1.9 Kingdom of Jerusalem Planning

[TheMeInTeam]

You have two options for this achievement. I've done a lot of testing with this (as has Josh127), and I'm sure others have as well. I'll share what I've found so far:

Knights:

- Historical friend of Venice and can ally them consistently, sometimes getting them to friendly.
- Venice's galley fleet is not reliable, so it's difficult to use it to defeat the Ottomans early.
- 4 tax is feasible to convert with an inquisitor.
- Attacking Berber nations is far less doable now with the change to how allies are called.

Plans: Bring Venice in on Byzantium, move capitol to Constantinople, pick religious ideas.

Cyprus:

- Hostile situation with no immediate allies as in 1.9 you can't guarantee Poland
- However you can defeat Byzantium solo with a day 0 DoW if you let them land troops on you + get stackwiped --> land on Athens once you get enough galleys.
- You won't convert Cyprus before religious ideas or forming KoJ.
- Once you have Byzantium as a vassal you can ally Poland and possibly Aragon depending on Iberian wedding.

Plans: Move capitol to Constantinople, pick religious ideas.

I don't like either of these. Doing a no CB hurts with 0% unity when you need ADM ideas to convert Judea and likely your other provinces, and both cases you rely heavily on the Ottomans targeting the Mamluks and winning sufficiently to give you an opening. Conquering BYZ and moving capitol to Constantinople (done to floor LA to 0 and give you a ton of money) gives you a FL around 8 and the ability to afford considerably more than that, so if you gain momentum piggybacking on the Ottomans you can win that war, but you're so dependent on it with this opening.

So, I'm open to suggestions. The goal is to power spike enough to solo the Mamluks by 1490, so you have enough time to take and convert Judea by ~late 1490's when the reformation happens sometimes. I have some alternate considerations:

1. Opening Administrative ideas and getting to the 5th idea will give you 6 extra FL, but virtually guarantees you won't be able to convert Judea by yourself in time. To do this, we'd need a vassal that opens religious ideas and can be fed, and it's hard to find one other than Teutonic order or Muslim tech nations we can't see (full annex --> released into Christianity, true long shot).

2. Opening Trade ideas gives us much more naval FL and money, pretty good for a game where you just go Orthodox but not so hot for our goals here, even if it does give you the ability to make enough ships to beat the Mamluks at sea. The problem with beating Mamluks at sea is that you still can't safely land pre-1500 with this strat, except in Tunis, and you're not going to march 6 regiments into Mamluks lands without piggybacking the Ottomans anyway.

3. Opening a military idea doesn't really work here as far as I can tell.

4. Normal Euro majors won't help you with the Mamluks, so while they can help you survive you don't thrive that way.

Is there something I'm missing? Some sneak attack that will net us the kind of FL necessary to win the day? I can picture an "ally Venice and vassal --> force religion on Theodoro" strat, but Genoa will draw the empire and Crimea the Ottomans. Georgia + co are doable but then QQ hates you and won't let you through.

 

[Chimerae]

One more problem: as soon as you take cyprus as the knights, Venice will hate you when they take the mission.

 

[Clownie]

One more problem: as soon as you take cyprus as the knights, Venice will hate you when they take the mission.

-96 opinion. If it's at +200 when you take it, it'll go down to +104, which means they won't go hostile.

@TMIT: Doesn't Syria take religious ideas?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

-96 opinion. If it's at +200 when you take it, it'll go down to +104, which means they won't go hostile.

@TMIT: Doesn't Syria take religious ideas?

I believe they go defensive --> religious. If they go religious first they'll take a lot of pressure off this, though getting such a vassal in time and annexing it would still be an uphill climb you could at least juice your FL a little via ideas.

A big advantage for the Knights is that Venice can often be coaxed into attacking Mamluks with some luck, which while normally would be limited in effectiveness tends to work much better in tandem with Ottos. As Cyprus you're not going to get that from Poland or even Aragon. Still, Venice could easily get dragged into French wars, ganked by Austria + friends, or declare for Cyprus at an inconvenient time for you.

 

[Clownie]

In my experience, they will never, ever fight you for Cyprus if opinion is +200 before you annex it.

 

[Pornek]

The goal is to power spike enough to solo the Mamluks by 1490, so you have enough time to take and convert Judea by ~late 1490's when the reformation happens sometimes. I have some alternate considerations

Is this something youre absolutly set on ?

 

[Clownie]

Unfortunate.

 

[balmung60]

If you need a vassal with Religious Ideas, here's what's nearby for nations that take Religious Ideas first: Naxos (vassal of Genoa), Epirus (cores inside Ottomans), Achaea (cores inside Byzantium), Albania (only challenge is getting it before the Turks do), Montenegro (province of Zeta, held by Serbia), Aq Qoyunlu (nominally takes Expansion first, but has no coast and Religious is next (tested and they do take it first if you release them), Crete (core on Venetian province thereof), Corfu (vassal of Venice) Iraq (cores in QQ).

Out of these, I think Achaea holds the most promise - Albania and Montenegro might be easier targets, but they'll need to leapfrog their coring range to core provinces in the Levant, and pretty much everything else is a harder target than Byzantium. Though I'm pretty sure there are some dirty tricks you could pull to force Albania or Montenegro to be able to core the Levant, like if you could manage to force their capital over there by giving away their only core.

 

[Mztr44]

If it helps any, you can fab a claim on Mentes and improve relations with Karaman from day 0. Get military access from Karaman when relations are high enough, and put a troop on your cog ready to land in Karaman when your claim is done, if you try to land in Mentes the Ottoman fleet will sink you. Declare on the Ottomans and land your troop, send your cog home and start looting the ottoman provinces, cancel military access to Karaman so you can get all of them but Mentes & Tekes. The Ottomans don't care because they are sieging Albania. You can do a circuit of Anatolia at least 3 times before the Ottomans start sending troops after you, maybe more. Once you have all the money you can get, queue up as many Carracks as you can and offer tribute to the ottomans for your remaining cash and 10% war reparations for 10 years. After they accept peace you can cancel all the carracks and you've just quadrupled your starting money.

Edit: There is also a very slim chance while you are at war you get the decision to convert Rhodes for 4k manpower @ 75% chance since you're at war and have an unconverted province.

 

[Thesian]

One thing to beat the provinces out of the Mamluks could be an alliance with the Ottomans via support independence.

From 1458 on, if Cyprus has a regency or a female ruler (like the super-crappy heiress you start with), the Mamluks offer an ultimatum to become their vassal. No restrictions regarding AI-only or anything, you can of course refuse. If you can prevent the Ottomans from hating you, you should be able to get them to support your independence and from their it should be a cakewalk to Jerusalem. You would probably have to mainly sit on your hands till then and especially dont take stuff from Byzantium, the Knights or the Beyliks in order to not anger the Ottomans. The event is in the Mamluk file.

I haven't tried that theory in practice yet though and instead blobbed all over the place with the Knights (without reaching Jerusalem in time to reform, but at least that saved me from the decision to swap to a worse color and flag).

 

[ErikHeinrichs]

Sucks a little that i have already done, one my second try, forming of KoJ as Cyprus in 1.8.1. I took religious first and did some smallish conquering until i noticed that Ottomans were kicking Mamluk teeth in so i jumped on it and took the three provinces need, cored and converted. When i got pop up for the decision to form KoJ the reformation was already 91-92% so it was pretty damn close.

Currently the "finished" game looks like this

 

[Chimerae]

I took religious first and did some smallish conquering until i noticed that Ottomans were kicking Mamluk teeth in so i jumped on it and took the three provinces need, cored and converted.

That is more or less purely based on luck :/

 

[ErikHeinrichs]

That is more or less purely based on luck :/

The teeth kicking isn't luck. It's a fact as Ottomans never ever lose against Mamluks but yeah... having the right moment to jump on them while that is happening is bit of luck but hey... so is basicly anything in this game.

 

[dirtInfestor2]

If you do not want to form KoJ asap you can try to ally PLC, wait for the Ottomans to warn you, then start a no-cb against Wallachia so that you can crush the OE first without them being able to call their own allies - i dont know if this works though, but i just saw someone on reddit doing it.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I've done it in 1.8 with the knights. It basically boils down to luck and restarting a lot of times. There is no time to relocate, and beside that it's just too gamey. You need three pieces of the puzzle to fall together flawlessy:

1) Venice needs to conquer Cyprus for you in the first years of the campaign, defeating the mameluks on the sea. They are evenly matched and the naval AI is erratic, so it's far from easy.
2) Venice will hate you for taking Cyprus, so you need allies to win a war against them or scare them long enough to change their attitude. Fail to do so and Venice will annex you in no time.
3) You need the mameluk's military to be pounded into nothing by ottomans and the black sheep/white sheep hordes. Preferably at the same time. Then you have to jump in with your meagre force and hope the mams do not reorganize. If they put five regiments together, they'll destroy you. Take tons of debts and go all in, for this is your only chance to take Jerusalem. Only Venice could help here, and even them do mostly nothing.

From here, congratulations, you're Jerusalem. A dirty poor five province minor surronded by huge countries who hate your guts. If you time your expansion well, you could survive till the time your superior tech group begin to shine, and then you have hope of defeating the Turks. I've finished the campaign with all the North Africa up to Tunisia, Arabia, the Levant and the southern coast of Anatolia.

There are other possible strategies, like going for Byzatium like you plan, but I feel you want to ignore the ottomans early on, mantaining a low profile. A single war with them, even if somehow you win, will slow you down fatally.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Is this something youre absolutly set on ?

If it's not possible, fine. But I'm not so fast to give up on such things.

Out of these, I think Achaea holds the most promise

The problem with the Ortho ones is that you have to convert them first (or vassal --> force religion) or they'll be Orthodox, but this is a longer list than I expected so maybe I can make something happen with administrative or trade after all...probably not the latter though since that route makes me want to beat the Ottomans and that's counter-productive.

Edit: After some thinking, the Cyprus route where you vassal or full annex Byzantium (more likely vassal) --> force release Achaea --> vassal + force religion on Achea could work. AFAIK, Naxos is a vassal of Venice, not Genoa, and that's prohibitive to this run in most cases (sometimes Venice will declare on you and lose to the Mamluks, but this is even less reliable than piggybacking Ottos).

Iraq is no-go; you can't see it or beat QQ in time and if you could, you could just take out Mamluks lol. I can't picture anything but Achaea and Montenegro being consistent, but thank you for pointing them out as I didn't realize they were options!

There are other possible strategies, like going for Byzatium like you plan, but I feel you want to ignore the ottomans early on, mantaining a low profile. A single war with them, even if somehow you win, will slow you down fatally.

After jacking Constantinople you can get upwards of 30-40 galleys, and this will let you soundly defeat the Ottomans. The main problem with doing that is that you gimp the Ottomans, rendering them incapable of defeating the Mamluks and thus blocking yourself from getting KoJ in time. If you just want a strong start as Knights or Cyprus, going Orthodox and snagging BYZ --> spam galleys off 0 LA same-religion Constantinople (moved capitol floors it to 0%) allows you to do a slightly slower Byzantium type of game. That's not what I'm going for here, but it's strong enough if you just want a good opening.

One thing to beat the provinces out of the Mamluks could be an alliance with the Ottomans via support independence.

I had considered this possibility, but the Ottomans begin the game hostile and it's quite difficult to change that as they're more than -10.

Anyway, snagging Constantinople and going administrative ideas + admin 5 will give you somewhere in the neighborhood of a 14 FL and money to pay for it. Your own stuff will be stuck as Orthodox, but feeding Achea should do the trick to get KoJ. You are still reliant on the Ottos to weaken the Mamluks, but less grossly so as there's a big difference between a FL of 5 and a FL of 14 when it comes to killing Mamluk stacks as they're trained while also sieging.