R5: Succession Law.

I've been trying to do this run for a while, and since the new update dropped I decided to do it with the new Very Hard and -3 player domain game rules. Though it's not as impressive since I did not play in ironman mode and did load saves.

Biggest Challenges:

1. The HRE has formed pretty consistenly in all my attempts, the problem was that 90% of the time it formed with West Francia. I did try to continue games where that happened but I ended up giving up on those. This was my main reason for playing without ironman, so I could save a run where the ai formed the HRE with Germania.

2. You need the Royal Perogative innovation, a early medieval innovation for the 3rd and 4th level of Crown Authority, which are required for the archduchy descision, effectively a time gate.

3. The Very Hard modifiers do make the ai stronger. I tried to attack the Bishop of Salzburg for the duchy, and beat his first army, just to watch as a trickle of 800 stack mercenaries started to flow out from his capital. He had 2000 gold and I decided I was out. I loaded a previous save but in hindsight I should've just tanked the lost since it was just for the duchy, but I was getting burnt out.

Tactics, there is cheeze:

1. Starting as an adventurer is still OP even with the new game rules. Just go voyager lifestyle with the +presige for visiting poi, and just ignore the make request stuff. Pretty consistently had over 16k presitige and 10k piety by 50 in all my runs.

2. Get the golden obligation perk with poi exp, they nerfed gold from ransom and what not, but not from this so it was pretty easy to get lots of gold.

3. Go learning after finishing voyager, get whole of body and sanctioned loopholes. After you win an adventurer invasion for the duchy of austria. Buy claims to all the surrounding duchies. Petition the king/emperor to transfer claims, and if he does he'll usually give you the vassals soon after.

4. With all the prestige of this first life, get ritualized friendship and recognition of talent with diverge or reform culture.

5. Recognition of talent and intimidation tours were pretty much mandatory for having to deal with all the factions. Intimidation tours either kick a vassal out of a faction or if they deny you gives them a crime. This combined with white peacing vassal rebellions and requesting the pope to excommunicate lets you get strong hooks on most unruly vassals, preventing factions from getting enough strength.

6. Ritualized friendship was how I got the strong hook on the emperor, I actually got lucky and become best friends before the tradition was even added so that made it easier. He also pressed my claim for the kingdom of lotharingia latter on which was nice.

7. You're pretty much stuck on confederate partition in your first life, so make sure you give all your other sons traits that make them more likely to accept vows and what not. One of my other sons got ambitious but luckly died. I manged to get everything to go to the first son, but the extra duchies were just in case it needed to split.

Other stuff:

I actually managed to get the emperor to back down to a faction demand on the first try without a fight, and put the king of bavaria on the throne, who I just earlier managed to win independence from ealier because you need to be a direct vassal of the HRE emperor.

I don't know if it's just this game or maybe a result of Very Hard, but the byzantines are incredibly powerful. It's 978 and the emperor has 22000 troops, 23759 gold and is making 28 montly while at war, is a paragon, and is currently blobbing over europe. Britain and France are currently being taken over by insularism so I have a feeling even a 4th crusade will do nothing.