1591-1595 Queen Maria I – Finishing the War
Jan 1586 – Apr 1591
Yemen
So here we are, with our first Queen. Maria I von Habsburg
is a bit of a spanner when it comes to administration (clearly filing is not
her thing), but is OK elsewhere. Her son, however, is very good diplomatically,
which will be useful when he takes the throne, as we are lagging behind in this
area.
Across the oceans, however, our troops and generals continue
to prosecute the war effectively, winning battles in Aden, Zeila (against
rebels), and a final naval battle.
Its gets so bad for the Yemeni that the Ottomans see a
chance and declare war on them as well!
In April 1591, with the warscore at 64%, there is little
point in continuing, and we offer terms. We take the important trade provinces
of Muscat and Aden, as well as Tajura and Mocha (next to Aden) for their trade
goods (spices and something else I can’t remember). We also take the small
island of Socotra as part of my megalomaniac obsession to control every island
in the Felipe... I mean Indian... Ocean. In addition, Alderaan stops becoming a
vassal of Yemen, and the Yemeni have to give back a province in the north to
some random nation.
The good thing is we get loads of trade power and trade
goods in the Aden node (although not yet enough to dominate the node). The bad
news, as evidenced by the next picture, is that we have reduced our manpower
down to almost zero (575 to be precise, from a prewar level of 25,000), have overextended
ourselves to dangerous levels (80%), and have severe rebellion issues (”You
rebel scum!”). I suppose rebels are to be expected when attacking Alderaan! We
set about coring and converting our new provinces as we get enough admin power
to do so...
Meanwhile, in South America, Rio da Prata and Castilian La
Plata have finished their war, with our subject taking the whole of Chile as
part of the peace deal! Well done! AS this happens, Castilian Brazil and
Portuguese Brazil enter a war of their own. Again we leave them to get on with
it
Talking about subject nations, here is a picture of ours.
The most important numbers here are the tariff income we get from our colonial
subjects (third column) and the Liberty Desire (penultimate column). Setting
the tariff level up or down (+ and – buttons) costs admin power so you don’t
want to do it very often. Increased tariffs mean increased income but also
increased liberty desire. If the liberty desire gets above 50%, the colonial
nation may demand independence and rebel. I’ve decided that I want to keep my
liberty desire in the low to mid 20s to be on the safe side. Note the final
column denoted the number of army units they have.
1592 sees us take level 15 military tech, giving us some
better infantry
But also sees us lose control of the Papacy to our ally
Austria. Bugger!
The other bad thing to come out of the Yemeni war was that
we got 75 Aggressive Expansion points. These decay over a period of time, but
not quickly enough, as the Ottomans join a Coalition against us. Any one of
them may declare war against me now, and the other members of the coalition
will automatically join. I’m not bothered about Yemen and Alderaan, but the
Ottomans have an army of 175,000 troops, compared with my 57,000, and I have no
manpower at the moment! I immediately send a diplomat to Constantinople to
improve relations, in the hope that they will eventually leave the Coalition.
In early 1593 we check on how the Brazilian war is going,
and it looks like it’s going well for our boys
By the end of the year we’ve colonised another province in
South Africa, to deter the Frenchies
And taken diplomatic tech 12 (we’re slowly catching up!)
In February 1594 we get notified that the Brazilian war is
over, and Castilian Brazil has been completely annexed by Portuguese Brazil.
Who said colonial nations were a pain? Not me! Mine are awesome!
One of the benefits of being such a powerful colonial nation
is that I can now easily maintain 4 or even 5 colonies, despite the financial
burden. Here you can see that we have 4 colonies active on the island of Java.
This will help us with our ongoing mission to dominate trade in Malacca
Finally, by late 1594, we start to reduce our overextension
(and hence reduce all of the negative modifiers that come with it) as we core 3
of the provinces we stole from the Yemeni
And that’s the end of this update. Just a short one, for
reasons that will become clear in the next update!
The next update should take us quickly up to 1600, at which
point we’ll stop and take a look at the world, comparing it with the previous
snapshot we did in 1555
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