Thursday, January 26, 2017

Prussian Amazons: Part 36: 1023-1030: Empress Grasus III

With my retinue (and even without the holy order, mercs etc.) I have army so massive - 62k - that my capital can no longer support them in winter. Fortunately my boats can. Also I discovered that neutral trade post gives -10% supply limit penalty, which is just silly.

Last thing Grasus II did was join Jain Arab Empire and sent all troops to Rome. Before they could disembark, she died, succeeded by her youngest daugther Grasus III.

Starting with rather mediocre 10/5/9/8/6, at age of 35, the states are not amazing, but there are ways to get better.

Sadly first order of business is to reestablish tributaries. It's such a hassle, it might be good idea to cut down their number to more manageable level, but then small ones usually surrender with little fight.

Even without bothering with Hordes and Far North, as they hardly generate any money, it took me 7 years to reestablish other tributaries, and I let two go with white peace as I really needed peace for more important things.

Sunni caliph tried to use his claim on Arabian Empire, but failed. Unfortunately my Jain emperor over there got himself a Sunni heir, so not much good will come out of it.

I studied Necronomicon for some culture tech, and got my majesty so high I was able to pass imperial administration. That means I'll be able to reorganize the realm with viceroyalties, but that will be a long process. And I have some other plans first.

Not the best ruler, but she's got ambitious plans

Crushed Crusade within month of her ascension 

Tributaries are so much hassle. Jain Arabian Empire project looks doomed.

Prussian Amazons: Part 35: 1013-1023: Grasus the Old

I had no more mass building projects, so I recruited 13k Baltic Warriors pure heavy infantry retinue.

Emperer of Arabia Sa'ud was popping up babies left and right, so even though I got her oldest daughter married to my bastard grandson, the chance of Prussians getting control over Arabia is slim.

I was enjoying my old age, trying carousing focus, but events from that were really underwhelming.

What was left of Aztec Empire got conquered by tribal Catholics from  West Africa.

In 1023 the Pope called for another crusade - on Jain Jerusalem. This silliness can't stand.

Well, one more thing to do before I die I guess. Even with ultimogeniture my heir is 34.

As for my children:
* son Arelis - died of poor health at 43, his daughter is duchess of Smolensk
* son Nomedas - died of The Plague at 16
* daughter Gulbis - died "attending the chamber business" at age of 46, left 4 daughters who rule Bavaria, Jylland, and some minor titles.
* daughter Milyuns, 42 - duchess of Ostlandet, married to king of Kamarupa, so there's a chance our dynasty will get that remote kingdom. Her bastard son is married to oldest daughter of Arabian emperor, younger legitimate son is heir to Kamarupa.
* daughter Grasus, 34  - heir to Prussia, married to Sinhala Buddhist for good karma, has a son and a daughter

Queen of Bavaria hates me due to baseless accusations that I had something to do with death of her father, who tried to setup independence faction.

After a series of very short reigns, this one is a going too far the other direction.

Don't you have any Muslims or Aztecs to fight? 

Prussian culture spread quite wide even without modding, but then it's been very long campaign already.

Prussian Amazons: Part 34: 1007-1013: Fall and Rise of the Sunni Caliphate

I'd like to see Aztecs driven back over the sea as much as everybody else, but we can't tolerate the Sunni Caliph blobbing even harder.

So I invited Caliph's brother Sa'ud Abbasid, convinced him of foolishness of his silly religion, and pressed his claim, all while hopefully derailing the jihad for Africa.

Weirdly he was in matrilineal marriage (game rules mess with Muslims), and his heir was an Uyghur Zoroastrian girl. I arranged for her to marry an illegitimate bastard of my second daughter, and bribed her to come over as well and accept a more reasonable religion.

But there's a war to fight - I sent my troops to Egypt, and I got individual stacks on their way to jihad target. And conveniently every province there has decent supply and river defense bonus from basically anywhere.

Annoyingly a host invasion launched in the middle of our war, but host sizes are capped, so it was not major trouble.

After this great victory, I thought caliphate was over, but no - even though caliph had almost no legit vassal levies, you can keep already raised levies as long as you'd like, so he still had 20k to press on jihad. And thanks to these scary looking troops, his brother folded to his independence faction, and let him and two other dukes go.

So now caliph got himself a mid-sized country, when I hoped it would be eradicated.

I even tried to help the Aztecs by asking them to become my tributary, but by the time they accepted jihad was at 95%. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Vlach Orthodox count of Naissos got 22k event troops, which didn't even seem like much nowadays, but he conquered himself a nice chunk of land. With some luck, it could end up as a small resurgent Byzantine Empire, same as emir of Granada got himself half of Andalusia become Francia stopped his attempts.

Oh and on subject of my (now dead) husband becoming doge of Genoa - it currently has 4/5 patrician houses "de Genoa". I suspect something glitched there, but not sure what, and I don't recall ever seeing this before.

With so much gold and no free holdings, I started building universities - first in my demesne, then just outside, so technology can spread to next vassal's demesne. Even then, the bonus is not big, so not sure it would make significant difference.

War for Arabian Empire mostly took place in the Nile Delta.
I wish Nile was navigable like in history.

Caliphate is doing a lot better than expected.
Also so hard to see with two Caliphs, Jain emperor, and assorted minors all being green.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Prussian Amazons: Part 33: 997-1007: Building Spree

Apparently you can stack soup kitchens to get +2 relations with religious vassals per hospital, then another +2 for chapel. That's fairly expensive (1750 base for hospital, sick house, and 2 buildings), but as a Catholic 15k-ish gold for +40 with temple vassals (as well as disease resistance, purity etc.) might actually be a legit investment. For other religions, I doubt it.

As a good lunatic I worked on a flying machine, and I succeeded! It was only 50% death chance, and 50% chance of being known as Empress Grasus II The Cuckoo!

I also got rid of all the remaining council powers. With empress so amazing, who needs council?

My first daughter was married to king of Bavaria.
I married my second daughter to heir to kingdom of Kamarupa, on edge of the map.

My third daughter somehow got into regular betrothal with grandson of queen of Bohemia, via favor. I couldn't break it because of favor, but I could reject actual wedding - and fortunately the groom to be had a tragic accident. I married her to a Buddhist, as good karma has been foretold if I do that.

Weirdly my husband somehow got himself elected as doge of Genoa - I have no idea how that even happened. And he's Waldensian.

Jihads unlocked in 1000 as predicted, but neither caliphs seems interested in actually declaring one, in spite of plentitude of easy targets.

Finally after Nahua claimant conquered formerly Catholic Aztec Empire, Sunni caliph decided to declare Jihad for Africa. Well, previous one was my tributary, so I had a reason to help him. If they don't pay up, you're on your own.

Oh and on the subject, crusade timers apparently counts from its end (993), not beginning (980), so the next one is 1023, not 1010.

And I finally finished the building spree - other than 3 tribal holdings there's nothing left.

Renewed Jihads took them a long while to actually start.

 And they call me crazy!

Sunni and Hindu are very strong - mostly thanks to being so far away from me

Prussian Amazons: Part 32: 989-997: Fall of Francia

There was more business to attend to. Bavaria was in succession mess.

After death of Trozza Trozza, it was inherited by his son Wenzel, but his bastard sister Irmele usurped it by force - and she was first married to a Buddhist Tocharian, then to Sunni Nubian, so succession was weird.

I invited Meinhard, legitimate grandson of Trozza Trozza, whose father died of the Plague, and prepared restoration. I made him abandon his silly superstition, and married him to my older daughter. I even gave them a county as a wedding gift, as one of my vassal dukes went crazy and switched to Hindu.

After my son-in-law got his birthright back, I built a castle in county of Lorraine, only to discover to my shock that Francia dares to claim Lorraine as de jure theirs. This insult was unforgivable, so I declared war to abolish this infidel empire.

He had 41k troops to mine 33k. And the whole war was extremely underwhelming - I got 99% from occuations of his undefended and depleted by plague demesne in Brittany - and got 3% from a battle with a random 5k stack.

That demoted Francia to double-kingdom of France and Brittany, with all non-de-jure lands falling off.

After that I got abolition CB on Austrasia - which was a good precaution, as they were held by same family, so they could reunify.

Also some de jure cleanup, and a lot of tributary wars. There was also interesting development in that duke of Burgundy created a kingdom of Burgundy, which was actually separate from de jure kingdom of Burgundy. So two of them exist.

All those wars took place under conditions of very low supply limit - as provinces depopulated by the Plague stack with winter (and often other modifiers to due Plague-related backruptcy) to get basically 0 supply (100 minimum).

After all this fighting, Prussia became unquestioned dominant power over all of Europe - only caliph and Indian blobs can really compete.

Crusade took a long time to officially fail, 980-993. I don't remember if timer starts from declaration or conclusion, so if next one's in 1010 or 1023.

Jihads are going to trigger in 1000, as North Africa is still Catholic under Aztec Empire.

As I was disfigured, and wore a mask anyway, I organized ridiculously expensive (seriously, scaling costs with annual income is so obnoxious, EU4 does it too, but CK2 is a lot worse) masquerade party. Sadly there were no fun events.

 I wish it was possible to make different CBs use different warscore scales, as this was the opposite of epic war.

 Mittens, no!!!
I don't think all that money did anything.

Fall of Francia meant massive bordergore.
For reasons of political expediency, I might designate oldest daughter as heir this time, as she's married to king of Bavaria.

Prussian Amazons: Part 31: 978-989: The Black Death

I wrote a script to optimize find best construction sites (by number of existing sites and construction tech), but then again, apparently I already used up most of the obvious ones.

With ahistorically fast Mongols arrived ahistorically fast Black Deah. I had very high level hospital in my capital, and ring of decent level hospitals around it.

First news were June 978. By July 979 it reached our Black Sea province of Tmutarakan, but didn't go any further North.

It seemed like we might be safe, but by August 980 it crossed our borders via Constantinople.

By December 980 pope declared crusade for Jerusalem. I'd prefer if Catholics won to weaken Sunni Caliph, but worst case scenario would be if Francia managed to get it. Fortunately it was fighting independence revolt as well as de jure war with Bavaria, I decided to just let it go. And they might all die of plague anyway.

In April 981 it reached my demesne, so I decided to lead troops on trip to Iceland, as I couldn't shut the gates due to studying decision (from personal castle mod). I sort of didn't think about it.

In May 981 it reached my capital. In August 981 I returned home and shut the gates, but that was too late. My daughter got plague, so I asked my doctor to help her best he can - which he managed to do. And to throw away anybody else with the plague.

I took advantage of so many dying council members to stack the council and give back the ruler powers of war declaration.

In March 981 the plague started dying out in the Far East.

People suspected cats, so we did some research, and not only cats were innocent, I even got one as a pet for +1 health and +1 intrigue. Well, hopefully Mitten's better than Glitterhoof, who was not the best chancellor.

That wasn't good enough, as in September 982 I got the plague, and treatment cured it but cost me disfigurement. Fortunately stacking +1 family focus +1 digambara jain +1 pet cat let me survive this.

I thought nomad lands might be immune, but the plague reached there eventually. The only safe areas were India and Iceland.

I decided to spend time in seclusion partying, even though that cost me like twice the annual income. Apparently Death wanted to join, but I managed to fight her off!

Finally in February 985 the plague died off in my capital, so I left the seclusion as soon as possible. And then I got smallpox, but I survived without complications.

None of the major countries joined the crusade, so it's slowly failing. At least that delays jihads until 1000, which isn't actually that far away.

Important characters who died:
* Of my 2 sons and 2 daughtern, 1 son died, 1 daughter got plague but recovered.
* Emperor of Francia

That's an awfully short list compared with how many people die of flu each year. Seclusion is really too powerful, and AI just loves using it.


Not even Glitterhoof could negotiate with the Plague

The Plague reached our borders, but didn't expand from that one province. I thought we might actually be safe.

Pope's sense of timing is just amazing.

And it's home. We got this kind of event for every region.

Earliest infested provinces now becoming free of the Plague.

Falsely accused of spreading the Plague, Mittens just spreads purrs.

Fancy sprites.

Mongols seemed safe for a long while, but they got it too.

It's boring in the castle. Let's party!

Not even Death herself can get me!

Plague is almost over and the world is recovering. It wasn't actually half as bad as I expected, mostly thanks to seclusion mechanic.