One thing the Otto's are notorious for is moving reserves through constantinople. If you hide a stack on a province one back, you can just zap them when they cross the strait. They will lose a ton of troops to this. Often their doom stacks will splinter to carpet siege, and you can concentrate your force to take them out. If they do not splinter, take out some loans, and super merc up for a few months, just long enough to break one of their sieges. Just holding the war goal and the capital and using these tactics should get you to 40% pretty fast. Fire a barrage at C to shorten the siege there.
When the indirect approach no longer work, what is your basic strategy for defeating in a land war ''blobbers'' like France or the Ottomans ?
- Thread starter BaronNoir
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
One thing the Otto's are notorious for is moving reserves through constantinople. If you hide a stack on a province one back, you can just zap them when they cross the strait. They will lose a ton of troops to this. Often their doom stacks will splinter to carpet siege, and you can concentrate your force to take them out. If they do not splinter, take out some loans, and super merc up for a few months, just long enough to break one of their sieges. Just holding the war goal and the capital and using these tactics should get you to 40% pretty fast. Fire a barrage at C to shorten the siege there.
Depends on the stage of the game and who I'm playing as. Last few weeks i've doing a portugal run through, and for ottoblob i've started hitting early-mid reformation age. i just take the war goal, capital, and then smash and grab forts while avoiding his troops, peace out around 50%. Between -20% warscore against other religions due to age of reformations, -5-15% due to Malta, and -20% due to diplo ideas, you can get close to your overextension limit + feed any spare to your byz vassal at 50-60%. My first war was me as portugal + burgundy PU and a naples vassal versus ottomans +tunis+irrelevent friends. First attacked some forts in egypt /tunis that caused him to retreat down there to defend them, when I saw he was resieging forts in egypt/tunis, I grabbed edirne and constantinople, then carpet sieged all of his european holdings. After he moved back to Asia Minor, I then smashed tunis for a quick seperate white peace, then peaced out byzantines for a province for a byz vassal, this was before reformation. Used naples claim to start the war. Second war for byz cores, using same tactics. At this point I could be more aggressive, but you still don't want to commit to fighting him without overwhelming advantages and the reward being a stackwipe.
Getting Corfu/Lesbos/Cephalonia/Egriboz/Sakiz are all extremely good for Portugal, even though Byz has no cores on them so you'll have to pay for them. If you put a fort on them, it can attract a otto-stack, which you then cut off using your ships.
Byzantines have to pay for the upkeep anyway, and like most vassals they suck at actually helping out except as a exhaustion sponge.
Also: by stacking warscore costs you can force vassalize an intact tunis in the age of reformation which is very useful, ottomans will go there and wander around, die in the deserts. Eventually they'll waddle over to Fez which you obviously should keep a fort + defensive edict on. Force vassalizing Mamlukes is also good to retake all their cores.
I don't even worry about his massive swarms of galleys (although it really is time to put the AI on the sailor limit: hell weren't sailors invented in game to simulate Ottomans getting knee capped at Lepanto by having their sailors massacred?).... just make sure you have a good admiral on your deathstack and your heavies +your insane naval tradition should have no problem wiping them out. The only time I really commit to open combat is if i catch him trying to siege Constantinople and I cut off his retreat; even then I use a merc stack to lead and don't commit marines to it. As a little guy, one bad fight with the ottomans can take you out for 5 years.
In general, its nice to have vassals you don't particularly like adjacent to the ottomans so he can wander around them and siege them down. Your vassal eats the war exhaustion, you rack up warscore, and you only lose dudes to attrition.
Definitely grab malta though, very nice and easy to grab monument..
ON FRANCE:
france is a monster but you can get a lot of strong allies who want a piece of it. Britain, Austria, whoever came out on top in Iberia, at least 2 of the three will join a war. In the first war take out frances strongest ally first, and your first peace deal is getting a few vassals like gascon, brittany, provence. Next war reclaim cores and you have crippled france.
Getting Corfu/Lesbos/Cephalonia/Egriboz/Sakiz are all extremely good for Portugal, even though Byz has no cores on them so you'll have to pay for them. If you put a fort on them, it can attract a otto-stack, which you then cut off using your ships.
Byzantines have to pay for the upkeep anyway, and like most vassals they suck at actually helping out except as a exhaustion sponge.
Also: by stacking warscore costs you can force vassalize an intact tunis in the age of reformation which is very useful, ottomans will go there and wander around, die in the deserts. Eventually they'll waddle over to Fez which you obviously should keep a fort + defensive edict on. Force vassalizing Mamlukes is also good to retake all their cores.
I don't even worry about his massive swarms of galleys (although it really is time to put the AI on the sailor limit: hell weren't sailors invented in game to simulate Ottomans getting knee capped at Lepanto by having their sailors massacred?).... just make sure you have a good admiral on your deathstack and your heavies +your insane naval tradition should have no problem wiping them out. The only time I really commit to open combat is if i catch him trying to siege Constantinople and I cut off his retreat; even then I use a merc stack to lead and don't commit marines to it. As a little guy, one bad fight with the ottomans can take you out for 5 years.
In general, its nice to have vassals you don't particularly like adjacent to the ottomans so he can wander around them and siege them down. Your vassal eats the war exhaustion, you rack up warscore, and you only lose dudes to attrition.
Definitely grab malta though, very nice and easy to grab monument..
ON FRANCE:
france is a monster but you can get a lot of strong allies who want a piece of it. Britain, Austria, whoever came out on top in Iberia, at least 2 of the three will join a war. In the first war take out frances strongest ally first, and your first peace deal is getting a few vassals like gascon, brittany, provence. Next war reclaim cores and you have crippled france.
Last edited:
A useful strategy before the big head-on war is to make plenty use of siege-focused condottieri. Resieging delays both Ottoman and French expansion significantly, while also giving you gold to build a war chest or repay loans. It also has the advantage of letting you inconvience them with no risk of getting devastation and hopefully with minimal manpower losses. As Hungary, I sent a 10/0/11 stack with a 3-siege leader to Venice when the Ottos attacked them and OPM Albania (warleader). I resieged provinces (running between Venice and the Ottoman Balkans depending on where their army wasn't) and eventually dowed Albania myself to occupy the war target so that after 6 years of fightning the Ottos only got two insignificant islands from Venice in a separate peace.
- 1
A veteran EU4 player should be able to be #1 ranked GP by 1600s with any country.
The basic strategy that works for all situations and all countries is just blob faster. No country can keep pace with a player that knows how to expand.
Early game however varies a lot and requires unique tricks.
Fort spam in the new patch also has changed the meta. Now instead of offense and defense being the best idea group in the military group they are now mandatory for a post 1650 playthrough.
The basic strategy that works for all situations and all countries is just blob faster. No country can keep pace with a player that knows how to expand.
Early game however varies a lot and requires unique tricks.
Fort spam in the new patch also has changed the meta. Now instead of offense and defense being the best idea group in the military group they are now mandatory for a post 1650 playthrough.