How can you not get attacked by six factions in 30 turns?

So I hadn't played MTW2 in a while, as ETW is coming figure i'd boot it up, man I clearly must have been playing a different game. I recall having won the campaign several times with no great strains.

I tried France and HRE last night, and as both , i am attacked by six to seven factions in 30 turns or less.

I'm only in turn 50, and I am either forced to go to war with all of europe and be excommunicated or die.

I'm on Medium/Medium....do I have to put something on very easy? Campaign Difficulty Maybe?

I like playing the battles at medium but this uber unification of every nation is vexing me greatly...I know i'm playing central nations but Milan, Venice, Silcily Spain, Portugal, England AND Denmark all at one time? :laugh4:

Yes, at very easy difficult level is unpossible to get attacked by six factions in 30 seconds. So do not play at medium difficult of campaign , but you can play medium difficult battle if you experienced in it.
But did you try to attack them...I have never see that six factions attacking in 30 turns, probably you enforce their to do it.

I found diplomacy to be ugly in M2TW. Either bribe your neighbouring factions or get attacked. Hopefully you have a large foreign policy budget.

yeah...seeing as france and the HRE have large amounts of land, they will have many neighbors and therefore many enemies. Use your massive empire to get a nice fat treasury, and use the treasury to make armies and steamroll the factions, one at a time. Since they attacked you, they might get excommunicated and you can call a crusade against one of their towns. You might need to pay the papal states some money, but then you'll get high favor with the pope and you can crusade every last town of your enemies

Yea, I tried playing Denmark and not nearly as many problems, same difficult M/M and i havn't been attacked yet in 30-40 turns.

I guess it's just a matter of who you play.

I like HRE and France I'm just not so keen on having to wipe out England, Milan, Spain, Portugal, HRE, and Venice at the same time.


Also I probably didn't use alliances right as HRE as those seem to delay wars at least a good 5-10 years :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Polemists

Yea, I tried playing Denmark and not nearly as many problems, same difficult M/M and i havn't been attacked yet in 30-40 turns.

I guess it's just a matter of who you play.

I like HRE and France I'm just not so keen on having to wipe out England, Milan, Spain, Portugal, HRE, and Venice at the same time.


Also I probably didn't use alliances right as HRE as those seem to delay wars at least a good 5-10 years :laugh4:

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Other good factions to play as to avoid this are England, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and (if you can take Italy quickly) one of the Italian states.

If you simply must play as France or the HRE but you want a strong starting position then go and take someone elses! :2thumbsup: Migration games are fun and challenging, and can give you your favourite faction in a really great place.

Well, as HRE or France, you're going to get into plenty of wars. Both factions start with a large number of provinces and a large number of bordering Rebels, so you can get ~15 provinces relatively quickly. Once you get to around that level, the AI sees you as a global superpower, and random factions will just try to kill you. This is compounded by since the allies of nations your at war with will trend to hatred, making them more likely to go to war with you in the near future. The only way to really avoid this would be to expand much slower. Besides that there are a number of ways to mitigate the actions (Be nice to the Pope, only really attack one faction at a time since the AI can't conduct a true offensive, dish out cash to other nations, etc.), but they won't truly solve your problem.

Make sure you get some strong allies, eh? In my Scottish campaign, I'm sharing borders with England, France, and Denmark. France and Denmark have been allied with me since the beggining through multiple marriages and horrid wars (bella, horrida bella), while England has been battered down into a submissive protectorate.

I have colonies all over the map, but the only place where war ever only breaks out now is in Spain. Even then, things might turn out different, as I'm in good relations with everyone on the Peninsula except for Spain itself, who I recently wiped out accidently.

The point is, expand slowly and make sure your allies will stay as your allies through marriages and gifts. That way, you won't be so god-awfully unpopular.

TheAI can almost always be disuaded from attacking you early in the game if you place a cheap unit at a chokepoint so that it must make several attacks before it can assault a settlement, because the Pope will warn it before the settlement can be taken and the faction will not want to take the reprimand which will lower its Pope standing or cause it to be excommunicated if its standing is low already. If it persists and gets excommunicated, as the HRE often does, then you can get a crusade called against it which is better than getting a bailout of your business by Santa Congress.

This sounds good in theory but in my past 3 games this is a mixed benefit.

You can only launch a single crusade, and victory nets you 10 k worth of florins, this is great if you only have 2 cities to upgrade, but when playing as italian factions this barely pays for two large cities to upgrade, in fact it dosn't.

So far Milan and HRE both seem to get excommunicated, it has it's benefits, and helped me take out milan in two different campaigns. Yet usually it's financial gains are minor, as if you attack HRE or milan's outlying provinces your once again stuck amongst french or hungarians, who both seem to attack you just as oftne.

What do you mean you can only launch a single crusade? You can capture as many of the excommed's cities as you can on the way to the target city as long as your course does not deviate very much. After completing a crusade you have to wait a while; I am sure it is more than 10 turns but I don't think it is much over 20. The florins that you net come from the Pope's reward which will be higher the more troops that participated and you can sack the city or cities and sell improvements and give or trade cities for cash.