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driftwood

driftwood

Lt. General
Nov 11, 2001
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Anyone who reads the History forums may know that everyone there insists on only recommending books about Spain in general and Phillip II in particular. :D So, knowing when I'm beat, I've been reading J.H. Elliot's Imperial Spain and playing as Spain. I have a bunch of ideas I'm kicking around (will flesh more out tomorrow), but I wanted to start this thread for people thinking about Portugal, Castille, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Navarre, and Granada to post their thoughts/events on.

About the Spanish bankruptcy - many people are upset about having this forced upon them (as I will be when I get to the 16th century). While history should be likely, none of us want to be forced to recreate it. So how about something like this as a compromise:

# Debts of Charles V
Charles V could rarely raise enough money through taxes to finance is sprawling and awkward empire's needs in addition to his aggressive foreign policy. He resorted, throughout his reign, to loans from Italian bankers. The debts grew far out of control, ate up much ongoing revenue as well as alienating crown lands as security, and eventually resulted in costly defaults in the reign of his son, Phillip II.

Event I - Loans spiral out of control
Triggers: Spain, 1547
Action A : Promise to pay 1000 ducats in 10 years
* +5 inflation or something
Action B : Pay loans now
* Lose 500 ducats
* +1 centralization (improved revenues from land securities that have been redeemed)
* -5 inflation (early repayment is rewarded)

Event II - Our credit is exhausted
Triggers: Spain, 1557
Action A : Default
* Same effects as currently
Action B : Pay our loans off
* -1000 ducats
* Revoltrisk 6 for 3 years (onnerous financial burdens on your population)
* -10 inflation (large reduction in money supply, interest payments - should reduce inflation/price index substantially)

This is still fairly harsh, but at least you have 10 years warning to save up the money that any monarch would have known he owed, and avoid bankruptcy. You could repeat something like this for each bankruptcy (or even cause early payments to put other bankruptcy events to sleep).

I'm going to try and think up some balanced Inquisition-alternative events tomorrow.

driftwood
 
That's good Driftwood.

In my games, I have added a few for Castille/Spain to tone it down some too.

One is the population fear of excess Inquisition (once the Moors and the Jews were done, it could turn its eyes on good little Spaniards), one that is ahistorical is the not-at-all famous Portuguese revolution of 1460-65 (offset in there) to try to recreate Portugal if it gets diplo-annexed too early (cause that makes the balance of power way too screwy in the Iberian peninsula and outside Europe) and, more historically, the Civil war that followed Henri IV's death when Portugal supported his daughter Joan against Henry's sister Isabelle (of the y Ferdinand!) The Joan vs Isabelle hurts stability and, depending on whom you choose (joan is the non-historical path), you hurt your relationship with Aragon (support Isabelle) or Portugal (support Joan).

For flavour, I gave Portugal the Behaim event if its innovativeness is 7 or more. Martin Behaim made the first representation of the world as a Sphere. If innovativeness is 7 or more, you see the strategic naval potential of having everything connected and earn naval tech points. If innovativeness is lower, your event has you buy this lovely bejeweled globe as a novelty for 5 ducats and no positive effect except a well-appointed conversation piece.
 
I just finished Elliott's book ... now I guess I'll have to reskim it to glean the events out of it (where's a good timeline when you need one?).

Essentially the bankruptcies every 20 years from the mid-16th century on were caused by overly ambitious foreign commitments supplied by an inadequate economy. So, instead of forcing all these bankruptcy events on the poor, forward-thinking player, would it be better to tempt him/her to make the historically over-ambitious decisions that lead to many loans?

I'm thinking of giving frequent events that require decentralization, narrowmindedness, and/or serfdom in order to maintain stability (and to avoid revolts in Portugal, Aragon, Catalon, Valencia, Sicily, Naples, and Flanders), unless you get to a certain high threshold (i.e., if you centralize yourself, and free your subjects, and/or become openminded, you've overcome these problems for good). Also, lots of events giving you more armies everywhere, maybe also decreasing manpower, to drive up maintenance costs. A human player would be able to see that trap, but the AI would fall into it, bankrupting itself without the need for out-of-the-blue events.

Yes, Castile is too civil war-free in the 15th century. I'm not sure how much to micro-script all the events that happened to Spain, but at least the upheavals after the death of Isabelle and before the accession of Charles (regarding Ferdinand's status) should be modelled.

My main concern is to create an Inquisition-alternative path, so you don't have to expel the Jews and Moors, but I don't have any balanced ideas yet.

driftwood
 
Playing Castile-Spain I find myself narrowminded by the events (Torquemada and the expulsion) which is fine, more or less historical and good to get colonists. But this forces me to go extremely centralized and trying to be more naval, less serfdom and less aristocracy, if I can (and that is not that bad as a simulation of the real policy of spanish kings). I should leave things as they are, only providing an alternate way to the 'Torquemada style', because Spain will anyway be hardly pressed by Godzilla (aka France) and the dutch rebels (when the dutch revolt is fixed) and probably by England, Turkey and BB wars everywhere.

About the bankruptcys I'm against forcing them (wish there was a way of asking how much money a country has to pay for loans in the events). When Charles died he had to repay 25,000,000 ducats, and his yearly income was about 3,000,000, so that paying the interests consumed all of the income. Asking 'are interests more than x' would be a perfect trigger for this kind of event. Besides, the so-called bankruptcys were more like suspensions of payments to force renegotiation of terms. Exchanging debts for reductions in tax value of provinces would be the best way of representing the effect (short term loans were converted to long-term public debt bonds, which were more reliably paid, but gave lower interest rates).

I'm working on some events covering the XV century in Iberia. My first intention was to cover Castile, but I discovered very soon that the policy of Aragon, Portugal and Navarre was too involved with Castile to leave them out.
 
[later] I just posted many proposals for iberian events in the EEP West Europe thread.
 
Alatriste - nice list. What specific consequences do you think most of the events should have, besides revolts? I wish there were more consequences to a change of monarchs (drop in stability, nobles demand privileges, possibility of revolts, etc.) without having to script them.

For the bankruptcy, I think that's a good idea (about trading longterm tax revenue for short term debt rescheduling). True, the bankruptcies were more like temporary defaults, but they also resulted in the ruin of some of the loan-holding banks and had many of the economic effects of a bankruptcy (actually worse, since there was no clean base to start a recovery from, but just a continuation of debt).

I don't think the player should be forced into the many bankruptcies (many more than are in the game, I've found), which is why I want to rewrite them. I think your idea of lowering the tax revenue from random provinces is good (maybe with +1 to serfdom to represent the impact on the peasants and -1 to centralization because bankruptcy came from an inability to make non-Castilian regions contribute enough money). And I'll put in events letting you choose between militaristic or pacific policies now and again (the former gives you troops, therefore building up an overly large army that is stationed predominantly in Flanders and Italy). That should work well.

driftwood
 
I just had a flash of insight this morning on how to do away with the hardcoded bankruptcy events. I was reading Geoffrey Parker's The Grand Strategy of Phillip II, and realized that the Spanish difficulties came from a) maintaining a large army and b) getting it to where it needed to be (usually Flanders).

So, once the Dutch revolts start, why not set the manpower of those provinces to 0 until controlled by the Netherlands? By reducing manpower, maintenance costs for standing armies should shoot up. At the same time, since you can no longer raise armies in the low countries, you have to try and get your armies up there somehow. That means naval wars with England/France suddenly matter again, as does the Spanish road from Genoa/Milan up to Brussels. Talk about an incentive to gain military access and/or conquer Switzerland, Alsace, Cologne, etc.

I'll code it up later and see how it works.

driftwood
 
The first event we need is a new one for creation of Spain(also quitting Castile CB shields over Aragon) when 1516 Carlos I rose to the throne of both countries(Castile and Aragon, so leaders of Spain should be moved to Castile or Aragon leader files) Aragon should have an event that will only work if you selected Isabel in the succesion of Enrique IV, letting you select between:
a)Carlos is the heir of Aragon, this event will trigger to other one of Castile letting you create Spain(inheriting Aragon at the same time) and gain CB shields over Aragonese realms and also Italian culture.
b)The sons of Germana de Foix(she had no sons with Fernando but if she had thay have inherited Aragon), if you choose it lose 1 stability, break alliance and vassalization with Castile and enter RM and Alliance with France.
 
Leave them some manpower, 0 is too low, as many walloon soldiers fought with the spanish armies ('valones' was the name that soldiers from the Low Countries received in the spanish armies no matter if they spoke french or dutch). However, severely cutting that manpower would be a very good idea. Oh, how I wish that manpower wouldn't recover so fast!
 
I'm going to post inmediately the long version of the castilian events in the West Europe thread. Aragon and Navarre will follow as soon as possible.
 
The first event we need is a new one for creation of Spain(also quitting Castile CB shields over Aragon) when 1516 Carlos I rose to the throne of both countries(Castile and Aragon, so leaders of Spain should be moved to Castile or Aragon leader files) Aragon should have an event that will only work if you selected Isabel in the succesion of Enrique IV, letting you select between:
Click to expand...

This was included in the last patch, me parece
 
Originally posted by Gorion


This was included in the last patch, me parece
Click to expand...

not as it should be, Castle continues becoming Spain before "annexing Aragon and not after
 
Originally posted by Gorion
Nothing can be do about this. Colon and the rest of the explorers and conquistadores are Spanish, so Spain must appear before them.
Click to expand...

We could just move the Spanish explorers and conquistadores until 1516 to the Castilla file. It would make sense, as only Castillians were allowed to travel to the New World.
 
Also, we could implement the Catalan Civil War and the Remença revolts so if Ferdinand ends not being the King of Aragon, no Union can happen (in the current terms, at least).
 
Can anyone tell me which provinces in the Netherlands, generally, were under Spanish control enough of the time to raise armies? I could just assume that the Dutch ones should go to manpower 0 (or something else low) and the others (Brabant, Artois, Picardie?, Luxembourg) stay normal.

I would have coded the event, but my computer is in, ah, poor health. Non-booting health, in fact. Hopefully I can cure it by tomorrow, thought. :)

driftwood
 
Tough question, because that depends on how the war is going (I haven't played that long still, but in EU1 it was the norm that Spain always kept Holland and usually Flandres too, the AI fully knowing that they were the richest provinces, while the rebels got some of the others, less valuable ones).

In reality when the situation stabilized roughly around 1590 Spain ruled everything south of the EU province of Zelland and Holland everything north, Zelland itself being contested.
 
Aragonese events posted. Not as funny as the castilian ones, I'm afraid.
 
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