Session 7
Player Changes
Mughals is out.
War Continues (Session Start—1556)
With my advantage in troop numbers apparent, I decided to go on the offensive, rushing into Prussia and Austria and reducing the Prussian army to almost nothing, before having to retreat my much-depleted army without any major victories. For a few months back-and-forth action reigned supreme, until Prussia’s warscore was bad enough that I could stability hit him out of the war in exchange for his canceling a core. Despite my major advantage over Austria, he decided to remain fighting, no doubt hoping to hold out long enough for Prussia to rejoin and turn the tide once again. By 1555 both sides’ armies were largely depleted, and I decided to launch an offensive to win the war with more stability hits.
The meager French army moves forward for one last push.
Soon I was able to occupy sufficient territory to drive warscore above 40%, and stability hit Austria while declaring war on another of his vassals; Cologne. Austria accepted the peace (revocation of all cores), and I annexed Cologne, leaving me with a gain of four provinces from the war as well as revoking four of their cores. A slider move towards Free Subjects granted me Better Administration for a few months of free minting, I built an embassy to accelerate infamy reduction, and reached Land tech 23 and Arsenals with it.
Peace (1556—1570)
The uneasy peace which followed lasted much longer than I expected, as both sides nursed their wounds. I spoke to both Prussia and Austria hoping to bring about an end to the constant wars, but neither seemed interested (Austria resented losing the 7 provinces I’ve taken from him, and Prussia feels cornered given the relative power of Austria and I). Seeing little hope of peace in the future and with third parties still proclaiming neutrality, I built up a standing army of 450,000, burned infamy, and fixed up my economy.
The rest of the world remained relatively peaceful, with the Ottomans slowly eating the now-deceased Mughal Empire and having a minor skirmish with the Netherlands to ensure their dominance of it. While my infamy and with it trade had mostly recovered, the giant Ottomans still dwarfed everyone else in economy by this stage of the game.
The results of uncontested Ottoman expansion into Asia.
Another slider move gave yet another Better Administration event, this time buying me a Fine Arts Academy, and as the new decade began war once again appeared on the horizon; I saw Austrian and Prussian troops massing on my borders and prepared for yet another war.
What War Are We On, Anyways? (1570—Session End)
Soon into 1570, the Germans declared war, blitzing into France and assaulting as they went. My forces were forced to concentrate around the Champagne area, and things briefly looked bad as their much larger army engaged me. While their charge was not sustainable, it would’ve lasted much longer if not for a critical mistake from Austria.
A 4 fire 6 shock general fighting an unled army; the results were predictably messy.
Austria’s army, like most peoples’, was divided into a number of ~10-15 regiment stacks, one of which had his best general. Since most fights have been under 100 regiments per side at the start, the 10:1 wipe condition hasn’t been much of a factor this game, and thus he forgot to merge an extra stack or two with his general before charging. With the general’s maneuver causing it to arrive first, its army wiped instantly and the remaining forces arrived un-led. To make things worse, Austria never noticed, and when I retreated to better ground he followed, taking terrible casualties. Prussia used the chaos to move in on and occupy Paris, but he was ultimately forced to retreat when my army surged back after defeating the Austrian force, and the Germans fled France as I assaulted the land they had taken. For attrition reasons, the front once again stabilized directly on our border, and the war entered a long slugfest where neither side had much ability to advance or even kill many of their opponents.
At the session end 4 years from this screenshot, the front still looks very similar.
By the end of the session, the war looks indecisive. Both of them are drained of manpower while I retain 150,000 men in my reserves, and while their forces are largely depleted they still match mine due to sheer numeric advantage. I lost a significant amount of my army over border skirmishes, paying attention to one area while they would sneak attack in another, and in return have encircled and destroyed a few of their armies and look to be on the verge of another such wipe. The war, it seems, is far from over.
Stats and Map
http://www.europa3.ru/cgi-bin/mpsta...e=int&season=comp-2013&game=XVI&yearsave=1576
Comments
I intended to record the wars this session and have the visual aid be almost entirely that, but unfortunately the screen recording software instead chose to record my desktop behind the game. As a result, there is a distinct lack of screenshots. I’ll try to get screen recording working properly by next session.
If anyone's interested, the final casualties for the first war were 534,028 Prussians, 807,600 Austrians (for a total of 1,341,628 Germans) and 894,964 Frenchmen. I'd estimate another million or more died from attrition from every involved player. The current casualties in the second war are 946,189 Germans and 786,364 Frenchmen.