Has anyone managed to beat GB?

How do you beat that which is invincible?

Easiest way to beat them as a European nation is to start building ships on day one, put the whole stack of ships off the province containing their European navy, land 30-40 brigades in the British Isles, surround and destroy the one army stack near London, then cover the entire island 1 brigade deep and wait. When it's all conquered, demand a high-population Asian state. Repeat as infamy and truce allows. Research nationalism and imperialism and turn your new conquests into cores, for infinite brigades and industrial workers. Get health care social reforms if possible.

This will eventually result in a military score integer multiples higher than anyone else's, and you'll pass them on prestige and industry score eventually as well.

Dominatus said:

How do you beat that which is invincible?

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It's not impossible. Like Jawa in this thread says, it is also a question of attrition.

Zarine said:

UK keeps building fregate and manowar.

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Is this correct? Does the AI-UK never research and construct newer vessels?

Just attacked the home islands as France, they had a sizeable amount of soldiers, but only stationed in South England. They had a few mere thousands in Canada, Oceania and Africa combined. They had hundreds of thousands of troops in India. I suppose it would be possible if you strangled their armies with attrition, it would be a lot easier as China because of the mountains in Tibet.

Go after them as france, early, use masses of commerce raiders to blockade the home isles, defeat their armies quickly...its not so hard. I took india from them before.

Ashantai said:

From my limited experience, the AI places massive British armies in India. In my game alone they had over 300,000 in India by 1860. Contrasted to this is a mere 30,000 in Britain, and small forces scattered around the world in other areas. Winkling them out of India would be infinitely harder then assaulting GB's home islands.

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This, and also it's true that assaulting the home islands winks the Indian brigades out of existence. If the UK has thirty regiments backed by pops in Dacca, if you take Dacca from them that's thirty less they'll have next time.

Parmenedies said:

Is this correct? Does the AI-UK never research and construct newer vessels?

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They most certainly do build newer ones, but they may feel that they can't afford to do so.

It may be difficult to code how and when the A.I. should upgrade its navy, as in EU3 I recall navies being disbanded entirely just as the hapless fools declare war against another naval power.

guyfawkes5 said:

It may be difficult to code how and when the A.I. should upgrade its navy, as in EU3 I recall navies being disbanded entirely just as the hapless fools declare war against another naval power.

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Yeah well in EUIII, the AI was never able to figure out how to mass it's ships instead of sending them out to be defeated in detail. Hence the entire naval theatre was basically pointless.

In my current US game, I'd colonized parts of British Columbia and Alberta, which made my borders look weird. I decided to start a war against the UK to take the rest of these two states to tidy things up a bit.

I discovered that the AI is terrible at fighting wars that requiring naval reinforcement of troops. The UK kept feeding one stack at a time into the war in Canada, which let me defeat them in detail and increase my war score steadily. They ceded the rest of BC and Alberta to me. 5 years later, they declared war and ended up having to give up Sasketchewan and Manitoba and their territory in Alaska. I'm expecting they'll declare war again in the future, which'll let me keep gobbling up Canada. Though I plan to make them free Quebec.

From what I remember in Vic1 the AI disbanded its ships that were TWO classes older than its current technology. So, for example, once the AI achieved Ironclads/Monitors it disbanded its wooden ships. Theoretically it would have enough Commerce Raiders to go around while its more modern fleet grew.

Obviously this isn't perfectly historical, as wooden ships served alongside Ironclads for a period, but it may be better than wooden fleets lasting past 1900.

Assuming you want to stay under the Infamy limit, I've found as suggested above a strong navy and occupying the UK mainland, and then using the warscore to force them to Free People in India can get a pretty strong Indian state going independent of them eating up their military power for not too much infamy cost (far less than trying to take India for yourself). If you ally/sphere the India you freed, there comes a tipping point when India can take UK on it's own, you can then declare war on UK, call them in as an ally, and the UK is toast.

easy play smart, attack them where they are weak (yes avoid Attk India as they have massive armies there - attk like Canada, Guyana, South Africa and other weak spots), take em territory and ask for territory where they are strong (I usually start with NEw Delhi India then I use NF Soldiers) then having this, i usually Sphere China for some Cannon Fodders for the Next war (if not I take china for some more manpower) my wars with GB usually last a very long time since i ask for so much (every game i usually war with GB 5x or more taking tons of land and insuring i'm numero uno in everythng after that)

I luv infamy, the more i have the more i take from GB and Russia (only two Superpower to always war on me 'cause of high infamy, the rest they just drink wine like the french)

and no I don't like asking GB to free people, it's a waste of time, war points and all - it's either i take it as mine, or not at all

then after around 1890 the game gets boring as no one wants to war with me anymore LOL

yes..as usa- took all of mexico in 3 wars.. then allied and soi all of latin america

gb was at war with france or russia or something. i dont remember

then i attacked canada and took all of it... then blocked their ships with my 50 ironclads... which decimate hundreds of their wooden ships

then they wudnt give me all of canada.. which was unrealistic since they were in no position to argue.. i cud have beaten a relief army or blocked it from coming

so i yesmened them into accepting

now..

USNA

I have defeated the UK fairly easily with France. I left them for a long time and first fought them when they had become very strong but it was reasonably simple to defeat them with a force substantially smaller than their own.

The naval war was the easiest and based on what they put up against me I suspect the problem is that the AI gives far too much weight to the number of ships rather than the ship type. The UK had a large navy but they were mostly obsolete. When it comes to fighting they are suckers for attacking small fleets of ultra-modern ships and seem to be unable to deduce their obsolete crap is going to die. I suspect this misappraissal of naval strength extends to their built strategy hence leading to the relayively easy naval war.

On land I concentrated on using defence to inflict losses on their armies before attacking to finish them off. The critical steps seems to be to have your armies split up into "half" battle forces (fills half the permitted frontage) and assign good defensive generals. Once they attack send reinforcements and as attrition takes its toll cycle in bew armies. The AI never concentrates its forces fully and after heavy attrition it is usually possible to achieve a local collapse and overrun and destroy a few UK armies. In my case wityh the UK having 2:1 numbers against me the 2:1 attrition from the defence battles apparently maintained parity until I used a couple of local collapses to actually eliminate some large forces. This step requires careful judgement but gives a much higher effective loss ratio than the attrition phase.

With roughly equal land tech I had little trouble in wearing down the India army and ultimately causing a collapse of UK forces (world wide).

Outside of India the key tactic is to use naval movement to achieve massive local superiority and simply go round smashing their forces in one isolated theatre after another.

Overall fighting the UK required some care but wasn't seriously challenging. However, they are the only country that has given any real challenge at all although fighting the Chinese masses can be a bit exciting their techological weakness generally means it is more spectacular than actually difficult. Fighting a battle outnumbered 20:1 looks dauting but seemed to work rather nicely.

Believe it or not, but I beat United Kingdom.. as Panjab... fighting a war for their Asian possessions. It was the hardest challenge I've ever had in this game. The health care reforms I had passed before everyone else in the world skyrocketed my population. My Panjab Empire had the shape of Pakistan before the almighty Panjab bear attacked British and owned them badly. China also helped me (mainly with occupying provinces so I don't have to send troops to every single region, Chinese lost EVERY SINGLE battle they had with British, even their massive stacks lost to British, but the Chinese managed to beat the Asian UK puppets).