Leaving the Continent strategy for England, what to do with provinces in France?

[Nunn45]

If you are desperate to hurt the french, should still peace out day 1 with them then just come back when you have a lot more strength and a wooden wall between you and anything french.
The HYW is just too draining if you don't intend to control France.

 

[Amroth]

Just starting a game and im going to do a mix of these, day one peace out france for everything except labourd which is going to nav and cal which ill keep till staple port hopefully same time ill invade and vassalise scotland and diplo vass a irish minor and feed them the rest of ireland, ill take the norwegian islands and iceland then head for north America to get to the Caribbean fast. Then, Profit.

 

[G_Morgan]

I'd sell everything to Austria. If we must troll then we must troll properly.

 

[josh127]

There's a lot of land to colonize these days. I wouldn't be concerned with crippling the Iberians or France early. Thinking long term I want the Iberians to colonize a bunch of land that I can take, and I want to flip to France as my primary ally to hurt them on the homefront. In that measure, Castile and Portugal would be great early game allies. Not only because a giant alliance would probably keep France busy looking east, but also because they can bring fleets should you rumble with Denmark. Their early success should become your late game success along side your big blue buddy.

I'd dump the France cores early so I could start working on improving that relation, and as a secondary extreme long term goal I would be trying to keep relations as best I can with Austria for the inevitable extremely late game double cross of big blue. I'm sure they'll do some colonizing that you'll need to clean up, and you'll want someone on the mainland to help out.

 

[Path]

There's absolutely no need to deal with the Iberians unless you're attempting a WC and you're worried that they'll help westernize the Americas too quickly. The more they colonize, the better it is--just form your CNs and then steal their colonies. It's much faster than it'll ever be to colonize everything yourself.

 

[Meridian235]

Controlling the English Channel trade node as England:

The first thing you should do before unpausing the game as England is to start fabricating a claim on Scotland. While France is sieging down your continental posessions, DOW Scotland and crush them. If any Irish minors join in, Siege them out and take their money. Call in Portugal with care, you don't want to feed France warscore.

By the time you're done with Scotland, one of two things will have happened. Either Provence will start sieging down Calais, or Burgundy will DOW you and take it themselves. If Provence, then leave 3 infantry in Calais and invite the attack. Reinforce with men from across the channel. Rinse and repeat for warscore.

Offering anything other than the two southern provinces will give you the "Requires Caux as part of the deal" maulus. You're going to have to get creative with sea battles, fighting in Portugal, or the calais trick to keep warscore around 19-20.

If Burgundy declares, this is even better. They will keep France from occupying Calais, and take it for themselves. Finish Scotland, then peace out with France. When you have completed all of your offensive wars, ally Austria and bring them into the war with Burgundy. Take Holland.

You can figure it out from there.

 

[Mikalos]

Controlling the English Channel trade node as England:

The first thing you should do before unpausing the game as England is to start fabricating a claim on Scotland. While France is sieging down your continental posessions, DOW Scotland and crush them. If any Irish minors join in, Siege them out and take their money. Call in Portugal with care, you don't want to feed France warscore.

By the time you're done with Scotland, one of two things will have happened. Either Provence will start sieging down Calais, or Burgundy will DOW you and take it themselves. If Provence, then leave 3 infantry in Calais and invite the attack. Reinforce with men from across the channel. Rinse and repeat for warscore.

Offering anything other than the two southern provinces will give you the "Requires Caux as part of the deal" maulus. You're going to have to get creative with sea battles, fighting in Portugal, or the calais trick to keep warscore around 19-20.

If Burgundy declares, this is even better. They will keep France from occupying Calais, and take it for themselves. Finish Scotland, then peace out with France. When you have completed all of your offensive wars, ally Austria and bring them into the war with Burgundy. Take Holland.

You can figure it out from there.

theres like 3 missions that give you a free CB on scotland, why waste a diplomat on that

 

[Meridian235]

theres like 3 missions that give you a free CB on scotland, why waste a diplomat on that

Not before unpausing. It's important that you get the Scotland war over with quickly so that you can peace out with France and get ready to defend against Burgundy. If you have a reliable method of getting one of those missions quickly, I'd love to hear about it.

 

[Mikalos]

Not before unpausing. It's important that you get the Scotland war over with quickly so that you can peace out with France and get ready to defend against Burgundy. If you have a reliable method of getting one of those missions quickly, I'd love to hear about it.

or i can just get the CB after unpausing, becaude im not going to be getting a claim anyways right away

power gamey bullshiut should not be part of strat./ reccomendations unles OP asks for them

 

[ChildeR]

or i can just get the CB after unpausing, becaude im not going to be getting a claim anyways right away

power gamey bullshiut should not be part of strat./ reccomendations unles OP asks for them

Before/after unpausing doesn't matter, but I don't think you can get them before HYW is over. Which means when you DoW Scotland, France will join in due to the guarantee.

 

[AurochsAway]

or i can just get the CB after unpausing, becaude im not going to be getting a claim anyways right away

power gamey bullshiut should not be part of strat./ reccomendations unles OP asks for them

Avoiding war with France is not "power gamey bullshiut", it's common sense.

 

[Yorkie-GBR]

I tend to peace out after I have won a battle, sell Normandy to Brittany/ or Sell Labourd to Navara. The latter will make Castile and France Rivals, which can only be a good thing. Whilst this is going on I fabricate claims all over Ireland, and pick up the vassalise Scotland mission which becomes available after the HYW. I then DOW on the irish minors and take Scotland as a Vassal in the war and feed irish minors to Scotland, the rest I annex in full.

Deal with coalition, and the return to beat down France and later Burgundy/ vice versa depending of situation using the Justify Trade CB so you don't have to land troops on the continent. Blockade until W/S is sufficient to release vassals. It should go without saying you do not bring in any allies to these types of wars, use them to stop/help in coalition wars.

Rinse and repeat until France is no more, and prepare for the Netherlands to form and take them out, otherwise your nice trade income will take a dent.

 

[Mikalos]

Avoiding war with France is not "power gamey bullshiut", it's common sense.

everything about his p[osts was "do everything the most efficient possible way!" which is power gaming bullshit

 

[esmack]

One strategy to try if you want to hold, at least temporarily onto your continental holdings is to scorch the earth and retreat to Aragon and Navarre. Sit in the mountains and maybe snipe the odd small stack. Once French manpower starts to deplete Burgundy will declare on France. I got this to work once, but in another attempt France got access to Navarre fought my army in the mountains and won comfortably. Lucky France is probably not susceptible to such tactics.

AFAIK you cannot sell provinces to rivals so you probably cannot sell provinces to France, Castile or Burgundy. It's probably easier to release some vassals then free them before the truce timer runs out. That might trigger some power struggles between the majors.

 

[canuckinmontrea]

Early on I fight france and weaken them, then I go about my other plans of uniting the isles. I don't just hand france the mainland. I fully expect to lose there over time, but I make france earn it slowly, andmanage my manpower carefully. I keep Calais, even as I turn to a colonial focused game

 

[GamerKG]

everything about his p[osts was "do everything the most efficient possible way!" which is power gaming bullshit

There's no need to go running around being a jerk. If you want to discuss/debate his advice then you can do so politely. Just because he is offering advice you wouldn't want to take doesn't mean OP doesn't want it.


To answer the OP, I think the basic strategy is to give up all continental provinces in the HYW except Calais. This should give you an event that will let you also give France Calais in exchange for stability and some other bonuses. As much as I love fighting to keep Calais until the Staple Port decision, I ultimately think it isn't worth it. Mercantilism is not that important when you're England, as you'll have light ships everywhere to bring in New World trade, and you can conquer plenty of land for your trading companies because you don't have to fight any wars on the continent.

Since you want to take Scotland at some point anyway, and France might never stop guaranteeing them, using a diplomat to generate a claim immediately is a good idea. If you can declare war on Scotland before peacing out with France, they won't be called in. Even though France would do nothing in such a war militarily, they do cause warscore to be calculated differently and they will cause Scotland to refuse peace for a much longer time, which you don't need.

I don't think you can sell Calais to Burgundy (probably rivals), and Austria can't core it so they won't take it. I also don't think selling Labourd to Navarra is worth it, since France and Spain will fight anyways and I think you don't get the event to abandon the continent if you keep it.

I am personally uninterested in fully optimizing my gameplay since it is easy to become too big to fail, so you may not want to take my advice. Just do whatever you want to do, and as long as you don't get eliminated from the game, I think it'll be fun.

 

[Yorkie-GBR]

I also don't think selling Labourd to Navarra is worth it, since France and Spain will fight anyways

If France and Castile are Friendly, then you want to sell Labourd otherwise you run the risk of a France Castile alliance for the majority of the game. And even if Castile and France are Rivals, selling Labourd to Narava will almost guarnetee either Aragon and France Fighting or Aragon and Castile Fighting which in turn slows down Castiles expansion.

imo a Win Win situation.

 

[tytan88]

Note that Scotland always allies one of the Irish minors. If you wait a couple of days, you can DOW the Irish minor and vassalize Scotland right away. There is something to getting France to release all of its vassals or some land, but that's resources you aren't spending getting to the Caribbean before Portugal, which is usually my chief goal in the games. Get to the Caribbean first and Get to South Africa second if possible.

Releasing Normandy as a vassal also buys you time with keeping those provinces too.

 

[ecrurudesby]

Controlling the English Channel trade node as England:

The first thing you should do before unpausing the game as England is to start fabricating a claim on Scotland.

>English Channel
>Scotland
u wot m8

Anyway I wasn't rushed to subjugate Scotland in my current 1.8 game; I left them long enough that they started to colonise Florida, and when they had four Floridian provinces I vassalised them and got some nice free colonies along with my new British nation.

 

[Seleuceia]

If you want to continually hold on to Calais, fabricate trade wars on France/Burgundy and attack them before they attack you to get back Calais...with that war goal, blockading ports will give you a ticking war score, which means even if they occupy Calais, you will still have positive war score and worse case can white peace...you also then are guaranteed 5 years of truce, which means they can't attack you for that long to try and take back Calais...rinse/repeat indefinitely...