Failing Forward with France: New Player's Second Game

[jscaco]

After the success of my first Ottomans game, (it wasn’t a success as WC or anything, but as an experience it was successful. The journey is always better than the destination.) I started my second as France. Goals in this run were to learn about Christian mechanics, developing institutions, and the colonization game. Turns out I would also learn about disasters and bankruptcy, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.


When recreating this history, I was pleased to see that one of the expansions I recently added provided a “timeline” feature. This is amazing as I can now review exactly how Le Bleu Blob blobbed.


Now, on with the monarchs:


Charles VII (1444)-1467


The Ottoman victory at Varna shook the Christian world. Charles VII looked to his rivals of England, Aragon and Austria and sought new allies; Scotland, Provence and Castile would sign up. While his diplomats ran across Western Europe, the pope was furious that Charles did not promptly come kiss the ring and excommunicated him. Excuses, such as the scars of the Hundred Years War, or “I did not know the papal state started with a -10 opinion of France”, were not accepted. In retaliation, Charles VII decreed the dissolution of the monasteries.


In 1446, The Maine Event occurred (sorry, I had to make that pun once) and the province was ceded to France. In 1448, Provence decided to take a province of their own from Brittany and the French gladly helped. Bittersweet tidings came in 1450 when the Duke of Burgundy died; France and Austria split his land.

Hostilities with England broke out again in 1454, as Charles VII felt confident enough to drive the Brits back across the channel. England was allied to Portugal, so Castile fought them, and the Scots kept the English troops left in the British Isles occupied. This campaign would be largely successful, but would not entirely expel England from the mainland.


Charles VII’s feud with the Pope would escalate. In 1458 he sent his army into Avignon and reclaimed it. Despite’s Austria’s intervention, the city would fall and the pope conceded defeat but did not stop condemning Charles. France would continue this momentum and invade Brittany in 1460.


The remainder of Charles VII reign passed peacefully as he consolidated France’s recent territorial gains.

France at the end of his reign:

 

[stnylan]

First steps successful

 

[jscaco]

Louis XI 1467-1496


The ascension of Louis XI brought France back into the good graces of the Church. New allies were sought out; Portugal and Venice among them. On Ireland, Munster agreed to align themselves to France, and they were vassalized as well.


France joined the rush to discover new lands to the West, and eventually French ships would stumble across the island of Hispanola. Later explorations by France, Spain and Portugal would reveal the true scope of the new world, and the powers raced, but in a friendly, allied way, towards the rumored riches of America. Rumors of secret pacts dividing the world between the three of them existed, but could not be substantiated. A French colony would be founded on Tenerife in 1471, serving as a launching point for further expeditions.


In 1476, Louis XI resumed hostilities against England, attempting to reclaim the remaining holdout provinces. Aquailaine would be recovered. Scotland got pummeled and ceded some territory to England in a second peace. The French had naval superiority and tried to keep the English troops busy running around with rotating sieges in Ireland, Cornwall and Kent, but eventually the outnumbered French troops would be caught up on and crushed. This defeat, combined with the exit of Scotland from the war, eventually taxed the French enough that peace was sought before Calais could fall, so the English retained control of the narrowest point of the English Channel.


Louis XI would eventually turn his attention to Provence, invading and annexing their southeastern and western holdings in 1478, though the province of Barrois would hold out in the east.


In 1480, the region was shocked when England finished off the remaining Irish minors. Besides France’s vassal of Munster, only Ormond remained independent, and that was only though allying themselves with the English. The Munsterians saw the wisdom in learning to speak French and were fully annexed.


The French colony on Trinidad would become operational in 1485. The Portuguese would concentrate their early colonization efforts in Brazil and the Spanish in Africa.


A grave error would be committed in the late 1488 with the invasion of Ormond. Despite the French naval superiority, English troops were able to cross the Irish Sea somehow and utterly wipe out the French troops sent over to invade Ormond. Scotland would be further shafted, losing control of the Isles. Peace was reached in 1492, but hostilities broke out again almost immediately. France was interfering diplomatically in England’s effort to invade the Isles. No one is sure what happened exactly but the the Duke of Lorraine was involved somehow. The English navy, which had been separated and trapped in different ports during the first war, were able to combine this time and defeat the French navy, and the Duke of Lorraine broke away from France. Plans were drawn up to reobtain the Duchy by any means necessary, militarily or diplomatically, but Lorraine would remain independent for decades.


Despite this setback, colonial efforts would continue with the settlement of the Orinoco Delta in 1495, providing each access to two tribes in the area, the Arawak and the Carib.


Louis XI’s long reign is remembered for expanding the French territory overseas, but with one major setback towards the end of his life.

 

[stnylan]

Across the ocean. But do I spot a little bit of land north of the Pyrennes beign an unfortunate Aragonese colour?

 

[jscaco]

Across the ocean. But do I spot a little bit of land north of the Pyrennes beign an unfortunate Aragonese colour?

I would never actually manage to take that little area. I was looking for an opportunity to invade Aragon before Spain formed but I spent too long recovering from the defeat that caused Lorraine to break away, so I never had the opportunity. But I am satisfied with how France turned out at the end.

 

[stnylan]

I would never actually manage to take that little area. I was looking for an opportunity to invade Aragon before Spain formed but I spent too long recovering from the defeat that caused Lorraine to break away, so I never had the opportunity. But I am satisfied with how France turned out at the end.

Ah, well these things happen. And these little pecularities are also, I find, sometimes what makes the games interesting.

 

[jscaco]

A few corrections now that I've been working on the next part: It was Dauphine, not Lorraine, that was the breakaway duchy, and it happened in 1492 after the first war ended but before the second started over the Isles shortly afterwards in 1493. This conflict would carry past Louis XI's death.

 

[jscaco]

Anne 1496-1524


A highly skilled diplomat, Anne inherited the throne of a France in turmoil. The province of Dauphine had broken away, tired of endless wars with the English. Records are so fragmented that some historians mistakenly thought that Lorraine was the province that broke away.


The latest war against the English had been raging for three years was not going well. When the Isles declared independence from Scotland as the former had been reduced to a shell of its former self, the French found themselves rapidly mobilizing yet again to uphold vows of protection. England’s fine new navy, blockaded in port during the last war, was unleashed upon the French navy which was no longer concentrated and was engaged in separate duties. Many French soldiers had died to keep a toehold in Ireland, but French naval superiority was lost. Attempts to retake Calais had drawn out into long, costly stalemates, and the war was taking it’s toll. Eventually the isles fell in 1947, and the two powers once again retreated to lick their wounds.


Despite the loss of naval superiority, French colonies continued to expand. The port of Havana was settled in 1503 with the aim of controlling access to the Gulf of Mexico. The town of Nantes would quickly become the gateway to the New World as Anne worked to establish control of the lands oversees and bring French culture to the world. And while Spain and Portugal would become the largest of several colonial nations, Nantes would be recognized as the origin point of the institution of colonialism. (Spain and Portugal both took exploration and expansionist; I went exploration and economic. Nantes was the perfect lucky spawn point, as it allowed me to control the spread of it due east and cover most of France before it started to bleed into Spain and England, which pretty much allowed me to start the institution on my terms.)


Also in 1503, Colonialism would soon show it’s darker side. The French settlers and conquérants in Guyana saw the weakness in the Carib tribe and invaded, thinking that any atrocities committed would not be discovered back in Europe. While the other European powers cared little for the fate of the Carib, the French populace was shaken and riots broke out when word reached of the horrors of the unprovoked attack. (While I read that aggressive expansion in a different part of the world would not have much of an impact in Europe, I had forgotten that no CB wars come with stability drops).


Anne would use a softer touch with the Arawak on the other side of the Orinoco; they would form and alliance and would eventually become vassals. She would also get involved in several wars on continental Europe. When Savoy was excommunicated in 1506, France, Bohemia and Venice teamed up and Nice and Cuneo were awarded to France. French troops would aid their allies in the Potrugese-Morrocan war of 1508-1510 and the Venetian invasion of Milan in 1515, (I think, but may not remember correctly, that Anne herself was ironically excommunicated as punishment for helping Venice) and join the ultimately futile effort to slow Ottoman expansion in Zeta in 1518.


Puerto Rico would be colonized in 1513, and England, no longer hobbled by the French fleet would begin to stake claims to various Caribbean islands and the race was on. Towards the end of her reign, rumors of pending economic woe started to be whispered, as the nation was struggling to keep up on the interest on loans taken on to fund the several wars with England and invest into colonial adventures...

 

[stnylan]

Starting to spread into Italy I see through Savoy

 

[jscaco]

Charles VIII 1524-1540


Charles VIII inherited a strong, solid but debt-ridden nation. He was noted for his extreme averageness (3/3/3). In one of the recent wars against England, apparently Ormond was forced to break alliance with England and was now independent. His diplomats reached out and formed a new alliance.

Then he turned his attention to the economy. Bankruptcy, he reasoned, was inevitable, and he sought out the best experts to form a way to control it in such a way as to minimize the pain. It would be a plan many years in the making, and the French people buckled down and rode out the recession.

By 1530, it was over and soon opportunities would present themselves. Genoa had somehow managed to capture almost all of Crimea. Their armies were all on the other side of the Black Sea and their strongest allies were exhausted. A small army was dispatched to Corsica. With Venice attacking from the north, Genoa quickly surrendered the island. In return, France helped Venice invade Manutara.

In 1533, the island of Jamaica was colonized. The French colonists then began to turn their attention to Can Peach as a gateway to the rumored reaches of Mexico. Before long, hostilities erupted, but the conflict would not be resolved until after Charles VIIIs death...

(No screenshots because things look pretty much the same except Corsica and Jamaica are colored in and some borders shift around among the smaller powers of Europe. And an update in my next game: The League War went off while I was coring the last province to form Prussia, immediately after winning the war I formed Prussia, then managed to regain the Emperorship. Taking a breather here while I go through all the menus and access my sudden new situation as Emperor Protestant Prussia...

 

[MachopPower69]

What's up with Dauphine? Vassal?

 

[jscaco]

What's up with Dauphine? Vassal?

I was working on inproving relations with the goal of vasselization, but they were not too keen to be returned to the fold just yet. Claims were fabricated as a back up plan, and I would waffle back and forth between the approaches for a while waiting for oppurtubities...

 

[Blust]

It reminds me lot of memories from reading your AAR as a new player, very nicely written, I'm in !

 

[jscaco]

Henri II 1540-1554


When Henri reached the throne, the French setters in the new world were raging a war against Can Pech. It would end in 1542 with the French in control of the coastline of most of the peninsula. Henri thought it would make a fine staging point for further incursions into Mexico, but the settlers of the region had their own ideas. In 1546 they formed the colonial nation of French Yucatan. They grew closer to their subjects and were not as interested as expanding deeper into Mexico, much to the motherland’s chagrin, but more trade goods started flowing back across the Atlantic so there was little to complain about. (Here I learned that colonial nations form automatically once they reach five cored provinces. I was not able to gain the CBs I anticipated I would need to expand into the region for quite some time. Lesson learned! I should have only cored 4 of them at first, then waited until subsequent conquests to expand the nation. Oh well.)


Also in 1546, the colonists would establish a city in the province of Chitimacha at the mouth of the Mississippi Delta to further control trade coming down the river from North America. Called New Orleans, this city would be famed for its unique culture.


Although he wasn’t regarded as much of a militant ruler (2/4/0), Henri II would invade the small Italian nation of Montiferrat from 1546-1548. The allies of Bohemia and Venice would gladly join the effort, and France and Venice split the provinces of Moniferrat between them.


Sadly, the queen would die about this time leaving Henri a widower and the young prince Charles without a mother. While touring the new territorial acquisitions, Henri would meet a young Florentine noblewoman named Catherine de’Medici. Although scarcely seven or eight years older than the young prince, the king would marry her and Charles would grow to love his stepmother with as much affection and devotion as his own, though some nasty court rumors would suggest that his love was more romantic in nature. (I changed up some of the details of the actual history of Catherine de’Medici to fit the circumstances in the game and the ages of the characters involved).


The balance of power in western Europe would be shaken up in 1552 when the union between Castile and Aragon would be fully realized, and the new powerhouse of Spain would emerge. Although relations with France would follow more along the friendly alliance they had with Castile than the adversarial one they had with Aragon at first, the seeds of tension would start to be planted over conflicting colonial claims in the New World, but Henri and the new rulers of Spain would diplomatically manage to postpone and delay any decisions for future generations to deal with.


The seeds of future religious conflict would also be planted. The French had been largely ignoring the protestant reformation that was working its way through the Holy Roman Empire and other nations to the East. The reformation started to worm into France, but Henri II did not recognize the significance nor of these new Christian denominations and did not see them as a significant threat. Catherine, while she would not embrace Protestant principles either publicly or privately at this time, was critical of the Papal backlash to the movement.


Following the double-punch of Spain rising and the influence of the Church falling, Henri would die from a fever in March of 1554, leaving his young son and foreign queen to face the rising domestic tension alone...

(Western Europe in 1554)

(Colonial America in 1554. Spain and Portugal both took exploration and expansionist, so they were far ahead of the other colonial powers. Spain was settling the Rio Grande area, the Gulf Coast, a bit of Central America, Brazil and South Africa. Portugal was settling Northern Brazil, the West African coast, and Florida. Norway/Denmark had the Vinland colony in Canada, and the British, no longer contained by the French fleet, were interested in the Caribbean.)

 

[jscaco]

It reminds me lot of memories from reading your AAR as a new player, very nicely written, I'm in !

Thanks! I especially enjoy working the learning process into the narrative.

 

[MachopPower69]

Seeing Mexico divided quite well with Mixtecs, Aztecs, Zapotecs, Xalisco and Can Pech excluding New Castile and Mexique Francais makes it look interesting.

 

[stnylan]

The states of central American look ripe of the plucking.

 

[jscaco]

Catherine 1554-1593


Five months into the regency of young Charles, his stepmother Catherine de’Medici managed to take control of the council and the kingdom. During this regency period, however, French colonies would continue to expand with the annexation of the Arawak vassal province of Essequibo in French Guyana. Around this time too, England changed into the kingdom of Great Britain, despite several free Scottish territories.


She proved herself to be a capable administrator (4/2/3), and the less capable Charles was content to remain heir once he came of age. Her reign was noted for the development of the textile industry, among other advancements.


Throughout her reign, settlers would pour into the new world colonies of Louisiana, French Caribbean and French Guyana. She would honor a request from Spain to aid in the conquest of the Aztecs. The war dragged on from 1554-1557 and in the end Spain would only add a single province to their New Castile colony and France would only get some gold, but the Aztecs were devastated by conflict and disease, and they never truly recovered.


In 1562, found her popularity among the French people soar when she moved on Dauphine. The duke had been particularly resistant to returning to the larger nation. The groundwork was lain during her husband’s reign, but Catherine saw the time was right to move the troops in to secure the area. Great Britain and a few HRE minors came to Dauphine’s aid, but the French allies keep them busy long enough for France to occupy the two key provinces Dauphine had before breaking away; the duke would flee to his last province, one he had taken off Savory years earlier. Once the French regained the territory, peace came quickly.


In 1566, Ormond was fully annexed, and France and Britain now had split control over Ireland. Soon French troops were mobilized yet again in to aid the Dutch in their war of independence from Austria from 1567-1570. While France was thus engaged, Spain and New Castile managed to crush the Aztecs and took most of the territory for themselves, and England would have one more quick war against Scotland, force-vassalizing them in just a few months. The Dutch would ultimately prevail, but Catherine would continue to grow disgusted by the behavior of the Austrian ally, the Papal state, in the conflict and would further become more sympathetic to the Protestant cause.


Missionaries representing both the Protestant and Reformed traditions had been operating in France for some time at this point, and once Paris itself began to witness the transformation, Catherine officially converted to the Protestant cause. The news of the formation of the French Caribbean holdings into a full colonial nation was secondary to the other news of 1570, as with the kingdom split roughly equally between Protestants, Catholics and Reformites, as the decision to convert shattered what little religious unity remained. Tensions would rise over the next few years, leading ultimately to armed bands of zealots roaming the countryside. The conflicts known as the French Wars of Religion had begun.


(While researching how to navigate this disaster, I came across a few forum posts carping about how impossible it was for this event to trigger. It might be impossible for a skilled player, but I managed to stumble into it.)


In 1574, the new French colony of Biloxi in Louisiana opened the French expansion up into Chickasaw territory, who by this time had managed to subjugate the other tribes in Southern Appalachia. However, the stress of the domestic religious war forced France to abandon the war effort before any territory could be permanently secured. Portugal requested French help in their reconquest of Sus from 1577-1579, and while France sent some troops to help control territory, most of their forces were fighting their own citizens.


Even though she supported the Protestant cause, Catherine resisted the temptation to fund the Protestant zealots and further add to the destruction. Her armies, after cleaning up the Catholics near the Pyrenees, met the Reformed forces and engaged them in battle. And lost. (I did not know it was possible to lose to rebels with full army maintenance, much less get stackwiped by them. I don’t know if these rebels were just tougher, or if my army was had been whittled down to mostly artillery at his point, or if I was just unlucky.) In 1580, Catherine was forced to admit defeat and submitted to the Reformation movement. The state religion was changed again just a decade later. A new army was raised to put down the Protestant zealots, which were handing around in Brittany.


Once that was done with, Catherine learned her troubles with the new Reformed Church were only just beginning. They used their newfound influence to further wrest control of the nation from the foreign queen, and quickly let her know that, while she could keep the throne, the church estate really called the shots. (That’s right; I suffered back-to-back disasters!). She hatched a plan, though. A trusted general mustered what loyal continental forces he could, and moved to each of the Clergy’s holdings around the country in turn. There, they confiscated and dismantled the clerical infrastructure. After the first few stops, they soon found church-supporting militias ready to rise up and face them. The general would meet them in battle, then reinforce and move on to the next province. Tens of thousands died, but slowly and methodically, Catherine regained her influence. Finally, with the church too weak to resist, she regained power, although the state religion would remain Reformed, and the last of the internal French religious wars would draw to a close.


It would not get easier for Catherine, however, when her adopted son and last of the de Valous, Charles, fell ill. Despite the prayers of the kingdom, he died. Being too old to have children at this point and without dynastic legitimacy, she turned to her extended family. A nephew had recently married a French noblewoman, and they had a young son named Louis who she named heir. In 1589, she was able to resume the conquest of the Chickasaw, and within a year the French had secured the western half of their territory. It was handed over to Louisiana, which formed as a colonial nation in 1592. While that was going on, news from Britain arrived that the last remaining Scotch holdings had been fully annexed. Catherine would also answer another call-to-arms to aid Spain and Portugal when the Tunisians and Ottomans would team up to try to drive the Europeans out of North Africa, but she would not live to see the end of that conflict though. After a long, tumultuous reign, France would once again be placed in regency council for a boy king, Louis XII, who would have to work to establish the new de’Medici dynasty...

 

[volksmarschall]

God bless the BBB! Admittedly, I do love a good French game. And I do think they are among the more forgiving factions for new players to start with -- simply because it's not punishing to the player when they make mistakes. Turn the Americas Blue!

Best wishes.
Cheers!

 

[jscaco]

Louis XII (1593-1640)


Louis de’Medici would take the throne in a comparatively weak position, being just a minor and a foreign one at that (despite being raised in France, he still had an Italian accent and mannerisms, leading to either amusement or disgust among the court). Few could deny his administrative skill, but his diplomatic efforts left much to be desired (4/2/3). The nation was stable, but the scars from the religious conflicts of his great aunt Catherine’s reign were still fresh. There was also a grand war between the colonial triad of Spain, Portugal and France defending their gains in North Africa from the muslim powers of Tunis and the Ottomans trying to retake lost territory; they would ultimately be repelled.


He would watch helplessly as the Dauphine dream of an independent nation died with the ascension of the Swiss as a regional power. In 1603, the French colonies in South America, affectionately called French Guyana, developed full colonial nation status. The mother country would start subsidizing the colonial nations around this point to encourage them to settle the New World faster.


As Loius XII’s fifteenth birthday approached, the island of Sardinia would break away from Spain. He would move troops and ships into position, waiting nervously to see if Sardina would make any powerful friends. But they did not and the invasion was launched; it would take about a year to control the island, but his generals would eventually formerly present the island as a belated birthday present.


Now that the four colonial nations were operating independently, and, except for the case of French Yucatan, expanding on their own, Loius XII decided to look to other areas of the globe for France to make it’s mark. He would look to press the French claims in India, managing to subjugated and vassalize the nation of Andhra (the OPM of Malwa would also eventually be vasselized, but I don’t remember if it happened at this point). Vijaynagar would consolidate it’s hold on the rest of the Indian subcontinent soon after, making further expansion difficult. The first French African colony would be established at Benguela in 1608, followed by Luanda in 1623.


France would also help her allies. The Dutch would receive both offensive and defensive support. The Porugese would receive help with their African conquests, and Spain with it’s first wars against the Inca (although France would drag it’s feet in that conflict, as continental affairs were pressing).


A quick war against Austria and Lorraine, with Bohemia’s assistantce, would net the provinces of Barrois and French-Counte in 1624; this would be followed up by a brief unsuccessful attempt to take the last Savoid province of Piedmont. In 1630, French expansion into Africa would continue with the first war against the Kasanje, netting a few more coastal provinces. Finally, Louis’s vision of grand new colonial nation in eastern North America would begin with the establishment of the colony of Delaware in 1635.


Louis would die at the age of 52 in 1640; his only surviving child Marguerette would succeed him, though she would have to endure a regency period of her own.


The French Empire now spans five continents...