France: Any Advice on Allies, Idea Groups and Strategies?

[Corvus_Alt1]

So, I'm thinking of playing as France this time round, and I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to play as France. I'm not so interested in world conquest as I am in just forging a colonial empire and expanding French borders into the Rhineland, Low Countries, Italy and maybe Iberia. So, I have to ask which allies are better for France? Should I try to stick with Aragon or Castile, or both? Should I try to ally with Burgundy or conquer them? Likewise, should I go with Exploration as my first Idea group or Diplomatic? What ideas should I follow up with? Also, which vassals should I try to absorb first? Finally, what regions should France focus on first colonially? I know, a lot of questions, but France is really a different nation to play as compared to England or Burgundy, which means that I'm more conflicted in terms of strategy.

[Alex]

Burgundy will never ally you, so don't think about it. You are too far away to grab exploration meaningully quick so don't.

During the HYW DOW on brittany, take a province (don't core it) then spam improve relations until they like you (opinion >= 0) so they don't go ally a big guy and it it tough to vasalize them 5 years later. vassalize them and sell them the province back and work on annexing them asap - you want the trade power. You can take 3-4 province back from England in the war. Take Normandy and Gascogne atleast ,maybe calais. Leave the basque cultured province because it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and you don't benefit from it. You want to demand territories back instead of release nations because you need them for man power, force limits and tax income. It's better to become stronger than make England weaker.

I like to grab diplomatic ideas first so I get an extra diplomat - this is huge for annexing your vassals. Ally with Denmark and revoke the guarentee on Scotland .Everyone else who is a western power will rival you, so just ignore them. You should try and fight Castile/Portugal early on and release galacia and sell them Porto and the Castilian province next to them. Next you want to vassalize Galacia in another war (so you can feed them and they hopefully fabricated claims) and take Navara (core and culture shift). Next I would go about vassalizing Granada if they have claims on decent provinces, then take them and sell it to them.Your goal is to seal off the coast of Iberia by annexing POrtugal and locking Castile in. You need 3 wars to vassalize Portugal, but I do it in 4 because I can't core the Azores or Madeira right away.

Anyways, take porto the first war and a low base tax province - core the low base tax one so you can take more later. Make Castile release Galacia. With Castile you can sell provinces to Aragon or core them yourself (and make Aragon return them to Castile once you vassalize them). Once Castile or Portugal can be vassalized for under 100 war score GUARENTEE THEM. This is very important because they will get annexed by Granada or Aragon, or Moroco or someone. Anyways, castile likely allies with Burgundy, so you want to ally with Austria who will bash up Burgundy for you. Austria should crush Burgundy for you and get you your inheritence.

Important: if the king of Burgundy dies, release Burgundy as a vassal - you have 50 years to declare war on Burgundy to renew the cores and make them "return cores" for no AE. Anyways, it should take 25 or 30 years to annex Iberia. Aragon is easy because they will lose their holdings in the med and you need 2 -3 wars to vassalize them. They hold a core that belongs to one of your vassals, and your vassal will culture shift it for you so be sure to grab it ( I think it's Foix).


After Burgundy dies you need to go about anexing the British Isles - declare war and take as many provinces with a Scotland core as you can and then release them as a vassal. return the next cores in another war and proceed to release Northumberland, Wales and Cornwall. Sell Cornwall, wales and Northumberland provinces until they do not exceed 25 base tax - the max you can force vassalize in a war. (Scotland is a ♥♥♥♥♥ and won't buy provinces). Since they will all have English as an accepted culture they will be inclined to fabricate claims on england - hope they do so you can sell your new vassals these provinces To get Ireland, make them release the irish minors. When said minor gets all the provinces except one force vassalize them and sell them the last one, they almost always have a claim and have a strategic interest in forming Ireland (so they want it).

England should be reduced to London, Kent, Wessex... and needs 2 wars to vassalize. suck up the OE for 5 years then ♥♥♥♥♥ slap them to being your vassal. This takes 3-4 wars to do in total. You can get militar yaccess through Norway/Denmark to Orkney so you can just bum rush them for Scotland the first war, your navy doesn't matter. (you should be spamming trade ships).

Now you want to reclaim Burgundy - take the coast first, and if you can grab a styria core and release it from Austria. The next 5 to 6 wars with the HRE are just feeding Burgundy and Styria, and doing some clean up colonizing. Your second idea should be a military one because you need to counter Austrias defensive ideas (you get 20% morale from NI) so offensive or quality is best. your third idea should be exploration. You want to max out diplo ideas for unjustified demands. Anyways, you should be able to annex Iberia, England and cripple the HRE to the point of where you will become emperor roughly by 1580 - ( I did it by 1553 in a world conquest game, and I even integrated Super denmark and ♥♥♥♥ blocked Siberia...). The idea is to reduce Austria to be a weak little cripple so you can move in and vassalize electors. You need 3 - Bohemia usually votes for themself and so does Brandenburg.

Once you're the emperor you need to start spamming imperial liberation to get IA and religious unity for more IA. don't add all your conquored territory until you revoke the privilege. You need 3 electors vassalized and you get +2 relations and a diplomat for being emperor, so your only out 1 relation slot, but you're France and have like 10 so it doesn't matter. you can pass all the reforms in the next 100 years or pass them in 150 years and focus on expanding elsewhere, namely Russia or the Ottomans. Russia is good because you can still take Novgorord cores and Ottomans are good because you can vassalize an OPM mamluks and take Byzantium/Syria cores in 2-3 wars and blob enourmously from there. If Austria integrated Hungary this is fantastic, you take a province, release Hungary, feed them nawm nawm nawm nawm nawm yummy core dumping. If you want to expand into Russia, start off small taking the area bordering Finland, AND MAKE THEM RELEASE PERM AT ALL COSTS. THIS IS A ♥♥♥♥ BLOCK FOR SIBERIA. GUARENTEE PERM AND DIPLO-VASSALIZE them. You will get range from your Novogord vassal.

Poland can be crushed by taking their Ukraine cores, releasing htem and core dumping Lithuania to fill up Ukraines big belly in 2 wars with 100 war score worth of provinces (maybe 3 if they are small). Make the mrelease Smolnesk and Polotosk as well and sell them provinces but make sure htey don't exceed 25 base tax... and annex them. By this stage you are so big you can diplo-annex anything under 30 base tax, so consider than when making Russia/Muscovy release minors and feeding them - they don't need t be your vassal. your fourth idea should be religious ideas to convert all the infidels to the true faith. Your next idea should be expansion for the colonist to get Siberia and expand in Asia.

It's now around 1700 - 1750 and the world is at it's knees looking at the horrendously large big blue blob. I think you can form the HRE then form French Nation to annex the whole HRE. Just put a merchant in Antwerp and collect and everything will go there. All that's left is North Africa, what you didn't colonize and Asia.

[Corvus_Alt1]

Wow... Just wow. You certainly know how to make World Conquest work. I mean, yikes, that's a scary Big Blue Blob. Somehow, I think I'll avoid going so far as to conquer everything, just for the sake of role play and just focus on taking my neighbors. If i try conquering the world, well... I think it's more fun to role-play a little and still have some challenging opponents around until 1820. As long as I get the Low Countries, Iberia, and Italy, I'll be fine and happy.

[Alex]

Ah yea, that is how I planned it out and it worked well until the cores of the Turkish minors disapeared and I'm stuck trying to colonize now.

Iberia you should grab first in the same way that I suggested, and the low countries, you can either core dump Austria or just take the coastal provinces (Holland, flanders) as vassals and core dump them individually.

I'm sorry it's a wall of text, I just wanted to post how to go about getting everything you want quickly. The big one is you can't colonize until 1520ish at the earliest so don't get exploration first. As France you don't need to have doom stacks guarding colonies (NI) so you can spam colonists to your wallets content. Based on your ruler, Diplo first is usually solid but this puts you behind in naval tech (you need naval tech level 7 to colonize without the Azores or Madeira/Canaries). Since your behind in tech from Diplo ideas, a military one next is good. then you grab exploration is what I would suggest.

ADM idea first is bad because you can't tech up to the second idea fast enough for exploration, MIL first is bad because you need tech more than ideas until 1500 so a DIP idea first is your best bet. Exploration first is too slow because you can't use it (but it does let you core the Azores and Madeira with the third idea in your first war which is a plus), but you won't be colonizing until you annex portugal at the least, which is 1500ish, 1520 if the RNG doesn't like you, which is about when you could colonize anyways...

Good luck.

[Corvus_Alt1]

Thanks! Out of curiousity, when is the best time to deal with Provence, and which is the better first military idea for France, Quality or Offense? Also, what other idea groups do you recommend asade from Diplomatic, Quality/Offense, and Exploration? I know that Economic Ideas is a good one to pick up, but I'm drawing blanks on the others. Aristocratic? Naval? Defense? Expansion? Trade?

[VoiceGS]

Hey

I would take out Provence fast as they tend to ally with annoying neighbours. When I play France I take them out after securing Normandy, Caux and Lambourd. Ally Austria as they will love you untill you start meddling in HRE affairs. (A warning about allying with Austria: in my last French game I noticed that I didn't get the Burgundian succession event as I was in a war with Burgundy helping Austria and I've heard that event won't fire unless France is at peace with Burgundy. So if you want 4-5 free cores and it gets to 1490 and the event hasn't fired then break your alliance with Austria.) If you Ally Aragon be prepared for their defensive wars with Castille unless the Iberian Wedding event pops up. But, if you plan on crushing Castille then it may be a good idea. My last game I allied with Denmark but they didn't help much.

If you plan on doing what Alex wrote above I would take Offense for Forced March. Then Quality later on. Other than Diplomacy and Exploration take Naval. I only take Aristocratic when I play a nation in the Eastern Tech Group unless a western nation has a NI that gives a good bonus to Calvary. I normally go for a ADM idea on my 4th Idea slot or earlier if my king has a real high ADM score like +8 or 9 then take Economic since French cores are high base tax.

Hope thats ok.

Voice

[Alex]

You can either PU them (same dynasty), take Provence then fully annex or take provence -vassalize.

[Shaka]

İlk olarak Alex tarafından gönderildi:

Burgundy will never ally you, so don't think about it. You are too far away to grab exploration meaningully quick so don't.

During the HYW DOW on brittany, take a province (don't core it) then spam improve relations until they like you (opinion >= 0) so they don't go ally a big guy and it it tough to vasalize them 5 years later. vassalize them and sell them the province back and work on annexing them asap - you want the trade power. You can take 3-4 province back from England in the war. Take Normandy and Gascogne atleast ,maybe calais. Leave the basque cultured province because it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and you don't benefit from it. You want to demand territories back instead of release nations because you need them for man power, force limits and tax income. It's better to become stronger than make England weaker.

I like to grab diplomatic ideas first so I get an extra diplomat - this is huge for annexing your vassals. Ally with Denmark and revoke the guarentee on Scotland .Everyone else who is a western power will rival you, so just ignore them. You should try and fight Castile/Portugal early on and release galacia and sell them Porto and the Castilian province next to them. Next you want to vassalize Galacia in another war (so you can feed them and they hopefully fabricated claims) and take Navara (core and culture shift). Next I would go about vassalizing Granada if they have claims on decent provinces, then take them and sell it to them.Your goal is to seal off the coast of Iberia by annexing POrtugal and locking Castile in. You need 3 wars to vassalize Portugal, but I do it in 4 because I can't core the Azores or Madeira right away.

Anyways, take porto the first war and a low base tax province - core the low base tax one so you can take more later. Make Castile release Galacia. With Castile you can sell provinces to Aragon or core them yourself (and make Aragon return them to Castile once you vassalize them). Once Castile or Portugal can be vassalized for under 100 war score GUARENTEE THEM. This is very important because they will get annexed by Granada or Aragon, or Moroco or someone. Anyways, castile likely allies with Burgundy, so you want to ally with Austria who will bash up Burgundy for you. Austria should crush Burgundy for you and get you your inheritence.

Important: if the king of Burgundy dies, release Burgundy as a vassal - you have 50 years to declare war on Burgundy to renew the cores and make them "return cores" for no AE. Anyways, it should take 25 or 30 years to annex Iberia. Aragon is easy because they will lose their holdings in the med and you need 2 -3 wars to vassalize them. They hold a core that belongs to one of your vassals, and your vassal will culture shift it for you so be sure to grab it ( I think it's Foix).


After Burgundy dies you need to go about anexing the British Isles - declare war and take as many provinces with a Scotland core as you can and then release them as a vassal. return the next cores in another war and proceed to release Northumberland, Wales and Cornwall. Sell Cornwall, wales and Northumberland provinces until they do not exceed 25 base tax - the max you can force vassalize in a war. (Scotland is a ♥♥♥♥♥ and won't buy provinces). Since they will all have English as an accepted culture they will be inclined to fabricate claims on england - hope they do so you can sell your new vassals these provinces To get Ireland, make them release the irish minors. When said minor gets all the provinces except one force vassalize them and sell them the last one, they almost always have a claim and have a strategic interest in forming Ireland (so they want it).

England should be reduced to London, Kent, Wessex... and needs 2 wars to vassalize. suck up the OE for 5 years then ♥♥♥♥♥ slap them to being your vassal. This takes 3-4 wars to do in total. You can get militar yaccess through Norway/Denmark to Orkney so you can just bum rush them for Scotland the first war, your navy doesn't matter. (you should be spamming trade ships).

Now you want to reclaim Burgundy - take the coast first, and if you can grab a styria core and release it from Austria. The next 5 to 6 wars with the HRE are just feeding Burgundy and Styria, and doing some clean up colonizing. Your second idea should be a military one because you need to counter Austrias defensive ideas (you get 20% morale from NI) so offensive or quality is best. your third idea should be exploration. You want to max out diplo ideas for unjustified demands. Anyways, you should be able to annex Iberia, England and cripple the HRE to the point of where you will become emperor roughly by 1580 - ( I did it by 1553 in a world conquest game, and I even integrated Super denmark and ♥♥♥♥ blocked Siberia...). The idea is to reduce Austria to be a weak little cripple so you can move in and vassalize electors. You need 3 - Bohemia usually votes for themself and so does Brandenburg.

Once you're the emperor you need to start spamming imperial liberation to get IA and religious unity for more IA. don't add all your conquored territory until you revoke the privilege. You need 3 electors vassalized and you get +2 relations and a diplomat for being emperor, so your only out 1 relation slot, but you're France and have like 10 so it doesn't matter. you can pass all the reforms in the next 100 years or pass them in 150 years and focus on expanding elsewhere, namely Russia or the Ottomans. Russia is good because you can still take Novgorord cores and Ottomans are good because you can vassalize an OPM mamluks and take Byzantium/Syria cores in 2-3 wars and blob enourmously from there. If Austria integrated Hungary this is fantastic, you take a province, release Hungary, feed them nawm nawm nawm nawm nawm yummy core dumping. If you want to expand into Russia, start off small taking the area bordering Finland, AND MAKE THEM RELEASE PERM AT ALL COSTS. THIS IS A ♥♥♥♥ BLOCK FOR SIBERIA. GUARENTEE PERM AND DIPLO-VASSALIZE them. You will get range from your Novogord vassal.

Poland can be crushed by taking their Ukraine cores, releasing htem and core dumping Lithuania to fill up Ukraines big belly in 2 wars with 100 war score worth of provinces (maybe 3 if they are small). Make the mrelease Smolnesk and Polotosk as well and sell them provinces but make sure htey don't exceed 25 base tax... and annex them. By this stage you are so big you can diplo-annex anything under 30 base tax, so consider than when making Russia/Muscovy release minors and feeding them - they don't need t be your vassal. your fourth idea should be religious ideas to convert all the infidels to the true faith. Your next idea should be expansion for the colonist to get Siberia and expand in Asia.

It's now around 1700 - 1750 and the world is at it's knees looking at the horrendously large big blue blob. I think you can form the HRE then form French Nation to annex the whole HRE. Just put a merchant in Antwerp and collect and everything will go there. All that's left is North Africa, what you didn't colonize and Asia.

wow Alex you appear to be an authority on this game. So badly want to play as france and kick spain so i can steal all it colonies.

[Alex]

Nah, I tried 8 or 9 France WC games that ended in failure or I got bored. My best attempt was I formed the HRE and annexed everything west of Perm and North of the boshporous by 1750's but I got tired from focusing too much and gave it up.

I computed the war score required (and number of wars) to annex common countries or obtain certain vassals (Like Ukraine), which leads to very efficiency expansion strategies.

the biggest threats in any game are

1.) Russia - Unless Novogord forms it or a minor, it's so damn hard to break up
2.) Ottomans - Hard before 1550 because their units are better than western and around 1600 all the cores vanish but still doable.
3.) Iberia - colonies

[Corvus_Alt1]

So, out of curiousity, is there a way to completely take all of the English holdings in the French Region during the Hundred Years' War, save perhaps for Calais? Because I really have no idea how I'm supposed to get the warscore higher than around 45%.

[Alex]

I regularily get it to 60ish (I bait them to land troops while I let war score tick), but the best I've done is demanded 4 territories and some money, never all 5.

To get four of them, you need to engage their units right away (also take mission to increase prestige for free stability). split your 30 stack and put Bureau leading one army and your other general of choice in the other one. Engange their two stacks, then siege up Normandy and the holdings along the Pyrene.

Now, siege with 5 units and put your guard stack *two* "tiles" away from the provinces they have vision of. If you capture their holdings, this means keeping them 1 back from the Ocean. England will try to land troops. Let them land, don't move. They will chicken ♥♥♥♥ out and run if they see you bee lining it for them. They will land the token 10 or 12 stack and you just crush it. You can get ~20 war score this way. To siege calais, get your subjects to follow a guy to Normandy, then you need to "disable attach units" to all of your regiments and hopefully they will go to Cailais and take it for you. Make peace when they are moving their navy in a patrol, so they don't get 4 war score from the blockade(s).

Length of war and war exhaustion will tick up ending in them giving you four provinces, or a 50 warscore peace deal. I reccomend returning a core to Armenac instead because it's +40 opinion, so you can annex them almost instantly after the war.

[Corvus_Alt1]

Thanks for the tip! Also, I should point out that I have a save where I start as Curia Controller, but do not have the gain prestige mission. Should I pick up the mission to expel England from the French region instead, or does that require that I take all their holdings including Calais?

[Alex]

That mission requires all the holdings, including calais. I don't take it first because it takes atleast two wars to do, and in the 10 years you can likely accomplish a more useful mission.


Plan your battles carefully and most importantly know when to quit. Your most valuable resource is man power. If you run out of it, you're done.

[Lilltiger]

Ally Castille and Austria and Poland, eat up Aragon and Burgendy, then you end the alliance with Austria if they are the emperor of HRE, and then eat up the HRE states.
France is probly the easiest nation in the game to play, after you got the Aragon and Burgendy areas you will be unstoppable.

[The Rainmaker]

İlk olarak saltire1307 tarafından gönderildi:

Hey

I would take out Provence fast as they tend to ally with annoying neighbours. When I play France I take them out after securing Normandy, Caux and Lambourd. Ally Austria as they will love you untill you start meddling in HRE affairs. (A warning about allying with Austria: in my last French game I noticed that I didn't get the Burgundian succession event as I was in a war with Burgundy helping Austria and I've heard that event won't fire unless France is at peace with Burgundy. So if you want 4-5 free cores and it gets to 1490 and the event hasn't fired then break your alliance with Austria.)

unequivcally not true.

I was at war with Burgundy Castille and some other countries while Burgundy was in a seperate war with Austria and the event took place. Basically it gives you the option of white peace and taking the cores/provinces or not taking the cores and losing prestige.

I dont know why anyone would not take the cores so it was kinda silly.

In my game everyone rivaled me however I was able to ally Aragon, Scotland and Savoy before Castille PU'd Aragon.

Annexed a bunch of stuff, stomped on the English and got a PU with Scotland. Curbstomped Provence and Brittany and got the Event to fire on Burgundy where I got some of their cores. Now just waiting for a good time to attack Austria while I continue to chunk down Castille/Aragon and England.

[Alex]

You are better off taking land from Castile and POrtugal - seal off the coast to stop colonization. England is a close one on the list because you need to stop them from colonizing too. Your best bet is to make them release everything, sell them provinces until they are under 30 base tax and diplo-annex them 50 years later when you have enough base tax.

You can actually diplo-annex Norway which is sort of funny.