I just finished the first 40 years of the GC as Austria (on level Leicht/Easy), and boy did I learn some valuable lessons for the future.
I posted a couple of pictures to go with these comments at:
http://members.tripod.de/yuanti/screens.html
The first picture shows what I was able to accomplish in 40 years. The second shows what else I was able to accomplish... everyone hates me! If you look at the little dialog box on the left you can see that only Hungary and Russia have a positive view of me, while the other 6 major powers all hate me (-200). Strangely enough, I fought a long, bitter (for me) war with Saxony, and they still only have a -170 attitude towards me, while all the other small German states have a -200 attitude.
Well, what did I expect.
Last night I had started the campaign by forging a military alliance with Saxony and Hungary and then attacking Bohemia -- last night no one came to my aid, and after a hard struggle I managed to pry two provinces aways from Bohemia. This morning I went back and picked up right before declaring war, because it was pointed out to me that a small button appears on the upper right of the map which you have to push to call your allies to your aid. Oh. Well, that certainly helped the second time around, as Saxon and Hungarian troops poured into Bohemia alongside their Austrian allies and within a few short months the three allies partitioned Bohemia with relatively little loss of life. Everyone else began to hate me at this point. Not that I was well-liked to begin with. I spent the next couple of years rebuilding my forces for a go at either Venice or Bavaria, while using my high diplomacy rating with Saxony to try to vassalize them. They just kept refusing (3 times!), so I decided to make them my next target! I had to wait a while, so I could break the state marriage and alliiance with them and be able to declare war without dropping into negative stability, so in the meantime I took Milan, which proved to be rather easy, though it ticked off the rest of Italy. And then I conquered Bavaria, which had a decent sized army, but my two-pronged attack never gave it a chance to recover from its initial loss, so it retreated from province to province running into rested troops, who immediately sent it packing again. Then I launched my war against Saxony, which had three provinces (having secured Sudeten from Bohemia).
Now, I have to say that on paper this looked to be a cake walk (and my Milanese and Bavarian expeditions made me overconfident). Two of my bordering provinces had Small size fortresses (which are tough nuts to crack around 1500), and I had a 60 size army and a 28 size army ready to put a hurting on his 11, 7, and 11 armies. I checked all the diplomacy ratings to make sure i wasn't stepping on any big toes and declared war, sending the 60 army into Sudeten to take the fortress and beat his 11 army there. Well, in the two months since I had checked the diplomacy ratings, Saxony signed an alliance with Thüringen, so I actually had to fight two small German powers. No problem for mighty Austria, right!?! WRONG! I think the war took about three years, and I never even managed to lay siege to Saxony's capital. After about 30 months I had Sudeten firmly in my control and I was besieging Thüringen, while a massive combined army was waiting in Saxony for me to make a wrong move, but the AI failed to come to the rescue of the Thüringen capital and I captured it and signed a separate peace with them, in which I annexed them. After another six months of fighting, I realized I couldn't win, so I accepted peace in return for taking Sudeten.
I set about building up a new army, and one year later I was ready to go back to war with Saxony... but I couldn't because the terms of peace treaties mean that you can't go right back to war with someone. Okay. Now what. I sure as hell wasn't going to sit around with a big army, so i attacked Württemberg and conquered them fairly easily, though their tiny army did a tour of Austria, pillaging along the way, causing a revolt in the Sudeten, being chased by an army twice the size which finally caught up with them in Thüringen, just in time to absorb them when I annexed Würtemberg.
This is when I noticed a very big problem that had developed. My finances were in ruins. I had taken out three 200 Ducat loans, which is bad enough. Two of them I had already extended, making the interest ridiculously high. Luckily, Austria is a fairly rich country, thanks to Styria (which has gold in abundance), so I figured a few years of peace would allow me to pay off those debts, so I went ahead and raised the amount of money I was getting per month (by decreasing expenditures) and settled down to wait for the next loan to come due. I quickly reversed this decision when I noticed my inflation had risen to 20% !!!
I then spent 4 years trying to undo all the damage i had done. I boosted my economy by making infrastructure upgrades, I paid off my loans, and I reduced my monthly income (after expenditures) to a zero. This had no effect on my inflation, other than to prevent it from rising any further.
The result is that after 40 years, I have added 8 provinces to Austria at the cost of a 20% inflation rate and the hatred of everyone (even distant Spain hates me now). I may have ruined my chances in the later parts of the game, but maybe I can still find a way to reduce the inflation. And if I can cultivate my relations with Hungary and Russia, I may yet find a way out of diplomatic isolation. I still have an alliance with Hungary. Maybe if i declare war on Turkey, Hungary will join and together we can win a war in the Balkans. This will piss off Venice, but they already hate me (-200) anyway! I hadn't intended this to be a full-fledged AAR, but it sort of was. Sorry about that. Hope it was interesting at least.
------------------
'Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war.
We charge you in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood...'
Henry V (a la Shakespeare)
I posted a couple of pictures to go with these comments at:
http://members.tripod.de/yuanti/screens.html
The first picture shows what I was able to accomplish in 40 years. The second shows what else I was able to accomplish... everyone hates me! If you look at the little dialog box on the left you can see that only Hungary and Russia have a positive view of me, while the other 6 major powers all hate me (-200). Strangely enough, I fought a long, bitter (for me) war with Saxony, and they still only have a -170 attitude towards me, while all the other small German states have a -200 attitude.
Well, what did I expect.
Last night I had started the campaign by forging a military alliance with Saxony and Hungary and then attacking Bohemia -- last night no one came to my aid, and after a hard struggle I managed to pry two provinces aways from Bohemia. This morning I went back and picked up right before declaring war, because it was pointed out to me that a small button appears on the upper right of the map which you have to push to call your allies to your aid. Oh. Well, that certainly helped the second time around, as Saxon and Hungarian troops poured into Bohemia alongside their Austrian allies and within a few short months the three allies partitioned Bohemia with relatively little loss of life. Everyone else began to hate me at this point. Not that I was well-liked to begin with. I spent the next couple of years rebuilding my forces for a go at either Venice or Bavaria, while using my high diplomacy rating with Saxony to try to vassalize them. They just kept refusing (3 times!), so I decided to make them my next target! I had to wait a while, so I could break the state marriage and alliiance with them and be able to declare war without dropping into negative stability, so in the meantime I took Milan, which proved to be rather easy, though it ticked off the rest of Italy. And then I conquered Bavaria, which had a decent sized army, but my two-pronged attack never gave it a chance to recover from its initial loss, so it retreated from province to province running into rested troops, who immediately sent it packing again. Then I launched my war against Saxony, which had three provinces (having secured Sudeten from Bohemia).
Now, I have to say that on paper this looked to be a cake walk (and my Milanese and Bavarian expeditions made me overconfident). Two of my bordering provinces had Small size fortresses (which are tough nuts to crack around 1500), and I had a 60 size army and a 28 size army ready to put a hurting on his 11, 7, and 11 armies. I checked all the diplomacy ratings to make sure i wasn't stepping on any big toes and declared war, sending the 60 army into Sudeten to take the fortress and beat his 11 army there. Well, in the two months since I had checked the diplomacy ratings, Saxony signed an alliance with Thüringen, so I actually had to fight two small German powers. No problem for mighty Austria, right!?! WRONG! I think the war took about three years, and I never even managed to lay siege to Saxony's capital. After about 30 months I had Sudeten firmly in my control and I was besieging Thüringen, while a massive combined army was waiting in Saxony for me to make a wrong move, but the AI failed to come to the rescue of the Thüringen capital and I captured it and signed a separate peace with them, in which I annexed them. After another six months of fighting, I realized I couldn't win, so I accepted peace in return for taking Sudeten.
I set about building up a new army, and one year later I was ready to go back to war with Saxony... but I couldn't because the terms of peace treaties mean that you can't go right back to war with someone. Okay. Now what. I sure as hell wasn't going to sit around with a big army, so i attacked Württemberg and conquered them fairly easily, though their tiny army did a tour of Austria, pillaging along the way, causing a revolt in the Sudeten, being chased by an army twice the size which finally caught up with them in Thüringen, just in time to absorb them when I annexed Würtemberg.
This is when I noticed a very big problem that had developed. My finances were in ruins. I had taken out three 200 Ducat loans, which is bad enough. Two of them I had already extended, making the interest ridiculously high. Luckily, Austria is a fairly rich country, thanks to Styria (which has gold in abundance), so I figured a few years of peace would allow me to pay off those debts, so I went ahead and raised the amount of money I was getting per month (by decreasing expenditures) and settled down to wait for the next loan to come due. I quickly reversed this decision when I noticed my inflation had risen to 20% !!!
I then spent 4 years trying to undo all the damage i had done. I boosted my economy by making infrastructure upgrades, I paid off my loans, and I reduced my monthly income (after expenditures) to a zero. This had no effect on my inflation, other than to prevent it from rising any further.
The result is that after 40 years, I have added 8 provinces to Austria at the cost of a 20% inflation rate and the hatred of everyone (even distant Spain hates me now). I may have ruined my chances in the later parts of the game, but maybe I can still find a way to reduce the inflation. And if I can cultivate my relations with Hungary and Russia, I may yet find a way out of diplomatic isolation. I still have an alliance with Hungary. Maybe if i declare war on Turkey, Hungary will join and together we can win a war in the Balkans. This will piss off Venice, but they already hate me (-200) anyway! I hadn't intended this to be a full-fledged AAR, but it sort of was. Sorry about that. Hope it was interesting at least.
------------------
'Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war.
We charge you in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood...'
Henry V (a la Shakespeare)