Part 9: Regency Council & The First 100 Years

Part 9: Regency Council & The First 100 Years


France offers an alliance out of the blue. Maybe they can sense that I want their Egyptian province? I'd rather remain friendly with Burgundy anyway, so we decline.



Another slider move becomes available, and I spend it on maxing out Centralization. We've gone past the soft cap for it a bit, but that's okay. The benefits of an extra tick worth of centralization far outweigh the 1 point per tick we go past a soft cap.



Burgundy finds itself in a war with England, Austria, Poland, Milan, and several minor nations, and we join the invitation to help. There are some strong land powers on the other side, but they can't really reach us due to our naval dominance blocking their transports and Burgundy's armies taking all their attention in central Europe.



One of our highly skilled tech investment advisors dies, and we don't really have the cultural tradition to recruit a suitable replacement. Instead, I check who is available in the pool and find a navigator. He'll let us colonize a bit further than our current Naval Tech level would normally allow.



Enrique IV's heir, Ana passes away of illness. She was a brilliant diplomat with 9 in that attribute, but her administration and military were only 3. Female are the same as male rulers except for one thing: you can't convert female rulers into generals. Enrique IV is getting on in years, and we turned him into a general to pass the militia act decision recently as well. If we don't find a new heir before Enrique IV dies, our interim regency council will be forced to pick a replacement, probably from another dynasty. This can often take years.




Another idea becomes available at Government Tech 11, and I spend it on the Patron of the Arts idea. We used to have plenty of spare magistrates, but these days they are all being spent on constructing new buildings as soon as we get them. Patron of the Arts will help us maintain enough cultural tradition without using magistrates that we'll at least be able to hire 3 or 4 star advisors if need be.



I build one of the unique buildings, an embassy, in Alexandria. This Embassy will help us burn off all of that infamy we're getting from our wars a little faster. 0.4 extra infamy reduction per year is actually pretty good. Consider that the base infamy reduction is only .10 per year, per point of base diplomacy on your ruler. The diplomacy bonus from spheres of influence don't help with this, so an extra .4 from an Embassy speeds things up nicely. Embassies can only exist in non-cored provinces that border another nation. Once we gain a core on Alexandria, we'll have to build a new embassy somewhere else.



Burgundy hasn't lost its touch at beating up its neighbors.



Jerusalem finally converts to Catholicism, and this opens up a national decision that allows us to release the province and restore the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I decide that another vassal state to help in this region might be fun, so I enact the decision and quickly start creating diplomatic ties with them. A Marriage, gifts, military access, an alliance, and a few gifts.



Eventually, they are convinced to accept vassalage to Spain. Now I can sell some of the other nearby provinces to them to create a barrier between Spain in Africa and the hostile nations in Asia Minor.




In the midst of transferring territory to Jerusalem, a new heir is born to Enrique IV. Gabriel is not the best of replacements, but at least he has moderate military skill. As soon as Gabriel's future heir gets near adulthood, we can just turn Gabriel in a general and let him fight on the front lines until he dies a hero.



After a few more months, I finish transferring all the territory to Jerusalem that I want to. Hopefully they'll be able to make good use of the land I gave them and assist us in regional wars.



Enrique passes away when Gabriel is only 5, and the youngest age at which an heir is allowed to take full control is 15. This means that we'll need to operate under the rule of a Regency Council for 10 years. Being ruled by a regency council will slowly sap your legitimacy, but this can be prevented by renewing some royal marriages. Regency Councils are also unable to declare wars, so our military expansion is on hold for a decade.



Our next slider move becomes available and I spend it on moving towards Plutocracy. We've been operating without any spies for far too long. We need to get at least past the halfway point into Plutocracy before we start generating any at all though, so it'll still be a few decades before we can use them.



We gain cores on all of the North African provinces we seized from Morocco a few updates ago. If your ratio of non-cored to cored provinces is too large (the exact ratio is based on your ruler's Admin attribute), you can suffer from an effect called overextension. Overextension causes your stability to take twice as long to increase, and adds a noticeable amount of revolt risk nationwide.

Another benefit of these provinces coring is that we receive full census taxes from them. You receive 90% less annual census taxes from non-cored provinces. Actually, you receive full census taxes from distant, oversea provinces once they are cored too. The oversea tax penalty on oversea provinces only applies to the monthly tax income to investments.




Gabriel becomes old enough to take the throne, and after only a few years already produces an heir. Antonio's stats are quite a bit better than his father's. Once Antonio is around 12 or so, we'll put Gaben to work on the battlefield.



I immediately took advantage of the fact that we could declare war again. With Jerusalem's help, we seize a large amount of land in Arabia. This puts a few more spice and coffee provinces under our control and into Alexandria's markets.


The earliest events of the Protestant Reformation start in around 1498. The King of Denmark converts to Protestantism and begins converting his country.



On the religion mapmode we can see that Europe is all Catholic except for Denmark, which has one province fully converted and a few others that it must send missionaries to. Eventually, we'll have to make a decision whether we're going to stay Catholic, or convert to Protestant or Reformed. It'll be interesting to see what our allies do, because this can impact diplomatic relations dramatically.



After mapping the Caribbean to my satisfaction, our exploration fleet travelled all along the coast of India and through Southeast Asia, uncovering large potions of the map and discovering Japan before anyone else in Europe.


The State of the World in 1500

It's been 100 years now since we started, so let's see how things are shaping up.


Our continental borders haven't budged since forming Spain. I worry more and more about our border with France as they continue to gain power, though.



England has been shattered by its most recent wars. Two Irish nations share Ireland with Portugal. Scotland pushed south and seized one Welsh province, and Wales liberated itself from what was left. In the southwest, Cornwall was released as a sovereign state and in the east, Burgundy continues stealing coastal provinces from them.



France and Burgundy both continue to grow just to my northeast. It seems like neither of them are willing to start a huge war with the other even though they don't have friendly relations.



Portugal and Spain continue to expand in North Africa, Arabia, and the Middle-East.



We control the majority of the Caribbean. Portugal managed to beat me to a few islands however. I'll likely build a CoT in Havana once we gain a core on it. That will be a huge center of wealth in the new world.



Spain's income remains far above anyone else. Alsace, a one province minor HRE nation manages to have a higher income than Portugal.



Aachen still leads the world in technology, with Ulm right behind it. They are both once province minors in the HRE as well.



Austria as the Holy Roman Emperor controls the largest army in the world. Just below them are Ming China and Spain. France's large number of troops worries me, because I know they are all going to be concentrated in a single area while over half of ours are in Arabia, Egypt, Spanish Morocco, and Sicily. We are a little below our land forcelimits these days. With the huge focus I've put into building structures, I haven't had the extra ducats to put towards new regiments. I'll have to force myself to remedy that.



And finally, we somehow remain the largest naval power in Europe despite my neglect of building any new ships for decades. We are far below our naval forcelimits, too. I'd like to build a larger, more modern fleet with newer ships sometime soon.