How is your EU3 Game going?

[Bowsling]

Wow, all that in 60 years! You could probably pull off a WC at this point.

 

[Tee Kay]

Watch out for Austria!

 

[Bowsling]

Watch out for Austria! Bohemia!

Fixed it for you.

 

[Tee Kay]

Fixed it for you.

No, not fixed. Austria is the closer threat and also may even be more powerful in absolute terms.

The only non-threatening Austria is a non-existant Austria.

 

[Bowsling]

The only non-threatening Austria is a non-existant Austria.

Hehe. Very true.

Also, more Scandinavian shenanigans:

 

[Optical]

Nice Ragusa game, make a united Balkania.

That's basically the idea. If I can get my inflation down...

I have a suspicion I was just looking at that map over at Paradox.

Probably.

Wow, all that in 60 years! You could probably pull off a WC at this point.

Simple trick: mercenaries, and take down Montenegro right at the start. You just need to be lucky enough to have a Montenegro not guaranteed/allied, so I DoWed day 1 and then waited for my mercenaries.
Also, Claims on our Rivals and three Boundary Disputes.

Watch out for Austria!

Austria is the closer threat and also may even be more powerful in absolute terms.

The only non-threatening Austria is a non-existant Austria.

Yeah, that's definitely a threatening Austria. Not sure yet how I'm going to deal with them, Westernising is at this point the #1 priority which will hopefully make that easier.

Hehe. Very true.

Also, more Scandinavian shenanigans
[snip]

...Gelre??

 

[Bowsling]

And Prussia too!

 

[SamSniped]

No, not fixed. Austria is the closer threat and also may even be more powerful in absolute terms.

The only non-threatening Austria is a non-existant Austria.

The Austria-Hungary and Austria-Bohemia alliances that formed in the 1500s were struck down by my Italy before ~1600. Now my only threats are Ming (although is looks like it's about to fall apart), Japan (somehow Japan can into Middle East...), the Big Bleu Blob (who is on my kill-it-quickly list), Persia (which is fricking HUGE), and the Not-Quite-Spain-Called-Castile-Portugal alliance (I took some of the needed provinces from Castile, and vassalized the now OPM Aragon). And none of them will dare attack the international superpower known as Italy

Pics tomorrow.

 

[Duke of Britain]

Hmmkay. Perhaps it's time I try out a beta-patch, then. It is somewhat more difficult to conquer Japan this way .

OK, that worked. Whew!

And, you know your naval tech is awful when...


And those admirals were of similar skill. Two threedeckers and three frigates is enough to defeat 100 caravels? At least Portugal was scared enough that they stayed at port in Lisboa until I occupied the city. But I'm glad I challenged Portugal before Great Britain with this result!

Similar skill? no.
1 more maneuver is a lot, and your fleet had WAYYY too many ships, see if they would ever beat a fleet of 60 big ships with a 6 maneuver admiral

 

[Quintillus]

And Prussia too!

Is that Prussia in Finnmark? I was wondering how it was still uncolonized, but that is about Prussia's color, too.

The Austria-Hungary and Austria-Bohemia alliances that formed in the 1500s were struck down by my Italy before ~1600. Now my only threats are Ming (although is looks like it's about to fall apart), Japan (somehow Japan can into Middle East...), the Big Bleu Blob (who is on my kill-it-quickly list), Persia (which is fricking HUGE), and the Not-Quite-Spain-Called-Castile-Portugal alliance (I took some of the needed provinces from Castile, and vassalized the now OPM Aragon). And none of them will dare attack the international superpower known as Italy

Pics tomorrow.

Do post pics of Japan in the middle east. Especially if it's the eastern Mediterranean Middle East.

Similar skill? no.
1 more maneuver is a lot, and your fleet had WAYYY too many ships, see if they would ever beat a fleet of 60 big ships with a 6 maneuver admiral

Is one maneuver that much of a difference in a battle? I did notice that my positioning during the battle was nothing short of awful, but attributed it mostly to having a quarter of the naval technology.

If my fleet can't beat 5 non-transport ships, I don't think it's necessary to worry about even defeating 30 ships with a 3 maneuver admiral. Plans are on the line to update it to a 200-capital-ship fleet, but I'm not sure they'll be followed through with.

Unless you mean to say that bigger isn't always better? My natural inclination was to apply the Texas doctrine and figure my fleet just wasn't big enough to defeat Portugal's advanced navy. After all, since when was it easier to defeat 20 spearmen with a tank than 10 spearmen?

 

[W|M]

There's a bug in D&T (I'm not sure if it's in vanilla) whereby if you have too many ships (about 100+) fighting in one battle, they'll always get massively defeated.

 

[uat2d]

There's a bug in D&T (I'm not sure if it's in vanilla) whereby if you have too many ships (about 100+) fighting in one battle, they'll always get massively defeated.

It's part of the game, it's about maneuver, too many ships will make them ineffective, either use a better Admiral or less ships, more than 5000 cannons is not advisable.

Paradox implemented it to avoid naval doom-stacks.

 

[Arakhor]

How do you check how many cannons you have in a fleet?

 

[SamSniped]

The Austria-Hungary and Austria-Bohemia alliances that formed in the 1500s were struck down by my Italy before ~1600. Now my only threats are Ming (although is looks like it's about to fall apart), Japan (somehow Japan can into Middle East...), the Big Bleu Blob (who is on my kill-it-quickly list), Persia (which is fricking HUGE), and the Not-Quite-Spain-Called-Castile-Portugal alliance (I took some of the needed provinces from Castile, and vassalized the now OPM Aragon). And none of them will dare attack the international superpower known as Italy

Pics tomorrow.

Pics as promised-

Spoiler Parts, then whole map :

Pics 4 & 5 have Japan in Africa (they used to have the SW corner of the Middle East). Pics 5 & 6 have Ming occupying the Swahili capital. Oh, and Persia is in #6 in South Africa.

 

[Quintillus]

It's part of the game, it's about maneuver, too many ships will make them ineffective, either use a better Admiral or less ships, more than 5000 cannons is not advisable.

Paradox implemented it to avoid naval doom-stacks.

Huh, that's unfortunate, I was hoping to create just such a naval doom-stack. Wouldn't you think my admiral could be smart enough to send in, say, 15 of the ships at a time and not friendly-fire the fleet to pieces?

Doesn't this also pose a problem for non-western nations? How are you supposed to defeat the Spanish armada if you're tecnologically backwards and can't build a supermassive fleet? They'd tear apart small technologically backwards fleets.

It looks like this means it's even counterproductive to add more ships, not just diminishing returns? It'd be tragicomic if I tried this with 200 ships against 1 ship and all 200 of mine got sunk because there were too many of them.

How do you check how many cannons you have in a fleet?

I don't know if there's a fast way, but back of the envelope, I think a Caravel has 25 cannons, so times 100 that'd be about 2500 I had there (a few Carracks were there I think). But the 5000 figure might assume better ships - most European nations will have better technology before they'll want or need to build that many capital ships.

Pics as promised-

Spoiler Parts, then whole map :

Pics 4 & 5 have Japan in Africa (they used to have the SW corner of the Middle East). Pics 5 & 6 have Ming occupying the Swahili capital. Oh, and Persia is in #6 in South Africa.

That's a gigantic Italy. Are you going for dominating whatever comes up for dominationability?

That's a decent Japan, but I was hoping for more Asian Middle East. I've seen Japan (or the daimyos, in Divine Wind) in East Africa occasionally, not sure exactly what it is about East Africa that Japan likes so much. I forgot you weren't on Divine Wind; Japan seems to be expanding more thanks to that. And I agree, that's a pretty big Persia. You should try fighting Persia, France, Spain, and (if they have a good navy) Britain all at the same time!

Looks like France, Persia, and Spain are the only

 

[SamSniped]

I prefer to deal with my enemies one at a time
And yes, I just conquer whatever I feel like. I went after Castile for the lolz

 

[Duke of Britain]

Huh, that's unfortunate, I was hoping to create just such a naval doom-stack. Wouldn't you think my admiral could be smart enough to send in, say, 15 of the ships at a time and not friendly-fire the fleet to pieces?

Doesn't this also pose a problem for non-western nations? How are you supposed to defeat the Spanish armada if you're tecnologically backwards and can't build a supermassive fleet? They'd tear apart small technologically backwards fleets.

It looks like this means it's even counterproductive to add more ships, not just diminishing returns? It'd be tragicomic if I tried this with 200 ships against 1 ship and all 200 of mine got sunk because there were too many of them.

No, just don't use a huge bigship-only stack, in my Portugal game i can use some 60-80 mixed fleet with no problems
of course, usually i have good admirals and my tech is good as well.

I don't know if there's a fast way, but back of the envelope, I think a Caravel has 25 cannons, so times 100 that'd be about 2500 I had there (a few Carracks were there I think). But the 5000 figure might assume better ships - most European nations will have better technology before they'll want or need to build that many capital ships.

Yeah, but if they technology is superior they'll tear you apart anyway thanks to the combat modifiers (you can see yours in the same screen you change maintance)
If it was on land it would end up the same.

 

[W|M]

A 50 big ship stack is safe from friendly fire, even in the 18th Century.

 

[Duke of Britain]

A 50 big ship stack is safe from friendly fire, even in the 18th Century.

No. Just, no.
50 Man o'Wars would not be easy to manage in the 18th century, and if you want to compare to real life, it would have even more small ships...
The Admiral of such fleet would have a very hard time coordinating it, and it would definitely be under danger of friendly fire thanks to its size, no fleet is safe of it, unless we are talking about very small numbers...

 

[NBAfan]

No. Just, no.
50 Man o'Wars would not be easy to manage in the 18th century, and if you want to compare to real life, it would have even more small ships...
The Admiral of such fleet would have a very hard time coordinating it, and it would definitely be under danger of friendly fire thanks to its size, no fleet is safe of it, unless we are talking about very small numbers...

Indeed, just ask the Spanish.