So I'm playing as England, at war with Castille. It's about 1440, and I'm about ten years off getting QFTNW. I want to take a large chunk out of Castille, as large as possible, as to have no competition for America. How should I go about doing this? Headsup: I'm seiging Barcelona with eighteen men, no general. Their forces of 30 are arriving. I have 18 back in Wessex, and a stab rating of -3. So, what exactly do I do from hereon in?
Spanish War
- Thread starter unmerged(715491)
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Why are you at -3 stab? Why doesn't your army have a general? How do you plan to survive the upcoming 18k vs 30k battle? Do you have any allies in the war? Do you have the Naval tech for blockading yet? What difficulty do you play on? What's your financial and technological situation? What do you expect us to say based on the information you have given so far?
I'm on -3 stab because I'm a bad player, and I forgot to buy a general for the army. I don't expect to survive the battle, I expect about half the spanish forces to die, so I can mop them up with my other army. I'm playing on normal difficulty. My naval tech is about 6 at the moment. I'm on about Level 6 for everything scientifically at the moment. I've got 42K men available to hire for battle, and about 200gp.
You shouldn't engage them, don't rely to kill half their force. With that enermous numerical advantage, it's more likely you'll lose your whole army for barely any casualties inflicted. Retreat to your backup army and join forces with it. Always remember one thing that will win you almost any EU3 war as long as you have atleast minimum amount of troops needed - when you start a land war against a powerful nation, don't go for provinces, go for their armies (move all your armies close together so they can all join battle together), then pick their armies off like this, since the AI is not competent enough to join their forces MOST of the time (so be careful, because if you make 1 major battle & they do send all their forces & they have more troops, well... then you might be screwed, hah).
And when you get to picking which provinces to annex - take coastal provinces. It lowers their naval forcelimits since they lose coastal provinces. Try to take all the provinces "closest" to the Americas (so it's the coast near Portugal), that way their range to colonies will be higher (the range is from the closest unblockaded core province, so make sure they don't have any islands outside of Mediterrian with cores/or almost cores) and they'll need higher naval tech to reach their desired colonies!
And when you get to picking which provinces to annex - take coastal provinces. It lowers their naval forcelimits since they lose coastal provinces. Try to take all the provinces "closest" to the Americas (so it's the coast near Portugal), that way their range to colonies will be higher (the range is from the closest unblockaded core province, so make sure they don't have any islands outside of Mediterrian with cores/or almost cores) and they'll need higher naval tech to reach their desired colonies!
- Always seek staying at +3 stab.
- Respect manpower, attrition and war exhaustion. Going 18k siege on enemy land is too much, especially if you do not have owned/controlled lands bordering that siege.
- I assume the 42k you talk about is your manpower? name it manpower, it confused me in the beginning.
- Also, creating armies during war shouldn't be something to depend on, production areas could get attacked, and production itself is time-consuming thanks to the usual war exhaustion, also it will leave less manpower to reinforce injuries & produced units will need to regain morale & group up first.
- Don't start a siege unless you're confident it will most likely hold. Whether it's because you killed all hostile armies, or pacified them at least, or have a guard force near that siege, I don't know and it's not my business, just as long as you're sure that a months/years long siege will not be interrupted in a way that could have easily been avoided or a way that was obvious.
- +1 on going for coastal provinces, I recall base tax being the involved factor, in addition to navy buildings. Also, crippling their economy in general will limit them too, cause it's what factors in for colonial intentions (e.g. having infinite manpower wouldn't really help colonization work, thus it doesn't really factor in).
- +1 on Portuguese cored region, & the similar.
EDIT: Losing 18k, at 1440, regardless of nation, is painful, I would never go far as labeling them "expendable".
- Respect manpower, attrition and war exhaustion. Going 18k siege on enemy land is too much, especially if you do not have owned/controlled lands bordering that siege.
- I assume the 42k you talk about is your manpower? name it manpower, it confused me in the beginning.
- Also, creating armies during war shouldn't be something to depend on, production areas could get attacked, and production itself is time-consuming thanks to the usual war exhaustion, also it will leave less manpower to reinforce injuries & produced units will need to regain morale & group up first.
- Don't start a siege unless you're confident it will most likely hold. Whether it's because you killed all hostile armies, or pacified them at least, or have a guard force near that siege, I don't know and it's not my business, just as long as you're sure that a months/years long siege will not be interrupted in a way that could have easily been avoided or a way that was obvious.
- +1 on going for coastal provinces, I recall base tax being the involved factor, in addition to navy buildings. Also, crippling their economy in general will limit them too, cause it's what factors in for colonial intentions (e.g. having infinite manpower wouldn't really help colonization work, thus it doesn't really factor in).
- +1 on Portuguese cored region, & the similar.
EDIT: Losing 18k, at 1440, regardless of nation, is painful, I would never go far as labeling them "expendable".
Also, is there a specific reason you siege exactly Barcelona? It would be way easier to reinforce armies on the northern coast of Spain, so you don't have to ship your troops into the Mediterranean.
And this too. Don't bother going for the fancy looking provinces, unless it's about the "Fallen Capital" modifier (not sure if it's in vanilla, but it's in Death & Taxes, disregard if it isn't), in which case you'd also need to hold the capital occupied and your tactic of sieging it & running would not work. And if that modifier is only D&T and you're playing vanilla - abandon Barcelona, it's not worth it since enemy will just get it back if you want to take the coastal provinces that mean something (Portuguese coast, the provinces closest to the Americas - you need those, you don't need provinces near Barcelona, for now), unless you want to waste armies defending it and losing potentional "capturing power".
Oh, and don't forget - you can always retreat from battle to sea (if you have enough transports), and you can just retreat (before the enemy reaches you) into sea too, that way your army will be untouchable as long as your navy escort is strong enough and you can easily re-deploy the army to a more suitable position.
Also armies will not reinforce while at sea, and more than 6k will suffer attrition there.
Still a very good option as England when you need to re-deploy quickly. You can just send the army back to England, recover a bit, then send both your armies to the Atlantic coast in seperate provinces, wait for Spanish attack and then send your other army into the battle. Don't forget a general.
Wasn't discrediting your ideas, just didn't want him to sit half a year in sea then noticing he did not regenerate (or even worse, degenerated) the army.
Retreat right now. AI is usually nice about giving military access even if they don't exactly like you. Id form up in SW France and go from there.
True about military access, almost all nations will give you military access, even a nation you've made peace with a week ago from a war that completely devastated their lands and took all that was holy to them.