How to survive as HRE in SS6.2 VH/VH

[henyo10]

Even though I'm not the HRE in my game, they always get wiped out. I wanna play as them though but I'm sort of scared since it looks like a lost cause. Any ideas how to survive?

[Delvecchio1975]

Play a defensive game and attack on one front at the same time. Defend against everyone, and take down your neighbours one by one. Start with the Danes.

[Tyrenia]

The key is picking your battles. You start of with lots of provinces, but not much in the way of army. Give away some of them to factions who look like they are about to attack you. You get money and prevent a war (Bologna in particular is a major flashpoint with Venice). With your now heavily defended core cities, build up an offensive stack, and move into Northern Italy to attack either Venice or Genoa. I would suggest Genoa first, because they will usually have 3 of the Big 5 Italian Cities, as opposed to Venice's 2. After taking out one, then take out the other. Using Ancona, build a strong defensive stack. THis is to discourage Sicily from attacking. For the same reason, be wary of taking Ajaccio. This will become a flashpoint with Sicily, and that is a battle you don't want to fight... yet.

With a steady cash flow, you are now ready to tangle with the Continent's big Boys... France. Build a couple of stacks and strike at them hard and fast, sieging Paris and their biggest Castles. This will destroy their main troop production centres, as well as giving you well defended strongpoints in the heart of their territories. Go offensive on the French with the Parisian stack, while keeping the other couple in the Castles to counter any French aggression against your territories in France. Keep capturing cities until all the lands north of the Pyranees are yours.

Once you have destroyed the French and pacified Northern Italy, you have a variety of options. My suggestion would be to go for Britain. There are 2 reasons for this. First, you don't want an agressive island at your back, in your troop producing heartland. Second, it provides a good springboard into Scandinavia, and then to Lithuania, which gives both Papal brownie points and allows you to encircle Poland.

You may notice however, that I have left the Danes, the Poles and the Hungarians out of the opening equation. This is where choosing your battles comes in. Do whatever it takes to secure a strong frontier with these guys, even so far as giving a settlement or two. Form defensive blocs against them, but try to make sure you don't get pulled into a multi-front war. This is the reason that Germany has lost both World Wars, and it works the same in SS. You will deal with them all eventually, but it is imperative to do so on your terms. Fighting a defensive war will mean your death, because the AI can spot weakness a mile off, and they will all attack you and you will die.

So, in brief:

If a potential enemy is massing, give them a non-crucial settlement for peace
Do whatever it takes to ensure safe Eastern and Northern Borders
Attack the rich Italian city-states first, then France
After that, you should be secure.

Oh, and one final thing, stay friends with the Pope. The threat of excommunication is often a strong deterrent of Catholic aggression

Hope that this is helpful

[Loose Cannon]

Wow, are you people serious? I can tell from you your posts that neither of you have played HRE on 6.2 VH. Only a Late Khwarezm campaign is harder.

The AI HRE gets excommunicated often but not always. The human player starts excommunicated & at war with the Papal states. You can make peace and you can even get the excon lifted but its too late when that happens. The dogpile is set in stone and will occur by turns 12 to 14. France goes at Antwerp (or Bruges), DEnmark hits Hamburg, Poland likes Magdeburg or Warsaw (if you have it), Hungary goes after VIennna, sometimes Venice does too but they usually just go after Bologna. Genoa takes Milan and then comes through the Alps. Did I forget anyone? Oh, yeah, if England landed by Bruges they will join in the fun. And I'm not talking 3 or 4 units but one or two FULL STACKS. From everyone.

I speak from the experience of (at least) twenty-five attempts during beta-testing playing the HRE. IT was harder in RC1 or beta2 but Gracul gave more starting troops & money as we went along. Its also easier with RR/RC installed (April version) because the AI gets less troops, so you might want to install that first. I have tried every strategy and only one works.

Here are your clues.
1. This is not World of Warcraft or some other silly social game.
2. This is not Civilization or some other silly city building game
3. This is not Crysis or some other silly one on one game

4. This game is TOTAL WAR.

If you don't know what total war means, look it up on Wikipedia. That's your strategy, I'll give you tactics later today or tomorrow

[Knight of Heaven]

Wow, are you people serious? I can tell from you your posts that neither of you have played HRE on 6.2 VH. Only a Late Khwarezm campaign is harder.

The AI HRE gets excommunicated often but not always. The human player starts excommunicated & at war with the Papal states. You can make peace and you can even get the excon lifted but its too late when that happens. The dogpile is set in stone and will occur by turns 12 to 14. France goes at Antwerp (or Bruges), DEnmark hits Hamburg, Poland likes Magdeburg or Warsaw (if you have it), Hungary goes after VIennna, sometimes Venice does too but they usually just go after Bologna. Genoa takes Milan and then comes through the Alps. Did I forget anyone? Oh, yeah, if England landed by Bruges they will join in the fun. And I'm not talking 3 or 4 units but one or two FULL STACKS. From everyone.

I speak from the experience of (at least) twenty-five attempts during beta-testing playing the HRE. IT was harder in RC1 or beta2 but Gracul gave more starting troops & money as we went along. Its also easier with RR/RC installed (April version) because the AI gets less troops, so you might want to install that first. I have tried every strategy and only one works.

Here are your clues.
1. This is not World of Warcraft or some other silly social game.
2. This is not Civilization or some other silly city building game
3. This is not Crysis or some other silly one on one game

4. This game is TOTAL WAR.

If you don't know what total war means, look it up on Wikipedia. That's your strategy, I'll give you tactics later today or tomorrow

I agree completely, i find on campaing in VH, the best strategy is strike first, everyone, before they strike you, becouse when they strike you , you wont give a chance, so is strike in every front at same time. The best defense is a atack. on HArd you can do that, seat a while , and take one enemy at time. but not on VH. What you can do is a defensive ofensive game, meaning, atack their stacks that are massing before they atack you.

[JiangZiya]

it's supposed to be hard, the holy roman empire was pretty fail.

[Holy winter]

I agree completely, i find on campaing in VH, the best strategy is strike first, everyone, before they strike you, becouse when they strike you , you wont give a chance, so is strike in every front at same time. The best defense is a atack. on HArd you can do that, seat a while , and take one enemy at time. but not on VH. What you can do is a defensive ofensive game, meaning, atack their stacks that are massing before they atack you.

I agree the best defence is to attack. But I would do it different. I would only attack denmark and genoa from the start. I would collect many of my troops and take the cities Arhus and Genoa out as fast as possible. If you succeed you have almost 2 factions less to worry about. (And Genoa just has an island).
After this is done I would start to make good garrisons to defend my borders (make sure you have archers and Xbows in all border regions) and continue the war with Denmark.
I think a war with all neighbor factions from the start is to risky and almost impossible to succeed, especially in the late era campaign.

Getting good terms with the pope is almost impossible if you are in war with other katholic factions.

[Haakon]

edit

[Awellesley]

Germany always has the unenviable task of defending so many borders. France, Denmark, Poland, Venice, Genoa, Hungary etc. make for some sleepless nights, especially in 6.2. You may want to try a I always do the following:

-Make Castles around your perimeter to help until your economy gets going, cities on the interior.
-Have a field army or decent garrison on all your fronts, even if this takes away from your city building. France and Poland can usually be dissuaded by a strong troop presence initially.
-Decide whats important-If you want to stay in Italy, be prepared to fight for it and pour lots of resources into it.
-Pick your fights one at a time. Know that if you expand into Lotharinga/Burgunday, you are going to come into conflict with France. Don't do this if you are concentrating on other fronts at the same time.
-Pray!

[django333]

Be prepared to give up ground. You may even want to give away a region or two to try and win over some of your neighbors and the Pope.

[KittySN]

I like keeping HRE alive when it's the AI, primarily by getting a crusade called as immediately as possible, just so it isn't Frankfurt.

Poor HRE... it just want's to kill the pope.

[OneArmedScissor]

get on good terms with the pope.
Pick a direction to expand. Say you want to expand north. Keep your castle frontier settlements. Give away your city settlements to the pope. Push north into Denmark.

If you start a 3 front war, you're probably gonna get rolled.

[Outlawstar15a2]

What works for me is to divide the HRE into four distinct districts in your head. Then assign a city or castle in each of your districts as your Theatre headquarters. Each theatre with have a primary threat west=French, South=Venice and Milan, East=Poland, North=Danes now prioritize which theatre is the most important to defend and put your resources mostly in that battlefield. This mental segmentation and resource division has saved me so much trouble in the long run rather then handling my affairs per settlement and it's fun because of the roleplaying potential.

[Callawyn]

I never give anything to anyone. Bologna's mine and I'm keeping it If it gets attacked, that gives me a reason to take out whoever attacked it. Northern Italy is incredibly rich, and I want all of it. Bologna's a useful foothold. Expect to get attacked by either Milan or Venice, or both, and eventually Sicily too. The two castles at Bern and Strasbourg should be taken and developed asap, send your highest chivalry general here to boost pop growth so you can upgrade all the way to Citidel. This is a gift that keeps on giving for a LONG time. If your highest chiv general kinda sucks, send him here anyway and develop another general to get even higher chiv (Crusade, Occupy, Release, park in city with low taxes) and then send him to these castles.

Suicide your faction leader asap to end the excommunication, everything after that should be easy so long as you make sure to start Crusades rather than risk having a Crusade called against Frankfurt or Vienna.

I prefer to crusade first against Riga, which starts neutral, rather than Vilnius (the Lithuanians have nice units are can be difficult to crack very early on). Use the Crusade to take as many neutral regions as possible (ie the whole southern and eastern Baltic all the way to Finnland, and then take Sweden too). Have as many armies join as possible (even if they never leave home, just be sure to win the Crusade before units start deserting). You should be able to get a couple of turns where your upkeep costs drop dramatically, which will allow you to pay for enough buildings in your build queue to jumpstart your economy. Can always Crusade Vilnius later, the AI almost never knock it out without a Crusade. I like WizAv85 idea of calling a Crusade you're not planning on helping just to keep the AI busy, I've not done it since I really like to take advantage of Crusading, but for a faction like HRE which starts with 2 potential Crusade targets its very important to call a crusade, any crusade, as soon as possible every time for the first 100 turns or so.

Try to get at least one Princesses married into a neighboring Faction, for the stable alliance. Keep that faction happy, send money if necessary. Keep at least one strong alliance until you'd prefer to own their territory. I've had good results allying with Poland while playing either HRE or Hungary. Its always better to choose your wars, prepare and backstab a neighbor, rather than have a neighbor backstab you when your armies are busy elsewhere.

[KittySN]

Huh... interesting thoughts on survival though I'd disagree with most. On turn 1 my sights are on Rome, Venice, Genoa, Milan and Arhus. I need cash for all the wars I'm getting into. (Venice and Arhus are first, attacked by turn 2.) I also start preparing to thwamp Poland and Hungary because that's my weak side. France can be held off nicely with smaller garrisons because of the wall of castles if you don't decide to throw tons of money at them for an alliance. I figure everyone's going to attack me anyways, so get some armies in position while they're disorganized and kill, kill, kill... I haven't played through an entire game of HRE, but I've played up to about turn 20 with that strategy and it seems to work. Oh, and get a bunch of siege equipment into Frankfurt to slaughter the crusaders.

[Tacitursa]

KittySN what submob are you playing and on what difficulty?

Id love to know how you take venice on turn 2 and attack rome without getting crusaded and completely AI gang raped.

[KittySN]

As the thread is labeled: 6.2 VH/VH. I wouldn't have posted here if I hadn't any experience. It's not difficult if you play everything on the battle map. And it's especially not hard once you get seige equipment in your settlements (particularly the trebuchet); you can under-garrison so many settlements and slaughter anyone stupid enough to approach your walls. The fact of the matter is you're going to get crusaded against and AI gang raped anyways, so take advantage of those first 12 turns of freedom and steal a half dozen settlements from the bastards while they're not focused. Screw what the pope thinks; it's the HRE! I'm the pope!

Oh, and it's simple to take venice by turn 2 if not on turn 2. Undermatch in the seige and the AI will sally. Then beat them on the battle map. Place a second force on the bridge behind you to keep from being pincered. Venice has a crap garrison. It's how I fight half my battles.

[Vaz]

Bah, I tried the one general trick once, went quite well, but I ended up losing my general and bodyguard in exchange for 400 Spearmen, which even on small, is no worthy trade off. You are just that good Kitty. =)

[KittySN]

If you're going against a few units of spears, it's best to have 2 cavalry units; separate them by enticing, then weave around and stab at one with a charge from both sides. (To do this effectively, have one cavalry equal distance from the sally gate at 45 degrees in both directions so the AI splits so you don't get in behind it, capturing the square.) This tactic kills pretty much anything but pikes and halberds. Spears should also be last so morale is terrible.

Yeah, you have to keep a close eye on your general. If he starts getting bloody, he should only be doing rear attacks. It was easier in RTW because you could rally and keep the general back for a second before impact. The more you do it, the better you get!

Bla... bla... bla... I waste too much time playing this game.

[Tacitursa]

Am i misreading or are you using the capture square exploit while the sallied army is still outside?

Cheating is not a tactic.