For those of you who haven’t figured out how to get started as Luxembourg for fun or for the achievement, since having 0 access in a personal union is a pain.
Guide to Independent Luxembourg
All credit goes to Leefizzy!
Opening Moves
Expel Diplomats vs the Dutch, dropping your relations to 20, and start hurting your relations.
Do whatever else you want to do in your run, but the two steps above are necessary.
Independence
As soon as your relations with the Dutch drops to 19, start the Independence play.
Wait until the progress gets to 70 and then invite any one power who can be bought (Likely Austria) into the play. They will surrender immediately when they realize they can’t take on Austria’s 250+your 3 battalions alone.
Congrats, you are now an independent 1 city minor who can now trade, it’s up to you to decide where to go from here.
Why/How This Works
This works because the Dutch severely outclasses your army, so it doesn’t feel the need to bribe anyone to help.
Therefore, you take advantage of the 9 tick delay the ai(or everyone, I dunno, I’ve been playing nothing but Luxembourg so far) has for accepting bribes for plays to make sure they can’t get anyone to help them vs Austria.
There is a phase progress pause for 5 days/ticks but because of the info above, the Dutch can’t invite anyone in time, usually Prussia.
For Norway, the process was slightly different. Get Denmark onboard by promising them the opportunity to mock (!) Sweden. Hire another general with defensive traits. Once you have about 70 independence progress, mobilize and set both generals to defend on the north/west front where all the Swedes will confidently march into your prepared defences.
Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, the Danes will have crossed into undefended Skåne and will just troll their way to Stockholm while the Swedes die at the northern front. 100 war exhaustion should set in just as the Danes approach the capital.
Technically you don’t even need someone else’s help since the Dutch can’t even get their armies to Luxembourg
Do the Dutch just back down when they realize they can’t move on your territory? I never even considered it. It could throw a wrench in grabbing the rest of Wellonia if it results in a foreverwar.
The Dutch being a larger nation and an AI, will mobilize their much larger military. Then feel free top laugh as they lose all their war support, due to how expensive it is to keep armies mobilized, before just giving up
If this happens instantly, I’m all for it, but if this isn’t the case, the opportunity to immediately start a play for the rest of Wallonia just after getting independence and not have a Dutch army knocking on your new border is too big to ignore for my playstyle.
I’m testing it Right now tbh. Wouldn’t recommend including any other war goals but Independence when “fighting” the Dutch, and the worse their bank is the better off you are for getting them to capitulate faster