Sick Man of Europe - an Ottoman Empire AAR

[morningSIDEr]

4.) Consonants. Serbia is my storehouse of extra consonants, and I can't let them fall into enemy hands.

When planning strategies, this objective is always most important, protection of the consonants! Hopefully you can indeed beat Italy to occupation of Austria's provinces, as it certainly looks as if Austria is on the ropes. Personally though, I rather hope Russia gets involved too. They will not best you, it will instead simply be interesting to see how you defeat them once more!

 

[Stuyvesant]

Frighteningly realistic behavior (circa 1915) from the Italian AI - jump in when your opponent is down.

If the Italians occupy the northern Italian regions, will you still be able to get enough war score to obtain your goals? And if not, can you get an army up north soon enough to keep the Italians in check?

The continued ruthless entrapment and decimation of enemy armies is (as always) a sight to behold.

 

[naggy]

Enewald: I prefer to make things more challenging for them, not vice versa.

loki100: Moo! As to the AAR situation: straight gameplay AARs after a game has been out 2 years really needs something interesting to make it click. Something epic, like PrawnStar's AARs, or some interesting limitation (like my single CoT game as Castille).

morningSIDEr: My spies have been sent to tell Russia about this upstart nation called Khandesh...

Stuyvesant: What I want will take a shade under 90 war score, I think. I can't get to Austria's regions in Denmark, so your suspicions probably are correct that I may end up short if I can't take at least part of northern Italy.

 

[naggy]

Chapter 16: The Dismemberment of Austria

A quick check of armies shows that Wurttemburg has no brigades left and Austria is down to 65 (to my 84). Several of their remaining brigades have been mauled, so I'm in good shape.

October 1866: One trick to keep the AI busy is to use cavalry in another front. I had split up and started occupations, then fled when the Austrians show up. In this case, 9 brigades are uselessly defending the east while I sit safely in Romanian Moldavia.

Back in the west, the Austrian army in Foca surrenders.

November: The army in Zadar is trapped, and another small army has tried to sneak in. In this case, since there are still unaccounted for brigades, I'm not going to try to envelop the smaller army, so it escapes on the 14th (after losing over half its men).

November 21: For once, the Austrians move to break the encirclement, except I've managed to get 10 brigades with a good defensive general there first. They also inexplicably don't merge the two incoming armies - so one brigade arrives early to insta-die due to being outnumbered 10:1.

Oh look, that's where the rest of the Austrian army is! Good choice...(for me). I didn't notice before the occupation, since my outliner was focused on influence.

December 12: This is all the Austrian's armies in theater, all nicely encircled and being strangled to death. I keep a few remaining irregulars for encirclement duty - that way if I screw up and get one killed, they're irregulars.

December 21: The Austrian army that had been near Romania appears back in Croatia, so my cavalry spreads out again to start occupations.

December 27: A late Christmas present of the unpleasant variety comes barreling down on 3000 irregulars in Karlovac. In other cases, I might disband the army to prevent the loss of POPs and to prevent Austria from getting free war score, but I desperately need to keep the army in Bihac sealed off - a battle will do that.

Happy New Year! The armies in Bihac are free to move north to Karlovac. Again, I'm not trying for encirclement here: this is the last Austrian army I know of, so I need to take the opportunity to chase it down and milk all the war score I can (I don't yet have 25 from battles).

January 11: The Austrians lose in Karlovac and retreat north to Ljubjiana.

January 18: The Austrians in Zadar finally surrender after over 2 months. It leads to a peace offer (hah!).

January 27: 10800 more Austrians are lost (to 3250 Turks) in Ljubjiana, pushing them north to Klagenfort, then to Salzburg, then to Innsbruck, and finally to Bozen (on March 27th). As my army follows, brigades split off to start occupation - as long as I follow and start battles, I don't take attrition (though since the battle in Ljubjiana ended so late in the month, I'll eat some).

March 1: A new war goal is added: Acquire Transdanubia. I am not yet over the BB limit. More war goals must wait until the last possible minute. Most our army is now occupying Austria.

April 5: As you can see here, Italy has not gotten very far into Austrian territory. More war score for me! In the mean time, the last Austrian army is marching around the desert, taking attrition.

April 7: Targu Mures falls to my cavalry near Romania, making the first Austrian province to be occupied. They currently hold 5 of mine (2 in Tripoli, 3 in Croatia).

April 15: Attrition: It's what's for dinner. And look at that soothing green in the outliner. Sooo peaceful and calm...

May 11: With battles over, our stockpile spending is dropped to 40% to conserve cash - we've blown through over 100,000 pounds in this war so far.

May 22: The UK declares war on the USA over American New England.

July 2: The Ottoman Empire signs the Geneva Convention. Nice timing for Austria, that we signed this after the war was all but over...

September 16: As Austrian provinces fall one by one, Switzerland gives us Military Access (on the third try), letting us start occupying Wurttemburg.

March 6, 1868: Most of Austria has fallen, so it's time to go over the limit. Slovakia is added as a war goal, as is the annexation of Wurttemburg. I'd go after the rest of Austria's sphere, but France is Friendly with Bavaria and Baden, and Italy is currently occupying Saxony - I don't want to declare a war only to have Italy annex them.

March 21: Moravia is added as a war goal.

March 25: War is declared on Saxony, as the Italian army has moved out for no apparent reason.

April 6: Denmark declares war on Austria to retake Jutland.

April 10: Bohemia is added as a war goal.

April 20: A few Jacobins rise up in Prussia, which still only has 10 brigades.

May 4: A War of Annexation is declared on Saxe-Weimar. Their armies quickly are crushed.

June 24: Wurttemburg is annexed - we receive 2 MIL because we failed to humiliate them as well. On the same day, Austria agrees to peace, ceding Transdanubia, Slovakia, Moravia, and Bohemia. We have now grown by 5 regions. Austria is now split in 3 parts, and I have a nice clean border with my next victim - Prussia.

 

[Duke of Awesome]

The borders! they burn! nice job smashing them regardless of your complete disregard for the art of border making.

 

[naggy]

The borders! they burn! nice job smashing them regardless of your complete disregard for the art of border making.

According to Google Translate: Veni, vidi, finibus impar sum! (I came, I saw, I made odd borders!)

 

[winsingtonIII]

Haha those may be the ugliest borders ever... but great work none the less!

EDIT: Wait... how did you not go over the BB limit after annexing Wurttemburg and taking 4 regions from Austria??

 

[TheArchMede]

April 7: Targu Mures falls to my cavalry near Romania, making the first Austrian province to be occupied. They currently hold 5 of mine (2 in Tripoli, 3 in Croatia).

At first I thought that was your typo, but I see it is spelt that way in one of the screen shots. Tirgu Mures is the modern Romanian name for the town in Transylvania that would than have been known by its Hungarian name (or possibly its German name). The map there is really muddled in terms of what names are used. It looks like Paradox rolled dice to decide whether to use the Romanian or Hungarian names in each region and ignored the German ones.

Speaking of muddled, the tactical AI seems pretty incompetent. I was impressed by how good the AI was in the original at avoiding encirclement but unless there is a lot of manoever going on to set it up that you are not showing, it looks awful by comparison. It was awful (as in every Paradox game I have played) at dealing with amphibious situations, but I thought the original was pretty good at managing deployment in a purely land campaign. You could encircle it, but you had to work hard to manage it. Is it just the way you are writing it, or is the tactical AI that much worse than in the original?

 

[PrawnStar]

Good going there and don't worry about the knockers, I know the borders are a Work in Progress.

Re The Arch Mede's point about the tactical AI - is this down to you doing a lot of manouvering? The AI doesn't cope very well with that - although to be fair quite a few humann generals ended up losing to enemies with a better grasp of mobility.

 

[Dewirix]

So you've decided to start the BB wars in 1866?

Good luck with that, although I suppose it's too early for anyone to have a crazy number of brigades and you'll be fighting the Russians and Austrians regularly in any case.

On the ease with which you can encircle enemies, the AI normally falls down by being overly aggressive and not keeping a reserve. By splitting forces into 10-brigade stacks you can usually get the AI to focus its efforts on one of these. Then you can use the others to surround and reinforce. However, you can only really pull off the trick when you've got enough troops to actually win that battle with the AI's main stack.

 

[Darth Moose]

You've almost convinced me to buy Vicky2 naggy. Go Ottomans!

 

[unmerged(198309)]

You need to make sure to annex Krakow at some point.

Also what is Austria's score now that you stole her Prime Provinces? Are they still a great power?

 

[naggy]

winsingtonIII: I am now over the BB limit. However, I now have the 5th highest MIL score (IIRC, behind China, UK, France, and Japan), and UK is allied with me. No one seems to want to risk bringing the UK in.

The Arch Mede/Prawnstar: If you invade the AI, it is pretty decent at maneuver. However, once the AI starts an occupation, the AI seems to prefer continuing occupation to maneuvering for advantage, which means that you can safely crush them one army at a time. It takes quite a bit for the AI to stop an occupation.

Dewirix: BB is more of a guide than a rule. And you're right - without a heavy local advantage, you just get smacked around. This is where falling behind on tech hurts - you can encircle someone all you want, but if they have machine guns and you don't, it just means you die in a big circle.

anweRU: For all the problems, the game is a blast to play until the lag hits.

Surume: They are on the menu once I go after Russia. As for Austria, they are still a GP - They're 5th-7th at this point. Industrialization covers up being rather pathetic otherwise.

I have played to the end of the next war, so I'll get the rest of the updates out this week. The borders are not getting prettier.

 

[oberstbrooksy]

Why do you have such a hate for Germans!

Move on the Italians or the French!

 

[naggy]

Why do you have such a hate for Germans!

Move on the Italians or the French!

Prussia is significantly weaker than Italy, and I can eat German minors like popcorn.

The French have not fought a major war at all during the game, so they have plenty of soldiers and poor mobilizable pops to throw at me.

 

[Nikolai]

Those borders sure are ugly. Something needs to be done.

 

[TheArchMede]

On the ease with which you can encircle enemies, the AI normally falls down by being overly aggressive and not keeping a reserve. By splitting forces into 10-brigade stacks you can usually get the AI to focus its efforts on one of these. Then you can use the others to surround and reinforce. However, you can only really pull off the trick when you've got enough troops to actually win that battle with the AI's main stack.

So the AI regularly has a main stack?

Have things like the concentric attack bonus and the movement malus in enemy controlled territory gone?

 

[naggy]

So the AI regularly has a main stack?

In this war, they used 5-6 roughly equal sized stacks, and most of the time, half of them were arranged together so they could defend each other, so that made sense.

Have things like the concentric attack bonus and the movement malus in enemy controlled territory gone?

They are not in V2 (to my knowledge). The malus isn't really appropriate to the early period (later on, though, units should be able to use friendly rail, which they currently can't).

 

[Enewald]

You are fulfilling the Ottoman dream: Baltic coastline.
they attempt it often in Eu3 and are close to achieving it in real life.
One day... all German Turks move to Mecklemburg and vote to join Turkey. It is inevitable.

 

[aldriq]

I thought you were going to Austria for a snack, not a seven course banquet! I should have known better...

You are fulfilling the Ottoman dream: Baltic coastline.
they attempt it often in Eu3 and are close to achieving it in real life.
One day... all German Turks move to Mecklemburg and vote to join Turkey. It is inevitable.

It all makes sense now