Sunset Invaion. Is it still possible?

[awelltrainedfer]

I was wondering if this achievement is still humanly possible now that the silly 50% autonomy minimum for colonies is in place.
I've spent the last week attempting this one, and here's what I've found out through hours upon hours of time wasted:

1. It takes about 4-6 hours to reach the point were it's even possible to westernize because now you no longer just sit around on max speed. Now you have to subjugate all you meso-american neighbors.
This seemed cool to me at first because it makes the early game less boring. But now I see that this is the biggest troll of them all because I have to replay those same hours every single time you reset.

2. Westernization seems to be the first huge hump to pass, because you must start westernizing as fast as possible to get the event to change to christian. Without this event, you are 1000% dead. I've manage to start westernizing around 1530-1540 depending on where the Europeans colonize, but I only survive about one in three games because I don't get the event to change religion before someone starts a Pegan CB war on me. (I've attempted to fight off the war at this stage: completely impossible. Even with 10-1 number advantage, your armies will still get annihilated)

3. Assuming I make it pass the first hump, I'm still completely stumped as to how to survive because now that every single province you own is at minimum 50% autonomy, you will never have the manpower or force limit to survive if any Europeans use a colonial conquest CB against you. I did a non-ironman test run, and colonizing like mad (running between 4-6 colonies at once non stop) I can reach a point were I am safe around 1720-1730. That's almost 200 years of pray-to god the Europeans ignore you until you catch up in tech and military power.

What I want to know is this: is there some super secret that will make the AI ignore the fact that you have tons of land they want and have no ability to stop them from taking it?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What I want to know is this: is there some super secret that will make the AI ignore the fact that you have tons of land they want and have no ability to stop them from taking it?

The issue is that you think there is no ability to stop them from taking it .

Replace "Tarascan" with "Aztec" and you have an empire that is set up to get the achievement easily:







You can also see how to...er..."survive" the "European attacks"... . Yes, they attacked me. That's totally how it went.

Note that so long as you border a Christian province, you get the event weighted 10x to convert to Christian while westernizing. However, the achievement is completely doable as pagan as you can see above (I went reformed though), because you can simply trash the AI fleets over and over again (keep the pressure on so they can't rebuild nicely) while you catch up after westernizing.

Any westernization finished by or before 1550 should give you time to colonize and set up infrastructure to give you the power you need. Also note that if you really hate the LA floor, you can swap to a CN after selling it all your stuff and since you're a former CN, you get no LA floor on colonies. Because you started as AZT, you can still get the achievement. Not necessary, but it does let you do lulzy crap like "Sunset Invasion as USA" if you want to do it that way.

Westernization seems to be the first huge hump to pass, because you must start westernizing as fast as possible to get the event to change to christian. Without this event, you are 1000% dead.

This one is from 1.7, but should show well enough why it isn't true:

 

[Meds]

I believe the 50% la floor on same continent colonisation is going away in 1.9 (but on the other hand you have to pay a small amount of adm points. May be worth holding off until 1.9, maybe not. Worth considering though.

 

[Meridian235]

I don't know a lot about this achievement, but I know DDRJake was able to conquer England as Chavs.

Likely, your best path is to somehow become a colonial nation. If this is even possible, I do not know, but if you can, this is the way to go.

 

[ahyangyi]

I believe the 50% la floor on same continent colonisation is going away in 1.9 (but on the other hand you have to pay a small amount of adm points. May be worth holding off until 1.9, maybe not. Worth considering though.

Ouch. Just had a terrible Arawak game
(well, the game worked fine. just my playing was terrible)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't know a lot about this achievement, but I know DDRJake was able to conquer England as Chavs.

Likely, your best path is to somehow become a colonial nation. If this is even possible, I do not know, but if you can, this is the way to go.

Of course it's possible. Colonize South America without making it contiguous with North America through Panama. This creates a CN.

Then, colonize Panama and sell all of your provinces but your capitol to the CN. Raise tariffs to release/play as CN. Diplovassal your old self, and sell it provinces in South America until you can move your capitol back to NA (this allows you to avoid forming a CN in the Caribbean). Your new self-vassal still has exploration and will continue to colonize, conveniently creating same culture/religion provinces as you and feedable. As for you, if you westernize before doing this you get western units, no LA floor, and effectively more colonists than otherwise possible because you can subsidize your vassal into making them in addition to your own. The CNs by default open with trade, then due to a bug in 1.8 will not pick expansion but if you do this fast enough you can just cancel whatever they take 2nd and pick exploration or expansion if you have AoW.

You can either play as some made-up CN name, or form Mexico/USA/Louisiana/whatever. Aztecs ideas are better for combat, but anybody who stacks 3 military ideas and builds up infrastructure can easily make a last 100 years push into the required provinces without too much trouble; I did this achievement last patch when Aztec had generic ideas and for almost all of my fighting there I only had quantity/aristocratic/offensive. 1st 2 wars vs France took some doing; the others were a joke.

 

[knoddy]

As TMIT pointedo ut the key to this is those Heavies. Diplo Tech 3 is more important than exploration. get diplo tech 3, build a fleet of 20-30 heavies. when Portugal/Castile declares sink everything they bring over. You will have a morale disadvantage but they will only bring 3-4 Heavies per fleet. you tear them apart.

This will buy you the time you need to westernize. The 50% LA floor is harsh but it hardly stops you doing it, you can keep declaring on the colonizers and steal their colonies and seal them out of America completely.

ALSO - dont know if this is possible or not, but I think I did it with a CK 2 game. Can you copy/paste the entire savegame to a different folder, so you can avoid the tedium of the first 50 years if you so desire?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

As TMIT pointedo ut the key to this is those Heavies. Diplo Tech 3 is more important than exploration. get diplo tech 3, build a fleet of 20-30 heavies. when Portugal/Castile declares sink everything they bring over. You will have a morale disadvantage but they will only bring 3-4 Heavies per fleet. you tear them apart.

This will buy you the time you need to westernize. The 50% LA floor is harsh but it hardly stops you doing it, you can keep declaring on the colonizers and steal their colonies and seal them out of America completely.

ALSO - dont know if this is possible or not, but I think I did it with a CK 2 game. Can you copy/paste the entire savegame to a different folder, so you can avoid the tedium of the first 50 years if you so desire?

Not in ironman AFAIK, but otherwise yes.

I prefer to declare on the Iberians rather than the other way around, constantly as truces are up. Not only can you snag colonies this way, but you also prevent them from ever gaining traction in putting together real fleets. I've seen as many as 20 heavies come over at once, but if you keep nailing them they don't really get a chance for that.

 

[awelltrainedfer]

The very last game I played lost because heavies don't cut it. I had 30 heavies, but the were wiped out by Castile's initial 15 heavy and 30 transport fleet because their heavies are 2 ranks above mine. I then mass bought another 30 heavies and managed to sink Castile's first fleet, but that only pissed him off and made him bring over the other 40 heavies he had plus hundreds of lights. And due note that because of the autonomy, I can only afford 30 heavies at the time. And the whole time I'm doing this, Portugal, Castile's colonies, and Portugal's colonies are all happily landing stacks all over North America.

As for the suggestion to become a Colonial nation: won't that disable the achievement because you are no long Aztec?

 

[AurochsAway]

As for the suggestion to become a Colonial nation: won't that disable the achievement because you are no long Aztec?

No.

achievement_sunset_invasion = {
	id = 54
	
	possible = {
		ironman = yes
		start_date = 1444.11.11
		tag = AZT
	}
	
	happened = {
		owns = 227 # Lisbon
		owns = 217 # Madrid
		owns = 183 # Paris
		owns = 236 # London
		owns = 97  # Amsterdam
		owns = 118 # Rome
	}
}

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The achievement only requires you to start in 1444 as Aztec in ironman and own the listed provinces. Anything else you do doesn't matter, you can form USA and get it, culture drift to Castillian and form Spain militarily (that'd be a hell of a thing if actually managed alongside the achievement though, considering you'd CN everything in new world instantly), whatever.

 

[knoddy]

The very last game I played lost because heavies don't cut it. I had 30 heavies, but the were wiped out by Castile's initial 15 heavy and 30 transport fleet because their heavies are 2 ranks above mine. I then mass bought another 30 heavies and managed to sink Castile's first fleet, but that only pissed him off and made him bring over the other 40 heavies he had plus hundreds of lights. And due note that because of the autonomy, I can only afford 30 heavies at the time. And the whole time I'm doing this, Portugal, Castile's colonies, and Portugal's colonies are all happily landing stacks all over North America.

As for the suggestion to become a Colonial nation: won't that disable the achievement because you are no long Aztec?

what year was this? I am curious because I very much doubt the fleet sizes you have described unless its like 1650.

THe idea of using heavies to defend yourself is only until you can westernize & christianise. use the Heavies to protect yourself from the first invasion, then westernize go christian and try and make a big scary friend of a certain large blue blob.

you need to buy urself time to catch up on military tech and consolidate power base.

to give you an example in one game where i failed. it was 1525 ish I had a fleet of 25 Heavies smashing all castile & portgual sent over, the only problem was they had already landed before I built the boats. the biggest fleet I saw was from Portugal was 35 boats which was only about 9 heavies 15 transports and the rest trade ships. there is no way in 1550 which is when you should be westernized by that CAstile would have 40 heavies and hundreds of trade ships.

Also portgual was diplo tech 9 meaning they had access to Carracks and a +0.5 morale advantage and I still sunk everything they sent over.

Finally the 50% LA floor only effects colonized provinces. everything you take from your meso american neighbours should be at close to 0% LA by the time you start colonizing. I had a fleet of 25 Heavies, a standing army of 20 (not getting paid) 3 colonies (stole one from spain) 2 lv 1 advisors and 1 lv 2 and was still making money until half of my land was occupied.

Using heavies is mainly to help you survive until you can westernize and christianise then the westerners should get off your back a little.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What I said about keeping pressure on is important. In all 3 of my last Mesoamerican runs, I have actively declared on Portugal/Castile/England in the early-mid 1500's to steal colonies and/or pick up a core to start westernizing, then every 5 years after that for a long time (even while westernizing). If you just sit with a big heavy fleet and let them gradually build up theirs, they get insurmountable. If you are killing 5-15 heavies every 5 years, you buy a lot of time.

In my experience, most of them are hostile regardless with some rare exceptions, so I'm not too fussed tanking relations with the colonizers since it does improve your own position in the process. If you want a European ally, after westernizing and winning a war vs Spain or England, grab a province off of Aragon (ally with Portugal or Spanish PU) or maybe Meath off England. I prefer Aragon because especially if you're talking Iberian wedding there won't be a core there and the AI won't make it a war goal later. Having a province so close to the Europeans makes diplomatic actions easier. For example, in the Maya screenshot above at different times I'd managed to ally Austria and Ottomans despite being animist (neither take exploration and get colonial conquest after all). Russia was also a possibility in the very late game.

Once you're caught up in military tech (you really only need to buy 50-60 years if you westernize pre 1550), you can start winning on land too. The Europeans will still be up on you in ideas, but you can definitely get local numerical superiority, and since they have nowhere to retreat they'll retreat to adjacent provinces and get stack wiped.

 

[Mgoblue201]

I ended up converting to protestantism and Castile declared war on me anyway using cleansing of heresy, but heavy ships are very effective for preventing them from invading. If you're westernizing in the 1530s, then the Europeans should only be one ship rank above you. The Galleon doesn't come around until a few decades later, so you should have complete control of the seas. My westernization went very poorly, but I still began my European conquests around 1600 and finished by 1770 even though I took my time.