French AAR - my first

[Dale]

Thanks for the comments of the first BB war. In my game I'm up to 1562 (from memory) and in the middle of Catherine's period of obscuranation. I SOOOOOOOOOOO hate that period! Just riding it out at this point, chasing rebbles. It's so boring.

In the mean time I've had another BB war with England, Spain/Portugal/Palatinat, and have made a dent in England's colonisation attempts. I had to end this one early with only a couple of province gains (and not the ones I wanted either) because of obscuranation.

As for Venice, yes they still have their three islands. Venice and Turkey have only had one war so far, and Venice won that and took some territory from Turkey. So no island hopping for me. Plus, like has been said before, taking Venice brings me too close to the Eastern majors of Poland, Austria & Turkey. Though I suppose with Austria as the HRE, not having a common border with them is pretty irrelevant eh?

Anyways, hopefully I'll have an update soon. I'll play through to the end of the rebellions before posting another update.

 

[Morlac]

Originally posted by Dale
Plus, like has been said before, taking Venice brings me too close to the Eastern majors of Poland, Austria & Turkey. Though I suppose with Austria as the HRE, not having a common border with them is pretty irrelevant eh?

It can be relevant. It still takes time (a couple months, most likely) for the Austrians to walk across multiple provinces just to get at you. And even as HRE, I believe that they don't escape all attrition -- I think they get something like what they would if they were walking through the lands of a vassal -- like 50 or 60% of the normal support limit you'd get if you owned and controlled the land. So if they try walking a nice big army to you, it should suffer along the way..

In my current campaign, I am HRE (by virtue of their being so few Catholic nations left, I suppose...) and I actually find it a bit of a pain, as my armies always set their paths to the shortest possible distance, regardless of attrition along the way. So I am constantly having to "correct" it by manually walking them from one province to another along my supply chain.

 

[Carolus Rex]

Been reading up some, great stuff Dale.

 

[unmerged(6975)]

Cool, Cool! I love this. I should probably go back to playing as a major for awhile. You get to do so much more stuff!

 

[Dale]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I lost my save game!!!!!

My EU corrupted and kept crashing, so I reinstalled it. But in my stupidity, I forgot to copy the savegame out before deleting the directory to clean out the IGC files. So it's gone forever. *sigh*

Oh well, France is too easy to win with. I'll just have to start another game with a different nation. I'm debating one of these to play:

- England (been a long time since I played England)
- Austria
- Hungary (always fun with Turkey and Poland as neighbors)

Or, since I enjoy a challenge:

- Papel States
- Naples
- Denmark

At this point I'm leaning towards Papel States or Naples. Any comments?

 

[Morlac]

My condolences on the loss of the save game, Dale.

If you're taking votes on the countries you named, I'd go for Hungary.

If you're taking suggestions, I'd vote for a country similar to all those you named--Venice, the minor major.

Good luck and be sure to AAR your new game!

 

[Dale]

New country selected!

Okay guys, I decided to go with Naples. One good thing of Naples is the CB on Spain for Sicily.

I've played just over 1501, and the first Spanish-French war has almost finished (Savoy just WILLNOT make peace)!!!!! I destroyed the Papel States early on in the war, but since they're bigger than me had to content myself to one province (Navarra had sieged Emilia back). So now I'm bigger than them, but don't want to rock the stability too much at this point (-3 stab hit for DOW on Papel States for me).

Anyways, I'll play a bit more and then start writing a new AAR for it.

 

[Dale]

Okay then, let's forget about the Naples thing just yet. I got annexed by Spain.

Basically, Navarra DOWed Spain, and I refused to oblige the alliance (giving Spain a CB on me). Anyways, the French-Spanish alliance war went on for a while, and then I cancelled the vassalation with Spain. Anyways, in the war with Spain that followed, they ignored COMPLETELY, the French and Savoy troops destroying their home provinces and they came almost exclusively after me! Man, were they pissed!

Anyways, within 2 years I was annexed.

Moral of the story: DON'T cancel your vassalage unless you can guarentee getting 2 quick provinces to get your white peace!!!

---------------------------------------------------

So I started a new game. This time, as who I should've gone. Morlac, great suggestion.

Yes, I'm playing the Minor-Major, or the Major-Minor if you will.

Stay tuned for........

The Rise of the Illuminata!

Coming soon to an AAR near you.

 

[Morlac]

Condolences

Ouch -- sad to see Naples get taken down so quickly, but that's the disadvantage to starting in vassalage -- it's rather hard to get out gracefully.

It might have been necessary to get a bit bigger, so that as you said, you could have forced a quick peace with Spain.

On the other hand, it's nice to know that folks are listening to me and I look forward to reading your next AAR. (By the way, I've played around with Venice and I don't envy you. On paper you've got great prospects, but you're stuck funneling most of your economy into your navy. If you don't cut the navy way back you can't afford much else, but if you do, will you be able to project any armies where they need to go?)

And on another note -- the Illuminati are so cliche I think they even got mentioned in my AAR, though their lesser known bretheren the Carbonari get more play...

Good Luck! (It's been reaaaaalllllly dead around here lately! )

 

[Dale]

Morlac:

Yeah, the Illuminati are pretty cliche, but they're a good villian eh? Funny how Tomb Raider depicts them so badly, but then what can you expect from Holly-"I have wool over my eyes"-wood. Oh, and yes, I do know that I'm introducing the Illuminati 300 years before they appeared, and that they'll appear in Venice instead of Bavaria. But their single philosophy fits my goal, "One World Government!"

Anyways, just on the navy thing, in Jan 92 I did the best thing that can happen to Venice in EU, I disbanded 30 galleys.

The most interesting thing to see in my game so far, is my alliance, VERY un-Venice!!! But you'll have to wait and see.