Europa Universalis IV

Loving this apostrophe placement for my country (Kitkit'Ish).

Furry said:

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WTF is this shit. Thai Siberia is not something I expected to see. How does that even happen with the AI?

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That is one of the most amazing AI plays I've seen.

I finished my Triple the Rome (be Russia and HRE Emperor and Emperor of China) achievement and it was pretty good fun. I kind of did it the "hard" way because I started as Novgorod instead of a country that could quickly get one of the emperorships. I just love being a republic and a Novgorod Republic is pretty damn good. I also think the Russia area missions and countries are so damn good it's hard to resist. I actually went HRE first which, in hindsight, was a huge mistake, at least in terms of efficiency. Poland and Lithuania went Protestant so to even conquer towards Catholic lands meant taking a ton of Protestant lands, which made it a lot harder to flip Catholic. I thought about doing the religious rebels taking over my country but that would have taken years and I just hated the idea of it so I conquered until I had enough Catholic land.

Another reason not to take the HRE first is you have to pass a ton of reforms before you can make it hereditary and switch to an eastern religion for EoC. This was actually the first time I've ever actually played as the HRE Emperor and it was a good time -- I'll have to do it again. A part of me wants to try this again, this time starting off as maybe someone like Korea or Manchu. In any case, with all the good CCR and humanist/separatism reforms, I never once had to worry about rebels. It made for a really relaxing playthrough. I once again went with Mercenary ideas first -- it's really become my go to idea opener and it's really all about cost/manpower savings than actual military power.

Before then I played a number of games that I didn't mention. I kind of got carried away and have done something like 5 world conquests now, heh. I did a custom nation run in the New World that was awesomely broken. I had Siberian frontiers in my national ideas and, most powerfully, +2 goods produced. If you ever do a custom nation, I really think +2 goods produced is the most game breaking option you can select and it's not even that expensive -- you could definitely fit it under the normal 200 cap.

I was playing Starfield for a while but that game's hold is weakening some so I'm thinking of maybe trying a Three Mountains Ryukku run. I'm not sure whether to try and go colonial or do something like take Japan.

Some lovely border gore as I attempt a Pirate Republic Ryukyu Three Mountains run.



Thinking I messed up a bit with the early game and the Pirate Republic. I took too much land I didn't fully state, resulting in too slow reform progress growth. I should have hyper focused and only grabbed some important provinces. I'd be done with the entire reform tree by now (1630ish) if I had and would have been able to raze for decades at this point. Oh well. This WC feels a bit behind now but I think it's going to be fine. the going question is whether I feel forced to tag switch (which is allowed for the achievement if you true one tag). Missing having mission modifiers and the CCR from things I could easily be right now (Emperor of China and Mughals would have been easy).

Pirate Republics get a 50% penalty to governing cost, which was really difficult to deal with for a while and held back the economy and, most importantly, my manpower and force limit. But it's a good challenge. Going with EoC into Mughals or forming a Horde or something along those lines would have made it so much easier and a bit too similar to some of my past runs.

One thing I've done this run that I've never done is lean into stacking aggressive expansion (given Ryukyu starts with -25%). I'm at 65% right now, have been up to 70%, and believe I should be able to get to 80 or 85%. It's actually really relaxing not having to worry about coalitions pretty much at all.

Ugh... this is not really something you want to see. Ottomans allied with Russian and France.

I didn't know that about France being able to become a historic friend. That's pretty crazy. One of these days I'll do an Ottomans run for the crazy OP fun of it.

I decided to restart my Ryukyu Three Mountains run. I was still on track to get the achievement but it would have been a sweaty push toward the end and I definitely felt like I misplayed the early game. With the way my reform progress was going, I probably wouldn't have finished the reforms until mid 1750s and that's horrible for a republic. So, I felt like I needed a restart now that I had a lot better idea of what to do.

And boy, what a restart! Keeping reform progress growth high has been the primary focus for the first 100 years (where I'm at now) and it's made all the difference. I'll be able to start razing in about 1580ish instead of 1650 like my last game. Plus, being close to done with the reform tree means I'll be able to get enough absolutism to still fire court and country (probably not exactly at 1612, but 1620 or 1630) -- that's pretty good for a republic that has the -40 Max Abs malus.

I've focused primarily on snagging Centers of Trade to expand my finances and my raiding reach. I wouldn't say I was overflowing with money but the raiding has allowed me to carry budget deficit for nearly the entire game until just now. I doubled up on force limit to attack Jaunpur and go after the -10% CCR/AE monument and it was kind of amazing how well that went. I probably didn't need to bulk up that much (and I was losing 50-70 ducats a month in 1490 which was crazy). I've attacked every major power in the China and India region and I'm kind of shocked I haven't been declared on. One of the things I did to help out was to really limit what forts I kept and accept that in some wars some of my coastal lands will be occupied but it doesn't matter because they'll never get to all my holdings to get any significant war score. I then just siege them down while they're doing that.

I probably have double the development of my previous run at this same point, as well as three beefy vassals and two smaller ones. Much happier with this run.

Loving the AE stacking; I'm pretty sure I'm capped out. I went up against a really beefy Ottoman (again) in my restart. He had something like 25 forts and 500k troops in the mid 1600s. The first war lasted something like eight years just from having to siege so many goddamn forts. I knew if I waited until the truce was up, they'd be barely any weaker, so I truce broke him and it was all of -6 AE. I crushed him again and then immediately truce broke him again. Now, the whole world has decided to absolutely destroy him.



Edit: The best part is after these three truce breaks, taking full land/cash each time (two vassals and then keeping the rest), Otto was still under 50 AE, haha.

Well, King of Kings seems to be having an affect on the Ottomans thus far. This is in 1467. I'm playing Ardabil on the far right but I haven't really been affecting any of the major players in the area (Timmy, Otto, or Mams).

Byz into Latin Empire taking control is amazing by itself, but also Albania, Venice, and the Mamluks are taking control too.

Looks like I'm the only one still playing this game, haha.

I recently went for the Isle of Mann achievement (playing as Mann, conquer every island in the world, which is 408 provinces). If you just do a WC style run, it would be easy enough to get, but that seems too boring, so I self imposed a rule that I would not conquer any mainland unless it was for colonial nations. I actually used Maritime and Naval for the first time ever and they were my first and third idea. I didn't even use the old faith Administrative. I also didn't nation ruin England to start, just released and played as Mann for a little more challenging start.

It was a really interesting playthrough because it was pretty hard until it got real easy, heh. Starting out, paying for heavy ships is a huge burden and constantly taxes the economy. Furthermore, I went Pirate Republic and picked the reform that didn't allow any allies. So, the entire game I had no one but my colonial nations to help me. I didn't take any vassals because I knew they'd get swamped. As you get further along, you get enough heavies that you can defend all your provinces quite easily and then you do long blockades or some strike assaults on capitals with an expeditionary force. With naval superiority and only islands, the size of your opponent really doesn't matter at all. At one point, I was in three wars with Spain, France, a big Austria, Otto, a huge Tuscany and a bunch of minors -- and I purposely started them all. My land forces were outnumbered close to 10 to 1 but it just didn't matter because I killed or quarantined their boats and I slowly picked up the war score I needed to get the select few provinces I needed.

Definitely a fun run if you're looking to do something completely different, though waiting for war enthusiasm to tick down against a big alliance can be a bit boring when you don't quite have the navy to start another war.

Below is my bounty of captured flaghips (more were destroyed). I almost felt bad for Spain.... but not quite.



My boat totals at the end: