Instead of the Turkish menace, the Austrians will now form an empire in fear of the French? Well-played, volksmarschall, well-played.
Although I like to follow a form of historicity when conducting AARs and their associated play thrus per the game, convenient re-writes are always permissible. That, and I sort of integrated Hungary during the Second Italian War, and I wanted direct control over Hungary's modest size army, instead of hoping that the Hungarian AI would join me in battle, instead of sitting in the adjacent province with 12,000 or so men...
Bits and pieces of the modern world begin to take shape.
Also, the scale of those wars sounds terrible.
I really screwed myself over in the sixteenth century. I think the longest stretch of peace was between the Second and Third Italian War, on average, probably only a few years of peace before I was embroiled in another conflict. I don't think my manpower ever recovered to over 50,000 (I think I'm sitting around 90,000 in total). I'm pretty sure I took out at least a dozen loans during the Italian Wars and the aforementioned, and still to be covered, 40 Years' War. I had a huge mercenary army to offset the manpower issues, but then they just cost so much money! The joy of being Austria, and the the emperor, who was desperately making sure the prince-electors always favored me instead of a Protestant rival.
Need a secret weapon :ninja:
I need more than a secret weapon. Maybe like 500,000 manpower with another 25% morale bonus to my armies and I think the BBB and I will be on level terms!
The amount of Turks in the Balkans is TOO DAMN HIGH!
Luckily, I only encounter the Turks once in the sixteenth century, as part of the 40 Years' War (or I'll write it up as such). The seventeenth century, already by 1601, now that's a different story about Austrians vs. Turks for the Balkans, Southern Hungary, and Transylvania...
I think containment is the only feasible plan. Destroying France is just unfeasible. As it stands, I'm barely able to defeat them, again, they have a +10% discipline and +0.6 morale advantage over my armies (well, +5 in discipline only because for much of the 40 years' war, I had that discipline adviser in military), and there's already an anti-French triune between Habsburg Austria and the HRE and associated allies and vassals, Burgundy, we'll revisit them later in the AAR (hint, a Habsburg is now on the throne), Spain, and England! And France is still colonizing in North America and not being punished with any loss of land. I keep checking the ledger, I get down to less than 1000 men and France still has like 30,000 men still fresh in their reserves!
Oh, and we are on the same military tech level. It's the fact that France gets good military national ideas on its own, the Elan! (+20% morale I think), has the manpower national bonus, completed offensive ideas, is working on defensive ideas, already getting the defensive moral bonus, gets the bonus discipline upon completing her national ideas, while the only military idea I have (completed) is defensive, because I need diplomatic and influence ideas to keep my hegemony over the HRE!
I think the other national idea I have is Administrative, I'm pretty sure I need to check on that. Don't even know what idea groups I selected!
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