Spain is the Emperor and HRE related achievements

Short "How to Guide" to be elected HRE Emperor as Spain, and while we're at it, unify the HRE
3 achievements : "Spain is the Emperor", "Emperor not just in name" and "The Emperors new clothes"

Long term goals and objectives

The long term goal is to get Elected as HRE emperor, starting as Castile.

We'll need to :

• get a land connection between our Capital and a HRE province
  
• Discredit Austria as an effective Emperor
  
• Take control of a majority (4 out of 7) of Electors
  
• NOT be ganged up on by the HRE Majors

This means carving a path in Southern France, and being able to wage multiple wars with the central powers (Austria, Bavaria, Pomerania, Savoy, etc...) and manage shifting Alliances.

This requires a strong power base in Iberia, so you can focus on the HRE, and not be backstabbed by Portugal or a resurgent Aragon

So here's the plan, in broad strokes:

1/ Neutralize Iberia : Annex Granada, Vassalize/PU Portugal and be friend with Aragon until Iberian wedding triggers
2/ Backstab France as soon as it's safe, grabbing provinces up to Savoy.
3/ Get strong allies in HRE and use opportunistic wars to vassalize OPM Electors
4/ Wait for the Emperor to die (How I miss CK2's assassins)

Building a strong power base

note : EU4 patches have nerfed PUs since I first played, but Castile enjoys a lot of scripted PUs so that should still broadly work.

We want to create Spain, neutralize Portugal while still being "fresh" enough to tackle France when the opportunity arises.

So we're going to play nice.

Step 0: Make your 0/0/0 heir a general, so he gets more chance to die.

Ally both Portugal and Aragon as soon as the game start.
Get Royal Marriages, improve relations and just be a good neighbor.

Crush Granada together (ideally, wait for their ally Morroco to be busy elsewhere, otherwise you won't get enough WS on your side of Gibraltar)

Help Aragon keeps its PU with Naples, you'll inherit it in the end.

Wait for the Iberian Event wedding.
It will trigger between 1450 and 1500, if Castile and Aragon rulers can marry each other (ie male/female), or if Aragon is in regency , as long as they're not at war with each other.

If it doesn't fire, I'd restart.
Fighting with Aragon to form Spain by force could leave you too weak to tackle France later on.

In my game, I was able to get a "Claim Throne" PU with Portugal, but this was before patch.
You can try to force vassalize them before they spread everywhere.

If you're lucky, and Portugal enters Regency between 1550-1650, there's a very small chance that you'll just inherit them, if you have a RM, same religion and their opinion of you is over 100 (200 is better)

Don't hold your breath though, even with 200 relations, chance of triggering are only 0.7% per year of regency...

For the first ideas, I took Diplomacy (a must have given the number of vassals/PU you'll need), Exploration to benefit from your NI and build up a colonial empire that will pay for your wars and mercenaries, and Defensive.

As soon as doable, go grab the Incas and Aztec gold mines (even easier if you control Portugal). You' ll need the cash...

France in the way : linking up to HRE

I'll detail the HRE mechanics in the next section, but we need a cored link (direct or through coastal provinces) between our Capital and a HRE province.

The best way is to carve out Southern France, with the added bonus of taking out the big blue blob before it's too late, and facilitating our access to the many, many HRE land wars we'll have to deal with...

There's no precise how to here, there's too many variables.
Just keep good relations with France so they don't attack first, and monitor their armies on the ledger, and wait for France to be low on manpower and already fighting a war (or fresh out of one).

Hire as much mercenaries as your colonial empire allows, and dive in. If you choose your moments right, other countries may pile on, since the AI evaluates relative army strength for DOW opportunities.

At the negociations, focus on weakening France through "Release Nations" and "Cancel vassal "options. It's better to vassalize Provence or Guyenne than to grab the provinces yourself.

Anticipate and make friend with Savoy, so they don't turn hostile due to border frictions.
If Britanny is still in one piece, you might just be able to diplo vassalize them with a few Dip Rep bonus. It's always nice to be bigger, and it prevents France from expanding this way.

A weak France almost certainly means a strong Burgundy, but that will be a problem for later.

Note: There was no Burgundian inheritance in my game. It may greatly complicate things, depending on timing. I'll try to add a section on this later.

House of Cards: Getting HRE Electors to vote for you

Ok, we're a strong Spain, we removed (or crippled) France and we have a land connection to HRE. Now to get elected.

The HRE has up to 7 Electors, that each vote for the country they like best (HRE or not). When the current Emperor dies, the AI scores each countries and the one with a majority of electors is the new Emperor.

NB: Electors may get annexed, so sometimes they're only 5 or 6. The AI Emperor should appoint new ones in that case, but it's sometimes buggy.
Electors evaluate each candidate on :

• Relations : -200 to +200
  
• Religion : -50 if Heretic
  
• HRE Status: +50 if large HRE member vs -50 if outside HRE

[/b]

Prestige: Prestige score /4

Legitimacy: Legitimacy score -50

Trust: -10 to +10

Same culture bonus +5

Diplomatic Reputation : Dip Rep x 2

Current Emperor also adds the Imperial Authority Score

Vassal/Liege link : +50 for Vassal Elector but -50 for remaining Electors (stacking)

[/list]

Warning : Only MALE Monarch are eligibe. A Spanish Queen will never get elected.

The Emperor has, at minimum a [105 + IA ] points advantage over you, since they're same culture, inside HRE (while you're not) and current Emperor.

You can't do anytihing about their Legitimacy, but you can hurt both their Prestige and Imperial Authority by attacking HRE members and defeating the Emperor. Be careful not to antagonize Electors in the process. But even with 0 prestige and 0 IA, it's still a 80 point gap.

If the Emperor has bad relations with the Electors, you're in luck, but they can easily patch them up (Imperial Grace gives +40, and Austria has a lot of Diplomatic boosts as NI) , so it's not safe.

So we need to vassalize the Electors.
when you start down this path, you need to go all the way and vassalize 4, as the other Electors will hate you for vassalizing one of their own.

Having a vassal ensures that you can push Relations up to 200, probably getting an edge over the Emperor and a +50 bonus.

You still have a [55 + IA] gap to cover...

It 's okay to be elected if the Electors and the Emperor are on bad terms, but it might even not be enough since in theory the Emperor could push relations up to 165 with : Improve Relations (100), Imperial Grace (40) and Gift (25), even 190 if they have a preexisting Royal Mariage.

Vassalizing Electors : How to juggle with HRE alliances

We need to force vassalize 4 Electors (Diplo vassalization is impossible).
Focus on the small ones first, before anyone else gets to them.

HRE is a web of alliances, and you need to be very careful when Declaring Wars.

You'll need a couple of strong allies, to watch your back and serve as a buffer versus Austria & co.
Look for someone relatively strong and in bad terms with the Emperor.
In my game it was Bavaria (My friend in the middle of HRE) and Savoy (my neighbour and shield).

Keep them happy, but if possible don't help them grow too much in size, or they'll be a problem later on. Using them to hurt the Emperor is always fun, but not the priority right now.

Study the alliance network : look up who is allied with your targets.

• if they're isolated:

[/b]DOW them, DOW them now, even without a CB (if you have completed the Diplomatic ideas, it's only -1 stab)

If they have a lot of strong allies :

[/b]Find the weakest link in their alliance, ie, the country allied to your target and DOW this one. When your real target answers the Call to arms of their ally, beeline for them and vassalize them in a separate peace. White Peace your nominal target.

If they are allied to one of YOUR allies:

[/b] Start an easy war, call your allies, then start the real war against your target. Your allies, being already helping you in one war, cannot answer the Elector call to arms against you. Wait one month before white peacing the pretext war.
[/list]

If somehow you get entangled in some kind of pan HRE war, don't hesitate to white peace or concede and Break Truce the next day, to get your target one on one.

Exemple Cologne is allied to Austria, Burgundy, Tuscany and Hesse. Ouch... But Hesse is only allied to Cologne and Trier.
So you get a claim on Hesse, DoW them, but take out Cologne in a separate peace.

Not attacking them direcly also avoids the "Can't negotiate with War target" if they call a large country that becomes war leader.

Be opportunistic.

Once, Savoy Called me to Arms to attack Tuscany. I agreed to keep them happy, intent of keeping my armies safe, when I realized that Austria and Cologne where helping Tuscany. I rushed to siege Cologne, ignoring everything else and vassalized them in a separate peace. I then let Savoy and Austria weaken each other while I watched on the sidelines.

Note: The attrition due to terrain when sieging in the Alps is gruesome. Use mercenaries or you'll end up with no manpower, and Burgundy looking at you funny ...

Why won't he die ?! Curse of the immortal Emperor

Once you have 4 Electors as vassals, you need to pamper them so they trust and like you, while waiting for the Emperor to die.

But even a vassal Elector might prefer the Emperor to his liege, or be on the edge.

The solution, as often in EU4, is ... WAR.

Your vassals will answer the Call to Arms, and being at war with the Emperor both hurt their long term relations and give them the temporary "Enemies -200" modifier.
Quite enough to bridge the gap.

So war against him, dragging it out as long as possible, especially if the Emperor is already quite old.

Sometimes when the RNG God is angry and he just won't die :)

In my game, he reached 73 years old before kicking the bucket, and we were at war since he was 67 or so...

Once you get elected, pause the game, enjoy the moment...








AND ADD YOUR CAPITAL TO THE HRE.

That's why you needed a continuous link through France. Only add the minimum number of Provinces to reach Madrid, save the others for later, you'll need them to increase IA.

As soon as your Capital is an HRE province, Spain will be a full member of the HRE, removing the 100 points handicap vs other large HRE nations and ensuring that you will always be reelected.

Even if you lose the position due to a female Monarch, you'll get it back easily next election.

Note: To add a Province to the HRE, click on the big HRE flag on each Province screen. You can do this even if you're not the Emperor, but the Emperor must accept the territory, and the AI will always refuse if they think you're a threat to them (Smart AI) .

Herding cats : how to manage YOUR HRE

Now that you're the Emperor, you might as well pass the reforms and unify the HRE.

Here's how it works:
To pass a reform, Imperial Authority must be at least 50 and half the HRE members (not just Electors, all of them) must be in favor.

Each Vote is scored following these Criteria :

Previous Reform: -3 for each previous reform

HRE Member

• Economic Power: - [(Base Tax + # Temples) + 2] x 0.2
  
• Religion: -20 if Heretic
  
• Gov Type : Monarchy +2 / Republic 0 / Theocracy -5
  
• Culture: -5 Different culture / -10 different Culture Group

Emperor

• Opinion : Opinion / 10 (i.e. from -20 to +20)
  
• Overextenstion : -1 per non cored Base Tax
  
• Diplomatic Reputation: +1 per Dip Rep.
  
• Ally +5 / Vassal +25
  
• Imperial Authority: +1 per IA above the 50 minimum

How to gain Imperial Authority.

• Each time your country is reelected Emperor, you gain 10 IA
  
• 1 IA per province you add to the HRE
  
• Liberating a HRE member that was annexed (scale to country size)
  
• Enforcing Religious Unity on an heretic HRE member (scale to country size)
  
• Defending a HRE from attack from a non HRE member
  
• Being Defender of the faith and protecting someone (not tested)

You don't want to add provinces to the HRE just yet, so the most efficient is to Enforce religious unity and attack large HRE members to make them Release Nations they annexed.

This has the added benefit of removing Heretic and strong economic Power penalties for the votes.

Liberating members is straightforward: look for a country with cores of a country they can release, check they're weak enough, Declare war on a flimsy pretext, and make them release as much nation as possible. You even get a special "Liberation" CB if someone annexes a member while you're Emperor.

Enforcing Religious Unity is a bit trickier.
Using the Diplomatic action costs 1 IA.
If the target accept , they switch religion and you get a nice IA boost, but also a strong relation penalty (stacking) to every other Heretic HRE members, making it less likely that they will accept in turn.
If the target refuses, you get a CB against them, to force religious conversion. Note that for some large countries, WS needed for Religious concersion is over 100% so you'd need several wars.

Don't be stupid like me and Enforce Religious Unity on 6 OPM because it's easy, before realizing that 10 provinces Pomerania hated my guts (-230 penalty) and would never consent.

So do the large one first (improving relations etc) trhough diplomacy, and use the CB against the OPMs that hate you.

Passing the Reforms :

There is a total of 8 reforms to pass.

The first 4 are no brainers, and will only require 50 IA, and your diplomats working overtime (increase relation, Guarantee, send gift) to tip 50% of the members in your favor.
The +33% Relationship Improvement Advisor is very useful here.

The 5th one, Ewiger Landfriede, will disallow internal HRE wars.
Before you enact this one, finish to reshape the HRE as much as possible.
It's your last chance to shrink large HRE Princes by making them release Nation, or convert Heretics by force of arms.

Now, add all your cored territories to the HRE (Spain, Naples, part of France). You should easily have 80 IA +, without effort.
Stop as soon as there's enough to pass the 6th Reform, that makes your title hereditary.

The 7th one, "Revoke the Privilegia" is the trickiest one: You still only need 50% of voters to enact them, but all members that vote against will leave the HRE.

You'll want to crank up IA to 100, and use everything you have so everyone is in favor.

A cheap trick to increase IA, is to release YOUR vassals, now that all your territories are part of HRE: Releasing Britanny, Aragon , Naples as "New HRE Princes" will give you tons of IA.

Be careful, sometimes the released vassal will move its capital outside HRE (France did this to me, probably because Paris was isolated from the rest of French Provinces), wasting the effect.

Now that all of HRE members are your vassals, you're unstoppable. Increase IA by eating alive your neighbors or releasing more vassals, passing the last reform is easy, since they all have the +25 Vassal modifier.

Note that the unified HRE is actually weaker, since you lose all HRE specific bonus and quite a lot of Force Limit (and coring power)

[Easy, Mo'fcker!]

@Siu-King i restarted until i got a game were aragon didnt hate me... was possible to make them ally and also ally portugal ... later england forced portugal to annull treaties and i ate them
now its 1483 i have PU aragon, neaple, portugal is soon rdy to force vassalize (so the still colonize for me) i have savoy ally who got rly big now caus luckily they declared war to switzerland and pulled france in an me on their side.. so i was able to avoid this damn france-austrian alliance and got some provinces of france as reward from the peacedeal^^ think in the next war 1494 i can link up to the rest of burgundy by eating a way through france and then i can start the HRE project^^

[Siu-King**]

After becoming the Emperor...all the HRE vassals we got to get ourselves elected became a serious burden to your Imperial Authority...Any workaround? otherwise you're just forced to release them or you will have no IA left before you can use them

[Siu-King**]

Is it still possible to do this today? Aragon hates me from the start...and his heir doesn't die at all, while Portugal also has heir.

[burtod]

-LC-BOSS Yes, even as rival, the Iberian Wedding will fire. I see it commonly when I am not Castile, Aragon and Portugal allied, Aragon and Castile Rivalled, wedding fires and Castile starts to matter.

[TDG]

Because thats way more wars and takes longer then just say one or two wars with BBB

[SapphicKerfuffle]

Instead of moving through the big blue blob which has endless manpower and would be a useful ally why cant you just invade all of italy after 1490 and between 1444 and 1490 just invade north africa

[Erawolf]

You might want to update your guide since there are many newly updated stuff. I can give you "Northern Italy leaves empire" as example.

[Muscat]

Thanks, Simca.

Pippin, as far as I played, it seemed this guide was still feasible. Waiting for Common Sense now.

[zt]

And can be Iberian wedding with rivality?

[zt]

I dont know, i know only, that everytime when i play it, everytime my rival is castille :/