When is the best time to recover Normandy? when the game starts or later on? and who should i have as an ally to help my achieve this? :wacko:
England - Recover Normandy
- Thread starter Caramel95
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Well, when you're powerful enough to defeat France. Really good allies are Burgundy, Aragon and Castille in this case. Attacking when they are distracted is also quite good ofc. However, really important is more to do the Occupy Paris mission before the times runs out, as it will give you cores on the whole Gallia region which is all of northern France and a bit of Burgundy.
Any time France is fighting on the continent is a good time to attack the French. Since you have a godlike navy you can just white peace if things go badly since your two or three provinces in France wont give them enough warscore to enforce demands.
If you have Burgundy as your ally and Frances opening move was to reclaim Provence you can easily take back all your cores in France. Boh will defend Bur's capital and take south France while Bur and Eng can focus on the north leading to an easy victory as Eng and Bur will field twice as many units as Fra.
If you are playing with Historical Lucky nations France will be lucky making them win practically every battle. Bur can't defend their own capital and will lose easily without support. Boh will lose immediately when they start engaging Frances main forces. You really need to divide and conquer to get a victor that doesn't take 200 peace deals.
If you are willing to make many peace deals strike into the south of France while landing a few troops near the north. This should split their forces enough that you can release a country or some vassals without having to fight many battles, if you can release Normandy then you can vassal - annex or just reconquest them.
Defeating France is the n1 goal of any ENG player, great land with few rivals and you can smack down TWO major powers (FRA/BUR) maybe even ARA if you decide to push into Iberia afterwards. The only problem is after CAS is defeated you either have to make naval trips or expand into the HRE which is a pain to say the least. Fighting Blobstria in the Swiss alps is a huge pain in the a** until you fight enough wars to take a province and vassalize the Swiss.
Cas is actually a bad ally for fighting France since they are usually fighting never ending wars aginst the heathens.
If you have Burgundy as your ally and Frances opening move was to reclaim Provence you can easily take back all your cores in France. Boh will defend Bur's capital and take south France while Bur and Eng can focus on the north leading to an easy victory as Eng and Bur will field twice as many units as Fra.
If you are playing with Historical Lucky nations France will be lucky making them win practically every battle. Bur can't defend their own capital and will lose easily without support. Boh will lose immediately when they start engaging Frances main forces. You really need to divide and conquer to get a victor that doesn't take 200 peace deals.
If you are willing to make many peace deals strike into the south of France while landing a few troops near the north. This should split their forces enough that you can release a country or some vassals without having to fight many battles, if you can release Normandy then you can vassal - annex or just reconquest them.
Defeating France is the n1 goal of any ENG player, great land with few rivals and you can smack down TWO major powers (FRA/BUR) maybe even ARA if you decide to push into Iberia afterwards. The only problem is after CAS is defeated you either have to make naval trips or expand into the HRE which is a pain to say the least. Fighting Blobstria in the Swiss alps is a huge pain in the a** until you fight enough wars to take a province and vassalize the Swiss.
Cas is actually a bad ally for fighting France since they are usually fighting never ending wars aginst the heathens.
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that mission looks fun. Ive never had it come up though? haha. I was thinking those 3 you said should be allies. just wasnt too sure.
Well, if you want to tak down france, you need, to first own ireland, and have scotland vassalized. If you will have both parts done, you should build up a big army(at least 40k troops) and attack france. Best if it is at bad moment, like when france fight burgundy, austria, bohemia or aragon/castille. If you plan it from the beggining, you should try to ally burgundy at the beggining. Also if you ally or vassalize brittany, it is also helpfull. Mostly just ally everyone you can around france. Also, good strategy might be invading castille and PU'ing them, before attacking france. You can try doing same with aragon, or just do it with both if possible. Fact that you start allied to portugal is quite helpfull here.
If you wait with your mission to conquer irish minors, it is quite possible that brittany will guarantee them(because they are same culture group :rofl
, which if you are allied with burgundy, might be good for you, as you will be able to vassalize brittany, without intervention of burgundy, which will give you additional ally for such war.
If you :
PU castille and aragon
ally burgundy
vassalize brittany
conquer ireland
subjugate scotlan
You should be surely ready for defeating France, without much of a problem.
Of this actions, conquering ireland, and subjugating scotland is must. Allying Burgundy is vital, and vassalizing brittany is very important.
PU'ing castille and aragon is just a possible addition, a thing that you may try to do, if you are skilled enough. Altough PU'ing aragon, is a lot easier part, while anyway, both are easy enough if portugal will stand on your side. Also PU'ing castille may be easy if you attack them, while they are fighting muslims.
If you wait with your mission to conquer irish minors, it is quite possible that brittany will guarantee them(because they are same culture group :rofl
, which if you are allied with burgundy, might be good for you, as you will be able to vassalize brittany, without intervention of burgundy, which will give you additional ally for such war.If you :
PU castille and aragon
ally burgundy
vassalize brittany
conquer ireland
subjugate scotlan
You should be surely ready for defeating France, without much of a problem.
Of this actions, conquering ireland, and subjugating scotland is must. Allying Burgundy is vital, and vassalizing brittany is very important.
PU'ing castille and aragon is just a possible addition, a thing that you may try to do, if you are skilled enough. Altough PU'ing aragon, is a lot easier part, while anyway, both are easy enough if portugal will stand on your side. Also PU'ing castille may be easy if you attack them, while they are fighting muslims.
Thank you Casiru, for that. i forgot Bohemia will come to Burgundy's aid. and i dont have Lucky Nations at all. it will most probs take me about 500 reloads by the time i get anywhere haha.
Ill try all the strategies given here. haha i have time to kill, must say Iwanow's strategy looks fun
Ill try all the strategies given here. haha i have time to kill, must say Iwanow's strategy looks fun
Mind that i never did it myself. It is just strategy, that had come to my mind, when observing situation england starts in. Plus, you need to remember, that castille, starts with more prestige possibly, and to PU a country you need to : have more prestige, they need to have no heir/low legitimacy, you need to have royal marriage with them, and you need to have over 40 legitimacy (from what i remember). Aragon and Castille, start w/o heir, so you just need to make your prestige, higher than theirs. Also, before you PU them you need to claim their throne(which requirements i just said). If you lose claim, you need to instantly dow a target, or you will lose CB that allows you to PU target country. You lose your claim when your king dies, they get another king(it may be your king thou...), or they get a new heir. Also i think it changes when you or them change goverment form from monarchy to other type...
Yehi tried yours first, lets be said i all by Portugal deserted me and castille officially raped England and Portugal so i restarted, allied Scotland, Burgundy and Castille (Aragon refused) Then i went to war with france and all my Allies including Portugal honoured it (Yaysiess) And france just got done over. i ended it with me getting Caux and Armagnac, cores revoked on Calais Gascogne and Labourd, Scotland got Normandy but i will rip their faces off and vassalize their useless backwards nation.
OMFG the game crashed just before i saved and now i have to redo all that. needless to say im pissed right off now (Excuse my language)
Well, you can try to PU aragon first, then do it with castille. Aragon, got much weaker fleet and army, and they are no match for english brave soliders. When you got aragon and portugal as allies, you should have no problem with defeating castille, if you built your army to the limit... ofc. anyway defeating castille is bit of a challenge, but if you want to do it you can, you just need to think. First thing to do if you want to do it, is moving your army into portugal, then making sure castille army is as divided as possible, and defeating regiment by regiment, until you destroyed their army. If you done that, you can just sit and occupy all their provinces.
With aragon - you just need to quickly drop big army in their mountains, then, bring more regiments, until you have more forces than they have, and when you do, just destroy their main army, and occupy them. Also, you can try doing same with castille, but remember that castille CAN just bring whole it's army, and destroy you anyway. In the north, there is border province with navarra, that got mountains, which fits such strategy.
Autosave is bless sometimes. In sp, i have autosave every month. But problem comes, when it crashes when autosaving... So it is good to save before and after any decent war...
With aragon - you just need to quickly drop big army in their mountains, then, bring more regiments, until you have more forces than they have, and when you do, just destroy their main army, and occupy them. Also, you can try doing same with castille, but remember that castille CAN just bring whole it's army, and destroy you anyway. In the north, there is border province with navarra, that got mountains, which fits such strategy.
Autosave is bless sometimes. In sp, i have autosave every month. But problem comes, when it crashes when autosaving... So it is good to save before and after any decent war...
The mission I told you about will only fire when you're already at war with France.
So if you're able to win the war, just cancel your current mission, as the "Occupy Paris" mission is probably the best in the whole game. Then just, well, occupy Paris and, whoop, you get cores of a huge part of their land. Especially good if either you or France started the war with the Reconquest-CB (which is quite likely) as in this case you can just demand that provinces in the peace deal for 0 infamy, even though they weren't cores at the start of the war.
So if you're able to win the war, just cancel your current mission, as the "Occupy Paris" mission is probably the best in the whole game. Then just, well, occupy Paris and, whoop, you get cores of a huge part of their land. Especially good if either you or France started the war with the Reconquest-CB (which is quite likely) as in this case you can just demand that provinces in the peace deal for 0 infamy, even though they weren't cores at the start of the war.
i think i have autosave on, ill just see where abouts i am on autosave, hope its near the end. because in the middle france was beginning to push back.
Good point here.
About defeating france : Not matter you have allies or not, if you fight france on it's own(well france + vassals), you can win. You just need to make a good plan.
First phase - Preparations :
Of course, preparations are most important. If you prepare well, france will stand no chances, whatsoever, as long as you make things according to plan.
You should ally france neighbours, and defeat irish and scotland.
Scotland is much more important, because they got modifires and events that make them very dangerous when fighting you, even if otherwise, they are meaningless.
Ireland minors are not a threat to you. But they can be an annoyance, and annexing them, give you additional strength.
Of neighbours of france most important is burgundy, as they are only little weaker than france, if you will ally them, you will be easily able of taking france down.
Aslo, you should get military acces thru countries that are not your allies, that border france - to have a place to run if your armies are in peril.
I think, mostly you should get it from : Aragon, savoy, provence and milan. While aragon is obvious, a so savoy and provence - milan may be not, but if for example france will have pass thru savoy, you will be able to run further, and even if france army will follow you, you may just run there. Also it will be helpfull if you will follow strategy i have though off.
EDIT: Before you start war with france you should have around 30-40k forces - is should be quite easily reachable for you after having whole british islands...
Phase Second - Starting war :
First thing you should do, before taking on france, should be sending small(9k or around it) that will be on south. This small stack, is there, to divert french armies, and if it encounters any bigger resistance, you should run. Actualy you should not siege any provinces with it. Only just destroy small stacks and walk around to plunder the enemy provinces. In this way, even if you will fight none enemy stacks, you will gain income, and your enemy will lose it, plus gain war exhaustion.
If your enemy starts to follow your troops with big stack, run, and let it eat the atrition.
While doing this, you should observe situation in the north, and with bigger stacks, help burgundy(if it is on your side), or wait for good situation to disembark your troops. You should bring two big stacks in normandy and caen - those are your cores, so you will get support limit from it, as if it were allied province. You should siege those provinces down, and then take paris. If you will do it, france economy will be broken, aspecialy if you do the former part(the plunder). If big france armies come to attack you, just join the stack together, so the french will have trouble fighting them. If you can try to destroy french armies one by one, and use the defensive tactics.
Phase third - defeating the french :
When you got normandy and paris, france economy is quite destroyed, as paris is it's most wealthy province, and it's capital. But it does not mean france is dead. To end it, you need to defeat it completly by destroying it's armies, and occupying its provinces. Try using defensive tactics, as long as they armies are not dead, and do not let them retake paris, plus try to occupy the northern provinces, and sack the southern. If you do it succesfuly, they will bankrupt, and you will just destroy them easily killing their armies without much trouble, and quickly taking down their forts. Their vassals are not of great threat to you, but you should be aware that they can bring some forces.
Conquering France on normal/hard is quite easy. Ally with ARA, BOH, BUR, HAB, CAS or POL.
BOH is your nuker, they have quite big army as emperor.
ARA and BUR are in case you need to peace out. (you don't need both)
HAB, CAS and POL are support, you don't need them, but if you can...
Invest in GOV and take your drill.
Start war with FRA with reconquest CB. Find main FRA navy and leave your carracks there. Wait for BOH to distract their army into south.
Now attack Paris with all your manpower. I assume you already have dine in Paris mission. Assault if you feel like it.
Now when you have cores on most of France territory attrition won't drain your manpower (so fast). If you can win do it but don't make peace too fast, let their WE build up.
With no army, no money, reduced territory and sank navy they will be taken apart by other countries and rebels.
If you can't win, well, take some land and money or give them some BUR/ARA provinces and get ready for round two.
As Iwanow said conquering Ireland and subjugating SCO is important but you can win without it. BTW if SCO isn't your vassal they can easily back stab you...
Oh and one more thing, you're quite narrow minded so PAP will make good ally (excommunication is the best tool for gang rape).
BOH is your nuker, they have quite big army as emperor.
ARA and BUR are in case you need to peace out. (you don't need both)
HAB, CAS and POL are support, you don't need them, but if you can...
Invest in GOV and take your drill.
Start war with FRA with reconquest CB. Find main FRA navy and leave your carracks there. Wait for BOH to distract their army into south.
Now attack Paris with all your manpower. I assume you already have dine in Paris mission. Assault if you feel like it.
Now when you have cores on most of France territory attrition won't drain your manpower (so fast). If you can win do it but don't make peace too fast, let their WE build up.
With no army, no money, reduced territory and sank navy they will be taken apart by other countries and rebels.
If you can't win, well, take some land and money or give them some BUR/ARA provinces and get ready for round two.
As Iwanow said conquering Ireland and subjugating SCO is important but you can win without it. BTW if SCO isn't your vassal they can easily back stab you...
Oh and one more thing, you're quite narrow minded so PAP will make good ally (excommunication is the best tool for gang rape).
My strategy is :
Pause the game, make alliance with Scotland (to ensure they wont ally with france and stab you),Burgundy/Aragorn/Castille/Savoy (particulary any of French neighbours, Burgundy is unlikely to accept alliance/call to arms so better try other one), leave one diplomat to instantly dow France before it has it's vassals allied. Start building regiments in South England, send your existing army with a general to normandy and all the regiments you train. French army will engage yours but if you will send new troops fast enough you will soon overhelm them.Fully focus on gov tech to get +1 land morale idea to help you with France. France will be too busy with Portugal,Scotland and Savoy to destroy your doomstack at Normandy. (I often see France likes to focus on killing Savoy first). Try to carpet siege north France and beware for new vassals joining the fight, get the occupy Paris mission and have fun with cores on whole Galia.
In one of my games I was so lucky that durning first war with France two provinces (Toulse and Auvergne) ceded to me via event, so France lost like 6 provinces in one war
Pause the game, make alliance with Scotland (to ensure they wont ally with france and stab you),Burgundy/Aragorn/Castille/Savoy (particulary any of French neighbours, Burgundy is unlikely to accept alliance/call to arms so better try other one), leave one diplomat to instantly dow France before it has it's vassals allied. Start building regiments in South England, send your existing army with a general to normandy and all the regiments you train. French army will engage yours but if you will send new troops fast enough you will soon overhelm them.Fully focus on gov tech to get +1 land morale idea to help you with France. France will be too busy with Portugal,Scotland and Savoy to destroy your doomstack at Normandy. (I often see France likes to focus on killing Savoy first). Try to carpet siege north France and beware for new vassals joining the fight, get the occupy Paris mission and have fun with cores on whole Galia.
In one of my games I was so lucky that durning first war with France two provinces (Toulse and Auvergne) ceded to me via event, so France lost like 6 provinces in one war
If you're going to PU Castille as step 1 to world domination as England, you need to do it very quickly, before trying to PU Aragon. Castille's throne has a nasty habit of becoming invulnerable if you're not fairly quick.
My starting move as England is RM with Castille, then win any quick war to get enough Prestige to allow Claim Throne on Castille. Declare war on Castille (really early, 1400-1402 maybe), ideally whilst Castille is fighting Granada & really ideally with it's armies in Africa (where I can trap them with the RN).
Force a PU on Castille (after a lot of hard fighting - attrition in Spain can be nasty), ally with Castille, get relations up, & then worry about France. If you can military access through Aragon or Navarra (PU, vassalise or annex) then France is easy - Castille will march 30k troops to assist in any French war.
You've got until 1450 or so to Occupy Paris - that's an awfully long time.
My starting move as England is RM with Castille, then win any quick war to get enough Prestige to allow Claim Throne on Castille. Declare war on Castille (really early, 1400-1402 maybe), ideally whilst Castille is fighting Granada & really ideally with it's armies in Africa (where I can trap them with the RN).
Force a PU on Castille (after a lot of hard fighting - attrition in Spain can be nasty), ally with Castille, get relations up, & then worry about France. If you can military access through Aragon or Navarra (PU, vassalise or annex) then France is easy - Castille will march 30k troops to assist in any French war.
You've got until 1450 or so to Occupy Paris - that's an awfully long time.
1475 if i recall correctly. or 1470. Not quite sure.
Anyway PU'ing aragon first may make PU'ing castille lot easier. But best way is just to know how to fight(like not doing uber-big stacks in enemy lands, keeping your armies close to each other, and avoiding atrition...
I think that's a good idea actually. However, there's a lot of luck involved when it comes to choosing who to PU first (with that pesky new legit heir popping up - which sometimes make me want to have a CK2-style assassination system).
I'd warn against early coups against major rivals. What are you supposed to do for the rest of the 400 years?