Socotra: Part 01: 1444-1455: East African Power

It's been very long time since I played any map games.

So here's a fun mod pack:

• all the usual Fun and Balance, updated to EU4 1.37.2
• subjects use overlord colors (there are some minor coloring glitches with 3-level relationships)
• institution spread nerfs from before
• subjects no longer cost any diplo slots - there are 4 diplo slots for external relations. Paradox keeps adding no-diplo-slots subjects in basically every DLC nowadays, which just shows how diplo slots for subjects were a mistake in the first place, so let's just go for it. You'll no longer get any bonus diplo slots for Strong Duchies.
• as I'm tired of Ottomans blobbing every single game (and of the no-CB Byz opening), I reversed results of battle of Varna one day before game start, and released all Ottoman Balkans to East Rome, Bulgaria, and Albania. Ottomans keep their cores, and they have all the stupid bonuses Paradox gave them, so they might still dominate. I'm not going to interact much with that part of the map early game, so this change is just for fun.

I don't really know if current Fun and Balance really balances anything anyore, as Paradox ran wild with power creep recently, and I'm not playing often enough to keep up with that.

So anyway, recently I've been thinking about how OP custom nations became lately, so I'm playing a custom nation this time, Ibadi Mahri Socotra (Socotra is actually Coptic in vanilla, but that doesn't work for the build I want). But the only way to get mission trees is to form one of the nations. In this part of the world, I think my options with good OP mission trees are Mamluks, Persia, Mughals, or maybe Byzantium or Italy.

I took 400 points to pack my nation full of overpowered ideas. It's totally possible to do extremely overpowered for just 200 points, but I sort of want to try multiple different overpowered things.

The set is:

• Tradition: +1 Infantry Fire
• Tradition: +2 Goods Produced
• 1st: +30% Reform Progress Growth
• 2nd: +1 Colonist
• 3rd: +1% Yearly Army Professionalism
• 4th: +30 Vassalization Acceptance
• 5th: -25% Warscore Cost vs Other Religions
• 6th: +10% Administrative Efficiency
• 7th: -20% Minimum Autonomy in Territories
• Ambition: -25% Province Warscore Cost

So by the time I finish my third idea group I'll have:

• overpowered economy (full cheese, Ibadi throws +10% goods produced on top)
• overpowered early game army (just one of two possible Infantry bonuses)
• basically free exploration ideas with +1 colonist (estates now give)
• -50% warscore cost (which I'll stack even higher)
• free 100% professionalism
• everybody lining up to be my vassal
• overpowered trade companies
• and +10% admin efficiency on top of that
• +30% Reform Progress Growth is nothing special, I just rarely get to these late reforms, so I wanted to give it a try

To do proper modifier stacking, I'll need Diplomatic (for warscore cost), Espionage (for vassalization acceptance), and Expansion (for minimum autonomy in territories). Administrative is always a good ideas, as I got no coring cost or gov cap bonuses. Religious would be great as I'm playing Ibadi, and free CB sounds great, but I might get away without Religious thanks to monuments, we'll see.

For my starting provinces, I took 6 small islands for total of 25dev:

• Socotra
• Qamari next to Madagascar
• Maldives
• Nias, Belitung, and Christmas Island in Indonesia

Mainly to have CBs everywhere from Madagascar to Java, not really for sake of land as such. The only thing that's Fun and Balance specific here is provinces scattered so much, in vanilla max distance is a lot lower, so I'd probably need to put my capital in Maldives for this kind of build.

With 2/2/2 ruler, 0/0/0 heir, Iqta government, and 0/0/0 spouse. Iqta government disallows spouses, but custom nations are a bit broken, so if you use load ideas function, you can get 4 more points with 0/0/0 spouse who's going to disappear right away, first giving you 4 more points to spend. This fits exactly in 400 point limit.

I get to choose my Islamic school, so I took one for -10% aggressive expansion.

Campaign goal is some kind of Indian Ocean Mare Nostrum, probably with Suez Canal and grabbing Italy for convenient trade end node.

Anyway, time to get started. And the first goal is to get as much clay as I can. 1/1/1 provinces are just amazing, as I'm getting basically 10 free dev per province from my ideas. 30dev of such crappy lands is like 130dev to me, and Arabian peninsula is full of it.

Standard opening, seize land, gran mana privileges, hire all advisors, disinherit 0/0/0 heir, the usual stuff.

Then I went on conquering Madagascar and East African coast. A lot of top tier 1/1/1 land at low coring cost and low AE. Even with extra strong infantry, I ran out of manpower real fast, but I have plenty of money for mercs, even going over force limit on mercs is no big deal. I need to be careful with my ships, as I don't have any naval bonuses, and my navy is mostly transports, fortunately AI is too dumb to do anything about it.

I increased Socotra's size from 25dev (plus virtual 60dev) to 141dev, plus equivalent of virtual 300dev from my ideas. I have a lot of rebellions, and coring to do, and other issues to deal with right now, but once I'm done, I'll likely have great power level income. Before even reaching any of the 6 nearby gold mines, which would also gain free 10dev equivalent each. If I get gold mines of Kilwa, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, I'll probably have world's second highest income after Ming.

I have no good way to get Renaissance, as all my land is terribly for deving, but we can wait a bit with this.

A handful of 6 tiny islands. Nice thing about custom start is that I can choose my color.

Just some very aggressive opportunistic expansion into crappy land. Arabia is even crappier (which is great ROI), but there were a few too many alliances, and Mamluks now took a good chunk, so maybe later.

So I made Ottomans lose all their Balkan lands to see what would happen. The game barely started, and they completely reverted my Varna change. Poland even rejected Lithuania PU, so their main opponent is not there.

Well, it's potentially convenient for me, as Mamluks have been aggressively expanding into Arabia, and I wouldn't mind someone cutting them down to size.

And the map looks so much better when subjects (of France, Hungary, Poland, Mamluks, Timurids etc.) are colored with overlord's colors. That's the main reason I came back to EU4.