MattyG said:
What pun?
That's exactly what we have in Interregnum, Burgundy and Savoy get electors and the empire expans its boundaries.
We had to make it early in the game (January 10, 1419) because unfortunately the boundaries and electoral votes cannot be adjusted once the game begins.
Of course we want logical outcomes, although EU2's engine does not make this easy sometimes ...
We aren't seeking a single outcome, and we haven't the time and human resources to code for every possible logical outcome, so we chose two or three possibilities, those which create intriguing changes in direction, which are fun and which are suppportive of the MP environment.
People don't always coalesce against a threat and history is littered with examples of this. And even if ioutcome X was a rare outcome it would still be logical, in as much as any human response is logical. Over the years of debating outcomes I have often wondered if people find only a 'most likely' outcome as being the only logical or realisitic outcome. But truth is stranger than fiction. Who could have predicted Alexander the Great's conquests? Hardly the 'most likely outcome' or even 'logical'. Or Castille growing in 100 years to become the most powerful state in Europe? Or the discovery of the new world? There are so many examples. If studying history has taught me anything its that logical outcomes are rare.
But there is an analogy here, which is the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Infidels, again, but they didn't really see much coordinated resistence.
However, I think you make an interest remark about western European reactions to a unified Iberia under Al-Andalus. I think it ought to be a trigger for a reforming of France if this has not already happened.
But I still don't see why having a lock on the title of Emperor necessarily leads to Germany being formed. The HRE has been around for a while and there have been many powerful emperors, but Germany remains highly divided.
We need to start states small and not make it easy for a state to grow large. So, Bavaria can't simply become Germany in 1430 and inherit all of the German minors. Game-wise, there is no balance and no fun.
I also don't see why the electors will necessarily agree on who to elect, just because they are all Wittelsbachs. They might well hate one another.
I presume you are making a joke on the pun
but on to the rest of the post...
Well yes there are a number of historic incidents that don't fit the mold, does not necessarily make them illogical outcomes, just improbable ones (there is always that "B" and "C" choice in the G.O.D [games operational director] pop up screen that we don't ever see); and the game engine can take those into account through the aforementioned alternate choices.
But we also run into a cardinal rule for all works of fiction here: Reality does not have to make sense but fiction does. So when I say something is the most likely outcome I mean exactly that: If deciding the event on a dice roll the odds will skew towards that outcome. Doesn't make it a "lock" but it makes it far more likely to occur then not.
Now it is certainly possible that if the various electoral seats are in different branches of the Wittelsbach family that they might not in actuality vote for one of their own (in the event that they can't come to a decision of which member of the family is going to get it, or one cousin still holds a grudge from childhood etc), but the game engine does not do that very well... so we have to work with what we have, and what we have is a system that almost always has Bavaria as emperor.
So we can assume that the votes are spread out amongst the branches of the family and that they almost always vote themselves in (which tends to not make sense over the long haul of time, there is bound to be a squabble logically, the lack of variability here becomes a statistical outlier). Or we can assume based upon how the engine handles it that the votes are in the hands of a single branch which actually will tend to make a lot more sense based upon how the game acts.
And that is what will lead to the unification: A family that can vote themselves emperor without having to make the kind of compromises and promises that the Hapsburg's did (which kept the empire a loose structure as the various smaller states protected their bailiwick), would be able to do it through the existing system. They don't have to promise to the electors that they will not make the throne hereditary, they don't have to make promises about not changing much of the system, they don't have to do anything but look after their own interests and not the interests of those that wish to grow their own personal power at the empires expense.
It is not a guaranteed outcome, few things human are; but it is the most likely the most probable of outcomes. Think of each election as having an "A", "B", & "C" choice in which "A" is make the throne hereditary.... how many times in a row must the game make a "B" or "C" choice for the empire to NOT unite?
And how likely is that eventuality?
People today and even more so back then tend to look out after their own interests and tend to take the path that gives them greatest benefit or increases their power. Sure there are examples of that not happening (that "B" choice again), but it is still the more likely of outcome choices for a person. And we know that the Hapsburg's made an attempt at unifying the empire at least once with a far weaker position from which to start, and that the Wittelsbach's were equally ambitious and just as aggressive perhaps a bit more so given the number of wars they got themselves into with the Hapsburg's and the disparity in their countries sizes...
So we can make a factually based deduction that they will try to unify the empire, and that means that it is going to suck eggs being a German minor player.... you can always choose not to be annexed, but you are going to end up like Liechtenstein... small and surrounded probably selling stamps and tax breaks.
I can see an attempt to resurrect France, I alluded to it a bit in my other post; I also see how the various factions involved are going to spend a great deal of time fighting over who is the rightful one to do it because they have no method to solve that question other then combat.
But Germany doesn't have that particular problem.
That is what I am driving at: The unification of a German kingdom is the most probable of outcomes given the set up and human nature. It is not so much a question of "if" it happens but a matter of when.
EDIT:
To expand upon that a bit; given how Bavaria plays her hand in the game as has oft been reported, she ends up absorbing Germany quite a large percentage of times.
So not only can we make an argument for this happening based upon sound game theory reasons, human nature reasons, but also because the game tends to do it all on it' own reasons....
Fun is a relative and subjective perception, some fun may be lost in one aspect but fun will be generated in another in this turn of events. Those people that want to play Anhalt into being a major power may lose out here, but to be frank they had a near vertical wall in front of them anyway on that score; but the part of the game where people enjoy a gripping alternate history with a high degree of plausibility/probability would be greatly enhanced. So it becomes a matter of sacrificing the quite probable to the interests of the nearly impossible as a choice to some degree.