By Brian Snow
My Armies Are Invincible!
Create a great army by gaining at least 7 land-morale playing the grand campaign. (15 pp)
Difficulty: Easy
You will most likely get this achievement by just playing a normal game of the grand campaign. As you develop higher land technology, you will receive bonuses to army morale, for example at land tech 19, you will get an additional .25 land morale. However, you will not attain land morale 7 by just depending on land tech developments. Here is a list of different way to increase your land morale up to 7:
- Land Maintenance: Having your land maintenance set to full will give an additional 2.00 land morale.
- National Idea “Military Drill”: This national idea will give an additional 1.00 land morale.
- Ruler: A ruler will give additional land morale based on how many stars in military they have. Each additional star corresponds with an additional .10 land morale for a total up to .90 for a 9 star in military ruler.
- Defender of Faith: Being the defender of faith will give an additional .50 land morale.
- Prestige: Every 2 points in prestige will give an additional .01 land morale. Having a 100 prestige will give an additional .50 land morale.
- Grand Captain Adviser: Every additional star that the Grand Captain adviser has will give an additional .05 land morale. A six star Grand Captain will give an additional .30 land morale.
- Serfdom vs. Free Subjects: By having this slider set all the way to +5 free subjects will give an additional .20 land morale.
- Offensive vs. Defensive: By having this slider set all the way to -5 offensive will give an additional .10 land morale.
- Land vs. Naval: By having this slider set all the way to -5 land will give an additional .10 land morale.
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No Trail of Tears
As Cherokee in the campaign, westernize and survive until 1800. 90pp
Difficulty: Normal to Hard
General Tips:
- Convert ruler to general when warring with Native American nations
- Avoid taking coastal provinces permanently to avoid European war
- Invest research into land tech 3 for fort level 1
- Stockpile money to bribe European countries into good relations
- Sell province or colonize by European colonies to start westernization
Detailed Strategy:
At first glance, this achievement may seem hard, but is actually much easier than it appears. There will be several problems that need to be overcome in order to be successful with this one, but first concentrate on your Native American neighbors, Creek and Shawnee. Before the game starts, set all research to Land and Stability. The goal is to have +3 stability as often as possible to help prevent rebels and Land tech 3 which gives the fort level 1. Getting forts is a very high priority, so once +3 stability has been reached place all the research into Land. The first slider should go into innovative. All following slider movements need to go into innovative and centralization to meet westernization requirements. The first slider movement could go into centralization, but if rebels pop up from the movement it will be hard to defeat them until additional regiments are created. You will need to eventually get your sliders to -2 centralization and -3 innovative. Next, see if any useful advisers are available. If there is an army reformer available, be sure to get him for the land tech investment.
Because Cherokee is a tribal democracy, you will not have to face a tribal succession, so it is fine to take more than nine provinces. Some people believe it is better to remain small as Cherokee and vassalise the other Native American instead of annexing due to smaller countries teching up faster. However, I have never had a problem getting land tech 3, the major tech needed before the Europeans arrive. I tend to attack Shawnee first as you want to fully annex this nation, however with Creek, you will want to leave some Creek coastal provinces eventually. But that will not be until later so it is fine to attack whichever. First, form an alliance with the other nation you don’t plan on attacking. Then co-invade the other nation you are not allied with. In order to launch a successful invasion, you will need to produce enough regiments to maximize your forcelimits and maybe more depending on how many troops Shawnee or Creek have. I went two regiments over forcelimits to insure victory and minted to avoid any loans. It is OK to get some inflation this early as there are ways to get it to away over time. Also, these wars will be very brief as there are very few provinces to conquer and none of them have forts so minimal inflation will result. During the war, be sure to convert your ruler into a general. This is very important as I noticed both other Native American nations do this and attacking an army with a general without your own general can put you at great risk of losing.
Now, you have to consider how many provinces to take once victorious. At any time, during the war, you can choose the seize colony option when having a regiment over an occupied province. The problem with taking as many provinces as possible is that due to a lack of forts, if rebels appear they can rapidly take large amounts of territory. This problem can be circumvented in a couple of different ways. First, only take two to three provinces per war and stack your army on the newly gained provinces so incase a rebel group does pop up, you will generally win the first battle and already have the rebels at a lower morale, resulting in less back and forth chases with rebels that can take many months to destroy. A set back to this option is that it will take much longer to fully conquer your neighbors and core their provinces. A second option is to take more provinces than two or three and mint more to field a larger army and play a risky game hoping that you will be able to defeat the spawning rebel groups if more than one appears. I always go with this option because with a ruler as a general, you are pretty much guaranteed to defeat rebel groups. Also, a lot of rebel groups tend to hop back and forth between two rebel conquered provinces so even if three rebel groups popped up, they generally only take up to 6 provinces. An advantage to this method is you core your neighbor quicker. Whichever method, try and vassalize what is left of your neighbor to gain the extra tax income. When the five years are up and the peace treaty is finished, cancel vassalisation and conquer.
Once one of your neighbors has been fully conquered, it will be easier to conquer the other. So repeat the same type of strategy as before for the other neighbor. One thing that is very important to do however is to not have any coastal provinces before the Europeans start colonizing. This is because the Europeans will much more likely declare war on you if you have coastal provinces. Every Native American game I’ve played having coastal provinces, I have gotten a DOW on me from a European country before coming into contact with any other European colonies to try and bribe them into good relations. You want to avoid war with Europeans at all costs until westernized as you will be decimated. Therefore, you will eventually want to release Creek as a vassal. I find the best strategy is to fully conquer Creek, wait 50 years until they are cored, then move your national focus to Alabama. This will allow you to enact the provincial decision “promote culture unity.” Do this for Alabama and Yamasee. This provincial decision will remove Creek cores from both of these provinces, so when you release Creek as a vassal, it will only have Penasacola, Apalachee and Muskogee – the coastal provinces.
Once your neighbors are defeated, all you need to do is wait until the Europeans come. During this time, you should be minting enough to gain some type of profit at the end of each year. You want to do this to stockpile money so when you come into contact with the Europeans, you will have money to bribe them. I turn down land maintenance during this time near half way until nationalism revolt risk dies down from conquered provinces and then I turn it down almost all the way. I wait 10 years after the Creek provinces have been cored with Cherokee and then release Creek as a vassal with only the three coastal provinces. If you are already coming into contact with Europeans, release them right away even if they have not been cored to avoid a DOW from the Europeans. Having coastal provinces puts you in a high risk of war. After releasing as a vassal, cancel vassalisation to prevent being dragged into a war if the Europeans declare war on your vassal. If you have a ruler with high enough administration skill, you can then go to war with Creek and raise war taxes. Once you defeat their army, you can just sit on their provinces and collect the additional tax money from the war taxes. This is risky however, because war exhaustion will began to build up creating additional revolt risk so be sure to do this with a good ruler or not be at war for too long at one time.
One other important thing you can do during this waiting period is to hire good advisers. Since you have nothing else to do with your magistrates, raise your culture tradition to get 5 or 6 star advisers. I go for army reformer for quicker land tech 3 to get the fort 1 as soon as possible, statesman because as soon as land tech 3 is done you will need to get to government 10 as soon as possible to be able to reform government and get out of a tribal type government and finally I get a master of mint. This will allow you to mint while getting little to no inflation. Once you have all three advisers chosen, all the rest of the magistrates should be used to get your culture tradition in the 90% and then buy different advisers that you won’t hire. Different AI nations will buy up these advisers and pay you for them, doing this can result in a lot of additional money. Continue doing this until the fort 1 is available and then start fortifying all provinces with magistrates. Also, once land tech 3 is researched, begin investing into government. As for what national idea is best to choose, I go for “colonial ventures” for the first. This will allow for expansion, be sure not to have too many colonies that drag down your economy and began depleting your stockpiled money, and once you discover the Europeans you can send a colonist to create a colony by them for westernization. If the Europeans have already settled near you or you don’t want to colonize yet, “National bank” is very good at getting rid of any accumulated inflation and allowing for additional minting. “National conscripts” and “military drill” are also good NIs if you plan on going to war after westernization.
Eventually the luck parts of this achievement will come into play based on what European colonizes near you first and if you can get a ruler with administration of level 6 or more for westernization. If you get the right leader, don’t turn him into a general as this will increase the likelihood of him dying. Castile is the worst country that can settle near you as they are more powerful than other colonizing countries like Portugal. Hopefully Portugal or some other weaker country will colonize by you; in the run through that I got the achievement, I got really lucky and Sweden settled nearby. If they don’t colonize directly by you, or by one of the province Creek owns, which you could declare war on Creek to take the province neighboring the European country, you can try to sell a province to them. Sell it for 0 ducats and go through all your provinces to see if they are interested. Most of the time, it will be “impossible” to sell so you may have to wait. Another strategy is to take a coastal province from Creek as this time and sell the European country that province. The European countries seem to like coastal provinces so it usually goes from “impossible” to “unlikely.” With enough tries, an “unlikely” province will eventually sell. If you have the NI “colonial ventures,” you can try to send a colonist to set up a colony directly by the European colony. Whichever method you choose, be sure to spend your stockpiled money to bribe the European country so they won’t declare war on you.
Once you have a province directly next to a European country, start undergoing the westernization process. You do not need to reform the military after every westernization step if the country has positive relations with you or is in an alliance with you. This will slow down the westernization process. Only reform the military in between westernization steps if you feel war is imminent and need better technology group troops. After westernizing, the game is treated like any other European game. You can choose to sit back and bribe everyone so no one will go to war with you and wait until 1800 or you can have fun and expand and conquer.
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Pure Harmony
Starting in the grand campaign, enforce religious unity as China. (15pp)
Difficulty: Very Easy
This achievement can immediately be attained by releasing Xia as a vassal. Xia contains the only provinces that have a different religion. However, if you want to legitimately do this achievement, it is still easy to do. You will have to wait until the Temple faction comes to power from slider movements and ruler attributes. Once in power, the Temple faction can then send missionaries to the non-state religion provinces until they are converted. The other two factions cannot send missionaries.
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The Crysanthemum
Unite Japan in the grand campaign as one of the four daimyos. (20pp)
Difficulty: Normal
Each daimyo has their own strengths and weaknesses. Picking which to use is based on personal preference. Tachibana is isolated by water and if a sizable navy is maintained, you will be able to avoid invasion. You can therefore choose who to war and when to war and not fear retribution from land. Fujwara is the weakest of all, but not by much. Fujwara has one advantage in that it only has one border with a rival daimyo, Taira. In the very early game, declaring war on Taira and taking advantage of your alliance with Minamoto can quickly give Fujwara an overall advantage. Taira is the strongest in early game in terms of richness and size of army. However, Taira needs to rely on its alliance with Tachibana when going to war with either Fujwara or Minamoto as these two countries are allied with each other. Minamoto starts out as shogun. They also have a large army and can support a navy. Because Minamoto starts out as shogun, I tend to choose them when trying to unite Japan, however it is viable to use any daimyo and there is not a significant advantage when choosing one daimyo over the other. If another daimyos besides Minamoto is chosen, the title of shogun must first be attained. This will need to be done by overthrowing the current shogun and using diplomacy to get votes when trying to request title of Kampaku.
When directly taking provinces from other daimyos, 8 infamy will be received; this is double the normal 4 infamy received from non-daimyos nations. If brute force of declaring war followed by taking provinces without a CB is followed, this can be a very long game and the lack of CB will cause multiple stability hits. Therefore, any way to circumvent this problem is helpful. In order to undergo diplomatic actions as shogun, the players shogun influence needs to be manipulated. There are decisions that can be passed, high prestige and high relations with other daimyos that will higher shogun influence. Low prestige and poor relations with other daimyos will lower shogun influence.
The easiest strategy that incurs the least amount of infamy is to form personal unions. This will give no infamy and place cores and keep buildings on inherited provinces. At the start of the game, immediately form royal marriages with the other daimyos. Then choose which daimyo you want to target and claim the throne. This strategy can be used right at the beginning of the game because some of the daimyos will have illegitimate heirs at the beginning. If a daimyos doesn’t have an illegitimate heir, lowering that countries prestige by winning wars against them can help lead to an illegitimate heir. Otherwise, it might just take time to wait until an illegitimate heir appears. After winning a claim the throne war, a personal union can be formed. In order to inherit the country when the king dies, the members of the personal union need to have relations over 100 as well as your country having high prestige.
A different approach to inheriting another daimyo is to vassalize that daimyo. Go to war and take enough provinces so that vassalization is eventually an option. Once vassalized, demanding annexation will become available over time. However, the buildings of the annexed provinces will be destroyed and no cores will be made on the annexed provinces. This method is still more efficient than taking every province at 8 infamy each.
An additional option to taking provinces at reduced infamy is to use spies. Using a spy to place claims on another daimyos provinces can be used if your country has title of shogun. This will ensure that the province is cored and the buildings won’t be destroyed. This method will also create a CB to go to war with to avoid stability hits. Infamy will still be gained, more or less depending on if the spy is caught, but it will be less infamy than the 8 infamy gained if just taking the provinces without any CB or claim. A spymaster should be hired for this method as it will make available the decision to hire ninjas. This decision will boost spy efficiency by 50% and make it less likely that your spies will be caught and therefore less infamy will be incurred.
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This Navy Can Take It All
Create a grand navy by gaining at least 7 naval-morale playing the grand campaign. (15 pp)
Difficulty: Easy
You will most likely get this achievement by just playing a normal game of the grand campaign, although this achievement can be harder than getting the 7 morale army achievement depending on what type of game you are playing and not having as many ways to increase naval morale. As you develop higher naval technology, you will receive bonuses to naval morale just as you do with army morale. However, you will not attain naval morale 7 by just depending on naval tech developments. Here is a list of different way to increase your naval morale up to 7:
- Naval Maintenance: Having your naval maintenance set to full will give an additional 2.00 naval morale.
- National Idea “Superior Seamanship”: This national idea will give an additional 1.00 naval morale.
- Ruler: A ruler will give additional naval morale based on how many stars in military they have. Each additional star corresponds with an additional .10 naval morale for a total up to .90 for a 9 star in military ruler.
- Defender of Faith: Being the defender of faith will give an additional .50 naval morale.
- Prestige: Every 2 points in prestige will give an additional .01 naval morale. Having a 100 prestige will give an additional .50 naval morale.
- Grand Admiral Adviser: Every additional star that the Grand Admiral adviser has will give an additional .05 naval morale. A six star Grand Admiral will give an additional .30 naval morale.
- Land vs. Naval: By having this slider set all the way to +5 Naval will give an additional .10 naval morale.
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