Chapter 4 - The golden age of reformation
What a wonderful day outside...
Perfect timing to stay indoors and continue writing my AAR about a video game
Yes, no, mom... I will go outside today!!!!
For 5 minutes, before I get skincancer... Err, getting off track again. Where were we? Right, re-drawing the borders of the roman empire. What I do remember from last time is that our economy was about to collapse and we needed to fix that. Even though we haven´t used any mercs so far, we were running a constant deficit. I was hoping to outgrow the debt eventually, like we mostly do. Constantinople isn´t the worst of trade nodes, but we aren´t conquering upstream continiously. Maybe switching to genoa trade node will fix things mid-term once we own most of the provinces there. Not slowing down on the war-business to save money...
Right,
our not so dumb move to declare on tunis to snatch a province from granada allows us to do some cleansing in castile. Had to do that blitzkrieg style as frances truce with castile was running out and they seem to enjoy basquing in the sun down there. Now we can ask them to join OUR war and make sure that they won´t expand any further. Austria is in as well, so this war will be fought on autopilot...
Aragon, Portugal and Naples are in as well... I´m
still confident that france will handle it..
So confident that we start another war against samtskhe. Opportunity is good as muscovy, their AND our ally won´t join in. Need several provinces from them to form rome...
Most of our allies in our war, stab 3, all points spent... time to press the button. 5 years of bankruptcy is a long time in a speedy run. However ae is currently still one of the biggest limitations and it will get some time to cool off. Also we have basically 3 peace deals
to digest during that time so we aren´t slowing down that much....
Hmm, still in the negatives.
That is not a good sign. Maybe 10 years before, when I realized that this was going to happen, I was thinking about investing some of the loans still available to us in infrastructure. There just wasn´t any good available. In a regular game we would be buying manufactories in the new world or india, but grain farms in europe... i don´t think so. Especially as this won´t be a campaign that will continue for several hundred years... at least I hope so ^^ One major contributor to our debt is converting the land to orthodox faith. We are constantly running our 4 missionaries and I´m not planning to stop this. No rebels,+33% more manpower and more income (-10% tax and goods produced per -1 tolerance)
for a bankruptcy here and there...
Wait, seems like I haven´t been watching the northern parts of the map, since I just notice.
Can´t be aware of everything... Novgorod is still alive and seems to have beloozero (does the name come from below zero degrees?) as a vassal. Even if they got some provinces returned that must mean they won at least one war against muscovy. Good job. I just clicked on the alliance with muscovy as soon as it became availble, lol...
This land isn´t required to form rome, still it would be nice to own the black sea. I would love to forward the crimean trade to constantiople... but we only have 2 traders. We could make so much more money if we had 5-6, I just don´t know where to get them from
without getting side-tracked too much. Taking trade ideas? Please....
When did milan enter the war? Thanks for the money and prestige...
I have to force myself very hard to not take more land then absolutely necessary. Going into persia would be very lucrative, but would delay us for decades... we take tradepower and money instead...
This allows us to complete the mission that re-establishes the theme system. Very useful as it gives us 11 dev in constantinople, but more importantly +25% manpower permanently and most
importantly restores greek naming of turkish provinces!
62k manpower pool... not too bad for 1489. Half of our land is also held by vassals...
Very good, shadow kingdom. None of the italian nations remained in the hre... it seem like provence has joined though...
I´m
making a judgement call right now... Integration of bosnia is at 69% and has been going on for 27 years or so... bosnia!
I figure
calling the golden era right now won´t make it last until the end of our campaign. However we aren´t losing that much on coring efficiency as we also won´t be having any absolutism or admin efficiency by then. The -10% power point reduction is the only modifier that influences our vassal integration cost. If we can integrate bosnia, eretna and syria during that time period I´m more then happy and forgo the +10% morale bonus for the final push as we gain a lot of power from the integrations. It is a tight schedule and it won´t allow many delays like, high ld, occupations or dip shortages...
Oh lord, don´t tell me...
another vassal? Who is going to pay all those 100% integration cost. Oh well, naples was supposed to be our first vassal and that 50% transfer subject thing is running out shortly. I guess it is now or never...
More dev in constantinople? Yes please...
Truely the city
of worlds desire! 52 dev in 1491, lol....
76% integration... this is taking way too long for a 112 dev subject. I know this is not very efficient as we have to core it again, but back in the days it made sense to give it to bosnia. At least seizing venice from them doesn´t give us ae.... just 135% liberty desire, lol
Even though we have 50% liberty desire the integration completes next month as the seizing of the province put the integration progress above 100%...
100.0%,
sometimes I amaze myself
Portugal is non-co-belligerent so we just take money from them...
... and just like that 5 years are over.
Bankruptcy expires tomorrrow...
The south of spain is ours. We could get perma claims from taking the tunis area, but we first have to conquer that and don´t actually need it to form rome, just tunis the province. Also taking anything up north would give us more ae with the christians...
Highest forcelimit in the known world... Allied to no 2,3 and 4....
Dodged a bullet there. Got legitimacy back to 75+% at 92% progress of the civil war disaster...
We are behind in tech. Coring, integration, raising legitimacy ain´t cheap ^^
Time for some crusadin....
River nile, here we come!
Just like that it´s already over. We take all those powerful centers of trade away from mamluks. I would love to take all his coasts to deny him running light ships, but unfortunately he can do so in the red sea as well, so that would be useless, unless we take those coasts as well...
Hmm, seems like
there is a powershift in the hre in favor of bohemia going on... hmm, we do need vienna from austria....
Better make good with bohemia (6/5/6 ^^) then...
gotta hedge our bets...
Ah what the hell, after seeing their ruler... alliance it is...
In order to save up precious dip points we cancel our alliance with austria... but declaring on hungary. This way we circumvent the 5 year truce. We do need a couple of provinces from hungary still anyways... Our new ally bohemia joins in on the promise of land.
At least we aren´t bankrupt anymore...
73k max manpower, current manpower -11k. They will grow back. We currently focus on taking the smaller nations out of the war and peace them out for money and trade power. Also cancelling alliance between elector and current ruler austria to further give bohmia an edge in the next election.
What is this? Oh right... defender of faith.
Go away novgorod, we are busy...
Tech time, we waited so we can afford 2 admin tech at once...
Next idea group: diplo. If influence still had the -20% ae, it might have been a tough call. Since they don´t have it anymore diplo is much better suited for our purposes. It does give ae reduction in form of improved relations, 2 diplomats. The diplo rep and limit help with integrating vassals... most important is the -20% warscore reduction though. We still have a lot of land to conquer and without absolutism this will save us several wars we would have to fight additionally...
Vienna calling....
I´m hoping bohemia will do a seperate peace and give them all the land we don´t want from ourself. Unfortunately they don´t bite and I don´t want to keep the war running for too long...
We do have the coalition dance, nations joining in and leaving, going on from time to time... That means
we are right on the edge and basically at optimal expansion speed
To make it not stick
we bribe smaller nations and keep them above 0 relations...
Too bad we can´t do that with the bigger nations... poland joined in...
Already 3,5k in debt again...
decadent romans...
Of course bows...
muskets are overrated!
The age of reformation is here. We do lose -10% ae... but we gain another -25% warscore cost (-45% total with diplo ideas) against other religions, which is everybody we need to fight against and the main reason why we stayed orthodox. Other form rome speed runs had the tactic of staying catholic, becoming pope for the -20% ae and excommunication cb. Definately very good strategy, but I thought -10% ae/25% improve relations and -25% warscore cost can compete. Not mentioning the unrest reduction and extra manpower... Also I
hate the pope election thing
We waited long enough, time to peace out. We take all required provinces from hungary and 2 which are in constantinople trade node. 2 provinces for our new friend bohemia...
Nothern border is secured. It is no limes, but at least we have a defensive line of forts stretching from the adria to the carparthians
to protect us from hre barbarians...
A short period of peace. Always a good time to start annexations... Eretna first. 1396 dip points, sniff... eta 1563, golden era ends in 1540 something...
Savoy is murdering aragon with the help of france. Time to get in before they occupy their capital....
Got it...
Not the -20% ae from our cause is just event (influence ideas :/), but I take it...
Grrrranda.
Granada gone. Aragon forfeits their islands... Lots of bribes going arround to keep coalition in check.
Two mission, yay!
Orthodox faith is growing faster then protestantism. England is friendly to us. This is kinda important. For one we don´t want another major power to join the coalition. Eventually we
want to switch them out against france as an ally and maybe use them even to fight france...
We do need the iraq provinces down to basra. QQ hand them over volunteeringly? Didn´t think so...
We are forced to slow down on the conquesting due to coalition threats. This gives us
time to catch up in tech....
Dip tech has to wait a bit though. It hardly gives us any benefits and we will never reach dip tech 23. So ideas are way more important... The rest is mostly going into integration cost and seperate peace deals. We are going to make a pause on ideas at this point though... later more about this.
Hello Timmy... quite a big font you got there...
Unfortunately we don´t have the extra -25% warscore cost from splendor yet so there will be another war against qq. At least timmy can´t take the remaining required provinces away from qq now...
Sure we want to be your ally timmy. We considering every top 10 application. As long as we got enough men on our side, coalitions won´t form. I do take having timmy on our side instead of one diplo tech over 50 years anyday...
After starting annexing syria... diplo tech will be stagnant until the end of the campaign ^^
He will be useful. The third idea group will be our last one... what will it be?!
-25% warscore cost vs other religions <3
Our claims. Again over half of them wasted on vassals, but at the time it seemed like the best solution....
Nothing much changed. Our manpower is recovering. Timmy switched places with austria. I think they are still emperor though...
Keeping our truces with mamluks... also christian ae needs to cool down further..
Byz troops op!
This should include all the province we need from mamluks to form rome,
right?!
Insults here and there to keep our allies happy... everybody seems to hate poland!
N´other war with castile... portugal is getting killed by morocco. This is beneficial for us as taking land from muslims gives us less ae from christians, who will long term be the bigger problem. We basically already own 95% of the required muslim territories, but not even a third of the christians. I´m hoping for a strong hre reformation and england turning anglican soon to give us less ae when starting to work on italy and france.
We are spending tons of cash not only on bribing coalition countries, but also on keeping our vassals happy. Buying every loan, placating rulers and in some cases even developing, just as a last resort though as this increases integration cost.
Sure, what are 500 ducats... become the defender of faith again, we get another missionary so we can spend even more ducats on conversions.... Most of the
sunni provinces are relatively cheap...
Herakleios... hmm, Hermes would have fitted better....
No, no... nonono... stop it with the vassals. Not being able to core this land due to lack of range is not an excuse... Can´t we just conquer it later... I guess france would have eaten them by then, not a good option neither...
Admin tech 10, here we go... That is basically the last admin tech we need, the rest can go into coring...
To make that investment more efficient we take admin ideas with coring cost reduction...
Shamefur dispray portugal, shame, shame, shame!
Hmm, morocco is still hungry... we should allow them to eat more of iberia... They need to hurry though, we are on a tight schedule.
What is happening to our finances? Somebody is embezzeling money from us... 55 ducats for missionaries, 57 in interest... and then still 50 ducats over budget. Our costs keep increasing, but not our income :/
We intentionally leave a border between castile and morocco... you never know. Then we take castilian forts and make a conection to the gulf in order to get range to the english channel...
Did my research. To form rome we also need the azores and canaries, which seems a bit odd since we can´t even see those provinces, but np... as long as we don´t have to take exploration... france?
We do have two problems. A coalition is about to form and will most likely stick. We are also running low on power projection. A war against poland solves both problems. It gives us a truce with the biggest nation in that coalition and allows us to humiliate them. There aren´t any legitimate rivals for us left, only france, but we are still allied to them...
Hey, muscovy wants in on the action. They seem to have partitioned novgorod with denmark and strive towards the west...
Yes, yes austria...
you are a badboy, but as soon as poland is peaced out you are running home to your mommy...
It won´t have a huge effect, but forcing religion on hre nations at least gives us some improved relations and ae reduction... eventually that won´t help neither....
Dancing on a razors edge.... Truce juggling poland, mamluks and aragon becomes a necessity...
We do the show strenght thing. 100 power points in each category +40 power projection... noice.
Alright,
I waited for this moment 20 years or so. Remember when I said we are making a pause on ideas for a while. Byzantium has another thing going for them. Constant events that give 50 powerpoints in each category. They do have a mtth of 36 month, so on average you get one every year (can´t get a second one within the next 12 month unfortunately). You also get -25 point events to even it out, but it is roughly +1 power points a year. Not the world, but it adds up. I´m a bit disappointed in myself, that I never took a screenshot of those events, but if you ever played byz (who hasn´t), you know what I mean. Thing is, once you complete your 4th national idea, those events stop. That´s why I delayed it. Now we saved up enough points....
... to take 4 ideas at once, 25% ccr from admin and dip rep and -20% warscore cost from dip ideas. Taking the dip ideas at once was important too, because we definately wanted the -20% warscore cost reduction. Taking the dip rep idea first would have increased the integration spend by 4 points each month. Would have save us precious years with the integration of our vassals, but much delayed the warscore cost idea... So that´s it basically for ideas and tech, rest of the points can be spend on coring and integration...
Eretna will be done in time, eta 1532... (golden era lasts till 154x)
1541, thank you
Golden times, except in our coffers... we might have another itzy bitzy bankruptcy at our hands. Not to worry though, vassal integrations won´t be affected and we will have some time
to improve our golf game. It is already 1520 and we will soon have to ditch our french alliance and start working on italy. That won´t amuse the hre. Also there is our vassal problem. Headache! Anyways, that´s it for todays episode. The freakin sun is gone and it started raining... Maybe I can actually go outside now and do some normal people stuff
Have a good one!
