English Help/Terminology Question

Dear Gang:

Greetings from Canada!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

I'm sending up a flare here in hopes that I can find some help with play as England. My two main problems are these: 1) Rebels 2)The Pope and his idiotic Crusades. 3)Effective use of my Princess.

The final straw with the Rebels came last night when they deliberately sailed in and sank the ship that was supposed to take Patrick McDougall, the Scots diplomat, home. The last time I saw him, he was still standing waiting for another ship. I'm also finding that trying to conduct a decent naval battle with these knaves is nigh onto impossible. :help:

Secondly, I don't think the Holy Father, in all his finite wisdom, knows how hard it is trying to get to the targeted site of his Crusades. I've tried to comply twice this past week only to be sunk by Egyptian rebels and have tons of people standing in my way once I had gotten to Venice. Is there a polite way to tell the Holy Father to shove his Crusades where the sun doesn't shine?

Last, but not least, I'd like to learn how to best to employ my Princess. Do I allow her to conduct face to face negotiations with other Princess whilst she strolls about the countryside? So far, I've found her of little use and usually wind up marrying her off and let my male diplomat do all the negotiations.

Since I'm a rookie at this game, I'm looking for some kind soul to explain to me what is meant by "map information"? What is meant by this and what am I offering other countries when I do offer them this? So far, all I'm asking for is trading rights and alliance.

Is there something I'm missing here?

In closing, I do apologize for being so long winded, but I do need help to make myself a better liege!!!

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Are you using the most recent patch? That cuts down on pirate activity somewhat. Otherwise, try to ensure that you either use stacks of ships when transporting people, or end each turn in a friendly harbour.

As for crusades, well it's not essential that you join them but overland routes work best unless you have a big stack of ships cos they'll get sunk otherwise.

I don;t have that many princesses so usually use them to try and bribe enemy generals who are in a town/castle. But only after they're about 25 or so.

Well for rebels fleets, it's usually enough to make sure you have superior numbers when you attack. Also, be sure to check what kind of ships you're tangling with: I think the rebels can have pirate ships or other ones nastier than the mundane low-level sort, which can be a real problem if you stumble into a tougher fleet than you were expecting.

For the pope, it's pretty easy to just ignore the crusades if you don't intend to participate. You lose the mission that tells you to join up, but usually the rating hit isn't very bad, and you can easily make it up by giving the pope money or building big churches.

A couple ways to use princesses:
- build them up by using them extensively as diplomats. They seem about as good at it as diplomats, and will gain skill points like a diplomat does. Once they have good skill, you can then send them off to try to marry an enemy general: if successful, he joins your faction. If not, it seems they get married but you lose the princess instead of gaining a general.
- simply keep them hanging about in a city until she gets marriage offers just like the princesses you have but don't get on the strategy map. I believe the generals offered to royal princesses (i.e. the ones you get on the strategy map) end up being better than the ones you get for the other princesses who don't show up as usable characters.

If you intend to actually send her about doing missions to gain skill, then be sure you know her name: you'll get marriage offers for her, which you'll need to decline in order to continue having her on the strategy map. If you accept one, she vanishes... but of course if you get a really good general offered, it might be worth doing even if you were planning to skill her up to steal an enemy general.

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Originally Posted by Indy1958

Last, but not least, I'd like to learn how to best to employ my Princess. Do I allow her to conduct face to face negotiations with other Princess whilst she strolls about the countryside? So far, I've found her of little use and usually wind up marrying her off and let my male diplomat do all the negotiations.

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Not sure if you know this, but Princesses can negotiate with any enemy army, general or settlement, not just other princesses. When you click on a target for the princess, the marriage option comes up by default, but on that window there is a small button that shows a handshake. Click that and you can negotiate like any diplomat.

For the crusades, make sure you bring a large amount of ships wih you preferably at least half a stack with you if you have enemies in the way. Also, it is much better to call the crusade targets just get a diplomat to Rome ASAP and bribe till the pope loves you. Then, there is a very high chance that he will agree for your crusades

Dear Gang:

Good morning from Canada!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

Now, for my final question: What is meant by "map information", what does it entail and how do I swap it with my allies?

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Map information is basically offering them the map of the portion of the world you've discovered/can see. This mostly consists of your empire, but will include any areas that have been seen by your various agents and armies. Similarly, by getting map information from other factions, you can uncover areas of the map where they have been but you have not. This is most useful for determining where the heck cities are on the map, but good for other things as well like resource locations, and to determine the spread of various factions that you normally wouldn't know.

Map infomation is just sharing the explored area of the map. If you offer map information you show them the area you have explored. If you request map information your map will show the areas the other factions has explored.

I don't belive the map information will update itself after the exchange until you re-trade the info or explore it again.

In the early game I always demanded and offered map information and trade rights and was only rarely refused.

It's rebels on the land and pirates on the sea, and pirates suck, hard. For some reason, the ships pirates get are stronger than ships the navies get! At least, that's true at the beginning. The only faction whose tier 1 ships can take on pirates with even odds are the Byzantines. For every other faction, the crews are equal in numbers to the pirates while the pirate ships are superior, so you need 2:1 odds at least in order to win. By the time you get to your tier 2 ships, the stats become comparable and the crews become larger than the pirates so you'll usually win if you aren't outnumbered. I definitely recommend you do one of two things as England to handle the pirate problem: either maintain a very strong (and correspondingly expensive) navy to kill off any pirates you see, or maintain no navy at all. Just keep a ship or two in port at London and use them only to move troops between London and Caen.

As for handling crusades, England has issues there. You are so far away from the holy land that going on crusade is difficult. If you go strictly by sea you risk being sunk. If you have overwhelming naval superiority you still have problems with desertion, because of an indiosyncracy with the game. Desertion seems to calculate distance between your crusading army and the target, and if that distance doesn't shrink by a certain amount troops start deserting. By sailing around the Iberian peninsula you are actually getting farther away from the Holy Land, so the troops desert. Probably the best way to go about it is to sail to Caen, march overland to the northern coast of the Med, then hire mercenary galleys to sail on from there. Even then you risk pirates.

I haven't played England myself, though I plan to after this next patch is released. Build a diplomat strictly for kissing His Holiness' backside. Park that diplomat next to Rome, and periodically gift the Pope with money, 500 to 1000 florins either all at once or in 100-200 florins per turn for a set duration; doing this raises your papal standing dramatically. Keep your pope-o-meter high, and then you don't have to worry about going on crusades. Once you've consolidated your hold on the Isles, you have a safe haven from which to expand, and you'll almost certainly wind up at war with France at some point, so move south and take either Toulouse, Marseilles, or both. This will give you a southern harbor and you can maintain a fleet there. Then, in the future, you can just take ship in the Royal Navy from there and sail across. Even then, bring overwhelming naval superiority, because the AI does build fleets and your target will likely attack you before you arrive. I lost a crusader army once to the Egyptians that way; I encountered a half dozen Egyptian fleets before my fleet could get from Spain to Antioch, and even though I was considerably larger at first, they just wore me down.