New 100 Years War Mechanics. Lets Build A New Plan!

[Cary Miller]

So I have just played a 1454 saved game whereas I won the hundred years war. Unfortunatly I got a coalition war and French independent war so I raged quit that rare save file.

I'm making new/re-using old notes and I NEED YOU to help me find ways to beat France. Post your ideas and we shall make a list



Me: Getting military access from Savoy and defending in in Dalphine is great! (even better than Bearn as Bearn uses Hills instead of mountains). Make Sure you use your +4 Maneuver general as France has +4 maneuver as well and you wont get the river crossing penalty on your side if you don't! Also get Fleet basin rights so your ships can blockaid south France and not sink while waiting on your troops.

Me: I didn't know there was a level 3 fort here. It could be a great idea to "Scorch Earth" here before escaping and/or fooling France to stand there with a huge stack! As always either pick up your army by docking a boat or getting military access from Brittany.

Me: Remember from above about docking in Savoy? You need fleet basin rights more for than just landing troops easier. You need it so that you can blockaid the enemy ports to the south! Btw you can now "Mothball" fleets to save money (Save the rest for later and upgrade them when possible). I say send about 3-4 to west France and 1 to both south France sea bordering provinces.

 

[Cary Miller]

Bump for a chance. Common Peps o

 

[dav77-b]

I dont see much benefits from winning the HYW. You cant pull trade from bordeaux to your home node anymore.
I think it is much more important to peace out asap ) keep calais ) and wait for france to attack burgund -> get holland and antwerpen.

I made good experience with funding rebels in AOW. When suddenly 90 french peasants revolt HYW is much easier

 

[Aethir]

Actually I've discovered that France in PU will now fabricate claims on Burgundy's territory, so I've just been feeding it territory every time I go to war with Burgundy to avoid the coring costs.

 

[Santoes]

Minus the 100 year annexation it's a good plan

 

[Aethir]

Meh, last time I did it it took around 22~ years to integrate France. The extra time it takes to integrate isn't that big a deal because I can still use France as my attack dog the entire time.

Edit: Also, more importantly it frees me up in terms of aggressive expansion that I can use to eat up Castille or vassalize Britanny.

 

[Kalderus]

Has anyone checked if the full-annexation in an independence war + release as a vassal method still works to calm France down? This worked in 1.7, where you could always fully annex any nation in an independence war, regardless of size/basetax, so the strategy was to entice France to rebel, then win the war, get a full occupation, fully annex them, and then to release them as a vassal, where they would always have the vassal attitude and never rebel.

 

[Cary Miller]

Has anyone checked if the full-annexation in an independence war + release as a vassal method still works to calm France down? This worked in 1.7, where you could always fully annex any nation in an independence war, regardless of size/basetax, so the strategy was to entice France to rebel, then win the war, get a full occupation, fully annex them, and then to release them as a vassal, where they would always have the vassal attitude and never rebel.

Ill have to look into that and maybe add it up there

 

[dav77-b]

So I tried to win the HYW but I faced serious problems fighting France + Vassals, Hungary, Burgundy, Savoy, Mailand, Venice and Provence the same time. So how do you do it?
The suggestion to get acces in Savoy doesnt work as Savoy will declar war to you and join France. France+ Allies + Burgundy have over 120k troops. And england has worse generals than france. -2 penalty of mountains is nothing if 120k stack fight your 40k stack

 

[Aethir]

I think it's doable so long as Burgundy doesn't get involved and that didn't happen the two times I did it. Though Burgundy did attack once right after I won within 3 months.

General advice:

Get the discipline, diplomatic reputation, and minus revolt risk advisors. Call in Portugal to the war and do the standard start for the HYW. Once Portugal has around 10-20k troops in southern France use them as either a meat shield or as shock troops to take the brunt of the initial damage. At this point France will most likely have only called in maybe one ally or so and the ones they do call in should not have their armies in range to support so do your best to maul the combined french + vassal army before they arrive.

Btw, you should have been building mercenaries from the get go. I was around 40-42k+ troops at this point + Portugal's stack.

Once you've beaten the French army focus on hunting down smaller stacks and if you have the morale/numbers(don't forget to consolidate constantly) kill their incoming allies' armies. They tend not to stack on each other. The rest consists of maneuvering to pick off isolated stacks of 15 or less, 20 if you have all your troops around and they can't reinforce. Basically after the initial win you never want to fight a battle where all the enemy armies are in range to reinforce each other until you have numerical advantage.

Once you manage to kill everything but less than 5 or 6k troops, start splitting up your armies to carpet siege with one troop on each province. I generally start in northern France in case allied reinforcements come through southeast France. I usually take about 7 loans during the war and am able to pay off 2 from looting and I get all but one or two paid off by getting 100% WS on France and extorting 370~ ducats at the end of the war with the added bonus of keeping France docile. Also, don't forget to force Provence to give France her cores back. The extra relations help.

Finally, forget Bearn, France almost never attacks it unless they have numerical advantage. Make do with river crossings.

 

[RobRoy3]

Has anyone checked if the full-annexation in an independence war + release as a vassal method still works to calm France down? This worked in 1.7, where you could always fully annex any nation in an independence war, regardless of size/basetax, so the strategy was to entice France to rebel, then win the war, get a full occupation, fully annex them, and then to release them as a vassal, where they would always have the vassal attitude and never rebel.

Doesn't work anymore. Can still take various provinces free of charge, but not a full annex/release vassal. So the post-union management piece IS a bit more complicated.

 

[Alerias]

Minus the 100 year annexation it's a good plan

Its nowhere that bad I did it post patch. Use the right advisor the right advisor tho.

Also integration isn't mandatory. Can keep em and let them fight your wars and colonize from Poitou.

 

[RobRoy3]

Also integration isn't mandatory. Can keep em and let them fight your wars and colonize from Poitou.

I think it's a bit more important now to decide which way you're going early. If you don't plan to keep them in a PU, long term, I think you'd be better off starting to dismantle them from the first liberation war, or maybe even from the get go and skip the PU entirely; just release nations in the first war.

But there's something just wrong about allowing the to keep Poitou. Will they eventually colonize from Languedoc?

 

[unmerged(512301)]

I'm in the middle of an England game at the moment and won the 100 year war pretty easily (France has been under a personal union the whole game)

My strategy was:
scorch earth all the mainland provinces to wear France's Army down.
- Move all troops back to the England.
- Get the adviser that gives diplomatic bonus.
- Call Portugal into war.
- Bait their main fleet out of port and destroy it.
- Get Fleet access from savoy and blockade all their ports.
- Increase relations with Burgundy as high as possible ASAP.
- Keep an eye on the sieges, if France is singing with a small number if troops and their doomstack is far away, bring troops on quickly by boat destroy them and move back to mainland.
- By now their war exhaustion will be pretty high, start funding rebels.
- Once rebels spawn, Move your entire army onto the mainland and attack their stack that just fought rebels (with your best general)
- Go around and kill all their minor armies.

From there, France won't recover and they are all yours.

This strategy took me about 9 years on Hard Ironman.