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Let's Decide What To Do With Aragon in... EU3: Magna Mundi!

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Iituem:
Let's Play England - EU3: Magna Mundi

This is my first playthrough of the Magna Mundi mod for Europa Universalis 3.  I have been warned numerous times by players, watchers and even the manual itself to treat this as a completely new game.  Let's see what sort of pain we're in for.

England seems like a relztively 'safe' choice.  Experienced players of vanilla EU3 will no doubt call me a pansy for taking such an easy nation and, were this vanilla, I would be inclined to agree.  Then again, I have been told repeatedly (see above) that I cannot pull a "turn Ansbach into the HRE and then conquer the world" like I did the last time I played - or at least, not easily.  For now, I'm staying out of the Holy Roman Empire since it's been reworked so much (we'll conquer that beast when we come to it) and taking on a modestly powerful nation in good stead to hit the Americas.

My standard rules for LPs apply - Ironman, so no savescumming and I have to roll with the punches and suffer any tactical errors I make (and I will make them, I am not Dick Mountainjoy).  Audience participation is allowed and encouraged in the form of cabinet ministers or advisors, much in the same vein as Sirus' GalCiv LP.  I really prefer people to take appropriate names for the era: John Sergeant, Emile Hauser, Caravaggio il Marconi and Xochitl Achcauhtli are all acceptable names (the last only once the Americas are discovered), but if someone signs up as a minister called 'lazybones77' they can expect me to forcibly rename them if they want mentioning in the write-up.

Alternatively, adopt one of the in-game cabinet advisors, or else one of the traditional Earls or Dukes of England (or even a low-level Baronet trying to make a name for himself) and try to make a name for yourself.

Spoiler: Shouldn't you be doing You are King? (click to show/hide)Yes, but that takes a certain amount of creativity and thought.  This is something I'm less obligated to do and makes a fine relaxation exercise.


Our Kingdom in 1399

Richard II has been captured and forced into abdication.  His imprisonment in Pontefract Castle is unlikely to last long - the new King will be unlikely to bother spending much on his food supplies.  In the twenty-two years under his reign, we have seen England battered by peasant revolts and an attempted war by Scotland and France deflected by scorched ground preventing their advance. 

Richard's attempts to rule unbound by ministerial restrictions and the subsequent mistreatment of the lords appelant who opposed his misrule (and their supporters) earned him powerful enemies in noble families such as the Courtenay, Earls of Devon.  Although Richard's reforms ended the war with France and thus reduced his reliance on parliamentary grants for taxation, Richard's lavish expenditures put the kingdom's finances in even greater peril.  His campaign in Ireland helped restore Crown authority and installed the Duke of Surrey as the new Lieutenant of Ireland, in no small part to deflect Surrey's claims to the succession.  Unfortunately, Richard's second military campaign in 1399 left Irish affairs in an extreme state of flux, with no guarantee of the long term position of the English crown.

The last two years of Richard's reign saw an increased degree of tyranny and taxation, seeing the Earls Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick (all senior Appelants) arrested on suspicion of a plot.  Warwick is now in prison, whilst Arundel has been executed and Gloucester has died under unknown circumstances whilst in the company of men of the Duke of Nottingham.  With no heir and only a 7-year-old French princess for a bride, the Lancaster family made its claims to the throne via John of Gaunt, whose son was Henry Bolingbroke, Duke Hereford.  Gaunt and Bolingbroke made Richard promise to uphold the inheritance of their estates if either died - a promise Richard reneged on when Gaunt died, exhiling Bolingbroke and disinheriting him.  This was not only gravely unpopular but a breach of law and precedent beyond the limits of what even a king could get away with.

In 1399, Richard's position was on the surface stronger than ever before; his marriage to the French princess left him with not only a 28-year truce with France but an £83,000 dowry - putting him £43,000 in the black for the first time in his entire reign.  Richard felt secure enough to take his most loyal men with him on his second expedition to Ireland - leaving nobody loyal behind in England.  Henry Bolingbroke landed in Yorkshire with a small force of men and gathered support from many of the nobility and neutrality from the rest.  With no supporters left in England and no place to land safely, Richard surrendered at Conway Castle before being transferred to Pontefract Castle where he was imprisoned and abdicated the throne.

Yesterday, the 13th October 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was crowned Henry IV of England, of the House of Lancaster.  History awaits with baited breath to see what this new King and his nobles will do.


Spoiler: The Realm (click to show/hide)
The State of the Realm - A junior minister's report.

Home Affairs
As a nation we operate on a fairly decentralised government with a lot of power given to the various Dukes and Earls of the nation - we do not have a truly nationalised army or government, but neither is the king completely at the whims of the nobles.  The decentralisation affects the tax income and productivity of the nation, but seriously clamps down on the revolt risk.  Trying to pull more power towards centralised government will greatly increase the chance of uprising.

Our class structure is quite firmly aristocratic, though not as segregated as France or some of our more extreme continental neighbours.  There is still a small measure of influence from the merchant classes, but some minor policy adjustments to take power away from the nobility would lead to more balanced government.

Serfdom is an ancient and well-respected tradition in England, but our feudal laws are not as absolute as they once were.  Many if not most serfs are strictly tied to the land, but there is enough freedom of movement to sustain a valid urban population.  We can allow this status quo to remain as it is without upsetting things too much.

We are a traditional society, certainly, though not completely closed to new ideas.  This has led to a much more stable country, but we perhaps could do with relaxing some of those constraints to permit a touch more free thought.

If we gradually adopt a balanced approach to our cultural outlook as outlined above, we can expect to see a number of benefits for our country that whilst not obvious should still be significant enough to be worth our while.  We would continue to enjoy these benefits for as long as we remained balanced in our policies.

Militarily we have a strong naval bent, giving the Admiralty much power in our government and making for powerful navies but perhaps sub-par armies.  We have no particular bent towards either offensive or defensive tactics and we definitely prefer exceptionally drilled, high quality forces over mass troop tactics.

Stability is not exactly a non-issue, but there is not a massive amount we can do to improve things.  The magna carta reduces the risk of revolt across the whole of the kingdom massively, as well as aiding in the stability of the kingdom, and our decentralised government assists, but we will always risk revolt in Wales and Ireland due to a failure to accept the culture.  There is nothing we can do to accelerate that acceptance in terms of policy.

The king has a son, Henry, who is 13 years old.  In two years he will reach his majority, and is anticipated to be something of a military genius, though only reasonable at administration and diplomacy.  It is likely that the king will live long enough for a regency council not to be an issue.

Thanks to the popular support of the nobility and Richard's abdication, King Henry's legitimacy is not in question.  So long as he does nothing to damage the legitimacy of the throne (such as claiming another throne, performing dangerous changes to the power balances of the state or starting an illegal war) he should retain all the benfits such legitimacy grants.


Foreign Affairs

Our french provinces are Calais, Gascogne and Saintogne.  We have a foothold in Ireland in the province of Meath, and relatively peaceful relations with the Irish lords.  Our only outstanding legal claim to French land is the county of Armagnac, a vassal of France.

Scotland remains a danger as ever, and remains allied with France.  Should we attempt to retake our claim in France we will have to fend off Scotland as well, and equally we can expect the French to consider Richard's truce as null and void as we do.

On the other hand, if we can capture and hold Lothian and Aberdeen long enough to gain rights to the provinces, we could declare the king ruler of England, Scotland and Wales (in effect, all of Great Britain) and achieve acceptance of Welsh and Scottish cultures as well as attaining land rights to the remainder of the Isles.  We could attempt this through the traditional means of war and then holding it for as long as it takes (up to 200 years, but more likely 80), by fabricating claims to the provinces prior to an invasion (one at a time, possibly taking up to 40-50 years) or by attempting to vassalise and annexe or else to unionise and inherit the nation through diplomacy.  Scotland does have a legitimate heir, however.

France, Castille, Aragon, Bohemia and a large number of the german princes are all without secure successions.  It would be a valid, if not necessarily pleasant strategy (and damaging to our nation's stability) to marry into their lines, claim their thrones and then either build up for an invasion to try and secure the throne in a personal union or else to stay at peace, improve relations and hope for an inheritance.  A third option would involve building up said relations quickly and then assassinating their king, but with our inexperienced spy corps that would likely backfire.


Colonial Affairs

This isn't even an issue.  There are rumours of distant lands, but we would need much better ships and navigation techniques (Naval Tech ideally around 12-14) to even consider funding an expedition to seek them out.  It could be a hundred years or more before we ever have the ability to pull this off.


Trade

We are a member of the Hanseatic Trade League under Lubeck.  This may not necessarily be in our best interests in the long term, but right now our position remains amicable.  Should we leave the League and cease granting Hanseats the trade rights they have enjoyed, we will no longer have the advantages in trading the the League grants and must compete with League merchants.  Right now, London is a centre of trade in its own right and pursuing our moral economic policies should help us milk all that we can from it.  We are maintaining a small presence in Antwerp and Paris, but focusing on achieving a larger stake in our capital might prove a better expenditure of resources.


Military Might

As a nation, we specialise in infantry fighting over cavalry warfare, with our army proper consisting of a rather meagre 4000 soldiers and 1000 cavaliers.  This is about the proportion we need to maintain to avoid cavalry being under-represented in the army, but we will mostly want to keep infantry in play.


Naval Might

One of the few advantages England has is a long history of naval superiority.  We may not be the superpower of the oceans, but we are at least semi-competitive with other nations.  Our Royal Navy makes for some 28 ships of the line, 13 flytes and 17 cogs for troop transport.  Most are engaged in fishing to help supplement wages.  Our tradition of naval fighting instruction and tendency towards grany fleets gives us a vast improvement to the distance our ships can travel for colonial ventures (50%), a significant improvement to our fleet size that counteracts the maluses for a nation of our size (+50% naval force limit, but -40% from arbitrary nation size), and excellent naval morale.


Treasury

The nation is running at a loss of 9.5d/month, pulling in 26.6d/month from tax, trade and production and expending 36.1d/month on various development budgets and stabilising the country (currently due to stabilise sometime in August 1402).  No minting of new currency is being done, and given how difficult it is to reverse minting this policy has been encouraged by the Treasury to continue.  We pull in 86.1d/yr in census tax, but we still end up at a loss of 15d/year overall.  Right now we have 109d to spend.

Increasing taxation would be an excellent way to improve funding - given Henry's administrative, ah, limitations, a sherriff or treasurer would have to be hired and given a cabinet position to administer tax changes, but an additional 10-15% in tax could be wrung out of the most populous and wealthy provinces in the south of England - not coincidentally also where there is the least risk of rioting.  This would increase the chance of rioting by some 2.5-3.5% in those provinces, but bring in another 7d/yr - seemingly not much but perhaps enough to make a difference.  On the other hand, tax increases would harm population growth and trade in the long run.


Knights of St John

The Order of St John, an order of privateer knights operating in the Mediterranean, have asked to establish a Grand Priory in London.  If allowed we would suffer a small reduction to direct tax (-2%) from granting them church lands and associated tax exemptions, but the morale of our sailors would improve slightly (+0.10) from the training of the knight commanders.  This would also assist the fight against the Moors in the south, not that this terribly concerns us.


What advice does our cabinet have for our young new ruler?  Should we try and improve our revenues, continue funding technology equally across the board (putting our earliest advance some 50 years in the future, compared to 20 with full investment in a single field), try and increase our land holdings in the continent or else try and manage our domestic situation?

Shall we aim to unite the British Isles, or press France and try to break that behemoth's power?  Should we play openly, or pursue a more covert strategy with use of spies? 

Zrk2:
I've never played the mod, but I know that in the regular game your best bet is to sell of your continental holdings anf focus on forming GB.

What is your current mission?

Iituem:
Selling core provinces in MM is (if even possible) generally not desirable.  It takes 200-500 years to lose a core in Magna Mundi, and anywhere between 2-50 years to gain one.

No mission yet, I haven't even played beyond the first day.  Getting input from the watchers first.  We may completely ignore missions, if needs be.

Mr.Person:
The benefits of missions are pretty good, really. They're pretty much generally all worth it except a few. Worst case scenario, we just cancel a shitty mission and go on as normal.

I generally start off by funding stability to full, but my knowledge of MM says to avoid doing that. Hmm... If you can, grab Scotland and/or Ireland in a manner that won't result in war with France. How soon til we get another idea? If it's one government tech away, rush it. Otherwise, go balanced so we don't hit any ahead-of-time penalties and give everybody else neighbor bonuses.

Toady Two:
I once managed to form Great Britain before 1500 in MMP2 with a lucky diplo-annexation of a vassaled Scotland. You're first mission will likely be(I've only played 1453 start) to conquer Normandy. It's really hard since France is difficult to beat on land even if they are fighting on multiple fronts eg. vs Castille and Aragon. If you don't want to meddle in continental affairs then just unify the isles and go colonial. I think duking it with France is more fun though.

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