Note: not rocket science, but very helpful to me.
In a recent game as the Ottoman Empire, I came to a number of conclusions.
If you wish to play a peace mongering nation at the beginning, the other countries might not be willing to play kindly with you, seeing as how you are defenseless. (I believe other countries are more likely to declare war in 1.03 too.)
How then can a country manage to protect itself in the beginning and still make enough money in order to colonize and industrialize?
Now you have all heard, don't mobilize if at all possible. Its going to kill your population and kill your economy. However, if you follow that advice and keep a good-sized defensive army, its also going to hurt your economy, even in peace.
If you can mobilize correctly however, you get the best of both worlds.
The beginning of correct mobilizing lies in, from the beginning, increasing your ability to mobilize to max as quickly as possible and keeping it there. This increase your military score and make it less likely others will declare war on you.
Free in peace, and ready to go with overwhelming numbers in war, mobilizing can be essentially a completely free army. There are a couple of things to remember though, when mobilizing.
After you have first pressed the mobilization button, use the manpower you get to build troops/reinfroce the regular troops you already have. Then, the next step is crucial in the validity of mobilization. Decrease defense spending to nothing, but keep army maintenance at max. This step should stop the money hemoraging caused by mobilizing.
Essentially the goal is to win the war without needing to reinforce. As soon as you can, deploy all your troops and try to quickly destroy the opponents military and take as much territory as you can. Time is on your opponents side, so its important to have your mobilization as high as possible, in order to quickly create a big military force to quickly crush the opponent.
Before I realized you could simply turn down defense spending after you mobilized, I feared the huge debt incurred by mobilization. Now I feel secure when I can mobilize 50 divisions, because, due to what I've seen of the AI, you should be able to mobilize and crush them, forcing them to the peace table early. Against a human, it would not work so well, because the human could starve you out with his regular army.
The key is to drop defense spending right after you mobilize. Then quickly win. It makes playing a peace monger, especially a peace monger with pre-scripted wars like Sardinia or the Ottomans much easier to play.
Of course, your other poor country's tool to winning wars cheaply are defensive allies. They can mean the difference between victory and defeat, and they are super cheap to create.
I just used this to beat Russia in the Crimean War without having a good army , and without incurring a single pound of debt.
Mobilization is your very special friend!
In a recent game as the Ottoman Empire, I came to a number of conclusions.
If you wish to play a peace mongering nation at the beginning, the other countries might not be willing to play kindly with you, seeing as how you are defenseless. (I believe other countries are more likely to declare war in 1.03 too.)
How then can a country manage to protect itself in the beginning and still make enough money in order to colonize and industrialize?
Now you have all heard, don't mobilize if at all possible. Its going to kill your population and kill your economy. However, if you follow that advice and keep a good-sized defensive army, its also going to hurt your economy, even in peace.
If you can mobilize correctly however, you get the best of both worlds.
The beginning of correct mobilizing lies in, from the beginning, increasing your ability to mobilize to max as quickly as possible and keeping it there. This increase your military score and make it less likely others will declare war on you.
Free in peace, and ready to go with overwhelming numbers in war, mobilizing can be essentially a completely free army. There are a couple of things to remember though, when mobilizing.
After you have first pressed the mobilization button, use the manpower you get to build troops/reinfroce the regular troops you already have. Then, the next step is crucial in the validity of mobilization. Decrease defense spending to nothing, but keep army maintenance at max. This step should stop the money hemoraging caused by mobilizing.
Essentially the goal is to win the war without needing to reinforce. As soon as you can, deploy all your troops and try to quickly destroy the opponents military and take as much territory as you can. Time is on your opponents side, so its important to have your mobilization as high as possible, in order to quickly create a big military force to quickly crush the opponent.
Before I realized you could simply turn down defense spending after you mobilized, I feared the huge debt incurred by mobilization. Now I feel secure when I can mobilize 50 divisions, because, due to what I've seen of the AI, you should be able to mobilize and crush them, forcing them to the peace table early. Against a human, it would not work so well, because the human could starve you out with his regular army.
The key is to drop defense spending right after you mobilize. Then quickly win. It makes playing a peace monger, especially a peace monger with pre-scripted wars like Sardinia or the Ottomans much easier to play.
Of course, your other poor country's tool to winning wars cheaply are defensive allies. They can mean the difference between victory and defeat, and they are super cheap to create.
I just used this to beat Russia in the Crimean War without having a good army , and without incurring a single pound of debt.
Mobilization is your very special friend!
