French campaign advice

[ghyslyn]

started as france, my original plan was to expand on the surrounding rebel settlements and then attack england and take the whole british isles, as i was preparing to attack britain Venice invaded in the southeast, i repelled their initial attacks but then the holy roman empire invaded in the east, now i started fighting with both of them(defending against venice and counterattacking against HRE) but now Denmark invaded my in northeast too and took Bruges and Antwerp.

Then the pope decides to excommunicate me for attacking HRE and calls a Crusade on Toulouse, i succesfully defend it but it drags Portugal into the list of wars(Portugal is in control of almost the entire iberian peninsula). I have few allies, sicily and Milan are allied and are at war with Venice, but doing little impact, Venice got excommunicated so i could attack them but geographically its not the best place to attack for me right now. The pope is Spanish and spain is another of my allies, but that just brings it far enough for him to reconciliate my faction. so my question is, now what?

possibilities ive thought of:

invade portugal
invade HRE
invade british isles while defending continental territories
invade Venice

so far the easiest to do would be to invade Venice as it wouldnt piss off the pope, anytime i get aggressive with any other faction he warns me of excommunication(most of my enemies are loved by the pope, especially England which is why i doubt invading britain)

any ideas?

[ghyslyn]

oh yea forgot to mention, the pope hates me, but i do have full stacks in pretty much all my border settlements, so next time the pope calls a crusade i may be able to send an army or two, make him happy with me

[Hurricane]

It's probably best to attack Portugal while fighting off the HRE and Venice with some armies, once you control Spain and Portugal seal off the Iberian Peninsula-North Africa sea crossing with your navy.
This way, at least you'll have somewhere to fall back to if you lose France, it will also give you some nice income and eliminate one of your borders, so you only have to focus on the east and south-east borders for the moment, as long as England and Denmark don't attack.

If you don't want to go to war with Spain for fear of the pope, send some spies into their cities/castles to cause unrest and then use assassins to blow up their buildings that keep the population happy. The city/castle will revolt pretty quickly, leaving it wide open for you to take. Also send a diplomat to Rome and start bribing the Pope, go on any crusades the Pope calls and try to get to the target city/castle first and be successful in taking it.

[ghyslyn]

spanish pope dead, danish pope elected, denmark attacking Reims and Venice attacking Dijon, attacking Portugal wont work, i think ill attack Venice since its surrounded by mountains and allies, good economic help lets hope(Venice currently includes the city of Milan)

btw i cant bribe anyone, i dont even have enough money to support my armies

[lawngnome]

If the Scots are still around I would ally with them, and if Poland is hanging in there I would get them on your side as well. Try to get the Danes and the HRE to concentrate on each other while you take out Venice. Also, try to help Spain against Portugal... if Spain gets knocked out then Portugal will come after you.

[ghyslyn]

denmark+HRE=best friends, they both like venice too, spain feels indifferent towards portugal, so far im still defending, new crusade against jerusalem ill join it see if the pope likes me more then

[Bohemians]

I think you did what I did as France, grew all over and suddenly had borders with too many people... We should have grown on one area, and do it fast... instead I have a large France that includes north of Spain, Swiss and Holland... So I have too many neighboors now... I am at war with 7 factions too : HRE (early on), Spain & Portugal (both allied between them and with the moors too), England who still has Normandy (the pope told me to leave the english alone, and am a good christian), and due to my 2 crusades I also am at war with Egypt and the Moors (I took 2 provinces from each), and finally but not the least, Milan just declared war on me.
My only ally is the Pope, and I have chances to influence who will be next pope because I have 3 young cardinals, and another 3 priest working their way to purple habits.
So 7 enemies, and 1 useless ally. It only serve me to keep an ok level of the Pope liking me, thats it. They still give me the warnings every time I press forward on my attackers...

So, I know how you feel my friend...
My advice would be to not go for portugal but to do as suggested (it was suggested for spain, but do it to portugal instead) and cause problems with your spies, so that spain and Portugal get themselves deeper in war without anyone winning. But dont go there before you get a free pass (either of them being excomulgated). Go for Venice, but dont continue past northern Italy... dont go to Greece and Illyria even if they have provinces there, you would get in contact with Polland, Hungary and Byzance... you dont want that.
Try to get either Polland or Hungary (whomever is stronger and/or accepts you as an ally).
And ALWAYS join the crusades... it takes only a simple general, and 8 basic troops (militia if you want), and the rest you get for very cheap on your way to the goal. It will make the Pope like you, you might get some cash, you will get some experience either because you got there or because you where on your way, and you might even get provinces and looting, which will help your wars back home. Thats what I did. I was on my way to Jerusalem with my first crusade, but Polland got there first (I was delayed by the Egyptian fleet almost drawning my Crusaders), so instead I landed in Egypt and took Alexandria and Cairo, good looting, and good incomes now for not much. And my second crusade (I asked the Pope to call for a crusade), was for Granada, I got there first of course, because I had my troops in Toulouse waiting to get there. And that gave me another 2 rich provinces, good looting too, and now my spanish and portuguese enemies have me on both flanks... So Crusades are a MUST. My troops got a very nice experience from it, and those where all good troops, not the 8 militia I had sent to Egypt !
So I can use them to sandwich the Iberians very fast.

Finally, dont over expand, or else you will have to have more troops just to protect your borders, try to get to Milan and Venice, loot them, and then try to get some HRE provinces without getting the Pope to dislike you that is.
Cause havoc in portugals provinces and if you can in english land too... this way you can enter without a problem there. And have that protected island for yourself.

At your service, Bohemians King of France, Lord of the Swiss, Pharaon of Egypt and Master of Grenada

[ghyslyn]

new update:

alright i took one turn to recruit one priest in each of my cities, so now i have half a dozen priests headed towards egypt to get higher points.

10 empty cardinal seats, 3 cardinals, 1 venician and 2 danish, danish pope. denmark still at war wtih me but they offered a ceasefire, i declined without them paying me but next turn i might reoffer a simple ceasefire.

sending a diplomat to england, trying to get them to like me because they have no enemies and they have no friends, they are very weak tho, theyve yet to expand past british isles and im guessing they dont even control half of britain(they still have normandy)

ive completely forgotten the idea of attacking iberian peninsula and i really wont do it, portugal is recently weak, and spain one of my only allies, there are no real benefits to attacking portugal.

crusade called on Jerusalem(Egyptian), im sending two armies(including my king, under the popes personal request(and threat of ecommunication)), theyre sailing right now.

almost all my cities were overpopulated

great news(sorta). Marseille revolted, Venice sent a full stack to try and take it right away, they lost, weakened rebels were generally easy to defeat with a moderately sized army, sacked it and gained 15000 coins, which is more then ive seen in a long time considering i only make a profit of about 4k per turn. this allowed me to set up new walls in 3/4 of my cities, so overpopulation wont be much of a problem anymore and ill be able to raise some of my taxes.

hostilities with the HRE are getting weaker, nobody's really attacking each other much anymore, ill try keeping it simple with them then getting a ceasefire

also going to get another round of priests to send to holy land to make it more catholic holy

[ghyslyn]

denmark besieged paris, while besieged my diplomat got cease fire, trade rights AND alliance

england hates denmark and vice versa, preparing an invasion force for great britain

england is at its lowest rank with the pope to date(most likely because of danish pope) which is still high, "the pope feels no ill will against england", still its now or never, ill check details on scotland

[napoleonic]

denmark besieged paris, while besieged my diplomat got cease fire, trade rights AND alliance

how the hell did you give the Danes chance to siege Paris? In my campaign, I would never ever let the Danes crossing into French territory.......

my advice is that you should expand to Britain islands since if you move east you will be forced to deal with many factions which is harder than just England and Scotland.

[MasterAdnin]

started as france, my original plan was to expand on the surrounding rebel settlements and then attack england and take the whole british isles, as i was preparing to attack britain Venice invaded in the southeast, i repelled their initial attacks but then the holy roman empire invaded in the east, now i started fighting with both of them(defending against venice and counterattacking against HRE) but now Denmark invaded my in northeast too and took Bruges and Antwerp.

Then the pope decides to excommunicate me for attacking HRE and calls a Crusade on Toulouse, i succesfully defend it but it drags Portugal into the list of wars(Portugal is in control of almost the entire iberian peninsula). I have few allies, sicily and Milan are allied and are at war with Venice, but doing little impact, Venice got excommunicated so i could attack them but geographically its not the best place to attack for me right now. The pope is Spanish and spain is another of my allies, but that just brings it far enough for him to reconciliate my faction. so my question is, now what?

possibilities ive thought of:

invade portugal
invade HRE
invade british isles while defending continental territories
invade Venice

so far the easiest to do would be to invade Venice as it wouldnt piss off the pope, anytime i get aggressive with any other faction he warns me of excommunication(most of my enemies are loved by the pope, especially England which is why i doubt invading britain)

any ideas?

Invade Portugal. It's easy to get to, Portugal typically has small armies, and also, it'll get you some cash you'll need later.

Adnan

[WarAngelsCDC]

I love my French campaign but I almost had the same problem with a large border. Every Catholic faction thought they could take small pieces of my land. I was fighting on 5 fronts and the only allies I had were the pope and England.

Too bad I was making near 50k per turn and I blew through 3 countries that were cocky enough to attack me within 12 turns.

So I could get away with invading the countriest that attacked me: I just gave the pope 1000 florins every turn I dropped out of favor with him. It kept me at perfect even though I was pretty much unifying the Catholic faith under the French flag lol.

[ghyslyn]

how did u make so much money tho? i originally planned on making more money then i could spend, but its nearly impossible...

[ghyslyn]

took jerusalem, pope loves me, quickly converting religion in jerusalem, sent a full stack to Dublin, going to take it from rebels(lots of rebels on british isles good place to conquest), going to expand it into scotland if i can and then campaign and take england, if possible without any more help from continental europe(apart from taking normandy)

what i really need to know, is how the heck do i make money without having to invest in money making buildings which cost several thousand, which are almost always invested in defensive forces

[ghyslyn]

hey been a while since i updated, need a new strategy peeps, toulouse+Rennes = citadels where i train troops whenever i have enough money to spare, ive lost alot of cities, only cities on continental europe i still have are Paris, Marseille(which is under siege, odds 5:9), Rennes toulouse bordeaux and Pamplona(Iberian peninsula)

i dont have money, i make about 100 bucks a turn, but i do have control of the entire british isles, trying to build as much economic buildings on brit isles as possible, i wanna do with that what i did in RTW with greece, all of the greek isles and such were making me like 30 000 denarii per turn simply through naval trade, it was insane

[ghyslyn]

can no one help me?

[Hurricane]

I guess don't concentrate too much on France at the moment, focus on your economy in Britain, Ireland and maybe Pamplona, build every single money making building you can apart from any farm over +3 unless it's a castle, disband any units you don't really need.

Once your rich enough build a few armies in Britain and Ireland, land an army or 2 in Portugal/Spain, conquer the Iberian peninsula, sacking every city and castle you capture, at the same time land an army near Bruges or Antwerp, capture both of these cities and defend them at all cost since they give you a nice amount of cash. Once your armies have finished conquering the Iberian peninsula, place a navy of at least 6 ships on the crossing between Spain and North Africa, then bring your armies up from Spain into southern France and take as many cities and castles as possible. Once you have enough money from your conquest in the Iberian peninsula, send another army over from England to reinforce you army near Bruges/Antwerp.

[Ahiga]

1) Install one of the mods to give you better campaign AI.
2) To stay on the pope's good graces, give him gold tribute. I never have to give more than 600, and usually give him 100-200 gold a turn and I can stay in his good graces enough to even fight the people who got him into office.

3) Why don't you have enough money? Are you taxing your cities? France was one of the easier campaigns for me given their monetary benefits. Build the warehouse addons to your port which really shoot up the trade. I guess yours is low because you are at war with so many people.

[ghyslyn]

im doing the economic push in britain, currently im making enough to both pay for new buildings in britain and slowly train armies in france, succesfully defended bordeaux, paris and toulouse, lost marseille. sent an army and took caen, reverting that army with reinforcements against angers, built a new army in toulouse and marching east, gonna retake marseille if i can and maybe push north into dijon and rheims

[Feliks]

France is a powerhouse. After about 50 turns of VH/VH I had repelled England, taken all of modern France, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and had a treasury of 80,000 +. I was at war with Portugal, Denmark (Which had a very sizable empire), the HRE, Milan, Venice, and Sicily (All of Italy had united against me).


I was winning on all fronts.


Turn Marseilles into a major seaport with top docks, wharfs, and markets. The only Castles you really need are Buardabeax and Metz, only use them for calvary. Mostly just keep cities, from a highly upgraded French city you can make an army that will wipe the floor with any other:
1 General Unit
2. Spear militia
4 Voulge Milita
2 Scotts guard
2 Guandarms
1 Trebuchet
buy a few units of Mercenary Crossbowmen before a major battle for some added bulk.

Make a line of infantry with Voulge men in the center and spears in the flanks, have your Scotts guard and artillery behind shooting fire, and dead cows if your defending (you don't want to have to advance through them). Place a line of mercenary crossbowmen in front to weaken the enemy and soak up enemy missiles. Then all you have to do is get your calv. behind and you've won every time. (the map of northern Italy is covered with Heroic battle markers and my King and Heir both of 10 stars because of this tactic)


Also always execute prisoners, you won't have to fight them again and the dread will make your foes rout more easily in battle.