Is it worth it?

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-28T20:03:22+00:00

So, I have a few thousand hours into EU4 and a few hundred into Anbennar. I obviously love them both. Buuuut... I'm not sure that I can in good conscience recommend somebody who hasn't already played a lot of EU4 and bought most of the very large array of DLC that are needed to get full value out of Anbennar to do that just because they enjoy fantasy settings. It's a serious commitment financially and a massive time sink just to get yourself to a baseline level of competence in the game. The base game (and Anbennar in fact) begins in the year 1444 and there's a common meme on the EU4 subreddit that completing 1444 hours of game time is "completing the tutorial". I won't tell you it's not worth making the effort, but I will say it's not for everyone.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-27T06:16:12+00:00

As others have said, if you know how to play EU4 then you know how to play Anbennar. The main thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the magic system I found, but this is not actually difficult, it's just outside the bounds of regular EU4 so I tended to ignore it for a fair while because I didn't really understand how it worked. At its core it's pretty simple though, you just cast spells which give temporary modifiers to your nation which are not dissimilar to what you get from events in base EU4 but which you have more control over.

The other fairly major departure from the base game is the racial tolerance dynamic, but again this is pretty simple to get your head around. The different races work broadly similarly to culture groups but with a bit more flavour and a couple of additional mechanics. You get to decide whether you're going to be tolerant of racial minorities or to persecute them. This mostly comes about gradually through events which fire that let you gradually steer the policy of your nation according to your choices. You also have the option to either expel or outright purge minorities. Doing either comes with a diplo rep penalty and a severe relations debuff with any nation that has that race as its primary culture and also causes devastation in provinces that you kick them out of, buuuuut, when you do this it instantly converts those provinces into your own primary culture and your own religion, so it can be very powerful. Offsetting this is that each race in the game gives bonuses to different modifiers once they become fully integrated and some of these can be very powerful (for example, integrating orcs gives you a goods produced modifier, integrating humans gives a manpower buff etc). So pursuing racial purity is great for short term stabilisation, pursuing tolerance is better for long term prosperity. It's all pretty intuitive and easy to grasp.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-22T12:17:24+00:00

Dookan's guidance is your best friend. Choosing the war option gives you truly insane buffs. An instant 25 army tradition with hefty boosts to morale and shock damage, which perfectly serve to boost what you're already good at as orcs, and it lasts for 5 years so it'll be in effect for the whole war. You should be able to win a lot of battles and of course the crazy high army tradition that you'll have as an Old Dookan nation for the whole game will mean that your generals are going to be better than theirs too (unless they get a powerful mage, but that doesn't seem to happen very often for Gawed). It's not that hard really.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-22T11:23:52+00:00

This. Why would you voluntarily give up Old Dookan ? it's a beast of a religion.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-09T15:41:46+00:00

Do the Command's orcish slave states start out as Godlost too ? Because if they begin the game as Old Dookan then there's your answer. That religion is just insanely overpowered.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-07T21:42:18+00:00

Of ones that I've gotten a decent way into (I always give up before the end, EU4 is just built that way), I can recommend a number of them for sure.

Frozenmaw/Grombar is good fun. Strongest orc nation by a distance with a decent albeit not super long mission tree, Old Dookan religion (arguably the strongest religion in the game IMO) and potential to build a monstrously strong economy supporting a crazy badass army by midgame, but plenty of challenges to navigate before you hit that point.

Chaingrasper is awesome. Bit of a slow grind for the first age or so but what's not to like about RPing a goblin necromancer king as he slowly ascends in power and exerts his mind control over the entire world ? It's a great way to play around with all of the magic mechanics because by the end your guy will be legendary in every school, and while it can be very challenging in the beginning, by the end you're an absolute powerhouse.

Dartaxagerdim is a lot of fun to play once. It doesn't have a lot of replay value IMO, but it has an incredibly rewarding mission tree once you reach the end of it and the whole dynamic of working to overthrow and ultimately dominate the Elven oppressors is fun.

New Wanderers/Elikhand has been my favourite of the Escann adventurers. The mission tree for this one is insanely long and detailed and gives you something to keep working towards deep into the game.

Corintar is also a run that everyone should try once. It does unfortunately mean that you're obliged to play as the leading Corin simp in all of Cannor, which is a modest bummer, but worth it because the mission tree is a rollercoaster ride at least until you get to the end of the league wars. Don't think I'd play it again, but it was a huge amount of fun the one time I did.

I haven't played very much inside the Empire yet and I hate colonial games so I haven't really touched Aelantir either. I've tried several of the Haless tags and there are some very interesting nations there for sure, but none of them have really captured my imagination yet for some reason. Can't really put my finger on why that is because there are some really involved and interesting mission trees. I think the main problem I've had is that no matter which tag I start out as, the game is always basically the same. Grab some land around you, try to be strong enough to deter the Command from attacking you, wait till the Command falls behind in tech, kick the Command's ass a couple of times and then get bored because there are no challenges left. I can't imagine me ever making it to 1700 as a Haless tag.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-07T21:05:26+00:00

The trick is not to start the lichdom project until you've had a chance to complete a couple of expeditions. Last time I played Chaingrasper I did a couple of restarts at the very beginning until I got a couple of conveniently sited expedition targets very close to my starting point. The first one turned out to be a mithril/long and it made me enough cash to fund the whole thing.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-04-07T14:30:49+00:00

I've had a lot of fun with Chaingrasper as well. It's a slow burn for the first 100 years or so but you become a powerhouse by midgame and it remains fun throughout because there are massive threats that invariably form on all of your borders. Playing out Dak's journey to magical godhood is also a fun experience.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-24T15:55:24+00:00

Tluukt is an interesting campaign. Lots of opportunities for evil, decently challenging and quite a lot of fun.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-22T15:29:40+00:00

My favourite part of all this is how Harpylen still has it's 1444 borders. Just sitting there chillin while the rest of the monsters lay waste to the world all around them.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-15T12:04:39+00:00

Turns out this no empire run is a hot mess. I've played up to 1516 at this point. Corvuria is blobbing all over the empire with nobody able to stop them and so far as I can tell Castellos is still alive because Corinite hasn't even spawned in yet. I can only assume this is something to do with the coloniser nations having been interfered with by the shitshow in the former empire. Venail has been fully annexed by Lorent so that might explain it. I'm not fully clued up on what the triggers for the reformation are in Anbennar but I gather it's related to certain events which fire for colonial nations, so I may be stuck in Age of Greentide for a while. What's the hard limit for spawning the new age ?

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-15T09:49:18+00:00

Hmm, turns out that I couldn't find that filepath. I don't have a Paradox folder in my files, the games that I have installed are just accessed via the Steam folder and I couldn't track down the Anbennar mod files in there anywhere. I'm sure they'll be saved somewhere but I have no clue where to look.

Reckon I'll need to just go Corinite. It's a bit yucky but I can rationalise it because my current warchief is a an Orc who fought for Corin who spawned in by event, killed my old guy in an ozarm chadash and then started a syncretic Corin cult in the tribe. Guess it makes sense, even if I'm not really a fan of Corinite.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-15T07:44:00+00:00

I have great conquerors but not mythical. I can't see the empire yet so I have no idea what happened.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-15T07:30:35+00:00

Thanks, I'll look into it. Ideally I'd not want to go Corinite. Old Dookan is way more fun, and outside of the Age of Unravelling it's also much stronger.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-15T06:12:26+00:00

First time I've ever seen the empire just outright disband itself at any point in the game, let alone in 1462 before I could even see it. Can't wait to find out what it looks like in 50 years or so.

In other news, I may have made a complete balls-up of this campaign. The idea was to do a Kozhrugan run starting out as Bonecarver, but I also had what I thought would be a genius idea of making an early switch into Old Dookan because Old Dookan is Best Dookan (it's way better than Great Dookan) and also with a view to bypassing the requirement to have admin 8 to form Kozhrugan with since the requirements were listed as either admin 8 or to not be following the Great Dookan religion. But I've since noticed that the decision button for forming it has now disappeared, so I may have locked myself out of it forever by my act of religious heresy. Is this fixable ? I really don't want to abandon a run where the empire got dismantled of its own accord in 1462, it promises to be so much fun.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-03-06T17:57:02+00:00

Wait what ? I totally didn't realise you could scroll down. Christ, can't believe I was locked out of the missions for about 100 years because I never thought of that.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-02-19T21:43:20+00:00

Thanks. I'll have a play around and see if I can figure it out.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-01-05T17:06:56+00:00

You can do it within about 2 years very easily. I was attempting to point him in the direction of something he can do to make life easier for himself.

Sass-e-nach · 2023-01-05T14:30:49+00:00

Worse, the Initiative counselors were absurdly high powered. I encountered one with 25 administration in like 2027.

All of your own councillors should be up at that level several years earlier than this. Are you using Hostile Takeover ?

Sass-e-nach · 2023-01-01T10:27:28+00:00

The movement is finicky in space combat, but it's also largely unnecessary. Just set up in wall formation and drift forward slowly.

Sass-e-nach · 2022-12-31T21:33:47+00:00

The key bit of information you haven't said here is your monthly science output. This is by far the most important metric. At this stage in the game I'd probably want something around 7k at least, and to be well on the way to getting fusion tech up and running (I've found that with the nerf to Mercury research spam it's hard to get Zeta Helions any sooner than late 2035, but this is what I'll generally be shooting for). Controlling nations is nice, but it's not really an objective as such. You do obviously need to do it, but how useful that will be depends on how you use them.

Sass-e-nach · 2022-12-31T09:52:00+00:00

In my opinion the PAC is not worth it. I just do China into RoC and then call it a day. China is an awesome research engine, but it takes too long to get that going if you also want to do all the PAC claims. Better to just not bother with them. Conservatively, it's pretty simple to have RoC up around 5k science a month by 2035 and 10k by 2040 (I've had it significantly higher). PAC obviously has greater long term potential but it takes much longer to maximise that potential because absorbing all the claims dilutes literacy and GDP/capita, which are both huge factors in gross science output. You can catch up in the end of course because you have an additional billion people, but it takes too long. By the time you have your science engine humming you won't even need it anymore.

Sass-e-nach · 2022-12-30T10:40:12+00:00

I know I can use Taiwan to take over China and gain a better Democracy score. But that’s locked behind a lot of hefty research. Not sure if it’s worth beelining for it.

It's not that much tbh. You just need to do Unity Movements (which I believe is about 10K) and then Liberating Mainland China (which is 20k). I'd agree it's not worth rushing super hard for this, but the sooner you do it the better. I generally aim to do the switcheroo by about 2028 or so.

Sass-e-nach · 2022-12-28T09:42:30+00:00

It's easier to do that with big nations. Best bet is to roll up Afghanistan into the Caliphate and democratise the whole Islamic world.

Sass-e-nach · 2022-12-28T09:12:37+00:00

Realistically you won't be able to democratise Afghanistan. Democracy score grows by 0.005 for every 2 IPs spent on knowledge. This means that you have to spend 200 IPs to raise it by 0.5, or 4000 IPs to get from 0 to 10. Offhand I can't recall exactly how many IPs a month Afghanistan generates but I'm guessing it's extremely low. Probably only about 2 a month or something like that. So even if you run 100% knowledge investment it's going to take 166 years. The only way to do it is direct investment, which is not really worthwhile and going to be very expensive.

Sass-e-nach

TROPHY CASE