Try this for a challenge

[Cowhead418]

I wanted a challenge so I started an HRE campaign on Expert in Early (XL mod). You have a large income to start off with but an unbelievable amount of borders to defend and several enemies surrounding you: the French, Danes, Venetians, Genoese, Hungarians, Polish, and Bohemians. You also start off with somewhat rebellious provinces, lots of unloyal generals, several under-developed provinces, and a relatively crappy troop arsenal at the beginning.

So I begin by building up infrastructure and making lots of troops in an attempt to secure all my borders. A few turns in the French invade Lorraine and win a close battle. I take it back the next turn. Two turns later my small garrison in Friesland is bribed by the damn French and I have to send troops to defend. I win there but lose another close battle in Lorraine to a French invading army. The next turn I take it back and have most of my troops on my western front. I manage to take advantage of a French civil war and capture Ile-de-France.

Earlier I had built a ship from Provence - HUGE mistake. A Venetian ship attacks and gets blown away by mine. The Genoese had taken a province from the French and have two half stacks there. A few turns later a Genoese ship attacks and also gets sunk by mine. On my eastern front I had some armies but I was worried by the large armies of Hungarians, Polish, and Bohemians. Suddenly another one of my garrisons is bribed, this time by the Venetians. I move in troops to defend.

Now is about the 15th turn and this is when all hell breaks loose. The French sally out from their keep in Ile-de-France and move in with relieving forces. The Genoese also send an invasion force in and team-up with the French. The Bohemians invade Franconia with a very-good quality army where I have a pathetic defensive army of Spearmen, Archers, Urban Militia and some Feudal Men-at-Arms. The Venetians send a larger force to where they bribed my army, and then my ship is sunk. I retreated from Franconia and didn't feel like fighting in Ile-de-France so I auto-calced and lost. I auto-calced against the Venetians but lost too.

I feel I could have won two of those battles if I fought manually but it wouldn't have mattered. I was being attacked from all sides and it was only a matter of time before I was over-run. A civil war would come and my empire would collapse. I wasn't in the mood to see a collapse so I quit the campaign. Any tips on how to play the HRE on the XL mod?

[Ciaran]

It´s no different in High, the HRE is hard, really hard. How did I manage? Luck, and a lot of it, I suppose. The occasional sacrifice of a province like Savoy or Austria helps to concentrate the forces, too. Try persistantly to get ceasefires, it´s unlikely you can convince anyone to ally with you in the beginning. And don´t build ships! Ships are an invitation for war. The AI loves starting wars by attacking your ships. That you actually managed to sink the others´ ships is odd, I always loose if I´m the one who´s attacked and I only play on normal difficulty. It took me about thirty turns to live down the wars, the pope attacking the Venetians was a tremendous help, as was an accidential neglience in the defenses of Genoa which I mercilessly took advantage of. But before I got one surviving go I had three other tries abandoned. The start is really frustrating
[edit]Something else, you´ll need money. To get it you have to raise taxes, where happiness allows it to Very High level. It may give your governors vices, but you just can´t do without the cash. And every battle won helps, it increases your Kings influence and you need that to live down the wars and keep the happieness up[/edit]

[Sardo]

I don't want more challenge. I almost had my behind handed to me in my current English, hard, XL campaign (my first serious XL campaign and my first serious MTW campaign in quite a while).

In short: I'm now running for King of Spain, after both 'King of England' and 'King of France' didn't work out the way I intended.

Being chased around the map is a whole new sensation.

[phred]

I just had some fun playing the Danes, XL early campaign, hard.
No one ever attacked me in Scandinavia, so I conquered Scandinavia and sent out crusades to the middle east. It was a lot of fun to see if I could conquer/keep my crusade provinces without any reinforcements from Scandinavia.

I got bored/irritated around 1250 and quit the campaign, but the early part was really fun and challenging.
That's great mod.
I haven't tried the HRE but my frusration tolerance is pretty low so I probably shouldn't even try it.

[Lanemerkel1]

by the time I can have the pleasure of taking out the HRE in my English campaign their either gonna be completley dead, weak and pre occupied with the rebels in their provinces AND surrounded, or EXTREMELY p.o.ed at me and surrounded.


either way their dead

[Odin]

Any tips on how to play the HRE on the XL mod?

Maybe a few...

I wont claim to be an HRE Expert I have played them twice in XL and never finished the campaign. You pretty much outlined the situation well with your first post so no need to rewrite it. You are an empire already, and from what I see on the boards guys get into trouble by trying to expand to early. Thats what makes the HRE game a bit frustrating, to play it well you really just have to build up what you have to start with and field off incursions.

If you must go to war early, Bohemia is a good choice, weak starting army but exceptional province values. Eventually one of the Italian factions will declare on you. So that is when you conquest, when someone declares on you !

HRE is prone to collapse, but often its due to multiple front wars, well early on dont start any, let the AI get excommed and you play defensive. There are a few givens in the game that I noticed with HRE this might help.

1. England and France will eventually goto war

2. One of the Itallians will declare on you

3. Denmark has to be watched in the North

So my tips are play defensive wars and build up elite forces. Dont waste your time with crap troops, you got the cash build the best and within the defensive strategy you can take a province or two.

[dgfred]

About the only way to play HRE on hard in Early is to turtle up for quite awhile, using the so-called porcupine defense. After getting your forces and
infrastructure built up some, I usually knock on France's door and punch the
Danes in the mouth. Consolidate somemore, maybe even take on the Poles or rebel sections around them. I personally love to take all of the Northern
provinces and slowly expand to the west and southwest. Mainly you have to
have solid/strong border defenses and a solid/strong economy. Hope this
helps, and other questions we will try our best to answer. HRE can be a real
.