What a difference in game play Brandenburg vs. Milan

[cuendillar]

The frustrating thing for me with Unlawful Territory is the change that the Emperor will ask for it even when you're at war now. Functionally this means it's impossible to take land from the emperor himself without eating the penalty, because if you somehow fight another war with them you can't core the province. Maybe it was too easy to avoid the penalty by chaining wars, but now it's way too hard. And can really futz with HRE diplomacy as mentioned above.

Taking and integrating vassals is probably the best way to expand within the HRE now. If you want to be cheeky, a fun way is to ally countries bordering your target on all sides, so that you can partition it completely with each country (including you) ideally getting a single province each. Then immediately release said nation as a vassal from the province you took, cancel the alliances just in case and watch your new subject grow on its own as the emperor demands that your former allies return provinces to them....

Conquer-release-diploannex is slower than outright warchaining, but vassals do offer quite a lot of power compared to direct rule for small nations as long as they can be kept in line.

Regarding wars with the emperor, the same principle applies. For example, in Austria's case you could take land to release Carinthia and Styria as subjects and then reconquer their lands in the subsequent war. Same with Bohemia regarding Moravia and the Silesians.

 

[bestbrian]

Milan is disgustingly good to play. You can do the Ambrosian Republic and have a ton of fun, then do the Military Dictatorship, which is also interesting -- but success seems to be predicated on keeping your military tradition as high as possible. This can be tricky and requires you to pick different idea groups in a different order than you might otherwise.

Venice is objectively and measurably more powerful than Milan, but for some reason people don't seem to play Venice much. I suspect that it is because they are one of the villains of your Byzantium campaign that never quite developed or because they are right underneath Austria's giant chin or because they are always getting sieged down by the Ottomans. I'm not certain.

P.S. the best nation to form Prussia with is not Brandenburg or the Teutonic Knights, .... it is Poland. The game hands you all of the provinces you need. Sure, you'll have the Eastern Tech unit pips, but this is like arguing that the Dark Angles aren't as good as the Space Wolves ... while true enough, the point is that you are playing with Space Marines...

P.P.S. If you want maximum mayhem, use Poland to form Prussia, then flip to Orthodox via rebels and form Ruthenian Tsardom, keep Prussian Ideas and conjure Space Marines from thin air using Streltzy button.

I think the primary culprit in deterring people from playing Venice is the merchant republic mechanics.

 

[Danskjävel]

huh? Unlawful territory penalties aren't anywhere nears as bad as you make out. An extra 10 unrest (typically in only 1 province at a time) for a few years? So what. You don't need to be Bohemia to deal with that, literally any HRE country can deal with that just fine.

Conquest speed is reduced yes, but that's due to the bonus HRE AE. Unlawful territory isn't the reason.

UT does over 30+ years negate most diplomatic interactions in the HRE execpt from the few allies you made before starting catching the modifier, which you will do if you don't ally the emperor. That means you practically have to either BE the emperor, ALLY the emperor. Or be strong enough to beat or ignore the emperor which generally speaking only Bohemia is from the 1444 start. That is leading to my second point, that HRE play is tedious as most games are the same ol' ally or become the emperor.

That’s… what the religious wars are for.

One event spanning 20-30 years in the mid game is for opposing the mechanic and main gameplay of HRE spanning game start to end/dismantling/unification? I can hardly agree to that. What I'm saying is that playing in the HRE has generally 3 modes of play, all fairly tedious after some playthrougs, and none of which is an in depth internal opposition to the emperor.

The game doesn't really portray the autonomous nature of the entity that was the HRE: it portrays it as an area with extra AE and an extra diplomatic layer and more events. Which is fine compared to other regions, but it's a shame that playing an antagonistic diplomatic game is not fleshed out at all.

 

[The Macedonian]

I think the primary culprit in deterring people from playing Venice is the merchant republic mechanics.

You could be right, the lack of estates in the modern game hurts quite a bit -- no burger loans, no religious diplomats, no strong duchies, just to name a couple of the big ticket privileges. It was much worse when they could only have a handful of states, as well.

Personally, I never play Venice as Venice, I immediately perform shenanigans to transform into Dalmatia. You can't quite manage this before un-pausing, and I would recommend building a claim against Serbia and Byzantium before doing so; however, you can do it very quickly if you need.

 

[Marquoz]

I think the primary culprit in deterring people from playing Venice is the merchant republic mechanics.

Which is one reason I ditch the Republic as fast as possible. The other is to become Emperor. Both are very doable in the early game.

 

[Jespoke]

Which is one reason I ditch the Republic as fast as possible. The other is to become Emperor. Both are very doable in the early game.

I was about to say "Unless you really want to be Emperor, just switch to Oligarchy", but then remembered that is not available to Italians. At least next patch Merchant Republics and their equivalents will finally get estates.

 

[Kapi96]

UT does over 30+ years negate most diplomatic interactions in the HRE execpt from the few allies you made before starting catching the modifier, which you will do if you don't ally the emperor. That means you practically have to either BE the emperor, ALLY the emperor. Or be strong enough to beat or ignore the emperor which generally speaking only Bohemia is from the 1444 start. That is leading to my second point, that HRE play is tedious as most games are the same ol' ally or become the emperor.

Simply not true.

You can easily ignore the emperor from day 1 as most countries in the HRE. You don't need to be them, ally them or play as Bohemia. I've played in the HRE many times and haven't once had issues with unlawful territory.

 

[Danskjävel]

Simply not true.

You can easily ignore the emperor from day 1 as most countries in the HRE. You don't need to be them, ally them or play as Bohemia. I've played in the HRE many times and haven't once had issues with unlawful territory.

You can also juggle coalitions for the entire game and claim that AE is no problem. Or you can expand extremely slowly and not have it be a problem. But you're missing my point regardless.