1st EU2 GC. ravagon runs England.

ravagon · March 21, 2003, 03:57

Into the ground. Down a rabbit hole. Then he starts to dig.

Having been enthralled by the whole concept since one of the Swedes (Henrik, CR?) first posted a link to their site in late 2000 IIRC, I finally managed to get a copy not so long ago and its been on my shelf until just recently, after I managed to wean myself off HoI for a moment.
Went through the tutorial with nary a problem and then started my first GC as the mighty precursor to the British empire. Rule Brittania!
Opened rather well if I say so myself, and I managed to expand my continental holdings by a couple of provinces until the French had had enough. Not too shabby.

Then it all started to go wrong. I'd gotten a few merchies into various trade centres - knowing how important they were, and gotten into a new alliance (the Burgundians (sp?) didn't seem to like me very much after the end of the war against France for some reason. I can't imagine why. It's not like I stuck them with any captured French provinces to administer.

) with Castille and Aragon, although I wasn't the leader anymore.

My (relatively good) monarch upped and croaked and his heir turned out to be a real twit who suddenly decides that I should spend my time discovering some place in Japan on the other side of the world.

(Yes I left this option on - not realising that I was auto-assigned a task if I didn't select one myself). As if I didn't have enough to do with mad Scotsmen named Macadder in kilts running around wielding claymores just to the north, but I digress....
When asked how exactly I should go about this he seemed rather vague and left it in my hands. Gee thanks for the vote of confidence.
Not having any explorers I have no chance of accomplishing this whatsoever so I just have to sit there and take the demotion when the 5 years are up.

In the interim my neighbours obviously share the same high opinion of my new monarchs abilities that I do, and promptly proceed to knock all of my merchies out, knowing full well that the twit needs to use all his fingers and toes to count the 20 allowed in a CoT, and certainly can't put Englands merchants back again.

The French then go and get themselves into a war with somebody I can't see and with whom they have no hope of reaching, and end up with a revolt in one or two provinces (at some point in all this Orleans rebelled too and left their alliance). After taking the province the rebels then decide to wander into my territory and start scribbling their evil "Vive la France" grafitti on my city walls. Of all the Gaul! (pun intended

). This will not do so my armies mobilise to put them down.
Just before they arrive in the invaded province my leader ups and dies (great timing there

- I'll have to make sure he's buried in the same cemetary as the Scots with their evil spectres tootling away forever in purgatory on those accursed bagpipes.

) leading to large casualties in my army in the routing of the French rebels.

All seems rosy and then I get hit with my first random event (they seem to occur once every year?).
Its the plague. Aaargh. No. Not the plague! It must be the Scots doing of course although I can't quite see how. (Note: over the next 50 years I would come to see plagues as a blessing - simply because they removed the possibility of a worse event

).
Lots of people die in one of my provinces but my tax revenue doesn't seem to be too badly affected (holds up evil capitalist pig sign

) and it doesn't seem to spread any or induce a revolt so maybe it isn't the end of the world.

The next couple of years are spent rebuilding the glorious English army, getting hit with another couple of negative events, a stability drop and a treasury loss (this last being something to do with the twits voodoo accounting no doubt - of course we haven't reached the Caribbean yet so maybe I should just say that he can't count.

) IIRC, in the process but good events are just around the corner right? (

@ ravagons naive wide-eyed optimism).

Anticipating a followup scrap with France and the bagpiping yahoos from up north we conserve our treasury (ie: I lock the door and don't give the twit the key) and group our armies. We don't have long to wait.
As soon as the 5-year period is up France declares war again. My allies and I mutually declare that French champagne tastes like vinegar and that we have to stop them making any more of it.
Battle is joined and my two continental army groups surge into action. I take 2 provinces, both after a long sieges and throw my Anglia army at the Scottish forces beseiging Northumberland. I don't have the strength to rout them and have to retreat but do break the siege - forcing the Scots to levy up more men and giving me breathing space to regroup.

The French offer me peace with a pitiful 100D. I throw it in their faces and tell em to get stuffed. I want one of those nice rich wine provinces (that way the twit can drink himself silly and stay out of my hair) but they just don't want to give it up.
I then finally capture Artois - right next to Paris and send my glorious forceson the Southern march. They never arrive. Castille makes peace getting only 200D.
Flabbergasted I can only recall my forces and try and find a good way to tell my Monarch that I've lost 10000 men for no gain.
Then ... disaster! (aka random event time). I lose 2 stability, get a big +2% revolt risk and a revolting Northumberland. This on top of the +1% I had from war weariness and the +3% in the two recently "liberated" French provinces.

I didn't note what event this was (although I'm pretty sure it was random) but I hope I never see it again.
Over the next 2 years my forces and treasury are utterly shattered as I get hit with revolt after revolt after revolt (one province, at 3%, had 5 revolts in a single year! Is the risk per month or per day?

).
Finally, my stability restored and the risk lowered, I get my first good event - 10000 of Englands finest deployed to Meath. Meath? Now where have I heard that name before? Thats in ... Ireland isn't it? Ireland? Ireland! I only have a single province in Ireland and the last time I looked it was in rebellion! Aaarrrghhh! Frantically my fleet in Lancashire sets sail but they don't have a prayer. I can only gaze in sheer horror as my new 10000 man army, near zero-morale, is routed in a province with nowhere to retreat and utterly annihilated.
Little did I know then that this would be one of the 3 "good" random events I would get in the next 50 years...

Still, it couldn't be all bad could it? Maybe the twit would buy the farm and I'd get a good boss again? Maybe the Scots would all simultaneously evolve a sense of hearing and instantly drop dead at the sound of those bagpipes? Maybe ravagon would accidentally-on-purpose hit something called an "off switch" and try again tomorrow ... One can only hope.

If I'd known I was going to do this badly I probably would've played the French.

[Editted due to bad spelling, grammar, punctuation, paragraphing and violating pretty much every literary edict in the English language. Actually, in hindsight, the original fit my GC rather well.

]

Henrik · March 21, 2003, 12:04

Why won't they ever finnish the Mac Port of this game

I so wish I could play this thing when I read these reports

(yes even though you lost).

civman2000 · March 21, 2003, 19:23

My first GC was as Helvetia...By the end I had a couple colonies in Africa, monopolies in almost every CoT in Europe, and has added Tuscany, Siena, Emilia, Piemont, Baden, CHampagne, Wurzburg, Anhalt, Ansbach, Tirol, and Salzburg to the mighty swiss empire. Right now i'm almost done with a GC as Lorraine. Right after the Huguenot rebellions, lots of rebellions broke out in France and almost of all it defected to Bourbonnais and I got Nivernais, Champagne, Franche-Comte, and a bit later Lyonnais. I also acquired Alsace (of course), Baden, Bern, Bourgogne, and Mainz, In a recent war with France and their ally Luxembourg I annexed Luxembourg and gained Pfalz and Artois. When France inherited me, I was very annoyed (to not be annexed you lose all stability, relations w/France go down 200, and you get a crappy "Noble Council" leader for the rest of the game). I've been maintaining around 3-4 monopolies in Europe at a time (but unfortunately I can't get into the best CoT in Europe because the evil spaniards are embargoing me

). Nearly all of northern germany was taken over by Hannover, but their aggression stopped when the became english vassals. Bohemia has annexed brandenburg, and other than hannover, the only german states are the puny Bavaria (minus Ansbach), Saxony, and Holstein (plus mainland Denmark).

ravagon · March 24, 2003, 04:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Henrik
(yes even though you lost).

Actually I'm still going.

As soon as I managed to stabilise things though I got hit with the "War of the Roses" event

which put me right back in the hole.

Quote:

Why won't they ever finnish the Mac Port of this game

Actually ... http://www.europa-universalis.com/fo...threadid=70779

seems to imply that its not far off. Some seem to be quoting Q1 2003 although the most anybody got out of Johan was "Its still in testing".

Velociryx · March 29, 2003, 12:47

Way to go, Rav! And is this game still ongoing? I'm curious to see how you pulled yourself out of the pit, and how the English are faring now!

-=Vel=-

ravagon · March 31, 2003, 01:22

Indeed it is still going.

After the War of the Roses (which took me at least 5 years to recover from

) I rebuilt my forces to a fairly formidable strength (During which time the French, thank goodness, had other concerns), even exceeding the low-maintainance limit in some cases.

I managed to build up 3 fairly sizable armies based in Guyenne (southern France), Picardie (Northern France) and the Midlands (to deal with the thrice-damned Scots).
France had been engaged in a period of near-continuous warfare for about 3 years by this time and was starting to look a little ragged around the edges.
Never having been one to make the first move (ie: I didn't have a CB

) I sat and waited.
Sure enough, as soon as they'd finished warring against Savoy (IIRC) they dow'd me and began moving south. The Scots and the Irish joined in and struck at Northumberland and my Irish province respectively, without making much headway.
To my utter horror my Spanish allies pulled out almost straight away, leaving myself and Aragon facing the 3 nations and an almost certainly costly war.
I have no idea what happened next, nor how or who caused it, but, somehow the French alliance wound up in a war against Flanders, Lorraine (Now where have I heard that name before

) and another ally (whose identity escapes me at present), before Orleans started attacking Paris (on its own) as well.
The 50 000 strong French army beseiged Alsace and one of Aragons provinces while my armies smashed a couple of much smaller French forces and captured 5 provinces, one after another, including one with a weapons manufactury (I had been wondering what the crossed swords symbol on the map meant - what with nobody having anywhere near the tech required to build one).
The captured Lorrainian province rebelled and reverted to Lorraine, and Aragon captured a sixth French province before France gave up, ceding 3 provinces to England and another to Aragon.
I had lost the Irish province to sieging forces and Northumberland was in dire straits but when France made peace those were anulled and I didn't lose any territory.
Furthermore, France and its allies were still at war with the other nations and their revolt risks were building ever higher. Even after they made peace they were dealing with rebellion after rebellion, one of which eventually defected to England (yay

) without a shot being fired.
Having just won bigtime on the continent I wanted to sit out for a while and consolidate, so, taking advice from someone on the EU board I pulled out of the alliance with Spain and took the stability hit.
Now normally this is something I would never do but I didn't desert them in time of war (unlike the way they deserted me) or anything so I didn't feel too badly about it.
This, for whatever reason, worked. Well. France hasn't bothered me since (although my army maintainance costs haven't diminished since so maybe French discretion had something to do with it

).

France-Scotland had a falling out a few years later which saw French and Irish armies by the score invading the (low maintainance) Highlands, suffering tremendous attrition losses, and Scotland sueing for peace by offering their entire treasury (<50D

and French-Irish losses had been in the region of 30 000+ !).
(I think it was during this phase of the game that I really learned how unprofitable war can be

).

Having had enough of the Scots treacherous ways I headed north as soon as the France-Scotland war was over (oh and before they could rebuild too much

) and captured Strathclyde, Lothian and the Grampians in fairly short order which saw both Strathclyde (with another weapons manufactury

) and the Grampians ceded.
This was the last war I fought (at least to date) as I received an explorer in the closing years of the 15th century and have been competing, economically and colonially, with Spain-Portugal in the New World ever since.

(I'm now in the early 17th century btw)

To sum things up - basically, the only way I managed to dig myself out was through sheer dumb luck. France left me alone for long enough, bad events held off for a bit, and just when I'm going to all-out war something bad happened to the "other guy". I'll take sheer dumb luck over any sort of skill on my part anyday.

Just in case the developers haven't heard it enough lately, this is an absolutely fantastic game!

(Btw Vel, if you're still designing spells for CandleB're, I could use one in a format able to be easily imported into EU2? I'm not saying what it'll be used for mind, but it needs to be able to simultaneously burst all bagpipes, break all claymores, and sink all land masses north of the latitude of, ... oh, shall we say Northumberland?

I'll keep it handy for the next time I play as England

).

Reinhard-Baer · March 31, 2003, 09:58

Wow looks like my first tries with this game. I feel with you pal

After a few month the whole world declared war on me because I annexed all the small nations of course it was a disaster in the end but hey you learn and now at first I sign some alliances before I go to war and after everything is said and done my allies where the next to fall. Hey it's war and you know:
All is fair in love and war.
The AI is so stupidly trusting they deserve to be punished for that but they never learn, regardless of many times I start a new game they trust me again and again and again. Perhaps there should be an inbuild counter that remembers all I’ve done in a previous game

and change the habit of the AI-nations in the next one. Wow after 4 games the AI will gang up on me at the start of the game

Velociryx · March 31, 2003, 11:48

Good show, Rav! And as to the spell.....I'll see what can do!

If you're looking for a very different sort of challenge as an island nation, may I recommend taking Brunei as your next game! I started playing as them over the weekend, and am actually enjoying it very much! Gotta make *every* decision count tho, cos you start off with such limited means that it's difficult to actually get going good....one misstep, and you set yourself back 20-30 years....good stuff tho!

-=Vel=-

ravagon · April 1, 2003, 03:13

Brunei, huh?
I have a feeling my, erm, "skills" (and I use the word extremely loosely, to say the least

) may not be quite up to that yet.

It begins with only the one province IIRC?
I'd be very interested in knowing how you manage it though.

At present I have Japan and Sweden rather high on my list and plan to give the Ottomans a go too.
Maybe I'll fit the Sultanate (?) in there somwhere if I feel up to it.

Addendum: Having just wandered over to the paradox forums, it would seem that EU2 1.07 is now out.

to Johan.

Nikolai · April 1, 2003, 09:38

Quote:

Originally posted by ravagon
Addendum: Having just wandered over to the paradox forums, it would seem that EU2 1.07 is now out.

to Johan.

Well, yes. But if you want the newest functions and improvement, don't install it, install the beta patches instead.

The beta patches is more up to date. 1.07 has no files made after the twenty-something, while the latest beta patch is from 31. march. Of course, the beta patches is BETA, and you are not guarantied that all is okay, but as long as I've used them, I've seen no problems.

Velociryx · April 1, 2003, 12:35

Yep! Looking forward to downloading the latest patch! Some extremely interesting changes in this latest round!

As to Bruneii....TWO provinces! (with the oddity that your non-capitol province has Paganism as its religion.....)Your starting treasury is 50d, and you make 17d per year at +3 stab in annual income. I've played slightly more than a hundred years so far, and have them up to 15 provinces (no wars yet, pure colonization, though the little putzes in Bali are gonna push the issue sooner, methinks). Actually have a warrior king with good stats tho, so it might not be a bad time to just end the matter with them.....

Four of my provs are still colonies tho (two at level 6, 1 at lvl 2, and one at lvl 1). The downer is that I've been dumping all my money into growing big enough to be self sustaining, and have not done anything about fortification (got one fortification improvement event, which fortified my very first colonial posession when it grew into a city, but nada besides that).

So....after a hundred years of play, I'm at Land and Naval tech 2, Trade 3, and Infra 2 (tho we're getting close to Infra 3!), a groovy warrior-king, 'bout 6000 troops, some galleys and transports, and a singular warship that came with the explorer I recently got! We're....not exactly England yet, but we're not doing bad....

-=Vel=-

Velociryx · April 3, 2003, 12:24

Been fiddling with EU2 a bit more, and I must say, I'm *completely* impressed with Paradox's committment to the game....still recieving patches based on player feedback! That's just awesome!

My biggest problem with the game is that there are simply an overwhelming NUMBER of nations to play. I've found myself starting no less than a dozen different GC's simultaneously, and then switching back and forth between them to get a solid feel for the way different countries play.

Finished several of them so far, and the three I've got running at present are the Brunei game, Austria, and the Cherokee, with plans to start another as Lorraine to see how she plays now....fantastic, and even better is the fact that they all FEEL remarkably different! The Brunei, game is quite contrasted to the Austria one, for example, because of its isolation and slower tech....plus the fact that Island nations require a radically different approach...and the vastly smaller economy means that each ducat must be carefully spent.

I'm diggin' it, and anxious to hear of your latest exploits, Rav! Hmmm....perhaps an MP game is in order as well....

-=Vel=-

civman2000 · April 3, 2003, 13:13

As Lorraine, my advice is to ally with France ASAP. Otherwise they'll attack you while you're weak and annex you. Once you've annexed strassbourg and maybe some other provinces, you can cut your ties with France but until then ally with them.

Velociryx · April 3, 2003, 13:33

::nodding:: that's pretty much the approach I took with Lorraine in EU1....I figured even in France's weakened state in EU2, I'd still be no match for them, so yep...that's what I was thinking as well....no doubt, my early growth will have to come at the expense of a couple of german minors/burgundy, then pounce on France after....

-=Vel=-

ravagon · April 3, 2003, 20:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Velociryx
So....after a hundred years of play, I'm at Land and Naval tech 2, Trade 3, and Infra 2 (tho we're getting close to Infra 3!), a groovy warrior-king, 'bout 6000 troops, some galleys and transports, and a singular warship that came with the explorer I recently got! We're....not exactly England yet, but we're not doing bad....

-=Vel=-

This and 15 provinces after a century.

That actually sounds quite a lot like my England at the same point although you may be a province or two and some galleys up.

Quote:

I'm diggin' it, and anxious to hear of your latest exploits, Rav! Hmmm....perhaps an MP game is in order as well....

Nothing more from me I'm afraid as I've been a bit

lately. I'm planning on finishing my England campaign though so 1.07 may just have to wait a while.

An MP game? Not against me?

I can see it now - Vel takes Brunei, I take Castille and just hope he doesn't invade too quickly.

ravagon · April 3, 2003, 21:27

A few questions, observations, comments, etc. Please feel free to refute/comment if I'm in error somewhere and bear in mind that I haven't even finished a single GC yet (and am still playing under 1.06 to boot).

(1) Revolt risk - Number of revolts seems far too high for the apparent risk displayed in my province info?
A 3% risk per month, in each province, over a dozen or so provinces, should surely give me an expected 1 chance in 3 of a revolt somewhere?
In such circumstances I wound up almost always getting at least one revolt, sometimes 2-3. It could have been just bad luck but it seemed far too consistent..

Additionally the number of rebels seemed to be completely independent of the province income and completely dependent on the fortress level. I always ended up with 7000 in a minimal fort zone and 12000 in a small fort zone - ie: enough infantry (with a few extras) to siege the fort plus a few cav/arty.
Exceptions were my provinces with < 5000 pop which seemed to contain a garrison strength of 2500 in a minimal fort instead of 5000. Revolts here produced only 5000 rebels - again consistent though with a number of infantry just in excess of the no. required to siege the fort.

(2) Trade Agreements - Don't seem to work too well. I'm fairly sure I've seen my merchants competed away by those with whom I have such agreements and I've definitely had the "A merchant has competed away a merchant from ... " wrt those same nations when my own do the same thing.
The only thing it seems to effect is whether or not I can send merchants at all - for example if I have 5 in a COT and another nation, with whom I have an agreement, holds a monopoly then I can't send a merchant (ie: the only place for me to compete for would be the monopoly spot). If merchants can be sent then it seems to be a free-for-all.

(3) Popups - Don't always seem to be too accurate wrt effects - for example - Converting England to Protestantism - popup indicated that I'd only take a -2 stability hit which didn't sound too bad (I won't be making that particular mistake again

) when in reality it was a -2 in addition to the normal (-6?) hit for changing religion. That one hurt.

(4) Religion - advive needed. Since converting to Protestant I've established a half-dozen or so colonies in North America (good colonies too with furs, etc as trade goods) that also became protestant. Since this point most of my original provinces back in the homeland have gone over to reformed (except for my capital). Is it worth my while converting to reformed?
ie: Would my colonies (which now produce about 50% of my income) begin converting (albeit gradually) as well?
I have zero missionaries and an income of about -2 so converting manually isn't an option without major changes in my slider settings.

Velociryx · April 3, 2003, 22:36

Hiya Rav! And not to worry....I'm one of the *least* warmongering players I know! If you ever decide you want to experiment with a GC, I'm thinking we could either pick two countries near each other in western Europe or on opponsite ends of Europe and dominate much of the planet jointly!

(and in these types of games, I usually focus on economics and fund the wars of my allies anyway, staying safely out of harm's way when possible...

)

As to your observations, I'd say they're mostly dead-on. The rebels really DO seem to have an uncanny knack for always bringing "just enough guys" to the party, regardless of population level, and the 3% revolt risk is bunk, IMO! When it says 3%, I "read" more like 30%, cos that's more in line with the actual number of rebellions I'll be getting.

The hope is that in the next patch Johan is working on, we'll see fewer (but nastier) rebellions so there's less busy work when stability tanks and war exhaustion settles in.

Trade agreements - I've not experienced them failing, but admittedly, have not paid terribly close attention most of the time. Keep in mind now that per the latest changes, each trade agreement reduces your trade efficiency by 1%, and so directly hurts the ol' wallet, so they're not nearly as useful as they once were ('bout the only thing they're good for now is avoiding ticking off your allies by competing away their merchants).

Religion - ANY time you change religion, you're stability will tank. That was considered a rather major deal back in the day, and you'll spend the better part of a decade digging yourself out of it.

If you have a few provinces that are "straying" (ie - some other religion besides your state religion), that's okay, but know that revolt risk in those provinces will be somewhat higher than in provinces of your state religion. This can be mitigated somewhat by adjusting religious tolerances via the sliders, and dreadfully complicates things if you expand your territory in such a way that you've got 4 or more different religions inside your borders. (lesson here: if you expand, keep your expansions limited to the same religion as your state, and maybe 1-2 others max....if your state religion is protestant, and most of your territories are prot., and you expand into catholic, reformed, orthodox, and sunni territories, there's NO WAY you'll keep them all happy, and you will find yourself dealing with revolts aplenty). The good news is that knowing the positions of your sliders, you can predict where the revolts will occur with a high degree of accuracy, and have troops already on the scene to deal with them as they occur.

Missionaries - haven't played with them much, but they seem mostly a rich boy tool in any case....very expensive, limited chance of success per try, fairly long duration. In my games so far, I just eat the occassional revolt and spend my money on colonial expansion.

-=Vel=-

civman2000 · April 4, 2003, 13:56

I just started a game as Brunei...as soon as I got trade 1, I had 5 merchants in that CoT on Sumatra (I forget its name) and 3 in Kansai. Some Hindu Indonesian state (I forget its name) vassalized Makassar and got into war with me. They got Makassar to ally with them too. I've been crushing them though; my navy is much stronger and I just annexed Makassar. I've made one colony; I haven't been able to expand it because of money, and even if I had money i couldn't build any more colonies because my army is too small to kill the natives. Right now its around 1430.

ravagon · April 10, 2003, 04:25

Managed to diplo-annex the accursed Scotts (that spell can go into storage thanks Vel

) in the mid-17th century after I finally got a good monarch.
Sent them a letter of introduction with HUGE results. Relationship went from -200 to -80 or thereabouts. In the space of the next few months, and a few more letters of introduction (Probably shouldn't go too deeply into why exactly he felt the need to reintroduce himself every month

, but, anyway ...

) we had a royal marriage and vassalisation.

A decade later they agreed to join us in our campaign of world dom.., erm, peaceful coexistence.
We got the option to take the British flag (*Rule Britannia plays in the background*) and took it (Umm... Now that I think about it, I wasn't supposed to have conquered Ireland by this time was I?), setting forth to form an empire upon which the sun will never set.

By this time the admiralty's many explorers had revealed many secrets of the oceans and with a large stake in North America and a chain of strategic colony bases around the world we set out to establish a position of dominance in the largely undeveloped Oceania (Needed to find some place to send all of those captured rebel scum, eh what?

).
(I also wanted to keep an eye on a nation about which I've begun to develop a rather uneasy feeling - some know it in hushed voices as "Brunei"

).

The effort was only just in time, as, hot on our heels followed the Portugese in a race to dominate the spice trade. [Their great mistake though was an apparent desire to systematically erradicate the invaluable, if aggressive, native populace.

I discovered the benefit of doing otherwise upon colonising Davao or Mindanao - the one with a pop of 10k anyway. As soon as the 6th successful colonisation attempt established itself I had a colony of 10.5k people with tax/trade outputs of 40+ immediately.

A century's worth of growth at the expense of a couple of failed attempts and native attacks.].

Building outwards we took Australia (see previous reference to dumping "undesirables"

) and, joy upon joy, a COT popped up in Wolla-something after founding a size-1 colony. This new COT should remain exclusive for some time to come with the majority of the Portugese SE-Asian possessions being little more than trading stations, hence lacking the facilities to sustain extended exploration.
[Mental note to self: Absolutely always found colonies instead of TP's, unless in dire financial straits].

Not only did this give a substantial boost to our future financial position but many other nearby British provinces automatically redirected their trade to the new centre.

Several hundreds of ducats per year, exclusively and almost instantaneously.

Not since we had been the first to dominate the new COT in Barbados (rapidly discovered by both Spain and Genoa unfortunately

) had we been in such a position.
With high spirits the cash abundance was sent home to the king as we again turned our gaze to the mother country and ...

... Europe??!!

Aaarrghhh. Who took Western Europe and replaced it with Frenchland?

Is this a joke? Maybe they were all just flying French flags for April fools day and got their calendars stuck on April the 1st?
[Historians note: This tradition had its beginnings several years earlier when a certain family of 3-fingered, yellow pagan weirdos burned another family of 3-fingered, yellow christian wackos at the stake as a punishment for mocking the pagans new year, which just happened to fall on April the 1st.

]

The French scribbling "Vive la France" is one thing but when much of Germany and Austria is doing it too it becomes a little ... worrying.

Lorraine - gone, Bavaria - gone, the Palatinat - gone, Savoy - down to a single province. Things just weren't looking good.
We weren't too inclined to challenge them on the battlefield either as their standing army had grown to a whopping 250k+

... even if they were mostly putting down dissent and scrapping with (the very beginnings of an

begin to dawn) ... the Austrians. At the end of a rather narrow (and threatened) land corridor that had already been cut off in one place by revolters and in another by the nation of Baden - a French vassal which doesn't appear to grant French passage.

(thus was born the seed of a cunning and devious plan

).

With nothing to lose, and plenty of cash in the bank, we began lending out to those most in need. It just happened, purely circumstantially of course,

that first on the list of recipients was Austria. Fancy that.
Next came ... hmm ... a country I'd never heard of before named, ... Modena? Well I never! It just happened that they too were, coincidentally, at war with France, as Austrian allies.
Gelre? We can lend them some money I'm sure. Oh? Well would you look at that?! They aren't Austrian allies but they ALSO seem to be at war with France?

Well, not wanting to appear to favour any particular side, each of these nations was offered a loan of 500-1000D, all at the quite unreasonable rate of 1%.

Hello? They all suddenly seem to be recruiting? Oh dear. That might not bode well for the French war effort. Not to mention the rising revolt risk and the increasing number of French provinces under siege.

[Hmmm. There seems to be a maximum no. of smilies you can use in a post. Oh well. +1

]

ravagon · April 10, 2003, 04:31

What happened next was a true joy to behold. French armies crushed the newly forming Austrians but then lost a MAJOR home province to revolters and pulled most of their forces back home to crush it (note: without making peace!). In returning home they travelled via controlled Austrian territory so as to avoid the rebellious province in their land corridor.

Mounting a long siege with over 90K men on a large fortress sees November turn into December. Snow! While the inhabitants of the rebellious city made snowmen and had a merry old Xmas the beseiging French forces apparently didn't have quite as good a time of things. Losses mount and more men are thrown in.

The other rebel-controlled province defects!

Forming the nation of Wurzburg and cutting off 2 more French provinces.

Whoops. Wouldn't you know it, but we, erm, accidentally offered Wurzburg a loan too.

(A bit risky this because they're only a single province and, if cut off, would be annexed - but its still worthwhile in our estimation).

France is now in trouble as they've taken far too long on their major province. RR is up to 2% in their capital

and up to 9% in some other provinces!

Rebels take both of the French provinces cut off by the creation of Wurzburg.

Rebels take a province in the south with a "mighty" strength fortress!

Two more provinces defect and reform Britanny!

(Britanny gets a loan

).

The province of Maine defects to England, cutting off French access to Britanny and another (sieged) French province.

Wurzburg manages to hold off Baden and makes peace. No hope whatsoever for France to reconquer the other two which then reform Bavaria!

France makes peace with Austria-Modena but they now have no Atlantic or North Sea ports left and are still at war with Brittany and Bavaria, neither of whom they can touch.

The Palatinat declares independence from France.

(Hi new peoples. Would you like a loan by any chance?

).

France finally makes peace and starts to get the RR down but its far too late for their "mighty" fortress province which, along with another, defects to Savoy.

In the aftermath, France had lost 9 provinces (only one to Britain but one can't really complain about these things

) and retained none of those they'd originally taken off Austria (all were either retaken by the Austrians after they'd been cut off or were relinquished in the peace treaty).

Oh, and I got all of my money back too.

With my 1% interest.

Having this money stuff is great!

unic · April 10, 2003, 08:56

Heh, reading this thread really makes me want to take the time to get into EU2. I bought the game over half a year ago, and played it a tiny bit, but didn't really have the time to get into it... and then, it ended up just sitting on a shelf. The dilemma of too many games to play and not enough time...

But I'll really have to give this one a serious stint! I imagine it will take quite a few multi-hour sessions to get a feel for the game, but it certainly seems to be worth the effort once one has gotten past the learning cliff.

... just need to stop playing Galactic Civilizations and Imperialism 2 so much first :P

/unic

Kropotkin · April 10, 2003, 10:15

Ravagon, seems you're going to a prime example of ad hoc learning by doing. It's always a lot more fun to read the AAR's of people that doesn't seem to have a clue about what they are doing until after they have done it.

Nikolai · April 10, 2003, 10:25

It looks like you've had a great time reavgon!

But, you didn't know that loan-sharking is considered cheating?

ravagon · April 11, 2003, 02:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Kropotkin
Ravagon, seems you're going to a prime example of ad hoc learning by doing.

Heh. Actually I picked up most of it over the past couple of years through reading the Paradox forums. At least in theory. Practice though seems to be another matter.

Quote:

But, you didn't know that loan-sharking is considered cheating?

I did know this.

In my defense though a 1% profit, even for 3000-odd invested, doesn't really amount to very much.
Maybe I should send it as a "personal gift" to the French monarch? It might make up for the 9 provinces and 100k men he just lost. *snigger*

El León · April 18, 2003, 13:35

Loans? Cheating? They never accept mine! Why is it cheating?

BTW - That Nippon. Now that will give you a little run. Not for those who lose patience after the third annihilation of the 30-strong army by 5 measly peasants who then cause the government to collapse. Once the 17th century rolls around, you even start thinking that you may survive.

So how did it end, Ravagon?

Nikolai · April 21, 2003, 12:52

León,
I've not tried Nippon myself, but I've read tips from experienced players over at the official site, saying that if you know how, it's easy.

First off, you need to know that the revolts only occours in mainland Nippon, and not anywhere else, so if you have enough land elsewhere, you can easilier controll the revolts. Second, if you do the right choices in the events and play your cards right, the RR will be lower.