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MattyG said:
mikl,

It looks like you are on to a strong idea here. I suggest that - once things formally come together for the team - that you make the revision of the Hansa and the associated provinces as being your 'baby'. I know you have played them before and have a feel for the flow and problems. Not that the Hansa reuire a lot of revision, its one of the better event files in the game. But you can work out how to include the culture changes you suggest and to develop both events related to this, the spread of their culture and so forth.

One challenge: never ever give them German culture. It's what we are trying to work towards and it would defeat part of the purpose of all of this.
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I agree. One of the wierdest things in my current MP playing of Hansa, is that as an economic power it's in my interests to dump coastal, core cities like Kent and Ingermandland and even Anglia in favour of inland, germanic provinces like Koln and Hessen.

So I accept the challenge, revising the Hansa aberrated history very slightly.

I would also ask that we consider that you look at recreating swiss culture. They have had their own language for centuries, and a strong geographic separation from german, italian and french culture. If they can't be accomodated as a nation in the 1419 start-up, then their culture should at least exist. There are Event and Revolt possibilities aplenty. Perhaps a series of events can lead to the creation of a small new ai nation in 1580, after the Reformation, perhaps....? Could you do the same thing for the Basque?
 
What about splitting the dutch culture in flemish and frisian. Let Holland, Geldre, Friesen and Oldenburg have frisian culture, and rest of the lowlands have flemish culture, and make sure Bavaria doesn't have both cultures. The south dutch (flemish) culture could be given to both Hansa and Bavaria, and maybe through events to Burgundy, while the frisian culture should be very hard to achieve (but Hansa could get a chance to gain it).
 
Here are some useful maps for HRE purposes, if we want to use history as an inspiration:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~deubadnw/history/maps/maps.htm

As I said above, reducing the number of 1-province minors is probably necessary to reduce the level of fighting and force-annexation, but we don't have to do much: even 2-province minors are a lot better than 1-province minors.

Here are some concrete suggestions:

- Anhalt can be incorporated into Saxony, or perhaps we could have a 2-province Meissen instead
- Luxembourg can be independent, but allied and married to Bohemia and Hungary (actually all three had the same ruler)
-Brabant can either be made larger or fully incorporated into Bavaria
-Friesland can be extended to cover Oldenburg province, along with the culture (actually Frisian rather than Dutch, but we may not want to introduce a new culture there)
- as per mikl's suggestion, we can have Brandenburg, owning Brandeburg, Kustrin and Hinterpommern provinces

Have some starting alliances in the HRE, so that the minors aren't just left to fend for themselves. Either we have a grand alliance, or we start with 4+ alliances: pro-Swabian, pro-Bavarian, pro-Hansa and one or two other alliances covering the central area.

Historically parts of the HRE were heavily fortified - we can put small forts in a lot of the HRE, especially where there are lots of minors. Given the Ai's difficulties in waging war, this might at least slow down the rate of force-annexation. Luxembourg was described as the 'Gibraltar of the North' - maybe a medium fort there?

Finally, the current 'Swabia' is misleading, as most Swabians live in Württemberg province, which does not start as part of Swabia. Also, the 'Swabian' capital is in Bern or Freiburg by the looks of it, neither of which is anywhere near Swabia. Should we move Swabia, or should we give it a more suitable name?
 
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Incompetent said:
Finally, the current 'Swabia' is misleading, as most Swabians live in Württemberg province, which does not start as part of Swabia. Also, the 'Swabian' capital is in Bern or Freiburg by the looks of it, neither of which is anywhere near Swabia. Should we move Swabia, or should we give it a more suitable name?
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We could call it, ummmm, Helvetia. :p
 
As discussed by tarakan and others, one problem with keeping the HRE minors alive is the AI's tendency to diploannex everything in sight. There is one simple way of interfering with the AI's ability to diploannex, however: we make the HRE a mess of vassalage to start with. Vassals to minors obviously can't be made vassals by majors, and even their suzereins are much less likely to accept vassalage, by virtue of having vassals of their own. But there's also the prospect of minors DAing each other. So here's what I suggest:

- We make various HRE minors vassals to other minors.
- Where possible, we make sure that the suzerein doesn't have a land connection to the vassal, or that the vassal is at least comparable in wealth to the suzerein.
- In some cases (Bavaria!) we tone down DIP scores a bit.

The end result will hopefully be that the AI's attempts to diplovassalise, and hence to DA, are much more likely to be thwarted.
 
Anything that helps the minors is fine by me. The overpowerfull Bvarian and Hanseatic empires are driving me nuts. (Also given that they do not have core provinces and their tech is dropping making them too easy to defeat).
 
Incompetent said:
As discussed by tarakan and others, one problem with keeping the HRE minors alive is the AI's tendency to diploannex everything in sight. There is one simple way of interfering with the AI's ability to diploannex, however: we make the HRE a mess of vassalage to start with. Vassals to minors obviously can't be made vassals by majors, and even their suzereins are much less likely to accept vassalage, by virtue of having vassals of their own. But there's also the prospect of minors DAing each other. So here's what I suggest:

- We make various HRE minors vassals to other minors.
- Where possible, we make sure that the suzerein doesn't have a land connection to the vassal, or that the vassal is at least comparable in wealth to the suzerein.
- In some cases (Bavaria!) we tone down DIP scores a bit.

The end result will hopefully be that the AI's attempts to diplovassalise, and hence to DA, are much more likely to be thwarted.
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Incompetant,

A creative solution. There are many options that we have at our disposal in addition to these, and between them we can ensure that Bavaria's diplo-madness does not happen.

Relationship scores: we can begin the scenario with Bavaria as a pariah, or close to it. While the ai gets an easy leg-up with relationship regeneration, if the scores for Bavaria begin at -150 for all of its neighbours, this will also slow down their diplo-annexation.

AI: the current ai posits Bavaria as a warmonger with a warscore of 75 (!) and the following eternal enemies: AZT SWA TYR WUR BOH HUN BUR HSA. What this means is that they expand (or burn out) quickly, and our hard work at having them nowhere near possible diplo-annexees would swiftly evaporate.

Alliances: Taking it a step further, Bavaria does NOT start the game with strong allies, but is instead isolated.


So, the pre-history for Bavria would have them as a recently-expanded state, alone and without allies, their relations at rock bottom. Peace has become the order of the day, as their king and advisors realise that the years of rapid growth through conquest have come to an end. They have reached the boundary with Burgundy, who is in no mood to see further Bavarian expansion, and in the east the Bohemians, Hungarians and the Hansa have given stern warnings. Surrounded by blocks of cautious allies, the have determined the time is right for consolidation.

Without allies, with poor relations, a more pacifist ai (something we will do for most nations) and with the network of vassalages such that only conquest can gain them more territory, the Bavaria as we know it will change dramatically. We will need to ensure they keep their quality leadership early on, or else see them sink more often than not.
 
MattyG said:
Incompetant,

A creative solution. There are many options that we have at our disposal in addition to these, and between them we can ensure that Bavaria's diplo-madness does not happen.

Relationship scores: we can begin the scenario with Bavaria as a pariah, or close to it. While the ai gets an easy leg-up with relationship regeneration, if the scores for Bavaria begin at -150 for all of its neighbours, this will also slow down their diplo-annexation.

AI: the current ai posits Bavaria as a warmonger with a warscore of 75 (!) and the following eternal enemies: AZT SWA TYR WUR BOH HUN BUR HSA. What this means is that they expand (or burn out) quickly, and our hard work at having them nowhere near possible diplo-annexees would swiftly evaporate.

Alliances: Taking it a step further, Bavaria does NOT start the game with strong allies, but is instead isolated.
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Hang on a minute - there's no need to go overboard. I'm talking about protecting the minors, not clobbering Bavaria. Bavaria often does badly as it is due to excessive aggression.

How is the Duke of Bavaria supposed to be both a pariah and Holy Roman Emperor? Giving bad initial relations might work in other areas, but in this case I think it would backfire badly, as it would only make Bavaria even angrier.

Agreed on the AI. Any AI in Bavaria's position needs 0 aggression, or there's no way they'll keep the HRE crown.

Alliances: Bavaria isn't allied to any majors in 1419 AFAIK. Are you suggesting it should be prevented from allying with its own vassals?
 
MattyG said:
OK, I'll keep out of this discussion.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to sound nasty; in other contexts (eg Hungary), your ideas might well be effective. But if we want to bring balance to the HRE, we'll always have to proceed with caution as far as the AI is concerned. The problem is more acute in Abe than vanilla, because in vanilla the majors are on the periphery.
 
I like the idea about a lot of vassals, they won't at least force annex anything in their sight, really building up their bb, and be hated by all then, diplo- annexations is another matter, but I can live with them. Make Bavaria allied to their vassals, and give them a peaceful AI. Then make a hard Burgundian- Swabian alliance to weaken Bavaria's position, but make also Burgundy and Swabia unlikely to dow Bavaria early.
 
yourworstnightm said:
I like the idea about a lot of vassals, they won't at least force annex anything in their sight, really building up their bb, and be hated by all then, diplo- annexations is another matter, but I can live with them. Make Bavaria allied to their vassals, and give them a peaceful AI. Then make a hard Burgundian- Swabian alliance to weaken Bavaria's position, but make also Burgundy and Swabia unlikely to dow Bavaria early.
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The vassals would do nothing to prevent force-annexation; they'd be in order to make diplo-annexation harder. But hopefully we can restructure the HRE so that the majors can't conquer the minors so easily.
 
Make the minors all two province with the ends on the oposite sides? :)
 
Incompetent said:
As you may have noticed, Aberration suffers from the same problem as most versions of EU2, which is that Germany and the Low Countries are locked in a permanent state of war for the first few decades of the game, with force-annexations coming one after another until only a few countries are left. Often wars become very protracted as the beligerents can reach some, but not all of each others' provinces. For reference, here's the initial set-up at present:


So, any suggestions? In general terms I would say we need to a) reduce the number of 1-prov countries drastically, b) dole out military access if we want the AI to behave sensibly.
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Well....

lets look at this from a RW perspective for a moment. There were a number of "countries" in the HRE as each noble had the right to negotiate with foreigners in regards to his own lands. However, that is only part of what is needed to be a functional "state", the other parts are: Military power and economic/monetary independence.

When you factor those other two vectors into the equation you are left with a far, far lower number of "countries" in the HRE. The only ones that could be considered in that catagory would be the Palatinates and Margravates. Since a Palatine has the ability to not only raise troops, but mint money as well as make war upon the enemies of the empire. A margrave can raise troops and make war but truly can not mint money so giving them a bit of slide here as they can do two of the three.

So IRL the minors, unless they also had lands in one of the Palatinates or the Margravates that entitled them to be called a Palatine or Margrave and access to the powers granted to those titles etc. should not be considered a viable and playable option as they would be under the jurisdiction of the HEI technically.

But the game does not handle that very well, and as a result we have those same minors getting gobbled up by the bigger "nations".

Which is about as good a way to handle it as I can see. Frankly, some of the minors should NOT be in the game as they are not capable of survival within the game because of how it handles the HRE. And since I can not see a way to make the game handle this situation any better, IMHO just let the minors get gobbled up.

As an example: Julich and Berg were prize pieces of property, but they were not allowed to have a standing army nor to mint money. They provided troops to the imperial army and used the imperial currency (which even the Palatinates did but they could mint them!). IRL if a noble attempted to invade them to conquer the territory without having a legitimate or quasi-legit claim TO them, the Emperor would intervene and stop it. But the game can't handle it and can not be made to handle it to the best of my knowledge in that manner.

I would recommend rethinking how the HRE is handled in Abe, but I do not think that it would be a practical consideration given the particulars.
 
mikl said:
This might not be part of the german minors discussion, but why are the Swiss not part of Aberation? If it's due to the Swabians taking them over, I'd argue that their culture must still exist, parhaps acting as a revolt issue or event for Swabia, if they grow larger than - say - 10 provinces.

I'd also agree that starting some of the minor in alliances would help prevent Bavaria from picking them off at will, and fighting each other constantly. But either this is an ai file issue, or a case of starting them all off as 2-3 province statelets, and losing some of the magic of the thorny german problem.
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there really is no "Swiss" culture during the game timeframe. They were, and to a great degree still are "German". Same customs, same language, same style of traditional dress as the other South Germans/Tyrolians...

They included Swiss culture to simply make them a PITA for anyone to hold onto them. But in Abe the Hapsburgs crushed the initial Swiss revolt and crushed it hard, so there will be no development of a "Swiss" culture.
 
Billdo said:
Why does Bravia have cores on all dutch provances. I can see the ones they own and Flanders and brebart, but not in the northern provances. Also, I really don't like the brandenberg provance under their control, just gives them the ablitly to strike out more.

Also I looked and not a single german minor in northern germany is in an alliance at the beginning, I think that putting some into an allaince in the beginning would help. Also there is not a single RM up there either.
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Historically the Wittelsbachs were in control of Brandenburg prior to the game start and lost it over a period of time to other houses. In Aberration they kept ahold of it, which would not have taken a whole lot more then a lucky break here and there.

As to the cores on the low countries... I can only presume that they have claims based upon the alluded to marriages in the write up or possibly some ancient claims from the pregame start period.
 
MattyG said:
Incompetant,

I went to that language site and it was more about German now than about the past. I did some more research and I remain unconvinved that the linguistic differences in Germany are any different in scope from those in Spain or Italy at the time. With the exception of Low Saxon (Holstein province, maybe Oldenburg) I just don't think the three rough dialects deserve different cultures in EU2.

Of course, there's still the caveat that we can re-write the history the way we want it, but I would want to read a really convincing storyline that justifies strong cultural differences between the north and the south such that a southern province would feel a northern lord would be as foreign as an Arab/Berber/Iberian/Italian.
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there really is no major justification for a German culture split over what is essentially a Souther drawl....
 
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