First Ever Victory on MTW2

Russia – Short Campaign
Objective: Capture 15 provinces, Eliminate Poland and Hungary

This is the first time I have managed to complete a game of MTW2 and was really just a test game to see if OG Gleeps advice on merchants actually worked. However, it turned into quite an interesting struggle which kept me on the edge of my seat right to the wire.

I've ended up with an interesting dilemma in my Russian Campaign. In order to win I have to hold 15 provinces and eliminate both the Polish and Hungarian faction.

The early game followed a quite normal pattern. I eliminated all the rebel factions in my area expanding the Russian Empire to the eastern map edge and securing Finland.

POLISH BETRAYAL
The Poles decided to betray our alliance and that gave me the excuse I needed to capture all their cities in northern Europe. This was achieved without too much trouble but for some reason although I had captured all their visible cities their faction was not eliminated.

HUNGARY ELIMINATED
I proceeded with my objectives, fighting off a half-hearted invasion by the Danes and the HRE before eliminating the Hungarian’s. I now had over 15 provinces in my Empire and just needed to eliminate the Poles to win.

MIDDLE EASTERN POLISH PROBLEM
I had discovered that the Polish faction still survived because they had managed to capture Damascus during a crusade. So, now found myself with a Polish Middle Eastern catholic faction sitting in the middle a massive Egyptian/Muslim empire with the Mongol horde rampaging in through Asia Minor between us.

A STRATEGIC PROBLEM
I sent a team of assassin's, spies and diplomats over to Damascus to try and cause trouble by blowing up temples and bribing Polish officials. But so far, its not working and for some reason the damned Egyptians didn’t seem interested in eradicating the Christian enclave in their midst.

I had managed to form an alliance with the Mongol Horde whilst I began secretly feeding funds to the Byzantines in the hope that they could keep them busy long enough for the Egyptians to finish off the Poles. I was hoping that someone would declare a Jihad before the Mongols got bored with our alliance.

CONSTANTINOPLE FALLS
Constantinople fell to the Mongols despite the investment my treasury made in shoring up its Byzantine defenders. Fortunately, the Mongols were stupid and a few turns later lost the city to a Rebel uprising and then had to capture it back, which bought me a few more months of peace in Asia Minor.

TERROR BOMBING FAILS IN MIDDLE EAST
I was still making no progress in eliminating the Poles in Damascus. My assassins were routinely bombing the temple and city hall in the city in the hope of creating civil unrest and brining about a revolt but so far without success. I thought about sending an invasion fleet, but realised that the army would have to land in Egyptian territory and march through it to reach them. That would cause a diplomatic incident which I would prefer to avoid. I had upset the Danes earlier by accidentally marching an army through their country and it took years to restore peace. Likewise, I was convinced that the Mongols would interfere if I marched overland. Having re-captured Constantinople and as they are still waging war against my Byzantine Allies. I figured if I marched an army into their territory or Byzantine they (or the AI) would assume it was coming to aid my ally recover Constantinople and attack it. (I know I would)

The hope was that by trying to stir up religious unrest in Damascus and start some sort of civil war I could weaken the Poles enough that just perhaps Egypt will invade and finish the job for me.

THE HORDE GO HOSTILE
Well the horde has gone hostile and both Sophia and Thessalonica are now under siege. Sophia is holding out well but for a while it looked like I might lose Thessalonica.

I quickly realised that Peasant Archers were not the most suitable wall archers for defending a city as their bows do not have enough range, and so a systematic program was begun to replace them with mercenary crossbowmen and dismounted Dvor. Although I later discovered that Cossack musketeers were pretty good too.

MONGOLS SLAUGHTERED BY RUSSIA
My standard procedure during sieges is to launch routine sallies every turn against the attackers. The objective of these is to cause maximum casualties to the besieging force whilst losing as few men as possible myself. Frequently this is simply a case of emptying every units stock of arrows and other missiles into the besiegers. This process seemed to work well against the Mongols whose besieging armies began to lose anything up to 50% of their strength per turn whilst besieging my cities, though peasant archers proved to have a limited use in these sallies due to their poor range.

During the occasional Mongol assaults on my cities I discovered that eliminating their rams was the best tactic as without the capturing a gateway the vast bulk of their cavalry can't do anything against your defences. On the occasions where they managed to capture a gate or breached a wall with siege engines I found the best tactic was to keep my wall archers in place on the walls and merely block the main roads to the city centres with heavy infantry and spearmen. This produced a killing ground behind the walls where their cavalry were forced to try and break through my infantry shield walls whilst being shot in the back by my archers. On several occasions the streets of Thessalonica were carpeted with dead horsemen from these attacks and whole Mongol armies were wasted in this way. In one assault three Mongol generals were killed in including their Khan.

POLES CAPTURE ANTIOCH
The terror bombing campaign I have orchestrated in Damascus is still not bearing fruit and so far there has been no civil uprising against the Poles. However, the good news is that the Poles just seized Antioch and so their territory now extends right to the coast. That means if I can just get the horde off my back I might be able to send in an army to deal with them.

POLISH TRAITOR OFFERS A GLIMMER OF HOPE
Finally, I had a major breakthrough in the Holy Land. One of my diplomats managed to bribe Prince Leuwenski a nobleman in command of a small Polish army with 5,000 florins and over the next few turns I hired several units of mercenary knights and horse archers to bolster his forces. I also built him a fort just outside Damascus to shelter in.

POLISH REBELS CAPTURE DAMASSCUS
The Poles attempted to eliminate the fort and lost, which weakened their garrison in Damascus enough that I felt able to besiege it with my mercenaries.

My intention was just to starve the Poles into submission but on the second turn of the siege good King Wenceslas and his Polish Garrison decided to sally out of the city and drive my army off.

Bad move....the Polish army outnumbered mine but with three units of mercenary Knights and three units of horse archers, their crossbowmen and militia were no match for my men.

King Wenceslas was surrounded and killed by my knights whilst the horse archers decimated the militia even before they managed to file through the city gates and deploy.

Their King dead the entire Polish army routed and were chased back through the city streets and massacred in the town square. My mercenaries then sacked and pillaged the city raising over 11,000 florins for my war chest which more than paid their wages.

I even managed to retrain some of them and replace their losses before the Tumurid's appeared in the area and I decide there was no way to hold the city.

DAMASSCUS HANDED TO THE MONGOLS
Next turn I destroyed everything of value in the city raising a further 9,000 florins and then gave the city to the Mongols. I figured that this might keep both the Timurid's and the Mongols busy for a few years whilst my now replenished army marched on Antioch and eliminated the last of the Poles.

In fact the Mongol’s immediately formed an alliance with the Poles and the Timurid’s seemed reluctant to attack either of them.[curses]

FINAL VICTORY
Finally managed to finish off the Poles and win the game.

Not quite as planned but then as they say 'all planning goes out the window as soon as the first shot is fired'.

The Timurind's refused to do the decent thing and finish off the Poles in Antioch for me, although they did besiege it for one turn before getting bored and wandering off.

In the end it was the traitorous Prince Leuwenski, and his army of mercenary Knights and Horse Archers who did the dirty deed and were called upon to lay siege to the city. I figured that given time I might manage to starve them into submission but as horses can't climb ladders I had little hope of taking the city by storm.

Then the AI did one of its occasional stupid moves. As Prince Leuwenski and his mercenary horse approached the city the Poles produced some additional units that exceeded the maximum strength of the garrison. As usual these units were placed outside the city walls, and because they had nowhere else to go they just sat there.

Next turn Prince Leuwenski's army decided to attack this small group of units and remove them from play in preparation for besieging the city.

What I had forgotten was that when you do that the entire garrison of the city turn out to support their fellow countrymen. So, what I thought was going to be a small elimination battle outside the city walls, turned into the final showdown between the rebels and the poles. The entire Polish army including their king rushed to the aid of the small force I had attacked and a massive battle ensued. My rebel knights took huge casualties and I thought at one point I might lose my entire rebel army, but by focusing their attacks on the enemies bodyguard cavalry I was able to systematically eliminate all of the Polish nobility and Royal Family in turn, whilst my horse archers sacrificed themselves keeping their militia crossbowmen busy.

Finally, after a long and desperate struggle the enemy militia, now abandoned by their knights, broke and fled being hunted down and massacred as they tried to escape.

Only 25 men made it off the field and when the dust settled I discovered Antioch totally unguarded and was able to just walk in 'sacked it' and click 'end turn'

VICTORY....The first time I have completed an MTW2 game.

A good easy read, a couple of comments.

1. Using spies , i've never been able to get a core city(near to capital) rebel, I think the max unrest by spies is 80% and also religious unrest seems to be capped at 80%. A nuisance strategy I think but not possible to win a game with it(waits for someone who has)

2. Assassins, I've also never had enough luck with these in vanilla, though Lusted's L to C mod has enhanced ones which you can rule the world with.



3. A good idea to get rid of a unit outside a city is send 1 lonely unit to seige the city, then demolish the unit outside with your army, the city defenders cannot assist in this, then seige the city with your whole army. Of course you could use a night attack if available which does the same sort of thing.

A good read :thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Razor1952

1. Using spies , I've never been able to get a core city(near to capital) rebel, I think the max unrest by spies is 80% and also religious unrest seems to be capped at 80%. A nuisance strategy I think but not possible to win a game with it(waits for someone who has)

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Yes, the massed spy trick was something that used to work in Shogun Totalwar and I once won a whole campaign just using spies, assassin's and geisha's. I called it 'The War of the Shadows' and wrote a campaign log for it on 'The Org'.

I don't think thats possible with MTW2 and the only role my spies took in this campaign was to monitor the effects of my assassin's terror bombing.

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2. Assassins, I've also never had enough luck with these in vanilla, though Lusted's L to C mod has enhanced ones which you can rule the world with.

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I must admit assassin's seem pretty poor in MTW2. I am told they need to be trained by killing princesses but personally I've never tried this process so I don't know if it works.

In this game their role was simply to destroy any and all buildings in Damasscus which provided +Law, +Happiness or +Order and hopefully cause civil unrest as a result. The strategy was particially successful as at several points my spies reported that order in the city had dropped to 50% and buildings and units in the city did suffer some collateral damage. But, there was never an outright uprising and I suspect that this just isn't possible to achieve without modifying the game.

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3. A good idea to get rid of a unit outside a city is send 1 lonely unit to seige the city, then demolish the unit outside with your army, the city defenders cannot assist in this, then seige the city with your whole army. Of course you could use a night attack if available which does the same sort of thing.

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Well as it happens the garrison of Antioch rushing out to assist their comrades was the best thing that could have happened. In fact, if I had not been half asleep I would have done it deliberately. It was just funny having deployed my knight and horse archers to click the start battle button and find the entire polish army rushing onto the battlefield. I must have been really tired as I hadn't even noticed them on the pre-battle summary screen. Just glad I don't use the auto-resolve for small battles.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was impossible for civil revolt to occur at the capital

Massed assassins can be very useful, 3-4 assassins bombing different building during the same turn (churches, militia buildings, town halls and inns for instance) aided with some spies in the settlement can cause great discomfort in the hearts of the rulers, especially if their coffers aren't bolstered with huge income from sea ports. Not to mention the old religious unrest... Central regions and castles are more difficult, though. I bet I'm not really saying anything new here, but this is how I deal with uncooperative factions - I never start wars, maybe that's why everyone hates me.

Assassins don't seem to die too easily either, and if you have the guilds, the starting stats can be around 3-5 or beyond. Training them with rebel generals is of course the most classical way, and if you have the money to spare, I think they can give even too much an advantage to the human player. It's fun though, so I'm not complaining!

@Caliburn: Thats basically what I was doing to Damasscus, concentrating on their Race Track, Church and Town Hall. I managed to get their public order down to 50% at one point and was obviously creating some civil unrest as random damage was occuring to other buildings, but the city never revolted even with all the buildings destroyed at once. Possibly because as Sapi said it was a capital.

Eventually, 4 out of my 5 assassins was caught and executed but they did a useful job for quite a while.

Yeh - I'm not 100% sure about the capital thing, but I can imagine that for the player at least it'd be a horrible gameplay mechanic to be thrown out of your last city because the people don't like you.

Any ruler would impose martial law before allowing that to happen.

I'm pretty sure you can start a rebellion in a capital city. I remember starting one in Bologna in late game when population was high and it was the capital of HRE. I had three spies in there and 6 assassins to take down the general and all the "happy" buildings in there.

I probably should have been clearer - what I meant was that i doubted you could start a rebellion in a faction's last city, though it might be possible

Very wierd campaign

One thingyou may all have forgot to cause a little unrest- send your religious unit (priest etc) to enemy lands that have opposite religion will cause religious unrest

@Harve
Good point...though in this instance it was more in my favour to hinder the adoption of christianity rather than assist. Thus my assassin's were busy blowing up the church in Damasscus everytime the Poles rebuilt it.