It was not a good session for me; I lost my victory card in the Rhineland to Khan, who also took Utrecht and Gelre to fill out his own VC; and then Dragoon attacked me for Mexico. Apparently I had annoyed him more than I realised when I invaded Kiche at the same time he did and took the gold provinces. There wasn’t any question of me fighting both Occitania and the Latin Empire on land, so I surrendered the Rhineland without combat, just as Khan did when Dragoon and I attacked him – you may be seeing a pattern here. However, the war for Mexico was colonial, meaning it couldn’t be fought in Europe, and I thought I might be able to win the naval war and wear down Dragoon’s expeditionary force, or otherwise force a stalemate; the more so as I was allied to Great Britain and between us we had a much larger navy than the Latin Empire. Unfortunately, a mere doomstack with 50% numerical superiority is apparently no longer sufficient to win a naval battle in this EU4 of early 2018. It is somewhat unclear to me what precisely went wrong; but the fact remains that Golle’s and my combined fleets were twice defeated by Dragoon’s. Theories for the cause include a series of very lucky die rolls; a better admiral (with 2 extra points of maneuver giving one or two extra heavies in the front line, and the Naval Gunner trait giving 10% combat ability); and considerably higher naval morale due to completing a mission, Defender of the Faith, Fervor, prestige, and power projection, in that order of importance. I also wonder if the old habit of just putting all one’s ships in a doomstack and seeking out the enemy doomstack to win or die is now bad tactics? Since you can’t fight with the whole doomstack all at once anyway, most of your ships will be wasted whether you win or lose; if you had several smaller stacks, then if you lost you could put in fresh ships against the enemy’s damaged ones. Against this is the risk of having your ships captured when you lose. It is not clear to me what the answer is.

Eurasia, 1667. Note the closing up of Africa and the continued absence of Korea; happily, longtime peanut BootOnFace has volunteered to play this crucial slot.

Atlantic, 1667. Mexico in Latin orange, a dramatic entry into the colonial game and a very visible loss of prestige for the Ynglings, not to mention those yearly shipments of gold.