Venice AAR Session Three – 1445 - 1461
Retribution
Hi everybody, this is the third installment of my AAR. This was a very bloodthirsty session for a lot of nations. Unfortunately, not much of note can be said due to the slow speed of the game, so this third AAR will be brief.
So it took us a few years, but we finished our war with the Ottomans. It should be noted that our war demands on the Ottomans changed to 2 Bulgarian provinces and the 3 Karamanese provinces of 1399. With these provinces we released them as vassals. The war lasted longer than we thought due to problems with rebels and Syria’s armies (an Ottoman vassal trying to stop our sieges). But we eventually finished the war and this is the result:
After a few years, Poland and France declared war on the Ottomans. From what I understand, diplomacy went south. However this was fine by us as the Ottomans deserve any sort of bad luck they get. During the war, we were at peace and continued to build up our fleet and develop our nation. We decided it would be best to annex Sicily as we needed more room for land as well as more land to protect us in case of another war.
The Ottomans looked to be on the defeat against the French and Polish. The Austrians (and the Russians) used this opportunity to declare war on Poland. Unfortunately for Poland, France could not help Poland as they currently had a NAP with Austria.
During this war, the Mamlukes declares war on the Ottomans. It seemed like the Ottomans had no rest from war, which is good because they are our enemy and scum of the earth.
Potshots with the English Royal Navy
We spot English ships south of Sicily, and since we had no knowledge of what those ships were there for we declared war and engaged them – a pre-emptive strike. What we didn’t know was that the English navy was sending troops into the Egypt and Syria to help the Mamlukes fight the Ottomans. At the time we didn’t understand because they were at war with France and we thought they might have been helping the Ottomans, our sworn enemies.
After seeing few naval battles and no support in Egypt, the Mamlukes were confused and had to explain the situation to us. Despite being enemies with the English, we did not want to see the demise of Mamlukes. After being explained the situation we sent white peace to the English whom grudgingly accepted. Unfortunately for the Mamlukes, their war with the Ottomans ended in defeat.
War with the Ottomans
However, during the Ottoman war with the Mamluks we were sitting there waiting for an opportunity to strike. We saw one when the Ottomans had sent all of their regiments to Anatolia or Arabia leaving their Greek holdings unprotected. We declared war on the Ottomans and our Moroccan friends wished to join aswell. The started off good as the Ottomans were already at maximum war exhaustion (and probably minting). We were too late to save Mamluks - they surrendered soon after our invasion.
Unfortunately for us the Ottomans cleverly got their regiments across the sea. We had our main navy on patrol and stopped monitoring it as we thought it was fine. However the Ottoman split up their navy into two, used cogs to cross the Aegean with some troops while occupying our main fleet by suiciding the rest of their ships. This wasn’t as much of a problem because they did not bring enough to be able to defeat our armies.
However a little bit later on, more Ottomans were spotted going around through Russia and coming down from the North. This gave them the numbers advantage in the area and which indicated that we would no longer be able to maintain military control of the area. We proceeded to evacuate our armies and wait for blockade technology.
War on the Mainland
While I don’t usually make sections just for wars on the mainland, this war is a big war that it should be spoken about. It was a war between France and Poland versus Austria, Switzerland and Muscowy. When the war started it had two fronts: The Swiss-French border and Poland. I was unable to see the war in Poland as I had no alliance to them but I watched the French front. France stormed across Switzerland and held up in the mountains. Austria and Switzerland managed to repel the French regiments but took large manpower losses. On the retreat many of the French stacks were wiped giving Austria an immense advantage. This initiated France to frantically rebuild his army while Austria tried to stop him by splitting up his army to kill any newly-created regiments. This failed in the end for Austria since France was able to recover and wipe a lot of Austrian stacks that were out of position. France proceeded to storm back through Switzerland and into Austria. As of the end of the session Austria and Switzerland are the losing side, while there is a stalemate between Poland and Muscowy.
Second war with England
During our war with the Ottomans (and also during the big war in Europe), we were attacked again by the English. Not much fighting was had as the English navy was hesitant to engage a battle with us (the exception being at the start of the war when England tried for a surprise attack). For most of the war their navy was docked in Iberia, only to poke out once and a while to keep us on our toes. There was only one instance of English troops fighting Venetians which was on the island of Sicily. England did not bring enough and they were soon defeated.
It should be said that both the English and Venetians were punished for this war. The Superior Seamanship national idea is extremely important during naval battles, it is the equivalent of military drill and it is very costly to take for both of us. Both nations were above forcelimits and our fleets costed us a lot, because we both had to sacrifice one of our national idea spots (grand navy or press gangs) in order to maintain our fleet’s power. The exchange of national ideas had a cost to stability and most importantly to the cost of naval maintenance.
With Our wars with the Ottomans and English raging onwards, the future of Venice is still unforeseen. Our researches are rushing to unravel the mysteries of the almighty blockade tech (Naval Technology 9). With this tech coming soon, we believe it will destructive to the Ottomans economy and bring us closer to Ottoman defeat. Only time will tell what will happen between the English and Venetians.
Naval Ledger
Our navy is still the largest, but England has closed the gap by quite a lot.
Post game thoughts
I felt this session went well. The Ottomans got what they deserved and were at war for almost the entire session. Their inflation is out of control and their economy is a wreck. They have rebels everywhere. We passed an important decision today: Formalizing scales, weights and measures which boosted our economy nicely. Our fleet is constantly growing; however it is still unable to be paid for as we cannot afford it without a degree of minting (and thus taking inflation). Being at war with both England and Ottomans worries us as they are strong nations. Next week we will see how we do, thanks for reading and my apologies for the lateness of this third update.
Stats:
http://www.europa3.ru/cgi-bin/mpstats/stats.cgi?action=show&league=na&season=rp&game=X&yearsave=1461
Map:
http://i.imgur.com/ZZ87E0e.png
Video: (won’t be done for a few more days due to low internet bandwidth)
