Team Brigantes - Hibernia Police

[Pro]

Hibernia, this weather-beaten island at the edge of the world is a place of constant conflict. Divided between tiny clans and petty kingdoms, this island is forever the victims of their wars to dominate one another. It is a place where life is brutal, ugly, and usually short.

Or rather, Hibernia was all those things. But no longer. From this day forward no Hibernian will make war on any other Hibernian. No Hibernian will ever again lose their life in these petty squabbles. I will build a throne for Hibernia. I will ascend to that throne. And from it I will ensure the safety of all the people of this wretched island.

---

This is going to be my attempt at a self-imposed achievement I've challenged myself to: Form Hibernia with no wars being fought on the island. Not just no wars being by me, or involving me, but no wars at all being fought between any two countries in Hibernia. It might take a restart or two, with only two diplomatic relations to work with and a lot of countries to protect. Once we're past the first few years though there should be no risk of needing restarts though, and I got past that early path in one of my two short test games.

 

[Pro]

I know that it is tempting to prey on the weak and vulnerable. I must therefore be reactive, and reach out to offer friendship to those countries that find themselves isolated and alone. My experience tells me that a ruler is far more likely to pick on a neighbor with no allies. If he has allies to back him up against a victim who is alone then he'll be all the more eager. But my experience also tells me that rulers hesitate to go to war with those with allies to call on, even when he has allies of his own at his back. If I can make the right friendships to keep things peaceful I can then hopefully create a more lasting system of protection that I can extend to the rest of the island.

Beyond that we must look to the west. Warless and innocent I still need these lands to fulfill my vision for Hibernian unity. I must be careful that I don't bring our wars and conflicts into these innocent lands. I long for these idyllic lands, and I have decided that it is on the western shore that I will build my throne.

---

In both my test games alliances formed in the way shown by the green lines below. That would make the red and yellow dots particularly vulnerable, although in my experience the yellow dot often ends up alone but unmolested. I don't think there are any hard or fast rules though, in my conquest game it was the rightmost of the northern two countries that got ganged up on. I actually didn't know that there was a country there until I started looking into this challenge. The first time around those provinces were depopulated before I ever looked up there. The goal here is obviously to keep that from happening. Once its clear whos the odd ones out I'll ally with them and start improving relations so I can get them to agree to become tributaries. Once they are it'll free up my relations slots to protect other countries.

I want my capital to be at Gangania, in the middle of the screenshot below. It is both coastal, on a plain and near a river. The only things it lacks are being near a major river or being farmland, but there's none of either on this island. It's also very well placed colonizationwise. Since you need 8 pops to colonize from a territory it can cost a lot to move in enough pops to a province to start colonizing from there. So you want to colonize as many territories from the same place as possible. Since you can colonize by sea up to two sea zones away Gangania can colonize almost all the coastal territories. The only ones it can't reach is the very southernmost one and the two northernmost ones. So in terms of colonization my first goal is to colonize my way towards Gangania and move my capital there.

I spent my starting stability changing my laws. I choose the extra commerce income from barter over the faster centralization from mint. With all the colonization I'm going to be doing it's possible that I should have valued the monthly civilization value increase more than I did. But I'm going to be hurting very badly for money this game.

My starting gods are terrible but I'm not going to change them before my stability gets a bit of time to recover.

In terms of ideas I went with hospitium (oratory, +33% improve opinion maximum) in order to get people to agree to become my tributaries, and haruspex (religious, +10 subject loyalty) to keep them as tributaries. That means no bonus for matching idea groups, but that's a small sacrifice to make.

I was very lucky with the researchers, getting 4 with traits that give a chance of bonus inventions. One of them was hiding as the war chief, make sure to always check your offices when looking for researchers. Since I have basically no research points coming in at all and won't get any more by promotion since I'll move a bunch of pops out of my capital for colonization they are going to be my main source of innovations.

 

[Pro]

By early march the following alliances had been made:

Darinia has allied itself with all three of its neighbors. I have no idea how it manages to get the diplomatic relations to do that. That makes those four countries safe as none of them can declare war on any of the other without fighting one against two. That makes Vinicnia (furthest northwest corner) and Caucia (green, just south of the quadruple alliance) the vulnerable countries here. So I ally with them and start improving relations to turn them into tributaries. At least there are only two vulnerable countries here rather than the 3 I expected.

Further south the two countries directly east of me have made an alliance, but the ones south west of me have not (yet). I really hope they do. The AI is perfectly willing to go to war one on one and I can't protect them yet.

Later:
October 1st, 452AUC, two years into the game, I reach the site of my future capital. I don't have the political power to move my capital yet, and although I'm almost there I think I'd rather use it to change laws as soon as I reach 30 centralization.

In terms of colonization I am at this point going to focus on getting high population provinces along the coast. As you can see I'm really hurting for money to fund my colonial project.

My southern neighbors still haven't made an alliance, which worries me. But both are in mercantile stance at least, which soothes me a little bit. I'm still really eager to finish making the northern allies into tributaries as soon as possible so I can prevent these to from having a go at each other.

 

[Pro]

The first crisis of the game happens in may of 454, as Eblania mobilizes its levies. A look at the diplomatic interface shows that they have claims on my ally to their south and the planning your destruction modifier on diplomatic interactions. They're clearly planning for war; Is this the end of the campaign?

I see no other option but to invite both my allies into a defensive league. It will put me over my relations limit (a league of 3 with two diplomatic relations), but I see no other option.

Another question is will the AI reconsider its decision to go to war if that means facing three countries instead of two? Or is the AIs decision already made and final? I'm somewhat tempted to save and reload after making the defensive league in case that triggers a new round of diplomatic calculation. In a way that could be seen as something of an exploit, but if the AI doesn't reconsider its diplomatic situation until you reload is that any less arbitrary and gamey?

In the end I decided to do what I could to save my campaign. I waited until the month had ticked over and when Eblania had neither declared war or disbanded its levies I saved and restarted the game. What followed was a tense few weeks until around the 20th of June, possibly exactly a month after its mobilization and my creation of a defensive league, the levies disband. I have no idea if the AI looks at its diplomatic situation on a monthly basis and it would have made the same decision eventually whether I reloaded or not, or if reloading is what made it eventually decide that it was going to bite over more than it could chew. But whatever the case the crisis was weathered, and the game didn't end quite yet.

Aftermath:
One unwelcome bit of news is that creating the defensive league seems to have cancelled my opinion improving action with those countries. A sad waste of 50 gold. So I was left looking at how I could potentially salvage the situation.

Here's the diplomatic situation with one of my new league members:

I need normally 101 to overcome their standard reluctance. At this point there's also 8 "potential strength". That shows up sometimes and I don't understand why. Each 2 points of positive opinion contributes 1 to their acceptance, so it looks like even 200 opinion wouldn't be enough. But watch this:

Raising my levies gives +25 from "current strength". Giving a gift at this point would take me to 106, which would be enough were it not for that current strength modifier. I'm going to wait for a few months to see if it disappears again. Otherwise I'll have to waste the 25 gold to raise opinion by a few more points.

In the end the modifier doesn't go away and in June 456, more than 2 years after the crisis, I finally have enough gold to be able to afford to resume raising the relation without sacrificing my colonization. Arguably I should have paused the colonization to continue the diplomacy. I think they'll pay more in tribute than a lot of territories. But more than any 5? Even when you count potential exports? I don't know.

 

[Pro]

In March of 457 AUC I got a very appropriate event:

A chance to become friends with one of the chiefs I'm trying to make my tributary. Unfortunately that's two months before improving opinion would finish, so it really only saved me the 5.5 gold for a gift.

So I sent the gift to my other ally, waited for the chance to send another diplomat, raised my levies and:

After 6 and a half years of work I finally have my first tributaries. And just as big a miracle is that neither of my southern neighbors, despite still not being allied to each other, have not gone to war yet. I quickly ask both of them to be my allies and they both agree. Part of my haste is because I don't want them to ruin things when they're finally looking like everything's going to work out. But a bigger part is that Eblania still has a claim on my new tributary, and by making my allies into tributaries I removed the defensive league that was deterring them before.

Now I just have to see how quickly I can save up the 50 gold to up relations with my new allies. My current tributaries give about 0.35 gold per month. I think I've decided that colonizing is more profitable if you get a surplus you can sell, but making tributaries is more profitable otherwise. I close to commenting that I have a wood surplus that I can't find a buyer for. Just when I was about to type it I realized that it's in my capital region and I have offers for it disabled. I'm essentially paying something like 0.3 gold per month for the ability to not build any ships 25% more quickly.

I also have a new factor to consider, loyalty:

A tributary with loyalty less than 30 will have the possibility of ending their tribute. I obviously don't want that so I have to change my diplomatic stance to domineering for +10 loyalty and +20 subject opinion. Each point of subject opinion is worth 0.25 loyalty, but I don't expect that to matter here because I think their opinion would be stuck at 20 (eventually) anyway. You see I found out something new today. If you increase the maximum you can improve someone's opinion (say by making them a tributary) while you're improving their opinion you'll keep going to the new limit. So I'm going to improve their opinion by another 133 and then it'll decay by 1 every year. So they'll have an opinion of me of 200 for more than a century.

I'm worried about the power relative to overlord though. I think its because we have equally many levies. you need 40 non-slave correct culture pops for 5 unit levies and I have 36 so I will soon outnumber them. I really hope its not based on the power of all tributaries though. Then I'm going to really struggle.

Unfortunately leaving neutral diplomatic stance will mean I'll be over my relation limit, but I don't expect it to be a huge problem.

 

[Pro]

Defeat comes not with a bang but with a whimper:

Two sets of troops appear and just as suddenly they were fighting. I think I got complacent. I assumed that once I had the allianceless countries under my aegis then it would be fine, but I think I underestimated the AIs willingness to reexamine its diplomatic situation. Two former allies broke their alliance and went to war with each other and I never checked that the alliance was still there. I messed up bad. Since I had assumed that this would happen early on if it happened at all I assumed I would just try again, but I've played far too long for that now. I'm just going to keep playing, and recognize that I failed to keep my eye on the ball.

I wonder if it was one of the countries losing a province (presumably to the population stealing event) that triggered it? Or was it because Darinia had so many alliances?

In july 463 I finally got my first breakthrough. I think you get one per 40 years per researcher with the relevant trait, so waiting 13 years isn't all that bad even with 4 of them. I took the first innovation on the path towards great theater. I think you always want to get the unique city buildings first. And I want the increased number of diplomatic relationships on the way there. First game of Imperator where I have ever cared about diplomatic slots.

A couple of months later I finished improving the opinion of my allies. With my stronger levies to show off I didn't have any trouble signing them up as tributaries. One had gotten a negative opinion modifier from an event, but that just meant that I needed to throw in a gift on top of having them join my defensive league to get their opinion high enough. Next I wanted to sign alliances with my eastern neighbors. Their alliance is still strong, as is that of the remaining three members of Darinia's quadruple alliance. I checked all of them in the aftermath of the disaster, obviously.

However I hit a snag. I found out that the -loyalty for strength relative to overlord doesn't seem to be based on strength of all subjects, but when I dismissed my levies it went to -40, possibly because I'm seen as week when not able to raise my levies. Unfortunately that put my new subjects just under 30 loyalty and one declared independence almost immediately. That means I can go for my eastern neighbors next, since if I make one a tributary it'll end their alliance, and the tributary may attack their now unprotected former ally. Instead I'm going to ally one member of the now triple alliance as well as my brief tributary.

A big problem with bringing my unruly subject back into the fold is going to be that ending a tributary relationship gives the overlord a claim on the former subject's capital. That's going to mean a permanent -25 opinion of me due to me having a CB on them. As far as I know there's no way to give up a claim. I'll see what I can do though. It's possible that I can befriend their chief for the necessary opinion.

 

[Pro]

Luckily I was able to befriend the wayward chief and bring him back into the fold. I have learned my lesson. This time I'm not dismissing my levies until I've raised his opinion high enough, using the increased limit to improving opinion with subject, that the -40 penalty for strength relative to overlord won't matter. This was a horrible waste of gold all in all though. I think between befriending him and raising the opinion again I lost something like 75 gold.

Then the question is what happens next. I'm actually starting to think I'm approaching the end game. I can only realistically ally with two or three countries at the same time due to the penalties to accept alliances when you have many allies or you are over your diplomatic relations limit. But if I raise my relations with everyone I only need to ally with them for a few months at most to get them to become tributaries. I'm running out of good territories to colonize. Everything that remains is only 2 pops and won't give me any exportable surplus. I think I'm going to save up 100 gold and start improving relations with the remaining four countries (there are five independent countries other than me left, but I'm already improving relations with one)

Maybe as a reward for deciding to be more considerate of the opinion of fresh tributaries the game gifted me with this event. A choice between 15% bonus taxes for 5 years or the good natured trait.

That's +5 subject opinion as a ruler, which should mean that even before the opinion boosting from the higher increase opinion ceiling has time to kick in I shouldn't have a problem with tributaries leaving even with my levies unavailable. Still I'm going to be careful and I'm going to wait for the opinion to be well and truly boosted in the future.

 

[Pro]

A new danger emerges:

Eblania, the same country that started the first crisis had offered me an alliance. I accepted, even though that meant not allying with any other member yet because of the number of alliances penalty on top of the penalty for going over relations limit. I had already increased my opinion with the others enough for one extra alliance, but I hadn't sign one yet.

I found myself regretting that a lot when I got the ally is considering breaking the alliance notification. Being my only ally while they have another ally means that they could potentially have achieved a two v one. Maybe that's what they hoped. I immediately signed an alliance with the far northern member of the triple alliance. The AI is willing to fight fair, but generally only one v one, not two v two. They also only have a casus belli on my tributary, not on me. As I understand it declaring war on my tributary would bring them into a war with that tributary, me and my other ally. With only a single ally to back them up I don't think they'll want to take on three countries.

I could change to neutral diplomatic stance and use the extra diplomatic relation to secure a further ally. But that would bring all my tributaries down to 30 loyalty. I don't know if they can break free below 30 loyalty or at 30 loyalty and I don't want to find out.

One factor that may make a difference is that my levy size is back down to 4. I've had enough tribesmen demote to slaves that I have less than 40 non-slave pops.

 

[Pro]

In the end Eblania did go through with breaking their alliance with me. I went ahead and used the freed up relation slot to ally myself with their ally Darinia. Since mutual allies will side with the defender any offensive war Eblania were to start would put them in a one v three at best. Of course I have to be careful not to turn Darinia into a tributary first. Since they are the only one of my allies that's allied to Eblania turning them into a tributary would risk my other ally (or even one of my tributaries) preying on them. And of course I don't want to leave myself with no other allies than Eblania again, seeing as they have a claim on my tributary, and could definitely turn hostile.

Luckily the plotting your demise modifier did end. Pretty much exactly as I was turning the other two northern countries into tributaries. And Eblania followed just a month or so later. That just leaves the two southern allies, who I started improving opinion with a little later than the northern ones. I wanted to not face a too hectic period of having to make everyone tributaries at once.

I wasn't quite there yet, but I was on the home stretch. During that last bit of relation raising I got the alliance might break warning for both countries. I stopped both, one by inviting them to a defensive league and the other with a gift. In June of 471 AUC, almost 21 years after starting my quest I got every (surviving) hibernian country as tributary.

I had hoped to have enough gold to colonize all the remaining territories once I had achieved the diplomatic side. However I made some mistakes where I moved pops from a different province than I thought and I got one of those events where a character steals 50 gold, so I couldn't quite do it. I could colonize them earlier either, to avoid that kind of event, because once you have 25 territories you become a regional power and you can no longer make or join defensive leagues. And I needed defensive leagues for the opinion boost to get people to accept being made tributaries.

So here's where I stood when I'd used all my gold on colonization:

Nothing to do but wait for a little more gold, right? That's what I thought, and of course I got complacent. And then Manapia (that's the red country) ended their tributary status. I have no idea how they managed. I thought everyone's loyalty was really high. The other tributaries certainly had as high loyalties as I expected. But I hadn't checked beforehand, so I don't know theirs. I should have checked, but I didn't. And now I was a regional power, so I couldn't invite them to a defensive league. So there was only one other way I might be able to get the required opinion: befriending their chief. So I set about doing so, and after spending a bunch of resources I failed. And what do you do when you fail? You try again. Next time, after spending even more resources I did get that friendship, and after saving up to also refresh the gift and improved opinion bonus I finally got it:

Every country as my tributary, with every territory colonized. Triumph at last. I didn't quite manage to avoid any war ever being fought in Hibernia, but I can ensure that there will never be another one:

 

[Pro]

Closing thoughts:

I think I've shown that a completely peaceful Hibernia is possible. I could have avoided the one war that did break out if I'd paid better attention. Its definitely proven that its possible to form Hibernia diplomatically. So the next question is: should you? In a normal game where you're not doing any self imposed challenge should you conquer the other states or go for diplomacy?

I think the answer is actually that you should generally be diplomatic. Every country gets about 2 base tax income, which will make up almost all of the income of most of these countries. So as tributaries they'll pay 15% of that, or around 0.3 gold per month. If you need to improve relations and give a gift to get them to become tributaries that's about 30 gold, which you'll earn back in 100 months, or 8 years and 4 months.

Of course you're only making your money back if you're not missing out on income from conquest. If you would only get tax income by conquering those provinces then that assumption is accurate. With low population, low civilization and few bonuses your provinces give essentially no tax income. But that assumption is definitely not true if conquest would get you an exportable resource surplus. The amount of gold you get per trade route varies a little according to the good, but is generally of the order of magnitude of 0.3 gold per turn. So one trade route gives as much income as a tributary. If we look at the southern most country on the island it has two provinces that produce base metals and there's a third one uncolonized just north of it. This country will provide twice as much income by conquest as it would as a tributary, which makes conquest a lot more attractive.

Another factor to consider is population loss from conquest. Generally my impression is that a country being conquered will see 2 to 4 pops die most of the time, out of around 8 starting pops for most countries on the island. Those pops would take a long time to earn back the 30 gold it would take to avoid conquest. But that's only normal values, not upper values. I've seen countries disappear entirely when conquered, with both territories being completely depopulated and the conqueror getting nothing. If any province is depopulated that adds a pretty big extra cost. Just colonizing the province costs 10 gold, but that assumes that you have the 8 pops in a neighboring territory to do so. If several of those pops have to be moved in that means the cost goes way up.

So that's my summary. Make tributaries out of countries that won't add resource surpluses and carefully consider doing the same for the countries that do. Another closing thought is that colonization is a lot more expensive than I considered going in. I don't actually think it makes sense financially to colonize first like I did in this game. Going straight for the three adjacent wood provinces on the western coast costs 100 gold and gives that province 2 surplus wood that can be exported for 0.2 each plus modifiers, giving something like 0.5 gold per month total. That same gold could convince three countries to become tributaries, giving you 0.9 gold tribute per month. Most of the provinces you can colonize are even worse than that. I think it might be very worthwhile to focus on making tributaries before colonization. One thing you do have to consider though is the cooldown on colonization. I could easily imagine getting into a position where you've got the money but have to wait to be able to colonize. On the other hand you could use that gold to found a city instead and start fixing your non-existent research. It's not like uniting Hibernia at the earliest possible date has to be your goal

 

[Bullfilter]

I've played far too long for that now. I'm just going to keep playing, and recognize that I failed to keep my eye on the ball.

I reckon that gives you a 9/10: New Hibernian Regional Order.

Every country as my tributary, with every territory colonized. Triumph at last. I didn't quite manage to avoid any war ever being fought in Hibernia, but I can ensure that there will never be another one

Good effort. I haven’t got Imperator yet but probably will in due course (after I finish my EU Rome Vae Victis retro AAR, perhaps). So while I can’t follow all the assumed gameplay references, I’m sure some of the points you’ve made will become relevant when you do. Congrats on finishing this compact little AAR.

 

[Pro]

Congrats on finishing this compact little AAR.

Thanks! And thanks for reading!

 

[HistoryDude]

This was interesting.

Good job at achieving most of your goals!

 

[Pro]

Thanks. I tried again, but I had a tributary declare independence at 34 loyalty. So apparently the wiki is wrong on this point and actually achieving this goal is more luck dependent than I thought. So I'm probably going to declare myself satisfied with having had only one war.