2 big empires left - what do I do?

[NewJeffCT]

I am in my 3rd campaign under MedMod 1.85 (I do not have VI...)

I decided to play the usually easy Spanish, early in total conquest mode.

After a rocky start in which the French swept down through Aragon, Valencia and into Africa, they fell apart in civil war and I was able to snag the whole Iberian peninsula and all the way through the Sinai, Palestine & Arabia via crusades against the then ex-comm'd French. The Byz managed to get Algeria and still hold it.

Cut to the 1280s now. I also control Toulouse (to crank out Chiv Knights) & Aquitine, as well as Crimea & Khazar, Livonia, Finland & Novgorad and a few others.

The rest of the board is as follows:
Hungarians: 1 or 2 provinces, about to be swept under the purple tide.

Novgorads: Muscovy and 2 or 3 other landlocked provinces.

The Byz: Everything else, including the Italian peninsula.

The Byz have bigger armies than me, but I'm starting to crank out good troops (gold armor & gold weapon Knights of Santiago from Castile & Navarre, and soon Leon) And, thanks to MedMod, they have about 6 billion ships in every sea province. I have been building ships to catch up, but that may take forever.

Should I wait until the Byz attack me, or do I spring the surprise on them and be aggressive? I have over 1 million florins in the bank - maybe some bribery to divide the huge Byz empire? I don't think the start of the war will wait until the LATE era, which I was trying for (even though I'm building my cannon foundries...)

[katank]

waiting until late is quite possible.

try a combo of culvs and serpentines and this shoudl destroy their armies easily.

I find that about 6 culvs, 2 pav arbs, 2 handguns, 3 CMAA, 3 CK to be able to handily rout most every army thrown against me.

few can withstand the incredible morale penalty under heavy gunpowder fire and crumble.

bribery isn't advised as the Byz emperors are rather high influence and powerful with their generals extremely loyal.

this means very very high costs for bribing and it might not even succeed.

[RollingWave]

Try to weaken them with agents (set off rebellions with spies and covert their province to christian) than try to land sea invasions in their back yard.

[Chimpyang]

Or you can launch a crusade or two against them. Be sure to target weak areas and fil them full of mercs that you don't have to pay for (cos it's a crusade).

[Somebody Else]

You could play the Byzantine game against them... assassinate everyone in sight...

Deplorable I know, but war is war, even if you're at peace.

Or you could just crush them on the field time after time after time.

[Xiphias]

Without VI though assasins will be 0 star and the Byzantine Kings are usually very powerful.

[katank]

ummm, also, the Byz being very big would usually end up controlling Syria and without a fortress in Syria, you have little chance of killing those 7*+ kings or princes.

a few failed attemptsa and they also get crazy high valor vs. assasins due to V&Vs although this woudl reduce their acumen marginally.

[katank]

I would say out produce them navywise and sink them all.

be sure to send a tiny half dead unit to attack a province and have them lose miserably in autocalc on same turn as epic naval combat.

the game engine tends to pity you and give many very undeserved naval victories.

half dead peasants cost less than 50 florins and also 1 turn to produce compared to hundreds of florins and three turns for a single ship.

so let's see who wins. eh?

then land maultiple invasions of their poorly defended provinces and also try to hit the chokeholds and this would make their empire weakened and possibly result in civil war.

once they have a civil war, it's rare that they can recover against a determined foe.

[RollingWave]

Generally the AI very rarely produce enough of a naval force... and even if they do (in the case of italians and sicilians) they often hoard it in one spot and don't try to actively go after ur shipping (thats not in their zone) too much....

I would also try to mass spy in some province with port and no border tower and a small or no garrison though.... espically if u can't control the sea yet... this way they should be able to start rebellions eventrually which will cause they some head aches... (although better watch out for them getting very high lvl general this way... this work best in Christain vs Christian as u can also use ur inquisitors to burn them :P)

Another tip is if ur gonna land everywhere... use the scroch earth burn and run tactic epsically if they are large.... just go from one undefended provicne to another and don't try to seige them too much... u'll get a huge amount of money this way while they are left with destroyed province, espically great when u land everywhere and run around everywhere... eventrually if ur winning u can either separate their troops and take them out one by one or corner them all in one province for one big showdown.... I used this strat to destroy spain in my current danish campagn... I landed 3 attack on the iberion (leon, castilla and vercilia ) and then whenever they try to take castilla I just run and take cordoba and granada etc... run aroudn until I finally trapped his king in castilla 's castle and held it long enough to gg them.

[katank]

@ rolling wave, if you want to get plunder, you need to assault the castle.

your tactic only works in regular MTW but not in VI as no pillage unless you assault the castle and win.

[NewJeffCT]

Well, I built up my fleets quite a bit, but still had far fewer than the Byz, who seemed to have at least 10 ships in each sea province (thanks to MedMod 1.85), and often more.

Since I am much better at defending, I decided to attack them at sea at first around 1290 and then wait for the inevitable counter-attack on land. With the Papacy going down and the Hungarians down to their last province, I figured I could not get through 21 years of peace until the Late Era arrived. Is that possible once it is down to two factions?

The naval battles in the first year went well, including a 10-0 victory in that little area between Cordoba & Morocco. However, I lost most of my ships in the Northern Mediterranean east of Toulouse, as well as everything in the eastern Mediterranean except for the Black Sea and off the coast of Egypt. However, in the Northern Sea provinces, I did much better.

Meanwhile, I kept cranking out gold armor, gold weapon troops from Castile, Leon & Navarre. I also sent some assassins at the Byz emperor, hoping that he would get one of those vices that cause his empire to lose happiness. No luck there, and even remote lightly garrisoned Byz provinces maintained 200% loyalty. Meanwhile, my isolated provinces like Ireland & Finland saw steep loyalty drops.

The first counterattack came in, of all places, Brandenburg. Luckily, I was defending over a 2 bridge province. I had one arb and 2 vanilla archers set up behind some chiv sergeants & foot knights. The Byz came in waves of Byz infantry, Varangian Guard, Pronois and Kats. Amazing to see the 3rd wave of reinforcements being 3 Byz cavalry & 4 Pronoi Allegion, followed by Treb archers & Byz Infantry. Their damned 1 man Kat unit general with 8 stars marched off the board early, though.

My lower quality troops barely held on in what should have been an easy defense. I lost over 1,000 men. The Byz lost a few more, but how often do you see bridge defenses where the AI barely loses.

For some reason, I got lucky and that was their only attack that first year. Why only 1 counter attack when I had barely 1,000 troops each in Brittany & Normandy, and the AI had over 10,000 between Anjou & Ile De France? I had a good 3,500 to 4,000 in Aquitine with a 6 star general, but had no way to reinforce Normandy if they got attacked. And, between Brandenburg, Prussia & Pomerania, I had maybe 5,000 or 6,000 men. The AI easily had 18,000 to 20,000 in surrounding provinces with available high star generals. Yet, their attack was 1,800 men into Brandenburg?

I was still in trouble. I decided to turn all my provinces over to shipbuilding, as by the end of the next year, I had no ships in any non-Iberian connected Med province, save Egypt.

I still did not counter-attack, but this time the Byz came stronger, though still a weak attack into Brandenburg. They Byz overwhelmed my army of bribed feudal knights in Wales – my 1,000 men consisting mainly of 0 upgraded Feudal Knights and several arbalester units had no shot against gold armoured Kats, Byz infantry & Byz cavalry, among other units. Their attacks in the Sinai & Arabia were repelled, but barely. My province of Flanders also got overwhelmed as 8,700 Byz troops defeated my valiant 1,300. At least the Byz lost more than me. A huge force of rebels lost Ireland to me, and I put down a rebellion in Egypt by moving some forces off the front line of Cyrenacia. I managed to up the garrison in Finland enough to stave off another rebellion. Still no Byz rebellions, though.

I was still in trouble, but luckily my shipbuilding started to pay off quickly, and I managed to clear some of the north sea provinces, which led to the Danes & English respawning in Sweden & Norway and in Mercia & Wessex, respectively. All Byz provinces.

I also managed to clear enough Byz ships from the Spanish coastline to start moving ships back to the rest of the Mediterranean. However, the Byz then overwhelmed Normandy & Brittany – I just abandoned Brittany to them to retreat back to Aquitine. Brandenburg finally fell, but Prussia & Pomerania held fast.

It has been the old Mexican standoff in northern Africa, with the Byz having maybe 5,000 troops in Tunisia, and me having 2,500 in both Cyrenacia & Algeria. Nobody has moved there. The Papacy sprang back to life with 4 provinces, but the Danes & English were beaten back to single provinces. William Wallays led a successful rebellion in Scotland and threw off the yoke of Byzantine rule.

It is now 1302 and while I have lost several territories overall, I now control the seas and Byz loyalty has dropped. Nicea & Anatolia are controlled by rebels. The only territory I have gained was Tripoli & Syria in a push north from Arabia. I feel pretty good overall, though my treasury has gone down several hundred thousand…

[katank]

taking nicea and anatolia would be nice.

you might be able to raid Const. and raze it to the ground.

even in late game, that capital is very important to the Byz and if you get a foothold in their homelands there, you can dish out some serious damage to their loyalty etc.

also, GA wise, Const. lost would cost like 4 points lost or something.

[king steven]

Quote[/b] (NewJeffCT @ June 03 2004,11:13)]
Should I wait until the Byz attack me, or do I spring the surprise on them and be aggressive? I have over 1 million florins in the bank - maybe some bribery to divide the huge Byz empire? I don't think the start of the war will wait until the LATE era.

no, chuck in a few spies. try 4 a civil war. MO

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flat.gif

[ah_dut]

If you put about 10 spies to try and find secret vices he gets some weird vice that takes away loyalty iirc, katank, remind me what it's called please? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

[dessa14]

i would wait to late, crank out the best units in the game.
and then crush them misrebly.
if it is how i think you should be able to do this well since the byzantines are horridly weak in the late period of the game.
thanks, dessa

[king steven]

bribe a http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-oops.gif load of there army

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[NewJeffCT]

the big war started in 1290 - initiated by me - but is still going strong in 1330. I'm in pretty firm control of the map and am very close to 60% control, though the Byz may have bigger armies than me. However, my arsenal of culverins, gold/gold knights of santiago, gold armour chiv knights from Toulouse, etc is going to overwhelm them pretty soon. I think my successful pre-cannon defense of Toulouse with 3,500 troops vs the Byz' 13,000+ was a turning point. I lost over 1000 men, but the Byz lost 4000+ and had over 5000 captured.