuco, Tarma, and Lima. It's at this point that I see the 10,000 Inca troops bearing down on me. They march onto Lima and occupy it with sights on my capital, so I desperately sue for peace. I "cede" Lima and they accept the deal! This is the bare minimum needed to get Chimu into the game.
Tarma is a gold-producing province so it provides me with about as much monthly income as the yearly income for the whole empire. So far, only a small amount of extra inflation from gold production.
Nearly 5 years go by and not much happens apart from me slowly replacing my mercenaries with regular troops. This is a slow process as my manpower builds up slowly and maxes out at about 2500. I check the Inca mission and it's to reconquer one of the provinces I took. Predicting that they would DoW on me shortly after the ceasefire ended (they had built up 11000 troops), I kept building more and more troops over my force limit. Sure enough, a few days after the ceasefire ended, they DoW'd on me. I was ready with 7000 regular troops and I quickly bought about 4000 more mercenaries. Their 11000 clashed with my 11000, but as they walked along to attack me I had a huge terrain advantage as well as a better leader. We won and annihilated all of their army! Quickly I moved mine forward and seized most of their remaining provinces, then agreeing to a peace:
I'll have some money please, and they can drop their cores on a bunch of provinces. It's at this point that at the end of the month, I discovered something truly sadistic that Paradox had added. Native American tribes aren't nerfed enough, apparently, so they have yet another penalty - the "Incapable Ruler" penalty, which gives you a horrible revolt risk increase, a horrible reduction in yearly tax, and a horrlbe max infamy limit reduction. This applies if you have more than 9 provinces, a tribal government, and a leader whose admin skill is below 7. For now, I give away a couple of provinces to the Inca to get my province count down to 9. Long-term, this is going to be one of those things where we need to keep reloading to ensure we're the luckiest native American tribe ever. Every leader we have from now on must have at least 7 admin skill. Anything less is game over for a native American tribe. Not to mention that we need high admin for Westernization as well, anyway.
In anticipation of being able to get more provinces, I want to get a colonist or two (that's another area where we'll do the reload-until-lucky thing - colonization must always succeed!). As we're literally hundreds of years off our first national idea, pretty much the only way we can get a colonist is with a coastal centre of trade. Luckily, the inland Incan one stagnates and dies, and a new one opens up in our coastal capital:
This gives us one colonist every 10 years... as long as it doesn't stagnate and die. Which it will. Yay.
More waiting for revolt risk to go down and every captured province to core, and then this happens:
For a poor country that needs to lose money annually to keep inflation down, this is sweeeeet.
More waiting, and after the latest ceasefire with the Incas ends, I decide which 3 provinces I want them to keep - one gold province (to help reduce my inflation), and two poor grain provinces. I also vassallize them:
Now I have a 6-star master of the mint and a 6-star sheriff, too. Not much else to do with the magistrates except commission paintings, and the religious stuff you can do as Animists helps raise cultural tradition too.
Then my coastal centre of trade stagnates and dies, and another one pops up in the Incans inland capital province of Huanuco. I tried reloading this several times, but it always happens. I guess the game finds a capital of a neighbour to open a new CoT in and as the Incans are my only neighbours, it puts one there. I'm now stuck on 0.74 colonists. However, as my leader isn't dead yet and I need to wait for an admin level 7 leader, we can't use the colonists yet anyway - it would increase my province count beyond 9 and screw me over. When I get a decent leader, I can diplo-annex the Incans and start colonizing (hopefully when I deconstruct that CoT, a new one will pop up in one of my coastal provinces; perhaps my capital?)
Upon loading my game one time, I notice that England has been rather successful...
Castille, Portugal, Aragon, Naples, Brittany, France, and Burgandy look like they're fine too. This game could end rather quickly and brutally when they start to arrive. Oh well...
More to come next time!
Last edited: