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
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