Iberian Wedding?

[BlueBangkok]

I got Isabella as heir before Castilian Civil War triggered. Of course, then it triggered, replacing Isabella with the useless Enrique. After the civil war was over, I am stuck with him.
Am I screwed and doomed to restart or can Isabella somehow return?

[bri]

There are ways to get a new heir named Isabella but I'm fairly certain the event version can only fire once.

[Marquoz]

The Isabella event won't happen twice. However, you can still get the Iberian Wedding by fulfilling the necessary preconditions.

For Castile, these are:

Trigger conditions
The country:

is Castile.
is not a subject.
has at least 25 cities.
is not at war with Aragon.
is a monarchy
Spain does not exist.

Aragon:

is AI controlled.
was not player-controlled at any point.
is not a subject.
is a neighbour of Castile.
is not at war with Castile.
is not the warleader in a war.
is not in a war were the CB is Independence.
is a monarchy

Any of the following:

--The rulers of Castile and Aragon have a different gender.
--Castile or Aragon:
is controlled by the AI.
has a regency

The year is between 1450 and 1530.

[BlueBangkok]

I see. So I am at the mercy of RNG for me or Aragon to get a random female heir now. So I might as well just restart and stay at war for 80 years.
What an enjoyable experience Castille has been in this patch.

[Marquoz]

You had bad luck this time, but there are things you can do to improve your chances. For example, try to get a female ruler or heir much earlier than "80 years." (sentence here deleted--grotaclas correctly pointed out it was in error)

These are the trigger conditions for the disaster. Note that this information, just like the Isabella event info I provided earlier, can be found on the wiki.

Castile:

does not have an ongoing disaster.
is not at war.
has an heir.
is not the lesser partner in a union.

Any of the following is true for Castile:

has a regency.
the heir's claim strength is less than 80.
has a female heir.

It is currently the Age of Discovery.

So disinherit bad heirs or use them as generals and send them into combat and hope they die. Do the same with mediocre or bad rulers. Try to trigger a regency with your queen in charge while you have an underage heir. These are standard Castile moves to get the Iberian Wedding event in the first decade or two of the game.

Here are two screenshots of a Castile Ironman campaign I started last week. I wanted to experience the changes from the last few patches:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141702299
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141702084

It's 1534 and everything's going fine. In fact, I got bored and stopped playing this one.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

For example, try to get Isabella much earlier. You want her on the throne long before the Age of Discovery starts because that's when the Casilian Civil War disaster can occur.

You are mixing up something here. The Age of Discovery is the first age of the game, so you can't get Isabella before it. And getting Isabella before the Castilian civil war all but guarantees that the civil war will happen before she can become ruler, because she will fulfill the prerequisite "has a female heir." and Castile's starting ruler is an 1/1/2 which means +1% disaster progress unless you can get to +3 stability and Isabella starts as 5 year old, so +1% progress is enough to fire the disaster before she turns 15

[Marquoz]

Right, right, sorry. I mixed up Reformation and Discovery in my head somehow. Thanks for catching that, grotaclas.

It's still a good idea to try for a female heir, but after the civil war. Thinking back on it, the disaster fired pretty early in my campaign, and then I tried to force a female heir or consort regency since Aragon was all-male at the time.

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

You had bad luck this time, but there are things you can do to improve your chances. For example, try to get a female ruler or heir much earlier than "80 years." (sentence here deleted--grotaclas correctly pointed out it was in error)

These are the trigger conditions for the disaster. Note that this information, just like the Isabella event info I provided earlier, can be found on the wiki.

Castile:

does not have an ongoing disaster.
is not at war.
has an heir.
is not the lesser partner in a union.

Any of the following is true for Castile:

has a regency.
the heir's claim strength is less than 80.
has a female heir.

It is currently the Age of Discovery.

So disinherit bad heirs or use them as generals and send them into combat and hope they die. Do the same with mediocre or bad rulers. Try to trigger a regency with your queen in charge while you have an underage heir. These are standard Castile moves to get the Iberian Wedding event in the first decade or two of the game.

Thanks. This time I tried everything besides preventing the Castilian Civil War by any means necessary. I did not know that you lose Isabella if it fires without any chance of getting her back. I sent my starting ruler into combat against Granada, Morocco, Portugal, and Tunis like dozen times, begging he would die, of course he kept on living for 40 years.

In the end I was able to trigger regency like you suggested, however, that's when the "shadows on the move" events started happening. And not once, but every few months. First I got a 4/4/4 Habsburg thinking "cool this is finally over, now I just wait the regency out". But then every few months that stupid event will trigger, killing the heir with 95% probability (which is naturally a 100 per cent in ironman), and getting another one with 0 age, therefore, I will never get out of the regency until the paranoid regent dies somehow on her own (also perpetually losing prestige and legitimacy).

This is really cursed, not a great experience early game as Castille post-1.30, let me tell you.

[Kapika96]

In my experience Isabella is pretty rare, she comes along maybe 20% of the time. While the Iberian wedding is incredibly common, happens in like 95% of games.

You don't need her for it, just to have different gender rulers or Aragon to have a regency. Given Aragon's starting ruler and heir are very close in age they'll probably die pretty close to each other resulting in a regency shortly after, so even if neither of you ever get another female ruler it'll likely still happen.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by BlueBangkok:

In the end I was able to trigger regency like you suggested, however, that's when the "shadows on the move" events started happening. And not once, but every few months. First I got a 4/4/4 Habsburg thinking "cool this is finally over, now I just wait the regency out". But then every few months that stupid event will trigger, killing the heir with 95% probability (which is naturally a 100 per cent in ironman), and getting another one with 0 age, therefore, I will never get out of the regency until the paranoid regent dies somehow on her own (also perpetually losing prestige and legitimacy).

AFAIK "shadows on the move" requires an estate led regency, but Marquoz was recommending a queen regency, because she counts as female. I think an estate regency counts as male so it won't help with the wedding if Aragons ruler is male. Check the exact triggers for the events on the wiki to see why you get them and then prevent the conditions. The event which is literally called "shadows on the move", can easily be prevented by getting the estate loyal which leads the regency

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

In my experience Isabella is pretty rare, she comes along maybe 20% of the time. While the Iberian wedding is incredibly common, happens in like 95% of games.

You don't need her for it, just to have different gender rulers or Aragon to have a regency. Given Aragon's starting ruler and heir are very close in age they'll probably die pretty close to each other resulting in a regency shortly after, so even if neither of you ever get another female ruler it'll likely still happen.

I get her almost all the time, and she is incredibly useful due to her colonist boost.
The tricky part is to not lose her due to the civil war disaster if she comes along before then (which is exactly what happened to me).

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by BlueBangkok:

In the end I was able to trigger regency like you suggested, however, that's when the "shadows on the move" events started happening. And not once, but every few months. First I got a 4/4/4 Habsburg thinking "cool this is finally over, now I just wait the regency out". But then every few months that stupid event will trigger, killing the heir with 95% probability (which is naturally a 100 per cent in ironman), and getting another one with 0 age, therefore, I will never get out of the regency until the paranoid regent dies somehow on her own (also perpetually losing prestige and legitimacy).

AFAIK "shadows on the move" requires an estate led regency, but Marquoz was recommending a queen regency, because she counts as female. I think an estate regency counts as male so it won't help with the wedding if Aragons ruler is male. Check the exact triggers for the events on the wiki to see why you get them and then prevent the conditions. The event which is literally called "shadows on the move", can easily be prevented by getting the estate loyal which leads the regency

I restarted anyway because that run was done for.
According to the wiki it seems it can be prevented, yes, however since you have no way of instantly boosting loyalty with an estate, you are still at rng mercy if it fires while below 40% loyalty.
I also find it quite misleading that "loyal" = "above 40%" (according to the wiki) in this case, while in every other case it's "30% or above". I think what happened was that I seized land and then the regency fired some time after that with estates hovering around 35%, which is technically loyal for every other in-game thing.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by BlueBangkok:

In the end I was able to trigger regency like you suggested, however, that's when the "shadows on the move" events started happening. And not once, but every few months. First I got a 4/4/4 Habsburg thinking "cool this is finally over, now I just wait the regency out". But then every few months that stupid event will trigger, killing the heir with 95% probability (which is naturally a 100 per cent in ironman), and getting another one with 0 age, therefore, I will never get out of the regency until the paranoid regent dies somehow on her own (also perpetually losing prestige and legitimacy).

AFAIK "shadows on the move" requires an estate led regency, but Marquoz was recommending a queen regency, because she counts as female.

Right. I've gotten the Iberian wedding with Isabella some of the time, but it's much more common for it to happen when either Castile or Aragon falls under a queen regency (at least for me). So, if you have an underage heir (0-14 years old), make sure your male monarch always has a wife. If the current one dies, send additional royal marriage offers until you get a new one, even if it sends you over your relations limit. Then try to kill off your king.

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Right. I've gotten the Iberian wedding with Isabella some of the time, but it's much more common for it to happen when either Castile or Aragon falls under a queen regency (at least for me). So, if you have an underage heir (0-14 years old), make sure your male monarch always has a wife. If the current one dies, send additional royal marriage offers until you get a new one, even if it sends you over your relations limit. Then try to kill off your king.

It's gotten quite funny after the restart. This time, Juan died right when heir was 16, then heir took over, castilian civil war fired, and I got Isabella after it fired. So, she's alive and well. I guess now it's just the matter of waiting it out while killing off heathens. Also, France, Burgundy, and Aragon love me. It's like the game is apologizing for the previous run rng streak.

[Marquoz]

Great news, BlueBangkok! Enjoy forming Spain!

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Great news, BlueBangkok! Enjoy forming Spain!

Thank you. It is shaping up to be one of the best Spain runs yet - Isabella on the throne, PUs over both Aragon and Portugal, colonists already working, all in 1479.