Lesson X: Hodgepodge
Hello there, beautiful reader. It's been awhile, hasn't it? Indeed. You look better than ever. I was given some screenshots by Gibskov (If you have any screenshots of problems you're having in-game, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PM them to me. Thanks!) so it's time for me to finally stop being lazy and write another lesson.
Now then, time to get started.
An often overlooked feature of the game is the ability to use
religious decisions. I know I didn't really find out about these until I had already been playing for quite some time.
What do we see here? Well, this is a screen for religious decisions, as you could probably deduce by context. More specifically, these are the religious decisions that are available to those countries of the Catholic faith. The biggest dog on the block is "Embrace the Counter-Reformation". If you're Catholic, you pretty much just take this decision when you can. There's almost no point in not taking it, except for the fact that certain ideas, like Ecumenism, prevent you from taking this decision. But we're not here to talk specifics, you can figure those out on your own.
No, rather, I wanted to point out the existence of this whole panel itself. Those veterans reading this are probably chuckling to themselves, but I seriously just cannot stress enough that these are a thing. Most religious decisions aren't very good unless you're in a specific position, so it's easy to forget about these, especially if you play a lot of Muslim countries (holy crap their RDs SUCK). But there you go.
Now onto some Imperial politics.
Come the Reformation, the Emperor has basically two choices: Remain Catholic and force all the convertors back to Catholicism OR switch religions and begin forcing Catholic nations to turn. Every nation in the Empire you turn from heresy as Emperor grants you ten Imperial Authority. So, if you're going for an HRE unification, it's often a good idea to switch (just make sure to start patching up your relations with everyone ASAP) as Imperial Authority is needed for reforms as well as helping majorly in holding onto the office.
If you're the Emperor, it's generally a good idea to stay Catholic, UNLESS you're going for reforms, than the extra authority is a huge deal. I couldn't tell you what to go for, but either one is equally strong if played correctly. However, nothing is more fun than watching the sea of yellow evaporate under an encroaching wave of blue.
Sorry for such a short comeback update, but I'm getting a new computer soon and I'll finally be able to play! Won't that be fantastic?