The Holy Roman Emperor stole my vassals!

[Camoron]

I am playing as Ireland and have decided to take a vassalization approach rather than simply annexing, which has actually benefited me greatly up until now. Somehow, and I've never seen the AI do this so early before, Bavaria was able to become HRE even though Bohemia had conquered half of Asia and then passed the vassalize reform before 1600. Only problem is, I'd already vassalized quite a few member nations myself, including most of the Netherlands and parts of France and northern Germany. Now, I was wondering what would happen if/when Bavaria ever managed to pass the vassalize reform as it's quite a difficult one to successfully pass, but my question has been answered: the HRE will indeed vassalize nations that are already vassals! What's worse, the Emperor was my ally, so as soon as he did it he called me in to help put down member states that didn't want to be vassalized :wacko:.

I gotta be honest, this really took me out of the game and made me angry. It's completely nonsensical to think that the Emperor could steal my vassals, especially without at least giving me some sort of way to fight it short of declaring war on the entire Empire and re-vassalizing them one by one. I really think the devs should take a look at this for a future patch and consider either removing the Emperor's ability to vassalize nations that are already another nation's vassals, or add in some sort of triggered event that will let you choose whether to give up your vassals or defy the Emperor and keep them by declaring war on the Emperor.

 

[Y2Jonathan]

Wow...first of all I'm amazed the AI managed to get that far. I've never seen past the third reform in my games. Second, great job as Ireland. I've tried a lot as one of the minors and only succeeded 2ish times. One was good, the other was going fun but was ruined by an unexpected and unwanted PU with France.

As far as what you actually were bringing up, I imagine this was just an oversight for a situation that was never really thought through. Certainly if someone has vassals in the empire and this reform is passed they should get an event similar to the one that all members of the HRE get. Another possibility is that if a member is a vassal to a nation other than the emperor they automatically refuse to become a vassal when the reform passes thus declaring war and bringing in their overlord. But honestly, that's a crazy game you've got going.

 

[unmerged(204522)]

why would a country continue to accept vassalage to a minor foreign liege when they can join their cultural brethren as part of the greatest empire in the world?

 

[HanSime]

I've seen this happen a few times, once while I was HRE and got a regency, Bohemia ran off with my advanced HRE and finished up another reform: they vassalised pretty much everyone. Of course I refused, but as a consequence, I went to war with all my own allies and couldn't close independent peaces with countries well within my sphere of influence...



I would find it a much better if the decision for the vassalisation event only affected those countries within your Sphere of Influence.

 

[Camoron]

why would a country continue to accept vassalage to a minor foreign liege when they can join their cultural brethren as part of the greatest empire in the world?

Why would I sit back and allow it to happen? The combined might of the Irish Empire (hardly minor), and my HRE member vassals would have been able to topple puny Bavaria and their 6 provinces. Even after vassalizing everyone else, if I had been able to go to war with them with my vassals I am pretty sure I could have pulled it out, depending on if Bohemia had accepted being a vassal of Bavaria or not. Even if they had, their empire is so vast and made up of huge chunks of mostly worthless Steppe provinces that I could have blitzkrieged in and taken huge chunks of Germany to negotiate a nice peace deal with Bavaria before Bohemia could even get their soldiers into Europe.

 

[DDRJake]

Why would I sit back and allow it to happen? The combined might of the Irish Empire (hardly minor), and my HRE member vassals would have been able to topple puny Bavaria and their 6 provinces. Even after vassalizing everyone else, if I had been able to go to war with them with my vassals I am pretty sure I could have pulled it out, depending on if Bohemia had accepted being a vassal of Bavaria or not. Even if they had, their empire is so vast and made up of huge chunks of mostly worthless Steppe provinces that I could have blitzkrieged in and taken huge chunks of Germany to negotiate a nice peace deal with Bavaria before Bohemia could even get their soldiers into Europe.

Your vassals did have a choice in the matter and they did choose to side with the emperor over you. Unless I'm mistaken,you fought or married into these countries to make them your vassals and they now have the chance to become part of something huge and really stick it to you. What's more is that their vassalage to the emperor was democratically passed.

It's up to you to take a stand against it, but it makes utter sense that they would choose HRE over you. I once lost my HRE vassals to the empire EXCEPT for one OPM who remained loyal to me and fought HRE Bavaria to remain my subject. I was Chrokee.

 

[Evie HJ]

"Stealing" (or annexing, however you do it) another nation's vassal should definitely be the same as starting a war of succession - the offended nation gets the chance to treat it as a declaration of war, and the vassal status is determined by the result of the war (so that you have the option to re-enforce your vassalage if you win the war, rather than having to force the emperor to end vassalage, then enforce another one of your own in a second, separate war, which is ridiculously cumbersome)

 

[CyberEagle]

Why would I sit back and allow it to happen?

Yeah, why DID you? You can force the emperor to revoke his reforms before he gets to that point, you know.
And yeah, they actually choose him over you - they had the chance to refuse, but didn't.

 

[xereck]

When an Emperor is one step away from that HRE decision, it's time to strike and force him to revoke the latest reform in a peace deal. I did that with Russia when Bohemia had been passing one HRE law after the other. I think the system is working quite well, only downside is that only the human player can see the threat of these reforms.

 

[unmerged(204522)]

Why would I sit back and allow it to happen? The combined might of the Irish Empire (hardly minor), and my HRE member vassals would have been able to topple puny Bavaria and their 6 provinces. Even after vassalizing everyone else, if I had been able to go to war with them with my vassals I am pretty sure I could have pulled it out, depending on if Bohemia had accepted being a vassal of Bavaria or not. Even if they had, their empire is so vast and made up of huge chunks of mostly worthless Steppe provinces that I could have blitzkrieged in and taken huge chunks of Germany to negotiate a nice peace deal with Bavaria before Bohemia could even get their soldiers into Europe.

if youre so mighty with all your HRE vassals, why werent you the emperor?

 

[Ruanek]

if youre so mighty with all your HRE vassals, why werent you the emperor?

Maybe he didn't want to be emperor.

 

[jdrou]

Another way to look at this is that it probably shouldn't even be possible for anyone outside the Empire (other than the Emperor if he is outside) to have vassals inside the Empire since all such states are at least nominally subordinate to him. In this case he simply enforced his superior claim over yours.

 

[ind2bc]

why would a country continue to accept vassalage to a minor foreign liege when they can join their cultural brethren as part of the greatest empire in the world?

There are 5 different culture groups in the empire i wouldn't say they are cultural brethren

 

[lizardo]

As England I had a few provinces that I tried to join the HRE with and all the HRE did was steal those provinces without letting me join.

Is there some magical rule to joining the empire? Do I want to?

 

[bovinespy]

Another way to look at this is that it probably shouldn't even be possible for anyone outside the Empire (other than the Emperor if he is outside) to have vassals inside the Empire since all such states are at least nominally subordinate to him. In this case he simply enforced his superior claim over yours.

I agree. The current system is fundamentally flawed, which results occasionally in these bizarre scenarios.

 

[ind2bc]

As England I had a few provinces that I tried to join the HRE with and all the HRE did was steal those provinces without letting me join.

Is there some magical rule to joining the empire? Do I want to?

I believe it is impossible for England to join as you cannot join the capitol due to the English Channel

 

[Ruanek]

As England I had a few provinces that I tried to join the HRE with and all the HRE did was steal those provinces without letting me join.

Is there some magical rule to joining the empire? Do I want to?

If you want to become a member of the HRE, you have to add your capital province. If your capital is in the British Isles, that's impossible, because you can only add provinces already adjacent to HRE provinces. You'd have to move it to the European mainland, first.

 

[jdrou]

Note that someone did create a mod that allowed HRE joining across bodies of water in specific cases where it might make sense (e.g. Sardinia, England if they own Calais, etc.).

 

[Kurblius]

It seems to me that the most effective strategy to prevent the original poster's situation from happening is... prevention itself. Reversing the Reforms in a peace deal, especially on the odd occasion when the Imperial Throne paces to a weak Emperor should be a fundamental consideration in dealings with the HRE. The more reforms he passes, the more powerful the HRE get, and you can only roll back one reform per war, so you gotta do it early.

 

[Camoron]

When an Emperor is one step away from that HRE decision, it's time to strike and force him to revoke the latest reform in a peace deal. I did that with Russia when Bohemia had been passing one HRE law after the other. I think the system is working quite well, only downside is that only the human player can see the threat of these reforms.

I had no casus belli and he was my ally. I honestly wasn't paying attention to the reforms because I didn't care and I didn't think he would be able to just steal all my vassals without at least giving me the opportunity to do something. Some of these vassals have been with me for a long time, some over 100 years, I could have probably annex some of them if I wanted to but I didn't want the Unlawful Territory events so I left them as vassals. Some of them I vassalized through war, yes, some of them I liberated from Denmark and then vassalized. Either way, they loved me as far as I could tell .

I can understand the Emperor enforcing his claim over mine. What I can't understand is that I am given no choice but to sit back and take it. Yes, I know, I can break my alliance and declare war without a CB, but that's kinda lame.

if youre so mighty with all your HRE vassals, why werent you the emperor?

Because I wasn't a member of the HRE and I didn't want to be. Since this happened, though, I decided to reload my save, am going to unjoin Lubeck from the HRE (my only mainland European territory), which will weaken my relations with Bavaria, move my capital to Lubeck, break the alliance with Emperor Bavaria, fight Bavaria and force them to revoke the Erbkaisertum, rejoin Lubeck to the HRE (thus making me a member nation), and THEN I will finally become the Emperor and pass the reform then dismantle the whole thing.