Monday, March 31, 2025

Guard That Veil!

I finally started Dragon Age Veilguard, many months after it released and about ten years after the previous installment "Trespasser" came out. I'm still very very early in the game; Steam says I have about 10 hours, including character creation. But I wanted to jot down some first impressions. If previous games are any indication, I'll have much more to write later on!

 


 

MINI SPOILERS

Veilguard continues the series' pattern of changing what feels like everything about the game with each new entry. There's a total new combat system, a total new visual aesthetic. On the visuals, there's a very prominent purple motif that carries through all the menus and user interface, as well as much of the gameplay. It's really striking, and I think I like it.

 


 

For combat, I'm still getting used to it. The combat reminds me a lot of what I've seen of Hogwarts Legacy, a real-time action RPG that's oriented around dodges and parries and counterattacks. For the most part you'll attack an enemy until you see a glow around your PC's head signaling an incoming attack, then dodge or parry to avoid the damage, and resume attacking. Your companions' special abilities occur on cooldowns, while your own can be activated after you do enough damage.

 


 

You acquire skill points by leveling up and occasionally by finding special items, then spend those skill points in a web of possible abilities. This aspect is similar to skills in Inquisition, which in turn owes a huge debt to Final Fantasy X. One big change is specializations: you directly unlock a specialization by reaching it in the tree, instead of requiring a special quest or unlock as in previous Dragon Ages. (Dragons Age?)

In a blow for the series, you now only can bring two companions with you on quests, down from the traditional three. Some quests are locked to a particular companion, leaving a lone slot to fill. The overall dynamic now feels very similar to Mass Effect, in particular how you need to prepare for synergies: each companion will be able to inflict a certain status effect (like Sundered, Weakened, etc.), and will be able to "detonate" another status effect, exactly like in Mass Effect building teams that can product Biotic Bursts or Tech Explosions.

 


 

Companion builds have a similar skill-tree unlock system, but significantly simplified from the player character's, and it appears that you get companion skill points by progressing their stories instead of from leveling. In combat, companions mostly run on auto-pilot, but you can order them to use cooldown abilities on specific enemies, or can requests buffs for yourself.

The game keeps the Barrier system that's been around for ages, but seems to have dropped the Guard mechanic that was introduced in Inquisition. Enemies may have Armor that you need to take down before you can stagger them, or barriers that will regenerate after a delay, so usually you want quick, light attacks on Barrier enemies and slow, heavy attacks on Armor enemies.

I'm playing as a male Qunari rogue. I didn't spend as much time as usual in character creation, but I'm very very very very happy to see that the hairstyle options are dramatically improved over what Inquisition offered. I'm also pleased to see Dragon Age following the path of Baldur's Gate III and other recent RPGs in allowing mix-and-matching of sex and gender characteristics, where you can vary your character's voice, genitals, pronouns, etc. It's interesting how franchises seem to start exploring in this space with NPCs before later opening the door to PCs to escape the traditional rigid divisions in character creation.

 


 

I was mildly bummed that the Dragon Age Keep is no longer in use; instead, there's an option buried in character creation where you can make a handful of selections about what happened in Inquisition. I'm not surprised about this - maintaining lore consistency becomes exponentially more complex as the number of games grow, many casual fans probably don't remember what they chose 15 years ago in Origins, and properly supporting the vast number of decision points Inquisition did would have required spending a ton of engineering time and money in content that most players would never experience.

 


There is a very light Origin option for your character, where you can select the faction they were associated with prior to the events of this game. It's much less involved than the Origins origins, but offers more choice than we got in DA2 or Inquisition, so that's cool.

 


 

Your main character is known as Rook, although that's clearly a code name, and they have an actual name you can select (which nobody will ever use). Again, this makes me think a lot of Mass Effect with Shepherd and Ryder. We kind of went through this with Hawke, but Hawke had a much more fixed background, while Rook's varies based on your origin. I have noticed that Rook seems significantly more dominant from the get-go than any of the previous protagonists. The DA:O silent protagonist has a very slow and gradual climb in authority throughout the game, and even at the end is still arguably playing second fiddle to other folks like Morrigan, Alistair and Logain. Hawke canonically gains power between acts 2 and 3, but during the actual gameplay portion is always a lone agent against the world. The Inquisitor grows into a position of authority within roughly the first third of the game. Here, Rook seems to be giving orders and steering the direction from basically the start. That isn't bad or good, just different. It does kind of make me think of the difference between, say, GTA games where your protagonist starts off riding bicycles and finding baseball bats versus Saint's Row where the game might start with you being the President of the United States and firing off laser death rays from a UFO.

 


 

As for the story: Again, I'm very early on. (This still counts as Mini Spoilers for Veilguard, but probably Mega Spoilers for Inquisition and earlier games). You start off on somewhat familiar ground, working with Varric and Harding to track down Solas. In my backstory my Inquisitor vowed to stop Solas and kept the Inquisition active under the Chantry; so far that hasn't impacted this game but I expect it will. My Rook is similarly anti-Solas, though I am growing increasingly curious about the implications of that. It's been clear for a while that Solas sees himself as a good guy, and the damage he's causing as a regrettable sacrifice for a greater cause. My Rook isn't having any of that nonsense, though.

 


 

So far I've recruited Harding the scout, Neve the detective, Bellara the Veil-Jumper, and Lucanis the Antivan Crow. Since Rook is a Rogue, that's a solid 3/5 rogue-heavy party! I've been prioritizing Harding so far, although it looks like all companions are eligible romance interests. I am really enjoying the direction of the party so far. In Inquisition, I was a bit bummed that there were twice as many male companions as female, so it was pretty fun to have the first three companions in Veilguard all be ladies.

 


 

MEGA SPOILERS

For decision points... I brought Harding with me into greater danger during out first confrontation with Solas, and as a result she's been pretty beaten up, though her spirit remains as strong as ever. I opted to leave the Mayor of that one blighted town to his fate. In general I'm always a good guy who believes that everyone is capable of redemption... but what the Mayor did was heinous and he didn't seem remorseful about his actions. I was interested to see Harding approve of my harsh action; I would never think of Harding as "evil". But that's always been one of my favorite things about Dragon Age: it's better than any other game I've played at evoking complex moral dilemmas that explode the trite good/evil dichotomies most other games wallow in.

 

 


 

END SPOILERS

I think that's about it! So far I'm enjoying the game; I'm not fully "hooked" just yet but I imagine that will set in as the plot advances. I'll probably be semi-completionist in the game, I usually like doing all the companion quests and faction quests and things, but won't feel compelled to, like, get 100% of the collectibles or anything like that. I expect I'll have at least a few more posts to drop as the game kicks into gear!

Thursday, March 20, 2025

I Was Going To Conquer The World, But I Got Bored

All right, I think I'm ready to call it on my Bohemia / Saxony / Prussia game! It was a lot of fun, but like pretty much every Paradox game I've played, if you do a good enough job the challenge eventually fades away, and I don't think I'll be able to force myself to play all the way through to the 1821 end date.

 


Still, I did get to hit some great accomplishments in this. I was able to build all three of the great Canals: Kiel, Panama and Suez. I didn't conquer the world, but I did defeat everyone who ever challenged me. I think the #2 ended up being Korea with around 700 development, everyone else was under 500. I survived multiple waves of Revolutionary uprisings and nations, defeating each one. I accomplished a good 40-50 or so Steam Achievements over the course of this run. 

 


 

I don't think I have as much action to report in this last post. I was sort of half-heartedly working towards a World Conquest for a chunk of it, so I would fight a war, take a huge amount of provinces, either grant them to vassals or core them, and then repeat.

 


 

I did inherit the throne of Hungary, who had been in a Personal Union with me for centuries I'd been curious if that could happen; I had inherited Poland a while ago, but not Hungary or Lithuania, and I had wondered if those were too big or if Poland had been specifically scripted to inherit. I was honestly mildly bummed at the inheritance; I don't accept a lot of the Balkan cultures Hungary has, and they were a big and beefy military aid in my wars. I did get to make use of some of their Monuments, though, so that was kind of cool.

 


 

I continued to use my HRE Vassal Swarm in all these wars, but they're definitely less useful as you get further out from Europe. They take a while to walk over to, like, Bangladesh or whatever, and then need to trudge back afterwards, and might still be in east Asia when I'm spinning up my next war in south Africa or whatever.  I kind of wish they would just stay home and fight the rebels that pop up in their homelands when they seize crownland. Maybe there's a Subject Interaction for that, I never thought to check.

A few of my vassals got VERY big: Perm stretched from Norway to Siberia, Astrakhan snaked from the Black Sea to central India, Leon went all the way down into Mali, and so on. They stayed loyal, but I did discover a wrinkle. I'd been planning to revoke the revocation of the Privilegia, and then re-revoke it to vassalize a few late entries into the Holy Roman Empire. But those large vassals like Perm had been granted so much development by me that they would not support passing the reform. Which for other reforms would be fine - I definitely had a majority - but for that particular one, HRE members who voted "no" would leave the HRE entirely, thus depriving me of their awesomeness. I think I would get claims on them, but I didn't want to fight a war against the large snakes I'd created. In retrospect it probably makes sense to either wait until you have everyone you want in the HRE before revoking, or else avoid feeding non-European lands to your vassals until after you're done revoking.

 


 

I'm still pleased with how things turned out, though. By the end of the game I had 95 (!!) Royal Marriages going, taking up zero Diplomatic Relations slots. The HRE itself had over 100 members, counting republics and johnny-come-lately monarchies.

 


 

My most precious subject was Ethiopia, though. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'd had a long-running scheme to join into a personal union with them, and carefully balanced keeping them alive while leaving the door open for forcing them into the union. It took some luck to pull off, and they were initially miffed, but almost instantly flipped to loving me, thanks to the vast tracts of eastern African land I gifted them with. They got basically all of Aljuraan immediately after our war, got most of the Mamluks' African land south of the Mediterranean coast over the course of multiple wars, and even extended into central Africa through Yao. Good times. I love me a Prester John.

 


 

For the most part I was declaring on the largest country, then the next largest, working my way down. The main exception was Korea, which was allied to Yue, Wu, Khmer, and a few other good-sized regional powers. The Center of the Revolution spawned in Korea, so I kept hoping it would flip Revolutionary, which would cancel all of its alliances and give me a CB that would let me take a lot of land after fully conquering them. That never happened, though. Somehow Korea itself was able to remain stable while many of the other powers around them fell to the revolutionary forces.

 


 

My economy was insane. I was permanently on the hard cap of 1M ducats: no matter how much I spent in a month, it would be back at the cap the following month. My OCD compelled me to continue the process of forming Trade Companies and upgrading Centers of Trade and building Stock Exchanges, even though there was really no point for me, just spite for those not already in my empire.

 


 


 

I did make it through to the Industrial Revolution, the last Institution, which once again spawned in my borders. All of the Institutions ended up appearing in Europe, and I think all but Renaissance and Colonialism were mine. The IR did take a little longer to spawn than I had thought. Checking the tooltip, it looked like I had all of the requirements, but I hadn't connected the dots that all of them had to be true for the same province. I had provinces with furnaces, and I was the trade/production leader for all industrial goods, and I controlled the largest trade node in the world, and I had provinces over 30 dev... but I eventually realized that I didn't have a single province that was (1) in the English Channel trade node and (2) had a furnace and (3) was over 30 dev. Once I realized that, I dev'd up a Furnace province, but it didn't fire. I frowned. Then, on January 2nd 1751, it did fire. Hooray! I guess they probably only check for conditions once per year or something.

 


 

Anyways, that's it for this game! It was really fun, but as always I'm shocked at how long these games can be, and I'm sure it will be some time before I dive back into it. From watching the community, I think most players don't usually try to do these powerful campaigns I'm naturally attracted to: instead they'll set a goal of getting a specific Achievement or something (many of which require playing as a specific nation and accomplishing a specific task), and quit once they achieve that achievement. So that might be nice, if it could end up being a few dozen hours instead of many hundreds of hours of gameplay.

 The rarest achievements I got on this game included:

  • Spice Girls: Having a female ruler, have active trading bonuses for Cloves, Spices, Salt and Sugar. (I don't think Prussia can have female monarchs, but I did get this during a Consort Regency.)
  • Voltaire's Nightmare: Have at least 100 countries in the HRE. (Probably the most fun thing I did here! I'm particularly proud of adding Iceland.)
  • Czechs and Balances: Starting as Bohemia, grant at least two privileges to each estate while having at least 50% Crown Land. (As you've probably noticed, EU4 achievements tend to be punny.)
  • God Tier: Become a Tier 5 Defender of the Faith as a nation that is neither Catholic nor Sunni. (Bullying nations to become Protestant was surprisingly entertaining!)
  • Georgia on my Mind: Fully own all three Georgias. (I'm actually not sure what the third one is.)
  • Master of India: Own and have cores on all of India as a European nation. (Pretty sure I should have gotten this during my Portugal run too, but achievements got borked on that one, alas.)
  • Trade Hegemon: Starting as any European country, conquer and have cores on Aden, Hormoz and Malacca. (Same comment as above.)
  • Over a Thousand!: Own 1001 provinces directly.
  • The Revolution was Crushed: In a war against the target of the Revolution, control their capital and have at least 99% war score.
  • Black Jack: Have at least 21 different subjects with 5 cities each and without any subject having 50% or more Liberty Desire.
  • The Coin is Stronger than the Sword: Charter Company from an Indian nation.
  • Wonderful: Own 8 different monuments on tier 3. 
  • Industrial Powerhouse: Have 10 furnaces built in your nation.
  • Traditional Player: More than 90 percent Naval and Army Tradition. 

Anyways, there are a lot more achievements; those are the ones that apparently fewer than 5% of players have, for what it's worth.

I forget if I mentioned this in a previous post, but while playing this game I went on a non-sale shopping spree and picked up all of the music packs for this game. I'm glad that I did - I've been playing this game a lot, and it was great to hear some fresh tunes. Even without a sale they're just a few bucks, and I like supporting Paradox.

I guess that will do it for this post! Now to find some new games to play!

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

A Ton of Ham

I think I've written about this on the blog before, but I've been a certified Alexander Hamilton freak since the third grade. In my memory, we had a very basic set of lessons on US History, which included events like Paul Revere's Ride and the Declaration of Independence. After learning that Thomas Jefferson wrote "All men are created equal" and that Jefferson owned slaves, I made up my mind that Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite and a bad man. Somewhere in there I learned that Jefferson's arch-rival was Alexander Hamilton. "Well, if Jefferson hated Hamilton, then Hamilton must have been a good guy!" I decided. Over the years I've learned a lot more about both men and the age they lived in, but I think my basic attitude remains essentially unchanged since then.


I recently finished reaching a collection of Hamilton's writings, published by the Library of America. It's a fantastic book, and it was surprisingly cool to actually read the full text of things I've read about but previously only seen excerpts from: the Federalist Papers, his childhood account of the brutal Caribbean hurricane, his proposal for consolidating states' debts, and so on. It's also a very long book: I'd been reading it for some weeks, was surprised to not be too far into it, then flipped ahead and saw that there are over 1000 pages in there! Even this is only a tiny fraction of his collected writings, but it's a good one, a mix of comprehensive sets (as his contributions to the Federalist Papers) and representative samplings (a love letter to Eliza, two letters to Philip, incendiary newspaper articles, notes to statesmen and friends).

Somewhat surprisingly, there is no introduction, no preface, no footnotes. That's very different from most books like this I've read before; thinking over it, that's probably done at least in part to generate new copyrights. I really liked it, though. It can feel distracting to read through something, encounter a footnote, and break up the flow of the text while I dip over to read it, or else skip over it and carry the nagging feeling that I'm missing out on something important. With "Hamilton: Writings", it was a teensy bit like getting into a speculative fiction novel: there's a bit of a learning curve as you adjust to the slightly archaic spellings and idioms and things, but then you're fully immersed, and can just take everything in stride. Of course, it helps that over the years I've read quite a bit about Hamilton's life from Chernow and other writers, so I'm coming to these texts with some pretty full context.

The editors of this volume retained the original spelling and punctuation, and it was kind of fun to see them continue to pop up. Examples included "shew" for "show", as in "I shewed him my mettle." Also "burthen" and "burthensome" instead of "burden" and "burdensome"; it would be interesting to see the original manuscripts for these, I'm curious if he used "Þ" or "th". He also likes œconomy instead of economy and fœderal instead of federal. Interestingly, the book includes a handful of contemporary writings by others (including James Madison's account of Hamilton's proposal at the Constitutional Convention), in which they do use the spelling "federal," making it seem like "fœderal" was more idiosyncratic on Hamilton's part.

One cool (?) new thing I learned was the symbol ⅌. I don't think I've ever encountered this before. It appears in his report on manufactures, where it's used in a few different constructions but most often something like "⅌ Cent". I speculated that it might mean "per", and after some research (which is tricky - how do you look up a symbol you don't recognize?) I learned that it does, though more specifically referencing a ratio. I can see why "%" outcompeted "⅌ Cent"!

Man... there is so much I want to write about here and this will probably end up as a monster post, apologies for that. In retrospect I probably should have done a separate post on each of the major sections of the book, which each are hundreds of pages and contain a lot of fascinating arguments and spark a lot of thoughts. But I waited too long and it's all jumbled up in my head now, sorry.

A lot of this reading is of course colored by living in early 2025, and I often felt a strong feeling of wistfulness and melancholy, reading about how strong systems were established while living through what sometimes feel like their last days. But there's also writing that's just pure fun: Hamilton can be very sarcastic and cutting. Even more is awe-inspiring, and I somehow ended up with even more respect for his intelligence, curiosity, rhetoric, discipline and powers of persuasion. As well as horror at how far off the rails he was capable of going.

Let's start off with a few passages that feel especially resonant today.  In "A Letter from Phocion to the Considerate Citizens of New-York on the Politics of the Day" he writes:

"It is, however, a common observation, that men, bent upon mischief, are more active in the pursuit of their object, than those who aim at doing good. Hence it is in the present moment, we see the most industrious efforts to violate, the constitution of this state, to trample upon the rights of the subject, and to chicane or infringe the most solemn obligations of treaty; while dispassionate and upright men almost totally neglect the means of counteracting these dangerous attempts."

Much later, in a private letter to George Washington that's primarily a rebuttal to arguments against the consolidation of state debts he veers into this "I'm made out of rubber and you're made out of glue" passage:

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.

[...]

When a man inprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits - despotic in his ordinary demeanour - known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty - when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity - to join in the cry of danger to liberty - to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion - to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day - It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."

From "Tully III", he argues for a forceful response to the Whiskey Rebellion instead of taking an approach of appeasement, but I think it rings true now too:

If it were to be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of security in a Republic? the answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last. It is by this, in a great degree, that the rich and powerful are to be restrained from enterprises against the common liberty - operated upon by the influence of a general sentiment, by their interest in the principle, and by the obstacles which the habit it produces erects against innovation and encroachment. It is by this, in a still greater degree, that caballers, intriguers, and demagogues are prevented form climbing on the shoulders of faction to the tempting seats of usurpation and tyranny.

This collection includes all of Hamilton's Federalist Papers, which are a lot! They cover a ton of topics, including a lot of writings on tariffs, which was particularly interesting in light of contemporary discussions. It's pretty impressive to see how well people in the 1700s understood how tariffs work: that tariffs result in higher prices for consumers, but that they might be useful in some specific circumstances to promote domestic manufacture, for example. As with reading, like, The Baroque Cycle, it's humbling to realize that almost everything we know about finance and economics is literally hundreds of years old. (Of course Hamilton didn't discover these things himself, he was widely read and familiar with Adam Smith and other earlier writers.)

Alexander Hamilton is such a good writer. I'm reminded that rhetoric and logic were classical areas of study, and it really shows here, especially in the Federalist Papers. carefully constructs arguments towards logical conclusions, and exposes the flaws in arguments against the Constitution. But he can also be really sarcastic and funny; in one paper in particular he mockingly imagines a series of excuses to oppose federal power, shooting each one down. It's a classic straw-man argument but really entertaining. Much later, his diss of John Adams is similarly sarcastic and funny, you can hear his eyes rolling.

The Federalist Papers are filled with smart thinking and strong rhetoric. A few topics feel kind of dated, but a surprising number feel vivid, even more so in 2025 than in 1995. As another example: in writing about the executive, he argues for putting a single person in charge of the executive branch instead of a council, which was a competing argument being made. He points out the big value in being able to hold a single person responsible for errors, poor judgment or corruption, whereas when there is a group of people, everyone blames someone else, responsibility is diffused and it's hard to hold people accountable for their actions. He points to (his) contemporary examples, noting that in New York the governor is mostly the sole executive, except when it comes to making appointments, where it is done in cooperation with a council; and specifically in the area of appointments, everyone agreed that some appointments were corrupt, but disagreed as to who was responsible. Anyways, this makes me think a lot about the high-level sclerotic character of our federal government in recent decades: we usually have divided government, and each party can blame the other party for anything that goes wrong. I increasingly pine for a parliamentary system, where one party is clearly in charge and gets all the praise for what goes right and all the blame for what goes wrong. It seems like Hamilton would have preferred that as well, as he openly admired the British system of government.

You can see why people have been so suspicious of Hamilton for centuries. He's very complimentary of Great Britain; in non-published conversations he would say that the British political system is the best that currently exists. He held backchannel conversations with former British enemies (including the guy who turned Benedict Arnold) in which he made clear that he would rather that the US sign a commercial treaty with Britain than with France. And he was right - the sentiment pointed towards France, but Britain made much more sense as a trading partner. He also made enemies with his maneuvering to deny John Adams votes in the first Presidential election. You can see that his concern was legitimate - he genuinely worried that anti-federalists would promise but withhold votes from Washington, causing Adams to accidentally become president, souring the start of the new country. He openly agonizes over how many to withhold from Adams to avoid that possibility without insulting him. Of course, the thin-skinned Adams became livid when he learned about this years later.

Maybe the best part of this book was getting to finally read the full versions of some of the pivotal documents described by Chernow, especially his "I wish there was a war", his article describing the devastating hurricane, etc. It does not include everything, though: Chernow also included some of his youthful poetry, which covered an interesting expanse between chaste religious fervor and a frank admiration of feminine beauty. I can understand why they weren't included here since they're of much more personal interest than predictive of his political influence. (We do get some of his love letters to Eliza, though, and those are fun to read - he's slightly teasing, brash and assertive more than tender. It's an interesting contrast to his "Cold in my professions" letter to John Laurens!)

Reading these letters rekindles some ancient middle-school civics lessons I've long forgotten. One of Hamilton's complaints is that the original Continental Congress had most of the greatest men in America - he doesn't drop names, but folks like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, etc. But after the Declaration of Independence, most of those great men went back to focus on their state governments, so the later Continental Congress was mostly the B-team: people who were not as smart, as decisive, as energetic, as principled, which in turn contributed to a lot of the agony of Washington's Continental Army. That continued after the war, with most talent focusing on the state governments, leaving ineffectual committees in charge of the Confederation. He grouses about this in a letter to George Clinton, of all people, who would become his greatest political foe.

Jumping ahead a bit, after the Constitution was ratified, Hamilton becomes the first Secretary of the Treasury and issues a series of stunning reports. First up, from "Report on a National Bank":

Nothing can be more fallible, than the comparisons, which have been made between different countries, to illustrate the truth of the position under consideration. The comparative quantity of gold and silver, in different countries, depends upon an infinite variety of facts and combinations, all of which ought to be known, in order to judge, whether the existence or non existence of paper currencies has any share in the relative proportions they contain. The mass and value of the productions of the labor and industry of each, compared with its wants; the nature of its establishments abroad; the kind of wars in which it is usually engaged; the relations it bears to the countries, which are the original possessors of those metals; the privileges it enjoys in their trade; these and a number of other circumstances are all to be taken into the account, and render the investigation too complex to justify any reliance on the vague and general surmises, which have been hitherto hazarded on the point.

This is a pretty astonishingly fore-sighted argument that criticizes the then-prevalent gold-based monetary system, in favor of the modern view that a nation's wealth naturally reflects its productivity rather than how much gold and silver it has in its vaults. It would be nearly 200 years later before the United States finally embraced a fiat currency that decoupled us from the "possessors of those metals".

His economic reports are so amazingly good, I think they're better Econ 101 primers than most things I've seen in my lifetime. The reports give simple and clear explanations of topics like the monetary supply that don't dumb things down and don't get lost in the weeds. 

From the same report:

Nor is this all. The metals, instead of being suspended from their usual functions, during this process of vibration from place to place, continue in activity, and administer still to the ordinary circulation; which of course is prevented from suffering either diminution or stagnation. These circumstances are additional causes of what, in a practical sense, or to the purposes of business, might be called greater plenty of money. And it is evident, that whatever enhances the quantity of circulating money adds to the ease, with which every industrious member of the community may acquire that portion of it, of which he stands in need [...] For whatever furnishes additional supplies to the channels of circulation, in one quarter, naturally contributes to keep the streams fuller elsewhere.

I just love that writing: I don't think I've ever heard of currency "vibrating" before, but it's really a perfect metaphor for its role and behavior. As bank notes leave the Treasury, pass through the hands of merchants and customers, and eventually return in the form of tax payments, they are not idle, but serve to facilitate a vast number of private transactions not involving the government at all. Elsewhere Hamilton gives a great explanation of the fractional reserve system, noting the enormous benefits as well as the risks to be mindful of.

All of this dovetails really well with other finance books I've been reading lately. I'm reminded of Bernstein's "The Birth of Plenty", in which he notes the enormous advantage Britain had over France due to the greater trust British people had in their banks: this led to a virtuous cycle where surplus money was deposited, creating an expanding money supply, encouraging more economic activity, and more money being placed in the banks. Hamilton clearly understood this dynamic and wanted America to be a part of it. I'm also reminded of "Investing in US Financial History", which rightfully praised Hamilton, and showed how the First Bank of the United States would go on to solve the nascent nation's economic woes, which returned after the bank charter lapsed.

I was a bit surprised to see the brutal counter-punching of Jefferson in Hamilton's report on the constitutionality of a federal bank. Obviously I knew that Hamilton and Jefferson were foes - that's why I became a Hamilton stan in the first place. But I'd always imagined that they would just shout at each other behind closed doors in cabinet meetings. Nope! These were big, publicly published airings of grievances and  accusations thrown before the House of Representatives. That in turn reminds me of "The Men Who Lost America". In that book, it is noted that the Prime Minister and Cabinet system were relatively new in Britain at the time of the Revolutionary War: there wasn't really a concept of a unified parliamentary executive, just various high-ranking voices. It seems like at this time the American executive was similar, with George Washington the supreme magistrate but each cabinet member running their own fiefdom. I've been meaning to read "Team of Rivals", I'm curious if those competitions were kept behind closed doors like they (usually) are today or if they were similarly exposed for all to see.

These reports reveal the many big battles occurring in the critical first years of our nation. The conflict between "implied powers" and "express powers" is taken head-on; I'd be mildly curious to read Jefferson's prior report that Hamilton is responding to here. As I know from history, once Jefferson became President he came around to Hamilton's way of thinking; nothing in the Constitution expressly authorizes the government to make something like the Louisiana Purchase, but it was too important an opportunity to let pass.

Hamilton is amazingly fore-sighted. In speeches at the New York ratifying convention, he takes on an argument that the number of voters per House seat should be set at a lower number to increase the representativeness. He confidently looks towards a future where the population will double, treble and more, forecasting at the resulting number of representatives and showing that it would be impossible to get productive work done with such a sizable crowd of legislators. In his report on the public credit, he notes that debt from the United States government currently bears an interest of 6%; but looking at the rates of credit for more mature nations in Europe, he confidently predicts being able to bring down the interest rate to 5% within a few years of the assumption of state debts, and within twenty years to 4%. Of course this would open up opportunities to restructure the debt by taking out new loans at 5% or 4% to pay back old loans at 6%. But those rates will only fall once the US can assure creditors of timely and faithful payments on the debt, which in turn makes it essential to honor those debts and avoid the temptation of, say, only paying the original holders of the securities.

More fore-sight: in his report on manufactures, he notes that America has an overwhelmingly agricultural economy and will remain so for at least a generation; but he still argues that it will be beneficial to diversify into an economy that includes "artificers and manufacturers". He notes the greater productivity, less risk (from bad harvests domestically or superior harvests abroad), overall gains in efficiency and national soft power. It's amazing that he was writing this in the 1700s, before the industrial revolution really took off. Again, he was intelligent and well-read, familiar with both ancient Greek and Roman history as well as the latest developments in Holland and Scotland. I'm reminded of Chernow's overall thesis that Hamilton's vision for the country is the one that came true, not Jefferson's vision of a land of yeoman farmers.

But also, at this stage Hamilton doesn't seem to be as reflexively anti-Jeffersonian as Jefferson seems anti-Hamiltonian. (n.b.: I ought to read more Jefferson to validate this.) Hamilton does have a lot of praise for American agriculture: the nation is very fortunate to be able to produce its own food supply, which gives it great security in all times and especially during war. He notes the primal emotional pull of a man being able to own and work his own plot of land. He sees how the lure of available farmland will help drive immigration from Europe to America. He sees agriculture and industry as complementary, not oppositional: agriculture will help give raw inputs to industry, and industrial tools will improve agricultural efficiency.

One kind of funny, kind of bleak thing is Hamilton enthusing that an advantage of manufacturing is being able to put women and children to work. He approvingly notes how this is happening in England. Pretty far removed from Dickens!

In his proposal for the national bank, he spends a good amount of time on the government of the bank and the process of electing directors. I was surprised to see his proposal of a tiered system of voting: a person owning a single share gets one vote, between two and ten shares gets one vote per two shares, and so on, with an upper cap of I think thirty total votes. This is pretty much exactly the structure that Thomas Piketty proposes in "Capital & Ideology" for ownership of enterprises that have a social mission, such as news and media companies. If a business makes, say, shirts or tractors, then having one vote per share is perfectly fine and benign: owners will just look after their business interests and no harm will result. But founders who want to make a positive difference in the community may rightfully be concerned that, say, a Jeff Bezos or a Patrick Soon-Shiong would buy up shares and subvert the mission or turn it into a propaganda outlet. This tiered system of ownership encourages broad participation and allows wealthy people to invest money without giving them undue control. Anyways, it's been a while since I read that book, but I think Piketty said that these kind of structures were more common in previous centuries. Sometime I'd like to read more about when, how and why that changed.

From the report on manufactures:

The disturbed state of Europe, inclining its citizens to emigration, the requisite workmen, will be more easily acquired, than at another time; and the effect of multiplying the opportunities of employment to those who emigrate, may be an increase of the number and extent of valuable acquisitions to the population arts and industry of the Country. To find pleasure in the calamities of other nations, would be criminal; but to benefit ourselves, by opening an asylum to those who suffer, in consequence of them, is as justifiable as it is politic.

This reminds me that, up until about 2002, official American policy tended to see immigration as an asset to the country. And it was right, as pretty much every economist agrees. Moving immigration from the Treasury department to the Justice department sounds like a minor bureaucratic reshuffle, but it has done profound damage to our national psyche and hastened our economic decline.

One of the amazing things about Hamilton is how he simultaneously has insight into big-picture abstract systems, and also granular nuts-and-bolts understanding of particulars. In the report on manufactures, he lays out the big-picture multi-generational quest for encouraging the development of a domestic industrial sector in the United States, then moves on to how the government can selectively tune specific tariffs to encourage private-sector investment, development and consumption, and ultimately into specific recommendations on specific commodities. In the segment titled "IRON" he notes that iron is useful in the vast majority of manufactures, that local manufacturers are already producing iron nails and spikes, and that Virginia has productive iron mines and mills. He encourages raising the existing tariffs on imports of iron to encourage the further development of local iron and secure independence from foreign sellers. In his segment on "LEAD" he notes approvingly that the existing tariffs on lead seem to be pushing the growth of lead mining and suggests maintaining their current level. In the "COPPER" portion he observes that copper is a useful input to a wide variety of industries, but that America does not have significant copper production, so here he recommends lowering the existing tariffs: making it cheaper will encourage importing more and increasing the overall supply available to secondary industries. Anyways, I feel like Hamilton is every flavor of nerd all rolled into one mega-nerd at the same time.

One point Chernow makes in his biography that becomes very clear here is Hamilton's thin skin.  Washington apparently wrote Hamilton during his first term, pleading with him to patch things up with Jefferson. Hamilton's response is slightly chastened, but still hugely aggrieved, listing various ways in which Jefferson has insulted him, blocked his agenda and interfered with items in his cabinet portfolio. And yet, by this point we've read countless letters and articles in which Hamilton has insulted Jefferson and sought to interfere with State Department business like treaties with Great Britain and France. To me this comes across as a blindness on Hamilton's part, not deception. It's like he's saying "I'm just a smol bean who wants to do good things and never did anything bad to anybody", while firing off page after page of blistering invective.

Hamilton's draft of Washington's farewell address is super-interesting. I want to compare it with what Washington eventually delivered, at least the opening of it does not seem very familiar. It's interesting how Hamilton will write stuff like "Not unconscious at the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications for the station", which I can't imagine Hamilton ever writing about Washington and that he would viciously attack if someone else wrote it about Washington; and yet it's exactly the humble tone that Washington craves, so it's perfectly ghostwritten. In a way their relationship has come full circle, from Hamilton's role as aide-de-camp in drafting most of General Washington's written orders during the independence war to his role as a senior advisor drafting President Washington's major speeches, in all cases anticipating the thrust of Washington's desires. I think you could make a very touching two-hander play just about their relationship, its ups and downs and ups again.

One of the most surprising things from this entire collection is a passage from the farewell address explicitly linking good government with religion:

To all those dispositions which promote political happiness, Religion and Morality are essential props. In vain does that man claim the praise of patriotism who labours to subvert or undermine these great pillars of human happiness these firmest foundations of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician equally with the pious man ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public happiness. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property for reputation for life if the sense of moral and religious obligation deserts the oaths which are administered in Courts of Justice? Nor ought we to flatter ourselves that morality can be separated from religion. Concede as much as may be asked to the effect of refined education in minds of a peculiar structure - can we believe - can we in prudence suppose that national morality can be maintained in exclusion of religious principles? Does it not require the aid of a generally received and divinely authoritative Religion?

It's very interesting to me to read such a passionate advocation for religious belief in the context of a government with separation between church and state. My immediate thought on reading this passage is that it might have been a swipe at Jefferson and his deistic beliefs. But it's equally odd to hear this coming from the mouth of Washington, who was supremely private about his personal religious faith, and from the pen of Hamilton, who began and ended his life with strong religious beliefs but at this time had not been a churchgoer for his entire adult life. I do wonder if "religion" may have meant something slightly different to the contemporary 1796 audience than it does today; I associate religion specifically with organized and orthodox belief systems, but perhaps at that time it would have meant general spiritual feelings or something else. I guess it may be significant that the address never refers to "God" or "Christ," so maybe it would still fit within a deistic framework.

Pre-posting-edit: I just scanned through the delivered version of the farewell address, and see that here that Washington changed that last sentence to "reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." A lot could be written contrasting "a generally received and divinely authoritative religion" with "religious principle".

The Reynolds Pamphlet is genuinely insane. Everyone says it is, but I didn't fully appreciate it until reading it for myself. It's so tone-deaf, he never apologizes to Eliza and only briefly mentions her a couple of times in passing. He makes himself out to be the victim; the general tone is "This was wrong, and there's no point in belaboring that fact, so let's not dwell on it." He keeps listing all of the original letters he's attaching as appendices, which eventually total in the high 40s. I'm reminded of the classic Stringer Bell quote: "Are you keeping notes on a criminal conspiracy?!" Hamilton's point is that his conduct was never criminal, which is true, but he seems completely blind to the fact that it was still completely wrong.

It is interesting how Hamilton's opinion of Mrs. Reynolds is still ambiguous - even after all these years, he still isn't sure whether she was in on a plot from the start, was brought into it later, or was always who she seemed to be, a woman in a rough situation. He starts off confidently asserting that he's pretty sure the initial encounter was fabricated, but that certainty dwindles by the middle of the story, and he openly weighs the evidence for and against. It's very much in line with Chernow's reading, who is also unsure of the real story but notes that Hamilton had a life-long soft spot for mistreated women, very much due to seeing how his own mother was treated. And I've really enjoyed (while also feeling discomforted by) how this plays out in the musical, with the various actresses portraying Maria occupying various points along the temptress/victim spectrum, and carrying that ambiguity onto the stage.

It's darkly funny that, after the farewell address we get an accelerating sequence of letters and addresses wherein Hamilton opines on the centrality of morality and religion in public life, and then is swiftly exposed as an adulterer. Some things in politics don't change! After his affair comes to light he seems to lighten up on the "morality" language somewhat, but continues hard to hammer home religion, specifically contrasting with Jefferson's "atheism".

Hamilton seems increasingly unhinged near the end of the collection. It's kind of like he's past the boiling point, and all of the obstacles and insults he's encountered over the last fifteen years are instantly repaid with stern fury. Chernow sees this as the evidence of what a powerful (and good!) moderating influence Washington had been on Hamilton, tempering his brilliance with wisdom and tact. Once Washington retires for good, Hamilton has no restraints left, and becomes dangerous to himself and others. In a particularly chilling letter he notes that the recent election in New York has been bad for the Federalists, and so the pro-Jefferson delegation will tip the presidential election in his favor. Hamilton urges the current pro-Federalist assembly to change the rules to cast votes based on the previous session and not the newly-elected one. He admits that this is not lawful, but he's so incensed and terrified at the thought of Jefferson as President that he will take any measures to prevent it. It's so sad to see this ruthless ends-justify-the-means pragmatism from a man who so eloquently created and defended the overall federal framework, the system of checks and balances, the pathways to peaceful transfer of power, who had so recently railed against men who would ignore the law for their own ends.

It's also a little humbling to see the incredibly heightened fears of the time, the certainty that America was doomed if the wrong man got elected. All in all, Jefferson's administration wasn't bad - he kept alive the First Bank of the United States, continued steering a middle course between Britain and France, and oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. The optimist in me wants to say "Things won't be as bad as we think they will be!", while the pessimist/realist in me thinks that sometimes things will be even worse than we imagine.

Hamilton turns into kind a resigned elder statesman near the end. People still write him for advice, he seems to sometimes have a deeply pessimistic outlook, other times a sense that the bad guys are winning but it's important for the good guys to remain honorable and uncorrupted so they will be seen as worthy when the present regime collapses. But he takes solace in being a "farmer" with a larger property outside of the city, and focusing on his private law practice, belatedly building up financial security for his family.

This adds another level of tragedy to his duel ("interview") and death. He didn't want to be a part of it, and does seem to have acquired genuine religious convictions against dueling, yet his sense of honor and pride compelled him to go through with it. He writes to Eliza that he would be unworthy of her if he apologized to Burr and avoided the duel - I somehow doubt she would agree with that, she'd probably much rather have her husband!

The book ends with the sequence of letters between Hamilton and Burr leading up to the duel, then the letters Hamilton wrote the night he died, and closes with two conflicting eyewitness accounts of exactly how the duel went down. The back material includes a timeline of Hamilton's life, including explanations and events that are not directly covered in these writings. It's very terse and encyclopedic. There's also a set of end-notes, which may be of interest to some but I didn't find very useful. They're pretty sparse, and aren't referenced within the text (which I'm glad for), so you wouldn't know to look for them while reading and they're rare enough that you wouldn't want look for one after each piece. There is an interesting but technical discussion of how the text was prepared: unlike earlier collections, they've left most of the spelling and punctuation intact, but they did correct some obvious misspellings and consistently rendered periods. And, that's it!

This ended up being a much longer read than I expected, both in the number of pages and the length of time to read through it all. I have no regrets, though. Like I said up top, it feels especially relevant today; but I suspect that most people turning to these writings over the last 250-some years would also find them meaningful. Somewhat like the Bible, these are foundational texts that have defined the world we live in: they're part of our oxygen, things that are so omnipresent we don't even notice when they're there, but are far more influential than the things we pay attention to. So many things that we take for granted had to start somewhere, and this is where they started. I think our country really lucked out by having so many brilliant people involved in starting things up - yes, our system is a mess, but it's a system that has worked more or less for centuries, and that's no small feat. I'm coming out of these book somehow even more impressed at Hamilton's intellect and vigor, which is no small feat as someone who already held him in the highest esteem to begin with!

Saturday, March 01, 2025

Your Revolution Is A Silly Idea, Yeah

I'm approaching the end of Europa Universalis IV! In particular, I have entered the final of the four ages, the Age of Revolutions. It's pretty fun!

I think I left off in the late 1600s, shortly before Enlightenment. Once again I was able to spawn it in my borders. In this game I've avoided taking technologies early, which means I have a good surplus of Monarch Points, so I've been plowing those into development. For the previous century I'd built Universities everywhere and was progressively Dev'ing provinces up to 30 to make them eligible for Enlightenment.

 


For previous Institutions, I used Edicts to encourage their spread but waited as late as possible before Embracing them to minimize the cost. For this one, I went ahead and Embraced pretty early, once it had spread to 10% of my country.  I'm at the hard 1-million-Ducat money cap, so money is completely meaningless now, and I welcome any chance to spend it.

 


Let's start at 9 o'clock and continue clockwise:

 


I was able to finish eating Spain. As one of the only Catholic countries left besides the Papal States they didn't have any significant allies, and over successive wars I'd gradually taken away their coastal provinces. Again, the key to fully annexing a large country with subjects is to declare on an ally (in this case, the Papal States) and co-belligerant them, which will let you fully annex them without getting the huge acceptance malus from a nation annexing itself. By this final war my New World holdings included the former English and Portuguese colonial nations, which were each smaller than Spain's American colonies but combined could hold their own. The hardest part of this war was actually taking a level-8 fort in the Andes that Spain directly owned; I think they ran out of real estate before they got enough provinces to make a Peruvian colony. South America was Spain's strongest presence so this ended up being slightly tricky: I did some dancing with large armies of theirs while my English and Portuguese subjects came through the American isthmus, started siegeing once I had some breathing room, and ultimately ordered some artillery barrages to break through the walls. 

 


Once Spain fell, I was de-facto the sole independent power in Europe. Decades later Sweden ate the one province Denmark, the Papal States still exist as an OPM, and I eventually forced Muscovy into the HRE.

As I expand outside of Europe, I try to use those HRE vassals when possible to spread around Overextension and make better use of Accepted Culture slots. Perm was a relatively late addition to my family, but in terms of square mileage it's one of the biggest nations on the map now, snaking out to Vladivostock and holding big chunks of Mongolia and even China. Astrakhan and Circassia are similarly making inroads into Asia.

I'm mostly focusing on the other Great Powers, especially the highest-dev ones, which end up needing multiple wars to take down. The Mughals were geographically the largest empire for much of the game. Their territory is shredded now, and they have less than half of their largest extent, but even with all that they still are large.

 


I was curious about where and how the Center of the Revolution would break out, and what to do about it. From reading online, some people will intentionally try to spawn the Revolution inside their territory, so they can crush it and remove it immediately. Much like with Absolutism, though, that requires tanking a lot of things I would ordinarily want to do well: having low Stability, lots of loans, low prestige, etc. I think that in my Portugal game the Revolution spawned in France, which led to a fun and exciting war against my one-time ally. Here, though, I had so dominated Europe that almost no free nations remained, let alone any other Great Powers.

So I was a bit surprised, though I shouldn't have been, to see the Revolution spawn in Korea. Korea has been a very strong and boring nation for as long as I've been aware of it: they're basically at their historical borders, have some strong alliances to deter aggression, have highly developed provinces and can keep up in institutions. 

 


Even though the Center of the Revolution spawned in Korea, they have not yet become revolutionary. This has been a bit of a pain. The Revolution has spread to many of my provinces in Asia, including in China, Indochina and the East Indies. So it's the first time in the game that I've had to deal with serious and sustained rebels, as the +20 unrest from my high Absolutism outweighs the many benefits I get from things like Humanism. Fortunately I haven't been getting actual Revolutionary rebels, but still some separatists and other annoying types. I'm falling back on my Portugal-era strategy of spreading around Fortresses to minimize the hit when rebels spawn into an undefended area.

The first nation to flip revolutionary was Wu. I wasn't around for the Mingsplosion, but it looks like Wu and Yue emerged as the biggest heirs, along with Liang and a few smaller nations. I had previously pounded Wu shortly after they took the first Celestial Reform and tanked their Mandate. When a nation becomes a Revolutionary Republic, they dissolve any pre-existing alliances they had, so if you declare quickly you can get a nice clean war in. 

 


"Crush the Revolution" is a really nice casus belli. It reduces War Score Cost, but more importantly for me, it seems to also eliminate Unjustified Demands, meaning you can take all provinces for 0 DIP.

One slightly annoying quirk I encountered in this playthrough: if you are a monarchy and you border the Revolution Target, you get a "Counter-Revolution" malus that increases Unrest in all your provinces (and I think has a few other negative effects). If you declare war on the Revolution Target, this should be replaced with a "Reaction" modifier that instead gives a net reduction to your Unrest. However, "Reaction" is only applied if your capital is on the same continent as the revolution target's capital. So for me, as a European with substantial Asian holdings, I had only downsides and no upsides.

But anyways, I defeated Wu a second time, taking much more territory from them. I try to be strategic about timing my wars, more specifically the end of them. At this phase of the game, part of me wants to always be at war, spinning up my next conquest as the previous one is winding down, especially since I have armies all over the world and big enemies with Level 8 forts can take longer to crack than their provinces take to core. But if a war ends and I have a few days or more of peace, I can grant provinces to my vassals, which lets me take over 100 Overextension worth of territory in a peace deal without actually having to keep it on my books. I can also release new vassals, which I almost never do these days but situationally can be very helpful (more on that later). So anyways, at the start of a war I'm already thinking about how long the war will take, how much overextension I expect to have (with that war, any other current wars and any provinces being cored that may not finish), what other wars I want to start, and based on all that whether I should have a rolling ladder of wars or fight this one to the finish and take a breather.

The revolution target had been crushed, but the actual revolution still lived on, as Korea's Center of Revolution continued its propaganda, bringing more disorder and chaos to my Asian holdings. Only a year or so after the Wu monarchy was restored, Japan was the next nation to turn Revolutionary. I'd been concerned about taking on Japan, as they had unified the islands and did not have any footholds available for naval insertion. But, again, a nice advantage is that all their existing treaties were canceled. Also, at the start of the Revolution several large "rebel" armies are spawned, and in this game those armies were similar in size to the regular armed forces. Thanks to my naval presence in the area, I could see that Japan's armies were all fully in the south of the country fighting off the rebels, so I quickly declared war and landed a ~40k stack on Hokkaido. Naval landings can be nail-biting experiences since they last over a month and quickly turn ugly if your enemy can move defenders into position prior to you touching soil. But they landed and took the province, so I could swiftly follow with the remainder of my invasion force.

This ended up being... I don't want to say necessarily an "easier" war than Wu, but maybe "cleaner": thanks to the constrained geography of Japan, I could steadily march south, siege forts one by one, and decisively crush their army outside Nagasaki, instead of chasing remnants all over the Asian Steppes and Siberia. Because of the -50 malus revolutionary targets get to accept a peace deal, you kind of need to fully occupy all their territory to push from 99 warscore up to the decisive 100; but once you do reach 100, you can take advantage of the reduced cost of warscore and diplo and take enormous swaths of land. In a single war I was able to take more than half of Japan, including all of its centers of trade, Great Projects, and straits, all in a contiguous line across the islands. I'll need to return and finish the job at some point in the future, but Japan's status as a Great Power has come to a permanent end.

After the first Wu war, they got separately declared on by both Yue and Manchu to claim the Mandate of Heaven. Yue was quite a big larger and more powerful than Manchu, but I think Manchu got a head start, and in any case Manchu was able to finish its war and seize the Mandate before Yue. But, Manchu doesn't have Beijing, Canton or Nanking. Oddly enough their Mandate has ticked up a bit over time even though their monthly rate is shown as negative; I've never played in China so I'm not super-familiar with the mechanics, I assume they're getting some Events that grant Mandate or maybe there's a Government transaction or something available to them. Part of me wants them to get the Mandate high enough so they'll take a Reform and then I can quickly declare on them while their forces are weak; but as it is I'm happy just waiting while it stagnates and eventually decays.

I did get to fight against Yue, though, when they became the third and (so far) last nation to turn Revolutionary. This was a bit more like the Wu war, except I had a much bigger footprint in China and so had a lot more room to position and maneuver my troops. Perm and Astrakhan were actually decently helpful in blocking out the north of the country while I focused on fighting and sieging in the south. As with Japan I was able to take a ton of land, but this time I could also give a lot of it away to Perm.

Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten one rule for optimal play. I had gotten used to giving my Holy Roman Empire vassals the Centers of Trade in Europe - since I use "Divert Trade" on all of them I end up with all the Trade Power anyways, and this way those centers can have an accepted culture and maybe some additional development. But I kept automatically doing that in land grants in Africa and Asia as well. I really should have kept those for myself, so I could turn them into Trade Companies, and just given the rest of the provinces to my vassal. Not a huge deal, just something I should remember for the future.

 


 

The East Indies has been a surprisingly slow point of expansion for this game. Brunei had an absolutely massive navy, and I was shocked when their swarms of galleys torpedoed my large fleets of heavy ships. I was able to declare later when Brunei and the Mamluks went to war against each other; in this game it looks like the Mamluks became colonizers, settling around Ternate, Tidore and other islands. By keeping a careful eye on the larger Brunei fleets and opportunistically attacking, I was able to take down some smaller groups of ships and land troops on some islands. I didn't bother to get this war close to 100%, but took forts on enough islands to be able to cherry-pick strategic positions and Centers of Trade. Later on Banjar and some other regional powers piled up on Brunei and I think they've been completely removed now.

 I've now fought a few wars in India, mostly against Vijayanagar but also Bengal. As usual the first one is challenging, subsequent ones are far easier. Most of the Monuments in India are tied to specific religions and so aren't very useful for me, but it is a very rich subcontinent. I don't really care much about production income since I've maxed out my treasury, but it is satisfying to tie up those trade nodes and get free merchants so I can siphon still more ducats away from potential rivals. Oh, and I've completely controlled the coast for a while now... actually, I'm away from my computer but I think I have everything from the Persian Gulf through Malaysia directly under my control.

Africa has been pretty quiet lately. I did finally succeed in a war against Mali, who were briefly a Great Power but have now been reduced to about six dispersed provinces. I grabbed a few provinces from Air and Yao as non-co-belligerants. I need to fight another war against Zimbabwe at some point as they still have some Centers of Trade. One of the more interesting wars was against Kilwa, which is the one place on Earth still under Terra Incognita. Interestingly, you can take provinces in a peace deal even if you can't see them on the map, so I prioritized taking those invisible provinces (which of course are instantly revealed once you own them). I can take the visible ones later.

The most interesting thing in Africa, though, has been Ethiopia. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but a long-term ambition of mine has been to form a Personal Union with Ethiopia, a Christian nation that I can feed land to in Africa. I've had a Royal Marriage with them for ages; I never entered into an Alliance with them since I knew that would complicate an eventual succession war, but I did Guarantee their Independence as the Mamluks were nibbling away at their territory. Most importantly, I kept one Diplomat constantly Currying Favors with them. It took a long time for this to tick up since I didn't have an Alliance, but it did progress; once it reached 100, I would trade some in for Trust and continue growing.

 


Their leader was really, really old, but just wouldn't die. But his heir was aging, too. I think that at one point the ruler was in his 80s and the heir in his 50s. Finally I got the notification that they did not have an heir - perhaps a hunting accident? I immediately Traded Favors for Heir and got a Chotek in the line of succession. I nervously monitored the dynasty. Younger heirs are less likely to die, but still can die. And heirs that accede to the throne often come with their own consort and heir: not a huge problem as it makes the line secure, but I was running low on time to get the heirless gap I needed to make a play for the throne.

Still more time passed, and finally the old man croaked and my Chotek acceded to the throne. Without an heir - hooray! I claimed the throne - I now had my Casus Belli, but had to wait a month to make a move. After that month, I tried to declare the war - but of course I couldn't declare on a nation whose independence I had guaranteed. Fine, cancel the guarantee. Wait another month. Ethiopia's rival Aljuraan declared a conquest war against them. The new king was probably working overtime to try and sire an heir of his own. The month was up. Declaring the war would mean breaking a truce, for a painful -3 Stability... but I didn't care. The dream was coming true.

I'd positioned my Afrika Korps outside the southern border of Ethiopia. They had a lot of Level 8 forts, which of course are a pain. I was also in a bit of a race against Aljuraan: I would need a lot more war score to enforce the personal union than they would need to take some territory, and only one of us could siege each fort or province. I plopped a big stack down on the nearest fort, then sent another big one on a long detour through Mamluk land towards the Level 9 capital fort. Aljuraan was making good progress, but fortunately seemed content to take regular provinces while they chased Ethiopia's army, for the time being leaving forts in my control. Unlike them, I preferred not to fight any Ethiopian armies if I could avoid it, as they would shortly become my own allied armies.

It all went pretty well. Shortly before the end of the war the Europeans from the Holy Roman Empire showed up and managed to contribute some valuable artillery to a few sieges. I took the Personal Union the moment I could, and was pleased to see that I was correct and that I could now join in the Ethiopia/Aljuraan war as the new war leader. (I think something similar had happened previously when I Revoked the Privilegia and abruptly became the defender against Muscovy's invasion of Rostov.) Ethiopia, Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire all now had huge armies right outside Aljuraan, and we steamrolled them. I think it was like a month-long war in total. I had been thinking of just taking a chunk of them, but we were able to fully annex them. And then I could turn around and give a lot of that territory back to Ethiopia - see, aren't you glad to be in union with me?

 


 

By far the biggest development recently has been the war between Prussia and the Mamluks. They had been my most valuable and powerful ally for much of the game, and they are still the #2 great power even after losing two decisive wars against me. I don't have any good justification for turning on them, it's just a pure power struggle. I think I cleared my alliance by declaring on another ally of theirs, or possibly another Sunni nation. (In the past I had navigated those situations by first calling the Mamluks in as an ally in another war, in which case they are not eligible to receive a call to arms against me.) Once the alliance was over and the truce cleared, we began duking it out.

They have a lot of development, so even after getting a really high warscore and taking their capital I can just take a fraction of their empire each time. I'm trying to remember the timing... let's see. I think that, prior to the first or second war, I released the Ottomans as a one-province minor vassal in Byzantium. Since the province was in the HRE they popped out as an HRE Prince. The province was Protestant, but the overall Ottoman cores were Sunni, so it came out as Protestant; in the past nations I've released as Catholic or Orthodox will convert on their own to Protestant if all of their provinces are already Protestant, but I think that only works for other denominations in the same religion. I was hoping that I could use the "Force Religion" Emperor Action in Diplomacy to convert them.... and it worked! I am very amused to have my Protestant Holy Roman Ottomans as my vassal princes.

 


The Ottomans haven't been a contender for centuries since I drove them out of the Balkans and Greece and the Mamluks ate them from the rear, but they did still have cores on all of Anatolia, so I was able to very cheaply get back that huge chunk of real estate from the Mamluks.

In the more recent war, which I just finished, I finally did what I should have originally done and taken all of their islands: they had the Spice Islands and various other East Indies spots. I also grabbed Crete after sieging down a level 2 Fort. Thanks to Ethiopia being on my side, we could take their claims and cores as well. And I had a lot of other odds and ends that I granted to my Black Sea princes. I did snag a lot of provinces with tempting Great Projects. Unlike India, most (not all) of the Great Projects in the Middle-east don't have religion requirements, either being free to everyone or requiring an accepted culture. It will be a while until I can core and convert all of them, but when I do, I'm looking forward to blazing through those projects. I'm probably most excited for the bonus Missionary from Jerusalem. Oh! And I also took the provinces required to start construction on the Suez Canal, which is the third and final canal I have remaining to build.

At this point, I'm feeling like I'll probably make it to 1821 after all, as there's less than a century to go. I'm less certain how hard I'll work towards getting a World Conquest. Right now I'm just taking on a rotating slate of Great Powers and working my way down the list, but there are a lot of minor nations out there. I'm sure that I militarily could take them, but dealing with super-high overextension and rebels does not sound very fun, and I don't know if I have enough time to properly digest and integrate the whole world. I also could try doing more stuff with non-HRE vassals; I've been avoiding them since my understanding is that they will take the strength of HRE vassals into account when calculating liberty desire, but I did end up with a western African vassal and their Liberty Desire is pretty manageable, so now I'm wondering if that could be viable after all.

 


Anyways! I'm continuing to love the game, and will most likely have one final post in the future before I put this campaign to bed for good!