QuarkJets posted:

And smartly choosing where you fight. So many times people have come into this thread complaining about getting destroyed in combat over and over and it turns out that they're attacking over rivers and also letting the AI have all of the defensive terrain advantages.

And with the most recent fort changes it's now easier than ever to get your enemy into a position that is hugely advantageous to you. A fort in the mountains is a huge advantage against against a larger, superior enemy force.

MrBling posted:

With Rights of Man I've seen the AI do some questionable warfare. Like, straight up running a smaller stack into my very much larger army without any backup around. I guess it does some calculations to make it appear favourable for it.

No question that the AI has gotten a lot better, but sometimes you just get that headscratching moment of an enemy 10-stack running head first into your 15+ stack to try and relieve a fort siege.

Lord Hypnostache posted:

Thanks to the discussion about Ethiopia in the last few pages, I think I'll have to give them another shot after failing miserably a couple of times. Last game I made the mistake of prioritizing desert provinces for forts, instead of mountains. I tried to maximize the attrition, which helped against Mamluks and their Moroccan allies, but once I found myself sharing a border with Ottomans, their ridiculously large armies melted through my forts without taking considerable losses. I think the difficulty with Ethiopia is that you have to plan so much ahead for the next opponent. When conquering the Horn of Africa, you are preparing to face Mamluks, and when facing Mamluks you are preparing to face Ottomans.

RabidWeasel posted:

Oh gently caress, I just kind of realised that the fort changes have hosed my almost 100% consistent Tabarestan strategy because I can't siege QQ's capital and get a defensive bonus any more

A shame because that first war was always incredibly fun and every other strategy I've seen involves sitting on your rear end for ages and trying to use allies

Koramei posted:

started doing an Ethiopia run too after those past posts, here's where I'm at:



I've gotten very lucky with the Ottomans. They didn't glitch out and get stuck in tech 6 for the whole campaign after inhereting Crimea like they did in my last campaign (in fact, they beat up Spain and have southern Italy), but they still haven't focused their attention on me- I haven't had a single war with them, and at this point I honestly feel like I could take them and beat the campaign*, if I took out a bunch of loans. I can probably attribute that mostly to luck, but keep in mind there are some things you can do to forestall the inevitable when you're bordering them or Ming- you can see one in the picture. I released Lebanon from the Mamluks (not a vassal, although I'm not far from being able to diplo them) which gives us a nice buffer between us and makes Ottomans hate me markedly less. I also kept a diplomat pretty much permanently on improve relations, and avoided too much AE with the Ottomans at all costs. They've gone and rivaled me now, but there were a good 80 years they had me available as a rival and could have absolutely clowned me if they'd done so, but never actually hit rival on me. Even if they do rival you, you can often keep up good relations and they'll eventually lose interest as long as you don't rival them back and don't give them a good opening. Until you pass a certain size, anyway. It's the same tricks I use regularly in East Asia games when I have a looming Ming on my border and it tends to work pretty well. Still, also helps to get lucky.

I went exploration -> expansion -> quantity. Inflation was an issue for sure, a full half of my income was from the Mutapan gold for probably 50 years until I really got the trade rolling in (just got global trade to fire in Zanzibar) so I had a lot of inflation to buy down even with the advisor from the burghers. But honestly, I don't think it's worth going economic. Pellisworth mentioned it before but I think it's really worth stressing- AE is the limiting factor in this campaign. You can see I have Hejaz, Ajuuran and Kilwa in positions ripe for the taking, but I just can't risk going for them because it's coalition hell if I take more than a small bite at one time.

So honestly, unconventional as it sounds, I think influence is the way to go, if you don't wanna go into super-colonization mode like I tend to do. The AE reduction is king, reduced annexation cost means you can take even less AE by mostly using vassalizing, and then buy down your inflation with the extra admin points you've saved from not coring things. Diprep will help diplovassalize, and then envoy travel time is actually pretty helpful when you're a huge colonial empire.

Plus, final part of the group that'd help with something I've really come to appreciate in this campaign- increased heir chance and extra prestige. I just hosed up with my last one and am now stuck with a 4,2,2, but before that I've had a string of god-kings and queens through the entire campaign. As Ethiopia, you get an absolutely absurd amount of prestige and legitimacy, which means you can pretty much reroll your heirs constantly if you're stuck with even an average one. Abuse the hell out of this. Aside from the point where I hosed up where I spawned in Printing Press (note: do not do this in Magagascar, the single string of provinces up East Africa do not make for good spreading ground), I've been a tech leader the entire campaign, plus no problem with ideas, coring, and development, plus the inflation I had to buy down. I'm expecting they're gonna nerf disinheriting soon because it can be absurdly overpowered. Maybe only as certain nations though.


*keep in mind you don't actually have to eat your way all the way over to Armenia to get Yerevan for the blessing. Just release them. Taking Constantinople, releasing Armenia and even Antioch too is all possible in one war, as long as you're willing to grind it out with them.

TorakFade posted:

How do I bring India / Spice islands trade to the english channel? It seems it passes through a lot of nodes that siphon lots of ducats out, I have like 9 merchants so I can put them all to steer it but I'm not sure that's optimal. Should I also send some light ships to protect each node?

Also england is crazy, I can keep around a couple full 25k stacks of mercs and still rack in money hand over fist

Koramei posted:

started doing an Ethiopia run too after those past posts, here's where I'm at:

Koramei posted:

You can see I have Hejaz, Ajuuran and Kilwa in positions ripe for the taking, but I just can't risk going for them because it's coalition hell if I take more than a small bite at one time.

really queer Christmas posted:

Since everyone seems to be playing an Ethiopia run right now, I'm wondering when you guys embraced the first couple of institutions. Did you try to get it asap and not let the tech cost rise or did you wait until it was cheap to embrace?

QuarkJets posted:

Say what? I assumed those were your vassals! In my game I ran them AND the nations in madagascar up to >100 AE and it did not matter at all because they are all super weak.

really queer Christmas posted:

Your play through seems to have gone completely different to mine. I'm about 30 years in after you and I'm just getting control of the Zanzibar trade node and trying to make headways into Madagascar. I didn't get lucky with my rulers who were usually below average and re-rolling usually made them even more subpar. Nothing like wasting 50 prestige to get rid of an heir with about 6 points to an heir with 3 points!

The ottomans steamed through the Middle East and had a good chunk of Egypt by 1550, they were helped by getting two long living 6-6-6 rulers. They have like 1500 development and an army of like 200K so I'm feeling real good about my chances

Since everyone seems to be playing an Ethiopia run right now, I'm wondering when you guys embraced the first couple of institutions. Did you try to get it asap and not let the tech cost rise or did you wait until it was cheap to embrace?

Jazerus posted:

Exploration -> Expansion -> Quantity -> Influence, or Influence -> Quantity, is definitely the way to go with Ethiopia. Humanism used to be ridiculously good too, to let you keep Egyptian, etc. as an accepted culture and roll forever without ever raising autonomy on conquered territory, but with a lot of the changes in the last year or so it's fallen to a late game pick if anything.


Colonize South Africa before you go to India or SE Asia so that that node is uncontested, then collect there until you either have enough of a fleet to dominate the West African node and send it on home, or have colonized the West African coast enough to dominate there. You will need to have a fleet on Zanzibar for sure until you take Kilwa's trade centers, which will secure a route from SE Asia to the Cape in South Africa, and then if you want India's trade you'll need to have one in Aden as well.

If you think you're rich now, just wait til you've got trade flowing from China to the Channel.

Koramei posted:

e: also 20 ships is nothing. click on the trade window for the ivory coast and look at the trade power breakdown. by 1650 I'd usually have more on the order of a hundred or more ships in an essential node like that.

Koramei posted:

You don't get AE with the Ottomans when you attack them? Now that Kilwa's Zanzibar provinces are taken I can probably eat them without anyone caring, but Hejaz and Ajuuran cause all kinds of problems still for me. Even the Indonesian teams want to coalition me.

Pellisworth posted:

e: this is where I would suggest Defensive over Quantity, Defensive is imo a better option at punching up against stronger nations like Ottomans, while Quantity certainly is better at expanding against basically everyone else you're fighting. My expansion into SE Asia has been really slow because I colonized most of Ivory Coast like an idiot (don't do this, get the Cape and then focus on SE Asia) and haven't had the forcelimits until recently to maintain large enough armies in both the Middle East and SE Asia.

Koramei posted:

PleasingFungus posted:

this just makes me really wish that there was wasteland between finland and sweden/norway.

Ofaloaf posted:

It's called "Norrland".

Tsyni posted:

All the talk about quantity as a first idea makes me cringe a bit. Quantity definitely is convenient, and Ethiopa can make use of it, expanding against lots of people at once, but wait until you have you 5.0 morale army vs a 7.0 morale army and then you might think twice. Sure, if you're making a poo poo ton of money and can afford lots of mercs it's fine. I am not discouraging its use for Ethiopia, I just remember always taking quantity first when I first started playing the game and how much of a revolution it was switching to defensive (or sometimes offensive) first.

Koramei posted:

I don't agree, 50%+ force limit is a hell of a lot to make up and if you're spending your money on buildings for that (those are expensive buildings, too), you're not spending it on other things that could give you more of a lead in the end. I don't think quantity is a good universal pick like I once did, but Ethiopia's in a position to take extremely good advantage of it- some of the worst land in the game, but access to oodles of trade income. Army size affects a hell of a lot of things in this game beyond the wars themselves, it makes it a lot easier to snag alliances with the European powers to help you beat up on the Ottomans, for instance, and also to dissuade them from attacking you until you're ready. Defensive also forces you to grind things out a lot more, whereas with quantity you can potentially have the numbers to take the initiative.


speaking of:





I'd done most of offensive too by the time I triggered the war (1615) to be fair, which helped a lot on their forts. Still a pretty big grind, but it only took one showdown war; Constantinople + releasing Armenia is just something like 65% war score, so I only had to carve my way through Anatolia.

Fister Roboto posted:

There really needs to be some sort of "cannot meaningfully contribute to the war" modifier for both answering a CTA and for negotiating white peace. I hate getting stuck in a war for up to 5 years because my primary target called in some shithole OPM halfway around the world.

Pellisworth posted:

Don't undervalue Morale. Morale wins battles.