Austria, the empire questions

[raahoj]

Hi all thx for reading.

My question is How do I play to make all the reforms and inherit the hole empire? I usually play as austria but only 1 reform is enacted and then alot of non catolics appear and fuck it up. also france spain and poland attacks, and im never asked to help defend even though im the emperor.

should I pick other ideas or which to pick?

another question is how do I get 75% power in wien trade note?

any benefits to forming germany or prussia etc?

I play vanilla no mods, no world conquest. should I buy an expansion?

thx for your time, I hope I get alot of answers

 

[Laurent1944]

I should admit I have no idea how to play vanilla now, and what has been included in vanilla from last changes. As for buying DLCs, I advice you to buy "Art of War", "Common sense" and "Rights of Man" that are the most generalists and will give you access to many useful functions. If you want to play in the HRE, the last DLC "Emperor" may be interseting, but while the former three will be each at 5$/euros during each sales period (1 or 2 in every trimester), Emperor will be at 15.

Other than that:
1) you will defend an HRE country only if it is directly attacked, if it joins a war as an ally, you can't. You can try to ally the attacked country to join the war on its side.
2) when the reformation starts, attack the center of reformations as soon as they appear: if you change the religion of the province they are in (best way is when they are in an one-province country, force the country to change religion) the center will disappear.
3) as for ideas, influence is a good choice for Austria. Ignore Exploration/Expansion.
4) to get 75% power in Wien trade, you have to conquer as many provinces as possible in it, build buildings that raise power trade and force your enemy to give you trade power in peace deals.
5) Prussia has an awesome military government but requires you to swap of culture and to be protestant, so it is not easy for Austria, Germany you can do it but Austrian ideas are better for HRE

 

[Emoneh]

I play with all expansions on so some of this might be a little off. If you want the full HRE/Austria experience, you should probably buy Emperor at least.

As a first step, you need positive ticking IA. That means addressing the sources of negative ticking IA, primarily heretic princes as you say. You need to declare war on them or their allies & use the enforce religion peace deal. Make sure you peace out all heretic allies separately with that deal - don't ignore them or just settle for gold. Free cities are a particular problem because you can't declare war on them directly (without consequences), so target their allies. Doing this is your biggest priority. Beyond that, reconquer lost imperial territory, make sure there are 12 free cities, and force your enemies to release countries in peace deals to maximise the number of princes. But remember that if you release a country with mostly protestant/reformed land, they will follow that religion, making the problem worse. Once you pass the third reform (at least with Emperor) you get access to the expand empire CB which lets you declare on small countries to force them into the empire, which will increase IA gain a lot.

Diplomatic & influence ideas are strong for Austria, particularly diplomatic, because they help you solidify your control over the emperorship, have a lot of friends and burn off AE quickly. Also make sure you're strong militarily.

Conquer & upgrade centres of trade in Wien, build trade buildings, steer trade from upstream nodes.

Don't form Prussia or Germany. The final HRE reform lets you unify the HRE into a single country, which is the alternative if you want to go down the HRE route.