England in IN

I can't emphisize too much how important patience is as Britain fighting France. This is in part a "do as I say, not do as I do" kind of thing, as I screwed that up in my last war with France. Three years in, War score was + 30 (and not getting higher - it is tough just to maintain it at that level given that France still outnumbers me in troops about 2 to 1), with France's war exhaustion 14 and climbing, their stability -1 - I made peace, taking Piccardy, a little cash, and making them release Hanault. Not a bad peace, but I think if I had waited them out I could have caused a lot more damage & maybe even taken a second province.

As it is, though, while France has expanded a bit to the SE and E, since they have lost some important cores (3 in Normandy to an independant Normandy, and now Picardy to me), they are ranked 5th I think in income, less than half of mine (I'm first, my ally Castille a close second, and Denmark, owners of much of northern Germany, is third).

I think I need to bite the bullet and expand my army a bit for the next war - it's only 40,000, and my force limit as I recall is at least 50. Of course, as always, manpower is an issue as well; one of the reasons I made peace when I did (in each of the two last wars, actually) was that manpower was running out.

As I said, fun fun.

I realize that this is getting a bit like an AAR, and I know England isn't exactly the biggest challenge in the game, but I'm finding it a good moderate challenge, at least played the way I'm playing (contain the BBB, eventual expansion onto the continent) and more to the point a good introduction to some .. well, maybe not advanced, but semi-advanced - tactics.

It's around 1490. The latest was a war with Burgundy after they had been warned. I took Vlandern (spelling?) and Brabant, so now I have a nice contiguous 5 province block in northern France/the low countries. Best of all France can access it only through Picardie, helping my defense immensely. I also grabbed a couple provinces from the Aztecs and one from the Maya.

France took another province from Burgundy as well, and is looking blobbish in the SE (Switzerland/Savoy/Piedmont, etc.). But it's deceptive; they have a bunch of non-cores, some different cultures, and some poor provinces, and are missing some key provinces in the other directions. So now my income is more than double theirs; they have slipped to 7th.

Going forward, I see myself slowly chipping away at France. They are still tough but I keep getting stronger relative to them in income, manpower, and force limits. I'm allied with Spain; still no joint wars against France. That could accelerate my conquests; OTOH I find that more often than not when confronted with two strong opponents the AI buys one of them off.

I'll probably grab a couple more provinces from Burgundy as well. For now expansion in Germany is constrained by Denmark, though in the long run it should actually be easier to take provinces from them rather than a welter of small nations (from a stability and BB perspective). At some point I'll probably turn on Brittany and Normandy, for now they are helpful allies and, in Brittany's case, a vassal.

And I'm just about 10 years from cores in North American foothold. I don't think I'll go crazy at first on colonization; mainly strategically placed colonies and start slowly filling coastal NA and Brazil. Interestingly, Azores is still open, but I don't need it now; it would accelerate my push into the Indian Ocaean by maybe 10 years, but there are other ways to do that. (My biggest mistake so far was probably not grabbing something on coastal Africa 50 year ago for that purpose). Research still a tad anemic but adequate and it will improve. I have plenty of money, mainly from the usual practice of using non-European nations as ATMs, though I haven't done nearly as much of that as I could have.

And then the Reformation beckons; I haven't played it as England. I know the real history of course but there might still be some surpises. It does tend to effect bigger empires more severely.

Funny fact, irrelevant to me except to the extent that it constrains France, but Italy is mostly owned by ... Bavaria.

Shabz said:

France in my game is already Le Blob. I declared war on them, and Castille (now known as The Turncoats) has dowed me!!! Turns out they had Casus belli against Portugal, my ally, who held Valencia (how and why I don't know ) and an alliance with France and me at the same time.

As you said... Fun fun...

Click to expand...

Ack!! By the time they are the BBB I would think they would be pretty tough for England to take them on (on the continent anyway); look up thread and see some good advice (which I followed!) that as England you really needs to stop them from forming the BBB in the first place. I know, that doesn't help you much now.

Final update on my own game - 5 more wars in just over 10 years, 3 against France and 2 against Burgundy, I keep chipping away at both. Fighting France is now challenging in a different way - they don't have much coast left, and I now have 15 continental provinces, so I can't really make as much use of my naval mobility & other raiding tactics. I'm still outnumbered, and France has a slight one-on-one quality edge. So what ends up happening is that I start out with allies (all wars lately have been via warnings, and I always end up with a strong ally at first) and just smash em, but they peace my allies, turn their armies on me, and I end up making peace taking a couple provinces. I'm sure if I was better I'd just completely stomp them in a longer war, but so far that result is elusive.

What's remarkable is just how resilient France is. They have lost 6 or 7 provinces to me (a couple of those weren't theirs originally) and 3 from the forced release of Normandy, but with their expansions to the east (& absorbing vassals, only Provance is left) they keep going strong, continuing to field large armies. What's funny is that if you compare France at the start to France now, they have a somewhat similar number of provinces (a few more overall I think), but they have moved east. Burgundy also. Almost like when the barbarian invasions pushed other barbarians west, but in reverse. Maybe I'll eventually push France into Balkans. Though more seriously, they are increasingly constrained by semi-powerful neighbors to the east (Denmark, conquerers of northern Germany), Bohemia/Italy, and to a lesser extent Austria).