This will be my first AAR, but I've read dozens of them here over the years, so here goes my try at one
Just a quick background of pre-Victoria timeline events: I started out as the Byzantine Empire in the Crusader Kings 1066 scenario, as the mythical "Invictus" dynasty - I was just playing around at the time, so I gave the Emperor and his son 20/20/20/20 stats to represent some kind of superhuman ability to rule - as in the mythical "Benevolent Monarchy" as the *theoretically* best form of government. In Crusader Kings half the fun is trying to improve your dynastic line through careful grooming of the future family tree, but in this case my goal was more to keep the purity of the original line intact.
It worked, more or less, and my empire prospered under my godlike rulers for almost 200 years. I took over the Muslims in Persia and North Africa, helped Europe turn the Mongol hordes back sometime around 1250ish AD, and then... well, then I got tired of the game since I was too powerful and nothing could stop me.
So I transferred the game to EUII using the export function, and started in 1419. The EUII game was rather uneventful since I'm not a very good EUII player, but I did manage to hold on to my gains and almost max out my tech, plus save up a lot of money. Then around 1820 I transferred to Victoria Revolutions, and it is here that my AAR begins.
***
The World in 1836, after almost a millenia of struggle and brutal bloodshed - at least, for the Europeans! As you can see from the maps below, the people of the Americas, Africa, and East Asia have prospered each in their own ways:
Europe:
Africa:
South America:
North America:
Asia:
Now what you'll immediately have noticed is that except for a very late Byzantine attempt at colonizing Brazil in the 1700s, all of North America is still virtually untouched by all the usual suspects (except for one British colony in Trinidad, The Cherokee, Aztecs, and Mayans rule unchallenged.)
I grabbed the coastline of South America, the southern tip of India, and parts of the islands north of Australia (I was thinking ahead to all the rares that I'll find there in Hearts of Iron II, if I ever got that far along!) That was all from map trading, throughout the entire game I never got a single naval explorer.
Asia is powerfully dominated by the Chinese and Mughalistan, that massive pink blob that took all of India.
Europe on the other hand, is very weak! Yes, they're all civilized, they have a handful of factories all together, but nothing like a regular Victoria 1936 GC. Their populations are also quite small and backwards, I loaded up as a few of them and there's not dozens of free clerks, craftsmen, and capitalists floating around! Overall I'd say the population (and strength) of Europe is well below half of what it should be in a normal campaign.
So, to make up for this (no one likes playing a boring game) I'm going to make myself a worthy adversary. I'm gonna let China start as civilized, edit Beijing with a couple of craftsmen, clerks, capitalists (and by a couple I mean the entire provincial population of 2 million+ ) and put the entire nation at 70% literacy. That's the highest in the game, I have 50ish, and Prussia and UK are up in the mid 60s. They'll still have 0 tech to begin with, but that goes for a couple of European countries as well! In fact, in this alternate timeline its pretty meaningless to talk about civilized and uncivilized areas, because clearly only the Byzantine Empire is worthy of the name Civilization
China could end up being very scary though, they have a population of 360 million - compared to mine at 160, and Europe at (I'm guessing) less than 200 million. I don't really know how to really customize edit AI files in save games, but since I imagine China has a pretty limited and isolationist setting, I'm gonna give them the same general settings as Germany, where applicable.
Now since this game isn't entirely meant to be played from 1066 to 1960 (CK to EUII to Vic to Hoi2) I have made minor edits to the transferred save.
I've straightened out some borders, stupid things like England having St. Petersburg and Denmark having 2 provinces in Norway that looked really ugly. Sweden also had southern Italy, and I gave that to Austria. I also had Austria release Sardinia-Piedmont as a vassal to give Italy a chance of forming later... right now all those Italian pops are worthless since Austria doesn't have a full citizenship government, IIRC.
To deal with the countries that have laizzes faire governments, I've put 100k capitalists in each European capital plus converted some pops (again, only in the capital) to 100K size and made them clerks and craftsmen. I don't know if it'll do much good without factories, but I do want Europe to start industrializing sometime this century, so if I absolutely have to I'll go back sometime in the 1850s and give UK, Germany, Austria, Russia and France the basic factories to get started - machine parts, furniture, clothing, steel etc, one of each, the basics needed to industrialize.
Besides that, no other edits.
Oh, well, it has no impact on gameplay but I edited Greece to look more like Byzantium. I got a flag and shield off the Byzantine Mod, and I renamed the Greek pops to Byzantine and the country is called Byzantine Empire.
I also (for purely RP reasons) decided to represent the heirs of my Byzantine King, the original Sol Invictus, as a separate ethnic group called the Blood Royal. I used the Romanian marker, changed all the Romanians to Hungarians in the save game, and then made small populations of the creme de la creme, the four hundred thousand or so of the upper echelons of Byzantine Society, the ones ruling the 160 million peasants beneath them! I mean... loyal subjects, not peasants. And if I meant peasants I meant it in a good way
Constantinople is something like 20-30% Blood Royal in its population make up, and they're all Aristocrats, Clergymen, or Officers. Except of course a 100K soldier stack, which represent the youth of the nobility, who aren't afraid to go fight on the front lines... this is supposed to be a Benevolent Monarchy, not a just a parasitical idle rich society!
There's also a strong presence of Blood Royal in Baghdad (Capital of the Mesopotamian Region) and Alexandria, Capital of my North African holdings.
On a much smaller scale, there's a couple of thousand in Buenos Aires in Argentina, and a similar amount on some island off the Philippes.
Now in game mechanics terms that means absolutely nothing, but since I like RPing in my games, especially when I make an AAR out of it, I will take extra care of those provinces since they're the Emperor's blood kin who will get killed should enemies enter, and not simply peasants! I mean, loyal subjects, who are every bit as important to me as ... ahh, who am I kidding?
Self imposed rules of the AAR:
This is a continuation of a Crusader Kings game, and the original Dynasty which has steered Byzantium through almost eight centuries is still in power. This means that I will stay a Monarchy, and should the Monarchy fall, then the game ends. I *might* consider going Constitutional Monarchy if it comes to that, but that's only going to happen when there is no other way. Until there is a VERY compelling reason to do so, I won't do it. In any case, if my people start electing liberal or socialist governments then they've shown that they're unable to handle the responsibilities that come with voting, namely voting for what the Emperor thinks is best.
I won't reload, ever, if I make a tactical or strategic mistake. I'll only reload if I *accidentally* push the wrong button on something, but if I go into a war and start losing, I'll have to make peace somehow. If my main army gets encircled I'll just have to build a new one, and if Anarcho-Liberal scum take Constantinople, shoot the Royal Family and overthrow the entire Monarchy... well, then I really should have defended it better, but now they're all dead!
I will probably do edits, but never in my own favor. If for example China (the Arch Evil enemy of the game, or so its intended to be) just sits there, I will load up as China and have them declare war on their neighbors and start acting like the Evil Empire I know they can be
If the AI starts stupidly colonizing, I will load up and redistribute their claims amongst themselves so that the map looks nicer.
If America doesn't get any colonists due to the general low population of Europe, I might - if I can justify it under the circumstances - start moving some pops there manually just so that I don't end up with an unrealistic Hearts of Iron II game where the Cherokee still rule half the continent. Realism will trump gameplay, but again, only under exceptional circumstances and never for no reason. To avoid blank spaces in the map, I might change the colonization build time to one day instead of 3 years at some point, just to insure that everything is covered before the end.
Stuff like that I will probably have to do at one point or another, but the gist of the rule is that it can never be in my own favor and I will keep such interventions to an absolute minimum, preferably none at all.
My units will be limited by the fact that at least half of them have to be Greek (Byzantine) culture. Since the Blood Royal ruling faction doesn't have full citizenship allowesd, it means I won't be able to build hordes of units by taking over India for example. I'll have to rely on my Byzantines to do the dirty work, but that's only fair since they're the ones who are benefitting the most from it anyways.
OK, well that just about covers it. Haha, this AAR might fizzle out and die, but right now I'm having much more fun playing since I'm thinking about a story arc at the same time. So hopefully I'll make it to Hoi2!
First installment to follow shortly, I played right up until the beginning of the liberal revolution in 1845.
This might end up being a short AAR, lol, I wonder if it's even possible staying a Conservative Monarchy AND a major industrial and scientific power throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th! My farmers and labourers are happy enough, but those damn craftsmen and clerks have dangerously liberal tendencies, but unfortunately I need them to remain semi literate to invent and build new upgrades for my war machine... or industry, whatever they call it...
Just a quick background of pre-Victoria timeline events: I started out as the Byzantine Empire in the Crusader Kings 1066 scenario, as the mythical "Invictus" dynasty - I was just playing around at the time, so I gave the Emperor and his son 20/20/20/20 stats to represent some kind of superhuman ability to rule - as in the mythical "Benevolent Monarchy" as the *theoretically* best form of government. In Crusader Kings half the fun is trying to improve your dynastic line through careful grooming of the future family tree, but in this case my goal was more to keep the purity of the original line intact.
It worked, more or less, and my empire prospered under my godlike rulers for almost 200 years. I took over the Muslims in Persia and North Africa, helped Europe turn the Mongol hordes back sometime around 1250ish AD, and then... well, then I got tired of the game since I was too powerful and nothing could stop me.
So I transferred the game to EUII using the export function, and started in 1419. The EUII game was rather uneventful since I'm not a very good EUII player, but I did manage to hold on to my gains and almost max out my tech, plus save up a lot of money. Then around 1820 I transferred to Victoria Revolutions, and it is here that my AAR begins.
***
The World in 1836, after almost a millenia of struggle and brutal bloodshed - at least, for the Europeans! As you can see from the maps below, the people of the Americas, Africa, and East Asia have prospered each in their own ways:
Europe:
Africa:
South America:
North America:
Asia:
Now what you'll immediately have noticed is that except for a very late Byzantine attempt at colonizing Brazil in the 1700s, all of North America is still virtually untouched by all the usual suspects (except for one British colony in Trinidad, The Cherokee, Aztecs, and Mayans rule unchallenged.)
I grabbed the coastline of South America, the southern tip of India, and parts of the islands north of Australia (I was thinking ahead to all the rares that I'll find there in Hearts of Iron II, if I ever got that far along!) That was all from map trading, throughout the entire game I never got a single naval explorer.
Asia is powerfully dominated by the Chinese and Mughalistan, that massive pink blob that took all of India.
Europe on the other hand, is very weak! Yes, they're all civilized, they have a handful of factories all together, but nothing like a regular Victoria 1936 GC. Their populations are also quite small and backwards, I loaded up as a few of them and there's not dozens of free clerks, craftsmen, and capitalists floating around! Overall I'd say the population (and strength) of Europe is well below half of what it should be in a normal campaign.
So, to make up for this (no one likes playing a boring game) I'm going to make myself a worthy adversary. I'm gonna let China start as civilized, edit Beijing with a couple of craftsmen, clerks, capitalists (and by a couple I mean the entire provincial population of 2 million+ ) and put the entire nation at 70% literacy. That's the highest in the game, I have 50ish, and Prussia and UK are up in the mid 60s. They'll still have 0 tech to begin with, but that goes for a couple of European countries as well! In fact, in this alternate timeline its pretty meaningless to talk about civilized and uncivilized areas, because clearly only the Byzantine Empire is worthy of the name Civilization
China could end up being very scary though, they have a population of 360 million - compared to mine at 160, and Europe at (I'm guessing) less than 200 million. I don't really know how to really customize edit AI files in save games, but since I imagine China has a pretty limited and isolationist setting, I'm gonna give them the same general settings as Germany, where applicable.
Now since this game isn't entirely meant to be played from 1066 to 1960 (CK to EUII to Vic to Hoi2) I have made minor edits to the transferred save.
I've straightened out some borders, stupid things like England having St. Petersburg and Denmark having 2 provinces in Norway that looked really ugly. Sweden also had southern Italy, and I gave that to Austria. I also had Austria release Sardinia-Piedmont as a vassal to give Italy a chance of forming later... right now all those Italian pops are worthless since Austria doesn't have a full citizenship government, IIRC.
To deal with the countries that have laizzes faire governments, I've put 100k capitalists in each European capital plus converted some pops (again, only in the capital) to 100K size and made them clerks and craftsmen. I don't know if it'll do much good without factories, but I do want Europe to start industrializing sometime this century, so if I absolutely have to I'll go back sometime in the 1850s and give UK, Germany, Austria, Russia and France the basic factories to get started - machine parts, furniture, clothing, steel etc, one of each, the basics needed to industrialize.
Besides that, no other edits.
Oh, well, it has no impact on gameplay but I edited Greece to look more like Byzantium. I got a flag and shield off the Byzantine Mod, and I renamed the Greek pops to Byzantine and the country is called Byzantine Empire.
I also (for purely RP reasons) decided to represent the heirs of my Byzantine King, the original Sol Invictus, as a separate ethnic group called the Blood Royal. I used the Romanian marker, changed all the Romanians to Hungarians in the save game, and then made small populations of the creme de la creme, the four hundred thousand or so of the upper echelons of Byzantine Society, the ones ruling the 160 million peasants beneath them! I mean... loyal subjects, not peasants. And if I meant peasants I meant it in a good way
Constantinople is something like 20-30% Blood Royal in its population make up, and they're all Aristocrats, Clergymen, or Officers. Except of course a 100K soldier stack, which represent the youth of the nobility, who aren't afraid to go fight on the front lines... this is supposed to be a Benevolent Monarchy, not a just a parasitical idle rich society!
There's also a strong presence of Blood Royal in Baghdad (Capital of the Mesopotamian Region) and Alexandria, Capital of my North African holdings.
On a much smaller scale, there's a couple of thousand in Buenos Aires in Argentina, and a similar amount on some island off the Philippes.
Now in game mechanics terms that means absolutely nothing, but since I like RPing in my games, especially when I make an AAR out of it, I will take extra care of those provinces since they're the Emperor's blood kin who will get killed should enemies enter, and not simply peasants! I mean, loyal subjects, who are every bit as important to me as ... ahh, who am I kidding?
Self imposed rules of the AAR:
This is a continuation of a Crusader Kings game, and the original Dynasty which has steered Byzantium through almost eight centuries is still in power. This means that I will stay a Monarchy, and should the Monarchy fall, then the game ends. I *might* consider going Constitutional Monarchy if it comes to that, but that's only going to happen when there is no other way. Until there is a VERY compelling reason to do so, I won't do it. In any case, if my people start electing liberal or socialist governments then they've shown that they're unable to handle the responsibilities that come with voting, namely voting for what the Emperor thinks is best.
I won't reload, ever, if I make a tactical or strategic mistake. I'll only reload if I *accidentally* push the wrong button on something, but if I go into a war and start losing, I'll have to make peace somehow. If my main army gets encircled I'll just have to build a new one, and if Anarcho-Liberal scum take Constantinople, shoot the Royal Family and overthrow the entire Monarchy... well, then I really should have defended it better, but now they're all dead!
I will probably do edits, but never in my own favor. If for example China (the Arch Evil enemy of the game, or so its intended to be) just sits there, I will load up as China and have them declare war on their neighbors and start acting like the Evil Empire I know they can be
If the AI starts stupidly colonizing, I will load up and redistribute their claims amongst themselves so that the map looks nicer.
If America doesn't get any colonists due to the general low population of Europe, I might - if I can justify it under the circumstances - start moving some pops there manually just so that I don't end up with an unrealistic Hearts of Iron II game where the Cherokee still rule half the continent. Realism will trump gameplay, but again, only under exceptional circumstances and never for no reason. To avoid blank spaces in the map, I might change the colonization build time to one day instead of 3 years at some point, just to insure that everything is covered before the end.
Stuff like that I will probably have to do at one point or another, but the gist of the rule is that it can never be in my own favor and I will keep such interventions to an absolute minimum, preferably none at all.
My units will be limited by the fact that at least half of them have to be Greek (Byzantine) culture. Since the Blood Royal ruling faction doesn't have full citizenship allowesd, it means I won't be able to build hordes of units by taking over India for example. I'll have to rely on my Byzantines to do the dirty work, but that's only fair since they're the ones who are benefitting the most from it anyways.
OK, well that just about covers it. Haha, this AAR might fizzle out and die, but right now I'm having much more fun playing since I'm thinking about a story arc at the same time. So hopefully I'll make it to Hoi2!
First installment to follow shortly, I played right up until the beginning of the liberal revolution in 1845.
This might end up being a short AAR, lol, I wonder if it's even possible staying a Conservative Monarchy AND a major industrial and scientific power throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th! My farmers and labourers are happy enough, but those damn craftsmen and clerks have dangerously liberal tendencies, but unfortunately I need them to remain semi literate to invent and build new upgrades for my war machine... or industry, whatever they call it...
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