Annoying when playing England

[DubCat]

One thing I find very annoying when playing England (especially early in the game):
If someone lands troops in the British Isles, and have no transports to get back if defeated they wander around and pillage your provinces. Any attempts to root them out will only result in that the enemy flees. It takes forever to kill off an army of just a few hundred men, because they will only flee all the time. If you corner in the enemy’s army, he will only escape and escape until he ends up in a province where there are none of your troops, and then you are back at square one. Is the only solution to have an army in every single province? Sounds wacky!

Also, is not England supposed to get a lot of settlers as random/historical events? I got quite a few, but after a disastrous war with France I loaded an old game, and never received any more settlers or conquistadors through events. Strange.

While on the topic of settlers, can someone explain how colonial dynamics works? Is it something triggered by the religion or perhaps the monarch?

 

[Berkut]

How do French troops get to England in the first place?

Did the French defeat the English fleet?

Berkut

 

[unmerged(439)]

no they dug a tunnel

 

[DubCat]

Originally posted by Berkut:
How do French troops get to England in the first place?

Did the French defeat the English fleet?

Berkut

Was that the answer to the question? I think NOT. They sneaked around my blockade and landed troops in Scotland and Ireland (which I controlled).

 

[unmerged(358)]

I've found out the only way to deal with this kind of maurauding troops, at least when the enemy is small, is to leave them alone for long enough that they can get their morale up and then attack them with a numerically superior force, and with lots of cavalry... Then they usually have enough morale to survive the first fire phase and get to the shock phase were you can deal them some real damage...

Cobos

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If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.

 

[Emperor of Europe]

Actually I find the concept of marauding troops great. And historical.


Regards,

EoE

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Uhm... nice province. I
think I'll take it.

 

[DubCat]

Originally posted by Cobos:
I've found out the only way to deal with this kind of maurauding troops, at least when the enemy is small, is to leave them alone for long enough that they can get their morale up and then attack them with a numerically superior force, and with lots of cavalry... Then they usually have enough morale to survive the first fire phase and get to the shock phase were you can deal them some real damage...

Cobos

Thanks for the tip. I'll try it.

 

[Berkut]

Originally posted by DubCat:
Was that the answer to the question? I think NOT. They sneaked around my blockade and landed troops in Scotland and Ireland (which I controlled).

It was not meant as answer, it was emant as a question, hence the *question mark*.

Since I do not have the game, I was wondering how France manages to get troops landed in England without destroying the English fleet. Historically, that is what saved England. Does the game not have a provision for defending your shores with your own fleet?

Berkut

 

[unmerged(358)]

It sure does as you have to 'hold' the seazone while the troops debark from the ships. But that assumes you can have enough fleets to make sure NO French fleet can get to your coast... And as ships in ship-to-ship battles generally are survivors (you usually make the ships flee rather than destroy so many of them), getting rid of all the small 5 ship fleets that France often uses isn't always that easy.... But if you've got a major fleet you can stop France from being any serious threat to your island, but not necissarily from being a nuissance, that's what makes it fun.

Cobos

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If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.

 

[unmerged(477)]

Well Mr Russian Eagle, of course there are ways to protect your shores. But England has a lot of coast, and a french fleet can make a sneaky detour (not that the AI is that sneaky) while you are looking the other way. Its hard to keep control of everything that happends if the war is fought at several places at once, and keeping your fleet out at sea for months will get them sunk due to attrition. So a french landing in ireland is not that uncommon.

Mormegill

 

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Mormegill:
Well Mr Russian Eagle, of course there are ways to protect your shores. But England has a lot of coast, and a french fleet can make a sneaky detour (not that the AI is that sneaky) while you are looking the other way. Its hard to keep control of everything that happends if the war is fought at several places at once, and keeping your fleet out at sea for months will get them sunk due to attrition. So a french landing in ireland is not that uncommon.

Mormegill

How does this attrition thing work? Is it a set loss per turn whenever you are at sea, or does it vary according to how long the fleet has been at sea. If the later, the answer is to rotate fleets. That is how real navy's do it. For every ship deployed on station, you have to have a total of three in your navy. Of the other two (besides the one on station), one is in a shipyard back home getting overhauled/refitted/etc... and the other one is in pre-deployment training, in transit to or from deployment or in post-deployment R&R. So, it would seem that to be safe from these 'small 5 ship fleets' landing troops in England, the English would need to keep a fleet rotation going so that every 'seazone' is protected constantly, but no fleet stays at sea long enough to suffer attrition loses. The other thing is that spreading out would make the English vulnerable to defeat in detail if the French brought out a big fleet, which is what the Germans were trying to achieve at Jutland. Not having the game yet, I don't know how many ships it takes to insure that you would defeat a 'small 5 ship fleet' or how many 'seazones' would need to be thus protected to keep the French out of England. Maybe too many ships to be practical, but maybe not. Historically, England kept a big navy and very small peacetime army as compared to other European nations. I have read that throughout the 19th Century (admittedly after the game's time period), England owned slightly over 1/2 the warships in the world and had an official policy of requiring the British fleet to be able to defeat the combined fleets of the next two largest navies. It seems that if the game is well designed, the strategy that worked so well for England in real life would be a good one in the game.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 15-02-2001).]

 

[DubCat]

The most annoying thing about EU is actually keeping your fleets in order. The rotate system you mention will not work, because it is so time consuming. This is a Real Time game, you know. You both have to keep the blasted Catholics from invading + expand your colonies in the New World and Africa. A patrol option or something like that is on the Top Ten Most Wanted Features for the Next Patch List. Just as Mormegill mentions, the French almost always lands troops in Ireland.

Ship attrition has many different factors playing in. How long the fleet has been at sea, how far from a friendly port it is, if there is a storm in the sea zone, if you have an explorer as a commander, etcetera.

 

[Viking]

I say let france invade.. just make sure you take the english admiral with 60 ships and wipe the floor with all the 5 size french fleets. Once they are wiped then you get a small army to just chase the french about.

When I am england the only other country to have a fleet is turkey.

 

[unmerged(490)]

I think the AI for fleets is still a little screwy. In my current game I just annexed the Hansa. It was fairly easy since they seemed not to have any money.

After annexing them I realised why. They had 500+(!) transport ships (but no warships!). Were the trying to move the entire country to Africa or something!