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Completed Forming Poland - Victoria 2 AHD Krakow AAR

chzr

Scholar
Joined
Jun 26, 2010
Messages
1,238
So, I have few screens from my playthrough as Krakow and since there doesn't seem to be any recent Vicky 2 LP (not even mentioning LP of AHD) and most people play rather CK2 anyway, might as well post it here.

There are only about 30 screenshots, so it won't be long, but I'll try to remember and comment stuff that happened in the meantime, hopefully providing some insight for everyone who wants to see/play/learn etc about the expansion.


Let's get this started:

6inX8h.jpg


Right from the start, I start researching romanticism as anyone who wants to become great power as soon as possible.
Taxes are set to 100% for poor, middle/rich is low because there aren't enough pops to provide any significant amount of money. Education and Aministration is set to max, so are tarrifs. Military spending is set close to 0% because I don't really need to pay any soldiers yet. Note that except national stockpile, tarrifs and military spending the budget will be pretty much the same the whole AAR.

Because in AHD you have to justify war and unlike in vanilla, you can't attack anyone without cb, i hold elections (Krakow starts as democracy) and make people vote reactionary party with jingoism, which speed up the cb acquisition speed (current party is pro-military). Justifying acquire state cb takes about 300-400 days.

Last thing is to encourage clergymen to get more research points. I should also say that Krakowian starting techs are especially shitty.

With somewhat stable economy, I use my limited diplomatic points to ally Austria and start fabricating acquire state CB against switzerland.


h11yH.jpg


If you asked how do i plan to attack Switzerland without any army, Krakow starts in Austria's sphere of influence. That's not only the reason I can ally with them, but they are also willing to join me in war against some irrelevant nation, like Switzerland.

Of course, there's a reason why I 'attack' Swiss instead of any other country. This mostly comes down to starting spheres of influence and while there are many countries in Europe, most of them are protected by some great power (or 'friendly', which means GP can intervene in the war). Other option would be Two sicilies, who are too strong for very quick land grab and montenegro, which is one province like Krakow (and it would need conquest CB that costs twice the infamy of acquire state). East Switzerland also has 70% literacy, raising the current avarage.

Now, few important things to note with the new CB system is that you can't justify war against nation that has truce with you, relations must be under 50 and you can make only one CB at a time. While first two conditions don't bother me (yet), the last one makes it a bit tricky for Krakow, because in 1-2 years after the start of the game, Russia removes Krakow from Austria SoI, which means they will no longer protect me, or help me to get another state the same way like they will do with Switzerland.

cA8gf.jpg


Here you can see Austrian army after the peace giving me East Switzerland. The main reason of having this state is that Krakow can now become great power (you need at least two states). As you can see, except having a bit higher literacy, I still have shitty income and no army. Factory is bankrupt and it will stay that way for some time.


XrDiC.jpg


Few years later, thanks to romanticism and idealism discoveries Krakow is now great power. The goal now is to sphere Two Sicilies, because nobody tries to influence them yet and they have rather strong army, especially compared to the rest of Italian states. Before Krakow gets some competent army, Two Sicilies' forces will be a tool for expansion.

Apart from that, I influence Papal States and Tuscany. With some effort it's possible to remove them from Austrian and French spheres, which is important since I want to annex them later. After removing them, I also decrease opinion on respective GPs, preventing them from honoring the alliances they made once I attack.

Obviously, once it's clear that Austria won't be bothered protecting Tuscany, I start justifying conquest CB.


Y4ae0.jpg


As you can see, after 7 years everything is ready and war is declared on Tuscany. As planned, Two Sicilies do the job, with help from Sardinia-Piedmont that offered me alliance when I started influencing them as well. Italian provinces finally grant some manpower and money for a small army.


7fUw2.jpg


Same method is used to get one state from Papal States. Thanks to the new CB acquisition, while you cannot attack whenever you want, in the long run you'll end up with lower infamy for CBs, making conquest CB against smaller nations somewhat affordable. This means I'll also end up annexing two provinces of Modena to connect south and north Italy. The rebels you can see in Lucca are Garibaldi's Redshirts. If they had managed to hold Lucca for 1 years, Italy would have been created from remaining Italian states, which is something I don't want thus I make sure they don't capture it.


S6IJS.jpg


Yet again, I remove S-P from French sphere and attack them to get the two-province state Annecy. In the meantime, Prussia together with Austria offer me alliance for some reason. This is something that greatly helped me in achieving the goal of this playthrough as you'll see later. Back to S-P, having Austria in war was great because they demanded Nice which, even if single province, still counts as state. With Two Sicilies demanding Sardinia, this will leave S-P as a single state nation, ready for annexation in 5 years when truce ends.


89zsn.jpg


This is S-P after the war. While my states are still splintered all over the place, my possible army size gets bigger and bigger. Too bad I can hardly afford it and my military techs are still as bad as they were in the beginning of the game. As far as research goes, most culture techs are mandatory in this case, while rest of the time I get techs for influence speed and anything that increases income.

As you can see on previous screen, I start influencing China. Now, in AHD China is divided in sub-states that can't be allied, which means sphering Chinese Empire isn't as huge now. Still, even with their lower numbers they still make a decent ally, especially early in the game when tech levels aren't that great.



qw1RJ.jpg



Now, you may be reading this and wondering if I'm playing Krakow and trying to form Italy...

Well, fortunately with Prussia and Austria offering me alliances this isn't the case. With free liberate CBs that are available against everyone with Polish cores once Krakow becomes GP, they actually agreed to join me in the war (or rather join my 2 irregulars). While fighting with UK isn't great, they mostly just blockade everyone and occasionally land with few units, Netherlands and Spain don't have large armies to begin with, and you can see how much land is captured before Russians even arrive. I should also mention something that I didn't screen, which is China capturing quite a lot from Russians in the Asia.


x27Ef.jpg


Two years of fighting later, whoever is war leader signs a peace, ceding Krakow not only first piece of Polish nation, but also very potent state. Also, during the war I annexed the rest of Papal States, making S-P last remaining point of interest in Italy.


5tqpF.jpg


And soon after first step in forming Poland, S-P is annexed as well. Able to build and maintain decent army, I start to finally research some military techs, preparing for another war with Russia.


SvPwU.jpg


Second war with Russia, this time also with help from sphered Ottomans starts slowly, because Russia has help from France. Wish I had more screens of this, but by winning battles, war score eventually favors Krakow. Thankfully, being war leader this time I can white peace all nations except Russia and happily add all war goals I can afford.


UUh4S.jpg


Since states didn't cost much warscore with all provinces captured, I was able to add every single liberate CB I had, giving me all Russian lands needed for Poland.


LvjmR.jpg


Suddenly, Krakow is much more scarier than before. I think this shows really well that CBs and cores need some more work... Being able to take whole state for free just because I had CB on one province there seems a bit wrong. Anyway, the Russian part of Poland now belongs to Krakow.


ufcDd.jpg


NGF eventually breaks alliance with me, giving me opportunity to attack them. I only manage to take one province from them because at the same time, Russia attacks to get her provinces back, and Austria signs peace with NGF, so I grab one state while I still have war score. Defending against Russia isn't that hard, however, war exhaustion is slowly rising and I don't have enough money nor manpower to fully support army.


X2Kq8.jpg


Having trouble maintaining army, reinforcing it and dealing with rebels, NGF attacks back. Fortunately because they started the war, I don't have to deal with their allies so after dealing with their mobilized forces, I can finally push them back and start capturing their provinces. Forested Lodz gets honorable mention for being the bloodiest place during the war. Every time someone tried to attack there (whether it was me or NGF), he suffered horrible losses, usually atleast around 10:1 ratio.


ET9Rz.jpg


Once I started winning the war with NGF, Russia used the opportunity and attacked again.



nRfGc.jpg


Like the last time, defending against Russia isn't big deal. This time they don't even have a lot of forces around (probably didn't mobilize). Having Ottomans and now Sweden as allies means UK and Russia send some forces there, just to sign white peace with them later.


5nQD0.jpg


After signing white peace with UK/Russia alliance again, I take my time to capture most of the NGF. Unfortunately I was still missing around 6 war score for Schlesien, meaning one more war with NGf was needed to get all Polish cores. Special thanks to Pommern for providing another example of retarded core system.



bg951.jpg


At this point Krakow is now larger than Austria, which is quite something when you compare it with the first screen. All thanks to free cores and 'bonus' Russian and NGF provinces. Needless to say, previous wars 'fixed' my economy, not only by giving me more poor people to tax, but also reducing my army size. That said, my war exhaustion is now around 50%, resulting in extremely high militancy and frequent uprisings.

That means I wait around 10 years in peace, dealing with rebels and building new army...


2NTIF.jpg


In the meantime NGF made alliance with USA, which didn't really help them and I took Schlesien without a problem. When NGF was unable to deal with rebels, few German minors got independent and NGF ended up with proletarian dictatorship. Only Polish cores left are in Austria, that declared war on me just when I wanted to attack them.


hKy8a.jpg


Obviously, dealing with mobilized peasants wasn't a problem.



I7tj2.jpg


And as always during war, butthurt Russia declared war together with UK and France.


itE2Z.jpg


Good for me, UK was just happily blockading and France apparently had all forces in Africa and didn't even mobilize. Mobilized Russia was pain in the ass though because even when winning every battle, I didn't have enough troops to fight all of them.

Nevertheless, when I dealt with most of Austrian forces and eventually even Russian reinforcements stopped coming, I was able to humiliate France (prestige from war goals now scales) and focus just on Austria again.


sqw9K.jpg



Getting enough war score to get 2 more uncored states, I had everything to form Poland and even more, finishing my goal. I haven't played further yet since as you can imagine, at this point it's your regular superpower, so let me just end this with two screenshots.


COmFk.jpg


MpHto.jpg
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Personally I always found the amount of gamey tactics like acquiring territory in goddamn Italy to be rather offensive (and the fact the area required for forming Poland is ridiculous in size), so I always took the time to make a separate formation event for Poland which required only the core areas around Congress Poland.

AARs like this also heighten the wayyyyyyyy too stable nature of the Russian Empire, which should be crippled by hordes of nationalist rebels the moment it gets its ass seriously handed to it. Well, I'll get back to that later when they've patched AHD enough (and also probably add a little event chain for the civil war that's launched by Russia getting REALLY badly beaten after 1890 or something, and a generic Russian bonus modifier for organization and spawn rate for Communist rebels)
 

Cenobyte

Prophet
Joined
Feb 13, 2010
Messages
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Location
Japan
The Polish borders achieved by collecting the states with core provinces are always really fugly. I wonder if anyone at Paradox HQ has ever seen a map of historical Poland :?
 

Hellraiser

Arcane
Joined
Apr 22, 2007
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Location
Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
The problems aren't the core locations, it's the fact that to get one province with a core, you need to get the whole region which results in the borders being as derpy as they are. You can only get realistic borders via "releasing" a state but not by conquest since that always nets you the entire region and not just the cores.
 

Cassidy

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2007
Messages
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Location
Vault City
The problems aren't the core locations, it's the fact that to get one province with a core, you need to get the whole region which results in the borders being as derpy as they are. You can only get realistic borders via "releasing" a state but not by conquest since that always nets you the entire region and not just the cores.

Only applies to Great Powers AFAIK. Countries without GP status will only get the provinces they have cores at.
 

Yeesh

Magister
Joined
Nov 10, 2006
Messages
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Location
your future if you're not careful...
As someone with only some CK II and HOI2 experience, and a tiny bit of EU3 but not much, I find the sheer meta-gameyness shown in this LP to be mighty off-putting. I attribute this entirely to the game and do not mean it as a criticism of the LP. But it makes me very wary of trying V2. (But I'm also old and lazy, so was it even going to happen anyway?)
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
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Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Well, the meta-gameyness is more than anything due to playing as Krakow, and trying to form Poland.
 

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