Chimu - the gutsy natives!- Ethnic uniformity
We want to burn all non-Chimu colonies in South America at this point; I want the end analysis to show as high a percentage of South America as possible having Animist/Incan religion and culture. As the two Holland colonies up north in Antioquia and Magdalena are rather close to becoming self-sustaining, they're the first target. Holland is allied with Portugal; both have good fleets, so we could be in for some naval trouble. Nevertheless, we grit our teeth, and send some soldiers up into position, ready to burn the colonies. We then declare a war of aggression on Holland (we're not far enough in government tech yet to switch to Republican Dictatorship or I'd have done that and used the Imperialism CB).
January 1653 - Step 1 complete. Burn, baby, burn!
By July 1653, both Holland colonies have been destroyed successfully. Jujuy becomes self-sustaining and we build a fort there. We really don't want to stay at war with Holland for any longer as we've achieved the only thing we set out to do now, so we sue for peace with Hesse, the now-leaders of their side of the war. We have to concede defeat as they won't take a white peace... no problem.
In April 1654, we can change our national focus again. Now, we really want our own "Centre of trade for South America". Almost all of our provinces trade through CoTs that aren't worth enough to allow us to create a new one (Peten and Guayra), but by a stroke of luck, one of the provinces captured from The Hansa still trades through Pensacola, which is worth well over 800 ducats:
We'll set the national focus to Patagonia Oriental, next to the Pensacola-trading Tehuelmapu, so as to catch all of our southern-tip-of-South-America colonies and make them grow more quickly:
Et voila! We can create our own new coastal CoT in Tehuelmapu (we've been saving up 500 ducats over the last couple of years to do this).
We create it, and start auto-sending merchants immediately:
Their compete chance being 99%, we should easily get a monopoly there. Of course, only our provinces will trade through this CoT as everyone else hates us, but who cares? We're so big that it's enough to keep this CoT from ever stagnating! As the CoT will be worth quite a bit, this is a nice money-spinner for our treasury. Of course, a coastal CoT also gives us an extra 0.1 colonists per year:
Woohoo for extra colonists!
March 1656, and we're back up to stability level +3. Next up is Genoa, whose colonies' populations currently range between 500 and 800. Their colonies in Xeres, Itenines, and Uruguay can go. I'm counting the Falklands as South America, so that can go as well. First, we DoW on them - they happen to be at war with Maya, with whom we happen to be allied still (I'd forgotten!), so we can DoW on the alliance CB and have no stability hit! Then, we rampage through, seizing these babies (instead of burning, because they're contiguous with us so we want to join them to our territory immediately)...
In July 1636, a spanner lands itself in the works. Portugal have an annoyingly good navy. Magdeburg and Galicia join in as Portugal's allies.
And another one in October 1656. Grrrr, this one is really annoying. I Hate France.
Now for the Coup de Grace of the Genoa colony war; in January 1657, we send colonists to each seized colony, flipping their religion and culture to ours!
July 1657 - We've sunk a bunch of enemy ships, yet Denmark stole the Falklands colony. That Falklands colony will be hotly disputed over the coming decades... it seems to be the first thing the AI often goes for, so it's a good job we have a good navy to stop them landing most of the time. We're gonna get it back.
... and within a couple of months, we do.
Sigh...
By July 1658, after winning numerous naval battles like this and occupying a load of their territory, Castille still won't even white peace.
We sue for peace and concede defeat just to get this war off our plate.
The British are
really determined to get their fleet to (presumably) the Falklands. Aint gonna happen. We intercept them again.
I hope their last thoughts as they sank beneath the waves were, "Why oh why didn't we accept Animism?"
Our navy is having to do a
lot of work through December 1658...
Will they ever give up? Still no peace deal and we're in 3 wars.
By March 1659, France are willing to accept a concession of defeat to end the war. We agree. Down to 2 wars. By April 1659, Britain are also now willing to accept a concession of defeat. We agree. We won't go down so easy next time, but it ends this tiresome war.
In June 1659, we found a colony in Guayaquil. This begins the final push north to colonize the remaining uncolonized part of South America. We're now finally ready to move our northern border forward, though we'll end up next to Castille. Better have troops ready for that.
August 1659 sees us get to naval tech 24. Our navy will now fight even better, though they've been doing us proud so far. Then, we concede defeat to Portugal in December 1659 to finally end that war as well.
February 1660 - Now, there are still some colonies owned by Sardinia-Piedmont that need to be taken care of; Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip, and several that they have founded to the north. We launch a war of aggression against them. In June 1660, it's slider change time. We go more narrowminded. There are now a few Christian provinces we need to make Animist, and innovativeness kills off missionaries.
In July 1660, we seize Tierra del Fuego and send a colonist there to flip its religion/culture to ours. It's closing in on 1000, so it should be a fully-fledged province soon. Meanwhile, a couple of units are marching north to take out their northern colonies. We want to burn those guys as they're not contiguous with our territory yet, so they'd be too hard to defend.
Colonization successful in December 1660! Tierra del Fuego is now Animist, Incan culture, and self-sustaining.
February 1601 - We're burning these babies! Sardinia-Piedmont really seem to love building colonies.
We core on Charcas in June 1661.
Their South American colonies having been burned, we "concede defeat" to Sardinia-Piedmont (or actually Hesse, the leaders of their war coalition) in July 1661. As usual, getting a white peace out of them would be long and tiresome. And of course, as soon as we burn their existing colonies, they found a bunch more by May 1662. We'll have to take them out again and immediately replace them with our colonies in a "ring" formation, blocking off the inner provinces so that only we can colonize them.
Our Uruguay colony becomes self-sustaining in October 1662, and in January 1663, a "colonial company founded" event gives us a colony of 200 in Cuyo... I'll take it, but I'd rather have had another colony to the north, where we're trying to oust the European colonies and replace them with ours! At the start of May 1663, we core on Chichas. Every little helps... we need more annual income, and more core provinces to lose the overextension penalty!
This will be really handy in helping avoid inflaiton for a while. Meanwhile, Castille are mounting troops on the Panama-Choco border. I feel one of their usual wars coming on. We beef up a couple of our units with another 4 infantry and 2 cavalry each. We're 16 over our land force limits after this. Apparently owning most of South America doesn't let you wield anything like as big a force as owning most of Europe. In September 1665, we're told that Cuyo will produce wine! A rare good for South America, and very welcome.
As expected, the ultra-aggressive Castille declare war on us in October 1665, but we've been expecting it and massing troops on our side of the border. The good news is that Sardinia-Piedmont shortly join in as Castille's allies, which will allow us to seize their colonies that we want - Antioquia, Bogota, Cartagena, and Chiancon.
The first casualties of the war are some of Castille's ships.
In December 1665, we notice that France now has a 2-year-old regent. That should stop them declaring on us for a while.
March 1666 - Again, we don't really want more plutocracy; not getting many diplomats now... but again, we need the cash.
In December 1666, Castille march on us in Chorotega. On paper we should win this as we have roughly equal tech, but our focus on quantity has put us at 90% discipline; Castille seem to be giving us a lot of casualties.
Indeed we win by January 1667, but it feels like a Pyrrhic victory; we lost a lot of men, and our morale is on the floor.
In September 1667, Castille make the mistake of splitting their army in half and moving half out of Chorotega. We pounce on the remaining half and exterminate it! Also, we've now seized all of Sardinia-Piedmont's South American colonies. Just that one Genoese colony, Magdalena, to go.
The Hansa declare war in October 1667. Bastards! Or is it swine? Anyway, another annoyance to deal with.
Continued...