Overlording the Underworld
Why do I continuously get stuffed next to useless nations that are either the opposite of me ethics wise, or total war races I don't want to fucking fight? This run I am a fucking MEGACHURCH. What are my neighbors? Materialists, a swarm, and a criminal syndicate. And the materialists even hate my guts. I got lucky and managed to place one branch office before getting kicked out of one of them, but the other wised up real fast and shut me out even after managing to secure a full suite of pacts with them. I am getting tired of this. If I wanted a war run, I would have chosen a race that wasn't a megachurch.
This. Cannot. Continue.
The AI is perverse when it comes to civ placement, and likes to place you next to your ethical opposites just to facilitate some conflict. I think the workarounds to this would be to enable a random start and hope you get plunked down next to someone you can get along with, or design some like-minded custom empires and force them to be part of your next game.
Be nice if there was a "likelihood of asshole neighbors" slider on the galaxy creation menu, though.
Current earworm: "The White Witch"
Overlording the Underworld
Agreed. And some other balance tweaks. Like that nation I had a branch office on declared a war to get rid of it. Considering that was their CB, nothing short of a total victory should have granted them that. So why the fuck does a status quo victory still give them the right to kick me out? I held my own, murdered their fucking fleets, and was on my way to occupying them and making them a subsidiary when the damn game forced an exhaustion peace. That should NOT have been a victory on their part. I was winning.
That all you got?
Kaiserreich got an update yesterday; Caribbean focus trees, some alterations to existing ones. Still nothing about China release date yet though.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Playing my first game of Crusader Kings since getting Holy Fury, and for a long while yet - I was drawn in by their promises of pagan region redevelopment.
So literally the first thing I did was load up the Ghana Empire and see if they were still Gavelkind. My several year long historical pet peeve is finally freaking over.
I have no idea what to do with myself. What will I complain about now?!
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:44:56 AM
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
When playing as pirates and taking the prize taking doctrine, building ships is a waste of ducats beyond a flagship and one or two heavies to get started because you can capture so many ships. With a prize taker admiral, you can take about 85% of enemy ships you fight and easily stay above force limit without any construction.
CK2 dev diary: more on wonders.
Also, the team is considering adding an option to revive Egyptian paganism in a future update, but if they do so, it will be after the upcoming wonders update.
Redmess
Having just finished reading "The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt", that sounds like great fun.
Optimism is a duty.
So, it turns out that stacking "-25% warscore cost for provinces" against other religions as a custom nation ideas with the same modifier as an Age of Reformation ability is really dangerous because you can take like 200% overextension in a single peace deal. And I called in Kumarindu as a co-belligerent when I declared war on the Burning Empire. And ate them both in a single peace deal. Gotta say, 300% overextention is "fun". In my accepted culture provinces, I'm weathering the storm due to taking on a whole lot of corruption that I can rapidly burn off when I'm not overextended, but I'm getting "separatist sentiment" like every other week and I've killed like 200k rebels in the first year, and the Burning Separatists are looking to add another hundred thousand bodies to that pile.
Finally playing an EU4 multiplayer game again and I'm really loving the government customisation they added with one of the recent [=DL Cs=}.
I started as Friesland and turned them into a merchant republic. It's the early 16th century now and the Scotland player (who's been busy taking over England piece by piece) is a bit annoyed because I'm bagging 70 % of the trade in the English Channel -and as both he and the Castile player are colonising, this trade node will become even more profitable.
Actually planning on doing a fairly tall game, with expansion outside of the Lowlands being limited to colonies, vassals and trade cities.
Also the Reformation has been fairly weak so far, with my country and a few scattered princes being the only Protestant countries on the continent. Scotland had the option to go Anglican, but they stuck with Protestantism, while what remains of England went Reformed and is now being battered by Catholic rebels.
Some screenshots of our game so far. The other players are Scotland (as mentioned before), Castile and Bohemia.
That all you got?
What the heck is the Burning Empire?
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Editor of Posts
It's a country that can appear in a Random New World.
The Burning Empire is one of a handful of predefined fantasy nations that can be spawned in the Random New World, and it's a very large High American tech Inti empire with its religion automatically reformed. It also has counterparts in the Nahuatl Obsidian Empire and the Mayan Crimson Empire. There are also several other High American fantasy nations (any have the culturally appropriate units, though), such as Kumarindu (Tamil/Hindu monarchy (though in my game, they'd become a merchant republic somehow)), Zhengheian and/or Yingzhou (Jianghuai/Confucian republic), Vinland (Norwegian/Norse monarchy), Atlantis (Greek/Animist kingdom, still uses High American units), Kemet (Egyptian/Animist kingdom, Mesoamerican units), the Hodenosaunee League (Iroquois/Totemist republic - basically roided-out Iroquois), Lost Bosnia and Lost Serbia (Serbian/Animist tribe), Knights Templar (Francien/Tengrist(!!!) monastic order), a lost Tribe of Israel (Syrian/Jewish tribal monarchy), the Order of St Joseph (English/Reformed monastic order), and Secret Denmark (Danish/Zoroastrian republic). There's also an entire "Columbus was right" scenario with a duplicate Indian subcontinent full of Indian tech nations with Indian cultures and all the countries given names that are anagrams of nations in 1444 India. The India map is from an older version, though.
Servant of the Omnissiah
The Holy Fury expansion is pretty solid. While the mechanics for the Crusades and the fleshing out of the Catholicism mechanics is pretty good, and the addition of several African provinces just as cool, it's Hellenism where the fun begins.
Nothing stopping a Byzantine Emperor from declaring Hellenism the state religion and taking all of the old Imperial Borders back under the Aegis of Zeus. And you can now declare yourself Pontifex Maximus!
The Pagan Reformation Mechanics are super nice too - gives Paganism a real fighting chance against missionaries and the sorts. Sadly, the AI almost never reforms any Pagan Faith on it's own, which kind of puts a damper on the challenge bit.
As for what's coming up, the Wonders theme sounds super cool, but there's one throwaway line in the Dev Diary that's caught my eye -
"For the record, we aren't bringing Ancient Egyptian Religion back this expansion, but it's not off the table. Who knows what the future holds?"
I hold the secrets of the machine.
Redmess
I was trying out an Extended Timeline mod for EU 4, and it's pretty fun, although the length of the average game means there is a lot of blobbing going on. I don't see how a 1444-like start could form naturally from the earliest date, as Europe tends to be dominated by a handful of huge empires after the first thousand years.
Optimism is a duty.
Too much adorableness
I wonder for the revival of revival of Ancient Egypt religion will also make it possible for some nation to break into Akhenaten worshipping...
Give me cute or give me...something?
Redmess
I've been reading up on Egyptian history, and I think one of the greatest ironies of their history was then conquering the Nubians and forcibly converting them to Egyptian religion and culture... only for the Nubians to stick with that culture and centuries later go on a holy war against Egypt to restore Egyptian culture after Egypt had weakened.
That would be fun to recreate. 
Taking your overlord's culture and then crushing them in time.
That all you got?
That would be a great way to mess with the Decadence mechanic in other cultures that weren't Islamic.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
So apparently this will be a thing in Man the Guns
◊.
That all you got?
How? And why?
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Amazing.
That might be the dumbest alt history option in the game.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
She was the woman King Edward abdicated to marry.
If you go monarchist as the UK and puppet the US, you put the king's wife in charge.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
What's the shape of Stellaris as of right now? It was such a mess when Mega Corp launched that I skipped it entirely, but now I'm somewhat hankering for a game. Still, it's such a huge time investment that I'd rather know how buggy it is before I commit.