Has anyone tried this? I would love to hear thoughts. I am playing it right now, and it's insanely OP. You have Mughal level core-cost, Russian level manpower, unbeatable fort defence, unmatched trade power and improve relations. Not only this, but you're Orthodox! The, imo, strongest religion in the game. If you combine the Italian manpower idea with the effect of Orthodoxy and decent Patriarchal Authority you can literally have an endless supply of men. It's some of the most fun I've had playing a game ever.
I think Aragon are actually the strongest nation to form Italy with, since you own the southern half of Italy already, can PU Castile/Portugal and no CB Byzantium for ultimate power. Italy is hard to conquer because of AE, so having a bunch of places to expand elsewhere is very important. You do lose the ability to inherit Castile by forming Italy, but Castile is a small price to pay for the Italian ideas, plus I had a Spain game recently.
Strategy was:
1) No CB Byz, vassalise. Ally Lithuania + Mamluks, declare war on Ottomans for Byzantine cores. Take them back + a few more provinces and get your cores/claims back from Epirus. Integrate ASAP. Don't grow Byzantium any bigger so that you can integrate them fast. It's also to prevent any liberty desire from subject development once you have Castile + Portugal. Once integrated, do the usual trick with no missionary maintenance to get Orthodox rebels to temporarily break your country. Accept rebel demands when you're 50% Orthodox.
2) Flip Sicilian. You could alternatively wait, integrate Naples, and flip Neapolitan but you can flip Sicilian immediately after the Byzantine wars with a lot of unstating.
3) Do the usual Aragon stuff after. There are some nice claims and bonuses. Try and postpone the Iberian wedding until Castile have taken exploration (hard, thanks to their useless rulers. I got them just before they hit Admin tech 5, but they luckily still took expansion). PU Portugal once they've taken exploration. Attack Provence whenever France don't want to protect them anymore. Use Provence to start your Italian wars. Italy is very high dev, taking more than 2 provinces at a time is coalition territory and some of the Italian states will join the HRE again when they feel scared of you, so you have to be patient and expand elsewhere. I invaded England. I also force converted some of the small Italian states (Siena, Bologna) to Orthodoxy so I could vassalise them easier.
4) Once you've integrated Naples, done as much as you can as Aragon, form Two Sicilies. Two Sicilies have really nice ideas in their own right, and their -10% core-cost comes earlier in the ideas list, whereas Italy's comes right at the end. Two Sicilies have permanent buffs in their mission tree, and the tech costs, morale and unrest ideas are all extremely strong.
5) When you've completed what you can with Two Sicilies and have completed the last national idea, form Italy! You now get a claim on all of Italy and have such powerful ideas, such high development base provinces, that a WC is more than possible.
The ideas I took were:
Influence (annexation cost), Religious (CB and I have lots to convert), Admin (CCR stacking), Quantity (I never take quantity this early but I was rich and Religious + Quantity policy is great), Humanist (I love Religious + Humanist unity, no rebels). I'll take Diplomatic next. It's usually my 1st or 2nd idea and it's starting to hurt me not having the province warscore cost idea in a WC. I'll take Offensive and something else afterwards.
Anyway, I can only really, really recommend you try this out. It's great either for a fun game, or for a World Conquest. Please let me know if anyone has any criticisms of my strategy, or if you've managed to do this yourself.
I'm in 1630, own the whole Mediterranean, most of the Americas, most of the British isles, all of France, the coasts of West, East and South Africa, and a chartered company in India. I can core provinces for 2 digit figures, even 1 digit figures, am never short on men even walking around with death stack. I have an army 3-4x bigger than anyone else, the largest fleet in the game, level 3 advisors all around and still making lots of money I pump into buildings.
I think Aragon are actually the strongest nation to form Italy with, since you own the southern half of Italy already, can PU Castile/Portugal and no CB Byzantium for ultimate power. Italy is hard to conquer because of AE, so having a bunch of places to expand elsewhere is very important. You do lose the ability to inherit Castile by forming Italy, but Castile is a small price to pay for the Italian ideas, plus I had a Spain game recently.
Strategy was:
1) No CB Byz, vassalise. Ally Lithuania + Mamluks, declare war on Ottomans for Byzantine cores. Take them back + a few more provinces and get your cores/claims back from Epirus. Integrate ASAP. Don't grow Byzantium any bigger so that you can integrate them fast. It's also to prevent any liberty desire from subject development once you have Castile + Portugal. Once integrated, do the usual trick with no missionary maintenance to get Orthodox rebels to temporarily break your country. Accept rebel demands when you're 50% Orthodox.
2) Flip Sicilian. You could alternatively wait, integrate Naples, and flip Neapolitan but you can flip Sicilian immediately after the Byzantine wars with a lot of unstating.
3) Do the usual Aragon stuff after. There are some nice claims and bonuses. Try and postpone the Iberian wedding until Castile have taken exploration (hard, thanks to their useless rulers. I got them just before they hit Admin tech 5, but they luckily still took expansion). PU Portugal once they've taken exploration. Attack Provence whenever France don't want to protect them anymore. Use Provence to start your Italian wars. Italy is very high dev, taking more than 2 provinces at a time is coalition territory and some of the Italian states will join the HRE again when they feel scared of you, so you have to be patient and expand elsewhere. I invaded England. I also force converted some of the small Italian states (Siena, Bologna) to Orthodoxy so I could vassalise them easier.
4) Once you've integrated Naples, done as much as you can as Aragon, form Two Sicilies. Two Sicilies have really nice ideas in their own right, and their -10% core-cost comes earlier in the ideas list, whereas Italy's comes right at the end. Two Sicilies have permanent buffs in their mission tree, and the tech costs, morale and unrest ideas are all extremely strong.
5) When you've completed what you can with Two Sicilies and have completed the last national idea, form Italy! You now get a claim on all of Italy and have such powerful ideas, such high development base provinces, that a WC is more than possible.
The ideas I took were:
Influence (annexation cost), Religious (CB and I have lots to convert), Admin (CCR stacking), Quantity (I never take quantity this early but I was rich and Religious + Quantity policy is great), Humanist (I love Religious + Humanist unity, no rebels). I'll take Diplomatic next. It's usually my 1st or 2nd idea and it's starting to hurt me not having the province warscore cost idea in a WC. I'll take Offensive and something else afterwards.
Anyway, I can only really, really recommend you try this out. It's great either for a fun game, or for a World Conquest. Please let me know if anyone has any criticisms of my strategy, or if you've managed to do this yourself.
I'm in 1630, own the whole Mediterranean, most of the Americas, most of the British isles, all of France, the coasts of West, East and South Africa, and a chartered company in India. I can core provinces for 2 digit figures, even 1 digit figures, am never short on men even walking around with death stack. I have an army 3-4x bigger than anyone else, the largest fleet in the game, level 3 advisors all around and still making lots of money I pump into buildings.
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