The Malaccan Distraction (1604-1700)

Out of all my playtime as Malacca, the 17th century was by far the most eventful, but my updates come slowly enough as it is so I’m just going to hit the highlights and then get with the screenshots.

The first third of the century was pretty tame.  Some growth, some colonization.  I became good friends with the one-province sultanate of Brunei and later made them into a vassal state.  Vassals in EU2 give half their income to their parent state, but stay basically autonomous.  The relationship can be formed through diplomacy, as happened with Brunei, or through conquest.  An example of the second kind is the Hindu state of Mataram, which I was fighting around this time, and which I eventually defeated and forced into vassalage.  Later, I discovered that while vassals may not attack their parent states without severe penalties, they are perfectly free to fight each other, and I enjoyed great entertainment from the Brunei-Mataram wars that would occasionally erupt as I went about colonizing the rest of the archipelago.

For Malacca, the turning point came in the late 1620s with the appearance of its greatest ruler, Abd Jalil Shah II.  A mighty leader and a formidable army commander (some rulers in EU2 can lead armies in the field), he governed for nearly half a century.  Under his leadership, the Malacca Sultanate expanded its territory by both colony and conquest, and grew from a modest kingdom into a bona fide empire.

The first great victory was the unification of Sumatra.  In 1643, I took advantage of our Royal Marriage with Atjeh to claim their throne, followed by a declaration of war.  The Shah led his armies across the Strait of Malacca and oversaw a speedy campaign.  By 1644, Atjeh was subdued, and I took the province of Riau for myself and forced the rest of Atjeh into vassal status.  That arrangement only lasted three decades.  In 1667, perhaps in a form of suicide by proxy, Atjeh declared war on Ayutthaya, who promptly conquered and annexed it.  That seemed as good an excuse as any for me to step in, so Malacca immediately went to war with her Siamese neighbor.  In 1669 Ayutthaya ceded the provence of Atjeh, and Sumatra was finally united under Malaccan control.

Around this time I began negotiating exchanges of map information with friendly Sunni states in the Near East, such as the Ottoman and Mughal empires, and through them Malacca finally became aware of Europe.

On the mainland, in 1655, we seized the province of Phuket from Ayutthaya.  In 1689, thankfully, it converted from Buddhism to Islam, making the populace far more manageable.  That was, by choice, my only gain in mainland territory throughout the game.  But it was enough — Ayutthaya was never a significant threat to Malacca after that.

Abd Jalil Shah II died in 1677.  He was replaced by the much less impressive Ibrahim Shah, who was replaced in 1685 by the even less impressive Mahmud Shah, and so on for the rest of history.  From this point, it would be the colonists and traders who would write the remainder of Malaccan history.

An interesting thing happened in the 1670s.  China — as though it had nothing better to do in the midst of its endless war with the Manchu — began to sail a force around Indonesia, massacring natives on every empty island it could find.  Why it did this I can’t say.  I suspect China was clearing the way for future colonization efforts which it never got around to.  I wasn’t pleased by all this slaughter — it denied me untold thousands of potential Malaccan citizens — but I decided to take the opportunity to colonize these now much safer provinces before China or anyone else could.  So in 1683, we finally established a colony on Bandung in central Java, its hostile natives having been erased by the meddling Chinese in the previous decade.

Finally, in November 1688, the Colonial Dynamism random event happened.  Malacca received its first conquistador, one Colonel Hamzah, giving me the long-awaited power to explore unknown land zones.  Although exploring sea zones require a different kind of unit, there were lots of islands in the places I already knew about which could be explored.  In April 1689 Hamzah began his first voyage, to Palawan, which turned out to be home to angry natives and a great deal of fish.  Over the next decade he visited the remainder of the Spice Islands, discovered the Phillipines (still untouched by European feet), and even sailed as far as Taiwan.  Malacca established a colony on Taiwan in 1695, just to remind China who this ocean belonged to.

Hamzah died in November 1700, and that brings an end to this chapter of Malaccan history.  At this point the East Indies look like this:

Bonus: The Indian subcontinent.

Here we also get a little glimpse of the world to the west.  Northern India is under the rule of the wealthy and powerful Mughal Empire (purple), while the south remains divided between smaller Hindu states, with a few French (blue) and Portuguese (green) colonies for flavor.  Also, the Dutch own Sri Lanka, though that won’t last much longer.

And speaking of Europe:

Heady days for the Ottoman Empire.

In this alternate 1700, the borders of Spain and Portugal are about where we’d expect to see them.  France, though, has spread east to claim big parts of the German world.  The Papal States have reasserted their temporal power and claimed most of the Italian boot, while Austria (white) and Poland-Lithuania (orange) are predictably strong players in central and eastern Europe.  (England and Scandinavia are still beyond my ken.)  But the big success story is the light-green Ottoman Empire, who at this moment control the Near East, northern Africa, and the Balkan peninsula.  Can their growth be contained?  Stay tuned for the next 100 years!

 

The Malaccan Distraction (1492-1603)

So to recap: I’m playing EU2 again, and to warm up before returning to Ireland, I’ve started a separate new game as Malacca.  I picked a slightly shorter scenario, one beginning in 1492 and ending in 1819.  For the Europeans — not that I’ll see very much of them on this side of the world — it is the dawn of the Age of Exploration.

For Southeast Asia, it’s just business as usual:

This is all I know of the world at this point.

Southeast Asia consists, as always, of a number of smaller and oft-feuding kingdoms.  I won’t point them all out, because many won’t last very long, but those who will become major regional players include the Vietnamese Dai Viet nation (light green), Cambodia (dark gray), the Laotian state of Vientiane (dark blue), Ayutthaya, aka the Kingdom of Siam (reddish brown), and various Burmese states of which Arakan (light orange) will prove the greatest.

Of course up north, hulking huge and dark brown, is China, and at first glance it might look like a shoo-in for conqueror of the whole region.  But actually, we are in the declining years of the Ming Dynasty, and China is in for a loooong period of isolationism, uprisings, and ultimately full-on rebellion against the Manchu.  Built-in scenario events will keep China very busy for the next hundred years or so.

Then, finally, there’s the hero of our story, the Kingdom of Malacca:

In 1492, the Petronas Towers are only 18 inches tall!

Malacca was established as a Muslim sultanate on the Malaysian peninsula in the early 1400’s and was a big factor in the spreading of Islam across the Indonesian archipelago.  Malacca itself was the center of the incredibly lucrative spice trade and was home to the busiest port in the region.  That vast commercial wealth was what prompted Portugal to conquer it in 1511.  Needless to say, that’s one fate I plan to avoid.  My Malacca ain’t goin’ down like no punk.  Fortunately, the European nations in EU2 are more sluggish about exploting the Far East than they were historically.  We won’t see much of them in my game — they’re too busy squabbling on the European continent and colonizing the Americas.

Which brings me to my own goals.  Recalling the wisdom of The Princess Bride, I’m choosing to curb my hunger for territory on the Asian mainland, and instead focus on growing Malacca to a maritime commercial power.  Colonizing the islands of Indonesia and their spicy wealth is my primary goal (there are a few small rival kingdoms there, but most of the territories there are empty).  Once that’s accomplished, and Malacca has built a vast and rich empire on black pepper and nutmeg, we’ll see what opportunities arise next.

So that’s 1492.

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Not to keep you in suspense, here’s 111 years later:

Gradually, terra incognita becomes less incognita.

As you can see, I managed to avoid conquest by Portugal.

In 1603, Malacca has expanded its interests in Indonesia, colonizing western Java and establishing trading posts in east Sumatra.  Colonization in this part of the world is a slow and expensive process, because most of the unclaimed provinces are the home of large populations of hostile natives.  (To avoid too much gamespeak, I’ll sum it up thus: natives make a province harder to colonize, but if you can restrain yourself from eradicating them, you get a nice starting population when your colony’s finished.)  Bandung province in central Java is the hairiest of the lot, which is why I’ve kept it wild so far.  As my economy and population grows, the hope is that I’ll later be able to plant a nice big army there to protect the colony as I grow it.  It won’t ultimately work out that way, for reasons I’ll explain as we move into the 1670’s.

My rivals in Indonesia have been the petty kingdoms of Brunei, Atjeh, Makassar and Mataram.  Mataram quickly proved the bad boy of the bunch, conquering Makassar and seizing territory from Brunei.  Later they picked on me and didn’t do quite so well.  After a hard-fought naval war, Malacca laid a punitive smackdown on them, winning eastern Java and the province that originally belonged to Brunei.  They now know who’s boss.

Mostly I’ve kept aloof from mainland politics at this stage, but Ayutthaya made a few efforts during the 1400’s to conquer the Malaysian peninsula, and each time I managed to drive them back, though not without some effort.  The states of Southeast Asia have warred with each other throughout, and you can see that some of the smaller states of Burma and Laos have been swallowed up by Arakan and Vientiane.  (As we move into the 17th century, I’ll be embroiling myself more and more in local politics, and SE Asia will become a battleground of two alliances: Dai Viet, Vientiane and Ayutthaya on one side; Arakan, Cambodia and myself on the other.)

Europe has not involved itself much in local affairs this century.  The most that’s happened is that Portugal has settled the Chinese port of Macau, as they did historically, thanks to a built-in scenario event.  They’re that green province you see in the north.

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Tune in next installment to see the next 100 years of growth for Malacca.  Highlights include warfare, the extermination of native peoples, colonization, more warfare, and the growth of Malacca into a full-fledged empire.  Believe it!

 

We Interrupt This Hiatus

Time and vicissitude have led me away from EU2 for a while.  Now, as it happens, I’m drifting back.  I’ve still got the Eire savegame and, with a little luck o’ the Irish, I should soon be back posting updates to their merry march to world hegemony, though doubtless with less frequency or detail than I first envisoned when I started this project.  Screenshots is hard work!

But in the meantime, I’ve begun a new scenario to flex my long-atrophied EU2 muscles, and I might as well share that.  So watch this space for reports on the kingdom of Malacca, as the ancestors of modern-day Malaysia attempt to dodge greedy Europeans while spreading their economic influence across the Indonesian archipelago.

 

Chapter 0: Here Come the Irish (Clap, Clap, Clap Clap Clap)

Once upon a time, on January 1, 1419, there was a verdant isle which its inhabitants called Éire, but which I’m going to call Ireland because that’s the American way. Since the 12^th century Ireland had existed as a nominal subject of the English crown, but as a practical matter the Gaelic Irish governed themselves in most parts of the country under local chieftains. Over the years, direct English authority had shrunk to the city of Dublin and several surrounding counties, a region known as The Pale.

And here, using the EU2 political map, we see the five provinces of Ireland and the four that Ireland actually controls. (That’s something I’ll have to fix.) Ulster is my capital, as denoted by the circle icon. All of the Irish provinces are marked with my national symbol, signifying them as my “core provinces”. Owning a core province of another nation, as England now does, causes sour relations between the two countries. It also means that I have a perpetual right to declare war (in game terms, a “Casus Belli”) against England for as long as this situation lasts.

Okay, now let’s zoom out and check out the state of Europe in January 1419:

As you can see, a lot of the national borders that we generally associate with Europe aren’t, uh, quite established yet. For instance, you might be asking, “Where the hell is France?” At this moment in history, French government is highly decentralized, so French territory is a patchwork of independent but allied duchies. The blue territories are France proper; some of the other colors represent the vassal realms of Bourbonnais, Orléans, Provence, and Auvergne. Over time, France tends to absorb these smaller duchies and become more centralized.

The other factor in play is the Hundred Years War, that long period of intermittent warfare between England and France, now in its 82nd year. England presently has the upper hand thanks to their devastating victory at Agincourt in 1415. They are in control of some French provinces, and are also in alliance with Brittany (the tan kingdom in northwest France) and Burgundy (dark red, central and northern France). Against the English alliance stands the rest of France, who are in alliance with each other, plus Scotland.

Ireland is neutral in all this, but it should be obvious that we’re no fan of the English on our little island, and anything that keeps them occupied makes me happy. Ireland starts as the smallest and weakest country in the British Isles, and if I want to drive those English bastards back where they came from, I’ll need to make my move while they’re embroiled in wars of their own.

Now, if I may direct your attention to the top of the map, you’ll see the main game status bar floating up there.

On the left side we have the number of traders, colonists, diplomats, and missionaries available to me. They’ll tend to increase as time passes (to a maximum of 6 apiece).

Over on the right, it’s time to introduce one of the most crucial metrics in the game. Ladies and gentlemen of the EU2-reading public, say hello to your new best friend and mine, Stability. Stability is a measure of the internal cohesiveness of a nation, and it can range from -3 to +3. It influences darn near every aspect of a country, from income to trader replenishment to the chance of rebellions. We’ll want to keep it high, and when it gets dangerously low, bringing it up will become our #1 priority. The larger and more populous a nation, the longer it takes to recover from Stability hits. Big sprawling empires can take years just to go up a single point. For Ireland of 1419, which is quite tiny, it takes only a month or two.

Finally, we have the Manpower rating (which measures the current drafting limits of my army), and the other really important figure, my bank account.

Gooooooooooals!

Here’s what I want to accomplish in the next 400 years toward making Ireland into a world power. These goals pretty much speak for themselves:

• Drive the English out of Ireland for good!
• Absorb England and Scotland, peacefully or otherwise, unifying the British Isles under an Irish crown.
• Own a foothold in continental Europe.
• Colonize the New World as much as possible. (Particularly the gold- and potato-rich territories of the Inca Empire.)

Also, just to be different, and to give myself a challenge:

• When the opportunity arises (after the Reformation happens), go Protestant and try to get all of the Irish provinces converted to Protestantism by game’s end.

That should be enough to keep me busy a while. One more thing: player-controlled nations can take on optional “missions” to earn extra victory points. I won’t be doing any of these, so that my VP total will be a more accurate measure of how Ireland is performing against the other nations of the world.

Coming next: the first 20 years! Watch Ireland establish itself as a nation, build its strength, and engage in a pointless and extraneous war – just like the big empires do!

 

The Start of a New, I Mean Old, Era

Hey, what happened to Infamy Unlimited?

Don’t worry, everyone’s most loathed City of Villains super-criminal group is still around.  But as they haven’t gotten up to much worth writing about lately, I’ve decided to push their exploits to the side for now, and lend this blogspace to gaming tales of a different nature.

Specifically, I’ll be chronicling my progress through a full game of Europa Universalis II.  And you get to watch!

Released in 2001 by Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive, EU2 is a strategy game spanning four centuries of world colonial expansion.  And you can play as any nation during that period, from Austria to the Zulu.  The Grand Campaign, which I’ll be playing, covers the full scope, from 1419 A.D. (the midst of the Hundred Years War) to 1819 A.D. (the end of the Napoleonic era).  During this time, technology will advance from the age of pikes to cannons and rifles, wars will be fought, lands will be colonized, religions will splinter and spread, and the political map of the world will be redrawn in various amusing ways.

EU2 has a gigantic map, hundreds of playable nations, and is enormously complex, so I’m not going to try and explain the whole deal up front.  Instead, I’ll cover the relevant game dynamics as they come up during my recaps.  For now, it’s enough to mention that the game uses a victory point system, and while I will be keeping track of those, I’m going to hold myself to a less quantitative standard of success.  Broadly, my goal is to grow my chosen nation from a small-time player into a major power – not merely in Europe, but also in vast colonial holdings across the globe.  My nation will be the core of an empire upon which the sun will never set.

And what nation is that?  It’s that friendly little emerald isle called:

IRELAND.

Since the game covers 400 years, my plan is to provide a 20-part recap, each chapter spanning 20 years of alternate Irish history.  Let’s all hold hands and pray that I can succeed in holding to a weekly posting schedule.

For now, stay tuned as we take a peek at the state of Europe in 1419 A.D., and the tough row Ireland has to hoe in the centuries ahead.