Succession Wars: Part 07: 1551-1565: Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Jerusalem

The HRE started its religious leagues:

• Catholic League - Austria, Poland, Hungary, Muscovy
• Reformed League - Switzerland (not even elector), Catholic France, Protestant Denmark

This was really one-sided, and I was already allied with Austria and Poland, so it only made sense for me to join the Catholic league. But before I could do that, I was dragged into a war, and I leagues can't be joined when at war.

Denmark-Poland alliance broke, and without any major power supporting them, Danish empire finally fell apart. The game bugged out a bit. England and Sweden were both disloyal and allied, so they should be fighting their independence war together. And I was supporting England only - normally it doesn't matter as you'd get pulled into the war either way. But somehow Sweden rebelled, dragging me in, but England I was supporting stayed out of the war completely - not joining on either Danish or Swedish side.

England bugged out and notably missing on both sides of this war

As far as I can tell, that's not my mods' doing, it's a new vanilla bug I haven't seen before. It might have something to do with some colonial war England was involved in, but I'm not sure.

I was really curious what would happen if I declared on England in this state, and the dialog claimed that it would bring Denmark and Norway into the war, but it didn't as we already had another war going. I just grabbed a few quick provinces - wargoal Cape and 5 provinces in England itself - before Denmark could even rejoin.

In that time, religious league wars started, and I joined as Austria's ally even though I wasn't allowed to join the league itself as I was at nonstop war. Well, we outnumbered them 6:1.

Religious League wars are frequently one-sided when player is too strong, but this one would be ridiculously one-sided even without me joining

The result of this war was France getting huge beating, Austria forcing them to release a bunch of minors, which I then quickly diplovassalized. The only downside is that both Denmark and France gave my navy serious beating, but that didn't save them.

So that's France and Denmark undermined. Even with religious leagues war won, HRE was still rotting from within, more and more princes swearing loyalty to me.

That wasn't the end of wars. I didn't have one day of peacetime in decades, as my allies kept dragging me into one stupid war after another. I even lost diet agenda to buy a province in India, as I'd need to be at peace for one day to do this. Overall I don't like the whole "you can't do this if you're at war", but none of that can be modded as far as I know.

Finally I hard annexed Castile, but I can't form Spain as damn Poland won't end their stupid war with Denmark to give me one damn day of peace to do this. Allies in this game are the worst. Now to be fair, half of these wars I get dragged into are event wars from my mod, but it's still unbelievably annoying, that being "at war" blocks half the game mechanics.

Once they finish their stupid war, I'll be able to reorganize my newly unified country, help 4 colonial nations I inherited, and I'll check new mission tree.

Succession Wars: Part 06: 1527-1551: Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Jerusalem

On succession, I inherited nasty wars with Venice, Hungary, and France, and I really wanted out.

Hungary was nearly fully occupied, so I let them get away with some broken alliances and some gold. I thought this would be a good signal for Bohemia to start their independence rebellion against Hungary, but Hungary just allied Muscovy right away, Austria soon after, and Bohemia chickened out of declaring independence.

I had to white peace France, but at least I could fully remove Venice, one of few remaining minor powers - and briefly even one of the great powers.

As the strongest country in the world, I was the rightful successor of the Roman Empire, but nobody acknowledged my claim. The Western crown was Austria's and electors were not interested in handing it over, the Eastern crown was in Constantinople, and the Pope was holding Rome and not interested in giving me a a third one.

And Europe was consolidating. Denmark got PU over England, and I didn't even notice for a good while as almost everyone in Europe has the same salmon color.

The Great Salmon Empire

There are now 7 major powers in Europe, and 4 of them have almost the same color:

• Aragon/Castile/Portugal/Jerusalem/so many vassals - salmon
• Denmark/Sweden/Norway/England - salmon
• France - blue
• Austria and its HRE minions - white and rainbow of minors
• Hungary/Bohemia/Milan (also in the HRE) - salmon
• Poland/Lithuania/Brandenburg - salmon
• Muscovy - yellow

There were other powers outside Europe, but they didn't have color conflicts with me. I don't think there was a single EU4 game ever where color scheme bothered me so much.

I would love to undermine all of them, to make my color unique, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. Fine, I guess I'll just pay the price to integrate Castile, so I can change my color to Spanish yellow.

For some minor undermining, I started bribing OPMs in the "Holy Roman Empire" to swear fealty to me one by one. It's a lot of vassals, but it doesn't add up to that much land.

Since supporting independence of Bohemia didn't really work out, I tried it with England instead, but that wasn't too successful either.

Well, there's the whole rest of the world to conquer.

The Mamluks had another succession, and I autodeclared holy war on them by event. I was planning to just core return CB them to restore Syria, but I guess Jerusalem is calling. Mamluks had annoying allies like Persia and Kilwa, so this took a while, but I took the whole coastline, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Mecca for good measure.

And I ran into a surprise mechanic. Overextension effects used to only happen when you had >=101% overextension, so I took 100.8% without worrying about it, but apparently they changed it in some recent patch, and now the threshold is actually >100%. I learn new things even after so many years of playing.

I got my first colonist, and sent them to Kongo, together with some soldiers to secure the whole coastline. I even accepted Kongolese culture, as there's a decent monument there that requires that. It's really silly that the whole culture system got reduced to unlocking monuments, but it is what it is.

I'm spreading my expansion between Kongo, West Africa, North Italy, Egypt, and Middle East, and with some core returns, and some holy wars, there's not even any coalition against me.

But new things are coming. Printing Press got invented, and with it, religious leagues started in the HRE, so all of Europe is going to get realigned now.

I still hope to roll free East Rome PU, and I alss allied Bavaria to try to roll their PU, but no luck there either. Bavaria isn't even that likely, they have so many allies and same religion neighbors, even if they fall under PU, it probably won't be mine.

Overall, I didn't have any high impactful events yet, either positive or negative. I based the odds on what made AI simulations work best. For most fun experience, the player should have a lot of high impact events. But if every AI was rolling high impact event all the time, the world would fall apart pretty quickly. And I really wanted the mod to treat player and AIs the same.

Succession Wars: Part 05: 1486-1527: Emperor Ferran II de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, Castile, and Portugal

Now that I had a new your king, the goal was Portugal PU, the last free PU in Aragon's mission tree. It feels weird that I'm playing a mod that gives free PUs left and right, and I have huge number of PUs, but zero of them came from modded events.

So far I'm actually barely affected by the mod. I saved some mana on instant vassal inherits, I lost a lot of money when peasants tanked my prestige, which eventually resulted in very expensive Naples independence war, but then I saved even more on building spam with inward focus.

At least in part of the map I pay attention to, the main beneficiaries of the mod seem to be Hungary, Poland, and Genoa, and the biggest loser are the Ottomans, and countries that fell under event PUs (Bohemia, Milan, Brandenburg).

So the mission tree gave me Portugal PU CB. Portugal was allied with England and Poland. But since Poland came to my help in war against Albania (overlord is defender in independence wars), they already couldn't help Portugal. And so I declared war on Portugal on the first day of my reign.

The Papacy fell under French influence, and they got me excommunicated, killing my ongoing efforts to diplovassalize OPMs. Then the Pope excommunicated France, I forgot to add exception for curia controller for this event. Oh well, I'm fixing bugs as I play.

Europe was already falling under controls of a few major powers - England, France, Austria's HRE, Denmark/Sweden/Norway, Poland/Lithuania/Brandenburg, Hungary/Bohemia/Milan, and Muscovy. And most of the minors were allied with one or more of them. But Venice stood alone, so I attacked them, and returned Roman cores Venice stole from collapsing Ottomans back to the Romans. I'm still hoping to get Roman PU by event.

Europeans were already a bit upset about Portugal and a few Italian provinces, so I tried to spread my expansion all the way from Genoa to Balkans to Black Sea region. I returned all remaining Roman cores, and they could do triumph for Greece - they did literally nothing, it was 100% due to me returning their cores. I'm using pretty standard tactics - release OPM vassal then return their cores in the followup war, or release OPMs then diplovassalize them, or sometimes take some land directly if coalition doesn't look too bad.

I finally got a high impact event - I declared event holy war CB war on the Mamluks. Earlier it would have been pretty nasty, but Mamluks didn't have any strong allies, so we just swarmed them. I used the war to setup OPM vassal Syria and grab some minor land up to Alexandria and some gold.

Bohemia kept spamming me with support independence requests, so I finally relented, but it didn't help them. France declare on Castile's colonial nation, which dragged Castile into the war, and then me, probably to their surprise - if I remember correctly AI doesn't understand these two level subjects, it's a bug that existed in every version. And France called Hungary into the war, and that dragged Hungary's subjects too.

But I couldn't call my allies like Poland and Austria, as I was already in a war against Venice, and EU4 engine is too stupid to support calling into a single war, instead they just have -1000 would be called into multiple wars. So I had to fight it all alone.

All that for some stupid colonies I couldn't even locate on the map

During the war emperor Ferran II died. He was succeeded to thrones of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal by Ferran III.

Succession events:

• Aragon - army reform, +10 professionalism, 20 years of -20% morale
• Castile - inward focus, 20 years of -25% dev cost, -40% build cost, +75% province warscore cost
• Portugal - trade reform, +10 mercantilism, 20 years of -50% trade power

Not the best timing for army reform, but this is all really mild.

My idea build is pretty standard:

• administrative (for ccr and gov cap) - pretty much a no-brainer
• influence (for diplo annexation discount) - I thought about not taking it, as Castile can be annexed for free, and event can instantly annex vassals, but Castile turned out to be too big for instant annexing, so this forced the issue
• religious - so I can actually convert all Mare Nostrum area, and for Holy War CB

This means I have no colonist yet, so I really shouldn't be annexing Castile or Portugal, as they're colonizing for me. I mostly want to annex Castile for better color and new mission set.

I really wanted to use this war to break one of Hungary's PUs.

Hungary is losing hard, but I'd need to 100% Hungary, Bohemia, and Milan to get them to break either PU. It's probably better if I just break Hungary's alliances and hope Bohemia figures it out by themselves somehow. Then white peace France and fight again when I can call my allies.

Succession Wars: Part 04: 1479-1486: King Joan III de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, and Castile

I needed to do a small mid-campaign mod adjustment. I inherited Mzab, and that's the third vassal inherit already, it's been happening more than intended. I added both instant vassal inherit (can trigger on vassal succession) and instant vassal rebellion (can trigger for overlord succession), so I thought it would be balanced, but most of events in the pool are for independent countries only, so instant inherit ends up vastly more likely than free rebellion.

So from now on, instant inherit is for same religion vassals only, and different religion vassals can get instant religion change event instead. I nerfed inward focus numbers a bit, and added a few more events, and some Sunni/Shia and (only outside HRE) Catholic/reformation wars.

Hungary unfortunately managed to get their union over Milan back by force. I thought about supporting independence of their PU junior like Bohemia or Milan, but that would drag me into a war with Austria and France, and I wasn't really looking forward to that.

On Papal succession Pope reset all his alliances and rivalries - this by the way is the most realistic feature of the mod - so I ended up fighting Pope and Siena, and releasing some of Pope's annexed vassals.

Poland got mod event PU over Brandenburg, so every major power in Europe is consolidating. I don't even mention random OPM PUs everyone has been getting - Scotland got 2, Austria got 2, Even Ferrara got 2 somehow.

Well, my 13 mana heir reached the right age, so it was time for my 6 mana king to abdicate. I think this might be the first time I'm pressing abdicate button.

Random events on succession:

• Aragon - all vassals I don't have truce with instantly rebel, but since I had truces with 4/5 (Morocco, Ragusa, Knights, Spoleto), that means just Albania and nobody else
• Castile - noble estate influence, 20 years of +50% nobles influence, -20% other estates influence, +1 diplomat (high risk of getting estate takes over disaster)
• Naples - clergy estate influence, 20 years of +50% clergy influence, -20% other estates influence, +1 missionary (high risk of getting estate takes over disaster)
• Navarra - diplomatic reset - this doesn't even do much for subjects, as it wouldn't break support independence if they had it

Well, that's all very mild.

Albanians refused to accept our salmon color and want to be deep red on the map instead

I really should form Spain, as all of Europe except France and HRE minors has essentially the same color

Succession Wars: Part 03: 1457-1479: King Joan III de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, and Castile

Small aside, I was confused why Castile went domineering over me, but apparently they got PU CB over me from their mission tree.

Successions are happening more often than I'd like, but they came with only minor challenges:

• I can ignore peasants rebellion in Navarra, all they want is increase autonomy, but Navarra is OPM anyway, so autonomy in their capital is fixed at 0%
• Naples will hopefully fight its pretender rebels, lose some troops, and be easier to deal with if they actually declare independence. AI is not smart enough to lose to pretenders on purpose to skip independence war.
• My inward focus would slow down by expansion, but I'm AE limited anyway.

The big problem is still that 6 countries rivaled me, and 4 are supporting Naples independence movement. And Naples actually pressed that button, with only Milan and Papal States staying as my allies.

It was not quite as bad.

• France supported Naples, but because Austria dragged both me and France into one of their silly wars, France couldn't join war against me
• England is too far and useless
• Ottomans are busy fighting Venice
• Castile and their PU Burgundy were busy fighting Austria

And all I needed was white peace anyway.

Probably the hardest war of this campaign. Of participants, Naples, Castile, and Burgundy are all in my realm now, and Ottomans got many beatings by me. England still unpunished.

So I was optimistic, but my army was actually stuck in Africa, and England landed their army in Aragon itself. Well, loans, mercs, and if it bankrupts me so be it.

And then, for the first time ever - Poland did great power intervention on my side!

Well, I kicked Castile out of the war thanks to my merc spam, but I ended up 1000 gold in debt, and then I had to take even more debt to get Renaissance.

I allied Austria and East Rome despite their betrayal. My other ally Milan fell under Hungary PU - I allied them to have a chance to get it myself but that didn't work out either. So I added Poland as my ally instead.

I thought it was over, but all the assholes now piled up to declare support for my disloyal vassal Granada. But then I instantly inherited them by event anyway. This didn't discourage my asshole rivals, so they supported my another disloyal vassal Tripoli.

They were just barely near 50% disloyalty level, but AI was just waiting for exact moment it went a bit over 50%, and independence support! Well, soon I got them integrated by event as well, but that meant border with the Mamluks.

I didn't see any way out of my debt other than by conquering Tafilalt gold mine.

Ottomans declared against East Rome after all, but I was so far in debt all I did was sending some boats over.

Castile inherited Burgundy by vanilla event, then I got PU over Castile by Iberian Wedding, making me second Great Power after Ming, and this time everyone was even loyal! Fortunately Castile already took exploration ideas - subjects normally don't take them, but they'd continue filling them if taken.

But I noticed one downside to it all - after inheriting Burgundy, Castile is too big to insta-inherit to form Spain, so I'll need to pay the mana price. I could make them lose 10 provinces by losing a war on purpose, or I could pay a few thousand bird mana for it. If Iberian Wedding triggered event happened before Burgundy inheritance event, it would be me getting Burgundy for free, and then getting Castile with button click. Well, that's a problem for a future ruler.

There's also another problem - my color is really terrible. 5 European major powers - Aragon, England, Poland, Denmark, Hungary - as well as all their subjects - have almost the same salmon-ish color. And some minors like Serbia as well. Once I form Spain it will go away, but that's a fairly distant goal.

Anyway, now that I had Castile's army on my side, I might as well try to win their war for East Rome. We got that warscore to 50%, transferred all occupations of Roman cores to them, but all they took for it was some cash.

Now that I had one gold mine, why not another? I diplovassalized Albania, and used their claims on Kosovo gold mine.

Meanwhile my ally Poland decided to fight the Ottomans, dragging me into another war. No big deal, and Poland took some clay.

It's so hard to see Aragon's greatness, as almost everyone uses the same salmon color

I originally planned to do one episode per ruler, but it's been going for quite a while already, and my ruler is only 41, so we'll continue Joan III's story in the next episode.

Inward Focus expired after 20 years, and during that time I spammed temples, workshops, barracks, and even a few marketplaces and farm estates. With this and two gold mines I got my monthly income to 47 (behind Ming, Castile, and France), and I repaid most of my debt.

It's all been such a casual game, and I'm now casually number one great power.

The most interesting mod events from this episode were Hungary getting Bohemia and Milan as PU juniors, but then Milan getting pretender rebels on succession who actually won, so now Hungary and their disloyal Bohemia is fighting a war to get Milan back. I'm a bit tempted to help Milan.

Succession Wars: Part 02: 1445-1457: King Joan II de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, and Navarra

The first order of business was dealing with 91k peasants rebels. It's not really worth fighting, so I accepted their demands for +20% autonomy everywhere and -50 prestige. It's not ideas, but I was already at war, and I'd spend a lot more money on mercs to deal with the peasants than a bit of autonomy would cost.

But first I can let them fight Tunis army who landed on Sicily. Our side has stronger navy, so I could have stopped them if Naples fleet attached to mine, but subjects are useless, so they didn't. In Fun and Balance there are no magical bridges like one between Sicily and South Italy, so Naples army is not going to just walk to Sicily either. It's all just a minor inconvenience.

North African wars were going fairly smoothly. I vassalized Granada and took some of Tunis's coastline. This upset them a bit, and they started a coalition, so I started a war with intention of white peacing it quickly to break the coalition. Then a few more easy wars. The goal is to not upset the Mamluks or Ottomans to prevent coalitions, and not have direct border with the Mamluks to prevent nasty succession events with them (vassal border is fine).

I got vanilla event for +50% liberty desire by Naples (obviously I won't just let them go), and then negative prestige from peasant rebellion gave them even more on top. I really should have dumped all my mana into their dev to get it under 50%, but I didn't do it, and they started to gather supporters.

Ottomans were the first supporter. Castile broke our alliance, and supported them too soon. Then England. Then France. Somehow 6 countries rivalled me!

I tried to play vanilla Burgundy succession roulette, but Castile got them instead. This is sort of fine, as I will probably get Castile eventually, but for now they're really hostile to me. They refused to release the lowlands, bringing them into war with Austria.

Austria challenged the succession, and it the attacker against Castile, Castilian Burgundy, and Portugal, so Austria can't call its allies (like me). Normally it would be total wipe by Castile, but AI is really awful at naval invasions, and they never asked me for military access, so Austria might actually win this, costing me my rightful clay.

After all that, my new ally setup is Pope, Milan, East Rome, and Austria. That's not really going to frighten Naples into not declaring.

On Papal succession Pope's vassal rebelled, so I got dragged into that war.

I got CB on throne of Muscovy, but I'm not doing that.

Morocco's vassals declared war on them, and their ally Ottomans abandoned them instead of helping, so I joined the pile-up to grab a few provinces for myself as well.

And then king Joan II died, and on succession (separate events for every country):

• Navarra got 6k peasant rebels
• Naples got 30k pretender rebels - they'd break the PU if they succeed
• I got inward focus - -50% build cost, -25% dev cost, +50% province warscore cost, go play tall now!

Inward focus isn't too bad, as I can't take too much land due to AE anyway.

For interesting succession events that happened in this episode:

• Oldenburg became junior partner under Burgundy (they got auto-annexed with other HRE juniors when Castile got Burgundy)
• Kildare became junior partner under Scotland
• Mantua became junior partner under Ferrara
• Crimea tried to jihad Genoa, and got full annexed instead
• Ottomans are getting wrecked to normal reconquest war as Venice guaranteed Albania, nothing to do with the mod

Ottomans are getting wrecked with almost no player intervention, all I did was ally East Rome, that made Ottomans attack Albania instead, and they are losing to Venice somehow. I still hope to get East Rome PU by event, but odds aren't that high.

Inward Focus could be really good if I stacked the discounts even more, right now I'll only build a few temples with it.

Succession Wars: Part 01: 1444-1445: King Alfons V de Trastamara of Aragon and Naples

Modding with clankers

I thought my custom Socotra game two years ago would be my final EU4 campaign, but two things happened. First, I tried EU5 and I really did not like it. And second, I really wanted to see if clankers are any good at modding, and EU4 is the game I'm most familiar with modding.

So I drafted a simple mod idea. Every new monarch, every country receives a big succession related event. This isn't a typical player-only randomness meme game, I wanted everyone to play by the same rules. Things that can happen on succession include:

• become a junior partner of another country (Christians only; only allies and neighbors allowed, and not if they're much smaller than you), or a vassal of a much stronger ally (non-Christian)
• every neighboring Muslim / Christian / Dharmic / other horde instantly attack you if you're wrong religion / wrong horsiness
• reset all rivals and alies and instantly wipe out -40 AE with everyone, so you can start over diplomatically
• all your rivals get claim throne CB on you
• a lot of religious rebels, maybe even from a religion that's not on the map but was historically present on a given subcontinent
• and a lot of fun smaller scale events; modifiers generally last 20 years or until the next succession

I'll explain each event as we get it (or some important country gets it).

Also latest Fun and Balance included. This campaign won't be very balanced, but I ran about 20 AI only simulations with tweaks in between, and it has just the right level of chaos.

So to answer my question, clankers are OKish at this. The clanker I used needed a lot of guidance, access to game files and some example mods, access to game's error log, and in-game testing, but in the end I managed to write this mod a lot more quickly than I'd do by hand, and I didn't even burn too many tokens on it. And that's speaking as a very experienced Paradox modder. If you haven't modded much, you might struggle to prevent the clanker from going of the rails completely.

Clankers are a lot worse at this than at coding mainstream programming language. They hallucinate syntax, make many basic mistakes, and of course they have no idea how to make the game fun, so that's why there's a human in the loop.

Anyway, as event choice is random and you only get a few rolls per century, there aren't any great ways to cheese the system. You can steer the system by allying countries you'd like PU over, avoiding borders with infidels you really don't want to fight, and so on. But for most part you'll need to adapt to what you get.

Some high impact events like becoming a PU junior have quite high odds, but AI is bad maintaining PUs so a lot of them fall apart.

Aragon

It's 1444 again. At least Fun and Balance colors subjects with overlord's colors

So now that the introduction is over, it's time to play. I picked Aragon, as a big easy country with big mission tree is going to be great for dealing with all the nasty events I'll need to deal with. I'm going to play really chill, which for me means no 11 December 1444 NoCB Byz.

To keep the theme, this series will be one episode per monarch, however long or short their reign.

Aragon can form Spain, go colonial, or form some mini Roman Empire. Or for all I know I could get PU over Sweden and take this campaign into a wildly different direction.

So my plan is to expand by force mostly in North Africa, and try to get as much land in Europe as possible from free PU events, and claim throne wars. So:

• Naples - already my PU junior
• Navarra - currently ruled by my heir, so automatic PU on succession, still vanilla
• ally Castile, I can get their PU by vanilla event or by mod event
• ally and marry Burgundy. Countries with more than 1 junior partner are not eligible to mod PU event to, but since I'm doing PU game, it would be silly not to try
• ally Pope - that prevents excommunication event, and it's just a good idea for Catholic power
• try to ally Byz and get them as junior partner. And normally that would discourage Ottomans from attacking them, but in this mod Muslims and Christians (and Hindus, Sikhs, and hordes) can declare automatic religious wars on succession

I started war with my rival Tunis right away, before they could ally Ottomans. They allied Granada, so the goal was to force vassalize them, and then maybe grab some coastline in North Africa so future wars will be easier.

Unfortunately my king died almost right away. The random event was 91k peasant rebels, which is fairly mild as these events go.

One event PU already happened offscreen, of Ennarea over Kaffa, both in East Africa.

The first succession happened far too early, and peasants are not happy about it

I didn't want to make any event 100% good or 100% bad, and technically "your rebels could fight your enemies" makes it only a 99% bad event