Succession Wars: Part 14: 1663-1679: Roman Emperess and Hegemon Ana de Trastamara

Emperor Carlos abdicated on day of his coronation.

What happened was Cultural Conflict events. Every stated province with non-accepted culture gets +25% autonomy, 20 years of +10 unrest, but culture conversions are -50% cheaper for 20 years.

I don't actually need that -50% that much. The cap is -90%. I get -10% max innovativeness, -25% religious ideas, -25% Roman Empire reform, and I could take religious/influence policy for -15% more, netting me -75% already. Then adjacent culture would be -25% hitting the cap, or and I could use Senate debate for some extra bonus so even non-adjacent ones would hit it.

And I spammed reduce autonomy to get absolutism maxed out again. And are you even a true successor to Rome without some civil wars?

As Roman Empire I got access to special vassals that don't take diplo slot, and inherit on ruler death. Did Paradox implement the mod I vibe coded already? There's a few differences:

• pronoiars are DLC-locked, so you need to pay for them
• only some countries get them (so they can sell other special subjects in other DLCs)
• inheritance is deterministic on first succession, not random
• they are much more restricted (subject needs to be a monarchy under 100dev; under 15% ld to get free inherit)

Well, I could convert 7 of my 15 vassals to pronoiars, the rest I'll integrate by event or the hard way, they're all small so it's not much mana.

And it's really pointless, but since I got Cultural Conflict event, I spammed culture convertion in cheapest nonaccepted culture provinces. It's all going to be such bordergore once they all finish.

I got game event that Roman people of my country are upset because my ruler is Catalan. You just became "Romans" a few months ago!

I got another complication - I could no longer raise tercio infantry. I still had them unlocked, but they can only be recruited in overlord provinces with Iberian cultures, and they all went "Roman" overnight. I also can't build any more special heavy ships (Iberian culture only) and special light ships (Portuguese culture only). I can still build special galleys, as that's based on Venice monument.

It was time to conquer China, and I used two slightly more advanced strategies.

Ming collapsed long time ago, but still existed as an OPM - so I force vassalized them (you can also diplo vassal, or grab province of their primary culture and release, but OPM Ming is ideal). Then since I was allied with some Chinese successor states, I curried favors and asked them for core return. Now the reason this works far better than normal core result is that Ming has cores on all of China (unless they were forced to revoke them in a war), and because I'm so much bigger, I was getting 100 favors/year! Sadly this didn't work with Korea, and their vassal Chu with a lot of Ming cores. Apparently you can use core return on PU junior, but not on a vassal? Weird. In any case, Korea eventually annexed Chu, and then handed me over all Chu's provinces for free.

I did something similar with getting what was left of Tonkin and getting Annam to hand over their shared cores one by one.

And second is directly asking tributaries for their overlord's lands. Game wants to limit you to taking at most 100% province warscore cost of land, with 15 year truces in between. The classic solution to it is to follow up any such big war with small war against a tributary, which is white peaced to reset the truce timer to 5 years.

But you can do something a little more advanced, and just attack tributary OPM, bring in their overlord as non-cobeligerent, and ask tributary for their overlord's provinces. This costs double the warscore cost, and generates a lot more AE, but if there's a lot of tributaries, you can do this without any pauses whatsoever! This works with any one sided alliances. It works best with tributaries, but it also works for anyone who spams guarantees, or against HRE emperor (but AE cost is a bit much in the actual HRE).

This campaign is not terribly exciting at this point. I control 85% of the world, there's just 26 independent countries, and just 689 non-Catholic provinces (including uncolonized). WC and One Faith are pretty much a given. I'll get to mod conclusions after the world is fully Roman and fully Catholic.

Other than some islands, this is full extent of non-Roman.

Small Annam is hiding with purple color, but they keep handing over cores to my Tonkin.

Conversions lag behind conquests, but at current pace the world should be fully converted by 1725-ish.

Culture conversions are fairly pointless, but since I got event for it, I spammed convert button on all cheap provinces. Sadly my colonial nations all have old Iberian cultures, so there's zero chance of getting One Culture.

Advisor Cost Modding

Advisors in game are level 1-5. I wanted to extend them to level 1-10 to have some useful late game money sink, unfortunately game formula is silly, with base costs being quadratic: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100. Going up a level at first costs x4, then x2.25, but going lvl9 to lvl10 is just x1.24, quite trivial.

It would be far better to just have consistent x2 cost for every level, but base cost is hardcoded. The alternative is to use triggered modifiers like "if you have admin advisor level X, you get +Y% admin advisor cost increase". This unfortunately breaks all the advisor cost discounts you can have. If we made lvl10 advisors have base cost 1000, then -20% discount saves you 200 gold. If all we can do is base cost 100 with +900% penalty, then -20% discount only saves you 20 gold, or 2%.

We have one small feature we can use. Advisor costs increase over time multiplicatively. Half price advisors from events also cost multiplicatively. So if we double cost over time from +0.5%/year to +1%/year, and apply +50% cost penalty for every level above 5, then we get, 200 years into the game:

• vanilla formula: 2, 8, 18, 32, 50, 72, 98, 128, 162, 200
• tweaked formula: 3, 12, 27, 48, 75, 135, 221, 336, 486, 675

This still makes advisor cost discounts a lot less effective, but it seems like decent middle ground.

At this point it doesn't matter, as my income is well over 10k/month without even trying too hard, but it could matter for future campaigns.

Succession Wars: Part 13: 1651-1663: Roman Emperor and Hegemon Carlos II de Trastamara

I found out that Norway has a monument for +1 missionary, so that was a priority war. Maybe I'll manage to squeeze that One Faith after all.

I hit 1m gold cap in 1657, and I had nothing to spend the money on. Monthly income over 7500, manpower maxed out, all great projects and buildings I could want built already. I rarely played so far into late game, so I didn't really run into this problem often before. This reminded me - I thought about increasing max advisor level from 5 to let's say 10 before. They already have quadratic costs, so it's good money sink without too many balance problems. Or at least it would be if late game economy was balanced. Oh well, it's worth testing this out.

Upgrading all advisors from level 5 to level 10 increased my advisor spending from 41 to 166. So it's a lot of mana, and not really much of a money sink. I'm not so sure about this change, I might revert it. Or maybe I could figure out how to make cost increase steeper. The base formula is hardcoded, but there could be some way with triggered modifiers.

Bengal decided to break alliance with me. Not due to any mod event, just good old -100 "wants your provinces". I wondered who else I could ally instead, but the world is really low on meaningful independent countries.

My ally Poland annoyingly started guaranteeing or allying whoever was left in Europe including Muscovy, so I really wanted to drag them into some war to distract them, but I couldn't find any opening. The only one was attacking Sweden/Norway, but Poland decided to fight for Norway's independence without me, losing me that opening.

Finally in 1663 I annexed France and for the first time ever restored the Roman Empire. I like purple, but Spanish gold color was also great on the map, nothing like that awful Aragon salmon. It converted all my main culture group to Roman, but only within my borders, not the colonial nations.

I needed to instantly assign 69 Senate seats, which would cost me about 200 absolutism. Fortunately it doesn't go into negatives, so I could drop it to 0, then harsh treatment and reduce autonomy spam, so I got it back to 47 before unpausing, and I'll get it back to 100 soon enough. The first Senate debate I did was for extra missionary, the dream of One Faith lives on.

And on the day of Roman restoration, 63 year old Carlos II decided to abdicate to his 20 year old daughter Ana, but that's the story for the next episode.

With Kilwa's last province conquered in Spain's last war, Africa is 100% conquered continent, second after Australia (always hidden by minimap that cannot be turned off).

What's left is Poland/Lithuania/Muscovy/Scandinavia area, the whole East Asia, and a lot of cleanup.

Annam has very similar color, but it's not mine yet. 

I really thought that my colonial nations would become Roman too, sadly they are now different culture group to me. I didn't bother with culture conversions, I just accept whatever monuments require and ignore tiny wrong culture penalty.

Succession Wars: Part 12: 1634-1651: Roman Emperor and Hegemon Carlos II de Trastamara of Spain and France

I tweaked succession events a bit - now mass was declarations can only happen if there's at least 2 countries that would declare, and some of the low impact events check that they have at least some impact. The mod needs a lot more changes, but I'm only doing ones that requires limited testing mid-game.

There's event for possibly auto-annexing a vassal, and it triggers more often than I wanted as vassals have very small event pool, but I really want to form the Roman Empire as soon as possible, and that requires owning 425 of 475 valid provinces directly, so I have to manually diploannex everyone there instead of waiting for lucky events. Getting France PU probably delayed Roman Empire formation, as PUs have 50 year timer to even start integration.

There was a fun chain of events in India. Persia and Delhi got involved in Shia-Sunni war, and Persia made Delhi release 5 minors, with Persia as their automatic guarantor. Of them Garha was released Catholic as I actually owned most of their cores and converted them already.

So now that Bundelkhand had two Christian neighbors, it rolled "all your Christian neighbors crusade you". And that dragged me into a war against Persia too.

Overall I'm just conquering in Europe to restore Roman Empire, but I won't be able to until I integrate France anyway. Unless I did some chain truce braking, but this is a chill campaign.

I have a way to deal with Poland - and that's releasing vassals, and making Poland return their cores. I already used that with Wallahia, Teutonic Order, Nitra, Wolgast, and now I force vassalized Denmark to feed them a lot of Polish clay.

Poland got event PU over Ferrara, and it looked like pretender rebels might be able to get independent, but I forgot that I allowed Poland military access, so they walked all the way to crush them. Oh well.

Just relentlessly expanding from Pacific Coast of North America through Europe, East Africa, India, Indonesia, and Philippines. OE needs to be kept near 100%. I think this is on good track to become a WC.

Once France is annexed, I can change color form Spanish gold to whatever is Roman Empire color. I think this is going to be my first.

Catholicism is doing very well, and WC is very likely, but I don't know if I can actually One Faith this.  Especially after I lost my 2 missionaries when Counter-Reformation expired. I'd probably need to start setting up Catholic subjects in East Asia. The math suggests it's doable, but it would have been a lot easier with those 2 extra missionaries.

Succession Wars: Part 11: 1624-1634: Roman Emperor and Hegemon Carlos I de Trastamara of Spain, France, and Bohemia

I went to war with 23 groups of North American heathens at once. Sadly due to all the bordergore I couldn't just annex most of North America in one go like I initially hoped to do. There's no rush, and my colonial nations clean up OPMs on their own.

The most notable thing here is that 3 regions have 2 CNs instead of 1 - Castile's and Portugal's. This means double the bonuses (notable +3 merchants), but it requires some microing.

Annoying new mechanic are native federations. They look like bordergore, and every federation has the same black color. Right now there's 3 federations, and it's impossible to tell which is which. Fortunately this problem will solve itself soon.

Sweden used our alliance for help getting PU over Norway.

Once I unlocked Town Halls, I could spam them everywhere, revoke gov cap privileges, and get 100% absolutism. All the hassle that was once necessary with Court and Country and so on, nobody's going to bother with it anymore unless going for some really weird build.

Now the Town Hall tech happened way earlier than it's supposed to, as Fun and Balance reduces ahead of time tech cost penalty from +10%/year to +1%/year. In AI test games I ran this actually seemed fine, and was balanced by much slower institution spread, achieving big tech gradient between Europe and Rest of the World. But for the player located in Europe, it's clearly too good, so I did some mid-campaign nerf to +2%/year.

I also wanted to buff Court Ideas -20% max absolutism from estates to -50%, but it's coded in very annoying way where every privilege in the game checks this separately, mixing it with two other sources of this effect, and I'd rather not change hundred different places for something so minor.

Succession Wars events need a lot more rebalancing, but it's a lot harder to get it right due to their random nature, so I'll do this after the campaign is over.

There were many wars, but it felt rather uneventful.

When Carlos I died, the following happened:

• Portugal area got a lot of unrest by event (vanilla; happened a few months before actual succession)
• France got 165k pretender rebels
• Bohemia (nearly annexed) got Inward Focus
• Spain - all Protestant/Reformed/Anglican/Hussite countries I bordered declared war on me (except ones with truces or allies or already at war)

That list was literally just Thuringia with 6k troops, recently freed from Saxony's rule (I had truce with Saxony).

As this really doesn't showcase the mod, but then which event would? Jihad war would just be Aceh, as I have truces with all other Muslim neighbors. Other than all vassal rebellion, all other events feel like I'm likely too big to even care anymore. I'm sort of tempted to console command myself a global vassal rebellion, but since my colonial nations and PUs would remain loyal, it wouldn't even be particularly difficult, just rather tedious. And in any case, console commanding events would mess with mod testing.

Counting by dev, World Conquest is about 55% done.

I feel like if I want to conquer the world, I should already be planning something for big blobs like Poland instead of keeping our alliance and helping them expand.

Against everyone else, -30% warscore cost against other religion (Malta Forts, Council of Trent, Court policy), -20% province warscore cost (when I finish diplomatic ideas), and 100% absolutism should be enough

Succession Wars: Part 10: 1599-1624: Roman Emperor and Hegemon Carlos I de Trastamara of Spain, France, and Bohemia

I was barely beginning my reign when the French decided to give me their throne. I allied a few countries I hoped to get like currently East Rome, Sweden, Bengal, and Annam, but so far 3 countries I got for free (Bohemia, France, Vijayanagar) were all by accident, and my many long term alliances with Austria (because it's HRE), Poland (because it's elective), and Pope (because it's Pope) are excluded from free subject events. So I'm not even close to really optimizing my way here.

I also inherited Vijayanagar by event. For the first 100 years felt like the mod barely makes any difference, and now it's overcompensating giving me free stuff all the time. I'll try to deal with mod balance at the end of the series.

The campaign reached the stage where AE is just a number. And for that matter so is money, as I struggle to find anything to build.

I just bought myself Bangkok from Ayutthaya with its 15% gov cap monument, because I had a ton of money, never enough gov cap, and I didn't want to open another front just yet.

There was a surprise opportunity to force vassalize the Pope, so I took it. That's also my 3rd HRE vassal elector, but getting vassal electors to vote for you is still a huge struggle, so I finally made a decision on take over or destroy.

HRE was rotting already, with 1 elector Ferrara under Polish PU, and 3 others - Teutonic Order, Cologne, and Papal States under my vassalage, so it was time to end it.

The war to destroy the Holy Roman Empire

Muscovy got entangled in this war through some alliance chain, so I broke Muscovy's alliance with East Rome's, and it was finally time to do a small detour and vassalize them as well.

The war was nastier than I expected. It was just 4 capitals to take - Gelre, Mainz, Wien, and Pest, but they changed hands multiple times. And level 6 forts started showing up. But in the end, there wasn't much Austria, Hungary, and assorted minors could do against me and Poland.

Now Rome and Constantinople are both held by my vassals, making me the true successor of the Roman Empire.

Absolutism started, and I'm not really sure how to get 100 max absolutism. Just mana and gov cap privileges really tank it, and court ideas -20% max absolutism loss from estate privileges is not meaningful enough. And I'd really rather not deal with Court and Country. I even rushed Nizwa monument for +10 absolutism, but I only got to 77 (80 if I got perfect legitimacy and religious unity, which is not easy while expanding). Harsh treatment discounts are stacked so high, that my absolutism is at max at all times.

I'll get remaining max absolutism eventually. Once I unlock Town Halls, I'll be able to drop gov cap privileges, and there are some government reforms that give absolutism.

I did a lot of expanding all over the world, trying to feed myself, my subjects, and my colonial nations.

To restore the Roman Empire you need to hold 425 of 475 provinces in its historical borders, and if I integrated my subjects I'd already be at 400, but by myself I'm still very far.

For world conquest progress, I'm at 49% of global dev (excluding uncolonized provinces), so maybe I could turn this "I'm going to play really chill" campaign into my first EU4 WC. Yes, mods make it easier (unintentionally), but if I wanted a "legit" WC I could roll back to 1.31.0 Leviathan, and it would be far easier than this.

Minor countries will be quickly swept away by diplomacy or force. HRE was just destroyed and two OPMs already got annexed (not by me), and three countries got vassalized (by me)

It's very satisfying to paint the map with unique Spanish gold color. I'd hate it if I still had Aragon salmon, just like Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and Milan.

Could this be a One Faith run too? Reformation got crushed early, all major colonizers were Catholic, Europe is mostly Catholic, and it's just Asia and North America that need a lot of converting. In most campaigns Protestant England and others would have pained half of North America blue by now, but we managed to avoid that.

I'm not sure if I can manage this, as I'm already pretty much maxed out on missionaries and missionary strength, and they're barely keeping up with my expansion. Soon I'll be expanding a lot faster.

Succession Wars: Part 09: 1584-1599: Empress and Hegemon Estrella I de Trastamara of Spain, Portugal, and Bohemia

By the time 20 years of Inward Focus expired, my income increased from 510 to 1050, and there weren't any buildings left to spam. Eventually I'd need to spam Town Halls but that was many techs away. Many monuments needed upgrading as well, but it takes 70 years total to max them out, and Inward Focus doesn't give discount to throwing extra money or manpower to make it faster. So it was great twice, but something else next please.

For my 5th idea I decided to do something new. The first four picks were fairly standard - administrative, influence, religious, and expansion - as they are just crazy strong. But for 5th I went with court ideas.

It provides:

• monarch diplomatic skill +1 - more mana is always good
• +20% reform progress growth
• +1 diplomatic reputation - very relevant in vassal spam game, not so much unmodded
• estate privileges have 20% less impact on maximum absolutism - that's about +15-ish max absolutism
• Administrative/Court policy - 5% coring cost reduction
• Religious/Court policy - 5% province warscore cost against other religions

As well as minor bonuses like +10% estate loyalty, +2 monthly splendor, +1 yearly prestige, +0.5 yearly legitimacy (or some other government power).

This isn't mind blowing, but the other two new groups (infrastructure and mercenary) looks like total garbage, and this one seems OKish. I'd probably be better off with Espionage, Diplomatic, or even Trade or late Exploration for just one extra colonist. They could really bump that max absolutism bonus, estate priviledges are just not worth absolutism cost late game (other than mana) so you end up not using estates much. Having an idea group that lets you continue playing with estates to the end wouldn't break anything.

I finally ran out of countries I wanted to diplovassalize, so I clicked economic hegemony button in 1591, with 1100 monthly income. It will be hard to diplovassalize anyone with that -50 relations penalty from being a hegemon on top of wrong religion on everything else.

I mostly expanded outside Europe. Brunei's succession event made me declare a holy war on them, and I had no troops or ships there, it was just some faraway colony. I started building a new fleet but before it finished, I managed to white peace them.

In Europe, I continued my policy of breaking down any powers, so I broke Hungary's PU over Milan. One my of allies Poland dragged me into a war against my other major ally Austria. Well, it's time to unalign myself from Austria anyway, at some point I want to either take over or destroy the HRE.

I don't know why AI is so eager to call the player into a war that would break an alliance.

Then again, war alliances abuse is core EU4 mechanic

I got most unexpected event, Vijayanagar sought protection from a stronger ally, and they became my instant vassal. They were not happy that I asked them to go Catholic right away, but I sent them enough money, prestige, and dev clicks that they got over it quickly. It's nice to just instantly get second biggest country in the world by event. Event conditions are: non-Christian country, with no subjects, with ally that's at least 4x bigger by dev (non-Christian because Christians get PUs instead), and it mostly triggers on OPM, but instead it trigger on a great power.

I wasn't even planning anything with Vijayanagar. I once got Diet mission from Burghers to get a province in India, and I had no colonial range to do anything else than buy one from Vijayanagar, and allying them drastically reduced the price. Then I kept them as allies, as various Middle Eastern countries I was fighting were allying Indian Muslims, so Vijayanagar could distract them long enough for white peace. Meanwhile Vijayanagar kept sending me money to buy institutions. Overall, good deal for both of us.

Empress Estrella I was already 70 years old, so it was good time to abdicate.

This was a wild succession, and the wildest part was that it wasn't evens part of my mod!

• Portugal got instantly inherited - this is vanilla's doing!
• my new emperor was Protestant (not the country), and Bohemia became Protestant! I pressed buttons to flip back to Catholic, and to enforce religion on Bohemia. The mod event they got was just Inward Focus.
• I got 5 stacks of religious rebels all over the world - Reformed in Britain, Sunni and Coptic in Africa, Inti in South America, Alcheringa in Australia

The rebels aren't particularly hard, it's just 117k of them, but that geographic distribution is a huge pain. Well, that, and being over gov cap again, is now a problem for Emperor Carlos I.

I think the reason emperor was Protestant was that I royal married some Protestant OPM to diplovassalize them, so Estrella's husband was Protestant, and maybe heirs get their religion after father, even if mother is the ruler? Somehow I don't think it ever happened to me before.

Beautiful yellow empire, now that yellow Vijayanagar also joined it

The only small trick is that yellow Scotland is independent, but not for much longer.

Succession Wars: Part 08: 1565-1584: Empress Estrella I de Trastamara of Spain, Portugal, and Bohemia

I got really tired of my allies dragging me into neverending wars, so I separate peaced Denmark, making them release Norway. Then I could finally form Spain, andh get a color that distinguishes me from the rest of Europe.

Finally abandoned salmon

Two other great powers Vijayanagar and Muscovy are also yellow, but I don't have bordergone with them yet.

Dutch Revolt disaster started ticking, and I really didn't feel like dealing with it, so I moved my capital to Ghent. Dutch Revolt is one of the most heavily railroaded parts of the game - as to get "historical" outcomes so far removed from the 1444 start ridiculously heavy-handed scripting is needed. So Paradox provided an easy out for players who don't want to deal with this nonsense, and I'm going to use it.

And then Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Spain and Portugal died, barely a year after his crowning.

Succession events:

• Spain - inward focus, 20 years of +75% province warscore cost, -40% build cost, -25% dev cost (nerfed from the last time, as it was way too strong)
• Portugal - trade reform, +10 mercantilism, 20 years of -50% trade power

Such mild events are great for me, but they really aren't showcasing what I was trying to mod here.

Fortunately province warscore cost only affects provinces I take, not provinces my vassals take, so I can at least somewhat reduce that penalty. Or I can just start a lot of small wars instead of a few big wars, and expand as fast as my overextension and mana allow.

But it's not like I have much spare gov cap to expand, so I might just as well use this time to build up and spam manufactories, courthouses, trade company investments, and great projects. On succession Estrella's empire had monthly income of 510.

But slow expansion didn't mean no wars. HRE emperor Austria wasn't willing to defend elector Hungary, so I attacked them, but somehow they changed their minds and joined a month later, breaking our alliance. And then they called our mutual allies Poland and Sweden into the war, as well as some minors like Ferrara and Papal States. All while I already had multiple ongoing colonial wars. Oops.

A world war started by lying tooltip is peak EU4.

We mostly allied each other back just after.

The goal of the war was to end Hungary's PU over Bohemia. I also grabbed my second elector vassal - OPM Teutonic Order, but if I ally Poland again, I could request their provinces back.

While this whole huge war was waged just to undermine Hungary and for Bohemia's freedom, Bohemia decided to just give me a free PU by succession event on peace day.

Almost right after our war ended, Austria, Poland, Sweden, and Ferrara who were defending Hungary decided to attack it together instead.

I ran into another tooltip issue, tooltip said Hormuz would abandon their ally Aq Qoyunlu, but they didn't, and this time it wasn't even any HRE shenanigans. This saved Aq Qoyunlu, as I really wasn't going to 100% huge non-cobeligerent Hormuz just to grab one province.

Various New World natives kept attacking my and Portugal's colonies, so I was forced to send a lot of troops over, and province warscore cost penalty from inward focus was actually quite inconvenient here. Without Inward Focus my province warscore cost against other religions is 55% (100% base, -25% age ability, -10% council of Trent, -10% level 2 Malta monument). With that +75% penalty, it's 130%, or provinces are 2.35x as expensive because Paradox math definitely makes sense.

For "inward focus" I sure did quite a bit of expanding

In less than 20 years of my reign, I doubled my income to 1000/month, but I'm not grabbing hegemony just yet, as that would ruin my vassal game.

The wild thing about HRE is that there are only 6 eligible candidates right now - Austria, Hungary, Ferrara, Spain, France, and Poland - and two of them (Spain and Hungary) have female rulers so can't currently candidate. Nearly all other countries are either subjects already, or are Protestant or Reformed, or republics, or theocracies. 5 of electors are theocracies (the other two being Hungary and Ferrara).

Succession Wars: Part 07: 1551-1565: Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Jerusalem

The HRE started its religious leagues:

• Catholic League - Austria, Poland, Hungary, Muscovy
• Reformed League - Switzerland (not even elector), Catholic France, Protestant Denmark

This was really one-sided, and I was already allied with Austria and Poland, so it only made sense for me to join the Catholic league. But before I could do that, I was dragged into a war, and I leagues can't be joined when at war.

Denmark-Poland alliance broke, and without any major power supporting them, Danish empire finally fell apart. The game bugged out a bit. England and Sweden were both disloyal and allied, so they should be fighting their independence war together. And I was supporting England only - normally it doesn't matter as you'd get pulled into the war either way. But somehow Sweden rebelled, dragging me in, but England I was supporting stayed out of the war completely - not joining on either Danish or Swedish side.

England bugged out and notably missing on both sides of this war

As far as I can tell, that's not my mods' doing, it's a new vanilla bug I haven't seen before. It might have something to do with some colonial war England was involved in, but I'm not sure.

I was really curious what would happen if I declared on England in this state, and the dialog claimed that it would bring Denmark and Norway into the war, but it didn't as we already had another war going. I just grabbed a few quick provinces - wargoal Cape and 5 provinces in England itself - before Denmark could even rejoin.

In that time, religious league wars started, and I joined as Austria's ally even though I wasn't allowed to join the league itself as I was at nonstop war. Well, we outnumbered them 6:1.

Religious League wars are frequently one-sided when player is too strong, but this one would be ridiculously one-sided even without me joining

The result of this war was France getting huge beating, Austria forcing them to release a bunch of minors, which I then quickly diplovassalized. The only downside is that both Denmark and France gave my navy serious beating, but that didn't save them.

So that's France and Denmark undermined. Even with religious leagues war won, HRE was still rotting from within, more and more princes swearing loyalty to me.

That wasn't the end of wars. I didn't have one day of peacetime in decades, as my allies kept dragging me into one stupid war after another. I even lost diet agenda to buy a province in India, as I'd need to be at peace for one day to do this. Overall I don't like the whole "you can't do this if you're at war", but none of that can be modded as far as I know.

Finally I hard annexed Castile, but I can't form Spain as damn Poland won't end their stupid war with Denmark to give me one damn day of peace to do this. Allies in this game are the worst. Now to be fair, half of these wars I get dragged into are event wars from my mod, but it's still unbelievably annoying, that being "at war" blocks half the game mechanics.

Once they finish their stupid war, I'll be able to reorganize my newly unified country, help 4 colonial nations I inherited, and I'll check new mission tree.

Succession Wars: Part 06: 1527-1551: Emperor Ferran III de Trastamara of Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Jerusalem

On succession, I inherited nasty wars with Venice, Hungary, and France, and I really wanted out.

Hungary was nearly fully occupied, so I let them get away with some broken alliances and some gold. I thought this would be a good signal for Bohemia to start their independence rebellion against Hungary, but Hungary just allied Muscovy right away, Austria soon after, and Bohemia chickened out of declaring independence.

I had to white peace France, but at least I could fully remove Venice, one of few remaining minor powers - and briefly even one of the great powers.

As the strongest country in the world, I was the rightful successor of the Roman Empire, but nobody acknowledged my claim. The Western crown was Austria's and electors were not interested in handing it over, the Eastern crown was in Constantinople, and the Pope was holding Rome and not interested in giving me a a third one.

And Europe was consolidating. Denmark got PU over England, and I didn't even notice for a good while as almost everyone in Europe has the same salmon color.

The Great Salmon Empire

There are now 7 major powers in Europe, and 4 of them have almost the same color:

• Aragon/Castile/Portugal/Jerusalem/so many vassals - salmon
• Denmark/Sweden/Norway/England - salmon
• France - blue
• Austria and its HRE minions - white and rainbow of minors
• Hungary/Bohemia/Milan (also in the HRE) - salmon
• Poland/Lithuania/Brandenburg - salmon
• Muscovy - yellow

There were other powers outside Europe, but they didn't have color conflicts with me. I don't think there was a single EU4 game ever where color scheme bothered me so much.

I would love to undermine all of them, to make my color unique, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. Fine, I guess I'll just pay the price to integrate Castile, so I can change my color to Spanish yellow.

For some minor undermining, I started bribing OPMs in the "Holy Roman Empire" to swear fealty to me one by one. It's a lot of vassals, but it doesn't add up to that much land.

Since supporting independence of Bohemia didn't really work out, I tried it with England instead, but that wasn't too successful either.

Well, there's the whole rest of the world to conquer.

The Mamluks had another succession, and I autodeclared holy war on them by event. I was planning to just core return CB them to restore Syria, but I guess Jerusalem is calling. Mamluks had annoying allies like Persia and Kilwa, so this took a while, but I took the whole coastline, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Mecca for good measure.

And I ran into a surprise mechanic. Overextension effects used to only happen when you had >=101% overextension, so I took 100.8% without worrying about it, but apparently they changed it in some recent patch, and now the threshold is actually >100%. I learn new things even after so many years of playing.

I got my first colonist, and sent them to Kongo, together with some soldiers to secure the whole coastline. I even accepted Kongolese culture, as there's a decent monument there that requires that. It's really silly that the whole culture system got reduced to unlocking monuments, but it is what it is.

I'm spreading my expansion between Kongo, West Africa, North Italy, Egypt, and Middle East, and with some core returns, and some holy wars, there's not even any coalition against me.

But new things are coming. Printing Press got invented, and with it, religious leagues started in the HRE, so all of Europe is going to get realigned now.

I still hope to roll free East Rome PU, and I alss allied Bavaria to try to roll their PU, but no luck there either. Bavaria isn't even that likely, they have so many allies and same religion neighbors, even if they fall under PU, it probably won't be mine.

Overall, I didn't have any high impactful events yet, either positive or negative. I based the odds on what made AI simulations work best. For most fun experience, the player should have a lot of high impact events. But if every AI was rolling high impact event all the time, the world would fall apart pretty quickly. And I really wanted the mod to treat player and AIs the same.

Succession Wars: Part 05: 1486-1527: Emperor Ferran II de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, Castile, and Portugal

Now that I had a new your king, the goal was Portugal PU, the last free PU in Aragon's mission tree. It feels weird that I'm playing a mod that gives free PUs left and right, and I have huge number of PUs, but zero of them came from modded events.

So far I'm actually barely affected by the mod. I saved some mana on instant vassal inherits, I lost a lot of money when peasants tanked my prestige, which eventually resulted in very expensive Naples independence war, but then I saved even more on building spam with inward focus.

At least in part of the map I pay attention to, the main beneficiaries of the mod seem to be Hungary, Poland, and Genoa, and the biggest loser are the Ottomans, and countries that fell under event PUs (Bohemia, Milan, Brandenburg).

So the mission tree gave me Portugal PU CB. Portugal was allied with England and Poland. But since Poland came to my help in war against Albania (overlord is defender in independence wars), they already couldn't help Portugal. And so I declared war on Portugal on the first day of my reign.

The Papacy fell under French influence, and they got me excommunicated, killing my ongoing efforts to diplovassalize OPMs. Then the Pope excommunicated France, I forgot to add exception for curia controller for this event. Oh well, I'm fixing bugs as I play.

Europe was already falling under controls of a few major powers - England, France, Austria's HRE, Denmark/Sweden/Norway, Poland/Lithuania/Brandenburg, Hungary/Bohemia/Milan, and Muscovy. And most of the minors were allied with one or more of them. But Venice stood alone, so I attacked them, and returned Roman cores Venice stole from collapsing Ottomans back to the Romans. I'm still hoping to get Roman PU by event.

Europeans were already a bit upset about Portugal and a few Italian provinces, so I tried to spread my expansion all the way from Genoa to Balkans to Black Sea region. I returned all remaining Roman cores, and they could do triumph for Greece - they did literally nothing, it was 100% due to me returning their cores. I'm using pretty standard tactics - release OPM vassal then return their cores in the followup war, or release OPMs then diplovassalize them, or sometimes take some land directly if coalition doesn't look too bad.

I finally got a high impact event - I declared event holy war CB war on the Mamluks. Earlier it would have been pretty nasty, but Mamluks didn't have any strong allies, so we just swarmed them. I used the war to setup OPM vassal Syria and grab some minor land up to Alexandria and some gold.

Bohemia kept spamming me with support independence requests, so I finally relented, but it didn't help them. France declare on Castile's colonial nation, which dragged Castile into the war, and then me, probably to their surprise - if I remember correctly AI doesn't understand these two level subjects, it's a bug that existed in every version. And France called Hungary into the war, and that dragged Hungary's subjects too.

But I couldn't call my allies like Poland and Austria, as I was already in a war against Venice, and EU4 engine is too stupid to support calling into a single war, instead they just have -1000 would be called into multiple wars. So I had to fight it all alone.

All that for some stupid colonies I couldn't even locate on the map

During the war emperor Ferran II died. He was succeeded to thrones of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal by Ferran III.

Succession events:

• Aragon - army reform, +10 professionalism, 20 years of -20% morale
• Castile - inward focus, 20 years of -25% dev cost, -40% build cost, +75% province warscore cost
• Portugal - trade reform, +10 mercantilism, 20 years of -50% trade power

Not the best timing for army reform, but this is all really mild.

My idea build is pretty standard:

• administrative (for ccr and gov cap) - pretty much a no-brainer
• influence (for diplo annexation discount) - I thought about not taking it, as Castile can be annexed for free, and event can instantly annex vassals, but Castile turned out to be too big for instant annexing, so this forced the issue
• religious - so I can actually convert all Mare Nostrum area, and for Holy War CB

This means I have no colonist yet, so I really shouldn't be annexing Castile or Portugal, as they're colonizing for me. I mostly want to annex Castile for better color and new mission set.

I really wanted to use this war to break one of Hungary's PUs.

Hungary is losing hard, but I'd need to 100% Hungary, Bohemia, and Milan to get them to break either PU. It's probably better if I just break Hungary's alliances and hope Bohemia figures it out by themselves somehow. Then white peace France and fight again when I can call my allies.

Succession Wars: Part 04: 1479-1486: King Joan III de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, and Castile

I needed to do a small mid-campaign mod adjustment. I inherited Mzab, and that's the third vassal inherit already, it's been happening more than intended. I added both instant vassal inherit (can trigger on vassal succession) and instant vassal rebellion (can trigger for overlord succession), so I thought it would be balanced, but most of events in the pool are for independent countries only, so instant inherit ends up vastly more likely than free rebellion.

So from now on, instant inherit is for same religion vassals only, and different religion vassals can get instant religion change event instead. I nerfed inward focus numbers a bit, and added a few more events, and some Sunni/Shia and (only outside HRE) Catholic/reformation wars.

Hungary unfortunately managed to get their union over Milan back by force. I thought about supporting independence of their PU junior like Bohemia or Milan, but that would drag me into a war with Austria and France, and I wasn't really looking forward to that.

On Papal succession Pope reset all his alliances and rivalries - this by the way is the most realistic feature of the mod - so I ended up fighting Pope and Siena, and releasing some of Pope's annexed vassals.

Poland got mod event PU over Brandenburg, so every major power in Europe is consolidating. I don't even mention random OPM PUs everyone has been getting - Scotland got 2, Austria got 2, Even Ferrara got 2 somehow.

Well, my 13 mana heir reached the right age, so it was time for my 6 mana king to abdicate. I think this might be the first time I'm pressing abdicate button.

Random events on succession:

• Aragon - all vassals I don't have truce with instantly rebel, but since I had truces with 4/5 (Morocco, Ragusa, Knights, Spoleto), that means just Albania and nobody else
• Castile - noble estate influence, 20 years of +50% nobles influence, -20% other estates influence, +1 diplomat (high risk of getting estate takes over disaster)
• Naples - clergy estate influence, 20 years of +50% clergy influence, -20% other estates influence, +1 missionary (high risk of getting estate takes over disaster)
• Navarra - diplomatic reset - this doesn't even do much for subjects, as it wouldn't break support independence if they had it

Well, that's all very mild.

Albanians refused to accept our salmon color and want to be deep red on the map instead

I really should form Spain, as all of Europe except France and HRE minors has essentially the same color

Succession Wars: Part 03: 1457-1479: King Joan III de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, Navarra, and Castile

Small aside, I was confused why Castile went domineering over me, but apparently they got PU CB over me from their mission tree.

Successions are happening more often than I'd like, but they came with only minor challenges:

• I can ignore peasants rebellion in Navarra, all they want is increase autonomy, but Navarra is OPM anyway, so autonomy in their capital is fixed at 0%
• Naples will hopefully fight its pretender rebels, lose some troops, and be easier to deal with if they actually declare independence. AI is not smart enough to lose to pretenders on purpose to skip independence war.
• My inward focus would slow down by expansion, but I'm AE limited anyway.

The big problem is still that 6 countries rivaled me, and 4 are supporting Naples independence movement. And Naples actually pressed that button, with only Milan and Papal States staying as my allies.

It was not quite as bad.

• France supported Naples, but because Austria dragged both me and France into one of their silly wars, France couldn't join war against me
• England is too far and useless
• Ottomans are busy fighting Venice
• Castile and their PU Burgundy were busy fighting Austria

And all I needed was white peace anyway.

Probably the hardest war of this campaign. Of participants, Naples, Castile, and Burgundy are all in my realm now, and Ottomans got many beatings by me. England still unpunished.

So I was optimistic, but my army was actually stuck in Africa, and England landed their army in Aragon itself. Well, loans, mercs, and if it bankrupts me so be it.

And then, for the first time ever - Poland did great power intervention on my side!

Well, I kicked Castile out of the war thanks to my merc spam, but I ended up 1000 gold in debt, and then I had to take even more debt to get Renaissance.

I allied Austria and East Rome despite their betrayal. My other ally Milan fell under Hungary PU - I allied them to have a chance to get it myself but that didn't work out either. So I added Poland as my ally instead.

I thought it was over, but all the assholes now piled up to declare support for my disloyal vassal Granada. But then I instantly inherited them by event anyway. This didn't discourage my asshole rivals, so they supported my another disloyal vassal Tripoli.

They were just barely near 50% disloyalty level, but AI was just waiting for exact moment it went a bit over 50%, and independence support! Well, soon I got them integrated by event as well, but that meant border with the Mamluks.

I didn't see any way out of my debt other than by conquering Tafilalt gold mine.

Ottomans declared against East Rome after all, but I was so far in debt all I did was sending some boats over.

Castile inherited Burgundy by vanilla event, then I got PU over Castile by Iberian Wedding, making me second Great Power after Ming, and this time everyone was even loyal! Fortunately Castile already took exploration ideas - subjects normally don't take them, but they'd continue filling them if taken.

But I noticed one downside to it all - after inheriting Burgundy, Castile is too big to insta-inherit to form Spain, so I'll need to pay the mana price. I could make them lose 10 provinces by losing a war on purpose, or I could pay a few thousand bird mana for it. If Iberian Wedding triggered event happened before Burgundy inheritance event, it would be me getting Burgundy for free, and then getting Castile with button click. Well, that's a problem for a future ruler.

There's also another problem - my color is really terrible. 5 European major powers - Aragon, England, Poland, Denmark, Hungary - as well as all their subjects - have almost the same salmon-ish color. And some minors like Serbia as well. Once I form Spain it will go away, but that's a fairly distant goal.

Anyway, now that I had Castile's army on my side, I might as well try to win their war for East Rome. We got that warscore to 50%, transferred all occupations of Roman cores to them, but all they took for it was some cash.

Now that I had one gold mine, why not another? I diplovassalized Albania, and used their claims on Kosovo gold mine.

Meanwhile my ally Poland decided to fight the Ottomans, dragging me into another war. No big deal, and Poland took some clay.

It's so hard to see Aragon's greatness, as almost everyone uses the same salmon color

I originally planned to do one episode per ruler, but it's been going for quite a while already, and my ruler is only 41, so we'll continue Joan III's story in the next episode.

Inward Focus expired after 20 years, and during that time I spammed temples, workshops, barracks, and even a few marketplaces and farm estates. With this and two gold mines I got my monthly income to 47 (behind Ming, Castile, and France), and I repaid most of my debt.

It's all been such a casual game, and I'm now casually number one great power.

The most interesting mod events from this episode were Hungary getting Bohemia and Milan as PU juniors, but then Milan getting pretender rebels on succession who actually won, so now Hungary and their disloyal Bohemia is fighting a war to get Milan back. I'm a bit tempted to help Milan.

Succession Wars: Part 02: 1445-1457: King Joan II de Trastamara of Aragon, Naples, and Navarra

The first order of business was dealing with 91k peasants rebels. It's not really worth fighting, so I accepted their demands for +20% autonomy everywhere and -50 prestige. It's not ideas, but I was already at war, and I'd spend a lot more money on mercs to deal with the peasants than a bit of autonomy would cost.

But first I can let them fight Tunis army who landed on Sicily. Our side has stronger navy, so I could have stopped them if Naples fleet attached to mine, but subjects are useless, so they didn't. In Fun and Balance there are no magical bridges like one between Sicily and South Italy, so Naples army is not going to just walk to Sicily either. It's all just a minor inconvenience.

North African wars were going fairly smoothly. I vassalized Granada and took some of Tunis's coastline. This upset them a bit, and they started a coalition, so I started a war with intention of white peacing it quickly to break the coalition. Then a few more easy wars. The goal is to not upset the Mamluks or Ottomans to prevent coalitions, and not have direct border with the Mamluks to prevent nasty succession events with them (vassal border is fine).

I got vanilla event for +50% liberty desire by Naples (obviously I won't just let them go), and then negative prestige from peasant rebellion gave them even more on top. I really should have dumped all my mana into their dev to get it under 50%, but I didn't do it, and they started to gather supporters.

Ottomans were the first supporter. Castile broke our alliance, and supported them too soon. Then England. Then France. Somehow 6 countries rivalled me!

I tried to play vanilla Burgundy succession roulette, but Castile got them instead. This is sort of fine, as I will probably get Castile eventually, but for now they're really hostile to me. They refused to release the lowlands, bringing them into war with Austria.

Austria challenged the succession, and it the attacker against Castile, Castilian Burgundy, and Portugal, so Austria can't call its allies (like me). Normally it would be total wipe by Castile, but AI is really awful at naval invasions, and they never asked me for military access, so Austria might actually win this, costing me my rightful clay.

After all that, my new ally setup is Pope, Milan, East Rome, and Austria. That's not really going to frighten Naples into not declaring.

On Papal succession Pope's vassal rebelled, so I got dragged into that war.

I got CB on throne of Muscovy, but I'm not doing that.

Morocco's vassals declared war on them, and their ally Ottomans abandoned them instead of helping, so I joined the pile-up to grab a few provinces for myself as well.

And then king Joan II died, and on succession (separate events for every country):

• Navarra got 6k peasant rebels
• Naples got 30k pretender rebels - they'd break the PU if they succeed
• I got inward focus - -50% build cost, -25% dev cost, +50% province warscore cost, go play tall now!

Inward focus isn't too bad, as I can't take too much land due to AE anyway.

For interesting succession events that happened in this episode:

• Oldenburg became junior partner under Burgundy (they got auto-annexed with other HRE juniors when Castile got Burgundy)
• Kildare became junior partner under Scotland
• Mantua became junior partner under Ferrara
• Crimea tried to jihad Genoa, and got full annexed instead
• Ottomans are getting wrecked to normal reconquest war as Venice guaranteed Albania, nothing to do with the mod

Ottomans are getting wrecked with almost no player intervention, all I did was ally East Rome, that made Ottomans attack Albania instead, and they are losing to Venice somehow. I still hope to get East Rome PU by event, but odds aren't that high.

Inward Focus could be really good if I stacked the discounts even more, right now I'll only build a few temples with it.

Succession Wars: Part 01: 1444-1445: King Alfons V de Trastamara of Aragon and Naples

Modding with clankers

I thought my custom Socotra game two years ago would be my final EU4 campaign, but two things happened. First, I tried EU5 and I really did not like it. And second, I really wanted to see if clankers are any good at modding, and EU4 is the game I'm most familiar with modding.

So I drafted a simple mod idea. Every new monarch, every country receives a big succession related event. This isn't a typical player-only randomness meme game, I wanted everyone to play by the same rules. Things that can happen on succession include:

• become a junior partner of another country (Christians only; only allies and neighbors allowed, and not if they're much smaller than you), or a vassal of a much stronger ally (non-Christian)
• every neighboring Muslim / Christian / Dharmic / other horde instantly attack you if you're wrong religion / wrong horsiness
• reset all rivals and alies and instantly wipe out -40 AE with everyone, so you can start over diplomatically
• all your rivals get claim throne CB on you
• a lot of religious rebels, maybe even from a religion that's not on the map but was historically present on a given subcontinent
• and a lot of fun smaller scale events; modifiers generally last 20 years or until the next succession

I'll explain each event as we get it (or some important country gets it).

Also latest Fun and Balance included. This campaign won't be very balanced, but I ran about 20 AI only simulations with tweaks in between, and it has just the right level of chaos.

So to answer my question, clankers are OKish at this. The clanker I used needed a lot of guidance, access to game files and some example mods, access to game's error log, and in-game testing, but in the end I managed to write this mod a lot more quickly than I'd do by hand, and I didn't even burn too many tokens on it. And that's speaking as a very experienced Paradox modder. If you haven't modded much, you might struggle to prevent the clanker from going of the rails completely.

Clankers are a lot worse at this than at coding mainstream programming language. They hallucinate syntax, make many basic mistakes, and of course they have no idea how to make the game fun, so that's why there's a human in the loop.

Anyway, as event choice is random and you only get a few rolls per century, there aren't any great ways to cheese the system. You can steer the system by allying countries you'd like PU over, avoiding borders with infidels you really don't want to fight, and so on. But for most part you'll need to adapt to what you get.

Some high impact events like becoming a PU junior have quite high odds, but AI is bad maintaining PUs so a lot of them fall apart.

Aragon

It's 1444 again. At least Fun and Balance colors subjects with overlord's colors

So now that the introduction is over, it's time to play. I picked Aragon, as a big easy country with big mission tree is going to be great for dealing with all the nasty events I'll need to deal with. I'm going to play really chill, which for me means no 11 December 1444 NoCB Byz.

To keep the theme, this series will be one episode per monarch, however long or short their reign.

Aragon can form Spain, go colonial, or form some mini Roman Empire. Or for all I know I could get PU over Sweden and take this campaign into a wildly different direction.

So my plan is to expand by force mostly in North Africa, and try to get as much land in Europe as possible from free PU events, and claim throne wars. So:

• Naples - already my PU junior
• Navarra - currently ruled by my heir, so automatic PU on succession, still vanilla
• ally Castile, I can get their PU by vanilla event or by mod event
• ally and marry Burgundy. Countries with more than 1 junior partner are not eligible to mod PU event to, but since I'm doing PU game, it would be silly not to try
• ally Pope - that prevents excommunication event, and it's just a good idea for Catholic power
• try to ally Byz and get them as junior partner. And normally that would discourage Ottomans from attacking them, but in this mod Muslims and Christians (and Hindus, Sikhs, and hordes) can declare automatic religious wars on succession

I started war with my rival Tunis right away, before they could ally Ottomans. They allied Granada, so the goal was to force vassalize them, and then maybe grab some coastline in North Africa so future wars will be easier.

Unfortunately my king died almost right away. The random event was 91k peasant rebels, which is fairly mild as these events go.

One event PU already happened offscreen, of Ennarea over Kaffa, both in East Africa.

The first succession happened far too early, and peasants are not happy about it

I didn't want to make any event 100% good or 100% bad, and technically "your rebels could fight your enemies" makes it only a 99% bad event