Crusader Kings III

Duke Nuno Il Vimaranes is a start in 1066, you need to Play as any Ruler in 1066 and he is a Vassal of King Garcia of Galicia. Form Portugal is a major decision you can take and you need to completely control Beja and Algarve without losing any other land and have 300 gold.

Restart if Nuno doesn't have perks in the Intrigue tree, the perk you want is Kidnapper. You want to start a Kidnap scheme against Emir Abu-Bakr ibn Abdallah of the Aftasid Emirate. Once you get within 1 month declare a Holy War for the Duchy of Beha (you can change objective if it doesnt choose the one you want). Make sure you dont have him in jail before you start the war as you want be able to declare war.

Hopefully soon after the war starts you will Kidnap and you will be able to enforce your demands. From there you may have enough levies to declare a war on Sheikh Abu-Bakr for the Duchy of Algarve (if not use the Kidnap trick again).

With both those under your possession use the decision to form Portugal and the achievement is yours.

To do this without the Kidnap trick use the Meritocracy perk to make a scheme against your King and take his title to give you the strength to win those wars without tricks. Revoke the titles of your counts so you can strengthen yourself beforehand.

Since the last guide for this has outdated information, I decided to write a new one that also covers the different viable tactics depending on whether you have the "Fate of Iberia" DLC or not.

1) General information and prerequisites

We need to start as Duke Nuno II Vimaranes, the historical ruler of the Duchy of Portucale and vassal to the kingdom of Galicia in 1066. We need to take the special decision to form the kingdom of Portugal playing as Nuno himself, the achievement becomes impossible once his heir takes over. That means we are on a relatively tight time schedule, since Nuno is already in his thirties, has no special health perks and often takes a lot of stress due to being ambitious and arrogant.

To form the kingdom of Portugal, we need to hold the 4 duchy titles of Portucale, Coimbra, Beja and Algarve. Holding the titles is sufficient, we don't need to control all of their de jure territory, but the titles must be created (so three more duchy titles for 250 gold each). We also mustn't have another title higher than the rank of duke yet and we need 300 gold.
Finally, we either need to be independant or be in the opportunity phase of the Iberian struggle (the latter option is only available if you own the Fate of Iberia DLC).

Nuno starts out with the title duke of Portucale and the necessary counties to create Coimbra, but we need to conquer the land to create the duchies of Beja and Algarve from two Muslim Emirs who start out considerably more powerful than Nuno and also tend to get good alliances among the muslim rulers of Andalusia and North Africa.

Nuno's starting position is quite bad. Despite being a duke, he has almost no income and only about 600 men to start with, because he only holds the county of Portucale, all other counties are held by vassals. He is married to a lowborn wife in her thirties and his only daughter is already married to one of his vassals (who is usually a halfway decent marshall, with the other powerful vassals often being borderline useless for court positions).

Nuno himself is a decent but not great intrigue ruler (with an intrigue stat around 15 and 6 intrigue lifestyle perks already unlocked), with his other stats being mediocre or bad. His stats aren't always the same and also his third character trait beside ambitious and arrogant can vary, so if you get a particularly bad version (like e.g. bad stewardship or almost zero diplomacy), consider just starting over and hoping for better stats. As for his third character trait, IMHO sadistic is the best that can happen, since it gives you easy options to mitigate his high stress gain by executing or torturing prisoners, although the trait does come with the downside of everyone disliking you and less piety gain. Well, if they don't love us, we can still rely on fear to keep them in line.

In order to achieve our goal, we'll need to increase Nuno's personal domain to up his income and levies and we need to get alliances, to become strong enough to defeat the Muslim Emirs.

2) General tactics

The advice in this section assumes you don't have the Fate of Iberia DLC, but much of it also applies if you have that DLC, unless otherwise noted in section 3.

2.1) Choice of lifestyle and making gold

We start with almost no gold income and the monthly income from our domain will remain low, since we have no particularly rich counties in reach and we don't have the time to save up gold and build a lot of buildings to improve the economy of our fiefs. Thus we will need to rely on additional means to make money.

At the start of the game, pick a stewardship lifestyle (the best one for Nuno, who is a mediocre stuart at best, is probably domain focus for the +3 on stewardship and thus a better chance to pass the stewardship checks in the lifestyle events and possibly plus 1 on domain limit. If you happened to get a good stewardship score, you might instead go for wealth focus for a better chance of events that directly get you money).

We want at least the "golden obligations" and the "this is my domain" perks. We'll send our spymaster to search secrets in various royal courts and use them to blackmail foreign lords for gold. If you intend to go for a high dread rule, stick around in this lifestyle a little longer to also pick up "war profiteer" and "fearful troops". The latter straight up halves your men at arms upkeep when you are at 100% dread. After that, we should probably go back to an intrigue lifestyle that fits our education, although if you don't intend to use schemes much, it may also be worthwhile to go for medicine lifestyle instead to improve Nuno's chances to live longer.

We'll start with 6 intrigue perks already unlocked. You can redistribute them once in a lifetime at a high stress cost, which is totally worth it if you don't get the perks that you want. We could either go fully into the schemer skill tree or mix schemer and torturer. I prefer the latter, since hostile schemes unfortunately aren't that effective for our goals and with our very limited gold budget (which means we can hardly spare any gold to bribe agents). I recommend to first get "truth is relative" and "digging for dirt", to make our search for secrets for blackmail more effective, and "dark insights and divine retribution from the torturer skill tree. The latter allows you to torture prisoners without losing piety, so you can get your dread level to maximum easily and if you have the sadistic trait you can easily lose stress that way. Don't judge Nuno, everyone needs a hobby ;-)). Distribute the rest of the intrigue perks at your discretion, depending on whether you want to use hostile schemes or not. The "like weeds in the garden" trait is also a good one to get, because we need more children to get alliances.

An earlier guide recommended using the kidnapping scheme for easy conquest. Unfortunately, that scheme has been severely nerfed when being used against rulers outside your realm, so it is tantamount impossible for a mediocre schemer like Nuno to succesfully kidnap the Muslim enemy rulers to win those wars easily. Therefore, you might not even bother with getting the kidnapper perk and the hostile scheme boosts. It can still be worthwhile to get kidnapper though to help you become independant later. Kidnapping your liege is easier than kidnapping a foreign ruler and unlike with an offensive war, you can do it before starting the war, because technically it's the liege who starts the war when he refuses to give in to the demands of your independance faction. Murder schemes can be useful occasionally to break up enemy alliances, but keep in mind that neighboring Muslim rulers might help each other out in war regardless of alliances if you use holy war casus belli.

Blackmail and later ransoms will be our most reliable source of additional income. If you happen to dig up some dirt on your liege in the process though, don't waste that hook for gold! Demand him to appoint you as his steward instead, which will give you a flat +2 gold bonus per month as well as a % bonus on your monthly income and stewardship lifestyle experience.

2.2) Getting allies and increasing our domain

We start with an unmarried uncle at our court, whom we can use to get an alliance if we marry him matrilineal to a female ruler. Don't expect to get anything terrific as a low fame dynasty duke with only around 600 men, but every little bit helps if they are close by. Infanta Uracca Jimena is a good candidate who should agree to marry him.

This one alliance won't be enough, so we'll start a scheme against our wife. The only question is: Will it be a seduce or a murder scheme? I went for the first one, since she had quite decent stats and a matching personality (but that may differ for you, her stats aren't always the same). Being in her med-thirties, she isn't too old to still give birth to a few children if you make her your lover right away. If you aren't satisfied with her stats or if she hates you, you are probably better off murdering her and marrying for an alliance. Keep in mind though that Nuno as a quite weak Duke isn't the best catch at the start, so there is no guarantee that you will find a young adult wife that has halfway decent stats AND gives you an alliance. Nuno's stats aren't stellar, so he can't afford getting betrothed to a child or marrying an idiot just for the alliance, he needs a wife who can also be a capable assistant.

With at least one first small alliance in place, it's time to increase our domain. Being a little more powerful ourselves will increase our chances to score a good second and third alliance once we get children and/or become a widower. We are still way too weak for the holy war against our Muslim neighbors. We could consider attacking our weak fellow vassal counts in Astorgia and/or Monterrey, but we don't have a casus belli on on them and fabricating a claim costs gold that we don't have. So our best move for now would be to get rid of some of our more incompetent vassals and taking their counties for our own.

Directly revoking titles from our vassals without a valid reason is risky, since it will probably cause ALL of our vassals to rebell against us (which is a fight we would likely lose) and would also cost us legitimacy and tyranny points. Instead just fire the two most imcompetent ones from your council and raise your crown authority. The will likely form a liberty faction against you immediately and they are strong enough to be able to challenge you within a few months. Call upon your ally's help to defeat them, then you have them in prison and can take away their titles as punishment for the rebellion without further negative consequences, plus you get a few prisoners you can ransom or torture for dread on top.

Now we have increased our domain a little and made some gold, you could still consider fabricating claims and taking your two aforementioned fellow vassals as well, but don't waste too much time annexing fellow catholics, Nuno won't live forever. As soon as you can get an alliance strong enough to take on your southern neighbors, you should do so and take their best counties for your domain instead. You might need to save up some money for doing a pilgrimage, to get your devotion level high enough for a holy war for duchy casus belli.

2.3 Getting competent staff for cheap


Recruiting guests and searching for a court physician and caravan master again costs gold that we don't have and you might also still lack competent courtiers to fill your council positions. Fortunately, you do start with a handfull of unremarkable unmarried courtiers and knights hanging out and wasting space at your court, so find spouses for them with good stats who are suitable to fill your court positions. Check matrilineal for your female courtiers, so that their male unlanded spouses will move to your court instead of your female courtiers moving away to their home court.

When picking your court physician, spymaster and bodyguard, don't just look at the stats, but make sure they are personality types who are either very righteous or easily terrified, so they won't agree to be agents against you. Nuno isn't a very likeably guy and there very likely WILL be murder schemes against him.

2.4 Conquering Beja and Algarve

Depending on how the land is distributed between the Muslim rulers, you will need 2-3 holy wars for that. Make sure you have powerful allies so you can win them even if Muslim neighbours who aren't allied with your target intervene. It may help to wait until some of them are occupied with other ongoing wars before you strike.
If you actually have some spare gold at that point, you could alternatively try to fabricate claims and use a mundane casus belli instead to avoid random non-allied rulers joining the defense. But since your time is limited and getting a claim on the whole duchy instead of just one county is random based, you are probably better off with using holy wars.

2.5 Becoming independant

It's best to do this as the last step, because you need the protection from the bigger realm in the early game phase to deter your Muslim neighbors from attacking you when you aren't ready. If by the time you conquered all four duchies your liege is still just the King of Galicia, you can easily demand independance from him and he will be far too weak to hinder you. It is quite likely though that either Alfonso of Leon or Sanchez of Castille have taken their weakest brother out and reunited two or all three of the spanish thrones under them, in which case they could still be considerably stronger than you. To win the independance war, you either need an ally outside of your liege's realm, or you can try to use a kidnap scheme on your liege if you invested into that skill tree. Once you succeeded to imprison you liege, you can press your independance faction demands and win instantly.

3) Differences if you play with the Fate of Iberia DLC

Being part of the Iberian struggle causes quite a few differences in the rules that impact your tactics. The most notable ones are that you don't need to be independant to form Portugal if the struggle is still in the opportunity phase by the time you acquire the required titles (which should be doable, you can't dally too long anyway, since Nuno's lifespan is your limit) and that you can't use holy war casus belli against the other involved rulers.

Instead of holy wars, we have the special struggle clash as a casus belli that's always available, but it only targets the counties that directly border your realm, so you might need more wars to get the required lands than if you could target the entire duchy directly. Alternatively, you could try to fabricate claims or you can use the special option to buy claims for piety, which is available during the opportunity phase of the struggle (works just like the sanctioned loopholes perk from the scholar skill tree, a duchy claim costs 500 piety, a county claim 250). Getting claims instead of using struggle clash can be worthwhile because a struggle clash costs more fame than a claim war and vasallizes rulers instead of deposing them.

The advantage of having to rely on non-holy wars is that your opponents will usually only get help from allies, so you can make things easier by using murder schemes to break up alliances. The kidnapper perk is entirely useless in that scenario, since you don't need to become independant from your liege.

Furthermore, you have access to the befriend scheme during the opportunity phase without having the diplomacy perk for it, so if you have a decent diplomacy score, you could try to make friends instead of just terrifying everyone to keep them in line.

The special struggle rules also give you a few more options for making money and getting allies:
- a border raid war on Monterrey and Astorgia can get you some gold in the early game
- with the "contract assistance" interaction, you can offer to aid a non-allied ruler in a war in exchange for gold
- Interfaith marriages between involved rulers are possible during the opportunity phase, which allows you get an alliance with the powerful Emir of Toledo, provided you get a baby daughter that you can pro forma betrothe to him as a future secondary spouse.