One of my worst EU4-habits is waiting for the 'perfect' time to strike. I don't need to wait for an arbitrary point in time to do what I want to do, I can do it right now too, but no I have to dilly and dally and dawdle until everything is perfect and alright.
In my case I was waiting for my one galley to finish building so my navy would be up to its force limit, before declaring war on Aragon. Only a few days before completion, the Iberian Wedding fired and Castile PU'd Aragon. So much for my dreams of expanding into Italy.
One of my other bad EU4-habits is to trying to play according to a romanticised narrative. That is to say, what I really ought to do now is to break my alliance with Morocco, allowing Portugal and Castile to swoop in and eat them up, and myself to take whatever remains. Instead I'm keeping my alliance with them. I don't how I benefit from this. On one hand I can try and keep the Iberians from expanding into North Africa, on the other I'm not sure that that's going to make much of a difference when they simply colonise all of the Americas.
So I'm blocked from expanding west (Morocco), north (Castile-Aragon), east (Mamluks), and south (Sahara). What I'm doing is biding my time and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. The Ottomans still don't have a border with the Mamluks, but once they do I'll pull them into a war with the Mamluks. My intention is to take at least Alexandria.
I've noticed that Castile and Portugal have broken their alliance. I can smell an opportunity here. As long as Portugal remains allyless, I can join forces with Morocco to take Cueta, and possibly Granada as well (which Portugal ended up annexing, instead of Castile). Once I've taken Alexandria as well, I should have enough ducat inflow to support a larger army and ally France, and join forces with them to eat up Castile. Castile, though, is allied to England, which complicates matters rather. England is usually a really useless ally, but I'm not sure as to whether that's changed in the latest patch.
So no action for now. Just a matter of watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce.
I made a mistake in my last post. It was Portugal who was allied with England, not Castile.
Anyway, I declared war on Portugal and called Morocco in. England joined on Morocco's side. Nothing to worry about, I knew that I and Morocco combined had more land troops and ships, and even if the English navy was too strong for ours as long as we held Cueta we could be sure of being able to cross the strait.
At first war went well. There was no sign of the English, and between me and Morocco we kept the Portuguese navy ineffective. Portugal never dared commit their ships into an entire battle, always retreating when they got outnumbered. The Moroccan army was seiging Cueta when it was attacked by the Portuguese. My own army was just nearby and we jumped in. Even with our superior numbers it was a close-run thing; just my luck that every run every second opponent has a crazy stack of morale modifiers; in this case despite being on the same Military Tech level Portugal had a morale of 4.5 while Tunis' was 3.5. We did win the battle and thanks to the blockade managed to speedily siege down Cueta.
The way lay open to Andalusia. Crossed the Gibraltar, crushed yet another Portuguese army, then sieged down the Granadine provinces. Everything was going swellingly, we had captured 2/3 of the Granadine provinces, Morocco was just about to siege down Malaga... then the English arrived. Again we had superior numbers, but they had superior morale and a defensive bonus thanks to the mountains in Malaga. They defeated us, and the North African armies retreated back across the Atlantic.
Back in Algeria, I regrouped my scattered forces, and set out to make a defense in the Moroccan mountains. The Moroccan idiots decided to sit on Cueta, preventing the Portuguese from moving in. Frustrated, I pulled away my units and to my relief Morocco did the same. Portugal walked in, and we smashed them in Cueta. Then we rushed into Granada, a joint Anglo-Portuguese army smashed us there, we retreated, they followed, we smashed them, and so on and so forth...
Despite the stalemate I could sense victory. Portugal had lost their morale modifiers and were on the same level as us, and both England and Portugal were running out of manpower while I had still more than 11k. Now that the English had completely wiped out my navy and nullified the Moroccans's, they were attempting naval landings in Algeria. Since they could only transport 10-13k at a time, this was perfect. I split my army into two. One half stayed with the Moroccans as they sieged down Malaga for the umpteenth time while the other chased and smashed English forces in Algeria before they could group together.
At long last Malaga fell. Portugal surrendered Cueta and the Granadine possessions to Tunis, and the crowning jewel of the Reconquista, so lately liberated from the Muslims, was back in their hands.
At this point Castile realised they could not allow Morocco and Tunis to gang up on Portugal and so renewed their alliance. So there went my plans of expanding into the Portuguese homeland and challenging the Castilians in the colonisation game.
After some years of idle peace, during which the Sultan Muhammad IV built a grand new city in the desert province of Laghouat (for some reason) and Tunis in general prospered, war broke out again. The Ottomans had set their sights on the Mamluks, and it was all-out war between the two great powers. At first the Ottomans found themsleves pushed back, and the Mamluks were actually sieging
their Anatolian provinces. The Sultan Mehmed III in desperation called on for Tunis for help while raising more troops from all over the Empire. Muhammad IV obliged, only to find that Morocco had joined on Mamluks' side. The two stalwart allies, who had gone shoulder-to-shoulder through so much together, were at war with each other.
The Mamluks decided to completely abandon the Ottoman front and sent an army into Tunisian territory. I made short work of it, and it retreated (!!) even further into Tunis. I smashed them again as soon as their morale went up, they then retreated into Cueta, a Tunisian enclave among Moroccan territory. I followed them there, smashed them again, and found out that I could not return except withut sieging down the Moroccan mounain fort in Fez, which I could not do, becuase as soon as I started doing so the Mamluks and Moroccans made a beeline for me. So Muhammad IV hung up his feet and chilled with his men in Cueta, while the Mamluks and Moroccans ran amok in Tunis.
Meanwhile, since the Mamluks were no longer interested in the Ottomans, the latter had mounted a counter-attack and was taking Mamlukean clay like crazy. On the other hand Morocco and Mamluks had almost completely occupied every province in the Tunisian heartland, with the exception of the capital and the Granadine possessions.
Just finish the war already
After what seemed like an eternity in Cueta, during which Muhamad IV had seen all the sights and pretty much exhausted what the Cuetan tourism industry had to offer, the Ottomans walked into Tunis and wiped out the Mamluk-Moroccan forces, bringing an end to the war. Muhammad IV, rather sheepishly, returned to Tunis, and motivated probably by embarrassment set out to improve his realm. Spates of fruitful raiding brought much gold which the Sultan used to pay off his debts. Mosques were built in abundance, madrassas were established across the Sultanate. The navy was rebuilt and the army size increased, and for the first time a North African army wielded that novel and terrible weapon, the cannon.
That's all for now. Next run I aim to declare war on the Mamluks before the Ottomans can, take out Morocco and force-peace them, then wait it out while the Ottomans siege down Egypt and rescue me from the Mamluks who will inevitably have made a beeline for me.
