What did I do to deserve this?!

[Portal]

So, I just ragequit my Bavaria game because of Coalitions. I mean, at first they were reasonable -- I was expanding pretty aggressively, and it was only logical for all the OPM's to band together against me. I stole a few provinces from the Swiss, I vassalised Ausburg, Ansbach and Salzburg before annexing them, the usual moves. When France forced the Austrians to release Styria, I took Linz too. So yeah, of course Bohemia would beat down on me with its 60,000 strong coalition, force me to release a few vassals and take two of my cores. Perfectly acceptable.

Then later, I vassalized Saxony, Thuringia and Wurzburg, and annexed Frankfurt. Over a reasonably long period, yeah? Bohemia again formed its coalition, then later left it during my wait to annex those vassals.

But once I had annexed them, for some reason, four different coalitions formed. First, the Austrian Coalition, with Brandengerg, Triers, the Palatinate and a few other German states. They declared a Punitive War. Okay, I can deal with that. Then, Bohemia formed a Coalition with Lithuania and declared a Punitive War, joined by any German state that wasn't my vassal or Brunswick. I get a White Peace with Austria and try to fight off the Bohemians. Then, the Venetians brought THEIR coalition of themselves and Styria. That's getting a bit frightening. Then, the Milanese dogpile me, accompanied by Mega-Spain which had been eating into France and Morocco for the entire game.

Seriously, what?

They didn't form when I vassalised Saxony, or when I vassalised Thuringia, or when I vassalised Wurzburg, or when I annexed Frankfurt (well, Bohemia did but that was just it and the 2 province Palatinate). But when I diplo-annex my vassals, I not only get attacked by Austria and Bohemia, who have reason to hate me, no, I get the entirety of Europe except for my allies France, England, Poland and Brunswick, of which only France (who, I remind you, was getting eaten by the Castilians / Spanish) and Brunswick answered my Call to Arms, and Hungary, who I had a Royal Marriage with.

 

[Krilnik]

You get AE from annexing vassals, and opinion malus ( especially in HRE ) if I am right

 

[Portal]

You get AE from annexing vassals, and opinion malus ( especially in HRE ) if I am right

But why do the Lithuanians or the Spanish care? Nobody's forming any coalitions against aforementioned Spain. It seems they all despise this tiny German minor.

 

[Golladan]

That Diplomat advisor. He's so good.

Wiki says that nations with Rival, Hostile, or Threatened attitudes can join a coalition.

 

[roman566]

Welcome to EUIV, where AI main goal is to make your life miserable.

 

[Great One]

A similar thing happened in my game. I was playing Spain and had inherited France through a Personal Union. After inheriting France, any time I annexed a vassal or conquered a tiny one provenience nation in Germany, coalitions would form to pound me into submission.

It was bad enough that Austria and Milan (who inherited Burgundy and ruled half of Italy) got together with several minor states. I was able to hold them off, but reduced my manpower to near 0 in the process. Then, the smell of blood got Russia to march his troops clear across Eastern Europe and invade France for no apparent reason. I was forced to allow two small nations to break away in the South of France to secure peace.

Later I declare war to retake what was rightfully mine, and I am dogpiled by three separate coalitions. First the newly formed Netherlands teams up with Austria and declares war on me. This is not entirely unwelcome as I would like to feed a few Austrian provinces to my Bavarian vassal and take some new world colonies from the Dutch. First I have to beat them into submission though which is tougher than I had anticipated. As they begin to wear me down and refuse to negotiate for peace (they will not accept any offer at this time says the tool tip), the UK teams up with Milan and a few more minor states in a second coalition. I think I should be able to keep their warscore low by conquering the North American provinces of the UK, but the war in France is not going well and both coalitions are occupying the majority of French territory. Then, the Ottomans decide to team up with a third coalition and march about 200K troop across Europe to besiege what remains of Spain while sending another 100K troops across North Africa to retake Tunisia and Morocco from me. The Ottomans also park a fleet of 150 ships off the coast of Spain so that my fleet will be sunk when they finish besieging my territory. All they want me to do is release France as an independent nation (despite me inheriting France peacefully).

The worst part, I am required to broker peace with the three coalitions separately! After the UK, Milan (the leading power in the Netherlands alliance...go figure) and the Ottomans are done, not only is France about 6 different countries with a few yellow provinces mixed in, but my Iberian peninsula also has two minors brought back to life and one Austrian province for good measure. I was also forced to give up all three of my German vassals.

At the very least, if the game is going to have the coalition dogpile mechanic, they should join the existing coalition. Having to take three unreasonable peace deals (which I would never be able to ask for when I beat down the AI) is broken!

The other thing I don't like is that the game seems to treat peacefully acquired territory the same as conquered territory. It is one thing to say that the deposed King has gone to foreign lands to form a coalition to retake his land, I get that. When I have inherited land through proper dynastic succession, the game should treat that differently. The same with vassals being released. If I have beaten a small country into submission to force them to be my vassal, they want to be released, but if they voluntarily become my vassal through diplomacy, there should be a very high warscore cost to force them to be released IMHO.

 

[aitaituo]

But why do the Lithuanians or the Spanish care? Nobody's forming any coalitions against aforementioned Spain. It seems they all despise this tiny German minor.

You see, it all started when Pope Julius II induced Emperor Maximilian I to attack Venice and return Romagna to the Papal States which had been lost after the death of Pope Alexander VI. Maximilian failed, so Julius organized a coalition consisting of the Papal States, France, Spain, and Austria (Ferarra came too) with the intent to invade and partition the mainland territories of Venice.

After the war started the Papal States and Venice made a separate peace.
The Pope became concerned that the French were actually going to acquire the territories they had been promised after only 10 months of fighting, so he joined Venice's war.
Things were going badly, so the Pope started a new midwar coalition against France which England, and Austria and Spain (they apparently made a white peace with Venice) joined.
Things were going good again after that, so they all declared war on Tuscany with the revolution and counter revolution CB.
The new coalition couldn't agree on who would get what, so Venice joined France's war after agreeing to divide northern Italy evenly between them via pm.
Things went badly for France and Venice at first, but then things cooled down and England made a separate white peace.
Everyone kind of lost interest for a while, but then France came in with a new army then made a white peace with Spain, made the Pope return Modena to Ferarra and ceded Parma to France (at 100% AE, ouch!), and after a couple more battles got a white peace with Austria.

And that's why coalition mechanics are the way they are in EUIV!

 

[randomguy123]

Welcome to EUIV, where AI main goal is to make your life miserable.

yep massive change of hoi

 

[Wardok]

In my opinion there should never be able to be more then 1 Active coalition agsint you at any given time......being DoWed 4 times with "coalition/punitive" at almost the same time is ridiculous.

 

[unmerged(184583)]

Welcome to EUIV, where AI main goal is to make your life miserable.

I find this true more often than not, even to the detriment of said AI. Seems like they go out of their way to punish me, even if it means losing a bigger picture war. Example, was playing as Ireland the other day, big war on many sides all fighting over orleans. England parks 31k troops in meath. Burgundy, brittany and the like get slaughtered and lose the war, England ends up just killing my army and parking there with no reward. :glare:

 

[Fremor]

Keep in mind that you get AE from making someone a vallssal trough force.

 

[brifbates]

Playing in central Germany you really have to be on the ball with your diplomacy because so many nations are in the area and they all have 4+ allies to call into any dogpile available. Maximize your relations with any nation of note before incurring any AE. And yes, annexing multiple HRE vassals at once is a big no-no because it trashes your relations with the entire empire.

 

[Lakedaimon]

Yep the HRE is a very dangerous place to go expansionist in. From what I read you kinda brought this on yourself. Expansion in the HRE should be slow and calculated. Vassalizing and annexing small nations really won't help you at all. If you want to directly own the territory it's better to go after the ones that manage to expand a bit. That way you only get so much AE for more provinces and only get the annexed HRE member relations hit once for more provinces.

 

[ArsenicCornflak]

I had no AE and fabricated a claim on Westfalen as the Netherlands, got kicked in by a coalition.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

I played Ulm fairly recently (like.. last night?) and managed to stay out of coalitions for the most of the time.

First, you become the target of the coalition if you are the ONLY major aggressor in the region. If someone else becomes the coalition target, you're given a free rein. In my game this was Austria - very dangerous. But as long as Austria is gathering all the hates onto itself, I can just go to war, vassalize Augsburg, Bavaria, Mainz, Palatinate, etc and annex one after another.

My early allies were Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland, AND France, AND the Ottoman Empire. (Diplo tech can go to hell, I'm landlocked anyways) I lost the alliance with Switzerland since we found on the opposite side of chain alliances, but still. Regarding the expansion - minimize taking provinces at all costs. I took just enough provinces from Bavaria to make it vassalizable in the next war - given the truce, the aggressive expansion can dilute over time, and vassalization gives you far less AE. Allies and vassals take almost no aggressive expansion, so allying people near you who you don't want to fight and fighting people who you don't care sounds like a sensible thing to do.

Moving on to other easily vassalizable nations to the north, DoW'ing Austria with more than twice my military to keep French and the Ottomans busy around. My late game allies were France, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and by then the Franco-Ulm alliance was like 300 years old.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I don't get into coalitions so much is because I'm lazy and I don't DoW every year. Say, I take two provinces from Livonian Order. They form coalition. I completely ignore them for 50 years and busy myself elsewhere. The AE is completely gone. I take two more. Sometimes I just send all my diplomats to annex 3-4 vassals and do nothing in the mean time, with the diplomat advisor with BROT bonus. Coalition subsides, vassals are annexed, move on.

By the way, don't ever break alliance on your side. Don't refuse the CtAs. You can make friends and they stay as your friends if you play nicely. Don't blob in random directions, focus. You kill one thing and just that one thing, bring in other people who also hate that one thing if possible, and placate other people bordering that thing.

 

[Korashy]

AE is multiplied by a Size of Country modifier, which means that if you are a very large country, taking 1 province can cost you 200 AE. This will be removed with the next patch, keeping it at 15 AE flat regardless of size.

 

[aitaituo]

This will be removed with the next patch, keeping it at 15 AE flat regardless of size.

Whoa! Really?

 

[Korashy]

Whoa! Really?

Well 15 AE per province regardless of the size of your country. This can still go up or down depending on CB's / other modifiers (such as province is in HRE).

 

[RadRussian]

If you expand within HRE, that's what you're asking for. You could vassalize HRE withing 100-150 years from start and direct your aggression outwards but you decided to do otherwise so I think you deserved it.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

If you expand within HRE, that's what you're asking for. You could vassalize HRE withing 100-150 years from start and direct your aggression outwards but you decided to do otherwise so I think you deserved it.

Neh. It depends. It often happens that someone will start expanding and draw coalitions unto itself. It happened at least twice in my two HRE campaigns as Tuscany and Ulm. It happened in other games but I don't really remember the details since I wasn't playing in it.

In my Tuscany campaign, it was Bavaria. The coalition against Bavaria formed, including Austria, who sparked it and annexed half of Bavaria. The coalition shifted to Austria, and nobody cared if I vassalized Italian minors or not. I encroached right up to the Alps, but somehow the people who should be worried about me - like Milan and Savoy - were still in coalition against Austria. The empire shifted to Bohemia, then to Savoy, and by then I dismantled the Empire. Though in this campaign I was also focusing on Naples, so I wasn't exactly marching into the HRE heartland just yet. Burgundian inheritance didn't fire in this game.

Stuck in the middle of the HRE, the same thing happened when Cologne (of all people...) drew coalition. Burgundian inheritance fired, Austria joins coalition against Cologne. Cologne is crushed, Austria takes more land. Austria gets its coalition, the Empire goes to Bohemia, Austria gets pissed off and starts invading Bohemia. In the mean time I was vassalizing and annexing half of present-day Germany. Nobody forms a coalition because they saw Austria as a bigger threat, which certainly was since Austrian military was at least twice bigger than mine. I DoW Austria, bring France and the Ottomans in, end of Austria. Savoy becomes Emperor, Empire dismantled.

So... I guess one thing: be slow until someone else draws a coalition unto itself. The AIs for some reason prefer taking provinces instead of vassalizing, and as long as you don't act too quickly and become the first target, the AI is likely to get more AE from taking provinces than you vassalizing your small neighbors. Well, that's just my bet. But expanding within the HRE has not been that difficult.