Ralegh
Posts: 1557
Joined: 2/1/2005
Status: offline
|
Wll, 7th in my series of trying to win at Napoleon level with the release version of COG (actually, with the beta of the patch...). Turkey has lots of obvious problems - poor morale troops, poorly developed country, borders that its neighbours really want pieces of. There is also a much less obvious problem: preventing someone else winning first.
I tried a few variants around improving the Turks to a high morale army, but basically I couldn't get it all going fast enough to prevent France winning. So I tried using that horrible army Turkey starts with - and things turned out just fine.
So in the first month, I offered the Great Land Exchange to Austria - 8 provinces of Turkey that aren't worth glory to me but are to Austria (Greece; Imereti; Wallachia; Crete; Cyprus; Macedonia; Bosnia; and Bulgaria) in return from 6 provinces of Austria that are worth glory to me (Hungary, Grosswardein, Petarwardein, Ofen, Banat and Karlsburg). I have other provinces they want, and they have other provinces I want, but I figured this was a good deal.
Meanwhile, the two Egyptian armies conquered Cyrenaica, supported by the fleet.
I made an alliance with Britain, and set up lots of trade with Britain, Spain, France (to keep them onside).
One wierdness struck: as soon as the deal was final, Austria was somehow at war with me! I suspect a bug, since I couldn't figure out any reason for it. Anyway, the one useful Turkish army (the Vizier's, after swapping its militia for regular units) went to Styria, and the other two Turkish armies occupied lots of the newly Austrian provinces (which were ungarrisoned as yet), as well as rushing garrisons to my new territories. The French had already done the hard work of hurting Austria, but I think my taking 5 cities from them hurt - they surrendered to everyone. I took Venetia and their two best armies on loan.
Meanwhile, economically I had taken all Turkish units out of garrison except for provinces threatened by the Austrians - food saved by letting the garrisons forage allowed a surge in my economy. I concentrated trade on getting more textiles, as usual, and concentrated on building up barracks to level 3, plus a bit of culture. I chose Serbia, Pest, Ofen and later Vienna as my troop building cities, and got them to barracks 5 and factories 3 (so they could churn out corps and artillery as the opportunity arose [note that turkey starts with onluy one artillery but lots of iron, and that arty doesn't take textiles to make].
Send all my armies [4 Turk, 3 of which are militia, plus 2 Austrian on loan] to the Russian border, except the 2nd Egyptian from Cyrenaica up to cover my capital. Get Prussia to agree to attack Russia with me.
Ooops - Russians in Italy took Venetia - I should have put someone in the city. Send lots of new divisions over there - they siege the city without an army being present.
My fleet finds the Russians in the Adriatic, and pursues them to Corfu, where we launch port raids every month until they are down to 1 ship. This is mainly to hurt their morale and glory, but also removes some strategic options from them. We retire to Venetia to get repaired. [Note - killing the last few strength points from the last ship in a fleet in port is very very hard - they hide behind the fishing vessels or something.]
A textbook invasion of Russia in the picture below. Note I am leaving at least half a dozen divisions defending each supply depot - that supply chain is a matter of vital national importance. And I saved up enough money to be able to afford to pay for supply [over 2000 gold before starting the invasion] - I need all my reinforcements to make up for combat casulties. Depots seem to work a little differently in the patch - and I don't quite understand what the change is. They sometimes look like I built them, but then aren't there any more - I wonder if I need forces in enemy territory to build a depot there... Hmmm, that worked OK.
The Russians aren't stupid - most of their counter-punch effort is lower down on the supply chain, allowing foraging to shrink the main attack army to the point that they can't beseige Moscva. The Austrian armies prove their worth, beating off some counterattacks. We flood additional divisions up into the armies, and watch Russia surrender to France, then a few months later to Spain, and finally to us. (Neither France nor Spain had troops inside Russia - I think the insurrectionists need a better understanding of the realities of life). So we grabbed Cheryon, Volhynia and Podolia from Russia - all provinces that give us glory.
Now lets trade some of the territory we have that we don’t want for French Sevastapol - they accepted Lesser Wallachia, Adana and Bessarabia (good supply sources for them I suppose, even if not worth glory to them). I wanted to handicap the French, so I had them exile Napoleon as part of the deal (silly AI).
We also bribe Spain into liberating Oran, which we want - we'll liberate West Egypt, Damascus and Syria in return (none of which produce glory for us). We can always conquer them if we want them back.
Send 2 armies down to North Africa (militia), aimed at Banka (part of Tripolitania). The Triploitanians have a corps, and they beat the heck out of our militia armies - who regroup and get beaten again, and regroup (with additional divisions) and get thrashed a third time. Grrr. 4 new infantry divisions (morale 4.5) and a regular cavalry get sent down, giving this force better morale, and combine with the remnants (consolidated into 3 divisions from 14 initial plus about 8 extras), and they finally beat off the Tripolitean army. [In this patch, capturing forces seems to have been tweaked - only 5 divisions were captured by the Tripols. The others were either destroyed as a result of combat, or from me consolidating their forces.]
Meanwhile, we reorganise our main army - our strike army is now 18 divisions (2 corps), and a morale of 5.1 (4 x morale 7.9 Jannissaries; 5 x artillery; 5 x regular cavalary; and 4 other seasoned infantry) - partly thats from fighting the Russians. It is backed up by a lower morale infantry army (morale 4.1) of 7 divisions.
Now Sweden had actually declared war on me in defence of Russia, although they didn't send any troops. They are at war with Prussia as well as Spain/France, so that looks like a good place for some glory. The main army (with its sieger followon army) violates both Austrian and Prussian territory to get to Malmo, where I want to run a sea supply chain. The fleet has sailed around, successfully handling some Americans [they declared war on me after the blockades in Banka] and some Swedish privateers, until we run into the main Swedish fleet - oh no, those aren't all Swedes - some of them are American warships! The Turkish fleet is completely sunk. Hmmm.
Well, on with the war. No sea supply chain - lets see what we can do without supply, although I suppose I can form an alliance with Russia so I can get some supply up there... The Prussian army follows us through neutral Denmark and into Malmo - they aren;t allied to me, but if they want to come along, thats a good thing in my book. The Prussians lose a battle to the Swedes, softening them up for me, and draw the Swedish army to Karlkorona. My army bypasses them and dashes for Stockholm. The Swedes counterattack, but the Prussians have joined us, and we are just too much for them. Sweden surrenders to Turkey, and we are over 1000 glory. [Dec 1808]
Game Notes:
- A great test for the patch, I did discover some strange game dynamics which I have reported as bugs.
- We beat the Russians by having 3:1 or 4:1 odds in most battles, and using quick combat - in detailed combat they would have beaten us! The irregular cavalry in particular is much better in quick combat than in detailed.
- France and Spain actually had more glory that we did until the Swedish surrender pushed us over the top - if they had surrended to all enemies, all three of us would have gotten over 1000 glory at the same moment.
- A key to the win was building up barracks all over Turkey. Most of the feudal levies coming on in 1808 had morales over 4 - and the Jannisaries were up to 7.9! And Turkey got a lot of bang for the military upgrades.
Only Sweden to go, and then I can try playing some longer games - maybe starting in 1792.
[Can't upload the graphic at the moment - something wrong with the server. Will try again later.]
 Attachment (1)
< Message edited by Ralegh -- 7/27/2005 2:05:29 PM >
_____________________________
HTH
Steve/Ralegh
|
Printable Version
AAR - Ralegh as Turkey - 
I can usually pick up Transylvania and Banat without ever fighting Austria. 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread