State of the world: 1444
We own Roma (of course), Romanga, and the little white dot over in France, Avignon. Major neighbours are Naples (in purple, currently a subject nation of Aragon), France (the big blue blob), Milan (purplish, in Northern Italy) and Austria (in white). Austria's not really a neighbour, but they're going to be the major stumbling block in any given war we're waging on territory north of us, due to the fact that they are the current Holy Roman Emperor and get called into war by any member states of the HRE when a non-HRE nation declares war on us. We're not a member of the HRE and we can't move our capital, so we can't become one. Sadly, everyone between us and Denmark is a member of the HRE. Expansion that way is gonna be awfully tricky. France is busy in the Hundred Years War with England, which they'll win. The AI can't win it as England.
Other notable neighbours include Provence (light blue), Urbino (the blue one between Roma and Romanga) and Tuscany (darker blue to the north of Roma). Urbino's likely to be war number 1; we have more troops than they do, they're in our way and they're not a member of the HRE. I'd like to take Provence to link up Avignon at least by sea, and because it's a damn good province.
Milan, Siena (Grubby white near Roma) and Tuscany have all declared us as rivals. You'll also note that our ruler, Pope Eugenius IV, is fucking terrible. Not the worst ruler around, but pretty terrible, so we're going to be behind on tech until he dies. Luckily, he's 61 and I'm going to be using him as a general, massively increasing his risk of death. With a bit of luck, we'll get a better Pope next. I'll likely counterrival Siena and Tuscany, using the third rival slot for Urbino and see if I can't get a conquest mission to fire. With a bit of luck we'll annex them before anyone else cares, although I'm going to need allies just in case. Probably Hungary (Reddish brown, across the Gulf of Venice). I'll also likely want France and/or Poland as allies to help combat Austria.
We're also going to need to figure out what our first set of national ideas are going to be. I'm going to be daft and leave it up to you all. We get 8 of these groups through the game and we can drop them later to replace them, although we only get 10% of the points spent back. Assuming we don't have any -idea costs, they're 2800 of the relevant monarch points to fill out an idea group, so dropping groups is expensive as all hell.
Innovative: less war exhaustion, cheaper tech, cheaper mercenaries, cheaper advisors, and some other crap, in order of actual use. Meh/5
Religious: Free casus belli on heathens and heretics, much stronger missionaries, hella cheap stability and cheaper culture changing. Pretty good, particularly in an RP mindset.
Economic: Mo' money. Not nearly as useful as it sounds.
Expansion: A colonist, a trader and some colonial growth. Flat out useless as a first idea.
Administrative: Hella cheap mercenaries, cheaper core costs (really the only useful bit) and cheaper admin tech. A pretty solid first idea group. The mercenaries could be handy and the cheaper cores and admin tech can save a lotta points.
Humanist: Unrest? What's that? Basically deletes the unrest mechanic from the game, particularly if you have a -unrest advisor or nation specific ideas. Fapfapfapfap/5. Do want.
Espionage: Trash. Skip.
Diplomatic: We can't get royal marriages and personal unions, so we lose a lot of the bonuses of this, but it's still a strong idea group, particularly for the reduced province warscore cost.
Trade: Take a wild guess. Not a bad group, especially for a larger empire spread across a bunch of trade nodes.
Exploration: Also what it sounds like. Would let us get into the colonial game with some diplomatic technology and a bit of luck, although I'm not sure we'd really be able to support colonies at this stage.
Maritime: Bonuses to light ships. Allows ships to repair in coastal sea zones. Can be pretty strong.
Influence: More money from vassals, cheaper vassal annexation, less aggressive expansion so people don't care if you're a warmonger so much. Also very stronk.
Aristocratic: More manpower, cheaper military tech, +1 leader shock stat. Very strong as a first idea due to the shock stat being the only one that really matters at this stage in the game.
Offensive: Faster sieges, slightly better troops, multiple of leader bonuses. can be very handy.
Defensive: Less attrition for you, more for the enemies and your provinces get sieged much slower. AKA Russian tactics.
Quality: Better troops across the board. Solid later on.
Quantity: Imperial Guard tactics. Very good, particularly if used with Quality.
Naval: England/Great Britain. More, better boats. Probably not that useful for us, to be honest.
Overall campaign goal is to take Constantinople and Jerusalem as our own. Should we manage that, I'll let you pick another goal. I'd like to declare the Kingdom of God on Earth by taking all of Italy, but it's gonna be awfully tricky to do until we get a lot bigger. I should also note that I'm playing on Ironman mode for the first time, so lucky nations are on historical, meaning that Castille, the Ottomans, Muscovy, England, France, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Brandenburg and Sweden are all going to be a little stronger. Normally I play with lucky nations off, so I'm probably going to lose to the Ottomans the first time I go for them.
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Topic: Europa Universalis 4 LP - The Papal States (Read 5376 times)