Chimu - the gutsy natives!- A bloody nose
We're currently at war with 2 European powers, and I'll give you one guess at naming one of them. However...
...after occupying a few of their territories, we quickly white peace out with the other one, Sardinia-Piedmont, the war we didn't want to be in. Now we can fully concentrate on Castille, whom we have been winning some fantastic land battles against, eg.
In addition, Castille's fleet has mostly been reduced to smithereens.
Haha, Castille offer a white peace in November 1689. Sorry buds, not this time!
We offered Portugal military access on the offchance (they're already granting it to us), and although it was "Very unlikely", we got a yes!
Maybe they're less likely to attack us now?
Goias and Diamentina were, with our having colonized the prior-mentioned inland provinces to the north-west, the only South American provinces not yet colonized. I was wondering when someone was going to get round to colonizing them. Then in January 1690, we notice that Goias has been colonized by Castille and has a colony whose size is about 200.
But hang on - we're at war with Castille! Good timing. Then that's decided - one of our primary war aims will be to seize Goias! Hopefully we can colonize Diamentina at some point too. Always better to instill Animist/Incan culture into a territory from the get-go wherever possible, from our perspective, rather than just having to put up with some European culture and convert it to the Animist religion. As for the war, this is the first time I've seen this:
We're the ones at 100% war capacity for once. No wonder Castille want a white peace. In April 1690, we march onto that chunk of Castillian South America and face their main army head-on.
Very nasty casualties because of the terrain disadvantage, but we win, pursue, and...
...insta-kill! Now we can occupy this area and seize that colony. Castille have more armies than us, but they're all sitting around in Castille proper. They have zero ships to transport them to the Americas.
September 1690 - Operation seize colony is a success. Now that we've seized it, we're going to want to cut some territory through to it so it's contiguous with ours. We'll want at least Mato Grosso from Castille, and Mbaracayu (hey, I didn't name it) from Genoa.
In June 1691, Portugal start a colonial war against Castille. This keeps getting better and better...
By October 1691, we're occupying more and more of Castillian South and Central America.
What's that I smell, Castille? Desperation?
We decide to end the war in December 1691, with Castille's nose bloodied badly. We take their main chunk of South America, and content ourselves with Panama in their Central American teritory; it's hilly, and will give us a nice terrain bonus while defending if they march into it. 24 infamy for this, though, so a diplomat and an embassy are needed quickly. We also now send a colonist to the captured Goias colony to flip its religion/culture.
In May 1692, our colonist successfully flips the religion/culture of Goias to ours!
Portugal seem to be doing alright against Castille in June 1692. Talking of Portugal, we get a core on their Sao Vincente province through a boundary dispute event. Then in January 1693:
We successfully colonize Diamentina, the last uncolonized South American territory.
July 1693 sees us make another slider change towards quality. I think we pretty much want that slider in the middle. In October 1693, we get government tech 30, allowing for another national idea. For the first time in the game, we actually have the "luxury" of not being completely desperate for a particular national idea. Several are highly desirable, of course, the prime two contenders being Divine Supremacy (giving missionaries to convert those Christian colonies to Animism), and Superior Seamanship (our navies are important, so giving them a morale boost is very nice, especially considering how important a part morale plays in naval battles... often, a fleet that's superior on paper will frustratingly lose and flee to the nearest friendly port because their morale dipped too low!) We end up going for Divine Supremacy, because it's a bit more pressing; our navies seem to be fighting well enough to win naval battles, and we want to get started on the conversion of the whole of South America back to its rightful Animism. We've quite a few provinces to go to do that.
Ooh, I only just noticed this one by August 1694?! Gold standard? Yes please! Even more inflation reduction.
In May 1697, Maynas becomes self-sustaining. Boy do we need the money. We're struggling to avoid inflation increases even with a combination of factors reducing our inflation by 0.31 per year!! In June 1698, Cuenca and Canelos also become self-sustaining. Fort building time.
Ahh, August 1698 and Castille are once again ready for their regular can of whoopass.
In June 1699, Quijos becomes self-sustaining, and in September 1699, so does Goias; later in April 1701, Mariquita will too. Financially, things are easing up now with the reduced colonial maintenance and coring on the odd province.
By June 1700, we're starting to get the odd missionary and convert places away from Christianity. I hadn't seen a pagan missionary before. Looks like a witch doctor? I guess they don't often get the opportunity to do their work. Cool!
"The king of Spain wants an update on the subjugation of those Chimu savages! Quickly!!!" "Well, umm... erm..."
May 1701 - Caqueta, with the help of one of our colonists, becomes self-sustaining. Only one colony to go! Aaand in October 1701, Castille finally bow to the inevitable and pay us tribute, as well as dropping their cores on territory we conquered.
June 1702 sees Diamentina become self-sustaining with the help of a colonist we sent. That's the last province in South America to be fully colonized!
August 1703 - And with that, South America is fully fortified. No provinces may now be occupied just by walking onto them. That's nice. Especially as I'm noticing a huge French military build-up right next door.
Will they attack? Probably. Will they beat us? No way. Here's the overall picture, anyway:
It's great that we've knocked through Castille's territory in the north-east and colonized those 2 remaining provinces there. Everywhere now has a fort. However, that area is still blocked off from the rest of our territory by Genoa's holdings which we'll want to cut through as mentioned earlier, and there's also a Portugese colony in the region that we have a core on. We're gonna want to absorb all that area into Chimu as well, and then it's pretty much a case of going along the northern coast to finish things up. Stay tuned for the next instalment!