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

[GamerKG]

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.

If France and Castille are friendly I agree. However I don't think I've EVER seen this happen.

Also another problem I have with the AI is that they don't seem to switch alliances all that much due to the trust mechanic and rival mechanic. Really I would think it would be a good idea to let Castille become stronger so it can fight France for you, which might mean letting it ally France at the beginning. Unfortunately the AI won't ever un-ally France so...

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...

This is clever, a good use of an underused mechanic, pure reward for nearly no risk, and not so strong as to make the rest of the game pointless. Excellent.

 

[salmanbabri]

France rarely does serious colonizing. Worry more about Spain. If you really want to dominate the colonies, win the hundred year war and use france to conquer the Iberean. Then quit the game cuz you just won.

That's exactly what I did in my latest game. Won HYW, PU with France & then integrating it in about late 16th century. In the mean time I kept raiding Spain & Portugal & destroying their navy & army. I can easily conquer Spain but I don't feel like doing it. Time to start a new game.

 

[Meridian235]

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

I suppose. This isn't revoking HRE in 1450. Attacking France's nominal ally Scotland instead of fighting a difficult war on the continent isn't an unreasonable decision. Neither is baiting France's ally Provence into a fight in a province their big sister can't fight in. About the only gamey thing about this strategy is getting around the AI's insistence that Caux be part of the peace deal. There are plenty of better examples of "powergamey bullshit" on these forums. You should troll there, but consider yourself fed.