Succession Wars: Part 10: 1599-1624: Roman Emperor and Hegemon Carlos I de Trastamara of Spain, France, and Bohemia

I was barely beginning my reign when the French decided to give me their throne. I allied a few countries I hoped to get like currently East Rome, Sweden, Bengal, and Annam, but so far 3 countries I got for free (Bohemia, France, Vijayanagar) were all by accident, and my many long term alliances with Austria (because it's HRE), Poland (because it's elective), and Pope (because it's Pope) are excluded from free subject events. So I'm not even close to really optimizing my way here.

I also inherited Vijayanagar by event. For the first 100 years felt like the mod barely makes any difference, and now it's overcompensating giving me free stuff all the time. I'll try to deal with mod balance at the end of the series.

The campaign reached the stage where AE is just a number. And for that matter so is money, as I struggle to find anything to build.

I just bought myself Bangkok from Ayutthaya with its 15% gov cap monument, because I had a ton of money, never enough gov cap, and I didn't want to open another front just yet.

There was a surprise opportunity to force vassalize the Pope, so I took it. That's also my 3rd HRE vassal elector, but getting vassal electors to vote for you is still a huge struggle, so I finally made a decision on take over or destroy.

HRE was rotting already, with 1 elector Ferrara under Polish PU, and 3 others - Teutonic Order, Cologne, and Papal States under my vassalage, so it was time to end it.

The war to destroy the Holy Roman Empire

Muscovy got entangled in this war through some alliance chain, so I broke Muscovy's alliance with East Rome's, and it was finally time to do a small detour and vassalize them as well.

The war was nastier than I expected. It was just 4 capitals to take - Gelre, Mainz, Wien, and Pest, but they changed hands multiple times. And level 6 forts started showing up. But in the end, there wasn't much Austria, Hungary, and assorted minors could do against me and Poland.

Now Rome and Constantinople are both held by my vassals, making me the true successor of the Roman Empire.

Absolutism started, and I'm not really sure how to get 100 max absolutism. Just mana and gov cap privileges really tank it, and court ideas -20% max absolutism loss from estate privileges is not meaningful enough. And I'd really rather not deal with Court and Country. I even rushed Nizwa monument for +10 absolutism, but I only got to 77 (80 if I got perfect legitimacy and religious unity, which is not easy while expanding). Harsh treatment discounts are stacked so high, that my absolutism is at max at all times.

I'll get remaining max absolutism eventually. Once I unlock Town Halls, I'll be able to drop gov cap privileges, and there are some government reforms that give absolutism.

I did a lot of expanding all over the world, trying to feed myself, my subjects, and my colonial nations.

To restore the Roman Empire you need to hold 425 of 475 provinces in its historical borders, and if I integrated my subjects I'd already be at 400, but by myself I'm still very far.

For world conquest progress, I'm at 49% of global dev (excluding uncolonized provinces), so maybe I could turn this "I'm going to play really chill" campaign into my first EU4 WC. Yes, mods make it easier (unintentionally), but if I wanted a "legit" WC I could roll back to 1.31.0 Leviathan, and it would be far easier than this.

Minor countries will be quickly swept away by diplomacy or force. HRE was just destroyed and two OPMs already got annexed (not by me), and three countries got vassalized (by me)

It's very satisfying to paint the map with unique Spanish gold color. I'd hate it if I still had Aragon salmon, just like Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and Milan.

Could this be a One Faith run too? Reformation got crushed early, all major colonizers were Catholic, Europe is mostly Catholic, and it's just Asia and North America that need a lot of converting. In most campaigns Protestant England and others would have pained half of North America blue by now, but we managed to avoid that.

I'm not sure if I can manage this, as I'm already pretty much maxed out on missionaries and missionary strength, and they're barely keeping up with my expansion. Soon I'll be expanding a lot faster.

Succession Wars: Part 09: 1584-1599: Empress and Hegemon Estrella I de Trastamara of Spain, Portugal, and Bohemia

By the time 20 years of Inward Focus expired, my income increased from 510 to 1050, and there weren't any buildings left to spam. Eventually I'd need to spam Town Halls but that was many techs away. Many monuments needed upgrading as well, but it takes 70 years total to max them out, and Inward Focus doesn't give discount to throwing extra money or manpower to make it faster. So it was great twice, but something else next please.

For my 5th idea I decided to do something new. The first four picks were fairly standard - administrative, influence, religious, and expansion - as they are just crazy strong. But for 5th I went with court ideas.

It provides:

• monarch diplomatic skill +1 - more mana is always good
• +20% reform progress growth
• +1 diplomatic reputation - very relevant in vassal spam game, not so much unmodded
• estate privileges have 20% less impact on maximum absolutism - that's about +15-ish max absolutism
• Administrative/Court policy - 5% coring cost reduction
• Religious/Court policy - 5% province warscore cost against other religions

As well as minor bonuses like +10% estate loyalty, +2 monthly splendor, +1 yearly prestige, +0.5 yearly legitimacy (or some other government power).

This isn't mind blowing, but the other two new groups (infrastructure and mercenary) looks like total garbage, and this one seems OKish. I'd probably be better off with Espionage, Diplomatic, or even Trade or late Exploration for just one extra colonist. They could really bump that max absolutism bonus, estate priviledges are just not worth absolutism cost late game (other than mana) so you end up not using estates much. Having an idea group that lets you continue playing with estates to the end wouldn't break anything.

I finally ran out of countries I wanted to diplovassalize, so I clicked economic hegemony button in 1591, with 1100 monthly income. It will be hard to diplovassalize anyone with that -50 relations penalty from being a hegemon on top of wrong religion on everything else.

I mostly expanded outside Europe. Brunei's succession event made me declare a holy war on them, and I had no troops or ships there, it was just some faraway colony. I started building a new fleet but before it finished, I managed to white peace them.

In Europe, I continued my policy of breaking down any powers, so I broke Hungary's PU over Milan. One my of allies Poland dragged me into a war against my other major ally Austria. Well, it's time to unalign myself from Austria anyway, at some point I want to either take over or destroy the HRE.

I don't know why AI is so eager to call the player into a war that would break an alliance.

Then again, war alliances abuse is core EU4 mechanic

I got most unexpected event, Vijayanagar sought protection from a stronger ally, and they became my instant vassal. They were not happy that I asked them to go Catholic right away, but I sent them enough money, prestige, and dev clicks that they got over it quickly. It's nice to just instantly get second biggest country in the world by event. Event conditions are: non-Christian country, with no subjects, with ally that's at least 4x bigger by dev (non-Christian because Christians get PUs instead), and it mostly triggers on OPM, but instead it trigger on a great power.

I wasn't even planning anything with Vijayanagar. I once got Diet mission from Burghers to get a province in India, and I had no colonial range to do anything else than buy one from Vijayanagar, and allying them drastically reduced the price. Then I kept them as allies, as various Middle Eastern countries I was fighting were allying Indian Muslims, so Vijayanagar could distract them long enough for white peace. Meanwhile Vijayanagar kept sending me money to buy institutions. Overall, good deal for both of us.

Empress Estrella I was already 70 years old, so it was good time to abdicate.

This was a wild succession, and the wildest part was that it wasn't evens part of my mod!

• Portugal got instantly inherited - this is vanilla's doing!
• my new emperor was Protestant (not the country), and Bohemia became Protestant! I pressed buttons to flip back to Catholic, and to enforce religion on Bohemia. The mod event they got was just Inward Focus.
• I got 5 stacks of religious rebels all over the world - Reformed in Britain, Sunni and Coptic in Africa, Inti in South America, Alcheringa in Australia

The rebels aren't particularly hard, it's just 117k of them, but that geographic distribution is a huge pain. Well, that, and being over gov cap again, is now a problem for Emperor Carlos I.

I think the reason emperor was Protestant was that I royal married some Protestant OPM to diplovassalize them, so Estrella's husband was Protestant, and maybe heirs get their religion after father, even if mother is the ruler? Somehow I don't think it ever happened to me before.

Beautiful yellow empire, now that yellow Vijayanagar also joined it

The only small trick is that yellow Scotland is independent, but not for much longer.

Succession Wars: Part 08: 1565-1584: Empress Estrella I de Trastamara of Spain, Portugal, and Bohemia

I got really tired of my allies dragging me into neverending wars, so I separate peaced Denmark, making them release Norway. Then I could finally form Spain, andh get a color that distinguishes me from the rest of Europe.

Finally abandoned salmon

Two other great powers Vijayanagar and Muscovy are also yellow, but I don't have bordergone with them yet.

Dutch Revolt disaster started ticking, and I really didn't feel like dealing with it, so I moved my capital to Ghent. Dutch Revolt is one of the most heavily railroaded parts of the game - as to get "historical" outcomes so far removed from the 1444 start ridiculously heavy-handed scripting is needed. So Paradox provided an easy out for players who don't want to deal with this nonsense, and I'm going to use it.

And then Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Spain and Portugal died, barely a year after his crowning.

Succession events:

• Spain - inward focus, 20 years of +75% province warscore cost, -40% build cost, -25% dev cost (nerfed from the last time, as it was way too strong)
• Portugal - trade reform, +10 mercantilism, 20 years of -50% trade power

Such mild events are great for me, but they really aren't showcasing what I was trying to mod here.

Fortunately province warscore cost only affects provinces I take, not provinces my vassals take, so I can at least somewhat reduce that penalty. Or I can just start a lot of small wars instead of a few big wars, and expand as fast as my overextension and mana allow.

But it's not like I have much spare gov cap to expand, so I might just as well use this time to build up and spam manufactories, courthouses, trade company investments, and great projects. On succession Estrella's empire had monthly income of 510.

But slow expansion didn't mean no wars. HRE emperor Austria wasn't willing to defend elector Hungary, so I attacked them, but somehow they changed their minds and joined a month later, breaking our alliance. And then they called our mutual allies Poland and Sweden into the war, as well as some minors like Ferrara and Papal States. All while I already had multiple ongoing colonial wars. Oops.

A world war started by lying tooltip is peak EU4.

We mostly allied each other back just after.

The goal of the war was to end Hungary's PU over Bohemia. I also grabbed my second elector vassal - OPM Teutonic Order, but if I ally Poland again, I could request their provinces back.

While this whole huge war was waged just to undermine Hungary and for Bohemia's freedom, Bohemia decided to just give me a free PU by succession event on peace day.

Almost right after our war ended, Austria, Poland, Sweden, and Ferrara who were defending Hungary decided to attack it together instead.

I ran into another tooltip issue, tooltip said Hormuz would abandon their ally Aq Qoyunlu, but they didn't, and this time it wasn't even any HRE shenanigans. This saved Aq Qoyunlu, as I really wasn't going to 100% huge non-cobeligerent Hormuz just to grab one province.

Various New World natives kept attacking my and Portugal's colonies, so I was forced to send a lot of troops over, and province warscore cost penalty from inward focus was actually quite inconvenient here. Without Inward Focus my province warscore cost against other religions is 55% (100% base, -25% age ability, -10% council of Trent, -10% level 2 Malta monument). With that +75% penalty, it's 130%, or provinces are 2.35x as expensive because Paradox math definitely makes sense.

For "inward focus" I sure did quite a bit of expanding

In less than 20 years of my reign, I doubled my income to 1000/month, but I'm not grabbing hegemony just yet, as that would ruin my vassal game.

The wild thing about HRE is that there are only 6 eligible candidates right now - Austria, Hungary, Ferrara, Spain, France, and Poland - and two of them (Spain and Hungary) have female rulers so can't currently candidate. Nearly all other countries are either subjects already, or are Protestant or Reformed, or republics, or theocracies. 5 of electors are theocracies (the other two being Hungary and Ferrara).

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