Holy Roman Empire

[frogbeastegg]

The Holy Roman Empire is playable right from the start, without the need to unlock it or edit any files.

[Antagonist]

I'll take a crack at this one from observations in my campaign:

Overview
The Holy Roman Empire (often abbreviated HRE), corresponding approximately with modern-day Germany, is one of the most complicated and strangest entities in Europe, having being everything from a confederation of petty princelings to among the most powerful nations on Earth during the course of it's history. As far as M2TW is concerned in 1080 it's a quite large but somewhat fragmentary faction smack-dab in the middle of Europe, surrounded by both enemies and opportunities.

Unit Roster
Fairly conventional during the Early and High eras, with knights, sergeants and crossbowmen in castles and militias in cities. Look out for the Teutonic Knights guild. The HRE comes into it's own late in the game, with a number of powerful unique untis including Gothic Knights (heaviest of the heavy cavalry) Zweihanders and Forlorn Hope (heavy infantry with greatswords) Landsnechts (excellent mercenaries including pikes, musketeers and swords) and Reiters (one of the few gunpowder cavalry units in the game) Their choice of artilliery and naval units is similar to that of other Northern European factions.

Starting Position
The Empire's central position has a number of ramifications: the player can expect to be attacked by several factions (at least) early in the game, but also has numerous options as to where to expand. To the west you have France and England - they seem more likely to get bogged down with each other initially, but will likely become a threat later on. To the North is Denmark, which has little choice but to attack you and almost certainly will. To the East are a number of independent settlements, such as Magdeburg, Prague and Zagreb. Beyond them lie the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. The game recommends that you capture at least some of these settlements, although this will certainly bring you into conflict with both of these factions. To the South are the Italian factions - Venice, Milan, Sicily and the Papacy. The southermost Imperial settlement, Bologna, is surrounded by these factions.

Diplomacy
My own experience is basically don't bother: Your central position and Papal unpopularity (see below) make it very difficult to be everyone's friend. The best I have been able to acheive is to placate the factions on one particular fronteir (I chose the France and England) but otherwise expect to make a lot of enemies very quickly, especially on Hard difficulty and higher.

The Pope
The Holy Roman Empire has a complex and unique relationship with the Papacy. Most of the time this relationship is characterized principally by mutual hatred. You start out in very poor standing with the Pope and it is difficult to improve this. In particular, the game objectives make it virtually certain that you will go to war with the Papacy sooner or later (you must capture Rome with default victory conditions) It is possible that with numerous priests hunting down Heretics and Witches, prompt responses to Crusade appeals and generally pious behavour you could rescue this relationship and wait try and wait for someone else to capture Rome but this would be very difficult to say the least. Note also that warring against the Papacy will not do any service to your standing with the other Catholic factions, especially if you find yourself attack Crusading armies.

The Campaign
Unlike factions such as Denmark or England which have limited initial opportunities and clearly defined enemies, the Empire's position means that while you will likely be fighting people in every direction at some point. The main focus of your efforts will shift as time goes on, but will likely be different for each player and in each game. I personally chose to focus on Italy, but have had numerous problems with Denmark, Poland and Hungary as well. If you're looking at Italy it's an important priority to capture the northern cities of Genoa, Florence, Genoa, Milan and Venice. The latter two are factions and are unlikely to appreciate Imperial militarism. One particularly important issue with the HRE is the choice between castles and cities. Italy and the area east of the HRE has very few castle settlements, and it would be a good idea to convert some cities to castles both to establish a more effective frontier and to provide better troops for your armies.

Hopefully more people will add their impressions (particularly late game, I'm still around 1250) as each HRE campaign is likely to very different depending on where the player chooses to focus their strategy.

Antagonist

[geala]

I will give some impressions of my play, although it is not a real guide. I'm also still in the early times for some reason, around 1240. Be graceful with my English.

I started a campaign on H/H and stopped soon because I didn't disabled the moves of the AI on the campaign map which is boring and stressing in the long term. Then I started a campaign on H/H again and soon a second parallel campaign on M/H to see the differences. In the M/H campaign I gave HRE a huge starting treasury of 30.000,- G and increased the kings money from 1500,- to 2500,- a turn.

Speed is your friend in the first turns. You get an army near Hamburg (rebels), hurry it to the castle immediatly, otherwise the Danes will siege it the second or third turn. After the fall of the castle you can build a harbour; as in MTW and RTW sea power seems to be the key for victory in the later game (just my experience). If you are a German or know something of the geography (or both) you can also get a little annoyed at the location of the harbour which is on the shore of the baltic sea instead the north sea. And why Hamburg is a castle and not a rich merchant city only CA can tell.

You could also try to get Antwerpen at an early stage which would offer you big money and a harbour at the north sea, but I would not recommend this. The rebels inside are fairly strong. But worse, it brought me in conflict with France in my first campaign, something I wished to avoid at all costs.

In the actual campaigns I ignored the flemish coast. I was never attacked by France with was a bit surprising considering the experience from MTW. But there are other attackers left.

Second aim should be Prag/Prague/Praha. You get order from the council to catch Magdeburg, but Magdeburg is a small castle and what do you want with another castle? Also Poland seems to be scripted to attack Magdeburg, which can cause conflict at an (too) early stage. If you want to take Magdeburg, hurry up because the Polish go straight to siege the castle.

After Hamburg and Prag I took Stettin on the baltic shore (annother castle unfortunately) and transfered it in a village. Fourth was Metz (a castle again) then I stopped to consolidate my robbed land. I transfered Staufen, Metz in towns at the first opportunity.

From the beginning HRE is the strongest power in the world. Haha. It's a power desperately in need of money and money is everything im TW games. I reduced troop production to Hamburg (castle), Frankfurt (city) and Innsbruck (castle). I really developed only Frankfurt and Hamburg for the military. Later buildings cost a huge amount of money, money you need for your troops instead.

You now have ten provinces but you need many troops so you never have enough money. So you need towns and farms and markets. Spend every money for economical growth. Selfexplanatory. And building streets is now essential. I'm a defensive player and I never managed it very well to have enough troops but not too much troops. You can come into depth rather easily if you produce too much because of the ever increasing danger beyond your borders. More later.

I don't like the pope and I never built up churches at a great level. That was not a very wise decision. Inquisitors began to wander through my countries. Oddly more in the M/H than in H/H where I rarely saw one of these frightening guys. In M/H till now they killed every male member of my family except for two. I like my generals and was not very pleased with this. So you should do everything to please the pope, building churches early on and obey every papal order.
I choose another way, now killing every inquisitor I see on the map. That is very difficult because of the low killing chances of assassins. You should do better and cringe before the pope.

The big problem of HRE: first everybody likes you (except the pope) which changed later on. In the H/H every neighbour came and signed treaties with me. I get Poland, Venice, Hungary, Milan and Denmark, Sicily as allies (and also other nations far more away), only France refused it. But that means nothing. Later all of the lovely neighbours attacked me except France and Hungary. Strangely in the M/H it was much more difficult to get allies. An explanation could be the fast building session I could start because of the large funds of money which makes me very strong very early. Something the AI nations do not seem to like.

Problems started for me from the 25th turn on. Suddenly I was attacked by Venice, Denmark and Poland at the same time. I survived only because of the sometimes very dumb AI. Interestingly it was not a great difference in the H/H and the M/H campaign.

In my experience you can do nothing to live in peace with the surrounding nations. I tried it and got my ass kicked. Therefore early offensive play is recommended I fear, something I don't like. First you should get rid of the Danes who have only one province. In the early game you can afford excommunication (only effect is +20% unrest in the settlements but that is nothing). Don't fear inquisitors, they came independent of being excommunicated or not. But in the M/H they left my country after I got excommunicated (strange cowards). After Denmark secure the rich and safe lands of Sweden, Norway and Finland. Next candidate is Venice, giving rich money, best defensive position and a bridge to your italian settlement at Bologna. The AI is not very clever so don't fear the battle at the bridge to Venice. Then beat Poland. After that you have to face France or Milan. In my M/H Milan is the superpower. I became their vassal many times with brought me some needed money and made me survive the struggle till now. You should attack Milan and later on Sicily wether you got excommunicated or not. I'm now at this stage, on turn 80 or so, you should do it as early as possible.

In the summary I don't see a big difference between H/H and M/H. The other nations are generally less aggressive in M/H, some rarely ever fighting others but the most aggressive are unfortunately the neighbours of HRE. M/H oddly was indeed harsher than H/H: without the cheated starting money I would not have survived some attacks. One interesting thing I found was that in the cheated M/H campaign the rebels had very good troops early on, much better than mine; maybe the AI choose troops by the level of the player buildings?

Perhaps I will write more when in the later HRE campaign which I deserved very much but meanwhile I started a Spanish campaign and that is far more fun than playing HRE in the early times and less danger to get additional grey hairs. And I think the later game will be very similar for every catholic nation.

[chapparal]

Carpe Jugulum :P

I started an HRE campaign based on how difficult I percieved it in MTW (Never played them then) and how people percieve the HRE now.

My impressions

HRE starts off in a rough spot (duh) so if you'd like to play a peacenik game, and somehow succeed as HRE, My hat is off to you. HRE is all about warfare, so lets make like a good german and get to it!

This is my experience Based a VH/VH campaign about 25 turns in. My empire and road to victory are already established pretty much. Milan has decided to attack venice with a 1/3rd stack and i really just don't feel like fighting them right now. I'm fairly confident I can wipe the milanese out in 7 turns, if it weren't for that accursed pope.

You know where you stand in terms of geography, so i'm not going to repeat the 'France to the west, danes to the north, oh noes' thing again. Instead, i'll focus on the positives. Such as winning.




Opening Moves
*ahem*
Well, you have the french to the west, the danes to the north, some scattered rebel territories to the west, and the italians to the south.

The first 3 moves will most likely determine how easy this game goes for you. You will definately want to make sure you can accomplish them, and they should be doable for anyone on VH/VH.

First Off: See those delicious rebel territories? Beautiful Prague, succulent Florence? Ignore them. Now. The best move is to go in hard and fast, and *liberate* the HRE.

To this end, this means destroying the Danes, and beheading the italians. (namely Venice.)

Destroying the Danes:

The Danish (mmmmm....) army to the north will take the fortress immedietly south of Denmark. You have 2 methods here, and 1 is risky, and the other is risky as well.

1) Bring your commander from the Northeasternmost territory, buy some mercs, reinforce the northernmost army and take the dutch capital.
2) Use the northernmost army, move into the woods as north as possible, siege Denmark's capital turn 2, conquer through either assault or combined Sally/reinforcement defense on turn 3.

Option 2 is hard, but i believe it is possible. The primary dutch armies will be messing with sweeden and laying siege to the northernmost mainland rebel province. You should be able to get in and do it.

If you take Option 1, the pope will be very angry with you, threaten excom (to both you and the danes!) and the danes will probably have enough time to take the Northernmost rebel province (which is a castle) which means you'll have to take them out. Slowing you down in the early stages, as well as making it longer to defeat those axe wielding vikings.


Venice.
You cannot destroy the venetians in a timely manner due to their far off island nation. Instead, cut the snakes head off, and the body. Save the tail for another day (or, try to get it in a ceasfire, then kill the body, don't get your hopes up though)

You have 2 options here:
Your first move in both of them is to move your garrison (Everyone) from the southwesternmost province and march to attack the italian province south of them. It will take them a while to get there, so alternatively, you can sieze venice, build a boat, and sail there as well. I'd recommend both actually. But how to sieze Venice?

In addition to this, move your garrison from your southernmost castle (its directly NW of venice, sorta) and move them torwards venice.

Enter option time:
1) Siege on the first turn, contain the threat, assault the second
2) Siege on the second turn, Venice will actually leave Venice mostly undefended. Siege on the bridge, fight the combined sally/reinforce, and take venice super easy.


Again, 2 options here, both are possible. 1) is fastest, and difficult, but may mean you'll have a harder time on the body (middle venetian castle West of Venice) It also means you may make it to the body faster.
2) is easy, but it feels like cheating, is terribly predictable, and venice will most likely get sieged in a few turns from a maurading venitian general if you don't leave a few units on the bridge following the assault.

How to take venice?

Move your italian province garrison (Except for the peasants) and attack Venice, picking up a few Mercs if you need them. Make sure to build some militia and lower tax rates to keep the province green. Move this stack and siege venice.

Now that we've dealt with the dutch and have really screwed over the italians, no doubt the pope hates you. Stuff it pope. Its easy for the pope to threaten to excom both sides, and both the Dutch and the italians attacked me, getting their stupid butts excommed, making for fast assualts. Still, in the end the pope hate my guts. Oh well, my people were happy.

don't put pressure on the poles, let them expand to their northwest, (just make sure to capture that northernmost fortress directly south of Denmark though, it'll be handy to ensure security)

Take the eastern rebel provinces all the way to the meditterranian. In addition, you might want to take antwerp. Shuffle troops around to maintain strong borders, and fight off rebels that will cut into your trade.
We don't want to expand into Mentz or other places to the west because not only will the french be slightly peeved, your putting yourself on the wrong side of the Rhine, which is/will be very useful should the french ever wish to pull a milanese and attack you.

Take Scandinavia (watchout for pirate fleets!) and florence(florence 1-2 turns after you take venice), sardinia and corsica. Build them a little ways, and turn them all into economic powerhouses. Cut trade deals with practically everyone.

Wipe hands on pants.



You'll be in an incredibly strong economic and military situation awfully quickly. One caveat though, is I didn't feel that the *core* territories of the HRE were very economically viable, so don't spend too much in them too fast.

[chapparal]

The Campaign
Unlike factions such as Denmark or England which have limited initial opportunities and clearly defined enemies, the Empire's position means that while you will likely be fighting people in every direction at some point. The main focus of your efforts will shift as time goes on, but will likely be different for each player and in each game.

Antagonist

Quoted for truth, and i though i'd elaborate as to why wiping out the danes and venetians gives you a superb launching platform.

Simply put, it's economics. You now have large trading infrastructures in the Baltic AND in the mediterranian. For what its worth, I think the portuguese/spanish/moors are the only ones to really reap the benefits of this, of which there are plenty. All of them involve money.

With the Danes' quick demise, you don't have to worry about the dutch powerhouse they always seem to become later on. With Venice taken, you can now become the Trading powerhouse in the south that they were supposed to be.

One Mistake i made though: Kinda important Typo.
"
Venice.
You cannot destroy the venetians in a timely manner due to their far off island nation. Instead, cut the snakes head off, and the body. Save the tail for another day (or, try to get it in a ceasfire, then kill the body, don't get your hopes up though)

You have 2 options here:
Your first move in both of them is to move your garrison (Everyone) from the southEASTERNmost province and march to attack the italian province south of them. It will take them a while to get there, so alternatively, you can sieze venice, build a boat, and sail there as well. I'd recommend both actually. But how to sieze Venice?"


That definately required a fix.



Addendum: In terms of endgame, it might be a good idea to mount an invasion of england, and then follow it all the way down till france, then invade france on all fronts. Eastern expansion is totally possible as well, but I'd bet they will end up fighting amongst themselves, which means encroaching on them may blow up in your face. They'll have to deal with those mongols eventually anyway. Better them than you.

Vis-a-Vis the Pope:
IF you are excommunicated, there is only 2 ways back into the fold (that i know of)
1) You lose enough territories (At least in the AI's case)
2) Your faction leader kicks the bucket

Obviously, you don't want 1 to occur. So it may be a good idea to go all out at the end of your faction leader's life, and not care about excommunication. Likewise, you can lose your Faction leader in battle, but thats not recommended, and may not come when you want it to. Best to eliminate a faction, and then be back into the church, than threatened into stopping half way.

[PaulTa]

I also believe that the starting moves will either make or break you, so here's my take.

wait for venice to contact you (which is actually pretty early on, first or second turn kinda early) and sell all your goodies (trade rights, map info, etc) but NOT an alliance. You want to remain reliable. Rinse and repeat with Milan, only use your own diplomat to contact them.

Wait for the papal diplomat to ask for trade rights, and then spring the big question (will you ally with me?). Gift them military access, map info, and enough florins to take you to the top of the papal list. If you attack any catholic faction before allying with the papal states, it's near impossible to do.

Once you have the pope in your pocket and a diplomat camped outside of rome for the occasional florin gift, use all that cash you've accumulated from selling trade rights and maps to buy some mercs with your faction leader, and then siege Venice. They're going to attack you anyways, so don't feel bad about it.

After you whipe out venice and any relieving forces in a bridge battle, set your sights on Milan and Genoa. Milan will attack you anyways as well, and you want to disable these italian superpowers before they can turn their piles of florins into piles of crossbowmen and militia spearmen.

Once you've secured Venice and Milan is out of the game, set your sights on Sicily. Here's another power that is hell bent on attacking you, and their fortress in Palermo hits citadel around 1115. You wouldn't want a citadel being wasted on norman knights when it COULD be making Zweihanders, would you?

Once Sicily is removed, probably with the help of mercs, you have a central med. base that produces some of your best infantry. You're in a prime position to follow any crusades that are called, and you can have at the southern bit of france in a few turns of sailing.

I prefer to keep some powers in the game that blossom, so that I have a bit of competition when I get my good units (because that's when the fun really starts anyways), so I don't bottleneck Denmark by taking hamburg (I bring the troops down to help with Milan, actually), and I leave all the rebel provinces becides Prague to the poles (who need it anyways). In my opinion, it's better to set up camp in italy and a bit of southern germany than to freeze one's arse off in the cold and poor northern germany.


Now remember, your starting units suck compared to merc spearmen and merc crossbows. Try to snatch these up whenever possible, and don't be afraid to make mailed knights up the wazoo for flanking those Italian spear militias.

[econ21]

This post is largely a placeholder for any lessons from a HRE PBM we are launching, but for now here are some unit stats (prerequisites incomplete):

Unit Stats

3^|Unit size|Melee|Charge|Missile|Total defence|Defence|Armour|Shield|Cost|Upkeep|Prereq|Misc
7^Peasants|75|4|1||3|3|0|0|110|90|C1|
7^Town militia|75|5|2||7|1|0|6|290|125|T2|F
7^Halberd militia|75|5|2||1|1|0|0|300|150||
7^Zweihander|60|14|6||11|4|7|0|680|150||
7^Forlorn Hope|60|17|6||12|5|7|0|650|250||
7^Dismtd Feudal knights|60|13|3||21|8|7|6|570|225|C3|
7^Dismtd Imperial knights|60|9|3||17|3|8|6|540|225|C4|AP
7^Dismtd Gothic knights|60|14|6||14|4|10|0|810|225||
7^Spear militia|75|5|2||7|1|0|6|310|125|T2|F
7^Sergeant spearmen|75|7|3||9|3|0|6|420|155||
7^Armoured spearmen|75|7|3||14|3|5|6|420|155||
7^Merc spearmen|75|7|3||14|3|5|6|540|185||
7^Crusader sergeants|75|7|3||14|3|5|6|?|200||
7^Pike militia|75|7|2||1|1|0|0|150|125||F
7^Landsknecht pikemen|75|11|4||4|4|0|0|350|225||
7^Peasant archers|60|2|1|5|1|1|0|0|220|100|C1|
7^Peasant crossbowmen|60|2|1|9|1|1|0|0|220|100||
7^Crossbow militia|60|2|1|9|1|1|0|0|220|100||F
7^Merc crossbowmen|60|6|1|12|7|3|4|0|860|180||AP
7^Pavisse crossbowmen|60|6|1|12|14|3|5|6|490|125||
7^Arquebusiers|60|6|1|14|3|3|0|0|460|125||
7^Handgunners|60|11|2|13|13|6|7|0|650|150||
7^Mounted crossbowmen|40|7|2|5|10|5|5||470|175||
7^Reiters|40|11|5|20|13|6|7|0|920|250||
7^Merchant cavalry|40|6|2||14|3|7|4|370|210|T3|F
7^Mounted sergeants|40|9|4||13|5|4|4|470|175|C1|
7^Mailed knights|40|10|6||14|5|5|4|680|250|C2|
7^Feudal knights|40|10|6||16|5|7|4|?|250|C3|
7^Imperial knights|40|10|8||16|4|8|4|750|250|C4|PC, Mace
7^Teutonic knights|40|13|8||16|5|7|4|950|250|C4|PC, Mace
7^Crusader knights|40|13|6||17|6|7|4|220|300|C4|PC|
7^Early gen. bodyguard|21|13|8||16|5|7|4|820|250| |2HP,PC
7^Late gen. bodyguard|21|13|8||17|5|9|3|870|250| |2HP, PC
7^Gothic knights|40|13|8||15|5|10|0|1000|320|T5|PC, Mace|


F= free militia unit
AP = armour piercing
2 HP = two hit points
PC = powerful charge (not sure if that just refers to the 8 charge stat)
Prequisites: C1 = level 1 castle; T5 = level 5 town etc.

[geala]

It is now 1506 in my HRE campaign. My conclusions so far are: playing HRE is rather similar to MTW. There is a peak of trouble you have to survive when most of your neighbours come after you. That peak for me was around 1250 when I had war with Denmark, Poland, Venice and Sicily and Milan join enemyship. If you manage to get through it nobody really can endanger you.

Spain, England and Hungary attacked later but that was only annoying, not dangerous. Nevertheless I have to keep at least 8 field armies at the borders because there are no natural barriers except against England.

Units
German units are of mixed quality. There is no really extraordinary performer. In the early and middle game you have Spear Militia and Armored Sergeants and the normal knights, nothing special.

Of course you need Pavise Crossbowmen (castle) and Halberd Militia (city) in the middle game. After I got the halberds I used Armored Sergeants only in second class armies.

Zweihänder are a bit better than foot knights but not that good as I thought in the beginning.

If cavalry would be easy to use and without bugs HRE would be much stronger. Gothic Knights (MTWs darling) are great shock cavalry (in theory) and Mounted Crossbowmen and Reiter are fast and deadly from the distance. But more often than not they failed to charge correctly so playing hammer and anvil is not always possible. If caught in melee Gothic Knights are as useless as every other cavalry unit I know so far.

There are a lot of canons available. With it, crossbowmen and arquebusiers horse archer/missile armies were no real match which was a bit surprising to me. You have substantial losses but invariably win the match. More dangerous (to my taste) are foes with strong infantry like the Aztecs for example. It's a pity that Landsknecht pikemen are only available as mercenaries for they would be a good core of the armies.

Cities/castles
Also in the late game there is only one thing you need: money. Therefore I transferred most of the castles I conquered to cities. My "military triangle" was Hamburg (castle), Magdeburg (castle) and Frankfurt (city). All were build up as fast as possible. Hamburg is for Zweihänder, Pavise Crossbowmen and Mounted Crossbowmen (which are not build in stables but in the archers lab), Madgeburg for Gothic Knights and Reiter, Frankfurt for Arquebusiers, Halberd and Pike Militia. You can form armies easily in the middle of the three. Cannons are build in Aarhus (you need a city with a harbour for building carracks to reach the new world, and the last building for cannons improves also your ships, so it's a good combination to build canons in a harbour town). Beneath the named strongholds I did not develop military structures. I only use what I find when I conquer foreign land. Let your enemy spend the money, you need it for the many troops you have to field.

[Bleda]

When I played as the Holy Roman Empire, I found that the best diplomatic strategy is to say damn all the rest and bend over backwards to please the Pope, his friendship is the only deterrent to numerous attacks from your neighbors. The best way to make friends with the Pope is to pay him to be your friend. On top of trying to get experienced priests to become cardinals you must PAY HIM OFF. I realize this is hard to do as the HRE because funds are in short supply. To do this, whenever I have a particulary good turn or sack a settlement I always give a nice cut to the pope. If it is your pope or a friendly country's pope that is in power, you can offer tribute of about 4000 to get outstanding relations. Otherwise expect to pay 8-10k for the same result. The Pope loves money, pay him, be his friend.

[Snite]

Just one thing I'd like to add as I found it to be very helpful: Because of Bologna's large population and it's central location to Milan, Venice, and Sicily, I converted it into a castle and was able to upgrade to Fortress right away. Of course this brought down my income slightly, but Fuedal Knights make excellent counters to the Italian spear units that outshine your own. It's been an excellent boon to my war effort against these factions.

Snite

[sapi]

A quick summary of what i've gathered from my hre campaign:

- strike hard, strike fast - you need to clean up the rebel territories around you asap and break the back of at least one of your neighbours.

- damn the pope - he can't do much to hurt you

- spam cavalry - it works very well against the infantry heavy armies of most of your enemies (barring the polish)

- Convert some of your castles to cities - you need the income

[Iavorios]

I don’t know about you, but I find it pointless to build anything else except feudal knits, dismounted feudal knits, armored sergeants and x- bows. O and gunpowder units. All the others are just not worth the money and the waiting. Imperial knits are weaker than feudal ones (I have tested it personally) and this must be some kind of bug. Any way I can handle the game with fortress troops only, just until the gunpowder comes.

[katank]

Mounted sarges are cheaper and can still do a number on infantry with repeated charging.

Imperial knights don't look that great statwise but they have armour piercing maces which make them better against armoured targets than feudal knights.

Strategically, I find that securing Northen Italy and Denmark early on to be very useful. It wipes out some of your smaller neighbors and enables you to focus on other fronts. This avoids the 6 or 7 way crunch that often happens to the HRE come midgame.

[Skott]

I just finished a HRE short campaign. M/M settings. After reading this thread I decided on a rapid expansion as my early strategy. In the north I took Hamburg and Magdeburg first. In the south I took Florence. These were my opening moves. I left Hamburg and Magdeburg as castles. Florence remained a city.

I knew the Danes and Milan had to be eliminated as quickly as possible but I also knew I couldnt fight both at the same time. I sent diplomats out and made trade and alliance agreements with all factions except the Danes. They would be my first target. Milan I hoped would be peaceful for a while since fighting on two fronts is not something I wanted.

I struck Arhus first, the Danish capital. Although I captured it the Danes captured Antwerp first. I dealt a serious blow to the Danes but didnt take them out of the game. The Pope intervened so I was forced to wait seven turns before renewing the war. They offered peace and I accpeted and that helped keep them peaceful while I found other targets. And find them I did.

I took Stettin before Poland could get to it. Then I managed to get to Metz before the French and Milanese forces could. There I stopped my expansion of rebels cities because I didnt want to encroach on other factions and force wars. I spent time building and teching up but it didnt take long for Milan to realize they were now bottled up and wanted what I had in Italy. I played a defensive war against the Milanese troops in Italy. I wanted them to be excommunicated because once I started my drive I didnt want the Pope interfering. Venice stayed true to their alliance so I got lucky they didnt jump me from behind. Same goes for Polansd and Hungary. France kept their alliance for a while then they started blockading my ports. Once milan was excommunicated though France requested a ceasefire which I happily agreed to.

The Milan fight was tough. Their basic plan was a constant wave of troops aimed at Bologna and Florence. At first they started with about three units and kept increasing the number of units. At one point Florence almost fell but I rushed in troops during a siege and fought the Milanese to a standstill in the streets.

First let me make a few comments about street fighting. Street fighting is worse than in RTW because the AI pathing is much worse and the streets much more narrower for setting up in. In RTW you could tell the unit how to form up but in M2TW you cant get the cursor to work as well. Consequntly you have to get the formations set before sending them into the narrow parts of the streets but units in M2TW wont stay in formations and their pathing ability basically sucks. You cant get them all go the same way. The trick is to send a command to each individual unit. It works but its a slower process.

The one nice thing about M2TW street fighting is that you can choke a street with troops if you have enough and they got decent defense. Its not other infantry units that are a problem but calvarly IMO. Mounted knight units just bulldoze through their way through like a big lumbering tank and can take the hits while doing it. If you have a thick depth of units they wont break through. Too few troops or not thick enough and they will break through and once they get behind your men they do serious damage. Mounted knights are powerful in cities as well in open areas.

Anyway I managed to hold the Milanese in the Florence streets. They were cavalry heavy whereas I was spear militia heavy but their knights only used one street so I was able to mass my men thick enough so they couldnt break through. If the AI had used more than one street Florence would have fell.

It was at this point the Pope finally decided to excommunicate Milan. I went on the offensive now. Also I was now able to attack the Danes again. I moved my northern army to the Arhus port and sailed them to Antwerp. I wanted a quick victory against the Danes to put them out of the war before The Pope could intervene again. Antwerp fell in one turn to my overwhelming Northern army. The Danes ceased to exist except for some rebel mercenaries to the eastern region.

The fighting in and around Genoa and Milan went back and forth. I couldnt get into a siege fight wth them and they couldnt siege me either. It was alot of field fighting in the open and woody areas of that region. Finally through attrition I wore the Milanese down to where i could get my armies to siege Milan and Genoa. Genoa fell first. It had a exhausted small garrison by this time so they went down easily enough. Milan however was a tougher nut to crack. I laid siege and attacked twice before finally succeeding in taking it. Now I could focus on Bern and Dijon but before I could Pope Gregory died and although my guy was elected to the Papacy, Milan was reconciled. I even made a ceasefire and a trade agreement with Milan.

I used this time to rebuild my military and economy. First thing I did was disband all mercenary troops form all my armies. This kicked the profits way up so now I had money to build. I worked on getting my merchants trading. this helped the treasury greatly. The fishing and amber markets north of Arhus, the silver mine south of Hamburg, the silver mines and dyes southwest of Vienna were all putting alot of money into my treasury. The Pope also called a crusade to retake Antioch. I decided not to partake in it however. I kept the Pope happy with gifts of money so I didnt worry about his wrath.

During this lull in action I noticed Prague hadnt yet been taken. I thought for sure the Poles would have taken it but apparently they couldnt or hadnt tried. Wasnt sure which. Anyway I got a army over to lay siege to it. After a brief struggle prague was now part of my Holy Roman Empire.

After a few years I renewed my war with milan. I wasnt sure how the Pope was going to react though. Bern was now their capital. I sent three armies in to take Bern and Dijon. One army I sent to take Dijon which fell easily after a siege. Bern put up a stiffer fight but I had them outnumbered two to one and basically overwhelmed them at the walls and in the streets. The Kingdom of Milan no longer existed.

Having 18 territories and removing the danes and Milan only left me two territories left to complete the victory requirements. The crusade was still ongoing but only poland joined in. I thought this amusing. Usually several factions join in on the first crusade of the game but only Poland had joined and they didnt seem to be in a big hurry. In fact poland attacked me. They blockaded my Baltic ports of Stettin and Hamburg.

I was faced with a choice. Attack Poland and get my two territory victory condition or take Oslo and Stockholm and get it that way. I really wanted Stockholm and Oslo and I wanted the Poles to be my buffer between Russia, who I was allied with, but more importantly the Mongols if they showed up later on. The poles didnt seem interested in a land war so I let their ships do as they pleased. I built six cogs and a army of sergeant spearmen with some peasant crossbowmen and some ballista and sailed for Stockholm. Took it easily enough and then sailed for Oslo. When I took Stockholm the Poles asked for a ceasefire but wouldnt re-ally with me. I took Oslo and that ended the short game with all victory conditions met.

In my HRE game I found out that the HRE troops are strong in the beginning and get stronger as you tech up. The infantry performed well and I was impressed with my German knights. The Danes werent a match (I know from past Danish campaigns the Danes can do quite well) if went after them right away and as long as everyone stayed friendly it wasnt a hard campaign to play. In my campaign only Milan was a real problem. I got lucky that Venice, Sicily, and Hungary stayed true to the alliance. If they had entered the war on the opposite side my empire would have collapsed quickly. France did attack but as a naval threat only. They never came after me on land. They were locked in a war with Spain and Portugal so I guess they got a mission to blockade me and thats what prompted them to attack. They could have made my campaign harder as well.

My Holy Roman Empire stretches from Scandanavia in the north to Florence in the south. From Prague and Stettin in the east to Metz, Dijon, and Antwerp in the west. I ended the campaign at war with no one and allied to most factions. Thats kind of unusual in M2TW short campaigns. My man sits on the papal throne in Rome as well. Its a very solid empire. I intend to continue playing this campaign with the intent to take over all of Italy and Europe. I want to see how the HRE plays out in the late game. I expect great things from my German troops

So far I really enjoyed the HRE faction. I didnt think I would like it much at first because it looked like it would be a gankfest by the other factions but in my campaign the diplomacy worked well for me and I was able to more or less take on my enemies one at a time. Which is the way I prefer my battles in M2TW. :2thumbsup:

[pat the magnificent]

my tips as i approach 1300 on VH/VH

concerning the pope-
be super nice to the pope early on at the very beginning. always do what he says, no matter the cost. start no wars and only defend. BUT, as soon as you can field at least 6 priests and send them to russia. stick them in areas with 0-30% catholics until they all become cardinals (with at least one prefari). AT THE SAME TIME, make an assassin and start murdering captains, witchs, and pretty much any and everyone you can. always save before attempting to kill somebody (if you die or fail load it and don't bother trying again until next turn). As soon as your assassin gets about 8 subterfuge, send him to rome and kill the pope. (remember to save) next turn elect your dude pope. That more less takes care of the pope problem.

(its a good idea to keep sending priests to russia just in case you need to kill the pope again.)

-who to kill first

Venice, no question. you'll need armies with lots of knights to take care of their annoying pavise xbow militia units, and lots of heavy infantry to take care of their infantry militias.

what to do while you're killing venice-

firstly, make sure you only have 2 or 3 castles. with each castle set up to make a particular type of unit. I like to keep a city capable of making seige engines near each frontier, they just move too slowly to make them from only a single city. keep your frontier cities (and they SHOULD be cities, not castles) well garrisoned with militia crossbowmen and spearmen and at least a few peasant archer units to help take out siege engines. in your other settlements only keep enough units garrisoned to maintain order.

REMEMBER, EVERYONE IS GOING TO TRY TO KILL YOU-

Defence is key. only focus on one nation at a time. and always adjust your units to the roster of your enemy. merchants are definately worth your time. don't militia buildings in all but a few cities, focus on farming, roads, churches, and anything to increase trade profits. establish trade rights with any nation that hasn't yet attacked you. and for god's sake, keep your damned general and family members out of your cities (unless you have one of those exceedingly rare compenent ones, but even still they're better served as military commanders)

KILL THE DANES SECOND-

cause hey, why not.

FOR FIGHTING...

the poles- pavise crossbowmen and lots of them, always try to make him attack you, defending against those polish nobles if far easier than attacking them.

the hungarians- same as poles, plus bring along some teutonic or imperial knights to deal with their heavy infantry. i found them easier than the poles.

the byzantines- once again you'll need lots of pavise crossbowmen, balistae and cavalry are nice to take care of thier nasty heavy foot archers. its also much preferable to fight defensive battles against these shmucks.

Any of the italians- Heavy Cav and Heavy Infantry, you'll want units with maces and morningstars to dispatch the sicilians and the papacy due to their large numbers of heavy infantry (IE Imperial knights (mounted and non-mounted ) and Teutonic/Gothic Knights)

the frenchies- you want a well balanced force for them. halberd / pike militia units included, being that they have alot of cavalry. hopefully you'll have some zweihanders to chew through cavalry and infantry (use the pikes or halberd to receive the cavalry's charge then send the 2handers to dispatch them) I like to use Mounted Crossbows to kill their archer units.

the british-

basically the same as the french, except you can leave the pikemen home. strangely, the computer does seem to be using too many longbowmen in my campaign, needless to say this had made killing the english very easy.

Those are basically the only faction i've killed thus far, but its pretty easy to figure out what units to use.

[Braedonnal]

I tend to pack up and ship out of initially poor and underpopulated Germany and begin a new wave of Völkerwanderung. Seeing as there can only be 'one' Empire, I head to Cornith and conquer north and east until I hit Constantinople/Niacea and you can do this with your starting units if you have skill on the battle map.

Note: Be sure to make lots of alliances and milk money out of your neighbors for trade rights and map information before leaving Germany. You need that cash when you let Germany rebel away or gift it to the Pope (or both).

Initially, you are very isolated and not exactly in a defensible position, as Hungary will have Sofia by the time you get there and Venice is always threatening from Ragusa, but with some patience and skill you can gain those lands for yourself and settle in. Venice tends to give me nothing but grief so I have to eliminate them (damn suicidal AI) but after that things seem to quiet down. Hungary will continue to play around with you because of Sofia but with your excellent castle units you can deal with them. I hold for a time in the west and focus on the east with both agent and military conquest.

Pros: Wealth, faster access to high end units, easy Crusades and easy access to non-catholic foes. Oh, a pro for enjoyment is watching the power vacuum in Germany.:2thumbsup:

Cons: Initial difficulty (one shot of bad luck and you could be done), extreme poverty before you take your new homeland and strange AI behavior (seems they don't cope well with the HRE in the Aegean littoral).

Give it a try. You'll have fun, win or lose.

[sapi]

That sounds almost as fun as my venetian experiment in the holy land - i have to give it a try.

Still, i don't understand why everyone fears the pope - he can't hurt you.

After my recent actions as milan i'm going to make a habit of killing him around turn 5 (as the hre i just ignored him and suffered the excommunication, before finally wiping out the entire college of cardinals).

If you're any good on the battlemap you can smash his amies, pick up rome and get a good pope elected very early on.

[Oshidashi]

1) Bring your commander from the Northeasternmost territory, buy some mercs, reinforce the northernmost army and take the dutch capital.

:oops:
You confuse the Danes with Dutch. Danes are from Denmark, Dutch are from The Netherlands. The Dutch aren't even in the game. Not very strange when you realise we "Dutchies" only became a political entity in the 17th century after fighting the Spanish for 80 years.

[PseRamesses]

I love playing the HRE mainly because of location. In my experience an early blitz is the best strategy.

Army 1, Heinrich the Champion takes Florence, ask for a crusade on Tunis. On the way there I take Ajaccio and Cagliari. When Tunis is secured I give it to either the pope or the Sicilians. Now, Heinrich´s stats are almost maxed out wich will help you in all future negotiations.
Army 2, from Vienna and Huremburg takes Prague, Breslau and Stettin.
Army 3, from Frankfurt takes Hamburg and Magdeburg.
Army 4, from Staufen and Innsbruck and Metz.
All finished by turn 5. Army 2&3 merge and march on Antwerp and Bruges which should be yours around 8 or 9.

I only keep castles in Innsbruck and Magdeburg. I ally with all my neighbours except Milan (and Venice sometimes). My alliances always contains a clause that they pay me 100f/ turn for 20-50 turns. This will keep the peace in most of my game for a long time. My main focus are Italy and the rich cities of Genoa, Milan and Venice. Usually Milan goes for Venice and eventually gets x:ed. This is what I´ve waited for.
I always calls the crusades and sends my faction leader, heir and sometimes others to keep their stats maxed and my rep as high as possible. This soon gets my rep up to very trusworthy and hardly none touches me from that point.

[sabaku no gaara]

I try to blitz the nearby rebel settlements early on and build roads in all my settlements, then grain exchange, then churches and happiness etc... I place good defending units on my Italian cities, and as soon as possible, I take 1 or 2 familly members and some merchant cavilry, put them on a ship sail to north africa and march to Timbuktu. after conquering timbuktu and arguin, the merchants in my 2 "colonies" bring in all the money I need, I wipe out Milan and take the city Venice as soona s possible as well, by that time the pope has demanded me to go on a crusade against Jerusalem and after taking that I try to take Accre and antioch to strengthen my position, if necessary I take allepo and gaza and give it to the french or an other Ally to keep the Egyptians and Turks occupied with those. after that I build up my economy and frontier defences (Zweihanders and forlon hope are the backbone of my defence, they can take on anything, 2 units of zweihanders once routed an entire spanish army of jinetes and dismounted feudal and chivalric knights after they breached my walls)

I don't like going on the offensive untill I'm sure my economy will survive long wars, and I usually focus on taking economicly important area's in a blitzkrieg. In the mean time I use spies and diplomacy to weaken some neighbours and strengthen others to keep everyone at war with all but me

[Calavera]

:oops:
You confuse the Danes with Dutch. Danes are from Denmark, Dutch are from The Netherlands. The Dutch aren't even in the game. Not very strange when you realise we "Dutchies" only became a political entity in the 17th century after fighting the Spanish for 80 years.

Ironically though, I often find the Dane in the Netherlands in most of my games. They tend to make for Antwerp pretty early on.

[sturmgrenadier]

Hi. This my first post at TotalWar.org First off, please forgive me if I am not posting the following question in the correct place. While I have attempted to familiarize myself with the forum's regulations and general etiquette (being that I am a newcomer and want to be warmly received and continue to avail myself of the forum's resources), I must confess that my examination of the rules has not been exhaustive (and I may have missed something). I also hope that you will have a bit patience for my basic questions. Anyway....

I've only been playing the single-player MTW2 for about a week and exclusively as the HRE (I'm assuming this is the commonly used abbrevaition used here for the Holy Roman empire). I used the forum's search function, but could not find much about the specifics of strategy for effectively utilizing merchants. In my relatively short playing experience, I have found it enormously difficult to use them advantageously. I quickly learned that sending 'rookie' merchants to far-flung lands is ineffective; they are almost invariably rubbed out by the competition (this was not surprising to me). "No problem," I thought to myself, "I'll just build my merchants up for success by having them develop experience through plying their trade close to home and on comparatively small return resources (5 to 10 florin per turn). Then, when they are more seasoned, I'll send them progressively farther away and to seek out more valuable resources" Simple plan for success, right?

Wrong...I've found that even merchants deployed in regions adjacent to my territory (either friendly or neutral faction controlled land) are routinely and frequently scythed down within the first two turns of their existence. There is precious little opportunity to 'groom' my merchants; rather I suspect their initial deployment is more akin to the landing craft doors being opened up on the beaches of Normandy: rapid and unavoidable annihilation (I mean the comparison only in a figurative sense and don't mean to offend anyway). This phenomenon is all the more perplexing and frustrating, because this happens even to 'graduates' of the first-level merchant guild (that I am invariably offered pretty early in the game though I do little to attract one. And granted, I realize that the benefits of an initial guild are likely modest, but I would expect them to have some impact on merchant peformance). I find that out of five to seven merchants that I deploy, I am lucky if a single one survives to build up a decent amount of experience (several filled in circles on his attribute card). In my best case scenario, once I had a merchant live to earn 117 florin per turn working in Polish territory. This was a rare exception, though. And I should note that even in this case, the merchant was well into middle-age by the time he accrued enough experience to the point where it was presumably unlikley he would be rubbed out. And he died not to much later:(

In short, as a new player, I have not found that using merchants passes the proverbial cost/benefit test. At five hundred apiece, and the conservative/highly optimistic assumption that one in four will survive to bring back one hundred and fifty florin per year for twenty turns, that's still only a total return of three thousand florin for my initial investment (and a profit of a lousy thousand florin). I can better invest my funds into building troops, developing infrastructure; things that I suspect will help my overall cause more, especially in the early stages of the game (I know, duhh.....) In short, merchies offer too much risk for too little reward.

It's really a shame, because unlike what I've read in some forums/reviews (the criticism that merhants are a dull and boring addition to gameplay in MTW2), I really do like their concept! I don't mind doing the busywork of checking up on them/doing the legwork for turn after turn. The problem is that they just don't help me:(

Maybe, I'm just an idiot and other players have had more success using merchants? I don't know where I'm going wrong. Maybe someone will write a guide/primer on 'Merchant Startegy' here on this forum someday. But if most players think that merchants are as lackluster as what I've heard, I doubt it. But one can only hope, right?:) Thanks for your time and ideas!

[Gingivitis]

The M2TW Citadel forum would get more replies, but as long as we're in the HRE section I can give some HRE specific advice for Merchants. What I would try to do is to get a northern port so you can produce a decent navy. With this force you can park your ships east of Arhus blocking the land bridge, preventing any merchants from entering Scandinavia while sending all yours up there for the amber, iron, and silver. This will be your training zone where you can level them up a bit. However if you see a merchant getting close that you would have a good chance of acquisitioning you could let him through and use it as a opportunity to skill up. Once you get a decent level you can send your merchant to higher value resources or just send him around looking for takeover targets. I usually have a lot of watchtowers up and can spot a vulnerable merchant when they're in range. Sadly I would say that the computer merchants are usually much higher in skill than yours but if you see one coming just move off the resource as they won't try takeovers if you're merchant is not trading anything.

[Skott]

1) Welcome to the forums

2)Yes, most people use HRE as the abbreviations for Holy Roman Empire when talking about it.

3)Merchants in the unmodded version of the game arent that great IMO. There are two exploits (some people consider them exploits and some dont. I'll use the word 'exploit' for now for lack of a better term) you can use though to keep other merchants (who always seem better/stronger) from taking out your merchants.

a)Escort exploit - Use a cheap military unit and place it where the merchant would normally stand over the resource and then have your merchant/s join it. Other merchants cant attack you while you have an escort. The downside to this is that the escort could be persuaded by a foreign diplomat to switch sides or go rebel which will lose your merchant/s stacked with it.

b)Fort exploit - Take a leader and basically do the same as the escort exploit except you build a fort on the resource and place your merchant/s inside it where other merchants cannot touch them. Only downside to this is that forts cant be built on every resource. The terrain sometimes doesnt allow for fort building.

These so called exploits work best in your own territories. If you go placing military units or forts in someone else's lands you are inviting war.

On a further note in my experience the HRE homeland resources arent as productive as other resource sites in other faction's lands. Meaning they dont gather in as much profit as other places. Its my opinion that CA didnt playtest their own game enough to know this. There are however some mods out there that address this situation. You may want to try some of them once you get your fill of the vanilla game.

[sturmgrenadier]

Thanks for the ideas, folks. It amazed me what a great resource a forum like this is: one can draw upon the playing experiences of so many different players. It may have taken me playing dozens of campaigns just to discover some of the things that you both mentioned! At any rate, thanks again.

[sabaku no gaara]

I don't regard the fort as an exploit, I regard it as a "trading camp" It's the one thing that actually makes the game playable as HRE for me, as without this I would never be able to build up an economy, defend my lands, build up an offensive military etc...

As soon as I can, I go to Timbuktu, build a fort on 1 of the gold resources and fill it with merchants, right now in my HRE campaign I have 15 merchants trading gold in Timbuktu, and still I have some turns where I don't have money and my building queues (spelling?) are stalled. Having to garrison your city's because the AI keeps planting spies, and having to garrison your crusader kingdom because people are unhappy over religion and the numerous Egyptian spies in the cities is a huge drain on your economy, not to mention the fact you have to build build build and recruit recruit recruit to defend from Jihads and prepare for the mongol and Timurid invasions.

not to mention the money you need to keep the pope happy so he won't interfere in your wars in Italy

[Blacknek]

Hi,

Haven’t posted here for some time. But MTW 2 hooked me back in to computer games (having almost zero time for it---work sucks ;-)

Since I played my favoured faction once again, I wanted to contribute some short facts I experienced this far playing the HRE.

First of all, the tips described above are all excellent reading, so I’ll try not to be too repetitive.

Opening moves:
Being a defensive player by nature myself, I tried that way the first time I played (worked out for me in the first MTW with the HRE several times- I just conquered the rebel outpost to the east and then build up until France inevitably attacked). No good idea, you got surrounded later on without having sufficient funds to pay your wars. The German default homelands just aren’t productive enough and the enemies are too great in numbers.
It is still possible to do it this way I guess (with lots of micromanagement and some luck I guess), but the best way is definitely a quick demise of the Danes and the Milanese. I left Venice (the faction) untouched in the beginning except for Venice (the city). This way you get tons of florins through sea-trades and you can conquer the Scandinavian rebels getting even more sea-trade.

The pope:
Definitely a pane in the a*# playing as the HRE. Your standing drops constantly without doing anything special (for example, as I played the Spain, the standing raised all the time without doing anything special…).
As for excommunication: This happened to me on the very beginning through killing the Danes and Milan. This doesn’t have real consequences in the beginning of a game I think. The pope didn’t call for crusades and the other countries were too busy with themselves to use the opportunity to attack me without retaliation from the church.
As soon as I got a solid situation I discontinued all wars. By this time the pope was old, and after he died and my excomm got cancelled through the election of a new pope I gifted him lots of money and an area to the west.
Giving the pope some hundreds florins every second turn or so I’m the holy fathers best friend since than :-).
Plus having a Papal state outpost between you and France as a buffer turned out to be great. This way they got excommed on their expansions to the west, giving them a lot of trouble.

So all together you have to acquire a solid financial situation in the beginning. For that you have to perform at least two blitz-attacks. After that your position is strong enough to survive the situation, when everybody wants to beat you up (or get powerful enough so they wouldn’t even dare).

Enjoy the game and sorry for tipos,
Blacknek

[Ramtha]

That is a very good guide antagonist!

[Wodeson]

My experience as the HRE (Hard/VHard) is somewhat different to those above.

My most importance initial move was a complete blunder: I entirely missed the fact that I had a small initial field army in the region of Hamburg. This lend to the Danes taking Hamburg and expanding along the northern coast of Europe and attacking the Poles and English rather than me.

My first dilpomatic moves were to ally with everyone including the ever corrupt Pope. 250 tribute per turn bought off the Papal States and raised my standing to 'perfect'.

Deciding that Bologna was undefendable, I gave it to Venice in return for what I hoped would be a strong alliance. Inevitiably, the very next turn they attacked me, and were closedly followed a turn later by Milan.

However such aggressive moves of their parts led quickly to their excommunication, and allowed me to direct Crusades against their cities, since I was such a good friend of the Pope.

However all my other alliances held strong. The Danes and Poles seemed more than content to fight each other and ignore me. The English and French kept to similar arrangement, and Hungary joined me in attacking Venice.

With no sea ports my income was very tight, however the use of Crusades coupled with the AI's habit of leaving it's cities under garrisoned allowed me to annex Northern Italy, which solved my money problems.

100 turns later and my position in central Europe is secure, leaving me the choice of expanding in whichever direction I wish.

[Gingivitis]

As a few others have posted, I took everybody and left Germany at the start, and Germany is absolutely perfect for this. It will take you a few turns to get everybody to Bologna to the port, but you need a few turns to make sure you have a big enough fleet to get to the Holy Lands safely and get enough rep with the pope to call a crusade. When you do get everyone there, think it was turn 8ish, have 2 stacks of boats and put 3 generals and an army big enough to crusade both of them and set off for Antioch. I didn't get enough rep to call the crusade until I was at Rhodes but I was able to step off and join at that moment. Next I ended my turn with my 2 fleets south of Nicosia.

I then sent one boat to land at Adana and one to land by Alexandria. At this point I split the armies by adding as many merc/crusade units as I could and had about 5 stack 1/2 to 3/4 filled. Egypt held Jerusalem, Gaza, Cairo, Alexandria, and Adana. At Adana I sent one stack to Antioch, one to Adana and one to Jerusalem. The other fleet had one general go to Gaza and one towards Alexandria as there weren't enough mercs/crusaders left to get a 3rd stack going. The net result was Egypt was eliminated at turn 18. I took the leftover crusading units and used them as fodder for taking Edessa, Damascus, and Aleppo. I moved my Capitol to Antioch, flooded the area with priests and now was safely in control of the holy lands.

As for my old lands, Venice attacked and took Bologna as I was en route to Antioch, and the other cities rebelled. The 2 castles remained mine until turn 35ish when eventually a full stack of Danish troops walked into my empty undeveloped Innsbrook and Venice for some reason couldn't be bothered to send 1 stack of peasants to take the undefended castle of someone they were already at war with and bribed the other place away. Was kinda amused though that I'd never seen a province successfully bribed away before.

[TeutonicKnight]

Can the HRE win in a defensive mode? Playing the honorable, high-rep method, and simply teching up? Or do you absolutely have to go apeshit on your neighbors to stay afloat?

[PseRamesses]

Can the HRE win in a defensive mode? Playing the honorable, high-rep method, and simply teching up? Or do you absolutely have to go apeshit on your neighbors to stay afloat?
Yup, they shure can. I remember one game where I initially I blitzed all rebel settlements accessable from my provinces. Also took Corsica, Sardinia and Malta (BigMap-mod) through a crusade. Next Rhodes and a new crusade secured Jerusalem, Acre, Antioch, Aleppo and Damascus. All of this before my first king, Heinrich, was dead. Need I say his traits was maxed out?!
From here I just teched up and defended. At one point 6 cath-factions was x-ed for messing with me. I own the CoC and had a HRE pope since Gregory died (the first one). Eventually I winded up with the Danes, Sicily, Poland and Hungary as my vassals. Unfortunately I had to take out Milan and Venice but gifted their holdings to Sicily.
Later I fought off both the Mongols and the Timurids. When the game ended all of America and the New World was well educated in the german language.

[Crazy Larry]

Can the HRE win in a defensive mode? Playing the honorable, high-rep method, and simply teching up? Or do you absolutely have to go apeshit on your neighbors to stay afloat?
I tried this recently on H/H, and had some success. The thing is, even though you're surrounded by 8 countries who will have borders with you sooner or later, quickly grabbing all of the rebel settlements within your reach will force Venice, Poland, and Hungary to expand eastward, cripple the Danes' and Milan's expansion capabilities, leaving you with only France as a real threat (the Papal States and Sicily never really seem to bother me until I take the fight to them.)

The key is to start fast, emptying your settlements so you can take rebel settlements. I haven't tried HRE on VH/VH yet, but I've found that I can beat all of the other countries to the punch to get 13 settlements within the first 10 turns without going to war with anyone (Hamburg, Stettin, Prague, Breslau, Magdeburg, Bologna, and Metz being the rebel settlements I take.) I could probably get 14 settlements if I pushed a bit harder (by beating Milan to Bern), and maybe even 15 if I fielded a navy fast enough to take Ajaccio. After that it's just a case of buying the Pope's alliegance and careful economic planning (turn Hamburg into a city, and at least one of Metz/Staffuen/Bern). At this point you'll quickly start raking in cash, enabling you to field a army big enough to take on all comers. Indeed, my biggest problem was the fact that, between my overwhelming military might and my alliance with the pope, no one seemed to want to take me on. I was still at peace with everyone after 30 turns, at which point I decided to turn agressive and started conquering Venice and Milan.

[TeutonicKnight]

Crazy Larry,

I started a new game last night and did exactly that - major land grab of all the rebel settlements. I've been able to conquer the rebel places you've listed, and am sitting on a comfortable cash flow. Ajaccio was very hard to hold against Milan and Sicily, but they've apparently been warned off by the pope now. I'm at Reliable reputation, allied with the Pope, and only the French are truly trying to get me. They are at one cross, and I'm at ten, so I'm preparing to crusade them when they are excommunicated here in a turn or two. I'm alternating with the Turks on number one for military might.

I've even gotten a Teutonic Guild already in Frankfurt. Not sure how that happened.

Hate to say it, but I think turtle-mode is the true way to go with the HRE. Once you can get your finances sorted, you are in a pretty good position. :)

[Atalus]

played a short game and won. M/M by turn 62.

Gotta say the unit roster for them sucks hard until late stages. Maybe Gunpowder will help a lot but using a lot of militia units in the Italian areas against the Milianese and Sicilians is hard.

I played Expansionist and knocked out Danes, Milan, and Sicily in short order, in that order. Hungary didn't give me a problem with a full garrison at Vienna. But Poland liked to block ports for no reason and then call a ceasefire.

overall you require some luck in your battles and a working mod for the bugs

[Mightypeon]

Well, I thought I share my thoughts:

In my game, I started with blitzing venice (I do not like seperated alnds and Venice starts with a port:P) and relativly quickly took both Venice and Raguza.
Afterwards I quickly made peace.
I used the troops from Bologna, Insbruck and Vienna for this.
On the northern front, I quickly expanded taking Hamburg, Stettin, Breslau Magdeburg and Prag.
To the west I took Metz, and, after some teching up/merc buying Antwerps and Bruges.
To rack up happyness, I lead a Crusade to Antioch (yeehaaa, it was rebel at that time).
However, desipite having full crosses, 2 pesky 10 star inquisitors burned everything that can burn in Italy. Inclduing my piety 5 heir.
Therefore I used a mobile hit Squad of 9 heavily depleted units to kill pesky Inquisitors.
From that on, I managed to get decent holdings in the Holy Land (snatched several rebbelious prvinces and I am still at peace with everyone:D), which should give me a good start for the next Crusade to Jerusalem.
I kept Metz (Western Front) Hamburg (Northern Front) Mageburg (Eastern Front)
and Rugza (South Eastern Front) as Castles to have a source for a good amount of troops.
I changed Bologna into a Castle because ferrying troops from far away would ahve been pesky.
I turned everthing else into cities.
As neither the English nor the Scots seem to ever go on a Ship, I am quite content with my North Western front.
Because of the highly oppourtunistic Byz, Getting a Strong Garrison at Rugoza is incredibly important.
I had a larger than usual force at Wien (7 full units of various infantry with a Heir) which kept the Hungarians friendly.
Milan engaged France quite early. The war made their crosses go down a lot.
Sicily is so far a non issue.
I did not take Bern to allow the Milanese and French to keep Fighting.

[Iavorios]

Well, in my game (VH/VH) both Scotish and English attacked me by see. They DO use boats and landings and where very strong. I dont know how they did it, but they dint fight one onether.
Any way i thing that HRE has one of the best units in the game. A couple of imperial imperial, mounted and dismounted, some armored sergeants and couple of passive x- bows and you can handle just about everything. The only trick here is that you need more spears against the Mongols and the handle, and that is it. Afcourse your city army's suck, but not that much. If you dont like it check the Russians, the Pols, and the Hungarians.
O, and HRE has the best economy in the game. Banks and printing presses. You have a ton of cash and one of the best armis.
So yes, you really can play slowly whith them, but only after you take all the rebels, France, Britain and Northen Italy. After that you can wait until the end of time getting richer and snobby.

[Captain Pugwash]

I am trying to get the only decent ancillary but having some difficulty-

Trigger hildegard_von_bingen_anc_trigger
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted
Condition FactionType hre
and SettlementBuildingFinished >= church
and I_TurnNumber >= 20
and I_TurnNumber <= 50.

Do i interpret this right after turn 20 any settlement with a church which a general constructs something entitles you to the charactor.

Does being excommed effect the chances.
Can more then one general aquire the same ancillary or is it one only

ta

[Flavius Merobaudes]

Hi Pugwash! Although your question doesn't belong in a faction guide, I'll try to answer.
Ancillary hildegard_von_bingen
Type Religion
Transferable 1
Image court_elderlylady.tga
Unique
Description hildegard_von_bingen_desc
EffectsDescription hildegard_von_bingen_effects_desc
Effect Piety 2
Effect Authority 1
Effect LocalPopularity 3
As you see she's a unique ancillary only one general can have. I changed transferable to 1, so I can hand her over to someone else. As long as I'm not concerned slavery is fine for me :stupido:
As the trigger says it's not enough if a church exists but the building just finished has to be a church or above. Hope this can help you.

[Captain Pugwash]

thanks explains the sole issue

[PuppetMaster]

Okay what's up everyone, I'm an American so bare with my overly militaristic attack strategem haha.

I just beat a long HRE campaign on H/H, so I'm going to offer some of my insight as to how I obtained this victory.

1. Crush Denmark. By crush, I don't mean go in all happy go lucky and engage the field army they send to Antwerp, I mean break their siege of Hamburg (which they will most likely attempt) with your family member from Frankfurt and the army hidden to the north, and then head to Arhus with mercenaries recruited along the way. 1 turn siege, then BAM assault the city and take it 1, 2, 3. Guess what! Denmark is no more. Scratch one annoying neighbor to the north, and add some sweet Baltic/North Sea territories to your bank.

2. Take either Stettin or Antwerp. I prefer Stettin as to avoid conflicts with England, France, and Scotland too early in the game. The fall of the western countries is inevitable, but not yet, a conqueror must show patience. Plus, Stettin is in the Baltic which turns into a wealthy little trade pond if you ask me, so go figure. Let the Poles take Magdeberg, if they're passive on the eastern front of your empire, then don't sweat it until you decide to move east into the slavic lands.

*As you do all of this, make sure to take Prague, believe me, it WILL pay off. Make multiple trade agreements/allianaces, especially with the Italians, the Pope, and Hungary. Also, make Vienna your capitol. Trust me, when you are raking in 7000 gold by the time the Timurids arrive, then you'll know why haha. Make Frankfurt a castle, that way you can have Frankfurt, Hamburg, and possibly Magdeberg all producing tough level troops in the later game. Plus, Frankfurt has a higher population so it'll level up faster.

*Dealing with the Italians*
Kill/conquer/squash/batter/defeat/stomp/torch/raze/abolish Milan. A treacherous people so it seems, this faction is THE most bothersome, bar none. Argue it with me all you want, the Milanese are THE most annoying in the game due to their suprisingly large field armies that seem to pop up out of no where, not to mention the competence of their 'militia'. With Milan, I just went head to head with them and had to simply out-wit a computer. Grant it there was some luck, but Milan is the faction that NEEDS to get eliminated by the Germans in the early game, or else you just won't do well. Take Milan, take Genoa, and hunt them down until they are no more. The same kind of goes for Venice, but Iraklion is a pain, so whatever I own all of Europe in my game and Venice is just chilling in Rhodes, so I don't really care, its not like they can do anything to me haha. Sicily, depending on their stance in Africa and with the Moors could possibly attempt an attack on Florence or Bologna. If so, just send an army down and squash both their territories like with the others. If they have Norman Knights, just be wary and look for subtle map advantages that will tilt in your favor, assuming you have weaker units. Make Palermo a city (it was generating 3500 last time I checked, which is pretty good) and you're set there.

Okay I don't feel like typing much more b/c I gotta run to work, I justed wanted to say how random my last campaign was haha. The superpowers before I absolutely swept the map were me (HRE), Portugal, Hungary, Russia, Byzantines, and the Turks (Mongols too of coursE). Idk, I thought Portugal and Russia being big was kind of interesting, but whatever.

By the way, I am trouncing the Mongols right now. Apparently their power lies in their 10 star maxed-out-dread generals, so your best bet with a military confrontation with them on an open field is:
A)Not facing them at all haha
B) Attempting to assasinate their generals
C)Waiting until they die of old age or combat, then going in for the kill on their armies


I did C (unintentionally), and its working. I have gothic knights, forlorn hope, zwei handers, basically all good german troops, and i am taking mongol armies to town one full stack at a time. O well, thats all I gotta say really, IM me if you want to hear more: DrFeelgood787 is my screen name.

PEACE

[Fußball]

Gotta say the unit roster for them sucks hard until late stages. Maybe Gunpowder will help a lot but using a lot of militia units in the Italian areas against the Milianese and Sicilians is hard.

What makes German units so 'par' in the early game is the almost complete use of the spear. Lucky for you almost every other neighboring faction uses as many spears as you do. Also fortunate for yourself is you have a beast at your disposal: mailed knights. They rip through anything early if you use them correctly. Your knights will turn your enemy's well and orderly line into meat paste with one charge and eat the remnants in close combat.

And your spear-bearing Italian neighbors are nothing to fret over. Their militia statline may be slightly higher than your militia but you are German and your tactics will rule the day so long as you keep a good head on your shoulders. If you stay on the defensive you will have nothing to worry about against attacking Italian militia. Especially if you are holding a wall against an assault.

And you always have your General with his bodyguard as extra punch which itself alone, used properly, can engage numbers three and four times it's own size on open ground. And in confined areas your bodyguard can rush in and provide close-in support with steel and valour if your spearmen cannot hold their own.

If you really do not believe you can hold Florence and Bologna with their militia garrisons then your castle at Innsbruck can supply your garrisons in Bologna and Florence with better trained sergeant spearmen, mailed knights and armored spearmen. So long as you keep Venice out of the mountain pass from Innsbruck into Venice ( which the AI never seems to move into anyway ).

If need be you always have mercenary spearmen which are the best spearmen available early on, if you can cope with the high upkeep. Mercenary crossbowmen are also abundant, and very powerful and have long-range crossbows early on. Of course they, like other mercenary units, have high upkeep.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Empirate]

It seems really easy to get Teutonic Knights, which are some of the best knights in the game. They have very good attack and defense, a charge of 8, and in melee, they have armor-piercing maces! Right now I have a Teutonic guild in Hamburg and Magdeburg, and a master guild in Frankfurt, that is at turn 70. They eat everything I throw them at - except for some Milanese Duke's bodyguard, apparently (wiped out two units of Teutonics who had charged him from opposite sides... oh well!). They're very expensive, of course, so I have a third of a stack of them roaming the countryside, cleaning up pesky rebels blocking roads. This way, they gain experience without much risk, and I can send them to retrain in Frankfurt time and again. They're already getting into the silver chevron range... feel like attacking me some more, Frogs?

When and how exactly do you get Landsknecht units?

[Magraev]

I've heard you only get landsknechts as mercs and only late in the game (after gunpowder probably).

[Flavius Merobaudes]

You can hire Landsknechte from 1470 on, i.e. turn 195 with vanilla settings. They are available over all central europe except northern Italy. But you get Swiss pikeniers there.

[Fußball]

It seems really easy to get Teutonic Knights, which are some of the best knights in the game. They have very good attack and defense, a charge of 8, and in melee, they have armor-piercing maces! Right now I have a Teutonic guild in Hamburg and Magdeburg, and a master guild in Frankfurt, that is at turn 70.

Funny enough I built my first Teutonic Knights chapter house in Frankfurt as well! Then was asked to build one in Hamburg also. Eventually I was asked to build a headquarters in Frankfurt which I politely declined. I want to build the headquarters in Hamburg. That way they have higher experience from jousting and better quality armor upgrades. Seeing as how I have not yet built a leather tanner in Frankfurt.

Tschüß!
Erich

[gardibolt]

Any significant strategy changes for HRE under 1.2? I'm thinking I may try them next.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Gardibolt,

I guess the resounding silence is a "No, there are no significant changes."

I've been playing an HRE campaign at my customary glacial pace. [Caveat: as a noob I'm playing on M/M.] I started by destroying Denmark and decapitating Venice (taking Venice and Zagreb but not Ragusa, yet, at Turn 56 or so). In the initial expansion took Hamburg, Arhus, Stettin, Antwerp, Magdeburg, Bern, and Florence. I converted most castles to towns keeping Innsbruck, Hamburg, and Bern as castles.

Got trade rights with virtually everyone and alliances with France, the Moors (who were also allied with the Papal States--go figure), and Byzantium. Kept decent relations with Hungary and Poland but couldn't get Hungary to ally despite large quantities of florins.

Got excommunicated along the way. Gave Florence and sustained florins to the Pope and was a good boy and reconciled before Gregory died. In the election I guessed right and became the fair-haired boy of the new French Pope (10 crosses). He didn't live very long but I at the next election I backed the right horse again and went back up to 9 crosses. Meanwhile I'm gradually accruing cardinals and am up to 4 right now.

Milan attacked me--surprise surprise--so I took Milan and Genoa leaving their capital in Dijon with colonies on Corsica and (I found out later) Sardinia. Later I got a mission to eradicate Milan so I took Dijon and Ajaicco and my allies the Moors took Caligari and the mission was fulfilled. Presently I regret not picking off Metz as it represents a huge salient between Dijon and Antwerp. [I also mildly regret not grabbing Prague.]

I got my short game victory by taking Oslo the same turn that Milan was destroyed, so now I'm continuing.

Sometime in there I grabbed Bruges, sacked it, and gave it to the Pope to minimize friction with France. I quietly lost the alliance with France because they had allied with Milan just before I finished off Milan, but relations are still good...for now.

Just as I took Ajaicco the Spanish landed a fairly strong army on Corsica. Predictably they promptly besieged Ajaicco and I was in no position to reinforce my troops there...who turned out to be barely strong enough to defeat the inevitable assault. I destroyed small Spanish squadrons off Corsica and off Valencia (I think) at which point the Pope told me to cool it, and I'm following that for now. My screen of spies, assassins and priests does not see any Spanish armies on the way.

Speaking of the Pope, I have two armies on their way to Aleppo in the Second Crusade (having missed the First due to being ex-com).

So at this point I've been at war with Venice since about Turn 2 and they have a large, low-quality stack down at Ragusa (presently killing small Sicilian landing forces). Someone took Iraklion from them so if I take Ragusa I think they will be gone. I'm not sure that I want to bother--and it may piss off the Pope--because they act as a buffer with my allies the Byzantines. My basic plan right now is to tech up and further develop my economy...which seems to be bringing in a profit of about 10K right now. I'm also about to take Stockholm to turn most of the Baltic into a trading lake (Hanseatic League, anyone?) Presumably everyone in the world is about to attack me, or at least France and Poland

[rvg]

Playing my first HRE campaign now, and so far have been focusing on Italy to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Grabbed Hamburg and allied with the Danes who went on their usual route to take Brugges, Antwerp and Stokholm... Danes are no threat, they got plenty of money but no castles (Oslo is still rebel). To the East I allied both with Poles and Huns. Poles aren't a threat either, they got plenty of castles but no money. As for Huns, we have a marriage alliance, which should hold long enough. Allied with the Frenchies, but they are stagnating. Relieved Venetians of Venice, and without Venice they are a joke. Milan is my next target, followed by the Sicilians.
Converted Bologna to Castle and I'm very happy with that decision: converted it to castle right after building town watch, which meant instant Armored Sergeants which were instrumental in defeating the Venetians.

My plan is to completely secure the Italian boot, boot the Pope out of Rome and give him some dinky island (like Corsica) as a fiefdom. From then on I'll just take it easy, build up and do some serious turtling. Hopefully, the Byzantines or the Egyptians will become superpowers which will make it a fun mid/end game.

P.S. I recommend *NOT* to hit Prague early, as that tends to overextend my armies and weakens my Italian front.

[Malkut]

Germany has the easiest short campaign victory requirements ever. I just beat it in 31 turns, and I wasn’t even in a major hurry. The secret is to care about nothing but conquest and looting. Ignore diplomacy. Ignore the Pope. Ignore the economy, insomuch as you can. Ignore historical accuracy. Ignore sanity. You're German: you don't need sanity.

Just keep gobbling up land and looting cities. Build at least one new unit in every city every turn, even if it’s just a bunch of town milita. Eventually, you’ll need knights and crossbowmen, but this is the early-early game. Just overwhelm everyone with numbers.

You start big and strong, and your targets, the Danes and Milanese, are small and feisty. You’re also right in the middle of everything and everyone, so you aren’t going to run out of things to loot before you run out of cash. You can Hulk Smash the Danes by turn 2. If you keep gobbling up land and looting every city you come across. Take Venice as soon as possible to knock a very annoying enemy back quite a few paces. Milan might have a city on Corsica, so be prepared to build a boat once you’ve taken North Italy.

Really, there’s not much else to say, here. Numbers, numbers, numbers, and speed.

[turnip]

This is my first real go at the HRE in M2TW (I never got very far in MTW either, so there you go), playing M/M. (1.02)

The first turn is really important.
- Take most of your Bologna garrison and head down to Florence. Venice usually plays nice for a few turns, so you can afford to wait the siege out if that's your preference.
- Take most of your Nuremberg and Vienna garrisons and head towards Prague - you can siege it second turn and take it at your leisure.
- Immediately siege Hamburg with the half-stack you've got hiding North of Frankfurt. Train some militia and send them up with your general next turn.

- The siege of Hamburg is a feint, to encourage the Danes to go and pick another settlement. As soon as they've wandered off - either to Magdeburg or Antwerp - lift the siege and pay Arhus a visit. Hopefully, you can take Arhus before the Danes either return or take another settlement. With them gone, you can take Sweden and Norway in your own time.

- Train some troops in Staufen and Frankfurt and send them over to Metz - the rebel garrison is small and should be easy to take out. Train some more troops in Staufen, add them to any you can get in Innsbruck and Metz and head for Dijon. If you're lucky, the French will have depleted the rebels there and they'll be easy pickings. Regardless of whether it's French or not, you'll want to take Bern next, but take a few extra men along with you to Switzerland.

- Reinforce your army in Arhus and head South to take Hamburg and Stettin and make sure your Cardinal pops along for the ride. You may also be able to get Magdeburg depending on how quickly the Poles get moving.

Once that's all done, you'll have 12-14 regions and an empire stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Try to get Alliances with everyone around you at the beginning (the Danes excepted), since it should keep them from backstabbing you for a little while at least and give you a little time to tech up. With that sort of starting point, it's really easy to consolidate, since even if you're attacked you've got enough provinces and money to crank out a full stack army in a turn and retaliate; the only question is whether to sit back or push for the win.


In my game, I'm at Turn 58 and I've wiped out Milan and taken Venice, Zagreb and Ragusa from the Venetians. France attacked me and were excommed for their trouble - in the aftermath, I took Paris on a crusade - and I'm currently crusading against Naples after Sicily attacked Ajaccio.
I also successfully crusaded against Jerusalem, donated it to the Pope, then took Gaza and swapped it for the Poles' Magdeburg before taking Cairo and, imminently, Alexandria.
Hungary and the Poles are keeping stacks near Vienna and Prague respectively, but large militia garrisons seem to have dissuaded them from attacking so far.

[TeutonicKnight]

I'm going to add one little tidbit here. I play the HRE quite often. My latest game I tried something different, and it seems to have worked out well.

I converted Innsbruck to a town, and Florence to a castle.

I know, it sounds crazy. Innsbruck as a castle is really not in a useful location except to defend the heartland from Italian aggression. If you aren't on defense, it's too far to do much good. Florence and Bologna are vulnerable with only militia troops. However, making Florence a castle has really buffed my capability of handling all the Italian warmongers. You not only have an easy location to get retraining, but you are also centrally located to form an army against anyone else on the peninsula.

If I had it to do over again, I might try converting Bologna instead. Florence is just a little too far to support Venice once you capture it, even with paved roads.

I also decided early on to make Frankfurt my "assassin center", Nuremburg my "spy center", and Staufen my "priest center". I converted Staufen to a town, and I try not to keep to many castle provinces close together. A third of my provinces are castles, and that seems to feel about the right balance of money to military. This time around I am using assassins liberally. I'm still playing high chivalry style, but I'm taking out as many agents and family members as I can. I've got three 10* assassins so far, and a major Assassins Guild in Frankfurt. :)

Making sure that you are good buddies with the pope means you can use the Crusades against your neighbors. So far, my game has had three crusades. All three were declared by me, and all three were on western European targets. My plan is to take all of the western front first, before I march on the east. My people need their Lebensraum.

Still haven't gotten to gunpowder yet, though. That is one of my holy grails in this game. :(

[pezhetairoi]

A quick question about piety: How do you go about raising that? And how do you make your priests so high in piety that they become promoted? My 6-piety cardinal got inquisitioned, and that horrified me since he was a darned cardinal. And what strategies have you for dealing with inquisitors? How do you get rid of them? As HRE they seem to pay especial attention to my family members. I've already lost 2 heirs to them, and this is only turn 30, and this despite my somehow having 6 crosses on the papal love list. Do inquisitors come looking for your people, or do you have to be within a certain range of them for it to work? And are inquisitors that annoying to other factions loved more by the Big Papa, for the sake of argument, say Spain?

[Iavorios]

The only answer to the inquisitors problem is the assassin. Inquisitors will always come. They appear from nowhere, in case there is a heresy in a province. The problem is that even when the heretic is dead, the inquisitor keeps on going to the another provinces. And since the AI hates you he keeps going for your people. In doesn't really matter haw much the pope likes you, ore what country are you playing. So kill them as soon as you see them, before they burnt to many man and get to strong. So if like to play on hard or very hard you don't have much of a choice, but to develop the assassin guild. One HQ is enough.

[Hrafn]

A quick question to the unit list posted further up:

Does Pike and Halberd Militia only have 1 total defence? Doesnt that means that they drop like flies for any attacker? And the Halberd is not listed as a free upkeep unit, i tought all militia units was given free upkeep in cities with the relevant structures in place?

Im just finishing of the landrush in the first turns as HRE: grabbing the rebel settlements, crusade against tunis completed and have gotten bogged down in war against denmark (they managed to get stockholm before i killed århus..). Now the Venetians, Milans and Sicilly have attacked (taking Corsica from rebels on the road to tunis wasnt a very popular move..both milan and sicily have attacked several times) and i retaliated getting Venice and are now building up to get the two main milan towns (im at turn 14 now). After Milan is out i can focus on killing Sicily every 7th turn (the pope has to be replaced...even at perfect relations and ally he is a reall pain in the a....)

One fun epsiode as well: Had a mad scramble towards one of the baltic rebel towns against a polish army who tried to get there before me...i sendt the faction heir in and sieged ahead of the army since he was faster on horseback...funny thing is when the rebels sallied, they mostly got beaten down by my polish allies :)

Im now trying to consolidate a wacked ecconomy and since i expect all other factions to turn on me sooner or later i plan to fill the towns with free upkeep forces to keep cost down and have some roaming stacks with reinforcement heavy castle troops for added defence.

As for inquisitors: Wouldnt a comitted build of churces/priests keep them away?

[Iavorios]

Unfortunately if you build more temples and kill of all the heretics on time, the inquisitors will only not appear in your land. But they will appear in another places and then come for you. Being bad christian will cos them to appear less, but been god will not stop them from coming out of nowhere. Althought in 1.1 and 1.02 they are a lot more passive and easy to kill from 1.0

[kingtiger]

my experience of the HRE on VH/VH have been somewhat different then those experienced here.

From the gun

taking as many rebel provinces as possible while making as many alliances as usual. While doing this i gained the reputation of very reliable. I managed to ally with every faction around me except for milan and denmark. I also managed to capture every rebel Provence in central europe as well as 3 of the rebel Jerusalem regions from a crusade (not Jerusalem itself the 3 above it). Although these proved costly to upgrade they will serve a great purpose to me in later game!

Peaceful Times

To my surprise i managed to keep at peace with every nation up till turn 60. During this time i had singed free army movement with most allies. But all was not well. My allies the French had recently come under siege from the blasted Milanese. I built 3 large stacks and sent them to my borders that used to be shared wit the French but now Milan. All my armies could do is but watch as the relentless Italians slay my poor allies while the council of nobles argue the cases of why we should or should not go to war. While the court argue and the French die my spies report vast expansion by my most faithful allies the Venetians they had just conquered all of Greece and was now pushing into north Africa and the Turkish occupied lands. While the danish were forced to push into Russia because of my early game expansion.


A reason to Fight

After 60 years of peace and expansion the council decides it shall stay peaceful until the vile Milanese attack Switzerland. the King was currently staying in the alps enjoying the thick snow when he had to retreat to the castle with only 1/4 of a stack of units against a full army. The HRE was at war for the first time the prepared armies begin there march into Milan from every direction. One thing seemed to be certain that there would be alot of bloodshed over the next few years as the Milanese had one of the best standing armies in the world. As the armies closed in one gifted diplomat seeked an audience with the Milanese king. The panicking king accepted the HRE as there rulers and protectors before one man was slain in battle.

Expansion, Expansion, Expansion!

the council happy with its new lands now required more. There scouts reported of rebel lands on some isles just west of the west coast. Two small armies were sent to conquer the top of Scotland and Ireland. The two kings of these isles had been to busy fighting to expand. The HRE now has alot of money and no enemies the king sends out some armies in ships to far away lands to look for unconquered territories. While this is happening there had been much talk with eastern allies and them needing the might of our armies against the largest threat to the catholic world the turks! The king strikes a deal to give assistance against the infidels for a small province in eastern Poland. The armies sent to look for new territories are ordered to unload and besiege the coastal cities of the turks the Jerusalem provinces also scrape together a great army to besiege the turks. With the idea in mind to gain a few provinces and sue for peace i decided to send a diplomat to the turks to see if they want to surrender. To my astonishment they declare me there ruler and protectorate. The great Turkish empire consisting of 12 provinces now belongs to the HRE.

Foreign Ownership

Now the HRE owns 18 provinces through vassles. on top off the 22 they already own victory is within sight while still holding VERY RELIABLE statis.

Summery of next 20 turns

- mongols invade russia
- England excommunicated for attacking HRE (irland)
- England (3 provinces) taken by the bulk of the HRE armies
- Denmark (russia) gets swarmed by mongols
- Denmark attack HRE
- HRE invade denmark (Scandinavia) while weakened with ease

Now with the required 45 provinces needed (vassles are included in this) all that is needed is th capture of Rome. with very reliable reputation in tact and only attacking after being attacked i betray the papal states to finish what would be the most enjoyable game i have ever played.

this just went to prove that war is not the only way with HRE (or the easiest)

Cheers

[Robespierre]

So, you want to be Kaiser, huh? Theres more to it than looking pretty, that's for sure.

I have just clocked onto what a good thing the teutonic knights are. the order/guild building means you can train what are in effect feudal knights in a city.you can leave your castles to grow, which is what they have to do fast to get to citadel level and start churning out imperial foot knights.

perhaps it is a good idea to have more castles as the empire expands. it could cut the cost of developing towns and help to focus cash on the Italian/German places. plus maybe some castles on the outside might help compensate for having no "natural borders". so turn 30 on, Italy done, if i seize a castle from a rival, it stays a castle.

[Robespierre]

wel i have given that Arhus ploy a twirl. it worked. the danes were eliminated, but i was excommunicated. do i care?
relations with the pope have become worse and worse,culminating in a unfortunate battlefield accident when his holiness, no doubt deceived by his evil advisers, took the field against Otto Von Kessel and was killed during a well-timed stray cavalry attack. the kaiser considers this to be a case of death by misadventure, or open verdict at the very worst. however the pope-o-meter is now at rock bottom. just to be very clear,the holy roman emperor is in fact the most righteous defender of the church and the most loyal servant of the pope. however sometimes the emperor may query the trajectory of their policies, and structure of their institutions. the emperor wishes to commisserate with the new pope following a streak of bad luck affecting officers of the Holy Inquisition, those inquisitors who survive are always welcome guests at postal inns across the empire.

[Cheetah]

Can the HRE win in a defensive mode? Playing the honorable, high-rep method, and simply teching up? Or do you absolutely have to go apeshit on your neighbors to stay afloat?

It is possible but one have to realise that the only way to keep away your neighbours is to convince them that you have a larger force. Which is ofc not very feasible if you are scattered all over Europe.

So, here is what I did on second try H/H, autoresolving all battles (on the first try I was creamed, almost, I had to fight out sieges on the battlemap to survive ~;p).

Since I wanted to play a high-rep game taking out the Danes and Venice, as suggested by many, was out of question. Also, holding Bologna is not really feasible as there is no way you can convince the Venetians that you have a larger army. So:
1, sell Bologna to the Venetians and move your King to north with the garrison.
2, Besige Hamburg with the forces you have nearby.
3, Besige Magdeburg with the forces nearby.
4, Send your troops from Nurenburg to capture Prague, send a few units from Vienna to help the siege.
5, Move troops from Insbruck to besiege Metz, send help from Stauffen.
6, get an alliance with the Hungarians (hungarian princess will visit)
7, get a marriage alliance with Poland

You really do not have to hurry with the siege of Hamburg and Magdeburg, feel free to sit out the siege. Besieging both castles has the benefitial effect that it will throw both the Danish and the Polish plans out of the window. They wont attack at this early stage, the Danish army started wandering aimlessly around.
Capturing Prague is more important as it has a greater economic potential. The army capturing Prague moved on to capture Breslau.
Once I captured Magdeburg (it is the smaller castle) I moved the troops to help the siege of Hamburg. After I captured Hamburg moved on to capture Settin.
In the meantime the army capturing Metz moves on the capture Dijon. I left Bern alone as I knew that the Milanese will sooner or later attack and I wanted no contack with them.
Also beefed up the garrison of Vienna with militias (half stack), and Insbruck with peasants and peasant archers (another half stack) to scare away the venetians.
England and Spain offered alliance which I accepted.

As reward you will get 4 FK, with some of the troops from Metz/Dijon I moved them to capture Bruege. Bruege has a good garrison it will resist weaker AI attacks for long, so it was still rebel. France attacked Antwert but was defeated so I took Antwerp too.

The army capturing Settin is patroling on the Danish border and shadowing any Danish and English (yes they have an army marching accross north europe) movement.

So all in all I managed to capture: Prague, Breslau, Settin, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Bruege, Antwerp, Metz, Dijon. I have an income (around 6-8k per turn) that I can keep all building queques busy.
It is around turn 40 and the Polish and the Hungarians are solid allies (never had any problems with the hungarians and expect to Polish to hold out till the marriage alliance holds), the Danes are still sitting in Arhuus, Bern is still rebel but I do not mind it, the French have armies marching up and down near Dijon but I built up a half-stack of militia garrison to scare them away (so far it works), the Venitians attacked me after all (with 1 unit xbow besieging Insbruck!) but never made any serious moves, their armies are marching up and down near Venice.

So atm it seems I have several options: (i) turtle and tech up to get DFK (spears are not very good on autoresolve vs italian militias) then move down and visit Venice; (ii) lure the Venitians, by weakening the Insbruck garrison, to attack Insbruck to get them excommed; do the same with France by weakening the Dijon garrison.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

In my game, i decided to move into florence in italy, only to have a series of sieges that failed from the milanese. I am seeking revenge and am bringing my all mighty cavalry army to defend my emperor in florence while blostering to stone walls in the other italian city :thumbsdown:

[BetterDeadThanRed]

As a man of Italian decent, this campaign is making me hate my own guts. It seems near impossible to face down an army of their elite crossbow militia with nothing more than spearmen and mailed nights. Its about 30 turns in and my homeland is only now starting to build up economic momentum. I just received a Teutonic Knights house but its in Frankfurt and rather far from the frontlines with Milan and not really in a position to do me much good.

My question is, does anybody have any suggestions for tactics to defeat the Milanese in the early game? (other than simply spamming militia units and mailed knights)

[Vladimir]

Play it smart. Distract their armies while you target their cities. Bring a catapult and a good one-two punch will take them out.

[Ratwar]

Well, I tend to use a combination of Militia Spam supplemented by Mercs Milan isn't too bad.

[CrusadeAgainstYourEnemies]

I've played HRE several times and the Italians drive me crazy, so I've decided to try this:

Blitzkrieg Italy on VH/VH.

Take all my troops, except for 2 in each city and one archer in each castle down south with 3 generals, the two Sons of the Emperor and the Saxon. Bring all of them down to Italy for one decisive blow against Milan and Venice

I needed a big army to take Venice first with Saxon and the younger son. Henry, the Faction Heir, teamed up with Emperor Heinrich and his boys from Bologna to take out Milan.

So far I'm on about turn 10, been excommunicated and have taken Venice and in the process of taking Genoa and Milan.

I hate these two factions with a passion and thought "Why not just end it right now... F what the Pope says, F the rebel settlements."

I'm thinking if I end it quickly, buy back my way into the Pope's favor then I have the money making cities in Italy and then I can go take out the Danes.

I've allied with the French, Hungary and Poland. I just need them to behave for a while so I can crush Northern Italy and be on my way.

The way I see it, everyone decides to take out the North, by getting some rebel settlements and then moving onto killing the Danes.

But there's no real money in the North, and I'm not letting the Italians build up. I've done that before and while I won the campaign, it took forever and I ended up with a deep seeded prejudice against Milan and Venice.

Let me know if any of you have tried something like this and if you've got any ideas. It's tough so far, these Italians can fight and the Pope has got their back. Hopefully the Danes/Poles/French have their own crap to take care of before they focus on me, I'm counting on speed here.

[CrusadeAgainstYourEnemies]

I've played HRE several times and the Italians drive me crazy, so I've decided to try this:

Blitzkrieg Italy on VH/VH.

Take all my troops, except for 2 in each city and one archer in each castle down south with 3 generals, the two Sons of the Emperor and the Saxon. Bring all of them down to Italy for one decisive blow against Milan and Venice

I needed a big army to take Venice first with Saxon and the younger son. Henry, the Faction Heir, teamed up with Emperor Heinrich and his boys from Bologna to take out Milan.

So far I'm on about turn 10, been excommunicated and have taken Venice and in the process of taking Genoa and Milan.

I hate these two factions with a passion and thought "Why not just end it right now... F what the Pope says, F the rebel settlements."

I'm thinking if I end it quickly, buy back my way into the Pope's favor then I have the money making cities in Italy and then I can go take out the Danes.

I've allied with the French, Hungary and Poland. I just need them to behave for a while so I can crush Northern Italy and be on my way.

The way I see it, everyone decides to take out the North, by getting some rebel settlements and then moving onto killing the Danes.

But there's no real money in the North, and I'm not letting the Italians build up. I've done that before and while I won the campaign, it took forever and I ended up with a deep seeded prejudice against Milan and Venice.

Let me know if any of you have tried something like this and if you've got any ideas. It's tough so far, these Italians can fight and the Pope has got their back. Hopefully the Danes/Poles/French have their own crap to take care of before they focus on me, I'm counting on speed here.

Do not try this on VH/VH...

Took out Milan and decapitated Venice, but the world came crumbling down after that. The Danes invaded from the North, the French into Northwestern (Milanese) Italy, the Sicilians into Bologna, the Hungaraians took Sicily.

I got back into favor with the Church but it was too late. Now I'm under siege on every front and have shrunk to 4 provences: Innsbruck, Staufen, Milan and Genoa.

I restarted and chose to take out only Milan this time and go for the rebel settlements in the North.
Took Leopold and the bulk of the Vienna/Nuremburg garrisons to take Prague then eventually Breslin, took Saxony and the utmost northern army to take Hamburg, Magdeburg and Stettin.

Then I used the Emperor and the Faction Heir to take out the Milanese after taking Florence. Florence I gifted to the Papacy, then eventually gifted Bologna as well - was planning on only giving Florence but Bologna became too difficult to defend/build up against the Venetians.

Now I've eliminated Milan, had Venice excommunicated for attacking me and the Hungarians; ironically they went for Vienna instead of any of the Milanese holdings. Crusaded against Venice, toppled it and now my Hungarian allies are seigeing Zagreb while I blockade Ragusa. The Danes and Poles have kept to themselves, the Sicilians are blocked off from me by three Papal State holdings, the French are locked up in a war with the Iberian states and I'm about to take Bern and move into Antwerp.

The lesson is to blitzkrieg Milan, wait for a Venetian attack and collect as many rebel settlements up North in the process. I haven't teched much but that's next on the agenda.

***Quick tip, bring lots of priests up North as those settlements are low % Catholic and you can get a couple of Cardinals in the process***

***Quick tip 2, convert some Castles, especially up north into towns. I've got Magdeburg and Stauffen as my only two Castles at this point and I'm doing very well economically***

[Iavorios]

As the HRE the Pope doesn't like you from the start. So ally with him from the start, as wait anybody else. Form mariage aliances with Hungari and Denmark (it is quite easy by the way) and you will be free to concentrate on North Italy and France. Allays keap the pope hapy, and be pations .I personely capture North Italy after no more than turn 25.

[Sheogorath]

Its interesting that people say the starter provinces dont produce much...by turn 20 I had Vienna producing ~5,000 gold a turn (with the aid of a decent governor). Not much by late game standards, but a real nice boost early on. More, I found, than Venice was producing.

My strategy was pretty much to expand until I couldn't. This is mostly viable simply due to the fact that all your neighbors mostly expand towards you (or into you, as the case may be.)

As with all the other posts, I recommend taking out the Italians ASAP. Genoa and Venice are bastards and will backstab you rather quickly, whether they're ready or not. Your other neighbors (the Danes and French especially) will follow suite.
The Poles also attacked me, but, oddly enough, only did so by recruiting a merc fleet in the Black Sea, sailing it to Bologna and blockading the port. They then ignored me, but refused all peace offers. Go Poland >_>;

In regards to units, I'm still early in my game, so the HRE's roster is nicely summed up by the word 'generic'. No special, faction-unique units or mercs in the area, unless you count the Templars, who are nice, but are basically glorified Feudal Knights.
Your basic tactical strategy is generally to pin with spears and hit the flanks/rear with your knights. Crossbows are useful too, sometimes.

I stayed on the Pope's good side by participating in every crusade, and calling a couple myself, as well as having plenty of priests. (Insert obligatory 'no little boys are safe' joke here). I'm well on my way to dominating the College of Cardinals, and if I have my way (thanks to some handy assassinations) the next pope will be German.

[floydsvoid123]

Playing M/M 1.0 vanilla M2TW

The HRE is a truly satisfying game and will require you to muster every bit of your financial, diplomatic, and tactical skill to succeed. Your position in the beginning is indeed complicated. Not every faction will go to war with you at once, but be assured that they will at some point or another, and far before you can recruit your best troops. Your settlements are fairly productive, though they are no Genoa, Venice, or Milan; you will need them to boost your production, and it will be a long battle. Your northern frontier is quite secure, especially if you go for Hamburg and the Danes. Your south is divided and you produce inferior troops compared to the Italian militia units. Quite a few of the settlements you'll encounter will be castles, and many will require an investment to convert to cities for the production. Your initial treasury is relatively low, as well as your subsequent income, so an aggressive start is crucial.

I ended my game with Northern Italy minus Milan and Venice, and owning Prague, Metz, Bern, Hamburg, Stettin, and Arhus beside my original cities. While I was being besieged every other turn or so, without it I easily had an income of 8000-1000 florins. I had a Teutonic Knight's guild in Hamburg, and 2 to 3 full stacks of sergeant and mailed knight armies plus one of Teutonic , sergeant, and dismounted Feudal Knights. I gave up on the campaign because it was evident I'd mismanaged it, leading to the capture of Vienna and Venice by the Venetians and a Pope that loved me but refused to excommunicate Milan for attacking me, plus I could see a full stack of Sicilians coming up to take lightly defended Bologna. But I think I know how I should have played this campaign, and this is it.

From the beginning it is apparent that the Pope hates you with a passion. Even in M/M, he refuses at all cost to ally with you, something he grants to most Catholic and many of the non-Catholic factions in the game. It is absolutely imperative to avoid excommunication, or to reconcile if it has already happened, but to do that you need something to win back his favor - gold.

My first moves were to go north and destroy the Danes and take Venice. If the Danes take Hamburg they have the potential to become a massive power - quite often in grand campaign games, if it isn't Milan or France that capture Antwerp and Bruges, it is Denmark, and with the addition of Stettin, Scandinavia, and Hamburg as a fortress, they will become near unstoppable. So never, at all cost, let them have Hamburg! Once you've taken Hamburg, go for Arhus. There's a chance that they will be sieging Hamburg by the time you arrive to attack - worry not and attack their army and drive them off before taking Hamburg for yourself. It is crucial that at this point you do not siege Venice. If you attack the Venetians and the Danes at the same time, the Pope will consider Venice the priority and force you to stop attacking them. You do not want this, you want the Pope to ban attacking the Danes. This is because within the next few turns, you can destroy the Danish faction. Destroying a faction that you're not allowed to attack lifts the excommunication (either that or it does not apply to you at all). So take Arhus as quickly as possible - you'll need the troops to further your conquests.

Down south, I tried to attack Venice, but they had a pretty decent stack waiting inside consisting of those Italian spear and normal militias. My own spear militia and my cavalry would be slaughtered, so I decided to attack Florence instead. Venice will be the first faction that openly attacks you, so prepare well. Stock up on cavalry in Innsbruck, and built the barracks series - you'll need the sergeants.

Convert as many castles to cities as possible. Castles you should keep are: Innsbruck, Hamburg, and Bern if you can get it (the Milanese tend to ignore Bern in M/M, so you can wait a long time, but don't do that. Bern is an integral castle, the focal point of your attacks on Milan. I realized that way too late.) Staufen can serve as a secondary cavalry factory for a short time - only until you capture Bern and Metz. Metz should become a city as well, it tends not to be attacked for quite a while (the French seem to have no interest in me at the moment).

Capture Stettin with your Arhus army only for the religious conversion mission. Your current cardinal, Peter, is unlikely to become the Pope, as he will die before Gregory. Instead, train a new priest (the Pope may give you 500 florins to do so in Hamburg) and use him and Peter to get the new priest some piety points. Heretics tend to pop up a lot especially in the northern HRE, so use them wisely. You always want to have at least one cardinal in the college as the HRE, and for the moment that's all you can really ask for considering your income.

Be careful when trying to capture Prague. Firstly, it is fairly well garrisoned for a rebel settlement, similar to Antwerp, Bruges, and Bern. Secondly, the Venetians will go for Vienna if you do it too late, and Vienna is a major cash settlement. Prague is fairly safe in M/M from the Poles, for some reason they want dirt poor Stettin. Vienna and Venice will be the focus of attacks from the Venetians, so prepare.

Buildings should focus on the economic. In castles, always build with castle upgrades as a priority followed by barracks upgrades to get to your spearmen. In cities, go roads first - the bane of the HRE is the incredibly long time it takes to traverse it. Moving troops is impeded by the mountains and the far too numerous rivers. farm upgrades should come next - the population boost will be extremely important for your finances (more people=more taxes), followed by market upgrades. In attack-prone cities, however, you want to modify the order a little bit. Get those city barracks upgraded, at least to crossbow militia level, if not halberd militia level. Cities this applies to are all of the northern Italian cities - Venice, Bologna, Genoa, Florence, and Milan, as well as Vienna. These cities are your economic base - you must protect them at all cost. A lot of the time, the 5 free militia garrison will be enough if you know how to defend chokepoints, but there will always be a few times when the enemy will bring a number or quality of soldiers you cannot defend against. This applies most to Venice and Bologna, with Vienna also being included occasionally. Ballista towers may be a good investment to protect against siege towers and the like, but in all likelihood you won't get these until very late in the game.

While it may not seem to make a lot of sense, release prisoners often. Get your generals' chivalry up. Try to do this in Bologna with your king, as he already has 4 chivalry in the beginning. This is to attract a Teutonic Knights Guild to your cities. While I did not manage to get one in Bologna, I did in Hamburg, and these are without a doubt the best units you will get for a very, very, very long time, and you'll likely be using them even toward the end of the game. If I had managed to get one in Bologna, the game would have gone much, much, much easier for me. Those Italian spear militias would have been toast with strawberry jam on one side and stale butter on the other.

Remember, even with armored sergeants and sergeant spearmen, the Italian militia units will fight on par with your infantry (they are, after all, pretty much equivalent to the mercenary version, and the pavise crossbows are equivalent to the mercenary crossbows plus extra defense while reloading). Innsbruck will not upgade to Fortress for a long, long time, so in the south, those sergeants are all that you'll get, plus whatever militia you can come up with in the cities. You will have a noticeable lack of missiles - it's too much of an investment, and all you get really is a support troop, nothing that can overcome the pavise and genoese. It is imperative to use your cavalry well. Either make use of hills and mountains to make your charges unstoppable, or use the standard anvil and hammer. This would be a lot different if you got access to dismounted Feudals in Innsbruck a lot earlier.

Milan will attack you after Venice does, followed by the Poles quite a while later in my game. Read the diplomatic information scrolls - are the Poles suddenly allies with Milan? If so, you can be sure that they will launch an attack on Stettin very shortly. The Sicilians will attack around now as well.

Very likely you will not have the resources to specialize your cities for guilds until the Italian factions are done with. Milan is pretty much done for once Genoa and Milan are taken. Venice is a harder nut to crack - take down Venice, Zagreb, and Ragusa, as Zagreb and Iraklion will do for the Venetians what Venice cannot once you take it, and Ragusa will be their unit factory. Be agressive. You can afford to lose these provinces to, say, the Hungarians, who won't be much of a threat for now. Venice with its high quality missiles and infantry will. Sicily is not a threat for most of the beginning, but when they become one, take Palermo using a navy. In M/M it is usually very lightly defended, as very few armies if any come to attack it (Moors are too busy in Iberia). Once they lose Palermo, you have gained a very well upgraded fortress and they can only come at you now with militia, which your Teutonics should slaughter. However, attacking Sicily is too much of a risk until you can secure all of Northern Italy and the Venetian lands. (I wonder if giving Zagreb and Ragusa to the Pope will be a good Idea - they don't tend to be very valuable settlements and often suffer attack when I play as Venice.) It will be a very difficult time for the HRE - the Pope is constantly warning you against attacking, and agression is hard when your enemies can launch waves of cheap yet superior units at you. Even once you drive Milan from Italy, be on your guard - they tend to have full stacks wandering around waiting to siege your cities. Destroy them utterly, and be at peace.

Things not to do. Remember, everything depends on Italy.
I feel you should not try to take Scandinavia. It takes a very long time to conquer these areas because of lack of any roads, and while they may provide good Baltic trade, they are hopelessly undergraded settlements. Oslo in particular will be a horrible battle considering the units garrisoned there and the units you can afford. If you have secured Italy, and you have an extra general wandering around Hamburg, give him a few strong units and send him to take the towns. Otherwise, just bide your time.
Magdeburg seems to incite the wrath of the Poles. You don't need another castle, you certainly don't need another war this early.
Antwerp and Bruges have always been early-game no-no's for me. Those Flemish Pikemen paired with those mailed knights are quite frankly scary to confront. By all means, wait. These are rich provinces, yes, and they do boost North Sea trade, but you don't have that many North Sea ports apart from Arhus and you don't have the resources to protect cities that far from Hamburg.
Do not expand farther east than Stettin and Prague, father west than Metz. Avoid war.
Cagliari and Ajaccio, the isles off Italy, are good settlements to take, however they begin as castles and you want them as cities. Only go for them if you're absolutely certain you can spare the troops and time spent upgrading to produce town militia.
Do not attack Zagreb until you have a sizable military base. Otherwise you thin your lines too much between Zagreb and Vienna.

[Olaf Blackeyes]

I have won BIG time with several M2TW factions. However my very best campaign was with HRE. I say this because i tried to make the name alot more truthful. At the end i had Germany, France, Spain, everyone of those american territories, the Holy Land(German Crusades ftw) and all of Italy, including Rome. I must say that if you can get off the ground, you can crush ANY faction, those sergent spearmen are a staple of my armies at least until you get to near end game.
BTW ALWAYS get the Teutonic knights if you can, excellent heavy cavalry.

[Schiltrom]

If you take (or bribe) Florence and then send a diplomat to the Papacy, you can offer them an alliance and give them Florence, and if you do it before the fifth turn, they ought to accept, just occasionally give them a gift to ensure the alliance holds, and you've got favour with the Vatican, not to mention that if you ask for military access (with, of course, a fitting price) you've got easy access to the Cornered Republic of Sicily. Have fun, hehe.

[Schiltrom]

If you want to defeat the Italian powers, convert a large town into a castle, you will be able to upgrade it to a fortress straight away. Build military production buildings and you'll eventually be able to recruit Feudal knights (mounted and dismounted) and pavise crossbowmen. These can defeat most Italian Militia units.

[Olaf Blackeyes]

Ah the HRE.... This was my very best M2TW vanilla campaign.

I tried to make the name "real" so to speak. As we all know at 1080 in the campaign this name is a total misnomer. I began by taking hamburg, and the other German reb settlements, including Metz. Then i went to war with Northern Italy. At one point both Milan and Venice were allied against me. While this was going on i allied to both Poland and Hungary to keep that front from exploding. It was at about this time that the Danes attacked hamburg and Antwerp so i fought them off then invaded Denmark. This started a two front war. That lasted for about 10 turns after i broke both Venice and Milan. Denmark took another 5 turns after that.
Honestly the HRE early units are very generic Catholic units and tactics, however i find that they are the most powerful of the early Catholic variations and have everything you require with few weaknesses.
After i finished off Denmark, i hyper-grew my kingdom. Built economy, ect. Then the Pope called his Crusade against Jerusalem around turn 39 i think. I was the first on the bandwagon cuz he was PISSED at me for breaking 3 different Catholic factions so fast. I barely beat a Portuguese army to Jerusalem. After that i expanded to form the Outriemer of old, including Edessa. Mass recruitment of priests and merchants to make the region !!!MINE!!!
Then i was brought back to Europe by the Sicilians attacking Bologna (spelling?) Of course it was underdefened so it was lost, then exterminated. I immediately got two FM's and a HUGE force of mercs to take it back. Then i side-stepped the Pope and hit Naples. The Pope then keels over, and elections.
???????
RECESSION!!!! The French guy won by one vote, (damn the Portuguese:furious3:). So i quickly crushed The Sicilians and sacked them both for vengeance. At this point i did not hit the Pope, cuz that would cause WAY too much crap unless i could obliterate him in one turn. Which was impossible. However i did take the Med Sea isles. Another short period of mass building. The Mongols show up in Russia, nothing too major.
Then comes France attacking Metz. While i managed to repel them it kicked off the biggest war i had fought in the campaign up to that point. This was about turn 62 or so. The French its turns out had !$#!@loads of fullstacks waiting to say hi to me. About this time the Frenchy Pope dies. I have about 1/3 of the Cardinals on the map so i win of course. So now the Pope is my bestest friend EVARZ!!!!!!!
The High HRE units are bland at best. Imperial knights, im sorry, SUCK! I cant use them for anything at all. I was still recruiting feudal knights and Teutons for most of my campaign. ALWAYS get Teutons, these are the very best of the HRE high units.
Anyways i was at War with France. The fighting was fierce especially around Rhiems for the first 25 turns of said war. That place changed hand like 10 times or so. French cav is demonic, i swear. At turn 5 or so the the Death hits. Lots of dieing for 6 turns or so. I lost at least one army completely. After it was over i gained the upper hand against France, around turn 96 i finally took Paris. BRUTALITY for all the crap they put me through. Taking Paris destroyed the French, for while they still sent full stacks at me they were full stacks of crap. I take Caen from the English and am at eternal war with them for awhile, but nothing happens there. I get to Toulouse and is in the hands of the Spanish. Around turn 106 i crush The French and make peace, trade, then alliance with them. Scotland disappears soon after. Then i attack Spain. The Iberians must have fought themselves to death cuz there werent a lot of stack in any of the iberians nations. Spain and then Portugal fell fast. The Moors were a different story. I had to kill 2 Sultans to get them outta Spain. But after they were shoved out i made peace with them.
Then a period of mass building occurs. The new territories are brought up to scratch fast. The only real prob is Corduba. Not being my culture and so far from cap i have several rebellions there. As a huge Moor city i cant do nothing about it. Then the Americas open up. By this time i have all of the Cardinals and elections are at my disposal. I invaded Brazil first the Cuba and NA. It took me a while to find the entrance to the Aztec lands. and i underestimated them as well. First army to land got rolled under by 5 fullstacks:furious3::furious3::furious3::dizzy2::furious3:. It took me twenty turns to finish off the Aztecs. i killed all of their FMs before the walls of Tenochtitlan and took that settlement as a rebel one. At this point i was about 3 territories from victory. i took two ME settlement and then to finish it all off, ROME!!!!!! All in all it was a fun campaign.
The late unit were bland as well except for the Zwihanders. Those guys are FUN!!!:laugh4::yes::beam::beam::beam:

[grapedog]

I have to say that while HRE is not my favorite faction, it's close to it. Their position on the map is one of the most diverse and offers so many options. It requires a good bit of defense as well, but that's part of the fun.

The only mod I'm using is the Vanilla Mod which is more like a bug fix than anything else.

I was allied with Venice and France from almost the beginning of the game, they kept two sides of my frontier from being attacked almost totally. Poland after an early foray into my territory left me alone for the rest of the game. I was lucky in that Scotland, England and Denmark amounted to next to nothing for a large portion of the game and so my northern area was pretty much left alone. It's why I spent so much time in Africa...I didn't want to go causing ripples in a nice calm pond...plus, for some reason even though 3 popes in a row were my own, I was constantly on the bad side of the pope as Hungary and Sicily constantly poked at me and kept poking back some of the time.

I made the tactical blunder of waging an extended campaign in north africa and the middle east region with any close by castles. Both the Mongols and Timurid had invaded very early in this campaign and I joined into the fighting probably 40-50 turns in when the Mongols had already pretty much eradicated everyone from the area up to and including Nicea and Constantinople and some of the Turkish cities in the mountains. I started the slow process of having all 4 of my home castles(Bern/Metz/Hamburg/Innsbruck) pumping out troops which would slog their way over to port near Bologna and then take a ship to North Africa or areas near Antioch, Acre and the like.

It took me quite a while to get a foothold in that area with huge mongol armies all over the place and longer still to get a castle or two up to speed to start pumping out troops locally. I think the one thing I would change now, if I could go back to just before I started my north african campaign is that I would have probably taken Corinth and Palermo at least, to have some closer castles pumping out the much needed re-inforcements. Eventually, somehow, England started producing MASSIVE amount of high end troops from it's broken up hold on the UK and really started going after Brughes and Antwerp, both of which I lost at least once and had to take back right while I'm in a full scale fight with the Mongols and Hungary getting uppity.

Great game though overall!

[CrusadeAgainstYourEnemies]

Anyone have any ideas for making the Royal Family better?

I play an aggressive early game and always set up my successor, the faction heir, to be a strong King and make sure he's producing with a hottie for many children in all my campaigns.

Henry, the first faction heir for the Holy Roman Empire, though, I always have problems with. He gets sloppy tax man and religious problems all the time. His command stars don't rise as quickly or as high as Otto Von Kassel or Dietrich Von Saxony. And I've done a campaign before by teching up his brother, Leopold, and killing Henry off, but I want to try once to make Henry a badass.

Has anyone achieved this?

[Viking Prince]

Keep him in the field. Keep the Cardinal with his army as well. Be certain to use him in combat with close odds rather than easy to win battles. And, of course, hope for the best.

[dzidek]

I wonder why HRE gets such crappy units?
Don't get me wrong, they are on a acceptable level but can be beaten easily with other factions counterparts.
F.ex. the foot soldiers. What's with the 2h swords, it looks like a little obsession for me. DGK are a joke, such high era and expensive unit that gets butchered by Viking Raiders.
DIK, ok so they have AP attack, so what it's at 8 :/ IARC.
Shooters... standard stuff... nothing to write about. Avarege as they get.
Cavalry, thank got for the Raitars. They by far the best flanking cav for me. If you get them aroung anamy unit and they shoot in the back, it's an sure root. And they are decent in melee too.
Imperial knights are a little better then feudal knights. Gothic knights on the other hand are worse then other factions best cav. In fact they die rather quickly which really surprises me.

So i'm wondering why is HRE really an averege nation? Shouldn't they be a top nation?

[Stangler]

As a man of Italian decent, this campaign is making me hate my own guts. It seems near impossible to face down an army of their elite crossbow militia with nothing more than spearmen and mailed nights. Its about 30 turns in and my homeland is only now starting to build up economic momentum. I just received a Teutonic Knights house but its in Frankfurt and rather far from the frontlines with Milan and not really in a position to do me much good.

My question is, does anybody have any suggestions for tactics to defeat the Milanese in the early game? (other than simply spamming militia units and mailed knights)

Make sure you spread your spearmen out and use your family members. The more settlements you have the more family members you have so expansion is key.

You may need some mailed knights but not many. You can't match their crossbowman and you do not want a long fight so make sure you do your best to get you flank them ASAP.