100 Year War Attrition Wise.

[Jools]

This applies to all the historical facts but I will only use three to support my Case

1.Hundred Year War
2.Thirty Year War
3.Second Great Northern War (18th century)

Now I was really disapointed when I started playing the EU scenarios. I started playing as Sweden in the Northern War and thought (mind you this was one of my first few games) I will rampage about with King Karl all over Poland, Ukraine and Russia, rampaging, plundering and destroying the enemy of my beloved Kingdom. But HEY! Whoops! How did Karl die??? Oh, attrition 20? Shit, guys get out of there... oh... too late, all dead. Well the Moskals won without a single fight, damn they're clever!

Same applies to thirty year war. When I first started learning about these wars I was startled to find the Swedes maneuvering all over Germany, then later Poland. These guys where so far away from home and still one. Where the hell is Poltava anywyay? Oh Damn! It's in Ukraine, Holy....(...)...

Now tell me, why does my army die before it sees any REAL action in EU??? Huh?

Will the same disaster apply to the hundred year war? Will all English Armies disappear before they even arrive in Calais? That would totally suck.

Now I read in the Leaders thread about giving your commanders a Logistics skill. This would be nice and solve many problems...

P.s. Please rate this thread as I fear the 100 year war will turn into the 100 year attrition war in EU2 and it would be nice if someone at least though of changing it (unless *they* already have, which is cool)

 

[Emre Yigit]

You could always....

....move your leaders and army into low-attrition Turkey for a while. Has historical precedent too.

 

[Lord Prime]

I have no real attrition problems using smaller armys. My favorite strike force is 10k infantry, 5k cavalry and 50 cannons. I usually attack with five of these smaller armies. As they can converge on the enemy if there is a need to crush a bigger army. These armies are large enough to besiege fortress up to medium size. When larger fortresses comes into the game i use forces of somewhere around 150 cannons accompanied by cavalry and infantry, still lower then 20k and have strike forces in nearby provinces to be sure that no large enemy forces gets to close.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Jools

P.s. Please rate this thread as I fear the 100 year war will turn into the 100 year attrition war in EU2 and it would be nice if someone at least though of changing it (unless *they* already have, which is cool)

It doesn't want changing. If anything attrition should be WORSE than it is in EU, because quite often it's possible to lose hardly any more troops to attrition than you do to actual fighting. In reality, the vast bulk of army losses during the time period had nothing to do with battles.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

Now tell me, why does my army die before it sees any REAL action in EU???

Let's see: poor food, poor clothing, poor doctors, no antibiotics, little rest, no shelter, and a total lack of understanding about the spread of disease….

Geeze. I don't know.

Keeping your troops alive on the march was half the battle.

 

[Jools]

I understand your points but there were large armies that didn't suffer much attrition because of their leaders organization skills.

Anyway there were many armies that could be kept at a stable level, armies that thought in many wars and had minimal attrition but in EU and army is a temporary thing...

"Let's see, 100k to build, only 30k will make it to the seige and say 8k will survive... hmmmm..."

 

[Secret Master]

Attrition

It has been my experience in EU that you can march your armies all over Europe, as long as you are willing to reinforce attrition losses as they go. For example, when playing the Union of Kalmar, I marched from Kurland to Moldavia, so I could force them to cede Kurland to me. (Long story on why that had to happen. If your interested, read my AAR in the AAR forum, here

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16078

)

The point is that I was able to march an army full of Danes and Swedes all the way to the border of Turkey, and still sack a fortified province. I suffered a significant amount of attrition, but by reinforcing the expendable infantry, I could keep the valuable cannons in action. I would suggest to anyone who seems to be suffering unusally high attrition that they should perhaps rethink their marching strategy in Europe. The game is more than forgiving for attrition.

 

[unmerged(3571)]

Originally posted by Jools
I understand your points but there were large armies that didn't suffer much attrition because of their leaders organization skills.

Anyway there were many armies that could be kept at a stable level, armies that thought in many wars and had minimal attrition but in EU and army is a temporary thing...

"Let's see, 100k to build, only 30k will make it to the seige and say 8k will survive... hmmmm..."

If your land tech is high enough and you aren't in unduly hostile terrain/weather (eg. Russia), attrition losses are very minimal, doesn't really matter how good your leader is.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Jools

Anyway there were many armies that could be kept at a stable level, armies that thought in many wars and had minimal attrition but in EU and army is a temporary thing...

"Let's see, 100k to build, only 30k will make it to the seige and say 8k will survive... hmmmm..."

But there weren't any armies that big. If you only build armies of 5,000 at a time, you pretty much can avoid attrition. If you have 100,000 guys sitting around in one province, you'll lose an awful lot of them very fast.

 

[Guest]

As I was saying before I was so rudely deleted.Except when an army was beseigeing acity they wouldent sit around letting there arses freeze off they would seek shelter in a frindly city or in winter quarters

 

[unmerged(3571)]

Originally posted by FREEDOM FIGHTER
As I was saying before I was so rudely deleted.Except when an army was beseigeing acity they wouldent sit around letting there arses freeze off they would seek shelter in a frindly city or in winter quarters

But such cities wouldn't have the capacity to support many such armies.

Attrition was a fact of life, even as late as the Napoleonic wars. Often an army that wasn't sieging a city would spread out to forage for what it needed.

 

[unmerged(1302)]

seek shelter in a frindly city or in winter quarters

Where would they find those in 1419???