How do I prevent/win wars?

[Spearton95]

Old Gods strart, playing as a flourishing Kingdom of Danmark. Third time I ragequit/game over. Be damned this game and its ironman mode, I can't undestand why I still love it.
So, how do I prevent from being raped by West Francia? I tried everything. Whenever I become weaker, they just come and destroy generations of work. I always have relations 75+, most of the time even 100, why do they keep invading me? There's nothing I can do? I always manage to ally with some Swedish people, and being an Holy War almost every Scandinavian come and help me; but they're useless, because they walk all over Finland and Prussia and try to besiege some useless county while the enemy comes at the gate and destroy my armies and occupy my holdings. And then destroy my ally's armies too. Why the heck don't they follow my army, as they always did before? Why do they split? I hope someone could explain what am I doing wrong/teach me some trick.
It can't be possible there's no way out.
And no, I won't give up Holstein.

Edited because of error in reporting relations, it's 75+ not 100+, and 100 not 200.

 

[Zsrai]

Did you reform your religion already? If so, that may be a bad idea to do too early. The Pagan Homeland Attrition bonus is pretty brutal towards invaders. Usually that AI won't even HW you if they aren't Military Org 4 yet.

The other thing you can do is raid more for the event troops from being Tribal, and hope to swarm the Franks. Tribal troops are pretty much wet tissue paper ever since 2.4.X though, so that's also why the Feudal Franks rip you a new one.

 

[Sirrobert1]

You're a pegan. Use the killer attrition

 

[yezhanquan]

Old Gods strart, playing as a flourishing Kingdom of Danmark. Third time I ragequit/game over. Be damned this game and its ironman mode, I can't undestand why I still love it.
So, how do I prevent from being raped by West Francia? I tried everything. Whenever I become weaker, they just come and destroy generations of work. I always have relations 150+, most of the time even 200, why do they keep invading me? There's nothing I can do? I always manage to ally with some Swedish people, and being an Holy War almost every Scandinavian come and help me; but they're useless, because they walk all over Finland and Prussia and try to besiege some useless county while the enemy comes at the gate and destroy my armies and occupy my holdings. And then destroy my ally's armies too. Why the heck don't they follow my army, as they always did before? Why do they split? I hope someone could explain what am I doing wrong/teach me some trick.
It can't be possible there's no way out.
And no, I won't give up Holstein.

Let's look at this bit by bit.

1) Opinion cannot be greater than +100; any excess is ignored. This aint EU IV.
2) You need to move your armies into your allies' territory for their troops to get attached to yours. At least, that's how I remember it.

 

[klopkr]

Let's look at this bit by bit.

1) Opinion cannot be greater than +100; any excess is ignored. This aint EU IV.
2) You need to move your armies into your allies' territory for their troops to get attached to yours. At least, that's how I remember it.

Lately it seems like they don't like attaching. That might just be RNG though.

 

[Spearton95]

Oooops. I did a proportion writing this post. I meant 75+ and 100. My bad. I'll just edit the first post.
However
No, I didn't reform yet. Damn it I was so worried about being invaded that I didn't think about attrition. Is it actually as deadly as you say? Still, it doesn't take much time for them to occupy my counties, and in a year they arrived to Sjaelland, and my war score hit -100. How do I survive enough to let attrition do the work?
I think it's just a matter of gold, then. Play safe, let them die because of attrition, and when they're down just raise some mercs and destroy them?

And why didn't my vassals and allies follow my army, like they used to do before?

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

AI won't generally attach to your army if it will result in the army going over the supply limit. Divide into smaller stacks and they'll join you.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

Move your capital further into Scandanvia.

Also, if you get a lot of gold per turn, retinues are amazing.

Also, build forts in all your territories, they only cost 20 gold and can slow the enemy down quite a bit.

 

[Spearton95]

Thanks for all the suggestion. I'll give a try.

 

[gdj]

Use ships to ferry troops further west and invade some undefended parts of West Francia. If your army is large enough you might even try to assault a holding. The West Francian armies will often (but not always) turn home to free their county again. When they do, get back to your ships and sail home. With good timing you can ping-pong your enemy around until your allies arrive, and have ticking warscore in your favour. Evetually, white peace should be possible.

 

[szmik]

Hire a mercenary band (cheapest in maintenance will do), send them to siege their capital, while avoiding their armies. AI tends to hunt them, so you can micromanage running around, while your other armies gather and siege their other holdings. Try picking off their not yet doomstacked armies too.
It worked for me when holy warred by Abbasids, playing as not so grown yet horde.

 

[Spearton95]

Thanks guys. Next game I'll try harder.