Papal States: Part 17: 1620-1625: Mission to China

As I could finally attack Ayutthaya, I did so without waiting, vassalized Yue, and that got me into the first war in China, finally!

As there was going to be a lot of coring to do, I setup 4 vassals there - Khmer, Dai Viet, Yue, and Ming. Nearly the whole territory of my ally emperor of China Chu is either Ming or Yue core, so if I wait long enough, I'll be able to consume them from within.

I'm running out of space to build new manufactories, but there's still a few decades worth of trade company investments to do. After that I'm not even sure what I could do with the money.

I got to 95% max absolutism (current 88% and changing 3% per year). It cost me Strong Duchies privilege, but if I get Pegu monument, just beyond the border, it's basically Strong Duchies for free. I'm not sure what's the best way to get that last 5% but it will do.

Anyway, there's alot of cleanup I could do, like actually conquering China, but it feels like a formality. None of the Europeans cares enough to coalition me, even France got over losing Paris and 2/3 of their land to me. Sunni alliance network is broken, Delhi and Bengal who would be a hassle just don't care, so I can crush the remaining ones region by region without much trouble. Even for China, I can get nearly all with core returns, so zero coalition risk. There's a lot of map painting to do, but it's really just a formality.

Overall it was a decent campaign. The game is in somewhat better state than previous few patches. I'm not saying the game is balanced, but they toned down the broken parts a lot.

Here's list of monument bonuses I have, with pretty much all that aren't max tier being in process of being upgraded:

• Advisor Costs: -0.45 (Parthenon 2, Pyramid of Cheops 3, Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• Appoint Cardinal cost: -0.1 (Saint Peter's Basilica 2)
• Average Monarch Lifespan: 0.05 (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 2)
• Caravan Power: 0.33 (Aït Benhaddou 3)
• Church Power Modifier: 0.3 (Duomo di Milano 2, Holy City of Jerusalem 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 1)
• Clergy Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.4 (Duomo di Milano 2, Hagia Sophia 2, Pyramid of Cheops 3, Sankore Madrasah 1)
• Culture Conversion Cost: -0.05 (Borobudur Temple 1)
• Curia Powers cost: -0.1 (Saint Peter's Basilica 2)
• Diplomatic Relations: 1 (Petra 3)
• Diplomatic Reputation: 2 (Petra 3)
• Envoy Travel Time: -0.33 (Petra 3)
• Fabricate Claims Cost: -0.2 (Petra 3)
• Global Trade Power: 0.05 (Aït Benhaddou 3)
• Governing Capacity: 100 (Royal Palace of Caserta 3)
• Idea Cost: -0.1 (Pyramid of Cheops 3, Saint Peter's Basilica 2)
• Improve Relations: 0.1 (Versailles 2)
• Income from Vassals: 0.1 (Versailles 2)
• Institution Spread: 0.15 (Sankore Madrasah 1)
• Missionaries: 1 (Holy City of Jerusalem 3)
• Missionary Strength vs Heretics: 0.03 (Holy City of Jerusalem 3)
• Monthly Fervor: 1.75 (Duomo di Milano 2, Holy City of Jerusalem 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 1)
• Monthly Piety Accelerator: 0.001 (Hagia Sophia 2)
• Monthly Splendor: 3 (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 2, Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• National Tax Modifier: 0.15 (Versailles 2)
• Nobility Influence: 0.1 (Versailles 2)
• Nobility Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.1 (Versailles 2)
• Papal Influence: 3.0 (Duomo di Milano 2, Hagia Sophia 2, Holy City of Jerusalem 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 1)
• Possible Advisors: 1 (Parthenon 2)
• Prestige: 3.0 (Doge's Palace 3, Holy City of Jerusalem 3, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 2, Royal Palace of Caserta 3)
• Prestige Decay: -0.01 (Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• Reform Progress Growth: 0.45 (Doge's Palace 3, Royal Palace of Caserta 3)
• Republican Tradition: 0.5 (Doge's Palace 3)
• Resistance to Reformation: 0.3 (Duomo di Milano 2)
• Tolerance of Heretics: 0.5 (Hagia Sophia 2)
• Tolerance of the True Faith: 1.0 (Hagia Sophia 2, Notre-Dame Cathedral 1)
• Trade Efficiency: 0.1 (Aït Benhaddou 3)
• Yearly Patriarch Authority: 0.002 (Hagia Sophia 2)

Once all finish upgrading, and I get a few more, the list will be about twice as strong. And I avoided fighting Spain for their stupidly good monuments like Alhambra and Malta. So monuments are still stupidly overpowered.

I really like tech changes from the latest Fun and Balance mod. It feels like EU3 again, with decent but not overwhelming degree of European tech advantage, but nothing too crazy, and a lot more room for variance between countries (Delhi and Bahmanis are both 1 tech ahead of Spain or Commonwealth, even though they're facing more difficult situation).

My vassals here are tiny Ming next to Beijing, tiny Khmer, and a bit bigger Vijayanagar, Yue, and Dai Viet. About the most serious issue is that I want to take some monuments from Bengal, and that risks Sunni coalition, but there's no rush, and number of Sunnis worldwide has been plummeting.

Overall political map, a lot of cleanup to do in Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, and then conquest of China to do, but really no serious challenge left. All I need to do is make sure Delhi and Bengal don't join any coalitions, and I could even get so many troops they wouldn't think of it.

It feels like the Pope should get some anti-heretic tools but you get absolutely none. HRE emperor gets some, but doesn't really use them, on the contrary - he gives heretics Free City status like candy.

I also really hate that Orthodox privilege from the latest patch, the result is that AI never ever converts Orthodox, even after the schism is healed, and there are 0 Orthodox countries, Orthodox is still 6th biggest religion by provinces, and soon it would be in top 3 as other religions get wrecked.

This tech map is beautiful. This is how it was supposed to look like, before institutions broke everything.

It's not quite as impactful as it looks, as 2 mil tech difference is only noticeable for some specific techs, and AI often takes mil ideas so it balances out.

Papal States: Part 16: 1610-1620: Mission to India

My expansion was limited by two main factors - gov capacity, and coalition risk. Also timing of OE and paper mana, but I can handle that better.

For coalition risk, it was mostly the Sunnis - there was France and some non-Sunni Indonesian minors there too, but they were all manageable.

The usual way to deal with coalitions is to ally some countries in general direction of your expansion, as allies care about your AE a lot less. That meant Delhi, Bahmanis, Bengal, Ayutthaya, Shun, Chu, Bukhara etc. Of course they were all rivalled with each other, so I could only pick two. After some consideration, I decided to go with Shia Bahmanis, and current Emperor of China Chu. Delhi, Bukhara, or Bengal, all Sunni, would be better allies for AE reduction, but they're so densely allied with my targets that it would be difficult to hold such an alliance.

It would be possible to get Ayutthaya to give me their monuments for cash eventually, but I'd need to pause expanding for far too long. A lot easier to take them by force, and Ayutthaya's lands are the most obvious way to China.

The second way to deal with coalition risk is just to remove as many Sunni countries as possible. There was 32 of them, and that number can be reduced without too much trouble. This decade I only eliminated 4, but I'll continue God's work.

As for governing capacity, I had two obvious options - reach max level economic hegemon (takes 200 months at >1000 income, and you get zero benefit before max level), and get Pegu monument and upgrade it. And as admin tech gets upgraded I'd get more gov capacity eventually.

Let's talk about gov cap meta a bit.

Initially, gov cap cost are:

• states - 100%
• trade companies - 50%
• territories - 25%

Trade companies and states are arguably roughly about equally valuable, as long as you have money for trade company investments. But if you don't, states are a lot better. Territories are pretty much crap. And all gold mines need to be stated, but that's only a few extra states overall.

Once you get tech for courthouses (8) and can afford to spam them these numbers change to:

• states - 75%
• trade companies - 25%
• territories - 1% (should be 0% but game hates going to 0%; anyway nearly free)

This really makes you want to spam trade companies everywhere, as 3 trade company area are a lot better than 1 stated area, and at this point you probably have money for investments.

Eventually, at admin tech 22, I'd unlock Town Halls, and with that cost is:

• states - 50%
• trade companies - 1%
• territories - 1%

So you can trade company the whole world.

But until you reach that point, there's an interesting way to squeeze just some extra gov capacity out of your land. In every area, make one province (the one with trade center) a trade company, and everything else a regular territory. Average area has about 3-4 provinces, so it would cost you about 10% of gov capacity to do so. And you get most value out of it. As long as trade companies have over 51% trade power in the node - and this is fairly easy - you get that merchant. And trade company investments give at least some bonuses (notably goods produced) to all provinces in a given area.

All this is mostly useful if you want to do World Conquest or something close to it. Anyway, I'm not doing this right now, but I might need to start doing it if gov cap squeeze gets really bad. I probably won't have to, as the mod makes it easier to take techs a bit ahead of time, so I'll probably get Town Halls before I'm really desperate for it.

Anyway, absolutism happened, and I don't even know what's meta. After cleaning up estate privileges to only important ones, my max absolutism is only 65, not really enough. I revoked Strong Duchies and New World Charter to get to 80. I guess I have some government reforms and monuments to squeeze a bit more absolutism, so I can get to 100 without bothering with Court and Country.

I continued expanding in West Africa, East Africa, Middle East, and Indonesia, mostly into Sunni areas. As I allied Bahmanis, I chartered a company from them just next to Vijayanagar, force vassalized Vijayanagar, and started asking Bahmanis to return Vijayanagar's cores. If I'm counting it correctly, it will only take 717 more favors, or about 90 years. Well, even if I only get part of that clay, it's still free clay.

After one of such wars, I finally managed to reach Asian mainland, and get border with Ayutthaya. It's closer and closer to China.

My emerging economic hegemony is going very well, I'm already over 1600 monthly income, and over 1200 of that is pure profit.

This is close to done, there are more other Europeans (Spain and France) than natives. Now time to head North.

I decided to clean up all the Sunnis, West African ones too, mostly for sake of Timbuktu monument. Air is my vassal too. There will also be a lot of Spanish and French here.

Papal States: Part 15: 1597-1610: Jesus Brings Gold

I wanted to get into some more fights with France, as Paris has 2 monument slots, and they held some cores from my vassals. They allied Commonwealth and Portugal, so it looked nasty, fortunately I got my allies to fight on my side. Spain would only join once I paid off their debt of 2000 gold, fortunately I have a lot of gold. I took Paris for its monuments, cores of my vassals, and mostly French colonies in Africa and Indonesia.

I continued expanding in Indonesia and East Africa, really struggling with governing capacity. Well, there are three good ways to increase that:

• spam courthouses - definitely doing that
• economic hegemon - at max level it gives +20%, but only at max level, nothing until then
• monument in Bangkok, currently level 0 controlled by Ayutthaya - at max level it gives +15%

It looks like they fixed the exploit where I could buy a province with monument through Charter Company. But that only applied if monument is actually there (even unusable counts), slots for empty monuments do not count. So I really wanted to buy it from Ayutthaya - and they didn't care about monument slot, but they really hated all my nearby provinces, so they wouldn't sell anyway. Did the numbers change there too, or did I just wait too long?

Well, I guess this means war. At some point at least, direct attack on Ayutthaya's tributary Malacca would bring Bengal and a lot of annoying countries into the war, and I really don't have many troops or ships over there.

An unrelated weird thing is that I can also build great projects for my vassals, even if I can't use them myself.

Economic hegemon gives -50 relations with everyone, they toned it down in 1.33, down from ridiculous -100. Unfortunately this means I can no longer diplovassalize infidel countries, there's pretty much no way to overcome -50 on top of all the other penalties. I could still diplovassalize Catholic, and I could force convert then diplovassalize other Christians, but neither of these is really helpful for my Chinese expansion plans.

I've been expanding quite aggressively, and so far my dipomats have been able to patch things up with angry countries, so no real coalition risk yet, but that -50 is going to make it a lot harder.

Catholicism is doing decently. Denmark and Great Britain are the only significant heretic powers, but there's a lot of small ones in Germany. Indonesia and East Africa are both about half done.

Speaking of China, Shun nearly unified China - but it's actually Chu who grabbed mandate from Ming a while back, and they're still holding to it. Ming still barely exists. Overall a very rare combination.

Papal States: Part 14: 1585-1597: Missionaries for Indonesia

In the followup of Heretic League War, there were 26 Protestant, 8 Reformed, 3 Anglican, 1 Coptic, and 0 Orthodox or Hussite heretics, for a total of 38. Most of them in the HRE. I could do another round of heresy purging, but all the European adventures just keep distracting me from the goal of spreading word of Jesus to China. I hope the emperor will do at least some of the converting now, since he now has "politely ask to convert or else" button at his disposal.

In addition to Europe, I was also taking a lot of detours in East Africa, but at least that was on the right path. There's a huge network of overlapping alliance between Sunnis from Kilwa all the way to Indonesia, and breaking it on one end weakens it on the other. At least the Sunnis from West Africa aren't involved. I might do some West African detours later, but it's very low priority.

I started some minor Indonesian expansion by asking various local countries if they'd like to join my glorious empire, and I got a lot of positive feedback on that. I got into a few small local fights, for now it's mostly diplomacy.

Right now I think my China plan is to conquer Indonesia and go North. I don't think I can realistically take India anytime soon.

Burgundy decided to form Netherlands, and that meant leaving the HRE, but also ceding all French provinces to France. This is honestly a fairly dumb decision, and it's very rare to see this actually happen, as Burgundy rarely survives that long. This really screwed Burgundy and brought France back into ranks of Great Powers.

Portugal's CN Caraibas got independent with British help.

A lot of Great Powers are interested in Spice Islands.

I settled 4, conquered 4, and diplovassalized 14 provinces.

There's little hope in plan to reach China by land anytime soon

Papal States: Part 13: 1571-1585: War of the Heretic League

My alliance network of nearly all Catholic powers started to fall apart. My ally Portugal and my enemy France both joined the Protestant League, allied each other, so next time I had to fight France, Portugal joined on their side. After I beat France, I allied Portugal again, as there was still one vassal core I wanted them to return, but I never managed to do so.

I kept getting involved in minor religious wars in the HRE, but avoided joining either league, having allies on both sides.

But the leagues would not abandon me. The Catholic League was quite a bit stronger, but Bohemia found the perfect time to strike. Due to other ongoing wars Sweden and (Anglican but on Catholic side) Great Britain could not join, so that was 90k Catholic League troops who could not participate, bringing the balance pretty close to even.

So my choice was either to take Austria's call to arms, lose alliances with Commonwealth and Portugal, and maybe win the war. Or to dishonor the call, lose alliance with Austria, and see them probably lose or white peace the war due to AI incompetence.

So I joined the League War. If I was war leader, it wouldn't even be hard:

• just go for Portugal and white peace them so their CNs also leave
• go for HRE minors and France to kick them out of the war, maybe converting some HRE minors in the process
• then big fight with the Commonwealth for white peace
• and finally force Bohemia to accept Catholic supremacy

Unfortunately the emperor is in charge of the war, not the pope, and AI just does not understand the concept of kicking countries out of the war quick to improve balance of power.

AI Austria was just as bad as I thought. I was 100% occupying one country after another starting from Portugal, hoping they'd get peaced out for some gold, but no, Austria just kept them in the war indefinitely. Meanwhile Commonwealth and Bohemia focused on occupying my land in the East.

Eventually Austria figured out how to play this game, but peace terms were just money and land, and not a single forced conversion. Eventually our side won. Austria released 13 new countries over the war, which actually really increased HRE heretic count.

All this distraction prevented me from reaching China, but I got myself a vassal Aceh in Indonesia, Medri Bahri in Africa, and got an African province from France.

Nice global war. I had to fight some local Sunnis too, as they tried to start a coalition., but that was a very minor war.

I could have prevented occupation of my land by spamming forts but it's usually not possible to spam forts from every direction, and the upkeep is too high.

Austria was sure annoying by pointlessly prolonging the war.

France and Bohemia got dismantled, and there's been a lot of changes among HRE minors I don't care for. Commonwealth is now my rival, as I'd be losing too much on power projection without any, and it's either Commonwealth or Spain.

Papal States: Part 12: 1558-1571: Religious Wars in the Holy Roman Empire

Heresy in the HRE needed periodic culling. Even after I got rid of 4 heretic princes, they were up even worse to 33.

My war list included 11 cobeligerents, and 34 countries total, but I could call my allies to do most of the work.

I took Serbia's leftovers for myself, gave Berlin to the Commonwealth, and released some minors from Switzerland (to make Brandenburg and Switzerland convertible next war), but overall the war was just about conversions, and some church donations. After it was all done, heretic count fell to 19 (would be 18 but Hamburg went heretic halfway), and that even included one of the electors Saxony.

There were still 5 active centers of heresy in the HRE, so there was little hope of it staying that way, and the heretic count started ticking up before my soldiers even got home.

Well, I really wanted to expand into Persia, but once more Commonwealth dragged me into some stupid steppe war, where I'd end up in a truce with all the Persians.

Heretics in the HRE started a heretic league, and unfortunately my allies took opposite sides:

• Catholic - Austria, Burgundy, Spain
• Protestant - Commonwealth, Portugal

So far I'm trying to convince the heretics to accept Jesus peacefully so I didn't join either league. But if heretics attack, I'll be called into the war as emperor's ally anyway. Heretic count ended up going back to 27 just a decade after my big war, almost completely reversing my progress.

As I couldn't go East through Persia, I went through the Red Sea instead. I took Mecca for myself, and setup Alodia as a vassal on the other side.

God is blessing me with more and more money, and now I'm up to 525, and started upgrading monuments to level 3. It's not much longer to 1000 and economic hegemony.

I took Expansion as 4th idea group. It's not even for colonists (I sent one to Africa), it's mainly for -10% autonomy in territories, which would double tax and manpower I get from trade company regions, and I could maybe stack it. But it is also my backup way to reach China, in case I need to go through Indonesia or something.

My attempt at doing mini league wars.

I can't do the real ones, as Emperor is always leader of Catholic side, no matter how weak compared to other members.

It looks like I'm trying to recreate the Roman Empire, even though I'm doing my best to reach China.

My intervention in North Germany definitely reduced that nasty blue.

Papal States: Part 11: 1545-1558: Conquest of Egypt

Heresy was spreading so wide that I lost a tier of Defender of the Faith, I'll need to do something about it.

Counter-Reformation started, and I had to pay 2000 gold for it. Unfortunately I haven't been a Papal controller in 4 popes, so someone else was making decisions.

And somehow they picked 3 harsh, and 1 conciliatory - and in exactly the optimal combination. You get -10 heretic opinion penalty for every harsh or +5 conciliatory, but that's your opinion of them, not theirs of you. For every choice you get:

• +2% missionary strength vs heretics OR +2 tolerance of heretics vs - this is the one they picked conciliatory, and that's probably optimal choice, as it's super easy to stack missionary strength, and missionaries spend vast majority of time with heathens not heretics so harsh bonus does very little
• +30% Institution spread in true faith provinces OR +10% Institution spread everywhere - unless you're 2/3 infidel, harsh is obvious correct choice
• +10% Manpower in true faith provinces OR +5% Manpower everywhere - unless you're 1/2 infidel, harsh is obvious correct choice
• −10% War score cost vs other religions OR −10% Curia powers cost - this is the most important one of all, warscore discounts are great, and stacking them is even better.

They're pretty much in order from the least to the most important. As long as the last one is harsh, I'd say the council was successful.

I had a big war with Mamluks to get the Pyramids. France kept getting excommunicated, and they were a huge pain, so I decided to do something about it and attacked them.

There's a button you can use to pay some gold to remove excommunication, and that invalidated CB mid-war, but a recent patch fixed it, and you cannot now use it if you're fighting excommunication war anymore.

I was allied to Portugal, Commonwealth, Burgundy, Spain, and Austria - but Portugal and Commonwealth were too far to join, and Burgundy and Spain really wanted France's land for themselves, so I only had Austria as reliable ally. I ended up taking the risk and called Spain and Burgundy into the war. Spain indeed took one of the provinces I could have a 50% AE discount on, and Burgundy took Paris with its monuments (which I really wanted, even if maybe not this early).

I took the rest of discounted provinces, setup some tiny Toulouse and Brittany, so I can take some cores back in the next war with France, and I broke French-Swiss border so they'll cancel their guarantee. I really need to attack the Swiss to cleanse HRE of heresy.

And my income progressed to 420 a month. Obvious sign from God.

France is mostly a detour, Paris monuments would be OK, but no big deal. Spain, Burgundy, and Portugal all have a lot better monuments, especially Spain, but for now they're using them to do God's will.

Papal States: Part 10: 1533-1545: Fall of the Ottomans

French-led coalition dissolved on save reload, as they often do, so that problem went away.

Now that I established Kingdom of God, my main goal was increasing my income as much as possible. I got to 265, that's still quite far from economic hegemon and tier 3 monument spam, for now I have all monuments at level 1 and I'm very carefully prioritizing which can get level 2 upgrade first.

But there was also a side goal of liberating the whole Holy Lands. For that I got Qara Qoyunlu as my vassal, as they had crazy number of cores all over. To free a vassal slot I got rid of heretic Switzerland.

The big war was with the Mamluks. They rebuilt their fleet which was now stronger than mine, but no worries, I called Spain and Commonwealth into the fight. And they both sent fleets into the war - which both just stood there, one tile away from big battle, while Mamluks managed to sink my flagship. AI allies are as useless as ever, no matter how much Paradox games get patched.

I keep losing Papal elections, Pope from Burgundy excommunicated France, and my ally Spain attacked France, dragging me into this. That's some complicated Papal intrigue. I put serious effort into this war, hoping to get Savoy for the trouble, but I got absolutely nothing. At least France is now a bit weaker.

During that time Commonwealth called me into their war as well. AI really needs to tone this down, they won't get any use whatsoever from someone already fighting a war. Commonwealth is growing really monstrous, fortunately I don't have any reason to confront them.

The number of HRE heretics increased tno 28, and I finally got Deus Vult, so I celebrated it with a small heresy cleansing, but I only got 4 of them, and the new ones will keep coming.

While I was doing some minor border cleanup I removed what was left of the Ottomans, with barely any resistance. Catholicism managed to spread to Iraq, and I want to spread it to Egypt and Persia next. Eventually China of course, but one step at a time.

Commonwealth is really racing me, one of best AI performances I've seen

This is about the expected amount of heresy in Europe, but decent spread outside Europe. No Counter-Reformation yet.

Papal States: Part 09: 1524-1533: The Kingdom of God

My ally Switzerland betrayed me and went Reformed. The heresies are spreading all over the HRE and Northern Europe.

However, I had much more important thing to worry about - the final province needed for The Kingdom of God. Savoy had a massive alliance chain, but our shared ally Spain wouldn't help them, so all I had to fight were France, Burgundy, and a bunch of HRE minors. Painful but doable. They even managed to besiege Rome, but I sacked Paris first.

Unfortunately just as I was about to proclaim The Kingdom of God, Poland - now turned into Commonwealth - called me into their war against Denmark. Amazing timing here, especially as I really didn't want to sail my outdated fleet to fight the Danes. Sweden took advantage of that and declared their independence - something AI did not ever do before this patch, so a nice change here.

God is definitely blessing me with money, getting over 230 gold per month, or 23% towards economic hegemon. I started revoking monopolies as well, that will take a while, but it will increase my income quite significantly. I'm using a lot of small tricks including getting a second gold mine in Morocco, it adds up.

Unfortunately due to delays by the Commonwealth, my truce with France expired, and together with 4 heretic HRE minors they setup a coalition against me. That's my first coalition this campaign, I'm barely over AE limit, and I don't even need to expand anymore in Europe, so it was fairly avoidable.

But now I finally have empire tier, and with it governing capacity to expand a little, taking next steps towards China.

It's definitely possible to squash heresy early, and if you're playing HRE emperor, it's the right thing to do. As Pope, you don't really get affected by heretics all that much. 

I don't plan to expand in Europe much, now it's slow way to China.

Allies - Portugal, Spain, Switzerland (I might drop them as they're heretics now), Austria, Commonwealth

Vassals - Morocco (will get its cores back from Portugal, in exchange for favors), Karaman, Trebizond, Syria (still OPM)

Papal States: Part 08: 1511-1524: One Schism Ends Another Schism Begins

I did some reorganization. I deleted 8/10 forts, and it looks like there's 2 more in parts of North Italy I'll be getting soon anyway. I demoted Serbian from accepted and added Greek instead. Penalties for non-accepted culture were never really important, now you need to accept a culture to use its monuments, and the one in Athens is really good. There's no need to accept any culture without monuments, except early game.

I dissolved alliance with former HRE emperor Cleves, and got a diplovassal Trebizond instead. My main allies Spain, Austria, and Poland rivalled each other, so my diplomats are wasting a lot of time making sure they don't break alliance with me. It probably won't last much longer.

After the French Pope there was another disaster - a Portuguese Pope. At least he did a sensible thing and called for a Crusade against the Mamluks. Too bad only after I already declared a claim war against them, so I couldn't use the CB. I took Religious ideas as third, obviously, so I'll soon be having that CB without any curia actions.

The war goal against the Mamluks was Cyprus, so I was guaranteed a win as soon as I won big naval battle against them. After a bit of fighting, I only took Jerusalem area, and one province to release Syria. I'll come back for more later. Age of Heresy started, just a month too early, so I missed on 10% AE discount for it.

The Kingdom of God plan is a bit stuck - France guaranteed Savoy, and then Spain allied them, and Muscovy of all things guaranteed Genoa, and I need both for it. Well, there's always some way to pull on alliance chains. The chain didn't even take that long - Muscovy got into debt, and decided to disregard their guarantee on Genoa. So the only thing left is Savoy, and honestly if I have to fight France for it, so be it.

I did some loose ends cleanup, like Ragusa, Knights, Armenia, Marakesh's monument, Tafilat's gold mine, and so on. None of them is terribly important, but they add up. I also started setting up trade companies, and reached 150 monthly income, 15% there to economic hegemony.

I could be expanding faster but I'm constrained by governing capacity. Even Kingdom of God and its empire tier would only give me 25% more than what I have now, that's not enough to conquer China.

After doing a lot of missions, I befriended African Christians in Alodia, to unlock prerequisites for End The Schism mission. Poland did half the work for that, conquering Moskwa. This flipped every Orthodox nation to Catholic, but not their peasants (except Moskwa and Constantinople), so who knows how that's going to go.

So the old schism finally over, but Austria is really not doing a good job fighting the new one. It's already 3 electors, 6 other princes, and another schism just spawned, like one is not enough.

Zero Orthodox countries, so at least that worked

I'm not quite sure which way I'll go to reach China. Going through Egypt and Arabia collects a lot of monuments, but just Mamluks would take 6 more wars (so 90 years) to annex, and I don't even have governing capacity for it anyway. I could go through Persia instead, or join colonization late and sail around Africa. Whichever way I go, there's a serious risk of a global Sunni coalition against me.

Papal States: Part 07: 1500-1511: Heretics In Holy Roman Empire

I was fighting multiple wars at once to deal with North Italy, when Poland called me into their offensive war against Crimea. Is this a new thing? I remember AI not really doing this in older patches much, calling someone already fighting a war into another.

There's no great way to conquer North Italy, but I'm grabbing target provinces whenever I can. In one fairly big war, I kicked Venice out of Italy, so they setup their republic on Crete instead. Some delicate naval timing was required as Venice had stronger navy than me, but they were just moving their doomstack around so I managed to barely sneak in a siege of Venice, and that was it. I got the rest of Venice in a war against Trent.

I should build up the navy, but I'm behind on diplo tech so I'd need to upgrade it soon anyway. The big naval war will be with the Mamluks, but not just yet.

I still need to get the rest of North Italy for Kingdom of God, but once I do that, I'm not going to have much to do in Europe - the actual goal of the campaign is bringing Catholicism to China after all. I mean, it's not like the Holy Roman Empire is going to suddenly turn into a den of heresy, right? Well, it turns out some heresy started showing up, but that surely won't be a big deal.

It was time to fight the Ottomans again. Cobeligerent Tunis, and that bring Mamluks into this, with fleet far stronger than mine, and my allies are not going to be of much use. Eventually Mamluks got tired of it, and I took all the coastline Tunis and Ottomans had. I also diplovassalized Morocco, I could give them some land over there, it's not of much value, but it will stop piracy.

I lost curia control to France. Well, it was great while it lasted. At least Austria got HRE emperorship back, so I don't need to keep Cleves alliance.

I took Constantinople and Poland took Moscow, which lets me end the schism between Catholics and Orthodox, but there's two other missions I need to do first.

Another important thing I'm doing is trying to get my income up as much as possible, so far I'm up to 113, which is 11.3% towards economic hegemon. In current patch military hegemon is better, but it's also a lot harder to achieve, and I'm only 9.2% there. It might not seem like a huge difference, but it's much easier to massively increase income from trade than force limit, especially once I eliminate Genoa and Ragusa.

Naval hegemony was always trash, so no point even bothering. There's also good reasons to take none of them whatsoever, as you'll be paying huge diplomatic cost, but that's for much later anyway.

The heresy is obviously result of Cleves' weak HRE leadership, and nothing whatsoever to do with Papal leadership of the Church. I'm converting about 2 provinces per year, and soon I'll liberate the Holy Lands.

Decent progress towards Mare Nostrum. I think I should have naval dominance in the next war with the Mamluks, as their friends like Tunis and Ottomans no longer have any coastline.

Papal States: Part 06: 1491-1500: Subjugation of Milan

It feels slightly embarrassing that so long into the game I'm still only Great Power #3, as Ming is still doing well, and Poland is slightly bigger. Well, not for much longer.

First, I needed to fight Venice. They were impossible to defeat on the seas, but I could still grab some of their coastline. By the way Paradox games universally have really awful naval combat systems, which nobody really understands. EU4 and HoI4 both.

After that I got into a second big war to vassalize Milan.

I needed a bit of peace to ask Savoy and Switzerland to return Milan's cores, but instead Poland dragged me into their war against Teutonic Order and Denmark, like I can do anything about it. Once it was over, I got Milan's 3 cores from Savoy and Switzerland, the same ones I gave them first to get Milan under 100% warscore (and to save on AE).

My issue with too many diplo relations solved itself, as my ally Switzerland called me into a war that involved my other ally Savoy, so it was one down either way. Savoy has one of the provinces I need for Kingdom of God, and Switzerland doesn't, so it's a pretty obvious choice.

Once my truce with Venice ran out, I needed to attack them for Milan's cores. I also need Venice for Kingdom of God, and to get more of Venice node trade. That ends up being a surprisingly big fight, involving even England.

I wanted to do some more serious expanding, but I hit gov capacity cap. It makes sense, as I'm now finally number one Great Power, with Ming being bigger, but not having Renaissance yet. I can use the usual ways to handle it:

• finish admin ideas
• get empire rank - which for Papacy is only possible through Kingdom of God decision
• spam courthouses - fairly expensive, but with income of 80 and net profit of 30 a month, I can afford it
• monument in Naples gives +50 gov capacity on tier 2, and +100 on tier 3, that's not too significant, and there are much better monuments elsewhere but this one will need to do

These are two separate wars, they add up to quite a bit

As an aside, I hope Poland captures Moscow, I need a Catholic power to hold it for one of my missions, and it would be such a hassle to go all the way there

Papal States: Part 05: 1473-1491: Third Ottoman War

I managed to just barely diplovassalize Ferrara. I allied HRE emperor Cleves, however embarrassing it is. It took me 2 over diplo limit.

I had to take a break to deal with all the rebels everywhere. They're just a nuisance, not any serious threat, but I'm playing a non-monarchy, so I miss -3 unrest from max legitimacy, I had 3 unrest from Shadow Kingdom before allying Cleves, and I play aggressively - expanding everywhere, slamming reduce autonomy as soon as I can, using Provoke Revolt a lot etc. Just deal with them as early as I can.

I got into a small war against Mantua and Saluzzo, but the most important part was that I gave some land from non-cobeligerent Milan to my allies Savoy and Switzerland. I'm getting it back AE-free later.

Favors with my allies kept accumulating, so I dragged Austria into pointless war with Herzegovina guaranteed by Venice, just to break Venice-Austria alliance, and as I was at it, break Venice's other good alliances in the peace deal. I made Herzegovina Catholic for next age's objective.

After far too much waiting, I started the Third Ottoman War. Actual war goal - Tunis. I'm really fed up will all the infidel raiding, so I cobeligerented them, and took most of their coastline. One more war and the main pirate spot will be done. The only other country doing it is Fezzan, but they're now a vassal of the Mamluks and almost annexed, so that will end it.

Once Tunis was dealt with, I returned all Bulgaria's cores and most of Karaman's. All that without a single country even close to coalition territory.

Coming next is finally a war with Venice and then Milan. I only have 6/13 provinces needed for Kingdom of God. Strangely God seems to live in North Italy, not like Jerusalem like most people would have guessed.

For second idea group I took Influence. I've been doing a lot of expansion through diplomacy, and it will save me a lot of points. Third one will most likely be Religious.

Cleves somehow won reelection, which is arguably even more impressive than what I've been doing. It looks like Austria might win the next one, and that would save me one wasted diplo slot.

The whole Tunis adventure is just a distraction, as they've been raiding my coasts and joining Ottoman wars. Even Ottomans aren't all that important, they're just in the way. What I need to do soon is get North Italy for Kingdom of God and Jerusalem. Then, God's secret plan can begin.

Papal States: Part 04: 1465-1473: Second Ottoman War

I had a fun plan: vassalize what's left of Naples. They're allied with Ragusa, so annex Ragusa, and release Dalmatia. Then I'd have vassals with cores owned by Aragon (PU under Castile) and Hungary (PU under Austria), and I'd demand return of these cores for favors for 0 AE.

Unfortunately it turns out that only works if cores are held directly by your ally, not by ally's subjects. So until Austria integrates Hungary, and Castile integrates Aragon, neither of these plans would work. And I'm definitely not going to sit on tiny vassals for 50+ years on an off chance that nothing will go wrong in the meantime.

Turns out it went even worse, as Castile got restoration of PU CB on Naples, and took them, preventing me from ever having pretty borders.

No big deal, I attacked Ottomans the second time, calling in Austria and Poland. As I proclaimed Crusade on them as Curia Controller, and neighboured them, I could declare Holy War CB even without having Religious ideas. This seemed like a good idea, as their ally Genoa somehow wasn't willing to join a holy war CB, but would join them with a reconquer CB. I had no idea that was even a mechanic in EU4, there are such CB-based rules for CK2, but they work very differently.

Anyway, it had some downsides, as Ottomans even with just 9k troops leftover managed to get +40 from battles against our over 100k, and huge ticking warscore on top. Somehow being ahead on mil tech, and various Ottoman bonuses do that. Really embarrassing Catholic performance. In the end, I 100% occupied them, as I was dominant on the seas so my troops could be where I needed them to, and that overrides any warscore from CBs, and gives me direct 100%.

I took nothing except land from them. I setup Bulgaria and Karaman for big core returns, and took some more coastline for myself. I didn't want to take all Balkans, as that would make Poland and Austria less willing to join the war due to distance between borders. As lond as Ottomans have something in the Balkans, even if it's just a single province, my allies will join. I'll need at least 3 more wars to annex the Ottomans, so I should try to keep my allies involved.

Between gold, trade, and buildings, I managed to get higher income than anyone else in the known world (because we've never heard of the Ming). For now I'm just building regular buildings, but I'll get to monuments soon enough. I'm also already the second Great Power, after Ming. Ming usually collapses to its disaster in 1520s, so I'll be the top Great Power either way, but let's see if it happens before or after Ming collapse.

Next steps:

• I could attack Serbia or Ragusa to reset Ottoman truce, then fight them faster, but in such case, I wouldn't get any help from my allies in our next war, as they'd still have full truce
• some of the North Italian minors can be diplovassalized, but I don't have diplo slots for it. I could also just take them by force, but my AE budget is limited
• Venice is just asking for it, but they're allied with Austria, England, and their league, and they have highest mil tech in the world, so it wouldn't be worth it at this point
• fighting Mamluks for the Holy Lands would be great, but it would be better if I had some diplo slots to release Syria and Iraq

Maybe I should break some alliances I no longer need like Savoy, Switzerland, and Ferrara to free some diplo slots? Ferrara is nearly diplovassalizable if I get 3 more diplo rep somewhere.

I'm still wondering about my HRE membership. Austria is ruled by an underage woman, so they won't get the throne back in decades. Maybe I should take diplo slot cost and ally the new emperor, OPM Cleves?

There's just 4 provinces between my lands and Jerusalem, but I'd be fighting that on my own against army over 2x my size, so it might be better to wait with that. 

Papal States: Part 03: 1456-1465: Papal Gold

I needed gold of Kosovo, and I was trying to figure out some clever ways to get there, but Albania made it easy as they were willing to just become my vassals, and they already had claims on Kosovo.

Shadow Kingdom incident triggered, and I wanted to stay in the HRE with Austria, but Cleves got the throne. I stayed in the HRE, even though that meant pretty harsh penalties as I wasn't allied with the Emperor. Oh well, hopefully Austria wins the next election, or someone else worth a diplo slot.

So it was time to deal with North Italians. Siena surrendered with little resistance. Florence had backing from Venice, which took mil tech 6 a few years ahead of time, so I couldn't defeat them on land, but thanks to my anti-Ottoman fleet, I defeated them on the sea, dropped siege on their capital, and they decided to peace out and even pay me some money for the trouble. Unfortunately that meant I couldn't break Austria-Venice alliance, but one thing at a time.

I need to conquer the whole North Italy for Kingdom of God decision, but there's no rush with it, and pacing myself a bit will keep AE under control better.

I finally full cored Kosovo, but apparently -5 tolerance for Orthodox means -50% goods produced. I forgot that's a thing, as I never had that kind of intolerance, base is -2, and you usually get +1 for max legitimacy, so it's just -1, or -10% goods produced, hardly a big deal. Instead I got -1 from some decision that was already taken at before game start, and -2 from events, so -5 total. Ouch.

And you'd think Pope of all people would get some missionary bonuses, but Papal Ideas don't have a single missionary related one. I can still convert them, but it will be a slow and painful process.

For the first ideas, I had three obvious choices:

• Divine - new group for theocracies, unfortunately it's just really bad. I guess −10% Culture conversion cost is nice if someone goes for one culture run, and wants to stack culture conversion discounts, but in a normal run it offers nothing.
• Religious - would fit the theme and is actually decent, I might still take it second or third
• Administrative - because if I don't take them, I'll never have enough paper mana, so that's what I did

I think my openers will be Administrative and Religious, even though double admin is harsh. I could still join the colonial race, but liberating the Holy Lands just feels more Papal. Maybe I could take Diplomatic or Influence instead, just to balance the points better.

Only ten provinces in a decade, so a lot slower pace than before.

I was also planning to eat Balkan minors soon, but Austria, Hungary, and Poland took most of them already. Overall I have a lot of directions of possible expansion, and I'm limited mostly by AE, mana, and vassal slots.

Papal States: Part 02: 1452-1456: Papal Constantinople

I couldn't declare war on the Ottomans right away, as I was waiting for favors with Poland to build up. Maybe I should have curried some favors, but timing of all this is quite RNG dependent, so it's hard to predict exactly how much time I have. I could go with just Austria, or promise Poland some land, but there's no need, favors accumulate really quickly.

As I was still a curia controller, I called for a Crusade against the Ottomans, that gives some modest combat bonuses that ended up making very little difference. And after just a few months of currying favors, I attacked the Ottomans. Wargoal Constantinople, no half-measures here. With Austria and Poland/Lithuania it's 109k vs 43k troops. And Ottomans were already at war with Karaman and some of Karaman's friends. There were some tiny issues like my allies having mil tech 3, while Ottomans being already on 4, and very insufficient number of galleys I had, but it's as close to ideal as it gets.

During the war we got all Balkans without any issues, but we couldn't really cross over, and any attempts at going around (by my allies, not me) got defeated. About 30k rebels popped out in occupied lands, and I hoped they'd convince Ottomans to give me what I wanted faster, but they ended up not making a difference.

I couldn't get 100% peace deal without waiting for far too long, and eventually I let them get away with just 80% peace deal. In older patches it would be a waste, as favors are hard to get, but here I had enough favors for a second war before the first one was over. Notably I didn't get a border with Serbia to get CB on Kosovo, as Hungary guaranteed them, but it turns out Austria got them mid-war, and that cancelled Hungary's guarantee. Well, that's awkward, a gold mine would really fix my money problems. And AI is now breaking guarantees sometimes, back in the days AI literally didn't know such button existed, but now France cancelled guarantee on Scotland.

The war made me 6th Great Power in 12 years from game start, and kicked Ottomans from 2nd place completely out of the list, all with very modest AE nowhere close to coalition territory. To be fair, some of it is because I got Renaissance early, and most other powers didn't, so if everyone catches up, I'd be out of the list, and Ottomans would creep back in, but it's a good start.

I couldn't expand much faster, as I didn't have mana for it. My starting Pope was terrible, and second was so-so. Unlike monarchies I can't reroll Popes, so I get what I get. Republics nowadays can stack republican tradition gain to get mana, hordes can loot to get mana, theocracies have probably the weakest mana gain of all government types.

Obvious prospective war goals at this point:

• Ottomans again, quite a few times, they're still worth 340% warscore, and they managed to defeat Karaman
• finish Naples for their last 3 provinces
• attack Venice, but they're allied with Austria so I can't do that directly, I'd need to fight them and require breaking that alliance first
• go after North Italian minors, once they leave the HRE
• go after Serbian gold, either through Ragusa or through Albania

Shadow Kingdom fires after 1460, so it's not too far away. Even when they leave the HRE, it's still a lot of AE coming my way.

This looks like the classic "no-CB Byzantium" opener, but I had a CB

Papal States: Part 01: 1444-1452: Pope and Two Roman Empires

It's been a while since I last played EU4, so time for a new one. I tried a quick one as Ayutthaya a while back, but I felt bored so I dropped it quite fast.

Fun and Balance got some substantial updates. Notable for this run:

• institution spread is much slower, about 2x, and institutions hard depend on each other, so at the worst India will be about ~4 techs behind Europe, not ~2
• ahead of time penalty reduced from 10%/year to 1%/year. This isn't quite as big, as techs also has tech penalty based on institutions, including ones that didn't spawn yet - this lets most technologically advanced nations get 1 or 2 techs ahead of the usual times, but even most of Europe is about where it would be in vanilla
• dev pushing nerfed slightly and Adal monument nerfed at tier 1 (both still very viable for the player), so AI doesn't go around these changes too easily
• anyone with capital in Asia can take Mandate of Heaven from China, regardless of their religion

The opening moves for Papal States are to join the HRE. Pope is locked to kingdom tier, so we won't be losing our government tier when we join the HRE. Later we'll switch to empire tier with Kingdom of God (despite its name), we can still be in the HRE then.

I ally whoever's strong (Austria, Switzerland, Savoy, Ferrara, Poland, Castile), improve relations with Switzerland and Lithuania for missions, and rival some minors like Provence that don't really matter.

There are two obvious war goals:

• Provence - I want to attack Provence but only if France breaks their alliance or decides they're not worth defending.
• Naples - it's important to send spies to Aragon immediately to fabricate claims, as Naples independence can trigger any time, and it's best to attack them day one, before they get allies

Many Papal States guides recommend conquering North Italian minors while they're still in the HRE. This is a terrible idea and a huge waste of AE - just wait until Shadow Kingdom fires, rushing this is just wasting a lot of AE on nothing in a fairly high AE part of the world.

Another obvious thing to do is the classic "NoCB Byzantium" opener, which is extremely valid as a Pope. There are even some missions that require holding Constantinople. I skipped it this time, as it might be unnecessary if I get Naples fast enough.

I joined the HRE in early 1445, and it took France no time to break alliance with Provence, so I pounced on them, promising Savoy some land if they'd join. We were still slightly outnumbered, but all the minors can be peaced out separately without much trouble.

Unfortunately Savoy occupied all the lands I wanted, so I instead vassalized Provence, while giving Savoy 2 of 6 provinces Provence had to reduce my AE. I'll get them back later for favors, so it's arguably better this way. Provence starts with Lorraine as a minor PI partner, but that does not get transferred, and to be honest, I don't really need Lorraine. During the war I humiliated my local rival Florence for age objective as well.

Naples broke free from Aragon, and did not send me 100 gold, so I got Subjugation CB. This is of course a trap. I have too little power base on my own, so having Naples, Urbino, and Perugia as vassals, even if I didn't vassalize Provence, would be a terrible idea. No, we need a good old conquest here. Subjugation CB saves some warscore, so I'd be able to take more land, but there's no AE discount, so that's another reason to not do this.

The Renaissance spawned in Urbino, so I didn't get the bonuses, but I'll annex them soon enough.

Naples independence took so long, I barely managed to claim Epirus on time. Ottomans declared war on Epirus, so I declared next day to get to their capital first, full annexed Epirus, and released East Rome, without any NoCBs.

This gets me to 10/8 relations, so arguably it might have been better to core these provinces and release them later (trading some paper mana for bird mana), but I'll annex my two OPM vassals in 1454 anyway, and then everything will be fine.

There's one change from the usual plans. Normally if you vassalize or release East Rome, you'd convert them to Catholic, so they convert all the provinces for you. This no longer works. Patch 1.34 added burgher estate privilege that gives Orthodox (and Coptic) full autonomy, and AI always takes it, so it never converts Orthodox/Coptic provinces.

By the way Pope has a mission to get +100 relations with Lithuania, that gives Lithuania a few decades of +2% missionary strength. For a while it was useful to get Lithuania to do some missionary work, but now they always take the same stupid privilege, so the mission does literally nothing. Not a single Catholic AI country will convert a single Orthodox province no matter what happens.

The usual starting position

It's a decent Papal start. The Pope starts somewhat stuck in the middle between Aragon, HRE, and France, but a good shove unstucks expansion opportunities.

Diplomatic Situation. The map mode isn't great, as it doesn't show that Poland has Lithuania, Moldavia, and Mazovia too.

Montferrat: Part 20: 1680-1688: Roman Empire Restored

It was time to clean things up and press up the Restore Roman Empire button.

The main reason why it was taking so damn long is that I didn't want to break any truces. So while that was going on, I was doing some casual conquering in Africa and Indonesia.

I finally got Imperialism CB as I was about to get that last province, so I started mass declaring cleanup wars on random island nations I couldn't have taken before due to lack of convenient CBs. In just one last year before clicking the final button, I removed about 12 countries from the map.

At this point nothing stops it from being a World Conquest. There's still 133 years, and I already control 55% of global development.

At current admin efficiency (60%), staying at optimum 100% OE all the time (32% OE per 100), and -45% coring time, I'd be able to core about 188dev per year, or the whole rest of the world in a bit less than 65 years. Not even counting client states, another 10% admin efficiency discount, and optionally going over 100% OE, as I have permanent +3 stability, +11.5 tolerance of true faith, -9 base unrest, and will get more once I get other monuments.

It's basically impossible for true faith provinces to rebel, and I can convert about 10 provinces a year. Nearly 2000 land and naval forcelimit each, nearly 2000k max manpower, 5000 monthly income (at 650 expenses).

I think that's the closest I got to EU4 WC, as actually going for WC would be stupidly tedious, and Fun and Balance arguably makes it even more tedious, giving everyone two more ally slots, so wars tend to spillover more.

Anyway, here's what I think of 1.32.

The worst parts of 1.31 got fixed (AI deleting own armies at peace, all the issues with moving dev to capital, ridiculously broken monuments etc.), so game is in reasonably playable state, but it's much less balanced than it used to be.

Here's the full list of monument bonuses I got, and getting newly conquered province from zero to max level was trivial at this point (8500 gold and 350k manpower - both basically meaningless at this point):

• Administrative Efficiency: 0.05 (Alhambra 3)
• Admiral Cost: -0.1 (Murud-Janjira Fort 3)
• Advisor Costs: -0.55 (Parthenon 3, Pyramid of Cheops 3, Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• Aggressive Expansion Impact: -0.1 (The Grand Palace of Bangkok 3)
• Appoint Cardinal cost: -0.2 (Saint Peter's Basilica 3)
• Army Tradition: 0.5 (Tower of London 3)
• Autonomy: -0.1 (Borobudur Temple 3, El Escorial 3)
• Average Monarch Lifespan: 0.1 (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 3)
• Burghers Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.1 (Bara Katra 3)
• Caravan Power: 0.73 (Aït Benhaddou 3, Bam Citadel 3)
• Church Power Modifier: 0.3 (Duomo di Milano 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 3)
• Clergy Influence: 0.1 (Saint Peter's Basilica 3)
• Clergy Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.5 (Duomo di Milano 3, Hagia Sophia 3, Pyramid of Cheops 3, Sankore Madrasah 3)
• Culture Conversion Cost: -0.25 (Borobudur Temple 3)
• Curia Powers cost: -0.1 (Saint Peter's Basilica 3)
• Diplomatic Relations: 1 (Petra 3)
• Diplomatic Reputation: 3 (Alhambra 3, Petra 3)
• Envoy Travel Time: -0.33 (Petra 3)
• Fabricate Claims Cost: -0.5 (City of Khami 3, Petra 3)
• Global Trade Power: 0.25 (Aït Benhaddou 3, Belem Tower 3, Suez canal 3)
• Governing Capacity Modifier: 0.25 (El Escorial 3, The Grand Palace of Bangkok 3)
• Governing Capacity: 100 (Royal Palace of Caserta 3)
• Idea Cost: -0.15 (Pyramid of Cheops 3, Saint Peter's Basilica 3)
• Improve Relations: 0.15 (Versailles 3)
• Income from Vassals: 0.3 (Alhambra 3, Versailles 3)
• Institution Spread: 0.5 (Sankore Madrasah 3)
• Liberty Desire in Subjects: 10 (Alhambra 3)
• Max Accepted Cultures: 1 (Borobudur Temple 3)
• Merchants: 2 (Bam Citadel 3, Bara Katra 3)
• Missionaries: 1 (Holy City of Jerusalem 3)
• Missionary Strength vs Heretics: 0.03 (Holy City of Jerusalem 3)
• Missionary Strength: 0.01 (Stonehenge 3)
• Monthly Fervor: 2 (Duomo di Milano 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 3)
• Monthly Piety: 0.002 (Hagia Sophia 3)
• Monthly Splendor: 3.5 (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 3, Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• National Tax Modifier: 0.2 (Versailles 3)
• National Unrest: -2 (Borobudur Temple 3)
• Naval Force Limit Modifier: 0.3 (Murud-Janjira Fort 3)
• Naval Maintenance Modifier: -0.2 (Murud-Janjira Fort 3)
• Navy Tradition: 1 (Murud-Janjira Fort 3)
• Nobility Influence: 0.1 (Versailles 3)
• Nobility Loyalty Equilibrium: 0.1 (Versailles 3)
• Papal Influence: 5 (Duomo di Milano 3, Hagia Sophia 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 3)
• Possible Advisors: 1 (Parthenon 3)
• Prestige Decay: -0.01 (Santa Maria del Fiore 3)
• Prestige: 4.0 (Doge's Palace 3, Holy City of Jerusalem 3, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus 3, Royal Palace of Caserta 3, Tower of London 3)
• Reform Progress Growth: 0.45 (Doge's Palace 3, Royal Palace of Caserta 3)
• Religious Unity: 0.1 (Notre-Dame Cathedral 3)
• Republican Tradition: 0.5 (Doge's Palace 3)
• Resistance to Reformation: 0.5 (Duomo di Milano 3)
• Sailors: 0.25 (Belem Tower 3)
• Ship Trade Power: 0.3 (Bara Katra 3)
• Stability Cost Modifier: -0.25 (Stonehenge 3)
• Tariffs: 0.2 (El Escorial 3)
• Technology Cost: -0.15 (City of Khami 3, Sankore Madrasah 3)
• Tolerance of Heathens: 1 (Stonehenge 3)
• Tolerance of Heretics: 2 (Hagia Sophia 3, Stonehenge 3)
• Tolerance of the True Faith: 3 (Hagia Sophia 3, Notre-Dame Cathedral 3)
• Trade Efficiency: 0.1 (Aït Benhaddou 3)
• Trade Steering: 0.2 (Bara Katra 3)
• Treasure Fleet income: 0.2 (El Escorial 3)
• Vassal Force Limit Contribution: 0.5 (The Grand Palace of Bangkok 3)
• War Score Cost vs Other Religions: -0.15 (Malta Forts 3)
• Yearly Absolutism: 1 (The Grand Palace of Bangkok 3)
• Yearly Corruption: -0.1 (Parthenon 3)
• Yearly Patriarch Authority: 0.005 (Hagia Sophia 3)

And there was a bunch of extra decent monuments available in HRE and South East Asia for the taking I just didn't get to yet. The stuff open for grabbing includes +10% goods produced in Amsterdam, -2 unrest in St Petersburg, +1 missionary in Ostlandet, two more pope mana monuments in HRE, +2 diplo slots in Pegu, -10% tech cost in Korea, and the list goes on and on.

I think the key issue is just how easy it is to stack all those bonuses. If you were limited to only a few monuments per country, that would be a lot better. In CK2 price goes by 40% for every monument you already control (by 80% for each of same category), and CK2 never overflows with gold the way EU4 does, so I don't think that would even work. Maybe just make every monument require spending a accepted culture slot on it?

Somehow Catholicism became the strongest religion, but only on condition that you control curia during Council of Trent, or AI makes so many non-stupid choices, as conciliatory choices are just so ridiculously weaker than harsh choices, it feels like basically a fuck you to the player. You lose curia RNG, AI picks all the bad choices, deal with it. Especially −10% War score cost vs other religions (which you can absolutely stack with -15% from Malta monument, -20% from age objective, and some other discounts) is stupidly good bonus AI will happily throw away for weak −10% Curia powers cost.

Hilariously people online usually whine about the opposite case - where they were playing heretics, or allied with heretics, and Pope took harsh positions while they'd rather have conciliatory.

Funnily enough, I was completely overflowing on Pope mana even after having modifier for controlling Rome that was supposed to prevent me from getting any Pope mana.

Beyond that, there were other issues, like the unguarantee exploit (which AI was also using), AI endlessly pointlessly pillaging each other's capitals. The game overall feels really clunky, with so many poorly connected systems, and UI not being sure what it should do. I think the time is right for EU5.

That's what controlling 55% of the world looks like. Including historical Roman Empire borders, nearly the whole New World, Africa, Middle East, most of Indonesia and nice chunk of India.

This was a very casual game, never no-CBed anyone, only broke one truce (to get PU over Austria), never intentionally went over 100% OE (a few times slightly by miscounting), didn't rush destroying HRE etc. If you want a WC, it's really easy in this patch, just takes way too much patience.

I got really good RNG twice - random Byzantium PU, and controlling the Curia during Council of Trent.

Montferrat: Part 19: 1671-1680: End of the HRE

The colonial conquests continued. Surprisingly some HRE minors decided to coalition against me again, but it was not even a nuisance, so I didn't bother guaranteeing/unguaranteeing them.

I was getting fed up with the 4D chess I needed to get all the relevant HRE provinces, so I did the chain calculations once, and declared war that would drag all 7 electors in. It was only a 12-long chain of cobeligerencies, and far too much time spent drawing diagrams on paper. Maybe I should write a war optimizer script, can't tell for sure if this is even the optimal one.

There was just this tiny problem of actually winning the war with basically the entire HRE. It was super tempting to do some force conversions, or get some land in this war, but really I needed to do the responsible thing and peace out all those damn irrelevant countries.

At least I white peaced the ones that would do it. AI is incapable of fucking off when it should, so I ended up 100%ing and force converting a lot of minors. The HRE finally got dissolved in 1680, without HRE armies even really getting defeated. They just went on an adventure sieging my French and Spanish provinces while I occupied 7 electoral capitals.

That meant 7 provinces needed to restore the Roman Empire.

The war to abolish the HRE involved nearly the whole HRE, so I think that was fair.

The usual strategy (ally 4-5 electors, fight emperor and their 2-3 elector allies) is drastically easier.

I don't even have that much AE here, only about half of HRE, exiled Castile (now Peru), and some Indonesian minors want to coalition me. I control 49% of world's development, and I just eliminated the biggest remaining challenge, so I don't see coalitions able to do much.

Montferrat: Part 18: 1661-1671: On the Verge of Roman Restoration

I was overflowing with mana of all kinds, so I tried my best to stay at just below 100% overextension so I'd have a way to spend it all.

Anyway, HRE was a big problem. HRE has three big issues:

• higher AE - that's actually the easiest to work around
• demand unlawful territory
• stupid restrictions on declaring war on HRE member if at war with emperor or allied to emperor - this can mostly be worked around

Demand Unlawful Territory is the most annoying feature, but it was also the easiest to work around. If you stayed at war until you cored it, emperor couldn't demand it. Unfortunately they changed it in 1.32, and now war does not protect you at all. It wasn't in the patch notes, so I ended up checking Paradox forums, where a lot of angry players complained about it, but devs said it's intentional.

This is extremely annoying as that's completely uncapped relationship penalty with all HRE members, including my PU junior Austria, and my ally OPM Pope who respawned in the HRE (with all the butthurt about Australia wiped out). Taking 10 provinces means -250 penalty, on top of all the other penalties, not really reasonable.

So my options:

• force vassalize 4 electors, become HRE emperor
• dismantle the HRE - actually quite hard if I cannot ally electors
• destroy the HRE by taking the whole HRE by force
• ally the emperor - not really possible anymore
• expand through vassals - technically possible, but such a massive hassle
• declare new war against the emperor while the provinces are coring - that's the only thing that still blocks the request

Then I thought about it some more, and it's just dumb the way it is, even though there are workaround. This penalty needs to be capped by the mod. Just as Tordesillas penalty. The problem isn't that HRE Emperor demands some territory - that makes sense. The problem is that this request can be spammed and the penalty is not capped in any way. EU4 has a lot of really stupid opinion modifiers, and the Fun and Balance mod fixes a bunch of them, but not in any systematic matter, just whenever I find something obviously too annoying. Maybe I should do a full rewrite of opinion tables.

Technology for town halls happened, so I spammed them everywhere, and from this point on I'll never have any governing capacity shortage. Basically courthouses make territories cost no capacity (25% base, -25% courthouse), but territories are shit. Town halls make trade companies cost no capacity (50% base, -50% town hall), and these are good. And there's tons of spare capacity to assign to states as well (100% base, -50% town hall; you can lower it with state house but there's no need).

As the right tech got unlocked, I started building canals in Suez and Panama, but these cannot be sped up by throwing more men and money an them.

I'm quite close to finishing things. It's just one war each with Aragon, France, Cilli, and Flanders, but awkwardly the emperor Bohemia wants to get involved in all of them. Oh well, I guess I'll fight them 4 times.

Mostly expanding in Africa to find something to do with spare mana.

There's not really that much point to this expansion, I have way over 3k monthly net profit and all the manpower I might want, but feels bad to waste mana.

Yellow everywhere, with about 8 converted provinces per year.