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Another Prussian try, this time things are progressing much better:
Kurland is my march, Brandenburg and Galicia-Volhynia are vassals. And Austria and France really really really should be historical rivals, the two blobs are allied since 1444 despite Austria holding Nevers right in the middle of France.
Basically finished my campaign as Nevers. It was quite fun, in particular beating on poor poor France. For my independence war I was able to secure an alliance with Austria. This alliance, soon to be reinforced by Aragon held from the mid 1450s till the end of the game without any interruption. Which Aragon you ask? The yellow one. Aragon beat Castile early on and, strengthened through the tripple Alliance, continued to conquer all of Iberia and earned itself a good chunk of France. Took surprisingly long for him to actually click the button and form Spain though. Interestingly, the “vanished majors” are all still around! The french capital is now in beautiful Samoa, but they also own Vanuatu. Portugal is and OPM in Menade (which is a province on Sulawesi). And Castile is freezing of his ass in Alaska.
Other notable things in Europe is the lack of Ottomans (they have a few provinces in northern Africa left), big Poland and some interesting minors: Karelia (in Neva), Sapmi, Livonia, Krete. Cyprus is still around, although it's Sunni now (and their de Lusignan became the Dynasty of the Ottomans for a while!). The Pope is an incredible power and so was Mainz for a while, until a war punched out half a dozend minors (Mainz owned all of northern Germany at one point).
The other continents are interesting too.
A big Timbuktu, a dominant Mutapa and a thriving Sannar in Africa, with Haasa conquering Arabia.
Asia had seen some big changes in the 18th century. Persia, Vijaynagara and Bengalen were long term powers, but Kashmir and Buchara declined hard and were replaced by Yarkand, while Ming finally imploded to the joy of everyone in and around them. Nouvelle-Zélanda is my colony, Nevernese Indonesia is mine too.
In the Americas we have largely interdependent nations, since the mayor colonizers died at home. The only colonies left are great britains Newfoundland (sandwiched between british Louisiana and (castilian) Louisiana) and my colonies Nouvelle-Nivernaise and the Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson. The most out of the normal here is scottish Colombia.
Knights into Jerusalem into jewish Jerusalem.
I picked aristocractic in the hope that 50% hostile core creation might make me an unappealing target for the Ottos. I think it worked but now they just dont care.
I managed to turn this to a phyrric victory. The Ottos are relentless though and in 1650 I have a 6k debt and the interest is killing the nation.
At its greatest extent:
So I completed the 'African Power' achievement, after dealing with an enormous Otto blob and a full-on world war for one frickin' French colony in Africa, quite proud of myself! Here is glorious Kongolese Africa:
But, just for the hell of it, I did this:
Silly Inca, that's not the right continent! Glorious 'AfrIncan' power!
So, where to begin... some time ago, I was digging through the EU4 files, searching for "inspiration" for a new campaign. 00_government_names.txt caught my interest, as it contains a number of special designations for ruler titles and government types, given certain circumstances. In particular, I liked this entry:
So basically, you can become a true Roman Imperator... provided your people are of Roman (Umbrian) culture, and believe in Jupiter, Mars and Venus once again. I'm sure this was added primarily for custom nations... but where is the fun in that, right?
Since there is only one way to get "Roman" into your nation's name in standard EU4 - yes, good ol' greyskin - I started as Austria, and the first 70% or so of my game consisted of a fairly normal Austria -> Italy -> HRE run. Rein in those pesky Italians (we need an Umbrian province for conversion anyway), push some early reforms through, PU Hungary and Bohemia, form Italy after copious amounts of cultural conversion (Influence + Religious policy in combination with the new adjacency bonuses even makes the cost in DIP somewhat bearable!), endure the religious leagues until they decide they can't fight you, revoke the Previlegia around 1620 and proceed to casually conquer all of Europe with the patented vasal swarm.
All the while, I was also looking to secure some Animist provinces - to teach my people the ways of Polytheism again, should the time come. I had orignially planned to use the "Oromo Migration" events in eastern Africa, but unfortunately, they fired really early, and I missed my window by about five years (once the modifier is gone, they get converted back really fast). Fortunately, and amazingly, Kano had actually survived and stayed Animist in western Africa, so i quickly no-CBed them during a war with Portugal, and finally secured a tiny smidge of Animist land under Italian protection.
So, while I finished my conquests in Europe (and northern Africa/near East to ensure a land connection), I also wreaked havoc in western Africa, and fostered a nice, fairly large Animist rebellion. Usually, religious revolts need some time to get going, but you can really accelerate things by "feeding" the rebels newly conquered territory, since rebels prefer provinces with high unrest, and provinces occupied by rebels will only spawn rebels of the occupying type, even with separatism.
Finally, for some screenshots! I really should have made some earlier, but never the less: Europe on December 24, 1735:
It's about 15 years after the formal Renovatio Imperii and probably the last time Christmas will be celebrated anywhere in eastern Europe, at least, since the Imperial Legions are in full retreat and mostly busy with conquering in the Americas (good thing you can just keep colonial territory uncored, and establish a colonial nation via 5 cores once you have the correct religion ).
1741, and Rome is about to return to the true faith! (Yes, rebels really aren't that fast)
And finally, in March of 1745, rebel demands have been accepted, and Imperatrix Angelica I rules supreme over a truly Holy Roman Empire - by Jupiter's grace!
Somehow, we still have a cardinal assisting... I'm sure that won't last.
Of course, why stop there - glorious Rome had already made incursions into India and China, so I just continued to spread the word of Neo-Helenism throughout the world, even at the cost of releasing stubbornly heathen colonial subjects (the whole campaign was done in 1.14, so no changing via vasal interaction). The final results:
Now, one-tag WC is nothing special nowadays, particularly with greyskin, but I'm still really pleased with it - especially since I only really started around 1750 and integrated nothing outside of Europe for free (well, parts of northern Africa, because who wants to core the Berbers?). Plus, who can say they got their World Conqueror as Roman Animists?
Obviously, I didn't have enough missionaries to convert everything, but they still did a fairly good job at wiping out the Abrahamic religions in Europe, Asia and Africa, thanks to stacked religious bonuses (RIP in 1.15 ). Those last bits of Sunni in Africa originate from my brilliant plan to release Macina as a vasal for conversion, and convert they did - straight back to Sunni, putting the recent conversion modifier on a number of provinces before I could annex them.
Orthodox, Reformed, Coptic, Shia and Ibadi are gone for good, Sunni is present primarily in Indonesia, and of course there are still a lot of Protestants and Catholics in the colonies:
Cultures (they are feeling mighty Roman in Egypt and Anatolia!):
End-of-game Screen:
1 Million rebels in one province! I was hoping they would also transfer to my overseas provinces or at least Britain, but that didn't seem to work properly.
Those Peruvians shure like their independence... and with stacked morale bonuses from Plutocratic, Defensive and Colonial Ideas, plus a timely military reform, they where some of the few to give the Imperial armies some pause!
Ever seen Russia as a vasal of Zunghar? Yeah, me neither.
Arapaho is doing the sensible thing... not reforming, just colonizing, careful no to touch any of my colonies. It almost worked, I had to abandon Influence in order to colonize towards him.
It's the year 1809. The Legions of Rome occupy all of the known world. All of the world? No! Some Gauls are stubbornly resisting from inside their small... metropolis... on some mexican peninsula...
I had thought about that, would have made for a far less relaxed campaign though And since you have to flip to Umbrian culture anyway, I know I would have formed Italy regardless.
Final stats: 3461 development, 216 provinces with a 284 development march (Kurland)
Achievements:
A Fine Goosestep
Agressive Expander
An Early Reich
For the Glory
Grand Duchy
It's all about the Money
Just a little Patience
My armies are invincible!
Ruina Imperii
That's a Grand Navy
This Revolution Was Crushed
This navy can take it all
Total Control
World Discoverer
Final stats: 3461 development, 216 provinces with a 284 development march (Kurland)
Achievements:
A Fine Goosestep
Agressive Expander
An Early Reich
For the Glory
Grand Duchy
It's all about the Money
Just a little Patience
My armies are invincible!
Ruina Imperii
That's a Grand Navy
This Revolution Was Crushed
This navy can take it all
Total Control
World Discoverer
Poland Can Into Space! Also Winged Hussars, One King to Rule, Bleed them Dry, and Die Please Die.
That's all of Europe, plus a little bit past the Urals 'cause I thought it looked nicer. I wanted something fairly relaxed, and this was the result. Poland really is the France of the east. I got very lucky with two PU's out of nowhere - one on ~700-development Venice (who hated me) and another on ~1200 development France. Barely managed to integrate France before the game ended.
I wasn't the star of the show, however. I had originally intended to avoid Europe and conquer Asia instead, but I didn't want to interfere with the beauty that was... AI Ming:
I swear, I had nothing to do with it. Ming started with lucky nation status (because I was Poland, I guess), and they had a long series of militarist rulers. They lost the mandate of Heaven at one point, but they were able to get it back and retake all of their lost lands. Oh, and they never westernized.
They were also allied with Vijayanagar for a century or so, resulting in Ming, Vijayanagar, Orissa, and Lan Na all sharing the same dynasty. The old world is effectively ruled by two, maybe three major families:
End result for me was an income exceeding 1500, a standing army of 1.9 million, a naval force limit around 800, max idea groups, max tech, and all without westernizing until 1660. Stayed Catholic and restored religious unity in Europe, integrated Lithuania, Venice, and France manually... it was fun. Not sure what I'll do next... maybe homework, finally.
Now, if I can do spoilers right, I'll include a couple gifs...
This is my Austria HRE game.
It was faster than i expected to get it. The mid game with heretic princes slow you down a lot but after that it's pretty easy.
My game was absolutly not the best, no burgundy inheritence and i missed the shadow kingdom because i didn't understood well how it works. On the other hand i got the early PU on Hungary.
I also got a female queen without pragmatic sanction... and the new emperor Geldre just got the second imperial reform dismantled
So i think you really can do it a lot faster and it's probably the easier way to get a world conquest actually.
Ideas: influence, Religous, defensive, diplomatic, offensive, quantity
start: ally france, hungary, palatinate,... dow venetia prettty fast
In the end got the achievement One family to rule them all
I really finished 1 year before the end. I could have done a better game especially in early, it took me too long to convert to catholicism.
After that, as always it's a mess to deal with OE. The key is to have all the time something to convert to your religion.
When the religous centers appear in Europe, you have to get aggressive in europe to shut them down but even with that you will have to fight a lot in europe cause there are all the time events that converts OPM countries. If you can, dismantle this HRE!
ideas: Influence, religious, administrative, defensive, expansion, quantity,
My ideas are questionnable, expansion is not really needed, i think that humanist would have helped a lot.
Thought about smoothing the borders before the end of the game, especially annexing whole americas and rest of the British Islands but I'm kinda burned out from this session.
Last battle for Paris and Madrid with France was very edgy. I dowed alone vs BBB, Venice, Peru and Lousiana to quickly rush for capital and it worked! hence discipline is King.
