Fall of Vienna

As Venice, turn 114, I have owned Vienna for 20-25 turns now. Vienna is a well developed city contributing a substantial share in taxes to the nation. It forms part of my border with Denmark which I have been fighting off and on for some time now. I have two forts protecting the approaches to Vienna which Denmark has taken often but usually their armies withdrew afterwards or were quickly destroyed. Vienna has always survived the threat.

Well a Danish army approached Vienna but I barely paid attention. Often they approached but never reached Vienna in the past. I had 4 spear militia units garrisoning Vienna and had just moved 3 militia cavalry units into the city. Not a very good garrison but I was focused on my war with France and just noted the Danish advace. Although perhaps I should have, Vienna was not a fortress but a city-not made to survive an assault. I still wasn't worried as I had a large army near Budapest.

On the next turn, the Danes attacked the fort and quickly took it. Then on the same turn, they immediately advanced on Vienna and started a seige. Now I was a bit concerned. I immediately moved my Budapest field army towards Vienna. With one more turn, my field army would drive the Danes off with a hard lesson.

But on the next turn, they assaulted Vienna!!! My troops fought valiently but were simply overwhelmed. The city fell...with a groan.

Then the ruthless Danes exterminated the cities population!!!!!!!!!!!! The entire population put to the sword without mercy... Aggghhh...the shame, the humilation...the shock!! Smoke bellowed and twirled above the devastated city.

My field army was stunned by the news. But now, the Danes have made my
bad guy list...no mercy will be shown... All cities are contributing troops to end this once and for all. The black flag is up....:skull:

The AI can be pretty challenging on h/vh.

Tell me about it :P

On my current byz campaign (vh/vh) i played for an hour yesterday for a net loss of two territories :o

I'm winning practically every battle but losing the war ;)

The trouble is that i'm fighting the sicilians, papal states and milanese in the west, the hre in the north, and the turks and egyptians in the east and south...at once :D

Hehe...I know what you mean.

I am at war with France, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, Silicy, Byzantine and Egypt. I think that is everyone. :embarassed:

My ally Poland is slowly but surely being devoured by the Mongols. My other ally, England, hasn't ventured out of their castles to disturb the French in the last....oh.... hundred years or so. I keep demanding :help: but it hasn't stirred them in the least.

I am definitely streched and losing Vienna hasn't helped. I just hope the Pope doesn't call a truce before I recapture Vienna. :dizzy2:

Vienna is one of those cities with a bridge in the next tile. That means there is only one way in and out and the seige army sits on the bridge if you leave it vacant and they are all the harder to dislodge if you sally or bring your army back from Budapest.

What I do is leave a garrison sitting on the bridge and a single unit on the tile at the end of the bridge, over the river from the city. Then there are two battles for the invader before they get to the city. It costs more but it stalls the invaders. It gives you time to move your armies back and recruit more units in the city.

If you have missile troops and decent infantry you can really chew up an invader's army meaning they will be at reduced strength when they seige.

Oh this time there's a sneaky and fast AI... well not all the time but quite often.

Yesterday, as English, I caught the opportunity to finish off the Danes. A long war led to Danes being excommed so I hurried for a double strike - sending the whole army from my Hamburg fortress to take Danish Aarhus and another one from my Metz castle to grab Frankfurt.

I imagined the HRE, which I'm at war with, would need at least 2 turns to react - enough time for me to take Aarhus and Frankfurt, sack and put the cities under control and return to reinforce my castles.

Bad idea - the HRE immediately reacted and now Hamburg, defended by one unit of billmen, is besieged by a full HRE stack. No time to reach the place with any reinforcements, so Hamburg is lost... :wall: Man, that'll teach me to underestimate.

Ooops sorry ignore my above comments I was describing Venice, not Vienna :shame:

Tactics still work but not for Vienna!

When I was playing Byzantium, Hungary had declared war on me. I caught the fortress of Bran defended only by a general, who suffered a mysterious fatal accident. That left the fortress undefended and I waltzed in and occupied it. I saw a large Hungarian army northeast just on the other side of the mountain range, and worried about it, but for about 10 turns it didn't move. I thought the AI was being passive, and moved most of the troops out of Bran to deal with a rebel army that appeared southwest of there.

Well, it wasn't being passive; it was waiting for another army to be completed. Because it started moving, only not alone. The large army (or what I thought was the large army) swung around the mountains through the pass and besieged Bran. The LARGER army (which I never knew about, teach me to keep spies out in advance of the borders) moved down and besieged Bucharest. I could only relieve one. I relieved Bran and lost Bucharest, but took about 1/3 of the army out defending against the assault. I had to go back and lay siege to Bucharest with an all horse archer army because I hadn't teched Bran up to build infantry, then wait until it starved out to retake the city.

No doubt the campaign AI is more aggressive than in Rome. This is the first time since MTW that I lost 2 provinces in a row...

On France H/H, I had taken Genoa, Milan and Venice from the original owners. After my 9 star commander died of natural causes in Venice, however, the pope's armies took Genoa and Milan, and the Sicilians took venice. In all 3 cases, the AI assaulted after a short siege.

I did exact revenge (killed the Pope in Rome! ), but only 10 or so turns later...