Even with the Holy Roman Empire and 240 000 soldiers, I stil lose against France...

[BaronNoir]

I'm not very used to ground warfare in EUIV, being more of an England player, but I really find a large France brutally difficult to beat. I'm a bit aghast when I see a 120k stack moving north and a 90k stack moving south with a third stack as large in reserve....

 

[Kirikano]

How many military ideas do you have? If lucky nations are on and you don't have more military ideas than a blobbed France, it can be extremely hard to win against them. I just saw a blobbed France with a forcelimit of 300 crush a united HRE with a 600 forcelimit through two wars. The first completely drained all of the HREs manpower, and the second broke the HRE because France will recover manpower so much faster. Since Bordeaux is an endnode now, France tends to be slightly richer than they used to be too.

 

[hauptman]

You're playing wrong if france scares you.

I'm guessing you started as austria, and went full diplo game, so dont have any good military idea sets... and no more allies because you unified the HRE.

Things you can do different next time;

Do not unify the HRE (ever). Revoke the privilage and allow vassal hordes to simply overrun your enemies. Even france is toast when 73 Imperial states focus their might on her. Once all of Europe is subjugated and added to the empire... then in 1820, you can pass the last reform.

Play as Brandenburg. Take military idea sets, and not even france will scare you.

 

[Zak Preston]

France is annoying: you have to have at least 4 military ideas to make your troops equal to French troops with 2 mil ideas (Aristocratic, Offensive, Defensive, Quality). You should also have Quantity to match their 200k-300k army pools. And now imagine France takes all 4-5 military ideas.
Unlike Sweden, Brandenburg\Prussia\TO or Ottos and Muscovy, their nation doesn't start as a minor or doesn't fall behind in lategame. Also their BT is insane.

 

[Jeggred86]

Do not unify the HRE (ever). Revoke the privilage and allow vassal hordes to simply overrun your enemies.

When you don't plan to pass the last reform you can lose a war and revoke the last reform as peace deal so you won't get the -3 dip rep penalty. You will keep your vassals and the free upkeep. Later when you want to unite the HRE you should have enough provinces you can add to the HRE for the last two reforms.

 

[Pornek]

If it is possible after unifying it, release Brandenburg as vassals and feed them some of your provinces. Piggyback their generals and youre good to go.
Burgundy might also be good as vassal/PU. In my current game as Austria they have the second largest army(170) after me(260) while maybe getting 8 additional provinces. I guess it is because of their cheap mercs and the English Channel being so rich.

 

[Zqrfmb]

those poor AI countries unable to blob out of control because France is a big bully. If you're fighting defensive wars, I would suggest putting all your eggs in one basket and keeping your entire army handy in whatever denominations and distribution prevents taking attrition, then dogpiling any french stack with your entire army, preferably in a defensive battle if terrain is rough. In the meantime, get some military ideas of some sort that aren't aristocratic, the holy roman elephant can eventually flatten the big blue blob. If that doesn't work, well, then they blue you.

 

[nalfz]

Even with the Holy Roman Empire and 240 000 soldiers, I stil lose against France...

Well I'm no expert, but that might be more your fault than the game's

 

[Sachko]

You're playing wrong if france scares you.

I'm guessing you started as austria, and went full diplo game, so dont have any good military idea sets... and no more allies because you unified the HRE.

Things you can do different next time;

Do not unify the HRE (ever). Revoke the privilage and allow vassal hordes to simply overrun your enemies. Even france is toast when 73 Imperial states focus their might on her. Once all of Europe is subjugated and added to the empire... then in 1820, you can pass the last reform.

Play as Brandenburg. Take military idea sets, and not even france will scare you.

This. The vassal storm is so much fun.

 

[CyberianK]

In my current AustriaCheaterIronman game even with vassal storm for me it helped getting Offense as military.
When I have ZERO military ideas I usually can't avoid some epic fail situations where my hole army+country gets r8ped.
Better generals some troops bonus and 5 disc advisor plus high army tradition (80+) is enough to beat France if you have superiour numbers.

If your army tradition is low then you absolutely have to wage a few wars to get it higher before killing france.