Can I stop this HISTORICAL DISASTER?

Today, we look at changing history. More specifically, playing in another start date in EU4 - no EU4 mods this time. EU4 Sweden at this point is called the Swedish Empire, and historically, they lost the Great Northern War that saw Russia proclaimed as an Empire. I'm going to see if I can change this outcome, and conquer the Baltic for the Swedes!
Can I stop this HISTORICAL DISASTER?
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Emperor:
Faith incandescent
JoshuaS
King:
Charlie Damerell
Crilly
Flyerton99
JdoW52
Kargon
Sjalmi
Lewis Wright
Redguard76
ShadowSinger
Duke:
Benjin
ColeZawesome
Cutaline
Ghostwolf567
Of The Dragon
Phalexsu
Thomas Carmichael
#eu4
Count:
AssBreath
Bobby Bottle Service
Brandon Smith-Darby
danjamrod
King of the Hoot Hoots
Penda
ratsoupchef
Red Star
Stuart Watson
Søren Ryge
ThatOneGuy
Baron:
choppyrice
Hachi
Professor toad
Rhcali
Tobias Lauge Borgstrøm
Trevor
#eu4
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:21 - Setting up
03:05 - Northern war
08:37 - Peacing out
09:30 - Fixing the country and chill
12:26 - Partitioning Poland
13:26 - Danish war
15:10 - Downtime
15:56 - Littlethuania
16:40 - Downtime, fixing economy, assessing the map
17:59 - Prussia wars the HRE
18:46 - The Dacke war
19:26 - Russia war 2
22:22 - Little Russia
23:05 - #Ignore1444
25:23 - Laith's TED Talk
26:57 - War with Prussia (and the world)
33:17 - Wrapping up and outro

[@emperorofnothing1]

I think it's hilarious that laith says He'll blitz for Moscow, and says "That's what you should've done" and that's exactly what the Swedes tried to do irl.

[@lightworker2956]

Europeans in the 1700s: "we should conquer Moscow." Europeans in the 1800s: "we should conquer Moscow." Europeans in the 1900s: "we should conquer Moscow." Europeans in the 2000s: "we should conquer Moscow."

[@bigtim3060]

Well, Sweden had already done it once in 1610, so why not do it again?

[@jevinliu4658]

@@bigtim3060 That was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedes actually supported the Russians

[@erusean8492]

Was about to comment that, lol

[@tyskbulle]

@@jevinliu4658 Shhyyy, dont ruin our Berlin & Moscow achivement

[@johncao6516]

For another alternative start date challenge, try to survive the Qing conquest as Ming, anytime after 1645. 11/11/1651 is probably a good challenge. And the ultimate challenge: start as Ming in 1662 (Taiwan OPM) and reconquer China.

[@elgenerico6263]

Reconquering the mainland as Taiwan is somewhat of a political statement lmao

[@yousifosama4414]

@@elgenerico6263 and a very based one

[@snomcultist189]

I support 1662

[@Empereur1805]

@@yousifosama4414 no bc taiwan is a cuck of usa. Commie china in the opposition to the usa

[@fallengeneralyt1619]

ive seen this one before

[@ChrisVillagomez]

Definitely would watch a "Try to survive the Partition of the Commonwealth" video

[@feudaljester7581]

zlewik has done it in the most difficult start date

[@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva]

The "Ted Talk" he did actually does drill down into something important to political/historical scholarship and that's how determinism can cloud people's ability to pull important data out of an event because they just write off all alternatives as impossible.

[@TheAxeaman]

What do you mean by determinism can cloud peoples ability?

[@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva]

@@TheAxeaman "It happened this way therefore it could have only happened this way and looking at other factors has no point" is a common pitfall for people in research. It discourages interrogating the data more thoroughly or applying lessons learned or modern resources creatively. A real world example were the many failures of militaries in the World Wars. Focusing too much on tactics over logistics, focusing too much on static warfare, etc. because that's what mattered in the last war, so it'll always matter in the same way.

[@TheAxeaman]

@@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva thank you for the write up, that was kind. Could you learn how to unlearn that behavior?

[@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva]

@@TheAxeaman The long and short of it is just to be open-minded and not presumptive when looking at data. Don't assume every war ever lost could have only gone one way or else you may miss some good insight the losing side had. Modern combined arms warfare looks a lot more like German Blitzkrieg than Franco-British Sitzkrieg, despite who ultimately won the war.

[@antiwars9889]

@@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva Not only that, people forget that they can change the conditions of said wars by tweaking the decisions of said rulers and party policies and more niche parts of history coming to administration. You can easily twist the conditions in a realistic way from a hundred years before to justify the other side winning, and the best alternative histories often take into account of these niche things.

[@jamesmacdonald1116]

Karl/Charles XII of Sweden is their version of Richard the Lionheart. they spent very little time in the nation they were king of, they were great military generals and they were absolute insane men with death wishes.

[@aminatandour589]

The main difference was that Richard cared very little for England whilst Charles Wanted to ensure it’s safety from any and all foreign threats.

[@mehmetakifderin6606]

i know there has been a year but i know a quote that fits perfeclty ''All those whose names are written on history books are a little crazy'' -my history professor

[@roedagardet]

In Sweden, we call the period from the end of the 30 years war to the end of the Great Northern War "stormakstiden" (great power era), we see our defeat in this war as the end of us being a great power

[@siamigo286]

Y’all made most of Northern Europe bow at one point. Most definitely the premier power of Europe for those 30 years, mad respect to Sweden

[@GRANFRA99]

@@siamigo286 an important power there but spain france and england were still leagues ahead

[@SnapplyPie]

@@GRANFRA99 England actually wasn't leagues ahead, but I would say the Ottomans, France and Spain were ahead, Sweden just didn't have the population and manpower to stand up to those 3.

[@JohnDoe-nf6yk]

@@GRANFRA99 how was england ahead at this point???

[@GRANFRA99]

@@JohnDoe-nf6yk richer, more population, more everything honestly. Give you a hint, go to Sweden, outside of Stockholm there is really nothing, no noticeable city, no monuments, nothing.

[@suclox12yearsago56]

“What if we blitz into Moscow” Yeah that went well last time

[@thebronywiking]

It actually did in 1610.

[@Jamie-st6of]

maybe in EU5, they should have two or three very well-crafted start dates instead of one real start date and a myriad of shitty bookmarked dates. like how CK3 has two start dates that are both fun to play.

[@space__idklmao]

CK3 867 is pain and suffering if you aren’t a viking

[@solinvictus6562]

@@space__idklmao Well,life was pain and suffering in 867,so that fits

[@raxzar]

@@space__idklmao i love 867

[@youtubeadministration8037]

Definetly 1618 should be a date in that case. The Thirty years war war one of the most important events in the timeline, there'd be still half the game to play and we already have started reformation. They'd just have to improve 30yw and I'd play that as much as 1444

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

The issue with EU4s start dates is the amount of dev team time would have to be spent fixing them for every patch.

[@Pontus_Vendelson]

What you think a stackwipe is: A magician making the stack disappear in to his hat. What stackwipe actually is: Just a slaughter.

[@pauldennison1757]

Actually not, morale based stack wipes represent the organisation and the morale of the army shattering to such an extent that it disperses into the countryside and is incapable of reforming into an effective fighting force. This is the reason why morale stack wipes give the wiped country back half of the manpower, because they survived but straggled back instead of retreating as an army.

[@therealmrkrabs6413]

3:35 the actual strategy of the Swedish king, didn't go very well for him.

[@sandels5805]

It did, it only failed when they had several redoubdts and 3 times more troops then us, and we only lose because our cavalry couldnt reform in time

[@JosefZeethuven]

@@sandels5805 så då gick det ju inte bra 🤦‍♂️

[@gabrieldossantos1116]

@@sandels5805 But- but they lost anyway didn't they? So it didn't go well at the end. It's like saying "Germany only lost because of logistics, they could've won WW2 if they had infinite fuel, steel and manpower" lmao

[@barneythepurpledinosaur7002]

@Gabriel Dos Santos YEAH? Duh even Luxembourg could win WW2 single-handedly if they had infinite manpower, equipment etc. an INFINITE amount of anything could win somebody a war Now just wait before you go “wHaT aBoUt TaCoS LoL” Yes with an infinite amount you drown you neighbors in them.

[@bigtim3060]

@@gabrieldossantos1116 well, infinite fuel, steel and manpower are all Impossible factors, but what Sandels probably wanted to say is that the factors which in the end determined the northern war where so amazingly small to such a degree where one outcome wouldnt be more suprising than the other

[@Mettallium]

I think one of the problems these "let's play that war/disaster" videos is that they only focus on a single event and then the video ends. What I enjoyed about this one is that Laith played longer than just the nordic war. So, keep it up!

[@GettingMyLifeTogether2024]

If you truly want a hard start then trying to gain independence as quasim in 1600 without using the support independence option is probably the most difficult thing in EU4.

[@TheAxeaman]

Who? Why?

[@maelos61]

Yeah, that would be so much fun as a video too... getting independence without using the actual game mechanic for it... Truly riveting...

[@jaysefgames1155]

@@maelos61 No dlc and you can't support independence. This is how you had to do it before that dlc.

[@nightlight73]

I’m mad I didn’t get my movie review… instead I got a Ted Talk. I NEED MY MOVIE REVIEW LAITH!

[@MrRoyalOss]

The extended timeline mod has the WW1 startdate option which starts you out in a bad place if you start as Austria or Germany.

[@nicholasoneal1521]

I always loved the other start dates until they stopped maintaining them

[@arvidgreat]

Sweden did have a colonial empire. We had cities in india, we owned bits of the gold coast. 18:15 and we did have a few places in north america like delawere and a few islands in the caribean

[@goranpersson7726]

huh, cant quite recall the gold coast one although I know denmark had a lil bit there

[@justalex3828]

@@goranpersson7726 It's switched back and forth between a few country...but the sequence is Swedish-Danish-Dutch-British Gold Coast... Unlike Delaware it's really wasn't much of a settler colony but just a bunch of Forts in the coast

[@pidde1633]

I wouldn't say an empire. The one in India, Porto Novo, got destroyed by the British and French after a month. Guadeloupe was formally still run by the British, and cabo corso we lost to Denmark after some years. And the one in Carribbean, Saint Barthelemy was french before and after we had it. We tried, we really did hahah.

[@DD-nb9rn]

i remember learning about swedish new world colonies in middle school lol, unlike other colonizers the swedes had a friendly policy with the american indians too bad they lost the colony to the dutch

[@feudaljester7581]

poland as well

[@boyarbeloved]

“what if we just blitz it to moscow” i see laith also studied at the napoleon military school alongside funny mustache man

[@alanetchetto8908]

And alongside the swedish king he is playing as. As it was his strategy as well, lol.

[@Strider1633]

Nice video, I actually enjoy alternate starts or modded runs. Also kudos to your editor, the TED part was hilarious. :) Keep up the good work man.

[@josh77577]

You should watch kings and generals The Great Northern War documentary it is very interesting. The goal of the war was mainly to dethrone and replace the king of saxony and the Polish Commonwealth. The other wargoal was to restore lost territory from the Russians who conquered neval.

[@humppi.2304]

This is a good video concept, the later start dates in EU4 are criminally underexplored

[@profdemon1972]

has a proud swede i can say that i love every video when people save the swedish empire

[@makasbtw]

Yes

[@georgeknowles7504]

21:20 Ming got swept over by the Manchu for similar reasons. Something to do with the silver entering Ming ports via Canton causing so much inflation that once the silver currency travelled north it was already inflated too much to be useful. Probably got a detail or two wrong there though.

[@sohumtripathi3588]

Try beating the Napoleonic coalitions next

[@eyyy773]

I could totally listen to Laith just talking about media and history more. Loved the vid btw as always and I think saving Poland from partition would be fun to watch.

[@calmkat9032]

"Why don't we just blitz into Moscow?" Bruh he organically came up with the strat Sweden did IRL

[@SteelingLight]

You're editor is on some next level stuff here. Absolutely amazing! And absolutely amazing handling of this Swedish war!

[@Reticent_Gaming_Actual]

Tip: when giving provinces to a subject you don't have to search the list, you can just click on the map.

[@mrsauceman5721]

Damn the editor has sas today.

[@meli12405]

Just a suggestion, perhaps Laith's facecam can be rotated and shifted to the bottom left corner? With it's current position, it blocks the war icon so you can't really tell if he's winning a war or not, and by how much.

[@nathanmc6848]

He needs to be able to type /add_warscore without suspicion

[@demrasnawla]

I like how the Dacke War event said "lose 3 stability" at the end of the text but it didn't actually take away any stability

[@iowsiam492]

While it wasnt exactly late game one of the most fun campaigns I've done is to start in the 1600s as England and try to get Cromwell's England. You never see anyone talk about it because I guess people often avoid the disaster

[@BassManiac07]

part of byzantiums decline was largely due to the fact that they had like no money after justinian, more of a slow decline looking at the military, and not the only factor, but lack of money definitely worsened byzantium and the conflicts they felt the need to engage in

[@jkyeah8033]

Can we have a late game start as the 13 colony’s vs Britain

[@thechosendino206]

Loving the editors work ;)

[@abzabza2]

Despite losing, sweden did amazing job in northen war and Carl was like irl god of war

[@joostvandenoord4336]

I'd love to see you save the Netherlands from the 'rampjaar', or disaster year in English

[@bluelobster6060]

That was a fun video ! I'd love to see you do more along the same theme. Maybe you could face the Seven Years wars as Prussia or the War of the Austrian succession as Austria.

[@hotsteam5800]

3:57 he did try that, he lost

[@EsperothX]

Love the alternate start date content, personally.

[@markothegamer441]

I sure loved this id like a few more of theese but witch scenario well i dunno you could win as napoleon or something but that feels somehow easy. Anyhow i hope more of these kinda videos get made

[@Nifn45]

That was excellent, you have earned yourself a new subscriber good sir

[@akiamini4006]

Very nice run maboi Leith ! #ignore1444 indeed ! Survivin through desasters is fun to do!

[@zantom5888]

You should do more of these

[@thered4dr]

6:57 well no one wanted it and you needed somewhere to store the pickled herring

[@dimo9463]

I absolutely love this editor making fun of laith, its hilarious.

[@pyrhusofeprius]

The whole time this video was playing Sabaton was playing in my head.

[@SheepiTheSheep]

The dacke war was that when Sweden broke free from the kalmar union one area of Sweden wanted to be a own nation. There was a war between Sweden and the rebellion that ended with Dacke, the leader of the uprising got his head cut off

[@carltonleboss]

I like how Augustus II "The Strong" generates 0 mil power a month

[@pyrhusofeprius]

I’d like it if you played other start dates. Maybe you can do the crusades in the extended timeline mod.

[@dariocolombo5049]

Give to the editor a raise!

[@julius879]

8:18 they wanted to survive, pretty much... I'm quite certain they were the ones to be attacked for once.

[@sebbasbaoz8314]

I like the poland idea! The one where you try to survive the partition, but to make it hard you do have to start at war, you can't have preparation time, cuz you're too good otherwise. The comment from John Cao with trying to reconquer China as the Ming OPM in Taiwan from 1662 sounds fun too!

[@LarsSteenbreker]

Playing as the Netherlands, defending against Spain sounds really nice! I would definetly watch it!

[@hoyinching9313]

25:23 - 26:54 So true. We can win, tie or lose

[@YuzuruHakushaku]

holey crescent mode for HOI4 is about what if Sweden was victorious, I think playing that after this would be so fitting

[@MyFunnyVids888]

There is an exploit to the dacke war if you hold the event and just stab up it registers the event's requisite for ending as fulfilled it wont spawn the rebels and it will end the event from what I remember. I don't remember if its been fixed though

[@suplified]

best episode in a long time

[@barneythepurpledinosaur7002]

One tile client state only challenge!

[@Karsuuue]

Ngl... sometimes I really like playing on other start dates... there are some really nice events and scenarios out there

[@drake713]

I kinda want to see you conquer the new world and just see what mess the rest gets up to

[@boomzoom994]

does anyone know what happened to the Ulm subgoal?

[@combrade-t]

I'm a big fan of later start dates, And it is actually not too bad because the Advisor cost and tech cost "Increase over time" only starts when you start, so If you say, start in Asia you can use your brain to rapidly modernise and take over a tonne of Asia with not a lot of problems. It's a lot of fun. I'd definitely like to see more videos of a similar concept, I think Zlewikk had something similar of saving Historical disasters I think it was called, but later start dates are underappreciated and your play styles are quite different.

[@warlord95Sweden]

Your Ted talk made me wanna sub to you again. Länge leve Svea Rike

[@Relevant_Irrelevance]

incredible video

[@arvidblomqvist5891]

If I remember my Swedish history correct Carl XII actually tried marching to Moscow but then winter came and I think you can guess the rest....

[@thebronywiking]

We are swedes. We to have extreme winters, especially back in those days. It was the scorched earth tactics of the russians and abandonment of the ukrainians that did us in.

[@chaos4395]

surviving the partition of poland would make for a good video, keep it up!

[@beasty9525]

i agree with Laith, think of all the pain we can inflict

[@TheColombianSpartan]

Loved the Ted talk edit

[@denisklemont2540]

Loool 2 separate forts in one province!!!!

[@GreenSharder]

It would be interesting to see the same but the Commonweath before their collapse

[@OlujaDoTokija]

Go watch Zlewikk's video about it

[@GreenSharder]

@@OlujaDoTokija Eh, before the first partition is kinda boring since it’s still in a good position, I’d prefer to see a survival and rebuilding after or during the first or second partition.

[@connortheandroidsentbycybe7740]

Dalaskogen has a province modifier that gives it a native +5 goods produced

[@svcatomic4496]

I 100% want him to do a video of him surviving the petition of Poland

[@filipkopec525]

20:27 Wonderful idea

[@admiralswood5291]

As a Swedish person with an interest in history, I like this. Keep up the good work!

[@stryke5729]

I am entirely unsure if this is possible in eu4 but if you could win the Haitian revolution against the French it would be beautiful

[@Kasaaz]

Different Start Dates are awesome.

[@cohortConnor]

Odd that Sweden would start with mostly cavalry when Cav was the one thing they lacked. They even tried using reindeer for cavalry

[@boniour3883]

Hol Up' I've already seen this somewhere. *Looks at Zlewwik's channel*

[@Aldinth]

As you said, Poles are your 5th highest demographic :D Partition of Poland at the later dates is super painful to survive, would highly recommend it!

[@Gawinnerchickendinner]

You should do eu4 disaster saves

[@zap648]

"They should've rushed Moscow". Oh the Swedes went further than Moscow...

[@SnapplyPie]

They got a trip to Moldavia!

[@tylerbenintende4510]

Hi Mr.Laith. Try the American Revolution start date and get current American borders plus Hawaii and Alaska. That would be a fun video. I love your other videos too. Keep up the great work!!!

[@travisdean6063]

idk how long I've watched your videos without knowing your name is Laith

[@combrade-t]

Loved the Laith ted talk, need more - and to be fair he is right. Like it's alt history, you can either just run with it or you can attempt to justify it, history is full of randomness and nations that defied reason the point of your alt history scenario is to find a way they could have won and stabilised, and they don't even need to last that long in the top scenario to make it interesting. If Sweden held on after the great northern war and consolidated Scandinavia and managed similar actions as Laith did in the video, Russia would probably just have to go elsewhere for ports for a time and maybe focus more on Southwards expansion into nations that were not modernised like itself and focus firstly on warm water ports, maybe speeding up the decline of the Ottomans and British-Russian great game dynamics, maybe into something of a three-way rivalry of Sweden, the UK and Russia because Russia and Britain want to compete over middle east whilst Sweden and Britain want to compete over Northern European Trade and possibly some colonial ventures too, since continued Swedish strength would probably lead to them getting at least a slightly larger colonial empire.

[@aleksajakic8447]

There is one alternative start date where Montenegro is a two province minor vassal of Ottomans, I think that would be an impossible challenge

[@aguy6771]

someone should make a mod that makes the later start dates better, giviing a country realistic buildings and army for that era, perhaps even custom events, current later start dates are undeveloped and not maintained. But if they were improved i would give them a shot.

[@makiskanyt9269]

wait you took down the cyprus video ? was it cus of the quality ?

[@Sunehoulind]

Does anyone know where that trip to Ulm for 100k subs went?

[@Goldenblitzer]

I actually agree with him, I think its why I'm a fan of the great conquerors mechanic in anbenar

[@yigitardagul7925]

you can try ottomans at 1683 I think it can easily be the hardest disaster save

[@sophiaisbased9621]

I want more Laith TED talks

[@Walesball1214]

partition seems a good vid

[@copiusgrimus6671]

Try saving ottomans in the crimean war or any balkan wars in extended timelines

[@darksideofpermanentwaves4159]

That ted talk edit made me laugh hysterically

[@Ugapiku]

Bro, if you think 2 forts in Lithuania is a lot, then you should know there were hunderds of castles in Samogitian region alone...

[@Ugapiku]

And yes I do know this is a game and you can only have 1 fort...

[@OlujaDoTokija]

What happened with the Ulm trip and Tom?

[@jonkliker2438]

At the end you didn't take Bornholm from Prussia, so they still had a port and a navy

[@loopyguy7611]

YES, more please 🙂

[@biodtox]

The other start dates are often overlooked which is a shame. It's nice to spice things up starting at later bookmarks. I really do hope this trend catches on because as of now Paradox actually resigned from other start dates! CK3 has only TWO start dates compared to like TEN CK2 has. It's really sad because at the end of CK2 development they added another starting date for free and it was one of the best.

[@battlez9577]

Ck2 has the main ones, and then all the day by day ones

[@jawshvancouver2754]

The reason those invasions worked (Al Qoyunlu or India) worked because: The Aq Qoyunlu was of similar cultural heritage to the Qara Qoyunlu, therefore when they conquered the region the peasantry and nobility, aswell as other group. Weren’t fully opposed to the conquest and allowed it, in many cases actually the classes defected. This is because of cultural similarities as I mentioned but also because the region in question had been trading hands frequently and there wasn’t really a tie between qara rule and the region. As for India, it was a divided region with no clear national unity as every region saw themselves as fairy different. The British succeeded because they exploited the division, the decline of the Mughals/Maratha, and they also had also been established in India for a while. However, the British also had the key advantage of already being a international empire.