This war is easier than earlier ones. Perhaps because the Ottomans don’t seem to have very many stacks of troops – by 1660 their Manpower and recruited troops have been so whittled down by successive wars (remember, by us not 6 years before, plus a continuing war with Austria, and now this one) such that they had little left to defend themselves.
We run around the countryside, destroying straggling troop formations and bursting city walls! Not all battles were so easy – we did take significant casualties at times – but the war was almost won as soon as it began.
While the war raged, we succeeded in capturing another colony on the African Ivory Coast.
Our navy, in the early war, scored some victories even against the Turkish fleet! We captured a galleass, and sunk others with little loss. But we met the bulk of their fleet at the Straits of Gibraltar, and they caused us to flee.
Our young king comes of age during this war. So long as he’s kept away from foreign rulers and sensitive nobles, we expect the waifish little emperor Ermes I may rule quite well!
As all this continues, the province of Marrakech converts to Christianity, more city walls fall, and we face another embarrassing defeat at the hands of a smaller Ottoman fleet. The small African tribe of Adal declares war upon us, and are quickly dispatched.
Imperial troops blow down the walls at Angora (Ankara), but nearby in Konya the Islamic general Alauddin Ekrem hands out a devastating defeat of one of our armies. This hardly turns the war around, but it is galling all the same.
Our endless wars with Mecklenburg come to an artificial end, but the battleground for their remaining land (and the CoT) simply transfers to our endless wars with Great Britain!
We stir up trouble for the Portuguese, in America. Hoping that the fledgling colony on practically useless Unamakik will eventually fall to us by defection or colonization.
We have such superiority in troops that we continue our siege warfare, either actively – bringing walls down in a few days – or passively, waiting for multiple cities to succumb.
We turn down multiple offers of peace (many of which wasted valuable Warscore giving up on claims which we didn’t care if they made or not!).
Eventually, after a relatively short war, we demanded relatively little (3 provinces), and got what we wanted.
The Greeks, of course, were glad to be rid of the Turks. Edirne put us alongside the Ottoman capital on two sides, and the balance of power shifted even more in our favor.
As a fringe benefit of this particular peace (this was part of our plan), we acquire the lucrative Bosporous Sound Toll, controlling merchant traffic to and from the Black Sea, which means not just the riches of the Ottomans (such as they are, still), but also the riches of Russia through most months of the year (the trade being frozen in place across their northern ports – this is not simulated in EU 3, of course, but this is how it would have been historically).
Having had a chance for our Stability to improve, and for our economy to recover from long years of war, our Imperial income has soared during this period. Our conquests are, of course, long term economic investments, which are currently coming to fruition!
In the years after the war, we expand our colonial holdings in far-off Siberia, grabbing Tauisk, a gold-producing province on the frozen wastes near Kamchatka.
And, we expand our colonial possibilities yet further with the acquisition of a “Tech” which has thus far eluded us – we choose as our next National Idea Quest for the New World, enabling us to dispatch Explorers and Conquistadors to push back the dark areas on our wide-ranging maps!
You might be surprised to see that we’ve waited so long for this Idea. Truth be told, there were more important things to be achieved, and other countries (most of whom we were often at war with) were already expanding their reach into areas where we would then follow up and conquer. So QftNW was sort of a useless pursuit for us.
Now, on the other hand, many of these empires have stagnated or disappeared, and they can ill afford to send ANYONE forward in search of new colonial lands. They need all their generals and admirals close to home, to defend the homeland, and so for them exploration is a waste. Hence, it now falls to the Holy Roman Empire to expand the world’s horizons and spread enlightenment through colonialism!
