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[Mictlantecuhtli]

superb national ideas

Especially when France getting 2x bonus from native populations isn't considered needlessly overpowered when combined with the fact that the AI never has native uprisings.. I honestly don't understand how they could make France any less inevitable. If there weren't 'don't murder Spain/UK' checks on France it'd just be needlessly inevitable.. Vanilla balance is so bad..

[Vactor]

So I've got a decent game going for a Norwegian Wood attempt, It is 1630, and I've got all of scandinavia, what would have been muscovy, and most of north america north of florida blocked off with colonies.  Right now i've got healthy alliances with France, Spain, and Commonwealth (which is quite large, and has a lot of naval supplies).  I still haven't touched the ottomans, who are doing a pretty standard ottoman performance.

The other main alliance consists of Portugal and Great Britain (who I cut down to size a bit in an earlier colonial war, forcing them to release scotland and most of their colonies), and Commonwealth.  HRE took the reformation pretty hard, with Austria sticking with Catholic, while the rest of the empire went protestent.  They routinely lose wars to a France/Hungary alliance.

At some point I'm going to need to break up Commonwealth, but there is no way I can face their army 100k+ vs my 50k standing army, and France and Spain have a hard time shipping enough troops around to be effective.

I'm thinking of three main options, I could expand through where golden horde is, and use commonwealth armies to beat up the ottomans for me.  Alternatively, I could carve a path through the HRE to France, essentially building a road for my French allies, or I could try to burn off Commonwealth's manpower in futile wars in the east against the Timurid/Ottoman alliance.  Maybe a combination of these.

I'd like to go to War with Britain in order to capture some British and Portugese Colonies, but without Commonwealth joining, I could do a no CB war on britain's ally Brittany, and possibly nab one of the naval supplies I need off them before France gets it, but I fear this would just sour my French relations, and I'll need to fight them at least once for the supplies they already have.

I'm wondering, If I go to war with some steppe hordes, and call Commonwealth in, will Britain still be able to call them to their defense If I attack?  Will France and Spain still join me against GB if I don't call them into the war with Timurids, or will this situation give the "called to multiple wars" penalty?

I have to say this is one of the more intriguing situations I've had with this game, and as an aside, probably the first time I've seen such a successful commonwealth, I suppose me sapping Muscovy right away helped them along a bit.

[stabbymcstabstab]

So I may have just PU'd france as a united HRE by complete accident. I didn't even purposely try to form the HRE either, also Mumulakes might have total control of Africa, and Ming is(was), stable and conquering India the last time I checked. It's amazing what you can do in this game by accident.

[kaian-a-coel]

Tried a second game today, after a very short first a year ago as muscovy. I tried the Mamluks, thinking it'd be easy enough.

I severely underestimated the f*cking turks.

All was well and I was expanding quickly (though that alliance with Hedjaz was a grievous error in hindsight), but everything changed when the ottomans attacked.

I was ROFLSTOMPED into the ground in no time, tried to expand into africa to compensate, but the land down there is shit and the people rebel all the time. I got the things barely under control, and then the ottomans attack again.

Second ROFLSTOMP, I can't stop them, and africa is rebelling. I ragequit. I'll probably play someone else next time. Maybe the ottomans.

[PanH]

Yeah, the Mamlukes are in a pretty bad spot at the start of the game. They're not Novgorod, which looks big but is ridiculously weak, but still not easy nonetheless. They don't have a very good tech group to fight the ottomans, they don't have the expansion possibilities, etc.
Generally, the countries that are recommended (even the not recommended as easy) are quite easy.

[lijacote]

If you've a certain mass* as Muscovy, you can have the Ottomans die off to mass attrition. 10% attrition on a stack of 50k is bloody brutal, and they won't be able to continue like that forever. Scorched earth is great. Of course fighting them head-on before you are Russia or strong enough* is dangerous, they're arguably the strongest nation at the start.

*haha no specifics

[kaian-a-coel]

Switched around and became the Ottomans. Didn't saw the truce on one of the turkish minors. At least I think that was a truce, I suddenly found myself at -3 stab and with a coalition. Oops. But hey, the invasion of anatolia was ahead of schedule, hurray!

On the downside, I had to vassalize the guy who entered the coalition with the mamlukes, because I wasn't fighting five years for two cores.

There was a neat mission about cleansing the unbelievers from anatolia or something, it promised 30 army tradition, but I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do exactly. Instead I took the "conquer levant" one. Nice little checklist, claims galore, just have to wait until the end of the truce...

[Descan]

Sounds like either conquer all non-Muslim states in the region (map-mode) of Anatolia, or have all of your (again, region) Anatolia provinces be Muslim?

[stabbymcstabstab]

News from france on the date of  April 4th of 1514, France declared itself the Revolutioary Kingom of France! At the Same time Half a million Rebels Loyal to the pope Revolted in Italia Joining the 2 million Traitors that already declared indepence, Sadly they were crushed to the last man.

(I think my game is starting to break, possible due to meager amounts of cheating. There is no way I should be facing down nearly three million rebels after any war, well maby 500+ extension might have something to do with that.)

[kaian-a-coel]

Sounds like either conquer all non-Muslim states in the region (map-mode) of Anatolia, or have all of your (again, region) Anatolia provinces be Muslim?

The wiki says all my anatolia provinces must be muslim. The game itself is pretty unclear though, it tells you that:

 (X) not one province in anatolia is:
NOT ottoman
in muslim group

Or something to that effect. It's really confusing. I thought I needed to own all muslim provinces in anatolia.

[Karlito]

You need to own all provinces in Anatolia, and every province in Anatolia must be Muslim.

[Vactor]

Follow up on my Norwegian Wood attempt:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is now 1780, I've got 25 provinces left to capture from 11 nations, including Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, and 2 HRE member states.  I managed to take everything I need from commonwealth, and have the largest navy with 75 tripledeckers.  Portugal and GB both have 50, so I could still lose to their combined Armada.  Spain has the largest army, but no navy, and I share a dynasty and royal marriage with them, so I may be able to nab them in an PU before time runs out, however it may be simpler to just take the provinces i need from them in an imperialism war.

The Ottomans are flying towards bankruptcy with a current debt of 23,000 some ducats.  France got torn apart in a series of wars with Spain and Austria after they stranded a 100k army in the Caribbean for a few decades.  I can occasionally get an alliance with Spain or France, who go back and forth from being friendly to hostile.

My biggest problem right now is that I think i'll need to fight Austria in 3 wars, 2 of them as HRE wars.  They are allied with Brittany, and I still need Genoa, and a province out of Bohemia.  I could do it easily if I can get Spain back as an ally, but I'm not sure if that will happen.  I should be able to drag GB and Portugal into individual wars by declaring on their small pacific allies and taking what i need by getting the 100% warscore after 5 years of occupying the nation that I declared on. This would allow me to eliminate their navies one at a time.  I'm a few years away from Commonwealth being able to declare on me, which would pull in GB and Portugal, so I need to kill their navies before that happens.

Spain has the most territories I need, and I think I can get it all in one war, so I'll probably leave them for last, so I don't have to suffer so much overextension.

Which leads me to my last challenge, overextension.  Commonwealth had noble traditions, so i'm still struggling to core the provinces I took from them, along with everything else I'm grabbing up.

I feel like i'm close, but i'm worried I'll run out of time.  I'm currently thinking my next step would be to fight a land war against the ottomans and ethiopia while i fight successive naval wars against GB and Portugal (declaring on the second once the first's navy is destroyed.) Then blockade  them both for awhile to let the war timer wear out a bit before I take the provinces I need from their colonies.  I shouldn't actually need to fight their armies, which means once I beat the ottomans I can take my land armies against austria.

I can pull austria into a non-hre war by declaring on Brittany, but I'm afraid that will preclude me from declaring on HRE members.  At the very least I'll be able to fight austria without the rest of the HRE and break them before the upcoming HRE wars.

It is exciting being so close, but also a bit stressful.  I just wish I had a good ally that didn't own any naval resources.  Commonwealth would have been great if I hadn't let them take the baltic coast.

[WealthyRadish]

If you're in the home stretch, I wouldn't worry about overextension, stability, debt, or manpower. Once you've gotten what's left of the low hanging fruit, I'd throw everything I have into wars, declare without CBs, break truces, hire mercs, take loans, get more mercs, etc. ADM points are probably going to be better spent on stability than coring anything. If you have a good enough economy, you should be able to last quite a while. Client states will be useful if you have them, you'll probably have to go full Napoleon and blitz most of Europe simultaneously once the coalitions get bad (if they haven't already). You should start considering taking territory you don't need just to create vassals/client states, if you don't need to worry about the truce length.

I don't think claiming the throne with Spain would be a good bet, considering the lack of time, unless you need a CB. Unless it counts for the cheevo, I don't know. I've barely played vanilla, and the only cheevos I have I think are the ones for WC as Ryukyu, when I cheated.

[Vactor]

Damn, I came home to a patch that reduced my administrative efficiency from 50% to 25%, pushing my 90% OE up to a dangerous 135%.  Between that and the trading changes, my peacetime monthly income dropped from +80/month to -25/month.  I'm debating playing through it, or sitting on the save to see if they revert some of what they did with this patch.

[Uristides]

Threw up a new Savoy campaign because patch killed my other one.
Dismembered Switzerland early on with Burgundy, Baden and Milan. All they have now is Bern, which I'm taking whenever the current truce expires.
When the Burgundy ruler died this time we got into a PU that dragged me and half the HRE into a war against Provence and all those modern-Spain Iberian folks.
Settled the war fairly early because that hit on my monies and all I could do was sit and watch Austria steamroll everybody since France didn't want either Burgundy or me going through their territory.
Now I'm sitting on a PU with a country that is some 4 times stronger than me, a tad broke and with France as a rival.

The strategy section on EU4wiki says I should vassal Milan early on, but I can never get that to unfold. Their tax and military always put tons of negatives on me.

Overall, still no idea what I'm doing. Victoria may be quite obtuse on its internals, but it's fairly straightforward to just pick and play. EU is just like what the how do those tech trees work and what is that idea stuff and how does trade work and why can't I ever make money and slow, really slow. Also no easy mode picking up a secondary power in Latin America and slowly building up to rule the world.