Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-20 03:49:37 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2014-2035
So the game started as an 1 base tax OPM Bahrain, on an off-shore island. Muslim tech group, Shiite among Sunnis, so almost everybody hates me. So much fun ahead.
First I allied myself with Iran and Oman, got royal marriage with Oman, military access from Iraq, and started dropping troops in Basra. I start with 9 troops, 1 transport, and 1 light ship - none of which I can really afford. Interestingly all Sunni Gulf countries with Shiite populations switch to Shiite pretty much right away, so much for my hope of getting piety fast.
Anyway, Shiite or not, as soon as all my troops landed in Basra, it was time to take over Kuwait. Oh and Iraq decided to ally me as well - I double checked, they are Sunni, they totally love my buddies Iran, so sure. Thank you George Bush!
Weirdly Armenia, with no allies, decided to attack Iran. And democratic Iraq decided to overthrow socialist government of Syria. Sure, I'll join both your wars, why not. And Saudis attacked Kuwait I was just sieging - that's awesome, I can assault it with Saudi troops taking all the beating. So I withdrew my infantry, ordered assault, and killed 9000 Saudi infantry without losing one soldier. That's pretty good, since Saudis are the number one risk for me.
There's ton of hilarious wars going on all around me. Sweden tries to force Finland to become a monarchy, Greece holy wars Turkey, Osroene tried to break away from Syria (WTF is Osroene?), China tries to get Taiwan back... OK, that last one makes sense actually.
2015-12-26: Kuwait falls, my base tax quadruples from 1 to 4, or it will once I finish coring that.
I was extremely tempted to just go after Saudi Arabia since they were still at war with UAE over nonexistent Kuwait, and had barely more troops than me with all the loses, but none of my allies would join me as we were technically still at wars against Armenia and Syria together, not to mention Saudis were allied with Somalia and Eritrea so they had over 3x my numbers, not to mention massive fleet. Wait, UAE is at war against the Saudis? Bring it on!
Well, UAE fleet was way too big, so I had to drop my armies in Oman, and march from there. Hopefully Saudis will sink UAE fleet at some point. Oh Saudis are helping me siee Beni Yas by throwing their troops on nearest minefield again? How kind of them, wow!
Meanwhile Iraq conquered Damascus and forced Syria to release Osroene. Osroene has truce with Iraq and Syria, but not with me, so time to get an undefended vassal! Saudis bailed out of UAE war taking Liwa soon, but hopefully they got weakened by all that enough that they won't be bothering me anytime soon.
2018-04-17: Two remaining UAE provinces annexed.
2018-05-09: Osroene is now my vassal (and they had ton of cash to pay for privilege of not getting annexed outright).
Meanwhile Iran was letting Armenian 12k siege its province after another, with its 57k troops just chilling there, WTF? This is a big deal, since Iran won't join any of my offensive wars as long as theirs is going on.
Unfortunately by then almost everybody had some allies. Almost is the key word, since OPM Palestine didn't, and I had still 2 diplo slots free (in 2014 I start with 10 idea groups - early administrative, early military, defensive, offensive, administrative, economic, trade, religious, diplomatic, and espionage - that's apparently standard set for all Arab nations). Israel was kind enough to provide me military access.
And it was so sweet. Israel declared war of reconquest of Judea and helped my siege. Well, here goes 6k Israeli soldiers. This was actually really good - Israel was allied with Turkey, which is far too powerful, but they attacked Palestine without any help, so if I got them vassalized Israel would instantly get into aggressive war against me. A war where Iraq, Iran, and Oman joined me since I was the defender, but nobody joined on Israeli side since it started more than 2 months ago.
Iran finally proved their incompetence and they paid off Armenia some big cash for the war, but no provinces. I think this might be an AI glitch - 36k army stood there in Iraq-e-Ajam whole war. This is a big deal, since if that army is stuck forever Iran will be a totally worthless ally. Oh well, restarting game just in case.
2020-10-24: Israel annexed. Unlike Palestine and Osroene I can core that since it's all coastal, and since they're wrong religion nobody except Lebanon even cares for AE (I got some AE going, but less than I expected).
My diplomacy turned sour at this point - Oman broke our alliance, and Jordan joined Yemen in coalition against me. It would be fine if I could stilly rely on Iraq and Iran as reliable allies, but after I've seen Iranian performance in war against Armenia... I'm not so sure.
Now it was a bit awkward where to go next. Alliance networks were getting thicker with each year, I wasn't strong enough to challenge any of major regional powers, and Iran got heavily into debt to pay off Armenia, so they wouldn't join me offensively. I started fabricating claim on Cyprus (for everybody in Arab culture group I had Nationalism CB) to maybe go that way, but then they got allied with Turkey so that didn't work.
Well, it was time to strike Lebanon, their alliances with Cyprus, Armenia (didn't join), Georgia, and Azerbaijan be damned. Georgia somehow sailed all around the world to sink my only trade ship and attempt to land some troops - only to be sunk by Iraqi navy.
2022-12-13: Lebanon annexed. That included not only Lebanese Sidon and Tarabulus, but also formerly Syrian Aleppo and Hammah. Iraq holds Damascus, and Osroene holds Ar-Raqqah, nothing of Syria remains.
This unfortunately grew coalition againt me to Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, and Turkey. Notable country not on the list - Saudi Arabia. Oh and conveniently there's a clusterfuck going on between Djibouti/Yemen/Sudan/Jordan on one side, Ethiopia/Chad on second, and Somalia/Saudi Arabia/Eritrea on third. So why not join Bahrain/Iraq/Iran/Palestine/Osroene as fourth side? I can't annex anything for 17 months since I'm at 80% OE, but the war will probably take longer than that anyway.
Saudi army was nowhere to be seen, so I was just slowly sieging it through. An 11k rebellion in Lebanon was seriously annoying.
2025-01-19: Saudi Arabia gave me five poor provinces (6 base tax all of them put together) and 400 gold.
Now I got stuck again. As long as coalition against me included Turkey, any war against the coalition was off not really realistic. Egypt was only slightly less doable. Oman was easy target, but it was allied with Iran. I could wait for truce with Saudis to run out, but they were very likely to join the coalition soon too (and that indeed happened pretty as soon as they peaced out their wars). A big part of that was the extremely annoying -50 sabotage reputation penalty to my relations with nearby countries - otherwise I might be able to do some kind of diplomacy. In EU4 even really dumb countries like Taiwan and Seychelles are doing that to me, for no reason whatsoever.
Well, my manpower was so low that I just took that as a sign that it's time for a year or two or peace. So I waited, and waited, and finally I decided that war against Turkey is maybe not such a huge deal, and attacked Oman, with Iran on my side, but Iraq remaining neutral. Iran proved that it can actually move that damn 56k stack if it wants to. War against Turkey was being won by Iran and my vassals, but I didn't really pursue that further.
2028-09-06: Oman vassalized.
And the reason I didn't was because I finally got a much better opening. Yemen - allied with Qatar and Jordan (as well as Sudan) - left coalition against me. I had a chance to strike two coalition members and at once, get a path to Africa, and without involving anybody powerful. It couldn't get any better than that
2030-07-29: Annexed Qatar. I sort of planned that as my first target, but then went for Kuwait instead since neither Saudis not UAE would let me drop my troops, but Iraq would. Better late than never.
2030-12-05: Annexed Jordan.
2031-10-09: Took 4 of 6 Yemeni provinces. My navy was just 3 transports, so I couldn't get Socotra, or Yemeni capital of Aden - and Sudan sieged my capital in Bahrain which I'd need to get back for 100% warscore. Totally not worth it. Oh and Turkey left coalition against me, leaving Saudis as 1-member coalition.
And so it was time to finish off Saudis. Somalia and Eritrea were on their side, and while I'd love to take some of that land, my naval power does not make that a realistic option.
I was tempted to try to get Eritrea in this war, but Red Sea was completely blockaded, and Iranians somehow got there first anyway. No big loss, I'm slowly building a fleet.
2035-02-02: Annexed Saudi Arabia.
And that's it for today. In 21 years I got about as far as I could get in 5 years from a Saudi start, but this way is a lot more fun.
My short term goals are to form Unified Arabia (for which I'll need to annex Palestine - in progress, and conquer Iraq - currently my ally), and to get a foothold in East Africa. Long term goal is to restore the Caliphate - from Fez and Cordoba to Sistan and Samarkand.
The maps tell many stories I didn't have time to cover - North Korea and Japan jointly conquering South Korea, Sweden conquering half of Finland, Tuareg rebels seceding West Egypt to Libya, India getting beaten by Nepal, and so on.
#eu4
Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-20 16:18:31 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2035-2046
Now that I think of it, I might end up unifying Africa as an OPM anyway this campaign, even if not as African OPM. It's just made out of so many countries which look like they'd be vassalizable in a single war. Of course it might be misleading - between province sizes, average base tax per province, and EU4's absolutely dreadful map projection countries which are vassalizable are not necessarily those which seem to be - and game doesn't offer any clue who's vassalizable and who isn't without actually going to war.
I declared war on Cyprus with intention of vassalizing their ally Azerbaijan and hopefully not seeing any fighting with Cyprus actual. Azerbaijan dragged me into some Pakistani-Afghan war, which I pretty much ignored until they offered me white peace out of it, then I conceded defeat to Cyprus due to lack of any fleet on their side. I've heard some rumors that next DLC will have buildable canals in Suez, Kiel, and Panama - that would be amazing.
I got myself into some quick war to finish off Yemen, and Iran decided to rival me out of nowhere and break out alliance. And they also switched from Shiite to Secular. Which is a shame, since they're a very powerful country, were Shiite, and we have 100% nonoverlapping culture group, so there's no CB to fight over anything. In fact I mostly vassalized Azerbaijan to go around Iran to my Caliphate targets in Central Asia, so we can stay best buddies forever. I'd much rather see Iran stay and Iraq go, as I'll need to conquer Iraq at some point in the future. No matter, Libya will do as an ally for now.
Then I got myself into another dead end, with any war triggering alliance chain up to someone very strong. Finally I decided to attack Eritrea, allied with Kenya (who bailed out) and Egypt (still considerably stronger than me at that point). Fortunately Egyptian main stack mostly just sat there in Alexandria, while I was sieging everything and destroying its smaller armies.
In the meantime I attacked Somalia, hoping to vassalize them, but that's 102% warscore - I hate how there's no way to tell without going to war, if it was just base tax sum or such that would at least made some sense. Fortunately one of other Somali wars forced them to spawn Adal, so I could just take both and return cores. The Somalia vassalization plan still mostly worked, except Ethiopia took one of its provinces.
During that war Iraq went Secular for no reason (AI in this mod loves this), and broke our alliance, which made Iran come back to me. Pretty good. Since Iraq had no other allies (does religion change break them all automatically?), I took the opportunity and conquered half of it without much fight.
Now I'm going to be at 128% OE for a year before 4 Egyptian provinces finish coring. I could release Syria and instantly go to 96%, but that would take not only Damascus but also 3 provinces I already have cores for anyway. So annoying. Especially since I think it would do building destruction on change of ownership, so that's -60 mp / province / change of ownership, or up to 480 points going to hell - unless they fixed that nonsense and it only destroys on conquest, not on peaceful transfer. Probably worth checking that out.
Iraq is now of vassalizable size, so In 5 years I'll just go force vassalize them and return their provinces back. Meanwhile I still need to hack myself a land route to East Africa.
#eu4
Post 3 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-21 01:43:41 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2046-2061
I decided to take that one year of high OE. Kenya kept bothering me about an alliance until I finally let them - but if they ever dare to dishonor that, they'll see themselves on my vassal list. Fortunately other than some rebels and a bit of merchant complications, it was not too bad.
Then I waited for my truce with Egypt to run out to start the Great East African War! The war had multiple parts (not all simultaneously):
• Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan - were also allied with Eritrea but they bailed out
• Eritrea - OPM allied with Libya, who conveniently already on my side in another war
• Sudan - allied with Cameroon
• Iraq - I needed to get rid of all that OE
• Kenya - my unfaithful ally who wouldn't join my war, without even 60 day timer trick
This allowed me to move throughout all of East Africa as area of operation, and also let me send my troops as explorers - since Muslim tech group in this mod is bugged in not seeing inland Africa when game starts :-/
I wasn't interested in large scale territory grab - mostly just the coastline of East Africa - which now I control all the way down to Kenya counting my vassals.
I attacked Afghanistan to vassalize their ally Armenia, then conceded defeat to peace out.
Then after truce timers ran out I did another push against Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia (all in coalition now), taking some inconsequential provinces, but hopefully I'll be able to vassalize what's left of Egypt next war.
I attacked Georgia who was allied with South Sudan - both seemed vassalizable. Then Georgia turned out to require 104% warscore, and South Sudan got some provinces from Democratic Republic of Congo in another war before ours ended. I seriously hate this vassalization cliff mechanic.
Anyway, now I'm holding some uncored provinces that are meant to be returned to 3 different countries as soon as I vassalize them. It's extremely unreliable, but what else can I do.
And let's talk bugs:
• Kenya doesn't even want to buy its own fucking core from be, popup says "Nyanza is too far away for Bahrain to make into a core". It is already your fucking core! I reloaded the game to work around this one, but that's just vanilla bug.
• This mod not only tries to emulate particular era - it tries to emulate all of them. This doesn't always work well. For example now everyone has 10 idea groups unlocked, which means 4-5 diplomats per country, half of them have espionage. So everybody is under permanent sow dissent (+50% stability cost, +1 revolt risk, frequent random rebel events even in 0RR provinces - usually small but still annoying), and under permanent sabotage reputation (-50 to relations with your vassals, neighbours etc.)
• "Secular" as state religion in its own religious group is cute, but it doesn't work all that well. For example feeding secular vassals is impossible, since everything is wrong religious group. Secular is also not meant to have any provinces, but it got some by events.
• Not seeing the whole map in 21st century is seriously annoying.
Still pretty good for what essentially is a total conversion.
#eu4
Post 4 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-21 19:16:39 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2061-2072
Diplomatic relations limit is basically just a hint, so I went on vassalization spree across Africa and Caucasus. That resulted in a very sizable coalition against me forming, and one of my transport returning from Cameroon getting sunk with some troops onboard... Oops.
Well, the first major step towards recreating the Caliphate taken - I'm now no longer Bahrain, I'm Unified Arabia. I don't think it did anything other than changing my color on the map.
Since the mod turns all Africa into a bunch of colonial regions, it wanted to spawn a colonial nation in East Africa for me, even though I was connected by unbroken land route with it... Seriously game, stop that, the engine doesn't support colonial regions on same landmass as you. Nothing some mid-game modding can't fix fortunately. The engine generally makes far too many assumptions that you're playing an European nation, otherwise quite a few things break. Unless that's because I change my tag, and it spawned colonial nations before it figured out I'm connected? (Siberia is colonial region, but Russia holds it just fine)
I totally get it that African (as Asian, Australian etc.) colonial regions are there for 19th century gameplay, but they are super annoying in 21st. That's a downside of one mod trying to do it all.
Oh and I ran into that damn bug where I can't give provinces to vassals even though they're cores - I just console commanded my way around it (tag SSU, own 2064, tag UAR; - own 2064 SSU doesn't work as wiki claims it would).
Anyways, I'm restoring the Caliphate really aggressively, I'm now at 8/11 required provinces, the only ones missing are Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Sistan (Afghanistan), and Cordoba (Spain), since vassal-held provinces (Fez and Tunis) count for this just fine.
Everybody East of me seems to be allied with Russia or China or India, so I'm not terribly fond of going there. I don't really know how to get an opening there. I can make claims over Caspian Sea, but I don't think I can core over it (and chain alliance goes to China and Russia).
Half of Africa is in a giant coalition against me. My African possessions are quite disconnected, since I was extremely opportunistic with these conquests - that's just the way I play every single time.
I could just wait for some vassal annexation and for coalition to go away and continue conquering Africa - at least enough to connect my possessions, I don't think there's much point trying to unify it. I could also go for India - it basically fell apart, so there should be some kind of opening there, and going for Sistan and Samarkand from there might be easier than through Iran.
I'm not totally sure, but I think I should be able to restore the Caliphate still in 21st century, or at worst early 22nd.
#eu4
Post 5 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-22 22:36:08 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2072-2080
I continued expanding as aggressively as I could in Africa. I mentioned something about uniting Africa, and I'm uniting it just fine - in a grand coalition against me! I keep getting positive stability events, so I used them to declare some no-CB wars - Jaisalmer in West India is now my vassal... Unfortunately Tajikistan with a total base tax of 6 is somehow too fucking big. Seriously game, WTF? There should be at least some way to know that before the war.
Algeria decided to declare war against me, bringing half the coalition with whom I didn't have a truce with them... Fortunately only half of it. They have about 50% more troops than I have, but about a third of my army is in Central Asia in another war and doesn't really count for this, so if they threw all they've got at me they'd have about 2x advantage - but then a lot of that are remote allies like France who aren't really likely to do much in the war.
The big problem here is not military victory - that's not terribly difficult thanks to AI dumb, the problem is lack of separate peace and really fucking stupid coalition warscore scaling, or lack thereof, making this war completely pointless from my point of view. If everything goes perfectly I'll be able to tick up the warscore to 100% and maybe vassalize Libya, but more likely than not it will take forever and I won't have anything useful to show for it. And the fucking game won't even tell me if someone is vassalizable mid-war unless I occupy their capital if I can't negotiate with them directly! It's such a pile of crap. Seriously - coalition losing should at least be forced to pay you massive reparation coming from each member's treasury and annual loan.
I really want to go to war with Iran, their Russian allies be damned, to get the coastline so I can get those 2 central Asian provinces I need for the Caliphate (in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan).
On the war map it's just me, my vassals, and my only allies Pakistan as green vs half of anti-me coalition, France, and 3 Central Asian minors in red.
#eu4
Post 6 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-25 18:20:49 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2080-2092
I defeated grand coalition against me and all I got for it was one lousy province. Before that war I was seriously pondering reenabling coalitions in my minimod (with AE scaling fixed), but now that I see how broken warscore scaling still is, not going to happen.
In my more interesting war I got Kyrgyzstan as a vassal, which dragged me straight into a war against my former allies Pakistan (white peaced right away) and Kazakhstan (lost 3 provinces to Kyrgyzstan).
Anyway, my truce with Iran just expired, so it was time for another war. What's that? Allied with Russia, India, and Sudan. Bring it on! Well, India and Sudan bailed on them, so I was outnumbered only 2:1, not 3:1. Fortunately my goal was not conquering all Russia - just taking a bunch of Iranian provinces. Russians even sent some troops to help their allies, but Iranian just repeated their great strategy of "keep all troops in the capital while the rest of the country burns", so it was pretty one-sided in the end.
I still wanted to expand a bit in Africa, so I started a series of small wars designed not to bring the entire coalition into the conflict - against Rwanda (annexed), Sudan (almost annexed), Morocco (Libya vassalized, 3 provinces taken), Seychelles (annexed), Comoros (annexed), Equatorial Guinea (annexed). It didn't matter much what the war was about - as long as the primary target wasn't coalition member it worked for me, and if a new opening happened in the middle of one war, that meant another war joined the list.
All that let me solidify my position in North and Central Africa, but fall a bit short of connecting it all together. Since all my truces expired I'd like to attack Iran now - except they're allied with Russia, and in a coalition against me together with pretty much all of Africa. One of the two is fine, both, probably too much. I'm technically allied with India (what's left of it, less than half the geographical area of India), but there's no chance of them helping me since they're in their own war.
I could also start a separate war with Russia (by let's say attacking their another ally Turkey), and a separate war with Iran and the coalition. It's a safe bet that none of coalition members will bother to transport their troops all the way to Iran, and Russia won't help in war it's not in. Probably the best plan.
If I continue playing the way I do - opportunistically expanding and building my power base with just very vague geographical constraint, I'm pretty certain to miss my 21st century caliphate target, but I'll probably hit early 22nd. Even then it's going to be a bit of stretch to call it a "restored Caliphate" with about half of Muslim territory out of my control, but then Ottoman Sultan called himself a Caliph with even less.
I could rush for three cities. In fact if I win war against Iran fast, Sistan is just over the border. Portugal doesn't like Spain, so they'd probably let me land my troops there, and take Cordoba. Samarkand is justa too deep for any legitimate CB, but then I can just take it without any good excuse.
My OE is pretty consistently between 100% and 200%. So far I had far fewer nasty events than I'd get in vanilla with this.
#eu4
Post 7 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-27 02:39:41 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21st Century Shia Caliphate: 2092-2101
My target of choice Iran was in the coalition and allied with Russia, so I expected extremely difficult fight, then I realized they're also allied with Spain - so I avoided both the coalition and the Russians, taking 3 Iranian coastal provinces. I still had to concede defeat to the Spanish (allied with Portugal, Ireland, Nigeria, and some minors), since they sunk half my fleet, and I'd prefer if they didn't sink the other half. My diplomats immediately proceeded to fabricating some claims on Afghanistan and Pakistan - who in order immediately proceeded to joining the grand coalition against me, oh well.
To solidify my position in North Africa I attacked Morocco (who foolishly left the grand coalition) in order to vassalize them - Berber tradition provinces are otherwise extremely difficult to core, and I had a bunch of those. Other than that I decided to take it slow for a few years since I was already over 200% OE, and I'd need to get a lot more provinces to restore the Caliphate and connect my lands (not mandatory but useful as I won't have naval supremacy in this campaign ever).
And in the middle of my small war agaist Morocco, Russia decided to attack me. Normally I have the largest army in the world pretty quickly, in this game however I'm only distant 5th:
• Russia - 403k - force limit 342
• USA - 334k - force limit 199
• China - 311k - force limit 191
• Germany - 270k - force limit 196
• United Arabia - 201k (and many of them in Africa) - force limit 123
Russians decided to CB conquest of Hormoz. That's way down there in Persian Gulf. And they don't even have a claim on it (they had claims to some border provinces in Caucasus). WTF was that about, some special mission CB? India as expected betrayed our alliance - allies in EU4 are just extremely unreliable like that, and I didn't even really feel like punishing them for it.
Oh, what's that? Uzbekistan joins the war on Russian side? Here comes 9th Caliphate target city of Samarkand. I'd normally conquer a land route to the target, but since they insist, I'll take it, even if it's totally uncorable.
Russian army was just epicly incompetent, so I got to +40 warscore from battles in no time, and took most of Caucasus area without any resistance. I decided not to bother with taking any territory from Russia, and just made them give back 8 cores to Ukraine, Poland, Finland, and Japan, and got some petty cash (I early over 200/month, so all cash is petty). It won't make a huge difference to them, but I have no reason to let them get away without some kind of punishment.
Well, two targets to go. Afghanistan is in the grand coalition, so the big question is - do I care? And the only answer is that to be honest, at this point, I don't. Maybe if Russia or China joined the coalition I would, but some African minors? Now technically they have more troops than me, but 257k vs 419k troops is still better odds than I faced fighting Russia, and they're mostly in Africa, scattered in tiny stacks with no coordination (AI has huge trouble coordinating stacks of even single country, let alone a coalition that big - just look at the fun map how many countries hate me).
I mostly avoided fights in Africa - just harassed them enough to make sure they won't take any of my provinces, and focused on attacking Pakistan and Afghanistan. I ended up only taking Sistan, and 2/3 of Pakistani coast.
That brings me to 10/11 cities necessary to restore the Caliphate. The last one is Cordoba. Spanish army isn't particularly strong, but their navy sure is.
No matter - I can simply bribe France or someone else to give me military access, land all my troops before the war starts, and then keep my navy in port for duration of the war. The victory is near.
#eu4
So much yellow
Fun war
Me and my vassals
Post 8 - Originally published on Google+ on 2014-04-30 00:29:11 UTC
EU4 campaign: 21nd century Shia Caliphate: 2101-2108
There was only one thing left to do, but I needed to leave a lot of boats and armies in Africa and Asia to keep order - I could only spare 100k for Europe and 50k for Spain's and Portugal's 3 North-West African provinces.
I got alliances with Turkmenistan (to almost have land access to my lands in Central Asia) and Navarra (dropped 100k troops there). Transporting troops with just 25 transports took forever, then war was pretty quick.
I have a huge number of modifiers to my army strength - 100 tradition, 100% piety, +100 prestige, 0 WE, the kind of generals 100 tradition gets, relevant military ideas etc., so throughout the entire campaign any kind of "equal" battle was basically a one sided massacre, even though the entire world has basically the same tech level.
It's pretty much the opposite on sea, Portuguese naval fleet first crushed my naval fleet in Persian Gulf, and then when I repaired that, got some war ships, and tried to attack them at 2:1 ratio, I barely won losing every single trade ship and heavily damaging my war ships and transports.
Anyway, I crushed Spain's and Portugal's armies, and while I was sieging they attacked Navarra and forced them to cancel our alliance. Oh well, not a huge loss. It didn't take that much time to get them to cede Granada, Cordoba to me, and all 3 African provinces to my vassal Morocco.
Afterwards it took two years to get 100% of my country Muslim, and to get 100 diplo points (100 admin and mil I already had) necessary to reestablish the Caliphate.
And that's it for the campaign. If I were to continue, Spain and Britain joined the coalition (Britain because provinces I took are so close to Gibraltar), so until they change their mind any attack on the coalition is a horrible idea. Fortunately coalition membership is very fluid, and there always seem to be non-coalition targets.
The best strategy for country stability would be to annex all vassals (Morocco and Kyrgyzstan are being annexed already), and conquer territories necessary to connect everything together. That would require wars against Algeria, Mauretania , Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Portugal - sort of showing how ridiculously disconnected my realm became.
Anyway, campaign was extremely successful. From 1 base tax Shiite island to reestablished Caliphate and 5th greatest world power in just 94 years is a pretty good record. I had huge fun early game when I was extremely weak and desperately expanding to make my survival more likely and protecting myself from regional superpowers like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
Late game was not that good - all the forced speed bumps forced me to expand very slowly, and slow expansion means no challenge. If I could just ignore coalitions, OE, coring etc. and just go for it I'd probably have some really fun wars against Russia, Turkey, all of Africa at once etc., instead of wasting time on 1 base tax islands just because they were not in a coalition.
Anyway, it's time to try another game!
#eu4
Political map
My lands, vassals, and allies
Shiites
Coalition against me
No comments:
Post a Comment