Upper Lorraine troubles as Otto

[Lord Hoosier]

After crushing Thankmar in my Iron Century Campaign as Otto, I was given the choice of invading Upper Lorraine. Louis IV immediately jumped to their defence and I fought him to an ugly white peace. My vassals are mad that I had their levies out for so long (-16 opinion). I am playing ironman so retrying is not an option unless I completely restart.

First, is this a workable situation? My goal was to get the HRE set up or at least be big enough to be a major player by the Crusades.

Second, if a restart is better, should I go for Upper Lorraine at all?

Thirdly, as I am married to England, will they ally me to beat up Louis next time around for Lorraine, if I stick with this as my campaign?

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

AI almost always accepts a call to arms. So England probably will help you.

 

[Serenity84]

I was also in the situation where I was weakened from the Thankmar rebellion and then some other uprising. I don't like that the event immediately declares war. The way it's written makes it sound like you just get a claim

 

[Lord Hoosier]

I was also in the situation where I was weakened from the Thankmar rebellion and then some other uprising. I don't like that the event immediately declares war. The way it's written makes it sound like you just get a claim

That's exactly what happened to me. I had an Slow Fever around a thought I could declare when it cleared up.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Just make sure you actually secure the alliance before going to war. And remember it can be possible to 'cycle' your vassal levies so you're letting some of them 'recharge' their opinion of you then swapping out, if you're in a situation where you can afford to not use them all at once.

 

[Lord Hoosier]

Just make sure you actually secure the alliance before going to war. And remember it can be possible to 'cycle' your vassal levies so you're letting some of them 'recharge' their opinion of you then swapping out, if you're in a situation where you can afford to not use them all at once.

How do you do that?

 

[Sunshine Moon]

How do you do that?

Assuming you mean the vassal levies thing: Just pick some vassals you really don't want to annoy any more, and either on the list of vassals in the military screen, or by going county by county on the map, raise only the levies of your other vassals. The ones whose levies you haven't raised, their opinion penalties of you will gradually go back down; when they're at an acceptable level, you can disband the vassal levies you've been keeping raised and raise the ones you left unraised until now, and now the ones whose penalties have still been climbing will start calming down.

You can't do this forever but it is a way to make the opinion penalties accumulate slower than usual. Again, I don't know the exact numbers you're working with here, so it may not be feasible to do this if you're going to need everything you can muster to stand a chance.

I used a similar method in a recent game to keep a large empire fighting wars in rapid succession; in one war I'd use the troops of my Greek vassals, then for another war hot on its heels use my Italian vassals to let my Greek ones calm down, and so on, so that levy opinion penalties basically became a thing of the past (the only time I needed all my troops was when a crusade was targeting me, and vassals don't mind being called on for that).

 

[BuddyLove]

Personally, if I were doing the Otto start, I'd restart if any of the 3 campaign wars failed (Thankmar, Lorraine, Italy), but I believe you only need to win Italy and Thankmar to be able to form HRE.