Patch 1.4. Please Nerf the HRE (Austria)

[aragonFTW]

Austria struggles often enough.

It should be a real threat to any human player when the last 3 imperial reforms start to happen, regardless of the emperor.

I think you are right when you say the AI should take this threat seriously and attempt to stop it (ala Napoleon in our time) rather than specifically damaging the historically appropriate Hapsburg ideas.

 

[petertel123]

Afaik the HRE should actually be decentralising, but now it's the other way around

 

[Dr. B]

Interesting information, has anyone actually made the emperor revoke a reform?

If you have, please tell what is correct:

A) You must have 100% definite warscore, meaning occupy all the emperors land
B) You must have 100% definite warscore, meaning occupy all the emperors land + vassals and/or PU partners
C) It is enough to beat them decisively for 80+%ish to make the "revoke reform" offer green

 

[Incompetent]

Well, that's the only problem I see with Austria/HRE. Historically, you had most of the nations in Europe dedicated to keeping Austria in check for most of this period. If the player can't be bothered to participate, player gets the consequences.

In that case, the problem is that the AI doesn't realise the existential peril it faces if it's anywhere near the HRE and isn't Emperor. The French AI especially should be much more aggressive about preventing this calamity.

The HRE as a regular 'end-game boss' doesn't belong in a historical game. It makes about as much sense to have to fight the Draka.

 

[Hootieleece]

Austria unifies the HRE too easily.......in my current game they unified it in 1625 without blobbing at all. And Every game I start Austria unifies HRE it is just a matter of time. During 1.2 and before I actually saw the Emperorship change hands and fall into some OPM's hands.

I think the problem lies in Austria's NI's. They make controlling the Empire diplomatically too easy and add "Lucky" nations bonus recipe for disaster. I would be fine with it if united by AI 1 time in 10, but it happens every game.

 

[G_Morgan]

In that case, the problem is that the AI doesn't realise the existential peril it faces if it's anywhere near the HRE and isn't Emperor. The French AI especially should be much more aggressive about preventing this calamity.

The HRE as a regular 'end-game boss' doesn't belong in a historical game. It makes about as much sense to have to fight the Draka.

The AI should get a relationship penalty for every reform the emperor passes. Not a huge penalty but enough that by the time the title is hereditary the emperor will struggle to keep external allies.

 

[Xara]

This is part of the problem. If a minor elector can't enact a reform to make the HRE hereditary, it will eventually revert back to Austria (or Bohemia).

You don't understand. It gets stuck because it WON'T go back to Austria. A tiny nation like Saxony that gets elected receives huge penalties to passing a reform because they are a 'weak emperor', and cannot enact any further reforms. Thus, they continue to accrue IA up to the 100 limit, because they can't spend any. However, every point of IA currently in stock applies a +1 to the vote to get them re-elected as Emperor. Thus, they sit at 100 IA with a +100 bonus to being re-elected from every elector, which can easily lead to even an OPM getting re-elected again and again and again, putting the reform progress in limbo. At that point, it only ends if they die while actively at war with too many electors, or straight up get annexed.

I've seen it happen any number of times.

 

[Guancyto]

Interesting information, has anyone actually made the emperor revoke a reform?

If you have, please tell what is correct:

A) You must have 100% definite warscore, meaning occupy all the emperors land
B) You must have 100% definite warscore, meaning occupy all the emperors land + vassals and/or PU partners
C) It is enough to beat them decisively for 80+%ish to make the "revoke reform" offer green

C. It's just like releasing Styria from them, beat them bad enough and the 'demands exceed warscore' penalty will dwindle to nothing.
(B is never the case, not even for Full Annexation)

Erbkaisertum (the hereditary reform) is your "go" signal if you're going to revoke reforms, once they revoke the privilegia and make all HRE minors their vassals your job gets many times trickier.

 

[lucaluca]

I think they should either make it much harder to form the HRE, or code the AI of France, Hungary, Poland, Brandeburg, the Ottomans, Sweden and the Netherlands to prioritize revoking reforms in the HRE. Maybe make it a mission for all the countries that border the emperor

 

[unmerged(463193)]

nerf ottomans too. they have 400k forcelimit and 700k army in my game in 1700.

 

[TheBloke]

Whatever else happens to the HRE (and personally I think it's fine as it is - with the exception of the OPM-elector issue that needs some attention), for the love of God please fix that ridiculously bad colour.

Forming the HRE is the single most decisive, powerful event in the game. The resulting nation is a behemoth, veritably dripping with power and prestige. And what does it get? Some barely visible, washed-out grey. Like a wet Tuesday in February. Utterly forgettable.

It should be a vibrant Imperial Purple, the desired colour of empires the world over. Or a fearsome blood red, chilling the souls of its enemies. Or even a blue, highlighting its powerful hereditary monarch. Anything, anything, except that faded, inconsequential, pathetic non-colour.

 

[might]

Even though I am expanding in the middle of the HRE, they still managed to get the reform out

 

[LiberiusX]

HRE has formed, or been on track to form, around 1650 in every one of my games.

It doesn't need to be nerfed so much as the Reformation needs to be buffed. The Reformation doesn't do near enough damage to the Emperor's armies and IA as it should. Also, IA is still pretty easy to get, even for the AI(confusing, no?).

Still, Austria's armies aren't particularly difficult to defeat. Just kick them down early and keep them down. (I've also found it useful to keep relations good with Austria's neighbors, so you can enforce peace).

 

[TheBloke]

Regarding the OPM-elector issue: seems like there could be a very simple fix for this. IA should decay, like Prestige.

The rate of decay could be something like -2 per year, and there could be ways to reduce that decay. For example, passing a reform could reduce it for a few years - therefore benefiting active Emeperors.

This would serve both to make reforms/forming HRE a little harder - but not impossible - and mean that if an OPM gets elector, but is otherwise unable to pass any reforms, he will eventually lose the IA and someone else, hopefully someone better able to pass reforms, will take over.

Perhaps the decay could even be allowed to create negative IA, thus meaning that electors who are unable to accrue more IA to counterbalance the decay will get a malus to being re-elected and will eventually be usurped.

The above needs to balanced and thought about more than I have, but some principle along these lines seems like it could fix a couple of issues, and encourage activity as Emperor, and remove Emperors who are unable to be active.

I might also be in favour of completely removing the 'hereditary emperor' reform. I don't think it's good that after a certain time, the Emperor can never be replaced (except by annexation but in the case of Austria, that's not likely to ever happen.) I think that preventing the change of emperor limits opportunities and strategy. Maybe that reform could give a boost to remaining emperor, like an automatic +25 or +50 vote points, but not make it automatic.

 

[TheBloke]

Another thought:

When a new emperor takes over, they get an automatic +25 prestige, and a five-year bonus to for example, morale, manpower. This highly encourages nations to try and become emperor (AI should be coded to understand this)

BUT, when a new emperor takes over, the most recent one (or even two) reform is immediately cancelled.

Result: More nations try and be emperor, and the more often the emperorship changes hands, the slower the reform process.

In my game I recently became Emperor for the first time ever. It took some planning and strategising (and asking lots of questions on the forum!), but it wasn't that hard, because I'm already a very blobby GBR with Spain in a PU. What I was surprised about was that when I became Emperor, I inherited the exact same HRE that already existed. Austria had passed three reforms already, and I just took that over. I was then able to immediately pass the fourth reform with the IA I generated by adding all my territory to the empire.

It was kind of like I let Austria do the hard work to pass three reforms, then I just stole their work from them - with not much more effort, maybe less, than it took them to pass those reforms.

I would be in favour of emperor change cancelling at least one reform, as I think each new emperor should have to do his own work. In the most extreme example, I could have waited until Austria passed five reforms, and then taken over and immediately passed Proclaim Erbkaisterum and made it impossible for anyone else to ever replace me - despite the fact that I'd have only been emperor for a month, and Austria had been for 140 years. (Impossible except for getting 100% WS against me, but that's a tough call that the AI is unlikely to ever achieve.)

The HRE rewards are great, so I think the work required should be large too. And I think there should be more encouragement for nations to take it over, in the form of bonuses on becoming emperor, but that should also result in increasing the work involved.

I like anything in the game that encourages central points of importance, over which many nations are strategising and fighting and there's a tug-of-war over power. The HRE could be more like this, I think, if the above - or similar - was changed.

 

[TheBloke]

One more thought on the reform process:

Any reform that hurts the HRE members, should malus their relations against the emperor. Reforms 2, 3 and 4 all give boosts the emperor and maluses to the members. This should have some effect on them, making it harder for the emperor to pass the next reform.

 

[Xara]

One more thought on the reform process:

Any reform that hurts the HRE members, should malus their relations against the emperor. Reforms 2, 3 and 4 all give boosts the emperor and maluses to the members. This should have some effect on them, making it harder for the emperor to pass the next reform.

Most of those "malus" effects are simply removing the benefits they gained from being part of the empire in the first place, leaving them nearly-neutral until the end of things.

 

[lordelenath]

In my latest Granada game Austria unified a super HRE. Since I was fighting for survival the first 150 years I couldn't weaken them in time. By 1650 they passed the vassalization, 1700 the unification. The HRE has a whooping 850.000 men under arms and is allied to halve the world.

I don't actually have any problems with the AI being able to pass the reforms successfully and unite the HRE (and it's seldom as powerful as this time). But I really think there should be some kind of diplomacy or opinion malus towards non HRE nations. After all, a unified HRE is one of the most terrifying enemies - but right now the AI has absolutely no understanding of that. Maybe add a -5-10 opinion modifier for each reform towards non HRE nations (excluding vassals and PUs). Some kind of special CB would be appropriate too, either after the vassalization or unification, the concept could be similar to Rev. France.

This would also help to somewhat balance the HRE being played by humans, since right now it seems to be the single most powerful tool for expansion.

 

[R0land]

In my current Burgundy game the HRE was formed about that size except with Italy and Denmark added PLUS a PU with a very big Castile. They were also regularly allied with a big Great Britain and Portugal.

I had previously eaten all of France so I wasn't any slouch either but I couldn't take that on. The solution was to ally to Russia, Sweden, and the Ottomans. Then wait until they do something silly (Get in a war in Asia for some reason, go to war with Great Britain in one case) and strike!

Cue three (so far) massive continental wars and the HRE is now much, much smaller because of all the released nations.

 

[DerOstkonig]

never seen anything even close to this. usually the HRE isnt doing so good. So I wouldnt say the mechanics need an overhaul.