Tentative country list:

Austria: nonfiction
France: Jim14Qc
England: Tiny
Castille: goofy
Venice: Flyingbanana
Byzantines: djstu
Muscowy: Selim/Bro/cantthinkofanythin (lolbad forum name btw)
TO: djstu
Poland: Auts
Timurids: Ranok
Burgundy: Daer
Portugal: Vivalasgit

Currently at 12 ppl.

Who has yet to pick countries yet besides Doom? JLBorloo?

Countrys unpicked so far:
Ottomans/Byz: (might move djstu to Byz and leave TO open)
Vijay/other Indian to compete with Tims
Morroco?
Holland if we have no Burgundy
Sweden/Denmark
maybe another HRE country like Brandenburg (instead of TO?)

list is obv subject to change depending on doom and JLBorloo's top 3 country picks.

what's good for me?

I wouldn't do a brandenburg. They blow even in SP

One of the newbies/weaker players should also seriously think about playing the ottomans, they're like spain in that you can expand easily and not many people have it out for you initially.

this is old, but mostly right.

Combat now has 4 mandatory phases. 1st a 3 day fire phase, then a 3 day shock, then 3 day fire, then 3 day shock.

If your army runs out of morale in that 12-day period you will get routed (usually, for some reason this doesn't happen 10% or so of the time, I don't know why. Practically speaking if you're that low on morale you will get routed eventually tho as your army is chased down).

To boil down all the rolls crap: Your offensive stats for your units determine how much shock/fire/morale damage they do, the defensive stats determine how good they are at withstanding that kind of damage. So in a fight between a shock 4/2 unit and a shock 3/4 unit the 3/4 has the advantage and will kill more people. Other than that the general rules are not to fight in the mountains and withdraw from fights where you're getting ridiculous terrain penalties (which are somewhat random as well).

How do you want to survive as byz if someone takes the ottomans?!

I have done a Vij game in SP that turned into Hinustan really quick, but I don't see how that is a viable spot. You gonna get raped sooner or later anyway...

Not really, if you recall last game the initial rush to India actually got beaten back by AI vijay which wasn't even very large. You should be able to unite all of India (well besides the NW part that Tims are sure to get) as well as getting most/all of southeast Asia by the time the Europeans arrive in force, and by then you are too strong to invade. Even with superior European troops, you will have like 100k+ army to throw at any invaders. India has good base tax provinces and a ton of supervaluable spice and other exotic goods so they are very rich as well. India would ldo also make a deal to sell a province or 2 to a friendly European in order to modernize, and its mutually beneficial since the European would get the India trade company decision.

Obv if he is byz we wont have an ottomans

40% tech tho

50 iirc, but it doesnt really matter, by ~1500 when you have regular contact with Europe you should be ready to modernize, and European troops dont actually get noticeably better until they get like land 18ish anyways. Again, unless someone like France sends their entire army across the world to invade you, needing 100+ transports and leaving themselves defenseless in Europe, I think you are ok. Maybe they take Ceylon cause your fleet wont be good enough to defend it, but if they land in India you can crush them. The only real negative to India is that you are basically playing single player until Europe finds you, although with a human Timurids you will have some pvp interaction.

Gotta play that diplomacy game too, just get some friendly European powers (austria imo!) to guarantee you in exchange for a port province.

Nonfiction playin the meta game, trying to defeat me before the game even begins by giving away a key Timurid expansion area :P

I'm sure its been discused, but what version of this game should i be buying to play MP?

Chronicles, which includes the base game and ALL addons.

TO and Poland? France and Burgundy? Seems like a certain austria player wants to make lots of little enemies to fight amongst themselves, am I right?

I say:

Holland instead of Burgundy (**** I guess give it to djstu... god damn it ****er)

Ottomans obviously.

Denmark/Sweden instead of TO.

So, for land 13 troops, we has:

	Off. Shock	Def. Shock	Off. Morale	Def. Morale
Condotta Inf.	1	3	2	4
Landsknechten Inf.	1	2	3	5
Ref. Gallogaigh Inf.	3	0	5	1

That would make Landsknechten the best out of these, right? Even in shock w/ Reformed Gallogaigh but big advantage in morale, slightly behind Condotta in shock but another morale advantage. Reformed Gallogaigh actually looks like the worst of the 3.

They are the best if you are aggressive ldo.

To what degree does the game even care who attacked who, though? (aside from terrain bonuses)

I mean that's what people requested bro. I used everyone's 1st or 2nd choice, no one picked Holland or Scandinavia or ottomans

Some territories are easier to defend versus some other ones. I have noticed the defense modifier will change some depending on different factors when attacking between the same providences. I am not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with generals.

Yes


Not as I understand it. The offensive/defensive stats of a unit are not dependent on which army is the attacker/defender. They're just the natural stats of the unit. So like in a fight between Ref. Gallogaigh Inf and Landskenchten Inf both would have the same amount of casualities (3 off shock for RGI vs 2 def shock for LKI, then 1 OFF Shock for LKI vs 0 def shock for RGI) but the landskenchten inf would rape the morale of the RGI (5v5, then 3v1).

This is why, imo, Nonfictional lost so quickly in the last war. He was using Free Shooter Infantry (fire 0/3, shock 4/2, morale 6/3) against my Tercio Infantry (fire 3/3, shock 2/3, morale 4/6). I had a massive advantage in fire (not that it meant a whole lot at our tech level but it balanced out my small disadvantage in shock) and a small advantage in morale. So while we dealt each other approximately the same amount of damage casualty wise my troops were harder to break, which essentially let me wear his morale down to nothing.

The only thing that depends on who is attacking and who is defending is terrain bonuses. RGI might be better at assaulting forts, honestly I have no idea how the game works that out, but 12k of any type of infantry will take down a lvl 1 for easily enough.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the season might have something to do with it as well, I know that you get higher attrition during the winter, but honestly I try not to focus on it so much.

Fighting wars is all about positioning, making absolutely sure you have clear lines of retreat and then trying to outflank/push your opponent until his line breaks and you can chain-assault provinces with impunity.

Also, since it looks like I may be holland again, I need clarification on my "trick" (which isn't really a trick but more just game knowledge) and it's use thereof.

So what does offensive morale do?

it's a measure of how fast a unit can deplete another unit's morale. Likewise defensive morale is a measure of how hard it is for enemy units to deplete that unit's morale

That would make offensive morale better if chasing but worse in big battles?

Terrain modifiers per the terrain file
Forest: TM = 2.0,
Mountain: TM = 5
Plains: TM = 0.0
Rivers: -1 to attacker.
Jungle: TM = 2.0
Marsh: TM = 3.0
Desert:TM= 0.0
Hills: TM = 4.0
Farmland: TM= 0.0
Steppe: TM= 0.0

i thought you could anticipate the chance of which terrain penalty you'll get using the terrain view mapmode. e.g. 60% hills 40% plains means a 60% chance for the hills modifier and a 40% chance for plains.

You could look at it that way yeah.