In the last few days I have played a few quick games with AoW, specifically to see how the new religious mechanics with Centers of Reformation and the Religious Leagues in the HRE worked.
In all of them the Protestants where hopelessly outnumbered and easily crushed by the Catholics. The main reasons I could identify for this where:
1. Few to no major powers go Protestant:
Now this is something that I thought was already an issue pre-AoW. Usually the only Nations to go Protestant where German Minors, Scandinavia and Britain. Which are for the most part second-rate Powers and even if Britain is strong and united the AI does a poor job projecting power on the continent. In some games however you got lucky and France would flip.
With the new Center of Refomration mechanic (which i like conceptually) this is now even more unlikely. In the few games I have had the Protestant CoR are usually firmly clustered (most of the time one in Bohemia, one in Scandinavia and one in Northern Germany) so that the chance of Austria (which was majority Protestant before the counterreformation!) or France to convert is fairly low. As the Reformed CoR also tend to spawn in already protestant areas Protestantims as a whole tend to stay a pretty much central European phenomenon. Now this would be so terrible if not for point 2 ...
2. All Catholic powers join their Holy League:
This is really bad. Not only is Austria more often than not one of the top 5 military powers in Europe, but all too often they are also joined by Spain, France, Portugal and the Polish Commonwealth. In my last game this meant that the Catholic League had 4 of the 5 greatest powers in Europe to call on. Now this isn't only bad balancing but also terribly historically inaccurate.
While in many ways it is tempting to call the 30 year war the first general European War it wasn't quite as extrem. In the end only those powers who had a direct and dire interest in who controlled the HRE got involved. Which is why Poland for example stayed out of it completely. France on the other hand actively supported the Protestant cause to disrupt their Habsburg rivals.
So what ought to be done? Well if you ask me both these issues should see some changes. The Centers of Reformation are a fine idea. But Protestantism should be able to spread even into regions further away from them. If the countries to which it spreads decide to stay Catholic they will probably become so again without a CoR nearby after a while (which happened in many regions of Europe in the later 16th and early 17th century). Secondly the AI likelihood of joining a Holy League if he is not a Member of the HRE should probably changed and reduced. It's kind of insane to have all of Catholic Europe chomping at the bit to go fight a religious war in a foreign realm.
Anyway has anybody else observed similar things in their games or am I off the reservation on all this?
In all of them the Protestants where hopelessly outnumbered and easily crushed by the Catholics. The main reasons I could identify for this where:
1. Few to no major powers go Protestant:
Now this is something that I thought was already an issue pre-AoW. Usually the only Nations to go Protestant where German Minors, Scandinavia and Britain. Which are for the most part second-rate Powers and even if Britain is strong and united the AI does a poor job projecting power on the continent. In some games however you got lucky and France would flip.
With the new Center of Refomration mechanic (which i like conceptually) this is now even more unlikely. In the few games I have had the Protestant CoR are usually firmly clustered (most of the time one in Bohemia, one in Scandinavia and one in Northern Germany) so that the chance of Austria (which was majority Protestant before the counterreformation!) or France to convert is fairly low. As the Reformed CoR also tend to spawn in already protestant areas Protestantims as a whole tend to stay a pretty much central European phenomenon. Now this would be so terrible if not for point 2 ...
2. All Catholic powers join their Holy League:
This is really bad. Not only is Austria more often than not one of the top 5 military powers in Europe, but all too often they are also joined by Spain, France, Portugal and the Polish Commonwealth. In my last game this meant that the Catholic League had 4 of the 5 greatest powers in Europe to call on. Now this isn't only bad balancing but also terribly historically inaccurate.
While in many ways it is tempting to call the 30 year war the first general European War it wasn't quite as extrem. In the end only those powers who had a direct and dire interest in who controlled the HRE got involved. Which is why Poland for example stayed out of it completely. France on the other hand actively supported the Protestant cause to disrupt their Habsburg rivals.
So what ought to be done? Well if you ask me both these issues should see some changes. The Centers of Reformation are a fine idea. But Protestantism should be able to spread even into regions further away from them. If the countries to which it spreads decide to stay Catholic they will probably become so again without a CoR nearby after a while (which happened in many regions of Europe in the later 16th and early 17th century). Secondly the AI likelihood of joining a Holy League if he is not a Member of the HRE should probably changed and reduced. It's kind of insane to have all of Catholic Europe chomping at the bit to go fight a religious war in a foreign realm.
Anyway has anybody else observed similar things in their games or am I off the reservation on all this?
