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.