Let's All Play Together - Community Nation Discovery

[TheMeInTeam]

Can someone explain to me how one gets 3 military techs ahead in Sub-Saharan tech group by 1517, I only spent about 200 points on General rerolls which surely can't account for this stupidity.

I was current to western standards in military tech before then, due to MIL focus. That was crucial to beating Portugal to take Sierra Leone. By 1517 I was western tech already. You can move off MIL focus if you're current and have decent advisors, but if you'll fall behind it's usually not recommended.

If you average MIL income of ~7 and never roll a general, you'll be about on par by 1505 (roughly at or near tech 8). IF you have national focus available, you can guaranteed a military income base of 5, meaning you need a +1 mil advisor and an average ruler skill across that timeframe of 1. If your average ruler skill is >1, you can be current with a few rolled generals. If you don't have national focus available, just budget your military advisor +1 as a priority and hope for the best.

My advice: DONT REFORM THE GOVERNMENT!
You mentioned that hard mode consists of taking Exploration or Expansion, and leaving the government reformation for later. However if you took one of those then you'd do pretty darn well for yourself, and could colonize the Ivory Coast to dominate trade.

Tribal governments, in addition to their obvious penalties, have multiple unique events that kill your heir and/or provide extra stability hits. They also have no ticking -LA. Admittedly the -15% core cost on empire rank despotism has some attractiveness, but you're really paying to get it.

When I do my 2nd run I'm going to skip exploration/expansion as a changeup, the idea being to fast-conquer West Africa and switch to Sunni/westernize before 1520. I'll sit at ADM 2 until I westernize (putting it all into coring lol). I'm feeling influence --> ADM or economic. I'll take exploration later to fill in a few uncolonized provinces so things aren't such an eyesore, but early I'd rather funnel that money into buildings and military. Provinces are pretty easy to take off the colonial AIs if you can field 40+ regiments.

As a node, ivory coast blows chunks. It feeds into multiple powerful nodes, some of the strongest upstream prop in the world similar to Caribbean...good to control but not where you'd want to collect normally.

 

[alpaca]

Tribal governments, in addition to their obvious penalties, have multiple unique events that kill your heir and/or provide extra stability hits. They also have no ticking -LA. Admittedly the -15% core cost on empire rank despotism has some attractiveness, but you're really paying to get it.

I couldn't find any events like these that specifically target tribal nations, can you identify the file they are in? For me, the main problem seems to be that you can't reform your government to get the more developed government types that provide local authority reduction, which isn't a big deal if you're sitting at peace most of the time, but if you're a warmonger it is. Still, the coring cost reduction or manpower+force limits looks pretty juicy, too, and one shouldn't forget that you have to pay a non-negligible approximately 800-900 admin power to reform the government (you need stab 3, which is worth 100 + 150 + 200, 200 for the decision, 200 to get stab back to 0 - I actually prefer sitting at 1 stab, so make that 300). All in all, I'm not really convinced it's worth it.

The only reason why I reformed the government is that I've actually been under the mistaken assumption that you need to do so before you can westernize, but it seems that this only applies to the steppe nations and Americans. Slowed down my westernization quite a lot to 1551. I'll probably restart the game with this knowledge because I wasted a lot of points on techs and ideas before westernizing that I'd otherwise have more effectively spent.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'll look for the file when I'm home. One of the effects is stabhit + heir dies, and only tribals get it AFAIK.

If LA is an issue it *is* possible to manually lower it if you pay to win with common nonsense . Any time you have 100 legitimacy, re-buy into theologian and then you have -2 (advisor), -3 (legitimacy), -5 (TTF, for animist/Sunni/Catholic, from religion + legitimacy), 1 from stability. This is enough to manually lower in accepted cultures even if you're a tribal despot, though it's less tight with federation.

If you have the divination decision and are running tribal federation (or have more stability/Islamic decisions in play), you can manually lower autonomy in unaccepted cultures, too. If you're worried about losing some of the -unrest conditions, just lower it in strong provinces like Bambuk, Bure, Katsina, Timbuktu, Gao and leave the others. That way you can station troops when unrest gets rebel chance high and you can knock it down to 0 with stationed troops (up to -5 with 20 troops).

The most brainless setup for this is as animist:

animist (1)
divination (1)
TTF (5)
Legitimacy (3)
stability (1)
Theologian (2)

Which allows you to lower autonomy in all animist provinces without separatism despite unaccepted culture, with a 1 unrest wiggle room. You can do the same thing with Sunni if you have ADM ruler of 3 or better, or if you go Protestant/Reformed and take superintendents.

 

[ahyangyi]

I couldn't find any events like these that specifically target tribal nations, can you identify the file they are in? For me, the main problem seems to be that you can't reform your government to get the more developed government types that provide local authority reduction, which isn't a big deal if you're sitting at peace most of the time, but if you're a warmonger it is. Still, the coring cost reduction or manpower+force limits looks pretty juicy, too, and one shouldn't forget that you have to pay a non-negligible approximately 800-900 admin power to reform the government (you need stab 3, which is worth 100 + 150 + 200, 200 for the decision, 200 to get stab back to 0 - I actually prefer sitting at 1 stab, so make that 300). All in all, I'm not really convinced it's worth it.

Nitpick: you are counting the 100 ADM cost from 0 stab to 1 stab twice

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Apparently, if you have AoW, you're Sunni and wind up with both a completed reform group and 3 stability, you can get a DHE. The Ottomans will make you a normal sultanate w/o a stab hit if you're at 100% unity . MTTH is 12 months so you'll get it fast.

Nitpick: you are counting the 100 ADM cost from 0 stab to 1 stab twice

Reform decision is -5 stab, so you'd be at -3. Base cost to boost it to 1 would indeed be 300 ADM.

 

[ahyangyi]

Apparently, if you have AoW, you're Sunni and wind up with both a completed reform group and 3 stability, you can get a DHE. The Ottomans will make you a normal sultanate w/o a stab hit if you're at 100% unity . MTTH is 12 months so you'll get it fast.

... even if at -200 relationship with Ottomans?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

... even if at -200 relationship with Ottomans?

It must be positive, but depending on what stage of the game we're talking that's probable if you're Islamic and have the...buddies as rivals. I usually wind up with either administrative or economic pretty early there...the former being good for its core cost and merc and the latter for its -inflation and stacked -build cost with Hausa ideas. I also don't make North Africa a priority because of its obnoxious core cost and a tendency to ally them to sponge Iberian armies (they like landing there first if you call in Tunis/Morocco, then get themselves exiled and take a long walk etc).

Morocco seems like a sucky ally at first glance but they sponge for your conquest wars and can easily join with you on engages in north Africa for stack wipes if you go up there to help them, and then they'll give you your claims with the war score since often the Iberians already lost their Berber cores. I like that route a lot more than trying to go Christian and play nice with Iberians only to have to deal with them when they're really strong late game (as opposed to screwing them over at every turn throughout the game, blocking the East India route and CN-stealing them).

 

[Clownie]

My kingdom of Zazzau on the eve of the 16th century. Kanem Bornu is a march, Songhai is a vassal.

...and after the war.

I'm still unreformed animist, and I intend to stay that way.

My opening move was to ally everything that would ally me, then DoW and annex Nupe. Amina didn't even live to see Hausaland united, as she died in 1447. Thankfully, she was replaced by a 2/6/6, whose 3/4/1 son (after a 6 year 2/1/0 regency council) reigned for only 7 years before being replaced by his much more apt son, as you can see in the screenshot. As for the 2/6/6, he reigned for a good thirty years and four days. In short, I enjoyed great luck with monarchs. In case you're wondering why my diplotech is so terrible despite amazing diplomats for leaders, I've lowered war exhaustion a lot.

I picked religious as my idea group, because it's absolutely crucial in order to stay animist, and Deus Vult is great for expansion if you're pagan. In fact, the religious group and being unreformed come together nicely: cheaper cores from the government type, one of the best CBs in the game from religious ideas. My game will be geared towards extreme expansionism.

 

[alpaca]

I'll look for the file when I'm home. One of the effects is stabhit + heir dies, and only tribals get it AFAIK.

If LA is an issue it *is* possible to manually lower it if you pay to win with common nonsense . Any time you have 100 legitimacy, re-buy into theologian and then you have -2 (advisor), -3 (legitimacy), -5 (TTF, for animist/Sunni/Catholic, from religion + legitimacy), 1 from stability. This is enough to manually lower in accepted cultures even if you're a tribal despot, though it's less tight with federation.

If you have the divination decision and are running tribal federation (or have more stability/Islamic decisions in play), you can manually lower autonomy in unaccepted cultures, too. If you're worried about losing some of the -unrest conditions, just lower it in strong provinces like Bambuk, Bure, Katsina, Timbuktu, Gao and leave the others. That way you can station troops when unrest gets rebel chance high and you can knock it down to 0 with stationed troops (up to -5 with 20 troops).

The most brainless setup for this is as animist:

animist (1)
divination (1)
TTF (5)
Legitimacy (3)
stability (1)
Theologian (2)

Which allows you to lower autonomy in all animist provinces without separatism despite unaccepted culture, with a 1 unrest wiggle room. You can do the same thing with Sunni if you have ADM ruler of 3 or better, or if you go Protestant/Reformed and take superintendents.

Yeah, I actually manually lower, but it's certainly slower unless you do it in every province at once. In fact, I often lower even when I don't quite have -10 revolt risk in one province per rebel group as it's usually easy enough to suppress it with a smaller infantry stack when it gets close to 100%. I'm often leery of separatists and noble rebels, though, which do crap when they take your unprotected provinces. Of course, if one uses the overseas coring trick, one won't have less than 75% autonomy in a lot of provinces anyways, so this might actually be a moot point. Taking Tribal Despotism for the core cost reduction + overseas coring and admin idea should give you Otto-like coring at 1 adm/dev if you don't have WE.

Apparently, if you have AoW, you're Sunni and wind up with both a completed reform group and 3 stability, you can get a DHE. The Ottomans will make you a normal sultanate w/o a stab hit if you're at 100% unity . MTTH is 12 months so you'll get it fast..

What's a DHE? You'll also need 90 legitimacy for this event. Still nice, though.

Game status

So, I restarted my game after realizing I didn't actually have to reform my government to westernize. This time I therefore westernized much faster off Portugal, finishing in 1514 (would have been 1512 if I hadn't got the annoying -30 legitimacy event 4 times or so). I'd previously subdued the whole Sub-Saharan area in 1485, having three vassals and about 380 dev myself. The three gold mines are fully built up at 11 base production each, otherwise I haven't done much development. I jumped to admin and diplo tech 4, mil tech 7 (close to 8), which puts me at competitive in mil tech with the Europeans, but some catching up to do in adm and diplo. No ideas yet, I'm considering Exploration to get some colonists that would allow me to get the corridors through the desert into Egypt and Eastern Africa.

Portugal and Castile - who got lucky with Isabela and the Iberian Wedding already triggered in 1464, early enough for them to actually keep Naples for once - are allied, unfortunately, so it will be a long time before I'm powerful enough to take them on for real, especially since Castile is also allied to France. So far, I only took the one measly province from Portugal to westernize, and it took me several years to get enough ticking score for that. Probably going to have to get Morocco in the boat or something and diss the Spanish stacks on their turf.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Here's my run:

First, I vassaled Kano and took out Nupe. this prompted a coalition of Mali, Songhai, Air, Kanem Bornu, and Yao (I snuck allied Timbuktu). I had the animist minors as allies, Mossi was conquered by Songhai already. This utter BS war put me 15 loans in the hole, but it also shattered the opposition:



Screw vassal feeding too much then, just a little. Core it all and get the monies.



So we want a western border or core. I pick that 2nd option. With the #'s and decent miltech despite 0 skill I can make it happen, even taking some extras :



After gathering up enough ADM again (I'm still ADM 2 lol!), I westernized. 5/5/5 progress per month, but this let me consolidate the place completely, not doing so bad now:



Noobtugal and Castile are tech 11, so I'm not at any serious risk here. Not a lot of good ally targets but after western reveal I'll use conquest claim on Castile and start taking their new world stuff too.

I can focus ADM and run +3 soon (as soon as westernization finished I got a new theologian, so I hired him and manually lowered autonomy everywhere but Air, which I raised due to conquering during westernization).

After doing so, my force limit is 63. We're in business to do some real damage even before ideas at this rate . I'm Sunni so I can convert whatever too. I think straight influence --> administrative is in play here.

 

[Orctavius]

Well this is embarrassing.

I decided to relocate my capital for the superior lakeside climate. Yeah, this was totally deliberate.

 

[nossnahoj]

At a first glance this sounded extremelly funny, then after looking at the screendumps and wondering why none are proofing iron man, I read there is no such requirement... and it all got so very boring.

 

[Maldazar]

At a first glance this sounded extremelly funny, then after looking at the screendumps and wondering why none are proofing iron man, I read there is no such requirement... and it all got so very boring.

Well, I think everyone needs to decide by himself what he finds fun to play, that doesn't change that you can still help each other out with possible hints/ideas playing ironman or not...

btw: I ALWAYS play ironman (since the first game I played) and of course i'm playing this on ironman as well, but if people prefer to play without it, that is their own choice

 

[TheMeInTeam]

At a first glance this sounded extremelly funny, then after looking at the screendumps and wondering why none are proofing iron man, I read there is no such requirement... and it all got so very boring.

I only play with an extra 2 hours per game in save time when I really want an achievement.

If you want to tell yourself someone cheated, feel free. The same goes for anybody else here. Don't think for a second you can't save scum or "back up" the "ironman proved" games, though. Every single game you see here is a game you're taking someone at their word for and nothing more, regardless of ironman.

 

[atwix]

I like this idea. Especially if conclusions/tips/hints/objectives get added to the Wiki pages after someone writes it up after rummaging through all playthroughs.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I like this idea. Especially if conclusions/tips/hints/objectives get added to the Wiki pages after someone writes it up after rummaging through all playthroughs.

Hmm, but how to write this for the wiki? I wound up taking a good bit of damage from that coalition war so someone better than me could definitely be further along, but best I can tell other than maybe your very opening moves this is more about being opportunistic and judging what you can get away with/afford. Something like a Mongolia or Tarascan has precise steps just to survive, same with BYZ or Navarra/Granada. But this position you're not under immediate existential threat, it's more a matter of using allies to expand and finding weak links in AI alliances/messing with CTAs on mutual allies to break alliances.

I'm tired of colonizing though. I'm going to pick something else first and just war my way into new fronts. I'll take exploration later.

 

[atwix]

New long term zazzau objective:

- dominate cocoa market and core all colonizer provinces to create an overseas export market for your home made chocolate. Move trade capital to channel/sevilla for this, and make sure you get 80% trade power in that node.

 

[alpaca]

At a first glance this sounded extremelly funny, then after looking at the screendumps and wondering why none are proofing iron man, I read there is no such requirement... and it all got so very boring.

You know, the reason I don't play ironman is mostly because you have to play a lot more slowly in case you make a stupid blunder like missing a fleet sailing through to dump a stack in a province somewhere or me losing a whole fleet because I forgot it in the pacific ocean or missing that my intended enemy recently got a new ally. When I play ironman, I have to habitually pause every few game days and scan my entire realm so I don't miss an enemy preparing to attack one of my stacks or sneaking a small fleet through when I'm not paying attention. When I play non-ironman, I can simply reload if I make an avoidable (with sufficient time-consumption) blunder like that. I also sometimes reload if the rng screws me over with rulers and it's reasonably near the game start that, in an ironman game, I would probably restart the game. Again, this is more about saving time than giving myself an advantage. I almost always take regencies and bad rulers further into the game to emulate what it would be like without reload cheating.

I have a lot of experience with board games, and there you have a similar option: you can allow players to modify their last move if something occurs to them and it doesn't matter to the other players, or you can play hard with "when the finger is off, the move stands". What we found is that if you do the second, the game takes twice as long because people deliberate a lot more before doing anything. Sure, it makes you arguably play "better" because you make fewer mistakes, but for me it's to the detriment of my enjoyment because I'm too perfectionist to let stupid blunders slide. Besides, sometimes there's simply a bug or a game rule you're not aware of, and that can screw you over big time, too.

Besides, it's not like you can't ctrl+alt+delete, then close the game thread to reload the last month in ironman, so scumming good rulers, stackwipes and such is always possible (and a lot of people on these forums seem to do that apropos). So you'll have to take people at their word anyways. I try to mention when I reload-cheat in a situation where it actually matters.

 

[Maldazar]

@alpaca : although I myself only play with ironman on, because I like the challange of having to pay attencion to everything and being penalized (very hard sometimes) by making mistakes, I can totaly understand why someone who doesn't really care about that, or maybe doesn't have the time to play like that would play without ironman.. Second reason I like ironman is because for some reason, with paradox games, i'm an achievement whore... (other games I really don't care about achievements, but with paradox games they give you some interesting objectives that you would possible not do otherwise)

Anyway, I don't understand the hate towards non ironman players, anyone can save scum (even in ironman).. heck, you can even play on AI easy, player bonus and no lucky nations on ironman (and achievements WILL work), the only one responsable for you cheating or not (and on what you consider cheating) is you yourself...

 

[Vaximillian]

heck, you can even play on AI easy, player bonus and no lucky nations on ironman (and achievements WILL work)

Hadn't it been fixed yet?