continued...

Even with the first GA points year approaching, I made a silly blunder, redistributing troops around and probably reducing the Friesland garrison size by 60 or 100 men. I should have known this would set something off. Maybe I even took my eye off the ball and forgot to check what the French were up to across the border?

Perhaps I'd got it into my head that the 2222 florins they'd had to pay me to get their Prince back would have taught them a lesson? Nope, they went and attacked Friesland again.... in 1099!

My 3-star Emperor ('Drinker' from turn 1, giving -1 cmd) had guarded the place for a year or two but I'd just sent him to Lorraine, so that his younger son (4-star) could move to Burgundy. The recently promoted general had gone to look after Brandenburg (3/4 stack of Poles, with their king, had taken Pomerania), leaving another no-star general in charge. The French bring something like 5 archers, the Prince (v6), another 20 RK's, 1 UM and maybe 1 Pez. I envisaged lots of casualties to missiles and maybe enough morale hit to make mine break even before meleé started, so I cop out and retreat to the castle. Bang goes how ever many points apply to a Homeland lost. grrr

Of course, my king and a full stack reliee the siege and see them off without a proper fight but the damage is done and the lesson learned. Next points year expect attacks!

At the same time, I wonder why I'm making such a fuss over Friesland, which is worth barely 100 fl per turn anyway. I've ignored my own advice about maybe letting go of a cruddy province, to make the most of the rest and take it back in later years, when growth in other directions has strengthened the economy. For some reason, I'd decided to build my first port there (aiming at shipbuilding), rather than Saxony which still lacks even a fort. In fact, I've yet to commit to the port build until Friesland ceases to attract French attacks. I reckon I'll have to change tack and build it - and the ships -in Saxony. I'm safe from the Danes for the time being but they've already taken Sweden (hooray! they've attacked in the right direction at long last) and they will be raking in the cash before long. One war at a time, though.

It's now 1101 and I am really paying the price of inaction against Italy, in the earliest turns of the game. France has been a distraction, I admit. I got my Papal warning after they'd attacked me without provocation and I was over-cautious in not making punitive attacks on France, for fear of full-blown ex-com which I'm not quite ready for yet.

I had Toulouse in mind for a hit, which is disconnected from their northern provinces by a piece of English-held Anjou getting in the way. Attacking there gives them no path of retreat, meaning pillage AND a healthy bit of ransom. Trying to avoid ex-com means that they're now accumulating Hobilars down there, which will negate the power of my archers easily. To my dismay, I require a horse-breeder to get cav of any description and, even then, they'll be mounted x-bows, not 'proper' meleé light cav.

The big mistake is not capitalising on the Papal warning right away, opening up against Italy before they'd built up forces and leaving the French to keep their gains, if only for the length of time it took to finish the Italian campaign.

As for the Italians themselves, the puny stacks I had politely let be for the past decade have swelled to 3/4 stacks so rapidly, I wonder if I was paying proper attention or not. Admittedly it's mostly UMs but they have a healthy scattering of valour-1 units in there. I know about the stats differences, so it looks like I'm going to need better than 2:1 numerical advantage as well as efficient flanking moves to fight these with v0 UMs of my own.

Of course, the easy fix for that would be to get my King and Princes down there, to make the most of their valour bonuses but that leaves the door wide open to the French, who have a 5-star general (must check HEROES.TXT for him) kicking around on my western border as well as a party invite to Austria, for the Huns and the Poles, whose stacks now seem bigger than mine.

So, here's a brain-teaser for HRE experts out there, as well as being a generalised question about overall strategy.

Q. How willing are you and how advisable is it to take territory off one faction, when you know that it must come at the cost of a second faction taking a different set of lands off you, because you simply don't have enough troops to look after both jobs at once?

In my case, I see the Italian provinces as being better wealth-generators than the landlocked provinces bordering France. They also give me access to the Mediterranean, which I'll definitely need, come the time to Crusade. Furthermore, kicking the Italians off the mainland is a war that can be fought to completion (ending with no shared borders) within the lifetime of one Emperor, so any resultant excom will eventually end.

In conquest mode, I wouldn't have to worry about conceding ground to the French, so long as my gains are worth more, in the long-term, than what I lost. No doubt, I will gain sufficient strength to take them back and, who knows, I could even let the French spend cash on building stuff, which I can pillage or steal from them later on - so they could be doing me a favour!

In GA mode, however, it does mean losing homelands, so I have to wonder whether it may ultimately cost me the game, when the final totals are known, if I repeatedly failed to get them back in the relevant years.