Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Korbac]

Any more nice Empire Building games you guys could recommend on the cheap? (Less / equal to £15) I have CK but am having trouble with it running on Vista.

[PenguinOverlord]

You should've gotten EU3 Complete + HTTT as it was on deal. Let me think.

[inteuniso]

The Protestant Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1588

After getting an extremely lucky start when playing as Holland, first by conquering Hainaut, inheriting Luneberg and then gaining Cores on Hamburg and Hannover, I quickly made progress. By 1588, I span 4 continents and am planning on expanding further into South America and the East Indies.

My Empire

The world. Note Portugal's holdings. Also, Great Britain, a Theocracy, controls most of Mexico.

[Zrk2]

The Republic of Venice circa 1200. I have beaten Milan into a pulp, leaving them with about one random settlement out west somewhere. I have captured two rebel villages, and have fought the Byzantines more times then I can count. I also hold Irkalion on Crete, but it didn't fit in the screenshot. Next I have to choose who I'll go to war with next, the HRE, Hungary, the Papal States, the Byzantine Empire (most likely, they're assholes), or Sicily, my friend (mostly because the Papal States have kept us apart, currently they're excommunicated and I'm in shit for continuing my war against Milan despite what the Pope demanded.

[Toady Two]

Magna Mundi Ultimate - Safavid Persia 1559

I started of as a Turkic tribe call Qara Koyunlu. They were Sunni until the Shi'ite Safavid dynasty seized power and formed the Persian nation.

What came later was a series of conquest that made me feel a bit overconfident. It's the beauty of Magna Mundi that it  can make your situation change dramatically from descizions you made many decades prior. As you see by my borders alone I am in bit of a predicament and my planned expansion eastward into India might prove impossible, I'm probably going to the thrashed and then downward spiral...

Despite having vast, rich, fully converted provinces, a gold mine and a CoT I can only muster fund to keep a standing army of around 40 000 men.

Now look at my neighbors. Two of them, Ottoman Empire and Russia muster respectively the biggest and the second biggest army in the world, 80 000 dudes a pop. Both are obviously hostile. Ottomans are pissed because I'm a heretic major power converting or annexing all their friendly Sunni minors. I've ended up on Russia's short list too by engaging in the colonial CoT in Crimea. The Khanate is my vassal and it has two Russian cores on it's provinces.

It's probably my fault why the Russians are so beefy so early on. Earlier this century Poland also crusaded against me and ended up losing their entire army trying to take Crimea. I white peaced out but the weakened Poland was easy prey for Muscovy so now I face with a much worse foe.

If I manage to defend against this Russian invasion(I will likely lose the CoT). My hopes of expanding east look grim still. Transoxania musters an adequate 40 000 strong military and is allied with Delhi that packs another 40 000.

[Ampersand]

The Persian Plateau is very mountainous and offers a great tactical advantage if you know how to use it. You should be able to handle any one of those enemies if you are able to make use of attrition as much as possible. You can loose nearly every battle and get many provinces occupied if you play the game smart and simply wear the enemy down. They will not be able to sustain a prolonged war in the region of Persia for very long without having to worry about prolonged rebellion at home.

Drive up war exhaustion as much as you possibly can for your enemies and you've nothing to worry about.


It also looks like you're playing Magna Mundi, so here's the advice I offer in that regard. Make sure you develop the provinces. In this mod, no province is worthless. Developing them with provincial decisions for biannual fairs and artisan workshops and the following building lines is always a good idea, and can make even the poorest of provinces profitable.

Take an army national idea to give you a higher land force limit,  if you feel your army is too small to sustain the country.

[Toady Two]

Yeah well, with your advice in mind I managed to hold off the Russia, England, Norway alliance and giving them no more than a concession of defeat.

I did savescum a bit to get my micro right. It was difficult not to lose an 8000 strong army against 40000 russians roaming tiny provinces with only 10 day travel periods. Russian WE rocketed up to 20 while he lay siege to by heavily fortified provinces. They were then hit by the Times of Strife event and got down to 1 stab.

I haven't been building improvements unfortunately. I hope it won't make me suffer later. I just can't muster the cash with no minting. I spend every dime on missionaries and fortifications. Once I have attained religious unity(very close) and fortified the border provinces I will get some improvements going.

[alexwazer]

Here's the state of my empire in my current game of CK, in which I started as Count of Usora (Croatia) and now hold the titles of king of Jerusalem and Syria:

Iberian Peninsula:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Balkans:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Middle East:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

King/Kingdom details:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At some point, some muslims from Spain managed to take 2 provinces from the king of Croatia. Later on, I conquered those, along with my current holdings in Spain.

Because I created my own kingdom instead of breaking free, the king of Croatia doesn't mind too much the fact that I kept a few provinces, so we have relatively good relations. It won't last forever  He currently holds the title of king of Serbia on which I have a claim.

It is somewhat funny how I got my kingdom. It started with the usual crusade to liberate Jerusalem. After I successfully conquered the province, and a few neighboring ones, I had an event to give back Jerusalem to the church or whatever, which created the kingdom of Jerusalem (and gave me a whole lot of piety and 250 prestige). After a quick look at my new neighbor, I realized I could claim his king title for... 250 prestige  Guess what I did

When I got my kingdom, the Turks were all over the place: from Kuwait to Byzantion, from Acre to the very borders of the Rus empire. After the death of one of their previous leader, I did all I could to destroy them. Assassinated their new leader (a merely average leader) and got him replaced by a 1 year old child, assassinated the chancellor to screw his diplomacy and then declared war. I started the war with close to 5,000 gold and finished with over 15,000; after some of the Turks vassals declared war only to plead for a peace agreement, many offering tribute of 500 or so (one offered over 5,000). I gained almost nothing from this first war (Acre, Tiberias, Palmyra and Byzantion) considering I had to use every single men I had, including my vassals' and had to fight from Turkey to Iran and from Georgia to Jordania against an enemy that started with nearly 200,000 troops under his command... and had to deal with a backstabbing Byzantium empire at the same time (they only wanted Antiocheia however). However, I achieved to break the Turkish empire, they were left with nearly nothing except a bunch of rebellious vassals and ex-vassals.

My kingdom is in a relatively stable state at this point. My previous ruler died recently, so I am currently trying to make sure the succession goes well. I have 2 main issues right now. My kingdom is so spread out that it is becoming troublesome to deal with rebellious vassals, so I am planning to give every province in the Iberian peninsula to my vassal there who is a cousin or something. If he breaks free later on, I'll just let him go and hope he can create a new kingdom for our dynasty If he declares war, I would just let him waste his time moving troops all over the world and offer white peace once his troops have been slaughtered. My second issue is much more annoying. The kingdom of Croatia, the Byzantium Empire, the Kingdom of Georgia (held by muslims) and the Turks all have claims on part of my kingdom. While none of them is strong enough to attack me on their own, I would have a hard time fighting any 2 of these at the same time. This is the reason I am currently allied with the BE. I will need to move against one of them before long or risk having them move against me.




Edit: I decided to continue the game after leaving it on hold for a week. A few months only after the above screenshots, the BE decided to do a bit more backstabbing. I mobilized every troops between Croatia and Syria, pillaging every byzantine provinces on the way before the damn fool agreed to drop his claim on Byzantion. I had a few claims on some of his provinces, but I dropped them all so I wouldn't have to worry too much about more backstabbing. Next step will probably be to force a war with Croatia so I can later focus on the eastern front without worry.

[Ampersand]

I haven't been building improvements unfortunately. I hope it won't make me suffer later. I just can't muster the cash with no minting. I spend every dime on missionaries and fortifications. Once I have attained religious unity(very close) and fortified the border provinces I will get some improvements going.

You need to have the appropriate great men, and provincial buildings. In addition, the province must be core.

Simply, an Alderman will get you the market and workshop building expansions. In any province with a workshop, you can use a provincial decision to upgrade it to artisan workshops, and more as your tech level progresses. Chartered Markets become biannual fairs, and so on, Anchorages become Expanded Anchorages, and so on. Just stay focused, and it shouldn't be an issue. Generally, you only ought worry about the Workshop and Market line above everything else, the Anchorage line second. Ignore the collector line, as the revolt risk added is too risky outside of your capital.

Finally, send merchants to Indian centers of trade, and Samarkand. Even Genoa and Venice, if you can get away with it.

[Rilder]

Japanese Empire, 1751 (EU3 Divine Wind none of the beta patches)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Started as Minamoto, just in the last 100 years I've finally managed to gain a significant amount of power, probably due to Westernizing. Slowly colonizing into the North and for the most part pursing a vassalization doctrine in South East Asia. (Surprisingly easy to Diplo-Vassal a lot of the minors)

China has been my main battlefield with a few short skirmishes with the Europeans trying to annex Pattani till I got fed up and Vassalized them (2 Stab hit for that ouch)

Not going for WC of course, I don't play that way.

Rest of the World:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Lets see, Both Flanders and Brittany have moved their capitals to the new world.

The Hanseatic league has a pretty huge foothold in South America

Milan is colonizing every corner they can find.

Castille is doing the same thing they did in my Hesse->HRE game and colonizing the hell out of North America.

Not paying much attention to Europe but it looks like a clusterfuck as usual.

Venice is expanding its holdings in Asia Minor

Baluchistan has been like that for a couple hundred years

The Oirat Horde share Japans Dynasty
As do Shan I believe.

Gondwana was the powerhouse of India then it fell so now Rajputana is now the powerhouse.

China has been torn apart by constant warfare, Ming at one point was annexed, then they made a comeback, though they got dragged into a few wars for awhile and got beat down pretty hard, but now they've learned just to stay the fuck out of the rest of Chinas business and have seemed to make a bit of a comeback.  Qin and Wu on the other hand constantly see themselves greater then what they actually are, usually resulting in Japan intervention and the prompt beating down by the Expeditionary Army, followed by the countryside going to revolt

Brunei, forever alone and ignored.

[Toady Two]

Wow that is some twisted AI expansion, the wierdest shit is going on in the New World. Nice job unifying Japan.

I'm most shocked at the surviving Oirats. Don't they start as a tribal horde nation that can only lose land unless they modernize? I take it you took hand in Ming's collapse that might have help the local Mongols a fair bit.

Baluchistan is sick, I'm disappointed that they didn't form Mughals and go on an India conquest spree.

I'm clueless as to what landlocked Bavaria is doing in Alaska.

[Rilder]

Actually Ming collapsed long before I united Japan, they had just come back as a OPM by the time I was getting close to Uniting Japan.  I dunno what happened to the Oirat, Maybe they were annexed and came back in a rebellion/peace deal. A while before this Qin was HUGE. I think owning everything the Oirat owns now.

Edit: Fun Fact I discovered playing today.. Oman.. yes Oman is one of the most technologically advanced nations ingame, having 40 some land technology for example, while nations like Milan are still in their mid 30s.

[Ampersand]

The only more insane uber-Venice I've ever seen is one I made, what with controlling all of Italy, Greece, India, and the Americas. I've never seen AI Venice do anything but not understand how to defend it's capital from Rebels.

Whatever though. I suggest you check out the Delvet-i ali Osman Map if you have Divine Wind. Generally it is more correct and the shape of things is more sensible and proportioned, no more Sicily south of Tunis. The map doesn't just modify things in the area of The Ottoman Empire, either. Most of Europe is effected, as well as western Asia, including Persia, and Northern Africa

[Rilder]

Eh I'm not in the mood to mod just yet.

[Johnfalcon99977]

I'ma getting EU3, then seeing if I can conquer as much as I can with Italy.

CONQUEST HO!