… and we’re done. Great run, but we just couldn’t do it.

Heh. Actually, I made it to 1710, had my best game yet, but then I got greedy and triggered a coalition war. I could probably play the game out, but between that, a few other dumb mistakes and a lot of small, suboptimal plays, I don’t think that particular World Conquest is salvageable.

I learned a lot, though, and I’m not about to quit such an interesting project.

So I’ll restart in a couple of days. Meanwhile, here are some of the lessons I learned during this playthrough.

1-Fight wars to 100% warscore (or near to 100%) – in the early stages of the game, I wasted lots of time and manpower by going for early peace agreements. That’s a crushing mistake: by the time the enemy is willing to sign a peace deal at 35% or so, you’ve generally won the war anyway. Driving up the warscore higher is a formality by then.

2-Focus my aggression. It’s not always possible, but it’s better to kill off a nation completely than to have it stick around with 150 AE. That’s something I should absolutely have done throughout the entire run. The coalition that ruined me in the end wasn’t a huge European blob, it was a dozen country from all across the world.

3-Don’t ignore the economic game. In this playthrough I learned the importance of trade, but also that ignoring the invest-reap rewards value of buildings and ships was deadly.

… and tons and tons of nifty little tricks.

We’ll see how it works out.