ETW: No Allies and everyone is declaring war on me!

[Flavius Stilicho]

Evening gang!,

I am quite new to ETW, having been completely satisfied with Rome and Medieval 2 for years I took the plunge and bought ETW. I am loving it so far BUT I have hit a brick wall in my campaign. First of all I am playing as GB as I was informed this should be the easiest nation to start off as. I started off by keeping to myself, upgrading roads, farms etc. The first thing I decided to do was to take care of the pirates of the Caribbean. It wasn't long after that France and Spain decided to declare war (most people said this didn't happen to them for a while but seemed to happen very quickly for me, I hadn't even built up a significant navy at this point!) on me, so in the Americas I took New France all of Frances islands, leaving only Louisiana for them. I started picking off most of Spain's possessions as well working my way through South America.

Now I may have made a mistake in deciding to invade France in Europe, they were annoying me immensely and they had destroyed the Dutch early on (again I was told they would be a reliable ally but they were gone in a few turns. So I took Paris and Flanders from the French and forced them to a peace treaty. Then because of all this expansion a tonne of nations have become hostile, Prussia, Sweden, Savoy are now at war with me in addition to Spain and France. I have thought off countless armies trying to besiege Paris. Sweden annoyingly invaded the Thirteen colonies and took their cities destroying them whilst I was defeating the Iroquois. Then the Cherokee declared war as well!! So I have taken the cities back from the Swedish, I am dealing with the Cherokee whilst being wary of the fact the US spawned early on and if they declare war on me, my position will be very precarious as they're in my back yard while my army I am fighting on the front against the Cherokee.

I have zero allies and everyone close to me looks like they are after my blood and my economy is pretty shot after fighting all these wars so I am having to pick my battles wisely.

Has anyone else had this problem of allies being destroyed early on and being left with a lot of hostile nations? Any tips/advice welcome!

[Izsx]

I just got into Empire Total War a few weeks ago for the first time also, but after having sunk like 250+ hours into it so far (I have no life), I like to think I have a basic grasp of things, so maybe there's something here that might help.

I presume you're playing Grand Campaign, first of all. I found that sometimes starting as England, intentional or not, that the declaration of war from France and Spain was quite random. I've had it happen on like turn 3-5, and i've also had it happen like 30 turns later. I haven't noticed if difficulty affects this, so can't shed light on that. I even had the start of a game where they declared war on me, then the next turn sued for peace. Was a bit odd.

Sometimes the United Federations (The Dutch) falls early, other times i've seen them move off into Sweden and take land there, and also mercilessly moving through The Rhineland (Westphallia), and conquer that minor nation VERY early on. Again, I haven't noticed weather difficulty affects this or not.

Couldn't tell you if it's random each time you start a new Grand Campaign, or if it's glitchy. There's a lot of bugs in Empire Total War that i've noticed. One of my biggest gripes was the mission from Louisiana (If you're the French), where if you conquer Michigan Territory, Algonquin Territory and Cherokee Territory, that Louisiana will join you (If you're friendly with them.) I'd accidentally gifted Louisiana the Michigan territory after conquering it (didn't even think about the mission), and when I realised, it was IMPOSSIBLE to trade the region back. Seriously. I offered them something like 22 territories (as a test) for Michigan, and they still refused. So I did the only reasonable thing; I conquered Michigan territory back, and the moment I captured the city, all of Louisiana was mine (even though we were at war and hated each other; they still joined me.)

The AI controlled nations seem to be quite random in there actions. There's a video floating around somewhere of someone who conquers every single territory in the game, destroys all happiness producing buildings, and watches it all crumble down. What some of the newly formed nations end up doing is quite interesting, and kind of gives a glimpse into potential computer-controlled behaviours.

Just try new games with different scenarios in mind, and see if it keeps happening or not.

[anant]

The best thing to do in ETW is to conquer India...gives you lots of money and a base away from Europe's powderkeg. Control trading posts and concentrate on building your army and navies first, then you can upgrade your roads etc. later.

[Assault Korps]

I think it's great that every game is radically different. The more scripted a wargame like this is, the more lame. ETW is one of the great wargames of all time.

[bigdaddy1204]

I've just bought Empire Total War and am in a similar situation to the OP. I'm playing as the Ottoman Empire and I've already restarted the campaign about three or four times as it's really, really hard. Everyone immediately declares war on me on turn 1 regardless of what I do. I am always attacked by Russia, Austria, Venice, Persia, Georgia, Dagestan and either Britain or France. Fighting off seven factions at once is nigh impossible. To make matters worse, my faction can't make any decent ships to defend my trade routes (need to research tech) and even if I could, I don't have enough money anyway.

Every turn I am fighting multiple battles, always against unfavourable odds. There are never enough troops and never enough money. In my current campaign, I've concentrated my resources in the east. I have destroyed Georgia and conquered Persia province. But the British have seized Egypt and in the west the situation is dire. Venice is about to take Athens and I have lost Bosnia to Austria. Worse, I cannot close the eastern front as Persia is coming with a huge army to counter attack me and they have already seized Armenia.

I think I can just about hold on in the east and if I could defeat that Persian army, I might be able to take the rest of Persia, eventually retake Armenia and then my army might finally be able to turn west to retake Egypt. But that may not be possible because the need for troops in the west is now so urgent I will likely need to concentrate my pitiful resources there.

It's certainly compelling but I'm really struggling and can never seem to make any headway. There's just not enough money and too many enemies. I'm contemplating pulling back and abandoning most of Europe to concentrate what's left on an all out effort to defeat Venice and take Greece. If I could at least neutralise that threat, I could then redeploy my forces to stand a better chance of holding back Austria and funding the war in the east.

[Izsx]

Are you using Darthmod bigdaddy? The difference is enormous, and affects diplomacy on a greater scale. I'm playing a Sweden grand campaign right now, Russia declared war on me like turn 4 or 5, yet Denmark didn't follow through with them (as they usually would), so now i'm pretty friendly with Denmark, and even have trade going. Try using Darthmod and seeing if it makes a difference, the vanilla a.i. is pretty rubbish in all honesty.

[Flavius Stilicho]

UPDATE: Just a quick update, I decided to hang in there and see how things went. Glad I did because I ended up taking over all of the Americas on the campaign map. Once this was done the money started rolling in, I disbanded all my armies in the Americas (keeping a few good units with lots of exp) and started upgrading all the roads, ports, farms etc. Once this was done an insane amount of money started rolling in. Last I looked I have over £440k.

I am now concentrating in Europe briefly before I launch an invasion of India, the Spanish are being a pain as always, so after doing a recce of Spain I have discovered that only Madrid has a significant troop concentration. All of Spain's other cities in Spain have zero troops. So I have built two large fleets (5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd rates with Sloops/Brigs) and loaded one army in each (x4 Heavy Cavalry, x10 Line Infantry and x4 Howitzer units) and landed them on the nearest Spanish port.

So tomorrow I will assault Madrid, take Lisbon and Gibraltar and start bringing more troops over from France/England. Once I have taken Spain I will then get two large fleets ready to invade India.

I love this game, very addictive. The only thing that bugs me is that the economics are a bit screwy, France has one city left (Strasbourg) and yet they're still harassing me with the odd raid near Paris which I have to deal with and surprisingly they have a few fleets in the Mediterranean still. How the hell do they manage to afford all of this!!

[Goutlard]

How the hell do they manage to afford all of this!!

As an ETW modder I can answer that easily.

Do you see the "Other" income that you have ?
Well, every major faction has the same income as a base, no matter how many provinces they have. And even further, the higher the game difficulty, the more unit price and upkeep reduction bonuses does the AI get. That makes it so that in very hard difficulties, tiny countries can afford massive armies for seemingly no reason !

[orangenee]

Yeah, the AI can be real twitchy. I'm also GB.

In my current game, the newly formed Quebec decided to declare war for literally no reason. Maratha declared war because they wanted a single island in the Carribean. I'm also playing whack-a-mole with the USA as I didn't get onto smiting the required states for the 13 Colonies to flip.

Now France is currently busy committing genocide on the natives in America as well, so that's another war brewing as once the AI runs out of stuff to do it will come after me.

Sweden randomly declared war on the 13 colonies as well for literally no reason.

Maratha though you really have to kill off early as they are very expansionist and get rich quick.

I'm a turtle type of player though, I'll go somewhere, fortify it and wait. If somebody tries something I'll break their force on my walls and then counterattack with a fat stack.

However the AI does have some tells. If it makes an offer that seems to good to be true, fortify your weakest point immediately as they may have an army wander over. Not much you can do to stop it as it seems to plan in advance. I've tested it out by going back several turns to see if the same thing happens every time, it does in the majority of times.

Generally you should assume everybody is an enemy at all times and never drop your guard. The game goes from happy alliance land to scorched earth in a matter of turns.

[Flavius Stilicho]

Hi Laetus,

Completely agree. I'm glad I stuck with conquering the Americas first though. I finally broke the French and Spanish. Managed to take their European settlements as well which helped immensely. Once America was conquered I developed it and was raking in a nice sum each turn as I disbanded all my American armies built up a nice treasury and then plotted the Indian invasion. Thankfully there was one rebel city just off the mainland which I took as a base to start churning troops out of. Maratha had several undefended cities on the coastline opposite me so I took those first. It took a lot of grinding down their armies but eventually I took all of India and now my treasury is bursting at the seems. In Europe the main power is Poland-Lithuania and far east is the Ottomans. Thankfully I'm allied with Poland but some of the smaller nations (Savoy/Genoa) have just declared war on me for no reason. I'll deal with these and then the Ottomans as they declared war on me for invading the Barbary states as I didn't realise they were her protectorates. Defeated those in three turns. Confident I can slowly grind down the Ottomans. Its going to be a long war as they own Russia, far east and Persia! Fun times

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

I can heartily recommend Darthmod, I always play as GB (no really?) yes and Darthmod seeks to redress the balance. I agree that conquering India is important to add to your treasury so that you can stop other factions declaring war on you all the time by using diplomacy and forging alliances.

[Aexodus]

Indeed, the only faction worthy of playing other than GB is the glorious Kingdom of Prussia

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

Indeed, the only faction worthy of playing other than GB is the glorious Kingdom of Prussia

Not so keen on Prussia myself, but I am biased about Darthmod as I made drum rolls for both Empire and Napoleon.



A lot of the Drums and music in this video was mine.

[Aexodus]

Ooh gosh I dinnae actually kno that