Jumping around, the 1.30 edition

[Sfan]

Hello there!

A few years ago, I had immense fun doing an AAR with very specific houserules.

To restrict myself, add some impredictability and enjoy a balanced world while still tryharding and pushing myself to the limit, I switch country repeatedly. This is something I have done consistently since years for fun campaigns, and this creates really interesting story lines. Now that we seem to have a more stable patch and I am back to EU4 with renewed enthusiasm, I wanted to relive this experience.

Basically, I pick a random country and I play it for about 20 years. There is no set rule for how long I have to play it, I stop when I feel like there is nothing more to achieve short term. This can go anywhere from 10 to 40 years, as it happened in one instance in my previous AAR. Once this is done, I leave the country into the competent hands of the AI and jump to a new country, which may be a nation I just destroyed or someone on the other side of the globe. Obviously, my previous nation can become a complete disappointment, or it can thrive. Seeing a minor nation I controlled in 1500 still be a regional power in 1700 is incredibly rewarding.

There are some specific house rules I use.
I try to leave the country in the best possible position. Basically, I don't conquer as much as possible by bankrupting myself, letting an empty shell with 5k debt, no manpower, rebels and a coalition. I leave the country if I'm confident they won't collapse immediately in AI hands. I also try to improve the economy as much as possible as this is the best way to ensure a country's survival long term.
This is also why I won't abuse Estates, given that I'm afraid that the AI won't be able to rebalance things. I will try to increase crownland if I can, especially as we near the Age of Absolutism.
This time, I decided to completely skip the New World and just reroll. It can be fun to play, but for an AAR it does not add much as the nation always disappoints and disappears.
I play in Normal because switching countries is my way of limiting myself. I pondered doing this in Very Hard, but more countries would be dead ends.
I don't use exploits and try to keep things realistic and stable if I can but I play extremely agressively in some dire situations. My previous AAR included several no CBs and trucebreaks, as this is the only way to play some nations. Some situations I will jump in may be more desperate than any situation in 1444. As I said, I will try to salvage what I can before leaving, but some nations were clearly doomed (looking at you, Timurids from last time). I will still avoid no CB and trucebreak if I see another realistic option to succeed.

What you can expect here is a mix of serious gameplay and hopefully useful advice (in all modesty, I'm pretty good at this game), some potential fun challenges if things don't go my way (an Icelandic North America might have slipped in my previous AAR), and the real feeling of history unfolding. That's what I really enjoy. To me this feels like a superior version of an observe game, as I can root for some countries and I am emotionally engaged.

 

[Sfan]

All of this being said, let's start right away! My first country could be anything from Ming to Ulm.

Welcome to Kedah. For those of you who don't know where Kedah is, this is one of the two small OPMs north of Malacca, trapped between Malacca and Ayutthaya's subject (the western dark red one). Well, that's some serious challenge thrown at me right away. Glad I did not chose Very Hard after all

Usually, I would just present the nation in the first post, but I wanted to offer some exciting gameplay from the get go, so I start playing right below.

A closer look tells us we are evenly matched with Pattani our neighbour who is obviously our only valid rival. We are a Plutocratic Monarchy, giving us an extra merchant that we can't use efficiently right now anyway. Our ruler is average and there is nothing else to note immediately about ourselves, so let's have a look at other nations.

Obviously, the big bully breathing down our neck is Malacca. They are the strongest nation in the area by a fair margin, they want our land and we can't attack them as they are a Ming tributary, we are not and Ming is not interested in Kedah.

We have a Force Limit of 7, and our ruler is instantly made into a very decent general (a siege pip !) That's obviously not enough to take out anyone easily, apart from Pattani. My logical move is to secure alliances. Ayutthaya and Pasai would be the next two nearby powers, but Pasai is actually hostile too and Ayutthaya is not interested.

I still manage to get Siak and Pagarruyung on my side, which opens interesting possibilities. Malacca is a no-go (because of Ming), and Ayutthaya too (they are way too strong). I can fabricate of my neighbour Pattani, and on Pasai on the other side of the strait.

Pattani is the weakest one by far, but I can't call in any ally unless I wait 10 years.

Their alliance with Palembang and Pasai means I will be 1v3. I'm confident I can stackwipe Pattani on day 1 but that leaves me in a precarious 1v2. I will be relying on the AI screwing their landing (they often do) and ideally not getting a land access. They will obviously have complete naval superiority, and that's the area in the world where this is really important to control the sea.

Pasai is stronger, but Siak and Pagarruyung are interested in joining:

We know they are allied to Pattani, who I can still stackwipe on day 1, and Siak and Pagarruyung should take care of Pasai 2v1. The real issue here is Malacca. I need to somehow hold 1v1 without losing control of Pattani, when they have twice my force limit.

Hopefully, OPMs have ways of their own. The basic opener for all non European OPMs (and for weak nations in general) is to open by going insanely over the force limit and get into massive debt, but repaying it by multiplying your starting land multiple times in the first peacedeal.
So, deep I start digging, taking the 5 loans from the burghers (this is insanely good) and selling the land I just seized (this is bad, but I really need it as it is literally the equivalent of 8 loans in my situation).

And here we go! I hire a morale advisor, go 8/7 FL for now, but I am ready to hire mercs.

The numbers look good if you consider my 8k men will stackwipe the 3k Pattani immediately, but Malacca hasn't mobilized yet.

As expected, the war starts with an easy victory. There is definitely something wrong with AI OPMs this patch, they started with 5k men and disbanded 2k. All AIs field less troop in peacetime, which is not necessarily bad because it can help their economy (if they don't hire mercs then disband then re-hire, and I think that's what majors are doing right now, but that's another debate and I need more input to be certain). However, this is nonsensical for a nation that does not have the strategic depth to hire troops or to hide their main army before they can reinforce it. OPMs should have a different logic. Anyway, in Normal difficulty, you always could stackwipe any OPM as another OPM if you had a morale advisor and went slightly over Force Limit, so that does not change much here.

I hired the Free Company because Malacca is coming at me. I'm at 12/7 Force Limit and I am bleeding money.

Hopefully, the AI can be outmicroed by pausing every single day. This was already looking like the most micro-intensive war I have played in a long time.

I win that battle against Malacca and I can finally start making progress on my front. By now, my allies should have handily taken control of their own 2v1!

Are you kidding me? They are both sieging the same fort while Pasai is sieging them and has 2k spare men to reinforce Malacca. This is a complete disaster.

Hopefully, I manage to luck out on the fort and finish it before Pasai reinforces.

I don't peace out Pattani yet. This is extremely important. They can't build armies yet, but the ennemies will most likely waste time desieging their capital fort. If I peace them out my situation will actually be worse.

As expected, Malacca has started sieging with half their men and split their armies in the process allowing me to stackwipe 3000 of their men and to start sieging them. I can't stress out enough how important it was not to peace out Pattani to win the war. Meanwhile, Pasai has fallen to us, and Siak to them.

I want to see if I will be lucky and finish the siege of Malacca before they finish the siege of Pattani. That would allow me to actually take land away from Malacca (right now I can't because I don't occupy any fort).

This does not happen, and I have to peace out Malacca now or risk losing all the momentum, because Siak will soon be peaced out by Pasai, who unsieged their capital. I can ask war reparations from them which will help me a lot in the aftermath of what is now a certain victory, even if we have no warscore.

I can keep the mercs to re-siege Pattani and send my men to relieve my Sumatran allies.

I finally resiege Pattani and peace them out, but Siak surrenders to Pasai shortly after, as we were about to finish unsieging their capital (was at 49%...)

Still not a worry, as the war is won. We massively outnumber our ennemy and have naval superiority to ship troops and speed up sieges, so we can easily crush their army, chase them and stackwipe them:

I give some land to Pagarruyung (Gayo and Batak) but take the best provinces. This is important to keep trust with allies early game when you called them with territory. If you don't keep your promise (If they lose more than 10 trust), you won't be able to call anyone with the promess of territory for 30 years, and this is a very powerful tool as a small nation early game.

The 3 provinces I took were the trade centers. My empire is disconnected, but that's such a massive boost to our economy it is worth the risk.

We leave the war with a far superior position, although I would really have liked to break Malacca. Given how poorly our allies fared, this is still a major victory. The debt is insanely high for such a small nation, but we can disband our mercs, consolidate our troops and pay the loans back.

Our economy will massively improve once we finish our cores, and we are now in a secure enough position that we can reasonably expand. I leave it there for now, after these 5 first years. This war was clearly one of the best ones I've fought, and I must say I'm really proud of myself. I will talk about the rest of our Kedah campaign in another post, because this one is pretty long already. I let you guess where we will expand and what will happen to our country.

For reference, I give our 1444 situation. I will compare it to our current one once we leave Kedah.

Development 1 province, 10 development
Income 1,98 (+0,84 at 0 army maintenance)
Army 4/1/0 (7 FL)
Tech 3/3/3, no idea group

 

[Sfan]

After that initial war as Kedah, we were in a really good position. Still weaker than some of our neighbours, but definitely in a less precarious state. Our first task was fixing our economy, and once we finished coring and stating our new provinces, our income skyrocketed.

We also needed to find new and better allies, especially because I had plans to turn on Siak and Pagarruyung eventually. Brunei was by far a superior choice.

Major diplomatic events were also occurring opening new possibilities, as Ayutthaya was getting destroyed by a coalition who would force them to release their subjects.

By that time, rebellions started plaguing both my land and Pagarruyung. I did not want to attack into the jungle and Pasai wouldn't let me get access to kill the Pasai separatists (how rude) so I had no choice but to find other ways of entering their land. The newly independant Ligor gave me the perfect opportunity.

Pasai was a dead state, and we quickly steamrolled their army and crushed the revolts.

Our ennemies were no match for our new strength, and we easily won the war and cleaned up our borders a bit...

... and expanded North:

That was also the time of our first government reform, and we doubled down on the Trade direction. Let's hope AI Kedah will become one of the richest nations in the world (who am I kidding, they will spam coastal batteries).

Our expansion wasn't over, and we clearly had more to do. Sunda had been beaten down by Majapahit, and they offered a perfect opportunity.

There was no real difficulty in the war, but our navies was almost entirely destroyed to allow us to pass the various straits freely.

I don't go out of my way with the peacedeal and my priority is really to unify the country and fix these borders to help the AI manage it. That's why I don't take anything in Java. I want to use the final years to connect my various holdings, but the Sunni disaster strikes.

Well... 11 years without wars is a big no. I will fix some things in the country and deal with some of the revolts, but then I will jump to my next country. My main task is to build a solid merchant navy to control the Malacca node and help the AI control the seas.

Even if they still have one loan, I'm sure they won't have any issue.

I leave Kedah in a very stable diplomatic situation, with strong allies to cover their back.

There were numerous expansion opportunities that I could not take. Let's hope the AI will see how free some wars are once they get out of their regency, especially this Ayutthaya.

In just over 20 years, we transformed Kedah.

1444
Development 1 province, 10 development
Income 1,98 (+0,84 at 0 army maintenance)
Army 4/1/0 (7 FL)
Tech 3/3/3, no idea group

1465
Development 13 provinces, 147 development
Income 10,17 (+3,58 at 0 army maintenance)
Army 8/4/0 (14 FL)
Tech 3/3/5, no idea group

I had a lot of coring to do, and I had to manually reduce war exhaustion to avoid collapsing from rebels, and I took the burghers' agenda to develop production for cash as often as possible. That explains the tech. Hopefully they will rebalance that on their own. I also could not develop for Renaissance at all, I definitely did not have the powerbase to do so yet. Development and income massively expanded, as expected.
Overall, I think we are in a really strong position. We have the most development and the most income of all nations around us (Ayutthaya, Brunei, Malacca and Majapahit are all slightly behind us), and only our ally Brunei . My only concern is our scattered possessions and the lack of naval superiority (we have no heavies).

 

[Sfan]

As the second part of Kedah was a bit short, I already introduce our next country. We move to another continent and leave South East Asia behind us.

Our new country clearly does not offer the same challenge. Mali and Songhai are the two strongest powers in West Africa. Mali did not expand at all, but at least they did not lose land either, and they are in prime position to control the region.

We already start in a war, but it seems it is a very easy one.

Technologically, West Africa still lacks all institutions. Feudalism grows in the capital of Songhai and Mali, however, because we are Feudal governments:

Religiously, 1.30 introduced an interesting tweak. A Sunni AI seems to ignore conversions altogether, and the new Dhimmi privileges are really interesting.

Overall, I think this new country will be an easy one. We can quickly expand and control a good chunk of the region. I will also try to keep up in tech and forcespawn institutions, and to create a strong economic powerbase. The real question is whether our impact will be big enough to offset the inevitable Spanish/Portuguese colonization, and potential invasion later in the game.

 

[Sfan]

Thanks to everyone for your kind responses. I'm glad to see familiar faces coming back. Even if you don't want to comment, don't hesitate to like my posts if you enjoyed because I'm an attention seeking insecure person it feels great to know that people are following.


Back to Mali. We were in the middle of a war, but the AI had taken care of most of it already.

We take 100% warscore from Mossi without any difficulty. I intentionally do not border Songhai because I want to keep them friendly, at least for now. I don't need to antagonise the only power that can rival me.

As it happens, they are even willing to ally. This removes any potential threat and I can safely start expanding.

Kong is my ally, but they hold a goldmine and they are an obvious target. This war will cement our regional dominance. We abuse the fact that they are split (and that Kong is drilling) to stackwipe them one by one and carpetsiege to prevent further recruiting. There is no real challenge playing as Mali, so I won't go in further details about the wars.

Kong and Jolof are gone, and Macina is several reduced. I stay clear of any land Songhai claimed for now, because I want to focus on internal matters.

First off, we develop Feudalism in our capital.

Regional events are also unfolding, and we have a new neighbour to our northwest.

The starting ruler of Mali also finally died, and I had disinherited the heir as one of my first moves. The horrendous starting rulers is the main thing preventing Mali from doing well, and I get a new decent ruler from a new dynasty, even if his low legitimacy creates the threat of a Civil War.

Finally, we also start hearing about European traders, who do not appear as a threat yet, even if we know they are the ones who might eventually topple AI Mali.

We turn our attention to Fulo, who will definitely not have survived long.

That also allows us to conquer Yatenga.

Now that I started developping for institutions (it made me fall behind Songhai in military tech short term), I know I will start coming back and I will eventually surpass them. I am also big enough to not have anything to be afraid about anymore.
I also finished developping Renaissance during the war, pushing the goldmine near my capital to 37 development and 19 production for 10,51 per month...

As a rule, always try to develop provinces in your capital area, especially if your capital is a center of trade. There is the generic mission to reduce dev cost in the capital area, the fact that I upgraded the Center of Trade in Joma to reduce it even further, and the fact that this is cheaper to place edicts in the capital area.

I keep on improving Mali by switching government form from Autocracy to Iqta. I really want that 5% RCC now that I expand extremely fast.

I use my new powers and clean the remaining tags around me.

However, the threat of Civil War is more and more pressing, and this is not something I'm really willing to deal with. This is the best way for me to screw the AI, so I try to release vassals and feed them my new land.

Timbuktu has nice cores on Songhai, so they are the choice of reason. My second vassal has more to do with where the heart is.

Dahomey has the best flag, the best color, one of the best timed achievements of the game, and I had one of my best games playing as them.

Meanwhile, Songhai rivaled me and they are our next target. I just need to surpass them in Military Tech, which I finally do in 1485. I devpushed two institutions, but I'm now easily catching up while they still have an 85% penalty.

The military 6 vs 5 gap and the number advantage make the war really easy, and I'm not worried at all.

I'm actually disappointed by how straightforward this ends up being. They are afraid of us and disturbed by our vassals. They spend most of the war sieging Dahomey and running away every time I come nearby. We reached the point where nothing can truly challenge us (until Portugal and Spain come ashore), and that's exactly why I'm glad to leave Mali soon after this war.

We just take the time to do a final war:

We feed Macina to Timbuktu and we annex and release Nupe, leaving only Benin, Songhai and our ally Katsina as neighbours.

This is now time to leave Mali for our new country, with two final screenshots.

We are the fifth great power but the best is yet to come, thanks to our goldmines.

We have the highest income in the world!


1465
Development 11 provinces, 91 development
Income 16,10 (+7,35 at 0 army maintenance, courtesy of the goldmines)
Army 11/4/0 (15 FL)
Tech 3/2/3, no institution (64% tech penalty)

1489
Development 37 provinces, 283 development + 113 development from vassals
Income 34,66 (+16,19 at 0 army maintenance, courtesy of the goldmines)
Army 28/4/0 (35 FL)
Tech 3/2/6, no tech penalty. All the coring and the devpushing made us fall really far back in admin and dip.


Mali was clearly a success, but there was no real challenge. The game is not in my hands anymore, and it really depends on how successful and agressive Portugal and Spain will be. There is nothing Mali can do if they coordinate well and focus on them early, but they have all the tools in their hands to prepare and become a regional power.

We now take the direction of our third tag. I won't say who it is for now, but we go back to the joys of OPMs.

 

[Sfan]

Before discovering our new tag, I want to thank everyone for the kind responses.

Sadly, our next country isn't in Europe, there aren't actually that many European tags, but at least we discover a new area and we don't interact with our former country.

As for Mali, they have a nice base but I don't see them being rich long term. Gold is the best early game income, but the area lacks good tradegoods and the trade is really bad, so they will get outscaled. That was still a really pleasant surprise to have the highest income.

Of course, this all depends on what the AI will do. Segway to...

Kedah had many opportunities to expand, neighbouring a weak Ayutthaya and having good allies. My main concern was that I could not unify their holdings because of a regency.
Let's see what they achieved:

Kedah lost 2 provinces. Pattani got released, and Malacca gained one province from them on Sumatra. This is clearly disappointing. At least, they kept their allies and they are still a strong power. Most of their issues seemingly came from a war against Ava and Lan Xang, and Ava is burning in rebels after conquering Ayutthaya, so that might be an opportunity to come back.

We leave Kedah behind, and we forget about Mali for now. Time to discover a new OPM.

Hmmm, sure... Nice one. We are locked tiny Ennarea, one of the only surviving Coptic minors who are already really hard to play in 1444 when they can at least expand in the area. At least we are allied to Ethiopia. And in a war against Adal.

This looks winnable, but we don't really have much to gain from that. Our entire army, strong of 4000 infantry, is busy sieging a fort with Ethiopia.

We can also see that Ethiopia is our only ally, and that we are rivalled with Damot.

Damot is also Coptic, but they don't have any ally. They are a promising target. The only promising target, as we have 2 neighbours, Ethiopia and Damot.

1489
Development 1 province, 7 development
Income 1,34 (+0,88 at 0 maintenance)
Army 4/0/0 (6 FL)
Tech 5/6/7, no Renaissance, has unlocked Religious but not taken any idea

I honestly don't know what to expect there and I'm not sure how long I'll play. First, let's win that war for Ethiopia. Then, let's attack Damot. And then, let's hope Ethiopia did not take the province at the border of Adal and Damot, so that we can declare on Adal with Ethiopia once the truce is up? That's a plan. We could always no CB towards Lake Victoria, but I will try to avoid it.

 

[Sfan]

I was clearly not afraid of dying. If anything, more afraid of having nothing to do. Being landlocked and completely surrounded by Ethiopia and wastelands, this is really hard to get something, even from a no CB.

Anyway, we had a war to win.

This honestly went really well. I was surprised by how useful Alodia was. I managed to grab a few occupations to prevent Ethiopia from completely encircling me.

Meanwhile, some news from our North:

And our truce with Damot is up. With the war won, we can start expanding:

Ethiopia peaces out. We gain many favors to boost trust and cement the alliance.

But the real question is what did they left for us?

Well... They released Welayta, but else, they clearly cut us off. More worrying, we don't have access to a colonizable province, we are locked near wasteland. Even after conquering Welayta we would be one province off from being able to take Expansion and colonize towards Ajuraan, they locked that path. That's what I wanted to do.

You can have a closer look at the geography once we annex Damot:

You see the three wastelands to our west, southwest and southeast. We would need Dawaro, owned by Ethiopia, to colonize Afder and Ogaden.

At least nothing prevents us from conquering our new neighbour.

We also develop the goldmine in Kaffa. We are in no position to spawn institutions and Renaissance will come by itself eventually. But some extra money does help.

We finish our last war and we are left with pretty much no option.

I could try to find allies to turn on Ethiopia, but I don't see who. I don't see how I could win 1v2 vs Ethiopia and Alodia eitger. A no CB vassalization of a minor is always an option, but that takes time to payoff and that's extremely risky for the AI to have scattered posessions and to rely on military access/walking through natives. Finally, I chose the safest option and embrace my fate. I'll try to make Ennarea stable and to create a strong Coptic front.

I take my time and convert the new provinces to Coptic and deal with the revolts. We don't want Ennarea to collapse.

We definitely boosted our income with the goldmine, so I abandon the preselected Religious (which the AI wouldn't use at all) and pick Economic ideas. They're the best ones to play passive and we really need the Inflation reduction.

Even with the inflation reduction, and an advisor, inflation is on the rise. That's the only real concern.

1489
Development 1 province, 7 development
Income 1,34 (+0,88 at 0 maintenance)
Army 4/0/0 (6 FL)
Tech 5/6/7, no Renaissance, has unlocked Religious but not taken any idea

1504
Development 4 provinces, 43 development
Income 13,10 (+7,86 at 0 maintenance)
Army 6/4/0 (9 FL)
Tech 5/7/8, no Renaissance, Economic 3

Overall, I'm not satisfied with Ennarea, but I did not expect much. A player can get out of that isolation, but an AI can't, and I did not want to play for 30 years as such a small nation just to setup the AI in the right direction. Let's say we multiplied our income by 10. That's something.
I genuinely think the Coptic Front (we are all allied together) is strong enough to repel the Mamluks. If that's the case, we should keep our 4 provinces and Ennarea may very well be the exact same nation by 1821.
That was a very short one, and honestly not very enjoyable to play. The next nation will have a lot more possibilities.

 

[Sfan]

Saving the Coptic Faith might indeed be an accomplishment. If that's the case, I guess that saves the 15 years of Ennarea. Of course, that all depends on the AI now. Segue to...

Kedah had lost 2 provinces after seemingly losing a bad war against Ava (and maybe one against Malacca too earlier). They still had their alliances with Pagarruyung, Siak and Brunei.

They regained one province, and the region consolidated a bit. Siak has been gobbled by Pagarruyung. Did Kedah dishonor the alliance? It seems like it. That does not really change much, the land there is still controlled by their ally. My main concern is that they don't comeback in tech at all, despite not expanding. The 2/0/2 ruler does not help.

As for Mali, we left them in a really strong position.

It seems they defeated Benin, and that triggered their Civil War. So much for me trying to prevent it. I still think they are in a secure position. They are currently pulled in a war against Kano + Songhai + Yao by their ally Katsina, and they still have their 3 subjects. They might soon be left completely out of expansion opportunities, but at least their position is really secured.


I introduce the next country right away, because I played ahead and the next tag is the most interesting so far.

This one is definitely a major power already, even if the diplomatic situation in India can be really tricky.

As expected, we lack any good allies as we are the only major Hindu nation. We are allied to the small 2 provinces nation of Kolathunad, on our west coast. They wouldn't accept vassalization as we hold one of their cores, and this alliance is a complete waste. They just take away some of our trade.
Our other ally is Kalahandi.

I have a soft spot for them, they have a super cool flag and I did a very enjoyable Ganges Khan run with them. And at least they would agree to a vassalization.

Our last friendly neighbor is Andhra:

It seems they were forced to annul their alliance with us and they are left without any ally. They transfer their tradepower, but I see no reason why we should not invade them instead.

This leaves us with our two hostile neighbors.

Gujarat isn't that impressive, and we beat them in a recent war. At the same time, their alliance with Jaunpur might be annoying, and their land isn't our priority.

Bahmanis is obviously A LOT stronger. Their alliances with Delhi, Malwa and Bengal are extremely scary. But their land is more valuable. They have some of our cores, this is the proper trade node and this would make us a lot more compact.

Finally, no institution has spread to India yet. This will need to be adressed too.

I see opportunities to unify the Hindu nations by conquering Andhra, breaking my useless alliance to conquer Kolathunad, and vassalizing Kalahandi. The rest might be a lot more complex if we don't get ourselves out of diplomatic isolation, but this is both exciting and interesting.

 

[Sfan]

I would not expand into Indonesia unless I control Bengal. Unless I really can't do anything in India. As it happens, there were many opportunities the AI did not take, so India it will be.

1504
Development 44 provinces, 355 development
Income 34, 30 (+10,47 at 0 maintenance, +3,30 when drilling)
Army 28/9/5 (43 FL)
Tech 6/8/8, no Institution, Economic 4

Under my new leadership, Vijayanagar starts a complete reshuffle of its politics. We've had enough of protecting useless little Hindu states, time to unify the Hindu powers. And to find new alliances to the North instead.

Kolathunad is definitely the worst alliance we could have. I'd rather have Jaunpur, even if they are allied to Gujarat.

Oh, and Multan isn't bad either.

Oh, and Kalahandi is not really useful as an ally, I'd rather have them as a vassal.

And Andhra would look much better in yellow.

Which makes us close enough from Orissa to have them accept vassalization.

In less than 2 years, we transformed the situation. We have 2 new vassals, including Orissa who has numerous cores. And we abandoned useless allies for a very powerful Jaunpur. I pointed out the difficulties of Vijayanagar, but I always knew we could eventually get out of that isolation. India is so dynamic and that's probably my favorite region to play in.

Jaunpur is not a rival of Bahmanis and they don't want to join for territory there, but they are a rival of Bengal and we now have a CB on Bengal thanks to Orissa. I just build up a bit and wait for my new military tech. I decide to tech up tech 9 at a very expensive cost instead of developping. I want to expand agressively, and I would like to finish Economic ideas (the AI has already filled 4 of these and they are pretty solid ideas in any situation, so I keep them) and secure my position before developping.
The real trigger is that Malwa and Delhi get into a war with Baluchistan, Gujarat and Multan, my new ally. That makes things even easier as Malwa is weakened and Delhi is unwilling to honor any Call to Arms.

We attack on Bengal so that we can call Jaunpur, with the Orissi cores as our CB. But we set Bahmanis as cobelligerant.

Unusually for me, I kept most of the forts. At least a line of hill/jungle at the border. They are very powerful to lock Bahmanis is bad provinces.

You can see how the war is pursued there. We have a main siege stack, and we outmaneuver their stacks with a strong stack of full combat width led by a 5 maneuver general.

We can make them lose a lot of time sieging our forts and our vassals and canceling the sieges to run away/not do it and be defeated, while we secure most of their forts at very little cost.

Slowly but steadily, we overwhelm Bahmanis and we can turn our attention to the bigger picture.

Things aren't looking good for Jaunpur, but they aren't for Malwa either who is sieged by basically everyone in India at once. Our priority is now to eject Bahmanis of the war and to save Jaunpur.

We give Orissa their 2 cores in Bahmanis, we take 3 forts (one north given to our vassal, two south) and we secure a land connection to Orissa. That also removes the entire coastline of Bahmanis. They are basically dismantled.

This also gives us one of the sickets mission reward we could hope for:

Don't mind if I do.

Time to finally rescue Jaunpur. The warscore is really bad because we ignored the wargoal so far, but the relative strength is clearly in our favor so long as Jaunpur is in that.

We finally manage to kick Malwa out.

And we can turn our attention on Bengal, finally winning this war.

This wasn't the hardest war, but there was still a real possibility of losing it. Not our Kedah war vs Malacca, but still a very enjoyable and microintensive war, especially the early outmaneuvers. Our superior leadership clearly helped (that 5 maneuver saved the day).

It is time to cleanup our former ally

This now makes India a lot more compact, and we completely shifted the balance of power. Delhi got annexed by Multan, and instantly reformed by our ally Jaunpur.

As you can see, the Bahmanis/Malwa/Bengal block looks a lot weaker. Gujarat has close ties with Delhi, but their land isn't the highest priority. In 12 years we have already secured a strong position, but I don't want to end it immediately. I stillt think there is a lot of work to do with the economy, the institutions, and I would like to do a second war against Bahmanis to reclaim our cores. That's still a lot of years, but we shouldn't be too much over 20 years. And if I do all of that, there won't be anything left to stop Vijayanagar.

I don't have a lot of screenshots anymore, but I assure you we spend years building workshops and destroying coastal defences. I still think the AI might rebuild them before Manufactories, but there is sadly nothing we can do to prevent that...
I also find myself a new vassal, the fourth one.

They do also have some cores left.

After over a decade of economical management, time to strike Bahmanis again.

On paper, this still isn't an easy war, but we secured enough fort to remove their strategic depth.

We quickly peace out Bengal and Malwa to focus on the main front.

The war is messier because I deleted all of my own forts to secure the economy in the previous decade, but we aren't really challenged, just annoyingly carpetsieged by the AI until he surrenders.

I take back all of my cores, and I secure the 2 border provinces between Delhi and Bahmanis for my vassal Jharkand. Let's make it clear for the AI than Vijayanagar will eat Bahmanis, and noone else.

We use the little time we have left to develop for institutions. We have long finished Economic ideas and we picked Influence as our second group to help with our 4 vassals. Hopefully the AI will at least get the third idea (to reduce annexation cost) before strating the integration of the vassals.

We leave Vijayanagar in an ideal spot.

This looks even better if you look at it from a diplomatic perspective.

Embracing the Renaisance and Colonialism pushed us all the way to #3 GP

We are fifth for now because I did not wait for the tick of the month, but we will be third once it updates. This also gives us a general idea of the world. Ming exploded and France is strong, those are the 2 main takes. Also both Muscovy and Poland successful in the same game.

We sadly aren't the first in income this time, but those statistics are sweet too:

1504
Development 44 provinces, 355 development
Income 34, 30 (+10,47 at 0 maintenance, +3,30 when drilling)
Army 28/9/5 (43 FL)
Tech 6/8/8, no Institution, Economic 4

1529
Development 59 provinces, 561 development + 168 development in vassals (it was 26)
Income 82,28 (+48,57 when drilling)
Army 44/8/20 (76 FL)
Tech 8/9/10, all institutions, Economic 7, Influence 0

That's a real satisfaction. I had high hopes as India is probably the best region in the game to quickly become strong, but I did not expect us to be that strong that quickly. The diplomatic situation really helped, we came in right when Delhi collapsed and was replaced by a better Delhi. Our economy is insane, and that makes it even more surprising that someone has more income. We pretty much caught up in tech, we developped institutions and we have an extremely powerful army that can really afford drilling. From there, I don't see how the AI potentially messes up.

We leave Vijayanagar to discover a new continent. I rolled 3 American nations in a row, but refused to play them, especially that late. So I guess it's not that hard to guess which continent it is.

 

[Sfan]

Before introducing our new nation, let's review the performance of our favorite AIs.

Kedah had stabilised, and they stayed exactly the same:

These pretender rebels shouldn't be much issue. My only concern is that they fall far behind in tech. They still have Pagarruyung and Brunei as allies, so they should still be safe from any attack. And they actually could inally attack Malacca: we saw that Ming is not in the GP list anymore and they were the main thing protecting Malacca.

Mali had kept on consolidating the region, and I wasn't worried despite the Pretender Rebels.

They finished the integration of Dahomey (RIP the best blue of the game) and they are about to finish Timbuktu too. Their tech still isn't great, and they are allied to literally all remaining powers in the region. That might be their height, especially if the Iberians start colonizing agressively.

Finally, Ennarea had a strong Coptic front but no real expansion possibility. The key to their survival was placating Ethiopia until the end...

Well... No more Ethiopia. Only Alodia, who is decent, but Ethiopia + Funj should easily beat Alodia + Ennarea.

I'm worried for Ennarea, but Kedah finally has possibilities to expand in Malacca. Mali is predictibly strong and stable. And Vij will most likely be a strong power for the rest of the game.

This leaves us with our fifth nation. I had clearly hinted that this was in Europe, as I teased about a new continent and refused to play in the Americas this time.

That's an interesting one for sure.

 

[Sfan]

Hello there !

Back to Sweden we go. We were a subject of Denmark, but I had not given any other information about the country. The general situation of the country is actually pretty bad:

1529
Development 26 provinces, 146 development
Income 19,13 (+4,86) That's the real issue. The Swedish AI barely built anything, except, you guessed it, shipyards.
Army 6/1/2 (22 FL) And here we go. They have an impressive navy of 32 with one carrack and 22 galleys. But 9k men.
Tech 10/9/10, all institutions, Trade 5, Offensive 5, Admin 1

I'm definitely not convinced by Trade ideas when you basically own one node, with 2 nodes upstream. That's probably something I will abandon at one point. Apart from that, the economy is horrible, and we can not afford going to Force Limit. Our tech is great, so at least that's something.

My first move will obviously be to gain independance. Luckily, we have very valuable nations willing to help us, while Denmark is diplomatically isolated.

That Poland has the PU over Lithuania and looks really stable for once.

On the other hand, Denmark has SLIGO as their only ally. An impressive choice for sure. Interestingly, they have a PU on the Palatinate who is disloyal.

Before going into war, I had a quick look at Europe because we had not seen anything yet.

Nothing too strange here, no power has really consolidated. Castile did not get the Iberian Wedding and Scotland still holds strong, so no GB or Spain. Poland and Muscovy are looking great, and the two of them are actually allied, which is really uncommon and explains a lot.

The HRE is exactly what you would expect, I waited for 1.30.2 to start the run for that exact reason.

That's a very unsuccessful Reformation so far, but that can still change. We are firmly catholic and this is too late to get a center of Reformation, so I don't plan on changing, at least now.

Now, to the war:

The Palatinate is willing to ally because we are both disloyal. This makes Denmark extremely scared, and something very rare happens:

I'm now really worried that Denmark might also abandon the union on me and waste the opportunity of an easy war, so I declare immediately.

Denmark seems to be in a very sorry state too. You'd expect a bit more men, even if they quickly recruit.

Now that we are independant, we also have a new ruler:

And he is a complete disaster...

During our war, Muscovy jumps on the occasion. That forces me to rush for the Norwegian provinces. I'm fine with them reclaiming Novgorodian land, but Norway is mine.

We quickly get an heir, and he is much better. You can see Scotland sieging Sligo and getting sieged in return. They'll win the race to the capital and we'll easily kick Sligo out.

Finally, the war is won without any real difficulty.

We get the really bad Norwegian land because I honestly don't want to siege it anymore and I want to deny it to Muscovy. We also give one province to Poland so that they're not annoyed: we need them as an ally. I don't take the provinces in Karelia to avoid antagonizing Muscovy. And then I mostly take money. That honestly isn't much, but I'll have time for a second more useful war.

We now set our eyes towards a new target pretty much the only one we can access:

The run actually starts going sour, even if there is no apparent difficulty. Just paying for our army to wage wars incurs debt, having corruption from new land makes it worse. I start realizing that Sweden is actually in a worst spot than in 1444 and instead of expanding and snowballing, we have to stabilize things. A cruel king with horrible stats and bad events don't help either. I honestly did not expect Sweden to be difficult so I also played a bit careless until I fell into a bit of a debt spiral during that war.

Anyway, we still win it without any military difficulty:

Where is the OPM bank of old patches when you need it

That's enough expansion for now. Coring with a 1 admin ruler and dealing with revolts when he is cruel and we have super low legitimacy from a new dynasty is a real pain.

Meanwhile, Muscovy peaced out Denmark, took the Karelian provinces and forced them to release Norway. Good for us I guess, although Denmark and Norway quickly ally.

My intention of being peaceful is suddenly questioned when I am called to arms.

I have absolutely 0 intention of helping poor Poland, but I'll accept the call. We need allies. By the way, this happened because Poland and Muscovy both eclipsed Denmark, and Poland thought it would be a good idea to rival their ally Muscovy instead and lose their protection against the Ottomans. Good call.

Strong Ottomans.

Meanwhile, we pursue diplomacy.

Poland rivaled Muscovy, but Muscovy did not rival Poland, so they are not actually angry at us from being allied to Poland.

That can be really tricky to be allied to both of them, but it gives Sweden extra security, as Poland is getting carpetsieged by the Ottomans while I completely ignore the war and sit in Stockholm at 0 maintenance.

I push being a bad ally one step further when I declare my own war in the middle of all of that:

There is really no challenge anymore except dodging the numerous revolts that plague Norway and Denmark. Mecklenburg even jumps on Denmark too, and they start chain bankrupting.

We quickly peace out Norway, and the Ottomans finally end their war:

Sorry for not helping, Poland. I was really busy doing... stuff.

Much better. We improved relations to prevent coalitions. We also avoided taking the Polish province that the Ottomans forced them to return to Denmark, let's stay friendly. The AI might need allies.

We now control the most valuable provinces of Scandinavia. Owning Sjaelland also allows us to sell some of our navy.

Time to take a decision I very rarely take:

We finish coring and prevent several revolts during the next years. Meanwhile, poor Denmark bankrupts about once every year.

Our situation looks great on paper, with strong allies and a firm control over Scandinavia. But there are numerous weaknesses behind that. The economy still isn't great, our two main allies hate each other and we might have to make a choice (worst, the AI might have to make one, and this will probably be a bad decision). More worrying, our disaster ruler, numerous -stab events and the coring set us really far behind.

We have the worst tech in Europe. One might question my decision to abandon almost filled Trade ideas, and one might question even more why I decided to double down on Sweden and pick Quality instead. My thought process was that the AI was stable for now so I could fall behind in military, but Sweden would need to punch above its economical weight lategame once they eventually lost one or both of their allies, and potentially went to war with Muscovy (you never know). Stacking quality is probably the best option, and that's also historical. Offensive + Quality + Swedish ideas and events can make a REALLY scary Sweden lategame if they don't collapse. But for now, that set us behind.

We clearly improved, but I'm worried this might completely collapse in AI hands. The situation is clearly not stable, and the economy still isn't looking great.

1529
Development 26 provinces, 146 development
Income 19,13 (+4,86)
Army 6/1/2 (22 FL)
Tech 10/9/10, all institutions, Trade 5, Offensive 5, Admin 1

1553
Development 47 provinces, 339 development
Income 25,08 (+11,70)
Army 20/4/6 (46 FL)
Tech 10/10/10, no Printing Press, Offensive 7, Admin 2, Quality 3

We gained independance and more than doubled our development, and our army is a force to be reckoned with. But our economy is still pretty bad and our tech is a disaster. I would have also liked to turn Protestant or Reformed for stronger military bonuses, but adding more instability to Sweden was out of the equation. I can't stress out enough how surprised I was by the state of Sweden (and how bad it still is). It has potential, but a single bad war and they might go down the Danish route (who bankrupted 7 times or something).

For our next nation, I must admit I had rolled a Siberian Tribe and said... nope. I could have played it but honestly did not feel like it. My second roll was a lot more interesting. And in Europe too.

 

[Sfan]

It has been quite some time since I updated this AAR. I may have spent a bit too much time playing Age of Empires these last few months, but I came back to EU4 last week and I really wanted to keep playing on that timeline: I had a lot of fun so far and I really want to see how the AI will play with my previous nations. I'm playing games by intense phases so probably expect numerous updates in the next days/weeks and rest assured that even if I go silent for a few weeks/months I never forget EU4 and don't forget that AAR. I hope people will still be around to follow our journey around the world.

As usual, I will start by looking at our previous nations. This will also refresh our memories of this AAR.
Our first nation was tiny OPM Keddah. We had grown them substantially and they became a strong regional power under our control, but they stagnated since then. Here is how they looked last time we checked:

And here is how they stand now:

They lost their alliance to Pagarruyung and Malacca gobbled almost the entirety of this nation. Kedah gained one province and some development during these years, but this is a meagre consolation for the loss of a strong ally and the strengthening of their main rival in the area. Kedah is still allied to Brunei but that's the only thing keeping them safe: Malacca is clearly a step above them and would probably destroy them 1v1. In theory, their game can still go in any direction: winning a war against Malacca would remove their only real threat and make them very powerful, but they could die at any time if Brunei does not help them.

Our second nation was a very strong Mali:

They were a very dominant power about to complete the integration of Timbuktu and they had only allies/vassals left in their region. Did they find any expansion?

They did not, but things are promising. They broke their alliance with Katsina and can probably invade them at any time and Ashanti appeared through event so they now border two weak nations they can invade. They still have their alliance with Kanem Bornu so they're not completely alone either. We see that Castile starts expanding in the area, they are in Arguin and Brazil so far, but they could reach the Ivory Coast any time. Morocco holds strong for now, so the threat shouldn't come from the North yet. The annexation of Timbuktu also gave them a very big font, and that's obviously the most important.

We had then jumped to Ennarea.

The small landlocked OPM had very limited options and we did the best we could, but they were completely locked by Ethiopia and in a precarious situation with their only ally being Alodia.

Wait what happened to Alodia? Our ally somehow defeated the Mamluks and they give us a nice buffer, and a nice protection from Ethiopia. Ennarea is still completely locked away from any expansion unless they attack Ethiopia with Alodia.

We had also played as Vijayanagar and did extremely well in the very volatile Indian region:

We had surrounded ourselves with vassals, had secured good allies and has completely crushed Bahmanis and their own alliance web.

They annexed one of the vassals and are in the process of annexing Orissa, and they won another war against Bahmanis. Things are looking great. Vijayanagar has lost their alliance with Delhi and Delhi seems to be collapsing, but that shouldn't be an issue. They still have a very strong Multan on their side and no real threat. I see them thriving in the future.

Finally, our last nation was Sweden. Still undet Denmark, we had gained our independance and expanded nicely, but we weren't as strong as we looked with an extremely bad economy and technology compared to what you would expect.

As I said in the previous post, it can go any way. If they stay stable for a few decades they will be a really scary regional power for the lategame, but they might also collapse, especially if Muscovy or Poland turn on them (they are allied to both Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, which is both good and bad depending on how the situation evolves).

I had played the next nation last summer, so I give you the full story next post: I'm sure we all want to see this timeline move forward.

 

[Sfan]

After Sweden, we aren't exactly out of your comfort-zone. This is another medium power in Europe with great potential in 1444, but they too had stagnated so far while their neighbours expanded. This is also on the patch where the AI was mainly building Shipyards, so they aren't as strong as they could be if they focused on their economy.

Let's have our first look:

1553
Development 27 provinces, 289 development
Income 27,03 (+6,38)
Army 13/4/6 (34 FL) and a very strong navy
Tech 12/12/12, no Printing Press, Economic 7, Defensive 7, Trade 5. Up to date in tech and pretty decent ideas. Trade ideas are almost completed. They are not my favorites but they are not the worst, especially with the new trade distribution in the Mediterranean.

The main things to note is that we lost Naples (as always in 1.30) but are unexpectedly not under Castile. The alliances are pretty good with Austria, Naples, the Pope and an OPM Genoa in Corsica. France and Castile are two scary neighbours, however.

Our expansion paths are limited. Castile is allied to Austria, Milan, Lucca and Provence are part of the HRE and protected by Austria: all of those are out of the equation. I don't think we are strong enough to defeat France without relying on Austria being good, and I'm not confident on Austria not messing up this war. Keeping a nice defensive line in the Pyrenees and playing it safe seems our best option for now. Our alliance with Naples serves a goo defensive purpose, but it also blocks a viable expansion path. The alliance with Genoa is useless. I would like to vassalize them because they have juicy cores, but I absolutely can't get their relations over 190: they are Protestants, I'm not a Great Power to influence them and they are Republic so I can't RM.

My first moves are to cancel our alliances with Naples and Genoa and to start fabricating on Tunis, our only real target. I get Ferrara as a decent ally instead, they are also part of the HRE so they should be stable and not call me in bad wars, and they have a decent 16k army.

Morocco has Tlemcen as a vassal, Tunis is pretty solid and Fezzan is still independant. They are all allied, this will be a pretty tricky war.

I have naval supremacy but Castile granted military access to them so that's a bit irrelevant. We have about the same number of troops but the Papal State is not really committing anything in Africa.

After losing a battle in Tlemcen when Morocco unexpectedly reinforces, I decide to cut that war.

That was definitely winnable but that would have been expensive and probably longer than I'd like. I think cancelling Tunis' alliance with Morocco is the best option: in 6 years I'll be able to attack them separately and this should be pretty easy. Meanwhile, I can focus on other things.

The most important of them is to turn on our former ally, Naples:

Not only is this good land, but it is also in the Genoa trade node. Naples' only ally is Genoa and I can get their land this way. I do not call the Papal State because I don't need their help and I want all the land for myself.

The war is really not challenging. We completed our Trade ideas and thus completed the Aragonese ones (this was our third idea group). This gives us extra morale from our finisher on top of Defensive idea and our army is no match for nations without military bonuses or ideas.

Meanwhile, Lucca jumped on the opportunity and attacked Genoa.

We vassalize Genoa and force religion on them (which converts their only province). That drags us into the war with Lucca.

We take 100% from Naples, seizing the entirety of their Western coastline.

Lucca does not exactly stand a chance, that mechanic is always a bit unfair for the poor AI nation who tried to expand.

We annex them and grant their provicne to Genoa who has a claim.

We use all the money from these wars to build our economy and quickly develop our nation until our truce with Tunis is up.

Expectedly, the war is very easy now that Morocco is not part of it.

We get the entire coast of Tunis and Fezzan, after improving relations with the Ottomans to prevent a coalition. We add all this land to Trade Companies and get an extra merchant.

As soon as the war is over, Tunis re-allies Morocco. I hoped that they would rival or at least fall apart. If I want to turn on Morocco, I will have to fight Tunis again so I wait for the cores to finish.

My final core finishes today, and the Ottomans also just payed back a loan and will now honor the call to arms of Morocco... I checked last month and they would not. That's unfortunate but I can't do much about it. Morocco would just have been an extra bonus and I might have been unable to take much because of potential coalitions but the important land was Tunis to setup trade. A strong Morocco allied to the Ottomans also isn't bad: it's a nice counterweight to Castile.

As I can't expand, I focus on internal matters:

The spam of buildings also unlocks my mission tree:

We finally reach the end of our truce with Naples who allies Milan.

Milan is a pretty strong nation, but our army is extremely strong and we win battle after battle. This is just an opportunity to get close to 1000 ducats from Milan before peacing Naples.

I could get more, but the other provinces are outside of the Genoa node and out of my current states. I'm also on the verge of coalitions.

After 24 years, we have massively grown and are now truly the masters of the Western Mediterranean.

We barely make it to the 8th great power:

I would have liked to attack either France or Castile, but both would have been extremely risky wars for very little gain. The Ottomans also protect North Africa, so Aragon is a bit out of easy expansion paths, but that's not my concern anymore. They have already grown under my guidance, and I'm quite satisfied with the result even if there was nothing extraordinary.

1553
Development 27 provinces, 289 development
Income 27,03 (+6,38)
Army 13/4/6 (34 FL) and a very strong navy
Tech 12/12/12, no Printing Press, Economic 7, Defensive 7, Trade 5. Up to date in tech and pretty decent ideas. Trade ideas are almost completed. They are not my favorites but they are not the worst, especially with the new trade distribution in the Mediterranean.

1577
Development 44 provinces, 462 development
Income 61,51 (+34,14) The big improvement is there, we secured a lot of trade with our conquests and filled Trade ideas to boost that further. I had completed the churches and workshops and was starting to spam manufactories.
Army 20/4/6 (42 FL) and a very strong navy
Tech 14/13/14, all institutions, Economic 7, Defensive 7, Trade 7, Offensive 3. I am up to date in tech and Aragon would not really benefit from any admin or dip idea group right now. The obvious choice was a military group and I chose Offensive which gives a nice middle ground between Quality and Quantity (discipline, pips and Force Limit) to complement Denfensive ideas and Aragonese ones (they have morale and Artillery Fire, that's pretty solid lategame).

After 2 European powers and Vijayanagar, I would like a smaller power next, especially outside Europe. I get exactly what I want. Any idea on the area?

 

[Sfan]

Thank you everyone!

After our trips to Sweden and Aragon, we are about to leave Europe. And we had Vijayanagar before that, so we had a streak of relatively strong powers: time for a change.

Before that though, let's have a look at our favorite nations.

With the growth of Malacca, their situation was getting more and more difficult and I had growing concerns for them.

F. They lost a war against Malacca and then another one against Lan Xang. They have the same tech as 24 years ago so they are probably trapped in a chain of bankruptcies. They will most likely be dead by next update. This is very disappointing, they had at least as good a position as Malacca when I left them, if not better. I secretly hoped they could form an AI Malaya or something awesome like that.

At least, Mali wasn't really threatened. They had the opportunity to expand into Katsina and Ashanti and a solid alliance with Kanem Bornu. We know from Aragon that Castile isn't the scariest Castile even if they are not collapsing either.

They are really stagnating. At least they are teching and getting ideas, but they re-allied Katsina and I have no idea why they did not invade Ashanti yet. Castile started colonizing Sierra Leone.

Ennarea was in that weird spot of being allied to Alodia but not Ethiopia, and Ethiopia completely landlocking them.

The Coptic Front reunited! Ethiopia massively expanded in the Horn of Africa and re-allied Ennarea. The Mamluks are finally collapsing to the Ottomans so I'm pretty sure the Coptic nations are safe for now. Alodia and Ethiopia are not allies though, they might be rivals but I hope Ethiopia grows enough to ecplise Alodia. They need to unite to hold if the Ottomans get a border with them in Egypt. Absolutely nothing to say about Ennarea itself, as expected.

Vijayanagar is the strongest of the nations we played so far. I wasn't really afraid, but how are they looking now?

Oh god they are SO scary. They annexed all their vassals and still have their alliance with Multan. They have decent tech, at least one good ally and they can expand in literally every direction. I guess governing capacity starts being an issue for them and that's why they did not go ham.

Our European friends of Sweden had a solid grip on their region with very weak Norway and Denmark nearby, and an alliance with both Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania.

They are consolidating, as I hoped. Muscovy formed Russia and won a war against Poland who formed the PLC. Sweden is now allied to Russia and not the Commonwealth anymore, this is a lot less risky. The Commonwealth is now trapped between Russia, the Ottomans and Sweden, ready to be partitioned. Sweden came back a bit in tech and ideas, completed their conquest of continental Norway and they won a war against Denmark for Gotland (they already had Sjaelland). They don't have a lot of avenues for expansion anymore because they now get closer and closer to the HRE, but you never know. They have Russia on their side and they can get a huge portion of the PLC if they play their cards right. Can they get the entirety of the Baltic?

And here is Aragon, in a strong position after our 24 years with them!

3 majors (or at least medium-sized nations) and 2 European nations in a row, that's way too much. Where is the fun when I can't slowly watch the AI undo all my work as they did in Keddah?

That's a change! Central Africa hasn't consolidated yet. They seem to be the weakest of the 4 nations left in Kongo and they are allied to Karagwe who united the interlacustrine area. What can we make from this? That's what we'll see. The cards are not entirely in our hands though: these nations can be really strong in 1444 but they fell extremely far behind in tech and external powers could play a huge role in the area.

 

[Sfan]

1577
Development 3 provinces, 25 development
Income 3,21 (+1,42) That's quite the change with our previous nations...
Army 5/1/0 (8 FL)
Tech 8/7/9, Defensive 7, Espionage 2: I abandon Espionage immediately.

I wasn't that confident about Yaka: we were the weakest of the nations in the region on paper. Even if we could unite the region, we'd face a massive external pressure because we all are extremely far behind in technology and institutions. We all have Feudalism and Kongo has Colonialism.

You can see Printing Press growing in the Northwest of Kazembe: those 2 provinces are Protestant for some reason (Kongo is Catholic, I guess that comes from that but that's really random). We are all even in Miltech, which is what really matters.

Kazembe is truly the strong power of the region. They are allied to Chokwe and a weak Mutapa.

Being Catholic, Kongo is really isolated. Their only ally is the OPM Benin, probably too far away to be impactful anyway.

We are in no position to win wars on our own, as you can see below:

Thankfully, we have a very stable ally: Karagwe. They might join a war against Kazembe with the promise of land but we can't bring them against anyone else. It seems we just allied because we only have one favor.

Finally, our opening comes from the instability of our neighbours. Kongo and Chowke had lots of rebels and Chowke is the first nation to collapse:

I could jump on Ndongo immediately but I see them as a new opportunity. We can ally them and bring them against Kongo or Chokwe to get a much-needed edge:

Sadly, they have plans of their own and they jump on Kongo almost instantly:

We had no claim on Kongo, so we had to wait:

Just as we declare, Kongo themselves collapse and Loango gets their independance:

All those events don't make us lose track of our war:

This is a race to get the occupations as Benin expectedly does not contribute. We quickly peace out to get what we secured:

We get a border with Loango, we more than double our development and we get provinces with Colonialism:

Ndongo made their peace with Kongo and we declare war on the defenseless Loango who wasn't independant for long:

With our peace finally made, we can focus on stabilizing our nation. Our first priority is to get a strong ally:

Who better than Mali? We are now close enough from them and they are willing to protect us. This pretty much removes all threats: noone will declare on us, at least from Africa.

Now that we have a bit more security, we can take a very important decision:

I always try to give my nation opportunities long-term. Converting to Christianity will create a lot of instability for a few years but I will be in charge and I'll try to have a smooth conversion. In the lategame, being Catholic will help Yaka get RM and alliances with European nations to get protection from colonizers. This may make all the difference in the 18th century.

We spend the next years dealing with numerous rebellions, including some rebels from Ndongo who strategically export their rebels to us:

Our modest peacedeal with Kongo means our truce is up before Ndongo's one. We can finish them as soon as the truce is up:

Our decision to turn Catholic may have come at the wrong time:

As if to prove us wrong once more, a new Protestant nation makes its entrance:

Kuba breaks free from Kazembe in those Protestant provinces I mentioned. The AI is way too passive and it refuses to fight rebels too often in this patch. That carries our entire run as Yaka, I would have like to play it without Ndongo, Loango and Kuba breaking from Chokwe, Kongo and Kazembe. Nothing we can do about the bad AI though, so we might as well attack Kuba.

Goodbye Kuba.

I also spent all these years managing estates and getting the proper privileges and more crownland authority. A big goal was to push the influence of the burghers and to get their loyalty over 60. This means we can forcespawn institution at a much better cost. We have an event in a state getting -10% devcost and we get the edict so we can actually develop at a good ratio despite the climate.

The province is adjacent to our capital where we will develop our next institution.

We finally peace out Kongo who accepted Benin was not going to help after all:

We use that extra gold to embrace Renaissance in 1590:

Things are looking nice and I have big plans but Ndongo decides they don't want to cooperate anymore:

I really wasted my time with that alliance, that's disappointing. I was going to devpush Printing Press then declare on Chokwe bringing Ndongo, but I'll have to wait.

I develop Printing Press nonetheless, using the Growth of Capital mission, the state edict, and loyal burghers. This really makes a huge difference in ROTW.

We have played for more than 20 years but I still want to do more. We haven't done much conquest even if we completely transformed our nation with 3 institutions and a new religion. Our former ally will have to pay for their betrayal:

I had to push legitimacy and buy a diprep advisor because my ruler is a babbling buffoon. I think bringing Karagwe is worth the effort, this makes the war really straightforward.

We can break the alliance of Kazembe and Chokwe, get money, war reps and Humiliate them:

I won't have the time to attack Kazembe but Chokwe now seems defenseless. That's not the biggest news, however:

We have our first European "neighbour". Scotland is still alive and they are allied to our good friends in Sweden (and France and the Isles). That's definitely less scary than Castile or England (unless they become GB themselves, but it wasn't looking like that last time we saw Europe).

We finish Ndongo and turn our gaze on Chokwe but they got an alliance with our ally Karagwe immediately.

Both nations are above us in tech (we pushed instutituons but did not benefit from it yet) and we are almost 30 years into this nation. We are also low on manpower and ducats. I think doing that difficult war and then stabilizing would push us way over the time limit. Sadly, I'll have to leave it there. Stretching ourselves too thin with wrong-religion provinces and potential revolts everywhere is the best way to lose everything once the AI takes over.

I spend the next 2 years coring, converting (this is really fast with the Counter-Reformation) and dealing with rebels. Yaka should hopefully remain stable:

We end our run in Yaka after almost 30 years, out of money and manpower. We definitely could not have done an extra war even if this is frustrating to abandon Yaka so close from greatness. Reminds me of Kedah, and that's not a good sign.

1577
Development 3 provinces, 25 development
Income 3,21 (+1,42) That's quite the change with our previous nations...
Army 5/1/0 (8 FL)
Tech 8/7/9, Defensive 7, Espionage 2: I abandoned Espionage immediately.

1607
Development 21 provinces, 224 development
Income 17,96 (+8,88)
Army 16/4/0 (24 FL)
Tech 8/9/11, Defensive 7, Economic 0

We massively expanded, that's not a surprise at all. We aren't that strong, though. Some of our land has autonomy and we don't have a very good tech. Our neighbours have 11-12 in Miltech and Europeans have 15-16. Yaka is not really stronger than their ally Karagwe for instance, even if they have more potential.
I'm unsure what the AI will do. Not breaking Kazembe and not invading Chokwe might bite us in the end, but I'm still happy with what we have done.
I took Economic ideas because they are always good, especially for the AI. I wondered if I should go Exploration or Expansion but I think it's too late to secure the coastline. If anything, that might get the AI into trouble.

Even if they don't expand, I think this is a strong powerbase once they come back in technology. As usual, everything is possible, and we might get even more surprises, because next post is giving an overview of the world and presenting our next nation. We might get greener pastures.

 

[Sfan]

I'm back after a month!

We left Yaka in good position and I had promised greener pastures. But before discovering which ones they exactly were, let's have a look at our previous nations:

Our starting nation Kedah had a rough time. They were now clearly at the mercy of Malacca. Were they annexed or did they bounce back?

Neither. They retained their 4 provinces thanks to a massively improved diplomatic situation. They are now a tributary of Lan Xang and allied to Brunei and Bengal. This ensures they will not be attacked but they might still lose provinces in a Malacca/Brunei war. I still like their situation a lot more, I thought they might have been annexed by now.

Mali was strong and sexy. We know they got an alliance with Yaka, did anything else happen?

Sadly not. They can't expand. I don't know why they don't turn on Katsina and Kanem Bornu, and I have even less idea of why they don't annex Ashanti or Benin. Their tech is more and more worrying and the Europeans are a looming threat. Stay strong.

What news of the Coptic Front?

I really like what I'm seeing. Ennarea is stagnating, as expected, but Alodia and Ethiopia pushed back the Mamluks and Ethiopia is expanding in Yemen. I'm not afraid of the Mamluks anymore, the only threat for them will be the Ottomans. I'd like to think I made a difference there by helping Ethiopia defeat Adal and adding extra stability to the region.

Vijayanagar is at a spot where nothing can really threaten them anymore. Rolling such a strong nation early on guaranteed that they would be successful. Did they expand or are they stuck because of Admin Capacity?

They gained 11 new provinces. We're now reaching the Age of Absolutism and they might go on a rampage if they make the good choices regarding Admin Capacity. They still have numerous allies including a beefy Multan.

Sweden was in a precarious situation depending on their alliance with Russia and still behind in tech.

Things are slowly improving. Russia apparently sold them a province, I hope this does not create issues down the road. But they came back in technology and they have one of the best army in the World in quality with a compact country and not many neighbours. That's a very good thing.

Aragon was looking like the exact opposite. A decent tech and a rich country but numerous neighbours and a diplomatic mess.

They kept their number of provinces, have a very good tech, developped a bit. They seem to remain stable. They are still allied to Austria but this is now a very weak Austria after losing the League War. Things might quickly turn in any direction for Aragon. Everyone probably wants a piece of their land and they lost their alliance with the Papal States that was at least covering the Italian front.

A
Also a quick reminder of how Yaka looked after our run. A strong Catholic nation full of potential. Let's see how the AI takes them.

As for us, we leave Africa. And we leave the world of small nations.

DA WHAT? I had pretty lucky draws so far, but this one tops them all.


1607
Development 162 provinces, 1602 development
Income 217,54 (+53,31)
Army 104/43/85 (327 FL)
Tech 16/16/16, Admin 7, Quantity 7, Trade 7, Offensive 3

The opportunities are pretty much limitless. But big countries in AI hands are often a mess, so I'll see which direction I can follow. Cleaning up and consolidating can be a good start.

 

[Sfan]

This is a challenging country for sure. Not because I risk anything, but because it challenges my objectives for such a run. No matter what I do and what happens, the Ottomans will be very menacing. This is already a super strong Ottomans. I had many questions: should i completely reshape Europe by doing major wars, or play it safer and try to consolidate?
I decided I would start by consolidating because that's what I would have done if I had more time. Building a powerbase against weaker nations is more rewarding than doing difficult wars, especially when you are the Ottomans and you are surrounded by options. This way I also avoid destabilizing Europe any further. I could probably have put my heart to it and reached Vienna or even Berlin in 30 years, but I'm not a man of chaos.

So, who are these Ottomans?

As we can see, any major nation in AI hands is a mess. They expanded into every direction but left so minor nations all around them, and their expansion makes little sense. They have scattered armies all around their empire.

Our alliances are pretty pointless except maybe Morocco. That's something we might want to fix.

Expectedly, we are swimming in money. It's not necessarily well used, however. We pay subsidies to random nations and we have a flurry of forts but they aren't upgraded.

This will necessarily shape our run. Despite Ottoman Government, good government reforms and admin ideas, we're almost at our governing capacity limit. This also convinced me to consolidate instead of going on a rampage.

I had talked about the need of better allies and Transoxiana is looking really strong.

I now enter a series of wars to clean up the unnecessarily messy borders.

I won't pretend there was any challenge:

Two nations annexed already, time to expand in the Caucasus. Imereti prevents me from freely walking around the Black Sea and that's annoying. For now, I prefer not to attack them directly because of alliances, but I have Georgia ready for that:

While I'm at it, I also want to complete our control of the Black Sea. Crimea has better alliances:

I take the forts over the coastline, the coastline will be easier to take later on.

I'm now at 5 nations annexed in 5 years. I can't keep the same pace forever, but that's definitely some serious consolidation of the region.

I now switch my focus to a bigger nation, but they are not especially scarier:

I have the ressources to pursue several wars at a time:

I make quick work of Tabriz and even forget to screenshot the peacedeal. They are full annexed. Sixth nation so far.

I could have taken plenty of different peacedeals against the Mamluks. Securing the Nile and the border with Nubia, going around the Mediterranean until I reach Aragon in Tunis. I finally decide to just add some extra heartland in the Levant. This is not necessarily the best land, but it looks pretty.

I don't forget the Mediterranean, however:

And seven nations incorporated in our glorious Empire.

I now turn my attention to yet another direction.

This is the reason why I did not attack Imereti directly. I had a truce with Persia and that would have been a waste to drag Persia in a war before I was able to make them a cobelligerant.

Imereti is dealt with almost instantly. Eight nations gone.

That makes it nine.

And we take a huuuge chunk of Persia. Some of the best land in the World: excellent trade goods and multiple trade centers.

This is now time to turn our focus on our former ally Gazikumukh. They stand in the way of our natural expansion and are allied to nations we definitely want to incorporate.

I can't take too much from Fars because of coalitions, overextension and admin capacity. But at least I get the estuary in Basra.

The Great Horde is officially the tenth nation to disappear. The good thing when you annex everyone is that there aren't many nations left to create a coalition.

And that's a lot of good land too. I don't get Astrakhan, I don't have the warscore. But those are good provinces, and they make us look way prettier which is what matters.

I'm now reaching the end of my conquest spree:

As you can see I'm over my governing capacity, but there's one more war I want to do before the opportunity vanishes:

Mazandaran is the eleventh nation we annex in 23 years. Not even one nation every 2 years, sadly. These two provinces are some of the best in the game too. We secure the Persian Node.

We can leave it like that, with a very good-looking compact country:

A reminder of how it started to see the improvements in borders and font size:

This was a shorter run, focused on conquest, but I definitely had a massive impact. I removed all the minors in region and removed any hope of a comeback from the Mamluls and Persia. I also focused a lot on internal issues behind the scenes. I deleted some forts, upgraded others to help the AI, boosted the economy and tried to do conquest upstream of Constantinople and not downstream towards Europe.

How do we look after that?

I think we can safely say that we are the best.


1607
Development 162 provinces, 1602 development
Income 217,54 (+53,31)
Army 104/43/85 (327 FL)
Tech 16/16/16, Admin 7, Quantity 7, Trade 7, Offensive 3

1630
Development 218 provinces, 2207 development
Income 333,82 (+81,75)
Army 200/0/200 (489 FL)
Tech 18/17/18, Admin 7, Quantity 7, Trade 7, Offensive 7, Quality 4

You can see all that happened behind our 11 anexations and multiple wars won. The goal was to make the Ottomans even scarier. Removing random nations around them to get complete control of trade in Crimea or Aleppo, conquering mostly in useful trade nodes with a specific focus on the Persian tradenode. We removed the subsidies and deleted some forts, but we upgraded our border forts, especially near Russia/Hungary/Poland. You never know. We also modernized our army by creating perfect 20/0/20 lategame stacks. We are too early for them to be the most effective but the AI never has enough cannons, that gives them a headstart. And we completed Offensive AND started Quality. With Quantity/Offensive and the economy to back the Force Limit, Quality is just what we need to ensure the Ottomans never lose a war. I was still spamming manufactories and Soldier's Househoulds. The maximum manpower is 300k but it should grow.

That was a pretty strange one. I tried to make it interactive and interesting by counting the nations we annexed, but to be honest this was mostly a conquest spree by exploiting alliances and truces to avoid coalitions and make every war as easy as possible. Behind that, some common sense economy management and a lot of deletion of buildings and rebuilding of better ones. The result is honestly impressive, I launched a Very Hard Ottomans in a normal game. Let's see how this ends up.

 

[Sfan]

After rolling mostly strong nations (even if some of them were in a precarious position), I also wanted some weaker ones. But before seeing what the dice has in store for us, let's have a look at our previous nations:

Our first nation, Kedah, was in a sorry state. We had left them in a strong position, but they had slowly declined and were on the brink of being annexed with four provinces scattered in 3 different places. They had some protection, at least. Was it enough?

Oh well, they are down to one. Lan Xang wasn't enough to protect them from Malacca. Maybe the Europeans who start appearing around them might save them by attacking Malacca? I doubt it.

Mali spent the last decades sleeping, slowly falling behind in tech and letting the Europeans colonize the coastline. Is there anything new?

Nothing new. They even let Britanny take one of the provinces of Ashanti. They still refuse to attack Ashanti and Benin for some reason. At least they are catching up in tech.

What news from the Coptic Front?

As we know, the Mamluks got beaten by the Ottomans so I'm confident Ethiopia can bounce back in their war with Ennarea's help. The real threat is that the Ottomans are now bordering Alodia, and scarier than ever.

Nothing could seemingly stop Vijayanagar.

And nothing did. They gained yet another 15 provinces and over 100 development. It feels good to see a nation doing well. I need at least one success story. We might interact with them again soon.

Sweden had bounced back from their early struggles and so long as they keep their alliance with Russia, I'm confident in their survival.

Definitely not what I envisioned. Russia broke their alliance with them and attacked them and took a huge part of Finland. But it's not all bad news, Sweden took parts of Prussia from the Commonwealth and Russia might struggle if the Ottomans attack them. Sweden still has a nice heartland, and a good control of the Baltic to pay their high-quality army.

Last time we checked, Aragon wasn't expanding as we might have hoped. Their position remained precarious with weak alliances and strong neighbours.

They secured an alliance with GB which is an excellent thing. It should deter some agression. They also gained Corsica but that's it. It seems to be really hard for them to find opportunities. I still think they'd lose a war against Castile or France quite handily. They are relying on them having better things to do. I hope they can expand in North Africa or Italy before it's too late.

Finally, we had just left Yaka after 30 years playing with them. That was a bit frustrating because they had risen to prominance in their region but it was clear they could still be challenged. These last years might be decisive to see if they assert their dominance or can be contested.

I like what I'm seeing. They won the war against Chokwe + Karagwe that I did not want to start myself. They replaced their alliance with Karagwe with much better ones with Scotland and GB (Catholicism paying off). And they kept Mali. I don't see how anyone could attack them. Let's hope they don't do a stupid move.

So, where are we going? I said we might interact with Vijayanagar soon.

Marwar ?
Ok... ? Are we actually about to get annexed right under our eyes? We are allied to Vijayanagar but we are losing an offensive war against Mewar. One where the AI did not call Vijayanagar. Let's see if we can turn things around.

 

[Sfan]

I think it would be unfair to leave you guys guessing and to pretend I'm about to be annexed.

It's just a typical case of the AI having more numbers but taking bad decisions. They usually end up winning anyway, and we will for sure end up winning.

Bahmanis is busy unsieging Mewar and we are busy sieging Bahmanis with Kumaon. Once we get Bahmanis out the war should be really easy.

We win a decisive battle against Mewar and can finally wrap up this war.

And that's another full annexation! It seems we never stop.

This also allows us to unlock a new institution.

Our situation is still pretty poor with a lack of Printing Press really hurting our tech.

Now that our situation is more stable, we can transform our nation:

What does it do for us? I'm not sure, we rely on Vijayanagar to survive and this might annoy them. But it's cool. And army quality is always nice.

Let's save the burning world.

It's now time to look at our options:

Malwa is the weakest of our neighbours but they are guaranteed by both Delhi and Gujarat.

Delhi and Gujarat are also both allied and have strong allies. Vijayanagar has a truce with both of them for an extra 12 years.

Finally Multan is the worst of all with their alliance with Persia and Vijayanagar. It seems it might be hard to get out of our current position before the truces of Vijayanagar expire.

We try to find a new ally in case we need some extra help. Sistan is surrounded by stronger nations but they seem relatively stable, and at least they shouldn't be in Vijayanagar's path of expansion.

Our hopes of saving the burning world are soon put to test:

This might not seem like much, but Sharjah brings the Ottomans in and Vijayanagar defends Multan. I see stacks of 50k units roaming around Persia taking absurd attrition. This does not end here as Russia sees this as an opportunity:

Well good luck AI Ottomans. They can probably defend against that, and they shouldn't lose much anyway, but that's still scary. We'll see what happened to them in the next update.

Meanwhile, we ignore all that chaos and focus on building up our nation:

We develop Printing Press.

We might be behind in Admin and Diplo, but at least we caught up in tech in Military Technology. And we are ahead of everyone in India, on top of being Sikh.

Peace finally returns to the world, so Vijayanagar finds that it's a perfect time to start a war:

Not much to say about it, truly:

Vijayanagar is looking stronger and stronger, time to use them to our advantage.

That's an easy war on paper, but we are locked on the other side of the ennemies so we have to fight our way through them:

Our quality isn't bad. 1 more morale, 16% more discipline and 30% more tactics than Delhi. We don't have the economy to field enough canons, but otherwise we'd wipe everyone.

We finally reunite with Vijayanagar and after that it becomes a fairly easy war.

We break the alliances of Gujarat. I definitely want parts of their land eventually.

I'd also like the land of Delhi but I won't have the time to do everything so I take their money for now, and those two provinces I need to connect my country.

And finally it's time to annex Malwa.

We spend the next years coring, converting and slowly building up, before our truce with Gujarat is up.

Our last war with Marwar is by far the easiest:

We could take more but I don't want any risk of a coalition. This also makes us look pretty on the map.

I finish my conversions and add buildings before leaving Marwar. I want them to be strong and prosperous before I leave them. As many nations, theyre in this odd spot where I know I could take them to great heights if I kept playing, but they are still unstable for now. They rely on Vijayanagar and a bad war could spiral out of control. Let's hope they don't end up like Kedah...

I don't have the stats for now. I'll post them later. But it's safe to assume we are a little bit stronger than we were.

 

[Sfan]

I guess most of you forgot where we were, which is completely understandable. As I said, I reached 1821, but I also had completely forgotten that I only posted until Marwar. Let's get ready for 160 years of action and surprises.


First, a recap of how everyone is doing.

Our first nation had been Kedah, a South-East Asian OPM who became the strongest in the area under our guidance, and then was completely eclipsed by Malacca once the AI took over.

They were back to an OPM in 1630 and the prospects were grim.

And we officially lost our first nation. This is a real disappointment, I think they had an excellent position and I still don't understand how they screw it up. Once they lost the first war against Malacca this was over, but they should never have lost that first war with their strong allies and more development than Malacca. Oh well...

Our second nation was a lot stronger and safer.

Mali's issue was really stagnation. Allied to Katsina and Kanem Bornu, and for some reason unwilling to attack Benin and Ashanti, while the Europeans were agressively colonizing the area. Thankfully Scotland and Britanny, who are definitely not the scariest.

Forget everything I said, they actually moved. They killed Ashanti and Britanny killed Benin. More importantly, Jolof revolted away from Scotland giving a new target, and Scotland and Britanny locked the coastline. This means there won't be any Castile there any time soon; Mali should be safe.

We then rolled tiny OPM Ennarea:

We could not do much being completely locked, so we had focused on the Coptic Front, hoping Alodia and Ethiopia would do well and we'd do well by proxy.

That's a failure. The Ottomans are way too strong. I killed the Coptic Front when I rolled them.

At least our fourth nation shouldn't die at all:

Vijayanagar was already looking beautiful when we left them, and they've been looking more beautiful every update. We know a lot about them from our Marwar game.

Yet another 5 provinces and 50 development. That's not much, but they were abused by their ally Marwar who kept calling them in their wars (hmhm) and they also fought a war with Multan against the Ottomans which ended in a stalemate. That really set them back. Once we consider this, the fact they still grew is impressive. Marwar and Multan are strong allies, now maybe time to invade Delhi?

Next came a weak Sweden, which we found on the verge of financial ruin.

We tried to consolidate, but the AI antagonized Russia and lost a lot of land in Finland in a recent war:

Sadly things keep going worse, they lost another war. They aren't losing much land and they still have their heartland, but they really have only one way back into this: if the Ottomans destroy Russia. Otherwise they'll slowly lose ground.


We kept medium European powers with Aragon.

I had done a good job expanding and controlling trade, but the diplomatic setup was really bad because I never broke Castile or France. At least the alliances with GB and Austria were good (although Austria lost the League War).

And the expected happened. Great Britain dishonored, they are clearly about to lose this war. I should probably have been more agressive, that was a mistake. I played it as I would have if that was an Aragon game (killing minors, controlling trade, building a powerbase) but that does not make any sense here: I should have foreseen Aragon's death if I did not manage to kill at least one of my two scary neighbours. I am quite frustrated.

Then, we finally left Europe to discover Yaka, a small Central African nation. We completely transformed them and made them Catholic.

They had done an excellent job in AI's hands, winning a crucial war against Chokwe and finding valuable European allies. Could it be an AI success?

Definitely not an AI success... Karagwe and Kazembe allied. Yaka attacked them alone 1V2, and is losing. Very sad. I don't understand why Kazembe and Karagwe aren't rivalled.

Our following country was the Ottomans. Sometimes you're lucky. Or were we actually? This was probably the least enjoyable of all the runs, we just consolidated and created a monster, smashing poor minors:

We at least know that the Ottomans got stuck in some big wars. But did it affect them?

Not at all. I made them way too stable. They're almost guaranteed to win the game and end up #1 GP in 1821 already, unless I roll Russia right now (spoiler, I did not). They have twice the development of everyone else.

And finally, our final played nation war Marwar. A very weak Indian state who had only one asset, an alliance with Vijayanagar. We used that to secure a nice little Kingdom and even embraced Sikhism to save the burning world.

So... who's our tenth nation? Not Russia, not someone able to challenge the Ottomans. But an interesting nation with some good potential:

The only interaction I had with Milan so far was repeatedly wiping their armies as Aragon. But they look decently strong, with two major allies: Great Britain and Hungary. Although we see that Hungary could die to the Ottomans any time, and we know Great Britain is a terrible ally because they just abandonned Aragon to their death.