A collection of rules/styles to make the game more enjoyable.

[RickooClan]

Hi everyone, i would like to start a thread to collect everyone's gaming rules/playing styles in m2tw, which is intended to make the game much fun, enjoyable, realistic or challenging. :beam:

So you could post your rules/styles in here, follow with some brief description as you like. Hopefully, everyone could find something interesting here and bring those into their game too.

Surely i will make the start:

1. Only city/castle with general can recruit or build
2. Only generals can lead army to attack
3. No adoption of generals, all generals must be royal blooded or tied
4. Never attack other Catholic faction unless they attack you first
5. Never break alliance (No betray)
6. Never got excommunicated
7. No active spying, no asissants
8. No execution of prisoners
9. Only occupying cities
10. Take part and make best effort for every Crusade
11. Never building forts
12. Never save/reload for favor

Descriptions:

1,2,3: These rules make the uses and lives of general more precious as they are very very limit in numbers. This also encourage a slow pace campaign as every city/castle require a general to run + encouraging role playing of generals/family tree.

4~10: Role playing as a chivalrous and piety kingdom, this also make the game more challenging

11: As the AI cant really make use of them, just to be fair.

12: As it says.


I find my VH/VH game much more enjoyable after these rules applied compare with my other "free style" campaigns. I especially like rule 1 and 3 only with them i will really get into detailing of VnVs, general breeding and such. (And they are quite fun post 1.02 too! ). It also force my campaign into slow pace but every city/castle are well planned and overall the kingdom is much solid.

Cant wait for the full release of 1.02 (or 1.03??) and start a new campaign with these! :beam:

p.s. and i am looking forward to see yours game rules/styles as well!

[MStumm]

How about the dishonorable/tyrannical rule set?


Never release/ransom
Always try to be excommunicated
Never become pope
Never upgrade/build churches
Never train priests
Have 4-5 units of peasants in every army and send them in the first wave
Never build happiness buildings
Always exterminate settlements


I haven't actually tried playing like that, except for the peasant rule. Not sure how far its possible to get without churches and happiness buildings.

[sbroadbent]

I haven't actually tried playing like that, except for the peasant rule. Not sure how far its possible to get without churches and happiness buildings.

I would suspect you wouldn't get very far. First of all, if you take a province which is not of your religion you have huge religion penalties. Not building happiness buildings would mean that you'd need a huge garrison or otherwise you'd be facing rebellion/revolts, and as a population increases in size the size of the garrison needs to increase to maintain the same amount of Public Order. One option would be to convert all places to castles (if possible). Each time a place revolts that is one less turn of income, and a greater cost to replenish your troops.

The only way you could do this is if you blitzed the map and simply let the places go rebel, or sell off your acquired territories to rich factions. Of course, how boring would that be.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

get as many 0of your princesses disgraced as possible (with really old guys):2thumbsup:

[Shahed]

lol

[Budwise]

How about the dishonorable/tyrannical rule set?


Never release/ransom
Always try to be excommunicated
Never become pope
Never upgrade/build churches
Never train priests
Have 4-5 units of peasants in every army and send them in the first wave
Never build happiness buildings
Always exterminate settlements


I haven't actually tried playing like that, except for the peasant rule. Not sure how far its possible to get without churches and happiness buildings.

OMFG, thats gruesome. I tried to stay neutral but my empire is highly turning Chiverous and I think trying that way next would be killer for fun.

Count me in next campaign.

[RickooClan]

How about the dishonorable/tyrannical rule set?


Always try to be excommunicated


I haven't actually tried playing like that, except for the peasant rule. Not sure how far its possible to get without churches and happiness buildings.

I think this would actually make the game challenging, especially if a catholic faction get excommunicated in the early rounds of game. Which would simply put your kingdom in war with everyone right at the start. :laugh4:

[Didz]

I think that would depend on playing style. Its clear from many posters that ex-communication is not considered an issue for them because they prefer a 'slash and burn' style of game.

It also depends on ones definition of a challenge. For some the only challenge worth pursuing is that of pwning every AI opponent and smashing your way to victory. But the game offers a lot of other options and personally I've stopped playing anything other than the short campaigns now, simply because I find that restricting myself to the limited objectives set by the small campaign victory settings makes the game more challenging as I have to deal with those factions who are deliberately targetting me without getting distracted from my own goals.

In my Venetian Campaign for example the French are being a real p-in-the-a but my target are the Byzantines so I'm having to block in the west whilst attacking in the east and have been forced to negotiate with the Mongol horde to gain their assistance in achieving the downfall of Byzantium. Under those circumstances having a high Pope rating makes sense as it keeps the other catholic factions in check whilst I deal with the Othodox heretic.

[sapi]

I think this would actually make the game challenging, especially if a catholic faction get excommunicated in the early rounds of game. Which would simply put your kingdom in war with everyone right at the start.I find that that's not really an issue....

As for mine, I'd like to try having only one professional army, always led by the heir or king, with everything else garrisoned by militias.

[Didz]

The other challenge with the short campaign mode is that you have to acheive your pre-set objectives whilst preventing your opponents acheiving theirs.

I finished an RTW short campaign last night which went right to the wire on objectives. I was playing the House of Brutii and had to eliminate the Macedonian and Greek factions whilst holding 15 provinces.

Quite early in the game I was informed that both the Britons and the Eygptians were close to victory. A quick check revealed that Briton only needed two more provinces and would acheive that by eliminating the last two Gallic towns to win. Likewise, Eygpt had more than enough provinces and only had one more Selucid and two more Armenian cities to destroy.

The problems I immediately faced were that Rome was at war with the Gauls and allied to the Britons. In fact, the Julii were aiding the Britons in destroying the Gauls and so I had to dispatch an army to deliberately trigger a war between the Julii and the Britons whilst at the same time feed money to the Gauls to keep them from going under.

Likewise, in Egypt I had to feed money to both the Selucids and the Armenians to try and keep them alive. The Armenians refused to allow me to send military aid to their country and in the end the Selucids were destroyed and I just managed to eliminate the last Macedonian city as the Eygptians beseiged the last Armenian town.

[sapi]

I never thought of it like that :grin2:

Interesting :thumbsup:

[HoreTore]

No happiness buildings?

Why, oh why, would a tyrant never build a brothel?!

[Didz]

Interesting :thumbsup:
Its worth giving it a try. It can lead to some bizarre situations. I actually found myself in the last game desperately trying to persuade a very suspicious Gallic Warlord that I really, really, really did want to give him the city I had just liberated from the Britons.

He refused to beleive me, convinced that it was all part of some devious Roman plot. Likewise, the Armenians absolutely refused to let my army march through their country despite the fact that we were allies and both at war with Eygpt and that there was a huge Egyptian Army bearing down on their capital, so all I could do was throw bags of gold over the city walls and hope they were being put to good use.

On top of that the Senate were getting really irritated with my seemingly irrational behaviour. Its the first time I've ever seen a senate order telling me to get out of an allies territory, I ignored it of course as the ally was Briton and I was determined to start a war, but I half expected to trigger a civil war within the SQPR.

[Skott]

I would suspect you wouldn't get very far. First of all, if you take a province which is not of your religion you have huge religion penalties. Not building happiness buildings would mean that you'd need a huge garrison or otherwise you'd be facing rebellion/revolts, and as a population increases in size the size of the garrison needs to increase to maintain the same amount of Public Order. One option would be to convert all places to castles (if possible). Each time a place revolts that is one less turn of income, and a greater cost to replenish your troops.

The only way you could do this is if you blitzed the map and simply let the places go rebel, or sell off your acquired territories to rich factions. Of course, how boring would that be.


I dont know. You could just sack or exterminate your own cities as they become uncontrollable. That would fit in with the theme of a tyrant or evil leader. Definetely a negative type theme play but if thats what interests you it could be done.

As someone mentioned above the game does lends itself to different variations as to how you wish to play since you are allowed to make up some of these rules yourself despite what the game coding allows.

[RickooClan]

As for mine, I'd like to try having only one professional army, always led by the heir or king, with everything else garrisoned by militias.

This sounds interesting too...*taking notes*
:book:

[microbus]

get as many 0of your princesses disgraced as possible (with really old guys):2thumbsup:

I get my pricesses to aout 34 then mary them to a young general at the moment my only princess who is not 38 is married to a prince aged 19 :laugh4:

[TevashSzat]

If you are into a more Civilization type of play, you could also always auto-resolve except for during sieges.

[Bearclaw]

In my most recent game (with Lusted's LtC, which makes it possible to make vassals) as Spain, I have made every Christian nation my vassal and now I'm playing as the leader of a Christian alliance, fighting off the Byzantines, Russia, and Turkey, who are the top 3 nations. It's been a lot of fun lording over all of Europe without having to garrison it, and having everyone pay me tribute.

I also like to play a Viking-style. The goal is to run a major deficit budget but make money off of sacking only. It's tight in the beginning, when you have to just send everything you have at the nearest city and you get small rewards, but pretty soon you'll be able to make tons of money and get several armies in the field. The rules I play by are:
1) Heavy infantry only. I have a thing for Vikings, so I play with Viking Raiders, Dismounted Huscarls and Norse Axemen only, and only as the Danes.
2) Run your budget as far in the red as you can. The trick is to pillage quickly enough to keep yourself afloat.



I just thought of something else: Win a campaign without using large armies, max size like 6 units or so. That would really force you to win with strategy and not with superior numbers/superior troops.

Actually, that sounds pretty interesting; I think I'm going to try it out soon. Anyone have any other rule suggestions? Or faction suggestions? At first look, I'm thinking the Turks would be good, maybe Russia, maybe Sicily. Turks because they have good troops for light harassment, and they don't have to face heavy European troops early on. Russia for most of the same reasons. Sicily gets good troops, and they can definitely be a naval nation, so they can compensate for weakness on land by ruling the seas and dropping small armies on undefended cities.

[Didz]

I played an STW campaign once where I did not allow myself to declare war on any other faction or attack any city unless it was owned by Rebels.

I called it 'The War of the Shadows' as the technique required heavy use of ninja's, geisha's and whatever the spies were called. The only way to expand was to cause revolts and assassinate enemy shoguns until their cities went Rebel and then go in a liberate them.

[Bearclaw]

Okay, so here's my "6-unit army" campaign rules:
1) Armies must be no larger than 6 units. Generals don't count, but there can only be one per army.
2) That's it.


In order to compensate for my huge disadvantage on land, I'm going to put extra focus on navies and agents. However, I've set some extra restrictions on my own campaign, because you could easily just use a few exploits to get around the 6-unit limitation.

1) I won't blitz my neighbors early on. It would be easy to expand quickly before anyone else has big armies and secure a nice financial advantage. The point is to make the game very difficult.
2) I won't cheat by having several 6-unit armies attack together. I will, however, try to overwhelm the enemy by attacking in several places at once, and then slipping away if he tries to attack with a much larger army.
3) I won't spam agents to make enemy cities revolt. I will probably use spies in the field to keep me well-informed and assassins to take out dangerous generals.


I'm thinking about playing as Russia/Turkey, Sicily, or England. Russia/Turkey have large provinces with horse archers, which would make it very easy to harass the enemy and then fade away. Sicily is well positioned to be a naval superpower and launch surprise attacks on its enemies. England has longbows, which will hopefully even the odds a bit, and the stakes can protect me from a devastating charge.

Note: I'll be playing on Lusted's LtC, so results may vary.

[phonicsmonkey]

One thing I've been doing in my current Venetian VH/H campaign is refusing to field a particular troop type until I am sure the relevant AI is also able to field them. For example I have gunpowder troops available but I know that my european friends have not yet begun to build them, so I'll wait until they can and stick to crossbows and siege weapons until then...

Impatience is starting to inspire some interesting tactics, like funding my enemies with all my spare cash and sabotaging their siege works in order to try to get them to build cannon foundries instead...

that also reminds me that early in my campaign I decided to choose my long-term allies and enemies in europe. With trusted alliances enabled i've built a power block with Poland and England, and I've been funding Spain for centuries with my excess cash at the end of each turn:2thumbsup: , building them up for a final confrontation, hopefully on two continents when the New World is discovered....

[sapi]

Its worth giving it a try. It can lead to some bizarre situations. I actually found myself in the last game desperately trying to persuade a very suspicious Gallic Warlord that I really, really, really did want to give him the city I had just liberated from the Britons.

He refused to beleive me, convinced that it was all part of some devious Roman plot. Likewise, the Armenians absolutely refused to let my army march through their country despite the fact that we were allies and both at war with Eygpt and that there was a huge Egyptian Army bearing down on their capital, so all I could do was throw bags of gold over the city walls and hope they were being put to good use.

On top of that the Senate were getting really irritated with my seemingly irrational behaviour. Its the first time I've ever seen a senate order telling me to get out of an allies territory, I ignored it of course as the ally was Briton and I was determined to start a war, but I half expected to trigger a civil war within the SQPR.
I can imagine that the Senate would have been slightly surprised to watch you march into the lands of your most hated foe in order to defend them from a long time ally :idea2:

[SirRethcir]

@RickooClan

In addition to your points (1,2,4,5,6,10,12 - I'm using myself in most of my campaigns) you can deepen the role playing part by imagine you are the Leader of your faction. That means all battles are autoresolved except those in witch your faction leader is involved.
It's fun on VH/VH. :laugh4:

[Matty]

I restrict myself to one castle and any other troops have to come from cities. In future I am also going to keep my wealth below 50.000 florins and give away the excess - I have yet to decide how, but suspect a Machiavellian twist of supporting the enemies of my enemies....

[RickooClan]

@RickooClan

In addition to your points (1,2,4,5,6,10,12 - I'm using myself in most of my campaigns) you can deepen the role playing part by imagine you are the Leader of your faction. That means all battles are autoresolved except those in witch your faction leader is involved.
It's fun on VH/VH. :laugh4:

Interesting! Actually i did try to role play my game in an ultimate style that i switch to "general view camara" in all battles in RTW. That means all i can see is what the general unit can see on the battlefield! :laugh4:

However, very soon i have to give up because in siege battle i just cant manage whats going on as most of the units are out of my sight!

@Bearclaw

I can imagine your 6 units campaign will be very difficult and challenging. I think i might take your concept but with a 10 units setup including general. (So half my force compare to AI)

[_Tristan_]

I've started a 1.1 Hungarian campaign and have restrained myself to attacking only rebel settlements.

I'm on turn 48 and the AI Controlled Milan (former ally) have just betrayed me and tried to grab Zagreb...

The only unprovoked attack I've made is participating in a crusade on Antioch (rebel at the start but Egypt-owned when i got there).

However, I try to force Ai controlled cities to rebel to gain control (the first are starting to riot).

On the matter of characters, I try to keep every character on the left side of the family tree, by accepting only princesse mariage and heir adoptions.

I've allied with every single faction except the Moors and the Egyptians (the Moors have a trade deal), the Egyptians were crusaded (???) before I could reach them with a diplomat.

I've have about 5 factions on Very Good to Perfect Standing, 3 more on Good and the rest on Reasonable, only two are under So-so.

I even forestalled the annihilation of my allies the Danes by gifting them Aleppo... The Viking Kingdom is now found only in the Middle-East with a huge stack around Ahrus.

Thus my rules are :
1/ Always fight with less than 3:1 odds (equal or 2:1 being the best)
2/ Try to match army type (fighting Infantry with Infantry)
3/ Make use of all agents
4/ Make alliances with any and all and try to keep them as long as possible.
5/ After wars, try to get a ceasefire ASAP
6/ Try to get warring factions to cease fighting.
7/ Gift money or territories to your allies to prevent extinction, give military help also if possible.
8/ Try to get only family member generals and if possible only on the direct line of descent.

[Durallan]

I've started a 1.1 Hungarian campaign and have restrained myself to attacking only rebel settlements.

I'm on turn 48 and the AI Controlled Milan (former ally) have just betrayed me and tried to grab Zagreb...

The only unprovoked attack I've made is participating in a crusade on Antioch (rebel at the start but Egypt-owned when i got there).

However, I try to force Ai controlled cities to rebel to gain control (the first are starting to riot).

On the matter of characters, I try to keep every character on the left side of the family tree, by accepting only princesse mariage and heir adoptions.

I've allied with every single faction except the Moors and the Egyptians (the Moors have a trade deal), the Egyptians were crusaded (???) before I could reach them with a diplomat.

I've have about 5 factions on Very Good to Perfect Standing, 3 more on Good and the rest on Reasonable, only two are under So-so.

I even forestalled the annihilation of my allies the Danes by gifting them Aleppo... The Viking Kingdom is now found only in the Middle-East with a huge stack around Ahrus.

Thus my rules are :
1/ Always fight with less than 3:1 odds (equal or 2:1 being the best)
2/ Try to match army type (fighting Infantry with Infantry)
3/ Make use of all agents
4/ Make alliances with any and all and try to keep them as long as possible.
5/ After wars, try to get a ceasefire ASAP
6/ Try to get warring factions to cease fighting.
7/ Gift money or territories to your allies to prevent extinction, give military help also if possible.
8/ Try to get only family member generals and if possible only on the direct line of descent.
direct line of descent can be hard sometimes, because it will mean that you have to let your king go to valhalla so you can marry the newest faction heir to a princess. I have managed to do it for 280 turns, all my kings are on the left hand side of the family tree. Quite proud of that.

[Calavera]

get as many 0of your princesses disgraced as possible (with really old guys):2thumbsup:

Can you still get princesses in an incestuous relationship with a family member, or did that not make it into MTW2?

[Jokerkaaos]

This isn't exactly a ruleset, but it's an experiment I'm trying to give myself a challenge. I call it "I... am Jerusalem!"

What I did was to start a long campaign as England on vh/vh. Immediately, all my units except one in each town for a garrison (for now), were loaded onto my navy and headed for the holy land. The idea is to relocate completely, heading directly for Jerusalem, taking it, then allowing all your original provinces to go rebel (you're welcome, Scots).

I dropped my diplomat in northern France and my princess in Portugal, both to work their way east doing what they do. I dropped my merchant off in north Africa to head for the gold mines. Every other unit headed directly for Jerusalem. No stop along the way - no turning back (though you might want to leave one ship behind for when Henry matures a few turns into the game so you can bring him along).

When I arrived, Egypt had already taken Jerusalem in force. It was quite a nasty fight to take it, and now I am at war with Egypt and 20 or so turns behind them in development. I disbanded the garrisons in my original provinces, sold off everything except the churches (so as not to anger The Hat), set the tax rate to very high, and watched them go rebel.

These were really the only "rules" I set up for it: no stops before taking Jerusalem, no development or recruitment in original provinces at ALL (just starting units until taking Jerusalem), and Jerusalem must remain my capital.

It's pretty fun so far. Giving the AI a head start helps it a lot.

[TinCow]

I'm a big fan of "relocation" as well, using pretty much the exact same rules as Jokerkaaos. So far I have done this in the following ways, and enjoyed them all immensely:

England relocated to the Middle East.
Turks relocated to England.
Denmark relocated to Mediterranean islands.

I am also considering the following relocations, but am waiting for patch 1.2 to start a new campaign:

Byzantium to Iberia
Russia to North Africa

[USMCNJ]

1) Only family members can lead armies
2) Never start a war with a catholic faction
3) Always stay friendly with the Pope
4) Never sack/exterminate catholic cities
5) Always release catholic prisoners

[steev]

I once played an RTW campaign as Egypt where I never built any unit upgrade buildings, so my force was mostly peasants and militia, with triple gold chevrons... worked well at first but soon got bogged down with heavy casualties and contsant retraining when fighting Armoured Hoplites etc..

My first MTW2 game I didnt know any rules (my manual is in Thai, which I can't read), so i didnt bother building any churches or priests... it was the most fun game i had, but i gave up on that too cos I'd set the conditions to show all AI moves and that soon took longer than my own moves... I was playing England and the Inquisitors really got out of control when I took Bruges and Antwerp and they were about 25% heretic... inquisitors slaughtered all my generals, my king, everyone - really a blast... and I was still making good progress despite getting ex-commed all the time...
...
now that i know how to play the game, its a lot less fun - i miss all those crazy inquisitors...
maybe i should draw up a set of "Religious Mayhem" campaign rules...

[uanime5]

Only your capital can be a city, the rest must be castles.
No settlement can have a port, nor can mercenary ships be hired
You cannot go to war with any faction, other than Rebels. Though you can attack any army that attacks your castles or capital.
Armies can only be lead by the Faction Leader or Heir


While this seems to make the game easy, by creating a lot of stable and secure settlements, converting everywhere into castles really screws up your economy since castles cannot improve their trade or train agents.

Since most rebel provinces are captured early on you cannot expand your Empire unless a neighbouring faction's settlement rebels or a neighbouring faction is destroyed. Consequently you have to train spys, assassins, and diplomats in your capital then send them to your neighbours to causes settlements to rebel, faction families to dies out, and cause wars or bribe enemy armies. The restrictions on army's leaders ensure that you can only have two armies at any one time.

These rules give the AI more time to build up their armies.

[RickooClan]

Only your capital can be a city, the rest must be castles.
No settlement can have a port, nor can mercenary ships be hired
You cannot go to war with any faction, other than Rebels. Though you can attack any army that attacks your castles or capital.
Armies can only be lead by the Faction Leader or Heir



Wow! your rules are pretty harsh and why ports or ships cant be built? (just for lower the players income?)

@Jokerkaaos & TinCow

Your " reloacation " game styles sounds fun and it is like am European style of Mongol Horde getting to the holy land! :laugh4:

@ Tristan de Castelreng

I have tried the "rebel" enemy land style back in STW too. As i remebered there is a clan who have discount n training agents [cant remember the name but they are blue in colour. Sometimes i just send 20+ spies into an enemy province in a turn and it just turn into rebel instantly! That was a lot of fun.