Going to have to earn my Lion of the North

[Oridaellin]

Okay, it's not quite as bad as it looks. Russia and Spain just started a war with the Ottomans so they effectively have a lot less troops to fight me with. I also have a few colonial nations, so with luck GB will waste their troops and fleets attacking Vinland and New Sweden.

I'm fairly strong on ideas, and I'm soon going to be at 112% discipline. My king (Who the game named, not me) Gustav Adolph is a general with excellent shock and fire.

I suspect that if I blitz Lubeck (They are big and have eaten half of Denmark and Brandenburg) early on I can take Pomerania for myself and return a ton of cores to my allies early on to help the war effort.

I don't usually fight wars this scale, or this one sided. Do I have a chance?

 

[Robert de Bruce]

I don't usually fight wars this scale, or this one sided. Do I have a chance?

If you buy your king glasses, yes.

 

[Oridaellin]

Well, Russia is ignoring the Ottomans entirely and attacking my eastern borner with 100k troops while Spain is eating southern France. This does not bode well. I mean, Lubeck went down without any trouble... so, that's something?

 

[Orkonkel]

Have no doubts.

 

[Sfan]

Well, I hope you're not done with the war yet. The League war is pretty easy to win despite the odds if you knock out secondary participants as fast as possible. AI will usually be reluctant to simply whitepeace members of the opposite league. As an human, focus on sieging lone members/supporting your allies when they siege weak members. As soon as you can whitepeace someone do it. In a few years you'll have a more balanced setup, because the AI won't have whitepeaced your allies, and will wait for at least some money and war reps instead. The longer it goes on the easier it becomes, especially if you're willing to loan. After a few years more and more people will white peace out of war exhaustion, depleted manpower and things like that.

 

[Oridaellin]

War is still ongoing, I'm seven years in.

Russia stomped the Ottomans and have been wrecking my allies, really it's just France and I remaining. Fortunately I finally sieged down enough russian forts for them to white peace, which means the catholics are down 100k troops. I'm sending my army to quickly stack wipe a british invasion force in Norway, then after that I'm going to see about knocking Poland and Lithuania out. With them down it will basically by France and I vs. Austria and Spain + some minors.

So long as France doesn't peace out I still have a shot. Current numbers are about 100k troops against 140k, so it's not horrible.
Sadly, I may end up with a treaty of Westphalia as opposed to a Lion of the North, but it's still far from over.

 

[Sfan]

It's all about how France can hold, in deed. Protect them at all cost if they start to get overrun. If they whitepeace you're doomed, if they stay in you can white peace PLC, then Spain, then win. Good luck.

 

[Oridaellin]

Update, Poland and Lithuania are out, the Netherlands too. France is likely to surrender at any moment, but on the other hand my eastern front is now secure and my western territory is a sea of forts, so I may be able to just go on a capital siege spree to end this. Austri is willing to white peace this, so I'm confident to try a little longer for the win.

 

[Oridaellin]

Holy crap. This one feels good!

Since I figured France would peace out soon I surrendered to Spain, giving them a single French Province.

France and Venice peaced out, leaving me as the last protestant standing against around 100k Catholics.

Wiped out a second British invasion force then attacked Hamburg, peaced them out for 1k gold (I mean, this was a mega expensive war after all!)

Attacked Brunswick and fought a giant 50k Austrian-Cologne stack with my army which was roughly equal. They were stack wiped and from there it was mine.

Got mit uns!

 

[CoolSpin]

Almost 1m casualties, "We bled for this", 1m casualties on each side

 

[henzington]

The league war is perfect for the 1m casualties achievement

 

[Oridaellin]

See, I probably could have gotten it if I was patient and drew in the ottomans, but it seemed like they were at least 15 years away from joining the league and I really wasn't comfortable waiting that long.

 

[Oridaellin]

Weird things that happened after the war:

The electors love me, but literally all of them have anulled treaties with me for at least three more years
Denmark became a OPM and is now an elector
After repeatedly clashing with the massive Dutch and English Navies I now realize that I lost only ten ships the entire war
Since I didn't conquer them yet all western north american natives got the institutions and are now caught up on tech (I feel like that's going to be a problem later)

 

[Sfan]

Unless this was fixed, you can't get We bled for this in the League Wars because people separate peacing destroys it.

Anyway, good job for doing it.

 

[Rikissa]

Who became Emperor?

 

[Bayes]

Great thread! Gratz on your victory looks like you deserved it.

 

[ecrurudesby]

I think most people advocate seiging down secondary participants to peace them out quickly, but personally I swear by my tactic of grouping up with a large allied country, keeping your armies together and ensuring you both win the big battles handily. Follow them around like a shadow and if they clash with a big enemy army then you can reinforce to keep your strongest ally in good shape. This also allows you to force favourable engagements yourself, the importance of which your nearby ally should recognise and jump right in.

It's all very well sieging a bunch of capitals, but if your allies are getting annihilated in the meantime then you'll soon find yourself hopelessly outnumbered.

 

[QDI]

Congratulations!

Last time I tried though, I couldn't become the leader of the league. How did you manage that?

 

[Oridaellin]

Congratulations!

Last time I tried though, I couldn't become the leader of the league. How did you manage that?

I focused hard on improving my prestige after converting, plus I had about 500 total development by the time the leagues formed. I believe that weighs it in your favour.

Even still Bohemia was the leader at first. I resisted the urge to rage quit and eventually they wound up in small war and I became the leader. Was a terrifying few years though before it happened!

 

[Oridaellin]

Who became Emperor?

The palatinate sadly. Once I'm allowed to have treaties with Brandenburg and Bohemia again I should be able to become the new emperor.