Hello EU 4-players my name's Raymond and welcome to the fourth and final video of the War Academy is it just me or has this series gone on for a long time
anyways in this episode I'll discuss some more advanced topics of warfare including many techniques skilled players used to maximize the usefulness of their army as well as a discussion on the overall philosophy you should have towards warring in general to start with let's begin with the scenario of being faced by a larger opponent words like this can be unavoidable at some points especially early in the game well this is a bad position to be in you do have some methods at your disposal to even the odds many of these methods are useful even if you're not facing the superior enemy but that can be especially useful or necessary when you are to start here are some tips for fighting when outnumbered.
Tip1 practice good army micro an excellent scenario to train yourself in is to fight Muscovy as Kazan 1 vs 1 in 1444 important things to learn include how to pick off stragglers armies the importance of regiment consolidation how movement lock constrains the ai's ability to respond especially in areas of the map where provinces are larger the benefits and limitations of forts along with the concept of seed racing fighting in favorable terrain and when to give ground at the tactical level to secure a long-term strategic advantage the Kazan vs. Muscovy scenario nicely exaggerates the importance of all of these
At first the odds might seem daunting Muscovy in its vassals have well over twice the amount of troops that you do however you have the advantages of being a horde having the goldmine not having to deal with fassl's and possessing a human
brain
EU 4 isn't that complicated at the tactical level so with a bit of practice
you should be able to pull this off with a fair degree of consistency I'll put a
link in the description if you want to watch this full war from the perspective
of a skilled player
Tip 2 take as many loans as necessary a key element of efficient play is understanding just how far this game will let you over leverage yourself a good rule of thumb is that if you're running a surplus when your maintenance sliders are at full then you're only tapping into about 30 to 50% of your military potential a victory even a high cost can often lead to getting money from your enemy to pay off those loans or at the very least it can provide a truce time or long enough for
you to go into a managed bankruptcy which can be a powerful tool in its own regard one rather stark example of this as Byzantium versus the Ottomans and
1444 by hammering the load button like there's no tomorrow it's actually possible to create an army large enough to defeat the main Ottoman battle stack on even terms and from here it's possible to seize down forts and gain enough four score to secure a good peace deal in a 1v1 war before going bankrupt this isn't the best Byzantium strat out there but it's something to keep in mind as a general principle if an early war is a life or death struggle then you have no reason not to go into as much debt as necessary the loan tank is insanely deep in EU for and as such it's
certainly something we should take advantage of
Tip 3 trap enemies in straight crossings one of the most notable aspects of military geography are the gaps where land units can traverse bodies of water without boats
it's often possible to bait the AI into a trap with these using a small army of
your own once the enemy is in a position like this you have two options first you
can attack them as a victory will lead to a guaranteed stack light alternatively if those troops aren't going to cause a problem on that side of the strait you can instead opt to just leave them there this ensures the a I won't rebuild its troops to refill that force limit removing that army from the war and gently
Tip 4 the vassalization trick this one is more of an exploit than the rest but it's been in the game long enough and has been a feature of MF strats Tamara its inclusion in this list what you do first is gather as many allies as you can then wait for your target animate to declare war on some small nation then declare war on that small nation yourself and vassalize that before your target enemy has won
upon vassalization you'll be dragged into your vassals war the war with your target nation with a single important caveat that it counts as a defensive war not in offensive one this fact gives a huge boost to your allies accepting the call to arms allowing you to pull in tons of help which can easily overwhelm your enemy
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