Bohemian Empire: Part 16: 1628-1635: Holy Roman Empire United

I was waiting for Court and Country and for my Imperial Authority, I started a quick war against Mamluks, and then Tunis.

I won Court and Country and I could give back all my estates +1 mana privileges. I had to temporarily revoke them for duration of the crisis.

Max absolutism is: 65 base + 5 empire + 10 two government reforms + 5 great power + 10 legitimacy + 5 religious unity + 15 crownland + 20 winning Cout and Conutry, or 135. So I can give away -35 absolutism worth of privleges and still have absolutism at 100%+ cap. Each mana privilege is just -5, so I still have some leftover. Overall new estate system is stupidly easy. I'd probably keep it a bit less than that.

So finally in 1635 I had enough IA to pass the last reform. And unlike previous reforms, this one actually has voting by each country. And unfortunately the new 1.30 interface won't tell me who'd vote for it.

When I tried pressing it at 50 IA , I got Sweden, Denmark, Oldenburg, Switzerland, Nuremberg, Genoa, Liege, and Utrecht rebelling. If I wait for 100 IA (just 6 more years or so), it's only Denmark, but by a lot, as they have huge AE against me.

Well, I could wait another 20 years or so for Denmark to accept it as well, but that would be rather boring, so here's the map of what HRE would look like if i just won the whole vote.

Great Powers map

Pasai is a rare contestant, narrowly overtaking Bahmanis at 9th

So some 1.30 conclusions.

HRE:

• HRE is overpowered if you start as Austria, or take it over early as another Catholic power; if you start late (in vanilla as Protestant; in F&B also as any other version of Christianity) it's a lot weaker
• forcing OPMs into HRE is nice; forcing huge (especially heretic) countries is actually a bad idea, as they'd never accept your religion, or accept revocation of privileges
• HRE CBs don't work too well unless your target is contiguous - and sea zones don't count
• latest hotfix nerfed it to the point wehre it's not too stupid
• nerfing influence ideas by removing AE reduction made playing in HRE less fun - AE doesn't make things harder, it just forces boring waiting; and there are no other good ways to reduce is (espionage ideas are seriously not worth it)
• overall it's OK change

Hussite:

• Hussite church powers are not as bad as I expected - those bonuess are fairly weak, but being able to switch them pretty much at will was useful a lot
• Bohemia has 3 paths - stay Catholic; go Hussite, then flip Protestant by event; or go Hussite and stay Hussite; Catholic path is definitely most powerful
• overall it's good extra flavor; a lot more interesting than Anglican for sure

Estates:

• new estates are stupidly OP, and have a lot less strategy involved than old estates; on the upside there's a lot less micro
• one really annoying issue with new estates is that you need to remember when its buttons (call diet and seize land) become available - old estates had notifications
• going full mana nad mercantilism privileges; then hard revoke 1610 almost everything for Count and Country; then give some back after winning Count and Country is a reasonable strategy; I'm not sure if it's optimal
• overall it's fine

Mercenaries:

• terrible change
• every AI blob now has infinite manpower
• especially Ming is indestructible after they just fixed it like one patch ago
• using mercs is really unfun, as they're impossible to split, and can only move as a group, so it adds up tons of extra pointless micro
• overall terrible change

UI:

• I had a lot of trouble with new trade company UI (which trade regions / states can build what), and notification goes to bad UI; but it turns out they made perfectly decent UI hidden in outliner - I only discovered it after finishing the campaign oops
• new HRE UI is not great - especially trying to figure out who'd vote for your reforms and why not
• building outliner is still terrible - building barracks / churches / workshops etc. makes sense as it shows you what you get (manpower / money etc.); but building courthouses for government capacity discount has no help whatsoever; and manufactory number has always been ridiculously wrong
• overall it's fine

Other changes:

• Bohemian mission tree is one of better ones in game. But if you play you need to decide what's your strategy before you even start, especially wrt religion and HRE.
• provoke revolt is the best button EU4 added in very long time
• playing without Religious and without Humanist worked OK, as EU4 rebels are ridiculously weak, and got even weaker now, but honestly I should have just picked Religious for the CB and its 25% AE discount
• administrative ideas are now basically mandatory; not only they save ton of paper mana, and ton of OE by reducing coring time; they're also the only source of that much extra government capacity. Even if you play tall, you should have administrative ideas
• I was spamming courthouses everywhere, took every government capacity bonus, and wasn't even growing that fast, and I was really close to the cap for last few decades. Admin efficiency doesn't affect the cap, maybe it should. Overall it's a very uninteresting system.
• Expansion ideas double what you get from non-state non-trade company territories, so if you play wide enough, you'll probably need them. Otherwise territories are garbage.

So 1.30 Emperor gets 3/5 stars from me.

Bohemian Empire: Part 15: 1616-1628: Hereditary Holy Roman Emperor

I had no idea what to pick for my 5th idea group. Eventually I decided that the build is: Diplomatic, Administrative, Influence, Trade, Expansion.

I started some colony in South America, but it will be completely insignificant this campaign.

I fought Tunis for Italian islands.

On death of my emperor I inherited my PU minors Brandenburg and Saxony. This is actually quite annoying, as that costs me my Electoral College votes, and now I need to make some alies, or demand a recount or something.

I started Court and Country in February 1623, pretty much by accident. I did the absolutely right thing and passed another HRE reform and declared war to get Sweden inside the Empire the same day.

This war was awkward as Britain joined on Swedish side, and sunk a third of my fleet as I was sailing from Mediterranean to Baltic. I tried building a small heavy fleet to secure the route, but Britain showed me that it's completely inadequate.

Somewhat surprisingly their side lost more ships than our side, but that really didn't matter, I couldn't blockade London, so I had to wait 5 years until full occupation of Sweden got me to 100% warscore.

After that I managed to make HRE hereditary. Just 7 years left to revoking the privilegia. 

Holy Roman Empire, not counting my other lands in Syria and Commonwealth, and without Danish non-HRE lands. It's huge.

Bohemian Empire: Part 14: 1599-1616: First Coalition

I took a break from HRE fights and attacked the Mamluks, taking Jerusalem and some forts for myself, and releasing Syria as vassal to manage AE.

I allied Shia Persia as well, for AE management.

My maximum absolutism was just 21%, due to all the privileges I granted, so start of age of absolutism meant mass privilege revocation. Turns out revoking privileges is super easy, barely an inconvenience, and by the time Age of Absolutism started, my max absolutism was up to a much nicer 69%.

I passed 5th reform, and unfortunately then I noticed that my Expand Empire CB on Sweden expired, as I lost Age of Reformation bonus for 20% warscore discount. And it would be so nice to get Sweden into HRE.

I was happily fighting Mamluks in a second war, when Pope tried to start a coalition against me. Well, it's amazing it took that long. I attacked the Pope day one

Of course I couldn't let them actually form a coalition, so I declared war on them day one. This did not discourage a bunch of other countries from coalitioning me anyway.

I got a few new minors into HRE, and then I noticed that Bourbonnais I just made join is being attacked by France. Well, that's the first time I use Enforce Peace ever I think. France refused, all HRE minors got +50 opinion modifier with me.

We 100%ed France, and Bourbonnais took 5 provinces and even handed over one to Spain for some reason. I allied Spain after this, since I might have to expand into Tunis or France soon, and they have no other allies, and lost most of their colonies, so they're exactly the kind of weakened state that could use some protection.

Coalition is just Genoa, Anizah, and Hormuz. I don't know why they thought that would be enough. Genoa and Hormuz even have slightly positive relations.

There was also a minor issue - I declared Expand Empire war on Orleans, and winning it made some of their lands join HRE, but not their capital, so they're still a non-HRE power, and now there's an imperial province controlled by foreigners (that is Orleans) costing me some IA.

I still hope to stack up absolutism so high I can get force Sweden (really close) and France (very far, but it keeps getting smaller, so maybe) into the HRE. That would cost some stupid amount of AE, and drag me into war with my ally Muscovy.

Then again, if I broke up Muscovy into pieces, and made them join the HRE too...

I'm not sure how far this campaign will go, I'll probably declare it won at Revoke The Privilegia, and I'm already 5 reforms in, with 4 to go (ignoring some optional ones).  

There were a few awkward simultaneous wars, Great Britain got dragged into this due to their Defender of the Faith, but AI doesn't know how to transport troops, so I usually just ignore them.

I could have pushed the Mamluks harder to get Mecca for +1 missionary, but I wasn't sure if I'd be fighting coalition with Denmark and who knows else just right away, so I only took Syrian cores and some cash.