1510-1520: Victorious but Exhausted
I left off in the middle of a war with Ottomans. The Ottomans had just defeated an allied army at Denizlie south of their capital at Hudavendigar. I respond by lifting the siege of Hudavendigar and assembling my forces with those of my allies in Karasi. Luckily, the Ottoman AI decides against taking the only Asian province I held, and instead decide to trek around the Black sea to invade Ukraine:
(Ottoman AI deciding to go around Black sea instead of directly attacking via Sea of Marmara)
This allows me to actually siege and capture their capital . And then I discover I can abuse the AI by sieging Ankara, which would draw them back from South Russia, and then unsiege it , which would get them started back towards Ukraine.
(abusing Ottoman AI to win more ticking warscore and enemy exhaustion)
Meanwhile in the West, a Polish army had made its way to Tunis. With a bit of merc recruitment on my part, and the use of my fleet to blockade, I get enough WS to get a good peace out of the North Africans:
(separate peace with Tunis)
In the peace, I finally kill the Ottoman-TUnisian alliance. And manage to return Benghazi to Mamluks. With luck, the Mamluks will manage to expand into Tunis and get stronger.
BY late 1511, I had managed to occupy 2 more forts in Western Anatolia ( Kocaeli and Sugla) and pushed warscore to +60%:
(war situation as England converts to Anglican )
But that is as good as it gets for me. Once I push deeper to Ankara and Icel, the Ottomans return and push me back. In addition, rebels now pop up in the Ottoman provinces in Europe, and these threaten to whittle away my war score. So it is time for peace:
(peace concluding the second Ottoman war)
This was a very advantageous peace. I achieved most of my goals. I returned several cores to Byzantium, weakening Ottomans by loss of land. I could have returned more to them, but I did not want Byzantium to go over 25% of my own Dev ( remember that Austria proper is not that large, and my Hungarian and Bohemia PUs do not count in calculation). I also managed to give Mamluks their two provinces they lost back. I am hoping this strengthens them enough to act as a future check on Ottoman expansion. I also release Ramazan back , in the hope that Mamluks will swallow it before its truce with Ottomans expires. And I get a foot-hold in Asia, right next to the Ottoman capital.
This puhes Ottoman Dev rating down to 671, with 50% of Muscovy ( but still more than 50% over England):
(Dev rankings after Ottomans are brought down a peg or two) .
And when Muscovy annexes a chunk of Novgorod, the GP rankings are almost balanced. Only issue is England lagging:
(GP table after Muscovy grows at expense of Novgorod - England is stuck at 453).
The Scottish-French alliance is clearly holding back England. And unfortunately, Scotland's only other ally - Kildare- is also allied to France.
Without a way to help England at this time, I decide to go back to the "North Italy Strategy" and strengthen my situation there. Specifically, I wanted to secure the Alpine passes between France and Italy, which were controlled by Savoy. Since Savoy was a French ally, and I could not attack them directly. Instead, I chose to attack them via Venice, and for various reasons I brought several allies to the party:
(DOW on Venice)
I expected this war to be easy, and was planning to mostly sit back while I recover some manpower and let my allies handle the situation. But 5 months after war start, I get a very important notice. Tuscany - allied to France - had declared war on the Papacy - allied to Castile:
(France and Castile at war) .
I so wished I had not already declared on Venice. I could have declared on Savoy instead at this time and ended up fighting France while they were embroiled with Castile.
SO I hurry up my own war and land on the Venetian capital in Crete:
and then wait for the sieges of Cuneo and Savoie to end. And in preparation for intervening against France, I start to fabricate on the only French province I could claim, Forcalquier in the south ( shares sea tile with Genoa)
But my enthusiasm for helping Castile is dampened when I go to check on their war score with France and discover they had allied the.....:
....Ottomans! ( Castile is buddy with Ottomans, inset shows claim fabricated on France) .
That was an unexpected alliance. I do not ever recall a Castile who had Aragon and Naples under them allying Ottomans. This is definitely not good news for me. Although I guess one silver lining is that Ottomans would not become allies with France as a result!
In 1515, Cuneo fort falls and the Savoyard army is destroyed by Burgundy in a battle. THis convinces them to part with a couple of provinces:
(separate peace with Savoy)
I manage to annex Cuno and its mountain fort. But there was not enough Warscore ( since savoy was not main belligerent) to give Savoie to Burgundy . The separate peace generates a decent amount of AE, and I decide to wait a bit before peacing out Venice. In the meantime, I watched Castile and France duking it out:
(Castilian and French war)
As French armies overran the Italian peninsula, the Castilians succeeded in pushing deep into France. I should have acted at this point, but I hesitated. Instead I waited for my own AE to dissipate for one more year before i peaced out Venice:
I go for full annexation. I wanted Dalmatia so that I can eventually add Ragusa and SErbia to the Empire. And although I initially thought of giving Crete to the Mamluks, I decide to take it myself so that I can help the Mamluks in the future with Institution spread ( they were not friendly with my Vassal Byzantium, so if Mamluks owned Crete, institution would not spread to it. Plus if I owned Crete, institution would stpread to it quicker by Embracing than if Mamluks owned it and it spread by diffusion).
After I peaced out Venice, I was ready to intervene in the French-Castilian conflict. French troops returning from Italy had by now pushed the Castilians back in Bordeaux, and the tide of the war was clearly in France's favor:
(Castilian warscore with Florence , inset shows difficulty of getting alliance with England)
I wanted to intervene now against France . And I wanted as many allies as I could get. Sadly, Poland refused no matter how I declared war on France ( directly or via their allies) . I tried to recruit England, but the "Very Hard" difficulty was the difference between success and failure ( see screenshot- I could have increased my Dip Rep by +2, using Papal Influence and advisor, but would not have been enough) .
So in the end , I go with a coalition of the willing , and play it safe by picking an easy war goal:
(indirect DOW on France , via Ferrara)
I picked 2 province Ferrara as primary belligerent so that I can be assured of easy warscore and main enemy war exhaustion . This way, in case of a disaster (such as France overrunning BUrgundy), I can always ask for a quick peace.
My first action of the war is to free Romagna province, which was the war-goal in the Florentine-Papal war. My logic was to cut down on the Florentine war score and prevent them from concluding a peace where France gets some land at the expense of Castile. The immediate effect of this , however, was the conclusion of their war with the Pope:
(peace between Florence and Pope, and by extension France and Castile)
Clearly, I had waited too long to intervene against France. ANd now I faced them alone. I so wish I could take my decision to delay back.
ON paper, me and my allies outnumbered the enemy by 3 to 2 factor. But in reality, they had several advantages. First were France's internal lines of communication. My troops had to trek between Italy and Low countries using the long way. Second, French Elan!. Third, my allies were easily distracted by rebels, small enemy stacks and other crap:
(Example of problems plaquing my coalition in the war against France)
So I was never able to assemble a big enough army to win a battle against France . But I was able to amass warscore thanks to having an easy war goal, which the French could not reach due to my fort at Cuneo:
(fall of the war-goal Cremona - Warscore is a positive +11 , but I have rebels in Parma, Dalmatia and Kocaeli )
After I take Cremona, I help my allies overrun Tuscany for more warscore, while I try to capture any French land. But with my manpower at zero, my stack kept getting smaller over time. I thought about burning some of my Professionalism ( now at 27), but decide against it. January 1519 marks the high-water mark of my military efforts:
(warscore at 29 thanks to the fall of Firenze, and a couple of victories in Picardie).
After that, France takes the offensive and without manpower I am powerless to resist them . FOrtunately, I still had the ticking warscore in my favor, and as 1519 draws to a close, I move my army from the NOrth back to Italy, and manage to occuppy the unfortified province of Forcalquier:
(Austrian army in Souther France, as French armies are about to break into Burgundy)
I check peace options at this time, and this is what I can get:
(conclusion of war with France)
I am able to get a single province from France, release Pisa from Florence and get some money.
Forcalquier is useful as it is hilly (defensible terrain) and holds a Provence core, so I can release them if I wish . I could not get any more French provinces. PLus anything extra would trigger lots of AE. What I really wanted to do is either return cores to England, or feed Burgundy. But I never captured the requisite provinces.
IN addition to Forcalquier, I released Pisa which is promptly diplo-vassalized:
For now , I am coring Forcalquier. Like
@atwix suggested, I will probably add it to the Empire before releasing Provence out of it. This is the imperial map and the power rankings:
This another unbalanced decade. ANd the sad thing is that my own expansion as Austria is causing the loss of balance. But I have a good chance to restore the balance next decade. If England grows, and I manage to keep the Ottomans under check, and Muscovy does not explode, I can end up with a balanced result. I marked in the screenshot provinces that I can add now to the Empire for a total of +15 IA. Sadly, IA is heading South due to the Reformation and so any IA I get from adding land will be lost. But some of provinces I add can be released to create new princes of the Empire, which would decrease my Dev and help rebalance the rankings while at the same time enlarging the imperial base.
Ideally, I would get the REformation under some control before I start adding to the Empire.
(super weird to have excess admin all the time xD )
