Playing 2 campaigns as the Empire. The elector count mechanic seems like a cool idea on paper and is lore friendly, but utterly pointless...

I tried playing both keeping the elector counts and just taking everything over internally..

The whole prestige and Imperial Authority mechanic is broken, entirely broken.

There is no way to keep your imperial authority up, or gain prestige in a meaningful way, or gain it in anyway past a random generation of events which there is only 1 that lets you gain imperial authority or prestige... but you have about 9 different events that trigger on a daily turn that forces you to spend prestige, and or lose imperial authority..

This already makes the entire option of keeping the elector counts happy pointless and meaningless, and a fools errand.

So the only real way to do this is to run around like a chicken with your head cut off, regaining lost territory (if there even is any) and giving it back to a count. While hoping to god you get a lucky random roll to spend prestige to gain imperial authority more times than you trigger the several other ways to lose it, which is liking winning the lottery.

To make matters worse the Vampire Counts run amok and destroy all your counts with impunity, and all the while you attempt to keep them under control, and deal with the constant civil war event triggers, you have non stop assaults from orcs hitting your towns to the south.

To add even more salt to the wound, you'll get constant spams of "hey this count wants to confederate" spams, which you CANNOT TAKE... because taking even 1 of them will destroy your peasly small imperial authority and once that ♥♥♥♥ goes negative even once, its a non stop imperial destruction straight to -10 and civil war..

(playing a few campaigns for about 100 turns each to test the early mechanics of the Empire. you CANNOT allow the Imperial Authority to drop into the negatives.. or you WILL have a civil war 100%. Because there is absolutely ♥♥♥♥ all no way to get your Imperial Authority back up before a constant string of Imperial Authority events trigger that strips more away from you. With constatn civil wars between counts, and other events with minus imperial authority as your only option since by this time your pitifully small prestige pool will get decimated).
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This makes the entire mechanic pointless... your only real option playing as the Empire is ♥♥♥♥ the mechanics and go straight into a civil war and take it all over. Which is a huge a disappointment because the mechanics seem like a cool idea, but are utterly useless to play around, and is just a pointless ♥♥♥♥ show of the player getting punished for literally nothing and no way to do anything about it.

Suggestions:

I'd like to see other ways to gain Imperial Authority, and prestige, that balance out the constant "count A hates Count B, and go to war" spam which destroys your prestige, and then the "Faction A attacks count B, do you want to send soldiers" options.. Which again just utterly destroy your prestige and Imperial Authority.

This doesn't mean I want an abundance of ways. You should still be able to go into the -10 and civil war option, but I think more needs to be tied into it than just "Civil war will happen whether you like it or not, here's a randomly generated ♥♥♥♥ you mechanic that'll determine how fast that happens".

For example, winning battles against Orcs and Goblins should net some good amounts of prestige along with it. Karl Franz could even get a skill with 3 tiers that nets more prestige for these battles.

Wiping out factions of Orcs, GOblins, or Undead should net some Imperial Authority.