Europa Universalis IV Beta AAR Albania: Chapter I: Skanderbeg's Last Stand. (November 1444-February 1446)

In 1443, Albanian forces deserted the Ottoman coalition during the Crusade of Varna, and in the following year of 1444, Albanians organized under the League of Lezhë, a state dedicated to preserving short-lived Albanian independence. The League was led by a remarkable general, Gjergj Skanderbeg. The failure of Varna left Skanderbeg in the lurch, but nonetheless he managed to lead a remarkable guerrilla opposition campaign to the Ottomans that used Albania's rough mountainous terrain to his advantage. Albania was still independent after his death in 1468. Let's see if we can walk in his footsteps.This will be fun.I played this game on my standard settings: Handicap to AI (Probably shouldn't have done this), AI Difficulty Normal (AI treats me just like it treats the other AI), Historical Lucky Nations on (extra bonuses to the Turks), Ironman Off. In retrospect, I probably should have put Handicap to Human, put AI Difficulty to Easy, and turned Lucky Nations off.Albania starts the Grand Campaign in a relatively rough spot, but it isn't without its own unique advantages, chief and foremost among which is Skanderbeg himself. At 6 Admin 5 Diplo 6 Mil, Skanderbeg is the single best political leader at the 1444 start (though Mehmet II the not-yet-Conqueror is a 5-5-6 and is only marginally worse than Skanderbeg). Furthermore, Skanderbeg's formidable 5 Fire 5 Shock 5 Maneuver 0 Siege general stats are truly stunning. Let's see what we have to work with militarily.Three brigades of infantry and one cog. We will take the no-brainer course of action and have Skanderbeg lead our troops. The good news is that our army is already built to forcelimit so there's no need for further construction. Theoretically, we could raise a brigade of mercenaries at this point, but I didn't think of this plan at the time.Skanderbeg is ridiculously good at monarch point generation, and a team of trusty advisers only makes him better. Albania's economy could only support two, and it supports them in the loosest sense of the word, but I doubt I'll ever have to worry about bankruptcy. Our heir is a slightly-above average ruler who pales in comparison with his godlike father. With Skanderbeg's monarch point generation, if we can get out of the war with the Turks, we will actually tech far quicker than most of the countries in the Western tech group, whose group advantage is no match for Skanderbeg's obscene monarch point glut.We've talked about Albania's amazing monarch because most of the other aspects of Albania are distinctly depressing to contemplate. Its one province is as poor as it gets, with a mediocre trade good and one base tax, and is Orthodox while Albania's government is Catholic. Furthermore, the Byzantines and the Venetians have cores on us, so if the Ottomans somehow fail to finish us off, the Venetians will swoop in on us like vultures. Even Serbia hungers for our land for some reason. On the plus side, 0.0% revolt risk! Then again, considering that any possible rebels would likely be fighting a Turkish siege, maybe even that is a negative. Also, because our Religious Unity is 0%, we're unlikely to ever achieve a level of stability.Our trade is simple as can be: transferring trade from Constantinople to Ragusa and collecting there. Trade is negligible for us, though. Let's take the mission to restore our prestige!Albania's diplomatic situation is grim. Serbia wants us to fail so it will not offer us military access to hide our valiant forces, and while Wallachia and Hungary look on us with pity, neither will raise a hand in our defense. I send a diplomat to raise relations in Hungary because why not.Time for some serious thought about our position. I think that if I have my army run east far enough, with Skanderbeg's fantastic maneuver I might reach Constantinople and get military access to hide my army. Then I would slip my army into siege in Edirne and pray that it fell before Albania fell. It's a desperate plan, but I have no alternatives. Sadly, the AI isn't falling for old tricks that would work in EU3 anymore. Note that it plans on dividing its army rather than marching the whole thing to Monastir so I can't flee to Epirus instead.Nevertheless, Skanderbeg will still arrive in Monastir a week before the Turks. Might that be enough time to get to Macedonia? Having no other option, I took the gamble. Meanwhile, I secured a backup hiding place in Athens just to get more options in case I needed to double back. As it turned out, the gamble was a failure due to the maneuver of Mehmet the Conqueror. Had the Turks left their army leaderless, I would've been able to flee right into Constantinople. As it was, I had to run in terror back to Albania.I was caught. Mehmet's army would reach Albania before I could get to Epirus and try the "flee to Athens" plan. With that in mind, I sat still and let Skanderbeg take a valiant last stand, outnumbered 13-1 by the Turkish host. He fought better than he could be expected to, but the result was inevitable.Though my army had fallen, my fort still remained intact...Albania was safe, but for how long? (Also, my one-cog navy remained intact, but I forgot it existed.) The Turks cleverly divided their army again, not wishing to suffer 5% monthly attrition by keeping all 39,000 troops on Albania.Word came that Skanderbeg was considered an embarrassing failure. I felt sorry for the poor man, who did everything he could for his country.In one of the most heartwarming moves of this last stage of Albania's existence, the Crusaders of Athens offered their hand in full alliance. Their only regret was that the war was over two months old and not one they wished to get involved with. Still, their moral support counts.Though Albanian diplomats considered conceding defeat to the Turk, the best they could get was 10 positive, 67 negative, or a -57 net Ottoman opinion of the deal. The Ottomans had no interest in anything but finishing the war by finishing Albania. The Turks would not be satisfied with things they did not want, like an end to Albanian trade power or even Albanian vassalization.The Serbs tried to swoop in on Albania's carcass, but with Turkish troops already settling in for a siege, the Serbs were too late to kill-thief.Sieges move in phases, wherein the percent chance that a siege will end victoriously goes up in increments of 7%. Breaking the walls of a fort is an automatic +21% to the chances of the fort surrendering. Interestingly, the Ottomans could have obtained another +14% by blockading me, but the one cog of the Albanian navy was too terrifying a foe for the Turkish corsairs. Water shortage is another +21% modifier...I survived for one round after that second image, but Albania finally folded in February of 1446.Perhaps the Turks would have mercy and not finish me off...no such luck, though. A week later, Turkey finally freed up a diplomat to tell me that I was no longer a sovereign country. Skanderbeg's dream had died.In one of the coolest Easter Eggs of all, though, game over via annexation allows you to transfer into Spectator Mode, allowing you to watch the entire world without Fog of War and use the console to tag switch to the country of your choosing. If Albania became independent again, whether force-released or spawned by rebels, I would be able to take control of them again. It would be as if the wandering ghost of Skanderbeg finally returned home. Most people would never discover this feature, being too determined to savescum or ragequit out of an impossible situation, but there is more honor in taking one's defeat in stride and realizing when one has been outplayed. It was a good match, AI. I will be back.If I had spawned a Fort Defense military adviser, I might have prolonged this another few months. If I had gotten my army to Constantinople and had the fort defense adviser, it isn't beyond the realm of disbelief that I might have sacked Edirne before Albania fell, though the Lucky Nations benefit to fort defense would mean that the Ottomans would have the advantage even in that most favorable of scenarios. Besides, the Ottomans had thirty-nine regiments and were more than willing to break them up into stacks of 25 and 14. The latter would have eventually Hunter-Killered me. I might also have set the game to the easiest possible standards. I'm confident that I would have still lost, but it might well have prolonged this tale from 16 months to two years.That's where you come in, readers. Let no one think that Europa Universalis IV is an easy game. Nor is it a hard game. It is as easy or hard as you set out to make it. Albania is, in my opinion, the hardest start in the game: even if you somehow win the Ottoman war, your economy will be in shambles and Venice or Serbia or even the Byzantines will opportunistically DOW you. And yet...and yet I am confident that some day the word ALBANIA in the largest possible font size will cover most of Europe in some AAR on this forum and people will joke about the terrible beta player who didn't figure out the trick to Albanian dominance. I'm sure that this will happen. There are unsolved problems in EU4, and even if you think you're hot stuff for forming Germany as Brandenburg or Westernizing as Mali or enacting Form the Qing Dynasty as the Manchu (all of which are rewarding paths to incredibly powerful resulting states), think about the even harder challenges that await you. Like "As Albania, survive the first five years of the game."Take my challenge: survive past my record of February, 1446 as Albania. Then try to break the record of the guy that did that, and so on. In EU4 as in life, we can't all be the Castilles or the Frances that start out with the world laid out on a platter or the Muscovies and the Ottomans that have a clearly-demarcated path to greatness, but the greatness achieved by an Albania, though smaller scale, can feel sweeter than any of theirs because it's well and truly earned. Do not fear failure: Gjergj Skanderbeg was still head of a sovereign Albania when he died in 1468. Dare to dream that you can match that: though there's no achievement for it in EU4, I'd find one player Albania independent in 1468 more impressive than any number of revived Byzantine Empires. Good luck.