Moronic Mughals - No-Admin tech WC 1.34.5 (very hard)

[Pureanger]

Chapter 0 - Pre-run planning and thoughts


Besides "what have i gotten myself into again" I didn´t actually think too much about it honestly. No ingenious 17 step masterplan. I wanted to go pretty much with the same setup from my last AAR as it worked like a charm. I learned one or two things from last time though...

Before going in, what did I presume were the major challenges? No admin tech means a couple of things:

- no ideas (neither from idea groups nor national ideas... only the national tradition)
- no admin efficiency from admin tech
- no government capacity upgrades from admin tech
- no buildings that require admin tech (most notably buildings that reduce gov cost, but also adm manufactories)
- a huge corruption penalty from having unbalanced research
- going over government capacity will become a real pain and is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome. Going 100% over gov cap would cost us an extra:

+100% Stability cost modifier
+100% Advisor cost
−50% Improve relations
-50% Administrative Efficiency
+50% Aggressive expansion impact
−1 Militarization of state


Fun times!


The good news is that those hurdles will ramp up slower than with the no-mil tech run. I had only up to mil tech 10 to get my capital to safety on the british isles. Up until mid game we won´t feel too much of a problem. Sure, we could expand quicker or more smoothly, but the lategame is where things will become interesting.

The general game plan is to expand somewhat rapidly, but mostly within the constraints of our government cap. We will have see how far we can reduce our actual cost at all times. One fear is that I will expand too quickly, because we will drown in admin points ^^ This would be bad for aggressive expansion. If I exceed gov cap too early, ae might become a major problem, especially when we get close to europe.

The mughals however have the god tier diwan mechanic, which gives us access to pleny of modifiers to offset the lack of ideas. Gaining accepted cultures once we have conquered them will go a long way with dealing with unrest and will also unlock quite a few monuments we can make use of. They also have a pretty high base goverment cap from their government reforms. Last but not least, they have -25% ccr as their tradition which is the best there is.

Oirat, the speed wc champion, was my alternative option like I mentioned. They do have 20% ccr in their tradtion. However they lack all the other benefits of the mughals I just listed. Yeah, they do have this horde thing which gives them unlimited mana and (actually useful) reduce the amount of development that would eat up gov cap. I would have prefered to play as them, but I got the feeling pretty quick that they won´t be able to handle the lategame.


Last thing to mention is that I hardly played any eu4 in recent history. Yes I got my 12.000 hours, but I haven´t played for almost a year and the last time before that was another year ago. I haven´t kept up with development of the game and I haven´t watched any Florryworry videos (unforgiveable, I know). I´m solely relying on core mechanics being the same and adapting quickly to changes. Please excuse an old man if he sounds dumb or outdated from time to time. After all I´m in retirement

Ok, that covers the gist of it I think. Next chapter we will start the actual run. Hope you enjoy.

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 1 - Setting things up


Like last time we start as jaunpur.

2-3 restarts until we get an insult from delhi before sirhind dows for independence.

... tempted to disinherit heir....

..., but we need 40 prestige for a mission.

We dow delhi before sirhind does. Moved armies to the border.

Stackwipe delhian forces a few days in.

Sirhin won´t move their forces as they are disloyal.

That means we pretty much beat all active force and can comfortably siege down 3 of 4 participants.

This is not according to plan. Timmy declared on multan. We have to hurry.

We accept hindavi.

Finish the mission that gives us claims.

And peace out for all of delhi and jangladesh.

That also gave us sirhind as a vassal. We annexed jangladesh as a third vassal would have been less easy to manage and use up relation slots.

Our troops are thrilled.

Our neighbors appeased.

This slick grab for power cost us only 26 ae with timmy.

2 years in and we have as much dev as france.

Having 2 subjects lets us take strong duchies.

Chagatai is one of the earlier options for an alliance. From last run i recall them often getting into war with ming about tributary. We will have to keep an eye out and a diplomat ready. Don´t want to mess with ming too early. That was one of the things that didn´t work out too great in my last run.

Man they nerved slacken standarts to the ground. Only 2k manpower. Wtf. Manpower will become a problem.

Man, timmy wastes no time. We need those provinces as well.

We turn upper doab into a state.

... and reform delhi.

This gives us a core again kashmir.... which we want back.

We disinherited our heir and not a minute too soon. Come here my son.

Timmy is busy with hormuz. Is that enough? I would prefer them to be busy with independence wars, but you have to take what you get.

Let´s make use of chagatai before they become useless.

Bahmanis is warming up, won´t say no to that!

Transoxiania and other vassals are passive because of high ld, but still going is though.

Another marriage proposal from the south.

Early mil tech upgrade. That should help murdering timmy.

60k soldiers dead, but we need those provinces.

Peace time.

What´s with everybody being so friendly. Are we playing on very hard?!

Let´s get the integration policy for a second.

... and annex our vassal sirhind for free. Doesn´t cost anything as we are delhi and delhi has cores on sirhind. Sweet.

More missions completed.

26 ducats income. 500 dev. Not bad.

Even Vj seeks our protection.

Hurts to abandon those cores.

But we feel more afghan today.

Boom, mughals to your face, world.

Getting rid or truces with small nations.

Sry guys. Too much coalition risk.

Moving up.

War against malwa and bengal.

Let´s play this defensive. Let them come and then hit them hard once we tech up.

Advanced tactics. Get into position.

Incoming. Scorch everything.

Arrival date 27th.

Too slow.

You dead.

I love the fact that battles are quicker now. I believe this has to do with the fixing of the ghosts army bug. This brings the stackwipe back and is a huge buff for tactical gameplay. Very, very handy!

Things are happening.

Nobody seems to care. ok. Gotta build those spy networks!

Mission complete. Claims on bengal.

Dow bengal again via jarkhand. Malwa can´t join as we are still at war with them.

First we peace out bengal for a 5 year truce. Next we take required provinces from malwa.

Here we go. All hindustani provinces for another 10% ccr.

Mewar declared on malwa, because they thought they were busy with us. So we declare on them

We do get a little bit of a coalition going.

Claims all over the place.

Another 10% ae reduction.

... and more ae.

Awesome -10% admin tech reduction... wait....

Another early tech upgrade. We even get innovativeness. Important.

Next war against timmy. We managed to get favors with mamluks, so this war will fight itself.

Bengal coast is ours.

So is baluchistans.

Hitting hard all arround.

Our gov cap is 676/900.

We start exploiting dev, can´t start too early. How i hate doing this. Even worse then dip banking!

Thanks mamluks.

Missions, so many missions.

Ae isn´t looking too bad.

I have to cut this chapter unfortunately as i have to attend my duties of watching netflix with my gf 1471 and things don´t look too shabby. Of course we could have expanded quicker, but for now restraint is in order. It is better to stay small, but strong and stable. Have a good one!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 2 - Indian Powerhouse


Hello gang. Ready for another round of mughal action? Last time we casually formed the mughals and established our rule in northern india. We scored several alliances which on the one hand keep us save from coalitions and also reduce ae of allied nations which is helpful since we won´t keep those forever. The general idea is to expand at a medium pace and go for necessary provinces and low autonomy and strengh in general. Last time we got declared upon by ming at an unconvinient moment. I plan on being better prepared this time. Also not blobbing like crazy gives us more reform progress and prevents us from going over gov cap. Finishing missions gives us plenty of perma cores for another 25% ccr.


Vj will fight this war for us.

We will fight this one then.

Like I mentioned before. Only take what we need.

This I want.

Vj does as well. Luckily we are fighting together in a war.

Coalition threat growing. We got plenty of truces though.

Sweet, sweet perma claims.

Oh well vj, thanks for the ride.

No 1, baby.

I might have found a replacement for vj. Malacca is perfectly located. Very advantageous to put your enemies in the middle of yourself and your allies.

I´m doing something fishy here, can´t remember what though. We are giving cores back to pegu, but pegu isn´t our vassal.

Pegu is allied to lan na and lan xang. Ah right, I think I didn´t want to take provinces from ayutthaya as they are tributary of ming and I couldn´t co-bellingerent them. Pegu is no tributary.

Take the alliance before they change their mind.

Have to watch devastation this time too. Last time this became a problem as i did not plan for it.

One of the best ways to deal with devastation is to build forts... if you can afford it.... which we can.

Already running out of rivals.

Emergency dissolve of our alliance with chagatai. Ming is about to declare on them and we don´t want to be dragged into that mess.

See. I´m psychic .

Continuing my strategy to relase and or strenghen non ming tributaries in se asia.

Everything else is up for grabs.

It´s just for your protection bahmanis. Vj is looking at you.

Willing puppets.

Sry bro, we got the better everything. Started using mercs though to deal with manpower shortages.

We ate a good part of timmy, but they manage to fix their losses.

Mughals stronk.

Taking plenty of vjs fort provinces. Madurai will be released.

Gujarat, we need to take those claims. Hop you don´t mind.

Hm, I had something else in mind actually, but if you volunteer I won´t say no.

Mamluks and transoxiania will keep timmy busy.

More claims.

Drowning in power projection.

Renaissance slowly creeping towards us. We might get lucky as we are allied to mamluks. No dow from otto until now, btw.

We make our own luck... just in case.

Damn, Ming took defensive ideas.

This happend last run as well. There is one mission that requires all provinces in the area to have 30% autonomy or lower. Last time i accidentaly increased it in one province and to took like 50 some years to lower it again to finish the mission. This time timmy conquered it and did the same in one province, before we took it from them again. Thanks a lot :/

Payback.

So far no ae with ming.

Time for a big push in se asia. Kill as many small nations or get truces. Eat everything quickly so nothing is left for a coalition.

Huh, that´s new. I´ll take it.

So far we can keep up pretty well in army quality without any ideas.

Ah welcome, I was waiting for you.

Oh, oh... otto is on the move.

Finally. Reached 30% autonomy.

Yay.

Another round of painstaking exploiting.

Actually I wanted to pace myself... It is hard to not conquer everything

883/1000

Money is good.

Hmm, somewhere in the nearer future ming will reform again.

Gotta love reconquest cb.

This was expensive. One mission requires a level 3 trade port, but new requirements demand that the provinces has 25 dev.

Pegu likes us too much as we returned their provinces.

Lifting the fog.

So many options, sometimes you forget they exist. Can be helpful though.

Oh damn, mamluks won´t be a strong deterrent for much longer.

Another push into se asia.

Level 4 reform... reduced admin tech, yay.

Eating several smaller nations and building a land bridge to vientiane.

Heartattack. Paradox rolled out a new update.

We are fine bois. We are fine. Pfew!!!!

We can embrace renaissance.

More releasing and chipping away from mings tributaries.

My heart again. Call the ambulance. Wohoow!

Still stuff to conquer in india.

Cheap bastard.

You had it coming.

Pegu is ours.

37 ae with ming. Not too bad.

Hmm, very very tempting.

Mamlu-who?! Quick peace with bahmanis and hello otto.

Let´s cement that.

Ming still outnumbering us, but it was a good trade. I might be partly responsible for ottos low numbers as we have been cockblocking them from eating mamluks.

Starting to integrate our vassals as it will take some time.

What is happening in europe? Austria and spain surpassing otto. Interesting.

Oh, oh. Ming just reformed. This might be a good chance. Too bad I´m not fully prepared.

Unbalanced research already at 0.30 corruption each year. Thank god it is capped at 0.50.

Expanding a bit to the west for a change.

Thravada Zealots starting to threaten to break our country.

Guess I have to :/

Another free vassal who got released by us.

And we have a border with ming.

Gotta love those mountain provinces close to ming. Prime spot for ambushes.

Looking good. Mil Tech 9!

Timmy split in half.

First time over gove cap. 1031/1000. They changed the penalty this patch so that you don´t get less ccr but reduced admin efficiency. Not Sure what´s worse in the end. Sucks both.

We do have a lot of land statified and partly fully cored to maximise our strengh and manpower. Hurts to get rid of those cores. It´s for the greater good!

It is time. We change our religion to theravada.

That´s right. As budhists we can have tributaries. Kewl.

We also have to change our first government reform.

43% religious unity. Hopefully rebellions won´t become too much of a problem.

Free tributaries. I´ll take it.

And another potential candidate. We are still allied to them yet though.

Corruption and unbalanced research eating into our budget. Starting to take loans to push our military to the max.

Devastation levels in mughal land.

Weather is looking good. I think we can start operation confucius very soon.

Alright guys. That´s it for today. We are prepared to take a swing a ming. Thanks for reading and until next time. Bye!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 3 - Clash of titans


Welcome back for the next episode. The time might be good to take our big rival ming for the dominance of asia. We are dominating india and se asia and have no real threats from the western border. We are also budhist now, which allows us to claim the mandate of heaven.


Changing religion crashed our prestige, which is important for ae management. Luckily taking land in se asia or from ming hardly influences other regions of the world. We don´t have to worry about it too much and it will recover quickly enough.

Khmer grew significantly and has high liberty desire. We might exploit that in the future.

Cleaning up in india.

Integration proceeds well. We get tons of dip rep from great projects and other sources.

Have to compensate for modifiers everywhere we can...

Vj is toast.

Mamluks aren´t too happy we ditched them. 49 Ae. Surfing on the edge.

Dev´ed for Colonialism as well. We got plenty of powerpoints since we don´t have to buy admin tech, ideas and have already lots of ccr and claims. Deving in our capital provinces also does not use goverment capacity. Mil points are a little bit more scarce, but they are a good investment here, as there is also no autonomy and we do need every manpower we can get.

Coalition isn´t a threat.

Ming is two institutions behind.

One...

...two.

Vientiane integrated, as well as some remaining opm. Ming ae 46.

More missions done. Claims over all of se asia.

Map reveal. Hi Japan, you don´t like ming neither, right?

Rainessance spreading to ming. We shouldn´t wait too long.

Gazi wants our protection.

Ha, I was hoping this would happen.

Khmer isn´t a real match for ming, but they sure enough are a distraction.

Ming is also only tech level 7!

Another disctraction on the horizon.

Mandate back up to 40, but it is still below 50.

Alright, buckle up. We are going in!

We are letting them come. Scorching earth in mountain provinces and trying to lure them in.

Damn it. Forgot to close the back door. Somehow ming had troops parked there.

That´s not how I planned this to go ^^

Nobody taking our bait in se asia. I´m taking yunnan fort by storm. Last time this province was mings graveyard. Only hill terrain, but very long walking distance, even longer when scorched.

Scorching earth in our backyard works wonders too.

Unstoppable...

... progress. Ming can´t consolidate forces quickly enough. We pick them of one stack at a time and quickly there isn´t any resistance left at all.

Nor any will to keep fighting. I try to take as many forts as possible. I´m also worried that some of the other neighbours might get an idea of taking the mandate, so I plan on isolating them as quickly as possible.

We don´t have any vassal integration cost reduction from ideas, so vassals in aren´t the greatest idea. Also last time I got the "only in name" disaster, because I had too many chinese vassals and did not accept enough chinese cultures. One vassal is ok i guess. They do reduce our needed goverment capacity on the plus side. Once we take the mandate I also don´t want immediately get the "unguarded frontier" disaster neither. We can prevent that by having a vassal as a buffer zone.

There are a few rebel factions in our country.

Time to move our focus westwards. Otto is hungry as well, and it is better if we negotiate the peace treaty with mamluks.

Since Otto will take care of mamluks, we have time to go for another quick round with ming.

I feel that this isn´t streching our limits. Let´s start a third war.

... and it´s already over. Let´s talk again in 5 years.

Rebels are happening. Using the supress rebel option is a but annoying, but a must.

I don´t recall how, but somehow we have aquired already 96 favors with malacca.

Khmer isn´t currently a tributary of ming, so we can dow them without them interfering.

Our rule of india is undisputed.

Further progress on the missions. One more to go.

Not cheap, but we got the moneys.

Another vassal integrated.

We do have ming in the coalition mix from now on.

As well as mamluks. Mamluks can cool down however. No land for otto. Sry bud.

Blasphemy, you dare to call US in a war. Ok fiiiinee. Don´t expect me to help!

Should keep him busy for a while. A busy otto, is a good otto.

Shit, austria and spain seem to be on a rampage ^^

Exploit time.

Shame to waste all those favors, but if we go into china, we definately need to go into the malaccan trade node to rake in all this sweet trade money.

Japan will fill the spot.

Break is over ming. Let´s go.

Corruption is costing us an arm and a leg. But ming coffers will make up for it.

Mandate is at 28 and we are already going thru mings armies like paper.

Even less forts for ming. We take money as well to repay our loans.

Rinse and repeat.

Gov reform no 5. Perfect another 150 gov cap.

Timmy rotation.

Need to keep devastation in check.

That´s what I worry about. However manchu is only going for a reconquest.

Sharks have smelled blood in the water.

Since we aren´t muslim anymore we have to tread carefully with ae. Lucky for us there aren´t many small muslim nations left that can see us.

Our capital has fallen. Steering rebels is so annoying.

Hopefully this thing will be over soon.

Don´t you dare tributary scum to kill of our rebels!

Alright, that´s it. Cancel access.

Finally.

You are welcome

Rebel central.

South is secure.

South east will be soon.

Game is baiting me with all the admin tech cost reduction

Don´t you dare declaring your own wars otto. That´s not our deal.

I see a monstrous austria, becoming more monstrous

We are the biggest nation in the world, but manpower and forcelimit are way behind. Not having quantity ideas, but others having them, will be a major drawback in the lategame i figure.

We do have cash though

... and soon even more cash.

It is costly, but I´m aiming to get as much innovativeness as possible.

Who the hell game manchu access to ming. Shuun!

Manchu became pretty big, pretty quick.

Otto didn´t take too much timmy land, because we marked a lot of their provinces as of interest.

Oh boi. Suddenly Otto is interested in a lot of land himself....

Not ideal.

Hmm, who could be a replacement for otto?

Russia is one candidate. Let´s insult their rivals.

Working on mings isolation.

We do need another vassal. Mongolia is a good candidate to rule over the hordes land.

Always on the edge of goverment cap. 1464/1450.

Argh, this is a hassle. Going over gov cap, lowers admin efficiency which sometimes puts us over 100% oe. Hard to calculate.

We do have options though.

Getting close.

Manchuuhuuu!!!

Cleaning up india.

Austria is running amok.

Mongolia rises.

Bangkok has fallen.

Full core everything.

Claims on malacca.

Score!

Stop it game!

War´s on khmer, malacca and oirat.

Actually useful.

The buffer grows.

Khmer has more dev then you´d expect.

Give me all those juicy trade centers.

We release majapahit from 2 malaccan provinces.

Ming time. This time we also claim the mandate! Yay!

Becoming minghals gives us a huge boost in government capacity.

First reform is switched and gives us +500 gov cap. We are good again for a few years.

This time I managed devastation a lot better, but mandate is still falling. Think last time we were in free fall though.

The kicker is of course the extra 10% ccr from being emperor. Once we are at celestial reform no 4, we get another 10%. Last time we reformed super fast by accident via disaster. I´m thinking about doing it again, but more in a controlled fashion. We will see how things go.

The battle for asias supremacy is over and the crown is on our head. This is only the begining though and time isn´t on our side with every idea group unlocked our enemies multiply their strengh. Hope you tune in next time. Take care!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 4 - Nurturing the beast


Looks like I got another chapter in me today. So let´s jump right into it i´d say. Current status, we just took mandate of heaven... but we won´t stop there.


Current ccr 35%

Next item on the list... turning hindu.

Shiva is our guy... or better gal.

I´m planning to trigger the empire in name disaster, because at this point I believe I can use it to turbo reform the celestial empire via disaster events. I´m not aware at this point that this is actually the wrong disaster, one that does not get rebel events that give mandate. I forgot the name of the actual disaster I was going for, but it has the same icon, which got me confused.

- 87% ccr (becaus of perma claims). 12 month to core.

yep, sure.

Sweet. 10% admin efficiency till end of game. Madurai is not affected and the rest of the provinces are fully cored for free reintegration in a few years.

Let´s build a few more forts to deal with devastation.

Let´s also upgrade the grand palace of bangkok for extra gov cap.

60% ccr

An boatsloads of cash.

Man, austria and spain got crazy expansion levels.

Admin tech costs only 86 power points. So tempting.

View of the world as we know it.

Ae map.

I think I´m being so smart here

Austria is also making progress with reforms. This could become a worthy endgame boss.

How the mighty have fallen. Meh, they never actually became that mighty, we hit them just at the right moment, being behind in tech and low on mandate....

Another mission done.

I don´t see otto coming back to our side. Might as well make it official.

Our military is top notch. 27 innovativeness.

Malacca and moluccas need to be ours.

We almost stopped the bleeding.

Let´s hit them all at once.

Oh shit, spain incoming.

If I could just.... So close

I almost forgot about this new button. Concentrate development. This reduces dev in our vassals (quicker integration) but also in our own provinces and beams them to our capital where we don´t have any government capacity cost. I think I will start to use it more often in this campaign....

Philipines and brunei.

Bam, diplomatic coup of the week. We got an alliance with austria. This should be an excellent protection from an ever too greedy otto. Pfew!

Otto is strongest, but we have an entente of no 2,3 and 4.

Allies are mostly a deterent for coalitions, but manpower for favors is actually useful since the slacken standards nerf.

Alrighty. Age of reformation.

We do have a new cb, btw. Force tributary. This will be handy since we won´t be able to get religious cb from ideas.

You served your purpose japan. We are over diplo limit so, bye bye.

Being emperor of china, we are gaining lots of cores on ming as well as a unify china cb, which is bonkers.

See? Most of that is already cored.

At this point I realized I f*ed up, by triggering the wrong disaster. I thought I have almost 2 accepted cultures (lacking one provinces from a vassal, which I could seize whenever I wanted the disaster to end). However not giving me any mandate events. So go back in the time machine an screw that plan.

Everyhting accepted, disaster ends. Time wasted. Plan gone. Great. Guess we have to reform the slow way, by waiting.

Meanwhile in otto lands.

We finished the war for the spice islands. We could seperate peace all the smaller nations and annex them. Funnily I can´t annex the main target, since I chose tributary cb, which requires you to tributise a nation first before you can take any land of them. Major bummer. Seem like we still have to make some claims. Guess better then nothing.

Exploit time. Starting to lag.

Big chain war on the central asian steppe hordes.

QQ is a new vassal as he owns otto cores. might become a good buffer.

Uzbek as well, to manage central asia.

Whatever it costs, just give me the friggin mandate.

Return uzbek land.

Holy mother and jesus. We are golden

And a landbride to our vassal.

Otto ae rising, 42. Especially transoxianian land would be very costly. Was tempted to take more, but too dangerous.

Annex Deccan for 0 dip.

Europe reveal. Austria doesn´t look that big, but it does have pu´s over bohemia AND burgundy. Spain has a PU over portugal and I think naples as well (not 100% sure anymore). Going into europe won´t be fun :/

But that is future mughal problem. Let´s have some fun now. You get some money.

... and you get some money.

And now let´s kill this sob.

So screwed

But, for the first time we do have a coalition on our hand.

Reformation a little bit on a slow burner atm.

We do have money coming in so, let´s invest. Ccr and ae reduction always pays off.

Just force converted mongolia via vassal tab to get the extra splendor bonus.

Those otto armies aren´t made from paper like mings armies. Let´s hit them in the mountains.

We have superior quality though.

Advanced boat tacticts. Gotta love naval transport support....

We could get our first reform. Might not be the best idea in the first otto war. Think we are going for meritocracy as reforming would bring us down to 30 mandate.

I´m starting to boost the progress of important great projects. With money of course...

Abort, abort... incoming otto.

Why you come to me otto? Guess i play the distraction.

No good, no good....

I´m running out of ideas what to do with my excess admin points. This however is a bad idea since expanding infrastruction will make the capital province start costing government capacity. Noticed it later and had to get rid of it.

We can hold our ground for a few days, but we are no match against all of ottos forces.... yet.

Live to fight another day.

I just love doing that.

Finishing of the spice islands.

Ming exploded, allows for some quick unify china wars.

Our moment will come. Otto liberated their provinces, but we are waiting in position an just teched up.

No, no way....

That´s just being cocky....

Yeah... serves me right.

Wow.

Before peacing out we waited for the religious wars ability.

We are rather generous with our peace terms to not get crazy ae.

Spice islands pretty much done.

New vassal, syria.

Our crown land is getting higher and higher.

Now they are done.

Pfew, costly friendship... worth it.

Getting close to gov cap limit again.

Another nice great project. Had to seize it, because of accidentaly returning it to majapahit.

Going below 50 mandate sucks big time because of unrest going thru the roof.

Friggin beastmode.

Yep, portugal AND Naples confirmed. F me.

Reform tier 6.

Manchu cut down to pieces.

Korea, it´s a pleasure.

While we can´t build any courthouses in our own provinces. We could build them in our subject lands, if they have admin 10 or above. This also works for tributaries.

Deved for printing press as well.

Crap, new russian ruler turned aggressive. Alliance won´t hold much longer I guess.

Next up japan.

Damn, over gov cap limit again.

have to remove stated lands, which will cost us lots of power.

We do get decent reform progress, from high crownland and meritocracy.

Another awesome great project. Reduced Minimum autonomy in territories gives us a huge power boost and indirectly increases reform progress.

I´m starting to add one trade company per state to make them eligible for trade company investments. This costs gov cap, but will give us a huge income boost. I always do it in the lowest dev province.

Local venture gives us +0,30 produced goods in all provinces in the state and the last governance upgrade gives -5% minimum autonomy and +2000 manpower in the trade company region.

And just when things are looking up, you get hit right in the balls again.

On that note, I´m calling it for today. It´s netflix o´clock. Tomorrow we will deal with this civil war mess. Have a good one. Bye!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 5 - Careful maneuvering


Hello, welcome back to our no admin tech world conquest. Last time we conquered most of asia, scored powerful alliances with austria and russia and started battering down otto, who betrayed us. Oh yeah, and we are in a civil war. Progress will be slowed a bit until we have finished our celestial reform and entered the age of absolutism. I don´t want to accumulate too much ae with the major powers yet.

Well, double negative makes a positive i guess. First I wanted to reform via a disaster that doesn´t give mandate events. Now I get a disaster I didn´t want, that gives mandate events. Oh well.

Unrest is quite bad. This is even without oe.

Those rebels I´d take every day.

bam, 2nd reform.

oh my, +5 unrest with 2 stab.

I take every decision that gives mandate, no matter the cost.

Austria integrated burgundy, spain naples ^^

... reform no 3....

... and no 4. There is a tick for rebel events every month. It is costly in terms of power points, prestige and money, but totally worth it. This would take 100-200 years without events.

70% ccr

We do have quite a few rebels at 80-90%. Since we don´t really need the final reform, I think it is better to end the civil war now.

Easily done. Just kept one rebel army arround on an island.

Pfew.

Expoiting, exploiting, exploiting....

Japan´s trade chanels perfectly in our nodes.

10 month coring time. That means we could go over 100 oe, not that I plan to do that anytime soon. We are always close to gov cap limit.

We are starting to print money.

Shopping time: great projects.

... and institutions.

I get the feeling we are falling back in ranks.

Seriously, chill out austria... please.

Here... I give you something to do.

^^ I guess we are the weak link.

Timmy first.

Yemen next.

While we are in the area....

Also investing heavily in broker exchanges, since we can´t buy admin manufactories.

We are taking the yemeniti coast.

Once again we have to tread carefully with transoxiania, because of ae.

ae map

We do have access to the mediteranean, yay.

Core will be finished in 10 month.

A murderous war.

Finally done.

We now get coring range to anatolia and can take provinces for ourselves.

Here I stumble upon a exploit... err... I mean feature, if you use tributize cb. For testing purposes, I had to try it out of course 99% warescore:

98% warscore. I found this video later, that explains the exploit. It only works on certain nations though, or maybe certain sizes. Some major enemies, especially in europe seem imune from it. I think I used it maybe 3 times total, more of convinience then of necessity.

You do have to deal with the oe too ^^

Spain is actually no 2, crazy.

Tempting to have austria and spain weaken itself. A cb would be nice though.

Oh man, Austria took defensive and quality.... this will be bad. Please don´t take quantity!

Shit, no, no... that can´t happen right now.

To the time machine. Hey austria you don´t like spain, right. Let´s show them who´s boss. hehehe.

Japan is almost ours.

Our russian alliance survived wonderously. For 10 years I thought they would cancel every day, but then their ruler died.

Austria and mughals are actually outnumbered, but many of the spanish troops are in the new world.

We need more power....

Oh, ingolstadt took the emperorship of austria.

We earn so much money, I start upgrading and speeding up great projects left and right. Hindus have some great projects. Unfortunately the bug, where you could also use budhist projects as well via diety does not work anymore in this patch :/

The steppe hordes are no more.

Haha, almost feel sorry for you austria... almost.

Useful, since it reduces our gov cap cost from trade companies. Down to 1910/2057 from 2052/2057.

We do have a few troops in the area to help out austria against spain. Now we can earn some easy favors by fighting against netherland as well.

Major Mil tech upgrade.

Austria is growing tired.

40 favors sweet.

Only 1 reason left. Spain is on medium. If austria peaces out, spain will get a huge boost again and we will have a problem.

Spain is on 1 reason too, argh.

Storm this fort, quick!!!!

Both on low ^^

Omg, probably on the last day.

Relations with austria are repared as well. No thought of breaking the alliance. Hopefully ^^

On that note, we will take a well deserved break. I notice things are not getting easier. We haven´t reached our final form yet, but the usual snowball effect is not happening at all, which is to be expected. Anyways, have a good one and until next time.

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 6 - Sneaking up on europe


Europe is coming into reach. Before we accumulate massive ae with christian countries, i want to finish of remaining pockets of resistance in asia and the muslim countries. Some strategic brigeheads in europe might be useful for later. We also might be able to score some free tributaries of small or medium sized countries. Tributaries are great as they to get any ae, as well as give us power points or manpower. We also want to use vassals in europe. We can return cores for cheap ae, they are a good disctraction for close by enemies and we can keep them until late game when we probably have major issues with government cap. Perfect since they don´t cost us any.


Trying to get to maximum trust with austria asap. They could help us taking out most of europe and would be an formidable endgame boss.

I released shun, because with unify china cb and 70% ccr, we can integrate them much faster by conquest then by diplo annex.

Done

This will be helpful. Because of all the vassal annexations we are falling back in dip tech.

I thing less to worry about.

Korea finished. They have some insane high dev provinces. They used to dev a lot, but is it just me or is the ai developing much more this patch?

Sneaking up on spain.

Filling in gaps.

Byzantium re-emerges. They still have cores left, but we have to hurry.

Now we can fabricate on a very important island.

Crap, we don´t have them in a coalition yet, but if austria is busy someplace else, they might get ideas.

The horn is ours. Further south!

France is truly desperate, lul. I´d take any help i can get in their situation...

Mutapa is keeping up in army size ^^

I gave mongolia a japanese provinces, because I didn´t want to go above 100 oe. Now I have to seize the province....

.... to get the 10% morale bonus from diwan. Oh well.

Only few full cored provinces left to get rid of. After that we have to find other ways to increase our gov cap.

Time to beat down otto. Only little time before byzantiums cores expire.

Otto is still strong, but they have to chance being sieged from three sides. We can also rush their capital pretty safely.

Making good on dip tech. Austria got another pu over poland. Lucky bastard.

Guess we have to rush this.

100 more gov cap. Not much, but gives us a few years until we hit the limit again.

Those events are nice. We do finish quite a few great projects and excess prestige now goes to powerpoints.

We have some excellent generals, who save us tons of manpower. We also use a couple of mercs. Btw, awesome that they fixed the merc size and composition.

The poenix rises

I don´t have anything personally against you france, but I have to keep austria busy and keep them from eating you. You understand? Also you are allied to a very important island.

1 government reform progress each month. This will be very useful, as we can also buy gov cap with it once we have fully reformed.

Haha, into my belly.

Here I´m trying to get a foothold into scotland to maybe release them later on.

Upgrade this badboy at once. We will lack a lot of admin efficiency. To make up for it, we need all the warscore cost reduction we can get.

Going into africa.

Peace with france. We only take a few provinces.

Free tributaries.

Next round against spain. This time for real.

Netherlands is quickly peaced out, but they still outnumber us. I count on them having an upper hand on the european continent.

What, now?! Are you kidding me?

I might had to do another test here with the tributize cb.... just to make sure it still worked.

Still works ;P

Fighting spain is a total nightmare as we hardly accumulate any warscore because we can´t touch any of their holdings in the new world. At least we got money for mercs.

Ai cheats. Takes three army idea groups in a row. At least its our ai.

Tough war, but we take only very select provinces to minimize ae.

Man, come on. Already at gov cap limit again.

Alhambra is boosted also at all cost.

Naturally we get the global trade institution.

Everything territories, but our capital state. From now on we really have to rely on other sources of gov cap.

New government reform. Super helpful as it removes the penalty from heathen and heretic provinces. In combination with our mughal diwan accepted culture mechanic we have a huge unrest reduction in most of our provinces.

Mil tech 17, 58 innovativeness.

Ae map.

Army sizes.

Quality. Austria has actually 8,08 morale.

Is that normal? I have no idea anymore.

Vassal time. Portugal and aragon see the light of day. Naples will follow once we have open diplo slots.

We could go hegemon. We will do that definately for the 20% gov cap and reduced minimum autonomy... but later. We still need our ally austria.

Knock, knock... otttttooooo.

Finally transoxiania is gone. They prooved to be very resilent.

Alhambra upgraded.

Austria just roflstomps everything.

This is 159 oe?! How many wars do i have to fight them?! How many wars will i have to fight against austria

Cleaning up african borders and getting gb involved in the process. two flies with one stone.

Madagaskar and the ivory coast.

Absolutism is here... finally!

This should go quickly. 92 accepted cultures, lul.

We take the gold coast from gb and annex jolof.

Damn 2329/2196 gov cap. -3% admin efficiency and all the other crap.

Naples is released released before the next spanish war. Now we have a couple of cores to return

We fight in italy....

... africa....

....indonesia....

... in france. Everywhere.

Man the spaniards are tough cookies.

Lucky for us, quite a few spanish units got lost in africa. And now we do have a tech advantage again.

We can also build dip manufactories now.

Harsh treatment first, to boost absolutism.

Soon, very soon....

Once again we take suprisingly few provinces from spain. I´m torn between what will weaken spain quicker. Taking away land in europe or the new world. I go for a mix as I also have to consider ae in europe. Spain and france are in the coalition mix from now on.

I returned napoli for the ae reduction, but I definately want the province for myself.

Because of reform progress and sweet gov cap.

Unfortunately austria totally wants it too...

Finished.

Finally, we approach our final form.

And on that bombshell we end for tonight. Hope you enjoyed the ride so far. Will be back tomorrow with plenty more looting and fighting Bye

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 7 - Grinding down spain


Morning lads. The age of absolutism has arrived. We are in the midst of court and country and hopefully have our main source of admin efficiency complete. We will get 30% from absolutism, 10% from the viceroyalty of deccan and 5% from alhambra. Temporarily we will also get 5% from splendor during age of absolutism. Technically there are a few more sources, but it would come with opportunity costs. We won´t get the 30% from admin technology, which is a major bummer, but hey you guys aren´t here to see that, right?

What´s up next? We have two major threats in europe. Austria is the most powerful and has the most dev, spain is a close second but maybe even more annoying to deal with. They pretty much own the new world, which gives them a massive boost to income and troop numbers directly. Their colonial nations have crazy troop numbers as well, so we can´t occupy those lands. Spains weak point is their main land in europe, which we can overrun with austrias help. So the plan is to do just that, since austria is still on our good side. The only problem with that is that we will have to deal with a massive austria in late game. Half of europe super blob, full of forts and reduced admin efficiency and time running out. Oh boi, what did i get myself into


I´m revoking my priviliges. Only one´s I keep for now are the ones that give +100 gov cap.

Try to make good on dip tech before imperialism cb, which will be a huge help. Slowing down on vassal integration, which set us back a lot as well as peacing out seperately.

Gaining 17 dip power each month. Our current ruler earns us 6 and we have level 5 advisor everywhere. They hardly cost anything because of several advisor cost reductions.

Half of subjects dev.... 1774. That means spain is currently owning colonial nations with 3750 dev in the new world, while only owning 1500 himself.

Austria isn´t joining.

War´s cost money. I get that. Here we go.

We good? Let´s do this.

First we occupy the french... while fighting several smaller war´s in africa.

After france is out... we only canceled their alliance with otto... Otto is next. Notice how little land we can take from those european super blobs with one war. This is actually a 100% warscore peace deal. We have to fight so many wars against them. Without the help of our allies those war´s each would also ruin our manpower and probably eat up all the available mercs as well.

Something different for a change. Gb is pretty isolated since france would be their only natural great power ally, and well... let´s say they don´t like each other. My plan of releasing scotland and returning cores, actually did not work out, since gb failed to wipe out scotland completely. They moved to the new world where I can´t reach them for the moment :/

Huh, russia is taking care of sweden for me. Spasibo.

I´m so happy that stackwipes are back

I don´t want gb in the coaliton yet, so we are for the most part only take their colonial nations.

Only central africa remaining. I don´t know when they changed that, but that was actually one of my fears of not being able to reach the nations where kitara is right now, because we won´t be able to get colonists from ideas. It would have been a hassle to get a vassal to colonize for us down there. Guess kongo gets a mission nowadays.

Kongo fields a big army, but they are no match for our battle hardened troops.

Pfew, one worry less.

King of Kong(o).

Our troop limit is rising, but no snowballing. We could pay for much bigger armies, but manpower is an issue as well. I try to conserve it whereever i can.

Yay!

105 max absolutism. That means we actually can afford one more little privilege. No worries from going below 100, from being low on legimacy... as we don´t have any.

1k surplus. We collect most of our trade in hormuz currently.

Next round with spain.

War´s become a little bit easier against spain, since we have slightly better access to the spanish core land. Make no mistake though, this is still brutal and I have to kill all of spain´s europe forces which is 400k or so. If only for the warscore. Owning the war goal gives us ticking, but ticking takes a long time. By that time spains colonial nations have overtaken our new world holdings. It is impossible right now to 100% them, which is very annoying as it significantly increases the number of war´s I have to fight against them.

We do get some colonies going in north america, but they are outnumbered 10:1 by the spanish cns.

Man, can we stop with those doomstacks out of nowhere... please.

Austria... how about some help here?

Half of the spanish army tends to move into africa, which I´m fine with. Shall they run arround there, while I siege down iberia.

Annoyingly I don´t have real naval dominance due to being behind in dip tech, so I can´t chase the troops in africa, because spain is blocking the strait of gibralta. My troops are standing there and hold their d*cks in their hands. Maybe we got a window now...

Ha, smart dog. Portugal intercepted the blocking spanish fleet for us.

Now we can breach the fort and also get the warscore for the spanish provinces in morocco.

Not again ^^

Almost full absolutism.

Africa finished.

More reform progress, how nice. The accepted culture mechanic from diwan unlocks quite a few great projects for us. With all the cash coming in we can instantly boost them to level 3 immediately.

1.25 reform progress per month. Sweet.

Alright, 50% admin efficiency and 75% ccr currently and 7,8% all power cost reduction from innovativeness. I can work with that. At this point I´m at 999 admin points most of the time, because i don´t know what to spend them on.

61% Warscore seems the highest we can get. Each war I´m torn between returning cores to our vassals or taking new world land. This time we go for colonies.

Ae with austria has reached 34. Have to watch this very carefully. They do at least half of our fighting. It would be a major problem if they turn against us now.

The best way to keep them loyal is to constantly involve them in wars.

Check out our losses. Even though you´d might think that otto is pretty much toast, which he is, who am i kidding. We still suffer major losses. I have to watch carefully that most of the actual fighting is only done by our mercs.

I was considering to release and conquer our vassals mongolia and uzbek. Russia would have immediately attacked them though. Had to pay full price.

Level 5 advisors for 14 and 9 ducats a month

Naughty france has to be punished.

Another bite out of otto.

We do have a cb on one of the remaining native tribes. This will be used to attack pretty much all of them. It looks like we already own the whole west coast, but there is one massive ichisi federation with almost the same color as us.

Operation overlord. Meanwhile russia betrayed us.

I´m always talking about austria and spain, but russia actually brought some decent numbers to the table.

Stack-u-wipu.

Let´s get that into our belly, before spain does.

We took a few trade centers from britain and actually made them a tributary by force here. The thinking is that for the time being i take them out of the potential coalition as long as I can manage their liberty desire.

New vassal, gascony.

Hmm, hmm. Only two remaining rivals. I´m not sure if I want to add russia yet. They might enter into annoying alliances with maybe spain or whoever. They are rivaled with austria at least.

Maybe I gave new mughals a little bit too much oe.

Wait I thought you can only do that if you are allied?!

The french with their alliances... that settles it.

Wait a moment... new ruler.

Ha, how lucky can you get. I was already thinking of ways how to murder them. Hmm, shall we take it? Hmm, hmm.

Spain... again

Now I´m torn again about taking more european land from spain. New Spain and brazil have high liberty desire and field massive armies. If I can get spain itself weak enough, they might call idependence. Then I could attack them direcly. What to do, what to do?

Spain also has some colonies in the spice island and oceania, which is quite a nuissance. Besides from them stealing trade, I have to conquer those provinces and jump between theatres of war each time. They do cost a lot of warscore though. That´s why i let them keep it for now.

Those colonies weren´t finished yet, though... snatch.

Running out of investments. All the available local ventures build.

Since Manpower is a major issue, i´m checking out the trade company investment that gives manpower next.

Works only in provinces that are actual trade company lands as it seems, not the whole state like with local ventures.

Still very much kicking....

Better get our top man to the front.

Damn, they keep coming....

Nah, screw that ^^

Cancel alliance. Let´s me guess. Go back to otto? ^^

Yay, we have reached 100 army professionalism. I have been saving up to get some extra modifiers.

Hurry, dip tech 20, en par... level 23 coming up.

Let´s see if that increases mexicos and brazils thirst for independence.

Oh shit. I wanted to use prepare war on austria, but they need 50 opinion with us. Dangerous, dangerous.

I guess we did not go with the option of re-allying with russia. Gotta set an example against betrayal I guess.

Generals cost only 15 mil.

I´m constantly exploiting development. First I do taxes, but I have to do dip now too if there is no tax left to exploit. Manpower I will do last.

With austrias help, russia was easily defeated, compared to spain. You basically only have to conquer most of their european provinces.

No, no, no austria. No going alone!

I start to build training fields everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

Give up otto. You are no match for us. 1k mughals vs 27k otto stack.

We start another war with denmark to shorten our truce with russia.

Otto to finally shrink a bit more.

A much needed upgrade to our gov cap, +250.

2664/2783

New vassal, norway.

Next war against russia. Sure more innovativeness, why not. 93 now.

New spain formed an alliance with brazil. Maybe now things get going.

Russia is cut down to its european holdings.

We also build conscription centers... Everywhere!

France gets punched next. We also get the first hre nations in a potential coaltion. Not that this matters much, just have to stay clear of austria.

Our force limit finally moves up a bit.

War against spain... AGAIN. How many friggin more?! ^^

Uzbek integrated.

Ha, we had the highground... and also tech advantage.

Manpower is constantly drained. Fortunately slacken standards pays off by now. I try to keep professionalism above 80% to get the bonus to morale damage.

Men are dying like flies.

Spain still has almost as many troops then austria and us combined. Crazy, and we can hardly get warscore on him.

New Spains armies are doing nothing, our colonies still get overrun by spains other cns.

Over time they grow tired furtunately.

Free tributaries. Not as many as i´d wish for, but I take what I can get.

Three for one.

I guess now or never. We go for the last reform. Don´t really need it, but when finished we can make vassals out of tributaries. Not sure if it´s worth.

Easy war.

Lul, only cost 336 mandate to make a vassal out gb.

Yes! Imperialism. This will help a lot, as it also lowers warscore cost by 25%.

This speeds things up a bit. Starting to go over 100 oe more often now.

Building, building, building. Building isn´t actually that bad, it is the removing of buildings to get enough space that is really annoying.

- 3 stab for war on subject. Call in austria to have them in a war still when we peace out france.

We do have lot´s of stab cost reduction.

Next war against spain.

That´s what I´m thinking most of the time.

Don´t look that much. Spain got a pu over brittany. By taking all of brittanys land we get their colonial nations for free.

Norway returned to glory.

Concentrate dev.

... and aragon annexed.

Finally we get a bit of a snowball going, but austria is still a close second. They are starting to eat up the hre. Brutal, this will be brutal.

Alright. That´s it for another episode. I have some free time on my hand so i will try to get 2 more in todays. We will see. Laters!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 8 - Wiener Schnitzel


The year is 1692, only 130 years left. Spain has proven very resilent. 6 maybe 8 wars which we have won, but they haven´t lost much strengh. Every war eats away resources and more importantly time. Time we will need for our real end game boss, austria. Soon we will have to start working on them too and then we will have to manage spain, russia and austria itself on our own. We more or less have reached our final form and progress won´t get much quicker due to gov cap limitations. It will rather get slower once we start going over it and we will also loose 5% admin efficiency after the age of absolutism. My palms are getting sweaty.

First we start on gb, -3 stab

What is admin points? Currently over gov cap limit.

Crush!

Well, maybe we haven´t reached our final form yet. Next Government reform.

We can afford another privilige.

Dude, austria check your attrition.

Spain have 1116 force limit ^^ Most of their colonial nations took quantity and have massive army sizes themselves.

Hre not amused.

- 3,5% admi efficiency

Expand administration

-3,1% admin efficiency. So about 0,4% per upgrade. Good to know.

A quick war against russia with austrias help. 600k russians, but most of them get lost in asia. They don´t have many forts left.

I don´t think we can keep up the austrian alliance much longer :/

bye, bye 5% admin efficiency in 10 years :/

What do you say? One last time, austria? A gift of 7200 ducats might have made the difference.

I start to station more troops in the new world, in the hope of not being totally crushed there.

Still annoying.

Portugal integrated. Like aragon, they did fight quite well and had like 70k troops or so, but soon we rather need our diplo slots somewhere else.

I managed to get prussia to volunteer for vassalage. Unfortunately it is the ducal version, lul.

While austria is in a war with us against spain. We declare on lithuania and co belligerent most of the hre. I believe ingolstadt is still the emperor.

Hit them hard quickly and wipe as many

Sieging russia for a quick peace.

No luck in the new world.

Russia peaced out.

Hre and sweden mounting some counter attacks in north germany.

Hmm, I got a feeling....

Not the full, stack... but half of it.

Too much cash. Starting to hand out 10k gifts to our subjects.

Hre almost sieged down. Half a million dead. 0 manpower.

We start making peace deals. Hre is turning green.

It had to happen. Austria broke the alliance. Suit yourself!

They are still in a war with us against spain.

Finally we can become hegemon. Takes a couple of years until we are at maximum power gain. Can´t wait for the +20% gov cap.

Lul, spain 1,5m force limit.

261 oe. we have quite a couple of unrest reduction modifiers on top of the accepted cultures and no religion penalty.

Think we pissed of all the remaining countries by now.

But there are not that many remaining anymore. 543 oe and netherlands, saxony and cologne became our vassals.

Conquering the hre let us embrace enlightenment.

That´s not how I planned that.

13930 dev. I´d say that is about half of the total dev remaining.

Coring time reduction. Most important modifier in the game!

Still getting a few uprisings each month.

Already calming down, see.

Maybe a few more uprisings

Pfew, done.

A last stand.

1661% warscore cost, to conquer all of austria. That means 16,6 wars against austria.... with the current admin efficiency levels. We will lose 5% in a few years and more if we go further above gov cap limit. F* me!!!!!!

- 7,9% admin efficiency :/

I guess we have to start removing trade companies now. We earn enough money anyways.

It is time. Ring the alarm. We are at war. War with austria! I was wondering why we get -3 stab, austria is not our subject. Lucca is our subject (tributary). I try to involve as many small nations as well to remove coaltion participants.

Blitzkrieg for vienna.

I´m desparte for lower gov cap and start exploiting manpower as well.

Got admin eff down to -4% again.

Right, almost forgot. We can concentrate development in our own provinces. This lowers our gov cap as well.

We do have some high dev states in europe.

Heavy fighting, but we have new canons now and austria doesn´t. 100 inno.

Max mapower 982k, 80k left, 169k needed to reinforce.

35 dev removed, beautfull. You know how i have to click for that in the laggy exploiting tab.

91 dev in delhi at no gov cap cost.

Slow but steady progress.

I was trying to win the first war against austria before the age of revolutions. No chance. That means 5% less admin eff. Oh well. We fire our golden area.

Even with the extra +10% morale we just quite get to austrias levels.

Over a million dead on each side. Austria still with half a million troops remaining in north germany. Looking forward to the next 20 wars ^^

I just got a new favorite vassal

The end is nigh.

Ok, let´s open this door.

We priotize fort provinces.

We release hungary and bohemia and feed the western provinces to gascony.

I screwed up big time and gave too many provinces to byzantium. Now I have to seize them.

They are disloyal now, but we get the -10% warscore cost vs other religions for completing the south slavic culture. Worth it. I believe we finally have reached our final form now!

One month has passed... and we declare on austria again.

-5 stab sounds harsh, but without overextension stabbing up costs us only 50 admin till +1.

War exhaustion goes down 0.18 per month, during wartime! This will give us unrest and rebellions, but it will be hopefully managable as long as we don´t go crazy on the overextension. We will have to truce break as there are only 100 years left, too little time for regular wars. I also don´t want to give him time to recover to full strengh.

Blitz, blitz....

That´s how you prepare schnitzel. Loving it.

Austrias income has dropped to 38 ducats.

While we devastate austrias lands a bit more. We have time to start another war.

More forts removed from austria. Preferably close to vassals so we can give them away.

Germany has some extremly high dev provinces, but most of the conquered land went to vassals. -3% admin eff atm.

I just realized something. Austria thinking that they can´t afford it anymore, just killed 90% of their remaining forts. Something like 20-30 level 6-8 forts. That is very much exploitable and makes my live so much easier

Three is the charm

Wait what? How is that possible. Saxony has 0 liberty desire. Paradox must have changed something and make vassals rebel even if they have negative opinion. That is a problem, since a few of them have huge negative opinion from ae.

Just so saxony doesn´t get any ideas.

Four times the charm?

Return some more cores.

Also, sweden gets cut down.

855% warscore cost, down from 1600 something in what... 10 years. Who´t the boss now austria. Problem is, we put all that dev into vassals... who we have to annex. But one problem at a time....

With taking the hegemony, we have become a true military juggernaut.

We start one more war against rügen and gain a shortened truce with austria.

Maximum power almost reached.

We break with cologne. We won´t get them happy and use too many diplo slots. This will also give us a possibility to get shorter truces with austria.

Wohoo, 3115/3402 government cap. Economic hegemon gives us +20% now.

Another war against the vicious spaniards.

Very short war, mainly to get a truce... but I´m also fed up with dealing in that way with spain.

Already austria time again. We keep busy.

They had some time to recover... but not that much has changed.

New peace deal

Next target is cologne, with austria on board to get the 5 year truce.

This could have been extremely annoying earlier on. Fortunately they had been rivals for most of the time.

And now... move this here....

... and then here.

I was fed up with fighting 20 more 50% warscore wars with spain and moved our capital to the new world. If that means that I won´t be able to integrate all the vassals due to going massively over gov cap limit, so be it. With europe halfway under control I can use a little break. Next up we will already enter the last phase of our campaign. Make sure to tune in to see if we can gobble up all this remaining dev in time. Until then!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 9 - Race to the finish line


Austria, the big white blob looks a lot less scarier nowadays, but let´s not kid ourselves. We just have shifted the problem and gave 90% of the conquered territory to our vassals. We either have to diplo annex them, which costs huge amounts of dip and takes forever... or we have to conquer them... again. Then there is also the problem of the new world, which we have decided to conquer. This will add tons of gov cap to us and makes conquering europe that much more expensive. Clock is ticking.

For now we are just below our limit again, because we got a whooping +20% from hegemon. 3421/3429. Those bonuses to gov cap will become rarerer and rarerer.

By moving our capital (to the new world) we can go for a new round of concentrate government.

How I hate this screen. I must have spent dozends of hours exploiting dev in this run. Every bit counts though.

Biggest city in the world.

3172/3429. 250 gov cap freed, worth it.

Gb gone.

War against austria and russia.

Costly seperate peace.

... austria.

I don´t know saxony. Just got you to positive opinion. Not Sure if we ever reach +190. We also have only 4 diplomats. At least 2 will be busy with integrations and the other two are busy making peace deals. Hardly no time to improve relations.

Sry, have to cut you loose.

Sweden is finished.

I hope I don´t regret this. Our truces with the new world are running out. We can attack spanish cns directly. It is much quicker and easier to not full annex them, but leave them one province.

Most of the provinces don´t actually give oe.

New spain had something like 300k+ troops. They are a joke now.

260 oe, but not a problem. everything will be done in 9-10 month. We are at gov cap limit again however. 3556/3510.

More wars against lusiana, california and peru and we end up at 3831/3510 and -4.5% admin efficiency.... but at least we don´t have to deal with the americas anymore.

We will have some rebel problems, but we got enough police over there on auto pilot.

18445 dev owned by us. Roughly 8000-9000 more to go.

Let´s see how well you do this time mr spain.

Let´s take those provinces as well as the remaining opm cns.

Spain has this el escortial great project, which gives another +10% gov cap. I was eying it for a while, but somehow first I misread the prerequisites, then I thought it should work. Now i think I messed up something, because one of our cns owns still a castillian cultured province and that´s why we don´t have the culture accepted. It is a bit of a bummer, because I could have gotten this way earlier.... Anyway doesn´t work now, something must have gone wrong.

Truce breaking austria. Cost us roughly 300-400 admin points to stab up again, depending on oe. Admin points actually get some value again.

... and already over again.

I was worried about netherlands as well. I was just able to reach the +190 relations with them to be able to annex them. I fed them a lot of land :/

Byzantium integrated, -7,2% admin efficiency. This also increases our vassal integration cost.

5 mil to buy a general. lul.

Saxony, shortened truces with austria and spain.

We maxed out our government reforms. That means we can invest all in expanding administration.

This land in germany is costly. almost all 40 dev provinces.

Militarily nobody can reach us anymore.

Russia almost gone.

Ok, if we want to go for a true one tag we have to do it soon. All or nothing I say. 70 years to go.

We have new great powers.

For some friggin reason we now accept castillian and I can upgrade el cortial. I don´t understand, but who cares. Gimme gov cap!!!!

4142/3828, -4.1% admin eff.

Austria getting smaller and smaller. Trying to take more land for myself.

355 oe, no problem....yawn.

Naples integrated.

Ermm.. what I did not pay attention for one second and 3,7 million rebels pop up. Jesus. I guess accepting their demands is the best option. Fight twice the numbers of our armies all over the world or press one button and gain a bit autonomy.... press button!

Lost 10 absolutism... but meh, we just decrease autonomy again, rofl.

Bohemia and gascony start their annexation process. Integrating 3 vassal at the same time costs all of our dip power ... and then some.

Oe 0, truce break.

Truces with the former cns run out.

We release more cns.

Brazil.

Another truce break.

Saxony.

Not that it matters much, but we can invest the 100 prestige from dismantling the hre in placating rulers of our vassals and then seize provinces from them.

This is the sad end of the austrian juggernaut. I thought it would take way longer, but we took them down in roughly 40 years.

Saxony is gone as well. Now we seize provinces from vassals that are not being integrated yet.

And then we suprise attack them. We can attack our subjects without having to wait for a 5 year truce.

Quicker then diplo annexation.

We don´t need strong duchys anymore and change the privilege for the annex without diplo penalty one.

Dow on usa and cuba, the biggest nations left in the game besides us.

Not a fair exchange.

I sometimes still find a state which we can concentrate. 32 dev deleted. Noice.

Our golden era just ended.

Hungary gets hit next.

I actually lack admin points. That´s a first in 300 years ^^

Pesky paticularist again. Only 766k this time, but I´m too lazy again. Just give me the papers, I sign anything.....

Russia finished.

... and spain.

That technically makes completes our world conquest , but we wanted to make everything pretty, so it is not over yet.

usa.

canada.

australia.

mexico.

quebec.

Norway doesn´t go down the peaceful way neither.

We are truce brakeing even former cns now.

No need for trade companies anymore.

4898/3944 gov cap, -12,1% admin efficiency.

Hungary integrated.

We have some spare admin again, so I experimentally move our capital again so we can concentrate dev from states again.

I spare you the steps in between. Roughly reduced gov cap by 150, for 700 admin points. Not really worth it, because in the beginning less dev is wasted.

Gascony finished.

Bohemia next.

Norway.

Hmm, netherlands take until 1789....

Screw that!

Screw it again.

All f*ing right.

Drums please!

Holy crap, we actually pulled it of.

Half of our modifiers.

the other half

income

ideas

5090/3973 gov cap

1.68 reform progress per month

country(s)

religions

development

It was another crazy ride. This run took me almost 3 month and 400-500 hours ingame time. It wasn´t as difficult as my no mil tech wc , but it is definately a close second. Maybe even more tedious. I actually had a lot of fun playing this campaign as it was thrilling till pretty much the end. I had my doubts up until the 1730s if i can pull it off. That´s how it should be.

The power creep is real. It is kind of mind boggling for myself if I consider how many massive modifiers, you´d might consider mandatory for a wc, I skipped and was still able to pull this off. There is so much potential in just observing, making use of opportunities and in general playing slow. That, and the fact that the mughals have always been rediciously overpowered and got so many modifiers to replace all that

I anticipated most of campaign and knew that mughals would be perfectly suited for this challenge. What I did not plan for and made a real difference was the constant truce breaking towards the end. It was a lucky coincidence that the mughals also have so many stab cost reduction modifiers. I did not expect for austria to become such a huge blob ^^

I apologize for rushing this aar a bit and for not integrating any videos. Unfortunate time restraints and I also wanted to finish before xmas to have a stress free time with my family. I hope you still found some entertainment. This might have been my last aar as this cost me greatly like my other challenges. Mostly sanity, but also a lot of time which I seem to have less and less of. Then again I said this already the last two or three times. Who knows... I never did this unreformed native wc, hmm.... no, no stop it. I will go back in my well deserved eu4 hiatus and maybe, big maybe... in the future.

I wish everybody a great x-mas. Take care and keep watching those Florryworry streams!