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Death & Taxes WC as England

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unmerged(176534)

First Lieutenant
2 Badges
Nov 1, 2009
205
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  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Heir to the Throne
This is an attempt to do a WC using the <Death & Taxes> mod on <Very Hard> difficulty. As there are so many more provinces I'm not exactly sure if this possible due to time constraints: on Vanilla it can take me about 150 years to gobble everything up going over the BB threshold off course. However, doing this is really really unpleasant and not something I want to pursue. So I'm going to try and not go over the threshold and that will mean taking out the main colonizers as soon as possible.

Hence, the country I've chosen is England.

England has some pretty good starting sliders which will help because as the quantity of territory increases the time to change them also increases:



I move to <Narrow Minded> to give better Papal States relationship and ally with Burgundy and Castille. The first mission I've got is <Conquer Ireland> so that starts immediately while I build a few more troops to get right to the limit. The standard troop stack that I shall be using pre-artillery will be 8 infantry and 4 cavalry. When artillery (culverins) are researched I'll be adding 4 artillery to each army group.

I also concentrate all income into Government so I can get <Military Drill> asap. This is vital for the conqueror, especially on <Very Hard> difficulty.

I want to attack France as soon as possible as they are right now enemy number 1. I can't exactly remember how the war started as France went after Provence straight away and I didn't think that they brought Burgundy into the war. But, shortly after they attacked someone else and the war spiraled so that I got involved and I called Burgundy and Castille into the war.

France's armies are extremely strong morale-wise at the start, much stronger than mine, but I get military access in Brittany and concentrate on sieging Maine, Anjou and Normandy and/or Caux because of the mission that gives cores on the latter two provinces. I also send armies to help ongoing battles with my allies that seem winnable. I also thought it might be an idea to try and take out Nemours/Vermandois/Champagne to try and stop Burgundy peacing out with some provinces.



In the end I can only get Maine and Anjou and force France to release a vassal or two. This is important as it prevents France from getting many other countries as allies. I will repeat this trick in future wars. The only real ally that France gets because of this is Denmark who isn't much of a threat. I build more galliots (you can't build caravels until naval 10) to get my fleet bigger. I also keep maintenance at 100% permanently even when not at war as it prevents tradition falling much and it's very cheap.



Unfortunately shortly after France is guaranteed by Brittany now so I make ready to make war on them as I'd like to vassalize them so I can still use their territory for hiding it and preventing assaults as my troops cannot stand toe to toe with the French troops:



While sieges are taking place I get <Military Drill>:



Armagnac joined that war with Brittany so I grab a province as this usefully pokes into France and might allow me to prevent early assaults by leaving an army group in Labourd:



Not sure why, but I can't vassalize Brittany (value 122%) so I just take Armor:

 
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Shortly afterwards Burgundy went to war with France and I was obliged to join in. It was one of those wars that they declared on someone like Bar and the leader-of-the-war spiraled until it ended up being France. I quickly tried to siege provinces near Burgundy but wanted out of the war once the French armies were dead as I couldn't grab enough provinces so I just peaced for Caux (low war score and it's next to Burgundy so they are more likely to take it in a peace and I didn't want that; it also conveniently links up with Calais). But, Burgundy took nothing in the war:



This is a handy wee mission for attacking France without attacking France, i.e. not getting the guarantors involved (mainly Brittany who will continue guaranteeing France for some years to come):



Not long from the start I found Scotland without allies and I had the <Conquer Scotland> mission so I set about him. Didn't take long and wasn't a very hard war. Not sure why but vassalizing Scotland only cost about 70 war score and it's much bigger than Brittany. (Sorry, this is not in the correct chronological order as I did it before "now" in the post.)

The next war with France was begun and this time I only called in Burgundy. Peace was settled:



You can see that Castille has been banged a bit because they foolishly deleted all their units at the end of a previous war against France (the first I think) and were set upon by Aragon and Portugal (answering alliance). I answered to but was happy to stand on the sidelines.

The next war with France using that handy mission resulted in me taking Vermandois, Champagne and Nemours as well as a release vassal.

Shortly after this I found myself in a war with Burgundy; they attacked one of the smaller states that I had forced France to release from vassalage and I wasn't about to let Burgundy gobble these up. The war was not particularly pleasant because Burgundy is allied with Holland, Lorraine and Brabant along with some others. I was pretty high on BB here so I thought it best to just get Picardie to join my provinces up.

My BB cooling is about 1.5BB per year now that I've got an Embassy too and soon I'm ready for another war with France:

 
Burgundy asked for MA soon after and I gave it to them so they wouldn't attack me when I was at war with France as that would be nasty.
Not long later I get hit by <Overextension>. It was partly due to my crappy ruler.



I want two more wars with France to make them really small so I don't have to worry about them attacking me while I'm at war with other countries and then I can concentrate on Portugal and Castille as I really have to get them before they get <Quest for the New World>. In Portugal's case I think this is the 2nd idea they get and for Castille it is the 3rd idea they get. But, the next idea is not for a while so I will concentrate on Castille to start with and just take a province or two from Portugal as I go along. I do not believe that Aragon ever goes for QftNW so I don't care about them.

We are now ready for war with Castille:



As you can see Castille didn't take kindly to having provinces given to Aragon and Portugal in the first war and has been gobbling up both quite nicely, particularly Portugal. The best thing is that they got into a war with the Papacy and I can Excommunicate them. Bonus as provinces will just cost 2BB instead of 4BB. Thus, I wait until the previous war is ended, un-ally, un-MA and then Excommunicate them. They are guaranteed by Portugal so I'll try and pay them to leave the war after a few battles.

The strategy is to let them siege south-western provinces and them combine armies into 2-army stacks (16 infantry / 8 cavalry) and attack through their lines via Armagnac-Labourd-Vizcaya leaving some of their armies still sieging my provinces. This is because if I attack the other ones they will retreat into Labourd which has a big stack of their troops. This kind of works or it does eventually while I have to defeat the HRE of Bohemia attacking south-eastern provinces. I have maximum troops which is about 6 army groups.

As I push into Castillian territory until his armies are dead I assault a province or two with a double-army stack and then retreat in order to prevent horrific war exhaustion from attrition. Peace is settled for a huge chunk of coastline:



I thought this was quite interesting: Austria in a PU with Anhalt. Should keep him from expanding in the short term:



I shortly get involved with Aragon attacking Castille (I guaranteed them) and as I'm so high on BB I just take Almeria. In the next war with Castille/Portugal Bohemia does not join in and I take Portugal down to just Lisboa and a few more coastal provinces from Castille. Aragon started a war with those two while I was sieging all their provinces and low-and-behold they annexed Portugal. Couldn't ask for more:

 
The reason I am asking Castille for coastal provinces is so that even if they survive until idea 3 they will not choose QftNW if they have no coast.

I didn't realize but when I settled with Castille/Portugal in the last war I went over the BB threshold so I released Leinster to get below it. I've got a 3 DIP monarch currently. Although I have done the <Conquer Ireland> mission can I do it again if I un-vassal Leinster?



I thought this was interesting. Must be a scripted adviser (Henrique the Navigator):



Austria is finally out from the PU with Anhalt. It was never going to last forever but it did last for at least 20 years.



At this point I'm behind on military; quite a few countries are at 14/15 now including Austria so I put everything into it. My tactics for economy is dump everything into stability to get it to +1 or +2 (for the magistrates), otherwise leave it at equal for everything. I previously rushed Government 8 to get Embassy (-0.4 BB is vital) and naval 10 for Caravels (when I was near it).



The next wars are with Castille and Granada. Granada is still a vassal of Castille. I think there's an event at some point letting Castille annex them so I do <Holy War> on Granada to take as many coastal provinces of them as possible (actually all their provinces are coastal). And then I find that I can also Excommunicate Aragon which I gladly do and make war:

 
When I get to <Noble Republic> I gladly switch government as rulers are much better than under monarchies and I'm never going to be stuck in a Regency unable to attack anyone. Also it's much easier to get a high DIP ruler.



And the ruler is great:



I was finding myself quite close to 0BB so I annexed Scotland. They had been my vassal for quite some time so it happened first time.



Finally new troops:



And another war is finished with Aragon for a great big gobble:



Why?

 
You can see how many cardinals I have here; I am 4 clicks towards <Narrow Minded>:



I've got this event a lot and I've been going with <Plutocracy> every time and now I can finally get spies:



This is a nice bonus; never had it before. In fact didn't even know it existed.



And my third idea is <Superior Seamanship>.



The 2nd was <Larger Army>. I realize shortly after this that I'm going to need <QftNW> at some point soonish as Naples has grabbed a colony in Madeira so I switch <Superior Seamanship> and wait a few years before DoWing Castille (Naples is allied)



All I actually did with the <QftNW> was to discover the Azores and Canaries so that I can colonize them as I do not want to do any other exploration at all.

And Castille is gone:

 
The second last war with Aragon:



And the next war finishes them off:



Even though it was quite difficult to do with attrition and shortage of transport fleet I managed to take Iceland from Sweden to reduce his naval range and hopefully discourage him from exploring (the problem with attrition came from attacking the TO as he had MA through Lithuania so I lost quite a lot of battles but managed to eventually take down his main armies and siege a number of provinces):



So, what next. As you can see the war between the OE and Austria, Hungary, Lithuania, Brandenburg, other countries has been going on for some time and the OE is now doing badly. I'd like to get this war finished with so that I can attack the OE as I want to limit the Catholic countries. But, not sure if I even need to tbh as Lithuania is the leader and they have none of the provinces. Thus, maybe I need to be at war with him or at war with Austria as he's the one that's doing the damage.

Also, I now have all the provinces necessary to declare myself France although I'm not sure that there is much point as all that I will get from this a few more cores in Burgundy, Berry, Bourbonais, Brittany and I get missions to conquer them as England sometimes. Taking down Brittany is essential to stop colonizing but they don't have the QftNW yet. Also worth pointing out is that I cannot allow any country to get QftNW because even if they don't colonize they will reveal territory that will later allow other countries to colonize. Which is why I am not exploring either.
 
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I've decided that I need <Unam Sanctum> after all so I'm switching <Superior Seamanship> for it.



This allows me to attack Bulgaria to get some territory next to the OE. This means that it is much easier to suffer less attrition if I have provinces of my own that I can retreat to and I won't need so much transport fleet capability if I can have most of my armies already in my own territory prior to the invasion.

I'm a bit low on the support limit for fleets so I'm going to build shipyards all along the Atlantic coast of Iberia.



Austria amazingly white peaces with the OE for no reason:



And shortly after Bulgaria is annexed:



The OE is still doing really bad against Hungary, Brandenburg, Bavaria, …




So I've decided that I'm going to give them a hand. I DOW Moldavia which is Orthodox which brings Brandenburg and Hungary into the war and I start attacking them in OE territory and assaulting their sieges to return the land to the OE. After a few years I settle with Hungary for the joining Bulgarian provinces and with the OE in a state that they should be able to cope with.

 
I'm now ready to DOW the OE. A crusade is called and war begins in earnest with assaults to start with and then retreating back to my territory to recover infantry and morale. I see that the OE has not converted his provinces so I use a better war type than <Holy War> to result in just 1BB per province:




Here's a few battles going my way. The OE troops can't really stand against the European troops and they really don't have enough artillery:



I do a couple assaults initially and then retreat back to my own Bulgarian provinces and concentrate on wiping out his forces. It does not take long and then I do assaults where I can while keeping a double army stack ready for wiping out reinforcements. (You can't block the Bosphorus in D&T).

As usual I pay of the allies after a short while and with my WE is heading up towards about 10 due to attrition I peace out with a huge territorial swathe coming my way:

 
A new idea <Superior Seamanship> is had:



More wars with the OE follow with me gradually eating up more European and then Asian provinces:



Religious map of Europe:



Remarkably Austria is protestant and Brandenburg is Emperor. I'm assuming that as long as Austria doesn't change back Brandenburg will be Emperor until I get a chance to dissolve it much later on as Bohemia has been crushed with Poland owning some provinces and Silesia being released.
 
Apart from cores I'm not using BB to take down catholic countries excepting <Border War> which will give me a province for 2BB. This is because the <Holy War> BB only lasts until about 1650 I think so I want to make sure I use this as much as possible while I can. And, as long as they can't colonize there's no reason to not allow them to upgrade their provinces until I can take them off them.



New units arrive before anyone else that matters:



BB dissipation is really good atm. Going full <Narrowminded> really helps.



Not everything goes my way in the battle stakes:



Crusader events are great for keeping your Papacy Influence high:


 
I switch to Administrative Republic as soon as I get it:



Core map situation:



You can see that I'm at war with Austria from that picture. They attacked Hungary and I defended with them. They were crushed within a year or two and I forced them to release Styria which is also protestant. They were being gangbanged by everyone at the time so I didn't see much point in releasing Catholic countries and hoped that the others would do the same but they released Tyriolia and Salzburg.

As I had virtually eliminated the OE the wars were expanded to include the Mamlukes and Jerusalem is acquired after a few wars:



Around this time I also got to the tech for Fine Art Academies and I started building about 5 of them (this is later increased to 7) so that I can keep Cultural Tradition high as I have no other way of doing so without using magistrates and they're too much required for buildings now that I have so many provinces.

Also, there appears to be a bug in D&T or perhaps this is meant to be how it is but all manufacturies are just ~1000g so I've been building a lot of them. My cash per year hovers between 100g and 1000g per year depending upon my troop situation which I try to expand as and when the troop limit expands. I'll comment more on this later when I start up the game to count how many I have because I'm sure on an earlier version of the game there was a certain number at that price before the price started going up quite rapidly.

And finally the OE is gone:



Bugger, Sweden has got QftNW:



So I'm going to have explore a bit more now:
 
So, exploration starts in earnest and I head over towards Bermuda and then down towards the Aztecs and middle America as I can see that Sweden is at war with some of them. I find Sweden's not-colony as he won't have the range yet to get over there but some territory that he's take off the locals. I guarantee all of them so that if he peaces out I will get involved if it starts again. Can't quite remember why but I think he got involved in a continental war so didn't get anything else from them other than one “city”.

I also make sure that I colonize all the other free spaces that I reveal so that when they are revealed to everyone else in 25/50 years they won't be able to colonize them as the last thing I need is Europeans getting more provinces. But, I may have to make war in future if I find colonies not yet finished like I did with Naples and Madeira. (In that case I burned it then planted my own as taking colonies still costs BB, not much but something).

This is a religious map view:

 
This is some years after my last post and you can see that I've made good in roads into the middle east. I've also started on Morocco as I can use a <Holy War> BB on them but not the <Nomad War> (or something like that). I hope the latter doesn't go away at some point.

My BB dissipation now ranges from about 2 to 2.5 depending upon number of cardinals. It's not unheard of to have 8 – 10 cardinals although sometimes this goes as low as 4.

I'm really trying to get up to Government 29 as at that point I can get <Cabinet> which gives a further -1BB reduction a year. Once this hits I expect I will have to have multiple wars going on simulataneously to actually use up that BB as sometimes you can only take 4 provinces in a war if they are valuable.



I've now got a border with Delhi and it appears that I can do a <Colonial War> with them for just 1BB per province which sounds fantastic. I'm not quite sure why this is but I hope this is the same for all if not just a lot of other countries outside Europe / Middle East.



And not long later <Cabinet> is acquired. Here is my infamy reduction (3.29 BB per year).



As I'm such a huge country now some of the bad events can really take the cash away (that's -2800gold).



Sweden started another war with the central American states so I DOW'd Denmark who's reformed and this brought Sweden into the war. So, I took Haustecas of them in the peace deal after annihilating their fleet repeatedly.

 
That's as far as I've got currently. A few remarks:

My fleet is getting much larger than my support limit now even though I keep the shipyards in Iberia at the latest building that I can build. Now that I've got to Wargalleons and Merchantmen I'm replacing all my fleets with these and I delete all enemy units that I capture if they are not these. General purpose fleets I generally use of 30 wargalleons and 16 merchantment (so that I can move my standard 8/4/4 cav/inf/art army stack around [another reason I have settled for 8/4/4 is that the <split> button works well when requiring siege armies to form as this gives a nice equal 4 siege capable army and I can then recombine armies easily; makes lots of wars significantly less time consuming]). I have one of these in the Med, one in the English Channel, one at Gibraltar and I'm starting to create one for the colonies. I also use a few small fleets of 5 - 8 wargalleons for keeping pirates away from colony coasts by patrolling. These are starting to cost rather a lot of dosh but compared to my army cost it's rather little and almost certainly affordable.

As far as magistrates go I have got to treasuries now and I'm upgrading all the high value (currently over 10g although this will reduce) provinces as my tax take each year was falling enough that I had to mint just to spend my magistrates each year. My income is back up to about 800g per year (at 1596). Once I've got this high enough I'm going to start switching over to building government buildings so that when I get to colleges I can start building these as these will allow me to massively increase my magistrate output which will be required to upgrade the enormous numbers of provinces I'll own by then (I'm currently at >260). Then once I get to cathedrals they will just be one more on top of the colleges and they will be vital to convert all the provinces and hence reduce rebels. Currently I get 3.5 magistrates a year and 0.91 missionaries a year.

When I get spare cash I build another manufactury as they are still on 950g. Currently I have 6 universities, 7 textile mills, 9 refineries, 6 naval equipment manufactury, 5 weapons manufacturies and 7 fine art academies. Actually, now that I think about it that is not extreme so perhaps the cost of manufacturies will start to go up at some point.

My BB is about 17 (1596) after that war with Sweden where I took Huastecas. I will next go to war with Qara Koyunlu in order to stop Poland and Novgorod eating into provinces south of them although by now Novgorod has explored and colonized all the way across Asia and is allied to Ming. Nothing I can do about that now. Not sure if there was anything I could have done about it. Then I will continue eating across the middle east and Morocco. Probably a bit into the Arabian peninsula to get at Mecca and Yemen the latter of which I only get a <Holy War> CB against.

Current map:



I've been quite happy to let Austria gobble up provinces and countries because they're protestant so I should be able to take provinces for 3BB instead of 4BB later. (Not sure when 2BB for heretic war went up to 3BB but it's not good!)
 
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Why did you change to France? Seems rather odd considering the title.

Either way, impressive work, though I think an actual WC will be impossible for you as this point as you only have holy war for another century.
 
Ashantai said:
Why did you change to France? Seems rather odd considering the title.

Either way, impressive work, though I think an actual WC will be impossible for you as this point as you only have holy war for another century.
Click to expand...

I switched to get more cores and I thought I might get some more interesting decisions but England/GB seems to get better decisions than France.

I'm beginning to agree with you that WC may be impossible unless I go over the BB limit. I'll give it until maybe late 1600s to see how far I get before I make a decision on that front. I think the main drawback with going over the limit is (apart from continual rebellions) the -3 stab which means you can never declare war and as currently Japan hasn't formed it may be impossible to make war on them.
 
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