View Full Version : Hungarian Starting Strategy
Can anyone suggest a set of good opening moves for the Hungarians in Early?
Do I go after the steppes, the Byz, the Polish, or try to grab Venice. Maybe take on rebels in moldavia, etc.?
Also, I should likely make the most of szekelys and armored spears, right? I don't really see much use for jobaggies though.
Ideas? Help would be greatly appreciated.
i havent played the hungarians yet but i will try.
imo you gotta act fast, take the rebel provinces around you and specially take moldavia, for the avar nobles :) good little heavy cav. then its either attack byz when strong enough or um...attack polish then continue east :).i wouldnt bother vith venice, since if you do that you have to defend on too many fronts.
I try to hold the ground from Kiev to Constantinople to Venice, a triangle of land. I usually wait until the Byz are at war with the Turks, then get Constantinople, same with the Italians and Venice. Once I get all the provinces within this triangle conquered I usually try to hold and build.
Szekely are good, but expensive. Jobaggies have a use, but need to be used properly. Behind spears they can be quite effective against high quality armored troops.
ichi
vlad_demstra
03-01-2004, 06:57
In my game i am in now i ran into a blood bath with the turks. so there is a fare warning just in case. I think poland and the poleish lands are a wise take. leave italy and the germans alone fo rthey will be come good allies. try to build a fleet as fast as u can. For the turks see to swarm like rabbied dogs. dont attack the byz right of ether. They have a better starting group and generals then you. If you wish to take out the byz or die trying, Wait a few years. it seems like the hungarians spawn alot of prices. :P i hope this helps.
Build your economy and fleet up. Theres a lot of natural resources in that region that can be a good source of income. Make ships and start trading all the way up to Finland. The Polish are good to attack, and can help you pretty much split the map in half, giving you the opportunity to choose which side you want to expand into. Early on, I would take out the Polish, then set up some good trade, build up your armies and then roll through the Byz as quick as possible with a few (maybe 3-4) good complete armies, and some low quality troops to support and hold the provinces while your better armies advance.
The turks seem so easy to be defeated in the first few turns. So reach Constantinopole and then Asia Minor.
I just played a game with the Hungarians on High (hard).
The trick for me was holding on to my homelands, expanding to the south east to get Bulgarian brigands in Bulgaria (first conquest) and the rebel() province of constantinople.
Basically i played like this;
turn 1:
build a fort in Kroatia & Carpathia.
Order 5 halberdiers in Hungaria while constructing a metal smith
turn 4:
Order slav warriors in Kroatia and peasants in Carpathia
Take your king and all other units in Hungaria (leave only a small rear guard, i used mounted x-bows for that) and take bulgaria. Kill as much as possible of the defending army; you'll have to storm the castle later
Build:
Anything you want in Kroatia & Carpathia (just set your goals, i set the following goals for those two provinces;
Kroatia; shipbuilding
Carpathia; Halberdiers with maxed armor, weapons & morale upgrades
turn 5:
Move your Slav Warriors and Peasants to Hungary, order your army to assault the bulgarian castle, and take it
turn 6:
Move 2 units of halberdiers , 1 unit of slav warriors and 1 unit of peasants to bulgaria, regroup your army.
Move the next peasant unit & slav warrior unit to Hungary
Turn 7:
Move your army to Constantinople, defeat the defending army, and starve out the remainder (kill as few of the enemy as possible to reduce the siege time).
Now, at turn 10 or so, you should be in control of constantinople, and if you're lucky you'll be building bulgarian brigands by then.
Serbia and Moldavia and greece are next on your list of conquests. You should now have a 4 province border area, with two rear area provinces. A pretty good score for your faction.
Better yet, you have only fought rebels, so you should be in a position to remain allied to all others.
In awhile, you will see the mongols appear, these guys are a bit dangerous, so keep a goodly sized army just south of Kiev to stop them.
These were my opening moves this week, i hope this helps.
greets,
-Ranges
Doug-Thompson
03-02-2004, 22:25
1. On the very first turn, send you emissary with a bribe to get Moldavia.
If the Polish or the Byz get Moldavia first, you are cut off from all eastern expansion, and you don't get Avatar nobles. Either one of those events would be a disaster.
2. Move as many troops as possible to Moldavia, because you'll need a garrison to prevent revolts.
3. Your other provinces will be exposed in the early game. Don't get scared. Also, build forts in Crotia and Moldavia so you can get Slav infantry, which are very cheap garrison units.
4. Take Wallachia and Serbia before the Biyz get them.
These rebel provinces are defended by peasants and spearmen. Leave most of your army on a hillside and approach the enemy with your cavalry archers. Have them shower the unarmored rebels with arrows. Be careful to not get caught. You may want to send only one cav archer unit at a time. One unit is easier to micromanage. Also, I don't play with a time limit on battles, although that shouldn't be a problem against this rabble.
I like to leave the cav archers in open formation. They seem better able to move out of each other's way, or even move through another skirmishing unit of CA..
When the hapless foot soldiers break and run, you can let them go. Theres no place to flee..
============
After that, the situation is just too fluid for further instructions. The Poles might invade you. The Holy Roman Empire might have rebel provinces in civil war. The Turks may have kicked the Byz all the way across Asia Minor, or vice versa.
Yoko Kono
03-03-2004, 01:08
first priority should be moldovia for the avar nobles, kiev is also useful for heavy steppe
go for constantinople next as it will save you in the long run with its single border to defend not to mention the money it generates and the fact taking it almost cripples the byzantines so badly asia minor is there to take
aim to have the balkans under control by about 1110 and you should be well set up for the rest of the game
i aim to produce szekely in hungary, spearmen in carpathia, archers in bulgaria, mercs in wallachia, avar nobles in moldovia and jobbagy/slavs/boats in croatia, serbia and greece and catholic bishops in constantinople
with this setup you can build a decent trade empire and armies that will cope with pretty much anything thrown at them
Doug-Thompson
03-06-2004, 17:59
I made a mistake in my earlier post. After playing the Hungarians again to check, it is not absolutely necessary to bribe your way into Moldavia. You have enough troops to take the province, although there is a small rebellion risk.
(I play on the huge unit size, which should make no difference.)
The vital thing is to seize and hold Venice at some point.
There are no trade goods from Crotia and Serbia. You can build up trade from Kiev, but that will be one of the first provinces to fall when the Golden Horde arrives.
Eight ships can set up a good trade network between the Adriatic, Kiev and the Nile Coast. Get that network going with Venice in the mix, and you have a very nice economy.
The Polish will attack you sometime. I attacked back and conquered Poland and got my warning from the Pope. From there, I was able to conquer a rebel province on the Baltic coast. It took time, but eventually I conquered Sweden and set up trade routes in North Europe, too. It was sweet.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif
thanks for the help. I was able to take moldavia, serbia, wallachia all with my initial force by running the HA around and shooting up the assorted spearmen and peasants, then using the king's RKs to bfinally charge and really break them. I was able to do all this with nocasualties to my HAs and my king's RKs lost a few but that was auto replenished.
My concern with sacking Venice is needing to take rest of Italy and have very long border with HRE. with const., I might have huge problem with taking on the powerful Byz and to top it off even if I take it, I might end up facing uber turks or uber egyptians.
thanks again.
Quote[/b] (Yoko Kono @ Mar. 03 2004,02:08)]first priority should be moldovia for the avar nobles, kiev is also useful for heavy steppe
go for constantinople next as it will save you in the long run with its single border to defend not to mention the money it generates and the fact taking it almost cripples the byzantines so badly asia minor is there to take
aim to have the balkans under control by about 1110 and you should be well set up for the rest of the game
i aim to produce szekely in hungary, spearmen in carpathia, archers in bulgaria, mercs in wallachia, avar nobles in moldovia and jobbagy/slavs/boats in croatia, serbia and greece and catholic bishops in constantinople
with this setup you can build a decent trade empire and armies that will cope with pretty much anything thrown at them
avar nobles? Meaning?
avar nobles are only in VI expansion.
they are like feudal knights with weaker attack BUT they have better defence AND armor and are disciplined. they also require LESS building prerequisite, only horse breeder and armourer. getting that kind of cavalry helps when being hungary :)
don't forget that they get large shields so they are even better and able to defeat other heavy cavalry including kataphractoi and feudal knights
the low build reqs of only a horse breeder and armourer makes them a bit OP IMHO
that's only when I don't have them tho. when I have moldavia, I have no complains whatsoever http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
damnit, a tip, if your going to attack byzantines better start on it early, i waited like 10 years and i could not conquer constantinople :( too many byz infantry and kataps doh >_<
oh and my "Szekelys" got owned by a bunch o trebizond archers....WTF??????????????
your szekely's got owned by treb archers? in missile duel or melee?
in missile duel it's understandable.
if in melee, it might be a fluke but the treb archers have a decent combat rating and have more men so it's not unconceivable. also, they migh jump in valour once they kill one of your's. at least it's not as bad as byz cav owned by vanilla archers in melee.
in meele in open field...oh i forgot something, they had an 8 star byz general with them http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif .. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-stunned.gif
i only had a 4 star general http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif
that would explain it. they would have 7 attack and 2 defense while you would have 5 attack and 3 defense. This means that they have 1 more point different than you in each hit.
each of their treb archers is thus tougher than 1 of your szekelys let alone the fact that they have 60 men and you have only 40.
this is not even a fluke. so no need to http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
next time just try not to take on monster byz heirs nor underestimate those treb archers.
heck, one byz campaign I played, I used almost exclusively treb archers and won http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
Kristaps
03-08-2004, 18:48
I tried to play Hungarians once: Early, Expert. I allied with all surrounding factions and expanded fast into the rebel lands: both the local ones and the ones to the East. In about two decades, I owned all of Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania and Livonia (armies consisting mostly of jobaggies, slav warriors, and some szekely)... And... got bored... :)
Doug-Thompson
03-08-2004, 23:56
I won a "60-percent" victory with the Hungarians in that game, and never got excommunicated. Not once.
I don't play Catholic factions very often. I'm quite sure that was my first game as a Catholic where I never got ex-communicated.
So, if you like to play Catholics and hate interference from the Pope, play Hungarians. No Crusades, though.
Doug-Thompson
03-09-2004, 00:20
Quote[/b] (katank @ Mar. 06 2004,12:47)]tMy concern with sacking Venice is needing to take rest of Italy and have very long border with HRE. with const., I might have huge problem with taking on the powerful Byz and to top it off even if I take it, I might end up facing uber turks or uber egyptians.
I didn't take any of the rest of Italy until the game was won and I needed more provinces to get to "60 percent."
You don't have to get Venice right away, just sometime early enough in the game to set up a good trade system before the Golden Horde arrives.
mbrasher1
03-09-2004, 02:06
Interesting thread. I have found in the couple of Hung Expert/GA/Early games I've played that their fleet has very few starred leaders -- making it esp vulnerable to a trade war. I don't know if this is merely a freak occurrence, but I really struggled to get a victorious fleet general -- they were all born with ZERO stars.
But it has great ag provinces.
Also, Hung has such an easy opening in the first few years. The ease of getting szekelys -- the fastest medium cavalry in the game (Ok, tied with GH Horse Archers and Alan Mercs, but nobody can build those) -- means that any enemy is likely to be whipped. The spears and peasant armies of the rebel provinces are toast.
The comp does not know how to cope with horse archers. At all. They chase after them if you place your szekes on the flanks. Lure a unit away and then smash it. I try to lure high value units away. Recently, I lured a Byz VG away and slapped it silly with 3 szeks.
WRT unit choices, the slav warriors are great as garrison units that can fight. The slav jav man is good for skewering Byz inf. Those guys are really tough in early. My approach was to wait for the Byz to get into a war with the Turks and then go for Greece/Const.
Lastly, since Hungary is such a crossroads for the crusades, I did not keep huge forces there. I made sure that my core troop producing provinces were kept well away from any enemy.
const is a tempting target indeed. nice tip on slav javs against byz inf. I don't really use javs all that much.
slav warriors really good for charging enemies from rear or flanks and are cheap as you mentioned.
must add that you didn't mention jinettes in your list of speediest medium cav. we can debate on steppe cav being medium or light and also mamluk HA which are even superior to GH HA due to having a shield.
your point is well taking that szeks are amazing tho.
In my current Early Hungarian Campaign (started not too long ago), I've found myself acting as the Pope's protector - his blessings of the Hungarian Catholic Crown keep other Catholic Princes from Crusading the Hungarian states into oblivion.
As others have stated, I built a quick initial kingdom stretching from Croatia to Moldavia, and also picked up Kiev. Initial Naval forces built in Moldavia and Kiev, connected southern Med all the way to Libya. War of opportunity with Italy (upon their Excommunication) brought about control of Naples, Venice, and Tuscany. Pope whiped out by Holy Roman Empire soon thereafter, to my chagrin. Little did I know that the French and English were both beating the snot out of the HRE during this time period, resulting in HRE lands rebelling.
Pope soon reemerges in Rome and two stacks in Tuscany? I destroy all improvements, pull all loyal troops out, and form an alliance with the Holy Father on the next turn.
The Pope's reemergence "blesses" the Holy Father with 6 or 7 stacks of Feudal troops, making him very political. He subsequently excommunicates the French for their transgressions against their Christian bretheren the English, and proceeds to lead a Holy onslaught towards Burgundy. For some reason, he overextends himself and the French are able to whipe out one Papal army and turn back another (horrible strategery on behalf of his Holiness, here...).
The HRE, still outside the blessing of his Holiness the Pope, now in civil war between one of the Princes and the Emperor prove to be ripe for the picking - Bohemia and Austria soon become Hungarian vassals.
As of my last campaigning this morning, one of my lower ranked generals led a punitive expedition towards some Egyptian Rebels in the province of Palestine, re-establishing order and bringing peace to an otherwise troubled area.
Thank you for leeting us know. I also use Moldavia for ships, Wallachia for spies.
why not avar nobles in moldavia though? they are some of the best heavy cav in early IMHO. Are you ppl playing pre VI?
to me, moldavia seems better devoted to avar nobles although I guess I don't really need to pump one out every year http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
but then again, 16 avar nobles charging at the enemy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/jawdrop.gif
LOL
mbrasher1
03-09-2004, 23:39
Kat, I love jinettes. They are great for killing the general with their javs, and also to run down fleeing enemy.
I guess their melee is equal to that of szekely. But zekes are better.
Zekes have a charge that is 2 higher than jinnies, an extra attack and 28 arrows.
I used zekes as ranged units, or units to pulverize isolated archers or double team drawn off enemy units. By the time they are using their attack, the zekes lower defense rating does not come into play, as they are attacking either weak units or routing enemy.
Doug-Thompson
04-07-2004, 19:41
Played this faction again recently. Grabbed Venice right off the bat. Not only didn't get excommunicated, but still got $1K gifts from the Pope for services to the church. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif
That was the only Italian province seized, and the Italians immediately made peace. I offered them a princess.
I still had time to grab Serbia and Moldavia before the Byz could move. Holding Venice gave me the trade income needed to make Skelzy and Avar nobles.
An alternate start that I don't like nearly so well is to use Hungarian horse archers drive German peasants and spearmen out of Austria and Bohemia easily. You're able to get those provinces and Bavaria too before the Pope gives you warnings. I didn't get any Pope's gold though.
taking HRE is not as great. grabbing Venice is good policy.
so is blazing your path to constantinople and holding it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I conquered Serbia and Moldavia, ASAP. I expanded east and conquered all the rebel provinces and Novgorod. Doing so increased the size of my empire and reduced the number of borders I have. Byzantine held all the former Turkish and Egyptian provinces and attacked me after that. It was a huge war between us but I won easily. I took out around 5 of his provinces the turn after he attacked me and started pushing him out.
I built Szekely in Hungary, swordmen in Carpathia, Avar Nobles in Moldavia and Steppe Heavy Cavalry in Kiev and Khazar. After Avar became unavailable in high, I switched Avar to Szekely because it already had the needed infrastructure and Hungary to Chivalric Knights since I figured the metalsmith upgrades would be more useful to them. I didn't need spearmen when I used Hungary.
My strategy is just use my Szekely and Steppe Heavy Cavalry to harass the enemy. If they have lots of archers, I charge any spears with my swordsmen then charge the archers using all my cavalry. If they don't have lots of archers, I just continue harrassing then attack after inflicting a lot of casualties or when the enemy formation is broken. Steppe Heavy Cavalry is has more defense than Szekely so they generally go in first. Szekely are faster so they generally charge last and are used to fill in holes or to charge at the back.
Expanding eastward gives a ton of money after a while so I had no problems supporting an army this expensive. Avar Nobles also have a very cheap support cost considering they are just as expensive as feudal knights and are better in melee. I did build them one every year and I had a lot before high period kicked in. The Mongols were defeated in one turn when they emerged though they emerged with armor upgrades because I developed Khazar. I've learned to develop some other province there for military troops like Chernigov if I wanted two provinces producing Steppe Heavy Cavalry.
son of spam
04-08-2004, 23:56
In my medmod hungarian game, I attacked Poland immediately, using my hungarian nobles to wipe out their retainers, and using woodsmen and starting horse archers/archers to kill their spearies. They were wiped out within 3 years, and to top it off, I got volhynia through a bribe, giving me some okay infrastructure. Unfortunately, I did get excommed, but the only result of that was that the French, of all factions, decided to crusade against me. Everyone else still remained my steadfast allies.
The French crusade was targeted at Hungary and it came over austria. I thought I was screwed badly at first, as it was jammed full of knights templar, feudal seargents, fanatics, and a couple of knechtes. However, Austria to Hungary is a bridge battle so http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif ...Man did they rout fast when they got hit by my hungarian nobles sent across the second bridge. Not one of the intial wave survived. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I expanded into the lower steppes, and declared war on the byz. Their armies were extremely stong, but flooding with woodsmen really helps. When the woodsmen finally rout, the byz chase after them, allowing you to cut them to pieces with hungarian noble reinforcements. Once their starting units (vesteritae and that varang guard) are gone, the byz are sunk.
By this time, the HRE had a major civil war (like always) and I bribed austria and bohemia, giving me an extremely nice western border. On the east, I attacked the Kiev Rus after they had a civil war, allowing me to relegate them to Rhodes. By this time, I was the strongest faction on the map, and after wiping out the danes and swedes, I quit.
Whew that was a long long ramble. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-pimp2.gif
I had a battle just like that. The AI faction attacked me in a bridge battle where there were two bridges. I forgot which faction it was. I sent some cavalry to the other side using the 2nd bridge, I think it was Avar Nobles and a few others. I used Steppe Heavy Cavalry and Szekely to shoot arrows while my CMAA or FMAA defended the bridge. Once the enemy commits most of his army to attacking but before he starts mass routing, I send the cavalry to attack their archers and block the bridge escape route.
Against their reinforcements, I just parked my cavalry back to the hill between the 1st and 2nd bridge on their side. They would attack the 1st bridge again and I would repeat my tactics. Barely anyone escaped from their side.
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