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Beating France to form Germany

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Victoria 2 17560 After Action Reports (AAR)
It's always easiest to take them on at the very beginning: they have no allies and a small mobilization pool. Unfortunately, at least in 1.1, they try to take back their lost territory practically every time the truce runs out, so you have to keep your border well-defended.
 
As has been said establish a minimal front and have it as well fortified as is possible. Anticipate the French sending a doom-stack at your lines which means having reserves to rotate fresh troops to the battle and sufficient additional forces to encircle and create a kill-box. If you can pull all that off you can destroy half or more of the French army in one battle. Don't be too eager to establish that encirclement -- you will see the French continue to send troops into that engagement if you don't and you can maximize their losses and essentially win the entirety of the war in one engagement.

Some find this gamey, but you can go ahead and occupy all of continental France ... this has successfully kept them from ever coming at me again as it totally destroyed their industry and kept them in rebel hell for the next twenty years. Before they were in a position to worry about foreign affairs again I was far too strong a military presence for them to bother with their cores.

Keep Austria friendly, or at least have managed to have beaten badly enough on Austria previously that they're not too eager to come at you -- and if they decide to come at you they're a minor annoyance that can be managed once the French have been annihilated.
 
Encirclement & destroying armies work like in HoI, so once a massive battle is joined, (100k vs 100k or so) encircle that province with small detachments. When you win, their brigades are destroyed. I managed to destroy 200 French brigades like that in 4 months, even having a smaller army and inferior tech. Felt like 1940. :p
 
my strategy is quite different.

First, get a Good general, those +3 when attacking are very nice... (once i have a +6... but it is rare)

then.. let the french to invade your territory... it means they would have serious supply problem... as the upkeep certainly is not enough. If they go deep into your territories, you should be happy as they lost more troops due to upkeep. Your country is large, and let them take a few province does not matter. You will take them back.

Then let your 'Good general' to attack them. Choose a good battlefield to attack, sth like plain and never mountain, send stacks of army WITHOUT general to support him. The reason is that, in case the battle is not going well, and you want to save/load (or cheating as sb say), your general will not be changed. If you reinforce with other generals, the general on battke would probably change if you load the save game again, may be a nasty one, which means it is not good.

It always result to a huge battle... sth like 200000 vs 300000.. the french would keep on sending reinforcement.... and in most case... due to your good general.. you would win....

Fight few of such battles, the french should be exhausted of their army. And always.. due to the larger size of french army, pick your battles wisely. Dont fight a battle that you know you will not win... or win with huge lost, you cannot afford that. And after a battle, I always send the brigades that are depleted of organization and strength behind the front line to have a rest until they are of gd condition. It is a bad thing to use exhausted army in another battle, esp when your army is smaller than the french one.

And dont forget to pursue their defeated army if it is safe to do so...so that they cannot reinforce in their homeland, destroyed armies are always better, isnt it? ;)
 
I just beat france to form German empire
Also had a massive battle 5million Germans vs 7million French In One Battle!!!!
I have tamperd with the Mob size and pop size in the defines file so it could be a epic game :)

Id say just tie up heaps of there soldiers with most of yours, then send smaller armies into unguarded states, ur warscore will go up and they will have to accept you taking the provences you need to form germany
worked for me
German Empire 1859
 
I played last night, and I defeated the French! I took about 2 years with several major battles (my largest being 500 brigades vs 450 brigades). so, do I need to conquer Wurtemburg and Bavaria to get the three hurrahs?
 
I have no problem beat France as NGF. The key is to know that in Vic2 troops have no free province to retreat will dismiss after been defeated. So, first move is drawing most of France troops into one province. Then, surround that province with my troops, even one troop will do. Waiting org of France down to zero. It will be easy to kill 100K and dismiss another 300k France in one battle.
 
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Lord Tywin said:
Well I'm also thinking about beating up the French but I have quite a serious problem, those bastards are allies to the Austrians.
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Now that is quite the pickle. In 1.2 Austria shouldn't be that much of an issue since they can't mobilize @150 brigades as they can in 1.1. In 1.2 you might manage to destroy one army, start calling allies and letting them occupy France and then smash the Austrian army. If you're playing 1.1 you're going to need to manage that war incredibly well and perhaps get a fare amount of luck.
 
I'm the NGF with the southern German area in my SoI. But France is allied with Russia and no one else wants to ally me. I had the USA as ally in the beginning and I declared war on France once when they were fighting the UK. But the USA abandoned me and I had to fight two fronts which I eventually lost. I killed more of them than they of me but I eventually had to make peace because my troops were exhausted.

Is it basically game over? I don't see how I'm going to win a two front war without friends. Especially if Russia is industrializing this quick. I really don't want to start over because I hate the SoI mini-game in the beginning for Prussia.
 
Don't call your lesser allies to war! They only detract from the warscore because France will destroy them. Also you should be far ahead in military technology because of your tech-team (or whatever it's called with military-industrial complex).
 
I had to conquer Baden since Austria wouldm't let it go and it gave me a fairly large frontier. However the war wasn't that hard. I had a huge standing army which I concentrated on my border and all army techs up to date.
I then mobilized and let my reinforcement organise right behind the front.
France was allied with Belgium and Switzerland.
when I declared War they stmped 2 or 3 huge doomstacks on my army. I beat them and the pursuited with fill power while keeping Belgium and Switzerland with small stacks. After their doomstacks were defeated, the French had no army on the mainland. That's when I regreted not having a navy. I divided my troops on small stacks to occupy the territory, begining with the most important Provinces and then headed to the coast. When their overseas armies landed I joind my stacks from nearby provinces to bet them and then split again to occupy. Half of France was sufficient to win.
I might add that I went the historical way, I added the cut down to size casus belly, which made the thing all the more difficult.
 
You can win the SOI war with Austria. It's a little gamey, but this is how I did it. Wurttemberg was the last south german nation that I needed. Italy had been formed, so Austria was focusing all its time on preventing me getting Wurttemberg or in taking back Bavaria and Baden.

I researched all the techs that enhance diplomatic influence, then throw all my influence just at Wurttemberg. Austria will always discredit you before any of the other options, so while they are recharging their influence, keep up on Wurttemberg. Once you see Austria in the 30s, stop influencing until the discredit wears off. Work on banning their embassies and expelling them from the nations that you have already sphered. Repeat the process once the discredit in Wurttemberg has worn off. Austria's influence will have been reset and they'll discredit you again, but you'll still gaining points. The AI doesn't seem to be smart enough to keep building up influence after you stop. If it were smart like a human, it would recognize that any power that has more than, say, 50 points is a threat regardless of what the current rate of influence is. It would be smart to keep building influence to Ban Embassy while you're not influencing them. It will always take the cheaper and more immediate option (discredit), no matter how many points you have. Eventually you can sprint to the 100 points you need and snag the nation you need.

Like I said, it's gamey but it works.
 
The whole influence system is either gamey or it isn't, but it's all there is so it's what we have, and I can't think of anything you can do with it that's more gamey than anything else.

If you put all of your influence into one state, sometimes the AI will oppose you with similar focus and sometimes it won't.

If you put 1/3 of your influence into each of three states, sometimes the AI will counter you in one state; you can stop influencing that state and work on the other two.

It seems to be task-oriented and if you catch it when it's busy doing something else, it often won't oppose you even though it could and should.

I was able to take all of the German minors out of the Austrian sphere with default diplo tech by using a combination of patience, feints, and blunt force.

Example: On day one put one point into Holstein, Luxembourg, Saxony, and Hanover. You'll get smeared within a few days in three of those states. Put all influence into Luxembourg and France won't oppose you. Pick up Holstein at your leisure. After the smear has worn off, put one point each into Saxony and Bavaria. The AI countered in Bavaria. I took influence out of Bavaria and focused on Saxony. The AI continued in Bavaria and eventually zapped me there (can't remember how). I just kept going on Saxony and the AI never put another point into that one.

It has some kind of prioritization system that's a little off and it's easy to confuse it.
 
brucemo said:
The whole influence system is either gamey or it isn't, but it's all there is so it's what we have, and I can't think of anything you can do with it that's more gamey than anything else.

If you put all of your influence into one state, sometimes the AI will oppose you with similar focus and sometimes it won't.

If you put 1/3 of your influence into each of three states, sometimes the AI will counter you in one state; you can stop influencing that state and work on the other two.

It seems to be task-oriented and if you catch it when it's busy doing something else, it often won't oppose you even though it could and should.

I was able to take all of the German minors out of the Austrian sphere with default diplo tech by using a combination of patience, feints, and blunt force.

Example: On day one put one point into Holstein, Luxembourg, Saxony, and Hanover. You'll get smeared within a few days in three of those states. Put all influence into Luxembourg and France won't oppose you. Pick up Holstein at your leisure. After the smear has worn off, put one point each into Saxony and Bavaria. The AI countered in Bavaria. I took influence out of Bavaria and focused on Saxony. The AI continued in Bavaria and eventually zapped me there (can't remember how). I just kept going on Saxony and the AI never put another point into that one.

It has some kind of prioritization system that's a little off and it's easy to confuse it.
Click to expand...

It seems to be more broken now in 1.2 because of the 5 year influence freeze during a truce, and you've got to rely on more gamey tactics. I think to be historically accurate and also make the Assert Hegemony ever worth using to form Germany, you should be able to influence the minors immediately after winning this CB. That's basically what that CB, it makes Austria lose all of its influence in German powers. Now though, Austria or another GP can easily pick them up while you're still waiting to influence.

You are right though. It seems to be easier when the AI is distracted with a war or some other priority.
 
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