I partially followed this guide and it lead me to a very successful game,thank you!
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I can only thank you for this guide. Still works like a charm.
I revoked in 1580, got the commonwealth on time. Now I’m keeping an eye on Spain and working on forming Italy. One faith + wc here I come. With only 400 hours played this is very easy.
Idea groups diplo, rel, inf, admin, quantity. Didnt need a single loan Thanks to prince money. Smacked down Kalmar, UK, Russia, Otto’s and France. Now my zombie hordes rule all. Except the waves, ai sucks at boats.
I revoked in 1580, got the commonwealth on time. Now I’m keeping an eye on Spain and working on forming Italy. One faith + wc here I come. With only 400 hours played this is very easy.
Idea groups diplo, rel, inf, admin, quantity. Didnt need a single loan Thanks to prince money. Smacked down Kalmar, UK, Russia, Otto’s and France. Now my zombie hordes rule all. Except the waves, ai sucks at boats.
This is a very well-written and informative guide, and helped me through a thoroughly enjoyable game to end as Revolutionary unified HRE - thanks!
You can still follow this guide. I started with less manpower and never got Burgundy, but didn't really matter. Preventing the league war was a bit harder than what this guide made it out to be, but that could also be due to patch fixes. Got Spain in 1580 (had to choose between them and Napoli), Portugal right after, then won the war against Commonwealth in 1619 and revoked the privilegia in 1630. Still waiting to claim the British and Napolitan thrones. I may be some years overdue and didn't get Burgundy, but Portugal, Napoli and England were greater gains. France is split into more nations than I've ever seen in that region and Greece is almost all back in Europe. All I need now is a better navy to prepare for Britain and eat up the Turks and Russians.
I doubt I will choose the Renovatio Imperii reform as having these amazing vassals wreak havoc on our common foes was too beautiful to discard, not to mention never having to core anything in France ever again. Will probably take some coastal provinces for myself though, to get that naval force limit higher.
I did try this guide yesterday and there are so many things that are out of date sadly:
- you cannot ally Poland or Castille due to "has too many relations"
- RM Burgundy is only possible at the first day of the game, when you take dip rep advisor instantly as they go to "too many relations" crap the day after.
This is a problem because you cant make any big ally which makes everytinh much harder (im playing at very hard obviously).
- you cannot ally Poland or Castille due to "has too many relations"
- RM Burgundy is only possible at the first day of the game, when you take dip rep advisor instantly as they go to "too many relations" crap the day after.
This is a problem because you cant make any big ally which makes everytinh much harder (im playing at very hard obviously).
Even with the recent changes, this guide is still awesome, and has been really helpful in my current Austria run. I managed to get all the alliances at start, but some of them were a bit close and required a diplo rep advisor. The mission system slightly changed how I got the PUs, I got Bohemia the old fashioned way and Hungary through the CB from the new mission.
Still waiting for a chance to grab Poland and Spain (Castile got the wedding but hasn't formed Spain yet). Sadly Poland selected a local noble, and will probably end up in the death spiral very soon, so in the worst case I might end up skipping the PU and feeding it to Hungary instead.
One thing that I didn't see mentioned yet is the Historical Friendship between Austria and Hungary. If you can force Hungary into PU without actually fighting him, you get to keep the friendship, which gives you an overpowered -50% LD in the PU. I just called a bit more allies to the fight than needed, and focused on smashing Hungary's allies while letting my allies do the actual fights with Hungary. Siegeing seemed to be ok as well, so I sieged his capital with a large stack that he did not want to engage. Worked like a charm, and he was loyal from day one despite being the same size than me.
Still waiting for a chance to grab Poland and Spain (Castile got the wedding but hasn't formed Spain yet). Sadly Poland selected a local noble, and will probably end up in the death spiral very soon, so in the worst case I might end up skipping the PU and feeding it to Hungary instead.
One thing that I didn't see mentioned yet is the Historical Friendship between Austria and Hungary. If you can force Hungary into PU without actually fighting him, you get to keep the friendship, which gives you an overpowered -50% LD in the PU. I just called a bit more allies to the fight than needed, and focused on smashing Hungary's allies while letting my allies do the actual fights with Hungary. Siegeing seemed to be ok as well, so I sieged his capital with a large stack that he did not want to engage. Worked like a charm, and he was loyal from day one despite being the same size than me.
I personally find Castille stronger for this strat. I've done a similar run on 1.24.1 that goes like this :
Rival france, disinherit your 000 heir. Habsburg event fires. This is good for two reasons: preventing the civil war AND securing two PUs and possibly three if Bohemia falls.
Iberian wedding, focus your AE on preventing shadow kingdom. How? You're gonna invest buckloads of birds into securing alliances and HRE votes. Get Provence if possible so you can move your capital there to enter the HRE until you can add Iberia to the HRE. You'll have to switch your capital back to iberia at tech 10 to form Spain, so try to have a beeline of provinces taking the HRE there. I did it by taking the Pyrenees provinces from france.
Anyway, back to austria. They might get Burgundian inheritance, so can you. They might get Hungary. So will you when you claim their throne.
Back to Castille. Why? Because you'll get Naples, which will fabricate on Italy for you, making the shadow kingdom prevention achievable. You'll get Aragon too, which is a pretty underrated nation. And you might get Portugal as PU (check event Portuguese Crown, sadly didn't proc for me until now, 1600). Castille's military power is unrivaled during the height of this strategy's difficulty (religious age) with the amazing 30% shock damage reduction.
And, for finisher, you're on a way stronger position for colonization and expanding into Maghreb without disturbing Europe.
And i also got a fed commonwealth, got lucky and the Habsburg there was 62 years old when they abolished the elective monarchy. 3 years and the dude popped. Didn't even need a war.
PS: Obviously the only drawback i can think of is that you'll take longer to revoke. I'm at 40 authority and erbkaisertum proclaimed, twenty-ish years later than the standard 1580 revoke.
Rival france, disinherit your 000 heir. Habsburg event fires. This is good for two reasons: preventing the civil war AND securing two PUs and possibly three if Bohemia falls.
Iberian wedding, focus your AE on preventing shadow kingdom. How? You're gonna invest buckloads of birds into securing alliances and HRE votes. Get Provence if possible so you can move your capital there to enter the HRE until you can add Iberia to the HRE. You'll have to switch your capital back to iberia at tech 10 to form Spain, so try to have a beeline of provinces taking the HRE there. I did it by taking the Pyrenees provinces from france.
Anyway, back to austria. They might get Burgundian inheritance, so can you. They might get Hungary. So will you when you claim their throne.
Back to Castille. Why? Because you'll get Naples, which will fabricate on Italy for you, making the shadow kingdom prevention achievable. You'll get Aragon too, which is a pretty underrated nation. And you might get Portugal as PU (check event Portuguese Crown, sadly didn't proc for me until now, 1600). Castille's military power is unrivaled during the height of this strategy's difficulty (religious age) with the amazing 30% shock damage reduction.
And, for finisher, you're on a way stronger position for colonization and expanding into Maghreb without disturbing Europe.
And i also got a fed commonwealth, got lucky and the Habsburg there was 62 years old when they abolished the elective monarchy. 3 years and the dude popped. Didn't even need a war.
PS: Obviously the only drawback i can think of is that you'll take longer to revoke. I'm at 40 authority and erbkaisertum proclaimed, twenty-ish years later than the standard 1580 revoke.
The event that removes historical friendship has a CHANCE on battle fought. Dealing it the way you did it was smart nonetheless but if the need arises you can just savescum if that's your thing.
I've reached 1551 playing Austria in the latest (GB) patch and a few things seemed to not work the same anymore:
1/ I was unable to ally Poland at the start. I re-started several times before giving up. I wasn't able to ally Castile either, but maybe I didn't try hard enough for that one. The biggest ally I got (apart from Hungary) was Brandenburg, and they were the most useless ally I have ever had.
2/ Ducats can no longer be taken in massive quantities from defeated minors - about 30 ducats is now the norm, which makes those ducat-mining wars no longer worth doing.
3/ The new PU missions take care of Bohemia.
Some of the advice above is very good - eg,
- take "End Rivalry" as a peace demand - +5 prestige a pop, with no downside.
- keep an eye on the "Unlawful Territory" notification and keep releasing states
- keep an eye on your Religious map-mode and whenever a Prince converts, make them convert back.
- with the Religious Idea, my conversion time for protestant provinces (once the -100 modifier ran out) was 5 to 8 months each.
I don't know if the new patch had anything to do with this, but the Unions with Hungary and Bohemia both happened early and easy, and then the Burgundian inheritance fired totally in my favour.
One side-effect of owning all of Holland and Flanders is that each time I go to war, enemy stacks seem determined to make a very long march to the Low Countries instead of heading for where the real action is. I guess the AI calculates the value of the land there and the maths is attractive.
I had one nasty hiccup - after Integrating Hungary, I added all new provinces to the HRE, which got me to something like 65 IA, but when I took my first Imperial Reform, my IA went straight to 0. Not good.
Another big drop in IA is caused by the female heir - is she scripted to appear? Not a bad ruler though.
I completed the Italian mission with about 2 years to spare. You really need to concentrate on this to finish it in time I think.
Also, one of my first objectives was to take Serbia, Bosnia and Wallachia, and since I took them the Ottomans haven't tried to start any trouble at all.
I still have no idea how I'm going to complete the Venice mission - he has a massive fleet, I have no chance of crossing. I keep hoping he'll get himself in trouble with the Ottomans or Castille, but no such luck yet.
1/ I was unable to ally Poland at the start. I re-started several times before giving up. I wasn't able to ally Castile either, but maybe I didn't try hard enough for that one. The biggest ally I got (apart from Hungary) was Brandenburg, and they were the most useless ally I have ever had.
2/ Ducats can no longer be taken in massive quantities from defeated minors - about 30 ducats is now the norm, which makes those ducat-mining wars no longer worth doing.
3/ The new PU missions take care of Bohemia.
Some of the advice above is very good - eg,
- take "End Rivalry" as a peace demand - +5 prestige a pop, with no downside.
- keep an eye on the "Unlawful Territory" notification and keep releasing states
- keep an eye on your Religious map-mode and whenever a Prince converts, make them convert back.
- with the Religious Idea, my conversion time for protestant provinces (once the -100 modifier ran out) was 5 to 8 months each.
I don't know if the new patch had anything to do with this, but the Unions with Hungary and Bohemia both happened early and easy, and then the Burgundian inheritance fired totally in my favour.
One side-effect of owning all of Holland and Flanders is that each time I go to war, enemy stacks seem determined to make a very long march to the Low Countries instead of heading for where the real action is. I guess the AI calculates the value of the land there and the maths is attractive.
I had one nasty hiccup - after Integrating Hungary, I added all new provinces to the HRE, which got me to something like 65 IA, but when I took my first Imperial Reform, my IA went straight to 0. Not good.
Another big drop in IA is caused by the female heir - is she scripted to appear? Not a bad ruler though.
I completed the Italian mission with about 2 years to spare. You really need to concentrate on this to finish it in time I think.
Also, one of my first objectives was to take Serbia, Bosnia and Wallachia, and since I took them the Ottomans haven't tried to start any trouble at all.
I still have no idea how I'm going to complete the Venice mission - he has a massive fleet, I have no chance of crossing. I keep hoping he'll get himself in trouble with the Ottomans or Castille, but no such luck yet.
I'm playing Austria as well with 1.25.1 patch (but no RB DLC).
I was able to ally Castile and Poland just fine. Both were friendly towards me, I think.
I was able to ally Castile and Poland just fine. Both were friendly towards me, I think.
Reforming removes all your IA. Whoops.
Female heir is probably random, the pragmatic sanction really hurts in rushing reforms.
ty for this guide, I've never played Austria but now I think I have to give it a go.
One hot tip I noticed on 1.24 (and I think BudgetMonk's Holy Broken Empire video showed it still works on 1.25.1): While Revoking the Privilege is the most obvious case of having free vassals dumped in your lap, I noticed that the free Vassals actually begin after you make the empire hereditary. Try passing the sixth reform, then release a vassal in some land that's been added to the empire. You should be able to RM/whatever for free, and of course their liberty desire is calculated the awesome way. If you want to revive Sweden after using its land for an IA rush, go ahead.
It's been like this for ages (maybe even 1.00). Hereditary Empire reform makes all your HRE vassals free of diplomatic slot. Do not marry them though, as this still counts as one relation.
