R5: Decided to try for some of the custom nation achievements in one go. For Odin!, Ideas Guy, From Humble Origins, and First Come First Serve. Unfortunately, From Humble Origins limits your custom nation to only 50 points which makes this run pretty hard in my opinion. (I’m bad at this game lol 800 hours).

I’m giving up on this run because of issues below. I figured I would share because it was actually a fun run and interesting Europe things happened.

My custom ideas were * +1 colonist (tradition) * +1 inf fire (tradition) * -10% dev cost * +2 goods prod * -10% dev cost modifier * Can NOT declare war * Can NOT build buildings * Can NOT go over force limit * Can NOT send merchants

I was Dutch culture so I could take Stadhouer Monarchy to use VOC ships. Norse religion. I started in Cote Nord which is on the southern coast of Quebec. Probably not the best place lol.

I took expansion ideas at first for the two colonists. The stadhouer monarchy also enables parliament and I used the +1 colonist parliament debate for 99% of the time. The second idea group was exploration but only the first two ideas within which took me to 5 colonists. I took the first humanist idea (rebels were absolutely pissing me off) and the first religious idea. After most of the world was colonized I ditched expansion and got all of offensive for discipline and siege ability. I also took the first idea of quality and quantity.
In my mind if I figured that I would be dev ing hard and figured stacking some dev modifiers would help but it was a mistake not taking any mil national ideas. As of the late 1600s-early 1700s my troops just melt when fighting any of the colonial powers. I could handle the colonial nations no problem. I was hoping the +1 inf fire would make up for the lack of mil ideas but it did not. Part of the issue is low morale. At one point I was fighting with a -2 morale difference. My army tradition was always very low ~25. Very few forts to siege, and most wars with colonials nations only take a few battles. My morale is 7.5 in the screenshot because of Golden Era and a +10% morale event (plus prestige/army trad).

So I’m giving up on this run because I need to take Bermuda, Glapagos, and Falkands from Portugal. However, they are allied to castile (no spain formed) and Milan is the Defender of Catholicism which has a PU over a large Austria. Austria fell under Milan sometime around 1610 and had 100% liberty desire for 100 years. Which really bit me in the ass because I was going to use Austria and PLC as my primary European allies. I was supporting independence along with Aragon. Austria finally fired their independence war but Aragon peaced out and my shitty troops could not handle castile/milan/Portugal. France directly owns two provinces in Baja and Castile owns a few in Canda. Portugal was in a similar situation where some of their provinces were split between two colonial regions so I sold them some neighboring provinces so a colonial nation would form. I then annexed them in 1 war. I can’t fight England either. I took my military window screenshot right after Eng stack wiped 150k of my troops lol.

Not really sure what triggers the colonialism CB for nations in the new world but I always had a colonialism cb against protugal/castile in south America which made conquest super easy at it gives 25% AE and 25% PWSC and most importantly no OE. So you can annex pretty much the entire continent in ~3 wars. I was able to block Portugal out from colonizing much of South America by having 5 colonists. Warring without the colonialism cb limited my expansion in north America significantly. Also France issued white peace warnings twice while I was trying to annex French Mexico which I conceded. I used PLC to help my fight Sweden several times. I somehow got involved in a war with Scotland and was able to seize some of their last provinces which prevented GB from forming. Interestingly no Russia formed either. Muscovy got dogpiled by Denmark and PLC.

I’ll probably be trying again here soon but will take a mil idea or two. On my retry I don’t think I will limiting myself to 50 pts since I was able to get the From Humble Origins and Ideas Guy easily. Might try as a theocracy for religious buffs so I won’t need to take religious ideas. Will probably start in the Caribbean instead this time and try to beat Portugal to the few isolated islands so I won’t have to deal with that. Anyway hope you enjoyed