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Im still playing it right now, got a Claim Throne CB on Denmark+Sweden, really tempted to eat a -4 stab to enforce PU immediately. Also muh Schleswig-Holstein, will post end-game state.
Cont.:
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This is my best playthrough ever, feels better than the WC I did, maybe sometime I'll post an AAR of this. Also Timurids formed Mughals and are No.2 GP
 
I post my Hungary game right now because it's at a crossroad.

I wanted to use the new opportunities brought by the fact Hunyadi is no longer a regent. That early game passivity has always prevented me from playing Hungary, so I just wanted to punch Poland and Ottomans, get strong, and invade Austria for Take that, von Habsburgs.
I happily started exactly as I planned, being relatively small and expanding at a moderate pace, but everything went a bit mad when I could force PU on the entirety of the Kalmar Union, and when Russia rivalled me even if I did not plan to expand towards the east. I'm still uncertain about what to make of that game, and what I should exactly try to do. It's been a lot of fun so far, that's at least that.

The starting position of Hungary is really enjoyable. They are weaker than all their neighbours once they consolidate the Balkans, but they have the diplomatic tools to bring massive coalitions against these neighbours.
The economy is extremely bad compared to the size because trade is atrocious, and the Black Army is an insane moneysink. This really pushes Hungary in the direction of spending a lot of money to fight a major war, and then recover for an extended period of time, that's actually very enjoyable. The modifiers you can stack are totally crazy. With the Mercenary Discipline from the Age of Reformation, and the fact I took Offensive ideas, and the fact I had an advisor and a strict ruler, my full frontline of merc infantry had 130% discipline in the early 16th century. Oh god those casualties. Everyone was melting, even that super blobbed AI Prussia (I had literally 0 impact on that, except maybe punching Bohemia and Poland), or France who was completely annihilated in battles. It's nice to have morale, it's not good if that leads to you taking casualties for longer.

I was almost constantly heavily in debt, and as expected, this is truly now the majors that you need to fight to get money.
ccFZBTC.jpg

No way I could get that in a previous patch. That kinda balances the fact minors don't give me anything anymore.

Things are a lot more stable now, I took it slow and finally consolidated my powerbase and spammed manufactories. I annexed all my vassals and my Scandinavian PUs, to get that beautiful map.
lTIYlF1.jpg


Which is a lot better if we consider that I also have a massive Spain in a PU.
G2lNGLi.jpg


Things finally look good on all fronts, and I am ready to go.
h2YHj5G.jpg


AgqJech.jpg


DQMlmvU.jpg

With all my annexations, i have been able to max absolutism already. And that's where things get interesting. I have so many opportunities with that run. My PUs were totally lucky, I did not pick diplo, did not marry old rulers, they just happened. I don't know if I should use those advantages, even if the run was not directed towards blobbing at all.

WJ4ZuMM.jpg

But that Orthodox One Faith is very tempting. Because yes, I am orthodox, obviously. I'm still uncertain whether I should just get Austria now, or try to push it further.
 
Hi everyone! After only reading on this forum for quite a while now, i decided to finally share some of my games as well.

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Savoy/Sardinia-Piedmont doing it the Habsburg way. Around 1550 i got a lucky uncontested PU on Austria. A little later i was offered to fight for the throne of the Commonwealth and later Bohemia followed. Lastly i claimed the throne of GB when they had a weak heir around 1760. Tunis, Albania and Hamburg are Vassals/Marches as well. Sweden has been my ally for almost the entire second half of the game. Definitely my luckiest game as far as PU's are concerned.

hVsmKc1.png

First game with Cradle of Civilizations: Merchant Republic Portugal. Apart from the heavily developed southern half of Iberia i own all trade company regions in Africa and the East Indies. My Colonial Nations control all of South America, Mexico and the Pacific Coast of North America.

gF8WKwW.png

My latest run (still in 1.24). Hungary is under PU, the rest of the western border protected by marches (except Brandenburg). Thanks to 90% maintenance reduction I'm paying a whopping 100 Ducats per month for the Grand Russian Army. Sorry for the bordergore in Western Europe, but i felt i had to show France their place before the end of the campaign. Stackwiping the French with my thirteen morale (Golden Age ran out before this screenshot) deathstacks was quite fun indeed.
 
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Those are some wonderful games. Don't you have more screenshots?
 
95A614F240A86E17232B826129138612C65E9DDD

223429A660892FC5E37BC97C7FD2A1562294B985



reaching the final strech of my Foremost Servitor of Jagannath / Sun Never Sets on Indian Empire ... only need a handful of wars with European Colonizers (and one or two in Western Africa) to finish both of them ...

England needs to be fought, probably twice (they're sitting on Brazil, London and a small handful of miscellaneous small pacific islands), Spain needs to be fought once (a few provinces in Colonial La Plata, and a couple of pacific islands), France needs to be fought (for Ottawa and a few south American provinces for prettying out the borders) and probably lastly Portugal once (already knocked them around a handful of times, so that's pretty much a sideshow for a single of my stacks and then my colonies handle the rest)
 
Decided to free Tibet after getting the First Toungoo Empire achievement.
BeFunky Collage.jpg

Thought it was pretty hilarious that due to the new money stealing system, I ended up with 4 times as money much than when I started the first Ming war, *after* paying off my loans.
 
I post my Hungary game right now because it's at a crossroad.

I wanted to use the new opportunities brought by the fact Hunyadi is no longer a regent. That early game passivity has always prevented me from playing Hungary, so I just wanted to punch Poland and Ottomans, get strong, and invade Austria for Take that, von Habsburgs.
I happily started exactly as I planned, being relatively small and expanding at a moderate pace, but everything went a bit mad when I could force PU on the entirety of the Kalmar Union, and when Russia rivalled me even if I did not plan to expand towards the east. I'm still uncertain about what to make of that game, and what I should exactly try to do. It's been a lot of fun so far, that's at least that.

The starting position of Hungary is really enjoyable. They are weaker than all their neighbours once they consolidate the Balkans, but they have the diplomatic tools to bring massive coalitions against these neighbours.
The economy is extremely bad compared to the size because trade is atrocious, and the Black Army is an insane moneysink. This really pushes Hungary in the direction of spending a lot of money to fight a major war, and then recover for an extended period of time, that's actually very enjoyable. The modifiers you can stack are totally crazy. With the Mercenary Discipline from the Age of Reformation, and the fact I took Offensive ideas, and the fact I had an advisor and a strict ruler, my full frontline of merc infantry had 130% discipline in the early 16th century. Oh god those casualties. Everyone was melting, even that super blobbed AI Prussia (I had literally 0 impact on that, except maybe punching Bohemia and Poland), or France who was completely annihilated in battles. It's nice to have morale, it's not good if that leads to you taking casualties for longer.

I was almost constantly heavily in debt, and as expected, this is truly now the majors that you need to fight to get money.
ccFZBTC.jpg

No way I could get that in a previous patch. That kinda balances the fact minors don't give me anything anymore.

Things are a lot more stable now, I took it slow and finally consolidated my powerbase and spammed manufactories. I annexed all my vassals and my Scandinavian PUs, to get that beautiful map.
lTIYlF1.jpg


Which is a lot better if we consider that I also have a massive Spain in a PU.
G2lNGLi.jpg


Things finally look good on all fronts, and I am ready to go.
h2YHj5G.jpg


AgqJech.jpg


DQMlmvU.jpg

With all my annexations, i have been able to max absolutism already. And that's where things get interesting. I have so many opportunities with that run. My PUs were totally lucky, I did not pick diplo, did not marry old rulers, they just happened. I don't know if I should use those advantages, even if the run was not directed towards blobbing at all.

WJ4ZuMM.jpg

But that Orthodox One Faith is very tempting. Because yes, I am orthodox, obviously. I'm still uncertain whether I should just get Austria now, or try to push it further.
Take that von Habsburg, and a little bit more.
ItVR2Vi.jpg


I also have a nice control of Western Europe through subjects.
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Which gives me control of most of the New World.
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With all of that, the glorious Orthodox Faith is spreading.
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And that obviously opens new possibilities.
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But only of these opportunities is worth taking for the moment.
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I may consider the other one later. ;)
 
Decided to do a colonizing game with England for rule of Britannia. Plans were to PU France and then mostly colonize and conquer new world, Africa and Asia TC regions etc.
However i also wanted to do new achievements and i quickly realized that completing all missions would require to integrate France and destroy the HRE. So i rampaged through Europe too. In the meantime i tried to keep track of coal provinces and keep them for myself and see how much can this stack late game. Of course i built manufacturies and production buildings everywhere.
(on a side note its so boring having to delete the temples or other useless buildings the AI has spammed when you conquer it late game...is there some fast solution to it that i am not aware of? or maybe make a suggestion for it... i currently just click manufacturies for example, see where the map is yellow and then i go on each province and delete building slot)

Brandeburg, naples, alsace , palatinate marches. Russia ally
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Second Try and a Crazy Game. I got over Austria in a PU, but lost them after they had a revolution and became a republic. In Addition Aragon dominated Castille and got a PU over Great Britain, which they never lost.

Got my Basileus Achievement, but will not make Mare Nostrum. All Byz Missions too :)

2IfaR39.jpg
 
Just another Germany. The less-anothery thing about is in the save name - "Jan Hus Was Right". Guess what's so special.

tHjc4f3.png


Full imgur album with various stats.

If that GBR was not on my side, I'd be scared.

Was 1.5 Innovativeness from 100...

Not shown in screenshot album:
- Mamlukean Australia
- Transylvania converting most of Transylvania to Romanian
- Republican Transoxiana
- during wars my marches have 9-10 morale. Sending officers OP.
 
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Burgundian Conquest, obviously. ;) In addition, I got Bright Spark (goes almost automatically as a European tag), Center of Attention, and One Family to Rule them All (how did I not get that in my Austria game?) along the way, as well as Industrial Powerhouse right before I took the screenshot. There's still some straightening borders to do, some minors to eat and three subjects to integrate, but I think I think I'll call it quits here.

Burgundy's start is kinda weird - quite strong, but it's still hard to find some opening, especially when the Brits chicken out and hand over Maine without a fight. So I did what seems to be the best opener for every European nation with a coastline and invaded Ireland, then Scotland, then England, while being allied to France (who still lost some provinces to England when they defended Scotland) and Castille.

I got a fairly early opportunity to PU France (iirc, the war for the throne ended in 1518), which caused a huge HRE coalition that forced me to spit out a few Irish minors because a) France wasn't loyal yet and b) I had to declare against England to prevent them from joining said coalition, and while my troops were trapped on Britannia, the coalition occupied most of my homeland and congregated their troops so that I couldn't really fight them back. Oh well, France PU >>> some Irish provinces. :D

Later (I believe in the early 1600), I managed to get on the Castilan throne as well; and after that, I got me some Habsburg on my throne via marriage with Bohemia, which allowed me to PU them and Poland in quick succession. Austria I just straight up force-vassalized when I noticed that my Absolutism and them losing one province to Bohemia pushed their total warscore below 100%.I also vassalized Portugal after feeding Castille half of their European land, just to have some additional colonists.

Some interesting things to note:
  • The Ottomans were way too passive at the start - the Mamluks managed to snag all the Anatolian minors around Karaman away from them. The Ottoman took them over at a later point, of course, but they didn't even manage to eat past Jerusalem before I started to butt heads with them. Both the Ottomans and the Mamluks started colonizing SE asia later. :D
  • That's Danish Scandinavia! They actually managed to keep Sweden in line and integrated them before 1550 - first time I've ever seen Sweden not break free.
  • Friesland was fairly successful, eating a good chunk of NW Germany and forming Colonial Nations in Alaska and La Plata.
  • Ming sploded, which is also the first time I've seen that since I've gotten the MoH DLC. I never bothered expanding past Madagascar (a couple colonies, but no wars whatsoever), so I didn't exploit that, but Russia did and ate most of Manchuria and a bit of Ming's initial Northern provinces.
  • Naples unfortunately broke free from Aragon - nothing unusual that far, but I haven't seen them so successfully in the Maghreb before. Pope Man conquered their heart land in a recent war, but they were still doing fairly decent.
 
That actually happens nearly always if Denmark doesnt enforce Scandinavian Constitution
I guess Sweden has always been lucky in my previous runs :D

Although tbh, I'm not quite convinced that is the case. In my experience, Sweden's Liberty Desire will be around the 50% mark as soon as Denmark loses its age ability, and I even distinctly remember that they asked me to support their independence in this particular run. I suppose Denmark's chances are better now that the AI has learned to take "oversea" provinces like the Baltic, Novgorod, and Scotland in Denmark's case, since Denmark seems quite likely to expand in one of these directions. But "nearly always" goes completely against my experiences, even in the last two or three patches (I can't remember when exactly this particular AI issue was fixed).