Chapter 6 - Absolutamente

Oh no, I haven´t reached my quota of daily aar chapters yet. Where´s my writing hat. Organize thoughts... aye. Last chapter we manages to fill our coffers with mucho ducats preciosos. We did that by securing 90% of the genoese trade node and redirecting trade from our growing gobal empire there. Meanwhile we were spreading our there is no god gospel to anybody who would listen, same as our vassals. Our main foe was otto, who was basically fighting are bare-knuckle box street fight 3:1 against austria and allies, qq and transoxiania and finally us. The beast is still standing, but it looks like the constant blows are taking its toll. 1610 is arround the corner and you know what time that is. Absolutism baby. It is really time we get the snowball going (yellow snow, yuk). I think I blobbed harder in my first wc back several years ago, but what can you do... we still rely on conquest cb...Ah, otto... i was just talking about you. *Kapow*This is no fair fight anymore. Bohemia and russia are in it too. Feels a bit too much actually, but I don´t have anything else to spend the favors on except buying trust.While we´re in the area.. Filling up those states.Yikes, austria finally joined the coalition club, a bit too late. There were some other countries in the benelux and south-west germany who jumped in and out of the coalition which was kinda dangerous, because I couldn´t get truces with them. Now they cooled off and austria and hormuz are basically the only ones who I won´t truce cycle. If transoxiania would join the club it might be a problem, but I keep a close eye on them, always improve relations and even send gifts and stuff if necessary.No peace yet, let me get that institution first...... and buy this tech.Now we peace out... Oh crap, what did i just babble about having the coaltion under control. Eh, little punks except otto and austria...Hmpf, just 50 pp from otto for conquered provinces... guess it has to do..tlemcen integration is moving along and taking up speed with 7 dip per month. eta 1620. Forgot when we started, but 1620 sounds pretty good... 1610 would be best, because we could instantly reduce autonomy when absolutism hits. Not the end of the world, i want to do the absolutism thing a little different this time anyways. Debates are nice, but not always getting the right ones can be pretty annoying (especially late game when you rely on them ^^).Hey, look what i did. Diplo annex -15% issue. eta moved down to 1613. Almost like I planned that 70 years ago... I´m so smartGuess Northumberland has done it´s duty too. I wonder if we can do a rush integration during the 10 years of this -15% interation cost issue being active... that would be swell.Ok, enought diplo stuff... get me my sword. Brittany just lost frances will to continue to be their ally. I guess we can speed up that process...Brunei didn´t have any real allies to begin with. *Fruit-loopiness intensifies*This is one of those events I was talking about earlier. +1% is not much, but I can every little bit I can get....Sry, but we have dibs on the new world. You may keep some of your unfished colonies and work on the hinterland... we take that later.This is sad england, just let go....Still holding on... I see...Thats one of those beneluxers I was talking about. Liege, hainaut, brabant, also switzerland are sometimes eligible for coalition sometimes not. I do my best to keep them out as several of those smaller to mid size countries can make the difference...Ayayay! Me gusta! (did we double our force limit within the last 30 years? ^^)Here is my tactic for this run to push absolutism as quickly as possible. Last couple of runs I noticed that raising autonomy didn´t work so well anymore, doing shananegans with rebel is always annoying to me... so I wanted to try something different. First I made sure I reach as many age goals as possible upfront, in this case it was 3 (multicultural might be possible too if you took humanism, which we can´t do in this run). The idea is to get the harsh treatment cost reduction as quickly as possible, -50%. You can combine that with the mission "conquer new states" which gives you -33% harsh treatment cost. If you are orthodox you can reduce it even further with one of the icons. Harsh treatment gives 1 absolutism and combined with 1,2 or 3 of those modifiers becomes very cost effective to raise absolutism. It takes about 10 years in this run for me to get the splendor goal, but the mission i activate immediately. I do harsh treat all those "cheap" revolts which cost 50 mil normally and go down to 30 something already (combined with the splendor bonus they only cost 7 mil or so). The thing is you want to have some some rebellions during the time until you can trigger court and country... that usually isn´t too much of a problem, especially in our atheist crusaders case. It might be not the fastest way, but I found it to be very reliable, hassle-free and quick enough...37 mil for starters, I don´t go crazy with it, but buy a couple whenever I have spare mil or before doing a peace deal. Only the cheap ones though. Btw. i just did the math, shouldn´t it be 33 mil if the initial cost was 50. Hmm...People hate us from mali to malacca...Of course decreasing autonomy is still part of the deal. I stop increasing autonomy from now and this is where rebels hell really becomes a thing. We do have 7-8 more unrest then in a normal campaign, without autonomy reduction and slow conversion. Check out those new provinces in brunei, 19 unrest for math knows how long.. I have to dedicate over half of my army to stay behind and take care of rebels all the time.Yikes, dropped the ball there for a sec.No 1., but like I said, our invasion forces are much smaller, more like 80-100k split up into 2-3 theatresBoom-shakalakaThis however... I´m not sure how many provinces there are in total... but this sounds like ALOT to do in 200 years... over 2500 to go.Slowly, but steady...Quick and angry...Those friggin particularist spawn with 200-300k, they used to work in our favor, because you could accept demands and reduce autonomy afterwards, but now it also costs 10 absolutism.Those dudes, however I´m glad to appease...August 2nd, 1611... am I good or what?Too many territories is going up. Currently at 0,20 per year... just money at this point.Granting seats to the parliament reduces absolutism. Good to know, I let them automatically get assigned which does nothing...Reduce autonomy in freshly integrated lands...Damn 28...Anyways, let´s continue. War for colonies with friesland who became a colonizer. Also taking the coast from kilwa...Reduced too many territories down to 0.04, by adding land to tradecompanies and giving away out of state provinces to vassals.Najd is well known for being a conversion monster. Somehow they became an opm vassal in iraq. I hope they get eaten up so I can release them in their core provinces which I already own.Byzantium finally got it´s +3% missionary rate bonus, but they start to lag behind in adm tech. This will soon become a problem as they are not able to core all the land i give them and keep up in tech. admin tech 17 is crucial for the admin efficiency. They do convert very well, but i´m pretty sure I won´t keep them arround forever, which is sad because I didn´t plan on owning those lands myself... too many territories and stuff. If they just wouldn´t roll rulers with 1 admin all the time.Looks like northumberland didn´t make it in time. back to missionaries...This is pretty red...Transoxiania... I write you a cheque and leave the number blank... what do you say?Money... hahaa...A new idea group... what shall we get? Diplomatic is the way to go I think. Need to speed up conquest by as much as possible... Also more relations and diplomats, improve relation, reputation... yeah, yeah.. I´m sold.Boom, Olivares... Didn´t see you coming. Fine specimen of a duke...Ok, we got our splendor ability. 9,5 years into absolutism. Let´s stomp those skulls in...9 mil instead of 56... lowest is 7 if i recall correctly. I stay in the war with friesland until call for peace raises we high enough so we for one get more rebels and on the other side become eligible for court and country... which we just did. 9 years, not too bad. I saw somewhere a method that gives you instant absolutism, but it was too cheesy for me. I think it involved the -1000 liberty desire trick with vassals where you seize provinces from them, lower autonomy, give the province back to them... rinse and repeat.. nah, not for me.Ok, we have enough war exhaustion. Let´s make florida a present.Uhuhu, we get a new vassal. Our diplo limit just went one up, we integrated tlemcen and are about to do the same with northumberland... Who will it be? *drums* it is ajuuraan. A conversion heavyweight in it´s region. Taking religious ideas first by default upon release, 1% conversion strenght AND +1 missionary... nice. We will feed him all provinces in cape horn that don´t belong to trade companies all the way up to egypt. He gets immediately converted to atheism... 2 provinces with many cores to return, perfect.War with the mamluks to feed our new vassal. absolutism is at 60...While we are in the area...Northumberland integrated....It is time... conflict of court and country. Of course we take the -1 unrest option.Wait what... a fifth missionary?!? Damn, if I had know that I would have taken jerusalem ages ago...Ming, pulled ahead of of again... I think they finished offensive.Happy too early, the missionary quit his job at the end of the month again... Also yay, rebels... rebels all the time..We have court and country running, but we don´t have time to waste. Just fight some less global wars. Switzerland has a few provinces in genoa and is also allied to 2 coaltion members...If I press this button...Boom... rebel bomb to the face!One more war can´t hurt, can it?Rebels, rebels, rebels everywhere....Switzerland and mailand cores in genoa secured....Brunei almost gone. The coalition seems to become smaller again...Man, taking care of all those rebels is kinda expensive...This should help a bit with the deficit.No 1 again, we just ming just became available as a rival again and I plan to make it count....Oh, france just joined the club of colonizers... i guess it is a bit too late. We have secured all the prime realestate. I don´t mind them colonizing a bit as our cns are much stronger then theirs so I don´t have to allocate any armies to the new world if we ever fight them. I´m more worried about non-new world provinces. We have sealed off africa perfectly and we are dedicating all colonization efforts to malacca and islands in general, which are always annoying to conquer...Nice, 10 years went by quickly. We are ready to go bois!... in the next episode. This was rather efficient. Our conquest speed should get more traction from now on. I worry if our conversion speed will be able to keep up. We will need more vassals that is for sure. I wonder which ones it will be. Najd would be very nice, but is still landlocked unfortunately. We will see what opportunities arise. Later guys...