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Now this is satisfying: my game objective was a Hindustan (started as Delhi so had to turn everything Sunni from scratch - all your territories start out Hindu!) that owned the Indian ocean. From Africa to Indonesia and everything in between!

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Hi, my name is Mark and I have never made a post on the forums before. So I hope this works out.

I would like to share my story with EU3 to everyone (as in, the few people who still check these forums).

I purchased EU3 Chronicles when I was in fifth grade (early 2012). I had done a bunch of research on cool-sounding computer games to ask for for Christmas. Ultimately, I decided I would ask for EU3 Complete with the logic being that "the last two expansion packs don't add more years so you're not getting any more for your money." However, I guess my parents didn't want me to spend my time playing computer games, and nobody bought the game for me. I had watched some YouTube videos of a guy playing as Teutonic Order (not sure what version he had but I do remember that it was pre-DW because when I got the game I was surprised it looked different from the video) and the game seemed like a lot of fun so I decided to buy it for myself. I did a bunch of comparison shopping and ultimately ended up getting Chronicles because it was basically the same price as Complete. I don't remember how much I paid for it (although I think it was pretty cheap; I could probably find that information somewhere). I ordered the game off of a really sketchy website and it took like a month or longer to arrive in the mail. That is one of the only things from my childhood I really remember waiting and waiting to finally get.

The day after the game arrived (I don't think I tried it the day that it came), I remember sitting on the floor during class (5th grade writing) and waiting and waiting for the day to end so I could go home and play my new game. I was definitely super excited. I came home by myself (I was a latchkey kid because both my parents had to work) and set it up. I remember waiting and waiting because it took soo long to load. Finally I was ready to choose a country. I picked Ming because... it was China and that seemed cool, and it was really big. The game was SO COOL. I spent more than half an hour clicking on all the buttons to see what the did, reading all the info boxes, looking around the world, starting troop recruitment because "I want to take over everything!"

Finally I was ready to start. There was just one problem - I didn't know how to unpause the game! I tried clicking everything but I couldn't figure it out. Ultimately I had to save the game, close out of it, go to the internet, and google how to do it. Oh, it was just pressing the spacebar. -__-

I don't remember everything super well because this all happened a long time ago. I do remember, in my game as Ming, that every time I could manage to get into a war (which is a little bit tricky with the factions) I would always take as much territory as I possibly could. Regardless of what CB I was using. Also, managing money was easy because you could just move the little slider in the economic window over and you could always start making more money.... I remember having around 50-60 infamy and there were SO MANY REBELS and then the game wasn't really fun any more....

I probably spent some time trying a few other countries but ultimately I picked Castille to start a new game. I don't know exactly when this was but I probably spent a lot of Saturday mornings playing EU3. I really sucked at the game, I do know that. I would take over random territories without considering how profitable owning them would be (so I took over all of North Africa). At the beginning I still minted a lot. I kept as large of an army as I possibly could and I was always trying to go to war because without war, the game was boring. I think I also put all COTs on max autosend merchants because I didn't understand the idea of compete chance and I didn't realize that perpetually high infamy made trade nearly impossible. I got QFTNW and lost more than one explorer because I went exploring in the North Atlantic with galleys.

I also had another problem - my computer was really slow. I didn't realize this was abnormal at the time, but I ALWAYS kept the game on max speed. And even then there was lots of time sitting there doing nothing. That's why I really always wanted to be at war - otherwise it was easy to get bored and there was nothing to do. I think even at max speed the game would only go at like 1 day per second. Or maybe it was even slower than that. If you consider all the time spent paused, I could play for hours and just a couple of years would go by.

My Castille game didn't go insanely well because I was still learning. I had extremely high inflation. My economy was very weak. I tried to colonize in Brazil but it was really expensive and bad for my economy. (Also, I don't think that I ever built buildings although I did eventually figure out that that was important).

I eventually got a new laptop computer for Christmas. I'm not sure when that was. It's the computer I'm using to type this message now. I think I was either in 6th or 7th grade but I can't remember for sure. Probably 7th actually.

When I got EU3 running on this computer, I was BLOWN AWAY by how fast it could go. The max speed was CRAZY fast. I think that probably I had stopped playing EU3 very much by this point because it was just so tedious (and also I was bad at it).

I'm just going off of my memory here, but I would guess that 7th-8th grade is when I was most into this game. I learned a lot more and I spent a lot of time reading AARs. Later on I also spent a lot of time reading the wiki. I'm pretty sure that I've read every single page on the wiki multiple times over by now. I remember having snow days and spending my time playing this game and reading AARs. I also got Victoria 2 and convinced some of my friends to get it (I think like 4-5 friends got it). IIRC it was only like 10 bucks for the base game at the time and I thought we would be able to play multiplayer together and I would be able to show them all how good I was at this strategy stuff. I did spent a decent amount of time playing Victoria 2 in 8th grade and I don't think I really played EU3 at all for like a 1 year period or so. Unfortunately, not only did my friends suck at playing Victoria 2 to the point that they quit out of frustration, but we were unable to get multiplayer to work. Which was really a bummer for me.

After I started high school I didn't have a lot of free time. However, I had of spurts of interest where I would get really obsessed with EU3 again and play it really seriously. This happened during like 2 of my summer breaks and 2 of my winter breaks or something like that. However, I basically have hidden that I played this game from my parents. And I spent a decent chunk of time playing it. I mean I'm sure they know that I played it some but not to the extent that I did at the times that I did. I honestly have been embarrassed about playing this game and generally don't tell people about it, except that it sort of a joke/meme with my closest friends.

Last summer I got my first job and I don't think I played EU3 at all (or maybe I did, I can't recall) although I did play a little bit of Victoria 2 for the first time in several years. (I also wasted a lot of time playing surviv.io).

In June I graduated from high school and I haven't been working for the past month. I'm moving in to college in a month. I may go back to my job for the next month (possibly starting tomorrow but as of right now I'm still unsure about that actually happening). The past 2 weeks I played EU3. My childhood is over and this is a game that, although I know it's played by a lot of adults, I will always associate with being a kid.

For a long time EU3 made me excited in a really special sort of way. The sound of a certain bird (IDK anything about birds) always reminds me of waking up early on Saturday mornings to play EU3. I will always associate this game with snow days and with hot summer days being home alone. I remember my dad told me to make sure I was staying hydrated so I would sit at the computer and continuously drink water and refill the glass, with the effect being that I had to go pee practically every 20 or 30 minutes. Now I'm an adult and ready to move on.

(Oh and to be clear, I didn't spend my whole childhood playing computer games. I liked reading a lot when I was younger and spent a lot of time doing that. I played soccer up through 9th grade and then started doing track, which, although I was not great at it, I was dedicated to it and spent a lot of time on it. I did debate for a year and a half and also got serious about quizbowl - where I occasionally was able to use my EU3 knowledge :) ).

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Now, let me post my DW empire! Hopefully the pictures will show up!

I started as Luneburg. I began this game coming off a game as Poland where I had been able to form a giant eastern empire by the mid-1600s and get elected HRE, but everyone in the HRE hated me and I wasn't able to progress with imperial reforms. I wanted to play a game that was different than basically every game of EU3 I had played before:
  • Almost all of my games were as countries that began reasonably powerful. I wanted the challenge of starting off as an OPM.
  • Trading. I had never tried to be a trading power and I wanted to do it.
  • HRE. I hadn't really tried to navigate the HRE through diplomacy and that was a good challenge.
  • Colonization (or the lack of it). Most of my games, which were usually as large countries, ended up with me trying to colonize as much as possible. In this game I wanted to ignore the colonies and focus on Europe.
  • The Reformation (?). Maybe this is a thing I'm adding in hindsight because I don't really remember for sure, but I know that I had never tried to convert my country to Protestant/Reformed.
I'm not sure when I started this game. It may have been the summer after 10th grade (so 2 years ago), or it may have been after 9th grade (3 years ago). I do know that it was summer, and I went long periods of time without playing at all. I probably completed the whole campaign in like 3 or maybe 4 periods of serious interest (or obsession).

It took a long time to establish myself as a trading power. It took a lot of slider moves; my first two national ideas were the two trade-oriented ones. I remember getting dumb missions like Arms Race Versus Neighbor! where I would build up my army and then disband the troops immediately after completing the mission. Finally, I started to make more money from trading after like 25-30 years of careful management. Then I got claims on our rivals which helped me expand. Also, at the beginning, I made royal marriages with everyone that I could. This paid off when right at the beginning of the game Ryazan of all countries got into a PU under me. That was quite surprising. (Side note: I later accidentally inherited Ryazan and then released them as a vassal because I did not have access anywhere near the province at the time. I finally annexed them near the end of the game by cancelling their alliance/vassalization and annexing them through war because they had a republican form of government.)

Basically I had all the provinces surrounding Luneburg plus a couple of really rich provinces in the Netherlands, and I was bringing in lots of money due to trade. When I got involved in wars I would vassalize small countries whenever I could (even for 4 infamy, although I made sure to keep my infamy down). I eventually was able to vassalize enough electors that I was able to put myself in line for the HRE. Finally, the old emperor died and my dude was elected. I generally had good relations with a lot of people in the HRE and I tried to keep it that way. I think I passed the reforms relatively quickly.

When the Reformation started, my provinces were among the most affected. More than half of my provinces converted to Reformed and then I made the decision to convert as well. This ruined my relations with most of the HRE. So I spent a lot of time trying to improve them again. However, then I was able to make countries convert to reformed and gain imperial authority for doing that. Which made passing getting the imperial authority a lot easier. Later on, my of my conquests in Europe were using Unam Sanctum/Cleanisng of Heresy. (Personally, I think it's weird that Holy War no longer works but Cleansing of Heresy is perfectly acceptable until 1821, but whatever).

I remember having several really tough wars against France, where my army of vassals came to save me. France was my biggest enemy as Luneburg, basically. I didn't have a large army, even when I formed the HRE.

Also, even though I didn't plan on doing any colonization (and for a while, even after getting a port, I didn't make any ships), there was some point in the 1500s where I discovered the Americas and basically no colonization was happening. I ultimately started colonizing some of the West Indies because basically they were too nice to not take and they were just sitting there. And then... I had to build some ships to protect my tariff efficiency.

I went back and have the before and after forming HRE pictures. However, I'm not going to add any more pictures from pre-end of game because it take SUPER long to load my save games (probably I would need to go delete a bunch of old save games but I'm not planning on playing any more any way.)
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No sure how my infamy went down.... I just noticed that.

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If you're wondering how I managed to get Austria, which was quite powerful, to be my vassal, I think I got pretty lucky. Austria actually offered me an alliance out of the blue which I accepted, and then they called me to arms against the Ottomans. Since we were allied in a war I don't think they could have declared war on me by declining to become my vassal when I passed the reform, so they accepted. A few countries did decline, unfortunately, but I got 'em all eventually.

From this point I had clearly already won. Before this game, I have never played a game past mid-1600s (I think). I'll give you a quick run-down of what happened.

I went after France with Cleansing of Heresy. I took like half of their European provinces. Then I used Obscure Documents to get them in a PU. (That's something that I never used before this game and it's pretty cool and makes your life a lot better.) I also went after Poland. Later I got Poland and Lithuania in a PU and inherited them at the same time I inherited France. From France I think I got a lot of American colonies (especially Southern South America and maybe some other parts. Poland also had some South American colonies. Before 1650 I attacked Ming twice and stole as many valuable provinces as I could. (I also went to war with Japan using Holy War but I couldn't take their provinces for 1 infamy, that was really annoying and I didn't get anything out of it.)

England formed Great Britain and I did attack them at some point and took their most valuable provinces. Later I got them in a PU and then inherited them.

Basically I cleaned up a lot in Eastern Europe in the last 100 years. I took a lot of the Russian provinces. I didn't make the land connection to Eastern Siberia until less than 50 years before the game ended, and the land connection to China didn't happen until the last 20 years of the game. (I took a bunch of land from Novgorod using the Revolution/Counter-Revolution CB). When I got the land connection to China the Chinese provinces suddenly became all of the highest-production provinces in the country.

Here is my empire:
Sweden and Cornwall are under a PU. My vassals are Bosnia, Epirus, Wallachia, Tyrone, USA, Dauphine, Sicily, and the Mamluks.

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You might be wondering how I ended up with so many colonies from a "non-colonization" game. Well, I did stay true to my word and I never took QFTNW. I inherited a lot of them (especially in South America and Africa. Indonesia is super valuable and definitely worth colonizing. I actually kept getting cores on Castilian provinces in the Americas and took a bunch of their provinces that way. I also made Castille release Mexico and took their valuable provinces using Cleansing of Heresy (I did this right at the end of the game, though).

Well, that's basically the game! I have a bunch more pictures I'll put in below.

Interesting stuff that happened:
  • There are now only 3 Catholic countries: Sweden, Castille, and Mexico. However, there were several more right up until the endgame, including: Sicily, which I got a vassalization mission in the last 10 years and force converted when vassalizing, Portugal (my vassal who I annexed in the last 10 years), and Norway, which I annexed in the last 5 years (for hundreds of years, Norway's sole province was the Canarias).
  • Bourbonnais is located only in Africa, although they have some colonies in Oceania. It is a trading power. They have level 4 forts in all of their provinces and their capital had level 6 fort plus a march.
  • Vijaynagar was the second largest in terms of army and income for a long time, but in the last 10-20 years of the game underwent a major collapse.
  • I only annexed Aztec in the last 10 years of the game. (Previously they had been surrounded by Castille, and then by Mexico).
  • Several hordes still exist and they seem to be doing alright.
  • Minamoto converted to Catholicism at some point when they only had like 4 provinces left. Fujiwara was totally dominant in Japan and I thought they might be able to united Japan but they didn't quite manage it, even though Taira has just 1 province and is their vassal.
  • I never had this much infamy during the game; I only ended with this much because right at the end I took the two Ottoman provinces that I needed to connect my Arabian holdings to Europe.
  • I sponsored rebels in Murcia when it belonged to the Ottomans. It defected to Castille and the troops became Castilian soldiers that Castille combined with their army. Their army was then sponsored by me and was unable to fight my troops or siege my provinces for the last ~40 years of the game (and Castille and I were perpetually at war every few years)! (This was a problem earlier as well when I sponsored rebels that declared an independent Ukraine. When I went to war with Ukraine they could not fight me.)
Religion
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Trade. Little countries in my vicinity kept making COTs and I kept having to take them over! I was at full free trade the entire game, although at some point I wasn't really able to compete in foreign COTs any more (part of this is that I stopped caring so much about trading). However, trade is by far my largest source of income still. In contrast to Europe, the Americas only have 4 COTs, and for a while there were only 3 with most trade going through 2 of them: Muskogee and St. Thomas. Both ended the game with 1 million population and at times both had a trade value of more than 3000. I counted and there are 43 COTs in the world, of which I own 29, including the 4 most valuable.
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Tech. I was always way ahead, although small countries kept trying to catch up. I tended to vassalize and annex the annoying trading powers.
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Here's my economic situation. Despite making tons of money from trade I still lose like 2k every year, apparently. I've always kept the minting slider at the lowest possible setting (and why I have national bank, I'm not sure, because I basically never did any minting, although I guess I did a little bit at the beginning). Ironically, my navy is my biggest expense - it was hard to keep at 100% tariff efficiency! I had to get grand navy because I was over the forcelimits and I was trying to reduce my expense there.

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Charts!
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I won't post the military screenshots. I have 704k troops and the next is Persia with 112k, Fujiwara has 84k, and Castille has 68k, Yemen has 66k, and Ming has 62k. I think the Ottomans would be up there except I just wiped out at least 70k of their troops or something like that.
I have a Navy of 202/189/6/230 for 627 total ships. Nobody else has more than 100. (Vijaynagar has 95).

Here's my kings. My current king took over at age 15 and already had a 6 year old son. That was weird. The original heir sucked, but he died. Eventually I got a replacement who was born in like 1808. Ironically, the new heir is 9/9/9.
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For all of you who still play EU3 - thanks for reading! I wasted a lot of time on this game to be honest, but I'm moving on with my life now. Don't have regrets!

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Thanks for sharing your story Mark. It was an interesting to read other people's path and their experiences with the game.

I also had another problem - my computer was really slow. I didn't realize this was abnormal at the time, but I ALWAYS kept the game on max speed. And even then there was lots of time sitting there doing nothing. That's why I really always wanted to be at war - otherwise it was easy to get bored and there was nothing to do. I think even at max speed the game would only go at like 1 day per second. Or maybe it was even slower than that. If you consider all the time spent paused, I could play for hours and just a couple of years would go by.

Ha ha, that was like me back when I was playing the game in High School. My laptop could run the base game, but it struggled to run it with the expansions. In fact, my computer would often get the Blue Screen of Death and I even had to download a mod to remove graphics that the game looked terrible, just to reduce the likelihood of that happening. Even then, I would still keep trying to play the game.

When I got EU3 running on this computer, I was BLOWN AWAY by how fast it could go. The max speed was CRAZY fast. I think that probably I had stopped playing EU3 very much by this point because it was just so tedious (and also I was bad at it).

Same here. Once I got a job and bought my own PC, the game became crazy fast to follow. However, I never turned it down below speed 5. I'm too cool for that and I learned to set autopause for crucial events. I think I only ever lowered the speed for extremely crucial wars or if I'm playing multiplayer to avoid desync.


I did debate for a year and a half and also got serious about quizbowl - where I occasionally was able to use my EU3 knowledge :) ).

To be honest, playing EU4 gave me a firm understanding of geography - something that I never really had before - and also sparked my interest in history. I would read many wiki's on the empires and states around the world when I was doing a playthrough... and considering I played almost all over the map from Europe, Russia, Africa, NA, SA, India, Asia, I ended up reading a lot on subjects (even outside of wiki) I wouldn't otherwise had been interested in. It gave me a lot of perspective on understanding why some things are the way they are now.

Today, I am still surprised at how many people lack understanding of basic geography outside of where they lived, for even major nations such as such as Spain, Germany, South/North Korea, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand etc.

For all of you who still play EU3 - thanks for reading! I wasted a lot of time on this game to be honest, but I'm moving on with my life now. Don't have regrets!

The way you wrote it, I wasn't sure if you were thinking of leaving EU3 behind, leaving EU behind, or leaving gaming behind.
I'm assuming you're just leaving behind EU3, and considering its age, I think it may be time indeed.

But ... have you ever thought about playing EU4 or even other PDS games like CK2? Nostalgia won't be much of a factor there, but I do think without nostalgia, it is an improved and better game.
 
Imperial England, just for the fun.
No colonization, no holy wars. Christian Europe minding her own business, that's it.
50 years ago Poland was expanding like crazy through the Hordes. 2 wars and a lot of spies made a lot of harm.

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Scandinussia anyone ?

It was a rather old file I had started, uniting Scandinavia with Sweden and leaving it around 1530 with all the Baltic Sea conquered, Novogorod and Poland severly weakened and a bunch of Vassals in Russia. Going through the Hordes was obvious at this point, but the map was ugly, with a big annonying Lithuania making a purple hole in the middle of my territory. I decided that with Western tech and some cool Swedish features, it was worth the effort to make it cleaner and go Eastward, completely ignoring the West, my Groenland cores and even the most part of Europe for a very long time.

I could have become Emperor though, having vassalized Brandenburg and PUed Burgundy (who had become elector). But I mostly had queens in this game and since they couldn't be elected empresses, they just turned away from the HRE. I also had Portugal in a PU (back in 1444) that I really hadn't asked for, but I let them freely go their colonial way through the Atlantic.

Two maps, juste before and after a big war I had delayed for too long. The imperial countries were getting too greedy, Austria took Constantinople from the Ottomans before I could... The problem was they had a 200k army, Bohemia coming to their rescue as the Emperor with 200k more (they had more than 100k in Naples only, but I managed to trap them in Sicily blocking the strait and let them take the attrition)... and even Spain got involved at some point with 200k more, but fortunately they were already in deep trouble against France and accepted the peace deal with me just taking Sinope). 30+tech armies and level 4 forts were tough. Wars are frightening at this stage of the game.

Well, the rest was only Horde colonization and a few holy or imperialist wars (I didn't intend to take on the Ottomans at first, but they attacked my big vassal Georgia and once I had beaten them started getting dogpiled by Austria, so...)

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Well, that looks promising.

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I cancelled the alliance with Granada on day 1 while guaranteeing Epirus. Annexed Naples in 1403. Sicily was in trouble, I DoWed them with Holy War CB, annexed them and vassalized Savoie and Aquileia in 1416. Claimed Algiers's throne, war, PUed them. Went back to Castile in the early 1430's while they were DoF and had no reliable allies (what can you do Bohemia ?). Claimed Mamluk throne, war, PUed them. My heir with very low-legitimacy but good stats inherited both Algiers and the Mamluks in 1444, which was totally unexpected. He's still on the throne now, turned against Ethiopian rebels then conquered Tripoiltaine and vassalized Tunisia with a mission, then diploannexed them. Meanwhile, second war against Castile with Venice and Portugal involved, another bunch of Holy wars on orthodox minors. Claiming Ottomans' throne right now, won't necessarily need to fight another war but that would be winnable. Naples, Sicily and Granada are cored and converted. I started colonizing around.

My initial goal was to get all of Africa but as long as I can win against Europeans, there is some good land to grab there as well. Would like to colonize South America too, as I'm pretty well placed to beat Portugal on this. They already have QFTNW though. And I'll have to westernize at some point. Wait and see...

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(That's Oyo next to my colony in West Africa, in case you're wondering)
 
Didn't expect much from that Savoie game, but in 1405 I got an unexpected PU with England and somehow managed to keep it... by permanent war, vassalizing minors, repeatedly beating France and stuff like that. For more than 50 years AI England has been a powerful, faithful but really stupid ally (i.e. quietly sieging poor Brittany with all of their armies while I was struggling with the BBB next to them). From time to time I had to rely on some other unreliable AI allies like Burgundy, Austria or Spain.

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I had formed Piémont-Sardaigne and was starting to look East wondering if l would form Italy again. I had just forced Milan into another PU when still unexpectedly I inherited both England and Milan.


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Then I became emperor and mainly focused on keeping that HRE crown, making a nice map, beating other European countries when they became too strong (Bohemia, Burgundy, Austria, Castille, Sweden and so on)... and finally forming Italy and grabbing all the cores.

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All in all, a surprisingly good game. Also, I like how AI Morroco imitated my previous game with this country.
 
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Playing Dai Viet. Started with attacks of opportunity, and consolidated most of SEA and the Malayan peninsula by 1500, while allied with Korea. China (Ming) overextended against the various hordes, and collapsed into revolts, losing the Mandate of Heaven. Their tax income fell to 0 in many of the provinces, and they couldn't even afford to pay their roughly 10,000 demoralized troops, who repeatedly failed to stop usurpers from seizing the throne, leading to further revolts and further economic failure.

Wu declared independence from Ming with around 10-12 provinces, and Korea managed to pick off pieces of Manchu. I forced Wu into a Personal Union, and a couple of decades later did the same for Ming. Keeping Ming's revolts under some semblance of control took most of my attention for the next couple of decades. After roughly 20 years of constant rebel-chasing in Ming territory, I inherited Ming, then reduced Visayanagar (which had taken control of most of India) to a junior partner in yet another PU.

Next problem was Brunei, which had expanded onto most of the islands in the region, fielded a significant navy, and were allied with one of the small states on the northern side of the Horn of Africa. This led to a golden opportunity to establish a foothold in Africa, while Castille was heavily engaged with taking land from the Mamluks. Basically, I suddenly found myself as a neighbor to a large Western power, and with that, all things are possible. Two more slider moves and I was able to begin the process of Westernization in the late 1500s, and managed to initiate all three stages of it within 15 years with the same ruler. When he passed away, his heir inherited both Wu and Visayanagar, and was able to complete the reforms, improving the army to Western European standards.

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At this point, having a fully Westernized power loose in the East feels like a big kid beating up the toddlers on the playground and stealing their lunch money. The only real threat I had to face after that was when Portugal tried to encroach on my turf, and I had to send an armada around Africa to besiege Lisbon, wiping out most of their fleet and army in the process. I've remained on good terms with Castille throughout the campaign, sharing military access and jointly fending off our various threats and revolts, yet they would never lower themselves to formally ally with the "little yellow people", even though trust is in the "Utter" category. I've got Centers of trade throughout the East and Middle East, including Alexandria in Egypt, and my traders are competitive with those of the Western countries. The main limiting factors at this point are Infamy and Magistrates.

So..... Now it's 1682, and I'm trying to muster the ambition to continue what's basically an "already won" game.
 
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Went back to this cool Champa game I had left 2 years ago. 1527, fully westernized and modernized, a bunch of vassals (including Tibet which would put me in contact with Central Asia Hordes), a PU with Korea and a long lasting alliance with Ming.

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I had force-released Aceh from Brunei in a previous war and that got me involved in a defensive war against Gondwana. I took advantage of it to take the rich province of Kutch from them, not knowing where that would lead me exactly...
I gained another random PU with Nepal. I spent a lot of time colonizing all these islands in modern Indonesia.

Then I noticed Vijaynagar lacked an heir to their throne... which I claimed. Almost imnediately I had to fight a war. Not very difficult with my far superior tech and my amazinglly loyal ally Ming.

I proceeded to diploannex my vassals in order to get direct access to Central Asia, which would make colonization there much more efficient. I also chose Absolute Monarchy : Imperalism Casus Belli is useful when as an Hindu nation you cannot declare Holy Wars.

Then this finally happened...

CHA1637inherit.jpg


Cham being a culture of the malay group, I could have formed Malaysia, but... that-would-kill-all-the-fun of building an enormous Empire with a 2PM South-East Asian underdog nobody ever cares playing with.

Ming had also inherited the Manchu at some point, which I thought was better than otherwise because they would keep stuck with the Celestial Empire faction system and that would prevent them from being too agressive and trying to expand. However, after 1644 they became Manchu themselves... since they lacked an heir, I claimed their throne and broke the alliance. I was busy preparing the inevitable succession war when 2 years later their Emperor died and I peacefully got the PU I was expecting to have to fight for. In 1695 I just inherited them.

Meanwhile, I had gained almost all the territory I wanted to claim for my Empire. One last war and I took these Portuguese colonies and finally got these neat borders... I took a screenshot of this because it's not likely you will see again a Champa army occupying Portuguese land in Siberia and sieging Lisbonne anytime soon... unless you give it a try yourself.

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All in all, an very satisfying game.

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Thanks to all that play this game still. I've always lived in the past, this game proves it. And there's still plenty of time for EU4, EU5 is years in the making. I see HOI 4, Crusader KIngs 3 and Imperator Rome getting the spotlight for a long time. All great games too.
 
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Went back to this cool Champa game I had left 2 years ago. 1527, fully westernized and modernized, a bunch of vassals (including Tibet which would put me in contact with Central Asia Hordes), a PU with Korea and a long lasting alliance with Ming.
Impressive work! I've always wanted to play a Westernized Japan but I've no idea about how to tackle it in order to Westernize ASAP. Any advices?
 
Impressive work! I've always wanted to play a Westernized Japan but I've no idea about how to tackle it in order to Westernize ASAP. Any advices?

Thanks ! Well, a quick reminder about Westernization rules : https://eu3.paradoxwikis.com/How_to_Westernise

In all the games I have played as a non-Western country, I noticed that it was around 1500 when I could finally gather all the requirements to westernize. I'd like to make it earlier but I'm not sure "ASAP" can be any earlier than this, since the first priority before that might be to just survive (or to achieve your special first goal when you play a more powerful country, like uniting Hindustan or Japan). Anyways, it might take a century until you get a good ADM ruler, have made all the required slider moves, chosen QFTNW, landed in Africa and conquered some land (Congo is a common target for this), then got in touch with some friendly, advanced (and preferably weak and relatively harmless, like Navarra or an OPM Italian republic) Western country, which will be at peace at the moment and accept to become your neighbour while buying one of the provinces you have conquered there for 0 ducat. The most frustrating is when they stubbornly refuse your offer... but saving before asking & reloading until they say yes could get you out of this embarrassing situation if you don't consider that cheating.

Then you have to be ready for some 20 to 30 more years of stability hits, bad events, riots - and rewarding technological improvements. The requirements to Modernize the military are even higer somehow, and I often wait for at least a decade before doing this, it's not so urgent once you have taken some significant technology advance towards your neighbours. But say that if things go well, you won't dedicate more than 50 years to the whole process and it should be done well before 1550, which is just at 1/3 of the entire game.

It could be quicker if :
- you're lucky with genius rulers, and good advisor events that allow faster stability recovery (don't forget to hire a level 5 o 6 Artist before taking the first stability hit, by the way) ;
- you focus on making your slider moves towards Centralization and let the Patron of the Arts (which you will have carefully chosen as one of your NI) events push you towards Innovation ;
- you manage to survive as a relatively small country without too many uncored provinces and different cultures or religions, so that you will progress in tech and recover stability faster (be careful before rushing into colonization or conquests !) ;
- you play a country with good starting slider positions, like Korea or Champa (which was one of the reasons I chose them in the first place). Well, this is not the case with Japanese daimyos but I suppose you deal with it when you wanna play Japan... and you will have some other advantages. I only made it once but I remember a unified and westernized Japan is a very powerful country that can conquer Ming pretty well - and as Shintoist they can take the Unam Sanctam NI and get the "cleansing of heresy" CB against ALL the country of their religious group...

Have fun playing Japan and don't forget to post your Empire ;)
 
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In all the games I have played as a non-Western country, I noticed that it was around 1500 when I could finally gather all the requirements to westernize.
The one other requirement is that you're at least 20 or 30 techs behind that neighbor of the better tech group. You'll probably be several techs behind at the start, but it will STILL take a few decades until you're far enough behind to launch Westernization, even if you can somehow pull off all the required slider moves and get a perfect ruler onto the throne. If you manage to get a border with a country that has Western technology, it will be faster, but in cases where they're one or two tech groups ahead, it can take a century.

For example, playing an Eastern European country, it wasn't until around 1490 that my techs fell far enough behind my Western tech group neighbors, but it took another decade until I had the necessary sliders in position and an adequate ruler to begin the process. Playing a SE Asian country, the neighboring Muslim tech group countries still weren't far enough ahead by the mid 1500s, and it wasn't until I went and took a province adjacent to a Western tech country that I could begin the process, even though my slider positions and ruler were already sufficient a couple of decades before that.

Of course, you could always do less-than-optimal research, and waste points by researching something ahead at a steep penalty, so your other techs lag behind....good luck in not getting conquered in the mean time.
 
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The one other requirement is that you're at least 20 or 30 techs behind that neighbor of the better tech group. You'll probably be several techs behind at the start, but it will STILL take a few decades until you're far enough behind to launch Westernization, even if you can somehow pull off all the required slider moves and get a perfect ruler onto the throne. If you manage to get a border with a country that has Western technology, it will be faster, but in cases where they're one or two tech groups ahead, it can take a century.

For example, playing an Eastern European country, it wasn't until around 1490 that my techs fell far enough behind my Western tech group neighbors, but it took another decade until I had the necessary sliders in position and an adequate ruler to begin the process. Playing a SE Asian country, the neighboring Muslim tech group countries still weren't far enough ahead by the mid 1500s, and it wasn't until I went and took a province adjacent to a Western tech country that I could begin the process, even though my slider positions and ruler were already sufficient a couple of decades before that.

Of course, you could always do less-than-optimal research, and waste points by researching something ahead at a steep penalty, so your other techs lag behind....good luck in not getting conquered in the mean time.

You're right, I forgot to mention this. That's another reason why you almost always have to wait until 1500's to be able to westernize. The gap with more advanced Western countries increases very slowly during the 15th century, but there is some kind of acceleration in research after level 10 is reached in their different technologies - then and only then you start to seriously lag behind. I don't take the risk to "waste" my research though - regardless of which country I play, I always focus on Government (for the NI and other administrative improvements) and Military research (for obvious reasons) and rely on the other 3 technologies combined to create the necessary 20-30 level gap. For instance if you want to westernize thanks to Holland, you can expect that around 1500 they will have reached level 15 in Production, Trade and Naval, while you'll be stuck at level 8, so that should do the trick, even if you're almost on par with them in GOV and MIL.
 
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I started a game with Teutonic Order, wondering what would happen if the Knights would stick with taking their mission very seriously - that is, converting the heathens and heretics in far North-East Europe, and keeping in mind that they would have to go back to the Holy Land one day. That would be another opportunity (after my Scandinussian game a few months ago) to conquer Asia as a Western Tech power, without messing with the HRE (I only vassalized Pomerania).

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Then there was this tough guy, Maximilian Franz. After 48 years as Grand Master, and as the Reformation popped up in Europe, he thought that it would be legit to create a dynasty of his own. He even lived 13 more years after that, then died leaving a 10 year-old heir on the throne of this unquiet realm trying to make its place between reckless Hordes and angry neighbours - the lack of manpower has been a constant problem here, even at higher tech levels I kept on losing thousands of men in battles with the Mongols and it took ages to reinforce.

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(Yes, I changed Prussia's map color. TO's dark grey is acceptable but Prussia's light grey is really lame. Enough shades of grey, that dark blue fits better to my taste).

Now I'm proceeding to swallow my vassals - all these minors in the middle of my territory, including Novgorod. With the Eastern colonies getting cored and slowly converted, the manpower issue should get easier.
Time for a Holy War with the Ottomans, they look weaker than usual. On my way to Jerusalem then... unless I take advantage of my recent victories in the West (the defensive war against Poland came as a good surprise in the end) and become the true boss in that region. The game is very open at this point.
 
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Another Germanic game : HRE Bavaria, with the all-time popular (and cheesy somehow) PU strategy. And another lame shade of grey, that's right, but meh.

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(The Byzance PU had totally come out of the blue by the way). Actually the funny part came after this. Poland had lost the PU with Lithuania and the Golden Horde remained quite unchallenged for a long time, with that suprisinlgy resilient Crimea as a buffer state. But Poland finally made their way and started colonizing like crazy. I had to stop them.

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After beating Poland and cutting them from their recent colonies (who eventually rebelled away with a little help from me), I got access to Crimea myself, thanks to Wallachia and Moldavia who I had vassalized in a war I waged following one of my missions. Then I had to keep up with it because after Poland, Novgorod was feeling like forming Russia. Then again, spies are essential in this kind of situation ; being at war with both the Golden Horde and Novgorod, I kept the latter busy while funding patriot rebels in their colonies so that they would return to the nomads.

I also had a long and interesting defensive war against that big Sweden - made them force release Norway and Finland, whom I soon got a random PU with.

Oh, and look at these impressively successful Muslim powers, especially Morocco (undoubtedly, the AI feels so confident with them since I played that fortunate Morocco game), Yemen, and above all the Mamluks who are on a rampage in Central Asia. Holy War would not be easy here.

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Oh, I didn't tell you what happened with that Morocco game I mentioned several times ? My bad.

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This is the very first time I have this cool modifier : " a sought after bachelor". Anyone else ? This is very useful for Muslim countries who have less possibilities to lower their BB than Catholics. If you insist on refusing marriage in order to keep that bonus, you might trigger an event that makes your ruler die without an heir, though.


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I really should move on with this game and conquer Europe, that would be hard but fun (I haven't modernized the military yet). I'm afraid I lack the time and energy to dedicate msyelf to it though.
 
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Arcas Cronifer, are you playing vanilla EU3 or perhaps a mod? I know Magna Mundi still uses the vanilla map so that's why i'm asking