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Hey, folks, Kuck U Kinte here with a post that will hopefully clarify some of the things that I have been glossing over. In an attempt not to repeat stuff that other LPs have covered, I've ended up glossing over stuff that newbs could consider vital information. Yikes! As the newbs are my friend and I want them to have fun and learn, I decided to do this short "behind the scenes" LP, to explain how I behave differently than a Feudal christian or a Norse might.


First things first. Wives, can't live with 'em can't live without 'em. Your wife is a very important member of your Doge-dom. Here's a fine example of a pretty much perfect wife. In order of importance: she has the genius trait, we use this to breed geniuses into our realm. It's far easier to have a continuous succession of genius rulers in a republic than a feudal realm due to the amount of male family at court. Secondly, she has a great education trait. Our potential rulers are unlikely to have a martial education, but we will be overflowing with adult dynasty member due to how trade post expansion works. Agalina has trained many of Pisa's finest generals, and by the looks of it, mothered one too. Thirdly, is her traits. Educators often pass on their good traits to their wards, and if they have bad ones they will prevent the ward from taking on the good version. Yu'll note that Agalina is a relative. All that genius breeding and we can save a few of the premium wives for ourselves. As she is a member of our dynasty, she was born Italian and was educated Italian. She will have passed that cultural education on.


Here's the wife finding screen. Like a feudal ruler we look for geniuses. There are 2 there that are coming of age. They are the wrong culture, so won't be used for education, but we can breed them. Thankfully for us, women's rights will not exist for 1000 more years. Look for women with Midas Touched at game start to pass that on THEN breed genius into your realm.


Here's our mansion. I've touched on this in my LP whenever I upgrade, but here I stress the best upgrades. Upgrading your palace increases trade post limit, and admin office increases stewardship AND retinue cap among other juicy boons. Wowza!


Here's a peek at our family trade zones in the late game. Please note that all of my trade zones are bordering. This is so we can get the connected to capital bonus.


Here's our first trade zone as Pisa, and a good example of how I prioritise my trade post building to maximise income. I fill out all trade posts in a single zone before moving on. This is because you make more money controlling every trade post in a zone that you do partially controlling multiple spread out trade zones. Building this way I was able to completely shut out my fellow patricians, many of whom can still only afford the single trade post they started the game with.


Here's our capital holdings. I prefer to build castles as you will already be making money hand over fist as a republic, and thus it's best to go all in with the military holding. I built this castle when the republic was well setup. You could easily build one quite early however, as I was planning to move my capital until I changed my mind when Sicily was formed under my nose.


Here's our council. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but a few notes.

Fabricating claims is often your only method of expansion more often that it would be for a feudal realm. Use it when other methods dry up, otherwise have your diplomat buddying up with the Pope (for gold/claims) or a big ally (I used France a lot as you will see in later updates).

Martial is almost always training troops in the capital. As this is where you family mansion is, you will have an excess of troops there no matter what. Pisa has even more troops than Palermo thanks to the mansion. If only there was an easy way to move capitals to a non dejure capital...sigh.

Steward is often overseeing construction to speed up the process of mansion upgrades, which take a long ass time. Otherwise he's collecting taxes in the capital. Be wary, as your heir is likely to also be your steward in the republic, he may be killed when collecting taxes. Proceed with caution.

Spymaster. He moves around a lot. By default, he's either scheming in the capital if I feel my landless patricians are trying to kill me after an election, or he's scheming in the holding of a vassal who's title I want to revoke. If he uncovers a plot by said vassal I will try to entice them to revolt with imprisonment and then revoke their shit after the war. When you vassalise the pope you can cut out the middleman and just excommunicate anyone of your choosing and revoke stuff that way, but as you can never go above low CA, it will cost you vassal opinion. I also use my spymaster to create spy networks in places where I want to assassinate the ruler with gold as it provides a binus. I assassinate a lot.

Chaplin. This guy is often busy too. He's either in Rome chatting up the Pope, or he's converting provinces. As Pisa you will probably have Muslim/Orthodox holdings at some point, and only you will convert the Island of Sicily (get Sicily) since only counts and above have councils, so you might wanna set him there. It took me 100 years to convert it all by myself because I wasn't really that proactive. Vassal dukes and counts will convert their own stuff and more quickly if they have high stewardship. Create vassals with high stewardship post holy warring.


Here's a peek at my final demesne. I often went over my cap for a generation or so to hold on to all of Palermo and Pisa. The 2nd county in Pisa was revoked from a naughty Patrician, as were the various baronies I wanted.


Here's our retinue mix. Not really much to say here, but you can see I built a lot of pikes. This is mostly to take advantage of the Italian cultural tactic, which isn't awesome or anything. Normally, if the retinue was good I would just use 100% cataphract/longbow etc. I have quite a few archers too, to help with sieging. I feel that retinue composition isn't a gamebreaker or anything. It was 100% pike in the early game and it served me fine, for the most part. A 100% shock retinue is probably more optimal though, so feel free to ignore my random retinue.


Tech. Again, not much to say, but you can see where I've been pumping points. Military org for retinue cap, Trade Practises for Trade post cap, legalism for demesne size, and noble customs or whatever to keep my feudal lords happy until I'm ready to piss them off on purpose.


Boom. I hope that was useful and cleared up any confusions folks may have had.