Oman 1697 - Please help me kill endboss Spain

[k4sp3r00]

Alright I've committed a virtual genocide against my own people.

The rebellions tab at the start to give some perspective into the situation. I was not kidding when I said every single rebel will rise up. By victoriesmy estimate the amount of rebels exceeded 1 million though maybe not if you don't take those particularists into account. I did because I did kill them all. I figured I should be able to slaughter all this unorganized cannonless rabble without any problems. Simply split my army into 80k stacks that fill the entire combat width and have them split up and hunt the rebels in different parts of my empire. I quickly realized that that was not to be as the cannonless rabble caused some major losses upon me in the battles you see starting up in the screenshot. Well I still felt my manpower pool was practically limitless even though that's been proven to be false assumption several times so I was a bit more unconcerned than I perhaps should've been. The initial collapse was much bigger than I thought it would be though, leaving my economy in the dumpster though I think the bigger cause for my economic distress was all the maluses from OE.

Rebels a bit more than halfway to enforcing demands in the picture, their grip on my lands would still grow after this especially in india which was almost 100% rebel controlled at their peak but also in Africa where the many rebel groups would come to roughly double their control of land after this. In addition due to my habit of making armies with no extra infantry to consolidate more than a few armies outright lost their battles due to a severe thinning of the frontline from countless battles against rebels. My manpower pool was still bottomless but there was no way to mobilize it all in time! I was understandably concerned that I was fucked and so I started raising new armies all over the place further hurting my economy from going over force limit. I was cursing myself for not just accepting the demands of those particularists though I did come to accept my 100k+ peasants' demands instead in desperation of the ever worsening situation. Funnily enough even with all this a few areas newer rebelled, I did have a bit over +10 unrest even in the stablest parts of my empire but a few places where I'd increased autonomy in for unknown reasons were willing to overlook this and they stayed loyal to the bitter end...

Thankfully the end was bitter for the rebels not me! I had managed to kill the worst of the rebels by this point even if they were very impressive in terms of land controlled and since it was mostly the rather small India that was causing problems with it's billions of tags all rebelling I was able to concentrate my armies and overrun the last rebel armies very quickly. Much of this glorious finale was also thanks to my no-forts policy allowing me to retake all the rebel lands almost instantly after their armies were wiped. The new armies I was constantly raising certainly helped as did my transport capacity allowing me to (very quickly) navally transport a full 80k stack from a won front to one where there were still rebels which happened several times over the course of the war. All of these were absolutely decisive as I only had 10 months or so to spare before the rebels were capable of enforcing demands on their own.

Suck it rebels! I win!

What comes to the damages my economy suffered over the course of the war, my economy was nicely propped up by a GOLD RUSH!!! event giving me a casual 10k+ ducats to burn. This in combination with the fact that I'd been comparatively responsible in handling my economy throughout the game meant that the damages I suffered were ultimately very limited, only amounting to a couple loans. Slacken recruitment was used a couple times but I immediately recouped the lost professionalism by rolling generals. This rolling of general as well as a general increase in army tradition from all the battles(totaling at a whopping +20!) meant that my generalship became much better towards the end of the war. In my foolishness I mostly left old farts undismissed so that advantage in generals won't last too long sadly. At least I have one good 19 year old general that'll stick around. The rebellions lasted 5 years which is roughly what I estimated would happen but holy shit was this intensive. I was absolutely terrified in the darkest hour of the rebellion when there were constantly dozens of pop ups about new rebels, rebel occupations and of how my armies were losing battles to rebels left and right.

As you can see the "revolutionary" ideas of the Spaniards were not universally and much of Africa has broken free from their rule. These are fetishists, meaning I don't necessarily have to conquer them at all since they will convert the sunnis themselves though I probably will still kill them since they're so weak and easy to conquer. However before I do that I need to finish up the Spaniards themselves. All my armies are now ready for battle and the Spaniards are the only sufficiently large nation to require my full attention. Well I guess the grand Ottoman-sunni alliance could still also require my entire army but I have a truce with them for now so Spain it is. I even have that cool crush the revolution cb letting me take more stuff and suffer less AE than with imperialism. Probably won't bother to actually crush the revolution though, it's no threat to me and you need a lot of WS to do it.

I expect this to be the last war with Spain as they've lost many of their sunni provinces to the africans and don't have many of them anyways. Portugal has DOTF and is willing to aid Spain but I don't think waiting around is the right play. I have the advantage in terms of cannons and my generals are the best they ever will be. The gap between the Spanish armies and those of mine will only grow wider yet with time as my generals get replaced with shittier ones. Worse yet they took quality ideas recently(though thankfully they haven't even started filling it yet) while I was forced to take expansion to colonize the few remaining sunni provinces.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Back again. Did the final war against Spain this time.

The numbers screen looked more than a bit scary, the christians have a lot of soldiers, infantry especially. Thankfully they're low on cannons which is what counts at this point. My army is also arguably superior to the Spanish one in quality for once, I have a 2 mil tech lead for unknown reasons and both techs are absolutely decisive giving me +1 morale of armies and +0.5 infantry fire respectively. In addition my generals are absolutely godlike, 5 5 with +10% artillery combat ability being the peak but others being of comparable quality. Nonetheless I chose to play it safe with almost all soldiers stacked up in North Africa and Iberia to prevent Spain from defeating me in detail. I allocated a 80k stack to the SEA theater to siege the Philippines as well as some miscellaneous island and (as I would later find out) forgot a 40k stack in Russia. Literally everything else was here though. This would turn out to be unnecessary as it turned out Portugal had no troops in Portugal, I recalled Lisboa being retaken by Portugal so I assumed they had defeated the rebels and were in process of retaking their lands but this was not the case. Initial engagements confirmed my superiority and allowed me to realize the matter with Portugal giving me the confidence to send troops into West Africa too. The Spaniards did have a single sunni province there that I needed to take.

For once the Spaniards chose to contest my advance into Iberia in any proper fashion, they left a large stack sitting in Madrid that I was forced to dislodge. Though the Spaniards only had 17k cannons they were quite a threat thanks to their raw numbers. The start looked rough as I rolled a 0 to the Spanish 9.

Followed by 2 to 7.

and a 3 to 9. These all being directly after each other.

Thankfully that was it for the good Spanish rolls. I think I would not have won that fight without funneling in troops to protect my morale though the Spanish collapse after this and their lack of cannons meant that I was actually the one with fewer casualties and not by a small amount, 20k Omani deaths to a whopping 40k dead Spaniards! This battle set the pace for the rest of the war, the Spanish would set up similar defensive stack several more times with the battles having similar results. The Spaniards would never roll quite as well but they teched up and managed to force a fight on their mountain fort in Navarre so it's not like I rolled them over at all although they never truly managed to threaten me. Ultimately I took all of Iberia leaving the bulk of the Spanish army in France so I could go occupy Portugal while a few stacks guarded the border fort.

I bothered with Portugal at all because as it turns out that "crush the revolution" is a horrible cb after all, -50 reasons to peace out and +50 war enthusiasm is horrifying no matter how cool the other bonuses are. I suppose if you full occupy the enemy then those don't matter and the other bonuses are admittably pretty good but I had no such intentions with Spain since that'd imply invading the new world. Actually I was just looking to take the rest of the sunni provinces for a meager 22 WS which I would've been able to do so much earlier with imperialism.

Oh well. The other fronts were mostly unintresting, SEA consisted of me island hopping and taking the Philippines in an extra careful manner that caused me a lot of attrition for what wound up being literally no reason. I saw more rebels than christian troops in the region and neither was a threat of any sort to me although my island hopping was disrupted once by a smallish Spanish stack that managed to drive my 40k stack back into the sea. West Africa was a similar story, this time there were no Spanish troops there and so I was allowed to carpet siege the remnants of the Spanish colonies uncontested, most had already declared independece so I assume Spain valued the region much lower than before. Also those independent colonies there? Conquered to the last one, my armies had nothing better to do. As mentioned I did not leave an army in the East Africa front and it went about as well as one might expect. Against all expectations there were no christian troops there this time though and with only Kalundwe's soldiers sieging they did not do as much damage as one might have expected. They achieved less than in the previous war but it was pretty similar overall.

Also on the matter of christian troops missing they certainly were, only Spanish and Milanese troops had any presence anywhere. All the colonies as well as Portugal did literally nothing to fight me as far as I can tell. No clue what caused this, most of the colonies did have less that 50% liberty desire even if not by much.

Ultimately the end end of the war was brought on by Portugal being very willing to negotiate after me taking their lands, leaving their vast colonial empire out of WS calculations post negotiations. This was not quite enough for peace with Spain but combined with ticking WS and "length of war" ticking down that would've been enough to end the war. The actual end, however was a bit more dramatic. The Milano-Spanish troops were causing quite a few WS losses by beating up France who'd collapsed into a civil war and was unable to defend their own lands(not sure if this had anything to do with the civil war though... BBB my ass) forcing me to intervene and destroy that Spanish army on the border once and for all as it was screening the occupations.

The lads were defeated as one might expect and tragically for the Spaniards, they retreated to the adjacent province occupied by Spain. The following stackwipe swung the Spanish opinion in favor of ending the war on my terms and so I was able to get everything I wanted and then some. As far as I know this should've been the last war I have to fight against the christians so I'd say the objective of the thread has been achieved. They weren't half as threatening as I originally thought they'd be and iirc I did do the math on their army size incorrectly at the start, effectively counting their colonies twice and overestimating them by 200k soldiers due to it... Bit of a dissapointing thread compared to how cool I thought it could've been but I hope I've managed to keep you all entertained nonetheless. I'll still update the thread with the finale of 3-4 wars against the Ottomans which may or may not involve truce-breaking in order to give some sort of closure though.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Played a bit of that "relaxed closure" I was promising you guys and I certainly shouldn't have.

The Ottoman war was of course no biggie as one might expect. Tunis and Khorasan were caught in the crossfire, Tunis being outright annexed and Khorasan being reduced down to just their capital.

I even got a third of the Ottoman army right off the bat as they were drilling too close to the border. No clue how they managed to deal so many casualties before getting rekt, maybe all that drilling made them that much stronger. In all other military aspects I should be even with the Ottomans or even stronger by a bit. I've been massively underestimating drill if that is the case. This was the only real stack on the Ottoman side of the Bosporus and so I was able to take everything unopposed. This time I decided to also cross the Bosporus and mop up the rest of the Ottoman troops too. They initially seemed to have the rest (120k or so) stacked up in a hills province. I chose to take the fight.

Luckily most of the Ottomans moved out of the province allowing me to catch them pants down. Didn't expect a stackwipe but it certainly settled the war, afterwards the rest of the Ottoman army went to sit behind their fort in Albania, the only place where I couldn't catch them. I quickly occupied most Ottoman lands and forced them to fork over all their forts and then some in the peace deal. All was well and I should've stopped playing there but I decided I wanted to truce break the Ottos naively thinking overextension wouldn't be a problem since quite a few provinces still had -100 unrest from the last wave of revolts...

Not only was I wrong about the rebellions but the truce break also put me in disaster territory. Still fought the second war to the end though. I thought I could just client state the christian provinces and boost autonomy to deal with the rebellions. I may have prevented some rebellions by boosting autonomy but it cost me all my absolutism (shouldn't be that big of a deal to get it back though) and the client state plan was prevented because those lands are considered to be overseas and as it turns out you can't client overseas provinces. Could've fixed it had I taken one more provinces from the Ottomans but I did not know of that rule until it was too late and truce breaking the Ottomans again seemed like a bad proposition. Alas it seems the mayhem returns and I'm gonna be killing another million rebels, this time the big bunch is made up of 770k revolutionaries rather than peasants or particularists so I can't even accept demands(and have no intent to flip revolutionary anyways).

Worse yet, Ottoman weakness was exploited by other nations. Russia is at war with them and though I expect them to purge the sunni heathens the Neapolitans have no such limits and have taken and TC'd a single sunni province. The Neapolitans are no pushover holding almost all of Italy and their alliance network is vast though I still expect it to be a nice and quick war since it's over one trash province.

I took the liberty to start with the rebel squashing and by all rights it looks like it'll be a repeat of last time. Even started making a extra 80k in good time in Arabia which does indeed have that -100 unrest keeping it loyal. Those will clean up the eastern parts of Africa. Otherwise my armies will be mostly pushing eastwards to India and cleaning up Egypt which is a great cause of concern. I already have armies in North and West Africa for the sake of cleaning up rebels in the formerly Spanish lands. They can handle those areas by themselves and I may even wind up pulling some of them eastwards by the power of transports. I rolled a "couple" extra generals so I can have generals on every stack for max efficiency. Don't really need those mil points you lose monthly for anything else anyways since I have so much of it to spare, the next tech is way off.

Pictures still seem like an unfitting way to showcase the rebel matters but since I neglected proper descriptions last time I'd say that North and West Africa are reasonably chill with reasonably few rebels none of which are that massive(and many of which have already been mopped up by stacks I left there). The rest of Africa is similar but currently remains rebel territory with no soldiers of mine in there, Ethiopia in particular has an unusual concentration of rebels though. Ethiopia is however nothing compared to Egypt which is the core of those 770k revolutionaries and is already being contested strongly. I expect my cannons, superior generalship and morale to give me the edge I need to crush the revolutionaries piecemeal there and based on the first fights I'm right. Persia et al has some major rebels but lacks smaller spammy stacks to occupy stuff. The bigger stacks may be a slowdown for troops pushing east but not a major one. The steppes I hold are contested by 80k soldiers that were handling Khorasan during the two Ottoman wars and since the region is reasonably low on rebels it's likely to be pacified swiftly. The rebels there are much like those of Africa, many and varied but not particularly numerable and with no stacks large enough to threaten the 80k soldiers. India is as previously mentioned, full of big rebel stacks and a major concern. 40k soldiers were stuck there as they were preparing to wipe out Jaunpur. They have cleaned up the regions near Tibet and with reinforcements from SEA they may well become a proper rebel cleaning stack capable of speeding up the cleanup of india by quite a bit. SEA is very low on rebels but due to the inherent island hopping required by the region it's still a pain to clean up. I didn't get that far into the rebel squashing before getting exhausted and delegating the responsibility to my future self. Expect me to report back tomorrow on the progress of the genocide. I may even wind up doing some stuff after that if I'm particularly in the mood for eu4. Will make it a separate post from the rebel stuff if I do.

 

[k4sp3r00]

Genocide 2 the electric boogaloo is over.

The rebels squashing went roughly as I outlined previously though the Persian stacks proved to be a much more troubling delay. I was forced to sit around for what must've been a year just waiting for reinforcements to arrive so that I could finally break through and advance on to India. Oh and the autonomy boosting proved to be worthless , everything rebelled anyways. Overall though, the rebels weren't as much of a threat as they were previously and it even seemed like I might be able to prevent that disaster. As I was making good progress I got a particularly troublesome event:

With the -1 stab I had no hope of preventing internal conflicts from setting ablaze and so I was forced to ponder if there was perhaps some positive way to use my fall to -3 stab. Another truce break against the Ottomans so that I could finally make those client states would take me to -3 as well, and according to my theory the event would then do nothing...

I was right. The war was a bit troublesome as I didn't have soldiers around but the Ottomans had a whopping 40k so overall it was a cakewalk of a war. Didn't bother full occupying the Ottos but I did occupy a fair chunk of their lands.

I opted to be a bit more brave with the peace deal than I originally intended. This time my theory of -100 unrest proved to be right with the Ottoman OE adding no further rebellions although the lands I took rebelled in no time flat. The other side of the Bosporus was given in it's entirety to two separate client states roughly matching Greece and Bulgaria. Except for Istanbul of course which I wanted to convert myself.

While all this was going on India had become the last rebel stronghold and it proved to truly be quite a strong one as expected. I was only able to bring in a couple 80k stacks initially and for a time it seemed that a few of the rebels would indeed be able to break free. Not that it would've mattered as those would've been hindus not sunnis or shiites but thankfully I was able to ship over several stacks of reinforcements with which to stomp the rebels down to the last one. Wasn't cut as close as last time so I was very right about being able to afford that Ottoman war.

The ultimate end of the rebel havoc came a bit after the surrender(read: stackwipe) of the last rebel forces as civil disobediance continued to cause problems. The nation was however eventually stabilized and as all cores were done I even mopped up a few of the last sunni OPMs while I was at it.

For what it's worth the rebels did cause significant economical problems especially due to the disaster. My economy was not in such a pristine condition as it was last time so I was forced to take more than a few loans and the intrest combined with my golden age ending forced me to disband 80k soldiers to prevent a deficit. Don't need them for anything anymore so whatever. At least I was able to maintain 100 professionalism thoughout it all though I spent a lot of mil rolling generals to make it so.

Only the Ottomans and Aq Qoyunlu remain with those OPMs killed. I have no clue whatsoever how it happened but Naples converted that sunni province they had in a TC so that war won't be necessary also what few provinces Russia took from the Ottomans are not in TC and the Russians are not known to be merciful towards heathens anyways. I think this time I'll respect the truce. I still need to recover absolutism and gather admin for coring.

 

[k4sp3r00]

I promised a relaxed epilogue and that means I'll damn well give one! There's shockingly little to write about this time though.

Well for one I broke my promise to not truce break the Ottomans. I happened to have no truce with Aq Qoyunlu, the last heretical nation to exist except for the Ottomans. As the heroic defender of the sunni faith the Ottomans came in to protect them. The war was quick and brutal for obvious reasons. As the Ottomans were a non-cobelligerent I was only able to take 3 provinces from them. My distinct lack of absolutism from my folly of increasing autonomy had a lot to do with it too.

Afterwards I waited. As I had no enemies but the Ottomans I had no need for war, I made sure of that. Indeed the 8 Ottoman provinces on my side of the Bosporus had the last sunnis in the world. Shiites had went extinct long before. Once the truce finally ended I slaughtered the sunni forces one last time and took their lands under my protection. Conversions didn't take long at all and that was it.

The third way had been achieved. Astute observers may spot a small amount of Ottoman green on the map, they did indeed survive on their own side of the Bosporus. Funnily enough the achievement doesn't require you to kill all the heretical nations, only the people.

And that's it for the thread. I've long since realized I do not enjoy late-game EU4 and now I have nothing left to achieve in this run. I own roughly half of the world and although a grand christian coalition might theoretically be able to threaten me I have no motivation to force such a coalition to trigger. It'd be too blatant of a fake challenge for my tastes. If I could WC I might try for it but I certainly can not. I've made too many mistakes in the run for that at least. That final waste of all my absolutism really sealed the deal in that regard, might barely have been possible with client state abuse and a full realization of my ability to conquer stuff uncontested after the fall of Spain had it not been for that. I'd give the 1821 screen but my computer is bad so it'd take way too many hours at speed 5 for that. I'd have to sit there too to unpause it occasionally.

I might make another AAR if I see something worth writing about in my games but I'm not that good of a writer so I don't think I'll write about normal games since then there'd be little to see or comment about (not that I've gotten that many comments anyways). Maybe I'll just write anyways though, this has been plenty fun for me too.

 

[MatthewP]

Nice, congrats on getting the achievement. I think there’s more of a readership for narrative style AARs but I enjoyed it FWIW. Your writing is good and most people get better and more comfortable as they go.