Advice on Hispania grand campaign

[Ceranai]

So after a few practice runs I got a good game going in Spain. Starting 769 I used French alliances to first take the south of Spain and by provoking rebellions and then declaring on them I quite quickly united the Iberia peninsula. This was a merc heavy strategy but I've mostly outgrown my use of them now. For some reason I didnt follow at the time the king of Italy converted to Muslim and so I have been holy warring Italy in my spare time (though plan to leave Rome under muslim control to trigger early crusades when it hits 900)

The defensive pacts against me are a bit pathetic so I will probably just keep slowly eating infidel lands. Given this was my second conclave game (first being a ragnar lothbrok run) I decided to empower my council for the vassal limit bonus and to avoid constant civil war (for some reason no matter how nice a ruler I am I get hit with a demand for higher council authority at 200% every decade or so). This gives me a large number of vassals and lets me be centralised so I'm going to shift from stewardship to diplo.

My concerns are:

A) Threat, im currently at 79%, a few more wars will make it hit 100%, are there and super bad things that happen at 100%?

B) how do I best take the south of France to link up my empire

C) What succession and laws do I want as a megablob, due to favours getting a bit out of control my feudal vassals are tax focused and my burgher vassals are levy focused so I am gonna first have to fix that.

D) What late game goals should I have? The early game was a challenge but now its getting a bit dull, I'm mostly waiting for the truce timers on italy and africa

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

A: Read the Tooltip, I'm not sure of the exact negatives, but you can find them there.

B: Marry into Aquitaine and Burgundy. Or, invite a claimant to your court, land him, and then push his claim through war.

C: Try to have the laws as balanced as possible. And Primogeniture and Elective both work pretty well.

D: Maybe you should try to reunite the Western Roman Empire? You're already pushing into Italy and Africa, capture Gaul, England, and Wales and you'd be good!

 

[ninoallen]

how did u gain so much threat? you look like u just been holy warring ?

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

how did u gain so much threat? you look like u just been holy warring ?

Holy Wars can build up threat. I once got like, 15% for Holy Warring for Franconia or Bavaria.

 

[Heinrich4]

how did u gain so much threat? you look like u just been holy warring ?

When you get bigger you will also get more thread per conquered county. In my current playthrough one county gives me 10% threat.

 

[Ceranai]

A: Read the Tooltip, I'm not sure of the exact negatives, but you can find them there.

B: Marry into Aquitaine and Burgundy. Or, invite a claimant to your court, land him, and then push his claim through war.

C: Try to have the laws as balanced as possible. And Primogeniture and Elective both work pretty well.

D: Maybe you should try to reunite the Western Roman Empire? You're already pushing into Italy and Africa, capture Gaul, England, and Wales and you'd be good!

The negatives are basically that at different levels the defensive pacts against you merge or something like that, I was basically worried that at 100% the whole world would coalition me. The problem with the claimant route is that atm my empire is really neatly arranged and landing claimants will screw that up, not to mention it feels a bit gamey, getting claimants shouldnt be hard anyway as I have plenty of spare land and the french succession is a huge mess with claimants everywhere to most of the French kingdoms.

Elective seems a bit risky, every now and again i have to micromanage to keep my dynasty on the throne. The thing with reuniting the Roman empire is that I've done it before and it gets to the point of blobbing for the sake of blobbing. I mean I have 400 years left I could go for an uberblob....

how did u gain so much threat? you look like u just been holy warring ?

Each holy war tends to add between 5-20% threat, by declaring on infidel rebels and force sieging everything I've been able to win maybe 20 holy wars in 100 years, faster than my threat goes down at least, it was around 50 before I started attacking italy, the three wars I've won in italy have given me a lot of threat.

 

[DarthDanMan]

C & D
You could try getting Imperial Administration, and then turning all your vassals into viceroys. It does take up quite a bit of time.

 

[Steel_atlas]

A. Huge coalitions that making prosecuting wars take forever.

B. I wouldnt bother just land some relatives, prefably Italian ones (send some cousins to be tutored by italians, the pope works) then release them, it will lower your threat.

C. I personally stay basic and elective untill I get 5 majesty and 5 legalism, never landing any castillan relatives, then switch to Imperial Admin but staying elective. With no landed same culture relatives you should be able to never have a regency/bad heir.

D.:

Depends if your looking at EU IV after your done.

Heres what I did for my super Hispania campaign.

Dejure drifted everything into K_castile in the traditional E_Spain, including D_barcelona.

This makes sure your Empire transfers with no vassals on the mainland.

Dejure drifted Africa and Marakech into E_Hispania, put relatives on the thrones of K Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Mesopatmia.

The Tunis has a very important trade node in EU IV, and by basically destroying Islam I saved Abysinnia and ended the threat of nearly undefeatble Jihads, in the later years Jihads are pretty unstoppable.

I also broke up K_italy, putting itallian relatives in control of the various duchies and italian merchant republics in Pisa and Genoa, the republics boost the econs of everyone else. Also K_italy is powerful in EU IV.

I also put italian relatives in charge of K_sicily to block ERE blobbing.

Releasing vassals are the only way to lower threat, hence I would basically slowly eat up land then put relatives on the thrones of those areas and then release them once they have solidified their rule, aka no debuffs on their demense.

 

[Ceranai]

A. Huge coalitions that making prosecuting wars take forever.

B. I wouldnt bother just land some relatives, prefably Italian ones (send some cousins to be tutored by italians, the pope works) then release them, it will lower your threat.

C. I personally stay basic and elective untill I get 5 majesty and 5 legalism, never landing any castillan relatives, then switch to Imperial Admin but staying elective. With no landed same culture relatives you should be able to never have a regency/bad heir.

D.:

Depends if your looking at EU IV after your done.

Heres what I did for my super Hispania campaign.

Dejure drifted everything into K_castile in the traditional E_Spain, including D_barcelona.

This makes sure your Empire transfers with no vassals on the mainland.

Dejure drifted Africa and Marakech into E_Hispania, put relatives on the thrones of K Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Mesopatmia.

The Tunis has a very important trade node in EU IV, and by basically destroying Islam I saved Abysinnia and ended the threat of nearly undefeatble Jihads, in the later years Jihads are pretty unstoppable.

I also broke up K_italy, putting itallian relatives in control of the various duchies and italian merchant republics in Pisa and Genoa, the republics boost the econs of everyone else. Also K_italy is powerful in EU IV.

I also put italian relatives in charge of K_sicily to block ERE blobbing.

Releasing vassals are the only way to lower threat, hence I would basically slowly eat up land then put relatives on the thrones of those areas and then release them once they have solidified their rule, aka no debuffs on their demense.

Nah i have no plans to convert, I typically play eu4 for a more challenging strategic experience and ck2 for a more role-playing experience.

Why just land my relatives?

Also the last holy war I won i was able to get to 100% in a month or two before the other coalition people got there, are you saying its gonna get much worse?

 

[Dakilla TM]

I have some questions as I'm planning on a Hispania game soon:

What culture are you gonna flip to? Castillian or Catalan?

But the most important one for me is, where do I set my capitol? Is it Leon, Cordoba, or Barcelona? Or some other place?

 

[Ceranai]

I have some questions as I'm planning on a Hispania game soon:

What culture are you gonna flip to? Castillian or Catalan?

But the most important one for me is, where do I set my capitol? Is it Leon, Cordoba, or Barcelona? Or some other place?

I don't know, if I do bother to culture flip I will probably go welsh for the retinues but Im not trying to min-max this run so will probably stay visgothic as long as I can.

As far as capitals go I went for the duchy of seville, its the richest duchy in spain and if you grab it from the muslims in your first war with them it makes subsequent wars much easier. You do have to convert it from Muslim but given the rest of spain is catholic it pretty much guarantees they will have religious rebels 24/7. Was in a weak position for a bit because I had to give up provinces to stay under the limit and it took 10 years for my base in seville to kick off.

I think the absolute no1 thing about a Spain campaign is to suck up to france and be really opportunistic in spain. By betrothing gisella of france (12 years old at game start) you should be able to get west and east france as allies and together with your troops that gives you about a 1000 troop lead on the muslims for your first war, assuming the ai doesnt derp its relatively easy to win that war. A year after the first war was over rebels popped up in Algarve so I grabbed that next with a merc army and did the same to aragon when it broke off so by the time my second war with the blob came round i was 3 duchies up and he was 3 down

 

[Steel_atlas]

I have some questions as I'm planning on a Hispania game soon:

What culture are you gonna flip to? Castillian or Catalan?

But the most important one for me is, where do I set my capitol? Is it Leon, Cordoba, or Barcelona? Or some other place?

Im pretty sure using the default dejure capital provides a bonus, but I cant say that 100%.

Going Castillan or Catalan have the advantage of easily culture flipping Visigothic lands.

 

[Ceranai]

Im pretty sure using the default dejure capital provides a bonus, but I cant say that 100%.

Going Castillan or Catalan have the advantage of easily culture flipping Visigothic lands.

There isnt a de jure bonus for capitals which is why I always move it to whatever my richest province is

 

[StarSword]

There isnt a de jure bonus for capitals which is why I always move it to whatever my richest province is

Serious question, how do you tell what your richest province is? The size of the loot bar?

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

Serious question, how do you tell what your richest province is? The size of the loot bar?

I just go into the "Economy" map mode. When you hover the province it will display a number.

My capital, Kurzeme, is richer than Venice!