I got Circassia as a vassal, and started adjusting Black Sea region matters more to my liking. This forced my diplomats to work overtime and throw gold at infidels to avoid a coalition.
I assigned all my Anatolian holdings to two trade companies. So far I'm not really struggling with governing capacity (408/625, with many easy ways to increase the limit), but it's a fairly casual campaign, not a world conquest. Once I finish annexing my vassals I might feel different about it.
Damn Turks allied Muscovy. Between that and every faith getting a defender, I felt quite stuck.
Then I noticed that France somehow lost its Defender of the Catholic Faith status, and Brandenburg had no allies other than Austria and a few OPMs. Time to make good on my subjugation CB from new Bohemian missions! With all my hired mercs from infidel wars, and all my subject troops I had 95k to their 51k. King of Poland unfortunately was cruel, so wouldn't join, and it would break my Austria alliance.
There was still just one tiny problem. A coalition of over 30 countries was about to form if I subjugated Brandenburg, and Poland was cruel and obviously wouldn't defend me. Mamluks maybe would, but what good would that be.
I thought about force converting them now, and only subjugating them next time, but that CB only lasts 10 years.
There was only one thing to do - engage in bribery on an even more massive scale. I had massive influx of gold from all the gold mines, sold some land to estates, even took a loan, and somehow those more and more of those outraged countries were too busy counting coins to complain about my expansion.
I peaced out Brandenburg exactly December 31st, as I'd have exactly 50 AE with my rival Denmark and that was the only way to keep them out. A few HRE minors and Aq Qoyunlu were still interested, but they were too weak together, so no coalition formed.
That doesn't mean it's over. Truces are going to expire (especially the Ottomans), all those bribes and influences are on 5 year timer, and some minors still want to coalition me, and are just waiting for a big country to join that.
I suppose I'll need to declare war on the Ottomans and Great Horde the day our truces expire, to prevent them from joining a coalition with HRE minors, but I can just fight them for money this time. Muscovy getting involved in this will be painful, but not as painful as a huge coalition would be.
Since Brandenburg was no longer independent, that resulted in snap HRE elections, and Burgundy is now holding the title. Too bad, I hoped for Hesse or someone else insignificant.
Austria allied me back after all this.
Reformed faith showed up as well, with first center in Bruswick.
I'll need to repeat what I just did with Saxony. To avoid a coalition it will take over a decade of waiting for AE to die out. Fortunately that should be the last of major HRE AE. League Wars will be just about force converting minors.
I want to take over Venice end node at some point, and that will be a lot of AE as well, but it can really wait.
To squeeze every last bit of better relations over time, I switched my church aspect to Pacifism. That's +30% improved relations, but -1 stab to declare any war. Obviously I'll need to remove it before I declare anything. I'll probably have to take it easy for a while.
+30% means mere 0.6 AE a year, and I'll need to get rid of it after a few years to prevent Ottomans from coalitioning me, so I'm not even sure if it's worth the hassle.
Hussite chuch aspects are not too bad. I always keep Taborite Resurgence and Bread and Wine, and keep changing the last one:
- Taborite Resurgence: +20% manpower
- Bread and Wine: +1 tolerance of true faith, +5% goods produced (that means gold income, production income, and tax value)
- Sola Scriptura: -10% warscore province cost vs other religions (best of them all, but only needed when peacing out someone too big)
- Adamite Services: -20% culture conversion cost (used very temporarily to start a bunch of conversions, then switched out)
- Freedom to Preach: +10% religious unity, +1 tolerance of heretics (had this early, not really needed anymore, too many tolerance bonuses by now)
- Pacifism: +30% improve relations, -1 stab to declare war
I haven't used yet:
- Regular Defenestrations: -33% harsh treatment cost - might be useful when absolutism shows up
- Clerical Poverty: -15% stability cost, -10% clergy influence - might be useful if I need to revoke clergy privileges
- Punishment of Sins: -0.05 corruption, -10% nobility influence - might be useful if I need to revoke nobility privileges
- Orphan Hetmans: -1% army tradition decay - it's not terrible, manpower bonus is probably better
No comments:
Post a Comment