The goal of this thread is to demonstrate that the game is unbalanced in favor of Spain. I am going to take the nation of Spain from 1492 and conquer the entire world before 1792. My goal is to actually take over the world before 1700. However, I am giving myself 92 years of mistakes and setbacks since I am not using save/reload tactics. No cheats were used. Autosave is on in case of crashes/power outages/etc. Random events and Dynamic missions are off to ensure general playing conditions. Additionally, I will be using auto-send for merchants and turning merchant messages off. This will allow me to focus solely on colonization and war. However, I may turn auto-send off and try to use merchants to get a trade embargo against me if I need a Casus Belli on someone.
Settings:
Victory Conditions: Standard
Difficulty: Very Hard
AI Aggressiveness: Furious
Game Speed: 1 minute = 2 months
Fog of War: On
Events: Historical Events Only
Forced Annexation: On
Dynamic Missions: Off
Base Victory Points: On
Autosave: Yearly
The structure of this thread is semi-complex, so read carefully. I am doing posts in five year intervals. The first interval, for example, runs from January 1st 1492 to December 31st 1496. Don’t be confused by the year numbers. At the beginning of each post will be a summary and short-term tactical description. The summary will, obviously, summarize the general occurrences during the interval. The short-term tactic description will describe the immediate goals of the time and whether or not, and to what degree, they were achieved. After these two items will come a list of important dates and things that occurred on those dates. This is provided for technical understanding of the tactics employed during the interval. This is followed by a list of the provinces acquired during the interval.
However, before I post anything, I would like to take you through the Grand Strategy of this campaign of world domination. Anyone who wants to succeed at a task as monumental as world domination needs a plan. My plan, given the nature of the objective, is actually quite simple. It is divided into three phases.
The first phase is colonial dominance. The goal of this phase is to first colonize the entire east coast of North America. The reason for this is to deny access to North America to the British and the French. Columbus, it turns out, will discover Quebec long before he ventures into the Caribbean. After North America is secure, the new goal is to colonize the Caribbean while conquering the Aztecs. After that is finished, I will conquer all of South America, except Brazil. Meanwhile, my seafaring explorers will be busy discovering the route around South America to west coast of Mexico. From there they will venture out to Hawaii, over to New Guinea, and down to Australia. I estimate that around this time my explorers will all be dead. However, Portugal has been doing the legwork for me in the other direction. By now, they should have extensive maps of the routes around Africa and into the Pacific Rim Islands. If I haven’t already, I will get these maps from Portugal, by the pen or by the sword. Now, colonization of the Pacific Rim Islands and Southeast Asia can commence. Once that is finished, we move into the second phase.
The second phase is non-European dominance. China, Nippon, and the Indian nations will fall before my mighty armies. Africa will be cleaned of trading posts placed by Portugal, France, and England; any my colonies will replace them. A two pronged ground offensive across North Africa from the west and into the Middle East from the India. I will meet in the middle and push the Turks back up into Eastern Europe. Now we enter the third phase.
The third phase is European dominance. Conquest of the British Isles will probably be first, followed by France, Central and Eastern Europe, and finishing with the conquest of Scandinavia and Russia. In the end, the world will be mine to rule. Want to know how I plan on doing all that? You will have to wait and see.
Like I said before, the purpose of this thread is to show how Spain can dominate the entire world and nothing can stop her. How is this so? There are three mechanisms within the game that create this problem. The first is the incredibly large amount of explorers given to Spain and the incredibly small amount given to everyone else. The second is the Treaty of Tordesillas. The third is the weak military tactics of the AI. How and why these factors unbalance the game will be shown in this thread over the course of the game. I hope that a game designer reads this and considers it when they are drawing up Europa 2. But alas, I may be dreaming.
It is also important to keep in mind that this only applies to playing solo. However, unless a human is playing France well and is aware of what is going on, this should apply to any multiplayer game as well.
Settings:
Victory Conditions: Standard
Difficulty: Very Hard
AI Aggressiveness: Furious
Game Speed: 1 minute = 2 months
Fog of War: On
Events: Historical Events Only
Forced Annexation: On
Dynamic Missions: Off
Base Victory Points: On
Autosave: Yearly
The structure of this thread is semi-complex, so read carefully. I am doing posts in five year intervals. The first interval, for example, runs from January 1st 1492 to December 31st 1496. Don’t be confused by the year numbers. At the beginning of each post will be a summary and short-term tactical description. The summary will, obviously, summarize the general occurrences during the interval. The short-term tactic description will describe the immediate goals of the time and whether or not, and to what degree, they were achieved. After these two items will come a list of important dates and things that occurred on those dates. This is provided for technical understanding of the tactics employed during the interval. This is followed by a list of the provinces acquired during the interval.
However, before I post anything, I would like to take you through the Grand Strategy of this campaign of world domination. Anyone who wants to succeed at a task as monumental as world domination needs a plan. My plan, given the nature of the objective, is actually quite simple. It is divided into three phases.
The first phase is colonial dominance. The goal of this phase is to first colonize the entire east coast of North America. The reason for this is to deny access to North America to the British and the French. Columbus, it turns out, will discover Quebec long before he ventures into the Caribbean. After North America is secure, the new goal is to colonize the Caribbean while conquering the Aztecs. After that is finished, I will conquer all of South America, except Brazil. Meanwhile, my seafaring explorers will be busy discovering the route around South America to west coast of Mexico. From there they will venture out to Hawaii, over to New Guinea, and down to Australia. I estimate that around this time my explorers will all be dead. However, Portugal has been doing the legwork for me in the other direction. By now, they should have extensive maps of the routes around Africa and into the Pacific Rim Islands. If I haven’t already, I will get these maps from Portugal, by the pen or by the sword. Now, colonization of the Pacific Rim Islands and Southeast Asia can commence. Once that is finished, we move into the second phase.
The second phase is non-European dominance. China, Nippon, and the Indian nations will fall before my mighty armies. Africa will be cleaned of trading posts placed by Portugal, France, and England; any my colonies will replace them. A two pronged ground offensive across North Africa from the west and into the Middle East from the India. I will meet in the middle and push the Turks back up into Eastern Europe. Now we enter the third phase.
The third phase is European dominance. Conquest of the British Isles will probably be first, followed by France, Central and Eastern Europe, and finishing with the conquest of Scandinavia and Russia. In the end, the world will be mine to rule. Want to know how I plan on doing all that? You will have to wait and see.
Like I said before, the purpose of this thread is to show how Spain can dominate the entire world and nothing can stop her. How is this so? There are three mechanisms within the game that create this problem. The first is the incredibly large amount of explorers given to Spain and the incredibly small amount given to everyone else. The second is the Treaty of Tordesillas. The third is the weak military tactics of the AI. How and why these factors unbalance the game will be shown in this thread over the course of the game. I hope that a game designer reads this and considers it when they are drawing up Europa 2. But alas, I may be dreaming.
It is also important to keep in mind that this only applies to playing solo. However, unless a human is playing France well and is aware of what is going on, this should apply to any multiplayer game as well.
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