Well, had I lived some more years…:mad: The Fatimids will be for MsWhatsit, I guess. Too bad there’s a succession right now since they got themselves in a war against the Shash (and also have 96% decadence). They would be ripe for the taking.
I checked and in fact, France lacks 10 counties that belong to us (previously to Burgundy) and one that belongs to Hungary to form an empire. So, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Doing so I noticed that France is going to be much less of a threat than I thought she would. She is still using an agnatic-cognatic gavelkind succession. How she didn’t break before, I don’t know, but this time, unless she changes the succession rules, she’s going to explode. The king is now 55 and upon his death his titles will be shared between 4 daughters (no surviving sons). One kingdom (France, England, Denmark) will go to each of the three eldest, I didn’t look into the detail of the dukedoms.
None of the daughters are married, the oldest being 20.
Ah, one of those quirky rules. The fact that France doesn’t line up well with its historical boundaries shouldn’t really prevent it from claim an imperial crown. If it weren’t a succession game, I’d probably use the console to give the emperor title to them just to make the competition more interesting.
My description of it was brief, but the previous King of France died on my watch. The crowns were split, but they all had claims on each other and were eventually reunited. With daughters holding the crowns, there will definitely be usurpers coming from all directions. With the France part being the strongest, I expect they’ll get reunited under that crown again.
I’ve done empires before. They’re not any more difficult than a kingdom with a lot of duchies. This time it was a little harder because of the elective succession (penalties for holding king titles). With primogeniture, it’s easier, although you get stuck with bad emperors occasionally.
Trying to regroup the links to pictures showing the extension of Aragon. I probably left some links that don’t belong, forgot some that did, and generally messed up the quotes. Let’s see…
But on the other hand there are vassal bonuses with the elective succession.
And I rather liked to have the opportunity to choose my successor, and since everybody was a Jiménez anyway, I had a large pool to chose from. Although I must admit that once I had him lined up as my successor, I wouldn’t have dared to try to change (If I had died at the beginning of my reign, the empire would have split and I would have been the first player to hand back a realm smaller than the one he got). And I suspect I would have been in some troubles too if he had died before me.
Trying to have your guy elected seems like a fun part of the game, though. No regret at all, and I will probably try that in my individual games instead of switching to agnatic primogeniture as soon as I can as I used to do.
I’ve looked up and asked on the Paradox forums. It seems that inheritance and claims pressed work differently :
-If a vassal inherits a foreign title, he will stay a vassal only if his current title is equal to or higher than the title he’s inheriting. So, in this case, Mendo being a lowly Hispanian baron and inheriting the kingdom of Wales became an independant king, and added his barony to his kingdom to boot. On the other hand, Gomez beong already king in Spain added the kingdom of Burgundy to his realm while staying a vassal of the empire.
-On the other hand if we press the claim of a vassal or of a mere courtier who is also a member of our dynasty, he will stay a vassal regardless of the relative importance of the titles. So, in this example, if instead of waiting for the death of the previous king of Wales, I had pressed Mendo’s claim on Wales and won the war, or if currently my successor press the claim of his sister, he (or his sister) would have become a vassal king of Wales automatically.
The first part has been verified “experimentally” in this game, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the second part, not having tested it, and not feeling like loading an old save and testing it at least at the moment.
OK, in fact curiosity got the best of me, and I tested. It didn’t take much time, in fact. I pressed the claim of mendo’s sister without giving her any title (so as to verify that a member of the dynasty doesn’t need to have a title for her to become a vassal after a successful claim war), and it worked. So, the condition for someone to stay/become a vassal after a successful claim war aren’t as stringent as they are when it’s an inheritance.
Also, I discovered while testing a kind of casus belli I didn’t even know the existence of : the “dispute succession” Casus Belli “Princess Aragonta of Hispania was a pretender to the kingdom of Wales when the old ruler died, granting the emperor Tello I of Hispania the possibility to start a fullblown succession crisis on their behalf” . From what is written, consequences seem to be pretty much similar to a regular claim war except that they include “Implement limited crown authority”. So I guess that if Hispania had high crown authority, it would be reduced to “limited” upon starting such a war.
It’s an annoyance that you have to pretty much test anything or ask people on Paradox forums to know how the game actually works in various circumstance. But then again, for some reason, Paradox has somehow been unable to release proper manuals/documentation since their very first game Europa Universalis I a dozen years ago (I remember, I bought this game at the time)
Especially annoying since they change substantially the rules with their patches without,again, any written documentation. And it’s the same thing with the DLCs. Even though Muslims in “Sword of Islam” don’t work at all like Christian rulers, there isn’t any manual explaining the mechanisms/differences for this DLC, for instance.
I’ve formed the Wendish Empire before. I think that’s the easiest empire to form, too. I still struggle with desmene size, though. I think my actual problems lie in my aggressive taxation and what not. When I get that big, or on the way, I need to relax the tax laws a lot more.
Have never ruled a large empire. Don’t be surprised if the next person who gets my save finds himself ruling a tiny island somewhere while the rest of Hispania ends up in the hands of the pope or something.
That’s a good goal for the next person-- vassalize the pope. It’s actually not that hard. You take one of your family members, make them a bishop and give them enough stuff that they like you better than the pope. Then make them an Antipope, then have a war to install them on the Holy See in Rome. The Pope can raise 10k or 20k troops, but that’s very possible for Hispania to beat at the moment. Once you’ve done that, you can excommunicate basically everyone at will and all of your bishops automatically pay all their taxes and provide their troops to you. Papal vassalage even transfers from Pope to Pope after your own personal Pope dies.
Hey, guys. Sorry for the delay. I opened the game a few days ago and it’s hella daunting so I haven’t touched it yet. I’ll definitely play through it either tonight or tomorrow.
My first impression is that I am completely loathed by all of my most powerful vassals. We’re talking -100. A big chunk of this is because of demenses and duchies, so I’ll have to start giving those away.
That seems to be yet another instance of the AI not being very smart. The Pope usually has enough gold to hire all the mercenaries at once if he needed to, but for some reason waits until you’ve thrashed his piddly normal levies to hire any. You just have to make sure you catch the mercenary armies as he raises them before they get up to strength and then, yeah, it’s pretty easy.
One other fun vassal Pope perk is making him your court chaplain and sending him on errands. Hey Pope! Quit wasting your time in Rome and go convert some heathens in this tiny Iberian county I just conquered!
Alrighty. My turn is over. I frankly didn’t know what to do with all of this so I mostly focused on lowering my demense size to something reasonable and making my vassals not hate me quite so much. A few feasts and some targeted land granting got things sorted out pretty well, which had great effects on my bank account. The next in line (least original user name, I believe, will be starting with a very sizable bankroll to the tune of nearly 11k gold.
The most notable thing that happened during my reign was the excommunication of the French queen, which resulted into France splitting completely apart. It got back together eventually, and then France united with England, resulting in a giant red splotch to the east.
I also lost the easternmost counties in the holy land when some Sultan or another declared war on me. Everyone and their mother joined the war on my side but it was too far away to do anything.
So, I just took over the game at 61 years of age, an old, madman. This is going to rule. I immediately declared four holy wars on large portions of Africa, gave away a handful of duchies, but didn’t create a kingdom (there’s another couple of duchies we can create as well. I’m going to sent my chancellor to go into England’s territories to see if we can’t stir up some trouble there. 1337 is going to be the Summer of Alvar! Oh yeah, I also created an antipope. So, my goals? Let’s take over Africa, start screwing with England’s empire, and undermine the crap out of the Pope.
1339: One of the holy wars is won (Tangier), one stopped because they stopped rebelling against their liege, and two are still going strong. They squashed my retinue, so now I’ve bought all the mercenaries and I’m stomping infidels.
Its good to be the emperor.
Oh yeah, someone had my wife killed, so I get to marry a nice, fresh 16 year old.
ETA: Ooh, also my claim for the Duchy of Toulouse is coming in. This could work spectacularly!
1341: England is breaking up very nicely in France, so as soon as this last holy war is over, I’m going after the two duchy claims I have pressed there. This is working nicely. I think all of it is because of Glitterhoof, my horse, who I just named my new Chancellor.
1342: I had a small revolt in Ireland. They shall be squished mercilessly.
1355: Glitterhoof and I had a mild disagreement, so I was summarily crushed. I totes had it coming.
The only wars going on are the one in Ireland (which already has troops there), and some related attackers in Tangier… We picked up Toulouse, Auvergne, Angoulerne, and the Duchy of Tangier. I think England is a little susceptible to a bunch of claims, too. France is back again now, albeit in a much smaller capacity. Who gets it next?
Oh yeah, pics(before and after). I see that we lost Sicily and Tripoli, though. I’m not sure how that happened.
