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.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 38: 1350-1360: The End of The Middle Ages

I increased Orthodox heretic spawn rate, as there was just far too few and still a lot of game to go. It's really hard to mod this, as CK2 heretics aren't linear - they either don't exist, or there's a death spiral of religion into clusterfuck of heresies.

Lollards finally won majority over Catholics, but it's a 5-way race. Soon Catholics came ahead as primary, then Lollard again. It will probably keep flipping for very long time. Being primary is the worst, as counties flip from primary to random heresy (except when neighbouring existing heresy, they prefer that one). AI can't really stop the heretic death spiral.

After victory over Song China, it was time to demobilize, and to release Bengal and Bulgaria as sovereign kingdoms. I don't want any king tier vassals.

I still have a lot of heretic vassals.

King of Germany and Franconia, who lost Germany a while back, just recreated it. I need another plan for that guy.

My sister empress of China declared war to make Pope a tributary state of China - who was already my tributary. I guess Pope has some cities in India, but it's still weird.
Chinese armies took forever, but they ended up winning, making Pope a tributary, and messing up my font placement. Oh well, I can live with it.

Then she magically flipped Pisa from my tributary to Chinese tributary. OK, this is annoying, but still totally my fault.

At this point I've been thinking what I want to do with this campaign. There's 84 more years to go in CK2, but really not much to do. And then in EU4 it's not going to be a terribly interesting game.

Maybe surviving as Orthodox German China with 0% religious unity could be entertaining, but I'd probably stabilize in 20 years tops, and then there would be nothing left to do.

I thought about making myself HRE, and making Protestant Reformation spawn against Orthodox, but that would probably be really easy as well.

Interestingly there's now new fanmade CK2 to EU4 converter, with some extra fancy features. Unfortunately it hard crashes when I start converted game in EU4.

I was fun while it lasted. Here are some maps.

The New Rome would cover the whole map if I didn't release parts as independent countries every now and then

There's a bit of Surprise Buddhism challenging Orthodoxy, but I could wipe it all out in a few wars if I really wanted

Mongol culture spread like crazy due to special nomad mechanics (pasture provinces convert to owner culture automatically, so brief Mongol Empire had lasting cultural impact)

German culture definitely spread to Provence, Italy, Finland, and a few other places, but it doesn't really look that special. In CK2 characters far too easily flip to local culture, so there are Habsburgs of every local kind. I don't hate the concept, but it's not tuned properly.

Even non-Imperial lands are mostly Habsburgs

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 37: 1342-1350: Kaiserin Berta and Celestial Empress Beatrix

There's still a century to go, and my todo list is short:

• destabilize any remaining strong countries like especially Rus and Germany
• either integrate or release any king-tier vassals
• put Habsburg on the Chinese throne
• take revenge on king of Armenia for murdering my niece
• border cleanup

China plan was fairly long term, so I started raising new retinue, something that I stopped bothering with after defeating Aztecs and Mongols.

And that was Kaiser Waltheof's last act, as he soon after died, succeeded by his daughter Berta, married to his nephew Teodosije of Bulgaria.

I couldn't find any way to cleanly revoke my mother's 4 kingdom tier titles, so I just took -120 opinion penalty for 5 years with all vassals, and up to -160 for 10 years for destroying those titles on top of that, but that only with affected vassals.

With vassals plotting my demise, I finally managed to get a CB to abolish Empire of Rus, and I attacked them. It didn't change a huge deal, as 3-kingdom of Vladimir/Chernigov/Novgorod was majority of its territory, but it's progress.

After that I had a grand tournament where my vassals could bash each other's skulls, and hopefully remove some malcontents from the world of the living.

Then it was Germany's turn. This was a quick victory, and also completely useless, as king of Germany had second title as king of Franconia, so all I did was renamed that place.

I needed some safe area to launch invasion of China from, so I conquered Bengal for one of my kinsman. So much for integrating all vassal kings. I moved my 84k strong retinue there. It's cheap and effective units - 38k pikemen, 38k archers, 8k heavies. Cavalry, elepants, and such nonsense are really overcosted in current patch.

I still wanted to wait for vassal relations to get a bit better.

But then, in February 1349, I started the greatest war yet - Invasion of China. I had a total of 380k of troops vs theirs 190k - with 75% levy reinforcement penalty, as all those extras were sent to invade China proper.

The decision where the war will be was totally up to them - I sent my spymaster to get some visibility. They spawned in Jiuquan at Northern top of the Silk Road and instead of ramming their way through to Bengal as I expected, they followed along the Silk Road and then through the Steppes heading towards Europe. I wasn't sure if they aren't bluffing, so I had to split my armies.

Then some rebellion happened in France, forcing me to leave even more troops behind. Suddenly my 2:1 advantage all evaporated - and my troops were sitting there eating winter attrition.

The first battle only happened June 1350 when my troops tried to stop Chinese invasion crossing Volga.

After losing a few crossing attempts, Chinese backup plan was to cross Volga further North, then run head first into my troops on hills while crossing Don.

By December 1350 after 5 failed crossing attempts, and with only a third of Chinese forces dead they just gave up.

With loss of Western Protectorate, my troops in China managed to overrun it, and my sister Beatrix became Shizu von Habsburg of the newly proclaimed Tang Empire.

Meanwhile, one of my vassals got Petra for me. Too bad this isn't Civ5, so it's not that kind of amazing. Catholics and Lollards are almost evenly matched, and considering how it's been going, Lollard will likely become the main branch of Western Christianity.

War for China took place on Volga and Don crossings

Habsburg China!

After their overflowing rebels destroyed Habsburg Britannia, it's much deserved payback

I plan to getrid of Bengal and clean up the borders a bit

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 36: 1328-1342: Catholicism in Crisis

Orthodox Habsburg ruling line in Georgia was about to end, with it falling to some Turkish Jains. I wasn't going to allow that, so I organized invasion of Georgia, and distributed its lands among my kinsmen.

My son and heir Leopold died of severe stress, leaving my wife as my powerful vassal. I had 4 vassal kings:

• distant kinsman Dietmar of Anatolia
• nephew Teodosije of Bulgaria (including lands of Hungary)
• wife Gulisa of Epirus, Croatia, Serbia, and Sardinia-Corsica
• granddaughter Safiya of titular Carinthia, ruling OPM in our ancestral seat of Basel, and somehow big chunk of Southern Georgia

Vassals took some convincing, but I managed to take over and abolish Carinthia and Anatolia, properly integrating them into the Empire of New Rome.

I got challenged to a duel by my marshal, and I foolishly accepted, ending up seriously wounded, but I got better.

Catholics were being completely wrecked by heretics from all sides, falling down to 0% moral authority. I increased heresy rate, and left them on high for a while as nothing seemed to be happening, but I didn't expect that.

Basically as soon as Catholic moral authority started falling from its near permanent 100%, that resulted in more heretics, resulting in more moral authority loss, until it got completely crushed. Oh well, I toned down heresy rate, maybe they'll recover, maybe they won't.

And it wasn't just that - I did my best to undermine every Catholic country, then Zhao and Song troops invaded Britannia.

The world showing all my vassals as own countries. Catholic Northern Europe, formerly stable Britannia and a few big kingdoms, is in total chaos.

Kanem-Bornu, formerly most of Sub-Saharan Africa, went into Catholic-Monophysite-Fraticelli 3-way civil war.

Catholicism got so wrecked it has good chance of losing its primary status within its branch to the Lollards. Currently of 699 Catholic-branch provinces, there's 315 Catholics, 196 Lollards, 92 Waldensians, 52 Fraticelli, and 44 Cathar

Orthodox also has higher heresy spawn rate, but they get suppressed as they happen. Of 654 Orthodox-branch proinces, only 4 are heretics.

Maybe I should give Buddhists some heresies so they join in the fun? It's 263 really stable provinces

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 35: 1322-1328: Zhou Invasion of Habsburg Britannia

The Pope decided to declare Crusade for Khazaria. That sort of makes sense as that's the last Sunni state and quite big, it's also basically one big pasture very difficult to hold for any feudal lord.

Song China won another civil war, but remnants fled West and atttacked Britannia and specifically its Indian holdings. Britannia was suffering under so many heretic rebellions, it couldn't properly defend its Indian holdings.

Zhou Empire was declared over Britain, Scandinavia, and half of India, overthrowing my Habsburg kinsman. I couldn't tolerate that, and fortunately I had some favors with the Song, so it wasn't too much effort to convince them to finish the job and crush their rebels.

I had a lot of troops doing nothing, so I decided to help. And since it was really long way for Chinese troops to get there, I ended up doing all the fighting while China only provided the best CB in game.

Zhou Empire has really pretty color

For all I know it would fall apart in no time due to religious and cultural issues with its vassals

The aftermath in Europe

Zhou Emperor now demoted to a duke controls a good chunk of Scandinavia

The only remnants of Habsburg rule outside New Rome are Georgia and OPM Kavlevan is Estonia - both with non-dynastic heirs

Plenty of non-dynastic relatives though, like my nephew rules Germany, my cousin Castille

The aftermath in India

Maharastra is still Habsburg, as are Orissa, Bengal, and a few of the newly independent duchies

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 34: 1307-1322: Roman Balkans

My wife got a hand cancer at age of 17, and prompt amputation saved her life. She refused to ally me, and she got a huge revolt against her rule going.

The only good thing she managed to do is give birth to little Beatrix. Who somehow managed to get baptised by Satan? I think it's a bug, as far as I can tell, she got baptised by the Pope, and neither me nor my wife nor the Pope has any connection with Satanists.

She later had a second child Leopold, and then Wulfhilde. I gave Leopold an OPM titutar kingdom so if she gets overthrown he'd be my vassal, but that was taking forever. In the end it worked - Leopold is a vassal 5-king.

My nephew duke of Moesia conquered himself pretty much the whole Hungary. Some other vassals conquered chunks of Egypt, Arabia, and Germany. I've been expanding like crazy by doing totally nothing.

Empire of Kanem-Bornu went from Catholic to having a Monophysite heir related to Monophysite Nubian royal family. I tried to help them a bit to speed things up but it didn't work.

Empire of Britannia has an Orthodox heir now, so if they go Orthodox that would be the end of biggest Catholic empire.

Unfortunately Georgia had a non-Habsburg heir. I got husband of the queen killed hoping she's remarry matrilineally, but the went for a regular marriage with a Jain king of Punjab and Rajputana. At least the heir is still a Georgian Orthodox baby from her first marriage.

I started building Great Library in Palermo - that's 9th great wonder in the empire.

There's nowhere near as many heretics as I expected, so maybe I should change the settings again? Occasionally heretic rebellion wins, but then it gets overran by holy wars from every direction.

This is really baffling. Is the Pope Satan? Is that war Catholic baptism looks like?

Blood of Alexander gives my extended family kingdom level CBs

If it continues at this rate until 1444, I'll conquer the world without declaring a single war

I already released huge swaths of land as temporary tributaries