Hey guys, something just came up so I'll be a couple of hours late for our game today. If someone else wants to take over Great Britain I'd be totally fine with that. They can do whatever they want as its the last session.

So from now I take it that after an AI session we are entitled to get changes to what the AI has done? I had multiple AI sessions, so that is actually nice to know.

if the AI seriously screws up your country, yes. Your AI did awesome your 1st session and never did anything so ******ed as portugal's. Neither I nor Austria ever got fixes either

The AI also ****ed with my armies a lot, twice - first time disbanded most of them, and 2nd time disbanded some and raised some new but bad stuff to replace them. I was picking Muslim Archers and Men At Arms out of my armies all session, neither are my troop types obv, but those aren't huge problems. The stuff that I did ask for (cent, govt, capital, ~25 ships) were all master-level AI ******ation.

France seemed to do alright as AI.. I think the dumbest thing it did was pick QFTNW, which you could've defo asked to have changed.

Updated probable country list for game 2:

Austria: Nonfiction
France:: Jim
Castille: goofy
Portugal: Viva
England: Tiny
Muscowy: Selim
Poland: Auts
Naples: Nicho
Hansa: Skrittak
Byzantine: djstu
Timurids: Ranok

FlyingBanana, Doom, and Daer idk where to put them. Open areas in europe are Sweden/Denmark, Holland, Milan/Venice, Morocco. Could also be in India, Japan, China, or Indonesia.

hamachi's not working for me

No complaints about the first session tbh, wouldn't have asked for changes anyway. But the AI made slider changes in the later sessions, those could have been made undone tbh. But I'm not nagging, it's more of a "ah, nice to know".

QFTNW is something France should have kept. AI was right man

Game Post-Mortem:

So, due to a few people (****ing jim) being late and then some other issues we called off this session and the game.

Final Thoughts on what would have probably happened this session:

Personally, I think this can be counted as a Milanese victory. Hanseatic technology would have eventually outpaced Milanese tech, but as it stood both countries were pretty much equivalent when it came to land tech and both were pushing against the "tech arriving before its time" limit.

While Hansa had a much much larger income they were hampered militarily by two important factors. First, the lack of a national bank idea prevented Hansa from minting as much of its economy as Milan. Indeed, Milan has had little to no inflation for the entire game. And with the ability to mint 27% of her economy without getting inflation Milan can support an army disproportionate to her economies size, relative to the Hansa.

The second, and more important factor in the War that Never Happened, was land force-limits. Due in no small part to being the Holy Roman Emperor Milan had a land forcelimit of 220 regiments, compared to The Hansa's 190 or so. Both countries were able to expand further than that, but with the acceptance of Austria to become a Milanese vassal (for teh forcelimit boost ldo) Milan would likely have been able to field a European land force of over 300,000 troops. Combined with the diplomatic severing of French support from The Hansa (not that I would leave that border unguarded anyway), and the negotiation of a series of trade embargoes against The Hansa that would have cut their trade income in half, the outcome of the next war would almost certainly be a Milanese victory even without the assistance of Austria.

With The Hansa broken (relatively, their economy would probably still be on par with Milan's after losing the war) the rest of Europe would likely have not been able to stand against Milanese and Austrian hegemony. Lack of a decent navy would have prevented the Ottomans from changing the balance of power as well. All this of course assumes that Milan's strategic plan went according to plan, which is a big "if".

Final reviews/commentary of the other player countries:

The Hansa

Not much really to be said here. The Hansa took advantage of a large power vacuum in germany to expand like crazy, using their trade war CB's to generate tons of stab-free wars. Drunken parlayed his strong initial position into becoming an economic juggernaught the likes of which I have never seen in an eu3 MP game before. His realization of the value of new world trade goods (one I didn't have until I saw their direct effect and an aspect of this game I neglected) also led to his becoming a super-economic power.

The only reason The Hansa didn't run away with the game last session is due to their loss in the Pan-European war. Both Milanese/Austrian preparation for the war everybody knew was coming, and the complete failure of her French allies (no offense DooM, we were all new at some point), led to a loss in a war The Hansa likely should have won. And while The Hansa walked away mostly unscathed Milan's victory lead to her growing her military power to ridiculous heights, which as mentioned above would have likely led to a Milanese victory in the 2nd war with punishing effects for The Hansa afterwards.

Ottoman Empire

Well played generally. Your tactics during wartime were good (you actually presented a much greater challenge then either France or the Hansa) and if you had been able to break the blockade of the Med you probably would have won the war. Lack of a navy was your only real mistake this game imo.

England

You played p. passive so there isn't much to say. You mentioned earlier you felt you made several mistakes, I don't know if I would agree really but getting stuck in passivity is a common trap for newer players. Overall I would say you played well.

France

Choosing not to colonize was a gigantic mistake. If there's one thing this game has taught me it's that you cannot ignore the New World anymore, the trade goods are just too valuable. Ignoring both the New World and Far East severely limited your expansion and put you in a horrible spot strategically to the point where France actually became the weakest European land power.

However you did get a lot of war experience, more than almost any other new player, so where-ever you end up next game I would expect you to preform much much better in pvp wars compared to the other newbies and 1-game vets.

Spain

Like most new players in this game you were waaaaaay to passive early on. Not surprising, but it put you in an awkward spot. You however seemed to realize this and expanded greatly once you realized you were "****ing Spain"

My advice going forward would be to break less diplomatic agreements for two reasons. First being it makes people not trust you in game which can seriously hamper your diplomacy and second because it leads to grudges which are just not fun. Additionally I would counsel that you may want to spread yourself less thin. Despite your large-ish army most of your forces would probably have to be dispersed among your many many colonial holdings. I suspect only 2/3rds of your army was actually in Europe at any one point in time, which is a weakness people could exploit. Also, taking bits of everything can lead to people getting annoyed with you, especially if you take bits of what they consider "their" area of expansion, like china.

Sweden/Scandinavia

You came in late, so didn't really get to do much. I liked that you found a way to grab bits of the Far East tho.

Austria

Austria had a rough game immediately out of the gate. Our 1st Austria player came within inches of losing his country entirely, and the only reason he didn't is because I propped him up. Were this a more competitive game I probably would have eaten Austria and became Uber-Milan. Tiny did a good job resuscitating it but a combination of poor starting position and new HRE mechanics (to me as well) limited his expansion and resulted in some regrettable ****ups.

That said, Austria was still an important power in Europe up until the end of the game and throughout the game was a critical Milanese ally. Her ability withstand an invasion by both The Hansa AND the Ottomans in the last war without crumbling was as much a victory as Milan's destruction of the French army in S. France. If either of those two events don't happen the war ends with a draw at best, a Hanseatic Victory at worst. The Hansa's last-minute gambit to press to N. Italy, far from their supply lines and through unoccupied territory, played a large part in their defeat. Had Austria folded Hanseatic armies would have been fresh and reinforced on the Milanese border instead of weary and attrited.

Portugal

Not much to say really, since Ranok is a vet and portugal is a p. boring country to play. Props to him for taking over a country he didn't want when our 1st guy never showed.

Russia

Auts did a fantastic job early on with Muscowy, raping everybody around him in record time. He then formed Russia, and did nothing after that all game despite having a huge army and ridiculously big land-trad (p. common in Russian games I find). Booooooooooo

Great write-up. Sorry to everyone for showing up late, my laptop was in my buddy's car. I greatly anticipate playing in the French region (I'm still undecided whether I prefer burg or France, will have to look into it this week. Thoughts?)

Learned a lot and had fun. Thanks for the tips djstu.

EDIT: I'd obv. form France as Burg. Is that doable in MP? I don't see why not off the top of my head.

Guys, saw this thread and snagged the game for a little holiday traveling options.

Any suggestions for single player settings to maximize the fun? Don't know anything yet about the game really, but figured I should ask.

Lack of naval ability is almost a given for the Ottomans. The Alliance with Portugal was probably supposed to help with that somewhat, but you split us apart.

Agreed on the passiveness. It's tough to say how well England did because they never really ended up doing anything.

One major mistake was not taking the southern US natives when they were available, which let Hansa come in and get them. We had discussed colonial areas and it sounded like England wanted North America, so I left Shawnee alone.. if I'd have known they wouldn't move on them, I might've gone after them myself and then been able to give some of South America to Spain. Or maybe there was some secret deal with Hansa that I don't know about, idk.

Also same critique Bent gave to Spain, you ended up being very spread out. It would've been better to focus on one area imo and let the others slide, as opposed to having small colonial regions all over the world. I'd make an exception for something like Ceylon though, which is an excellent base for potential action in Asia.

Not sure if France was really the weakest major power (toss up with Spain IMO). Expansion outside Europe is definitely important, but it's tough to say where they could have gone with QFTNW as the 3rd-4th NI. By that time some wars had been fought for colonial gains and I was really starting to dig my heels in about 'my areas'.

I'd agree with the 2 major points of keeping deals and focusing. I was trying to point you towards Africa as a wide-open unclaimed area but you never went and I'm not really sure why; ended up that Mali converted their population to Muslim, which made that west african area much less valuable since it'd be wrong-culture (but that sort of falls on everyone else who ignored them, too).

Another big issue (for me at least) was your slowness with responding to diplomacy in the week. There was basically a turning point where I wanted to pick one other colonial power to work with between Spain and England; I went with England just cause he was actually talking with me. If you had of been more active in the diplomacy between sessions we probably could've worked out a deal where you got a huge part of southern South America, but that never happened and we just had wars instead.

On the spreading out front, I personally think the deal with Milan to give them parts of India was a big mistake too. You should probably have just split India 50/50 with the Ottomans. The main thing you seemed to gain from that was splitting me & Ottomans apart for an early conquest of Portugal, when I was willing to sell those lands for reasonably cheap in the not-too-distant future. But the cost was basically giving Asia up, by opening the door for Milan. Much bigger loss in potential than what was gained, IMO.

Another thing was Spain ended up being the poorest country in terms of income/province. I'm not really sure what could've been dong about this, but if the game continued then keeping up in tech would have become a real problem. One thing many Castille players do is move towards Free Trade, since Castille starts near the middle trade slider wise, but with a focus on aggressive Asian expansion that might be less appealing (infamy issues and all).



I can't comment much on Scandinavia or Austria since I wasn't paying much attention to them. Scandinavia did a decent job expanding in Indochina, but that's a pretty weak area and I'm not sure it would have paid off. The Scandinavian homeland itself is already relatively poor. I think the best move would be to focus on getting some high-value colonies somewhere to help offset that, but like Bent said you joined late so that would be tough to do. Scandinavia is the 2nd poorest country, ahead of Spain, but probably the most vulnerable due to dependance on trade - an embargo or 2 could be crippling.

Austria didn't seem to do that well, never finishing off Bohemia & Hungary and not securing much of southern Germany. The new HRE mechanics are weird though and I've had trouble expanding as Austria in single player too. It seemed like Austria was too dependant on Milan's backing all game long, and it should probably be the other way around (Austria helping Milan).

If nothing else I've proven the ludicrous value of new world trade goods. With my capital moved to Mexico in the final edit (so that my Carribean provs became regular ones instead of colonies), my Production income is up to 143.4 monthly = 1720.8 annually, well ahead of Milan for world lead (this was why I wanted to go Protestant, to increase my prod. income). Stability took only 6 months to recover for 1 point. With Spain bought out, I could have ideally continued on in peace for a long time - slowly improving provinces & bringing my Tech back up to par - and come out of hibernation in 50-100 years as a leading power based on economic strength alone. The slow rate of 2.9 magistrates/year is the biggest thing holding me back, but at the same time I needed them mainly for military improvements (Shipyards EVERYWHERE for crazy naval force limits!), as my production and trade was strong enough to keep the economy zooming. It would've been boring as hell until that point though.

I'm not sure how viable Portugal is going forward though. They're totally dependant on getting out of Europe and moving capital to the new world to turn those colonial tarrifs into real Production income. But with the revelation of 'holy **** new world goods are amazing' we'll probably see more competition for new world colonies in the future. I think the best strat for the future would be similar to what I did, but focus on beating Mexico faster (in particular taking Mexico province for the core). Maybe also take Shawnee but less of Brazil to gain more early-established colonies. But be ready to deal away chunks of the Carribean/Brazil/whatever really to other European powers, and instead mark them down as possible future conquests.

Russia did great in forming, but westernized too fast I think. Getting a ton of missionaries out to convert the Horde conquests is key, but can't be done with innovation. The crappier hordes like Nogai and Khazak should probably just be vassalized since their land is so painfully worthless.

I made a graph of income/province for every country (once and EVE player, always a spreadsheet maker). I can't figure out how to get my excel graph working in google docs though so here it is as a ghetto screenshot:



Income/prov is a decent measure of overall wealth, since Stability and Tech costs are largely tied to the # of provinces you own. Seeing Spain at the bottom is really surprising and I can't really figure it out. Even in terms of Tarrifs, India should be making them some decent bank, but isn't - for example an indian Cotton prov like Surat is only bringing in ~9 ducats, whereas Hansa's Cotton provs are in the low-mid 20s. Lack of decisions & modifiers must be some of that (Spain has only 3 decisions enacted, none economic), but there must be something more that I'm not seeing. I'm just baffled by how their income is so low, it doesn't make any sense.

p. awesome graph. It's nice to see my suspicions of Austria not being as weak economically as she seemed being confirmed.

I think the dip in Milan's growth was due entirely to the takeover of southern china. I wasn't getting much out of those provinces and I was nowhere near to beginning their development building wise. My plan for this session was actually to release my entire S. China holding's as vassals so I could bring my infamy down from 30 to around 7, which would let me more than recoup the tariff losses in trade, cut my stab costs nearly in half, and free up 30,000 troops for the war in Europe.

One last note for the game: Don't underestimate the value of diplomacy during the week. It's a constant game changer and the people who engage in aggressive diplomacy are usually the ones that end up winning. For instance, in this game when faced with a Spain/French coalition I immediately set about breaking that alliance and bringing Spain into my diplomatic sphere. With spain in my pocket I got access to India and a valuable ally in future wars in France. I've made several deals throughout the game to keep Milan diplomaticly secure and to head off potential problems with the result being there wasn't a single PvP war that I wasn't "ready" for, which is huge.

And again, for this last session I managed to split the Hansa/France alliance, which would have led to the almost certain defeat of The Hansa in the next war. Don't underestimate diplomacy

You don't have all the facts here, I assure you.

OK 1 thing hurting Spain is a lack of modifiers/decisions enacted. You only have 3 national modifiers, and the only economic one is the Suffragan Bishop Act which actually hurts your tax income. Normalizing Weights & Measures is an amazing provincial decision for your capital which gives a huge national modifier, that should be a priority for every country ASAP (i.e. at govt tech 10).

oh? do tell...

Cant argue with garphs, Hansa is easily the winnar. Thats not even counting my trade.

Yeah your dip is defo due to your expansions not paying off yet. Hansa's boost comes from trade & monopoly domination, even mroe so than in the past. Portugal's from moving capital and converting crap tarrifs into amazing production & decent tax. France's huge boost from 1 session back seems to be from production (296 -> 749 somehow :O ) and trade being reestablished.

No that's from (national income) / (# of provs) as listed on the stats pages. Defo includes trade.

Oops that's actually England down in the bottom. Scandinavia is mis-graphed and it's 2 points are at the start for some reason (they should be at the end), but it's also down in the poor house.

I could never figure out why my income was so far behind. I tried to build the right things but had never made it this far into the game and have 0 experience with the decisions. Should I even take that suffrage one? I appreciate all the input, I'll be keeping it in mind.

You should defo look at the decisions available and look for ones that'll increase your tax/production/trade efficiencies, as they have a huge impact on income. Things like Liquor Act and Church Tax are gold (in fact the only reason to take the Statute in Restraint of Appeals is to get at Church Tax earlier than converting, IMO). Weights & Measures has no downside, only requires 5 magistrates & govt tech 10, it's a must-enact. Expand the Beaurocracy is good too since it gives more magistrates to upgrade things. Those are just ones that come to mind, there are tons to look for.

Suffragan Bishop Act is good for reducing stability costs, if you can afford it. Tax is usually a major income though, especially early game. It might've been OK for Hansa or Portugal if they were having stab problems, but probably not so good for Spain.

Trade and Production techs also raise Trade and Prod efficiencies by 1% per tech level, so though it might be tempting, don't ignore them.

Edit: Also whenever possible your Minting should be minimized, since that's money that could otherwise be spent on techs. Even if your inflation is at 0, if you don't need the gold, don't be minting (you probably do need some to keep up with building upgrades, but still, it should be kept to a minimum).

As the game continues, the global demand for all goods will increase. This drives the prices up and makes Prod/Trade more important sources of income later and later.

Going berserk with Bardiche vs Men At Arms seemed like bad idea.

That was an issue that surfaced a while ago, one I was stumped to solve. Hungary is a vassal of Bohemia which is in a PU under Spain. To wrench away what I did manage to get, I had to dow on an ally. All the adjacent German provinces were vassals or guaranteed by the hansa or milan, not powers I saw anyone else in Europe incredibly eager to tangle with. I definitely made some dumb mistakes, but I don't think grabbing more territory had been a realistic option for several sessions.