Which, again, isn't a reason not to do it. The fact that it isn't an option in the game is dumb, and if both France and I agree to it why shouldn't we be able to just edit them out without being forced to go through a fake war.

I'm just saying that's the difference between editing the save for Selim's colonies and this since you asked what the difference is.

dj, thanks for the buildings post. Question:

Can you elaborate on how this works? The description says they give +250 manpower, how does it work out to 500?

I have to say this is absolutely fascinating to read.

Diplomacy in action in fast forward.

And because the Mughals are the greatest empire the world has ever seen or known. Djstu mortally wounds me by implying i might have been disingenuous.

The province is a dreadful one. I only got it because i had a mission to get an indian port (also for the trade company decision later) and it benefits both the province's more savage and uneducated neighbours.

posted last week i was struggling with moscovy. Well that game has turned around.
Playing as other countries, it was basically get casus belli, and attack. With Moscovy, you have to be a lot more patient and pick your spots to attack. Once I got better with setting up alliances and picking my DoW spots, game became a lot easier. managed to for Russia and move my capital.
New problem: Westernization. First game I've played where I had to do this, and apparently I did not understand this process.
So once you westernize tech, you still need to westernize units right?
Until you westernize units, you get all kinds of pain in the ass stuff happening?
So here is what happened:
I westernized. I agreed to something that gave me resisting westernization. I thought i clicked on tech, but must have clicked on military, and it still said oriental. So I thought I lost my westernization. Then I thought crap, if you accept resisting westernization, you lose your westernization. So i loaded an old save and never took anything that gave resisting westernization. One of the things that is an alternative to resisting westernization moves your slider one spot toward decentralization. I did this several times before realizing the way to get through this is you have to modernize units, which requires being almost all the way to centralized.
So, I'm trapped between westernize tech and modernize units for at least 50 years because i need to move at least 4-5 sliders toward centralization.
I gave up on this game because of this, and have started an ottomon game. But, still learning more.

It gives +250 base manpower to whatever province it's in, and apparently to generate your max manpower pool the game takes the sum total of all the manpower your provinces generates and doubles it.

So in a province with no bonuses it would increase the manpower there by 250, and max manpower by 500. If you had national conscripts, which adds +50% manpower, you'd get the initial base 250 *1.5 = increase to province manpower (375). So then the increase to your max manpower pool would be 750

I usually find that the best move for Moscow/Russia is to not westernize until later on. You need high innovative slider to westernize, but you need narrowminded slider for missionaries that can convert all of those muslims you will be conquering to your south and east. After forming Russia you should be strong enough economically that you arent falling too far behind, and as the AIs start getting 10+ inflation, as long as your inflation is low you will actually pass them in tech despite being in a worse tech group.

History question:

Why does England have cores in France? Anyone know of the appropriate wiki page to read?

Norman Conquest of England

Basically a bunch of frenchies conquered England.

The Hundred Years War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War

The short version is that English Kings, from 1066 onwards, were really French nobles just using the island to have a bigger title, or their descendants. Of particular note, William the Conquerer was the Duke of Normandy in France and invaded England to take it's crown in 1066. Soon after, England somehow inherited Aquitaine too, i.e. west/Atlantic France; Richard Lionheart the crusader was really a Frenchman from Aquitaine, and never visited England itself or learned English. Those lands were a big bone of contention between the French and English throughout the middle ages.

In the early 1300s the King of France died, and all 3 of his sons died shortly after him too without any male sons of their own to inherit the throne directly. So the English argues their King, who was the son of the 3 dead kids' sister, had a fair claim to the throne of France as well. The French said **** that and appointed the dead kids' cousin as King. With the history of weirdly divided land contributing, they started a long series of wars in which England wanted France's throne, and France wanted its lands back from English claims/rule.

The wars went back and forth as tactics changed and new tech was developped over the course of - surprise - about 100 years, well into the 1400s. In the 1390s, the Duke of Burgundy declared independance from France, because the French king's brother was a crazy sex fiend and tried to bone all the rich French ladies (including the Duke's wife, and possibly the Queen). So that split France in half again just before eu3 begins.

Historically, France was totally ****ed and 100% going to lose to the England+Burgundy alliance. But then Joan of Arc came along and won enough lucky/miraculous victories to put France back into things.

Great stuff, Ranok. Nice writeup.

I knew the french took england at some point but didn't know/see any logic to how that would translate into england having a claim to france. Did not know Lionheart was french either, wtf. Facinating stuff.

English = French is what I get out of it.

I've been playing a SP game as Vijay the last couple weeks which I think is the most fun I've had playing this game, but it's had its ups and downs. Cliffs have basically been...

- war neighbors at start of game to get Hindustan cores (pretty fun)

- wait 50 years for provinces to core

- form Hindustan ~1480, marvel at all the green territories I'm about to take for yourself

- cry as my prestige gets raped from uncontested claims, my diplomats fall to 1/yr, my war exhaustion skyrockets from running around the mountains everywhere and fighting long tough wars against the Timurids (NOT FUN) (well fighting the Timurids is pretty fun but doing that while dealing with rebels popping up every 5 minutes in all of my provinces across a huge empire is super annoying)

- deal with the always-fun experience of DOWing a country for reconquest, then realizing it's a vassal of Chagatai, so I can't take territory from it, I can only make Chagatai release it, at which point they re-invade before my 5 year truce is up and vassalize it again anyway

- finally get all my Hindustan cores, marvel at the extent of my beautiful empire (~1550?)

- fight 5 year wars with Timurids, Chagatai, and Oirat Horde for the rest of eternity (**** you hordes I don't want to take your **** provinces). only benefit is that having horde neighbors gives me the sweet colonist bonus for colonizing SE Asia islands later.

- take Unam Sanctam so I can expand east with reckless abandon

- in a war with some rando SE Asian country, notice they're allied with Najd, who have a province bordering Burgundy in Yemen; take it for future use in westernization

- butter up Burgundy with gifts of gold (I'm super rich btw, have like 10k gold at my peak, down to about 1.5k now as I've been building the **** out of my infrastructure) so they don't get mad at me and destroy me, eventually develop an alliance

- Westernizzzzeeeee bitchez, techgroup MUSLIM whatttt, tech speeds up a little but not a ton

- deal with onslaught of rebels as I sloooooooooooooowly recover stab, realize that building temples like everywhere is probably a good idea

- slowly get back to stab 3, build temples in literally every province which decreases my stab cost by about 40%

- can't Westernize again because my king died and all my **** rulers now can't get an administrative rating above 5. knowing from our MP game that explorers die if the ship they're on sinks at sea, I try making my king a general, putting him on a ship, and sending it out to die in the deep waters off of China. ****er swims back somehow.

- finally get an admin 6 ruler, have choice between westernization and military modernization and go for westernization again. thank GOD, since the game doesn't tell you that doing this the other way around would be ******ed (will explain later)

- recover from stab hits much quicker this time (my next NI was church attendance duty for -33% stab cost, then bill of rights for -2 revolt risk)

- am now fully WESTERNIZZZZZED bitches and in the western tech group, look at my techs and all of them have a +100 neighbor bonus LOL awesome, start climbing up the tech tree at ridic speed

- look at tooltip for military westernization, surprisingly it says it changes my units straight to western. so, unlike westernization I don't need to do that multiple times (though I imagine I would have if I did military modernization before fully westernizing, and it just would have been dumb), just once after I get my tech to western.

- ...but, here comes THE MOST ANNOYING PART OF THE GAME so far: "Resist Western Influences." O, how I hate you so.

Cliffs: like 4 times per year (random, sometimes 1, sometimes 10), you get some random event that will let you choose between something bad or taking the "Resist Western Influences" modifier, which actually isn't that bad on its own - you lose 2 prestige but gain -2 revolt risk. EXCEPT for the small fact that you can't do military westernization if you have the Resist Western Influences modifier, and it lasts years. Keep in mind you also need to have +3 stab and -5 centralization to do military westernization. So, with that in mind, here's what the game throws at you several times a year:
- Resist Western Influences or else you take a -2 stab hit (~2 years to recover)
- RWI or else you gain 2 decentralization (are you ****ing kidding? choice between 10 years or 2 slider moves (~26 years) to be able to do military westernization??? that's what you give me?? **** you, game, **** you)
- RWI or else 7-15 regiments of angry people rise up somewhere (not bad in isolation but annoying as **** when this happens several times in a row while you're fighting a war somewhere else)
- RWI or else you lose a merchant somewhere (this is the only one I can think of that isn't maddening)

****ing hate you, western influences

- eventually get so mad that I just load my autosave anytime one of these bull**** events comes up that isn't rebels or merchants and get to westernize my military

- to my complete and utter joy, it doesn't automatically switch your unit types for you, which means I get to keep South Indian Cavalry - you get them at land 15 and they're just dominant - 3/1 fire, 5/2 shock, 5/2 morale. Western cavalry doesn't surpass them until land 36. So I get to keep those and switch to Tercio infantry, best of both worlds!

- begin facerolling over everyone in SE Asia. nobody can stand up to my army. I can wipe out an entire nation with a single stack. ghana take THE ENTIRE SUBCONTINENT 4 MYSELF MUAHAHAHHAA

- just for fun, declared on Japan since I could see Kyoto. pretty hilarious, move your navy into the Seto Inland Sea and like 20 ports are insta-blockaded and reinforcements can't island-hop to stop you.


So yeah, I think I'm at about 1650? now and my agenda for awhile is going to be crushing Asia. Somehow Ming and Manchu both failboated hard, and Wu rose from the ashes to have basically all the territory Ming should have, with Korea getting a good chunk of Manchu. Unam Sanctam is pretty sweet since I get free CBs on every non-Hindu non-Muslim nation in Asia. Although I thought Banana said you can take stuff for 1 infamy? It's costing me 2 to take provinces. Bill of Rights also gives you a free CB on any nation that can release other nations (aka most nations in the world) but I should probably swap that for something else since it's a little redundant w/ Unam Sanctam now that my stability/revolt troubles are over.

Speaking of the failboats that are always fun, some of the oddities around the world:
- France failboated, Burgundy dominant power
- Iberia is just a joke; Granada exists, Aragon and Castille are still warring all the time
- Golden Horde failboated really early to the benefit of Nogai/Sibir, which then became the benefit of Lithuania as they gobbled up all their territory and are now a massive power
- Utrechtian Africa. It exists.
- It took a long time, but Timurids eventually failboated and gave way to a massive Persia, which started out as 1 province that broke away due to rebels
- Chimu > Inca, lol Inca
- At one point when Timurids were absolutely massive (territory from the Mediterranean to Tibet), I guess some rebels all had territories at the right time all around their empire because I found myself bordered on the northeast by.........Jalayirids. Their capital was in Iraq and they had 3 other provinces way on the other side of the Timurids, bordering Chagatai and Tibet. lol what the I don't even (man that would suck if you were playing in the Middle East and wanted that capital - nope, sorry, gotta trek 5,000 miles east to take their other territories first)

So anyway, this has been a lot of fun on the whole and I'll keep playing this game for awhile longer (I think this is the latest I've gotten in a game before getting bored and wanting to start over w/ a diff country), but I can't imagine doing this in MP, with a Mughal neighbor guaranteeing you'll never get tons of Hindustan cores (bye bye prestige) or having to deal with all that military westernizing bull**** w/o the benefit of autosave.

Also, I would enjoy more "Ranok explains history" posts.

i had a pretty good game as vijay also. unfortunately after forming hindustan, i had really high war weariness which lead to so many revolts i couldn't keep them down and my country practically dissolved.
+1 on westernization being a total bitch. i had my first run in with it as russia and just totally ****ed up the process.

Yeah, my first experience with it was as Russia also, but not in a good way. I didn't plan ahead and by the time I was ready to westernize, I realized I was still super narrowminded and like 5-6 slider moves from being able to do it. By the time I pulled it off I was taking heat from westernized neighbors and got crushed. Vijay's isolation is kind of nice in that regard.

Arthur Currie GOAT

Images from the aforementioned Hindustan game:



And Europe:



Two very entertaining words I forgot in the above summary:

Granadan. Creek.

Anyway, what do you guys think my next move is above? I've vassalized a lot of SE Asia already, and I'm not really sure what I do against, say, Wu, given that big empires almost always have a ton of ****-ass grain provinces. Do I throw caution to the wind and say "**** it" and roll over them piece by piece, taking all provinces regardless? Do I get them to release a bunch of smaller states and pick and choose which ones to take over and which ones to vassalize? Do I just take the provinces I want and try to vassalize the leftovers in one fell swoop?

Also, when you see people on pdox forums talking about world conquest games - are they taking all provinces or does vassalization count too? Does that include colonizing every province in the world?

has to be the WOAT cliffs

Pretty good cliffs of what would have been like a 10,000 word AAR iyam

China, Japan and Korea have chinaware provinces, some with ridiculous manpower and tax bases.

What's so bad about Resist Western Influences ? Take it and make sure that you are ready to modernize your military the second it runs out ( 10 years IIRC ? ). And switch to a republic before going for westernization imo. Relying on the game to give you a high admin ruler and keeping him alive during that time is just so annoying.

How does a republic work? Never had that type of govt.

You're prob right about taking RWI, I needed one more slider move in like 13 years so I figured I'd take RWI once, then stick it out 3 years until I could get my slider.