Laying plans for a HRE game

[The Unknown Guy]

Ok, I'm in dire straits. The French keep trying to assault Burgundy (to no avail), but the Italians are getting serious. Since I flooded them with slavic warriors, now they´re doing the same with Militia Guards.

Now, I was pondering to stand to it, but there are several problems:

- I have to get enough armies from the north to the south
- I am very short on cash
- The BLASTED FRENCH WAR. I can't use the Burgundy Garrison as assistance until that one ends. And they persist in not ending it.
- Byzantium rules the steppes, in fact, right down to Prussia. It´s a matter of time before they decide to go into "Kill HRE Pretender" mode

So I´m going to do this, after I call it a day and start a slightly easier Italian or Sicilian game to keep an eye on Spain and her Jinettes, and whether I was successful at hitting their economy:

- First: raze all Italian provinces I have taken. I´m going to lose them anyway. Might as well ease a bit my poor economy.

-Second: Raze all provinces within range of the French aggresion. Sooner or later I´ll lose a battle, and then my somewhat developed province of Swabia will jump into their hands. Again, I need to strenghten my economy. I´ll do the same with the south, but I left that on purpose less developed on infrastructure.
-Move my northern garrisons to Brandenburg and Saxony, hence locking Denmark and Norway, where I already had taken steps to establish my building centers. I´ll keep that on, using my plundered money. Also, it will be easier to defend from there.

Now, I know this is desperate, and will mean a hit on Victory Points, but that prostacted war is taking a toll anyway. I need to secure myself a base, as fast as possible. My hope is that once the Byzantines finish Poland for good, they´ll start traveling west, and meet the Italians and the French, and that the subseçuent wars and bloat effect, combined by a cheap yet effective viking taskforce, will allow me to reclaim homelands in time. That or leap to the British Isles, and start my HRE anew conçuering from Scotland downwards. I´ll lose half of my slav warriors provinces, through :(

[General Dazza]

Sounds like a challenge Unknown - stick with it!

But I wouldn't raze all theose provinces. To defend your borders you need troops, and to get troops you need cash. Don't take out your future income streams. You might get on top, but then when you start to expand you'll struggle again.


I had a similar pain in my campaign. I was at war with the Hungarians but the Pope was protecting them. I was also at war with italy and france.

I was at war with these three for ages, just holding on. Eventually I got lucky as Italy sent 3000+ troops to provence. I then attacked it's only retreating province and then massed everything I had and attacked it's provence stack. Luckily they withdraw and automatic annihilation.

My tip is be patient. Hold the line and wait for an opportunity.

[The Unknown Guy]

I was planning to move my production centers north, and in fact I´d been doing so for a while. Saxony and Brandenburg are already capable of producing Sergeants and Men At Arms. What I´m going to do is abandon Swabia and Switzeland (Swabia was the only truly developed province of those) and destroy the castles, so when I counterattack, the enemy can´t hold my troops there in a siege.
Burgundy, which is also Sergeant-able, I will leave with it´s current garrison, as it´s more than able to hold invasions through the river, and I already defeated a french force coming from Lorraine. The Italian cities I´m razing are Milan and Genoa, and they don´t have much barring keeps and bowyers able to churn out crossbowmen. Since Italy is flooding me with cheap useless things (and I might do the same, building legions of Slav warriors to harass them) I´m removing the severe annoyance of having to deal with crossbowmen, their only armored unit to date.
Damn, I wish I could raze Venice, but they are well garrisoned there, and my southeastern strike force is decimated. Hence my need to retreat to production centers and less wide frontiers. (very bad VP wise) :/
The good thing is that most of Germany can stay intact, as I left most provinces as "economical", not military, things. (Swabia was the exception because I hoped to get Swabian swordsmen in time to kick the French out of Lorraine)

[ULC]

You can end the war with the French within two years! First, raze and abandon all your lower provinces except Swabia, bump up the tax rate so that they are very disloyal, then retreat to lorriane and burgundy. Then attack Ile de france and flanders, forcing thier king into champagne. Then attack champagne with all that you can muster (make sure Ile de france and flanders are garrisoned enough so their are no loyalist revolts, otherwise it will ruin it.) If done correctly, and with a little luck, you should now have decent rebels blocking italian and hungarian advances into your empire, and recievced a nice fat paycheck for the french king, maybe even eliminated the french entirely.

[Vladimir]

The blitz France option is usually your best opening move. The turtle and hope nothing bad happens usually ends in disaster.

[The Unknown Guy]

Ok, I won the war. Still not over but I won it.

First: I assaulted Lorraine with around fourteen hundred trash troops, 500 sergeants, a men-at-arms unit, and a royal prince. The attack was a fragfest to the strongly garrisoned French province, which among other things had lots of Militia Sergeants, bowmen, Hobbilars, two ballistas which were killing off my unit from a safe fortified forest, three sergeants or so, and four spearmen units or so. It was a massacre. I lost the battle with twelve hundred casualties (most of them trash-troops-- the sergeants got battered, but survived for the most part), and killed only 600 french. Besides, this got me excommed. However, it provided leverage for the following assault, which included all my Franconian stores of trash infantry, eight hundred sergeants, six bowmen units, and a crown prince. The french retreated, leaving a garrison in Lorraine which shall be trashflooded, and furthermore, retreating all their surrounding troops to Paris, leaving Champagne without any protection, and Tolouse along the same lines.

In the Italian front I slash-burned Milan and Genoa, sadly removing the keeps, but I needed the cash in the north, and if I left things standing they might just be turned against me. Then I assaulted the undermanned Florence. This turned out to be the Doge´s undoing: His influence plumetted, and half his Venetian garrison/bodyguard force went into civil war, so no matter the outcome, the loser will be weakened enough so that I can put an end to their presence there.
So now I hold half of the HRE Glory Goal.
Plans:
-Slash and burn Provence and Champagne, following the Italian method. Then either force the French into a bitter peace, or exterminate them. Either will do. Razing Champagne will mean a SEVERE hindrance to their war efforts, even if they recover the province (which is not impossible, as the Paris forces are rather large)

- Keep on fortifying and building in the North: If ANYTHING goes awry, I can retreat there and build up my forces & trade a lot. See below for something that could go awry

- Prepare for a potential Byzantine invasion. Not that they have been aggressive towards me, but they might just give it a try, and now they´re a juggernaut. For this I´ll need to fortify key provinces with Sergeants and Genovese sailors (once I rebuild my new Italian provinces), and leave non-key provinces with skeleton garrisons in forts, backed by assault armies of cavalry and men at arms, with some sergeants as anti katatanks -just in case (now that things are going right I HOPE I can finally get good çuality standing armies, and leave trashflooding as an emergency, guerrilla warfare tactic. And do it with half of the trash being slav javs, being both cheap and capable of dealing heavy casualties to strong armored units)

- If everything goes right: fulfill the Holy Roman Empire goal, taking Rome and Naples, and kicking the Pope back to the papal states. Then hopefully either make peace or raid them to the point of their armies not posing a serious threat (I don´t want to hold a garrison in Italy while the Byzantines rampage in the steppes)

[The Unknown Guy]

Ok, the problems hit the fan: the Hungarians, French (that´s what happens for not exterminating them), English (weren´t they supposed to be warring with the French anyway?) and Poles attacked at the same time.
So I had to pull my "scortched Earth" plan.
Now, I have lots of sergeants and troops, and kicked the Novgorods out of Finland (in order to close another border, gain more cash, and expend some of my cheap militias ... if the area south of Finland only presents one border I´ll attack it too)
Hungary has cut it´s way through to Silesia. There they stopped, for some reason. The French have retaken Lorraine, and the English have briefly held to that province West of Saxony, but I kicked them out (It´s my main shipyard).

What stands, currently: Burgundy (Probably for long. I have sergeants, some men at arms, some bowmen, and four ballistas to rain death on enemy generals), Venice (Don´t know for how long. Things seem pretty dire over there. I lack cash, and I lack decent military buildings there. I might pull out a scortched earth, then kamikaze it´s garrison against some weak hungarian-held territory to slash and plunder), and the North (namely, all north of Saxony, plus Brandenburg and Pomerania. For some reason Franconia was respected, althrough I had to scortch its military buildings due to lack of cash and impossibility to defend it).

- Good things: I have a great army at the north with which I can both defend my provinces and lash out, plus good infrastructure (no knights yet, however :( ), and the Burgundy Garrison can bite enemies in the rear when I strike down. Also, I managed to pul out six inçuisitors to harass Hungarian advances (I´ve followed Papal orders concerning the French to the letter so far, I´m entitled to have some inçuisitors)

- Bad things: I´m badly out of cash. My army is composed mainly of sergeants (expensive, and not an efficient attack force) and militia (which routs, lowering the morale of my proper units.) I need to reform the army: get rid of the militia, reduce the sergeant number to the barest minimum to garrison the north, and keep men-at-arms forces, which are both cheaper to produce and maintain, and more useful attacking. At most keep one sergeant unit to shoo away cavalry.

I´m going to fight this one to the bitter end. :p

Mithrandir:edited language