Paradox Games

japan can be fun. I did it as the nothernmost one in EU 3 once. managed to seize some colonies in africa by the mid 1600s, with almost all of japan united under me, and started westernizing.

then my riding the edge of bad boy limit caught up to me and I got into some messy wars with china, and then spain decided the japanese home islands would make a nice colony, and for once they were the historically accurate massive empire and whupped my ass.(instability and rebels didn't help)

edited 5th Jul '14 11:47:17 PM by joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

Doesn't Japan start off United in EU 3? As opposed to EU 4 where each clan has its OPM and it's up to Kyoto to unite everything.

I'm pretty sure each clan is already vasalized, you just need to annex them over time.

As for Austria . . . How far into the game are you? Depending on how they annexed half the empire, they might have ridden out the relations problems. If they did it peacefully then they wouldn't have half the problems wars would cause.

Meanwhile in CK 2, I'm playing a Shattered World Jorvik campaign where I'm allowing myself to use the age cheat to keep Halfdan Svitserk and his red headed harem alive throughout the whole game. It's fun, because otherwise I'm playing straight. We already have the title of England, we're just consolidating and slowly knocking off the rest of the OP Ms. It's been tough going because if those counts have enough piety, they pull out thousands of holy soldiers, and I'm having to play my cards very carefully to topple those Grandmaster armies.

One thing I managed to learn: If you attack a high piety lord directly, he'll pull out those holy armies, but if he's only an ally in another's war, he won't bother. He probably wants to save that ace for defending his own sorry ass.

Was hoping to start a Persia game (either Karen or Saffarid) now that the game is stable again but the Persian, Greek, Turkic and Arabian unit packs, their Horse Archers in particular, are all borked. They now all use the Western model instead.

Also, Muslims are suffering from a glitch where female wards pinball between tutors, causing your vassals to accumulate opinion penalties going into the 100s.

edited 6th Jul '14 6:26:31 AM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

In.vanilla it does but in divine wind there's 4 and you can either accept that or try to take over

I'm baaaaaaack

Everyone in Japan starts out as vassals in EU 4 too, with the bonus of the Shogun being able to declare war on his own vassals under certain conditions.

Yay! We're slowly but surely absorbing England and Wales. As well as the Southern border of Scotland. It's going slow because those constant efforts by counts to grow are giving them piety up the yin yang, so whenever any of them gains a few hundred points they're capable of defending themselves rather nicely. At least against us outsiders. The Jarl of Brittany is fighting to consolidate his realm, and it ain't working well. Even with my help. The enemies managed to bring 5,000 soldiers to the fight and they're keeping everything I can muster out of the war.

Of course, the computer's a fucking idiot. A De Jure war? SERIOUSLY? We're bleeding our own MA dry, and you're not waging a war to fix that? Numbskull. Every war I fight is a conquest to build us up, meanwhile our Holy Sites are in Catholic hands and need saving. No one's bothering to fix that.

I'll just have to do it my bloody self I guess. Then I'll see if I can grab vassals in the homeland so we can build up our power there too. Might take the North of France while I'm at it, to bolster the Bretons and take a chance at snagging them as vassals.

Gotta say, Shattered Worlds is awesome.

EU3's Divine Wind expansion split Japan into four Daimyos named and apparently based on the four great noble clans of Heian-era Japan (794–1185) — Minamoto, Fujiwara, Taira, and Tachibana — with a Kyoto OPM in the center where the Emperor resides. There are special mechanics involved, one major element being that an outsider cannot declare war on the Daimyos — they have to DOW Kyoto, which automatically makes you at war with all Daimyos. In turn, the Daimyos cannot engage in foreign diplomacy, unlike Kyoto; whichever Daimyo holds the title of Shogun, however, can start wars outside of Japan.

Note that splitting Japan into the aforementioned quartet clans for the game's time period makes no sense, as by the end of the 12th century (i.e. no less than 200 years before the earliest game start at 1399), Minamoto was the only survivor of the four, ushering in the first Shogunate in Kamakura. Sure, some later Japanese nobles claimed descent from one of those fallen trio, but it was simply a matter of bloodline prestige, not a sign of the clans' resurgence.

edited 7th Jul '14 12:19:26 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It is important to remember if you are trying to form Japan is that the condition for giving the Shogun a CB is having more than 10 provinces, so you may want to attack it when you have none or ten provinces.

My plan for becoming emperor somehow ended, thanks to random chance, working. After another war with Austria I got the reform to make the emperor title be inherited revoked and after the truce I got some land and released one of the three electors from Austria, then Austria went and annexed one of the electors. From the two reamining elecetors, one was a vassal from Austria (votting for Austria) and the other was the one I released (that was voting for me). While I was waiting for my truce to expire and maybe take mor things from Austria, Austria decides to change it's goverment to noble republic and I gain the tittle of emperor of the HRE.

edited 7th Jul '14 9:58:44 PM by joaqs

"My lord, our castle has been completely overrun!"

"I see. We have but one option left, then."

(uncomfortable pause)

"...Honorable seppuku?"

"What? No, you dolt! We launch an all-out attack on the Shogunate! That is the only way we can erase the stain of this injustice!"

---

In other news, I got my hands on EU 4 a while back, and I've been having great fun playing a "trainer" game with Castile now that I've figured out how to tune my graphics settings so that the game doesn't run slower than frozen molasses on a level surface.

edited 8th Jul '14 5:07:35 PM by Specialist290

Whoops, my bad. I meant to say nine.

I figured as much. Just thought I'd have a little fun with it

Game I've spent 20+ hours on just got a glitch where I'm hostile to every vassal (not their lieges) on the map. It also retroactively impacted my previous autosaves. Anyone know if there is a fix for this?

Serves me right for thinking this game would be playable after the Ro I launch disaster...

EDIT: Fixed it with a full reload, but damn that was a scare. Not sure what triggered it though, last thing I did was join a war against a host on the side of the Irish infant King of England (who is so screwed it's not even funny).

edited 9th Jul '14 8:05:55 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

That might have been, IIRC host are automatically hostile to everyone, so it makes everyone treat you as a hostile

Well, that did not end well.

I have 90 years left on my Muscovy game, but rather than continuing it decided to try Brandenburg. After a false start (didn't check Ironman, gotta got achievements!), the landscape looked promising. Suddenly, punitive war while I'd been counting on peace for a while (vassalized Pomerania and one of its allies by sheer tenacity after a major screwup, hiring stupid numbers of mercenaries and ignoring the 10+ war exhaustion/-40% warscore). Now I know why people hate coalitions—for Spain/Russia, they're a defensive nuisance that means I should go conquer elsewhere. For a small nation in the HRE, they are death.

Might have tried to drag it out to a white peace, but for the other thing I learned: bankruptcy is the absolute worst—all monarch points to zero, lost all my mercenaries and coring progress while being carpet-sieged by the Hansa. The cause of that? Apparently the number of loans I'm allowed can suddenly, mysteriously, change, so I best not consider myself safe 7 under the limit.

Time for a third try, fighting smarter so I don't need to financially ruin myself to survive.

Only the sun has stopped.

Yeah, coalitions scale horribly for small and middle powers. They should be reserved for those who try to go Napoleon on everyone. I honestly prefer Infamy from the previous games; sure the global aspect made no sense (Japan getting furious at France for taking out German minors) but at least you had a limit that you could plan to not go over.

Nope, hosts aren't like rebels in that they are hostile to everyone. They are only hostile to their target, their allies, their target's revolts and those trying to take the same land.

edited 10th Jul '14 7:53:45 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

When you start as Branderburg, you should try to get an Alliance with Austria or the Teutonic Order or Bohemia to secure your early game. If you didn't go for an Alliance with the Teutonic Order you can later attack them for the provinces neede to form Prussia.

So, I took some time off from CK 2, about 6 months... did the Norse get a massive nerf or did the rulers just become less aggressive?

I remember massive blobs that appears basically out of nowhere and Norse overrunning half of the map. Heck, they even destroyedScottish culture, which is quite a feat.

This time, Norse don't do all conquering spree and are fairly reasonable in their conquering.

The Norse and the Tengri have been toned down, yes.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Unless you're playing as them.

CK 2 question: What happens if you press a claim over an independent realm for the spouse of the character that you're playing as, and win the resulting war? Does it get treated as any other courtier, i.e. it remains independent but with a ruler who is very friendly towards you?

edited 11th Jul '14 1:35:02 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Pretty much, with the added benefit that her heir is the same as your heir (assuming that she isn't your second wife), meaning said heir gets to inherit both realms.

It's how I got my heir to inherit both (my) Ireland and (her) Scotland.

edited 11th Jul '14 1:31:07 PM by Kayeka

Neat. I'll have to try that in the future. Of course, it all depends on the succession laws of my targets.

On CK 2 related news... It's been around 40 years since game start for me, and this test game with Munster is going rather well. Got the hang of the basic mechanics, and even went and formed the Kingdom of Ireland after getting over 51% of the de jure territory, allowing me to just diplo-vassalize all but one of the remaining Irish minors (Ulster really didn't like me), so I had to DOW them... to press the claim of one of my courtiers, thereby ensuring the placement of a friendly ruler who would not say no to a diplo-vassalization request. Then I went and created all of the possible duchies and handed all but three of them to loyal courtiers to simplify things for me (too many direct vassals to juggle around for me).

... And now I have the fun situation of watching my third ruler's two-year-old son, who inherited the kingdom rather soon after his father finished assembling it, face the rising threat of a faction that wants to put his much more competent cousin (from a different dynastic branch from the original ruler that I started the game with) on the throne. Faction power has reached 108% by the time I decided I had enough CK 2 playing for today.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Yeah, this time around I was smarter and allied a lot more people (most usefully Bohemia) before doing stuff, and went after the Teutonic Order first—I mistakenly thought Pomerania would be easier the first time, but reclaiming your own territory means no time/points spent on coring and less AE modifier, and the province is isolated thanks to Poland so it's easy to grab the wargoal before enemies show up.

Approaching 1500 now, and I am Emperor! With a large sphere of influence, but no reforms passed (another coalition with France, Austria, and about eight other countries came after me, so I cancelled the one Austria did—saved me from losing territory/alliances while I regrouped; I'm even buddies with France now), not overwhelmingly powerful, but I'm sure I can at least hang on to the throne indefinitely.

I have 44% Imperial Authority from a bunch of defensive wars and liberating; when I hit 100% do I get to pass reforms regardless of votes or something? Or should I just bestow Imperial Grace upon everyone?

Only the sun has stopped.

Except for the last one, you only need 50% and enough votes. More IA makes you more popular to reelect and makes passing reforms easier, but not automatic.

This may be a stupid question, but how do you find characters you've marked as special interest in CKII?

I'm in the middle of my Shattered World playthrough and the Mongol Leader shows up pretty much right as I become King of Rus. I'm in the middle of micromanaging a war for land and a call to war at the same time, and I didn't have quite the means to deal with it at that exact moment (I heard you can stop it by assassinating the leader before the army shows up, and I had the money), so I marked him special so I could deal with it in a few minutes.

A few minutes later, I tried looking for him, but couldn't find a "special interest" tab in the character finder. Putting the character's name in the finder didn't bring up anything, and looking for Timurid just directed me to a blank page for some reason (though apparently that's because the Timurids were a different horde than the one I'm dealing with), so I assumed someone else took care of him.

I was wrong, so they're currently going back and forth with the Muslim empires (the only people besides me who really built themselves up into major powers) but eh. It's not really a problem, it just drew my attention to my initial question. Even if there was some other reason why I couldn't find the guy, I still don't really know where the characters marked for special interest are listed and that's probably a problem.

edited 11th Jul '14 7:55:24 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.