Okay so I'm cruising along as England. I colonized half of North America, united with Scotland. My economy is great, my manpower was up around 28,000. Now I look over and notice my biggest competition is France, and I want to knock him down a few pegs. So I ally with one of France's neighbors, Lorraine, in the hopes of getting into a fight with France. Sure enough, about 5 years later, I get the call to arms. The year is 1540 or so.

So I go in feeling rather cocky. I have the largest navy in the world, and the production is squish France (or so I thought). But the problem is, I just can't seem to deliver. In this war, I send in a few armies and they get utterly crushed. I send in larger armies, and they still get crushed. I barely scratch them. It's really frustrating.

Does anyone have tips on midgame wars for this game (i.e. after Cavalry stop outright dominating the game). I think I would enjoy the game more if I didn't dread having to go to war so much!

What is your technology level in land compared to them?

14 each

Oh, and I'm playing vanilla, unpatched.

I'd patch the game and get the two expansions, they are definately worth it :)

I don't even have the $8 to buy the package deal from amazon >.<

If their generals are better than yours, you will have trouble.

If their generals are better than yours, you will have trouble.
Indeed, generals often decide the outcome. Even if you have low tradition I'd get some generals as they're still better than none...

oh, and I'm not sure: does discipline exists in vanilla? Since that plays a major role in how many casualties there are.

what unit types to you use for your infantry and cavalery? Do you attack from the ship/across a river? What is your Quality/Quantity slider?

My first attack, I decided to try to create a stack of about 5000 Latin Cavalry. And send them across the channel to eliminate their armies, whilst I prepared a larger army of about 7 or 8000 of Latin Infantry and Cannon to go in and follow behind the cavalry, besieging the provinces. Then I planned to have another smaller, more mixed army to defend the captured territory.

The cavalry worked for a while, and won their first few battles. But as I was sending in my besieging force, the cavalry lost big. Then my besieging force got wiped out immediately afterwards. After that, I created a much larger mixed force of artillery, cavalry, and infantry of about 11,000 men. I sent them in, and they got crushed too. I made sure that most of my fights were defensive (I'd wait for them to come at me). Also, all my armies had generals (but, since it was my first war, my tradition was set at 0%).

I continued trying to send in armies, and they all seemed to get wiped out, so, with a warscore of 1 or 2% (I won all my naval battles, plus a couple in the colonies), I was forced to pay them about 200 ducats. It was outrageous. :mad:

I think my main problem, is that I simply don't know how to fight wars in this game.

You don't send in a stack to fight alone, land several armies with cavalry/infantry to fight off the enemy and infantry/cannon to siege provinces.

The other thing is once you invade, the AI will start concentrating forces to repel it - so it sounds like you allowed the AI to concentrate without sending over adequate follow up forces.

Don't know vanilla at all, but in IN, half the problem with fighting France is their NIs. They nearly always seem to take Military Drill as their first and often Battlefield Commisions as their second, which means their troops have a large boost to morale (for the early game at least), and they've generally got better generals. A high shock general leading high morale troops is downright scary, particularly when, as with France, they probably outnumber you too.