ping

I believe the devs wanted to include a "pay 100000000000 ducats to ravage Europe's economy" button towards the end of the mission tree, but either reconsidered or removed it because it would've been a bit too much. This is my first game on the current patch and I skipped the previous two, so I'm not aware of all the little details. The mission tree still has a "Show Generosity" mission (give lots of money to the owners of Ankara, Cairo, and Mekkah, i.e. probably the Ottos and the Mamluks) and one of the two final missions is to "Prepare the Pilgramage" (have the country in pristine condition), so Mansa Musa clearly still has his footprint in there. Plus, a short section about discovering and colonising South America is framed as the search for the expedition that Musa's father allegedly went on. The phase before you click the "Restore Authority" button is pretty rough, though. Frequent stability hits, and events along the lines of "lots of local autonomy OR fight 12k rebels". So once I got there, I created some more problems for myself by manually lowering autonomy everywhere, which means that I'm going to get a bunch of rebels anyway. But at least I'm very rich now.

Rebecca seize to exist Needs to accept more cookies

That's a good button 🥰

Banned for not accepting sweet heresy (nor cookies).

Knows, deep in his heart, that heresy will ultimately prevail.

Has a profile picture with a blue hand (just give it a second) Wololo

Ponders about heresy - a very laudable activity.

In a Swiss tropiquarium (which apparently is a word), the first ever seen albino Galapagos Tortoise hatched from its egg about two months ago. The owner of the tropiquarium believes that an albino in the wild would have very low life expectancy because its white colour would easily attract predators, and Galapagos Tortoises very very rarely multiply in captivity - the news article I got this from cites a 2-3% chance of success. You can search for "albino galapagos tortoise" for some very adorable pictures, too. Galapagos tortoises grow to up to 200 kg weight (and the mother weighs around 100 kg), but only weigh 50 g when hatching.

A little repetitive, to be perfectly honest. One "majestic" phrase and one more "melodic" phrase, 16 seconds each, repeated ad infinitum. Well, only seven minutes in that video, but I still skipped ahead to the 6min mark after maybe two minutes. Until there's some really epic middle part that I missed because of that - eh, doesn't sound bad, but I'd hope that this isn't an overworld theme or something of that sort. 4/10

Should approve of heresy. It's good for you. And fun!

I prefer Asturias, personally. Nice calm bright blue map colour. León's purple is a bit garish, I find.

Doesn't seem to like the very tasty cookies. That's OK, though - more cookies for me. And more heresy. Sweet, heretic heresy.

BANNED!

Should renounce the authority of the Emperor. There will be cookies if she does.

Well, the AI will probably break the alliance because this does tank their Trust value, and you can't call anybody in promising land for a pretty long time... but beating the Ottomans before they start rolling is a very big price. (That said, for a new player, I'd recommend not doing all this and treat the Ottoblob as the final boss instead. They will be incredibly strong, hundreds of thousands of troops, but hey, final boss) Yeahh, EU4 DLC is an expensive joke at this point. Potential new players get greeted with a 400€ price tag and the devs need to account for 65536 different possible DLC combinations. Re: Forming Spain: Whenever Castile and Aragon have rulers of different gender, there's an event called "The Iberian Wedding", which allows you to take Aragon as a free personal union. Queen regencies count, so even though the event can only happen between 1450 and 1530, it's very likely to happen "naturally". Toss your heir into the Atlantic (as long as you have the necessary DLC... 😐 ), if you get an Isabella of Castille event say "Yes, please", and don't fight Aragon since that would just waste resources conquering stuff you'd get for free anyway. You can actually release them as a vassal and choose to play as them, if you so desire It's a button on your own diplomacy screen (the one you get by right-clicking your own territory), below the list other nations' opinions. Playing as a subject is a self-imposed challenge though. There's no incentive to be anyone's vassal, unlike in Crusader Kings, so the first step is always to look for anybody to support you in an independence war (which, guess what, is another DLC feature 😞 edit: the "seek support" part). There are a handful of strong and/or interesting tags that start as a vassal / junior part of a personal union, though - Sweden, Norway, Naples, Butua (in SE Africa) come to mind. Not something I'd recommend as a first campaign, though.

...I'm almost impressed with myself for randomly guessing the correct game It's been a long while since I've played as Castile, but I'm guessing that "hope that they don't ally the Ottos" is part of any plan. Failing that, you can attack one of Granada's allies and force Granada to annul any ottoliances and, if you want to, give you some money. As long as the peace deal remains below 50%, they won't be able to re-ally the Ottos before the truce if up. Failing that... *sigh* If Granada only allies the Ottomans and nobody else, you can try to still declare on them and fully occupy them. If you fully occupy the primary war target (and have no occupied provinces of your own) at any point five years after starting a war, you will get 100% warscore regardless of any secondary participants. But of course, it's likely that you'll find a big stack of angry turks at your doorstep. Even with naval supremacy, the AI tends to get mil access somehow. All that said, there's always the "no-CB blurple" approach for any European major. As cheesy as it is, declaring an immediate no-CB war on Byzantium in order to vassalise them is a very powerful move to make sure that the Ottoblob doesn't get out of hand. Without the free empire rank they get from conquering Constantinople, they're significantly weaker than otherwise. Still, fighting them for BYZ's cores can be quite difficult even with a strong start such as Castile, so don't be afraid to a) go over force limit and b) temporarily ally some nearby powers (Hungary, Austria), call them in promising them land, and then not give them anything.

Could receive some very tasty cookies by performing a little bit of heresy. Just a little, and you can stop anytime you want.

Hmm... the capitalised letters are G-E-T-T-N-I-D-S-I-M-N-I-E-A... Get TNID simulator NIEA Get the new ID simulator NIEA id Software doesn't really produce simulation games, though - platformers first (Commander Keen!), later first-person shooters. I guess "Hovertank 3D"... sorta kinda works? But saying that calling that game new is a strech is an understatement and then some, so maybe there's a sequel on the way? Or a completely new franchise? Get the new id Software simulator game - now in early access! Nice little puzzle, but I generally try to avoid buying games in early access. I don't really want to pay money so that I can function as a beta tester. In EU4? Doesn't work, I'm afraid. Both buttons to form Spain (diplomatically as Castile or Aragon, and militarily) require that no Muslim country holds any provinces in Iberia to press, so you can only ever finish the Reconquista and then form Spain, no matter who you start as. I guess you could conquer Granada, then click the Spain button without converting the conquered provinces, re-release Granada as an independent nation and then reconquista (re-re-reconquista?) those provinces again. But I feel like that goes against the spirit of the assignment.

Triple banned because I met a few singers who really challenged their choirs' conductors' belief that everybody can learn to sing. Quintuple banned for the sake of faster escalation.

The Roman Imperial succession had a number of low points throughout its entire run (Nero was the fifth Emperor, Caligula the third - and when he came to power, people were glad that old, cruel, paranoid Tiberius was finally dead) and Didius Julianus probably wasn't a particularly bad person at all, but the way he gained his (very short) Imperium still stands out. His predecessor, Pertinax, was instituted when the Praetorian Prefect had Emperor Commodus (another terrible ruler, by the way) assassinated and made the Praetorian Guard hail Pertinax as Imperator. It seems that the Prefect had promised his guard a great monetary bonus for that, but Pertinax was unwilling - or unable, it's not like Commodus left a healthy Imperial treasury - to pay more than half of that. An enraged group of 200-300 Praetorians ended up striking down Pertinax when he tried to reason with them. The Praetorians then still felt that they were due some cash, so they had the brilliant idea of selling the throne to the highest bidder. Didius Julianus ended up winning that auction, paying 25000 sesterces, although it probably helped that the main competitor was Pertinax's father-in-law and the Praetorians feared retribution for their murder should he become Emperor. Obviously, Didius Julianus was deeply, deeply unpopular with basically everybody - the Roman citizenship as well as the military outside of the Praetorian Guard. Immediately after his ascension, three generals were hailed Imperator by their respective legions - Pescennius Niger in Syria, Clodius Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus in Pannonia (located in today's Austria, Hungary, and a couple Balkan states). Severus, being stationed closest to Rome, immediately marched his troops to Italy, faced very little opposition because few people were willing to fight for Didius Julianus, and was quickly named Emperor by the same senate that had declared him an enemy of the state maybe two months prior. Instead, the senate sentenced Didius Julianus (who they had only named Emperor under threat by the Praetorians) to death and he was executed on June 2nd, 193 AD, 66 days after trying to buy the entire Roman empire for 25000 sesterces. According to a contemporary historian, Cassius Dio, his last words were, "But what evil have I done? Whom have I killed?”. 193 ended up in the history books as the "Year of the Five Emperors" - Pertinax, Didius Julianus, and the three pretenders following them, between whom Septimius Severus ended up victorious. There's also a year of Four (69 AD; Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespacian) and a year of Six Emperors (238 AD; Maximinus Thrax, Gordian I-III, Pupienus, Balbinus), which is definite proof that the German Kaiserreich was but a pale imitation of the Roman original. We only managed a Year of Three Emperors, or Dreikaiserjahr, when Wilhelm I and his son Friedrich III died within a few months and made way for ol' war monger and later nazi sympathiser Wilhelm II.

Banned for (Baa-dee-ya!) dancing in september.

And two years older than Pokémon's Cyrus. Getting closer and closer to FFX's Auron (well, [spoilers] [spoilers] [spoilers]), who is 35.