Power By Production - A IN 3.2 AAR

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well i don't have victoria so i don't read those AAR's often
hmm ... that may be a good idea to weaken france , if they will station troops in turkey/egypt ...
unfortunately our relations are terrible and thay kind of war would be hard to get ^^

I've never used it against France like I've done here with Castile, but I find that France willingly sends large forces to the black sea area, so you might want to try there instead of North Africa.

 

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Chapter 5
Seeing that the first page became increasingly slow to load with the many images, I've toyed around with reducing the quality of the jpg's. I hope it suffices

When I'm allied to France, I make it a habit to keep atleast 2 units of cavalry on the french border in case of new wars where I need to take control of the siege. France is quickly becoming surrounded by vassals, leaving them with little room for expansion. Here I get two sieges which eventually forced them to take a vassal instead of a province. When I peaced out France had 7+ war exhaustion.

With France being an ally in an active war, low stability and high WE, I took a chance and declared war on Castile again.

The sieges were rather uneventful, but a few other interesting things happened. France reentered the alliance. The new vassal of Flandern fields a standing army of 14k soldiers! and they are of Flemish culture and will help keeping Zeeland free of dutch nationalists - great. I got a core on Sjælland! - even greater - and the loan was paid off.

Venice triggered a warning. I always try to handicap Venice in the battle for Italy. I'd much rather have land focused Milan appearing on top, since they are less likely to try and sneak in colonies around the world. I get plenty of events for the serfdom/free subject slider and try to keep it around the target -3. I never got another siege in the war against Lorraine, but France was content with monetary compensations, so I think it was a pretty successful war.

I grap a good chunk of Castilian territory, a Norwegian province, vassalize Switzerland and get 733 ducats. Things are really starting to shape up nicely.

The new patch may have made the bankruptcies less devastating to the AI, but you can still put them into a bankruptcy loop simply by taking their coastal provinces. Castile goes bankrupt approximately twice a year.

Another example of how to cheat France off their usual gains.

No update with only successes. I lost my master of the mint, and there are no replacements! At least I have a healthy treasury and will probably be able to stay afloat long enough for the next national decisions.

 

[vicotnik]

I just thought I'd mention that "vornedskab" doesn't require tech 30, it just requires serfdom and ADM 6. The Danish decision that requires tech 30 is "den danske lov", but that only gives -1rr if I remember correctly.

 

[MizarNX]

Excellent ARR. I like the idea of nations swapping, I'll be following!

 

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Nice AAR; the title reminds me somewhat of OHgamer's in the vicky AAR subforum ...
Can't you achieve your cultural shift via the "Kezbero-animist-vassal-province-selling" trick ?

 

[sprites]

for the moment , he has no animist vassals and no animist land closer than subsaharian africa xD

 

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I just thought I'd mention that "vornedskab" doesn't require tech 30, it just requires serfdom and ADM 6. The Danish decision that requires tech 30 is "den danske lov", but that only gives -1rr if I remember correctly.

Oh, I missed that. Well, it doesn't change things, since Scandinavia will be the final country anyway..

Excellent ARR. I like the idea of nations swapping, I'll be following!

I won't do that much nation swapping until later in the game, but hopefully everything is ready for GOV 30

Nice AAR; the title reminds me somewhat of OHgamer's in the vicky AAR subforum ...
Can't you achieve your cultural shift via the "Kezbero-animist-vassal-province-selling" trick ?

for the moment , he has no animist vassals and no animist land closer than subsaharian africa xD

I don't like going subsaharian, because the other Europeans will start colonizing and I can't turn the culture back (and I rarely wont to expand my main culture!) When I've got France under control, I will send out an expedition to find some animists in The Americas. (Step 5 of the master plan - I need the Aztec gold mines for the Spanish Gold Fleet Decision anyway.) The biggest problem will probably be the religious homogeneity of Europe. I think I will have them setup shops in a North African province do a annex/release through war/vassalize dance in order to get them out of tribalism. That is another reason for why I let Granada hang around .. but it also depends on how the reformation and possible crusades go . If the animist trick fails, I will just pump up a vassal.

Also, I'm no stranger to herding animists, but they take out 33% of the population which isn't exactly healthy in terms of production.. and production will dwarf taxation in the end, so I will try to avoid it.

I guess time will tell.

 

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Chapter 6

Predictably England dows Scotland in the beginning of 1446. I honor the alliance and tries the same tactics as last time.
I learned from the last war, to snipe the English cog fleets, but also to not completely obliterate it. With a single cog they keep make 1 unit landings that I easily overrun. The landings are never dangerous, but they help to turn up the warscore.

First I finish the war with Venice and bargains military access for my bait-fleet. While the carracks occupy the English fleet around Athens, I sneak in an invasion force in Ireland.

A new king! Nothing extraordinary.

The Castilian provinces are relatively quite, but for some reason rebels started to spring up monthly. I almost got the idea that someone was founding them, but couldn't catch a spy. In the end I had to pull back the "Northern Army" lead by the 5-shock king Filipe II to quell the troublemakers.

Oh, yeah, and I start to get some of these. I even have some spare money to bribe cardinals.

6 years into the war, I found that the English was ready for an invasion. Here you see how my invasion navy held out against the English home navy. Damaged or unorganized cogs were recycled into Ulster at the 28th of the month. Usually they could sail out again to meet the enemy on the 1st.

And a new king again! These stats are much better.

True to the plan I free the Western Isles from the English oppressors, lure their main army over the North Channel and then blockades them. I don't even want to know what kind of attrition they are suffering there!

Cores are starting to pop in conquered provinces. The rest of Aragon followed quickly

While battling with England I failed to keep up my suppression of French conquests. Castile is utterly broken... and I found a bug! yay me

I grapped the areas around London in the peace deal, and to my suprise England broke afterward. They also moved the capital.

King Henri IV of Brabant was excommunication and I grapped the opportunity for a good war. I plan to vassalize Brabant despite their dutch province, but they had too much money to pass by. Especially with Production 9 coming up. For some reason I often see Brabant spreading the Dutch culture to their Flemish provinces, and I intend to let them do their magic. The remaining dutch provinces will probably be enough to keep dutch as accepted culture and when the time comes, I will expend a centralization point on diploannexing them. (hopefully fully cored through boundary events)

Oh, next up on the excommunication list was King Willem VII of Holland. I rarely see anyone doing a consolidation of the dutch minors. Well perhaps except for when France is going on a rampage, but that is clearly out of the question for this AAR . I will probably have to annex all four of them which will hold back expansion quite a bit. They never declare war either, so my goal is to get them excommunicated and then dow. Holland was guaranteed by Brabant whom ended up vassalised. I just love the battle setup 13k men from Flandern, 17k from France and 1k from Portugal - and since I arrived first, I got the siege.

Sweden triggered a warning. They have no land that care about (until very late in the game), but they brought in Castile! for another slapping. Now their capital in Toledo is completely sorrounded and ready for a move. I underestimated the Swedes and lost the 6k cavalry "Northern Army" due to a blockaded sound. Oh, well. An unremarkable peace was settled.

Finally. After a short burst to government 4 and landtech 5, I've been exclusively focusing on production research. Now I can build workshops - and it turns out I've horded treasure enough to start construction in all provinces at the same time! (That is a good sign indeed)

 

[sprites]

i usually see burgundy blob around the dutch provinces and such , but this is nearly as bad as france taking it , as the considerably strenghened burgundy fielded 102k soldiers by 1470!

a bug? an un-updated label

 

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i usually see burgundy blob around the dutch provinces and such , but this is nearly as bad as france taking it , as the considerably strenghened burgundy fielded 102k soldiers by 1470!

I'd much rather see Burgundy consolidate than France. France has QFTNW as their 4th NI while Burgundy gets it somewhere around their 7th. The order of NI's is another thing that confuses me with the new patch. It used to be that the AI nations were quite predictable in terms of which NI's they chose and in what order. Now it is a complete mess. I look forward to see what other people get in IN 3.2 games that progress more historical. I have the game set to pop up when a nation chooses an NI, and I'm totally spammed with "nation XXX has chosen Siege Engineer" messages!

 

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England shows suicide tendencies and triggers a warning. I take London and a few extra provinces. Lincoln is a core from a previous boundary dispute.

Cornwall - still being excommunicated - seemed like a good vassal. And their allies are well chosen for a quick war. Sadly they never seem to field an army large enough to keep my English possessions free of rebels, and I have to (almost) permanently station 8k cavalry up there.

I am not completely sure what happened here. Perhaps England was at war with Cornwall without me getting a pop up. I only had the CB. Perhaps they started the war before I vassalised Cornwall, and triggered my warning, but I didn't get the pop up, because I couldn't become both the attacker and defender of Cornwall.
Hmm... I wonder if that can be used to engineer some wars while being warned... Anyway Cornwall took Gwynedd and I took the rest of England. Castile is forced out of Toledo and their African holding breaks up (except for that small desert province between the Mamluks and Morocco. Now, if I just force the Castilian capital out there, I am pretty sure one of the muslims will do the final annexation. Malta is considered of Iberian culture, and revolted to Granada :-D

Second National Idea is national bank. I don't really need -0.1 inflation reduction, but I don't need inflation either. Anyway, at a later point I need the idea for the Bank of Amsterdam decisions, and it seems an alright idea for now. Like for military drill, I will probably have to change it at some point later.

This came up a few years back, and now the war is concluded. I didn't want to break a truce just to suck up to France, so I declined.

Now, France is completely uninterested in a new alliance. Well. It's probably time for a showdown anyway. I was lucky the alliance lasted this long.

How am I doing compared to the 5 step plan. Step 1-3 are clearly done. Castile is broken and it's a matter of time before they are forced out of Iberia. England and Denmark are finished (I have a core on Sjælland through boundary dispute). I'm behind with the dutch provinces and hope it won't turn into a problem, but those OPM annexations are just so expensive in terms of BB - and I'm already getting up where I depend on Despotic Monarchy to keep me under the BB threshold. I've also established a nice network of vassals around France. When the war comes, they will be fighting on all borders! Time for step 5

 

[nsahn]

Castile is forced out of Toledo and their African holding breaks up (except for that small desert province between the Mamluks and Morocco. Now, if I just force the Castilian capital out there, I am pretty sure one of the muslims will do the final annexation. Malta is considered of Iberian culture, and revolted to Granada :-D

I thought you wanted the Castillian capital to remain on the Iberian peninsula, so that you could release them later?

 

[unmerged(74857)]

I thought you wanted the Castillian capital to remain on the Iberian peninsula, so that you could release them later?

That works as well, but inspired by Kebzeros animist land sales, I plan to create an animist Granada and sell them the land. It'll have the added benefits of eventually turning Iberia into danish cultured .. and then it's BB free.

I don't really like the BB reduction - it feels amoral. It could easily become a CHEESE like mission, releasing a huge animistic country and annexing again in 5 years. I guess I have to walk a fine line somewhere. I had a game where I tested how to import animists to Europe, and it was relatively easy to set up latin tech'ed administrative monarchies with animistic state religion all over the place. - I'll show you how in a couple of updates

 

[sprites]

now you have too much english provinces to form netherlands

 

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now you have too much english provinces to form netherlands

Yeah, I'll have to get rid of them somehow. The problem is that if England ever loses it's fleet and picks up on tech's again, they can take QFTNW. For some reason, despite bankruptcy, 1000% inflation and beeing a OPM the colonizers can always found a couple of expeditions and before I can stop them, they've mapped out the new World. So I hope that some other nation will annex them in time. That being said, I do plan to set up an animist vassal in England depending on the reformation. England is a fine place to do so, since they have high base tax, and will eventually be overseas, so I don't have to worry about the population if I do an animist wave.

 

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After having admitted that the French alliance was never to be resigned, and war was approaching, the recruitment of a new army was ordered and diplomats sent out to secure the royal line in case things turned awry.

Louis XI, king of France had united the Francophone heartland through small wars, diplomacy and intrigues. He was a talented general, but found a special liking in the "handsign waving" part of the battle rather than the simple killing. The Portuguese court and military academy had only disdain for such notions and joked about the French court and their womanly ways. General Rogérío de Pimentel was quoted for saying "Louis XI is truly innovative. The new two-handed approach has really changed the aesthetics of the battle field and I'm really looking forward to see how it compares to the old-school ways we teach in Portugal."

It took two spies to fabricate a claim on Bourbonnais - the French vassal soon to be absorbed - and war was swiftly declared.

The vassalising strategy has clearly paid off with 41k extra men waiting on the French border ready for a siege fest.

At the Pyrenees I pulled the normal tactic of scorch and retreat when the first French army rolled in. The first battle roll was catastrophic and I would normally have pulled out after 5 days to let French sit a eat attrition instead. . but with the new rules, I stuck around. Eventually, after having chased the stack to Armagnac, they gave up.

Shortly after Louis XI was leading a new attack. This time on the siege group from Flandern. My 11k cavalry army rushed in to help them cover the retreat, but the French were disciplined and kept control of the battle. Duke Boudewijn X of Flandern ordered the retreat and the French army started chasing. The French army got confused by the different hostile countries around them. Instead of trying to destroy one army, they kind of waltzed through with no direction. The indecisiveness of the French army allowed the Portuguese troops to reinforce and when the battle turned to Zeeland, the French were beaten horribly.

And that was it. No doomstack. No 1-day assaults... Actually, the French armies were gone? I sent in small skirmish troops of 3-5k cavalry, but only found small newly recruited armies scattered across the country. It turned out the French forces were gathering around Brittany. I didn't mind too much, and started to siege from the south.

Another AI trick. I got their 4/11/0 army to run in circles around Paris.

Peace was settles, but not until a good CB had been engineered. The thing here is that France looses all but two ports (with a different culture, so they are prone to revolt away.)

They've synchronized their bankruptcies! How sweet

A new peace. Normandy revoltet away on their own.

Oh, what is this about you ask. Well, I'm going to make a new attempt on getting Denmark to expand their culture. For some reason Jämtland - an inland province - has a Danish core. It is also conveniently close to the still growing colony of Lappland.

I remove the military access and declares war.

At the same time the peaces with Denmark and her allies are concluded, cores on the first danish conquests starts to pop. The first and hardest accepted culture has been acquired! (The dutch are comming way to slow for my liking.)

A new king. And he is just in time to finish off suicidal France

Again the French provinces are forced to split up. Notice Burgundy already feasting on the cadaver ;D

A new king. Again! oh, no. That DIP 3 is hurting.

To finish this update. I got the Hansatic Kontor event. For some reason I thought they fixed it with ver. 3.2 ? Now. Both choices are bad since the long term plan is a plutocratic society.. but what am I to do if it pops multiple times? I took the stab hit this time around.

The lack of Dutch provinces is a problem. I'm considering blowing the BB limit for while just to get hold of them in time. My shield of vassals that protected against France can just as well work against the HRE nations. Advises are welcome

 

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Hansa, culture change

You forgot the Hansa bonus: +25% global trade income. You can't get it later, so starting with Portugal you lost it for good.

In order to change primary culture from A to B in IN 3.2b, you need to move your capital to a province with B culture, and you need that the number of provinces with B culture to be strictly greater than the number of provinces with A culture.

Cores are irrelevant, if not for the indirect requirement that a province must be core to move the capital to. Accepted status of the new primary culture is irrelevant, too.

An unexpected side effect of changing primary culture is that the old primary culture is not automatically accepted. This means that it needs to form more than 20% of the tax base to come back as accepted culture after relinquishing primary status.

Example 1: you have 6 portuguese provinces, 4 flemish provinces and 6 dutch provinces, plus a botload of other core provinces where no more than 3 share the same culture, meaning that your portuguese culture provinces do not make up at least 20% of your base tax. Your primary culture is portuguese, and your capital is dutch. If you sell one portuguese province you can change primary culture to dutch. Portuguese culture is lost, and does not become accepted.

Example 2: as above, but your capital is flemish. You need to sell 3 portuguese provinces and 3 dutch provinces in order to change primary culture to flemish.

 

[unmerged(77251)]

I don't like going subsaharian, because the other Europeans will start colonizing and I can't turn the culture back (and I rarely wont to expand my main culture!) When I've got France under control, I will send out an expedition to find some animists in The Americas. (Step 5 of the master plan - I need the Aztec gold mines for the Spanish Gold Fleet Decision anyway.) The biggest problem will probably be the religious homogeneity of Europe. I think I will have them setup shops in a North African province do a annex/release through war/vassalize dance in order to get them out of tribalism. That is another reason for why I let Granada hang around .. but it also depends on how the reformation and possible crusades go . If the animist trick fails, I will just pump up a vassal.

Also, I'm no stranger to herding animists, but they take out 33% of the population which isn't exactly healthy in terms of production.. and production will dwarf taxation in the end, so I will try to avoid it.

I guess time will tell.

Hehe: I said to myself a guy who plans to press every nickel (or perhaps gold piece) knows those tricks. But than again, I was more thinking of taking over the one shamanist province on the baltic early, letting it rebell - and there you go with a nice pagan opm vassal. Also, no need to force convert while loosing a lot of taxpayers: by feeding the shamanist vassal with province having an active missionary, you can convert anyone to whatever culture you want. Of course, it assumes you quickly turn protestant.

 

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You forgot the Hansa bonus: +25% global trade income. You can't get it later, so starting with Portugal you lost it for good.

I forgot that one in the discussion. Hanseatic League gives 20% trade_income. Starting as Portugal gives 10% production efficiency and 5% trade efficiency. I figured that starting out as Portugal gave me a better position to take out the colonizers before they start. The Portuguese decisions are smaller compared to the Hanseatic League, but Mecklenburg or Denmark just doesn't have the same ability to project powers to the Iberians.

Also, do you know what the deal with the Hanseatic Kontor. It is buggy, but how is supposed to work? By accepting the Kontor you get the country_flag "hanseatic_member" which isn't cleared upon the immediate closing of the Kontor. In effect I can now chose to leave the league, but I do not have the modifier. For some reason I thought the event was fixed in 3.2, allowing me to join the league if given the right sliders and proximity. It looks to me like they actually wanted to give the country_flag "hanseatic_league" instead of "hanseatic_member".

In order to change primary culture from A to B in IN 3.2b, you need to move your capital to a province with B culture, and you need that the number of provinces with B culture to be strictly greater than the number of provinces with A culture.

Cores are irrelevant, if not for the indirect requirement that a province must be core to move the capital to. Accepted status of the new primary culture is irrelevant, too.

It appears you are right. I'm a bit puzzled how come I didn't know.. I guess that just makes it easier.

An unexpected side effect of changing primary culture is that the old primary culture is not automatically accepted. This means that it needs to form more than 20% of the tax base to come back as accepted culture after relinquishing primary status.

Example 1: you have 6 portuguese provinces, 4 flemish provinces and 6 dutch provinces, plus a botload of other core provinces where no more than 3 share the same culture, meaning that your portuguese culture provinces do not make up at least 20% of your base tax. Your primary culture is portuguese, and your capital is dutch. If you sell one portuguese province you can change primary culture to dutch. Portuguese culture is lost, and does not become accepted.

Example 2: as above, but your capital is flemish. You need to sell 3 portuguese provinces and 3 dutch provinces in order to change primary culture to flemish.

In all my games Brabant eventually got some culture conversion events. In fact, until I started playing around with cultural decisions, I thought that Limburg started out dutch. You will see in (perhaps) the next update that I have some success with expanding the dutch and danish cultures.

Hehe: I said to myself a guy who plans to press every nickel (or perhaps gold piece) knows those tricks. But than again, I was more thinking of taking over the one shamanist province on the baltic early, letting it rebell - and there you go with a nice pagan opm vassal. Also, no need to force convert while loosing a lot of taxpayers: by feeding the shamanist vassal with province having an active missionary, you can convert anyone to whatever culture you want. Of course, it assumes you quickly turn protestant.

I like to hang around with the Catholics for a while. I will try to punish nations that turn protestants, and force convert them to Catholicism (always 50 war score), then later turn protestant myself. Turning to early will speed up the reformation, and I really don't like the idea of a bunch of protestant OPM's.
It also has the added benefit of getting the "religious revolt" modifier early. A few land sales later I will be able to clear the flag - but you can only get it once, making the time at -3 tolerance much quicker. I will seed animism in muslim and random reformed provinces, possibly starting a small wave to forceconvert a few capitals.

You can take Samagothia early, but taxation is not that important in the end game, and I don't plan to focus on culture spreading. I will only do it when it's convenient.

.. now time to edit some screenshots.

 

[unmerged(74857)]

First up I decide to release Ulster and Cornwall from vassalage. Connacht has the mission to annex Ulster, and I'd much rather have Ireland as a vassal than tiny Ulster. I hope Cornwall will annex England.

This would have been a great event, if I didn't just learn that the "accepted culture" status is not required to shift culture. How could I have missed it? Did the rules change at some point?

I need a port in the Red sea so as to work my way towards India without exploring Africa. At the same time, Judea and Mecca gives those nifty bonii to prestige and missionaries that are always welcome. . Third, and perhaps most importantly, I was in lack of rebels to send my suicide king against. War was declared. It was a rather messy war partly, due to the two 12k rebel stacks spawning in Cairo and that the Mamluks were opportunity dow'ed by the Ottomans and Timurids. My combined forces in the area was a split up 7/7/0 stack with cavalries stealing sieges and infantries assaulting whatever the rebels left behind.

During the war, Afonso V finally gave in and left the country to his better suited heir. Afonso had always wanted to know what happened if you sail over the edge of the world, and his first noteworthy action was the commision of (what was to be known as) the Afonsine Suicide Expedition.

Apparently the edge was further away from home than expected. A small 10 man refitting station was set up on the remote island of The Azores, and the expedition continued.

They were ordered to sail as far west as possible, only returning when they had discovered the edge. The expedition would eventually fail and they never did return. Later a bottle mail showed up on the Portuguese shores with exact coordinates as to where a military landing would be preferable. Afonso VI understood that such a magic tale could only be true if being the work of God and he founded the recruitment and buildup of a new army headed for the new world.

Back in Europe the expansions were going slow. The only available Casus Belli happened to start wars against two dutch minors who where eventually annexed.

Freeing Ulster paid off, and a new cool vassal was gained.

Landgrap in the Americas. The Aztecs had absorbed all of Zapotek and could only pay 1000d for some reason. I need their gold mines anyway and chose to annex.

Annexing the dutch minors blew the BB limit and all kind of BB-war related stuff started to happen. . Except that most of my neighbors are vassals, so I don't get that much trouble. I am satisfied with the provinces I have at the moment and don't plan much in the way of expansion for the next decade or so.

Peaces were signed with all the opportunistic attackers. France was landlocked for good. Maya was vassalized. The province of Zapotech was demanded as it had become a core through a boundary event. That means I can continue exploration over the pacific ocean without revealing too much of the Americas. I conceded the release of Zapotec to landlocked Ryazan. I could have just released them as a vassal, but that would have made them catholic. I will vassalize them when the truce runs out (the BB reduction was good too.)

The trade efficiency was finally brought up over 50% and the statute of monopolies were taken. I haven't been able to trade much in this game due to badboy and small CoTs, but with a rising trade efficiency I decided to invest in three new CoTs (all opening on the same day.)

I also got a great man event (missionary) and chose to swap millitary drill for national trade policy, enhancing trade income even further. The sudden boost expanded the economy greatly as can be seen on the income graph. (Aztrakhan is break away state from the Golden Horde.)

A slightly annoying cultural assimilation event happened which inspired me to look at how the cultural herding goes. Both dutch and danish has expanded in Europe. Denmark has been pumped with wartaxes and finally sent out a colonist to Lappland. Brabant must have had a cultural assimilation event them self. Land sales will start in 5 years or so.

Things are looking good I believe.