Great Moments in Europa Universalis/Victoria/Hearts of Iron

Oh, also my new Commander has a 32 (!?) in Militant skills because Jesus gives him military advice!!!!!!

how do i unlock jesus

two years later and my truce with the king of scotland has expired while he's in the middle of a crusade campaign in beirut with his entire army. alas my military leader is no longer inspired jesus now :(

that's awesome btw about inheriting York. i think i've maybe successfully inherited a distant county through marriage once ever. what was the queen's comparable strength? if you could've held her off with an alliance or a mercenary corp it might've been worth doing. even if you could hold her to a white peace you'd have gotten to keep york and a like 20 year truce out of it.

what's sad is that i had spent a considerable amount of time trying to pull the marriage inheritance thing off, by looking for men with titles willing to marry matrilineally (couldn't find any, although i invested a lot of time into it!) and various other shenanigans, none of which panned out. meanwhile the york thing just kind of happened on its own. i still don't fully understand, or even partly understand, the ways that titles and claims are passed on from generation to generation.

the queen's comparable strength was much higher than mine, probably not so much because of the strength of her alliances but because i was relatively weak over in ireland. i was spending most of my time trying to unite a bunch of vassals who were trying to murder my children, and wasn't thinking about broader military concerns.

conquered Scotland (waited like a courageous and virtuous ruler for the king of scotland to go crusading in jerusalem and then hijacked the bulk of his kingdom while he was gone) and most of Wales - now eyeing England. I have an alliance w/ the King of France (and my genius daughter is married to his heir and is his heir's heir's mother) so that should be useful. the problem is that even w/ vassals (which i try to resist using bc my own levies are robust) i only have like 15k soldiers and the king of england has 20+. i've built up a bit of a bank (1000g) but that doesn't feel like enough to overwhelm him w/ mercenaries and i'm concerned about relying on France to supply the missing firepower because NPC AI is not fantastic especially when you need to build up for a big army - doom stacks facing each other - they won't always coordinate correctly and stack w/ your army and then you end up losing.

i did get a genius on the throne - the son of my second son was a genius so i educated him up and then switched over to electoral monarchy so i could bypass my eldest's claim to the throne. he had married some dumbshit (w/ a cute portrait tho) in the meanwhile so i had to assassinate her (pope was extorting me for a divorce for like 400g so that was not happening) and then married my genius cousin to hopefully make some genius heirs to inherit. unfortunately w/ electoral monarchy i had my son (from the first marriage but that won't be a problem since i can just elect the right heir when he's hatched) set up to inherit the kingdom of ireland but one of my conniving uncles got enough support to become the inheritor for scotland and i sure as hell was not going to let scotland go after all the work i spent stealing it. so i assassinated my uncle too and now my dumb brat kid from my first marriage is set to inherit both kingdoms. luckily i'm young and my genius cousin is young so we should have time making genius babies and hopefully avoiding inbred ones.

achievement unlocked: United the Kingdoms

now to never play as anyone in the UK ever again

any ideas for what achievement to go after next? i've always wanted to unite Russia

http://www.ckiiwiki.com/After_the_End

that sounds p cool.

i united india in eu4, currently reenacting the classic 18th c land grab tug of war in the middle east between the ottomans, india and russia.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?attachments/secret_cult_screen_01-jpg.240720

WHAT

No Active Mission, eh?

tom do u play this game? it's really the greatest.

No I need to give this marriage a fighting chance

this goddamn game is FIVE. YEARS. OLD.

and still rules.

has anyone played Hearts of Iron IV? i'm about to start it up for the first time, and was just wondering if there is an obvious go-to resource/guide i should look for