Austria Guide

The **Habsburg Monarchy** or **Austria** is the **Holy Roman Emperor** at the start of the game, and the main rival to French Domination on the European Continent. It's army counts 58 brigades (4 metastacks 3 mobo stacks) and it can mobilize up to 56 more brigades. It also starts with a 5/3 general - **Eugene of Savoy**

## Overview

Internally Austria faces small amount of problems at the start. First of all it's low literacy, especially compared to other German states needs immediate fixing. While initially the player may want to focus on the military side of the tech tree given the likelyhood of a conflict against france, Austria should definitely invest in the culture tech tree even more once it's diplomatically secured. The **"Spanish Court Ceremonies in Vienna"** will raise your POPs literacy by 5% given you own **Neapoli and Brussels** or **Banat and Transylvania**, alternatively you can get it through researching the **State Of Nature tech (1715)**. Austria starts with much of Southern and Central Germany Sphered, with the notable acception of Bavaria, a player should use that to their advantage as much as possible.

Austria does not start with cores on Hungary, however it has a **permanent casus belli on all it's cores**. At the start this means it can instantly declare on **Transylvania** and **Ottomans**.

Recovering Banat allows you to extend the casus belli to Belgrade and Wallachia, while creating Galicia-Lodomeria extends the cb to West and East Galicia and, if owned by the player upon creation of Galicia-Lodomeria and Malopolska.

If Venice loses it's Balkan holdings, Austria can extend the casus belli to include Milan and Veneto as well.

Austria can significantly help **Brandenburg** with **forming Prussia** by simply allying it, making it skip the tech requirement and forming the nation immediately.

Austria can get impressive buffs to Silesia, including pop growth buffs, and after the Maria Theresa event, it get access to further flavor helping with assimilation, research and administration.

**Fund The Theresian Military Academy** decision will **always increase army influence by one** this can be used by the player to **prematurely get very influential army**, and gain the ability to **recruit up to 6% soldier pops.**

Austria **can gain cores on Bavaria** by **1745** if they get the "Law and Jurisprudence" tech.

Austria gains **Hungarian** and **Croatian** **as accepted by 1740** with the Maria Theresa event. This event is always guaranteed to fire, provided you are not a republic of any kind.

There are ways to **prematurely gain those cultures**. If Austria conquers **Belgrade and is a great power**, it will gain **croatian** culture as accepted, while **becoming a Constitutional Monarchy** will allow you to gain **Hungarian** as an accepted culture, provided Hungary doesn't exist.

## Spanish Succession Crisis

In case of Spain choosing the Bourbon path, Austria will gain a unique cb on them that upon enforicng will make all spanish lands with HRE cores and italian cores secede to Austria. A succesful succession war will put the Austrian player on his way to becoming the top player on the continent, however it is ultimately up to the player if they want to declare the war or not.

## Austrian Succession Crisis

Austrian Succession Crisis functions in a much different way to the Spanish one, given that any sort of scripted peace deal is impossible to do as there is no telling how the borders of europe look like 40 years into the game without excessive railroading (which in general is a no-no in multiplayer mods).

"Issue Pragmatic Sanction" is a decision a player can do in 1713 provided thry're a GP. It sends an event to every Great and Secondary Power giving them the choice of either accepting the sanction or not. Accepting The Sanction will give the nation no way to intervene once the crisis happen. Refusing the sanction will give them an ability to **gain an additional acquire state casus belli** **once Austria gets the Maria Theresa event.**

**Not issuing the Sanction will give every HRE member a free "Claim Emperorship" cb on Austria and France will gain a free "Dismantle HRE" cb once the crisis happens.**

Austrian Succession Crisis happens **in 1740** through the "**Reign Of Maria Theresa**" event. With it the decisions for free acquiring state cb become available, and **Bavaria will gain a "Claim Emperorship" cb on Austria**.

## Dissolving The Holy Roman Empire & Proclaiming Austrian Empire

Once **Jacobins** are active and **Austria has no spherelings that are part of the HRE**, they gain a unique ability to **dissolve the HRE**. Although initially it may seem like a bad idea, dissolivng the hre once much of it is either conquered, or lost to France/other players unlock the ability to **"Proclaim the Austrian Empire"** which **gives cores on all provinces which you have a free "austrian empire core" cb at the moment of taking the decision**, which may be at smallest just Hungarian cores, and at largest can grant cores on Hungary, North and Central Serbia, Venice and Galicia-Lodomeria.

## General Strategy

In multiplayer, Austria is in a difficult position, given that it's pretty much surrounded by enemys. It is extremely important to begin building up an alliance block of some sort to survive. England, Prussia and The Netherlands are Austria's usual choice and many players tend to go for the succession war later giving up lands that they gained to their allys.

While it is possible to try and kill Brandenburg at the start by denying them a quick formation of Prussia, allying them is a much better choice as they will help you destroy any French player's dream of expanding into Germany.

Killing Transylvania, pretty much immediately is also advised, as with time they'll only become more and more of an issue for the Austrian Player, as They can form Hungary, denying austria the ability to get hungarian as accepted prematurely.

Austria starts with a 4 year truce with The Ottomans, and the player should utulize this to their advantage.

After the early game wars, the player should focus on building up it's literacy and expanding into the balkans.

Once enough HRE minors are annexed the player should try to dissolve the HRE as having cores on hungary etc. is much better then any bonus provided by being the Emperor.