How to role play as nasty/dread King?

Ok I have played some games as a chivalrous Christian faction, occupying only, ransom/release , attack only non Christian/excommed. The benefits of chivalry are quite marked.

So now I'm looking for ideas on how to role play the opposite type of King, .....>chivalry is for the birds, give me blood etc.... who cares who I hurt.

Just blitzing won't do it for me, I need to codify what my own rules and sub aims are for this nasty guy.

Some initial thoughts.

Forget religion- churches, burn them down , the Pope ignore him and take the papal states. Ex-commed , who cares. No priests of course.

Enemy town , sack 'em or exterminate them.

Battles - kill them all ... always.

Allies forget it.

Trade treaties. grudgingly accepted till I need your cities.

Assassins, lots of them.

Take no prisoners!


Any suggestions welcomed, is this possible ?, which faction should I play, should I play on easy/easy?.

Err if you want to be really dreadful you probably should be blitzing as else people might think you meek! :p

You'd probably still want to get as many alliances as you can early on, but sell them expensively (you can get up to 6-9k for alliance, maps + trade). You can break alliances at will then, but best after you got some financing going.

Sacking/exterminating is fine, but you will end up needing churches just to prevent constant riots which slow you down and might end up killing your governors. Making a puppet pope isn't chivalrous, so you could go ahead with making ample priests.

You also want spies in every settlement nearby and assassins to take out anything in your way.

Dread generals are fun mainly against low command, low chivalry enemies (mainly captains actually), but are rather useless against high chivalry (and command) generals. Even having a proper general seems to negate most of the dread sadly.

You also want an army that can quickly devastate the enemy and strike fear into their hearts. Heavy cav is probably right for that.

It depends on what kind of nasty you want to be. :evilgrin:

You can be the all-out evil bastard, and do as you described in your first post.

You can be the insidious bastard; make alliances but backstab when it's the most opportune for you.

You can play the outward nice guy, make and keep alliances, but kill everything in sight using assassins. It's hard to do but you can eliminate other factions this way.

As for battles and sieges, the game itself and history has the best advice in my view: "Kill them all! God will recognize his own!" - Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux.

Kill people.

Every time the happiness of a town falls below green, remove the garrison, wait for it to rebel, attack it then exterminate the ungrateful little wretches.

If they're not happy, surely it's for their own good?

Oh that´s simple, just play as if you were playing the RTW campaign: exterminate, run down fleeing enemies, use spies and assassins.

As a matter of fact, in my first M2TW campaign that was just how I approached it, as if I were playing an RTW mod. As a result, I ended up with loads of high-dread generals, and as for my Emperors (I played the HRE) usually ended up with epitephs like "the Cruel", "the Tyrant", "the Butcher", etc.