Want/ need advice for Austria

[Hootieleece]

I am about to play a playthrough as Austria. They seem to be my nemesis, so I will join the Dark side.....(or White side) Other than Herding Cats as Emperor what do I really have to look forward to?

I would like some general Ideas on who to Ally with and Idea groups to take.

My intention is to PU Bohemia and Hungary and fight the Ottomans......like IRL.

I think I should take Diplomacy first.........

 

[Demusch]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...to-play-as-austria&highlight=Austria+strategy
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...groups-for-Austria&highlight=Austria+strategy

Some other threads on this forum about the topic, there should be several more though. The main question you should ask yourself is if you're going to be friendly or hostile to France early on. There's a strategy somewhere on this forum for completely dismantling France in the first 50 years as Austria, but the other option would be to ally them, help them in wars, and then diplo-annex them when your own diplo scores get high enough.
There are missions for Bohemia and Hungary (other than the possibility of just getting the PU with Hungary outright in the first 10-15 years...). For fighting the Otto's, it can work, but if you're also keen on forming the HRE, you might be stretched a bit thin on manpower. Remember, Austria has 0 military traits of its own, so you need a solid plan for allies for every direction you'd want to expand towards.

 

[unmerged(82265)]

I gave up my Austria game, because all my babies got in wars without telling me. I find spending 30 minutes on the message filters annoying. I wish there were default popups for any war in the HRE when you are the emporer. It would make sense.

 

[m4recky]

Austria is fun.. in the beginning.
You get a lot of unions (hungary, burgundy, bohemia) and passing the HREforms is soo easy.
Speaking of: a very efficient strategy is to use the 'enforce peace' option. It makes the game consider the war to be defensive; hence by winning it you get a huge Imperial Authority reward.

Kicking Venice is a good idea, but you should probably focus on France as soon as possible. It will become hostile at some point anyway..

Revoking the privilegia is fun (DoW Ottomans and see the swarm of vassal armies in action; very fun to watch). Renovatio Imperii on the other hand caused me to abandon my Austria game because it became so ridiculously easy. In fact the game becomes a piece of cake the moment you revoke the privilegia but it doesn't appear so in a direct way. Once you have direct control over a 400k army you can simply overrun pretty much everyone (Russia included) without any effort. Boring.

 

[LarryLeica]

Austria is fun.. in the beginning.
You get a lot of unions (hungary, burgundy, bohemia) and passing the HREforms is soo easy.
Speaking of: a very efficient strategy is to use the 'enforce peace' option. It makes the game consider the war to be defensive; hence by winning it you get a huge Imperial Authority reward.

Kicking Venice is a good idea, but you should probably focus on France as soon as possible. It will become hostile at some point anyway..

Revoking the privilegia is fun (DoW Ottomans and see the swarm of vassal armies in action; very fun to watch). Renovatio Imperii on the other hand caused me to abandon my Austria game because it became so ridiculously easy. In fact the game becomes a piece of cake the moment you revoke the privilegia but it doesn't appear so in a direct way. Once you have direct control over a 400k army you can simply overrun pretty much everyone (Russia included) without any effort. Boring.

Agree with this. It's fun to play twice, the first you work out what to do, the second you do a WC or near enough. It gets hugely tedious once you've formed the HRE around 1600 or even earlier. Saying all that it is a good to way to get up to speed on the diplo game.

 

[Hootieleece]

I've given up on two previous attempts.....I NOW know NOT to ally anyone inside of the HRE. Drag you into too many wars.


Also anyone getting bored with EUIV? Replayability seems to be less than EU3.

 

[Demusch]

I've given up on two previous attempts.....I NOW know NOT to ally anyone inside of the HRE. Drag you into too many wars.

Being dragged into wars isn't a bad thing, it allows you to build up trust with neighboring countries, leading to easier diplo-annexing. Too many wars can become a drain though.
The second, more important factor is that you don't need allies within the HRE to reap imperial authority. Any minor getting annexed gives you a CB, and using that to release the minor back as an independent state gives you IA.

While the game itself is a lot of fun, with a ton of replayability, some factors do become boring. Mainly: -Colonizing nations, without any other interactions. -Coalition wars. The first one can be challenging, the 5th one involving the same parties is just a drag. Then again, they do provide one thing which a lot of these games lack: once you grow big enough, you stop to have a challenge in the game, which is where coalitions come in. However, this is of little consequence to Austria, who should almost never get any significant aggressive expansion anyway.

 

[Hootieleece]

started playing Austria attempt 3........got dragged into a coalition against Poland (Poland who was picking on Bohemia) who had Denmark and its posse on its side. Where do the AI Nations get ALL these 6/6/6 generals.....espaecially 6 fire generals killing me when the infantry has NO fire pips at all and battles that should be stack wipes(30k vs 5k , 18k vs. 4k, etc.) last long enough for enemy's main army to force march to save the detachment......because EVERY AI General is an fricking Genius. I tried rolling multiple generals to get one......best I got was a 3/4/4/1 that got OWNED in every engagement he every fought in......in another thread I was told that a 6/6/6 general is 3 times as good as a 3/3/3.

I'm thinking of returning to EU3........at least its absurdities were understandable.........

Sorry about the Whining! I guess I have to go back to playing more conservatively and relearn warfare.