Vassal Swarm tips ?

[kesa822000]

The HRE vassal swarm.

So far , because I don't know what I'm doing , In the vassals menu I have just left my vassals on the default toggle of " Do your own thing. "

But now I'm beginning to wonder.

It is 1720 , so , except for my HRE vassals , there simply are no minor states in Europe anymore .

And wars no longer take just six months , but take two years --- at least with my unwieldy vassal swarm.

For example , ( If you care to read ) my last war was about gobbling up a bit more of France. France only controls one - third , to one - fourth of France now. The rest is mine.
For that reason , I guess , the French Army is garbage. The one thing France has going for it is that it still has five or six top of the line fortresses. The days of sieging down a castle in a week are over. You need at least a division of artillery , and it is is still going to take two months to siege down the fortress.

( the other thing that poor France has going for it is the game won't let me take more than maximum war score in territory. But never mind that. )

France was allied with Sweden . Sweden is in even worse shape than France. Sweden is a bit like Canada ; It has a big footprint on the map , but that is entirely misleading. Sweden has only 20,000 men , and its navy is even smaller , and it is two steps behind in military tech.

France was also allied with Poland , now called The Commonwealth. Poland was the problem. Poland is huge ; It annexed Russia. And it has an army to match its size. And it is top of the line in military tech.

I'm still nearly twice the size of all three . :P

Well , come the war , what did my vassal swarm do ?

Siege down French castles as quickly as possible and knock them out of the war before Poland can fully mobilize ?

No.

Form a meat shield in Prussia and roll over the Polish steam roller with their bigger steam roller ?

No.

My vassal swarm headed up to Scandinavia to knock Sweden out of the war.

Grrrr ,

Gee , fellas , it's great that you knocked Sweden out of the war , and allowing me to bite off another chunk of Scandinavia . But the fact is I could have handled Sweden myself with one second tier general , one second tier army , and artillery left -overs , at leisure .

Meanwhile the Poles were torching the eastern marches of the HRE , Glogow , Opole , Lusatia , and Bohemia looked like they got hit by a planet - killer meteor ,

I lost 30,000 men in Prussia for nothing ,

And the siegeing down of France consequently took three times as long as it should have.

Granted , I still won the war . After torching Scandinavia my vassal swarm finally turned south and proceeded to erase the Polish Army. I bit off another chunk of France , AND another piece of Scandinavia , AND even took a few provinces from Poland.

But I'm wondering if there is a better way ?

Should I give my vassals specific assignments ? And , if so , what assignments ?