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I am new to the game and currently playing as Byzantium (easy mode). In the very early game I get into royal marriages with Serbia, Wallachia and Hungary. I declare war against the Ottomans and my allies come to my aid; jolly good! However, all of a sudden, my 25-year-old Emperor dies without an heir. Regretfully, I do not carefully read the next pop-up windows, but what happens is that Hungary declares war against me and Austria, who appears to be in a PU or something with me??? My next Emperor is not a Byzantine Palaiologos, but of the Hapsburg dynasty and it seems that Austria is a vassal of mine??? However, when the wars are over, my economy shows 0 income from vassals (I would expect Austria to have positive income by now and pay something to me as a vassal).
Could someone take a guess and explain to me what happened and what are possible ways for me to take further advantage of this situation?
Could someone take a guess and explain to me what happened and what are possible ways for me to take further advantage of this situation?
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That's ... something.
You have Austria under Personal Union (PU), which means your king rules both countries. They work sort of like vassals, but they don't give you their income, and the PU will break if your king dies while Austria has negative opinion of you OR you have negative prestige. Otherwise, it can be integrated in 50 years, rather than 10 years for vassals.
There is no reliable way to get a PU on someone, so count yourself very, very lucky. With Byzantium and Austria, well ... a new player doing a Byzantium run and getting a PU on Austria is just adorably lucky. You won the EU4 lottery. Keep those relations and that prestige over zero, and shine on, you crazy diamond.
Are you sure you have Austria under a PU rather than the other way around? Because it seems to me that Austria's ruler is now ruling Byzantium and Hungary is pressing its claim on Byzantium's throne (succession war).
@ zodium: Thank you very much, that is quite informative! I guess I got really lucky as you say 
I annexed my previous vassal, Athens, peacufully, but I am not sure what the integration of Austria will look like and what the implications will be (coring, religious and cultural wise); I hope I can pull it off!
@ panionios: Amazingly so, yes I am sure that Manuel von Hapsburg is ruling both countries from Constantinople, i.e. Austria is the lesser part in the PU. I have no idea why though. Efharisto (thank you) for the reply.
I annexed my previous vassal, Athens, peacufully, but I am not sure what the integration of Austria will look like and what the implications will be (coring, religious and cultural wise); I hope I can pull it off!@ panionios: Amazingly so, yes I am sure that Manuel von Hapsburg is ruling both countries from Constantinople, i.e. Austria is the lesser part in the PU. I have no idea why though. Efharisto (thank you) for the reply.
@ zodium: Thank you very much, that is quite informative! I guess I got really lucky as you say
You won't be able to integrate them unless you're bigger than them. Also you'll never be able to integrate them if they have a Heathen religion. Byzantium starts as Christian, right? So make sure you never convert to Muslim or anything else
In case you're not aware, the PU will break if, when your monarch dies, either is true:
- Austria's opinion of you is negative
- You have lower than 1 Prestige
So you will want to Improve Relations with Austria immediately unless they're opinion of you is already good, and keep an eye on that over time. You want to keep your Prestige high in the game anyway, so that is unlikely to be an issue, but if you ever do lose a war and it goes low or negative, take immediate steps to get it high again, like fighting an easy war, or revealing some new TI if you have Exploration and Quest for the New World.
There shouldn't be any coring issues. When you integrate a PU/Vassal, all of their cored provinces become your cored provinces.
The only coring consideration is if you feed new territory to your subject (which is a good idea) - once you do, make sure you don't integrate until the subject has cored it all.
I've played 3 games as the Ryukyu Kingdom, and the 1/1/1 ruler at the start of the game has lived into his late 80s in every game.
You won't be able to integrate them unless you're bigger than them. Also you'll never be able to integrate them if they have a Heathen religion. Byzantium starts as Christian, right? So make sure you never convert to Muslim or anything else
In case you're not aware, the PU will break if, when your monarch dies, either is true:
- Austria's opinion of you is negative
- You have lower than 1 Prestige
So you will want to Improve Relations with Austria immediately unless they're opinion of you is already good, and keep an eye on that over time. You want to keep your Prestige high in the game anyway, so that is unlikely to be an issue, but if you ever do lose a war and it goes low or negative, take immediate steps to get it high again, like fighting an easy war, or revealing some new TI if you have Exploration and Quest for the New World.
There shouldn't be any coring issues. When you integrate a PU/Vassal, all of their cored provinces become your cored provinces.
The only coring consideration is if you feed new territory to your subject (which is a good idea) - once you do, make sure you don't integrate until the subject has cored it all.
You should make a megathread to put all your damned tests in one convenient place already. I'm this close to having to make a "TheBloke-related" subfolder in my EU4 bookmarks. :v
Haha. I'm working on it. I want to start making some FAQ threads and am going to contact a mod soon to see how one arranges such a thing.
Did you see this one? I put in the median as well as the mean, despite not really knowing if it was important, in deference to mathematical types such as yourself
Actually this is rarely a consideration unless you've fed a subject quite heavily; the integration process will in most cases far outlast the time to core.
Is there a way to stop my vassals from attaching their troops to mine? It's causing me to take massive attrition while I'm fighting Novgorod as Moscovy.
Not yet, but soon. It's coming in 1.4.
In the meantime, having stacks of more than 30k should at least discourage it.
Especially considering that they will usually take, at most 3 and often just 2 provinces before refusing based on overextension, and indeed the coring time vs annexing is trivial.
You can also split your stacks, the attached regiments always stay with the original unit, so if you move all but one of your regiments away from the stack, you can guide all the allies around with just a single regiment (in which case attrition shouldnt bother you too much)
I just realized something... I play France, so doesn't that mean that even if I take "Embrace the Counter-Reformation" I will lose it again as soon I have my national ideas completed and get "Libterte, Egalita, Fraternite"?
I do not see why you would think that. The Counter-Reformation ends if you convert do a different religion or if it has been 150 years since the Reformation; NIs or even tolerance should not affect that, as far as I am aware.
The description of "Embrace the Counter-Reformation" says that I "will lose this bonus if I ever take "Libert,..." or "Ecumenism"" - or do you think that just refers to the fact that the counter-reformation prevents your provinces to convert?
There is a random event with the same name as the French idea, to which this is referring.
I'll be honest, I've checked the events file and there doesn't seem to be any event related to that, so my assumption would be that it is wrong. Safest way is to save and test it out I suppose.
Ah yes, then that's probably it.