why can't I add non-european provinces to HRE?

[n3uva]

title

[Marquoz]

Because that's how the rules of the game are written.

[n3uva]

yeah but is there any good reason for not being able to? if I wanted a global HRE why couldn't I do that? any good reason?

[Marquoz]

Again, it's because the developers decided to limit the HRE that way. It's already the strongest force in the game.

If you want it, mod it.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Again, it's because the developers decided to limit the HRE that way. It's already the strongest force in the game.

If you want it, mod it.

Nah, the strongest force in the game is the Turkish menace.

The only reason why HRE is a force to reckon with is only due to the number of small countries inside - with each one developing provinces it can become a force to reckon with if not nipped in the bud. This is similar to how the Turkish menace has to be nipped in the bud ASAP otherwise, you will have to face a standing army of 500K+.

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by darkestkhan:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Again, it's because the developers decided to limit the HRE that way. It's already the strongest force in the game.

If you want it, mod it.

Nah, the strongest force in the game is the Turkish menace.

The only reason why HRE is a force to reckon with is only due to the number of small countries inside - with each one developing provinces it can become a force to reckon with if not nipped in the bud. This is similar to how the Turkish menace has to be nipped in the bud ASAP otherwise, you will have to face a standing army of 500K+.

An HRE vassal swarm absolutely dwarfs the Ottomans. The latter just start fairly big, and have good opportunities to get larger; they're really not any greater a threat than most other tags that reach their size. Taking them out early is only necessary if you're next door and in their expansion path.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by darkestkhan:

Nah, the strongest force in the game is the Turkish menace....This is similar to how the Turkish menace has to be nipped in the bud ASAP otherwise, you will have to face a standing army of 500K+.

Nope. I can crush the Ottomans at any time. Start of game, middle of game, end of game, whatever. Doesn't matter. They're incredibly weak, paper tigers, a tiny fraction of the power they should be. And, as Malvastor said, the HRE vassal swarm is many times stronger than the Ottomans are.

[Marquoz]

As an example, here's a screenshot from my last Angevin game. My 350K troops plus another million or so from the vassal swarm are obliterating the Ottomans in 1556:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141043555

Total allied forces are about 1.4 million, although you can't see it in this screenshot.

[RCMidas]

Ottomans didn't even get off the ground in my last game. I wasn't even involved as I was experimenting with Gotland. Instead, the Mamluks went north and began eating into the beyliks and the Ottomans in alternating wars. I practically stopped my tests just to watch that unfold - though I did intervene to break up the HRE and stop them from heading into the Balkans to get involved there too.

[alan_buchbach]

I thought in previous patches it was possible. I'm sure I saw screen shots of someone who started as a one-county minor on the Frisian coast, who left the HRE and moved their capital to Newfoundland and then rejoined. They could then add every province in North America to the HRE.

[Marquoz]

If that happened, they were running a heavily modded game. You can't join the HRE if your capital isn't in Europe, and you can't move your capital out of Europe if you're part of the HRE.

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

If that happened, they were running a heavily modded game. You can't join the HRE if your capital isn't in Europe, and you can't move your capital out of Europe if you're part of the HRE.

Wait actually- this might be/may have been possible. East Frisia starts as a non-member, but gets an event to join. That event may not check if you're actually in Europe (since it was probably written assuming East Frisia would be in, well, East Frisia). So if it still fires even though you've moved to North America, and the logic for adding provinces focused more on adjacency than on being in Europe, it might have once been possible.

[RCMidas]

That's incredibly unlikely. That event has an effective 50% chance to fire by 1450. For East Frisia to colonise Newfoundland so quickly...I mean, yeah, theoretically it's possible, but only for a player who knows EXACTLY what they're doing and gets incredibly lucky with the delayed event.

Still can't add the North American provinces to the HRE though.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

As an example, here's a screenshot from my last Angevin game. My 350K troops plus another million or so from the vassal swarm are obliterating the Ottomans in 1556:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141043555

Total allied forces are about 1.4 million, although you can't see it in this screenshot.

Yeah, in your games Ottomans haven't really taken off - Serbia, Albania, Bosnia. It's clear that the trade value flows into Ragusa, thus cutting down the income of Ottomans.

In my current game as Bengal, I'm likely to contend with 500K troops Ottoman blob. Granted, it's a standing army and they don't have much manpower, but at the same time, there is no other power even close to that force. I also had Timurids not exploding, forming Mughals, Vijayanagar allying Ming, and the alliance network that largely constrained my growth. Luckily for me, Ming exploded and the Mughals got tied up in "a war": 5 wars, including separate wars against Russia, Ottomans, Jaunpur, Bengal (me), and Sindh.

I remember in my last game as Hungary I handled the ass to Ottomans early in the game - by cutting off expansion into Europe and bleeding them dry from cash and thus preventing them from building income buildings. This had a very heavy impact on the army size and the number of forts. As a result, they were very easy to handle.

[RCMidas]

The Ottomans have 500K? Why don't you have 2 million? You should have all India by now. You have all Indonesia. You should be eating into China, Ethiopia, Arabia, all before actually needing to face the Ottomans at all. Let them and the Mughals waste their time with each other whilst you claim the rest of the east. There's nothing then that can stop you.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by darkestkhan:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

As an example, here's a screenshot from my last Angevin game.  My 350K troops plus another million or so from the vassal swarm are obliterating the Ottomans in 1556:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141043555

Total allied forces are about 1.4 million, although you can't see it in this screenshot.

Yeah, in your games Ottomans haven't really taken off - Serbia, Albania, Bosnia. It's clear that the trade value flows into Ragusa, thus cutting down the income of Ottomans.

Except you're missing something huge.  This isn't my first war against the Ottomans.  It's my third.  They had eaten all of the Balkans and Hungary in addition to the Mamluks, the Persian Gulf, Astrakhan, and so on.  But they're getting stomped anyway--and EASILY--because the vassal swarm is the game's strongest force.

In each war, I grabbed one province of non-existent nations like Serbia, Wallachia, Bosnia, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Karaman, and so on.  Then I cored them, added them to the HRE, and released them as vassals that are part of the swarm.  In the next war, I fought reconquest for their cores.  This keeps truce timers short (I'm not taking money or other reparations from the Ottomans because I'm plenty rich on my own) so that I can expand faster.

A couple screen shots will illustrate this.  First is Europe in 1570, from the same campaign.  Look at all the little countries!  Karaman!  Tver!  Mentese!  Nitra!  Transylvania!  
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173074452

But they're all mine, as the HRE view shows:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173074730

I'm using my GC to directly control provinces whose trade is part of the English Channel node or that feeds into it (like Denmark and Norway) by annexing those vassals one by one. I'm eating Portugal directly because I want to take over their colonial nations myself and don't want them as a vassal that colonizes again.  I will finish that process in the next war.  Spain is gone, its colonial nations are mine, and its European land has been fed to HRE vassals like Leon, Aragon, and Catalonia.  But I directly own the provinces that are part of the Bordeaux node (which feeds the Channel) and those that have monuments I want (like Granada).

The swarm is by far the mightiest force in the entire game.  It dwarfs the Ottomans, and everything else. The "Turkish menace" isn't even a speed bump to the swarm.