The discussion in the Empire thread was getting a bit long for a game that has hardly begun so I'm making a separate thread for it.
This attempt is a Prawnstar style no cheese WC with Portugal in 5.2 with the bugfix. I have previously completed WCs as England, France, Castille, Burgundy and the Ottomans (twice). At the moment its a test game, and some of the things I've tried having worked out as well as I probably needed them to, so I am expecting to restart once I think I've properly explored the options available to Portugal.
Portugal has the advantage other the others that it doesn't have to be taken out fast, but doesn't have the starting size or helpful missions and cores on rivals the others do.
Manpower:
This is tight for everyone at the start of the game in 5.2 and Portugal is particularly weak.
I always hire the highest level advisor available when the advisor market opens up a year into the game. I hired a lot of mercenaries for the first war with Castille which was minting well spent. In addition I took Conscripts as the second Idea (Drill is essential as the first). This isn't something I've done before, except in a campaign where its already taken at the start of the game. It worked rather better than I thought it would.
Avoiding taking casualties is very important, but my problems with keeping an army up around the force limit were more to do with having the funding than having the troops and the force limit wasn't as shabby as I had feared it might be.
The biggest problem I've found so far, is the lack of CBs. I've been very reliant on other powers starting wars that I could exploit, rather than being able to start them on my terms. Wars against Castille have been Alliance, Obscure Documents, Restoration of Union (twice). Wars against France have been accepting call from England (3x) and Conquest (mission). I haven't managed to get a CB on England at all yet. The option I was working on was allying with France, hoping that makes France feel strong enough to try a Reconquest, and hoping I get the leadership when I get called. Then I got a chance to claim the throne of Aragon, but they'll call Scotland as well as England.
Its probably too late already, I was never that hopeful about being to take out England before they got Quest, but I think they'll have it for a long time and leave me with an awful lot of lands needing to be protected by spies until I can colonise them myself. I'm not sure if the AI tends to leave it to a later slot if its been wrecked in a war, but thats the sort of straw I'm left with.
Meanwhile, out on the Steppe. That's a rather large rebel stack. Its not the only one, theres a similar sized one last seen heading into the interior of Muscovy. Managing this without bleeding manpower can get tricky. The Portugese army is not too shabby, and there are units to bring it above Austria under construction, there's enough to sneak 24k into Scotland and leave 16k in Spain while not letting rebels have a completely free rein, but having Scotland on the same side as England is something I'd prefer to have avoided.
This attempt is a Prawnstar style no cheese WC with Portugal in 5.2 with the bugfix. I have previously completed WCs as England, France, Castille, Burgundy and the Ottomans (twice). At the moment its a test game, and some of the things I've tried having worked out as well as I probably needed them to, so I am expecting to restart once I think I've properly explored the options available to Portugal.
Portugal has the advantage other the others that it doesn't have to be taken out fast, but doesn't have the starting size or helpful missions and cores on rivals the others do.
Manpower:
This is tight for everyone at the start of the game in 5.2 and Portugal is particularly weak.
I always hire the highest level advisor available when the advisor market opens up a year into the game. I hired a lot of mercenaries for the first war with Castille which was minting well spent. In addition I took Conscripts as the second Idea (Drill is essential as the first). This isn't something I've done before, except in a campaign where its already taken at the start of the game. It worked rather better than I thought it would.
Avoiding taking casualties is very important, but my problems with keeping an army up around the force limit were more to do with having the funding than having the troops and the force limit wasn't as shabby as I had feared it might be.
The biggest problem I've found so far, is the lack of CBs. I've been very reliant on other powers starting wars that I could exploit, rather than being able to start them on my terms. Wars against Castille have been Alliance, Obscure Documents, Restoration of Union (twice). Wars against France have been accepting call from England (3x) and Conquest (mission). I haven't managed to get a CB on England at all yet. The option I was working on was allying with France, hoping that makes France feel strong enough to try a Reconquest, and hoping I get the leadership when I get called. Then I got a chance to claim the throne of Aragon, but they'll call Scotland as well as England.
Its probably too late already, I was never that hopeful about being to take out England before they got Quest, but I think they'll have it for a long time and leave me with an awful lot of lands needing to be protected by spies until I can colonise them myself. I'm not sure if the AI tends to leave it to a later slot if its been wrecked in a war, but thats the sort of straw I'm left with.
Meanwhile, out on the Steppe. That's a rather large rebel stack. Its not the only one, theres a similar sized one last seen heading into the interior of Muscovy. Managing this without bleeding manpower can get tricky. The Portugese army is not too shabby, and there are units to bring it above Austria under construction, there's enough to sneak 24k into Scotland and leave 16k in Spain while not letting rebels have a completely free rein, but having Scotland on the same side as England is something I'd prefer to have avoided.
