Been playing EUIII again, this time as Muscovy. Slow expansion, made my way down towards the Caucus', and formed the motherland around 1580. A rather boring game this time around in relation to previous ones, until 1610. On march 14, I began the Crimean war about 140 years, and it was one of the bloodiest battles ever to grace the earth. You look at China, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and nobody fielded troops enough to mount to the casualties this battle created. There won't be another conflict like this for 100 years or so.
Lined up around Armenia to the Black Sea, I stood on the border of the Ottomans ready to defeat, what I thought, would be a relatively simple mopping up operation. I had isolated the Golden Horde to one province, with a Corps standing by to take care of them, as well as two Corps ready to take on Crimea, in their capital and a province to the NE of them. The Ottomans also control a fair share of the coast of West North Africa, and I had my century old navy bring over a Corps to take Oran, which holds a valuable Center of Trade as well as nice resources. Overall, before any conflict started, I had about 70k troops on the front lines, all 10k units, and two corps guarding both Siberia, and the Swedish-Russian-Polish border. On the note of troops, I would think powerful artillery would HELP a battle, but I've repeated found in putting down rebellions that they are absolutely worthless. I don't know if they'll ever become useful, but a 3cav/4inf mix will defeat 12k of rebels, while a 3/4/2art mix will almost always fail.
War declared, troops amassed, I charged into enemy territory, with fair successes in the back enemy provinces of the Golden Horde and Crimean lands, but the Ottomans had amassed their own armies at the border.... which numbered no less than 50k per stack, with 3 provinces each containing their own stack. Thankfully I was the richest nation on the planet and had, if unintentionally, amassed a enormous fortune for the war - which would end in debt worth a decade of the next richest countries income. I've slowly been modernizing Russia, changing it's outdated ideas, at enormous stability cost, abolishing Serfdom, and tossing the aristocracy on it's ass outside the palace gates in favor of capitalism. Under this wonderful despotism, mercs cost literally one ducat. They won all my old wars for me, you just sent waves upon waves until the enemy succumbed. There was no thought to it, just raise another mass. And because they were serfs, they cost hardly anything in upkeep either. Now, NOW! they cost 41 ducats a unit. Not awful, but certainly more than I expected to pay. Cavalry was 70 or so. Two waves of mass merc recruitment saw me with another 48k on the front line, and while I did whittle down their numbers, I was pushed back repeatedly.
Meanwhile, I had successfully seized the rich center of trade in Africa, and was slowly pushing my way into the interior. However, because it was a mere corps in the hot African sun, they made heroic pushes against enemies, but could never capture territory. The cat-and-mouse game of chasing their weak units all over Africa came to an end, and I retreated back to my little coastal province I had captured and defended it. I had thought to bring back reinforcements, so I hired one of my finest Admirals from the Navy College, put him at the helm of the expedition back to the homeland to bring reinforcements. (what reinforcements?! They're all dead in the mountains) While a noble cause for which this admiral fought elegantly, capturing many ships along the way, the Ottomans held the passage to the black sea with force far outnumbering anything I had started with or captured, never mind the fact that all these ships were a century old. He did make it through, and arrived safely in the Crimean port of Kaffa, another center of trade port. During his voyage, I had conducted many spy operations against the Ottomans, as they did against me. While they tried to disrupt my government, create rebellions, I turned their war council into a puppet of mine. Killing morale, their research into new techniques and technology, causing mass desertion in their reserves, this move, while costly on the international scene if I was caught, went without a hitch, and I believe was of great assistance to the war effort. i continued morale tactics, as well as attempting to incite troop desertion, but I don't know if the latter ever worked.
On the front lines, the Golden Horde was annexed into the motherland, while Crimea was controlled in entirely, forced to cede all but their capital, and became a puppet government of the Russian Empire. On the Ottoman front, the bloodbath of Russian and foreign troops eventually congregated into two Fronts, each 200 units large, with 30k actual troops in the northern Front, and about 10k in the southern Front. Seeing this rather pathetic mess, and recognizing the fact that, while they may have lost actual manpower, unit weight, how many regiments you have, also plays a role, and this could prove as dangerous as sheer numbers alone. Thus, I instigated a mass levy, of 80,000 troops, half cavalry and half infantry. Placing my Monarch, Vassily the Ninth, at the front of this great Army about to save the Third Rome, I had him lead the troops from Moscow to Armenia.
...
This was a huge mistake, as the lands couldn't support such numbers, and by the time they arrived at the front, they were no more than 10k men and losing more every day. The War Score was good, in the 30's out of 100, but the situation looked like it could easily be reversed, as that last manpower draw was the final straw to pull. By now I had 5,000 in debt, one last loan awaiting for me, the interest rates were so high that it sapped everything I could mint, and got in taxes, and more mercenaries were so expensive it would take months to buy a single infantry regiment, let alone a cavalry one or even an Corps. However, the second wave never came. I had forced over half their remaining forces by sheer unit weight alone into Georgia, where they would not, or could not, escape and attack my rear. Thus, with excellent generals leading each stack, I eventually recaptured Russian lands, and started pushing into Asia Minor. Nary a soldier was to be seen for the entire region of Turkey. It is only once I reached the Aegean coast that resistance was met. The navy that had sent all but one ship of mine to the bottom of the Sea of Marmara was guarding the strait, with their final stand army of about twelve thousand troops making sallies into Bursa. I disbanded one of the 200k stacks, built up gold reserves, and levied a final 40k man mass to go through Moldavia and siege Thrace itself to hopefully end this dreadful, bloody war.
You may have guessed what happened to that unit, especially as it passed through foreign lands and arrived as nothing more than a small group of Cavalry. Crimea had revolted from my control, and just as my new army passed by the province, I sent them to siege, and defeated yet another contender in this war. By this time, Hungary and Bosnia declared war on the Ottomans, and they eventually ceded to my demands of a route from the Caucus to the actual Mediterranean Sea. I don't know how I managed to get off so easy in the end, for much of the war they looked prepared to rout me and take the Caucus region. I can only hope my spy operations prevented the second wave, and even 4 years after the war, you can still see the devastation to their military prowess that I have wrought upon them. They were once the mightiest military power on earth, with troops in excess of 50k besides everyone else, and quality to match those fine infantry.
With this victory I can now set sail to dominate the African coast, and I now preemptively surround the northern border of the Mamluks, where I am giving serious consideration to the liberation of Judea. I am also working on forging claims that I should rightfully hold Rome, not the Pope, which I expect success on in the next decade or so. My other viable option is to go to Stockholm, uniting with my single province in Scandinavia as well as taking their valuable Center of Trade.
Whatever path I take, I've got at least 20 years of consolidation and stability issues to take care of. I've left in my wake over half a million soldiers dead on my side alone, and I estimate about 400,000 overall dead for the three Islamic states who failed to defend their homes. Two states were annexed, my debt exceeds that of a decades worth of income for the second richest state in the world, Great Britain and I now control a monopoly on the worlds copper. Overall, a good morning.
If I learned to be more creative in my writing, I bet somebody would read this shit.