Oman 1697 - Please help me kill endboss Spain

[k4sp3r00]

Hey guys I'm doing third way as Oman and as the run is nearing it's end I'm absolutely terrified of continuing the save as I have a massive endboss Spain to beat and I'm not sure I can do it without help since I'm not super experienced with eu4, only having 600h or so put in. The buggers have put a ton of sunni land into TCs so I must fight them several times to get the cheevo and god damn them I will. Guide me to victory friends, I will be following suggestions and reporting back whenever I play, will probably be a pretty epic run whatever happens. Personally I'm way too terrfied to do anything myself so you guys will have to guide me in almost everything.

So with the introductions out of the way lets get right to it. Here are some pictures to help you understand my situation.

The current situation in an open war against Spain, I have to conquer a lot of stuff off of them and I still have other wars to fight too so I don't think I can fight all my wars vs Spain with them as a non-co belligerent. Ofc this is not what we actually have to face right now but this is everything we'll have to take away from Spain to disarm them. Below is the war against Spain we will be fighting.

Not pictured: Spanish CNs will bring in 100k infantry and 75k artillery.

So at least in terms of numbers the situation looks pretty grim right now. I will most likely have to fight the war as is. I need to start dismantling Spain ASAP as there's a lot to conquer and I don't have the tools to deal with a christian coalition at all so wars against the christian Spaniards will have to be spread out a bit to avoid getting coalitioned.. Oh and I have full elan for +15 morale of armies from a one off event until 1703 and Spain has a mere 7k manpower in the stock right now so I'm tempted to make the DOW as is after planning the war with you guys' help. If you guys really think it's best to wait and that I'll have a better chance against Spain in the future then I can also focus on mopping up the ottomans etc but I don't think Spain's getting any weaker and I also don't think I'm getting stronger than this. The gap between Spain's western units and my muslim units will only widen with time not to mention the current opportunity with +15 morale will be wasted. Oh and with regards to those rebellions going on mopping up will at most take until 1699 when most of my cores finish and I get to not have 200% overextension. Some cores are also coming up earlier and I've been fighting the rebels for a while so I might be able finish up earlier as well. But we do have some prep time.

In terms of quality my army is shit. I have quantity and offensive(1 idea off completion). After completing offensive ideas and taking every policy available to me while still having the full elan event active Spain proper will have +5 discipline on me. Morale works out to being slightly in my favor thanks to my 100 prestige and higher army tradition though without the full elan event Spain will have better morale. Oh and western units are a better than muslim units AFAIK so that doesn't help either. I'm currently full legalist and though I'd much prefer mysticism for the morale and fort defence I don't think I think it's realistic for me to get any mysticism on such a short schedule. Or at all really. Mysticism is kinda hard to get in general huh. Finally Spain has more for defensiveness due to being a lucky nation. P.S. can you check ai combat abilities or their policies somehow? Spain may well have some policies boosting their army quality further.

The real question is what should I do with my (very limited) mil points. As you can see in the first pic, i do not have mil points to spare and I have several things I could invest mil into; I can roll a couple generals to get 100 army professionalism (for faster drilling, do I even have time to drill before this war? I usually don't drill my armies so I don't know) and a chance of getting better generals, I can take tech mil tech 24 which will soon have no ahead of time penalty associated and gives +0.25 tactics mostly Spain doesn't have mil tech 24 yet and they haven't filled up defensive ideas so they might also end up not taking it at all, I can do assaults/bombards during the war itself for faster sieges or I can take the last idea from offensive for +5 discipline and the possibility of taking some policies although the only ones with military related bonuses are offensive-trade for +10 movement speed and offensive-maritime for +5 ship durability and +1 naval leader maneuver. What exactly I'll have enough mil for depends on how long we wait until the war starts but I'm currently making 13 mil points/month with every possible bonus except focusing on mil which I could ostensibly do so getting tech is a bit utopian and getting the last idea will also not happen soon bar a strict saving diet and/or events.

In terms of advantages I have better army tradition. I have ~55 and spain has ~18. Pretty sure we're roughly even in terms of generals though but army traditions has small bonuses associated with it and those favor me currently. I also have 25 more army professionalism than Spain which probably helps a lot. Finally and most importantly for the land war Spain only has 7k manpower in the reserve while I have 137k and that 137k is far from my cap, at most I can have around 400k manpower saved and thus my manpower recovery is a whopping 6k/month which is almost certainly more than Spain, this is on normal difficutly after all so the ai should actually be limited by their manpower.

Also having naval oriented ideas as Oman I have of course invested invested into having a good fleet. My fleet is absolutely superior in terms of quality in every way imaginable by no small amount and I can take dip tech 24 for some brand spanking archipelago galleys that should tear into the outdated Spanish twodeckers that only get upgraded to threedeckers at tech 25. That is if the Spanish heavies are even up to date. My only concern is that I currenly only have 49 galleys on the correct side of the (non-existant) Suez Canal while Spain and their CNs have 100+ heavies that will most likely all be mobilized to fight me. I have no maps of the horn of africa and probably won't be able to explore around it. If I could then I could just order every coastal provice to make galleys and get a fleet that's guaranteed to win the seas. Regardless fleet quality being OP may or may not be enough to carry me to win the war on the seas despite the numbers disadvantage though (and i do have some trade ships privateering in constantinople to blockade Spain in case I do win). If anyone thinks they'll be able to tell whether my fleet is OP enough or are interested or whatever I can give details on the naval side of things but I think most people won't care. I'm not entirely sure if I actually need those archipelago galleys or if i need to build more galleys or whatever but I think I'll just play on the safe side.

Also as you can see I have ducats to spare. I make 100 ducats a month and can take up to 57 loans worth 3200 ducats each. I'd like to not go all in on loans but if there's something that needs to be done in you guys' opinion then I can spam loans for it. Spain is absolutely the last big endboss of the run after all. Just don't bankrupt me for this one war, Even in the best case scenario I can only get so much WS off of Spain here and now and there will be several more wars in the future.

Oh and as a final mention, Spain owns the Philippines where there are 2 sunni provinces, both in TC. I will have to take them as well at some point and they may well wind up serving as staging grounds for a Spanish invasion of Omani India (or as free WS for me lol). If you guys need extra information on anything just ask and I'll deliver!

Please help me! It seems like this is going to be a really epic finale to the run and I don't wanna lose it!

P.S sorry if this doesn't belong in the AAR subforum, I thought it'd belong here since I'll be making extra briefings on how the run progresses in the future.

 

[HistoryDude]

Spain is such a blob here.

Do they have any land on the Arabian peninsula proper? Do you have to worry about a land invasion?

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

I had the same issue with Spain in my Japan run. So far I haven't managed to beat them on land (I have held them off at water but that wouldn't be helpful here). If I find anything I will make sure to let you know.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Spain is such a blob here.

Do they have any land on the Arabian peninsula proper? Do you have to worry about a land invasion?

Thankfully no Spanish land in Arabia but I have land borders with them in North Africa and West Africa so I do have to worry about invasions.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Alright it seems this is a bit of a slow forum or then people don't care so much for these types of posts. Oh well. I'll go forth with the prepwork today. If anything unexpected happens I'll make another post. Will make a note of the Spanish monthly manpower recovery if nothing else. In addition I've come up with 2 war plans that could work.

Plan 1:
Deathstacks on the border
YOLO
???
Profit

Good dice rolls and ai idiocy may or may not win me the day for me and if they do, I'll be able to ruin the Spanish nation which is the main reason I'm even willing to consider this. By ruining them I mean getting some rebels to spawn in their lands, removing all their prosperity, causing mass devastation etc. All that should weaken them enough to make them more managable in the future. However Spain is NOT a co-belligerent so I can only do so much to them in the peacedeal no matter how much I occupy. More importantly the sunnis have no truce with me right now and if they sense weakness(after a dozen major battles against Spain for example) they could well coalition and DOW me bringing 250k units into the war. If that happens it'll prevent me from ruining Spain and a coalition war would be a time waste I do not need. Not to mention the sunnis might actually be a threat if I commit heavily against Spain. Also as mentioned I do not have full faith in actually winning the war this way. The prospect of smashing headfirst into a superior army worries me even if that superior army is commanded by the ai.

Plan 2:
Win the seas
Occupy all Spanish islands (Sicily, Philippines, Sardinia and the Balearics might be some extra islands somewhere)
Peace out

I'm 99% sure it'll go off without a hitch. I have much more faith in my fleet than my army. Downside is Spain will be free to occupy my stuff and although I can definitely win the siege race esp. with delaying tactics involved I can't imagine being able to do anything against the Spanish after the island hopping is done since the +15 morale from full elan event will be gone by then and again, Spain is a non co-belligerent so it'll be a pretty really meh peacedeal. Spain will remain a force of terror even afterwards but having a truce with them will give me the peace of mind necessary to expand elsewhere hopefully allowing me to bridge the gap a little bit.

BTW I think I might also be able to get France to help me with the second Spanish war and though the only have a pathetic 50k units those are French units with some Elan! and they should make the next war against Spain feasible as long as I annul the Spanish alliances and they don't get new ones.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Reporting back, 19 february 1699 - rebels dealt with for good and OE is at managable levels. Didn't advance the game any further as time is very limited due to that full elan event and I want my armies properly positioned depending on what plan we go with. I got three(3[3!{3!!!!}]) -10 army tradition events from OE during this short time and one of my better generals died after that. My generalship was never all that good and is now a whole lot less competent. Only 2 generals are at a acceptable level, having 4/4/2/0 and 3/4/3/1 respectively. 3/4/3/1 shmuch is old enough to die any moment now. No traits on either one sadly, perhaps they'll show their colors during the coming great war. A lot of my manpower has vanished to the rebels shocking absolutely no one except for me. Not going down any further than this thankfully, all units are fully reinforced. On the other hand the Spaniards have gone to 0 manpower having fought a couple quick wars against natives. This also means some of their army ought to be in the new world, a victory on the seas would trap those soldiers there making an outright win on the land that much more possible. The fact my military advisor died and I got the +5% discipline guy(+1 and unpromotable but for that discipline bonus I'm willing to overlook that) reinforces this train of thought and so does the fact that:

It seems that that muslim coalition I was talking about is much more unlikely than I previously though. All the major muslim powers have gotten themselves into major wars and they're all on the losing side of their respective wars. Those wars may well end midway into conquering Spain and the possibility of a coalition forming is not to be ignored but at least they'll all be weakened.

I'm also unsure as to how I should set up my army if I do go for the land war. I'm pretty sure it's better to have everything together so I can reinforce into the fights for morale at least at the before I get some good fights on the Spaniards but whether that grand army goes to Spanish North- or West Africa is undecided for now. Both have equally bad supply but West Africa has mostly no terrain penalties with the notable exception of a hill fort (there's also a fort with no hills so I surely won't be forced into fighting the Spaniards there in order to take land not that the Ai is competent enough to make a play like that anyways). North Africa is almost exclusively hills and mountains which is mostly a bad thing but going there allows a follow up into Spain proper and the first fights(hopefully decisive ones) in North Africa will most likely be over a Fort in Dahra which is one of the few provinces with no combat maluses.

Also my fort line is more than a bit questionable on both land fronts, the Spaniards will probably get 5-10% WS from occupying stuff before the fort line stops them unless I split up my army to stop them. They could also just waltz through uncolonized africa into my lands near Kilwa where all my trade ducats come from. No amount of forts can stop that one sadly. The option of splitting my army is not entirely unreasonable since preventing myself from bleeding WS like this is kind of a big deal though I won't do it unless you guys give advice in favor since I still have major concerns regarding actually winning the war. Pussying out and going island hopping is still and option since the land war is highly risky despite everything and in that case I will obviously leave a big chunk of my army to prevent Spanish carpet sieging and possibly get some easy stackwipes. Those hypothetical stackwipes could enable me to ruin Spain which tempts me to play it safe and just go island hopping and see what I can do.

P.S. I got that alliance with France I was talking about. They are sadly not intrested in any Spanish land right now (or Kalundwean land which is what actually matters since that's who we're actually DOWing). Hopefully I can keep the alliance for the next war since I'll probably have the 10 favors by then. Naples is also in consideration for an anti-Spanish alliance as they field a whopping 100k unit army though those are of quality as shitty as my own boys. They are only in consideration instead of being actively sought out since I have some concerns about whether they'd actually be willing to co-operate and since I need dip slots for client states.

 

[MatthewP]

I think you would see more responses if you posted on the main discussion forum instead of the AAR forum. That said, my two cents:

1) The way to kill Spain in all my games is to invade Iberia. Typically they have lots of troops overseas and once you do this you'll badly hurt their economy + have enough war score to get a good peace.

2) With the AI at low manpower, they're likely to avoid your large stacks more often than not. This is great, you pick fights you can win easily and otherwise just siege them. Don't be afraid to burn some of your professionalism if you need to for manpower.

3) I think you should pursue both of your options together. Control the med and fight them in North Africa. If they do a huge invasion in east Africa, take Iberia from them and make peace. Maybe send back a couple stacks to pick off smaller units once you see they've committed to attacking and you're not going to have problems in your main attack.

4) It would help a lot to get the next tech and offensive discipline bonus. I think I'd get the tech first but they're both big boosts. Save your points rather than rolling for generals or sieges and use those to compensate when you lose your morale. Mil focus doesn't seem like the worst idea, depending on how much you need the other points.

Good luck! I like your chances - Spain can be a bit of a paper tiger because they spread their troops around the world so much.

 

[MatthewP]

Addendum: Assuming you do win the war, you won't be able to take tons of land but get some strategic spots to be able to easily invade in the next war. E.g. strait of Gibraltar is nice for your mobility, that fort can be a trap for their armies and you split their land in half. Next war you can just drop a few stacks there before you declare and take Iberia right off the bat. They'll never retake it or reinforce because you hold the fort.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Plan for war

Sounds like a solid plan will be doing this when I get to it (hopefully later today). So both plans together except we leave the philippines alone.

Cutting the strait for the next war is a good plan. My priorities for the peace deal are as follows:
1. Annul with portugal (Very scary ally of Spain and a lot of portugese colonies are of vital intrest to me)
2. Gibraltar
3. Other annuls so I can weaken Spain to the point I can DOW them directly.
4. Sunni clay
5. Other clay

Spain can be a bit of a paper tiger because they spread their troops around the world so much.

I sure hope so.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Alright guys I'm back and the war is done.

A coalition did form after all. At least Khorasan and Aq Qoyunlu weren't in it since my ally Russia pulled me into the war you saw previously giving me a truce without causing any real delays. Even got 1 province for my efforts.

Thankfully the coalition was too cowardly to DOW me. They could've messed me up quite badly.

The war on the seas seemed close initially as the Spanish admiral was arguably even better than mine thanks to better manouver. I did wreck them in the end though giving me naval supremacy for the rest of the war. Might not have went so well if the decisive battle wasn't in inland seas where galleys get a +100% bonus. Sadly since there were always strong naval stacks hiding in port I never properly managed to blockade Spain.

Also I tragically never did manage to take Sicily, there was a 18k stack of spanish troops there and I had too few transports. Won't be a problem in the next war.

Foolishly neglected screenshotting but the land war went according to plan for the most part. Whoever mentioned that ai likes to dodge fights if it has low manpower was VERY right. The Spaniards were very careful. There was only one fight against a full combat width Spanish stack. I won it but with 2x the Spanish casualties due to the fight being over a mountain fort and me not having a general initially. This being with the +15 morale bonus I won't have next time. You'd think something like that would make the Spaniards braver but that was definitely not the case. Afterwards I pushed through North Africa and Iberia practically unopposed. What few occupations the Spaniards made elsewhere was put in the name of Kalundwe so I was able to get a solid peace and against all odds Kalundwe agreed on a white peace immediately afterwards. I annuled Spains biggest alliances and took gibraltar. Truce until 1712. The war would've been perfect if not for the fact that my careful advance in full combat width stacks caused a crippling amount of attrition deaths.

The next war will be a decisive war with Spain itself as the target and all things considered I still expect it to be intresting enough to post about for me to keep the thread alive. The Spanish fought hard when they did fight and if it really was the manpower that was making them be so careful then they may wind up being much more active and successful in stopping me in the next war. Next up I'll be grabbing portuguese colonies while waiting for the truce to run out. If there's time I'll also conquer Borneo from Brunei and Britain. It will probably be much less intresting as these wars are unlikely to be lost but at least it'll keep the thread alive till the next war with Spain.

 

[k4sp3r00]

I was just watching my soldiers going back from Iberia and those Spanish fucks grabbed DOTF! That annulment with Portugal just became meaningless!

The next war may end up being quite interesting after all! I still want to kill Portugal and the Spaniards aren't willing to defend their rival Britain and I can use the brief gap before they reclaim DOTF to also declare on portugal with no Spanish involvement. I don't wanna take any chances. If I do decide to take my chances with this then it'll be a three front war.

Front 1 Indonesia:

War here will be mostly naval. After the last war I have full faith in my navy shredding anything that comes in it's way so there should be no problems here but you never know. If I lose the seas the I lose the seas, nothing to be done about it. If I do win then Borneo will likely also involve some important fights on the land so I'd like to have a full combat width stack here just to be safe. The brits do have the best army in the world in terms of discipline right now and their morale is nothing to scoff at either.

Front 2 Southeast Africa:

I don't know what kind of resistance to expect here. 2 full combat width stacks should be more than enough to deal with anything the Portuguese could realistically throw at me. I can use transports to ship the other one out if I encounter nothing scary.

Front 3 Europe:

Austria, Liege, Sweden(dead by Denmark so IDC) will be pulled in via alliances. I expect a lot of fighting here that may wind up being tough. The 2.5 full combat width stacks I can spare here should do fine enough. Brits won't be leaving their island anyways since it is Oman that rules the waves(hopefully). Either way I can ship one of those stacks from Africa to reinforce if the fights in Europe get too tough. Dunno whether I should aim Austria or Portugal. Portugal is the one I'm going to be peacing and it's not like I'm taking all that much land so I don't think aiming Austria will be necessary but who knows.

I will sleep on this and only get to the warring tomorrow. I do have a 80k manpower deficit so maybe it's be better to chill the fuck out and not take a massive war like this. Focus on mopping up the sunnis or something instead. Their coalition will make that war less desirable though(no separate peaces, -30 reasons to peace out) so the glorious option is legitimately worth considering. If the sunnis disband their coalition out of sheer terror then I'll choose to war them no questions asked since I do want to give my manpower some time to recover. Suggestions welcome as before.

 

[MatthewP]

The thing I'd worry about is if the coalition declares in the middle of your large war. You and I know the British aren't doing anything but the AI will still count them when it decides how strong your enemies are. You could handle it of course but it would be pretty expensive and slow you down.

How hard would crushing the Sunnis be? If the answers is "Pretty easy" then I'd probably do that. Can you attack a weak ally of a coalition member and call in the member as co-belligerent? I think this allows separate peace and gets rid of the peace modifier (the wiki agrees). This could really help you in 15 years because you'll have them all on different truce timers. The "Attack England to remove DoF + attack Portugal" option should still be on the table later when your manpower recovers a bit, and doing it without a coalition looking over your shoulder would be nice.

Also, on manpower, you don't need to be 80k in the hole during a war. Use slacken manpower, you'll get the 5 professionalism back just from hiring generals over a couple decades.

Edit: Also, nice job with the Spain war! Seems like it went off pretty perfectly. You might be able to find a better balance between keeping your troops together to deter attacks and minimizing attrition, but that's always tricky with a strong enemy.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Can you attack a weak ally of a coalition member and call in the member as co-belligerent? I think this allows separate peace and gets rid of the peace modifier (the wiki agrees).

I can and will do this and only half for science. I think I was a bit power crazed from having beaten the Spaniards I thought unbeatable in the last post. Good thing I stopped playing there lol I totally would've done it if I'd kept playing.

Sunnis will barely put up a fight. They have 200k inf but only 40k arty. Ottomans in particular could still deal out a fair amount of casualties to me if they keep their forces together since those cannons are mostly theirs.

You are also very right about slacken it will probably be one of the first things I do next time I play.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Alright for the sake of not throwing the several dozen hour run for science I tested the calling in a coalition member thingy before actually doing it. It does NOT remove the ban on separate peacing coalition members and even makes you unable to separate peace the coalition member you put as co-belligerent despite the fact you could separate peace them if they weren't a co-belligerent! At least there's no -30 reasons to peace out with the war leader probably since they aren't part of the coalition. I have corrected the wiki on the matter as it did indeed contain erroneous information about this matter.

Thankfully all this co-belligerent trickery quickly became moot as the sunnis reacted to me peacing out with Spain exactly as I had hoped, in terror of the prospect of actually ending up at war with me they left the coalition one after another until there was no coalition. All the more reason to declare war on them. Ottomans were the one I ultimately wound up picking as my main target since they were closest and were fittingly big though I also had some quick wars in africa.

Before

After

The African wars were quick and easy as one might expect looking at the size of my adversaries. I did suffer a fair amount of casualties to attrition however as is often the case with African wars.

The Ottoman war was less smooth. Ottos pulled in Khorasan via alliance and after realizing I hadn't commited enough troops to killing Khorasan after losing a pretty big battle I decided to peace them out for a mere 3 provinces. The fact the Khorasanis have 0 forts may have led me to fight the war poorly due to a lack of clear cut objectives. Oh well they weren't a co-belligerent anyways so I couldn't have taken all that much more anyways. Against the ottomans themselves I had brought more than enough troops however due to me practically ignoring the Ottoman army in favor of fast sieges I wound up losing some battles. The fact my troops were occasionally caught without a general(4 is just not enough for all these stacks!) and that the ottomans just have a lot of troops meant I ended up taking ~150k losses most of which were from battles. The casualties could have been significantly worse but most of the ottoman troops stayed on the other side of the Bosporus where they did actively fight back against me, ultimately with some success as I was prevented from occupying most of the provinces there. Them staying there may have been a bit less consensual than I make it sound as I obviously blockaded the strait with my glorious fleet not to mention my forts would've probably prevented passage anyways. Also as one might expect the typical galley spam of the Ottomans was literally nothing in the face of real galley spam. Didn't even screenshot since a win on the seas seemed so obvious. I don't think I lost a single ship and I definitely gained a few. Maritime ideas paying small dividends at least. The peace deal saw the Ottomans losing every single fort on our side of the Bosporus and then some so I consider this a win overall despite some bumps in the road. The next war against the ottomans should be that much more efficient thanks to this though they will still likely field enough troops to cause problems. I could've taken even more land but I wound up favoring ducats and war reps as I didn't want to go crazy on overextension in the name of not having a billion rebels to fight and drain my manpower against. I still have 110% OE which might be a bit more than I can handle but we will see.

Before

After

As one might expect the heavy manpower losses were not covered by natural manpower recovery. Overall I slackened recruitment twice (though the first slacken was mostly spent on recovering from the war with Spain) and a third slacken would not be unreasonable in the current situation. I still view professionalism as something highly desirable however(especially since it's one of the few thing boosting my otherwise shitty army quality) and don't want to let it slip any further than it already has so I will allow natural manpower recovery to deal with these losses instead.

I think I still have time for one big war before the next war with Spain high OE or not and I'd like it to be something that doesn't end up being a massive drain on my manpower. Ming and their steppe tributaries seem like the obvious choice, ming has a shockingly small army and at 0 mandate it doesn't really matter how big their army is while the hordes are small enough to not be too concerning. Their hayday is long past anyways, cannons rule the battlefield now not cavalries. But all this in the next filler episode, coming tomorrow probably. Friday will be D-Day when the last interesting war of this run starts (and possibly ends), the decisive war with Spain. Oh except that I might still have to deal with Portugal and Great Britain simultaneously if the Spanish don't lose DOTF status beforehands and that war will still have some challenge in it.

 

[MatthewP]

Nice update! sorry for giving you bad information on the coalition thing, but it turned out well since now the wiki is accurate.

Ming/Hordes seems like a good easy war. You shouldn't need to keep so many large stacks together with Ming at low mandate so that should cut down on attrition. Looking forward to seeing the next update.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Alright I'm making up for that missed update yesterday. Ming and the hordes have been rekt and the second war with Spain is over.

"something that doesn't end up being a massive drain on my manpower"

Well to be fair it was only a little under 100k manpower I had to throw into the grinder for this one. My army's impressive quality became apparent during the war, I lost a battle to 0 mandate Ming. Really need to figure out how to manage generals as my troops were there without one but I was still shocked that Ming could win on plains against a full 80k stack. Their own casualties weren't even that bad. Regardless that was a sign to not push this war too far. I forgot to take a screenshot of the result but I took a little under 100 OE and whacked the Ming bank for ducats. Chagatai will still take another war but Oirat is done as far as I'm concerned.

Good thing I peaced out in good time too, it's a long way to walk from China to Spain and not only did the truce end long before I DOW'd much of my army didn't make it in time. The plan was the same as before except that I'd send a 120k into the more southern parts of Spanish Africa. They occupied it all rather uneventfully but having fewer troops in Iberia would've bit me in the ass big time if it wasn't for France's heroic sacrifice of taking on the bulk of the Spanish army alone.

They peaced mere months after this shot.

Also it does indeed seem that the Spanish were more daring now that they weren't out of manpower. They had a fair share of victories on every front, against all expectations the naval one included. They managed to pick off "a few" transports and trade ships while my main fleet was away:

I half expected to win by sheer numbers. Could've gotten away much earlier if not for my stubbornness.

In addition the Spaniards did some Naval ops in the Eastern Indian Ocean though thankfully this did not include landings. They disrupted my "honest entrepneurial operation" that was extracting money from Malacca under the black flag. More concerningly they also sunk much of my actual combat fleet there. Goes to show I do rely on my admiral quite a bit. This defeat was extra concerning as their fleet still consists of twodeckers based on the one heavy I captured. Threedeckers may threaten me even with an admiral on my fleet.

This was technically a win for me in terms of how much money the sunk ships cost but still. I do not have a large amount of galleys while the Spanish do have a lot of those heavies.

On the land the war was much smoother. The French sacrifice allowed me to siege a lot of Spain unopposed. When the Frenchmen peaced out I had to actually fight the Spaniards though. I took what was possibly the worst fight possible. You might not be shocked to learn I was only one or two days off being stackwiped here before reinforcements arrived.

I did eventually win by funneling in reinforcements even if the casualties were 3:1 against me and the Spanish backed off into France afterwards though they still had a very large army there.

The war was cut short as the situation started going heavily against me before I was fully done conquering Iberia.

My carpet sieging was rudely interrupted by a big Spanish stack.

Sicily was about to fall back into Spanish hands.

And most importantly that very big army I was talking about manned up and started threatening my conquests.

I decided to not push my luck further. Took all Spanish forts in North Africa and Malaga which was a block to waltzing into Spain proper.

Could not have taken a single WS more. The Spanish occupying lands around Kilwa was a big part of the reason for this. I'll see if I can figure something out for that. The run might not be totally won considering how slowly I'm conquering stuff. I'll try to stay vigilant and I guess the run being cut a little bit close is reason enough to keep posting. Anyways Spain could even get their alliances back and then the run would be very not won, even this win was pretty close and the Spanish haven't been weakened much at all in terms of military power.

Next time I think I'll wreck Portugal or something.

They sealed their own fate in the end.

Though technichally DOTF was passed to Austria afterwards that doesn't matter as Austria is allied to Portugal anyways. Also turns out the Portuguese are 4k in debt, if not they would've defended Spain from me.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Yay I'm still alive.

I'm taking no chances this time. Instant DOW before unpausing.

Don't remember why austria was unwilling to defend Portugal. It was however a part of the reason I dared do such a reckless DOW.

Good thing I did it too huh.

For obvious reasons Portugal was no threat on the land but on the seas they were almost even with Spain in numbers and Spain had caused me quite a few losses. More importantly Portugal has a naval bonus designed to nullify the bullshit advantage superior naval quality gives, something I've been relying on in the seas quite heavily. Thankfully they had shit for admirals and their heavies were outdated, some of them by two models! I initially wrecked them pretty hard but they just kept coming!

Over the duration of the war my ~80 galleys in the Mediterranean were reduced down to 37. I did much more damage to the Portuguese navy ofc but this increases my concerns that once the ai finally upgrades to threedeckers I really will have reason to fear for my naval supremacy. Apart from the galleys the war went about as well as it every could have. My casualties were nonexistant and I got a 49% WS peace deal. I did not get all the things I was eyeing but I did get all sunni provinces from Portugal so I won't have to face those hypothetical threedeckers with the Portuguese naval bonuses at least.

Unless they colonize these.
Oh and

Sike you thought. I did not expect that to be two provinces and they're both sunni too... One was left with Portugal due to my carelessness so I'll have to fight for it later down the lane. Good thing it isn't a fort so I can at least just smash Portugal proper and ignore their fleet if I need to.

I played a bit after this but only mopped Brunei off the map and did a small-scale war against the Remnants of Jaunpur and the Mamelukes. In that time my fleet recovered enough that I should be able to take on the Brits next. The Brits should be a quick war though and I'm not sure if I should go against the Ottomans or Spain afterwards. Part of my army will be unable to make it home for the Spanish war and I'm also 99% sure it'll imply having my soldiers sitting around for a year or two near the Spanish border but on the other hand leaving the Spaniards alone will allow them to rebuild their alliance network. I will sleep on this and listen to suggestions.

On a completely unrelated note how is the revolution nowadays? I usually don't play this far and have never seen the new revolution do it's work. I've learned how to deal with it in your own lands via the forums but how afraid should I be if Spain does go revolutionary? Any general tricks for dealing with the revolution would also be appreciated if you think I need it.

 

[k4sp3r00]

I'm back again. I ultimately opted to go for Spain instead of the Ottomans. I thought the idea of Spain getting allies was concerning enough that softening them up is highly desirable. In addition I had to spend quite some time uneventfully stomping rebellions over my empire so I didn't even waste that much time waiting for the truce to end. Austria grabbed DOTF and I couldn't find a way to rid them of that status, sadly it was too late to back out at that point. The French being too far in debt to participate was of some concern as well. Over the last few wars my faith in the AI's ability to fight wars competently has decreased significantly so I was not all that concerned.

Though the odds were a bit concerning.

In addition to ai incompetence I was unconcerned by the numbers due to the fact the christians lacked cannons, many of the Spanish troops would likely be stuck in the new world and I had recently spent a large amount of excess mil on rolling generals giving me the definitive advantage in leadership. All these factors proved to be very accurate. In addition the Austrians played the war quite like a player would have, they practically did not participate.

Almost immediately I was able to wipe four 10-25k stacks in North and West Africa, together amounting to maybe one full combat width stack further dooming the Spanish war effort.

The Spanish going revolutionary mid-war did not help them. This may wind up causing me problems in the long term but since all CNs get +30% liberty desire I think it's more likely for the Spaniards to get fucked themselves. We will see. At the very least the revolution is spreading in my lands and that is a bit concerning as it may cause issues later down the line.

The war had several theaters some of which were more active than others but all of which followed the reality of the Spanish being in a weak position.

I finally decided it's time to take the Philippines and I was allowed to occupy them unopposed. I should have gotten all the sunni provinces there in the peace deal so I won't have to deal with it anymore unless I want to and considering the WS I profited I think I'll be taking it in the coming wars too. The seas were 100% in my hands though the Spaniards did ill to my trade ships a couple times. It seems that the Portuguese ability to mitigate my quality advantage on the seas was very much working as intended since the Spaniards couldn't even touch my fleet even though they should be pretty much even with Portugal in quality otherwise. This is quite relieving as it means the inevitable war against GB for the rest of Borneo should see the seas firmly under my control.

The east African front did not go as planned. I bled a lot of WS as the Spanish were able to occupy lands here. They had too many soldiers for me to just fight them back where needed as I had planned to and sadly my subject Burundi has all his buildings slot full so I couldn't fort up his lands. Very annoying.

The Africa front was otherwise a resounding success. As mentioned I started the war with several stackwipes of some poor soldiers stuck in North Africa due to a recent Spanish war against Morocco while in West Africa the 80k troops the Spanish had allocated to defend the area found themselves badly outmatched by the 160k I sent to take it ultimately facing the fate of being stackwiped though they arguably bought some time. I fully occupied Spanish-held Africa barring some Islands though I'm not sure I got all that much WS for my efforts.

Finally there was the Iberian front. I was honestly not entirely convinced I could take it this time around what with Austria involved and France NOT involved. Initially I figured I'd try to occupy southern Spain where I had full vision of Spanish stacks or a lack thereof and to snipe Toledo by the power of having the numbers to force any christian forces to retreat until I had the fort and then getting a fair peacedeal after. After the Austrians showed themselves to be uncommited to the war effort I decided to push for a bit more going eastwards to the fort in Valencia next. While going there I encountered a large stack of Milanese and Spanish troops. Wouldn't have taken the fight as I had no general and it was a big stack but I was already locked in. I managed to stackwipe them despite my distinct lack of a general partially thanks to them having some extremely shitty generals in that stack. Still not entirely sure how I pulled it off. Maybe it wasn't as big of a stack as I remember leading to raw numbers deciding the fight. IDK. Another ~60k Spanish stack had simultaneously come to contest my occupation of southern Spain but noticing they had practically no cannons and no general I figured I'd take the fight. My 80k stack stackwiped them in no time flat by the power of cannons and a 6 fire general. After these fights the Austrians showed just how commited they were by moving from Northern Spain to France and staying far enough away from me to make sure I didn't fight them by accident. Although to be fair the Austrians were already moving away from the fights before this. The only loss in Europe was that the Spanish alliance wound up retaking the fort in Sicily uncontested before the war ended due to my negligence. I was sadly unable to leave a galley stack watching the area as I had forgotten to build extra galleys in the mediterranean. In addition to that loss of Sicily I left most of modern day Catalonia and Basque country unoccupied due to a lack of dev and the presence of forts but pretty much everything else in Spain was occupied.

Despite occupying practically everything Spanish in the old world the peace deal I ultimately got was only around 40% WS. Not sure how much of that was because of the Spanish occupations in my lands but good god do they have a lot of colonies in the new world. Oh well at this point I'm rather unconcerned by the Spanish as they're clearly no threat to me. Should only take one more war to take the rest of the sunni provinces. Due note that Spain and Portugal are both in coalition territory now. Definitely need to keep that in mind in the future. Casualties during the war were around 350k for both me and the christians. Would've favoured me but I suffered 100k+ losses due to attrition.

I expect Spain to have +1 hostile attrition from defensive ideas next time so that'll be fun. Probably won't have as much manpower to spare either. They'll also be fully adjusted to this whole revolution shtick and possibly more capable of mounting resistance against me thanks to that although I don't expect them to actually beat me anymore as I've grown in strength so much while they've gotten declawed by me. As far as I can tell the revolution gives +50% force limit as the main bonus (in addition to not having to deal with revolution spread) though I'm not sure how capable Spain is of filling that forcelimit. Probably not very considering my highly profitable privateering operation against them and how hard badly I've ruined their lands over these past wars. Honestly at this point it seems to me Portugal forting up that one sunni island and beating me on the seas is more of a threat to the run than Spain. At least these big blobs have managed to slow my conquering to the point that I've been unable to properly utilize my vast amounts of admin and dip points. Might have done better with that if I was conquering eastwards instead of westwards and seawards but alas the achievment requires muslim lands not tengri, orthodox, confucian or buddhist lands so I think my choice to expand into Spain was justified especially since I also need to convert the lands and lack the ability to shamelessly trucebreak for the finish due to a distinct lack of diplo ideas and a very real threat of a christian coalition.

Next time we kill GB. I don't wanna wait for all the naval powers to get their threedeckers as those could still realistically threaten my naval superiority. I don't think Borneo alone will give enough WS to take everything I need though I don't actually need all that much extra, the Brits have done poorly this game and therefore lack sunni colonies that I'd need to conquer. Options for getting the extra WS include naval invading GB and plain normal invading Poland who recently allied GB. Poland chose a local noble and has been brutalized pretty hard in general so I think that'll be what I go for although I'll at least try to blockade GB. The whole GB alliance only has ~1/3 my numbers though they all have superb army quality. If they all commited to Poland they could legitimately cause problems for me if they happened to also have a good general but I don't expect anything of the sort. I also have several wars against the sunnis themselves to be done and I think I can do them simultaneously with the GB war to some extent. Maybe I'll DOW ottomans and focus down their ally Khorasan while my other troops are in Poland or something to that effect. Might also opt for Chagatai, Yarkand and Ming instead as a safer choice. We will see.

It seems I badly neglected taking pictures this time. Will try to do better next time around.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Still not dead! Lets jump right into that GB war I was talking about. Initially I figured I'd just blockade them, take their SEA colonies and be done with it. Surely a couple shitty jungle provinces in the middle of nowhere could be that hard to conquer? Sadly it was not to be. Those jungle provinces were actually pretty high dev and even with imperialism they were worth 29 WS. Oh and the blockades+occupations got me all the way to -1 WS from ticking warscore... Even getting to that point took a lot, there were some major bums on the way.

Their fleet is quite strong though I've beaten both Spain and Portugal, shouldn't be that different right?

It was that different. I think it's because the Brits have that naval doctrine of theirs, they have a solid admiral and their bonuses are a bit stronger than those of Spain. I'm not 100% sure if those were threedeckers or not but I'm pretty sure they were. The casualties did favor me but that's all the galleys I had. Had to back off and build some more before I could try again.

Although... If the Brits won't die in a fair fight I might want to make the fight a little less fair.

and now we wait to win off the soil and toil of Russia.

The Brits seem to realize how fucked they are too, they're on medium war enthusiasm from nothing but the horrifying odds they're facing. Won't give me what I want yet though.

Actually those galleys got built before the war ended by the power of Russia, let's go do a loop de loop around Britain and kill their heavies.

Much better. I had the age ability for naval engagement width this time, the brits did not. Still they're clearly capable of putting up a fight on the seas. Exasperates my concerns for my naval dominance which I was admittably mostly faking previously.

Surrender at once! We have your entire nation blockaded for *checks papers* 5 WS. We're gonna lose this war to ticking warscore aren't we. The plan to naval invade Britain was long abandon as I realized that the British army is actually pretty big and more importantly the Brits are top 1 in the world in terms of discipline while I was among the worst. I figured they'd shred me if I tried anything funny.

Although to be fair I do make 60 ducats a month for my troubles. That certainly still has an effect on my economy.

Eh? Ayutthua is how the emperor of china? Well fuck. Don't need more wars against ming(those wars against Ming tributaries were finished uneventfully off screen, Ming didn't even join) so don't care about their recovery from the pit of 0 mandate but I may yet need to fight Ayutthuas big buddhist block. They have a sunni OPM (Kedah) vassalized and it's possible that they won't integrate those sunnis on their own. Won't do the war willingly though since that's a big alliance web(Taungu+Ayutthaya+a big Pagaruyung off screen) and I might not have to in the first place, the buddhists are not known for their tolerance of heathens so if the integration does happen the sunnis will be converted without my intervention.

Oh and while I was looking away the Brits broke out of the blockade. Perfect. My fleet got picked off one at a time and is in no condition to restart the blockade. Will have to wait to rebuild once more though I'm starting to run out of sailors... These brits may yet beat me on the seas. I guess Britain does rule the waves after all but I'll try once more!

EH!? I know Russia was doing a lot worse than they should've been doing but Russia losing to an army half theirs was not part of my plan. This certainly complicates the war. The Russians did occupy most of Poland and Sweden in my name but both of those still have an army on the run that'd unoccupy their country in no time! As Britain was unwilling to abandon their few sunni provinces to my hands yet I had to send a small ~150k army to handle the situation. I was joking about losing to ticking warscore but it was not far from actually being the case. At this point with 3 provinces unoccupied in Sweden and 1 in Poland the Brits had -12 reasons to give me the peace I needed. Ultimately this was fixed by doing said occupations and mopping up the Swedo-Polish armies while third time was the charm on the seas, those 5 WS from blockades were decisive after all. Those -12 reasons vanished faster than one might expect since "demands exceed war score" was a factor, making them decay twice as fast. However for a time it certainly looked like the Brits would force me to have a second war with them later.

I did not expect the war to be this damn hard. I though I was in for a nice quickie like with Portugal and instead got a massive and costly slog. Shows there's still challenge left in the game so I must remain vigilant. On a completely unrelated note:

The what now? HOW?

Ehhhhhhh... Well they are way stronger than the protestants at least so I guess its kinda fair but I think the pope got scammed out of his authority. Good thing for my French allies though.

Oh and since my armies were around the block I decided to start a war with the Ottomans too.

Started with a band too we did. Thankfully this was on Istanbul, they can't cross the strait as I have it forted and they have jackshit in Anatolia so I'll be able to get a good peace deal without having to fight a single battle since that's clearly something I can't do.

and so I did as I said. Ottoman allies were peaced out separately in wars that were overall laughably easy while I occupied everything on my side of the Bosporus allowing the peace deal in the picture. As a sidenote Khorasan is also no longer a concern. The poor lads were non-cobelligerents in three separate wars and I certainly abused them for it. This along with the lesser(though not in terms of land conquered) off screen wars I've fought means the sunni coaltion is no longer any kind of concern ever.

Although on the subject of coalitions, do you guys remember how I said I need to remember Portugal and Spain are in coalition territory? Totally remembered that. Together these two may threaten me on both the seas and the lands so I will need to do some actual planning again before starting the war. Unless the coalition expires which is unlikely. Probably will just post the setup again before the war and await guidance from you guys while also planning the war on my own. Not that we'll be fighting them anytime soon. I've taken big chunks of land from all of GB, Chagatai, Yarkand, Jaunpur, Khorasan, Aq Qoyunlu, Tunis and the Ottomans in the span of ten years...

...and that means the next episode will have a lot to do with rebels. The efficiency of my methods is questionable, but after around 150% WS you have to fight all the rebels in your realm anyways so after going over that accidentally I figured I'd just go over it a bit more. I'm not 100% sure whether or not I can actually handle all the rebels but we'll see I guess.

 

[MatthewP]

Ha. I went to 300+ overextension for the first time recently and it was pretty eye-opening. Good luck. I made it through but it ate up all my maxed out manpower and then some. And that was after I gave in to the particularists (which was part of the reason, absolutism and all).

Otherwise, looks like pretty good progress. I think invading Britain is easier than you think. If you have naval superiority you can usually just land on ireland with a strong stack or maybe two, quickly take that side of the strait, then build up at your leisure. And/or use the strait as a trap to wipe their stacks one at a time. Get access in France first to stage the invasion.

Also, if Spain is the revolution target I think you should get a very good CB against them. They have some good bonuses though.