*I'm not sure if this is, strictly speaking, an AAR because I'm nowhere close to being done and the entire point of this was to ask for some advice (which you'll find at the end) but since I'm annoyingly verbose it quickly turned into a long-winded summary of my game thus far. Proceed at your own risk.
Hello all, I'm brand new to the Europa Universalis series and in fact had never heard of them or any other Paradox games before a couple weeks ago when I saw the EUIV pre-order on Steam. Because I'm a veteran of Civilization and have logged countless hours on it, I tried out the demo and loved it (note: I only played Ottoman in the demo). I quickly realized that Europa Universalis was close enough to Civilization for me to love it but different enough to address some of the things I find boring or tedious in Civilization. Pretty close to the perfect game, in my opinion. After fooling around on the demo for a bit I bought the game and started playing. I started a Muscovy game that was alright but got bored because Lithuania was checking all westward expansion so I started a Munster game to try to unite the British Isles under Ireland but found that was far beyond my skill level. After spending about a week between those two games and raging about not receiving achievements (I'm an achievement whore) I found out that you had to play Ironman to get them. Gulp. So I started a Burgundy ironman game because a) Burgundy was pretty awesome, b) I wanted to play a moderately difficult game that would still allow me to get into the colonization game, and c) in my ignorance I thought I could join the HRE as Burgundy but quickly realized I'm too big. This is that story.
(Law & Order bum-bum)
I never really intended to do anything like this so I didn't really make notes of the early game but between my memory and the surprisingly handy History log I'll do my best to recall what happened over the last week of (slowly) playing this game but I apologize in advance if I say I conquered a province that I started with or something of the sort. I'm also pretty bad at this game so bear that in mind as you read.
I knew how powerful France was both from history and from perusing some threads on the game but had absolutely no idea how powerful. So during the Hundred Years War I first allied Brittany as a check against France (lol, so naive) and then focused on expanding, first up was conquering Barrois to connect my two groups of provinces. I did so and ended up with Metz and Lothringen, as well. Sweet. Well sort of, Austria soon came calling and as Holy Roman Emperor demanded Lothringen back and I, not wanting to stir up trouble so early, obliged. I then turned my attention north to try to conquer the Dutch provinces. I went through those small provinces quite quickly and ended up with Breda, Hainaut, Brabant, Luxembourg, Zeeland, and Holland giving me quite a nice set of provinces. I thought I was on my way to becoming a European power and challenging France for supremacy in western Europe. Ha. Somewhere around this time I sucked up to Denmark and royal marriaged and allied them mostly to have an easier time during the colonization phase as I don't think in any of my, admittedly few, games Denmark has failed to integrate Norway (and thus I could dock in Iceland) but they actually turned out to be the perfect ally in a different way: a powerful country just on the other side of my future enemies whose only regional challengers (Russia, Lithuania(?)) are too far away for me to be threatened if I get dragged into a war. Not to mention the ridiculously huge navy they'd develop.
Austria was not happy with my expansion and demanded several of my provinces back and since my ego had a pretty nice boost from the relatively successful early game I declined their offer. I believe that France and Austria were both in a coalition against me along with Aachen, Friesland, and several other small regional provinces looking for protection. However it happened, I ended up on the wrong side of a large-scale coalition war. Denmark was pretty much able to keep Austria in check - a common theme throughout my game, did I overestimate Austria's power? Is it my location? Just luck? - but France ate up Brittany like nobody's business and then turned its doomstacks on me. Somehow, probably through AI stupidity, I was able to keep France from occupying too many of my provinces and eventually settled the war using the warscore from my and Denmark's naval blockades (100% on France and the Friesland-region countries) to win the war. I believe I got France to renounce a claim or some such, so not a great victory by any means but I survived the Austro-French invasion... this time.
I then took advantage of my truce with Austria and France to conquer some of the provinces that hadn't joined the coalition without retribution. I took Gelre and Utrecht this way and looked pretty well on my way to uniting Holland and catapulting into colonization. I also used this time to suck up to Castile hoping it would finish off Aragon and provide a solid front against France in future wars. Soon after, Austria declared war on me which brought the coalition (which now included Savoy, Switzerland, and the rest of my neighbors except England who still controlled Calais and Caux) with it. It's listed as a Punitive War which is caused by the "Dishonorable Scum" casus belli (I think). I'm not really sure how you get those (I suppose something to do with diplomatic reputation?) but long story short, Austria hated me.
So I got completely obliterated in this war. Castile did not perform as I had hoped and France occupied several provinces then sent those doomstacks north to me where I had been able to defend the northern part of my territory but Switzerland, Austria, Savoy, and France had pretty well taken care of the southern area. I was able to get selective battles where I had the advantage and was able to whittle down the invaders but France's manpower is just too much. I'm not entirely sure how this worked out because in all fairness I was dead to rights but somehow I was able (blockade warscore?) to secure a peace where I only really had to throw Brittany, which was useless anyway, under the bus.
During the truce period I rebuilt my army surprisingly quickly and declared on England who was having problems with Scotland, using "Conquer Calais" as my casus belli. Denmark was able to maintain a pretty strong blockade despite England's strong navy and I of course took Calais without a fight and was able to win it in the peace treaty within a year, literally months before my truce with the News Team 9 (NT9) Coalition (clever, right?) expired, giving me another port to start preparations for colonizing.
(Somewhere before now I also took Liege who had been a pain in my ass. It's fitting that stupid province is shaped like a thorn.)
France was not about to let some peaceful shipbuilding occur, however. They fairly quickly declared on me to take Calais back, which of course brought along the NT9 coalition. Switzerland and Savoy and some of the small Germanic provinces had left but the big players were still there. As usual, Spain got destroyed and Denmark blockaded France while keeping Austria busy. I was able to hold my own against France for a little while but eventually the war devolved to 18 regiments of mine dodging France & company's 41 around the IJsselmeer by hopping between Friesland (which I had occupied and really, really wanted) and Holland whilst my navy forced France to go all the way around. I was hoping I could do this long enough to build up a decent second stack or for Danish/Swedish reinforcements to arrive but apparently I double tapped pause before going into a menu (something I do frequently, as you'll see) because out of nowhere my little stack was eaten by France. Oops. According to my History log this war lasted 5 years and I was able to secure a white peace.
A couple years of peace followed and I was focusing on building up my navy, trying to boost my economy (which I'm absolutely terrible with), trying to come up with a way to conquer Friesland (who was straight up allied with France now), and prepare for an invasion of Caux (England). I decided to take a break from the game to take a shower and when I returned I realized France had declared war on me in 1480 (2-3 years after I left) because I DOUBLE TAPPED PAUSE APPARENTLY. Ugh I'm the worst. When I left I had two main army stacks, one on the French border and one one the Frieslandish (?) border with a couple strategically placed smaller units to lower rebellion risk. When I returned my whole army except the one by Friesland was destroyed over the course of 16 battles (!). Not to mention my entire navy (~20 ships) had been destroyed. I was at about -11% warscore and -20ish prestige but luckily France was sieging one of my provinces with just 16 regiments while my sole remaining army had 19. Thankfully something happened that force-paused the game or who knows how deep I would've been in it. I quickly hired some mercenaries with my relatively large gold stack and boosted up to 25 regiments or so and repelled the French. I played defense for a bit and sent a couple regiments to siege down Friesland (I still really, really wanted it). Denmark had essentially destroyed Austria's army and came in to help me out and after rebuilding a nice stack of ~35 regiments I went to siege Ile-de-France. This very much displeased France's doomstack that was in the Iberian region who came to break the siege. It would've been about 30 about half morale regiments for me (in one army under an amazing general) against 21 full morale for France & vassals under several armies and generals but just as France was approaching Paris, Spain's stack of 17 emerged from the bottom of the screen giving chase. We clashed in Paris and France reinforced with the stack that I had repelled from my borders not too long before. France was able to win the battle but lost so many troops I wasn't too upset about it. After quickly regrouping (I got my stack up to the size of all my opponents' armies combined), myself, Spain, and Denmark went back on the offensive and were able to obliterate France's army. I then sieged down and occupied Ile-de-France (the first time I'd occupied a French province) and carpeted northern France. Unfortunately France can regenerate an army ridiculously quickly and I had to consolidate my sieges. Denmark and Spain went hunter killer after France's fledgling army and before long France had literally one regiment. It was easily the happiest moment of my life thus far.
^Only 4,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry outside of that remote Austrian stack.
I then sprung into action, once again carpeting France to try to hinder its regrouping ability. No way I was going to let France have any room to breathe now I had it on the ropes. Before long France's provinces were dropping like flies and with Denmark and Spain still in hunter killer mode my 2-3 regiment siegers were never really in much danger.
Now I've won the war, I have about 85% warscore; I know I've won, they know I've won, and I kind of feel like Jimmy Valvano after NC State upset Houston (0:11 in the video). But now I'm faced with the same problem the underwear gnomes from South Park were: 1) Beat France 2) ??? 3) Safely expand enough to become the dominant colonial power. I'm not sure how to go about Step 2. Obviously I can't seize a bunch of French provinces because I'm not good enough to deal with the overextension, aggressive expansion, and whatnot. I'm thinking the best way to proceed would be to force France to release a couple strategically placed nations, like perhaps Champagne and Normandy, and try to help Brittany back onto its feet but I also don't want to spend my precious warscore doing that only for France to re-vassalize or otherwise absorb them back and going back to right where I started. So my question is what is the most efficient way to neuter France? The prospect of Champagne as a buffer state is quite tempting but I'm fairly certain it will align with France against me. Another thing to consider is how Spain will proceed if France is cut down. Sure they're my ally now but if they can expand through a weakened France sooner or later we'll have to bump heads. Something to take into consideration is I'm behind on administrative and diplomatic tech from combating all the war exhaustion and potential rebellions over the years. I am, however, a couple years ahead in military tech.
These should help visualize it the situation hopefully:
^The belligerents (worthless Brittany didn't even bother joining, since I was in the shower for the war start I'm not sure if they dishonored the call or broke the alliance beforehand or what and haven't bothered checking)
^I've occupied every lesser member of the NT9 Coalition
^Southern France, the only area I haven't finished sieging down.
Obviously the war's over and the only benefit to continue sieging provinces would be to acquire more warscore in order to leverage a better peace deal. So my question to all you EUIV experts is this: What do I do to gain the most benefit from this miraculous situation I find myself in?
Thanks in advance and I know I left out quite a bit of information that may be useful so if you want to know anything else feel free to ask.
Hello all, I'm brand new to the Europa Universalis series and in fact had never heard of them or any other Paradox games before a couple weeks ago when I saw the EUIV pre-order on Steam. Because I'm a veteran of Civilization and have logged countless hours on it, I tried out the demo and loved it (note: I only played Ottoman in the demo). I quickly realized that Europa Universalis was close enough to Civilization for me to love it but different enough to address some of the things I find boring or tedious in Civilization. Pretty close to the perfect game, in my opinion. After fooling around on the demo for a bit I bought the game and started playing. I started a Muscovy game that was alright but got bored because Lithuania was checking all westward expansion so I started a Munster game to try to unite the British Isles under Ireland but found that was far beyond my skill level. After spending about a week between those two games and raging about not receiving achievements (I'm an achievement whore) I found out that you had to play Ironman to get them. Gulp. So I started a Burgundy ironman game because a) Burgundy was pretty awesome, b) I wanted to play a moderately difficult game that would still allow me to get into the colonization game, and c) in my ignorance I thought I could join the HRE as Burgundy but quickly realized I'm too big. This is that story.
(Law & Order bum-bum)
I never really intended to do anything like this so I didn't really make notes of the early game but between my memory and the surprisingly handy History log I'll do my best to recall what happened over the last week of (slowly) playing this game but I apologize in advance if I say I conquered a province that I started with or something of the sort. I'm also pretty bad at this game so bear that in mind as you read.
I knew how powerful France was both from history and from perusing some threads on the game but had absolutely no idea how powerful. So during the Hundred Years War I first allied Brittany as a check against France (lol, so naive) and then focused on expanding, first up was conquering Barrois to connect my two groups of provinces. I did so and ended up with Metz and Lothringen, as well. Sweet. Well sort of, Austria soon came calling and as Holy Roman Emperor demanded Lothringen back and I, not wanting to stir up trouble so early, obliged. I then turned my attention north to try to conquer the Dutch provinces. I went through those small provinces quite quickly and ended up with Breda, Hainaut, Brabant, Luxembourg, Zeeland, and Holland giving me quite a nice set of provinces. I thought I was on my way to becoming a European power and challenging France for supremacy in western Europe. Ha. Somewhere around this time I sucked up to Denmark and royal marriaged and allied them mostly to have an easier time during the colonization phase as I don't think in any of my, admittedly few, games Denmark has failed to integrate Norway (and thus I could dock in Iceland) but they actually turned out to be the perfect ally in a different way: a powerful country just on the other side of my future enemies whose only regional challengers (Russia, Lithuania(?)) are too far away for me to be threatened if I get dragged into a war. Not to mention the ridiculously huge navy they'd develop.
Austria was not happy with my expansion and demanded several of my provinces back and since my ego had a pretty nice boost from the relatively successful early game I declined their offer. I believe that France and Austria were both in a coalition against me along with Aachen, Friesland, and several other small regional provinces looking for protection. However it happened, I ended up on the wrong side of a large-scale coalition war. Denmark was pretty much able to keep Austria in check - a common theme throughout my game, did I overestimate Austria's power? Is it my location? Just luck? - but France ate up Brittany like nobody's business and then turned its doomstacks on me. Somehow, probably through AI stupidity, I was able to keep France from occupying too many of my provinces and eventually settled the war using the warscore from my and Denmark's naval blockades (100% on France and the Friesland-region countries) to win the war. I believe I got France to renounce a claim or some such, so not a great victory by any means but I survived the Austro-French invasion... this time.
I then took advantage of my truce with Austria and France to conquer some of the provinces that hadn't joined the coalition without retribution. I took Gelre and Utrecht this way and looked pretty well on my way to uniting Holland and catapulting into colonization. I also used this time to suck up to Castile hoping it would finish off Aragon and provide a solid front against France in future wars. Soon after, Austria declared war on me which brought the coalition (which now included Savoy, Switzerland, and the rest of my neighbors except England who still controlled Calais and Caux) with it. It's listed as a Punitive War which is caused by the "Dishonorable Scum" casus belli (I think). I'm not really sure how you get those (I suppose something to do with diplomatic reputation?) but long story short, Austria hated me.
So I got completely obliterated in this war. Castile did not perform as I had hoped and France occupied several provinces then sent those doomstacks north to me where I had been able to defend the northern part of my territory but Switzerland, Austria, Savoy, and France had pretty well taken care of the southern area. I was able to get selective battles where I had the advantage and was able to whittle down the invaders but France's manpower is just too much. I'm not entirely sure how this worked out because in all fairness I was dead to rights but somehow I was able (blockade warscore?) to secure a peace where I only really had to throw Brittany, which was useless anyway, under the bus.
During the truce period I rebuilt my army surprisingly quickly and declared on England who was having problems with Scotland, using "Conquer Calais" as my casus belli. Denmark was able to maintain a pretty strong blockade despite England's strong navy and I of course took Calais without a fight and was able to win it in the peace treaty within a year, literally months before my truce with the News Team 9 (NT9) Coalition (clever, right?) expired, giving me another port to start preparations for colonizing.
(Somewhere before now I also took Liege who had been a pain in my ass. It's fitting that stupid province is shaped like a thorn.)
France was not about to let some peaceful shipbuilding occur, however. They fairly quickly declared on me to take Calais back, which of course brought along the NT9 coalition. Switzerland and Savoy and some of the small Germanic provinces had left but the big players were still there. As usual, Spain got destroyed and Denmark blockaded France while keeping Austria busy. I was able to hold my own against France for a little while but eventually the war devolved to 18 regiments of mine dodging France & company's 41 around the IJsselmeer by hopping between Friesland (which I had occupied and really, really wanted) and Holland whilst my navy forced France to go all the way around. I was hoping I could do this long enough to build up a decent second stack or for Danish/Swedish reinforcements to arrive but apparently I double tapped pause before going into a menu (something I do frequently, as you'll see) because out of nowhere my little stack was eaten by France. Oops. According to my History log this war lasted 5 years and I was able to secure a white peace.
A couple years of peace followed and I was focusing on building up my navy, trying to boost my economy (which I'm absolutely terrible with), trying to come up with a way to conquer Friesland (who was straight up allied with France now), and prepare for an invasion of Caux (England). I decided to take a break from the game to take a shower and when I returned I realized France had declared war on me in 1480 (2-3 years after I left) because I DOUBLE TAPPED PAUSE APPARENTLY. Ugh I'm the worst. When I left I had two main army stacks, one on the French border and one one the Frieslandish (?) border with a couple strategically placed smaller units to lower rebellion risk. When I returned my whole army except the one by Friesland was destroyed over the course of 16 battles (!). Not to mention my entire navy (~20 ships) had been destroyed. I was at about -11% warscore and -20ish prestige but luckily France was sieging one of my provinces with just 16 regiments while my sole remaining army had 19. Thankfully something happened that force-paused the game or who knows how deep I would've been in it. I quickly hired some mercenaries with my relatively large gold stack and boosted up to 25 regiments or so and repelled the French. I played defense for a bit and sent a couple regiments to siege down Friesland (I still really, really wanted it). Denmark had essentially destroyed Austria's army and came in to help me out and after rebuilding a nice stack of ~35 regiments I went to siege Ile-de-France. This very much displeased France's doomstack that was in the Iberian region who came to break the siege. It would've been about 30 about half morale regiments for me (in one army under an amazing general) against 21 full morale for France & vassals under several armies and generals but just as France was approaching Paris, Spain's stack of 17 emerged from the bottom of the screen giving chase. We clashed in Paris and France reinforced with the stack that I had repelled from my borders not too long before. France was able to win the battle but lost so many troops I wasn't too upset about it. After quickly regrouping (I got my stack up to the size of all my opponents' armies combined), myself, Spain, and Denmark went back on the offensive and were able to obliterate France's army. I then sieged down and occupied Ile-de-France (the first time I'd occupied a French province) and carpeted northern France. Unfortunately France can regenerate an army ridiculously quickly and I had to consolidate my sieges. Denmark and Spain went hunter killer after France's fledgling army and before long France had literally one regiment. It was easily the happiest moment of my life thus far.
^Only 4,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry outside of that remote Austrian stack.
I then sprung into action, once again carpeting France to try to hinder its regrouping ability. No way I was going to let France have any room to breathe now I had it on the ropes. Before long France's provinces were dropping like flies and with Denmark and Spain still in hunter killer mode my 2-3 regiment siegers were never really in much danger.
Now I've won the war, I have about 85% warscore; I know I've won, they know I've won, and I kind of feel like Jimmy Valvano after NC State upset Houston (0:11 in the video). But now I'm faced with the same problem the underwear gnomes from South Park were: 1) Beat France 2) ??? 3) Safely expand enough to become the dominant colonial power. I'm not sure how to go about Step 2. Obviously I can't seize a bunch of French provinces because I'm not good enough to deal with the overextension, aggressive expansion, and whatnot. I'm thinking the best way to proceed would be to force France to release a couple strategically placed nations, like perhaps Champagne and Normandy, and try to help Brittany back onto its feet but I also don't want to spend my precious warscore doing that only for France to re-vassalize or otherwise absorb them back and going back to right where I started. So my question is what is the most efficient way to neuter France? The prospect of Champagne as a buffer state is quite tempting but I'm fairly certain it will align with France against me. Another thing to consider is how Spain will proceed if France is cut down. Sure they're my ally now but if they can expand through a weakened France sooner or later we'll have to bump heads. Something to take into consideration is I'm behind on administrative and diplomatic tech from combating all the war exhaustion and potential rebellions over the years. I am, however, a couple years ahead in military tech.
These should help visualize it the situation hopefully:
^The belligerents (worthless Brittany didn't even bother joining, since I was in the shower for the war start I'm not sure if they dishonored the call or broke the alliance beforehand or what and haven't bothered checking)
^I've occupied every lesser member of the NT9 Coalition
^Southern France, the only area I haven't finished sieging down.
Obviously the war's over and the only benefit to continue sieging provinces would be to acquire more warscore in order to leverage a better peace deal. So my question to all you EUIV experts is this: What do I do to gain the most benefit from this miraculous situation I find myself in?
Thanks in advance and I know I left out quite a bit of information that may be useful so if you want to know anything else feel free to ask.