• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
A nation I can't pronounce, an achievement that was far easier than I thought it would be. But I do love playing in the Middle East, and this nation has an excellent colour, flag, and decent ideas.

mSejYf6.jpg

c04fbcO.jpg


Bonus: my contender for "worst name placement in EU4".

g1KozaD.jpg
 
PmIaYBJ.jpg


An absolutely delightful Aq Qoyunlu run. One of the most fun runs I've had in a long time. Everything went wrong within the first fifty years: we were declared on by the Ottomans very early on, the Mamluks allied us but then attacked Qara Qoyunlu and blocked off our expansion into Iraq (and our mission tree!), the Timurids not only survived but became the Mughals and ate a big chunk of northern India - and with Russia in the north, that was it for easy expansion. We've been bankrupt twice, we've lost wars, we've had some hard hard times. But in 1734, the empire is finally thriving and at peace.

Oh, we're also Orthodox. This was originally for the interest of playing an isolated Christian nation surrounded by muslims, later for the fun of stacking all the bonuses of an Orthodox feudal theocracy.

Here's some other pictures from the world that's developed.

534lb1w.jpg


AQ's ruling house showing signs of inbreeding earlier in the game.

dTx8pWb.jpg


The Mughals in their prime in the 1600s. Bharat was formed by Vijayanagar.

chR8CVt.jpg


The AI turning the tables on the chins (sadly not with the Hunyadi dynasty).

cV3i4O6.jpg


Europe at the end of the run. Interlocking networks of alliances have created a remarkably stable and historical-feeling Europe - there are wars, but they are rarely if ever decisive, and as a rule nations swap colonial possessions rather than their provinces on the continent. The Netherlands were formed by Gelre, and with colonies in North and South America have taken on something like their histroical importance. Ryazan has gone from strength to strength all game - despite losing its aliance with Russia due to dynastic squabbles. The Reformation was centred on former Teutonic territories: Poland went reformed, while Lithuania finally broke to Orthodox rebels after decades of internal religious termoil.

QoKzkKD.jpg


Despite being exiled from its homeland, Scotland has survived and thrived in the new world. They also have a solid chunk of East Africa, and colonies in the Carribbean and the Pacific. Also featured are the Iroquois, who have done well for themselves (they're the only big native nation) by playing the colonisers off against each other.

jOCZnXQ.jpg


The spice islands are a highly contested mess where land changes hands constantly. As well as me, the French, Spanish, Russians, Mamluks, Portuguese, and various native empires all have stakes there. Portugal was the first to reach the islands, but France displaced them to become the big player in Indochina. Most of my territories there are former French provinces.

Overall, this game has been a testament to the fun of seeing what happens if you stick around to salvage a run which seems like it's gone irreperably wrong. Would recommend.
 
eu4_35.png


eu4_36.png


Meißner Porzellan achieved :)

Despite the outcome, this wasn't much of a Greyskin campaign - I only revoked around 1730, shortly after I got the Saxony achievement, then formed Prussia because I was still missing the Goosestep achievement, then pushed the last reform ASAP in order to fix my honestly hideous borders in Germany. After that, I went after the Rising Sun achievement and used the time needed to integrate my Japanese vassal to fix the rest of my European borders, which mostly meant eating Tuscany and the Pope and kick GB off the mainland and take a little bite of Britannia for good measure - they had gotten a PU over some Dutch minor fairly early and conquered all of Bretagne.

I did push for Empororship in the earlygame, for the immediate boost and to claim some land from Burgundy, but I wanted to go protestant and didn't want to bother with the league war. However, the Protestant League, altruistically led by Lübeck (i.e. a Republic), kicked Austia's butt pretty hard and handed me an HRE that was even surprisingly religiously uniform and didn't lose IA even during internal wars.

My main allies for the entire campaign, not counting small electors, were Austria at the start of the game, who I dropped when the leagues formed, and then Spain for most of the rest of the campaign. They even stayed friendly when I, er, aquired some French colonies in the Americas, but unfortunately they got an "irritated about claims" modifier of almost -200 with me right before the end of the campaign, which forced me to break the alliance - you can still see the Royal Marriage active on the second screenshot.
 
210elis.png

2hxx6xj.png

24fbplh.png

kajtrc.png

Run for Great Perm here, with some extras included. After a bunch of restarts and more savescumming than I'd like to admit, managed to get Lithuania to support my independence after Muscovy first beat Novgorod to a pulp. Lithuania was already exhausted from a war with TO and LO with a 25k stack of noble rebels running about, so it was really tough to manage siegeing forts, relieving occupations in Lithuania and of course killing smaller stacks, but thankfully Lithuania attached all their troops to mine and I rolled Mikhail as a 3/4/1/2 leader to match that Muscovite starting general. After shameless amounts of reloading for battle rolls, siege rolls and the like I managed to get a ~75% peace (Lithuania separate peaced earlier, and stayed allied for a pretty long time but they were absolutely swimming in rebels for most of their existence and weren't very useful), taking as much land as I could and also getting a connection to the now smaller Novgorod. The 2nd war was almost as tough as the first, I had 20k, Muscovy had ~50k (vassals and allies included), but they had left some forts mothballed and they mostly focused on trying to take those back while I did occupations and guerilla strikes elsewhere. After this war my ally Denmark dealt the decisive blow, returning a boatload of cores and releasing countries, leaving me mostly free to expand how I wished.

I ended up changing ideas groups somewhat, at first I picked Defensive to have an edge over Muscovy in battles, then I switched to quantity to regain some manpower, and finally settled on Aristocratic (yay for having god rulers). 2nd group was Religious, then Admin, Exploration (picked this too early, Diplo or influence would've been far more useful), Influence, Diplomatic. After imperialism I switched Religious for Humanism, and for the last 10 years or so I was filling Espionage because I figured I could get the Winged Hussar achievement.

Bonus: isn't caravan power just great?
2i6i3x1.png

I control all the following nodes so these geniuses don't even benefit from this, but they still manage to pull hundreds of trade value the wrong way.
 
210elis.png

2hxx6xj.png

24fbplh.png

kajtrc.png

Run for Great Perm here, with some extras included. After a bunch of restarts and more savescumming than I'd like to admit, managed to get Lithuania to support my independence after Muscovy first beat Novgorod to a pulp. Lithuania was already exhausted from a war with TO and LO with a 25k stack of noble rebels running about, so it was really tough to manage siegeing forts, relieving occupations in Lithuania and of course killing smaller stacks, but thankfully Lithuania attached all their troops to mine and I rolled Mikhail as a 3/4/1/2 leader to match that Muscovite starting general. After shameless amounts of reloading for battle rolls, siege rolls and the like I managed to get a ~75% peace (Lithuania separate peaced earlier, and stayed allied for a pretty long time but they were absolutely swimming in rebels for most of their existence and weren't very useful), taking as much land as I could and also getting a connection to the now smaller Novgorod. The 2nd war was almost as tough as the first, I had 20k, Muscovy had ~50k (vassals and allies included), but they had left some forts mothballed and they mostly focused on trying to take those back while I did occupations and guerilla strikes elsewhere. After this war my ally Denmark dealt the decisive blow, returning a boatload of cores and releasing countries, leaving me mostly free to expand how I wished.

I ended up changing ideas groups somewhat, at first I picked Defensive to have an edge over Muscovy in battles, then I switched to quantity to regain some manpower, and finally settled on Aristocratic (yay for having god rulers). 2nd group was Religious, then Admin, Exploration (picked this too early, Diplo or influence would've been far more useful), Influence, Diplomatic. After imperialism I switched Religious for Humanism, and for the last 10 years or so I was filling Espionage because I figured I could get the Winged Hussar achievement.

Bonus: isn't caravan power just great?
2i6i3x1.png

I control all the following nodes so these geniuses don't even benefit from this, but they still manage to pull hundreds of trade value the wrong way.
Nice. Perm is a hellish start, I only managed to gain independence because Muscovy declared an exhausting war against Kazan and Chagatai, then Lithuania declared on him pulling in Poland and the Kalmar Union. I declared on my own, winning independence very carefully, and even then I lost a subsequent war against Muscovy.
 
Nice. Perm is a hellish start, I only managed to gain independence because Muscovy declared an exhausting war against Kazan and Chagatai, then Lithuania declared on him pulling in Poland and the Kalmar Union. I declared on my own, winning independence very carefully, and even then I lost a subsequent war against Muscovy.
Yeah, I feel like the biggest challenge isn't just getting independence - you can do it under the right circumstances - but you also need to be able to keep up with Muscovy.
 
Edit: Regarding corruption, I don't use it much because it increases all MP costs, and this is the real limiter in the game. But it can be useful for unrest, yes.

If you're going to spam 100% LA land as horde, debasing is great. You make a substantial amount of money compared to the cost of paying it back, enough that for a 2% power cost increase you can treat this as a constant and solid revenue stream early on.

Doesn't look like you needed it though.
 
Debasing is specially good if you're a Muslim attacking heretics/heathens (... ideally making sure that there is as few that doesn't qualify as possible, by selecting a small enough religion), as they can pay 50 Legalism for -2 Corruption
 
Don’t have access to my computer rn but happen to have these pics on my phone there not thaat bad quality right?
CA5EE461-12DB-4663-B1BD-1AD7D398A9D0.jpeg

My Austria run... can’t see it but the year is 1750-something. I got a PU over Russia, Spain and Great Britain... Also revoked at around 1570, managed to fully eradicate protestants only 70 years after they appeared. Overall a pretty decent run imo, closest I’ve got to WC (can probably still get it) sitting pretty with about 11k development against poor Ming who has roughly 1500.
99524125-32C6-4A61-8B2D-AEC164F9786B.jpeg

All colonies I got from my PUs. Yes that’s an independent columbia who is a great power.
 
Just finished what is probably my biggest game ever. Started as a custom manchu culture horde boarding Ming. United the manchu tribes, built up to 300 dev then waited for Unguarded Frontier disaster to strike Ming. They declared before it hit them, but not by much, two months in and the disaster struck. I fought Ming probably two times before he collapsed.

I had an image in my mind what I wanted to achieve in this play through.
Qing Empire Finished.jpg

I went colonial but didn't focus on it, figured I could get what I wanted later once I had finished what I wanted to conquer. Almost went world conquest, I've never done one before, in the 1600s but I decided to stick to my goals. Largest empire I've ever built. All of North America is mine, as well as all of the Pacific and Indian ocean islands. Iraq and Armenia are both my vassals as well. I took Gibralter because I figured why not, only land I took in Europe. I also have Madagascar.

Europe isn't doing to bad, France went revolutionary, after our multiple wars, but they didn't do anything with it. Even with me sending them 15k gold and about 400 in subs every month. I spent the last 70 years of the game fighting the colonizers in Europe, luckily I found willing stooges to let me stage my armies in there territory.
20180509215003_1.jpg


Africa is pretty well split between the Europeans and the Ottomans. I do own a little bit of the Gold Coast, but that is because my vassal Holland, who got ejected from Europe and had there capital in Indonesia had colonies there.
20180509215016_1.jpg


And finally, South America is split in half by Portugal and Spain, I do own a little in the south, again because of Holland.
20180509215023_1.jpg

This was an Ironman run and I got a few achievements, mostly little ones because I almost never play Ironman and if I do normally it is with a ton of mods. Was a very enjoyable game, but towards the end was a slog to just finish. Don't think I'll play such a blobby empire for a while, but was lots of fun.
 
Last edited:
My two most recent games.

First my Byzantine Empire.

It was supposed to be only a test, so it's not an ironman save. I had a really good start and managed to get all of Ottomans' Balkans around 1520. After that I followed the missions and managed to re-create Justinian Empire around 1720. It took me three wars against Portugal and Spain and three against France to get what I have now.

GgQil7.jpg


The second one is my colonial Japan.

United Japan around 1500 and then started to colonize south-east Asia, Siberia and the New World. Shortly after colonizing Taiwan Ming DoW'd me. I used this to became their tributary so I could conquer Korea, Manchu and other tributaries without them intervening.

When I broke the tributary in 1730 I was already #3 great power :D
Then I helped Tibet and Ayutthaya break their tributaries too.

Main lands:

cBtIR1.jpg


Colonies:

dBPoXN.jpg
 
Just finished what is probably my biggest game ever. Started as a custom manchu culture horde boarding Ming. United the manchu tribes, built up to 300 dev then waited for Unguarded Frontier disaster to strike Ming. They declared before it hit them, but not by much, two months in and the disaster struck. I fought Ming probably two times before he collapsed.

I had an image in my mind what I wanted to achieve in this play through.
View attachment 367966
I went colonial but didn't focus on it, figured I could get what I wanted later once I had finished what I wanted to conquer. Almost went world conquest, I've never done one before, in the 1600s but I decided to stick to my goals. Largest empire I've ever built. All of North America is mine, as well as all of the Pacific and Indian ocean islands. Iraq and Armenia are both my vassals as well. I took Gibralter because I figured why not, only land I took in Europe. I also have Madagascar.

Europe isn't doing to bad, France went revolutionary, after our multiple wars, but they didn't do anything with it. Even with me sending them 15k gold and about 400 in subs every month. I spent the last 70 years of the game fighting the colonizers in Europe, luckily I found willing stooges to let me stage my armies in there territory.
View attachment 367967

Africa is pretty well split between the Europeans and the Ottomans. I do own a little bit of the Gold Coast, but that is because my vassal Holland, who got ejected from Europe and had there capital in Indonesia had colonies there.
View attachment 367968

And finally, South America is split in half by Portugal and Spain, I do own a little in the south, again because of Holland.
View attachment 367969
This was an Ironman run and I got a few achievements, mostly little ones because I almost never play Ironman and if I do normally it is with a ton of mods. Was a very enjoyable game, but towards the end was a slog to just finish. Don't think I'll play such a blobby empire for a while, but was lots of fun.
Achievements with a custom nation?
 
Achievements with a custom nation?

There are a number of achievements allowed to custom nations. There is also a bug right now that lets you foist 800 point nations with immortal 6/6/6 ruler type setups onto a normal nation and treat it like an ironman game. I wouldn't want to get achievements in such a way but it could be amusing to do some lulzy stuff with it.
 
There are a number of achievements allowed to custom nations. There is also a bug right now that lets you foist 800 point nations with immortal 6/6/6 ruler type setups onto a normal nation and treat it like an ironman game. I wouldn't want to get achievements in such a way but it could be amusing to do some lulzy stuff with it.
Too bad I already have WC... o_O
 
Too bad I already have WC... o_O

Haha, with absolutism how it is I doubt you'd struggle to get WC without special tricks, but yeah running an immortal 6/6/6 with 20% CCR, -2 unrest, megatolerance, and military ideas on Ryukyu might make the opening a bit more straightforward.
 
Haha, with absolutism how it is I doubt you'd struggle to get WC without special tricks, but yeah running an immortal 6/6/6 with 20% CCR, -2 unrest, megatolerance, and military ideas on Ryukyu might make the opening a bit more straightforward.
Immortal trait costs so many points you can't pick any ideas... right?
 
Immortal trait costs so many points you can't pick any ideas... right?

I'm not privy to the details of the trick because using it doesn't interest me, but there seems to be a way to save a template with big negative values such that adding ridiculous NIs and immortal ruler and such still doesn't put you over.
 
Immortal trait costs so many points you can't pick any ideas... right?
If I remember correctly, you can get an heir with like -99 adm/-99 dip/-99 mil and crappy traits by editing your custom nation, that will give you a very comfortable amount of points