Vanilla NTW
Prussian Campaign
Full campaign mode- conquer all of Europe before December 1713
Medium/Medium Difficulty- While I could probably go for a harder battle difficulty, the campaign itself I like so far at medium difficulty and I am still learning the tricks of the trade of naval combat.
This will be my first-ever game-story. While I am still trying out which format I want this to be in, I will say I will probably gloss over most of the political machinations in what will, we all hope, become the Prussian Empire. To give a fair warning, I may change tenses as to who is talking, but ill do my best to iron out the kinks before they are posted to the forums here.
I will not go turn by turn action. That’s a nice way to write these but I am not that organized and I have already played a number of turns, and the first major Prussian military action has already happened. Hopefully it will soon become a minor action, but at the moment Prussia is so small it could be easily crushed.
I have played almost all of the Vanilla campaigns through to the end, though most of those were the historical version and so much, much shorter. I have just finished a full Austrian campaign on these same difficulty settings and won in the middle of 1712.
I chose to play the Prussians next for a number of reasons. My first reason is the nature of the different factions. I like playing as Britain, but they are quite isolated though their navy is outstanding. France is an excellent choice, but they can quickly consolidate a defensive position that is quite impenetrable, in addition to having a crappy navy in the beginning, they do have access to both the Channel and the Mediterranean, giving them many different trading options. As such, I have deemed these both too easy for the moment. I have just finished doing Austria on this same difficulty and I would prefer not to do them again for awhile, as this last game seemed to drag a little bit at times.
Russia is the last playable faction in the vanilla version besides Prussia. While Russia does seem to have a lot of territory and a wide border, they have an extremely defensible position and it is easy to crush the enemy factions through sheer numbers and their unique ability to withstand areas of attrition (my favorite ability, as any other faction I hate areas of attrition). Prussia, next to Austria, has the least defensible position. In addition, Prussia has a few unique disadvantages: It is surrounded on 2 sides by firm allies of each other (Austria and Russia- and Austrians hate Prussians…) which are, and can become, exceedingly powerful in a short time; when it is not surrounded by ‘allies’ (I use that term loosely) it shares a border with France (very hostile to Prussia) and many other small city-states. The fourth border, luckily enough, is the sea. Nonetheless, being surrounded on 3 sides by powerful enemies and fractured city-states is a challenge.
I plan to finish this, and have regular updates- one a week covering what’s happened in game. If I didn’t play NTW that week, I will possibly post something more theoretical, such as spy work.
Unfortunately I will most likely not have any pictures. I am not very technical in that area and I don’t normally have a whole lot of spare time… I don’t even know how to take a screenshot on a PC. I know that it would be a lot better if I could at least have some maps of Europe to help yall with the big picture, and perhaps ill try that. Until then you might want to refer to google images with their NTW map of Europe.
Feedback is of course welcome, in addition to advice and your own thoughts on what is happening. My last Prussian campaign was pretty rough towards the end, as it was only the historical campaign and I was quite neutral for many years, but then both the French and Austrian coalitions declared war on me, within the same turn. It was NOT good.