Didz Peninsula Guide for France

As noboy has replied to my earlier thread, and as I am now several years into my campaign I thought I'd post my own simple guide outlining the things I learned so far from playing France.

Money, Money, Money

It's scarce..and needs to be conserved.

I've noticed this with NTW in general but it seems to be even worse in the Peninsula Campaign. So, don't waste it.

My general strategy is to spend what little I've got on economic improvements that will pay back quickly. Initially, I limited these investments to the safe pro-French provinces north of the Pyrenees, but I'm now confident enough to start investing money in local Spanish properties that will give a reasonably quick pay back (e.g. 2-4 turns to build)

The big exception is the main French city (Toulouse) which is best kept right up to date with the latest buildings if you can afford it. I've got a bit behind with this and it's now delaying my tech-advances.

Hearts and Minds

Another big difference from the standard campaign is the need to win the hearts and minds of the Spanish people.

Invest in School buildings to increase the number of educated Spaniards willing to spread the word about liberty and freedom amongst the superstitous peasants, and use the Region Reports to send them to the area's where there is the most unrest.

At the same time invest in Members clubs to obtain spies/assassin's and use these to hunt down the enemy agents and priests who are trying to spread lies amongst the population.

Also be aware of the fact that churches spread dissent and burn them to the ground as soon as possible.

Watch your Back

One annoying aspect of this campaign is that the AI seems intent of murdering your generals.

I just recently lost Suchet and Massena to 'Unexpected Death Syndrome'. Which I assume means that there are enemy assassins about although I've never seen one.

I'm working on the assumption that placing a spy in the stack with my General will help, but I've yet to see if thats true.

However, I have tried repaying the compliment and have had reasonable success murdering Spanish generals.

Military Strategy

'"In Spain large armies starve and small armies get defeated."

This was the accepted trueism of the Peninsula Campaign, but forget it in NTW. In the NTW Peninsula large armies kick butt, end of story.

However, as France you cannot afford to raise large armies. So you need to make them from the troops you already have. The main strategy is to remove as many regular troops as possible from the garrisons of Spanish cities and mass them under your best generals.

Oddly enough, moving troops out of garissons doesn't seem to make much difference to the likelihood of rebelion. So it seems quite feasible to strip a city of its entire garission save one or two militia without any negative reaction. In fact, pretty much the only troops you should consider recruiting in the early game are militia to replace your regular garisson units.

I settled on three main armies under Suchet, Massena and Soult, and switched any spare troops between them to counter the area's of main threat.

In the West the Portuguese border around Badajoz usually see's an early thrust by the British under Beresford and Wellington and needs to be defended.

In the East an early thrust by the Spanish from Valencia needs to be dealt with.

In the Centre, there are a few small guerrial armies that need to be eradicated.

Having dealt with these inital threats (in my case killing both Wellington and Beresford in the process) one can begin to go on the offensive.

I dealt with Valencia first destroying the Spanish rebellion in that area and capturing the city, and I am now driving South along the coast towards Seville, to finish Spanish resistance before concentrating on the British in Gibraltar.

Supplies and Logistic's

Some map area's are poorly prepared to replenish you armies, therefore it's a good idea to maintain a rear replenshment location behind your advance which is constantly replenishing and feeding fresh units to the front.

The basic idea is that after (or just before) a battle the replenishment depot dispatches a stack of fully replenished units to the army, and after the battle these units are simply swapped for the damaged ones and these then march back to replenish depot ready for the next battle.

This reduces the time your armies are hanging about in poor area's trying to find recruits, and allows your army to keep fighting without having to withdraw.

Naval Strategy

The naval strategy in the NTW Peninsula campaign is a bit weird. You start off with a naval supply route from Southern France to Eastern Spain which is delivering a certain amount of supplies (trade basically) every turn.

However, you're navy is much too small to protect this supply route, and so I assumed that it would rapidly be blockaded or worse in the opening turns of the game. But so far it hasn't been. In fact, the Royal Navy has been remarkably passive throughout and so I've been able to preserve my fleet and my supply route intact without too much trouble.

I've even managed to snap up a Spanish 32 gun Frigate which was docked in Valencia Harbour and add that to my fleet. But that has been my only naval battle to date.

I have just recently managed to make enough money to start building 74 gun ships and launched my first a few turns ago.

My initial plan is to use this to raid the enemy supply ships in the Bay of Biscay and cripple the enemies trade and supply routes. However, I'm still reluctant to trigger a major confrontation with the Royal Navy until I'm sure I have enough ships to win, and until I can do that I'm not wasting money of trade ships. (other than the one I built to complete the mission)

Overall Strategy

Basically mass your troops and hit any enemy army making an incursion into your territory hard and fast and destroy it utterly.

Keep garissons as small as possible leaving only militia in them. Don't worry if the enemy capture them as long as you can counter-attack and destroy the enemy when you take it back.

Thats about it so far, I'm just about to capture Seville, and hopefully sink the British trade fleet in the north Biscay trade port.

Surprisingly little Spanish guerrilla problems so far, so I seem to be winning the hearts and minds war, and there are no priests or enemy provocatuers currently alive and active in my zone of control.

Thanks for this!
I've completed the campaign as UK, I am now eager to try as France - then have a go as Spain.

- jeff

I've just done the opposite. Having completed the campaign as France I'm nearly at the end of a British Campaign. I must say once the money problem was sorted the French campaign was very easy, hardly any problems with guerrialla's at all. Wellington, Beresford, Picton and Hill all dead and Spain completely under the French yoke.

Not that the British campaign is proving much of a challenge either, although I got a bit of a shock when the French captured the Spanish fleet and nearly severed my trade lanes. Had to hastily build a couple of 74's to restore naval supremecy, before I could get back to chasing the French out of Spain.

Navy is pretty easy, both French and brits initially have just one fleet with a couple of ships (74gun+32gun) which can be defeated easily. French fleet is in the Mediterranean, and brits are hanging out near the Gibraltar. Either one can be destroyed/captured on second turn, given if they meet each other Spanish/Portugal fleets are minor and no match to 74 guns of the major nations. As British, I actually captured the French fleet and disbanded the French 74 gun because it was weighting heavily on my finances The rest of the game, I used 74 gun and 32 gun to control enemy ports and french couldn't build a new navy to attack me.

I find navies rather useless in this campaign, at least against AI. I'm on the point of completing a campaign as France (just Portugal left) and had severe monetary troubles in the first five turns or so, which forced me to scupper all military ships. As it turned out my merchant fleets were never, ever attacked by the enemy...

Also, with Spain being a lump of land with a string of sea around it in this campaign, transport is a non-issue as well. Now if the Baleares and perhaps parts of Morocco were included, that would've been made a difference.

I found that once I had secured naval dominance I was able to destroy or capture the British and Spanish trade convoys and replace them with my own, which in turn generated a lot of additional revenue. There was also the possibility of using amphious landings to ninja poorly guarded enemy ports well behind the front line of operations, but to be honest I didn't do that much when playing France.

What a coincidence, I had just started my French campaign in the Peninsula when I stumbled across this - seeing it was by Didz, I simply had to peruse it.

A fine and to-the-point guide sah, top hole. I too am attempting to rapidly concentrate the professional soldiers into one to two full-stacks before securing the supply lines of the Pyrenees. I intend to explode outwards from there - and since I'm playing LME, I hope to draw out the vastly superior British stacks by endangering Portugal or Gibraltar in due time when I have both the confidence of the people and the monetary assets to do so.

The campaign is frightfully refreshing, as France you are often on the Strategic offensive for the grand majority of the campaign, and it is interesting to be playing nearly perpetually on the strategic defensive.

+Rep for this thread old boy.