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One comment about joining a coalition against an enemy and declaring war: you are able to take provinces, but only ones that are claimed (by you or your allies/vassals). If you can somehow get a bunch of claims against a country that is the target of a coalition, then use the coalition CB yourself, you can take provinces for something like 25% AE (might even be less).

By the way, what mod are you using for the event pictures? I tried looking through steam workshop for something similar and couldn't find it.
 
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I don't like 1.10 or 1.11. But then, it's mainly because they keep nerfing my beloved Byzantium. =/

It's a real pity that they're nerfing Ryukyu so much with the latest changes.
 
In what way was early westernization nerfed (going to assume you're talking about no-cb colony seizes here)? Lack of manual exploration? I'm not completely surprised they viewed it as something that needed 'fixing' though.

It's definitely a reasonably assumption that Three Mountains and (to a much lesser degree) World Conqueror achievements are paradox's way of open-sourcing 'exploit testing', though.

Kind of unfortunate that a lot of the changes move towards making a large portion of the map inaccessible to most players, though.
 
Multiplayer balance shouldn't effect singleplayer.

Singleplayer should be a sandbox. You really shouldn't be so restrained like these arbitrary changes which are due to multiplayer,
 
Early westernization is actually still doable. Portugal has an event now that gives them control of Goa when they discover India. Because, you know, Portugal was so underpowered before. Anyways, as a player, if you grab and core a province bordering Goa you should be set to start westernizing quite early.

You can also still manually explore if you don't enable El Dorado. It takes longer to get to Europe but you can still do it by going around Africa. If that change ever migrates to the main product then moving your capital to be Europe adjacent is going to be tricky. Of course, the bigger issue now is that it's hard to acquire any territory while keeping yourself eligible to move your capital to another continent.
 
You can also still manually explore if you don't enable El Dorado.
It's bizarre that the changes are such that playing without CoP or El Dorado actually make most hyper-blob gameplay a lot easier.
 
Chapter 7: Some unexpected wars



First and foremost, I wish to point out that i'm continuing the AAR in 1.9.2, since patch 1.10 made old saves uncompatible! So all the new subject behaviour changes etc don't apply.

Tuscany declared on the Papal State. France and Austria joined in versus the Pope. Spain didn’t quite like the idea that someone attacked the Pope, so they came to his defense..

Result?

Spain faced Austria, France, Milan and Tuscany. Spain got trashed. BAD :eek:

I was eyeing this war for a few months, deciding whether or not to take the BIG risk of joining the dogpile in Iberia and to declare force PU war against Spain. If I did that, I would be completely alone versus Spain and Portugal, if the Tuscan war ended.

In the end, I just couldn’t control myself any further (don’t like sitting on my thumb if I can do an opportunistic move) and I just DID it. :cool:

Force PU war to get Spain and Portugal as minor Pu subjects. Alone :confused:

I occupied whatever the other nations left open, and kept OUT of any real fight. I’m going to need all my troops for this stunt…



I carefully watched what the other nations did against Spain. They did a good job of eradicating all enemy troops in Iberia. Austria is starting to transfer occupations to Tuscany. I took that as a warning the Tuscan war would end soon. I started to prepare for that. I made like 14 merc infantry. Its costing me an arm and a leg to pay for them, but this should be worth it :cool:



Portugal and Spain ferried troops in from their colonial provinces. I manoeuvred out of the way, and let the other nations deal with those stacks. Since the Iberian troops got nowhere to retreat to if they fight inland, they all got stackwiped.



Since I saw that Tuscany is close to getting enough warscore to take Romagna (they won’t full annex the Pope most likely), I made the move I planned.

I used the 14 1k stacks of mercs I produced, and placed ONE stack of 1k on each province that is occupied by the other war… I just hope they won’t get black flagged for some weird reason, when the Tuscan war ends.



Aaah its SO satisfying if a plan works :)

The 1k stacks didn’t get black flagged, and ENTIRE Iberia is sieged by me :p

Note that occupations don’t tick since most stacks are too small to siege the provinces. BUT they DO prevent Spain and Portugal from making more troops in Iberia :D



I kept the main merc army out of the occupied Tuscan provinces, in case the stacks there would get black flagged when the Tuscan war ended. Always have a plan B. Plan B was to split the merc army up and walk to the new unoccupied provinces IF my other stacks would get a black flag when Tuscan war ended. In the end plan B wasn’t needed and I split the merc army to reinforce the 1k stacks.



In the end, I had a 2k merc army on each Iberian province. The only danger now is Spain or Portugal landing more troops.. They were out of manpower though. I carefully watched the fleets around Iberia from now on…

See the event? I’m considered a European trade power now… Right, I suppose I am :rolleyes:

That event increased price of chinaware with 50%.



The reason I got that event: I’m attacking and occupying Wu again. Wu was without allies. Got to take the opportunity ;)



We took Madrid :mad:

Let the ticking warscore begin! So far, no fleet invasions yet. I was so vulnerable in Iberia at this stage. I had high heartbeat for this entire war :eek:

I hope this stunt will work :confused:



Well, that didn’t work out :(

I claimed throne of Austria before, but it turns out a nation who has minor PU subjects can never become a minor PU subject themselves, even if they are at peace. I wasn’t quite sure. Now I am…

The new Habsburg noble that got elected emperor has good stats and is a diplomat. PFWIEUW! Las thing I need is a declaration from Austria because they get militaristic ruler o_O



The other war you can see, is versus Ragusa. They broke free of the Ottomans. When I saw rebels there, I made claim on the province. Such claims last, even if a nation becomes free due to rebels. So, I got claim on Ragusa the moment it got free. I declared on them a while back, to make sure they make no allies. I’m turning my attention to them now, since Spain decided to land troops in… Albania. Dumb Ai :rolleyes:



What were you hoping to achieve Spain? Oh well, they got slaughtered :rolleyes:



Doesn’t it look beautiful :D

Iberia completely occupied. I didn’t have enough warscore yet to end the war though. I had no choice but to stall the war, and to obtain more warscore by ticking warscore from occupying Madrid.



Polotsk and Volhynian nationalists began to ravage Lithuania, and a pretender rebel stack on top. Lithuania can’t reach the nationalist stacks.



Oh boy. This looks promising :eek:

The heir of the old king of Sweden died of natural causes (I saw no event). And my dynasty is in line to deliver noble, because I am their biggest tax base partner. We’ll see what happens.



Ragusa got sieged up, and I demanded full annexation. BUT, was I gonna regret I did this war :confused:

This peace deal was a drop too much in a bucket I kinda took my eye off… The coalition :oops:



Ok, now THIS came as a surprise :eek:

The entire coalition jumped on me the day after after I ended Ragusa war. This was the drop for France; they attacked me.

AARGH. Not NOW :mad:

The plan was to attack France AFTER I ended force PU war, with the help of Austria.

But then again, since it was defensive war, Sweden got called in, along with Austria.
I can’t do separate peace deals with Muscovy, Yue, Ning and Manchu now, since the coalition declared on me…
Looking back, I think I preferred THIS over losing the chance to force PU Spain and Portugal.
In theory I could have started war versus France with help of Austria (Sweden would likely have joined because Muscovy was part of coalition aswell), and THEN declare force Pu war on Spain. But since France was fighting Spain along with Austria back then, that option was out.
I had HOPED not to get coalition war until force PU war with Spain was over. I guess I got too greedy, since Ragusa was the drop that incited the coalition to attack.

Oh well :( Not everything can work out as planned. I *could* have done some gamey tricks to remove AE and coalition, but I wanted to play this run clean.. Hope that decision won’t be my downfall here, or in the long run.

Anyways, I got work to do now! That’s a big part of map that’s red o_O



At least my financial situation isn’t bad. But OH BOY. I got to plan ahead how to deal with France :eek:

I was hoping Sweden would take care of Muscovy. The plan was to move these 9k into a position where the Austrian army stacks can attach to them. I just kept my spirit high and began to micromanage my way into France.



As things weren’t complicated enough ALREADY, Venice joined in on the coalition war, after France called them in. Great. Just GREAT :mad:



I moved my mercs that dealt with the Polotsk nationalist rebel stacks to the southwest, and I let the Austrian stacks attach to 1k stacks of mine. You are going to regret this, Venice :mad:

Austria attacked the main army of Venice, and routed them to Dalmatia. I attacked them there *again*. Guess what, that 58k stack of Austria didn’t HELP. The went back north the day before they were supposed to help me on this Dalmatia fight :rolleyes:

ARGH :mad: Gotta love unpredictable AI. That would have been a stackwipe. Instead, the venetian main army got routed again, to Corfu. I followed them, and managed to stackwipe the main Venetian army in Corfu, before the venetian fleet could forbid me passing the land strait into Corfu.



What about the Asian front, you might wonder :confused:

I ended the war versus WU, and sent the troops to Ning. I was lucky Manchu was waging war versus Oirat at this time. The only problem: Manchu is sieging the province in Oirat that borders Lan Xang.. I hope they will keep on sieging, as the Manchu army is BIG o_O

I’m attacking the Ning army here, after I made sure they can’t run anywhere. Ning army got routed and destroyed.
 
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Saxony trashed Bohemia. Sweden is doing a nice job sieging Muscovy, while Muscovy sieges Crimea. That part of the front seems stable. I shifted my attention to the alpes, and France.



What is the best way to deal with a MEAN French army? Let them attack you in mountains and with a river crossing.

Ai doesn’t take the ally stacks that are near into account, when deciding to attack army in Brescia. The moment they did, Austria redirected all their closeby stacks to Brescia, to reinforce this battle. I counted on that :cool:

Louis XIV himself is leading the battle against my best general :eek:. Louis XIV is a 6/6/2/0 general o_O

Remember the defensive fight I manoeuvred myself into during the war against Malaaca, Ligor etc? This is the same tactic I used.

OOOH BOY this is going to be nerve wrecking :confused:

I switched to speed one and did a quick prayer to the RNG gods for good combat rolls. Even with a -3 to dice rolls, France is slaughtering me here.. Mainly because they got a full back row of cannons.

…..


HOLD THE LINE MEN!!! 68k reinforcements are on the way :eek:



2 weeks later Louis XIV started to regret he ever set foot in the Alpes :cool:



My old king died. It turned out I did the right thing with Spain. If I hadn’t declared force PU war when I did against Spain, I likely never would have gotten the chance again. The only reason I even COULD do a force PU war is because this king lived long. So, the royal marriage with Spain had lasted all this time, and that enabled me to claim throne of a nation I lost alliance with decades ago…

On his deathbed, the old emperor asked his heir Kosai to lead Ryukyu to a triumph versus the coalition. Not an easy task :confused:



Main Muscovy army is still in Crimea. Muscovy attacked the small stack, and the Swedish army in Finland reinforced the battle. Muscovy got slaughtered :p

The Swedish army is faaaar superior due to their 15% discipline bonus and military idea groups. Sweden was attacking Finland in a separate war before they got called into this coalition war.. I think. Too busy to notice how Finland got there in first place :confused:

Also, these Polotsk and other Lithuanian rebels are disrupting stuff here.. I left them. Maybe Muscovy stumbles into them :p



Iberia stayed fully occupied. I needed more ticking warscore to end this war…



I assigned a few 1k stacks to loot France. Because, why not ;)



That big Austrian stack was determined to attack France. Stupid AI. France will reinforce that battle with all stacks it has! Don’t DO IT! … Oh you will huh. Fine. You will regret this :rolleyes:

The AI baited Austria to attack with river crossing and bad terrain. Grmpf. I think the AI is self aware and learning of my moves earlier o_O



-2 to dice rolls. Nice going, Austria. Still, 80+k versus 25k can’t go wrong right? Well it can, if France used forced march to reinforce the fight… Which it did :confused:

Louis XIV wanted revenge :mad: And trust me, he bled Austria BADLY.

It was a battle led by the best generals in the world.. Louis XIV (6/6/2/0) versus Matthias Von Esterhazy, Austria's best general (6/5/2/1).



A couple months later, and that battle was STILL ongoing. France reinforced this battle with ALL stacks :confused:

On top of that, Tuscany is harassing my venetian siege forces. Yeah, Tuscany joined in on the war also. Sigh :rolleyes:

The battle of Barrois will be known as the “massacre of Barrois”. Both sides lost tens of thousands of troops. It also was the most close call battle I EVER saw in Eu4 o_O

In the end, both sides had like 0.2 or 0.1 morale, and the only units that didn’t retreat already were casual 1k reinforcements on both sides. I made 7k mercs and let ‘m join that battle. In the end, that might have been decisive, since I WON with like 0.05 morale when France and all the rest got routed.

These were a couple of nerve wrecking months.



The new emperor Kosai was SO happy with the victory that he held a celebration party. Some time later this nice heir was the result :D

And the ticking warscore is doing its thing in Iberia!! Oh god SO close…146-147 o_O

Do you see that 9k Spanish stack in Madrid? They are desperately trying to remove my occupation of Madrid. They are at -42%, so I still have a load of occupation ticks. Needless to say, I began to eye the progress on their siege carefully. The idea was to peace out when they got over 0%, and to try for some more warscore to get ducats from Spain aswell.



Meanwhile, I manoeuvred myself into a position to deliver the deathblow to France.

Remember the tip I gave about positioning 1k stacks in a nation, to reduce their possible routing destinations? I’ll demonstrate what I mean.

See those 1k stacks positioned in France? These 1k stacks actually PREVENT France from fleeing to the province they stand on, but ALSO prevent France from routing to all the NEIGHBOURING provinces of these “occupied” provinces.

Now study the screenshot. That’s right…. France has NOWHERE to run thanks to carefully placed 1k stacks.

I bet you think now “Wait WHAT? That actually works?:eek:



I’ll prove it does by this screenshot. Instead of routing to the furthest province possible, France did a disorganized flee of the province where the fight took place. They literally fled to all neighbouring provinces, since the AI deemed no province was safe to run to, due to those 1k stacks everywhere.

And I anticipated that, and moved some stacks to all neighbouring provinces. France got routed to all sides, and when they entered the neighbouring provinces, the 1k stacks wiped ENTIRE FRENCH ARMY o_O Or the chasing army did.

Now look at the battle results. Louis XIV his army got stack wiped by 620 infantry. Those 620 men killed off 16k French troops. Uhhhhh.. right :confused:

I bet Paradox will now patch the routing mechanic, after demonstrating this..



Spain finally gave up. VICTORY IS OURS :D

When you force a nation into a PU, those nations drop out of all wars they got, they keep their troops and fleets, and won’t join your ongoing wars. So, Spain had time to regain strength and to get rid of its war exhaustion. And I got Portugal as minor PU subject aswell. If you do a force PU war on a nation which has PU subjects of its own, you become overlord over both.

I actually pulled it off. Yay :cool:

In other news, Poland went reformed aswell.

I started to siege France. Sweden did fine job occupying Muscovy. Manchu occupied stuff in Lan Xang. Be my guest :rolleyes:

I turned the coalition war around, and I’m making gains now!



Venice was the first to fall. I did annul treaties and war reparations with ‘m.



Sweden bashed Muscovy SO badly that everyone joined the dogfight. I almost felt sorry for Muscovy at this point :(



Sweden occupies stuff in the West, and the Hordes and Buryatia occupied stuff in the east. Poor Muscovy :(

See that blue province west of Bryansk? Polotsk broke free of Lithuania, and I gained holy war cb on them.



France is being sieged. The pope is impressed enough to proclaim the recently deceased emperor as a Saint. I doubt many other ancestors were catholic… Right? :rolleyes:



I turned my attention to Tuscany after Austria did also. I can make separate peace with Tuscany also, so why not :)



2 years later, I made this peace deal with them. France is almost sieged up aswell. In the long run, I intend to feed Abruzzi to Tuscany aswell.



I almost forgot entirely, but Scotland joined the war aswell, and England sieged them up. I made separate peace with Scotland, and gave England some cores back.



Over the weekend (I never play in weekends) I contemplated what I would ask for in the coalition peace deal. A tough nut to crack :confused:

I think I made 15 different peace deals, but none satisfied me in the end. And I restarted the deal.

Look at the right top of the screenshot. During the war, Ming became a vassal of Yue, because of another war Yue was fighting before the coalition war started. This interrupted my core creation there because Ming suddenly came involved in the coalition war. ARGH :mad: That’s 48% overextension that’s frozen. I didn’t think of this possibility. Bit too busy I guess.

So asking a load of French provinces was out. I had 60% overextension. Instead, I gave Lan Xang some VERY high base tax provinces, including the former Ming capital of Nanjing. That former capital was 17 base tax(!) and those two provinces alone gave Lan Xang 96% overextension. So I had to adapt this peace deal and removed giving Guilin to Lan Xang (didn’t want to make the mistake of overfeeding lan xang again!) and gave Crimea a province aswell.

I gave Sweden a claimed province, that linked their territory to the captured province Finland had. I did this to make sure Sweden had a direct access route into Lithuania, so they could help on a possible future invasion of Lithuania. Got to plan ahead in Eu4.

In the end, the peace deal still gave me bad feeling :(

Not asking anything of France just felt wrong. Maybe this war was a big waste of time… Could have declared on Ottomans or so. Oh well. Not everything goes as planned in Eu4 :confused:

But my vassals gained more then 40 base tax worth in provinces. Not too bad ;)



I needed a breather, and Austria aswell. Muscovy got trashed BAD by me, and now Oirat declared on them also.
 
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Remember that screenshot of the 71 year old heirless king? He died, and a Habsburg noble ascended their throne. OHH boy :eek:

Are you thinking what I was thinking then??

Slight problem though. Sweden has 100 prestige. 100 :rolleyes:

So I had to equal that to claim their throne. And I had 92 prestige, since it dropped a little during the breather period. ARGH :mad:

I contemplated how to get 10 prestige fast, and did a bit of a drastic move o_O

I declared restraint of appeals (after an insult to the Pope) and gained 10 prestige. I claimed their throne.



I claimed their throne, and planned to start a force Pu war.. Austria really liked Sweden, but they had so much trust in me that they got swayed to help on this claim throne war. I had to break alliance with Sweden, cancel access treaties, and HOPED Sweden wouldn’t get an heir in these months. They didn’t.

What DID happen during these few months, was Sweden declaring on Norway. England came to the defense of Norway, so they couldn’t join my force PU war versus Sweden.

It seems I would have been called into that Swedish war if I didn’t do this force PU war, so.. Its now or never :confused: If I didn't do the war now, I would have been called in by Sweden/England.

Bohemia and Saxony will come to the defense of Sweden, and I made both co-belligerent. That dragged three OPM Hre states in; Ansbach, Augsburg and Holstein.



My plan was to occupy everything in HRE first, to make some separate peaces. I let Austria do the fights, and my army focussed on occupations and chasing routed armies and stack wiping them.



In other news: Ottomans are trying to westernise off ME. The insolence :mad:

They got reactionaries and “internal conflicts” as a result. Guess what? Persia did NOT want to re-ally them after the “annul treaty” timer with ottomans was gone.



I started a war versus Qi, and that dragged Shun and Chu in. The real reason I started the war is that rebel stack in Qangzhou, just south of Qi. I forgot an important lesson I learned in 1.7, and had to pay for it :oops:

Important tip: If you conquer Asian high base tax provinces as European power, it will spawn huge rebel stacks aswell. Its best to CONVERT these high base tax provinces BEFORE coring them.. Why? If a rebel stack spawns there AFTER you cored it, the rebels will have YOUR tech and YOUR military tactics. And it makes them almost impossible to beat with asian vassal armies.

That’s why converting high tax base provinces FIRST is good idea. The rebel stack will spawn, but since you don’t have a core there, the rebels will take the tech of the former owner. And after that, rebels won’t spawn again due to the -20.00 revolt chance malus.

I’m not 100% sure it works this way, but I’m pretty sure it does.

Anyways, I MADE the mistake of coring it first, and that 32k rebel stack has MY tech.. That is why I declared on YI. My vassal armies would only attach to my 1k stacks IF I wage war in Asia. So, I started a war versus Yi, led my ENTIRE vassal army there, along with every ryukyu stack I had, and tried a desperate attack versus the rebels. I won, barely. It was like 75k versus that 32k rebel stack, and they almost managed to defeat my entire combined Asian force, even though I had crazy good dice rolls.

I made quick work of occupying Shun and Chu.

And whats up with all these +1 stability events? Geez. It made me reach +3 again :D



Saxony and their minor PU subject Bavaria got occupied. Things were a little messy there, but Karl von Habsburg himself saved me when Bohemia attacked my occupation forces..



Champa finally integrated… Useless vassal begone! This is a scope of the Asian territory Ryukyu controls in 1631. I released U-Tsang as protectorate to get rid of the uncorable provinces at some point.



In other news: Otomo turned catholic and is slaughtering Japan. And Qing formed out of Manchu. Right. Bet you won’t see that happening a lot :confused:



Ok, the Hre front is secured :cool:

Time to start the invasion of Sweden. One slight problem. Naval Ai. Whatever I tried, I couldn’t budge the Spanish and Portuguese fleet to kill the Swedish fleet near Denmark. Sigh :rolleyes:



Remember that province I gave Sweden in the coalition war? I planned ahead for a possible force PU war/Lithuanian war. That one province given created a possible corridor into Sweden through Lithuania. And Lithuania likes me enough to give access. They also gave access to Austria.

The idea now was to lead all 1k stacks with Austrian army attached, towards that corridor and to Invade Sweden from the east. Micromanaging horror. I had to move those stacks through Crimea and Minsk into Lithuania, and then into Sweden. That was the plan. You can see me leading those stacks through Crimea there.

Slight problem: Sweden anticipated my move, and sent troops to Lithuania to repel my attempt :eek:

And OH MY GOD these Swedish troops are seriously overpowered o_O

They tried an attack on a stack, and I was lucky some other 1k stacks with Austrian forces were already in vicinity. I routed the Swedes, but not without a serious amount of losses…



The moment I set foot upon Swedish territory, Spain decides to awake from its catharsis and sends its fleet and troops to the Danish territory. I’ll never understand naval AI.. I guess they woke up because I set foot in war target territory, but not sure.



I was also lucky that the Swedish army was split in two. The second Swedish army retreated towards Stockholm, but I catched them in time and led all the stacks south to reinforce that battle. As you can see, only 4k-6k of my own troops are involved in the invasion! My own army had to kill some rebels in Bulgaria. They moved towards Sweden only a couple months later, to start occupations.



Meanwhile, I started a war versus Wu again, to keep my forces in Asia busy. I noticed too late my truce was gone, and that other nations were invading them also…



The Ai really made a dirty move there. I was planning to feed Lan Xang, but Yue fed Ming its cores back, making feeding to Lan Xang impossible. GRRRRR :mad:

By the way, you can see here that I fed Lan Xang the old capital of Ming (Nanjing) in the coalition war peace deal. 17 base tax ;)

I had no choice but to retreat. But I sieged up Wu anyways, since I was trapped. The AI almost seemed sentient there and thwarted my plans…



A bit later, I annexed Chu, fed Pegu some Shun provinces, and took one Qi province for myself. Turned out I couldn’t core the Chu province, and I sold it to Lan Xang after these wars.



Swedes attacked from the north again, when I was moving westwards towards finland province. Eeek:confused:

Go east again folks :eek:



The Swedes fled across the land strait towards Stockholm. I was able to use the same land strait and landed in Stockholm with 40k troops. I had to wait a bit to cross the strait, until I saw the Swedish fleet sailed south to repel a stray Austrian fleet landing troops in Danish territory. Austria blublub, but I landed in Stockholm :cool:



Portugal and Spain landed more and more troops in Danish territory. They kept minimal occupation stacks there, and moved north. I guess this is proof that the AI takes into account where your forces are, in deciding how to move your subject forces. Ok brave subjects, If you move north to kill a stack, then I will aswell ;)



I set Stockholm as a province Portugal should siege during the previous battle, and after the fight Portugal occupied Stockholm. Attaboy :p

I led my army south in pursuit of the main Swedish army.



Needless to say, a stackwipe was the logical result there…



I did a revoke of the restraint of appeals. I got to stay catholic after all, if I ever want to become emperor. So why not going for a revoke. I don’t lose papal influence monthly anymore, and I KEPT the tax bonus decisions. No, that doesn’t get revoked!

All enacted decisions that say 'until 1821' can't ever be revoked no matter what you do.

Important tip: You can enact decisions tied to culture, nation or religion that last until 1821, only to keep these bonuses when you CHANGE your culture, religion or nation tag. You keep these bonuses, and you can enact (possible) new ones if you switch religion, culture etc. They all stay active until 1821.



Sweden gave up. I started to occupy more and more territory. This war is won. But I wanted to make separate peaces in the HRE, so I continued occupying entire Sweden for warscore.



In other news, Otomo is actually eating entire Japan. Wow :eek:

I ended the pointless Wu war after I got enough warscore to ask reparations and their ducats.



In other news, Oman is going on a blobbing Spree. Orissa is the main nation in India. Warsangali blobbed in east Africa, but is getting Punished now.



I made separate peaces in HRE. Austria got fed up to 9x% overextension, as thanks for their help in the war.

I ended the union Saxony had over Bavaria. All those HRE states gave me reparations and their gold. Thanks folks. Note that I fed Ansbach and Augsburg to Austria aswell.

I checked opinion of all HRE states after, and it seems they don’t care. HUH? It seems that feeding Austria several Hre princes doesn’t make them hated in HRE anymore, since the league wart mechanic. Another tactic of mine during the foix run that seems to have been nerfed… I am unsure how I can ever become HRE emperor now. Wiping all catholic nations in HRE, I guess. We'll see.



Sweden gave in. It stood completely alone now, and they accepted to become minor PU subject of Ryukyu. VICTORY IS OURS :D



This is a diplomatic snapshot of my subjects/allies in Europe. Not bad huh. Austria allied and did RM with Poland, Polotsk AND Riga after the war. Who said you can’t expand diplomatically as Austria? They already made Pomerania a vassal diplomatically before this war.

I fed Austria provinces towards Brandenburg, anticipating the peace deal would drag me to war with Brandenburg. It didn’t. The idea (in the long run) now is to link Swedish territory to the Austria territory, like I did in the Foix run. In the long run, that’s handy, if Austria ever becomes my PU subject.. Linking up all your subjects is needed.

I want to note this: if Milan did NOT become minor PU vassal of Austria, I would have gotten Austria as minor PU subject when their heirless king died during this chapter. But it didn’t work out. Oh well. Not everything works out as I want it to. Benefit of this: I don’t get aggressive expansion for feeding Austria.

Well, these have been a few chaotic decades. But in the end, I gained 3 minor PU subjects :p

And Austria is starting to grow crazy big o_O

If Austria integrates Milan (or god forbid inherits it :confused:) I might get a chance for a succession war over Austria. But that can’t happen before 1648. We’ll see what happens.

Next up: bashing the Ottomans again.

Hope you enjoyed this (long) chapter!
 
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Nice chapter.

But i am afraid that these last changes to the game have completely killed such an inspirational game style.

Vassal overfeeding certainly needed some kind of changes, and LD is pretty good choice.

But recent changes to coalition mechanics and AE are just too much, because they have not offered some counterweight to balance coalition wars. Ok they have introduced 30+ war enthusiasm for every country participating in coalition war and you can not get 100% war score for just occupying war leader. But when you defeat them they just get even more angry. There should be some kind of AE reduction for defeated countries in coalition wars.

And looting changes, i mean how to survive as a horde. Shame.

It seems like the patches are just some sort of weird competition between high skilled players and Paradox.
 
It seems like the patches are just some sort of weird competition between high skilled players and Paradox.

Reminds me that they recently hired DDRJake.

Atwix,

That was an excellent chapter! I was at the edge of my seat the whole time. How do you balance playing, taking screenshots, and writing? If I could do all those things, I would almost certainly do a 1453 AAR as Morea.
 
Reminds me that they recently hired DDRJake.

Atwix,

That was an excellent chapter! I was at the edge of my seat the whole time. How do you balance playing, taking screenshots, and writing? If I could do all those things, I would almost certainly do a 1453 AAR as Morea.

About Jake: I hope he will like his new job. About his skills: Paradox explicitly asked for players with loads of paradox game experience, and with deep understanding of the mechanics of their games. Also, you had to want to move to Sweden. Anyways, not MY cup of tea. But I bet its fantastic to become a DEV of the games you played a lot.

About balancing my playing etc: I do a monthly check of entire battlefield (or even more) and i usually take screenshots then. Also, i have many, many popup settings that pause my game all the time. If something happens, I'm right on it.

As for writing.. The many screenshots I take actually make me remind the exact situations I was in back then, and I don't forget those over the course of a week. Thats why I usually do a weekly update.

Writing all of that just flows out of my fingers, don't know if the comment/writing is any good actually :)
 
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Nice chapter.

But i am afraid that these last changes to the game have completely killed such an inspirational game style.

Vassal overfeeding certainly needed some kind of changes, and LD is pretty good choice.

But recent changes to coalition mechanics and AE are just too much, because they have not offered some counterweight to balance coalition wars. Ok they have introduced 30+ war enthusiasm for every country participating in coalition war and you can not get 100% war score for just occupying war leader. But when you defeat them they just get even more angry. There should be some kind of AE reduction for defeated countries in coalition wars.

And looting changes, i mean how to survive as a horde. Shame.

It seems like the patches are just some sort of weird competition between high skilled players and Paradox.

I know how you feel. Doing WC as Ryukyu will now be without westernizing early etc. Seems like i started my run in time.

Then again, I wonder if I could pull it off in 1.1x aswell.. So maybe I started too early ;)

My way of playing since 1.7 is definatly out in last patches. But new ways will always turn up.
 
About the chance of an Austria PU. Apart from having lesser partners, being in war prevents your country from ending up in a PU, and weren't they fighting Spain there for a long time? Perhaps they were at peace when the king died. Anyway, such a close call of just inheriting the main competitor for the HRE title. Sooner or later, you are going to have to fight Austria into a PU (Austria has a huge chance of getting new heir with their traditions + lucky nations bonus). I'd go for it the first chance I ever saw them heirless, but then again, you've been feeding them pretty well so going to face fierce opposition.

This is really interesting to read.

:)

EDIT:
I see these 5-6 points fire/shock generals and just cringe at the thought of fighting them with chinese tech units.
 
About the chance of an Austria PU. Apart from having lesser partners, being in war prevents your country from ending up in a PU, and weren't they fighting Spain there for a long time? Perhaps they were at peace when the king died. Anyway, such a close call of just inheriting the main competitor for the HRE title. Sooner or later, you are going to have to fight Austria into a PU (Austria has a huge chance of getting new heir with their traditions + lucky nations bonus). I'd go for it the first chance I ever saw them heirless, but then again, you've been feeding them pretty well so going to face fierce opposition.

This is really interesting to read.

:)

EDIT:
I see these 5-6 points fire/shock generals and just cringe at the thought of fighting them with chinese tech units.

Austria was at peace when their king died. Worth a shot to claim i guess, since the negative malus for claiming throne (or other nations claim throne) dissapear relatively fast.

Trust me, I'll keep close eye on Austria. Karl got a nice stat 0 year heir. So maybe, just maybe, if he dies and heir is in regency, the heir might come out of regency with no heir. I'll be waiting then.

About feeding Austria: I know its risky. But Eu4 WC needs taking risks. BUT: I can't declare directly on HRE states, or Austria would defend them, since I'm NOT in HRE. So why not feeding Austria then... They grow more powerful, can diplo vassalise easier, and they can take big vassals in diplomacy. If you can get a succession war then over Austria in that situation, you are unstoppable after.
 
I have no idea how you get all these PU's... I mean you don't do anything I haven't done since about the start of the game, but I'm not convinced I've ever got a serious PU in game, despite always desperately hoping other countries wouldn't get heirs in time.... Luck I guess.
 
I have no idea how you get all these PU's... I mean you don't do anything I haven't done since about the start of the game, but I'm not convinced I've ever got a serious PU in game, despite always desperately hoping other countries wouldn't get heirs in time.... Luck I guess.

Jumping an opportunity when i can I guess.

Example. Muscovy is really weak after I bashed them in that coalition war. Other nations declare too. Muscovy is no longer outraged, but threatened. My -3 to diplomatic reputation due to integrating vassal expired. Muscovy has tiny army, since they just got out of being occupied 60%.

....and guess what? I can RM muscovy now with maybe 60 positive malus, and -58 against so to speak. Muscovy has *one* RM partner, and a 40+ heirless king. I did RM, I maybe had a window of a few months to do it, before Muscovy produced troops again (and a fleet).

I put that 'trick' in PU guide:

It is possible to get a RM with a country that has -200 opinion of you and threatened status (hostile and outraged status give malus making RM impossible!) due them wanting the provinces you conquered from them earlier. It doesn't take this into account. With high enough diplo rep, a diplo rep advisor and some luck you might just pull a RM off with a non-outraged/hostile -200 opinion neighbour of same religion. If you grow very big, you can even RM-200 opinion heretic countries that are reasonably far away from your nearest province.

A decade later, they formed Russia now, rivalled me, and got lot of territory back. BUT i still got the RM, AND i will deliver new noble if king dies. I'll force PU when that happens. Its same situation as how I got Castille/portugal in a PU with force PU war.

Luck must be forced. Whoever says they don't get a PU ever, is likely not hawking the map for disputed successions and/or not using the right popup (pause) settings. Also, you got to keep an eye for RM opportunities. Like Muscovy, it gets considerably easier to marry a weak opponent.
 
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Chapter 8: Let the snowballin’ begin!



Lets take a look at my idea groups. I untrained exploration, as I don’t need it anymore. Spain and Portugal provide the cb on pagans; they have full exploration idea groups. I lost coring range, but who cares. I hardly colonise stuff anyways :rolleyes:

Yes, you can use pagan cb from PU subjects, if they finished exploration idea group. This won’t work for religious deus vult or the expansion cb though. Pu subjects won’t supply that.

I won’t advance religious for now. I’m trying to finish expansion to get the expansion cb to attack stuff in Asia. The expansion cb is even better then the holy war cb from religious idea group, since it enables you take provinces for 50% cost and no diplo cost, AND it enables you to release nations for 0 dip cost aswell. That’s insanely powerful :eek:

I intend to take influence, diplomatic and administrative, and to take all ideas in it. But that is something for the long run.



I declared conquest war on Ottomans. Yes, conquest, not holy war. In the end you will see why ;)

I made many allies of Ottomans co-belligerent, and this is result. I’m at war with 10 nations :cool:



I let Austria attach to 1k merc armies as usual, and moved them one province a time towards their goal. I focused the stacks on a 9k leaderless stack of the Ottomans… Wipe.



Two monarchs duked it out in Edirne :eek:

WTF Austria.. You just wiped 23k troops in one combat round?! Yep, looks like it. The Ottomans have *really* bad morale..

This is going to be easy :rolleyes:



I used the pagan cb from Spain/portugal on a few south american pagan tribes. The intention here (and in the end, in entire American continent) is to feed all tribes to colonial nations of PU subjects. I don’t get AE if I do it, so why not :D



I’m starting multiple fronts again. I directed Austrian forces towards Ottomans, and I focussed my entire non merc army on Morocco, for starters. Portugal ferried troops in to help.



I chased the routed army of Morocco and stack wiped it…



Immediately after, I started siege on all Moroccan provinces before they had chance to build more troops. The idea here is to use MY troops for occupations (no attach on) and to use 1k stacks to direct Portugal/Spain armies to kill Tunesia and Tlemcen. Micromanaging for the win, as usual :cool:



I baited the combined army of those nations to attack me in desert mountains, and routed them. I stack wiped the Tlemcen army. The idea now is to guard the occupation stacks and to move eastwards with occupations slowly.



I opened a front in Asia aswell. Its time for a LONG overdue payback against Ligor and Malacca :mad:

Those nations did a buggy war versus me ages ago, and made me lose.. Time for revenge!

I got like 16k Ryukyu troops in Asia (they used to be Champa vassal troops, and they got upgraded after integrating them) and they are far superior now to any army in Asia… This should be easy. The only problem is that I intend to feed Pegu here, and not Lan Xang. So feeding Pegu stuff from Nepal or Bengal was out… I let Bengal do their thing. I don’t intend to meddle in India just yet. They can occupy whatever they want, after 5 years whatever they siege up won’t matter anymore for warscore…



The final front was the area around the Black Sea. I set my vassals Bulgaria and Crimea to siege the OPM Theodoro and Astrakhan, and Sweden along with a few stray Austrian stacks occupied Golden Horde.

…. Multiple fronts, multiple wars.. Yep, micromanaging horror again to overlook and guide all fronts :rolleyes:

Cascading aggressiveness requires it, or you get stomped somewhere before you know it. I usually do speed 2 until fronts are secured, and then I switch to speed 3 with regular pauses to overlook the entire front for adjustments…



…because if NOT, stuff like this happens! EEK :eek:

I was lucky Austria reinforced the battle itself from the north. Normally, if there hadn’t been a stack there, I would have moved the stack in the east. But.. wait :confused:

What is wrong with the morale of the Ottomans? Austria is winning the battle, leaderless, with -2 penalty against an Ottoman army two times the size and led by a good general… Ottomans only has 3.0 morale. Come on, Austria has double of that!

The reason is the Ottomans are still having bankruptcy malus I guess. Funny enough, in the end they lost all westernisation progress and just stopped westernisizing completely.



Lets do another tour of the frontlines. The small south American tribes quickly gave in, and got fed to Spanish colonial nations. I attacked the Aztecs aswell, who were being sieged by 2 neighbours already.

Got to be opportunistic, as always :cool:



In North Africa, I’m slowly moving my occupation forces eastwards. I used a small stack with my best leader to bait the leftover Tunesian army into attacking, and reinforced the battle. Wiped :cool:



The reason why I picked Ligor/Malacca now: Malacca made a *stupid* peace deal in a previous war that cut off their main army from their mainland. But since the capital of Siak is right on the land bridge from Malacca into Siak, they had little other choice.



Timurids are trying to westernise aswell, off Muscovy. They couldn’t handle the rebels and several nations are or will break off. On top of that, everyone is invading them aswell…

Bengal is occupying 10+ Pegu provinces, but I could care less. The target here is Ligor and Malacca :mad:



This is the situation in East Asia now. Yue annexed Ming. Bye Ming… We will miss you :(



I chased the Ottoman main army, and wiped it. I know, it starts to get dull huh :rolleyes:

I switched to speed 3, as all fronts were secured.



Time to make peace with the Aztecs. I grabbed pen and paper, and calculated a peace deal that would give Portuguese Mexico exactly 100 overextension (or +5,00 in unrest icon of the nation).

Yes, I literally use pen and paper for that. IF you calculate wrong and overfeed a subject or a nation, that nation would go into a negative spiral of stab hits and rebels for DECADES. I don’t want that… Anyways, I conjured up a nice peace deal.

Portuguese Mexico fed and happy.



I did seperate peace with Malacca, after transferring occupation to Pegu all the way to the south. I took one province for myself, to make claims from.

I then made peace with Ligor: I gave Pegu and Lan Xang their old cores back, and fed Pegu all provinces except their capital. Whatever Bengal and Nepal sieged up didn’t matter, as 5 years had passed. The land linked up and Pegu started coring all of it, having +4,xx overextension in their unrest icon tooltip.

Pegu fed and happy.



I fed Theodoro to Crimea, and took Astrakhan for myself. It’s a trade center that borders Timurids and Persia, so its strategically interesting for me to take and core it…

Note that I can core it since my subject Crimea has a cored province next to it. If a vassal is on same continent as you, they extend your coring range to all their neighbouring provinces. Its how I cored stuff in territory of Lithuania, Poland and now.. Astrakhan.



And now a complicated screenshot o_O

It shows the peace deals I made with Ottomans, Morocco, Tlemcen, Tunis and Golden Horde.

Crimea got a load of provinces from Golden horde.

Crimea fed and happy.

Ever wondered why I declared “conquest war” versus Ottomans and not holy war? Here is why. I explained in a previous chapter how you can use conquest/reconquest war and its wargoal province to transfer occupation to far away subjects.

That’s exactly what I did here: I transferred occupation of the wargoal province to Spain, and after that transferred ALL occupations inland to Spain, until Spain occupied the coastal province that borders the Mamluks in the South.

I took some provinces for myself in Europe, gave Spain a province on the border of Europa and Asia (the ingame border that is) and this gave me core reduction on the coastal provinces I took in the Asian territory of the Ottomans. The downside is that local autonomy there stays at 75%.

Another benefit of this: Spain has now provinces near the Bosporus, and black flagged troops of Spain can lose their status THERE now, without running all the way BACK to Spain. In the long run, this is very handy, once I will use Spain/Portugal to attack Asia.

Spain got fed exactly 100% overextension.

Spain fed and happy.

The Bosporus is officially owned by Ryukyu now, and the Ottomans gave up Constantinople as capital, since it became isolated. I started claim on Constantinople immediately!



Morocco gave me a coastal province for coring purposes later on, and an inland province to get holy war cb against them and Timbuktu. Morocco, Tlemcen, Algiers and Tunis gave provinces that created a Portuguese corridor in North Africa from Ceuta to the border of the Mamluks.

I took one 1 base tax province in east Tunis to get Holy war versus the Mamluks, and cored it. Spain had “continue the reconquista” mission, which gave them claim on Oran. Since my subject had a claim there, I was able to transfer occupation of that Spanish claim to Spain. In the end I fed them 2 provinces there, because why not.

Portugal got fed exactly 100% overextension.

Portugal fed and happy.
 
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