France is broken. AI imbalance?

[acantoni]

In my Recent Game as Tuscany in 1530 or so France basically doesn't exist anymore (ile de france + 2 other provinces)
We have a huge Aragon that got all Castille, some province in Portugal, and half the southern france - Brittany which has now like 10 provinces and Burgundy that is now the north-east part

 

[LarryLeica]

Am currently playing as France with a 1399 start date modded in. It's the easiest game I've ever played, it's 1475 and I am untouchable especially after taking defensive as my first idea and prioritising filling it out. I've not played France in any EU game before.

When I've played other nations it seems France either gets torn apart by 1500 or it stabilises and has roughly it's modern borders. I've yet to see it blob. The biggest blob in most games is Lithuania so far.

 

[unmerged(461739)]

Well since steam is down and I can't continue my new Ironman game, I'll toss in my 2 cents. France is good, but not unbeatable. I won the 100 years war, not easily but a win is a win. Peaced out with Provence and then Scotland who joined later, then wore France down and got myself Foix as a vassal and some cash. You need to pick your advisers carefully, for example 0.5% morale might not seem like much but it's enough for a small stack in the mountains to hold the line against the BBB and her vassals. Along with that you need to manage the war effectively so you don't have to keep war taxes forever and such. Now France is being crushed by Burgundy as I deal with the House of Dork in the WOTR.

 

[Axe99]

Only in my first game, up to the 1720s with GB/England, and France seems pretty reasonable. Clearly the power to beat, but also clearly beatable with sensible alliances et al. At one point, Sweden got senior partner in a PU with France, which was a bit scary (Sweden has swallowed up all of Scandinavia and a good deal of Northern Russia), but fortunately they fell out again pretty quick.

 

[KingGeorge]

Well since steam is down and I can't continue my new Ironman game, I'll toss in my 2 cents. France is good, but not unbeatable. I won the 100 years war, not easily but a win is a win. Peaced out with Provence and then Scotland who joined later, then wore France down and got myself Foix as a vassal and some cash. You need to pick your advisers carefully, for example 0.5% morale might not seem like much but it's enough for a small stack in the mountains to hold the line against the BBB and her vassals. Along with that you need to manage the war effectively so you don't have to keep war taxes forever and such. Now France is being crushed by Burgundy as I deal with the House of Dork in the WOTR.

As England I couldn't win the hundred years war or defeat France in any other war between 1444-1567. The only time i've defeated them so far is when i attacked their undefended colonies in America while they were in a war against a massive coalition (which they've actually defeated) and even then they would still send transport ships to their colonies. If i didn't have a superior navy i would have lost that war. Hopefully i won, annexed a bunch of their colonies forced them to pay 563 ducats, return cores to their rightful owners and release Toulouse as an independent nation. From what i figured their military is strong but their navy not that much, so in my opinion If you want to have a chance against them you need a strong naval force with many heavy and transport ships.

 

[Hootieleece]

@Larry Leica: Try France with offensive ideas. Just as OP. Thats how i played them. In one of my games Late game AI France had both maxed out. With their National Ideas.......I just surrendered.

 

[FietsPomp]

Currently in the process of beating a fully formed france at around 1500. I felt like he was unbeatable with its military larger then the next two strongest countries combined.
Playing as Venice with northern Italy as my land.
My strategy was allying Spain and Portugal and wait until france attacked the HRE. Since i was part of the coalition england and a couple of HRE minors joined in to.
Now france is at war with half the HRE, england, spain, aragon, napal, portugal, bohemia(emperor), large trier, and some minors and vassals.

My tactics came down to helping aragon/spain/portugal. The AI is quite stupid vs stronger AI so they dont seem to band together properly. You need to help them with this.
France has stacks of 25 running around and a/s/p have 16-18 each. So they will loose if you dont help them. I joined my 25 stack halfway into their battle and it worked wonders, destroyed 3 doomstacks.

So far i seem to be winning, hoping uber-denmark isnt going to break up the fun.

 

[Amagaeru]

Remove the annex vassals missions or nerf it and you fix the problem. Was the same for EU III. France doesn't get -1 stability of annexing it's vassal and it does it with a mission way to easilly.

 

[DarkWraith]

I was just thinking to myself that there must have been some change since past EU games, because in every game I play France completely collapses by the end of the 16th century. I usually have nothing to do with those collapses, so it isn't just the OP human player.

In every game I've been in so far, it's Spain who's been the power to beat. They're the only country that have been consistently powerful, and usually in the #1 spot, in all of my games. Portugal doesn't do too badly either, but they're always tailing Spain.

 

[Grifen88]

I was just thinking to myself that there must have been some change since past EU games, because in every game I play France completely collapses by the end of the 16th century. I usually have nothing to do with those collapses, so it isn't just the OP human player.

In every game I've been in so far, it's Spain who's been the power to beat. They're the only country that have been consistently powerful, and usually in the #1 spot, in all of my games. Portugal doesn't do too badly either, but they're always tailing Spain.

The main change is

a) diplomatic relations limit, so France usually doesn't have allies early on
b) coalitions
c) France starts in the midst of the HYW, unlike in EU3 where France starts off in peace.

Together, they lead to a very rocky early game for both France and England. Both usually manage to throw away their manpower in the ensuing war, though England seems to be on the losing end fairly consistently. The thing is France itself cannot seem to get a favourable peace deal in a reasonable timeframe, since they can't occupy the home isles and the war usually drags. It's not uncommon to see the AI white peacing out or just taking one or two provinces.

If France manages to reoccupy the their former territory, the AI then usually tries to zerg the neighbouring nations. At first, they succeed, since France has huge manpower and godking generals. Then coalitions form. Since France usually don't have allies, they have to fight these coalitions all by themselves. It's a toss-up whether or not they succeed. A majority of time in my games, they fall to coalitions and then you see France become a mess of colours as half a dozen countries occupy them. Then it's all downwards from there.

However if France manages to reabsorb their vassals and reconquer their historic borders, yes, that's when the BBB appears.

 

[AndreasPhokas]

biggest issue Is france getting .33 morale bonus early on, move that back and their armies are a lot easier to beat.

 

[Welsige]

France to me is allways a pita. It dosent help that my allies dont give me control of their troops, its hard to guess if they are attached of not. Most often than not its just a mess of small stacks being crushed by France.

Contrary for what i read, France to me allways have allies, like venice and others here or there.

To my bad luck, i have yet to see a coalition form against France. Usually they form against me, playing as Austria.

Dosent France get penalties for annexing all that territories early on? Hell broke on my for just conquering 3 provinces in legitimate wars...

 

[LiberiusX]

Super necro. What lvl wizard are you?

If by "all those territories early on" you mean their vassals like Orleans, Bourbon etc. then no, they don't get aggressive expansion because they are just integrating them.

As Austria, are you annexing by diplomacy or conquest? If by conquest, you get 2x Aggressive Expansion(AE) for annexing inside the Holy Roman Empire.

 

[Yxklyx]

France is not broken in my current game but surprisingly they haven't gotten any Military ideas other than Aristocracy and we're in the 1630s. They've expanded a bit with me as an Ally but that's stopped now and we're ready to start the reconquest. It depends on the game.

 

[grommile]

Dosent France get penalties for annexing all that territories early on?

France's earliest land acquisitions tend to consist of:

• Reclaiming its cores from England (Calais, Caux, Gascogne, Labourd, Normandie), Provence (Anjou, Maine), and Burgundy (Picardie) under a Reconquest CB, which reduces AE for cored provinces to 25% of base. These provinces have either Basque culture (Labourd) or French-culture-group cultures (the rest), are a significant distance away from any large countries with Germanic-culture-group cultures, and are not part of the Holy Roman Empire.
• Diplomatically annexing its vassals, which now gives zero AE.

So, no, France does not in fact get much in the way of AE from that wave of reclamatory expansion. The only uninvolved parties they're at all likely to upset are Castile and Aragon.

Austria, on the other hand, has no unowned cores to reclaim, so any land taken by direct conquest will probably be taken under a Conquest CB, which generates three times as much AE as retaking cores under a Reconquest CB (and that's before accounting for things like the AE penalty towards HRE members for taking HRE land, which applies even in circumstances where it arguably shouldn't such as taking Treviso from Venice). I would generally recommend that you not try to expand by direct military conquest in the early game as Austria; doing so shows unawareness of, or disregard for, your chosen country's strengths.

 

[Nilmerf]

I've got France down to one province now.. if I take Paris it costs 510 admin points to core it with a claim! Damned Aristocratic ideas..

I suppose I could vassal them, but it would take decades to get over the negative relations.

 

[Viperswhip]

I've got France down to one province now.. if I take Paris it costs 510 admin points to core it with a claim! Damned Aristocratic ideas..

I suppose I could vassal them, but it would take decades to get over the negative relations.

This is actually not true, unless you have the worst diplomats in the world, you can increase relations by 200 in about 2 or 3 years with any vassal, and any war they join you in you start getting bonuses that way as well. It's not too hard, it's the same as any other vassal you take in a war.

 

[Nidhoegger]

Funny that this comes up right now. In my current game France got ripped apart by sucessive peasant, religious and nationalistic uprising. I never took a hand, even allied them with Prussia and still therer is not much left of them. Hell, even Burgundy reappeared....