Aragonese

[Cheetah]

early

[Cheetah]

high

[Cheetah]

late

[katank]

early strategy for Aragonese

take Navarre first turn with starting troops

queue towers

go a bit archer heavy and build some spears to protect them

get towers for navarre and some peasants to garrison it

take you king back to Aragon and attack Toulouse ASAP so you grab the nice farming and bonused chiv knights down the road.

take Valencia when you can or rush Spanish first.

build inn in navarre to get enough power to defeat the Spanish.

bribing El Cid is an OK idead if you can spare the cash as he is a great general esp. in attack.

however, on hard or expert, you can rarely afford to do so.

therefore, just shoot up his jinettes using archers.

once you capture castille, hopefully with church intact, build chapterhouse to do north African Crusade run which yields many sweet Knights Santiagos and Order foot.

after finishing off the Spanish, the Aragonese are almost the same as the Spanish as they share all units in common and their tactical position would be the same.

[Imperial Buffoon]

Two tips:

El Cid
For some reason it's easier (cheaper) to bribe El Cid after two years than in year 1. Another option is to attack him with a unit of vanilla spearmen and say, one or two of archers to thin his jinettes down and then withdraw. That will lower the cost. Bribing El Cid in anything above normal will put you in a hard financial position for many years and has to be chosen carefully.

Crusades
It takes more building up because the Spanish build up Castille rather than Leon but buiding your crusades in Leon gives +1 valour Santiago Knights.

[katank]

el cid still costs too much to be worth the trouble and my archers killed him the first time I tried that

I prefer to get crusades going right away so as to have the crusade run earlier so you get the GAs for holy land faster.

leon needs to go to keep first while castille can stay at fort level and produce the crusades.

there's thus a 12 year advantage in using castille

I switch to leon later.

[agentxcubed]

I prefer a slightly different strategy:

First, bribe El Cid. You can always use a good general, and money will only be an issue for the first few decades.

Next, take that same emissary and bribe Navarre if you feel that you have the money. The only purpose of this is to earn your emissary valour, but it's nice to have an agent that doesn't kick the bucket the moment someone pokes them.

You should have an alliance with The Spanish (thanks to your most energetic emissary). Attack the Almohads in Cordoba with everything you can throw at them: in my game the task was easy because the garrison was split into two halves, one of which had a leader with low loyalty... he soon learned of the error of his misguided ways and turned his sword to the true Christian cause... yes, I bribed him.

Be careful in that battle: Valencia to Cordoba is a bridge battle, which is quite often a royal pain, as you are not defending.

Once you hold Cordoba, Portugal is open to subversion. This all takes its toll on your treasury, so be careful: you don't need to take Portugal, and it's a pain to keep loyal.

As soon as you had taken Navarre, let it revolt. For the purposes of this exercise, you want the Spanish to take it. Just let it sit there, inviting appendment to some realm. When the Spanish claim it, rejoice.

Here comes the tricky part: Directly the Spanish take Navarre (with the king or some prince) send armies as large as you can to relieve them of Leon and Castile. You want to trap the Spanish royalty in Navarre ad infinitum. While trapped in Navarre, the Spanish will learn the difficulties of not having absurd wealth just tripping over itself to be theirs. What fun.

My advice is to take things easy a bit from here. Complete the Reconquista if you want to with Granada, but be aware that the Almohads have a Glorious Achievement that requires that territory and will want it back. Take steps towards a monastery in Castile, a Chapter House in Leon, a church and later cathedral in Cordoba, and I would say shipwrights in Aragon and Valencia. You may, if you choose, grab Portugal and provoke rebellions (it's one of the easier territories to do that in) to raise your Generals. Assassins are nice to have, especially if the Pope gets on your case about the whole Spain business.

Another thing: you want to keep the Spaniards alive once they are trapped in Navarre. Ally with them and defend them against invasion. A very nice thing about Navarre is that once the Spaniards are trapped there, your northern border becomes just Aragon: easy to defend.

From there, the world is your oyster. Crusade all the way to Palestine, using ships if possible. You can actually have multiple crusades active if you form one against some faction (not the one encouraged by the Pope) and later form one against the Pope's chosen victim. His Holiness gets so excited that someone listens to him that he forgets that you already have a crusade. Knights of Santiago are a nice thing to have, and so are Order Foot Soldiers. Order Foot are actually slightly better than Chivalric Sergeants, and can be gotten much quicker. A successful crusade to Morocco or Algeria can set you up with a few units of Knights Santiago or Order Foot: a trifle expensive perhaps, but not as expensive per unit as Royal Knights, and also cheaper to support.

[peacedude]

I usually ally with the Almohads to wipe Spain off the map as soon as possible, since the later into the campaign it gets the Spanish get stronget and the Almohads get weaker. So use the Almohads when they are strong to help you wipe out a serious rival and then once it gets to the high period they are significantly weaker and you can deal with them at your leisure.

[rvg]

For my Aragonese initial land grab I usually limit myself to provinces directly bordering on Aragon. Navarre, Valencia, Castille, Toulouse and Aquitaine.

I usually leave the Almos alone and let them have the rest of Iberia; From this point on, I crusade to Antioch (a GA goal), then lay low and build up.

Occasionally I would go and take a crucial homeland province from a faction that is getting a GA lead.


Sure, the most efficient way to play Aragon is to take the whole iberia and play it like the Spanish, the problem is that I don't *wanna* play it like the Spanish, I wanna play it the Aragonese way :)

[Maloncanth]

I've taken a few looks at Aragon's game in late. It's a pretty hairy starting position. Actually, I think it's about the hardest opening the game has to offer and it is indeed rated Very Hard so it's gotta be worth a look. The first time I played it the game totally bogged down with the Russians ahead in points. I've started up a new game so I'll post some of the stuff from it here as I go along. The game is on VI, Hard-GA-Late Era

Challenges
Aragon has two major hurdles on the GA game. The first is securing the Homeland points, which are vital because I don't think Aragon has any other way of getting them. You start with Aragon and Sicily so those are no problem. Sardinia is a bit more complex, and Valencia is a can of worms right from the start unless you're excellent at the tacticals (I'm not).

The second hurdle I find are actually the Russians, Hungarians, and sometimes the Poles. They gain two points for every conquest so they will get ahead if any one of them snowballs to a large size, and because they're so far away, it can be difficult to project the power to do anything about it before they have a huge lead.

Opening
So anyway, I open the game and check my generals. I get dealt a pretty good hand, I have a bunch of acumen-4's. There are no good generals besides the king at a middling 3 stars and while the technology level is decent, the Castillians have more and better of everything.

The Pope always attacks Naples on turn 1, denying you the province and you can't really fight the Pope from turn 1. Castille will attack Valencia on turn 1. I believe the battle might be winnable there, but it's certainly too difficult to me. Your attack from Aragon to Valencia will, I think, turn it into a 3-way bridge battle between you, Castille, and the rebels.

My turn 1 builds in Sicily are a tower and a spy. The tower is obligatory and the spy shuttles to Valencia on the next turn. The small chance he has of triggering a rebellion in Valencia is probably well worth the cost. It's not like building troops in Sicily will get them anywhere and the Pope is unlikely to hit you. In Aragon, the two choices I see are either building a port and getting more ships, or building an armoury to get quality troops (chivvy knights and silver armour jinettes) in preparation for a land war with Castille. I go for the latter and leave the ship building to Sicily. For the first two decades or so, Sicily builds a tower, a shipyard, then nothing but ships and economic upgrades. An alternate strategy is to skip 6 turns of economic upgrading to get a dockyard up to get carracks. I think that'd probably be a better choice but I didn't see it, so I have no carracks and am ahead on my upgrade profits by 6 turns.

I also assign the province titles to my acumen-4's. Sicily is richer in the long run, so I give the chamberlain scroll to Sicily's governor.

Navarre
The rebel stack in Navarre is worth about 2000-3000 florins and it includes a set of chivalric knights. Bribing Navarre early is probably worth it, if only to have a second province rolling out militia sarges as soon as possible. It's definitely possible to simply attack it and siege it, though that takes longer and requires that you find the troops for it.

Sardinia
The Italians will usually attack Sardinia and take it within a 10-15 years. It takes at least a decade to get ships that far so attacking it and occupying it will be a real breakneck scramble. Bribing the place early is risky because the rebel troops there often aren't enough to hold the place down. (For such a poor island province, Sardinia is really very difficult to suppress.) I plop a spy there and sure enough, the Italians who went there got repeated rebellions. I bribed the stack for a few thousand in the late 1330's/early 1340's.

Tertiary Concerns
The northern border can potentially turn into a nightmare as the English start with a star-eyed boy in Aquitaine and the French will be strong for a couple decades before usually being overwhelmed by a gang of other computers. Given the choice, I usually side with the English/Swiss that usually end up together.

Peace with the Italians is essential. You probably can't beat their navy early. You need the sealanes (hell you need to open your sealanes) and the Italians generate income for you at Sicily anyhow. I find that as a rule of thumb, if the Italians get a good grip on Sardinia, it's a bad turn but I'd pick peace with Italy over it until the navy turns out okay.

The blurb says something about attacking the weakening Byzantines from Sicily. It might be possible to do it early, I don't know, but I sure as hell don't see a way. It does become very possible later in the game however and I did indeed manage it in my last game.

I know a lot of people like allying with the Almohads but depending on how good you are with Castille, they might become too strong. Having strong elmoheads snatch Cordoba from a weakened Castille before you've taken it is very bad.

Fighting Castille
Castille is your first major enemy and I don't see any option besides doing it early and putting your full attention to it. On the bright side, the Pope won't bother you because you're tiny and they're huge. In the course of playing, I've found that taking risks and rushing is really part of the Aragon game. If you wait too long, Castille will simply outbuild you and become all sorts of trouble and with a few well placed crusades (not necessarily even Spanish ones), the almohads won't be able to stop them for you.

There three critical provinces are Castille, Valencia, and Cordoba. The spanish generate a lot of income, so disrupting Castille can be very effective as they'll lose that province's income for the turn, even if you retreat against their counterattack the next turn. Castille is also the best way to attack Valencia since hitting it from Aragon will get you a bridge fight. Cordoba will become necessary eventually as the southern border. You will of course, also want Leon and Portugal after that to secure your domain.

As soon as I got stack that could beat the Castille garrison (with my admittedly limited tactical strength), I threw a it at Castille and started contesting it with the Spaniards every few turns. The set of Chivalric Knights I bribed off Navarre earn their keep. I also chose to attack while the Castillian siege against Valencia's rebels was still ongoing so that their garrison was tied down. Hence there wouldn't be a counterattack into Aragon, while trading over Castille protected Navarre. I also know the French and British are fighting hard up north so I can get away with a great deal. I get into an extremely evil fight in Castille (they camped a hill and I had to lure them down) but I win, sure enough. Next turn, they respond from Cordoba and Leon, driving me back into Aragon.

We continue the trading for many turns through a bunch of difficult battles against Spanish numerical and often qualitative superiority. Then, the Almohads (bless their souls) step in, launching an assault at Cordoba. They are repelled but they draw Spanish blood and leave them with no counter that could dislodge me from Castille. The next turn, the castle garrison kamikaze out at me and are killed to a man, leaving me in control of Castille. This proves to be the turning point as Castille provides me not only with tons of incomes but lots of troop facilities and offices. Money was a problem with profits dropping to 3 digits before but it jumps to 2000 with Castille in the fold. The Spanish are now on the defensive with the elmoheads getting ready to rail on them from the south.

After a few turns of building, a French crusade suddenly arrives. Next turn it launches itself at Morocco and drives the elmoheads into retreat. The turn after that, the elmos counter, and the crusade is driven back into cordoba where it would wither for many turns. The Spanish and the Almohads settle with about two and a half stacks each facing each other from Cordoba and Morocco. I have no eyes in Granada so I can't really tell what's happening.

Meanwhile, I launch an attack at Valencia from Castille and begin sieging the citadel there. A few turns later, I muster enough force to catch the Spanish king in Leon. One neat trick is that if your force is overwhelming, the computer will always pull a full retreat rather than risk their king's life stranded inside a besieged fort. Leon falls instantly, on the same turn that the siege in Valencia completes.

Early 1340's
I settle my borders and begin building up for a bunch of turns, now in control of all my homeland targets as well as Castille and Leon. The Spanish are still a military presence, with Portugal, Cordoba, and possibly Granada though the borders of Granada mean that it is unlikely to be too profitable regardless of who is holding it. The Almohads offered alliance, which I accepted, and Castille sued for peace, which I also accepted. One problem that Aragon has to worry about is that while it has to fight Spain, having the almohads take Cordoba (regardless of from who) is probably even worse than the Castillians having it, so I have to be careful not to beat up the Spaniards too much until I take it for myself without taking on the whole Elmohead empire. Meanwhile, the Swiss and the Brits have both been excommed and France is now no longer visible from Aragon or the med, although their lingering crusade is in Cordoba. The boatbridge now also extends from the coast of Valencia, to malta, which currently looks attractive. It is now 1347. (to be continued)

[Jxrc]

In Early a reasonable start is to do the following:

first turn take toulouse with whatever you need to defeat one ballista,one unit of spearmen and one of archers. You have two UM, one archers and your king so you can pick your army to be 100% sure to win to manage to get the skilled attacker vice. Build one watchtower and an unit of peasants in Aragon. Automatic ceasefire with the French once you have won. Use you emissary to get an alliance with Spain.
second turn: move the peasants to Toulouse for garrison purpose and bring back whatever you can (at least your king) from Toulouse without loyalty dropping below 100%. Build watchtower in Toulouse. UM and spearmaker in Arragon.
third turn: invade Navarre. Easy battle if you have one archer, one UM and your king since you face only two units of peasants and one of spearmen. Get the enemy down the hill with your archer, engage with the UM charge with the king and peasants and spearmen are history. Build peasant in Arragon.

Then do basically the same as with Toulouse, bring in the peasants as garrison and have as many troops go back to Arragon. Once you have about two archers, one Spearman and your king you can invade Valencia if the Spanish have not done so yet.

Given that at some point your doomed to face either the spanish or the almohad build as many archers and jinettes as your economy can support. Archers will be handy to get rid of the Spanish Jinettes while your own will basically be your only units that can get you rid of the Almo Militia (Spanish are a much easier fight given how stupidly the AI uses its Jinettes). The easiest option is usually to stab the Spaniards in the back when they are at war with the Almo but there is no guarantee that such war will start or that the Almo will not make the first move and conquer Castille at their first attempt. If getting rid of the Almo by an early blitz is easy when playing the Spaniards it is quite another story when you have to face them twenty or thirty years later when they got plenty of AUM (sometimes you are lucky the AI uses its AUM as garrison in Portugal). Once you got rid of the Almo and the Spaniards, the game is almost exactly the same as when playing Spain.

If the Spanish and Almo are just happy sitting there you can either attack the Spanish directly (tough and risky since you can be backstabbed by the Almo, the French, the HRE from Burgundy, the English or even the Italian navy). Another option is to build ship for trade from Toulouse and seek for opportunity elsewhere (bribing rebels here and there, sending crusade to a province that is not likely to be conquered immediately such as Livonia, Volga whatever, etc. taking out any faction about to collapse,etc) while upgrading the quality of you troops in your core kingdom (replacing spearmen by FS, UM by MS, etc). The second option gives more variety to the game since conquering the whole peninsula basically amounts to playing the Spaniards with a fifty years delay.

[Empirate]

As somebody said, taking risks and sitting tight in even tighter spots is Aragon's bread and butter. I've just played two campaigns in the Late game, and boy! The start is really hard. I'd recommend being good on the battlefield, otherwise you really have to have some luck.
Taking Navarre on turn one is not only possible, but also advisable. With only one province in the Iberian peninsula, your neighbours would easily outproduce you otherwise. Churn out milsarges or whatever strikes your fancy there. Try building up a force of Feudal Knights and Jinettes in Aragon, but don't forget to bring some Feudal Sergeants: You'll need them against Spanish heavy cav. As soon as you have a full stack, attack Castile. Usually (at least in my experience) the Spanish won't have many troops there and will withdraw to the castle. Try picking a turn when the king is there to make them abandon the province, though this will likely not work. Either way, they will counterattack, and you have your first big fight in Castile, and you MUST win it. In one of my trials, I lost, but decimated all the Spanish quality troops. After that it was an arms race for some years. I fully expected to lose Aragon, but got lucky. Only the fact that the Spanish held the Almohads to be the bigger risk prompted them to offer a ceasefire.
Several years later I was able to renew my attack on Castile, driving the garrison to the castle, only to be counterattacked by a big force the next turn. I actually waited a few more turns to be able to attack Valencia simultaneously (the Spanish had taken it the very first turn), but this got me into a bridge battle that cost me dearly. At least it prevented the Spanish to use their Valencian troops to relieve Castile.
Do it however you judge best, but take Castile, Valencia and then Leon as early as possible. This will secure your income, and also relieve you of that nagging "I only have two provinces" feeling, as far as the Iberian is concerned.

In Sicily, I went for shipbuilding all out. Before you can build ships, churn out troops from the beginning, you'll need them to take provinces and can ship them over to the Iberian later. No watchtowers for me: This enables you to get either Sardinia (for GA points) or Malta (if the Italians already have Sardinia) a turn or two earlier. I went for Malta, as I didn't want to cross my swords with the Italians, couldn't afford the huge garrison Sardinia takes to keep quiet, and Malta makes more money. I took the island relatively intact, meaning I could produce CMAA and Arbalesters: Nice!
A ship chain from Aragon to Malta takes four ships, at least one of these being a Caravel. You can accomplish this in thirteen turns, if you go straight for shipbuilding in both Sicily and Aragon. Connecting the two parts of your fledgling empire feels ever so much safer! It also made the fight against the Spanish much easier.

If the Almohads want Cordoba, there's not much you can do to stop them, if the Spanish don't give you a hand. They didn't give me one, so the Almohads have Cordoba now. If you time it right, you can wait for one of the inevitable crusades going through your territory and take Cordoba in it's wake. This worked well for me on several occasions, in one of the games allowing me to take first Cordoba, then Morocco and Algeria (bandwagoning with a German, English and French crusade, respectively). Keep building ships in Sicily, Malta and Navarre, while Aragon and Castile tech up to produce crack troops: Chivalric Knights, +1v Arbalesters and +1v Chivsarges are not very far to go. Keep an eye on your northern borders and expand into Aquitaine and Toulouse as soon as possible, to give you more depth and a stronger power base. In the north there should be at least four factions beating on one another in an interesting if bloody war: French, English (stronger in this period than earlier), HRE and Swiss (don't underestimate them... they seem to grow to five or six provinces quite regularly in my games, and SAP pack a mean punch). Assault whoever is beginning to lose to take some easy pickings. Destroy the Almohads outright: Even in the deserts, their troops are not up to fighting your heavies anymore. Just remember to make desert battles QUICK! That way, your tin cans can't be fried by Saharan temperatures. Autocalcing works well, but feels kinda cheap.

Once you have done these things, you can go wherever you want. I'd recommend building your navies like crazy, so you can amphib anybody who gets close to you in GA points. Even if the eastern factions seem to have it easy gathering points, you can expand and conquer quickly after living through the rather harsh beginning. The Iberian allows you to recruit crack troops with weapon upgrades, and Sicily rakes in the money. Play aggressively, and your conquering points alone will make you the winner, coz you're no slacker on conquering point ratio either - not like the 5:1 Germans or French! Attacking in the Balkans could be a good idea, as Hungary and Poland can pose a threat to you point-wise. Russia is more difficult to take care of, but there's much time yet if you play it aggressively. A 100% victory is not impossible, I think, if you don't slack around too much and choose your targets wisely.

One note on the Italians: They are incredibly aggressive in this stage of the game and will pose problems. As soon as you have a navy that can rival theirs, try and destroy them, even if it sets you back 15 to 20 years. In one of my games they amphibbed practically everywhere, holding Norway, Mercia, Scotland, Egypt, Tunisia, Crete, Rhodes, Crimea, Serbia+Bulgaria... the list goes on. It was very very hard to get rid of them as they were so spread out all over the place, and their fleets just seemed to always remain in existence somewhere, and made it hard to get to them. Try Assassins and Grand Inquisitors... but these may take too long.

[ninja]

expert, high.
in game as aragonese i prefer to strike north first. tolouse is a nice base to hit HRE from. usually HRE is at war with many factions and its armies are spread and consist of a weak units. it is not so hard to take and hold burgundy and then switzerland to get swiss pikemen. if you will be agressive enough germany fallen into anarchy. after HRE collapsed it is time to crush spanish and almohads. cordoba has the highest strategic value. control of it allows to split enemy forces apart and defeat them easily. some fleet in straits of gibraltar brings any other's distant trade routs under your control.

[doctrellor]

ON the XL Mod

I followed the above advise in my game that just blew up on me...:(

step 1) Ally France, Portugal, Almos
step 2) Take out Spain
step 3) take out Portugal/Almos

Since I took the slow road, and built up, this took me to 1190

Now the next 40 years went by fast as I had already built up a strong econ to do what I did

France was my longterm Ally and was unstable as England and the Danes pounded France mercilessly... as France pounded the Genoses/Venetians/Papacy

so Toulouse rebelled, and I took it at 1200

33 years left...

I was building up a fleet and ringed the Western Med with ships as I intended to take out the ALmos out of North Africa.. but things worked out differently...

I went after the Danes and Genoese...

The Danes took out the Almos and Corsica/Sardinia.. to I had to slowly destroy the Danish fleet and land troops...once I took out the Danes, I then worked on the Genoese...

Until the French backstabbed me and Declared a Crusade...

I then took 2 stacks to go after North Africa and head to Egypt where the Almos seemingly took out the Eggys..Lucky I bought like 2 stacks of Mercs.

and I had 6 stacks for France

So when the game blew up, I basically owned the Western Med with fleets, and I owned North Africa & Corsica/Sardinia & Southern France/Provence while the Danes/English owned Northern France

The French blew up (just as Golden Horde/Mongols arrived) and went civil war in 1233 when my game blew up..:(

++++++++++
Summar for guide...

Early Game:
Take ownership of Iberian Peninsula

Mid Game
Take out North Africa + Genoese/Sicilians since those ALWAYS seem to tick off the Pope and get themselves ex-communicated

That way you have the Western Med locked up tight as you head to Byz/Eggy for the riches

[newguy]

In Early a reasonable start is to do the following:

first turn take toulouse with whatever you need to defeat one ballista,one unit of spearmen and one of archers.

i do the same in the early game. i would like to add a intersting observation. after the conquest of toulouse province i put the taxes "very high" and got of coarse loyalist rebellions next two years (i remove the aragonese forces out of the province to get the rebelion). here comes intersting part - after crushing the second one, pope ALWAYS excommunicate french, leaving them without allies for a long time.

[Kenshin the vega bound]

Why bribe el cid? Theres plenty of battles to train your king so he can have heathly heirs. El Cid goes down like all the others LOL. Money is tight and you need it to develop your provinces.

[gollum]

heh - its seems that the largest question (existential?) for Aragon players is whether to bribe El Cid or not. However who needs El Cid when you can just take a few mercenaries and crush the Spanish and then soon after the Almohads... Then proceed... France/England, HRE, Italy, Pope and Sicily.

The unfortunate truth is that Aragon is very slightly easier than Spain (that is very very easy).