The Hundred Years War - an England Combat Tutorial AAR

With Burgundy out of the war, Castille cut off from it, Normandy annexed, and Aragon's army spanked, it's time to punish France for jumping in.

To expand on an earlier statement: since France declared war using the Reconquest CB, I can retake my cores using the same CB, because it is a mutual CB. A mutual CB means that both sides of the war (but not allies) can use the CB's terms against each other. Holy War, Reconquest, Cleansing of Heresy, and Nationalism (take provinces of same cultural group, requires Gov't 30) are mutual, for example. Excommunication, Dishonorable Scum, Liberation, and Conquest are not. --- If someone declares war on you, when you go to demand tribute, it will tell you whether you can use their CB against them. ---

November 8, 1410: Since I no longer fulfill the criteria for any national missions, I get a generic mission - Save Calais. The generic war missions are generally pretty useful - in this case, I lose .25 war exhaustion when I end the siege.



November 15: Since I've neatly cut France in half already, all I have to do is push their armies south (or wipe out their northern armies, and I can start besieging their northern 4 provinces. Here, the bulk of their army in the North is kicked out of Orleanais, pushed east to Nemours...



February 18, 1411: ...and wiped out in Vermandois. Central France is mine!



In the intervening time, I saved Calais, and then got one of the more worthless missions: Create an army for our nation. The Create army/navy missions require you to build to 99% of force limits. For armies, you will rarely need to do this - it's often a waste of money.

March 15: I've left behind detachments to besiege provinces, and will now just keep their armies away while the sieges complete. Paris gets 2000 men, since it has a level 2 fort. --- At a minimum, your detachment should be as large or larger than the garrison, and have enough extra to cover attrition. ---

Since France's prestige is in the toilet, these sieges won't take quite as long, as prestige reduces defensiveness.



November 1: Aragon offers white peace after I wipe a small army out in Bourbon.

November 22: Success! My only core on France is now Paris, which I can take in the next war. --- A capital may be taken in a war if it is disconnected from the rest of the country and is landlocked. In that case, you cannot take any other provinces. However, the AI will often move their capital if this happens. ---



Since I got a boundary dispute on Navarra, and I have nothing better to do, I declare war on Navarra to get my core. The list of allies looks intimidating, until you realize that they'll all probably get bored and white peace out once I thrash them around a bit. --- As long as your war capacity is high, AI nations are not too stubborn about accepting a token peace to leave a war. --- Navarra is a vassal of Aragon, so I'll have to force Aragon to give up the province. Aragon is the war leader, since Castille was already at war with me.

--- I have relatively high WE (8ish, IIRC) at this point. I don't recommend starting this sort of war with high WE unless you really know what you're doing. ---



February 9, 1412: Brittany is the first out of the war after Vendee falls to siege. Again.

March 22: My army lands in Gascogne and quickly throws Aragon out.



April 16: The combined Aragonese/Portuguese/Navarrese army had assaulted right before I landed - which made them easy to throw out of Labourd...



May 18: Chasing down this army in Navarra would be dangerous...



...except that Castille bailed!



June 11, 1413: With Castille out, it's a matter of taking Navarra then taking a couple Aragonese provinces to convince them to give up. Portugal's army just walked home after getting thrashed, and that left Aragon alone against an army 3 times her size. Due to my army size (26000 in theatre once I moved them all), I assaulted Aragon and Barcelona to rack up war score quickly and bring Aragon to the table. --- If you have relatively high manpower and force limits, assaulting to end a war quickly is useful, so that you get the peace-time bonus to WE reduction and cultural tradition back that must quicker. ---



I've got about a year and a half before the truce with Burgundy runs out - not quite enough time to get my WE down (it's 7.99, and I'll reduce it by .16/month.) Of course, there are a couple of events that could help me reduce WE much quicker...

Panopticon said:

Why did you do that attack on Maine so soon? If you had just waited 5 days the southern army would have replenished more morale since it does so every month. You lost 1 month of morale and soldier increase. Was there a reason for the hurry?

And you wrote "the army coming north from Anjou". It's south. That confused me for a while.

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Fixed the directional oops.

In retrospect, you're right. I should have waited. The hurry, as it were, was to keep them out of Normandy and Caux and push them south, but waiting 4 days wouldn't have really made a difference in that respect.

anweRU said:

For one of my cores? Odd, I'm pretty sure I've been grabbing my cores for free (I play an infamy restricted game) in defensive wars. I'll have to go back a few saves and check the wars. If you are correct, then the AI must have used Reconquest on the countries that I was guaranteeing.

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Panopticon said:

Yeeahh... I think there is something odd about that thing. I have had defensive wars were my cores cost 0 and I have had them cost 1 but it was not only for reconquest they were free.. I'm not sure what is going on but there is something fishy it seems..

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Hrm. I must admit, I don't let people keep my cores long enough to end up in too many defensive wars.

There are, perhaps, other rules, but I know that if there is no CB (attacking or defending), you'll pay full cost, even if it's a core. If you attack using Holy War, for example, you'll pay 1 infamy rather than 0.

Enewald said:

Now, next time you can annex all of France?

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Without cores? Uh...no.

Sorry: This is on hold - last weekend due to Vicky 2, and now due to work rearing its ugly head.

ForzaA said:

I wonder, how much legitimacy did that Castillian bail cost you? (I haven't quite figured out how that one works, some peace offers seem to cost you legitimacy..)

And why did you consider this bailout necessary? Do you believe that 250 ducats was a smaller price than the continued involvement of Castille would have cost you?

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As England with lots of cored French provinces, money is not really an issue, but having Castille in the war keeps my War Capacity low. The lower my war capacity, the more stubborn the peace AI, and the more I have to deal with occasional landings in England.

Hopefully I'll be back to updating this next week. Between V2, work, and kids, I just haven't found the time to do anything on the computer.

Zozo said:

Nice. Did pretty much the same (in IN though).

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Glad to hear it worked out! Yes, the missions do require some luck to get the right ones at the right time.

By the way, it's maybe not the place, but I just finished reading your "Provence AAR". Tried 20 times last night but it always ended the same way.

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I remember retrying Provence in IN a few times after I did that AAR, and I learned that like my Bar AAR in HTTT, sometimes you just get curbstomped with no real way to avoid it.

I was thinking of coming back to do the second part of this AAR (HRE), but since Divine Wind is in production, I'll probably do something with that when it comes out.

Instead, I'm starting an AAR for Victoria 2:
Sick Man of Europe - An Ottoman AAR