Certain War

Tongera said:

Does anyone know how i can take on the following three countries at once: France, UK and Italy? I am Germany with Austria and Friesland and Gelderland region of the Netherlands, i am second most industrialized nation with 3 greatest army in the world. My allies are Russia, Greece, Belgium, Denmark, Serbia, Montenegro and Switzerland. Any ideas on how i can go about it?

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The UK won't do anything, and you should be able to easily defeat France and Italy, especially if Russia is not against you.

Well, considering you're Germany you are probably already the strongest nation and have the largest standing army (and i assume you are also technologically advanced when it comes to army techs) in continental europe you could even take on the three of them alone (you might have to mobilise though) but since you have Russia as an ally...

UK have a massive navy but its mostly comprised of man-o-wars and ironclads/monitors so if you have access to cruisers/dreadnoughts you can pretty much destroy them with inferior numbers and a good admiral (mostly the same for France but they seem to be a bit better at upgrading their navy). Land-wise the UK isn't much of a threat and even if they have complete control of the seas they will at most drop a stack or two in your borders but it's at most a nuisance.

France will be your biggest problem, they can mobilise a lot of troops so if you have belgium and switzerland in your SOI, leave them out so the french will be forced to fight you in your (hopefully) fortified Alsace - Lorraine. Wait for them to attack you (if possible lure them into attacking you by leaving a small stack in one of your border provinces with a good defense general, with reinforcements nearby), reinforce as they send stack after stack to the battle and after the stacks stop coming, encircle them (keep a few stacks avaliable for emergencies, chances are the odd french stack will attack your armies in those provinces around the battle). If you win the battle you will pretty much destroy the french army (if a defeated army cannot retreat to a province, it gets deleted) and can proceed to the siege phase.

Italy although powerful isn't much of a challenge, you should be able to both fight the french and have enough armies to at least keep the italians at bay, especially with Russian help. Once you wreck the french army you can send a few stacks to beat the italians.

What calvin said practically. The UK does *not* fight, they only blockade. Your borders with France are small and you can absolutely crush them. Italy is generally sorta weak and since you won't need all your army for France (due to small borders)you can handle them with ease. Russia is also extremely strong and could take on both france and italy on its own (just like you could). Prussia can take on France and Austria at the same time and completely occupy them, it's not hard, just take it easy. I would *not* call those minors you're allied to, because they'll just reduce your warscore.

Sounds like they give good advice. The Brits almost never drop troops, like its so rare I almost want to say they NEVER drop troops, all they do is blockade. France is really not that hard to beat as Germany. Last night I used about 450 brigades of my 550 brigade standing army to defeat their whole normal and mobilised force of about 650 last night with ease. Play defensively, let them attack. I'll beef up my line on all but one point, wait for them to attack it, slowly send extra troops in to match theirs, but never enought to overwhelm them and make them stop sending troops in. Once I figure the battle is big enough and still easily won, I overwhelm it so they stop sending in more troops, surround it and wait. Rotate troops in and out every now and then to keep fresh, and by the end I just knocked down 1/4-1/3 of their army in one battle. Just make sure that when you surround, the surrounding troops have enough that they won't attack it and start up another battle.

You're in the era of tanks and you only have a standing army of 150? Well mobilising will obviously be needed. Just hold Italy off, you prob have a fairly small border and its mountainous and probably fortified. Just keep about 30-40k troops in each province and they shouldn't attack. Everything else goes to France. Fight a slow careful defencive war and you should be just fine.

Is that all the brigades you can have during peace? That number is really low. Should have a good 400 brigades minimum by now, if not 500+. my 550 army was in PDM and thats in only 1890's. In vanilla its usually about 400ish by turn of century I believe. Sounds like that army really needs expanding, badly. That will solve so many problems. I don't even mobilise when i fight just France. Or even France + say BeNeLux.

are your industrial subsidies off the charts? negetve tarrifs unsustainable? tax too low? Germany should be overflowing with money.

Here is my Corps setup, and I have around 20-25 of them
1 Dragoon
1 Currassier
2 Hussars
4 Artillery
1 Mobile Artillery
1 Engineer
2 Guards
8 Infantry
1 Airplane
For a Grand total of 21 thousand men per corps.
Mobilized units are grouped in units of 20 thousand men, and generally support the regular corps.

Tanks are Strategic Level for me, and they are never attached to a Corps.

Navy generally consists of 30 dreadnoughts in six groups of five, and 80 crusiers in ten groups of 8, and they are formed into task forces as needed.

I have beaten Russia, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan in a war, with my only allies being Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Montenegro.

can you load up a save?

Why are you imposing tariffs? Tariffs are a viable option only if taxes are maxed out and you still cannot cut down on anything else (including education, since you're germany). Tariffs kill economies and mollest children. Well, they don't really do that second one, but they can be devastating. It's a bad idea, especially when you've got 0% middle tax. Taxes are always better than tariffs.

Tongera said:

No subsides, 5% tariffs, 0% tax for rich and middle class with around 15-25% tax for the poor people.

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What moldeh said. Also you should increase those taxes a lot more (they're way low, i for example keep all of them above 50% for the entirety of the game in most of my games), given you'll need a larger standing army to take on the brits, french and italians.