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Crusader Kings III Available Now!
The realm rejoices as Paradox Interactive announces the launch of Crusader Kings III, the latest entry in the publisher’s grand strategy role-playing game franchise. Advisors may now jockey for positions of influence and adversaries should save their schemes for another day, because on this day Crusader Kings III can be purchased on Steam, the Paradox Store, and other major online retailers.
He didn't actually spoil things, because that's not what happened. It's a Russian interpretation of what would happen in the future if the game was going to continue (which it wasn't) and if you assumed that players were playing to continue the game long-term (which they weren't), because Russia is bitter about the game ending when it did.dah, why'd ya have to spoil things pilis?
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It has ended due to Pewt not wanting to continue and getting OE-Prussia to suicide into Russia leaving a Russia-Austrian-Italian alliance uncontested and about to crush France the lone surviver of the doom allianceThe game is going to end after the next update?
Yep, Ottomans got a good chunk of his army trapped in Europe and... that happened.
Finally have some spare time, writing it up now!
Edit: Sleep. Will finish tomorrow, hopefully, although I have stuff to do most of the day... blah.
Finally have some spare time, writing it up now!
Edit: Sleep. Will finish tomorrow, hopefully, although I have stuff to do most of the day... blah.
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ouch!
Surely that battle is a contender for the Hall of Fame?
Nice to see the Despotate of Byzantium though...
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Session 11 (Final)
The Beginning of the EndAt the end of last session there had been some talk of ending the campaign due to how much the diplomatic situation had degenerated, but people still wanted to play at least a little longer. The session started out where it left off; Russia and I were just gearing up to get to Government 33 and then race Land ahead of the rest of the world. After reaching it soon into the session, I picked Scientific Revolution and enacted Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, which reduced my incredibly ahead of time Land tech to very manageable levels (about 20,000—two years investment—per tech level).
Ottomans had wanted to attack Austria and Italy since last session, and continued asking to soon into this one. Finally, Austria took the initiative and attacked the Ottomans, and Prussia rushed to join the Ottomans’ side. While I initially joined under the assumption Russia would too, when Russia clarified he wasn’t interested I agreed to peace out on the condition that Russia not join during the resulting truce. Initially, Prussia and the Ottomans met success, but since the Ottomans had not brought over enough troops when warned (by Austria’s claiming of Defender of the Faith about 6 months before the war started), Italy’s blockade of Constantinople meant that they quickly started losing ground and running a greater and greater risk of being wiped. In the north, Prussia initially made headway, but quickly found himself stalemated against Austria’s army, allowing him to push slowly but nowhere near quick enough to come to the Ottomans’ defence.
The Turks find themselves with their backs to the wall.
Soon after, the Turkish army in Europe wiped, and without any Ottoman success breaking the naval blockade Austro-Italian troops were free to pour north and push back Prussia. While the Ottomans’ fleet was increasing, a mistake led to a good chunk of it being wiped, removing any hope of the Ottomans getting an army into Europe and thus sealing Prussia’s defeat. Finally, Prussia surrendered and Austria demanded their cores back as well as the release of Bremen.
Escalation
Soon after Prussia’s surrender, my truce with Austria and Italy ended and I moved into the weakened and manpower-less countries with my full army, given that it seemed there was no hope of breaking the diplomatic situation and I wished to seal the end of the campaign. As expected by my much higher tech (LT36 or so to LT32), larger army, and full manpower pool, the initial campaign was short and bloody, leaving me well into enemy territory almost immediately.
French armies race across Europe.
Italy and Austria put up a respectable resistance, but given their lack of tech and resources, their end was clearly in sight. However, they refused to peace, hoping that Russia might come to their aid, although Russia didn’t seem to demonstrate any such interest; instead, they declared war on the Ottoman empire and pushed south with their own tech and army advantage. However, to prevent further demands from me, to boost Russia’s forcelimit, and to give Russia more reinforcement rate both Italy and Austria accepted vassalization by Russia, a move which I considered both gamey and not fun and which caused me to officially announce my resignation from the campaign by the end of the session, a move which the Ottomans immediately echoed. Finally, thanks to the low warscore cost of provinces with Imperialism and this late in the game, I was able to demand a large chunk of land to drastically weaken Italy and Austria and repay both their refusal to peace and their large demands on Prussia.
This is the End, My Only Friend, the End.
As the Russo-Turkish war dragged on, Russia slowly pushed through the Caucasus while cutting off the Ottoman connection between Persia and India, instantly making all of India considered Distant Overseas and dropping Ottoman income significantly. Due to the Ottomans’ pleas for help, Prussia joined and started invading Russia from the west, while Austria and Italy continued putting pressure on Anatolia. Soon after, Austria rushed north and started occupying undefended Prussian land while their army was in Russia, prompting me to break my truce to rejoin the war.
Like with the previous war, I quickly pushed into Austria and Italy, with a small expeditionary force liberating Prussian lands in the north. However, soon into the war the Ottomans decided to accept Russian stability hit terms and then immediately re-declare war to unoccupy all his land, which had the unfortunate side effect of peacing me out with Russia and preventing me from further liberating Prussia (although Austria had occupied it, Austria being a Russian vassal meant Russia was the one who actually controlled the provinces). In the east, the Ottomans, Russia, and Prussia all were down to nearly no income nor armies, and the Ottomans was having significant chunks of their country revolt away. Italy and Austria’s incomes were also tanking and inflation rising, and in general it appeared that I was the only country not taking this last-session brawl as an excuse to drive my country into the ground.
By the end of the session, I was in the process of stability hitting Italy once again, and with Europe in a broken state we ended the session and thus the campaign.
Europe is in shreds, with France singularly having some semblance of stability.
Comments
The campaign was quite fun, although the ending got more and more disappointing. The Ottomans’ refusal to consider anything other than constant attacks on Austria and Italy forced the game into a 3v3 scenario since I had already committed to working with Prussia around the time of my NAP with Austria, Italy and Prussia. While there was talk about ending the campaign at the end of the previous session, finally the player vassalizations got too absurd for myself and several other players to take the campaign seriously any more, and after a fun and rather suicidal series of wars for the second half of the session the campaign ended in disarray. It was a good run, and I hope everyone enjoyed it!
Could, yes. Want to, no (nor did they). It just wasn't fun anymore, and doing that would've resulted in the utter destruction of everyone other than myself and Russia sooner or later.
Ofcourse what pewts keep forgeting it was a temporary messure of Giving Russia Reinforcement rate inside Austria and Italy so Russia could push France back into whatever hole he crawled out of.. Whats not pointed out is also that Russia beat of 2 suiciding Countries that suicided on French Orders to end the campaign before France was picked apart
Pewt, thanks for a great, readable, no bullshit, gameplay focused mp AAR. TBH, I very rarely read AAR's, but this one was definitely worth it.
A few questions as always:
If a player offers to be vassalized, is there a mechanic that allows him to change that status without initiating a war?
What the hell happened to South American Spain and GB, and didn't Sweden just spend the entire game sat in Japan? What was going on there? Or to paraphrase the question, is there a game to be had outside Europe?
I was pretty surprised that Prussia went for Scandinavia rather than trying to get the much nicer provinces in Germany, though I suppose that reflects Brandenburg's much poorer starting position. The Prussian military reforms didn't seem to be game changing either.
The Ottomans are always going to be weak as long as they have a naval focused enemy.
Quite surprised at the strength of Russia as well. Always a slow burner, but it seems that once formed and stable, Russia is pretty indestructible.
I was surprised about the fate of the Dutch, though as you pointed out in an earlier post, a good economy and fast teching can create a strong military in the future, but doesn't mean anything if it can't defend itself in the present. Was there no point where everyone was getting worried about Holland's tech speed?
Did Austria make any headway in forming the HRE?
Great AAR, and great for all the other players to chip in their contrasting views too.
It had been going on between Italy and Austria for several sessions, and considering you vassalized them 10+ years before the end of the campaign you really could've waited a little bit before doing so. Whether or not you intended to abuse the force limit and peace deal side-effects of vassalization, your team was getting the advantage from them and did not make use of the stated purpose of the vassalization at any point.
They didn't "suicide on french orders to end the campaign"; everybody recognized that the campaign was coming to an end other than you (including Austria and Italy) and as of me announcing my resignation due to being tired of the vassal abuse among other things, Prussia and Italy have both said that they were playing self-destructively because there would be no consequences given the campaign was about to end anyways, and presumably Austria and OE were doing the same.
I get that you're apparently frustrated that you never got to fight me or something (despite never really trying to when you had the opportunity), but you're taking this to bizarre conspiracy theory levels.
I also would've been quite happy to see another "guaranteed victory invasion of France" had you actually attempted to do so (which you didn't), especially given how well all the previous ones (by Austria/Prussia) went.
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u must have missed beeing forcepeaced togheter with OE then? Russia won versus France
You where the one who ended the game by creating the alliance of doom and told us that it would never end.
Neverending alliances are never any good, especially when one nation (France) sayed that they would just fight wars to give his friends land and not demand anything on his own.
Just think its funny that you did the same thing that you hate when other players do.
STOP! COOKIE TIME