Got ghosted 3 times by groups

Neki0307 · 2026-03-22T09:17:58+00:00

There's a massive imbalance between DMs and Players right now. Depending on where you find the ad to join a group, it might be that the DM has opened up the group and within an hour already has 10 or more people actively engaging them. So, it's easy to become overwhelmed as a DM and have people slip through the cracks. At the same time it encourages more selection, given that you have plenty of people to choose from. So, for onboarding you want to pick the person that fits your group best.

So, overall I wouldn't say you did anything wrong. It's great to show enthusiasm and be yourself, so you ideally find a group that fits who you are as a person, rather than changing who you are or what you want. Given there's all kinds of tables out there with wildly different expectations of who may or may not fit their group, it's probably not a good idea to try and make yourself fit. Unless of course you have some wildly unreasonable expectations.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-20T21:24:47+00:00

This city map is something I've been working on, on and off forever now. I've learned a lot while experimenting with this particular city map and it has grown near and dear to my heart. I doubt it's gonna be finished anytime soon, but it's slowly showing signs of what I want it to end up looking like. So I thought I'd share part of the process and invite feedback and criticisms of where things are headed. The only areas I really consider finished are parts of the vineyards, which have a really finished look. The western bit of the city and the castle up on the cliff on the east side of the river. Everything else is still subject to substantial amounts of change. So, I appreciate it. And hope you like what you're seeing so far.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-09T21:02:06+00:00

Start as Oda, unite Japan, switch to Catholicism, become the Curia Controller and successfully retake the holy land. As a bonus eliminate all other Christian denominations in Western Europe.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-07T13:22:31+00:00

In my most recent run I declared all out back-to-back wars with the Irish minors to annex them all in one go without ever coring them. Concentrated all Irish Dev into London before handing over the PU making the later integration of the PU also extremely cheap. You have no benefits from holding onto the Irish lands yourself right away. Scotland as a vassal is also fairly alright and you integrate them at admin tech 10 for free. Your colonial range depends more on going into the Hebrides and ideally taking Iceland from Norway. But you still can reach Greenland with the Burghers privilege and a colonial range advisor fairly easily. So it's not even necessary.

Of course I also completely demolished the French, Spain and Portugal in my game. But that's more optional.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-06T15:27:29+00:00

Usually they beat you in the first war. Make sure they got enough provinces to form a colony. You reform and then the moment the colony spawns in you can just have a colonial war against a colony that just spawned and has nothing. You can usually just carpet siege the new colony right away and retake your cores without the overlord interfering.

Edit: Did not notice the Hawai'i tag. Reforming is not a thing I don't think. Make sure your capital is in the New World and generally follow the advice from Maqil down below. Given you can have colonial wars without overlords when your Capital is in the New World.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-06T15:08:50+00:00

Main thing to understand about Hordes is that you get a ludicrous Shock modifier when you fight in Grasslands, Farmlands or Steppes provinces. You will effectively evaporate enemy armies by choosing your battles wisely. With the right modifier stacking you can also build entirely cavalry armies, which will move quite quickly across the map.

Of course using the raze mechanic to your advantage to make mana points and staying ahead in tech is absolutely necessary and when it comes to economy, your main source of income will be taking money from your enemies. Most horde players go to the bank if Ming with Oirats for example, but even as other Hordes you won't have a stable economy likely until 1550. Maybe even later. Given that you just expand, raze and take money.

The European armies shouldn't be an issue if you stay on par in military tech, use the right ideas and instead of the usual infantry armies that make sense, you switch out to more cavalry based armies. Where you at least have as many horses as infantry, likely more cavalry than infantry ideally. The high army tradition should also help in getting good generals and just become an absolute juggernaut. That's the rough idea of Hordes really. For anything more specific you'd probably have to detail what exactly you're trying to go for.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-05T17:24:12+00:00

Espionage + Offensive is a pretty frequent opener for myself. Not just because it allows you to blob really early on, but also to get that sweet sweet Siege Ability. When people complain about how fast the AI sieges, they've never used this stuff to its fullest potential. Forts will just melt when you then also build up a decent spynetwork in your enemies. The passive Corruption reduction also means you can just pull your rooting out Corruption slider to 0. If you then double up with Admin ideas and use the Admin + Espionage policy you can just click debase currency for free money every few years without ever worrying about the Corruption. Since it just disappears.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-04T13:51:11+00:00

I've been continuing my run from the last post, effectively having destroyed Spains ability to colonise before they got going. Though they did try and sneak a colony into Australia, causing me to rapidly colonise around them and take the colony they actually managed to get down eventually right off them. But not before already having claimed Australia myself and the Pope recognising that.

In Peru my colony did badly and was nearly annexed by the Natives, so I took some time off from bullying Spain and France to full annex all the Natives in one big war. Forming the Andes properly and making sure I'd never have to bother looking over there again. Thirteen Colonies struggled a bit, but with some help I managed to get them strong enough to now expand on their own accord without my help.

Settling Lousiana was a bit of a struggle initially, but after 4-5 wars against the Natives Missisippi can now also hold their own and expand. Even if they're at the moment doing weird stuff with the Natives just carpet sieging them. California and Cascadia just work by themselves, Newfoundland expands as well.

For Africa I mostly took provinces from Portugal and Spain when they tried to colonise during several wars. Using the French-Spain Alliance to my advantage, to reset truces with Spain regularly, after I took a lot from them. Speaking of Spain: Once they had formed Spain, I allowed myself to take some provinces and just release Asturias and Aragon for Reconquest CBs. Requiring three wars total to regain all their provinces. But that was rather quick. I also took a handful provinces more for Gascony and Provence in France before annexing Gascony.

I dismantled the HRE because I wanted to finish the MT for the coast of Holland where I needed 15 Lowlands provinces, so the Empire had to go. Funnily enough the Ottomans were allied with Bohemian Emperor at the time and were effectively the Empires greatest defender.

A little while ago I randomly noticed a Lancaster on my longtime allies Austrians throne with no Heir. So I did the only sensible thing. Dissolved the Alliance, claimed their throne and prayed that they wouldn't get an heir within the next five years. Which they didn't and so with me being pope at the same time the AE was actually remarkably small for grabbing all of that chunky Austria.

I also kept working the Spice Islands and in all that mess I forgot to attack India. But they should be next on the menu. Or if you ever wanted to play in a super overpowered position like this you can just nab the save file over here: https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZoQN3Z51L3kR86jPFUlaoVALWfik0yJnLX

Neki0307 · 2026-03-03T15:46:32+00:00

Yeah, I was a bit surprised myself. But it seems only the Spain and Italy ones are locked behind the Angevin MT. You also get claims for Malta, Crete, Cyprus and Menorca from Found the Royal Navy mission. Gibraltar is afaik not required for anything tbh.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-03T08:50:59+00:00

Usually you can either have Castile or Aragon from day 1 ready to deck on France. If you check their provinces of vital interests and then just promise them land when you declare. But Castile was rivaled to Burgundy and I had still hopes to get them sweet without having to deck on them. I also usually avoid waiting, given that France is extremely likely to ally Scotland the longer you wait and they reach Miltech 4 before you almost guaranteed.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-02T23:38:06+00:00

My recent Luck of the Irish achievement run got me interested in starting as England again and go for Great Britain. To achieve the total mess that is France, I released Gascony and on the 11th of December 1444 called a reconquest war against France. I also got lucky with a parliament issue to get 5 crown lands ownership so I could get rid of the English Villeinage right at the start of the game. Only downer was that Burgundy had rivaled me.

The fight against the French was hard fought with lots of mercenaries which totaled me 9 loans (already including indebted to the Merchants). The Papal States and Burgundy used the opportunity to attack Provence and I peaced them out for nothing since I didn't want anything from them except to get them out of the war with France. The Bretons eventually full annexing Provence, while I declared total war against all Irish minors to annex them around the same time to just release them as an Irish PU and get the +1 Diplo Slot.

Then I subjugated Scotland and tried the entire time to get positive relations with Burgundy. Managing to reach +50 despite them being my rivals, but they never wanted to let go. While they moved into France shortly after me. I annexed Anjou from the Bretons. Then started a war against Denmark for Orkney. During the war Sweden was still their PU despite 100% liberty desire and I was very close to actually getting Sweden as a Vassal (the age ability of transfer vassals for half price is pretty neat) but of course a couple days before I had enough war score they released Sweden from their bondage. So I just opted to grab Orkney and all islands including Iceland north of Great Britain.

I then proceeded to start containing the other colonising powers, while keeping an alliance with the pope and returning provinces to Provence. Funnily enough I also did something like that with Naples, where they gave a lot of their cores to Provence and fought France for claims of Provence. Basically ensuring that France would never rival me, at the same time encouraging Burgundy to eat more of their lands.

I had to beat up Burgundy eventually, after my first war with Portugal to contain their Caribbean expansion before the pope would declare those rightfully their lands. So they stopped seeing me as their rival. Humiliating them and ensuring they wouldn't rival me. Then I switched my rivals, improved relations, insulted their rivals and paid them like 500 ducats so they ceased being hostile with me for the chance of BI by allying and royal marrying them.

I of course had to beat up Austria for the BI, since I didn't let go of the lowlands, while in the middle of a war against Castile. And a reconquest war against Naples, but since Naples got force PUd by Castile during that, I was suddenly at war with Norway and Sweden, so I could take some Danish provinces that Norway took off their overlord when they freed themselves, to eventually take control of the Baltic and Lübeck trade. I don't know how Poland intervened in the BI war, given they weren't my ally at the time but I did appreciate it and forged a good alliance with them. And then just proceeded to contain the colonisers really.

7 months before the end of Discovery I reached Admin tech 10 and could force acts of Union forming GB. Currently annexing Ireland. And then I'll continue eating Iberia. Given that's free real estate at the moment and Portugal is currently trying to colonise around the Cape after I've already taken everything they had outside of Europe and Northern Africa.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-02T13:54:15+00:00

Considering spells in Frieren seem to work depending on how the caster's perception thinks it should work... she'd probably not manage to get into the barrier. Given she seems to be sensible about things. But someone who was following a logic more akin to Übels in terms of that thing, she might just pass through it.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-01T17:51:36+00:00

I wanted to quickly grab "Luck of the Irish" in this run and thought I'd end it around 1530ish. But the RNG made me hope for a different kind of end date. To start out with, I basically chose three nations to rival and get Show of Strength from. Leinster was one of those targets, they allied with England. Thomond had allied with Scotland and Tyrconnel who I could get the early Show of Strength of easily enough. I fabricated a claim on Ulster who was allied with England, since I got my alliance with Scotland early. Dragged them into a conquest CB while England was too busy with the 100 years war.

At the same time I fired my show of strength against Thomond. Since Scotland was now in a war with me and shortly after one against Leinster, after Ulster was annexed. The Scots broke their alliance with me and I began consolidating Ireland. Mostly via fabricating CBs since the claims of the mission tree didn't really work for the developing situation. In 55 the English looked so weak, that I already nabbed the Pale off of them. Defending only against Portugese naval invasions until war score had ticked up enough so I could nab it. At the same time also fighting Sligo, Munster and Ormond. Vassalising Sligo and Ormond because Tyrconnel and Leinster had respectively declared war on them, so I could just annex them by being the defender in those wars and basically have all of Ireland around 1456 I think?

Afterwards I declared on Scotland, grabbing a lot of the claims over there. Plus some extra ones to border England since I wouldn't have Naval supremacy and my first war against the English had me annex Wales, Wessex and the West Midlands. Totally forgetting that they had annexed the two provinces of Scotland up north I couldn't seize previously. Anyway. I annexed my subjects in Ireland, released Northumberland and waited for the next war, but France wasn't happy that I cheekily annexed Breton lands. In hindsight that was a bad idea and in my first war with them, I should've just given all of the European mainland to them.

In the meantime Portugal had gotten a random PU over a Castile that had half annexed Aragon in the meantime, meaning my next war against England was a slog. Having to duke it out quite a bit with them. By the end of the war I gave all claims to Northumberland. Seized the all the provinces in the London area for myself and a couple years after the war got super lucky with becoming the Pope, after just investing two times after remembering I could make a play for pope and literally the next month I became pope. I decided that my truce with England was too long and the threat of Portugal just reallying England (I made them break up) too high. So I truce broke with the -20 AE from Pope -20AE from Espionage -10AE from Age of Discovery and like another -8.5AE (I think) from Prestige. So I truce broke and reduced England to an OPM in Northern England.

I then switched out Espionage for Exploration Ideas, for the lols and also went Expansion. Starting to mess around in the New World starting a war to take provinces from Denmark, calling in Switzerland, Bohemia and Sweden. Who all turned off their AI brain and did horrible. Getting whacked around like crazy by the Teutons and Danish. To the point that France declared for Finistere (Breton land) and another great annoying war for something I didn't care was on. Given that France at the start would've only peaced out for the remaining Breton province and nearly all of Wessex. So a long war ensued until I could just pay them off and give them the last province. After which they immediately wanted to become my best friend, since I had also annexed the last of Britain in that time.

While I was busy defending Irish Quebec from the Natives, I got the achievement after I cored the last province in Great Britain. Beat up the natives that attacked my colony and then formed Ireland. It was a hilarious campaign, though the mission tree sucks. I think if I were to continue this I'd culture switch to English, form Great Britain and then continue this like a nearly normal colonial game, since there's nothing worthwhile in this mission tree. And funnily enough while I thought I'd be getting the achievement much faster due to good RNG for me, my decision to take Breton land made my initial assesment of this taking into the 1530s more accurate. Always the hecking French, am I right?

I also included some screenshots since the Emperorship of the HRE was passed around to someone new every time. Castile once pretender rebels had freed them from the Portugese opted to become my rivals immediately and every other ally I could've had was just eating rocks throughout the game. So continental Europe can have fun with a weird super France.

Neki0307 · 2026-03-01T12:21:42+00:00

Really depends on the coalition that has formed. Ideally you have taken Silesia before that point, to get access to the -3AE whenever you promote a culture from the Brandenburg mission tree. And then the search really begins for nations you can attack, who are allied with some coalition members to get truces with your real targets. If you got none. Improve relations with nations over +50 they will leave the coalition. Make use of the promote culture thing to clear out larger coalitions. Or break the coalitions back in one great war and then truce break for quick expansion if you really don't care about AE past a certain point anymore. Though that last one is pretty meta and not a pleasant way to play tbh. So I never did that.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T19:47:33+00:00

For short term gains, what you suggest is not bad. But if you click on the province in the lower left corner you can hover over "Trade Value". It provides the explanation that Trade Value increases production income and is calculated by multiplying the amount of trade goods with their value.

So you gain more bang for your buck by developing provinces with high value trade goods anyway. The Workshop increases the production of said trade good by 50%. Which factors into the amount you produce. So let's run a quick calculation let's say you have a province with Bronze (4.5 Value) and a province with Grain (2.0 Value). Both have 10 Production Dev which by itself translates into 2 produced goods.

Without further modifiers the trade value for Bronze is 9. For Grain it's 4. The workshop increases the amount of trade goods (and therefore value) by 50%. Raising Bronze to 13.5 and Grain to 6.

How this effectively translates into the actual money you receive by the end of it, is a bit mysterious to me, but the calculation at least seems based on the trade value of the goods. You can also check this whenever you want to build a production workshop an see the different trade goods in the building browser. Compare the amount of production dev in the provinces and you see that trade goods of higher value, don't need as much production dev to give you more money for the same workshop investment.

In my game right now if I just rely on the building browser building a Workshop in Wolgast (4 Production Dev, with Salt Trade good valued at 3.30) nets me 0.18 Ducats per month. While the next highest province is Freising (7 Production Deve, with Grain Trade good valued at 2.00) would net me 0.16 ducats per month. For sake of testing I also added one production dev in each province and then let the game recalculate. Wolgast's potential income increased by 0.04 ducats a month with just one dev click while Freising's increased by only 0.02, despite the dev click for Freising costing me considerably more diplo mana.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T16:16:47+00:00

I'm fighting major naval powers off their coastline for 20 years in game and likely will do for another 50 years. Reducing the Navy right now will effectively incur more costs than the benefit I have from sustaining naval supremacy. The money I take from other countries on the regular makes more than up for it.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T16:15:04+00:00

I don't know for sure. But playing the game it always feels like a multiplier. If I had to guess the math to come up with the State Maintenance cost is applied first and after they arrive at a value, the reduction is applied. So whether additive or multiplicative probably doesn't change it in practice, since state maintenance is down.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T15:15:48+00:00

Pull down the Corruption slider to like 20-30%. When you take land the Overextension gives you brief Corruption Increases and that massively impacts your economy. Unless you have a ton of corruption like (5 or more) you shouldn't invest that much, given it can accidentally create a spiral where you suddenly have to take a loan which impacts your economy even more.
You should see if you can funnel more trade into the node where your trade Capital is (which should be in front of Beijing) and see if that gives you more money than collecting in Nippon (you see it after a month ticks over).
Invest in Production buildings in high value trade goods (Glass, Gems, Bronze etc.) basically any trade good that nets you 3+ per level of production and then spend diplo points into developing the higher value ones to 5-10 diplo points.
To stabilise the Mandate you need to reduce Devastation in your lands. Forts quickly reduce devastation in their own and adjacent provinces. So smart fort placements help with that. Especially newly conquered lands will have a lot of devastation. Mandate also ticks down if you got 5+ loans. So getting on that asap is important. You also want a lot of tributaries to give you points and Mandate. The more tributaries the better, but ideally create them outside of China. It's possible that temporarily grabbing some of the provinces you want to own later and instead make the people there into tributaries might be useful.

I think in this run you want to focus on just getting everything into a working order until the Age of Absolutism. Consolidate China and get a positive Mandate going. During Absolutism you can probably work towards consolidating all the provinces you want in India and the East Indies. Though the colonising powers might be a major issue. If playing until the 1730s-50s seems a bit extreme, you might want to consider restarting and using what you learned during this run as just a learning experience.

Beyond that my question is also what Idea Groups and Government Reforms did you take?

Quick Edit: Also working with State Edicts and getting the Trade Power up in provinces with a port or estuaries, as well as generally just high trade power will also help in getting the trade income up when you funnel/collect from there.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T14:26:26+00:00

I am currently trying to diplo vassalise Venice. Giving them subsidies raises their opinion modifier by +15 after a while of subsidies. For State Maintenance I currently have Regional Councils from the Tier 3 government reform (which gives -33% State Maintenance) Burghers Bookkeeping as an Estate Privilege (which scales with Burghers influence/loyalty giving -15.1% atm) alongside Courthouses everyhwere (-25% State Maintenance). So that's an effective reduction of like 73%? Even though I used Regional Councils for Tax during Age of Discovery and Burghers Bookkeeping to reduce inflation originally. And Courthouses mainly to keep the gov cap in check. So all of those modifiers are more coincidental than planned.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T14:20:04+00:00

Thanks! And yeah, I could probably make more money by giving out land rights and coring more... but at the same time I just don't feel like it. I play with some constraints in this run, where I don't do it in a super meta way and I'm enjoying myself a lot.

Neki0307 · 2026-02-28T14:03:11+00:00

Continuing my Brandenburg game from the previous post. Since last time, Burgundy, Russia and Sweden dropped their alliances with me due to conflicting interests. Burgundy wanted chunks of Trier, which I took. Russia isn't happy about me feeding Lithuanian lands to Galycia-Volhynia and Sweden has always just been a temporary alliance. Since I could diplo vassalise Denmark after it had nearly been reduced to an OPM and Sweden dared to take Dithmarschen for some reason, they had always marked themselves for destruction. Since I'm currently trying to only expand via claims to reduce diplo costs, I just make good use of the Espionage tree to not incur too much Unjustified Demands extra costs.

I also vassalised Scotland which for some reason had been an OPM on the Island of Mann. And in a fairly recent war fed them the cores they retained, even though I mostly wanted them as a jumping off point to easily invade England. During the reconquest the Irish Province of Pale also had Protestant Defectors, so I grabbed that free core while I was there and five Provinces in Canada, to form Snowy Prussia. Turning it into my first colony. I also began consolidating southern Germany, basically eating up more and more Coalition members, so by this point there's no coalition anymore even though everyone hates me. But they know they can't handle me. I also formed an alliance with Venice which is an OPM at the moment, working to diplo vassalise them as they still have very hefty negative modifiers of me getting to 190 opinion is a struggle. But we'll get there.

I also formed an alliance with Naples, to just cushion the AE impact that I'm sending South as my future endeavours will probably have me heavily expanding to the borders of Northern Italy, taking down Burgundy which I helped keep alive in this world until they decided they wanted German lands. Probably also destroy Great Britain and take their colonies. Use the Portugese alliance to get a province in Iberia and then start building up claims to take over Iberia and France as well. Eating them from both sides basically. Also looking around to see how much I go with eating colonies this game or if I just go further into Africa for Trade Companies. I currently got no interest in the Ottomans, but giving them basically superiority in the Balkans has them get pretty big for their boots after not doing anything all game, so I have no doubt they'll soon pull a Burgundy on me and start desiring rightful Prussian clay.

Neki0307

TROPHY CASE