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.