Benchmark my early Savoy game

[TeeWee]

1.24.1 (latest patch), with DLC: AoW, CS, Cossacks, RoM, WoN, Res Publica (all new for me)

It's 1458 and I'm Savoy. Diplomatically, my allies are France, Milan and Papal states. I chose Milan as an ally because he had Switzerland as rival, and the Swiss had both me and Milan as rival, so I went for the Swiss, Burgundy and Provence as rivals for the first part.

I passively helped France kick out the English (sieging a single province was my contribution). Then, the pope excommunicated Provence and I got a Excomm CB for Draguignan. The pope and the Burgundy-bloc both went for it, but Provence was allied to France and Milan. The Provence-France bloc managed to keep the Burgundians in check.

So I decided to be an opportunistic Duke of Savoy and declared war on Burgundy for Franche-Comte. It was a bit of a difficult dance to keep Franche-Comte occupied, fleeing to Wallis every time the Burgundians or his vassals marched close and hope that France and Milan (in their seperate defensive war versus Burgundy) would kill the Burgundian stacks. With a bit of dancing about, I managed to rack up enough warscore to gain Franche-Comte.

Provence meanwhile was still in a two-way excommunication war with the Pope and Burgundy, and I saw I could declare war on Provence without him dragging in his allies (France and Milan). So I went for that as well, using the pope's excommunication CB on Draguignan. It was a bit of a race against time at the end, because Provence had peaced out his other wars and I still had to siege the capital and a province in my home land to get enough war score but I was just in time.

End result: I managed to grow two provinces in about 15 years. Not bad. But I needed 6 loans totalling 275 to do it.

Question one: is this worth it? I haven't really played a "intermediate" start yet and I can't really tell.

Question two: how to recover? I'm not a huge nation that can easily war itself out of debt using peace deals (I abused that a lot as Russia). If I mothball my fort and dismiss some mercs (I went for mercs in my wars, probably a mistake looking back, I ended up with my manpower intact) and lower maintenance, I can just end up in the positive (+0.5-ish). I also have 3 level 1 advisors, so I can dismiss those, but that will cost monarch points obviously. I can milk money from the estates, but this is the first time I've played with estates on, and it's hard to wrap my head around it and managing loyalty and influence isn't easy.

Last question, this is more game mechanic related. I gained two favors from France, and two from Papal states for participating in their wars. What can I do with these favors? Are they only for calling allies into wars, or can I use them in other ways?

 

[netherlink]

Hi,

All in all i would say your start is OKish. But i wonder how you managed to burn so much money in so opportunistic wars.
Really sad you couldn't get Provence, too.

Anyway, to your questions:

Question one: is this worth it? I haven't really played a "intermediate" start yet and I can't really tell.

Depends on question 2 and what you can make out of it. If you manage to take more land from provence and burgundy, so it was worth the heavy 1st war and hinders france from getting it (with maybe less then 6 loans ^^), for example.

Question two: how to recover?

Your kinda bad eco sux somewhat. I totally think you would've gained way more if you'd just fought Swiss instead. Anyway, first, totally annex Montferat ASAP xD secondly, turn to your smaller neighbours and kill them easy for money and build a snake to Venice or Austria or what ever you wanna conquer later. If that's not possible because of strong alliances, you'd have to relax 'till you have 10 Favors with france ( hint to question 3! ) and then attack. Fabricate claims as hell in the meantime, tho! ^^

Last question

Favors are used for 3 things:
1: to call in an offensive war
2: to tell to prepare for war, which makes them to increase army maintenance, stops them from declaring own wars and increases call-to-arms modifier by 10 for 1 year.
3: to increase their Trust, which makes im less likely to break the alliance, increases call-to-arms modifier and stops them from rivaling you if Trust is 80 or higher.

Hope you're satisfied! ^^

gl hf

*EDIT*
All Favor actions cost 10 Favors

 

[Lord Zsinj]

Ok, my strat for Savoy (successful Savoy into Italy run). Claims on Swiss iron mine province (same state as your 2 Swiss culture provinces), and Novarra. Rush military tech 4. When you get it before Milan, throw down on the first of the month and stack wipe their ass. Take Novarra in War. BUT, before peacing out, throw down on the Swiss (unless you get sucked into some other war). This is merely to let you core Imperial territory and not deal with some inbred Austrian swine telling you to give it back. That is your M.O. in Northern Italy till Shadow Kingdom fires. Don’t take territory from the Swiss, just grab Ducats, War rep, and alliance break them.

Milan should be your first big goal to eat. Spend all favors with France to build trust. Try to keep the inbred shitpiece wearing the Papal Tiara happy to avoid excommunication, and slowly eat Italy. If you do any to get really frisky, no CB some Berbers when they are tied up in another war to grab some of the Maghreb.

 

[tobias.mb]

Question one: is this worth it? I haven't really played a "intermediate" start yet and I can't really tell.

Question two: how to recover? I'm not a huge nation that can easily war itself out of debt using peace deals (I abused that a lot as Russia). If I mothball my fort and dismiss some mercs (I went for mercs in my wars, probably a mistake looking back, I ended up with my manpower intact) and lower maintenance, I can just end up in the positive (+0.5-ish). I also have 3 level 1 advisors, so I can dismiss those, but that will cost monarch points obviously. I can milk money from the estates, but this is the first time I've played with estates on, and it's hard to wrap my head around it and managing loyalty and influence isn't easy.

Last question, this is more game mechanic related. I gained two favors from France, and two from Papal states for participating in their wars. What can I do with these favors? Are they only for calling allies into wars, or can I use them in other ways?

1.) Going for French Provinces is not a good Idea, when you want to keep France as an Ally long term. Since you already did, you should start planning to oppose them eventually. Try to get Provence & Avignon to deny France those Provinces. These are also in the Genoa Node, which means you gain a good amount of Profit from them.
The war against Burgundy was probably not really worth it. Franche-Comte is not in the Genoa Node (or is it? I don't remember....) meaning you only get some of that provinces income.
Additionally you are pissing off 3 major power by holding it (France, Burgundy, Austria)
What's done is done, but in the early game it is usually better to target weaker nations, and appease the big ones.

2.) Since you said, your manpower is intact, the best way to recover is going to war. Depending on their alliances it should be against Provence, Genoa or Milan. With the remainig 2 Provinces from Provence you can accept their culture, and Genoa & Milan are already in your culture group. Early game this makes a significant difference. Provence and Genoa (the Provinces) also have a trade bonus. Getting those in your Home-Node should be one of your top priorities, since they mean a lot of money.
You could also declare on the swiss, but I'd only do this, if they have no allies of their own, and I would only turn them into a vassal or march without taking any provinces.

I wouldn't disband your mercs or fire your advisors. For mercs, just merge them during a war and slowly replace them with regulars again. (Or keep a few mercs as a reserve, that's independand from manpower). With advisors, you might want to wait with re-hiring someone once one of yours dies while you are in dept, but you can keep the living ones.

For Estate actions: The easiest (=least troublesome) way to use them, is to only use them once one of their events fires. If it is an event that increases loyalty, you can ask for mp. If it is an event reducing loyalty, you use "call for diet" (and equivalent ones). Asking for Money is a bit seperately, since it only reduces loyalty by 10% (thus they stay loyal). So you can use it on cd, as long as you have 'grant monopolies' ready in case a reduced loyalty event hits.

3.) Favors can also be used to increase trust. High trust mainly does 2 things: a) An AI with high trust towards you is more willing to join your wars. If you want to attack someone you AI ally doesn't want to attack, it's not enough to have 10 favors alone. High trust might just push it past the treshold.
b) An AI with high trust towards you is a lot less likely to break an alliance with you, even if they would have strategic interests to do so.

 

[TeeWee]

Hi,

All in all i would say your start is OKish. But i wonder how you managed to burn so much money in so opportunistic wars.
Really sad you couldn't get Provence, too.

I think most of it just went to mercenary paychecks and reinforcements. In hindsight, mercs were unnecessary probably. But, what's done is done. As for Provence, I may have gotten more out of it, but didn't dare push my luck.

Your kinda bad eco sux somewhat. I totally think you would've gained way more if you'd just fought Swiss instead. Anyway, first, totally annex Montferat ASAP xD secondly, turn to your smaller neighbours and kill them easy for money and build a snake to Venice or Austria or what ever you wanna conquer later. If that's not possible because of strong alliances, you'd have to relax 'till you have 10 Favors with france ( hint to question 3! ) and then attack. Fabricate claims as hell in the meantime, tho! ^^

Short term, Genoa should be next. Then, it's either the rest of Provence, or turning on Milan (which now has a rebel pretender problem, is currently my ally)

 

[gia257]

1.24.1 (latest patch), with DLC: AoW, CS, Cossacks, RoM, WoN, Res Publica (all new for me)

It's 1458 and I'm Savoy. Diplomatically, my allies are France, Milan and Papal states. I chose Milan as an ally because he had Switzerland as rival, and the Swiss had both me and Milan as rival, so I went for the Swiss, Burgundy and Provence as rivals for the first part.

I passively helped France kick out the English (sieging a single province was my contribution). Then, the pope excommunicated Provence and I got a Excomm CB for Draguignan. The pope and the Burgundy-bloc both went for it, but Provence was allied to France and Milan. The Provence-France bloc managed to keep the Burgundians in check.

So I decided to be an opportunistic Duke of Savoy and declared war on Burgundy for Franche-Comte. It was a bit of a difficult dance to keep Franche-Comte occupied, fleeing to Wallis every time the Burgundians or his vassals marched close and hope that France and Milan (in their seperate defensive war versus Burgundy) would kill the Burgundian stacks. With a bit of dancing about, I managed to rack up enough warscore to gain Franche-Comte.

Provence meanwhile was still in a two-way excommunication war with the Pope and Burgundy, and I saw I could declare war on Provence without him dragging in his allies (France and Milan). So I went for that as well, using the pope's excommunication CB on Draguignan. It was a bit of a race against time at the end, because Provence had peaced out his other wars and I still had to siege the capital and a province in my home land to get enough war score but I was just in time.

End result: I managed to grow two provinces in about 15 years. Not bad. But I needed 6 loans totalling 275 to do it.

Question one: is this worth it? I haven't really played a "intermediate" start yet and I can't really tell.

Question two: how to recover? I'm not a huge nation that can easily war itself out of debt using peace deals (I abused that a lot as Russia). If I mothball my fort and dismiss some mercs (I went for mercs in my wars, probably a mistake looking back, I ended up with my manpower intact) and lower maintenance, I can just end up in the positive (+0.5-ish). I also have 3 level 1 advisors, so I can dismiss those, but that will cost monarch points obviously. I can milk money from the estates, but this is the first time I've played with estates on, and it's hard to wrap my head around it and managing loyalty and influence isn't easy.

Last question, this is more game mechanic related. I gained two favors from France, and two from Papal states for participating in their wars. What can I do with these favors? Are they only for calling allies into wars, or can I use them in other ways?

was it possible to marry burgundy? the inheritance is a bigger payout than FC, still, now you can excomm for two provinces (hopefully france doesnt go for them) so you are getting there, try to get more italian borders with papal rivals (and dont become one), right now you only want big payouts (trade centers, milan lands, a gascony province but you allied france so no) or save admin to get your first two idea slots.

I dont know if its worth it to become emperor as a shadow kingdom, but you got the extra relation slot

about estates its easy, early on you want 75 influence so you can get 150 monarch points (or 100, but 100 is riskier), the game will trigger + or - 10 influence events, so you will get most likely screwed on one if you have the minimum land required (hitting 85 influence with +2 progress), but thats no problem, because the disaster only happens at 100 progress, you let it tick, and remove land to go below 80 influence at the last moment, and ride the penalties until you can have low influence naturally

When you are below 40 loyalty you get penalties but you suck it up, or, if you have the resources, pay for it (but it recovers faster the lower it is so it may be better to hold to pay until 25% loyalty and not at 10%).

That is assuming you want the MP and not the money or the manpower, if you are in a desperate situation you may get only 100 points (or none) until you fix your issue.

About money you are in the genoa node, so you wont have money problems soon, inflation is a just number, if you can somehow war hamburg you will be set.

 

[TeeWee]

1.) Going for French Provinces is not a good Idea, when you want to keep France as an Ally long term. Since you already did, you should start planning to oppose them eventually. Try to get Provence & Avignon to deny France those Provinces. These are also in the Genoa Node, which means you gain a good amount of Profit from them.
The war against Burgundy was probably not really worth it. Franche-Comte is not in the Genoa Node (or is it? I don't remember....) meaning you only get some of that provinces income.
Additionally you are pissing off 3 major power by holding it (France, Burgundy, Austria)
What's done is done, but in the early game it is usually better to target weaker nations, and appease the big ones.

2.) Since you said, your manpower is intact, the best way to recover is going to war. Depending on their alliances it should be against Provence, Genoa or Milan. With the remainig 2 Provinces from Provence you can accept their culture, and Genoa & Milan are already in your culture group. Early game this makes a significant difference. Provence and Genoa (the Provinces) also have a trade bonus. Getting those in your Home-Node should be one of your top priorities, since they mean a lot of money.
You could also declare on the swiss, but I'd only do this, if they have no allies of their own, and I would only turn them into a vassal or march without taking any provinces.

I wouldn't disband your mercs or fire your advisors. For mercs, just merge them during a war and slowly replace them with regulars again. (Or keep a few mercs as a reserve, that's independand from manpower). With advisors, you might want to wait with re-hiring someone once one of yours dies while you are in dept, but you can keep the living ones.

For Estate actions: The easiest (=least troublesome) way to use them, is to only use them once one of their events fires. If it is an event that increases loyalty, you can ask for mp. If it is an event reducing loyalty, you use "call for diet" (and equivalent ones). Asking for Money is a bit seperately, since it only reduces loyalty by 10% (thus they stay loyal). So you can use it on cd, as long as you have 'grant monopolies' ready in case a reduced loyalty event hits.

3.) Favors can also be used to increase trust. High trust mainly does 2 things: a) An AI with high trust towards you is more willing to join your wars. If you want to attack someone you AI ally doesn't want to attack, it's not enough to have 10 favors alone. High trust might just push it past the treshold.
b) An AI with high trust towards you is a lot less likely to break an alliance with you, even if they would have strategic interests to do so.

Good points with respect to France. Maybe I can sell Franche-Comte when the time comes. I don't know yet. Getting the rest of Provence would be nice, maybe in my next step. My hope is that France will be busy against Aragon / Castille and Burgundy in the short-medium term and that I might even gain a foothold on Sardinia out of it. Longer term, I might have to switch to the Austrian bloc.

My game goal is to have a nice trading empire around the med. I don't have plans to go the colonial route, but rather make sure the trade flows towards Genoa via Alexandria (the overland route) or via Sevilla / Champagne (the colonial route). The continent should have a nice balance of power and I'd love to become a power broker, but I have no idea how to do that yet. Just wanting a very different game than last one (a no-DLC Muscovy to Russia game)

The next target on my list will be Genoa and other Italian minors to extend my income. Milan is on my list, but currently is my ally because I don't want to fight everybody at the same time and we share the Swiss as a common enemy.