btw: Archduke, where are you practicing and what sort of work are you doing? I'll be happy to send any referrals that may come my way.

If you exempt them from taxes...

You spend 3-4 turns supressing rebels. Then you start to tax them, and you spend another 3-4 turns supressing rebels.

Better off just taxing them and annihilating the rebels in the 1st 3-4 turns.

Leave 2 infantry or dragoons in the rear and keep your main army moving. :)

Hadn't played Austria in a while, so knocked out a quick game last night (2 hours tops). Very easy to handle--build 2 of the very nice Austrian line infantry regiments a turn for three turns, then make pre-emptive strike on Ottoman empire with them and the nice little army that starts in and around Vienna. Grab Modavia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, then buy piece with the Turks in exchange for Bulgaria. Took about 3 turns. On the turn after my DOW on the Turks, Poland declared. Used the army in Galicia plus a couple of new regiments of infantry and a couple of cannons (got cannister shot on Turn 4, mobile artilllery built on turn 6) to grab Warsaw. By that time (maybe turn 8 or 9), the armies that beat up the Ottomans were streaming back north. By turn 12 I had destroyed Poland (Prussia jumped in and grabbed Danzig) and was ready to either turn back south into Asia minor, east against Russia, southwest into Italy (my personal fave) or west against Prussia (my least favorite, since Prussia makes a nice buffer against France). If pressed, I'm pretty sure I could have completed the long campaign victory conditions (30 provinces, including a bunch of stuff in central Europe) by about turn 25 or so.

I'd also forgotten that the central Euro powers start with lots of very handy pikemen. In ETW, unlike Napoleon Total War, you can change your formation after you're in melee, making pikemen very useful. They're all but invincible in square formation in melee, so you can charge them at anything and then, just as you get into melee, change to square and kick butt. A screen of those crappy little Balkan skirmish troops that seem to be everywhere is sufficient to keep them from getting nailed on the way it--at least until your opponents get improved artillery. Effective even against cavalry (which the AI is too stupid to simply move out of the way).

Mach,

How do you keep Prussia from declaring war against you on turn 3. I have tried everything and the same thing happens each time. Turn 3 Prussia declares.

Hmmm. I didn't have that problem--perhaps because I was already at war with Poland and Ottoman Empire. Prussia definitely doesn't like Poland, so maybe that made the difference. Or maybe it was because I pretty much maxed out my army building in the territories next to them in the first few turns. Still not a huge problem. Starting armies are very understrengthed and the AI builds up extremely slowly. Austria has the added advantage of overstrength line regiments (though their accuracy and reload skill are not great (see chart of infantry statshere). Decent strategy guide here, though I find it a bit conservative (probably because it assumes something like parity in tactical battles, which is just not the case once you get the hang of them)

Ok. Two more questions.

First is does another nation's missionary's roaming around your territory effect anything other then that territory's religion. My example is French Missionaries roaming around Austrian controlled Hungary. I haven't really bothered much with them because both the French and Austrians are Catholic so I figured it couldn't hurt. However, all of the sudden I am having troubles with the Hungarians striking, rioting and rebelling. I am wondering if the Missionaries are stirring things up.

Second Question. I am playing the long campaigin (1799 end date). If I am able to get my victory conditions before 1799 does the game end or do I have to hold them until them until 1799.

My situation is that I am playing Austria. It is 1757 and I control 28/30 in territories and 8/8 of the specific targets. If I get 30/30 before 1799 does the game end or does it continue until 1799 with me having to defend the 30/30 from outside attacks?

Machiavelli wrote:btw: Archduke, where are you practicing and what sort of work are you doing? I'll be happy to send any referrals that may come my way.

Mach, Sorry I never responded to this. I tried to respond via PM but could never get it to go through. I live in the Northeastern Philadelphia Suburbs and I guess you could say I am a GP.

Basically, my situation is that I graduated law school in 2006 but went to work for a PA State Senate after working on a doc review contract. Unfortunately, my position was eliminated in March of this year due to the state's budget issues. The problem is that I have no practice experience. Combine this with the 2009 dissolution of Wolf Block, it is very hard to find any firms interested. So I decided to do what I needed to get some practice experience.

Archduke Russell John wrote:Second Question. I am playing the long campaigin (1799 end date). If I am able to get my victory conditions before 1799 does the game end or do I have to hold them until them until 1799.

My situation is that I am playing Austria. It is 1757 and I control 28/30 in territories and 8/8 of the specific targets. If I get 30/30 before 1799 does the game end or does it continue until 1799 with me having to defend the 30/30 from outside attacks?

Once you get the victory conditions, you have won, but you can carry on up to 1799 if you want.

I'm not sure on the missionaries thing. I've always seemed to have different religion missionaries around so always tried to get rid of them as quickly as possible if I couldn't overwhelm them with my own.

Generally, however, you just always have to keep an eye on the happiness levels in each province and they will get worse over time unless you build the right buildings etc.

danivon wrote:Once you get the victory conditions, you have won, but you can carry on up to 1799 if you want.

Well I wish I would have known that before I ended my war with the Ottoman leaving them with two territories (believe it or not, my Austria controls Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Anatolia.

danivon wrote:I'm not sure on the missionaries thing. I've always seemed to have different religion missionaries around so always tried to get rid of them as quickly as possible if I couldn't overwhelm them with my own.

How do you get rid of them. I have tried sending a Rake to assassinate them but they always fail, I have sent Gentlemen to duel them but they only duel other Gentlemen and sending my one Missionary or military unit doesn't seem to have any effect on them.

danivon wrote:Generally, however, you just always have to keep an eye on the happiness levels in each province and they will get worse over time unless you build the right buildings etc.

I think this may be the problem. I have spent so much time at war lately that I have had to neglect my construction.

Persevere with rakes. You won't get one who can go after bigger fish without them getting some practice in

My next question is what do I need to do to trade technology. I can't seem to get anybody to trade with me even those who are friendly or very friendly to me refuse a trade. Even if I offer 4 of my tech's to 1 of theirs.

Is it more a money thing?

I have no specific answer, but you have reminded me that it's been ages since I last played ETW. From my recollections, I try to research as fast as I can, so trading tech is easier if I want to. Most offered trades will be imbalanced against you, So I tend not to do it.

When I fire up the game again, I'll also see what foreign missionaries of the same religion do (or don't do).

havent yet tried ETW. But it sounds so different from MTw II and RTW.

I recently reinstalled RTW after many years away from the game and decided to download the Europa Barbarorum mod for it. I'm hooked. This is soooo much better than the original game. Much more challenging and realistic with masses of extra detail. The amount of effort that must have to go into creating a total conversion mod for a major game is frightening. A few years ago I had a go at some very basic level modifications of RTW myself (mostly just changing things to allow retrainable mercenaries and a few other very basic adjustments). It took absolutely ages to get everything right so the game wouldn't crash. These guys have created a whole new map, complete new roster of units with new skins for each, new ingame music, new sound effects (they even hired actors to do authentic sounding speech for various ancient languages) and all kinds of other stuff. By the time they'd finished RTW was obselete as both MTW2 and ETW had already been released. Completely bonkers, but they have at least created the game that RTW ought to have been.