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[MrWiggles]

Just for the record, I wasnt being condescending or sarcastic.

Intention isn't magic. You just can't ask whether someone has not considered such an obvious possibility without sounding like a jerk. Might as well ask whether someone knows the sky is blue. I believe you when you say you didn't mean to come off that way, but that question is just extremely condescending by default.

Very true, but you know what else is true, controlling your own reaction.

[MoLAoS]

Just for the record, I wasnt being condescending or sarcastic.

Intention isn't magic. You just can't ask whether someone has not considered such an obvious possibility without sounding like a jerk. Might as well ask whether someone knows the sky is blue. I believe you when you say you didn't mean to come off that way, but that question is just extremely condescending by default.

Very true, but you know what else is true, controlling your own reaction.

Considering its prevalence as a troll on the PDox forums, that wouldn't be very likely. Anyways most of my post wasn't an angry rant, just a couple lines. Hardly very much drama considering the amount of trolling that phrase has been used in.


On the topic of EU4 itself, I have finally started to integrate France, lost a few years because Bohemia somehow pwned my 3x as big army while having too many cavalry and with everything but the general the same thus making that war last until the length of war penalty expired in its entirety. And I was on the way to losing another army when I peaced out. I also had to release Finland and pay 1.2k ducats to Austria to end a coalition war on me, and 500 plus novgorod and ladoga to Muscovy to avoid them attacking me while I still hadn't finished Bohemia. Luckily Burgundy, Bohemia's only ally peace out and gave me gold and cancelled their treaty after France/Spain did a lot of damage. Of course the reason Muscovy wanted Novogord was to form Russian which it did right after peace. FML. Still I got Plock for Mazovia and have begun to annex Mazovia which has Podlaise, Plock, Warsawa and Wizna. And I got like 3 cores back for Poland. Once I win one more war with Bohemia for the last 2 Polish cores and one vs the Ottomans for the 3-4 they have I shall annex a massive Poland. I annexed Britanny over the course of the war. Also Papal Control is perhaps permanently in my grasp. I now have 4 controlled Cardinals and 2/5 prospective ones. If only those chances for a PU with Hungary and Spain had worked out. My next goal is to clean up Pomerania and Brandenburg and Mecklenberg and maybe Brunswick if I have to so I can finally control all of the Baltic coast. Normally I get it a lot earlier but shit happens. I think I traded half of Scotland, Cornwall(which is how I got close enough to Brittany and all of Ireland for it. Once I clear that up I'll be after the rest of England. Release Scotland and Wales, and maybe Northumberland although it only has one core. I may just direct core that. Maybe try to sell some English lands to Wales or Scotland if they'll take them. Ideally I would vassalize England, but with their rich base tax it might only allow me to hold a few lands that way. I think 20 basetax is the limit for Force Vassalization. Maybe I can do the release plus a little coring, then attack again for max lands, then break truce right away and try to force vassalize and sell it all its lands back, thus saving a lot of coring time and cost. Then I guess I'll release Ukraine and take some lands and try to vassalize it and Lithuania.

Ideally I want to be undisputed master of Europe by 1621, thus giving me 200 years to expand overseas and handle the middle East and Russia. Without getting those lucky Spain and Hungary PUs its probably not a potential world conquest. But then, I was playing Denmark, can't vassalize anything but Eastern and Ottoman, has terrible NIs for coring or conquest and is curtailed immensely early on by the HRE and Russia. I'd say all of Europe including colonizers and maybe half the rest of the world would be a good result.

[Rakonas]

Sometimes terrain really makes a difference, like with the super mountainous areas of switzerland and western austria.

[MoLAoS]

Update update:
Ottomans kept stomping me, even when I win I lose more guys. Its total bullshit. They just have Lucky Nation Generals and roll after roll of high numbers. In the end I peaced out with 150 ducats and 2 of the 4 cores I want. I actually coulda got 3 core returns and one conquer and then sell return to hit the total of 4, except the war was so damn long Lithuania recovered from Russian stomping it and sieged the provinces I wanted.

I'm just waiting for my 3rd, yes 3rd, regency of the game to end so I can crap on Bohemia for the other 2 it has and then annex this sucker. A solid 10 or so provinces plus 4 from Mazovia ain't bad considering how shit I am at diplo annexing. The other 2 would have given me a sea presence in the Black Sea but w/e. I'll expand over from my French Med coastal provinces.

My upcoming ruler is 5/0/3. Thank god I'll be starting his reign by annexing the 3 French OPM vassals I got stuck with and soon after the annexation of Poland to clear up my relations. I may also dump Bavaria as an ally. They never join my wars and they are weak anyways, even carved up Bohemia managed to retain more than its starting provinces.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Update: I actually got stomped by dice rolls in the first fight with my new French armies but I prevailed with about .20 morale to spare in the next fight where I outnumbered them 2 to 1 and there was no terrain bonus for either side.
Stupid jerks just kept rolling 8s and 9s on top of their 2x as good generals.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, its not only terrain but bad dice roles and lucky nation generals just constantly fucking you over and over and over. I had 60k men when I attacked the Ottomans. Now I have 14k. Meanwhile the 110k troops I was counting on from France and Spain are not even coming. Apparently France lacks the boats to move dudes any distance and the Ottoman boats are crushing the Spanish. Nominally I have armies 2x as big as the Ottomans even after they crushed like 50000 of my guys regardless of terrain. But they can't get anywhere. Luckily I'll finish integrating France in the next 5 months and ship them a short distance to where they can pursue a land crossing through Prussia/Mazovia/Poland.

And to think I thought returning 40 warscore worth of cores to Poland against an inferior tech group was going to be a walk in the park with 3x as many troops at equal or superior tech level. Its been like 5 bloody years, 6 months till France is mine and I can use their troops with an intelligence slightly above that of a squirrel which the AI apparently can't handle in order to smash the Ottoman armies and then carpet siege. Even before the Ottoman death fleets the useless Spanish were barely doing anything.

[werty892]

That's why I play with lucky nations off.

[PanH]

Ottoman units are far from inferior to western and eastern units. In fact, I'd say they're even better until around 1650-1700 in addition to the fact that the Ottomans are Sunni (potential huge moral boost). Ottomans are on par or better than most western nations until late game for the military.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I had an AI Ottoman empire that converted to Shiite after losing to rebels. That +35% morale at full piety was pretty devastating.
The Ottoman units really decline in quality at around tech level 17. Tech level 24 is where they completely fall behind both Western and Eastern which is expanded to 22 full pips at end game! However what I find makes western infantry so deadly is not only that they get more pips but rather have the highest fire pips in the game which get the biggest multipliers. Mid to end game is all about stacking fire and moral.

[MoLAoS]

That's why I play with lucky nations off.

Ironman though, so not an option. Its not even that I took like 10 years and lost 100000 troops. Its that fucking Lithuania ganked 2 of the provinces I wanted after I finally crushed the immortal souls of the Ottomans into the dirt. I would have had a province on the Black Sea and Moldavia is a nice province in general. Diplo-annexing the entire starting borders of Poland would have been amazing revenge. Plus the main thing I even did to stop them was support rebels to lose them their Teuton lands that they stole before I could get them. Aside from this war I only put minimal effort into completely destroying a Great Power. Hell the 40 stacks of rebels I spawn, the first time there were 29 and Poland and Lithuania finally got them, drove their prestige so low that they lost their PU with Lithuania. Took me a whopping 100 or so gold to support those rebels.

Honestly, something goes catastrophically wrong in every war I've had with a major power past the point when I formed Scandanavia. Its only my abuse of loans, my high levels of ideas due to lagging in diplo tech and my general refusal to ever get up that beats my enemies into submission. I could have conquered another 50 provinces of various things by now except for random massacres where the enemy's 6/5 general was rolling all 8s and 9s.

[MoLAoS]

Well this post may have been a slight overreaction. So I edited and the new version is below.

After the stomped my dozens of mercs and killed literally 100% of my army I managed to piece out by cancelling treaties and also my 3 OPM French Vassals and giving Austria a crapload of gold. I kinda wish I had tried to do that while I still had troops. Musta lost 20000 or so that I could have saved if I had thought of it. Honestly though I still think its bullshit that Brandenburg's 15k guys got the province bonuses when it was my vassal we were fighting on. I assume its some sort of war declaring guy doesn't get the bonuses thing. And I'm still so pissed about their 2x as high dice roll average. Also apparently it would destabilize Hungary to join my war on their rival Bohemia but they happily joined Austria and Brandenburg and Savoy in roflstomping ME, their loyal ally for hundreds of years because I declared on Brandenburg.

The main reason I attacked Brandenburg was because they were sieging Bohemia provinces I want for Poland. Honestly I should have just annexed Poland instead of attacking the Ottomans and Bohemia for their last 6 cores. Instead I could have annexed my French OPM vassals, attacked Burgundy and the Dutch during the Dutch War of Independence and taken control of Antwerp for my capital thus massively boosting my trade income.

[Rakonas]

It is upon us.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Tarran]

Uh, wat?

[Rakonas]

There's a panda mod, complete with sprites of bear cavalry.

[MoLAoS]

I need a mod with America in the late 1700s with a bear nation. Internet points for whoever gets the reference first.

[MoLAoS]

And the Saga of Scandanavia has ended. I went after Switzerland to both vassalize it so I could release its cores from Austria and as a last ditch attempt to release Tirol and Styria. First Hungary's troops musta not had maintenance up so Austria insta killed like 40k troops. Then when I got them to attack me in Ostmark for the -1 terrain and -1 crossing bonus even with bringing in constant streams of mercenary reinforcements I got them down do .26 and .51 morale before I lost. If only I hadn't spent so many military tech points on my war taxes button I guess. Once they took me down my chances were really over. First England declared war on me and even though I manage to kill one of their fleets thus leaving the second fleet hopelessly doomed, then Burgundy declared war on me for Champagne. Given my massive debt and the inevitable loss of Styrian cores in one year I opted to give up the ghost. Sure I had massive armies and income and the worlds largest fleet. But without lucky nation generals and being behind in all the techs especially military by 2 or 3 and with Denmark's lackluster ideas as far as warfare goes.

However I learned a lot of stuff about next time like get into the HRE posthaste and conquer Hansa and grab the Dutch stuff early. I pray I'll have a similar chance to break up Poland. I may want to focus a little more in one area next time. I went after half of Scotland plus the whole of Ireland thus bringing me into those two disastrous conflicts with England. Although my initial attack to take Cornwall and Meath in order to be able to vassalize Brittany actually went extremely well. Then of course it mad England and later Great Britain declare on me twice. It may be better to break up and vassalize Poland and start working on Lithuania/Ukraine early on rather than go for British stuff. Being in the HRE will of course make many things a lot easier. I had 2 or 3 wars where Austria + Brandenberg curbstomped me. Also I can go after Mecklenberg and Pomerania earlier to make sure I rule the Baltic, plus the aforementioned Hansa. Assuming I can PU Hungary and/or France next game as well as rule the Curia I expect my new strategy to be amazing. I do not know if I should be come Emperor or just dissolve the HRE.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

So after seeing that Panda mod it got me musing about Ming and the Manchu invasion and how it could be improved.

Right now the biggest issue I see is that when Manchu invades northern China and declares themselves the Qing dynasty but they're still forced to conquer the country piece by piece and wipe Ming out completely.
My solution would be to have a dynamic tag call China which changes name per dynasty, just like CK2 with Muslims/Pagans. When Ming (China) loses the Mandate of Heaven all neighbouring countries will get a CB called something like "Force Dynasty". If a country using this CB wins with 100% warscore that nation will tag switch to China, it's name will change to the current dynasty and the previous tag plus the land it owned is given to the AI and forced into either a vassal or PU (national ideas will likely be inherited from conquering country).

This is meant to primarily simulate both the Qing and Yuan (maybe Wei?) invasions which had a force taking over the full region of the Chinese empire but their homelands remaining rather autonomous. It would make the Asia region a whole lot more dynamic with the possibility of other Asian dynasties taking the throne of China (imagine the Joseon or Sho Dynasty!).
Revolter states (like Zhou) can be spawned dynamically by event which instead of just taking over a few provinces and calling it quits will try and force a dynasty change, making losing the Mandate of Heaven deadly even for a player.

Been thinking about a way of trying to mod it but I don't think the game will handle the "double swap" of the tags. There's also no current way to make a dynamic tag meaning that there would be a big ugly China spread across the map.