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.
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