Bohemian Empire: Part 02: 1452-1466: Union over Hungary and Croatia

I increased my country by 50% in 8 years, so it was time to recover.

I allied Hesse who I want to be the next emperor. Unfortunately that failed and Austria got reelected.

I finished my mission to convert main Bohemia and get 100% religious unity (through stacking tolerance for heretics mostly), and got Hussite Center of Reformation as a reward. Unfortunately it's the only one that can spawn.

I still had some time, so I went to a small war to convert a few HRE minors to the true faith.

And then it was time for the big event. Restoration of Union CB on Hungary! Austria was still allied to them, and England declared itself Defender of Catholic Faith, so I had to distract both (on opposite sides) with a small war against Venice.

Venice was also conveniently fighting Ottomans, as they guaranteed Orthodox Albania. I don't really care about their war, as long as they don't interfere with my legitimate claims to Hungarian throne.

I got PU over Hungary and Croatia without too much trouble - and then by event Hungary inherited Croatia so I only had that one.

Unfortunately Venice war was going tragically poorly. Venice had 10 war exhaustion and Ottomans sieging them down, so I thought I could just wait them out a bit. Then Ottomans peaced them out, took just a few provinces, and as Venice was non-cobeligerent, that was enough to completely wipe out their war exhaustion to 0. I hate this mechanic. Even worse, Venetian ally Savoy inherited Burgundy and all their vassals mid-war.

They started having completely ridiculous demands, so I had to spend crazy amount of money on mercenaries. First I managed to get Savoy and their far too numerous subjects out of the war. Then France attacked England, drastically reducing English interest in defending Venice. A bit of fighting later Lucca also white peaced. Eventually Venice, supported by just Naples, agreed to a white peace.

The war left me with 500 debt, which isn't really even such a big deal.

Imperial Diet demanded that Savoy release Burgundian lowlands, and they complied.

I was briefly a Great Power, but that only lasted a year. By my favourite metric of income, I'm actually 4th in known parts of the world after Ottomans, Mamluks, and England - but that's just my two gold mines, both developed to 10dev.

My realm consists of Bohemia, Hungary, and tiny Stettin

I'm allied with Austria, Brandenburg, Hesse, and Poland/Lithuania/Danzig

All that finally unlocked a non-HRE expansion route for me. I can fight Balkan minors, and then maybe deal with Ottomans - not by myself, but maybe if I could get Poland or Austria to join me. There's still even leftovers of Byzantium in Morea, they would make a nice vassal in longer perspective.

If I had any mana, and so far that's not going too great, I'd love to invest in diplomatic ideas. Renaissance will be in Praha in 1471, and I'll just pay the full price for it right away.

There's no hope for any early Hussite League, I can barely fight Venice to a draw with Austrian help, fighting the whole Catholic HRE would be crazy. Hopefully I'll make it before Protestantism appears and they setup theirs.

Bohemian Empire: Part 01: 1444-1452: The Hussites Are Back

EU4 1.30 came out with an HRE update, and added Hussite religion for Bohemia. It's absolutely awful and Bohemia is ten times more powerful going Catholic route. Catholic Bohemia has very easy path towards HRE emperorship. Protestant Bohemia could try to win league war. Hussites don't even get this option, and honestly if you don't want HRE, you should just go Orthodox.

Fun and Balance mod fixes that! Every Christian denomination can trigger Religious Leagues - and as soon as 4/7 majority of electors take the same side. Or you can wait for 1550 with 1/7 electors, but only first challenger gets the league - there will never be multiple wars. Of course the right thing to do would be an Orthodox League, but we're doing Hussites this time.

Anyway, the goal of the campaign is to form Hussite HRE, and do Bohemian mission tree.

Likely challenges:

• playing in HRE with its massive AE, and no good expansion options
• everyone hating Hussites
• having to start and win League War to get anywhere
• mission tree setting me on a coalition course with all my neighbours
• trade situation is really awful
• even relative to other HRE countries, it's really hard to get naval access and break out of this
• me not really understanding 1.30 meta
• ally AI also not understanding 1.30 meta, and getting into massive debt all the time

Likely strengths:

• Bohemia starts as about 20th-30th strongest country, depending on how you measure it
• decent mission tree with PUs over Poland (possibly with Lithuania), Hungary, Brandenburg, and Saxony
• starting with a gold mine and two nearby gold mines in Hungary and Austria
• enemy AI also not understanding 1.30 meta, and getting into massive debt all the time

[PIC 1]

Starting as a mid-tier power in a really stuck situation

So, let's get started. I start as Catholic, and in 5th year of an interregnum after death of Albert the Magnanimous. Before any dynastic and religious struggles start, I ally Austria, Poland, and Brandenburg. Hungary, Denmark, and Lithuania rivalled me, but that's a silly set, so I set Hungary, Teutons, and Venice myself.

The most obvious thing to do would be fight Hungary for Slovakian gold mines, unfortunately we start with a 5 year truce.

In March 1446 I finally got Hussite King-Elector Jiri z Podebrad, a 5/4/3. So I could finally start a war. First target being Teutonic Order. Unfortunately in all this forced waiting they allied Stettin, Livonian Order, and Denmark. And Poland still had truce with them, so I could only call Brandenburg into this. Oh well.

The war started super easy, until my vassal asked Poland for military access, which grants it to all enemies, completely destroying my ability to defeat them one by one. WTF isn't this fixed yet? This bullshit has been in the game for years now. There aren't even any mods to fix this.

I got Stettin as a vassal and made them Hussite. This solves my access to the sea problem. Unfortunately the war otherwise went poorly. I sieged down 2 Teutonic fort and then their capital, but Praha was about to fall, and Sweden showed no signs of going disloyal, so I decided to white peace.

On on my way home, my zero maintenance troops ran face first into rebel stack. Why isn't there a warning for that on top? Right now it's not too bad, but once you can't see all your troops on one map, it's a huge problem.

Unfortunately Austria allied Hungary before my truce expired, killing my idea of a quick fight.

Actually, Austria would love to help me fight my rival Venice. Oh and what's that? They're now too busy to help Hungary, and their only other ally Landshut dishonored? Too bad.

It was still really painful, but I took great use of my church tenet of 10% warscore cost discount against infidels, and just barely took Slovakia - including the extremely important second gold mine. Then I peaced out Venice by giving them the only Austrian coastal province, and tiny amount of gold.

That sort of looks like Czechoslovakia

Ally my 3 allies - Poland/Lithuania, Austria, and Brandenburg, are at some point going to be my enemies. 

I spent so much mana on developing provinces for gold mine and for estate missions that I'm still at 3/3/3 tech, while being an institution behind.

I'm voting for Hesse for Emperor, and they're leading with 3 votes. If it works, it will weaken the Empire, and that's perfect.

Estate privileges I chose (max is 4):

• nobles: +1 mana, Supremacy over the Crown, Strong Duchies, monopoly on Livestock
• clergy: +1 mana, Clerical Ministers, Expansionist Zealotry, monopoly on Wine
• burghers: +1 mana, Interfaith Dialog, monopoly on Glass, monopoly on Textiles

Extra mana is a total no-brainer. Monopolies give +1 mercantilism every 10 years at cost of -20% production income of chosen goods (in very convoluted way). So over a century 4 monopolies will give me 40% mercantilism, and that's +80% province trade power.

Supremacy over the Crown is supposed to generate extra agendas, but so far it didn't. Strong Duchies is +2 diplo slots and -10% subject liberty desire. I lowered Fun and Balance previous base 8 to 6 (because it's so easy to get +2 here).

Expansionist Zealotry is +5% extra morale, Clerical Ministers is missionary maintenance discount (or a much better bonus for other religions). These aren't that useful, and I'd happily replace them with more monopolies if I had any. Interfaith Dialog is +2 tolerance, and I'll keep it until I get decent religious unity, then I could pick another monopoly.

Even that very modest expansion already got a few countries nearly to coalition level, so ideas like taking Hungarian, Polish, or Brandenburger throne by force, maybe they'll need to wait.