I was hesitant to post anything about this strategy, as it is very gamey and rules-exploitative and therefore I worry about drawing attention to it and having it shut down by Paradox. However, I assume that they probably already know about it and have chosen not to fix it (yet), and furthermore I think as many people as possible ought to enjoy it before it is possibly eliminated. This is based on the excellent YouTube video demonstrating this strategy by Ciroth as well as my own multiple attempts at the strategy. As I said, it is pretty much an exploit, so if you are turned off by unrealistic rules exploits, or if you work for Paradox 
, then just stop reading now. On the other hand, if (like me) you like the idea of beating up the world with the combined might of France, England, and the HRE by 1550 or earlier, then this strategy is for you! I’m sure it is a good start for a World Conquest and multiple other achievements.
This strategy is based on two game mechanics: 1) Adding provinces to the HRE gives you increased Imperial Authority, and 2) creating the nation of England removes all your provinces from the HRE. Therefore, if while playing as France you can eliminate England (which takes 4-5 wars) and get yourself elected the Emperor, then you can switch between France and England (for 100 diplo points per pop), adding all your provinces to the HRE each time until you have enough points to Revoke the Privilegia and turn the entire HRE into your personal swarm of obedient, bloodthirsty vassals. (Well, except for Austria who remains upset about the whole thing and sits in the corner nursing her armies and wounded pride, but who needs her?) Now that you have all of France and England, and the HRE swarm, you are pretty much unstoppable, short of truly gross abuse of AE, for the remainder of the game.
In Ciroth’s video he is able to Revoke by 1548 in apparently his first run. In both of my runs I did it in the early 1520s (of course I got to watch his video first), although in the second one I could have done it in 1503 if my monarch hadn’t died childless. Ciroth states at one point that he knows someone who Revoked before 1500 with this strategy. From one perspective 1.19 is a bit easier, as you can usually force England to declare war on you through the Maine event, leaving you with all of your allies and them alone for an easy victory.
Like most EU4 strategies, this one is not free of the whims of the RNG. However, there are really only three common random occurrences that really mess it up badly. First, if your elector allies are rivals, which you can see at the very beginning of the game and restart if necessary. Second, if the Maine event mentioned above fails to fire (I found that it does fire about 2/3 of the time), then you will have to declare war on England, which is still quite winnable but will not be as easy. If it gets past 1450 then the Maine event is not going to fire and you can either declare war or restart. The third problem, and potentially the biggest as it takes a while to determine, would be difficulty in becoming the emperor. Since a lot of the elections are determined by when someone dies (e.g. when they have a high IA then it is hard to beat them), this is probably the most unpredictable and frustrating part of the strategy. Nevertheless, it is usually doable with persistence.
I should point out that I did have to start over several times for each attempt, but I was usually able to determine within 5-30 minutes of playing if the run was going to be viable. And most of those restarts were from my own learning curve and dumb mistakes.
So here are the steps:
1) Open the HRE screen and check to make sure that the first four electors (Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, and Maine) are not rivals. If so then restart. (Note: It might be possible to use a different set of 4 electors; I played around with this some but my successful attempts were with those four.)
2) Hire your advisors. Get the + diplo rep advisor if at all possible.
3) Rival England and two others. I usually choose Savoy (because you’ll surpass them soon for more power projection) and Burgundy or Denmark.
4) If you choose, play with the Estates actions for increased ADM points. By increasing their influence to 75-79 you can get up to 150 points from each estate, but that puts you at risk for a mess if an event occurs to increase their influence past 80. I usually get the admin and diplo points but leave the military points until I need a new general.
5) As you start the timer, in quick succession end the alliance with Provence, and ally Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, Mainz, Castile, and Scotland. Also ask for military access to Scotland. This will all put you at 6/4 diplo relations but that’s OK. Ask or accept royal marriages with Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Castile. Do NOT accept a RM from Scotland, as you are going to need to backstab her in a few years.
6) VERY QUICKLY move your entire army to Scotland. If the Maine event fires before you get everyone there then it can be a mess, and you may lose a stack to England’s navy, which will probably require a restart. It is possible sometimes to sneak over the rest of the army over by going out to the Atlantic and around to the north of Scotland.
7) From now on, carefully monitor the electors of the HRE. You want to try to get all four of your allies to vote for you when the emperorship becomes available. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes not so much. Improve relations, use gifts and Influence Nation, and any other tricks to get them to vote for you. Try to keep diplomatic reputation, prestige, and legitimacy high. If you lose an election don’t worry…just keep up your attempts and you will usually be able to be elected before 1500. Frequently by the time you become emperor the first reform has already been passed.
8) Hopefully soon after you get your army to Scotland the Maine event fires – the one where you can force England to declare war on you. If you get the other event (where England just gives you Maine) then you can declare war on England but you may have problems getting your allies to join. In my second successful run I had already been elected Emperor when the wrong event fired in about 1447. Since it was such a good start otherwise, I went ahead and declared on England and with some difficulty was able to win. If the event fires correctly, you and Scotland can beat up England on her soil while Castile and your HRE allies siege down England’s continental holdings. Get to 100% warscore and take the two provinces in SW France and as much as you can get in the north of England and Pale in Ireland. Take as many provinces as possible so you can have as few wars with England as possible. Don’t take all of their territory in France until the last war with England if you can avoid it, as it will give you a constant casus belli against them.
9) After your first war with England, when you have a foothold in the north of England and Ireland, cancel your alliance with Scotland, revoke their guarantee, and cancel military access. This will decrease your excess diplomatic relations. Start building a spy network on Scotland and one of the Irish minors that has few allies and a lot of casus belli on its neighbors. You can force an early second war with England by declaring on its Irish allies, but I’ve found this does more harm than good since you can’t co-belligerize them and so the provinces are more expensive and you reset the peace timer.
10) Between wars with England you can attack Scotland and expand in Ireland. I would NOT expand on the continent as you need to keep AE under control. Be sure to check on each peace screen who is getting AE and might join a coalition against you. You will get some AE especially in the northwest HRE for your activities in Britain; improving relations can help keep them out of a coalition. You can handle Scotland and the Irish minors. Probably the only real danger would be getting Burgundy in a coalition against you.
11) As you begin to get more territory, DO NOT add new states unless they are Francien or English culture. You are going to need to culture shift between these two later, and the fewer other cultures incorporated into states at that point the better. This will keep your finances and manpower a bit weaker than it would be otherwise, but once you’ve completed this strategy it will be much easier to clean up.
12) It will take 4-5 wars with England to finish her off. Be prepared to attack England as soon as the peace timer is over, using either casus belli from their continental holdings or fabricated claims. Keep Castile happy and they will generally take care of Portugal and England’s continental provinces, leaving you free to keep most or all of your army in Britain. Take as close as possible to 100 warscore from England every war.
13) For this phase, your only priorities are killing England and becoming Emperor. You might get dragged into continental wars on behalf of your allies, but don’t start any or take territory as it will really push up the AE. Keep the pope happy as you don’t want to find yourself excommunicated.
14) Once you do become Emperor, if Burgundy does not have an heir consider attacking it to force the Burgundian succession event. However don’t worry about that too much, even if the event fires early and somebody else gets the HRE possessions. Don’t generate a lot of AE here either.
15) Before your last war with England, check to be sure that you will have all of the provinces you need for the Form France and Form England decisions. (On my second run, after switching to England I realized that Brittany had taken Maine from England, costing me more time to get it back.) Also try to have about 700 diplomatic points saved up by the end of the war that eliminates England.
16) Now England is gone and you are the emperor. Make sure that you have added all of your provinces to the HRE to increase IA, passing the reforms as soon as you can. Now here’s the tricky part. In order to form England, you must have 50% of the development of your cores (not territories) be of English culture. The easiest way to do that is to remove all states which are entirely of cultures other than English or Francien, switching them back to territories. You will have to remove their Estates, which will cause some revolts so have some armies nearby. You will probably end up with angry Estates with too few provinces, but it won’t last long so it shouldn’t matter. If you have all of the English culture area and Francien culture area cored, there are a few provinces left with other cultures but you should be able to manipulate it to get over 50% English culture by adding or removing states. Switch to English culture for 100 diplo points, then choose the decision to Form England (NOT Britain!). This will remove all of your provinces from the HRE. Now add them all back, passing the reforms as soon as you can. Then play with the states again to put you back to greater than 50% Francien culture. Culture shift to Francien (again 100 diplo points). Now rinse and repeat until you are able to Revoke the Privilegia! Note that for the Revoke reform you may need well over 50 IA to get everyone to vote for it. You want everyone to vote for it, as those that don't will not be your vassals.
17) After this I assume you can continue playing as either England or France. I chose France each time. Now you have a big mess to clean up, but you also have about 30 loyal vassals (and one disloyal pouting Austria) who will swarm off to war at your beck and call. You should have a great income from all those vassals. You will need to add back states, placate your Estates, and re-core everything you moved to territories. You should already have Administrative idea #2, decreasing coring costs, but if not then get it quickly.
18) Speaking of Idea groups, I would recommend taking Influence first…the increased diplo rep will help you get elected emperor, and the decreased AE will help avoid coalitions. I took Defensive second, but honestly it probably would be better to go straight to Administrative to get the decreased coring costs at idea #2, then ignoring the rest of the group for now.
19) Of course you can proceed to the last imperial reform and turn all of the HRE into your territory if you like, however that is much weaker than the death swarm of vassals who are also giving you manpower and money. PLUS you lose all of the bonuses for being emperor. Also be aware that you will then be the HRE and not France, and muddy grey is not nearly as pretty of a color to paint the map compared to royal blue.
20) And now you are master of France, all of Britain, and the HRE, prior to 1550 at least. The world is yours for the taking!
, then just stop reading now. On the other hand, if (like me) you like the idea of beating up the world with the combined might of France, England, and the HRE by 1550 or earlier, then this strategy is for you! I’m sure it is a good start for a World Conquest and multiple other achievements.This strategy is based on two game mechanics: 1) Adding provinces to the HRE gives you increased Imperial Authority, and 2) creating the nation of England removes all your provinces from the HRE. Therefore, if while playing as France you can eliminate England (which takes 4-5 wars) and get yourself elected the Emperor, then you can switch between France and England (for 100 diplo points per pop), adding all your provinces to the HRE each time until you have enough points to Revoke the Privilegia and turn the entire HRE into your personal swarm of obedient, bloodthirsty vassals. (Well, except for Austria who remains upset about the whole thing and sits in the corner nursing her armies and wounded pride, but who needs her?) Now that you have all of France and England, and the HRE swarm, you are pretty much unstoppable, short of truly gross abuse of AE, for the remainder of the game.
In Ciroth’s video he is able to Revoke by 1548 in apparently his first run. In both of my runs I did it in the early 1520s (of course I got to watch his video first), although in the second one I could have done it in 1503 if my monarch hadn’t died childless. Ciroth states at one point that he knows someone who Revoked before 1500 with this strategy. From one perspective 1.19 is a bit easier, as you can usually force England to declare war on you through the Maine event, leaving you with all of your allies and them alone for an easy victory.
Like most EU4 strategies, this one is not free of the whims of the RNG. However, there are really only three common random occurrences that really mess it up badly. First, if your elector allies are rivals, which you can see at the very beginning of the game and restart if necessary. Second, if the Maine event mentioned above fails to fire (I found that it does fire about 2/3 of the time), then you will have to declare war on England, which is still quite winnable but will not be as easy. If it gets past 1450 then the Maine event is not going to fire and you can either declare war or restart. The third problem, and potentially the biggest as it takes a while to determine, would be difficulty in becoming the emperor. Since a lot of the elections are determined by when someone dies (e.g. when they have a high IA then it is hard to beat them), this is probably the most unpredictable and frustrating part of the strategy. Nevertheless, it is usually doable with persistence.
I should point out that I did have to start over several times for each attempt, but I was usually able to determine within 5-30 minutes of playing if the run was going to be viable. And most of those restarts were from my own learning curve and dumb mistakes.
So here are the steps:
1) Open the HRE screen and check to make sure that the first four electors (Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, and Maine) are not rivals. If so then restart. (Note: It might be possible to use a different set of 4 electors; I played around with this some but my successful attempts were with those four.)
2) Hire your advisors. Get the + diplo rep advisor if at all possible.
3) Rival England and two others. I usually choose Savoy (because you’ll surpass them soon for more power projection) and Burgundy or Denmark.
4) If you choose, play with the Estates actions for increased ADM points. By increasing their influence to 75-79 you can get up to 150 points from each estate, but that puts you at risk for a mess if an event occurs to increase their influence past 80. I usually get the admin and diplo points but leave the military points until I need a new general.
5) As you start the timer, in quick succession end the alliance with Provence, and ally Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, Mainz, Castile, and Scotland. Also ask for military access to Scotland. This will all put you at 6/4 diplo relations but that’s OK. Ask or accept royal marriages with Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Castile. Do NOT accept a RM from Scotland, as you are going to need to backstab her in a few years.
6) VERY QUICKLY move your entire army to Scotland. If the Maine event fires before you get everyone there then it can be a mess, and you may lose a stack to England’s navy, which will probably require a restart. It is possible sometimes to sneak over the rest of the army over by going out to the Atlantic and around to the north of Scotland.
7) From now on, carefully monitor the electors of the HRE. You want to try to get all four of your allies to vote for you when the emperorship becomes available. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes not so much. Improve relations, use gifts and Influence Nation, and any other tricks to get them to vote for you. Try to keep diplomatic reputation, prestige, and legitimacy high. If you lose an election don’t worry…just keep up your attempts and you will usually be able to be elected before 1500. Frequently by the time you become emperor the first reform has already been passed.
8) Hopefully soon after you get your army to Scotland the Maine event fires – the one where you can force England to declare war on you. If you get the other event (where England just gives you Maine) then you can declare war on England but you may have problems getting your allies to join. In my second successful run I had already been elected Emperor when the wrong event fired in about 1447. Since it was such a good start otherwise, I went ahead and declared on England and with some difficulty was able to win. If the event fires correctly, you and Scotland can beat up England on her soil while Castile and your HRE allies siege down England’s continental holdings. Get to 100% warscore and take the two provinces in SW France and as much as you can get in the north of England and Pale in Ireland. Take as many provinces as possible so you can have as few wars with England as possible. Don’t take all of their territory in France until the last war with England if you can avoid it, as it will give you a constant casus belli against them.
9) After your first war with England, when you have a foothold in the north of England and Ireland, cancel your alliance with Scotland, revoke their guarantee, and cancel military access. This will decrease your excess diplomatic relations. Start building a spy network on Scotland and one of the Irish minors that has few allies and a lot of casus belli on its neighbors. You can force an early second war with England by declaring on its Irish allies, but I’ve found this does more harm than good since you can’t co-belligerize them and so the provinces are more expensive and you reset the peace timer.
10) Between wars with England you can attack Scotland and expand in Ireland. I would NOT expand on the continent as you need to keep AE under control. Be sure to check on each peace screen who is getting AE and might join a coalition against you. You will get some AE especially in the northwest HRE for your activities in Britain; improving relations can help keep them out of a coalition. You can handle Scotland and the Irish minors. Probably the only real danger would be getting Burgundy in a coalition against you.
11) As you begin to get more territory, DO NOT add new states unless they are Francien or English culture. You are going to need to culture shift between these two later, and the fewer other cultures incorporated into states at that point the better. This will keep your finances and manpower a bit weaker than it would be otherwise, but once you’ve completed this strategy it will be much easier to clean up.
12) It will take 4-5 wars with England to finish her off. Be prepared to attack England as soon as the peace timer is over, using either casus belli from their continental holdings or fabricated claims. Keep Castile happy and they will generally take care of Portugal and England’s continental provinces, leaving you free to keep most or all of your army in Britain. Take as close as possible to 100 warscore from England every war.
13) For this phase, your only priorities are killing England and becoming Emperor. You might get dragged into continental wars on behalf of your allies, but don’t start any or take territory as it will really push up the AE. Keep the pope happy as you don’t want to find yourself excommunicated.
14) Once you do become Emperor, if Burgundy does not have an heir consider attacking it to force the Burgundian succession event. However don’t worry about that too much, even if the event fires early and somebody else gets the HRE possessions. Don’t generate a lot of AE here either.
15) Before your last war with England, check to be sure that you will have all of the provinces you need for the Form France and Form England decisions. (On my second run, after switching to England I realized that Brittany had taken Maine from England, costing me more time to get it back.) Also try to have about 700 diplomatic points saved up by the end of the war that eliminates England.
16) Now England is gone and you are the emperor. Make sure that you have added all of your provinces to the HRE to increase IA, passing the reforms as soon as you can. Now here’s the tricky part. In order to form England, you must have 50% of the development of your cores (not territories) be of English culture. The easiest way to do that is to remove all states which are entirely of cultures other than English or Francien, switching them back to territories. You will have to remove their Estates, which will cause some revolts so have some armies nearby. You will probably end up with angry Estates with too few provinces, but it won’t last long so it shouldn’t matter. If you have all of the English culture area and Francien culture area cored, there are a few provinces left with other cultures but you should be able to manipulate it to get over 50% English culture by adding or removing states. Switch to English culture for 100 diplo points, then choose the decision to Form England (NOT Britain!). This will remove all of your provinces from the HRE. Now add them all back, passing the reforms as soon as you can. Then play with the states again to put you back to greater than 50% Francien culture. Culture shift to Francien (again 100 diplo points). Now rinse and repeat until you are able to Revoke the Privilegia! Note that for the Revoke reform you may need well over 50 IA to get everyone to vote for it. You want everyone to vote for it, as those that don't will not be your vassals.
17) After this I assume you can continue playing as either England or France. I chose France each time. Now you have a big mess to clean up, but you also have about 30 loyal vassals (and one disloyal pouting Austria) who will swarm off to war at your beck and call. You should have a great income from all those vassals. You will need to add back states, placate your Estates, and re-core everything you moved to territories. You should already have Administrative idea #2, decreasing coring costs, but if not then get it quickly.
18) Speaking of Idea groups, I would recommend taking Influence first…the increased diplo rep will help you get elected emperor, and the decreased AE will help avoid coalitions. I took Defensive second, but honestly it probably would be better to go straight to Administrative to get the decreased coring costs at idea #2, then ignoring the rest of the group for now.
19) Of course you can proceed to the last imperial reform and turn all of the HRE into your territory if you like, however that is much weaker than the death swarm of vassals who are also giving you manpower and money. PLUS you lose all of the bonuses for being emperor. Also be aware that you will then be the HRE and not France, and muddy grey is not nearly as pretty of a color to paint the map compared to royal blue.
20) And now you are master of France, all of Britain, and the HRE, prior to 1550 at least. The world is yours for the taking!
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