Just finished my first full grand campaign! England, 1444 to 1821, no DLC. Would post screenshots, but they all screwed up badly for some reason :v
Created Great Britain early on, surrendering Maine at the start of the game. Lost most of my French stuff in a bad war, but managed to capture Brittany somewhere down the line, half of which I held for the rest of the game, and managed to hang on to Calais the entire time. Narrowly averted the Wars of the Roses when I somehow managed to prematurely get a Lancaster on the throne.
Anyway, I became the dominant colonial power in Northeastern America. I established the Thirteen Colonies down to about Virginia and west to Michigan, took Newfoundland all the way out to the Northwest Territories, and established a small British Louisiana wedged between French and Spanish territories. Florida, somewhat unimpressively, colonized Florida and most of Louisiana, while Spain and Portugal divided up South America. Spain became the dominant colonial power in Western North America, colonizing straight up to Alaska. (The bastards even colonized just enough east to stop me from coloring the Northwest Territories red >:c) I also grabbed a couple of minor provinces here and there; the Society Islands, the little thing on the edge of the Kalahari, the one island east of the Falklands, and 3/4 of New Zealand (the Ottomans, who colonized Australia, took the northern tips of both islands.)
I conquered Norway and Denmark after the Kalmar Union dissolved. Norway had managed to colonize a little before it kicked the bucket, and later survived by becoming a vassal of Portugal. The tip of Florida remained New Norway for the rest of the game. I never managed to conquer Sweden, because they allied the Commonwealth early on and I couldn't amass a big enough army to fight them and didn't want to compromise my alliance with them. The Livonian Order survived surprisingly long, so I conquered that too. Later on, I somehow managed to conquer Flanders (don't remember how, I think it had something to do with piddly little Brabant getting elected Emperor and teaming up with Burgundy.)
In the 1700s I decided to head the other direction with colonization and vassalized then integrated the Maldives to use as a base from which to attack Asia. I also vassalized some little Indian nation, which later underwent a revolution and became a constitutional republic. We were good friends and they made sure we contributed when Portugal (which ate most of the Deccan territory) asked us to help kill Sind or Bengal.
Anyway, after that, I conquered Japan. It started with Kyushu and Shikoku, then we took on Honshu, conquering half of it in one war and the other half and Hokkaido in another. The whole thing was cored by the end of the game. Meanwhile, I also colonized Eastern Siberia, which was a bit amusing because the Japanese army's idea of getting back at me involved occupying the islands off the tip of Hokkaido and sitting there while I carpet-sieged Honshu.
Toward the end of the game, the Commonwealth got in a Europe-spanning megawar: England, Spain, Austria, and the Commonwealth against France and the Ottomans. The Commonwealth was pretty stronk this game and completely obliterated Russia, but Ottomans were (as you might expect) also quite stronk, painting the Arabian peninsula, Persia, eastern North Africa, a bit of Central Africa I never explored but could infer from the fuzzy edges, and the steppes straight up to Siberia a fine light-green color. The Commonwealth was stronker, though, partially because of their allies and partially because of Russia. The important thing in this war, however, was Spain, because in the peace deal they ate 80% of Aquitaine. This, along with a war against Brabant and Burgundy, weakened and distracted France so much that in 1815 I, with incomplete manpower reserves and a quarter of my army in Japan, attacked France and conquered Normandy, Caux, and Nantes from them.
Religion took a weird turn. Protestantism spawned in Germany and worked its way south, but Reformed also spawned in Germany and the two competed for breathing room while all the major powers (save Scandinavia) remained Catholic. Since I conquered Denmark and Norway, Sweden was the only remaining northern Protestant nation (and they were horrifically boxed in by the Commonwealth and myself.) Strictly Catholic Austria annexed a ton of German minors all the way up to Frisia, as well, meaning that by the end of the game Protestantism was more of a footnote than a religious revolution.
I ended the game lining both sides of the English Channel, getting revenge for the Danelaw and 1066, overlord of modern-day Estonia and Latvia, oppressing Native Americans from New York to Nunavut, sending Britons to the some of the most extreme locations on the Earth, and telling Japan of Jesus and the Pope. I had over 15,000 ducats in the treasury and had bested my arch-nemesis multiple times in a row. My total score was 3rd place, behind only the Ottomans and Ming, and neck-and-neck with the former (their score seriously suffered during the Great War, to the point that they only beat me by 100 points.)
I'm proud of myself. I know that England is a pretty easy nation, and that this was nothing compared to the guys who restore the Roman Empire or conquer the world as Ryukyu, but this was my first time playing a Paradox game straight through from the start to the end, and on Ironman to boot.
I think I'll do a Ming game next. I'd previously feared that I'd get screwed over if I tried playing them without Common Sense, but after this game, I think I'll be alright--by the time I conquered Japan, they'd caught up to me in full in terms of technology, and remained sedentary seemingly out of the AI's thickheadedness rather than out of legitimate paralyzation.
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Topic: Europa Universalis IV (Read 452837 times)