I thought about writing another war guide, but I realized I would never be able to cover everything myself. It would take too much time. Instead, anyone who wants to contribute something to this can do so. It'll be a community project. I think there are plenty of people out there who could write this sort of guide, and maybe who have wanted to, but decided not to because it takes too much time or they didn't want to upstage whoever wrote the last guide.
Another guide is needed though. anyone who feels inclined to share some of the tricks they've learned, this is the place to do it
. I'll copy-paste stuff onto the first post and try to organize it all into a logical order. New exploits are welcome too. They are fun to hear about at least.
A few tactics of mine. Please, share.
Delayed Cavalry Arrival
If you don't have land tech 9 and you're fighting against someone who has land tech 9 or higher, this is a tactic you must use. It's actually very helpful in later techs as well as it saves you morale and losses to attrition, but most notable in the beginning.
Shock is the only thing you have before land tech 9. So, you have to make the shock phase count. Ussually you will lose most of your morale on the fire phase, which will compromise your ability to have a strong effect in shock. You won't lose practically any troops on the fire phase however. To avoid losing morale, organize a 5k army of infantry to send ahead of the main force. Send the rest a little bit after it begins marching, with the idea of arriving when the first fire phase is nearly over. The arrival of this weightier force will immediately raise your morale nearly to full again, allowing your troops to fight at near full effectiveness.
The amount of time to give the infantry before sending the second force depends mostly on whether you have infantry in the second force or just pure cavalry. If it's all cavalry, send your cavalry when the infantry's movement is almost halfway finished. If you have infantry in your main army, send it in when movement is at about a quarter.
I would strongly advise against sending a leader with the first army. You know, don't attach too much importance to the cannon fodder.
Hiding Army Movement
If you have two armies, when you move them the direction it's headed will always be displayed as the direction the larger army is going. So, if you wanted to fool somebody, you could start moving a bigger army to one province and order the smaller army to another. It's a good way to catch spying cavalry forces at least.
You could take it a step forward and divide an army into 4-5 parts, making one of them just a little bigger than the others. Order that army to some random place, and all the others to the attack. You might want to pause to do this though to make sure they all arrive at exactly the same time.
Guerilla Work Behind Enemy Lines
Send a 10-20k infantry or cavalry army behind enemy lines and wreak havok. Go after recruiting armies, maybe try to capture some remote area. If nothing else, the loot will hurt them and help you, and it will be a distraction. Just be sure to keep moving so he doesn't catch you.
If the enemy is going to catch this force though and you're far away from your other forces, either disband to avoid giving away warscore or divide your army so some of it can escape.
River Jumping
When an enemy army is attacking across a river, you wait until their movement has been going for a few days, then attack across the same river to the province they're coming from. If you win the battle, you'll then arrive at the prov they're likely to retreat to before them, and get to win another battle!
Random Manufactury Determinism
If you're 7 inno or higher, you can get random manufacturies. To ensure that you get the kind you like, like for example if you only wanted refineries and weapons manus, all the manus you build would be built in fish, naval supplies, cloth, wool, and any other prov with goods that spawns a naval or goods manu. The more of these you have covered, the more likely it is that when you get random manus, they will either be refineries or weapons manus, and vice versa if you preferred goods or naval(not that there ever would be a good reason to prefere naval).
Some of Ryoken's contributions:
The Attrition-Retreat When fighting defensively and the enemy is sieging a province with rough terrain; especially mountains, you should send your army so that it arrives just a few days before the end of the month, then fight for a couple weeks, then retreat in the middle of the second month so that you will still be in the province at the end of it. This results in 2 months of heavy attrition. You may even take zero attrition yourself since it is your province and combat casualties shouldnt be too damaging. If your army is roughly the same size as the enemy's, 2-3 weeks of even combat damage shouldnt be too bad.
Galley Armada: This may be the only way for non-naval nations to compete after 1600 or so. Galleys cost virtually nothing. If you are fighting in your homewaters, you can just overwhelm a warship fleet. And you can carry a MASSIVE army on this uber-fleet. Just dont go crossing the ocean with it! Even for naval nations, having a big galley fleet around to soak up casualties is great. A huge galley force can engage the enemy fleet when it is fresh, soak up some casualties, and then your warships can come in to finish the job and pursue survivors.
Siege Train: It is sometimes useful to detach your cannons from the main army (once you go over 100 cannon especially). Otherwise, your army will move very slowly. Send the main army in to start a fight, the siege train arrival will give a small boost and bring a lot of firepower in after the morale has done its initial drop. Be careful of enemy cavalry flanking though, the enemy is not stupid.
Here's the section for gamey tactics that work well and are fun to read about and talk about, but will probably make people hate you if you ever use them.
Bankrupting the AI through loans
When you're fighting an ai alliance, after you've occupied every province of the ai to prevent them from spending any money on troops, you offer loans to all the members so that they all have roughly the same amount of money. Now wait until all of the seperate peace offers are on your screen, which should all be offering you the entire treasury of the respective ai nations. After all of them are up there, wait until the AI alliance leader offers, which will include the money of the entire alliance. So you can then pause and accept the money from the seperate peace offers, and then accept the alliance peace as well, which can come close to doubling your investment depending on how many ai there are. It's a very easy way to jump start a dead economy, or one that is not yet developed.
You can still take advantage of the ai like this without sending loans, but the profits aren't as high.
Lag-Colonists: This is especially useful if you are getting less than 3 colonists a year. Wait for a period of lag, then use the "right-click-send" method to send out multiple TPs or Colonists to a region. Unless you have a lot of cash to spend, you are really going to be using this to build a trading post empire (think Portugal). This strategy is very useful for blocking off "foothold" coastlines (North America/Brazil/South Africa/etc). This forces your rivals to spend more energy to get their teeth into a valuable colonial coast.
Lag-Vassalage/Annexation: During periods of heavy lag, send 10 or so offers to that nation you "just cant seem to vassalize/annex" (Hungary, Venice, Scotland, Crimea, Brandenburg AI, etc). Because of the lag, the offers will just hang around waiting to be resolved. Then they will all resolve once play resumes, typically leaving you with a vassal. In War III, I vassalized Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary before 1500 and vassalized Venice 6-times-simultaneously using this trick. It works!
Another guide is needed though. anyone who feels inclined to share some of the tricks they've learned, this is the place to do it
. I'll copy-paste stuff onto the first post and try to organize it all into a logical order. New exploits are welcome too. They are fun to hear about at least. A few tactics of mine. Please, share
.Delayed Cavalry Arrival
If you don't have land tech 9 and you're fighting against someone who has land tech 9 or higher, this is a tactic you must use. It's actually very helpful in later techs as well as it saves you morale and losses to attrition, but most notable in the beginning.
Shock is the only thing you have before land tech 9. So, you have to make the shock phase count. Ussually you will lose most of your morale on the fire phase, which will compromise your ability to have a strong effect in shock. You won't lose practically any troops on the fire phase however. To avoid losing morale, organize a 5k army of infantry to send ahead of the main force. Send the rest a little bit after it begins marching, with the idea of arriving when the first fire phase is nearly over. The arrival of this weightier force will immediately raise your morale nearly to full again, allowing your troops to fight at near full effectiveness.
The amount of time to give the infantry before sending the second force depends mostly on whether you have infantry in the second force or just pure cavalry. If it's all cavalry, send your cavalry when the infantry's movement is almost halfway finished. If you have infantry in your main army, send it in when movement is at about a quarter.
I would strongly advise against sending a leader with the first army
. You know, don't attach too much importance to the cannon fodder. Hiding Army Movement
If you have two armies, when you move them the direction it's headed will always be displayed as the direction the larger army is going. So, if you wanted to fool somebody, you could start moving a bigger army to one province and order the smaller army to another. It's a good way to catch spying cavalry forces at least.
You could take it a step forward and divide an army into 4-5 parts, making one of them just a little bigger than the others. Order that army to some random place, and all the others to the attack. You might want to pause to do this though to make sure they all arrive at exactly the same time.
Guerilla Work Behind Enemy Lines
Send a 10-20k infantry or cavalry army behind enemy lines and wreak havok. Go after recruiting armies, maybe try to capture some remote area. If nothing else, the loot will hurt them and help you, and it will be a distraction. Just be sure to keep moving so he doesn't catch you.
If the enemy is going to catch this force though and you're far away from your other forces, either disband to avoid giving away warscore or divide your army so some of it can escape.
River Jumping
When an enemy army is attacking across a river, you wait until their movement has been going for a few days, then attack across the same river to the province they're coming from. If you win the battle, you'll then arrive at the prov they're likely to retreat to before them, and get to win another battle!
Random Manufactury Determinism
If you're 7 inno or higher, you can get random manufacturies. To ensure that you get the kind you like, like for example if you only wanted refineries and weapons manus, all the manus you build would be built in fish, naval supplies, cloth, wool, and any other prov with goods that spawns a naval or goods manu. The more of these you have covered, the more likely it is that when you get random manus, they will either be refineries or weapons manus, and vice versa if you preferred goods or naval(not that there ever would be a good reason to prefere naval).
Some of Ryoken's contributions:
The Attrition-Retreat When fighting defensively and the enemy is sieging a province with rough terrain; especially mountains, you should send your army so that it arrives just a few days before the end of the month, then fight for a couple weeks, then retreat in the middle of the second month so that you will still be in the province at the end of it. This results in 2 months of heavy attrition. You may even take zero attrition yourself since it is your province and combat casualties shouldnt be too damaging. If your army is roughly the same size as the enemy's, 2-3 weeks of even combat damage shouldnt be too bad.
Galley Armada: This may be the only way for non-naval nations to compete after 1600 or so. Galleys cost virtually nothing. If you are fighting in your homewaters, you can just overwhelm a warship fleet. And you can carry a MASSIVE army on this uber-fleet. Just dont go crossing the ocean with it! Even for naval nations, having a big galley fleet around to soak up casualties is great. A huge galley force can engage the enemy fleet when it is fresh, soak up some casualties, and then your warships can come in to finish the job and pursue survivors.
Siege Train: It is sometimes useful to detach your cannons from the main army (once you go over 100 cannon especially). Otherwise, your army will move very slowly. Send the main army in to start a fight, the siege train arrival will give a small boost and bring a lot of firepower in after the morale has done its initial drop. Be careful of enemy cavalry flanking though, the enemy is not stupid.
Here's the section for gamey tactics that work well and are fun to read about and talk about, but will probably make people hate you if you ever use them
.Bankrupting the AI through loans
When you're fighting an ai alliance, after you've occupied every province of the ai to prevent them from spending any money on troops, you offer loans to all the members so that they all have roughly the same amount of money. Now wait until all of the seperate peace offers are on your screen, which should all be offering you the entire treasury of the respective ai nations. After all of them are up there, wait until the AI alliance leader offers, which will include the money of the entire alliance. So you can then pause and accept the money from the seperate peace offers, and then accept the alliance peace as well, which can come close to doubling your investment depending on how many ai there are. It's a very easy way to jump start a dead economy, or one that is not yet developed.
You can still take advantage of the ai like this without sending loans, but the profits aren't as high.
Lag-Colonists: This is especially useful if you are getting less than 3 colonists a year. Wait for a period of lag, then use the "right-click-send" method to send out multiple TPs or Colonists to a region. Unless you have a lot of cash to spend, you are really going to be using this to build a trading post empire (think Portugal). This strategy is very useful for blocking off "foothold" coastlines (North America/Brazil/South Africa/etc). This forces your rivals to spend more energy to get their teeth into a valuable colonial coast.
Lag-Vassalage/Annexation: During periods of heavy lag, send 10 or so offers to that nation you "just cant seem to vassalize/annex" (Hungary, Venice, Scotland, Crimea, Brandenburg AI, etc). Because of the lag, the offers will just hang around waiting to be resolved. Then they will all resolve once play resumes, typically leaving you with a vassal. In War III, I vassalized Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary before 1500 and vassalized Venice 6-times-simultaneously using this trick. It works!
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