100% World Dom - Sun-Baked Steel

[eschelar]

Well it has been a few years, but I got the itch and a few months ago, I got a new laptop. I also had a chance to sort out my steam account and on the last Chinese New Year promotion, spent about 150 bucks on Steam with 75-90% off titles. Yum. Included was ETW, all the DLC packs, NTW and more...

So I thought I'd give it a go with my 100% world dom with a handicap. I was going to do "Cold Hard Steel", which has no gunpowder units of any sort, but I chose Maratha and quickly discovered why that won't work out as I hoped. Generals are gunpowder units. Also, many of the units I thought were available to the Maratha are not actually available, leaving them with just two melee units and a bunch of cav. Because of this, I am allowing myself to keep the gunpowder units from the beginning of the game, but not to recruit any. They may replenish in the field, but no more units of those types will be recruited. I believe it was 3 units of Hindu Musketeers and 3 units of Bargir Infantry. Might have been one more of musketeers, but I've only got 3 left.

So I've made a "soft" handicap, where I am restricting myself to no gunpowder units can be trained for combat. I got to 1746 and started entering Europe and discovered that I also cannot recruit any melee units *anywhere* in Europe. So I will be bringing melee units from North America and India, but due to the huge amount of time required to do this (not to mention the upkeep costs), I have also started to recruit mob units simply as placeholders. They will not be allowed to fight (not that they are much use in a fight anyhow), but they will be used as non-combat pawns on the campaign map and as police forces to help keep the order. If combat is entered with a mob unit, they will be moved to the edges of the combat zone and if all other units fail, they will be instructed to flee.

I'm calling this "sun-baked steel" as a handicap. Which is pretty meaningless overall, but it is what it is. Difficulty is VH/VH and there are no naval restrictions.

Fascinating to use this as an introduction to an updated game. There are *MANY* updates and the game experience is significantly different from the first two speed campaigns (I do not use map travel exploits and limit myself to 5 "lifelines" cheeze type moves for the entire campaign - and these are restricted to responses to illogical behavior by the AI).

Some of the fun things include - dramatically more lively diplomacy (yeah, you can trade a lot more with tech and such with other nations than before... but your friends will still declare war on you just to liven things up - I have declared war on a single nation so far... and about 60% are at war with me), naval invasions work now! Yum! and trade theater nodes can now be attacked properly. The game also seems to be very aware of how to wage an economic war. In previous games, I would typically have 30-50,000 income per turn by 1730, but while I do have a potential of around 25,000 (net) per turn right now, I've collected less than half that for 80% of the last 40 turns. Much of my campaign has seen me making do with 3000-5000/turn and the game seems to try very hard to keep my income in that range via raiding and blockading.

There are still bugs a-plenty though. I cannot put agents on boats, they disappear altogether. France declared war on me from Carnatica with 6 units and suddenly sent a 6 unit army of the same composition against Hyderabad - no naval dropoff and no other way for them to recruit 6 units in Carnatica in a single turn. Persia had an entire fleet of ships (with a significant army on board, headed for *any* of my ports) turn invisible and the ships could not be interacted with in any way unless they entered a circle of influence and I had the opportunity to intercept. VH/VH naval battles seem ridiculously skewed for morale. Taking more than 30% damage makes even my admiral's ships surrender, even when I have massive superiority. I've lost a battle with 6 ships (adm. 3rd, 4ths, galleons) on 2 damaged pirate galleons and been sent packing. Sweden currently has 3 stacks of armies in the stockholm area, split into individual units and for the past 6 turns has been taking 20-30 minutes per turn to try to figure out for each unit if they should walk 6 steps north, 3 steps east or simply sit still.

Also, capitol buildings no longer count as their true value. Before, I could take Musovy with the Winter Palace and it had all the benefits of a fully advanced capitol. Now it acts as a simple 4-tier capitol building. In previous games, Muscovy was worth 8-11k/turn. In this game, it is worth around 2500/turn.

It also seems like the game "cheats" at various points. I tend to have valuable generals "die" of natural causes just as they are heading to battle (which instead of killing the general and leaving a unit, now destroys the entire unit). I'd put this down to the actions of agents, except replaying the end turn for whatever reason shows that this is the game event, because *someone* always dies of natural causes, either a general or a minister. And rakes can't kill government ministers... If the game does this, I will usually accept it, unless it's especially "cheaty" and it's really obvious that the nation doesn't have rakes in the area.

As can be expected, most of the early game was devoted to taking and building up India. I then moved on to North America and am currently driving into Europe via Russia.

The most difficult part of it is bringing infantry around the map. I can recruit 2 chevron Hindu Warriors in Bijapur, 1 chevron in Mysore and Gujarat. But it takes 4-5 turns to get them anywhere useful in Europe. I can recruit Sikh Warriors in Hindustan and Punjab. But it takes an additional 3 turns to get them to a port, then 4-5 turns to get them anywhere useful. That means that the cost of each troop is three times higher than initial training cost due to upkeep for as many as 9 turns.

I have found it fascinating to see how this changes my strategies and logistics and how it relates to current affairs in Europe. For example, my strategy must include a swift and brutal invasion of Great Britain (currently at peace, but with two large armies on two large fleets, each too strong for me to handle sitting off the coast of the US - which I own, but cannot afford to patrol). I will need to bring huge stacks of Indians via boat to GB and pounce very, very quickly.

The greatest challenge will be Europe of course, which is positively riddled with many, many stacks of advanced military forces by France and Spain, who have each expanded to ridiculous size and strength. France (at war) has something like 13 full stacks, fully developed artillery techs (which are very difficult to overcome with armies of melee and cavalry - even worse if you cannot train melee units in Europe) and massive naval fleets. Spain (at peace and trading, but for how long?) is a bit behind tech-wise and has less stacks, but is still formidable, with significant holdings in Europe and massive holdings in South America. Mexico is currently the highest earning capital city, raking in something like 8k/turn.

The Maratha Navy takes a long time to develop compared to the European nations and I've resorted to capturing galleons... tough business given the clairvoyant pirate fleets, constant raiding and near-0 income for much of the game.

good fun. I'll keep y'all posted and give you a bit of a rough timeline.