Europa Universalis III

[Shabbaman]

Perhaps it's worth to declare ASAP if they're not into many alliances at the start. You really need those provinces (especially Brabant, because of it's university (I guess Leuven is in Brabant) to make anything out of that starting position. I think your priorities are something like this:

1. Make sure Hainaut doesn't get you into war with Burgundy
2. Get rid of Hainaut
3. Get Friesland and Gelre
4. Make yourself unappealing for Burgundy

And use your diplomats accordingly. Maybe you could swap 2 and 3, I don't know if the PU allows you to wage war. So start like this:

1. Cancel alliance with Hainault. This should result in a rep hit with them, so perhaps you don't need to:
2. Insult Hainaut. Their king will die eventually, if you're below 100 you'll get out of the PU. Otherwise Burgundy might help you.
3. Attack ASAP, before they can get you into cascading war declarations.
4. Grant military access to Burgundy. Don't ask for it, offer it. If they have military access, they get a stability hit when they declare war on you. You can do the same with allies of Friesland and Gelre. Truce has a similar effect. I'm assuming the AI gets the same stability hit as the human player (hard to tell), but the AI will honor truce most of the time.

One thing you could do is to ally with France. I don't think you'll be harmed if Burgundy attacks you and France honors the alliance. The downside is that France and Burgundy will be fighting a lot anyway, so you might get Burgundy pissed at you at a time you might not want that. Note that Burgundy has provinces you want (and will get cores on), so you need to fight Burgundy at some point. The only way to win that war successfully is if Burgundy wages war on your allies, not on you, and you manage to steal one or two provinces (those with textile manufacturies obviously) and sue for peace.

[ProPain]

I don't think you should make yourself unappealing to Burgundy. Burgundy and France will end up in war, one will grow huge from it and that will seriously hamper you expansion options to the south, possibly even threathen your existence. Also Burgundy owns the Antwerpen CoT which is a huge boost to their income. The longer they have it, the stronger they become. You want that CoT.

Imho your best option is to fight Burgundy asap and make sure you get Antwerpen and at least one more Burgundian province from the 'belgian' chunk in the peace deal. To win this war in the early years 15K-20k troops should be enough. Put them all in 1 stack and fight defensively (only in your home provinces, not on B's turf) at first so B's armies suffer from attrition. Pick of armies that you can annihilate decisively without too much losses (practically: only fight armies that you outnumber at least 4 to 5 times). Avoid other fights, run if needed.

At some point you'll notice that B's war capacity will drop to the red (<25% ???) which means they don't have the manpower to reinforce their troops anymore. From that point on you can take on slightly more even fights. Once B won't be able to reinforce at all, you can simply clean up and occupy provinces you want to have out of the peace deal.

Be wary of occupying the southern B provinces. You'll be suffering from attrition yourself and reinforcing is slow. You'll easily get kited and run the risk of losing armies at little cost to B. Only occupy the northern part of B when you need a higher war score to force the peace deal you want.

[Kingreno]

Okay, some other Q's

When I ask for an alliance with a big country I get the "impossible" message, meaning 100% chance they will not accept the proposal. Playing as Holland I need an ally or 2 to even things up, how do you guys manage that?

How important are Papal scores and HRE scores? Ans Holland is supposed to leave the HRE asap, why is that?

[Shabbaman]

The AI can only get 3 alliances, that's why it's not possible to ally them most of the time.

As for the papal states, read my France AAR and look for the word "excommunication" (could be a valid strategy against Burgundy btw). HRE score is important if you have HRE ambitions, I don't think it's worth paying attention to.

[ProPain]

I dont agree HRE isn't worth while. Bonusses for being HRE emperor are huge and it's not that hard to become emperor when you're playing a dutch/belgian province. 3 electors are close and small (iirc Koln, Munster & the palatinate) vassal them and manage your relation score where necessary and their votes are almost garantueed. Usually 3 votes is enough to get the position.

[Shabbaman]

Well, by the time KR gets 3 vassals I don't think he'll be asking us for advice how to start his game. Until then, I wouldn't bother with the HRE.

[ProPain]

Played a quick Holland game to get a feel for the options:

pro:
Holland is a trade and economy beast.
I was amazed by this.in no time I had 5 merchants at all CoT's I could find. Research went fast, after 20 years (iirc) I could reach all CoT's and had 5 merchants sitting at each. Getting competed away was extremely rare so I was sitting on 5 merchants that I couldn't sent anywhere for ages. Never had that with other countries

Money was hilarious because of it. After a few years I checked the ledger and I was no 5 or something in income while only on 2 provinces and not owning a CoT. Ridiculous. As a consequence you can quickly build provinces improvements.

stability extremely easy to maintain
A consequence of the high economy and low province number. Getting back from stab 2 to 3 takes 1 or 2 months. Really fast

cons
In PU from the start
The PU is a pain. When the game started I saw Burgundy had the conquer Hainaut mission so I thought I'd be out of the PU in no time. Wrong, B just sat on it's hands and I had to wait for 20 years for the Hainaut monarch to die.

This makes for boring gameplay: you can't make alliances or royal marriages and you can only declare war on your PU partner. Soon you'll have merchants everywhere. You've built all buildings you can and a decent army. At that point you can only fast forward hoping something will happen.


strategy options
I think there are 2 options
1- sit peacefully, ride out the PU and race to Conquest of the new world
2- declare war on hainaut before you even unpause the game.

Peace option
I started playing peacefully but wasnt focussing on CofNW. Research is blazing fast so my guess is when you do focus you can reach the new world ages before anyone else and block hugs coast areas.

War option
If you send a DoW from the getgo, Hainaut will have no alliances yet. Safest way to do it. You'll take a +2 stab hit because you have no CB but wth the Holland tech rate: who cares. Hainaut is onlu a one province state so annexing it is an option, chances are Burgundy won't like it though so you'll need a sizeable army to deter them. Also you'll get 4 infamy from annexation and the HRE won't like it but that's a small price to pay for one extra province and freedom of choice

[Kingreno]

Restarted on Holland as well.

The PU is crap. I decided against War without CB as I tried that a few times and was attacked too soon. Instead this time I just dispolved the alliance and waited. This took ages. I skyrocketed om trade and tech and basicly kept out of wars. England is almost dead as Castille, Portugal, france, Burgundy and All Scandinavians are at war with her. Closer at home Burgundy took Brabant, Utrecht, Gelre and Friesland. France took Anwerpen in a war from Burgundy so France is the meanest SOB in town... She's Excommunicated all the time now. She even warned me!! Luckyli I am still at peace though I doubt this will last. I send money to France though, so it ma keep me alive.

However, all this peace has brought me to the new wolrd first! With all big navies engaged in heavy wars I got to colonise a whopping 10 lands in America! Being the only western power there is awesome. I makie a new colony every year and I may get the whole USA+Canada coast before anyone else gets in.

What would happen if France kills my European Holdings? Do I get a capital moving towards America?

[ProPain]

I see you took some speeling classes from Killer

Iirc ceding a capital province can never be part of a peace treaty. Annexing is the only option there and that's never gonna happen because you have to many overseas holdings. The good news: You'll never lose Holland.

Note that managing colonies is quite different from managing your european provinces: income works differently (dont know the ins and outs, check the wiki) and you'll have to make focused choices what to build: Magistrates will be in short supply from now on.

some tips:
- The caribbean, latin america and south america is much more valuable than N-america. Especially the latin&south american indians have huge gold reserves. Hit them before anyone else does.
- Income will be hampered when pirates block your harbors. Make sure you have enough ships to fight them of and keep trade going. Parking a ship in every coastal water will usually do the trick.
- Focus on coastal provinces first. You can only colonise inland ones from your coastal ones, so if you manage to get all coastal provinces before others arrive you can colonise the inland at you own speed. Latin america is important here because it gives access to the western american coastal provinces.
- Keep an eye on you colonial maintenance. It increases for every colony you have.
- Beware of the reformation: catholicism gives 2 settlers a year, protestantism only 1

[Shabbaman]

In my France game, I could conquer lands from north american indians beyond my colonization range (and without colonists!). They had a CoT as well. I don't know if it's always there, but that's worth looking into. Southern US and caribbean get expensive trade goods, so owning a CoT there means money. North US and Canada (yes Barbu, especially Canada) isn't worth much. Look at a province's base tax.

Moving your capital across the point is a valid strategy for European minors. Just do it.