And if they've got 1 million mercs, they've got about 3 million free merc manpower too. On the bright side, that just makes stackwiping them more efficient!
damn i gotta finish my conquest of americas in 60 years, takes 100 over extension to take the thirteen colonies but like fuck it
most of that army is over seas and I've got a swole navy and my province in ireland is the worst place in the world for the to siege so heres hoping they try
This patch does seem like a good time to try for games taking on the normal big threats like France or the Ottomans since it seems like the AI hasn't been changed to really account for properly manage their economy and manpower. I'm playing as Albania and it's 1470s and I've managed to join the empire, consolidate Albania proper and grab land from the ottomans all the way to Gallipoli. I do really wish Albania's idea set replaced its extra cavalry flanking modifier with like a movement speed buff. For extra cavalry flanking to be good you need to fight armies that are smaller than yours, with neither army being at max combat width, and you need other modifiers to boost your base cavalry strength. So for a country like Albania it is close to useless. (To be fair with almost any nation it is close to useless.Movement speed would still be appropriate with the "hit and run" idea but would actually, you know, be useful. Skanderberg managed to hold on to live for about twenty years so that was pretty good.
I half-anticipated WC to be more difficult this patch because they slashed Administrative Efficiency by 10% but it feels like the opposite (I sometimes miss the days when you had to squeeze as many MP out of the game as possible)
The AI can't really deal with the new merc system, they've had money troubles ever since the dev team nerfed trade efficiency and production efficiency from technology
The AI was at its best on 1.14 where it played most mechanics reasonably well and was absolutely brutal against the player because it focused on defense over offense
The AI was at its best on 1.14 where it played most mechanics reasonably well and was absolutely brutal against the player because it focused on defense over offense
On the other hand if you're playing a small nation having to rely on AIs they can be... "difficult" in that they try to siege provinces they'll never get.
One thing that was kind of interesting though in my Albania game (kicked the Ottomans out of the Balkans and have snaked through northern anatolia to a connection to the caucuses for the achievement) is that when the League war fired the AI Austria actually seemed to be smart in peacing out nations quickly to reduce the League's size as opposed to the usual AI thing if attempting maximize gains even if it makes wars way more grueling and ultimately less profitable. (I'm Protestant but I joined the Catholic League since I didn't think the Protestant League had a good chance, I was allied to Austria, and had I joined on the protestants' size I would have been extensively surrounded by the Emperor's league. I didn't actually help beyond defending my borders since I was hoping the protestants might somehow pull off at least a religious peace but they got totally crushed.)
Governing Capacity seems like a noob trap, there's no warning if you go over it and the AE penalties are brutal
I'm playing Ottoman and keep going over as i gobble up all the neighbors. I discovered you can spend government reform progress to up it some (so once all the reforms are done), but it gets more expensive each time you do and I'm out (for now).
Oh i can build court houses, i didn't realize they affected the capacity.
I have about 8 or 10 full states i could make had i the capacity. Way more if counting partial states.
Playing another tall game as Hamburg trying to maximize my tallness and I got a 60+ development capital in the first thirty years. With the new estate mechanics you can go sooooo tall. So much point generation. Innovative, quantity, and economic ideas. So much point cost reduction.
Playing as the Papal State and it's 1490 and I blobbed out like crazy after learning that you can Appoint Cardinal for +50 Opinion - which means you can knock any large or medium nation which didn't rival you out of coalition range
"Cardinals spread institutions" is super-duper-overpowered and they should probably increase the Printing Press support you get from being Protestant or Reformed
I'd seen Portugal had an old ruler and no heir, so I married them, hoping to spread dynasty, maybe get a free PU, maybe force a PU. Kept checking on them every now and then, nothing changed. Then my ruler died, and I didn't remember to send a new royal marriage offer. Checked the disputed succession icon, noticed it still said Portugal (60 years) - Prestige 10, or whatever it was, but it wasn't green any more. Realised my mistake, sent a new marriage offer, and got a free PU literally the next day. Holy shit, I came so close to missing that!
1. Norway still doesn't have any unique missions? C'mon paradox. C'mon.
2. I took Sjealland and managed to join the HRE but my rank wasn't forced down to duchy. Not sure if bug or feature. I know it used to be the case that unless you were the Papacy, you couldn't keep a kingdom rank unless you had managed to gain an elector title or become emperor. I'm not an elector, so maybe they changed it so that kings/queens who join the HRE can keep their titles. Or it could be an oversight but caused by HRE changes. Not comlaining either way.
3. Norway is the land of no money.
Figured I wouldn't take anything from Sweden in my first war against Denmark so that I'd encourage Sweden to rebel against the weakened Denmark, and I could jump on them for an easier war.
I took Sjealland and managed to join the HRE but my rank wasn't forced down to duchy. Not sure if bug or feature. I know it used to be the case that unless you were the Papacy, you couldn't keep a kingdom rank unless you had managed to gain an elector title or become emperor. I'm not an elector, so maybe they changed it so that kings/queens who join the HRE can keep their titles. Or it could be an oversight but caused by HRE changes. Not comlaining either way.
I saw a variant on this in a MP game I'm in. A Two Sicilies player finally took Rome from the Pope fairly late in the game and formed Italy, and it 1) unexpectedly rejoined him to the HRE because Rome was HRE land and the forming Italy decision changes your capital to Rome and 2) it left him as an Empire. The other player who was HRE Emperor made him an Elector (it's a fairly friendly game) and that didn't downgrade him to Kingdom, either.
One of the things I was most excited about this update was France's mission tree, but I gotta say, it kinda sucks.
The first set of missions includes one that requires the age of absolutism, and the second set has one that requires reformation, so there's not a lot you can do at the start.
There's one to conquer Brittany, but I always felt Brittany was best taken diplomatically (there's no rush to conquer them, they're not going to expand or be attacked, so your troops and AE are better spent elsewhere), and if you take them diplomatically it puts you waaaaay behind on the following missions (and what does taking Brittany have to do with defeating England?).
There's one for having low autonomy, which is impossible if you have a lot of trade companies.
There are two that require building shitty naval buildings.
There's one that requires exploration ideas, when I'd rather just take expansion.
There's one that requires helping another nation's CN achieve independence, when a) CNs never have enough liberty desire for that, and b) I'd rather take that land for myself/my CNs, rather than fight for their independence and ally them. Right now that one's impossible for me to complete because I own all the new world.
The mission chain to discover and conquer India begins with a settler boost. Settler boosts are irrelevant to conquering India!
A mission gives you a permanent claim on Moscow, then the next mission to siege down Moscow causes Moscow to lose 12 development. I don't want to burn it down! I want my land to be rich! Why give me a claim on a province if that's the reward?
There's a mission that gives a permanent +2 diplo relations! But it's after the revolution, so you'll get it for like 50 years max.
In contrast to earlier missions that are way too prescriptive, making me do exactly things exactly this way, there's the French Revolution mission. Be a revolutionary empire, or a revolutionary republic, or have no revolutionary ideas in the country, or be at war with the revolutionary target. That mission is basically 'wait until the age of revolutions, and deal with it whatever way you want'.
There's no mention of religion anywhere in the mission tree.
Most importantly, about half the mission tree is 'conquer these provinces'.
I'm honestly struggling to think of good new features added by this expansion. Hegemonies suck, because they make your vassals and allies hate you. Catholicism is as RNG as ever, and basically unchanged. The HRE has had a dumb set of options nobody will ever pick added to it. I'm struggling to think of any upside.
No longer being forced to move your capital to Oceania or Europe as an Asian nation is really good, also the general nerf to trade companies so they no longer outperform states in every regard
But the trade company autonomy also screws with embracing revolutionary ideas for example, it's all poorly integrated
And poorly thought out because they took so much money out of the game to shift it into trade companies and now it's just... gone and the AI can't deal
Yeah AI just don't have the cash to build buildings unless they're in extremely lucrative trade nodes and it ends up hurting the AI quite a bit.
Anyways, after nine attempts (including two that got past twenty years in game before something unexpected and terrible happened) I finally have a good Granada game.
France is my mortal enemy as they keep either claiming DotF or allying Iberian nations. Castille initially had a good game but I was able to attack Portugal while they were in the middle of a war with Aragon and they dishonoured their alliance. Eventually Aragon allied France and took their cores back and then some, so I jumped on Castille in a series of wars as that was happening. France kept intervening as Defender of the Faith though so it was harder than I would have liked. At one point I also had to preemptively had to fight a coalition war against Morocco, Aragon, Provence, and Portugal (All of them were bigger when this happened.) It was tough and I had to take loans but I managed to break up that first coalition before it could get any bigger. As you may be able to France has had an extremely good game even managing to take London. As I mentioned before I've fought them a bunch where they were secondary participants in my wars and the last time I finally managed to beat them pretty handily (if not easily) and got them to spit out cores/nations to try and weaken them some. (Yes they were even bigger before.) My allies are Tunis and the Ottomans. I am somewhat at the limit of what I can take in Europe for the time being due to being dangerously close to triggering enourmous coalitions that will be too big for me to try and break up. Also have a colonial nation in Brazil that I stole off Portugal. (They're still colonizing and still have their Atlantic islands, for AE reasons again.)
No longer being forced to move your capital to Oceania or Europe as an Asian nation is really good, also the general nerf to trade companies so they no longer outperform states in every regard
But the trade company autonomy also screws with embracing revolutionary ideas for example, it's all poorly integrated
And poorly thought out because they took so much money out of the game to shift it into trade companies and now it's just... gone and the AI can't deal
I'm not one of those people who hates Paradox's DLC strategy for keeping games running longer. I think it's great, actually. But they've introduced several massive game-breaking changes recently in their free patches to games like this and Stellaris that just infuriate me. Yeah I can roll back the version, but then I lose a lot of other stuff and have to worry about versions. It's super poor.
I feel like I have to wait until a patch comes out, see if it breaks things in the game, then get in play while the patch is still fresh before they come back in and change whole systems again and invalidate previous saves and that..... that's actively impairing enjoyment. I hope they get their QC back in gear.
Al-Andalus get. I also did a pretty quick game where I got the Riga achievement. It's not that hard. You attack the Livonian order when they've been beat down by either Poland, Lithuania, or Denmark. Then, if you're lucky, you can attack Danzig while they're in their civil war with the Teutonic Order and Poland won't join the call: you gotta hope that the Teutons have some decent allies who can siege down a fort or two so Poland doesn't want to answer the call)
Danzig gets an event where they become a vassal of Poland, but it can only fire when they're at peace. So if you get Poland to decline the initial call to arms you have all the time in the world to conduct your war against Danzig and take whatever you want. I wouldn't recommend taking too much besides Danzig and Konigsberg, because then it'll be very hard to join the HRE. Still, assuming you can join the HRE it's just a matter of being using that protection to build up a power base and take whatever land you need from Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, or Muscovy depending on who nabs it before you can get to it. (Denmark will often take Estonia before you can, so it might be worth investing in maritime ideas+the amazing 'Mission on the Highseas' theocratic reform so you can punch above your naval weight to fight them. Its also possible Sweden or Muscovy will then take that land off of Denmark so you'll have to fight them instead.)
Now I'm going for the twin Sri Lankan achievements. My first start has been pretty lucky. I managed to declare independence from Kotte as Kandy before they got any allies, and it seems like Bahmanis is doing better than Vijaynagar. (I'm allied to Bahmanis and Orissa.)
So continuing Kandy game, and after I got the Cotton Kandy achievement I eventually formed Marathas. (There's a mission that gives you an event which gets you the option to change cultures.) Maratha's ideas are generally a marginal upgrade over the Sinhalese ones, even if they are worse than the islamic alternative deccan's ideas, but there is one odd one that makes no sense. +15% government reform progress modifier. On a nation that you can't form until admin level 20. So you'll definitely have all the government reforms. I guess I'll just use it to get a bit more governing cap over time.
My Bavaria game has hit a speed bump. I went Protestant, and all my neighbours are Catholic still, so I can't attack anyone or the DotF Britain will join in. They outnumber me massively, they won't get in any other wars or take out debt or anything to give me a chance.
On the bright side, my dynasty is now on the Danish throne! It will be a while until I can challenge them, but there are some PUs waiting for me up north.
I made a custom nation for the Ideas Guy achievement. I took the +1 Monarch Admin Skill idea, the +1 Monarch Diplo Skill idea, and the +1 Monarch Mil Skill idea. Then I chose a republic. Goddamn it.
Ideas Guy can be done fairly easily starting in the new world, especially paired with the Siberian Frontiers idea. That said, you can also pair it with First Come, First Serve for a more challenging but still not too difficult run.
Another one that took awhile. I blame part of that on AI seeming to break a lot on this patch. Like, Mamlucks have kept a twenty thousand merc army in their capital since almost game start that they won't dismiss and won't move. Even restarting the game multiple times didn't help.
Also AI being unwilling to dismiss mercs in peace in general is just a big issue.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Ideas Guy can be done fairly easily starting in the new world, especially paired with the Siberian Frontiers idea. That said, you can also pair it with First Come, First Serve for a more challenging but still not too difficult run.
When I did First Come, First Serve I paired it with For Odin. That was a pretty entertaining run on VH.
I just managed to unlock it, starting in Australia. Only colonised in Aus and Polynesia. Made a few dumb mistakes during the game but none as bad as the one at the start.
Also, I took Maritime ideas because I wanted to be able to stop Europeans landing troops anywhere. Man, that's a bad idea group. Literally nothing of value in the entire group.
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most of that army is over seas and I've got a swole navy and my province in ireland is the worst place in the world for the to siege so heres hoping they try
Wouldn't recommend this on the current patch, trying to pass reforms while also dealing with the new revolutionary mechanics is annoying
The AI can't really deal with the new merc system, they've had money troubles ever since the dev team nerfed trade efficiency and production efficiency from technology
One thing that was kind of interesting though in my Albania game (kicked the Ottomans out of the Balkans and have snaked through northern anatolia to a connection to the caucuses for the achievement) is that when the League war fired the AI Austria actually seemed to be smart in peacing out nations quickly to reduce the League's size as opposed to the usual AI thing if attempting maximize gains even if it makes wars way more grueling and ultimately less profitable. (I'm Protestant but I joined the Catholic League since I didn't think the Protestant League had a good chance, I was allied to Austria, and had I joined on the protestants' size I would have been extensively surrounded by the Emperor's league. I didn't actually help beyond defending my borders since I was hoping the protestants might somehow pull off at least a religious peace but they got totally crushed.)
I'm playing Ottoman and keep going over as i gobble up all the neighbors. I discovered you can spend government reform progress to up it some (so once all the reforms are done), but it gets more expensive each time you do and I'm out (for now).
The governing capacity privileges also seem like something you'd want if you start as a larger nation
I have about 8 or 10 full states i could make had i the capacity. Way more if counting partial states.
Just saaaying.
I'd seen Portugal had an old ruler and no heir, so I married them, hoping to spread dynasty, maybe get a free PU, maybe force a PU. Kept checking on them every now and then, nothing changed. Then my ruler died, and I didn't remember to send a new royal marriage offer. Checked the disputed succession icon, noticed it still said Portugal (60 years) - Prestige 10, or whatever it was, but it wasn't green any more. Realised my mistake, sent a new marriage offer, and got a free PU literally the next day. Holy shit, I came so close to missing that!
1. Norway still doesn't have any unique missions? C'mon paradox. C'mon.
2. I took Sjealland and managed to join the HRE but my rank wasn't forced down to duchy. Not sure if bug or feature. I know it used to be the case that unless you were the Papacy, you couldn't keep a kingdom rank unless you had managed to gain an elector title or become emperor. I'm not an elector, so maybe they changed it so that kings/queens who join the HRE can keep their titles. Or it could be an oversight but caused by HRE changes. Not comlaining either way.
3. Norway is the land of no money.
Figured I wouldn't take anything from Sweden in my first war against Denmark so that I'd encourage Sweden to rebel against the weakened Denmark, and I could jump on them for an easier war.
I saw a variant on this in a MP game I'm in. A Two Sicilies player finally took Rome from the Pope fairly late in the game and formed Italy, and it 1) unexpectedly rejoined him to the HRE because Rome was HRE land and the forming Italy decision changes your capital to Rome and 2) it left him as an Empire. The other player who was HRE Emperor made him an Elector (it's a fairly friendly game) and that didn't downgrade him to Kingdom, either.
The first set of missions includes one that requires the age of absolutism, and the second set has one that requires reformation, so there's not a lot you can do at the start.
There's one to conquer Brittany, but I always felt Brittany was best taken diplomatically (there's no rush to conquer them, they're not going to expand or be attacked, so your troops and AE are better spent elsewhere), and if you take them diplomatically it puts you waaaaay behind on the following missions (and what does taking Brittany have to do with defeating England?).
There's one for having low autonomy, which is impossible if you have a lot of trade companies.
There are two that require building shitty naval buildings.
There's one that requires exploration ideas, when I'd rather just take expansion.
There's one that requires helping another nation's CN achieve independence, when a) CNs never have enough liberty desire for that, and b) I'd rather take that land for myself/my CNs, rather than fight for their independence and ally them. Right now that one's impossible for me to complete because I own all the new world.
The mission chain to discover and conquer India begins with a settler boost. Settler boosts are irrelevant to conquering India!
A mission gives you a permanent claim on Moscow, then the next mission to siege down Moscow causes Moscow to lose 12 development. I don't want to burn it down! I want my land to be rich! Why give me a claim on a province if that's the reward?
There's a mission that gives a permanent +2 diplo relations! But it's after the revolution, so you'll get it for like 50 years max.
In contrast to earlier missions that are way too prescriptive, making me do exactly things exactly this way, there's the French Revolution mission. Be a revolutionary empire, or a revolutionary republic, or have no revolutionary ideas in the country, or be at war with the revolutionary target. That mission is basically 'wait until the age of revolutions, and deal with it whatever way you want'.
There's no mention of religion anywhere in the mission tree.
Most importantly, about half the mission tree is 'conquer these provinces'.
I'm honestly struggling to think of good new features added by this expansion. Hegemonies suck, because they make your vassals and allies hate you. Catholicism is as RNG as ever, and basically unchanged. The HRE has had a dumb set of options nobody will ever pick added to it. I'm struggling to think of any upside.
But the trade company autonomy also screws with embracing revolutionary ideas for example, it's all poorly integrated
And poorly thought out because they took so much money out of the game to shift it into trade companies and now it's just... gone and the AI can't deal
Anyways, after nine attempts (including two that got past twenty years in game before something unexpected and terrible happened) I finally have a good Granada game.
I'm not one of those people who hates Paradox's DLC strategy for keeping games running longer. I think it's great, actually. But they've introduced several massive game-breaking changes recently in their free patches to games like this and Stellaris that just infuriate me. Yeah I can roll back the version, but then I lose a lot of other stuff and have to worry about versions. It's super poor.
I feel like I have to wait until a patch comes out, see if it breaks things in the game, then get in play while the patch is still fresh before they come back in and change whole systems again and invalidate previous saves and that..... that's actively impairing enjoyment. I hope they get their QC back in gear.
Danzig gets an event where they become a vassal of Poland, but it can only fire when they're at peace. So if you get Poland to decline the initial call to arms you have all the time in the world to conduct your war against Danzig and take whatever you want. I wouldn't recommend taking too much besides Danzig and Konigsberg, because then it'll be very hard to join the HRE. Still, assuming you can join the HRE it's just a matter of being using that protection to build up a power base and take whatever land you need from Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, or Muscovy depending on who nabs it before you can get to it. (Denmark will often take Estonia before you can, so it might be worth investing in maritime ideas+the amazing 'Mission on the Highseas' theocratic reform so you can punch above your naval weight to fight them. Its also possible Sweden or Muscovy will then take that land off of Denmark so you'll have to fight them instead.)
Now I'm going for the twin Sri Lankan achievements. My first start has been pretty lucky. I managed to declare independence from Kotte as Kandy before they got any allies, and it seems like Bahmanis is doing better than Vijaynagar. (I'm allied to Bahmanis and Orissa.)
On the bright side, my dynasty is now on the Danish throne! It will be a while until I can challenge them, but there are some PUs waiting for me up north.
TWENTY MILLION DEAD MERCS
Again, hardly a speedy achievement run.
I made a custom nation for the Ideas Guy achievement. I took the +1 Monarch Admin Skill idea, the +1 Monarch Diplo Skill idea, and the +1 Monarch Mil Skill idea. Then I chose a republic. Goddamn it.
Also AI being unwilling to dismiss mercs in peace in general is just a big issue.
When I did First Come, First Serve I paired it with For Odin. That was a pretty entertaining run on VH.
Also, I took Maritime ideas because I wanted to be able to stop Europeans landing troops anywhere. Man, that's a bad idea group. Literally nothing of value in the entire group.