AAR - Ralegh as Sweden

[Ralegh]

And finally, Sweden (this is the 8th - and last - in my series of AARs as I tried to defeat the AI in a standard campaign [1000 glory, 1805] at Napoleon difficulty with standard power settings). Interestingly, this game went to 1811 - the longest previously was 1808. [I played this game with a beta version of the patch - it didn't have a fix for the multi-province minor country bugs in it yet, although things like combat worked really well. I had no CTDs at all.]

Sweden starts with highly developed provinces, which have high populations. This is good, in that they produce much more than you would expect from their numbers, and bad because it is expensive to make much difference. As other countries, I got lots of upgrades - doing so as Sweden is very hard. Finally, Sweden doesn't have anyone any good at producing textiles - that means trading for textiles and looking for some territory with 'em is crucial.

I put my diplomat in Denmark, trying to charm them - Denmark has most of the areas I get glory for, but with the multi-province country bug conquering them is just too hard, so I will try to charm them to my side. Whenever I can, I put 100 gold in a subsidy for Denmark as well.

Sweden starts with good moral units - both land and sea - lets use 'em.

So, initially we surge out through Denmark to besiege Batavia. [Partially, I want to find out if taking Batavia will get rid of the Dutch fleet and/or Batavian army. Partially, it will give me a supply source close enough for operations in France. Partially, it lets me be near Paris, while waiting for an allied invasionary force. Partially, its a source for textiles...] We used the fleet to blockade the port, and beseiged with the army. Taking a calculated risk, I surged all my militia forward too (emptying all the cities) - that way they can continue the seige when the main army moves on.

xxxxxx America declared war on me, offended by my blockade of Batavia. For the remainder of the game my fleet occasionally destroyed some armerican merchants and privateers - I didn't see an American combat fleet this time. Wish I could pay them off or something.

An Austrian faint at Paris get my attention, but before I can move to support it, Austria surrenders to its enemies. Too bad. Russian and British forces both approach, so we join them to move on Paris. Interestingly, 2 main French armies are in Russia at this point, and advancing strongly to Moscva. The allied armies besige Paris, and meanwhile the Russians shatter the French supply lines in Russia and the main French armies start dying off. My militia (not in a corps or army) finish besieging Batavia, and it becomes a supply source for us.

A counter attack by the reformed GrandArmeeII kicks the allies out of Paris, badly hurting the British and Russian forces in particular. I scurry down to siege Bavaria, waiting for the allies to get some troops into France. French forces have given up the attack on Russia and flood west - and my army gets overrun by the flood. We run away back to Malmo to rest and refit. (Sure enough, it was the Batavian army that beat us up - after we had owned Batavia for about 6 months!)

Meanwhile back in Sweden I have been growing artillery, some cav, etc (although not enough textiles for a corps yet!). We refill the army [in the patched game, reinforcements come in 4 times faster when the army in in friendly territory], and surge it back to join the allies in an attack on Paris. Supported by 2 British armies and 2 Russian armies, we successfully beseige Paris again, and France starts being forced by insurrectionsists to surrender to us in turn. I take Picardy (an objective province), Languedoc (as a supply source for my follow on attack against Spain), the Grand Armee on loan, and all the French colonies. I induce Napoleon to emmigrate to Sweden, and put him in the Swedish Army as its commander. (Don't look for a game feature - its more an exploit.)

At this stage, France and Spain were at the top of the glory list, followed by Britain and myself (Sweden). So next stop: continuing the war against Spain. The Swedish and French-on-loan armies march south, smashing resistance on their way to Madrid. Languedoc turns out to have been a great choice - they must have a high feudal rating: they rush built 6 divisions immediately, which made a nice reserve to garrison my depots. I put 3 divisions with each depot as I moved to Madrid to protect the supply chain. The French army on loan reverted just before Spain surrendered. I took Austria from Spain (who had taken it from Austria, of course), and made them free Tuscany, and give me all their colonies.

Russia and Turkey joined me in trying to influence Denmark and I spend about 2000 gold over 8 months - and then they stepped up the pace of the contributions - over a few months, Denmark went to +3500 towards each of them! (I watched more than 8000 gold get poured into the country during a bidding war.) Turkey dropped out of the bidding, and Denmark went Russian. Bugger - I wanted Denmark. Maybe I could get some territory to sell the Russians? Hmmm.

Britain tried to bribe me into declaring war on Turkey, and I gave a counter offer asking for a different bribe, which they refused - but somehow I ended up at war with Turkey anyway. After a brief stop to tank up, we rushed to Turkey!

Meanwhile, I traded I swapped Austria and Languedoc to Russia for Carelia and Hannover, and the loan of Cherson and all 3 Russian Fleets (the Danish, as well as the 2 Russian). Cherson gave me a better supply source for operations against Turkey, and the 6 months loan seemed a good idea. I moved the fleets around - I was planning an attack on Britain if my victory against Turkey didn;t give me enough glory to win. (And I would take territory from Turkey that the Russians wanted, and swap it to them for parts of Denmark...)

I was also making alliances via treaty to get access rights - France and Austria made alliances with me, and decided to join in my punishment of Turkey. Turkey surrendered to France first, and Austria and I later - it was enough to kick me over the top, and the game ended. But France and Britain were at 967 and 982 respectively: not a crushing win at all. [In other games, second place was usually under 600 glory.]


Notable features:
After playing Turkey and even Austria, the high morale Swedes were a delight to play. Sweden has so fewer provinces that the economy takes a back seat, which was a nice relax - and has 1 army to worry about, not 4 or 6 - which means lots of leaders in most battles. Not being able to get upgrades easily was annoying though.

By the end, I had 2 corps in the army, and a second army moving down to seige things. I had build 2 guards too - although they hadn't gotten a chance to get their bayonets wet.

Leveraging the British presence in France, and getting artillery were the keys to the French campaign. I made sure my army was supporting the Brits (who had artillery as well as even better units than mine) - the French couldn't touch us in battle.

The Spanish campaign was very different - their high numbers of cavalry units made for a different style of warfare, and it was just my forces (supported by the French army on loan, of course). While the AI still doesn't use combined arms as effectively as I do (following up an attack by one arm with an attack by another), partially that is because I take their artillery out of play as fast as I can... Spain made a good effort to break my supply lines which was only defeated because of the Languedoc divisions.

The Turkish campaign was a romp - there were enough Austrian armies to provide great protection for the supply chain, and I took the lead position smashing their armies. The Turks fough us with a medium morale (about 4) army - 2 armies full of irregulars and militia seemed to be stranded on Corsica. (I don't know how they got there - the Turkish fleet was at strength zero after loosing to Britain, so they weren't gonna be ferried home any time soon.) [I'll look into this as a potential bug.]

Many of the fixes were very interesting:
- alt tab works dependably
- far fewer POWs
- battle at night much less worthwhile (although still sometimes worth it)
- things like tooptips and movement arrows made the UI easier to use