The Holy Roman Empire business that is. After my most recent ironman experience I think a mid-1460 to early 1470s HRE is possible from an Austria start without anything really breaking your way (I did it with no Burgundy inheritence) as long as your starting ruler doesn't die. Combine zaikantos's elector trick and the "improve relations with elector" mission and it's pretty smooth sailing. The only random bit is whether you'll get a chance to defend the empire once you've forbidden the internal wars.
All credit to zaikantos for discovering the elector trick, which is as follows: warring on electors to take away their elector-hood doesn't create the malus that the tooltip says it does. It's basically treated the same as going to war for a little cash. Granting an elector-hood gives you 10 imperial authority, and 65+ imperial authority lets you force through an HRE reform. Considering Austria can crush all of the electors pretty easily, setting up an elector merry-go-round that nets crazy imperial authority doesn't really tax your military reserves.
You can't grant electorship when your authority is at zero, which could present a problem with keeping the party going, except for the mission. When you have an elector whose opinion of you is below 50 there's a decent chance that you'll get an improve relations mission that pays out 1 stability and 5 imperial authority for getting their opinion above 100. The trick with this is that you want the final push to get you over 100 to be making a rival of yours the same as the elector. Then you can switch the rival (e.g. to the elector) and make the elector eligible for the mission again without doing permanent harm to the relationship.
Since making a rival re-computes the available missions, you basically get to pay 10 dip to fire off another chance at the mission showing up. I'll actively hunt it out once I start hitting mid-40s IA, and keep the mission active until the reform goes through. Then change rivals back, send a little gift, and bam, the train keeps rolling.
I got to the Erbkaisertum November 1460 without anything weird happening (you want to fire off the Landfriede with five or six electors in your pocket for one last burst). At that point you're kind of at the mercy of whether outside parties want to attack. Picking up defender of the faith helps, but there's no guarantee.
In my game Genoa kept poking people in the eye--they picked up Kaffa and sparked a war with Crimea and later Aragon got grabby over Corsica. That was enough to get to Revoke the Privilegia, which is itself pretty sweet--the member states don't count against your vassal cap, and the way they swarm over enemies is very reminiscent of watching HRE blobs blast people in CKII.
I finally got tired of waiting for people to attack and went after Burgundy to get them to release their hoard of HRE members. Combined with resisting the Danish/Swedish/Norwegian attempt to grab Holstein, that let me make it to full HRE-hood in June of 1474. Getting there pre-1470 definitely seems possible with friskier neighbors.
This seems like the best base to try at the WC achievement, at least until Paradox blocks it by making the elector revocation malus work as described.
All credit to zaikantos for discovering the elector trick, which is as follows: warring on electors to take away their elector-hood doesn't create the malus that the tooltip says it does. It's basically treated the same as going to war for a little cash. Granting an elector-hood gives you 10 imperial authority, and 65+ imperial authority lets you force through an HRE reform. Considering Austria can crush all of the electors pretty easily, setting up an elector merry-go-round that nets crazy imperial authority doesn't really tax your military reserves.
You can't grant electorship when your authority is at zero, which could present a problem with keeping the party going, except for the mission. When you have an elector whose opinion of you is below 50 there's a decent chance that you'll get an improve relations mission that pays out 1 stability and 5 imperial authority for getting their opinion above 100. The trick with this is that you want the final push to get you over 100 to be making a rival of yours the same as the elector. Then you can switch the rival (e.g. to the elector) and make the elector eligible for the mission again without doing permanent harm to the relationship.
Since making a rival re-computes the available missions, you basically get to pay 10 dip to fire off another chance at the mission showing up. I'll actively hunt it out once I start hitting mid-40s IA, and keep the mission active until the reform goes through. Then change rivals back, send a little gift, and bam, the train keeps rolling.
I got to the Erbkaisertum November 1460 without anything weird happening (you want to fire off the Landfriede with five or six electors in your pocket for one last burst). At that point you're kind of at the mercy of whether outside parties want to attack. Picking up defender of the faith helps, but there's no guarantee.
In my game Genoa kept poking people in the eye--they picked up Kaffa and sparked a war with Crimea and later Aragon got grabby over Corsica. That was enough to get to Revoke the Privilegia, which is itself pretty sweet--the member states don't count against your vassal cap, and the way they swarm over enemies is very reminiscent of watching HRE blobs blast people in CKII.
I finally got tired of waiting for people to attack and went after Burgundy to get them to release their hoard of HRE members. Combined with resisting the Danish/Swedish/Norwegian attempt to grab Holstein, that let me make it to full HRE-hood in June of 1474. Getting there pre-1470 definitely seems possible with friskier neighbors.
This seems like the best base to try at the WC achievement, at least until Paradox blocks it by making the elector revocation malus work as described.