Rise of Nations: Napoleon: Toughest: 24) Battle of Mantua
2Napoleon decides to venture further into Austrian Territory with the Battle of Mantua.
Starting out with only one city, it's easy to get landlocked in this scenario by the channel and the two Austrian Cities parked right in the center of the map. To make it worse, any expanding in towards the center of the map will be met with intense Austrian aggression.
So the plan is to go around and seize the cities one by one and then assault the capital.
As almost always, grab the 1st line of library techs. City placement is critical here. Go East over the mountain after getting the 2nd civic tech and the religion tech at the temple just to be able to place your city closer to the mine. (You can get away with just the extra civic tech but I like my mines or woodcutter camps to be within the economic range of cities so i'll wait for the religion tech.)
Plonk a third city down on the west side, across the channel. To safeguard it, build a dock there and at least 3 sloops as you can get invaded by the Austrian army. There are quite a few fish that are uncontested as well.
Continue building cities eastward in the mountains. 5-6 should be plenty.
Meanwhile, while you're defending: Garrison your army into the forts. It's better to have them in the forts as any of your army that strays close to the border will invite more of the huge (and I mean huge) Austrian army across to you and that will be game over.
Defend until your economy is order. Then push on both sides of the channels to defend your trade routes. Getting a few bomb ketches can help soften up the shores.
I targeted the city closest to the southern corner. It's relatively undefended and if you control the channel it can't be attacked as easy.
So march your army across the channel, and down there and grab the city. Assimilate it, build all your military buildings. Then have a small army near your capital push forward. That's essentially a decoy while your stronger army crosses the channel to grab the easier cities. I'd just grab and hold the first city and assimilating that territory before making things more complicated. Make sure your capital is well defended before you pull this off though. At least 2 forts and a few towers and a barracks at least continuously pumping out units. You may need to do this a few times to weaken one of the fronts enough to make a breakthrough.
Once you've gained territory across the channel. Focus on grabbing all the cities east and around the map. Essentially we are surrounding Mantua.
To grab Mantua, armies on both sides should be strong and grab any cannons and target the military buildings first while the units engage enemy forces. Once most of the military buildings are down there should be enough of a unit advantage that you can capture Mantua.
This ends the first 3 scenarios on the second route available to chose at the start of the campaign.
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