Hey guys, intermediate level player here (1900hrs, medium difficulty)
I've been on a quest to close all 373 achievements in the game, built my own achievement tracker and tried to ramp up my achievement completion pace. I wanted to share a few of my last few achievement runs over the past 2 months, feel free to ask if you want me to expand on some, give tips etc. Also feel free to have a look at my tracker and see the completed achievements if you want some help on some of those too!
- Achievement completed: Academical - VH
Goal: own 50 universities as Athens
The Run: my latest run and boy it's a hard start. It took me about 6 attempts though I basically just restarted every time around 1450-55. This start as Athens, a Byzantium vassal, is arguably harder that Byzantium. You can easily get the Ottomans to support your independence (in fact, at game start with the estate privileges and a diplo rep advisor) but they will immediately ditch you if you take all Byzantium land. Also, you need to be really sneaky if you want to snag Constantinople's occupation in the initial war because if the Ottos get their hands on it they won't transfer it back. But it is possible as they will first go fight Byz's army. And it ended up being my strat', to get Constantinople, curtail the Ottos and full annex Byz in the war. After that though, you're ally-less and weak so Venice will Dec on you, and 5 years later, the Ottomans. It's imperative to drag out the war a bit until you get high relations with powerful Catholic allies, since you are Catholic. I got Austria, Aragon, The Papal State and Hungary as allies immediately after or just a bit after the independence war, deterring any dec.
After that it's a slow and steady expansion, mostly using your catholic bros. The achievement "only" requires you to have 50 provinces and by ~1620 when universities are available so you can take your time. Venice islands and provinces in the Aegean sea were by first targets and then later on, when the Ottomans were distracted and my allies strong enough, successive wars to break them and take over the Balkans, a bit of Anatolia and even some provinces in Lithuania who got independence from Poland. Money was a struggle for a long time and the military weak so this run required patience. This is not at all the only strategy, an exodus to North Africa or even the New World might be easier. Also, you cannot form the Latin Empire.
Enjoyment: 8/10. The hard start, constrained region made it an interesting challenge at least until the 1500s.
- Achievement completed: Pick your Poison - H
Goal: as Kaffa, have a vassal own Cafa (in the Pontic Steppe) and dev it once
The Run: the start is quite easy. Your OPM neighbors are weak and you're rich since you start with a goal mine. After a quick expansion taking over the surrounding OPMs you should soon be able to take on Adal or Ethiopia, whichever is weaker, with the help of a few other nations (I allied Yemen and Marehan iirc). You get access to another gold mine quickly, making your early economy very strong. After I finished off Adal and ate Ethiopia in 2-3 wars I even managed to get in a defensive war against the Mamluks to weaken them. I continued to fight them when I could with my superior economy, to expand North, while going south as well into Ajuraan. Kaffa's ideas are not terrible but I felt like forming Somalia would help and it is authorized to complete the achievement.
Once I got access to the Mediterranean after that, I did not even ally the Ottomans (even though I flipped Sunni through rebels), managed to ally some of their rivals (including Timurids who stayed strong in my game), and declared on them when they got busy in a war. They had gobbled up Cafa but I didn't need a lot of war score to get Theodoro and Cafa in a peace deal, release Theodoro as a vassal, feed them Cafa, let them core it and do one dev click.
Enjoyment: 7/10. A pretty nice run! It's quite quick (maybe 3-4hrs game time), an easy start (as opposed to Athens, I first-tried this one), I like the Horn of Africa as a starting region, and while the inevitable battle against the Ottomans later is boring, you only need half a war to finish the run.
- Achievement completed: Stardust crusaders - M
Goal: as Japan, have the Land of Christian Sun government reform while holding Cairo and Palestine.
The Run: I already got other Japan related achievements so I solely focused on Stardust Crusaders for this run. Anyways, you can't do the isolationist one at the same time as you need to get the Open outcome in the Christian incident to get the government reform needed. I started as Oda, the strongest Daimyo apparently, played a typical "Hunger Games"-like opening with constant warring in the opening stages to eat all the other Daimyos and easily fight Ashikaga to form Japan. I kept Oda's ideas. After that I focused on exploration to try and get Colonialism to spawn in Japan and while I did get a colony in Ohlone in 1498, I missed out on the prize. I continued and devved it the hard way, then focused on expanding towards Africa by island-hopping (Philippines, then Moluccas, then west-Indonesia, then Ile Bourbon next to Madagascar).
I then looked for a weak target to no-cb in the Arabia/Horn of Africa region. I vassalized Hadramut, got a few other provinces and started to form a base in the Horn of Africa. In my first attempt I focused too much on the mission tree, fighting Korea, and China that it eventually drained me. So in this second attempt I went straight for the prize. Unfortunately the Ottomans were quicker and the required provinces had fallen under their mighty grasp. I continued to secure the Horn of Africa, south of Arabia and African east coast fghting off Kilwa to improve my economy and army and waited (and waited, and waited) for the Christian incident to finally be able to become Kirishitan Japan and get Catholic allies. After that I was able to ally some of Ottos rivals (Austria and Poland iirc, maybe France or Spain too). One war was all that was needed at this point to get Cairo and the 3 Palestine provinces since Absolutism had already appeared.
Enjoyment: 5/10. The start in Japan is always fun, and trying to race for Colonialism or migrating towards Africa was fun too. But the (very) long wait for the Christian incident made it a bit boring towards the end. Also, this being a M (Medium) difficulty achievement is a bit of an under-estimation in my opinion.
Coming up: Kuban Cigars, Mass Production, Tiger of Mysore, Spanish fly, Hessian Mercenaries and Stiff Upper Lippe, Where are the penguins?, Sun Invasion, The Fezzan Corridors
