How to conquer Heretics?

[Ceranai]

So Im working my way to the Rome achievement because I almost got it a long time ago and now I just want to get it done

Its been 54 years in this game and I've taken a decent chunk of infidel land but despite my best efforts at intrigue and marriage tactics I cant get a decent casus beli against Catholic kingdoms, which is espesically annoying given the pagans to the north of my are now catholics too.

The problem is that pretty much everyone is using elective succession in this game (seems a bit odd to me) and so despite a lot of assassinations and marrying claimants I have not yet been able to declare a war for more than a province at a time. Ive chipped away 4 southern provinces from italy but its slow going given the almost global defensive pact against me. How should i go about getting better wars with my catholic neighbors? If i was playing catholic i would use the pope to get duchy claims but im not sure if that will work as an orthodox.

So the question is how do you best invade large, same religion counties when marrying onto the throne isnt working. Problem with elective succession is that it makes the conditions for pressing weak claims really difficult and strong claims are pretty hard to get hold of.

 

[Arkangilos]

It's too bad they don't have a special CB to invade former Roman land...

 

[SaphireSeas]

So Im working my way to the Rome achievement because I almost got it a long time ago and now I just want to get it done

Its been 54 years in this game and I've taken a decent chunk of infidel land but despite my best efforts at intrigue and marriage tactics I cant get a decent casus beli against Catholic kingdoms, which is espesically annoying given the pagans to the north of my are now catholics too.

The problem is that pretty much everyone is using elective succession in this game (seems a bit odd to me) and so despite a lot of assassinations and marrying claimants I have not yet been able to declare a war for more than a province at a time. Ive chipped away 4 southern provinces from italy but its slow going given the almost global defensive pact against me. How should i go about getting better wars with my catholic neighbors? If i was playing catholic i would use the pope to get duchy claims but im not sure if that will work as an orthodox.

So the question is how do you best invade large, same religion counties when marrying onto the throne isnt working. Problem with elective succession is that it makes the conditions for pressing weak claims really difficult and strong claims are pretty hard to get hold of.

You can start by fabricating a claim on Rome. That allows you to Mend the Schism. Then Catholic Europe will be an orthodox heresy and you can holy war them. Just try to make sure that the Lombard king hates you, I believe it makes it less likely to convert. Then HW up Italy.

Otherwise, you're looking for Claimant wars. This process can take forever, but it will be greatly helped if you're trying to invite orthodox Italians rather than Catholic ones.

Finally, Claim Wars, which is what you have been doing so far. Focus on the regions needed to reform Rome (check the Tooltip).
Once you have the Roman Empire, you get plenty of CBs.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

The only piece of the puzzle you need is Lombardy. You can capture Sicily with De Jure claims.

Fabricate a claim on Rome, and then capture it.

Mend the schism, which will make Catholics heretics. You can then Holy War for the desired duchies to proclaim yourself Emperor of Western Rome

 

[Ceranai]

Thanks guys, so basically mend the schism and holy war to get the imperial reconquest cb as well

need to save up some cash too, i got a claim for the duchy of latium and it was gonna cost 1000 gold when i only had 300 XD, my retinues are burning money

 

[Bernard95]

The only piece of the puzzle you need is Lombardy. You can capture Sicily with De Jure claims.

Fabricate a claim on Rome, and then capture it.

Mend the schism, which will make Catholics heretics. You can then Holy War for the desired duchies to proclaim yourself Emperor of Western Rome

This. You've already done the hard part of taking down Abbasids- you just need to finish the job. The moment you take that "Mend the Schism" decision, all of the Catholics that don't convert Orthodoxy will be considered heretics. With a little luck, Lombardy won't convert and you'll be set to pick off the last few duchies you need. If they don't however, or you just want to be overpowered, then once mending the schism convert to a heresy (preferably Catholic or Fraticelli) so you can holy war the "heretics" right back. If you also manage to become the dominant faith again, you'll even pick up the Catholic holy orders as an added bonus in addition to the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

I'm playing the same campaign. Went a different route though.

Are you playing with Conclave? With conclave active I've found elective monarchy is not anywhere near as common as it was without it. When I first started I basically sacrificed stats and started family focus, breeding low stat (family focus gives piss for stat growths) children, but lots of them. Used them to either marry into the landed count/strategos in the empire to put near everyone in my dynasty in control of the empire.

Helps because for the first two generations nobody in the Byzantine Empire cares about their dynasty. They'll matrilineally marry their heir to your daughter even if they own three counties. The revolts also help in securing byzantine land for your dynasty, especially when you win you can imprison and then kill the only member of that dynasty, defaulting the land to you. Just gotta watch out for that first revolt though, painful.

#2 goal when immediately starting out is a de jure war on Venice. I prefer to land my second son as the first Doge of Venice. You know, the one who actually has some intrigue and wouldn't get assassinated 5 years in. 1st Revolt usually starts up right as you finish off Venice.

I then focused immediately on the de jure lands in the Balkans. Meaning Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Get them before they turn Christian.

While I did that I primarily focused on finding a Karling to invite to the court. With how fragmented that dynasty gets it was fairly simple to invite even a weak claimant to my court, matrilineally marry him, land him, and then press the claim whenever. Even if the claim never comes hey it's a Karling, about the only other dynasty line that would give house Isauros prestige for marrying. Once it did come however, bam. All of Western Europe in one swoop. Oh and 100% Threat. Realistically it's be 300% Threat with how much land I got off doing that, but meh.

Low priority for me were the Abbasids. I find they often attack aimlessly, and usually do not go about declaring war on the player owned Byzantines, especially since I didn't really make a move on Cicilia. That Muslim buffer state holding Antioch and Cicilia is nice. I just planted a diplomat constantly on top of their capital and within 100 years they fragmented hard. Once that happens Antioch, Jerusalem, Cicilia, and Armeria were a cinch to secure.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

I'm playing the same campaign. Went a different route though.

Are you playing with Conclave? With conclave active I've found elective monarchy is not anywhere near as common as it was without it. When I first started I basically sacrificed stats and started family focus, breeding low stat (family focus gives piss for stat growths) children, but lots of them. Used them to either marry into the landed count/strategos in the empire to put near everyone in my dynasty in control of the empire.

Helps because for the first two generations nobody in the Byzantine Empire cares about their dynasty. They'll matrilineally marry their heir to your daughter even if they own three counties. The revolts also help in securing byzantine land for your dynasty, especially when you win you can imprison and then kill the only member of that dynasty, defaulting the land to you. Just gotta watch out for that first revolt though, painful.

#2 goal when immediately starting out is a de jure war on Venice. I prefer to land my second son as the first Doge of Venice. You know, the one who actually has some intrigue and wouldn't get assassinated 5 years in. 1st Revolt usually starts up right as you finish off Venice.

I then focused immediately on the de jure lands in the Balkans. Meaning Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Get them before they turn Christian.

While I did that I primarily focused on finding a Karling to invite to the court. With how fragmented that dynasty gets it was fairly simple to invite even a weak claimant to my court, matrilineally marry him, land him, and then press the claim whenever. Even if the claim never comes hey it's a Karling, about the only other dynasty line that would give house Isauros prestige for marrying. Once it did come however, bam. All of Western Europe in one swoop. Oh and 100% Threat. Realistically it's be 300% Threat with how much land I got off doing that, but meh.

Low priority for me were the Abbasids. I find they often attack aimlessly, and usually do not go about declaring war on the player owned Byzantines, especially since I didn't really make a move on Cicilia. That Muslim buffer state holding Antioch and Cicilia is nice. I just planted a diplomat constantly on top of their capital and within 100 years they fragmented hard. Once that happens Antioch, Jerusalem, Cicilia, and Armeria were a cinch to secure.

Nice. I've always wanted to play a Byzantium game. I have to wrap up my current campaign and then play Stellaris for a bit, so it's not going to happen soon.

You started in 769?

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Yeah. Byzantium start at 769 is about the most overpowered start I've ever seen. Easy Holy wars, extremely centralized with viceroyalties, and best of all, technological might. Byzantines start off with ~15k troops despite being vastly smaller than Abbasids, so the green blob (who has ~19k but loses that fast to decadence) doesn't really attack you.

Meanwhile Charlemagne, if he ever gets remotely close to HRE, has what, 5-8k troops with all that land. Basically nothing will stop your expansion for a long, long time, even 100% threat.

 

[Ceranai]

Yeah. Byzantium start at 769 is about the most overpowered start I've ever seen. Easy Holy wars, extremely centralized with viceroyalties, and best of all, technological might. Byzantines start off with ~15k troops despite being vastly smaller than Abbasids, so the green blob (who has ~19k but loses that fast to decadence) doesn't really attack you.

Meanwhile Charlemagne, if he ever gets remotely close to HRE, has what, 5-8k troops with all that land. Basically nothing will stop your expansion for a long, long time, even 100% threat.

Not true you start off with about 8 k troops, and with conclave if you upset your vassals even a bit it makes them very likely to revolt. It isn't a hard start for sure but you use different victory criteria. Mine is covering most of the map before I get bored, its not like its hard to blob as any country thats why you just set different standards.

I think the word overpowered is a bit out of place in a game where you can wipe the floor with the AI in almost any war, i mean you can start as a opm and easily become an Empire.

Also now that defensive coalitions are a thing growing as a blob is so much more effort than growing as a small one. Ive had a coalition against me since my second war in this game that has always included almost every country that is close to me

 

[Ceranai]

I'm playing the same campaign. Went a different route though.

Are you playing with Conclave? With conclave active I've found elective monarchy is not anywhere near as common as it was without it. When I first started I basically sacrificed stats and started family focus, breeding low stat (family focus gives piss for stat growths) children, but lots of them. Used them to either marry into the landed count/strategos in the empire to put near everyone in my dynasty in control of the empire.

Helps because for the first two generations nobody in the Byzantine Empire cares about their dynasty. They'll matrilineally marry their heir to your daughter even if they own three counties. The revolts also help in securing byzantine land for your dynasty, especially when you win you can imprison and then kill the only member of that dynasty, defaulting the land to you. Just gotta watch out for that first revolt though, painful.

#2 goal when immediately starting out is a de jure war on Venice. I prefer to land my second son as the first Doge of Venice. You know, the one who actually has some intrigue and wouldn't get assassinated 5 years in. 1st Revolt usually starts up right as you finish off Venice.

I then focused immediately on the de jure lands in the Balkans. Meaning Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Get them before they turn Christian.

While I did that I primarily focused on finding a Karling to invite to the court. With how fragmented that dynasty gets it was fairly simple to invite even a weak claimant to my court, matrilineally marry him, land him, and then press the claim whenever. Even if the claim never comes hey it's a Karling, about the only other dynasty line that would give house Isauros prestige for marrying. Once it did come however, bam. All of Western Europe in one swoop. Oh and 100% Threat. Realistically it's be 300% Threat with how much land I got off doing that, but meh.

Low priority for me were the Abbasids. I find they often attack aimlessly, and usually do not go about declaring war on the player owned Byzantines, especially since I didn't really make a move on Cicilia. That Muslim buffer state holding Antioch and Cicilia is nice. I just planted a diplomat constantly on top of their capital and within 100 years they fragmented hard. Once that happens Antioch, Jerusalem, Cicilia, and Armeria were a cinch to secure.

I went for the sunnis first to get the rest of anatolia and then armenia, grabbed eddesa and cilicia and thenI launched myself straight into the Abbasids because I saw they were in a decadence revolt pretty early on in the game, broke truces to take syria, damascus, jerusalem, sinai, cairo, damietta and alexandria in one big war. Now Ive grabbed chunks of persia and afganistan and most of africa.

All i need is Rome to mend the schism so while Im waiting for that CB Im rampaging with holy wars. Im only 61 years in so i have plenty of time to fgure out how to grab france and italy. Italy hasnt really done everything this game because they are in the coalition against me and have been constantly marching to and from wars that are ages away.

Im in a really good condition, have a few weak claims in the family in case i get lucky but france is broken and my only claim is on the empire as a whole, and Italy hasnt had any of the conditions needed for a weak claim at all

 

[Ceranai]

So an update: mended the schism and almost everyone became orthodox. Guess Im gonna have to get the duchies to form the roman empire then rely on the imperial reconquest CB

Religious map:

Map of the Empire:

A small bit of luck is that the rest of tha balkans is still catholic so I can grab that then i only need a couple of duchies around italy. Ive gotta stop messing around in the east lol, i was considering grabbing india too XD

 

[Morrowind3]

It's too bad they don't have a special CB to invade former Roman land...

It's odd, I vaguely remember that CB existing shortly after Legacy of Rome got released. It seems to be gone though, anyone else remember? Did they remove it?

 

[Zelius]

It's odd, I vaguely remember that CB existing shortly after Legacy of Rome got released. It seems to be gone though, anyone else remember? Did they remove it?

You do indeed get such a CB (on duchies), after you form the Roman Empire by owning the key counties.

 

[Aries666]

Try and find someone with a strong claim to the kingdom who will accept an invite, give them a barony, press their claim.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

So an update: mended the schism and almost everyone became orthodox. Guess Im gonna have to get the duchies to form the roman empire then rely on the imperial reconquest CB

Religious map:

Map of the Empire:

A small bit of luck is that the rest of tha balkans is still catholic so I can grab that then i only need a couple of duchies around italy. Ive gotta stop messing around in the east lol, i was considering grabbing india too XD

Is that Asturias I spy.... wait no it has Muslim name, but it's not part of the Umayyads?

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Not true you start off with about 8 k troops, and with conclave if you upset your vassals even a bit it makes them very likely to revolt. It isn't a hard start for sure but you use different victory criteria. Mine is covering most of the map before I get bored, its not like its hard to blob as any country thats why you just set different standards.

I think the word overpowered is a bit out of place in a game where you can wipe the floor with the AI in almost any war, i mean you can start as a opm and easily become an Empire.

Also now that defensive coalitions are a thing growing as a blob is so much more effort than growing as a small one. Ive had a coalition against me since my second war in this game that has always included almost every country that is close to me

Mine is more filling every single province in the game with a dynasty member, preferebly of my culture. It's much slower than yours, since I didn't do much until my dynasty size grew appropriately. Also yeah, you start off with 8k but the Abbasids start off with 9k, more than enough of a deterrent to not attack you. Then they just break apart over time.

Here is my current Ironman game with all the gameplay DLCs active.

Favorite Part of Conclave is how you can use favors to invite people out of your religion group into your court, leading to something like this.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

Mine is more filling every single province in the game with a dynasty member, preferebly of my culture. It's much slower than yours, since I didn't do much until my dynasty size grew appropriately. Also yeah, you start off with 8k but the Abbasids start off with 9k, more than enough of a deterrent to not attack you. Then they just break apart over time.

Here is my current Ironman game with all the gameplay DLCs active.

Favorite Part of Conclave is how you can use favors to invite people out of your religion group into your court, leading to something like this.

Why aren't you Rome? Don't you have all the Duchies that you need to form Rome?

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Missing Tunis, Just waiting for that revolt down there to finish up so I don't need to declare war twice

 

[Dahoota]

Lombardy is united in his game and controls the rest of Italia. You guys are doing this all wrong.

1. Go to the Kingdom of Lombardy title, look up claimants and invite one to your court. Bribe them if you have to, preferably someone with a strong claim. Being 60 years in, there should be a few by now especially as Lombardy has gone elective.
2. Land them. Anywhere. A barony will do.
3. Press their claim on Lombardy.
4. Presto. Your vassal controls Lombardy and it's now part of your realm. Reform empire after one war.

Your vassal king will likely revolt at some point. Let them, then revoke the kingdom as a traitor and make it a viceroyalty.

Edit: just saw your comment that it is elective. Yes, elective makes it really hard to marry someone onto the throne or press weak claims, but it also produces plenty of strong claimants in the former king's children.