On the top of it, I really really really like that the AI takes multiple factors beyond their own religion into account when deciding on which side to take in the religious conflict that engulfs the HRE, but sometimes it gets quite wonky. I am playing an Aragon game where I planned on sitting out the HRE wars, but somehow found myself elected emperor and therefore the default leader of the Catholic League (I really don't know how I got elected...I was ignoring that part of the map and had no electors vassalized or anything). Unfortunately in this game, the Reformation was very, very strong (almost the entire HRE outside of Austria, and lots of Northern Italy was reformed! As well as Great Britain.) I had maintained a strong alliance with France from the start of the game, and definitely I decided I wanted no part of either league when France joined the Protestant League to oppose Austria as is normal. Unfortunately, when I was elected emperor, France switched onto the Catholic League to honor their alliances (Good!), but this caused Catholic Austria to switch to the Protestant League. When the war came, France and I were swamped and pretty easily defeated (This is what I get for using my first military idea on naval!) and the HRE went Protestant.
This leads to two problems, because of the huge truce timers, there was basically no chance for any of the Catholic powers who might have wanted to try to reverse it to attempt it before the event that makes the faith permanent fires, and this in effect meant that still Catholic Austria had completely shut itself out of the emperorship just to score points against me and France! While I really appreciate that the AI takes into account many different factors, this kind of oversight makes me just laugh at poor Austria.
This leads to two problems, because of the huge truce timers, there was basically no chance for any of the Catholic powers who might have wanted to try to reverse it to attempt it before the event that makes the faith permanent fires, and this in effect meant that still Catholic Austria had completely shut itself out of the emperorship just to score points against me and France! While I really appreciate that the AI takes into account many different factors, this kind of oversight makes me just laugh at poor Austria.
