Strategies for playing African and American pagans

[Dustman]

I started a game as Aztec and was quite happy with game development, although bit bored. It all stopped in 1528, when English came out of blue with two armies, 15k and 18k, plus their allies Portugal with 20k, Denmark and Sweden with 15k and number of phony allies. My grand army of native american spearmen had 9k, and ~8k in manpower pool. By stroke of luck, no other explanation on hand, I managed to lose my very moderate gains from conquest, all vassals, a lot of prestige and hundreds of gold, but managed to keep original holdings and one other province, plus fully westernized in just two years. Till eventual conversion to Catholicism, nothing I could do to stop Europeans. Even with quite advanced defensive army units (from native american tech group, adm7 is a rare trait) and military drill they simply walked over my stacks, plus supply limit was just a fraction of their.

Now, 90 years later, with supply limit of 34, manpower of 55k, quite few provinces colonized and with largest income (mostly trade) in the world, I can think of repaying them if desired. But, as I said, my survival was an accident and unpredictable whims of European invaders.

So, anyone can share a reliable strategy for playing pagans? Ways to minimize your losses, to stall their advance, to retake land back promptly? I can only think of leaving land without forts and just try and outmaneuver invaders, scorching land as their killer stacks move after you. Unreliable but at least a chance when dealing with a single European invader...

Hah, I thought of Cortes with his small army of under a thousand taking on thousands of bloodthirsty Aztecs. In my game a handful of naked natives ran from combined armies consisting of most enlisted men from three strong European nations

 

[Achtung56]

Often surviving as a Pagan is as much up to skill as it is to luck. You have to plan your finances carefully, and hope that the Europeans don't swallow you the second they hit the New World. In the event of war, the idea of stalling their advance, like you said, is a strategically sound idea, and trying to limit the amount of enemies you encounter.

 

[Nunn45]

Yeh the game has a bit of a major flaw with how easy it is to land huge amounts of troops overseas and easily reinforce them....hopefuly they fix that next Game.
Realy its a matter of working yourself to a point were you can westernise the instant they arrive,hopefully surviving until you can push them out completely.

I found Oyo or other pagan nations in Western africa to be good to play, you can easily conquer Western Africa and have enough troops to beat Morocco to the North and partialy westernise off them, THEN westernising off Castille or Portugal.

 

[Dustman]

Beside ease of overseas invasion EU3 has a major flaw in supported limits. Even during Napoleonic invasion in Russia at the end of the period, attrition claimed enormous toll. Here, very sizable armies can simply march into woodlands or jungles and easily replenish themselves. Few hundred troops were a force these days, not only in Americas but in SE Asia as well - quite few Portuguese managed to become local rulers in the region, albeit very few left lasting dynasties.

 

[Mods]

1) westernize once
2) Instantly start building massive navy
3) Bribe england and Castille

And you're safe (Works best for the central Americans, for they have lots of coastlines and thus naval forcelimits)

 

[Dustman]

1) westernize once
2) Instantly start building massive navy
3) Bribe england and Castille

And you're safe (Works best for the central Americans, for they have lots of coastlines and thus naval forcelimits)

Interesting. Would probably work if England wasn't an attacker

Can any province of a pagan nation (exc. a capital) be seized, or only of these in the most backward tech group?

 

[Crater122]

No matter the tech group, if you're pagan, any territory can be seized. Pretty stupid in my opinion, but that's how it works.

 

[Borne2Run]

Don't expand too much initially if you're doing Death and Taxes... you'll be fighting revolts for the next 60 years when the disease and conversion tool-chain hits (any Meso-American state).

 

[StephenT]

No matter the tech group, if you're pagan, any territory can be seized.

Does that affect the player, or only AI-controlled pagan nations? Because when I played Cherokee, the Europeans never seized any of my provinces.

Anyway, the strategies I used:

• Forts are important. Try to research enough land tech to build them before the Europeans arrive in force.
  
  
• When they invade you, you want them to spend time besieging your forts. While they do, sneak in behind them and recapture any provinces they've already taken, by assaulting the weakened garrisons.
  
  
• Use attrition. You'll never win a battle against them, unless by sheer fluke. But they won't reinforce any of their losses as long as they're not in home territory: you will. Keep wearing them down; lure them deeper into your territory then cut them off out of supply.
  
  
• Go full Quantity and try and keep your manpower high, to use this attrition strategy to best effect.
  
  
• The AI is bad at reinforcing troops abroad. They'll send a large army, but once you've destroyed it through attrition, they probably won't send another.
  
  
• Don't be afraid to lose a war if you can get out of it by conceding defeat, or surrendering a vassal or sphere, or even paying ducats. For a long time you'll be measuring out your life by five-year truces.
  
  
• Burn colonies whenever you can. You don't want the enemy to establish a solid foothold in your lands.
  
  
• Set up a refuge. Colonise provinces far from the coast,out in the American West, which will be safe from invaders.

 

[Mods]

I think they'll only seize when you play above normal difficulty

 

[unmerged(106985)]

I remember that in IN AI always seized colonies and pagans but not anymore.