First off thanks to Rabid for bringing to my attention that Aquilea is in a position to form a Theocratic Italy. Totally missed that this is a possibility now (or that Aquilea has any starting cores by now in the first place...), the last time I checked for things like this the decision still turned you into a monarchy no matter what.
Since I have yet to play a proper Theocratic campaign since 1.12, and I never actually formed Italy yet, this is what I decided on for my next campaign.
I'm playing in Ironman mode with normal settings btw.
Overview
Chapter 1: Road to Freedom - starts in this very post
Chapter 2: Incalculable Allies
Chapter 3: They finally notice me!
Chapter 4: Great progress and great risks
Chapter 5: Strength through Adversity
Chapter 6: Diplomatic Merry-go-round
Chapter 7: All hail theKingdom Archbishopric of Italy
Chapter 8: Settling old scores
Chapter 9: Times of War
Chapter 10: Anyone else wants some?
Chapter 11: Patriarchate Restored
Chapter 12: Unified Italy
Chapter 13: I might have overdone it a little...
Chapter 14: Coalition luck
Chapter 15: Endless Wars
Chapter 16: Dominance
Final Chapter: Rome Reborn
Introduction
The Patriarchate of Aquilea (or Patria del Friuli as the state was known) used to be a major power in northern Italy, but the rise of the Republic of Venice proved to be its downfall. Just before the start of EU4's timeline a war between the two saw the utter defeat of Aquilea, and historically the Aquilean Patriarch of that time officially gave up his holdings and claims in 1445 (for a sizeable amount of Venecian money).
But history will unfold a little different in this campaign...
Goals & Plans
The first step will obviously be to release Aquilea as a nation. At the starting date they have cores on two provinces, held by two different nations:
One is Görz, held by Austria:
And the other one Friuli, held by Venice:
Since Friuli has the "stronger" core and is also the former capital province of Aquilea this is what I'm going with.
Past that the next step will be to (re-)gain my independence. Hopefully Venice's rivals will help with that, that should make this step very manageable.
My main goal will be to form Italy. I don't really see a reason not to join the HRE asap, but I'll reconsider this once the "Shadow Kingdom" fires. Since I plan on staying a Theocracy I don't have any aspirations in regards to the Empire, becoming an Elector would be nice though. But I don't think it's likely that any Electorates will become vacant before the Reformation, and by then I'll most likely be too big. But we'll see how things develop in that regard.
Past that it all depends on my motivation. I ended my recent campaigns once I reached my main goal to start over somewhere else, no promises that it'll be any different with this one.
I think I'll try to my expansion to Italy for the time being, so no colonization or expanding into weird places (that's the plan at least, and I'm usually not sticking to my plans...).
So here we go:
Chapter 1: Road to freedom
As I wrote I started as Venice, and released and continued playing as Aquilea, finding myself in this position:
Not a great first ruler, but he'll have to suffice. My land forcelimit is a whopping three, so I'll be starting of with some infantry, and then some tradeships. Spend money to earn money, the Venecian trade node is still pretty rich early on.
Surprisingly (at least to me) Venetian isn't actually my Primary culture, but Lombard:
I saved and reloaded after releasing Aquilea, but the AI still lost the first diplomacy tick and waited for the month to tick over before doing anything of note (maybe I had to exit the game completely?).
Here's how Venice is looking:
Great, one of the few times Venice and Austria are one friendly terms. I was honestly tempted to just restart till Austria and Venice start as rivals, but then decided to just go with it.
Hungary I can work with, but both Burgundy and Bohemia can't reach Venice and won't support my independence. And almost everyone else in Italy and the Balkans is either friendly to, or feels treatened by Venice and won't help either.
Ottomans might end up helping me indirectly though. I'll either have to hope for an early war between them and Venice, for Venice and Austria turning hostile, or for Venice finding itself on the receiving end of a random big war.
As expected, Hungary didn't need much convincing. Venice got the Papal State and the Knights as allies by now, combined with all her vassals that means I'll have to stay patient.
They're on to something.
And they don't seem to like what I'm doing.
In the meantime Venice conquered Ragusa, but noone else opposed them or even cared about it, so not the slightest opportunity for me there.
To make things worse Genoa, Hungary's ally, decided to invade Tunisia. Which resulted in Hungary having to fight the Ottomans pretty much on their own.
Somehow Hungary did relatively well early in the war, convincing Venice that the can get a piece of the Ottomans too:
Of course the Ottomans managed to turn things around soon, but since both Hungary and Ottomans were only secondary participants in their war they mostly focussed on Venice.
With the Papal States out of the picture and Venice losing her navy I figured that's the best chance I'll be getting:
Hungary will have to do some heavy lifting for me, and with them still being in a war against the Ottomans things can get ugly really fast. I have to hope that the Ottomans both do well and do poorly at the same time...
I build up my army some more (no longer being a vassal means my forcelimit went up), attacked some small stacks that were isolated and/or freshly built on the mainland, and then went for the Venecian holdings in the Balkans.
Surprisingly enough the Knights ferried all their troops over (and more of them than I would have thought) and proved to be the biggest obstacle on my way to freedom.
I joined the HRE already, figuring that there's no real downside to it at this point, and the added diplomatic reputation might come in handy.
Venice ended up losing both Corfu and Crete to the Ottomans, but thankfully Byzantium jumped them right after that war ended.
Byzantium ultimately lost that war, but between that keeping Venice busy and Hungary helping me siege some stuff that was all I needed:
My independence, the province of Treviso, and some very welcome war reparations. That's looking to be a very promising start.
On the downside both Hungary and Austria immedeately went domineering, so I lost the one ally I had right away, and had no chance of allying the nation that would be the most benefitial to me...
I tried giving up my core in Görz since I have no intention of expanding in that direction any time soon (it would have have been gone in 1494 anyways), but Austria still kept switching between domineering and neutral and didn't want to ally me.
So the Pope ended up being my first ally. I don't think this will be a long lasting alliance, but I need anything I can get right now, and they're reasonably strong.
As you can see Venice and Ferrara were my only rival choices for the time being, so that's what I went with.
So next time I'll have to try and get some more allies, and then figure out how I'll be able to expand. Ferrara is allied to France, so it'll most likely end up in waiting out the truce with Venice and attacking them again.
Since I have yet to play a proper Theocratic campaign since 1.12, and I never actually formed Italy yet, this is what I decided on for my next campaign.
I'm playing in Ironman mode with normal settings btw.
Overview
Chapter 1: Road to Freedom - starts in this very post
Chapter 2: Incalculable Allies
Chapter 3: They finally notice me!
Chapter 4: Great progress and great risks
Chapter 5: Strength through Adversity
Chapter 6: Diplomatic Merry-go-round
Chapter 7: All hail the
Chapter 8: Settling old scores
Chapter 9: Times of War
Chapter 10: Anyone else wants some?
Chapter 11: Patriarchate Restored
Chapter 12: Unified Italy
Chapter 13: I might have overdone it a little...
Chapter 14: Coalition luck
Chapter 15: Endless Wars
Chapter 16: Dominance
Final Chapter: Rome Reborn
Introduction
The Patriarchate of Aquilea (or Patria del Friuli as the state was known) used to be a major power in northern Italy, but the rise of the Republic of Venice proved to be its downfall. Just before the start of EU4's timeline a war between the two saw the utter defeat of Aquilea, and historically the Aquilean Patriarch of that time officially gave up his holdings and claims in 1445 (for a sizeable amount of Venecian money).
But history will unfold a little different in this campaign...
Goals & Plans
The first step will obviously be to release Aquilea as a nation. At the starting date they have cores on two provinces, held by two different nations:
One is Görz, held by Austria:
And the other one Friuli, held by Venice:
Since Friuli has the "stronger" core and is also the former capital province of Aquilea this is what I'm going with.
Past that the next step will be to (re-)gain my independence. Hopefully Venice's rivals will help with that, that should make this step very manageable.
My main goal will be to form Italy. I don't really see a reason not to join the HRE asap, but I'll reconsider this once the "Shadow Kingdom" fires. Since I plan on staying a Theocracy I don't have any aspirations in regards to the Empire, becoming an Elector would be nice though. But I don't think it's likely that any Electorates will become vacant before the Reformation, and by then I'll most likely be too big. But we'll see how things develop in that regard.
Past that it all depends on my motivation. I ended my recent campaigns once I reached my main goal to start over somewhere else, no promises that it'll be any different with this one.
I think I'll try to my expansion to Italy for the time being, so no colonization or expanding into weird places (that's the plan at least, and I'm usually not sticking to my plans...).
So here we go:
Chapter 1: Road to freedom
As I wrote I started as Venice, and released and continued playing as Aquilea, finding myself in this position:
Not a great first ruler, but he'll have to suffice. My land forcelimit is a whopping three, so I'll be starting of with some infantry, and then some tradeships. Spend money to earn money, the Venecian trade node is still pretty rich early on.
Surprisingly (at least to me) Venetian isn't actually my Primary culture, but Lombard:
I saved and reloaded after releasing Aquilea, but the AI still lost the first diplomacy tick and waited for the month to tick over before doing anything of note (maybe I had to exit the game completely?).
Here's how Venice is looking:
Great, one of the few times Venice and Austria are one friendly terms. I was honestly tempted to just restart till Austria and Venice start as rivals, but then decided to just go with it.
Hungary I can work with, but both Burgundy and Bohemia can't reach Venice and won't support my independence. And almost everyone else in Italy and the Balkans is either friendly to, or feels treatened by Venice and won't help either.
Ottomans might end up helping me indirectly though. I'll either have to hope for an early war between them and Venice, for Venice and Austria turning hostile, or for Venice finding itself on the receiving end of a random big war.
As expected, Hungary didn't need much convincing. Venice got the Papal State and the Knights as allies by now, combined with all her vassals that means I'll have to stay patient.
They're on to something.
And they don't seem to like what I'm doing.
In the meantime Venice conquered Ragusa, but noone else opposed them or even cared about it, so not the slightest opportunity for me there.
To make things worse Genoa, Hungary's ally, decided to invade Tunisia. Which resulted in Hungary having to fight the Ottomans pretty much on their own.
Somehow Hungary did relatively well early in the war, convincing Venice that the can get a piece of the Ottomans too:
Of course the Ottomans managed to turn things around soon, but since both Hungary and Ottomans were only secondary participants in their war they mostly focussed on Venice.
With the Papal States out of the picture and Venice losing her navy I figured that's the best chance I'll be getting:
Hungary will have to do some heavy lifting for me, and with them still being in a war against the Ottomans things can get ugly really fast. I have to hope that the Ottomans both do well and do poorly at the same time...
I build up my army some more (no longer being a vassal means my forcelimit went up), attacked some small stacks that were isolated and/or freshly built on the mainland, and then went for the Venecian holdings in the Balkans.
Surprisingly enough the Knights ferried all their troops over (and more of them than I would have thought) and proved to be the biggest obstacle on my way to freedom.
I joined the HRE already, figuring that there's no real downside to it at this point, and the added diplomatic reputation might come in handy.
Venice ended up losing both Corfu and Crete to the Ottomans, but thankfully Byzantium jumped them right after that war ended.
Byzantium ultimately lost that war, but between that keeping Venice busy and Hungary helping me siege some stuff that was all I needed:
My independence, the province of Treviso, and some very welcome war reparations. That's looking to be a very promising start.
On the downside both Hungary and Austria immedeately went domineering, so I lost the one ally I had right away, and had no chance of allying the nation that would be the most benefitial to me...
I tried giving up my core in Görz since I have no intention of expanding in that direction any time soon (it would have have been gone in 1494 anyways), but Austria still kept switching between domineering and neutral and didn't want to ally me.
So the Pope ended up being my first ally. I don't think this will be a long lasting alliance, but I need anything I can get right now, and they're reasonably strong.
As you can see Venice and Ferrara were my only rival choices for the time being, so that's what I went with.
So next time I'll have to try and get some more allies, and then figure out how I'll be able to expand. Ferrara is allied to France, so it'll most likely end up in waiting out the truce with Venice and attacking them again.
Last edited: