Land of Hope and Glory!

[unmerged(181153)]

And what is not thine will soon be thine.

Well you've got to aim high. Next objectives are to build up cash to purchase a number of refineries equal to the number of provinces I control with wine/grapes growing in them. After this I shall be aiming on securing merchants in CoTs around the globe. Whilst all this happens I hope to waltz into the native settlements in Africa and start butchering pagans. Also I'd like to annex Scotland, Ulster and towards the start of the War of the Roses maybe Portugal too.

Infra level 4 by 1460 is my next major goal.

 

[unmerged(181153)]

With no wars for a couple of years it is time to take an intermission in the chapters and clear up some stuff that's not too interesting but happened nonetheless.

We killed some rebels that were left over from the war with Portugal. Warwick's death had given us two revolting cities over the course of it's tenure. Both forces were crushed promptly.

​

York came back to France and set straight all that was wrong. He eliminated the revolt risk from event effects in France, was now available for warfare, came with his 10,000 men who marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again. And when they were up they were up. And when they were down they were down. And when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down.

Someone took a small puddle of our cash to make Holland a more profitable place in the long run. No complaints from me!

Finally we came to the end of our ridiculous war taxation cycle and our massive hike in inflation ceased. We were rewarded in our efforts by a bout of deflation in our lands.

 

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We had the choice of either investigating a crime for 10 ducats or losing 1 stability. The choice seemed obvious to me...

And the results proved exceedingly exciting! Our land was returned to a fully stabilized state. Huzzah!

Most fortuitously we had an exceptional year not so long after we had a bout of deflation. Our inflation rate was now down to 1.7%. We would not expect such luck in future years. Our minting would be kept to a minimum. For now.

Extraordinarily the rebels in Cantabria defected to Foix. This was interesting indeed and we were keen to see how this might play out.

Portugal joined our military wolf pack after much persuasion. Very nice.

We received a gift from a rich noble which more than covered the expenses of our most recent war loan. If we had better luck we'd be going to a casino!

Bad luck strikes, however, and we lose the service of an exceptional commander, York.

Apparently we have a great reputation. This strikes me as odd... doesn't everyone hate us?

Even more so now! We take the opportunity to make better buddies with Scotland and Annex their kingdom into ours. Lovely jubbly. 30,000 infantry and 11 vessels added to the forces.

Oh yes, and Scotland too.

 

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Our third colony (fourth if you count Meath) matures into a city.

Our first refinery finishes construction in Champagne. 12 more ducats a year production income and stickier merchants! But not sticky enough!

We brought York back to England as he was causing trouble and being an uncooperative bitch. He was left to mess about in England doing something uninteresting. Maybe I'll have him killed?

Portugal lost Tangiers back to Morocco which is nice because I didn't want to own any Sunni states right now. I'm not sure our country could deal with it.

We still had a great reputation. Seriously... what's up with that? >.>

Gloucester, who had served us so well, was apparently working against the state. We don't know how true this was as Suffolk seems to have been the perpetrator in creating these acts. This shall be investigated but Gloucester was no more.

Finally something interesting happened! Aragon declared war on us and called in her 3 allies, Naples, Mantua and Milan. We were a little shocked at first but that didn't matter now. Aragon was to fall by our hands. They would rue this day. Our allies were called in to help.

Clearly Aragon has been doing my allies no favours as they did not hesitate in joining me against my foe. I mean to make my enemy my vassal.

Our 100,000 strong army marched south to prepare for WAR!!!!!

 

[Enewald]

Time to get a bunch of new vassals?

 

[unmerged(181153)]

I don't know. In my history of waging war with Aragon I usually get screwed over by their mountainous eviroments, I anticipate them inviting more enemies into the alliance and Milan and Mantua are sure to get enough military access to be able to hit me with whatever absurd stacks of troops they train with their x8 gold income. I'm genuinely worried about this war. I don't think I'm in any position to lose it but if my army is weakened sufficiently and I need to train troops to replenish them then I might become a target for other European countries. Remember they ALL still have a casus belli on me from my annexation of Scotland.

Plus with 8-10 provinces suffering from nationalism RR, the war exhaustion might be set to rise. I'm might aim to make a few decisive strikes in aragon and sue for an early white peace...

 

[Serek000]

Yeah, Aragon can be tough to bring down. Their islands are tough to siege (low population and high attrition), and the mountains cause trouble both with defense bonuses and slow movement speeds. If you can, try amphibious landings into unoccupied provinces instead of overland assaults. Hopefully you can get some money out of them without any serious fighting.

 

[unmerged(181153)]

That's a good plan. Mantua is one of these single province minors which could prove to be quite rich. I'm tempted to win the war in those provinces with my cavalry and either vassalize them or earn a huge puddle of gold. I want more refineries... and I'm thinking about building Fine Arts acadamies. Maybe 50 of them... >.>

 

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Aragon Strikes the English First in Southern France​

An invasion force besiege Carcasonne and prep to hit Toulouse. We send our finest cavalry unit to intercept their forces.

Our cavalry meet the enemy and discover that the entire enterage is made up of cavalry themselves! This was an unexpected suprise from the enemy force. We suffer some heavy initial casualties.

We choose to tactically retreat to save losing more units and away a backup unit of infantry to make a sweep of the plains of Languedoc.

Meanwhile our troop in Gascogne come under threat from a small strike squad in the wooded areas around the river.

An English victory, this way comes. We are elated with our recent success and send our 60,000 strong unit to crush the brigands in Languedoc.

The battle doesn't even last a day! We crushed the enemy so swiftly they forgot to even turn up to fight. Blissful devesation.

10,000 more opposition rise to the slaughter and are quickly fended off with a few sharp jabs. We haven't seen any troops from Milan, Mantua or Naples as of yet, however.

The catalan ships join enter the fray. We battle for a long time but strike a decisive win over the enemy. We move on with the hope of shipping troops to the opposition islands.

A technological advance! We reach land technology level 2, albeit about 10 years after everyone else. We appear to have started to lag behind slightly in the military technology race. This is something that requires rectifying!

At last we see a 2nd belligerant in this war. Ships from the Naples navy attempt to stop our ships entering the med but we prevail and move onwards.

GOD DAMN PEASANTS! They can't do anything right! We have low inflation, there is no war exhaustion, we have a great economy, we are winning a war and we have the largest military in the world. What more do these bastards want? We opt to pay off their leaders and deal with a small revolt...

A small revolt which happens to occur right next to our troops and looks like a perfect opportunity to lure the enemies 40,000 troops into Languedoc for us to ambush! Haha! A brilliant plan! Well done peasants!

 

[unmerged(181153)]

taking a week and a half off and flying to Belfast and then driving to Edinburgh. woot!

Someone give me some advice, and do you know if it's possible to avoid the War of the Roses? :/

 

[Enewald]

You cannot avoid it I believe...

 

[unmerged(181153)]

I looked at the files and it seems odd but I think it's avoidable if you DON'T own Normandie and Caux. This is the only way you can trigger the events that sleep St. Albans. Nevermind, I guess dealing with the WotR is much more interesting...

 

[Toio]

If you take out Aragon, you basically destroy a strong Spain forming

 

[unmerged(181153)]

dealing with a "Very Hard" enemy on Furious. I'm really tempted to not take any of Aragon should they attempt to invade again with the Casus Belli they'd surely acquire. Maybe Vassalize and annex in a few years? ^^;

 

[Beamed]

Well done peasants indeed.

 

[Serek000]

Good to see those uppity Frenchies peasants put down.

Aragon can become a death trap if you're not careful, avoid letting them DOW as long as possible, although if Naples is around, they can be a useful ally, as they'll harass Aragon in Sicily, keeping their attention and hopefully a large amount of troops occupied.

 

[unmerged(181153)]

Upgraded my photobucket account to "Pro" so that images remain even after exceeding the 10GB limit. I'm astonished it's exceeded 10GBs already :/ oops!


Should update tonight with recent adventures!

 

[unmerged(181153)]

A Masterclass in Landbased Warfare​

We were able to quell the ambition of York for a short time with his place in Ireland. Our relations and taxes improved thoroughly as a result.

Our forces set out to strike at the rebels. Overwhelmed by superior leaders and armies on our own soils we prepared to crush. Unfortunately Somerset took control of the army and comparatively with Talbot was utter shite.

Victory for the shite general. We sent Somerset to get drunk in Paris rather than letting him assist in the war. We didn't want to lose, after all.

Talbot stormed through the mountains crushing as he went. Our target was Aragon. It was not possible for the enemy to reinforce by seas and we were to send our cavalry to the plains to stop the reinforcement by land.

A brief victory in Aragon and a massive victory in Languedoc had melted the enemy forces which now attempted to quell a rebel invasion mid war effort. Pitiful...

Gerona didn't take long to have English Squatters invade. Our French armies took this opportunity to loot the wines...

Aragon was being laid to waste and our fleet was in her harbour. We had 50,000 troops on board ready to diminish the last of the Catalan armies on the peninsula.

Our unit was to land and attempt to destroy the enemy quickly. We had only a small amount of supply for during the battle and needed to overcome them quickly.

We managed to destroy the army and equip our unit with all her rations and goodies to minimize casualties.

We sent a unit to Valencia to crush the rebel scum occupying the territory. Even the catalans didn't deserve to have a governmental collapse.

We lost the fight and pulled out of the zone. Luckily we had caused enough damage to dissipate the enemy forces and steal the siege for our own!

The rebels had done our work for us and an already weakened Valencia fell almost immedeatly to our invasion force. We finally had somewhere for our ships to rest during this openning phase of combat. Next we needed to invade the mediteranean islands. With revolts becoming increasingly likely we wanted this war over with soon...

We are next to focus on the seas and amphibious assaults...

 

[Enewald]

quite a lot of attrition...
Well, at least you can use French cannonfodder.

 

[unmerged(181153)]

Talbot with his +4 manuver skill stopped any attrition in Aragon and there's supply limit of 24 and 28 in Valencia and Catalonia (where most of my troops are respectively) which is increased by 10 for having both ports adjacent to high numbers of ships for supply. I have military access to Castile which means my ships can dock and resupply every few months.

Currently in the war my attritional losses have been approximately 3,000 from moving Talbot and his 24,000 troops through the mountains at the same time and 3,000 in Catalonia when I left it accidentally without ship based support for a month.

I have lost 1 of my 90 ships. I hope to lose no more than 10 ships in the entirity of this conflict, although if I'm going for a speedy victory then attrition might start taking it's toll. To gain the fastest victory in the mediteranean one needs to be able to have enough ships able to blockade constantly which means one needs a constant supply of ships resupplying at nearby ports. The Baleares and Sicily will be key targets to aid in the naval supply lines.

If you're confused that you can't see some of the other 125,000 troops on the last screenshot it's because they're on board the navy already.