The Hansa hits the high road

[De_Genius]

Hello all.

I have started a AoW game as the Hansa. Gobbling up my neighbours, losing some wars due to being too aggressive and not waiting on my big allies to join.

I have decided to go with Trade as my first idea. Now my next idea is coming up, and I am uncertain which to choose. I am going to expand a lot so Humanism would be a good choice, but the Plutocratic idea is also very appealing to me.
I am using almost exclusively mercenaries as my army atm, since I have more than enough money. I am also using lvl2 and 3 advisors to burn through the cash. When I will be getting manufactories, my money will certainly be sunk into those.

I could also use an advice regarding religion. Being a part of the HRE might make it hard for me to choose religion as freely as other countries though. Should I stick with Catholism for the +1 Mercantilism bonuses, or should I try to roll towards Reformed for the trade fervor ?

 

[Denkt]

Chose explortation to explore the wealth of Asia, then get expansion so you get the cb to get all important trade center which you will make into trade companies to dominate world trade.

 

[RobRoy3]

Should I stick with Catholism for the +1 Mercantilism bonuses, or should I try to roll towards Reformed for the trade fervor ?

Do you mean the +1 mercantilism you can buy with 100 Papal Influence? Or is there another bonus that I'm forgetting? If the former, not worth it, assuming HSA is even able to get to that level. Save it for stability or just get straight cash, unless they improve that option (by an order of magnitude, say). Go Reformed.

For ideas, while Humanism is nice, I'm not sold on it for HSA. Actually that goes for Trade, also. And while we're at it, Plutocracy, while still decent, is not nearly as compelling as it used to be. Probably still a pick, but maybe not a top 3 (unless you plan to abandon Republic for an HRE run?)

Actually, a lot depends on where/how you plan to expand the most? Sounds like you plan to conquer close to home? But if you're planning to be a colonizer or go after the Asian trade, you need Exploration and/or Expansion among your first three choices (really first two, IMHO). Religious can also be handy for HSA, depending on where you plan to go. How you plan to expand is relevant, too. I like Influence and Diplomatic for HSA, the way I play them.

 

[De_Genius]

Do you mean the +1 mercantilism you can buy with 100 Papal Influence? Or is there another bonus that I'm forgetting? If the former, not worth it, assuming HSA is even able to get to that level. Save it for stability or just get straight cash, unless they improve that option (by an order of magnitude, say). Go Reformed.

It is the +1 for 100 PI I mean. After a longer period of playing, I can now see that 100 PI takes a very long time to collect, so the +1 mercantilism is not really worth clinging to Catholism. I will go reformed when the opportunity comes.

For ideas, while Humanism is nice, I'm not sold on it for HSA. Actually that goes for Trade, also. And while we're at it, Plutocracy, while still decent, is not nearly as compelling as it used to be. Probably still a pick, but maybe not a top 3 (unless you plan to abandon Republic for an HRE run?)

Actually, a lot depends on where/how you plan to expand the most? Sounds like you plan to conquer close to home? But if you're planning to be a colonizer or go after the Asian trade, you need Exploration and/or Expansion among your first three choices (really first two, IMHO). Religious can also be handy for HSA, depending on where you plan to go. How you plan to expand is relevant, too. I like Influence and Diplomatic for HSA, the way I play them.

I am planning on keeping the Merchant republic goverment, since I like playing the Trading game. I am planning on conquering the German provinces and uniting the German people. I do not plan on becoming Germany since I will keep the HSA ideas. Influence seems to not fit a Merchant republic, or am I wrong ?
I am currently thinking of picking up Maritime, since I am using MP for military techs around lvl7 where those nice tactics comes. I am also using admin points for coring at the moment, so it almost seems the right idea to go for another diplomatic idea group.
As a Merchant Republic am I still able to diplox-annex vassals ? I have not played Merchant Republics much, so I am kinda unfamiliar with them. If so, Influence might be a good choice afterall.

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate them.

 

[bbqftw]

Hello all.

I have started a AoW game as the Hansa. Gobbling up my neighbours, losing some wars due to being too aggressive and not waiting on my big allies to join.

I have decided to go with Trade as my first idea. Now my next idea is coming up, and I am uncertain which to choose. I am going to expand a lot so Humanism would be a good choice, but the Plutocratic idea is also very appealing to me.
I am using almost exclusively mercenaries as my army atm, since I have more than enough money. I am also using lvl2 and 3 advisors to burn through the cash. When I will be getting manufactories, my money will certainly be sunk into those.

I could also use an advice regarding religion. Being a part of the HRE might make it hard for me to choose religion as freely as other countries though. Should I stick with Catholism for the +1 Mercantilism bonuses, or should I try to roll towards Reformed for the trade fervor ?

In my opinion, trade is not the optimal first idea group for pretty much any HRE minor-mid. What cripples your early expansion is getting coalitioned early - diplomatic ideas really help avoid getting wrecked by coalitions (put it this way, my first war as Hansa, I annex East Frisia and full annex Pomerania - you really want the extra diplomat to be improving relations nonstop and the extra diplo relation to get alliances to blunt your AE). Diplomatic might be a bit late as the second idea group - by the point you are picking your 2nd idea group you should have your medium-term best buddies on your side (France to the west and PLC/Muscovy - pick one - to you east), and your coalition management is pretty much fighting them whenever truce is up.

Depending on how good your start was (if you rolled a great starting leader and managed to re-elect him for multiple cycles), I like to go offensive as the second idea. If reform desire is high and you want to go reformed, then religious second is not bad either. I personally was not very happy with Catholic on a power basis - I did a world conquest and did not get Curia controller once, so its very inconsistent, and the Papal influence bonuses are middling. Reformed is much stronger, and its practically a free CB on everyone with religious ideas.

Influence seems to not fit a Merchant republic, or am I wrong ?

the diplo-influence combo is for those who like to expand as rapidly as possible. If your end goal for trading node is English channel, you're going to need to take out some heavy hitters, and for that you need quick power obtained via vassal-annex, which the diplomatic oriented ideas really help with. And yes, you can annex vassals as merchant republic. One of the best targets is Teutonic Order. Poland will often eat them to one province, then you vassalize TO and feed back their cores, so you get Danzig + Ostpreussen for zero AE.

For a more passive game, then something like exploration 2nd might be nice (but you'll have to gank Utrecht to be able to reach Bermuda with full explo + diplotech 7, no matter which way you cut it you generate some aggressive expansion).

 

[QVarus]

I am planning on conquering the German provinces and uniting the German people. I do not plan on becoming Germany since I will keep the HSA ideas.

I am currently thinking of picking up Maritime, since I am using MP for military techs around lvl7 where those nice tactics comes.

You keep your ideas, even if you unite Germany.

I wouldn't go for Maritime. The only real benefit is the +25% FL modifier. You can get this by picking Exploration as well. If you want to stay in the German region, you don't need it anyway: The only ships you'll build are galleys and trade ships. The big advantage of Republics is, that you can choose your leader. If you want to pick a military idea and stay up in mil tech: Choose a militarist. As The Hansa you can afford lvl 2 and 3 advisers pretty early, so teching shouldn't be a problem. In my Hansa game, I picked Admin first, the cheaper Mercs saved me a lot of money, that I could invest in advisors, buildings, fleets, going over force limits in wars and fast colonization.

 

[Freudia]

I think every time I've played Hansa I've gone exploration first. There's really no reason not to; you're already going to be at conflict with England anyways.

 

[Cossack_PL]

When I played Hansa in 1.7, I took administrative first and it was very useful, for some time you won't have manpower to fight any majors, so just spam mercenaries

 

[hauptman]

Plutocratic
Defensive
Economic
Quantity
Naval
Trade...

Stack bonuses, and take stuff you need NOW first. Like you dont need 3 more merchants now when you are only sitting in Lubeck.

Mercantislism is easy to raise, if you stay a merchant republic and always between 20 and 50 reptrad. So reelect, reelect, reelect. Play the republic game right and you'll have 240% province trade power.

Quantity + Naval + NIs make for frigates so cheap you can flood the earth with trade power.

This was my last Hansa game, maybe in 1.6. I was going to play one today, but settled on an Italian game instead.

That shape is on purpose... It gains me absolute control of all the continental nodes that feed into antwerp. The new trade system isnt much different... so I'd still shoot for similar borders. But I would also have to cross the channel to soften up and take power away from England.

Another view of the game, but of the trade page....

 

[vonlinchen]

IMO your religeon depends on what you want to do.

Catholic for large colonial empire
Protestant if you intend to conquer germany - (Dem Base Taxes nom nom nom)
Reformed for small trade nation.

 

[Cossack_PL]

Why Catholic for large colonial empire? All the CN provinces won't give you any cardinals, so in my opinion reformed will be better for trade bonuses (and morale in case of war with England/France/Spain/Portugal).