How to Make Castile Dank

Hey guys, [cringe at reading this in every guide] this is actually my second guide, but the first to cover a country.

In this guide, I mainly want to go over strategies and other things that I found that did and didn't work in my play through as Castile. I know the guide is almost literally a wall of words, I will be adding more screenshots and pictures soon, so don't worry!

As for using the names Castile and Spain, I try to use Castile in sections most likely to be relevant before the creation of Spain (admin tech 10) and try to use Spain with everything after that, and with events/decisions that pertain only to Spain.

Finally, I haven't played the game recently while writing this guide, so feel free to point out any errors I might have made with the game mechanics in the comments, and I'll happily correct them!

Enjoy!

As Castile/Spain, you have two responsibilities: the Continent and Colonization. Your ideas must be chosen to help you achieve your ambitions in both of those theaters.

1. Exploration
Choosing colonization ideas first helps you get a head start on other colonial nations, especially Portugal, by grabbing key jumping off points in West Africa. I usually fill these up to the second colonist, and finish them whenever I have the extra diplomatic power.

2. Expansion
These ideas are also pretty nice, providing an extra colonist as well as other ideas that will help Spain's lucrative operations in Asia with extra merchants, trade power, and CBs on Asian nations.

3. Quality
I really like Quality, especially as Spain, because Spain's naval presence makes the naval ideas relevant. Also it flat increases all of your troops' combat ability by 10% and gives an extra 5% discipline. Nice idea group for your military.

Here you can really choose ideas to fit your play style, but I always alternate idea groups by the type of power they use. Some good considerations are: Administrative

• Economic
  
• Administrative
  
• Religious or Humanist (really depends on your play style)

Diplomatic

• Influence and/or Diplomatic (really helpful for Spain is the Emperor)

Trade isn't really necessary because of all the merchants from trade companies. Militaristic

• Offensive
  
• Defensive

Quantity isn't really necessary because of all the manpower and force limit from buildings you'll get.

OK, so you've loaded up Castile and are now staring at the world on November 11th, 1444. What do you do with what nations?

Portugal is in the same culture group as Castile, and once you form Spain, it has a cultural union on the entire Iberian peninsula. Portugal also has two river estuaries and a center of trade in Castile's home node, Sevilla. Don't forget decent development. But, don't conquer Portugal! Why not?

Well Portugal's mission, when unconquered, is to funnel as much money as it can into the Sevilla node, which also happens to be Castile's home node! The only competition between Castile and Portugal is collecting the money in Sevilla. This means Portugal, in essence, is an extra two traders (minimum) pushing trade towards Sevilla. Portugal also is colonizing provinces overseas, whose trade value will eventually end up in Sevilla.

Thus, Portugal more or less doubles the amount of trade flowing into Sevilla.

If you want to, you could vassalize Portugal early on before their development gets to high, but again, don't annex them. You could conquer a few provinces such as Porto to get extra trade power in the node that counts, Sevilla. I personally dislike that as that makes Portugal rebellious towards Castile, and it results in ugly border gore.

Another option is waiting for an event that gives Spain a personal union over Portugal (http://www.eu4wiki.com/Spanish_events#The_Portuguese_Crown). It requires that the year is between 1550 and 1650, Spain has a royal marriage with Portugal, Portugal has an opinion higher that 150 with Spain, and Portugal has a regency. The event's mean time to happen is 2000 months, or 166 years. If you don't want to subjugate Portugal militarily, this event is pretty much the only way.

Aragon will most likely set Castile as a rival. I'm not sure about the current version, but in past versions Aragon had a chance of being friendly towards Castile. Either way, this doesn't affect your diplomacy towards Aragon. Your entire relationship with Aragon sums up with one event: the Iberian Wedding. Between 1450 and 1530, if neither Castile nor Aragon are vassals and the monarch of one of them is male and the monarch of the other is female, then every month there is a one in twelve chance (8.33%) of this event happening. This will provide Castile with a free personal union over Aragon, and Naples if the personal union between Aragon and Naples is preserved up to this point. If you get the personal union with Naples as well, you get the "Double the Love" achievement as well! This paves the way for you to take the decision "Form Spanish Nation Diplomatically" at administrative tech 10. This does the amazing job of integrating Aragon into Spain for free. No need to go to war for all of Aragon's provinces. Castile starts out with a truce with Granada until January 1448, but receives a mission from the start date to conquer Granada. This gives Castile free claims on all three of Granada's provinces. I would take this mission first, and declare war right on the onset of 1448 to prevent Granada from getting an annoying alliance with Morocco.

But, you may ask, the Granadan provinces are Muslim. Well, after Castile conquers Granada, this event fires: Torquemada and the Conversion of the Moors (http://www.eu4wiki.com/Spanish_events#Torquemada_and_the_Conversion_of_the_Moors). It gives you an option to favor tolerance to the Muslims or to convert the Moors to Catholicism for a province malus. In ture Spanish style, I would choose the convert option because in the long run, it will save you some conversion time with tricky Muslim provinces, while the benefit to go along with tolerance only lasts with your current ruler.

Except for Tangiers, North Africa is very expensive to conquer, hard to control thereafter, and the value of the land is menial. The majority of North Africa is either mountains or desert, has the ugly Berber traditions modifier, which increases coring costs by 100%, and all of this for low development and unaccepted culture. The best strategy here is to conquer only Tangiers for the valuable center of trade in Castile's home node, Sevilla, and maybe another province or two. If you're intent on subjugating North Africa, vassalizing a nation is a much better approach. You won't have to pay extra to core provinces, or core provinces at all for that matter. A hallmark of any non-France campaign in Europe is fighting the infamous Big Blue Blob. I enjoy stomping France and conquering her southern Occitanian provinces. If you get all of them , Occitan will become an accepted culture! Spain will also dominate the Genoa trade node, with your Aragonese and Occitanian provinces. You could even move your trade capital from Sevilla to Genoa to maximize the amount of trade you are collecting. To go about a war with France, I look for an opportunistic moment (see a theme here?) and declare war on France when she is invested heavily in another war. Attack only when you have a decent manpower pool with your buildings and at least two military idea groups to counter France's OP national ideas. A few decisive battles and France is in Spain's pocket.

I will discuss HRE and the rest of the world beyond Europe in later parts of the guide, this is just getting acquainted with Castile's neighbors, who are most likely to be conquered.

Needless to say, you want to take exploration ideas first, along with setting your national focus to diplomatic from November 11th, 1444 (what a famed date in EU IV history). When you end up with your first colonist, you want to immediately snag those jumping off points such as Cape Verde and the provinces in West Africa.

This is my guiding philosophy on which theater to spend most of your efforts colonizing.

The New World
The New World, apart from sparse natives, is quite frankly, new. There's no one there, and thus trade value in nodes is poor until European paint the map, which takes time. Also, trade leaves the New World in several vectors, and overall, funneling trade in the New World into a single node is hard. Also, your trade power is split between the mother nation and the colonial nation, causing less trade power to be utilized in pushing trade towards Europe. Finally, the New World's development is low, and especially outside of the equator where gold, cotton, and sugar lay, the trade goods in North America and Patagonia are somewhat poorer.

I believe focusing on the East is a much more lucrative and efficient strategy. There are two components to the East: Africa and Asia.

Africa
Going to subdivide again (cringe!) Africa can be further broken down into two parts: the coast, and the interior. The coast will be where most colonization and trade efforts should lie. The kingpin of the African coast is the Ivory Coast trade node. This is where virtually all trade routed through the Cape from Asia is doled out to all of the European nodes. Control of trade power here is vital. Grab all of the provinces you can by colonization, and any river estuaries and/or centers of trade that you can from the natives. If you're feeling it, make the Congo a protectorate. The rest of the African coast (Cape of Good Hope, Zanzibar, and the Gulf of Aden) can be conquered and colonized for full control of trade from Asia, and free merchants from trade companies (needless to say every overseas province should belong to trade companies except for rich provinces in China). The Gulf of Aden is important as is decides whether Asian trade goes onto the African coast or to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

Asia
Finally, Asia, where the riches lie. The advantages in Asia are that most of the trade goods there are bound to increase in price dramatically, you receive extra merchants from trade companies, and most of Asia is already inhabited, producing trade value in the nodes without waiting for the map to be painted. The European's only job in Asia is to control centers of trade to funnel trade to African, stealing the Asians out of their own trade income.

Pretty much the New World is too poor, by going to Asia and Africa you get more expensive trade goods and more of them, plus a headstart on other European nations because they will all be busy in the New World.

After you secure those points, I usually send one or two colonists off to the New World and one to Africa. In the New World, I would quickly colonize the Caribbean for the achievement "No Pirates in my Caribbean". After that, you can colonize Mexico, Peru, and Columbia for the achievement "Imperio español" and gold. After that there's really not that much to do in the New World.

The real riches lie in Asia and the lucrative trade there. To get to Asia, you have to get through Africa first. I usually colonize down the Ivory Coast trade node and conquer the river mouth from the natives to establish as much control as I can over that trade node, because as mentioned above it decides what part of Europe gets all of the African and Asian trade income. After that I go for the Cape, colonizing the coastal provinces and leaving the inland ones for later. Once finished in Africa, start grabbing all of the open territory in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. You can colonize Australia for small amounts of gold and the achievement "The Five Colonies". Watch out because even though you blocked off access to Asia from Africa with your coastal colonies, your rivals will soon reach Asia by island-hopping the Pacific from the New World.

Apart from the basics, there are a number of interesting things to do in Asia. As Spain you are in a good position to conquer all of India and Japan, especially when administrative efficiency kicks in to even further reduce coring cost, for the achievements "Master of India" and "The Rising Sun", respectively. Also, you can conquer Aden, Hormuz, and Malacca for the achievement "Trade Hegemon". These provinces, without the achievement, are still vital to your trade network in Asia. Aside from achievements, conquering as many centers of trade in Asia to further steer trade to Europe is essential.

All of this money Spain will earn through trade will finance the development of the motherland in something more grand than the war against the sea in those rebellious Dutch provinces.

The strategy described in this section will be a stark contrast to today's governments: we will be investing most of our income in infrastructure. The Spanish homeland, while not as poor as Hungary, is still not as developed as France. Money will fix that through two ways. Directly, through buildings that further boost our income and manpower, and indirectly, through level 3 advisers that will give us the excess monarch points to develop our land. Now with 500 ducats a month through trade alone, anything is possible.

Some buildings are better than others. Buildings expanding your force limit are a big no-no. The only thing that is your force limit by the mid game is your manpower, so build those buildings like there's no tomorrow (for France once you get the manpower). Also on the list of must-haves are trade buildings (only in centers of trade and river estuaries), tax buildings, and production building (only in provinces with expensive trade goods). Finally, factories can be built in provinces with valuable trade goods, and I believe are a good idea overseas as production isn't harmed by overseas penalties.

All of these buildings will further increase your income and manpower to finance and recruit your ever-growing armies so Spain can be the greatest power in Europe.

The only reason Spain should be worried about the HRE is for the Achievement "Spain is the Emperor". A the beginning of the 16th century, Charles V was simultaneously the Holy Roman Emperor, Duke of Burgundy, and King of the Spanish Empire. Pretty cool, eh?

With your new land bridge through France, you can go about becoming the Emperor one of two ways: diplomatically convincing the electors to vote for you or just vassalizing them. I found vassalizing them easier. Just wait for diplomatic tech 22 and the imperialism CB, and vassalize 3 or 4 electors. Improve relations, and after you're elected emperor, you can just release the vassals and go on about your colonization.

If you're intent on the diplomatic route and uniting the HRE, Influence and Diplomatic ideas are extremely valuable, and after elected you can try to push reforms through the HRE.

A cool strategy I used in my own playthrough described by this wonderful guide by nixx is to force your government to fall to Revolutionary rebels to turn your government into the insane Revolutionary Republic. This government gives you strong bonuses, as well as the bonuses from being the target of the revolution. Here's the guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=471022685

Well now that Spain is has 1st rank in all three score categories, the world is your oyster. You can go for achievements like conquering the world and other things like that. Go forth and conquer, and spread the glorious Spanish culture and Catholicism (of course)!

You can also [shameless self-advertising]check out my other guide if you haven't already, that covers army composition:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=301582277

*current*
0.9 - Guide release. Will add screenshots and pictures once save file is found & loaded