1792 AAR - Ralegh as France

[Ralegh]

Testing the latest version of the patch, I decided to play a full game, and picked one I haven't tried in awhile. The good news: no CTDs. The bad news: the multi-province thing is only partially fixed . Save/restore seems to be working fine, although I haven't tested it with multi-player detailed combat yet. Alt-tab seems fine, except from the opening screen. POWs have been toned down. I haven't managed to test the depot tweaks in this game - I'll have to contrive something to check 'em out.

Anyway, a little analysis of 1792 before we get going. The biggest change is the number of neutral countires with significant forces - here is a rundown: (showing number of divisions and rough average morale) [so 2IC means 2 inf, and 1 Cav]
Armies: Piedmont (2IC, 4.3), Batavia (2ICA, 4.8), Poland [2armies] (7I4CA, 6), Bavaria
(4I2C2A 5.3), Egypt (2I4C, 4)
Corps: Algeria (4IC, 4), Denmark (4IC, 3.5), Hanover (2I2C, 4.5), Italia (2I, 1.8), Portugal (4I2C, 2.7), Saxony (2IC, 4.5), Tripolitania (I2C, 4), Tunisia (IC, 2)
So Poland and Bavaria are better quality than France at the start, and have armies the size of places like Sweden and even Spain! Wow. Note that some of the North African countries are much better quality than 1805. France starts at morale 5, and Britain at 6.5 - so they are the varsity.

Development plan:
Military forces are quite well balanced - no desperate need for any particular unit type: we have some capable sports for building units (Paris and Berri). Lets build up textiles for expensive units...
1) We are going to grow, to build roads as necessary for all provinces to have capacity for extra population.
2) Get all provinces to barracks and culture 3 - its cheap, and gets upgrades.
3) Then build up labour producers to factories 5, and agriculutre specialists to farms 5.
[How do I know we are going to grow? I am going to take the militia out of the cities, letting them forage rather than being on paid supply - that will save awesome amounts of food.]

Trade plan: try to get trade routes with everyone to improve relations. Focus trade on gaining textiles, plus any stray food. At first we need iron (later we will have conquered some good iron producers, but at the start, lets trade for some). We are a great cash producer, so don't be afraid to spend some money. We have excess wine/horses, and could use a little luxeries to pay for the culture improvements...

Dipomats set to charm and sent to Bavaria (8 divisions and a morale higher than ours!- I want them!) Try to make treaties with people, just to improve relations (and get any colonie they will trade away). [I tried a few treaties my advisers though the British would go for, but they got rejected.]

French army concentrates in Burgendy, juggling our troops and the Austrians walk into us before we have finished. We try to keep the militia out of the battle, marching them AWAY from the sound of the guns! The French artillery save the day, pounding the Austrians, and the cavalry all get disordered but take the Austrian artillery. The battle teeters on the edge for awhile, but the enemy never found out weak militia, and we get a nice victory. The battle is worth over 30 glory - and the Austrians surrender.

We take Tyrolia and Carnolia, looking to block the Austrians from our hunting preserve or later in the game: Italy.

We finish rejigging the army (into 2 combat armies), and one advances on Berlin, while the other smashed the Prussians dribbling into France and then starts walking to towards Prussia to help finish them off. Several battles with the Prussians - outclassed and outnumbered, they leave our seige of Berlin alone for the next few months.

Russia DOW Poland - thats brave. The Polish army is darn good at the start.

Jan 1793 - we have been giving money to bavaria and poland - suddenly both ask to be French protectorates. We accept, figuring we will have to fight the Russians for Poland, and issue them an ultimatum. The Russians back down - Poland is ours without a fight!

Prussia surrenders, and we take Silesia and access rights (and their 10 colonies).

All of Europe is alarmed at the rise of France - in Feb 1793! Fabulous!


We start rejigging the Polish forces, and send the Bavarian army against Switzerland: time to start taking Italy.

We take Switzerland, and attack both Batavia and Venice. Venice falls.

In the most incredibly stupid thing I have ever seen the AI do, Spain declares war on France. I had been eyeing their Italian possiessions, and gettign redy to attack them - I suppose they are hoping to get me to overextend and then have someone else attack me.
2 armies stay attacking Batavia. (1 french militia, 1 polish combat)
2 armies enter Spain, attacking their forces aggressively on the way to the capital. (2 french combat)
3 armies start seiging Italian possessions in Italy. (polish and french militia and bavarian combat)
The force distribution ensures I can handle any sudden attack by someone, although Poland is so far away it is a bit bare.

Special Duchy of Warsaw levies start arriving - the 5 or 6 division levy includes 2 Lancers! Wow.

The Spanish force in Italy (the Piedmontese) actually win a battle against a siege army with 3 times the men, and comes after that army, winning again. That draws them the personal attention of the regional combat army (the Bavarians), who manage to predict their retreat route, and actually fight them twice in the same month, crushing them both times. [cf. Piedmont morale 4.3. Siege army morale 2. Bavarian morale 5.3]

In Spain, we go for a knockout [tactically, that means one army beseiges the capital while the other army goes after enemy forces, using stray divisions to direct the enemy retreat route], ignoring our own supply. If we can't get a surrender before the armies shrink below about 75% effectiveness, we will build a protected supply chain into Spain, which will mean diverting forces from their current aggressive taskings.

The knockout is effective - we take Catalonia and Piacenza, and make them liberate Naples and Piedmont. After a pause waiting for the peace treaty to take effect, we attack the newly neutral minors.

Its Nov 1794, and Sweden is scared we will win - they declare war on France. [We have 750 glory, Britain is on 350 and Sweden 330 - roughly.] [...More to come....]



Notes about the game:
- 1792 has a different feel to it - thats cool.
- Artillery seems much more powerful in this release.
- I just got lucky with the Poland/Russia thing - the timing worked to my advantage, etc etc. Its quite unusual for France to have such an easy time of it, apparently. [Good! - This was the least challenging Napoleon level game I have played.]

[ian77]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

Testing the latest version of the patch,

Oh you cruel cruel tease you......[:-]

[montesaurus]

In playing the French, I seem to have trouble forcing capitals to surrender. I have tried starving them, charging the walls, etc, but it sometimes seems to take more than a year to make them fall. Especially Hanover! Any suggestions for siege techniques?
Montesaurus

[ian77]

ORIGINAL: montesaurus

In playing the French, I seem to have trouble forcing capitals to surrender. I have tried starving them, charging the walls, etc, but it sometimes seems to take more than a year to make them fall. Especially Hanover! Any suggestions for siege techniques?
Montesaurus

You need to ensure that you have enough troops to properly seige the city... are you seeing the seige stats in the events scroll every turn... no "event" entry means no actual seige is taking place.

Ian

[montesaurus]

I understand about reading the event notices for sieges. What I want to know are which siege techniques are best to force a city to surrender. Charge the walls vs. Fire at the walls, etc. Plus, what is minimum number of troops to successfully storm or besiege a city? Do you need 2:1, 4:1 odds?
Montesaurus

[Ralegh]

Ralegh on Sieges
These are tips from my play - not holy writ - I haven't seen the source code on this stuff.

Sieges consist of 3 main parts

First, the siege check: In the siege check, the total attacking force siege capability is compared to the defending siege capability. There is no siege check if you are set to "starve the city", and a bonus if set to "charging the walls".
The following are roughly equivalent:

• 10,000 attacking inf/cav
• 1,500 attacking arty
• 3,333 defending inf/cav
• 1,500 defending arty
• 1 level of guns in the province (helps the defender only)
• 10 ships bloackading (helps the attacker only)
• guerillas count triple!

The actual siege check is done by generating a random number within the attacker's strength (so if they have 20 attacking siege strength, then a number between 1 and 20) to a random number within the defender's strength (so if they had 60 defending siege strength, a number between 1 and 60). The attacker needs their random number to be at least half of the defenders number to 'pass' the siege check and get at assault.

Second, if the siege check is successful, there is an assault - all attacking forces do damage on the defenders (regardless of their siege settings, so even corps set to 'starve the city' will fight). The defenders will do much more damage to units set to 'charge the walls'.

Third, starvation casulties. Starvation casulties seem to be increased if a corps is set to starve the city. Starvatioin casulties are MASSIVELY reduced for a port city if it is not blockaded.

Therefore the following tips:

• If you have more than one army/corps, have one set to starve the city.
• If you are in a hurry, set one army/corps to 'charge the walls'.
• The number of armies, corps, divisions is all irrelevent - it is pure numbers of men. The ONLY benefit from having armies/corps is the ability to set 'starve' and 'charge'.
• Leaders are irrelevent to sieges.
• Morale is unimportant in sieges - militia are just as good both at defending and at beseiging. I prefer to have sieges done by units I wouldn't want in battle.
• I often conduct sieges using 'hanger on' divisions from units I can't fit into my armies/corps, or special 'militia' armies.
• Consider PLUNDERING the province - reducing the level of guns will reduce the defenses!

I am arguing for a rule change to limit the number of attacking divisions to something like the no of walls of the city plus the number of roads in the province. At the moment, you could have 50 divisions in an attack, which strikes me as silly.

There is also a small chance of the defenders surrending - I don't know what effects it.

I will cross-post this in the tips thread in the War Room.[/color]

[Vimes]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh
...[*]Consider PLUNDERING the province - reducing the level of guns will reduce the defenses!..

I am not sure it is possible to plunder the guns from a province under siege!? I playede Turkey and watched France(many armies and corps) laying siege to Vienna for several turns and plundering at the same time. All areas of the province: roads, culture..etc was reduced to level 1 apart from the walls and the guns. They were at level 7 or 8 and there were not a single message of them being plundered.