Anybody Win as Turks? How?

[dancho]

Oh go ahead-- tell me. I've been playing them on 'normal' in the early period-- and getting killed.

I tried attacking the Byzantines and they steamrolled me. Next game, I tried attacking the Egyptians and they steamrolled me and then the Byzantines buffed me to a high gloss.

So I tried the path of peace. I sent my emissaries north to bribe the rebels, and many of the pagans came to Islam and I built a port and built ships and traded and made money. I had started to build a Grand Mosque when the Golden Horde arrived and my soldiers died heroically, taking many of the Tartars with them.

I am out of ideas. The Roman generals are all super-studs. My generals are punks and drunks. The Egyptians have wonderful generals and masses of hemp-crazed peasants who die in large numbers and overwhelm my professionals with attrition. I use Jihads, agents, infantry armies, cavalry armies, combo armies-- nothings. I lose always-- ALWAYS.

Was not like this in Iran...

[Iphikrates]

I did really well in an early Turk campaign on expert.

The trick, I think, is to hit the Egyptians immediately before they can convert their ridiculously large annual income into soldiers. Just keep pumping out your best troop types and attacking them.

I don't like to take on the Byzantines until I can build Saracen infantry to take on their kataphraktoi.

[Dracleath]

There are 3 keys to the turks:

1. Attack Egypt immediately. Don't wait to build up troops or whatever, hit them early and hard. If you are lucky or good you should be able to eliminate them before they really get going. Be sure to produce armenian cav in the provinces that will support it (rum and armenia) and horse archers everywhere else, these are in general superior to what the egyptians will put up and are availible in the first few turns.

2. Get saracen infantry ASAP. This is your mainstay, it's approximately equal to chivalric seargents and easier to get. Support them with Armenian Heavy cav, ottoman infantry (decent archers, can fill in gaps when you need them to) horce archers, etc.

3. When you get to a reasonable size and income, go grab an iron province (need it for weaponsmith, hungary is a good option here) and tech it up to janissaries. Max out the armorer and weaponsmith when you get the chance. Produce Jann heavy infantry, back it up with all the usual stuff. +3/+3 heavy janns will rip through any meelee unit in the game, period.

[ltj]

just for kicks i started up a turk game. i took two provinces, and kill the egyptian king. faction gone.

occupy province, hit enter

egyptions re-appear, holding all original territories except one.

wow they took a one year vacation, nice, and found an ultra elite army in the meantime. cool. i like that. really.

[malkuth]

You got to keep loyality at 200% to keep them from coming back in those providences. They will still come back somewhere else though.

Good Barrecks units would be UM or Peasants.

[dancho]

Thanks for the encouraging words...

About those Egyptians-- I found one of my Turkish generals had been 'born again.' I am beginning to see a theme here-- perhaps to conquer Christendom I will need to be wiped out, and born again!

Praise Be!

[dancho]

(A Follow Up)

I have put your advice into practice, and...

SUCCESS! (so far)

The Egyptian Sultan is dead! This is by far the best I have done with the Turks! If I can survive the Crusades and whup the Byzants (big 'if') I shall look forward to terrorizing the Balkans.

Thanks again!

[Vanya]

GAH!

Vanya's successful Turkish campaign went like this.

Early on, tech up to get Saracens. I didn't bother attacking anybody until I got them. Then, I went after the Byzantines. I had some problems with the kats, but the Saracens really came through there. Regular spearmen proved they had problems with kats. The first strike went north into Armenia, Khazar and Crimea. All fell fairly easily. The real fight was in Anatolia. Eventually, I grabbed Constantinople without a fight (twice) before finally pushing the Byzantines out of Anatolia alltogether. Their last vestiges were in the upper balkans, near Kiev. But, those too soon fell, but to a rebellion. I quickly moved in to secure them afterwards.

Then, I proceeded to tech up some more. Egypt then backstabbed me. Unfortunately for them, I had a Jihad already built to cover for a loss anywhere. So, the Egyptians got it. And the Jihad retook Syria from the pig backstabbers. Before long, all the rulers of Egypt were dead, and I mopped up the rebel provinces left in their wake.

More peace followed.

Then, Poland got greedy and attacked me. So, I took Poland out. Now, I had the Russians all boxed in, as I now had access to the Baltic. In a mere 4 years, a surprise offensive saw the Russians eliminated.

Great! Then Italy crusades against me. But my alims stopt their 2nd crusade cold. I take advantage of the war between Italy and Germany to take out the Hungarians and then move in to seize Venice. Soon, Italy is praying to Allah. And that silly man in the pointy hat was burned at his own stake.

After pushing into Elmo territory in southern France, and smashing my way across Africa and into Spain, and eliminating a severly weakenned German ally and a resurgent French revolt in neighboring provinces, I got the 60% marker victory. I figured it was good enough this time around. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif I never got those darned Jannies though. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif Bastids just need so much technical support...

GAH!

[Soapyfrog]

You can eliminate the Egytians on the 2nd turn... this makes your job much easier. This is the strategy for my current Turkish campaign, played on Expert:

On turn one, the Egyptian Monarch is in Antioch with a single unit of spearmen. Tripoli is lightly defended.

Attack Tripoli with a good sized army (at least 500 men). You SHOULD win the battle there.

Now the Egyptian Monarch is trapped in Antioch... attack him with a large force and kill him.

He has no heirs... therefore at the start of the 3rd turn, his empire dissolves into rebel factions. As a bonus, the Byzantines are very likely to ally with you at that point, will everyone else on the map (and I mean everyone!).

This will allow you to push al the way to Sinai without fighting a single other battle... just send enough troops to force a retreat of the rebels and consolidate. By the time the Eqyptians respawn (usually in Egypt around turn 10, though they might drop a stack in Tripoli, Palestine or Sinai so be ready) you should have crowded a LARGE stack of rebel troops into Egypt led by the Valour 6 general... as a lovely surprise for the respawning Egyptians http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Now you have the tax-base to tackle the Byzantines (although you will probably already have a crusade heading your way, so you might want to fight them off before you break your alliance and roll to Constantinople).

[Ckrisz]

The game really varies here. My first game as the Turks, I rolled to victory over the Byzantines, largely by draining my Egyptian border garrisons and steamrolling them. The Katakphrakoi ran like schoolgirls once I hit them with large numbers of Armenians.

I went back to the Turks after a few more campaigns as other factions, and I got CRUSHED by the Byzantines! The Kataphrakoi now seem invincible, even when buffeted by 200 spearmen, and the Egyptians constantly backstab me! Yikes!

But it does make the game interesting ...

[NagatsukaShumi]

Not finished it with them yet but I've got lots of land.

Basically hit the Byzantines STRAIGHT AWAY, this is vital, otherwise they'll gain to much power, push them back to the walls of the Constantinople, all the while building lots of units, trust me. In a few turns, allies or not, the Egyptians will attack Syria and Lesser Armenia, now if you built up you can go in and basically beat the hell out of them, the Byzants should ask for a ceasefire, but keep a large force on your borders incase, after the Egyptians are gone spend sometime uiblding up again, buildings too this time, then when you have the Saracen Infantry, build them up and attack North, by now you should be face with rebels and a stronger Novogorod, however your troops should beat them to a pulp, takes most of modern day European Russia and then go on assaults on Orthodox and the Alhomads, always keeping a formidable force nearby provinces incase rebels decide to stir trouble, this should keep the Cruscade happy Pope off your back more than if you went head on with Catholic factions, then build up again and go further in land and keep repeating this.

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Power to the Sultan!
-Clan Seljuk

I don't know Akech, can't trust Mithrandir with the newbies, he may try and create a Miny Mith.-NagatsukaShumi

[Major Robert Dump]

Extortion, friend, extortion total war.

Attack Byz and Egyptians at time to trap their kings. Never stop making troops. Ransom off kings for 10k a piece. Difficult I made 30k from each side by the 11th turn and cut their kingdomws in half.

by this time you should have other provinces that can make troops and slowly chip away at your neighbors and simelateously use your extrortion money to build a strong infrastructure from which u can rely on rest of campaign. Focus mainly on farm and trade and build up select provinces to make tough troops/

also, Turkish mate like rabbits. You start getting mature heirs every few years early in the game. Use them they fight well.

Stop at the Almoheads. You will need another muslim friend late in the game.