@Dub

Oh, this is brilliant. It should also give me some greatly needed late game organic information for balancing as well. Not to mention possibly highlight some areas where BT may be lacking.

This is quite welcome.

Haha cool run @Dub. I’ve never been able to do a successful Sweden run, how do you start successfully? I’ll put my 1.22 run up tomorrow as Spain

Originally posted by Chairman Meow (JP):

Haha cool run @Dub. I’ve never been able to do a successful Sweden run, how do you start successfully? I’ll put my 1.22 run up tomorrow as Spain

I find Sweden to be quite easy since I am able to ask for support for independence (DLC features that really should be part of the base game, grr...), although I will say that I got a bit lucky this time around, as Denmark had no allies and I got support from England. I would assume a run where Denmark allies Poland is much less salvageable. I simply declared, occupied Öresund with my galleys (Perhaps with a bit of help from England) and then proceeded beating the crap out of Norway. Swedish infantry combat ability should net you most, if not all, battles. After that I started beating on the Livonian Order through the Swedish Estonia mission, who also got declared on my Novgorod. I sniped Estonia and after a short while, I declared on the ally-less Novgorod and took parts of Karelia and Ingria.

As you may have seen in the picture, Muscovy was broken down hard by a coalition from all the minors introduced in 1.24. I only helped with a 12k Condottieri stack for a couple of years as I had nothing to do while waiting for the truces. I think around 1470 I had already controlled most of the provinces I originally wanted in my run, having just beaten down Denmark-Norway a second time for Skåneland, and Novgorod for the rest of Greater Finland.

My ideas are not ideal, but were: Offensive, Innovative (Gotta love that -0,05 monthly war exhaustion. It also helped with my merc costs, as I ran a 50% inf merc army), Exploration, Economic, Quality (For +20% inf combat ability policy), and around the end of my run I picked up Influence for some very needed diplo rep to convince the princes for revoking the privilegia.

Spain sounds very nice! I'm intrigued to see how wide you've stretched your empire as I've never bothered with trade company regions in my runs.

Originally posted by Dub:

Originally posted by Chairman Meow (JP):

Haha cool run @Dub. I’ve never been able to do a successful Sweden run, how do you start successfully? I’ll put my 1.22 run up tomorrow as Spain

I find Sweden to be quite easy since I am able to ask for support for independence (DLC features that really should be part of the base game, grr...), although I will say that I got a bit lucky this time around, as Denmark had no allies and I got support from England. I would assume a run where Denmark allies Poland is much less salvageable. I simply declared, occupied Öresund with my galleys (Perhaps with a bit of help from England) and then proceeded beating the crap out of Norway. Swedish infantry combat ability should net you most, if not all, battles. After that I started beating on the Livonian Order through the Swedish Estonia mission, who also got declared on my Novgorod. I sniped Estonia and after a short while, I declared on the ally-less Novgorod and took parts of Karelia and Ingria.

As you may have seen in the picture, Muscovy was broken down hard by a coalition from all the minors introduced in 1.24. I only helped with a 12k Condottieri stack for a couple of years as I had nothing to do while waiting for the truces. I think around 1470 I had already controlled most of the provinces I originally wanted in my run, having just beaten down Denmark-Norway a second time for Skåneland, and Novgorod for the rest of Greater Finland.

My ideas are not ideal, but were: Offensive, Innovative (Gotta love that -0,05 monthly war exhaustion. It also helped with my merc costs, as I ran a 50% inf merc army), Exploration, Economic, Quality (For +20% inf combat ability policy), and around the end of my run I picked up Influence for some very needed diplo rep to convince the princes for revoking the privilegia.

Spain sounds very nice! I'm intrigued to see how wide you've stretched your empire as I've never bothered with trade company regions in my runs.

Interesting, I think I’m forced to play Sweden, especially with your localised naming (waiting till it is implemented like).

As for Spain, let’s just say I owned the only colonial nations in all of America. I PU’d France which was handy and vassal annexed Ireland and Italy. Got a Byzantine vassal and, well it was an ace game.

This is what I've got so far on my Byzantium run, 1609. I made a map showing all the Themes of the Empire with their respective seats of Strategoi. I didn't attack the Ottomans until year 1500, soon after I had lost all my Anatolian cores since I deemed them too powerful and the 20 favors required in the Miscellanea addon had me wait 40 years to be able to call in the PLC. In the meantime I sniped Karaman, released Cappadocia and beat down on Venice using Austria as my punching bag. Once the Ottomans were beaten once, it was just a simple matter of blockading the strait. I surprisingly own a whopping 1461 development in these lands and, less surprisingly, am the top Great Power.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1255271894

I've also just learned how to upload custom screenshots. :D

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1258021064

Decided to take a screenshot of my latest Brandenbrug / Prussia run with the newest version of BT + Misc addon and some non-gameplay mods.

Edit: Had to fix link.

I think it's finally time to drop my Byzantium into (proper non-HRE) Renovatio Imperii playthrough. This is what I have so far in my game, having just disbanded the HRE in 1763 with it being the requirement in my submod to title oneself the Roman Empire as Byzantium.

Additional mods used:
BT Miscellanea
BT Byzantine Resurgence

The Map:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1261945212

Great powers:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1261944269

My story:

My playthrough began with me allying PLC and Austria early on. While waiting for relations to improve I vassalized Epirus through mission added in my mod. While waiting to accrue 20 favors with either of them to punch the Ottomans, I sneakily declared on Venice, promising land to Austria. While Austria was being sieged down I took great care of sieging down Venice's holdings in Greece. Once Austria peaced out I peaced out Venice for whatever holdings I could get. I then took care of the Knights after which I integrated my vassals and later on Cyprus, which I dealt with by making sure the Mamluks was blockaded and unable to send troops to me, since the Ottomans hated them too. Note that all the time I was doing this, the Ottomans had only annexed Candar, parts of Ramazan and the Knights & Cyprus' Anatolian holdings.

It was now 1470 and I needed more holdings from somewhere. I fabricated on Karaman and took their Cappadocian cores to release them as a vassal, taking Laranda and Selinous in the meantime. Forgetting I needed 20 dev worth of Turkish land to temporarily accept Turkish culture in order to convert Sunni, I looked for more land. I declared on Albania, getting Venice in there with Austria as well as Serbia. I landed and defeated Serbia and vassalized them. In the meantime, Ragusa who had been exanding into Bosnia declared on Serbia, from who I took the province of Terbounia and force-converted them to Orthodox. I then took most of Albania, leaving them with the province of Lissos, taking all Venetian holdings in Albania.

Shadow Kingdom rolls around by now, 1490, and Genoa leaves the HRE. As such, I declare and occupy all their holdings in Anatolia & the Black Sea, except Amastris as it had been converted to Catholic. At this point, it's 1494, when I now notice that ALL my cores in Anatolia disappeared, since I haven't had a single war with the Turk and it's been 50 years. My prestige, which was already low due to uncontested cores, tanked. Soon after this, I said it was finally time to push back the Turk. But before I do, I took Canik that I now could fabricate on due to owning the coast of Crimea.

The war on the Turks was declared around 1500, calling in I think the PLC to help me out. I used my then bugged Byzantine Resurgence CB from the mod (Apparently you had to put peace options in a separate bracket in 1.24), giving 50% less AE and 50% less cost for any provinces owned by the Ottomans in the Balkans & Carpathia. I did not realize the CB was bugged and I proceeded by taking back only my Greek cores, plus the province of Alexandroupolis to release Bulgaria with. The war was over around 1505. The remainder of Karaman was swiftly annexed by me soon after.

At this point, the Ottomans still have not conquered Ramazan fully, has not touched the Mamluks and invaded half of Georgia. After my first victory, they never recovered. I finished off Albania in Lissos, integrated Serbia and established the Theme system. In my mod, establishing the Theme System grants claims on what traditionally was part of the Empire, i.e Balkans, Anatolia, Magna Graecia, Sicily, as well as Lesser Armenia. At this point I went wild, attacking Spain for provinces in Italy and then killing Sicily who had become independent. I attacked Hungary and took Croatia. I finished off Ragusa. I defeated the Ottomans once more and conquered all of Bulgaria, annexed them and then annexed Cappadocia. I also conquered the Trebizond area from the Ottomans.

Around this time there was a coalition war that came from the Muslims. Due to my superior fighting force, I beat them back easily, getting 50% warscore and peaced out with Crimea, the war leader, for their two Crimean holdings. I attacked Ottomans with my other Byzantine Resurgence CB, which becomes available once Ottomans don't hold any land in the Balkans or Carpathia, granting the same bonuses to Anatolian provinces instead. This is around the time when I realize the CB was bugged. I don't remember whether I fixed it before or after the peacedeal (Probably not), but I took Nikomedeia (Among other provinces such as Smyrna) and Constantinople immediately recovered.

I finished off my conquest of Naples at this point. The Ottomans had decided to choose Saruhan/Magnesia as their new capital instead of traditional Bursa, meaning they developed the ♥♥♥♥ out of that province. By the time I conquered it, it was above 30 development. It was now 1580 and I barely held the Anatolian coast, but I did have central southern Anatolia and Trebizond. At some point later I declared on the Mamluks and took Syria, including Antioch.

Once I declared war on the Ottomans once more, Crimea wanted to feed his newly acquired vassal of Circassia a bunch of Georgian land. They managed to take back the Ottoman Georgia lands as well as Sinope + Kastamon. Refusing anyone any provinces in Anatolia, I declared and immediately took the lands before nasty Circassian core creation cost could hit. At this point, the Ottomans could be annexed in one more war. Just before the 17th century hit and Global Trade would become available, heading towards the Age of Absolutism, I conquered Rome and the rest of Hungarian Croatia. Hungary was allied to Austria, but fighting the war against the Papal States at the same time allowed me to take the Croatian parts of Hungary.

Georgia had been left alone and had expanded into all of Greater as well as lesser Armenia. I quickly moved to take their lands, conquering all of Lesser Armenia. I also killed off the Ottomans, leaving them with their remaining two provinces in Georgia. At this point we're around the picture I posted above in 1609.

From here on, I focused on beating down the rest of Georgia to get my Caucasian border established. I declared and took the once Austrian lands that Venice had taken previously. Around this point, the league wars hit, with Denmark having become emperor just before. All of the HRE except Austria was protestant, and Austria's provinces were actually completely converted to Reformed or Protestant. Still, he himself had not converted. This is also around the time when I rival the PLC in favor of gaining Muscovy as an ally. When this happened, PLC got wrecked in the League war and a very strong Brandenburg started eating them like Scooby Doo eats Scooby Snacks. I took Moldavian Dacia from him in a war and attempted to feed Muscovy as much as possible since I know they never do well otherwise. The Danes also started munching off the Commonwealth, eating Lithuania. I decimated Hungary to only leave them with their modern self. Despite this league war trashing all the Catholics, they were not interested in establishing a Protestant Empire, resulting in the Peace of Westphalia.

Around this point, I found Muscovy being way too passive, so I declared on the PLC while having paid thousands of ducats off Muscovy's debt, taking all of southern Ruthenia and proceeding to sell it to Muscovy for cheap. To Muscovy's defense, they did declare war on Nogai and took parts of that, but they left Novgorod for so long it wasn't even funny.

It was around 1650 and I now decided it was time to blob into Mesopotamia & Syria. So I did without much hassle. I snuck in Alexandria in a peacedeal together with Jerusalem and restored the Pentarchy. In my Byzantine Resurgence mod, restoring the Pentarchy allows Catholic nations to convert to Orthodox, should they desire. I also mended the East-Oriental Schism in the same vein (New in my mod), giving the same treatment to Coptics. I also started expanding into northern Italy.

I'm not sure exactly around when, but when I was involved in a rather big war with France, I was offered to contest Portugal's union over Castille, who had lost all of their unions previously due to liberty desire. Around this time I also decided to no-CB Novgorod so that Muscovy could FINALLY pick up that stupid Novgorod province so they could form Russia. I picked up Castille in a union who I over the next century gave all Iberian land to from France, Aragon, Portugal & Morocco.

When the 1700s and Enlightenment started to hit, I decided it was time to make a semi-Mare Nostrum run, meaning I focused mostly on the rest of Northern Italy and conquered Egypt + Ifriqiyan Maghreb. Nothing interesting really happened and I think I started integrating Castille at some point, still attempting to integrate them right now. Denmark decided they wanted to go revolutionary and lost all of Norway in the process. <3 I also began on establishing the Exarch of Persis in Persia, still WIP to this day.

Around 1750 I decided whatever was left of the stupid HRE needed to die. To do so, I had to declare war on Prussia who was about the size you see in the picture, calling in his elector allies Saxony & Anhalt as co-belligirents. The Emperor Palatinate called in the rest of the electors. Except one: Liege. But I had a plan...

Once I had sieged down all capitals in the HRE, I declared war on France. They were actually allied to Liege, meaning I could just occupy them and finish the HRE once and for all. Of course, this I did. Soon after, I peaced out Prussia granting Russia as much land as warscore could give, including most of Prussian Siberia (Because why not colonize Siberia when Russia themselves don't want to, right?!). I quickly peaced out France for the single province of Navarra and proclaimed myself the rightful Roman Emperor. Basileus Manuel III Palaiologos, a 5/5/6 Martial Educator.

... Oh, and I've culture-converted all of Anatolia into Greek/Pontic/Cappadocian/Cilician/Armenian, all of Syria + Mesopotamia into Syriac (Why they are in the Arabic group is beyond me, they're christian damnit), Egypt into Coptic and Maghreb into Zenati (Because I cannot get Phoenician and I suppose this is best berber or something).

Does your mod change the requirements for forming the Roman Empire? I thought you had to own all of France and Iberia.

Originally posted by Procyon:

Does your mod change the requirements for forming the Roman Empire? I thought you had to own all of France and Iberia.

Yes. As I feel that Byzantium have a reason to claim that. Basically what it requires is the abolition of the HRE and restoration of the Pentarchy. In return, it doesn't give the Roman Ideas or the Latin culture, keeping the Byzantine heritage. This Roman empire is simply a coat of paint change. Of course, this particular decision requires you to be Byzantium. Any other country can still form the Roman Empire under normal circumstances.

I might point out that the mod has now been published, if you want to check it out. :)

What does your diplomacy look like? I'd also like to see how you ended up culturally enriching your empire

@Smartguy725

I did play a bit further after posting, but here's a picture of my diplomacy (Allying Russia is actually more for RP purposes than any strategic reason. It seems fitting that the last two bastions of Orthodoxy should prosper together):

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1262600907

...And here's a picture of my cultural enrichment (Didn't quite manage to finish it. I also left Rome Umbrian because I had a decision that would convert it to Greek for free upon moving capital there. However since that decision in my mod requires a rival in Europe (There'd be no reason to move back there otherwise) and I didn't have any eligible rivals, I missed out on it. Instead the decision then requires 300 cities in Europe, which is basically all of France, Spain, Italy, Balkans and Dacia):

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1262600595

I will point out that I did cheat in 999 adm points for my client state Persis. Basically Paradox has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ them up hard with the introduction of absolutism making it easier to own the areas yourself. They currently sit at 300+% overextension in this game despite the 999 adm.

Originally posted by Dub:

@Smartguy725

snip

I suppose never thanked you, although I'm curious as to your state/territory map and how you go all those full cores

@Smartguy725

That is also part of my mod. I have included a so-called Exarch rule bonus for Byzantium. The case is that imperial administration was ridiculously complex yet extremely effective. As such, I represent this as decisions of establishing Exarches, which grants +10 max states, at the cost of increasing state maintenance by +200%. This can be done a total of 3 times in the mod: Italy, Africa & Egypt. I normally could have gone for the option of having the player establish client states to function as Exarches, however since client states have been gimped since the introduction of absolutism, I decided against it, opting to represent it as slightly more integrated.

Realizing this, maybe I should add a triggered province modifier that grants minimum autonomy if an Exarchate has been established in said region that triggers for all provinces part of that region. The only reason why I wanted the extra states is so you can establish Themes in those regions and the +200% state maintenance is supposed to offset that.

Hello. I've now got a Teutons into Prussia into Greater Germany game to declare. I declare my main goal finished in the 3rd of August year 1700, having just conquered the remnants of Austria in Wien and Ostmark. Housing a total of 3000 development in my lands, I have united all of the German lands, as envisioned by Pan Germanism in the 1900s. Now having accrued 250 aggressive expansion with the two Dutch countries of Utrecht and Netherlands, together with roughly 125 or so AE with France, Spain and the Italian countries, I proclaim myself the sole Kaiser of the Germanic peoples (Plus Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Croats, because they've been obedient peoples that have accepted my rule). The Swamp germans had no intention of joining me in my cause, which is why I left them to rot in their, well, swamps.

For reference: Kurland, Bosnia, Switzerland and Greece are my vassals.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274048323

Starting my campaign, I sent a diplomat to Austria to ask for protection under the banner of the Emperor. As I required a total of roughly 150 relations, since I could not royally marry, I desperately scrambled my kingdom for shiny ducats to appease the oversized chin-peoples known as the Habsburgs, even going so far as to demand payment from the Burghers. I managed to join before the Poles came knocking. In the meantime, I decided to bring back the Livonian order under my banner by fully annexing them, bringing their four vassals under my direct rule. I then gave the Livonian provinces to the vassals that had the correct cultures accepted (Kurland got Latvian and Estonian lands were split between Dörpt and Ösel-Wiek). These were annexed over the decades later to leave only Kurland remaining, as you see in the picture.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1262792337

While doing this, the Poles did not find the Habsburgs intimidating enough and declared war on me. Caught off-guard, my men fought to their best ability and, surprisingly, managed to stackwipe tens of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians. Apparently the Teutons have strong armies. Soon they begged for peace and, for some reason disbanded all their armies, leaving them woefully open to the Russian rebels, allowing both Polotsk and Smolensk to break free. Kiev was on their way, but didn't quite manage. I settled for the Posen region as I didn't want to get too much aggressive expansion and the land would've been worthless since I was already hitting my 5 states limit. I initially planned to cut Poland off from Lithuania, but because of the state limit there was no point.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1263129130
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274060782
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1263196252

I will point out that in the state picture I apparently only had 4 states at the time, but the point still stands that my expansion was locked behind the number of states.

After the war, I managed to pick up the Faceting event, which gave Königsberg a much needed boost.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274059546

A couple of wars later, and some time later, I again went to war with the PLC. For some reason I cannot help but think they did not appreciate me.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1268419367

I kept on and formed Prussia at some point. If you form Prussia as the Teutons, you luckily do not get kicked out of the HRE if you form it, as you stay a duchy. In fact, the Teutons -> Prussia decision can even be taken as a vassal state, which is awesome if you intend on getting yourself a Prussian vassal. Just vassalize the Teutons and give them Königsberg (And make sure they're Protestant/Reformed) and then you have it. I've here posted another states picture to show that these indeed stifled my conquests quite a bit.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274063277

Oh, and during this campaign, the Reformed reformation broke entirely because some nation said "We cannot allow this to contnue" on the event, leaving the Reformed faith to never spawn, except for some random provinces in Hungary for some reason. No CoR ever spawned.

Anyway, my conquests kept heading south.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274064961

At some point here I devised a great plan to dismantle the HRE, as forming Germany will force you to leave it. To do this, I had to break my alliance with Austria that had been since the early start of the game. This is the premise of the league war:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274065672

...And this is what it looked like once fired. Note that Sweden stayed neutral. I guess they forgot it's not World War II just yet.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1269738893

So, you may be wondering what my plan was? Well, this is the thing: If I could force the Protestants to win the league war, all catholic electors would lose their electorship. Since in my game, the only Protestant elector was Bohemia, this meant that if I could force a Protestant victory, I would be able to declare war on Bohemia, leave the HRE just before doing so, and thus cause the newly elected Emperor to join in. This I did, and this is exactly what happened. Poor OPM Gelre got the emperorship, which didn't last long.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274067036

At this point, I had conquered all the lands required to form Germany. I was however only on adm tech 18, ahead of time, so I had to wait a couple of years.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274068892

Since the HRE was now disbanded, I kept getting a lot of missions to annex OPMs and such, which I did while waiting for adm tech 20. This is what Prussia looked like before naming themselves the Kaiser of the German Reich:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274069816

At this point I went ballistic, intent on conquering everything as quickly as possible. As I did, I had a lot of countries start guaranteeing everyone, which was annoying. This meant multiple wars against a great deal of them attempting to break these guarantees and slowly chipping them down to size. This is what I looked like a while later:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1272992587

... And then, 40 years later, you get what you see in the first picture.

This run was a lot of fun. I had never experienced Theocracy mechanics before. Damn do they get a lot of revolts since they do not get the bonus from legitimacy. I can definitely recommend this! Juggling AE was a good challenge. I was also happy to see that despite Russia not forming that Muscovy colonized. So good on Draiocht for letting them make it to Eastern Siberia by 1700, despite not conquering Novgorod! It's not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

This run was mainly made to check whether Argacyan's assessment on monarch points being too low in the HRE, which I can gladly say is false. I had no issues with monarch points whatsoever and a lot of those 3000 dev that I currently hold are developed by me. The Polish lands all have at least 10 dev at this point.

How much cultural enriching did you do?