How do you accrue Imperial Authority while you have a subject elector?

[Corvus_Alt1]

Playing as Great Britain, have become emperor of the HRE, Prussia is in a personal union under me, and now I have to figure out how to acquire IA despite the fact that I'm going to be bleeding a net 0.02 IA monthly. Advice anyone?

[Blinks menacingly]

Wait, GB as emperor?Something went wrong there.

[Kagemin]

If you are losing IA from vassalized electors your best bet is to get a bunch of it at once so that you can immedeately enact the next reform.
Add a bunch of territory to the HRE at once, maybe release some Princes as vassals (any nation released with their capital in an HRE province will count as being a Prince), and you should be able to get enough.

[Surimi]

Yeah. Focus on big single sources of IA, like defending the Empire from aggressors or forcibly breaking up large nations (if you haven't done so, forcing Austria to release Styria would be a massive IA boom and should also remove them from the running for Emperor). If you're nearly there, release and reintegrate one of your own vassals. It will cost you diplo points and give you a relations debuff, but is probably worth it if it nets you a reform.

You could also deliberately sabotage your relationship with Brandenburg so that they break the union, but 0.02 monthly IA loss should be managable.

[Corvus_Alt1]

Thanks for the replies everyone! So I guess I'm going to have to very judicious with my wars and intervene in the empire when there is the opportunity to accrue a lot of IA at once. I may also need to consider adding all of my provinces at once, since I'll end up getting 18 IA from adding the Low Countries and London to the HRE anyway, so may as well make the investment and add as much IA as possible, right? But then, once I disallow internal wars in the HRE, I'd be really hard pressed to get IA. So, probably a better idea to wait until I really need the IA boost.

Sigh. Maybe I can get lucky and get a PU with Scandinavia, and then integrate them and add their territories to the HRE. And at least there are a couple of small blobs in the HRE for me to break up.

Also, out of curiosity, if I successfully pass the Proclaim Erbkaisertum reform, does the IA malus end since the Electors cease to be important?