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.
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