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Kingepyon, the method I talked about involved no unlawful territory at all. With it you can form the nation at around 1425 spending no more than 14 infamy, assuming you DoW Hainut to leave the union. Trade is harder during the 20 years you wait for diplo-annexation, but you can still hold some and you'll still be a world leader in technology during those times.
 
Kingepyon, the method I talked about involved no unlawful territory at all. With it you can form the nation at around 1425 spending no more than 14 infamy, assuming you DoW Hainut to leave the union. Trade is harder during the 20 years you wait for diplo-annexation, but you can still hold some and you'll still be a world leader in technology during those times.

I don't usually consider the diplo-annex mission to be reliable, as it never seems to fire for me :(.

I've never tried this before, and I have MEIOU installed, so I can't even check to see if it's possible, but you could try DOWing Hainhut day 1, and then using spies to fabricate claims on Friesland, and then inherit them. Instant cores on inherit + no infamy(or very little, I can't remember if that CB gives infamy or not). I've never tried this, but most countries don't have heirs to start, so if you work fast you may be able to do it.
 
I don't usually consider the diplo-annex mission to be reliable, as it never seems to fire for me :(.

I've never tried this before, and I have MEIOU installed, so I can't even check to see if it's possible, but you could try DOWing Hainhut day 1, and then using spies to fabricate claims on Friesland, and then inherit them. Instant cores on inherit + no infamy(or very little, I can't remember if that CB gives infamy or not). I've never tried this, but most countries don't have heirs to start, so if you work fast you may be able to do it.
Agreed. If we are to rely on missions, why not just exit the HRE and try to roll conquest missions?
 
Well, i think that best way to form netherlands as holland, is to wait for claims on our neighbours event for 5 years in game, and if it not happen restart the game, rinse and repeat. But if you don't want to count on randomness, or simply don't want to restart game each time it does not go your way, the second best way is to vassalize and wait for annex X mission. Then, if you don't want to wait on those pesky missions to fire, third best way is to leave HRE, and dow utrecht and friesland, remove them from hre, and pray that bohemia will accept your surrender without asking you to release those.

About best strategy, well, i dunno, last time i played as netherland nation it was vanilla, and i played as utrecht. But i think a viable strategy is to trade, as with +4 free trade, it is just too easy to gain gazilions ducats on trade... you just only need 6 star trader, 6 star treasurer, and 6 star TE advisor(or a MOM if you fancy on minting). About trying to conquer ottomans - too much expense for too little gain. I would understand doing it as venice, who is in good position for this, but i don't see great gain in doing it as holland. More likely advancing into russia would bring some income, if only you would just make them vassals, but even this doesn't make much sense for me. I would rather try vassaloizing denmark first(much better than doing it with russia - closer, and give you control of a strategic strait). But denmark often have very good fleet, and ally with some powers that may make a threat to you. Still if you see weak denmark, attacking them as holland/netherlands, is not the worst strategy. Also good place to expand would be gotland, if you dealt with netherlands.
 
I don't usually consider the diplo-annex mission to be reliable, as it never seems to fire for me :(.

I've never tried this before, and I have MEIOU installed, so I can't even check to see if it's possible, but you could try DOWing Hainhut day 1, and then using spies to fabricate claims on Friesland, and then inherit them. Instant cores on inherit + no infamy(or very little, I can't remember if that CB gives infamy or not). I've never tried this, but most countries don't have heirs to start, so if you work fast you may be able to do it.

You don't start with any spies as Holland, and when you get out of the union your legitimacy is too low to claim throne normally. So no, PUing Friesland is impossible at the start.

Also, those diplo-annex core giving missions fire pretty often as Holland. Just make sure you are at peace when you cancel or fulfil the previous one, and you'll have around 2/3 chance of getting it next, from my experience. You have 10 years to get each one, plenty of time -- once it appears just let it sit in the menu until you can annex. Most other countries don't get the mission reliably because they have other missions with higher priority, but Holland doesn't.
 
Why not just use console for that ewent in this case?

Well, cause it's cheating. The other way need some time to use, so it is not any way close to be exploit.
You don't start with any spies as Holland, and when you get out of the union your legitimacy is too low to claim throne normally. So no, PUing Friesland is impossible at the start.

Also, those diplo-annex core giving missions fire pretty often as Holland. Just make sure you are at peace when you cancel or fulfil the previous one, and you'll have around 2/3 chance of getting it next, from my experience. You have 10 years to get each one, plenty of time -- once it appears just let it sit in the menu until you can annex. Most other countries don't get the mission reliably because they have other missions with higher priority, but Holland doesn't.

Which is good if you play as burgundy, as you can PU holland(its in HRE... so free cores) XD.

But i agree the annex vassal mission is pretty frequent if you can't get much others, like in case of holland.
 
And your "reload until Claims on Our Riwals ewent fires" is not?

Well i think it could mean spending much more time on the game than simply cheating. Anyway if you are very lucky you can get it on first try. Whatever it is not thread for discussing this, maybe you could make some comments on other things, that are much more important, in my post.
 
Well i think it could mean spending much more time on the game than simply cheating. Anyway if you are very lucky you can get it on first try. Whatever it is not thread for discussing this, maybe you could make some comments on other things, that are much more important, in my post.
So it's not cheating when you are wasting more time?

As for the rest of your post, it's a repetition of what others had said so that has already been dealt with.
 
Not realy, as i sad good would be to vassalize denmark, i wonder what is your opinion on that.
My forehead has this response:
493051-anime_sweatdrop_1_large.png
 
What are some good ways to get a CB on Utrecht? When I have ignored them they will jump on Gelre taking their Core. When I warn them they just sit there happily thwarting me and my plans of Netherlands formation. They only time Ive had them oblige me was while playing as Brabant and having to concede defeat to France before I was ready to take them on. They tried to attack me and my vassal army when I was down.
 
A high DIP ruler should give you a better chance to fire the "Boundary Dispute" events.
Apart from that you could try "Bill of Rights" - that should grant you the "free people" CB.
 
Kingepyon, the method I talked about involved no unlawful territory at all. With it you can form the nation at around 1425 spending no more than 14 infamy, assuming you DoW Hainut to leave the union. Trade is harder during the 20 years you wait for diplo-annexation, but you can still hold some and you'll still be a world leader in technology during those times.

The method you choose relies on getting the right missions and on Utrecht and Friesland being willing to diploannex. In other words, it's just as luck-based as waiting on boundary disputes, if not more so (okay, obviously you can save scum more easily). The advantage of playing the boundary dispute game instead is that you're not committed to the strategy, you're not carrying infamy around while waiting for the right missions to fire (free-trade at 14 infamy is suicide for your compete chance), and in the meantime you can hypertech as a small merchant power.

Of course, you're right in that your method is a somewhat more reliable (though again, it depends on whether the diploannex mission fires or not) means of forming the Netherlands quickly, and if forming the Netherlands ASAP is your goal for its own sake, then you don't have a better option than your strategy. On the other hand, Holland really doesn't need to expand so quickly; you should be worried more about your tech position and colonization, less about the Netherlands cores.
 
OP, the strategy you have in your first post is well thought-out and should work well. In the longer term, looking at colonizing and picking off small west HRE countries when the emperor is busy in other wars is good. Attacking rich Italy (to supplement your rich homeland) might be good idea.
 
The last few times I tried to play as Holland my biggest problem was Burgundy consistently claiming my throne at some point. Considering the kind of missions Holland and Burgundy tend to get (= their prestige is guaranteed to be far higher than mine) and the relative army sizes that claim/PU is pretty much a slightly delayed game over.
Are there any ways out of that other than counting on some very favourable war against them or similar lucky turn of events? How does one prevent such an unfavourable claim in the first place?

Incidentally, I try to keep Burgundy on my good side but even when I fight no wars whatsoever - other than perhaps an initial one against Hainaut - and generally do nothing untoward I find our relations invariably drop below -100 at some point. It happens somewhere in the first few decades and I'm entirely clueless as to why it occurs. I usually only notice it by accident, in fact typically upon receiving an "improve relations with Burgundy" quest out of the blue.
What might be causing this seemingly inexplicable change in our relations?

Note that I'm still on HttT, in case that might make a difference.
 
Heck, forming the Netherlands before you start colonizing is pretty advantageous in itself. That means you won't get revolt risk in the colonies you owned when you did the tag change. If you developed a colonial empire as Holland and formed the Netherlands, have fun managing revolts until the colonies core.

What? I've formed plenty of countries with colonies and never had more revolts because of it.

I never did Netherlands but I've made UK with England, Spain with Portugal, Italy with Naples and HRE with plenty others, and never had more revolts because I enacted a decision that changed my country.
 
The last few times I tried to play as Holland my biggest problem was Burgundy consistently claiming my throne at some point. Considering the kind of missions Holland and Burgundy tend to get (= their prestige is guaranteed to be far higher than mine) and the relative army sizes that claim/PU is pretty much a slightly delayed game over.
Are there any ways out of that other than counting on some very favourable war against them or similar lucky turn of events? How does one prevent such an unfavourable claim in the first place?
That depends on when Burgundy tries to claim your throne. A few things come to mind:
- not be a monarchy (noble republic is an early opportunity).
- have a high legitimacy (get lots of royal marriages), since you start out with 0 legitimacy coming out the of PU with Hainaut.
- Very gamey: grant them military access. This will give them a -5 stability hit when declaring war on you.