BTW the new HRE system looks much more interesting (ie, interesting for the first time, rather than a bunch of breadcrumbs waiting to be swept up); i’ll have to try to make the HRE Protestant under the Palatinate.
Httt allows non-western factions to westernize and join the latin tech group if they fulfill certain requirements so both the Ottomans and the Byzantines could aim for that.
Westernizing is fairly easy but trying to do this with 50% inflation and being at war for almost 150 years straight is not.
I was able to force an opening with Ottomans fairly early-I got a couple of decent early alliances and hit them with a reconquest CB while their main army was on the other side of the Bosphorous with a bad case of the Timurroids, which will drastically sap (or overwhelm) any country’s manpower. The key was actually the navy-the Ottomans actually don’t start out with much, and if you can beat them with a few cheap galleys you can isolate all of their Balkan holdings no matter how large their army since they’ll never have enough transport to move them all over.
Some HUGE help here with HTTT is that:
a) you can get high-star masters of mint for inflation reduction using cultural tradition. Minting is a lot easier to bear when you have -.12 to -.14 right off the top.
b) You start in a trade league with Venice, which means that your compete and placement chance in the Venezia COT is very high, and at the start of the game that COT can easily run 1000+ ducats in total trade.
c) You have cores everywhere, and reconquest of them gives no stability hits. So if you can find a way to pick off some provinces through all of the guarantees/alliances/spheres of influence, you don’t take stability hits in doing so.
Again , the key for me was beating the Ottoman navy. Once I had the isolated I was able to squeeze them into nothingness since the Timurids are right next door and are insanely aggressive in HTTT.
I found that getting the Greek provinces back was easiest through spies and patriot revolts. One 6K stack out of Athens or Macedonia can take back 3 provinces or more since the AI isn’t all that good at shipping troops by sea.
Playing as a German minor (the Palatinate) has never been so much fun, especially since I gained control of the Holy Roman Empire. The HRE revamp has really made playing as the emperor really cool and really busy. I initially wanted to play as a minor trade nation, but I was getting out-competed so I stopped that. Once I became emperor of the HRE things really picked up. You get to make decisions based on your Imperial Authority, a value you gain by defending other members of the HRE and forcing the release of member nations by evil outsiders. As you accumulate authority you can cash it in to improve relations with other HRE members (and ensure a vote) or revamp the whole HRE system and ultimately annex all of the HRE into one huge superstate. A decent army is a must but you don’t need to be a superpower if you have powerful allies. Fortunately the new war resolution options are really satisfying and allow you to wage limited wars and concede defeat without going poor or losing territory. I’ve won and lost my share of wars but I’ve remained the emperor and I’ve vassalized all HRE members. The final step will be to create a unified nation but I want to make sure my army is ready for that as the rest of the world might get unhappy. I also want to take care of France before I form so they don’t pounce on me when I’m weak. I was able to get a few provinces from a lucky war and now I’m building up my army to gear up for a war to end all wars with them. To my glee I just gained control of the Papacy and an excommunicated France is going to be a sitting duck… I hope there’s enough left of France for me to take once my truce with them runs its course.
I tried my hand at a Byzantine game. The first two years were spent building up galleys while the Ottomans were fighting the Timurids in the east. Once war was declared I had a fairly small field army led by my king take on the Serbs/Bosnians and the odd regiment that the Ottomans built while three or four 1k infantry armies sieged provinces across Greece.
Only problem was, on my first attempt I conquered every province west of the Bosphorus plus Serbia and Bosnia and the Ottomans still refused anything but a white peace. They had long since made peace with the Timurids and were sitting across the sea with ther armies. They had 18 war exhaustion where I had 0.6 so I thought I could wait them out but in 1415 they were still nowhere close to giving in while I was spiralling deeper and deeper into inflation and running out of money. They had outlasted me and I was done for.
I started over, with the same plan, and this time the Ottomans were willing to give me everything I wanted. The difference seemed to be that in the second game they were hit with a serious peasant rebellion. It hurt them so bad that I ended up being able to follow the rebel armies and take over Ottoman provinces in Anatolia. I settled on their offer of everything but four of their provinces and suddenly the Byzantines had resurged as a power in the region.
I’ve come back to my EU obsession over the holidays and I have to say that Httt is really, really good. I really like how the new war declarations make you focus on your war aims and reward you for sticking to the goals. The advisor overhaul means that you can pretty much always get an advisor to fit your needs, and that rich and powerful states will have an easier time getting fitting advisors. No more being stuck with a 2-star fortification specialist as your only option when you’re ruling the most powerful nation in Europe.
After playing a bit with England (conquering France and then inheriting Iberia (Castille + Aragon) I have to say that there are both good and bad sides to the expansion, but overall I like the potential. As usual you should probably wait for a patch or two if you are not a fan already.
I agree that the DoW system is a good thing. It doesn’t add much in complexity, but it does provide a structure to wars. It also makes the mission system a lot more interesting with the conquest and subjugation CB. In my England game I almost only expanded according to the missions, never taking anything outside of cores. I did make an exception for the holy cities and toll areas though. The main thing I’d like to see changed is that reconquest against junior partners should work, and probably also vassals as well. As it is you can use the CB, but the provinces will cost 4BB each, and as far as I can tell you can’t force anyone to dissolve a personal union. I would also like to be able to capture a capital if and only if it is the only claim or core that you have and the war is (re)conquest. If that is not possible it should at least not be possible to get missions to conquer connected capitals.
Personal unions are an interesting tool now, but it might be a little too powerful. It did take over a century before I inherited Castille as GB, so it’s not entirely painless however. I suspect that trust plays an important part there, since I inherited Aragon a lot sooner, but they trusted me a lot more initially. It’s also interesting to see that most nations in Europe trust me a lot even though they are of different religions and generally hate me!
The HRE is the main bad part I’d say, since it’s not even remotely balanced. As GB I tried my best to fight the empire when I had missions or cores, and I removed all my conquests from the HRE. Despite this and despite have sub-zero relations with all electors I still became emperor for a few years actually! The main problem is however that the reforms are far too simple to pass, and that even one province minors that I beat in several wars will convince the members to pass reform after reform. The religious conflicts are also not solved by wars but by constant nagging from the emperor, eventually almost all heretics give up and convert. While some of them convert back several times, the nagging doesn’t stop.
There are several other changes that are smaller but still have a significant effect, mainly the more decisive battles, and they are mostly good. Pirates aren’t quite as annoying since they don’t do the zero-morale dance anymore, but you still need a lot of single ship fleets to cover the coasts in the most efficient way. Overall it’s good, but the HRE mechanisms has to be balanced somehow.
Playing in the HRE as the emperor I’d definitely agree that the reforms are way too easy to get. Even the ones that have detrimental effects on the member states have no trouble passing. And building up Imperial prestige is rarely a problem. If a human Emperor hasn’t united the HRE into a single massive nation by 1600 he’s holding back. The balance might be for the AI’s benefit but it still doesn’t sit very well with me.
The new dynasty/personal union mechanics are extremely powerful if you try to exploit them and probably need to be toned down a bit, though they’re not as bad as the HRE is, generally speaking. It’s not hard to look for a nation without an heir, get a marriage, and claim the throne. If there’s a regency you now have a cheap CB on the nation. If there is no heir at all you just need to wait for the union. Then you look for your next victim.
One thing I haven’t figured out though is what decides if a nation gets inherited or if the personal union continues when the monarch dies. I had a PU with Cyprus for nearly 200 years and at various times I’d see that I’d inherit Cyprus when hovering the cursor over Cyprus’ monarch, then a year later I’d check again and see that the union would merely continue. I ended up having to insult them to break the union and declare war eventually.
I bought this over the weekend and am having a grand time so far. I’ve only really scratched the surface of the new mechanics, but I already like the CB system – I particularly like the “Liberation” casus belli as a way to play peacekeeper, or enforcer of the balance of power, and force aggressors to disgorge their ill-gained spoils. As England in the 1508 campaign, I’ve already hauled out the colonialism CB (the one which allows you to grab nearby colonies) to attack a French outpost in Connecticut. Meanwhile, I’ve also experienced the joys of the dynasty system for myself, as the future Henry VIII predeceased his father, Henry VII, and Henry Sr. himself died in the middle of the French war, leaving a three-year-old bastard son to inherit the throne… yikes.
By the way, does anyone have tips for mopping up Scotland to form GB? My campaign against Scotland was a victory beyond my wildest dreams in which I grabbed all their land bar their capital, but at the cost of dangerously high badboy. Is it worth force-annexing the one-province Scottish city-state and running up even greater infamy, just so I can get that core on Edinburgh early? Or should I try to diplo-vassalise and diplo-annex over the centuries?
Diplo-vassalizing a state that starts off at -200 in relations is a tough prospect. You’re probably better off force-annexing them. If infamy is troubling you then I’d hire a diplomat or two and wait a decade before going for that last province however. No sense pissing off the entire world at once. If you get really lucky the Scots will have problems with their inheritance in the meantime, then you can bribe up relations to the point where you can get a royal marriage and immediately claim their throne and declare war, for a half-cost annexation.
The Scotland question can actually be solved by a certain mission called “Conquer Scotland”! To get this mission you can unfortunately not own any of Scotland before, and your relation must be less than 50. If you conquer at least one province in the lowlands and one in the highlands you will get a core on all of the lowlands, and this will make annexation free (as well as two lowlands provinces if you didn’t take them in the first peace). There is a region map mode you can use if you don’t know how they look.
In your case you might have to just accept the BB cost, going with vassalization will as Kalle mentions take some time, and it will also decentralize you. Claiming thrones is almost cheating, I’m pretty certain that annexation of a one province state in that case costs almost nothing in terms of BB, I think it was something like 10% of full price, or 0.8! It does cost a lot of prestige however.
10% sounds about right now that you mention it, and is ridiculously cheap for an annexation. The problem is that you can never count on an inheritance for a specific nation. While there will always be a handful states going through inheritance issues that you can exploit, getting a claim on Scotland in particular is unlikely to happen.
So I managed to initiate and foster a Ming Peasant uprising which overtook most of the country. I was promised that when the dust settled, we would be best buds. (I wasn’t getting along with the previous Emperor so well)
In spite of holding almost all of the provinces and the capital, somehow the Qin came into power, and we were neutral. I invested quite a bit of money in that endeavor, so I’m a little bit annoyed, and perplexed as to how I could have made more of a difference.
Is there any way to more directly influence the way a revolution turns out?
It would actually be cool to extend the negotiation and support for rebel factions.
This situation with scotland got me thinking. The inheritances, as such, aren’t broken. If England is trying to subjugate Scotland and the English player sees that the Scottish throne is vacant and can get a glorious conquest that way then that is an awesome moment in the game, because the odds of Scotland being without heir when the English player tries to conquer them is quite small. It’s a rare event, and should be prized.
The problem is that since there is always a handful of countries without heirs at any given moment, and since there are no real geographical or cultural restrictions, you can keep grabbing claims in random countries until you have a patchwork empire spanning the entire continent. When the inheritances is turned from a means to an end (the subjugation of my troublesome neighbour) to an end itself (the subjugation of anyone who doesn’t have an heir) then that is where the game breaks.
Having a “patchwork empire” is historical, though, and that’s why the system works the way it does. Though it may need to be toned down a bit as it seems to happen much more often then it should.
The patchwork empire isn’t what I’m objecting to as such, but when a crafty player can seek a marriage and force a claim with any random nation that lacks an heir with the sole intention of forcing a casus belli or a personal union, and is able to repeat that a dozen times, then the trouble is that the game is unable to recognise the behaviour. A historical nation that had behaved in similar fashion wouldn’t have been able to marry into any dynasty, ever, once people saw this blatant powergrab for what it was.
This thread scares the crap out of me, but I’m going to give EU3+all expansions a shot tonight. I hope I last longer than I did when I tried the original Hearts of Iron.
Yeah, that is a problem. There should be a way to factor that in to the badboy rating. After all, wars were fought historically to stop that sort of thing happening.