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.