Where do you win your campaigns?

Is it on the battlefield or on the campaign map?

In the past I tended to face enemy armies in the field with fairly even odds. But as I've got a little more experienced I find that I can't help becoming an economic powerhouse, and overwhelming an entire faction with swarms of full stack armies.

This is a little bit annoying since I am having less epic battles, and more and more autoresolving. The AI simply can't cope when you flood their lands with 8 full armies on turn 40. Its possible to storm by their filed armies so quickly you can basically rush all their settlements in a single turn.

Does anyone else find this? The game is about medieval warfare, it should be about feudal levies meeting chivalrously at a agreed location. But I seem to be using tactics more appropriate for WWII, where I blitz the weaker factions, and fight a strategic war of attrition against the stronger ones, with nearly everything happening on the campaign map.

Maybe it would help if the number of troops you could maintain was limited by more than money?

The flat fact is the AI is grossly incompetent at nearly every aspect of this game. You will tend to win the game anywhere that you choose. Mods improve this somewhat, but to a large extent the AI just seems broken. :wall:

:egypt:

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Originally Posted by Ramses II CP

The flat fact is the AI is grossly incompetent at nearly every aspect of this game. You will tend to win the game anywhere that you choose. Mods improve this somewhat, but to a large extent the AI just seems broken. :wall:

:egypt:

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I agree completely. The AI of this game may not have been able to be perfect(none are), but I believe it could have been done much better than it is. Normally, I can beat the AI however I wish: militarily, economically, etc., but usually I just crush them with soldiers.

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Originally Posted by Ichigo

... but usually I just crush them with soldiers.

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This is how I win the game too :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by Ibn-Khaldun

This is how I win the game too :inquisitive:

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Overwhelming force ftw!!!

I generally try to make myself an economic powerhouse first then make one or two small elite armies to duel with the AI which I retrain over and over. I enjoy micro-managing my economy, bribing the AI, creating alliances against a traget faction, and using some underhanded tactices (spies assassins). So I guess I win more on the Campaign Map than on the Battlefield. Although the battles are really why I play the game.

Like G^2, I play more on the campaign map but play more *for* the battles, if that makes sense.

Essentially, I want my battles to be meaningful. I want to feel like the battle I'm fighting is important; if I lose, I'll be set back; if I win, I'll be in a position of strength. I've never been one to play custom battles, because they're disconnected from any larger scope; no consequences outside that individual battle.

Having a good economy means you can have many more armies in the field than any medieval king or sultan, which I find too unrealistic. So I use some house rules. (Mods would be great, but my dialup connection means it's impossible for me to download them myself.)

I limit my numbers of stacks in a couple of different ways. First, every stack is led by a family member. Second, I don't go in with the goal of overwhelming the AI in numbers. If I have 8 family members, I don't send 8 stacks against my enemy. I try to keep stacks limited to between 1 and 3 stacks operating in a given "theatre". Usually I'll have an infantry-heavy "siege stack" working in tandem with a cav-heavy stack or half-stack that runs interference. I try to take out those AI armies that are wandering around rather than ignoring them and heading straight for the towns. Treat those enemy stacks as a threat (even if, due to poor AI, they're usually not), and you'll find a more challenging game. Use one of your armies as a shield for the other one; set it up on bridges, on high-traffic roads or high-fertility areas, and try to draw the AI to attack. You'll still win most of the battles, but you'll find your armies in the field mean a bit more to you as you have to cope with the losses you sustain.

Generally, I try to play slower, more "realistic"-feeling advances into enemy territory, rather than going right for the jugular and pouncing on the AI's undefended towns. Too bad the sloppy campaign AI all but invites you to blitz; the best thing I find for an interesting game is to resist the temptation.

Overwhelming amount of brute force military strength.

15 stacks of Militia Spearman vs The Mongols.
Ended up in a draw, with me losing all my stacks and the mongols lost most of theirs.
I just make another 20 and erase from the map.
:viking:

Playing a New Spain in the Americas I could even overwhelm the Aztecs etc with my numbers. :laugh4:

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if you want a campaign you can't win through overwhelming force, play BC.

The difficulty of building a huge economy and the punishing unit upkeep means you can't simply spam your best units, the huge enemy stacks that spawn whenever you siege anywhere mean you have to plan any invasion carefully and attack against the odds and the AOR system means you have to conserve your troops, because if you get your only invasion stack wiped out halfway through a campaign, you won't be getting another one in a hurry.

My Kingdom of Jerusalem campaign has probably been my most enjoyable campaign of M2TW thus far; I had great fun mounting an expedition up the Nile valley with a single veteran stack, finding myself in battles against multiple full stacks of Makurian troops, knowing that I had not only to win, but to do so with enough of my army intact to siege several well defended cities afterwards, since there would be no possibility of reinforcement.

So in answer to CR's original question, I would say I win my campaigns on the battlefield. I much prefer building a single stack of good troops and mounting a risky campaign deep into enemy territory, against seemingly impossible odds, knowing that I have to win every battle I fight, while the enemy only need to win one, to simply building endless stacks of militia and sending them in to win by weight of numbers, knowing that no matter how badly I fight and how many men I lose I can simply raise more. Militia have no place in an offensive campaign anyway, I tend not to use them for anything but garrison duty.

in the field, but then again, thats not because Im any good at the tactical game, but because I have a sensible army composition and battle , while the AI seems to totally lack both.

I try not to keep more stacks in any given theater than the AI has, so as to avoid winning by sheer force of numbers.

I find it difficult to pin the AI down to a single decisive engagement in the field. Unless the faction is very small, there will usually be at least another stack or 2 hanging around. Thus, my campaigns are usually determined by siege and sally affairs. Sally battles are unfortunately too easy to win which makes the capture of the AI large cities and castles predominant in my strategy. Id love to spam stacks of armies against similarly numbered stacks of AI but the game presents few opportunities for this with the exception of the mongols and timurids.

That being said, I will have an expeditionary army as often as possible, will not use for sieges and which I throw into every tough battle scenario I can find. Thereby ensuring a high body count of enemies and chevron gain for myself.

After retraining, the army will be sent to another equally impossible feat. This becomes at least in my imagination the "decisive engagement" and becomes quite entertaining as I try to test the limits of this small 1 stack force against any faction possible. More a sophisticated raiding party than anything else, they usually travel by boat ensuring mobility and the prospect of catching large enemy concentrations with "their pants down."