Two Sicilies help

[unmerged(219132)]

I started playing as the Two Sicilies and was able to quickly acquire Massa and Modena. My economy is doing okay right now, although it could be more industrialized. My big problem is that I can't expand. Every piece of land I need to create Italy is in the sphere of a great power. It's 1860 and I have still only conquered Massa and Modena. It's also incredibly hard to get allies. I have Prussia up to 195 and it's still "impossible" that they will ally with me. I'm stuck! Any suggestions/help?

 

[Wetew]

I started playing as the Two Sicilies and was able to quickly acquire Massa and Modena. My economy is doing okay right now, although it could be more industrialized. My big problem is that I can't expand. Every piece of land I need to create Italy is in the sphere of a great power. It's 1860 and I have still only conquered Massa and Modena. It's also incredibly hard to get allies. I have Prussia up to 195 and it's still "impossible" that they will ally with me. I'm stuck! Any suggestions/help?

You should focus on becoming a great power yourself, if you're not that already. To create Italy you either need to own the provinces or that they are in your SoI. The later might be easier then fighting wars against Great Powers like France and Austria...

 

[King]

Prestige techs are certainly worth investing in here. Keep military spending high to boost your military score if you can.

 

[tuore]

I'm having a wonderful time as Two Sicilies. First attack against the Papal State went normally, but when I invaded them again to annex them in 1843, I got in a war with France. It lasted until '47, resulting in white peace. The only thing preventing me from losing was my navy; I just destroyed those small french blockade ships. Now I own all of the Papal State and I'm in the middle of industrializing. 51 prestige, only 4 less than the OE, I hope I can take their place.

E: My avatar feels so helpless under that huge Paradox avatar.

 

[Wetew]

I'm having a wonderful time as Two Sicilies. First attack against the Papal State went normally, but when I invaded them again to annex them in 1843, I got in a war with France. It lasted until '47, resulting in white peace. The only thing preventing me from losing was my navy; I just destroyed those small french blockade ships. Now I own all of the Papal State and I'm in the middle of industrializing. 51 prestige, only 4 less than the OE, I hope I can take their place.

E: My avatar feels so helpless under that huge Paradox avatar.

There are some culture techs that give you a rather nice amount of prestige, enough to get you passed OE easily.

 

[tuore]

There are some culture techs that give you a rather nice amount of prestige, enough to get you passed OE easily.

I'll research those next.

 

[TheDarkside]

How did you get to war with Papal States? Did you just outright invade?

I was hoping for some opportunity to arise giving me a casus balli. But france now has papal states in their SOI so Im in a worse situation than both of you. I didnt expand one inch, I am afraid to test the badboy system!

 

[Lortto]

It doesn't help much I'm afraid. I'm playing with Sardinia myself and got myself to great power status and frankly speaking building your own sphere of influence is extremely unwieldy to do and if you try to conquer your way you'll be so far up in badboy that you'll be continuosly attacked by everyone and nobody accepts peace even if you're crushing them on the battlefield.

I just took Sicily from Two Sicilies myself and after that Prussia attacked Austria. Well naturally I decided to take advantage of this and marched my already mobilised army to Lombardia for a war of unification. I got myself approximately 40 warscore and Austrians refuse to give me Lombardia which was 12 warscore. I ended up getting DOW'd by Russia and England and France is lowering their relations with me as well.

I think there should be a second event to lower your Infamy like the Cavour diplomacy one because otherwise it will be almost 1900 if you ever want to unify Italy.

EDIT: Or maybe lowering the Infamy hit from annexing these one province states.

 

[tuore]

How did you get to war with Papal States? Did you just outright invade?

I was hoping for some opportunity to arise giving me a casus balli. But france now has papal states in their SOI so Im in a worse situation than both of you. I didnt expand one inch, I am afraid to test the badboy system!

On day 1 I mobilized, and about two weeks later invaded. They were under French SoI, but France didn't intervene. I took Romagna and some time after the truce invaded and annexed, leading to a 4-year-long war with France.

My badboy is now 21/25, though. Is there no faster way to burn it?

 

[Zolotaya]

How did you get to war with Papal States? Did you just outright invade?

I was hoping for some opportunity to arise giving me a casus balli. But france now has papal states in their SOI so Im in a worse situation than both of you. I didnt expand one inch, I am afraid to test the badboy system!

Annexing a OPM (ie Modena) gave me 14ish infamy/bb/whatever and it was not enough to trigger wars.

I (playing as Austria) just got everyone in Italy into my SoI except for Savoy, which France keeps banning my Embassy ... so my question here is there any way of converting a SoI into a political union ( like a Diplo-annex in EU3)?

It is really neat to control Italy ... I went to war with Russia and was able to wrest Warsaw and its state from them with the help of the Italians, but it would be neater to have Italy incorporated into Austria proper.

 

[unmerged(219132)]

Thanks for the tips so far guys. A little bit after posting I was able to finally take over Tuscany. The Austrians were at war with Prussia and didn't bother to do anything about it. I did get a lot of infamy points for doing it though

 

[Wetew]

Thanks for the tips so far guys. A little bit after posting I was able to finally take over Tuscany. The Austrians were at war with Prussia and didn't bother to do anything about it. I did get a lot of infamy points for doing it though

Yeah... Watch out for going over that limit. Getting the british fleet outside your coast isn't something you would want

 

[tuore]

It would take me 17,5 years to burn that 21 infamy... I'm never able to get Italy unified. Seriously, we need a faster infamy burning method.

 

[Darkrenown]

There's really no need to annex PAP to unify ITA.