Post your (DW) Empire

[Arcas Cronifer]

After all these years of playing EU3, American Natives still felt like an unmet challenge to me. Each time I tried, it was the same story : some 100 years of high speed and uneventful playing, with paltry efforts to get some tech progress, until I met England, Castille, France or Portugal who immediatly crushed me in spite of all the diplomacy I could use. Very frustrating, unfair (after all ,North American tribes resisted European colonization well into the XIXth century in OTL) - and I couldn't help thinking about how Prawnstar had managed an almost world conquest with Iroquois (one of the first, and best, AARs I ever read on this forum). So... let's try it again. Iroquois, then, since they're not completely hopeless (as a tribal democracy they don't get tribal succession crisis for example).

I played the first century as patiently and wisely as I could. Didn't conquer Huron at once, but in the 1420's they betrayed me after I had vassalized them, and I also gained some cores against them in border disputes, so I finally annexed them. I made all the slider moves I had to in order to westernize. I chose Colonial ventures as my first NI, which allowed me to expand a bit towards the South (and make contact with Shawnee, Cherokee and Creek, which ended up in partial conquest and vassalization) ; and, prudently, towards the East Coast where I expected the European to show up sooner or later. Honestly though, I still didn't have much interest in that game so far. But something happened... or, in fact, didn't happen. 1500, then 1510 and 1520, and still no colonists were in sight. What was going on ? I gave a look at the world map...

Europe was a mess as usual, but with some special flavor : all the big colonizers had been destroyed by their non-colonizer neighbourgs. Castille was reduced to a shattered 3PM by Aragon, while Portugal had already vanished from the map. France got slaughtered by Burgundy. England was severly beaten by Scotland - but even reduced as a 4PM, they still chose QFTNW as their 3rd NI. So they discovered America... but only 50 years later did the new European superpowers take advantage of that discovery. By then, I was more than ready, with cores and forts in all my provinces.

Here is what the world looked like shortly before my first encounter with Aragon, which was going to allow me to westernize (an ephemeral colony in Gespeg, which I promptly destroyed with spies inciting natives to revolt once I had completed westernization).

I mentioned spies. I used them a lot, since I produced twice as much spies as colonists. This was very helpful because while I couldn't colonize very fast myself, I really needed to slow down European invasion of North America without wars of agression (didn't really needed them, since I was still weak and the Europeans DoWed me quite often - it was not Aragon though, rather that scary, enormous and agressive Burgundy).

Here is a closer view at the situation in early 17th century :

They really started to hate me after I began to get those coastal provinces. Even westernized with my army modernized, I got consistently DoWed not just by the big ones but actually by anyone (like the Papal State or Norway ) and the game remained pretty tough for the following century. But I kept calm, had a good peace pipe... and eventually managed to give those palefaces a taste of their own medicine, and kick them out of the continent. I wish I could do more, but this result was quite satisfying in itself. Well, I didn't even think about a WC, of course...

(A long time before, England had moved their capital to Pipil... I decided to keep them as a vassal, which proved useful in my last war against Aragon. Oh, and France had practically become Argentina).

 

[Yersinia]

@Arcas Cronifer That's an impressive Iroquois. Lucky for you the usual colonizers were ruined.

My Golden Horde game has progressed, although I gave up on the idea of modernizing out of tribal government the hard way and formed the Mughals instead. It is a huge relief to be free of the constant rebel issues and the looming threat of the TSC. All is not well, however...

There is still a massive tech gap between me and the Western countries. I can overcome this with overwhelming numbers for the small island-countries remaining in Europe, but Great Britain is still a challenge I'm not eager to face just yet.

In the meantime, while I still have holy war casus belli, my main target is Japan. No Divine Wind to save them this time! However, there seems to be a bug with the 'shogunate disbanded' event. I'm not sure if there's a work-around for this. If not, I'll tag switch to one of the daimyos and annex Kyoto through console commands.

Remaining countries (old world):

Great Britain
Japan + Daimyos
Brunei
Bali
Kongo
Benin
Songhai

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

@Yersinia I think your patience and dedication have been rewarded ! That's the most glorious Mughal I've seen on this forum, and giving up on the Golden Horde seems perfectly reasonable if you are to address the threat coming from island countries. That GB (former Scotland IIRC) makes a perfect end boss... and you've only reached mid-game ! Looks like World Conquest is on the way...

Have you all heard about the Glory of Ulm ?

The kind of game I like, when I get tired of all that dynastic diplomacy, royal marriage and expecting PUs and inheritance... A good old administrative republic OPM. Trade like hell, leave everyone else behind in tech development (enjoy when you reach level 15 in the 1470's and everyone is still at level 10). Change your rulers at will every 4 years and get one with good diplomatic skills so that "Claim on our rivals !" event fires soon enough to give you perfect CB and cores against your neighbors. Make lots of vassals, and eventually get more influence in the HRE than the Emperor himself.

I focused on Eastern Europe, where Lithuania had completely vanished for some reason (revolted away later on as an OPM in Troki) as well as Muscovy, and Ukraine had become a power to count with, for once. Mazovia had become my vassal but they were very weak, I decided to sell them Polish provinces every time I happened to win a war against Poland. One of my favourite moments was when France had inherited Austria and I felt confident enough to beat them... and get cores on Austrian provinces for taking them back to the HRE (which also allowed me to get a land connection with my southern provinces in former Aquileia, which I had previously taken back from Venice).

This kind of game is quite open, I tend to have no long-term strategy (even though I could plan on forming Germany sooner or later, but that would kill the fun of playing Ulm, right ?) and just play opportunistic. There would still be a lot to do... But I've reached the point where there is no real challenge anymore, so I'm not sure I will actually continue this game.

 

[TheArchMede]

One workaround for the daimyo disbanded bug is to annex daimyos before you trigger it. If they've only got one province left, you can take it as part of a peace deal with Japan. War 1, reduce a daimyo to 1 province. War 2, annex that daimyo and reduce another to 1 province. War 3, annex another daimyo. I'm not sure whether you actually need to annex more than 1, but if there are only 2 left, they disband properly when you occupy all the capitals. That's how I deal with it in my WCs. No horde one yet, I lost an attempt to a save corruption while trampling France with the Timurids, and I've yet to regain the desire to fight through all that rebel pingpong again.

 

[Gyikoc]

I'm using a modified OOT (Occultus Orbis Terrestre) MOD.

And when I'm saying "modified", I mean like this.

If you think you see that somewhere, then I tell you: It is not a Shattered Europe ripoff from EU4 or something. I had the idea waaay before than I played EU4.

 

[Arcvalons]

I'm using a modified OOT (Occultus Orbis Terrestre) MOD.

And when I'm saying "modified", I mean like this.

If you think you see that somewhere, then I tell you: It is not a Shattered Europe ripoff from EU4 or something. I had the idea waaay before than I played EU4.

That's not Greenland, that's Pinkland. Common mistake.

 

[jez9999]

'Mare Nostrum':

I thought I'd play The Knights the way they're spiritually meant to be played; as the defence against the Muslim onslaught into the holy land, and eventual pushback against it and its reconversion to Christianity. This was certainly achieved:

... although ironically, the necessary first step was to immediately take Sardinia, then opportunistically take some small Italian states to provide the manpower and force limit base needed to join the inevitable dogpile on the Ottomans at some point:

All territories were cored by the end of the game, with the Mamluks providing a handy vassal for separating us from the middle east with which we didn't want to get involved. Note also Hungary to the north-east; after we confiscated its European territory, it was forced over into its Asian conquest holdings, in which it actually did reasonably well!

After this conquest, however, a modestly expanded target of restoring the concept of 'Mare Nostrum' - total control of the Mediterranean - seemed reasonable. The Iberian provinces in our culture group (save Malta) were actually the last provinces to be conquered, as we worked from east to west. However, Rhodes and Antalya were a minor exception to this, the former (which remained the capital from start to finish) having been converted to Maltese culture through a resettlement policy, and the latter through a random culture change event. A nice little outpost of our culture in Asia Minor!

We were pretty happy with the borders. Of course, they necessitated the deletion of the southern part of the HRE (Austria, being too aggressive and keen to re-take its land, had to be completely annexed):

The eventual powerhouse of The Knights had over 500,000 troops, and was a tech leader:

It also controlled 4 large, lucrative centres of trade - Alexandria, Venezia, Liguria, and Andalucia - in which it had monopolies, which provided very well for the mercantilistic empire's finances:

As ever, Republican Dictatorship was picked in the mid-to-late game for the government type owing to its complete lack of policy restrictions, and Imperialism CB on every nation for when provinces had to be taken, but there was no other excuse.

If they had continued beyond 1821, no doubt the eventual, even more modest target of The Knights would have been to make the entire world their protectorate!!!

 

[cetvrtak]

'Mare Nostrum':
View attachment 754853

I thought I'd play The Knights the way they're spiritually meant to be played; as the defence against the Muslim onslaught into the holy land, and eventual pushback against it and its reconversion to Christianity. This was certainly achieved:
View attachment 754854

... although ironically, the necessary first step was to immediately take Sardinia, then opportunistically take some small Italian states to provide the manpower and force limit base needed to join the inevitable dogpile on the Ottomans at some point:
View attachment 754855

All territories were cored by the end of the game, with the Mamluks providing a handy vassal for separating us from the middle east with which we didn't want to get involved. Note also Hungary to the north-east; after we confiscated its European territory, it was forced over into its Asian conquest holdings, in which it actually did reasonably well!
View attachment 754856

After this conquest, however, a modestly expanded target of restoring the concept of 'Mare Nostrum' - total control of the Mediterranean - seemed reasonable. The Iberian provinces in our culture group (save Malta) were actually the last provinces to be conquered, as we worked from east to west. However, Rhodes and Antalya were a minor exception to this, the former (which remained the capital from start to finish) having been converted to Maltese culture through a resettlement policy, and the latter through a random culture change event. A nice little outpost of our culture in Asia Minor!
View attachment 754857

We were pretty happy with the borders. Of course, they necessitated the deletion of the southern part of the HRE (Austria, being too aggressive and keen to re-take its land, had to be completely annexed):
View attachment 754858

The eventual powerhouse of The Knights had over 500,000 troops, and was a tech leader:
View attachment 754859

It also controlled 4 large, lucrative centres of trade - Alexandria, Venezia, Liguria, and Andalucia - in which it had monopolies, which provided very well for the mercantilistic empire's finances:
View attachment 754860

As ever, Republican Dictatorship was picked in the mid-to-late game for the government type owing to its complete lack of policy restrictions, and Imperialism CB on every nation for when provinces had to be taken, but there was no other excuse.

That's a whole lot of knights. Good to see Hungary driven back to where they came from

If they had continued beyond 1821, no doubt the eventual, even more modest target of The Knights would have been to make the entire world their protectorate!!

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you could use the Converters to continue the game into Vic2 and further to HoI4, if you wanted to.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

'Mare Nostrum':
View attachment 754853

I thought I'd play The Knights the way they're spiritually meant to be played; as the defence against the Muslim onslaught into the holy land, and eventual pushback against it and its reconversion to Christianity. This was certainly achieved:
View attachment 754854

... although ironically, the necessary first step was to immediately take Sardinia, then opportunistically take some small Italian states to provide the manpower and force limit base needed to join the inevitable dogpile on the Ottomans at some point:
View attachment 754855

All territories were cored by the end of the game, with the Mamluks providing a handy vassal for separating us from the middle east with which we didn't want to get involved. Note also Hungary to the north-east; after we confiscated its European territory, it was forced over into its Asian conquest holdings, in which it actually did reasonably well!
View attachment 754856

After this conquest, however, a modestly expanded target of restoring the concept of 'Mare Nostrum' - total control of the Mediterranean - seemed reasonable. The Iberian provinces in our culture group (save Malta) were actually the last provinces to be conquered, as we worked from east to west. However, Rhodes and Antalya were a minor exception to this, the former (which remained the capital from start to finish) having been converted to Maltese culture through a resettlement policy, and the latter through a random culture change event. A nice little outpost of our culture in Asia Minor!
View attachment 754857

We were pretty happy with the borders. Of course, they necessitated the deletion of the southern part of the HRE (Austria, being too aggressive and keen to re-take its land, had to be completely annexed):
View attachment 754858

The eventual powerhouse of The Knights had over 500,000 troops, and was a tech leader:
View attachment 754859

It also controlled 4 large, lucrative centres of trade - Alexandria, Venezia, Liguria, and Andalucia - in which it had monopolies, which provided very well for the mercantilistic empire's finances:
View attachment 754860

As ever, Republican Dictatorship was picked in the mid-to-late game for the government type owing to its complete lack of policy restrictions, and Imperialism CB on every nation for when provinces had to be taken, but there was no other excuse.

If they had continued beyond 1821, no doubt the eventual, even more modest target of The Knights would have been to make the entire world their protectorate!!!

Now that's what I call a lovely, inspiring, old school EU3 achievement. Congrats. I cannot imagine how tricky and painful the first years must have been...
Also, first time I see Würtemberg sneak into French territory like that.

 

[TheArchMede]

Some similarities to my current Lorraine => Wholly Roman Empire campaign. Its the Ottomans that have been kicked back out onto the steppe in my case.

 

[jez9999]

Here's the end result of my Aachen -> Germany attempt:

I was a little bit disappointed that I only formed Germany 75% of the way through the game - getting cores on the necessary HRE territories to form Germany is hard, and I didn't get a single free one so I had to wait 50 years for them to core; I also painstakingly diplo-annexed most of them - and this meant that I couldn't eat up the rest of eastern Europe in time, as I'd planned to. Bohemia therefore survived pretty well, although outside the HRE (which we had promptly dismantled).

We gobbled up all Germany's cores, although this took rather longer than I'd hoped (so much more of a long process than just forming the HRE and magically getting everything at once!) - and then I had to rush at the end to get the borders to look half-decent, putting me significantly over the badboy limit. It'd take maybe 5 further game years just to stop being dishonourable scum. What would've followed beyond 1821 is a rather long period of consolidation of existing territory.

However, this did allow us to get all the Germanic provinces inside our borders - just. Interestingly, one of the opportunities I jumped upon to get some kind of power as Aachen early on in the game was Finland declaring independence up in north-east Scandinavia..... as a Shamanist state! If anyone has any idea how that can actually happen, I'd be interested to know, because both of the Finnish state's provinces (Neva and Kexholm) were Orthodox! Actually, looking at the starting map, I think I know what happened; Karelia starts off as Novgorod's province, but with the Shamanist religion. It has no fort, and a small chance of rebellion. Shamanist zealots must have taken the province, then somehow taken Kexholm and Neva too for long enough to flip them to a new Finnish state! Anyway, as a Shamanist state, basically everyone in Europe attacked Finland, although oddly, nobody annexed their territory. Eventually I realized this as an opportunity, annexed them on a colonial conquest CB, and waited 50 years to core on them, using regular spies to incite natives in order to destroy any colony that existed in Karelia (and boy, did Sweden try to colonize that area!) Once we cored, we could colonize it. You may notice a large Rheinlander presence up there in northern Scandinavia. Our colony of course had this culture, and then we got a bunch of cores in that area through events. We took them pretty aggressively, and then events turned a bunch of those other territories to our culture too. Result: a Rheinlander cultural region in northern Scandinavia!

As a final note, the fact that we took the "vassalize everyone that you can" option towards forming Germany meant that we ended up vassalizing most of Germanic and Italian Europe. Some of these vassals got very busy colonizing around the world, leading to our ultimately owning large swathes of the New World through our vassals!!!

On the timelapse map, you can see the slow gradual spread of Aachen proper (most of the work in the first half of the game was vassalizing), except of course for our continual expansion in the north-east Scandinavian area! This probably helped a lot with vassalization, as it made us a larger state and therefore more likely to have our diplomatic offers of vassalization accepted. Forming Germany as Aachen, whilst the challenge I hoped it would be, turned out to be even more of a challenge than expected. In future I'd try Thuringia or Brandenburg, so that Germany can be formed much sooner, and more European (and Asian?) conquest achieved.

The Ottomans and Persia, for some reason, did very well this game. The Europeans barely made a dent in the Muslim world, and even north Africa remained Sunni. I myself was concentrating 100% on Europe, so I certainly didn't do anything to change that state of affairs! At some point I considered making a break through Muscowy to reach and colonize a bunch of Golden Horde territory, but then thought better of it as it would've been a distraction from forming Germany. Instead of that territory becoming Novgorod, Muscowy, Hungary, etc... it became Persia! A first for me to see, methinks.

 

[jez9999]

Formed Germany, this time starting as Thuringia. It's surprisingly difficult, and the first time I tried I was too passive and nothing much happened for 50 years. I started again, was much more aggressive about getting into wars, taking vassals at every opportunity, and never mind the badboy. This worked much better, but still, there are no missions to get cores on the core provinces of Germany and we only got one or two through the "claims on our rivals" event. This time round I managed to form Germany after maybe 150 game years.

I thought about trying to keep the HRE around with us as its only member, but it's like a ball and chain around your feet. You can't build up much badboy or you won't be voted as the emperor, even with the electors vassalized. You get constant monthly badboy for owning unlawful HRE territory, so taking HRE territory on an imperialism CB (only about 75% of the HRE is German cores) kills you infamy-wise. In the end I just dismantled it and things were much easier.

This is what the map looks like when Central and Eastern Europe is just all gobbled up by Germany:

It has such a different feel to it than at the beginning. Instead of your rivals being next door, it's just all your territory, adding to your enormous manpower! lol

The final map; a vassalized Jalayarids and Smolensk made for useful buffers to the south east and north east, and the AI often seems to play a surprisingly competent Persia.

Tech leader:

I didn't manage to do the whole France/Spain conquest that I'd wanted, but we did (just) manage to get all the Germanic peoples within our borders (Bohemia flipped to Saxon culture for bonus points):

One goal I did set was to try and keep the heretic religions out of the game. Our entire territory was Catholic and there were no states with Protestant or Reformed as their official religion, but you can't really stop one or two foreign territories flipping to them:

All in all, not bad, but if you want quicker Europe-wide conquest, form the HRE.

Oh, and timelapses of country and religion:

 

[TheArchMede]

The Wholly Roman Empire. From Lorraine, capital shifted to Rome, culture shifted, converted to Orthodox and the last province in Gaul just cored.
Targets were everything that had been in the Roman Empire, plus anything else the game gave me a core on.
Persia used to be much bigger, a solid block from Ethiopa to the Arctic, but fell apart after refusing to hand over disputed boundaries until its manpower and stability were completely wrecked.

 

[jez9999]

I managed to raise Ethiopia to a world power.

Really quite tricky though. I thought that because we started as Orthodox, we'd have various advantages that Christian states have. Turns out all it means is you're totally isolated in Africa for half of the game, until you get up to Europe, and then the Europeans are... kind of friendly to you, but it's not that great. And by that time you don't really need them as allies anyway.

I wanted to unite the Orthodox axis of Ethiopia-Byzantium-Russia, and if I'd been a bit more focused I probably could've.

Most of Africa was Orthodox, and we got up to the Red Sea, vassalizing a few Orthodox states in Greece, and Muscowy in Russia (which we gradually expanded), but it wasn't quite all linked up.

Early on, I had to re-throw the dice a few times though, like in a holy war with the Mamluks that almost destroyed us (forgot to give the northern-most state to our vassalized Adal), and the game killing off 2 rulers with good admin in a row in the middle of our Westernization.

Country timelapse:

Religion timelapse:

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

To think I have played EU3 for all these years, ignoring this gem...

Historically, the principalty of Achaïe was one of the last remnants of the Catholic states created in Greece after the invasion of Byzantium by the Crusaders in 1204. After almost 200 years it had gained independence and had been disputed between several powerful Western dynasties. Finally, the chief of the "Navarra" mercenary band, Pierre de Saint-Supéran, managed to claim the throne for himself. His heir, Maria Zacarria, was actually his wife - I guess he was already pretty old, she was younger than him and their children were too young to claim the inheritance in case he would die.

Anyway, this is EU3 here, so what are we gonna do with this ? Achaïe is an OPM in quite a precarious position, with the wrong religion and the wrong culture (we're Italian and basically have to switch to Greek on day 1 because it's unlikely we will form Italy any time soon). But it's not so desperate as it might seem (and certainly much easier than the Knights, to be honest). Venice is a convenient buffer against the Ottomans and they're rather friendly (we're in their trade league). The rest of the world doesn't care about us. And we have a core on Morea, one of the two ultimate Byzantine provinces...

In my game, Byzantium started a war against Adana, who managed to sneak their fleet to Morea, but right before their troops arrived, I DoWed Byzantium and started the siege by myself. It was all that I coud do with my tiny force, but that was enough. Byzantium won their war against Adana and annexed them, but even if their was no way I could land on Constantinople, my warscore was enough to take Morea and force the release of Adana.

Ten years later Byzantium lost their fleet and army in a pointless war against some Europeans. I attacked them without CB, taking the -2 stab hit, and very soon had to take that crucial decision...



I could conquer Constantinople, one of the biggest cities in the world. But it might trigger some giant patriot rebel army (I was glad and amazed in the end that it NEVER happened, actually). And the Ottomans had that "City of the world's desire" mission... So I could instantly become their target, which meant game over.

But the Ottomans were incredibly careless in that game - at least from my point of view. They didn't manage to properly expand into the Hordes, and while they spent a very long time at war with the Mamluks (and for a mediocre result) they got attacked by Castile, lost one province to them, then got some greek rebels (which I helped a bit - spies, my friends, spies. If you lack the manpower to field a big army but still can save some money, use spies as much as you can. You can definitely, and secretly, crush entire empires like this). The rebels also sieged Venitian provinces, while the (not so) Most Serene Republic was also involved in wars that didn't turn out very well. All in all, I managed to to get 3 then 4 more provinces that way, buffed up my army... and with a still humble force of 16.000 men, jumped in the next Holy war against the Ottomans.

From then on, the path was obvious. Achaïe was meant to be a crusader state, right ? So let's crusade.

Of course it became easier and easier in the Middle East. After the Ottomans and the Mamluks, I felt like Alexander the Great and went for that big Persia. But I also had to keep an eye on the West... where the right thing to do was to force a PU on that big Hungary, to begin with (and casually kick Austria's ass in the process, something I always do with pleasure). Hungary had previously inherited Savoy... I knew those HRE provinces between France and Milan would get me into some trouble sooner or later.

In the 1630's I moved my capital to Judea, just because that's what a crusader kingdom would do eventually (was not completely painless, though). In 1666 I inherited Hungary (thanks to that excellent young king with a funny name). The Saint-Superan bloodline had been lost, sadly. Later on I had another dynasty, the Laskaris.

The rest would just be about some borders to fix. But I guess you're starting to wonder about that HUGE Poland, obviously and fully gone into space (they inherited Lithuania very early and were doing very well all the time, while Novgorod quietly formed Russia)...

Well, my best option was to PU them, obviously. This would be the only war I'd have to fight against Poland, before becoming BFF.

There was still something I wanted to do for the end game. I said Achaie cannot pretend to form Italy... but now I really wanted to have it all the same. The problem was, if I were to take the Northern part of the peninsula, I'd have to deal with the HRE... and with a powerful Milan... who had France in a PU...

First, I proceeded to dismantle the HRE. That was 15 years of war, no less.


(First time I saw an HRE utterly incapable of passing one single imperial reform in 300 years...)

Then I did all that I could to separate Milan from France - and become ally with France myself. Oh, and I also did my best to clear my borders, and annoy my colonialist rivals while I was at it - time for wars of independence had arrived. I could see the US, Canada, Haïti, Peru, Colombia, Chili pop up... in almost historically relevant places (except for some Mexico in the Hudson Bay, maybe). Oh, and that rare Louisiana :



I finally managed to have all of Italy (the final touch was counter-revolution wars against the republics of Corsica and Sardinia). And some clean borders (I had to go fight Milan in exile in Kamchatka to get that East African Coast with the juicy CoT in Zanzibar). And even some friends : all the countries I helped to set free, and the vassals I didn't bother to annex (included that Sunni Qara Koyunlu that I had helped rebel from Persia and vassalized afterwards). I never inherited Poland though (would have been a mess anyway). And I didn't conquer that much in the end - but hey, that's still not bad for a despised OPM.

(Oh, and on a side note : well done the AI with that united Japan)

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

I think I've created a monster...
Denmark -> Scandinavia (1449)-> HRE (1536).

And still so much to do ! With 285 years left to play...

 

[jez9999]

The HRE is the wrong colour there...

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

The HRE is the wrong colour there...

Not wrong, different. I've edited some colors a long time ago (so long I basically forgot about original colors). Grey looks too similar to unsettled land to me. For countries that claimed the inheritance of the Roman Empire (i.e. The Papal State and the HRE), I prefer to use various shades of purple or crimson. Prussia is a deep blue. And Scotland has that dark green that fits quite well and prevents from confusing their land with Castile's.

 

[jez9999]

What confuses me is why they coulored the Golden Horde, Persia, Syria, and The Mamluks so similar (possibly identical, in some cases), as these countries regularly have borders with each other.

 

[jez9999]

I noticed the "Form Romanian nation" decision and decided to form it with the harder of the two Romanian starters, Moldavia. Start was surprisingly easy as the Golden Horde didn't attack too successfully, and cancelling vassalization with Poland didn't cause a war and we could pretty much just go on our way. Both the formation of Romania and expansion thereafter, however, were quite forced and not at all smooth. As I had thought, forming Romania requires you to get several cores from different countries, and the decision doesn't give you any new cores.... so it's pretty much just to get a new name and flag. I expanded much more casually than in most of my games, kept low infamy for the whole game, and in the end achieved the Black Sea domination I'd aimed for. Stained the area dark blue (Protestant) too.