Could really use some help: I'm terrible at fighting wars

[Dominion]

Yea.

Mostly because you're learning warfare and that's the wrong order of priorities.

First you need to learn how to win. Details like movement micro and attrition come later.

Pardon for typos. I'm in an mp match.

 

[rustwat]

Also tell Lithuania to keep their armies close to your armies

 

[PhoenixG]

Alright, so I've been playinga bit in a non-Ironman game where Hungary is allied with the Teutonic Order and Livonian Order. Here's an image of some of my attempts:

https://imgur.com/a/Rna21

I've tried to avoid getting caught by the Hungarian armies, which have a 2-star 4 shock general. I've attempted to seperate their armies, but they've been sticking very close to each other, and I don't want to get stuck ina fight where they'll just reinforce, any idea how to play the AI to seperate?

Meanwhile, TO and LO have been seiging Lithuania a bit too much for my liking. It was causing the Lithuanians a lot of problems with rebel stacks. However, I was worried that if I didn't keep my stacks close to each other, the AI would just pick them off one by one. I also have all ym subjects set to attach to me. Clearly my general strategy wasn't the best here, this war was too costly for what it should have been. Some advice would be welcome.

I also made a second attempt (don't have screenshots from that), where I focused on Hungary first and managed to take their two northern forts, and their capital province (this was before they seiged too much in the Moldavia area). My goal was to get them to peace out as soon as possible, and take their fort province along with Holst (or whatever that province with the gold mine is called). I couldn't get them to give that up though, because the length of war malus was preventing it. The Hungarians then send all their stacks to capture their province again. Should I have attempted to keep hold of those areas, risking a very unfavourable fight, or should I have retreated? Hungary would quickly seige their provinces back in that case, and I would have wasted a lot of manpower on attrition from seiges for nothing.

From the first screenshot, you put too much emphesis on sieging.. Sieging 4 forts at once with that little units is a bad move. You don't have any units left to fight.
If your goal is to force Hungary out first, why do you siege teuton land?
Besides that, how the hell is that teuton stack so far south? You should have intercept it a lot earlier before they even able to get close the the hungarian units. (most likely you focus too much on sieging).
That livonian order stack in the north is very tasty and quite isolated. Should kill that before he could siege it down.

Point is less sieging more fighting.

 

[Davewaveman]

Thanks for the advice. What would you recommend I do in that situation? Not seige at all until some fights have passed? Or leave a small seiging stack?

As for the Teuton stack, do you mean that one stack seiging Podole in the first screenshot? If I had managed to cut them off before, wouldn't LO simply send in their stacks to reinforce?

 

[Dominion]

Thanks for the advice. What would you recommend I do in that situation? Not seige at all until some fights have passed? Or leave a small seiging stack?

As for the Teuton stack, do you mean that one stack seiging Podole in the first screenshot? If I had managed to cut them off before, wouldn't LO simply send in their stacks to reinforce?

One or two sieges simultanously at best. Watch out for enemy troops. If you catch stacks out of position, wipe them. Remember to leave troops behind to keep your siege progress.
Take control over provinces next to your sieges, park armies there.

Enemy provinces under your control get your supply limit > less attrition

 

[PhoenixG]

Thanks for the advice. What would you recommend I do in that situation? Not seige at all until some fights have passed? Or leave a small seiging stack?

As for the Teuton stack, do you mean that one stack seiging Podole in the first screenshot? If I had managed to cut them off before, wouldn't LO simply send in their stacks to reinforce?

I would only siege one fort at a time, tops two. The rest fighting.. Also I would focus on Livonian order first, since he's a bit isolated, hungary can't get there easily and easier to peace out due "small" country.

Maybe, but you still only fighting 19k tops. And how much units do you have? At least 20k if you only sieging one fort. So number wise you'll beat them. And that is not even counting your pet Lithuania

 

[AlknicTeos]

Don't split your armies into TO and Hungary( if you don't have enough military). If you want TO, first peace out hungary. So all troops to hungary, once you have beaten some hungary troops you could decide to intercept TO armies, if you have enough armies left. Whats the ratio of your allied forces vs the enemy? with quantity I always have a high ratio to my favor.

 

[PhoenixG]

Don't split your armies into TO and Hungary( if you don't have enough military). If you want TO, first peace out hungary. So all troops to hungary, once you have beaten some hungary troops you could decide to intercept TO armies, if you have enough armies left. Whats the ratio of your allied forces vs the enemy? with quantity I always have a high ratio to my favor.

From the screenshot I spot 53k on his side vs 47k on TO, LO, Hungary side.

 

[otaats]

According to the screenshot, your huge mistake in that instance, is besieging 4 forts at the same time, while sieges are on the opposite end of the battlefield to one another. If you ignore mistake of not cutting of Teutonic Order's movement to south, you should've besieged all of Teutonic forts, for example. But whenever you want to besiege a province, you first need to keep in mind (and know) where the enemy army is. You could have very easily stackwiped Teutons, but now they pose a threat in the south. They were potentially no problem for you, but they became one. That's how EU works, in some way. Sometimes you can really feel some mistakes that you make, especially during a war.

Dominion, Sfan, and other posters gave you quite good tips, so be mindful of that next time you play. And yes, definitely, refrain yourself from picking up Quantity, especially early in the game. You are able of building a huge army easily without Quantity, with some experience. Try picking up Quality as your first military idea.

 

[AlknicTeos]

From the screenshot I spot 53k on his side vs 47k on TO, LO, Hungary side.

when it's that close, I would hardly siege that many forts

 

[BAMman100]

As people are pointing out your big problem seems to be spreading your forces too thin. In EU4 there is one overriding principle of warfare -- concentration of forces. If you keep your armies and the Lithuanian stacks around one fort you're sieging down there's a decent chance they won't even bother attacking your troops while the siege is ongoing. In the particular situation outlined in the first screenshot you posted that would be hugely helpful as a lot of the enemy forts are on defensive terrain, meaning you'll take a penalty; in fact, there's an extremely high chance you'll lose more manpower from those battles than you would from attrition in the sieges. Keep in mind TO has +Discipline and Cav Combat Ability to start off and Hungary starts with an excellent general, so your main advantage -- assuming equal tech levels -- would be numbers. Those Lithuanian provinces lack forts and save for Kiev are just not especially valuable, so while its not exactly good to leave them occupied its better than risking small stacks in battle to unsiege them. Once you've finished a siege, then get all your forces together and wipe the various enemy stacks in Lithuania. Preferably, you should bait them into attacking a small stack in some woods and then reinforce but attacking them in the steppes in Ukraine should also work out well.

You also made errors in which forts you targeted for siege. You declared for the province of Kulm and you can't get ticking war score until you occupy it but you are not sieging the fort that controls the occupation of Kulm, which is in Tuchel. To make matters even worse, you are sieging two coastal forts without the ability to blockade them, which gives you a -3 on your dice rolls in the siege phases and will result in sieges that take years. I will say that sieging the Hungarian border forts has some merit, as they open the way to Pest, which only has a measly capital fort with a small garrison and if you can get that, you'll be able to knock Hungary out of the war. So your priorities should have been (assuming a stack-wipe on the TO army was just not feasible because of where they were situated) to seige Tuchel and Kulm, attack the enemy in Lithuania, then siege Hungary and get a seperate peace. That way you would have had only the TO and LO to deal with and could probably then have spread out to siege the remaining forts all at once if you placed Lithuania on siege focus and gave them a target province.

In terms of some of the other problems you've mentioned in the thread, the advice others have given mostly covers what I can see as your main problems but I will add just a in direct strategic points to hopefully help you. More manpower is great and Quantity is a great idea group that I pick up most of the time. There is nothing bad about taking that idea group. Still, there is a downside in Quantity in that it does not give you any actual combat buffs (although there is a juicy +10% Morale policy available if you get religious), in that way Quantity is not a pure military idea group but rather a hybrid diplomatic/military one, a big part of its value lies in preventing the AI from opportunistically declaring war on you when you have low manpower. As Poland with the Lithuanian PU your sheer size and the fact that you probably have a GP ally should prevent that, so much of the reason for Quantity is lost. The other reasons for picking up Quantity -- force limit, reduced attrition, and lower army maintenance -- can all be gotten through other idea groups (Offensive and Defensive specifically) that also provide combat buffs. In you situation you get more from those idea groups than you do from further doubling down on your advantage in manpower and force limit. Even Aristocratic would have helped you more than Quantity here, so in that sense you're clearly on the right track all on your own but really that's an idea group you should consider picking as a second military group as your Cav Combat Ability National Idea is a ways into the game iircc and the extra siege pip is more useful when you have higher level forts to deal with.

 

[BAMman100]

Another issue that can arise when playing Poland is your Lithuanian PU falling behind in MIL tech since your ruler only has 1 MIL point, so watch for that when using his army as an attached force in battle.

 

[PhoenixG]

You also made errors in which forts you targeted for siege. You declared for the province of Kulm and you can't get ticking war score until you occupy it but you are not sieging the fort that controls the occupation of Kulm, which is in Tuchel. To make matters even worse, you are sieging two coastal forts without the ability to blockade them, which gives you a -3 on your dice rolls in the siege phases and will result in sieges that take years. I will say that sieging the Hungarian border forts has some merit, as they open the way to Pest, which only has a measly capital fort with a small garrison and if you can get that, you'll be able to knock Hungary out of the war. So your priorities should have been (assuming a stack-wipe on the TO army was just not feasible because of where they were situated) to seige Tuchel and Kulm, attack the enemy in Lithuania, then siege Hungary and get a seperate peace. That way you would have had only the TO and LO to deal with and could probably then have spread out to siege the remaining forts all at once if you placed Lithuania on siege focus and gave them a target province.

Not blockaded coastal province only has -2 penalty. -3 would be horrible without cannons.

 

[Rilek]

Keeping your armies close enough to support each other will help you quite a bit I think. If you have a 6 stack seiging a lvl 2 fort you should have another army in an adjacent provide to help out if the ai attacks. Heck, having another army nearby may prevent the enemy from attacking in the first place.

If you spread your armies out, or leave one behind to seige then the ai will be able to pick it off. You don't need to win the war quickly, just so long as you win. Even when I have a large advantage I only seige 1 fort at a time while the rest of my armies are nearby in case the enemy shows up.

 

[BAMman100]

Not blockaded coastal province only has -2 penalty. -3 would be horrible without cannons.

Ah, yes, my bad. Typing at 2:00 AM can lead to some typos. Thanks for the correction.