taw's gaming: God Empress of Prussia: Part 15: 1559-1564: Aztec Revenge Time

I integrated another batch of 10 vassals.

I had to suffer 192% OE for a while, so obviously every rebel came out, and my manpower went very negative.

I thought it would be better now that I had only one round of that instead of 3 or 4, but really it didn't, everyone rebelled, and second rebellions don't happen due to -100 recent uprising.

If they removed or toned down "recent uprising" mechanic and instead reduced rebel spawn to match, that would lead to more interesting choices. Right now, everyone's going to rebel once no matter what.

I still did a bit better, by raising autonomy on provinces I really didn't want to fight like islands or random low development provinces not next to castles, and then defending castles against rebels if possible. In the end it took just two years to get country back under control, and I had to merge my army down to size, but I didn't hire a single merc.

Well, +30% manpower from my national ideas finisher definitely helped here, I didn't have that previous time.

After that, it was time for the payback against the Aztecs. I called in Inca, all my CNs, and tried to use my navy well.

Of course AI had no interest whatsoever in engaging my fleet, so I had a choice of either babysitting them, or giving Aztecs pretty much naval superiority. Attempt at using "hunt enemy fleets" mission failed just as miserably as you can imagine. Naval power is just as useless as in real life.

While Ming had the most effective fort system at protecting their country, Aztecs had about the least - with all forts clumped together in Mexico with smaller second clump in Arizona, and most of their country completely unfortified. What it was good at was preventing me from getting any warscore - as forts were so deep inland, mostly on mountains, and they wouldn't actually engage me.

Aztec war turned out to be much more tedious than I expected, so I took very little - Panama area for Venezuela with 2 forts, and one province for New Prussia with center of trade.

Another reason why I let Aztecs get away with just 65% warscore worth of concessions was that Rajastan attacked my tributary Yarkand again, and flipping back and forth to manage both was just not fun. That's unfortunate about Paradox games - wars are fun only as long as they fit on the screen.

I separate peaced the Indians again, taking 3 fort provinces, just to make future wars less tedious. The game could really use a feature where I could outright demolish any forts I occupy - or dismantle them via peace terms.

My ally Jianzhou who attacked Korea when Ming was too busy to defend them got wrecked by Korea alone. That's what being 4 techs behind on mil does. Korea got back their borders, and Jianzhou's vassal Buryatia became independent - I offered them protection in this dangerous part of the world.