French in high: reflections and discoveries
My French high expert campaign is over. Generally, it was quite an eventful one. In it some things happened to me for the first time.
It was my first campaign in which I could never marry my prince to any of the foreign princesses. It kept the line of my kings purely French, though I could find some Almohad royal husbands for a couple of my own princesses.
It was my first campaign in which I had to do without a navy for the first 80 years or so. When I could afford producing ships I was at war with first the English, then the Danish, Aragonese, later the Italians (all of them through no initiative of mine). All those had ramified fleets along my coasts which made me keep quite sizeable armies in my littoral provinces and prevented me from having ships (whenever I produced one it got sunk a year or two later).
It was my first campaign in which a faction could be disposed of so easily. I had dislodged the Polish from Bohemia. Next year they attacked with a vengeance. The latter came in form of a Hungarian army (the ally of the Polish) headed by a childless king. Still next year I saw a bunch of rebel provinces where a powerful kingdom used to be.
It was my first campaign in which I had only one ally during the whole campaign.
And finally, it was my first campaign in which I had to face so formiddable Papacy. Basically, I had Europe under my control by 1350 or so. The factions left possessed a province or two each. Except Papacy. It was my only ally (see above) and besides its original two provinces it owned Venice, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Constantinople, Moldova, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Scotland and Ireland most of them captured in fierce struggle against the Sicilians and the Italians (it was the first time that I saw such an aggressive behavior of the Pope). Having serious scruples about attacking an (in this case - the) ally I let things be hoping for the Pope to attack me first. But he never did, instead he sent me a thousand florins gift almost every year (not that it mattered much - my treasury had about 1.3 million - but it didn't feel right somehow to bite the hand that feeds you). My first mistake was to loiter about wathcing Papacy amass armies. When I thought better of it the Pope had 12-14 full stacks in Moldova, 8-10 in Const and Venice, twice that few in Portugal, Sweden, Rome ... It is true, most of them were gun units or crossbows/arbalesters. It is also true, that the highest command rating a papal general had was 4 (which was the lowest for my average 6-7 star generals). But think of the numbers! It was like facing three or four Hordes added together. In 1410 I decided that I couldn't wait any longer and started the offensive. The war went wrong at first. My second mistake was to autoresolve battles for the first three years of it. I won one and lost three or four in this way. Of course, as the result of my king's loss of influence and the ensuing excom (for attacking Papacy) my empire was aflame with rebellions. (One more discovery I made - if you besiege the castle and the loyalty of the province is zippo - point your army at the said castle - after you agree to storm it the loyalty will rocket!!) So I got down to the campaign hammer and tongs. The Pope stormed all the castles it besieged. I lost all of them but he paid a very high price for every fortress taken (mostly because of the AI's stupid castle-storming tactics). There were good news from my subjects in the provinces that had rebelled. One more "first time" - in all of those provinces were loyalist rebellions against the rebels!! Gradually, I rallied my forces (got Joan of Arc appear - a 7-star chivalric sergeants unit trained in Egypt in 1429) and evicted the Pope first from the Appenines, then the Balkans, then Corsica, then Scotland and finally got him pinned down in Portugal. Next time I will know better - no more complacency towards the Pope.
Originally Posted by Suraknar
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