Super Austria stronger than France

[iosys2]

I play as Venice.
Allied with France that helped a lot we bit Austria at least 3 times; forced to cede Gorz and Trent, release as vassal Tirol.

Austria recovers despite 3 wars super-fast, much faster than me with a ludicrous force limit and huge army despite the manpower and the army was completely annihilated the last war.

Austria DOW me, CB: coalition war, Tuscany, Mantua and Savoy join.
France and all my vassals join: 5 vassals.

Blitz-War I route the Austria army before it can unify, but I could not follow the rotted army that retreat in the almost unreachable Nederland provinces owned by Austria.
I carpet siege Austrian main country sure that France will take care of the Nederland side as usual.
All at a sudden the war score drops down heavily and after a with France peace out!!! I check and see that Austria this time destroy France!!!:blink::excl:

I had to re-load and take 11 loans to raise such an army leave alone undefended Austria main country and run to help France. Only then (well a couple of re-loads every one raising 2 extra loans till 11!!) we finally destroy the HUGE stack of Austria.
I say how the hell Austria after being bitten down 3 times and having loose lands could raise an army in 1511 comparable with II WW!? And beat down Super France in its France land?

At end of the war I took Florence and vassalize Mantua and Tuscany (Pisa) since I need it to form Italy, I could not release land in Austria so I’m afraid it will be far from the end of this blood shading war with Austria. :sad:

 

[nalfz]

Sometimes france fails a bit
Were they at war with anyone else? Had they just lost a war recently before? Their manpower might have been a bit low

 

[Halaberiel]

Just a note: a lot of AI recovery speed is due to the lucky modifier that you can turn off at game start. Bear in mind lucky nations (incl Austria) get all of these bonuses:

"Lucky nation rulers have a bonus of +1 to their Admin, Diplomatic and Military skills. Additionally:

Administrative[edit]
Administrative Tech Cost -2%
Chance of Heir +25%
Global Revolt Risk -1
Yearly Legitimacy +1
Yearly Republican Tradition +1
Missionary Strength +1%
Stability Cost Modifier -10%
Available Advisors +1
Diplomatic[edit]
Diplomatic Tech Cost -2%
Global Trade Power +10%
Colonist Success Chance +5%
Spy Offensive Chance +5%
25% reduction to aggressive expansion[1]
Military[edit]
Military Tech Cost -2%
Maintenance Free Leaders +1
Leader Fire +1
Leader Shock +1
Defensiveness +10%
Manpower recovery speed +33%"

It really does make a huge difference as you'd expect. I usually turn it off, if you want a harder game there are other difficulty settings you can change.

 

[Ricox]

Well, they're the Emperor, so they get way higher force limits and can field large armies. Not even talking about how powerful it becomes after Burgundian Inheritance, when sometimes it can entrench so good that you need to wait till Dutch War of Independence to do anything to curb its power (I actually love the Dutch revolt events now, since I always somehow end up being on the opposite side of camp from Austria).

EDIT: Oh, and of course, if you use lucky nations - Austria will be even more powerful, I personally never play with it anymore. I like the random factor of EU 4 series (to an extent, in some calculations it's quite ridiculous).

 

[Swami]

I had the same problem in a Netherlands game, where I did everything to keep France from growing into the BBB. It backfired and made huge blobs out of Austria and Spain. As Bohemia I kept Poland / Austria small, which backfired through France and Russia become to powerfull.

Allthough this is strange, as normally I have this problem with me as a player making sure obvious threats don't become threats I can't handle. Here you're actually helping France and it still gets beaten down.. Has France been into wars with heavy losses with Austria and Spain? Or is it plagued with rebels that have weaken it? Or has Austria had more then average luck, early wars that went well or got a PU early on? Also I think that without lucky nations on France is stronger then without it. Sure as a player France is almost impossible to beat. But against a Spain / Austrian alliance it seems to be more succesfull without lucky nations then with it.

Personally I think France isn't as overpowered as people make it to be, I haven't specifically run into an undefeatable France more often then problems with Austria, Spain or the Commonwealth. And France is also easy to dismantle after a succesfull war, defeating them is hard, but once done and repeated a few times you can completely split it up into smaller countries.

A way to tackle Austria is making sure they aren't emperor anymore. As Venice you could enter the HRE and go for it yourself, but it might not go smoothly. You could also ally a member that can vote and preferably allready has the vote of another member. Start a war against other voters and hand over the captured provinces to your ally and give them to him as a vassal in the peace deal. Your ally will become emperor and Austria has probably lost most of it's power and you can take them out. Be aware that you should declare war to Austria via another state that isn't part of the HRE if you don't want the new emperor and your ally to turn on you. You could also become a member yourself and declare war directly.

Good luck and let me know if above works, because I've been playing myself with this idea ones, but didn't needed it. It was plan B and as far as I thought it through it should be possible to do. With 1.8 you can hand over provinces, which is even easier to give vassals to other countries and should give you influence into deciding who's emperor.

 

[saegoto]

nerf austria, buff france

 

[Halaberiel]

nerf austria, buff france

Haha no. France is way stronger than Austria militarily in general. French provinces are so high in base tax / manpower their ideas are amazing militarily as well, Elan! is just insane. Austria is strong with the Netherlands provinces but they often lose them after 1550. France will usually have perma +35-40% moral & 10% discipline not to mention their perma 3 star generals.

Also regarding splitting nations up, you can do that easily with Austria. Just win one war and get them to release Styria, they will never recover unless they have literally no enemies... Styria is almost half of Austrian land.

 

[saegoto]

Haha no. France is way stronger than Austria militarily in general. French provinces are so high in base tax / manpower their ideas are amazing militarily as well, Elan! is just insane. Austria is strong with the Netherlands provinces but they often lose them after 1550. France will usually have perma +35-40% moral & 10% discipline not to mention their perma 3 star generals.

Also regarding splitting nations up, you can do that easily with Austria. Just win one war and get them to release Styria, they will never recover unless they have literally no enemies... Styria is almost half of Austrian land.

don't say!

 

[Halaberiel]

don't say!

Haha sry I am just having my first France game at the moment and I am now understanding why it's always so difficult to kill them. Their armies are SO FREAKING STRONG!! I have not played any other nation with armies as strong as France. No one stands a chance lol

 

[zodium]

You know why the French have those three-star generals, right?

1. They lose a ton of dudes in battle because they're fighting all the time, which gives them tons of tradition.
2. They win a lot and then go carpet siege their enemies, which gives them even more tons of tradition.

If you expanded to about 80-100 base tax and then spent all your time carpet sieging others for no real reason all the time, you'd be pretty metal. Players like to do fun stuff instead of that, though.

 

[iosys2]

hmy: hmy: hmy: hmy:
I reload some old save game and France was waaaystronger than Austria

Inf cav art Tot mp
Pre war
Austria coalition (only stronger)
Austria 32000 16000 5000 53000 54299
Ausburg 5000 0 0 5000 12130
the palatin 6000 2000 0 8000 5413

Venice/France
France 40000 17000 12000 69000 74451
Venice 17000 10000 4000 31000 1520

As you see France was much stronger. At the begnning of the war Venice destroied and siedged all Austria Minor in Italy and defeated 1 major Austria army which run direction France

I checked and after a major battee that france won, France as a deficient split the army and Austria big stack destroy one by one, the win a major battle that destroy almost alll France remaning stack.

After a reload I run just in time for the latest major battle and save the day. Unlackily the peace deal leave Austria quite unharmed since my target where the Italian minors.