Montferrat: Part 14: 1599-1613: Monumental Exploits

I had a war with Castile coming, with extremely rare colonialism CB, that let me grab their colonies and colonial nations for cheap, and I got really close to containing them all to Europe, but warscore was just tiny bit lacking.

I had to demote Occitan, as too many accepted culture slots are taken by:

• Bedouin for Petra
• Castilian for Madrid monument
• Egyptian for Pyramids
• English for London monuments
• French for Paris monuments
• Greek for Parthenon

Bedouin of these is especially dumb, as it's such a shitty culture. The rest at least are somewhat significant.

I pressed the "request relative as heir" on Aragon to ask them to get my Palaiologos dynasty on their throne for 90 favors. This gives me 20 AE with every Catholic country, and there's a good chance they'll get hunting accident or whatnot, but it's a new button, so why not try it once.

I got Global Trade spawning in Pisa. The requirements (highest trade share in most valuable trade node) are such that if you don't get Global Trade spawning for you, then you're playing the game wrong.

England was getting wrecked by everyone so I force vassalized what was left. They're not getting London back, but a few years later I got them their cores from France and Scotland.

Anyway, let's get to the exploit I accidentally discovered. I asked Ayutthaya if I could just buy Bangkok, with monument already worth 1000 gold in it - and they sold the whole province, with one of the best monuments in game, for 780. Conquering provinces takes monuments down a level (so I'd need to rebuild it, pay 1000 + 10 years), but not any other change of ownership. Like Paradox forgot to update the charter trade company button to count monuments. Once fully upgraded it gives -10% AE, +15% government capacity, and like that isn't enough +1% yearly absolutism and +50% vassal force limit contribution. Insanity.

Oh wait, can I do more of that? They aren't actually that many monuments which are coastal, not religion-locked, and not in capital, but I also bought:

• Murud-Janjira Fort in Chaul from Bahmanis (just some naval stuff, but +1 naval tradition translates to more trade income) - just sold without any issues
• Bara Katra in Dhaka from Bengal - they wouldn't sell as they were threatened attitude, so I allied them, bought it, then broke the alliance with zero consequences

I also unsuccessfully tried to buy some from Majapahit (I had too many provinces nearby), Japan (they were too powerful), and Korea (it was their capital). If I knew about it before, I would have had all those monument provinces by now.

Age of Absolutism started, and I have no idea what's the meta at this point. I revoked some estate privileges, including the new one for +25 relations with all other Catholics. It's overpowered as hell early game, but at this point it doesn't really matter anyway. I have enough spare sword mana, that I guess I'll just spend that. It also increases +2.5 a year - +1 from high crownland, +0.5 from government reform, and +1 from that monument I bought from Ayutthaya and upgraded to tier 3.

Unfortunately there aren't any monuments that the much more desirable give max absolutism, so I'll have to revoke a lot of great privileges. I could then do Court and Country and grant them again, but that seems like such a hassle.

Right now it's possible to get (it's capped at 100):

• +65 base
• +5 great power
• +5 empire tier
• +5 max religious unity
• +10 max legitimacy
• +15 very high crownland
• +10 from two government reforms - Royal Decree and Political Absolutism, and they're both best picks unless you want a Parliament, which honestly isn't really worth it

So it's a total of 115, that's a budget of 15 to be spent on estate privileges, with no buffer for low legitimacy or low religious unity issues. Which is a shame as just mana privileges are 3 times -5, and Strong Duchies is -10. Going Court and Country would give me total estate privilege budget of 35. Alternatively some countries get extra max absolutism from ideas, government reforms, or mission rewards, so they need it less.

I was wondering why Religious Leagues weren't starting, and it turned out my code is messed up and they can start for every religion except Protestant. The previous time I played the Reformed league started which made sense, as there were some Protestant and Reformed electors, so I thought it was working. And now it's too late anyway, Saxony was the only Protestant elector and they got converted to Catholicism anyway, and by 1625 the whole league system expires. I saved Austria a lot of trouble here. Too bad, League Wars are always great fun.

I wish there was some mode that shows every country, except subjects get their overlord's color, and wastelands are colored too. Right now the only way to do that would be console-integrating subjects.

Also my vassal Leon setup New Leon in Florida, and is setting up another one in Columbia. That's the only way to get multiple CNs per colonial regions, and I'd get double the bonus if both are big enough (mostly another merchant, other bonuses don't matter all that much).

This is the weakest Reformation ever, and it's not even my doing, mostly HRE Catholics were really aggressive and destroyed two Centers of Reformation early. I guess I destroyed two more and I was Catholic Defender of the Faith all the time, so heretics couldn't attack back.

I think Catholic might be the strongest religion in the game now, but only if you actively engage in Pope game.