Socotra: Part 10: 1533-1540: The Golden Age of Socotran Hegemony

It's been very long time since I last played this campaign due to lack of time, and it doesn't seem like I'll have any more time soon, so let's do the final episode just to close things up.

I needed a lot of paper mana to finish my idea groups, and I didn't particularly want too much AE, so I mostly expanded by vassal core return.

As Timurids broke their alliance with Ming, and were busy in some silly war against Delhi, I did a quick one on them to seize their coast for my vassals, taking just two provinces for myself to cut them from the sea completely. Then I diplovassalized two recently shrunk Indian countries Mewar and Delhi, and returned some of their cores.

I needed to spend some paper mana to get sites of 3 monuments, from Pasai, Pegu, and Ayutthaya, also cutting Ayutthaya from the sea, bringing that Indian Ocean Mare Nostrum ideal closer. This got me to rare 100.0% OE, but as a small secret you can actually get to 100.9% before you start getting bad events - back then they coded it, there was no fractional OE, and the game didn't have any way to represent ">100% OE" condition, so they made it ">=101% OE".

Then I remembered, there's this Golden Age button. I only even used it for +10 max absolutism, because it made Court and Country so much easier. But it's not really needed in recent patches. Golden Age has one more fun ability - +10% goods produced.

So I started the Golden Age, and that got me over 1000 monthly income, and let me press the Economic Hegemon button.

This sort of messes up my diplomatic game, as -50 opinion with everyone else makes diplovassalizing even harder than having unique religion already did. But it would let me get ridiculous amounts of money. If I were to continue, but I don't have time, so this is as good a closure as this campaign gets.

In the end, I never got my mission tree. The Mamluks were just too ambitious of a formable tag for an OPM to rush it. Even if I fought them a lot earlier, it would still be far too many wars to annex them. That's a good lesson, if you play custom nation, plan where you're getting mission trees a bit better.

I never even completed my custom idea set, being one idea short, and 20 years away from Economic Hegemony ticking up to the max and giving me stacking -20% minimum autonomy in territories.

Ideas I took were just as OP as I thought, especially Goods Produced was just plain ridiculous. Infantry Fire was great, but it still required some attention early game if you're playing an small country, as enemies having much bigger armies sort of balances it out.

There was some anti-synergy between vassalization acceptance and going Ibadi. And generally going Ibadi just wasn't worth the hassle, I wouldn't get warscore discount against Sunnis until so late most of the Sunnis were gone anyway, and it would have made my early game so much easier.

Considering how little time I have, and how many other games there are, this might very well be my last EU4 game. I'll try to post the final version of Fun and Balance sometime soon.

Socotra at start of its Golden Age

Socotra: Part 09: 1526-1533: Great Pyramids of Socotra

I went to a big war with the Mamluks, but even with big province warscore discounts, it will still be more than two 100% wars to fully conquer them.

After that, my province warscore cost stacking really started working, and I had:

• -25% vs other religions from custom ideas
• -25% vs other religions from age bonus
• -5% vs other religion from Mecca monument

Which meant I could take half of Vijayanagar in one war. And this will only stack higher.

And so I was slowly expanding in Africa, India, and Indonesia, slowly turning the Indian Ocean into Mare Nostrum.

I have a small side quest to do of going into Ayutthaya for their -10% AE +15% gov cap monument, and there's also +1 diplo rep +2 diplo relations monument in Pegu as well, and +2% missionary strength and +2 tolerance of true faith in Pasai (Muslim only). Other monuments in the region are either religion locked or not that relevant anyway.

My income keeps going higher and higher, and it went from 630 to 770 in seven years, really close to economic hegemony. Taking economic hegemony will unfortunately make vassal game harder, especially since I have a rare religion. There are some fairly big countries that are practically asking to become my vassals like Mewar and Aq Qoyunlu.

Weirdly Venice is second richest at 146, is it some DLC power creep there? That never happened in old patches.

There are some annoying Portuguese and Castilian settlers in Cape area. I don't want a distraction of fighting them right now.

Timurids and Ming broke their alliance and rivalled each other instead, so I might clean up that border at some point.

So much purple but you can't even see my name on the map, so there's still more work to be done.

Socotra: Part 08: 1516-1526: Going East

Haasa rejoined as my vassal, and this way they forgot that I once demanded their religious conversion from them, Breenter scenario. This costs 25 prestige and a lot of hassle, vs spending 100 prestige on placating them 5 times, but it's so much more hassle. It's even better when making someone forget that I changed their religious group, that would normally cost 200 prestige to forget.

I got to max prestige, became empire, then threw all that prestige away into negatives to disinherit bad heir, and placating some vassals.

Something I didn't really know until now is that generic missions are no longer totally bad. They basically stapled "get claims on all neighboring provinces/areas" on half of the missions, extremely convenient.

I got some Indian vassals, then waged a few small wars to return their cores. Well, might as well keep going East, so I took parts of Ceylon, then finally got to some Indonesian wars.

I paid Hungary for Colonialism, but it's going to take quite a while to reach me. With capital area fully colonial, I was still at only 6.5% of adoption.

I used a small new exploit with Espionage Ideas, where there's government reform that lets you revoke privileges from estates ignoring their loyalty and influence. This sounds trivial (other than for things like bypassing Ottoman and Polish disasters, and rushing absolutism) but there's an exploit. There's merchant privilege that gives +3 mercantilism on being granted, and just -20% loyalty (capped at 0%) at being revoked, so I got my mercantilism to 100%, and they'll get over it soon enough.

Technically, maxing out mercantilism is not optimal for world conquest, as it's only helpful in contested trade nodes, and eventually you'll be having 100% of most of your trade nodes. And then you want to give trade companies as much trade power % as possible with minimum land. Mercantilism gives trade power bonus to both trade companies and non-trade-company land, and the way Paradox math works, for really huge empires mercantilism is potentially bad, and there's no way to get rid of it. But that only matters when you're so ridiculously huge you don't care about money anyway. For normal countries, this exploit is great, +200% province trade power, and also +10% merchant loyalty equilibrium (ironically), and +100% embargo efficiency. As well as colonial nation liberty desire penalty, but for the player it doesn't even matter that much.

My income went from 420 to 630 in another decade, even with pissed off merchants. It's really not far for economic hegemony.

So much beautiful purple, but still very poor map placement due to Socotra's shape. Even if we do Indian  Ocean Mare Nostrum, it won't fix my font placement, as EU4 won't color the ocean purple.

Conversion has been going quite well even without religious ideas. Religious ideas used to be A tier, but the game is throwing so many conversion bonuses at the player (especially monuments and government reforms) these days, I don't think it's still the case as at some point they just become redundant. Religious isn't bad, just less key.

Socotra: Part 07: 1509-1516: Socotran Renaissance

It was the time to break the Mamluks.

My infantry bonus that was stupidly strong at first fell down to just +57%, and now armies contain artillery as well, so it's really even less than that. And my numerous vassals' armies don't have that bonus either.

There was even a big battle where I was attacker against mountain fort in Tabuk, and had to throw my entire army to only narrowly win with bigger losses than the Mamluks. Oh well, it served its goals in the most difficult early game.

On the other hand God blessed me with a 5 siege general by pure luck.

Once I got past Tabuk, the rest was easy, and I cut the Mamluks in half, took Jerusalem and Petra monuments, one Syria province for a vassal, and some Mediterranean ports so I can buy institutions. And I finally paid Tunis to sell me Renaissance, for some ridiculous price.

Protestantism started in Europe just as my troops were crossing into Mamluk territory, starting with Sweden.

I had so much trouble with unruly vassals, that I just converted my non-Ibadi vassals Haasa, Mushasha, and Pattani and if they really want to go, they can leave. They'll rejoin later anyway. Haasa left, but they'll rejoin at some point soon.

I finally managed to get Renaissance, 66 years late, hopefully next institutions won't be this bad. I can buy them from just about anyone, and the penalty isn't that bad yet.

I could become an empire, but I'll need to farm some prestige to get to 75. Fortunately that's the last time in the campaign where prestige will matter.

I got my income up to 420.

One small thing that didn't go right, is that Portugal managed to colonize Cape before I got it in my reach, so now they're getting free merchant from South Africa trade node, not me.

I intentionally paused expanding for a bit, as I really needed Renaissance and I had too many unruly vassals already. It can all resume now.

Socotra: Part 06: 1497-1509: Economic Boom Before The Second Mamluk War

I kept bribing countries to join my realm. Medina came with a nice bonus of my 3rd missionary (2nd was from Defender of the Faith) from holding both Mecca and Medina, even though Mecca can't be converted yet.

Baluchistan was left barely alive from Indian wars, so they joined as well. I fought Indians, but only took core returns from them. I plan to go so hard on AE conquering the Mamluks, I don't want that coalition to spread to India. It was mostly just opportunistic, free clay is free clay.

I took Kilwa's 3 more gold mines, destated Magagascar to setup some trade companies, and in five years 1497-1502 my income grew from 200 to 250 per month. By 1590 it got to 290 gold per month. Mostly spamming trade company investments, workshops, and manufactories. It's not that far away from economic hegemony at 1000, but hegemony means -50 relations with everyone except my subjects, and that sort of clashes with expansion through vassals.

Hormuz and Mushasha were a bit too big to get vassalized, so I allied them, curried some favors, used favors to make them return cores to my vassals, and then oh wow, you guys are so small now, would you like to be my vassals by any chance?

I wanted to use vassal cores against the Timurids as well, but they somehow allied Ming, and I don't want to get involved in that kind of hassle just yet.

So many vassals meant they decided that they're stronger than me and started behaving disloyally. Maybe I'm overdoing vassals a bit.

Well, truce timer with the Mamluks is over, so it's time for another war. This time there are no vassal cores left, just sheer aggression, still at -40% AE, and full warscore cost against their full warscore worth of 452%. But the age is coming to its end, Mecca is slowly getting converted, and soon I'll be getting my warscore discounts.

I used to really like religious ideas, but I'm doing pretty well without them:

• +1 base missionary
• +1 missionary from Defender of the Faith
• +1 missionary from Custodian of the Holy Cities
• +2% base missionary strength
• +1.5% missionary strength from tier 4 reform
• +2% missionary strength from advisor
• +1% missionary strength from positive stability
• +1% missionary strength from state edict
• +0.3% missionary strength from mysticism (I'm not even paying attention to it much)
• +2% missionary strength vs heretics from some event
• merchants spreading religion (only against Fetishists for now, against Hindus in India later)

And soon I'll get Jerusalem monument for extra +1 missionary and extra +3% missionary strength vs heretics. With all that, religious ideas seem really redundant except I guess for CB.

The plan to quickly conquer Cairo, and become the Mamluks to get their mission tree sort of relied of Ottomans helping, but they barely conquered Albania.

The backup plan of becoming Persia or Mughals would require fighting Timurids and their ally Ming over and over, so that's even worse.

Maybe I'll be able to at least grab Renaissance from all this, as Mamluks already have it.

Socotra: Part 05: 1489-1497: Ibadi Conquest of Mecca

Things have been going really smoothly. The gold is piling up, most battles are one sided stackwipes, and minor countries are lining up to join the great Socotran Kingdom.

I didn't get any mana, sieging, or religious conversion bonuses yet, so there's been some issues with these. In retrospect, picking Ibadi was probably not worth it, at least not early game. The biggest hurdle so far was the mod disabling dev pushing for institutions and limiting institution spread, so Renaissance is still barely past Cyprus.

Anyway, it's time to stop dillydallying and challenge the Mamluks. As minor side quests I converted Hormuz and Medina to Ibadi, and they'll likely join as vassals in the future.

And from the Mamluks I took all my vassals' cores, some coastline, and Mecca. I can't even use Mecca, as I'd need to convert it first, and it has -5% Religious Center, -2% Sunni, and -1.3% development modifiers to conversion. I can maybe just barely overcome this, but even then it would take agas and I have so much other clay to convert. Even with two missionaries (second from Defender of the Faith), and my merchants doing extra conversions (only of Fetishists, not Sunnis), I barely get 65% religious unity. Again, going Sunni would simply be easier.

It didn't even cost that much AE. I have -46.3% AE right now, -10% from Hanbali Muslim school, -10% from age ability, -20% from Espionage ideas, and -6.3% from current prestige. I don't have a build to stack it, and soon the age ability will end. There's a monument in Ayutthaya that gives -10% more, but fighting there would be really awkward.

I finally got over 200 gold per month, Ming is second with 80.

I got my first colonist too, and with that free explorer from estates. For now I sent him to colonize some high dev islands near Madagascar, but soon I'll settle Cape.

Renaissance finally reached Cairo from their Cyprus former vassal, so maybe I can figure out some way to get it, like by conquering Cairo. This game is definitely more intense this without possibility of dev pushing institutions. Once I get access to Europe, next institutions shouldn't be too bad.

Mamluk War took a while, but it wasn't particularly hard. My infantry bonus is worth a bit less now that artillery joined the armies, but it's still quite strong.

I thought I'd conquer Mamluks to become the Mamluks and steal their mission tree, but that's 5 more wars at full warscore. Fun fact - massive warscore discounts are coming my way real soon. It would still be easier if Ottomans helped from the other side.

Socotra: Part 04: 1482-1489: Mostly Peaceful Expansion

I was the richest country in the world by a good margin, before I was anywhere close to being a great power. I wasn't even a kingdom until 1485 - due to endless bad prestige events, I couldn't get 50 prestige necessary. I ended up giving away prestige privilege to merchants, and prestige for conversions privilege to the clergy, and then I had to do some prestige farming on top of that.

I got to admin tech 6, and I overpaid like crazy for it as I still had no hopes of getting Renaissance. This unlocked workshops, which are normally already decent, but +2 flat good produced interacts crazy well with their +50% production income.

I did some fighting, but mostly I just bribes everyone around me to be my vassal. That's before a single vassalization acceptance bonus. My vassal swarm is already getting a bit unruly, so I'll need to integrate a bunch before I ask more countries, but there's still volunteers out there. For a while I thought that maybe vassals not taking diplo slots is a bit overpowered, but then they count their strength together against you (unlike some DLC subjects), so maybe it's not actually that OP.

Just because I'm the richest country in the world doesn't mean I have enough money, Kilwa still has 3 gold mines that are rightfully mine. But that part of the world is nearly conquered, and soon I'll need to decide to turn North or East.

But the whole Indonesia expansion, seems somewhat pointless right now, trade from there goes either to India, or to Cape, not Zanzibar, so I can't even get it yet. I think it used to go to Zanzibar a few patches ago, but I might be misremembering.

At first it seemed that Ottomans would recover and go challenge the Mamluks, but it looks like they can't even handle Albania, so I'll need to fight the Mamluks all by myself. They have >500% total warscore cost (I'll get discounts but much later), and the AE would be crazy as well.

I think I might be able to take over all of Indonesia with just bribes, but that's a slow and low priority process.

Another option is going for India as I can claim them from Maldives and Vijayanagar rivalled me.

My backup plans of forming Persia or Mughals don't look so great with this kind of Timurids, I'll likely be better off just facing the Mamluks.