We stopped almost 50 years ago to take a look at the
known world (link). Let’s do the same now.
1602 World View
Looking at mainland Europe for a moment, it’s hard
to see what has changed between 1555 and 1602. Iberia is almost the same,
except we’ve taken a couple of provinces from Castile. France and the smaller
nations around her are identical to before. Britain is still Britain. In
central Europe, Austria still dominates, and although 1 or 2 provinces have
changed hands it looks very similar to before. In the Med, Genoa has annexed
Corsica and Sardinia, but the Italian peninsula hasn’t changed.
Over in Eastern Europe, however, there has been much
more fluidity. Prussia has formed along the Baltic coast, and Hungary has lost
a lot of provinces, some to Austria and Poland, but most to Bosnia.
Drawing back a little, we can see at the bottom of
the map that Castile has lost its African provinces, and Algiers has gone completely.
Norway has also disappeared, being diplomatically annexed by Great Britain.
Sweden still dominates Scandinavia, and if anything has grown a little bigger.
Russia is still a big green blob, although Perm has appeared recently, and the
Golden Horde to their south has expanded, taking provinces from Russia and
Crimea.
Let’s take a look at the religious picture in
Europe. Err, no change.... well, the Orthodox religion has gained a few
provinces, but that’s about it. It looks as though the Catholic/Protestant
struggle has settled down completely.
Next, the world view! This is what we can see on our
map. Note that we still don’t have much of an idea about North America, or central
Asia. 55 years ago, we had no idea about the African interior, now it is
completely revealed to us. Similarly with the Pacific Ocean. There are still
areas of white, but we have discovered most of the Pacific Islands, and even
circumnavigated the globe. Notice that the name ‘Russia’ is quite far over to
the East. This means that they have pretty much expanded all the way to the
Pacific, and in fact, in total they have as many provinces as I do!
As an aside, the map views in EUIV are really
lovely, which makes playing the game a visual joy. We can expect great things
from Hearts of Iron IV with regard to how pretty it will look.
Using the diplomatic map mode, we can look at pretty
much the entire world (as we know it), and get an easy view of our own holdings.
I’ve chopped off the central Pacific as there really isn’t much going on there
at the moment. Our direct holdings are in green, with our subject colonial
nations in the paler green. Our allies (Morocco and Austria) are blue. The
yellow is Alderaan (Ajuraan) where we have a Cassus Belli.
We’ll talk about the specific continents in a
moment, but see all that green in South America? And dotted all over the East
Indies and Indian Ocean? That’s us! From the Galapagos Islands off the west
coast of South America (Longitude 90 West), to the island of Nauru in the
Pacific (Longitude 166 East). Once we lay claim to the Hawaiian Islands, we
will most certainly be able to claim the title “The Empire upon which the Sun
never Sets”. (Strictly speaking we can do that now, but having a gap between
provinces of 106 degrees of longitude rankles!)
OK, so we’ve seen the world, let’s zoom back in
again.
The Caribbean... In the islands themselves, there
has essentially been no movement. We hold the most islands, under the
government of our subject nation, Cuba. Great Britain, France and Castile hold
a few islands each, although not enough for them to form colonial nations. On
the mainland things are a little different. The Aztecs and Mayans are still
holding out, but are being squeezed, by the French colonial nation of
Cosmopolitaine Mexico from the north, and from Castile in the South. Great
Britain has taken the former Norwegian provinces in Florida, whilst Castile has
formed the colonial nation of Colombia.
We didn’t look at North America in 1555, because
there was nothing to see. Since then the colonial landscape has changed
dramatically. Whilst we can’t actually see what is going on in the interior,
along the coastline things are developing nicely.
GB has formed the Thirteen colonies, and controls
the Easter seaboard from Florida up to the Chesapeake (modern day Virginia).
The French have then, somewhat bizarrely, formed the colonial nation of
Floride, from the Delaware up to New Hampshire. North of there, from Nova
Scotia round to the Labrador Coast, GB has formed the colonial nation of
Newfoundland.
In the west, we can see two cheeky Castilian
provinces in the Baja peninsula.
Let’s be cheeky, and select one of the native
American tribal nations, to see what their world view looks like. This opens up
North America for viewing, and we get a much better picture of how it looks in
the interior. This picture is actually from 1604, and we can see that Great
Britain has moved new colonists even further round the coast of Canada into
Hudson Bay. Nobody else seems interested in Canada, and if the Brits are given
free reign we could end up with a powerhouse up there! The thirteen Colonies
now contains more than 13 provinces, and will soon have to attack the Native
Americans or other colonial nations in order to expand any more. Floride still
has a little bit of expansion room up in New York State, but not much, as
further to the north is the Canadian colonial region.
Cosmopolitan Mexico (French) in the south looks big
and strong, but actually the provinces all cover rather large areas in that
part of North America, so it is a bit misleading. Castile has colonised a
snaking line all the way up the west bank of the Mississippi, and have pretty
much reached the current location of St Louis. I think their provinces cut
across colonial region boundaries, however, so they still own the provinces
directly as they don’t have enough in either region to form a colonial nation
yet.
As far as the native Americans go, the Comanche over
in the west are in the safest position, but if the Huron and Cherokee manage to
get protectorate status from one of the colonials, they could tech themselves up
and have a decent chance of lasting a long time.
Let’s go back to more civilised parts! South
America, 55 years ago, was still very much a work in progress. Both ourselves
and Castile had Brazilian colonial subjects, and we had a burgeoning holding in
Argentina. The north of the continent was pretty much as it had been at game
start.
Well, all has changed. Castile created and then lost
a large Argentine colonial subject nation, and Portuguese Brazil ate Castilian
Brazil in a couple of wars. So the South and East of the continent is ours.
The North and West of the continent is all Castile,
however. Whilst we have been free to colonise unmolested in certain areas of
the globe (Indian Ocean for example), Castile has had the same luxury in South
America. They now have 2 subject nations, Peru and Colombia, and are pushing
their way into the interior to expand both. The funny little purple bit on the
north coast is owned by Brittany, of all things!
Moving East, we can see Africa in all its explored
glory.
Along the Mediterranean coast, Morocco (our ally of
many years) and the Ottomans have taken control and show no signs of letting
go. Down the West coast we have control, and also have Mali as a Protectorate.
France has a single colony here, round by Ghana. Moving south there’s more
uncolonised land until you get to our colony of Luanda, surrounded by our
Protectorate (and first subject nation of the game!) Kongo. Continuing down the
coast, France have taken 2 large provinces, and we now have four in South
Africa.
Rounding the Cape, we come to more uncolonised
territory, before reaching a couple of our colonies. Continuing north through
Kilwa (the other green coloured nation!), we pass through Zanzibar (ours) and
Mombasa (also ours) to the light green two province nation of Malinda (our
protectorate). North of there we control the province of Mogadishu, before
coming to the dark blue of Ajuraan (Alderaan as I’ve been referring to it
previously).
After that it’s a bit of a mish-mash. Yemen is now
split into a number of separate parts, with a bit on the African coast and a
bit up by Iraq, as well as their main holdings on the Arabian peninsula. They
have two vassals, Ethiopia and Ajuraan. Not sure who or what Funj is, but it
doesn’t sound pleasant. We currently have four provinces around Arabia, 3
centred on Aden, and one to the north, Muscat. Of course, it goes without
saying that we control Madagascar and the other Indian Ocean islands in the
picture.
That brings us nicely to the Indian Ocean. In 1555,
we had occupied four islands, I think. Now we have them all!!!! We have been
left completely alone to get on with things in this part of the world. Partly
this is due to nobody else from Europe having explored as much as us, and also
because we have taken so much land that nobody else has the colonial range to
interfere.
This is our next area of expansion – the East
Indies. We’ve already taken a number of provinces (circled in red), and there
are plenty more uncolonised ones in the Philippines and Indonesia, but they are
all in the Philippines trade node. We need land in the Malacca trade node
(circled in blue). Ayutthaya has some decent allies, but Brunei stands alone...
Further over to the west, in the Indian
subcontinent, we are going to have to take on the might of Vijayanagar at some
stage. I checked the ledger, they have 118,000 manpower, double mine! That will
make for an epic war, when we eventually get there. I may have to fund some
rebels when I get round to taking them on.
That concludes our run around the world!
Our plans are simple:
Colonisation – expand our territory in the
Philippines trading area at a steady rate, whilst also taking Hawaii and moving
into Australia/NZ if possible. My aim would be to control the flow of trade
from Australia, through the Philippines and Malacca, across to Zanzibar, and
from their round the Cape towards home. Nobody else has the colonial range to
get to the Philippines yet. The French can’t hop all the way across the Indian
Ocean in one go from their provinces in South Africa, and the Castilians need
to take a Pacific Island or two, using their range from South America, before
they can get there.
Expansion – we need more domination of the straits
of Malacca. That is going to mean annexing Brunei, along with a couple of other
smaller nations in the region. I’d also like to take more Yemeni territory if
possible, and then, maybe around 1630-1640, make an attempt on India!
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