I'm in my first game of Vic2 (as Brazil, which was recommended as a good starting nation, and from my experience this is correct), and I've found that even with the invention of machine guns, it seems that combat strategy isn't really all that different from EU3. Essentially, you combine all your batallions into the biggest army you can without getting horrible attrition and while maintaining a good ratio of different forces, use your death-stacks to go and whack the main enemy forces one at a time until they have no big stacks left (making sure to have numerical superiority, good leaders, and not attacking over rivers or into mountains, and trying your hardest to make them attack you rather than vice versa), and then carpet-siege their entire nation. It's been very mobile, with big armies chasing each other around until they get an advantage and go in for the kill.

This is very different to the static western front of WWI. It seems to me that dividing your force out over such a large area in Vic2 is a poor strategy, because it just means a single concentrated force can take out your armies one at a time. Defensive lines don't seem to happen in my experience so far.

Is this the general experience, or is it just a result of the nation I've chosen and the tactics I'm using? Is this different if I play as France, or if I build more forts? Is this something that Vic2 models poorly - i.e. the large defensive bonuses for machine guns etc aren't large enough? Am I just not taking advantage of my technology properly by having too much of an EU mindset?

Also a noob question: how can I quickly compare technologies with another nation? The US is kicking my butt and I'm not sure if it's because they're being smarter about tactics, or whether they just have better guns than I do.

(Also, Brazil is Socialist, which is fun)