Tonio DOW'd about a year later, which wasn't enough time to prepare all my defenses, but I still had about 500k standing and my fleet was strong enough to hold the Baltic.[/q]
I could rather severe to cut your fleet, but, yes, of course, you won by morale.
King John said:
About 70k in my MP pool. Russia invaded from the east, then had its supply cut and lost lots of troops to attrition. But Tonio had enough men that it didn't matter too much. I was going to ambush Suvorov a couple of times with my main 800 cannon/160k inf army, but always lost too many troops on the fire phase against his 160 cannons/150kish infantry army. Attrition did most of the damage.
I specially went for deep invasion to loot and give you plenty of attrition, when you reassaulted back provinces. Of course you had 2 good leaders, while i had at first phase of war only Suvorov, which made some problems for support line, but my main point was to generally cut your standing army. I didn`t care to intercept Blucher as target at the first stage of the war - you would reinforce him by new armies anyway. But the basic thing was reached that we got near same attrition at east germany, which was more bad for your MP. There were several periods of lack of supply, but when 3-6-5 (modified) leader came, he could care about this things, and i could go deeply through Berlin.
King John said:
England joined the war, but my NL ally helped me out and distracted him enough that he was never able to actually help Russia(or chose not to). NL fought a very good war, almost defeating England despite disadvantages in naval control, leadership, money and manpower.
As far as i can judje, you were not England target and he almost didn`t fight you - Ka wanted to dow NL and dowed their ally to keep MA and so.
King John said:
Since I had a truce now with Russia, I thought I could DOW Austria to help France conclude that war and gain an alliance with France. After I did so, Tonio broke the truce though and invaded again with his hordes.
Well, my point was that Prussia already had two very light easy "wars" to get 3+3 provinces from Austria and France without resistance. Would Prussia dow Austria or France at this situation (again long stubborn war between France and Austria), it would be repeated. So i`d interfere despite Prussia dowed Austria or France.
And like about first dow, i informed beforehand KJ about my position.
King John said:
Russia and Austria got lucky that the OE sub disappeared, otherwise t would've probably had Ottoman troops to deal with. 600k on the border or not, it would've been a distraction, dividing Tonio's attention and his leaders. I should've insisted on a rehost when Hal turned up again.
HAL threated like this, but i don`t think he would dare to come here. Anyway my 550-600K near OE at Caucaus stay on the same position as 10 years ago. But you are right telling that it would take one of my leaders, which was important last 2,5 years, after Surovov died.
King John said:
I think if I got to fight a 1v1 with Russia, the Russians wouldn't have broken through. Especially if I'd had a full MP pool and standing army. Neither of the wars were remotely even, but it gave me a chance to see how far I could push my country, and it was fun in spite of its ending.
John, you need to understand that i devoted to you not more than half of my abilities. My MP was never lower than 600, i have 550-600K army near Turks, and probably around 50-80K at Sibir. I didn`t hunt for mercs, and i didn`t see problem to invade you more slowly and reliable, stabhitting you all the time, while i didn`t stabhit you at all. For me it was clear that i can add resources, but i didn`t want to make a deal with massive attrition which i don`t like, so i moved economically step-by-step. Of course i wouldn`t need to invade west Germany twice if i concentrated on stabhits and keeping support line more crowded. After all you can see that i didn`t spend much more troops than you.
Basically it is not easy to manage 1,5 millions army, and AoD creates more problems by it`s bigger MP (though it is nice to see solid Austria and Prussia). Specially when winter likes to come. So my west Russia was whole 4-6 level forts with a lot of CCs at frontline. The biggest problem is to build troops and move the to the front trying not to lose much from attrition - it is very chaotic.
