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Castile 1.29 Guide by Post

Take everything you know about a chill, peaceful, Castile game, and throw it out the window. Today, we’re gonna be sweating bullets as we do our best to maximize the potential that Castile has as a european and world power. Starting as the 7th rank great power with 270 development and one of the absolute best positions for reaching the world, everything you could want really is at your fingertips. Although you start with a troubled line of troubled kings, this can be very easily remedied with the help of our trusty buttons in order to generate the monarch points needed for a powerful start.

The Beginning – No-CBing Byzantium


Preparation

  • Something that will be essential here is that Austria rivals France. Although this guide can work without that, it will be much more difficult for reasons that you’ll see quite soon
  • The very first thing you want to do is rival france and scornfully insult them. Right afterwards, you can send an alliance offer to Austria and they will accept it (assuming they’ve rivaled them, which happens 19/20 times). This is important because they are normally not willing to ally you right off the bat. If you get the extremely rare case where they haven’t rivaled france, you can instead scornfully insult another of their rivals who is NOT the ottomans although it will shake it up a bit
  • Now, you can go ahead and pick your Level 1 Advisors, and leave your national focus to military. Leave your merchants how the game has them
  • Move your armies and navy to Murcia, and turn both your king and heir into generals
  • For rivals, we’re gonna be picking quite carefully. Number one is france, since they will be a nice snack for us later on down the line. Next ones depend on who has rivaled you. If Burgundy has rivaled you, rival them back, and it’s the same for Aragon if they’ve rivaled you. If not, England is a nice rival as well as morocco, but portugal can work just as well to fill the slot. In the average game, my rivals consist of either France/England/Burgundy or France/England/Aragon
  • You’ll want to improve relations with the ottomans in order to get military access from them later, which is going to be very important. Make sure to find time to embargo your rivals without missing an improve relations tick. Ideally, you have Austria as an ally, and if you aren’t terribly unlucky you have either Aragon or Burgundy too. That’s all you need, but if you for whatever reason can’t get one of the other two just ally Savoy and maybe the pope. If you don’t have austria, at least try to get one of aragon / burgundy. If for whatever reason you get none of the 3 major countries, influence hungary and improve with them along with scornfully insulting their rival poland to get them to ally you
  • Around April/June 1445 you’re gonna want to put 10k troops on your boats and station them in the Ionian Sea. Disinherit your heir, do your estates AFTER DISINHERITING, and no CB Byzantium. Stab up twice.
  • If you managed to get a royal marriage with Austria, you can expect an event heir very soon. Otherwise, you’ll surely get one before your king dies anyway

The War with Byzantium

  • Once that’s out of the way, occupy all of Byzantium’s provinces including athens but NOT Constantinople. You can obviously go and peace out whoever they have allied, which tends to be serbia (although in my experience it’s better to just leave that for later), but this is where your relations with ottomans start to matter. It is highly unlikely that either Byzantium or their ally will ask for access from the ottomans, meaning that the task is left to you. You’ve been improving relations to ensure that they’ll give it to you so you can station a few troops in Kirkkilise. This is important because it will allow you to beat them to Constantinople with the help of a maneuver general
  • By this time, you should have the ability to start claiming provinces in portugal. First you’ll want to claim Porto, Beja, and Algarve, and after that it’s up to you, but I prefer to do states at a time
  • Set Ottomans as a nation of interest by clicking on a province, then right clicking the flag in the province menu and clicking the star. This will tell you when they declare war on Byzantium
  • It’s not a very hard war to win by any means, so you should be cleaning up the ally and maybe finishing up the siege of Morea when the ottomans declare on byzantium. You’ll know it’s coming because they will move troops to Edirne and probably Selanik or Tirhala.
  • When you see the notification pop up that the ottomans have declared war, pause the game.
  • Move the troops from Kirkkilise onto Constantinople. You may want to put your king or Alvaro de Luna on the stack for some extra speed. Since it’s actually closer to Constantinople than Edirne is, you will arrive earlier and will control the siege.
  • Finish sieging Constantinople with the assistance from ottoman troops, then put all your troops into Achaea and Morea
  • If you’ve managed to become the curia controller, call for a crusade against ottomans before declaring war for a major boost to your stats while fighting
  • Once you’re ready, peace out with Byzantium for vassalization and all of their money

The Fun Part (War with Ottomans)

  • Now, you get to call in all of your allies against the Ottomans. If you’ve picked carefully, you should be calling in people strong enough to have more than double, possibly triple the Ottomans’ army count. This war will be a breeze, ottomans have around 38 force limit which puts them at a disadvantage even with just you and Austria against them. You may need to ask hungary for access for austria and the others to be smart enough to go and walk into greece
  • (I have no idea at all why byzantium allied circassia in my game, but usually it’ll be serbia or wallachia)
  • Try to avoid sieges, but leave 1k stacks on the forts in case the AI decides to run off of it when it’s done sieging. Hand all the forts you occupy to Byzantium to save money, but it’s important to save your manpower here
  • While you aren’t doing a whole lot with your diplomats, you can go ahead and improve relations with aragon / naples because they will be your subjects soon
  • After taking mil tech 4, switch to Admin or neutral focus. I prefer admin, but neutral works fine
  • Improve relations with Byzantium throughout your war with the Ottomans
  • At some point, your king will die, leaving you in a queen-regency, although this could be a while before it happens. This is great, because it means you’ll get the iberian wedding relatively soon, and the consort is almost guaranteed to be better than your starting king
  • You shouldn’t need to worry about occupying more than just greece, but if you get the opportunity to cross to anatolia occupy what you can, but try to finish the war by 1451 if possible
  • Try to restore all of Byzantium’s cores, but it’s ok to miss one or two of the less important ones in order to end the war faster and get war reps. However, use the conquest option instead of the “return core” section, because it’s actually cheaper for some reason

The Aftermath

  • Greece should look like the picture, and that’s big rival #1 out of the way. You’ve lost a lot of diplo and some admin points in the process, but trust me, it’s worth it
  • With your money from the ottomans, pay off Byzantium’s debt to lower their LD to around 0%
  • Cut off your loose ends that are costing you diplo points, this means your alliances with anyone that isn’t Austria, or, if you didn’t get Austria, your biggest ally. If you allied Burgundy, remove them as an ally now but you should keep a royal marriage with them
  • If all has gone well, you should have the Iberian Wedding by now or soon, but regardless it’s time for Phase 2. Since we still want to be able to get exploration ideas very early, we’re gonna be saving our admin and diplo points a little bit.
  • Depending on how close you are to max manpower, you can slacken your recruiting standards then build up to max army size and max navy (build cogs) to complete the mission to prepare for the reconquista
  • If you want, you can definitely afford to upgrade your admin advisor and probably your diplo advisor to level 2. I personally just go for admin, but diplo’s fine if you want
  • Ally whoever spawned the renaissance so they can knowledge share it to you. This tends to be inconsistent and can be avoided, I usually only get knowledge shared by Austria when they eventually get the institution

War with Granada

  • Once your country is prepared for the reconquista, declare war on granada and fully occupy them. If they ally Morocco and/or Tunis, just use your navy to get troops over to deal with them. For morocco, get access from portugal and siege the fort in tangiers then stand on their capital and some other states. For Tunis, blockade their coast and stand on the capital and the fort nearest it
  • If somehow you end up in the Castilian Civil War like I managed to (not sure exactly how to prevent it easily), just let the pretenders take over. It’ll kill your heir, but that’s 100% fine because our new king will be young. Don’t stab up immediately, just let the pretenders force demands so that your stability is reset to 0, then go up so the disaster can end
  • Do NOT expel the moriscos in the event, because they’ll come back. Instead, just leave them and take the +1 stab (btw if you’re in the civil war during this, don’t finish the mission until pretenders enforce so you can get the +1 stab AFTER the reset)
  • Around now, you can start fabricating on Morocco, since they’ll be a target pretty soon. Claim tangiers first, then every province they own that’s in the sevilla node
  • Here’s a picture of my castilian civil war ending after my war with granada after I let them take over my country
  • Of course, when you have the torquemada event, you’ll pick the +1 stab option instead of the conversion option

The Iberian Wedding

  • This is the point at which Castile really begins to pop off even more than you previously would have with just the position and ideas. Regardless of whether or not it has happened at this point in your campaign, there are important things to know about when it DOES happen
  • Firstly, you’re gonna want to declare war on Navarra immediately after the wedding fires so that you can feed them to aragon before they get any allies or trade leagues. They’ll be set free by the wedding a lot of the time for whatever reason. If you kept them, then abandon the union and feed them to Aragon once the truce ends
  • Since a rival should free up as morocco has become invalid, now’s the time to rival Burgundy if you haven’t already
  • Keep in mind not to state anything new yet, because we will have very specific goals for our states soon
  • You should take the missions so that you can get your claims on Burgundy
  • With the boost of power from the Iberian Wedding (You should be the 2nd rank great power at this point), we’re gonna want to force the burgundian inheritance. Declare war on Burgundy with either the rival CB or conquest, and get ready for the next step. If you have beaten granada and haven’t gotten the wedding yet, you should have at least accumulated enough favors to call an ally or two in against burgundy, which should be enough. If you can call someone in on promise of land, do so since you’re gonna end the war via event and not in a way that requires you to share your winnings
  • Now that you have two Personal Unions, you’re gonna want to start banking up relations and LD to Siphon Income. You can do this very often, and it’s a really nice source of money if you can keep your subjects happy. Just make sure not to make them dislike you when your king is old, as that could break the union
  • Don’t forget to set your new subjects to either siege or offensive!

The Burgundian Inheritance

  • There are multiple opinions on how to do this war, and I’m fine with scumming it up and spamming alt-f4 to ensure that I can get my inheritance
  • What you want is to get +75% or more WS against Burgundy, then you have two options: 
    • You can either let the game run and hope that you get the inheritance before call for peace gets crazy, and keep sending show strength offers until they accept it (don’t click send if they’re willing to take it)
    • Or, and this is what I prefer, you make a save with 75-90, possibly even 100% WS and keep running the game for either a few months or a year or so and reloading if you don’t get the inheritance, and just reload that save until it happens. Warning: this can take a long time since the MTTH with everything in your favor is still very long, but it’s worth it
  • Since we’re sweaty tryhards however, I expect you to be like me and not stop until you get the inheritance, either through lots of war exhaustion or through being the scum of the earth (or you could just get it quickly)
  • You’ve now received a significant power boost, but remember not to state anything yet, because we aren’t quite ready for our culture shift and would hate to lose hundreds of points that we don’t have to in order to restate the land after stating it when you don’t need to. Remember, this land is free to state and we’re fine waiting on it
  • In order to form Andalusia, we need a couple of provinces from Portugal. By now you should have claims over basically the entire country, and we’re gonna go to war with them to take Porto, Algarve, and Beja
  • Remember, don’t state those provinces after you take them

Mini section on the Portugal War

  • Although it’s a very easy war, you should be careful in considering your peace deal
  • If you’re trying to save points, it may be better to only take Algarve & Beja, and leave Porto to take later. The goal is eventually to vassalize them in a war, not to form a union, so we aren’t trying to leave them strong
  • Although Morocco may very well take land out of Portugal as a result of this, remember that you can quite easily take it back and it actually helps you more than it hurts you
  • Around the end of this war, your truce with Athens will end, go ahead and declare war on them and let Byzantium clean them up and then grant their land to Byzantium

Changing It Up

  • We have three major options as to how to get the most out of our situation
    1. We can form Rum, which will take quite some time and a lot of war
    2. Another option is Andalusia, which is the quickest and easiest
    3. Of course, we could just sit on our land and form spain
  • Italy is an option too, but not a preferred one as it would take longer than even Rum
  • If you want to form Andalusia or Rum, set two missionaries on 0 maintenance in Upper Andalusia (the state, which actually means south on the map), and let the rebels convert your country
  • For Andalusia: After becoming sunni, simply swap your primary culture to Andalusian. This is tedious, and point heavy, so make sure to save up a few hundred admin points for it. A guide to culture shifting can be found here: https://youtu.be/6VrP6P-O1kI
  • For Rum: You want to put a lot of effort into getting rid of the ottomans and taking the required provinces to form Rum. These can be found on the wiki, but essentially consist of Constantinople, a few ottoman provinces in Anatolia, much of Karaman’s land, and Erzurum from Aq Qoyunlu. You’ll obviously need to swap your culture to Turkish
  • If you want to simply form Spain, which is in my opinion a slightly weaker path in terms of ideas although very powerful in expansion potential, you can just ignore the conversion to Sunni and then flip to either Orthodox or Protestant later on. You can feed Aragon a lot of land, since the formation decision is made to be OK with them having annexed Naples. Don’t be afraid to feed them a lot of Italy or France
  • Italy is a weird one, you’re gonna have to wait until 1490 to start taking land out unless you want to fight the HRE, but it’s definitely strong to flip Neapolitan after annexing Naples and form Italy, but just isn’t the move in my opinion

Directions of Expansion

  • In my opinion, the best way to go is east into India, however this isn’t the only option. If you do, however, choose India, this is a nice way to do it
    • Arumba, our patron god, tells us not to use one colonist in multiple colonies. Unfortunately, we’re gonna ignore that and use it as much as we can. It’s just too valuable for us to get a lot of land at the same time, no matter how much money it costs us
    • Set your Native Policy to Repression
    • Make sure your burghers and clergy are always running the interactions that increase settler growth and lower the chance of an uprising
    • Use the button to kill natives and stack wipe them so they don’t return. Check the amount of natives in the interface and put around double the troops to guarantee a wipe
    • Our first project will be tenerife for the Plus Ultra mission, but our real goal is to rush to india as fast as we can
    • The strategy we’re gonna utilize is building spy networks on people in other continents, then putting a colony next to them so that we have adjacency for a claim
    • The way it tends to go for me is that I’ll use this to fabricate on Jolof, take their land and core it (Take every TC province that you can, they’re really powerful), then move on to benin, kongo, colonize the cape, then I’ll use comoros to fabricate on the Madagascar natives in order to reach India
    • You’ll want to enter through either the Maldives or Ceylon (Sri Lanka) because chartering land is too expensive and a no-cb entrance gives you too much AE
    • The alliance chains are rough, so make sure to bring 30k+ units for your Indian wars
    • Try to get 100% of Zanzibar quickly, as your Indian trade will have to flow through there in order to get sent home correctly
  • If you want to stick with europe, Anatolia is a great path, as well as France, Germany, and Italy.
    • You receive multiple permanent claims over Italy simply for having the Iberian Wedding, that will give you a nice foothold
    • Anatolia and the constantinople trade node tend to become very rich, and can be a nice route into Asia or into dominating the Mediterranean
    • Castile is one of the top picks for forming rome, so If you just want to dominate the coastline and restore the empire, that’s totally doable
  • Another option is to rush the new world, which although in my experience isn’t very profitable at all, is pretty interesting sometimes
    • You essentially get claims on every province, and the ones that you don’t are covered by your national idea Inner Caetera which allows you to fabricate on any overseas province
    • Make sure to go to Peru and Mexico quickly, the gold income will boost you quite a lot
    • Using subject interactions, you can convince your colonies to attack other ones
    • Make sure to subsidize your colonies so they can colonies extra provinces as CNs and to help them keep an army up
    • Colonial Nations DO have Overextension, and unless you want to be fighting more rebels in Mexico than China does in Hong Kong, you might want to be a little careful with how fast you conquer
    • Be very very careful with you annex fully in Mexico, you might end up with 5 unwanted vassals from annexing someone who was about to pass a reform

Tips

  • As a habsburg, you have many PU opportunities open to you as long as you remain christian, I ended up with Bohemia before 1550 and had opportunities to PU both Austria and Hungary
  • Keep your navy strong. If you have the most heavies and enough lights / cogs, you shouldn’t be losing many naval battles. That said, make sure to spam galleys if your focus is inside the mediterranean
  • Getting a foothold in Britain early can be really valuable since you can collect trade already in the English Channel with the Burgundian Inheritance. Use claims bordering claims to attack Ireland or Scotland
  • If you didn’t get the Habsburg heir event early on, a neat trick that you can do is if Austria gets the Burgundian Inheritance, you can steal it by RMing them with no heir. You’ll get the heir from the event, along with the dutch land too
  • Using Claims bordering claims along with its extra -50% cost for taking subjects, you can attack denmark and occupy all of their land that doesn’t require galleys to fight in and steal Norway for yourself
  • If you ever end up at war with the pope, you candeclare the statute in restraint of appeals for a permanent -1 unrest
  • Once 1550 rolls around, you should release holland and feed them all of the burgundian lands to prevent dutch revolts. You’ll be able to annex them once it hits 1650 and the dutch give up revolting
  • Inland Africa can be quite valuable for its gold mines, but you will need to state them
  • You can use Norway or Portugal as a colonizer vassal to take the New World
  • After exploration ideas, there are a couple choices you can make for your next idea group
    • The path I find to work best is Innovative, then Offensive into either Religious or Humanist (depending on whether you’ve chosen catholic/orthodox or protestant/reformed, of course you would go Humanist if you’ve chosen to become sunni), followed by Influence and/or Administrative ideas. You’ll also want to ditch exploration ideas at some point for diplo ideas, as it’s not a particularly useful idea group later on. I also don’t recommend going any further than the first 3 ideas into exploration
    • If you want to ignore TCs, which in my opinion is less optimal than using them, you can go straight into religious/humanist, followed by military groups and diplomatic groups (and obviously admin ideas) in order to ramp up your conquest of Europe and Africa

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