Post your (DW) Empire

[TheArchMede]

Nobody expects

the Spanish Inquisition to conclude its work shortly after the last Castillian province in Spain is stormed.

This wasn't quite the end of Castille, at the end of the game rebels in Sweden defy the Ottomans who occupy the couple of Balkan provinces which are the remnant of Castille. Note the 820 overseas provinces, combined with the inefficiency of free trading, this has led to rather less tech at the end of game than I usually manage.
The Pope was kicked out of Malta, took up residence at the head of the Adriatic, and finished the game as a vassal. Most of the small countries bordering NL are also vassals, or recently force released in the hope of getting a vassalisation mission. Being a republic cuts down on the number of those that can be acquired, because mission targets can't be diplovassalised during truces. Vassalise Orleans is the current mission, but blocked by a truce. Wallachia is Moslem, as was the recently annexed Provence.

I piled up the BB at the end of the game cleaning up Asia. I had to take Brunei without a CB, and there were several other OPMs too, but even though it wasn't a spice province, the price had to be paid to make Indonesia orange. Chagatai is a vassal, but I ran out of time and diplomats and BB to clean up this part of the map. The rest of Asia is orange.

Jerusalem was seized off the Ottos right at the end of the game. I had intended to a couple of other provinces (you can see the armies that had failed to complete sieges still in place) but a level 3 fort bounced 50k infantry and I had to take what I could get on 31st Dec. There's a bit of Ethiopia still uncolonised, but everywhere to the south is orange.

France is the only non-orange bit of S America. It almost got down to the point where picking off the cores from boundary disputes would have made it a possible vassal mission, but not quite. (3 provinces maximum for that, it has 5, 1 of which is a recent core of mine)

I had intended to take all of N America (or vassalise Norway if that mission turned up) but it allied a country I was at war with and ran out the clock with the truce from that.

Objectives were to play Dutch style: merchant republic, reform religion, take everywhere historically dutch, steal colonies, acquire all the spice. One of the unusual features was that a lot of the American coast was taken with colonial CBs from inland provinces that were seized in a previous war.

 

[Kovax]

I just abandoned a Burgundy run at around the 1500 mark, once it became boring to continue. After grabbing a couple of HRE provinces as cores, mostly via missions, I took on France with an "Obscure Documents" CB, since they were already badly stressed in a long war with England and lacking a legitimate ruler. After I declared war, Castille and Brittany declared their own wars, with several smaller countries joining them. It wasn't pretty (for France), and I had to wait for some of those wars to finish and free up some occupied provinces before I could meet the 90% war score in my own war. After all of those other belligerents took pieces for themselves, released France's vassals, liberated countries, and so on, I was able to enforce my demands......on a 3-province France. Oh well. Sometimes even when you win, it feels like you've lost.

 

[jhhowell]

That's not specific to Hindustan, more a generic strategy ; but whenever I find myself in a position to grab Horde land (especially with GH and the Timurids) I do my best to keep it from other colonizers until I can have them for myself. Spice provinces like Fars and Hormuz are very valuable and their coastal CoTs provide some extra colonists, which makes the occupation and colonization of this territory sort of self-sustaining.

Now, in Hindustan's specific case... If I am to become the Asian superpower, I have to go for both China and Persia. China will be time-consuming, so Persia has to come easier. I don't want actual Persia or, heaven forbid, the Mamluks to take these lands, because getting a proper CB against them could be quite random.

Sorry for the slow reply, lots of real life issues keeping me from playing these last several weeks...

Re: Asian superpower, Westernized Hindustan is already the Asian (and almost certainly world) superpower, just with their core provinces. If I get convenient CBs someday I might grab some of the richer Chinese provinces, and likewise might grab Hormuz and Fars if they're ever not Timurid. Neither one is a priority, though, certainly not at the expense of badly-needed colonists in the scenario of taking enough Timurid provinces to get Fars and Hormuz. And getting CBs would probably require Unam Sanctam, which again I don't know that I care enough to take.

Staying on topic - Kannada culture reaches Canada:

I wish I could take Colonial Ventures multiple times. Between my spies and the AI Europeans being very random and haphazard about colonizing, I think I will probably get most of Canada, much to my surprise. If you're wondering about the odd color in NY/NJ, that belongs to the Hansa. Just about the only lasting consequence of a huge war involving all of Europe several years ago.

 

[TheArchMede]

I had decided I wanted a HRE game, but couldn't think of a good objective for one, until I saw "Frank Fort" suggested for an EU4 achievement. Playing as Frankfurt, take over and fully fortify France. I'm interpreting this as own every province with a French culture and put a level 6 fort in it.
Dalmatia was grabbed early so I would have somewhere to colonise from if France colonised before I was in a position to do anything about it.
Switzerland was an early opportunistic vassalisation. I inly had 6k troops at the time but got the chance to kick it while it was down with an Alliance CB and then siege it bit by bit as its other enemies handed back a couple of a provinces a time as they made peace.
France grabbed Savoy, but then imploded leading to Dauphine and Savoy revolting free and Savoy picking up Liguria (but not Savoie or Nice). Dauphine got itself excommunicated, which gave me the chance to pick up a province outside the HRE as well as force vassalising Savoy. A conquest mission got me Savoie with a core, and a diploannex mission got me a couple more cores. The Swiss vassal proving very useful for intervening here. The usual HRE vassalisation campaign continued to pick up other vassals as opportunity presented itself, and opportunities for further inroads into France also turned up as it kept trying to take on too many other big powers at the same time.
The Reformation took about 20 years from Luther to Calvin, which allowed a lot of countries to turn Protestant. France losing its main ally Austria when Austria converted led to yet another bite being taken and a lot of liberation too. France itself is currently Protestant but is powerless against a massive Catholic zealot uprising, there's a 25k army and a 10k army that are about to force it back to Catholic. As well as Austria: Bohemia, Poland and Lithunia make for a massive East European Protestant bloc. However the counter reformation followed hard on the heels of Calvin, there were just the two Reform provinces in the game at the time so there'll be nothing but an occasional OPM going Reformed.
A decent start, I got a lot more of France a lot sooner than I expected.

 

[TheArchMede]

France got itself beaten up by Sweden losing enough provinces to make it a vassalisation target, and then to the top of the once per decade annexation queue. Poitou is actually Swedish and occupied by Spain. I got a "save the catholics" mission to take Anjou off Sweden for a core. There is a whole lot of actual Spanish territory, The Spanish Netherlands are actually Spanish in this game as well as Provence. Spain also has a union with the Palatinate, but unfortunately never inherited them and they are in the process of revolting away at this point. (Unfortunately because the Imperial Ban would have been a juicy way to acquire them.)
There's a lot of HRE territory that is French and this takes painfully large amounts of infamy to grab when there's no core granting mission.
I switched to a monarchy and got myself elected Emperor rather than leaving the empire at this point, because the Imperial Ban on Spain is just so tempting.

End of the 1600s. Vassals have been annexed to link up with the ex-Spanish area, and Frankfurt has a connection to the coast for the first time. Hence all the extra CoTs that merchants can get to. Colonisation is also now possible, but since the French never made it overseas, there's no need for it. The naval support limit is now non-trivial and in the latest war dozens of British ships have been sunk as a result of them sending 4 at a time to blockade Liguria. Its still only a third of Spain or GB but if they split their fleets up, they pay for it. France still isn't connected, there's a province needing to be taken off Normandy or Burgundy to do that, but they are HRE and I'm not ready to acquire another illegal province at the moment. August I steadfastly refuses to die despite all the sieges he's been sent to and will probably outlive his 9/8/8 heir. Frankfurt's army is now the largest in the world and can walk all over anywhere it can walk to. Its pretty much all over bar the mopping up at this point.

 

[TheArchMede]

The area with French culture. Antwerp looks to have got the culture spread to CoT event while owned by Burgundy, otherwise its just the provinces that started with it.

All under Frankfort control, the final acquisition just completed was a diploannex of Lorraine.

All at max fortification at current tech (level 4).

I then pushed Land Tech hard to be able to build level 6 forts as soon as possible. Land tech was about 30 years ahead of time when I got them.

I picked up enough territory to form Germany, but some of it was still 15 years from coring. I could have grabbed rather more territory, but mostly just stuck to missions and Imperial Ban/Liberation CBs.

Final political map. Frankfort does have a little bit of India, for the decision. The pressure put on GB and Spain to force them to concede their French and Imperial possessions has led to North African, Indian and Chinese powers still being largely intact. Venice emigrated to Africa and Portugal to the Americas. Portugal then conquered a chunk of Italy, Sicily Naples and Venezia are all Portuguese. Sweden is the only significant Protestant power left. What was once a big swathe of Eastern Europe has been squeezed between Russia and Frankfurt, and suffered force conversions from my missions. Morocco colonised south very early, I'm not sure how they managed it, they had that West African coast before I had the map spread to see it.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

TheArchMede, kudos for your frank efforts on fortifying French forts !

Re: Mongol Khanate, that seems as impressive as it is masochistic!

It was indeed, and the last two decades before I finally got my Chinese cores were so hellish I eventually chose the only sensible option to continue that game...

Peace !

I wish there were a "Restore Yuan dynasty" unique decision for the Mongol Khanate, that would make more sense and feel pretty cool, but let's go for Mughal. I didn't keep my capital city in Delhi for too long though, I moved back to Khanbaliq as soon as I could.

The conquest of Japan and India still offered some interesting challenges after that, with the Westerners as special (albeit unwelcome) guests in Southern India. It took me a while to get rid of Castile and Hansa there.

After that I considered going furher West, on the tracks of the great ancestor Gengis Khan. I DoWed Novgorod for that purpose, but after a long and dull campaign (in the middle of which I got randomly DoWed by Burgundy seriously thinking they could conquer me at this point just because I had 3 provinces in Egypt), I felt I'd just had my share of wars for this game...

 

[jhhowell]

I'm declaring victory in my Kannada Canada game (see above, May 2nd). The Europeans didn't do nearly as much interior colonizing as I was worried about, so I was able to get all of Canada, plus just a wee bit more. The Cherokee you see there were force-released from Portugal and are Catholic with many Portuguese culture provinces.

World map below:

At the time of the final save I'm in the process of taking some Oirat provinces to connect Siberia to Hindustan proper. The land connection doesn't matter, but it seemed like the thing to do. A Trans-Canada Road is in progress, currently built from Stadacona to Miami, with work in progress to the west. I could use the former Westernization Base Calabar and interior colonies to devour the rest of the African interior, but ... why?

If you're wondering about the gray in Peru, that's Prussia. There's a bit of Bohemia and Sweden nearby, because that totally makes sense. The bluish gray bit in Gold Coast is Sardinia, which revolted free there ages ago and has survived despite the province having zero manpower. I'm very amused by Persia doing a Russia impersonation all game. Timurids went bankrupt around 1700, breaking all their longstanding tribute relationships. Unfortunately for Persia, Durrani jumped all over that first and more than doubled in size, including the Persian-cultured provinces I've felt Persia should have gone after 200 years ago.

Easily the most enjoyable EU3 game I've ever played!

 

[TheArchMede]

That reminds me of reuniting Gondwanaland.

Re-Uniting Gondwanaland - with Elephants!

I've been mostly away from EUIII for a while, partly for lack of time and partly because I was frankly a bit burned out on IN 3.1. Every game in Europe seemed to turn into me versus France, every game in East Asia turned into me versus Ming and...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[jhhowell]

Prompted by seeing "Avignonese North America" on the map:

Minors are doing a lot of the colonizing in my Germany game. France being pounded to smithereens is mostly my fault, I'll admit (the Avignon thing was their spies running rampant after I walked all over France on my way to make Castille give me a peace treaty a couple decades ago). But some of it is the AI doing weird stuff. England still doesn't have QftNW - their Central American provinces are conquests from the Aztecs and Castille.

Other fun labels: Scottish South America (Scotland is quite strong, and until recently was the senior partner in a PU with France), Savoyard South America, and German Castille (Castille had Tunisia long enough to get cores, and Tunisia became my vassal a month after I forced Castille to release them...). Flanders has a lot of colonial territory, but not contiguous enough to get a map label apparently. The bit around Hudson's Bay must be close, though. Genoa is doing all right for themselves too. Naples was doing better until they lost a recent war with Castille. The Castille bit in Colombia (not to be confused with the identically colored Scottish bit right next to it) used to belong to Naples. Not shown: Loango is a Kongolese province with Shamanist religion ... and Portuguese culture.

(I don't see a Strange Screenshots thread like in the CK2 forums, so posting it in this thread).

 

[TheArchMede]

And prompted by Gondwanaland here comes Laurasia. Starting as Lorraine, take over Europe, NAmerica and Asia.
Yes, that's Bohemia between Muscovy and Lorraine occupied Horde. Lots of vassals and a few provinces picked off from an English incursion into the HRE plus claims on our rivals. The vassals include 4 electors, so that horde occupation is supported by Emperor manpower. Muscovy got so close to cutting off the route to the horde, its only open due to a border dispute core seized from them. No chance to go exploring NAmerica is open for colonization by the usual suspects and there's no spies to do anything about it even if I could see them. Also the lack of a land connection means no ability to colonise overseas and it takes 3 years for my colonists to arrive in the horde. The initial asian territory was seized by a holy war on Zaporozhia.

50 years on. A brief stint as a republic allowed the HRE to be left and then the vassals reelected me at the first opportunity. This allows HRE territory to be acquired without penalties for lack of cores on the cheap with the Imperial "Liberation" cb and vassal annexations. This has opened up a land connection to the Med, but theres still work to be done to connect to the Horde area which is now being colonised at 80 days a pop rather than 800. No ideas to spare for QftNW, still no spies. Que sera sera in NAmerica. The Lorrainian army is invading Spain at the bottom right, the reason being that they have Lubeck, and I have a core on it. It was a long war for one province, but a province well worth grabbing. The Reformation has been a complete squib, there's just a modest collection of heretical HRE minors. who will in due course be pressured into reconverting for Imperial authority to make a couple of reforms.

Another 50 years. The Holy War has reached the Pacific. India has been sealed off, and there's just a little tidying of the borders to be done. According to well informed geologists, cores reveal that a couple of Himalayan provinces contain Laurentian rocks, and they are being acquired here.

Also as a result of taking the Espionage idea and starting to build level 5 government buildings, there are now spies, and map spread means they can see targets. Hispaniola was the first to be colonised, but with the aid of a hired Navigator, the NE is under the control of the King of Lorraine (the yellow bits there are Scottish, but the King of Lorraine is also the King of Scotland and Albania due to random dynastic happenings). Cherokee was forced released from England, which looks to have put an effective roadbloak on their colonisation and spies are working hard to try and remove them from Florida and Cuba as well as keeping their coastal provinces in revolt to obstruct whatever inland colonisation they may be trying.
Meanwhile, a tidy chunk of the HRE was been swallowed and the land connection to the asian territorites is almost complete. A corridor through the Ottomans via the Dardanelles has been opened by Holy War, and a corridor through Austria taken by Imperial Liberation. Croatia has been force released from Hungary and vassalised, the annexation will connect the capital to the Pacific and allow a significant fleet to be built. Regular diploannexations plus Liberations from Hesse and Burgundy have connected most of the HRE territories.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

And prompted by Gondwanaland here comes Laurasia. Starting as Lorraine, take over Europe, NAmerica and Asia.

Fine Lotharingian adventure you've got here, with a strategy completely different from the one I told here years ago. What would be your final goals for 1820 in terms of territorial expansion ?

I see that poor Georgia in the middle of your way on the first picture, and it brings to what has been keeping me busy last week :

This in 1427 is when I started to believe I could do something with that game, after an awful start where Alania fell to Qara Koyunlu and I had to pay tribute to them as well as to the GH. The Timurids just made me concede defeat because they were already busy elsewhere. When QK started to meet the Mamluks and send their armies far away, I sent a spy to Alania to fund patriot rebels, and I could get my province back shortly after without firing a shot. Here on the picture the GH was starting to be in big trouble and I had DoWed them, hoping I could colonize my way to that weak Crimea (and kick a struggling Poland out of there with spies).

Here I was starting to feel more confident, in spite of remaining quite poor. I got the Claim on our rivals event, which among other things granted me a core on Astrakhan and its CoT. Owning some Tartar territory also allowed me to hire much better troops than what was available in my culture and tech group at this point. But I still had a lot to do to take full revenge on the Hordes who had bullied me in the first place...

The Jalayrids randomly DoWed ma at some point and Candar joined in. I fought back and had the opportunity to annex Candar. I was a bit reluctant to take some Turkish cores so close to the ever worrying Ottomans, but I thought that might be useful later on (also, excellent troops can be recruited there). The Hordes were starting to beg me to leave them alone every month by then. No way.

So the Hordes ceased to be a concern, and then it was the Ottomans' turn (I had a core on the province of Erzerum and didn't want to lose it !). I also westernized because I was starting to lag seriously tech wise, and I had Bohemia and Portugal as Western neighbours. I diplovassalized Trebizond and a few yars later, Byzantium, who was still a 2PM but I allowed them to grow afterwards to 7provinces, thanks to my spies funding Greek patriots on that part of Ottoman territory (which was occupied by Algiers for decades, in a never ending war they had together - actually the Ottos never recovered from their second defeat against me).

After successfully beating the Mamluks and their Arab allies, I decided to expand Eastwards and deal with the Hordes for good.

I finished the Ottomans and beat The Mamluks and Co for a second time. Now I was big enough to consider having two simultaneous and non related wars on both sides. So in the West I seized whatever Horde territory Lithuania had managed to conquer a long time ago when I was still weak ; and in the East I started to push into Indian Terra Incognita.

And this is where I'm at for now... Planning a third war against the Mamluks, Yemen and Oman, and for this purpose bringing my oversized fleet Around Arabia, on both sides of that Mar Incognita I cannot cross because I haven't QFTNW yet and I still have to wait a few years until Gov tech level 25 to take it. Any suggestions for the second half of the game ?

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Right before bidding on Georgia's fate, I've been completing my Mughal series.

I had been struggling with Horde wars in the West for a couple decades when I decided to try that strategy to get me out of there : get tribute from Novgorod, Muscovy and Lithuania ; vassalize Moldavia, Georgia and Armenia, as buffer states to keep me away from other foes - and especially the Ottomans and the Mamluks. Once that long term peace was assured, I turned against the fellow hordes and carved my way through their territory, to the future heartland of Mughal in Northern India.

Nogai and Kazakhstan were conquered and/or vassalized and diploannexed later on. Khiva and Khorasan were vassalized as future non-Horde muslim allies for the Mughal empire. The Timurids were severely dealt with, while bravely facing the Mamluk conquest (which was stopped by the Ottomans invading the Mamluks anyway). I conquered Samarkand and kept in mind that it would make a fine and very central capital in a distant future, if I was to get tired of Delhi (I had decided not to go back to Sarai - too small and poor for a capital city).

When I reached Northern India I conquered all the required provinces as fast as I could. Indian armies were starting to be dangerous for my Steppe troops, but I was still taking advantage of the large manpower numbers provided by the vast GH territory. Finally, I took the Mughal decision right before another horde war against Vijaynagar broke out, while I was still at war against OPMs Rajputana and Delhi (just had to pay full BB to annex them in the peace deal, and get away with it).

There's still a long story to tell after that. I had to conquer all of Timurid territory before someone else did, obviously - but still gave them a chance to destroy the Jalayrids and Najd for me. I had to modernize. I had to conquer India - I didn't intend to go for China this time, but Vijaynagar was allied with Ming as they often do, so...

But I never forgot where I was coming from, and that former European enemies were still standing there. So once I was practically done in Asia, I turned my eyes back to the West. The balance of powers was quite interesting there, especially since Burgundy had inherited Castille with all its early colonies, which made them a bit overpowered but also got us rid of a notoriously annoying conqueror.

The Ottomans were resisting quite well against Christian Holy wars, and they even conquered bits of European territory in Sicily, Ireland and Northern Germany. I had alliances with them from time to time, but our relations were not very stable. What I wanted was a PU with them and I finally got it, albeit quite late in the game. They were very good allies after that, and quite useful when I started my wars against Muscovy and Lithuania.

Morocco was something else : they were extremely aggressive and had conquered all of Northern Africa, up to Judea. I had a RM with them, but was actually planning a war to kick them out of the Middle East, when we suddenly got a PU - and I inherited them less than a decade after. Some troubles with the rebels until all those provinces were cored, but other than that, a big worry less !

Other muslim states in the region were either vassalized and diploannexed later on, or partially conquered. The Syrian case was a bit special : I helped them to rebel away from the Mamluks, then I fought and vassalized them in some war, then diploannxed them. But 2 of their coastal core provinces were held by someone else (the Ottomans I think) and got some nationalist rebels. Meanwhile I had sold Beyrouth to Corsica, who I had chosen as a westernization partner. I let the rebels take it after I was done. So a new 3pm Syria emerged, which I diplovassalized... and annexed for a second time.

In the late17th century, I started to focus on whatever territorial gain I could still get in the West, hoping to inherit the Ottomans some day (it happened but I prefered to release most of their European provinces as vassals, especially in the HRE). I even had occasions to conquer Southern Iberia and Portugal, and perform a glorious invasion of Burgundy which allowed me to annex the Flanders region. But my real obsession was to get the whole territories of the countries that had once defied the GH : Novgorod, Muscovy, Lithuania and Poland.

And so did I...

 

[TheArchMede]

Fine Lotharingian adventure you've got here, with a strategy completely different from the one I told here years ago. What would be your final goals for 1820 in terms of territorial expansion ?

Everything to the north of the Tethys when Pangea split.
Everything north of Panama (arguably thats a little too far south and doesn't belong to either Gondwana or Laurasia but I've already colonised it). The Bahamas and Greater but not Lesser Antilles. Greenland, but not Iceland.
Judea is arguably a province too far south, but the Pope decided otherwise. Basra is being left in Gondwanaland. Mountains around the edge of India are disputable territory. I'll probably grab a few more than I strictly should. I also haven't come to a decision on the mediterranean islands yet.
The province of Bali Lombok straddles the border, so I'll probably grab it. Borneo and Palawan are in, Phillipines and Taiwan are out. Japan is in.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

Everything to the north of the Tethys when Pangea split.
Everything north of Panama (arguably thats a little too far south and doesn't belong to either Gondwana or Laurasia but I've already colonised it). The Bahamas and Greater but not Lesser Antilles. Greenland, but not Iceland.
Judea is arguably a province too far south, but the Pope decided otherwise. Basra is being left in Gondwanaland. Mountains around the edge of India are disputable territory. I'll probably grab a few more than I strictly should. I also haven't come to a decision on the mediterranean islands yet.
The province of Bali Lombok straddles the border, so I'll probably grab it. Borneo and Palawan are in, Phillipines and Taiwan are out. Japan is in.

Well I get the concept better now. Even more original and ambitious than Frank forts. Guess the conquest of Europe in particular - the central part of Laurasia - is going to keep you busy for a while.

Does your cavalry include mounted duck-billed dinosaurs by any chance ?

 

[TheArchMede]

The Laurasians fight their way into Japan as the Holy War CB runs out. Somewhat unusually for my large scale conquest games there are only 3 wars in progress when it happens so not all that much extra to be grabbed at 1 BB.

Also somewhat unusually there are quite a few targets for Nationalism. (France and the French minors)

Nothing left to Imperial Ban, none of the Empire had shown any sign of giving me liberation CBs, I went Republican for the Imperialism CB, so the HRE had outlived its usefulness.

The race for Gov 53 and 1 BB CBs completes 34 years ahead of time. Portugal is one of many exiles to the New World, Aragon and France are also here. Unfortunately for Portugal, it chose the wrong side of Panama, and its going to have to move again.

The last colony completes, a few places hold out against the dominant culture. Portugal only has its capital left in North America right at the bottom of the map.

Brittany and Prussia both refused to move their capitals and had to be completely annexed and then the non-capital provinces sold off to whoever would buy them. Some of them took a lot of diplomats before anyone would accept a free bit of Gondwanaland. It could have been complete about 5 years earlier otherwise.
South America at the end.

Africa, Arabia and India. The third incarnation of Portugal in SE Africa.

This is where England ended up. I force released Makassar from Brittany, and then tried to feed them the rest when calling them as allies, but only shifted a couple of provinces that way.

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

The Laurasians fight their way into Japan as the Holy War CB runs out. Somewhat unusually for my large scale conquest games there are only 3 wars in progress when it happens so not all that much extra to be grabbed at 1 BB.
View attachment 1079949

Also somewhat unusually there are quite a few targets for Nationalism. (France and the French minors)
View attachment 1079950

Nothing left to Imperial Ban, none of the Empire had shown any sign of giving me liberation CBs, I went Republican for the Imperialism CB, so the HRE had outlived its usefulness.
View attachment 1079951
The race for Gov 53 and 1 BB CBs completes 34 years ahead of time. Portugal is one of many exiles to the New World, Aragon and France are also here. Unfortunately for Portugal, it chose the wrong side of Panama, and its going to have to move again.
View attachment 1079952
The last colony completes, a few places hold out against the dominant culture. Portugal only has its capital left in North America right at the bottom of the map.
View attachment 1079954

Brittany and Prussia both refused to move their capitals and had to be completely annexed and then the non-capital provinces sold off to whoever would buy them. Some of them took a lot of diplomats before anyone would accept a free bit of Gondwanaland. It could have been complete about 5 years earlier otherwise.
South America at the end.
View attachment 1079956

Africa, Arabia and India. The third incarnation of Portugal in SE Africa.
View attachment 1079959
This is where England ended up. I force released Makassar from Brittany, and then tried to feed them the rest when calling them as allies, but only shifted a couple of provinces that way.
View attachment 1079960

That game was inspired by continental drift, but what you're doing here to your (former) European neighbours works more like centrifugal force...

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

It all started as a simple experiment : how would Bohemia handle the consequences after guaranteeing both Granada and Luxembourg on day 1 ?

After all, nothing prevents Bohemia from making the most of these perks of being Emperor from the start - such as the second largest army in Europe, the ability to walk it through the HRE territory, and some other bonuses in terms of stability, prestige (which also helps keeping Papal influence as it seems), not to mention what you can get by passing imperial reforms. It compensates more than enough the fact that you're landlocked and not very rich in spite of 6 decent starting provinces - all weak points you can fix quite easily with the right strategy.

So, due to this peculiar position that looks so well-balanced between advantages and challenges, Bohemia has always been one of the countries I was most interested in playing (especially once I decided to edit its original map color, which I didn't find very appealing). On a side note, one of my best friends is Czech, and when I started playing EU3 a long time ago, Bohemia was one of my first games so I could send screenshots and entertain him about the fuss I was doing with his country...

The first wars against Burgundy and Castille didn't pose me any serious problem and got me some riche coastal provinces with 2 CoTs. Forcing a PU with Poland and opening a route to the Baltic and Russian territories was also part of my strategy, so that's what I did next. But I hadn't expected the real lucky, game-changing event : a PU with England (it's not so unlikely though. Henry V is bound to die young, and he often does shortly before or after becoming king, so if you have some ambitions in Western Europe, getting that RM with England can be a smart move). I also took advantage of the war with Poland to reduce Lithuanian power, take Kursk and put myself in pole position to fight the Golden Horde.

More wars against Castille led me to also conquer Portugal. In the East I used the Imperial ban CB to get access and cores in the Baltic sea at the expense of the Teutonic order, and started to build a fleet. Colonization opportunites were still very limited though, since I lacked a land connection between my coastal provinces and my capital. Until this happened...

Encouraged by the way things were turning out, I forced another PU with Hungary, collected some good vassals (a bit too much perhaps, but Norway, Scotland, Holland, Brittany and Naples were to prove quite helpful with their fleets in my future European wars)... and spent the next century doing the usual stuff of fighting hordes, crusading in the Middle East and North Africa... and more unusual for Bohemia : exploring and colonizing my way through the Atlantic ocean !

I met some complications in Central Asia with Ming, who was in a conqueror mood in this game, taking provinces in their peace deals with Kazakhstan, to the point they almost reached the Caspian Sea. Many spies were involved in making these provinces fall back to Steppe Nomads, and direct war against Ming was even necessary to dissuade them from coming back.

Other than that, I reached year 1600 telling myself this was really a pretty good game, with no serious issues that could prevent me from getting further...

 

[Arcas Cronifer]

There were still a lot of Holy wars to fight and I knew I had to proceed with care if I wanted to maximize that CB before it expired. From this moment on I paid much more attention to details like BB management, or the pace of wars, occupation, peace deals and truces.

A new era began after the inheritance of Hungary. My wars around the world had left alive only American natives and a bunch of African and Asian countries (Aceh had done a great job at uniting South East Asia in this game, they owned about 30 provinces and had recovered from my single holy war against them, conquering what was left of Ming). My attention was mainly focused on Europe now. The only CBs available were Imperialism, Purge of Heresy and Reconquest (I had good diplomatic rulers and was collecting border disputes everywhere, for example that's how I got 4 provinces from Aragon for 0 BB).

But the real question was : what to do with the HRE ? Although the obvious and easy way would be to pass all Imperial Reforms and finish the game as a unified HRE, it was never my intention to do so. I was playing Bohemia, not some German country, and the cultural shift involved in the process felt rather nonsensical. So another plan was required...I had enjoyed being Emperor for a very long time, but I knew it had to come to an end sooner or later. The real question was when would be the right moment to do it...

When I felt the time had come, I started various wars against my main rivals Burgundy and Austria, as well as the Imperial electors who were not already my vassals. That way I occupied them all, and in the same month I made a peace deal with Burgundy as the Emperor, taking 8 provinces from them with the Imperial liberation CB, then switched to a Republican government, let occupied Austria become the new Emperor only for a few days... and dismantled the HRE before the non-core HRE provinces BB malus had a chance to kick in, as it would normally have at the end of the month.

I had to wait some 20 years more before I finally reached Gov Tech 53 with the ability to take the Revolutionary war NI. But with 60 years to go and a thorough management of these cheap CB wars, I was quite confident something good was going to happen...

At some point I occupied Austria again and for a very long time, because it was going to allow me to annex them entirely. Sweden was their ally and I let that siege go on for a while on a level 5 fort ... the city finally surrendered after 18.5 years !




I carefully annexed my vassals every 10 years but I had to dump 2 of them in order to finish in time. The Papal State, reincarnated in Köln, was the last one to go in 1814. I had also finished my last war by then - against Creek in North America. But I waited until every province in the world was converted to catholicism in 1820.

And this is how what started as just another good game ended as my second WC. I learned a lot in this experience, and first of all, that WCs are much more feasible than I thought, even when you don't really plan them to begin with !

 

[TheArchMede]

I've done a pretty similar WC game as Austria, just using the PUs the Austrian missions set up. I thought it looked on from your first post. I suspect any Western OPM can WC via pressed RM claims, but my normal rule house rule on PUs is to disallow pressing claims via RM. Spies have enough disadvantages that I allow them but rarely use them. My Ottoman WC is the only one where I made extensive use of them.
I regard 1760 as quite late for GOV 53. If you had built enough trade buildings, you would have at least doubled your trade income. Its effectively quadratic in TE so taking 145 to 200 is a doubling, plus it makes it easier to kick everyone else out of your CoTs and get closer to 95% rather than 30% from your monopolies. Trade 6 buildings are very profitable to spam to the point of 200 TE in a large empire. Using that cash to get GOV53 20 years earlier cuts at least 5 years off the time to finish a BB limited WC.