1st Iron Man Game (France) need advice

[LoftenHenderson]

I've played a few non iron man games so far but I'm not very experienced as an EU4 player so I wanted to try a relatively easy country for my first iron man game. I have all the DLC's except the last 3 (the Russia one, China one, and now the new middle east one).

It's 1503 and I'm playing France

I got my cores back from England and diplo-annexed Navarra early. I grabbed Provence while the were excommed) After that I got the Burgundian inheritance that was split with Austria (though Burgundy had gotten creamed in a previous war so I got 5 provinces and they got 6 – a lot of the Netherlands had been freed from Burgundy's PU by then). After that I vassalized Brittany.

I spent a while excommunicated for whatever reason (I think the Pope had a claim on Provence when I took it) and when it got lifted I had a bunch of free diplo spots so I allied 4 HRE electors and starting maxing out relations with them when I realized I could actually get myself elected. I'm sure you can see where this is going...

It took until the Austrian Duke/emperor died (without an heir no less) but I'm the the Holy Roman Emperor now (still not a member of the empire). Austria fell under a Bohemian PU when their duke died (rip habsburgs). I got the option to dispute it but accidentally declined. As things stand my heir is by far the leading choice for the next emperor.

My question is: Now what?
Should I join the empire (can I even do that and if so how)?
What can I do as the emperor and how do I hold on to it?
Should I try to free Austria from Bohemia?

Since Savoy is excommed and fighting the pope right now my plan is to take advantage and eat them in the immediate future. After that I have no idea what to do.

I'm rivaled to Ottos Muscovy and Mamluks (I didn't want to rival Castile because they're technically an ally).
England is being eaten by Scotland, Poland took local noble, Ottos haven't expanded much. Castile got Iberian wedding but lost it's Naples PU, however it got a PU on Hungary. It's impotent due to rebel problems currently (just had pretender rebels succeed, lost a war to Morocco, is being sieged by particularists).
I've taken diplomatic and defensive ideas so far, I have 0 AE and the largest army in Europe by quite a lot. I know I'm in a good position but I don't know what to do with it.
I also have like 6 cardinals, but I'm not the papal controller.

 

[Laurent1944]

If you play Ironman and don't know what to do next, you may still decide to chase an achievement. In your case, you can go after the "Better than Napoleon" one.

Or you can just restart a game to have a new challenge.

 

[frolix42]

Joining the HRE as France requires releasing a large amount of vassals in order to meet the requirement to be small. If you are going to join the HRE as France, you would want to start the process 11 NOV 1444, So doing it at this point in your game is pretty sub-optimal. You can become the Emperor without being a member. All that being said, the game is a sandbox and you can do whatever you want.

 

[Olterin]

I do believe that as Emperor of the HRE you can join at any time provided there's a province of yours that directly borders an HRE province. Being "small" isn't really a thing if you're already an Emperor who got elected from outside the HRE. It's a solid bunch of free IA too

If it's 1503 and you're a French Emperor of the HRE you could go for uniting it under your banner - passing the reforms, bonus points for smacking down protestants as they spawn. When you finally Revoke the Privilegia, you'll enjoy power like never before.

 

[LoftenHenderson]

I do believe that as Emperor of the HRE you can join at any time provided there's a province of yours that directly borders an HRE province. Being "small" isn't really a thing if you're already an Emperor who got elected from outside the HRE. It's a solid bunch of free IA too

If it's 1503 and you're a French Emperor of the HRE you could go for uniting it under your banner - passing the reforms, bonus points for smacking down protestants as they spawn. When you finally Revoke the Privilegia, you'll enjoy power like never before.

Okay, I think working through the reforms is a good goal. In the meantime if I annex Savoy with the AE I incur cause the electors to vote for someone else? What about Austria? Should I support their independence or leave them under Bohemia.

Also, how do I join the HRE. I have no idea.
Besides a +50 vote modifier what do I get from joining the empire? Is it feasible to keep the emperorship without joining?
Shadow kingdom fired so I could probably still expand into Italy even if I joined the empire. Only worry is AE – would it be worth it to take influence for the AE reduction?

 

[PhoenixG]

Okay, I think working through the reforms is a good goal. In the meantime if I annex Savoy with the AE I incur cause the electors to vote for someone else? What about Austria? Should I support their independence or leave them under Bohemia.

Also, how do I join the HRE. I have no idea.
Besides a +50 vote modifier what do I get from joining the empire? Is it feasible to keep the emperorship without joining?
Shadow kingdom fired so I could probably still expand into Italy even if I joined the empire. Only worry is AE – would it be worth it to take influence for the AE reduction?

I don't think you will. Just keep high opinion and high dip rep.
I think it's better the support Austrian independence.

Just keep adding province to the HRE. The moment you add your capital to the HRE you'll join. Although it will reduce you to duchy rank.
If you want to play with the HRE, influence and diplomatic ideas are a must. Mainly for the dip rep.

 

[LoftenHenderson]

I don't think you will. Just keep high opinion and high dip rep.
I think it's better the support Austrian independence.

Just keep adding province to the HRE. The moment you add your capital to the HRE you'll join. Although it will reduce you to duchy rank.
If you want to play with the HRE, influence and diplomatic ideas are a must. Mainly for the dip rep.

Okay, interesting. Thank you!
Is it worth it to demote myself to duchy just to join? Can the emperor not have a kingdom rank? Electors can be kingdoms can't they? But there's no way to become an elector for me is there?

 

[PhoenixG]

If you want to play with the HRE it's worth. Also since if you reach to the vassal swarm point and you haven't joined the HRE, the liberty desire calculation will get wonky.

There a two ways to become an elector. First if there are 6 electors the emperor can promote a prince to an elector (but not himself). Second you PU an elector and get lucky to integrate him on you rulers death. Both are heavily RNG, so no sure way to be one.

 

[deathbypie]

One thing to be aware of: If you add all your provinces the the empire, except your capital(to avoid joining), the only way you will get IA is by adding more provinces, since you will get a huge negative drain of "provinces owned by a non-member". Which is kind of silly.

 

[Olterin]

To join the HRE, you need to have your capital province join the HRE. Be aware that doing so will downgrade your country rank to duchy unless you're already an elector yourself (only exception to this rule are countries with fixed country rank, most notably the Pope). The advantage is indeed mainly in the boost to chances of being re-elected, however, by adding (your) provinces to the Empire, you gain an instant 1 Imperial Authority for every province added. AI adding provinces does the same, but that very, very rarely happens. A +50 vote modifier is rather big, if you check all the others - it's probably worth sacrificing kingdom government rank for.

Be aware that retaining the Emperorship and pushing for reforms drastically changes the playstyle - you don't *really* need to worry about aggressively expanding if you can secure your Emperorship. If you manage to successfully pass the reforms you'll own most of Europe anyway. By 1600. There are several ways on how to approach being Emperor, too, and all of them too lengthy to write about for me right now I'm afraid.

So instead I'll give you what I did with an Austria game of mine as a sort of template, it should be easily transferable. I went for the Bohemia and Hungary PUs to increase personal power (while reigning in Northern Italy but this is really only an Austria point). Austria with Bohemia is roughly equal to France in terms of how hard it can punch militarily, Hungary was just icing on the cake. After those steps were done I went for a rather unconventional no-expansion approach (other than getting the Burgundian land in the inheritance event but that had more to do with maintaining high passive IA gain). The key to quickly passing reforms is ensuring there are no internal wars in the Empire and no religious conflicts. So I picked up the religious idea group for that CB (yes I know it's at the end of the group, still worth it for this strategy). To avoid internal wars I took some key provinces throughout the Empire (the goal here is to have as many different princes bordering one of your provinces as possible), and spammed warnings on everyone who had a border with a prince bordering me. With judicious land claims in the Empire you can cover all of it this way. Getting those pieces of land is largely trivial, all it needs is one prince to refuse an Imperial request to return territory. The other part of this strategy relies on having borders with possible protestant nations - as you can see, this goes hand in hand with the previous point. As soon as the Reformation spawns, declare war on the offender and make sure to force-convert them when their capital is a reformation center - otherwise take most of their land and force-convert them. Priority targets are centers of Reformation. Force-convert them via peace deal (if in capital province) or via taking the province in question and converting it yourself (this is where the religious idea group comes in handy). If you can manage to kill most centers of reformations as they appear, you can maintain religious unity in the Empire for the most part and with any luck (and quick ruler succession for another boost in IA) you'll be able to pass Erbkaisertum before 1600. Once Erbkaisertum is passed, religious peace is enforced in the empire and no League Wars will fire. Always, always force-convert electors. No elector is ever allowed to be protestant. After you get to Erbkaisertum it's really smooth sailing.

With the specific circumstances of your game that Italy is no longer part of the Empire and also that Naples broke free, you can conquer those provinces (as AE allows) to add even more land (back) to the Empire and give a boost to Imperial Authority. It is also beneficial to release italian minors from lands you've added to the Empire, as having more princes speeds up the passive gain. Just make sure they don't get silly ideas, like eating all their neighbors.

As a footnote, I should add that the other way to pass reforms is to just eat all the land, add it to the Empire and push reforms that way. Each reform needs 50 provinces eaten, development doesn't matter. Also, be aware that as Emperor of the HRE you can core any province that's inside the Imperial borders (or I think directly adjacent).

... Hope I covered enough. I'm sure others will jump in to point out anything I might've missed.

 

[Atlanteax]

If you have over 1000 development and upgrade to Empire rank, you will not get pushed back down to Duchy after adding capital to HRE.

 

[LoftenHenderson]

Wow! That info will help a lot I think. Thank you so much for being so in depth.

I'm mostly feeling secure for reelection, though if I lose my diplo rep advisor and the curia diplo rep expires I might be in some trouble. 2 reforms have already been passed, but the reformation is coming pretty soon I imagine and things will get pretty hairy. Would it be worth it to join the empire now or wait, since there's no way I'll be able to keep my kingdom rank when I do join?

 

[LoftenHenderson]

If you have over 1000 development and upgrade to Empire rank, you will not get pushed back down to Duchy after adding capital to HRE.

its unlikely I'll make it to 1000 any time soon, I think I'm only in the 600's or 700's.

 

[Olterin]

It depends on what you are keeping kingdom rank for. Being Emperor can largely replace having kingdom rank. Plus, you can try some Personal Union (PU) shenanigans to try inheriting an elector slot - there was a thorough guide on PUs somewhere on this forum. If you inherit (not integrate) a Junion Personal Union partner who was also an HRE elector, and you yourself are an HRE member, you inherit the elector slot as well. I'd say it's worth the downgrade - you have plenty of time to go until the reformation, especially if there's already two reforms passed by 1503. You only need three more, and you have a solid 80ish years to go. That's very doable.

 

[LoftenHenderson]

Going to empire rank before joining the HRE isn't really feasible I don't think (I need 375 development still), the diplomat isn't a huge deal because I already get one from being emperor and another from ideas, but what happens if I have more states than I have capacity for states? Do states get demoted to territories? Or can I just not make more states?

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

If you have over 1000 development and upgrade to Empire rank, you will not get pushed back down to Duchy after adding capital to HRE.

Unless this is an aspect of the Persia patch, this is incorrect.

I did much the same campaign as TC as my last of the previous patch. France into HRE because I noticed I had never actually united the HRE. When I added my Capital I went down to duchy rank and lost my cultural union. I got it back when I formed the Greyskin.

 

[LoftenHenderson]

Unless this is an aspect of the Persia patch, this is incorrect.

I did much the same campaign as TC as my last of the previous patch. France into HRE because I noticed I had never actually united the HRE. When I added my Capital I went down to duchy rank and lost my cultural union. I got it back when I formed the Greyskin.

Hmm, losing the cultural union would be a pretty big blow wouldn't it? (That's the thing that makes me accept all Frankish cultures right?)

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Hmm, losing the cultural union would be a pretty big blow wouldn't it? (That's the thing that makes me accept all Frankish cultures right?)

It's really just some income. If you can get vassal swarm with the HRE is vastly outweighs some money.

 

[Atlanteax]

Unless this is an aspect of the Persia patch, this is incorrect.

I did much the same campaign as TC as my last of the previous patch. France into HRE because I noticed I had never actually united the HRE. When I added my Capital I went down to duchy rank and lost my cultural union. I got it back when I formed the Greyskin.

Worked for me on multiple occasions as of 12.2 ... it knocks you down if Kingdom rank, but not if Empire rank.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Worked for me on multiple occasions as of 12.2 ... it knocks you down if Kingdom rank, but not if Empire rank.

I think we need need someone else to confirm because our experiences are conflicting.