God Empress of Prussia: Part 04: 1460-1469: Aztec Second Sunset Invasion Mission

I decided to give my vassals a break, and attacked France for Paris, calling in Africa. I'm actually a bit surprised none of my allies (Africa, Pannonia, Rus) bothered to call me into their wars yet. Maybe AI doesn't like calling in someone who's at war, and I've been at war most of the time.

Since their army was sitting on their capital at low maintenance, I crushed them in a single battle, and managed to carpet siege their mainland while they were recovering in Valencia.

I tried to use my colonial army (1 cog, 1 infantry) to sneak in and get Canaries (as occupation lowers warscore cost, at least sometimes), but that got sunk. So much for the first colonial armies, I'm sure new ones will come.

I got Paris (5th COT for age goals, even if in bad trade node), Normandy (best trade node), Canaries (for much needed colonial range), and a bunch of angry countries that were borderline-coalitioning me, so I preemptively declared on Normandy and friends before peaceing out France just to give them some time to reconsider.

After that I continued religious reforms - getting infidel vassal count all the way down to 23.

I tried to release annexed countries too, but game seems to be having some bugs here, with cores disappearing way too fast. I suspect that might have something to do with some countries having wrong primary culture set in files, and that somehow affect cores. I doubt converter games get much QA.

My ally Pannonia decided to vassalize elector Venice, which also wrecked my imperial authority - as much as 10 heretics would. I broke that alliance, but that's a lot of authority lost before I'll be able to intervene.

They also managed to get a massive coalition against themselves. Fun and Balance currently disables punitive wars, so coalitions can use regular CBs, or work defensively, so I doubt it will do much.

I got every single age objective, and for my bonuses I got:

• +1 of each dev for every finished colony
• +50 settler growth rate (Portuguese only in vanilla)
• +33% siege ability (Ottoman only in vanilla)

As sieging down all those damn minors is just infuriating.

The age is still early, so I'll get a few more bonuses.

Fun stuff is happening elsewhere:

Apparently Aztecs can see Europe, and have mission which gives them claim on everything in France region (including some of my lands). Oh and both them and Incas are colonizing, but just on own continents for now.

Not only Deccan annexed their former vassal Turkestan, now Byzantium also vassalized Slavonia, both of which eroded my authority a bit.

Byzantines got Golden Era thanks to large city (Constantinople), 6 of 5 needed centers of trade (Constantinople, Kocaeli, Sinope, Macedonia, Ragusa - game insists there's a 6th but I can't see it), and presence on two continents (Europe and Asia).

I had plans to take Jolof in Africa, but Mali preempted me. I guess nothing really stops me from just attacking Mali, they're two technologies behind and have too much gold for their own good.

Surprise Battle of Paris

By the time they figured out what happened, mainland France was well sieged

So many wars - my vassals refuse to give back illegal lands

Every rebel OPM is a new siege, so it takes forever

Maya Merchant Republic with boats

Coalition against Pannonia

They're probably quite happy I removed Punitive CB

Aztecs waited centuries for second chance

God Empress of Prussia: Part 03: 1453-1460: The First Colony

I asked a bunch more countries to be my tributaries. I'm getting a total of 7 bird mana and 2412 men per year, which isn't exactly amazing, but there aren't that many sources of free mana out there.

My tributary of Ural and Ming tributary of Anxi border each other. So that conflict might come quite soon.

I've been fighting my vassals to remove heresy and to prevent them from eating each other too much.

Mazovia dared to flip back to their infidel ways, but heretic count is down 95 to 43. Total count is down 170 to 166. I'm basically keeping a schedule of nice wars to start, going for quantity.

There's a good number of infidel vassals with over 100% warscore cost, who'd need some more creative approach, but any infidel costs same amount of imperial authority, so they're really lowest priority. Eventually when passing 7th reform I'll need everybody's vote, but that's very far in the future.

Due to ways territorial cores work I got two provinces - Ust-Vym (3 dev in Siberia) and Neva (5 dev with estuary) with free cores by demanding unlawful territory. By old rules it would be really hard for original owner's cores to be destroyed, but here it already happened twice.

Apparently I can't colonize anything, as even distance from Iceland to miserable Greenland is just a bit too much, even with colonial range advisor, and next bonus is at tech 7. Seriously? Amazingly Azores are just barely in range from Caux.

I made age bonuses not tag-specific, as it's especially silly in converter games.

Byzantium and Deccan have been blobbing quite well, but institutions are going to wreck them. I have decent chance of getting all of them - if I colonize, build up best trade node, spam manufactories and universities, that's 4 institutions.

Printing press can happen anywhere with 20 dev (why 20 here and 21 for Renaissance? no idea), so that's more competitive - but it also requires admin 12, so a lot of alternatives will be behind.

I did a quick sneak peak and amazingly thanks to my nerfs Mings only just got its mandate growth to positive - but I'm sure they'll pass all reforms by the time I get there. And Aztecs are attacking Incas and winning.

I discovered that I got this province when someone occupied it

I thought it'd be returned to original owner

Just a bunch of wars here and there 

Seduction Focus

There's a lot of infidels out there

I got IA up to +1.32/year, or about 340 years to unify

God Empress of Prussia: Part 02: 1444-1453: Beginning of Renaissance

I messed up estates pretty much right away, getting plutocratic and aristocratic coups in progress. That ended up being useful.

I tried the edict for +50% trade power in Jylland, as it had 2 centers of trade. I'm not even sure that paid for itself. At least I moved trade capital from Baltic to Lubeck node - eventually it will need to move to English Channel.

First thing to do was humiliation war against Byzantium. Of course I forgot how to fight, so the first battle was 12k stack wipe against me. Second battle I lost my 45k attacking their 22k - mostly due to really awful generals I rolled in 4 tries, but crossing didn't help.

Fighting against much better general works really poorly in EU4, so I tried using merchant estate rebels against Byzantium to soften them up, then go in with my troops.

Of course game decided to bug out, and when I tried to setup 3-way battle between Byzantium, rebels, and me, my army magically autolost. Well, reload, just enter province same month their battle ends.

And I got fresh zone of control bug, when freshly recruited mercenaries were instantly in zone of control of a fort, and couldn't go join nearby battle of Skopje - only direction allowed was towards the fort.

It took way too much effort, but one of two Byzantines armies got destroyed (with rebels me having 5:1 ratio), and the other army lost battle of Skopje to merc spam. So far I feel like I'm the one being humiliated here.

Well, I finally kicked them out of European side, took Constantinople, and all I got from the war was humiliate rival and some money - humiliation being second age objective.

I got two princes to abandon heresy peacefully, leaving 93 to do, and huge relation penalty with existing heretics for doing so.

Well, time for some serious wars. My second war was against 12 members of Greater Prussia all at once. Fun and Balance higher alliance limit plus trade leagues plus marking everybody as cobeligerent is fun.

I chained 4 more wars like that. With so many damn heretics it's hard to even tell them apart.

While fighting those wars I got a bit land from Normandy - Caux Seine estuary, Antwerpen Center of Trade, and Picardie which slowly aims at connecting the two. And one provnice in Norway to help colonization.

By the end of it, I reduced number of heretic princes from 95 to 60.

I pressed demand unlawful territory button a lot. I'm OK with them taking each other's lands as long as total number of princes remains at 170. Sadly there's huge penalty for accepting this button once, so prince count fell to 168.

And Deccan somehow vassalized Turkestan, who's in the empire, so that's another source of imperial authority loss. I knew I'll have to face them eventually, but didn't expect that early.

Overall my imperial authority growth is finally minimally positive - but let's be honest, I'll need to convert a lot more of those bastards.

Somehow I got Renaissance in Denmark. I guess Italy isn't terribly well developed in this timeline.

As having 5 vassals is now an age objective, I got 4 of them already (Samogitia, Kurland, Lithuania, Halland), and I'm working on Estonia. That's a ton of diplo slots (5/9 on trivial vassals), but age goals are age goals.

I took exploration first, but I have no range whatsoever.

I asked Champagne and Luxembourg to be my tributaries. I could ask some HRE members, but I'm not sure how it's going to interact with revoke privilegia. Not to mention I want to finish religious cleansing first.

They'll send me 1 bird mana and 300 men a year, which is not much.

I'm now over 200 years old.

So far age goals (2/7):

• discover America - not yet, won't even have range before I take Iceland
• control 5 centers of trade - I got 4, I guess Scotland has 5th I might take
• city with 30 development - DONE
• embrace Renaissance and have it in all state provinces - embraced, spread to 18/30 - fortunately territory provinces don't count so I can't lose this once done
• 5 vassals - 4 done, 5th in progress
• present in two continents - not yet
• humiliate rival - DONE

There were a few countries with duplicate names so I made up some new ones like Breisgau (was second Baden), Ural (was second Perm), Oslo (was second Pecs, somehow), Milan (was second Lombardy), East Kola and West Kola (were two Kolas).

I thought my only worry would be attrition, so I sent my troops in small armies

Instead Byzantines just invaded right away, and wiped one of my armies

CK2 AIs are so much more passive, and it takes them forever to gather levies

After that fail I built 4 forts (original 3 were placed in dumb places so I deleted them)

They can't move, but I can't really attack them here

A while later I got to 60 army tradition and got some good generals

Giving unhappy estates something productive to do

Going in for 3-way battle, like it used to work 

Then reloading, waiting for battle to finish, and starting a second one

Renaissance requires 21 development, and in Italy only Venice has it

It also requires not being an island, not sure if straits count

I control majority of very high development provinces, so I'm not even surprised

God Empress of Prussia: Part 01: 1444: Introduction

Time to continue Prussian Amazons CK2 campaign!

Short term goal, is to bring religious unity to the Greater Prussia (HRE), discovering New World, and getting age achievements.

Challenging parts short term:

• Greater Prussia is 170 countries, 95 of which are Vajrayana infidels who didn't get the memo on imperial cult, so imperial authority is falling down fast. By the way I suspect something might have gone wrong with conversion here, but it's an added challenge so I'll just roll with it.
• I can't realistically get much imperial authority from adding provinces
• with immortal ruler I get no imperial authority from succession
• with same culture HRE everywhere, expanding anywhere by force will generate ridiculous levels of AE

Long term challenges will be:

• unifying Greater Prussia
• completely removing Aztecs and everybody else
• becoming emperor of China
• at which point I might just as well make it a world conquest
• harmonizing Confucianism with every possible religion, but only after I get imperial unification and age of reformation bonuses. I can't harmonize Vajrayana before then.

There's only Coptic 2 province minor next to Nubia controlling cold mine, so I'll doubt they'll survive, so I'll probably miss Christian harmonization. I won't get Judaism and Zoroastrian harmonization either. I should be able to get others - one per religion in my group (Vajrayana, Mahayana, Theravada, Shinto), and one per foreign religious group (Pagan, Muslim, Dharmic). Dharmic seems hard, but there are some Hindus in Indonesia.

But first, what I'm working with:

• 36 provinces, only 30 of them in states because I'm above state limit, and converter map doesn't match EU4 state borders
• 739 development (some earlier conversions test had it at 781, but then I hit tech cap and other lands caught up somewhat)
• 3 centers of trade: Vestjylland, Nordjylland (Jylland CK2 county turned into 4 provinces, including 2 CoTs next to each other, huh?), Warmia. In vanilla I'd get Danzig, Lübeck, and Hamburg instead, so it's basically even. Every test moved them to slightly different places.
• 5 estuaries - Riga, Danzig, Stettin, Hamburg, and Bremen
• also Sjaelland tolls, and Skane market for more economic bonuses
• in total 46 gold/turn
• 153 land force limit and 69 naval force limit
• Oh and I didn't get Prussian traditions. I'm "old Prussian" not "new Prussian".

And I start with one age objective completed since I control a city with 30+ development.

Converted countries. Shape of known world is pretty much list of converted provinces.

Wasteland like Arabia (which converter isn't aware of) creates terra incognita gaps

French yellow next to Prussian yellow

Italian green next to 3 Arab greens

Coincidence?

Greater Prussia

Sneak Peak into Terra Incognita

Everybody in New World except for 5 countries has High American, so they huge unit bonuses

We'll see how institutions will work for them

Prussian Amazons: Part 84: 1444: Conversion to EU4

Empress Weslikan decided to openly announce her immortality, and institute Imperial Cult of the God Empress - which for sake of converter we'll just model as Confucianism, and it can harmonize with Vajrayana Buddhism just fine, with some effort.

All her direct descendants felt pretty damn good about being related to a living goddess, so they instantly converted, and so did peasants in their demesne. Everyone else was a lot less impressed.

Centuries of Prussian rule under one empire managed to preserve unity of Prussian culture.

Converting foreign realms:

• all king tier characters become indepndent, as EU4 doesn't have vassal kings - this used to be more numerous group, now it's just Malwa, Lanka, Serbia, and Egypt - and of that only Egypt is significant
• all merchant republics become independent - that's Normandy, Damieta, and Kerman
• normally each country gets permanent claim on all their de jure territory, so they can get them back fairly easily, but it felt too much mess so I removed them
• since succession is not modeled, for characters where I really feel like succession would change things significantly (like very old kings of Nubia and Portugal with heirs of my dynasty), I'll just speed up succession a bit)

For Prussia:

• it becomes HRE
• since it's rather oversized HRE, I removed government rank limit, so I can become empress once I get more dev, and if anyone wants to be king, they can figure out a way to do so
• all viceroyalties are destroyed
• since EU4 doesn't have counts, I transferred a few and did some de jure cleanup, but it's mostly as it was
• and just a tiny bit of effort to reduce border gore a bit
• after all that I granted select powerful vassals (destined to be electors) king tier titles, but no vassals got any land beyond what they'd have as jure dukes or multidukes

And generally:

• all wars white peaced
• all claims removed
• all tributaries removed (not like converter cares, just for screenshots)
• conversion to Confucianism for all my descendants and their demesne

That's not the end of it, as after conversion I still needed to:

• remove all permanent claims I had
• turn off HRE religious peace - it has one official religion
• cleanup conversion bugs
• merge parts of Fun and Balance mod which were relevant

Couldn't be bothered to create new Confucian religion for one day, so I just reused Hellenic tag for Imperial Cult

My direct descendants directly rule most of the map

The final map

The final technology map
My very brief possession of some Scottish land has so much impact even now
I'd be far ahead if I wasn't at tech cap
In the end Prussia was second in tech behind Luxembourg

Prussian Amazons: Part 83: 1428-1444: End of The Middle Ages

I thought the time of major border changes is over, but in last decade Deccan subjugated Lanka, Arabia got Syria as claimant, and Mongol khan settled down as king of Anxi, from which Altay split, leaving little to the horde, but they have more just off the known map.

I had a bunch of random inherited claims which I wanted to clean up, and I managed to accidentally trigger a rebellion in process.

My vassal inherited Bihar, which was just too silly, so I set her free.

Byzantium also inherited a few counties in Spain, which somehow ignored all my laws.

I prevented France from taking over Castille, and then helped rebels split Brittany off France.

Two more court chaplains died in artifact search, but in spite of so many deaths, and so many penalties I accepted, nothing ever came out of it.

Fraticelli Teutonic Order, located in deep Siberia, got the last event horde, but did nothing with it.

I finally became ambitious with like 20th attempt at writing ambitious theorem paper, so my final stats are pretty sweet.

Technically EU4 starts 11.11.1444, but I left a few months just in case I need to advance time during conversion. Next part will just document full conversion process, as that's a lot of steps to take.

The last rebellion, I didn't even notice he'd say no

Anxi settled down, then broke into pieces

Random horde mod was fun addition, but its impact was far less than numbers would suggest

My traits improved somewhat during the final years.

Prussian Amazons: Part 82: 1411-1428: Final Border Cleanup

I tried upgrading to 2.7.1beta but it just caused issues, so I reverted. This of course caused more issues - resetting my message settings. This and EU4 mapmodes get reset so often I should probably put them on github or something.

I lost poet trait and with it +1 diplomacy. Instead I named a star after myself, getting me +1 diplomacy, and lost cruel for +1, so I'm a bit ahead.

I had about ten 10% shots at ambitious by writing theorem papers, so far all missed.

I decided that I'm pretty much done changing borders, so I just made everybody I could (except steppes, that's way too tedious) into my tributaries. France is the last one due, as I had a few wars with them, but I'll just make it before end of the game, for nice big font on the map. I finally kicked them out of Britain and Sicily.

Amazingly Tengri were back on the map for a while, as some Tengri count inherited county of Yamalia in deep Siberia. It was so unusual I even helped my great great granddaughter's host get that.

Pope declared crusade for France. As usual it didn't involve any troops, and lost without a single battle.

My grandson inherited Mali. I arranged a few marriages, but it's probably too late for inheritance too happen.

As for culture conversions here's statistics for population of my realm:

• 502 Prussian
• 5 Greek
• 4 Bedouin
• 4 French
• 4 Italian
• 4 Levantine
• 2 Bohemian
• 2 Mongol
• 1 Basque
• 1 Egyptian
• 1 Berber
• 1 Welsh

Huge uprising when Arabia was down to under 30k

It still did absolutely nothing - even with modding to help rebels

It's all so hopeless I'm tempted to just let rebels pre-siege all holdings in target county by event

Emperor of Deccan knows that resistance is futile

I border Deccan thanks to their two random exclave counties in the steppes

Game could easily fit font twice as big, I think it's just limited to some max size.

Monocultures

I thought about splitting that into multiple cultures in a single group.

However, since EU4 empires have bonus of free acceptance of your whole primary culture group, it would have literally zero gameplay significance for all that work