Session 3
Player changes:Maestro moved to Sweden, and Switzerland (Lealo) is gone.
The Calm Before the Storm, Reprise (Session Start—1468)
The session started off with a slider move towards Free Trade. It looked like the war would have to wait a little longer; Brandenburg had promised to protect Austria until Austria’s king died (giving him a shot at inheriting Bohemia), and I’d rather wait a while longer than fight an extra (albeit weak) player. I took the opportunity to cover everything in training fields, and given Land tech was 15 years ahead of time I temporarily broke my “land to 11” rule and went for Government 9, picking up Grand Army for the forcelimits and quality slider move event. A convenient event gave me 150 ducats and a free National Focus move (which didn’t reset the cooldown), giving me a few extra magistrates as a result. I noticed that Wurttemburg was still independent and took the opportunity to diplovassalize them, and after annexing Luxembourg with a coring mission my empire looked a little bigger.

The French Empire, now with more cores and provinces.
Land 10 came relatively early (1461) along with another Free Trade move, and with Austria still far behind on every important tech, but his king refused to die which bought him some time. My Land tech being once again being very ahead of time prompted me to again break my "Land to 11" rule to get Government 10. Elsewhere, England was invaded by Milan over a colonial dispute, although Milan was eventually repelled by a joint British-Dutch army. Finally Austria’s king died in 1467, and I sprang into action; I built up to nearly 200 men, enacted the Last Jousting Tournament for the +4 yearly army tradition, and hired a Discipline advisor (3 stars). Both Austria and I only had unimpressive 2-shock generals by the time the war began, although we were on the verge of better ones tradition-wise.

The French Empire prepares for war.
Early in the game (pre land tech 11 or arguably land tech 13) non-Turkish infantry are still somewhat questionable; Cavalry are expensive and can’t siege, but much stronger. Given that Austria had mostly cavalry and was straining his economy somewhat to do so, I figured I could afford to do the same. I kept around enough infantry to assault provinces during the war, although it became apparent soon into the war that that was a bit too much micromanagement to be worth doing.
The Second Franco-Austrian War (1468-1470)
The terrain situation between France and Austria is rather weird. We wouldn’t be fighting in the Alps, so the worst anyone would be fighting at barring bad judgement was -2, but Elsass is both a blessing and a curse; it gives you extremely good access to either invade or defend the east, but on the other hand is very easy to be encircled given that one need only block off the two provinces of Lorraine. With my army concentrated in Alsace & Lorraine, Rayzee decided to attempt to exploit this terrain quirk, but did was careful not to overcommit since he knew I had better tech and most likely a larger army as well. As a result, the battles ended in a French victory, but not a decisive one.

Austria moves a small force around from the north to partially cut off my retreat (he earlier moved south as well, not pictured).
Given how well my tech was performing in the early stages of the war, I decided to push forward in the hopes of catching a stack or two off guard or at least inflicting more casualties and warscore while it was available. While Austria’s well-defended retreat path ensured he wouldn’t be mass-wiping any time soon, he was still forced to retreat several provinces. After losing most of his men and me losing many of mine, he pulled out a 5-shock general (to my still-2 shock generals), forcing me to retreat after one more engagement.

The 5 shock general arrives. Interestingly, in situations with equal rolls my land tech advantage nearly perfectly evened out his roll advantage.
After he reinforced a bit he was able to reclaim some lost land while I regrouped, although at a cost; I acquire my own better general, albeit still only 4 shock to his 5. Near the same time he reached Land tech 10, meaning we were once again on relatively equal footing and both sides became somewhat more conservative. Even so, battles raged; he lost a few stacks which ventured a little too far forward, while I ill-advisedly got too bold with a few of my stacks, which were efficiently encircled and destroyed.

The war’s front stabilized around the Baden-Württemberg area.
By now both sides were nearly out of manpower, and fighting continued to become rarer and rarer. My warscore had nearly reached 40%, and given the low cost of Sundgau (the province I had gone to war over), I decided to hunt down Austrian vassal armies until I could bring the warscore into stability hit range. Soon after, with 47% warscore, Austria was vulnerable and forced to surrender.

You needn’t occupy an entire country to win a war; don’t let your warscore get too low.
Peace (1470—Session End)
The last few years of the session went by without incident; I annexed Lorraine, recovered manpower, and built a few more Training Fields. By now there are only a few more to go and Barracks are still a few years off, so I may get Workshops done in time after all.
Stats and map
http://www.europa3.ru/cgi-bin/mpsta...e=int&season=comp-2013&game=XVI&yearsave=1473

The world in 1473.
Comments, rants, and such
I got a bit better about taking screenshots in war this time around, although I still forgot in the more tense situations. Not sure how fixable that is; close wars can be very urgent, and I didn’t even have time to do all the ingame things I wanted to do (like Assault Baden and the Palatinate with my ~60 infantry), as well as forgot some stuff (like a stack down in Roussillon).
Notice how fast 123k manpower went to the minimum in a pre-CTJU war! As I’ve continually protested, people who think there is too much manpower in this game need to try multiplayer and reconsider their statement. In addition, the happenings of the war are in stark contrast to something Paradox said in the latest EU4 dev diary:
I’ll certainly be interested to see how EU4 warfare turns out, but I’m afraid Paradox is once again blaming AI problems on the game mechanics. EU3’s warfare is by no means perfect, but it’s quite a bit better than the AI would have you believe.First of all, battles in EU3 were not really fun enough, for us. You either ran into ping-pong situations, chasing an army you could not destroy from one province to the next, or the war was decided in one battle which meant a lot of idle shifting armies from city to city.
We wanted to get a better flow of war, and, importantly, could get decisive battles that gave you strategic advantages to be able to siege down territory you want. Over a long period of testing and experimentation, we think we have now balanced combat to be both fun and plausible.
Not that I know of.Very interesting to read.
Are there more multiplayer AARs around?