First Successful HRE Game (H/VH)

I've tried HRE several days ago on M/M difficulty and was quickly surrounded and destroyed by the coalition of Denmark + France + Milan + Venice + Sicily + Poland. Only Hungary stayed out of the ganking probably due to having a marriage alliance right from the start. Now that I'm more familiar with the game I decided to give it another try on "Hard" campaign "Very Hard" battlefield difficulty.

On the first turn, I saved as much florin as possible by not building anything, and started moving all my starting units southward leaving only 1 unit per province for garrison. This mass of spear militia, town militia, and peasant archers reached northern Italy in a few turns. With the only casualty being two of the armies that betrayed me enroute and became rebels.

When the first army reached Florence, the siege began immediately while peasant archers are being produced from the southern castles of the Empire. When Florence finally fell, the Venicians decided to betray our alliance and attack. When the remaining armies arrive from the Empire, they were put to use on the counter attack on Venice. There were multiple battles fought each turn. And I gotta say that those Italian militia sure are tough when you've only lower quality militia to meet them.

After a few turns before Venice fell, Milan decided to join it, and soon after, Sicily crossed the Papal province of Rome to attack me as well. I just threw waves after waves of militia at them and sacked at every city capture to fund more militia. At this point I'm out of favor with the Papacy, and started to receive cease-fire warnings on counter-attacks. To solve this problem, I gave my in-land provinces, never developed and drained of populace, one per turn to the Papacy. Each time the Papal States receive a province my relation with them becomes "Perfect" and Papal favor maxes out, allowing me to keep attacking the Italian trio non-stop and conquering all of Italy before running out of inland provinces to give away.

30 turns into the game, the Holy Roman Empire has experienced a massive migration. Most of the Empire now belongs to the Papacy. And all of Italy except Rome belongs to the Empire. Having given the Papacy most of its land, my relation with it seems to stay at "Perfect" with a "give tribute each turn" treaty, a insignificant tip for safe guarding the Empire's borders from those Poles, Danes, French, Hungarians, and what's left of the Venicians.

Up to this point I've had to adopt family members like crazy to keep my line from burning out at the stake. That would not be a problem for long though. For another 10 turns the HRE in Italy built up the cities while saving up for the purchase of Rome. Then, for 70k florins, the Pope sold his home and left with his inquisitors to live else where.

I stopped playing at this point. Since the Empire now controls all of Italy has nearly no land border to anyone but the Papacy at "Perfect" relations, and is so rich that there's no way to spend it all other than for land purchases, and the high-tech castle in Sicily already has Gothic Knights, it just seems that the Campaign is already won.

To the east the three Greek coastal provinces can be easily snatched from the Byzantines, and then by giving the Papacy a poor inland Hungarian provinces the Greek provinces won't even need to be defended.

To the west, taking Iberia would creat a permenent land border with the Moors, since they don't mind attacking Papacy the buffer wouldn't work on them.

Anyhow, the Pope is fueled by the coffers of Italy in this Campaign and he's never said no to money. And that has made me the bully of the western world attacking whoever I want and getting them excommunicated.


Tips demonstrated in this campaign:

1. Give poor land to Pope for favor as well as to avoid bordering other Christian factions.
2. Coastal provinces are rich, inland provinces are poor and the Pope can have them.
3. Pope doesn't pick on you when you have maxed out your Papal Favor and Papal State relations. He'll just excommunicate the other Christians counter-attacking you.... even when the other Christian faction is much smaller, weaker, and is dying thanks to your attacks.
4. Money gets you all the Papal Favor you need, much faster, easier, more reliable than participating in the Cardinal college.
5. Give the Pope some far-away land and then buy Rome to move the Inquisition farther from you.
6. March for the shore at the beginning. Coastal provinces give access to attacking remote, easily defensible, and rich provinces through the water.

That is really, really funny. I don't generally care for manipulating a game, but I do love off the wall strategies like because I am too historically bound to ever try them! Hilarious, thanks for the story!

I suppose HRE is really an apt moniker for your faction, as your base is basically Rome now.

Hilarious!!

Not that I would advocate that strategy but it certainly clears up a few more issues when dealing with the Pope.

He's a dirty, amoral pig in reality so if you have the cash just buy him off!! :laugh4:

Wow, that is a "exotic" strategy for the HRE. Nice one. I never made it to become Popeys favourite.