Help Managing Doom?

[RMassive]

Just grabbed El Dorado, playing the Aztecs, really enjoying it so far. Seems like you may actually have a chance to survive the arrival of the Europeans if you can get all your reforms together, and gives you something to do other than just wait for them to show up with the expansion/contraction due to constantly taking and losing vassals.

I'm not convinced that Doom is as manageable as the devs claim, however. For one thing, you're supposed to be able to sacrifice vassal kings to lower Doom, but I can't figure out how to do that, and I've checked the Doom tab, my religion tab, and diplomacy tabs with my vassals. I suspect there's a Doom minimum threshold or its done by decision, but I've gotten all the way up to 75 with no option to do it. The only way you can really keep it down then is by fighting wars, but there's another problem here- you can really only fight your neighbors, as you can't build boats (you're a "primitive nation"), and your neighbors are unlikely to grant you military access to fight the Mayans, for example. Given that you need 5 vassals to institute a religious reform (in other words, probably all your neighbors), and that each reform also kicks up Doom by 25, it seems to me to be really difficult to avoid hitting 100 Doom (giving you a 0/0/0 ruler, freeing all your vassals, and revoking two religious reforms). The length of truces is also far too long for how quickly Doom ticks up, so you're pretty much forced to break truces and take a -5 stab hit and a +5 to war exhaustion just to avoid hitting 100 Doom, and really screwing yourself over.

I'm now able to institute my first reform, and I'm at 29 Doom. I've got a save before I do anything, and I keep reloading and trying different strategies (reform now, wait for truces to go down a little, etc) but I just don't see any way to avoid 100 Doom without breaking a truce or getting lucky (called into ally's war, event reducing Doom, etc). Reforming American faiths should be tough for sure, but this seems to be a bit too much, and I can't imagine this is what the devs were after. Or have I just not figured something out?

[shoki]

Originally posted by soccerrockerryan:

For one thing, you're supposed to be able to sacrifice vassal kings to lower Doom, but I can't figure out how to do that, and I've checked the Doom tab, my religion tab, and diplomacy tabs with my vassals.

Check out the "vassals" tab. Its the tab on the most right. There you have a small button for sacrifising the king and one for the heir on the right.

As for the rest you just have to stay small and take vassals. I had no problem with doom so far. I'm always always at 0doom with all those events lowering doom. I conquered 1province from the nations around me, so that they are always weaker than me and vassalized them. Took reform 1 and did it again. Didn't even needed to sacrifice someone.

[RMassive]

So that's where it is. Thanks a lot. Did you find you have truces with your vassals after they're released though? I had a truce with one expire while they were still my vassal but after I reformed and released them we had a new, 8 year truce

[Falco]

I had to break multiple truces to try and keep my doom down but after 2 reforms it became increasingly more difficult. I've stopped playing for now because I'm hoping they'll adjust the truce timer or the timer for sacrificing rulers because if you have bad luck with the events popping and try to grow a bit you're screwed.

[RMassive]

Yeah I think outright expansion is a bad idea, as it really accelerates your Doom counter. It also seems like its important to get involved in any war you can, and also try to stagger your truces so you always have someone to fight. Also worth noting that rebels reduce Doom just as regular battles/sieges do

[Surimi]

I managed to pass all the reforms. Basically, while you don't have boats you do have normal coring range, so the way I did it was to have a few provinces dotted around mesoamerica just so I could flower war anyone. Remember, you can still fabricate claims normally, so a single province on the Carribean coast will let you fabricate claims and declare war on Yucatan.

The doom counter goes by number of provinces, so you only really want high-value provinces in your empire. All the little 1 and 2 base tax regions can be administered by someone else. However, you should expand enough to ensure that you are in a good position after each reform, as you'll be left very militarily weak.

The really tough bit, I found, is actually when you've passed all the reforms. My original plan at that point was to have a load of extremely weak vassals which I could sacrifice the leaders of when I needed a doom reduction, but once your empire passes a certain size that becomes impossible. As it is, my advice is to leave a powerful enemy alive just so you can war them every so often. Also, at that point, since your vassals won't break away any more you can have them administer a large chunk of your empire.

At some point, either Castille or Portugal will declare war on either you or your sacrifice-state. If you keep your army fairly large and strong at all times, it should hopefully be the latter. If the former, you're going to be in trouble and will have to lose some ground for now. Regardless, wait until the Europeans have conquered some territory and then move in and finish the reforms. You should now be through the worst of it, and can start expanding and playing normally again.

I agree doom is extremely brutal, especially compared to the relative ease of managing the Mayan or the Inti religions, but it is doable and can be quite a fun challenge.

One slightly cheaty thing you can do if you want to play the Aztecs without this ♥♥♥♥ is to declare war on the Mayans, beat them utterly for 100% warscore and the concede a "force religion" demand. You'll convert to the Mayan religion, which is quite a bit easier to manage and still has some powerful reforms. This won't disable any of the Aztec flavour events (although, obviously, you'll get Mayan religious events rather than Aztec ones). This may be especially preferable if you're planning to go Catholic long-term anyway, which I suspect would be a much safer option assuming you can still do it.. I know the Mayans themselves can do it very easily.

[Fleshhunter]

Natives also work I think so you can just march your army into the angry natives

[RMassive]

Yeah I've managed to fully reform and westernize, although things got pretty hairy when the Europeans showed up. Now I just have to bide my time until 1700, when hopefully some of the colonial nations around me will break free and give me something to actually do

Also, as long as you can get your doom down pretty close to 0 before you reform, you can sustain a 6 or 7 province nation and you'll only be at about 60 doom by the time the truces expire, which can easily be worked off through a few wars. Some tips to keep it down that others haven't mentioned though- only take what you need in peace deals, as more warscore equals a longer truce. Also don't call in your allies if you don't need them, as you won't get doom reductions from the battles they fight and the sieges they win (your vassals will help you out though)