EU4 AN EARLY REICH FREE

You can keep spreading through HRE more continuously with a lower likelyhood of coalitions forming. I think the best setup would be the first one. So forming germany this way is probably once of the slowest. The thing is, you'll need to spread slower as emperor lest you want to lose your seat. makes it loads easier and you get near 2x forcelimit and an income boost as emporer.

I'd recommend trying to become emporer if you go for this setup. lots of powerful allies, and you can most likely have a seat on the PLC throne for extra points. Nice setup to wipe off their large numbers.Дiplomatic, quality, influence - this is more defensive than anything else. I prefer this setup when poland is rivaling me, because they usually attack. you can easily go 2:1 with most people around you.

The 20% combat boost is really good when matches with the other idea bonuses. Quality, innovative, offensive - you'll most likely be broke, but I like this setup for the policies which are really good in a tight spot. Influence, offensive, humanist - you can hold lots of powerful allies as deterrents, and few rebellions when cleaning off OPMs like anhalt. As for ideas, I personally like ДЇor your first 3 ideas, you can do any of these Once you've maxed out your ideas, you're basically unstoppable. As long as you're big enough and have strong allies, you can handle some coalitions. Depending on how fast you go, you'll get a few coalitions on you, most of which will just die off anyway. I've formed germany a few times by 1700ish (each time quicker), and my fastest had austria at over 200 AE, but it didn't matter because by that point I was a few provinces off the decision. By the time you're done, you'd have conquered most of the HRE OPMs and maybe some of the smaller members. Make sure you don't be too aggresive that france/sweden/poland etc will want to form a coalition. As long as they are only coalitions within the HRE, you're fine. It doesn't matter if you have 10 potential coalitions. AS SOON AS the religious war starts, wait 1 to 2 years for armies to move around and slaughter each other a bit then begin declaring wars all over the place. You can still declare wars, but try to maximize the use of mercs to reduce your drain on manpower. The most important thing to remember is that once the Religious League is enabled, make sure you have claims on all your neighbours and that your country is in good state i.e high manpower, few loans, good economy, low AE. Try to vassalise as much as possible but never feed your vassals any provinces (they always give them back.). Just wait them out and conquer some more. As long as you have strong allies (PLC or france or GB or otto, etc) don't be afraid to have 5 man coalitions form. Assuming you want to wait.ДЄfter you've done those (which can happen before 1500) just wait for opportunistic wars to attack any members you're not allied to. Once you're large enough, the HRE will be so small that you can take these pretty easily.

EU4 AN EARLY REICH FREE

The mistake I always make (not like a care anyway) is that I take free cities early which almost always immediately result in a coalition just from them. You don't need to form prussia first either.ДЈ) Take Free cities last. You don't need to collect danzig or any of those provinces that teutonic has, you can leave them all for poland, it won't matter. Just max out your relation slots.Дў) conquer anhalt, magdeburg, pomerania and get back your core from teutonic. your idea is harder to pull off than just starting as brandensburg.ДЎ) ally poland/saxony/bohemia/brunswich/any other elector. By the time Canada is strong enough to fight the emperor and his allies (if it ever is), the game will be near completion. Going off to canada then trying to do a cross continent campaign to get back into the HRE will be impossible.

Eu4 an early reich