thoughtful retreats for improving your position relative to your neighbors

Interesting tactic I have been using in my current GA campaign. I have been razing some provinces I took earlier (I didn't add to the buildings there, just what I 'inherited':laugh4: ) to pull back my armies. By doing this I was able to free up some troops as I have a smaller front to defend, as well as allowing the Spanish to spread out and engage the Golden Horde (seems like their crusade is not fareing so well).
But I also poisoned the provinces I left by taking down the guard posts and posting my spies there (I have some also harassing the Argonese in Aquitaine and HRE in Provance). So in this way the provinces they take will be troublesome at best, as they have to rebuild and survive lowered loyalty while they occupy and put down the locals.

But of course, it is easier to use this tactic if you are playing GA as you are not as concerned with how many territories you take. Though it is possible to use this tactic if you're playing a conquest campaign to drain enemy resources (need more troops to hold down unruly locals) and spread the enemy out thin as they acquire territory you don't wish to hold or don't think is worth the trouble of holding.

Also my idea has been to allow the Spanish and Argonese to engage (as well as the aforementioned Spanish and Golden Horde) I am again attacking the Pope, allowing the Byz back in toward Rome and the Papal lands (after the Sicilians went bye-bye, not my doing, really).

Do you open channels for your neighbors to attack each other? How often do you do it in a campaign on average? Do you sometimes also mine the areas with spies?

Interesting...I don't go about it in so much detail, but 'chevauchee/slash and burn' tactics do feature whether I'm playing GA or conquest...often with the HRE, as you can't fight a prolonged war on all fronts, but you can, say, strike and cripple the Italian and Hungarian economies by hitting Milan/Venice/Serbia/Hungary before you move against France.
In my current HRE GA campaign I'm busy fighting the Spanish, but I'm also at war with Hungary, and am simply planning to wipe out their infrastructure cos I can't hold an extended border across Serbia/Hungary, nor can I risk stretching my line of attack as far as Carpathia, so i'm just going to loot and destroy everything. I'll probably also get warned by the Pope and won't have time to complete the conquest properly.
I don't make much use of spies though, I have to admit. STW players have often been let down by the comparative ineffectiveness of spies in MTW.
But the possibility of maybe increasing my border length in return for a cheap conquest is always something I consider.

I have done spy raids before, but they of course are not so effective as in Shogun. But, in this case, I am preparing the ground so to speak. If I had more spies, I could make it even more effective, but currently I have some tied up in two other provinces (besides the two I evacuated) and I am producing spies in only one province (perhaps should build another brothel or tavern:idea2: ).

Scorched earth policies have been discussed on this forum before, but I often find them useful and fun for building the bank account as my merc run around and cause havoc in bordering areas and in production provinces for my rivals.

More or less, I've followed the same tactics before. Particulary in case of succession of a new king of questionable competence I find it useful to abandon recently aquired territories to secure more valuable provinces, a plus of wich is that the enemy will often retake them and spread their forces more thinly.

I don't slash & burn that often, though I ususally destroy the enemy's shipbuilder buildings (enemy ships can be a real nuisance)
This is because
A) The AI can't do the same, so it's a bit of an exploit.
B) If an enemy faction ever gets its hand on the province it won't be any good for training troops, in the end you'll probably get the enemy to build more interesting units and therefore more fun battles is you leave most of the infrastructure intact.
I sometimes make an exception if I'm really starved for cash, but even then I try to leave the farming upgrades intact.

I have to echo Kralizec's points. Pillaging provinces tends to paralise the AI and create massive stacks of rebels which I always end up having to fight myself for some reason...

Building in MTW is slow as it is, even rebuilding back up to keep level is annoying. Historically "slash and burn" tactics were used, examples being the "danegeld", but entire provinces and citadels were not razed to the ground. Landind in wessex and completely levelling London is just not realistic.

Since I only play GA, I've started to use the strategy of attacking a province with the sole aim of tying-up or destroying the enemy's military. I stick to only completing my GA goals unless I'm far behind in points and need to get some Conquest points to make up the difference, so my empires tend to be small -- that leaves me vulnerable to counterattack by stronger, richer neighbors. Rather than just sit tight in my homelands waiting for the smackdown, whenever I go on the offensive (if say my homelands goal changed to include lands held by a neighbor) I attack multiple provinces at the same time.

A good example is my Early Expert GA game as the HRE. The year is now 1184 and I have my homelands plus Livonia (for Drag Nach Osten), Milan, and Tuscany (for the Holy Roman Empire goal). When the HRE goal came up, I invaded not only Milan (a goal province) but Genoa as well. The army in Venice wasn't enough of a threat for me to worry about. When my forces won in Genoa, I withdrew them back to Provence. My victory drove the Italians into civil war, and Genoa soon turned rebel. It's an exercise in fighting temptation for me not to pluck that fruit for myself -- it's sitting there like a little grey island in a sea of black :laugh4: .

For the erasons listed above, I don't like to raze AI provinces to the ground. I limit myself instead to destroying one building only -- it gives me some "slash and burn" satisfaction, but doesn't paralyze the AI when they get the province back. Only if I'm *really* desparate will I truly burn it all down.

CountMRVHS

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Landind in wessex and completely levelling London is just not realistic.

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But who said the game is realistic?:dizzy2:

Oh well, I can't be perfect. If I think I can retake the province soon, I don't raze everything as I assume the rebels will take over and I can retake it. But certainly I am not going to hand over tons of buildings to the AI, why make life more difficult for myself (sounds like giving the raw materials for war you don't want to use to the enemy and saying, here, let's make it more fair:help: )?

It's just that after awhile of playing the game and figuring out a lot of the tricks, some people want more of a challenge. That's all. Everyone has their own definition of "challenging"; for me, after having played MTW for several years, I'd prefer to see the AI tech up a bit so I can fight some of those cool units on the battlefield, rather than just peasants and archers. A lot of us therefore impose little "rules" to make things more interesting: only stick to your GA provinces, don't raze buildings, don't use agents excessively, etc. Just a way to get more mileage out of an excellent game.

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Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

It's just that after awhile of playing the game and figuring out a lot of the tricks, some people want more of a challenge. That's all. Everyone has their own definition of "challenging"; for me, after having played MTW for several years, I'd prefer to see the AI tech up a bit so I can fight some of those cool units on the battlefield, rather than just peasants and archers. A lot of us therefore impose little "rules" to make things more interesting: only stick to your GA provinces, don't raze buildings, don't use agents excessively, etc. Just a way to get more mileage out of an excellent game.

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Exactly.

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Originally Posted by gaijinalways

But who said the game is realistic?:dizzy2:

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I don't want a game where the AI is a push over, which is why I don't raze any buildings at all, except border forts, when I occupy a province. No one said the game was 'realistic', I wasn't speaking of realistic in the historical accuracy sense but moreso in the not exploiting the AI ridiculously sort of way. I don't raze for the same reasons that I don't train 20 Grand Inquisitors and burn everyone, spam jihads or train legions of Huskarls, JHI or VG's and go on a rampage: No challenge = boredom.

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Originally Posted by Caravel

Exactly.I don't want a game where the AI is a push over, which is why I don't raze any buildings at all, except border forts, when I occupy a province. No one said the game was 'realistic', I wasn't speaking of realistic in the historical accuracy sense but moreso in the not exploiting the AI ridiculously sort of way. I don't raze for the same reasons that I don't train 20 Grand Inquisitors and burn everyone, spam jihads or train legions of Huskarls, JHI or VG's and go on a rampage: No challenge = boredom.

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Hear, hear.
I like to feel I'm winning in as historically realistic a method as possible as well as not exploiting the AI's obvious strategic flaws, no rushing, no spamming, few assassins and Inquisitors etc. A bit of chevauchee/scorched earth is realistic, but not to excess. I do tend to slaughter all my prisoners regardless of V&V accumulation when playing as a Crusader or when fighting crusades, as I feel this is realistic. I tend not to when playing as a Catholic faction against another Catholic faction, for the same reason.

I still find it challenging, and the AI troops I'm facing are not just peasants and archers. As to using inquisitors, I tend not to, at all.

By the way, are you playing on expert level?

Hard usually, sometimes expert, i find the battles are a bit short on expert...!

I was in no way criticising your playing style or preferences btw, Gaijinalways, that's just how I feel I like playing it. If you're having fun playing it however you play it, you're doing it right!

Expert level is rather imbalanced. I used to play on that level but I now find that the AI refuses to rout, due to the morale bonus, meaning that my units can score some real kills, and not router kills. This means they gain valour alot faster. The hard difficulty doesn't have this problem so I tend to stick to this, with huge unit size. I have a few basic rules that I stick to, not exactly "iron man", and these are changing all the time:

1) One Jihad per target province.
2) No razing except border forts in conquered provinces.
3) No border forts.
4) No Inns/Mercs (modded out)
5) No Landbridges (modded out)
6) Maximum of 1 Grand Inquisitor and 2 Inquisitors at any one time.

Of course, guys, sorry if I made it sound like there was one particular way to play the game. I hardly find the game easy (if I did I wouldn't need to save so often so I can sometimes replay, must get VI as you can save after each battle:2thumbsup: ), and the types of AI troops I see are;

arbalesters, (pavise and regular)
xbows (pavise and regular)
longbowmen
halberdiers, billmen
chiv sergents
gothic and feudal foot knights
men at arms (regular, chiv)
knights (feudal, goth, chiv)
Lancers
jinetes
heavy, medium and light cavs

and of course the muslum equivalents (though in my current campaign, the byz are small, the turks and the egyptians are gone, so I don't see so many of those)


So I don't feel too sorry if I force the AI to rebuild on occasion (and net some cash at the same time).

@gaijinalways: Are you running MTW v1.0 or v1.1 (did you install the patch?).

VI is worth getting, I have seen it for £5 pounds second hand in those gamestation shops in the UK. I'm sure there's something similar in any other countries, or you should find it on Amazon.

I have the patch on, no VI yet.