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 Amazing timing here, especially as I really didn't want to sail my outdated fleet to fight the Danes.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.