Europe is our dancefloor - let's waltz

[VILenin]

That's tough having to abandon a country in the middle of a war, especially against a heavy weight like the Ottomans. This sort of reminds me of a juggling act where you have to throw all the balls up in the air and hope you can rush back before they all come crashing down.

[Kanil]

The AI is super-persistant in diplo-annexing, so any vassals you have will likely be annexed while you're gone.

Excellent AAR so far.

[BBBD316]

Really enjoying the AAR, great premise.

The war with the O/E may work for you now, if you can keep their fleet from landing you can white peace out and go back to looking west.

[aldriq]

VILenin - That's part of the fun, plus it gives you a peek on the way the AI works,which is always interesting. As for juggling, I'm playing with only 2 balls and not throwing them up too high

Kanil - Thanks! I have noticed that, which is good in Hungary's case but really inconvenient for Austria to keep electors as vassals.

BBBD316 - Thanks! I am surprised that the Austrian AI has sustained the war for more than 5 years, but since it hasn't managed to obtain any gains from the OE I agree that a quick white peace on that front is best. Burgundy is growing fast, I can't afford two fronts.

[Capibara]

I'm liking this AAR, well written, and with every turn that passes, it get's more interesting.

[Sweboy]

At what point will you join the two nations or is that not a part of your plan.

[aldriq]

Capibara - Thanks, I hope it stays interesting!

Sweboy - No, I want to keep the AAR dual so they'll be separate, as a loose confederacy.

[aldriq]

Austria 1475-9

Quick look:

-At war with the OE and friends, warscore -3%.
-At war with Saxony, warscore -5%.
-Two thirds of the army are mercenaries.
-Manpower at 0, war exhaustion at +10.2!
-New king, presumably Franz Stefan died in the battlefield.
-Some rebels hanging out in Krain.

It could have been worse so I won't complain. On the positive side, stability is still +2, so far Austria has been fighting mostly reactive wars. If the trend continues, who knows, I might even devote the country to trade!



First things first, I get right out of the war with the OE. There is nothing else in it for me, the main goals when I started the war 6 years ago were to save Hungary and weaken the OE, they are more than accomplished now. I give them a fistful of ducats and hope never to see them this side of the Danube.

Saxony is different. Despite having no manpower and the huge drain that the mercenaries are causing in the treasury, Saxony must be punished if Austria is to maintain any hegemony in the HRE. I don't even know how the war started, it had something to do with Anhalt and Bavaria. Anhalt is Austria's vassal so they must have signed a separate peace. Bavaria probably got out with a white peace or paying Saxony some compensation.

I send the bulk of my armies to siege Saxony's provinces and hope for a quick outcome. Their armies don't present much opposition, however their provinces take ages to fall. Two years later I've managed to capture 4 provinces out of six so with a warscore of +63% I start asking for peace. I ask them to become a vassal (98% WS), they refuse, no surprise there. I ask them to release a minor they annexed, 2 provinces and 50 ducats (50% WS), they refuse. I ask them to release a minor they annexed and 2 provinces (48% WS), they refuse. I ask them to release the minor and 1 province (32% WS), they refuse. I ask them to become a vassal again, they accept!! Oh well, I guess it pays being stubborn, but I don't understand why the AI consistently rejects significantly lower WS peace offers to end up accepting a significantly higher one, go figure. The outcome is satisfactory though, Saxony makes a juicy vassal, plus they are an elector. They are left with a 7K standing army so they should recover soon enough and become my strongest ally.

Something odd I noticed in this war when checking support limits/attrition in Saxon provinces is that my "military access" bonus was still active. Doesn't war cancel any military access, or is this a NA change or bug?

Just as I finish with Saxony, Hungary DoWs the OE, here we go again! Bohemia and Venice (Venice?! They must have become an ally recently) join Hungary, Wallachia, Karaman and, more worryingly, Crimea join the OE.

Well, this time they will have to fend for themselves. Austria has a manpower pool to recover, mercenaries to disband, workshops to build, allies to vassalise, electors to bribe... no holidays for the archduke until 1500 (if he can survive that long).

At the start of 1478 this is the situation in the Balkans, pretty messy:



However a few months afterwards the war ends up in white peace. Big sigh of relief, the OE is no longer the threat it used to be. Oh, and Hungary managed to annex Moldavia, clearly the AI ignores the ruler's diplomatic skill.

The rest of 1478 and 1479 are peaceful and allow for some rebuilding and consolidation. Advances in production and land technologies bring workshops and Men at Arms. Bavaria becomes a vassal. Many mercenary regiments are disbanded but I still have to keep 7 of them in order to leave a decent standing army. By the end of 1479 the HRE is fully secured, the only two electors that wouldn't vote for Austria would vote for Hungary! By the way the emperor invited the Papal States to become elector, they are now based in Riga thanks to the generosity of the TO, who gave them the province when Aragon kicked them out of Italy.

The only other development in Europe worth mentioning is the war between France and Burgundy. Brittany already took 2 provinces off France in this war and Burgundy will certainly get some more as you can see. Let's prepare ourselves for a Burgundian monster.

[CSK]

It seems you were able to fix the holes the AI made, let's hope there's not more. Burgundy seems to get stronger, that's certainly no good news for you, but may be acceptable if you manage to weaken them now.

Hungary's situation is a tad bit better, the AI at least did quite well "beating" the Ottomans. However, there's less room to expand for them, only big neighbours which could drag on a war longer than you could without changing the country. Certainly no nice situation you are in if you ask me.

[coz1]

Interesting that it appears you'll be passing that HRE crown back and forth between your two countries. That ought to help, as you mentioned, the AI stacking above the support limit. As for the OE, I fear you'll be seeing your AI power go to war with them often over the years. Perhaps you should ally with each other in the hopes of having some control over that. Also, do you, as Hungary, hope to annex Poland someday?

Well done so far. The only quibble I have is a request - any chance that you can convert your screenies into jpgs rather than pngs? The latter takes so much longer to load. ::please::

[VILenin]

Hmm, both countries seem to be doing fairly well, despite being controlled by the ai half of the time. And it certainly does seem like you'll have a monopoly on the HRE crown for the immediate future.

Judging by their lacklustre performance against Hungary maybe the Ottomans are on the decline. Well, we can hope, right?

[aldriq]

CSK - Yes, the challenge is going to be to sustain consistent wars with Burgundy/the OE, because they are not likely to be short wars.

coz1 - Sorry about that, I've just noticed that they are 1MB each PNG is the format the EU F11 function key produces, I'll convert them to jpg from now on. Poland are becoming quite annoying but they are allied to Lithuania so I don't think I want to get on their wrong side yet.

VILenin - That's my hope as well, ideally I'd like to evict the Ottomans from the Balkans, move the Hungarian capital to Constantinople OK, maybe that's a bit too extravagant.

[Sweboy]

Hungary moving the capital to Constantinople. Methinks someone wants to become the new East Roman Emperor!

[aldriq]

Hungary moving the capital to Constantinople. Methinks someone wants to become the new East Roman Emperor!

Austria can keep the western crown, Hungary will have the eastern

[Capibara]

Well, both countries are doing fine, at least for now, Austria must beware of Burgundy and I propose that Hungary doesn't stop until her armies are at the door of Istambul, down with the Ottomans!

[aldriq]

Capibara - Burgundy gets scarier by the minute.

Hungary 1480-4

The AI has been busy building more vessels, there is a new fledgling navy in the Black Sea. All the investment is going to trade and a merchant is on his way to Ile-de-France (and fails by the way, unsurprisingly with 54% chance). All very sensible policies when you have the Ottomans waiting at your borders clearly the AI has its weird obsessions. At least the army is in a good state and stability is positive. The kingdom of Hungary now stretches from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.



Truces with the OE, Crimea, Karaman and Wallachia mean there is not much to do in the next two years apart from building workshops to strengthen the economy a bit.

In 1481 our new ally Venice goes to war with Crete and asks Hungary for some help. Why not? Maybe we can take the island first and get some ducats.



But just when I finish off the Cretan army and the siege is under way Venice signs a white peace, what a waste of time!

In 1482 something silly happens that shakes the very foundations of Europe: sweet little Lorraine DoWs Austria. Lorraine's allies -France and Burgundy - join Lorraine. Ansbach, Mantua, Bavaria and Saxony join Austria. How has Lorraine managed to ally both Burgundy and France?! Not fair, not fair at all.

I wait and see how the war progresses, hoping that Austria's allies can be a match (who am I kidding?). After a year things don't look promising.



Cologne (recently annexed by Austria) is totally occupied by Burgundy, while Lorraine has taken Breisgau, only Konstanz is in Austrian allies' hands.

With 20K Ottoman and 10K Crimean men in the southern an eastern borders I take a difficult decision: to help Austria. After all Janos I is still emperor and Lorraine's behaviour is totally unacceptable by HRE standards. And Hungary owes Austria a favour, so here we go.

Hungary DoWs Lorraine; France and Burgundy join Lorraine; Bohemia joins Hungary, Venice bails out, I can't really blame them. I send both armies west, to Switzerland and Breisgau. Some small French armies are defeated on the way, until I finally make it to Schwyz and find some more serious Burgundian opposition.

In September our beloved king Janos I dies, after nearly 20 years as HRE and 25 as king of Hungary, not bad. The HRE crown goes to Karl I of Austria, as expected. He'll need all the manpower the HRE can provide.

The siege of Schwyz starts in October when Austria and France (the alliance leader) sign a white peace!! Austria is safe again, our help was worthwhile.



Now, who's gonna save Hungary?

I see several 10K stacks of Burgundians coming to Switzerland and not for a ski holiday. I start begging France for a white peace and on the third try they accept (after Aragon and Castille DoW France, how timely). I was lucky this time, it could have ended up very ugly indeed.

Fresh after this short but exciting war I decide it would be a shame to waste the free casus belli on Venice for betraying the alliance, so I DoW them in January 1484 (hey, no longer emperor so no need to be the good guy!). I quickly defeat the armies in Istria and Dalmatia and our Bohemian allies make inroads in Friuli and Verona. The second army takes ages to come back, it was stranded in Breisgau after the previous war and I had to get military access through Hesse and Ansbach.

At the end of 1484 Istria, Dalmatia and Ragusa are under siege but the WS is still low to make any worthy demand, so once again I'll let the AI to its own devices to sort out the end of this war. Three wars in a 5-year turn is more than I was expecting.



Ottomans and Crimeans remained quiet after the truces expired, but for how much longer?

[Capibara]

It really was a moved turn for Hungary, luckily, there weren't bad consequences at all for Hungary, now, just hope OE decides to solve old differences during the five year turn with Austria.

[BBBD316]

It is a pity that Austria peaced out, imagine if you could have held till the Iberians started making their presence felt, you could have dealt with the pesky west Europe alliance nice and early.

[Sweboy]

It must be quite interesting to see what the AI does with all your wars when you are looking the other way.

[aldriq]

Capibara - That's what worries me, the OE and Crimea are allied now, both of them against Hungary/Bohemia would be too much to handle. Hopefully Hungary will be busy with Venice this turn instead of DoWing the OE carelessly.

BBBD316 - Not sure about that, bear in mind that Burgundy and France are still bitter enemies, they just happened to be both allied to Lorraine. Even with France out of the equation I would still have had to deal with massive Burgundian armies, and Austrian regiments wouldn't have been much help, many I saw were down to 500 men. I don't know whether the Bohemians managed to cause any harm up north, though. In general I have noticed that the AI tends to quickly finish any other wars when a human player DoWs it, which is a perfectly reasonable policy, although it could assess a bit better whether it would be able to handle the new front without closing the others. In this case I honestly think that France+Burgundy could have dealt with Austria, Hungary and all their allies with no problem.

Sweboy - Well, Hungary has been spoon-fed 3 Adriatic provinces so even the AI shouldn't have much problem getting a good deal out of this war. A different matter will be what it gets up to afterwards.