Play as a Germanic nation, become emperor, revoke privilegia. Form Germany. The previously free vassals now give you -50 or something diplo mana per month. Can't annex them all due loss of opinion at annexing, and after becoming Germany, due to lack of diplo points. Can't release them due to lack of prestige. Could try going to war and losing, but odds are the winner wants something else than releasing vassals, and would take many wars due to warscore limit. How to deal with costly vassal swarm?
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If you're in achievement-compatible ironman (and you want to maintain achievement compatibility):
- I think the only practical option in this case is to revert to a save from before you formed Germany. (You do make regular backup saves, right? At least at the end of every play session? Right?!)
- Theoretically, you could: make all your vassals have 100% LD (by repeated scutage/descutage); hope that they declare an independence war fairly quickly; and immediately surrender (via separate peace if necessary), granting independence to every subject. However, the AI is often very happy to sit at 100% LD for decades/centuries without taking any action, so in practice this strategy is rather risky/unpredictable.
- (Passing the Renovatio Imperii reform to inherit all the princes won't work, because forming Germany as the HREmperor dismantles the HRE!)
If you have console access (ie. not ironman), you could use the
inherit command to inherit each of the princes. Or you could tag into them to manually trigger each one's independence war.Thanks.
I play ironman, I don't do backups. That run is not that important, so more on a generic level. If you have dozens of vassals and want to form Germany, how to deal with them before forming Germany? There are still the same problems of not being able to annex them all due to opinion malus of previous annexations, and not being able to disband them all due to lack of prestige.
As far as I can tell, you’re pretty much stuck here in this campaign. I can’t think of any palatable way out of your predicament.
In the future, my best advice is to spend a long time between revoking and forming Germany. During the interim you start annexing small vassals as fast as opinion and your mana pool will allow. Influence and Diplo ideas will help a lot here. Because you won’t form Germany until your vassal swarm is down to manageable numbers, this strategy all but rules out an early Germany formation.
In the future, my best advice is to spend a long time between revoking and forming Germany. During the interim you start annexing small vassals as fast as opinion and your mana pool will allow. Influence and Diplo ideas will help a lot here. Because you won’t form Germany until your vassal swarm is down to manageable numbers, this strategy all but rules out an early Germany formation.
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It's rather unlikely you'll have dozens of vassals as anyone other than the HREmperor with the privilege revoked. And the devs have deliberately chosen to make Germany fundamentally incompatible with the HRE. So, really, the answer is: "If you've fully centralised the HRE, you're supposed to form the HRE tag - not Germany!"
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Was a bit cheeky. Fought the war, took 3 provinces (because there ws no morrocon core next to me so I had to snake) and all their money, and then declared on portugal which they joined. So got them to 5k troops and no manpower before I white peaced.
I took the portugese islands. (so stuff like the azores). Should I trade company them?
The generic answer would be to not let that happen in the first place. If you want to play with the vassal swarm, you have to stay HRE emperor and if you form Germany, you should not have that many vassals. You could get an HRE vassal swarm in the first half of the game, but purposely let the small princes get annexed before you revoke the privilegia, so that you don't get too many vassals. Then you can integrate a few before you form Germany and maybe lose a few by giving them up in separate peace deals against big allies of your war enemies(if you are not hegemon). Losing vassals in peace deals removes AE which could be helpful.
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I usually do that, unless their culture is one of my accepted cultures. In that case, I would full state them.
He COULD diplo-annex them, I did that in one run. Stupid, but it works.
The "trick" is to annex 5-10 at the same time (depending on your diplomats), then wait 20 years. Because after 20 years the reputation malus with your other vassals just goes away.
Then you do the next 5-10, repeat until they are all gone.
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Nice idea, but I don't think this would work for OP, because they had "dozens" of non-free vassals, ie. they were far far far over the dip relations limit, ie. their dip mana income was extremely negative. So, even if the first 5-10 vassals were successfully annexed, they would be at perpetual -999 dip mana when the opinion malus disappears in 20 years' time.
The only slight corner case would be if you could get dip annexation cost <= -100%, and if zero-cost dip annexation occurs even if the overlord has negative mana. Unfortunately, although annex cost <= -100% is technically feasible, it's not very practical - you'd have to plan for it a long long time in advance (idea groups, be Catholic, permanent mission rewards via tag- & culture-switching, etc). And I don't know if annexation can occur with negative mana - it might, or it might not.
There is a cap. The final dip cost(after considering both diplo annexation cost and admin efficiency) can't go below 0.1 dip per dev(for full cores). I confirmed in a test a long time ago that the cost can be 0 for tiny vassals(with -100% diplo annexation cost), but I don't remember if their dev has to be below 5 or below 10. And I didn't test if you could annex such a vassal if you have negative mana.
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I think it could have worked if I'd done it before forming Germany. And started at least number of vassals / 5 * 22 (20 for cooldown, estimated 2 for annexation) years before 1821. So with about 50 vassals the start would need to be before 1600. Earlier, if still wishing to have some gameplay after forming Germany.
In possible future attempts, best to limit number of vassals-to-be before revoking. That takes away lot of the fun of vassal swarm though.
Oh, it's definitely feasible if you do it before forming Germany. But the scenario you presented was (approximately) "oops, I'm Germany with 50 vassals", and I think that's a game-ender.
FWIW: I think you can do it a bit faster than 220 years. If you have N diplomats, you can annex N-1 vassals simultaneously. (You probably need to maintain one diplomat for any vital actions that might arise during the annexation process.) You can probably get 11 diplomats as HREmperor if you really try, ie. 10 simultaneous annexations. And you can probably make the dip mana cost of annexation low enough (via a combination of admin efficiency, all power cost reduction, and normal dip annex cost reduction) that you can complete all 10 annexations by starting when you have >900 dip mana banked. Assuming all that works out, you can probably do it in {{50 vassals} / {10 diplomats}} * {22 years per cycle} = 110 years, ie. feasible by 1821 as long as you start by ~1700. If you start by ~1600, you could get ~100 years of Germany gameplay afterwards.
Or, of course, you could wait 20 years (until ~1620) and press the button to instantly inherit all of your vassals. Then form Germany and have ~200 years remaining before 1821.
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I wasn't aware of the cap - it makes the whole idea impractical IMO.
Even if you can annex 5- or 10-dev vassals for zero dip mana cost, that won't help for this scenario - most OPM HRE nations will have >20 dev by the time you revoke the privilegia, ie. there'll be essentially no-one you can annex for zero mana.
Agree.
The button, meaning Renovatio Imperii? Doesn't that turn the country to HRE, which can't form Germany.
The button to form Germany.
And yes, after you formed Germany it is.. problematic.
I did it as an Austria game, with influence,admin and quality, the catholic bonus and Austria's ideas, I have usually a 90% reduction. And much more than 5 diplomats. So 40-50 vassals would only be a 100 years or so, and the cost barely there.
And yes, after you formed Germany it is.. problematic.
I did it as an Austria game, with influence,admin and quality, the catholic bonus and Austria's ideas, I have usually a 90% reduction. And much more than 5 diplomats. So 40-50 vassals would only be a 100 years or so, and the cost barely there.
Oof, fair point. And you can't workaround via Viti either, as the HRE is specifically excluded.
If you undo revoke the privilegia by losing a war, do you lose all of your HRE vassals? If so, that might be a strategy.
Otherwise I guess you just shouldn't revoke the privilegia if you want to form Germany.
Playing as saxony, going fr the achievement; 50y in, so just started integrating Thuringia. Also just became emperor. My short term objective is to PU Poland with the mission. How do I most efficiently spread my dynasty? Marry to countries without an heir? My prestige is quite low because I had to do a disinherit, and atm only a few countries dont have an heir. I almost finished diplo though
Bonus question, I saw one of the saxon ideas gave church power. Should I go protestant?
Bonus question, I saw one of the saxon ideas gave church power. Should I go protestant?
I think the easiest way is to look for dynasties which already fulfill the conditions and then marrying one of the countries who can spread such a dynasty to you and then letting your ruler die without an heir. While you have a junior partner, you can't fall under a PU when your ruler dies without an heir.
With diplo ideas, you could royal marry all heirless countries to which you can spread your dynasty(so no other country must be more eligible to spread their dynasty) and break the royal marriage as soon as they get an heir.
Or you could go the other route and expand to 5 continents(or get the dynasty of a colonizer). You need to get to east asia anyway to get the Meissner Porcelain achievement
What exactly do you mean by fulfilling the conditions?
Also im integrating my junior partner because I need their province for the preceding mission, so i wont have a junior partner anymore