Is EU3 fun yet?

[Viking]

Should work.  In the provinces I can see they have a lot of troops, but it seems like I could just top him, but when I'm reminded about how many provinces he has in Persia...

Slightly worried about my Georgian provinces though - I inherited them a few years back.  But I should be able to retreat back to Constantinople...

Don't worry about the rest of timurid empire. Once you have wiped out the ~40 regiment doom stack their WE should have reached 15+ due to his massive attrition and his loss of ~40 regiments. By then the Timurid empire will be racked with revolts. After losing  his doom stack he'll be down on Manpower and War Capacity and up on War Exhaustion. The revolts all over his empire should drive down his prestige as well. Once MP is near 0, WC is near 0, WE is near 20 and Prestige is negative EVERYBODY will attack/revolt.

It's a pretty nasty self re-enforcing circle. You lose alot of manpower by having doomstacks cross bad territory so siege non-loc provinces. The losses drive WE up and the low MP drives the WC down. This makes the doomstack owner seem vulnerable and suffer lots of revolts. Each successful revolt with up the WE and lower the Prestige. Which in turn lower the WC and intimidation factor. Basically, kill the doom stack his country falls apart.

I've started using this mechanism to destroy countries. You make a plan pre-war how do destroy his Doomstack/Fleet. Then attack to push the WE up and the WC down. Then you can see the revolts. Once the revolts succeed then you move in with siege stacks designed to keep attrition low, taking provinces without assaults. Let nationalist rebels keep what they take, take back peasant and religious revolter provinces and kill the religious and peasant stacks (as well as any pretenders). By the time you have overrun all his lands then the major rebels should have formed nations. Then once you have withdrawn your forces make peace in exchange for releasing as many nations as possible (remember to cancel your alliances with these useless minors); you don't get BB and you reduce the enemy's size as much as possible for as little cost as possible. Hopefully you cut his country in half, since you already killed his fleet if he ever gets an army together within the next 100 years then he won't be able to put down the peasant revolts on the other side. You basically get to destroy a country for no BB. You just start the cycle to win the war and then when you have emasculated the country as much as possible then you release it with -3 stability +20% revolt risk due to WE and no armies or navies. The country spends the next 50 years dealing with a "Time of Troubles". In my present game Castille bounced back to keep it's home provinces and colonize a bit; Muscovy let the Russian minors live but killed lithuania after I took all non russian culture provinces from him with a dishonourable scum CB where I let the Muscovite doomstack into anatolia, invaded behind it, cut it's loc and killed it when it's regiments were at 10% start size; 22 provinces in one peace; France died, Bohemia kept it's core provinces losing about 20 in total, Austria bounced back to start size after I destroyed Bohemia.

It's a nasty circle Doomstack attrition leads to WE, WE leads to revolts, revolts lead to doomstacks dashing across land to crush revolts, which leads to more attrition which destroys WC which means your enemies will attack, which leads to more WE and lowers prestige, at which point you just collapse. All armies get destroyed, all provinces occupied, WE to 20%, WE to 0, Prestige to -100, MP to 1k and you are dead.

[Barrister]

Shit - I don't really want to destroy 'em.  I just want to survive a war with them, maybe take the one CB province of mine they hold.

What is a "non-loc province"?

[ulmont]

What is a "non-loc province"?

A province with no "line of control" back to controlled territory.

[Viking]

Shit - I don't really want to destroy 'em.  I just want to survive a war with them, maybe take the one CB province of mine they hold.

What is a "non-loc province"?

what ulmont said. When you don't have loc your rate of re-enforcements is drastically reduced. In EU3 war is about getting the doomstack into non-loc province and having him stay there for a few months. You seem to have loc into an adjecent controlled province and over the game overseas loc goes from almost non existent to very good. An English Player should never invade Normandie by sea, get access to burgundy (first diplomat of the game, before they start hating you) and walk overland from calais, you have loc so your army won't die.

[Barrister]

Bah - in the end I've fucked up by letting my infamy get too high to begin with.  I progress with my war with the Timurids, and get DOW'd by Venice.

I'm going back to an earlier save.

[Viking]

Bah - in the end I've fucked up by letting my infamy get too high to begin with.  I progress with my war with the Timurids, and get DOW'd by Venice.

I'm going back to an earlier save.

Infamy didn't do that, you letting your War Capacity and Prestige slip did that.

[Habbaku]

What is "War Capacity" exactly?  I can't seem to find a pop-up that'll explain it and the only manual with anything about it (NA) is incredibly cryptic as to what it actually measures.

[Barrister]

Bah - in the end I've fucked up by letting my infamy get too high to begin with.  I progress with my war with the Timurids, and get DOW'd by Venice.

I'm going back to an earlier save.

Infamy didn't do that, you letting your War Capacity and Prestige slip did that.

Like Habs, I don't know what War Capacity is.

But no, it's Infamy.  I have a high Prestige.  But Infamy of 10+ is bad, unless you're very powerful.  As a reborn Byzantium I'm starting to become powerful, but the real powers have no fear of me.

[jimmy olsen]

What is "War Capacity" exactly?  I can't seem to find a pop-up that'll explain it and the only manual with anything about it (NA) is incredibly cryptic as to what it actually measures.

I always assumed it meant what percentage of your force limit you had mobilized.

[Viking]

War capacity is a function of Manpower, Military size (army and navy if you have a port), war exhaustion, money, enemies. Basically it's the computer's guess of your ability to fight the war you are fighting. I've found from experience that War Exhaustion is the most important factor. But if you have a small navy compared to your opponent then you will suffer only if you don't have a direct means of attack.

I've been trying to get a definition for some time now, or just a list of inputs, but nobody seems to answer.
Edit: Nothing about it in the HTTT manual.

[Galrion]

Bah - in the end I've fucked up by letting my infamy get too high to begin with.  I progress with my war with the Timurids, and get DOW'd by Venice.

I'm going back to an earlier save.

Playing Byzantium now and I got lucky early on.  Ottomans lost their awesome leader and I was able to take a couple provinces which seperated their asian and european holdings.  The asian part became wracked by revolts and formed a new country, which let me decimate the remaining rump state.  That new country dissolved in under 5 years and the tiny countries remaining were easy pickings.  Been slow, steady expansion since then.  Got into a slugfest with Venice and Castille. Hungary and I were allied while France provided war subsidies to me.  Venice is doing quite well in my game.  They control all of Italy except Rome and a one province Genoa.  After about 10 years of constant battles I managed to take a province from each.  Blocked Russian expansion into the middle east (last game I played the Russians conquered everything in the middle east all the way into India.).  Managed to westernize fairly early, but struggling to westernize the military.  I keep having heirs that have amazing stats and then proceed to die off before they take over, leaving some 3,3,5 moron to take over.  The first time a 9,9,8 heir died I was livid, now as soon as I see one anywhere near that good I know they'll never live to rule the empire.

[Alcibiades]

Playing a Milan - Italy game now,  got the to year 1675.  Was real rough for quite a while with a very large unified France and Big Austria, but both were warded off and imploded eventually, though France is on a resurgence.  Trier has taken Austria's spot as the HRE and is blobbing the middle.

Meanwhile, Bohemia has turned into Hungary,Poland, and Lithuania and is a mega-blob, but the best part is Sweden, that stretches from all of Scandinavia excepting Oslo(Norway) through Russia - Astrakhan, 75% of Anatolia, and Inherited Brandenburg.  They're ridiculously Ginormous.

But it's still mildly entertaining, I've taken most of Brazil, a few holdings in Western Africa, and the Cape of Good hope are mine.  Castille has an enormous overseas empire, which I was happy to steal most of my Brazilian pieces from, with Portugal and Aragon colonizing heavily. 

Not sure which direction I wanna take now, I still need to pick off the island nations, and maybe grab large swathes of Northern Africa.  We'll see, the Ottomans just imploded under Bohemian and Swedish pressure, so should be easy enough if I decide to do that.

[Viking]

Playing Byzantium now and I got lucky early on.  Ottomans lost their awesome leader and I was able to take a couple provinces which seperated their asian and european holdings.  The asian part became wracked by revolts and formed a new country, which let me decimate the remaining rump state.  That new country dissolved in under 5 years and the tiny countries remaining were easy pickings.  Been slow, steady expansion since then.  Got into a slugfest with Venice and Castille. Hungary and I were allied while France provided war subsidies to me.  Venice is doing quite well in my game.  They control all of Italy except Rome and a one province Genoa.  After about 10 years of constant battles I managed to take a province from each.  Blocked Russian expansion into the middle east (last game I played the Russians conquered everything in the middle east all the way into India.).  Managed to westernize fairly early, but struggling to westernize the military.  I keep having heirs that have amazing stats and then proceed to die off before they take over, leaving some 3,3,5 moron to take over.  The first time a 9,9,8 heir died I was livid, now as soon as I see one anywhere near that good I know they'll never live to rule the empire.

Choose Noble Republic and pick the Bureaucratic candidate, I did that after my 17 y.o. 3 ADM monarch got himself a 3 ADM heir. I got a 9 ADM 8 DIP 7 MIL leader. I'm gonna let him stay on until he dies and then pick the Bureacratic candidate again. When I get my centralisation to -5 I'm going full western.

[crazy canuck]

Shit - I don't really want to destroy 'em.  I just want to survive a war with them, maybe take the one CB province of mine they hold.

What is a "non-loc province"?

You fail as a war leader.

[Barrister]

Shit - I don't really want to destroy 'em.  I just want to survive a war with them, maybe take the one CB province of mine they hold.

What is a "non-loc province"?

You fail as a war leader.

The Byzantine Empire is an Empire of peace.