Jangladesh 1.17 on very hard mode one tag AAR no exploits

[atwix]

I have no idea what you see in these "improved"graphics. To me it looks like a pile of pixelgarbage in white-green-brown.
Especially against the bright snow i cant see anything.

I just wanted to play in some other mapmode then political for most of the campaign..

Granted, if you zoom in it looks like pixel garbage.

But zoomed out normal terrain mapmode play is enjoyable, for me at least.

It's something else.

And it reminds me of one of my favourite strategy games of the nineties..

conquest of the new world, from Interplay.

It was also a pixelated (random) new world, which you had to explore/colonise. And it also had this green/brown/white pixel mess

Call me.. nostalgic

 

[Vulkandrache]

This game looks better than your EU4 screenshots with the mod for one reason: The colors are distinct instead of smearing into each other.
Alot of games do and did this. Trying to be fancy with the graphics while forgetting that someone has to play this mess afterwards.
One of the worst games i ever had with this problem was Civ4 which was completely unplayable for me since every terrain and unittype looked the same.

 

[atwix]

Chapter 11: Emir de Valois

The Brandenburg space marines are still busy with their war versus Bohemia.

They come gunning for the Mughals nevertheless..

They got routed.

Poland is being sieged, with the Ottomans watching closeby.

The Ottomans have a diesel engine, they always need a couple months before they can fire their war engine

They start by stomping the heathens on their land.

This might come as a surprise, or NOT

I had been eying the demise of France for a LONG while now.

Great Britain is close to finishing their war versus Spain. Tuscany is invading France.

The time is right to strike.

I HAVE to, as France is now guaranteed by Spain. Hence I have to attack before their war with Great Britain ends...

A month later, Great Britain did THIS

For 6 AE. Got to love very hard difficulty.

OMG the blobs

Luckily I surrounded the Ottomans almost completely.

Great Britain now borders my bridgehead port of Roussilon, and I got holy war on them directly now.

Brandenburg gets repeatedly baited on besieged forts. In the end, Akbar went on the offensive.

The AI really should learn to focus on ONE war, and not to focus half baked between two

..because, they are losing badly because of it.

King Louis de Valois said "Screw Europe!"

...and moved the French capital to the Turks Islands in the Carribean.

Don't look at me, nothing to do with it

They only have ONE province left in Europe.. Sundgau. Just because Tuscany couldn't core it

Take a look at those cores. And France is now under 100% warscore.

Which is exactly what I was hoping for

Brandenburg focussed on Bohemia. And did this, while losing BADLY to the Mughals

Well, maybe they are right. They can't lose anything to me, so why not.

The Mughals assembled their flimsy cog fleet, and sailed for the Caribbean.

A strange corsair captain led them there, as the Mughals had no clue when it came to sailing...

The French fleet is in cape Good hope, near their colonies there.

Meanwhile, the Mughals are sieging Berlin!

And our buddy is stomping all leftover condottieri and whatnot.

It went from bad to even MORE bad for Brandenburg..

And from bad, to WORSE

The recovery nap of Louis De Valois was brutally disturbed in the Caribbean

Our cog fleet picked up the rum drunk troops, and sailed for Cape Good hope.

The corsair captain knew the way. I hope

In 1694, a comet was sighted

Akbar Shaqri cursed, and tried to hold the peasants in line.

"The ECONOMY, you fools!"

Oh well. Silly peasants.

Akbar returned to the task at hand, and kicked Brandenburg out of the war, annulling all their alliances.

And he did what he CAME for during this war. The vassalisation of POLAND.

They have administrative and humanist idea groups, just like Manchu. Perfect vassal.

And they have cores left in Brandenburg and Teutonic order. Perfect vassal.

The peasants were in line again, and the stability went to +3 once more..

And right after, our +3 grand captain advisor became famous for his work, which allowed the Mughals to take the PRESTIGE option instead of the stability option.

+3 stab, +90 prestige, +20% morale until 1700.

Yay. Don't look at me.

And our corsair captain DID find the way to Cape Good Hope

He invaded their last provinces...

And Akbar put them out of their misery.

France got vassalised.

And forced to accept SUNNI as their new faith. France took religious as first idea, you see. And then I placated their ruler.

EMIR Louis de Valois kneeled before Padishah Shaqri!

It is now VERY sunni in the capital of France. *Cheers*

Europe wasn't amused, to say the least

A coalition started.

Persia started coring the port we gave them from Lithuania, and the Mughals kept one more bridgehead port in the Black Sea.

Taking on the coalition head on is usually not a good idea.

So, time for a good old trick.

I started looking who was allied to ANYONE in the coalition.

Tuscany is guaranteed by Great Britain. Whaddayaknow, I got holy war and reconquest cb (France) on Tuscany

 

[atwix]

Scandinavia is ALLIED to Great Britain. So attacking them head on was no option...

They DO want to help against Tuscany for favours. And so, Scandinavia is dragged into war versus their own ally.

Austria is still in debt, and won't get involved.

You know what is FUNNY?

The trick is to make a coalition member full co-belligerent in a war versus their ally, and then all coalition members will join the war as non cobelligerents, and you can force seperate peace on them then.
It is the best way to break a coalition.

But here? Tuscany is GUARANTEED by Great Britain.

Imagine my surprise when Great Britain effectively became FULL co-belligerent as coalition member, without calling the other coalition members in.

I was like "EEEH WHAT?"

Tuscany wasn't an ally of Great britain, but guaranteed by them.

This turned into an ideal way of kicking Great Britain out of the coalition..

Looking back, I should have threatened war versus the Teutons for Polish cores. But I simply forgot about that option

Who cares. We got a WAR to do

Great Britain is also busy in MALI, and don't focus on MY war.

They did leave a leaderless stack near Spain, which I stomped.

Tuscany tried to snipe me, but the reinforcements force marched to the rescue.

Portugal got dragged into this war also, as ally of Great Britain.

GRMPF.

I didn't plan it like THIS silly AI!

Oh well, I adapted.

*STOMP*

If Portugal can walk here, then I can walk to them!

That 50k troops divided themselves into siege stacks, and went for Portugal.

The Ottomans and the Scandinavians are starting to make a wondrous mess of things

Tuscany did manage to surprise me there..

HOLD THE LINE!

PFWIEUW

In other news: The Hre Emperor is getting stomped. Padishah Akbar took a look at Poland cores, and smiled.

Ming. Diplo vassalised by the Mughals, after they lost all their territory due to bankruptcy chain.

Sujan Singh worked his ass off to give them back all their cores.

Ming THRIVED once more. The Ming emperor could KISS Sujan Singh for what he did, and he secretly accepted a long term integration proposal.

It is almost 1700 now, and it is time to say GOODBYE to Ming.

You better start trembling, Europe

The Mughals just got a tiny bit BIGGER. Tiny bit.

There is ALWAYS a ton of micromanaging to be done after a big subject finishes integrating

First up: State assignment.

OOOOH my god

Ming is JUICY in development.

VERY juicy

Diplo integration gives you STATE cores.

...suffice to say I made ENTIRE Ming state territory.

And assined most of Ming to the TRADER estate.

They had a field day, rest assured....

And THIS is the result. Note that I had to shuffle traders. I steered trade from Ming into Malacca now, and from Malacca towards Goa.

A +90 ducat surplus, even when rooting out corruption at 95 ducats a month.

Life is good in the Mughals.

General Banu Begum had been practising swordplay with Padishah Akbar in Roma.

He tried. But nothing could beat the fury of this woman..

"You really are a wonder, Banu. I think I will give you something better to do then exercise.."

Banu Bogum smiled, and hired a TON of new Telinga mercenaries in Europe.

She had a new target in mind, as their truce was about to run out.

The POPE.

Yeah, we are coming Europe

Better start trembling.

Italy got overrun, and general Banu Bogum now turned her gaze northeast...

..and engaged the Teutons close to their capital.

FIRE!

The Teutons were a worthy adversary..

..but they fled before the might of the Mughals.

Tuscany tried one last time to turn the tide. The Ottomans intercepted them, and the Mughals move in to help them out..

In the end, Tuscany got wiped.

The Mughals take diplo tech, when the cost is 30 per tech level.

Our -%tech cost bonuses are stacking up SO well, that we can tech up at -95% tech reduction cost..

600 base cost -95% is... 30 minimal cost for a tech level. It is capped at -95%.

And guess what? The Mughals are CLOSE to taking admin tech 23, for administrative efficiency level 2

 

[atwix]

Genoa fell. The Teutons got obliterated. Their capital will be sieged.

Yeah, this is going swell

They swallowed our usual peace deal a bit after.

Slowly but steadily, the entire WORLD frowns at the Mughals

A new coalition formed.

If you want to know more on how to deal with coalitions, read everything under the spoiler button below this.

Spoiler

COALITION DODGING.
Dodging coalitions is an art. Especially if you start in Europe. Asia is easy to blob, due to different religions and how they look at taking heathen land.

There is a few important things here, especially if you take the situation where you invade Europe after conquering rest of world.
a. use diplomats to improve relations with everyone who will get severe ae from your (future) conquests.

b. look at peace deal scree, hover over ae icon, see who will join coalition. send diplomats to them.

c. if a nation will go into negative opinion AND has 50+ ae with you, they can join coalition against you if they do NOT have a truce with you.

BUT: if they come out of truce you got a couple of days until they join coalition. Declare right then, and plan for it. Which leads to d.

d. popups for truce running out. ACTIVATE THIS.

e. and making SURE you got this whent ruce runs out.

----->1. a cb against them (holy war for the win, taking bridgehead provinces to get this cb needs planning)

----->2. make sure you can core it or give it to vassal with 'grant province' subject interaction (needs cossacks dlc).

----->3. army near them to crush 'm. Blitzkrieg for the win.

f. If a coalition forms, you can break it by making a member of coalition co-belligerent in a war versus ANY ally of a coalition partner. All coalition nations wil join the war, BUT they can be bargained with for seperate peace. This still hasn't been patched.

g. prepare to do multiple wars at once, multipe theaters, and prepare to MICROMANAGE. without it, you are dead. Popup pause for armies arriving in province destination combined with moving them one provibce helps. Blitzkrieg wars...

h. study alliance patterns. There is ALWAYS a weak link to a coalition, to execute point in f., or to make big coalition member non co-belligerent in another war. It is WORTH it to score an annul alliance peace deal on them just to come back after peace deal runs out.

i. use gifts to get a temporary relation bonus. It can be WORTH it to do so, if it keeps nations out of a coalition, before doing a major AE peace deal.

j. keep an EYE on the truce icon. See WHAT nation will come out of truce WHEN. Then check if they are at war. If so, you can STALL a declaration until their war ends, as they can only join a coalition when at peace. If they aren't at war, then combine popup for truce running out with free diplomat and instant war declaration. FIRE that war, and invade when ready. It is better to declare the war then to see the nation joining the coalition. And stomp 'm when your other wars come to an end. Usually, the ai will focus on some fort FAR away from their homeland, and will get completely cut off.

k. Do NOT use forts. At all. Let the subjects you feed in the coalition area KEEP all forts though. The ai nations will siege THOSE, which means less war exhaustion for YOU. Forts are useless, especially if your capital is FAR away. Only forts near straits hold any merit, or near chokepoints.

l. if a big nation is on island, like England, then try do take a bridgehead province ASAP. Land 200-300k troops before the truce runs out, and then overrun their capital.

m. using holy war on a BIG nation can be helpful, as big battles will give you BIG warscore (holy war is superiority war, giving warscore from battles). One can do a quick blitzkrieg and end the war, only to put them in truce again. This depends on what OTHER nations ened to be put in truce. only press attack if no other big nations can join coalitions in the years to come.

n. try to vassalise nations that got stomped. Retake their cores. Plan ahead. If one can vassalise France or PLC that got eaten alive by neighbour, you can do reconquest for little ae. I think you can also threaten war then, to get nations on a truce. But i bet you need to be hilariously big to threaten war versus sizeable nation.

o. The HRE. Protestants can be kept out of coaliton for a LONG while if you attack nearby catholics, as long as you send diplomats in advance to do +100 relations. One can conquer entire catholic milan out of HRE, only to see protestant switzerland keeping postitive relation with 80 ae, when sunni nation conquers closeby. Combine this with gifting if you roll in ducats.

p. use BIG allies as attack dogs to help out in fights. Keep using them until their use is gone, and then betray them and eat them LAST on admin efficiency three.

q. annul alliance peace deal.. This can cause rival changes, and neighbours jumping the nation after you make peace. Creating some mayhem in the target continent helps to dodge coalitions, as nations at war can't join a coalition. Read some aar of mine to see why annul alliance peace deal can be golden. Stomp a big nation, only to annull alliances. Come back after that once truce runs out after 7 years. Taking land in seperate peaces will ALWAYS cost more monarch points and AE, so it is usually not worth it. I do say 'usuallly', as taking a port bridgehead to get holy war on the co-belligerent nation can be good seperate peace deal too. Combine this with STALLING the war versus their allies, and declare on them AGAIN while their allies are still busy in the OTHER war versus you.
that's it for now, might add more if something comes to mind.

Akbar smiled.

"BRING IT ON!"

The Mughal army formed a doomstack, and engaged Russia.

*STOMP*

This war required a lot of micromanaging, as many enemy stacks ran around the world.

Let's chase them all down for battle warscore

The Pope ceded this.

France got a bit of land after transferring occupation, and the Mughals took Friuli as a bridgehead port. Which gave holy war cb on Austria and Bosnia.

The coalition got battered. They got defeated left and right, Stack wiped here and there, and Moskva is being sieged.

How to stomp a coalition within 9 months.

How to micromanage full occupation.

How to run out of enemy stacks.

All the excitement of the last decade made me forget THIS.

GRMPF.

Oh well, better late then never.

Important tip: Constitutional monarchy won't work for a nation that assigned all state provinces to estates. You can't make estate provinces seats of parliament, folks. Keep that in mind.

We take Absolute monarchy. +5% discipline, -1 unrest, -0.10 autonomy per month.

Best monarchy form around

I considered my idea groups also, while at it.

The Mughals have admin tech 23 now, and we took offensive and diplomatic idea groups.

Classic WC idea groups.

Offensive gives more forcelimit, and +20% siege ability, which is silly OP. And +5% discipline.

Diplomatic gives diplomat, a relation slot, dip rep for integrating, and -20% province warcost, which is also silly OP.

Great Britain watched in dismay, and declared the Mughals as their new rival.

Its kind of funny, but there is no France in sight on this screenshot. That will hopefully change soon..

Bit busy now still though

A merc army routs Dali on our capital, and wipes them in the end. Korea and Brunei can do whatever.

Protectorates get unique subject events.

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Subject_Interaction_events

All our protectorates are happy now, except for Pagarruyung.

Ayutthaya is a good student, as they adopt our policy.

"The more we sell, the more we sow, the more we grow"

Sujan Singh his long term plan had come to fruition, decades after he finished the industrialisation of the Mughals.

The coalition was shattered like leaves in the wind.

All necessary forts occupied. Time to make peace.

I take everything in Russian Ruthenia and Russian Crimea that does NOT have a claim of the Ottomans on it.

Our alliance would be dissolved fast if I did take those..

I'm big enough to take vital land of the Ottomans now. They 'desires our provinces', but the malus to opinion isn't so bad.

If Ottomans got militaristic ruler, our opinion drops to +50 due to it. It never got lower though.

Russia cedes some forts.

We core Rutheniafor ourselves, and hand everything else to Persia.

They now have all provinces around the Caspian Sea. The holy fishing grounds are safe

Important tip: Use culture mapmode to assign missionaries. Try to convert an entire culture at once.
The rebels for that culture won't have time to pop, and the only danger will be religious zealot rebels of the religion you are converting.
If those zealots get high risk of popping, switch to another religion to convert, and focus on another culture within it. The other zealots will tick down to 0% again.

You will NEVER get rebels.

Spoiler

This is good old 'Sansa doctrine' from the Naxos AAR

Anyways, entire former Ming is being converted to sunni religion.

Great Britain swallowed annul alliance peacedeal a long while back, and Portugal also.

Tuscany swallowed a 100% peace deal.

France is on the map in Europe! But a bit out of place....

Before this, diplomats were sent to ALL HRE nations that would join coalition.

It might seem unbelievable, but NOONE cared about this, as the HRE is NON catholic.

France is coring their given land, and converting their old cores to sunni religion.

Akbar smiled.

Emir de Valois!

The Mughals had integrated Ming, and vassalised Poland and France.

Still, the conquest of Europe was only BEGINNING

Akbar reflected on that, while enjoying some well earned time off.

Akbar had paid for a national epic, and watched the première of his own song of legend..

Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

 

[Tom D.]

Great progress, that Sunni France was really funny to see !

Minor question: what is that merchant with the text balloon? Probably a DLC feature since I never saw it before. Just curious.

 

[atwix]

Great progress, that Sunni France was really funny to see !

My Joke on that was meant to be under the *cheers* jack sparrow gif. It got erased so it seems. Added it back.

It is now VERY sunni in the capital of France. *Cheers*

Minor question: what is that merchant with the text balloon? Probably a DLC feature since I never saw it before. Just curious.

I got no clue. It is new, that is for sure.

Maybe some dlc spy stuff gets unlocked at dip tech 12. Slander merchant spy activity or so?

 

[Vaximillian]

Minor question: what is that merchant with the text balloon? Probably a DLC feature since I never saw it before. Just curious.

That's Slander Merchants covert action, −10% global power for 5 years per 70 spy network points. Requires Mare Nostrum.
Espionage has been reworked for 1.17, the actions are now unlocked with DIP tech and not the Espionage group anymore.

 

[parats]

Seems like a wc is possible, would be glad to see it.

 

[atwix]

Chapter 12: Full scale EUROPE invasion

Akbar departed for Europe again.

No time to sit idle! We got a continent to conquer

The Ottomans and the Scandinavians join in versus SPAIN and AUSTRIA.

Ottoman fleets had revealed that a big Spanish stack was in Southern Italy.

Akbar engaged it!

Leaderless stack, so...

*STOMP*

I did that, to avoid that the Spanish stack would join up with the Austrian forces. The idea is to focus on Austria FIRST.

First war against a major power is always the hardest, and Austria sure is MAJOR. Especially on very hard.

Most of their troops were in the Netherlands area though.

Akbar could advance into their land.. He moved his ENTIRE army for the invasion of WIEN.

EEK

Austria used these few months to focus their entire might versus the Mughals!

160k troops were parked near Wien now

It might seem suicide to stand my ground near Wien, but guess who is closeby..

BUT, the Mughals have military tech 24 now, and Austria is behind in military tech.

They got 23.

Akbar decided to defy the Austrians, and parked his army at the start of the narrow valley that lead to Wien.

Austria was confident they could rout us, and engaged

COME GET SOME AUSTRIA!

The Mughal empire set up a defensive line, in preparation for what was to become one of the largest battles Akbar had ever seen...

The foolish Austrian Emperor seriously underestimated the Mughals. Only after a couple of days, he realized he would need ALL his stacks to help out

The Austrians got baited to engage. Akbar knew he stood no chance, but he had sent a raven to the Ottoman army, with a plea for help.

The Austrians will soon outnumber the Mughals two to one!

Will the Ottomans arrive in time?!

wait, is that BRANDENBURG moving towards us?

Yeah! They are hired by Scandinavia as condottieri

BOY was I glad I bought Mare Nostrum there

The Austrians likely would have WON if not for them

The Ottomans are still a few provinces away..

Akbar senses the time is right to leave his defensive position.

He engaged the weary Austrians from the flank!

It seems the space marines are doing a fine job. The Ottomans are trying to reach the fight in time, as it seems it is almost over...

The Austrians got WRECKED, as the Ottomans engaged on their OTHER flank now..

VICTORY!

Akbar watched the battlefield, and reflected on what happened. He had never taken part in such a BIG battle before..

He decided to press the attack on Austria, and he moved into the valley east, towards Wien.

The Austrians weren't the only concern here.

Bosnia got declared upon, as they could join a coalition due to the peace we did on Tuscany.

Akbar took the momentum to engage the Bosnian siege stack in the Polish Province of Bihar!

He deemed it safe to pursue the Bosnian army, as Hungary was forced to give access.

The Austrians won't be back so soon..

But then the Austrian fort in Istria fell.

The siege stack in Istria force marched towards Dalmatia, and arrived there before the routing Bosnian army!

They got slaughtered upon arrival.. Poor sods

Akbar took a moment to plan his next moves.

Lithuania was declared upon also (they got out of truce), and Silesia is protecting them.

Akbar led his stack west, into Silesia. If the Austrians come back, he has time to ride back from there..

The heartland of Austria is almost sieged up, but Austria has the entire lowlands in the west also..

Sometimes i just roll my eyes at the AI

Their heartland is close to falling, and what does Austria do?

Lose time in France.

Your loss, Austria... They duked it out with Scandinavia in the Alpes

Lithuania got peaced out, after Silesia capital fell.

They vanished off the map, as their last province was shortly after taken by the Teutons, near the Baltic sea.

It seems the Scandinavians are losing in the Alps.

Akbar decided to help them out, and sent reinforcements! A small shock infantry army was sent to the Alps, backed by war elephants.

You can see his army moving northwest, towards the lowlands, at the top in Ansbach..

Ottomans wiped a condottieri stack in Ravensburg, and also moved northwest.

The entire Mughal army rode for the lowlands now

Our reinforcements arrived in time in the Alps, and took the FRONT line

The Scandinavians cheered when the Mughal shock infantry descended the mountainside!

I felt a bit like Hannibal there

 

[atwix]

Hmm, it seemed the fight had more Spanish then Austrian forces... One would forget that this is a war aimed at SPAIN

The enemy lost close to 75k troops in that battle

That 'll teach you to attack in mountains

Austria had enough. Their forces got defeated, their heartland was completely sieged up, and their lowland fort line besieged.

They swallowed an 'annul alliance with Spain' peace deal.

Akbar rubbed his bloody hands with glee...

The Ottomans engaged the routed Spanish stack, and the Mughal empire rode SOUTH into Spain now

A competent cousin was ruling MANCHU now. He wanted some action, and he agreed to besiege Spain in Italy, backed by the Ottoman fleet.

We never doubted you, dear cousin.

Spain was still a force to reckon with. They tried to break through our lines, towards the siege stacks around Provence.

Permission DENIED

Another example of how MICROMANAGING makes you win wars. Using popup/pause for armies arriving, and moving them one province at a time, enables you to outmanoeuvre enemy stacks that travel from difficult terrain to someplace else.

Akbar arrived a day before the Spanish, and made a nice trap!

The Spanish lost 30k troops in that fight, and got routed..

Their capital fell. Akbar decided to declare on Portugal also (they came out of truce), because... we are in the neighbourhood

The situation there was stable for more then a year. The Spanish tried to break through to the northeast, but the Ottomans intercepted all their moves..

Portugal got besieged swiftly. Their troops were repelling an independence war.

The Mughals are filling offensive idea group for the +20% siege ability, as things didn't go FAST enough for Akbar's liking.

War won..

The Portuguese had left their capital unprotected, and messed around inside Persia.

They got routed..

As they had nowhere to run, they got stack wiped in the end.

EVERYONE in Orange gets attacked as soon as they go RED

Use popup/pause for truces ending

Aka, everyone that comes out of truce, gets DOW same day.

Next up: Kiev. Their land was given to Persia.

As said in previous chapter: the HRE didn't care much about our conquest of Catholic turf...

Mainly thanks to the Mughal diplomats

Spain gave up. They swallowed a 100% peace deal.

They ceded ALL the cores back to France, and France received EVERYTHING northeast of Roussillon. The northern coastline of Spain got divided between the Mughals and France, as France had two cores there. The fort in Napoli was also a Mughal province now..

Ottomans got some ducats for their trouble

Portugal ceded their entire coastline in Iberia, and some colonies. Including Taiwan, Cameroon, and the leftovers in Cape Good Hope.

Peace with Bosnia was stalled, despite the call for peace.

The Mughal diplomats were working tirelessly to improve relations with EVERYONE in the HRE.

If not, a big HRE coalition would form

Akbar gunned for Great Britain now.

They were doing a war in Mali, and couldn't join coalition during the Spanish war.

Time for some French reconquest

The British didn't see this coming.. they were horribly outnumbered in British France!

The army that protected British France was slapped left and right and center, until it got wiped.

Every nation that goes out of truce MUST be attacked. Or a giant coaliiton would form in no time, spanning entire Europe.

Next up: The Pope. Moldavia got stomped by the troops that stomped Kiev before this..

Our diplomats had finished buttering up the ENTIRE HRE.

Bosnia got kicked out of the Balkans, and only hold Venice and the province north of it.

Taking Venice and Treviso would have triggered a HRE coalition.

France got the brunt of the Bosnian land, and Mughals went for a corridor towards Hungary.

That was part of a longterm plan, that I had theorycrafted after watching the alliance patterns..

Got to wait and see, I guess

The pope got SMASHED.

General Banu Begum had died valiantly in the Alp fight versus Spain, so Akbar assigned his HEIR as new general. Sikandar Shâh Shaqri got some valuable experience by bashing Bonifacius Popus.

This really helped. I had hired a +3 tax advisor to get THIS at some point. I wanted to get this a bit later, when corruption was rooted out, but hey, I won't deny it now.
-10% diplo tech cost, thanks to this advisor event.

Important tip: It really pays off to hire advisors who give -%tech cost, when you are eager to tech up. If you get the event, dump all your points into teching up during the six years you get the discount..

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Advisor_events

As said before, the spy network in Scandinavia gives us an ADDITIONAL -30% to dip tech cost.

result? The Mughals can tech up diplo levels at -95% tech cost.. for 30 diplo power.

This was planned from the START of this campaign, and I'm glad my (very) longterm plan comes to fruition here.

The idea now is to tech up to dip tech 23 BEFORE 1718. If possible.

Austria had made some new allies during our short truce after the Spanish war.

The EMPEROR is now Luxembourg, and they HATE Austria. They won't even protect them

Suits me...

The Mughals had 100 army tradition by now.

Akbar asked to send the BEST student from the military academy, and he made them his new European stomp general.

Mustafa Ra'ana arrived in Europe, and took command of the second Austrian holy war!

Baiting the AI never gets boring..

 

[atwix]

Austria walked into the plains of Nemours, unaware of the approaching troops on their flanks.. They engaged the baiting stack.

Austria realized they were baited...

They were attacked from three sides now

General Mustafa Ra'Ana obliged his Padishah...

But the Austrians gave one HECK of a fight

The Mughals had an army of 200k in that bait trap, and Austria managed to kill SIXTY thousand mercenary infantry

Akbar ordered a shift consolidation of all the troops, and the merc regiments with 0 units were sent to Roussillon to regain their numbers.
Mercenaries from entire India and China region were flocking to answer the call of their padishah..

Let's CRUSH all these European heathens

As a result of this call to arms, 48k new mercenaries arrived in British France.

The Mughals had hired ALL the available mercenaries in their entire nation

Yeah, the limit allright. Our budget struggled to remain positive

I must say (as I did before), that this entire EUROPE invasion is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

The AI is RELENTLESS on very hard difficulty. They keep attacking in big numbers, with ALL they got.

Still, I always made sure I had full combat width of infantry near each besieged fort.

HOLD THE LINE!

The Austrians got slaughtered allright. Their front line broke. BAD. They lost 7k artillery.

The Mughals suffered another 40k merc infantry losses..

The army got shift consolidated again, and the depleted units sent south to Roussillon.

The stack there got shift consolidated ALSO, and the recovered regiments were sent north.

The Pope only ceded ONE province.

It was all I could take

If I took anything MORE, the entire HRE would coalition me..

We got to REPEL these heathens... again, again, again and AGAIN

The front line advanced, as forts fell..

This Ai.. GEEZ

The Roussillon stack got sent north once more, shift consolidated, and joined the fight.

Got to hand it to the Austrians. They weakened the Mughal army SEVERELY.

They even broke our front line, before the reinforcements arrived.

Our artillery took almost 20k casualties...

"ENOUGH is ENOUGH!"

Akbar took charge of the army, and did a hot pursuit of the Austrians. The fort in Liège had fallen, and the Mughals could now ride to the favourite recovery spot of the Austrians!

Forced march is handy in cases like this

The Mughals arrived in Holland before Austria could regain any morale!

I exhaled after this..

The lowlands are secured.

Time to ride for WIEN once more!

Things started to look pretty grim for Austria.

Their fresh merc army got routed in Wurtemberg.

General Mustafa awaited the routing army, and delivered the deathblow to the Austrians

War WON! Despite heavy losses

Austria was the hardest nut Akbar ever cracked. They sure gave us one HECK of a fight!

This reminded me of the first key war versus nutty FRANCE in my Qing campaign... Austria was as hard to crack!

Time to butter up the HRE once more. Diplomats had done all they could, so Akbar now used donation based opinion forming on the entire HRE.
This can be worth it, to dodge coalitions for a short period..

Great Britain had done little to defend British France.

Peace was made, and Akbar connected French Cores to Iberia, and made a road of French cores towards Paris, along the coast of Gascogne.

Austria gave back ALL French cores. Paris, Champagne, Vermandois and Nemours were French territory again.

Emir de Valois started to rebuild.. Those French cores around Paris had proven COSTLY in lives..

Emir de Valois had to bury 100+k corpses in these provinces, before diseases spread!

"Nice fertilizer!" he said. And then he sowed some corn.

It might seem weird that I snake and take Linz.

But it was part of the big longterm plan I talked about before.

The Mughals could now WALK their armies from India towards Paris AND Iberia, as this Austrian peace deal connected all our holdings in Europe.

There were two British France now.

And one French France.

French France

Don't look at me.

Emir De Valois still kept his capital in the Caribbean..

The Mughals were at PEACE once more. I took the chance to extend the truce with the Teutons, with threaten war for Polish cores.

 

[atwix]

Time to set my plan in motion.

The Hre was VERY pissed now, gifts or not.

The HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

Akbar had always frowned at that name.

They were FAR from holy, they were NOT Roman, and they were NO empire, but a confederation of German states.

Akbar had been planning to deal with this self proclaimed German 'Empire'.

First move: Declare on BOHEMIA, and let the new HRE emperor call in ALL his allies.

This is why I snaked my way to Linz; holy war cb on Bohemia

The mercs were at full strength, and Akbar invited the Scandinavians and the Ottomans to the party

It is time for a holy war against the HRE

Brandenburg was STUNNED.

The Mughals had tricked their ally Scandinavia in a war AGAINST them.

That one war had dragged in almost the ENTIRE HRE, as Aachen was allied to MANY Hre states..

General Mustafa Ra'Ana tried to secure Berlin BEFORE the space marines could reach Berlin... He succeeded! The Indian cavalry engaged the small garrison..

Their artillery tried to BREAK the charge.. To no avail..

Brandenburg came running to Berlin, but came too late. They were movement locked into our doomstack!

And routed...

From there, I went to speed two, overlooking and adapting troop movement to the enemy.

I also baited the enemy, when I saw that Ottoman/Scandinavian stacks were closeby.

This is TENSE

Second move in the plan: declare on HUNGARY with holy war also. (I took province near them earlier, remember). This dragged SWITZERLAND and COLOGNE in.

Why is that important?

Because ALL HRE elector states AND the HRE Emperor are now at war with the Mughals.

I think you might guess my plan here

It took me severe study of the alliance patterns in the HRE to conjure up a way to get all of them in a war at once

But, we succeeded, and found a way

Now we got to win this

Mughals versus ENTIRE HRE at once. Place your bets.

Rest assured, I did speed one or two at the beginning of this war.

Battles started EVERYWHERE, and I had to watch if reinforcements were needed left or right...

Many stacks got sniped, most battles won.

Warscore was piling up nicely.

But we aren't here for warscore

We need to occupy the capitals of ALL electors and the emperor!

The plan was to siege the HRE from the EAST to the WEST.

I kept scooping the map for battles my allies started, and reinforced them if needed..

Eager Sikh mercenaries joined the fight the Ottomans had started in Budejovice, south of Prague.

Without the help of the Ottomans and the Scandinavians, Akbar would have been slapped SILLY in these wars.

Keeping an eye on all ally stacks wasn't easy.

But I used the 'siege province' command for my allies, and they focussed on the areas I assigned them to siege..

We were indeed moving from the east to the west!

The HRE state armies all came to late to turn the loss around in that big fight.

This was one of the key battles.

Most of them did join the fight, but they all got routed.. Thanks to my 100k reinforcements.

This was some CRAZY fight

Most of the HRE nations were routed, so Akbar went into hunter/killer mode.

Brandenburg got occupied.

The frontline moved WEST into Aachen and Cologne and SOUTHWEST into Bavaria and Ravensburg.

The Ai did its best, but Akbar simply outmanoeuvred them!

And various stacks got WIPED.... Maratha Elephant units really were the early version of motorised infantry

The HRE got slapped silly

It went from BAD to even MORE bad...

to WORSE

The Mughal empire finally had the chance to focus upon the nations they declared on.. Bohemia and Hungary got besieged now!

18 march 1721 went into the history books as the day of an important victory for the Mughal Empire.

On that day, the Mughal Empire DISMANTLED THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE!

The Mughals took some nice land, and let the mercs loose inside the HRE.

We now got French France, and Polish Poland on the map.

Akbar had forced the entire court to sail to Roma, and forced them all to watch the ENTIRE HRE being burned to the ground.

The mercenaries pillaged and looted for MONTHS on end.

The nobles, the court and even the entire HAREM were forced to watch what would happen to ALL the heathens in Europe!

It is the victory dance of Akbar, with the entire court watching, that went into the history books though!

Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

 

[Vaximillian]

18 march 1721 went into the history books as the day of an important victory for the Mughal Empire.

On that day, the Mughal Empire DISMANTLED THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE!

Awesome indeed, but if you managed to get all the electors in the same war, you didn't even have to occupy them; occupying the Emperor would have sufficed.

 

[atwix]

Awesome indeed, but if you managed to get all the electors in the same war, you didn't even have to occupy them; occupying the Emperor would have sufficed.

that is not correct, occupying capital of all electors is needed.

It said so in the HRE screen. The tooltip even listed what capitals I was missing

I think you are confused with all electors must be your ally and occupy capital emperor.

That works too. But obviously, I wasn't allied to some/all electors

A mix works too. Few ally electors, rest occupied.

 

[Vaximillian]

that is not correct, occupying capital of all electors is needed.
It said so in the HRE screen. The tooltip even listed what capitals I was missing
I think you are confused with all electors must be your ally and occupy capital emperor.
That works too. But obviously, I wasn't ally to all electors
A mix works too. Few ally electors, rest occupied.

I think I only had to occupy the emperor when I dismantled the Empire as Sweden a while ago. They might have changed something though, they do it too often.

 

[atwix]

I think I only had to occupy the emperor when I dismantled the Empire as Sweden a while ago. They might have changed something though, they do it too often.

Yeah.. I guess so.

Still, I think you Always had to either ally, or occupy all electors +emperor to dismantle HRE.

Not sure on anything, as HRE stuff keeps getting changed a lot.

 

[Tom D.]

Great progress, now you won't have double AE from the HRE.

Why don't you use cavalry in your armies? Aren't they useful for your flanks?

Austria had enough. Their forces got defeated, their heartland was completely sieged up, and their lowland fort line besieged.

That's a lot of effort and work for so little gain, but I understand the reason behind only annulling alliance treaties. But still...

The Portuguese had left their capital unprotected, and messed around inside Persia.

Applause for the wonderful AI, really ...

Yeah, the limit allright. Our budget struggled to remain positive

Ever tried to use War taxes? For such a big Empire like yours, it can give a lot of temporary extra income.

Can you disband the Empire while an ally occupies an elector's capital?

Nice hats by the way .

 

[atwix]

Why don't you use cavalry in your armies? Aren't they useful for your flanks?

It's one of my flaws. I use merc infantry only, and use all my normal manpower on artillery. Hence I almost never use cavalry, especially late game. You are not the first to say this, but I simply don't adapt. I tried, but ended up with 1k cavalry in different armies, just because micromanaging other stuff had priority. The manpower change in 1.17 makes it lot harder to use front line normal troops for me. I tend to take LOAD of attrition casualties to make sure I outmanoeuvre and WIN versus enemies, rather then making perfect army setups and micromanaging troops so they don't take attrition. But that is o good explanation either. It's one of my flaws.

That's a lot of effort and work for so little gain, but I understand the reason behind only annulling alliance treaties. But still...

I did attack them again right after, when they had no allies So one could argue that the 'gain' is the ability to stomp Austria as player only, instead of relying on allies to defeat Austria+Spain. Annul alliance peace deal can trigger rival shifts also, which can isolate a big nation for the rest of the campaign. So, why not I guess

Ever tried to use War taxes? For such a big Empire like yours, it can give a lot of temporary extra income.

I was filling offensive idea group. If I am ahead in tech, and if I don't have military idea group to fill, then I would use war taxes. God knows I used it constantly in Naxos aar.

Can you disband the Empire while an ally occupies an elector's capital?

I honestly got no clue, as HRE stuff changes constantly, with stralth changes or patch changes. I just made a plan that I knew to have 100% success chance: occupy all elector capitals and emperor capital. I *THINK* anyone can occupy the capitals, as long as YOU are at war with them. But how this works with different wars and someone else occupying capitals of 'm, I don't know.

Nice hats by the way .

hope you liked the use of "empire Total war" screenshots


In other news: I took a week of vacation last week, so I was unable to play/write. Next chapter will likely be posted on tuesday.

 

[atwix]

Chapter 13: Mopping up very hard

Last chapter, Akbar dismantled the HRE.

The idea now is to keep EVERYONE on different truce timers, and to avoid the formation of really big coalitions.

Next up: Russia.

Akbar lost almost all his generals in the HRE campaign, so he hired a couple of new ones, and dismissed the worst one.

The Mughals have 90 army tradition, even without forts, and even without +20% siege ability from offensive. The Mughals got this high army tradition just from the stacking army tradition from finished sieges. And once we got the extra siege ability, it will likely never go below 90 ever again.

It can give some good generals

Anyways, Moskva is being sieged and falling fast, as Russia didn't upgrade its forts past level 2 for some weird reason

The Russian 80+k stack did NOT dare to engage Akbar on their capital.. Yet. They are still gaining back full morale while we are at 14% on their capital

Let the manoeuvring begin!

They finally have the stomach to engage us!

But 100+k Mughal troops were already force marching to reinforce the fight..

I have more artillery then infantry inside Russia..

Oh well, as long as they don't get damaged too much

Important tip: With level 6 or 8 forts, it can be hard to get max +5 siege roll bonus from present artillery, and equal infantry to protect that artillery, inside ONE province. Province supply limit simply gets in the way. So you can never have enough artillery for sieges in a big nation.. All you need is enough infantry to protect the siege stacks, while using +5 siege roll artillery stacks that are bit bigger then minimal siege troop amount for sieging. Like 25k+7k infantry on a level 8 fort needing 30k minimum to besiege. And 40k infantry nextdoor to protect 'm.

This requires scooping the map for trouble though. Or the Ai will roflstomp your siege stacks.

The idea here is to siege entire Russia within a couple of months, and then to engage their battered stack somewhere.

Time to give the deathblow to Russia

War won..

Russia got its bordergore problem solved. They didn't show any gratitude though

The favourite son of Akbar had died in a Russian winter siege.

The advisors and the nobles were relieved though, as the man was too impulsive to rule, in their opinion.

Akbar pondered, and decided that his favourite daughter would make an excellent ruler.

Akbar preferred a learned and wise daughter as heir over his hotheaded militaristic sons.

Much to the dismay of the Ulema, and the peasants..

Jodhaa Sharqi was the head of the Mughal Islamitic center of scholarly learning, and had a big interest in the Art of War, thanks to the reputation of her mother..

..the deceased general Banu Begum. Akbar did more then swordplay practise with her..

Disclaimer: More in spoiler buttons below! Only press if you are old enough

Spoiler

All the pictures of recent chapters come from the movie

Bajirao Mastani

It deserves a mention here, as some readers might like this kind of movie.

It is a 2015 movie, romantic story, going at snail SLOW pace in a setting of early 18th century India

The film has grossed over ₹350 crore (US$52 million) at the box-office, emerging both as a commercial and critical success and one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time. The film received several accolades at various award ceremonies across India. At the 63rd National Film Awards, Bajirao Mastani received seven awards, including Best Direction and Best Supporting Actress for Azmi. The film received fourteen nominations at the 61st Filmfare Awards, and won nine awards including Best Film, Best Director for Bhansali, Best Actor for Singh, and Best Supporting Actress for Chopra.

Spoiler

Several nations in Asia can join a European coalition.. The Mughals stomped them all. Korea hardly put up a fight, and got reduced to landlocked OPM inside Manchu.

And then... there was peace

Over the last decades, Padishah Akbar Sharqi funded a big spy network in Scandinavia, and made sure the Islamitic center of Scholarly learning had enough funding.

Jodhaa Akbar spent her teens amidst the books, trying to help her father with some radical reforms.

1723 was a crucial year for the Mughal Empire.

The tech of the Mughals was now up to par with most European nations!

The corruption inside the Empire was now COMPLETELY rooted out!

The Ulema got the promise that the Sharqi dynasty would continue to convert the world to Sunni religion. In return, they promised the assistance of their best missionaries, and the acceptance of Jodhaa as the heir to the throne.

6 missionaries (+3% power!) converted the heathens non stop..

Jodhaa Sharqi wrote a master thesis on foreign diplomacy, and her views quickly got adopted by the military. From now on, peace conference diplomats would use flexible negotiation. All enemy provinces cost 20% less in warscore now..

Most of these enemy provinces were protected by level 8 star forts now though

Akbar introduced a new type of soldier into the Mughal army, after years of spy research in Scandinavia. Sappers!

These siege specialists would give the Mughals a big advantage in sieging the dreaded European star forts. The best among them studied the European artillery designs, and the next goal was to reverse engineer the captured European royal mortars.

25k of royal mortars, combined with the expertise of the sappers, would make European star fort sieging a lot easier

Akbar considered to raise war taxes to pay off the debt made during the last big campaign inside the former HRE.

The budget that previously went to rooting out corruption got used for this..

And then it was time to depart for a new round of European conquest!

Easy wars though. But necessary, to keep them all from forming a BIG coalition.

Emir De Valois did a formal request for help..

France had hardly gotten the time to recover, after the costly and exhausting campaign to dismantle the HRE.

Akbar decided the loans would be paid off later, and gave his trusted vassal all the aid they required.

Spain was close to going out of truce, and Akbar wanted France to be ready for war once more!

Troops were already being shuffled towards Iberia, after Bosnia got overrun.

The Ulema eagerly sent missionaries to the former Papal provinces..

Bosnia ceded Treviso to the Mughals, and they are now an OPM on the province of Venice.

Dali ceded half their territory after a quick war. We got to end all these wars, before Spain comes out of truce!

Due to some bug, Spain was able to come out of truce BEFORE we could attack THEM

Within days, a small coalition formed, including Spain, Portugal and Brunei

So the Mughals declared on the ally of Spain, Burgundy. This dragged the entire coalition in.

Stupid bugs

This could have been avoided if truces didn't get buggy sometimes

Time for some bug hunting, I guess

First up: Spanish bug stacks!

The Spanish bug stacks got purged with fire, and Iberia got overrun with siege troops.

Brunei got overrun within months also...

Everyone who COULD attack Portugal and Spain DID attack...

Be my guest

Burgundy sniped our siege stack! The insolence!

A big army got redirected to the north to punish them

All in all, the new coalition got defeated quite quickly. The new Mughal sapper regiments helped to finish most sieges within the year... Star forts or not