Defeating Austria for the Hearts of the Saxons

[fatedkoga]

Every Prussia game i ever play has me throwing money at Saxony and focusing most of my diplomatic effort trying to get Saxony to be #1 power in their eyes but every time I try Austria bans my embassy before i get close. Is there a way to beat Austria without going to war?

 

[alanschu]

Yup! In the early game I focus on the culture techs to help with my diplomatic influence a bit, but it's largely based around microing your rotation some what.

As soon as I've been discredited, I stop all influence because it causes Austria to typically stop as more. If I keep going with the -75% modifier Austria is going to blow me out of the water and since I'm already discredited, they are going to just wait to ban me. I remove all my influence and put it in other places (early game that includes Luxembourg, Holstein, Hannover, and the other small German states etc).

Once the discredit is over, I restructure my influence so that the majority is going into Saxony so I can gain points as quickly as possible. Usually they will have less than 25 points and can't discredit me right away. Once they have 25 points I wait a bit to see if they discredit me. They often don't, and if by 30 they haven't I stop all investment and wait until I clearly see Austria has stopped influencing as well. Once this happens, I put everything back into Saxony which will usually cause them to discredit me again. At which point I repeat. (incidently, I do this for all of Austria's Sphere. I just do Saxony first because they are key for NGF).

In early game I spend most of the time on the diplomacy screen managing my influence and dealing with discredits and the like.

 

[joe9594]

This is the best way of doing it. The AI tends to burn influence discrediting when you can just go somewhere else. It is kind of unfortunate that the only way of getting control someone else's sphere member is by using the AIs stupidity. Maybe it can be improved in V3.

 

[LiberiusX]

Well....the influence system needs some work for sure. In my recent Prussia game, an event fired that removed saxony from Austria's sphere and put them in mine. Might have been a fluke.

Also, you could just ignore saxony and wait for the pan-German events to fire. Not only will this free up influence from other German minors, since you will annex them peacefully, but if you get lucky, rebels will collapse the Saxony government, making them hostile to Austria.

 

[Kovax]

In most cases, you can wait for some other country to spam influence, and Austria will burn a Discredit or Ban on them instead of you. That leaves Austria with insufficient Influence to stop you. Once they get up to around 45 points, and haven't Discredited me, I stop all Influence there and wait for them to burn their points on someone else. The best way to not get hit bay a Ban or Discredit is to NOT step in front of it. As long as you're not actively putting points into influencing, the AI will never hit you with its diplomatic weapons. I NEVER spend any Influence points on offense during the first 2-3 of days of the game, until most of the countries have shot their initial volley of Discredits. You can put a pip or two into a country that's already in your Sphere, until Austria, UK, and France have burned their 25 discretionary points, then pounce on whatever you want.

In the long run, waiting for some other country to take the Discredits or Ban for you then forces those countries to burn Political points to repair the damage to Relations, while you're still on good terms with both.