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Thread: Archived: Redux adventures (2nd ED)

  1. #1

    Default Archived: Redux adventures (2nd ED)

    I set up this archive to indefinitely preserve some old goldnuggets of past times for future reference, written for 2nd ED Redux. Virtually lost in the darker corners of the Main Hall. Its only about a eternity later then I originally had in mind, but all the same it has now finally happened. Both texts/copies are displayed here unaltered/unedited and with the permission of respective authors....

    Enjoy folks!


    - Axalon


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    Quote Originally Posted by Geezer57 View Post
    Speaking of satisfying moments, I had a real nail-biter last night in Axalon's Redux Mod.

    I'm playing the Germans for the 1st time - normally I prefer a faction that starts somewhere isolated or near chokepoints, so I can turtle for a while after initial expansion until I've developed some infrastructure/tech. Not in this game, surrounded by way too many factions.

    At any rate, after a few decades of opening play, no more rebel provinces are around in my neighborhood and tensions are rising. The Norse open hostilities by sinking one of my ships, followed by an invasion of Pomerania. My garrison there is too weak, I withdraw and abandon the province temporarily. After shifting forces and reorganizing, I kick them out of Pomerania, then move on Denmark for revenge. The AI retreats from Denmark, then retreats from Sweeden, and is left with only Norway. But it's packed full of elite Norse units, almost all with high combat stats and elevated morale/valor.



    But their Highking (who's in command) is only a 2-star General, while mine is 6-star. So while my units are somewhat inferior to the Norse, and my army (18 units totaling 1080 troops) is slightly smaller than theirs (21 units adding up to 1260 troops), I gamble on the extra command proving decisive. I have a big advantage in missile troops, but the map favors the melee defender - full of heavily wooded hills. I'm having 2nd thoughts on all this, but the AI has deployed at the fairly flat top of a hill that has one clear slope, one that starts out steep but shallows near the top. I'm hoping to get near the shallow incline, and shoot up any AI troops that exit the woods to attack.

    Things go just as planned at first - the first two units that attack piecemeal (a Norse Spearmen and a Norse Swordmen) are almost destroyed by crossbow bolts and rout (only to rally later). I move closer to the treeline, and hope to provoke other units to attack by shooting at them. Multiple Norse units emerge, and a fierce melee develops on my left flank, but no general engagement. So I'm able to outnumber and flank those units on the left, meanwhile feeding defenders one by one into the fray as more enemy units attack. Finally all my units are involved in combat, except to two of the four crossbowmen (one's chopped up to a remnant and routed, the other is stuck in melee), an Irish Kern I'd been saving, and my Imperial Knight (10 men) General's bodyguard. Out from the forest emerges the Highking's Norse Bodyguard (base stats of 5/8/5/5/10 chg/melee/def/arm/morale - 20 men) - one very tough cookie. As the enemy General approaches, I note that one of my formerly 60-man Frankish Spearmen (now down to 17 men) is standing around, having defeated their Norse opponent. So I send them to intercept the Highking, and take the initial shock of the charge, while positioning the Kerns and my General to flank. Meanwhile, the rest of my line is close to breaking, only my swordsmen (with their higher morale) still holding - several units on both sides have already routed.

    The two available Crossbows (depleted down to less than 30-men each) fire on the Highking as he gets closer. They only get a couple of volleys off before the Frankish Spearmen make contact (and immediately start losing badly), so the missile attrition isn't much. That is, until the Kerns launch a volley from behind, and drop 30% of the bodyguard. Then my General hits, gets a good charge in, and takes them down to about half. But as they settle into melee, the Frankish Spearmen break and run, so now the Norse Bodyguard are chasing them rapidly - presenting a poor target for the javelins. And my Imperial Knights are dropping fast, what with the uber stats and armor-piercing abilities of these Norse.

    The Highking's bodyguard is whittled down to one man, the Kerns are out of javelins, and my Knights are down to four men, when a victorious Norse Axemen unit emerges from the general melee and moves to save his King. In a desperate move to stave off disaster, I sacrifice the Kerns to delay the enemy rescuer, hoping to kill the King before it is too late. In a gamble to execute the Norse monarch, I turn the Crossbowmen's fire back onto the enemy leader (I'd turned them off that target when my General got involved with him). The Kerns were being chewed up rapidly, my line was wavering, my General was down to only a few men, and that darned Highking wouldn't go down. The tension was incredible ... then it happened - someone got the critical hit in (my leader or the missiles, I still don't know which) and the enemy leader fell dead.

    Several Norse units broke at that point, others were off chasing my routers, so my General and Crossbowmen attacked any enemy close by - luckily the Norse morale was very low and they shattered readily. By then another remnant crossbow unit (16 men) rallied and rejoined my severely diminished forces. But I had no melee unit other than my General (4 men) to face the Norse remnants and reinforcements soon to arrive. So I ordered in my only reinforcements (2 units: a light Halbardier (40 men) and a Light Cavalry (40 men also), withdrew to the nearest clear hillside, and waited. A few small and fatigued enemy units showed up while I waited, and were sent packing by concentrated volleys from the Crossbowmen. My small band rested on that hillside until the reinforcements arrived, meanwhile we could see new enemy forces marshalling in the woods across the valley. With two fatigue bars restored, my small band cautiously marched in the clear areas, seeking enemy resistance.

    We found two Norse Bodyguard units, one at 9 men, the other at 7, parked near one map edge. As we approached within missile range, they took off towards the reinforcement map edge. We gave chase, shooting whenever possible, until they stopped where a unit of spearmen joined them. My units were still uphill, and focused on the bodyguards until they broke under fire, taking the spearmen with them. Then all that was left were three units of peasant reinforcements, which didn't offer much in the way of resistance. The Light Halbardiers and Cavalry drove them off after a little melee. As we moved to follow the routers, the message "the enemy flees the field" was displayed and the ordeal was finally over.

    [IMG][/IMG]

    Casualties were horrendous - I lost more men that the Norse, and their survivors would have outnumbered my remaining forces by 3 to 1 if the fortification had been larger. Thank goodness all those extra enemy men, who wouldn't fit in the Fort, were lost.

    I haven't had such a roller-coaster ride in MTW in a long, long time. I'd like to thank Axalon for a great mod, one that's made my favorite game even better.

    Cheers all - enjoy!
    Last edited by Axalon; 02-13-2012 at 09:55. Reason: Clean up...

  2. #2

    Default Re: Archived: Redux adventures (2nd ED)

    ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Knight of the Rose View Post
    Recently – or somewhat recently none the less – Axalon claimed that playing the polish faction on Expert in his Redux mod probably is the most difficult situation you can put yourself into. And I went into that trap like a fool. The experience I gained from the following adventure could be shared in the relevant subforum, but I feel the Main Hall might learn from my story. Or at least smile at my vanity.

    I downloaded the mod and gave the polish a swing. I had heard that farm and trade income had been nerfed. And by clicking through the impressive number of units available to me I found that recruiting was very expensive, but upkeep cheap.

    So – my first go was trying “the rebel economy” – I didn’t believe Axalon could change the ransom pocketed from taking rebel lands. And Poland was surrounded by rebels and rebellious provinces. And at first I came out fine. But the second wave of rebels was large and the third a pure horde. Rapidly the income from the rebels was sucked into training new units.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Just as I was slowly shifting my economy from confiscation to taxation the first DOW hit me. The Lithuanians, an unplayable faction with strong horsepower, thought it could take on the might of the Poles. This led me into the first battles against a proper enemy. Quickly I realised there were a lot of lessons to learn in the mod. The AI is more aggressive, and the troops move quicker. Secondly the Poles do not have a spear/halberd unit of any significant worth. I was caught in many very even battles before I had slowly worn down the Lithuanians and took their capital province.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Then I though my eastern border secure, as the Rus was still struggling to gain power on the steppes. I then tried to fight the Hungarians over the southern border as they looked quite weak. They proved tough as well, but I managed to get Monrovia and Kiev, making my Kingdom a bottleneck between east and west. Yet peace can be hard to keep – the Lithuanians kept trying getting back their province.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Some turns later I managed to land a peace deal with the Hungarians. Meanwhile the Danes had appeared on my northern border as they invaded Pomerania. These guys can really take a beating as they are very tough heavy infantry with nice medium cavalry too. Through some practise and a lot of horse archers I managed to beat them back to the cold north. Feeling somewhat secure on all other fronts I then invaded the HRE which seemed to struggle with the Italians/Venetians.

    But as troops are expensive and my economy small, reinforcements are coming in as a trickle at best. The HRE, however, managed to get troops into Bohemia in the thousands. They even, to my big surprise, attacked Poland with a half stack as their friends in Bohemia were under siege. This led to a bridge battle where I was as close to loosing as you can get. My general charged in and managed to suck up all opposition and yet survive to see another day. Poland was saved by a hair thin margin.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Then I was pushed back from Bohemia and rebuild, invaded, sieged and was pushed back. But the infantry heavy HRE finally crumbled under a lot of crossbow fire. Just as my main army was besieging Prague castle for the third time the Hungarians decided to take revenge for their losses in our first war. As Poland, your most important province can be attacked well into the game, and this campaign was no different. The following battle was very close, very close indeed.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Bridge battles need to be fought differently from vanilla MTW. Archers with long range can wreck havoc on short range archers usually vulnerable to missile fire. I had one crossbow unit cut down to almost half strength before I knew what was going on. Secondly I had no proper stopping unit. All my efforts to hold the Hungarians on the bridge proved in vain. But the scramble to at least deny them anything but a bridgehead started to push them back. The breaking point came when the King was taken prisoner after a very hard fight.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    At this point – roughly 80 turns into the campaign things started to go very wrong for me. I had only won 3/5 of my battles and precious florins had been spend rebuilding old units instead of training new ones. All the empires around me – The Byz, the Rus and the Italians – looked rather freighting, but I though I’d settle in for a lot of turns building and turtling like there’s no going back. I was quite pleased that after taking northern Germany I could boast a handsome profit of 2500 florins each turn.

    But it was too late. The Rus had secured the east long ago, and had a powerful war machine going. In the east more or less all my troops were based in Lithuania, with a somewhat smaller force south of it in Kiev. I also had no generals of worth, nor troops of merit.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    The Rus DOW’ed me, and Lithuania fell, opening up the east completely. I threw back my forces from Germany to repel the eastern invasion. The German provinces rebelled and soon the HRE was back in strength. The Byz now fielded two and a half stacks in Hungaria and could take Poland whenever the felt the need to.

    Then I quit the campaign, fearing I would outright loose the game if I continued.

    The morale of this short story: When you’re used to do things in one way, and you enter new territory, don’t continue to do what you used to do. I’ve now just abandoned my third attempt at making the Polish a great empire, and I’m not sure I can bear another attempt. But the mod has my recommendation – very nice challenge…



    /KotR

  3. #3

    Default Re: Archived: Redux adventures (2nd ED)

    Given the age of these two tales, I have decided to keep this place locked until further notice (if nothing else due to differences with current available versions of Redux). Any comments on these tales (are welcome all the same) or suggestions on how to better proceed in their preservation - please use the regular Redux-thread....

    - A
    Last edited by Axalon; 02-13-2012 at 09:48. Reason: Clean up...

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