What game you guys are playing, but i play EU game
…when i read story after story, ancedote after ancedote where some minor power takes over the world. I just can’t buy it — not that i don’t understand the principles or strategies involved (use attrition against enemy, attack capitals to get provinces, avoid direct conflicts, cut off supplies, use allies to soak up armies, ect…), but that in my experience it just doesn’t pan out.
Like say, the Teutonic Knights. Here i thought this is a great minor to play — close to 4 capitals, good leaders, decent allies. However if you attack early you get tons of BB, which leads Sweden, Denmark, Russia and P-L to gang bang you together, so i decided to forge a ‘Northern League’ with Pomm, Haseanic, Brandenburg, ect… instead of attacking immediately. This keeps me alive for a while, if not unfortunately before all my leaders die out. When Prussia turns Protestant i invade and take them; when P-L gets involved in some big war i use the ‘Northern League’ alliance to attack and capture Danzig, i nice fat prize. Then it all collapses. Russia and P-L invade me with LEADERS, not generic armies, against which im helpless irregardless of my armies’ size. I lose Eastern Prussia to P-L and spend the better part of a decade fighting Russia and Pskow, (all i can do to concentrate knashing my teeth in disgust!!), which wrecks my economy, though not losing any provences. My inflation is at 35%, then around 1570, P-L invades again with Stephan Bathory (more or less his name); a leader whom defeated my armies, oh, around 8 or so times, and whom i never bested. He was invincible irragardless of how badly outnumbered; a.k.a 4 thousand of his, beating 20 thousand of mine. My morale drops like a ball against his armies; he beseiges and assaults lvl3 forts in 4 months; the same fort held out at -4 for a year against my 25k army without dropping one level. It takes me 2 years to capture P-Ls capital and Lithuania; it takes him less than 9 months to capture 2 lvl3 provinces and 1 lvl2. Meanwhile if im ever caught by a ‘named’ P-L army its just assumed i automatically lose; because i do.
I just don’t understand how ppl take unnamed armies, with no siege value, and conquer all of Europe. I mean, at a reasonable difficulty level like Hard/Aggressive. Sure, it sounds easy on paper, but ONE wrong move, one invasion or DoW against you at the wrong time, and its all over. One battle against your generic army vs. the comps’ named army, and you lose irreplacable troops.
I also think that the Mediterranian is the ‘real’ reason why most ppl conquer the world; no Russian winters to deal with, lots of poorly defended poor Muslimm countries to conquer.
icecool 02-07 23:55
May be a stupid question but you do have a compatabile (here I mean very good compaired with your enemy) land tech level right??.
Cheers, Ice
Dark Knight 02-07 23:56
The Teutonic Knights, despite their relatively large starting size, are actually a very difficult nation to play. It’s much easier to do better with a rich one or two-province German or Italian minor since you can amass a large tech advantage and have more chances for opportunistic aggrandizement. Also, not that many of the stories were written before the “badboy” value arrived, which now makes it much more difficult to constantly expand (although if you can gain a decisive advantage against your opponents and don’t mind being constantly at war, this in some ways actually makes it easier to conquer the world).
Lionheart 03-07 00:13
Well I think I’ve mentioned this before but once you get the knack of those badboy wars and are prepared for them beforehand they start to get a little easy. Admittedly I was playing Portugal who do get lots of money and have been through 7BB wars in the last 50 of so years. The original one started when I was at war with Incas and suddenly inherited the United Provinces and plenty of enemies. Admittedly not everyone attacked but the first one included Spain and France and was not the most comfortable of wars even though I bettered Spain and Mughal empire. After that you get to expect in and start to include France in the list of countries you can take on.
A few later and your comfortable taking on also the likes of Austria and Turkey and all-comers.
After all the wars now, Germany is mine as is Denmark and Hungary. Large chunks of Russia and Poland and Turkey is back to its home provinces surrounded by my ex-Venetian. Hungarian and Persian provinces.
As for taking on those leaders, the simple truth is to learn to retreat and to attack where the enemy is weak. The reason why I survived the first war against Spain and France was that I attacked Spain with everything I had in the region from the start from three directions. Once that was finished I was able to take provinces from France to negotiate a white peace. From then on, I had bases from which to take on the majors and often left forces standing during wars simply waiting for the DoW. No running from one border to the next. Deploy locally is the key and concentrate.
Scotchmist 03-07 01:45
Trade
I use all my trade merchants as they come where monthly pittance of spare cash permits, max of 10 D or so) and that’s the problem: I am sure I spend more on placing merchants and keeping them there than I get back including monopolies I win and maintain competition for. I might start recording the figures. I am forever poor playing England and I have arrived in my first CG in 1430ish and have the highest trade tech of ‘em all but not yet built a refinery. I took 4 bank loans in one go to build the naval thing, and no doubt this is going to lead to bankruptcy.
:rolleyes:
Vostok 03-07 02:31
well
This game i was playing, my tech is dismal, since ive spent at least 35 years in ‘total’ war footing, sending all my monthly income into the bank; my tech is 6-4-3-4-4 (in euspy), 6 land tech. Poland has i guess 9-4-3-4-4 at the end, so there is some disparity; however the highest is 12 and that’s China.
What happened is their playing the ‘grab the collapsing country’ card; when i had to give P-L Eastern Prussia, my VP fell dismally to around 45-50, and my rank from around 15 to 47 or so; i guess then Russia and P-L decided i was about to die, so i have been having to spend every penny i get in decades of war. And because i can’t conquer any new territories, im still in just as dismal a position, and so keep getting DoW’ed ever chance they get, preventing me from rebuilding.
This doesn’t mean that i’m stupid by any means; of course i avoid battles i can’t win; but sometimes im forced to battle whether i want too or not. For ex, i had captured P-L’s capital and ABOUT to take Lithuania, but P-L armies were about to take my capital in turn, and were reducing it faster. If i don’t attack, we both lose equal provinces so i can’t get a favorable peace treaty; worse, because their army is named and mine isn’t, i can’t beat them militarily.
In any event i have played several games similar to this; i suppose im not being aggressive enough at the beggining, or that there is some other ‘trick’ im unaware of. It is frustrating to read about hidden object games free downloads Granada conquering the world when i spend 100 years just to take Dresden and Memel, ruining my economy in the process. 
bmolsson 03-07 03:00
Try..
… not to take provinces all the time… When attacked, you go direct for the capital of your enemy and after taken it, ask for money, preferable at beginning of January….
Gives you money, much more than you gain from taking a few provinces, and keeps your BB value low….. 
As a minor, remember that the value of the provinces is more important than how many you have, at least in the beginning…..
Talmonious 03-07 05:26
Well, you can use any of the numerous AI flaws against the computer if you want to but most people feel that just cheapens the game. Alot of times, the line between your success and failure is thin. Sometimes one bad event can wipe you out or one good event can hurl you on the way to being a major power.
Xanadu 03-07 05:48
Also assaulting a fortress gives you quicker results….at the cost of a lot of infantry , but I digress
State Machine 03-07 07:03
You would be surprised at how many tactics there are to optimize your wars and so on. It includes various military tactics, and goes on to using trade wars, strategic bankruptcy, occupation of enemy provinces for profit, and, best, using revolts to achieve your goals. Regardless of the “validity” of these tactics, they really are endless, and very effective.
shawng1 03-07 07:21
Vostock,
Another problem with the Teutons is that you have no real opportunites to expand except going after a major, and yet three majors can combine to crush you.
As noted, your strategic options there are quite low. A fave minor for many people is Brandenburg. Rich provinces, good starting location. You can expand in any direction, and you only have one major (P/L) starting near enough to you to hurt you.
You can make a “German league” strategy, and build up allies and diplo-annex them. Or you can ally with another major and start pounding on your neighbors from day 1.
Another good psudo-minor (because they’re really more powerful than the typical minor) is Venice. Great economy, you get some leaders after a while with seige values. You start with a pretty wimpy army, but if you can survive until 1550 or so, you should be on par (at least) with all the majors in land combat. Plus your navy is non pariel in the Med.
United Prussia is a fun fantasy minor too.
The thing in any of these is, IMHO, at first, if you want to fight, get a big boy on your side. Don’t fight majors with a coalitin of minors. Most of them won’t even come to your aid, and often they can’t make it to your aid even if they wanted to. Find at least a second-tier power, and ally with them. Then mix in a couple smaller nations for you to work on diplomatically.
Also, look to diplo-annex rather than conquer. The BB hit is a LOT lower. (5 points less, because a military annexation automatically carries 5+the number of provinces, a diploannex is merely 1 point per province).
strategy 03-07 10:33
The trick is always to bide your time until your are of “critical mass” (typically when your annual income reaches 150-200d), before engaging in BB wars.
The key to the Teutonic Order is getting Poland and Russia pacified - particularly Poland. You need to get the right allies to achieve this, and then take 2 provinces from them in each peace (always leave one province with a CB shield in), until you are next to their capital province. By that time, you should be pretty well built up, if you’ve played correctly. This first phase is quite challenging, due to the massive superiority the Poles have against you, but once you can invade their capital immediately a war is declared, they are no longer a danger, and you should be about ready to go world-conquoring.
Coeur de Lion 03-07 11:32
Poland can be tamed. This is a story of Prussia, at least as far as the harder work is completed.
Prussian AAR
Admittedly the first and critical part of the story is missing so I will summarise briefly a general strategy
1) Keep useful allies against the Poles. Russia might be helpful and if you’re not following a historical game then Turkey could come in handy. Hungary is also another possibility since the trick is to keep Poland occupied away from your borders.
2) Your first goal is to get yourself on a firm financial footing. That almost certainly means getting a wide spread of merchants and by taking Kurland and/or Novgorod and/or Danzig.
3) Two tactics I have to admit to in the early game was the banking tactic and the tactic of sending small harrying parties to delay large Polish armies from attacking my main armies. The latter is a little dubious because of the great penalty suffered by forces that have to start their march again. Another less dubious tactic is one of allowing a siege and attacking the siege (brief battle and early withdrawal). This way, they suffer massive attrition in those Baltic winters.
4) Keep provinces fortified so that, when one assault fails, you can take advantage of the morale loss to try to force them to retreat. Numbers have little (if any) effect on morale and relieving a siege gives a major gain in time during a campaign.
5) Keep specialist siege forces, particularly if the Poles decide to DoW at the beginning of winter. That way, your siege infantry don’t get decimated by attrition.
And be a bit careful with inflation. 35 years on war footing is going to make everything very expensive. A successful campaign in this game has to bring in the economic side of things. No money = No troops.
hjarg 03-07 13:54
Hmmmm… about an idea to stab Russia early, when they are in war with Kazan and have all their troops in Kazan sieging, or when they are trying to take Horde. They have a lot of undefended provinces, and you can assault early in the game and take all fortresses quicky, especially with early leaders. Couple of wars with Russia, and to your great suprise you have annexed them.
About Poland… use winter and attricion. And siege armies to sneak past them and take capital. Also, alliance with Pommer and Brandenburg would be helpful- even more when you get Hungary as well. Poor Poles don’t know whom to attack them- so you can get capital and maybe a few provinces. Try to avoid direct battles.
I have played Teutons successfully: taken Russia, Kazan, Horde, Crimea, Astrakhan, Sibir, Prussia, Finland and half of Poland. Oh, and a few provinces in England as well. It’s doable, but difficult. But never declare war when target is in peace.
boreal_s 03-07 14:38
Try sipmle GCs first
I guess none of this “Granada starts and wins in 5 turns” campaigns were the first (and even second) that were played.
To get some practise you need to play GCs for several majors.
If you want to beat P-L, try playing Russia and learn how P-L is amassing their >100k armies in your southernmost territory, then wait until attrition gets it share and try to capture slowly a couple of shielded provinces near Moscow.
If you want to go against Hansea, start as P-L and learn how enemy troops are disembarking from ships in their allies Teutonia to go like a knive through butter to your capital, while you are stuck in Eastern Pomm.
If you would want later to colonise all the world, try Spain to learn what is better to do with 10 colonists in New World: 1 colony or 9 trading posts.
Start as Austria and try to leave with fast increasing inflation.
Save your games frequently, look through savefile info, learn that you will never beat Pskov in trade and Turkey in one on one fight.
Everybody was through this, but never posted.