Hello all.
The jerkyness mentioned above and mouse lockups appears to have been caused by my mouses final death throws. My optical mouse died yesterday. I had a similar problem with my first optical mouse, same symptoms.
Homer:
I have lots of tips in my players guide at the link below.
http://www.respawn.co.uk/content/view/255/77/
I think the very last section which is called play as England covers how to beat the french. It should work for all nations not just the English.
Theres a lot to be added to the guide yet but the basics are there for covering global stuff. I have not really gone into detail about taking out powerful nations yet in the guide.
However here is a summary of the information you asked for.
First of all you need at least 9 armies to surround the French Capital. This effectively stops the AI from moving in troops to defend the capital against your attack and gives you 9 armies you can swap with the troops attacking the capital if they start to take heavy loses. I estimate, if the french have a large empire you will need all 9 armies, if they have a small empire you may get away with 4 armies needed to capital the capital. This does not include armies needed to keep other french armies away from the capital during this process.
This helps keep your attacking force strong.
The other troops should be left in the regions between the french forces and their capital. If you have 9 armies and the french empire is big your going to need to be a good general on the battle field to pull it off. Otherwise id recommend taking out the french region by region before going for the capital.
Hanover is the best route into france to pull this off but you can get there from spain too with a little more effort. Hanover has a very good defensive position from which you can slaughter whole armies without loosing too many men you self.
Now, you need to have 3 armies beat the french several times in a real battle whilst taking very few losses. I had 3 armies totally wipe out 12 french armies in one of my games in the Hanover region which is ideal for pulling this off if you can make them fight at the river. You will need cannon to blast the far bank of the river and will need to pull them back when the enemy gets close.
The other important thing is to free any country the french control whilst your attacking their capital. This has 2 major effects on the game.
1) It distracts the french who may forgo the defense of their capital to stop you freeing other countries.
2) It raises your sympathy rating so when the war is over and your armies look weak, other nations are not so willing to declare war on you. Basically you want the little bar next to the sympathy number to be green not red by the end of the battle. Otherwise you may win france but lose the campaign to a sneaky AI opponent taking advantage of your weakness.
Distracting the french armies is by far the best way of keeping them away from your troops attacking the capital. Divide and conquer, but keep your troops together. Between revolts and the time it takes to annax the french capital you could loose a lot of men. So anything you can do to help here makes a big difference.
The 9 armies being swapped with those attacking will help a lot, it will keep the troop numbers in the french capital high enough to annex the capital quickly and help leave you wil a strong army at the end of it all.
Now here are some additional help for you.
When you have troops in all the french owned regions before the french capital falls, make peace with the french. This will annex those regions for your empire and allow you to upgrade them. After a few turns, finish the french off. It will be easier this time around because they will not be able to maintain a large army anymore.
If you go straight for the capital, any region the french owned will either convert to their original owner or will have a little flag on it to indicate you cannot upgrade it.
The most important thing to remember is that IG has not set way to win, you must adapt your strategy to take into the other nations. You may need to wait until you have an alliance with any nation that can threaten you before you try and take on france.
Hope this helps.
Taking over England is easy but requires at least 6 armies after you have dismanteled most of its empire. 3 in scotland and 3 in England and swap them to keep the numbers in england high.
Giskard
