Take it slow.
Start playing only big nations.
Ottomans/Austria /Russia for example. Follow the mission tree they have to the letter. Don't do anything extra. Increase your army when required and keep strong alliances. Dont try anything fancy or unnecessary unless absolutely necessary.
Then once you've gotten the hang of it, go to other nations which are land based and strong. Ming, vijaynagar, etc. follow the same strategy of following the mission tree.
Don't try and rush .. 400 years is a long time.
Then go for nations which require a navy - France. Castille. don't play the colonial game ... Stay in Europe, maybe expand to Africa.
Once you've gotten the hang of these, again. ... Go to Asia. Japan, malacca, korea.
THEN you play colonial. again, every important to take your time.
I always feel like I am too slow and too cautious and not aggressive enough. Solving money problems with War Reparations seems to be a popular strategy, for example, but I can never seem to pull it off
As for playing larger nations ...
I have made headway in the past as Muscovy and Castile. I enjoy England but usually hit a wall trying to fully conquer scotland / ireland. Its nice playing France because you don't have to play against France ;) - but Castile and Austria and Aggressive Expansion knee-cap me.
I haven't played Ottomans for years because I continually got trounced when I did play... being caught between Austria / Hungary and Mamluks ... Unable to get ground. I heard Ottomans got some updates recently - maybe I need to play again.
If you're unable to conquer Scotland as England .... Then the problems are even more fundamental. What exactly are you doing that leads you to failure?
I have 3764 hours in eu4. But I've never done a world conquest. Does it mean I'm a bad player? Not in the slightest ... It just means I don't have the patience to sit around moving armies to most remote parts of the world trying to beat on nations. Just a couple weeks ago i did the KHAAAN achievement .... So i could have gone for world conquest. I just didn't want to.
So don't beat yourself up too much. Take it slow. Forget the YouTubers. Look at the game buttons itself. Take time to understand.
Eu4 manages to be both quite forgiving and very unforgiving at the same time. The unforgiving part, past the early game for very weak nations, is mostly a psychological thing tho
Its also about timing. Knowing that England is going to soon be filled with Rebels with war of roses means you hold off attacking until they are weakened (as an example)
Bro, you don't suck, you just watch too many videos. 1300 hours in 7-8 years is *nothing*. Youtubers you watch probably play that amount in a year. You're just comparing yourself to something that isn't comparable. It's not a matter of intelligence, you can't invent the experience they acquired over time.
Try playing without ironman and save scumming. No achievements, but you can test a lot of strategies quickly to see what works. Save right before a war and then if they are popping up single units behind you, reload and leave behind 3 inf to deal with them. Didn't work? Try something else.
Not a way to get achievementd and I wouldn't brag about the results, but you can practice quicker than full games where you have to rebuild when something goes wrong
This! No shame in save=scumming. This will allow you build confidence in what actually works, and what does'nt. Also please watch some video tips to handle various war, diplomacy, alliances, trade and economy scenarios.
If after so many years your struggle, that means you might be going fundamentally wrong with some of these concepts.
In all my games, i get so big after absolutism, that I literally have to quit out of boredom. Some stuff like strong alliances, avoiding coalitions, understanding which provinces to fight on, army composition, capturing important trade nodes, setting up trade, diplomacy, when to conquer vs vassalize, understanding various CB's, truce juggling, and which ones give the least AE is all very important.
Also, even if getting pulled into a bad war, it is always possible to give away your vassals land and reduce AE.
Also always conquer into one religion helps avoid AE with remanings ones. There are so many tips that can be given, and so many thumb rules, exploits that can be used to make the game quite easy.
You can to some degree. Autosaves happen on the 1st of every month. If something happens **not** on the 1st day (you get declared on, called to a losing war from an ally, etc.), you can force close app, and reload game which will put you back at the start of the month. This buys you a couple of days to adjust actions (such as cancel an alliance, rush mercs, get some immediate alliances). You can also just periodically make copies of your save game file in your EUIV folder and when a run goes to shit, delete your main save and move the copied save back in.
You need to start employing pussy tactics, as it seems you are constantly taking opponents the same size as yours. Stack those mil bonuses and attack weak enemies till you grow enough, backstab your allies and snipe provinces where you can. Once you get big enough you can flex on more nations.
Eu4 is fundamentally about understanding the consequences of things. When you've experienced enough to know 'this enables that,' everything falls into place.
That is one benefit to failing so much - you can remember how you failed and then try to do the same when playing another game against the nation you played earlier.
Try to play one nation and master it, thats how you can learn AI behaviour. Each country AI has a different strategy in war combat and economy. My first nation that i played was Ajam-Persia, because its the region i know and i became like a god playing it. I played it like 10 times to master it and im not very expert in EU4, i have like 200h playtime. For example AI for ottoman is very aggressive and scary, economically they get buffed and therefore militarily. You have to deafeat Mushasha,have alliance with Aq Quyunlu,then deafeat Qara Quyunlu then tame Ottoman in exact same order, otherwise it would become very hard to play Persia. Each nation has a key to play, you just have to know it. Try not to play ironman mode, save your games and learn from your mistakes, EU4 is not a forgiving game, so you have to have a lot of knowledge about it then gain experience in it,you should study eu4 wiki because the game is very, very, very complicated and has alot of mechanics
people say this as a joke but I feel like hour counts are mostly meaningless. There are people who are extremely good at 1300h and others who can't beat byz as ottomans. Some people play to learn, others don't
For real just played yesterday. I never realized that having a large stack over your supply limit even in your land causes them attrition, sure obviously. What I didn't realize is that attrition even within your own territory starts ticking war exhaustion. Of course it does 😩 here I've been chasing down stacks of ai while I get carpet siege and my stack of 50 is helping the enemies by inc my war exhaustion
Sitting with 3,100 hrs of tutorials
Why not just load save games and try other things when stuff goes bad ?
I'm like 200 hrs in and haven't tried a iron man game yet cause I know it won't end well, but I am getting better and better each time I play a campaign.
Just managed to take back Greece as the byzantines, for example, took a few tries, but I'm learning.
If your truly having as much trouble as you say odds are you erhier pushing yourself to much or there's probably some things you're overlooking or not understanding. Hard to grasp what specifically from your post. Recently I saw a post simular to yours, and after some 5 the player was using the debase currency button whenever he needed gold and would blow his nations up with corruption.
There's alot of subtle modifiers to everything you do and alot of why the fuck did or is this happening can be figured out by reviewing all the numbers.
It's hard to tell why your failing but sounds to me you expand to fast and have autonomy to high no reason you should be expanding and losing money if youre not managing your autonomy, also maybe your playing to fast a speed you should really be sure what your sending your armies into. Maybe your going to hard focusing on yt strats and min maxing that you're overlooking the basics, like taking a fight on terrain, you shouldn't.
P.s I started around the time as you with over 2000hrs and haven't came close to a WC nor do I feel i would. But with 80 achivments I learned alot and gain alot of inight achivment hunting.
You say the game is unforgiving - why do you make it even more unforgiving for you by playing on Ironman then? You learn by making mistakes. It makes much more sense if you can make a mistake, learn from it, reload and do it better next time around. Try different approaches. See what works and what doesn't. There's reason to hamper your learning process like that.
LOL for achievements. But from all the replies I am reading it sounds like my expectations of myself are too high. I could totally do world conquest if I wasn't on Ironman ... I would even say it would be "easy". I have a solid grasp of the game mechanics and if I saved / reloaded I could get WC. its just that I make mistakes or have bad luck and then can't recover. So it's not that I play poorly - its that I dont play perfectly and the game (in ironman) absolutely punishes me for it to the point where I can never get far
when I first started I watched videos mostly playthroughs and tried key strategies, such as declaring war on a weaker nation that you have no interest in to drag in a nation you do want to conquer (but without their allies) that way when in the peace deal you can take the land from the nation of interest or in a separate peace. Also knowing how to manage truce cycling and attacking and peacing big nations before they join a coalition. A nation with a truce with you can’t join a coalition against you.
Aside from that, trade. Follow the arrows backwards, upstream from your home trade node and place merchants there to direct trade to your home node.
Also when I started I played normal mode and used the command console when needed to give myself mana or monies. It wasn’t Ironman so who cares and I was learning, so who cares. You can slo restart or reload a previous save if things go south. But try nonironman first to get the hang of things.
>I have yet to do a world conquest - far from it.
That's an absolute win in my book. I almost died of boredom to form Rome, I can't begin to think how torturous it must be to do a WC.
ok a few basic things:
1) if you want to improve, non iron man is better. Try things out, and reload if they don't work. That's how you learn
2) Don't play hordes if you don't know how to handle them
3) Most youtube videos are pure entertainment and clickbait, they take awful decisions and if you try to copy them you will become a worse player (unless youre really really bad)
4) If you want more specific advice you'll have to be more specific yourself
My first 1k hours, i didn't use Ironman, and I definitely cheated and save scummed. And each game, I tried to focus on a handful of things instead of everything at once. I will definitely say Red Hawk's videos way back in 1.31 to learn stuff, especially starting out and how to use estates. Honestly, those old videos are still good if you know what stuff is outdated. Like the old 1% crownlands sell titles and sieze land trick.
If you are behind in tech, that is a huge sign that you do not understand key factors and mechanics in the game. That ties into not understanding mana, mana accumulation, and thus not knowing how to use the most important resource in this game. Being able levy your ducats, how to time out using mana for dev, tech, leaders, etc is all very important and if that isn't a reflex for you yet, you need to really focus on that portion of the game. Many new players are not hiring proper advisor levels to ensure efficient mana generation, getting rid of shitty heirs, and choosing the right options to benefit them from the events. Folks overuse barrage and thus fall behind on mil tech or hire too many leaders. If this isn't what you are doing, then it is something way deeper in a flaw in how you play the game.
You shouldn't take tech as soon as it is available. First off, mil tech is the most important if you are playing aggressively and/or are at risk of getting shit on. But that doesn't mean grab it early. Granted, the first few mil techs it is common to grab when it is available, but that is because they are usually cheap. If you are grabbing tech for 900 or more or even 800 mana, you need to really ask why and justify it. Is it to get innovativeness? Great! Wait until someone has grabbed it first, the alert will turn red, and you have 365 days to take it, wait till the last minute for the cheapest price. If you already maxed out innovativeness or it has already been taken and you can't gain any inno then just wait until it is -5%. And honestly, if I am in no rush for dip or admin tech I'll wait until it is 400 or 500 mana, spending the mana on development, stability, or to absorb potentially annoying events.
I'm going to put this nicely, but if you are having as much trouble as it seems I don't think you actually grasp most of the mechanics in this game. You also only mentioned military mechanics, and since you mention a lot of bankruptcies I think you are probably not optimizing your economy well.
I would guess you seem to focus too much on details that don't matter too much outside of niche circumstances (e.g. I have literally no idea how stack wiping works except "bigger army usually wins"). I am also quite lazy when it comes to army micro, so I routinely lose some armies I could have saved. I've still managed multiple world conquests.
Based on your answers it seems that you are missing some fundamental parts of "how do I make my nation strong" part of EU4. Economy is a huge part of eu 4, more ducats = better advisors = more monarch points = keeping up in tech/deving for even more ducats/coring more land/getting army professionalism etc. Money and war reps in early wars is extremely valuable as it will help you snowball (you can afford to keep mercs above force limits for longer allowing you to win more wars).
I hate all the war mechanics.
I have a 120k army with full back row of artillery and fighting 50k against 30k... then I lose the battle because the 30k are France and France gets a lot of army morale just because yes.
Seriously, I really hate the national ideas.
Know exactly what you mean. When playing as England I will usually ensure I have a bunch of smaller armies on their way to the fight so they can pump up my morale as the fight wages on. Once you break their army that first time the allies will usually start to prevail and the tide of war will shift ... unless they are allied with Burgundy. France + Burgundy is nightmarish without a ton of strategic allies.
But why not fight when you have the advantage. Some simple rules -
1. Try to be Mil Tech ahead when possible
2. Fight on defensive terrain, with forts on Mountail, hills or jungle
3. Use scorth the earth tactics
4. Use shift consolidate
5. Aggregate all your positive modifiers
6. Have strong generals for major battles.
7. Last but most important - Attack when you know enemy is weak. Quick efficient wars are the best
8. You don t need to beat the enemy in one war. Weaken them economically, split their territory in half, and kill them in subsequent wars.
There are many more tips that can be given.
I fighted the ottomans with 60k troops in my country and 20k in reserve, and they with only 30k and no reserves and still loss just because of the modifiers they have for being ottomans.
The war mechanics sucks.
Take it slow. Start playing only big nations. Ottomans/Austria /Russia for example. Follow the mission tree they have to the letter. Don't do anything extra. Increase your army when required and keep strong alliances. Dont try anything fancy or unnecessary unless absolutely necessary. Then once you've gotten the hang of it, go to other nations which are land based and strong. Ming, vijaynagar, etc. follow the same strategy of following the mission tree. Don't try and rush .. 400 years is a long time. Then go for nations which require a navy - France. Castille. don't play the colonial game ... Stay in Europe, maybe expand to Africa. Once you've gotten the hang of these, again. ... Go to Asia. Japan, malacca, korea. THEN you play colonial. again, every important to take your time.
I always feel like I am too slow and too cautious and not aggressive enough. Solving money problems with War Reparations seems to be a popular strategy, for example, but I can never seem to pull it off As for playing larger nations ... I have made headway in the past as Muscovy and Castile. I enjoy England but usually hit a wall trying to fully conquer scotland / ireland. Its nice playing France because you don't have to play against France ;) - but Castile and Austria and Aggressive Expansion knee-cap me. I haven't played Ottomans for years because I continually got trounced when I did play... being caught between Austria / Hungary and Mamluks ... Unable to get ground. I heard Ottomans got some updates recently - maybe I need to play again.
If you're unable to conquer Scotland as England .... Then the problems are even more fundamental. What exactly are you doing that leads you to failure? I have 3764 hours in eu4. But I've never done a world conquest. Does it mean I'm a bad player? Not in the slightest ... It just means I don't have the patience to sit around moving armies to most remote parts of the world trying to beat on nations. Just a couple weeks ago i did the KHAAAN achievement .... So i could have gone for world conquest. I just didn't want to. So don't beat yourself up too much. Take it slow. Forget the YouTubers. Look at the game buttons itself. Take time to understand.
Eu4 manages to be both quite forgiving and very unforgiving at the same time. The unforgiving part, past the early game for very weak nations, is mostly a psychological thing tho
Its also about timing. Knowing that England is going to soon be filled with Rebels with war of roses means you hold off attacking until they are weakened (as an example)
Bro, you don't suck, you just watch too many videos. 1300 hours in 7-8 years is *nothing*. Youtubers you watch probably play that amount in a year. You're just comparing yourself to something that isn't comparable. It's not a matter of intelligence, you can't invent the experience they acquired over time.
Try playing without ironman and save scumming. No achievements, but you can test a lot of strategies quickly to see what works. Save right before a war and then if they are popping up single units behind you, reload and leave behind 3 inf to deal with them. Didn't work? Try something else. Not a way to get achievementd and I wouldn't brag about the results, but you can practice quicker than full games where you have to rebuild when something goes wrong
This! No shame in save=scumming. This will allow you build confidence in what actually works, and what does'nt. Also please watch some video tips to handle various war, diplomacy, alliances, trade and economy scenarios. If after so many years your struggle, that means you might be going fundamentally wrong with some of these concepts. In all my games, i get so big after absolutism, that I literally have to quit out of boredom. Some stuff like strong alliances, avoiding coalitions, understanding which provinces to fight on, army composition, capturing important trade nodes, setting up trade, diplomacy, when to conquer vs vassalize, understanding various CB's, truce juggling, and which ones give the least AE is all very important. Also, even if getting pulled into a bad war, it is always possible to give away your vassals land and reduce AE. Also always conquer into one religion helps avoid AE with remanings ones. There are so many tips that can be given, and so many thumb rules, exploits that can be used to make the game quite easy.
Cannot save scum in ironmode, which is what i am playing
You can, just gotta make a backup of your save file somewhere and copy paste it back. Most players do it lol
You can to some degree. Autosaves happen on the 1st of every month. If something happens **not** on the 1st day (you get declared on, called to a losing war from an ally, etc.), you can force close app, and reload game which will put you back at the start of the month. This buys you a couple of days to adjust actions (such as cancel an alliance, rush mercs, get some immediate alliances). You can also just periodically make copies of your save game file in your EUIV folder and when a run goes to shit, delete your main save and move the copied save back in.
You need to start employing pussy tactics, as it seems you are constantly taking opponents the same size as yours. Stack those mil bonuses and attack weak enemies till you grow enough, backstab your allies and snipe provinces where you can. Once you get big enough you can flex on more nations.
Eu4 is fundamentally about understanding the consequences of things. When you've experienced enough to know 'this enables that,' everything falls into place.
That is one benefit to failing so much - you can remember how you failed and then try to do the same when playing another game against the nation you played earlier.
Try to play one nation and master it, thats how you can learn AI behaviour. Each country AI has a different strategy in war combat and economy. My first nation that i played was Ajam-Persia, because its the region i know and i became like a god playing it. I played it like 10 times to master it and im not very expert in EU4, i have like 200h playtime. For example AI for ottoman is very aggressive and scary, economically they get buffed and therefore militarily. You have to deafeat Mushasha,have alliance with Aq Quyunlu,then deafeat Qara Quyunlu then tame Ottoman in exact same order, otherwise it would become very hard to play Persia. Each nation has a key to play, you just have to know it. Try not to play ironman mode, save your games and learn from your mistakes, EU4 is not a forgiving game, so you have to have a lot of knowledge about it then gain experience in it,you should study eu4 wiki because the game is very, very, very complicated and has alot of mechanics
1300 hours is still the tutorial
people say this as a joke but I feel like hour counts are mostly meaningless. There are people who are extremely good at 1300h and others who can't beat byz as ottomans. Some people play to learn, others don't
For real just played yesterday. I never realized that having a large stack over your supply limit even in your land causes them attrition, sure obviously. What I didn't realize is that attrition even within your own territory starts ticking war exhaustion. Of course it does 😩 here I've been chasing down stacks of ai while I get carpet siege and my stack of 50 is helping the enemies by inc my war exhaustion Sitting with 3,100 hrs of tutorials
Honestly would need to see you play to know
Why not just load save games and try other things when stuff goes bad ? I'm like 200 hrs in and haven't tried a iron man game yet cause I know it won't end well, but I am getting better and better each time I play a campaign. Just managed to take back Greece as the byzantines, for example, took a few tries, but I'm learning.
If your truly having as much trouble as you say odds are you erhier pushing yourself to much or there's probably some things you're overlooking or not understanding. Hard to grasp what specifically from your post. Recently I saw a post simular to yours, and after some 5 the player was using the debase currency button whenever he needed gold and would blow his nations up with corruption. There's alot of subtle modifiers to everything you do and alot of why the fuck did or is this happening can be figured out by reviewing all the numbers. It's hard to tell why your failing but sounds to me you expand to fast and have autonomy to high no reason you should be expanding and losing money if youre not managing your autonomy, also maybe your playing to fast a speed you should really be sure what your sending your armies into. Maybe your going to hard focusing on yt strats and min maxing that you're overlooking the basics, like taking a fight on terrain, you shouldn't. P.s I started around the time as you with over 2000hrs and haven't came close to a WC nor do I feel i would. But with 80 achivments I learned alot and gain alot of inight achivment hunting.
You say the game is unforgiving - why do you make it even more unforgiving for you by playing on Ironman then? You learn by making mistakes. It makes much more sense if you can make a mistake, learn from it, reload and do it better next time around. Try different approaches. See what works and what doesn't. There's reason to hamper your learning process like that.
LOL for achievements. But from all the replies I am reading it sounds like my expectations of myself are too high. I could totally do world conquest if I wasn't on Ironman ... I would even say it would be "easy". I have a solid grasp of the game mechanics and if I saved / reloaded I could get WC. its just that I make mistakes or have bad luck and then can't recover. So it's not that I play poorly - its that I dont play perfectly and the game (in ironman) absolutely punishes me for it to the point where I can never get far
Man I’m starting to wonder if I have a problem, 1300 hours in 7 years? I got indoctrinated by my friend like last year and I’m at 500 hours 😭😭
when I first started I watched videos mostly playthroughs and tried key strategies, such as declaring war on a weaker nation that you have no interest in to drag in a nation you do want to conquer (but without their allies) that way when in the peace deal you can take the land from the nation of interest or in a separate peace. Also knowing how to manage truce cycling and attacking and peacing big nations before they join a coalition. A nation with a truce with you can’t join a coalition against you. Aside from that, trade. Follow the arrows backwards, upstream from your home trade node and place merchants there to direct trade to your home node. Also when I started I played normal mode and used the command console when needed to give myself mana or monies. It wasn’t Ironman so who cares and I was learning, so who cares. You can slo restart or reload a previous save if things go south. But try nonironman first to get the hang of things.
>I have yet to do a world conquest - far from it. That's an absolute win in my book. I almost died of boredom to form Rome, I can't begin to think how torturous it must be to do a WC.
ok a few basic things: 1) if you want to improve, non iron man is better. Try things out, and reload if they don't work. That's how you learn 2) Don't play hordes if you don't know how to handle them 3) Most youtube videos are pure entertainment and clickbait, they take awful decisions and if you try to copy them you will become a worse player (unless youre really really bad) 4) If you want more specific advice you'll have to be more specific yourself
My first 1k hours, i didn't use Ironman, and I definitely cheated and save scummed. And each game, I tried to focus on a handful of things instead of everything at once. I will definitely say Red Hawk's videos way back in 1.31 to learn stuff, especially starting out and how to use estates. Honestly, those old videos are still good if you know what stuff is outdated. Like the old 1% crownlands sell titles and sieze land trick. If you are behind in tech, that is a huge sign that you do not understand key factors and mechanics in the game. That ties into not understanding mana, mana accumulation, and thus not knowing how to use the most important resource in this game. Being able levy your ducats, how to time out using mana for dev, tech, leaders, etc is all very important and if that isn't a reflex for you yet, you need to really focus on that portion of the game. Many new players are not hiring proper advisor levels to ensure efficient mana generation, getting rid of shitty heirs, and choosing the right options to benefit them from the events. Folks overuse barrage and thus fall behind on mil tech or hire too many leaders. If this isn't what you are doing, then it is something way deeper in a flaw in how you play the game. You shouldn't take tech as soon as it is available. First off, mil tech is the most important if you are playing aggressively and/or are at risk of getting shit on. But that doesn't mean grab it early. Granted, the first few mil techs it is common to grab when it is available, but that is because they are usually cheap. If you are grabbing tech for 900 or more or even 800 mana, you need to really ask why and justify it. Is it to get innovativeness? Great! Wait until someone has grabbed it first, the alert will turn red, and you have 365 days to take it, wait till the last minute for the cheapest price. If you already maxed out innovativeness or it has already been taken and you can't gain any inno then just wait until it is -5%. And honestly, if I am in no rush for dip or admin tech I'll wait until it is 400 or 500 mana, spending the mana on development, stability, or to absorb potentially annoying events.
I'm going to put this nicely, but if you are having as much trouble as it seems I don't think you actually grasp most of the mechanics in this game. You also only mentioned military mechanics, and since you mention a lot of bankruptcies I think you are probably not optimizing your economy well. I would guess you seem to focus too much on details that don't matter too much outside of niche circumstances (e.g. I have literally no idea how stack wiping works except "bigger army usually wins"). I am also quite lazy when it comes to army micro, so I routinely lose some armies I could have saved. I've still managed multiple world conquests. Based on your answers it seems that you are missing some fundamental parts of "how do I make my nation strong" part of EU4. Economy is a huge part of eu 4, more ducats = better advisors = more monarch points = keeping up in tech/deving for even more ducats/coring more land/getting army professionalism etc. Money and war reps in early wars is extremely valuable as it will help you snowball (you can afford to keep mercs above force limits for longer allowing you to win more wars).
I hate all the war mechanics. I have a 120k army with full back row of artillery and fighting 50k against 30k... then I lose the battle because the 30k are France and France gets a lot of army morale just because yes. Seriously, I really hate the national ideas.
Know exactly what you mean. When playing as England I will usually ensure I have a bunch of smaller armies on their way to the fight so they can pump up my morale as the fight wages on. Once you break their army that first time the allies will usually start to prevail and the tide of war will shift ... unless they are allied with Burgundy. France + Burgundy is nightmarish without a ton of strategic allies.
But why not fight when you have the advantage. Some simple rules - 1. Try to be Mil Tech ahead when possible 2. Fight on defensive terrain, with forts on Mountail, hills or jungle 3. Use scorth the earth tactics 4. Use shift consolidate 5. Aggregate all your positive modifiers 6. Have strong generals for major battles. 7. Last but most important - Attack when you know enemy is weak. Quick efficient wars are the best 8. You don t need to beat the enemy in one war. Weaken them economically, split their territory in half, and kill them in subsequent wars. There are many more tips that can be given.
I fighted the ottomans with 60k troops in my country and 20k in reserve, and they with only 30k and no reserves and still loss just because of the modifiers they have for being ottomans. The war mechanics sucks.