Bay 12 Games Forum

How should I proceed to dismantle the HRE? Half of the empire is either a vassal or in a PU. All electors, except Bohemia, are my vassals and wouldn't vote for anyone else even if they weren't. At this point, I am limited in my imperial authority because Austria is defender of the protestant faith and half the nations in the HRE are protestant. If I attack them, Austria turns against me; which is odd considering their king is... me. So, how could I dismantle the empire? I'm tired of gaining infamy for owning provinces that are rightfully (Yeah right!) mine.


I achieved my goal a bit earlier than expected by breaking apart France in 2 successives wars: I broke a truce for the first time ever to make sure France could not recover. So now, the HRE has served its purpose    Although I guess I could send my pet nations against the Ottomans since they completely annihilated the GH and have thus become a HUGE green blob.

Things went insane in my Holland game.

Protestantism has kicked in so I've been almost constantly at war trying to keep some kind of unity in the HRE. I don't really need to, but I treat the 'empire' as my personal pet. Pets need to be tamed.

Following the advices concerning the PU, I claimed the throne of Baden: normally a minor nation, but which was agressive and opportunistic in my game so that it was now a major power in the HRE (only Austria and me were doing better). I took advantage of their war against Austria to declare war and force them into a PU.

Also, while trying to build up a strong and united HRE, I have managed to build up good relations with Austria. Shortly after forcing Baden in an union, I got a major surprise. Austria was heirless, their king died and I got into a personnal union without even trying. In fact, I had not even realized they were up for grab for a union; I was too busy waging war left and right.

So I am now getting close to my intended goal of having a unified HRE to send against France

[quote author=snelg link=topic=91930.msg2611042#msg2611042 date=1315986602
Actually, since Holland is in the same culture group (IIRC) as most of the HRE you can annex them through unions and get cores. There's usually plenty of targets for unions in the HRE (since there's just so many of them) if you haven't already vassalized them all.
[/quote]

I'm still new to EU3, so I am not quite sure how unions work and how you get cores out of them. I know I don't want to annex uncored provinces and wait 50 years for a core. HRE members get 0.5% infamy yearly or something like that from each unlawful province... pfff, didn't they get the memo? I'm the law from now on.

Even with the HRE throne, I need to be careful with infamy. France, England and Austria are still serious threats and not very friendly. Especially England: 3 times my navy, 2 times my army and manpower and almost the same income. They also have provinces all over the place; all of the british isles, Normandy, western Iberian coast (Portugal is only a memory), Venice, Croatia, some province in Northern Germany, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Only England could start colonizing soon so I focus on that for now while trying to keep stable relations.

Since this is the first serious game I play, I'm not following grand world conquest plans. I will vassalize HRE members when the opportunities arise. Alliance chains are actually quite helpful there. I vassalized 2 electors, Munster and reduced the Hansa to Lubeck in a single war. I will continue colonizing and hopefully limit England's attempts. Besides that, I am just enjoying the game while trying to get a better feel of the game.

I also joined a day or two ago, scientist 2 / farmer 4 so far. I am currently trying to get a bit more money before leaving. Might also try to get scientist to rank 3 and a third profession (suggestions are always welcome) before heading for Libya.

Let me know if I should bring any resources.

IGN is Alexwazer.

Humbly requesting an invite from any of you fine gentlemen.

PM sent.

I'm kinda surprised he didn't make a post here already.  Bay12 would be an obvious place to fish for publicity/donators for this kind of thing.

I'm not really surprised considering how some people here react whenever someone's first post is about his game/project. Hopefully, now that someone else posted about it, he will show up and actually be welcomed rather than treated like a blasphemer against Armok's holy fiery blood.

I live in Quebec, but as far as games go, I might as well say I live in North America. As every American knows (the ones to the south anyway), America is a stricly english speaking continent country. Thus, very few games are translated here and we, the few millions french speaking weirdos, have to rely on the European market to get translations. I hate translations coming from France; even more so with voice acting, so I usually stick with english products when it comes to computers and especially games.

Here's the state of my empire in my current game of CK, in which I started as Count of Usora (Croatia) and now hold the titles of king of Jerusalem and Syria:

Iberian Peninsula:


Balkans:


Middle East:


King/Kingdom details:


At some point, some muslims from Spain managed to take 2 provinces from the king of Croatia. Later on, I conquered those, along with my current holdings in Spain.

Because I created my own kingdom instead of breaking free, the king of Croatia doesn't mind too much the fact that I kept a few provinces, so we have relatively good relations. It won't last forever  He currently holds the title of king of Serbia on which I have a claim.

It is somewhat funny how I got my kingdom. It started with the usual crusade to liberate Jerusalem. After I successfully conquered the province, and a few neighboring ones, I had an event to give back Jerusalem to the church or whatever, which created the kingdom of Jerusalem (and gave me a whole lot of piety and 250 prestige). After a quick look at my new neighbor, I realized I could claim his king title for... 250 prestige  Guess what I did

When I got my kingdom, the Turks were all over the place: from Kuwait to Byzantion, from Acre to the very borders of the Rus empire. After the death of one of their previous leader, I did all I could to destroy them. Assassinated their new leader (a merely average leader) and got him replaced by a 1 year old child, assassinated the chancellor to screw his diplomacy and then declared war. I started the war with close to 5,000 gold and finished with over 15,000; after some of the Turks vassals declared war only to plead for a peace agreement, many offering tribute of 500 or so (one offered over 5,000). I gained almost nothing from this first war (Acre, Tiberias, Palmyra and Byzantion) considering I had to use every single men I had, including my vassals' and had to fight from Turkey to Iran and from Georgia to Jordania against an enemy that started with nearly 200,000 troops under his command... and had to deal with a backstabbing Byzantium empire at the same time (they only wanted Antiocheia however). However, I achieved to break the Turkish empire, they were left with nearly nothing except a bunch of rebellious vassals and ex-vassals.

My kingdom is in a relatively stable state at this point. My previous ruler died recently, so I am currently trying to make sure the succession goes well. I have 2 main issues right now. My kingdom is so spread out that it is becoming troublesome to deal with rebellious vassals, so I am planning to give every province in the Iberian peninsula to my vassal there who is a cousin or something. If he breaks free later on, I'll just let him go and hope he can create a new kingdom for our dynasty If he declares war, I would just let him waste his time moving troops all over the world and offer white peace once his troops have been slaughtered. My second issue is much more annoying. The kingdom of Croatia, the Byzantium Empire, the Kingdom of Georgia (held by muslims) and the Turks all have claims on part of my kingdom. While none of them is strong enough to attack me on their own, I would have a hard time fighting any 2 of these at the same time. This is the reason I am currently allied with the BE. I will need to move against one of them before long or risk having them move against me.




Edit: I decided to continue the game after leaving it on hold for a week. A few months only after the above screenshots, the BE decided to do a bit more backstabbing. I mobilized every troops between Croatia and Syria, pillaging every byzantine provinces on the way before the damn fool agreed to drop his claim on Byzantion. I had a few claims on some of his provinces, but I dropped them all so I wouldn't have to worry too much about more backstabbing. Next step will probably be to force a war with Croatia so I can later focus on the eastern front without worry.