Ironman is scary

[Jadelith]

well.

Started as HOL. By the beginning of 1500s I had ~70% of greater netherlands provinces (Dutch + Wallonian + Flemish). 1510ish I think. I'm not a good player so this is not bad for me . but I mostly play ironman.

Gelre was the last country I needed for forming NED; it was allied to DEN, but was getting beat up pretty bad in a war with Munster & allies; DEN didn't care (even though they weren't at war with anyone else / no debt). I thought I might join the fun as well. Now, I was normally really scared of DEN and it's 45k army, but it's armies just sat at home in this war.

Until Munster peaced out by taking 2 of Gelre's 3 provinces.

I thought - hey, I'll just wait a bit on Gelre's only province till length of war malus goes down. That is, until DEN sent its entire army.

OK - I didn't want to use the 15 favors FRA owes me, but I guess I have to use it. Called to arms, FRA accepted.

Turns out, FRA's ENTIRE 50k army was sitting on scotland (they had a PU with them). Denmark quickly sank FRA's entire navy.

18k vs. 45k... war didn't last long.

Alt + F4. My ~6 hours gone in a few mins because of simple & completely unnecessary complacency :/

This is ironman and I'm sad.

 

[Sharples88]

Unfortunately the AI likes to send it's entire army to very strange places. Like North America. Leaving it's entire homeland undefended.

 

[Jadelith]

yeah, it was pretty weird seeing 0 troops in france for the whole war. DEN even conquered some of france's land - france was completely helpless.

 

[CharlieMRCR]

I hear you..the AI can be bad. I once relied on England to fight Scotland in a proxy war. I couldn't declare on France directly cuz they were allied with Ottos..no CB'd Scotland and called England in to handle the Scots until I got enough WS with France. Sadly, England's army was in Ireland, and Scotland held the straight with a single cog. England either hid or lost their navy somehow. Damn AI.

 

[Draconaes]

I've found ironman to be very good at teaching me to pay close attention to what I'm doing. Misclicks can usually be save-scummed, but I've grown to be very particular about declaring wars in tight situations.

Here's something I learned recently: do NOT assault a breached fort when you don't know where the enemy's army is, unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing. Stackwipes are never fun (for the player).