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Well, I guess you're right, but it's the wrong mindset, IMO.
Burgundy is #1 when the game starts, as far as income and number of troops are concerned.
They should be afraid of you, not the other way around.

But I guess that after fearing the Big Blue Blob (France) for a while, the thought of actually beating them early is unthinkable :)

The resources required to fight France is not worth the potential loss later on. Grabbing colonies, expanding trade, getting ideas, those things are infinitely more valuable and satisfying in the long run than taking some war torn province. Blobbing for the sake of snowballing even more... how is that even fun?
 
You can do all those in parallel. And you don't need to conquer France, just break it. Give provinces to Brittany, Provence, etc.

Or you could just stay in the Low Countries and wait for BBB to visit you 200 years later :)
 
The resources required to fight France is not worth the potential loss later on. Grabbing colonies, expanding trade, getting ideas, those things are infinitely more valuable and satisfying in the long run than taking some war torn province. Blobbing for the sake of snowballing even more... how is that even fun?

Because it makes my country's name slightly bigger and better aligned on the Political Mapmode.


:D
 
The resources required to fight France is not worth the potential loss later on. Grabbing colonies, expanding trade, getting ideas, those things are infinitely more valuable and satisfying in the long run than taking some war torn province. Blobbing for the sake of snowballing even more... how is that even fun?
It's incredibly easy to wreck France when starting as Burgundy in 1444. Use the HYW to your advantage, and the fact that England will not give up easily since France can't occupy the home islands.

Plus, if you do manage to manage to blob into France, you get control of those sweet, rich French provinces to help fuel your.... whatever you want to do, really.
 
Exploiting an AI to blob off it of is kind of skillless.

I'm better than that. No offense.

..?

It's one thing to exploit the AI being unable to do something, or falling for obvious tricks (start->cancel move, for instance) it's entirely something else to exploit a disadvantaged position (IE, being tied up in another war).
 
Exploiting an AI to blob off it of is kind of skillless.

I'm better than that. No offense.
Surely the Austrians and Russians thought to themselves: exploiting the Ottomans to blob off them is kind of skill-less (hey, I invented a word!). Maybe we should just sit here and watch.

Surely the Austrians, Prussians and Russians though to themselves: exploiting Poland to blob off it is kind of skill-less. Maybe we should just sit here and watch.

Role playing I can understand, but this just boggles the mind :)

Taking advantage of Frances wonky naval mechanics during the HYW is absolutely a gamey tactic, imo.
What wonky naval mechanics? You assemble the Burgundian troops, get 1 ally, get some mercenaries and attack move your troops into France - like a man!
 
You ever play as France man? Ever have a problem with Burgundy as them?

The HYW is handled terribly by them. Something ain't right with the way they trickle troops in. Their little stacks get destroyed by the English. I don't think taking advantage of that is fun.
 
You ever play as France man? Ever have a problem with Burgundy as them?

The HYW is handled terribly by them. Something ain't right with the way they trickle troops in. Their little stacks get destroyed by the English. I don't think taking advantage of that is fun.
I don't think I ever saw AI France losing the HYW. At this point I'm not sure if you're mistaking France (blue country) for England (red country) or just trolling.
 
You've been nothing but condescending and insulting. Is that what 'real men' do, insult others from the safety of their computer?

If you haven't noticed Frances problems handling naval mechanics during the HYW, that's your deal and I can't help that. You want to play easy mode and justify your lack of skill with gamey or unreliable tactics that's on you too. No surprise your AAR's are trash blobfests.
 
Hold on there, mate. No need to throw tantrums.

Well, I just re-read my posts to make sure and see no sign of condescension in the first 3. I'd even say that you started the aggression and can't take a joke ("like a man!" :) ).

Anyway, getting back on track. France has no navy to speak of in 1444. They're completely blockaded by England and just siege all continental English possessions with their humongous army. England is the one who keeps sending small armies to be killed in France. Go load the game and watch them during 5-6 game starts.

So what naval problems for France? The lack of a navy? :)

Fighting an opponent when he's weak is how history is written. Totally "gamey".
Just say that you want to colonize and trade. That's fine. But don't diss other play styles.






Ironically my only AAR is non-blobbing, Wallachia/Romania - where I just got revenge against Hungary and the Turks. The rest are just short stories of playthroughs with the nicest blobs I could make at the time.
 
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I would like to form Netherlands as Burgundy, but France... France just can't stop bullying me. I need some help so i can survive with the dutch provinces until i reach Administrative Tech level 10. Alliances, deffensive strategies, what to do, etc. :wacko:

If you gain military tech 5 and france hasn't, you got big advantage. declare on france while they still are in HYW, after you secured some strong allies.

Ally castile or austria if they didn't rival you, both at once, by prepping relations beforehand and sending 2 diplomats ON SAME DAY to ask for alliance (this negates the -50 malus for having a greater power ally already). Alternatively, you can look who france its enemies are. If aragon or venice set france as enemy, an alliance with them might not be bad idea either, since they can help out with their ships.

After the end of the HYW, try to get alliance with england too.

Declare war on france and (important this for getting england into alliance): OCCUPY the sieged english provinces and try to break siege asap so france can't peace out and take english provinces. Gascogne especially. If you see the french sending in their doomstack to break your siege, retreat to Béarn province southeast of Gascogne and fight the french there with the help of the castilian (and other ally armies).

Use the trick to stack wipe their doomstack (retreat out of fight when france has morale lower then 0,5 at the early part of a month, then send in a backup army to stack wipe the helpless french doomstack) and proceed to occupy all french provinces. 100% warscore.

In first war it is vital that you ask france to cancel *all* their vassals.

You can conquer Béarn (foix country) after this war with no casus belli, and release the guyenne country as a vassal. Next wars you can ask for return cores to guyenne (guyenne has cores on like the entire SW region of france). You will get a lot less aggresive penalty for this then outright conquering.

Also, if you form netherlands, your guyenne vassal will not be returned to France. After you fully recovered guyenne as a vassal, ask france to release champagne country. You might be able to diplo vassalise champagne right after.

as i said before : vassals you got inside france are not returned to france on forming netherlands. So obtaining guyenne and champagne as vassals is good idea.
 
as i said before : vassals you got inside france are not returned to france on forming netherlands. So obtaining guyenne and champagne as vassals is good idea.

As of 1.6, this is no longer correct. 1.6 has all French territory, including territory owned by vassals, returned to France.
 
I just finished the Sinasappel achievement as Burgundy. Some of the tips above looks like they are from previous versions.

Anyway, here's what I did in 1.7:

1. Sell off all your infantry and replace them with mercs. Have a cavalry heavy army.
2. Declare war on France continuously, the 15-year truce after every beat-down kinda makes this tedious.
3. The first war (declare war ASAP) is always the hardest (I only had Aragon as an ally), you might have to end the war with less than 100% war score, just have him cancel vassals.
4. Have France release Guyenne on the first war where you manage 100% warscore.
5. Ally Guyenne, and France is done at this point unless you get unlucky and he gets good allies.

Ally every new nation released. Dont worry about diplo point penalties unless you get into negative numbers. Vassalize France. It is probably tempting to diplo-vassalize the mini-French nations. If you do, limit yourself to a small amount of vassalized provinces. If you create Netherlands they automatically break vassalization and get inherited by France. If you have a lot of French region vassals, France will inherit them and just declare independence and crush your now tiny Netherlands. If France has 200 relations with you, they will never declare independence, and will always revert to the "vassal" relation instead of "hostile"
 
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As of 1.6, this is no longer correct. 1.6 has all French territory, including territory owned by vassals, returned to France.

ok, sorry for my mistake then :)

What if you feed all cores to a conquered and released champagne vassal, and then set them free? Will france still get them? (bet not). I'd rather want to make sure france doesn't get a thing if i formed netherlands one way or the other...
 
ok, sorry for my mistake then :)

What if you feed all cores to a conquered and released champagne vassal, and then set them free? Will france still get them? (bet not). I'd rather want to make sure france doesn't get a thing if i formed netherlands one way or the other...
IMO just bite the bullet and make sure that France is gone. Force them to release their vassals, give all their provinces to allies, wipe them from the map. It should be doable in 70-80 years and after that you'll have a nice game as Netherlands without getting your hands dirty.
 
IMO just bite the bullet and make sure that France is gone. Force them to release their vassals, give all their provinces to allies, wipe them from the map. It should be doable in 70-80 years and after that you'll have a nice game as Netherlands without getting your hands dirty.

i doubt that you can fully stop france in less then century now, with the new truce changes.

Given this new change to forming netherlands, i'd first cancel all their vassals, warn them not to go to war, let them release guyenne and champagne next and allying those, feed that champagne all your burgundian, wallonian and cosmopolitan provinces. Or releasing champagne and guyenne from one province, make them big, and then cancel their vassalage before you form netherlands... Maybe thats safer approach.
 
I never did it as Burgundy, but I had some nice time crashing France as Milano in early 15xx, allying Austria was usually enough, the key point was defending in Alpes:). I belive one could bait french with small army in mountains as Burgundy also:)
 
I never did it as Burgundy, but I had some nice time crashing France as Milano in early 15xx, allying Austria was usually enough, the key point was defending in Alpes:). I belive one could bait french with small army in mountains as Burgundy also:)
Wow, how did you reach this topic? Was it my "trashy blobfests" link? :laugh:

Yes, you can beat France with Burgundy and you can definitely dismantle it quickly. I dismantled France in ~100 years as Castile in 1.7. Even with the new truce timers, it wasn't completely off-the-map but it was toothless. Guyenne fully fed, English got back their provinces (England is much less scary than an unified France), the rest of France broken into a million splinters. So Burgundy, who is at least as strong as Castile, can do it in about the same time frame.

Burgundy doesn't even require mountains, mercenaries are enough. As long as your armies aren't completely shattered you just drain their manpower and start occupying provinces.