I wish it would cost less to conquer provinces off very large countries, so it doesn't take forever to chip away at one pre-Absolutism
Chances are you also probably can't 100% a powerful opponent and have to settle for 50 or even 25%, despite those wars being way more ressource-intensive to fight
While there is some new stuff for the Philippines, the big thing is that now, Oda, Kitabatake, and Tokugawa are playable at 1444, with their own NIs. Oda's being particularly crazy:
oda_rakuichi_rakuza = { "All over Japan the old Za guilds have grown influential enough to smother many forms of enterprise. With private armies they are also an affront to our direct authority. Let us abolish their monopolies and do away with tolls and closed ports or cities. Free markets and guilds, rakuichi and rakuza, will put an end to Za influence and let our commerce flourish."
global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
oda_tenka_fubu = { "Stabilizing our own holdings has given us a strong base for future expansion in what can only be described as a chaotic realm. Let us make the unification and pacification of Japan our clan’s mission, unifying the world can only be done through force of arms."
province_warscore_cost = -0.1
core_creation = -0.1
}
oda_generals = { "Obsession with birth and privilege has made this country weak and the rise of self-made powerful Daimyo throughout the realm has clearly proven how useless such notions can be. Let us take this lesson to heart and let success and skill be the guiding principle for who should rise to command our armies. Strong leadership is a requirement for rapid expansion."
leader_land_shock = 1
}
oda_azuchi_castle = { "Japan is in many ways a land of castles and everywhere we can see the growth of Jokamachi, Castle cities. It is through the construction of strong castles that one can assert influence both over the political realm and the routes vital to military campaigns. This learning is one we must take to heart. From the imperial court to our own retainers it is through the castles that we make sure that they are constantly reminded of our presence and power. At all times we must prioritize the reduction of enemy castles and the erection of our own in strategic locations"
leader_siege = 1
}
oda_triple_firing = { "The advent of firearms has, and will continue to, revolutionize warfare in the Japanese archipelago and through mastering these new weapons we can dominate any battlefield. In order to increase the rate of their fire our musketmen will form ranks, allowing one to fire while two others reload."
fire_damage = 0.1
}
oda_patronization_of_the_west = { "Western missionaries have brought many ideas and techniques to our land and unlike the old Buddhist associations they have no previous ties to corrupt land owners or rebellious cities. We should welcome the westerners into our cities and examine the benefits they can bring to our court."
technology_cost = -0.05
}
oda_kenchi = {
"Our realm is in many ways a patchwork of small manors and fiefs. An overview of their through worth, and in many cases even who owns what piece of land, is almost impossible to achieve. Let us undertake a major cadastral survey to investigate these lands in detail and create a new system of taxation and obligations that can then be both efficient and fair."
global_manpower_modifier = 0.2
They're changing base movement speed from 1.0 to 0.7
Considering the biggest time sinks late-game are sieges and just moving your units around, this is a massive change
Drilled armies are going to move faster but drilling such a wonky mechanic. When you're small, it's super-expensive to drill, when you're big, you're hardly going to get any professionalism out of it because your force limit spirals out of control (I usually hit 200 - 300 FL around 1600 vs. the 60 to 80 regiments I actually use).
It's soo nice there are now nations in the Philippines
What I love about that trade node is that you can also steer trade towards the Americas from there and now you can get a nifty little trade base there much more quickly
Anyone got a nice ridiculous idea for a new Ryukyu opening or strategy
I've looked into becoming a Shogunate but even a Ryukyu which gets released with its capital in Japan by the Shogunate will be a Despotic Monarchy
The old strategies unfortunately no longer work because Pagarruyung will ally Ayutthaya in most of the games I boserved and Kutai now alies one of the Philippine nations
Dunno if anyone still cares about the game but here's an important PSA if you wish to play in Asia: Ming will now cancel the tributary agreement if you grow too big, even if you keep sending them tribute
It roughly happens at a point where the Mandate loss from no longer having you and the Mandate gain from the other tributaries roughly cancel each other out
Which means it happened to me around 1545 (!) which is much too soon to actually take on Ming if you start as an OPM (in my game they have 200k troops at this point)
The main problem is that by killing tributaries, you will have accrued massive AE with Ming, so you kinda have to kill them as soon as they cancel, otherwise a coalition is just going to reform and reform until you're dead
And if you want to kill Ming around 1550, you will have to set yourself up from the start for it
I definitely still care about this one. I've been having a grand old time with the Imperium Universalis mod (found in the steam workshop).
Shrinks the map to a custom-made Europe-North Africa-India-East Asia and redesigns or tweaks tech, national focus, ideas, etc for ancient civs. you can pick time frames that let you play as the Babylonians, oversee the rise of Persia, pick up with Phillip II or Alexander, or various points of Roman conflict, or you can hop over to Warring States China.
Super impressed with the whole thing, haven't encountered any real bugs yet. My "take Rome from one province to an empire" game has seen Italy unified, and Athens and Carthage are the only appropriate powers for me to rival now, Macedon never rose up, so Persia is huge but crumbling with internal strife, and my fleet of biremes is almost large enough for me to contemplate a Corsican invasion after I finish mopping up the southern Italian states. Fun fun.
I just want to say in the 1660s Byzantium had a bigass coalition comprising every conceivable direction I wanted to expand in and I had to overextend my alliences to Stop Spain + France + HRE + Poland + Persia stomping me, but then by a miracle I get into a succession war with Portugal for Spain, and by the time I win that the mega coalition went away.
And then I peacefully PU Lithuania fifty years later.
SPQR, folks!
(I've actually hit the problem of running out of states)
Here's the opening I took: I no-CBed Haixi on December 11, before Ming could turn them into a Tributary State
When Ming declared on Haixi for tributary, I moved my army into the single bordering province and blocked it so Ming couldn't take any provinces off Haixi
Then ate Yeren next, afterwards Jianzhou and Korea, by that time I could move my capital to Oceania and take over the Philippines
Which translated into a nice 1.5k dev around 1550 (not counting my Indian vassal), with 10/10/13 tech and three partly unlocked idea groups (Exploration, Administrative, Religious)
Feels like a shame to throw this campaign away so early, the only hope I see would be stranding 100k Ming troops on some island, but they might just go for my stated land
I definitely still care about this one. I've been having a grand old time with the Imperium Universalis mod (found in the steam workshop).
Shrinks the map to a custom-made Europe-North Africa-India-East Asia and redesigns or tweaks tech, national focus, ideas, etc for ancient civs. you can pick time frames that let you play as the Babylonians, oversee the rise of Persia, pick up with Phillip II or Alexander, or various points of Roman conflict, or you can hop over to Warring States China.
Super impressed with the whole thing, haven't encountered any real bugs yet. My "take Rome from one province to an empire" game has seen Italy unified, and Athens and Carthage are the only appropriate powers for me to rival now, Macedon never rose up, so Persia is huge but crumbling with internal strife, and my fleet of biremes is almost large enough for me to contemplate a Corsican invasion after I finish mopping up the southern Italian states. Fun fun.
I'm considering declaring on every last tributary just before Ming cancels
Most of the Southeast Asian states are below 100% warscore, so it will be one hell of a war but it might work
I'm using Banners with 115% Discipline and no mercs, so I have a bit of Army Professionalism, unfortunately not as much as I would've liked, there's the issue with Force Limit inflation and little time to actually drill because of the nerfed movement speed
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Even Khmer is below 100% Warscore if I switch my Syncretic Religion, so I could basically annex all of SE Asia in one go
I can declare again in 1614 and by that time I hope I can trigger Court and Country with the OE I take off Ming
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I wish I had anticipated myself tearing into Ming so soon, because then I would've picked Humanist over Religious and also done some other things differently
So I successfully Formed Rome and conquered most of non-Scandinavian Europe. Coolio! So I got stupid confident and tried to see if I could get some achievements as Byzantium. Ugh. It's way more frustrating when you have to play the first few years again every time and can't load saves*.
The Ottomans pick the conquer Rhodes mission. Oh goodie I think, I can build a small navy up and island snipe them. But they never attack Rhodes. Instead they fabricate on Constantinople manually and attack me. Well that's not too bad, I allied a few minors (it's sad watching all those old videos with heavy hitter allies that I can't get because of those penalties for too many relations. Sometimes I can get Hungary, but that's it.) so I could cosy up to Albania and maybe Skanderbeg my way out of this... except the Ottomans Great Power-Alliance Broke me from Albania. And then my first battle is a stack wipe.
It's hard to know what strategy to try at the start of the game. I hear island sniping, heavy hitters, Skanderbeg, but only the third have I had a modicum of success with, and only in non-ironman. Is there a small Turkish Exhaust Port only two meters wide or something.
Maybe I should go cardboard man or something.
*Unless you do the very cumbersome thing of manually copypasting
I tried my luck by building a couple of galleys, going way over force limit and then getting Albania to attach to me
I lost my initial army in Constantinople which could've been avoided
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This was done without exploits
My fleet has three light ships, nine galleys and six cogs which is enough to beat/scare away the Ottoman starting navy
If you have a large enough stack and Skanderbeg is attached to it, the Ottomans will avoid it even if they could easily destroy it
What happened here was that the Ottomans split up, left 10k guys to siege Constantinople and walked the others to Athens - I later unsieged Athens with 3k men (the one battle I won in this war was against the stack sieging Constantinople, but I could've also beat a larger stack by getting more mercs)
Due to ZoC mechanics, they can't leave Constantinople, Edirne or Thrace by the time I took this screenshot, this is where I would peace out
I'm 777 ducats in debt but that should not be a problem when you get your cores back
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15 loans after restructuring the debt, could take 17 more
I outsieged the Ottomans by blockading, also helped that I had two siege pips on my ruler
Okay, I'm gonna run a lot of stuff past the thread for advice on where to go.
So, situation report.
I've just come off a Coalition (I am bad at managing Aggressive Expansion)/Rebellious Vassal War where I managed to snag Wallachia and the Agean Islands directly bordering Athens. I was hoping to aim for Crete as well, but I had to occupy it to claim it, and Aragon's navy was making sure that wasn't about to happen, and I was about to get crushed by a Mamluk juggernaut which would make my modest gains unfeasible, so I quit while I was ahead.
Biggest issue: Institutions. Colonialism spawned at the westernmost part of the rump of Castile, and it's taken 40 years for it to start developing in a single province of mine (Ragusa). Despite this I've strived to maintain Military Tech parity with my neighbours (we're all at 10, while Western Europe is getting to 11 and maybe 12). However I'm at admin tech 9, and diplo tech 7. I think my biggest error has been to feed three vassals at once, because it took a long time for me to feed annex Bulgaria, and I have Germiyan and Theodoro to do. My ideas are Influence and Defensive, and I'm thinking Admin next, because I'm going to lay off vassal feeding and core stuff directly for a while.
Politically and Militarily I'm on a tightrope. As the screenshot shows a lot of guys have decided to beef with me (probably my own fault), and that leaves military expansion options limited. Austria means Hungary as well because they've PU'd, and the Mamluks have double the force limit I do and none of my allies want to get involved. I do have Muscovy as an Ally, which is good defensively, and I saw that Brandenburg has started to blob, so I decided to make friends with them, and they were pretty useful in the coalition war.
So, gameplan: Save my monarch points until I can finally embrace colonialism (which I will take out loans on top of the 1.5K debt I already have to do so). Get admin tech 10 and admin ideas. I know Byzantium usually goes religious, and I want to do that eventually, but Admin not only makes coring cheaper, but has a policy that makes annexing cheaper as well. So I'm thinking get that, annex Theodoro and leave Germiyan alone for a while. Maybe March it up for extra troops and lower liberty desire. I will rely on the Byzantine idea of Missionary Strength to Orthodox up Anatolia. Other than that I'm focusing on getting Diplo up to at least 9 so I can start building a decent navy (had a good galley fleet, but lost a bunch while keeping the straights blocked) which I will need to start messing with Aragon and recently annexed Naples in earnest (which I plan to un-annex if you know what I mean). After Admin the next idea will probably be Quantity so I don't have to use all my building slots on manpower/force limit.
Politically my only expansion option is the PLC. Muscovy's already taken a chunk, and will join in a war for more, and I can feed Theodoro the rest of the black sea provinces. Brandenburg has a core on Poland, and I think it would be neighbourly to let them take that, as well as parts of Sweden who will also jump in. I might also add Poland as a Co-Belligerant, as that gets Pomerania involved (more for Brandenburg to take), and also Venice which I can use to snatch Crete without falling afoul of their alliance with a proto Super-France that's taken a large chunk of Castile. And maybe after all that I can start taking on the Mamluks one to one without having to merc spam.
Does this sound like a good plan, or would you do anything different? Any hints for catching up on tech beyond "don't spent MP"? Any obvious ally targets I can spend my fifth slot on? I have a mission available to vassalize Treibizond, but I suspect that will just end up with more Liberty Desire for my other vassals until I annex them. After Theodoro and Germiyan I'm thinking Syria and Naples for Vassals.
EDIT: Religious strategy. Is it a good idea to force non-Christian vassals to go Orthodox and try and get that 100 liberty desire down through feeding them? I tried that with Germiyan, and it didn't get down to decent levels until they revolted and I showed them the true path by force. I suspect an Orthodox Syria will end up the same, though it should be easier with Naples.
I would make Theodoro a march and annex Germiyan ASAP
What would've been ideal would've been to take at least 20 dev Turkish culture from the Ottomans and accept Turkish culture, then core any Turkish land directly
Turkish is just insane in terms of development and people tend to underestimate the effects of accepted/unaccepted culture
Germiyan is also a bad vassal because they sit right in your main trade node - if you can, I would Divert Trade from them
Generally it's easier to expand outside Europe than inside Europe, so the main expansion path I would see for you now would be into Persia and eventually India, Mamluks also need to be dealt with, ideally with European allies
It's a completely sensible option btw to develop for insitutions even inside Europe, Kosovo province would've been good (if you have Common Sense of course!)
Generally I don't Enforce Religion on vassals anymore, it takes too long to decay. Feeding them provinces also gives you just enough -Liberty Desire to counteract the Liberty Desire they gain from additional development (for a time). I would personally recommend a lot more direct coring. In my current Ryukyu run I was able to core 3k dev before 1600 (only roughly 500 dev is stated, but still).
I would recommend vassals in areas which aren't currently part of your trade chain, but you can also Divert Trade now if their Liberty Desire allows it. Theodoro is a good vassal/march because there is a not a lot of money in Crimea.
"Get into India" is based on what I would do, but of course of your goals for this campaign might look differently. You have a free diplomatic relation, I would cozy up with one of the smaller guys so you can call them in against QQ or the Mamluks. Even a small dude like Ferrara might be helpful.
I would only take Administrative if you plan to do a lot of expanding outside Europe in the near future, otherwise you might get more mileage out of other idea groups. It's okay to stay semi-tall for a while and this is still a completely fine situation.
So 120 years later and my main Vassal is an Orthodox Syria. I'm feeding them the rest of the Mashriq region then starting Annexing.
Diplomatic Situation: Russia decided it wanted all of Theodoro and broke my alliance. Fought a few wars with them since, they're not as horrible as you think, especially once Quality kicks in. I did manage to Ally France which is great (They're the HRE right now lol). Just got finished digesting Cores from a War with Austria where I took the rest of the Balkans, Vienna, London and Yorkshire. As the screenshot shows there's an outside chance of getting my Dynasty on the French throne, but they're in a PU with Provence and the EU4 wiki tells me that precludes a peaceful PU. The alliance cannot last, of course.
Short term goals: Aragon's pretty isolated, so I'm going to try and nab parts of Southern Italy off them and release Naples, which I shall then feed the rest of Italy to. I really need Diplomatic Ideas soon, because sometimes it feels like I'm only getting five or six provinces a war, and as you can see I really need to eat the Anatolian Interior. Other than that I'm not sure what else I can do except fight a lot. Vassalwise I'm thinking Catalonia for Iberia and Gascony for France.
Also manufactories actually spawned in the Empire lol.
Also also I totally add Turkish culture to accepted Cultures. I'll be adding Syrian too once they annex.
Hungary's not my priority, I already have all its provinces I need. I'm trying to be utilitarian with my Vassals, grabbing provinces I need for Rome.
Meanwhile, thirty years later...
Main difference is Syria is annexed, and I released a Kurdish minor to handle the eastern edge of Anatolia's coring. I'm on the cusp of finishing Diplo Ideas and getting Diplo 23 so I'm looking forward to playing with client states, never used them before. Also I've conquered and released Naples, and even taken Rome and given it to them, as befits a Roman. I was pleased with a bit of war juggling I did. France would have broken our alliance and gone to war if I attacked the Pope, so what I did was call in France to my most recent war with the Mamluks (and Russia, breaking that alliance felt fantastic), and then declared on the Pope the day before I peaced out with the Mamluks. Also because of that war juggling I manually converted most of the Kurdish provinces to Orthodox, so now the vassal starts as Orthodox without enforcing religion. Success!
Success I enjoyed for two years before my BFF Brandenburg has just called me into a war with France over an internal HRE spat. Oh well, I need all those provinces anyway, and I don't think he's too far from forming Prussia. I've got numbers already, I can use some quality. (Actually gonna take Offence as my final military idea)
Hey, army question. Right now my standard army is like six cavalry, X infantry and X-4 artillery. What do you think the optimal composition is? Is 20 artillery on their own okay for siegeing?
EDIT: Also Brandenburg has my dynasty, so there's potential there in the future.
For an endgame army I'd recommend half your combat width in cannons so you get your full combat width when you reinforce (and enough infantry so your cannons don't end up in the front-line)
You can make stacks out of only cannons but you are going to lose them if an enemy touches them
So having Cappadocia as a client state was fun, except for the fact they were unable to convert any provinces to Orthodox. Oh well. At least Hispania's doing that, although it's because they actually can.
Right now I'm grabbing Aragon (and Castile)'s final European possessions. Then I think I'm going to finally strike directly at France. Gotta start grabbing those PITA fortresses to soften them up. Also they're still the HRE and are actually allied with the three remaining electors, so there's potential to take out the HRE on top of everything. However the electors are eyeing up recently beat down Austria for the next Emperor, so if I wanna do that, better act fast.
I took offensive for my seventh idea, I need that siege ability. Any recommendations for the last one? I'm actually leaning towards Humanist to cut down on post war rebellions. I control enough trade nodes that Trade would be fiscal overkill.
Final question, is Constitutional Monarchy worth it? I intend to go Enlightened Despot but I'm still three techs away from that, and the Separatism cooldown looks useful as a stopgap. Is messing around with Parliament worth it at this stage in the game?
Oh also Portugal's probably gonna be another pain to annex because they've got a ton of colonies. So does France come to think of it. Hmm.
Final question, is Constitutional Monarchy worth it?
It used to be worth it because you could get -Annexation Cost from it, but nowadays it mostly limits your possible Absolutism
Used to be that creating lots of vassals was the optimal way to play for any non-RCC country, but now there are territorial cores, new sources of liberty desire and this Constitutional Monarchy nerf
Re: idea groups, I would take a military one because you're going to need it. France is saved last in most WCs for a reason. You need a plan how you're going to eat them without dying to AE.
Final question, is Constitutional Monarchy worth it?
It used to be worth it because you could get -Annexation Cost from it, but nowadays it mostly limits your possible Absolutism
Used to be that creating lots of vassals was the optimal way to play for any non-RCC country, but now there are territorial cores, new sources of liberty desire and this Constitutional Monarchy nerf
Re: idea groups, I would take a military one because you're going to need it. France is saved last in most WCs for a reason. You need a plan how you're going to eat them without dying to AE.
Either release Gascony or create Gaul as a client state to eat half of it after every war. I know what you mean about AE brain freeze, the final decade in my first attempt was nonstop rebeltastic while I was waiting for the cores to finish.
So If I'm taking a fourth military idea (I have defensive and quantity along with offensive) that's either Quality for all that quality or maybe aristocratic because their bonus gives your generals siege?
One more question, France has a PU over Provence and they've started integrating, which is slated to finish in 1730. Is there any particular advantage to waiting until that annexation before I attack?
Well that sucked. Five years of fighting and my allies just peaced out for nothing. So my three pronged strategy (I attack from Spain and Italy, Brandenburg and Denmark attack from Germany) just lost a prong, and meanwhile France can bunch up to take out the other two prongs once at a time, unless I just abandon any and all sieges I've got going on. Some battles had nearly 200,000 men in them. Is there a better way to handle France? at the start of the war I outnumbered them by more than 100,000, but it's hard to bring those numbers to bare without leaving vast swathes of territory vulnerable.
That area is the most difficult one on the map to conquer (after 1700)
In your situation I would recommend going revolutionary and saving up military points for artillery barrage, keep your forces together at all costs and push directly towards their capital
Artillery Barrage is in Mandate of Heaven, right? I don't have that. 15 level 8 forts suck to deal with.
I will confess that despite this being an Ironman run, I have been making copies of my save file before certain decisions, so I do have a chance to try again. Possible strategy: Fort the hell out of Spain and Italy and keep all my forces in Germany, where I can more directly help my allies and swat down France's allies as we all push in from the northwest. Maybe wait until I've unlocked Engineer Corps, and in the meantime focus on Portugal or something.
Artillery Barrage is Mandate of Heaven, yeah. You should look into how you can become a Revolutionary Republic.
AE = Aggressive Expanion, by the way. For dealing with a large blob like this, I would recommend repeatedly trucebreaking after you've taken out their forts. But I'm worried that even if you choose to eat France piecemeal, you might have to deal with a Europe-spanning coalition. Spread the Revolution CB would speed things up and help with the AE.
Also remember that you need time to integrate your subjects before you can form Rome.
Artillery Barrage is Mandate of Heaven, yeah. You should look into how you can become a Revolutionary Republic.
AE = Aggressive Expanion, by the way. For dealing with a large blob like this, I would recommend repeatedly trucebreaking after you've taken out their forts. But I'm worried that even if you choose to eat France piecemeal, you might have to deal with a Europe-spanning coalition. Spread the Revolution CB would speed things up and help with the AE.
Also remember that you need time to integrate your subjects before you can form Rome.
I almost feel like I'm too big to reliably pull off the revolution quickly enough (rebels in Tunis don't help me at all when they have to siege down Constantinople), although that 50% war score cost is neat. Also I have like 99 prestige.
Yeah, I'm not creating any more subjects after like 1750, and integration should start at 1785 at the absolute latest*, just to account for random drops in diplo rep. After that I'm eating the OE Brain Freeze all by myself.
*This is from experience, as Milan had most of super expensive Italy and took 19 years to eat at a fairly high diplo rep.
Out of curiosity, is there a reliable way to conquer the homeland of a Colonial Empire? I feel like the war score definitely takes a hit when they have large chunks of North and South America, and both France and Portgual do.
Ticking warscore, that's why it's best to push for and occupy the capital early
You also get a chunk of warscore for occupying colonial nations' and any vassals' capitals
You can trigger the revolution with any rebel type, by the way, the disaster just needs to have started - so you can spawn some zealots near Constantinople and have them occupy it
You can get rid of the prestige by placating your vassals, unless that's also behind a DLC wall (it probably is)
Unless they get into severe debt and you have a claim on it and their ruler has the right personality, probably not
Sucks. It's not that I'm scared, even with their troop quality I outnumber all my allies combined, but I'm just sad is all. I wish there was a mechanic to say "hey ally don't take that province pls". I marked it as strategically vital but if we're not in the war together... *Shrug*
But not yet. For now they will continue to help me beat down France.
My third war with France involved hoovering up a couple of new forts they'd build, but because of their vast colonial empire I couldn't rack up a large war score.
So then I fight Brandenburg. Sorry brah. I'm checking the ledger to see what our troop comparison is (I outnumber him three to one), and hey where's France? Oh, why does it only have 90,000 troops.
Third colonial war. Time for a truce break.
So a truce break, waiting for them to peace out with Nouvelle-Flandres because they reached Calais first and three years of overextension events later, voila.
I guess now it's time to see if I can make it look a little more like the actual empire.
Posts
Chances are you also probably can't 100% a powerful opponent and have to settle for 50 or even 25%, despite those wars being way more ressource-intensive to fight
While there is some new stuff for the Philippines, the big thing is that now, Oda, Kitabatake, and Tokugawa are playable at 1444, with their own NIs. Oda's being particularly crazy:
Considering the biggest time sinks late-game are sieges and just moving your units around, this is a massive change
Drilled armies are going to move faster but drilling such a wonky mechanic. When you're small, it's super-expensive to drill, when you're big, you're hardly going to get any professionalism out of it because your force limit spirals out of control (I usually hit 200 - 300 FL around 1600 vs. the 60 to 80 regiments I actually use).
What I love about that trade node is that you can also steer trade towards the Americas from there and now you can get a nifty little trade base there much more quickly
I've looked into becoming a Shogunate but even a Ryukyu which gets released with its capital in Japan by the Shogunate will be a Despotic Monarchy
The old strategies unfortunately no longer work because Pagarruyung will ally Ayutthaya in most of the games I boserved and Kutai now alies one of the Philippine nations
It roughly happens at a point where the Mandate loss from no longer having you and the Mandate gain from the other tributaries roughly cancel each other out
Which means it happened to me around 1545 (!) which is much too soon to actually take on Ming if you start as an OPM (in my game they have 200k troops at this point)
The main problem is that by killing tributaries, you will have accrued massive AE with Ming, so you kinda have to kill them as soon as they cancel, otherwise a coalition is just going to reform and reform until you're dead
And if you want to kill Ming around 1550, you will have to set yourself up from the start for it
Shrinks the map to a custom-made Europe-North Africa-India-East Asia and redesigns or tweaks tech, national focus, ideas, etc for ancient civs. you can pick time frames that let you play as the Babylonians, oversee the rise of Persia, pick up with Phillip II or Alexander, or various points of Roman conflict, or you can hop over to Warring States China.
Super impressed with the whole thing, haven't encountered any real bugs yet. My "take Rome from one province to an empire" game has seen Italy unified, and Athens and Carthage are the only appropriate powers for me to rival now, Macedon never rose up, so Persia is huge but crumbling with internal strife, and my fleet of biremes is almost large enough for me to contemplate a Corsican invasion after I finish mopping up the southern Italian states. Fun fun.
And then I peacefully PU Lithuania fifty years later.
SPQR, folks!
(I've actually hit the problem of running out of states)
When Ming declared on Haixi for tributary, I moved my army into the single bordering province and blocked it so Ming couldn't take any provinces off Haixi
Then ate Yeren next, afterwards Jianzhou and Korea, by that time I could move my capital to Oceania and take over the Philippines
Which translated into a nice 1.5k dev around 1550 (not counting my Indian vassal), with 10/10/13 tech and three partly unlocked idea groups (Exploration, Administrative, Religious)
Feels like a shame to throw this campaign away so early, the only hope I see would be stranding 100k Ming troops on some island, but they might just go for my stated land
Well I know what I'm doing when I get home...
Most of the Southeast Asian states are below 100% warscore, so it will be one hell of a war but it might work
I'm using Banners with 115% Discipline and no mercs, so I have a bit of Army Professionalism, unfortunately not as much as I would've liked, there's the issue with Force Limit inflation and little time to actually drill because of the nerfed movement speed
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Even Khmer is below 100% Warscore if I switch my Syncretic Religion, so I could basically annex all of SE Asia in one go
Wondering which peace deal would hurt Ming the most, I unfortunately cannot take a lot of territory because this is before any Admin Efficiency
I wish it was possible to cause a Mingsplosion if I take the Mandate now, but it seems unlikely
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I can declare again in 1614 and by that time I hope I can trigger Court and Country with the OE I take off Ming
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I wish I had anticipated myself tearing into Ming so soon, because then I would've picked Humanist over Religious and also done some other things differently
The Ottomans pick the conquer Rhodes mission. Oh goodie I think, I can build a small navy up and island snipe them. But they never attack Rhodes. Instead they fabricate on Constantinople manually and attack me. Well that's not too bad, I allied a few minors (it's sad watching all those old videos with heavy hitter allies that I can't get because of those penalties for too many relations. Sometimes I can get Hungary, but that's it.) so I could cosy up to Albania and maybe Skanderbeg my way out of this... except the Ottomans Great Power-Alliance Broke me from Albania. And then my first battle is a stack wipe.
It's hard to know what strategy to try at the start of the game. I hear island sniping, heavy hitters, Skanderbeg, but only the third have I had a modicum of success with, and only in non-ironman. Is there a small Turkish Exhaust Port only two meters wide or something.
Maybe I should go cardboard man or something.
*Unless you do the very cumbersome thing of manually copypasting
I lost my initial army in Constantinople which could've been avoided
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This was done without exploits
My fleet has three light ships, nine galleys and six cogs which is enough to beat/scare away the Ottoman starting navy
If you have a large enough stack and Skanderbeg is attached to it, the Ottomans will avoid it even if they could easily destroy it
What happened here was that the Ottomans split up, left 10k guys to siege Constantinople and walked the others to Athens - I later unsieged Athens with 3k men (the one battle I won in this war was against the stack sieging Constantinople, but I could've also beat a larger stack by getting more mercs)
Due to ZoC mechanics, they can't leave Constantinople, Edirne or Thrace by the time I took this screenshot, this is where I would peace out
I'm 777 ducats in debt but that should not be a problem when you get your cores back
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15 loans after restructuring the debt, could take 17 more
I outsieged the Ottomans by blockading, also helped that I had two siege pips on my ruler
August 1449, that army you see is all the troops I have after dumping the merc spam I availed of, and I have 500 ducats of debt. Thanks, Skanderbeg!
Next stop, probably Serbia.
So, situation report.
I've just come off a Coalition (I am bad at managing Aggressive Expansion)/Rebellious Vassal War where I managed to snag Wallachia and the Agean Islands directly bordering Athens. I was hoping to aim for Crete as well, but I had to occupy it to claim it, and Aragon's navy was making sure that wasn't about to happen, and I was about to get crushed by a Mamluk juggernaut which would make my modest gains unfeasible, so I quit while I was ahead.
Biggest issue: Institutions. Colonialism spawned at the westernmost part of the rump of Castile, and it's taken 40 years for it to start developing in a single province of mine (Ragusa). Despite this I've strived to maintain Military Tech parity with my neighbours (we're all at 10, while Western Europe is getting to 11 and maybe 12). However I'm at admin tech 9, and diplo tech 7. I think my biggest error has been to feed three vassals at once, because it took a long time for me to feed annex Bulgaria, and I have Germiyan and Theodoro to do. My ideas are Influence and Defensive, and I'm thinking Admin next, because I'm going to lay off vassal feeding and core stuff directly for a while.
Politically and Militarily I'm on a tightrope. As the screenshot shows a lot of guys have decided to beef with me (probably my own fault), and that leaves military expansion options limited. Austria means Hungary as well because they've PU'd, and the Mamluks have double the force limit I do and none of my allies want to get involved. I do have Muscovy as an Ally, which is good defensively, and I saw that Brandenburg has started to blob, so I decided to make friends with them, and they were pretty useful in the coalition war.
So, gameplan: Save my monarch points until I can finally embrace colonialism (which I will take out loans on top of the 1.5K debt I already have to do so). Get admin tech 10 and admin ideas. I know Byzantium usually goes religious, and I want to do that eventually, but Admin not only makes coring cheaper, but has a policy that makes annexing cheaper as well. So I'm thinking get that, annex Theodoro and leave Germiyan alone for a while. Maybe March it up for extra troops and lower liberty desire. I will rely on the Byzantine idea of Missionary Strength to Orthodox up Anatolia. Other than that I'm focusing on getting Diplo up to at least 9 so I can start building a decent navy (had a good galley fleet, but lost a bunch while keeping the straights blocked) which I will need to start messing with Aragon and recently annexed Naples in earnest (which I plan to un-annex if you know what I mean). After Admin the next idea will probably be Quantity so I don't have to use all my building slots on manpower/force limit.
Politically my only expansion option is the PLC. Muscovy's already taken a chunk, and will join in a war for more, and I can feed Theodoro the rest of the black sea provinces. Brandenburg has a core on Poland, and I think it would be neighbourly to let them take that, as well as parts of Sweden who will also jump in. I might also add Poland as a Co-Belligerant, as that gets Pomerania involved (more for Brandenburg to take), and also Venice which I can use to snatch Crete without falling afoul of their alliance with a proto Super-France that's taken a large chunk of Castile. And maybe after all that I can start taking on the Mamluks one to one without having to merc spam.
Does this sound like a good plan, or would you do anything different? Any hints for catching up on tech beyond "don't spent MP"? Any obvious ally targets I can spend my fifth slot on? I have a mission available to vassalize Treibizond, but I suspect that will just end up with more Liberty Desire for my other vassals until I annex them. After Theodoro and Germiyan I'm thinking Syria and Naples for Vassals.
EDIT: Religious strategy. Is it a good idea to force non-Christian vassals to go Orthodox and try and get that 100 liberty desire down through feeding them? I tried that with Germiyan, and it didn't get down to decent levels until they revolted and I showed them the true path by force. I suspect an Orthodox Syria will end up the same, though it should be easier with Naples.
What would've been ideal would've been to take at least 20 dev Turkish culture from the Ottomans and accept Turkish culture, then core any Turkish land directly
Turkish is just insane in terms of development and people tend to underestimate the effects of accepted/unaccepted culture
Germiyan is also a bad vassal because they sit right in your main trade node - if you can, I would Divert Trade from them
Generally it's easier to expand outside Europe than inside Europe, so the main expansion path I would see for you now would be into Persia and eventually India, Mamluks also need to be dealt with, ideally with European allies
It's a completely sensible option btw to develop for insitutions even inside Europe, Kosovo province would've been good (if you have Common Sense of course!)
I would recommend vassals in areas which aren't currently part of your trade chain, but you can also Divert Trade now if their Liberty Desire allows it. Theodoro is a good vassal/march because there is a not a lot of money in Crimea.
"Get into India" is based on what I would do, but of course of your goals for this campaign might look differently. You have a free diplomatic relation, I would cozy up with one of the smaller guys so you can call them in against QQ or the Mamluks. Even a small dude like Ferrara might be helpful.
I would only take Administrative if you plan to do a lot of expanding outside Europe in the near future, otherwise you might get more mileage out of other idea groups. It's okay to stay semi-tall for a while and this is still a completely fine situation.
There have been people who would tech up from dip tech 3 to dip tech 23 in one shot, but I would no longer recommend doing so
The bonus from Study Technology is also highly useful and I believe you even get it without owning Mare Nostrum
Update
So 120 years later and my main Vassal is an Orthodox Syria. I'm feeding them the rest of the Mashriq region then starting Annexing.
Diplomatic Situation: Russia decided it wanted all of Theodoro and broke my alliance. Fought a few wars with them since, they're not as horrible as you think, especially once Quality kicks in. I did manage to Ally France which is great (They're the HRE right now lol). Just got finished digesting Cores from a War with Austria where I took the rest of the Balkans, Vienna, London and Yorkshire. As the screenshot shows there's an outside chance of getting my Dynasty on the French throne, but they're in a PU with Provence and the EU4 wiki tells me that precludes a peaceful PU. The alliance cannot last, of course.
Short term goals: Aragon's pretty isolated, so I'm going to try and nab parts of Southern Italy off them and release Naples, which I shall then feed the rest of Italy to. I really need Diplomatic Ideas soon, because sometimes it feels like I'm only getting five or six provinces a war, and as you can see I really need to eat the Anatolian Interior. Other than that I'm not sure what else I can do except fight a lot. Vassalwise I'm thinking Catalonia for Iberia and Gascony for France.
Also manufactories actually spawned in the Empire lol.
Also also I totally add Turkish culture to accepted Cultures. I'll be adding Syrian too once they annex.
Meanwhile, thirty years later...
Main difference is Syria is annexed, and I released a Kurdish minor to handle the eastern edge of Anatolia's coring. I'm on the cusp of finishing Diplo Ideas and getting Diplo 23 so I'm looking forward to playing with client states, never used them before. Also I've conquered and released Naples, and even taken Rome and given it to them, as befits a Roman. I was pleased with a bit of war juggling I did. France would have broken our alliance and gone to war if I attacked the Pope, so what I did was call in France to my most recent war with the Mamluks (and Russia, breaking that alliance felt fantastic), and then declared on the Pope the day before I peaced out with the Mamluks. Also because of that war juggling I manually converted most of the Kurdish provinces to Orthodox, so now the vassal starts as Orthodox without enforcing religion. Success!
Success I enjoyed for two years before my BFF Brandenburg has just called me into a war with France over an internal HRE spat. Oh well, I need all those provinces anyway, and I don't think he's too far from forming Prussia. I've got numbers already, I can use some quality. (Actually gonna take Offence as my final military idea)
Hey, army question. Right now my standard army is like six cavalry, X infantry and X-4 artillery. What do you think the optimal composition is? Is 20 artillery on their own okay for siegeing?
EDIT: Also Brandenburg has my dynasty, so there's potential there in the future.
You can make stacks out of only cannons but you are going to lose them if an enemy touches them
Here's my campaign, 1650
I took Siberia from Russia because moving around there is now such a pain with the new movement speed
I thought I had set up myself well for taking the Mandate, but the Ottomans picked Exploration which means they suddenly border me in multiple places
They're a 1700-dev nation so oomph
It's not a big problem, but I was quite looking forward to being EoC and passing reforms
So having Cappadocia as a client state was fun, except for the fact they were unable to convert any provinces to Orthodox. Oh well. At least Hispania's doing that, although it's because they actually can.
Right now I'm grabbing Aragon (and Castile)'s final European possessions. Then I think I'm going to finally strike directly at France. Gotta start grabbing those PITA fortresses to soften them up. Also they're still the HRE and are actually allied with the three remaining electors, so there's potential to take out the HRE on top of everything. However the electors are eyeing up recently beat down Austria for the next Emperor, so if I wanna do that, better act fast.
I took offensive for my seventh idea, I need that siege ability. Any recommendations for the last one? I'm actually leaning towards Humanist to cut down on post war rebellions. I control enough trade nodes that Trade would be fiscal overkill.
Final question, is Constitutional Monarchy worth it? I intend to go Enlightened Despot but I'm still three techs away from that, and the Separatism cooldown looks useful as a stopgap. Is messing around with Parliament worth it at this stage in the game?
Oh also Portugal's probably gonna be another pain to annex because they've got a ton of colonies. So does France come to think of it. Hmm.
It used to be worth it because you could get -Annexation Cost from it, but nowadays it mostly limits your possible Absolutism
Used to be that creating lots of vassals was the optimal way to play for any non-RCC country, but now there are territorial cores, new sources of liberty desire and this Constitutional Monarchy nerf
Re: idea groups, I would take a military one because you're going to need it. France is saved last in most WCs for a reason. You need a plan how you're going to eat them without dying to AE.
Either release Gascony or create Gaul as a client state to eat half of it after every war. I know what you mean about AE brain freeze, the final decade in my first attempt was nonstop rebeltastic while I was waiting for the cores to finish.
So If I'm taking a fourth military idea (I have defensive and quantity along with offensive) that's either Quality for all that quality or maybe aristocratic because their bonus gives your generals siege?
One more question, France has a PU over Provence and they've started integrating, which is slated to finish in 1730. Is there any particular advantage to waiting until that annexation before I attack?
aka Fortresses suck.
In your situation I would recommend going revolutionary and saving up military points for artillery barrage, keep your forces together at all costs and push directly towards their capital
Coming from the south wastes too much time
I will confess that despite this being an Ironman run, I have been making copies of my save file before certain decisions, so I do have a chance to try again. Possible strategy: Fort the hell out of Spain and Italy and keep all my forces in Germany, where I can more directly help my allies and swat down France's allies as we all push in from the northwest. Maybe wait until I've unlocked Engineer Corps, and in the meantime focus on Portugal or something.
AE = Aggressive Expanion, by the way. For dealing with a large blob like this, I would recommend repeatedly trucebreaking after you've taken out their forts. But I'm worried that even if you choose to eat France piecemeal, you might have to deal with a Europe-spanning coalition. Spread the Revolution CB would speed things up and help with the AE.
Also remember that you need time to integrate your subjects before you can form Rome.
I almost feel like I'm too big to reliably pull off the revolution quickly enough (rebels in Tunis don't help me at all when they have to siege down Constantinople), although that 50% war score cost is neat. Also I have like 99 prestige.
Yeah, I'm not creating any more subjects after like 1750, and integration should start at 1785 at the absolute latest*, just to account for random drops in diplo rep. After that I'm eating the OE Brain Freeze all by myself.
*This is from experience, as Milan had most of super expensive Italy and took 19 years to eat at a fairly high diplo rep.
Out of curiosity, is there a reliable way to conquer the homeland of a Colonial Empire? I feel like the war score definitely takes a hit when they have large chunks of North and South America, and both France and Portgual do.
You also get a chunk of warscore for occupying colonial nations' and any vassals' capitals
You can trigger the revolution with any rebel type, by the way, the disaster just needs to have started - so you can spawn some zealots near Constantinople and have them occupy it
You can get rid of the prestige by placating your vassals, unless that's also behind a DLC wall (it probably is)
Got a third client state, and took a total of 11 of their like 19 forts, so the next war should be a lot less hassle.
Bad news however is that Brandenberg took Metz off Alsace in a separate war. Sigh. I didn't want to fight them, we've been besties for centuries.
(Is there a way to get that province off them without fighting?)
EDIT: Also I dismantled the HRE which was awesome.
Sucks. It's not that I'm scared, even with their troop quality I outnumber all my allies combined, but I'm just sad is all. I wish there was a mechanic to say "hey ally don't take that province pls". I marked it as strategically vital but if we're not in the war together... *Shrug*
But not yet. For now they will continue to help me beat down France.
:cool:
My third war with France involved hoovering up a couple of new forts they'd build, but because of their vast colonial empire I couldn't rack up a large war score.
So then I fight Brandenburg. Sorry brah. I'm checking the ledger to see what our troop comparison is (I outnumber him three to one), and hey where's France? Oh, why does it only have 90,000 troops.
Third colonial war. Time for a truce break.
So a truce break, waiting for them to peace out with Nouvelle-Flandres because they reached Calais first and three years of overextension events later, voila.
I guess now it's time to see if I can make it look a little more like the actual empire.