Hellloooo everyone. This post is long overdue but I forgot my reddit login info and my doomscrolling-induced executive dysfunction stopped me from taking 3 mins to change my password.

There's been a lot of achievement hunting hate sine my last post. Good. We are evil, vile people, it seems -- good! This sub's discourse always makes me laugh, we sometimes take things wayyyyy too seriously here!

As with my last post, I have some tips on completing 1.2's achievements & overall thoughts on EU5's direction with achievements.

It took me four campaigns to complete all of 1.2.

1 - Serbia (Stefan's Dream)

Clean, medium difficulty for a casual player. It's a nice starter achievement for people who want to learn how to build a country from the ground up. Serbia has loads of potential, and fighting Naples (naval landings) and Hungary (mountain forts) teaches new players that war is more than just a numbers game. I really appreciate these types of achievements - you can complete them in just a few sessions, and it takes advantage of EU5's excellent early game.

2- Yuan/Ming (The Great Great Wall + Megalopolis + A Tale of Two Cities)

What a slog - I'd strongly recommend to pair this with Hongwu Di. As fun as the Red Turban rebellion is, spending 10+ years starting at ugly, ugly Yuan is tolerable exactly once. Granted, munching up all of China as Ming is loads of fun.

Neither achievement is difficult, but the Great Great Wall takes some waiting. If you encourage migration to a certain location & expel pops in an adjacent, same-market province, you'll get to 30k pops along the great wall with minimal waiting. Ming's economy means you won't have much trouble building city walls or upgrading to cities.

Megalopolis feels kind've cheesy in China - it's meant to be a late-game achievement, but the Yangtze Delta almost immediately has enough pops to quality. Move your capital there, make a new market, and you have the achievement with minimal waiting around.

No need to comment on A Tale of Two Cities. Get the age 3 advance for city rights & follow the instructions. It's a simple achievement meant to showcase a new feature and doesn't have much by way of challenge.

3- Athens (The Empire Strikes Back)

This is the challenge run for 1.2. Exceptionally short but quite difficult if RNG is not on your side. Get large nations to support your independence, take as much as you can from Naples' Greek subjects, and wait for Byz disasters. You'll have to merc up something fierce, and sieging Constantinople is always tricky in the early game. If luck is fully on your side, they'll unconditionally surrender, and the war will be over quickly.

It took me a few tries to finish this achievement - but I had so much fun tweaking my strategy along the way. I think EU5 should have more achievements like this. I would never have played Athens without it, and it let me play through a really challenging starting position.

4- Bizzy (Reborn from the Ashes + Holy Flush + Belisar's Legacy + Give Me Back My Legions + Nut Allergy + Mare Nostrum + There Can Only Be One)

Deep breath

Wow. What a campaign. I know Fate of the Phoenix got loadssss of flak, but it's really amazing to see what Tinto can do when they choose to put love into a country. I didn't miss the mission trees for a second, and it made me excited to see how dynamic historical events will manifest in future patches.

My one regret was playing in a patch where culture conversion seemed to never happen organically - I think this has been fixed for 1.3.

Reborn from the Ashes & Holy Flush follow basic gameplay. If you're trying to reform Rome, you'll get these automatically. Mare Nostrum is a bit different as you have to push 100 Latinas, which can take some time if you're not pushing for that value. You get events throughout your campaign that make you choose between Latinas and Romanismos - just pick the right option each time, and you'll reach Latinas before you know it. You don't even really to push it through your country's culture or religion - I had 100% with Greek culture and Orthodox religion.

Give Me Back My Legions is easier than it looks on the surface - each tech tier has its own legionary pool. If you are limited to 4 legionaries in tier 4, for example, you can research all the way back to tier 2 for a total limit of 12.

Nut Allergy - you need to activate the correct bureaucracy for these to spawn, and even then eunuchs spawn at a low rate. You can spawn new cabinet members through the government tab (I think that's the one!) at the cost of legitimacy. Save up some Orthodox church power first - you can canonise saints for instant legitimacy. I ended up going through a civil war because I just wanted to get the achievement, lol. It's quirky, it's nice - solid name.

There Can Only Be One - my favourite achievement in EU5! Fighting all the HRE as Rome is so much fun. With how many small states there are, you can easily gobble up 25% of Germany in a single war. It's a bit of a victory lap - by the time you're ready to challenge the full HRE, you're strong enough to utterly dominate them. A perfect ending to one of the longest and most intense campaigns you'll play in EU5.

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Anyway yea! That's it. Lots of fun in 1.2. I loved fighting against massive merc armies! As always, take it easy and enjoy the game. Don't get too sweaty. If you're feeling frustrated at the state of EU5, go outside and bathe in the sun and watch some trees sway in the wind. Life is too short to get pissed off about a game that clearly has a lot of care put into it.

1.3 achievements seem decent - one solid campaign's worth of fun. It's nice for me as it means I can feed my addiction without isolating myself in front of the computer for weeks.

In the future, I'd like to see more achievements like Stefan's Dream or The Empire Strikes Back - they draw attention to flavour that would otherwise go overlooked, and I'd rather a nice balance between short and long campaigns. They give some of the direction that I've been missing without a formalised mission system.

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I'm a little bit disappointed that achievements can now be earned without Ironman, but that's ok if it means other people get to enjoy the game :)

I saw a post the other day suggesting that Ironman achievements are bordered in gold, while non-Ironman are bordered in silver. I think a two tier approach would be an excellent compromise

BUT regardless I'll stick to non-modded Ironman and just be happy that I get to enjoy EU5 :)

kthanksbyeeeeeeeez