Rowan11088
08-03-2003, 22:27
I've been playing a new campaign as the Turkish on early, and at first I just found it hard, because you start off with very little and are dwarfed by the big, bad Byzantines right next to you. After a while, I was able to finish off the Egyptians when the Spanish pushed through most of North Africa, and basically handed me a poorly defended Egyptian Sultan to kill. Once I expanded north towards Novgorod a bit, killing only rebels, things started going smoothly. Recently though, I took Sweden via a bribe, and everything went to hell. I barely held on to the province between low loyalty and the backstabbing Danish, and beyond that the Spanish declared a Crusade against me, and they were my allies All my allies broke their alliances because they were allied to the Danish or the Spanish (except the Sicilians, the only loyal ones????http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif). So I'm in trouble. I start churning out armored Ghazis and Futuwwa, Saracens and Muwahid, Bedouins and Turcomans. So the Spanish attack with a modest army before their Crusade, using Order Foot, Spearmen, Royal Knights, Jinettes, and Militia Sergeants. I field my half-prepped army, which did not yet have some of the new recruits. I used a new type of defensive setup, leaving escape routes for my desert archers between my rows of saracens, placing bedouins in the very front, and ghazis beside and behind the saracens. I scared away the Jinettes with only arrows, and when the rest of the army came around, the Saracens tore through them while the Bedouins and some Armenian Heavy Cavalry flanked them and slaughtered the lighter infantry. I killed over 400, captured over 500, and lost 70. 70 And those were from the cheap Saracens, not my merc Italian Infantry or Ghulam Bodyguards. Turkish armies are just awesome, even without Janissaries, and they are flat-out unmatched in the desert.