RE: Russia tips
Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 10:32 am
Defensively -- sooner or later, somebody's going to be sufficiently aggressive, bored, lucky-feelin', or crazy enough to make a serious attempt at invading you. It's likely to be an incredibly bad idea, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to happen.
There's the Turks, perhaps especially likely if the Spanish and British have chosen to deny the Turks much of North Africa, and if Turkey's at an enforced peace with Austria... or if they're simply feeling bored. If the Turks still have a fleet -- perhaps their more navally-empowered tormentors have simply drawn a line in the sea, and prefer them to remain intact to antagonize you -- one possible supply route is through Taganrog. A supply line extending NW from there to Moscow might be a touch shorter and require more shifting of your forces than a strictly overland route from Khotin. This is perhaps a decent reason to pay some attention to the Mediterranean, even though you won't be able to intervene very easily there, at least for a while.
Prussia and Austria aren't likely to go after you unless France has been thoroughly crushed. For them... going through the Pripyet Marshes is slower (2 MP to enter marsh) and expensive (pay for depot supply, or face really really bad foraging). And the odds are pretty good they'd want to gain as much ground as possible before the next winter rolls around, so they'd want to avoid slow terrain.
*If* Britain is on their side, perhaps because you've aligned with France and they're now out for revenge, there's the possibility of landings in Scandinavia. If they take Abo (and thus Finland), then Sveaborg provides supply really, really close to St. Petersburg -- supply that unlike invasion/sea supply in the northern Baltic will not be stopped by winter. Without fleets, well, they're not going to reach Finland unless they've already gone through St. Petersburg, or you botched the Scandinavian war and the Swedish army is being used to attempt an unlikely revenge. So keep an eye on Finland if GB doesn't like you.
Overland routes from Austria and Prussia are simply long, ugly, and a bit constrained by the Marshes, as well as the rules that prohibit allies from at all using each other's depots, or in co-locating them. It's a fairly long march, and they'll have to make it a very -wide- march if they want to occupy cities on the flanks to prevent you from building corps there -- reinforcements built in Kamieniec or Kiev can threaten supply lines going from Lublin, for instance.
Back up, draw them in, interdict supply lines (and even a 1M corps blocks), remember that Cossacks can move -through- enemy-occupied areas without fighting, remember that winter is 2x supply cost... and that you don't have a huge blob of minor states at risk of conquest, so enemies (other than GB if they succeed in taking Scandinavia) can gain absolutely nothing until they beat somebody in battle, so you shouldn't rush to offer it.
And with the upcoming surrender rules, they can't actually force you to sue for peace unless they occupy ALL your home province capitals... no mean feat. In the meantime, there's probably somebody else who sees an opportunity in attacking those foolish enough to concentrate their armies in your land...
There's the Turks, perhaps especially likely if the Spanish and British have chosen to deny the Turks much of North Africa, and if Turkey's at an enforced peace with Austria... or if they're simply feeling bored. If the Turks still have a fleet -- perhaps their more navally-empowered tormentors have simply drawn a line in the sea, and prefer them to remain intact to antagonize you -- one possible supply route is through Taganrog. A supply line extending NW from there to Moscow might be a touch shorter and require more shifting of your forces than a strictly overland route from Khotin. This is perhaps a decent reason to pay some attention to the Mediterranean, even though you won't be able to intervene very easily there, at least for a while.
Prussia and Austria aren't likely to go after you unless France has been thoroughly crushed. For them... going through the Pripyet Marshes is slower (2 MP to enter marsh) and expensive (pay for depot supply, or face really really bad foraging). And the odds are pretty good they'd want to gain as much ground as possible before the next winter rolls around, so they'd want to avoid slow terrain.
*If* Britain is on their side, perhaps because you've aligned with France and they're now out for revenge, there's the possibility of landings in Scandinavia. If they take Abo (and thus Finland), then Sveaborg provides supply really, really close to St. Petersburg -- supply that unlike invasion/sea supply in the northern Baltic will not be stopped by winter. Without fleets, well, they're not going to reach Finland unless they've already gone through St. Petersburg, or you botched the Scandinavian war and the Swedish army is being used to attempt an unlikely revenge. So keep an eye on Finland if GB doesn't like you.
Overland routes from Austria and Prussia are simply long, ugly, and a bit constrained by the Marshes, as well as the rules that prohibit allies from at all using each other's depots, or in co-locating them. It's a fairly long march, and they'll have to make it a very -wide- march if they want to occupy cities on the flanks to prevent you from building corps there -- reinforcements built in Kamieniec or Kiev can threaten supply lines going from Lublin, for instance.
Back up, draw them in, interdict supply lines (and even a 1M corps blocks), remember that Cossacks can move -through- enemy-occupied areas without fighting, remember that winter is 2x supply cost... and that you don't have a huge blob of minor states at risk of conquest, so enemies (other than GB if they succeed in taking Scandinavia) can gain absolutely nothing until they beat somebody in battle, so you shouldn't rush to offer it.
And with the upcoming surrender rules, they can't actually force you to sue for peace unless they occupy ALL your home province capitals... no mean feat. In the meantime, there's probably somebody else who sees an opportunity in attacking those foolish enough to concentrate their armies in your land...