I just got the Mare Nostrum achievement on my second play through attempting it. My first was months ago before the Cicero update and before I understood the game well enough to take on such a task. I wanted to share some thoughts and guidance on getting there, and also my understanding of the game since the Cicero update.
First, the pics!
Game History:
My memory, like so much history, is incomplete, the victor's (that's me!) version, and is colored as much by nostalgia as fact. But this is how the game played out according to me.
The start of the game was a bit of a royal flush start, with a series of alliances and wars that allowed for a very quick consolidation of Helenistic Italy. Etruria and Finiatia were the first war, started by me, ending in full annexation with event given claims. I immediately turned east to Umbria, Sabina, and Picaneta (which had quickly conquered Ancona. As this war drew to a close, I lucked out when a Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania alliance attacked me. I quickly finished sieging the east coast forts, let my allies clean up the rest, and moved my troops into defensive position against Samnium. Since they were on the attack, I was able to fight a war of attrition, sapping their manpower while maintaining my own, From there, Messapia had allied with Taulantia (which had conquered Eprius) and Brutia, and with a series wars, I consolidated control over the rest of the boot and the smaller city-states. A further war south and I took control of Syracuse and all points en route. So ends the first decade of play. Macedonia attacked, and another defensive war was easily turned, taking the full Macedonian lands, including Pell.
At this point, Carthage obliged with an attack, ostensibly on Siculia. This again allowed me to play a defensive war, with Carthage bringing troops to the island to suffer attrition while I picked them off opportunistically for defense. In the peace, I consolidated my control of Sicily and forced the release of Gymnasia (Balearic islands), and Tripoli. On the expiration of that truce, there were a series of wars for Tripoli, Cyranaica (which Egypt had reduced to a few settlements on the far west of the settled desert), and Sardinia. From there, the attack on Carthage was launched allowing me to consolidate control. I now had a shared border with Egypt who then attacked me. Having to attach across the Libyan desert, Egypt's overextended armies were easily defended against. I maintained navel superiority and alternately sieged Alexandria and their Cyranaica fort--forcing their armies to traverse the attrition heavy Libyan coast. This was the game's turning point war where Carthage and Egypt were irreversibly damaged allowing for my continued ascendance.
Meanwhile, during the truces with the major power, I continued with more or less constant wars, alternately along the Adriatic coast or towards Gaul. The idea being that I prosecute a war to east while truces to the west cool down and then turn west when the truce expires.
From this point, I maintained manpower superiority to the combined threat of Egypt, Phrygia, and Carthage. Egypt and Carthage through attrition warfare, and Phrygia through outright numerical superiority. A series of wars allowed me to consolidate control over Greece, and presented the first opportunity for a blood-letting of Phrygia.
By this time (c. 540) I had complete control of the Greek Isles, Carthage to Alexandria and Western delta (minus the uncolonized desert lands), Constantonople, and all Mediteranian islands but Cyprus. After a further war with Carthage, while still having significant aggresive expansion from conquests of Macedonian, Phrygian, Egyption, Spanish, and Gaulic, lands, the over extended nation finally broke. Newly annexed provinces either revolted or were released as vassals, strategically, and the rebellion was the only major war to seriously sap my manpower reserves as about 18 newly found states hired every mercenary army in southern Europe. Butt Rome was victorious, crushing the rebellion and asserting control over the newly cowed territories.
The rest of the game was uneventful from a story line perspective, I was easily the greatest power, with 1.25x - 1.50x the combined max man power of Phrygia, Egypt, and Seleukid. An initially Phrygia / Seleukid alliance meant Phrygian troops were routinely called to battle in Seleukid's easter enemy, Maurya, presenting ample opportunities for rapid land grabs, followed by a war of attrition as Phrygia tried to recover the forts I quickly seized. Egypt was a simple question of bating them towards Alexandria across my Western Delta and North African coastal forts, initially losing most battles while serving them Pyrrhic victories in battles.
For the last 60-80 years of the game, truces and aggressive expansion were the only real barriers to getting the achievement.
On the Cicero Update:
This update really went a long way to balancing the game, and giving it a more cohesive feel. It very much feels like the developer released a stable platform but with unconnected game-mechanics that felt more tedious than rewarding. The Cicero update got us to where the game "should" have been on it's initial release--and it does a very good job of addressing fan concerns. This isn't something that would fly with most developers, and if I didn't have a history of playing their games, I would probably not have been so generous in my deference to this style of release.
But the Cicero update is a thorough vindication of this release model, and a worthy reward of our patience while Paradox got this right. The game feels like a cohesive, engaging world now. I think there needs to be a better system to visualize character and family loyalty and relations, and some of the game feels tedious in much the same way EU4 did before updates streamlined it. Some of these are on deck for the Livy update, and our patience here is likely to be rewarded again. My two biggest gripes are the "fly-swatting" army maneuvering to consolidate occupation and control of a province, and the tedium of replacing buildings when conquering vast new lands (the Tribal settlement is useless to Rome, but there's no clear way to visualize this, nor replace them without opening the build menu for every. single. settlement!!!).
On warfare:
The "nepotistic army" has vast benefits for Rome. This starts off by dividing your army into 3, one Cavalry army with your highest ranked general, plus 2, half-sized armies led by generals of otherwise poor skill from a scorned family. This also addresses the problem of attrition--a bigger enemy than any nation to the constant-warfare state that the Mare Nostrum achievement requires. By sending a line of two or three armies down the road, you avoid larger attrition penalties, and the largest attrition provinces are only sapping a part of your army at any time. When entering battle, this allows you to bate your enemy into an initially smaller force, then bring in your other half, and your cavalry too--best commander and all. On top of all that, already having your troops in the defensive battle (with any terrain bonus), you can change your tactics for your arriving commander to properly counter your foe, plus they arrive with cavalry on the flanks (where it's actually useful). With your Roman ideas, heavy infantry supported by flanking archers, and the benefits of foresight and a mobile commander, you can get vast multiples for parity with enemy soldiers...thus with a smaller army, suffering less attrition, you can suffer many losses against a larger army while relying on your manpower to win a war.
Later in the game, as cavalry becomes engaged in road building, your armies become faster defensively because of your roads, the problem with scorned families is gone, and good generals too few the army changes. Furthermore, these units become useful for quickly pacifying enemy lands--independent operations as a rear-guard unit is a very effective use of cavalry. Still functioning in groups of 3-4 heavy infantry/archer armies that can be quickly assembled for a major battle, one of the primary army units will have your best general, and you'll have 3 or 4 groups of these armies (in the year 700, I had approximately 500k standing army with individual units of 36k-42k). All of these are drilling and spread out not suffering attrition during rare peace times.
My armies tend towards a 2:1 ratio of heavy infantry to archers, always with heavy infantry in the center, archers outside of them, and light cavalry on the flanks (this is not the default and must be changed for every army). Roads will form the backbone of your military supremacy. Fast defensive unit movement allows you to defend against a larger army by having two offensive armies that can opportunistically siege requiring your enemy to in effect fight on two fronts. A line of forts in Tunisia backed by a coast road from Carthage to the south lets you force Carthage soldiers across the interior desert provinces. Conversely, while you can use ships to force large Egyptian armies between Libya and Alexandria, building a road there allows you to avoid this attrition. Military traditions take a clear path: a beeline to road building, followed by the middle path for the siege benefits--the left traditions only real benefit to Rome is the +15% omen power for the third tradition.
I noticed that my wars fell into a distinct pattern of four stages: opening gambits, the struggle for supremacy, decisive battle(s), and victory consolidation. The two middle stages can often be short-circuited, particularly when superiority is asymmetric. All wars end by the "fly-swatting" clean up of making sure you control the correct forts and state capitols to take you desired lands. This makes the opening gambits the most interesting--they are the preparations for war and opening moves before battle lines are drawn for the slogging-it-out of the second and third stages.
Opening gambits take a number of different forms, and these are some I've tried with varying success:
As you prevail (hopefully) over the attrition stage of the war, it culminates in a decisive battle, the third and shortest stage. The enemy has rallied their full strength to a single theater of battle bolstered heavily by mercenaries. The war has centered the bulk of your forces to this same theater, and the apparently superior enemy makes the attack, a string of reinforcements keeps the battle raging for weeks or months, and it ends in a decisive victory with your army massed to begin a counter attack behind the shattered enemy's retreat.
The fourth and final stage is consolidating your control over enemy territory. War objectives a shored-up, the last few remnants of the enemy are dealt with. Tedious troop movements rule the day as you try to push your score just high enough to achieve your goal or hold off the enemy while the "months at war" score ticks down.
The warfare is something of a hybrid between HoI4 and EU4 in that you need to maintain battle lines to deny your enemy access to a strategic goal, but also while using the forts in tandem with this strategy. Warfare should be conducted with a clear strategic goal in mind. Tactical considerations should be how to achieve and maintain your strategic goals and should use forts and geography to force your enemy into an undesirable position.
The bottom line:
On nation building and statecraft:
Rome wasn't built in a day. The states and management thereof is pretty complex to say the least. Early considerations are towards maximizing trade profit, while later in the game excess food stuffs and limited food production will have a much greater pull on your territories. Cities and provinces benefit from specialization. Rome and your other metropolises (mine were Athens, Byzantium, Carthage, Syracuse, and Alexandria) were centers of research. The cities themselves were geared towards maximum citizens with maximum happiness and maximum productivity, while the settlements were geared towards maximum food production. Regional capital provinces are geared towards population growth and production and were agnostic to freemen vs. citizens. Spices, dyes, hemp, and marble producing provinces were geared towards maximization of their respective resources. Rural provinces (those with no city settlements) were geared towards slave output maximization. The provincial legation is useful to help centralize population of your newly conquered lands,
State optimization is key to success. Much of your conquered land will have tribal settlements in place which are of little value to Rome which tends towards a citizen / freeman / slave society. These should be replaced with slave estates and barracks where appropriate (slave estates to increase food production in urban states, barracks to improve cash flow in rural ones), and farm estates and mines to increase output of trade goods early in the game. Settlement buildings need to be constantly reviewed and updated (and the game needs a way to address this--both displaying settlements with the given building type, and a way to bulk replace buildings without having to click on each province, the the build menu, then remove the old building, then build a new one). When income means you must prioritize development, the slow evolution of a city means it should be the first to receive resources over the surrounding countryside--which can quickly change direction at a later date as needed. Import routes should be utilized to maximize province benefits.
Excess forts should be eliminated as these can become a liability in rebellion or civil war and they cost money and take up land that could be otherwise have more productive buildings placed on it. As a constant warfare state, your expanding borders should make all but a few defensive bottle-neck forts unnecessary
Aggressive expansion is one of three limiting factors on how fast you can grow, the others being truces and manpower. As such, consideration needs to be given to it. I adjust my expectations so provinces are generally tolerant of a baseline of 4.00 AE. AE precipitates a snowballing effect of province disloyalty. When a critical mass of state development becomes disloyal, they will rebel, each state becoming it's own nation and fighting a war allied with each other against their overlord.
These AE rebellions can actually be used as a means to control AE themselves. I (accidentally) ran my AE up to about 55 or 58 by conquering some of the Nile delta, Carthage and it's populated provinces, much of Spain, and some land around the Black Sea in a quick series of wars. Realizing my impending disaster, I released some of the states as client states and began relationship improvement to make them loyal to me. Geographic location (to split rebellious states with friendly forts, or a concentration well protected so they can muster a large ally army...) is more important that development level for whom to release. The rebellion was centered in Spanish provinces with a few isolated ones in North Africa and around the Black Sea. Once the war was declared, my country stats immediately went up (mainly research) as my population average happiness shot up. Vassals in Spain split the rebel armies and prevented them from being able to mass an army of any size early in the war. Well placed armies (in friendly territory adjacent to isolated alliance members) quickly subdue a few rebels with a 100% war score victory (which is pretty easy against a new state that has one fort and has yet to raise an army). The rest of the war was just a massive influx of mercenaries and splitting off one state at a time by sieging them on multiple sides and taking out the enemy where the siege is successful. As each state is pealed off, you banish their nobles and get the -0.50 AE for each state, bring them on as a 100 loyalty new state...plus the time elapsed with decaying AE while you control an otherwise loyal nation.
Feel free to comment, critique, or question!
First, the pics!
Game History:
My memory, like so much history, is incomplete, the victor's (that's me!) version, and is colored as much by nostalgia as fact. But this is how the game played out according to me.
The start of the game was a bit of a royal flush start, with a series of alliances and wars that allowed for a very quick consolidation of Helenistic Italy. Etruria and Finiatia were the first war, started by me, ending in full annexation with event given claims. I immediately turned east to Umbria, Sabina, and Picaneta (which had quickly conquered Ancona. As this war drew to a close, I lucked out when a Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania alliance attacked me. I quickly finished sieging the east coast forts, let my allies clean up the rest, and moved my troops into defensive position against Samnium. Since they were on the attack, I was able to fight a war of attrition, sapping their manpower while maintaining my own, From there, Messapia had allied with Taulantia (which had conquered Eprius) and Brutia, and with a series wars, I consolidated control over the rest of the boot and the smaller city-states. A further war south and I took control of Syracuse and all points en route. So ends the first decade of play. Macedonia attacked, and another defensive war was easily turned, taking the full Macedonian lands, including Pell.
At this point, Carthage obliged with an attack, ostensibly on Siculia. This again allowed me to play a defensive war, with Carthage bringing troops to the island to suffer attrition while I picked them off opportunistically for defense. In the peace, I consolidated my control of Sicily and forced the release of Gymnasia (Balearic islands), and Tripoli. On the expiration of that truce, there were a series of wars for Tripoli, Cyranaica (which Egypt had reduced to a few settlements on the far west of the settled desert), and Sardinia. From there, the attack on Carthage was launched allowing me to consolidate control. I now had a shared border with Egypt who then attacked me. Having to attach across the Libyan desert, Egypt's overextended armies were easily defended against. I maintained navel superiority and alternately sieged Alexandria and their Cyranaica fort--forcing their armies to traverse the attrition heavy Libyan coast. This was the game's turning point war where Carthage and Egypt were irreversibly damaged allowing for my continued ascendance.
Meanwhile, during the truces with the major power, I continued with more or less constant wars, alternately along the Adriatic coast or towards Gaul. The idea being that I prosecute a war to east while truces to the west cool down and then turn west when the truce expires.
From this point, I maintained manpower superiority to the combined threat of Egypt, Phrygia, and Carthage. Egypt and Carthage through attrition warfare, and Phrygia through outright numerical superiority. A series of wars allowed me to consolidate control over Greece, and presented the first opportunity for a blood-letting of Phrygia.
By this time (c. 540) I had complete control of the Greek Isles, Carthage to Alexandria and Western delta (minus the uncolonized desert lands), Constantonople, and all Mediteranian islands but Cyprus. After a further war with Carthage, while still having significant aggresive expansion from conquests of Macedonian, Phrygian, Egyption, Spanish, and Gaulic, lands, the over extended nation finally broke. Newly annexed provinces either revolted or were released as vassals, strategically, and the rebellion was the only major war to seriously sap my manpower reserves as about 18 newly found states hired every mercenary army in southern Europe. Butt Rome was victorious, crushing the rebellion and asserting control over the newly cowed territories.
The rest of the game was uneventful from a story line perspective, I was easily the greatest power, with 1.25x - 1.50x the combined max man power of Phrygia, Egypt, and Seleukid. An initially Phrygia / Seleukid alliance meant Phrygian troops were routinely called to battle in Seleukid's easter enemy, Maurya, presenting ample opportunities for rapid land grabs, followed by a war of attrition as Phrygia tried to recover the forts I quickly seized. Egypt was a simple question of bating them towards Alexandria across my Western Delta and North African coastal forts, initially losing most battles while serving them Pyrrhic victories in battles.
For the last 60-80 years of the game, truces and aggressive expansion were the only real barriers to getting the achievement.
On the Cicero Update:
This update really went a long way to balancing the game, and giving it a more cohesive feel. It very much feels like the developer released a stable platform but with unconnected game-mechanics that felt more tedious than rewarding. The Cicero update got us to where the game "should" have been on it's initial release--and it does a very good job of addressing fan concerns. This isn't something that would fly with most developers, and if I didn't have a history of playing their games, I would probably not have been so generous in my deference to this style of release.
But the Cicero update is a thorough vindication of this release model, and a worthy reward of our patience while Paradox got this right. The game feels like a cohesive, engaging world now. I think there needs to be a better system to visualize character and family loyalty and relations, and some of the game feels tedious in much the same way EU4 did before updates streamlined it. Some of these are on deck for the Livy update, and our patience here is likely to be rewarded again. My two biggest gripes are the "fly-swatting" army maneuvering to consolidate occupation and control of a province, and the tedium of replacing buildings when conquering vast new lands (the Tribal settlement is useless to Rome, but there's no clear way to visualize this, nor replace them without opening the build menu for every. single. settlement!!!).
On warfare:
The "nepotistic army" has vast benefits for Rome. This starts off by dividing your army into 3, one Cavalry army with your highest ranked general, plus 2, half-sized armies led by generals of otherwise poor skill from a scorned family. This also addresses the problem of attrition--a bigger enemy than any nation to the constant-warfare state that the Mare Nostrum achievement requires. By sending a line of two or three armies down the road, you avoid larger attrition penalties, and the largest attrition provinces are only sapping a part of your army at any time. When entering battle, this allows you to bate your enemy into an initially smaller force, then bring in your other half, and your cavalry too--best commander and all. On top of all that, already having your troops in the defensive battle (with any terrain bonus), you can change your tactics for your arriving commander to properly counter your foe, plus they arrive with cavalry on the flanks (where it's actually useful). With your Roman ideas, heavy infantry supported by flanking archers, and the benefits of foresight and a mobile commander, you can get vast multiples for parity with enemy soldiers...thus with a smaller army, suffering less attrition, you can suffer many losses against a larger army while relying on your manpower to win a war.
Later in the game, as cavalry becomes engaged in road building, your armies become faster defensively because of your roads, the problem with scorned families is gone, and good generals too few the army changes. Furthermore, these units become useful for quickly pacifying enemy lands--independent operations as a rear-guard unit is a very effective use of cavalry. Still functioning in groups of 3-4 heavy infantry/archer armies that can be quickly assembled for a major battle, one of the primary army units will have your best general, and you'll have 3 or 4 groups of these armies (in the year 700, I had approximately 500k standing army with individual units of 36k-42k). All of these are drilling and spread out not suffering attrition during rare peace times.
My armies tend towards a 2:1 ratio of heavy infantry to archers, always with heavy infantry in the center, archers outside of them, and light cavalry on the flanks (this is not the default and must be changed for every army). Roads will form the backbone of your military supremacy. Fast defensive unit movement allows you to defend against a larger army by having two offensive armies that can opportunistically siege requiring your enemy to in effect fight on two fronts. A line of forts in Tunisia backed by a coast road from Carthage to the south lets you force Carthage soldiers across the interior desert provinces. Conversely, while you can use ships to force large Egyptian armies between Libya and Alexandria, building a road there allows you to avoid this attrition. Military traditions take a clear path: a beeline to road building, followed by the middle path for the siege benefits--the left traditions only real benefit to Rome is the +15% omen power for the third tradition.
I noticed that my wars fell into a distinct pattern of four stages: opening gambits, the struggle for supremacy, decisive battle(s), and victory consolidation. The two middle stages can often be short-circuited, particularly when superiority is asymmetric. All wars end by the "fly-swatting" clean up of making sure you control the correct forts and state capitols to take you desired lands. This makes the opening gambits the most interesting--they are the preparations for war and opening moves before battle lines are drawn for the slogging-it-out of the second and third stages.
Opening gambits take a number of different forms, and these are some I've tried with varying success:
- Attacking 4 forts in the hopes that you'll sack one before the enemy can break all 4 sieges
- Positioning an army next to a prospective enemy's ally's territory, then quickly knocking out the enemy's allied partner before they can rally their army.
- Quickly seizing low-supply land with a fast, cavalry only army, forcing the enemy to retake it while suffering attrition
- Declaring war ostensibly for a remote province that can be easily and quickly controlled to start the ticking war score, while actually prosecuting a war for more valuable, centrally located land (think declaring for Libyan provinces while actually targeting the delta)
- Rapidly going on the offensive to pick off 1k-3k groups of soldiers as they try to form up the initial army.
- A rapid (and very costly) assault on an enemy's bottle-necked mountain fort with a low supply limit, forcing a numerically superior enemy to retake it with great losses while I picked off smaller allies
As you prevail (hopefully) over the attrition stage of the war, it culminates in a decisive battle, the third and shortest stage. The enemy has rallied their full strength to a single theater of battle bolstered heavily by mercenaries. The war has centered the bulk of your forces to this same theater, and the apparently superior enemy makes the attack, a string of reinforcements keeps the battle raging for weeks or months, and it ends in a decisive victory with your army massed to begin a counter attack behind the shattered enemy's retreat.
The fourth and final stage is consolidating your control over enemy territory. War objectives a shored-up, the last few remnants of the enemy are dealt with. Tedious troop movements rule the day as you try to push your score just high enough to achieve your goal or hold off the enemy while the "months at war" score ticks down.
The warfare is something of a hybrid between HoI4 and EU4 in that you need to maintain battle lines to deny your enemy access to a strategic goal, but also while using the forts in tandem with this strategy. Warfare should be conducted with a clear strategic goal in mind. Tactical considerations should be how to achieve and maintain your strategic goals and should use forts and geography to force your enemy into an undesirable position.
The bottom line:
- Manpower underwrites your wars. Manage attrition and battle losses so you're ready to start the next war at the end of the preceding. While AE and truces can be overcome with a high enough cost to stability, manpower is irreplaceable.
- Use alliances to your advantage. While declaring war on a state guaranteed by Phrygia raises the cost of land from Phrygia in a peace agreement, it may allow you to separately declare war on their ally Egypt, while negotiating each war separately. But...
- For the late game land grabs, you'll need to declare war directly on the power from which you need to take the most land.
- Remember how time factors in. A quick war where partial goals are achieved with a shorter truce might mean a quicker acquisition of land in the long-run. A long, protracted war or 3 years to peal apart an alliance and take land from each state might not make sense when compared with a 4-6 month war with only a 5 year truce. Likewise, when I declared war on a clearly exhausted and over extended Phrygia, they offered peace within the early months on very generous terms (both in terms of war score, and in terms of aggressive expansion).
On nation building and statecraft:
Rome wasn't built in a day. The states and management thereof is pretty complex to say the least. Early considerations are towards maximizing trade profit, while later in the game excess food stuffs and limited food production will have a much greater pull on your territories. Cities and provinces benefit from specialization. Rome and your other metropolises (mine were Athens, Byzantium, Carthage, Syracuse, and Alexandria) were centers of research. The cities themselves were geared towards maximum citizens with maximum happiness and maximum productivity, while the settlements were geared towards maximum food production. Regional capital provinces are geared towards population growth and production and were agnostic to freemen vs. citizens. Spices, dyes, hemp, and marble producing provinces were geared towards maximization of their respective resources. Rural provinces (those with no city settlements) were geared towards slave output maximization. The provincial legation is useful to help centralize population of your newly conquered lands,
State optimization is key to success. Much of your conquered land will have tribal settlements in place which are of little value to Rome which tends towards a citizen / freeman / slave society. These should be replaced with slave estates and barracks where appropriate (slave estates to increase food production in urban states, barracks to improve cash flow in rural ones), and farm estates and mines to increase output of trade goods early in the game. Settlement buildings need to be constantly reviewed and updated (and the game needs a way to address this--both displaying settlements with the given building type, and a way to bulk replace buildings without having to click on each province, the the build menu, then remove the old building, then build a new one). When income means you must prioritize development, the slow evolution of a city means it should be the first to receive resources over the surrounding countryside--which can quickly change direction at a later date as needed. Import routes should be utilized to maximize province benefits.
Excess forts should be eliminated as these can become a liability in rebellion or civil war and they cost money and take up land that could be otherwise have more productive buildings placed on it. As a constant warfare state, your expanding borders should make all but a few defensive bottle-neck forts unnecessary
Aggressive expansion is one of three limiting factors on how fast you can grow, the others being truces and manpower. As such, consideration needs to be given to it. I adjust my expectations so provinces are generally tolerant of a baseline of 4.00 AE. AE precipitates a snowballing effect of province disloyalty. When a critical mass of state development becomes disloyal, they will rebel, each state becoming it's own nation and fighting a war allied with each other against their overlord.
These AE rebellions can actually be used as a means to control AE themselves. I (accidentally) ran my AE up to about 55 or 58 by conquering some of the Nile delta, Carthage and it's populated provinces, much of Spain, and some land around the Black Sea in a quick series of wars. Realizing my impending disaster, I released some of the states as client states and began relationship improvement to make them loyal to me. Geographic location (to split rebellious states with friendly forts, or a concentration well protected so they can muster a large ally army...) is more important that development level for whom to release. The rebellion was centered in Spanish provinces with a few isolated ones in North Africa and around the Black Sea. Once the war was declared, my country stats immediately went up (mainly research) as my population average happiness shot up. Vassals in Spain split the rebel armies and prevented them from being able to mass an army of any size early in the war. Well placed armies (in friendly territory adjacent to isolated alliance members) quickly subdue a few rebels with a 100% war score victory (which is pretty easy against a new state that has one fort and has yet to raise an army). The rest of the war was just a massive influx of mercenaries and splitting off one state at a time by sieging them on multiple sides and taking out the enemy where the siege is successful. As each state is pealed off, you banish their nobles and get the -0.50 AE for each state, bring them on as a 100 loyalty new state...plus the time elapsed with decaying AE while you control an otherwise loyal nation.
Feel free to comment, critique, or question!
