Post your (DW) Empire

[TheArchMede]

I have absolutely never heard about that in 8 years of playing DW. Is it still existing in 5.2 though ?

It requires the Liberum Veto decision to be taken. Only a few countries get that opportunity and they normally only take it as a last resort when being overrun. The country has to survive, get back into good shape, stay that way for long enough to get the event that allows it to effectively undo the decision and then take the reform choice. Spend enough time beating up Eastern tech neighbours and letting them regroup afterwards, and you'll see it. You don't get text explaining whats happened, so its quite possible its happened in your games and you've never realised it. I had to go and track down the events in the files to see how it worked. I don't think I've ever seen it twice in a game before though. Its in 5.2.
This is what happened to a Russia that did it both as Muscovy and then Russia.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

It requires the Liberum Veto decision to be taken. Only a few countries get that opportunity and they normally only take it as a last resort when being overrun. The country has to survive, get back into good shape, stay that way for long enough to get the event that allows it to effectively undo the decision and then take the reform choice. Spend enough time beating up Eastern tech neighbours and letting them regroup afterwards, and you'll see it. You don't get text explaining whats happened, so its quite possible its happened in your games and you've never realised it. I had to go and track down the events in the files to see how it worked. I don't think I've ever seen it twice in a game before though. Its in 5.2.
This is what happened to a Russia that did it both as Muscovy and then Russia.
View attachment 776419

This is really interesting. I've been doing as you say : looked up in many of my old game saves to find a trace of it, but I didn't. I never take the Liberum Veto decision when I play Eastern countries, and in other games when I'm at war with them, I often keep the pressure on them until they take LV, wipe away the 15k army that pops up in the last unoccupied province, then wait a few months more until their WE get through the roof again. Maybe this doesn't allow them to recover enough to get the other Liberum Veto events later on.

But I'll be looking for it now, and let my Eastern foes a chance to get it, for sure . I find it amazing that this good old game still has some perks that remain to be discovered.

BTW, that Portuguese World Conquest of yours is looking good.

Edit : been looking for actual historical references for Liberum Veto and what this peculiar law did to the policies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the XVIIIth century... And as usual the game feature is incredibly relevant. EU3 and other Paradox games really have incited me to learn more historical stuff than I did in my student years !

 

[TheArchMede]

This is really interesting. I've been doing as you say : looked up in many of my old game saves to find a trace of it, but I didn't. I never take the Liberum Veto decision when I play Eastern countries, and in other games when I'm at war with them, I often keep the pressure on them until they take LV, wipe away the 15k army that pops up in the last unoccupied province, then wait a few months more until their WE get through the roof again. Maybe this doesn't allow them to recover enough to get the other Liberum Veto events later on.

But I'll be looking for it now, and let my Eastern foes a chance to get it, for sure . I find it amazing that this good old game still has some perks that remain to be discovered.

BTW, that Portuguese World Conquest of yours is looking good.

Edit : been looking for actual historical references for Liberum Veto and what this peculiar law did to the policies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the XVIIIth century... And as usual the game feature is incredibly relevant. EU3 and other Paradox games really have incited me to learn more historical stuff than I did in my student years !

Norman Davies is a good writer on this. "God's Playground" is his detailed history of Poland, his "Vanished Kingdoms" includes essays on quite a few EU3 era states that aren't around any more, he was also on the "In Our Time" podcast recently when they did an episode on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I'm not sure how accessible BBC podcasts are outside the UK, but well worth a listen if you can access it and I'd expect any EU player to like Vanished Kingdoms.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Norman Davies is a good writer on this. "God's Playground" is his detailed history of Poland, his "Vanished Kingdoms" includes essays on quite a few EU3 era states that aren't around any more, he was also on the "In Our Time" podcast recently when they did an episode on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I'm not sure how accessible BBC podcasts are outside the UK, but well worth a listen if you can access it and I'd expect any EU player to like Vanished Kingdoms.

Found it ! Might not be so easy to listen to (while I can read and write some correct English, hearing it live is another matter...) but certainly worth a try. AND I'm glad to say I have at least one book by Norman Davies about Polish History at hand - I'm a librarian and actually in charge of the History section

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Wanted to make some silly plans with an OPM that was absolutely not settled for them :

I chose Modena because, whereas their PU senior partner Ferrara can get into some trouble (The Papal State has a specific mission against them for instance), everybody around seems to ignore completely that pale yellow OPM. AI Milan doesn't even consider asking them for Military Access, which is a shame since this is how they consistently tend to fail at fighting rebels in Sienna and Pisa and so often end losing those 2 precious provinces. Of course I didn't bother proposing them either, so I could vassalize the new independent Pisa state later on.

I just had to refuse the alliance with Ferrara and let them die alone. Very soon they got seized by a pretender, which broke the PU and I was set free with a new and rather decent ruler, without having even asked for it. Then Ferrara DoWed me to restore the PU, they lost and became my loyal vassals. Oh, how the tables have turned.

Another reason for choosing Modena over Ferrara was that I intended to sail West - here the silly plans begin - and at least Modena is on the right side of the Italian Peninsula for that.

So, I took advantage of my University to get National Ideas faster, and being an OPM (and HRE member) allowed me to swap ideas whenever I needed it with stability hits not causing trouble for too long. I could choose QFTNW during the 1420's and colonized Madeira. I couldn't colonize very fast though, because even with Trade tech 7 I was not a very good trader, and in spite of Modena being a decent wine-producing province, I was constantly broke due to the expensive things I was doing overseas. Besides, something completely unexpected happened in the middle of the process : a PU with Castille. This allowed me to win that defensive war against Venice you can see on the picture above. The downside was that Castille involved me in European stuff more often that I'd need (Aragon was willing to reclaim that Valencia province Castille had taken earlier).

Actually my purpose was completely elsewhere :

I was finally not going West, but East. Modena decided not to trust the wild imagining of that Genoan navigator, Cristoforo Colombo : the road to India had to sail around Africa, period. I paved my way by conquering pagan countries instead of colonizing, it took a while but was also much less expensive. I finally conquered all of Mutapa and waited a bit until everything was cored and converted... then went for India with a foolhardy 20k army (who eventually won against Vijaynagar but was rather badly decimated, I have to admit. Galloglaigh Infantry is not enough against Indian troops apparently).

Fast forward some dull decades of conquest. During the 1530's my excellent, 85 year-old king Francesco died after a 70 year-long reign (!) and I inherited Castille. His heir was already 73 years old (some Prince Charles vibe here) but still lived long enough to be elected emperor. As you can imagine I couldn't care less about HRE stuff, but the news was welcome for the manpower boost (I still had issues with it back then).

I also had directly inherited Mantua earlier on, without even having a PU with them. Thank you, but that kind of ruins my plan of keeping my capital isolated until I'm ready to leave...

I wasn't really happy with that Castillan territory since it gave me Overexpansion (my Indian possessions were far from being cored). And I needed Castille alive as an ally in Europe, not only for their armies but for the big fleet they tend to build. So I released them as a vassal. In the 1550's, when Nova Modena (former Ahmadabad) and surrounding provinces (including Kutch and its juicy CoT) got cored, I also released Mantua, adopted a Republican government, rightfully lost the Imperial Crown, left the HRE... and moved to India.

It was said that I would still get some trouble from Castille though. Here I have just been DoWed by England for a stupid colonial dispute with Castille in North America... Don't you think I have some more important things to do, kids ? Like attacking former OPM Delhi who just made a spectacular comeback... and that unusually big Assam, too.

I was kinda exhausted by the game at this point, so I stopped there for a moment, but I guess many funny things could still happen. It was never as easy as it could seem though, because Modena is not Holland and the route I took with them was not obvious, really. But it was an original experience.

(Final sidenote : Switzerland went berserk in that game, probably got the "Claims on our rivals" event several times or something : whatever, they completely destroyed Austria, and for once I took zero part in it. Impressive.)

Edit : forgot to mention the incredible resistance of the Hordes in that game. Golden Horde falling to Muscovy and Prussia is quite recent here, in the early 16th century they still held Crimea, since Poland and Lithuania completeley failed to conquer them. The Timourids were struggling but after my first war against Vijaynagar they took advantage, took back some of their coastal provinces, vassalized the minors that had rebelled away from them, and even contained the expansion of Persia for a while. Other Hordes were mostly intact, and thus still in TI from the Westerner's point of view.

 

[TheArchMede]

20k Portuguese wasn't enough at that land tech either, at least not when Vijayanagara still had 120k to throw at them.
You could try to turn India Italian. I doubt settlement policies would be enough to do it all, but if there's still that pagan province in Assam, it should be possible.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

20k Portuguese wasn't enough at that land tech either, at least not when Vijayanagara still had 120k to throw at them.
You could try to turn India Italian. I doubt settlement policies would be enough to do it all, but if there's still that pagan province in Assam, it should be possible.

Well I think I've never used settlement policies (kinda deterred by the infamy, revolt risk and magistrate malus), and I'm not good at cultural conversion mechanisms in general. I just convert new provinces to my religion because it's better for the economy and social peace in the long run, but I'm used to living with massively multicultural empires. I even find it sad that through religious conversion, pagans completely loose their culture and their cores... How would that work with the pagan province in Assam BTW ?
Somehow in that case it would be more legit that rather than turning India to Italian, I turn Indian like any other conqueror of the subcontinent in History...

 

[TheArchMede]

Well I think I've never used settlement policies (kinda deterred by the infamy, revolt risk and magistrate malus), and I'm not good at cultural conversion mechanisms in general. I just convert new provinces to my religion because it's better for the economy and social peace in the long run, but I'm used to living with massively multicultural empires. I even find it sad that through religious conversion, pagans completely loose their culture and their cores... How would that work with the pagan province in Assam BTW ?
Somehow in that case it would be more legit that rather than turning India to Italian, I turn Indian like any other conqueror of the subcontinent in History...

Pagan fanatic rebels will force convert provinces they take to paganism which can then be reconverted to change culture. Put a missionary in a pagan province, give zero funding to avoid it converting, and you should have the revolt risk to get pagan fanatics. If you aren't going to conquer the world, why would the infamy malus worry you? Its a severe drain on colonists, but if you don't aspire to a colonial empire what else are they good for?
Culture shift to an Indian culture should be trivial. Turning Italy Indian would be a challenge as would shifting to an Indian religion!
Depends whose history you read ... South and North Indian cultures have different ideas on this and its quite hard to reconstruct Indian history due to episodes of destruction of inconvenient evidence by the victors. This is not unique to India, the English appropriate Stonehenge, I'm sure you can think of invented continuities in French history too .

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Pagan fanatic rebels will force convert provinces they take to paganism which can then be reconverted to change culture. Put a missionary in a pagan province, give zero funding to avoid it converting, and you should have the revolt risk to get pagan fanatics. If you aren't going to conquer the world, why would the infamy malus worry you? Its a severe drain on colonists, but if you don't aspire to a colonial empire what else are they good for?
Culture shift to an Indian culture should be trivial. Turning Italy Indian would be a challenge as would shifting to an Indian religion!
Depends whose history you read ... South and North Indian cultures have different ideas on this and its quite hard to reconstruct Indian history due to episodes of destruction of inconvenient evidence by the victors. This is not unique to India, the English appropriate Stonehenge, I'm sure you can think of invented continuities in French history too .

Oh, yes. French identity has been completely made up during the XIXth century, trying to simplify and essentialize what is actually a complex mix of cultural influences from every single neighbour country in Europe, not to mention the influence of every other continent of the world. That's why there is no such thing as a French ethnicity, and the mere concept of French nationalism is a contradiction in terms, no matter what some people may pretend now. Once again it's relevant that the game has made French culture a cosmopolitan one.

I remember reading about that Pagan rebels thing, maybe in the famous Ryukyu AAR where it was used for a reverse purpose of converting conquered provinces to the player's form of paganism and culture. Maybe I'll try to make it work or at least observe it in one of my games.

I think I've had bad feelings about settlement policies since a game where I was in a war and already with BB reduction issues, wondering why it was not cooling down faster, and realized that several of my foe's provinces I was occupying had the malus coming from this decision. But you're right, I should'nt care in the case I'm not going to have BB issues nor need a lot of colonists.

Maybe I'll pay more attention to that aspect of the game now... thanks.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Yes, I am aware that this thread is rather old and more than 5 months old - 11 YEARS and 5 months actually.

But please, it just cannot die. Come on.

Not a EU3 empire story here, but that weird stuff : Genoa turning into a crazy Orthodox Steppe Horde.
Being the overlord of Savoie, France had to do something against that threat...
The CoT vanished quite as soon as the province was annexed. And Corsica remained as an isolated island Horde, which makes them unreachable as well as unable to make any diplomatic or war move. Last time I checked, Catholic fanatics had taken over and I guess this way they were to be annexed by the Papacy sooner or later.

I've seen a lot of weird stuff with Hordes but I think this one was the first time.

Any comments, o intrepid and brave thread-stub ?

 

[jez9999]

How is it possible for Genoa to switch government type to steppe nomads?

 

[sprites]

How is it possible for Genoa to switch government type to steppe nomads?

In Eu3 you could collapse to rebels and get their government type... if Genoa still has its 2 crimean provinces it may have had some horde rebels and orthodox too as it's their religion now.

 

[jez9999]

But that would lose their crimean territories... their capital territory of Genoa would not be taken by rebels. Can their government change even under that circumstance? And actually, why would the rebels be steppe nomads? An Orthodox steppe nomads group?

 

[sprites]

If >50% of your country is occupied by rebels , it will collapse even without capital. don't remember if it was immediate or if there was a timer.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

How it happened, I still have no clue... But I reloaded the game as OPM Genoan Corsican Steppe Horde, to see what could happen to them. Surrendered to the Catholic rebels so that I don't get annexed by the Pope who had funded them. Took the stab hit (no brainer for an OPM) and the prestige hit, nevermind, it was already at -100...

Turns out, even as an isolated Horde Genoa is still member of the HRE, has good sliders, quite a decent income - so it would be possible (with some patience because it would be quite boring to reach that point) to reform the government.

Unfortunately, past that point, and since I had started this game playing France, the comeback on the continent would be very, very difficult...

 

[TheArchMede]

The Sultan of Muscovy is running out of time to form Russia in my current game. I thought there wasn't much strange going on, just Muscovy and the Ottomans in a stalemate for control of the steppes, but when I took a closer look I saw both sides were Muslim!

 

[Blank_It]

Russia...

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

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).

View attachment 605382

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.

View attachment 605385

(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.

An update on that TO -> Prussia game from 2 years ago. No need to comment much, I just notice I didn't go to Jerusalem after all...



OK, here's some insight on what happened : I wanted to get a better hold on the Baltic Sea, and suddenly realized Sweden had some succession issues. Forged a claim on their throne through spy (didn't even have a royal marriage with them I think), then DoWed and forced a PU on them.

Later on, there was this war with Norway for the remote province of Kola I had gained a core on after annexing my vassal Novgorod. Long story short, good old cascading alliances led me to fight a significant number of HRE members, including almost all the electors... And at this point I figured out while I was at it I'd rather get rid of the whole HRE stuff, if I was to form Germany some day. So...

And here I am, decades after, almost ready to form Germany with all the provinces required I conquered and cored without many subtilities in the past 50 years. Meanwhile I inherited Sweden and diplo-annexed Norway. A new chapter of the story is about to start... but I haven't passed the Prussian military reform, and I want to do that before becoming Germany. MIL tech is more than 30, my ruler is competent enough (I even turned republican for that purpose because my Hohenzollern kings were starting to suck)... but I still need 50% Military Tradition and I'm only at 25%. So I should fight more wars, but I'm so strong now that wars are easy, battles are quick and don't give me the epic scores in tradition I used to get when it was difficult. So I have to wait some time until I can pass those ultimate Prussian reform (which would be overkill anyway, I know, but...) and to finally form Germany and move on with all the juicy cores it would give me. But now I'm bored... I could go get Jerusalem at last, but Holy Wars era is long gone now so I will need some other proper CB.

 

[TheArchMede]

The goto CB in this era is Imperialism (It all belongs to Father Prussia).

 

[sprites]

imperialism? this is EU3 here, you are lost!