taw's blog: EU4 Institutional Ethiopia AAR

Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-16 23:34:05 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 01: 1444-1454

Campaign goals are:
• enjoy Coptic mechanics (Fun and Balance Holy Site system turned off as they sort of duplicate each other)
• enjoy institutions, maybe even without actually using development spam exploit
• enjoy other new features like disinheritance, Great Power abuse etc.
• remove kebab

The first order of business is that we have 6/5/6 righteous (+1 legitimacy) zealot (+1% missionary strength) with 1/2/1 heir, so straight for disinherit button.

It all worked fine, as I ended up with 3/5/4 a few years later.

Well, I start with one holy site, so first order of business was to go after second one. Coptic Alodia stood on a way and rivaled me, so I dispatched them on the way, getting some delicious PP, then I went after Shia Makuria, which didn't even have feudalism somehow.

It was important than neither would piss off Mamluks too much, due to different culture/religion. All those lands up there were 1/1/1 high autonomy crap, but that gave me second Coptic holy sites - obviously first two blessings being coring cost discount, and missionary strenght.

As soon as I got into war with Adal, taking advantage of temporary mil tech superiority, 13k and 14k rebel stacks popped up to mine 12k (my force limit is 18k, but I can't really get that many troops). Like, seriously Paradox, rebel stack sizes are ridiculous pile of bullshit - and of course they had tech 4, way ahead of most of Africa - and better generals.

I was allied with:
• Kaffa (but they rivalled me, so now they're gone)
• Medri Bahri (still ongoing)
• Yemen (still ongoing)
• Warsangali (who suicided themselves into Adal in separate war while I was fighting them, and they're gone)

Mamluks have 34k troops to mine 14k (and even that was only ramping up to fight rebels). What I'd really like is to just ally them until I get all East Africa, but that's unlikely to happen.

Adal, Ajuuran, and Hedjaz are now best buddies, and all rivalled me, but I could only rival Ajuuran back - at least I'm at 100 pp thanks to all the eclipsing.

I got a small gold mine from Kaffa, so that's something.

Renaissance started in Milan. Not sure how I'm going to get it - usually Cyprus gets it, then Mamluks get it from Cyprus (as they're friendly), so it might reach me within sensible time frame. Of course I could also just exploit the development spam.

Then again, I'm sort of tempted to dev spam my gold mine anyway.

Alternatively maybe Ottomans (of whom I've never heard - it's fairly ridiculous how narrow my map knowledge is, and it's a while until I'll be able to steal maps) will go to war with the Mamluks, and then I can get some of their land for myself - but that would kill any friendly institution spread.

#eu4

Starting situation

Missionary strategy - Alodia convince me not to take Beja by having active Coptic missionary

Ethiopia strong, sort of. As long as Mamluks don't attack me I should be fine.

Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-17 08:48:25 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 02: 1454-1476

I decided to not spam development to go around institutions, so I got:

• sword tech 5 at 2% penalty
• paper tech 5 at 3% penalty
• bird tech 5 at 4% penalty
• sword tech 6 was at 12% penalty (and one year ahead of time as I was overflowing on mana)
• bird tech 6 at 13% penalty
• paper tech 6 at 17% penalty

and institutions are just barely reaching Mamluk coast (due date - another century), but it wasn't via Cyprus as I expected.

I got called into Hedjaz + Adal + Ajuuraan + Maheran + Mogadishu war against Yemen. That was nice as I could wreck their armies, and let rebels rampage in Adal, but I couldn't cross to Arabia to help in the main Hedjaz vs Yemen war.

Also - OMG, they added losses in war to the war dialog, how awesome is that. I got 1 shitty province in all that, and 15 year truce with Adal. This is some serious bullshit - Adal lost basically nothing in the war, and I gained basically nothing, so why the fuck is truce so long? Just because Yemen fucked Hedjaz?

At least rebels managed to break Warsangali out of Adal, and I Deus Vulted it right away. ANd then Ajuuraan, who got separate-peaced from Yemen-Hedjaz war, so it was a shorter truce - and I got their vassal Mogadishu for free.

My mission pool was 3x attack Mamluks, so that was useless. I want to be friendly with them, at least until I get institutions.

Amazingly I managed to become a Great Power, just borderline - but then Ottomans wrecked the Mamluks, making them fell below me, so my Great Power status is now safe.

After that Yemen broke our alliance (like WTF is wrong with AI in this patch, it wasn't that bad before), so I allied Mamluks (much happier to do that after they got a good wrecking by Ottomans), Yemen's rivals Oman and Shammar, and down South Mombasa, Kilwa, and Maravi.

To be honest, I'm not really sure why I'd need that many allies. The idea is mostly to expand without coalitions, but then I can't really expand South anyway, being allied to nearly everybody there.

Weirdly my ruler became craven, even through he's been at war all the time. He's old now, so I'll get a somewhat weaker ruler soon.

I've been trying to steal some maps from everyone, which is my favourite espionage feature.

By the way I'm not as convinced by the "befriend Mamluks to get institutions" strategy - I'd probably be better off just attacking the Mamluks and getting institutions from European minor islands like Cyprus, Venice (Crete), Knights etc.

#eu4

I couldn't get any land in this (except that one province between me and Ajuuraan), but I could at least wreck Adal's troops to ensure rebel victory. Of course if AI wasn't a total retard, Hedjaz would have negotiated separate peace with me, then go after Yemen, but AI never does that.

Our power is just as great as all those countries we've never heard of.

Yemen is most likely next target, but straits are going to be a problem.

Post 3 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-17 18:55:09 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 03: 1476-1487

It's surprisingly hard to setup burgers to have any significant influence with all provinces being 1/1/1/s, as they won't take anything below 10 dev unless it's center of trade. At least Swahili coast has some high dev provinces.

I took sword and paper tech 7 ahead of time at 24% penalty. I took exploration as second group and picked Native Coexistence Policy (-100% uprising chance) instead of the usual Native Trading Policy (+20 settler increase) - which might actually be a legit way to colonize Africa.

Infuriatingly Mamluks allied my enemy Yemen, closing my expansion route on North or East, and showing again how bad my decision to be friendly to Mamluks has been. Yemen then even allied Ottomans, which was some serious clusterfuck.

I don't see any easy way out of being locked from expanding North. Rivaling Mamluks and somehow getting on Ottoman's good side might actually be the easiest way to get the institutions.

Ottomans embraced rennaissance when it was at 28% penalty, but it will probably reach 50% before I get it at current rate - I should probably cut the Ottoman middleman and just take the coast of Egypt for myself.

#eu4

Post 4 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-18 00:55:09 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 04: 1487-1501

My whole plan wasn't getting anywhere, so I just rivalred Mamluks and allied Qara Qoyunlu instead - I'd have preferred Ottomans of course, but you can't always have what you want.

I got sword level 8 at 38%, bird mana 7 at 42% - I really need that Mediterranean coast for institutions.

So I attacked Mamluks and (non-cobeligerent) Yemen. Their fleets were easy to wipe out - I had tons of lights and got 5 heavies from burger estate. With that, I invaded Yemen, and kicked them out of the war for some money and alliance breaking.

Unfortunately I had to keep a bit over 1/3 of my army on Central Africa rebel duty - it had 10 separate rebellions of about 10k each, one per province.

Meanwhile Mamluks got helped by enormous pretender rebel stack.

Qara Qoyunlu tried to separate war the Mamluks (fuckers wouldn't join my war even if I tried to promise them land), but lost.

Then Ottomans plus Tunis tried to attack the Mamluks - with Tunisian army getting wrecked by the pretenders.

I basically shadowed pretender rebels, got Cairo after they left it, and just managed to get the warscore to cut Mamluks in 3 parts.

Renaissance finally spread up to Damascus, but presumably Ottomans will just take that, and it won't spread much further.

And colonialism just spawned, and I'm not getting any of it.

As far as I can tell I spent 1074 mana so far on institution penalties - I could have spent about 2500 on development (as I have +20% or worse penalties due to arid / dessert / etc. literally everywhere) to spawn renaissance and avoid all that.

It's basically a total no-brainer to go for development spam unless you're in Europe.

#eu4

Mamluks and Yemen invade me. My army split between Yemen and Uganda region.

Trying to avoid pretender rebels. Can't take a single province in spite of 54% warscore because forts.

Even though Mamluks managed to defeat Qara Qoyunlu, I doubt they'll recover from Ottoman/Tunis attack just after I cut them in three. Yemen used to be their ally, but I forced them to break it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they joined the partitions.

Post 5 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-18 05:03:26 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 05: 1501-1511

I had huge stack of Mamlukean separatists spawn in Cairo, fortunately huge stack of Mamlukean pretender rebels managed to crush them on their way from one part of Mamluk land to another.

I was about to wait 30 more years for renaissance to come to my first province (via friendly Venetian Crete) so I spammed development there to get it from 50% to 100% - it went from 1/1/1 to 4/10/10.

Of course that meant 10 years wait to spread to second province, as it's much less effective than spamming it directly in the capital. It was all so wrong it was even in wrong state.

Funj spawned in empty lands as Coptic - so I had to force vassalize them instead of deus vulting - but then they flipped to Sunni, and as freshly vassalized they disliked me too much to take force religion. So annoying.

I got renaissance to spread from Tarrana to Alexandria, but it was still only 8.8% of required 10%. So more dev spamming to make Alexandria bigger, two loans, and 1000 paid to get renaissance.

It's totally unplayable to even try relying on natural spread. The only way to get institutions is to spam away.

And then I've noticed that this spamming actually got Alexandria halfway to colonialism - unlike you know, actually colonizing for a few fucking decades which does absolutely nothing to get colonization institution - nope, I need to wait for them to spread from Portugal.

Overall my impression is that the whole institution system has been a miserable failure in its current state. It's just impossible to play by natural spread unless you start in Europe, it's development spamming or nothing.

#eu4

Post 6 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-19 00:37:03 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 06: 1511-1521

I spawned colonialism in Alexandria, as obviously actually having colonies is not enough for any progress. I think having colonies in New World would work, but it will take very long time to reach there.

I diplovassalized OPM in Madagascar, made them Coptic, then got the whole island in spite of somewhat poor CBs costing me some bird mana.

The best part about it is that I discovered that now rebel dialog also shows vassal rebellions - so I knew where to wait and for how long. And vassals no longer mindlessly increase autonomy everywhere like they used to in previous patches.

After that my silly ally Sofala got me involved in their silly war against African minors three times their army size - but I still wanted to go to war with the Mamluks/Yemen, so I called favours from Qara Qoyunlu and Oman, even thought I had no armies to fight Mamluks.

South African war was too painful, so I sieged one fort of enemy's leaders, and got quick cash out of it, and gtfo. Yemen separate peaced thanks to Qara Qoyunlu and Oman wrecking them plus my blockade, so I got some gold from there too.

After that I asked Ottomans for military access, which allowed Qara Qoyunlu and Oman to cross to Mamluk territory as well.

With some good timing I even got my allies to fight Mamluk separatists for me. To get institutions I had to reduce autonomy over there, which meant rebellions much bigger than usual, but in both cases I got someone else to do rebel fighting.

I got up to Jerusalem, and it all outraged Ottomans, Yemen, and Mamluks so much they might coalition me. Since war is going to happen anyway, I rivalled Ottomans.

There aren't any serious naval fights to be done in Indian Ocean, so I sold all my heavies (5 from estate, 2 captured) to various countries to save on upkeep. Between loot and ship sales, I got enough money to embrace colonialism.

Somehow game decided that I'm number 1 greatest power, but realistically I'd say I'm 4th behind Ottomans, France, and Ming. The whole system is a bit silly - for example Austria as HRE is nowhere near the list.

My gold is still -300, but it should get better soon and it's 30 years until next institution, which I should probably also try spawning in Egypt.

Ottomans even have ridiculously strong allies - Muscovy, Tunis, Persia, Ryazan, Yemen, and Morocco. I just managed to ally Poland, plus some really minor powers.

#eu4

Best thing about rebels is when someone else fights them for you

Reached Jerusalem before Ottomans. Now that Turkish is back in Arab culture group, that actually generates serious AE - in many previous patches they would not give a shit.

Post 7 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-20 22:37:24 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 07: 1521-1537

I didn't have much money, but I still decided to build up my army to maybe convince Ottomans that I'm not a good target. So far it's been working.

I condottierred half my army to Mali, but I couldn't even reach their war even if I wanted. I normally wouldn't, but I gave it a try - and sent them to siege my ally Kanem Bornu, who didn't give a shit about this at all. I wanted to send them further, but it was terra incognita, and I couldn't swap my general for my conquistador because condottieri can't be reassigned. Or split. Oh well.

I got what remained of Sofala as my vassal, and expanded them a bit. I had to recall condottieri from Mali (I thought they'd do it themselves, as they were unhappy about them doing nothing, and their war was long over), but as soon as that war ended, I rented them to Portugal instead. Somehow Portugal figured out I'm abusing this feature.

I disinherited my 1/3/5 heir, who seems average until you consider that sword mana is the least useful mana - and I got event for a girl girl with shitty stats. Like, no. I ended up with random 3/3/5 Bohemian ruler via marriage with elective Poland.

Oman got into war with Yemen without involving Ottomans, so I gladly joined - getting one useless and disconnected province for my effort, even though I'm totally sure Oman had a lot of warscore left over, or could have given me at least something more connected (it was one of provinces I marked as of strategic interest, but under assumption I'd also get those connected to my territory first).

After that I still had a potential coalition of Mamluks, Yemen, and Ottomans - fortunately for me Mamluks broke their alliance with Yemen just as my truce with them was about to expire, so I wiped them off the map. Ottomans might attack me, but if it's a regular war not a coalition war, I'll be able to handle it, even if it means loans and mercs.

Ottomans are still a good deal stronger than me, but the longer they wait, the worse our inevitable war will be for them. Even Ottomans are not strong enough to fight all of Africa at once, and that's where things are going.

Third idea group I took was influence, so no surprises there.

I'm working on diplovassalizing Kanem Bornu, Chokwe, and Ashanti, and using them to conquer the rest of African interior.
#eu4

Post 8 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-21 05:38:43 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 08: 1537-1545

When I loaded the game I got hit by infinite distance between borders bug, which I thought must have been fixed like two years ago, but nope - it broke trade power transfers and messed with everything. Then I reload the same save, and it worked just fine. Oh well.

By the way I established a New World colony (one province in Brazil node), and that does absolutely fucking nothing to help me get colonialism (in newly acquired provinces that is, most of my country has it because I embraced it.

Persia allied with Ottomans and others attacked my ally Qara Qoyunlu, so I did the only reasonable thing I told them I'm busy.

By the way, it wasn't totally clear before, but now it seems that bullshit rebel doomstacks are totally 100% attrition-proof, sitting in provinces two times beyond their supply limit.

I expanded my vassals, basically building up for great fight with the Ottomans - and with two extra slots I arranged my relationships like:

• ally Poland (with Lithuania) - should keep Ottomans busy
• ally Austria (HRE) - should keep Ottomans busy
• ally Morocco (also allied to Ottomans - idea is that they're most likely to be attackers, and will keep Tunis busy)
• ally Oman (should keep Yemen/Persia busy for a while at least)
• ally Pope - every middle-sized country helps
• vassals Kanem Bornu (Central Africa), Sofala (South Africa), Chokwe (Kongo region), Ashanti (West Africa)
• 1 free slot

Ottomans are allied with Morocco, Tunis, Yemen, Persia, and Muscovy, so it's a big list. The whole alliance network on my side is arranged to delay everyone:

• Ottomans should be kept busy by Poland/Lithuania, Austria, and maybe even Pope
• Yemen strait will be easily blockaded, Oman should delay them at least
• Tunis will be delayed by castle in Benghazi, Morrocco should side with me and they'd be about evenly matched - maybe Pope will land there too
• approach to Egypt is blocked by castles in Ma'an (mountains), Sinai (highlands), and Cairo (well, river), so any direct
• Persia and Muscovy will hopefully be too far away to bother sending troops - but in worst case Poland/Lithuania should delay Muscovy, and Oman should delay Persia
• so in case of getting attacked, this should let me get my troops from deep Africa, which is like maybe even half a year - then I should be able to separately knock Yemen and Tunis out of the war, and that leaves me with only Ottomans with their army twice the size of mine, plus fairly distant allays

We'll see if it ever happens.
#eu4

Post 9 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-21 09:13:24 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 09: 1545-1559

Ottomans tried unconventional strategy of supporting my vassals who were still unhappy about me showing them true Coptic religion.

I got a coalition after all - Kongo, Yana, Soyo (all in Kongo region, and barely over the line), Ottomans, and Yemen.

And then Ottomans attacked as a coalition - the only upside was that it broke their support for my vassals' independence.

As I hoped for, my allies kept Ottomans and their friend busy - Persia unfortunately reached Egypt, and started sieging it down. Persia also had fairly big fleet I did not consider.

First order of business was unfortunately removing Kongo region minors from the war - which sadly meant fully sieging them, as coalitions have no separate peace - I sold all my heavies, and half my lights were still on wrong side of Africa blockading Kongo.

After that I managed to reach Egypt just in time to lift Persian siege.

A lot of fighting later - they could not put one step on my territory, and yet the bullshit game decided the war is -60% against me, somehow.

The first country to fall out of the war was Morocco. I barely got Tunis out.

The problem was really that they all believes that they're winning, even though they were getting absolutely nowhere.

Then Oman fell on my side. But everybody was exhausted as hell, so Muscovy and Persia white peaced. I'm actually surprised my remaining allies (Austria, Poland, Pope) were willing to keep going.

Amazingly I used zero mercs all that time, and Ottomans had 61k and zero manpower - I didn't even know you could hire that many. There was no way in hell they'd get anywhere. They completely lost. I literally halved army maintenance because I won the war.

Of course game was retarded and had warscore between -50% and -65% depending on its mood. I couldn't even get any battles, as they knew just as well they lost and stopped sending any more troops to me.

Austria, Pope, and Poland eventually gave up, but I really didn't need them as the war was won.

Oh and then Ottomans started sending me stability breaking peace offers. Like this game is maximum level retarded. By the way I don't think there's any way to turn this dumb mechanic off - at least I managed to disable call for peace.

And speaking of retarded, in new patch apparently AI will never go below -1 willingness to peace out a coalition war, ignoring all math to the contrary, which basically means coalition leader will never white peace out at positive warscore.

You literally can't use length of war, or war exhaustion, or anything like that, to win coalition war.

Finally they had decency to send some troops over so I could wreck them (without even waiting for full funding), as I was seriously considering white peacing the whole nonsense with console command.

But they only did one battle (which they lost), then they just stood there doing nothing.

Fuck that shit, tag switch to white peace it is, and that's the last coalition war in this patch, as I'm modding this out. It would literally last until end of the game this way.

#eu4

War cancelled due to cheaty bullshit bugs. I'm seriously tempted to just reload the previous save, as the whole thing was ridiculous.

This kind of war would be fun if it was regular alliance war, no coalition bullshit.

My allies doing most of the fighting.

Well, that's not going as well as I thought - they managed to lose enough battles to get warscore to -40% and ticking -25% on top of it.

Post 10 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-23 10:25:13 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 10: 1545-1560

So rolling back to previous save, with coalitions modded out, as the whole coalition war was a huge pile of bullshit. If Ottomans want to start a war, they'll have to do it the old fashioned way.

This time I diplovassalized Cyprus.

Ottomans supported independence of my vassals just as before.

I planned to attack Yemen to get Ottomans into a war without all their allies (and cancel that independence support), but Oman attacked Hormuz/Yemen first, so that plan failed. I eventually got two awkwardly located provinces for the effort, which is always nice.

Later Persia attacked Oman as well, but thanks to my blockade and Qara Qoyunlu not liking them, they couldn't even reach it. They could reach my Suez forts via Ottomans, and they even tried after hiring some condottieri, but that was silly, so they left.

Unfortunately later Yemen attacked Qara Qoyunlu, and gave Persia way to Oman.

And then it happened - three of my vassals decided to be whiny bitches and declared joint independence war with Ottoman support. We'll see how it goes for them.

Meanwhile, religious Leagues started, and my allies Austria and Poland picked opposing sides - but with capital outside Europe I can't get involved anyway.

#eu4

Good luck walking on water to wargoal of Hormuz

That's first independence war I ever had in EU4. This ticking warscore is guaranteed to go my way.

Post 11 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-23 16:19:14 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 11: 1560-1580

It was going to be a fun war - my vassals declared on me because Ottomans supported them, so numbers were good for them, but Ottomans have no way in hell to get anywhere close to them.

All my allies autojoined me, but nobody joined non-cobeligerent Ottomans, so we had 2.5:1 advantage or so. By the way there should be a way for defender to declare attackers cobeligerent (even if I probably wouldn't use it here).

The most annoying thing about the rebellion was that I was now a good deal over my land force limit, which cost me like 100/year. Second annoying thing was rebels constantly spawning in all my vassals' lands.

Of course there was no reason not to exploit that war as much as possible, so even with Ottomans as non-cobeligerent I got 5 provinces out of it, including 4th Coptic holy site in Antioch. Only Yerevan to go.

On the upside, losing war of independence reset all those vassals liberty desire from events all the way to -50%, so they don't mind I forced them to accept Jesus. On the downside it also reset annexation timer, and Sofala was really asking for it.

I really needed some extra merchants to capture African trade, so I colonized Caribbean, and conquered a good chunk of Mexico. That unfortunately meant big chunk of my army was now babysitting colonies and wasn't available for any serious fighting.

I force vassalized Kongo as it had a lot of cores, and I wanted to be done with that part of Africa.

I used a feature to make Yemen break alliance with Ottomans - which was actually silly, as it works for 10 years, but creates 10 years truce, so in theory they could really themselves right away - but they didn't, instead they were only allied with Baluchistan.

Due to bug I couldn't call Oman into this war, as they thought I'd be calling them into multiple wars (including those silly wars in Kongo region) - but Oman didn't waste any time and attacked Yemen anyway.

Unfortunately Persia attacked Oman same time, bringing surprise 70k troops, and forcing me to peace out Yemen for just coastline and Mecca, instead of going for 100%. Coastline lets me travel to Oman and Egypt freely, and Mecca is free missionary and prestige.
#eu4

Ottomans have been fairly successful at preventing my expansion in Middle East or North Africa

Colonial empire means 2 more merchants, which means huge increase in income. About 10% of my total income comes from having those extra merchants. Also I spammed mercantilism button quite hard, that's a lot of money too.

Post 12 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-24 10:46:35 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 12: 1580-1591

The long term struggle against the Ottomans is quite fun - they expand their power base tho the North, block me with their allies on most sides, tried to support my rebellious vassals, and even try to screw (Qara Qoyunlu) or flip (Yemen) my previous allies.

Meanwhile I try to expand my power base, and to screw their allies (Yemen has been quite successful).

Well, first I had the Persia-Oman war to finish - and unfortunately Ottomans decided to join that one as well. War between two of us where neither is war leader? Well.

It showed very clearly how hard to defend the newly acquired coastline is, and how useless non-coastal forts are against enemy doomstacks.

I also missed how Ottomans got next sword tech two years ahead of time, and I was surprised how their troops were fighting way better than I thought they ought to.

By the way AI is spamming artillery really hard - my "doomstack" (half my armies were in colonies or Africa) was relatively budget build of 31 inf 8 cav 8 art, their army invading my territory was 14 inf 3 cav 28 art.

I've been happily charging my troops into theirs, even if that resulted in their "victory" - counting battles of Jerusalem and Gaza, both of which I "lost" losses were:

• me - 11.6k inf, 6.1k cav, 1.6k art - 19.3k men total
• them - 15.1k inf, 2.7k cav, 17.9k art - 35.7k men total

That's 1.85:1 K:D ration, but it's even more lopsided looking at recruitment cost (reinforcement are some big fraction of that) - 316.5 gold on my side vs 755.5 on theirs for 2.39:1 gold K:D ratio.

After a while Ottomans ran out of manpower, got 60k mercs, and with warscore ticking against them decided to separate white peace - afterwards Persia decided to white peace as well. Weirdly Yemen got one province in their separate war with Oman during this mess.

I spent the next few years integrating vassals.

England got one of Aztec minors, which is aesthetically annoying, but seriously I'll be much better off by colonizing elsewhere and getting a few more free merchants.

#eu4

Colored wasteland is great option

Ottoman idea of "victory" is losing 11k artillery

Another great Ottoman "victory". Winning or losing, their manpower was melting far faster than mine, and I didn't use a single merc yet this campaign.

English Mexico is sure annoying, but I can't do anything about it as long as religious leagues are ongoing in Europe. Once leagues end one way or the other, European powers will stop being two big blocks and will go back to their usual clusterfuck, in which I might find a good opening

Post 13 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-25 07:01:05 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 13: 1591-1604

I was just minding my own business, finishing off Mexico, setting up new vassals in West Africa, getting more land off Yemen, and building up regimental camps everywhere, when world war started:

• Commonwealth, with Bohemia, Brunswick, Burgundy, Ethiopia, Sweden, Pope, plus random dependents
• Russia, with Aragon, Castile, England, Nuremberg, Portugal, Savoy, plus random dependents

There's surprising lack of Ottomans and Austria on either side.

Russians followed Ottoman army doctrine, and sent 11/3/25 doomstack to Poland, which got wrecked quite easily by more balanced forces on our side. And from that point it only went downhill for them.

I seriously couldn't help much in this war, other than by seizing 5 colonies, trying to be generally obnoxious outside Europe, and discovering just how bad my obsolete light ships are at fighting Castile's full war fleet.

The war was slowly ending, Castile gave up with war reparations, and then Ottomans decided to press that damn intervene in war button, joining Russia's side - but their war enthusiasm started very low due to length of war, as that issue war never properly fixed.

I got one colonial province from Portuguese Florida, and one from English Mexico in the deal (so total of 7), and Ottomans did exactly nothing whatsoever.

Sadly seizing colonies is still really awkward as they made colonies beyond limit cost ridiculously much - fortunately I could time that, and it was only semi-obscene.

After the war I continued expanding my new West African vassals - Hausa and Jenne.

I also tried to conquer my way to a few more CNs, but my targets had some secret allies I didn't see on the map.

Global trade appeared in Aragon, but it seems to be happily spreading all over the world with no issues. I'll probably adapt it by 1610 or so.

I wonder if there's an easy way to count how many times I've been at war with the Ottomans, neither of us even declaring directly on the other, or seizing much. It's been a surprisingly fun great power struggle.

Austria managed to make Catholic official religion of HRE with nobody to challenge them. Not like that's helping - HRE is basically all heretic

The English started a colony next to Kongo, which fairly clearly shows what's going to be the next step.
#eu4

This is what Catholic victory in HRE looks like. Pope is trying to purge Provence. I even recall popup about France going Catholic, as for a while even they have been heretics.

Here's a surprisingly big war. So far I've been expanding in various peripheral directions, leaving Ottomans mostly undisturbed.

African holdings. That route to Kongo will suffer Englishmen infestation soon.

I attacked Creek, who have been allied with Miami, and I clicked Miami as cobeligerents without thinking - turns out they had a ton of secret allies. Not a big deal - it's fairly normal for first war to mostly uncover terra incognita.

Post 14 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-28 14:12:47 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 14: 1604-1612

In theory I have CBs from exploration and expansion, but they seem to be broken. Expansion CB is still based on tech groups and continents, which is huge bullshit. Exploration CB is based on "primitives" (which means anybody in 4 native american tech groups with zero institutions).

It takes zero time for primitives to get all institutions by their special decision - it's seriously broken - based on Portuguese Florida a daisy chain of natives reaching all the way to Canada reformed off each other for free.

And as East African I'll never be able to get exploration CBs, as there's no westernization - even if I were the most institutionally and technologically advanced country in the world.

So I did the right thing and fixed the CBs:

• expansion now requires 2 institution difference, and target being in Asia/Africa
• exploration can target any new world natives as long as you're at least 2 institutions ahead and they're still pagan

That matches old rules reasonably well.

I got into war with Persia over Delhi, but that basically meant I did the blockading while Delhi did the fighting - in the end Persia got some territory from Sind, but main war white peaced.

I got into a much better one over Norwegian CN of Vinland, as their overlords Denmark had weak allies, and they were in wars with Pope and Sweden already.

And as the last thing I finished off Yemen and backstabbed the now useless Oman by attacking their ally Hormuz.

On the downside, European infestation of Africa is progressing - now England, Portugal, and Castile all have colonies in my rightful lands. I'll probably do something about it as soon as I finish removing Muslims from Africa.

#eu4

New World. Only 2/5 CNs are big enough for free merchants, but it's a matter of ten years to get other 3. Global trade gives +1, then having any colony in India/Indonesia (I have random island) gives another +1 by decision, so I don't exactly have a merchant shortage.

Old World. Arabia and West Africa are getting conquered, it might be a good idea to expand in North Africa a bit. Tunis keeps slave raiding Egypt, and that's fairly obnoxious.
I don't see realistic prospects of wrecking Ottomans or Persia anytime soon.

Post 15 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-30 20:11:01 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 15: 1612-1623

I got into a series of war in North America to get all 5 CNs to extra merchant size.

Then I got into some more wars to continue incorporating West Africa.

All the while crushing random rebellions.

It's not like I couldn't fight the Ottomans - I couldn't fight them while having my armies busy on far corners of the world.

I got myself into 5 year queen regency, but that's totally fine nowadays.

But at some point it was necessary to face Ottomans' coalition - Persia, Tunis, England, and Castile (now with Aragon/Naples incorporated).

The weakest link in the chain was Tunis. They were allied with Ottomans and Morocco, and Morocco was only allied to them and France. Turns out that Morocco broke their alliance with France for some reason (probably based on mutual hatred for Castile) - that's easy way to get to war with them, with Tunis as non-cobeligerent.

Tunis got forced to cancel their alliance with Ottomans, and Morocco got nicely dismantled thanks to new expansion CB. Tunis will probably reestablish their alliance with the Ottomans eventually, but it's worth a try, and getting 2/3 of Morocco in one war isn't too bad. The war was horribly bloody, as they had total freedom of movement while I had to keep my armies split between Morocco and Tunis parts in highly attricious territory, but by this point manpower is just a number.

I got myself vassal Trebizond, and I plan to use them against Georgia and Qara Qoyunlu, to get 5th Coptic holy site. This would also get me into conflict with Persia without involving the Ottomans, and if I manage to get them to cancel alliance, I don't think they'd reestablish it - they feel like natural rivals if anything.

Mainly due to European colonies far too much of my trade just leaks out - Castile got 15% in Zanzibar node, which is my main moneymaker. I really want to kick them all out, but both England and Castile allied Ottomans, so they're difficult to deal with.

#eu4

New Ethiopia can't core that western blob except one province at a time, so they have permanent OE. Borders between colonial regions in North America are just weird overall.

It's not that far from Antioch to Trebizond, so if I ever get into war with Ottomans as cobeligerents, I might conquer myself a route. Then again, both of us have been mostly avoiding open conflict.

Post 16 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-31 00:56:32 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 16: 1623-1633

I wanted to do just a bit more cleanup, but Ottomans had a different idea, and declared war on Austria. Austria should be a powerful ally as emperor, but HRE is a silly place with only two electors left - Bavaria and Salzburg - both OPMs - everybody else being non-Catholic, and Austria not being able to give itself electorship (this should definitely be possible, even if at cost of a lot of imperial authority or whatever).

Amazingly that broke Ottoman alliance with England, and they didn't call Castile into their war, so it was just Ottomans and Persia.

As who counts as great power was totally silly, their side had 2 (Ottomans and Persia), and ours just 1 (Ethiopia), with neither Austria nor England counting as one - so Commonwealth did great power intervention.

In theory it should be extremely one-sided, but I still needed to attack Tunis / Morocco, it would have been silly to let them get their alliance with Ottomans back - so I ended up splitting my forces, and fighting everybody simultaneously.

Ottomans and Persia of course mostly disregarded European part of the war and ganged up against me. Also fort ZoCs did whatever they felt like again, letting everybody into my country ignoring my forts - in theory ZoC fails should benefit me half the time, in practice they make it impossible to make any plans, as they'll just do whatever they want. My forts on Palestinian coast supposed to stop Ottomans did totally nothing.

I discovered that massed light ships got nerfed real hard, so maybe I'll need to get some heavy ships. Or maybe not, I can crush Persia whenever I like, Tunis and Morocco are on their way out of history, and in any war against Ottomans I'll generally have a lot of allies.

I also discovered that Persia has ridiculous stack of military bonuses, so taking them on at roughly even numbers is a bad idea - not like I had such option, Ottomans ignored my ZoCs and send their whole army to Arabia, by the time they gave up most of it was in enemy hands.

The war was so bloody I had to hire some mercs - end there were nearly 100k rebels left roaming around West Africa. Then again, Ottomans hit zero manpower long before me, and have been fighting with mostly merc armies.

In the end, I got most of Morocco, and a third of Tunis in my separate war. In the main war Ottomans lost 3 provinces in Europe.

After I deal with rebels, I'll need to come back to my plan to push my vassal Trebizond's CBs against Georgia, which is allied with Persia as well (and fairly big Shirvan). That way there's Coptic holy site and I might beat Persia enough to make them break their alliance with Ottomans.

Ottoman diplomatic situation has been deteriorating every decade. They allied all Muslims around me, and took full advantage of HRE leagues to make a ton of Christian allies as well. With Muslims getting removed from the map and leagues not coming back it will be difficult for them to get those alliances back.

I also started rearranging forts - noncoastal forts are just not worth it, that -2 bonus is just huge, and AI spams enough artillery to always have +5 against any size fort. It's also good to build them in mountains, but there are only so many coastal mountains.

#eu4

Post 17 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-10-31 22:59:18 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 17: 1633-1649

Tunis indeed got their alliance with Ottomans back almost immediately, so it was a good thing I started that war right away.

As soon as I was done defending Austria from Ottomans, Commonwealth called me into their war against Russia and England.

Fortunately the war against Russia and friends was rather one-sided, so I decided to go for Georgia/Shirvan/Persia anyway. Unfortunately Persia got a ton of warscore beating my allies Delhi and Sind, so I couldn't convince them to break their alliance with Ottomans, and I had to just annex Georgia into Trebizond instead.

After that I got the rest of Qara Qoyunlu, including the final Coptic holy site, but it still needs to be converted before I get the bonus.

I didn't get any break, as Ottomans attacked Austria again as soon as their truce expired.

I soon discovered that:
• even adding a few heavy ships to my light ship fleet didn't make much difference against Ottoman galley spam
• my vassal Trebizond deleted almost all mountain forts in territory of Georgia and Qara Qoyunlu which were key to my strategy against Ottomans

That left huge chunk of my army stranded in Trebizond, and of course Persia attacked me right away. Well, that left only one real option, and that was eliminating Tunis from it.

After that the best plan I could come up with was to maximize the ratio of beating dealt to beating received.

It was going on reasonably well, but then Bohemia and Commonwealth attacked Austria, Austria white peaced Ottomans, and I threw them under the bus. The silly war between Austria and Bohemia ended up in a white peace eventually.

Freed from Ottoman wars, I finished off Morocco, punched Tunis a bit more, and sent most of my troops to India.

Amazingly annex and release of Vijayanagar gave them my technology (but not my institutions), so they were happily wrecking Indians.

Next step Indonesia. (or I'll stay in India until Vijayanagar's OE goes to zero)

#eu4

Nice Coptic Vijayanagar, disregard 164% OE. Setting up strong vassals in India is one way to deal with Persia - my allies Delhi and Sind are of little use with it due to nerfed Indian institutions, and resulting shitty sword tech (13 and 14 vs Persia's and mine 20).

Under previous rules, Persia's Muslim tech and Delhi/Sind's Indian tech would differ by maybe 1 or 2 techs by this point, not this.

Denying Ottomans any allies in North Africa, one plot of clay at a time.
I managed to stop two Ottoman attacks on Austria, but the big goal of breaking Ottoman-Persian alliance failed. (breaking Ottoman-Castile alliance would have been nice too)

I told my West Indies colony to attack Scottish Colombia and forgot about it - they took one province in the war.

No idea why I can tell them to start colonial wars, but none of the other 4 CNs - it seems to be all of them neighbour enemy CNs.

Post 18 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-11 22:16:53 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 18: 1649-1656

It's been a while since I last played it, but there are still Ottomans to wreck.

Trebizond converted final Coptic holy site, so one goal is achieved.

I diplovassalized Ragusa, and found first ever use for strengthen government, as I just needed teensy bit of extra legitimacy to diplovassalize Genoa as well.

After that I decided to destroy HRE. There were only two eligible electors, and both were allied with Savoy who held Genoa's core. I made them both Coptic, and I thought that would instantly dismantle HRE, but it turns out I need to wait for current emperor to die. No big deal.

Dialog says "hereditary rule", but as far as I can tell that's a bug.

This might seem counterproductive, as strong Austria could be a counter-weight to Ottomans, but in practice I can't ally everyone in Europe, and Commonwealth and France are far better allies.

The funny thing is that Austria wasn't even involved in this. The only significant power involved was England, who lost a bunch of colonies in Africa and New World for their trouble.

Manufactories spawned and spread widely in a few years without any cheese, as I was sitting on hoards of money, so I built a ton of them.

My Indian army wrecked a lot of rebels, and Vijayanagar is still over 100% overextended, but at least they're converting the land quickly. I'd like to setup a few more vassals over there, but not entirely sure whom.
#eu4

Post 19 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-14 07:34:16 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 19: 1656-1665

I updated game to 1.19 beta. This changes the map, so states and forts are all messed up and needed manual tweaking.

First problem, is that it ramped up liberty desire from development to ridiculous levels, so I needed to lower that to 40% of vanilla levels to get something sensible (previously I had it at 60% of vanilla levels). I'm sort of tempted to lower it to zero, as there's already liberty desire from relative strength.

Much bigger problem is that it completely removes exploration/expansion CBs (which were horribly bugged in 1.18), replacing them with completely shitty overseas fabrication, nerfing two best idea groups in the game.

I did an observe game of vanilla, and that was the most miserable colonization I've ever seen. So instead I replaced the whole damn thing with redone CBs which let you attack anybody you want if you're 7 techs ahead - in colonial regions for exploration, outside colonial regions for expansion. That goes a bit further than vanilla's CBs, but it should be just fine. Tech different used instead of institution difference as it's more stable.

I established two more vassals in India.

I tried to start some rebellion in Ottomans, but contrary to what tooltip implied, that got totally nowhere. Ottomans managed to wreck Austria, undoing some of my great work, then attacked Hungary, defended by just Commonwealth.

Well, it was a good opportunity to destroy what was left of Tunis while Ottomans were distracted. Sadly my vassal Trebizond destroyed all the forts I paid for, so I couldn't block Ottoman troops from going to Crimea - otherwise Commonwealth would be able to occupy it in their separate war.

I got most of Tunis, and a few provinces from non-cobeligerent Ottomans - more for PP than beacuse that land was of much use. That got me to 120% OE, so next two years were basically chasing rebels all over the place.

I ran into new 1.19 bug where occupying any province (not even a fort) breaks diploannexation.

There was also the issue with new fort system. Basically forts only block movement frome one state with forts to another state with forts, so if you only build forts in border states, they block absolutely nothing - and indeed I had to chase Tunis army all over Africa, as they passed through like 5 forts on the way.

I guess building first line of high level forts and second line of cheapest castle would be enough, but they'll probably change the rules again, as now it's basically one fort per state, not one fort per border state as it seems at first.

Ottoman-Commonwealth war is still ongoing, but Ottomans are definitely losing. I tried to sink their navy just before ending my war, but they escaped without any losses twice, so I gave up on that.

Next step is to abuse the fact that Persia guaranteed some Indian minors to get them into separate war and break their alliance with Ottomans. Those bastards should be each other's natural enemies, not bffs.

And a minor thing - Commonwealth went Absolute Monarchy when I wasnt't looking.

#eu4

I got some land from Ottomans to refuel PP, and Tunis is no longer a threat. If I manage to break Persia-Ottoman alliance, they'll be eliminated as a serious threat.

Vijayanagar, Gujarat, Chanda are good vassals covering about half of India - and since they were annexed and released (Chanda actually released from a different annexation, it had more cores somehow) they massively outtech Indians.
I want to setup a few more, and maybe some in South-East Asia later.

Post 20 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-19 09:47:35 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 20: 1665-1669

Apparently they're reversing 1.19 beta fort rules back to 1.18. The new rules make forts not terribly useful, but at least they're simple and predictable, so I prefer that to 1.18 where nobody had any idea if ZoCs will hold or not.

With Ottoman allies being whittled down to Burgundy, Persia, and 2-province Tunis, it was time to break Persian-Ottoman alliance by attacking Sind.

Persia fought fairly well, fortunately all Indians on their side were garbage. I got Persia to break their alliance with Ottomans, but they still seem to love each other, so I'm not so sure it will do much.

After that I setup Sind as 4th Indian Coptic vassal.

I should probably stop lollygagging and go after Ottomans sometime soon.

#eu4

Post 21 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-24 10:17:56 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 21: 1669-1684

I updated to new beta which reverts fort change, as that was the only way to fix infuriating beta bug where diploannexation was instantly cancelled if rebels took any province, even nonfort one.

Unfortunately the fucking bug is still there, so I had to pause and unsiege by console to work around it - and now all my forts which were relocated to work with the new system are in wrong places. Oh well.

I was just planning to wait out truce with Persia, then strike them before they reestablish their alliance with the Ottomans. However, in a surprising turn of events, Persia allied Ottoman rival Commonwealth, definitely removing them from Ottoman alliance. Well, that went better than expected.

I did small fight against new world OPM, but otherwise did long wait for Ottoman truce to expire.

Unfortunately Pope decided to call me into their offensive war against Savoy, which obviously turned into great power clusterfuck, with France on our side, and England, Austria, Burgundy, and even non-allied Castile intervening on theirs.

Ottomans meanwhile attacked Hungary and Commonwealth, which Hungary was winning, but ended up white peaced when Bohemia backstabbed them in a second war.

I took diplomatic as next idea group (mostly for reduced province warscore cost far down the line), so I had 4th diplomat and not much to do with them, so I decided to try supporting rebels.

And Serbian separatists supported by me popped up just as our truce expired. War to support Serbians it is then! I had France on my side, but Commonwealth couldn't help due to truce.

First order of business was of course wiping out Tunis off the map. Weirdly Ottomans sent all their stacks to my territory, which somehow got 100k of the bastards stackwiped, and I'm not even sure why it went so well.

I tried to get naval suppremacy, but it was fairly close, and in the end their galley spam was more effective than my light ship spam, and I had to rebuild the whole Mediterranean fleet.

Somehow Even with massive heavy shipbuilding program, I could never destroy Ottoman galley fleet - that's definitely a change from how this game used to work.

Obviously I instantly ran into ZoC bullshit bugs, when Ottoman army walked through my fort in Trebizond, which by all logic should have stopped them. And forts on Greek islands blocked movement between Greek mainland provinces. And general bullshit like that.

Fortunately Ottomans got half their army wiped out and the other half was busy fighting France and Pope (who both proved to be extremely incompetent), I got Anatolia fairly easily, and their lapses in blockade let my armies cross to Balkans, from which Ottomans never recovered.

Ottomans had to release Serbia which happily became my vassal, and I also got Constantinople and enough provinces to block their movement across staits. Well, assuming no ZoC bugs, which is a big assumption.

The losses made Ottomans fall from 2nd to 5th great power, behind Commonwealth, France, and Castile. Ottomans still have twice the force limit of France somehow.

This campaign needs some kind of end goal, so let's make it removing Ottomans from great power list.

#eu4

My global empire (Australia / New Zealand CN only half fits)

And it was so fun to play without ZoC bugs for a while. Trebizond should be blocking movement, but it doesn't.

Of about 60 light and 10 heavy ships I had 28+2 were left, and Ottomans could have blocked me easily (well, unless I wanted to walk around Black Sea, they couldn't do anything about that) - but they kept moving their fleet around, so I sneaked all my armies through.

French 90k doomstack just wanders around. Paris got liberated when Burgundy got tired and agreed to white peaced. Pope was forced to cancel our alliance, but it's OK, I got Bohemia instead.

Best addition to EU4, historical army losses. AI goes all doomstack and usually has higher losses to attrition than to battles.

Of course most of that is mercs, as AI will always loan and merc up.

Ship losses. I lost more ships this war than for rest of campaign, as I didn't realize galleys got buffed massively, and ended up fighting much stronger Ottoman navy. If I knew about that, I'd have galley spammed too, or just avoided contesting them.

Post 22 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-25 11:00:50 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 22: 1684-1698

Right away Poland got me into silly war against Pomerania, their ally Saxe-Lauenberg, their guarantor Brandenburg, and HRE Austria. All our enemies had 8 provinces between them, and Commonwealth is 3rd greatest power behind me and (very narrowly) France, but why have 10:1 war when you can have 20:1 war, right?

I thought I'd use it to put HRE out of its misery by just sieging Austria's capital, but apparently removing all electors breaks "Dismantle HRE" button.

Ottomans stopped being a valid rival for me - which by the way is silly, now that the game has Great Power system, any Great Power should be allowed to rival any other Great Power.

A series of fun wars happened, mostly overlapping:

I supported independence of New Netherlands, getting into war with Netherlands and their guarantor Burgundy - by the way why guarantees work against subjects again? New Netherlands got their independence and became United States. They they got mission to conquer half my New World colonies and broke our alliance. Even sillies was how they decided to ally Netherlands back.

France got fancy CBs, and together with Commonwealth attacked Burgundy, who was allied with the Ottomans - Ottomans had a lot of difficulty moving troops between their now disconnected lands, and in the end Burgundy lost half their country (one province even to Gelre), and Ottomans even lost two provinces to Commonwealth in the process.

Me and France both supported independence of Castilian Brazil. That was painful, as Castile wouldn't acknowledge their loss until we 100%-ed them. At least I got 4 provinces in Granada for my effort.

Commonwealth got into imperialist war with Livonian Order, which pulled Russia, Castile, and Portugal into it. So far they've been losing slightly.

Ming finally got all institutions, moving them from 6th to 2nd place in great power rankings, and Ottomans lost a few provinces. On the other hand, Castile's loss of wrecked really hard by loss of most of their New World colonies (and some home provinces), so Ottomans are still 5th.

My truces with Ottomans and United States are about to expire - and Ottomans have never been weaker, with their only remaining ally Burgundy being freshly wrecked and really insignificant now.

In the upcoming Ottoman war I'll have imperialism CB, which gives 25% province cost discount - and I'm two diplomatic ideas away from having 20% more discount, so I might be able to dismember them quite well.

#eu4

Castile doesn't know they lost Brazil CN.

USA! Not even Trump can make those claims reality.

Come on, surrender already.

Post 23 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-25 20:46:02 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 23: 1698-1701

Oh one small thing I forgot to add, my wife got into affair with my advisor like it's CK2, and I've chosen option to execute them, but they both survived somehow. Not sure what's going on.

And something is really broken with game's music player - it keeps choosing shitty song by some sad guy signing like someone's cutting his balls.

"Threaten War" is sweet, I got Genoa from OPM to 5 provinces this way over time.

The great war of Commonwealth vs rest of the world ended in white peace.

I did the cleanup of USA and Dutch Canadian holdings, with just 30k stack and colonial militia.

Ottomans decided to attack Hungary and Bohemia, which wasn't the worst idea, except for timing it just half a year before our truce was about to expire. They still had second biggest army in the world, but fortunately they were busy, with territory divided into far too many pieces, so I moved with overwhelming force before they could react.

First thing in the war was ZoC bug which made me reload - apparently having one fort in Constantinople and another in Biga is still not enough to block Ottomans from moving across straits. This is seriously retarded. Even beta rules which allowed far too much movement would have blocked that, as would any kind of common sense.

I squeezed burgers for some bird mana, so they hate me, but I had 20% discount on province cost on top of 25% discount from imperialism - this meant I took over USA, and Dutch CN in Canada; and against Ottomans I setup Bulgaria, divided Greece between Bulgaria and Serbia (one minor island unfortunately was occupied by Hungary, so I couldn't get that), and I still have warscore left over for some Anatolian coast.

That made Ottomans fall to 8th place, and if Russia ever figures out how manufactories work, they'll fall to 9th, even without my intervention. Then again, they have 3rd highest force limit after me and Ming, so maybe that ranking is not terribly reliable.

And Ottomans are still at war with Hungary and Bohemia - which will be hard for them to win as I wiped out their whole army and navy. Hopefully Hungary actually takes some land instead of letting the bastards get away with white peace or reparations.

Enlightenment amazingly started in Brazil - and apparently seats of parliament get spread of it, so switching to constitutional monarchy makes it pretty easy to get.

The downside was that I needed to manually assign 64 seats of parliament - and even though parliament acts as just another estate (needs state core, not controlled by estate; and literally disables nobility estate), interface is completely different.

As far as I can tell all constitutional monarchies will have enlightenment in 15 years. And that's about half the world - EU4 made it ridiculously easy to change government types, I still remember back when it cost like 2 to 4 stability.

#eu4

Here's reloaded game, that Ottoman stack managed to cross to Asia Minor. It wouldn't actually be that much of a problem, but was just too annoyed by bullshit ZoC bugs.

Overwhelming force is overwhelming

Ottomans are much less impressive now, and I removed as much coastline as I could, so their force limit is now only as big as Scotland's.

Dutch incorporated into our colonial empire.

Post 24 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-11-28 14:07:35 UTC

Institutional Ethiopia: Part 24: 1701-1711

I sent Hungary some cash as they were fighting Ottomans, and then I sent some more to Ottoman and Castilian rebels, even though I didn't expect much. Bohemia separate peaced taking 4 provinces, and leaving Hungary alone.

My biggest contribution was cancelling military access Bohemia and Hungary had to my land, as due to new bullshit rules that magically gives Ottomans access to. Sadly my vassal Bulgaria gave Ottomans such indirect access, but Ottomans can't get to Bulgaria via my straits, so it's OK. They should seriously revert this stupid rule.

France was fighting Gelre and two OPMs and called me, Commonwealth, and Pope for good measure into the war, as it just couldn't do it.

England got PU over Russia, which was challenged by Commonwealth.

At this point I need to ask myself a question - is the game trolling me? Ottomans were really really close to falling off Great Power rankings twice:

• Delhi has just 4 dev less than them (579 vs 575), so if Bohemia/Hungary just took one more province
• Russia would top them if they got next institution

Anyway, there's a war to fight - and letting England have that PU would be just silly.

The war led to discovery that English heavies can wreck my heavies even when I have 2:1 numerical advantage. Something really weird changed about the new naval combat rules recently. I really hate it not because it's different but because I understood old rules, and I have no idea whatsoever how new ones work.

Hilariously Persia did a full 180, rivalled Ottomans, allied me instead, and attacked Ottomans for two Persian culture group provinces. I broke Ottoman alliance with Burgundy, but they allied Castile instead. I don't think it's possible to keep them completely without allies, but I'll do my best.

Sadly Ottomans got fucking conditional military access to my lands because Commonwealth accepted Persian call to arms (while massively war exhausted fighting England and Russia). I so fucking hate conditional military access rules.

Scotland decided to take advantage of the war over Russia, and they striked England as well, together with Portugal. That's rather ambitious, but it's not like they'll have better opportunity.

Even Malacca attacked England and got two mediocre colonial provinces for the trouble.

We won the war against England, and I assumed as a reward Russia will become independent, but instead they got PU by Commonwealth. Well, not exactly what I had in mind.

Persia took two provinces, kicking Ottomans off the Great Powers list. They might just get back if England gets wrecked hard enough by Scotland, but then again Persia also broke Ottoman-Castile alliance, so they'd get destroyed by our next war.

Enlightenment spreads nicely, so I'll get it in a few years if i just wait.

Anyway, as I said before, that's it! Campaign was total success. Except for the part where Paradox fixed fort system, then broke it again.

#eu4

It is done! My allies (Commonwealth and France) benefited a lot from our alliance - unlike early allies whom I threw under the bus at first opportunity.
Persia and Delhi were also my allies at some times.