Brandenburg. Might be the most fun nation to play. You’re a military machine, in a tiny package.
Sweden. They’re, as is tradition, OP. Room to grow in several directions.
France. If you’re ever at peace for more than two years, it’s because you’re like Alexander, and have no more worlds to conquer. Go for Big Blue Blob to really push the combat up.
Easy WC factions, ordered in my estimation of difficulty - Ottomans/England/Austria/France/Muscovy.
Muscovy is essentially a slightly weaker version of an Ottoman start. England/Austria require you to have a solid understanding of personal unions and likely in-game events. For example with Austria you should have both Bohemia and Hungary as junior partners in PU’s by 1455. England got even easier with Rule Britannia because it includes a mission to PU France after you defeat them in the war over Maine, which is easily doable if you ally Aragon and someone like Brittany/Burgundy right off the bat.
France has less super obvious freebie PU’s to abuse, but they are so powerful you can just brute force it with some planning and AE management.
Brandenburg into Prussia is lethal. Just make sure you stack the relevant bonuses.
Brandenburg is a riot if you just want to war.
I finally finished a WC last week with Austria. Tried a few times with the other big powers, but disregarding OE with all the vassals taking out rebels made this pretty easy. I still have 30 years left on the clock to get one faith. Playing someone else, I guess I should get better with vassals or client state management.
I find for a WC run it is extremely beneficial to have a vassal you expand alongside with to dump OE into, as going past 100 OE with any regularity will tank your stability which in turn forces you to either tank admin power or your income with a side helping of constant rebellions.
It’s also a massive fringe benefit that past a certain point your vassals will win all your wars for you and you barely need to play the game at all outside of deciding where to absorb next.
I’ll probably give Mughals another run after expansion drops as this WC got a bit boring towards the end after I knocked out the other big powers and started mopping up. The marriage game was fun at the beginning and had most of the big EU powers under a PU, but had a bit of bad timing with GB going republic after the PU. Maybe I should have let those rebels live as killing them seemed to force the government change. For now, I think I will finish up SPQR on CK2
@Zephyr your exploits are very impressive. I have hundreds of hours in these games and still feel aeons away from what you’re discussing.
About 700 hours since Thanksgiving last year when I got hooked on Paradox and stopped playing MMOs I think a 1000 hours is considered no longer a noob.
I’ve never been very successful playing the marriage game. I have read about it and had one good run with France where I had two PU’s - one with Hungary and another with another country whose name escapes me.
Can you give any tips/run-downs on how to do that? Getting most of the EU powers under a PU sounds fascinating.
I’ve never had much luck with that either. RNGesus never seems keen on giving me PU’s. They always seem to spit out some bastard heir months before they die.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one PU through inheritance in over 700 hours.
That’s why I don’t get too involved in the marriage/PU game. I don’t enjoy when so much comes down to luck, one way or the other. Rolling four 0’s and 1’s to start an important battle is bad enough. :)
What nation do you start from when you are trying to form Mughal?
The Ming, of course.
I tried…
I think Austria has an increased chance, but if I remember right, heir determination when there is no dynastic heir is based on development of those countries that are married. The Commonwealth is a little different as you need to keep a diplomat backing your heir until the sejm is overthrown around 1600. After that, you can claim the throne.
In my last game, I had Portugal, Spain, Commonwealth, Bohemia, Hungary, and GB under PU for a short bit. France I just ate and managed to get all of Burgundy with the inheritance event.
I have only tried Mughals once with Timurids, but think most of the Persian countries and Uzbek can form it.
I stopped my most recent Byzantium play through in 1639 but it seemed very much like I had a chance at my first WC game.
Obviously Byz starts small, but by 1630 I had taken the Ottos over entirely, expanded down the Red Sea, into Persia, and heavily into Italy/Austria. My only real competition was the blue blob that had munched most of Iberia and had taken chunks of the HRE and junior partnered Portugal and England.
Then I got an alert that the French heir had died, that the ruler was in his 70s, and that I had a distant relative from an old royal marriage in a position to take the throne. An extremely quick war of succession against Muscovy and I found myself the senior partner over France while it still held Portugal and England.
I kept playing for another 9 years, but that sucked the fun out of the game for me. I haven’t returned to it since. :(
I started Timurids a few times last night just to play around. Wow, what a messy situation they’re in! Vassals that want OUT, not much income… challenging.
PU mechanics: Yes, it seems dependent on luck and hard and whatnot. But some took the time to write a decent guide on them some while ago:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/guide-to-royal-marriages-personal-unions-and-claim-throne.788829/
Pretty sure, most if not all of the mechanics are still the same since then.
My most successful PU related run was with Sienna -> Italy. I had under PU among others Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Sweden (not at the same time tho). But that was in the older times, when different religious groups could marry, there was a CB forcing the union and other things which were already changed by the time the previous guide was written.