Can someone help me form the Archduchy of Austria? (2024)

I'm trying to form it for years now, but somethings have become unclear to me:

• Adult (Check)
• At Peace (Check)
• Count or Duke of the HRE (Check)
• Control Austria and Steyermark (Check)
• One of the following:
  • Dynasty member is Holy Roman Emperor (Not related at any level)
  • Strong hook on the Holy Roman Emperor (I have no ideia of how a can get a Strong Hook in anyone)
• Direct Vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor (Since the Kaiser created the Kingdom of Bavaria, I've become a vassal of the bavarian King)
• Level of Fame is at least Illustrious (Check)

How do I manage to become a direct vassal of the Kaiser again?

And how do I get a Strong Hook, especifically a hook in the Kaiser?

I recommend making becoming independent of Bavaria the very last thing you do, once you've accomplished all the other items. Otherwise the AI will just transfer you back to Bavaria since it wants everyone to be under their de jure liege.

There are three ways to get strong hooks. The first is to discover a *criminal* (as opposed to shunned, which gives weak hooks) secret, and blackmailing the target. The secret can be discovered by sending your spymaster to look for secrets in his court, but he may not have a criminal secret. The second is to use the fabricate hook scheme, which you can unlock in the Schemer tree of the Intrigue lifestyle. The third is through random events (probably best not to rely on this one).

Tiax said:

There are three ways to get strong hooks. The first is to discover a *criminal* (as opposed to shunned, which gives weak hooks) secret, and blackmailing the target. The secret can be discovered by sending your spymaster to look for secrets in his court, but he may not have a criminal secret. The second is to use the fabricate hook scheme, which you can unlock in the Schemer tree of the Intrigue lifestyle. The third is through random events (probably best not to rely on this one).

Click to expand...

tl;dr: reliably getting a strong hook on someone can be much more annoying and dependent on RNG than you would think.

Your statement is totally correct as is, but to further clarify on the the fabrication of hooks, a strong hook is not guaranteed from a success result in the fabricate hook scheme. Not only that, if the target of the scheme already has a non-criminal secret then the fabricate hook scheme will always use that as the basis for generating the hook, thus always giving you a weak hook.

Granted that once you have a weak hook on a target you can always consume it in some way so that you can try fabricating again to get the strong hook, but there is a cooldown ( 2 years IIRC ) before you can fabricate a hook again on the same target.

Thukula said:

I'm trying to form it for years now, but somethings have become unclear to me:

• Adult (Check)
• At Peace (Check)
• Count or Duke of the HRE (Check)
• Control Austria and Steyermark (Check)
• One of the following:
  • Dynasty member is Holy Roman Emperor (Not related at any level)
  • Strong hook on the Holy Roman Emperor (I have no ideia of how a can get a Strong Hook in anyone)
• Direct Vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor (Since the Kaiser created the Kingdom of Bavaria, I've become a vassal of the bavarian King)
• Level of Fame is at least Illustrious (Check)

How do I manage to become a direct vassal of the Kaiser again?

And how do I get a Strong Hook, especifically a hook in the Kaiser?

Click to expand...

The most reliable way of doing it (and I did it almost completely by accident in one game - the only thing that was deliberate was an assassination mission when I was nominates as the heir of the HRE) is to simply become the Holy Roman Empire. You have atleast 2 ways of doing it. First, become a powerful nominee that the electors prefer over everyone else (which is how my William the Conqueror did it, didn't even realize I was in the running until I got a notification that I was the heir to the HRE, and assassinated the Emperor before anyone could change their mind). The second requires a LOT of piety, the pope liking you A LOT, and your only title being no higher than a dukedom. Or have the Sanctioned Loopholes Learning Perk. But you could just BUY the claim (and maybe try to build up your strength/get strong allies) and then declare war for it... Once you have the HRE title, it's just a simple matter of taking the decision.