Je Maintiendrai and Sinaasappel! Acheivements Guide

This guide will take you through the formation of the Netherlands as Holland and getting the Sinaasappel! acheivement

Intro

Since the latest updates Burgundy no longer directly control Flanders, Brabant, and Holland. Instead they are in personal unions under Burgundy. In my opinion this makes it significantly easier to form the Netherlands than it was before.

My guide will be a walkthrough of Holland who starts with 2 provinces, 40 development, and 1 fort in their capital.

The guide will take you through the formation of the Netherlands and some other early game conquests as well as colonization and the Sinaasappel! acheivement.

War for Independance

Take a look at Burgundy's rivals and enemies. Hopefully they are rivals with, or more importantly enemies of France, Austria, and England.
notice how in this picture France did not rival Burgundy. This means you will have to waste time improving relations with France to get them to support your independance. You don't have to restart, but starting over will be faster and easier.

Day 1 start fabricating claims on Breda. It is a Dutch province and is required for Netherlands so why not get it right away? With your other diplomat get your independance supported from France, Austria, and England (not really neccessary), and possibly Provence.

Recruit some troops and declare war. You don't have to wait for your claim to finish just don't peace out before the claim is done.
Winning the war should be simple just let France, Austria, and England tear Burgundy apart. If Burgundy is allied with Castille, as they did in my game, it should still be pretty easy, let France beat Castille and peace out with them early on.

You don't want to trigger Burgundian Succession, since your war will end and you won't get Breda also Austria and France will be too close to you for your early expansion.
Get enough warscore to take Breda, war reperations, and some money. Also make sure that Burgundy has negative prestige after the peace so that when their king dies they will lose their PUs.

After the war break your alliance with England so France likes you more.

At this point your aggressive expansion is pretty high so lay low for a few years. During this time fabricate claims on the other three Dutch provinces (yes, getting caught increases aggr.exp. but not by that much), improve relations with France and Austria, and get other allies in the HRE (Munster, East Frisia, Oldenburgh, etc.).

Early Wars

In my game Austria lost the Empire to Bohemia, which meant that Austria would join most of my wars, but that I had to deal with unlawful territory commands from Bohemia.
If this happens you may want to drop Austria since they usually rival Bohemia, and ally Bohemia instead or just keep Austria and deal with the +10unrest and relations penalties, as I did.

My first war as a free country was to betray one of my benefactors. Fabricate a claim on Calais which is controlled by England. In my game England was only allied to Portugal and the Irish minors so there wasn't any real threat.
Declare war, call your allies into the war especially France.
Make sure you siege Calais, since it is far away and isolated you won't be able to take it unless you siege it. Let France siege Aquitane and Normandy and deal with Portugal. Since your navy probably is not big enough to launch an amphibious assault, just wait until your warscore goes up enough to take Calais from England. Giving provinces to France is not neccessary in this war.

Now chill for a bit, store up your manpower and money until your agressive expansion from Breda is down.

Then look towards the three Dutch minors. SInce there are so many different possibilities with their allies use common sense to determine who to attack first. In my game Gelre only had one ally so I take it first.

At this point I was able to ally Denmark.
I took Utrecht next.
As you can see in the pictures above I was called into another war by my ally, Munster, and Friesland was an enemy co-belligerent so I had to wait a while before I could decalre war on them and take the last province.

I was big enough to diplomatically vassalize East Frisia. East Frisia has an estuary in the Lubeck trade node which you should be transferring to the English Channel. They are also not part of the empire and so they are easier to vassalize.

In my game Burgundy lost all of their PUs. My next target was Flanders, they control Antwerp which is a coastal center of trade as well as 2 other high development provinces and it connects you to Calais. Get claims on all of Flanders.

Decalre war on Flanders. In my game they were allied to Oldenburgh who I declared war on as well, because East Frisia had a claim on them.

If Flanders is still controlled by Burgundy the war shoudl still be easy to win with France and Austria's help.
Full annex Flanders and in my game I gave Oldenburgh to East Frisia. After you get cores Flemish should become an accepted culture.

In my game Friesland became a free city so Bohemia joined my war against them. Again with France, Austria, and Denmark the war should not be hard to win.

I had the all the provinces required to form the Netherlands in 1474.

Waiting

Now you have to wait for administrative technology level ten for the Je Maintiendrai acheivement.

You will also have some time to kill before you can colonize.
I am not going to write anything about what I did in this time. You can expand pretty easily in the HRE there are a lot of small weak nations in Northern Germany that you can conquer. Remember that once you form the Netherlands you leave the HRE.

I formed the Netherlands in 1522

Sinaasappel!

This acheivement requires you to have three things:

• Orangists are in power
  
• 100%Republican Tradition
  
• own and core at leats one province in the China Proper region

First off you have to get to China.
Its important to note that Taiwan is in the China Proper region, meaning you don't have to fight Ming to get the acheivement you just have to colonize.

Take exploration as your first idea group and to speed up the process take expansion next.
With an advisor that increases colonial range and the Exploration idea that increases colonial range it is possible to establish a colony in the Carribbean (but not Africa) before diplomatic technology level 8.
My first colony was in St. Martin (Sint Maarten) in 1504.
then jump over to Africa and establish a colony in Beafada.
then move down to Cape (Kaap). For some reason in my game Portgugal colonized around it, no idea why. If they do colonize Cape before you, any province in South Africa will work.
I then went to Mauritious Island near Madagascar.
I couldn't quite reach Taiwan yet so I colonized Bangka first
Then finally to Kelang. I recomend Kelang because it is the only province that is non-tropical.

Orangists
When you form the Netherlands make sure you take the event that gets you the special government type (Res Publica required). Start with Statist candidates to increase your Republican Tradition.
Remember: IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE AN ORANGIST LEADER WHILE STATISTS ARE IN POWER.
In fact you even want to do this you want to keep Statists in power, but with as little support as possible, then when you have 100% republican tradition get Orangists in control. Elections are only every 4 years while Statists are in control.
If you get the Act of Seclusion event or a similar event pick the option that stregthens Orangists only if you have 100% republican tradition. For me this event helped me skip an election and get the acheivemnt 4 year early.
As you can see I got the acheivemnt in 1559

[BallenChauffeur]

Why don't I get the independence bar??

[MEYER]

Must be updated for France, who gets rekted every independence war

[New Caesar]

@McGriddle Oh didn't know that. Well I've got all the required provinces for forming The Netherlands but every country has 45 aggressive expansion and I recently lost the conquest in Calais and France got wrecked by England, Savoy, Portugal, and Venice. I was able to get a white piece but France lost a province. Also Austria broke the alliance but all is going well: no coalition and no losses except money and manpower from England. I'm waiting for aggressive expansion to got to like 10 and then I'll annex Flanders and Ghent which Burgundy took. This is a great guide and looking forward to more!

[GneissBro]

@The New Caesar
This is from an older version of the game. They increased agressive expansion in the latest patch

[pgapepper]

10,000 ducats. TRUE DUTCHMAN RIGHT HERE.

[New Caesar]

How do you not get so much aggressive expansion when I played I got 47 AE from Breda and a massive coalition attacked and Austria and France got destroyed.

[CrazyKristi]

this was well possible even before this update. I played Gelre and was allied with either France or Austria, and used those as main military forces while i slowly snacked away at burgundy. By the time you get colonization going, you'd just rush to taiwan and job done.

[Ristrimir]

now let that money flow towards amsterdam :D