EU III - The great Brabantian Conquest

[ProPain]

So Mels remark in the general EU III thread inspired me to play Brabant and conquer the Netherlands. I played a few test games to see what I'd run in and then started the game I play now. It's been a very interesting game and my longest EU III game untill now. As a consequence I learned a heap about EU III I didn't know before. Yes, Paradox a decent manual would be very welcome. So I'll do write up here to share my discoveries and save you all some time.

Brabant, a modest beginning
So we start out as Brabant, a three province state occupying what nowadays is the southern, catholic part of the Netherlands and about a quarter of present day Flanders, the dutch speaking part of Belgium.

Having my ass handed to me in previous games I start the game by looking at Burgundy and their mission: 'Reconquer Brabant'. Great, my powerfull neighbour who's hell bent on annexing me anyways now has a mission for extra incentive and less infamy and stab hits. I forego all royal marriage options and send all my diplomats out to big, nearby nations who are willing to ally with me. This turns out very necessary as Burgundy declares war immediately after I unpause the game. No worries though, got me some good allies.

I fight a defense war, building up troops, avoiding losses and picking off 1000 man burgundy armies where I can. After a few months we're looking at this.



Me and my allies have the upper hand troopwise and I have occupied Antwerpen which contains a COT (Center of Trade). The war continues and I end up occupying all burgundian provinces north of Bar. I try to reach the ones south of Bar as well but Burgundy maintains a 12K stack there and I only have 13K troops myself. Too dangerous. Also both our allies have chickened out of the war by this time so I decide to make peace. I have to choose between annexing 3 provinces but leaving Antwerpen and it's CoT to Burguny or taking Antwerpen and Ghent. I do some testing and go for the 2 provinces including the CoT. This turns out to be a great decision. The CoT gives me money but also now Burgundies economy is in ruins. The rest of the game they're of no consequence and the years after the war I see they suffer from a lot of unrest and revolutionairy troops rising up.

Brabant after the 1st Burgundy war:



Steady growth

After that initial war I get a lot of missions to vassalize the german states on my eastern border and the other dutch provinces. At some point I get the reconquer Gelre mission allowing me to conquer Gelre. After a little over 25 years Brabant looks like this:



Last pic is a diplo map: green is vassals, blue is royal marriages. Turquoise is both.

The marrying kind

The following 25 years are more of the same, vassalize german states. To alleviate boredom I marry of some of my relatives. They might inherite me a throne at some point and moving them abroad saves me their nagging at home.

Look at that diplo map. Who doesn't love a good marriage party



A decade later we managed to conquer all dutch provinces except Utrecht. At this time I wasn't to worried about Utrecht, later Utrecht proved to be a royal PITA. No mission to annex would show up, and even a diplo annex would leave me with a stab hit, unlawfull HRE territory penalty and 50 years before I get a core. Especially the unlawfull territory is bad because that gives a 0,25 a year penalty on your infamy. Should have diplo annexed it though, cause they'll make a horrible yellow stain in my beautifull Brabant for the next century.

Rise to power.
Along the way I noticed that all my vassalisation had an interesting, unexpected (at least for me) effect. I pulled some electors from the Holy Roman Empire in my sphere of influence and after working on my relations with some other I was elected Emperor of the HRE!!!

Never had this happen to me before and I was happily surprised by the effects. Being the emperor gives you more prestige, diplomats and....huge army modifiers. Suddenly I could build a big army with within my budget