Let's All Play Together: Kazan! Community Nation Discovery

[Peachrocks]

I hope you like border gore! Unifying Islam isn't pretty folks.

I am almost certain I will succeed, Ottomans are vassals to serve them right for all the times they were friggin useless. Aragon now Spain isn't that powerful and Poland although they hold Constantinople they don't have the PU over Austria anymore (that took forever to break down @_@). I'm likely able to ally Venice and call them and Sweden against either as well. All the same though, it doesn't look as though I'm not going to achieve much beyond that. I can take one crappy idea group then ditch it later for something fancy but doing it twice is extremely questionable and cost me a LOT of points.

It bothers me that there seems to be more bad idea groups now then good ones...

 

[Peachrocks]

Annnd... I give. I got all the provinces I needed to unify Islam, then I remembered, oh. ALL your provinces must be in the Muslim religious group, not just the ones you've conquered. I don't think I'm far off but really after all the other hiccups with this one, I want to only remember the memory of 'Grand Vizer Peachrocks of Kazan' and not anything else that came with it.

Everything just took too long to do because I was constantly behind thanks to taking two useless idea groups. Taking Thatta from Vijay was a massive pain in the neck too...

I can't even annex my former marches in time most likely because they are going to be butthurt for the next 80 or so years since I just finished annexing the Ottomans. Even if I can, I've lost all drive to play this one any further, I achieved the goals I thought I was doing and I was going to take religious over expansion and get the conversion strength necessary but after deleting 2 complete idea groups already, I'd really had enough of uber Aragon with PU over Hungary and uber Poland with PU over Austria.

I'm going to take a different approach next time...

 

[Peachrocks]

Nobody's posted in this since last time? Well... I tried again. I threw all rational to the wind and did this... opportunity costs be damned...

At least I'm not deleting idea groups this time... lol... .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Not the best, decided I wanted to unify Islam too. I managed but that meant first converting India and China. Oh well.



I did manage though

 

[Axe99]

You're both monsters, in a good way, well played .

 

[Peachrocks]

You're both monsters, in a good way, well played .

Yeah he's trained me well... or I've trained him... or well... or something .

Nah I'm too busy doing things for giggles to ever be as good as TMIT.

 

[Zwirbaum]

I'll leave this video here, as usual.

 

[alpaca]

Yeah he's trained me well... or I've trained him... or well... or something .

Nah I'm too busy doing things for giggles to ever be as good as TMIT.

My monarch game will beat you both. Allah is with the house of Chagatay! I'm at 4.7k dev and it's only 1650,. Not sure if I'll manage to unify Islam, but I'll get a window when I move into Europe with vassal feeding instead of coring to catch up to admin tech 23 for the -90% reduction. I'll see if I can drag my feet long enough to actually convert all my provinces to Sunni. I didn't get any regencies yet (except when I was a horde and they were killed instantly) - the gamble paid off so far. I just hope my current ruler doesn't live much longer, he's already 66 but refuses to die in honorable battle so that my 19 yo heir can take over.

Edit: lol, just started playing again and this happened: hunting accident (sorrow overtakes me in anticipation of a 15-year regency, but I click on "Oh well..."). Then, a few months later, my ruler dies and I get a new king. Low legitimacy, but quite capable 4/3/6, Safa III Janid before I can get a new heir. And that in a Sunni country. The RNGod apparently read my post and wanted to troll me a bit

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My monarch game will beat you both. Allah is with the house of Chagatay! I'm at 4.7k dev and it's only 1650,. Not sure if I'll manage to unify Islam, but I'll get a window when I move into Europe with vassal feeding instead of coring to catch up to admin tech 23 for the -90% reduction. I'll see if I can drag my feet long enough to actually convert all my provinces to Sunni. I didn't get any regencies yet (except when I was a horde and they were killed instantly) - the gamble paid off so far. I just hope my current ruler doesn't live much longer, he's already 66 but refuses to die in honorable battle so that my 19 yo heir can take over.

I can tell just looking at your screens that you'll beat me, you're ahead of where I was. I made two very significant mid-game errors from a blobbing perspective:

1. I overestimated early-game overseas coring as a cost reducer, which coupled with a late-ish westernization left me reaching administrative efficiency late.
2. I barely bothered with feeding vassals whatsoever.

While nations like Kazan should still feed vassals for maximized blobbing, I do wonder about the vassal integration act if you're coring at 1 ADM/development, since keeping that policy active costs you at minimum 1 ADM/month.

 

[alpaca]

I can tell just looking at your screens that you'll beat me, you're ahead of where I was. I made two very significant mid-game errors from a blobbing perspective:

1. I overestimated early-game overseas coring as a cost reducer, which coupled with a late-ish westernization left me reaching administrative efficiency late.
2. I barely bothered with feeding vassals whatsoever.

While nations like Kazan should still feed vassals for maximized blobbing, I do wonder about the vassal integration act if you're coring at 1 ADM/development, since keeping that policy active costs you at minimum 1 ADM/month.

You only need it to be active at the end of annexation, not during, so it's more like a fixed 120 admin for each annexation because you don't want to keep it working longer than 10 years. If you annex a vassal with 1k development, it saves you 1600 dip. That's very much worth it unless you have way too many birds. Bonus props if you annex multiple vassals at low dip rep within ten years of each other. I do like feeding my vassals up big, though, it's much less attractive if you go for small vassal rotating annexation. Also don't forget that you get a significant annexation time reduction if you go from 75% to 55%. Sometimes you even get lucky and receive the event that gives -15% cost, which can be great if it fits.

In the early game, I used almost exclusively vassal feeding in Europe to get full administrative quickly (westernized 1554 iirc, which I think is reasonably good if you don't want to sacrific almost everything to westernize ASAP), but now, I don't feel like I really have a surplus of dip - I am taking too much land in separate peace treaties. Though that is probably supotimal, I want to wrap up Asia asap to be able to get LA reduction so don't want to wait out the truces, and it also often allows me to get countries below 100 WS to save time (and dip due to the bug, though I try not to exploit that too much) later. I also kind of failed to get a useful vassal in Asia to feed before I westernized. I'm only starting the vassal game now, vassalizing Mamluks, who conveniently are an OPM based in Cyprus, and planning to release Crimea once my armies can't be gainfully occupied in Asia anymore. But then again, I wanted to experiment with going over the OE limit in this game, and my military capability is only now starting to be large enough to keep waging war while going over 100%.

Spending too much admin on coring early is something that can in general cripple you in this version, it seems. Doubly so if you need to modernize before you can westernize. I've also been there with the overseas coring. I think you should wait really exploiting that until you get adaptability for -75%/-85%, at least. With Kazan, perhaps even until you get the six policies for the full reduction. Vassal feeding is the obvious alternative. I've also found that going for overseas coring too early, even if I have adaptability, can be very bad for the economy unless you can secure lucrative trade nodes and hurt you in the long run. With the Ottos, it works well because Aleppo, Alexandria, Persia and so on all feed into 'Stanbul, so you get filthy rich anyways, but with a different node setup like Kazan here, I was seriously hurting for money in the late stages of the early game because the overland caravans siphoned off so much of my money (you can see this in my previous posts). I only really got ahead once I secured a large part of the Indian and Chinese trade, collecting in Bengal, Indus and Beijing/Yumen.

Edit: By the way, just because I'm ahead now doesn't mean I will necessarily be later. My late game is rather weak because I don't finish most games due to tedium.

 

[Chimerae]

Finished my game; played till the very end to finish the conquest of China. Pretty happy with the end result

 

[alpaca]

Finished my game; played till the very end to finish the conquest of China. Pretty happy with the end result

How much dev, etc. do you have?

 

[Alpacayak]

Tried getting an IM rolling to see how bad I am at this game. Nogai allies Crimea, putting heavy limitiations on what I can get from the first war. Timurids weren't doing great and wouldn't ally me either. Got bored with the slowfest that IM is and decided to roll a regular game on the side. Hopefullly 1.14 and brassman will run a bit smoother.

Still inspiring to see what you folks can do with this. I can't even dream of get past Muscovy as it is.

 

[Axe99]

Sorry to be so late to this game, the Otto's WC run I was doing just went on and on - eventually gave it the heave-ho at 1750, probably wasn't going to make it (I'd stopped playing optimally in the 1600s, as it was boring me to tears - I thought I might have been over EU, but am right back into it with this Kazan thing, just think blobbing isn't my thing) - but am very happily giving Kazan a run now.

My original plan was to try and not expand at all, just to contrast it with the WC run, but it didn't take me long to realise that was a very 'brave' move in the position Kazan starts in. I allied the Timurids, but didn't have anyone else keen to ally up, and had Muscovy, Nogai, the Golden Horde and the Uzbeks all rival me from the get-go. The Timurid's allied with Nogai, so I thought "well, at least they'll be able to get military access when Muscovy comes a-knocking', which they did about six months into the game. Except the Timmy's just sat there, possibly offering moral support but it wasn't entirely clear.

I dashed around the steppes knocking off the occasional isolated force, but Kazan vs Muscovy (and allies/vassals of Pskov and Perm) in 1444/45 isn't a pretty picture. Then Nogai declared war as well. This wasn't, however, a bad thing. I couldn't declare war on Nogai to get Timmy's into the picture, as they were allied - but Nogai declaring war on me did the trick. I scarpered what was left of my army down through Nogai to take a vacation in northern Timurid land, while the Timmy's destroyed Nogai's army, bringing the Golden Horder and the Uzbeks down on Nogai as well. I peaced out with Moscoy, giving up three provinces, but in the ensuing mess managed to nab a pathway of Nogai provinces all the way from what was left of Kazan down to the Timurids.

Unfortunately, the Timurids have now had all sorts of strife, with Persia and Afghanistan breaking free, but I'm in with a fighting chance. The plan is to only expand into other steppe hordes, and only take land off the likes of non-steppe hordes if they attack and I win, with an eye to play a tall, peaceful Kazan. We'll see how that works out . Of course, I'll go to war in support of Allies, and I suspect Muscovy won't leave me wondering.

 

[Alpacayak]

Ironman game just didn't take off, but I managed to do something on the normal mode modded one:

Spoiler

Allied with Persia and Yarkand. Armenia and Tver are marches. Trebizond is a vassal.

It's been a stupid ride. I was going for Khan of the seas but I couldn't get access to the sea for a long time and even when I did the costs of absorbing vassals earlier set me back on dip tech far enough that even the nearest locations were uncolonizable. Going down south far enough to reach Ibadi land was going to be complicated too, as I'd have to border Persia and that means they'd start hating on me.
I picked explo first because I really wanted to try KotS and I didn't feel like running the Influ+Arist combo again even though they sinergize well with the NIs. Meh
Arist was the second questionable choice. I just felt like stacking cav bonuses would be cool.
Then I picked eco to reform. Again out of pure hipsterdom and because gold mines meant I had to sacrifice some paper mana to the inflation gods every few years.

Reformed on the late 1500s but never managed to get a western border(I could get it from Russia once, but I completely forgot about that on the peace deal...)

Stuff that happened to me:
- Timurids broke the alliance quite early and allied the Golden Horde instead. That meant I had to ally Uzbekh for a while rather than piling on them.
- Not much time later Timmies imploded into Persia, Afghanistan and some more. Allahu akhbar, as they say.
- Faced Muscovy as early as I deemed it possible. It was not easy, but I managed to free(and later, force, vassalize) Perm and Tver and snatched some provinces. Maybe I could've done more before they got all beaten around, but I just didn't feel like going to war against Sweden too, even when they were quite weakened.
- Beat and vassalized Circassia to break them from PU with Trebizond; 50 years later and they'd be far too powerful. Vassalized them and inherited a war with Georgia. That was my ticket to a coastline, if only 15 years later.
- Let Tver be a march because I really didn't expect Russia to ever become weak and isolated enough for me to beat them again and because I completely ignored the possibility of using them to westernize off Lithuania and to hell if I lost those 2 isolated provinces in an aggressive war later.
- Let Armenia be a march because I just happen to like them. And they make a convenient buffer against QQ, Otto and Persia.

Some world history stuff:
- Russia was formed by Riazan. Long story, but they eventually beat the crap out of Muscovy and formed not too shortly after. That also meant for a long time I had no land connection to Tver and it was essentially useless in wars.
- Scandinavia was formed by Denmark. Not sure how on earth Sweden lost the war, but it did.
- Spain leads PU with France. That's going to be scary.
- Korea blobbed on the Jurchens and even had a small holding in Kyushuu. Must be karma, in the Lan Na game they changed hands between Manchu and Japan, and at one point even Portugal.

Overall this was pretty lame. I think I should be aiming to reform on second tech group instead of third. By the time I was finishing eco fighting Muslim group was pure soldier spam and even fighting Uzbekh and QQ needed some pretty heavy numerical advantage. Not to mention the horrid horde tech costs.
Putting so much dip into vassals up north and east and being too reluctant to face QQ also botched my chances of getting more coast and probably some asian/african colonies. OTOH QQ has been allying both Uzbekh and Crimea for a long time(and they were all way scarier up until a bit earlier), which means I had to do a lot of lifting in the wars by taking on Crimea and much of Uzbekh all by myself while shouldering some QQ aggression.
This being my first horde game I don't think I'm going to play another one any time soon(ie not until I get the next expansion). "Fuck you, I'm a horde" CB is nice, but I'm not much of warmonger and I almost didn't have time to build anything because I was always paying the debts of the last war I had to get in so I didn't get spammed by pretenders. Oh, and the absurd tech costs.
I should really start bugging you more with my pointless ramble. There's just so many mistakes I didn't even notice until I started writing this post

 

[Axe99]

Nice one .

Some world history stuff:
- Russia was formed by Riazan.

Now that's something you don't see every day .

- Scandinavia was formed by Denmark. Not sure how on earth Sweden lost the war, but it did.

Happened in my game as well - must be a good week for Denmark in EU4!

You're not wrong about the CB, it was my first horde game too, and it was right handy. With the new horde mechanics in the upcoming patch/expansion, it should make playing as a horde quite interesting .

My game's muddling along. In the mid-1600s and have westernised, and trying to build Kazan up into a modernised, developed wonderland, with wars for allies (Crimea, Ottos and Chagatai - was Afghanistan at one stage but they liked to declare really dumb wars, so I'm just guaranteeing them instead) keeping me interesting in-between. Commonwealth never formed, and Lithuania is struggling a bit (and Poland is tiny), so not much of a threat from anyone at the moment as Crimea has beat down on Russia one too many times.

Danger'll be if the Ottos rival me or the like, that could mix things up a bit, but at the moment I'm just casually culture-converting and developing and beating down on people. It's interesting enough, but I went from 'so small that I was bound to get ROFLstomped by Muscovy' to 'too big to be worried about anyone other than the Ottos' - should have stopped expanding a bit earlier to keep it interesting (although if the Commonwealth had formed or there was a strong Scandinavia, or a weak Ottos, it would have still have been plenty challenging - I'm not huge, 4th or 5th in the world on most counts except naval, tech and ideas - but all the big guys are a long way away, or are the Ottos (and I can't think of a sensible reason to de-ally them, and I'm not big enough to rival them).

 

[Zwirbaum]

So, it took me a lot of time too finally upload 5th episode. And I already recorded new one, with new microphone (I should sound less terribly)- expect new episode much faster this time

 

[Axe99]

Sorry to be a bit of a slowpoke - here's Kazan the 'mostly tall' (ended up expanding a bit more than planned, although largely into very large and very low development provinces). At 1820, we have:

Spoiler

Russia, our rival since they were Muscovy at the start of the game, ended up getting the revolution, so for larks we went counter-revolutionary on them - by a turn of fate (Buryatia pinching a bunch of their provinces in a peace deal a year or two before we were done) we were able to vassalise them in one bite - I'd never had a nation gone from my rival to my vassal before! Diplo at the end:

Spoiler

The goal of my game, though, was to play tall, so play tall we did. Despite starting on provinces that were (beyond Bashgird's gold mine) not terribly profitable, Kazan ended up getting a pretty healthy level of development, full tech and full ideas - first map is of base tax, hopefully we get a development mapmode at some stage in the future:

Spoiler

And while allying the Ottos was handy during the mid-game, the Ottos had a financial meltdown, which meant that at least from the mid-1970s they were relying on Crimea and Kazan to bail them out of trouble (which we did a couple of times, in interesting and enjoyable wars - who thought AI financial death spirals could be fun?!

Spoiler

Cheers for the thread and game idea @net.split, was good fun as always .

 

[Zwirbaum]

Small thread revive -(new microphone, and at the same time, I forgot about HUD recording, derp )

 

[Dutchman251]

Maybe we need a new nation? Something in the Indian region?