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How many nations show up in the Independent Nations Ledger? :p
 
there is a button for that?

.......



ok now i feel really dumb.




Guess I learn new things about EU4 each day.

Regarding next update: I don't know. Usually its once a week, but it can vary. I don't think I'll write another before monday, unless I make enough progress by friday.
Just noticed I forgot to answer. :oops: The button in the trade node that creates a trade company automatically adds all provinces to it and if there is provinces outside the trade company it remains otherwise it is a button to close it.
 
I found it already :)

Never noticed it was there ;)
 
Likely today or tomorrow. I was first planning to wait and to finish with one big chapter, but I'll add an update chapter soon.
 
Chapter 17: A Core In Paris, A Core In Stockholm


If I ever do another Eu4 game, I’ll heed Ikkiks advice and make a spreadsheet that keeps track of all diplo annexation costs for all subjects. I overfed my subjects in my Foix run, and I did it again in this Ryukyu run :oops:
I don’t like fixing my own mistakes, but since this a one tag attempt, I must.

Here goes.



The idea in these last decades is to reduce all nations on the map to less then 100% warscore, and to make sure they don’t have any high base tax provinces anymore. Rebel size scales with base tax of provinces, so this habit of taking high base tax provinces first might be worth it.

Japan is the first victim, after making a load of claims again.



Ryukyu invades Japan mainland again! Like Brunei, there is really no problem to it, because I landed troops on each part of Japan.

In the first war against Brunei/Japan/Ottomans (any naval nation really) you should ask for a province on each land part, so that you can land troops in the taken provinces before declaring war. This makes their fleets useless.



England started a revolt. In London and Firenze. It seems the British really liked their Italian holiday home :rolleyes:

Rebels are more of a problem then nation armies ever since the beginning of the 18th century.

I can safely admit they spiced things up in the last century.



Looking at London, I had a revelation :eek:

France. They have been my archenemy ever since Ryukyu tomfooled its way into obtaining a core and a capital in their territory.

I decided there and then I MUST have a core in Paris along with the planned core in Stockholm :mad:

I started claiming all parts of the blue bunny :D



Persia has some high base tax provinces still. I prepped a load of claims on them. Gimme! :cool:

The overall idea, doing a massive overseas coring operation, is to claim all eglible 4+ base tax overseas provinces around the globe FIRST, then the 3 base tax, and to attack when the time is right.

I attacked when Persia was fighting pretender rebels. Not that It mattered, but attacking opportunistically is what made Ryukyu BIG.

Force of habit. Sorry Persia :oops:



This made me smile. The mighty Ryukyu fleet battles the weak Japanese fleet near Okinawa o_O

THE BATTLE OF RYUKYU ISLANDS!

I hadn’t stared at my OPM starting position like this since 1444-1450 :confused:

Considering Japan has been my PU subject, and considering I’m eating them…

Ryukyu really came a long way :p



Timurids have three dots in their flag. Let’s see if you like these three dots, Timmie :rolleyes:

On a sidenote: I really like the way province names get bent and stretched to fit the terrain of the province. Look at Khujand. The KHU goes down towards the river, and the JAND is climbing the mountains on the other side of the valley..



Here I am again FRANCE!!! :mad:Don’t resist your destiny..
A baguette will *always* get eaten in the end :confused:

This time I brought more troops and outnumbered them 5 to 1.

Needless to say, this felt really rewarding. Attacking France in Plains with 120k infantry, 12k cavalry and 80k cannons was fun to watch :cool:

Although I missed the really HARD clashes me and France fought out in the past :(
Now RYUKYU is the BBB! (big bad bully)



Still, France fought hard. Its amazing how they decimated 1:6 of my infantry fighting against 5 to 1 odds…

And France has low prestige. I wonder how many they would have killed with full morale bonus from max Prestige…



Ok, job done :D

Ryukyu is fighting 5 wars at once again, and rising.

Let’s make some peace deals.



Japan gave me 40+ base tax worth in claims, including the 9 base tax Kyoto province. All they have left now is 1-2 base tax provinces and their capital.



West Africa. I attacked everyone that was still reasonably big.

Timbuktu got reduced to OPM.



Another corridor finished :)

Ryukyu can now walk from the gulf of Aden to West Africa.



Finally, Fulo got annexed.

Not much left here now ;)

This was also the first time I realised ARGUIN is mine again. Ah Arguin... The old capital of Ryukyu.

All this musing about things past incited me to re-read this AAR from the start again.



Paris fort fell. The beginning of the end.



Floride CN got occupied without a sweat. Powhatan goes into the annals of history, as the last native American nation that got erased off the map.



This might surprise you. Yeah, I decided to finish France off later on. They were slightly over 100% warscore to full annex :rolleyes:

I took the chance to feed ENTIRE Floride CN to Portuguese Louisiana and Thirteen colonies :eek:

Looks a whole lot better now, does it?

If you tilt your head a little to the right and look at the southeast side of Portuguese Louisiana, you can now see a grinning PIG pointing a … finger at Floride.. Florida.

Did I do it on purpose? You can decide ;)



I sent France on a diet. The blue bunny lost its belly…. And was under 100% warscore to annex now.



Timurid capital now stands alone.

I hadn’t noticed them until now, but it seems CHAGATAI is alive somehow in the northeast.

This Kazakh is also a problem. I can only declare on them with holy war AFTER I integrate Russia…



Ever since the start of this AAR, I attacked Ottomans after France. So, umm, let's attack them?

Its time to reduce you to 9x% warscore to annex, Ottomans. I want those Asian provinces.
 
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I had to attack Orissa also, because Madurai is still their Protectorate. If you attack a vassal, you can ask for all their territory in the peace deal.



Persia now only has some 3 base tax provinces, the rest is all eaten by Ryukyu :)
I spread Syria to the Caspian sea for fun. They can watch if Persia ever tries to fish there :D



Brunei was next. I drove the AI to madness again, invading Borneo with two mine layer stacks. In the end they sandwiched their army in the capital. Their army didn’t have time to gain full morale before I was on top of them.
I really don’t get why the AI doesn’t increase land maintenance to 100% if they can plainly see me offloading invasion armies…

Well, your loss :rolleyes:

Their fleet is bigger then their army, but all for naught.



The Ottomans gave me all my asian claims. France and Ottomans are now below 100% warscore to annex :cool:



I asked Madurai (one nation wiped), entire Garjat (second one wiped) and left Orissa without subjects and with an isolated capital.

Orissa was once the biggest independant nation left on the map. India was once the main problem on the map :confused:

It’s the 19th century now, and the problem got solved;)

The problem we face in the 19th century is Sweden being too big to integrate decently :confused:

In theory it was possible to integrate Sweden, you know.

But then I had to rely on having a 6 diplo emperor until 1820, I would have to flip to reformed, and I would have needed to activate another +1 diplo rep policy that would COST me 1 diplo power a month.
And I would have to cancel all vassals.

I didn’t want to risk that risky plan going all wrong.

And Sweden became the victim of the infamous plan B.



I’m sorry Sweden. And I was angry at myself this was needed. If I had planned ahead better in the 16th and 17th century, this wouldn’t have been necessary :(

I bet many readers will now frown at this screenshot.

What happened? I attacked Oirat with overseas expansion cb.

I then made an offer peace deal that cancelled some vassals and released nations out of Sweden.

The mechanic behind releasing nations that are part INSIDE (Overlord territory) and part OUTSIDE (subject territory) of the overlord is obscure. But it IS possible.

Best possible useful example to use this: releasing Guyenne out of France after England put them in a PU.

Releasing the nation in peace would create Guyenne with only the provinces England owns.

But if you do it with an ‘offer’ peace deal in a war, your subject also ‘lost’ the war, and is forced to donate all the territory of the released nation aswell.

You can forcefully release entire Guyenne out of France this way, if you have France as minor Pu subject, playing England. That weakens France, and makes them easier to integrate.

And I use this mechanic to knock several nations out of Sweden, to reduce their total integration cost…

This will only work if the overlord has a core of the released nation, and the subject also.

You can’t knock Finland out of Sweden this way, for example, since the overlord hasn’t got a core of Finland.

I know this is a messy solution, and I apologise for it :oops:

But it had to be done, due to my own fault.

I really should learn NOT to overfeed vassals :(

You know what is weird?

If the historical capital of the released nation was INSIDE the subject, and IF the cores of the overlord are of another religion then the cores in the subject… Then only the cores inside the subject get released.

Which makes a peace deal like this an ideal solution to the Sweden integration cost problem.

I still feel bad treating Sweden like this though :confused:



In other news: the remains of Persia exploded, and a few long dead nations appeared again.

Sigh… Two more nations started fishing in the Caspian sea :mad:



I had attacked Majapahit, who was Brunei protectorate. This enabled me to ask ALL territory from Majapahit, along with all Brunei territory outside Borneo.

It also left Brunei under 100% warscore to annex.

Note that I also did a few wars against small nations in Asia like Jin, Ning etc. They gave me some claims, or got erased off the map.



Here I am again France!! This time I will end you :mad:



France went down with its head high:eek:

They hardly had an army, but they still slaughter Ryukyan infantry without even filling the two battlefield rows.
France has 4.0 army tactics. And Ryukyu only 3.1.

That’s the reason really. Our morale is the same.



I outnumbered them 4 to 1, and France still managed to inflict as much casualties as Ryukyu.

Respect o_O



All things come to an end. The world will never see a French army again :)



Sweden. Stockholm. Paradox. Gaze upon them, as they are about to be eaten by Ryukyu…



Aaaah this felt rewarding. A core of Ryukyu on Stockholm. And the game saying I got control of the province.

I wonder if I can torch buildings in Stockholm now.

Spies reported a certain building being used as base to plot against Ryukyu….




Ryukyu reached 30 military tech. France is being sieged. Life is good in Ryukyu.



Paris fell. For the last time.



France fully occupied.

You have been the mightiest rival I had in this AAR, France.

We sparred a lot of times, and you slowly got eaten.

I am really sorry for the inevitable outcome :(



And then… France is gone.

And Paris is being cored:cool:

It made me feel a bit sad.

I probably should have spent the admin points coring overseas Asia.

But Ryukyu must have a core in Paris, and in Stockholm :D

Mission accomplished soon!



And now what?

Ryukyu versus the rest of the world, in one big all-out-war campaign.

And Integrating Russia and the rest along the way.

I made a boatload of cannons, and started leading Ryukyu to its final total victory.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

P.s: This all-out-war-campaign will likely be a micromanaging horror. The final chapter will be published as soon as possible, but I can't pin a date on it. As Blizzard would say: "Done when it's done"
 
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You are obviously a damn good player... I'm not nearly as good, probably, but I couldn't do a WC for another reason - it just takes too much time... how long did it take you to do the whole thing?
 
I started it on mid january or so.

Take into account I play slooooooooooow. Even a lot SLOWER then slow.

The entire Ryukyu run likely took several hundreds hours of gameplay. I guess I have the patience to micromanage, loot, and manage armies one province a time with everyone attached.

I try to get the most out of allies, opportunistic chances and I fight different continents at once. That takes time.

But seeing they nerfed most of the micromanage strategies shown in this AAR (like looting), it might go faster if I ever do another campaign.
 
oh. Make sure you've explored all of NA, and Ternate, Buton (those guys around Indonesia). I'm sure you are well aware of this.

Ready for the rebels?
 
The rebels can do what they want really. But they aren't a problem. The idea is to mass peace deal in the last year, annexing everyone over the course of months. Rebels can't do anything about a WC then.
 
Final chapter: All-out war

Before these screenshots, I made a ton of cannons, and gathered my infantry in the right places.

I also made a paper list of ALL the nations still alive on the map, after CAREFULLY checking (one more time) if no nations are hidden by fog of war still.

I also wrote the overall defensiveness and the max fort lvl of the nation next to their name in this list.

Got to plan ahead, as always.



My heir died somewhere in chapter 17, I had a king of 60+. The emperor got a new heir. “WTF 6/5/5” was my logical reaction.

But then I saw the age of the heir.. Age 13 :confused:

If that had been age 7, and if the emperor then died, I would have probably ragequit this game until forever :mad:

Anyways, the emperor died, and this 6/5/5 heir became emperor.. at age 15 or 16. This felt really weird. Maybe this emperor, is destined to do something big o_O



Russia. Final Personal union subject to integrate. Gaze upon them, as next screenshot they are gone :(



Well, that’s that. I could start integrating Trier/Venice now. And I also was ready for the planned ALL-OUT war.

4 years should be MORE then enough for it. All troops are waiting at the enemy borders. All neighbour provinces of all leftover nations have the exact number of cannons in place to get max siege bonus from artillery.

It might not look like much, but its still 750+ base tax to conquer. A lot of that base tax amount is my own fault. I overfed vassals again. And I cored too much in my own continent after moving capital to Europe.

The original plan of having a core everywhere proved to be impossible.

Maybe I would have had a chance if I kept my capital in Arguin for a LOT longer, while coring everything in Europe as overseas.

Oh well. What’s done is done.

With careful planning this might still be doable.



I started a war each month now, on the day I was able again after starting the previous war..

The nations with allies got a DOW first, then all the high defensive nations with lvl 5 forts. I slowly worked down my list.



The idea here is to siege with artillery only.

The rule of thumb to get most artillery bonus in a siege, is to place (FORTLEVEL times 5 artillery) as siege stacks.

I always assigned some more, to avoid it dropping under that minimum due to attrition.

Ottomans alone required 220k artillery to siege this way :confused:

I had 1700k artillery at this point, and 600k infantry.

My ducat income dwindled fast, because integrating Russia voided most of my trade companies. Nothing was overseas anymore.

Trade income plummeted. As did my ducat reserve. But hey, Its hard to spend 500k ducats in a few years. Who cares if Ryukyu throws its gold reserves out of the window…. We got a war to do :D



These two were a problem. Koch didn’t want to integrate Assam, not even after I gave Koch a core next to Assam with selling provinces. They simply refused, even though they had the pre-reqs filled to start. Even restarting didn’t help.

I missed the fact that Assam was a VASSAL of Koch. Costly mistake.

All the other nations who had subjects (like Brunei, Orissa etc) got their vassal completely wiped off the map prior to this chapter.

I didn’t notice Assam and Koch.

Oh well, this means I’ll have to annex Koch in two times, with a break truce war :(




I kept making more and more cannons. I sent them here and there. Imagine hundreds and hundreds of 1k stacks giving popup and pause for "army arriving at destination". I literally got a popup each day.

But I refused to turn the popup off, because a mistake is easily made. One army you moved, can easily be forgotten without this popup.

Anyways, I wanted full control of this war, and micromanaged on.



Start a war here. Start a war there. Plan to start a war here, and there. I was now in the “declare on everyone who has lvl 4 forts” phase of the plan.

As you can see, invasion armies are already in position for other nations who didn’t get a DOW yet..



Another key element of the battle plan: doing ASSAULT on *each* and EVERY level 2 fort across the map.

Infantry that finished wiping a nation army, got sent to other spots, to wipe other armies. The plan was to send them all to nations with lvl 2 forts ONLY in the final stage of this all-out campaign.

I also created more and more infantry near these “lvl 2 fort only” nations, with the manpower gain monthly. My entire manpower pool is depleted now :eek:



Kazakh and Chagatai had lvl 5 forts everywhere. Ok, then I bring 25+k artillery to each province :rolleyes:



Islands in enemy hands needed some planning ahead aswell. Yue had these islands colonized, and had ONE colony in west Australia. Luckily, I noticed that colony earlier!

Last thing I need is one unnoticed island province of any nation to ruin this :confused:



Koch accepted peace, giving me entire Assam and everything but their capital. I started a holy war on Koch again soon after.



Meanwhile, the sieges on the European leftover nations (with lvl 5 forts!) went well. BUT not in Cologne. I assigned two 1k stacks with good siege generals to help out there.



If a siege finished somewhere, I sent the cannon stack to another place where they would come in handy in the near future.

You’d be amazed how fast sieges go with a max artillery stack, even versus level 4 and 5 forts. Only nations with high (50+%) defensiveness are a problem.

WHY doesn’t the AI never ever build lvl 6 or higher forts?



I started more and more wars each month.

I came to the point I could start assaulting level 2 forts.

To assault a level 2 fort, you need 30k infantry or more easily. More is better.
5 military points per fort assaulted.

This mapmode is the fort level mapmode. Handy to see what nations have what level of forts ;)



Same mapmode, but in Europe. The level 4 and 5 forts there are slowly going over 0% and more… Hesse was the first level 5 fort to fall.



The Pope. Sorry bud, but I’m going to assault the Vatican. I hope the lord will forgive me :(



Trier and Venice are integrating. Trier was the first to finish.



Kaffa got completely overrun by two infantry stacks assaulting everything. OOPS we forgot their army :confused:

Lets solve that problem!



Timbuktu and Mali had the hardest forts to siege up in Africa. Level 5 and high defensiveness. Nothing a good siege leader general can’t handle though :)
 
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