How fares the Holy Roman Empire

[supadodo]

I'm thinking of starting a fresh campaign as the HRE. I've seen their unit roster and they look pretty good but not sure on their effectiveness. Also their start position is kinda hard to defend. So any experience tips from a HRE player that I opcan use. I don't want to start only to get my butt whooped by gang-banging factions.

[pevergreen]

Leave Metz and Bern and the One that the Danes take. Taking them will make them fight you sooner. Stem Milan early, as once they get xbows, they spread through france. Kick Venice out of Venice around turn 10, after you take florence on turn 2 (move all but 1 guy from Bologna to florence, siege it, take it the next turn) Convert Bologna into a Castle as it will get sieged alot. Then tech up a bit, spread in all directions.

(Bribe the pope, as your pope-o-meter takes a hit every turn.)

(Dont go on crusades, or if you must, gift them to the pope when you take it, concentrate on Europe)

[supadodo]

What about their units? I notice some of them are 2handers, and arn't they bugged or sumthing?

[GC64]

Only two-handers with axe animations are bugged.

[pevergreen]

Welcome ot the org GC64 ~:wave:

You can download zxiang two hander fix at the Total War Center.

Mostly i use armies of dismounted knights, pavise crossbowmen and mounted knigts. Works well enough with some armoured sarges.

Check out the King of the Romans in the AAR section, has a bit on Historical HRE armies.

[Skott]

Strategies can be found in the M2TW Guide section. From my recent experience I can tell you taking out the Danes and/or Milan (Danes will prove easier) early on will make a HRE campaign easier. In my campaign I didnt have much problem keeping alliances but this isnt always the case. Diplomacy in M2TW is a fickle thing. No two campaigns will play out exactly the same when it comes to diplomacy. One HRE campaign may have it easy and another may have it hard. The HRE units start off strong and get stronger as time goes on. I suggest reading the HRE Guide section for more detailed info. A lot of good strategies lie within it. Alot can be gained from reading the AAR section as well.

[Scotsmanforlife]

The majority of my troops are cavalry, i've had succes time after time using them. I'm playing as the HRE right now, and doing quite well. It isn't easy in the beginning, as no matter who you ally with they'll break it. I had Venice, Milan, and Sicily all break their alliance to me at the same time. When i first started off i moved south into italy and took as much as i could. Taking over venice and Milan's capitals put them on the back burner for a few turns which gave me time to breathe. At that point i only attacked when i was attacked. Helped keep the papal states off my back. :duel:

[supadodo]

What about the Pope? He's gonna be a major pain since you start with bad relations

[Scotsmanforlife]

Actually the pope hasn't been that bad. I've only been excommunicated maybe 2 times, and threatened to stop attacking maybe 5 or 6 times. What i did in the beginning was to make a bunch of priests and send them out into territories that were low in catholic religion. Not too many turns later i had about 5 cardinals and the pope was one of mine. Now the pope doesn't do anything, just sits in Rome. I have all the land surrounding him. Once in awhile i'll give him a city to keep up relations, that tends to keep him happy. :coffeenews:

[Dave1984]

Leave Metz and Bern and the One that the Danes take


Leave Hamburg? Are you serious!? Everytime I leave Hamburg, the Danes take it and are pumping armies right in my heartlands almost from the off. If I take it, the Danes don't get the opporunity to start pumping out armies for a good 100 turns.
Hamburg should be the first thing you go for.

[wiretripped]

Leave Hamburg? Are you serious!? Everytime I leave Hamburg, the Danes take it and are pumping armies right in my heartlands almost from the off. If I take it, the Danes don't get the opporunity to start pumping out armies for a good 100 turns.
Hamburg should be the first thing you go for.

I concur. Finishing off the Danes should be one of your first priorities.
Taking Hamburg will prevent them from expanding. Try to capture Arhus as quickly as possibly after that, and you're almost done with Denmark.
Then turn to northern Italy. More notably, Venice, Milan and Florence.

HRE's my favorite faction. :beam:

[Laconic]

On my current campaign I ignored Hamburg and went straight for the throat on the first turn. The Danes had one field army wandering around the rebel areas and watched stupidly as I walked my army up to their one city. They were too far away to catch me by the time I laid siege to it. They had only a unit of cannon fodder infantry and a general for a garrison, so three towers was easily enough to get inside the city almost unscathed. After Arhus was mine the faction was eliminated and I took the other rebel provinces at my leisure.

[Skott]

Taking out the Danes first would be the easiest and better strategy IMO. Then you can concentrate on the Italian factions. In my HRE campaign I been blessed with loyal Venetian and Sicilian alliances. Made taking out Milan much easier. I took the war to the Danes first by taking Arhus after taking rebel Hamburg but I let Milan attack me so they would get excommunicated. Once excommunicated you can attack Milan without worrying about the Pope getting upset. Milan expands very agressively and quickly so you wont be able to take them out in one fight. The Danes can be taken out in one fight if you are fast enough. I would say use the same startegy for Venice and Sicily as well but keep the alliances going as long as possible. Try to take on each faction one at a time if possible.

[TevashSzat]

Be sure once you take out the danes and the italians to ally with either hungary and poland or france since you don't want to be fighting a huge war against one side and have the other side just figure that your cities looks weakly garrisoned and attack you. Even if you are a good commander, you will be very low on money with at least two large armies that you have to spend upkeep on.

[Skott]

What I did was in the very beginning ally with everyone except the Danish and the muslim factions. Most everyone has held to the alliance. I'm amazed at how well its held together without me doing anything extra other than trading map info from time to time. This HRE campaign of mine has had the best alliance loyalty I've experienced yet. I probably couldnt reproduce it again though. Just one of those lucky flukes I guess.

[Alcorr]

I just started a game today as hre. I read up on the guides section and that helped alot you should do the same.

First off, take your northermost general and the starting stack up at the north and go straight to the danish capital and take it. Hire mercenaries to ensure sucess. If they capture the castle right below thier capital before you get there, take it and then thier capital. Thats what I did. Wiped them out in I think 3 or 4 turns. Then went on to take the two northernmost provinces.

Next thing I did was wipe out milan (only 2 cities). Right now im smashing up venice and just went to war with france.

As with every medieval 2 game while playing a catholic faction, hiring mercenaries early on is a sure way to success. The merc spearmen just massacre anything the enemy can get (with the exception of italian spear militia from milan) until a good 30 turns in or so, and by that time your econ should be pumping out better units than thiers and in higher quality anyways.

Dismounted and mounted gothic knights are awesome units, they work well late game. Im looking forward to using them.

Anyways once you kill of the danes, you should have the money and econ to take prague and milan at the same time. Once you have milan (o and dont forget the florence rebels) your econ should be way ahead of anyone else. The game from there on out is just downhill.

[-Silent-Someguy]

Just wipe out denmark in the first few turns as everyone has said basically. I engaged their army while it was sieging hamburg, destroyed it, then moved over Arhus. This then allows you to take Stockholm and Oslo from the rebels easily. Then I pumped out units from innsbruck as well as the crap you can get from Bologna, Then in about 5 turns Milan was gone too, I took florence, and then Venice, moved east to Zagreb and moved over that too. Its harder to full eliminate Venice because of their island city to the south east. The Sicilians can be really annoying so once you have got rid of milan, denmark and venice I advise sending an army to Naples and Sicily to take them, I found it very easy, as they landed an army near genoa which was destroyed in a siege attempt. then just take Tunis and they are almost done with. I of course did very little teching and spent all my money on mercs and training, but thats the strat I found more effective for the HRE early on in the game once you have taken out the italian factions you can decide to expand eastward or westward. I found eastward to be better, as the time I tried to go west i got caught in a conflict with Spain coming up from the south, france and england as well. It was very tedious. When I went east I found the poles relativly easy to mow over and Hungary was easy to push south where they where already fighting the byzantines. At this point I began teching up, and grew my economy.

Also the Moors are easy game once youve taken tunis especially when they are fighting portugal and spain, so you can take northern africa and build on this with crusader armies to take the middle east. However it is a while before you can muster them, due to the beating your rep will take with the pope from the aggresive expanionism I found to be the most effective with the HRE.

[sapi]

What about the Pope? He's gonna be a major pain since you start with bad relations
Once you push down to rome, kill him and all his family members to remove the papacy from the equation.

If you've still got your starting cardinal then you can just keep killing off popes until he is elected; otherwise you get a pope elected when you complete the victory condition

[PseRamesses]

I'm thinking of starting a fresh campaign as the HRE. I've seen their unit roster and they look pretty good but not sure on their effectiveness. Also their start position is kinda hard to defend. So any experience tips from a HRE player that I opcan use. I don't want to start only to get my butt whooped by gang-banging factions.
Blitz on turn one and build fast, ally with the pope - no one else! I concentrate on rebs early. Here´s my first turns:
*Take your Bologna-army and seize Florence, Ajaccio and Cagliari then swing back to defend the inevitable Milanese or Venetian onslaught.
*Take your troops in Nuremberg and Vienna and march on Prague, Breslau and Stettin.
*Your troops in Frankfurt seizes Hamburg and Magdeburg.
*Innsbruck and Staufen? takes Bern and Metz.
*The remnats of troops in Stettin and Magdeburg march on Antwerp and Bruges.
All of this is is finished within 15 turns. Call a crusade on Vilnius, Riga or Tunis as soon as you can spare some militia. If you´re not allied with the Pope before you´ll shure be after its finished.
In my current campaign my rep is "very reliable" and my realtions with Danes, French, Polish, Hungarian and the Pope are pending between "outstanding" and "perfect". I´m easily pulling in some 30-40k/ turn after taking out the Milanese and Venetian italian holdings.