What am I doing wrong as France? (yeah yeah, I'm a nublet <g>)

[long_fella]

I’ve played a lot of Portugal / Spain / England games, but find the current colonisation mechanics annoying, so I thought I’d try something else – France.

And I keep messing it up (cue newb jokes!).

Day one I marry Castille, start improving relations with Burgundy, and kick England off the continent. In the game I played last night I managed to get all five English provinces, including (and this may have been my mistake) Calais.

My plan would then be to let AE subside and then diplo annex my vassals. However Burgundy has other plans. In every game I have played Burgundian doom stacks march unimpeded across France. I rage quit last night when my stack of thirty, led by a two start general, with full morale, attacked a Burgundian stack of six. Did it win? Nope. Did it loose and retreat? Nope. My thirty got stack wiped by six. So I rage quit :-(.

Am I being too aggressive with the English? Should I take fewer provinces off them?

I've done a bit of googling on this, and looked at the wiki, but haven't managed to find anything specific on this topic......

 

[gajop]

I rage quit last night when my stack of thirty, led by a two start general, with full morale, attacked a Burgundian stack of six. Did it win? Nope. Did it loose and retreat? Nope. My thirty got stack wiped by six. So I rage quit :-(.

That sounds EXTREMELY unlikely. The only case where I can see a 6k army beat a 30k one is when there's a huge tech difference, bankruptcy, army maintenance turned off or something along those lines.
There is no way even with really bad army tradition, lack of advisers and military ideas, and fighting in a bad terrain that you can lose with such odds. Post exact battle results so we can figure out what actually happened.
Anyway, France is easy in SP, you pretty much start as the strongest power in game, I don't think there's really a need for a concrete guide - just conquer/diplo vassalize-annex as much as AE allows it. The only combat suggestion I have is to avoid attacking (unless odds are in your favor, as they were in your example), and let the enemy come to you (bait them by splitting your troops into smaller armies, with backup nearby).

 

[long_fella]

Agreed re it being extremely unlikely. I would never have attacked if I thought that the result was even possible.

* My units were full morale and full maintenance.
* There cannot have been a huge tech difference (Burgundy being even one tech level ahead would have been unlikely).
* I did attack in a Burgundian province, and it did have a river, but still......

I can't explain it. It was an iron man game so I am not sure how to go back to it / find the results, are they logged anywhere?

Anyway, I'll try again tonight and won't be so greedy grabbing the English continental provinces.

 

[justin6477]

If you're playing a continental France, my first suggestion is to click the randomized new world. You can active it up until 1500 or so, so feel free to try 1484, aka the best French start date. Burgundy is gone, you have cores on Brittany, England is reduced to Calais, and you start off in a truce with Austria and Castille.

As for the 1444 start, you probably shouldn't pick up all of England's provinces. I prioritize Aquitaine over Normandy, because nothing is worse than Labourd going to Navarra by way of rebels, and Navarra being Castille's vassal. Burgundy is also something of a monster because they are quite rich and can throw merc stack after merc stack at you. That battle does sound sketchy though.

 

[long_fella]

So a new game, and this time I only took two provinces to start with. That worked fine, the AE is much, much less troubling.

 

[Red John]

So a new game, and this time I only took two provinces to start with. That worked fine, the AE is much, much less troubling.

Your biggest threat, as France early on, is Burgundy. Wipe them out early and you're unstoppable.

Burgundy tends to ally major powers like Austria (rarely) and Castille/Aragon (far more likely).

Since they can already field the same, and even MORE troops than you, you should be VERY wary of whatever alliances Burg makes.