Winning the HYW means... A 200 Years War

[JohnnyAlpha]

So I just won the HYW as England and enforced the PU. Despite taking the entire north coast of France, plus three provinces in the south west, having all of Scotland and Ireland integrated, a massive army, navy, and colonies in America, France is still hostile. In the end, I was able to keep them in wars for the entire 50+ years, until, by taking thousands of ducats in loans, I could buy their +190 relations with gifts and start integrating. Ten years and thousands of diplo points later, they broke free at 97% and declared independence. I won easily, but now we're back to -60 relations and another 50 years to wait. All those MP down the drain. This has to be the stupidest thing ever. I could've annexed them several times over by now. Not to mention the shit I went through to keep them PU'd led to War of the Roses, Lollards Heresy, and Peasants war all in 50 years.

 

[MeatPirate]

by taking thousands of ducats in loans, I could buy their +190 relations with gifts and start integrating.

I'm confused, pretty sure that's not how gifts work.

There are a half dozen semi-active threads about keeping France in PU as England. It's not that hard but expect to fight 1 or 2 independence wars. It sucks that your integration progress and MP are lost, but if you're planning to win HYW plan to fight another couple of wars with them until integration. Frankly I'm surprised you got to 97%.

 

[JohnnyAlpha]

I'm confused, pretty sure that's not how gifts work.

I couldn't get past 165 relations without making a gift, and it took a hell of a sum to get the full +25 boost I needed for 190 opinion.

So anyway what advantage is there is spending literally thousands of diplo points on repeated failed integrations, when far fewer could be spent if I ditched the PU and instead shattered the country into vassalisable chunks, or even spent admin points instead via normal annexation. England needs those diplo points since it lives and breathes navy/colonies. It seems stupid because after spending great effort to win a very difficult HYW, your reward is a method for integrating France that is MOREdifficult than usual.

 

[Seleuceia]

In my experience, you are best not even planning on integrating France...assume they are going to declare independence, and when they do, make sure to take a few provinces each time (shouldn't cost any DIP points, don't remember if you get claims though so might be full cost to core)...if you get to a point where they are no longer hostile, more power to you (and then you would want to integrate them of course) but don't plan on it happening...

 

[MeatPirate]

I couldn't get past 165 relations without making a gift, and it took a hell of a sum to get the full +25 boost I needed for 190 opinion.

I understand, but 1000s of ducats sounds like a whole lot in the 15th/16th century.

So anyway what advantage is there is spending literally thousands of diplo points on repeated failed integrations, when far fewer could be spent if I ditched the PU and instead shattered the country into vassalisable chunks, or even spent admin points instead via normal annexation. England needs those diplo points since it lives and breathes navy/colonies. It seems stupid because after spending great effort to win a very difficult HYW, your reward is a method for integrating France that is MOREdifficult than usual.

There is no point. You shouldn't try to integrate until you're 100% sure it will work. That means prepare for another couple of wars with them. Keep Austria/Castile allied until you've whittled them down enough. You can also try the full annex -> release trick but I'm not sure how that works in recent patches.

 

[JohnnyAlpha]

Ok thanks for the advice. It's been particularly difficult since Castile, Aragon, Scandinavia, and Burgundy are all hostile and declared themselves my enemies. And they're allied to each other. And despite repeated wars with Burgundy there has been no inheritance event.

Also, ok maybe it wasn't thousands of ducats, but pretty close to 1000...

 

[Osman Pasha]

I will actually take provinces during independence wars, until they are down to 5 or so provinces. Admin points are less important than diplo points, so annex him, rather than integrating him...

 

[grisamentum]

If you are actually planning on reducing France without integrating (not sure if that's the best plan overall), one thing you can do is to take 1 Guyenne province for yourself and then release Guyenne as your vassal. It will force France to give all its other Guyenne provinces to your new Guyenne vassal, as well.

(You can test this as Poland with PU over Lithuania by releasing Ukraine as a vassal. IIRC it should work.)

 

[AurochsAway]

Admin points are less important than diplo points

Quite the contrary opinion.

 

[Frungy78]

If you keep 200 relations with France, they will never declare independence. Unless you have massive AE, that's not difficult to do.

 

[Seleuceia]

It depends on the stage of the game and what you are planning on doing...if you are planning on rushing the Americas (and especially if the War of Roses doesn't fire), DIP points are going to be precious to get those exploration ideas and DIP techs...if France revolts while you are trying to finish up that DIP 7 (or 9) tech or the exploration idea group, I'd say you probably should just take the provinces and core them...if however you need the ADM points more (reformation has hit and you need the stability, you are filling out expansion idea, etc.), then the conquer and release vassal trick is the better route...

In short, there is no one way to do it...

 

[atwix]

doesn't the 100% occupy annex thing work anymore? It used to be wargoal for independance war, in theory you could fully annex any size country during independence war... You can release them as vassal after you fully annexing them and then they will nlikely never revolt again.

It worked before, dunno if it still does.

screenie to prove:



I bet it still works, cause its WAD to make a revolting subject a vassal instead of minor PU partner to subjugate them and lower their revolt willingness...

I was gonna try in my current savoy run to fully annex england, but they had colony that wasn't on my map yet, so i couldn't try out if it still works. I hope they declare independenca again once i got caraibean and north south america on map

 

[PedroVargas]

It's probably a lot better to completely annex them because the AE you get for restoration of the union is quite severe (if they didn't change that in the last patches).

 

[JohnnyAlpha]

436% overextension would also be rather trying I imagine!

Can anyone confirm whether full annexation is possible with the current patch? That would certainly change things.

 

[atwix]

436% overextension would also be rather trying I imagine!

Can anyone confirm whether full annexation is possible with the current patch? That would certainly change things.

the idea is to release them as vassal after this peace deal, that removes all overextension and makes revolting country a boatload less likely to revolt.

 

[darianstarfire]

I know your struggles well. I actually won an ironman HYW and France kept breaking free everytime they went under 200 relations.

See you have to be at 200+ on hard at least.

You have to keep giving them gifts and you have to keep giving subsidies to build up your relations. You have too and you have to keep a diplomat maintaining rep.

I fought four wars and I annexed them and released as a vassal in the third war.

I thought that would be enough but as soon as they got under 200 relations and were supported by Austria then they broke. This time I got my butt handed to me because my allies Portugal and Castile were off doing whatever.

I stopped playing at that point and promised to never play ironman again. It simply not fun.

It's a lot easier to maintain relations at easier levels as far as I can tell.

 

[cleef]

Isn't the relation between the 2 countries in such a case determined by the difference between province count/army power ? i.e. similar to that of CNs and vassals when they might break free if your army is smaller than theirs ?

I'm curious to know if I (england) was to own more provinces than france and have a slightly bigger army, would their relation with me still drop ?

 

[atwix]

Isn't the relation between the 2 countries in such a case determined by the difference between province count/army power ? i.e. similar to that of CNs and vassals when they might break free if your army is smaller than theirs ?

I'm curious to know if I (england) was to own more provinces than france and have a slightly bigger army, would their relation with me still drop ?

i think countries only declare independence if your province and//or base tax total is lower then theirs. I integrated a full spain, england and even blobbed Russia without a singlze independance war cause i owned whole europe...

 

[Kalderus]

The tricky part is getting them to +200 relations, which is the only thing that will bring them into "vassal" attitude. Keeping them at war for 50 years to avoid independence wars (I seem to believe they can't declare while at war with you, but this may have been changed) really helps maintain things as you did, and meanwhile, park a diplomat in Paris improving relations.

Next try and get rid of your loans, because having these gives France the "A union only in name" modifiers, which can stack to over -100 relations. Unfortunately, you'll also likely be seeing "ignorant monarch" and "backwards monarch" due to Henry the doofus' terrible stats. Just try to ride out the penalties, and when time comes to integrate them, if you can reach +190 from improved relations and any gifts you need, quickly end your current wars, begin the integration, and then declare a new war, with the intention to drag it out as long as possible. My favourite target is Brittany, because it usually has no allies, and is relatively weak, so you can squash them, and sit around at high warscore before the "calls for peace" appear, and only take "concede defeat" as demands, which will help keep your prestige up to avoid the union breaking. After that, cycle to another useless war you can drag out, and then shift back to Brittany, and rinse and repeat.

Again, I may be wrong, and it may actually be possible for PU junior partners to declare independence while at war, but I managed to keep France (and Austria) stable by constantly cycling wars for the first 60 years, and returning to war immediately after beginning the integration (remember that you can integrate while at war, you just can't begin the integration.) The integration tooltip lies, liker so many other ones in this game, and thus yes, integration still occurs while at war.

After a long grueling set of restarts, I finally managed a successful run here, and got super-extra lucky with randomly inheriting a second PU with Austria, only a few years after the HYW.

(EDIT: Apparently the screenshot exceeds my alloted quota. Any advice on fixing this so I can show it? )

 

[beckermt]

(EDIT: Apparently the screenshot exceeds my alloted quota. Any advice on fixing this so I can show it? )

Upload it elsewhere and insert a link to the image instead of posting it. e.g. imgur.com