I have played a game with pretty much every major mod out there, so I will post a report after the champions league game that start in a few minutes.

Morocco also starts with great sliders for trading and lvl 5 in every tech, so I was a trading monster with 5 merchants in the 5 best centers of trade. Super rich so teching was ez, managed to claim Algiers throne and force them into a Personal Union and inherited them by 1430, giving me cores on all their territory, which gave me a large enough manpower base to fight off Castille and friends the few times they invaded. Morocco also starts with a decent sized fleet, I think 6-7 carracks, and is Naval 1 in sliders, so along with my huge trade income it made building up a large fleet pretty easy. I was able to establish naval dominance and blockaded the Iberian powers fleets in port every time they warred me.

Castille cut off my expansion in North Africa by annexing Tunisia in some random war. I tried to take it because I had 2 cores there but despite taking the 3 provinces, fighting off endless landings, and destroying the entire fleet they still refused to give any provinces. Those provinces are meh anyways besides Tunis so I white peaced. Decided to go colonial, so I rushed trade 7 and government 9 and got Quest for the New World as my 2nd National Idea and reached Brazil in 1450. Unfortunately I forgot that since Morocco is muslim they don't get free colonists, so I had to take the -3 stability hit and switch my manpower national idea to the +1 colonist/year one. Luckily I also had a COT develop in Ifni which gave me an extra .1 colonists a year from the coastal Center of Trade bonus.

I started spamming colonists out but it was very annoying getting only 1.1 a year, with about 70% chance for a successful colony. Every time a colonist would fail it would take another yearish to try again, which really slowed down the whole process. Got the canary islands first and around 8 provinces in Brazil, then decided to go south and take out Mali for their gold provinces. I think the optimal move is likely to just go for Mali before trying to colonize the new world at all. Mali is mostly poor ****ty provinces but it has 2 incredibly rich gold provinces that give like 80+ yearly income, and timbuktu is iirc base 13 or 14 tax. Plus they are all either Muslim or animist so no huge stability problems except the extra stab from poor provinces. Lastly, those provinces also will boost my manpower base a lot, given that Castille is about to form Spain and has like 50k compared to my 25k.

In the rest of the world, Portugal was nearly annexed by Castille but has now reached the new world and has some colonies in the Caribbean. Golden Horde conquered its way to the Adriatic, and fought a bunch of wars with the Ottomans who took most of the Balkans from them and seem pretty strong. However the Timurids conquered the entire middle east before slowly being pushed back by the Mamluks, and the Mamluks now have the entire mid east reaching all the way up to Astrakhan and including eastern Anatolia and are continue pushing into the Timurids.

In Europe, Austria inherited Transylvania giving it a border with the Golden Horde and is now conquering its way east and it stretches from Switzerland all the way to the Crimea. Given that the Golden Horde territory goes all the way to Siberia, Austria might wind up with all that land. Ottomans are warring them atm which is basically Europe's only hope. England has also gone on a conquering spree after unifying Ireland and Scotland, conquering Denmark, Sardinia, and a few random places in Italy. Speaking of Denmark, it is now somehow located in Brittany and has none of its former territory. Maybe it inherited Brittany? Idk.

At work atm but will put world map pics up when i get home

lol flanders

Same game, ~50 years later

France is disgustingly large and powerful

Mamluks still expanding like crazy into both GH and Timurids

Vijay united most of India and also expanding into Timurids

Ottomans cut off Austria from GH and are expanding there too

Austria has a personal union w/ Hungary

Bavaria are the German superpower, they aren't HRE but have like 6-7 vassals

Great Britain going crazy all over the place with territory everywhere

Do you have lucky nations on?

Also a lot of people expressed interest in a MP game earlier in the thread. Still on? Lots of games have been coming out so I've been playing BF more but I'd love a Sunday EU3 game. I think I'll pm everyone who showed interest and set it up this week if someone shows interest.

started playing, tons of fun

playing as holland right now, got out of the personal union with hainuit (i think thats the sp) and teamed up with france and england to take out burgundy...had the negative effect of making france far too powerful and england isn't the best ally vs them. ended up losing my alliance with england (mostly because they wanted me to fight france) and making one with castille to hold off france...then did a lot of opportunistic land grabbing in northern europe with diplo-annexing vassals, royal marriages, and reconquests from forming the netherlands to boost manpower. Also started colonizing and conquering south africa and the america's, they aren't a huge boost but it'll be a tremendous boon in the long term, lots of rich supplies to be found.

still worried about france, i can match them in terms of units (especially with a super powered econ) but they have twice my manpower and much better generals / NI's...they'll run me over in a protracted war. castille is more interested in the middle east so they prob wouldn't offer too much support outside of just forcing france to stay honest by keeping their military split. they'll be a much bigger help if i have to war against england as our combined navy's should beat england's royal navy.

really fun nation to play though, tried out some of the italian provinces but holland starts out with amazing sliders...makes it really easy to dominate CoT's within just the first few years. after that it feels like you're just tiptoeing around the european super powers until you can get strong enough to hold them at bay.

As a Lithuanian citizen, I was thoroughly saddened by those AARs

random lucky nations, mamluks def lucky because they somehow havent even reformed their govt yet

Just to reiterate I am way up for an mp game

^^ also way up for a mp game.

im down for multi on the condition that djstu doesnt play holland and has to rot somewhere in eastern europe like lets say poland

Realistically what we need for multi at a bare minimum is

at least 1 of Castille/Portugal/Aragon, preferably Castille if only 1
France or Burgandy
England
Milan or Venice or Naples
Ottomans
Austria
Novgorod or Muscovy
North German/Scandinavian power

which is 8

After that:
Portugal for more colonization competition
Poland/TO/other Eastern European country
Holland/Netherlands
Morocco/Mamluks
Maybe another German like Bohemia, Hansa, or Brandenburg

Even more?:
Indian like Vijay or Rajput
China
Japan

Asians would be great for balance reasons so that Ottomans/Russia can't just expand forever towards the east and ignore Europe, but anyone playing an Asian country will basically be playing single player for the first 100 years until anyone reaches them, so pretty boring imo.

Castille here if possible. It's the one I'd know best among those how to play decently.

Interested parties:

Nonfiction
Aunts
djstu
flyingbanana
myself

That's 5. Any others? We can possible recruit a couple extras from the paradox boards as well. Is everyone in US/Canada?

I'd play but Sundays are no good for me during NFL season.

Hehe no ****.

Also, I'm Euro.

Ya same, I'd rather do it some other day, maybe saturday or a random week night. Sundays I will be out drinking most/all of the day

Agreed, would play...have all expansions but I'm not very good.

Listen, just because I figured out how to turbo form the netherlands within 10 years reliably doesn't mean I should be banned from playing my dutch. And letting france/burgundy grab the lowlands is a recipe for disaster.

Personally I think a dutch HRE would be awesome.

Wait a minute... I wonder if I can turbo form germany...

Skill doesn't matter as much, if you aren't as experienced or skilled you can play the easier, stronger countries like France or Castille or England. The more experienced players can be the weaker or harder countries like Denmark/Sweden, Russia, etc.

LOL I'm experienced just not skilled. I'm not too picky who I play as either, would be fun to play against people and not AI.

For anybody eagerly awaiting the answer; Yes, yes I can turbo-form germany

Think I will be Hansa or Denmark or some north german power

How about Saturday afternoons? Tougher on the euro but week evenings wouldn't work. Otherwise something like Monday 8pm-12 would work for me.

Also have to figure out house rules, I'd probably just poach from a seemingly good MP game on Paradox forums.