It's kind of cool that you can avoid some of these disasters by just not doing the prereqs. I'm currently fading that Jannisaries Disaster by simply not building Jannisaries.

It is the only way to reliably get 100+ Absolutism cap. Whether you need that or not is another thing altogether.

But C&C really isn't that bad. A lot of the events give you stuff + you can control when the disaster ends, so you can fairly freely pick the -Absolutism decisions. I think the most troublesome part of the disaster is actually getting it to fire.

Not sure about why Aleppo doesn't give trade power, but you might want to transfer from Persia or Basra instead of collecting in Constantinople as you get the 50 trade power from caravan?

I don't have a merchant collecting in Constantinople (just auto-collecting in my home node like usual). Not sure what you mean about caravan?

Is caravan = the trade routes that go over land? Like Crimea to Kiev?

Steering from inland nodes gives you a bonus that I guess is supposed to make up for not being able to generate trade power with light ships.

http://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade#Caravan_power

How do you see who Curia Controller is?

Also, per the wiki, in order to have a Crusade called against me, Papal States have to have an opinion of -50 of the target (me). I have a + relationship with them but every time I try to invade Serbia I instantly get a Crusade called against me. Is this some auto event triggered by invading Serbia (Who is Orthodox fwiw)? Is the wiki wrong?

Yep. As a result, mid/large nations get much better value sending merchants to steer from inland nodes where you get 50+2 trade power instead of sending them to some coastal trade node you get only 2 trade power.

This video explains trade pretty well

1620:



Shammar (northwest of Hormuz) is my vassal, planning to feed them things as I eat up Arabia. After having some economy issues in my last session (my monthly income ranged from, like, -30 ducats/month at full maintenance to +50/month at zero maintenance, which became a bit of a problem during wars), I spent a lot of time at 0 maintenance this session to build up manufactories and get a solid economy. My income is now +50 to +100 depending on maintenance, so that's looking good.

I just tried an experiment (save-scumming in ironman, I'm a scumbag) to get a beachhead in SE Asia - now that I have Indian Ocean access through Basra, I built up 25 merchantmen (plus the 10 free ships I get for taking Basra) to take an army to SE Asia:



This is Ming's diplo view, to highlight the one country that I can attack without triggering a bunch of alliances in India and without getting Ming involved. It's Pattani, and I figured if I could just get an army over there and no-CB them, I'd have a power base in SE Asia. Sadly, Pasai next to them (on Sumatra) is their ally and brought like 55 ships out and sunk my fleet before my army could get onto land.

Other options:
- Orissa is the only other good option I see but they're allied with Jaunpur who has a larger army than I can deal with via sea transport (although theoretically I only need mil access through two countries to walk there across half of Asia)
- At dip tech 19, Majapahit will be in coring range for me (they also have a surprisingly large navy though)
- I could get expansion ideas for a colonist and colonize the Andamans or the other islands off the coast of Sumatra. I have an idea group available and was thinking Religious for the CB + mass converting provinces, but I'm not married to it right now.
- I could also go no-CB Kongo - it's not even that big of a deal, I think now that I completed diplo ideas it's only a -1 stab hit

Thoughts?

Random tidbits:
- Muscovy broke out of their PU from Poland but them got back into it somehow and have been staying in it, with low liberty desire, for decades now - I don't understand how this is possible
- protestant Austria is on the verge of extinction, they have like 6 provinces spread across 3 exclaves and one OPM alliance; never seen Austria fail this hard
- speaking of protestant Austria, the HRE religion situation is still hilarious:

Thats a pretty thicc Holland... and is that Lucca in italy???

Yeah I've been leaving my armies at full maintenance since I started whether or not they were fighting. fml

No telling how many ducats I've cost myself the past 110 years.

lol Papal States going Protestant why not

I'd be interested in this, although it would have to be a weekend to make it work for a European evening start time. I did one on eu3 through 2p2 and it was awesome.

I'd be interested at some point but I'm way too new to even attempt it right now.

It's still pretty ****in thick and I'll need to watch a couple more times probably but yeah this is the best I've come across so far.

World War I in 1559:

At Tech 19 religious seems kinda redundant. Missionaries are nice, but you'll get Deus Vult about same time you get Imperialism at this pace. I'd probably just unlock the first explo idea for the colonist and then initiate bunch of colonies with him. If you don't have Humanist yet, now it the time you want to pick it up. Otherwise just go mil-mil-mil.

Would you do this in a gamey way, i.e. get the colonist, use him a few times, then cancel the group and pick something else?

Why humanist? That's not something I would have guessed to be super useful, is that about keeping unrest down? I was thinking religious for helping to mass convert.

fwiw right now I have...
- admin
- influence
- diplo
- quantity

Eventually I'll go for defensive/quality, and I guess I have one more after that (offensive?).

1639:



- Mamluks dragged in a random Somalian country to our war, so I took one of their provinces and released Mogadishu to start feeding to the north (kept a province to start conquering to the south)
- Noticed Siena got released and had no allies so I no-CBed it, but I have astronomical AE in that area now so maybe that was meh
- Poland still has Muscovy in PU with no sign of that ending (liberty desire: 33%)
- I colonized next to Sumatra, can hopefully launch a war effort from there on SE Asian nations, should probably dump expansion now since that was all I needed it for?
- Alliances are annoying - Spain is DotF and has allied Papal States, Poland allied Venice and is guaranteeing Hungary

I think Admin, Humanist and Influence are the most valuable ideas for WC. The Full Humanist gives -7.5 unrest (+ potentially some extra from religious unity if yours is under 100%) for newly conquered heathen and heretic regions, which greatly reduces the amount of rebellions you have to put down + bunch of small bonuses. I think it is ideal policy to take 4th or 5th.

As for exploration, at this point I'd probably just game it and establish few unfinished colonies to use as landing points and as a way to fabricate claims. I'd probably not dump it before you actually need some idea group, but I wouldn't take anything aside the first colonist.

goofyballer: one way to deal with Poland might be to asap kill Polish armies, so Muscowy becomes stronger compared to Poland, which in turn increases LD. As long as LD is over 50%, they will just stay in Russian lands, so as long as you don't go there you basically get to wage war only vs Poland.

I can also recommend his three part series on combat and army composition.

To this day I have only a vague idea of battle mechanics. I just know cavalries suck (especially relative to cost) and you need enough infantry/cavalry to cover cannons and that at any time you can only field battle width allowed.

I didn't know about Janissaries until reading this post, and my god is the interface for building them annoying, to the point I feel like there must be a better way. For non-Ottomans players...
- the state interface (where you make territories into states and assign edicts) has a button that says "conscript janissaries" if the province meets the requirements (at least 10 development of heathen faith)
- so to recruit as many janissaries as possible you have to, like, flip back and forth between state and religion mapmodes (to know which heathen provinces are in states) and recruit janissaries in each state individually

But the bonuses are cool - they take 10% less damage and see double the gain from army drilling while costing twice as much to reinforce

Bleh. Trying to get a game started as Majapahit and finally got what I wanted (an admiral with decent maneuver to build the fleet, a good set of enemy alliances)... and had two comets in the first five years of the game.

It's an omen?

1683, just got dip 23 and thus imperialism CB, seems like a good spot to take a break at 1am. I worry I've been growing too tall and not wide, we'll see.

The (known) world:



My stuff:



I also have most of the Philippines as a vassal. I have no visibility of the New World but for awhile I've been building up spy networks on Holland/Portugal, stealing maps from them, and repeating (you can't really see the effects of that here but I've started opening up the Pacific and Australia doing that).

I eventually solved the Poland problem by getting dip tech 21 and sabotaging their reputation. That got Muscovy a high enough liberty desire for me to support their independence, which was the nudge they needed to break away. That was the biggest war I'd fought yet and w/o defensive ideas I was at a bit of a morale disadvantage (made up for it with numbers), once I finish defensive (just started, 3 ideas in) I think my drilled janissaries should be able to take anyone. Abdicated my ****ty 4/0/3 king so my 18 yo 4/5/3 heir could take over, time to wage constant war from here on out I guess?

My income is 90 ducats/month at full maintenance (350k troops), so that's nice.

edit: oh, another thing to consider, I can trigger my golden age anytime I want now during the absolutism age - will I want that now (crush all early wars to start spreading out) or later (drawn out conflicts down the line w/ the likes of Ming/Russia)?