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Not The One At The Top, Not The One That Writes History... Yet: Part IX - The End Of The Beginning (1141 - 1151)
Alright then, the time is right to really make our play for the throne... is what I'd say if I thought about what I should do. I didn't, and as such, the whole thing gets a lot more complicated.
Really, if you take away two things about learning to play as a vassal, it's these two rules:
Know the mechanics of the game well.
Keep your fucking cool and don't panic.
I didn't obey those rules in these next few updates, and there's going to be several situations where keeping my cool and knowing the mechanics well would have saved me a lot of trouble. In this case, there's one simple way to make a play for the throne that would have been perfect:
1) Create a faction for independence.
2) Push it.
3) Wait for Philippe to win.
4) Usurp kingdom because I have more than 50% of the de jure area.
5) Hire some mercs (to fight the powerful event troops Philippe still has) and punch people's faces in with de jure claims.
I didn't do that.
Instead, I made the dumb move of pushing for lowered Crown Authority to eventually push for Elective and then push myself as king. This is still a technically sound move, all things considered - the best succession law as a vassal is Elective (as it's not in your interest to let the CA go high enough to unlock Primogeniture), so you're already accustomed to it, and it's a fairly easy to push yourself for the crown once you're strong enough (and we are). However, given our current situation, the usurping method would be better.
This isn't worth it. You can only push a single CA lowering faction at a time, and the primary crown is the one that takes precedence.
This time around, Jaspert initially resists.
However, the situation is completely fucked...
...and he gives up without a single battle or siege. Good thing too... look at those fucking adventurer numbers! I'm certainly not going to try and fight that.
With that done, we're right on to the next faction, this time for Elective.
Once again, our numbers are much greater than what the king can muster, especially now that his holdings are being shat on by Philippe. However...
...since the last faction demand led to war, we have a truce with the king and can't push this new one! A surprisingly shrewd move by the AI.
Instead, we just wait and watch France burn once again...
...and in '42, Philippe gets his crown back. Now it's time to push the faction for Elective!
...or not. Since Philippe got magic troops from his adventurer event that persist until they die, he's a lot stronger than Jaspert was. We could use mercs to make up the difference, but let's just wait and see if the event troops don't get killed off in other wars. No sense wasting money.
Philippe tries to pass higher Crown Authority, but there's no chance in hell that'll happen. You can also see that our mega-duke status gives us a fuckton of weight when it comes to passing laws.
This marks one of the rare times where other vassals actually join one of my factions. Usually, the player opens factions not because he hates his liege, but because he's trying to further his own agenda, and when the other vassals love the liege, the factions rarely get going. Of course, we could previously just ignore that because we were so powerful, but here, the entire realm couldn't really give me a comfortable edge over those event troops.
Nothing much to do right now except sit around watching our tech improve (the Spymaster is a real MVP when it comes to tech)...
...and going to feasts and shit.
'43 rolls around, and Manass?s gets sick. Normally, this isn't really that big a deal, but when you're already stressed, you're taking a pretty big hit to health that could very well do you in. We've already got experience with characters dying too early, we don't need more! Thankfully, it passes without issue. Also, look at that cash. We're ready for anything that could come our way.
We even get our first retinue! Not a whole lot, but hey, that'll be 1000 guys!
In '44, the new king, Henri, gets jumpy and declares war on England - I suppose he was getting sick of France always being the one that got declared war on. Aquitaine joins in, and this should be a great opportunity for the event troops to get murdered.
While that war goes on, I push a county claim for one of my barons. Normally, this is stupid, because it messes things up when a county has a few baronies under the local count and one under some other count over god knows where, but this baron isn't actually in one of my counties - he's in Paris. Now, how the fuck did I end up with some baron in Paris as my vassal? I have no fucking clue. Seriously, I just noticed it when looking around for CBs I might have on my neighbors. I'm not complaining, though.
In '45, Manass?s finally gets rid of Stressed, and everything seems to be coming up just fine for us.
The remaining event troops eventually get into a big battle and get completely shredded after getting diminished by Philippe stupidly assaulting ?vreux...
...and suddenly, the situation swings heavily into our favor, so let's finally push that faction!
He gives up without a fight since he's losing a war right now, wonderful!
Ugh. Some things never change.
The new election results are in, and while we can match the amount of votes for the king's chosen heir, the fact that it's the king's chosen heir causes him to take precedence.
Taking out the chosen heir until the chosen one is too crappy for the other guy that isn't the king to go along with him is an option, but that's too unreliable. Plus, we can't get more than 99% plot power on this guy right now. So let's take a different approach.
First off, gotta get that Pope money again. We got about 2000 bucks laying around right now, we're stinking rich.
Then, we just cut out the middle man and make a faction to push ourselves as the next king.
He obviously resists, but that shouldn't be a problem.
The pathetic resistance he can put up is crushed early into '46, and from then on, it's just sieging very, very slowly.
Our Spymaster gets caught again, but that doesn't really matter, we just send the next best candidate.
Around '48, England goes and makes a claim for Anjou. Sure, why not. Less provinces for me to siege.
And very quickly, France is reduced to an even more pathetic rump state.
Nothing much else happens until '51, when we finally amass enough warscore to win this war. Oh, and Henri?
Get the FUCK out of my kingdom, bitch.
Now, this is where one would normally end it, since we're not playing as a vassal anymore, but I'm going to be continuing this game a bit further to see where I can go. Suffice it to say that we won't be staying independent for that long... I have a plan.
If we weren't going to be trying one of my hairbrained schemes, the general plan to restore France to a decent strength would go as follows:
1) Break the bank of Cluny to get loadsamoney for mercs.
2) Find a claimant for the duchy of Normandy and beat up England over that claim. Since the duke of Normandy is a de jure vassal of France, he should be your vassal when you press the claim successfully.
3) While that's ongoing, fabricate a claim on one of the provinces in the duchy of Brittany.
4) Kill the king of England and take back Anjou. If killing him isn't an option right now, take on the king of Aquitaine over Orleans instead.
5) Take the province in Brittany, land a claimant to the duchy in it, then press the claim to the duchy.
That way, you reclaimed pretty much all of the de jure French lands and Brittany to boot. After that, you'd focus on eating up Aquitaine and eventually forming Francia.
However, we're not going to be doing that, no. I have a plan...
Next time: I demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the game mechanics and lose my fucking cool. The plan goes to shit.