The Imperial Throne was the greatest curse EVER laid upon my glorious Prussian nation

[Eyestabber]

Hey guys, how's it going?

Today is a sad day for me as I give up on my Ironman Brandenburg -> Prussia game. And what exactly ruined my game? It wasn't the Russians, It certainly wasn't Austria and, to some extent, I wasn't even France. It was the Imperial Throne! I wish there was an option to give the Throne back to Austria along with my deepest apologies for ever vassalazing 3 electors in order to usurp a Throne that would end up being my undoing.

Everything was going amazingly well for my Prussia! I was expanding East, cutting through Polish-Lithanian armies with ease while keeping a strong alliance with Sweden and good relations with France. But I always thought being emperor would be a good thing, so I vassalized Saxony, The Palatinate and Wuttemberg in order to make sure I would be emperor one day. The day came, and I could not be happier! Well, except for the fact that i lost the "Imperial Integrity" buff, but HEY, it's the Imperial Throne! I'm King of the Romans, The Kaiser, the reason why people click "Imperial Mapmode" before choosing a neighbour to declare war upon.

I thought I could continue expanding East like I did on the previous decades, but here is how started the tragic story of Prussia's fall...

I was at war with Lithuania in yet another cicle of "fabricate as many claims as possible -> BURN THE HERETICS!". They were allied with Austria and Poland. Sweden wouldn't join me, but w/e. I could take all three by myself + vassals easily. And so I did. Crushing Austria was a glorious moment, especially when they brought like 21 divisions against my 14 Prussian divisions and still lost. DAT discipline, my friend...

So even though our alliance was vastly outnumbered, I still managed to win by using forced march to pick up stacks separated + we had the highest quality army of the West (Prussia + Full Quality + Full Offensive). Glorious victory! But I could not enforce yet another series of demands upon Lithuania because...The Big Blue Blob happened.

France attacked Lorraine Brabant in order to claim a province. I accepted the call to arms imediatly because I thought "hey, I defeated France once (war with Austria some 50 years earlier), I can do that again, right?". WRONG. My manpower was depleted due to the war with Poland-Lithuania-Austria. Instead of occupying my claims on Lithuania, I was forced to settle for some Ducats + annul treaties so I could use my army against France. But the sneaky BBB was incredibly prepared for this invasion. They outnumbered us...BADLY! To make matters worse, they were allied with Milan, which also brought a couple more doomstacks. With no possible victory on the horizon, we surrendered.

The demands weren't as bad as they could have been: Riga stoped being our vassals and we released Anhalt as a soveraign State. I was confident I could take revenge after the truce was done, so I started rebuilding my armies.

Couple of years passed and things were looking great! My armies losses were fully replenished and we had recruited a lot more regiments. We had MORE men than FRANCE!!!!!!111 I could almost TASTE revenge...

France attacked Loraine. Before accepting the call to arms, I made sure we still outnumbered the French. Yep, we did. More troops AND higher quality = victory, right? Well...Sweden joined the French side of the conflict! And so did Austria! And Milan (HOW DARE THEY STAND AGAINST THEIR RIGHTFUL EMPEROR!?)! And i'm pretty sure Poland-Lithuania were thinking the same thing, since their Attitude changed from Threatened to Hostile. The second great war against the French ended even faster than the first, this time around our armies were utterly crushed. Game OVER, IMO.

So, the moral of the story is:

- Do not trust Sweden. They are treacherous bastards!
- Do not seize the Imperial Throne if you are not ready and willing to take on the Big Blue Blob
- Being a member of the HRE, but not Emperor is not such a bad thing. Imperial Integrity was the main reason why my Prussia kept ahead of everybody else tech-wise. That and that tasty 10% discount on Ideas for being Protestant.
- I'm starting to think that a nation which already fields quality armies but severely lacks manpower like Prussia might benefit from Quantity ideas instead of Quality. And I think the opposite might be true: A Quality Russia would be very, VERY, scary...
- Discipline is BOSS. When you have 150% and you are fighting against an enemy with 100% you can usually beat him even if he slightly outnumbers you.
- If Austria loses the Imperial Throne they will hate you forever AND they will still have strong allies for god-knows-what reason.
- Prussia has the potential to become a strong trading nation. I'M SERIOUS! I was making a lot of money from trade while controlling Lübeck, Baltic Sea and Frankfurt nodes.
- I'm convinced that EU4's AI is one of the best, if not the best, strategy game AIs I've ever seen. I can't help but think that while I was fighting Poland-Lithuania AI France was watching and waiting...
- This game is so rich that we end up having fun even when losing

Hope you guys learn something from my mistakes. C ya!

 

[Xara]

I've taken Quantity as first military set in a few squished-area nations. It's a strategy for making up for your weakness rather than stacking your strength as much as possible. Not a bad idea, since two of the major outsiders (France and Sweden) have large turf and their own natural perks

 

[joelzhl]

You have the discipline and force march. French doomstack means nothing if you can scorch earth and kite the french stacks with force march.

Also, who needs manpower when you can hire 150% discipline mercenaries. Just keep merging your own stacks and replenish the lost infantry with cheap mercenaries.

 

[Eyestabber]

You have the discipline and force march. French doomstack means nothing if you can scorch earth and kite the french stacks with force march.

Also, who needs manpower when you can hire 150% discipline mercenaries. Just keep merging your own stacks and replenish the lost infantry with cheap mercenaries.

When I gave up it was no longer just France attacking me, but France, Sweden, Milan, Austria and probably Poland-Lithuania. I could easily beat France with my high discipline army, but NOT all these nations together.

As for hiring mercs, I didn't know mercs improved with your own ideas. I thought they would always have generic stats since they aren't really your countrymen. More Mercs could have been the answer, since we were pretty rich and could afford them. Oh well, i'm gonna try it next game I guess...

 

[Yenzen]

I've taken Quantity as first military set in a few squished-area nations. It's a strategy for making up for your weakness rather than stacking your strength as much as possible. Not a bad idea, since two of the major outsiders (France and Sweden) have large turf and their own natural perks

I agree with this. As Prussia you've already got an army of super soldiers, it's better to have more of those than slightly more super soldiers. Now if you were Muscovy or the Ottomans and commanding endless hordes, quality would help making them able to match your enemies 1:1 better... which is good when you outnumber them 3:1.

 

[Multiplicity]

So, the moral of the story is:

- Do not trust Sweden. They are treacherous bastards!
- Do not seize the Imperial Throne if you are not ready and willing to take on the Big Blue Blob
- Being a member of the HRE, but not Emperor is not such a bad thing. Imperial Integrity was the main reason why my Prussia kept ahead of everybody else tech-wise. That and that tasty 10% discount on Ideas for being Protestant.
- I'm starting to think that a nation which already fields quality armies but severely lacks manpower like Prussia might benefit from Quantity ideas instead of Quality. And I think the opposite might be true: A Quality Russia would be very, VERY, scary...
- Discipline is BOSS. When you have 150% and you are fighting against an enemy with 100% you can usually beat him even if he slightly outnumbers you.
- If Austria loses the Imperial Throne they will hate you forever AND they will still have strong allies for god-knows-what reason.
- Prussia has the potential to become a strong trading nation. I'M SERIOUS! I was making a lot of money from trade while controlling Lübeck, Baltic Sea and Frankfurt nodes.
- I'm convinced that EU4's AI is one of the best, if not the best, strategy game AIs I've ever seen. I can't help but think that while I was fighting Poland-Lithuania AI France was watching and waiting...
- This game is so rich that we end up having fun even when losing

Hope you guys learn something from my mistakes. C ya!

Hah, fun stuff. I just finished a game as Prussia today. I didn't get all that I wanted to achieve in that game as that game was my first attempt mingling with the HRE stuff. I didn't have exactly the same issues you ran into, but the issues I had were interesting enough. Denmark swallowed up Sweden and Norway in the beginning, so I never had much chance of interacting with a Sweden. I inherited the Imperial Throne for the first time via an unintended Personal Union that occurred with Bohemia (previous emperor). All I had with Bohemia was a Royal Marriage and nothing else. Evidently, Bohemia's line of rulers died out and gave me their throne willingly. I never had any issues with France in my game. I had an alliance/Royal marriage with them for a good part of the game. They never grew as strong as they're capable of in my game because Great Britain had great successes encroaching onto mainland Europe. Austria shared borders with France, and probably was the reason France was never an issue for me.

I was able to keep the throne from the first moment I inherited it to the end. I had great success against Lithuania and Poland. Was even able to take advantage of the Ottoman's weaknesses when they got done with an exhausting war. Unfortunately, my issue with Austria and I would have likely got kicked to the curb much earlier if it wasn't for the reform that prevented HRE members from declaring war on each other. Austria, for some reason, was able to successfully get into a PU with Denmark, followed by Great Britain, and eventually Russia. They were able to integrate Denmark first then Great Britain into their territories. Austria, for me, became very scary and slowed down my attempt to unify the HRE. It was a fun game overall. I may try the HRE again as another nation this time.

 

[HansBaer]

Once you know the combat (terrain, mercs, tradition...) better you wont loose any wars with prussia, even if its you vs the world.

 

[DasWood]

Playing as Brandenburg -> Prussia I had better luck taking quality first, THEN taking quantity. The reasoning being I had no trouble just building manpower buildings until I was big enough to actually need all that manpower to defend from all of europe + Russia coalitions.

 

[aqvamare]

where is the problem against austria, france, milan and sweden at the same time?

When you controll lübeck, baltic in trade your fleet should be higher in number than swedish fleet, and slightly smaller than french, if your are careful at the see, you should sucessful pin point the swedish army, when they walk though dansk to your country. sweden is now out of game for the rest of the war.

austria france and milan is actually totally easy, take all your troops and run straight to the three mountain provinces of austria, start sieging and make your stack "smaller" by splitting into three troops who siege every province. now wait until the allies attacking your siege stack, they will always do it, when they have twice the number than the siege stack. reinforce the siege stack by sending your othere siege stack into this province. win the battle like 35+k prussian in defence with -4 mountain, -2 river crossing and awesome general against 100+k french/austrian/milan army. at the end of the battle, you should still have 25k prussian, and the french/austrian/milan army should somewhere by 25k... repeat until they have no manpower and than roflstomp all siege troops of them.

With force march, have 20+k army with maximum manover general who only kills 3k siege troops. put this army into your cogs and on sea, so that the AI starts sieging.

you should easily crush this small alliance.

only problem will be the prussian siege of alliance territory could be, that you will now be fast enough in your first war.

 

[Incompetent]

You don't have to honour all war calls as Emperor. Losing 10 IA is bad, but it's better than getting mauled by France when you're not ready to fight them.

Also, if you are serious about staying Emperor, you need to crush Austria without mercy. The best concession to demand from them is to make them release HRE minors, as this generates IA and increases the bonuses you get as Emperor, plus it doesn't generate AE.

 

[Hsark]

- I'm starting to think that a nation which already fields quality armies but severely lacks manpower like Prussia might benefit from Quantity ideas instead of Quality. And I think the opposite might be true: A Quality Russia would be very, VERY, scary...
- Prussia has the potential to become a strong trading nation. I'M SERIOUS! I was making a lot of money from trade while controlling Lübeck, Baltic Sea and Frankfurt nodes.

Agree whole heartedly on these two points. I've noticed that a little extra manpower goes a long long way with Prussia, while some other countries (particularly ottomans) don't need it in the slightest. Also, mercs can get you out of any trouble - they're simply indispensable early on. You can keep on fighting pretty much forever if you use mercs well combined with lowering WE when needed, as long as you've got some defensive depth.

 

[zijistark]

... Then there's force-vassalizing Sweden early right after they've been thoroughly curbstomped by Denmark/Norway and their alliance (in which Denmark took the max. amount of provinces, possibly in two wars judging by the amount of them, adding to the already-dormant Swedish cores in Halland, Skane, and Blekinge, and Gotland under Denmark at start)-- this was after Sweden had opted-out of the Kalmar Union one way or another (as tends to happen), then proceeding to curbstomp Denmark not too long afterward and repeatedly force them to both return tons and tons of Swedish cores on one side (a very happy, satiated, and very powerful vassal) and cede provinces on the southern side until Denmark is left with just Sjaelland and you do the final, utterly satisfying annex while your superstrong, sworn, loyal Swedish vassal cheers you on for exacting their revenge. That's what a liege is for, man. Nevermind that I'm just going to diploannex Sweden soon, add their territory to the HRE, re-release them as a vassal for massive IA (and AE reduction), repeat, etc.

God, I'm addicted to Brandenburg.

 

[AndreasPhokas]

Offensive is very good for prussia just due to the manpower and super generals, i almost always fill out offensive as my first mil idea set.