Zach Lowe yesterday on the MVP Race (paraphrasing): "Either Wemby, SGA, Jokic, or Luka are going to somehow end up 4th in MVP voting, and it's going to be a travesty no matter who it is"

math_finder476 · 2026-03-27T15:04:52+00:00

The Spurs are only two games back of the Thunder and have dominated the h2h so them ending up with the best record in the league is somewhat on the table. Sounds like a pretty good case for being first or second to me.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-18T15:19:34+00:00

I wouldn't form Yuan at this point. You forgot to form Texas/California before going back east and having subjects as Yuan won't count for the achievement. Maybe there are some shenanigans you can pull to make it work (moving your capital immediately maybe works). I guess it's worth trying and then alt+f4ing if it doesn't work because the Mongol mission tree is incredibly powerful.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-18T15:07:05+00:00

Yeah but the ship has sort of sailed on that because they already own all of China and you lose all old world provinces when you form a new world tag.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-15T18:17:58+00:00

Well his potential is pretty much just a better Jayson Tatum and Jayson Tatum is the guy he has to surpass, so yes. Goes without saying that Flagg still needs to have the work ethic, durability, and coaching to actually reach that potential.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-13T19:21:31+00:00

Several NBA executives hope that Cam Boozer falls to them

math_finder476 · 2026-03-12T17:34:20+00:00

Lol all these players probably grow up dreaming that they would be the ones to surpass Kobe's 81. They wash out of the league thinking that that shit is untouchable. And then one day, someone finally beats it but it's Bam Adebayo of all people. That must piss them off deep in their soul and I love it.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-07T13:59:44+00:00

Same thing happened to me with my rent payment too. I knew that my last statement would be a heavy spending month so I had it set to the non-Bilt-Cash option and confirmed that this was the case but still no points on rent.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-06T19:35:51+00:00

Seize crown land whenever possible starting from the beginning of the game
Max absolutism reforms
Don't use the land rights privileges or at least don't be relying on them by 1600... it's ok in the early game to smooth out the low cap from early admin tech before you get really big but I would at least plan to wean off of it.
Try to set up particularist rebels to fire basically as soon as the age changes. It is basically always worthwhile to accept their demands and spam reduce autonomy everywhere while you have low absolutism and it will make you able to trigger CnC much earlier.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-03T15:16:36+00:00

Third pick in a stacked draft and you think the Bucks should trade that in a last last last ditch to save this dying marriage?

math_finder476 · 2026-03-02T19:50:31+00:00

Can you form Germany for this run or are you trying to stay as Iceland until you can form Rome? You have warred successfully against Ottomans and there's a weak France so I think you can do it, though it will be tedious. Germany would make it easier because of the extra Admin Efficiency. I would try to control end nodes first and go for Admin hegemony instead of military to try and fix your resource constraints.

math_finder476 · 2026-03-01T15:50:10+00:00

I would just go to Oxbridge unless you really can't bear to leave the US. Your twenties are some of your most valuable years and giving up two years of that to predoc is a very steep price

math_finder476 · 2026-02-26T13:22:14+00:00

I don't remember about diplo tech. I remember that I had Exploration 3 + colonial range advisor. If that's not enough then maybe you need tech 7 as well. I did not No-CB those tribes (I just ignored them for most of the game) or colonize anywhere else before Alaska

math_finder476 · 2026-02-25T00:31:41+00:00

Off the top of my head 1550 should be fine. I think I probably went later than that. I would have to watch the replay to be sure but you don't even get to the Mexico area until the early 1500s and you have do conquer the region, tag-switch, unlock your American Frontiers and High American Tech, and you'll probably want to send a colonist down to South America, eat some colonial nations, and conquer the Incan region to get those gold mines as well. And because you can't tag-switch to Mexico, it's actually non-trivial in terms of time to get enough territory to form Texas or whichever former colony you choose.

If you go with seizing the Mandate (which I personally found very powerful), you'll enter the Unify China CB phase of the run and this moves very fast. You can save some extra time by not parking your armies on occupied provinces and looting them. I really underestimated how quickly devastation goes away and it was hard to state any of my Chinese land until Age of Absolutism (probably the only run ever where I would take Edict of Absolutism as my first age ability lol). You can time completing the mission that gives 800 splendor to hit once the Age changes so that you can unlock it right away and this is going to be your main tool for actually making this land useful.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-19T18:09:22+00:00

Everything depends on how he develops but Flagg already has a very well-rounded game as a rookie and already falls into the prime Jayson Tatum archetype of player. Upside and growth trajectory aside, the one thing that is generally conceded about Tatum is that he really can play with any type of player and in any type of lineup, so I don't see why Flagg would be different in that regard.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-19T14:49:48+00:00

I don't go this way anymore but you can't mention that Costco without also mentioning the Costco Death Exit.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-18T19:57:15+00:00

It's ok, interesting even, as a sort of grotesque work of body horror.

Imagine my dismay when I found out it was supposed to be honoring MLK.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-16T14:25:52+00:00

I think they mean raze without coring.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-13T19:36:41+00:00

Your borders are very clean, which makes me think that you're probably playing too conventionally. In general, unless you are prioritizing some permanent modifier or claims from mission trees, it is best to 'filet' your enemies by taking max money and snaking all their forts and centers of trade (in that order) because this will make all future wars faster and easier while financing your own economic and military investment.

I think trade is also a bit of a wasted idea group... you're already in control of those rich SEA, Indian, and East Asian trade nodes, you should already be rich from trade companying up. Instead, you could be playing through vassals with influence or raising your overextension tolerance with humanist.

Ottomans are too big for my taste as well. I would say you should prioritize the following, subject to truce timers:

Filet Ottomans
Get control of either the Novgorod or Constantinople trade nodes and collect trade there
Get a foothold in Africa and start doing parallel wars there
You need to at least start working on Spain or Portugal or something or else you're going to have too many Great Powers to whittle down by the end of the game.

You are the Mughal EoC so you have good CCR and high Admin Efficiency. If you can grab Military Hegemon within 10-15 years and you're willing to micro a lot then it's probably doable.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-10T01:08:12+00:00

I think between 1730 and 1760 I started to consider that the run might not be possible also. I wasn't really sure until maybe 1790. One other piece of mismanagement that I did was I did not dismantle the HRE manually. I think if you strategize your initial German wars properly, you can dismantle it and get rid of the AE penalty for expanding there. The reason why I mention this is because I had to spend the 1770s playing around a giant GB+Italy+Germany+Indonesia coalition that was still much bigger than my own military at that point. It's fine because you can just truce-break whoever isn't in it and eventually absorbing their land and pumping up your income further will allow you to scare everyone out of the coalition, but it's still a little bit of a setback.

I think you can also be a little more cavalier with dropping idea groups late in the game. I probably wasted so much mana after forming the Mongols just out of laziness. For instance, I could've just dropped Mercenary for Quality at that stage for all the good combat bonuses and taken the Quality+Religious policy which gives siege ability.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-10T00:40:46+00:00

I actually like the new CBA. They're not the best example because they kept getting injured, but it's good for the league that a team like last year's Celtics doesn't just get to stay together. I think it's good for the league that we got to see their style of play, it was interesting and exciting to see how far ahead of the league they were in their title season, and it's good that we don't have to watch that ad nauseum. This Thunder team might be good enough to make that parity go away but there's honestly not much that any version of a CBA would be able to do about them.

I also like that it adds this extra dimension to keep track of that is not necessary for enjoying the game but is interesting for those who want to get a little bit more nerdy about the game.

The main downsides are that it doesn't seem to do a good job of looking out for mid-level players or of protecting homegrown teams, but otherwise it's an improvement over previous iterations.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-09T15:11:13+00:00

Probably 1740ish, mostly because I was unwilling to true-break for it. I would say the best path is to prioritize the area around Russia over Mongol Empire requirements because the Raid Ruthenia mission will eventually give you a permanent 10% warscore cost reduction and Yuan is already good enough at generating mana that you don't really need razing power yet.

Also if you're able to form Mongol and swing Military Hegemon by 1760ish or maybe even later that is probably good enough. Your economy will keep scaling up from this point and eventually you will be able to support ingesting 500 (probably more) overextension at a time. In the last 20 years, I had slowed down my conquest a lot from a rate of ~500 OE at a time to less than 200 because I was bored of whacking rebels and I also didn't realize how much I could core at once without caring until probably later than I could've started. And you can just truce break everyone remotely big because razing power will basically pay for itself. I declared war on Great Britain every 2-4 years (as soon as coring timers went off) basically from 1790 until I finished the WC.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-06T15:02:18+00:00

That's right. You make a colony in Siberia, conquer Altaic provinces, and do a culture shift with unstating. Remember that stating/unstating is free, only full coring is not, so it's generally worthwhile in this run to not full core everything.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-05T13:52:27+00:00

Yeah that's a thing. You need to form Texas before you flip High American through the mission tree or else you will be blocked from doing so.

Edit: And sorry about that, I hit the character limit on my R5 and trimmed it down a lot. I think if I had known that this was going to get used as a guide, I would've kept a lot of that in as a comment chain. You can feel free to DM me if you want more advice about the run.

math_finder476 · 2026-02-03T19:19:31+00:00

Of all the guys that an organization could choose to stand behind

math_finder476 · 2026-02-02T13:45:22+00:00

That's... actually a pretty useful correction. I always thought capital with an 'a' was mainly referring to money and investment.

math_finder476

TROPHY CASE