So there I am, being a, well, I guess badboy, the entire world hates me, but there I am, minding my own business, just colonizing the Spanish main, after I had to hunt down a map to figure out that it was NOT in fact Mexico which I already conquered, and suddenly a grand opportunity comes up. I excommunicated Milan, who's a barrier between me and my Switzerland holdings, consequences be damned. Well damn if the Holy Roman Emperor and his fucking ALL CAVALRY ARMY didn't descend up my two divisions. Those outdated things won't hold, so after a solid round of getting my ass whooped by some Balkan bitch, I retreat back to Spain, hide behind France, and modernize my army. Add some artillery, rebalance my forces to a 2art/4cav/6inf mix, fix up my garrison guards so that instead of wasting potential, they've got cavalry only.
By this point my garrison duty consists mostly of Mexico, Central Turkey, a force in Greece to bounce around the Greek and Byzantine nationalists, Switzerland and Northern Italy still, and I still need to keep an eye on Africa, it just doesn't want to calm down. In the scenario that comes later, this may have been a bad idea. With all the restructuring going on, my running balance of troops I can field vs ones in uniform is less than half of 222k. Really pathetic. I mean, still the biggest in the world, but really, with maybe half on garrison duty, I sure as hell don't have much to deploy at home. Those two massacred divisions, and a third I pulled out of Greece. Thank god France doesn't give anyone else military access, otherwise Spain would NOT be a happy place to be. Those fucking Bohemians fight like ragheads, with all that calvary. You'd think they came from Central Asia. Anyhow, I finally got my first new division up and running, and to give it a spin, I thought I'd pull a sneak attack off and annex the little one province bastard that decided to declare war on me. I get in, annex, then run off...
...only to be chased by another one province minor declaring war on me because I've gone from "very very bad" to "The world agrees, this country must fall." FUCK. A quick prayer to the true god, the catholic one, for no more mishaps because I'm hated so much, and then I get a warning from just about every fair sized nation I'm near. Mamluks, Lithuanians - who are fucking huge. Second only to me, by about 10k, very scary - and the one I really care about, Hungary. Their Balkan holdings and access through Bohemia mean they can really multiply the force, leaving me with almost certain fail if I try for anything besides a white peace. No problem though, I'll just occupy, no annexations till I'm a good boy! Well, that didn't work, some one province minor piece of shit in Turkey fucking attacks me, and that sets off all those warnings, and then the situation just goes to bloody fucking hell from there. Thankfully the game crashed, and I'll make a note to start up again BEFORE either I annexed the little bastard, or before the entire war. I probably saved over the latter though.
Artillery has definitely had an impact on the battles however, though they have had a much larger impact on the success of sieges, where before it might take six months, it now may take a single assualt to bring down most strongholds.