How best to run a war?

[DarkCloud]

Well... What do you usually do to run a war?
Take out a loan?
Have over 100 gold in reserve?

[uglyduck]

Newver, ever take out a loan unless the game forces you to.
Have a look thro the official fiorums as mentioned elsewhere. There is a very good FAQ section.
If asking questions then please make sure that it is clear you are talking about EU1

[Kyle]

If you can recover stability very quickly, take out War Taxes in the second half of the year of every year you're at war. I did that with my last game as the Papal States and for the first time, war was more profitable for me than peace time.

[Victor Galis]

Keep a large standing army to always be ready to fight a war. Wartime is different only in that your army is sitting around an enemy fort instead of at home. Be more powerful than your enemies (Easy for me to say, I'm France and my allies are England, Castile and Scotland... oh yeah, not like some major power can catch me unprepared) If you can not keep an army large enough to win a war just sitting around, keep as large of an army as you can build and pray it's enough. Infrastructure building is for when you're sure that no one will attack you, or when you have enough defenses.

Situation where you take out a loan: You're Moldova. It's the beginning of the game and you have a strong urge to beat Hungary into the ground. (Make sure you have allies.) In EU1 I annexed Hungary in under 10 years as Moldova with a pair of loans for army building. That made my country a lot more playable.

[DarkCloud]

Okay, thank you...

But, just wondering- how would the computer assemble an army from 20 to 90 in 3 years?

(This happened in a game wehre Russia declared war on Poland) Poland's army went from 20-70 in one year, and then to 90 in 3 !!!

How much money did you spend on your army to attack Hungary?
I was austria and I could hardly steal even one province from Bohemia with about 30 or 40 soldiers!

[Shadowstrike]

Use efficient stacks of combined arms. Calvary is for beating down enemy armies, infantry and arty are for sieges. Build your forces accordingly, dodge the enemy armies and march in quickly in seperate stacks of about 20 or 30 thousand, sieging multiple provinces. Get the capital and a few desired provinces, then offer peace.

If you're playing EU2 this would be a little more complex.

[The Andy-Man]

basically what i do (in EU1) is always have twice as many troops oin a province bordering a potentiall enemy (i am france, spain is in artois with 50, i have 80 in il de france and another 50 in chapaign for example). also, whenever i end up in war, due to the fact i have imense sized armies i storm alot of provinces quickly, remember do worry about them being in your country as much, just make sure you takeover more of theirs so when peace comes round you get 3 provinces even though they had hauled uo uin 3 of yours (you in 7 of theirs :P)

[St Leo]

also, whenever i end up in war, due to the fact i have imense sized armies i storm alot of provinces quickly,

Massive armies are very expensive in EU2 because of support being linked to manpower.

[The Andy-Man]

well, in EU1 a nice big army is helpful - i knocked the spanish out of a war in less then 6months.

[Dauphin]

Blitzkreig is good.

I just split my army up into several divisions, each division just large enough to lay siege. The enemy cannot build fresh troops if you lay siege to all provinces, and either way you get maximum pillage and reduction in their tax raising powers.

I am still waiting for EU2 to come out. x ¥

[Carolus_Rex]

It all depends on when in the game I am.
If I'm the little minor with not much to choose from, it's choosing wars wisely etc.

Otherwise, when I'm larger than life, I just jump in on anyone with 500 000 troops or so.

Though, for preparing, always save up some money, build the army u think will be sufficient, and build another one, so u don't run outta troops.