European Campaign 1805-1812

[James7504]

I play on VH VH. I have found this to be excellent particularly as any autocalc battles leave you with big losses - those big losses and the way units replenish mean finally no roll over campaigns. France is going to need a bigger income and a lot of research done. I suggest leaving our main enemies alone at the start, instead we have a campaign in the Med and in the Low countries to improve our income and eventually taking gibraltar and most of the med trade nodes.

Turn 1 Trade hannover with prussia for melk - then trade your techs with prussia. You can then sell a total of 4 techs each to ottoman and spain for 1 or 2 thousand each, and 2 techs to lesser countires for 500. Rotate some ministers through your justice minister position until you get one with 4 or more stars. After diplomacy we can take baden/wurtemberg with the 3 small armies near napoleon - and use napoleons stack to take zurich - the army in italy move back west of the kingdom of italy as they will join switzerland. We keep each - no protectorites so close to france - we want cash from these. The army that was in honnover now move to paris - all forces with "national" militia will go to join him at paris (will be 5 militia a cav and an arty) to form a home army. Build a trade ship and 2 trade ports in the med and i upgrade any provinces with no road.

Next turn Napoleon marches on the kingdom of italy, your other army there marches to join him. While the baden/wurtenburg force either takes bavaria or heads for tyrol. Bavaria is a useful bulwark and it is allies to you, taking it then liberating means you get some cash and units but you may not want to waste your men doing it. In the next few turns you take venice which you make a protectorate and tyrol which you loot and give to venice. This means you have bavaria and italy guarding your eastern front. I have seen both italy and bavaria taken back by austria but never before turn 60 - though Bavaria usually goes first to saxony, and sometimes russia! Batavia and Hessen hold your north - batavia can be brought into the war when prussia attacks and is a usefull ally (melk can be given to batavia to close the north border completely) - however if left long enough (turn80+) they may turn on you - hessen will attack you eventually as an ally of prussia.

So now you are upgrading your provinces, sending trade ships to as many nodes as you can take (even the spanish ones are ok as the brits dont usually patrol spainish waters) and making more trade ships everytime one is built- convert all the built ports in the atlantic to trade ports also - leave the unbuilt one connected to paris as a future docking yard. You will make yout italian/med capmaign your priority. Taking all of italy, sicily and sardinnia which gets you all the research buildings you need, more ports to make trade ships - leave 1 port as a shipyard- and a good plonk of income. Your last move in the med is to send a force to take gibraltar and fortify it, creating a warship and army recruiting province out of it.

Once you have taken all that - you will find your income is good - over 10k a turn and getting higher as you get more trade ships online and upgrade your provinces. Your income will take a hit as you want to build some ships to keep the brits away from spain, you will need to deploy 3 full armies, 1 to paris for any british landings, 1 to the east to hold Austria and 1 to hold prussia. They will all be troubling you by now - depending on how long your italian campaign took you may get your armies back in time or be forced to build more. Austria will be fighting ottoman and the earliest i have seen ottoman whipped by a russio/austrian alliance was turn 38, i have also seen spain beaten by britain once but they seem to usually land in normandy instead.

From this point you have the money to build and fight in whatever area you want. Take spain and portugal for more income and cut english trade to the south completely? Retake ottoman from austria/russia. Launch your armies on a reverse schlieffen plan through the low countries and on to berlin? From this point on you can do as you like because taking italy and the med makes you a superpower - dont get me wrong you can still lose from this point - but you can field 8 armies with this income, its how you use them that counts.

[ntwfan]

and then to set out to make trouble for Austria, with the aim to take her capital Vienna. Once you do that, Austria will automatically make peace.

It wasn't much of a mission reward for me because after I captured Vienna, the Austrians again declared war the next turn!

You want to keep a nice buffer against Prussia early in the campaign in order to deter them for as long as possible, while you deal with Schwarzenegger's fatherland.

It never works for me. I think the Prussians are hard coded to attack within the first 5 turns, so I end up doing a preemptive strike on them from turn 1.

[Hakomar]

@ ntwfan
Taking Vienna can be a challenge, as well as create further ones.
It is a capital city, and you will probably have a public-order crisis, putting down rebellions and whatnot. However it does make Austria make peace. If Austria and Prussia are allies, then taking Vienna to make peace is a silly idea, because Prussia is meant to declare war on you one turn after, along with it's allies. I would suggest you make them break allies.

[ntwfan]

About Vienna, I restarted and tried a different approach by assassinating their garrison general and sending both armies to crush the Austrians instead of diverting one army to take Italy. It made a huge difference with my army (led by Napoleon of course) defeating an almost full army of regular Austrian units and another army of citizen militias and surviving regular units in Vienna (About 3,000 of theirs vs only 140 of my own men lost). By setting Vienna's tax rate to zero and garrisoning it with at least 10 militia units, I was able to hold order without rebellion for three turns while researching the Napoleonic code to keep order high. While strikes and riots still broke out, no full scale rebellions ever happened and peace was maintained within three turns of capturing Vienna. But I had to keep tax rate at zero until the tax and theatre buildings were constructed in Vienna.

[erebrus]

Intro

Regardless of what faction you play, the first part of a TW campaign is always the same. Protect your borders keeping the smallest army possible and build an economy.
Protecting your borders doesn't necessarily require a full stack army in each border. Use all the possible tricks, these include allies and protectorates as buffers (don't be afraid to give away a poor border province if it greatly decreases the extent of your borders). Set your armies in ambush positions, use spies to see attacks before they reach your borders, etc. Also, keep an eye open for opportunistic attacks that will allow taking a neighbor province, but only if this doesn't increase your borders or put your defense under further stress. For instance, liberate them and create a buffer. It's important to do so with the smallest army possible so that you can invest more money instead of spending it on upkeep.
Building an economy is simple. You get money from tax income and trade income. The former is increased by infrastructure, admin buildings, commercial towns, etc. That's what you should invest on. Keep the building of military buildings to the absolute minimum (required for technology advances). Trade relies on getting access to trade nodes and therefore requires a navy which is clearly easier with same nations than with others.


France

France has 3 concerns. Eastern front with Austria+Russia, Northern Front with Prussia if/when it joins the Coalition and Western Front with the Brits.
Swap Hannover with Prussia for their closest province and techs. Prussia will keep it cool while you don't go on the offensive.
Use your allies on the East to keep Austria at bay. Keep an army in Northern Italy and another in the Strasbourg ready to support your allies if (and only if required).
Keep an Army around Paris for the inevitable Brit landing.

You want to build an economy and if Taxes are trivial (just apply the already proposed building approach), Trade is tricky with the French because of the Brit naval superiority. Given so, your goal should be to eliminate that superiority. Run with your atlantic fleet to Rennes avoiding Nelson at all costs. Upgrade your dry dock there. Use this fleet to keep Nelson in check and possibly attack the weaker fleets to get new ships. Once the dry dock is complete, build as many big ships as you need to take out Nelson. Once this is done, blockade every Brit port and go after its Trade Nodes. Start pumping out Trade ships. The Med on the other hand is easier and you can get some trade nodes from the start since Nelson will be busy on the Atlantic.

Once you get a very good income, get an extra invading army then go to Sicily, Naples, Papal States (at which point Italy will declare war on you). Have southern army take Milan immediately. From there Austria.
Once you go on the offensive, Prussia will join the coalition, so be prepared with armies on the northern front. Take Hannover back and be prepared for a lot of full stacks coming from Berlin. I took an army by boat and blitzed/looted the coastal provinces. Then I kept two full stacks in Hannover. Prussia kept sending armies and when they didn't I would advance and take the University, forcing them to attack again. Eventually they run out of full stacks since they can't replenish as fast as you (having lost so much wealth from the coastal provinces). Forces that attacked Austria can go North and help complete the job.

Finally Russia. To succeed where Napoleon failed. At this point it shouldn't be very hard since you can field several full stacks to get the job done. Still, I took it to the point where I barely fought any battle with Russia once I went on the offensive. Using two stacks from Konnisberg and two other from Romania, I went through the lines and took all russian provinces adjacent to Moscow with barely any resistance. I was able to do so in part because I liberated Courland and gave all these provinces to it. Being it a recent nation, Russia wasn't immediately at war with it. By the time it did declare war, winter was upon us, I had headed to French provinces (Warsaw and Konnisberg) to spent winter there. The russian armies on the offensive tasted a bit of their own medicine with the cold. Once spring came, I marched my 4 stacks to Moscow, defeated the two full stacks there and took Moscow. Game Over.

Note: You dont need to take GB or Ottoman, but both can be annoying and force you to allocate forces to keep them in check. Ottoman I used protectorates as buffers once it had only Greece and Rumelia. GB I ended up taking. Started with Ireland and Scotland. Liberated the latter and convinced them to declare war on GB. This forced them to spread their forces making my naval invasion easy.
Note 2: When I took Konnisberg from Prussia, I also took the western province and gave it to one of my allies with whom Prussia wasn't at war. This created a partial buffer which was enough to keep the bulk of Prussian forces (the ones at Berlin) from storming me. It also served as a bait for Russian forces who came stack after stack to be defeated. Russian Armies are far weaker than prussian ones and far inferior in Artillery, one of the strenghs of the French.

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C.

[jmartins]

Its informative post it provides a lots of information related to topic also add more information related to topic.

[kambiz]

Can we have a good guide for especially french campaign on hard or very hard difficulty for Multiplayer Campaign ? Also a guide for french (again Multiplayer) campaign for Peninsular would be greatly appreciated :)

Regards