Hopefully they'd focus on things like performance issues and actual bugs before wasting time on gamey tactics someone uses in a SP game.
Hundred Years War as England now seriously approaching ''unwinnable by design''.
- Thread starter BaronNoir
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Because the game starts in 1444, Charles VII has been on the throne for fifteen years and is recognized as the King of France by all relevant feudal lords (including Burgundy). The French civil war that gave Britain a foothold is a thing of the past, the succession line is clear, etc.
The British shot at the throne of France is dead and done by game start. At best - very best - they have a shot at retaining their holdings on the coasts of France, but the "claim" to the French throne is a paper claim by that point, and England is no longer in position to actually enforce it.
The British shot at the throne of France is dead and done by game start. At best - very best - they have a shot at retaining their holdings on the coasts of France, but the "claim" to the French throne is a paper claim by that point, and England is no longer in position to actually enforce it.
Not playing as England, I've noticed England getting a "Resistance!" event that spawns a HUGE (20+) stack of friendly rebels in French-occupied provinces. Did this used to happen? (The last time I played England was in 1.3 or 1.4.) Maybe there's some cheese to be had with letting France take your provinces, waiting for the French doomstacks to attack what are essentially free allied troops, and boat-bombing the ensuing battle to overwhelm the French armies with superior numbers. It'd be a long and gruelling wait, and you're depending on RNG to pop the event, but as always you can siege Bearn, destroy newly-recruited units, etc. while you wait, at least.
It's one of the cooler new events in AoW, any nation can get it. I've seen France get it, so it'll work both ways. And it does cost you some cash.
But the way you describe it makes me think trying to engineer this event, or messing with Local Autonomy may not really be so cheesy, after all. If you think about it, you'd be the legal sovereign of an area your crown had ruled for hundreds of years, you're beating the bushes for local support to go at the French crown one more time, who's to say you wouldn't be successful in rousing the locals? Wouldn't some of them prefer a scenario wherein they stick with the sovereign they know, rather than an uncertain future with new French sovereign who's looking like he's getting much too powerful? And wouldn't promising them greater local autonomy be something an English King would consider?
From that perspective, all WAD, no cheese here.
That's why it took the French years to conquer the last English possessions, including several more close military victories that were needed to defeat the English armies in France. A few battles going the other way could have turned the war around again, putting England back on the attack.
It was the war of the roses that ended any English ability to fight back.
The war almost resumed against in 1474, with an English army landing on French soil, allied with Burgandy and Brittany.
This. England had ballsed their claims to French lands up a couple of decades prior to the start date, winning the HYW should be seen as a minor miracle. I personally don't see the appeal anyway. You're England and you control France 20/30 years in to the start of the campaign, you've practically finished the game at that point.
The historical narrative is less important to me than the gameplay issue caused by having a way overpowered England in 1450 (if they won the war). You might as well claim victory and start a new game at that point. I usually do when there's no challenge left no matter who I'm playing. If they AI succeeded at it that would even be a bigger problem.
Well, some people argue that it was the Pre-Roses political difficulties and the King's minority/illnesses that hamstrung the English ability to fight effectively in France. And that it was, then, the setbacks in France that helped trigger the Wars.
But to assert that there is no way the English could have prevailed is quite the stretch. Success on the ground would've been the only way the English could've enforced their paper claim. But reverses on the ground were the way the English found themselves in a difficult position.
True. Not worth playing beyond that more than once or twice. But it's an interesting mini-scenario type of game, rather than a Grand Campaign, IMHO. You have a fairly challenging setup, that maaaybe you can win with some consistency, but luck is usually a factor, now allies will be again, and finding that usually successful strategy is always fun with a new patch.
Back on track to retake some provinces, perhaps, or force France to renounce its claims to Normandy and Aquitaine and let England keep those. IF they got lucky.
But back on track to making any kind of serious claim at the french throne? Not by 1444. The former Dauphin's simply been crowned and on the throne too long by then. The crippling weakness of the French throne and the civil war that made the English claim a serious option that several French lords were willing to accept was gone in 1444.
By 1444 the best Britain might get was to use their alleged claim as an argument to get some concessions in peace treaties if they could win enough battles.
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(Also relevant: a personal union between France and England with England as the leader is about as likely to last as a personal union between England and Scotland led from Edinburgh. Just like James VI/I had to move to London and rule from there, and just like HIS personal union became de facto an English-led personal union with Scotland as the junior partner, the same would have happened to an Anglo-French union. The kings of England would have had to move their capital to Paris to monitor their larger, more populous country. In time, France, not England, would have become the center of that realm, and while it would have been a Lancastrian France, it would still have been France.
The Lancasters and Plantagenet had a shot at winning the HYW by taking the French throne. For England, though, it would have been the mother of all pyrrhic victories.
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Right after I won I was attacked by a huge coalition who demanded I end the union with France - it was almost as much (if not more) of a challenge as winning the HYW in the first place!
I agree that in a standard game winning the HYW effectively gives you a mandate to crush whomsoever you please but some of us enjoy seeing what absurdities might be possible ^^.
So they retake some provinces, war continues for a while longer....who knows what happens then. Burgandy could easily switch sides again, plenty of problems could have destabilised France, the English could pick up on the new French artillery.
At the moment AI England cant even maintain its territory at the start.
It... was pretty easy? I just hired all the mercenaries I could, let the debt run up as far as it needed to and took the French head on. No special strategy required. And that was with the War of the Roses firing right in the middle of the bloody war. >:|
Much harder has been trying to integrate the bastards- they'll declare independence wars at the drop of a hat. It's 1620 now and it's still cooking, though we are getting close.
Conversely, I haven't found myself as strong as you might think, with France under the yoke. I spent most of the 16th century in a near permanent state of manpower exhaustion, and had to take on something like forty years of debt to win the Thirty Years War. Actually, this has been one of the most challenging and rewarding games of EU I've ever played.
Much harder has been trying to integrate the bastards- they'll declare independence wars at the drop of a hat. It's 1620 now and it's still cooking, though we are getting close.
Conversely, I haven't found myself as strong as you might think, with France under the yoke. I spent most of the 16th century in a near permanent state of manpower exhaustion, and had to take on something like forty years of debt to win the Thirty Years War. Actually, this has been one of the most challenging and rewarding games of EU I've ever played.
Retake some provinces was the best they could have gotten from the peace in the vast majority of reasonable scenarios. It would have taken extremely lucky scenarios to arrive at an English king of France by 1444.
You seem to be operating under the notion that England's enforcement of its claim was just a matter of military strength. That's delusional. England had won dramatic victories long before Agincourt and still never managed to enforce its claims to France except for a brief window of time after Agincourt.
And they only managed it then because the French king was insane, and the French nobility was in the middle of a civil war where a lot of them would rather be ruled by the English than by a French king favoring the other faction. That's what made the English grab at the French throne possible during a brief window in the 1410s-20s.
Once Charles VII was crowned in 1429 and managed to reconcile the different factions in the French civil war by 1435, that window of opportunity closed. Even large British victories wouldn't have made holding the French throne a reasonable proposal for the English.
(And we have plenty of people in this thread pointing out that they DID win the HYW, so it's clearly not unwinnable)
Which means a nerf to your strategy and another nerf to Byzantium for good measure.
With sorties your ability to keep a strong France for fighting that second war is kind of over, you don't have enough men to stack 2-3 units on every province. So, that second war will be more difficult, longer and gruesome. Now, if you beat people they have to leave the coalition though right? Or you can ask for it? I've not had to fight a coalition yet, but I will tonight when I finish my war against Austria with Castile and vassalize the electors.
What morale do sortie armies start with? I've looted Portugal with a 1 stack (well, the two provinces on the mainland) and not had a sortie yet.
Winning the 100 years war is a nice challenge, and so is the second war, after that I only keep playing if I am doing a WC.
A string of victories by a sane adult Henry? Or by his Yorkist heir/Lieutenant? Or a convenient death by one Dauphin/King? Another Burgundian alliance?
Please. Of course it was possible. Likely? Of course not. Call it fantasy, if you will. I'll call it alternative history. Have you EVER seen the AI do it, though? Nor have I. So how could it possibly hurt anyone's game?
Quite probable. IIRC, several mods try to represent just such an eventuality. And switching cultures and becoming the FRA tag is an option that any successful English player should consider.
I'm sure many Frenchmen would've said the same about getting a Valois King in 1428.
"Delusional" best describes someone who's discounting the absolute importance of the military situation on the ground. But, you're right, thread is getting off topic. Clearly you don't think there should be any chance England should be able to win the HYW. Clearly other people disagree. I'm sure you're comforted that it never happens for the AI. I'm sorry if my being able to do it in my games offends your sense of history.
Right. The game should only be played in line with my view of acceptable outcomes.
It looks like the rule is that the AI will never join an alliance with someone who is currently engaged in an offensive war. However, in contrast to previous versions, the AI is perfectly happy to join old wars, so both sides can do some prolonged schmoozing: the attacker to get reluctant existing allies on board, and the defender to get anyone on board who isn't already on the attacking side.
This cuts both ways, of course. Suppose as England you fight France to a standstill, and end the war with no union, but retaining possession of your mainland provinces. When France counterattacks, you can play the damsel-in-distress routine and start trying to recruit allies all over Europe.
Who was saying that there should be an English king of France by 1444? I am talking about the war continuing for a long time, potentially becoming a 150 year war.
The first English kings were arguably not actually intending to make a bit for the Crown of France, they just used their claim to the throne to legitimise their war. Legally they owed homage to the French king as vassals, fighting against him would make them merely rebels, by claiming the Crown they became a legitimate challenger and were more likely to get support in France.
Their success in enforcing the claim for a brief period was more about the fact that they controlled Paris and France was in chaos after the loss of so much of its nobility at Agincourt. Being crowned didn't really make much difference, they only controlled the territory they actually occupied anyway whilst the lands they didn't maintained their allegiance to the French. It is only in the game that enforcing the claim actually gets you control of all France.
Charles still could have been killed, Burgundy could have easily switched sides again (they did 25 years later) or Charles's nobles could have rebelled. France was hardly completely stable. Plus, as I said previously, a continuation of the war would not have necessarily meant trying to regain the title of King of France, simply securing the territory they had just lost in the French resurgence would be an entirely valid goal for the English.
In addition, we are assuming that the war just ends when a truce is made with England still is possession of their French territories. The war had already gone on for 100 years of truces and fighting, most likely (assuming no war of the roses) there would be a truce and then the war would resume for exactly the same reasons. The English claim to the French throne was only abandoned in 1475 as part of negotiations, the war could have begun again at any point.
I have won the Hundred years war, in various forms since I usually prefer not to PU them, I have also made an empire as Ragusa. A player can do anything, I am talking about an AI or if France and England had equally skilled players behind them.