Superpowers at war, any advice?

Hello, I joined this forum because it seems to be the best TW forum. Recently, I ran into a problem in M2TW, my first TW game.

I Spain, imbroiled in a 100-turn war with Denmark, and, just recently, the English. My armies are hemmed in. Toulouse and Bordeux are well-stocked citadels, and I own north Africa. I have a ten star general who is only 30 manning our outpost in Hamburg, and Oslo. The problem is, I can't take anything fast enough. I used to own almost all of north France, but it's gone now. The enemy blitzes anything I take. Christian the merciless, my ten star general with 10 dread is moving down into germany, while my king and his all-mercenary army are advancing up from my outpost in Naples. My prince Charles the Mad is sailing to the New World to try to get enough money to turn the tide.

Ok, there is my situation. I would like either:

Tips on defending cities
Ways of getting a ceasefire with England (They refused after I offered 3 cities)
Ways of generating unrest in enemy cities.

Thank you.

Well, depends on your $$ situation to some extent. If yer sailing to the new world I hope you loaded the ship w/merchants, they make serious bank there. I am assuming you are playing standard time game which means if yer sailing west, there's not much time to waste. That said, best advice is 'damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead'. If you cant hold what you take rampage the cities in the vicintiy and get em chasing you while you make bank by pillaging. Build 2 assault armies and every city you take load em with garrison and missile troops. You can make em pay for every seige that way-in soldiers not florins. Leave straggler-armies alone and focus on cities. Crank out spies to induce unrest and also to make sieges into same-turn assaults instead of waiting. Spies also dont slow you down like arty does (strategically on the Camp. Map anyway) and again I am assuming time is of the essence at this point. Some settlements of WE are close enough to hammer two cities in one turn if you don't plan to hold em at the time, bear that in mind as well if funds are needed. Garrisons should be militia and some missiles. Big blob of guys works great to hold em in place, while the missiles do the serious killing. Some arty is really nice if you can spare the funds for a spare serpentine in garrison but again my assumptions from your description is:turns are getting tight and florins are not in unlimited supply. Other than that, take the battles to them, starting with the cities your main generals are nearest to and don't relent. If excommunication unrest is hurting you, pay off the pope-his holiness is very fond of florins and the extra happiness you get in your cities from a smiling nod in your direction from the pope is worth every penny.

Hi! Of you are taking a big army to the New World, or more than one army, and your not far away from France, you should bring them back. Money from America will start to flow very slowly (but bringing just merchants would be okay), and you don't have that much time. It would not be hard to take the three rebel settlements in the New World, but it takes time to build them up. Lot's of time. And as I said, you don't have that much time. If you want to add more time, I would recommend medmanager, with which you can change the timescale, so if you are playing on 1turn=2 years then you could make that into 1 turn= 1/2 years, so you have three times more time.

if your at war with superpowers, send 3 spies and 2 assassins to every city before you attack it, take out the cities defenses then put the spies in there to get the unrest up and open the doors. brings cannons in behind your army and siege and attack in the same turn. have militia units moving in behind your cannons so they can garrison the place after you take it, then move on.

only take merchants and a diplomat to the new world, get trade rights and then suck out the resources, the cost of warring the Aztecs takes 10-15 years to get back.

i suspect you may not be playing the seige battles on the battlemap.

when you defend, its really pretty easy to win, regardless of what units the computer is using against you. just make sure you have the battle time limit turned on.

if you plug any breaches in your walls with super dense contrations of infantry, its more or less impossible for the computer to punch through, especially if you throw some pikemen in the mix.

Sounds like Fun!

Some great tips already, I would just add;

I totally agree with turning your ships round and bringing those xtra troops home.

Make sure you're citites/castles away from the fighting have minimum garrisons to concentrate your troops where you need them.

Keep spies in your front-line cities to prevent the enemy opening the gates with their spies and use more spies against the citites you intend to take.

Don't rely on hiding behind walls any longer than you have to. After capturing a city i only leave the army there long enough to bring the population under control and retrain. Every unit costs money so make them earn their keep through war, take the battle to the enemy and pick your ground. Fight the battles where you know you're going to cause significant losses without taking many of your own (occupying strategic bridges, mountain passes etc.) Make the enemy spend all their money on replacing troop losses while you spend yours on improving your infrastructure. If you are defending the walls then i agree with Pat, a small force can hold out effectively against a much larger one if done correctly (don't auto-resolve) which frees your better troops for attack. If you're attacking the enemies settlements then they'll be more interested in defending than attacking yours which is the exact position you're in now.

Diplomacy -
If you want to make peace with one of your aggressors you'll probably need to give them a lot of money and they may not even stick to the bargain. Get the Pope onside, if he likes you more than he likes them they will be asked to stop fighting you and if they get excommunicated he may even ask other factions to attack them. You will also be able to crusade aginst their cities which at the moment will be a lot easier than crusading to the holy land and strategically more valuable.

Remember - you're economy is key and fight on their ground not yours.

Good Luck!

Given the ease with which artillery knocks down gates and walls, I'm not sure why there is so much concern about spies opening gates.

It sounds from the original post that your troops are somewhat scattered about. You want to maintain a compact border when possible. This allows you to have more cities with minimal garrisons inside your border, which gives you money to spend to raise offensive armies, which get you more cities.

When you have enough extra troops in your border cities to put together a new stack and still leave a reasonable garrison behind, make that stack and take the next city in line from your border. Hopefully the border city you left behind now becomes an internal city and only requires a light defense.

As your borders expands and you have more lightly defended internal cities, you can afford to have more offensive stacks in the field.

This generally means your empire should be radiating outward from its core. As Spain, you should not generally be in Oslo or Germany without holding France.

As Spain, you can make an offensive stack of 9-10 heavy infantry (DCK or DFK) 3-4 heavy cav (CK or FK), 3-4 pavisse xbow, 1 general, and 1-2 cannon that can crush about anything you are likely to see in the West.

If you can get 3-4 of these armies rolling through an enemy's territory he won't be a superpower for long.