All of this, though on aggressive expansion one helpful thing is that countries with a positive opinion of you will never join. So if there's a couple larger folks you'd rather not see in a coalition, suck up to them as much as you can, and keep them content with you.

But, basically, this is live and learn to a large degree. I think the single greatest overall skill you need in this game is the ability to start thinking ahead and planning "where will I be two years from now, and what do I want to be doing?" and then preparing yourself for that.

Did a couple quick starts with France - first one, England allied with Austria, I allied Scotland (plus you start allied to Provence), we fought a big war, I took Normandy, but England crushed Scotland and took 3 provinces from them in a separate peace. Result: meh

Second one, England allied with Tyrone (lol), I fought them alone, took all English provinces in France but one because I stupidly didn't bother occupying provinces outside forts and Burgundy declared on England and occupied one, meaning I couldn't take it in a deal. Result: all English provinces (excluding Calais) except one in Normandy, plus Pale (England's outpost in Ireland, and the only non-forted province I could take outside the mainland). I got down to 0 manpower this time, but it'll recover.

I'm guessing that an ideal start for France is basically the second one, but not idiotically leaving that province alone? Getting the 4th Normandy province would be big since it would immediately give me the permanent claim on Brittany and let me keep rolling.

And if I can get Pale, prob a good idea since it gives me a foothold to fabricate on the rest of Ireland?

Austria is the easiest, assuming you'll use revoke swarm. Ming is probably easiest 'real' WC, but maybe try Spain? Iberian Wedding makes them the strongest player in Europe, and they are in great position to colonize (ie. conquer) Africa and the Americas.

For what it is worth, I think you can still WC this save, assuming your army is strong enough. It will be close though and you will be waging war on 2-3 fronts.

They can't call in Russia. For some reason in 1.25 PDX changed the interface with tributary to make it more confusing.



IMO it depends on the CB you used in the first place. If this is from Surrender of the Maine event, I actually think it is best to only take British provinces as you end up paying 100% unjustified demands anyways. Then you can fully take advantage of the sweet reconquest CB for the 2nd war. Getting claim to Brittany is fine, but you probably would rather eat Ireland first anyways to reduce AE spread to HRE. Eating (parts) of Brittany after taking British provinces leads to coalition.

I had to look up Surrender of the Maine - it looks like that causes England to dec on France with Restoration of Union? I imagine I probably don't want to wait for that?

In both cases above I decced on them in December 1444, with Reconquest. I actually wound up playing that second start out until 1464, and I think my position is pretty decent - I ate all but 2 Irish provinces, Duke of Burgundy Dies fired giving me a bunch more territory (though Castile got the inheritance which makes them scary powerful), and I annexed Provence. My truce with England just expired and I think I'm in position to declare on them again (their alliances suck and as a bonus they're allied with the last Irish nation for me to eat).

The Surrender of Maine is great event for France. It counts as England declaring war on you, so they don't get to call in any allies at all while you do get everyone. I did the Big blue blog achievement last week, the first war was 150k troops vs 30k . (The Surrender of Maine is also 99.99% going to fire by end 1447, so you don't really have to wait too long.)

Basically what I suggest is you that you financially utterly decimate England in the first war and take a foothold in the Isles and Ireland, then in the 2nd war you take back rightful French land (+some nice colonial port from Portugal if they are still allied) and in the third war you take London and whatever else you want.

Castile getting the inheritance is pretty awful for you, as it reduces your expansion paths quite a bit. I'd much rather have Austria get the inheritance since they are historical rival anyway and Castile makes for good early game ally.

Do Aggressive expansion and overextension go hand in hand, or are they completely discrete and different mechanics?

I saw a tip on Reddit last night talking about how you can reduce OE after conquering (for example) a 10-province nation by ceding a few of those newly-owned provinces to one of your vassals, but it said nothing about whether or not this helps with AE. It would be nice if it did both. Is AE only fixed by coring?

They are both tied to development, but don't have other connections.

OE is a measure of how much development (absolute number I think, which scales over time, NOT a percentage of your development) you have that isn't cored, and can be fixed by coring or vassal feeding.

AE is a measure of how much other countries are mad at you for conquering stuff and varies from country to country (see coalition mapmode to see who's mad at you). I believe it is only fixed with time.

OE is reduced by Administrative efficiency, though. I think OE = {Development*(1-Admin efficiency)}.

Aggressive expansion can be reduced by 2 ways: over time (improve relations modifier makes it go away faster) and giving up your own provinces in peace deal. If you give 50 dev in peace deal, AE should drop by 50.

Yeah, that's what I meant by "scales over time" since admin efficiency primarily comes from tech (I guess absolutism mechanics in the lategame and maybe some ideas also help admin efficiency).

Your 1650 (well, 1651) update -- check out dat dank name placement yo:



Not pictured: Australia, split between me and Portugal in two colonial nations.

I actually released Ming and then started to beat the hell out of them, because they were at 100% liberty desire and we can't have that. Nepal is too, but they never actually have troops because they're super broke. Then Ming had rebel problems and spawned Shun, so I ate those and then ate some Ming.

Have started to make small inroads into Japan (see north and south), and I'm sloooowly colonizing in Siberia to connect to Uzbek to get another front there (will probably vassalize them, they have a decent number of cores up there to reconquest).

wtf is Min Tartary??

I'm playing out a start w/ Surrender of Maine right now and while it's certainly different, I dunno if it's better...
- allied Portugal, Castile, Aragon (figured they had best naval power to fight England)
- war starts, England still crushes the naval battle, mainland remains untouched
- after winning the war, it occurred to me that I can no longer use this first war to bankroll 8 churches because of the hundreds of ducats I get in the deal, 2/3 of it goes to my allies
- used the peace deal to take Normandy, Pale, humiliate England (put me above 50 PP so I get extra monarch points) - sure, I can leave some of these provinces for reconquest later, but I figure it would help my economy to take some of them now since I don't have a ton of money; didn't see a lot of ways to hurt England in the peace deal

Provence got excommunicated and Burgundy attacked them, dragging me into a war with them. It occurred to me halfway through that I probably want Burgundy to win so that I get all the territory they take when the inheritance fires, so I WPed out after a bit, but fighting that war dragged on my economy for a bit too.

So, I dunno. I hadn't fully considered the economical benefit to fighting England alone and using that first peace deal to take, like, 500 ducats. France doesn't have a lot of $$ coming in early on, my monthly income is like +2 ducats in peacetime.

Naming hilarity. The actual "Min" is on the little island at the south end of their territory.

No comments on "Malayan Tannu Uriankhai" though, I see

Got to 1500 in the 3rd French start without Burgundy firing (and this would have been a perfect game for it, because they lost a war that forced them to release all their Dutch junior partners, so I think if the event fired I would have gotten most of their land and the only thing anyone would have inherited would have been Burgundian HRE provinces?)

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU

think I'm just gonna load the 2nd one where Castile got the inheritance and try to make a dent in them if I can

If it looks like allies are taking too big chunk of the ducats, just take War reps and transfer trade power, the put a merchant on English Channel. I think England starts with like 10 ducat trade income, some the transfer trade should net you 3-4 ducats/month.

Burgundy is very good ally for the war btw, the vassals have ton of ships that actually have a safe port nearby.

One of the most irritating things that has ever happened to me in this game:



This is the aftermath of a war I fought with Castile, who has Aragon and Naples in PU. They sieged down my southern forts bordering Savoy/Spain fairly quickly, but I managed to hold them there - their war goal was Rethel, and they kept trying to siege it down with half their army while I could direct my full attention at their sieging armies.

Eventually, because I still control the war goal and because I've won most of the battles, I have ~16% WS and they're willing to peace out. I hit suggest demands and they'll give me Cambray (which, conveniently, I need to finish a mission to get permanent claims on Belgium), but I need to siege down a fort in the area. No problem - I send my 2 siege general along with a 10 artillery stack to do it. I pay the 50 military points to get a breach and off we go, progress is at 0%. Castile is sieging down a couple forts in southern France at like -28%, but no problem, I have my breach, this will finish quickly, right?

.........right?

Somehow I lose TWO ****ING SIEGES THAT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE WALL BREACHES while I keep whiffing on ****ing 64% dice rolls. Now Castile is making gains, they don't want peace anymore, they're sieging Paris, **** **** **** **** **** I finally take out a couple more sieging armies and they'll peace out again, and luckily I can still get the same deal somehow, but I'm sure that cost me like 10000 more MP that I totally could not afford to lose.


The cherry on top of this is, I go to ask the pope for that thing that gives you +15% manpower recovery. One of the requirements is that you're at war. I forgot about this until after signing peace. ASDHFIOADSFHIODSAPODS

I'm seriously wondering what the fastest way is I can just start a war with someone to get this pope thing and then pay them off however many hundreds of ducats to forget it happened. This suuuuuuuuuucks. It appears that I'm 4 years from even filling my armies before I can even start replenishing MP.

At this point, do you just say **** it and consolidate your regiments? I'm not sure if that's even better, you'll just spend the MP on the tail end to recruit armies again instead of at the start to fill your existing regiments.

The reasons to consolidate don't see to be valid here:

-Naval transporting
-Upgrading army
-Over the force limit
-Upcoming battle

Reinforcing a regiment from 0 to 1000 costs 50% of full regiment cost, so it is better to just leave the regiments to reinforce over time.

After losing > 50k troops to 12k troops from some country I'm not entirely sure ever existed, I'll be starting over again tonight.

Demand troops from nobility? Slacken recruitment standards?

Also not sure if you are aware, but you can shift+consolidate to consolidate all your divisions but leave the empty ones at 0 manpower instead of making them go poof. You still need to fill those up, but that leaves all the rest of your troops at full strength.

I had a similar problem to goofy's wrt manpower after my first war with Ming. I sorta "fixed" it by consolidating and replacing with mercs up to force limit, but a) I had more ducats available at the time and b) I started with Administrative ideas so got the -25% merc cost straight away. I'm not sure that would help goofy's situation though as he looks to be a bit cash strapped. Maybe just spam loans and worry about how to pay them back later?

China in any of its forms having a manpower shortage is kinda funny

You can select to have manpower as tribute from your tributaries.

I'm doing a brandenburg->prussia game since there was some chatter in here about them and I haven't played them since before Rights of Man and the unique mechanics were added, and (shocker) they are hilariously OP. The whole militarization mechanic is supposed to give huge bonuses for staying small (and playing "tall), but because you can manually pump it with monarch points its just 500* mil points for an insane 10% Discipline, +20% Manpower recovery speed, and -20% Land maintenance modifier every time your fight a major war. Even though the max bonus quickly decays due to -0.015 per province, you get the lingering effects of the bonuses for years, and only really need to pump it to max right before or during a major war. Really dumb, they should have made it unable to manually pump, as it doesn't really penalize you at all for just blobbing as normal.

In my game its the 1570s and I've finished getting all the Prussian ideas which also gives another 5% discipline. So with max militarization, full quality, full offensive, the Prussian ambition, “Holy Sacraments” church aspect from Protestantism, and a commandant advisor, I am rocking 132.5% discipline. Can also get another 5% from absolutism once I reach that age, and another 5% from the Economic-Quality policy.

They also get an insane +20% infantry combat ability (tied with Swedish traditions for the best) which is pseudo-discipline. Plus, they get the best morale idea of +20% (tied with French "Elan"), and always have insanely good generals due to national ideas/militarization/idea groups.

Its no wonder that they are considered so OP in multiplayer, not sure how anything can deal with that. In my game I just almost single-handedly destroyed the Catholics in the League War by getting huge warscore from a huge battles.

*before power discounts, so with innovative ideas, high innovativeness, and even a golden age its significantly less.