Make it easy
80-100% musket army is devastating. I even think that either musket accuracy or musketeer firearms skill should be lowered.
An easy way to defeat any army up to x2 of yours is to raid villages (or trade-trade-trade) and hire armored musketeer mercenaries.
Mercenary equipment:
1. Early game: best musket available, infantry pike
2. Mid: some decent ammo, gloves. Headgear doesn't matter, but I purchase some helmets.
3. Late: best armor, best gauntlets
I prefer mix of Polish and Swedish mercs (polish for durability (hussar armor, 60+ hp, but flintlocks) and european for firepower (decent armor, miquilet rifles)).
High Trainer skill (Buskador?) + Surgery (Sarabun?) + Leadership is all you need.
You can have some NPC cavalry + some heavy cavs like reuters just for fun.
Typical orders:
Field battle (they slowly advance):
F1-F1 (hold) - F2-F2 (2 rows) - F2-F6 (spread)
Field battle (they try cavalry blitz)
F1-F1 (hold) - F2-F2 (2 rows) -F2-F7 (into formation - if enemy cavalry seems to charge right now). If enemy charge can cause heavy losses, i ride forward and try to disrupt the charge with grenades.
Field battle (they hold position)
F1-F1 (hold) - F2-F2 (2 rows) - F2-F6 (spread)
Then I slowly advance with F1-F6, and try to snipe enemy lord. They charge...win.
Siege (i attack):
Just charge. I lead the assault with a full backpack of grenades ))
Siege (i defend)
Fall back to the fortress yard, form the line, hold. You can massacre more than 600 men with your 80-100 musketeers + some cannon fodder from garrison. Maybe you can hold off an attack of about 1000 enemies; the thing is your troops have unlimited ammo, so you can kill...and kill...and kill.... WFaS sieges aren't that fascinating, they are stupid instead, so try to make it fast.
Money?
- Take debt and/or taxes quests but not return the money
- Hidden cache quest, choose the option to return the money...but...you know
- Buy gunpowder in towns, sell in fortresses
- Cheap goods caravan trade
- Quests
- = Raiding villages
Well, it's very easy and straightforward way to get cash. But it's too much like cheating for me. You can make some "limited" raiding (a bit of roleplay
), like if some lord is enemy of yours, so you loot his villages and hunt down his troops.
The historical way:
Spreading death with full-plate armored riflemen isn't the way of 17th century warfare.
Instead, you can have 2:2:1 army of poor musketeers, pikemen and reuters, try different formations, polearm bracing, reuter skirmishing, tercio formations etc. PBOD mod - that's what you need. Do not forget to turn AI formation on, feel the difference