Perhaps surprisingly by turn 52 I'm still thinking I can pull off a stalemate.
I rush troops from Holland and a few from central Germany and am able to recapture Hanover.
I realize that I need to hold Stuttgart at all costs to defend Paris, as the AI seems to have no problem at all seizing numerous defenseless cities per turn, and that's all there is between Stuttgart and Paris. I manage to get 2 cannons there to guard against an Austrian push.
I start pulling troops back - I had seized Prague with my ill-advised offensive but realize the troops are needed to fight the Austrians in the field so I pull them back. In the south, the troops I should have kept on the defensive a few turns to blunt Austria's defensive are annihilated and Trieste falls on turn 54 (and with it Lannes, who is wounded). This coincides with two British generals launching an offensive out of the Pyrenees - significant damage is inflicted on the defenders at Bayonne.
All this time, Napoleon has been conducting a fighting withdrawal out of Spain with most of the artillery I have left. He escapes by turn 55, but the artillery lags behind and a large army is reduced to a small one.
Thus, my army in Italy is shattered by my mistake of launching too early of an offensive;
My army in Spain is shattered by my mistake of launching a piece meal offensive;
My army in Germany is scattered and dealing with threats from three major powers while trying to conduct some sort of withdrawal. I consider it absolutely critical that I can hold on to the minor German powers who are a considerable source of my manpower. In a few turns it's pretty clear that I can't.
On turn 55, Verona falls, but more importantly, that damned Charles shows up just outside of Frankfurt and I have nothing to stop him. He takes the city and there goes more Allies (remember, Munich has already fallen). It is very frustrating seeing so many reinforcements stuck on the European Powers map with nowhere to go. I note that when Warsaw fell they were deleted. Did you intend to NOT do this for the German minor states (perhaps thinking no one would bungle it up as much as I did
). You may want to revisit it because it's certainly possible to mess this up enough for this to happen.
Anyway, I keep plugging away though on turn 57 Genova, Torino, and Niece all fall. In the north, I manage to beat back the British in northern Germany and "secure" this front. That's great and all. Finally something to celebrate!
Then on the same darned turn the Brits launch a naval invasion at Anvers!!! They take full advantage of the fact that I had to reduce the garrison there to fight them in northern Germany, and they land behind me. They also seize Liege that turn, as it is undefended.
At this point, I understand that the scenario is hopelessly lost and now I'm just wondering if I can prevent the fall of Paris. I abandon northern Germany, which I just secured (there is a theme emerging here of wasted offensives). I go into a full blown retreat. I have no hope of dislodging Charles from Frankfurt with the few artillery I have left (remember, it takes 9). My army east of the Rhine is in critical jeopardy of being cut off. I try to get as many as I can out. I send Napoleon to Paris to start doing administrative tasks and raising troops. It's too late. An army is cut off in Koln, but a minor action near Liege manages to open up a funnel and 6 important infantry escape.
By Turn 65, I write this with a good-sized defense force in Paris, Reims, and Brussels. I think that I can probably hold these cities indefinitely. The Brits are rolling up the Biscay coast and the Spanish are spotted approaching Clermont. I might get some relief in the future because the AI isn't being very smart Allies to one another and Britain is blocking out much of Austria and Russia's paths to get to me. Britain probably has the smallest army in the region.
I might keep the save just because it would be interesting to see if I can could salvage anything here. I think it's impossible to win of course and probably impossible at this point to even achieve a stalemate. Perhaps a partial defeat would be a good objective now
Anyway, I'm attaching it in case anyone wants to try.
In Retrospect, a list of my mistakes:
-Attacking piece meal or without a plan cost me terribly, especially in Spain.
-Not understanding that requirements to secure naval dominance left troops out of position. I chose to use them piece meal in Spain. I should have waited for them all to arrive on the border first and to attack in strength.
-Not waiting for the AI to blunt their own offensive in the war of the 5th Coalition directly resulted in my front completely collapsing, as did being unaware of the historic British landings in northern Germany, which led me to completely leave this front unsecured.
-I spent a lot of money on happiness improvements that don't really seem to have much use here. I found that I still had to use an entertainer and in many instances it probably would have just been cheaper to avoid the improvement altogether as you seem to need all three in most cities to get any benefit. A size 2 city can't even be kept happy with just one. I'm not sure if this is your doing or the game's but I'll be adjusting my strategy going forward.
-I didn't do a good job of min/maxing. I very much had a leisurely take on development and the economy at first and didn't get serious until it was too late. Turn 1 will take me considerably longer next time.
-Likewise, I didn't really bother moving Gendarmes much considering them worthless units. Thus, I had a few cities with these stacked in France when they should have been cannon fodder at the fronts. Next time, I'll be moving these too. They might do an OK job stacked on hills to slow down enemy offensives (I still think they're pretty much worthless in the cities).
-I probably should have taken greater advantage of Napoleon's administrative costs early on.
-I really needed to figure out a way to rush towards the heavier artillery to take on Zaragoza.
Some Constructive Feedback (which you need to take with a grain of salt given how poorly I did)
-I dislike the naval attrition model for a very specific reason: Villeaneuve almost always shows up in the winter, far from port, and by the time his fleet gets even to Biscay, it's half-dead. This is totally out of my control. I don't think naval attrition is all that accurate (it's not like they suddenly stop having supplies on board during winter) and I think if you want to replicate the risk of storms perhaps you should give ships the trireme flag during winter months and make the likelihood that they'll be sunk pretty small, but enough that it can happen, thus scaring the player into working along the coastline. Given that you don't allow shore bombardments during the winter I think these two things would combine to make naval operations effectively neutered during that time.
Bear in mind that you've stacked the deck against France in the first place. It's very rare for a naval shell to be able to kill a three decker in one shot but trois points routinely get destroyed by one three decker in return. In fact, pretty much any ship that's out to sea is effectively lost to another British ship out there (a slight exaggeration, but not by much). You're going to find that the people who invade England are going to tend to be either very lucky, or gaming the game. I know if I can get a few three deckers to Amsterdam quickly enough, and garrison that city with enough troops to preclude the AI from shore bombarding it, I'll be able to invade England as the AI stacks just below it and I can attack them from a city without issue.
You could remove this ability by only allowing naval munitions to generate at sea via lua, but then I suspect you'll never see anyone invade England unless you make other balancing changes.
-I will reaffirm that I dislike how hard Charles is to dislodge from a city. Maybe it's not a big deal if you're doing really well and have 9 cannons in the area. But consider that generals are pretty common in this game. If you end up fighting on numerous fronts as I did (and fighting 5-6 generals), you end up in a situation where you can't kill any of them unless they venture out. If the AI doesn't do that, you're never retaking the city they park in.
-Pulling up an improvement in the civilopedia causes the large picture to have the stock photo from the game. I think this might be a "me" issue because I think(?) there is an option in ToTPP to use the larger icon photo instead but if I'm wrong about this, consider investing some time on the internet grabbing some more appropriate photos because this is such a beautiful scenario that it really is marred with this (avoidable) glitch. If you intend someone to use a different setting, consider putting that in the installation instructions or elsewhere in the readme.
-Consider adding some minor text to the civilopedia, or utilizing the "tab" feature Prof. Garfield and I implemented in OTR, where there is some minor help for units. I'm not seeking historic information as you did with your Vietnam scenario. I think bullet points with some highlights (like you have in your game tips for the ships) would be good. "Frigate: can fire one naval shell per turn at cost of all MP" or "Napoleon: grants 50% bonus to infantry or shell attack or can use diplomatic bonus in cities." It would be good to have a handy reference in game for the changes you've made with lua. I get that you've put much of this in the readme but investing a few hours into this would, I believe, be a big help to the player.
Attached are the game save and my word document with turn by turn progress reports. This note took longer than I anticipated so I didn't fill out the excel sheet yet, but I will later.
Edit-revisit if you want to have units in training for ALL cities delete if the city is captured or not (perhaps on a delay of a turn or two to give the player a chance to recapture it). It IS possible to lose this bad!!!
All in all a top-notch scenario, truly a new standard for masterpiece. Please take all of the above constructively as I did absolutely have a blast here and am truly inspired to get cracking on my own scenario about a European megalomaniac trying to rule the world. I think there are plenty of other designers who are probably chomping at the bit to implement much of what you two did here and you should both be very proud.
. We saw the advent of lua-based scenarios with Caesar's Gallic Wars, the epitome of the macro-based work with Techuseh's outstanding Sealion, a new kind of masterpiece in Napoleon, a scenario that's jam-packed with new features in Over the Reich, and what appears to be a pretty good (but likely untested) work in African Colonies. When was the last time that five scenarios were released in one year? It's great to see things pick up steam again and wonderful to reconnect with all of you. 
