A padawan seeks advice

[Longbowmen Rock]

I am relatively new to MTW and hope some of you sages will help me with a few questions. As of VI:

1) Is there any way to upgrade units entirely? ie: (hobilars into m sergeants into fuedal knights or archers into crossbowmen into longbowmen) Getting a sweet general and investing in him only to have his unit become obsolete is no good.

2) Can assassins intercept enemy assassins/spies while counterspying? I've searched MTW forums and some claim no, some yes, and some even said their emissary caught some and it raised his valour. If no, how do you raise a spy's valour? The noobs churning out of the brothel aren't going to catch that lvl 6 assassin gunning for my generals.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Wasp]

Hey Longbowmen Rock! I agree, they're pretty nifty units!

For your first question, I don't believe you can, only Royal Knights seem to have this 'ability'.

I think assassins can 'counterspy', and I think spies raise their valour when they reveal hidden vices, plant evidence, etc.

Hope that helps.

[caravel]

I am relatively new to MTW and hope some of you sages will help me with a few questions. As of VI:

1) Is there any way to upgrade units entirely? ie: (hobilars into m sergeants into fuedal knights or archers into crossbowmen into longbowmen) Getting a sweet general and investing in him only to have his unit become obsolete is no good.
No.

2) Can assassins intercept enemy assassins/spies while counterspying? I've searched MTW forums and some claim no, some yes, and some even said their emissary caught some and it raised his valour. If no, how do you raise a spy's valour? The noobs churning out of the brothel aren't going to catch that lvl 6 assassin gunning for my generals.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Counterspying means intercepting rival spies/assassins. Your own spies and assassins can do this. It is debatable whether emissaries can or not (even though emissaries are stated to be "counterspying" when idle this may be just the default text, or they may be doing just that, though not as effectively as assassins and spies perhaps?). I know for definite that they could in STW, but I've never used emissaries enough in MTW to know if they can. The one thing I can say is that I've never noticed them gain valour from it, but that is not to say that they can't. The way to find out is to test it. Remember counterspying is different to your emissary/general/priest/princess suriving the attempt on his life and turning the tables on his attacker, this is the second layer of defense. An assassin caught by counterspies won't even get to the target, and you will simply see a message about an assassin being caught in your province by "bodyguards". The bodyguards are your counterspying agents (assassins/spies) and the border for if it is present.

Remember that the border fort will almost always replace your spy/assassin as the main counterspy if it is present. With a border fort in your province, your spies and assassins won't really have any opportunity to catch rival agents, as the that building will be doing their job.

[Caerfanan]

Remember that the border fort will almost always replace your spy/assassin as the main counterspy if it is present. With a border fort in your province, your spies and assassins won't really have any opportunity to catch rival agents, as the that building will be doing their job.
And that reminds me that I haven't used this strategy yet: no border forts to have good valour spies and assassins.... :shame:

Would you put both a spy and an assassin in the province, though? Spies are good for loyalty (and prevent civil wars?), maybe assassins are better for counter spying?

To answer another part of the question: to gain valour, for a spy or an assassin, you have two things to consider

1/ If you have Viking Invasion: the buildings for spy and assassin do have upgrades, making your agents start with +1, +2 or +3 valour

2/ When they succeed in missions they gain valour: I don't know if this always happens or not: 'might depend of the valour of the target.

[Longbowmen Rock]

Thanks for the info. If I remember correctly in STW border forts were the equivolent of a lvl 3 spy, which caught anybody nefarious until halfway through the game, at which time your ninjas were well trained. If your assassins in MTW can intercept enemy spies and assassins as well as your spies, then what good are spies save for uncovering hidden vices and the fluke unlocking the gate during a siege? And how do you raise their valour?

[caravel]

Would you put both a spy and an assassin in the province, though? Spies are good for loyalty (and prevent civil wars?), maybe assassins are better for counter spying?
You can use combinations of either. I prefer to have 1 spy (for the happiness bonus) and two assassins, though I move them around a lot. You have to remember is that though they do not have any kind of cumulative effect, if one fouls up and lets a rival agent slip through, the others are there as a back up. As far as their counterspying ability goes, they are equal.

When they succeed in missions they gain valour: I don't know if this always happens or not: 'might depend of the valour of the target.
The always gain valour, though later valour stars require many more successful missions to be made (as usual I forget the exact numerics of this, but to gain 5 valour your assassin, for example, would need to kill a lot more than 5 victims).

If your assassins in MTW can intercept enemy spies and assassins as well as your spies, then what good are spies save for uncovering hidden vices and the fluke unlocking the gate during a siege? And how do you raise their valour?
Spies can orchestrate a treason plot on your disloyal generals, and greatly improve the loyalty of the provinces they're in. They can also incite rebellion in rival provinces. There is a cheesey way to valour up your spies when inciting revolts. First train a mass of 0 valour spies, about ten should do it. Next transfer them and another 3 or 4 valour spy to the province you are targeting (If this has a border fort you're throwing their lives way). The target province should already be in trouble, that is, it should already be low loyalty with smallish garrison. When your spies are in position end turn and observe the loyalty drop, if it is not significantly less than 100% you're probably wasting your time. If any of you spies were caught, the enemy has at least one counter spy in there, so you'll need a bit of luck. End turn again and fingers crossed. If a revolt occurred, check the valour of your spies. You will see that all of your spies, though they were just sitting there and were not contributing to inciting the revolt (only the highest valour spy does that) have valoured up, and gone from valour 0 to valour 1. Your main man may have valoured up also. This used to work differently in MTW v1.1 IIRC. In that version the effect of spies was cumulative as with STW.

I by far make my best spies and assassins through counterspying and inciting revolts. Waiting around for the brothel tavern upgrades in order to get valour bonuses just isn't viable.

[The Unknown Guy]

Note: Portugal is a fragfest for spy-incited revolts, if you´re playing the Almohads. Move hordes of spies there and watch as the invasion force is slowly pushed out by rebels.

For extra laughs move in a few imams and turn them into religious revolts.

[Caerfanan]

You can use combinations of either. I prefer to have 1 spy (for the happiness bonus) and two assassins, though I move them around a lot. You have to remember is that though they do not have any kind of cumulative effect, if one fouls up and lets a rival agent slip through, the others are there as a back up. As far as their counterspying ability goes, they are equal.
OK, several spies/assassins will each try to spot the enemy spy/assassin...


The always gain valour, though later valour stars require many more successful missions to be made (as usual I forget the exact numerics of this, but to gain 5 valour your assassin, for example, would need to kill a lot more than 5 victims).
Maybe it works like the command stars? 2 exp (N-1) succes to have N "stars"?


Spies can orchestrate a treason plot on your disloyal generals, and greatly improve the loyalty of the provinces they're in.
OK, this one did catch my attention: how do you plot your disloyal generals for treason? I'm very interested by that one!!!

[Adrian II]

For your first question, I don't believe you can, only Royal Knights seem to have this 'ability'.The Wasp is right: all Royal Knights (including Princely units) can be upgraded from Early RK through High RK to Late RK. Only your ruler's unit can not.

[gunslinger]

My apologies for hijacking your thread, padawan, but I have a fairly newbish question myself, which I did not think warranted its own thread.

I'm thinking about puting VI / XL on a laptop. Since laptops don't have number pads, how do you control the up / down angle of the cameral during a battle? Froggy's guide only mentions the + - keys on the numberpad.

Also, the laptop has a widescreen. Will this cause issues?

[drone]

My apologies for hijacking your thread, padawan, but I have a fairly newbish question myself, which I did not think warranted its own thread.

I'm thinking about puting VI / XL on a laptop. Since laptops don't have number pads, how do you control the up / down angle of the cameral during a battle? Froggy's guide only mentions the + - keys on the numberpad.

Also, the laptop has a widescreen. Will this cause issues?
I put MTW/VI on a laptop with no problems. It has a 15.4" widescreen, it has a little bit of a stretched look to it but I hardly notice it now. You can also change the up/down view in battle by "right-click and hold", which is even easier than the numberpad.

[Longbowmen Rock]

No problem Gunslinger. But back to spies vs assassins, it seems that spies in MTW are as inferior to assassins as they were in STW where I didn't even use them. My style of play relies on squaring off in pitched battles with teched up units and good tactical decisions; my main use of operatives is to prevent enemies from getting to me.
Raising the valour of spies by going on suicide missions in provences with border forts just seems to be a waste because to build up assassins all you need to do is pick off foreign emissaries and alims blithely hanging around your king with Kill Me stickers on their backs.
However, if spies raised their valour by uncovering hidden vices that would change things considerably...Anyone want to weigh in on that?

[caravel]

OK, this one did catch my attention: how do you plot your disloyal generals for treason? I'm very interested by that one!!!
Just drag the spy over your (disloyal) general.

[Martok]

First off, welcome to the Org, Longbowmen Rock. Good to see you here. ~:cheers:

All right, now to quick clarify a couple things:

When counterspying, spies get first crack at capturing enemy spies & assassins. If the spy fails to capture the enemy agent (or you don't have a spy in that province), then the assassin will have a chance to capture him. If both the spy and assassin fail, then the emissary has a chance to capture the enemy saboteur/assassin. Thus, when determining who will have the first chance at capturing enemy agents, the heirarchy goes: Spies > Assassins > Emissaries.


However, if spies raised their valour by uncovering hidden vices that would change things considerably...Anyone want to weigh in on that?
I can't say this with certainty (as it's not something I've done that often), but I believe the answer to your question is yes -- which makes sense if you think about it: Your spies gain valour for convicting your faction's own generals for treason, so to successfully uncover vices in enemy generals should bestow valour as well. Again, however, I'm not absolutely certain of this.

[Deus ret.]

However, if spies raised their valour by uncovering hidden vices that would change things considerably...Anyone want to weigh in on that?

There are some other threads dealing with this ... can't find one atm so I'll add my twopence:

You don't want to valour them up by trying to uncover something and achieving little, except that the victims gain anti-spy traits. This will happen in most cases with low-level spies. A much better way to valour them up (this also counts for assassins) is to put them in your provinces to catch enemy spies/assassins. Remove any border forts as they will do the job for your spies. Depending on the province (some seem to be preferred by agents, probably because of their position) the defensive spies will gain valour quickly without any danger to them; once they have reached a certain level they are ready to be sent on the aforementioned missions - uncovering vices, trying your disloyal generals for treason and opening castle gates. The latter is especially nice imho because the castle will be captured without a fight. Although it seems to help greatly in that if the spy has already spent several turns in the province to be taken. Valour 5+ spies have a reasonable chance of escaping border guards and enemy defensive agents (don't overplay it, though) ... okay, they may be not quite the instrument for taking over the map but they add a nice touch to the game.

[Longbowmen Rock]

Thanks for the warm welcome Martok, and to the rest of you; I think I understand how it works.

It seems then, if you want to bother with spies, that you should borderfort every provence, train some lvl 6+ assassins, remove the bfs on your border provences and stick spies there. They get the first crack at the intruders and if they miss your assassins will get them (or the bfs if they move into the interior) but eventually you'll get some experienced spies which you can then unleash on some hapless junior generals, build up even more, and save for some risky but crucial siege or rebellion. Perhaps I was too hard on them before.

[caravel]

Thus, when determining who will have the first chance at capturing enemy agents, the heirarchy goes: Spies > Assassins > Emissaries.
This is why when training assassins, I always place about 4 of them in a province on their own, with no spies. When one of the valours up to about 3 I move him out and give the others a chance.

I can't say this with certainty (as it's not something I've done that often), but I believe the answer to your question is yes -- which makes sense if you think about it: Your spies gain valour for convicting your faction's own generals for treason, so to successfully uncover vices in enemy generals should bestow valour as well. Again, however, I'm not absolutely certain of this.
Revealing vices does increase valour. The question I have always had about so called 'secret vices' is that my own generals seem to have those revealed for no particular reason? Do they eventually get revealed anyway? Rival factions' spies aren't doing this because I've switched faction (ian mode) to check to see if they're in the province, and they're not. I've also checked ever year for AI spies on missions and never seen any. I am now convinced that the AI spies cannot conduct treason plots, reveal vices, or open the castle gates during a siege. So do secret vices get automatically revealed after a certain time anyway?

With the border forts, it's not necessary to build them at all - leave them for the AI to use, otherwise it's too vulnerable. Get your spies in there early, and they will fill the same role. For provinces that don't have any loyalty problem use assassins. Once they're valoured up, replace them, move them out, and get them working.

[Caerfanan]

Just drag the spy over your (disloyal) general.
Uh? Isn't that about vices or...

OK, I only used spies maybe twice on enemies' generals...

Thanks! :2thumbsup:

[caravel]

Uh? Isn't that about vices or...

OK, I only used spies maybe twice on enemies' generals...

Thanks! :2thumbsup:
When a spy is dragged over your own generals: Orchestrate a treason plot, when dragged over a rival faction's general: Reveal secret vices.

You cannot orchestrate a treason plot on a rival faction's general, nor can you reveal the vices of your own generals.

[Caerfanan]

When a spy is dragged over your own generals: Orchestrate a treason plot, when dragged over a rival faction's general: Reveal secret vices.

You cannot orchestrate a treason plot on a rival faction's general, nor can you reveal the vices of your own generals.
So does this treason stuff KILL the general?

[caravel]

So does this treason stuff KILL the general?
A successful treason plot sees your general executed. If it fails his loyalty decreases further and he may get one of the 'suspicious' or 'informants' line of vices. Failed plots apparently decrease the loyalty of all generals, and successful plots seems to increase their loyalty*. This is where having a lot of decent valour spies in all of your provinces comes in very useful for many reasons.

Imagine that your faction leader has just died, and you now have an overfed 1 influence hedonist on the throne? The number of disloyal generals has increased and civil war is likely. You've just built some expensive and slow to construct structures that you don't feel like losing and having to rebuild after a civil war.

The answer is to pull out the worst of those generals from their stacks and begin the treason trials. You will need to start as many at once as you can, not 1 or 2 at a time. If you pull off about 75% of these, it will be good, and your spies will have increased in valour. The next year you need to have another go and so on. Those stubborn ones that just won't die and have 0 loyalty and some nasty vices will probably need to be assassinated, though you can move your spies around and give your highest valour spy a try at bringing him down, before you resort to that.

-Edit: You should really restrict the use of this to worthless traitors or lesser general with no good stats. Generals that have very good stats but poor loyalty should usually be bought off with a marriage or title. Keeping him in the faction leaders stack for a while should also increase his loyalty.

*I haven't noticed this so much myself but I believe it is true. I don't know the exact figures/effects.

[Maximillian von Hapsburg]

I've never had a one-influence hedonist, thankfully, but yeah, you ought to bring them to the province the king's in, and orchestrate some trials. That'll hurt (...your disyloyal generals xD)

Yours,



Max

[Deus ret.]

nor can you reveal the vices of your own generals.

Which ís actually a deplorable thing because of a single but very annoying case in the game: the interchanged effects of pride/secret pride. Oh how I'd love to have someone uncover the 'pride' vice (or virtue?) on my former six-star general because it would only slightly decrease command, whereas the 'secret pride' trait which is currently sticking to him causes the loss of 2 command and acumen each :wall:

Anyway, it's fun to play around with spies. Several high-level ones might even become a power factor themselves by destabilizing an enemy empire, either by lowering loyalty or by constantly revealing vices. I remember bringing down the Spanish once mainly by using spies - a team of two/three of them tried each turn to uncover some other hidden vice on their king, and after 10 turns or so he had accumulated so many happiness-decreasing traits that revolts started in his core provinces, followed soon by a massive civil war :laugh4: However I must admit that it takes a while to do it this way and it may also result in the king becoming virtually immune to spies (that's what happened when I tried the trick a second time).

[Caerfanan]

Which ís actually a deplorable thing because of a single but very annoying case in the game: the interchanged effects of pride/secret pride. Oh how I'd love to have someone uncover the 'pride' vice (or virtue?) on my former six-star general because it would only slightly decrease command, whereas the 'secret pride' trait which is currently sticking to him causes the loss of 2 command and acumen each :wall:

Uuuh... I wonder about this. Your leaders will have vice, virtues, and hidden vices. My first guess would be that only the officially hidden vice are unveil-able? Or can a spy "create" a vice on a character? Whatever vice?

[Caerfanan]

A successful treason plot sees your general executed. If it fails his loyalty decreases further and he may get one of the 'suspicious' or 'informants' line of vices. Failed plots apparently decrease the loyalty of all generals, and successful plots seems to increase their loyalty*. This is where having a lot of decent valour spies in all of your provinces comes in very useful for many reasons.

Imagine that your faction leader has just died, and you now have an overfed 1 influence hedonist on the throne? The number of disloyal generals has increased and civil war is likely. You've just built some expensive and slow to construct structures that you don't feel like losing and having to rebuild after a civil war.

The answer is to pull out the worst of those generals from their stacks and begin the treason trials. You will need to start as many at once as you can, not 1 or 2 at a time. If you pull off about 75% of these, it will be good, and your spies will have increased in valour. The next year you need to have another go and so on. Those stubborn ones that just won't die and have 0 loyalty and some nasty vices will probably need to be assassinated, though you can move your spies around and give your highest valour spy a try at bringing him down, before you resort to that.

-Edit: You should really restrict the use of this to worthless traitors or lesser general with no good stats. Generals that have very good stats but poor loyalty should usually be bought off with a marriage or title. Keeping him in the faction leaders stack for a while should also increase his loyalty.

*I haven't noticed this so much myself but I believe it is true. I don't know the exact figures/effects.
Wow. Now that's an answer. Thank you very much Cambyses II!!!

~:cheers:

[caravel]

Uuuh... I wonder about this. Your leaders will have vice, virtues, and hidden vices. My first guess would be that only the officially hidden vice are unveil-able?
This is correct, only the currently existing secret vices can be revealed. So "Secret Pride" would become "Pride" => "Secret Perversion" => "Perversion", "Secret Adultery" => "Adultery" and so on. You can't perform this action on rebel generals... well not always anyway. There seems to be a bug because on occasions I have done so, the same applies to Inquistions, I did once target and burn a rebel general.

[Caerfanan]

This is correct, only the currently existing secret vices can be revealed. So "Secret Pride" would become "Pride" => "Secret Perversion" => "Perversion", "Secret Adultery" => "Adultery" and so on. You can't perform this action on rebel generals... well not always anyway. There seems to be a bug because on occasions I have done so, the same applies to Inquistions, I did once target and burn a rebel general.
Do you think that all the vices have a secret version? The "Secret Pride" is quite an oxymoron... I'll try to check that!

[Martok]

I am now convinced that the AI spies cannot conduct treason plots, reveal vices, or open the castle gates during a siege.
Unfortunately, this has been my observation as well. The other factions don't utilize most of a spy's abilities. :no:


So do secret vices get automatically revealed after a certain time anyway?

I would say yes, as that's consistently been my expierence -- my generals' secret vices are *always* revealed sooner or later. Vices usually seem to come out into the open around 5-10 years after the general picked up the "secret" version of the vice in question.

[caravel]

Unfortunately, this has been my observation as well. The other factions don't utilize most of a spy's abilities. :no:
It is doubtful if the AI would be able to make effective use of orchestrating a treason plot anyway. I have seen the AI send it's own inquisitors against it's own generals on several occasions. Not bad or impious generals either, just random ones. The AI can't tell the difference between a good general and a bad one. The reveal vices, function would have worked well for the AI, but that is probably somehow linked to the treason plot function and allowing one may have meant allowing the other, so maybe that's why it's not available? Then again AI controlled assassins seem to be prevented from murdering their own sides generals, so I don't see why the reveal vices function isn't there.

I would say yes, as that's consistently been my expierence -- my generals' secret vices are *always* revealed sooner or later. Vices usually seem to come out into the open around 5-10 years after the general picked up the "secret" version of the vice in question.
There must be a check that is done every turn, with a percentage chance of them being revealed (the same as with gaining any other vice or virtue. No doubt when the general is checked to see if he's eligible for any vices or virtues, this is also checked.

[gunslinger]

If an enemy general has the annoying trait of just being too pious to set up for heresy, I always like to send in a spy to reveal all of his secret perversions and such. Making these piety reducing vices public makes the inquisitor's job much easier.

[caravel]

True, if your inquisition fails once, there's a good chance that the target may have picked up "secret atheist", which is worth revealing with your spy.

[Longbowmen Rock]

Speaking of the way the AI is limited, I'm really disappointed the AI in MTW. It does the dumbest things in battle. Take my current English campaign for example:
1) I attack Ile de France, forgetting that it's a 1 bridge battle I don't have the necessary forces. With his army on the edge of the map (and my nearest unit almost as far) the French King charges across the bridge, right into the arms of my frydmen.
2) Besieging Castile, whose castle will hold out for years, the 1 archer unit garrison sallies out to attack my 700+ army, full of grim cav.

The enemy kings and heirs charge wildly, not retreating when it's down to them and they are surrounded with sergeants. They won't cover the second bridge in 2 bridge battles. I started with Hard and I'm still waltzing through the game. EA and their 7k employees should have put a little more effort into this, although I'm fervently grateful for what they made notwithstanding.

Any patches or mods to make the AI smarter?

[EatYerGreens]

Hi all,

I had - but am no longer able to find - a table I'd drawn up of subterfuge mission success percentages, which I was going to refer to, to make a point.

I was fortuitous to have had a campaign on the go where I had a collection of assassins with star ratings ranging from zero to six, bishops all over the place, helping to spot targets and there also happened to be several 'hero' emissaries, bishops etc. (valour stars mostly 'from birth') still alive in the game, as well as generals of just about every star rating. Unfortunately, that was probably vanilla-MTW and patching to VI means I can't return to whichever gamesave it was to repeat the process and it will be a long while before all the permutations of X vs. Y will become available to me in a campaign again, such that I'll be in a position to post a full set of results.

Anyway, you'll all be familiar with figures like 95%, 78%, 66%, 33% (assassin vs. Emissary_v0,1,2,3) and the slight variations for Bishops, Princesses, Generals, Heirs, Faction leaders.

What you might not have tried, to date, is looking at the figures for attacking your own spies and assassins with another of your assassins and how these scale when they have different valour ratings.

This is well worth a try as I believe the "capture success chance" of border watch towers (BWTs) and border forts (BFs) are equivalent to v_1 and v_2 assassins, respectively.

Now to my point. If the results are like this:-
assassin_v0 vs assassin_v0 = 66%
assassin_v1 vs assassin_v0 = 78% (same as BWT vs v0)
assassin_v2 va assassin_v0 = 95% (same as BF vs V0)

and you accept that your agents, on foreign soil, have to "roll a survival die" not just when they cross the border but *every year*, then you can understand why green agents usually get caught immediately.

Even a 5* agent has a risk of getting caught, although it's very low (5% or less, versus BFs). So, like CambysesII said, don't push your luck too far...

Counterspying
Each agent you have (on home soil) gives you a "die roll" against an incoming enemy agent, so the more, the merrier. However, the odds don't stack up in the way you might expect.

Say you're trying to valour-up a bunch of v_0 assassins and their individual chance of success is 5% against an incoming agent (of high valour), the odds (in any given year) are actually like this:-

Agents Odds of one 'success' Odds of zero 'successes'
1________5.0%_______________95%
2________9.5%_______________90%
3_______13.5%_______________85%
4_______17.1%_______________81%
5_______20.3%_______________77%
10______31.5%_______________59%
15______36.6%_______________46%
20______37.7%_______________35%

The reason the 'chance of zero successes' goes steadily down is because of the potential for other outcomes when increasing numbers of attempts are being made ('two successes', 'five successes') but which are irrelevant to our situation because you can only kill him once. Nevertheless, you can see that, even with a hoarde of agents, the enemy still has a pretty good chance of escape.

Realistically, your green agents are only ever going to get valoured up by catching enemy agents who have low valour (1,2,3) themselves and the high-star enemy assassin is probably only ever going to die by failing in the attempt to kill a similarly high-star general or a faction leader.

Where to train your defensive agents

I'd recommend using a province with a port.

Observe how your own agents behave, on 'autopilot', when ordered to attack a distant target. They make for the nearest port first, to shorten the route. Enemy agents no doubt do likewise. Don't expect much traffic in cul-de-sacs, like Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia. As mentioned previously, remove the BFs/BWTs for maximum effect.

EDIT: re-draw table - forum stripped out multiple spaces

[Martok]

Unfortunately, the AI does have issues with bridge battles. It's competetent enough when defending a bridge; but when it comes to attacking (or defending 2 bridges), the computer just isn't very good at it.

I'm not sure if the enemy royalty committing to insane charges is indicative of a flaw in the AI, or if it's supposed to represent the headstrong nature of medieval nobility. Sometimes I think it's a little of both. ~;)


Any patches or mods to make the AI smarter?
Unfortunately, there isn't; the AI is hardcoded and can't be altered. Removing the 2nd bridge from all double-bridge battlemaps would maybe help the AI somewhat, but that's probably about it. :shrug:

[Longbowmen Rock]

Does anyone know off hand the calvary and armour bonuses polearms have? I'm having trouble finding it online and it's not in the materials that come with the game.

For such a vast game one would think that the developers would volunteer as many formulas and stats as possible (like assassination/alliances/heresy tables). But then again, if it was all laid out for us we wouldn't be geeking out in a cyber community would we?

[Caerfanan]

Does anyone know off hand the calvary and armour bonuses polearms have? I'm having trouble finding it online and it's not in the materials that come with the game.

For such a vast game one would think that the developers would volunteer as many formulas and stats as possible (like assassination/alliances/heresy tables). But then again, if it was all laid out for us we wouldn't be geeking out in a cyber community would we?
Yup, you're right. You have a good unit stats tool on totalwar.co.kr, or you can start a custom battle with the unit that intersts you, then press F1, the number in parenthesis give the values against ca. in VI, the spears have +1 attack/+4 def, in MTW the jannissary heavies have +3 attack, +1 def....

Armour piercing is, err, only taking half of the armour in account if I'm correct?

[caravel]

This is well worth a try as I believe the "capture success chance" of border watch towers (BWTs) and border forts (BFs) are equivalent to v_1 and v_2 assassins, respectively.

As mentioned previously, remove the BFs/BWTs for maximum effect.
Not 'nitpicking' here, but I do see this posted often. :embarassed: Border Watchtowers are not counterspies. They act as spies in neigbouring provinces only, and not a counterspy in the province. Also border forts seem to be equivalent to much more than a valour 2 assassin, but I'm only guessing here. In the past I've often sent valour 3 and 4 assassins into a border fort province and lost the lot in one go. I would say that it's abilities are nearer to valour 3 or 4, as it's almost impossible to get past them with any assassin or spy of valour 4 and above below.

Armour piercing is, err, only taking half of the armour in account if I'm correct?
Remember this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79215) thread? ~;)

[Caerfanan]

Remember this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79215) thread? ~;)
Uuuh, yes, now that you mention it! ~;)

[The Unknown Guy]

In another of my chevauches among the MTW files I found mentions about "border forts and baileys", and the like.

Methinks that another thing that was dropped was a "real" border fortification which would play a role in defending provinces.

[EatYerGreens]

Not 'nitpicking' here, but I do see this posted often. :embarassed: Border Watchtowers are not counterspies. They act as spies in neigbouring provinces only, and not a counterspy in the province.



Oops, slip of the tongue, on my part. I'm off to read that building description, one more time... :laugh4: In fact, I think that v1&2 thing was how they used to work in Shogun.


Acid test: look for a province owned by a minor faction, which you are convinced has *never* had a tavern, at any stage in the game and has a province with only BWTs on it. Send in a v_0 assassin or spy and see if they get captured, inside of 5 years. I shall try this, the next time the opportunity arises.




Also border forts seem to be equivalent to much more than a valour 2 assassin, but I'm only guessing here. In the past I've often sent valour 3 and 4 assassins into a border fort province and lost the lot in one go. I would say that it's abilities are nearer to valour 3 or 4, as it's almost impossible to get past them with any assassin or spy of valour 4 and above.


valour 4 and below, even?

I'm still gathering data at the moment and somewhat hamstrung by only having assassins of v_1 (Inn-built), v_2 (earned) and v_6 (Guy of Gisbourne +kills) to test against each other.

v_2 vs. v_1 = 76% chance of assassination success
v_2 vs. v_2 = 66% chance of assassination success

extrapolating slightly....

v_2 vs. v_3 = 50% chance of assassination success
v_2 vs. v_4 = 33% chance of assassination success

Now re-interpret, in terms of BFs...
v_2 represents the BF; v_# represents your agent; 'success' is the BF capturing your agent, so his survival chances are the inverse.

It would have to be sensationally bad luck to lose all four v_4 agents with 1-in-3 odds, so I think your assumption is right.

Another thing I'd like to hear a report of is (for example) an enemy agent gets caught in a BF'd province you own, containing an assassin V_5 (or above) and the assassin gains valour. Yes, I know we've been consistently saying the BF *always* takes the credit, I'm just wondering if there comes a point where, provided the assassin's valour exceeds that of the BF's, that rule is overrided?

[caravel]

Oops, slip of the tongue, on my part. I'm off to read that building description, one more time... :laugh4: In fact, I think that v1&2 thing was how they used to work in Shogun.
I'm pretty sure they worked much the same in Shogun as the do in MTW.

Acid test: look for a province owned by a minor faction, which you are convinced has *never* had a tavern, at any stage in the game and has a province with only BWTs on it. Send in a v_0 assassin or spy and see if they get captured, inside of 5 years. I shall try this, the next time the opportunity arises.
The result will be that the Watch Towers simply won't catch rival faction agents as it is unable to do so. You will need to enable ian mode in order to switch to that faction and check that counterspies are not hidden in the province. You'll need to do that before the end of every turn.

valour 4 and below, even?
Slip of the tongue on my part, this time. :2thumbsup:

Another thing I'd like to hear a report of is (for example) an enemy agent gets caught in a BF'd province you own, containing an assassin V_5 (or above) and the assassin gains valour. Yes, I know we've been consistently saying the BF *always* takes the credit, I'm just wondering if there comes a point where, provided the assassin's valour exceeds that of the BF's, that rule is overrided?
Well there is a priority with spies and assassins. Spies are the principal counterspy. They will always be the front line of agents that a rival spy/assassin encounters when crossing the border. With a border fort in your province this changes, and the border fort is the first obstacle these rival agents will have to pass. If they can slip through the border fort your spy will be next. This is actually a very poor system, and if spies and assassins were given priority then they would gain valour from counterspying, and anything they miss the border fort would take care of anyway (well not always of course).

[EatYerGreens]

Also, if you think about it, a chain of forts covering all the roads and rivers crossing the borders of a province ought to be a major undertaking in construction and, once built, requires full-time *staff* to do all this interception stuff.

By rights, they should take several years to build and the cost should be on a par with a Castle or Citadel, even.

In fact, I'd probably set Citadel as a prerequisite (to encourage the AI to develop in other directions first); a construction cost of 3000 or over and, if I were in a particularly mean mood, while tinkering, I'd give it a small negative income (e.g. -30), to reflect the annual running costs.

To be fair to the AI, I might also borrow an idea I saw in a thread once, which was to put a small maintainance cost on agents, to discourage the player from spamming them all over the place (and with better survival odds, they may not need to do this any longer, anyway).

[caravel]

Also, if you think about it, a chain of forts covering all the roads and rivers crossing the borders of a province ought to be a major undertaking in construction and, once built, requires full-time *staff* to do all this interception stuff.
It would have been better if the forts had been manned and had played a defensive role in cross border skirmishes.

By rights, they should take several years to build and the cost should be on a par with a Castle or Citadel, even.
I agree, effetively you're almost removing the need for counterspies, so this should come at a cost.

In fact, I'd probably set Citadel as a prerequisite (to encourage the AI to develop in other directions first); a construction cost of 3000 or over and, if I were in a particularly mean mood, while tinkering, I'd give it a small negative income (e.g. -30), to reflect the annual running costs.
Yes, I do think they should have been castle prerequisites (discussed this in the pocket mod thread somewhere, there is another thread on this as well. I'll have a look for it.), this can be modded in.

To be fair to the AI, I might also borrow an idea I saw in a thread once, which was to put a small maintainance cost on agents, to discourage the player from spamming them all over the place (and with better survival odds, they may not need to do this any longer, anyway).
A small support cost for spies and assassins would be a good idea for the player, but would probably cripple the AI economically.

You have to consider the AI a lot when modding. Border forts are there for the AI at the end of the day. Taking them out gives a better game, but the AI's inability to counterspy effectively makes it a sitting duck - so this has to be compensated for.

There is an argument against the complete removal of border forts, in that there would be no means for removing the AI spies and assassins that get spammed. This simply won't be an issue because the AI factions will clean up each others agents in the way that border forts do now. The AI simply needs earlier and easier access to spies and the incentives to train them. The AI tends to leave spies where they're trained, whereas it sends assassins abroad a lot. This means that the only problem agents would be the spies hanging about in their own provinces. The assassins that the AI would spam would get caught by these spies, until eventually they gain a lot of valour. The difficulty is getting the AI to place spies in every province. This though is much easier than getting the AI to border fort every province, which defeats the object anyway. In the Pocket Mod I had improved this somewhat by levelling off the brothel/tavern tech tree (merging it for the muslims into one building called the harem) and making the upgrades cheaper and available earlier. This increases the number of spies and assassins that the AI was using, the problem though was that the border forts were still cleaning them up. A building that helps the AI that also hurts it.

For the border forts and watchtowers I was planning to remove both, or at least remove their abilities to spy on on the enemy and counterspy. I later decided to leave watch towers in and simply remove border forts. I never did get as far as 1.0.7 though, so it never happened.

The reason I was going to remove the watchtowers was because they do a job that Emissaries and spies can do, that is provide intelligence of neighbouring provinces belonging to rival factions. With the watchtowers on your borders (watchtowers that can look across the border and spy on the enemy capital a few hundred miles to the north and see exactly what is built there and what troops are stationed there!) there was not much point in sending an agent in to have a look, as the watchtowers are doing that already. I feel that the border forts and watchtowers simplify the game and make it extremely dull (for me anyway). I prefer to have to send in my agents to find out what is going on, and if my agents aren't there, well that's my tough luck. This would give many more of those battles where the composition of the enemy force is unknown. The reason I decided not to remove them, was because I realised it was quite a drastic step that would probably be very unpopular with many players, and IIRC I was having some problems removing them at the time, though I could have resolved this later (gnome editor bugs were the likely cause).

[tostigB]

The way to upgrade calvary or infantry is to build the needed buildings. I do not know how to increase the valour of spies, but you can with assassins by killing other
faction emissaries with low valour and working your way up. I killed the Pope once with an assassin (a glorious event). One of many sent. I think it Guy de Gusbourne (sic) who was made with a valour of five. Happy warring.

[EatYerGreens]

It would have been better if the forts had been manned and had played a defensive role in cross border skirmishes.


I'm glad you mentioned border skirmishes. I've had numerous occasions where I'm supposed to be at war but I don't have sufficient troops to both defend what I hold and be confident of successfully invading somewhere across the border but the AI apparently feels the same way. Years could tick by, yet nothing happens.

One would expect continual skirmishing and steady, low-level, losses, in reality and it would only have taken a minor adaptation of the siege-casualties code to mimic this mutual 'erosion' of troop numbers, all along the shared border - perhaps in proportion with the relative sizes of the respective opposed garrisons? Ultimately, a tipping point would be reached where one or other side felt confident to launch an attack.

In certain situations, a faction might be forced to withdraw from a province because it was logistically unsustainable, in the face of the erosion rate, or their Treasury could not sustain the ongoing recruitment costs. Blockades of a detached province with only primitive training facilities would become very serious problems indeed. With badly-managed troop resupply, you might even see the balance of power shifted to the point where a third faction suddenly felt able to step into the fray...

An added challenge maybe (motivation for more frequent diplomatic efforts, even) but, on the other hand, it could just become a tiresome logistics exercise for the player. As the game stands, you can simply imagine that losses to skirmishing are occurring but they're compensated for by "free" replacements.

All pointlessly hypothetical, of course but fun to think about what the game could have become like...



A small support cost for spies and assassins would be a good idea for the player, but would probably cripple the AI economically.


Economically healthy AI factions would be somewhat protected by the way they have that "close_to_support_limit" thing in the building_prod and unit_prod files, which change its build/train priorities as it begins to run out of money. Hopefully, it's set up to treat agents as 'luxuries' and stop spamming them well before a cashflow crisis sets in.


That other thread, I referred to, mentioned an agent maint cost either in single figures (if not using Gnome, apparently you have to be very careful not to insert space characters, or otherwise disrupt the tab spacing, as it disrupts the 'reading frame') or was not much above 10 per year. I'm used to seeing AI factions running 10-20 Emissaries and Bishops at a time (no idea what their loss rate is like), so that's not too heavy a penalty. However, it's me who does the real spamming (100+ bishops to get the entire map) so as little as 5 per agent would be enough to modify my playing style.



You have to consider the AI a lot when modding. Border forts are there for the AI at the end of the day. Taking them out gives a better game, but the AI's inability to counterspy effectively makes it a sitting duck - so this has to be compensated for.


Aye. I'm going to have to spend much more time using -ian mode to be in a position to comment further on that but I'm preoccupied with a campaign, for the time being.


Removing BWTs from the game? I'm uneasy about this because it transforms the first crucial decades of the campaign. The 3-D battles would become something of a game of bluff - OK, so you get told they have brought 600 more men than you have but are they just going to be trash-troops or are they way more teched-up than yours as well? There's a lot of building and troop mobilisation to be done in the first 20 turns and I'd never find the time to squeeze in the necessary agents. As you said, the AI can see the entire map, so it has nothing like this disadvantage.

I've had campaigns where I've transitioned from Early to High before I've had enough spare funds to even build the Citadel so, in return for losing the BWTs, I'd expect to be able to set up the brothel in a lower-level of fortification (Keep + curtain wall, perhaps).


Incidentally, that miraculous ability to see hundreds of miles into enemy territory is rationalised, by the game developers, as being due to your border guards stopping and interviewing passing travellers. So it's based on the 'rumour mill', somewhat.

In past threads, I have argued things such as certain agent types having primary duties to perform - bishops preaching, emissaries and princesses attending at court - which would largely preclude them from doing any more than the most cursory surveillance work, without immediately arousing suspicion. Similarly, I think that rumour-based reports, from the border, should only give you approximate troop numbers, not the details (until invasion occurs, so you DO get details in the pre-battle screen), so you are obliged to get a proper spy in to do the job. Info panels fully or partially masked by '?' icons and perhaps a ration of one or two fresh 'reveals' per year, forcing agents to stick around longer, could have made life interesting...

[caravel]

Removing BWTs from the game? I'm uneasy about this because it transforms the first crucial decades of the campaign. The 3-D battles would become something of a game of bluff - OK, so you get told they have brought 600 more men than you have but are they just going to be trash-troops or are they way more teched-up than yours as well? There's a lot of building and troop mobilisation to be done in the first 20 turns and I'd never find the time to squeeze in the necessary agents. As you said, the AI can see the entire map, so it has nothing like this disadvantage.
I actually like this aspect of it. It kind of represents me hearing word of 1000's of men coming my way but having no real intelligence as to their quality. Unpredictable battles can be very interesting.

I've had campaigns where I've transitioned from Early to High before I've had enough spare funds to even build the Citadel so, in return for losing the BWTs, I'd expect to be able to set up the brothel in a lower-level of fortification (Keep + curtain wall, perhaps).
The pocket mod does actually allow earlier access to the brothel. It is cheaper and takes less time to build also.

Incidentally, that miraculous ability to see hundreds of miles into enemy territory is rationalised, by the game developers, as being due to your border guards stopping and interviewing passing travellers. So it's based on the 'rumour mill', somewhat.
Indeed though the border watch towers deliver exacting info on the make up of the enemies' armies and their stats and the generals stats, and even his vices! Those watchtowers must have satellite uplinks and squadrons of spy planes operating from them. Rumours alone cannot reveal that kind of in depth intelligence. For me it's far more interesting to have send in an emissary or spy, it would also give me some incentive to actually train emissaries at all. I usually only keep one for bribing or stripping titles. If I'm brokering alliances or ceasefires (I rarely bother with diplomacy) I usually send a priest.

In past threads, I have argued things such as certain agent types having primary duties to perform - bishops preaching, emissaries and princesses attending at court - which would largely preclude them from doing any more than the most cursory surveillance work, without immediately arousing suspicion. Similarly, I think that rumour-based reports, from the border, should only give you approximate troop numbers, not the details (until invasion occurs, so you DO get details in the pre-battle screen), so you are obliged to get a proper spy in to do the job. Info panels fully or partially masked by '?' icons and perhaps a ration of one or two fresh 'reveals' per year, forcing agents to stick around longer, could have made life interesting...
I would be against getting full details from the pre-battle screen. If you have spies in there you should get info as to their type and numbers on that screen, though not their valour or armour weapons upgrades. Perhaps the level of intelligence could have depended on the level of the spy? I agree about emissaries only giving partial information. Such an emissary cannot go snooping around the barracks when he feels like it, to see what quality of weapons the enemy are using. It would also make sense if the assassin/spy/emissary would need to return to your provinces in order to bring that intelligence to your ears (instead of making a long distance call from Bavaria to Constantinople). During that time of course the make up of the enemy's army stack could have changed.

[Martok]

I actually like this aspect of it. It kind of represents me hearing word of 1000's of men coming my way but having no real intelligence as to their quality. Unpredictable battles can be very interesting.
I definitely concur with this. One thing I've always liked about Shogun is that while I knew how many men the enemy had, I had no knowledge of his actual army composition (lots of Ashigaru? archer-heavy? etc.). And while I certainly don't mind knowing *some* specifics, I do think VI goes a little far in how much information one gets about the armies around you.

Also, a by-the-by: For those who are interested, here's a link (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54932) to a thread started by sbroadbent. It's not an official guide, but it does contain a lot of useful information on MTW agents and how they work. :yes:

[EatYerGreens]

Caravel is right (as usual). My stance was genuinely felt, rather than a deliberate straw-man - not that I'm above making deliberate efforts at drawing out better opinions from people by posting some naff ideas of my own :beam:


I wouldn't mind the lack of info about the enemy forces so much if there was a mechanism in the game to pre-set a desired path of retreat for my stacks (invariably, the province abandonment option sends your retreating forces exactly where you didn't want them to go, leaving one province massively over-stocked and another province - which is now two moves away - virtually unprotected).

Similarly, it would be handy to be able to predetermine a selection of units to sit out the siege (as things stand, units which were inside the castle at the start of a turn appear outside of it after successful defence of an invasion), so that you could safely select the 'retreat to your stronghold' option, simultaneously have the main army stack evacuate (to defend the fall-back province) *and* have a garrison of just 60 keep the enemy at bay for years (enough time to organise a siege-lift operation), rather than have 420 (of the computer's choice) who will then starve, pointlessly, in 2 years, or less. (Annoyingly, many an AI faction dies a death precisely because of this behaviour - losing more in sieges than on the battlefields).

If you do opt to go into 3D battle, review the enemy units as they approach you, decide you're going to get steamrollered and withdraw off the map before the fighting starts, you then end up with one of your top generals trapped in the :furious3: castle! This hardly does any favours for your chance of mounting a successful rescue bid (the scenario involves being heavily outnumbered in the first attack and this is unlikely to improve in the time available).

I've had the game for years but I'm far from being a 'skilled player' so I'm less inclined to take my chances with my better generals.

More than once I've lost battles where I made a valiant stand against the first 2000 or so but eventually just run out of men (with reinforcements or not), or they've become totally exhausted, or the overall army formation got scattered as units chased routers away (I'm a 'no pause' battler, so I over-focus on one key area of action and miss the secondary stuff going on, so all my better units are in all the wrong places) and I'm eventually pushed off the field by the 500-odd, peasant-grade stuff left from the last wave. Galling.


EDIT: I've bumped the sbroadbent thread with a fresh reply.

[Deus ret.]

you then end up with one of your top generals trapped in the :furious3: castle!

And to add shame to insult, he'll probably have aqcuired the 'good runner' vice (or a similar one) for retreating from the battlefield, as well as lose a command star :no: well at least he won't be your top general anymore, as a little consolation in case the castle falls....

[Caerfanan]

And to add shame to insult, he'll probably have aqcuired the 'good runner' vice (or a similar one) for retreating from the battlefield, as well as lose a command star :no: well at least he won't be your top general anymore, as a little consolation in case the castle falls....
Worse: if you loose a battle, where you were 400 aainst 4000, you kill 1500 then root, you'll losse stars and have the reputaiton of a sissy.... Maybe that part of the command stars is based on reputation only, in that cas, the basic soldier will know you as 'the guy who lost there',without knowing that you were outnumbured 10:1...

[caravel]

Sieges in MTW simply don't work because of the time scale. MTW's time scale of 1 year per turn doesn't help at all. For siege warfare you need a 1 month per turn time scale or at least four seasons. This way multiple assasult attempts can be made. At present a well equipped citadel with a strong garrison will still probably only last 2 years before it falls. A 2 year siege is a very long time in real time terms, but in game terms two turns for a siege is pretty pathetic. Between six to ten turns would be reasonable and would increase the chances of the AI trying to assault. Selecting the men that remain behind in the siege would have been desirable.

In terms of battles, the game uses a kind of "chivalric" model I suppose. That is that if a general takes an army off to attack a castle and capture it, he is expected to do just that, and not return again empty handed. This leaves no room for skirmishes or raids or indeed tactical victories. You general may have fought off and destroyed an enemy three times the size of his army but then withdrawn his men when it had become apparent that he could simply not win against the subsequent waves. On returning to the campaign map you may see "eager to retreat" or worse. Which is not very just.

[Martok]

Worse: if you loose a battle, where you were 400 aainst 4000, you kill 1500 then root, you'll losse stars and have the reputaiton of a sissy.... Maybe that part of the command stars is based on reputation only, in that cas, the basic soldier will know you as 'the guy who lost there',without knowing that you were outnumbured 10:1...

In terms of battles, the game uses a kind of "chivalric" model I suppose. That is that if a general takes an army off to attack a castle and capture it, he is expected to do just that, and not return again empty handed. This leaves no room for skirmishes or raids or indeed tactical victories. You general may have fought off and destroyed an enemy three times the size of his army but then withdrawn his men when it had become apparent that he could simply not win against the subsequent waves. On returning to the campaign map you may see "eager to retreat" or worse. Which is not very just.
I agree that this aspect has always bothered me as well. In real life, were a general to have pulled off such a "Pyrrhic defeat" (causing the enemy disproportionate casualties before withdrawing), the morale of his men would probably skyrocket -- they'd be laughing all the way home about their "defeat". :beam:

To instead punish generals for withdrawing in those situations is a discredit. 'Tis a pity a general can't earn traits like "Skilled/Expert Raider" or "Skilled/Expert Tactical Withdrawls"....

[EatYerGreens]

I am at a 'sticky' stage in my current campaign where I can see no way forward other than an attrition strategy and a long string of battles which will, technically, be defeats. It's 1307-ish but I started this in Early and will run out of time (conquest mode) at this pace of progress... :shame:

Me: English, currently excommunicated (likely to remain so for next 20 yrs)
Frontline facing Danes (allied): Norway
Frontline facing HRE: Flanders-Lorraine-Isle-de-France-Anjou-Toulouse
Frontline facing Egypt: Algeria (a crusade, about to take its target)

I stupidly abandoned Burgundy, which I'd held for decades, when the HRE barged me out with superior numbers and coming from a direction which avoided a long-anticipated river battle. :gah2:
Now I can't take it back, from any direction, without a river battle, other than having my entire force coming out of Lorraine.

HRE has long had an obsession with Friesland - always three to five stacks - but never setting foot in Flanders, against a garrison of mine, which was half that size for a long time. Now they're doing the same with Burgundy, which has grown to 6-8 stacks in the past few turns. (Even if I thought I could actually beat those kinds of numbers, I simply don't have the time for monumental battles like that).

HRE hold Provence with a beatable-sized garrison but that's a river crossing, again, as well as similarly opening the door to the whole interior of France if their Burgundy force decides to move in.

They've left Swabia and other provinces in the middle of their line, lightly defended and I could raid these at any time but only at great risk to my own holdings. My last attempt at a smash and grab was immediately forced out by a huge siege-lift force and they can draw on their excess stacks from either Burgundy or Friesland to do this again, wherever I choose to go.


On the plus side, my troop centres have been spitting out 1 and 2-star generals like noboby's business recently - every time it's a CMAA/CS or anything on horseback, it seems - so it's not as if I have no choice but to get bad traits slapped onto my best leaders. I also have a lot of longbow units and a handful of light 'assault infantry' (Gallowglass/Clansmen) sitting idle.

What I have in mind is a series of attacks using some of the 2-star generals as leaders, marching up to within range of their line, have an archery duel, then throw in the G&C's for some quick mayhem and then try and withdraw off the field gracefully. If I think I can get away with it (time-limit OFF) I might even stick around long enough to bring on reinforcements, to rinse and repeat.

Although it's unlikely that I can get away with this tactic for long without melee action occurring somewhere, initiated by the HRE, hopefully I can keep contact to a minimum. With a 2-star in command and a decent leader in charge of them, all that will happen is a mass-rout and probably some hefty ransoms to pay, afterwards.

Like I said, if anything, I have an excess of these low-rated generals at the moment and it won't hurt to have some of them 'demoted', so to speak. At the same time, I can whittle their forces down to levels where I'd be more comfortable about a province-take attempt. If my desert forces can make further progress across Africa, it should cushion the hit on influence from the string of 'defeats'.

Also, it means that I at least get some battles done, instead of long sessions of 'End Turn', just waiting for the HRE to strike me in the vitals...

Incidentally, the Golden Horde are doing rather well for themselves in this campaign. They have Khazar, they have Greece, they have Prussia & Pomerania and north as far as Muscovy. Novgorod's last province won't hold for much longer. Strangely, the HRE are doing little to stop their advances on the eastern front and are concentrating on holding me back. They are going to get all-but swallowed up, if this goes on much longer.

If I attempt to crusade through/around HRE to fight the Horde, my only remaining trade partners will then be the Danes (2 ports), Italians (1 port), Sicily (1) and the Pope (1), apart from an unlikely ceasefire with Egypt. I have barely 20,000 in the bank and I expect I'd need well over 100k to stand a chance of pushing back the horde, against a sustained negative cashflow.


Note: I'm not looking for suggestions just yet, I'm just making a point about situations where the choice is 'attrition-defeats' or complete stagnation.

[Deus ret.]

Basically your attrition tactic sounds quite good under the circumstances, especially as you have an appropriate unit roster. Unfortunately the game's mechanics don't favour such a hit-and-run approach, because being defeated on or retreating otherwise from the battlefield will not only scrap your generals, but your king's influence before long. You can only lose so many battles before the generals start getting unruly, even if you inflict much more casualties than you mourn yourself :shrug:

Oh, and the behaviour of the HRE seems indeed strange, but apparently that's just the way it is with the AI. I witnessed it in the extremes while I was playing the HRE myself and the Aragonese bordered me in Provence. Sometime they got into a war with the Spanish in Iberia and lost badly, ceding province after province with little to no resistance to the Castilians while at the same time maintaining a border force of about 4 full stacks in Toulouse :dizzy2: and we weren't even at war.... I attributed this behaviour to the HRE being the most-hated faction around but now that you observe quite similar instances it may be independent of faction.