PSA: As England, PUing France directly gives LESS AE than releasing Gascony
Introduction
I'm making this post as a follow-up to this one. I noticed that almost all the comments there said that, while it's true that releasing Normandy as England was not worth it (it's not), you should release Gascony and use it to reconquest its cores, and then PU France in a second war, arguing that this gives less AE. While this looks intuitive, it's not really true, as I will show here.
I'll be recreating two scenarios. I've simulated them using the console, but hopefully they are realistic enough. In both scenarios, I didn't ally anyone nor do anything that would affect the AE gain.
Scenario 1: England gets a direct PU on France
In this scenario, England refuses to surrender Maine, enters in a war with France, and PUs them on the peace deal, simple enough. You can see that the western half of the HRE and Austria would join a coalition against me.
Scenario 2: England releases Gascony and PUs France later
Gascony reconquest | AE on France PU peace deal | AE map
In this scenario, England surrenders Maine, releases Gascony, reconquers its cores after the truce, and PUs France in the second war, using the CB from the mission to occupy Paris. The first truce lasts until 1450 (5 years after surrendering Maine) and the second until 1462, assuming you finish the war instantly. Even if you sold the province of Maine to Provence and thus avoided the first truce, you'd probably want to get money or war reparations, so the second truce finishing around 1462 is realistic.
During this time, France may have developed their land or integrated some vassals, which would increase the AE. I've accounted for this by making them integrate Orleans, which is possible for them to do in the eight years between 1454 and 1462. I have also skipped time with the console so that AE would not tick down, as I am interested in the generated AE.
As you can see in the AE map, the AE generated is higher, and both Castile and Aragon would join the coalition now, whereas before they would not. Even looking only at the last war, the AE is almost the same as the previous scenario (99 vs 98 AE with France), so you literally gain nothing by having used reconquest first.
Note: I tested doing this while selling Maine to someone else instead of surrendering it, but I found that the AE is essentially the same. It's only useful to avoid the stab hit.
Why does this happen?
The first reason is that Gascony is not all that helpful. While Gascony has 9 cores in French lands, only 4 of them are on France itself, the rest are on its vassals. When PUing france, its vassals are not counted in the AE computation, so reconquering those doesn't net you any gains.
The second reason is that there is a cap on the AE generated by forcing a PU. France is big enough to reach that cap in 1444, so it would give the same amount of AE even if it had 10000 development. By using Gascony, you're splitting that AE in two, thus not reaching this cap in any of the two wars, and thus making the total AE larger.
Other reasons why releasing Gascony is bad
- You have to fight France twice. France is pretty strong at the start, stronger than England, so this will consume your resources and manpower unnecessarily, especially if you're a newer player.
- It makes AE harder to estimate for newer players. You only get 14 AE on the first war, and likely you'll want to conquer Scotland, Ireland or Brittany afterwards. So in the second French war you already might be close to getting coalitioned, and you'll get 50+ more AE with many countries. You need to account for that and newer players will likely overlook it until it's too late.
- France will take longer to become loyal. Having a loyal France is a massive help in the future european wars, and the sooner you can have it, the better.
- You'll pay extra diplo when annexing Gascony because you'll have to integrate the provinces of Labourd and Bourdeaux.
- It's way slower in general (15-20 years slower) and halts your expansion pretty significantly.
Recommended strategy
The best strategy in my opinion is to just git gud and PU France on the first war. However, if you feel that you can't handle it, or don't want to tryhard, my alternative is to follow these steps:
- Sell Maine to Provence or Brittany, so that the Surrender of Maine does not fire.
- Get the mission to vassalize Scotland.
- Handle the War of the Roses at your own pace.
- Before or after the War of the Roses, declare war on Scotland with your allies. France will likely join, but just beeline Paris to get the PU CB from the mission and white peace them. Vassalize Scotland next.
- Wait for the French truce by conquering Ireland.
- PU France in 1450-1455 by calling your allies which will make it a lot easier.
This doesn't slow you down that much, as by 1455 you'll have more or less the same lands: France, Scotland and Ireland. It's also basically the same AE as PUing France from the start, so you're not losing in that front either. And it's significantly easier than fighting France + Provence without allies and with the War of the Roses ticking.
Hopefully this post serves to clear some misconceptions that are endlessly repeated in this subreddit and can help other players do better in their campaigns :)