total war against AustriaÉ
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:42 am
As France, at one point after beating Austria, Sweden, Prussia and Russia ansd getting 0-2 territories from the surrender treaty, I decided to try to beat Austria in a total war. This means that I had to win every Austrian province, and there are a LOT of them. Tp get to the point, it is impossible, even at the easier levels.
After a half-dozen victories, I noticed that the provinces I had conquered were reverting back to Austria, so one must garrison conquered provinces. Since militia units seem to refuse to move to conquered provinces, it means that each time one gains a province, one must remove an infantry unit from the army; so after a dozen victories, your armies have a dozen fewer units, not to mention units lost to combat.
Replacements are much slower to come and more expensive, and the result is that when I had conquered more than 2é3 of Austrian provinces, my large armies had dwindled to less than half their original size, with units that were down to less than half of their original numbers of soldiers.To make things worse, despite having only a few provinces left, Austria seemed to be able to make more units than I cold destroy every move. I was killing between 7500-30,000 Austrians per move, but Austria had no trouble producing more than I could kill. Is the AI cheating here? Even if Britain and others were giving the Austrians money, how do they produce so many units so fast? At one point both Russia and Prussia were also at war with Austria, but still they resisted the onslaught.
If you lose ONE major battle, that whole army becomes essentially useless for the rest of the war, unless you waste many moves moving it back to friendly territory to refit. When I succombed to the temptation to split my large armies, the Austrians would show up with a large army of their own and defeat my former Grande Armee, and one or two such losses means the failure of the whole campaign. And those small Austrian units keep attacking the conquered provinces where I have a single infantry in garrison, who tend to fall in one or two moves whereas it usually takes me three or more with a large army to get them to fall.Apparently the Austrians eentujally got a traty with the Prussians allowing them to move through Prussian territory, so Austrian armies with one or two infantry units would station themselves on the Prussian side of the border until I would move away, then assault the border provinces I had previously conquered, forcing me to backtrack to recapture the province, while the Austrians recaptured the provinces in the othr direction.
Here I was playing at the easier level, with all opponents down one slot in power; I hate to think of the whalloping I would take at normal or difficult levels.
After five hours of play, and now stalled with Austria down to a half-dozen provinces and all of my armies whittled down and getting worse, I finally gave up and pulled all of my units back to France and went to bed. (I was unable to get a response from my cease-fire proposal). Maybe I will just surrender to get the experience, temporarily have to give away a couple of provinces, and go back to the normal victory conditions of one or two proninces from each campaign.
The problem is that without total war, one can NEVER conquer all of Austria (not to mentkion getting to Moscow), because after each surrender that gives one at most two provinces, one has to wait at least a year before one can declare war again, so even neglecting the time it takes to win a campaign, to get 24 provinces would take more than 12 years, and I thnk Austria has more than 24 provinces.
In sum, from this experience, gaining all of Austria as Napoleon did seems utterly impossible, as the game seems programmed to prevent any one nation from getting very much more than its original provinces. But Napoleon conquered not only Austria, he had his brothers and marshalls sitting on the thrones of Austria, Sweden, Italy and others.
Henri
And please don't reply "I know Napoleon, and you, sir are no Napoleon!..."[:'(]
Of course unless one wants to spend a year playing the campaign, one has to go to simple combat. So I was fighting most of the time at odds of 5/1 to 10/1, for the reasons mentioned above.
After a half-dozen victories, I noticed that the provinces I had conquered were reverting back to Austria, so one must garrison conquered provinces. Since militia units seem to refuse to move to conquered provinces, it means that each time one gains a province, one must remove an infantry unit from the army; so after a dozen victories, your armies have a dozen fewer units, not to mention units lost to combat.
Replacements are much slower to come and more expensive, and the result is that when I had conquered more than 2é3 of Austrian provinces, my large armies had dwindled to less than half their original size, with units that were down to less than half of their original numbers of soldiers.To make things worse, despite having only a few provinces left, Austria seemed to be able to make more units than I cold destroy every move. I was killing between 7500-30,000 Austrians per move, but Austria had no trouble producing more than I could kill. Is the AI cheating here? Even if Britain and others were giving the Austrians money, how do they produce so many units so fast? At one point both Russia and Prussia were also at war with Austria, but still they resisted the onslaught.
If you lose ONE major battle, that whole army becomes essentially useless for the rest of the war, unless you waste many moves moving it back to friendly territory to refit. When I succombed to the temptation to split my large armies, the Austrians would show up with a large army of their own and defeat my former Grande Armee, and one or two such losses means the failure of the whole campaign. And those small Austrian units keep attacking the conquered provinces where I have a single infantry in garrison, who tend to fall in one or two moves whereas it usually takes me three or more with a large army to get them to fall.Apparently the Austrians eentujally got a traty with the Prussians allowing them to move through Prussian territory, so Austrian armies with one or two infantry units would station themselves on the Prussian side of the border until I would move away, then assault the border provinces I had previously conquered, forcing me to backtrack to recapture the province, while the Austrians recaptured the provinces in the othr direction.
Here I was playing at the easier level, with all opponents down one slot in power; I hate to think of the whalloping I would take at normal or difficult levels.
After five hours of play, and now stalled with Austria down to a half-dozen provinces and all of my armies whittled down and getting worse, I finally gave up and pulled all of my units back to France and went to bed. (I was unable to get a response from my cease-fire proposal). Maybe I will just surrender to get the experience, temporarily have to give away a couple of provinces, and go back to the normal victory conditions of one or two proninces from each campaign.
The problem is that without total war, one can NEVER conquer all of Austria (not to mentkion getting to Moscow), because after each surrender that gives one at most two provinces, one has to wait at least a year before one can declare war again, so even neglecting the time it takes to win a campaign, to get 24 provinces would take more than 12 years, and I thnk Austria has more than 24 provinces.
In sum, from this experience, gaining all of Austria as Napoleon did seems utterly impossible, as the game seems programmed to prevent any one nation from getting very much more than its original provinces. But Napoleon conquered not only Austria, he had his brothers and marshalls sitting on the thrones of Austria, Sweden, Italy and others.
Henri
And please don't reply "I know Napoleon, and you, sir are no Napoleon!..."[:'(]
Of course unless one wants to spend a year playing the campaign, one has to go to simple combat. So I was fighting most of the time at odds of 5/1 to 10/1, for the reasons mentioned above.
