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dragonchr15

Mercenary




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L-town, NY Posted: Mar. 18 2004,22:03

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the English campaign which was a lot of fun but Im tired of playing Catholic factions. I need to know how to play the Turkish in the Early period. I read a few posts and some say attack Byzantines becasue you will have to deal with crusades if you attck Egypt while others say attack Egypt becasue they have rich land and can finance your war with Christendom.

I am not sure whom to attack.

Also, can someone tell me a good Turkish army? I read Horse Archers are the key and historically (if i am not mistaken), the Turks massacred the Crusaders using Horse Archers.
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The_678

Count




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Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Posted: Mar. 18 2004,22:17

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Me I like to rush the egyptians for the richness of their lands. Also if you can capture their king in Antioch its a major advantage for the early game.

My army was mostly Turcoman horse and AHC(Armenian Heavy Canalry) until I could tech up to Saracens and Ghazis.

One thing with Muslim faction though is that you to learn to deal with losing alot of your men. THey just don't have the defense and Armour. But Ghazis are great for flanking and rears. Just don't expect to survive long.

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MadKow

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Portugal Posted: Mar. 19 2004,07:01

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Likewise.
When playing the turks i always jump on Egypt and annihilate them ASAP. The chance to ransom their king is a bonus but the provinces you conquer are reward enough. I tend to leave the Byzantines alone, and dig in and build after conquering Egypt. I probably shouldn't stop and go all the way to Morocco.

The reason to leave the Byzantine is to later let them handle the Horde, and attack them afterward. This not always works depending on how the western powers expand.

An early attack to reach Constantinople is very tempting, but you really have to be good at using horse archers because that will be your main unit. Kats with a good general can be a very tough nut to crack. And if you give the Egyptians time to build up you will be facing hordes of camels in their element, the desert.
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 19 2004,09:53

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Another Egyptian attacker here.

The best argument for attacking the Byz first is to get to them before they are too strong. However, I usually find that a strong Byz Empire is my best trading partner after I attack the Egyptians and hold the key trading provinces of Antioch, Tripoli and Egypt.

You have to build a navy to prevent a Crusade from landing on the key coastal provinces directly by sea. That naval protection has to extend to the Black Sea to prevent a Crusade from going through your back door through Georgia and Armenia. So, you have to have fleets in the eastern end of the map to begin with.

When those fleets are connected, trading with the Byz becomes a treasure trove and a solid base for expansion. Antioch is making more than 3,000 florins a year in trade income alone in my current game. The year is 1192. I have 82,000 florins in the treasury, at least two citadels building and at least two fleets in every Mediterranean sea zone, plus some in the Atlantic.

With an income like that, let the Crusades come. I thoroughly defeated a German Crusade long before making that kind of money.

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Turks do depend on horse archers and fighting with horse archers, frankly, takes a certain knack and a lot of practice..

Some people can fight a whole battle with nothing but horse archers, but that's far beyond my skill level.

It's perfectly feasible to drive the Egyptians as far as the Sinai without even fighting a battle, since their armies of mostly peasants will usually withdraw. However, eventually you are going to have to fight them and they will have plenty of camels and Nubian spearmen. This is bad, because camels will more than trump any Ghulam bodyguards or Armenian Heavy Cavalry you have, and Nubians are much better than your regular spearmen.

I build a Jihad very early, let the Eqyptians re-take the Sinai and then declare Jihad on the Sinai. I also hire some well-armored mercenaries. The Jihad gains strength marching through Syria and Palestine. The showdown in Eqypt has me winning by sheer force of numbers. After that, I can afford better troops.

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Phase one: Horse archers with basic spearmen, plus desert arches, and a few camels. Turcoman horse start replacing the cav archers.

Phase two: Turcomon horse completely replace the horse archers. Saracen infantry replace the spearmen. Turcomon foot replace the desert archers. Armenian heavy camels start replacing the camels, but keep some camels around. They're good for killing crusader knights.

Phase three: Ghulam cavalry starts replacing the Armenian Heavy Cavalry. AHC have a wonderful charge, but can't melee. If the enemy doesn't break in the charge and the AHC can't re-form to charge again, the AHC are in serious trouble.

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5 Saracen infantry, 5 turcoman foot, 2 Ghulam cav and 4 Turcomon horse is my typical army until I can afford better units.

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Finally, it should be mentioned that Syria produces +2 assassins.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on Mar. 19 2004,16:35
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Imperial Buffoon

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London Posted: Mar. 19 2004,10:54

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Quote (Doug-Thompson @ Mar. 19 2004,09:53)
5 Saracen infantry, 5 turcoman foot, 2 Ghulam cav and 4 Turcomon horse is my typical army until I can afford better units.

I tend to use something similar but with some futtawas (2) replacing 2 turcomans if I have them and 2 gazis replacing 2 sarracens. When attacking, it's worth replacing one of the sarracens by muwahids.
Compared to Doug-Thompson's army, mine has a weaker core but is more mobile (gazis are fast) and has better morale. Plus, gazis are really cheap so if I can, I tend to have a couple in reinforcement as well.
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Mouzafphaerre

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North of Isle du Milieu Posted: Mar. 19 2004,19:01

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Here's what I have been doing:

In the first few decades, or even for a century, I didn't add to my armies. Just built my starting provinces up steadily. Once I was near 100,000 florins (farms provide great income in the Turkish/early provinces), I slowly started taking on arms.

I didn't wage war at anybody; neither the Byz nor the Egy. Instead, built dozens of âlims and flooded the entire Mediterranean world with them, starting from my own lands.

I tried to persuade both the Egy and the Byz for alliances, at the beginning to no avail because of my kings' poor influence, but it proved correct lately.

The Egyptians were too greedy and attacked me from the south, which ended up with them eliminating and me holding the eastern shore and Egypt for level 2. After my first victory or second, the Byzs accepted my alliance proposal.

Level 2 involved building up Egypt against the inevitable Spanish assault, which indeed happened after they customarily ate up the Almos --a rule without exception in my games Also at this stage, I started building my navy and filled the eastern Mediterranean parts.

I had to start over two or three times because the Horde blew into Armenia. That was inevitable death in my strategy but I noticed that the AI is cheating It plays as if it knows about 1230 and the Byz leave Khazar and Armenia empty I imitated that and retreated every single soldier from Armenia in 1229. It worked They invaded Khazar and we haven't engaged yet. ;)

I built all upgrade facilities available so that my armour is level 2 while my rivals' are either absent or partly level one.

Units:

Turcoman Horses are preferable over Horse Archers, while Desert Archers keep up pretty well too. You can use them in melee against routing or really downgraded units. Forget Bedouin Camels unless with really high valour. They route on sight of marching peasants

In general, Turkish/erly units are inferior to everything else around. That's why I didn't engage in hostilities with the Byz from the beginning. However, once you get to Ghazi Infantry and Futuwwas, they pay off well.

Make a lot of spearmen and Muwahhid Infantry in defensive positions.

Hth
_

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Mouzafphaerre is also known as Hayreddin Barbarossa and Mao Dun
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 19 2004,19:24

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why not take on the byz early?

unless you want to make the game hard, take out the byz as soon as you are done with the eggy.

my HAs can run circles around the byz inf and shoot up that unit of varangs while they can't touch me.

then, my heavy mercs roll over the remainder.

the byz have no good production facilities early on except for const. and can be overrun easily after you take trebizond and then const.

popping out a jihad and letting the byz take it back and then hitting it with the jihad also helps for some nice troops and can help ensure you hold const.

once you have const, secure the rest of asia minor and throw the byz back to their measly islands.

I use const. for silver armored ghazis which have much better survival rates and then to build a grand mosque for spamming Imams who naturalize the byz provinces and help improve zeal for better jihads.

I actually find it preferable to build a load of jihads in a province, leave a border province weakly guarded and tempt an attack, retreat my unit to the castle and then launch all my jihads at it which hits the province in a turn due to my navy and then provides a huge influence boost for my new sultan and also give some kick ass troops for cheap.

the eggy are gone for 50 years now and the byz are relegated to a pitiable force wiht no navy stranded on cyprus and forced to trade with me while I make money from their homelands
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Fragony






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Amersfoort, Netherlands Posted: Mar. 20 2004,04:53

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Isolate the Egypt King second turn, and kill the bastard. Why the turks are regarded as hard in early is beyond me. You can overun either egypt or the byzantines in 3 years.

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Testicules habet et bene pendentes
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Nowake

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Bucharest, Romania Posted: Mar. 20 2004,05:45

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Also, can someone tell me a good Turkish army? I read Horse Archers are the key and historically (if i am not mistaken), the Turks massacred the Crusaders using Horse Archers.

Use them for luring the enemy, but don't try to shoot a unit down with HA, they'll dissapoint you. Use Armenian Heavy Cav and Ghulams, Saracan Infantry and arbs. When late era comes, you're going to have janissary

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Mouzafphaerre

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North of Isle du Milieu Posted: Mar. 20 2004,09:23

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Why I didn't take either before building myself up is because of external factors. The crusades suck once you get at the initial shot area of them.

I let them die off in Ortho. provinces or get repelled/weakened by the Egys.

Two years ago, I played Turks in high taking Byzs before the first decade was over.


_

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Mouzafphaerre is also known as Hayreddin Barbarossa and Mao Dun
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 22 2004,20:31

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 19 2004,19:24)
why not take on the byz early?

Once the Egyptians are down, the timing of taking out the Byz is up to the player. The question was, who to take out first. I vote for the Egyptians.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 22 2004,20:44

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depends though. although it may not matter to you, I find my self wanting to take const. for the income and also make sure they can't even produce byz inf.

giving the byz time to tech up is a very bad IMHO. You can pump turc horse with very low reqs while the decent byz units require far more so taking const. early would be the easiest time.

as well, I don't even need to disband my mercs who survived the egyptian campaign but I can use em directly against the byz.

Also, how can you resist getting a grand mosque up or having silver armoured ghazis?

spamming Imams for better jihads and produce tons of muslim revolts is cool and silver ghazis pulverize enemy troops and actually make it back in semi reasonable numbers
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 23 2004,09:57

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 22 2004,20:44)
Also, how can you resist getting a grand mosque up or having silver armoured ghazis?

spamming Imams for better jihads and produce tons of muslim revolts is cool and silver ghazis pulverize enemy troops and actually make it back in semi reasonable numbers

Now that's the best argument for Byz first I've heard yet.

Building a fort-keep-mosque-castle-fortress-citadel-grand mosque is a real pain. Don't forget that Heavy Jannisary infantry in the High Period onwards, either -- which requires a military academy and all the spear upgrades, too.

I remember the first time I used JHI. People had raved on this forum about how great they were, so I sent them straight up a hill to see.

The Sicilians charged them -- with 200 peasants.

The pitchfork crowd didn't just get beat. They evaporated on contact. You could have run a small engine on the steam.

I think the JHI lost four people out of 200. The next effect of the peasant attack was a delay in the uphill march by about 10 seconds, mostly to let the fleeing peasants get out of the way. The JHI then killed or captured about half the Sicilian army while everybody else tried to help..

Imans are great. The combination of high-zeal provinces they create, a sultan who boosts his piety and influence with successful Jihads and control of the sea is an incredibly powerful combination.

One of the great things about Jihads in high-zeal provinces is the good units you get. You get large numbers of cheap ones, but you can simply disband those. I get tons of Janissary Archers and a few Janissary Heavy Infantry with Jihads. I pick then out after the Jihad's over like gold out of a pan of gravel.

I play with huge units, so the more partial units I get that I can rebuild as complete ones, the better. I'll often run a Jihad from Arabia, for instance, through a province that has some JHI in it just so they'll pick up a few and create another unit.
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dragonchr15

Mercenary




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L-town, NY Posted: Mar. 23 2004,17:37

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Thanks for the replies, they helped alot.

After much though, I attacked Egypt first as suggested earlier and had little trouble slaughtering their peasant/Nubian army. But then, I was hit with a crusade from France and Germany at the same time and to make matters worse, the Byzantines broke our alliance and sank all my ships. I reloaded from a previous point (I knew I was going to get slaughtered for I had no real army), and attacked Byzantine first and I am doing ok for now.

What type of army do I need to take on Byzantines? Also, does anyone here ever do a Braveheart style charge by selecting all your troops and double clicking behind the enemy and watching the action? When would such a tactic be recomended?
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 23 2004,17:47

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Guess we should have mentioned that attacking Egypt first requires a pretty quick build-up afterward to be ready for Crusades, huh?

Sorry about that.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 23 2004,19:37

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well, I think you should pull all troops to syria on the first turn and then attack the eggy on the second.

going with this, I was able to wipe out the eggy at around 1092.

heading north, I start war with byz in 1095 or so and typically get const. by 1100 or so.

I then clean up asia minor and consolidate into building econ.

by this time, I don't have a navy for byz to attack or chance for them to double cross me.

also, it's physcially impossible for any catholics to launch crusades at me in that time frame unless it's the spanish and they teched straight for crusades.

Perhaps you don't like toplay with my breakneck rush style but I find no problems that way.

for the byz, if you have strong mercs, then head on charge is OK but skirmishing is really the best.

If you have loads of merc heavy inf and cav then you can do head on charge and win.

beware of supa katanks though as they may signlehandedly chew up half your army.

use javs on em. also, if you play VI, hire some druzhina as they are almost always available and dismount them int 60 men FFK which are absolutely fab at chewing up most anything that moves in early.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 23 2004,19:39

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thanks for doug thompson's comment but I still believes in that as more of a byz fast comment.

If I go byz first, my muslim brethren the eggy like to back stab and then I'm between a rock and a hard place.

they get time to mass darn nubian spears and peasant and desert archers which is not cool.

also, I might not be so sure of sultan ransom opportunity in antioch if I go after the byz first.

I love the guaranteed 10k or so of ransom as it finances my rushing strategy and later for economy.
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dragonchr15

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L-town, NY Posted: Mar. 23 2004,20:34

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 23 2004,19:37)
Perhaps you don't like toplay with my breakneck rush style but I find no problems that way.

on the contrary, your strategy sounds most intriguing and insane enough to work. But do you just burn your way through Antioch, Tripoli, Palestine, Arabia, Sinai, and Egypt in 10 years with just your initial starting troops? And how can you take Const by 1100? The game starts in 1095 unless im mistaken.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 23 2004,20:52

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nope, game starts in 1087, the death of william the conqueror.

my starting troops are enough to take first palestine adn tripoli, trapping their sultan in antioch which I attack on the next turn for the ransom.

I use the network of inns that the eggy leave behind to hire some troops to be my spear head.

I then take sinai to trap the eggy sultan in either arabia or egypt and then attack him to get another ransom.

I always have a moving wall of best general leading merc force attacking every turn while my king brings national troops behind for sieging and initial pacification of populace while a contigent of peasants move behind to pacify.

This works really well and builds up my general.

The strategy does work. I played at least 3 Turk games this way and my most recent case had me sacking const by 1100.

I've perfected my Turkish start now and by targeting carefully ransom opportunities of sultans and emperors, managed to also accumulate 27k in my treasury by that time even when using two stacks of mercs try it, it works
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Jamais Le Dimanche

Mercenary




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CALIFORNIA Posted: Mar. 24 2004,14:35

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I attack Egypt First The Egyptian King starts in Antioch.
I move all me units into Syria and Edessa. I attack from Syria into Tripolis, which is usually abandoned by the Egyptians, stranding their King in Antioch. I then attack Antioch from Edessa and Send half of my forces in Tripols back into Syria. This usually results in the capture and the ransom of Egyptian King for 10,000 florins give or take.
If you spend wisely and build some inns, you can then lure the new Egyptian King into Palestine and do the same thing over again by attacking through Arabia and Sinai stranding their King in Palestine, getting a second ransom. This puts a heavy crimp in the Egyptian Economy.
I then consolidate and concentrat on Byzantium.
Occaisionally the Byzantines will attack in collusion with Egypt, so you have to do all this as quickly as possible.

Note than early Turkish units are all light, so build quickly to upgrade to Saracen Infantry and Futuwwas befor taking on Byzantium aas their infantry slices through the regular spearmen easily.
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 24 2004,14:52

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 23 2004,19:37)
well, I think you should pull all troops to syria on the first turn and then attack the eggy on the second. (etc.)

The blitz katank describes is very feasible. We Eg beaters ignored the time element in earlier posts, it appears.

You should manage your own taxes, IMO, to avoid revolts, but I invade Tripoli and Antioch on the second turn I don't get the kings ransom as regularly as katank, but I use huge units. Maybe that has an effect. Maybe it doesn't. I don't seem to have as many units to spread around all over the map and catch the guy. When I do catch up to him, his successor won't pay the ransom.

Still, I grab Antioch and Tripoli on the second turn. Then concentrate troops in Tripoli on turn 3 and take Palestine on turn four. (Don't leave anything in Rum or Armenia but peasants. I haven't been bothered by the Byz yet.)

Notice that you've grabbed most of the Middle East before the Egyptians have had time to build a fort.

By turn five or six, you can attack both the Sinai and Arabia. None of this requires beating the comp in a battle. The Egyptians just withdraw because peasants can be shot to pieces by horse archers, and the AI knows it. So, don't fill your army with trash spears and peasants, which would be wiped out by Nubians. All those units do is encourage the Egyptians to fight.

Now it gets interesting. As katank mentions, there's an former-Egyptian inn within Palestine. You can hire mercs and have a big battle in Egypt. Or you can bide your time a bit, build a Jihad in Rum, withdraw from the Sinai and declare Jihad to get it back. The Jihad gains troops marching through Syria and Palestine. Then you add some mercs and simply overwhelm what's left of the Eqyptians.

Whether or not you can turn right around and attack the Byz is TOTALLY dependent on whether you got a king's ransom.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on Mar. 24 2004,15:12
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 24 2004,21:47

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well, this is kinda relying upon my knowledge of the game engine but the AI sultan always tries to move from antioch to tripoli on the scond turn and thus if you attack antioch and tripoli, he is able to run to palestine.

for some reason, with kings at least, the province they can retreat from is the one they try to go to.

thus, by taking tripoli and palestine, he has to retreat back to antioch, trapping him for a guaranteed ransom.

I thus feel that the Turks have the best starting position in early, esp. on the higher difficulty levels as money is my biggest issue on the higher difficulty levels.

the ransom is also sizeable as the eggy sultan would also have a heir by then for a total of around 10k which is very sizeable.

he then usually gets ransomed to arabia and you can sack sinai to trap him again.

I actually manage to ransom the sultan twice and total of something like 6 eggy princes during a blitz once and along with trapping of byz emperor, got 27k sitting in my treasury even after the extensive merc use to gain the continental lands of the eggy and byz.

notice, blitz technique requires extensive peasant pumping to maintain loyalty and seeking out super scary govs even if they are dumb (you can always strip them of the title later).
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PseRamesses

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Birka town in Svitjod. Realm of the Rus and the midnight sun. Posted: Mar. 25 2004,03:24

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I actually play the Turks in the same fashion as Katank and in 75% of my games isolate the egyptian sultan twice. It´s the easiest way to start a Turk campaign.

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*Fury of the Northmen mod*
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Gregoshi

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Posted: Mar. 25 2004,08:06

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Welcome to the Org Jamais and thanks for your contribution to the discussion. May you have many more.

Looks like we have the start of an Eg Beater club bent on overthrowing the yoke of Egyptian rule in the region. You start by pancaking them with Syria and Edessa them up. Once their defenses are cracked and their king poached, your war with the Eggies is over easy. If the Byz attack, you'll have to scramble to meet that threat. Just keep your sunny side up and be hard boiled with the dastardly Byzantines.

Check please

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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 25 2004,09:00

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Quote (Gregoshi @ Mar. 25 2004,08:06)
Welcome to the Org Jamais and thanks for your contribution to the discussion. May you have many more.

Looks like we have the start of an Eg Beater club bent on overthrowing the yoke of Egyptian rule in the region. You start by pancaking them with Syria and Edessa them up. Once their defenses are cracked and their king poached, your war with the Eggies is over easy. If the Byz attack, you'll have to scramble to meet that threat. Just keep your sunny side up and be hard boiled with the dastardly Byzantines.

Check please

The pun may be the lowest form of humor, but I still have to admit that was pretty good.

===============

Boy, don't I feel stupid for not getting $10K ransom per game.


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Gregoshi

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Posted: Mar. 25 2004,10:02

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Quote (Doug-Thompson @ Mar. 25 2004,09:00)
The pun may be the lowest form of humor, but I still have to admit that was pretty good.

Weren't you ever told not to feed animals lest they follow you home? Same applies here.

Follows Doug...


BTW, back on topic, I'm getting ready to start a new campaign and the Turks are #1 on the list of who to play. I got an indirect taste of their campaign thanks to Grothgar's MTW Interactive AAR game. It was very much fun and I'm sad it didn't progress very far, but I hope Grothgar's real life troubles have gone away. Anyway, it got me interested in the Turks. Needless to say, me being me, I will totally ignore the advice given here and forge my own path. Then when I get my head handed to me on a platter, I start over and do it the right way.

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Crash

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Maryland Posted: Mar. 25 2004,10:22

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Thanks for the great tips, Katank. I'm still learning how to play the Turks now, looking for new challenges.

I have the most trouble with the frequency of Crusades that come through my lands, immediately followed by the GH arriving in Armenia and Georgia. Even if I beat the Byz and the Egyptians one-on-one, I get hammered by Crusaders and Mongols. It gives me a lot of new found respect for the real Ottoman empire.

Personally, I tend to favor the quick strike against the Byz, let the Egyptians fight off the crusaders for awhile. Once Constaninople is secured, then take grab Antioch and Tripoli before finally taking out Egypt.

The Turks are great fun, but take a lot of effort.
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Hakeem928

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Newfoundland Posted: Mar. 28 2004,15:39

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I just tried the 'ransom trick' three times in a row and neither time did it work. Every time, I moved all my forces to Syria on turn one and invaded Tripoli on turn two, and every time they reinforced Tripoli with the Sultan from Antioch, and then proceeded to retreat him to Palestine. You guys must be special or something



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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 28 2004,16:28

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You have to invade Tripoli and Palestine at the same time.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 28 2004,21:38

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invasion at the smae time on the second turn is key to trapping the sultan.

this means you capture him on third turn and 10k ransom by 1090 makes even the expert level quite a bit easier as I can win most battles agaisnt crazy odds but can't just pull cash outta my @ss.

I think byz first is great and everything but 10k ransom that early guaranteed is too hard to risk losing.

also, the ransom + inss left in plaestine means mucho mercs with which to kill those crazy katanks that the byz field.

then, flood with imams, silver ghazis, etc. for a nice game.

I never have problems with GH when starting in early.

however, today, I forgot about the horde in my high turk game and had my @ss handed to me.

One ways to counter the horde is to have a gazillion Jihad markers around, retreat to castle and the launch all the jihads at the GH.

I was able to outnumber the GH with this tactic

chessy variation,

take the provinces, convert them to 100% muslim using Imams.

assasinate khan and all heirs to make em rebel. shouldn't be hard with 5* assasins from syria.

once rebel, launch a jihad at the province.

rebels owuld hand over province without fight if muslim and this eliminates horde with minimum fuss.

I find the jihad thing even better than bribing for taking them out as the other way is more expensive and you can't bribe them all reasonably.
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Aelwyn

The Man With The Golden Gun




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M.S.U. Posted: Mar. 28 2004,22:38

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I just started a Turkish campaign. I started by attacking the Byz. Those Byz Inf are extremely tough when you only have spears though. I hate facing v7 Byz Inf with a3. The best strat vs them are Horse Archers. Dwindle the amount down as much as possible, then hit them on as many sides as you can. I'm on the doorstep of Constantinople right now, after holding it for only 1 year. But I just butchered 1200 Byz that were presenting a serious threat. The Byz are weakened now, and my alliance with the Egyptians has proved valuable since they helped me attack the Byz a few times. Once I kill off the Byz and tech up, I'll take on the Horde and then the Egyptians, then spread up on both sides and envelop Europe.

Well, thats the plan anyways.

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I will burn for you, feel pain for you, I will twist a knife and bleed my aching heart...and tear it apart. - Garbage
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 29 2004,10:19

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 28 2004,21:38)
chessy variation,

... assasinate khan and all heirs to make em rebel. shouldn't be hard with 5* assasins from syria.

If that's cheesy, my name must be Chester the Cheetah.

The last time I assassinated the Khan was -- now let me think. Oh yeah, it was last night. This was after I ransomed him and some generals for $16K in a battle that also killed off his heirs.

The combination of waves of Jihads, sea power to allow them all to be concentrated and a gang of 5-star assassins is great. Don't forget the emissaries needed to bribe the surviving rebels and get yourself a nice new army of Mongols.

I used to avoid taking over Russian provinces before the GH arrives -- until I realized that control, however brief, lets me launch a Jihad later. It's a fount of endless troops. Just delete the ones you don't want.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on Mar. 29 2004,10:47
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 29 2004,16:43

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Quote (Doug-Thompson @ Mar. 28 2004,16:28)
You have to invade Tripoli and Palestine at the same time.

Correction: You have to invade Antioch AND Palestine AND Tripoli at the same time. This requires leaving Armenia bare, at least on huge unit size. There's also a small province loyalty problem. Your in the 90s with the newly conquered provinces. Still, it does work.

Not only do you get $11K ransom or so, but you get more income than you can spend the next turn. Finally, the Egyptians are bankrupted by this opening move. Conquering them is easy.

Has anybody ever have a province rebel in the opening moves when loyalty was less than 100 but more than 90 percent? I haven't. I think the game cuts you some slack in the opening moves.
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mbrasher1

Man at Arms




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The LBC Posted: Mar. 30 2004,19:08

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You should attack Egypt on the first turn. Plow south, into Antioch and Tripoli, taking his best money provinces on the first turn. They will not fight and you will have these two provinces plus 10k florins in ransom.

Be agressive with the eggies, you can capture their sultan twice for 10k apiece.

After that the Byz can be manhandled with the mercs found in Palestine. This way it is possible to eliminate egypt and take constantinople by 1100. Your goal should be to have 3 provinces ready for jannies by 1205.

My usual build strategy is
-- cav in Armenia (AHC) and Lesser Armenia (Ghulam Cav), Turco horse (Turco horse) and Edessa for bonuses
-- Turco foot in anatolia, futtuwwa/spies in Syria
-- camels in Sinai or Egypt
-- ghazi in Arabia
-- sarcs in Rum (getting ready for JHI with master spears) and Paletine (unarmoured if going to attack Almos)
-- econ upgrades in Antioch, Egypt, Tripoli

This lets you build buildings nonstop and shift seamlessly from era to era.

The Byz have no other source of good troops but constantinople. But if you attack them first, you will not have enough HAs to deal with their katanks and byz inf -- the only real counter the Turks have at the beginning. The Byz take awhile to get going and by the time they are getting UMs from upgraded provinces, you are knocking on their doors. You should be able to catch the Byz emperor once for 10k. By the time this is gone, your trade will be up and running, from Greece, Const, Antioch, Tripoli, Nicea.

The eggies do not have good troops in early, and are easily scared off. The byz have great troops, but can be countered by those weak HAs. Invade and have fun.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 30 2004,21:04

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Quote
Antioch AND Palestine AND Tripoli at the same time.


No you don't. Just Palestine and Tripoli to trap him in Antioch.

Attack Antioch next turn.

This will still get you the ransom.

progressing a turn slower means you don't have to leave Armenia bare and has less loyalty problems due to being able to crank up a few watch towers.

Note: you really want to avoid loyalist rebellions this early as this can kill your early rush dead in its tracks and possibly lose you some homelands too.

Agreed with mbrasher1's builds except for me focusing exclusively on assasins in Syria and using Tripoli for Turc. horse due to valour bonus there.

Also, I tend to use Const. for ghazis with silver armour while also spamming Imams there to prepare for masive Jihads which are GA goals and also the Grand mosque can help get you janissaries earlier.
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HopAlongBunny






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Posted: Mar. 31 2004,07:26

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I almost always go byz first. The few times I have gone after Egypt first, the royal family goes down fighting...no ransom for/from dead men
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Malcolm Big Head

Man at Arms




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Missouri Posted: Mar. 31 2004,08:08

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From my limited experience with the Turks it seems that the best sign of an upcoming Egyptian invasion is an offer of alliance. Kill them early and often.
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 31 2004,09:03

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 30 2004,21:04)
Quote
Antioch AND Palestine AND Tripoli at the same time.


No you don't. Just Palestine and Tripoli to trap him in Antioch.

That didn't work for me, katank. The Egyptian ruler moved to Tripoli and retreated to Palestine from there, while the other unit of troops that were with him had to surrender.

I guess rulers can afford good, fast horses.

No, I can't account for why the same computer program would give different results. Perhaps the places you invade with cavalry units makes a difference. I doubt that my use of huge unit sizes makes any difference.

Also, should the Byz be attacked after the first or second ransom is collected and what's left of the Egyptians left until later?

=====================

I devote Egypt and either Sinai or Palestine to full-time naval production. Otherwise, Crusaders can land in Almohad provinces and march on Egypt, or land in one of the Black Sea provinces and come knocking through Georgia.

Rum: Saracen Infantry
Armenia: Armenian Heavy Cavalry
Syria: Assassins, all the time.
Tripoli: Turcomon Horse
Arabia: Futuwwa
Antioch: Trade buildings and ships
Palestine: Ships
Sinai: Ships and siege equipment
Egypt: Ships and camels

Also, I build Ribalts and Jihads everywhere.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on Mar. 31 2004,09:40
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mbrasher1

Man at Arms




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The LBC Posted: Mar. 31 2004,19:30

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Jihads? I have been a bt disappointed with Turkish jihads. I build the marker but how often do you lose a province to an infidel? Not too often.

I did notice that I got LOTS of decent base units -- desert archers and stuff -- not the 3 units or so common in crusades.

Do you guys jihad ex-Almo provinces? I just do not see how they can be of help, unless you invade and withdraw merely to get jihadi troops. Worthwhile?

Playing as Italy, you can get 4000 troops for the crusade by starting in NAples and marching to Venice through provinces that you have increased zeal to 100%. The Muslims have lower zeal provinces, and you have no equivalent to inquisitors which increase zeal until you build a grand mosque. This usually takes along time.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 31 2004,19:40

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@doug

the invasion of palestine and tripoli should be simultaneous on the seccond turn.

the AI sultan stays put for first and tries to go to tripoli on the second.

your attack on tripoli forces him to go to either palestine or antioch and the sacking of palestine means that he goes to antioch.

once you attack antioch, regardless of whether you capture him on the field, you get to ransom him as he has no friendly adajacent provinces to retreat to.

I like to then take sinai to split the remaining eggy lands and get another ransom usually.

if obscenely lucky, you maybe able to capture him for a third time (I was able to do this once).


I find totally annihilating the eggy desirable as they usually still have a good stack left and can be annoying neighbors whereas the almos are far better neighbors.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: Mar. 31 2004,19:48

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@ brasher

I find jihads very worthwhile

Imams from a grand mosque are great for improving zeal. muslims benefit from zeal for jihads much more than catholics do for crusades.

I take Const. and build a grand mosque, then enough for silver armoured ghazis and head for fortress level after some econ upgrades.

Note: grand mosque worth it as it's necessary for military academy and having one ensures janissaries as soon as high rools around.

Absolutely spam those Imams they preach the glory of Allah and give you good troops.

Recipe for instant and plentiful army for cheap: (possible cheesiness warning)

build tons of jihad markers in a province.

make one of the provinces close to it rebel. (preferably a worthless one).

launch all jihad markers at it.

This is the greatest strength of jihads in that multiple jihads can be launched at a single province.

furthermore, if the province is 51% muslim or more, then the rebels would turn over province without a fight. (Use Imams to help make this happen).

I have used jihads to even overwhelm the horde. Besides, they generate tons of high tech troops that you can't get for years. You can disband the rest or send them rampaging to reduce enemies.
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: Mar. 31 2004,21:24

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 31 2004,19:40)
the invasion of palestine and tripoli should be simultaneous on the seccond turn.

But that's exactly what I did, katank.

Maybe I was just profoundly unlucky. I'll try it several times and see what happens, then post the results.
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Bhruic

Man at Arms




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Posted: Mar. 31 2004,21:36

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Don't think you really have to resort to cheese to win as the Turks. Although I was extremely lucky in my last campaign. I took out the Egyptians first (without trapping the Sultan ;)), then started building up for the Byzantines. Decided to go for the Almohads first, and control all of north Africa, and wait for the horde to distract the Byzantines. Well, 1179 rolls around, and I get a nice The Byzantine Emperor has died message. Unfortunately, he had no heirs, and the entire Byzantine empire goes neutral. I proceed to pick off neutral provinces until I get most of their territory (the Hungarians got a few). With an empire that size, it's pretty hard to lose.

But with that luck being said, I still could have taken the Byzantines if they had been around. The sheer economic power of the Middle East provinces plus the number of trade items that you end up having gives you a warchest that dwarfs anything the computer can try. You can afford to pay for armies that vastly outnumber the enemy. Even if, for some reason, you take more losses than they do, you can afford to. Makes the Turks one of the easier factions to play, imo (the same is true for the Egyptians, for pretty much the same reason).

Bh
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mbrasher1

Man at Arms




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The LBC Posted: Mar. 31 2004,22:56

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Multiple jihads?? Jeez this org is a goldmine.
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: April 01 2004,09:50

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Quote (katank @ Mar. 31 2004,19:48)
furthermore, if the province is 51% muslim or more, then the rebels would turn over province without a fight. (Use Imams to help make this happen).

This makes Muslim factions virtually immune from civil wars, if played properly.

Players retain control of fleets and Jihads when a civil war breaks out. Declare Jihads and use fleets to move them to rebellious provinces, and the civil war is over.

And you get scores of replacement troops, making up somewhat for the troops that rebelled.

Sometimes, the Jihad units have really low loyalty, though.

So disband them when the rebellion's crushed.

Successful Jihads increase the influence of your leader, which makes future rebellions less likely and increases troop loyalty. So your weak, rebelled-against ruler gets better too.
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Doug-Thompson

Duke




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Fayetteville, AR Posted: April 02 2004,11:17

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What I still don't know about this game amazes me, sometimes.

There's no maintenance cost for mercenaries while they are in a Jihad. (Same goes for Crusades.)

Turks start out with a mosque in Rum and could start building a ribat immediately if they wanted to.

After they ransom the Egyptian ruler, the Turks can build a Jihad in Rum and inns within Syria and Palestine. They can invade Sinai, then withdraw. Either the Egyptians will take it back or the province will revolt. Either way, there's an eligible target for Jihad.

The Jihad goes to Syria. Load it up with mercs at the beginning of the next move and march on to Palestine. Load up with more mercenaries in Palestine. Advance to the Sinai The Egyptians withdraw.

You probably have enough Jihad-generated archers and other troops to crush the Egyptian remnants without the mercs, but spare yourself the losses.

The next turn, invade Egypt and crush what's left there with a +2,000-man army.

Disband the mercs and go invade Byzantium with your new troops.

One important side benefit is that and mosque and ribat give a total of +3 morale. This gives a big advantage to Turcoman Horse and Armenian Heavy Cavalry made in Rum.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on April 02 2004,11:19
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yonderboy

Man at Arms




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Posts: 36
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Posted: April 02 2004,13:56

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This thread has inspired me to try the Turks again, and I had some VERY unusual results.

First of all, I went straight for the Egyptians, and thankfully the Byz's requested an alliance right off the bat. Seems they were occupied in the Balkans from the beginning.

The danged Egyptian Sultan started moving south from the very outset, and so when I assaulted on the second turn, he escaped. Sadly, no ransom $$ to finance the war (yet). I attacked Antioch with a mass of horse archers but sadly was beaten back. Antioch survived w/ a measley 8 spearmen in defense. I captured Palestine and Tripoli immediately. The very next turn, the Egyptians sued for peace. I sat there completely befuddled trying to figure out what to do. On one hand I was already outstretched, and the Egyptians had a lovely 8 (or so) star general sitting in Sinai w/ a few hundred men, AND I had already captured 2 superb provinces (Tripoli and Palestine). On the other hand, sitting around w/ an Egyptian-held Antioch on my flank was NOT a very comfortable option. However, I had no heirs yet (1 year til he came of age) and I knew I was ahead in the fighting, so I accepted peace.

This lasted for an uncomfortably long period of time. It was probably only 10-15 years, but we can all see how war was 100% inevitable. Thankfully, the Egyptians struck Palestine when I was prepared, and an epic battle ensued w/ a grand Turkish victory (well okay, I squeaked by, but since seemingly the entire royal family was there, I was pretty darn proud of myself). The next turn, naturally, I took Antioch (killing 600 peasants is fun) and Arabia. Eventually, I hired about 15 mercenary units in Palestine to ensure that the Egyptians were wiped out. Basically, the huge advantage I had in numbers of decent troops ensured that the Egyptians would scurry back into their stronghold in Egypt and then the mercenaries selfishly volunteered to be my front-line assault troops when I stormed the fort in Cairo. My royal family humbly mopped up after all the mercenaries were pretty much dead.

So far, I've just taken out the Egyptians, and am getting ready to attack the Byz. I need to ask you guys something though. I'm building all the royal buildings in Palestine. Mostly just because I want to. Is there any disadvantage to this since Rum is the home province of the Turks? Also... no one really seems willing to ally with me, except the Byzantines. This is, naturally, another reason I'm not eager to attack them. I realize that a lot of the Catholics are looking at me as the barrier to GA points, but I can't even get people like the Danes or Almohads to ally with me. I'm not complaining at all. This seems realistic in some ways. But when I play Egypt and conquer the Turks (hence, having the same territories), I never seem to have that problem. Is that normal?

Anywayz, the Turks are proving to be great fun. So is this thread

--------------
Someday I'll have a real sig here.
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: April 02 2004,14:29

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Quote (yonderboy @ April 02 2004,13:56)
I need to ask you guys something though. I'm building all the royal buildings in Palestine. Mostly just because I want to. Is there any disadvantage to this since Rum is the home province of the Turks? Also... no one really seems willing to ally with me, except the Byzantines. This is, naturally, another reason I'm not eager to attack them. I realize that a lot of the Catholics are looking at me as the barrier to GA points, but I can't even get people like the Danes or Almohads to ally with me.

That is an interesting game. Glad you're having fun with it.

The only disadvantage I can see to building in Palestine instead of Rum is that Palestine had to be build from the ground up, while Rum already had a fort, a mosque, a horse farm and a spearmaker, as I recall. That would save some time.

As for the alliance thing, I think the AI doesn't like to ally itself with warlike rulers. Egyptians finish off the Turks pretty fast with a human directing them, so the penalty is slight. That's just a guess, though.
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Doug-Thompson

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Fayetteville, AR Posted: April 09 2004,06:38

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Curse this thread.

Now if I play another faction, I feel cheated because I don't get $11K in ransom on the second turn.

Edited by Doug-Thompson on April 09 2004,14:00
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WorkNeglecter

Mercenary




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Posts: 6
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Italy Posted: April 09 2004,07:25

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Quote (mbrasher1 @ Mar. 30 2004,19:08)
My usual build strategy is
...
-- ghazi in Arabia

About Ghazis: I can't seem to ever use them correctly. No matter what unit I throw them against, they always start Losing badly and get chewed up. Plus, they stick in there until there are only 5 of them before they rout. I play medmod so I build them in Palestine for +1 valour, and they're usually armored as well. I put them in a wedge and plow them into Order Foot Knights or spearmen and yet they never win. Why do people love ghazis? What am I doing wrong?
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Leodegar

Mercenary




Group: Senior Patron
Posts: 13
Joined: April 2004
Posted: April 09 2004,07:45

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Quote (WorkNeglecter @ April 09 2004,07:25)
Quote (mbrasher1 @ Mar. 30 2004,19:08)
My usual build strategy is
...
-- ghazi in Arabia

About Ghazis: I can't seem to ever use them correctly. No matter what unit I throw them against, they always start Losing badly and get chewed up. Plus, they stick in there until there are only 5 of them before they rout. I play medmod so I build them in Palestine for +1 valour, and they're usually armored as well. I put them in a wedge and plow them into Order Foot Knights or spearmen and yet they never win. Why do people love ghazis? What am I doing wrong?

their stats are (without upgrades):

Ghazi Infantry Charge:5 Attack:5 Defence:-4 Armor:1 Moral:8

that means they kill a lot of enemys (high attack), but get slaughtered quick (low defense/armor). to avoid that, attack enemies who can´t fight them effectively anymore.
best charge them into the rear or flank of an enemy unit that is already engaged.

just try to pin the order foot soldiers with some saracen infantry or spearmen and manoeuvre your gazhis behind them, than let them charge
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HopAlongBunny






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Posted: April 09 2004,07:56

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Quote (WorkNeglecter @ April 09 2004,07:25)
Quote (mbrasher1 @ Mar. 30 2004,19:08)
My usual build strategy is
...
-- ghazi in Arabia

Why do people love ghazis? What am I doing wrong?

Ghazi are fast with armour piercing and insane morale. Head on into knights they will probably lose; hold the knights with a spear unit and run the ghazi in from the side.

The morale and speed makes them excellent flankers; they are also great at plugging holes in the line, their morale will tend to firm the resolve of any units they assist.

With the added kick of a ribat in the province you build them in, or a leader with a morale bonus, these guys will attempt to do whatever they are asked; not something you can say about many units :)
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Haethurn

Mercenary




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Posted: April 09 2004,14:34

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When I play as a Muslim faction, I like to roleplay. I pretty much try to follow the directives of the Qur'an, which forbids war with other Muslims. Of course, it also forbids aggressive war against non-Muslims, but I can't be blamed for accidently forgetting such a small and unimportant verse...mwahaha.

I go straight for the Byzantines, liberating Georgia and everything to the west up to Constantinople. At that point I stop and send my armies north to conquer the rebels in Khazar and the regions around it. I might also subjugate the people of Novgorod. Only when I have done that will I take out the Byzantines, and I never, ever attack the Almohads or Egyptians. I let them deal with crusaders coming my way.
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katank






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New York, USA Posted: April 09 2004,19:24

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how did you manage that? No war with eggy and enough time to subjugate the nov?

what difficulty level are you playing?

I remember once when I went byz first. Before Const. fell, my muslim brethren were already lusting for my blood. Only timely and ample use of mercs saved me from the location between a rock and a hard place.

ever since, I went eggy first to get ransom and avenge my grievance.

I never had problems with the almos though.

ghazis rock. Use them as fire and forget missiles. They are almost guaranteed to destroy the target unit but themselves as well. No guarantees on survival at all.

use on flanks to get most outta your exploding missile.

when your ghazis start routing, then you know you lost. (happened in one of the Saladin battles for me anyhow

the only ghazis I've ever ransomed back were 1 man units.

They are great morale wise. However, they are really impetuous. Don't expect them to use them for an ambush. One second I'm not looking, they shot at and are hitting some heavy cav head on and are getting massacred by heavy cav.
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HopAlongBunny






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Posted: April 09 2004,23:16

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I agree with Haethurn

Byz first is my preference; Egypt usually attacks me just before the Byz are exiled to their islands...no need to declare war on my Moslem brothers :)

Haethurn is far more ambitious than I. Everything North of the Byz homelands I leave until well after the Horde has been dealt with.
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Haethurn

Mercenary




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Posted: April 10 2004,00:08

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Quote (HopAlongBunny @ April 09 2004,23:16)
I agree with Haethurn

Byz first is my preference; Egypt usually attacks me just before the Byz are exiled to their islands...no need to declare war on my Moslem brothers :)

Haethurn is far more ambitious than I. Everything North of the Byz homelands I leave until well after the Horde has been dealt with.

When the Golden Horde appeared in Khazar and Armenia I just trained an army of about 3000 mercenaries in Georgia and sent them to deal with the Horde. They didn't capture a single province, and I killed Genghis Khan in like the first five minutes of the battle.
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Doug-Thompson
04-15-2004, 18:45
The first thing this thread needs is a step-by-step walk-through of katank's Kidnap the Sultan opening for early. I'm willing to write it but prefer to let katank do the honors.

PseRamesses
04-16-2004, 13:08
Quote[/b] (Doug-Thompson @ April 15 2004,12:45)]The first thing this thread needs is a step-by-step walk-through of katank's Kidnap the Sultan opening for early. I'm willing to write it but prefer to let katank do the honors.
I most certainly agree with you on that it´s the ultimate opening move for the Turks. Send him a PM.

katank
04-17-2004, 01:10
thanks for the honor.

I will start on it immediately.

I'll start up a Turk campaign to make sure of the accuracy and even unit by unit basis for hitting eggy.

BTW, I have also perfected blitzes for other factions like the Sicilians against the Italians, French against English, etc if anyone's interested.

Doug-Thompson
04-17-2004, 03:28
I'm interested. Go for it.

Cheetah
04-17-2004, 07:42
Sure, we are interested http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

PseRamesses
04-17-2004, 11:27
Quote[/b] (katank @ April 16 2004,19:10)]BTW, I have also perfected blitzes for other factions like the Sicilians against the Italians, French against English, etc if anyone's interested.
All strats are welcome. I think we players tend to go with our common play style most of the time and needs some fresh input, alt strats etc to excel in this game. Hit it Katank

katank
04-17-2004, 20:25
very long post warning

booted up early Turk expert campaign to demo my blitz strat.

too lazy for screenies but detailed description below:

first year, cueue watch towers in all provinces and move all troops to syria except for a peasant token garrison in Rum and queue up spearmen in Rum completely

note: name govs immediately. Turks tend to get 4 acumens easily. I was able to get 4 acu for all province two of which are 3 dread http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

these I made the govs of edessa and armenia to make sure I don't need troops there.

second year, survey troops in Syria

move new spearmen to Edessa leave a peasant in Syria

two stacks with 1 camel, 2 spears, 2 HA, and 1 desert archer per stack

with another HA in one and king in the other

needless to say, put 4* camel to command the one the king is not commanding

attack palestine with the camel stack and use sultan to attack tripoli.

eggy retreats without fight from both.

then move peasant in syria to tripoli and move entire force there to antioch. move new spear to syria.

palestine stays put for now.

wins battle and generates a ransom of 8486 florins including the newborn prince for eggy.

upon taking antioch, name very scary gov and build watch towers.

move tripoli peasant to antioch

leave spears if necessary in antioch for loyalty, move king to syria and as many troops as possible provided no rebellions elsewhere.

next year, hit sinai with 4* camel stack, move king's stack to palestine.

Eggy withdraws without fight from Sinai

next year, move camel stack onto arabia where eggy sultan is trapped, king's to sinai. This way, we maximize potential of our 4*.

wins battle, arabia castle comes up the same turn they lose the battle and hence they get to retreat to castle.

assault next turn and gain control in 1093 along with 8117 for sultan and 2 princes and possibly nobles.

send all troops to sinai for showdown in egypt with peasants and spears keeping people loyal elsewhere as well as cranking watchowers.

I sent the sultan's stack into egypt.

apparently, the eggy tries to invade and has larger force but decides they cannot win and retreated.

next year, I took egypt and then stormed.

33701 florins 1096, eggy dead

this is not at all a good showing and demonstrates the lowest performance since I developed it.

I did far better other times

this time, palestine inn was destroyed. otherwise, mercs make process better and faster in terms of organizing forces and thus hit them in egypt 1 year earlier.

also, mercs I hired would sometimes include good light cav including alans that can cause you to catch the sultan before he makes it inside arabia or egypt castle along with his heirs.

thus, once, I was able to get money these times too and thus was obscenely lucky.

Note: continuously amassing overwhelming numbers to make the eggy retreat without battle and going after the sultan allows you to avoid ever fighting the fine leader 6* camel general which can cost you soooo much.

By the time I faced the sultan in Egypt he was 1* from the captures, yet he still commanded.

Now, once the lands are settled down, pull forces to Syria and then Rum to hit the Byz city of Const. through Trebizond.

Once in Const, hold on for dear life and don't give it up.

you may get the inn in trebizond which can complement your palestine in giving mercs for the fight.

note: going after const means the byz emperor often gets trapped in Bulgaria/Greece.

So go after that area first and get ransom for him landing him in the Asia minor provinces.

Hit that and he goes to Georgia. Then, he went to Crimea after I sacked Georgia and finally to the islands.

Once I got a navy, I sacked his island twice to leave him one island.

This gave me 5 or 6 ransoms for the emperor.

This is absolutely best case scenario though.

Anyhow, once I had the eggy and all byz continental possessions by 1105 and more than 50k in the bank despite huge merc usage.

the empire then grew to 1.3 million florins in 1170 with citadels everwhere and me literally not knowing how to spend it all.

Once you have the byz and eggy territories as well, you are pretty much set and the game is yours.

I like to go to Moldavia for Avar Nobles and secure the steppe provinces that generate lots of trade.

This would likely bring you into conflict with the Polish.

to shorten borders, it's best to then conquer Hungarians and have a four province border of Prussia/Pomenrania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia and own everything east of that by killing the Nov and the rebels or bribing them.

Going for economy with so many rich provinces is really insanely good and you will have cash beyond your wildest dreams.

Note: always build watchtowers and then border fort in every new province you get.

the +20 and then +30 loyalty boost greatly reduces rebellions, esp. the loyaist variety which can kill your rush.

this also saves on garrisons and can help you keep you momentum.

phew, long post http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

katank
04-17-2004, 20:26
I guess I'll post my blitz strat series for all other factions later.

Doug-Thompson
04-19-2004, 06:50
Outstanding.

Good job, katank. Thanks. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

mfberg
04-20-2004, 16:32
Quote[/b] ]needless to say, put 4* camel to command the one the king is not commanding


Make the the 4* skilled attacker camel in syria the ruler of Rum (gives an extra star) when he attacks you have a 6* general in the first battle or two, after that he should become an expert attacker.

Of course mine started getting drunk the next year.

mfberg

katank
04-20-2004, 17:28
that's true. I forgot to add that.

too bad in that campaign, he became not so useful when he got black mailer and lost 3 loyalty. I couldn't trust him with stacks for quite a while.

RollingWave
06-08-2004, 14:43
Holy that blitz strat works insanely well.... took out both eggy and teh byz in a couple of decade (though had a few close calls against the byz... one fight he killed my general but my reinforcement killed his general and both side were routing like crazy LOL both side charge and flee half the time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif then their is that 9 star jedi prince that killed 100+ camal murabin and just about every damn unit I had before I killed him -_-)

katank
06-08-2004, 18:35
yep.

the blitz at the earliest can net you all the byz and eggy by 1105 or so with about 50k in treasury through some ransoms.

pinn and kill his katanks using missiles.

flanking and rear attacking camels work wonders too.

but still jedis can take out 100's of troops and turn a victory to defeat.

I really hope Rome fixes this.

RollingWave
06-09-2004, 05:17
Yes.... one fight they had 1 super jedi 9 star katatank and a group of urban milita... I musta fired on the jedi with my 3 group of horse archers (2 normal 1 turkoman) using up half of their ammo and the jedi still killed half my army before dieing wtf http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-furious3.gif

katank
06-11-2004, 01:50
trying hiring some mercs.

I'd like to see him survive fire from 2 mtd. x-bows while pinned by a unit of FFK (aka druzhina).

these boys kill jedis easily.

the FFK with hol dhold will last almost indefinitely and the mtd x-bows and javs or naptha if you can would surely finish him.

mcv
07-01-2004, 16:49
Okay, it's clear to me that in Early, it's best to surround and kill the Egyptian king first. But what about late? The Egyptians are strong, and there's a nice juicy fortress in Constantinople that would be great for training JHI.

The Mongols also hold a couple of lands that I'd like to have (especially Khazar after it gets the extra trade goods), and admittedly, Egyptian lands are still nice to have. But on Expert, the Turks just don't have the money to fight everyone, or even anyone.

I started by attacking Lesser Armenia and bribing Anatolia, which had the advantage of the Armenian rebels withdrawing into a province where I already held the castle. Byzantium took Trezbizond, so Byzantium looked like it was gonna be my first target. Build lots of Demi-Cannons in Rum for castle assaults (although I was really lucky that Byzantium withdrew out of the province and left me an empty castle).

Only after setting up some decent trade from Constantinople, do I have enough money for a bigger army (and soon a fortress in Rum), so now I can consider attacking Egypt or the Mongols.


mcv.

katank
07-02-2004, 22:04
my strat is only for early. In Late, ally with the weaker of the Mongols/Eggy and let them seesaw. taking Const. and rebel lands is a great idea.

As for not needing to assault, always target the province their king is in with superior forces.

if the AI thinks it might lose the battle, it will not risk getting its king sieged so will retreat.

this is excellent for grabbing Venice intact in early with either the Huns or Germans the very first turn.

a keep with ship production right away in early is extremely sweet not to mention the crazy farming and trade.

RollingWave
07-05-2004, 06:31
Seriously though... the more i play the more I find turks to be ridiculasly good faction overall in early....

Just consider their troop make up... they have by far the best troops for muslim faction and even arguablly the most solid lineup overall....

In early with turkoman horse and bedoiuns you are almost totally uncontestable in the desert.... the almos might give you a run with berbers and saharans (and nerubian spera) but the eggies don't really stand a chance against you.....

while you get THE best spear (and another useful more spcialized spear too) in early... and 3 solid foot archer (desert/fuwuttas/turcofoot... though i personally think turco foot is best due to high defense and valor bonus)

Then let's not even start on the calvaries... ur the only muslim faction that get access to armanians heavy cav provinces .... although u can't get saharan you are more likely to get lesser armania (ghulam bonus) and or the stepp province than the other factions.... with the v2 AHC and ghulams u acturally have BETTER heavy cav than the catholics in early and could still match them reasonablly in high.... all the while you have a huge horse archer advantage and better spearman too....

In high you get even better with JHIs.... how fair :P ... the almos and eggies are just starting to GET horse archers while u already run rampant with them (and probably have v2 turcoman by now) and then eggy get 2 other unit 1 is totally junk (abyssian guard) the other is a decent unit (mamulek horse) but nothing spetacular either...

come to think of it.... how the **** is eggy suppose to be a strong faction.... they have far inferior troops than BOTH the turks/almos/byz in early (their 3 closest neighbor -_-) ... espically the turks but the almos have far better infrastructure and access to good lands with iron AND get probably teh best generals/heirs except for the byzantians....

katank
07-05-2004, 15:48
v2 AHC are actually stronger than v0 CKs with 1 more defense.

I like turcomans for missile dueling but the futuwwas are so much better for fighting.

in High, janny inf is the way to go.

Eggy are fairly strong due to richness of lands.

it's easy to grab Syria off the Turks the first turn and then suddenly, you have 2 borders on that front instead of 6 and your sultan which is previously vulnerable, is now in an ideal position to forward strike into Edessa.

Also, they get Nizaris which are cool and the combo of pumped up saharans and bedouin camels are the cheapest all cav force in the game and is amazingly effective.

also, they can destroy the Turks in short order and get the AHC provinces.

YAKOBU
07-05-2004, 15:59
Hi katank http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I do enjoy your tips but must question your last point on AHC and CK's. How are v2 AHC stronger than v2 CK's?

katank
07-05-2004, 16:31
sorry, meant to type v0CKs

if not super upgraded or from Toulouse, the catholics still don't have better than v0 CKs and V2 AHC actually have 1 more defense than v0 CKs although less armor IIRC and one on one, you keep your heavy cav advantage for a portion of high at least

YAKOBU
07-05-2004, 16:34
Cheers katank, thought I was going mad http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif

As you say valour bonuses will alter the position http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

RollingWave
07-05-2004, 16:53
Yeah katank but that's assuming ur playing the AI :P .... in truth it'll take the eggies a while to get much saharan (iirc the fastest province to get it is egypt and that's still 4 turns before u can start... that's about how long the turks can start producing AHC and turcoman horse....) cavs and before that they are incrediablly vunerable to the mass horse archer hell of the turks.... having played both sides I find taking and holding syria early on is acturally harder than the turk blitz due to ur inferior units at the start. (though after you take syria ur really starting to get the advantage as now they have no more bedoiuns but still i find their first few counter attack to be scary)

I like tucoman better because they acturally survive the attacks :/.... even while flanking the futuwwas usually die in droves let alone in the frontal attack.... I like how you can use ur turcoman as a front line with some spears and they can basicallly handle everything reasonablly well allowing you time to flank with ur AHCs... turcoman holds the line MUCH MUCH better and easier than trying to flank with futuwwas .... (not to meantion there aren't any province with valor bonus to futuwaas :P

katank
07-05-2004, 18:09
I lost a few futuwwas but I wouldn't say dying in droves.

futuwwas I like just because of the fact that they can act as shock inf.

I don't quite feel comfortable with using archers as line inf except for jannies although turcomens do seem they can hold it pretty well.

they wouldn't kill much though, unlike the futuwwa. they all have their uses.

Eggy in the very early game is usually weaker than the Turks but some tactics and abuse of your BG unit will often get you to kill the Turks rather easily and then you can either carry the momentum into the Byz or give it a little break to tech up and regroup.

bringing out saracens and AHC would be good although every turn means another Byz inf which are nasty and I don't have the patience to tech up all my places before attacking so I usually go with the former route.

Doug-Thompson
07-06-2004, 19:11
I have to vote for Futawwas over Turcoman Foot.

Futawwas aren't as easy to control, and they also have a weaker defense. However, there's a five-point difference in their morale and Turcoman Foot. Futawwas may die, but they don't rout. Turcoman Foot won't die as quickly -- until the rout begins, and then they could get massacred.

Add that to the Futawwa's much better melee value.

katank
07-06-2004, 19:46
yay for futuwwas http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif

I frankly only flank or rear attack with them so they rarely get hit. 4 attack they have is equal to CMAA and JIs.

ah_dut
07-06-2004, 22:38
hello, I think that turk horse tactics are excellant against AI but most of the human armies have a lot of foot, archers. In BKB mod however, we have seljuq lunatics. excellant attack... horse archers... you do the maths http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Mouzafphaerre
07-07-2004, 11:43
-
Late/Normal

Divide your starting army and take the surrounding provinces. 2 units per province will suffice. You may consider bribing the rebel forces in Trebizond too.

After the first blow, get ready for the inevitable Mongol assault. Once you stop them, Kilikia and Caucassus are yours for nothing.

Get to the Mediterranean at once and build up your navy. Make extensive use of jihads against the crusades. The rest is plain and simple.

Hth
_

RollingWave
07-09-2004, 15:05
well JI is basically futuwwa+turcoman with both's strong point .... they have turco's defense and stability while having futuwwa's attack too...

but here's my argument on why turcofoot is better...
1.higher defense: futuwaa will die horriblly if they hit/get hit by just about anything that's not a peasent head on.... while turcoman will be able to hold their own (unless it's cavalry) for a while.... (givine you time to acturally pull somethign to help them... also makes them one of the best archer dual units in the game and great for leading a charge to draw missile fire....

2. speed: turcoman is fast... futuwaa is not.... while u need to flank with futuwaa to do good damage.....

3. valor: you easily acquire a province that give you higher valor turcoman.... while u can't upgrade futuwaa valor anymore than 1 you can get v2 turcoman.... (which is incrediablly good as a archer and pretty decent fighter...)

4. req: futuwaa require slightly higher req than turcoman... not much but still...

between the valor bonus and the fact that most ppl would surely build mosque/ribat anyway turcoman's moral isn't THAT big of a problem.... v1 turcoman have higher moral than a saracen infantry anyway... don't seem to see most ppl complaining about saracen infantry's terrible moral -_-

not to meantion a incrediablly important fact that higher valor archer = much more effective ranged shooters...

Turks have the easiest access to the super rigged v2 AHC anyway... they don't really need to have a slow low defense uncontrolled footarcher to do the mass flank killing for them.... what they DO need is something to fight on the melee line.... until they get Jannisary units they basically only have the saracen that's frontline worthy... i find that a line of saracen/turcoman tend to make for a very solid and strong center line giving ur horse archer a safe haven to retreat to and give ur rigged AHC time to do it's work

katank
07-09-2004, 15:43
good points. maybe I should use turcomans foot more.

I usually shoot with the futtuwas and then flank with the discounte ghazis leading the maneuver and futtuwwas following up with AHC rear attacking and saracen inf serving as the anvil.

smashed many enemies with little losses.

futtuwas provide quite a bit of hacking power on the flanks and it's not that hard to walk them around the flanks.

mcv
07-09-2004, 19:16
What about Ottoman infantry? They're a bit tougher than Futuwwas, but a bit better at fighting than Turcoman Foot. Especially when facing armour, which happens a lot when fighting Europeans. And they can get a valour bonus.

Another disadvantage of Turcoman Foot is that they take up a lot of space. When you have a large army defending a small hill, they screw up your formation.


mcv.

katank
07-09-2004, 19:38
ottoman inf I use quite a bit. to tell you the truth, there are so many turkish hybrids that it's a bit difficult to find a role for all of them.

ottoman inf are pretty decent but only available High onwards and I usually start in early and tech for JIs so I get JIs when I hit High and find no use for any other hybrid unless cash strapped.

RollingWave
07-10-2004, 13:43
I think ottoman inf are only useful if ur starting a late game.... other wise u'll get JI anyway and those are better in everyway possible..... (expcet for money of course) and if ur REALLY cash strapped u still have the trusty desert archers...

katank
07-12-2004, 01:39
well, against armor, they can do reasonably well.

also, they are better than DAs and also their build reqs are really low.

Blodrast
07-13-2004, 16:42
my two cents about katank's blitz strategy:
it pretty much works like you said, and it's great fun
however, i'd like to point out some particular issues i was confronted with during my campaign:
- first ransom of Eggy sultan in Antioch worked like a charm; second one, in Arabia, however, didn't quite work: I mistakenly killed the poor bastard But, since he had no heirs...no more Eggy. The rebels can be easily killed w/out a decent leader, or even bribed (although, since you missed out on the second ransom, I wouldn't advice bribing).
My point is that if you're not concerned with money, and you wanna speed up the process of eliminating the Eggies, you can kill him and the faction will degenerate if he has no heirs.
- Byz ransoming didn't work at all. I tried to trap their king, but it didn't quite work. I guess it's a matter of luck as to where and when he retreats. Here's what I did: attack Trebizond; king retreats to Const.; attack Const; king retreats to Nicaea; siege Const (no way I'll storm a citadel with barbican w/out siege eq). Ok, I thought, let's try to trap him in Nicaea. So I attacked Anatolia, and intended to attack him in Nicaea the next year, but in the same year, he tried to break the siege of Const. He failed, and disappeared My guess is he went to one of their crappy islands, because he sure didn't go to Bulgaria or Greece. Haven't seen him since, but I don't have a fleet yet.

My point with this one is that you should be careful with how many mercs you invest into, because you can't totally rely on ransoms. I've cleaned Asia Minor up, but I'm broke right now.

katank
07-13-2004, 17:00
cheapo strat.

after Eggy sultan got ransomed.

conquer Sinai.

then, conquer the province he's in but autocalc

autocalc would guarantee capture and not kill.

then, move troops out and let the province go loyalist rebel

then attack the other province.

rinse repeat.

loyalist rebels when you have no troops there aren't too bad and you get about 10k for every iteration and soon you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

the Byz emperor would sometimes get ransomed to Naples.

just storm the citadel with mercs and autocalc.

saves so much time and also money (mercs are supposed to fight and die, not fed)

Blodrast
07-13-2004, 19:52
er, ok, i know this is slightly (or more) off topic, but why is it that auto calcing is so unbelievably different from what a human can do ? For instance, how come you only get certain VnV's by autocalcing, but not if you fight those battles ?

To be honest, I hadn't considered autocalcing - I was determined to fight myself so that I'd get a hang of the proper usage of HAs, etc. Besides the main reason for playing the game is the battles, right ? So I would very much like to be able to get similar results to autocalcing...

sigh. I guess just for curiosity's sake, I'll reload and autocalc to see what the outcome is..

katank
07-13-2004, 20:22
the idea is that in straight fights, their jedi powers rarely lets you capture them.

they are either dead or escaped.

autocalc I think almost guarantees the capture.

Battles are great but why fight it out when it doesn't matter?

by that time, he will have shredded units that can be beat by a general and spearmen most of the time.

use your HAs on the Byz and have fun dragging the Byz around the map.

I find that with 16 HAs, I can easily destroy 3-4 Byz inf a battle.

to kill them far faster than replenishment means that you can weaken the Byz considerably

after some raids, push to Const. and ransom their emperor.

RollingWave
07-14-2004, 15:53
Well if you already cornered them in a province with no escape rout... as soon as he start routing pull all ur units away from him and let him run off the map... or ####.. even let him retreat ...... it doesn't matter as long as you win the battle with him still alive u'll capture him.... just make sure he doesn't die (usually... try hitting him with things like spear man that doesn't do a whole lot of damage to him comparablly as say camals or armor piercing units .........

katank
07-14-2004, 15:56
the problem is him not wanting to run a lot of the times and with jedis, my solution was always massed archery+javs+naptha.

the problem is that then I lose the ransom.

I still autocalc if he only has a few rag tag units left and I don't want to kill him but want the ransom.

RollingWave
07-24-2004, 05:17
True but in terms of early game... first of all the eggy royal lines isn't much of a jedi usually (and u won't have naptha jav usually anywya)

katank
07-24-2004, 19:16
still, killing him would mean no cash and even spears occasionally kill him.

he doesn't rout very fast.

RollingWave
07-25-2004, 19:19
Hmmm just finished as the turks... some thoughts....
If you start in early... the turk late units are a joke... ottman infantry are acturally the best amoung them due to AP... but even then JI and even turcoman/futuwaas are often still better.. (but if u get a master bowyers in rum they are somewhat worthwhile.)

Ottman siphia is a piece of ****... why would i want to buidl a slightly more buffed slow saharan cav in late that require huge tech ??? even when i get the v2 once from edessa they are still only useable as light calvary.... but if i want light cav i rather have something that's acturally speedy...

If OS was crap... the SOP is even crappier... 20 unit horse archer is ......

I acturally realize that crossbows aren't bad units at all... yeah u never want to use them if u can use arbs... but if u need to use them... they are still far more effective than most normal archers against armored targets....

Mental note... when u have a big empire... never send ur sultan into war XD... always keep him in a safe place with very secured sea connection to everywhere... or u'll lose half ur empire to rebels....

Wow muslims have a HUGE advantage with jihad vs rebels... almost 9 outta 10 time the rebel will give you the province withotu a fight and give you HUGE money from capturing them all....

And JHI is wow.... sending them against a pack of light cav is one of the most hilarious sights ever as the light cav litterally dissapear before they even get to run .... pretty much anything except maybe mass spearwalls melt away like ice in a hot summer's day against these guys.... the only way to beat them is to threat them like knights... pin with spear and flank with everything u got.... and they fight MUCh better than knights in melee and dont' suffer from AP and cav bonus as badly.... too bad i didn't mod my game to build grand mosque everywhere XD.....

MadKow
07-25-2004, 20:41
JHI is definitely wow. I do the trick of building military Academy then destroy Grand Mosque, and move it to another place. This normally means i can have around 4 Janissary building provinces during high, if i time all the buildings right, which i never do.

Late units are definitely dissapointing, specially since you're all pumped up with Janissaries and want more and better.

But lets face it, Turks are extremely powerfull as they are (played by a human because when the AI plays the turks they are always extinct by either the Egyptians of the Bizantines, atleast in my games.

ah_dut
07-26-2004, 12:36
on the topic of ottoman inf. i like them. I will generally have a master bowyer in rum anyway and AFAIK, they are cheaper than janny archers. so i use them.

katank
07-26-2004, 15:18
SOPs aren't bad.

their stats are comparable to late ghulams except for less charge.

they get to shoot. I usually just have them as the general.

the general you usually don't risk outright.

parking him behind the spearwall to steady the troops is often a good option and if he has missile capabilities, he can at least pepper the enemy a bit.

The_Emperor
08-05-2004, 15:40
I can't say SOP's are very effective for me... But then at only a 20 man unit, I can't expect much purchase from their missiles.

Still they can be useful, even if they are outclassed in Late period.

Tristuskhan
08-12-2004, 18:20
Just a small topic for my first time on the forum: I'd like to know tips on the way to preserve a strong ennemy in a turkish campaign... I'm just fed up with fighting outdated troops when reaching late, in fact... Is kicking the Pope the only way to allow christian superpowers?

katank
08-12-2004, 18:43
try playing medmod.

you can let the Spanish or the French become quite big.

if you really want, crush factions close to them by raiding or assasinations to help them along their conquests.

I've seen the Spanish have enough troops to wipe out the Mongols in a turn or two and also huge deposits of troops in places.

The French can also be similarly scary in some campaigns.

Tristuskhan
08-16-2004, 16:37
thanks katank, I did not play medmod yet but heard that man from Illinois gived a bonus to light cavalry in brittany (early), that means this guy is really serious: breton cavalry used to beat the francs in the forest, preventing us to have the fate of our irish cousins who weren't able to resist the invaders... I really need to play medmod but I lended my vi disc... I have to wait for a while. Now, on the current version I discovered that killing the pope gives a boost to christian powers: my last GA campaign saw the spanish ending game with more that 240 pts and producing lancers (I keep the savegame... very good battles to be done on that map!), swiss pikemen, and chivalric knights with silver armour in Toulouse. I've been playing that game for more than one year (been badly injuried at work and had much, much time to spend) and never saw that before: I was holding a classical Croatia-hungary-Carpathia-moldavia-kiev-khazar line, with sicily, ireland and scandinavia, Spanish held everything else, but islands in the medit. tunisia and cyrenaica (almohads) and tyrolia to the swiss... That happened after I crushed the germans who were holding most of today's france (I thing I spent twenty years running after the emperor). The spanish, who had been static for centuries, began to grab the province from the southwest, and then all the way to Muscovy... Everytime he was excommunicated I killed the pope and my spanish friend gained a solid empire (and never waged war against me).
Last thing, I'm sorry my english is so.... french and that I don't have internet at home... that I'm quite rare on the forum!

katank
08-16-2004, 17:46
who might be the man from Illinois you are referring to? Is Wes from Illinois?

I modded Brittany to give valor bonus to mtd. sarges too.

Tristuskhan
08-16-2004, 19:07
Well, I think Wes lives somewhere in the midwest, but I can mistake... how do you guys know more about our own (small, indeed) history than most of the Bretons themselves? Some thing about our cavalry: we had small nervous horses (today we have very big -more than one ton- cool ones) that were really used to fighting under trees. As long as we know about it, bretons used mounted archers with hit and run tactics... One or two french kings got so mad with that they just had to flee (battle of Ballon, about 845AD). I don't know if it's possible to mod horsemen for them not to get a "trees malus", but that would be the best way to have an historical breton unit. One just has to find a weak enough base unit to mod it.
Katank, are you from New York? Many men like me, coming from many remote places in old Europe, must have told you about their little countrie's history, so I'll do it too. Bretons came from great brittain between the 4th and the 6th century. The legends wanted us to have fled the germanic tribes, but new studies say most of the breton groups who moved where from wales and cornwall, meaning my ancestors are due to have fled the scots, invading from Ireland. Thanks, Celtic Brothers! Brittany was the only place on the continent that was never conquered by Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, I don't know the way he's called in English). Later the dukes of brittany became retainers of the french kings, as was supposed to be the english king. Mtw period was a long struggle to keep the country independant from french and english, quite successfully (the province was very rich that time: smooth climate, no famines) until our eleven years old duchess was married to a sixty years old french king in 1492. Independance ended in a group hug, wonderful isn't it?

katank
08-17-2004, 03:03
yes, I am from New York City. Bretagne is an interesting place. I actually have a few friends who are Bretons

I think the penalty for cav in trees is hardcoded so to avoid that, we may have to mod an inf unit to have horsie graphics.

I knew that brittany was famous for light cav and also had celtic origins but didn't know that it retained its independence for so long.

Tristuskhan
08-19-2004, 17:56
Well, independance is a big word... The princes of bretagne were very important retainers of the french king so when this was weak, the province had more than autonomy. Who would follow the french after Azincourt? The 15th century was a golden age for the great retainers of the french kingdom, bretagne (breizh in breton, that's more accurate) was very rich that time: I read something like two third of the ships entering Anvers or the thames in 1450 were breton, then integration to the king's domains had us following the stupid french policy about oceans, never getting organised (don't blame the french, it's a celtic behaviour) and beeing overran by english and dutch.
That topic is not related to the Turks, anyway, so let's come back to it. I'd like to know how players do act with the sons who are not to become Sultans, since the Ottoman dynasty got most of his power when a very special law went to be applied, I read it in a biography of Soliman the lawyer (the magnificient): the Sultan had the right to have his brothers assassinated if no (royal) blood was spilled -most were asphixiated, until the 17th century when they were kept incaged for all their life. That gave the turkish empire a fantastic boost, smoothing the civil wars and allowing stable kingdom. What I'd like to know is when that rule was created. I like to apply it in my games, insuring the best of my sons to become the Sultan. That's cruel. Could the turkish specialists tell us more about it? It's not related to the Shari'at, neither to the Yasak (law of the steppes, both turkish and mongol), who thought about it and how was it accepted?

katank
08-20-2004, 23:12
I don't know about it historically but in the game I do it all the time.

jedis are cool, odd useless heirs aren't. they typically lead a frontal suicide charge to occupy some strong enemy units.

Doug-Thompson
09-01-2004, 01:20
As I remember it, the first heir to get to the throne room of the palace got to be Sultan. It was literally a race.

This somewhat barbaric practice sure kept the dissidents quiet. For one thing, nobody plotted with their favorite heir because there would definitely be only one sultan.

That's all I remember off the top of my head, and I'm not extremely sure about that. Do a search for "Ottoman succession" and see what results you get.

Komutan
09-02-2004, 07:39
That topic is not related to the Turks, anyway, so let's come back to it. I'd like to know how players do act with the sons who are not to become Sultans, since the Ottoman dynasty got most of his power when a very special law went to be applied, I read it in a biography of Soliman the lawyer (the magnificient): the Sultan had the right to have his brothers assassinated if no (royal) blood was spilled -most were asphixiated, until the 17th century when they were kept incaged for all their life. That gave the turkish empire a fantastic boost, smoothing the civil wars and allowing stable kingdom. What I'd like to know is when that rule was created. I like to apply it in my games, insuring the best of my sons to become the Sultan. That's cruel. Could the turkish specialists tell us more about it? It's not related to the Shari'at, neither to the Yasak (law of the steppes, both turkish and mongol), who thought about it and how was it accepted?

Mehmet 2(the conqueror of Istanbul) created this rule.What motivated him was most likelly the civil war between 1402 and 1413.In 1402 the mongols defeated the ottoman army.Their ruler Timur splitted the ottoman territory between the 4 sons of the padishah.They battled each other and in 1413 Mehmet 1(grandfather of Mehmet 2) defeated the others.

Not all padishahs choose to have their brothers killed.Some were imprisoned for life in the palace.

But I think it is wrong to say that this practice allowed a stable kingdom.Ottoman rulers(with the exception of a few of the the earlier ones) did not have proper marriages.They had a harem and concubines.All these women fought for their sons succession between themselves.For example, the intrigues of Suleyman 1's wife, Hurrem Sultan(Roxanne) are very famous.

Watchman
10-28-2004, 23:19
The practice of royal frantricide upon ascension to the throne started with the Ottomans around what, late 1300s or early 1400s or so - actually right after they'd whupped the Serbs at Kosovo Polje if memory serves. I think there was something pretty dramatic like a captive Serbian knight or prince or something managing to stab the old Sultan, who died. His eldest son duly received the job and promptly had his brothers strangled on the spot to pre-empt the sorts of civil wars the various Turkish dynasties had tended to have, and the practice stuck.

Later on (a few generations after Suleyman the MAgnificient, I think) they just started isolating the princes in a building in the Porte known simply as the Cage from infancy, where their contact with the outside world was limited to servants and slaves. It is perhaps not a great surprise that the Sultans this setup produced tended to be insane, criminally incompetent, or both. A few actually turned out to be almost capable, and some more developed a passion for illuminating Korans or something similar and flatly refused to take the throne and leave their comfortable little world when asked to...


Anyway, back to topic. Playing the Turks from Early with the smallest unit size is otherwise kinda fun, but there turns up a wee little problem - 40-man Kataphrakt princes and 100-man blocks of Byz Inf are suddenly a whole order of magnitude bigger problems. Thus far I've managed to look scary enough they haven't attacked me, and even caught a few provinces (like Trebizond and Georgia) basically for free when the AI left them virtually ungarrisoned, but now there's a huge four-army block of Byzantines rooted in Lesser Armenia with a 6-star prince and a 100-man Byz Inf unit whose leader has enough nasty traits for the whole unit to have a valor of 6 before general bonuses...
~:eek:
I'm so not going in there until I get my Janissaries going.

phred
01-16-2005, 06:22
Does anyone have any advice for the Turks starting on High? I've tried two or three times and have been destroyed by the Mongols when they arrive. The Mongols seem to ignore everyone else and go straight for me, and 25 turns isn't enough time to prepare for the Mongol onslaught. Your provinces aren't well developed and your army isn't very large. Has anyone had success starting on High?

I guess the obvious answer is to not be in Asia Minor when the Mogols arrive.
So, maybe build a fleet and send everyone to Greece? or Egypt?

thanks in advance ~:)

Akıncı
01-24-2005, 10:01
i need your assistance,

what shuld i do about changing of beginning treasure

or where can i learn this questions' answer

please tell me

thanks

Jaqmaq the Blaq
01-26-2005, 23:12
Greetings infidels. I am new to this and still learning basics. Consider this post as getting my feet wet here so I am comfortable with questions later.

After playing as the Picts and Vikings on the Easy setting in VI, I decided to dive in with the Turks on Normal difficulty in the Early milieu. Gorsh what a soul consuming process. Most of my fighting is on autocalc as both of my computers tend to crash when I manually battle. I made so many mistakes at first it is a wonder I survived: spending money like it was going out of style, building loads of peasants and attacking smaller but better equipped forces of Egyptians and Byzantines and enduring horrific losses. Took me a while to understand the importance of quality troops with valor.

After a disastrous battle with the Egyptians, who had a 7 star general stationed in Arabia, I signed a ceasefire then an alliance and turned my attentions northward. Georgia and Lesser Armenia fell at once to my troops, not sure how, perhaps the peasants just hugged them to death. The "Byz" had some good troops in Anatolia and Trebizond but I spent myself into debt building tons of peasants and just overwhelmed them with numbers and of course my good looks. In about 10-15 years I had taken Constantinople for good. But the Egyptians had been patiently building and overran Syria and Edessa, eventially besieging Rum twice. This was not a good time for that as I had no money. Fortunately a great way to improve cash flow is to kill your troops. The assault on the 'Nople had decimated my forces and with the cash now coming back in it was time to upgrade to spearmen. I eventually found an amazing strategy that worked with the Egyptians: show up with the biggest army. They pulled back from Antioch. They pulled back from Syria. They pulled back from Tripoli. I slaughtered them in Edessa. We battled in Arabia and Palestine, and they pulled back. By the time we got to Sinai I had such a supply chain of decent quality troops going that each turn they ratcheted backwards. When they got to Egypt of course there was nowhere left to retreat. The beauty of it was that after the defeat in Arabia, their king led the army - even though they had a pair of 6 star generals and a 7 star general under his thumb. We left them to rot in the forts and in an astonishingly short time they were eliminated.

But we didn't stop there. When we saw the Almohad was mostly peasant armies, our supply chain kept us rolling all the way to Algeria until we came up hard against the cursed Spaniards in Morocco.

Meanwhile we held Constantinople and observed with wry amusement as the Byz were being pounded by the Hungarians and Polish. And we had finally started to learn Finance and Budgeting 101, and were able to keep reasonable cash flow with a few big projects thrown in every few years. And finally we had pushed into Khazar and Volga-Bulgaria which were not affiliated with anyone yet, and sent an emissary to ally with the Novgorod.

Silly Novgorod. They first refused alliance, then sent a large ragtag army against us. Fine. We pulled back to Georgia. And we found a 4 star prince we hated in Tunisia and worked him over to Georgia. By the time he got there, we had amassed a nice little stack for him. He charged into Khazar - and was defeated. Excellent! Gotta love that cash flow. We improved his troops and sent him in again, the Novgorod Prince moved in to join the battle, and we prevailed. And in an event of supreme convenience, the Prince died without heirs - the Novgorod holdings broke up into rebel bands - and with our new understanding of cash flow we bribed and blitzkrieged all the way to Finland, Livonia, and Kiev. I got concerned at this point because the vile Byzantines were now on our new doorstep in Kiev.

And about Kiev. We had continued to harrass the Byz, and finally lost our patience and took out Bulgaria and Greece in the same turn. After a few turns of consolidation and regrouping, we pushed into Moldavia, driving the Byz backwards into Kiev. We by now hated these Purple People Eaters so we launched into Kiev and then Crimea, rooting out their violetness wherever we found it. Our forces met east and west and now we control the entire Black Sea region, all of what would become Russia, Asia Minor and the Middle East, and Africa as far as Morocco.

The Spaniards hold Morocco and we are currently attempting to get them to attack us in Algeria, so we can start our first Jihad. They are being rather difficult about the entire process however. Ever since we busted the Byz in Bulgaria and Greece, the powers of Western Europe have been very gracious. Italy has a large stack but looks the other way while Greece is scantily protected. Hungary battles the Polish or someone in the interior. We are beginning to build ships to control the Med and have won over two of the islands. Our cash flows are reasonably strong, our sultan is learning how to build his armies, and we have 60 years before the Horde arrives. We have a castle in Tripoli and we're digging in at Sinai and Antioch to prepare for the pale infidels. Things are looking very bright for the Turks.

All in all it has been a surprising success for my first real campaign. The early years were pretty much: click End Turn and expect to die. And I had resigned to having the Egyptians in my backside for the rest of the game and only holding Asia Minor from Rum to the 'Nople. But once we got them turned around it was a swift linear progression of events.

Time to put our newest provinces in order and gear up for the Crusades and the Horde.

BalkanTourist
01-27-2005, 20:15
Welcome ~:cheers: !
Good to hear that you are doing well. I remember it took me awhile to get used to the muslim factions. I prefer(ed) a spear wall with swordsmen on the sides ready to flank, while light and medium cavalry hit the back of the enemy. With muslims you've got to concentrate on Horse Archers and hybrid units. I've never played the Turks but owned the whole world with the Almohads and the Egyptians. Once you get your economy running it's easy. Don't ever use peasants for anything but garrison duties. And at the last, I know how you feel as I auto calculated for a year before I got a comp that could allow me to fight. But trust me, it's a whole different story, if you like the game now, you'll love it when you fight your own battles. Despite RTW, I still believe MTW is the better game!

Jaqmaq the Blaq
02-03-2005, 20:29
Balkan, thank you. I am looking forward to conducting battles myself some day.

The Turkish empire has expanded since last I posted. We overran the Spaniards and survived an outbreak of Portughese rebels and now rule the entire peninsula of Spain. We're currently engaged in bloody warfare with the Aragonese who are not going quietly into that good night. But they are down to two provinces and we have a large force of 3000 of them surrounded and cut off from reinforcements. Their time is nigh.

The Byzantines have been forced into exile on the island of Crete and left to rot there. We will clean up their mess at the end. If we get bored we may land a small assault team to weaken their numbers and remind them who's their daddy.

As we populated the Med we began running into the Sicilians who managed to destroy the Papacy and push the Italians into Croatia. For a while the Italians and Hungarians provided a nice buffer zone. Good fences make good neighbors, but we got tired of being good neighbors and declared war on them both. Meanwhile the French attacked us and declared Crusade in one of the northern European provinces and the Germans just wound up being in the way. The Crusade moved into our soft belly behind the front lines and began slicing through us like a hot knife through butter. Finally we wised up and surrounded the Crusade with numerically superior forces on all sides, and then attacked the province it was located in. It moved to attack a neighboring province - retreated - disappeared. We have no idea where those 800+ fanatics went, but they are off the board for now. Meanwhile the Holy Roman Empire is a vague memory of yesteryear as the Germans gaggle together in one remaining fortification and prepare to drink koolaid punch. The Hungarians are long gone. We were offended by their weakness. The Italians barely lasted a year.

At this point the Sicilians appear to have had enough and launched a rather poor attack on our land forces, which was repulsed - and our sea forces - which was a lot more successful. We lost many ships. We are now engaging them by land, and we are cranking out ships in 6 provinces to overwhelm them by sea.

The Mediterranean supply route was the key to taking Spain, but the Sicilian interference has hampered us in taking out the Aragonese. And what a boon sea superiority has been. Thanks to advice on this forum, we peaked at a 19k net annual income before war broke out with everyone on the Continent. That surplus fueled not only our vast Turkish army but also a broad building improvement plan in every province in the empire. We are turning out Imams in Constantinople to spread the word of Allah to every dark corner. Each of our Holy Land provinces has a Keep, and we have saturated the eastern Mediterranean sea routes to sink any crusaders before they arrive.

We still have almost 30 years before the Mongol horde sweeps into Khazar, Georgia, and/or Armenia. Plenty of time to build up Muscovy and Kiev and prepare for any eventuality.

Our next steps are to finish off the French and Aragonese, retake control of the western Med sea routes, then tighten the noose on the Sicilian land forces. We are undecided how to approach the Papacy. Three assassins have failed in their attempts on the pope. The sultan's advisors whisper in his ear to attack and weaken the Pope but leave him with a small remnant of power until the very last stroke.

We have yet to make contact with Britain. Finland is building a shipwright and will soon begin launching its own fleet to explore those regions.

Our greatest dilemma at this time is simply the vast size of the empire. It takes fully an hour or two to manage the provinces and determine the upcoming year's strategy. Many of our emirs have developed crippling vices and we ponder the implications of stripping their titles. But the current Sultan is a weakminded fool. He is the likely target of assassins working within the royal family.

madyoui
02-11-2005, 23:18
i do not know what to do! i am playing turks and i have a yearly income of 10 florins! i only have the provinces i began with.i mhave an army designed to take on byzantynes but everyone says to attack eggys, what do i do? ~:confused:

BAD
02-19-2005, 03:04
Well if your army is designed for a Byzantine offensive take on the Byzantines. If you take some of there provinces you should be able to get enough forces to take on the Egyptians later even after they have strengthened their defenses.

I would suggest just all out offence against the Byzantines, before you go against the Eggy's. War on two front's while manageable =/ can get ugly. . . Try taking provinces up to and including Constantinople and Georgia then your Borders are only 2 provinces (to the North anways). =D Then get a ceasefire or alliance with them and switch your beady/greedy eyes to the Eggy's.

And try get some trade going with ships once you get the coastal provinces. That should help your treasury. Having said that it could be difficult when you are warring with your neighbours :dizzy2: . Well you can't have everything. . .

Claudius Maniacus Sextus
03-03-2005, 20:16
well i first quickly attacked byzantine's because they lack troops and unit developing buildings(except constantinopole).in a couple of years theyr beaten.by having to atack quick,you must use any unit you can muster and lead your battles withh great wisdom and courage.with constantinopole you can train better units like Futtuwas,saraceans,Ghulum etc.
and having this "high-tech" army you will crush the egyptians queit easyly,because their armies consist mainly of pezy's.
After this conquest you can do what ever you want,with Hashishin Janisaries and Ghulum your practicly invicibile.

This was just a little,short guide but i hope it help's.


~:cheers: ~D Cheers and Best of Luck! ~D ~:cheers:

phred
03-04-2005, 16:49
check out the earlier posts about rushing Egypt. In a couple of turns you can make a lot of money ransoming the Egyptian sultan and then in a few more turns you can own all Egypt. It works well and it gives you some great money making provinces.
~:)

sir_schwick
03-04-2005, 17:51
As strange as it sounds, I actually try and let the Egyptians keep Egypt. This keeps them from resurgeing with 6k troops in Arabia just when you have consolidated the Byzantines. Of course I eventually let them take Sinai and use boats to take Egypt. I know this is a lot of lost potential income, but handling resurgence armies is a biatch.

Also, I let the Byz keep their islands. Usually they make peace and those islands always have ports with no tradeable resources. Gives some immediate income to trade operations.

_______________________________________________

My first Turk game I did the classic Egypt-ransom-Byz-rush strategy. Then I invaded eastern Hungary and POland, streching from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. I was getting crusades out the arse, but it raised some really badarse generals. Learned the true meaning of Jihad and how to get 40+ Turcoman +1 valour horse in one turn. Decided to invade Iberia next for kicks. Actually beaten back cause of some bonehead moves, but they were out within 10 years. Was about to reach High era when my HD crashed and I lost that game.

_Aetius_
03-11-2005, 19:21
Heres a tip for dealing with Egypt. I attacked the Egyptians in the first 3 or 4 turns on Expert in the early period as the Egyptian sultan is in Antioch if you take Tripoli via Syria then he is trapped, then invade Antioch kill the Egyptian sultan and any sons he has there and the Egyptians are destroyed as they have no heirs left, very very simple way to deal with a big rival. That easy.

Kralizec
03-11-2005, 20:38
I did another Turkish campaign (starting early, expert) last week, and it was interesting in some ways.

First of all, the Byzanthines were quite difficult to deal with, unlike earlier Turkish games. However when I did manage to get Constantinople it was a piece of cake.

Secondly there were lots of civil wars and rebellions in the game. At the end of early almost all of eastern Europe consisted of rebel provinces, as did Norway & Sweden and a good chunk of central Europe. Strange thing is that most of them were quite well developped, lot's of citadels and master bowyers, etc. Those rebels must be industrious people! Of course I bribed lot's of armies and this helped my expansion.

Knowing the Golden Horde would come eventually, I began my preperations already in the early period. First I began a raiding strategy in all of the steppe provinces- 1. capture a province with a huge army, lead by my king 2. destroy all buildings in it (I really don't want the GH to have citadels and high grade production facilities) 3. pull out and repeat on other provinces. The added advantage is that when the Golden Horde is thinned out, you can launch lots of Jihads and take all the steppe provinces with ease.
I also built a fortress in Georgia because the GH appeared there in all of my previous games. I stationed a single unit of Gulam bodyguards there, plus 2 units of Hashishin. My thought was that because it would take an eternity to besiege this stronghold, the Golden Horde could only assault and lose a lot of valuable men or wait it out, letting me launch multiple jihads to retake it.

However, the GH did not appear in Georgia. I was pissed off.
Soon afterwards I was able to train the Janissary units. This coupled with v2 Armenian cavalry and v1 Saracen infantry + upgrades in good quantities meant that wiping the GH off the map wasn't nearly as hard as it should have been- they were gone in 11 years.

After that, well it got quite boring. There weren't any superpowers that could rival me, and whereas I wielded Jannissaries already the western kingdoms couldn't throw anything better at me then feudal units. It still took quite some time but there weren't any exiting battles after the Horde.

Jaqmaq the Blaq
03-20-2005, 18:06
Question to the Learned. Playing on Early Normal, my Turks have captured the whole board and it is still some 15 years before the Golden Horde is supposed to emerge. Am I forced to wait for the GH to emerge and be elminated before I can achieve victory?

Second question, now that I think about it. There is one territory not under my control, the Irish isle. They have no port so I cannot land there. Is there any Turkish unit available in Early that can storm in and root them out?

Jaqmaq the Blaq
03-20-2005, 20:58
My bad. Eliminating the rebel force in Ireland finished the game before the GH arrived. Apparently I had to have a port on the English isle to reach Ireland.

Malachi
03-25-2005, 15:37
Newbie Salute to Katank for the Early Turk blitz. ~:cheers: That's some good work. And a big yay for Futuwwas! Currently enjoying a High-Hard Turkish campaign. I think 25 years is long enough to prepare for the Mongols. ~D

phred
03-25-2005, 18:57
Currently enjoying a High-Hard Turkish campaign. I think 25 years is long enough to prepare for the Mongols. ~D


I'm playing the same (Turks High-Hard) and am having a hard time keeping my head above water.
Two English crusades, one German Crusade, war with Byzantium, war with Egypt, and war with the Mongols have severely depleted my armies and caused me to lose Trebizond, Rum and Armenia. I've gained Nicea, Egypt, Sinai, Arabia, Cyprus and just took Tripoli after a hard fought battle. I'm on the upswing and am finally making money, but Italy is getting big and could take me out pretty quickly if they so decide. I tried to stay at peace and just prepare for the Mongols, but the crusades and the backstabbing Byzantines changed that.

What's been your early strategy? ~:)

Dizciple
04-01-2005, 16:48
Hello im new to this game but ive been around these games for 10+ years. I was looking for some building info( the college of surgeons to be exact), and decided to post my thoughts on the turks, since im now engaged in their epic tale.

Early period:easy(ya ya I know its really easy but I will go for guts and glory later)
Start with only a couple provinces, and very uneducated people, and a small army. You are surrounded by egypt and byz. Egypt is overall the weaker opponent. But byz is a sleeping lion of the east. Better to kill it while its sleeping than wait for it to wake it up when its already hungry. Georgia is the first I take for +1valor janissaries in the later period also I focus on taking constantinople very early, whilst holding egypt at bay with diplomatic options.Once I have taken constatinople I focus on egypt till I get to egypt lol. By this time I will have also taken kazaar( one of two provences they invade, the other is armenia not sure if theres more.) At this point its best to defend whats yours for a while to build up your tech and prep for mongols. I saved at year 1200 and preped for 30yrs with my units and thousands of mercs. When the golden horde arrived they came with 25000 men, I had about 20000 I was aiming for 10000 lol. They only invaded kazaar because I had a large army in armenia as well 2000 men.
That battle was great and took 4+ freakin hours. But I learned about all the turks do's and dont's and which men are really good and ones that stink.
Saracen are the single most importent infantry for early and late periods I used 6 units in a square formation in the woods and the held off thousands of mongels. They shredded calvary and took arrows like champs(hehe woods are great cover, and calvary are poor in woods), also I used reinforcements for the other part of my army.....alot. Heavy steppe calvary for moscovy and kazaar are the best you can get for preping for mongols, use them well. I like this game for the battles, the strat part is easy even on hard, but the battles can be more difficult.
Once you defeat the mogols its a cake walk, not really any army thats going to attack with 25000 or even 10000 so you should have it pretty easy.

Main points of turks:

Turks are a heavy calvary faction, they have great archers and horse archers, use this to your advantage. Kill the men charging you, skirmish them some more then use heavy calvary to drive them home. Also they have some of the best heavy infantry in the game janissaries heavy infantry and gazi are just aw inspiring to watch cut through hundreds of brave knights even on horses.

Mongols will be a problem you must deal with in 1231 prepare for them early.

Crusades will be a problem, once you take constatinople they will usually crusade to that provence first and its easy to defend with a good army.

jihads are useful, I didnt use them to much except for fun but they may prove more reliable to you. Just remember that they are only used on previously owned provences!

Mercs!!!!! What could a warlord ask for thats better than his own body guards?? an army that he only pays once!!! if they die? who cares hire more!!
And you can get any unit for any faction!! even rebel units ha!
I took 10000 mercs to war against the mongols,chivaric sergants, italian infantry, arquebusiers(guns), handguns, alomohad urbans, bulgarian brigands, pavise arbalests, crossbowmen with pavise, longbows!!! alot lol, mortars lol gunpowder wasnt used in middle east yet not till 1260, chivalric men at arms, byzantine infantry, halberdiers!!! ahaha great units, poor mongols, billmen I think didnt use them in battle as I had 163 reinforcements, bleh to many.I also used a merc army for taking all of spain. Just make sure you have your own generals leading the mercs like your gulam cav.
Also I used mercs for taking byz out early, then I built up my own units and disbanded all the mercs.

This is my opinion on playing the turks, and some of the ideas that I used to thrive and have fun.....heheh 25kvs20k was alot of fun!!! I saved the replay, not sure if I could email it out but I have it for those new to the game or new to turks that wants to see them in action on a huge scale.


-diz

Kralizec
04-01-2005, 16:57
Tip: well before the Horde arrives, send a few army stacks to the steppe provinces. After you've conquered a province, tear everything down, move to the next province and repeat. This will earn you money, prevents the GH from building good troops and later on you can launch jihads on these provinces to gain quick influence for your Sultan.

kalifah of watton
04-05-2005, 20:00
the ottoman turks,a historical note.
i once read somewhere that the ottomans had a set battle tactic using three waves of troops.
1st wave-a motley collection of christan mercanaries who had been promised plunder go on to soften up the enemy and take heavey casulties.

2nd wave- in go the cavalry

3rd wave- finally the jannissaries go in and finish it all off.

because the jannissaries are so hard to acsess in the game you could use
high valour/armour sarecen infantry and turcoman foot as a reasonable substitute.the 1st wave could even be peasants as they are only being used as spoilers to disrupt thethe enemy before your good troops go in.if anyone tries this please post to let me know how you got on.
the jannissaries were also linked to a particular sufi sect and lived a harsh monastic life.before battle they would have a sort of last supper involving bread cheese and wine.extracts from the koran and the new testament were swen into their uniforms.
disclaimer....any mistakes in this post are my own.

the kalifah of watton :book:

kalifah of watton
04-06-2005, 10:22
as a foot note to my comments on the jannissaries i found a good article on them on the net at wikipedia free encyclopedia.ive noticed alot of spelling mistakes in my last post as i didnt use spell check.can you edit a thread youve allready posted?

the kalifah of watton :book:

King Bob VI
04-28-2005, 20:17
Currently enjoying a High-Hard Turkish campaign.

Same here, also. I rushed the Byz. early and left the eggys alone until they attacked me, now I've conquered all of their lands over to egypt. The horde: they sent a small army to georgia when they arrived, which I heroically beat off, but the next year they came back with about 3k troops. I got some merc. from armenia and used my pretty big army in rum to drive them back to Khazar, which I could defend from. I've just got the military academy up in rum (it's about 1350) and I'm enjoying the powerful jannisary units. Many of the turkish units can be built w/ +1 valor in various turkish provinces, so it's a good idea to build those there. Another good idea is to capture Constatinople asap. it provide a huge income, and can act as a center of trade. It is also convienient to be able to put most of your troops in there and defend from one province, instead of from Nicea and Trebizond, were you have to split your army. The crusades will come through Const. quite often, but it is quite easy to wear them down with HA and pepper them with foot archers, before charging them with various infantry, and Heavy Cav at the flanks. Just some tips, hope they help.

ichi
04-29-2005, 02:24
as a foot note to my comments on the jannissaries i found a good article on them on the net at wikipedia free encyclopedia.ive noticed alot of spelling mistakes in my last post as i didnt use spell check.can you edit a thread youve allready posted?

the kalifah of watton :book:

With member status comes the ability to edit IIRC.

There is a spell check feature with each post, helps out when you don't spell well or have fat fingers ~:)

ichi :bow:

RollingWave
06-16-2005, 16:37
The Turks are arguablly the worest faction to face the Mongols with, simply due to the fact that you can't build Arbalest.

The simpliest way to beat the mongols without heavy losses and heartstoppers is to build a CAMEL TURKISH SILVER load of arbalest and spearman. facing them in georgia and Armenia will mean that you have the height advantage, and with the endurign ammunition of the arbalest you can repell the mongols quiet well (the reason why they are better than archers... archers ammo ran out fast, you must keep pulling in new units of archers)

Another rather dirty trick i use sometimes is the hidden army trick. apparently the size of the Mongol force depends on the garrison you have in the eastern area, the more troops you have, the more Mongols will come, so essentially, leave a tiny garrison at the border areas, and in the areas close to the borders... build lots and lots of Jihad, that way, the Mongol will arrive with a rather small force, and u hide ur forces into the castle, the next turn you get up all ur jihad, sent them in and just auto calc.

Marquis of Roland
06-17-2005, 19:17
Never!

Drop as many full flag armies you can spare in Khazar! Mongols should arrive with about 22,000-25,000 men in just ONE province. That way you can kill them all at once! ~:cheers:

When Mongols arrive, drop a Janissary army in there with your best 9* general! Flat land should make it even more challenging! Oh yeah, hopefully you captured Constantinople quick enough to build Grand Mosque and a military academy....

After a 3 hour battle, you should not see any grass on the battlefield, just a LOT of dead horses and men! On the other hand, probably half of your janissaries will be dead, but the other half with have gained MASSIVE valor!

I do this with the pope too, I keep a large army in Rome and Papal States and wait for them to pop out. You can gain a lot of valor for your men this way. Plus the pope usually brings fairly decent men to fight (I hate an army thats made up of peasants and militia). About the only way you can have fun later on in the game (I also always wait for the Burgundians to pop out too). ~:cheers:

Marquis of Roland
06-17-2005, 19:19
Never!

Drop as many full flag armies you can spare in Khazar! Mongols should arrive with about 22,000-25,000 men in just ONE province. That way you can kill them all at once! ~:cheers:

When Mongols arrive, drop a Janissary army in there with your best 9* general! Flat land should make it even more challenging! Oh yeah, hopefully you captured Constantinople quick enough to build Grand Mosque and a military academy....

After a 3 hour battle, you should not see any grass on the battlefield, just a LOT of dead horses and men! On the other hand, probably half of your janissaries will be dead, but the other half with have gained MASSIVE valor!

I do this with the pope too, I keep a large army in Rome and Papal States and wait for them to pop out. You can gain a lot of valor for your men this way. Plus the pope usually brings fairly decent men to fight (I hate an army thats made up of peasants and militia). About the only way you can have fun later on in the game (I also always wait for the Burgundians to pop out too). ~:cheers:


For even more fun, change difficulty to expert!

The Wizard
06-18-2005, 14:55
The Turks are arguablly the worest faction to face the Mongols with, simply due to the fact that you can't build Arbalest.

Doesn't faze me at all. The advantage of the Turks is their enormous mobility. With very cheap forces (Turcoman horse, inf, Ottoman inf, ghazis) you can run around, tire and crush forces larger and better-equipped than yours.

This is extremely handy for the Late Turkish campaign, GA.

You will need to be extremely aggressive. Produce Turcoman horse and inf and, if you can spare the expense, some Ottoman inf as well. Keep the Egyptians befriended -- you'll have your hands full completing your GA goals, which are all to the West.

Invade your first goal, Anatolia, ASAP, some three-four turns into the game. After that comes Lesser Armenia, which is VERY IMPORTANT. It's easier to reach than Armenia proper, and it will gain you access to your only heavy cavalry for a whole while: Armenian Heavy Cavalry. You can produce them right off the bat there, which is great, because AHC will be your battle-winning arm.

Equip a single army for the task of pushing West. Just one. I equipped it with the following units: 4 Turcoman horse, 3 Saracen inf, 2 Turcoman inf, 2 Ottoman inf, 2-4 AHC. I built that up, of course, as I advanced, but the HAs are PARAMOUNT and must be in there. Consolidate your hold on the provinces you've just captured by sending garisson troops -- militia, peasants -- from your nearest by developed province. All that's needed is a stack of some two-three of these units.

Your eventual goal? Bulgaria -- it has a Citadel and this will allow you to tech ASAP to janissaries. Bulgaria has a hidden +2 valor bonus to JHI. To reach it bypass Constantinople after capturing Trebizond and/or Nicaea. Don't assault or starve out the garisson! It's better to bribe them, because that will keep the Citadel up.

I've found that you can reach Bulgaria within 10-20 turns from the starting date. From that base in Europe, you can calmly invade Serbia, Greece, Wallachia and Moldavia. As your power grows, your enemies will multiply: I found myself attacked by the Egyptians in Rum while my one single army equipped for large-scale battles was all the way in Bulgaria.

Now, to compensate for this lack of numerical power, you will need to use your HA's and light inf to the fullest. Contact with the enemy is NOT your objective. Pepper them with as much arrows as is possible, weaken them, let them chase your fast Turcoman cav and inf. Only when your HAs have no more ammo do you bring in your ghazis, saracen inf and, most importantly, AHC. Your enemy will be tired and weakened numerically, and once you have them pinned down by your Saracen inf, strike them in the flanks with that amazing charge power of ghazis and AHC. 3 units of AHC, 2 ranks deep, striking a weakened and surrounded army in the back is enough to make any enemy run like hell.

Your objective is NOT to fight battles with a lot of losses. You do not have the resources to compensate for large losses. Your objective is to have each battle end in a utter victory, where your enemy is annihalated at very little cost to you.

katank
06-19-2005, 17:07
That is indeed a good way to play and great fun.

Lack of arbs is not a problem.

For bridge battles in Kiev, the access to naptha more than makes up for arbs.

To kill that jedi king, use some naptha and send him to kingdom come instantly.


As for massive jihad spam, I tried that once. In early, I blitzed Constantinople and then produced a grand mosque for Imams. I built jihad markers every turn.

Zeal was at whooping 85 or so when the Mongols arrived.

I dropped all 40+ jihad markers on Khazar and owned the AI by autocalcing.

I then disbanded all the junk troops and ended with more than 3 stacks of elite janissaries.

KhaderKhan
10-07-2005, 15:43
You will need to be extremely aggressive.

Interesting that you should say that. Am new to this board but I have played this game for a while and I like to point one thing. To use your "Hit 'N' Run" tactics to its fullest potential you should have an effective mobile HC

(Imagine a armoured Boyar)

For me the Sipahi of Porte, how should be able to carry out this role, are unable to carry out this role because of their unrealistic stats.

To counter this I modify their stats from 5 5 5 7 to a more a realistic 7 6 5 5, double their unit size to 40 and notched up their speed slightly below that of a Turcoman Horse.

(And completly justified considering their high build requirements. That aside I did do another modification I may later regret - I modified the JHI charge stats to 7 and give them a single javelin missile, I may have over stepped the mark and inadvertently turned them into super-troopers)

BTW: Does anyone why I can't build a 2nd Grand Mosque and is there a way around it?

Strike For The South
10-09-2005, 23:42
BTW: Does anyone why I can't build a 2nd Grand Mosque and is there a way around it?

Welcome~:cheers: You can only build one (think of a cathedral same rule applies) and I dont believe there is any way around it.

Alexanderofmacedon
10-10-2005, 04:02
You got MTW SFTS?

KhaderKhan
10-10-2005, 12:24
[/QUOTE]You can only build one (think of a cathedral same rule applies) and I dont believe there is any way around it.[/QUOTE]

Hi, solve the problem and here's how. Once you have built a Fortress in one province and you have another Fortress in another province then you can [ make sure you give both build orders simultaneously] build a Grand Mosque/Cathedral in both provinces.

In fact I suspect you can build a whole series of Grand Mosques/Cathedrals in the provinces that have a Fortress. Nice?~D

KhaderKhan
10-10-2005, 13:06
You got MTW SFTS?

SFTS?

JHI? I based my mod on the Pilum-throwing Roman legionaries.

(If used correctively this modified version of JHI should be capable of taking anyone on, my only fear is that I might have made them too good but I can't know this for certain untill I played a few battles with them)

KhaderKhan
10-11-2005, 12:30
I thought I might as well tell you about my latest campaigns with the Turks.
Started in the "Late" period, Hard and the GA. (Couldn't be bothered with doing a campaign that was over 200+ turns) In my first move took I out the Trapeztines.

Casualty to them: 100%

Did the same thing thing to the Rebels in Anatolia and Lesser Armenia in turn two, built up my economy and troops for my upcoming war with the Byzantines in the year 1336 and made alliances with everyone except the Byzantines.

The Byzantines however attacked me two years before I was going to attack them. Lucky for me my troop number were a reasonable size whilst theirs (with the exception of those based in Nicaea and Bulgaria) was pitifully small and they didn't help their cause by bribing a rebelling GH army which brought the GH into the war at the same time as me.

In one move I captured Constantinople without any struggle as the Byzantines vacated what troops they had to Greece to regroup, their army in Nicaea I annihilated (I never ceased to be amazed on how quickly my Turcoman horses seem to route the Byzantine Infantry, my SoP and SI finished their Kataphracts off whilst my Turcoman foot fought and won against their Urban militia) and sat down to besiege their citadel.

By this time GH had captured Bulgaria and I fought the Byzantine army once again as they risked an all or nothing attack on my troops in Constantinople, I won by destroying and capturing their entire army (though it did riled me that I lost a 100 men in the process of doing so) and unfortunatly got their king killed. I then marched on to Greece whilst leaving a small garrison at Constantinople and destroyed the rebel army.

(I should also add that my Hungarian allie came in around at the same time and captured Serbia)

After a few turns of re-building my army, navy and economy I began amassing troops on my frontier with Egypt as they were doing the same. Using mercenaries I brought my troop level to a 1000+. The following turn my spies reported to me that the Egyptians were planning on attacking me the next turn so I pre-emptively sunk all their ships from Venice to Cairo and invaded their provinces.

All my encounters with them, except the initials ones where I had to face a series of Jihads against me, I won even though they outnumbered me 2 to 1 and I did with ease. I suspect this mostly happen because I had better quality troops (and all my units were by now V3/4 as result of my continual wars against rebels and my encounters with the Byzantines) and I had in comparison to their 1/2 star Generals I had on average 5 star Generals (the lowest being 4 and the highest being 6 or 7).

Within a few turns I had captured the entire ME and had the sultan completly isolated and trapped in Arabia. I received a 30000 florins for ransom soon after that. The Egyptians offered ceasefire, I accepted, and just to complete my takeover I'll bribe the rebels in Sinai to reduce my border with Egypt from 2 to 1.

Whilst this was happening the muslim peasants (mass conversions to Islam as a result of my army of Imams) of Bulgaria were revolting and overthrew the GH. I sent in a mercenary army and pacified the province.

For the next few turns I'll be re-building my navy and economy for my up-coming with the GH and by then my JI and JHI should be coming off the production line and kick the GH out of Khazar, Crimea and Kiev turning the black sea into a Turkish lake in the process...

Hope I didn't bore anyone with this long post.

KhaderKhan
10-17-2005, 14:30
Unfortunatly my game with the Turks ended. One minute am on the verge of capturing N. Africa then next...the game crashes:furious3:

Before I go I like to ask 2 questions.

1) What, in your opinion, is the most efficent (ideally inflicting 100% damage whilst suffering minimal casualties) way to use JHI? I find using them in a "Pin 'N' Flank" tactic (aka "Sword and Shield" & "Hammer and Anvil") too costly.

2) Is the MTW:Viking Invasion an extension of the MTW (like the Mongol Invasion pact in Shogun) in the sense that is the same game/setting (with the same factions like the Egyptians, Turks, etc) but with an additional earlier period (AD600?) or is it a completly seperate game in a different setting like RTW: BI?

MuseRulez
10-17-2005, 17:53
1) What, in your opinion, is the most efficent (ideally inflicting 100% damage whilst suffering minimal casualties) way to use JHI? I find using them in a "Pin 'N' Flank" tactic (aka "Sword and Shield" & "Hammer and Anvil") too costly.

Well, they can kill almost everything effectively as long you don't rush'em in head on. The only thing to prevent casualties is: 1.Upgrading armour and weapons. 2. Make sure they outnumber the enemy unit, try some HA (requirse some practice)


2) Is the MTW:Viking Invasion an extension of the MTW (like the Mongol Invasion pact in Shogun) in the sense that is the same game/setting (with the same factions like the Egyptians, Turks, etc) but with an additional earlier period (AD600?) or is it a completly seperate game in a different setting like RTW: BI?

VI enhances the Early/High/Late campaigns with new playable factions and units AND ads a completely new campaign Vikings

KhaderKhan
10-18-2005, 14:44
Thanks...

Seyfullah
01-26-2006, 04:05
Is it possible for factions with mounted archers to win battles relying almost completely on them? For example, Turcoman Horse or Horse Archers for Turks? If it was possible then I can't imagine the results.

Ludens
01-26-2006, 13:04
Is it possible for factions with mounted archers to win battles relying almost completely on them? For example, Turcoman Horse or Horse Archers for Turks? If it was possible then I can't imagine the results.
Theoretically it is possible, but a combined arms approach is often preferable. You will get better results if you have at least a few units of heavy cavalry nearby to quickly finish off weakened enemy units. This way your archers spend less time and arrows whittling them down and can move quicker to the next target.

Vladimir
01-26-2006, 17:14
My acronym for Early Turk Army is THA. Up to half my army may be composed of them. You'll have to use morale rules for greatest effect though and NO FRONTAL CHARGE!

Seyfullah
01-26-2006, 21:34
So Ludens, the cavalry should not be used as the main bulk of an army aided by infantry and ranged units? I don't know if you watched Kingdom of Heaven but that cavalry scene in front of Kerak was pretty impressive. I wish there was a Crescent deployment in MTW. It would be very easy to lure the enemy and surround and crush them.

Ludens
01-28-2006, 16:51
So Ludens, the cavalry should not be used as the main bulk of an army aided by infantry and ranged units?
I did not say that. My point was that a horse-archer army lacked shock power to finish off units, so the addition of some heavy cavalry would strenghten it. Horse archers are one of the most powerful units in the TW series if used correctly, but the game is balanced so that singe unit-type armies tend to be less effective than more varied armies. That said, the Turks have a very good cavalry roster, so an all-cavalry army (as opposed to an all horse-acher army) could be very effective for them.

bozkirsovalyesi
01-28-2006, 17:20
mtw-2 ile ilgili bir çok güzel fikrim var...
bunları ingilizceye çevirip bu sitede yayınlayacak birini arıyorum

Seyfullah
01-28-2006, 20:59
ok Ludens thanks. I will try to see how an all cavalry fares against the Crusaders. I just started this year, so i m kinda new. I need to get my hands on any tactic i can to have a great gameplay experience.


mtw-2 ile ilgili bir çok güzel fikrim var...
bunları ingilizceye çevirip bu sitede yayınlayacak birini arıyorum

Bozkir Sovalyesi bana soyle sana yardimci olurum.

bozkirsovalyesi
01-29-2006, 15:09
çok uzun bir şey galiba kardeşim.
gören kaçıyor..

istersen maille yollarım.

Geezer57
02-09-2006, 01:51
Is it possible for factions with mounted archers to win battles relying almost completely on them? For example, Turcoman Horse or Horse Archers for Turks? If it was possible then I can't imagine the results.
Yes, I do it for fun often in my current Seljuk (Turkish) campaign in BKB. Here's a link to a post-battle screenshot from my defense of Saxony with 1740 men against the Khazar Khaganate with 3900 men:

https://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1387/seljuksvskhazarinsaxonypostbat.jpg

The only troops that engaged the enemy in melee were five Seljuk Horse Archers (much like Spanish Jinettes for melee, but with a long-range bow and better morale). The casualty figures weren't particularly large, but very one-sided, and the KK chose to withdraw after having their collective noses bloodied.

From the battle log:

Battle Type:: CAMPAIGN
Date:: 01/15/06
Time:: 14:18:49
Host:: N/A
Attackers:: Khazar Khaganate
Defenders:: The Seljuks
Victory for:: DEFENDERS
Game Time:: 12 mins 29 secs
Battle Name:: Saxony
Map Name:: FlatInland17
Is Custom Map:: NO
Attackers' Florins:: 0
Defenders' Florins:: 0
Season:: Summer
Difficulty:: Expert
Time Limit:: 90 mins
Game Style:: Last Man Standing
Unit Size:: 60
Limited Ammo:: on
Fatigue:: on
Morale:: on
Restricted Camera:: on
Battle Terminated How?:: BATTLE FOUGHT TO CLOSE


Player Name:: The Seljuks
-------------------------
Player Type:: HUMAN
Stance:: Defender
Florins Allocated:: 0
Florins Spent:: 0
Number of Units:: 29
Total Troop Count:: 1740
Total Men Killed:: 37
Total Men Captured:: 0
Total Men Routed:: 0
Total Enemy Killed:: 473
Total Enemy Captured:: 512

Player Name:: Khazar Khaganate
------------------------------
Player Type:: CPU
Stance:: Attacker
Florins Allocated:: 0
Florins Spent:: 0
Number of Units:: 65
Total Troop Count:: 3900
Total Men Killed:: 475
Total Men Captured:: 512
Total Men Routed:: 1966
Total Enemy Killed:: 37
Total Enemy Captured:: 0

Ludens
02-09-2006, 13:07
Yes, I do it for fun often in my current Seljuk (Turkish) campaign in BKB. Here's a link to a post-battle screenshot from my defense of Saxony with 1740 men against the Khazar Khaganate with 3900 men:

https://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1387/seljuksvskhazarinsaxonypostbat.jpg

The only troops that engaged the enemy in melee were five Seljuk Horse Archers (much like Spanish Jinettes for melee, but with a long-range bow and better morale). The casualty figures weren't particularly large, but very one-sided, and the KK chose to withdraw after having their collective noses bloodied.
The problem is that the Turks in unmodded M:TW do not have a horse archer that is both strong and fast. Turcoman horse are fast, but have a low morale and poor melee capabilities. Vanilla horse archers are even worse. If you would try to replay this battle with either of those, it would have went rather less well, unless they were properly supported by good melee cavalry.

On the other hand, stronger horse archers (Boyars, Steppe Heavies, perhaps Szekely) can be deadly even when unsupported, but these are not available to the Turks, with the exception of Steppe Heavies once they conquer a steppe province. They also get Sipahi of the Porte in late.

Asmodai
02-09-2006, 13:32
On the other hand, stronger horse archers (Boyars, Steppe Heavies, perhaps Szekely) can be deadly even when unsupported, but these are not available to the Turks, with the exception of Steppe Heavies once they conquer a steppe province. They also get Sipahi of the Porte in late.

I think, that this isn`t a big problem, cos in the beginning, Turks fights against Egiptians or Bizantines, and against them, turcomans are the best choice.
Historicaly, turks invaded europe relatively late, when more advanced types of units were available.
But if someone wants to have a 100% cavalry army and is dreaming of beat every army...well, then must at least mix them whit some heavy hitters like Ghulam cavalry or Chorezmian Cavalry. Light for flanking and firesupport, and for luring infantry into traps made by heavy hitters.

Anyone tried breaking enemy line with few units of heavy cavalry on one point? If the target unit breaks, others start to wavering, and under bowfire they tend to flee very quickly.

Once they start running, they are on the mercy of the light cav.

Seyfullah
02-10-2006, 03:40
Anyone tried breaking enemy line with few units of heavy cavalry on one point? If the target unit breaks, others start to wavering, and under bowfire they tend to flee very quickly.

Once they start running, they are on the mercy of the light cav.

Sounds like fun, I ll probably try it sometime.

John XVI
02-12-2006, 16:16
I started as the Turks in Early,prepared for a war against the Byzantines but the CARNATION INSTANT MILK Egyptians attacked from behind. After obliterating them I had a long and bloody war with the Byzantines. After conquering Constatinopole(all built up,so I decided that I'd establish the JHI training there),a civil war broke out and Italians come and conquer Trebizond with a crusade(didn't want to defend it,it's a crap province anyway),plus the Egyptians come with 1500 men in arabia and antioch. To my surprise The Byzantine emperor wanted peace with me at my weakest moment and I accepted it. Then I flushed the traitors and the Egyptians out of my provinces and then decided to get JHI training into progress. After getting 8 units of JHI I decided to invade Trebizond. The italians had 400 men,all royal knights(heirs and king) vs. my 2000 men,all anti-horse(spears,x-bows and polearms). I'm thinking of invading the Byzantines soon,as they are at their weakest right now. I wasn't into HA at all until I started playing with the Turks. Now I realize their potential as harassment troops,if used in small quantities.

Asmodai
02-13-2006, 12:38
Hmm, you have vanilla MTW?

Cos having VI it is impossible to have JHI in early. And so, the light cav tactics must be perfected, cos turcomans(being available pretty soon) is very useful unit. I usualy have about 50% or more shooting cavalry(turkomans preferably, but HA earlier). Additionaly, this unit remains main light cav unit available to turkish armies for the rest of the game.

John XVI
02-13-2006, 18:38
Hmm, you have vanilla MTW?

Cos having VI it is impossible to have JHI in early. And so, the light cav tactics must be perfected, cos turcomans(being available pretty soon) is very useful unit. I usualy have about 50% or more shooting cavalry(turkomans preferably, but HA earlier). Additionaly, this unit remains main light cav unit available to turkish armies for the rest of the game.
I have plain,vanilla MTW. It's not "early age" anymore,the year is 1256,but I got the JHI as fast I could. They cost quite much,but they are more than worth their price. When playing the Turks,turcoman horse is quite good,as it can do well both in desert and in lush terrain. And fast cavalry in general has been a huge help for me,as I like to flank and hit the enemy in the rear. The JHI are very good for flanking,too.

idiotpariah
02-26-2006, 06:01
A lot of people seem to be advocating the use of Ghulam cavalry/Kwhrazmium. In fact these both suck big time compared to the easily obtained Armenian Heavy cavalry. built in Armenia with a master horse breeder they have a massive +2 valour. They will beat anything in early (except kats with master horse in Constantinople or Pronoi Allagion from Nicaea) and will beat chivalric knights as well!. A key factor to non knight cavalry is the +1 valour for the master horse breeder. Any cavalry that takes less than master horse breeder gets +1 valour very easily.

Tristuskhan
02-26-2006, 16:31
Rhaaa, soon we'll all play more turkish on MTW II. I miss them (MTW has always been disruptive for my computer, I stopped playing it when RTW came out). Return of the Yeni Seri!

_Aetius_
02-26-2006, 22:44
I always preferred Armenians over Khwarz's, but I do like Ghulam cavarly, they are good solid heavy cavalry that are fine in pretty much all terrain similar to Armenians. I'm unsure of the stats exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in a couple of areas, Ghulam cavalry are superior.

If anybody has the stats i'd like to see them, so to properly compare the wide variety of cavalry the Turks have.

_Aetius_
02-26-2006, 22:44
I always preferred Armenians over Khwarz's, but I do like Ghulam cavarly, they are good solid heavy cavalry that are fine in pretty much all terrain similar to Armenians. I'm unsure of the stats exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in a couple of areas, Ghulam cavalry are superior.

If anybody has the stats i'd like to see them, so to properly compare the wide variety of cavalry the Turks have.

Ludens
02-26-2006, 23:25
I always preferred Armenians over Khwarz's, but I do like Ghulam cavarly, they are good solid heavy cavalry that are fine in pretty much all terrain similar to Armenians. I'm unsure of the stats exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in a couple of areas, Ghulam cavalry are superior.

If anybody has the stats i'd like to see them, so to properly compare the wide variety of cavalry the Turks have.
Ghulam cavalry: ........... charge 6 attack 3 defence 3 armour 4 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 4 cost 275 support 70
Armenian heavy cavalry: charge 8 attack 3 defence 3 armour 4 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 4 cost 300 support 60
Khwarazmian cavalry: ... charge 6 attack 3 defence 5 armour 7 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 4 cost 375 support 70
Ottoman Sipahi: .......... charge 4 attack 2 defence 3 armour 4 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 2 cost 200 support 65

Horse archers: ......... charge 2 attack -1 defence 0 armour 2 speed 9, 24, 26 morale –1 cost 250 support 40
Turcoman horsemen: .. charge 2 attack 1 defence 0 armour 2 speed 9, 24, 26 morale –1 cost 300 support 40

Early Ghulam bodyguards:charge 8 attack 3 defence 4 armour 4 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 6 cost 300 support 62
High Ghulam bodyguards:charge 8 attack 3 defence 5 armour 5 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 6 cost 350 support 62
Sipahi of the Porte: .... charge 4 attack 3 defence 6 armour 7 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 6 cost 500 support 105

There is also two heavy cavalry units not available in the Turks' initial territory:

Avar nobles: ............... charge 6 attack 3 defence 5 armour 7 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 4 cost 425 support 60
Steppe heavy cavalry: .. charge 2 attack 3 defence 4 armour 5 speed 9, 20, 22 morale 4 cost 450 support 45

Sipahi of the Porte and Steppe Heavies are heavy horse archers: they carry bows, but can do well in a melee also.

(From Froggy's unit guide)

As you can see, Ghulam are slightly cheaper than Armenians but have higher upkeep and less charge. Khwarazmian have better defense and armour values, but a lower charge and a higher price (both initial and upkeep). They are equal in stats to ordinary Kataphraktoi, but tend to fail miserably when going head-to-head with the Byzantine jedi-generals. Ottoman Sipahi are the weakest of the family, but they come at bargain price (for heavy cavalry at least). Avar nobles rock, even though their training cost is rather high. Personally, I am very fond of Steppe heavies because they are heavy cavalry and horse archer in one, but they are rather costly and their stats are not that good. The bodyguard units are of excellent quality as always, but come with a hefty price tag for a small unit.

idiotpariah
02-27-2006, 12:05
But then add the +2 to attack and defence for +2 valour and the Armenian cavalry rocks, especially considering how low the build requirements are.

Ludens
02-27-2006, 14:07
But then add the +2 to attack and defence for +2 valour and the Armenian cavalry rocks, especially considering how low the build requirements are.
True, and not to forgot +4 morale making them very hard to rout. However, a nearby province IIRC also gave +1 to Ghulams, so you can get +2 Ghulams relativily easy as well. Still, there is almost no reason to prefer Ghulams above AHC.

Seyfullah
04-12-2006, 19:56
Yeah i think ghulam do get +1 in lesser armenia. when i played with the turks, ahc coming out of armenia got 1 star almost every other turn so its cav that can be generals if you're low on heirs.

John XVI
04-14-2006, 12:01
Heh,I found the ghulam cavalry useless. AHC can do their job a lot better.

Seyfullah
04-15-2006, 17:09
i guess ghulam cavalry does come after some upgrading and cost more too.

Bill Westwater
07-21-2006, 17:27
I am currently playing as the Turks in Late/GA/Hard mode in VI. The year is 1399 and i am 6 years away from being able to get JHI in Rum. It has cost me enormous amounts of time and money, and at present i only have about 1000 crowns, so i won't be able to afford them when they arrive. Its not as if i have done that badly, i have, in addition to Rum, lesser Armenia, Armenia, Anatolia, Nicaea, Constantinople, Greece and Trebizond, and an income of between 4 and 5000 a year. Is it really worth trying to get janissaries in late? If so, where? Rum is quite vulnerable against the Egyptians, who are the strongest of the surrounding factions, but then so is Bulgaria, where JHI get a bonus. Though described as easy in late, the Turks don't seem to be particularly easy to me.

Deus ret.
07-21-2006, 18:06
Is it really worth trying to get janissaries in late? If so, where?
It is, depending on your overall situation. Since it doesn't sound like you've already become the No.1 superpower on the map, build them! They're good for more than just fun - after all, they're one of the best units in late, actually THE best if you ask me.
If possible, you should build them in a province which gives them +1 valour. as with all units.....IIRC in the case of JHI this is Georgia, so you might not attain that goal. So build them where it suits you best: best upgrades, earliest availability etc. Actually JHI are so strong that they reign supreme even without too many upgrades, so just produce them! Once you see them in action you'll be satisfied. A very capable melee unit with sky-high morale, they're also quite good vs. cavalry, and if I'm not mistaken they can even shoot. You'll love these guys, they're extremely versatile and deadly. There is a reason why the Janissaries were among the most dreaded troops historically until well into the 16th century.
Those Janissary units are also the main reason why the Turks are classified as "easy" in late. Compared with the Byzantine units they're rather overpowered, and not even the Eggies can field anything which really matches them. Just assemble an army of a dozen or so of JHI and try to get a battle....

Sensei Warrior
07-22-2006, 00:10
I am not looking at a Turk game right now, but I think you might have gotten a couple of points confused Deus Ret. There are Jannisary Infantry and Jannisary Heavy Infantry. The JI have bows and swords, and the JHI have Polearms. The JHI are a great anti-cav/AP unit and definately one of the best in the game. The JI have bows, and very decent fighting stats. They can be used in either capacity with ease. I believe the JI get the valor bonus in Georgia.

Typically I wouldn't refute you Deus, you usually give great advice, but If I am wrong, or your post confused me, I will give my most humble apologies.

The rest of what Deus said is dead-on. All the Jannisary units are the best for the Turks and possibly the game. It would be comparable to wondering if you should build Lancers with the Spanish or Longbowmen with the English. Every Faction has a really good unit or two and the Jannisaries are the ones for the Turks.

Deus ret.
07-22-2006, 11:13
:oops: seems like I confused those Janissary types...sorry! thanks for clarifying, Sensei. I intended to write solely about JHI because JI doesn't become available much earlier, if at all, and for its own sake isn't really worth the whole build-up IMHO (the Turks sport quite a number of versatile hybrid troop types, but IIRC no pole arms other than JHI) .... I seem to have drifted off somewhat. Bill, by combining our two posts you can probably assemble something useful.

macsen rufus
07-22-2006, 12:43
I have a Late Turkish game on currently (one of many) and have Janisseries coming out of Rum. I settled on Rum because that was already pretty well teched up and easier to get the military academy built, and also the strategic consideration of being close to Lesser Armenia. LA is the ideal staging post for putting armies together as it is close to provinces that give you valour bonuses on most of your good troops, and being on the coast you can launch armies overseas with ease.

Of the three Janissery units I concentrate on JI and JHI - the Janissery archers are a bit superfluous with JI also having bows. An army where all of your infantry are Janisseries is very powerful, and you can use the Turkish tactics you've already practised with the earlier troop types, and you can kick any kind of @ss that comes your way.

Your cash shortage should be easily addressed if you expand a little southwards into Antioch, and a bit further into Palestine IIRC will give you a turc horse bonus.

Bill Westwater
07-22-2006, 12:55
I chose Rum as the place to build JHI for the same reason, its teched up. That and the fact that when i captured Constantinople, its fortress was reduced to a citadel. The problem with Rum was that i couldn't get allied with the Egyptions and they were the richest faction until about 1380 with the largest army. This meant that, having spent 8000 on a fortress, i had to keep a large army with one of my best generals in Rum, which would have been much better in Bulgaria or Greece fighting the Hungarians and Byzantines. Taking on the Egyptions too would have been a war too many, particularly after the plague in 1348, which puts a serious dent in your income.

macsen rufus
07-22-2006, 15:19
With the Turks, I usually halt my westward expansion at Constantinople, which is easily defended, and then try to secure up to Georgia, for another bottleneck. This frees up armies for the inevitable Egyptian campaign. I agree Rum (in fact the whole of eastern Asia Minor) is vulnerable due to the strange borders with Syria/Edessa etc, and that makes it hard to secure without a lot of troops locally. When going south I try to take two provinces at a time, driven by the need to reduce the number of provinces to defend - taking Syria and Antioch simultaneously is generally a good idea. Of course good naval defence is also required to guard your rear.

Bill Westwater
07-24-2006, 11:29
Good strategy Mate, and not that different to the one i tried to use. But i thought take and hold Bulgaria and Greece, and then go for the egyptians. I took Bulgaria, then Greece, and even Serbia (it was in the GA) but got bogged down in fighting with the Hungarians, who with silver armour knights with weapon bonus are lethal! Then the Byzantines, who i left with Rhodes and Cyprus rather than have a re-emergence, produced a big fleet from nowhere and destroyed my ships and trade network, which in turn prompted the Egyptians to pick on me. This led to a civil war, and its now 1413 Greece is in revolt, though i've taken Antioch and Edessa. JHI have come on line and its time to do some invading. You are right Egypt is definitely a softer target than Europe. The Russians are leading the GA by a mile unfortunately, as they get 2 points for taking 1 province, while the turrks only get 1 point for two, so i don't think i'll win, but never mind.

macsen rufus
07-24-2006, 12:22
I rarely play GA mode (always forget it's an option when picking a new campaign :oops: ), and haven't tried the Turkish GA at all so I'm not sure what you're "forced" into doing. Sounds like you've got your hands full now, so those janisseries are going to come in very handy.

And in my previous post I didn't recall correctly - Tripoli gives the turc horse bonus, and good income, too. I usually find the Egyptians can't take too much damage before they just collapse.

Vladimir
07-24-2006, 13:10
Plus the Egyptians tend to be less heavily armored than the whole of Europe. Therefore it only makes sense to use the missile and cav heavy Turks against them. Besides, with Big C. and Egypt under your control, you'll never be hurting for cash.

Empirate
07-24-2006, 16:00
Using the Turks it is usually not much of a problem to have half your army or even more consist of troops that can shoot: Ottoman Infantry, Futuwwas, Turcoman Foot, and of course Janissary Infantry; as well as Turcoman Horse, Sipahi of the Porte (including princes=generals): All of these are hybrids to a greater or lesser degree. Add Saracen Infantry (or, if you can get them, JHI) and Armenian Heavy Cavalry, and you'll probably have an army that can put more arrows into the air than anybody else except for the Mongols. I just love using archer hybrids, my favorite of the above being Futuwwas, as I usually don't take long enough to build Janissaries. With that many arrows in the air, even heavily armored troops are bound to take some casualties. Light troops just melt away. If you can concentrate your fire on a few enemy units, especially after annoying and separating them using horse archers, they'll flee very quickly. This allows you to defeat a part of the enemy force before they ever reach you, making melee that much easier.
Just remember to keep a heavy core of durable Saracens, armored up and built in a province with mosque and ribat, to up their rather mediocre morale. Then use part of your archer hybrids to flank, while the rest continue to put arrows in the air. Armenian Heavy cavalry pack a real punch when charging, so make extensive use of this.
I love missile troops because they kill without taking many losses if handled right. Hybrids are quite good at this and still can fight in a melee, especially as flankers. Turcoman Foot can even hold their own as main battle line troops for a while, due to their quite high defense and good armor. Don't expect them to do much damage, though: That's what their arrows are for. Ottomans and Futuwwas, though, are good attackers - Ottomans due to armor piercing, Futuwwas due to high attack and charge. The latter are killed quickly, so watch them. They're a bit like Ghazis that can shoot. Use up their missiles, then flank, and you'll be a happy little Sultan!

Sensei Warrior
07-25-2006, 00:13
:oops: seems like I confused those Janissary types...sorry! thanks for clarifying, Sensei.

Dont sweat it. I did manage to make a mistake as well. Jannisary Archers get the valor bonus in Georgia. Just for the record all the Jannisary units become available at the same time, High.



I intended to write solely about JHI because JI doesn't become available much earlier, if at all, and for its own sake isn't really worth the whole build-up IMHO (the Turks sport quite a number of versatile hybrid troop types, but IIRC no pole arms other than JHI) .... I seem to have drifted off somewhat. Bill, by combining our two posts you can probably assemble something useful.

I agree. Because of the Grand Mosque/Military Academy thing, unless you do something sneaky, you can only have one provence that produces Jannisary units. So usually once it finally get teched up enough I find that typically I use that provence to do nothing more than churn out JHIs, the type of unit the Turks are lacking to begin with.

Empirate brings up a good point about the abundance of hybrid units. With so many units that can pull double duty you can build a well balanced army out of units that use a bow. You can rain death on your enemies. I use armies that have as many as 12 units that shoot and fight. When it gets to that point not to many armies actually make it close enough to you to engage in melee. I have watched unit after unit disapear in a vain attempt to engage my army.

Empirate
08-03-2006, 16:31
Macsen Rufus brought up the topic of strange borders in Asia Minor and, in fact, the whole East. Strange they may be, but, strategically speaking, CA did a good job of simulating where armies could be moved and where not. The strange connection between Syria and Rum is actually due to a mountain range (the Taurus, iirc) that leaves just a few good passes, connecting the sierra-like plain of Rum to Lesser Armenia and to the parts of northern Syria that are called Edessa in the game, as well as north-western Mesopotamia (which is called Syria in the game). So from Rum, these places were all in easy striking distance. The separation between Syria on the one hand and Antioch, Tripoli, Palestine on the other is another good one: Instead of a mountain range, it was a desert that separated these, with just a few good roads making traversing it possible. These basically led to the north, to the middle and to the south of the Levant (i. e., to Antioch, Tripoli and Palestine).
So the strange borders in the game are pretty accurate, in the military picture of things that is. They do make it a little challenging to conquer and hold on to some territory, though. But this is most true when trying to take Asia Minor from the South up, not from the North down. So if you're playing the Turks, it should work to your advantage: Grab Syria, hold on to it. Lesser Armenia, Antioch, Tripoli and Palestine can then be taken at your leisure, one after the other (although I'd recommend taking Antioch quickly, to protect Edessa). In the west and north, advance to Constantinople and Georgia/Khazar, respectively. These bottleneck provinces can be held indefinitely until you're finished with the Egyptians - couldn't agree more on this. In fact, it might be recommendable to conquer all of northern Africa, all the way up into Spain, establishing Toulouse and Aquitaine as the final borders (as long as your fleets con protect your coastline). This gives you a huge empire with only four border provinces!
In Late, the trick is, of course, getting there in the first place... which I will leave to your strategic imagination.

Maloncanth
08-28-2006, 11:44
Though described as easy in late, the Turks don't seem to be particularly easy to me.

Oh wonderful! I am NOT the only one! Seriously, there have to be tons of people who find Turks - Late - GA a difficult game. I've played it three times now and I've still not won. :p

And here I kept thinking Late GA Aragon was difficult... Has anyone else given Turkish Late GA and compare it with some of the other Late GA campaigns? I'm considering writing another guide to it, since I think I understand why they're difficult to play, but then, I feel as if I have to earn the write to do that by actually winning once. XP

Celtic_Guardian
08-28-2006, 13:27
In early i found a good way to kill of Egypt quickly . If in the first few turns, you can mange to kill Sultan Al-Mustali 1, he doesn't have any heirs at the time, faction is done like that. I did have a re-emergance, but I beat them pretty easily, now turning my attention to Christendom.

Empirate
08-28-2006, 20:36
Yeah, Turks in Late seems to be one of the hardest campaigns you can play. At least, crusades have lost a lot of their bite by then, but you start with only one province, have to fend off three powerful neighbors and lack clear venues of conquest. Pushing into Constantinople at all costs is not as viable anymore, since the Mongols will make it hard on you to maintain anything resembling peace on the eastern front. I'd still recommend going after the Byzzies first. If you can manage to kill their great generals, the rest of their troops doesn't stand up to yours. As soon as you have Constantinople and the rest of Asia Minor, stop. Establishing one-province-borders will help immensely if you can do that. This also means you have to push back the Horde until you have Georgia or preferably Khazar, giving you another 1PB. After this, and once you have garrisoned Constantinople and Khazar so much you never need worry about them, attack the Egyptians. While their units are usually much inferior to what you can field, they have one thing you don't: Money, money, money. Well, they have it and you want it, so take it from them. Problem is, you have to be really good at minimizing casualties, coz you will lack the money to train reinforcements during much of the first part of this campaign. Ships are important, but mostly to protect your coasts, not to rake in trading money.

Hope you like the Turkish style of army: Winning crushing victories in the field is very important early on as you can't rely on superior economy and productive capacity.

Arol
09-29-2006, 16:01
Its 1174, and I've manged to put paid to the Spanish; just need to finish of Leon, and captured Castile with a castle intact.
It will be interesting to build up the metalsmith upgrades there, to see the effect on the perfomance of some of the units like the futuwwas. Maybe even later re-locate the Grand Mosque there and build super-JHI's.
This being the first time I've played the Turs, I've read the comments on these units, and if they were superb before, they must be near invincible with upgrades?

Empirate
09-30-2006, 15:25
As tempting as it sounds, I wouldn't wait for upgrades to build Janissary units. They're very very good as they are and don't really need weapon upgrades. Besides, they take such a long buildup that you simply don't want to wait the additional years it takes to build up the weaponsmith's facilities. I'd rather build the grand mosque and military academy in your most advanced province (likely Constantinople) ASAP, and roll out a few more units, so they actually get to see some action.
One "warning": The AI likes to withdraw from an army it thinks is unbeatable. I once had a stack of sixteen gold-armored JHI, and the computer armies always withdrew. I didn't get to see those über-troops in action at all!

Arol
09-30-2006, 23:27
...I'd rather build the grand mosque and military academy in your most advanced province (likely Constantinople) ASAP, and roll out a few more units, so they actually get to see some action.

The Grand Mosque is already in Const., right now I'm building it up to fortress level.
It was just a thought, that maybe later when Castile is buildt up to the same level, to see what those units would be like über'ed up!:idea2:
But, it seems like you've tried it::oops:

I once had a stack of sixteen gold-armored JHI, and the computer armies always withdrew. I didn't get to see those über-troops in action at all!

Empirate
10-01-2006, 13:18
You can't build a new Grand Mosque anywhere else as long as that in Constantinople is standing. A cheap way out is to destroy it after your Military Academy has been built, and rebuild it in Castile or somewhere. This enables you to have two or even three provinces churning out Janissary units. It's probably an unnecessary step, though, unless you're really taking it slow in your campaign or want to field only the very best troops you can. The Turks have a unit roster that's pretty good even without Janissaries, and these units just add a little spice, and a very badass heavy infantry indeed, something you have to do without otherwise.

Arol
10-05-2006, 22:47
You can't build a new Grand Mosque anywhere else as long as that in Constantinople is standing. A cheap way out is to destroy it after your Military Academy has been built, and rebuild it in Castile or somewhere. This enables you to have two or even three provinces churning out Janissary units. It's probably an unnecessary step, though, unless you're really taking it slow in your campaign or want to field only the very best troops you can. The Turks have a unit roster that's pretty good even without Janissaries, and these units just add a little spice, and a very badass heavy infantry indeed, something you have to do without otherwise.
I do want to take it nice and slow. Play this game to the completion.
With others Iv'e cut them short when winning was obvious.
Thanks for the idea of waiting for the Militarry Acadamy to be completed, and then re-locate the Grand Mosque!:idea2:
Should be some pretty powerful units comming out of Norther Spain by 1300!

caravel
10-06-2006, 13:31
So if you're playing the Turks, it should work to your advantage: Grab Syria, hold on to it. Lesser Armenia, Antioch, Tripoli and Palestine can then be taken at your leisure, one after the other (although I'd recommend taking Antioch quickly, to protect Edessa). In the west and north, advance to Constantinople and Georgia/Khazar, respectively. These bottleneck provinces can be held indefinitely until you're finished with the Egyptians - couldn't agree more on this. In fact, it might be recommendable to conquer all of northern Africa, all the way up into Spain, establishing Toulouse and Aquitaine as the final borders (as long as your fleets con protect your coastline). This gives you a huge empire with only four border provinces!
In Late, the trick is, of course, getting there in the first place... which I will leave to your strategic imagination.

These strategic "chokepoints" are what makes the eastern factions (Fatimid/Ayyubid/Mamluk, Seljukid/Ottoman, Byzantine), so potentially powerful. If you're playing as any of the three factions, taking the oppositions' territory before expanding elsewhere, is a good strategy, though if you want a real challenge possibly not. As the Turks, expanding first southwards into "Egyptian" territory is the best strategy and removes a treacherous neighbour that will give you grief later. There can be some good ransoms with this method also. After securing this territory, providing your shipping is solid, you only need a good garrisson in Egypt to deter any possible Moorish incursions.

Your next move would be against the Byzantine. The best way to initialise this is to have your Alims in asia minor years before, converting the populace. The first provinces to take are Trebizond and Anatolia simultaneously, isolating Georgia, then wait for the counter attacks beat them off with plenty of missiles, saracens, ghazis and AHC's. Once Anatolia is secure, that army needs to push forward into Nicaea. You can then prepare a, suitably mobile, force to take Georgia, which shouldn't be too difficult as it will be unable to reinforce effectively. Your western garrissons in Trebizond and Nicaea need to stay put, and another force needs to be prepared for the capture of Constantinople, once secure you have a three province chokepoint consisting of Constantinople, Georgia and Egypt, your fleets protecting the rest, and can sit back and develop it with relative ease. This pushes the Byzantine out into Europe. You may find them in Khazar very soon threatening your northern border, though by the early 1200's there will be a better reason to keep that province extremely well defended.

If you don't want to wipe out the Egyptians you could leave Sinai, Arabia and Egypt to them, keeping medium - strong garrissons in Palestine and Syria.

KhaderKhan
10-25-2006, 15:28
I do want to take it nice and slow. Play this game to the completion.
With others Iv'e cut them short when winning was obvious.
Thanks for the idea of waiting for the Militarry Acadamy to be completed, and then re-locate the Grand Mosque!:idea2:
Should be some pretty powerful units comming out of Norther Spain by 1300!

There's one little bug you can exploit in the MTW when playing the Turks, i.e. Multiple Grand Mosques, all you have to do is capture provinces that have both Citadels (e.g. Constantinople, Nicaea, Egypt, Rum etc..) and a mosque (easy to build), once you have both in place order simultaniously (this is important or else the bug won't come into effect) build orders for Grand Mosques. Once you have multiple Grand Mosques you can have multiple Military accademies.

Once you have them you'll be having 3 - 5 (or more) provinces that produce Jannissary troops. :laugh4:

Sometimes I do wonder why playing the Turks is described as 'easy' when it should be described as 'really easy'.

Agent Miles
10-25-2006, 17:00
I don't know what version you play, but I can que more than one Grand Mosque simultaneously, but the game only builds one. The others just don't get built.

Geezer57
10-25-2006, 23:34
I believe the "multiple GM" bug was one fixed in VI.

KhaderKhan
10-26-2006, 13:33
I don't know what version you play, but I can que more than one Grand Mosque simultaneously, but the game only builds one. The others just don't get built.

Did you have enough money? I suppose it also depends on which version of the game you play also.

John_Longarrow
12-12-2006, 00:58
Playing without the VI patch, I've not gone to war yet with the Byzantines. I started in early and did the "Ransom the Egyptian ruler" gambit. Captured him twice, first time got the ranson, second they didn't pay.

Current year is 1175 and I'm planning on taking out the Byzantines. They have a very strong garrison in LA and there are two crusades parked there. I've got 1000+ armies in Armenia, Rum, Edessia, and Antioch.

My plan is straight forward. Step one, take out the Byzantine fleet. I've held all of the eastern provences for over 80 years and I'm the only one who's really got a navy. I just finished crushing the Italian fleet after a 3 year fight. I've got about 80+ ships in my fleet so I have a strong hold on ALL sea traffic.

After sending their ships to the bottom, I'm going to take Constantinope. They won't be able to reinforce it and it should fall quickly.

My other boarder is Northern Spain.

I'm going to try a little trick to see how well it works.

I'm going to take Treb and then retreat. Next year I'll throw 10 Jihads into it, just to see what all I get. That should give me plenty of time to rebuild the Jihads in Armenia before the GH shows up. I'll have taken and given up Georgia by then so I should be able to crush their southern forces quickly then move in to reinforce.

Since I hold Castille with +1 upgrades to both armor and weapons, I'm planning up building at least 10 Jihads there to ship over to Georgia when the GH shows up. I'll drop a post when 1230 rolls around to give an overview of what my religious army does.

Adrian II
12-19-2006, 19:22
Early, Expert

It is possible to both take on the Byzantines and crush the Egyptians early on. Don't spend all of your measly initial troops on the Egyptians though, make some shiny new ones at the expense of the Byzantines first.

You start by taking Lesser Armenia (this serves to tie the Egyptian Sultan to Antioch) followed by Trebizond which has an Inn -- the mercenaries will help you keep the Byzantines at bay. If you send your Emissary after the Emperor, he will accept a ceasefire once you have taken Trebizond.

After which you should start concentrating troops in Syria in order to cut off the Egyptian Sultan (token force into Antioch to tie him, main force into Tripoli to conquer it) and ransom him, ransom him again, then kill him.

Then go for Constantinople.

In case of doubt however, you should go for the Byzantines because of (1) the money, (2) Constantinople (imams and new, better fighting units including ships), and (3) the strategic depth which you will need soon enough, primo against any Crusades, secundo against the Golden Horde.

:knight:

Vladimir
12-20-2006, 18:50
You forgot the three magic letters...THA! :2thumbsup:

Adrian II
12-21-2006, 13:41
You forgot the three magic letters...THA! :2thumbsup:Of course, how stupid of me! How could I forget the, um, the three magic letters... The all-familiar, well-known magic formula. Hahaha! :wink3:









:computer: Thai Hotel Association?.. Türk Haberler Ajansi?.. https://img186.imageshack.us/img186/3465/gruebel2ym1.gif (https://imageshack.us)

ksudylan
12-21-2006, 21:39
Ok this is going to be off topic but this was the most active thread

i havent played in a long long time and forgot how to attack islands

like im england but how the hell do i attack and hold ireland with troops and how do i attack provinces that arent dircetly connected to mine?

Adrian II
12-21-2006, 22:08
Ok this is going to be off topic but this was the most active thread.You are welcome, m8.
like im england but how the hell do i attack and hold ireland with troops and how do i attack provinces that arent dircetly connected to mine?Place one ship in each sea connecting your province of departure to the target province. Make sure no enemy (or enemy-to-be, in this case Irish) ship is in any of the seas you need to travel through. Once you have secured such a 'sealane', you can move your troops across the water to the target province in one turn. Just lift your army stack and put it down in the target province, as if normal.

As for holding Ireland, you will have to figure that out depending on the circumstances. ~:)

Vladimir
12-22-2006, 15:24
Of course, how stupid of me! How could I forget the, um, the three magic letters... The all-familiar, well-known magic formula. Hahaha! :wink3:









:computer: Thai Hotel Association?.. Türk Haberler Ajansi?.. https://img186.imageshack.us/img186/3465/gruebel2ym1.gif (https://imageshack.us)

:laugh4: Turkoman (sp) Horse Archers. As maneuverable and deadly as standard horse archers in Early but with enough morale that they don't break when the enemy farts in their general direction.

And cheap cheap cheap!

Adrian II
12-22-2006, 20:03
:laugh4: Turkoman (sp) Horse Archers. As maneuverable and deadly as standard horse archers in Early but with enough morale that they don't break when the enemy farts in their general direction.

And cheap cheap cheap!Just joking, man, I was born a Turcoman Horse Archer. I raise my first THA in Armenia (where I tech up for the heavies anyway) as well as Tripoli. I have them running so many circles around those Byzantine Jedi Princes, by the time they engage my spears they are down from 40 to 14. The only mistake I make by reflex sometimes is to let them get mano a mano with a unit of Trebizond Archers. Not smart if the Jedi has seven stars and the Trebizonders have, like, valour 4.
:juggle2: :laugh4:

Agent Miles
06-11-2007, 18:32
I’d like to post some insights on the myriad of Turkish units available. Everyone seems to think that Armenian Heavy Cav are the best horse unit you can get. After all, they start with one point of valour if you build them in Armenia, and a Master Horse Breeder ups that to two points. However, there is no iron in any of the provinces where you can produce them. To the contrary, you can make valour two Ghulam Cav in Lesser Armenia with a MHB and then send them off to an iron province that can produce this unit and upgrade their weapons. You cannot do this with AHC. Plus-one weapons make Ghulam Cav the equal of AHC in overall combat power and anything better puts them over the top, as demonstrated in the first three slides in my link.
https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/Turkish%20Units/?action=view&current=1.jpg

In slides 4 and 5 I show the comparison of Turkish Horse Archers (v2 from Tripoli with a MHB) to Steppe Heavy Cav (note that SHC can get v1 from a MHB). No comparison really. In Late era, Sipahi of the Porte are stronger units, although only half the manpower and they cannot start with any valour bonus. You could stay with SHC throughout. To produce them, just take Khazar after you gobble up the Byz and build the requisite infrastructure.

In slides 6-8, I show a comparison of the hybrid archer units available. I usually produce them in Rum, because eventually Ottoman Infantry gain a point of valour there. Futtuwa are fine, but cannot start ‘valoured up’ by a Master Bowyer. After you take Anatolia from the Byz, you have an opportunity to build v2 Turcoman foot if you build up to a Master Bowyer there. They are slightly better, but I usually use Futuwwa until Ottoman Infantry become available. Now the big question, should I make Ottoman or Janissary Infantry? Their stats show OI with a slight edge, plus they have a shield and an armour piercing weapon. JI are Elite and Disciplined, though. I go with the Ottoman Infantry. They don’t need the whole Military Academy infrastructure, so I can make them in Rum and send them off to an iron province to get gold weapons. If you happen to get an iron province with a mosque, ribat, Grand Mosque and a Military Academy, then go for JI.

In slide 9, I compare Muwahid and Saracens. They look similar, but are apples and oranges, really. Muwahid, with their great charge, are for the offensive and Saracen are great at holding the line. Both can be valoured up with a Master Spearmaker. I usually make these in Edessa and then tech up to JHI. As with the OI vs JI argument, Saracen or Muwahid have a better combat score than JHI if they get the golden weapons.

Slide 10 shows the often forgotten Hashishin. People sometimes think that they are just archer hybrids. They have the special ability that they can hide anywhere on the map, not just in forests. So in a defensive, you could hide them along the enemy’s line of march and attack from surprise.

The next two slides show the comparison of AHC to their traditional adversaries, Kataphraktoi and Golden Horde Heavy Cav. As you can see, nothing to be afraid of there. The last two slides show that Golden Horde HA’s and infantry are also inferior to what you can produce.

FYI

blackboard
01-08-2008, 19:39
I Play on Early, hard and I like to blitz the Byzantines on my second turn while I make alliance with Egypt to keep them from attacking me for a couple of turns.

I pump out spearmen in Rum nonstop, Send my King and his stack into Georgia and the Byzantines always retreat, Send my 4 star camel and spearman into treb and that army always retreats. By taking Treb I able to make my 4 star into six because of Treb title giving two stars and I have a pre-made INN. I also attack the providence left of Rum on my second turn but i cant remember the name.


The very next turn I send my new merc and my six star into
Const and 50% of the time the Byzantines will retreat and I'm now able to build the grand Mosque if I wanted to within 4 turns.



My Strategy is great because
1.)Egypt is no threat because they only pump out peasants.
2.) I get the best providence in the game making life much easier
3.) After Byzantine retreat from Const, they're usually now in a cival war and no more worries of any Jedi. In my current game after about 15 turns they only have a 2 star king. and accepted my ceasefire.

4.) Going after Egypt first means your will have to deal with
three or four 7 star generals from the Byzantines.


Egypt usually attacked Syria once I take Const but Im able to defeat their 1000 + army with about 5 or 6 camel.


Once I'm at peace with the Byzantine I quickly destroy egypt large army and usually make 10,000 by capturing their king.

I send my emissary into Norway, bribe the army and attack Sweden. I use Sweden to pump out ship so my empire connects right away and I build Norway but keep the loyal low so rebel come and I train my Generals.


Once I have taken Egypt I build up my trade by pumping out ships nonstop for the rest of the game. I'm usually making between 20,000-30,000 every turn and have 5 plus ships in each sea lane.


Very important because someone will eventually sink your ships if you have just 1 or 2 in some sea lanes.

Master Young Phoenix
07-25-2008, 13:01
The Turks are my favorite MTW faction, it's the one I start when I get bored with the achievements of another catholic faction ;) I had a brief spell of liking the Trade Factions (sicily, denmark, italy), but well, now I want conquest!

At the moment, a GA early/Hard game I'm the Top Monarch (9 influence GA score 56, the runner-up, the Doge has what? 39 GA points). I conquered the Egyptians and could atcually fund the war against both the Eggies and the Byzantines with sultan-ransom-money. I decided to build more camelriders this time, as the Egyptian camels managed to give me quite a bit of trouble at first. After a bit of a scuffle I made short work of the Byzantines, with a little help from my great friend King Béla II of the Hungarians and the camels again proved their worth. Nothing stops Kataphracts better than masses of cheap camels it seemed... the byzantines were cowards too. I only had to fight a few offensive battles and fend off a few of their counter-attacks.
At the moment, around 1155 , my generals (mainly Sultan Mehmed's 5 cousins, his 3 sons and the Amirs of Rum, and Constantinople) are all 4 or more stars and I expanded into the steppes, an operation in which the camelriders could shine once more, panicking all that steppe cavalry. Just to make the east all green while I decide who to attack. My borders are a bit numerous though, Greece, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Kiev, Lithuania to the north, and Egypt in the South. There are 3 ways to expand. At the moment, none of my neigbours have great generals. Command value 3 at best...

1. The Almohads, they ain't worth it. With two provinces left and the Spanish advancing, the chance that I can profit from a war with the Almohads is small. I could easily capture the sultan in Cyrenaeca but if the Spanish infidels take Tunisia, the faction is finished and I will not get a ransom payed.
besides, I don't want to be the one and only muslim faction just jet.

2. The Hungarians. Yes, my faithfull allies against the recently re-emerged byzantines (On rhodes, crete and cyprus. no ships, no threat). They just jumped in and grabbed Serbia right under my nose while I tried to take it from the cowardly emperor. and what have they done to repay me? Did they send one of their princesses to unretard my bloodline*? no! Did they agree on my proposals? NO! hmm...
so I guess I might have a go at them...

or...

3. The Polish. Yes! they are my neighbours too! An attack on them might provoke a crusade but I'm not scared of crusades. Also, they do not have an alliance with my most important ally in the region(and the forthcoming conflict), so they are a nice target the absence of a Hun-Pole alliance means that if I attack one of them, the other won't mind, or even help me (which the greedy huns are bound to do, they're sneaky like that).


and okay, there's that little corner in the north, called Finland, where the Novgorod Grand Prince lives in exile... not worth it also.

No crusades have come as yet, the infidels are way too busy murdering each other.

Cavalry armies are definately an option for the Turks, I have one dedicated cavalry army made up of AHC, THA and Bedouin Camels, led by the 7 star Amir of Rum (a bedouin himself) and nothing can stand in their way.

Naval trade is something I'm just starting now, The byzantine ships had to be gone first. My first target goal is the Ligurian sea, so I can quickly take out the pope if Crusades begin to appear on the horizon. No pope, no crusades...

I guess Bedouins will also prove themselves as my "warriors who repay the nation" when the Golden Horde comes... but that's still 70 years in the future... man, I was fast this time!


* the difficulty in scoring a foreign princess for your heirs means that undesirable vices will eventually show up, especially in the retardation area... even with 9 influence, the various christians are still to bigotted to send me one of their beauties for my noble sons...

Alp Arslan
10-27-2008, 23:26
I have found all of this to be really helpful, thanks!

Marquis de Said
11-01-2008, 12:08
Slide 10 shows the often forgotten Hashishin. People sometimes think that they are just archer hybrids. They have the special ability that they can hide anywhere on the map, not just in forests. So in a defensive, you could hide them along the enemy’s line of march and attack from surprise.


Yes, this is very true, but since in a surprise attack like that they would most likely be isolated, they would be easily swamped by the enemy's troops and slaughtered to the last man, especially if they get charged by heavy cavalry. And since the unit is expensive and takes two years to build, I find it more of a luxury, something I'd use to make a battle more interesting, rather than the type of unit I'd rely on in battle. THA would handle the job of flanking harrassment attacks against an advancing enemy much better because of the larger unit size and their ability to retreat and maneuver quickly.

It would be interesting to see how 8-10 units of Hashishin would fare in a line of battle against the enemy, though.

Mind you, I play the XL mod where basic units like Spearmen, Urban Militia, Militia Sergeants and FMA have much higher morale and are thus much more likely to stand up to a surprise attack.

Just my two cents.

Marquis de Said
11-01-2008, 12:19
* the difficulty in scoring a foreign princess for your heirs means that undesirable vices will eventually show up, especially in the retardation area... even with 9 influence, the various christians are still to bigotted to send me one of their beauties for my noble sons...

I have tried to get Christian factions to marry their princesses to my heirs hundreds of times, and I can't ever remember succeeding at it. Or maybe it's happened once or twice out of all those tries. So I think this is pretty much a lost cause.

On the other hand, I think this has been tested and proven (?) in another thread, can't remember which one, but having foreign princesses marry your heirs has absolutely no influence on how retarded your geneology eventually turns out. I think it is rather random, and these traits tend to spring up when you become more powerful.

This is just my theory, but I somehow feel, that if your king has 9 influence and otherwise high stats, the game will try to assign stats that are close to his stats, maybe a few points less or more, to his heirs. Now if he has 8 or 9 stars, if the AI ends up with a figure that is slightly higher, which would be more than 9, it drops it back to zero or 1, essentially starting to count from the start again, therefore you get the "retarded son" of a brilliant king. This way of calculating stats is slightly bugged, and another indication of it is the fact that, if your king has zero piety and sends out a crusade that fails, he will have 9 piety after that, which means the stat went back to the maximum value. The same would happen if your king has 9 piety and sends out a successful crusade: he gets zero piety after that. Even though it's bugged, it is one of the more amusing aspects of the game.

gollum
02-16-2010, 20:02
I usually blitz the Egyptians whom are far less dangerous adversaries due to the Turkish horse archer and due to their lack of jedi princes. If lucky, during the process i get to ransom the Sultan a few times and in no time i have taken out the midddle east for the Sultan;s sake. Then i build up a bit, until i feel strong enough to take on the Byzantines, this usually gives at least one worthy battle due to the many stars and many lives of the Jedi kataphraktoi Princes. However eventually Byzantium is broken and the only Citadel in early falls in Turkish hands. Preparations are made immediately there towards the military academy that will grant us access to janissary heavy infantry (the other janissary types can wait as the Turks have many other good bow units) in light of the Mongol visit. Depending on how much i want to humiliate the Khan i prepare for either to simply defend enough in Georgia to divert Mongol attention in the steppe or alternatively, to completely eradicate the Mongols and proceed to take over Russia.

Going towards Spain instead is a valid but somewhat risky move that requires a lot of naval supprt and quite some time to really pay off the significant investment. On the contrary moving in the Balkans, eastern europe and russia before making a move west is far better imo.

cori
03-29-2010, 11:59
I’In slides 4 and 5 I show the comparison of Turkish Horse Archers (v2 from Tripoli with a MHB) to Steppe Heavy Cav (note that SHC can get v1 from a MHB). No comparison really. In Late era, Sipahi of the Porte are stronger units, although only half the manpower and they cannot start with any valour bonus. You could stay with SHC throughout. To produce them, just take Khazar after you gobble up the Byz and build the requisite infrastructure.

FYI

Sipahi of the Porte do have region bonus in tripoli....

personally i modded them to be 40 men unit,as i feel them mistreated by CA..)):

gollum
03-29-2010, 18:51
welcome cori, to the org,
indeed the Sipahis of the Sublime Porte are somewhat mistreated and they do get the Tripoli bonus. Many regions give bonuses to more than one unit but these are not spelled out in the province info - as only one unit is mentioned.
:bow:

I of the Storm
03-29-2010, 21:33
IIRC, it's Edessa, where Sipahis get their +1 valor, not Tripoli.

gollum
03-29-2010, 22:25
Thanks for the correction I :bow:. I haven't installed the game ages now. Better stop answering if not certain.

All bonuses can be found in a column in the unit_prd file, although if memory serves they also have been posted either here or the .com somewhere.

cori
04-21-2011, 15:19
Returning to MTW after playing Shogun, got back to the forum for an inspiration…

I used Gnome editor on my CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11 file to check on regional bonuses for the Turk’s troops:
12.JanissaryBows Georgia
24.Turkoman Foot Anatolia
39.Turkoman Horse Tripoli
49.JHI Bulgaria
54.Ottoman Infantry Rum
79. AHC Armenia
82. Gulam Cavalry Lesser Armenia
86.Ottoman Sipahi Edessa, Rum
104.Sipahi of the Porte Tripoli
Numbers are for columns in an editor..

HopAlongBunny
07-03-2016, 00:44
A note on the Steam version.

A fortress is now required for the Military Academy; the route to JHI just got 20 years longer.

I have never tried to edit the Steam version, anyone know how to fudge the files...not even sure where they are located now.

drone
07-03-2016, 01:24
Should be wherever you place your steam games, mine is d:\games\steam\steamapps\common\Total War Medieval 1 Gold. Under that directory it should match the CD version.