This guide will walk you through turning Socotra into a Merchant Republic, managing the Republic, and expanding it from there. This has been my favorite way to play this game recently, and since Crusader Kings 3 won't have Merchant Republics on launch those of us who love the government type will have to stick with CK2 for the time being.

This guide assumes you have all DLC, as some of the actions mentioned in this guide may be part of DLC features. However, the only ones that are absolutely required are The Republic and Sword of Islam. The start date this guide uses requires The Old Gods, but if you don't have it there is a similar start in the Iron Century bookmark that you can use instead. Lastly, Way of Life and Jade Dragon are both strongly recommended but not required.

this guide is also intended to be utilized for Ironman playthroughs with achievements enabled; if you're using mods, you might as well just get one that lets you turn yourself into a Merchant Republic by decision.

Socotra makes a great spot for Merchant Republics for two reasons:

1. Since Socotra is an island, this makes it very difficult for your neighbors to attack you. Early on, coastal powers like the Abbasids simply won't have enough ships to land any significant amount of soldiers on Socotra. This keeps you pretty much safe from being made a tributary, a vassal, or (if you convert religions) dethroned in a Jihad or Holy War. By the time your neighbors finally do have the tech to take you on, you'll be lightyears ahead of them in manpower.
   
2. It has direct coastal access to the Silk Route, so even the smallest Merchant Republics can generate a lot of income by building trade posts along it.

Unfortunately, Socotra does have one big disadvantage: the African rain events. Socotra is the Easternmost province that gets these events, and they often have the unfortunate consequence of costing you a hefty amount of income, as well as killing some of your courtiers and/or destroying a building in Socotra.

However, the African rain events do provide some boons to you every now and then, and once you get your trade network going the monetary costs will be a drop in the bucket, and a small price to pay for security from the Arabian Empire. Furthermore, as this guide will get into, Socotra is merely a stepping stone in building a larger empire. Once you are powerful enough, you can abandon Socotra entirely by setting your capital somewhere else and giving the Duchy away. It's entirely up to you.

As you may know, Socotra is feudal at every start date, so you can't simply pick them in the character selection screen and then try to magically become a Republic from there. However, what you can do is start as a Tribal Ruler, conquer Socotra, and then become a Merchant Republic by decision. And lucky for us, there are 2 Tribal Rulers alongside the coast of Yemen in The Old Gods bookmark (867), right by Socotra. These two are the tribal counties of Mahra and Dohfar. It doesn't matter which of the two you start as, but I will mention that Dohfar's ruler is two years younger so you may prefer the slight advantage that provides.
The Iron Century bookmark (936) provides a similar option with the Tribal Duke of Hadramawt, but I still prefer starting in 867 because of the extra 69 years you have to get set up. For this reason, this guide will focus on the 867 rulers, but much of it can still be applied to Iron Century too.
So to create the Republic as quickly as possible, you will want to follow the steps below.

1. Start as either Dohfar or Mahra in the Arabian peninsula, Old Gods bookmark (867).
   
   
2. First order of business, go to the marriage screen and marry as many adult women as possible. This will give you extra prestige for creating retinues.
   
   
3. Take the War Focus.
   
   
4. Make sure you have a competent Marshal, Steward, and Court Imam (at least 10+ in their corresponding stat, optimally 15+.) If you don't, try to invite one(s) to your court through the character finder.
   
   
5. Set your Marshal to Train Troops, your Steward to Build Legend, and your Court Imam to Build Zeal. If the Steward or Imam actually raise any event troops, you'll want to manually disband them to avoid a Piety/Prestige penalty.
   
   
6. Now you're going to want to declare war on your tribal neighbor, Mahra if you're Dohfar and vice versa. However you probably won't have enough piety to do so, so what you can do is take the "Give Sadaqah for my Sins" decision which is guaranteed to give you 25 piety, and usually another 25 in a popup. If you don't think you'll have enough manpower to defeat them, raise a few Tribal Warrior retinues.
   
   
7. Once you have the counties of Mahra and Dohfar in your possession, build a shipbuilder in both provinces for 100 prestige each.
   
   
8. Continue saving up prestige. Each time you hit 25, create a new Tribal Warrior Retinue.
   
   
9. Once you have 25 ships built, declare Holy War for Socotra. If Socotra has fallen to some other Muslim realm already, I'd recommend restarting.
   
   
10. Gather your army and your ships in one province (be sure to merge your ship stack together or you won't be able to fit all your soldiers), assign competent commanders, and get as many men aboard your ships as possible. You may have to detach some from your main stack with the "Create New Unit" button.
    
    
11. Wait for Socotra to send an army to the mainland, then set sail yourself to the island.
    
    
12. After you win, set your marshal to now suppress revolts in Socotra, and start pillaging the capital of the island. Do NOT create the Duchy of Socotra before the capital is destroyed, as this will cause the Duchy to be created as a Feudal title and will block you from forming a Merchant Republic. Also a protip if a revolt DOES end up firing: if the revolt is a Nestorian Uprising (which it seems to be 99% of the time) converting to Nestorianism will invalidate the war and despawn all hostile troops (see step 14 for conversion instructions). Very helpful if you play with powerful revolt rules.
    
    
13. Once the existing capital is destroyed, the city of Tamrida should become the new capital of Socotra. At this point, go ahead and make Socotra the capital of your realm, create the Duchy of Socotra, and begin working your way through the "Tribal Organization" laws so that you can ultimately form a Merchant Republic. Do NOT form the Kingdom of Yemen or any other Kingdom (yet), as this will make it harder to move your capital later on, and will make your entire realm vulnerable to a Jihad if you change religions.
    
    
14. If you wish to convert to Nestorianism, you can do so by right-clicking on the Grand City of Socotra in province view and secretly (and then publicly) converting for 250 piety. Alternatively, if you have 1000 prestige, you can right click your own character portrait and use the "Convert to Local Religion" option. You can also secretly->publicly convert to Judaism through the Grand City of Dohfar, since it's a Jewish holy site. If you want to change religions to either of these then do NOT form the Merchant Republic until you do, otherwise the newly generated Patrician families will be Muslims, making it a lot harder to maintain religious control of the realm if you lose an election.
    
    
15. Beyond this point, especially if you convert religions, you're likely to get attacked for your mainland holdings, Mahra and Dohfar. It's generally better to just surrender such wars immediately rather than waste manpower and wealth trying to hold on to these counties. As long as Socotra stays under your control, that's all that really matters for now.
    
    
16. Once your Tribal Organization is maxed out, take the "Found Merchant Republic" Decision.

Congratulations, you are now the Merchant Republic of Socotra!

So now you have your Merchant Republic, but it's not very powerful yet. You'll have to build trade posts and upgrade your Family Palace if you want to make any decent amount of profits. Having a good relationship with China helps too, but if you have their diplomatic range restricted you will find that Socotra is out of range unless you expand East a bit.
Below is a rough outline of the steps you'll want to take to ensure the success of your realm.
Also I just want to mention here quickly, never give the other Patricians any titles and try to avoid having them on your council, unless absolutely necessary. You want to deprive them of prestige as much as possible, lest they get an edge over you in an election and take your realm from you.

1. As soon as you become a Merchant Republic, a trade post should automatically be built in Socotra. However, if one isn't, you'll want to manually build one yourself there.
   
   
2. You should be able to build another 1 or 2 trade posts immediately after that; open the "Trade Zones" map mode and look for other Silk Route coastal counties (they should be Yellow, or sometimes brown). These are the counties you'll want to build your Trade Posts within. For best results, see if you can find a grayed out money bag icon; these are extra valuable Silk Route provinces that do not have an existing trade post, and if you build one there you'll get a huge bonus to income and potentially retinues.
   
   
3. If you're within diplo range of China, try to sweeten them up with concubines and eunuchs. Kowtow as early as possible, maybe send them an artifact or two (try to avoid sending them money though as they usually ask for a lot of it.) What you really want to get from China is a Peace Deal (Imperial Marriage if they're Expansionist) and a Trade Contract, which will double your Trade Post income for several years.
   
   
4. Join the Hermetics and rise through the ranks; you'll be able to write a Magnum Opus for stat boosts and several events can give you more special artifacts that will increase your skills and abilities.
   
   
5. Your best friends are going to be the Business Focus and Retinues. That said, the technologies you'll want to focus on upgrading in your realm are "Military Organization" and "Trade Practices".
   
   
6. Always keep an eye on the election screen in the "Republic" tab and make sure that your dynasty is winning. All sorts of damage can be done with another Patrician running the country. If you ever lose an election, you better kill your liege as quickly as possible and win the next one. I find antagonizing them and then challenging them to a duel usually works pretty well.
   
   
7. Besides the election, the first thing you'll want to invest money in is your Family Palace. Start with the upgrades that increase your Tax Income, and be sure to set your Steward to Oversee Construction to get them built as quickly as possible. These upgrades will also increase your trade post limit, so be sure to build more Silk Route posts as they become available.
   
   
8. After your mansion has its tax income fully upgraded, focus on the upgrades that increase your Retinue size. Once you have all three, disband your Tribal Warrior retinue (which you should still have) and replace them with as many pikemen as possible ("Defense" retinue option).
   
   
9. Upgrade the rest of your Family Palace.
   
   
10. By this point, you should have about 15-20 trade posts. If you don't have at least 10k in gold, save up. Business focus is great for making money, especially as a Merchant Republic. Once you do, go through your list of trade posts and upgrade the garrisons on all of them. For your special Silk Route trade posts, you'll also have a "Trade Office" building upgrade available that will give you a huge boost to your retinues, so build those as well. I like to save up 10k between each upgrade tier (there's 3 in all for the garrisons) to avoid any unseemly emergencies, but you can generally build them as fast as you want.
    
    
11. Once all your garrisons are fully upgraded you'll find that your Retinue limit has increased significantly. Depending on your tech, you'll be able to raise around 10k in Defense retinues.
    
    
12. Somewhere around this point, you may want to construct a great work in Socotra. I would recommend either the Great Harbor for an income boost, or a Royal Palace for a Retinue Boost.
    
    
13. If you're out of Chinese Diplo range, at this point you can have your Chancellor forge a claim somewhere coastal in Eastern Persia or India. Pick a county that you're sure you can reasonably take in a war! Otherwise you'll just waste a bunch of gold and prestige trying. Then start buttering up the Emperor for that sweet, sweet Trade Contract.
    
    
14. Keep saving up money and accruing tech points until your standing army grows to about 20k men. Your rival patricians should have quite a bit of trade posts themselves now too, so feel free to start genociding them with murder plots to take all the posts for yourself (and then upgrade the garrisons on them to further cement your military supremacy). In fact, make a habit of genociding rival patrician families whenever they accrue more than 5 trade posts from this point on.

At this point now you should have more money and soldiers than you know what do with. So what do you do next? Well, that's up to you, but I can give you a general idea of how to do it!

Now that your powerful republic has been established, you can carve out or conquer just about any realm on the map. Even if a foe is too big for you, a Chinese Invasion to shatter the realm is just a few thousand Grace points away.

Now even though Socotra is great for starting out, the African rain events can get a bit annoying with how they constantly drain your income, kill your courtiers, and/or destroy your buildings. For this reason, you're probably going to want to look into moving your capital away from the island now.

However, you may have noticed that Merchant Republics have some trouble moving their courts. For whatever reason, the timer that determines when you can move your capital again usually has a negative value as a Republic, which means the option to change capitals is permanently grayed out... unless you're moving your capital to the "traditional" capital of your realm of course. Below I've outlined how to make use of this.

1. Find a Duchy with a coastal "traditional" capital in your desired province. You can find a list of duchies and their official capitals here[ck2.paradoxwikis.com].
   
   
2. Take over the Duchy (usually with a fabricated claim on the capital, then holy war for the rest), and be sure to keep the traditional capital under your direct demesne.
   
   
3. Create/Usurp the new Duchy and set it as your primary title. You'll now be able to move your capital to the Duchy's "traditional" capital without repercussion. (so for example, let's say you took over the Duchy of Oman; you'll now be able to set your capital to Muscat, thereby giving your soldiers direct land access to the Eurasian mainland, so you won't have to send them on ships everywhere. It'll also let you avoid the god-awful African rain events, provided you give away the county of Socotra to a vassal.)

You can even do this multiple times to crawl across the map. For example if you want to move your capital to Rome, you can take over Alexandria first, make it your capital, and then Rome will only be a short swim away.

You can also use this trick to change cultures for specific Decisions (e.g. forming Russia requires Russian culture, forming HRE requires German).

1. Conquer a Duchy (or a Kingdom if you are a King, and an Empire if you are an Emperor) that has your desired culture in its traditional capital. It doesn't have to be coastal, but your current "traditional" capital does. Be sure to keep the new title's capital in your direct demesne.
   You can find Kingdom capitals here[ck2.paradoxwikis.com] and Empire capitals here.[ck2.paradoxwikis.com]
   
   
2. Make the conquered title your primary, and set its capital to your capital.
   
   
3. Use the "Convert to Local Culture" decision by right-clicking your character.
   
   
4. Change your primary title back to your original one, and immediately move your capital back to where it used to be. If you moved your capital to a landlocked county and don't make it coastal again, you will become feudal upon succession!

Don't forget that you can also change religions by conquering Holy Sites! It doesn't even have to be your capital; as long as the Holy Site is in your direct demesne, you can right click the province CoA and secretly->publicly convert to the corresponding faith.

Once you have your new capital picked out, you should start changing laws. Specifically, you're going to want to change City Obligations to maximum tax focus. Since most of your vassals are or will be (or at least SHOULD be) city vassals, this will give your monthly income a HUGE boost. It will hurt your national levies quite a bit (potentially even removing your vassal levies entirely), but as a Republic you don't rely on levies anyway; Retinues and mercenaries should be your go-to for warfare.

Now, that said, the best way to actually expand your realm is to use those Retinues of yours, along with a hefty dose of mercenaries as necessary. Pikemen are nearly unstoppable in their own right, and with such a huge stack few realms will stand a chance against you. Your best CB will be Holy Wars, which is why Nestorianism and particularly Judaism can come in handy as most of the world will be a valid target.
I find the optimal way to hand out titles after a war is to make sure each county has a city, then grant the Duchy (along with all lower titles) to a Holy Man that you invite from the Decision screen for 25 piety (by this point in the game 25 piety should be nothing to you). Just make sure you're a King before you start doing that, otherwise you'll only make a bunch of independent republics.

With enough determination and a bit of luck, your possibilities will be endless. Below is some of the ironman Republics I've created myself using Socotra as a springboard.

India


Persia


Africa


The Roman Empire


The Holy Roman Empire


Russia and The Slavic Union



Israel


Arabia

As I hinted at earlier in the guide, it is in fact possible to overthrow the Republic and become a Feudal realm in an Ironman game. This method does appear to be slightly buggy, and may sporadically not work, though I've only had it fail once (and then work again on that same save file).

1. Move your capital to a landlocked county. The easiest way to move your capital as a republic is with the "traditional capital" feature. I've outlined how to make use of this in the "Expanding your Republic far and wide" section of this guide (except instead of looking for coastal counties, you'll want to find landlocked ones).
   
2. Make sure your dynasty is winning the election.
   
3. Let your current ruler die.

If all went well then your government should switch briefly to "Landless" and then immediately to "Feudal" after a few in-game days. You'll know it worked if your successor has a blue ribbon around his portrait in the succession screen.
If it worked, congrats! You're now a feudal realm with (hopefully) a ton of Republican vassals.



The main benefit of this is that it will allow you to take certain Feudal-only decisions, like becoming Samrat Chakravartin or reforming Pagan faiths with gender equality, while still maintaining Republican vassals who will rake in a ton of cash for you.



Another cool effect of going feudal is that, if all your vassals are Republics and you adopt Elective Monarchy as your succession system, there will only be one elector: you. In other words, you get free uncontested Heir Designation for life, and all your vassals love you for it.

Managing your republic from here is pretty simple. Make sure you win every election. Make a habit of dumping at least 2K into the election fund every time your ruler dies and the next one takes control.

Don't let rival patrician families grow too strong. Definitely don't give them any titles under any circumstances. Cull them when their families get too big so you can take their tradeposts for yourself.

Tax all your vassals as much as possible. Keep Feudal vassals to an absolute minimum. Build lots of cities too everywhere you can.

Maintain a strong relationship with China (if possible) for trade contacts, but avoid becoming their Tributary.

That's all there is to it really. Now get out there and bring democracy to these monarchist heathens!