Eat your greens - Kale (normal)

[Dominion]

After a few campaigns on the new patch I figured I'd dive back into writing an AAR.

After Saladin's Legacy bringing great joy to me, as a writer (and hopefully you, as a reader), it became obvious while writing that it was time to dive into higher difficulties.
The first experience being a Raja of the Rajput Reich quickly followed by a rather simple Arabian Coffee + Protect the Secret.

Emperor did bring a few changes and some minor achievements have been completed to get accustomed to the new mechanics, but be aware that despite that some of my decisions may not be optimal, mostly because

As usual it will be justified and explained in as much detail as possible and as usual this run will be done almost live.

Now, with most achievements being a lot easier than usual we thought we'd do something that had been put off for a while.

Eat your Greens
Control all Grasslands in Asia as Kale before the age of Absolutism.

Now before we dive in: I have no clue how to delay global trade. I don't plan on doing it either even if someone explains it.
Difficulty is set on normal, which should make it easy enough to blast through and have some time left for any reader's secondary goals.

Which brings us to the ultimate question: How smart is it to brag before starting a run?
Eh, what could go wrong.

Anyways, I hope you're as excited as I am

https://imgur.com/yyrbA7O

https://imgur.com/LlX9HHc

 

[Dominion]

“The year is 1444 A.D. Kale is not at all occupied by the Romans. One small village of indomitable Kale still holds out against the invading carnivores. And life is not easy for everyone else's legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Asia.”

We begin the game by picking our rivals.

Manipur for faster claim fabrication on rivals and some other stuff.
Well, USUALLY for faster claim fabrication. Right now it's a different reason. You'll see.

Take our stuff. Take all our stuff and shove it where you need it. 1MP per month? Hell yeah!
Do Therevadianians believe in hell? Whatever. 1MP in each category for free is nice, hell hin oder her.
Well, almost for free. We have to give some concessions, but they're not for long and we'll get back into useful regions asap.

We build enough units to go to force limit, check our finances if we can hire advisors (hahaha, no) and look around a bit.

Boatloads of Hindu provinces are getting conquered in the near future.
Kale is... Wherevada? Therevada!

No, our jokes did not get better during our absence. Yes, we still stand by them!

What does Theravadaism even do.

Only upsides. Worst case +1 dip rep, best case +2 dip rep and

+5% discipline and low carma gives

+2.5% discipline

Okay so you lose Karma from declaring war and you gain Karma by...

Honoring alliances and releasing nations.

https://imgur.com/4pnnSas

Okay, +2.5% discipline from now until the end of the game. Or until we lose our religion. That's me in the spotlight. That's me in the corner. Where were we?

Right. Control all grasslands.

FL is going to be max, Estates are satisfied, advisors are checked, tea is ready, it's time to unpause.

OH BOY THIS GAME IS FUN. I MISSED EU4 SO MUCH.

https://imgur.com/w5Lg834

Anyways, we continue. As if nothing happened. Because nothing happened. At all.

It's time for war. Almost 30 days spent without one. That can't be good for everyone's mood. How to wage war without a cb?

"B-but Dominion! That's a horrible cb and north is your only avenue out!" ahh, I hear you and you are absolutely right, but you see, this was planned from the beginning.

It actually wasn't. Your narrator is a sucker for 100 MP in every category, especially if it doesn't come with a truce.
How could it not? You'll see, you'll see.

First things first.

Stackwipe and go.
We start sieging and get greeted by another event.

There's a "We choose to ignore you" option?
Kale is sitting at almost 0% crown land. How can they give us an option with no effects?
Maybe we shouldn't complain about no punishment. It usually comes back to bite us in the arse.
Horrible flashbacks to a run with five or six comets...

So anyways, there we were, slashing and smashing

and grabbing prestige, Power Projection (soon over 50 for 1 additional MP in every category) and +100 MP in every category.
On a scale from 1 to 10, how locked in are we?

Houdini.
Manipur is gonna get annexed and we can continue conquering.
Only thing left is to wait for them to finish their sieges aaaaand

Done.
See those unused diplomats over there? It's because your dear narrator totally did not forget to send them in so he can immediately fabricate and start a new war.

Pinky promise.

We give Supremacy over the Crown to the nobility so they can pursue Agendas, which comes with a nice increase to loyalty equilibrium and 0 crown land loss and declare some more wars.

Next up: Let's expand north. Like, really hard. Like, totes hard. Like, cash money hard.

*dabs*

 

[Dominion]

As our grandmother always used to say: New day, new war!

Thinking back, she might have been a war criminal.

Anyways, war.

Kachar finished their war and deleted half their troops. Par for the course on 1.30
Good patch. Makes a few things a lot easier. We'll get to that later.

Except for one thing worth pointing out right now: Not only is the AI currently deleting half their troops, they also used to have their army on a level of maintenance that allowed them to be maxed in a single month's tick. Declaring on the first of the month meant having a minor morale advantage.

Nowadays they go all the way down to zero, so...

Chant it with us: Stack and Wipe. Stack and Wipe. Stack and Wipe.

https://imgur.com/7fyNTNU

Koch gets removed in a similar fashion. We split our troops to cover all provinces even if they don't suffice to siege them down to prevent either nation from recruiting.

Both are alied with Assam. Next avenue to expand into. Assam is currently at war, therefor they can't get additional allies.
Easy followup.

Early spring 1448 our king spawns a spawn.

AND WHAT A SPAWN THAT IS

https://imgur.com/OvQ3q5C

Damn son, who's your mama?

Not getting distracted for too long we wrap up our wars by vassalizing Koch (reduced AE compared to conquest + out of coring range anyways) and

Fully annex Kachar.

Can't declare on Assam yet because they declared on... whatever that OPM is over there. Nobody cares about it. It's gonna get annexed in a second.

Meanwhile Tripura has no allies

and no provinces either.
Assam finishes their siege on their own capital and we declare immediately before they can peace out their enemy. which would let them get more allies.

Chop chop chop chop chop 'em op. or up. Either way, they're getting chopped.
Lack of actual forts lets Kale's troops siege down every province and prevent them from recruiting.

And now for a minor trick. Your dearest narrator's newest and favoritestest trick.

Okay, newest might be a bit of a stretch, but a trade efficiency advisor is gonna get hired.

You see where this is going? Ohh you will see where this is going and you will love it and you will do it in every single one of your games because it's just that good.




Next up: What does it do and how much war is too much war?

 

[Lauron]

I'll follow

 

[Dominion]

Aaaaand we are back in black green with another round of "whose land is it anyways?" where the AE is fake and the MP don't matter.

Talk about a mashup.

Speaking of mashup, Ava breaks tributary with us because we refuse to pay tribute.

https://imgur.com/MrT1RLG

As for our recent war, Assam capitulates and we treat them with dignity. Humble in victory, graceful in defeat, as we always say.
Or assume. Not that we know how defeat feels.

First coalition is forming.

Or would be forming if 1.30.3 wasn't such a laughable piece of well balanced patch where nations barely go up to half their force limit.
Since forming coalitions is based on multiple factors, the basic and well known ones being:

- Minimum 4 nations
- Each nation at least 50AE
- Each nation has to be either outraged or have negative opinion of you
- Truce prevents nations from joining

with a lesser well known one being: If relative forces aren't at least 80% 90% 75% some number that keeps getting stealth changed because writing patchnotes is hard then the coalition doesn't form.

Meaning with everyone only using half their force limit on the current patch you can build a potential coalition twice as big without having to worry.
Same goes for them declaring on you, by the way. They need more power (which does calc in standing forces and morale) which they don't have.

On the other hand, if someone declares on you right now then you are truly screwed. Like, bigtime. They are strong enough to declare under normal circumstances AND double their troops in a few weeks.

Anyways, back to the game.

Some nation is getting pummeled and we declare to grab a province, completely forgetting that once they lose their war the remaining provinces controlled by us will become their capital.

Which is bad because annexing a capital as opposed to a normal province costs additional Warscore => additional AE.

Long story short: Welcome to our first bad decision. Some more are going to follow soon. Promise.

Manpower is still positive for god knows what reason. Corruption below 10 and we aren't above our relationship limit.
Something is seriously wrong with this campaign.

At least religious unity is concerning. Not for long though, we are going to convert to Hindu.

Why?
Because Wherevada is Whatevervada and we are going to conquer Hindu provinces.

Maybe. Probably.

Should probably check a map for grassland provinces sometime soon.

Renaissance pops up and so does our coalition.
Mayyyyybe we went a bit overboard.

We add a few allies and go over our relationship limit.
It's more a guideline than an actual limit.

We improve relations with Orissa above 50.

And after 2 months their stance changes to neutral.
This is because status gets changed from outraged to neutral above 50, but stances get checked before relations get increased.

So it's
49 - outraged => check for outraged, still below 50, nation stays outraged, relations increase to 51
51 - outraged => check for outraged, above 50, nation changes to neutral and increases to 53.

Or in our case stays at 51 because our diplomat is busy elsewhere.

With Orissa gone, the coalition crumbles.

So... time for some more slashing?

Time for some more slashing!

Speaking of slashing. Dashing. Speaking of something positive, our payoff from our recent hirees is kicking in.

Remember our little quiz from earlier?

Hiring a trade advisor and an inflation advisor gives you a chance for this event with a pretty nice MTTH.
You can either grab 5 mercantilism or fire one and get adm, fire the other and get dip or fire both and get 200 in each category.

Have we mentioned how we're a sucker for free MP?

And with that little gem we leave you for the night.

Some provinces have been captured, some MP have been gained, some AE has been collected and not a single thought has been wasted on grassland provinces.

Still got more than enough time, right?

Right?

 

[Dominion]

New day, new war. But first!

Oh no, not our precious Karma

Limbuwan declared on its neighbours, we declare on Limbuwan.
Basic AI mechanics kick in. They want the weakest link out of the war first so they besiege... someone. Don't know, don't care. We're their strongest enemy so we are allowed to siege down their nation in peace.

Take a few provinces, leave their capital alone for their enemy to take. Saves at least some AE.

Negative manpower, above our relationship limit. It's starting to feel like a real run again.
Our eyes wander around, looking for our next victim.

Time to take away their allies.

Bengal is way too strong for us to take on. Nothing more than a hit&run for some cash. Kale is already starving for money, sitting on two loans and counting.
Manpower is direly needed though. That's a lvl3 fort on their capital.

We exploit some development and declare.

We bumrush their capital while our vassal carpet sieges their provinces.
Our reward is two sweet, sweet wall breaches in a row.

On an unrelated note: The AI in 1.30 is extremely scared. They don't engage us for god knows what reason.

As soon as their capital falls we peace out.

War reps are fine. >2 ducats a month gets us back into positive territory again with barely any casualties aside from our vassal's losses.

We unlock mil tech 5 and our neighbour

Turns into Nepal

We'll allow it.
For a few months.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!

Fewer possible coalition partners = smaller coalitions, right?
Time to take out some more minors.

Ingame, of course.

We would never take out minors.

Pinky promise

Next up: Playtime is over. It's time to focus on our actual objective. Find those grasslands!

 

[Lauron]

woop woop. Some new information won about coalitions

 

[Dominion]

Back in black and back on track. Declaring on Nepal makes us laugh because nobody builds up to force limit on this patch.

3 nations, 6k units. Less than what Tirhut could do on their own.
And since they're all sitting on 0 morale we get to

Snipe around a bit

Everything's getting wiped and Kale's troops spread out to prevent any further production.

This whole "doesn't build to force limit" thing is especially painful for OPMs (=One Province Minors) since they are limited to 1 units per 2 months. They barely manage to recruit anything and can get interrupted easily.

If you want to punish larger nations, remember that you can see where they are building things and what they are building.

Also, sieges interrupt progress. No army for you, mon frere.

Our sieges don't necessarily have to progress.

Interrupting our enemy's progress is more than sufficient for our goals.

Dang sees their chance and declares on one of our enemies. Not that we'd care. Weird decision though, our enemies still have allies.

We get hit with "warriors do not read books", as if we'd ever want to tech adm or dip and move on to checking out potential peacedeals.

Might be a bit too much, considering we have 0 manpower and something like 6k units.

Speaking of too much...

Dang lost their war and got fully annexed. Their separatists walk right through our troops, which is kinda okay?
Winning a fight during a siege gives you +1 siege modifier, helping us progress faster.

More manpower would probably be better though, but hey, it's a free province that isn't a capitol.

Time for a few peacedeals.

Tirhut gets vassalized for reduced AE. Our current ruler dies one year before our 5/3/5 beast gets inaugurated. Fine with us.
We fully annex Jumla because we can.

We improve relations for a year to get a few nations out of coalition territory, get our new king and he immediately spawns a spawn.

https://imgur.com/lv85NC8

And he is Midas Touched

Time to peace out Nepal.

Full annexation, no prisoners.

The world reacts swiftly.

Aww, daddy's first coalition. It's so cute.

Again, with nobody building up to force limit it's kind of a joke.
Take note that they're all Hindu and mostly OPMs.

AE is a bit higher if you take from their religion, so Kale's plan is to take from either Sunnis or Therewhereda nations next.

Speaking of Hindu, more than half our nations is Hindu currently, which means

boom! Converted.

Fast, easy, dirty.
Only problem is our current prestige which dropped by... -150???

New patch, new bugs I guess.

Not gonna lie, that's highly problematic. Prestige is an AE modifier. More prestige = lower AE, low prestige = higher AE.

Might have to play around that one a bit.


Next up: Okay, this time we really start annexing grasslands provinces. Pinky promise!

 

[Dominion]

Quick update: My pc is currently going through a phase and the phase is called being dead.

I will continue soon.