Thanks! I don't have a discord yet but that's something I might do in the future. I'm also thinking about sprinkling in some more educational type EU4 videos along with the challenge runs to see if people are interested in those. Appreciate the kind words!

@ oh yeah anything explaining the mechanics of the game or how this or that system in game works and all that kind of stuff I would 1000% check out. Can’t wait to see what you’ll do next!

That's true, but I beat up on colonizers in lots of games and most of the time colonial nations stay loyal until the bitter end (even if Spain has lost all of Iberia and had to move their capital to the Canary Islands).

I didn't use the objective button in this one, but I got a few other comments along those lines and have started using it in a new run (with mixed results). It's better than nothing but no guarantee - at the end of the day, AI gonna AI. Thanks for the comment and kind words!

I haven't really tried this challenge anywhere else, but my guess is that it can work most places if you (a) play as a monarchy, and (b) share the same religion as most of your neighbors. So, for example, I think this would be totally doable with a Catholic monarchy in Europe or a Sunni monarchy in the Middle East. A minority religion or a government that can't do royal marriages (theocracy/republic) would make this significantly harder/maybe impossible for some tags. Trebizond's unique gov reform is the only reason we were able to ally Muslim countries like AQ and the Mamluks, and without that it would have been much more difficult. The mission trees are really strong, and I do think it's another player advantage since I don't think the AI really understands/plays to them very well. Post 1.36 Byzantium gets a handicapped early game, with a bunch of debuffs, but if you can navigate your way out of that it's probably one of the more broken mission trees in the game. Of course, if you form Byz as somebody else you skip all the debuffs and go straight to the OP stuff. Trebizond's tree alone is pretty strong, and if you start combining them then things can get out of hand. Thanks for the kind words - I'm glad this stuff is still enjoyable to those who have been out of the scene for a while.

@@rooosgamingden Well, the same religion stuff is one part of it, in order to make it possible for you to form alliances in the first place, but I was wondering whether being able to do so across religion groups might have helped you in that you had basically two sets of allies with highly different priorities/AI weights, and could maybe more consistently find _at least someone_ to go to war with any given target? this might be my inexperience leading me astray, though, I can't recall whether your allies being friendly with a war target meaningfully impacted their decision to honour a call to arms against said target, or whether it was only stab hits, distance and debt/manpower considerations. In any case, thanks for elaborating!

Yes, I almost always play ironman.

@ thank you congratulations again Even without the no army rules it was a fair party for Trebizond

Thanks, glad you enjoy it. Definitely more to come!

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Yeah I’ve noticed that. I like it, it adds a potential counter balance to Otto/Mams, and Persia often goes (or stays) Shia which is some nice variety.

@rooosgamingden Agree completely. Very nice to see Turks/Mams have an actual rival in their own region. And it's actually kinda nice to have a major power in the region to check players trying to shoot for India.

Yep that would have been a good call. I was concerned with subject liberty desire but I think by the mid to late game we were large enough and had good enough dip rep that we could have one or two decent sized marches to help out.

Thanks, glad you like it!

Thanks, glad you enjoy them!

Honestly I haven’t messed with mods much. Short term I think I’m going to stick with vanilla, but I wouldn’t rule anything out long term. Thanks for the suggestion!

Big rest stop/gas station just south of Grand Island

@rooosgamingden ok thanks

Thanks, I plan to :)

@@rooosgamingden 😁😁😁😁😁

Thanks!

As somebody who plays videos and podcasts on my second monitor all the time, that’s high praise! I appreciate it.

Florry has forgotten more about EU4 than I’ll ever know, but I appreciate the compliment!

Thanks, appreciate that!

Thanks and welcome!

True. There aren’t many good Shia allies early (Bahmanis is probably the best you can get, and if you’re playing in the Middle East that’s pretty much just a defensive shield) and there are plenty of other tags in that same boat. Glad you enjoyed the run!

Thanks, I have some more ideas I’m working on.

Thank you!

Thanks!

I know the feeling. Glad you enjoyed the video!

Thanks, I appreciate it!

If you put restrictions on yourself the late game can still be a challenge (for example, in my no army run, the late game was harder in some ways than the early game). But for normal runs usually I’ve accomplished what I wanted by 1600-1650 and I end it there. Glad you enjoyed the videos!

Glad you liked them!

I think they randomly went expansion ideas, managed to get a colony in Brazil, and then took a few more off Portugal as part of a war. It wasn’t a huge colonial nation but still pretty funny.

Thank you!

The wiki says Qizilbash start with a 25% maintenance cost reduction and -5% fire damage received. There’s an estate privilege Regimental Discipline that gives 10% shock damage for Qizilbash and scaling discipline (for all units I think). Ardabil also starts with the shock damage Muslim scholar.

Thanks, I appreciate that!

Thanks! I really like EU4 but once you’ve played enough the normal game can sort of feel like a solved puzzle. These challenge conditions keep things interesting and people are a lot more into them than I expected.

I’m not great at army micro. I can get away with that for the most part in single player, but I’m sure I would get demolished in mp.

@@rooosgamingden The attachment mechanical is a little scuffed (last I played the game in 1.35), particularly with mercs, but it works okay with regular armies. A lot of your battles are going several rolls with only partial front lines and you end up with infantry on the flanks and cav sandwiched in the line, so I'd give it a try in the future. Particularly, when you're facing hard fights. Alternatively, make a template of your smaller stacks, then just merge them all before the battle and after use the conform to template button to separate them back out easily. For 3 or more stacks, merge into doom stack and then separate back out with the template button is the easier option as sometimes it can get confusing which army is the "top" army for attaching.

Good tips, I’ll have to try those out.

Appreciate the support!