My tips on efficient campaign play

Hi there,
I would like to learn other players' tips on making campaign game more efficient/speedy. Here's what I have learned from experience (some of you may find these old news, but they are seldom mentioned in the guides).

Tip #1: Keep auto-tax on. Before hitting end year ALWAYS hold shift key and then use the mouse on the minimap to survey around for yellow/red provinces. Takes literally 3 seconds and avoids rebellions.

Tip#2: When surveying for possible rebellions with the shift key, also hold the V key . Again, use mouse and minimap for quick survey Takes zero seconds if doing tip#1 already :-)

Tip #3: Use bihops and emissaries to efficiently explore the map with agents . Assign a province to build a pile of emissaries/bishops (preferably province with port). Use C, Z and X keys to hide everything but your agents . Then move them to provinces you do not currently see. Hiding other units/cities makes it SO MUCH faster to spread your agents on the map. On PBM games I routinely use this to have the entire map explored in 5-10 years (unless using .matteosartori.)

Tip#3b: Use C, X and Z keys to reveal ships and hide other armies when moving your ship line . Makes it easier to see.

Tip#4: Peasants and only peasants stay in garrisons. Fighting units are kept in non-garrison armies. Every few turns I take out whatever troops the province has produced and move them out. This way I keep garrison and fighting units separate. Only exception is that I garrison governors who are not multi-star generals in their respective province (this way they gain acumen from buildings and they do not die in battles, so I do not have to replace them. No point in losing a high acument governor in a field battle. So I prefer peasants for governors whenever possible).

Tip#5: To efficiently replenish depleted units (which allows your first 16 units on a field to pack more punch and preserves valorous troops), I keep "tidy units up after battle" option ON and the computer will merge compatible units in a single stack automatically. To replenish a stack from another one in the same province, I take out all full strength units in a stack and put them in a separate "full-strength" stack and then merge the remaining depleted units with another stack of depleted units. Once a merged unit reaches full strength, I move it the "full-strength" stack. Out of convention, I place full strength stacks in the east side of a province and depleted ones on the west side (assuming the province is large enough. Trebizond and Algeria are my favorites for doing replenishing).

Tip#6: Use "Esc" key to dismiss all the events dialog . It will not dismiss the last one about vices and virtues. [I prefer no to turn off the "display non-essential messages" because I like to know when important buildings get done]

Tip#7: Learn to use the left-hand shift key on the keyboard to check map for rebellions. Otherwise you will one day hit the return key by mistake


Tip#8: Avoid putting medium-star generals especially princes in the stack of a higher-star general. You may lose track of them on the battlefield and have them killed. Use them to guard other provinces if possible (of course, sometimes you absolutely need that particular unit in a fight, but generally speaking use lesser command units if possible).


Ok. That' all I recall.

I like to hear what others do. In particular, I am looking for tips to solve the following:
***How to quickly move an agent/army from one end of the map to another . I hate waiting on the map to scroll and it is so SLOW. Any way to speed scrolling on the main map up?)

***How to remember which province is teching up for what. Right now I write it down. I also queue up all possible buildgins that lead up teh tech tree to the unit I want, but often some of them are not available until you build earlier ones, which makes it hard to queue them.

***A way to "mark" armies that should do something on the next turn (e.g if I am sending an army back to its home province for retraining, I often forget to move on the way and it ends up taking YEARS to get back. I tried positioning it on a particular place in a province, but the computer does not save the exact spot from turn to turn.)

please post your tips and hints

afrit
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...evalcheers.gif https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...evalcheers.gif

A quick thing to add to your comment on using the left shift key. When ordering archers into melee, be careful not to hit the windows key instead of alt. Take it from me, it sucks really bad to go to desktop in the middle of a battle or planning a campaign.
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...cons/mecry.gif


I do it ALL the time..... https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...ns/gc-wall.gif

Good advice, Afrit. For me the shortcut keys are particularly useful because I must have missed those in the manual What I want to know is how to avoid (as far as possible) negative vices like lazy, informal accountant, etc.

Afrit you pretty much got it right https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...s/bigthumb.gif

I disagree with the tidy up armies and would prefer to do it myself. Also you might want to keep certain units in the same stack and tidy up armies doesn't help. I like the idea of "theme armies" so I keep tidy units and armies off.

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Originally Posted by [b

Cita[/b] (Duke of Gloucester @ Jul. 27 2004,02:13)]Good advice, Afrit. For me the shortcut keys are particularly useful because I must have missed those in the manual What I want to know is how to avoid (as far as possible) negative vices like lazy, informal accountant, etc.

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A good way to avoid bad vices is keep a commander in combat. Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

the only way i find to not get the lazy vices is to fight, fight fight. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...ns/biggrin.gif

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ July 27 2004,02:53)] I like the idea of "theme armies" so I keep tidy units and armies off.

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can you elaborate on "theme" ? Do you put archers together, cavalry together etc.. ?

I used to have stacks with a single type of unit dominant because it is produced in that province (eg queue archers in province A, spears in B, etc..). I found mixing the units in the stack to become a well balanced army very tedious. So now I queue up units in a province in a way to end up with a balanced army in 5 years (e.g spear,FMAA, archer, light cav, spear), only exception being provinces with valor units, or specially teched provinces.

afrit

Here's a way to tempoarily disable the Windows key
http://www.bytegems.com/ihatethiskey.shtml

Thanks, Billman. I will keep governors on their own and see if that helps. Keeping generals fighting isn't always practical, Ah Dut, and I like them to be at home to pick up builder and steward virtues etc.

Thanks for your tips, especially the shortcut keys. I really should start using agent armies myself.

A few small things I disagree on, the main one being clean up armies. I find this option, if enabled so annoying

If you go for a generalised army as I do (4 spear, 4 ranged, 2 sword, 2 axe or other armour piercing, 2 or 4 horse depending on unit sizes) and often have two full armies in a rpovince together at the end of a year it mixes them up

Also auto-merge isn;t actually very usefull. I quite often have two partial units that I want to keep, for example two catapaults with 4 people in each, which can both be retrained in seperate provinces in only one year, same for any more-than-one year units. This is especially true of beserkers in VI. Also I go for seperate stacks of partials to go and retrain in a province with the best armour/weapons/moral bonusses, and if set to clean up armies they will mix with other armies along the way every time.

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Originally Posted by mercian billman

A good way to avoid bad vices is keep a commander in combat. Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

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This is very true.

I found that commanders of large stacks tend to get the bad vices more than those who are seperate.

So dispersal is a good idea.

Afrit , about your suggestion with leaving governors in garrisons: I have not personally verified this, but my feeling is, and I also remember having read this somewhere, that they are more likely to get bad vices if they stay in their home province (i.e., the province they are ruling).
So what I usually do is swap them around, ie.g. gov for province A goes in province B, and viceversa.
I have not seen any evidence that keeping a general in a stack of his own or in a big stack makes any difference.

Also, as you all know, the bad vices really start popping up in two stages, when you have some 40% of the map, and really bad after you pass 60%. Until then, it looks to me they are quite random; in my current campaign as the Turks, my troops have been sitting _completely_ idle in Bulgaria, Greece, and Constantinople for more than 100 years (some 120 years to be more precise).
I get good vices as well as bad ones: some of them get lazy, but not too many; but I also get numerate and silver-tongued (+acumen), and a few oddly get utterly fearless and brave beyond belief (how can they, when they've never been in a fight ?)..

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Originally Posted by afrit

can you elaborate on "theme" ? Do you put archers together, cavalry together etc.. ?

I used to have stacks with a single type of unit dominant because it is produced in that province (eg queue archers in province A, spears in B, etc..). I found mixing the units in the stack to become a well balanced army very tedious. So now I queue up units in a province in a way to end up with a balanced army in 5 years (e.g spear,FMAA, archer, light cav, spear), only exception being provinces with valor units, or specially teched provinces.

afrit

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By "theme army" I mean not all my armies are the same. If I'm playing the English I'll use Highlanders as the main force in one army (I try to use no more than 4-6 units of the same type) or I'll use Gallowglasses and kerns instead of FMAA. Theme armies aren't better or worse than "regular armies" their just different armies suited for different purposes.

A army with Gallowglasses or Highlanders as the main sword unit is better suited for desert combat than one utilizing FMAA. Theming also allows you to take better advantage of valor bonuses, it helps me keep track of certain units and, in addition adds a little flavor to the game.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

This is very true.
I found that commanders of large stacks tend to get the bad vices more than those who are seperate.
So dispersal is a good idea.

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I always leave govenors and generals apart, because the V&V's related to governing (farmer, builder, etc) go to the leader of the stack the governor is in, not the governor himself. Strange but true.

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Originally Posted by afrit

***How to quickly move an agent/army from one end of the map to another . I hate waiting on the map to scroll and it is so SLOW. Any way to speed scrolling on the main map up?)

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I use a resolution of 1024*768 for the campaign map. Then I scroll all the way up with the mouse-wheel. That way you can scroll pretty quick cause you already see about a quarter of the map.
I think you can also use the arrow keys to scroll the map.

Hope that helps

R'as

I find the quickest way is to zoom all the way out, then drag the army/strategic unit to a province in the general direction of the final destination, then scroll by dragging the trapezium around in the mini-map, then move the unit another screen's width, until you get to your destination.

You have to be more careful with armies than with strategic units, because dropping an army on a friendly/neutral province will bring up the 'do you want to declare war?' dialog. Strategic units can be dragged from province to province with impunity, though.

w.r.t. auto-cleanup - I agree that its generally better to leave it switched off. Its particularly annoying because your garrison units get mixed up with your combat units otherwise.

I think Ludens is right - vices and virtues go to the leader of the stack. I have sometimes noticed a prince getting a "steward" or "builder" virtue when he is not (& cannot be) a province governor but because he commands a stack which includes a governor. I am not sure if these nice virtues carry over to when he becomes king - I guess they do, but whether they add 10% to the kingdom rather than province, I don't know. Strangely, I have not found good leaders to pick up vices from their stack - maybe because such leaders are kept busy fighting and fighting seems to minimise the odds of picking up vices. However, my governors tend to have high acumen, so I tend to keep them out of such combat stacks to keep them safe. I guess if you are building up a province and want the steward/builder virtues, it would pay to keep the governors outside of a stack. Towards the midgame, it tends to be governor vices that are the problem so putting them all in a stack (ideally with the governor of Sinai or some such useless province on top!) might be good.

In a PBM campaign, the first thing I do is think what each province can build and from that assign to each province a role - e.g. Cyrenacia for Saharan cav etc.

I also try to assign 3 or so general objectives for the reign, to avoid being carried away by events and minutae, although I seldom stick to them.

Probably my main tip for efficient campaign play would be to assign at least 3 provinces exclusively to ship building. Crank out ships so that you have one in every sea and with maxed coastal trading facilities, you'll be rolling in florins. This will make it so much easier to accomplish whatever goals you have. You'll also be able to see most of the game world in all it's glory. Plus your coasts will be safe from invasion and you'll have great mobility internationally. The only downside is that AI piracy will doubtless spark some unwanted wars.

Mid-game, I also like to send a priest to every province - for intelligence, to convert unbelievers and to help loyalty in my own lands.

yep. I like to also use provinces as midway points for agents and use zoom.

when using the scrollwheel to zoom in and zoom out, it's really quick and when fully zoomed out, going from one end of the map to another doesn't take much time.

BTW, even if you "declare war" on the dialog and don't have an army attacking at the end of the turn, you will still be neutral.

just dismiss the dialog and you can use the province as a midway point for armies although don't forget to move it out before ending turn!

I dedicate at least 6 coastals to build ships until the seazones are filled with my ships plus about 4-5 spares. These 6 coastals are straight for ships in towers, fort, port, keep, shipwright.

I have all my coastals capable of ships by midgame.

I also spam with religious agents the internal land provinces first and then all the provinces to keep tabs on everything.

valor bonus and hence province specialization is big. I usually tech straight for the masters in these provinces to get v2 while iron provinces become upgrade provinces with weapons, armor, morale and just basic buildings to be able to retrain say swordsmen there for the upgrades. This way, high valor fully upgraded units come quickly.

Yes, but are we sure this works? If you upgrade weapons/armour do you lose the morale and valour bonuses from buildings and provinces? If not, Katank's suggestion is one of the best hints I have picked up from the board!

I disagree on two things. First, the tidy up units after a battle. I always leave that off. On early battles when I don't have that many good troops, I would use 2-3 princes on one army often. Auto tidy up units could combine those units making me lose some of my princes. I also use some of my governors that way and I could lose some of them also.

It's also more efficient for me to do it on my own. Putting a unit of 1 FMAA with a gold shield on a unit of 59 FMAA with a bronze shield will yield you a unit of 60 FMAA with a bronze shield. Doing it the other way around will yield you a unit of 60 FMAA with a gold shield. Also, some of my armies will have less than 16 units or around 16 units. It's much better in that case to have multiple 30-50 man units instead of having some 60 man units and having some 10-20 man units.

I also turn auto-tax off. First, you need around 120%, IIRC, to prevent factions from reappearing. Second, I've heard that higher tax rates have a bigger chance of giving some bad vices. The main reason I don't use it is that the loyalty of a newly conquered province gains slower when using higher tax rates. My armies have to be in garrison duty longer and that slows down my conquering. Also, if a king with good happiness virtues dies due to old age or the province gets blockaded from the king, even taxing it on very low might not prevent a rebellion. I always want a good degree of safety on newly conquered provinces.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

I also turn auto-tax off. First, you need around 120%, IIRC, to prevent factions from reappearing. Second, I've heard that higher tax rates have a bigger chance of giving some bad vices. The main reason I don't use it is that the loyalty of a newly conquered province gains slower when using higher tax rates. My armies have to be in garrison duty longer and that slows down my conquering. Also, if a king with good happiness virtues dies due to old age or the province gets blockaded from the king, even taxing it on very low might not prevent a rebellion. I always want a good degree of safety on newly conquered provinces.

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uhm, VI 2.01 has the autotax threshold at 120. So you can use that.
secondly, I am not aware of higher odds of getting bad vices if taxes are higher. I am really not convinced that is ture. Again, using as an example my current Turkish campaign, I've had very high set everywhere for the last 120 years. Very, very few of my generals have bad vices (and those are totally ignoreable, e.g. Greed +1 acumen -10 happiness). Oh, and they haven't been in a war in those 120 years either.

You are right about having to keep garrisons longer in, and slowing you down, but I find that is only the case when I'm really blitzing or going on a rampage and getting several provinces per year for several years in line. Otherwise it's usually not a problem, I only ever use peasants for garrisons and only in situations as the above I may not be able to keep up with my peasant production.
Also, unless it's _really_ early in the game, and you don't yet have spies, they do a _great_ job of boosting loyalty. AFAIK this has not been verified, but most people seem to agree that the same formula for decreasing loyalty in enemy provinces applies to your own provinces, except of course it increases loyalty: 40% + spy_valour * 20%. So a vanilla spy would give you +40 loyalty...which is more than enough usually.

The vices thing is not really substantiated so it may not be true. I'm aware of how spies currently work and I always place a spy in each of my provinces. They changed it so that I only need one spy per province.

I forgot which campaign it was, either the Danish or Hungarian campaign. During that campaign, however, my Middle Eastern Holdings had a drop in loyalty and went into the red and orange after they got cut off due to an enemy blockade. This was around at least 5-10 years after I captured them. The annoying enemy ship kept moving also so it took a few years to destroy it and they usually had a new ship soon after.

It's usually not a problem but you never know when a king with +30 happiness in all provinces suddenly croaks. Also, it takes more than 10 years for a province to assimilate which I find to be a problem even when I'm going slow.

You may be right.
I've also heard people claiming that some of their provinces rebelled or at least had significant drops in loyalty for no apparent reason, and some thought it had to do with the very high taxes.
But again, this has never happened to me, and I always keep taxes on very high.

And yes, I guess the question whether the assimilation process is fast enough or not is very closely tied to your style of playing, and "fast/slow" is a very relative thing anyway ~:)

@duke, I just suggest going for valor and upgrades in different provinces to get fully upgraded high valor units faster.

building all the upgrades and a master sword may take forever to get fully upgraded v2 sword unit provided it has a province bonus.

building straight to master sword in the bonus province wouldn't take as long and in that time, you can just build a regular swordsmith and upgrade buildings. train it in the bonus province and retrain for upgrades and you get an uber unit really fast.

note: assimilation periods vary upon happiness buildings, king stats, gov dread, religion, and other factors.

note: watch tower, border fort, town watch should be among the first things you build.

0 dread govs shouldn't be assigned to new territories as it actually lowers loyalty.

religion could be big issue. between catholic and orthodox it's not so bad but big problems with muslim countries.

dread on king very useful. ie. early brits have awesome king for blitzing due to dread level.

IIRC, if an AI faction with ships on vital sea lanes suddenly declares war on you, you could have loyalty on some provinces drop by as much as 50-60%, maybe even more. I usually find it very dangerous on the midgame especially since this could cut off some of my newer conquests away from the king.

What I usually do is put the money making lands that I initially have or have conquered early on on very high and leave the rest on normal. Troublesome provinces get set to low or very low. Once I have trade set-up, money ceases to be a problem for me so I don't bother with setting provinces on very high anymore. It's just a potential headache if mass rebellions start pouring in. I usually tinker with taxes only on the early game. I just leave stuff on normal in the midgame to late game.

Glad this thread generated good replies. Thanks for all the feedback.

Regarding auto-clean up for armies: after reading all the replies, the consensus seemed to be to turn it off. I tried that in a new campaign and I agree that it should be turned off (i.e my initial tip was wrong). I did discover the "M" shortcut key which allows you to merge an entire stack's units quickly and that pretty much makes the auto-clean obsolete.

Regarding auto-tax: Yes, there are situations when auto-tax is dangerous, but since I was really after quick and efficient play, I believe that auto-tax saves micromanagement time and may produce better income. What we really need is an auto-tax on per-province basis (I think RTW will have that as "auto-manage" Yipee!)

I liked the tip about moving your agents/armies to an intermediate province and then moving them later after adjusting the map. I will try it in my next campaign.

Agreed. If I could auto-tax my provinces at different rates, I'd do it.

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***A way to "mark" armies that should do something on the next turn (e.g if I am sending an army back to its home province for retraining, I often forget to move on the way and it ends up taking YEARS to get back. I tried positioning it on a particular place in a province, but the computer does not save the exact spot from turn to turn.)

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You can actually do this Afrit. Take an army or naval unit and place it where you whant it to be in an province or seazone then left-click on this province/ seazone. In 90% your unit will then be in that exact location the next turn. One exception though, if you build a unit or ship in that square your "placed" unit will automatically be moved to the default location.
I find this technique very useful when I´m moving units back and forth through my realm or setting up a shiplink when there´s alot of other vessels in the seas. Usually I tend to put units that are "going away" in the far end of a prov and units that are going "home" in the nearest location.

BTW, thanks for the C, X and Z-tip. Maybee I should read the manual after all this time, he he!

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Originally Posted by PseRamesses

You can actually do this Afrit. Take an army or naval unit and place it where you whant it to be in an province or seazone then left-click on this province/ seazone. In 90% your unit will then be in that exact location the next turn. One exception though, if you build a unit or ship in that square your "placed" unit will automatically be moved to the default location.
I find this technique very useful when I´m moving units back and forth through my realm or setting up a shiplink when there´s alot of other vessels in the seas. Usually I tend to put units that are "going away" in the far end of a prov and units that are going "home" in the nearest location.

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You can have a stack or strategic agent automatically find its way back to a distant province. Just drop him/stack onto the target province (which would be un-highlighted). Dont touch the stack again. When you press enter to end the turn, the stack would move (along with the AIs' stacks.) Leave the stack/agent on its own and it will find its way back. If you pick it up and drop it, the pathing is cancelled.

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Origninally posted by Maeda Toshiie
You can have a stack or strategic agent automatically find its way back to a distant province. Just drop him/stack onto the target province (which would be un-highlighted). Dont touch the stack again. When you press enter to end the turn, the stack would move (along with the AIs' stacks.) Leave the stack/agent on its own and it will find its way back. If you pick it up and drop it, the pathing is cancelled.

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Works fine as long as you don't pick the unit up next turn. If you do, then it forgets its orders.

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Originally quoted by Katank
0 dread govs shouldn't be assigned to new territories as it actually lowers loyalty.

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I wasn't sure about this, so I tried it out when I conquered a Spanish province - Castile, I think. I made sure I was taxing on "very high" and assigned a zero dread, four acumen governor. The happines rating went from 125% to 127%. Of course, when I re-loaded the game and used a four dread governor instead. happiness was a lot higher! However I can say for certain that using a 0 dread governors doesn't always make a province more rebellious. In some circumstances it may, fewer troops, more rebellious province etc.