[Shabbaman]

Okay, minor update. Right after I picked my third national idea, the reformation started. I didn't know if I should pick Colonial Ventures or Church attendance duty. Colonial Ventures gives you additional colonists, and this seemed nice in my quest for the new world: I had occupied some indian lands and was slowly colonizing South America. I was pushing naval tech as well, so I could grab the carribean with it's valuable trade goods. I could go for those islands if I had the additional settlers from Colonial Ventures... OTOH, I kept getting missions to integrate the small french vassals into the empire of France, but I couldn't do this because of the stability drop this would lead to. Long story short, reformation hit and I was screwed. Protestants and reformed are popular people in la belle France ajourd'hui. Since I had neglected religion in every possible way, I didn't even have any missionaries to reclaim those provinces (which, like I found out later, would've been pointless with the religious zeal penalty that converted provinces get for 50 years or so) Anyway... thanks to Propain I learned how to unlock my government slider, and I rushed towards the next National Idea. Church attendance duty has the nice side effect that other faiths won't spread in your provinces, but besides that you get a stability cost reduction. With that, and a level 5 artist, I could afford to integrate Alsace for sure.

Or so I thought. The elzasser people converted to some obscure christian faith and wouldn't think of joining France. Not even the walking EUIII encyclopedia named Propain could think of a strategy to convert them to catholicism, so here I was, with a useless national idea and a bunch of useless missionaries. At least those missionaries could convert those heathen indians in my captured colonies. And then...



My king died and left me with a regency council, so the game got really boring at this point. I took this opportunity to let my infamy drop a little, and expand my western colonies. I figured I should be looking towards the east as well, since I don't have much colonizing competition from the other European powers yet. So I grabbed the Cape, and with the help of a navigator I could grab Bourbon (small island next to Madagaskar (SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING), sounded appropriate for France to own that piece of land) later on. I scouted India and discovered the indonesian archipelago. I noticed that there are a lot of provinces with spices, so I decided that that would be my next goal.

After all, it seems only fair that I own Indonesia, historically speaking. Balkenende would be proud. I can't establish colonies over there (yet), but that won't keep me from waging holy war against those heathens. And yes, I can make good use of my missionaries there. So when I got a new king, I started pillaging Atjeh and Borneo (which was completely owned by Brunei...). Unfortunately those islands are too big to capture in one war, so this is going to take a while. Nobody liked Atjeh and Brunei in that region, so I made some friends automatically. I noticed some of these friends own provinces with a high base tax, so we're no longer friends.

My goal is to own all the islands in this region, and protect this with my huge fleet. They can keep the mainland, I don't like Ming as my neighbour. There's a COT on Java though, and I'm not sure it's wise to capture it. It'll bring me great wealth eventually, but it'll kill my compete chance for the next 50 years (until I get a core). I would like a COT in the region, so I guess I'm taking my chances. My infamy'll have to drop after this anyway... What do you think?

Oh, another fun fact: I randomly got a core on an aragonese province. Aragaon, my faithful ally, who I helped in many war they started (seriously, they're waging a war against Sicily and Modena EVERY OTHER YEAR), but who declined to come to my aid when the Khmer decided to attack me... yes, that Aragon. I wouldn't be surprised if there's going to be a war on the Iberian peninsula sometime soon. Especially since a core on their province means NO INFAMY FOR ME, ha! Oh, and they're allied with Portugal, and Portugal is getting too big for my taste.

Oh, did you know you can make high res pictures of the world? Pretty cool. Unfortunately the forum thinks they're too big, I'll have to look into that.