Nobody joins the HRE anymore

[mrbraindead]

Since the Hotfix I can't get nations to join the HRE. Playing as Austria even vassals that are really small and are adjacent to the HRE or even me won't ever join. What do I need to do? Is there a way to roll back to 1.30 without the hotfix?

 

[Nagassh]

I've seen Ragusa join, presumably because the Ottoman guarantee broke. A few other OPMs that broke out of an exploding poland / Bohemia joined too. It does seem pretty rare though.

I've also had an Imperial Incident for my PU England to join, but the Emperor voted no despite flip-flopping between being inclined for for / against repeatedly and most of the HRE being in favor. I really wonder what influences that vote.

 

[mrbraindead]

I'm talking specifically of 1.30.3 not any other version. As I said not even my vassals joined. It looks more like the mechanic got broken.

 

[LukasYork]

It's not broken. It's like 5th thread about this past 2 months.
It's back to the way it was before Emperor, so it happens very rarely.
Not only the Emperor has to have a high opinion of a country but this country has to be significantly threatened.
When I as Pope got a lot of AE due to vassalizing Naples and Byz, both Ragusa and Albania joined HRE

If you are allied to some minor as an Emperor they are not feeling threatened

 

[Mortmal]

There's a video guide on youtube with nations joining HRE like mad, thats why people are making threads about it, they still refer to that. It's always one way or the other , it was too powerful they nerfed it to oblivion. Not that is the biggest issue with 1.3. DLC was released without QA and an absurdly OP HRE mechanism .

 

[Greene]

1.30(.1) was waay too much and then 1.30.2 was the same as pre-1.30 which is waaay too little. Mainly because they decided adding provinces is no longer the source of IA, but countries joining is (and countries hardly ever join).

 

[love sweden]

Honestly the HRE is such a disaster of a design and its so strange to see a region be actively made worse by a DLC wich focused on reworking it.

 

[Sakkawakkado]

fairly sure the HRE is working fine. its better then it was before atleast

 

[Imperium84]

Since the Hotfix I can't get nations to join the HRE. Playing as Austria even vassals that are really small and are adjacent to the HRE or even me won't ever join. What do I need to do? Is there a way to roll back to 1.30 without the hotfix?

The point is nations only join HRE to seek protection from considerable threats, otherwise no one will sacrifice its independence to join an empire and bow to an emperor who probably controls and allies most electors.

The hotfix makes it less frequent but still possible. In my game some minors like Ragusa, Burgundy (after beaten by France) and Teutonic Order joined HRE.

 

[Jomini]

There are several problems with the current setup as I see it:

1. This is yet another change-and-balance that moves key balance elements behind a paywall. Adding countries to the Empire requires a CB that the base game does not have access to? Why? I can understand locking the content for incidents but if the Emperors only way to increase IA gain is to force other nations in ... why exactly did this need to be pay-to-play?

2. The conditions for helping the Empire grow stronger and more cohesive are basically an Austria only feature at this point. Suppose you are playing Bohemia and want to expand the HRE. You are Hussite so you cannot take the title until after the League War. Anything you do is basically entirely dependent on the whims of the AI (nah we don't want good relations) or actually our greatest threat is not Poland who has a permanent cores ... its Austria who we do not even border. At most you can spend a lot of time, AE, admin points, and all the rest to add releasable princes to the HRE ... and acquire maybe 5 IA for your efforts before the Reformation.

3. Suppose I am playing some state (like say an historical England) and I want to bolster the Empire (say as a check on France historically and maybe the Ottomans in alt-history if we are facing off in Persia). How do I do that? I mean in past patches it was easy. I allied Austria, gave them territory from France or the OE and they got more IA to get a better budget/allies/etc.. And I could help out even if I planned to back somebody else during the League War (e.g. help Austria gain land from France, then let my ally Saxony take the Protestant crown). And now? If the AI elects some small state, forget it. I can, at best, dump gold onto the Emperor so they can get re-elected.

4. The AI is terrible at it. A successful Emperor play is to win the election ASAP. Release nations within the HRE. And then force states to join (with a previous war punching them out of bigger blobs if you are power gaming). The AI? If its lucky it will not let the princes consolidate too much, resolve maybe one non-Burgundian province or two with a Ban, and inherit until the Reformation. At which point it seems to fall apart quite quickly barring whacky League War outcomes. If you give the AI anything average you end up with a weak Emperor and an AI that cannot strengthen the Empire for love or money.

The current system is removed too much from the basics of the game. The HRE should be something that states other than the Emperor can strengthen or weaken without having to go through all sorts of convolutions.

 

[AndrewPiano]

I just don't understand why the fix has to be either/or. They should at least make your own vassals join. Otherwise, you have to wait to annex them, annex them, add your provinces, then release them again so they'll be a prince of the HRE. It's quite frankly silly and the developers are pathetic.

 

[Greene]

I just don't understand why the fix has to be either/or. They should at least make your own vassals join. Otherwise, you have to wait to annex them, annex them, add your provinces, then release them again so they'll be a prince of the HRE. It's quite frankly silly and the developers are pathetic.

It doesn’t have to be either/or. People in pre-1.30 complained that not enough nations were joining HRE (I share that opinion), so in the 1.30 update they changed it. Then they realised that change was bad and they messed up, too many nations were joining HRE now so they moved back to the pre-1.30 system.

It’s just carelessness on their part, I think they are looking for a way to make nations join HRE more often but not AS often as 1.30. But we’ll probably finally see that change in patch 1.35 Japan or something cause you know, why fix it now when you can fix it next year?

 

[LukasYork]

countries joining HRE in 1.30 wasn't intentional. They forgot to add some checks they removed for debugging. They wrote that on the forums somewhere. In 1.31 patch notes probably

 

[Il Barto]

otherwise no one will sacrifice its independence to join an empire and bow to an emperor who probably controls and allies most electors.

Yeah, but if that country is your vassal and no longer independent you should be able to force them to join. Without that ridiculous "annex, add, release"-cycle. It make no sense. I mean, you can force their king to abdicate and place your cousin on their throne, but not to peacefully join the EU?

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

You can mostly force countries to join by war now as the Emperor, with the Expand the Empire CB.

It’s better than nothing, I suppose, although it does feel meddlesome, takes your time away from conquering outside of Europe, and accumulates AE, strangely enough.

Attack a large country (France, Ottomans, Poland, Aragon...) make it release smaller states, wait out the truces, attack those smaller states and force them in.

And again. And again.

Edit: and hopefully, they’ll be small enough to both join the Empire and force-convert if wrong religion. Otherwise it’s a war #3 for the same clay.

 

[Calanon]

Polities joining the Empire should be rare. I know that in EUIV it's possible to make the HRE a much more centralised entity, but historically only East Frisia, Flanders and Artois joined the HRE after 1444. Hungary was never even incorporated.

 

[Mike1984]

Since the Hotfix I can't get nations to join the HRE. Playing as Austria even vassals that are really small and are adjacent to the HRE or even me won't ever join. What do I need to do? Is there a way to roll back to 1.30 without the hotfix?

Nations absolutely will join. In our multiplayer game, multiple nations joined the (player-led) HRE, to the considerable annoyance of the French player. And nations also joined for protection from the (AI but surprisingly strong) Ottomans. But, there needs to be a reason, like the fact that France is about to eat them if they don't.

You can mostly force countries to join by war now as the Emperor, with the Expand the Empire CB.

It’s better than nothing, I suppose, although it does feel meddlesome, takes your time away from conquering outside of Europe, and accumulates AE, strangely enough.

Attack a large country (France, Ottomans, Poland, Aragon...) make it release smaller states, wait out the truces, attack those smaller states and force them in.

And again. And again.

Edit: and hopefully, they’ll be small enough to both join the Empire and force-convert if wrong religion. Otherwise it’s a war #3 for the same clay.

It's not supposed to be easy to expand or unite the empire. It's something that was historically not really feasible by this point in history. And making it as simple as "beat France once and you have them in the empire" would be absurdly OP, given that you can balkanise them after to get more nations out of them.

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

Yep, understand.

I’m used to playing the Orthodox Christians (Byzantium and Russia mostly) so I’m used to dealing with a piece of land once

Learning a different mechanic, I suppose. Have just played as an HRE emperor as Spain, Italy, and Austria, no one ever joins despite loving me! I guess I shouldn’t tame the external threats too fast...

 

[Mike1984]

Yep, understand.

I’m used to playing the Orthodox Christians (Byzantium and Russia mostly) so I’m used to dealing with a piece of land once

Learning a different mechanic, I suppose. Have just played as an HRE emperor as Spain, Italy, and Austria, no one ever joins despite loving me! I guess I shouldn’t tame the external threats too fast...

Yeah, them just liking you isn't enough. In a legal sense, it's basically accepting vassalisation (members of the HRE are technically vassals of the emperor), only without any guarantee it will be the same country in charge in future. So they're not going to accept without a good reason.

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

Yeah, them just liking you isn't enough. In a legal sense, it's basically accepting vassalisation (members of the HRE are technically vassals of the emperor), only without any guarantee it will be the same country in charge in future. So they're not going to accept without a good reason.

Makes sense when explained like this, thank you.

I’ve been single-mindedly focused on getting the highest possible monthly IA uptick, thus my mindset. A new territory for me!