Im actually in the process of a HRE GA campaighn, since I am only as far as the 1210s I'll only do an early section for the moment.
HRE - Early
To start, as many have pointed out, the HRE is quite fragmented and you have quite a few disloyal generals running around. Against this though, the provinces in the center of the HRE are quite loyal, so they do not require the garrisons you have there when the game starts.
To this end, start the majority of your troops moving to the north and south leaving nominal garrisons on your borders, your neighbours, the French especially have other concerns on their mind and you afford to have light borders for the first few decades.
Divide your empire into north and south troop production provinces, aim your border provinces toward the higher fortifications and your coastal provinces towards agents and fleet.
Massing your garrisons and whatever troops you can quickly make down in Italy, and over running their continental holdings yeilds some wealthy provinces aswell as Venice, a rich coastal town already developed. Once you have thier holdings make peace with the Italians but leave a garrison on your coast until you have a fleet to block invasions.
North, ignore Denmark for the moment, concentrate on the rebel provinces and drive up as afar as Novgorod, turn your recent acquisitions to fleet production. Stop just short of Novgorod until you can start drafting some Slavs from your recent acquisitions and some archers spear and militia from your inner empire.
Once you have your fleet production set up, stagger their production, two ships per turn, in the same sea ie Friesland and Saxony one turn, next two provinces next etc. This allows your fleet to expand one sea at a time, gives you a solid fleet of two ships per tile and more importantly puts a check on bankruptcy. At the same time build all the trading posts you can then start upgrading your defenses to next Fort level. Ultimately, ships from this production line will wrap around into the Med, your Med prod line is smaller and as we will see is liklier to take losses.
Once you have a decent force assembled and a fleet to move it, take Novgorod and Finland. There is no real need to finish them off if they expand, the main objective of all this is to take control of the Northern Seas and curtail Danish expansion. DO NOT expand further into the east, this will bring you into conflict with the Polish, Hungarians and Byzantines. Also it will leave you to fight the Golden Horde, let them bloody themselves on other factions before you swoop in in the High period and take the Eastern steppes off whatever weakened faction now holds them.
Your next priority is building a mediteranean fleet., lining up crusades in Venice and producing the volumes of troops youll need to take the Holy lands. this is where I seem to deiverge from a lot of the others, it just seems to me that these crusades yeild some easy GA points, where otherwise you have to rely on the less yielding conquest points or the trickier Empire points.
The fleet you need here is a it more specialised, it only needs to reach as far as the Holy Lands but each fleet will need usually 3 ships to take out the Egyptian fleet and stay viable.
The next part is simple, as soon as you have a fleet line stretching from Venice to the Holy Lands, mass your new legions of men in Venice and create a Crusade to Palestine.
The four Holy Lands will fall like dominoes, but be aware you may need to break your fleet lines if the French have a Crusade on its way.
That should all get you to the mid 1100s. By this time you should be the dominant trade force in the Med and the North and with a broad base of power you can begin to pick up the odd province. Ireland is a goodd one to have, the gallowglasses provide a good supplement to the Slavic warriors when fighting in the desert, and the Egyptians will bepissed enough by now that they will raid regularly.
Your coatal provinces, having established as fleet prod lines, can be turned to agents and you can use these to spread some discontent, especially among the Almohads. Send in a dozen bishops to thier European holdings then a few assasins and finally some spies. I took most of thier empire in this way for little cost, simply bribing the rebels that turned up.
The guts of the last half of the century should be turned to troop production. Try and make peace with the Egyptians for the moment as keeping the garrisons in the Holy Lands at strength in the face of constant invasions is expensive. Rather, build up some spare crusades, and build enough troops to launch several large crusades, one after the other. I broke the Egyptians in 1191, leaving them with only one land locked province. For the moment leave them there, as the new lands will not be very loyal until you can get them Christianised.
About now the rest of the world will be getting antsy. You can afford to ignore the Spainish, Aragonese and Almohads, but the Byzantines attacking your Eastern holdings seem inevitable. Destroy thier fleet and take all of thier Med islands to begin with.
As the age draws to the close, you shouls have the seas of terade completely in your possesion, with no one near challenging you, and your forces shgould be strong enough to with hold the French Hungarian Polish armies jealous of your new conquests, most importantly, with the taking of the Holy Lands, you shouyld have a substantial lead in terms of GA points.
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