14 DAY TRIAL // I have two of the third tier military techs researched and I have called on Von Moltke to launch his reforms of the armed forces, which gives me another small edge when it comes to my coming battles against Austria and its allies.
I still believe that I might fail in my attempt to defeat the united forces of Great Britain, Russia, Sweden and Austria, although I have done pretty much all the preparatory moves I can think about.
So finally I make my move, declaring war on Austria, calling all my minor allies and stating that my main aim was to achieve Hegemony over the Germanic people.
I then hope for the best and start moving my armies around.
Victoria II is a game where war is never at the center of the action, and when the game first launched, a lot of players complained about something called “ping-pong battles”, a situation describing the fact that defeated armies retreated soon and fast enough that a big war became a matter of simply stomping on enemy troops and diminishing their numbers via a long series of separate battles.
The development team has tried to address the problem by making morale more important, but making battles longer lasting and A House Divided is much better when it comes to war.
Unfortunately, the changes also mean that huge killer stacks, and Austria is quick in assembling one, tend to rule the battlefield, especially when the fight takes place in a narrow strip of land at the border.
To cut a long war short, I failed to combine my armies quick enough and my troops got defeated piecemeal by a larger Austria stack while smaller Russian armies went unopposed as they conquered the whole Baltic Coast.
I mobilized my poor strata to try and mount a comeback and managed to stop the advance for a couple of years, but then the forces of the United Kingdom came via Hamburg after establishing a blockade and finished me off.
Such failure would not be tolerated by the nobility of Prussia, so I decided to simply quit, reload and then try again.