Montferrat: Part 12: 1568-1581: Monument Spamming

I gave Roman Mexico another pile of uncored land. I've been sending them piles of money all the time as well, they might not recover stability before 1600s.

I got into a "AE is just a number" fight with Castile to get their monument slot as it provides governing capacity - something I lack the most. After that I released Leon for low-AE expansion, and allied the Pope again.

I'm forced to accept some stupid cultures for the monuments. Petra requires me to accept Bedouin. Madrid Palace requires me to accept the Castilian. Pyramids require Egyptian. There are French and English culture monuments on my way. I thought this is a total non-issue as spending one or two culture slots on that is not a big deal, but they really add up now, and it's a hassle. Fortunately new slots keep coming with diplomatic tech, but I had to un-accept Bulgarian and Serbian, and converted them all to my main Piedmontese culture just to free some slots. I might un-accept Occitan as well.

To be fair most of these cultures are big enough that I don't mind, but shitty Bedouin culture without one good province for Petra? Ugh. But Petra is totally great - at max tier it's +2 diplomatic reputation, +1 diplomatic relations, -20% cost to fabricate claims, -33% envoy travel time (which is pretty much like free diplomat once you have a global empire).

I had a quick crusade against the Mamluks, taking their Red Sea coastline, and the rest of Anatolia. Then took some land from France, including their Canadian colonies, just in time to prevent them from establishing a colonial nation and getting exclusive rights to Canada from the Pope.

It looks like it will be Castile, Mamluk, France, rotation, and because I can call allies to every single war with ease, that's not really going to be a problem.

I'm not sure why HRE Leagues didn't trigger yet. There's one Protestant elector who should have decent chance my now.

The most interesting thing about this campaign is testing monuments. These are current bonuses I have, not including wrong religion bonuses:

• Administrative Efficiency: 0.05 (Alhambra 3)
• Advisor Costs: -0.25 (Parthenon 1, Pyramid of Cheops 1, Santa Maria del Fiore 2)
• Clergy Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.05 (Pyramid of Cheops 1)
• Diplomatic Reputation: +2 (Alhambra 3, Petra 2)
• Envoy Travel Time: -0.25 (Petra 2)
• Fabricate claims cost: -0.1 (Petra 2)
• Global autonomy: -0.01 (El Escorial 1)
• Global tariffs: 0.05 (El Escorial 1)
• Income from Vassals: 0.1 (Alhambra 3)
• Liberty Desire in Subjects: -10 (Alhambra 3)
• Missionary Strength vs Heretics: 0.02 (Holy City of Jerusalem 2)
• Monthly Splendor: 1.5 (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1, Santa Maria del Fiore 2)
• Papal Influence: 0.5 (Duomo di Milano 1)
• Prestige Decay: -0.01 (Santa Maria del Fiore 2)
• Prestige: 1.25 (Doge's Palace 2, Holy City of Jerusalem 2, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 1, Royal Palace of Caserta 1)
• Reform Progress Growth: 0.25 (Doge's Palace 2, Royal Palace of Caserta 1)
• Resistance to Reformation: 0.15 (Duomo di Milano 1)
• Tolerance of Heretics: 0.25 (Hagia Sophia 1)
• Tolerance of the True Faith: 0.25 (Hagia Sophia 1)
• Treasure Fleet income: 0.05 (El Escorial 1)
• War Score Cost vs Other Religions: -0.1 (Malta Forts 2)

That is seriously a stupid list. With my income of 400 a month (at peace time 300 pure profit), I can start 7 tier-3 upgrades in a decade. I haven't even been focusing on monuments particularly much - Morocco still exists as a vassal (they have decent monument for trade), Paris and London have 4 more monuments I could take, and so on. By 1650 those bonuses are going to be completely crazy - going tier 2 to tier 3 about doubles the benefits.

This is after massive nerfs from the first monument release.

Oh and conquest of Mecca nets me +1 missionary, +1 tolerance of true faith, and +0.5 yearly prestige as well.

For ideas so far: diplomatic, administrative, expansion, trade.

Just a usual day in Roman Mexico. Once they started stabilizing I annexed half of the remaining natives, as coalition prevention measure. Rebellion size scales to owner country, so they're very small compared to what I'd be getting, so my troops can crush them with ease.

AI is being really stupid here, they full state things before they deal with OE and stability, so they've been at -3 stab and massive OE for all that time - by now it could all be territorial cores, with all their issues fixed.

Roman Empire going global, by far the strongest colonial power without even exploration ideas. Was I massively overvaluing exploration?

I want to repeat the same thing in Peru, and I shouldn't have coring range (Brazil is Castile's exclusive, La Plata is Portugal's exclusive), but apparently Roman Mexico gives me colonial range to Peru and California.

Which is weird, as according to travel time, colonist goes around (out of reach) tip of South America, not through Mexico. Oh well, I'll deal with it in due time, currently working on Louisiana and Canada CNs to add to by Mexico, Colombia, West Indies, and Romerica.

Meanwhile I've been expanding in Africa to get access to Asian monuments. Timbuktu also has tech cost discount monument very deep inland, I guess I could grab that. Other African monuments all seem to be religion-locked.