Give countries in the HRE a fixed government type

[Twoflower]

I really like the new countries and diversity in the HRE. One thing that has always bothered me (and I noticed again when playing Austria in 1.30 and trying to keep most countries in the HRE alive): you can revive annexed HRE minors and there are several new tags which you can release in a peace, but they will be released with your government type - i.e. if you are Austria (or any other emperor) tags that represent bishoprics and cities will always be released as counties/duchies (i.e monarchies).

This is somewhat strange because the HRE countries, including the releasable countries, represent relatively specific entities. For example the new tag of Donauwörth does not represent a "County of Donauwörth", but the free imperial city of Donauwörth (or actually Schwäbischwerd, but the naming is another matter). Aquileia represents the (theocratic) Patriarch of Aquleia, not a republic or a county of Aquileia. If someone had ever annexed the Archbishopric of Trier, the Holy Roman Emperor would have forced the aggressor to return it to the Archbishop, not to some new count of Trier.
If the HRE countries have national ideas, these are often tied quite closely to their government form (e.g. Trier has an idea "influence of the Domkapitel" - why would a republic or a county have a cathedral chapter? -; Frankfurt has an idea "Freie Stadt Frankfurt" - Free city of Frankfurt - which gives republican tradition and is entirely worthless for a monarchy or theocracy; Cleves has an idea "Strategic marriages" which obviously makes no sense for theocracies or republics).

It is not a big game-breaker, but I think it would be very desirable to either:
- give all cities in the HRE republic as fixed government type, and give all bishoprics in the HRE theocracy as a fixed government type if they are catholic
or (less restrictive, but probably harder to implement):
- give countries released by Imperial Liberation and Imperial Ban their former (or in the case of countries that don't exist at game start, their historical) government type.

 

[thetrue7man]

I'd be down with revising the way this mechanic works just in general.

I think just making all countries released except with the button to release vassals get their historical government type, and making vassals you release give you the choice between their historical government type or yours, would overall be better than the current mechanic.

The hre is certainly the most dubious case and something to the effect of your second option would clean it up a bit without a big redesign.

 

[Pbhuh]

Another option could be whenever a decision is made, an event fires where you can restore the country as it was or put family or local noble on the throne, gaining corruption, but increased friendliness

 

[FantasticFwoosh]

Only if it would justify the transition of a Free City to whatever new or enforced HRE type (by default it goes to a oligarchy)

Township with mayoral leaders? Or would the Free City (Cities) status remain but the status of immediate response by the emperor be retracted? That sounds a little OP, but it'd be nice for some more elaboration on what things a HRE republic can do, such as perhaps a reform to engage with becoming the HRE emperor by presenting a representative.

Im currently running a goslar republic campaign playthrough and i will say its a very efficient form of government economically to upkeep, if the HRE version was at all any way inferior i would emigrate out of the empire entirely and it'd render some choices like Republic Germany (which gets 0.25 republican/1 legitimacy/ 1 devotion or something) in its traditions relatively null and void. My objective is to subvert of to destroy the empire from within, so i feel happy about the state of republics being able to wreak havoc making unelectable candidates as i gradually rid Central Europe of monarchy.

Also all your republic vassals you spit out automatically convert to your religion regardless of what they had before, which is a added bonus other forms of government do not have access to for navigating around, in the HRE german states being able to cover both catholic and protestant with easy choices like the reformed faith to milk republican cultural sufferage and humanitarian ideas.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

This change is great for the purpose of immersion in some cases, but can make some game situations a bit awkward and does break immersion in other cases. If Protestant Netherlands released Trier as an independent nation it is highly unlikely they would release the nation back to the Archbishop appointed from Rome. If Revolutionary France released Aragon, they probably won't be releasing it as a Feudal Monarchy. If someone releases Milan what government form will it take on? Will it be an Ambrosian Republic or will it be returned to the control of a royal family? If Iroquois was released would it revert back instantly to a Tribal Federation? Would it only apply to nations in the HRE and why should it only apply there? What if the Emperor has negative relations with the Papal States and want to seize Trier from the control of the Clergy? If Prussia for some reason was completely annexed and the Emperor called for them to be released they would probably throw away the Prussian system and bring them more in line.

Unfortunately I am not sure there could be a one size fits all solution, something somewhere will eventually have to be ahistorical.

 

[Twoflower]

This change is great for the purpose of immersion in some cases, but can make some game situations a bit awkward and does break immersion in other cases. If Protestant Netherlands released Trier as an independent nation it is highly unlikely they would release the nation back to the Archbishop appointed from Rome. If Revolutionary France released Aragon, they probably won't be releasing it as a Feudal Monarchy. If someone releases Milan what government form will it take on? Will it be an Ambrosian Republic or will it be returned to the control of a royal family? If Iroquois was released would it revert back instantly to a Tribal Federation? Would it only apply to nations in the HRE and why should it only apply there? What if the Emperor has negative relations with the Papal States and want to seize Trier from the control of the Clergy? If Prussia for some reason was completely annexed and the Emperor called for them to be released they would probably throw away the Prussian system and bring them more in line.

Unfortunately I am not sure there could be a one size fits all solution, something somewhere will eventually have to be ahistorical.

All your points are valid. Just a few considerations:
1. The ideal solution would probably to give a choice on which government type to release as. I just have no idea how this can be implemented UI-wise.

2. When using the Imperial Liberation CB, the emperor enforces the restoration of an unlawfully annexed territory to its rightful owner. Even if the emperor dislikes the Pope, it seems very hard for him to justify installing a Duke of Trier rather than restoring the territory to the Archbishop-Elector. Installing a puppet government of your choice should not be possible with the Imperial Liberation CB. Hence, perhaps my second suggestion makes more sense than the first one.

3. At least for the cities, it just does not make sense to release them as counties or bishoprics, simply because these provinces just represent a city and its immediate surroundings. A city cannot just be transformed into a territorial state.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

All your points are valid. Just a few considerations:
1. The ideal solution would probably to give a choice on which government type to release as. I just have no idea how this can be implemented UI-wise.

2. When using the Imperial Liberation CB, the emperor enforces the restoration of an unlawfully annexed territory to its rightful owner. Even if the emperor dislikes the Pope, it seems very hard for him to justify installing a Duke of Trier rather than restoring the territory to the Archbishop-Elector. Installing a puppet government of your choice should not be possible with the Imperial Liberation CB. Hence, perhaps my second suggestion makes more sense than the first one.

3. At least for the cities, it just does not make sense to release them as counties or bishoprics, simply because these provinces just represent a city and its immediate surroundings. A city cannot just be transformed into a territorial state.

1. Would probably be ideal but as you say I can't imagine UI-wise how it could be seamlessly implemented and it probably allows for an awful lot of exploits that would be hard to plug as you would have to have strict controls on what nations could have what government types (as you say it also makes it seem like a vassal-overlord sort of relationship to choose the governmental system of the newly released nation).
2. I could imagine the Emperor justifying getting rid of an Archbishop to replace him with someone more friendly to the Imperial throne. There were several cases of this happening. Also if the Emperor was Protestant he probably wouldn't be too keen on handing it back to the Archbishop or even to a newly instated Church of Trier. What if the Emperor released Dithmarschen? Would he be willing to give the peasants control of their country back?
3. There were some cities that were purely ruled by a lowly prince of some far-off dynasty, so it wouldn't seem too shocking to me that a prince would happily accept the grand city of Frankfurt as their new dominion even if it meant they really didn't get control anything other than a single castle (in fact Frankfurt was temporarily ruled by a Duke during the duration of the game).

What you suggest is likely possible, but it would require thousands of lines of code for every possible use case and likely historical or maybe even ahistorical event that could have occurred. Each update another few hundred lines of code would have to be added or updated to compensate for the various new government forms or religions or cultures etc. With the sheer amount of code and possible unique cases bug and exploits would be inevitable and likely take months upon months to patch till it is ready. I really like your intention to improve the immersion of the game in such a way, but personally I don't believe it is possible without a mammoth effort which few players would likely even acknowledge.