Montferrat: Part 07: 1510-1524: Conquest of Venice

I got Lucca as a diplovassal, annexed some previous ones, got involved in minor war against Genoa and Epirus, where they got annexed, finally giving me decent level of control over my home trade node.

The coming big problem was Castile/Aragon, who took most of Naples over by force. That couldn't be allowed. Fortunately one fun thing Fun and Balance is doing is moving a few extremely rarely used diplomatic options from very late game into early game too.

So let's try Agitate for Liberty. 50 spy power for +25% liberty desire of one subject for 5 years. It's been in the game for very long time, but it's locked behind diplo tech so damn late nobody ever used it outside Extended Timeline mod. So I moved it to always being available, and then I used it on Aragon, and promptly supported their independence before they change their mind, as they were very barely over 50% disloyal even with my help.

It's still up to them to actually start the war, and nobody else is supporting that, and so far they're not very interested.

I declared myself Defender of the Faith, at level 5 it's quite nice, but I might get called into some HRE nonsense, hopefully on Austria's side.

I started a war against Venice and what was left of Naples, and my ally the Pope foolishly picked the wrong side. Pope tends to have a lot of alliances - I suspect it's because of estate mission to get +100 relations with the Pope, so all the Catholic countries do that, and then when choosing allies, they notice there's already a country they like a lot, so why not ally them.

I specifically did not call Austria into the war, as I knew they'd want the same provinces as me - so Austria decided to declare their own war instead almost immediately after I started mine, with messy race for who can take the land first.

This somehow turned to be an advantage. I took nearly 100% worth from Venice, and Austria took only one province and released 4 Italian minors. They now start auto-guaranteed by releasing country (Austria), but Austria didn't care for them, and cancelled their guarantees one by one, and I attacked 3 of them immediately. Ferrara managed to fgeh some allies before that, so I diplovassalized them instead.

Austria joined my support of Aragonese independence, and after 14 years of preparation, Aragon finally decided to declare their war. It's not amazing, as huge Mamluks and my former ally Florence are on Castilian side. Oh well, I guess I'll have to get some new allies elsewhere.

I started working on Great Projects, and I have a few but none of the really good ones. I think South-East Asia got most of the best ones, as they were introduced in South-East Asian patch. Still, they're not expensive (1000 + 2500 + 3500 for three tiers), and those bonuses add up. I have 4 (1 Orthodox-only so unusable), my subjects have 3 more, and there's like 10 more owned by my likely targets.

My ally Austria preventing me from getting my rightful clay again

If we manage to win this, it will greatly weaken Castile. And my vassal Naples has a lot of cores on Castile (also on Aragon, but one thing at a time).