Heh yeah timmies are doing really well in my game too, first time I've seen them still around this late.

Paradox posted a custom Ironman save on twitter. Requires the El Dorado dlc to play.



Spoilers:

Map:

lolwut.jpg

The big question... is there an achievement?

The big question is does colonialism ever spawn?

Man, I can really not care less about the last 60 years of this, though I'll do it just to play through to the end. Figure I'll clean up India, clean up mainland Japan, annex Korea, and pretty up the borders by taking out mainland Southeast Asia. I'm sure a better player could do more (like eat most of Russia), but bleh do I ever not care. Maybe I'll go for a final battle against France just to clean them out of China. Maybe.

Gotta take out mother Russia to earn the “W” (I’ve never “won” a game by my own standards)

well, just bounced into an 8 year regency council so that's not gonna happen

(They did insult me like 3 months after that happened, the cowards)

Not having much luck with Prince of Timur =(. Just breaking out of Timurid takes years. There are just so many Indian provinces it's hard to get on pace.

I think I'm going to swap to diplomatic+influence next run and see if lowering AE and maximizing vassal feeding will help.

Timmies! and Mingfail

Poland ate tons of Ottos and now the latter is in a revolution? wat

Yeah I've been allied with Poland, Lithuania almost the entire time, now Austria too and everyone has been dogpiling Ottos. Like as soon as truce expires one of those three declares again and calls me to arms and now it's "Revolutionary Ottomans" and I've got the counter revolution malus so I have to declare again to get rid of it I guess. I'm kinda over Ottomans, I can't focus on expansion into Central and SW Asia because I've been at war with them for the past 150 years (for the most part)

No law says that just because you’re called as an ally that you have to actually send troops.

Actually Lithuania broke our alliance last night, and they still hold those two provinces that are considered my cores and I guess it was inevitable but it's tricky now. Poland is really strong (thanks in NO SMALL PART to me helping merk the Ottomans, hell they've controlled Constantinople for over 100 years now) and fighting Lithuania is going to mean fighting Poland as well so I'm trying to cultivate good relations with the Austrians and Brits for when that happens.

The entire bottom half of my mission tree is blocked because I don't control those two crummy provinces. I've got around 100 years left so I'll need to get it done soon or otherwise not at all.

True, but the one time I decided to do my own thing and basically ignore them beyond saying "yes" to the call to arms, I wound up with Ottoman armies roaming up and down my lands taking my ****, almost as if they were going out of their way to ignore Poland and Lithuania who were actually taking their provinces. AI is weird sometimes.

ETA it's also weird that Commonwealth never formed because I'm pretty sure Poland has all the required provinces, I guess they never got Lithuania into a PU? Only reason I can think of. They've literally been allied with each other since the start of this game. I've tried to force Poland to break the alliance so I can just deal with Lithuania solo, since they have no other allies, but Poland isn't interested in quitting them even to appease me.

You need to find someone (Ottomans maybe?) to declare on and call them to arms yourself and have them fight the battles.

Whenever you have an ally getting out of hand, you just have to find a way to keep them in YOUR wars.

The AI hates starting two wars. It could be fighting a totally pointless war with Ming with no ships to send troops and it still wouldn't start another war.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind

I had a gift dumped in my lap last night. Austria wardecced Lithuania while Lithuania was fighting down in Egypt and somehow Poland did not join. Austria quickly overran them and forced a peace which including Lithuania breaking all ties with Poland. They currently have no allies so I should be able to take the two cores I need to unlock the rest of the tree along with a nice chunk of Ruthenia.

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffu so by the time I built up my army like I wanted it and moved it into place to strike, Lithuania has RE-ALLIED with Poland. fml

I mean what is the point of having a defeated opponent cancel an alliance if it can just re-ally before the damn truce is even up???

ETA never mind, Poland will join because it is Defender of the Faith not because it's allied with Lithuania. le sigh

Something else I've never understood: current allies Austria and Portugal won't join if I attack because they both are in truce with my target and it would "destabilize" my allies. I've been called into two wars v. Ottomans by Poland and Lithuania, respectively, both right after wars with Ottomans where I had truce in effect but I was not destabilized. Anyone know why that is?

Defensive war calls maybe? There’s never a penalty for honoring one of those.

Welp another run in the books. After struggling with Kandy it was kind of nice to just dominate everyone for a change of pace.

Highlights included:

-I got the Annexation killing blow on Ottomans AND Ming! Ming twice actually since rebels reformed it and I took it again. I know that means nothing to WCers but it was a first for me. I had very little to do with whittling Ming down to nothing, it was mostly Timmies who dominated from central Asia to the China Sea and once they bordered Ming and drained their mandate it was curtains. Never saw Timmies dominate like that

-Castile was king of the new world, overwhelmingly controlling SA save a bit of columbia and central America which Portugal had. But yet again Spain did not form, due to Portugal being the one to reconquista Grenada and Castile never went to war with Portugal. (This was my 5th full run and Spain has not formed in any of them, I'll probably play Castile or Aragon next just to see it done)

-I never got to attack Lithuania. They were very smart about picking allies, mainly Poland as already discussed. That was the only part of the mission tree I wasn't able to complete.

-England, NOT Great Britain, was the dominant country in western Europe (and my erstwhile ally) and held the northern half of France most of the game but interestingly never got around to finishing off Scotland. I attached Nova Scotia to get a foodhold in NA and kicked Scotland out and then sold their provinces to England and only then did GB form, which was after 1710. I wonder if GB ever would have formed if I hadn't intervened. Of course within a month of GB forming they inexplicably turned against me and we were rivals the rest of the game, though we never fought.

Anyone done the Novgorod-->Russia route? That seems like it might be cool, and obv more challenging than Muscovy

I did a Novgorod run a week ago to do the Frozen Assets achievement, then formed Russia and got the Relentless Push East achievement. Once you take out Muscovy it is basically smooth sailing. Novgorod (maybe all the Russian minors I don't know) has a ton of missions that gives them cores all over the place.

Take on Muscovy as soon as possible. Ally up at the start of the game and declare war imo.

Playing Ethiopia now for the Prestor John achievement. Early game is very easy since you can just annex whole countries and get basically no AE with anyone who matters. Easy to take the whole of East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Ran into a 8 year Regency Council then my new King died at age 19 and I had another 8 year Regency Council.

heh that's some awful luck

new map of Iberia coming btw

Uhhhhh so that's not the actual start map right? Reading the dev diary it sounds like they added some releasable nations, which presumably have been released in that screenshot? (which, like, come on, cool story but the map would never actually look like that)