France!

[amanis]

Attrition and infation has no effect for AI France, HRE Austria cumulates power on the border(attrition!) but NEVER fights on France territory.
Ottomans are often killed by attrition, other country too, what's going on?

[Blxz]

Gigau the mod designer is from France, he has built in cheats that make them unstoppable.

[JoeSteel]

lol super france can be an issue later on in some of my games. I feel however that france is strong to a historical level, that said they need some nerfing traits. Historically they didn't do as good at many points because of (bad luck? or just negligence from the military?). I often play as Burgundy so I have seen france at it's worse and at it's best and I get what your saying. Sometimes it seems like France can just take anything and shrug it off and then at the same time do poorly for what they have. I think france could do with a little bit of nerfing but not so much that they would have trouble fighting off castille or aragon so as to remain historically accurate.

[Tapscott]

I feel that Frances current strenght levels are accurate. If it is losing hte hundred years war, then its trait give it a handicap that makes it struggle to become powerful.

[Semi-Lobster]

I feel that Frances current strenght levels are accurate. If it is losing hte hundred years war, then its trait give it a handicap that makes it struggle to become powerful.

I have never seen a game where France struggles to win the Hundred Years War in 5.3.3, let alone actually lose

[SirkTheMonkey]

I have never seen a game where France struggles to win the Hundred Years War in 5.3.3, let alone actually lose

The problem there is that, unlike what historically happened, France never gets one-hit KO'd like it did at Poitiers or Agincourt. I think Tapscott is referring to the trait penalties France has until it can make the decisions to shake them off like Wrath of God.

(EDIT) I hate to turn this into yet another bug report thread, but the decisions for removing those trait penalties require magistrates but don't actually take them away. Is that working properly?

[amanis]

France should be able to create a mighty, even hegemonic empire. This is not a problem for me.
The problem is that WE would never exceed 21 and falling despite enormous attrition, blockade ports.
Inflation does not affect either a treasury or on a technology.(Not only for France)
Tech is another matter. France has the highest tech even though it is outside the HRE and is a big country.

[Tapscott]

The problem there is that, unlike what historically happened, France never gets one-hit KO'd like it did at Poitiers or Agincourt. I think Tapscott is referring to the trait penalties France has until it can make the decisions to shake them off like Wrath of God.

(EDIT) I hate to turn this into yet another bug report thread, but the decisions for removing those trait penalties require magistrates but don't actually take them away. Is that working properly?

Yar, I meant that the traits that they are dealt do hamper them a bit in my games.

[SirkTheMonkey]

France should be able to create a mighty, even hegemonic empire. This is not a problem for me.
The problem is that WE would never exceed 21 and falling despite enormous attrition, blockade ports.
Inflation does not affect either a treasury or on a technology.(Not only for France)
Tech is another matter. France has the highest tech even though it is outside the HRE and is a big country.

Any chance of providing a save? Perhaps they've got a perfect storm of WE reduction going on. As for tech, I think France's provinces might be a little too good. In my Anglo-French Union game I was consistently ahead of the tech curve and only a few rich OPMs were beating me and that was with me minting a quarter of my income.

[gigau]

Yes, i am from France, and yes i'm proud to be French... but this doesn't mean i will give cheats to France. I think you all know that, but i wanted to state the obvious.

My opinion might be biased but here are my thoughts about why France hasn't become a monster historically despite having moments of greatness : mostly a lack of leadership. I mean, an example is the Battle of Bouvines where the French defeat a coalition including the Holy Roman Emperor. But stupidity from French nobility will be the main cause of about all the defeats following, among which the Battle of Kortrijk (or Battle of the Golden Spurs) during which the french infantry was gaining the upper hand, until the Count of Artois decided he couldn't let the infantry get the glory and charged, killing his own infantry in the process and getting killed. And of course there are most of the confrontations during the Hundred Years' War. With Charles VII, things get better. And don't get me started on the conflict of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons.
During the Wars of Religion, things are slightly different. A series of weak kings have let the different religious factions fight each other. This allowed for the Habsburgs, present in Netherlands, Italy and Spain, to use the situation and finance the catholics and the protestants to weaken the Kingdom. On a side note, sheer stupidity of French leadership made them destroy any chance of allying with one of the only nation that also hated the ultra-catholic Habsburgs : the Anglican England.
Then, we had Louis XIII and Louis XIV who preferred to get caught in endless wars against everybody in Europe to keep the upper hand over the Habsburgs on the continent, overlooking the importance of a powerful fleet and the great promises of the colonies, allowing for the loss of Quebec that they deemed not worth fighting over for.
If we jump to the turn of the XVIIIth to XIXth century, we have the Revolutionary Wars and Napoleon's Campaigns, during which France was at war with most of Europe for the better part of 25 years. We could argue at length on what could have or couldn't have happened depending on the "ifs" and "if-nots", but there is this feeling that Napoleon took that last bite that makes you throw up and the end of a long dinner, with his Campaign of Russia.

All in all, call me chauvinistic (might be... after all, i'm French ), but i'd say France self-contained itself with lousy monarchs and stupid nobility. When leadership was much better, the neighbours allied or acted to keep them in check and prevent France from becoming more powerful.



That being said, i've added a penalty modifier at start of game, with decisions to simulate Charles VII/VIII (don't remember the exact one actually ) reforms of the economics and of the military. I'll check if i haven't forgotten something, based on Sirk's report.
In my test games, either France does very well after a century of game, or it has been destroyed. I could post a screenshot of my latest save game, in which France never recovered event in the 1750's, the territories being split between Navarra in the north, Bretagne in the west, Guyenne in the south, Dauphiné in the middle plus a few minors sparkled all over.

Once the spread of Reform works better, i'd like to model the Wars of Religions that really plagued French history, possibly it could be available for any nation of a given size with a certain amount of heretical provinces. This would definitely slow France down in a second part of the game.



And because, after all this is a reply to the first post (), i have a question for you, amanis : were you playing a nation close to France, with lucky nations on ? I'll have to check but it almost looks like bonus a lucky nations would have. Not because i have anything to do with that, but game almost always gives lucky nation trait to France when the player is in its neighbourhood.

[JoeSteel]

I always play with lucky nations, so that last part might explain how an army of 15k frenchmen could run over my 21k strong burgundy army with military drill about 80% of the time. I find that being HRE tends to deter them even if they hate your guts .
On to the HYW. The reason I see England not being able to even peirce france (despite my help of military access through artoys) is that France has a military that completely eclipses the english. It's like 100k total for france and around 45k for England. Im thinking that a standing army of 100k men isn't historically accurate lol. I also was thinking of Agincourt in my first post. "Hungover soldiers not make good cavalry charge!"

[Blxz]

Yes, i am from France, and yes i'm proud to be French... but this doesn't mean i will give cheats to France. I think you all know that, but i wanted to state the obvious.

Yeah, I hope you didn't think I was being serious. That was one of the least serious posts I've ever put in the MEIOU subforums, thought it was obvious. =)

[gigau]

Yeah, I hope you didn't think I was being serious. That was one of the least serious posts I've ever put in the MEIOU subforums, thought it was obvious. =)

From you, it was obvious to me

We have been discussing for some time now. But there are people here who don't know me much, and hearing that i'm French could make false assumptions. So i just wanted to state the obvious for them

[mtgdjs]

I feel that France's strength level is accurate. In most of my games it takes France many decades to recover the English-controlled territory in the HYW, which is what actually happened historically.

Also. France was strong historically because of strong kings. The state that really had trouble with bad kings and stupid nobility was the Empire, not France. Since France's strength largely came from early centralization, and even then wars with the Empire were always too exhausting for either side to gain a decisive victory, there weren't really many good ways for France to expand, and when others countries caught up in centralization, France lost the ability to fight all of Europe (without launching a revolutionary war, obviously). Had French kings tried to do earlier what Louis XIV tried, namely to get their heir elected Emperor and use the power of France to centralize the Empire, then France could have become far more powerful than it ever actually became.

[gigau]

Possibly, for some tags, i could add triggered modifiers for some nations (France would be one of the first on my list ) for which the effects of the ruler skills are more deeply felt.

[amanis]

In my current game France is torn to pieces by 1000 regiments (yes, one million soldiers) monarchist rebellion. wow
Gigau, what you did?

[Noctus]

In my current Kingdom of Jerusalem game in which i left Europe alone after 1420 France went into a dominating giant, eating Aragon, all of France proper, and the western third of the HRE. I carefully politiced my way around any wars with them and only tried some smallscale political containing by diplovassalising some border-HRE-minors so to give Mega-France less reasons to go towar and eat more HRE for breakfast. I needed the Habsburgs Emperors as strong-enough containment for the Ottomans to not eat up South-Eastern Europe and thus become a danger to myself.

This balance of power lasted till France fell into the biggest Revolution i have ever seen where 100k stacks were duking it (and this big was needed asFrance had astanding army over 500k strong when it hit) out for ~25 years and it collapsed two times till it stabilised smaller but still quiet strong (and spit out a 10-province Armangnac and a 8-Province-Navarre in northern France, and all the HRE-minors it had eaten up before.

This all was very cool! And all without me doing anything.

[europolis]

In my current Kingdom of Jerusalem game in which i left Europe alone after 1420 France went into a dominating giant, eating Aragon, all of France proper, and the western third of the HRE. I carefully politiced my way around any wars with them and only tried some smallscale political containing by diplovassalising some border-HRE-minors so to give Mega-France less reasons to go towar and eat more HRE for breakfast. I needed the Habsburgs Emperors as strong-enough containment for the Ottomans to not eat up South-Eastern Europe and thus become a danger to myself.

This balance of power lasted till France fell into the biggest Revolution i have ever seen where 100k stacks were duking it (and this big was needed asFrance had astanding army over 500k strong when it hit) out for ~25 years and it collapsed two times till it stabilised smaller but still quiet strong (and spit out a 10-province Armangnac and a 8-Province-Navarre in northern France, and all the HRE-minors it had eaten up before.

This all was very cool! And all without me doing anything.

Gigaus is a genius.
Maybe he should also look into Portugal, although they were the first state to properly centralize and did a series of grand things, they still feel like a minor with no real luck, when playing against them. They should have permanent major Explorations bonuses or something in the likes of.

[leppuno]

France is really a piece of work in MEIOU. It's definitely the most polished nation of them all because everytime they succeed/decline, there's ALWAYS a very obvious explanation in game.

In my games, I could see that the HYW is really coded to be back and forth between England and France. I've seen France cross "The French Channel" and yet other times, I've seen them collapse into Dauphin and sometimes even a resurgence after being turned into Dauphin. Most of the time though, status quo is reached and both crowds go home disgruntled.

That said, France never survives if I'm in play. Maybe it's because I don't really like the fact that the map is too blue. But yeah, defeating France is easy once you learn the trick.

TRICK: release Guyenne

[Haresus]

In my game a revolution crushed France pretty early. They split up into Duchies and I managed to get a PU mission on what little was left. Them Royalists are pretty damn scary.