Empire managing strategy

[elbasto]

Being the "grow, wait, grow some more and then overrun" kind of person I find hard to expand my empire until my conquered lands are well developed... This proved difficult as the building times are considerable.

So I decided to do the following, I only tried it with Spain so I'll describe it with them.

After conquering the entire Iberian Peninsula and up to Algeria early I started to develop. I left 4 iron owning provinces to train my armies and the rest to provide cash, agents and ships. After developing reasonably I could produce an army in 4 turns (with golden armor and weapons). I had sea superiority and a bishop in every single province.

The thing is, once I expanded it took me too much time to grow again because I was reluctant to expand before my new provinces were well developed.
Then I decided I will only have money buildings in all the conquered provinces, a Citadel + Barbician, border forts and a church and I level EVERY other single building.

In the long term this proved to be great because it speeded up my growth and every rebel that could pop up was made of urban militia in the high era…




Has anyone else used this “build up in a couple of areas and destroy everything that doesn’t produce money” approach?
And what results did you have? I'm specially concerned about rebels as they can be a real probelm.

[ajaxfetish]

I can't say that I have. Probably my worst habit in MTW is to develop every province I own constantly. I always have all of my build queues (sp?) full whether I need the buildings or not. Not very efficient moneywise but it makes me feel good ~:). It does sound like a reasonable plan though, and in some ways similar to the central concept of MedMod, where each faction can only train troops in their predetermined 'homelands' (though I think you can still build the buildings elsewhere).

Ajax

[Third spearman from the left]

Your plan sounds like a good approach to expanding your empire quickly, however I am always wanting to find out what new units I can build in certain regions so I end up developing them fully.

[m52nickerson]

I never really build up many provinces in my games, just a few at the start. Then any that a capture I just build the "happy" buildings and perhaps farming, mining, or trade. The only exception to this is I normally build up a few provinces south of the Black sea, but with no armour. That way that are used to make troops for the desert battles.

[Cowhead418]

I can't say that I have. Probably my worst habit in MTW is to develop every province I own constantly. I always have all of my build queues (sp?) full whether I need the buildings or not. Not very efficient moneywise but it makes me feel good ~:).

Ajax
I''m exactly the way you are. I'm never satisfied unless every single province of mine is building something. It's probably a habit I should drop because many of these buildings I never end up using.

[Ciaran]

Sounds familiar here, too. Old habit, but rather recently proven to be right, the hard way, as usual: For once I tried to follow Frog´s advice of specializing only a few provinces on military types and guess what happened, the crucial province got conquered. Now I keep at least one reserve production povince. Also, I seldom develop conquered provinces, if possible, I get the most important buildings in my core provinces and I leave the conquered ones the way they are, save from economic upgrades or some some buildings if a good unit is in easy reach. But I never demolish. You never know if you don´t need it in the future...

[elbasto]

I''m exactly the way you are. I'm never satisfied unless every single province of mine is building something. It's probably a habit I should drop because many of these buildings I never end up using.
I used to use that approach, so in the end I would never expand too much...

The main advantage the "train in the homeland and raze the rest of the map" approach are that rebels are never well equipped and also micormanaging provinces is far less complex.

Having a Citadel+Barbician also gives you a decent strong point from where to hold your ground until reinforcements arrive.

I used to keep 4 troop training provinces (the iron ones) and 4 others were I could retrain my units (this way you can replace casualties without slowing down troop production). I also choose some other symbolic provinces were I build troop training buildings (in that game, Flanders, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome).


The main disadvantage of this approach is that you need complete control of the seas. I keep two carracks in every single sea "province" and also three fulll stacks of them near my homeprovinces.
This allow reinforcements and replacements to arrive quickly to almost anywhere in the map.

[littlebktruck]

I don't really develop conquered provinces, save for trade. My particular management problem is that I turtle a bit too much, often leaving me short of money until I fink that particular opportunity that I'm looking for. For instance, in my current Sicilian game I've expanded very little at all; It's in the 1170s and all I have are Italy save the Papal States and Milan, the western Mediterranean Islands, and Serbia. Only last year did I finally find the break I was looking for: an Almohad civil war that allowed me to jump into North Africa with a rebel province at my back (meaning that I can use the alotted forces offensively until Granada). I'm having money problems because all my provinces but the islands require permanent armies, costing me money and reducing my offensive capability.

[sbroadbent]

I tend to primarily build economics and castle upgrades first in conquered provinces, and then develop some military buildings. Usually what happens is I have periods of military action followed by extensive periods of peace. At a certain point I'm bringing in enough money that I can build anything in every one of my provinces and still have my treasury consistently increasing. A nice aspect of developing all provinces militarily is that at a moment's notice you can start mass troop or ship production, and have a decent sized force out in a year or two. During my years of peace, I rarely have troops being produced at all, that most often I find I need to mobilize a force very quickly..

[matteus the inbred]

i think it makes a difference whether you're in GA or Conquest mode; in the former, it's often wise to have a breathing space and tech up lots, especially if you have all your objectives achieved for the present, or you know you've got a cathedral or similar to build. Crusades are worth providing really good troops for, trade takes a lot of time and i hate being reliant on it so tend to improve farmland fairly obsessively. i still have the habit of building only a few military provinces, always where i can get valour bonuses, and these are constantly being tech-up.
standard stuff for a non-military province is usually Fort+motte+bailey; farmland all the way to the max; watch/border towers; happiness buildings (inns/town watch). if i'm flush later on, i'll often stick a port/trading post if possible and then upgrade to a keep.

in conquest mode, i have as many (if possible, all) my provinces building troops and military buildings, and less of the optional stuff like trading posts and inns.
basically agreeing with sbroadbent...periods of fighting followed by periods of improving, rather than constantly pushing everything.

[gaijinalways]

Today 11:33
matteus the inbred i think it makes a difference whether you're in GA or Conquest mode

Very true, though your goals in the two are not always mutuallly exclusive. I often would develop some provinces for troop building, not just for bonuses, but sometimes for defense, because as your empire grows, some provinces are far away from your center (recently acquired lands) and they need to be protected quickly.

As part of this management strategy, I often would raze buildings I don't need for two reasons; one to raise needed cash for expanding in more important provinces, and two for buying mercenaries or building necessary defens troops. You can't develop everything, but also you can't always only develop provinces with bonuses for your troops. Parts of your empire might not be accessible by sea (depends on your faction and expansion directions and the extent of your navy), and you always have to think about whether the lands will be kept or 'given' away. If they will be kept, they need to be defended. On expert level (the only level I play), you must always be wary of attack, especially in provinces where your forces are weak. Having places to develop troops spread throughout your empire make more sense from a defensive perspective, from an economical one, it is slightly more costly, but cheaper than losing key provinces because it took too long for reinforcements to arrive.

[gunslinger]

The only thing I don't understand is why you would want to build all those citadels. If you expand in an organized fashion, keeping your fronts to a minium, and you get a navy at least powerful enough to protect your own coastal regions, you don't need anything more than a fort to produce peasants in those interior regions unless you want the more advanced castle types for technology purposes. You can build all of the farming advancements without so much as a fort, and unless a province is coastal, and you have a large navy, you don't even need to build a trading post. I generally just go as far as a keep or maybe a castle so that I can build churches and militia buildings in my interior provinces to keep them happy.

After the first 20 years or so of the game, there is no reason to count on a castle for defense. I'll explain my thinking on this. The only limiting factors in this game are time and money (and the pope if you're catholic). Usually the money problems work themselves out by the high period. So, all that's really holding you back from greatness is the time needed to build a province up. If I'm not mistaken, it takes something like 40 years to go from nothing to a citadel, and that's assuming that you don't build a farm or watchtower, or swordsmith or whatever else between castles. All of those farms and weapons buildings take a lot of time too, when you add them all together. If you get invaded and retreat to the castle, then you HAVEN'T SAVED ANYTHING. You don't collect any money from the province while you are in the castle. The enemy army still destroys a bunch of your best buildings, so you still have to spend the money and, more importantly, the time to rebuild that province. AI assaulting a castle of any type is so rare that you could fairly say it NEVER happens. The result is that you are still going to have to wait for your relieving army to get there before you can reconquer your province, minus a bunch of its good buildings.

Consider all of the buildings that must be built to produce one unit of fuedal knights: Fort, Keep, Castle, town watch, spearmaker, horse farmer, horse breeder, Chancellory, royal court, royal estate, armorer, armorer's workshop. (I may have missed something, but you get the idea) That is a lot of years and a lot of money. If this province is your best or only province for making feudal knights, and it's on a border, are you going to be satisfied with defending it with a citadel, or even a fortress? Not me. I would want a great big standing army that can easily take anything the AI throws at it so that the invaders won't destroy all those buildings, setting my technology back by 20 or more years.

In my humble opinion, you are much better off spending the cash on a decent standing army instead of a citadel if defense is your only concern. I know that the maintenance costs of a standing army are expensive, but if you have two stacks on the border, then the AI will feel compelled to place 2 and one-half stacks of inferior troops on that border, costing your enemy money as well.

Rebellions are not a problem in the interior as long as you make some happy buildings, manage religion, and keep a couple units of peasants in each province. My only fear is the "re-emmergence" of some faction in the middle of my interior provinces. I'll never understand the logic of some heir reappearing with two stacks of advanced soldiers with no warning whatsoever. What the heck are my spies and watchtowers for? Where did that new army get its weapons? Where did they train without my agents noticing?

I guess I've come up with a pretty long-winded way of saying that in my opinion castles should only be viewed as technology buildings, not as defensive buildings.

[elbasto]

The only thing I don't understand is why you would want to build all those citadels. If you expand in an organized fashion, keeping your fronts to a minium, and you get a navy at least powerful enough to protect your own coastal regions, you don't need anything more than a fort to produce peasants in those interior regions unless you want the more advanced castle types for technology purposes. You can build all of the farming advancements without so much as a fort, and unless a province is coastal, and you have a large navy, you don't even need to build a trading post. I generally just go as far as a keep or maybe a castle so that I can build churches and militia buildings in my interior provinces to keep them happy.

After the first 20 years or so of the game, there is no reason to count on a castle for defense. I'll explain my thinking on this. The only limiting factors in this game are time and money (and the pope if you're catholic). Usually the money problems work themselves out by the high period. So, all that's really holding you back from greatness is the time needed to build a province up. If I'm not mistaken, it takes something like 40 years to go from nothing to a citadel, and that's assuming that you don't build a farm or watchtower, or swordsmith or whatever else between castles. All of those farms and weapons buildings take a lot of time too, when you add them all together. If you get invaded and retreat to the castle, then you HAVEN'T SAVED ANYTHING. You don't collect any money from the province while you are in the castle. The enemy army still destroys a bunch of your best buildings, so you still have to spend the money and, more importantly, the time to rebuild that province. AI assaulting a castle of any type is so rare that you could fairly say it NEVER happens. The result is that you are still going to have to wait for your relieving army to get there before you can reconquer your province, minus a bunch of its good buildings.

Consider all of the buildings that must be built to produce one unit of fuedal knights: Fort, Keep, Castle, town watch, spearmaker, horse farmer, horse breeder, Chancellory, royal court, royal estate, armorer, armorer's workshop. (I may have missed something, but you get the idea) That is a lot of years and a lot of money. If this province is your best or only province for making feudal knights, and it's on a border, are you going to be satisfied with defending it with a citadel, or even a fortress? Not me. I would want a great big standing army that can easily take anything the AI throws at it so that the invaders won't destroy all those buildings, setting my technology back by 20 or more years.

In my humble opinion, you are much better off spending the cash on a decent standing army instead of a citadel if defense is your only concern. I know that the maintenance costs of a standing army are expensive, but if you have two stacks on the border, then the AI will feel compelled to place 2 and one-half stacks of inferior troops on that border, costing your enemy money as well.

Rebellions are not a problem in the interior as long as you make some happy buildings, manage religion, and keep a couple units of peasants in each province. My only fear is the "re-emmergence" of some faction in the middle of my interior provinces. I'll never understand the logic of some heir reappearing with two stacks of advanced soldiers with no warning whatsoever. What the heck are my spies and watchtowers for? Where did that new army get its weapons? Where did they train without my agents noticing?

I guess I've come up with a pretty long-winded way of saying that in my opinion castles should only be viewed as technology buildings, not as defensive buildings.
Exactly.

I build citadels with all the defensive improvements for two reasons:
a) It allows me to build the highest level of Merchants.

b) In case I get overrun I can wait for reinforcements or even loose the province and keep the most advanced upgrades.
e.g.: the enemy take the province, the demiculevirn towers are taken, I take the province back, the barbician is destroyed.
This means that I can keep all the buildings including the citadel itself.

[Roark]

Building citadels (and above) are the way to produce a good army in the first place, especially for Metalsmithing and specialist buildings like the Military Academy.

:book:

[gunslinger]

[QUIOTE/]b) In case I get overrun I can wait for reinforcements or even loose the province and keep the most advanced upgrades.
e.g.: the enemy take the province, the demiculevirn towers are taken, I take the province back, the barbician is destroyed.
This means that I can keep all the buildings including the citadel itself.[/QUOTE]

I had no idea that the buildings that get destroyed are a set thing. I always thought it was kind of random. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you never loose any of your other buildings or farm upgrades if you have the castle improvements? Can you give some more information on this please?

[elbasto]

I believe (not certain) that most buildings get "damaged" (they loose a level, right?) because the castle level is reduced. If for instance I have a Citadel and a Master Merchant and the Citadel gets "destroyed" into a Castle, the Master Merchant will get "destroyed" into the previous level of Merchant.

Having extra wall protections (motte, Ballista Towers, Catapult towers, Barbician, etc.) gives a far higher chance of building survival (either meaning that it gets destroyed or downgraded).

I think it works this way, but take into account that I can be wrong, beeing an inexperienced turtler myself I haven't been overrun many times and even if I did, I never checked the lost provinces.

[King Kurt]

In my current VI Byzantine campaign I am trying a new tactic to prevent reemergencies (is that a word???) I leave a faction with a single province - hopefully a not very useful one - they don't have the income to build an army, so attacking me is not an option. Moreover if the army starts to look threating, I attack them, reduce the numbers, but withdraw when they retreat to the castle. Currently I have the Turks, Hungarians and Poles bottled up like this. I mismanaged the Egyptians - I thought that they had another province after Egypt, which I wanted - so they have come back once, but they were dealt with by my border army in Egypt. Also the Novos went wrong - I invaded the last province, killed the leader in the autocalced battle and the remnants went rebel. However, 3 out of 5 so far aint bad.

A by product is that the remnant states seem to go neutral to you, so that has a trade benefit as well.

Another thought is why are people obsessed with teching up so quickly. The early troops can be quite effective and I would always prefere to build an army then spend time teching up. Obviously you need to do some teching and your core provinces will always benefit from castling up, but in my experience I end up with only 1 or 2 citadels by the end of the game. For example in my current campaign it is 1140, I rule from Egypt to Finland with a western border with the HRE, who are currently being dismembered by me. Constantinopole is a fortress - but it started as that - but everything else is a keep or fort. My armies are based on Byzant inf, tresibond archers, the odd Varangian, horse archers, Katanks from hiers - can't build them yet, about 2 years to go in Constantinopole -, steepe cav and mercenries. I pad this with peasants and slav warriors, who also provide the garrisons where needed. I have just in the last 3 years got the ability to make Byzant lancers and I have a fancy to build towards pav arblesters for when the horde arrive in 1230, but do not see the need for more higher tech troops.~:cheers:

[gunslinger]

I just learned something about the rules for re-emerging factions. According to the post I read, the following conditions must be met for a faction to re-emerge:

1. The faction must have an underage male heir at the time of its collapse.
2. The re-emergence can only occur during the time period when that heir would have been between age 16 and death (60 or so?)
3. The re-emergence can only take place in a province previously controlled by that faction AND which is currently undergoing a revolt due to happiness below 100%.

I never knew that the re-emergence could only take place if the province was revolting anyway. Also, I guess if it's been 70 years or so since you conquered a faction, you don't have to worry about it re-emerging.

I got this info on the following link: http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm5.showMessageRange?topicID=12997.topic&start=21&stop=40

[Mr White]

I'm not sure but I think this is incorrect. I was told re-emergences could occur when loyalty dropped below 120. Also I don't think that you're safe after even a hundred years, they'll keep taking place if your not careful. But you are right about the fact that they can only occur in a province previously owned by the re-emerging faction ( it said so in the manual)

[Ludens]

I'm not sure but I think this is incorrect. I was told re-emergences could occur when loyalty dropped below 120. Also I don't think that you're safe after even a hundred years, they'll keep taking place if your not careful. But you are right about the fact that they can only occur in a province previously owned by the re-emerging faction ( it said so in the manual)
I have heard contradicting statements about the threshold as well. Some say it is 120%, others 100% but 120% prevents your provinces from joining when a re-emergance takes place in a neighbouring province.

After seventy or eighty years they always stop re-emerging, however in every re-emergence, their King will marry immediatly, and pop-out a heir next turn.

[Geezer57]

I have heard contradicting statements about the threshold as well. Some say it is 120%, others 100% but 120% prevents your provinces from joining when a re-emergance takes place in a neighbouring province.

After seventy or eighty years they always stop re-emerging, however in every re-emergence, their King will marry immediatly, and pop-out a heir next turn.
The 100% loyalty level prevents regular Bandits/Rebellions - the 120% level prevents those AND re-emergences.

[talonferguson]

Another thought is why are people obsessed with teching up so quickly. The early troops can be quite effective and I would always prefere to build an army then spend time teching up. Obviously you need to do some teching and your core provinces will always benefit from castling up, but in my experience I end up with only 1 or 2 citadels by the end of the game. For example in my current campaign it is 1140, I rule from Egypt to Finland with a western border with the HRE, who are currently being dismembered by me. Constantinopole is a fortress - but it started as that - but everything else is a keep or fort. :

Cheers.:2thumbsup:

Spearmen, are cheap to make, More Versatile, More Abundant ( 100 vs 60 ) & Don't require the expensive swordsmith.

In the Early Era, A strategy of Rapid expansion using high numbers of spearmen/archers is far far superiour than taking the time/ money to upgrade tech lines & units. Having Polish retainers doesnt hurt, of course, either =P Yay poles.

It's much easier to Take someone else's Castle then build your own, and you can actually MAKE money doing it, rather than spending your own =P

The only armies that presented problems early era for me were Byzantines, but mounted crossbows take care of those kata's nicely.

I almost won 60% around 1200 this game =P But I had an insurgency North of Lithuania & holding the holy land without sea trade isnt very profitable, those provinces are magnets for rebels =( & then came the horde...

[King Kurt]

As furthur proof of this approach after 2 hectic hours last night, it is now about 1160 and my western borders are the eastern border of france on a line of Provence to Denmark. I must be close to 60%. The HRE is bottled up in one Baltic coast province after being devestated by 10 years of war and appears to be dissolving into civil war - (a lot of rebels have suddenly appeared) My only problem is that I stripped a north baltic state of troops to minimum garrison to reienforce my attack on the HRE and the Novos reappeared with 4 stacks!! - still it keeps it interesting. I intend to weaken the HRE and leave it in its baltic haven, castle up on my western border - france looks strong and I am not in a hurry and return to some unfinished business with Sicily by retaking Naples, Also, I have to start the long game for preparing for the Horde. I have all the troop types I want except pavs (tech towards that) and expect to fight the normal clash at kiev. However, I am thinking about creating an all cavalry army based on Steppe cav in Kazar to bloody their nose when they arrive. I reckon that if they are lead by a 9 star Jedi Katank - I always seem to have a few of those - they could do some serious damage.~:cheers:

[Ironside]

I'm one of the build up everything type. I'm doing it mainly because you get more money than you can spend. :2thumbsup:

But it has it advantages, mainly because it gives higher loyalty and that I can build good quality troops in a hurry if needed, both good protection vs broken sea-lines. Only takes a few turns to adapt to those conditions and then I'm still maintainin good defence on the frontlines.
Rarely builds above citadel in the provinces outside my main production center though.

[The Darkhorn]

I especially build up an area if I am playing GA and have "colonies" that could suddenly be cut off for decades if a war breaks out. I need to be able to retrain their troops after suffering losses. I once had an Algerian colony hold out for 31 years getting attacked 11 of those years.