Italy Megacampaign: Part 27: 1783: The End

I planned this as megacampaign, but it won't happen. EU4 to Vic2 converter doesn't look like it's going to get updated ever, and it's not just a matter of waiting longer, as next EU4 patches will come out, and mess with the export.

The world also turned out to be a lot more centralized than I hoped. Even with mid-game tag switch and taking things really slow last century or so, I can't see this being much of a challenge in Vic2. I planned to split the world a bit, but then it would be less an export and more a fresh scenario.

I felt that early game was a lot more fun than late game. It's not just the matter of being overpowered - there's just more meaningful entities to interact with. Early on there's like hundred countries that matter - if I'm Venice, then I need to care about Austria, Hungary, Ottomans, Pope, Milan, Aragon, France, Mamluks, and so on. And then their allies, and rivals. It's a rich complex universe.

By late game it's just a few fellow blobs, and the only thing keeping those trivial minors around is the guarantee spam blobs started doing a few patches ago.

Previous time I attempted to play till the end, late game lag forced me to stop early. This time late game performance was totally fine.

Some conclusions about experimental mods:

• restoring tech groups brought tech differential back (except with Ming and its free mana), but I'm not sure if that really makes the game better
• adding strong HRE emperor buffs is a great change
• unrest and rebel buffs mattered relatively little, but were mostly positive
• warscore changes mattered relatively little, but were mostly positive

As for my next Paradox campaigns, it doesn't look like anything new is coming to EU4, and the newly Imperator: Rome is universally panned as more an empty shell for DLCs to complete than a genuine complete game. CK2 on the other hand, that keeps getting great new content. Or I could check out what's up with new Kaiserreich.

Now that Google Plus is dead, I have two blogs where I sometimes post gaming content. Generally I'll post everything to my main blog, unless it's a campaign with crazy number of episodes, in which case it will go here. It's not great, but I don't want to open even more blogs.

Italy Megacampaign: Part 26: 1770-1783: Revolution comes to New World

I got Mong Kawng as another vassal and expanded them a bit.

I force vassalized Madurai. They were already at war with France and Provence, so I attacked Kikondja guaranteed by France to remove French stack from Madurai's capital. Interestingly Fetishist rebels took over parts of South Africa and defected to Kikondja. Surprise free Cape I guess, I didn't really plan to take it, but I won't say no.

Then it was time to crush Ming. Once more my fleets were too scattered, so I got defeated in early fights. Ming managed to even sink my flagship, but I sank theirs so it was only fair I guess. Another big reason why I was doing so poorly was that Chinese coast counts as inland sea for galley bonus somehow, and I had no galleys.

It was going rather unimpressively on land and sea, so I took some minor concessions and called it a day. Also started major fort and ship building program.

HRE declared a war on my ally Portugal - which by this time should really get renamed to Brazil. I did the silly thing and joined the war. The Revolutionary HRE had 200k mercs, many military ideas by this time, and some bonuses due to being revolutionary. My armies were scattered everywhere, without any mercs, and with fairly few bonuses.

Having to flip between all the different parts of the map definitely did not help. My armies fought extremely poorly overall.

And yet somehow I turned this -40% warscore around. I gathered my scattered navies, and got a lot of warscore this war. Then HRE invasion of South America got wiped out. Then one of Malacca. The HRE took a big bite out of our ally Toulouse, but it was hopeless to even attempt saving. Finally fighting in India got warscore to +1%, and then somehow crept to 10%, with white peace resulting from it all.

492k peasants and 148 ships got lost on attacking side. 301k peasants and 79 ships on defending side. With very little to show for it all.

Now I could get back to the main business of crushing Ming, but somehow still has 62% mandate.

I've been taking long breaks between episodes to maybe see Vic2 converter ready before I finish, but that seems increasingly unlikely. Oh well.

After first battles lost I was quite convinced that we're going to lose this war.