Will you blitz the map?

[Megas Methuselah]

So, will you blitz the map, or will you RP the game and expand as any normal nation would, at a slow, realistic pace? Hope you like the poll. :smile:

IMHO, I think blitzing the map ruins the game. All you care for are the battles, and neglect some other fine points of the game.

[A Very Super Market]

I will RP! Blitzing for my second campaign.

[Megas Methuselah]

Then vote.

[Incongruous]

Depends who I play as first, I will probabaly play two camapigns at once, as France and Austria. In my French one I will try to reverse the march of history and lead the Sun King's army to glory against Eugene and Marlborough and then Blitz wetsern Germany and the Netherlands.

As Austria I will consolidate my highly trained armies into two carefully planned regions of conflict, a defenive one against the French along the upper Rhine and Danube rivers and a more offensive one against the Ottoman Turks, slowly clawing away at Muslim Europe and reclaim Constantinople by the end of the game. I will also try my luck at reclaiming Spain and Holland for the Empire of the Hapsburgs, oh what fun!!!

[A Very Super Market]

Prussia for me, then the Dutch.

And I did vote. Since I have conflicting viewpoints, I spoke the truth.

[Monk]

My first campaign will be as the Russians. I am planning on trying to start out slow and then explode in a blitz. My goal is to have my tea in London by the end of 1760. :laugh4:

But seriously, I won't know what I will or can do until I see the Campaign AI in action. From all reports it's a lot better than M2's and I am looking forward to trying my hand at fighting it head on in VH. :yes:

[GeneralHankerchief]

Well, I'm planning a hotseat with a bunch of my real-life buddies a week or two after the game comes out. I'm thinking blitzing in that one might actually come to hurt me, so I'll take it a bit slower.

In my preparation games however, full steam ahead! :charge:

[Greyblades]

I cant help but beleive that any faction that tries to blitz will be ganged up on right at the start by the first tagets Allies, those who hate your faction, those who want your land, etc and promptly shredded.

[ArtillerySmoke]

Blitzing better not be viable...or else this is M2TW all over again.

I want the first guy who tries to blitz to wind up with a 3 nation coalition driving deep into their countryside.

If there isn't, I'll go back to MTW. If Empire doesn't get it right...I give up on technology. I'll go back to MTW.

[Monk]

I cant help but beleive that any faction that tries to blitz will be ganged up on right at the start by the first tagets Allies, those who hate your faction, those who want your land, etc and promptly shredded.

This is my hope, to be honest. After all what fun is there in steamrolling the map? Well lots of it, but that's beside the point. I'm really looking forward to the first time I tick off a bunch of factions and find myself facing a coalition. :2thumbsup:

Mother Russia expects every man to do his duty! :knight:

[A Very Super Market]

There are still campaign difficulty levels, no?

[Greyblades]

This is my hope, to be honest. After all what fun is there in steamrolling the map? Well lots of it, but that's beside the point. I'm really looking forward to the first time I tick off a bunch of factions and find myself facing a coalition. :2thumbsup:

Mother Russia expects every man to do his duty! :knight:

:daisy: that! I want to be the leader of those coalitions. Easy land with no consequences and divided resistance anyone?

[peacemaker]

I've never been good at blitzing, I always stop everything when my treasury hits the negatives, and I really want to provoke at least one revolution

[Polemists]

I'm not going to blitz but I will be aggressive. I plan to play as Austria and my goal is to take over the Caribbean trade theatre.

Since England, Spain and Frace at this time (along with pirates) have lock step on it and countless other provinces I'll have to move quickly to achieve my goal.

Normally, in MTW2 if I was attacked by a ally I would burn every city they had and exterminate left and right. Judging by the 4500 soldiers in danish capital tho in Jack's report...that won't be the case this time.

I plan to mostly fight nations with no allies, gather up my strength and soon as possible send a large army over to Carribean, and then just try to hold out and not get whipped by France, Prussia, and Ottomans.

While my army conquers Carribean I will try to take on Prussia.

I'm going to try in the Carribean to pit the nations against each other. ME, England, Spain V France, then Me, Spain v England, and finally Me vs Spain.

I am hoping (and i know it's to much to hope for) the AI will catch on to me playing allies against each other and unite in a last effort to try and hold the Caribean.

[crazyviking03]

I will take it slow and rp and build my infrastructure, taking advantage of my neighbors misfortunes when I can. I have never been a blitzer, yet all my friends and family who play TW are. In MTW, RTW, and M2, my brother just blitzed the whole map in like 2 days, and so did my brother in law, and i am like where is the fun in this? lol

My biggest problem is that I play like McClellan, I can never drive deep for the final push because I hate to loose troops, and when i do take a mauling I run home to retrain the units lol.

[Ishmael]

Ive always focussed on building a large economy, so ill tech up slowly and build my colonies in the carribean and whatnot. Unless I play as Ottamans or Russia, in which case ill probably just pick off small isolated European nations. In either case, ill build slowly.

[cambovenzi]

Ive always focussed on building a large economy, so ill tech up slowly and build my colonies in the carribean and whatnot. Unless I play as Ottamans or Russia, in which case ill probably just pick off small isolated European nations. In either case, ill build slowly.

yeah, building slowly, and using redunkulous troops is more fun IMO.
im sure i will try blitzing, but it wont be a 1st priority.
ill take some time to enjoy the game, not rush through it.

[Sir Beane]

I'm going to attempt to takoe over the world through bribery, diplomacy and subterfuge. Armies are such a brutish way of taking over somewhere. They lack class. :laugh4:

[Don Esteban]

My votes go to "I'm going to take out the French any way possible" :laugh4:


Seriously, I hope we can't blitz too much, I prefer a longer, tougher struggle.

[Polemists]

I'm going to attempt to takoe over the world through bribery, diplomacy and subterfuge. Armies are such a brutish way of taking over somewhere. They lack class.

I'll remeber that Beane when my classless untrustworthy Austrian army is at your gates :P, maybe those farms can save you..:laugh4:

[Sir Beane]

I'll remeber that Beane when my classless untrustworthy Austrian army is at your gates :P, maybe those farms can save you..:laugh4:

Ah but when your army sees the level of culture and civilization in my cities they will leave your barren and barbaric lands to come and live in a place that has flushing toilets :tongue:.

[PBI]

It really depends upon what you mean by blitzing.

If you mean directing every available resource into constant breakneck expansion, based on an unfortunate mechanic that makes running a Raubwirtschaft fuelled by sacking income a vastly more viable strategy than building a functioning economy, at the total disregard of technological advancement and diplomacy, thereby missing out on a good 2/3 of the content of the game... then no, I will not blitz.

If you mean expanding at a more or less constant but comfortable rate, balanced with technological and economic progress, and as a result ending up in control of an "unrealistically" large portion of mainland Europe, rather than still being in control of my country's starting territory by 1799 plus maybe the odd strip of land here and there... then yes, I will blitz, I will enjoy it, and feel no shame whatsoever in doing so. I further invite other players to play the game in whatever manner they deem enjoyable.

Incidentally, for those claiming that rapid expansion is an unrealistic way to play, one could argue that in this period (though more so in the 19th century) the most realistic way to play a colonial empire is to blitz, ruthlessly plundering resources wherever they are found to fund your latest military pee race against your European rivals. Certainly I hope the game will make simply pottering around in Europe for 200 years and thus (*ahem*) missing the boat on overseas expansion a difficult route to victory, just as much so as focusing too heavily on expansion and winding up with a rebellious, technologically-backward liability of an empire.

[IlDuce]

I'll probably do what I normally do. Bide my time, build up my resources and armies then blitx and get a large swathe of territory. Then settle, consolidate and start over. I tend to play in bursts as opposed to gradually chipping away at other factions.

[ArtillerySmoke]

It really depends upon what you mean by blitzing.

If you mean directing every available resource into constant breakneck expansion, based on an unfortunate mechanic that makes running a Raubwirtschaft fuelled by sacking income a vastly more viable strategy than building a functioning economy, at the total disregard of technological advancement and diplomacy, thereby missing out on a good 2/3 of the content of the game... then no, I will not blitz.

If you mean expanding at a more or less constant but comfortable rate, balanced with technological and economic progress, and as a result ending up in control of an "unrealistically" large portion of mainland Europe, rather than still being in control of my country's starting territory by 1799 plus maybe the odd strip of land here and there... then yes, I will blitz, I will enjoy it, and feel no shame whatsoever in doing so. I further invite other players to play the game in whatever manner they deem enjoyable.

Incidentally, one could argue that in this period (though more so in the 19th century) the most realistic way to play a colonial empire is to blitz, ruthlessly plundering resources wherever they are found to fund your latest military pee race against your European rivals. Certainly I hope the game will make it just as challenging to simply potter around in Europe for 200 years and (*ahem*) miss the boat on overseas expansion as to focus too heavily on expansion and wind up with a rebellious, technologically-backward liability of an empire.

Good post.

Ideally, I'd like each campaign to throw something different in our lap. I don't want to start a campaign and decide at the onset "ok, I'm going to blitz this time" or "ok, this time I'm going to dig in and build an economy early"...I want events that transpire and what other factions do to pull me into one course of action or the other.

Further, I'd like other Empires on the map to be equally capable of blitzing. There should be times that blitzing is not viable because all of your surroundings are held by strong nations and attacking anywhere would drag you into a lengthy war against one or multiple enemies.

Lastly, and I think they've been confirmed, I want coalitions that we can be a part of, as well as ones that are formed against us. If I'm blitzing like crazy and steamrolling Europe with France, moving east into the Germanic lands and Italy, I expect the nations to the east of me to form a coalition and try to thwart my advance. This is realistic and would naturally prevent players from just running wild all over the place. Instead of the pope, or the senate telling you what to do, it would be a large coalition with multiple types of armies in it. How you deal with it, is your call.

On a side note, I'm not sure if this is in the game, but it should be: Treaties and agreements. Like a situation where I'm not allies with England, but we have a mutual agreement to protect the English Channel with our Navies. Not allied, but mutually protecting the channel and our trade because we recognize it's in our best interest...even if being allied isn't. Further, take situations like Germany after WW1 and WW2. If you are defeated in a major war and have to surrender eventually, the coalition or major power that defeated you should form treaties and force you to pay reparations. Something like all major central powers have placed a condition on my French armies (which they've beaten in a war) that they are only allowed to have so many cannons in each stack (just an example), or that we are not allowed to sail with the highest level ship in certain waters. Breaking the agreement should have an array of effects - such as a return to hostilities and an invasion by the coalition, embargoes, blockades, etc.

Things like that should naturally force a player to think more than twice about blitzkrieg strategies and should also cause blitzing to be HARDER to accomplish, not EASIER...as was the issue with M2TW. Blitzing can be viable, but logistically/strategically/economically, it's always tremendously risky. This should be reflected in the game.

[Beskar]

You are forgetting, you can't Blitz in Empire: Total War, just like Rome: Total War, etc.

Each turn = 6 months.

It takes two turns to take an area, which is 1 year.

The Blitz was the taking over of territory within weeks.

[Greyblades]

You havent been lurking very long have you? In the .ORG the term blitzing means taking over a campaign map in as few turns as posibe regardless of the actual periods of time. An example would be the record: ATPG took over the entire M2TW map in 23 turns.

[Monk]

Actually I believe the record was broken and is more around 19 now. Which is a speed i just cant even fathom

[ArtillerySmoke]

You are forgetting, you can't Blitz in Empire: Total War, just like Rome: Total War, etc.

Each turn = 6 months.

It takes two turns to take an area, which is 1 year.

The Blitz was the taking over of territory within weeks.

Yeah Greyblades summed it up. We're not talking about the textbook definition of Blitzkrieg employed during WW2.

[Beskar]

You havent been lurking very long have you? In the .ORG the term blitzing means taking over a campaign map in as few turns as posibe regardless of the actual periods of time. An example would be the record: ATPG took over the entire M2TW map in 23 turns.
Holy crap, that is fast.

I never played M2TW, admittedly, only played the Total War series since the Era box set came out, which was 2 years ago, and I played Rome: Total War the most, but also played the other versions.

My usual tactic was focus on economy and taking over rebel settlements early game, then usually, peoples attacked me, so I invaded their lands till they cried ceasefire (or obilerate them, depending) which very often always made me the richest within a few turns and a millionaire shortly after.

[Schiltrom]

:focus: I'll blitz, I'll cheat... I'll be good, in my second campaign I might be diplomatic.

[PBI]

Yes, the flaw (or depending on your view, feature) of vanilla M2TW that made blitzing so effective was the very high amount of money gained through sacking cities, especially large ones. In essence, the average amount gained per city was large enough by itself to pay to raise enough militia/mercenaries to sack the next city with some left over, so long as you didn't take too long between cities. Thus a "blitz" campaign could essentially be sustained indefinitely until you ran out of provinces to conquer, there was no need at any point to slow down in order to consolidate and tech up or indeed to spend any money on anything other than troop production, hence my comment about missing out on 2/3 of the content of the game.

Most mods for M2TW tone down the sacking income substantially, making it a less viable strategy. Although opportunistic raiding (taking an under-defended, well developed city, sacking it, demolishing all buildings, and abandoning it) is always an effective tactic, and it's certainly still possible to expand fast, I've yet to see anyone manage one of the insane 20-odd turn blitzes on these.

Hence why I draw the distinction between blitzing (referring to a campaign characterized by the fact that the income made from plunder is sufficient by itself to sustain the campaign) and simply expanding quickly (where it is still necessary to develop the captured lands economically).


Things like that should naturally force a player to think more than twice about blitzkrieg strategies and should also cause blitzing to be HARDER to accomplish, not EASIER...as was the issue with M2TW. Blitzing can be viable, but logistically/strategically/economically, it's always tremendously risky. This should be reflected in the game.

Pretty much my thoughts, actually; in M2TW blitzing represented the path of least resistance, teching up at all was essentially putting yourself at a disadvantage. It would be nice if in Empire life would get harder the longer you put off consolidating your gains.