Europa Universalis IV announced

[Alcibiades]

Timur is one of those people who are fought over by all the Stans. They are like the Balkantards of Central Asia about this.

Lol,what about the nations who attacked lesser advanced nation to plunder them like the british,dutch,portugals,france,spainsh etc?
or the amercians who annihilated the indians in Northa America?

They are not *tards?

"Glorious" nations build themself on the corpse of others..
I see no difference between a mongol a turk or a british etc.
They all want to rule over others,and all did the same way by destroying others.

Don't think you're getting 'it'.

[garbon]

Timur is one of those people who are fought over by all the Stans. They are like the Balkantards of Central Asia about this.

I think that just leads credence to the idea of doing something generic like turko-mongol (or chagatai - though we also have the Chagatai starting as kirghiz).  It is very weird to convert Basra to Uzbek culture or to suggest that there was no clash of culture when the Uzbeks took Samarkand.  Particularly considering that Uzbek wasn't a particularly strong cultural identity at our game start.

Of course, there are also the strange things like forming the Mughals after making a mad dash for Delhi (while still ruling over all the Timurid lands) / and being the Timurids even once that dynasty has been replaced, so I'll file it all under a little odd but whatever.

[Queequeg]

Would it be a cadet branch of the Timurid line?  I think you could make an argument for something like that.

I'm thinking about doing an Ironman Puritan England AAR called "Cold is God's way of telling us to BURN MORE CATHOLICS!", will see how this game ends up.

[garbon]

Would it be a cadet branch of the Timurid line?  I think you could make an argument for something like that.

Maybe though my "cadet" line of Burji died out as apparently in tribal(or horde) nations you can't have a regency council so a Giray took charge with Burji as an heir. The underage dude subsequently died off, so I'm now on my 3rd dynasty.

Gameplay radically changes once you become Mughals. As long as you keep the Ottomans at least somewhat friendly, pretty much no one stands in your way. Took Religious as my first national idea and now I have all but 3 provinces converted to Sunni (2 of which are under conversion).  Persia exists with 2 provs as it revolted from Qara and Aq Koyunlu in Gilan-Mazandaran.  I'm so large (didn't lose any of the starting Tim lands) that I now have a majority in Basrah, Gujarat, Samarkand, and...Kashmir(?) without even applying effort.

[Queequeg]

Yeah, Persia is underpowered.

[garbon]

On a very bizarre note, Mir Wais (I presume of Hotaki fame) led an Afghan rebellion against my Mughal Empire in 1485. A bunch of provinces in Afghan region got +10 revoltrisk for a bit but that was all. Underwhelming in its anachronisity and effects.

[Queequeg]

Weirdly, the OE is seriously under-performing in all of my 1444 starts.  I really don't see benefit of starting that early at all, none of the great empires are established and it's too easy to blob early and take good colony spots.

[Queequeg]

Have you tried a Safavid playthrough, Garbon?  I actually quite enjoyed it.  Remade Afsharid Empire, took dominant interest in India, effectively clipped wings of Mamlukes and Ottomans. 

[Viking]

Weirdly, the OE is seriously under-performing in all of my 1444 starts.  I really don't see benefit of starting that early at all, none of the great empires are established and it's too easy to blob early and take good colony spots.

They do well enough in europe. The problem with the ottomans as well as everybody who needs to expand quickly and did so historically, they can't. Trying to slog through russia with a 30% war score cost against the steppe dummies is nearly as bad as not having any vassal about to release and annex because you can't finish off crimea or kazan cause annexing them costs 400%. The same applies to the mameluks, incas, aztecs etc. You have to destroy the mameluk army in four, five, six straight wars just to achieve what Selim the Grim did in one campaign. It's worse than in EU3 and the AI doesn't get any "special" events to help it. So, the mameluks remain and join anti-ottoman coalitions.

[Queequeg]

I don't think I am starting a game before 1520 unless I am playing Hungary or Byzantium. I like remodeling the Early Modern, not this sillyness.

[Caliga]

Weirdly, the OE is seriously under-performing in all of my 1444 starts.  I really don't see benefit of starting that early at all, none of the great empires are established and it's too easy to blob early and take good colony spots.

Haven't played in about a week, but I have a Castile game going and it was at ~1480.  Ottomans eliminated Byzantium (but Naxos, Athens, and the Knights were still there), Albania, and conquered most of Asia Minor (inc. Trebizond and all of the petty emirates).  There was a strong Serbian Kingdom holding its left flank in Europe, however.

[JonasSalk]

Did a 1444 start as Venice. Having the Big Bad Austria on my ass for everything I do really sucks, so I made sure to unify southern Italy via claim-warring a lot (Naples split from Aragon fairly early). Together with that plus Rome and Urbino, I had the income and manpower to start taking central and parts of northern Italy piece by piece.  Made sure to only declare on those places while Austria was distracted with a war (which happens non-stop) with somebody medium or big, or engaged in several wars. A small force, usually 3-5,000 is enough to take down most Italian minor states, leaving the bulk of my army to defend from Austria and counter-attack whenever I can.  It requires a lot of patience, but now that I'm in 1510, I have most of Italy, except for the Milan and Tuscan regions, which will soon fall.  So I should have Italy unified and be able to declare as Italy around 1520-1530ish if all goes well.

Doing this in multiplayer would probably be even more difficult, unless you had an alliance with France, Hungary, or Commonwealth to bash Austria with you.  A player Austria would have crushed me early without much trouble.

[DGuller]

In my Venice Ironman game, Austria was a pushover.  The first war would be pivotal, but once you win that, they're downgraded from a threat to a PITA status.  The Ottomans were the ones that were mauling me if they bothered to pay attention to me.  Thankfully, they didn't go out of their way to attack me directly for most of the dangerous period, so I learned to just not get involved in alliance wars with them, whatever the cost.

[Queequeg]

900 French cavalry just destroyed my retreating 30,000 man Dutch army.  Fuck me.

[Queequeg]

I'm still 3 techs above them, and in the initial struggle was a really close call with a French army that was 10k stronger.

Wish there was something to do with all my money.  The only real constriction on my expansion is how fucking long it takes for fleets to go from my Pacific holdings to Western Europe, and how quickly I can build ships and armies in the home provinces.