What if the Pope had 200,000 men? -- a Papal States EU3 1.3 aar

[chefportnen]

The game can get boring once you start going on that never-ending rampage that culminates in a WC. That's why I vote for these Papal Conspiracies:

1. Edit in some sort of depression that crashes your economy, putting you on the defensive and making the game more challenging.

2. Assassinate your Pope and mod the game so that power-hungry cardinals carve up your empire into different bishoprics, leaving you to reunite the Catholic world.

3. Simulate the actions of your Pope; seeing as how he's got horrible stats, play the game as how he would. Make diplomatic and political blunders, screw the economy, and fight poorly.

[Novea]

What about continuing your string of conquest , crushing and destroying most of the Islamic Middle East and Iberia and France . Afterwards , stimulate the reign of incompetent popes and send the Papal States spiralling.

[safferli]

Thanks for your comments -- I'll think about a few modifications that might be appropriate. We'll see if I can turn this game into an interesting and intriguing one for you and me.

I'll post my ideas here for discussion, once they -- well, exist And I'd appreciate any help for the modding, as I've never done this before. But no need to rush!

[sergius]

Wonderful AAR!
There is another option borrowed from Storey's game: get Mekka, let Burgundy limp away. You will be able to get your teeth in them later on.

The interesting aspect can be added by seeting yourself a far away and hard to get goal: get Badagashan in Afganistan or some COT from Ming. For fun's sake you can give yourself a time limit of 50 years to reach the goal (or some other time limit). By the time you are done you will have much smaller Bad Boy and you will be able to continue on spreading in Europe.

One question - why are you not converting your native provinces, or Muslim ones? Before WC you do not want to have many religions in your realm.

[henryjai]

Mecca provides +0.1 annual prestige, annex that province...

perhaps a diplo annexation of Burgundy after 30 years would be good?

[Paxdax]

Who is there to seriously challenge you? Take as much as you can, and let the gangbangers come, and kick their arses! MUAHAHAHA!

[safferli]

perhaps a diplo annexation of Burgundy after 30 years would be good?

I can only diploannex vassals, and the warscore required to forcevassalise Burgundy is insane. As Papacy, I can't form royal marriages... pity that

One question - why are you not converting your native provinces, or Muslim ones? Before WC you do not want to have many religions in your realm.

Simple answer: I'm an idiot. Also, I needed my money for the wars. These army (and navy!) sizes are completely nuts. I heard in NA 2.1 it's even worse? When I had some money left over, I decided that building a manufacture or two might be the better way to go. In retrospect that was wrong, because you only get a limited amount of missionaries but can build manufactures any time. Plus, the benefits of converting pagan provinces is immense, as they switch to your state culture.

[mad general]

You Are Doing Good.

[safferli]

Chapter 25: The Incompetency of Xystus IV


The Papal Empire saw it's largest and most decisive decline during the reign of Xystus IV. An empire that 6 popes had built for nearly a century was threatened with extinction after less than a year.

Xystus IV took over leadership in the successful war against Burgundy. He forced a peace treaty, taking all of the Burgundian Brasilian holdings, including a Centre of Trade in Santo Amaro. The muslim Holy City of Mekka was wrested from infidel hands on the same day.

The goal of Xystus IV, to control all Holy Cities, was complete with the conquest of Mekka.

But Xystus was easily distracted with "the ladies", irritating the ruling bishops. Over time, it became apparent that he could not, or would not, rule with the same iron fist and regal air as his predecessors had. The first man to exploit this was Antonio Innocenti, Vice-roy of South America. Rumours were that drinking too much coffee and eating too much chocolate prompted him to go native. He crowned himself Túpac Amaru II and re-instated the Incan Empire. His first official act was to declare war on his former Pope and master. (Silly AI...)

Conquistador Massano was leading his group of 6 cavalry regiments north, and was completely surprised by this act of treason. Wave after wave of Incan attackers came, wave after wave were bloodily slaughtered off. After more than 50 skirmishes, lasting at most a day, Massano had fought nearly every single Incan regiment and lost less men due to wounds than to attrition.

The self-stylised Túpac Amaru II realised the stupidity of his declaration of war and sought peace. Xystus IV was lenient and accepted a white peace with his former vice-roy, effectively recognising him as Incan ruler.

History has proven this to be his most severe error. Many local bishops grabbed the opportunity to declare themselves independent. The tribal regions of the Huron seceded and three newly-acquired French provinces elected a king to rule them and founded the kingdom of Guyenne. An uprising so close to Rome itself could not be ignored. Pope Xystus IV didn't bother, but the cardinals of Rome sent orders for the Papal Army to march into Guyenne. A peace treaty was soon signed, but the Guyenne king stubbornly refused to swear an oath of fealty of the pope.

Xystus IV realised that while he controlled all of the three Holy Cities of the world, the world did not recognise this -- he was denied the right of the conquest of Rome, by the mere technicality that he didn't conquer Rome. Ill-meaning Swiss advisors told him that if he embraced the Protestant faith, the world would recognise his conquest of Rome.

Gullible, Xystus IV agreed and forsake centuries of dogma and church doctrine.

[safferli]

To his great satisfaction, the world suddenly realised that he held Rome.

But, his treacherous Swiss advisors had neglected to point out that the world would then forget about the conquests of Jerusalem and Mekka.

Xystus was sent into a screaming fit, and only recovered after two weeks. Meanwhile, the Empire was falling apart. Revolts were widespread and numerous.

World opinion was at a record low, even countries such as Tibet had more of a say in international procedure. War exhaustion was high and the country was in turmoil. Xystus IV decided to head the armies personally, to keep his Empire from disintegrating.

How can such an imbecile get so good stats?!? Darn...

Ok, so I decided on the further heading of this aar. I have taken the following steps to make it a bit more interesting:

• difficulty is set to normal
• inflation is set to 29%, to ret-con the effects a normal difficulty would have had
• peace with Burgundy, taking the Brasilian provinces and annex Hedjaz (Mekka)
• Inca and Huron released as vassals and set free.
• Guyenne released as vassals and attacked
• war exhaustion set to 15. Revolt risk is very high due to this and income is nearly zero.
• stability investments set to zero
• prestige set to -99
• badboy set to 32.9
• serfdom_freesubjects set to +2 (additional three moves to the right), centralization_decentralization set to -5 to simulate the turmoils of the country
• set and keep tolerance for pagan religion to -5, the minimum. For the rest of the game, this slider will stay there.
• turn protestant. Many forumites asked for it, and here it comes. It's pretty harsh, as we have only two protestant provinces in the Empire (Switzerland and Napoli). Income is low due to the wrong religion penalty. We chose Deus Vult as a NI, so that no other of our provinces have converted. We will keep Deus Vult, so that we have to manually convert all of our provinces.
• lastly, I converted Xystus IV to a general, guaranteeing that he will have a long, happy and healthy life hampering me with his abysmal stats.

So, updates will now be less regular, as I need to play a bit ahead of time. On the other hand, it's possible to influence my gameplay, if you feel the urge!

I wish to thank everyone reading and, especially, posting to this aar. It's very rewarding to find so many people actually interested in my game!

[chefportnen]

Now this is similar to another Papal AAR I read, where the Papal States are always on the verge of collapse but are saved. Too bad it ended prematurely, but thank God for this one!

[chefportnen]

I invoke the powers of thread necromancy to request an update.

[safferli]

Ah, thanks chefportnen for figuratively kicking me in my lazy backside! I'm in the middle of moving to a different country and changing jobs, so I haven't had the time you all deserve. I can't play the game at the moment, because I'm at my parent's house over the holidays.

But -- have no fear! I have a few screenshots left over and I'll share them on Christmas Eve (no time before that, sorry). Spirit of Christmas and all that...

Meanwhile, merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone and thank you far all the wonderful comments, AARs and sense of community I get in here!

[safferli]

Chapter 26: Consolidating Years


The following years were difficult but only in the sense that previous popes were accustomed to being able to tell their Chancellor of the Exchequer "do it!" and it would be done. The modded revolt risk is killing our income, even with our cores. 1.69 tax income in a base 12 province. And I thought I'd never see something like that in my own games!

The first real shock came with the first yearly census tax. Pope Xystus VI believed he would be able to spend a few hundred ducats, but no. A measly 30 ducats arrived in the papal coffers. Luckily for us, every year this would rise by about 30 ducats, as the revolt risk from war exhaustion is slowly, but steadily beginning to decrease.

But even with all these handicaps, the Papal income is still much larger than their next contestor, Burgundy.

The orders given by the papal advisors were simple: wait it out. Send the Pope to hunt rebels, and wait for the world to forget the incompetency of the last years. War exhaustion would decrease, prestige would normalise and all investment into technology were suspended in favour of increasing stability. This would take about 5-6 years to get to the next level of -2.

Priority would be given to stability investments to get those to an acceptable level. A non-negative level of stability is aimed for, to keep revolt risk down. Every negative level of stability means two extra levels of revolt risk, as a negative stability level has an extra penalty. So, marginal benefits of increasing negative stability are even higher. Besides,we are doing well in the tech race and can afford to spend a decade or two investing in stability. It will hurt, but it's doable.

Meanwhile, the papal advisors look for the best and brightest men in all of the (now smaller) empire. It seems that the AI doesn't value diplomatic advisors as much as I do: We are able to grab another 6-star one! The 5-star colonial advisor spawned in our lands, so he was up for grabs. Given our low prestige and the terrible stats of the pope, we need the extra colonise chance badly. Also, there is a nice event that can fire for 5 or 6-star advisors, that will give us an instant three levels of stability. I'd give up my pope to get that event .

The pope is sent to hunt the many, many rebels. This way, he can't interfere with the daily politics of the Curia. Speaking of which, if you convert to Protestantism, you still keep your cardinals. Until they die, the Protestant Papal States will still be papal controller. Certainly a bug, but good for us. We badly need the BB-reduction.

[safferli]

Our pope on the hunt:

And he's got a lot to do. Setting the tolerance of pagan religions to -5 is doing wonders to our revolt risk in the Americas:

Mecca also isn't happy with their new rulers:

Many countries take the opportunity to stab us int he back (at least secretly). Portugal incites natives. That's bad, but we were able to re-colonise that stretch of land.

And Castille and France never learn. Who do they think they are?

While we wait for our stability to rise, Burgundy wants access to our lands. Well, if it makes them happy...

Then, this event fires. The description nicely, and accurately depicts the state of the empire. But, we were in luck, our stability is already at -3 and we are fully decentralised. Still, only half a year later, and this event would have killed 5 years of stability investments!

Finally, in December 1570, the papal coffers had saved enough ducats to gain a level of stability (that damn BB rating is sending the investment requirements through the roof).

With our stability slowly rising -- much too slowly -- we can now start to save some money for the next, truly gargantuan task: To convert the lands of the Papal Empire to Protestantism! This will take some time (and more than one pope), as you can see from this religion overview...

Merry Christmas AARland!

[mad general]

Send this aar all the way to the 1700's!! It is only 1570 and you are doing better then I would in a whole game !!

[chefportnen]

Nice update. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, Happy New Year, bah humbug (if that's the way you think).

If you survive to the end, convert to Victoria. That would certainly be interesting.

[safferli]

Chapter 27: Sit back and relax


WellI'm back and have played a few more (gametime) years. The problem is, that all of the steps designed to make the game a bit more difficult are actually just forcing me to do nothing for a while. Still, this will allow others AI countries to catch up.

The overall strategy at the moment is to do nothing -- we need to burn our war exhaustion and badboy rating. The war exhaustion is killing our income so there is nothing much we can do but wait. The plan is bring stability back to +0 or even +1 and use our yearly census tax to colonise and send missionaries once we get enough money.

So, nothing much to do and nothing much to report. I hope the next update won't be too boring.

A few random events here and there pull us out of the monotony of waiting for the New Year census taxes and fighting rebels on the way. Agricultural revolution is always nice. I personally always chose more money, who needs more manpower? +2 base tax is invaluable... I side with one of the noble families to avoid costs and stability losses. Bother that the revolt is on Bermuda (there are nobles there? On holiday, I presume...). I need to ship a few regiments there to put it down.

In 1572 our yearly census tax is high enough (more than 400 ducats) so that we can afford to send a missionary in addition to our customary colonists. Normally I'd go for high base tax provinces first, but here only pagan provinces will be targeted. Because I set pagan religious tolerance to -5, revolts are widespread. Converting them will give us a breather. Besides, if you convert a pagan province, the culture of the province will also change to your state culture. That's an additional -30% tax penalty gone! The only problem is, that our share of Lombard culture provinces will go down. I hope that we can still keep Lombard as accepted culture. I really don't want to lose that!

I chose lower-taxincome pagan provinces because they are cheaper to convert. I can afford two, nearly three cheap pagan conversion per year. As we gain 3 missionaries per year (1 from Protestant religion, one from Narrowmindedness full and one from the Conquest of Rome), this way we do not lose any missionaries by hitting the cap of 5 missionaries waiting. Gain three missionaries per year, but only sending two away is akin to killing off one missionary per year. Once more income trickles in, we can send the missionaries to higher tax income provinces as long as we send at least three per year.

Our first new Protestant province (and our third in total)! Demerara has reached city size and is happily payning taxes. Itamarca follows a few weeks after. In total, we have 4 Protestant provinces in our empire...

We gain cores on Toledo, Vizcaya and Almeria, conquests from Castille. More money!

Here, an income overview from 1573. War exhaustion is nearly gone, that's good. We can't even think to do anything before that's completely gone. Inflation is worryingly high, but that's ok. Nothing we can do anyway, we set it at that rate... The main problem is, that it is still another 3 years till our stability has reached -1!

We get to be papal controller (again) in 1573. Funny. After turning protestant that is the second time we can control the pope. Last time I checked, our ruler still has the title "pope". I hope no-one is schizophrenic here!

Our first conversion arrives in February 1574! Tampaulicas is the province and they turn out to tbe fine protestant workhorses and taxpayers!

A little before/after show: Population growth has risen from -2% to +8% (ouch, papal religious tolerance hurts...), revolt risk went down from 14.5% to 2.4% (again, religious tolerance) tax went up from 0.00 to 4.10 (thanks to less revolt risk and no more wrong religion/wrong culture penalties). Manpower went up from 67 to 261 (this is due to the province now being our state culture).

All in all, it's good to have protestants as subjects... Zacatecas is the next province that turns protestant.

And another before/after comparison. Zacatecas has the CoT, so the difference in tax in come is tremendous!

Stay tuned for more conversions and less action in the next update!

[chefportnen]

Woo! Update!

I really don't have much to say. Everything seems to be going smoothly, at least for now.

[safferli]

I really don't have much to say. Everything seems to be going smoothly, at least for now.

Well, there is not really much that can happen, if you just wait for the war exhaustion to drop. As long as no major powers decide to attack the Papal States (and they won't, the AI probably scared of the size still), I don't have much to say!