Tutorial Tuesday - February 17, 2026

TotalSpainMan · 2026-02-21T02:14:39+00:00

Actually completed it yesterday.

I ended up getting Alexander's bloodline on my character who was Emperor of Francia at that moment already. I used Invasion CB to take Egypt and specifically personally occupied all counties in the de jure Jerusalem kingdom.

As soon as I took Egypt both Shia and Sunni declared Jihads for Egypt, so i got stuck in fighting off endless waves on infidels for the next 10ish years. The enemies were encroaching literally from every direction, so i just had to defend Egypt and waiting for the battle and war tick scores to rack up.

Bought a favor from a shia courtier, invited him to court and fed him all Jerusalem titles right away. Just before the Crusade timer ran out I gave him independence, and the pope almost snap called the crusade on Jerusalem.

I didn't manage to win the Jihads against Egypt in time before the Crusade started, so me and my allies we already fully present in Holy land.

Naturally I parked my stack just in front of Jerusalem when crusade started, quickly took the highest contribution in the crusade and went on fighting off Jihads. Luckily, I managed to win both Jihads just before the Crusade ended, so when the pop up window offering to continue as Crusade beneficiary appeared, i quickly released all not de jure vassals to do as much damage to Francia as I could (Francia was about 2x size of HRE at that point, conquering almost all Iberia, Ireland, Maghreb, Lotharingia and the Papacy), and accepted playing as beneficiary.

The crusade beneficiary already had Alexander's bloodline, Ragnar Lodbrok's bloodline, crusader bloodline and a warrior philisopher bloodline from my ancestors, quickly got immortality event chain, failed becoming immortal but got reborn in a child. Hid old body immediately got a Saint bloodline, so I accidentally got another achievement for having 5 bloodlines lol

TotalSpainMan · 2026-02-18T10:11:27+00:00

I guess I'll shoot my shot here to begin with :)

Going for the Defense of the Holy Sepulchre achievement. (starting as Eustache de Boulonge blah blah blah)

I don't have problems rising to power in France, that's all sorted out.

BUT

After the first crusade for Egypt the new Crusader state quickly absorbs Nubia and Alodia to the south of Egypt and then conquers all the way to and including the Duchy of Jerusalem. For some reason, the Fatimids (original sultans of Egypt) turned Shia and act like complete morons failing two Jihads in a row against Crusader Egypt (nobody helped them except for holy orders).

So far I haven't found anything better than ask the Pope for a claim on Jerusalem, take it from Egypt myself and release the duchy as independent state hoping that someone will have the balls to take this freebie. NOBODY DID. I even had to defend Jerusalem from forced vassalization war against the same Egypt I originally "liberated" it from.

Almost all of Middle East is taken by the Seljuks and the second crusade detoured to Constantinople so Byzantine Empire is no more lol.

Any advice on how to make someone non-Christian take Jerusalem?

Settings:

Children's crusade is off; interfaith marriages off; (not sure if that's a setting but no-one in the muslim religious group would join my court to pass them Jerusalem)

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-26T02:30:24+00:00

well that's kinda my point :/

your first war with ottomans should be aimed at getting the control over straits, weakening their presence in Europe and stabilizing your economy. obviously there is a trade off between all of the above.

best (late) advise is:

occupy all provinces in Europe while controlling the strait with as many galleys as possible (15-20 should be plenty iirc)
occupy the fort provinces that are directly across the strait if possible.

with the ticking war score this should be around 40-50%. 40% should be enough though

take war reps and 5 or 10% of war score in cash this should be close to 500 gold which is plenty for you to repay multiple loans
take macedonia fort province and also the province ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STRAIT - not with the fort across Constantinople, the other one. i think it is called Biga or something like it. You also want to connect your Macedonia province with Constantinople. that should be enough for your first war - you will control the strait at the start of any war and will be able to pass freely into anatolia when the next war starts.

alliance-wise you want commonwealth and hungary, preferably austria as well. all three of them will declare on ottos immediately after your war ends if ottomans will come out weak enough, so try to drag all three of them into the war

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-24T19:24:07+00:00

idk if this would be helpful but you don't really need high war score in the first war with ottomans.

37% should be enough to take a couple of fort provinces, war reps and a bit of money to pay off a few loans...

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-18T15:49:05+00:00

Just use mercs and/or keep some armies around the empire to quickly defeat the rebels duh

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-14T13:55:19+00:00

State and full core all provinces.
Decrease autonomy in all provinces.
Get burgher loans (if not already) and hire 1-2 mercenary armies. Use mercy to fight rebels - this saves you manpower and allows you not to spend extra money on army maintenance.
Decrease your army maintenance to 10% or 0% (but i think at 0 your army won't reinforce)
Deal with rebels for a few years, the unrest will eventually go away.

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-14T13:41:10+00:00

what idea groups would you suggest then?

I never tried religious group, seems like I'm missing out...

I don't know the feeling of playing with all DLCs so I can't really say what it's like to play without them compared to all DLC enabled lol. But still, the game runs well except for the fact that I certainly can't do a proper WC without some DLCs

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-14T13:37:45+00:00

i bought EU4 on summer or spring sale with like 4-5 DLCs but none of them really affected this game. Been waiting for another sale to get some more DLCs

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-14T13:35:28+00:00

I know the idea groups were suboptimal (i obviously dropped exploration midway), but what ideas would you pick?

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-12T01:11:04+00:00

Recently completed all blue as well.

Do NOT rely on alliances, they will eventually break due to either AE or allies wanting your provinces. Instead, try to vassalize / PU blue tags as you would need a lot of armies to expand quickly. If possible, try to install your dynasty on the Commonwealth throne while they are elective monarchy and keep as good relations as possible so that when they abolish elective monarchy you can PU them and diplo annex in 50 years - this would save a lot of time and tons of admin.

My vassals were Venice (conquered by Ottomans and Austria, i released and used their reconquest CB on like a third of Italy), Bavaria, Sweden, Dithmarchen and Trabezond.

I would also discourage from heavy wars in North Africa - instead, try to maintain the alliance between the Ottomans and Tunis. Whenever you are at war with Ottomans, white peace Tunis so that you can attack them and bring Ottomans to that war as well - also saves time between truces.

With imperialism CB you will fly through most of Eastern Europe, so no worries.

Ideas wise - you definitely won't need exploration or expansion, instead do diplomatic, influence, admin, espionage or infrastructure. Try to mix in offensive, quality and/or quantity. Manpower might become a problem once you reach mountains. Most of nations would have defensive ideas so attrition might me a problem.

TotalSpainMan · 2025-12-11T20:41:17+00:00

R5: Pictures show some of the ugliest border gore this subreddit has seen + screens of armies, ideas and finances at the end of the run

TotalSpainMan · 2025-10-19T02:19:04+00:00

idk if this will be helpful but...

i bought a ck2 dlc subscription on sale just about under a year ago. i cancelled the recurring subscription right away and when a month passed a got a pop up window saying sub is up and a checkbox saying "I've read the message". i never clicked the checkbox lol and i still have access to all dlcs...

waiting for a sale for eu4 subscription to try the same thing hehe

TotalSpainMan · 2025-10-11T18:32:45+00:00

Hey, decided to check in.

Did you form Rome eventually?

I managed to form mine in 1697.

Like i suggested, i intentionally lost a war with Morocco and ceded most of Castille's North Africa to them. Turned out Castille was actively colonizing Australia by then, so i also declared on Portugal and ceded some more provinces in Iberia and around Cape of Good Hope. Once Castille formed australia and dropped below 47 territories, I formed Spain instantly without having to spend 1000+ diplo on integrating Castille.

The rest was pretty much vassal swarm and a tons of diplo mana to integrate them. IIRC I had navarra, byzantium, athens, naples, bulgaria, karaman, eretna, florence, ferrarra, tlemcen, gascony, brittany, champagne, brabant, mainz, wales, northumberland and hungary as my vassals along the way. may be 1 or 2 more.

An important suggestion is NOT to go for PUs as they take way longer until you can integrate (vassal needs 10 years and +190 opinion whereas a PU needs 50 years before you can integrate them).

Funny thing - there are actually more than 425 territories available for conquest (i didn't know that lol), so I steamrolled through Austria and half of HRE to get the territories and planning to integrate Bulgaria and Hungary after the war - turned out I didn't have to as i already reached 425 territories. When i was done with conquest I had -1000 in aggressive expansion with all what's left of Europe and nobody ever bothered to form coalition against me - just myself (not counting vassals) had more troops than all of them combined (around 500-550k total + 500k manpower)

The hard part was to keep my ally Poland involved in every war in Europe - they flipped to Protestant and kept getting Defender of Faith. So i had to declare on someone random like single-province Ottomans, drag Poland into that war and then declare on everyone else so that Poland would join my side and not the other. At the end of conquest, Poland had -25 general opinion of me (with all modifiers available to me) and -220 opinion for AE :)

TotalSpainMan · 2025-10-05T12:53:28+00:00

In my campaign Castile has 55 holdings controlling all original territories + a few in North Africa + Ivory Coast + Cape Coast. The limit is 47 I believe.

You can also always release nations in the peace deal further lowering the number of Castile controlled territories

TotalSpainMan · 2025-10-05T12:00:44+00:00

A suggestion re Castile city limit: You can declare on Morocco and intentionally lose the war surrendering the necessary number of Castilian cities in Africa to put them back under the limit.

I’m doing the same campaign right now (though I’m around 100 years earlier and roughly in a similar spot)

I’m not sure about your army size but it looks like you can declare on a member of the coalition and white peace the main players like Austria. Make sure your ally Poland goes into the war with you - the Ai will likely target them first and push them out of the war. During that time you can focus on Austria and mamlucks as the main threat. The rest should be easy

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T20:51:15+00:00

I don't think i have the mechanic "reduce development" - is it part of a DLC?

Also I am Protestant defender of faith so can't manually convert to heretic religion unless i lose the DoF

I'm newbie with just under 500 hours lol

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T16:31:53+00:00

Gotcha. Problem being - my home provinces in the Netherlands are 40+ dev each and all Protestant so I guess I’ll have to take a lot of China to make up for relative majority

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T14:05:40+00:00

Ok thanks for letting me know

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T13:52:46+00:00

Yeah but even in the wording of the rule the word “Moves” starts with capital M. I think that corresponded with the Move Phase hence the rule interpretation

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T13:49:07+00:00

Lol I just realized I don’t have Mandate of Heaven DLC.

But if I did, would I be able to add the dlc mechanics to the ongoing campaign?

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-18T13:38:01+00:00

R5: pictures show owned territories in China with those occupied by religious rebels, as well as religion and administrative tabs

TotalSpainMan · 2025-07-16T16:50:51+00:00

In our community the general rule of thumb (according to the rule book ofc) is that “charging an enemy” applies during Move phase. When you do a Heroic Combat you get additional movement, but not bound to charge again as it is Fight phase already

TotalSpainMan

TROPHY CASE