Faction - Duchy of Austria

[Knight2708]

You make some very good points. I think we can definetly incorporate some of these ideas once we release the first beta version of the mod. However, since these cities are in place already our focus is to get a playable version for people to test.

Once that is done I think we should definetly find a working solution to the german situation. Many years ago there was talk of either having Bavaria as a faction or the Holy Roman Empire. The only way to do this would be to remove one of the shadow factions so that fell through (we need at least Serbian shadow to prevent it from becoming a huge blob). But who knows what might happen in future versions.

Also, keep in mind that the rebel settlements will not be like in vanilla. They will be more active and also will be fully stacked up so they will be very hard to occupy.

For the swiss I think we need to find a compromise so to remove Schwyz and replace it with another city which was a lot larger and more important.

We can also use the mechanic of PSFs. So we can have forts which have Austrian troops in them around the Swiss areas and this would definetly trigger Swiss-Austrian wars. And of course there is scripting to try to encourage Swiss-Austrian conflicts. I agree it might not be a bad idea at all to have an actual Austrian settlement in the area of the Swiss to make it even more of a pain in their backside.

How big were Ensisheim, Laufenburg or Burgau?

Having a look at the Habsburg possesisons I think we definetly need to have either a settlement or lots of PSFs with Habsburgs in the Swiss area

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Honestly, while I would love to have the HRE in the mod, it probably doesn't make much sense to have it as part of this mod. Even if a faction slot could be freed up somewhere, it would need so many mechanics, scripts etc. to implement properly that its probably not worth it. It also has little connection to the mod's core region, not to mention that you cant really have the HRE in this period without also having Bohemia.
If the German region was focused on the Habsburgs and the Swiss, I think the two would be busy enough with each other, not to mention possible entanglements in Italy and In Austria's case Hungary, to not really need much else in the German region.
The idea to add forts to represent the Habsburg presence in Switzerland is a good one that I had honestly not thought about, although I still think that they should have at least one proper settlement within the Vorlande. Of the settlements I mentioned, Ensisheim would have been the largest, being the capital of the Further Austrian lands, although I don't think that it was particularly large and it would be increasingly overshadowed in importance by Freiburg after it became part of the Vorlande later in the 14 century. Laufenburg was mostly a castle with a small settlement. The main reason for suggesting it is that it lies within the Habsburgs' original area of influence in the Aargau, not because it was an important settlement. Burgau was similarly small and the center of one of the Habsburgs' largest possession in Swabia, the Margraviate of Burgau.

[Wallachian]

Yes, there probably won't be an HRE anytime soon. Realistically, Austria pretty much is the HRE in this area once the Habsburgs become emperors.

If there is to be an Austrian settlement the big problem will be figuring out the borders so that it covers from the Swiss area all the way up to Burgau in Swabia. There is also the issue of figuring out the settlement to replace and how to fix the borders after that so that we don't end up with big chunks of land into one province which makes no sense.

In terms of which settlement would be the one to make it in well it would have to be a compromise between the location and the importance of the settlement. Perhaps a good compromise could even be Freiburg even though it did not become Austrian until later but it is an important settlement and is also placed quite well.

From looking at the previous map and the one below we would need to stretch the province to cover the lands from Laufenburg, then up to Freiburg and then to the right in Burgau. So sort of like an inverted L shape. I am thinking perhaps Konstanz is the settlement that would be the one to go. as it is placed quite good in that area.

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[Hrobatos]

I think that Wall your suggestion of placing Austrian fort within Swiss teritory is quite elegant solution to represent their fiefs there. Sadly it is not possible to properly represent HRE in the engine so for our mod to have Austria as faction is more important due to its heavy involvment.

Choice of regions and settlements s not only based on events in 1345 but their overal importance up to 1530s.

One does has to keep in mind that focus of this mod is Ottoman invasion of Balkans and factions like Austria are then simply more important than say Bohemia or Bavaria.

[Wallachian]

The idea of having PSFs to represent this type of fiefs is quite old in the mod. Ideally this could be used for quite a few tricky things like fiefs, rebel areas etc for example they could be good way to represent Albanian rebels in Greece, independent cities in Italy, Frankish fiefs in Greece, Polish and Lithuanian activity in the Wild Fields etc.


However, we do have several rebel settlements that have pretty much nothing to do with the any of the factions up north in germany. So i don't think it would be too bad to replace one of them with an actual Austrian settlement in that area, especially as according to those maps they actually had quite large holdings in that area which sparked the wars with the Swiss.
For example, the city of Freiburg was actually quite large and important and in 1368 the city turned itself over to the protection of the Habsburgs, who allowed the city to retain a large measure of freedom. It became the capital of Further Austria. Most of the nobles of the city died in the battle of Sempach (1386) against the Swiss.

Indeed, Bohemia is way out of the map (really there is only the city of Brunn) and Bavaria had little to do with this area. That being said we do have some badass hussite units recruitable by several factions.

[Elendil 03]

Seems reasonable to me. As far as I'm concerned, Freiburg was one of the largest cities in mid-14th century Swabia with about 9000 inhabitants and it was wealthy enoug to afford a cathedral with one of the world's highest towers in 1330 - and, of course, it became the center of the Vorlande after it became Habsburgian. That leads me to another idea: Why not leave it rebel until 1368 and make it become Austrian via event which should then intensify the struggle for power against the Swiss? For balance reasons, the same could be done with Berne for the Confederacy in 1353.

[Wallachian]

Yes, as Hrobatos mentioned we generally base the map on the situation in 1345 however we take into consideration everything that happened between 1345 - 1530 and we make some calls. If a settlement becomes a lot more important in that period than it will be taken into consideration and some compromises are made. In this case looking at the maps, the history of Vorlande, the importance of settlements I am in favour of replacing a rebel settlement in Germany with a Habsburg possession such as Freibourg.


Scripting can work too (for example we have a script for Croatia as Hungarian vassall) but that is not the focus now but for later versions. We are working on a version with not many scripts as we don't have the manpower for that (dcdastro is just one man working on map, scripts, factions etc).

I don't think it is worth making any changes at the moment until everything else is ready, but this definitely needs to be kept in mind.

[PavleSubich]

So many posts and information requests
Must be that we are wery close to the alfa

[Wallachian]

@Knight or @Elendil. Are you guys able to suggest what we should use as name for the faction heir of the Duchy of Austria? The faction leader is the Duke, what should the heir named? For Switzerland it is a tough one, what should we use as faction leader and faction heir names? For example, Venice has Doge and Councillor.

[Elendil 03]

For the Austrians I'd simply call the heir Prince (as son of a Duke) or count (of Habsburg proper).
The Swiss commanders at this times were usually the mayors of Berne, Zurich and Lucerne, so I guess "Schultheiss" would be the most appropriate title for the leader, whilst the rural communities were lead by a Landammann, a title you could use for the heir.

[VINC.XXIII]

I don't know if this was already discussed as I missed genesis of Austria in Tsardoms, however, as I was imagining an administrative reform for Milan, I thought Austria could get one too under Maximilian(which would be of minor importance in actual campaign but would be more useful in Italian Wars start).

Namely I was wondering how Hofkanzlei, Hofrat, Hofkammer could be represented, this adding boni in forms of perhaps buildings, probably ancillaries.

The purpose of the reform was to centralize and optimize Justice, Finances, the three institutions were limited to Habsbourg's hereditary States it seems.

[Wallachian]

We haven't thought about any of this. Would be great if you could think about some nice admin reform for both Milan and Austria. Especially since in the late campaign we have the start date of 1448 which is not very far away from Maximilian's reign.

What reforms happened in Milan? Sounds interesting

[VINC.XXIII]

What reforms happened in Milan?

Milan had reforms from 1385 to 1389: creation of a post office(which played a role in censorship too), more intrusive centralization in financial and justicial administration(bypassing comunes at the benefice of the Visconti). There are some other measures I took notes in dev forum, related to scutage of lombard nobles.

edit@wallachian, I was asking it in public for Austria so peoples can contribute if they have knowlegde on it