How do I defeat Muscovy as the Commonwealth in eu4?

[XenoRush]

I'm having a bit of trouble surviving as the polish-lithuanian commonwealth (and yes, I know that seems pretty noobish) as I recently abandoned a campaign where my I super blobbed as the commonwealth and own all of the baltic, Finland, a decent chunk of northern germany, most of the balkans, and bits and pieces of hungary. I'm rated as the second greatest power behind ming and have army tradition: 23.6 (or at least I remember having that, but then again I have alzheimers when it comes to things like that), an army of 63,000 and militairy tech of 13 (Muscovy has militairy tech 11) and the year is 1556 but, despite all of this, come december 1556, no matter what I do, Muscovy declars war on me and none of my allies (Bohemia, France, an independant norway, and the loyal Danish) join in my defense except the noble Danish. Within 5 years of Muscovys declaration of war, with the help of their vassal swarm, my army has been basically curbstomped, and the relatively little amount of cannonfodder the Danish supplied my with are laying in a pool of their own blood. So really, I just have two questions.
1.) Why don't any of my allies join my war except Denmark? (Specifically the overpowered French) and
2.) How could I possibly stop my army from getting curbstomped and possibly win the war against the muscovites?
(BTW the only militairy ideas i've taken were offensive ideas which I fully unlocked. My other two idea groups are influence ideas and humanist ideas..)

[Sir Slasher]

sounds like army maint is low

[Shogun_Potatoe]

What ideas does Muscovy have and like above is your maintenance at max as for your allies not joining a defensive war are they in the middle of a disater/ war in huge debt maybe even a truck with Muscovy for some odd reason

[Shogun_Potatoe]

At least your Muscovy doesn't have an unholy alliance with ottomans like my Commonwealth

[thelonebanana]

Go for defensive ideas instead of offensive. For your first Idea, and also don't attack russia in the winter make russia attack you... polish cavalry become great in the mid game use that.

[freestyler-rs]

XenoRush님이 먼저 게시:

I'm having a bit of trouble surviving as the polish-lithuanian commonwealth (and yes, I know that seems pretty noobish) as I recently abandoned a campaign where my I super blobbed as the commonwealth and own all of the baltic, Finland, a decent chunk of northern germany, most of the balkans, and bits and pieces of hungary. I'm rated as the second greatest power behind ming and have army tradition: 23.6 (or at least I remember having that, but then again I have alzheimers when it comes to things like that), an army of 63,000 and militairy tech of 13 (Muscovy has militairy tech 11) and the year is 1556 but, despite all of this, come december 1556, no matter what I do, Muscovy declars war on me and none of my allies (Bohemia, France, an independant norway, and the loyal Danish) join in my defense except the noble Danish. Within 5 years of Muscovys declaration of war, with the help of their vassal swarm, my army has been basically curbstomped, and the relatively little amount of cannonfodder the Danish supplied my with are laying in a pool of their own blood. So really, I just have two questions.
1.) Why don't any of my allies join my war except Denmark? (Specifically the overpowered French) and
2.) How could I possibly stop my army from getting curbstomped and possibly win the war against the muscovites?
(BTW the only militairy ideas i've taken were offensive ideas which I fully unlocked. My other two idea groups are influence ideas and humanist ideas..)

your allies aren't joining because they have problems in their country that lower their willingness to fight (war exhaustion, debt, rebels, low manpower, occupied/besieged land) and/or they have really good relations with Muscovy themselves. That is also why Muscovy decided to attack you. The AI checks whether your allies would join or not and calculates the strength of your alliance accordingly.

Also your problem boils down on how to fight Russia. The answer is:
- split your stacks but keep them together so you minimize attrition but they can easily assist each other when attack. and be careful with fort mechanics. They can ♥♥♥♥ you over with sheer wonkiness and the AI cheating the rules. Also when you siege a fort, you're always the attacker so be careful with taking fights in bad terrain. Always check whether the stacks can actually help each other immediately.
- consolidate regiments. stacks with 500 men in them will suffer severe effectiveness penalties that can make you lose battles against inferior foes where you have double the numbers.
- don't take offensive battles unless you're sure to win very easily or as a finishing blow
- Use a lot of mercenary infantry so your manpower pool never runs dry completely and don't be afraid to take loans and raise war taxes
- check your army composition. the ideal is to have full combat width of artillery, 4-6 cavalry for flanking (possibly more if you're a cavalry based country and in the early game cavalry is also really strong) and have way more than combat width of infantry since the frontline bears the brunt of casualties. If you run out of infantry in a fight and your army suddenly has more cavalry than infantry, the fight is lost since that gives you major negative modifiers in battle.
- take control of the danish stack by making them stick to one of yours. The AI is stupid and will squander their forces.
- check the enemy generals. are they better than yours? If significantly so, you should think about rolling for better ones or play even more defensive.
- try to isolate and wipe smaller enemy stacks. the little victories matter, even with Russia.
- in big battles, start recruiting merc regiments all around and send them into the battles so you never run out of morale and men. The AI does that quite often and so should you. Big battles NEED to be won for you to win the war.

[XenoRush]

As for Muscovy's ideas i'm not sure how to check ( again my noobness showing) and when Muscovy declared War my ally Bohemia was dealing with 15k rebels, so i guess I can understand them not joining, but at the time the Big Blue Blob was more stable than ever( they even managed to annex scotland and most of england). For ideas I looked them over after reading Baphomet's comment and saw that the very first Idea gives you 1 army tradition yearly, which means I could have had rughly 50-someting army tradition which would have probably allowed me to stand toe-to-toe with Muscovy as i'm guessing they had pretty high army tradition as they had been in a state of constant war with Transoxiana, the nations in the caucus, and of course the other Russian states. And I just want to make sure I didn't miss out on anything militairily besides militairy traditions but was I supposed to get a special cavalry unit? If so whats its name? Also as for fighting Russia in the winter, I was pretty careful about not engaging them on their own territory no matter what, and instead I lured them into my scandinavian provences and let them take most of the attrition, but I guess that didn't really matter at all since they still mopped up the floors of europe with my nations carcass.

[XenoRush]

freestyler-rs님이 먼저 게시:

XenoRush님이 먼저 게시:

I'm having a bit of trouble surviving as the polish-lithuanian commonwealth (and yes, I know that seems pretty noobish) as I recently abandoned a campaign where my I super blobbed as the commonwealth and own all of the baltic, Finland, a decent chunk of northern germany, most of the balkans, and bits and pieces of hungary. I'm rated as the second greatest power behind ming and have army tradition: 23.6 (or at least I remember having that, but then again I have alzheimers when it comes to things like that), an army of 63,000 and militairy tech of 13 (Muscovy has militairy tech 11) and the year is 1556 but, despite all of this, come december 1556, no matter what I do, Muscovy declars war on me and none of my allies (Bohemia, France, an independant norway, and the loyal Danish) join in my defense except the noble Danish. Within 5 years of Muscovys declaration of war, with the help of their vassal swarm, my army has been basically curbstomped, and the relatively little amount of cannonfodder the Danish supplied my with are laying in a pool of their own blood. So really, I just have two questions.
1.) Why don't any of my allies join my war except Denmark? (Specifically the overpowered French) and
2.) How could I possibly stop my army from getting curbstomped and possibly win the war against the muscovites?
(BTW the only militairy ideas i've taken were offensive ideas which I fully unlocked. My other two idea groups are influence ideas and humanist ideas..)

your allies aren't joining because they have problems in their country that lower their willingness to fight (war exhaustion, debt, rebels, low manpower, occupied/besieged land) and/or they have really good relations with Muscovy themselves. That is also why Muscovy decided to attack you. The AI checks whether your allies would join or not and calculates the strength of your alliance accordingly.

Also your problem boils down on how to fight Russia. The answer is:
- split your stacks but keep them together so you minimize attrition but they can easily assist each other when attack. and be careful with fort mechanics. They can ♥♥♥♥ you over with sheer wonkiness and the AI cheating the rules. Also when you siege a fort, you're always the attacker so be careful with taking fights in bad terrain. Always check whether the stacks can actually help each other immediately.
- consolidate regiments. stacks with 500 men in them will suffer severe effectiveness penalties that can make you lose battles against inferior foes where you have double the numbers.
- don't take offensive battles unless you're sure to win very easily or as a finishing blow
- Use a lot of mercenary infantry so your manpower pool never runs dry completely and don't be afraid to take loans and raise war taxes
- check your army composition. the ideal is to have full combat width of artillery, 4-6 cavalry for flanking (possibly more if you're a cavalry based country and in the early game cavalry is also really strong) and have way more than combat width of infantry since the frontline bears the brunt of casualties. If you run out of infantry in a fight and your army suddenly has more cavalry than infantry, the fight is lost since that gives you major negative modifiers in battle.
- take control of the danish stack by making them stick to one of yours. The AI is stupid and will squander their forces.
- check the enemy generals. are they better than yours? If significantly so, you should think about rolling for better ones or play even more defensive.
- try to isolate and wipe smaller enemy stacks. the little victories matter, even with Russia.
- in big battles, start recruiting merc regiments all around and send them into the battles so you never run out of morale and men. The AI does that quite often and so should you. Big battles NEED to be won for you to win the war.

Thanks for this advice because I guess i've benn using pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stratagies when it comes to war, as my main strategy as the commonwealth was splitting my 63000 men into 3 armies( one 25k, and two 19k) and always keepig them close toghether when they were in enemy territory.

[freestyler-rs]

you can check the ideas a country took by opening their diplomatic tab and hovering your mouse over the little lightbulb in their country stats window. It also shows you how many ideas of the group they already have taken and how far they advanced in their own national ideas.

If France just had a big war with England, they might have taken loans and still have lingering war exhaustion. That lowers their willingness to fight. Size is not the same as stability.

By "luring them into Scandinavia" I suppose you were there as well? If you were there, too, both sides get attrition. Only defensive ideas and some national ideas (like Najd) as well as an advantage in supply limit (which you get through military tech) give the enemy more attrition than you would get. Against Muscovy it's not worth to make you both take equal attrition. Instead plunder some of his juicy plain territories with high development while he is sieging ♥♥♥♥ in the worthless wastes of Finland or go for his allies and siege them down to drive them out of the war for money and war reparations so he has less to fight you with.

[XenoRush]

When I lured Muscovy into finland Ionly one of my three armies were even near finland( one of the two 19k stacks) and the army that was in scandanavia was hiding in Copenhagen taking no attrition as the supply limit was well above 19000. As for frances war with engalnd they had all of that territory since the 1530s so I think they had more than enough time to recover from any negative reprucussions from that war, although they may have been in a war a little while before my Russian-style funeral in 1556, as I wasn't paying attention to them. Well, thanks for your help and answering my question. Maybe i'll go back to that playthrough sometime soon, but at the moment i just started a campaign as naples which has been pretty succesful so far.

[XenoRush]

freestyler-rs님이 먼저 게시:

you can check the ideas a country took by opening their diplomatic tab and hovering your mouse over the little lightbulb in their country stats window. It also shows you how many ideas of the group they already have taken and how far they advanced in their own national ideas.

If France just had a big war with England, they might have taken loans and still have lingering war exhaustion. That lowers their willingness to fight. Size is not the same as stability.

By "luring them into Scandinavia" I suppose you were there as well? If you were there, too, both sides get attrition. Only defensive ideas and some national ideas (like Najd) as well as an advantage in supply limit (which you get through military tech) give the enemy more attrition than you would get. Against Muscovy it's not worth to make you both take equal attrition. Instead plunder some of his juicy plain territories with high development while he is sieging ♥♥♥♥ in the worthless wastes of Finland or go for his allies and siege them down to drive them out of the war for money and war reparations so he has less to fight you with.

I just noticed you mentioned sieging down Muscovy's allies, but thats the thing i've tried and succeded in sieging Muscovy's vassals forts and Provences but other than their subjects it's just Denmark (who is allied with me), Muscovy, and because their subjects provences are all in Russia, I had to go on the offensive during winter to get anything done, although i never tried just waiting around and letting them come to me except in the previously mentioned time in Scandanavia.

[freestyler-rs]

ignore their subjects. you will only squander your forces in Russia. Only allies can be peaced out separately.