Hello! I'm just a single-player noob, but I thought I'd comment here because I'm simultaneously learning a lot and being entertained by the goings-on in your thread.
While your battles with Austria are no doubt thrilling and the planning and explanations behind it very informative, I'm particularly enthralled by how other players from your game are popping into your thread to post their own points of view and how they contrast with yours. This (admittedly unintentional) conversative element really keeps me intrigued as it reminds me of games like Diplomacy, where we'd discuss our plans in the open - and proceed to betray and backstab each other shortly after. This element of signalling and creating expectations really keeps me on my toes, and I find myself wondering whether, in your next update, you and your fellow players would keep to their word. I'm curious as to what a multiplayer game where players were only allowed to discuss diplomacy outside of the game would be like - if there are any such multiplayer threads I'd be most interested in reading them.
I also found your short discussion about the land combat system very informative; although I've been playing for some time, I've learned something about the interface which I never realised - the existence of the little symbol telling you whether it's possible to retreat! No more repeated clicking for me! I've also got a question and a comment on the points you raised in your tutorial.
The question - On the contrast between attack and defence pips, I know you said they're probably best reckoned together as a whole, but I was wondering whether having more pips on one side actually makes you more effective in that role. For example, Galloglaigh (LT11) has 2 offensive shock and 0 defensive shock, and 4 offensive morale and 1 defensive morale. If my opponent and I both use Galloglaigh, have a roughly equal army and generals, and are fighting on terrain which gives minimal penalties, does this mean that it would make more sense to be the attacker rather than the defender?
The comment I'd like to make is that you mentioned that manoeuvre affects whether the enemy army flees or is annihilated if drained of morale. I'm under the impression an army drained of morale would always retreat as long as it still had men, and could only be annihilated regardless of size if it was encountered when, or damaged to the extent where all units with men are at 0 morale within the 'no retreat' phase of combat, with manoeuvre not affecting this but rather whether you were able to catch the enemy army before the start of the next month.
I.E., if I won a battle, with the retreating enemy scheduled to arrive in the next province on the 1st, I'd need to assign a general with equal or better manoeuvre than theirs to the pursuing army, in order to catch them and annihilate them before they regained morale. Sometimes having less manoeuvre might even 'save' a retreating army at 0 morale, if it only arrived at the province it retreated to on the 2nd or later. Please correct me if you believe I've got it wrong.
I apologise for the long post - keep up your good work, and I look forward to more tales of your multiplayer bloodbath!