No, I mean, the idea that you should fight Austria first because you don't want to fight Ottomans yet is completely bananas.
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You don't fight Austria first, you fight Venice first with Austrian help. You probably could invade the Austrians first but it's a riskier affair and not as cheap and profitable as invading Venice.
Austria is going to have many more and useful allies; Ottomans will have few if any. When you're stuck between two larger powers (like Austria/PLC and Ottomans) the obvious thing to do is make them fight each other at the expense of the strongest. You should absolutely fight Ottomans and shouldn't have any trouble getting Constantinople in the second war, probably pre-1480s.
That's great if you can, but if you can't then my strat wins over the Ottomans with Hungary sola. What's more the Ottomans simply don't need allies at all to make war a poor life choice pre-mil tech 14, and that's assuming they are without allies - they usually don't have trouble finding allies in France, especially if they mutually rival Austria. Austria by comparison shares the Vienna trade node with Hungary, has really shit strategic depth, and it's incredibly easy to ally with the French or Bohemians to partition Austria with ease at the early game.
I did Dracula's Revenge as Wallachia; it would be a thousand times easier to do the same thing but as Hungary.
Attacking the Ottomans through land warfare early game results in bad times most times. Attacking their economy, attacking by sea, all these things are good for me :]
You keep bringing up these mechanics and strategies that apply to halfway through a playthrough. We are talking about pre-1500 here. Idea groups don't even come into play yet.
Of course they do, a strategy is a plan which achieves a long-term goal, it is not a short plan of action. Taking over the Wien, Venice and Ragusa trade nodes gives you an easy selection of states throughout Italy and the Balkans that offer great riches with little resistance, and Austria herself can be a juicy target before mil tech 14, and if you can't take on Austria you can still take over the Vienna trade node or expand east/northwards. By contrast there isn't a good reason to go attack the Ottomans pre-1500 after the truce ends, and if you look closely you'll see the mechanics and strategies I have said are all on a timeline. What this means is that they create windows which are not dependent upon the actions of the Ottomans or allies, but will inevitably happen. You don't pick innovative at the start to benefit immediately, the benefits manifest after 1500 for example. Likewise I don't understand why you'd want to attack the Ottomans when the power discrepancy between you is
largest. Pre-1500 the Ottomans have more development, more income, more discipline, higher morale, a better leader, better military leaders, better infantry, better cavalry, better infantry combat ability, vastly more manpower, galleys and Forts on the Bosphorous. Thus the strategy is not to attack the Ottomans when you are weak and they strong, but to attack when you are strong and they are weak. How do you become strong? With this strategy. This is what separates the proposal of having the Ottomans fight the Austrians from the strategy of making Hungary so strong that random chance cannot stop Hungary's victory; the former is an opportunity which may arise, or never arise, the latter will occur.
Hallo,I'm actually doing quite good at the moment. Managed to secure an alliance with the Mamluks, which ensures I will basically always have local superiority over the Ottomans, basically took all the balkans back with only greece proper left to the big green blob.
My long-term strategy is actually one of attrition. I don't really like doing the whole world domination thing. I'm more focused on making hungary/the balkans an absolute nightmare for countries to invade. At the most, I imagine I won't take much more than austria for its gold and venice for the node.
Yeah you're safe by this point. Maybe colonize Australia for banter's sake
What's your experience with attrition? For the most part I've found attrition strats to be pretty meh with big blobs like France, Ottomans and Russians, but great fun against high discipline-low depth countries like Prussia and the Italians. My most recent fun was when I metagamed as fuck a broken custom nation OPM in Persia, as a little Hindu state of Mazandaran.
With the Defensive Edict, taking only Mountain provinces, maxing out on Defensive ideas and policies, I managed to get just under 130% Fort Defense on every single province I had. That I took quantity and maxed out attrition made it even funnier for anything that dared to invade.
It gets hilarious when you consider defensive bonuses also apply to land you occupy, so even if you're outnumbered 5 to 1 occupying their land while they die from attrition in yours is a viable strat
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Topic: Europa Universalis IV (Read 466965 times)