Oki: A lot of people claim that France is a very easy nation to play in the GC. This is probably correct, given that a fellow was actually able to more-or-less conquer the world with it.
OK, how many times do we need to explain. JP has been testing the game for over 9 months, a long with me and other testers. He's been playing it more than is legally sane, for crying out loud, so have I, so has everyone Do you realise the amount of hours we put into testing this game? Experience, he played it well, he played it hard and he did ridiculously well.
I'll give you an example, the last game I played this much was doom2 some years back. Deathmatch to be precise, I skipped school, I went w/o sleep for days, I played it like a bastard possessed, non stop. That's all me and my mate did, and we became good, damn good. I'm not saying I've been skipping anything playing EU (heh,
) but it's the same sort of thing. Try and understand.
I doubt he would have achieved this sort of a victory w/o reloading, which he did on several occasions (his words). I did something resembling that with Poland, some months ago, annexed Russia, took out most of Sweden, a lot of the HRE and the Ottoman Empire together with Austria.
Each country has its problem spots, so does France at times. I haven't seen any actual 'wars of religion', but then I haven't seen other stuff such as the Polish civil war, the Polish Partitions, the Swedish independence war. Some things however have made it in, some hadn't. It's all about gameplay balance. The A.I would tear the living crap out of France if she was to fall under the blanket of religious wars, though they are represented as revolts and rebellions, it's up to you to decide what they are.
It's a combination of things that determines how you do in a random game: the acitivities of the A.I, the country you play, the stats / difficulty level, the ability of the player and his experience and chance.
France has been _seriously_ downpowered for this game, because quite frankly (as ynd said) it was much too powerful to begin with. Not a surprise since it was done originaly by a Frenchman from an original French BG. Even so it retains some potent instruments of destruction, she has a powerful army, she has good generals and admirals, a high population and many provinces. Good avenues for expansion. Poland and Turkey are in the same boat at the start of the GC, however Poland has certain setbacks that can force her to stop expanding. She is large and her armies take months to cross from one area to another, it's difficult to fight a two fronted battle. Same with Turkey, though she has huge resources and advantages she _would_ be defeated if Austria / Hungary and 1-2 nations from the middle east declared war on her at the start of the campaign.
Last thing: If you play the game and believe she is too strong DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Customize her, reduce some generals, reduce their statistics, do whatever the hell you like. It's UP TO YOU, however we've playtested each country as much as is humanly possible.
<breathes out>
Sapura
[This message has been edited by Sapura (edited 24-10-2000).]
