The Screw Up Thread

[Zardnaar]

This thread is dedicated for all those screw ups you will admit to. I had a good one today in Ironman Ragusa. I have some land in the gulf of Aden area that is not connected to Egypt. This means long trips around Africa. I sent all my heavy ships and 19 transports from Aden to Sicily as they are fast enough to make that trip. However I did not notice 3 galleys in the fleet which slows them down. The entire fleet went glug glug glug off the coast of Mali. Literally a few weeks after that I could not find my Mediterranean fleet of 60 odd ships mostly galleys. Turns out I clicked on them and sent that fleet to Aden by mistake. Said fleet was off the coast of South Africa. Glug glug glug. $110-120 new modern ships I was building for a war vs Milan/Portugal/Spain went bye bye.

I had 40 odd light ships left and a handful of new ships built. I could not really afford to replace all of that in a hurry either and it slowed down a war I had planned which I had to postpone for over a decade.

 

[Morricane]

gg! (gluglug)

 

[Squirrelloid]

I've now just declared two wars in a row, knowing exactly which allies and coalition members would be called, where the wars interfered with my coring progress on provinces previously taken. The first war was just derpiness from loading up a game after having not played in a couple days, and forgetting what I'd been doing before. But the second I can only blame on being tired and not paying that much attention.

Going to war with nations with cores interfering with coring of provinces (taken from other nations) is really annoying. xP

 

[schaedel]

Netherlands (from Friesland) declaring on 2 province Cologne, which is allied to 3 province Hesse...
Unfortunately I didn't properly check. Warleader changed to Hesse, Hesse is allied to France (1.6, so quite OP) and France brings in Sweden, which has united Scnadinavia. Well, it surely went down the gutters from there

 

[Latheloi]

Focusing so much on trying to catch and kill two Russian armies running around in Crimea with the main strength of my mighty Mughal empire, that I didn't notice themajority of the Russian army attacking across our Siberian border, and simultaneously stack wiping three armies that had wandered up there on rebel hunting duties.

 

[pquinn232]

"France is the defender of the faith, and will protect them"

Yeah. I might not have read that bit 30 years into my Ulm playthrough, which coincidentally lasted about 30 years and 9 months.

 

[Nationalbear]

I got the Diplomatic ideas first with Bavaria, and having a skilled diplomatic ruler allowed me to complete that idea group around 1475, so I immediately got to work using my new, shiny ideas to sway the HRE electors. Who wouldn't want to be emperor, right? Said and done, the Austrian king died around 1490, and voilá, Maximilian I Wittelsbach was crowned emperor!

Soon thereafter France started declaring endless wars against HRE nations, and I of course answered the call to arms, didn't want to loose IA after all! After two defensive wars against France (where I was made war leader in both cases, thank you very much...) I had been forced to revoke both reforms that had been passed by Austria early on (France wouldn't accept anything else), had no army, no manpower, no money and was in over my head in debt. That led to Austria pouncing on me, and I figured it was time to quit.

Lesson learned: Don't go for emperor unless you have the military and economy to back it up. You'll end up having to choose between war with France and being the most passive emperor ever, none of which are very fun...

 

[zezeb]

I was in a big war as Utrecht after taking ½ holland. They revolted and I forgot about them... I noticed it after a couple of years cause I lost my army. Later I lost all provinces besides my capital and an independant Holland. That's when I quit.

 

[sermaciej]

I lost half of my galleons, because I forgot about them :/

Oh, and when I first attempted to join HRE as Poland, I moved capital to Poznan (because I didn't know if with Krakow I won't have too much base tax) and sold everything else. 70 years later I found out that I need to own and have core in Krakow to create Commonwealth.

 

[Zwirbaum]

Me - Frankfurt, 1444.
Let's declare war immiedietaly on my neighbour before he gets any alliances.
No casus belli war declaration.
Wait a minute, i'm in HRE. HRE. HRE. HRE. What have I done!?!?!?!?!?!?! Austria noooooooo... Whew, ended only in Concede defeat. Wait a minute, why do I have coalition consisting of, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8... ok, I think I'll rather restart.

Lesson for the future: Do not play EU4, when your brain had critical failure and stopped working.

 

[Achanei]

my most classic screw-up: accidentally making a warleader peace deal when intending to peace out some minor party. whoops.

 

[Thesian]

Wanted to try an Ironman world conquest with France, giving myself a kick-start by forcing an inheritance of all of Burgundy as French Holy Roman Emperor. I had tried that move in a non-Ironman game with some save-scumming and it worked out fine. So, after countless Ironman-tries where Burgundy died prematurely while I either had not yet snatched enough electors or at least the Austrian ruler wouldn't kindly die so I could claim the Imperial throne, I had one try where I controlled 4 electors willing to vote for me in 1485. Austria had released Tirol, but still held the Imperial throne.

So... not wanting to leave anything to chance, I chained three wars against Austria by wardeccing different Italian minors - releasing Stryria, taking half their remaining land, vassalizing them. In 1492 I was Holy Roman Emperor. Without manpower but with a bunch of loans and merc spam i dived into a slaughterfest with Burgundy to get their king killed until 1500 while still being at war with England and Aragon while my Castillian allies where way to threatened to join any wars.

By 1495 I had peaced out of the parallel war by giving England some of their cores back and started wiping Burgundian stacks. In early 1498, their king finally died.

I accepted the French share.

I waited for the second helping.

...

Savoy accepted the Low Countries share.

Instantly killed the game via task manager and retried. Same result.

Browsing through the event files I found this:

# Emperor
if = {
limit = {
emperor = {
OR = {
NOT = { war_with = BUR }
NOT = {
any_owned_province = {
controlled_by = BUR
}
}
}

Apparently, you can inherit just fine while at war as long as Burgundy hasn't sieged any of your provinces. I could have easily lifted their sieges, but I didn't care because I figured I'd rather drive up war score by sieging their high value provinces.

I killed the game once more and tried again, this time peacing out with Burgundy before accepting the French inheritance in order to not have any sieged provinces. Savoy still got the northern part. The check obviously fires the moment the king dies.

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

I tend to lose my fleets, a lot >.>

 

[Zardnaar]

Forgot to turn my army maintenance up last night. Wondered how 30k Milanese troops wrecked me so bad with 80k.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

I was blobbing as Taungu, controlling all of SE Asia, most of India, and chunks of China. Things were starting to get boring in Asia, so I took to meddling in European affairs, like France's colonial wars with England and Portugal -- nothing that really affected me that much. Then one day, out of the blue, Austria declared the "Austrian Invasion of Japan." Wanting to help my Japanese ally (and wanting to keep my game fresh) I accepted the CTA and became war leader without even looking at Austria, and even when I did, I couldn't help but laugh at its lone coastal province on the Adriatic coast. I knew a naval invasion was out of the question and put the war out of my mind after a few months, hoping to score a few goodies from the Medium-Sized Grey Blob when warscore ticked all the way up. I mean, there was no way Austria was getting military access straight through the heart of Islam, right? ...right?

Three years later I look at Persia to see three red "50"s marching toward my Indian lands. My heart sinks, and in despondency I look at Austria's diplomacy page. "Has military access through Bohemia, Poland, Crimea, Georgia, Teutonic Order, Kazan, Qara Qoyunlu, and Timurids." gg, Austria, gg

...my mistake was forgetting to turn on access notifications for interesting nations, which I usually do during iffy wars.

 

[Packyastuff]

This:

 

[Achanei]

I was blobbing as Taungu, controlling all of SE Asia, most of India, and chunks of China. Things were starting to get boring in Asia, so I took to meddling in European affairs, like France's colonial wars with England and Portugal -- nothing that really affected me that much. Then one day, out of the blue, Austria declared the "Austrian Invasion of Japan." Wanting to help my Japanese ally (and wanting to keep my game fresh) I accepted the CTA and became war leader without even looking at Austria, and even when I did, I couldn't help but laugh at its lone coastal province on the Adriatic coast. I knew a naval invasion was out of the question and put the war out of my mind after a few months, hoping to score a few goodies from the Medium-Sized Grey Blob when warscore ticked all the way up. I mean, there was no way Austria was getting military access straight through the heart of Islam, right? ...right?

Three years later I look at Persia to see three red "50"s marching toward my Indian lands. My heart sinks, and in despondency I look at Austria's diplomacy page. "Has military access through Bohemia, Poland, Crimea, Georgia, Teutonic Order, Kazan, Qara Qoyunlu, and Timurids." gg, Austria, gg

...my mistake was forgetting to turn on access notifications for interesting nations, which I usually do during iffy wars.

just boat some 5 mercs into europe, siege wien, gg. AI is stupid

 

[Stgerlachus]

just boat some 5 mercs into europe, siege wien, gg. AI is stupid

Hmm you'd need to have discovered everything, and obviously you need to get naval basing rights, no way your ships will survive that trek. And five won't be nearly enough, the AI might be stupid, but it also loves building mercs.

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

This has happened to me more times that it should have: I'm fighting a battle, and I built some new troops to reinforce the battle, so I box-select all the new troops and click on the embattled province to join the battle. However, I also select the army that's currently fighting the battle, and I don't quite click on the correct province, which causes me to retreat from the battle even though I didn't want to.

 

[Targor]

Instead of dissolving the one mercenary regiment I had in enemy lands for looting, accidentally dissolving the war fleet which was currently activated with most of my army on it. Big fun.