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!