The Papal State - Holy Trinity Guide

This guide provides some tips and necessary tricks to complete the “Holy Trinity” achievement as The Papal State. Despite being listed as the “very hard” achievement this one is not as difficult as it seems if you play your cards right. The aim here is to vassalize Teutonic Order and then The Knights ASAP, leaving the Livonian Order to be the last. The guide is written in accordance with version 1.14.4 but 1.15 doesn’t change the strategy for this achievement so you can safely try it on this one also. If you have any questions, be sure to post them in the comment section – I’ll answer them if I can ;)

Part 0 – Things to know

The Papal State is a very interesting country to play. You always have a chance (usually the highest one) to be the Curia controller, being a theocracy you suffer no stability hit if your ruler dies (except for dying in battle). Also you are destined to have constant +100 prestige due to 2 national ideas and events. And you start in Italy – one of the most developed regions in the world. Speaking of Italy: I think The Papal State starts as the 3rd strongest nation there with 2nd place being Milan and 1st Venice. Eliminating those two states should be your first major goal.

Here’s a short list of things you should do in order to get the achievement:

- Joining the Holy Roman Empire is essential in order to expand in Northern Italy without risking the trouble of facing the Emperor. For that you need +181 relations with Austria (correction: right now in 1.15 it says +193). Start improving them ASAP.
- Poland should be your second ally for now as it allows you to beat the Teutonic Order (TO) quickly utilizing polish troops (note: Poland is very unlikely to invite you in its offensive war versus TO so you ally them in order to declare the war yourself later and vassalize them after Poland takes some territory from them).
- Your first targets to annex/take territory from should be Ferrara – Venice – Florence (preferable in that order although you might wanna take on Venice first since their provinces are one of the richest in Italy and they’re not part of the Empire so Austria is likely to join (note: in an unlikely scenario Austria might befriend Venice and even ally them, if it happens you can either restart of try to excommunicate Venice – it gives -50 to relations with catholics and then Austria usually breaks the alliance).
- In order to complete the achiement, you gotta vassalize (and designate marches) the Teutonic Order, the Livonian Order and The Knights and capture and core Jerusalem. Teutonic Order usually gets vassalized/annexed by Poland and if you want, you can forget about it and release it later. But here’s the tricky part: the cultures of the Livonian Order and The Knights don’t match the cultures of provinces they have cores on. If you miss the moment and they get annexed, you have lost your chance to get the achievement. Theoretically, utilizing the improved provincial culture change mechanic introduced in “the Cossacks” DLC you can revive the Livonian Order (just convert their Latvian provinces to neighbouring Prussian culture) but in case of The Knights you can’t – they’re located on isolated island and you can’t convert their province to Maltese culture if you’re not Maltese yourself (and as The Papal State you’re stuck with Umbrian unless something crazy happens). The Ottomans might go for The Knights as soon as they finish their Constantinople business. That is why attacking Venice which in most scenarios allies itself with The Knights ASAP is a good idea – you can take territory and vassalize one of the Orders in one war. Jerusalem is, of course, the easiest part since you can just jump into the inevitable conflict between the Mamluks and the Ottomans and grab some territory without breaking a sweat.

Part 1 – Getting Started

Improve relations and sign the alliance with Austria and Poland. Join HRE and start eating Italian minors.








If you’re gonna expand fast, eating Ferrara, Venice, Florence, Siena etc., soon you’re gonna face a threat of coalition. Here you might take several approaches to this problem:

- Stop expansion for several years and start improving relations with coalition members. Get diplomatic advisor which gets you better relations over time bonus. Upon reaching relations of 50+ target country gonna leave the coalition.

- Ally every major power in the region (which is possible since veryone wants to befriend the Pope). This way you can avoid coalition attacking you and deal with this problem later.
- Let them attack and break the coalition by signing peace. Usually, you can do it by liberating Avignon and a couple of minors from your allies (usually Austria).

Part 2 – Expansion in the Baltics

Your first target to vassalize should be Teutonic Order. Remember that you can’t vassalize it in its 1444 borders, wait for Poland to attack and take some territory from it first. Unfortunatelty, unless you got lucky with supporting some rebels, you won’t be able to get CB on them. You can’t take territory from them either since you can’t core it. So here you gotta attack without CB. Getting 20 aggressive expansion penalty and -2 stability hit is pretty major and can trigger a large coalition war. Get Influence ideas as your first idea group – it should help you significantly. Remember to ally Poland and bring it into this war, if possible – they gonna break the alliance once you vassalize TO anyway, so might as well use their troops to achieve victory. Although, after suffering a severe beating from Poland in their first war TO shouldn’t be strong enough to fight your troops.






Now Poland breaks your alliance. Check their rival list and ally those you can – you gonna need their help later. Leave Livonian Order for now and switch your attention to Mediterranean.

Part 3 – “The Kebab problem”

During my game I got pretty unlucky – most of the time the Ottomans go after Candar/Dulkadir or Serbia after Byzantine Empire but they got a mission to eliminate The Knights. I managed to attack Rhodes only 2 weeks before Turkish troops landed there themselves. I’m not saying here that you will get the same situation – just be sure to check the Ottomans’ current mission and diplomatic status frequently. After vassalizing The Knights I, of course, got dragged into their war with the Turks.





When fighting the Ottomans, if you don’t have enough troops, you absolutely must call all your available allies into war. In my case it was defensive so I didn’t spend any favours on that but in case you need to start an offensive war, be sure to stockpile some favours with each of your major allies. Plus, it might be a good idea to call a Crusade if you’re the current Curia controller (I called my way back in 1444 and it paid off).

Just look at this coalition - and they say that the spirit of the Crusades is dead :)



Some screens from that war:





Spanish king died in last battle and the union between Aragon and Castille broke lol


Victory!



The best man to decorate the Sistene chapel is Michelangelo but he's available only after 1475 so if the event fires early, be sure to click on the "no need to do it now" option.



After a successful war with the Ottomans switch your attention to the Mamluks. Wait for a moment of their weakness and attack. In most cases they vassalize and annex Cyprus and you can use The Knights’ claim on it to start a war. In my scenario I got even more claims since the Mamluks captured some territories from Venice.




That turned out to be not as scary as I thought



Be sure to eliminate mamlukean fleet if you want to ship reinforcements to the Holy Land



Now, that you have vassalized The Knights and returned the Holy City back to the Catholic church its time to get your last vassal – Livonian Order.

Part 4 – Finish what you’ve started

At this point of the game you should be strong enough to field a decent army and navy and have high military tradition after all these wars. Regarding the Livonian Order you might encounter several scenarios:

- Poland allies itself with Livonian Order. It is possible if they were previously allied with TO and fought beside them against you and if Lithuania doesn’t have any claims on their territory. This is a very likely scenario and in order to advance further towards your goal you gotta simply declare war on Poland using TO’s “Reconquest” CB.
- Livonian Oder stays neutral/allies itself with Sweden/Muscovy. Less possible but the worst scenario for you. Here you need to attack with no CB for the second time using TO’s provinces as a base of operations. Be sure to get your troops there before the war starts, try to get some allies into this conflict if possible. If no territory was taken from Livonia before, you gonna have to declare a no-CB war for the third time after the truce ends since you can’t vassalize them in one run (in first war give 4 of their provinces to TO – it should lower their vassalization cost to around 97-99%).
- Some of Livonian provinces got eaten by Poland/Lithuania/Sweden/Denmark etc. and it stayed neutral after it. This is the best scenario since you might only need 1 no CB war with an easy opponent to finish it off.

Making TO a march before the war is a good idea since it can make more troops this way


Excommunication is a good idea also if you control the Curia


Some screens from the war with Poland:






There's the new rebel type:


GG


Decided to go for another Crusade against the Ottomans, this time to liberate Constantinople



Here I had to declare another no CB war on Riga (ally of Livonian Order) so that I don't have to wait 10 years more for truce to end (Muscovy was already making claims on livonian territory)




After you vassalize your last opponent, designate it as a march and this is it – you got the achievement! ;)

Part 5 – Epilogue

After this game I have a strong feeling that The Papal State is OP – their national ideas are insane, especially with the Influence combo, you got no papal influence but instead get a passive chance to control the Curia (and it is usually the largest one), even your starting position is very strong – everyone wants to be your friend and every major nation with some work will accept your alliance request. You can even go colonizing – just get Ifni and Sus from Morocco and later take Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde from Portugal to be the only colonizing nation in South America and the Caribbean for several decades.

Here’s some examples of what you can do if you decide to go colonizing (screenshots taken from my other campaign as The Papal State):

Anyway, I hope this guide was helpful and informative. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them in the comment section below. Have fun ;)

Check out my other guides:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=304943828
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=439942341
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=441298477
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=461232037

[Serial Killer]

Good Job man!