Estonia Suicidal [Finished /w Videos] detailed Walkthrough

[SuitedQueens]

We lose our first combat to Thracia with Clean up stack due to bad rolls. Hunter Stack moves in to address Byzantines that showed up on the border. Everyone gets ready to mop up Abandoned regions next turn once Peace Treaties go down. I send Heavy Cav to Vassal. Cumans cede Crimea after 3 attempts. Floatilia benefits from Relentless trait the most. Last turn we killed 3 random ships on that patrol route.

[SuitedQueens]

Byzantine stack moves in to troll us by dipping Authority and taxing resources. Hospitalliers challenge region I wanted to get for myself, but luckily they get repelled. Powerful stack moving into to attack my Mediums clean up crew. We are on Defense and Mediums can't pull off Victories in Rough terrain without General Quality because they fall to grind of skirmishers. It takes about 8 turns to swoop up Neutral regions I care for and get into position to start war on Seljuks.













Crusade fires off on the like 10th attempt. We ally with Venice who lost all their territories in Italy and alive only because of me. I Send Councilor to my best general who I have to gift 2 more times after that to use him. I will be Disbanding remainder of Clean up stack and ships on the next turn. Relentless Character will help to arrive to my destinations faster.

[SuitedQueens]

Quick recap of mop up and move closer to Seljuks turns from T146 to T149 before the final wrap up post. Screenshots are selfexplanatory:

T146:





T147:









T148:





T149:

[SuitedQueens]

A few conclusions derived from this AAR.

1) If you try to play for tempo i.e. min max, then your economy will be dictated by a constant need of Gold and Metal to support more and more stacks, so you can't dedicate all your slots to Food, Infrastructure and Health. If you are playing Passive economy game then you should do exactly that to arrive to 15-18 POP ASAP before specializing your regions.

2) Lets review my anti-Inflation stack designs that beat the strongest force in the game bar none - Byzantines lists 1 and 2 and Crusader faction list. Almost all units have Improved Equipment because we got them via Diplomacy, Recruit RGDs, requesting from the Vassal, hiring as Province Mercs. So they are either SAUs or Mercs which makes them eligible for upgrade and fast XP gain. 2 Plains armies that can separate into 4 Rough armies and/or 4 Assault armies with enough Generals. Remember that I spent many turns under the worst possible stats Leader, which will be replaced by his Son with superior stats soon. I told my reasoning for why I kept despite my ability to dispose of him. Retinue covers 10 slots of Heavy Knights we got by Diplomacy. All other get discount from Vassal laundering. We still have enough resources income to request Vassal stacks temporarily, and they bank 8 Heavy Cav, few Heavies and skirmishers to boot. I also managed to get Average Transport Barges as Tribal, which is huge.





















Massed Bowmen and other units with base 10 Ranged Attack are indispensable, because if you hire them as Mercs they will get Improved Equipment for +4 Support bonus or sooner or later Military Reform to put them to +4 when you get them as laundered Levies from your Vassal. As you notice during the growth stage I built 1 Bowyer per province and 1 Horse Coral per province because +1 Effectiveness for horses really increases their consistency and attrition resistance, and +1 Ranged Attack and +1 Siege Score for Skirmishers is just insane value. I tear down those structures once my growth stage ended and I stopped hiring for my main stacks. I can leave with 3 Military Score because I don't need Character Quality and slots once I stacked up my Court with all purging shenanigans during Growth stage. I still have 2 Form Vassal decision to purge replacement nobles that might not be up to par with what we have.


3) 0 Admin Ruler with no Sons or Bodyguard held 4 times as much regions as Limit allowed with -30 Negative National Authority and 100 POW stack in Capital because we had 0 30 Loyalty chars. No Coups for 80+ turns given those conditions. Not much Thief Hideouts either despite our Nobles being on Gold for the whole game. We have 4 copies over 150 turns. Only a single Bodyguard from Warrior Contests as well. I didn't care for Loyalty at all because I knew that AutoGarrison can beat Rebels no problem. Barely got any diseases, like 4 Cult Sites overall. Unrest hit me pretty often and they are only dangerous because they decrease Food production or when they happen in Just Conquered regions with different Religious group (autocede) or regions that isn't Abandoned and opponent is their Permanent Owner. As you can see flying in the negative Authority and Local Authority doesn't prevented positive Noble Road & Anchorages events, but decreased minor positive boosts to zilch. And other negative events didn't trigger as often or had major impact. Religious negative events and Heretics stopped as soon as I returned Priests back to Piety. Bandits appeared only when I disbanded mercs on opponent or Vassal territories.







Note that I played a version where Garrisoned units disappearance bug drained much of my Authority that I could use the same way for Edicts. And thats what i would've been doing because you need to get conquered regions that are close to your Capital to sub50 Authority to start Pillaging them. Combine that from -2 that you will be getting from Insults constantly. Active Diplomacy allowed me to gain bunch of Allies and trading partners. I was extorting them for money every 2 turns. Not a single time I got minus Authority from the Hostile Claims because the whole world loved me, even my opponent in the active wars capped at 25 Relationships. I exchanged bunch of units for regions, Vassals and got me some Heavy Knights and Heavy Infantry early. I got protected from 10+ Crusade attempts for holding Constantinople, only Hungary broke Alliance which I wasn't able to restore, but they didn't DOW me.









We firmly established Legacy income and can easily increase it 3x times once more and more regions get Temples and Great Temples, Storytellers, Elders, Warriors Contests, various free slot Rituals, Observatories. I won't be highlighting loop of bouncing back and fort between Seljuks, Fatimids and Byzantines until Sudden Death victory since its more of the same old.



4) Lets review building you want in Specializing stage after growth to 15-18 POP completed which I would focus down from now on. Priority is always Gold, Metal, Authority and Legacy + Stewardship (for Nomads/Tribals)

• Must haves from Military branch in every single region: Peasant Roundup, Warriors Contest, Rustic Fort (on frontier regions) or Village. Boweyrs and Horse Collars have to go to free up slots.

• Pigsty and Feast have no contest. You can get rid of Feast if you have smth better. You need some food production to free up enough Peasants for Infrastructure and to cover for Unrest modifier debuffs. You will have a few of Bone structures, but get rid of them everywhere besides region where you need to convert POPs.

• You want some baseline Infrastructure to maintain Upkeep and produce reasonable amount for Renovation stage. Trade Acumen is crucial for Tribes because all great building require rare resources that will be missing. Metal resource, Iron and Copper trade goods are insane value. Crude Smelters should be built everywhere and Charcoal Burner in the centralized region. Quite a lot of structures will require Wood. So not every one of listed structures will be in every region, but 3-4 of them will. As you see most of them require Hills or Arid Hills, so not so relevant for Estonia.

• Lets cover more situational singleton structures that will appear mainly in the centralized regions because one copy per province is definitely worthwhile. Salt Producers are rarer, but always go for them, They require Marsh or Hills regions, which is not relevant for Estonia again. Those structures can be replaced by Imports from neighbours or amended by Trade Acumen for Missing Trade goods if smth Legacy Producing comes up. Craftsmen Borough should be dismantled after getting those.

• Now to the Gold producers besides Traders Borough that you want in every region, but they can sacrifice a slot for Legacy production if you have to choose. Highest base stats combined with Great Trade Goods for bonuses and spread. You can ignore them in favor of Legacy producing Great Trades structures.

• Ok, lets examine a typical Stewardship package. Only Shanties missing for +1 Free Pop but risk of rats. You want to go for Secret Society only if you can spend Authority to edict for it right after Mask Producer to remove them straight away. You can ignore Town Crier in above 50 Loyalty regions.

• Time to reveal Crucial Must have structures. Sacred Altar/Temples not shown cuz its obvious that you want to have them.

To sum it up typically you must have (no 0 slots accounted for):

2 Agriculture, 3 Infrastructure, 3 Stewardship, 4 Piety, 2 Military. That leaves 3-6 slots for everything else until later in the game where you can slowly grow again. Thats why you want to gradually take down resource buildings away relying on the Trade Acumen and Commerce bonuses. Like Horses and wood production can become situational structures as well. Remember to prioritize Gold, Legacy, Metal and Stewardship. Once you get to 3k-5k stored Stewardship can tear down Stewardship structures as well.


And self-quote I left on Surt AAR:

So sliding into old is not so bad as I think?

Depends on your knowledge an active engagement with the game. You can stay above your Demesne limit no problem because thats -0.2 per regions and its very easy to get 0.3 Authority per region on average. If you maximized Character related RGDs then you have bunch of Generals with above 75 Loyalty, so you don't care about Seceding Generals. Coups are very rare and won't end your Lineage 99% of the time. Civil Wars spawn rather insignificant stacks thats are easy to deal with especially if you have Vassals and Allies.

Court Expenses will be counteracted by Gold production once Just Conquered and Under Pacification statuses are gone after 10 turns. Unrest has a low chance to trigger and produces weak rebels that can be crushed by AutoGarrison. Remember that you can always feed low quality regions to Vassals or Allies. The only benefit is SAU limit increase, but if you are efficient player you can maintain 3 times as much SAUs as your limit due to Diplomacy and Recruit RGDs like me as Estonia currently.

The only real downside is huge Legacy income penalty but you as a big nation have more base than all opponents. I'm as Estonia have to fight giant wars for the rest of the game to get 1000 War Score for 10000 Legacy Concessions and cut off opponent territories to destroy their Legacy gain. And maybe the fact that Civ 1 nations often don't get Regional Decisions, Civ 2 one per turn, rarely 2, while Civ 3 often get 2 per turn.