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Paladin395

Second Lieutenant
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Apr 15, 2008
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I've noticed while playing recently that France is a lot weaker than it used to be. In some of my games France gets curb stomped by Burgundy or England and never recovers. I think they were games where lucky nations was off. France has been getting nerfed ever since 1.1. I understand a need to stop France from eating everything but I almost miss the challenge. France made a great final boss. What do you guys think?
 
This game is about what-if's and historical France got lucky several times in history. As I've said before, there are times when France is largely unstoppable and there are times when it collapses after massive pan-European dogpile.

I've had a couple of games where France would just flat-out beat down an alliance of England, Portugal, Austria, Bohemia, Burgundy, Castile, and the player himself (i.e. me), so I wouldn't say France is over-nerfed. However, I'd say Burgundy's just down-right scary if it gets to blob. Same for Blobhemia at a lesser extent. Austria seems a bit underpowered though! I've had few games that didn't have it trying to take back Tirol and Styria.
 
For me Austria is the most consistently terrifying power in Europe. Unless I directly interfere, Austria pretty much always becomes a monster whether they become the emperor or not.
 
France, once properly formed, is downright scary, and can take large parts of Europe all at once and win.

Once properly formed. Which is a very dicey proposal at best.
 
France just got more competition from Burgundy in the region, but it can still do very well. They are weaker though and easy to take down and split up if you want to intervene as a player in a major war. imo all is as it should be.
 
Every country that was a major power IRL. does well generally in this game.The Burgundy and Bohemia do well also because in 1399 they are in Powerful positions. IRL Burgundy was partitoned by France and Austria when the male line of Dukes died out. If Charles the Bold had had a son Burgundy would have probably stayed independent.In Bohemia's case the end of House of Luxemburg and the Hussite wars ended Bohemia's chance for great power glory.The AI isn't as good as a human player all historical great powers are OP in hands of a player. If they weren't that way players would complain that they weren't around to beat. With that being said see complaints about Ottoman AI being useless.
My thinking is that France should if united have a good chance of winning against everyone else.Look at Napoleonic Wars it was basically France against everyone else in Europe.In the end it took Austria,Prussia,Russia, and Great Britain(especially last two) to beat her.
 
I'd say Spain's pretty underpowered against other land powers though. Any straight up fight between Castile/Spain and Austria/Bohemia/France ends up with Iberia being covered in stripes.
 
That's because the Castille/Spain AI creates a doomstack in some non land connected province overseas and leaves it there. AI NEVER leaves enough troops to defend the Homeland if a colonial/overseas power.
 
Throughout most of the EU era, France ranged between 2x and 3x the population of Spain. Castille alone would be even worse of. That's a significant disadvantage to overcome right up.
 
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The AI doesn't know how to defend their own terrain. They either siege enemy provinces or attack enemy armies, never sit on their own terrain to defend. Thus Spain can't defend itself since they either counterattack against enemies besieging their mountain provinces or try fighting in the flatlands, where they're outnumbered. I think an army besieging a province shouldn't get defensive bonuses from terrain.
 
No; it showed that 1)The English in ideal situations* could use their longbow to decimate a cavalry charge, 2)That a divided France (which France very much was for most of the era) could only do so much, and 3)that the English have spent the past six centuries patting themselves on the back because they won a handful of battles in a war they ultimately utterly lost,

Contrast Patay, just over a decade after Agincourt, where despite a sizable English advantage the English took a horribly one-sided loss.

Manpower isn't about winning or losing one battle. It's about being able to afford coming back for round two after you lose one or two battles, thereby enabling you to learn from your defeats and adopt new tactics.

Regarding Austria, in the vast majority of cases, it would appear to be the ridiculously strong Imperial Bonus, since Austria is pretty good at getting their hands on that.
 
Regarding Austria, in the vast majority of cases, it would appear to be the ridiculously strong Imperial Bonus, since Austria is pretty good at getting their hands on that.
I don't think Austria needed the HRE to be scary.

In regards to Spain/Castile, its discipline and morale should at least be on par with France's early on. I suppose giving Military Drill as its first idea would help as would moving the quality slider a few notches to the left.
 
Well in my riga game, i got armies simmiliar size to austria HRE. But they are scary to me. However i managed to beat former HRE bohemia... but austria... they just got too much allies, and manpower for me to beat them. And problem is i got no border with them, so it is hard for me to fight them thruout HRE. And they got like 4 PU's
 
Well in my riga game, i got armies simmiliar size to austria HRE. But they are scary to me. However i managed to beat former HRE bohemia... but austria... they just got too much allies, and manpower for me to beat them. And problem is i got no border with them, so it is hard for me to fight them thruout HRE. And they got like 4 PU's
Yeah this is so relevant. If you are very proud of your player-controlled Riga and want to show if off, go start an AAR thread instead.