Victory then huh? how are we going to obtain it, well it's simply really, strategy and skills, as with war in realistic terms, victory is handed to the side with the superior strategy and skills.

"Oh but Cosmic, but i'm just a casual EU4 player, how am I meant to achieve victory in the face of defeat from my skills alone?"

Micro my dear boy.

So what is Micro? well Micro is made up of two different things, Orders and Movement

Orders are things like when you click to merge two different armies, or when you go to Consolidate Regiments within an army.

Movement is quite simply the commanding of an army to move by manually clicking.

The Speed at which you can micro and how quickly you can command an entire front is the most important factor in EU4 multiplayer war, so what can you do to improve it? and what can help?.

Orders

Hotkeys - Hotkeys are so unimaginably important that it really can't be overstated, you need to remember here, Micro in and of itself is a game of seconds, and how many seconds it takes to halt an army before it locks in? how many seconds it takes to consolidate 10 different armies? or to attach 3 different armies to transports.

For example, did you know B will detach all ART from a given army, meaning you could leave the given INF stack in a mountain pass buying time for the far more valuable ART to pull out of a lost battle, where as otherwise you would of had to have gone through 2 different menus and then clicked on the detach ART button just to do what we have done in less then a second.

Below is a list of all shortcuts relevant to Orders:

A - Attach units to Transports

S - Split army in half

D - Detaches an army from a given siege.

G - Merge units.

K - Consolidate regiments.

M - Forced March

N - Detach Mercenaries

Z - Detach INF

X - Detach CAV

B - Detach ART

V - Build units

Now if you take a look at this list, you can see there's not an awful lot that requires you to actually click into menus should you be using hotkeys, really just the actual formation of armies will require it, THIS is why hotkeys are so important, they can turn something that will otherwise take 5 seconds, and turn into less then 1, and when your fighting outnumbered and outgunned, YOU need to be the one reacting quickly and effectively, Hotkeys are your method to do so.

Movement - hotkeys can't do the clicking for you, and really this is more of a physical thing then anything else, but you can do ALOT to improve how quickly you click between armies, and how quickly you command them.

Practice is how we will be improving our Movement Micro, the best way to do this at any one given moment is in singleplayer.

Firstly, stop pausing, especially in war, I know that space bar is looking quite tempting when your getting overwhelmed, but you can't pause In MP at least good ones so getting used to pausing when your getting overwhelmed will quite frankly ♥♥♥♥ you over in a multiplayer war.

Secondly, play at speed 4, why?, well if you can go into late game wars against an AI, and Micro at speed 4 without pausing (Hotkeys help with this) then you will be able to go into a speed 2 MP war and micro like a legend, getting used to high speed, high risks micro in single player make the frankly slow speed of MP games not only bearable, but actually quite easy.

Alright, so, we're using hotkeys, and we are able to command our armies at a snappy responsive rate, brilliant, that is the skill side of EU taken care off.

Strategy

The way in which you fight a war will determine the outcome far more then the quality of the troops in the war.

Now the issue is, this is entirely subjective to the situation at hand, however, I can go over an example and give advice for the situation and sound stratergies to use, along with a few GOLDEN rules to follow in all situations.

The Rules.

When victory is not guaranteed by quality or quantity do not split forces, in a situation where the outcome of the war is determined by a few odd battles, Group into one large fist, and smash in a single blow, piercing your way into the enemies heartland.

Should favourable terrain be available, take it, and equally, do not fight your opponent in unfavourable terrain should any other path or option be available - it's much better to march into India via Bengal then it is Tibet.

Only engage in a battle should you have something to gain from it, Mindlessly throwing troops at the enemy without a fort to take, or a mountain pass to hold will not bring you closer to victory.

Be decisive, failing to size opportunities due to indecisiveness is the worst form of war one can commence, equally, a bad strategy executed quickly and effectively is superior to the best strategy executed slowly and poorly.

Exceed ones capacity in all instances of war, if need be, go 2x over your force limit, Sun Tzu once said "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." and this holds very true to EU.

If an enemy has seen themselves strong enough to split forces, then engage them one by one, and tear them limb by limb, until they are no longer able to walk towards you.

Situation Example

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1654476255142144081/9CB92CE67750344F53F70976DBBB567CE923DCA2/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Here we have an easy example of an Italy surrounded by a Germany, Germany is the attacker here, and we will be dissecting exactly how Germany attacks, and how Italy should be defending.

So, give it a few seconds, think how you'd handle this, and what your approach would be.

Firstly, terrain, Italy has the Alps, Mountain passes providing best defence in the game, and he has forts on all of the passes, so our dear attacker Germany will not be marching through those, he will instead be taking the hills on the sides, our lovely Germany has read Cosmic's guide and he knows he should be approaching in 1 fist, rather then 2, so he's going through Venice.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1654476255142180882/16CFABFB5259C845C7635AC514C9F42564851115/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

The red line here represents the mountain line Germany is bypassing, Orange, the lone hill fort, and purple being the reserve fort line on the hills in central Italy, along with black being Germanys approach.

so whats the best way to handle this?.

know your weak points and defend them adamantly, Treviso is a hill fort standing in between Germany and free reign of Northern Italy, and so when Germany besieged it, Italy struck quickly and soundly, managing to kick them off the fort and keep them out of Italy for a while, but eventually Italy was unable to keep up the manpower required and eventually lost Treviso following a failed battle.

What now?

Well as we can see from the map, Italy has a backup line of forts, protecting central Italy, so rather then fighting the Germans in the flat planes of Ferrara or Pavia, they fall back to the reserve line, holding the hills for as long as possible, taking battles exclusively on favourable terrain, in one clump.

In this situation Italy loses, but it is by the far the best way to handle a smart strike into Italy, it will be the way to deal the most Casualties to the attacker, and that is the way that you will achieve your victory in your own situation.

So what was the point of that little situation?

Well it teaches you a few brief but frankly important lessons:

Know your defences, your terrain, your entrances, and exits, the way people will come at you, and defend them accordingly.

Have a backup plane, build a network of deep defences to bleed your opponent as they go, and when you lose one fort line, don't babble about marching into flatlands and taking bad battles, fallback and hold the line!.