Help with "The Fate of Joan of Arc" as Orleans

[Hezekiah]

Edit: I misinterpreted the conditions required, and have adjusted them to match what is in game. This is much harder than I had first anticipated, as you have to remove the English from the continent (except Calais).

In 1.32.2, the decision "The Fate of Joan of Arc" requires that, as France or Orleans:

• The Age is the Age of Exploration
• England / Britain does not own and control Calais (starts owned by England) Incorrect. England / Britain may own Calais
• England / Britain may not own any province in the France region except Calais.
• France / Orleans owns or has a subject own Caux (starts owned by England) and Barrois (starts owned by Provence)
• France / Orleans is the Papal Controller or has +100 relations with the Papal States

This decision leads to a series of events which can eventually let Orleans become a crusader state theocracy.

These conditions are much harder to achieve as Orleans than France, because Orleans starts as a vassal of France and the duke of Orleans is a 1/3/0 in 1444. In my previous attempt as Orleans, just about everything went wrong after independence from France. I had two or three peasants' wars due to low stability and bad admin income, my allies betrayed each other, and Austria got a big Burgundy during the inheritance, which notably had eaten Barrois.

How should I proceed in a new 1444 campaign if I want to retry Joan of Arc and eventually reach the Orleans crusader state event?

 

[Terixis]

Do you still need to wait 200 years to become a crusader state in 1.32? Because if so, yuck. Anyway, the beginning is the most important and most difficult part for any weak vassal breaking away from a large country, but Orleans shouldn't be that bad. Restart until Burgundy and France are rivals, get support independence from England and Burgundy, and start the independence war before the surrender of the Maine since England gets crushed by that war. Take Paris and whatever gives you a border with Burgundy's northern part, give England something in Gascony to keep them happy, and give Burgundy nothing so they break your alliance. Then ally Austria or Castille and eat Picardie so you border Normandy and Calais, then break with England and attack them and take what you need. For Barrois you might want to join the HRE so Austria leaves you alone.

Note that all of the above can and will go wrong but that should be a relatively clear path. If France inherits Burgundy that's fine because you're going to murderize France anyway, if Austria directly inherits Burgundy (i.e., if they inherit Barrois) you might want to scum it because otherwise you'll be stuck becoming Emperor to weaken Austria to get it from them. As for your stab problems, you should be handing out the 3 +1 mana privileges at the start, putting national focus on admin, hiring an admin advisor (preferably stab cost reduction), and embracing the debtors life. Independence wars always give you a -3 stab hit so you have to buy back up to +1 immediately afterwards. Disinherit crap heirs, and then abdicate when you can (or try to get your starting ruler killed and hope you have a good consort).

 

[st360]

The bad ruler shouldn't be too much of a problem. You're in a region where aggressive expansion is high, so you will only be able to core so much anyway. Thats admin points. You're so small compared to your allies, your armies wont make too much of a difference, so that's military points. Diplo points are always worth the least anyway, but your ruler is actually okay with them, so you might vassalize a bit and choose a diplomacy points idea group as your first one.

80% of your early success is your allies, and that can often be just pure blind luck. The biggest thing you can do (if you don't mind doing it) is restarting until France has good rivals.

 

[Hezekiah]

As for your stab problems, you should be handing out the 3 +1 mana privileges at the start, putting national focus on admin, hiring an admin advisor (preferably stab cost reduction), and embracing the debtors life. Independence wars always give you a -3 stab hit so you have to buy back up to +1 immediately afterwards. Disinherit crap heirs, and then abdicate when you can (or try to get your starting ruler killed and hope you have a good consort).

Do you give the "Estate Statutory Rights" privilege when at zero crownland from the mana privileges? I hate the autonomy floor it gives.

The bad ruler shouldn't be too much of a problem. You're in a region where aggressive expansion is high, so you will only be able to core so much anyway. Thats admin points. You're so small compared to your allies, your armies wont make too much of a difference, so that's military points. Diplo points are always worth the least anyway, but your ruler is actually okay with them, so you might vassalize a bit and choose a diplomacy points idea group as your first one.

80% of your early success is your allies, and that can often be just pure blind luck. The biggest thing you can do (if you don't mind doing it) is restarting until France has good rivals.

Restarting is my specialty. Do you also recommend England/Burgundy and later Castile/Austria like Terixis?

 

[Terixis]

Do you give the "Estate Statutory Rights" privilege when at zero crownland from the mana privileges? I hate the autonomy floor it gives.

Never give estate statutory rights. You should give out the 10% def cost reduction to your lowest dev cost province at the start, dev it once, give out the 3 mana point privileges, sell crownlands for free money, dev 1 point again, then seize land to get to 5.19%. Being under 5% crownlands makes the malus pretty horrible but above 5% is alright. When you're at such a low crownland percentage you actually gain crownlands when you conquer provinces, so between that and seizing land every 5 years you should get back up to 30% pretty quickly.

 

[Vulkandrache]

Never give estate statutory rights

I have not found a single start in which i would no go into statutory.
Getting all the bonuses from the estates online asap easily beats out 25% autonomy.
Especialy if you start very small with your capital being your main body for most of those 20 years.
Double so since most of the land you conquer will be well above 25% LA anyway.

The whole "uh you gain 20+% CL if you conquer land as an OPM" just does not hold up.
That takes several years. Why would you not just take 30% immediately for little to no downside.

 

[Terixis]

I have not found a single start in which i would no go into statutory.
Getting all the bonuses from the estates online asap easily beats out 25% autonomy.
Especialy if you start very small with your capital being your main body for most of those 20 years.
Double so since most of the land you conquer will be well above 25% LA anyway.

The whole "uh you gain 20+% CL if you conquer land as an OPM" just does not hold up.
That takes several years. Why would you not just take 30% immediately for little to no downside.

25% autonomy floor is not "little to no downside". If you're an OPM or other very small minor the absolute last thing you want to do is instantly lose a quarter of your force limit, manpower from provinces, and income and be unable to get it back for 20(!) years. As long as you develop twice and seize to get above 5% the malus from low crownland is nothing. Two of the maluses (decreased max absolutism, which doesn't even exist until 1610, and increased liberty desire from subjects development (which you won't have any of as an OPM)) might as well not exist, and the -15% tax modifier for being at 5-10% crownland is actually 10% smaller than the 25% reduction from the autonomy floor from estates statutory rights. The only actual malus is the ticking +autonomy, but even if you sat at 5% crownland and never seized any more land and never conquered anything, it would take almost 21 years to tick up (+0.2/mo tick reduced by -0.1/mo by being at peace) to the 25 autonomy floor from estates statutory rights. And you could manually reduce autonomy at any time during that period if you wanted to.

tl;dr local autonomy is the worst thing in the universe and estates statutory rights should be avoided at all costs. Just give out all of the mana privileges at the start and ignore the dumb low crownland notification.

 

[Vulkandrache]

Your Capital does not care about statutory.
The smaller you are the less it affects you.
Which is why i said not going into statutory as an OPM, especialy as a Vassal, is stupid.
By the time your newly conquered provices are below 25% LA the 20 years are long over.

And if you are big then 25% less forcelimit and tax is negligible compared to multiple statewide bonuses.

The most ridiculous start ive seen so far is Bahmanis, which has no less than 5 estates all with mindblowingly strong bonuses.
20 years of 25% min LA is a small price to pay to get all of them online the first month.

 

[Zelius]

25% autonomy floor is not "little to no downside". If you're an OPM or other very small minor the absolute last thing you want to do is instantly lose a quarter of your force limit, manpower from provinces, and income and be unable to get it back for 20(!) years. As long as you develop twice and seize to get above 5% the malus from low crownland is nothing. Two of the maluses (decreased max absolutism, which doesn't even exist until 1610, and increased liberty desire from subjects development (which you won't have any of as an OPM)) might as well not exist, and the -15% tax modifier for being at 5-10% crownland is actually 10% smaller than the 25% reduction from the autonomy floor from estates statutory rights. The only actual malus is the ticking +autonomy, but even if you sat at 5% crownland and never seized any more land and never conquered anything, it would take almost 21 years to tick up (+0.2/mo tick reduced by -0.1/mo by being at peace) to the 25 autonomy floor from estates statutory rights. And you could manually reduce autonomy at any time during that period if you wanted to.

tl;dr local autonomy is the worst thing in the universe and estates statutory rights should be avoided at all costs. Just give out all of the mana privileges at the start and ignore the dumb low crownland notification.

If you are literally an OPM there is no downside unless you intend to somehow acquire 0% land somewhere before you can revoke the privilege, since conquered land will take more than 20 years for autonomy to tick down to 25, and your capital has no autonomy...

 

[Republic of Mercury]

The most ridiculous start ive seen so far is Bahmanis, which has no less than 5 estates all with mindblowingly strong bonuses.
20 years of 25% min LA is a small price to pay to get all of them online the first month.

But you don't need ESR to get those bonuses online.

 

[jonjowett]

Do you still need to wait 200 years to become a crusader state in 1.32? Because if so, yuck.

The conditions have been significantly changed, so it'll fire quickly if you were originally Orleans and slowly otherwise. Specifically: If you start as Orleans and fulfil all the conditions, the MTTH is 10 years after the start of the age of absolutism; otherwise, the MTTH is 100 years. Much better than in 1.31!

NB: One of the conditions for the beatification event is that you must have a cardinal in Orleans. This is something you should prioritise while you are small, as it will otherwise be very difficult to control. Arguably, it might be a good idea to stay small until you get the cardinal, and savescum if you lose it to "cardinal across the border".

EDIT: Corrected references to "being an OPM" to "being small", as Orleans apparently has 4 provinces at the start of the game.

 

[Hezekiah]

@Terixis @Vulkandrache @Zelius
Orleans starts as a "four province minor" with an additional core held by France. I didn't give out the privileges at the start of my most successful attempt since I feared the autonomy malus would be too much for such a small nation with disconnected holdings.

What does seem clear is that I mishandled the diplomacy and the use of my 1/3/0 monarch points, and I did not focus on the goals of taking Caux and Barrois after gaining independence and Paris. I think I might be able to bribe a friendly Burgundy with Calais to get it out of English hands. Getting the Inheritance would help if I could hold onto Burgundy, and if Burgundy does not self-immolate.

 

[Hezekiah]

I have made another attempt at retrying Joan as Orleans, and I have learned that I misread the requirements. England / Britain is allowed to own Calais on the continent, but they must be removed from all other French-region provinces if the retrial is to occur. This is much harder than I first expected.