Can one actually win the Hundred Years War as England now?

[TheBloke]

Of course it leaves you with no money. You're fighting a war for the kingdom of France. You should spend every last penny if it'll help. You should expect to come out of the war with as much as 10-15 loans. If you didn't take on huge loans and you lost then you weren't really trying to win.

The Scotland advice is ridiculous. Scotland will be there later. A war to enforce a PU on France is quite rare and vastly more important and the war is quite winnable within a few years.

Read the thread I linked. Here it is again: The Hundered Years War, England 1.3

Parallel Pain has this strategy down to a fine art, such that he can vassalise Scotland and win against France getting the PU, ending up with no loans and 300+ gold in the bank and a positive income. He explained his strategy in great detail in the thread I linked , and I would highly recommend anyone reads it who wants to win HYW as England.

I followed Parallel's strategy only about 25% of the way through, deciding to go it alone after that. And I am nowhere near as careful player as he is. But I still managed to get Scotland while beating France and PUing it, followed soon after by all of Ireland (under a vassal of Tyrone). I ended up taking 5 loans, and having only 5k MP left, but these issues were fixed soon enough.

Following on from there, I completed the annexation of Scotland and Tyrone/Ireland, giving me a United Kingdom. I then smashed Burgandy in two wars, taking Picardie, Artois, Antwerpen, Cambray and Vlaanderan, most of which I got France to core. I took two provinces from Brittany, Armor and Morbihan, and Provence, all of which I also got France to core.

Later I smashed up Austria (by enforcing peace for Litvonian Order, whom Austria were fighting as allies of Denmark,) forcing it to release so many nations that it dropped from 17 provinces to 4. Burgundy coalition-DOW'd me immediately after - which was now my third Burgundy war. They were joined by Utrecht, Milan, Switzerland, Brittany (again), Munster, and a couple of others. But with my allies of Castile and Portugal, I beat them again, this time forcing them to release Ghent, and taking Munster as a vassal and feeding it Osnaburck and East Frisia which I took from Utrecht. During the Austria war, the integration of France completed, and I took the decision to become Great Britain after I finished the Burgundy coalition war.

It's still only 1520 and I now have France, Scotland, Ireland, Provence and half of Britanny all integrated. Munster as a three-province vassal, my capital is Antwerpen (which boosted my trade versus London), and that will soon will be linked to the rest of my empire via a vassalised Ghent. And I've cut one of my previous biggest threats, Austria, down to a shadow of its former glory. Oh and I'm Curia Controller as well, and on a tech par with the rest of Europe. I've just added my third idea group, having taken Admin Level 10 one year Ahead of Time.

So yes, it's perfectly possible to win HYW while taking Scotland, and much more besides I am by no means an awesome player, certainly not a hugely careful one. That honour goes to Parallel Pain, and I highly recommend anyone doing this reads his detailed guide in the other thread. The only problem you'll have with following it is that by the end, you'll be too powerful and there might not be enough challenge left for the rest of the game

(Note I did all this on Normal with Historic Lucky Nations. I'm sure it's more challenging on Hard, although not necessarily hugely so as that just modifies the AI, not the specifics of mechanics. I plan to try that at some point later.)

 

[Sir Iain]

It's very possible, although the Ai can be a bit weird and it won't always cooperate.
You do need to use the attach to transport button, when loading troops unto a ship. I had forgotten it existed. Scorched earth isn't needed, although it can be nice.
You need to get Mil acces from Brittany and Navarre to evacuate your troops.
Lure the French to Foix where you can beat a superior stack.

 

[Parallel Pain]

TheBloke you give me too much credit. I'm not an awesome player.

The cog hit-and-run and declare vassalization war on Scotland weren't my idea, but the 1.2 HYW thread one.
Calling in Portugal and everything else was a lot of trial and error at 1speed.

If I was awesome I'd have did WC ^^;;;

 

[Viperswhip]

Military Access, yes, France may get it as well but get MA with Spain or Navarra, preferably both, and have them chase you through Spain if you can, get a quick fleet base, load your troops up in Southern Spain and leave their army months from home. I've done that to them twice now heh. I don't play my England game very often though.

 

[TheBloke]

TheBloke you give me too much credit. I'm not an awesome player.

The cog hit-and-run and declare vassalization war on Scotland weren't my idea, but the 1.2 HYW thread one.
Calling in Portugal and everything else was a lot of trial and error at 1speed.

Well you still turned it into a fine art, and gave a very precise, detailed guide to it, so you shouldn't be quite so modest! At the very least you're careful, and not nearly as impetuous as I am - as shown by the fact that although I was following your general principles, I still needed a few loans to get the job done, and burnt up more manpower. I do still plan to try the whole thing again some time (for about the 5th time now!) to try and match your results; but I want to actually take a game beyond 1650 first, rather than keep starting again over and over!

If I was awesome I'd have did WC ^^;;;

That's not awesome - at this time with current game mechanics, that's superhuman

 

[TheBloke]

Scotland will be there later.

One further point. This is the view I took the first time I played England, a month ago back in 1.2.2. I concentrated solely on France and getting them under PU, planning to come back for Scotland.

What I found was that by the time I was done with France and back up to a good enough position to be able to wage war, Scotland had new, powerful allies. I can't remember exactly whom, but I think at least one was also my ally (Castile or Portugal), and maybe Austria too.

So, although it may seem counter-intuitive, it can actually be easier to take on Scotland right at the start, in parallel to France. At the start of the 1444 game, Scotland has no allies, and is only guaranteed by France. Which of course makes no difference to England who are already at war with France. So get Scotland early, before they get their act together and get good allies, and then you can focus solely on the continent and colonies for the rest of the game.

And as has been stated, it's perfectly possible to wage war on Scotland in parallel. It's made a lot easier by the English Channel (which has been our saviour in every war after 1066, in fact!) All France can really do (or at least, all they will do) is siege your Continental holdings. Which as per the advice in this thread, and in more detail in the thread I linked, is easy enough to manage.

Doubly so when you get your ally Portugal fighting the French - although that seems like it's a bug. (More details, and screenshots, in the other thread, but briefly: DOW Scotland and Call to Arms Portugal. They'll get added to both your wars, becoming enemies of not only Scotland, but also France. And in my game at least, they did in fact fight France. This is surely a bug because it was rightly made impossible to call Portugal directly in against France because of the >60 day starting time.)

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Makes me remember one eu3 game where i killed france as england. In multi. I declared war day 1 on france, he called scotland, i annexed scotland. Then i won war with him.

 

[StatikShocker]

its pretty easy to sneak a lancaster into portugal, then england becomes #1 candidate for WC. Seems quite doable to me. just no war of roses

 

[grisamentum]

But you don't need loans to win.

Right, I didn't say you did. What I said was that if you lost and didn't have loans, you didn't try hard enough. If you can win without loans, awesome. But there's no excuse for losing without loans.

And you can beat Scotland in under 1 year loosing only 3k men, only 1 siege (by you).
After the initial battle (and you might as well fight it since you need to pull all troops back to England), you need no more than the regiments you can't carry on your cog to finish Scotland.
Not to mention fighting Scotland let you call Portugal into the war with France.

I hadn't thought of the Portugal trick. It's a little silly actually. You generate a "different" war with France by violating the independence guarantee, which allows you to get Portugal in to -A- war against France. Nice.

 

[Cattlehunter]

Rape is not funny.

"Rape" as a metaphor for losing in a videogame isn't a joke.

Good thing there weren't any jokes about something like murder, torture, forced-castration, or some other horrifying atrocity! Then there'd really be hell to pay!

Can you guys imagine... what if somebody made a game that rewarded the player for doing any of those disgusting things? I'm sure you'd both be boycotting the developer in the blink of an eye!

The Scotland advice is ridiculous. Scotland will be there later. A war to enforce a PU on France is quite rare and vastly more important and the war is quite winnable within a few years.

What else are you gonna do with your troops while the french are dying from attrition? Just march the 19k chilling by london straight up there and get them involved in a defensive battle, maybe sending over the ones from normandie as they land for good measure. Can even bring along the ones from southern france once they're evacuated, though they're unlikely to do anything more advanced by that point than suffer attrition.

England starts with so many more troops than it needs to subjugate scotland that you could do it with half.

Besides, the longer you leave them alone, the more time they have to aquire allies to drag into your inevitable war with them.

its pretty easy to sneak a lancaster into portugal, then england becomes #1 candidate for WC. Seems quite doable to me. just no war of roses

How do you "pretty easi[ly] sneak a lancaster into portugal"? There are no reliable ways of forcing PUs anymore.

Though you can vassalize portugal through warfare relatively easily after winning the HYW.

 

[StatikShocker]

Good thing there weren't any jokes about something like murder, torture, forced-castration, or some other horrifying atrocity! Then there'd really be hell to pay!

Can you guys imagine... what if somebody made a game that rewarded the player for doing any of those disgusting things? I'm sure you'd both be boycotting the developer in the blink of an eye!


What else are you gonna do with your troops while the french are dying from attrition? Just march the 19k chilling by london straight up there and get them involved in a defensive battle, maybe sending over the ones from normandie as they land for good measure. Can even bring along the ones from southern france once they're evacuated, though they're unlikely to do anything more advanced by that point than suffer attrition.

England starts with so many more troops than it needs to subjugate scotland that you could do it with half.

Besides, the longer you leave them alone, the more time they have to aquire allies to drag into your inevitable war with them.



How do you "pretty easi[ly] sneak a lancaster into portugal"? There are no reliable ways of forcing PUs anymore.

Though you can vassalize portugal through warfare relatively easily after winning the HYW.

tell me how you can vassalize portugal

 

[hwoosh]

Good thing there weren't any jokes about something like murder, torture, forced-castration, or some other horrifying atrocity! Then there'd really be hell to pay!

It is possible to make jokes about rape. It is even possible to make good jokes about rape. It is also quite possible to trumpet the fact that one is a tasteless, puerile dirtbag—and take pride in doing so.

tell me how you can vassalize portugal

I'm sceptical about this too.

 

[TheBloke]

You can vassalise anyone given enough wars. I just had a look in my 1520 England game, and it seems like it would take four wars to vassalise Portugal:

* WS requirement for vassalisation started at 318%
- First war: release Fez, and annex Alentejo, Algarve and Beira. That reduces the vassal WS to 220.
- Second war: annex Braganca and Coimbra. Vassal WS now 160.
- Third war: annex Porto, and four colonies. That takes it to exactly 100%.
- Fourth war: vassalise.

YMMV, as the vassalisation score is dependent on your own base tax and theirs. In this example, I have Scotland, Ireland, France, bits of Burgundy, Provence, and half of Brittany. I've barely built any Base Tax buildings yet, though. I don't know how many buildings Portugal have.

In terms of the annexation and OExt, a valid strategy might be to fight Castile (maybe as a Portugal ally), and make them release Galicia. If you can then vassalise that (not sure what the Distance Between Borders penalty would be), then you can feed it the Portuguese territories as you annex them.

I'd think you'd have to make all of this a priority from the moment that France was beaten, so that you could get your wars in before Portugal gained too many colonies. Though they only count 2% towards vassalisation, so it's not the end of the world if they have a few more.

Certainly do-able then! Not sure if I'd do it myself, though.

 

[aqvamare]

My advice, pray for a early Bugundy king dies event. It pushes your PU france, and your new neighbour will be weaker than england + france together. with calais, you have always a burgundy core province, release your new 1 province vassal burgundy, and than fight your new neighbor for giving back cores to burgundy, you normally need 3 wars for all burgundy cores. After this, eat burgundy and get more or less the complet antwwerpen trade note with cores.

For more fun, load the 1399 mod and start with starting year 1.juni.1420 as england. you start with 6 province in france and paris already sieged. As bonus you have brittaine and burgundy in your alliance against france.

When you loose this war, you loose every war

 

[collum]

Well that's no good.. time to do it again!

 

[grisamentum]

It is possible to make jokes about rape. It is even possible to make good jokes about rape. It is also quite possible to trumpet the fact that one is a tasteless, puerile dirtbag—and take pride in doing so.



I'm sceptical about this too.

aha, i knew my instincts were correct when i put cattlehunter on ignore several weeks ago. if anyone were to leap to the defense of the liberal use of the rape joke, it would be him.

vassalizing portugal is possible but it takes 3 wars. i've done it as spain so i could focus on continental affairs, but doing it as england seems silly when there's a decent chance you get a PU with them anyway.

 

[GoldenBear10]

As this was my first real dip into EU in any way this was certainly an interesting challenge. I think I ended up with 11 loans after getting the PU with France, but that was in part due to Burgundy coming in and attacking me only months after defeating France, which completely wiped my manpower. Afterwards I was able to get Ireland, and now have Scotland as a vassal with France integrated (only missing Brittany and Provence, for now). Burgundy stuck around a while, until I attacked them out of annoyance and in an attempt to take over coast of the Lowlands, which ended with me getting Picardie, Artois, and Antwerpen from them, before they self destructed as Trier and 3 different revolts wiped the northern group off the map, while southern Burgundy still exists. I am allied with Portugual, Castille (hasn't integrated w/Aragon) and Austria. I think I'm going to be taking my time in consolidating what I have in Europe, try and vassalize Brittany and Provence while continuing to colonize.

 

[Parallel Pain]

Actually I just thought I'll consolidate the 3 or 4 posts of guides from the other thread into one. So here's step-by-step:

Day 1:
-Pick vassalize scotland mission and DOW Scotland. DO NOT auto-call ally.
-Use diplomatic screen Call to Arms to call Portugal into your two wars.
-Ally Castile if it's not hostile. If you can't Royal Marriage Castile. If you can't Improve Relation Castile then immediately stop. If Castile is hostile (it happens) do this with Austria instead.
-Send barque fleet to protect trade Bordeaux.
-Cog immediately pick up Normandy army. Early Carracks shadow the Cogs
-Do Not scorch earth. It won't do anything in this scenario except use up MMP and cost you income.
-18k stack in England move north. 1k move to south coast to wait for Normandy stack.
-Give Gascogne army to Richard Plantagenet and have him attack the France vassal army not on the mountain.
-Pick military advisor with discipline or morale if lv 1. Don't pick others yet.


Then:

Diplomacy
1) Ally Castile (if you haven't already) or Austria (If you don't have Castile as ally). Call them into war if you can. But even if you can't having them as ally make Burgundy unlikely to DoW you.
2) Get access from Navarra.
3) Royal Marriage your allies, and Scotland once you beat them. (less likely of War of Roses).
4) Improve Relations Aragon/Austria/Castile (which ever two that isn't your ally, keep them from forming/joining coalition from the AE you will get)
5) Send diplomat to improve relation Papal States (for curia control, either to keep it or gain it eventually).
6) Improve Relations on the biggest of the Irish minors (the one you'll support and eventually vassalize)

War:
1) Cog pick up Normandy stack and land it on England south coast, then move to Gascogne to pick up Richard's stack.
2) Combine Normandy stack with the 1 regiment, and now move the 10k to the marsh province bordering Scotland (the western one).
3) Once Richard finish off the first (5k) French vassal stack, if the other vassal is within striking range and there's enough time before the French move south (there should be), hit the other stack. Then move to Gascogne.
4) The 18k stack scare the small Scottish Army off the marsh province, by moving through it, then move to the Eastern border province with Scotland. Make sure no other Scottish troop go siege the marsh province by moving towards it if they start moving towards it. Do this until the 10k stack is in place.
5) Deassign Richard Plantagenet from the 9k Gasgcone stack. Assign him to the 10k. Pick up the Gascogne stack and land it 1 provinces south of the marsh one.
6) Early Carrack fleet go blockade the Scottish Fleet.
7) Once the Scottish Fleet is blockaded, break off 3 Early Carracks and have them each blockade one of the other three Scottish sea zones.
8) By now the free stack Scotland get from the Highland should have appeared. They will combine and move towards the marshes. 1 Day before they arrive, move your other troops towards the marsh province as well.
9) Once this battle is won, consolidate the infantry regiments (I didn't consolidate the cavalry ones because I felt I'd need them for the French fight).
10) Give 8 infantry and 6 cavalry regiments to Richard Plantagenet and after he recovers some morale (if needed) load this army on the cog and begin picking off isolated French armies. See Below
11) Pick two full infantry regiment. Have them move through Lothian towards another province. Once they arrive in Lothian tell them to stop movement. This way they don't take attrition for the initial arrive in province-start siege. The siege will then start immediately without needing a third regiment or to wait for the month tick. This trick will now be used to siege a province with equal number to the initial garrison and will not be repeated.
12) Portugal should be sending a stack to siege Ayshire. If not, send another 2 infantry to siege it. Left over troops form a stack under Richard Neville. This stack march around the rest of the Scottish provinces picking off new spawns. You can cue up move command with shift key. Also consider plundering those provinces, though I didn't find it necessary.

2 controlled provinces and all blockade give you enough warscore to vassalize Scottland
Once you vassalized Scottland you can put naval maintenance to 0 and let Portugal and Scotland do the naval stuff for you. Then you should be able to hire the other 2 advisors (tax/trade/prod/repu/dipovertime) and still run a 4g+ budget surplus.

French:
-Watch out for shadowing stacks. French should have enough men for two or three of them at the beginning. Distance of Caux<>Normandy<>Ile de France is small enough you can hit a 2~4 stack and kill it and sail out before reinforcements arrive, but not from that one that border both Caux and Normandy unless you get a super good roll.
-Down south Poitier<>Bordeaux is far enough but none of the others are, so don't hit there if there's shadowing stack.
-If the shadowing stacks is up north, then kill the ones in the south, then wait for the shadowing stacks to move south and sail up and kill the siege stack in the north. If they're south, kill the ones in the north, then wait for the shadowing stack to move north and sail down and kill the siege stacks in the south.
-If French shadowing stack are too well placed, or they've put too evenly on the coast, lure them by putting troops in Navarra or Castile.
-If they still won't move, move a stack to Navarra then have it start moving towards Bearn and they'll move into intercept. Run away and they'll try to follow you into Navarra and Spain. Just make sure you can get all your troops out in time. Once they follow you into Spain, you can load into cog and kill more siege stacks.
-Switch out damaged regiments with your backups that were in Scotland to keep maximum men engaged.
-Keep repeating this hit and run.
-Sooner or later, they'll be low enough on troops that when you land the entire 14 regiment stack, they'll refuse to split up and consolidate their siege stacks to send everything after you. When that happens, land fewer and fewer regiment as bait.
-At this point the grounds should be much more empty than when the game started, so watch out for isolated stacks of 7~9 regiments marching around. If you see one isolated enough, land in a neighboring province and attack via land march. Make sure the leader of this isolated army isn't their top general.
-Once they are really low on regiments and probably refuse to come after you and refuse to siege both North and South at once, (they should have less men than England alone at this point) it's time for decisive battle.

1) Make sure they siege the Normandy provinces (if they're south, lure them north by sending a couple of regiments to siege Ile de France)
2) Then bring your army south. Give 5~8 regiment to Richard Plantagenet and have him siege Bearn. Keep half of the rest in your neighboring province, the other half on cog.
The French should bring half, and roughly half, of their men down to engage you. If they bring more, decrease the number of regiment Richard Plantagenet is leading (though not so few to get instant wiped). If they go after your stack on the coast, land your stack in the cog to make them switch target to Richard. Pick the army and sail off again so the rest of the French don't come and you don't get attrition.
3) Once they engage Richard, see if you need to reinforce him. If the battle is fought in hills instead of mountains and/or French is lead by their best general, reinforce immediately with everything you have. If not, see if Richard actually need reinforcements. If he's winning, don't reinforce.
4) Once this half of the French forces are defeated , the other half should march south. Use the exact same setup to engage him. Repeat as nece
5) When you're fighting one last stack and all other French forces have fought to the end and defeated (as in they didn't pull out prematurely, therefore low on men and morale), if you begin winning this one without a stack (or more) not needed for reinforcement, have this stack begin marching towards Ile-de-France to get a head start on the chase.
5) Chase and destroy all the French forces.

After French army all dead, pick about 9~11 infantry regiments and have them recoup their numbers. Combine the rest and give half to Richard Plantagenet and half to Richard Neville. Have one take Northern France and one take Southern France. These two armies should march around picking off any newly spawned regiments.

As the 9~11 infantry regiments reach full headcount, break them off to begin sieging. The order should be: Barrois (before Burgundy DOW Provence and take it), Ile de France (need 3 regiments), all other Provence provinces, all other French provinces.

Once you occupied most of Provence, force them to return Maine and Anjou to France. This makes the France you PU larger, make Provence small enough to diplo-vassal after their PU with Lorraine breaks, and decrease the time needed to bring France relationship to positive (and therefore the likelihood of the PU breaking because your king died). Force Provence to release Bar.

Force PU on France when you have taken enough provinces for the needed WS.

 

[Wodan9]

Ok, ease up. Your posts sound like you're freaking out and talking about "rape" and "doomstacks" when it's really a pretty simple matter of fighting a slightly numerical foe in a video game. Relax, take a deep breath.

The irony in this post is hilarious.

 

[Wodan9]

Good thing there weren't any jokes about something like murder, torture, forced-castration, or some other horrifying atrocity! Then there'd really be hell to pay!

Can you guys imagine... what if somebody made a game that rewarded the player for doing any of those disgusting things? I'm sure you'd both be boycotting the developer in the blink of an eye!

And of course the funny thing about it is that when you don't "see" it because you're so far about the map, and it's just little people that represent hundreds or thousands of people doing all kinds of things like this--and little flying numbers--that it's somehow okay.

Isn't that something?

This game, and games like it, do reward you for doing it.

What's better? To play a game and see the gruesome violence so that there is no doubt what's actually going on, or to play a game and see no blood or anything else grim?

It's like people believe the food we eat just magically appears in little wrappers or boxes.

The world is a violent place, and there's no use putting your head in the sand. The strong thrive and dominate on the weak. That's what nature is all about. Get over it.