And the blood flowed in rivers (EU II AAR)

[Asmodean]

Boshko....have you abandoned this AAR. It is enjoyable reading, you know

Please continue if you ever find the time for it

Asmodean

[Bosh]

I didn't abandon it, there was just an illness-related haitus. New chapters will be up soon.

[Bosh]

Chapter 17 Estland
August 1549-August 1560

And finally we get to rule a truly northern nation. We've got four full provinces in the Baltic/Novogorad area, Krementjug down south, an excolony in Ingermanland (pop 3,500+) and a few trading posts. Our only neighbors are our allies in Kurland, two-province Tula and Nizhgorod, but this does not prevent things from becomming interesting very quickly for our Kurland neighbors immediately declare war on the Tula midgit and we happily join in the fun. Despite horrific attriction and the unprevedented size of the Tulese defenses (medium) we finally secured victory in May of 1552, with Kursk being turned over to us. We then set to replenishing the size of our army in order to ready ourself for war with Nizhgorod. In May of 1553, we decided that the time had come to launch our attack, for the Nizhgorodan's new-found Ragusan allies were then engaged in a vicious war against Hinterpommern over the Czech lands and thus would hopefully be too busy to bother our beloved friends in Kurland. And so war was declared and two 25,0000-man armies under the command of two excellent generals (Stettin and Wismar) began the march into the Russian interior.

The war began on a sour note with Wismar being beat back in defeat and our two southern territories (Kursk and Krementjug) falling to the enemey in quick succession. To our immense relief the enemey then concentrated a massive 100,000-force in two of Kurland's southern dominions giving us a free hand to knife deep into their northern territory and soon enough Vologda and Moskva were ours while Nizhgorod was under our seige. But all was not well for attrition was heavy and our finances were ill-prepared to replace troops in large numbers, and Russian troops had been trickling north and rebels had raised the black flag in Tver, necessitating the diversion of one of our armies. As the war continued, we faced larger and larger Nizhgorodan armies but managed to stave them off while taking their capitol and liberating Kurst, despite losing Moskva soon afterwards. To deal with manpower shortages we then gathered all of our remaining forces into one army in an attempt to sweep over Russia's ill-guarded central provinces, starting with Vorones in the early summer of 1555.

But we were again distracted by rebels in our home territories after the fall of Vorones, but at least in Krementjug rebels had arisen to distract the enemey, but vicious enemey attacks allowed them to take back both their capitol and Kurst, leaving us with only Vologda and Voronese in our hands. However by June of 1556, Moskva was back in our hands and we marched on Nizhgorod itself yet again with a reconstituted army of 34,000 men. Then, in Febuary of 1557, things got much darker as our Kurland allies dropped out the war, handing over two provinces back to Nizhgorod and leaving us to face the might of the enemey alone with our small army, and so we wisely decided not to press our luck and were amazed when Nizhgorod agreed to a peace in which we would have Moskva ceded to us.

We then took out our anger at our inability to expand ruther on the Tulans and duly invaded their last province in August of 1557. We felt that, despite the massive Tulan fortification it would be an easy war, but we failed to consider the power of Tula's Holsteiner ally and as massive German armies coursed through our territory we counted ourselves lucky when they agreed to accept Ingermanland in a separate peace. And it was not until January of 1559 that Tula fell, at which time we marched our army north to knock them out of the holes they had found for themselves in Moskva and then annexed Tule in November. We spent the last year of our reign restoring order in our provinces and attempting to rebuilt our shattered army, but despite increasing its numbers we were unable to do anything when Krementjug declared independence in August of 1560, for Nizhgorod would not grand us military access, but we considers Moskva, Tula and Kursk a more than even trade for our losses of Ingermanland (just an oversized colony) and Krementjug (was far away from our main dominions), especially due to the location of a center of trade in Tula.

Across the rest of the world the face of power now wears a distinctly new expression. As expected, the Crimeans were able to beat the Armenians and look the ex-colony of Azerbaijan and then successfully weathered the wars we had saddled them with. But the Armenians were about to bounce back and take Sivas from the Anatolians, who were in turn able to recoup this loss by finally annexing the stubborn Rumelians. As they have for the last few decades, the Ragusans increased their territory, badly trashing the Hinterpommernies and taking enough territory so that Hinterpommern's German and Czech territories are now split. As predicted in the last chapter, Venice seems well on decline, having the remainder of its Illyrian territories stripped from it by Translyvania leaving it only with only its capitol, its South German territories and (strangely-enough) Maine.

Meanwhile Holstein has continued it slow and steady march towards German dominance (with a vacation in Estland), moping up the last bits of foreign-held Netherlands and taking Baden from Bern. However it is in France that things have changed the most. Bern inheirited the throne of Provencal which not only gave it a four-province take in the Flanders region and in further wars (including one where they took two provinces from Bearn itself) managed to come to dominate southern France as well as the whole Lotharingian region. Also, the upstart nation of Champagne, due to a now-expired alliance with Holstein have established a sizable Kingdom in what once was the northern reaches of Guyenne (the Guyennese themselves are on the verge of being annexed). Only England, Spain and Italy provide us with a picture of boring stability, where the only interesting development is the annexation by Genoa of the break-away Roman provence of Milan.

Starting Territory: 5 (plus colonies)
Starting Territory: 7 (plus one less colony and a very nice CoT)

[St Leo]

Whoo.

[Bosh]

Chapter 18 Genoa
August 1560-August 1570


We hope that our stint in Genoa will be more successful than our last Italian reign, despite us having only two territories (Genoa and Milan). We are heartened by the power of our alliance (Translyvania, Aragon, Bern and us), however our potential enemies are also strong. To the west lies a spit of Holsteiner land separating us from our Bernese allies, to the south are the Romans and to the east are the Venetians, all much larger than us. Due to the recent string of Translyvanian victories over Venice, we decide that the Venecians are the best target (especially due to the tempting Tyrolian CoT). However our army only numbers 6,000 men and so, despite the excellent leadership of General Sugaina, we decide to invest in more warm bodies before going off on the warpath again.

Then, in Febuary of 1561 with our army increased to 16,000 brave souls, the sight of large Translyvanian armies on the Venetian border and Veneice's war against Hinterpommern, we decide that the time is ripe and declare war, peace treaty be damned! All of our allies stood behind us. The war began with us crossing the border into Venice's southern outpost of Romanga. It is then that we realize that Venice is now allied with Bearn and Holstein, both of which are somewhat large (d'oh!).

The war begins well, with Romanga falling to us in July, but the size of the Venetian armies that we see to the north begin to unnerve us. We are forced to fight one of them when it marches through the Ragusan outpost in Mantua to attempt to retake Romanga. This results in the utter annihilation of our army. What an unpleasant surprise. Before our army can be rebuilt Milan falls in 1562 (I avoid taking loans to pay for armies, but will take them if I run out of money for upkeep) and we only recapture Milan days after the Venetians retake Romanga. Our army is then annihilated yet again and we get to see the wonderful sight of large Bearnese armies marching east towards our Translyvanian allies. Joy.

Things only get worse the spring of 1565, with the Holsteiners marching in from nowhere to take Milan and the Translyvanians bowing out of the war. Then, after finally retaking Milan and having our army annihilated for the third time, good news finally comes to our ears in the form of the Ragusan behemoth declaring war on Venice in March of 1566. But the Ragusans only drop out in defeat while the Bearnese take Milan away from us and the Romans attack our alliance. Curses, a thousand curses!

This, of course leads to the Romans leading a massive army into Genoa and taking our capitol itself, this for some bizarre reason results in us suddenly being at peace with just about everyone, with Milan becoming Bearnese territory without our say-so and the Romans leaving our capitol (huh?). Oh well, we are not inclined to question the source of our salvation. Our last years are spent doing very little aside from watching very large Venetian and Bearnese armies march past us on the way to Italy, where they beat the Romas quite thoroughly, gaining Emilia and March for the Venetians and Firenza for the Bearnese.

Over the last ten years change has been very minimal, with the only imporant factor that has not been mentioned being the great victory of Ragusa over the Anatolians, in which the Anatolians were completely stripped of their Balkan territories as well as Smyrna, leaving the Ragusans as the sole overlords of the Balkans.


Starting Territory: 2
Ending Terrritory: 1

[Bosh]

Chapter 19 Hinterpommern
August 1570

Thinks start out quite badly with the prospect of them getting quite a bit worse. Due to defeat in a past war against Ragusa our realm is split between three German provinces in the north and three Czech ones in the south and all of our Germans ones are unfortunately occupied by Kurlanders, who we are not terribly fond of. Then in October, for no readily apparent reason the Estlanders declare war on us as well and even more sillyness results when Kustrin and Silesia are handed over to the Kurlanders without us even being consulted (the nerve!) the Estlanders then beseiged our capitol and as we had no means of throwing them back into the sea we decided on the only course by which we could reach our capitol through a single war declaration: attack Holstein.

It was a silly idea, but then it was a silly situation we were in, and so the Long March began in May of 1571. We snuck into Wurzberg with barely a fight and continued on to Hesse, there we met anf annihilated a strong Venetian force before fighting our way into Hannover. We fought on bravely east through Mecklenberg and Vorpommern but by the time we had reached the vicinity of our homeland our once-mighty army had been reduced to a tiny remnant of 3,500 men, hardly capable of expelling the Estlanders who even then marched through the streets of our capitol. This, of course, did not prevent us from trying and our soldiers were killed to a man in July of 1572.

We decided then that we needed more soldiers. But all of our new recruits were butchered by Champagners (Holsteiner allies like the Venetians) and soon our entire nation was under seige it seemed. And in November of 1573 the last of our cities fell. But then complete disaster was averted when Champagne took only one of the two provinces it had captured leaving us with Ostmarch. But then that was beseiged by Bearn (who had declared war on us a short time ago) immediately and they succeaded the following May. We then spent our remaining years of territoryless rule doing precisely northing, which was about all we could do.

In the wider world another comparably calm ten years passed with the main events being a crushing Cornish victory over the Kentishmen, reducing them to northing but Kent itself and the Highlands, while the Kurlands smashed the Ragusans badly in Galica and the Campagners consolidated their hold over central France at Bernese expense.

Starting Territory: 6 owned, 3 occupied
Ending Territory: 2 owned, 0 occupied

[St Leo]

War?

[Kropotkin]

Come on Boshko. Not only does your new avatar scare me, you're also not posting any follow-ups of this game.

[Agathon]

Keep em coming

[Jonny]

We want more!