Crusader Kings III Announced

[Undercovergeek]

well, i didnt need to be as cunning as i thought - england kicked off with france and the two were so busy trading insults and territories they didnt notice me sneak in the back and steal Antwerp - thats 2 of the 3 missions done to create the Netherlands.

Gelre and East Fresia are all that remain, however East Fresia has a truce with me after losing in the battle of independance and they are safe for 2 more years.

In the meantime i increase relations with Austria, the leader of the HRE, enough to pop out a royal marriage and hopefully sire a decent heir - my current leader is sod all use at diplo, and ok at admin and war, his heir William IVth is even worse, and if memory serves he becomes the ruler of England IRL, i have no idea how. Relations are also increased with Castille and England, im not at their big boy status but alliances with single, 2, 3 province nations are below the mighty Dutch right now.

Im improving all territories now and developing the land and the trade markets we operate in, the army has increased to 13k and the navy 22k - just under max levels. While doing this we eventually trigger Admin level 5 and choose national ideas - its time for exploration, im not heading west, im going east - lets fire up the Dutch East India Company and start rolling in guilders

Im concerned Gelre is going to join the massive anti-Dutch coalition so we declare on them before they can and unwittingly unleash holy hell on northern europe - i have called in the Danes to help me, seeing as their closer to the allies that Gelre have chosen - Bern, Dortmund, Munster, Brandenburg and East Fresia again and a few others, Denmark isnt f**king around, they bring Norway and Sweden - theres a few months of to-ing and fro-ing as the Dutch Army and the Dutch Free Company of mercenaries tussle with Gelre and her friends and then the Vikings turn up mob handed and paint the place red - after about a year of sieging and drinking its all over, Gelre is ours, we hammer war reparations out of all the co-defendants and peace out - goddam East Fresia gets another 5 year safety net before i can get them

On a cold October morning, the horizon still orange and pink from the burn of the sunrise, seagulls squawk and chatter as they argue over the scraps of the last few fishing boats returning home from the previous evenings catch. Were one to squint its eyes and look east across the busy harbour of Amsterdam it would see there 3 freshly laid galleys, the work of the Den Leyden shipyard for the last 6 months. Sat low in the tide, filled with supplies and fresh water the crew and the ships await their Captain - the first of his kind to grace the new expanding country - an explorer!

[Undercovergeek]

The explorer and his fleet are sent south, round Castile and beyond morocco, past the canaries and on to the west coast of Africa, our target destination is arguin - the furthest colony we can reach with our current colonial range to establish a base there and then press on to South Africa and the Indies

At home all efforts are pressed into increasing our diplomacy power to help increase our colonial reach

Eventually our relationship score passes the required mark to diplo annex Utrecht and the wheels are set in motion - we should annex them just as east fresias truce expires. All our other provinces flourish in this brief moment of peace, they’re all developing with improvements. A new brush with England via more Burgundian unsettlement tells us the Dutch navy is now 17% more powerful than the English but their army is twice ours - eventually there will be war between the two but not yet……. Not yet

An unknown explorer by the name of Christopher Columbus comes to our court unhappy with his treatment by the Italians and Portuguese and asks for our sponsorship in his endeavours - he is made the captain of our colonial fleet and instantly helps out with our crippling attrition so far from home

Utrecht is absorbed into the growing Dutch lands and our forces head for east fresia - the last piece of the Netherlands jigsaw

[Metaldog]

It's been a minute since I played, and things may have changed, but, west to South America is most likely much easier than around the Cape and east to India.  Just a suggestion.  And wasn't there a Dutch Guinea along with a British and French in South America?

[Martok]

Good to see things appear to be progressing nicely for the Dutch.  Bit of a coup getting Columbus in your employ! 

Will your forces stop at East Fresia, though?  I wonder.   

[Undercovergeek]

It's been a minute since I played, and things may have changed, but, west to South America is most likely much easier than around the Cape and east to India.  Just a suggestion.  And wasn't there a Dutch Guinea along with a British and French in South America?

My next explorer will go to the Caribbean but I wanted to role play the DEI company and trade with the east - it’s a while since I read Wilbur smith but the last few were about the English and Dutch rivalry in the Middle East and the DEI

[Undercovergeek]

Good to see things appear to be progressing nicely for the Dutch.  Bit of a coup getting Columbus in your employ! 

Will your forces stop at East Fresia, though?  I wonder. 

Probably not 👀

[Undercovergeek]

East friesland falls easy aided only by a small independent Danish island and Munster who have been a thorn in Hollands side since the start of the game - we take the province. This triggers the third of the missions for the Dutch, and triggering that fires the create Netherlands achievement - we take it and paint northwest Europe orange, i wish i would have done some more research here - declaring ourselves Netherlands drops us out of the HRE - now anyone we want to take comes with the full might of Austria behind them, their place at the top of the HRE is looking pretty shaky so i might wait for the leadership to change hands, hopefully to a small nation and will start marching across some of these lowlands and western german provinces i missed

Our explorers heart sank off the west african coast  as he spied Portugese ships in the harbour and their flag in the bay - he heads back to Amsterdam until the range of his ships can be increased. As this happens the people of Holland rise up for a different type of leadership, beyond the power of the monarchy - the staadholder monarchy - the state will provide a leader, as will the royal family, if we choose a state leader he will be up for election again in 5 years against another state leader and the nominated royal, or if we choose royal they will stay in power until their deaths - Willem VII nominated by the state is a fine leader and he is chosen.

All territories are now able to receive the workshop upgrade, and in those provinces with trade goods, namely cloth, glass, salt and cows we expand the markets. With a navy bigger and better than England we feel ready to create a pirate fleet that will scour the north sea trade node and steal what it can from the English, we also establish a spy network in england to fabricate a claim on Calais - war is not far away

At last our ships can reach further and we send Christopher Colombus off to the Mali coast to establish a colony in Karou, on the grain coast near the Ivory coast - along with him he takes the Free Company of Holland, 5000 mercenaries, to deal with any locals. It will be a good few years before this colony is up and ready, after the Free Company arrive a conquistador is put in charge so that surrounding lands can be seen. Mr Columbus takes his fleet to the new found islands of the Caribbean to seek out a new colony that would allow us to funnel the riches of the new world towards the Dutch controlled English Channel trade node

[Martok]

Sounds like an eventful time for the Dutch! 


So I take it that if you'd realized the full effects, you would have held off on declaring the creation of the Netherlands to remain in the HRE?  What are the benefits of doing so? 

And did the people in Holland actually rise up?  Or did you have hand in things, so that you could bring about the steadholder monarchy?  I'm honestly curious. 

Mr Columbus takes his fleet to the new found islands of the Caribbean to seek out a new colony that would allow us to funnel the riches of the new world towards the Dutch controlled English Channel trade node

You mean the Dutch Channel trade node, right?   

[Undercovergeek]

With regards to HRE - definitely would have held off until I had ALL the lowlands - I’m maybe missing 3 provinces that’s all and it doesn’t affect the Netherlands mission tree

Within the HRE you’re treated like squabbling children and you can fight it out and depending on how much aggression is shown in the war score (taking all of a nation as opposed to a province or 2) the HRE will say give it back if he’s unhappy and the penalty for refusing is a few malus on trade and stability

Outside the HRE it’s a big no no - EU4 does apply some sense and any allies and the emperor will be called to war - in ck3 it’s the whole HRE - everyone comes to war - in my game at the time of writing most neighbours had joined a coalition against my expansion so actually attacking one of them was worse than summoning the HRE but they’re withdrawing now after a certain amount of peace - as I mentioned if the leadership of the HRE eventually falls to a weak one province nation and not the 30k men austria can bring we’re off!

 There’s a rolling score now for something called Reform and it ticks up depending on how much autonomy your provinces have - when you reach a trigger level it asks if you would to enact reform in increasing tiers - the first is your monarchy, the second the nobles, clergy, burghers, admin, beaucracy and so on - I’ll post some pics this afternoon

So there wasn’t actually a rebellion that we won or lost but a trigger that was ‘the people call for reform’

[Undercovergeek]

You don’t realise it at the time when all the incremental £15 dlcs accumulate - but man this far behind the dlc curve can be hard

I’m watching a few lets plays to get used to things and there’s always a button, a function, a something I don’t have - this weeks most popular Google search by me is ‘XXX button dlc’ eg ‘fleet explore button dlc’ turns out to be in the el dorado dlc where if you don’t have it you have to keep micro managing your exploration fleet and it’s easy to forget and they all die of attrition (😬) whereas with that dlc you choose ‘explore south Atlantic coast’ ‘explore Caribbean sea’ and the fleet sets off and returns home if attrition is too high

There’s four more things I really want that are all in 4 other DLCs - on steam £16 each, at various CDkey sellers around 8 so I’ll get the ones as a desperate need arises - 2 are just QOL buttons whereas 2 are really handy