Patch 1.4. Please Nerf the HRE (Austria)

[frolix42]

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.

If we want the AI bots to act historically, the AI does not coalition against Austria's diplo-annexation, it ahistorically remains unchecked and unopposed.
The fact that you think that most of the nations in Europe were dedicated to keeping Austria (not France) in check for most of this period proves that Austria has become very much too powerful.

Give us an option for players who can't (maybe because they are playing a challenging nation) or want an alternative to, destroying Austria in it's infancy.

The HRE is highly random on how and whether it forms. I've never seen it as powerful as this screenshot depicts. Then again, I always do my best to crush it

That's the truth. If you play a non-European nation, the HRE is inevitable.

 

[frolix42]

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.

I have not seen this happen, but it's more logical than the HRE princes regularly voting themselves into oblivion.

 

[LordNevx]

400 hours played and it have never been formed for me.

 

[BBBD316]

I do think that passing reforms should generate AE and France, Poland and other surrounding nations should get missions to roll back reforms. The AI is terrible at getting 100% warscore and hence will never ever fight a war to do this.

Other than that I think it works okay, I generally see the HRE 1 out of ever 3 games. It nevers forms if I am near Austria as I make sure to kick it in the teeth.

 

[rekindledflame]

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).

I agree with this the reformation is a joke and actually serves to help form the HRE rather than set it back. Simply changing this, by making countries less likely to accept religious unity would go a long way in slowing how early the HRE can form, while still keeping the possibility of forming alive. There's also the issue with how enforce peace works, when a country declines, you get the AI for defending the empire, which is rather silly when it's an inner-empire conflict.

As far as how often it actually forms, no idea, but I can say it has formed in every game I didn't play in the European theater (10 or so games), where as when I do play with a power in that general vicinity it doesn't form...for what should be fairly obvious reasons. ^^

 

[Marcus Septim]

In many hundreds of hours of gameplay I have never seen a HRE that I didn't form myself.

+1

 

[frolix42]

400 hours played and it have never been formed for me.

I'm thinking that a lot people who claim to have never seen the HRE form are playing European countries that cripple Austria early on. For a nation on the periphery of Europe, a smaller nation or a nation overseas there is no opportunity to stop the HRE from forming, which I maintain it does far too often.

If you want to roll back reforms after the year 1600, you have to fight at least four 100% warscore wars against a greatly buffed Austria. Fixing the Reformation seems to be the best solution since that is what decentralized the HRE IRL.

 

[RobRoy3]

I'm thinking that a lot people who claim to have never seen the HRE form are playing European countries that cripple Austria early on. For a nation on the periphery of Europe, a smaller nation or a nation overseas there is no opportunity to stop the HRE from forming, which I maintain it does far too often.

I suspect it has a whole lot to do with whether people play with lucky nations or not.

But I just don't perceive it to be that big a problem, since it is hardly guaranteed, in my experience either. Yes, I'll grant that it's far more often than I'd expect. But I perceive it to be more feature than a flaw. Yes, a perfect AI would probably be better at checking Austria, and ideally the game mechanics should encourage the blob threat to be less Habsburgs and more France as the Reformation/Wars of Religion undermine Austria. But since I'm skeptical that even Wiz is capable of such subtlety, I'd rather keep a semi-realistic threat going in Central Europe than nerf it.

 

[BBBD316]

I do think that Religious Unity spam is an issue. The like religion electors should group together and wars declared on this issue should drag more people in and cause larger relationship penalties.

 

[frolix42]

I suspect it has a whole lot to do with whether people play with lucky nations or not.

That's a good point. Since I exclusively play Ironman, which forces you to use Lucky Nations Historical, it must guarantee an HRE.

 

[lucaluca]

currently playing ironman, Austria has passed one reform by 1510 but lost the emperor title to Bohemia... the main reason is Bohemia, Hungary and Brugundy are allied, and Burgundy did not disappear. So I expect lots of action and twists in this game! So in general there is much diversity in outcomes

 

[aurelplouf]

Nerf Russia, super expansionist and always meddling with my affairs
Nerf Sweden, impossible to kill
Nerf France, so many people in such a small country!
Nerf Protestant Dictatorship Lord Protector England
Nerf Bandenburg, same as Sweden
Nerf Austria, because the color is white
Nerf Ottomans, because the color is green
Nerf Ming, because its annoying to break apart
Nerf Spain, because they didn't serve me a Paella when I asked them
Nerf Portugal, because they didn't serve me the head of the King of spain when I asked them
Nerf Tripoli that ends up spawning in West Sub Saharan Africa, even though they were previously eaten by the Mamluks
Nerf the Mamluks, because they ate Tripoli
Nerf Persia, because they didn't prevent the Mamluks to eat Tripoli
Nerf Malaya, because I don't care about them, they are on the other side of the world
Nerf Japan, because they don't help me beat down the Ming
Nerf Roman Empire with their +5 diplomatic reputation among their NI! Well if you converted from CK2....
Nerf Rebels, because they never spawn when I ask them to!
Nerf United Nations
Nerf BRIC
Nerf Paradox because they make great games!
Nerf You!
Nerf everyone else because you say so!

Seriously............

I have never seen the AI form the HRE in 300 hours of game all Ironman mode, and usually Austria ends up losing its Emperor title. You know when the Emperor enacts its reforms, and as a rule of thumb if you see a country becoming too strong, then its your job to tone it down.

If you don't, its your own fault.

Austria is fine as it is and so far the only little chance for those that want to try WC. For others, its fun to crush Hasburped!

 

[Beagá]

It´s not uncommon for Áustria to get IA only by new kings. A lot of what happens depends on Burgundy surviving or not, as if they survive and are spanked that means a lot of extra IA.

And enforcing religious unity should give massive AE with people of said religion, so that if Emperor became too zealous... Coalition and war.

Without the inheritance Áustria is frankly pathetic. Remember that they never inherit either Bohemia or Hungary.

 

[zodium]

I have never seen the AI form the HRE in 300 hours of game all Ironman mode, and usually Austria ends up losing its Emperor title. You know when the Emperor enacts its reforms, and as a rule of thumb if you see a country becoming too strong, then its your job to tone it down.

If you don't, its your own fault.

Austria is fine as it is and so far the only little chance for those that want to try WC. For others, its fun to crush Hasburped!

I've run 10 overnight observer games since 1.3, and a HRE of various sizes formed eight times. I haven't analyzed all ~100 debug saves to find out exactly what happened, but suffice it to say that HRE formation is a fairly common event without player interference.

 

[RMcD94]

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.

This solves the problem so easily.

Whoever the emperor is gets a -20/-30/-40 (ticks down) to people outside the HRE who neighbour it per reform.

If the reforms are fast enough they'll start stacking up.

This way you won't get weird situations where Europe is allied with Austria and helps them out.

Also the AI never wants to get rid of reforms, and since no one ever declares war on Austria (yeah cause Hungary is sure going to beat the Emperor) so after one reform is passed it can never go down.

I've run 10 overnight observer games since 1.3, and a HRE of various sizes formed eight times. I haven't analyzed all ~100 debug saves to find out exactly what happened, but suffice it to say that HRE formation is a fairly common event without player interference.

In statistics 30 is the number you want to go for.

It should be fairly easy for a couple/bunch of people to run overnight observe games, then take a screenshot of the map at the end of the game.

30 of those and we could have useful stats.

I'm assuming Paradox has done this on their own without having to be limited by speed 5. So they are probably happy

 

[zodium]

In statistics 30 is the number you want to go for.

It should be fairly easy for a couple/bunch of people to run overnight observe games, then take a screenshot of the map at the end of the game.

30 of those and we could have useful stats.

I'm assuming Paradox has done this on their own without having to be limited by speed 5. So they are probably happy

Given the number of events that go into the HRE formation outcome, ten games is more than sufficient to back up a statement like "HRE formation is a fairly common event without player interference." You are misapplying the Central Limit Theorem with an eye towards linear regression, which (almost certainly) does not apply to this.

 

[RMcD94]

Given the number of events that go into the HRE formation outcome, ten games is more than sufficient to back up a statement like "HRE formation is a fairly common event without player interference." You are misapplying the Central Limit Theorem with an eye towards linear regression, which (almost certainly) does not apply to this.

If you say so but considering the numerous posts by people who say they haven't seen the HRE form in a huge number of hours played I have to disagree. If it relies on say a 50/50 event to be guaranteed then 8/10 does not reflect that at all.

 

[zodium]

If you say so but considering the numerous posts by people who say they haven't seen the HRE form in a huge number of hours played I have to disagree. If it relies on say a 50/50 event to be guaranteed then 8/10 does not reflect that at all.

You can disagree, if you like, but not easily on statistical grounds, and certainly not on sample size grounds. It's also problematic to compare played experience to observer games with respect to a claim that is qualified as "without player interference." It's difficult if not impossible to be active in Europe without exerting some inhibitory effect on HRE formation, and given the nonlinear nature of the game, even a very moderate amount of interference can tip the scales substantially over the course of the game.

 

[Pornek]

If you say so but considering the numerous posts by people who say they haven't seen the HRE form in a huge number of hours played I have to disagree. If it relies on say a 50/50 event to be guaranteed then 8/10 does not reflect that at all.

Maybe because a lot of people dont finish games once certain mechanics are starting to become a huge hindrance for the player.

 

[RMcD94]

Is there anywhere in game that shows the dates that the HRE reforms were passed?