Hi guys, it's been some time since the last chapter. The reason was that my save was corrupted and I couldn't offer Denmark a peace deal... Every time I tried the game crashed. I was gonna also tell you a trick about taking unwanted enemies out of war easily, but I guess I can't do it this time. Sorry for that, but I guess I will use the trick later.
That bug also caused me some big casualties as 32 men Danish/Norweigan/Swedish army is running apart my sieges. I simply didn't care them since I was gonna peace out anyway, well now I can't peace out so I'll have to deal with them with casualties or not
So that was the fight . It was surprisingly easy to beat the Scandinavians even with -1 terrain modifier... They killed some of my siegers so I had to reinforce my army by a few quick mercenaries. The worst thing is that the Scandinavians will most likely come again and I'll have to beat their army every time :/ And I can't peace them as long as they don't offer it. So I'll just keep sieging Muscovy with caution.
I can complete that mission while the Muscovite war is ongoing. There are 3 heathen provinces right now. I'm %100 piety so it's about ~20 months to convert a province in average. I also have 3 missionaries because +1 from defender of the faith and another +1 from Conquest of Jerusalem.And the rewards are quite nice for a mission, as most missions just give prestige which I have plenty of.
They're back and causing problems again... By the way, Muscovy has taken Expansion as first idea. It's not very good... In some games it doesn't take expansion first because if an AI nation doesn't have port, it won't take exploration/expansion. So if Muscovy takes a coastal province in the first war with Novgorod, that's the reason it goes expansion. Carving a way through the Steppes isn't ideal but If I just deal a heavy blow on Muscovy, he won't colonise for some time because he'll be in great debt.
I have to consolidate regiments because I'm very low on manpower so I won't be able to reinforce them for some time... And I shouldn't pay extra cost for them when I can't reinforce them, also full regiments are better in fight.
So here's a bit vassal-management for you. Ryazan's army was set to aggressive because I wanted my vassals to siege for me while my stacks protected them. Now Ryazan's army seems to just move to another province to siege, but there are hostile armies nearby so they're more useful if they just stack to me and we kill the Russians together. So I set it to "Supportive" (and also make sure my army in Yaroslavlavl has "Attach to this unit" box checked) This makes AI attach to ANY allied unit it can and not siege on his own. Though there are some exceptions to this. Let's talk about how AI priotirize who to attach first. I want to state that those things aren't based on wiki or something, only my personal experiences so things could go unexpected in some case but still I found this pattern to be %95 true.
If you wonder how I learnt so much about vassal management, I played a Brandenburg > Prussia game where I Revoked the privilegia which made all HRE my vassal. With ~35 HRE vassals + my own vassals aside from HRE it's unlikely you don't try out every possible scenario and learn a lot
Besides, if you read the whole AAR you know that vassals are really great for many things. Maybe I can tell so many great uses of vassals too. Sometime later maybe. So let's get back to priorities.
But I state again, this list is %100 from my observations/tryouts so unexpected stuff can happen too. AFAIK no dev has told the exact pattern for this so I conclude mine to be close to true.
Priority list for vassal attachment
1) Overlord, which should be you. In %95 of the cases AI attaches to overlord if it can. But there are %5 of cases where I've seen that AI could move 2 province and attach to overlord but instead preferred to attach a war ally 4 provinces away... Well from my observations this is a very unlikely move and not WAD(working as designed), it's pretty unexpected so you should ignore that unexpected movement and consider it will attach to you. I'm not sure if that was a bug or something else was causing it that I have no idea of but anyway.
2) War ally. Basically nations that are fighting on your side in a war. I'm not exactly sure if an AI would priotize your own allies over any other ally(like defender of faith) in a war. So I won't comment on that.
2,5) Your other vassals. Well, I'm not sure of this one as well to be honest. Maybe they count your other vassals just as another war ally. It could be that. Maybe AI isn't following a pattern for this one, because I've seen it attach to ally and attach to your other vassal when it can, but I think I've seen them attach to your real allies more often. Still, it's safe to assume that if you set one vassal to aggressive and the other to supportive, the supportive one is likely to attach to aggressive one who will be sieging if they're close. Being close is very important for vassals because if they're not, all their moves will be unexpectedly random.
3) Vassals of war allies. I don't know why it's like that, but for some reason I don't see my vassals attaching to my allies' vassals and vice-versa.
They priotize like that but that doesn't mean if you make your vassal whose army is 10 provinces away from Supportive, he will come and attach to you. He may, but if there are other allies, he may choose to attach to them as well. Find it out by trying. Set supportive, make your army attachable, pass one day and see where the vassal is going. If it's going the other way you have to take a regiment of 1 man, bring it to the vassal army then the vassal will follow that. Another useful thing about vassals is that, you can actually have almost full control over their armies in a war. Just take 1 regiment and move it all the way to make all armies attach to that, how nice yeah?
Ah also, if you have too many armies and not enough generals... Well, attach each leaderless army to a vassal so they will use the vassal's leader in battle/siege.
Also if a vassal is sieging when you set it to supportive, it won't move to another province to attach to you. It won't break the siege. But if you move an army to there, it will attach to it and you can move it like that. Sometimes AI lags a bit so you may need to move to other province, then come back and do the same thing again etc. You should try out such things yourself because I can't tell everything here since after some time I gained practice so I do most stuff without thinking about it, you'll be like that too.
Right, that's enough lesson for today. Let's get back to the game
So I find out that Poland finally wants to fight. It's already too late as I 've done all the war anyway but let's call them in... They(Poland+Lithuania) can at least take care of the leftover regiments of the enemy... Besides, taking them into a war which they will gain nothing can only profit me because that way Poland won't be able to expand for some time and have a truce with Muscovy. Otherwise, after my war with Muscovy was done he'd just attack Muscovy himself and make a good peace deal easily since Muscovy will have no army anyway.
Took armies to attritionless friendly province. They suffered a lot and I don't want to lose even more manpower + war exhaustion. Lithuanian armies will end the war anyway so I need not to be concerned. My vassal Bohtan(Kurdish vassal) is marching towards Russia too, thanks to military access from my Polish ally and his subjects
I'm also banking my monarch powers again. Because buying techs with as much neighbour bonus as possible is the most efficient way. Unless that tech gives a specific instant bonus, like trade efficiency. Besides, most military techs are great when you're at war so should be taken before going to war. I can take new military tech right now but since I won't be fighting anymore in this war anyway, I decide not to pay it %30 extra cost due to being ahead of time.
By the way we can talk about westernisation too maybe ? I think many people overvalue westernising. I mean, yes, it's great but not for everyone.Lately, people have been playing even Chinese tech without westernising. I'd suggest westernising in any case if you play Indian/Chinese tech group ASAP. If you'll do it late, don't do it at all. Hordes should westernise too but they can wait some time before reforming the government because horde government is really strong. If you play Muslim tech group, it's really worth westernising actually but you may choose not to in some cases... Simply because westernation is a really painful thing and can cause great problem while its ongoing, and may put you back for some time. It will actually make your tech be really behind for some time as it will spend monarch powers, but it will help you catch up later on easier. As the saying goes in Paradoxplaza, "Power now is better than power later" and that's true, because it's a snowballing game we're playing. You may still do well without westernising as Muslim tech but you may need to always national focus on military because you'll be behind in tech and you never actually want to be behind in military...As for Eastern and Ottoman tech groups, I find westernising to be a luxury actually. They really don't need . Ottomans doesn't make great use of it because they will be very strong early game and need to use this to their advantage. But westernising will halt their expansion for some time which is not good. And Easterns are very close to Westerns anyway.
Beside, there is a %10 tech discount that I see many new players don't have an idea of. It's called "Western Arms" and it triggers when you have a Western neighbour that is not your subject and has an opinion of 150 with you. With Easterns it's really too easy to get this. For example Poland can ally Bohemia/Pomerania and get this easily. With any tech, you should try to get this modifier. As Ottoman tech it's not as easy as Easterns simply because Christians hate you but I may get it in this run. Poland AI usually westernises, so by conquering few provinces from Hungary I can be able to get %10 discount to tech unless by that time my alliance with Poland is broken.
Back to game
My allies are sieging down provinces. Now that the area is clear, I should actually loot provinces of Muscovy. Meanwhile I'll be able to explore other provinces of them too. Looting is a good way to gain money in a war. Besides, my troops have nothing else to do anyway.
White peacing Pomerania because I don't care it... Would take a war reparation and his money but Poland doesn't seem to care about Pomerania.
Took diplo tech because an embassy is great when you have lots of vassals.
Poland white peaces but after exploring the Eastern borders of Muscovy, I decide it's worth releasing Perm as my vassal and blocking Muscovy from colonising... Also Pirireis had asked for colonization, so here it is, I'll be the new Russia when Perm is integrated lol.
Oh good lord... My beloved 3/3/3 son is dead. Now I have no heir. Maybe I should just end the war as soon as possible so that my Sultan can make himself a new heir at home... (jokes aside war doesn't affect heir chance)
Go home Denmark, you're drunk...
After I've killed his last army, and finally without any bug, I'm able to white peace him. Call for peace is getting worse and worse but It's just a matter of time before I'm done with the last siege... Besides my warscore has skyrocketed to %99. Hadn't the bug happened, I'd get the same ws years ago but well... Can't do nothing about that.
Finally it's ended. I gave all the provinces covering Moscow to Ryazan, because you can't directly take a capital unless it's isolated. Will take Moscow in the next war. Also since Ryazan is both Orthodox and Russian, it will have less rebels due to true religion + accepted culture. That's why it's useful to make vassals specifically for culture groups/religions. In old times Tartars were one culture, one huge culture and they were in Altaic group. So when you had a Tartar vassal like Crimea, you'd just feed him all provinces from Crimea to Mongolia
Unfortunately, this isn't the case anymore. Anyway.
I also took 2 provinces for myself . Normally giving provinces to vassals is more efficient but as the Ottomans with Administrative ideas I have very little coring cost anyway and I dont want Ryazan to have even more overextension.
Took Perm's cores to release it.
When taking provinces from an enemy to release a vassal, think about such things. If you create a vassal in heretic lands, that vassal will have that Heretic religion as state religion(i.e releasing Shia vassal as Sunni) but if you release it in heathen lands, it will have your state religion(i.e releasing Sunni vassal from Orthodox lands)Normally, creating a Sunni vassal in Orthodox lands would mean basically having to deal with endless rebels... Since the vassal can't take them down on his own, you'd have to do it always. And if BT is long it will mean that the vassal will never be able to convert. But in this case I chose Perm for a reason. Perm's ideas makes him one of the best nations to keep heathens under control. Tradition gives +2 tolerance of heathen, and later he will also get -1 unrest and %25 religious unity... Well, he will be integrated by that time so he'll only make use of the tradition. But that's not the only thing! The first idea group Perm takes is religious. Which means he will be converting those provinces soon.
Anyway, I guess that's enough for today. It was a long chapter, but I covered up some topics that I hope will be useful to you. Make sure to comment so that I can know If I'm going in the right direction or not
